low_delta

We were going to eat out, at an Asian place we like, but they were closed - on a Saturday Night. It took us a couple of minutes to think of another place in town that we wanted to go to. So I decided to make a list of all the restaurants, not counting coffee shops and takeout/delivery places.

Grafton, from east to south
Flannery's Bar & Restaurant @ Fire Ridge
The Bunkers
Juice's Ghost Town
Water Street Brewery
McDonald's (ff)
Qdoba (ff)
Dave's Hot Chicken (ff)
Quiznos (ff)
Noodles (ff)
Subway (ff)
Firehouse Subs (ff)
Chipotle (ff)
Five Guys (ff)
Flipside
13 North
Collectivo (coffee shop, breakfast, lunch)
Spring Garden
The Stillery
Lobo's Place
John's Pizzaria
Fiddleheads (coffee shop, breakfast, lunch)
McDonald's (ff)
Even Odds (pizza)
Dragon Gourmet
Cousin's Subs (ff)
Bamboo Bistro
Culver's (ff)

( Cedarburg )

Sunday was a sedentary day. I sat for most of it. I caught up on my reading on Substack (photography) in the morning. In the afternoon, I sat at the computer and caught up on stuff. Fixed up some photos and posted them. Updated my whisky list. Took care of some CoPA things. Took care of some SAS things. Cooked supper. Worked on my presentation for the whisky tasting. Worked on Cyn's library project.

I don't know what's going on this week, if anything, except Cindy is retiring. Her last day at work is Tuesday!

I worked in the morning, and left for Chicago after lunch. And not as early as I'd hoped because things kept coming up at work. My friend messaged that she wouldn't be able to meet me.

I had to take my camera to a shop for repair. The first place I chose was mail-in only, but their website wasn't working and I couldn't get through. The second place I stopped at today. They told me they don't do repairs onsite. The two places they send cameras to either wouldn't do my camera, or would take over a month. So I chose a third place and drove the opposite direction. I went north because I had to pick up some whisky. And then I went south. But that time my phone wasn't working with my car, so I was driving in an unfamiliar part of town without navigation. I finally got it to work and got downtown in good time.

Got confused in the building trying to find the place. Dropped the camera off and headed back north. I thought I should be enjoying something in downtown Chicago but it was getting late, the weather is bad, everything is expensive there (it cost me $25 just to park for less than half an hour) and I wasn't in the mood. So I went back north.

I found a soul food restaurant. It was all electronic. You could order at a kiosk or QR for a menu and order at the counter. But I got confused and thought I had to order online. I was trying to enter my credit card number on the phone, but I didn't have to, and then realized I entered it on a scam ad that comes when you do a QR code. I was caught by one of those before. So while I was waiting for my food I called the credit card company and canceled my card. Later, I saw an email saying I had set up a Google Pay account. Oh what in the holy fuck. Why is this so hard! I mean, even if I was ordering online, why was I even trying to enter my cc number? Why didn't I see what I was entering it for? Google Pay is legit, so I wouldn't have had to cancel my card.

So I went over to Delilah's for some whisky. At least that went fine. Had rain for part of the trip home, and wind for all of it. Talked with Cindy for a while after I got home, and then had to go out for milk.

We got an inch and a half of rain yesterday, and the snow started in late evening. It continued through lunchtime today. I have no idea how much we got because the wind was so strong it was just drifting everywhere. We got out to shovel after supper, and did most of it. I finished around 10pm. Fortunately it was fairly light. Due to the rain, there was ice underneath, but also fortunately, because it was slushy before it froze, it was textured and not very slippery.

It's supposed to get below 10°F overnight. Then Wednesday it will be above freezing, and getting warmer every day after, so I don't expect it to last long.

Cindy and I were both supposed to go into our offices today, but there was no way I was going to spend 45 minutes shoveling, and then an extra long commute, and get there late and find nobody else in the office. My coworker felt the same way. He said it took his wife an hour to get to work, twice as long as usual.

Sometimes I'm hungrier than usual. Some days I can't go all the way to noon without having to find a snack or eat lunch early. I always need something in between supper and bedtime (that's usually six hours), but sometimes I need more than usual. No idea why this happens, but I'm sure most other people have this too. But recently I was less hungry than usual. I didn't need a snack in the evening (after a normal supper), and on top of that, I wasn't hungry for breakfast the next day, and made it all the way to lunch. Very strange.

As I mentioned, it's been a rough few weeks. I'm exhausted. Today we went to a play, and then met a friend of Cindy's for pizza.

Before we left, I asked her what time we had to leave. She said "the play starts at 3:00." Ogod, I have to do math and estimating.

"What kind of pizza should we get?" "I don't care." "But..." "Just don't get mushrooms." Not the kind of decision I was wanting to make at that point.

Her friend was very talkative, and I was grateful since I had nothing to say. It was taking a good portion of my energy to stay attentive.

I was going to write about something this weekend but then I put it off until today so I could include the whole weekend, and now I don't know what it was.

I made pancakes for supper on Friday, and the house still smells like pancakes. I have no idea why.

I'm still sorting and shelving the LP's. I'd like to get the turntable working and listen to them all. I wonder how long that would take. I feel like we could average one a day, but I'm sure I'd get tired of it, so it would probably take twice that long. And I don't know how many are there. I think we're talking about years, and that's with skipping all the ones we have on CD and listen to all the time. This explains why we'd get tired of it - because we already have most of the good stuff on CD, so this would be a couple of years of mediocre 70's rock music.

D&D yesterday. One more session in April will close out the storyline. Not sure what will happen after that.

Today I went to Chicago to buy whisky. I had them all located at Binny's but stopped at Discount here in Milwaukee on the way (Binny's has their inventory online, and Discount doesn't), and found five of the six whiskies, and for less money. Still had to go to Chicago to pick up that last one.

While there I stopped at Delilah's for a whisky. Ended up talking with the owner for a while. He gave me his card and said to let him know the next time I was in town so he'd be in and we could chat.

It hit 60°F today. It was above 50 yesterday, and I thought it would be cooler today, not warmer. I was in the office today, so I didn't go out. A coworker said it was chilly with the breeze downtown.

Someone asked me if we did anything for Valentine's day. I said Cindy and I went out to eat. That's more than we usually do. After dinner we went to the Art*Bar, since there was an artist's work we wanted to see. I didn't mention that part to the coworker.

I've been organizing our LP's. Friday I made separate stacks of all the letters A through K. Tonight I alphabetized them by band name and put them back on the shelves. I thought I had three shelves' worth, but then realized there are a couple of boxes on a fourth shelf. I think M will round out the second shelf, so we'll definitely fill four shelves. So I have to figure out how to get the shelves to hold them. They're wire mesh, so I have to put cardboard down on the shelf so they don't fall through. And I have to put something on the ends, because they're open.

It's depressing going through them because of how many are damaged from the flood of 2019 (which is how long they've been unorganized and ignored). So we should really thing about tossing many of them out. I intend to listen to as many as I can this year, so that will help make the decision on whether to keep or toss.

Speaking of outdated formats, I know we have a couple of boxes of cassettes, but I can't find them. I wanted to play them while I was working down there. One of the boxes, my plan was to listen and then toss. I started with that, but lost track of the box. It's probably behind some stuff that I can't get to. I need to clean out that room, but I can't because it's so full. Part of the reason it's so full is because we keep adding artwork. That's where we keep all our framed art. And we keep making more.

I can make space by cleaning out the game shelves. I know there's stuff in there we can get rid of. Games that are falling apart and I know we'll never play. There are probably some games that are in decent shape that I know we'll never play, that I can donate.

I've never seen a basketball game. Certainly no college or NBA game. Maybe a game at my high school, but probably not. My event at work has some people in from out of state, and others from out of the country. The company has a luxury box at the arena, so we were able to get passes to use the box. The Bucks were playing the Chicago Bulls last night, and half our group was able to go. The people who weren't into basketball as much, went tonight, to see them play the New Orleans Pelicans. Aside from the fact that I don't care about sports, I was fine with seeing this game because I'd never heard of the team.

The Bucks were behind for most of the game, then finally took the lead and were able to keep it close and won in overtime.

The box itself was just four rows of seats, but the seats were nicer and there was more room. The real benefit was the free food and drink. They had a really fancy buffet. Quite a variety of food - spare ribs, stir fry, brisket sandwiches, mac & cheese, grilled asparagus, fried chicken, some nice desserts including ice cream sundaes, and a station of cheese, crackers, sausage and veggies. All high quality stuff. And a bar which had some decent stuff if not a wide variety.

Those pro sportsball games drive me crazy. Every moment of the evening was filled with spectacle. They had contests and exhibitions and giveaways and people dancing on camera and... I don't even know. Oh, they had Humande Society in for an adoptable-puppy race on court at halftime (not one puppy knew what to do or where to go). Their mascot sunk a backwards half-court shot. That was kinda cool to see. They have to play music while the game is on, or the energy level would fall flat. It's insane.

We had our fancy dress ball on Saturday, the Robert Burns Banquet. All over the world, on this night, the Scottish diaspora gathers to celebrate Burns, the Bard of Scotland. There were recitations of his poems and songs. After dinner there was a pipe band and Scottish dancers. Later on, a Celtic-ish folk Duo.

I wear my formal kilt outfit - my Prince Charlie jacket with tails. It was weird, though. Right when we got there, Cindy told me that my bow tie had come undone. I don't tie it from a loose tie, it's on a strap that goes around my neck, and it had come unclipped. Later on, the hook on my belt broke, and it started falling off. Around that same time, during the performances, I dropped my flash unit. It was fine except a piece of trim came off. But it was weird.

It only got up to 2° yesterday. Fortunately it wasn't a long walk to the car. Today it was 12°. We were supposed to have our little ceremony at the Robert Burns monument. We always meet there for some more Burns (we always sing "Auld Lang Syne) and then retire to a nearby pub for refreshments. Because of the cold we decided to skip the monument and just meet at the pub. The woman who normally bring her scones wasn't able to come, so we had kringle. Not as many people as usual, but had nice talks with a few of them.

On the way down, I saw four cars spun out on the freeway. One of them *just* happened. When I got downtown it didn't seem very cold until I turned a corner and was walking into the wind. Holy cow. We have a rule that we wouldn't stay out there for more minutes than the temperature. I think we could have done twelve minutes, but not in that wind!