JUL 22

2024

Monday: last day before vacation! It's the season of oversold sailings and itinerary changes, so I was expecting to take a lot of time-consuming calls, but between the time I had to invest in projects and jumping into chat support to cover Chris's break, I missed out on calls for most of the day. (I did a little bit of trade sanction work during the hour when invoices weren't printing properly, but the rest of the time was reworking group commission reviews.) Everything was great until the very end of the shift, when I got two lengthy calls requiring me to talk with travel agents. I didn't get out of work until 30 minutes after my shift would normally end.

John had cornered Mim behind the couch earlier in the day, so once Julie got home, she snoozed with Mim in the bedroom for a while. Once I got out of work, I roused her, and we walked through a warm drizzle to Stogie Joe's for Quizzo. We were seated in the middle of the side room by some older guys, and the room was dramatically more comfortable this week. We had our usual (small Caesar salad, small soppressata pizza), and I felt like I was able to provide a lot more answers than usual during the question rounds. (The answers I was able to provide that surprised Julie the most included "Vasco da Gama" and "Ferngully".) We still wound up one point short of tying for third place, and after walking home, I soon fell asleep on the living room floor.

2023

Saturday: I stayed up too late on WoW finishing the July trading post goals, but I did at least complete the progress track.

This afternoon we drove out to the local Freddie's Frozen Custard place. It didn't feel like home; the prices were higher, the meat and the bun were a little different, and none of these franchises have had the fry seasoning out since COVID. The taste was close enough, though, so it was nice to revisit something neither of us had eaten in a year. After Freddie's, we went to a Petsmart to pick up litter, then came back to have dessert at Rita's. My misto shake combined a vanilla custard with a watermelon/chocolate chip water ice. It was better than it sounds.

I drove us back into town so we could get groceries at Acme. I picked up stuff for these cheese-and-breadcrumbs over meatballs dish I planned to make this weekend, along with lunch substitutions aimed at lowering the ratio of my carbohydrate intake. (I'm fine with this! I wasn't interested in trying yakisoba pan, anyway.) Once we'd brought the groceries home, I swapped out all the litterboxes while Julie did the dishes. Carrying all those bags of fresh litter must have been more of a workout than I expected, because my arms are sore.

Normally I don't make dinner until Sunday night, but we might be going to a cook-out tomorrow, so I did dinner tonight by myself. I was struggling to sequence the operations for cooking the meatballs and boiling the rigatoni and roasting the broccoli while also leaving enough counter and stovetop space for all the skillets and trays I needed. We didn't wind up eating until like 8:30.

After dinner, Julie and I tried playing Root on my laptop, but hotseat play is a little annoying when players have to be able to play cards in the middle of combat on other players' turns. Might just get her the game separately so we can play it that way, instead.