mental-health | In Retrospect

I always feel like The Waitresses – Christmas Wrapping is stuck in my head on Christmas Eve as I dash to and fro possibly while bundled up too tight, but today was typical Virginia, where the weather was showing it can be bright and sunny and warm for the day. And for this I took advantage of some outdoor time, first by walking to coffee with my retired old man group, then by walking the waterfront in Old Town because I arrived too early for yoga, and finally by enjoying the waterfront at dusk after having a mid-afternoon dinner.

Back before the earth cooled, or at least in the pre-COVID era, a coffee shop opened across the street from my home, where I was living in a large apartment building before I settled down and moved into a house. This was Idido’s Coffee and Social. I actually wrote entire proposals while sitting at Idido’s.

Once I moved I started walking to Idido’s a few times a week to get out of the house as well as I was still working from home all the time. I started noticing one of my neighbors was meeting his friends there, mostly retired civil servants, once a week, and eventually he invited me to join them.

Well, I have long since gotten out of the habit of going to Idido’s, but my neighbor’s group has grown to include between ten and eighteen people, and I still show up once or twice a month. That’s what I did today. I didn’t have to leave early to go to work thankfully. Instead, I left early got head to yoga.

Months ago I started going to a new yoga studio in Old Town Alexandria. Usually I go with The Boss, other times I go by myself (today was maybe the once this month I will go alone). And being the next town over you never know how long, with metro DC traffic, it will take to get there and find parking. Today’s answer? About 17 minutes. Sometimes it’s 30 or 40 minutes. End result, I was early.

Yes, I know I’m droning on and on about this but there’s a point.

I walked out to the waterfront to a spot I have never experienced. Let’s call this “things to do while waiting for yoga.” On this point there was, until recently, an empty warehouse but now there is a city park. It has a great view. I took the photo above with my new phone, an iPhone 17 Pro that I figured would be great for penguin photos next month.

I tried to make a joke about penguins but it just wouldn’t fly.

A month ago I was persuaded to upgrade my phone for aforementioned penguins, in part because the camera is so impressive. Purely as demonstration, not necessarily of quality because nothing is great with full on electronic zoom, I offer you this.

A view of the Capitol from six miles distant – notice it’s just a zoom on the photo above, a separte photo. But still, it tells me I can zoom in on an emporer on the ice and have you, dear reader, see an emporer on the ice.

But enough of this. Yoga as great, mostly floor practice, lots of stretching, then I came home and took a nap.

Dinner was at 3pm on Ada’s on the River. They still had their lunch menu up which was fine, it’s great. Ada’s is a better value than going into DC for fancy food and has a more extensive menu than most places in Arlington

We had a full bottle of champagne rather than cocktails and glasses. The occasion seemed to call for it, and the $89 restaurant price of the Beau Joie seems to be not tooooo far off from the $59 Total Wine price of the Beau Joie (it wouldn’t have surprised me to find that it was $30 in the store, such is the usual markup).

They had James River oysters which we refer to as being good enough for a half dozen. We like our oysters a bit more saline and tighter and smaller; the Chesapeake and tributary oysters tend to be less saline and larger. But these were fine and Ada’s serves them with excellent accompaniments. We also had tuna tartare and a dark brioche bread.

Ada’s does a great job with mussels, served with bread of course in a tomato broth with some spice and dill. After oysters, tuna, and mussels, it seemed to order something starchy, so of course there was a side of lobster mac n cheese. Two pots of mussels were the same cost as the lobster mac n cheese.

In honor of Hungary I ordered a glass of Royal Tokaji Aszú 5 Puttonyos. And then the salted caramel chocolate souffle.

Image of man stirring caramel into a souffle

This was actually the only flop of the day, and it honestly wasn’t a serious flop. The server brought the souffle out with a tin of caramel, but the caramel was lacking in quantity and cold. It wouldn’t pour. So, when he cut open our souffle with a spoon and poured it, it wouldn’t pour, so our poor sad souffle was sitting there looking like molten chocolate until he ran to the kitchen and heated up the caramel. It was good and tasty, but the presentation would have been better if it was as intended. Instead, I’ll need to make it at home!

And that’s all for today’s activities outside of the home. Inside the home I’m rolling out puff pastry. More on that tomorrow, maybe. And I’ll talk about yoga.

The weekend after Halloween seems to be when everything changes around here. The leaves start to fall, slowly, so now there is routine raking; it‘s decidedly chilly at night and jacket weather still in the daytime; and finally the garden starts to die off even if there is no frost yet. Days are simply too short for tomatoes to grow quickly. Oh, and it is 63 days until the next great adventure, but more about that later. For now, we spend the days working and preparing for winter.

I‘m trying to get to a state where what I eat is sustainably healthy. In other words, I‘m avoiding fried foods and some things that are unhealthy for me (emphasis on some as there is still a lot of Halloween candy in the house). For breakfast I had a bowl of cereal, orange juice, and a banana. Lunch was P.F. Chiang‘s General Tso‘s Chicken, delivered. I should have ordered the lunch portion but I accidentally ordered a full dinner portion. As a result, I now have a stomach ache, something that isn‘t good because when I get a stomach ache from chicken it tends to linger on for a day. And finally, dinner just has not happened yet. I‘ll probably have something healthy when I get home like some fruit, maybe an apple or two. Definitely not candy.

Today was a mixed day of reading cruise blogs, work meetings and training (we‘re taking sales training that requires role playing), and yard work. I‘m actually rebuilding the surround to my garden bed, something which requires sawing 4×4 lumber to fit. So far I have managed to build more than half the new bed without sawing anything other than wood. And then there were a couple of meetings regarding my kids‘ mental health and a visit to the hospital for one kid who is on a mental health side quest. That‘s the way he puts it – it‘s a side quest. I‘m content with that statement and I am also looking at this current incident as merely a setback. We will be back to normal before long.

For me, Mondays are the busiest day of the week. Whereas at one time I would come home and collapse on Monday, instead Mondays are now fast and furious and extend from waking up early to an evening piano lesson, first one for my daughter and then one for me. I finally get to relax after dog walk around 9:30pm. The nice thing about this arrangement is it allows me to not contribute to society on Tuesday and Wednesday nights guilt-free. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment, the piano playing part at least. We‘re going on nine years of piano lessons for my daughter and about eight years for me. She is by far the better player once she learned how to learn and once my friend Jessica learned how to teach her. She does indeed have a very interesting way of learning.

Anyway, the conclusion here is I am focusing on the day to day for another sixty days along with some travel preparation here and there, and I am fine with this (I rarely focus on the day to day for this long). I am fine with this as we are embarking on a fairly significant adventure in January. We also have some other draft plans for adventures over the next three years akin to accomplishing a good portion of our bucket list in this time period. What we hope to accomplish is something that truly amazes me as we have built a life that allows this, yet we also have already accomplished so much.

For this reason I decided to start writing about it. I am focusing on a format that I think will work when the time comes that we are traveling. My draft, for now, is five paragraphs or five quick sections. I‘ll start with an introduction to the day to kick off what I have been thinking about.

Second, I‘ll main sentences of body. I would start with what I ate or what our meals looked like. Especially when traveling I feel this is something we focus on a lot because food is such an interesting part of culture – as is drink. In a quick day this can be a paragraph but in a busy day or a day with a “foodie adventure” it can be more. After the food I will talk about major events from the day. And then I‘ll scroll to the evening. Hopefully this will be when I gather my thoughts for the day but it may be more likely to do that on the following day. Anyway, this is when I will begin to understand what the day was about.

And then a conclusion. So what? What did it all mean? Was it a good day? Yes, honestly it was. No, not everything is going as planned, but today was a good day.

Happy Christmas Eve dinner – seafood and yoga

First Monday of November