Weekend.

We spent a big part of the weekend doing house projects (we are mounting various shelves and hooks in our gym so all our gym accessories are up off the floor). Jeremy fulfilled a lifetime dream of being able to cut plywood in our garage. For a long time, to be able to do this involved buying a table saw or some such thing, but they invented a track circular saw which enables straight long cuts with a protected blade and he did great. Jeremy’s been working like a maniac for the past few months, but there was a lull between efforts which fell on a weekend, so we took advantage of the extra time.

We had a lovely Chinese New Year dinner on Saturday night with Xiao Ying and Chenny. Their kids are growing up and it’s fun to see. My parents are worried they won’t be able to buy snacks at the 7-11 in China, since the pandemic, they switched over to a completely cashless society (even panhandlers have smartphones apparently) and to get into the system, one has to be completely registered with the Chinese govt – so this makes it incredibly difficult to pay if you are an expat or a visitor. It’s this circular thing like you need to get a QR code to by a phone, but you don’t have a phone to produce the QR code, and it keeps going around and around.

Chenny was hilarious and handled all the ordering and he ordered all the americanized Chinese dishes that he loves. Sesame chicken, shrimp with mayo and candied walnuts. Classics. And a whole fish, because of the new year. Red envelopes all around.

Sunday, we went to Eric’s house for the superbowl party. He made delicious chili and we had frito pie. I love how the fritos kind of soften in the chili, but are still a bit crunchy. I also know that fritos have something in them that gives me a bit of a headache, so I have them only when I eat frito pie which is probably less than once every three years. I’m also in a fight with Luna, their chihuahua. Luna kind of “attacked” me a few months ago – I forgive her because I think she was in tooth pain. Attacked might be too strong of a word here because I may have inadvertently provoked her. But I’m a bit scared to approach her now (her bad teeth have since been addressed). Here we are at a little standoff over pita chips. We stayed until almost the end of the first quarter. I’m a party pooper – I look at football and I don’t like sanctioned head injuries happening before my eyes (but apparently all it takes me to participate in this is a bowl of chili and fritos). Nor do I like the money spent doing it, I told a friend, I think we should funnel all this money to child care subsidies and early education efforts. Again, I’m no fun at all.

Vincent, I apologize for my many shortcomings and please forgive me that in 20-30 years, I’ll be calling you about tech issues. Gene, for weeks, has had no internet in his apartment and various efforts have failed. I’m on his opera email list and I’m constantly getting emails which say – because Gene doesn’t have email, I’m sending this out – love Leah! My dad called last night all flustered because his $300 laptop stopped working. My in-laws, at the same time, called because they needed to download Firefox on their mac and couldn’t figure it out. We divided and conquered. Jeremy is better on PC and I’m better on Mac, so Jeremy walked my dad through his computer woes which involved thumb drives and ordering a new computer. I walked my in-laws through downloading a new web browser through the impenetrable thing that is a Mac. I can also feel this sliding of tech myself, even now. What’s a tiktok?