The Lower 48

I turned 48 last week, and it was almost as uneventful as I’d hoped. I preemptively took the week off so I spent most of the time relaxing, eating out occasionally, or otherwise doing absolutely nothing constructive. I really needed that.

The only problem is that I started coming down with some kind of cold on the 10th. It progressed into an insanely sore throat that resembled gargling rusty razor blades, which I suspected was either the current variant of Covid dubbed razor-blade throat or strep. Turns out it was neither, confirmed by tests. I guess there are just a lot throat obliterating pathogens going around this summer and I happened to catch one.

I didn’t fully shake it off until the 16th, which somewhat tainted my week off since I spent half of it in bed. Either way, my birthday rolled around as scheduled and Jen and I went to Clover’s Cat Club to hang out with the rescue kitties. I know we have four of our own, but I always enjoy visiting other cats. One in particular, a beautiful and incredibly friendly chimera tortie named Mosaic stuck to us like glue. She even sat in Jen’s lap unprompted for about 15-20 minutes. It was hard to leave her there, but we have no doubt she’ll be adopted soon given her warm disposition.

Dinner was, as is traditional, a steakhouse. This time it was Jim’s Steakhouse, which wasn’t much to write home about. Rather than medium rare, half of my ribeye was essentially bleu, making it cold and unnecessarily chewy. Rather than send it back, I opted to take the rest home, knowing it could benefit from some time in the microwave. Definitely not going back, but it was worth a shot. Perhaps next time we’ll go to Alexander’s instead.

In any case, this week it’s back to the grindstone. I’ve got a long TODO list, and not nearly enough time. Honestly, it’s a good problem to have; there’s never a dull moment.

Until Tomorrow