a short stretch at the embassy

I got up this morning and wrote in bed before I did anything else, which was helpful -- less helpful is that writing by hand in bed tends to aggravate my wrist almost immediately, but at least I get something down before picking up my phone or getting distracted by anything else. I did get slightly distracted by the robin that I'm still mildly at war with, but otherwise, it was a good way to start the day.

Then I did some stuff for the mural festival - I wrote an article for one of the local papers, which I think went pretty well. Then I had lunch with [censored], who got some [censored] from next door since I was eating very coastal-bougie avocado toast with fried eggs and [censored] doesn't like avocados or eggs (I hope that's not violating too much of [censored]'s privacy to share).

I spent a bit of time cleaning up, took a shower, and then went with my dad to investigate new phones for him since his current phone is too old to get updates. This took a bit of time, but things are mostly squared away, except for the fact that we had to order the phone and so can't get it until Monday. Also, the sales person took away from our conversation that I'm an unemployed bum and not that I used to work for the company that made the phone we bought, so I did a good job of staying uninteresting and incognito.

Then, my dad and I went down the street to a Ukrainian grocery store that I found solely because I was looking at the map around the phone store. I knew there were a lot of Ukrainians in the county north of us for unknown-to-me reasons, and they used to have a store on the square, but they moved to a new location and it's really nice. There was a lot of stuff that is no relation to standard American cuisine (would you care for some birch sap to cure your liver after too much vodka?). But they had a great salami / kielbasa counter, a wide assortment of tinned fishes, some frozen pelminis (which I would have bought if my stomach could handle gluten), some baked goods, and a bunch of other fun and interesting stuff. I bought some salami, and I'll have to go back and explore the next time I'm in town.

Then, my dad dropped me off at my house, and I was here just long enough to do a couple of tings before [censored] and I drove to meet the parents for dinner. Our usual prime rib spot was packed and also weirdly smoky inside, and I had a ribeye instead of prime rib, but it was quite tasty. Then we came home and watched some tv, and now I need to sleep - goodnight!