Celebrating the End of the Week

It is Friday, the last day of the work week, the last day of Town Hall week too. Obviously I was up at 6:30 AM getting ready for today's event at Echo Park. Noted that I made a stop at Target in the middle of the afternoon yesterday to pick up another gift card. Getting pretty fancy am I, offering up not one but 3 gift cards today. That's because today's session included the FRB too. In any case, my talk went by quickly and I thought I was pretty focused and impactful actually but then ago that's just my ego talking, still riding high I think from the successful session on Monday. Hey why not? I can pat myself on the back couldn't I? I mean an entire group from Virginia much like CCALAC invited me to talk cybersecurity with them too. No matter what I decide to do with that one, it was still good to get an invite right? It means people think I know my stuff. Anyway talk all done, we all headed to HOME restaurant near the Hollywood HC for the de-brief. Much smaller group this time (see pic) and some familiar faces were not there. Still, I enjoyed my awesome omelette and a try at Earl Grey tea, which I hadn't had since the beginning of the year! It was a nice brunch, we got to socialize a bit AS WELL AS talk about the week that was, what went well, what needs improving. I think we're plateau-ing a bit so we probably need a tweak here and there. Not too much change but it's starting to get stale I think. But we have 3 months to talk about whatever change we want to do. It's the last one of 2022 for sure though. A year ago, I was thinking it was going to be my last one for good IF I decided to retire at the end of 2021. Before the stock market crashed. I'm wondering now if I got out of the stock market in January would I still think retirement? Not just yet I don't think. I still have some work to do in that regard. 

Anyway, I went home to pick up the dog so she isn't so alone for a few hours and then I did the FRB birthday party. Why does everyone think I'm so competitive with this thing? Because I am. Greg had a Jeopardy game board up and it was all about songs and he actually did pretty good! Much better than the game I rigged up. And needless to say I was as competitive as ever. Rafeal was competing with me head to head and there were lots of other winners too. Heck even Sheng got a complete of songs. Also Larry, Barbara and Dennis. Yes Dennis. And so with the conclusion of that party also came the conclusion of the work day. I picked up Johnnie at 4 PM because he had an early Spanish class. And like last week, I made him spaghetti and pizza so he could have food while I dropped him off at Lisa's office right after his Spanish class. Lisa mentioned she had plans with her mom coming over and what not. And when I got there, Nikki was actually there getting a cleaning I thought. And so it was that at 5 PM my brief Johnnie Friday interaction was done and that was perfectly ok. I noted that for the first time, I was probably not going to see him this weekend since Lisa is home all weekend. And that's ok too. The whole month of October was bam-bam-bam I thought and I needed some respite before the holiday season starts for real. I mean already Johnnie has a day off in a week and then Thanksgiving week soon after that. I will have plenty of time with him. So tonight I realized that I had the entire night after 5:30. I also realized there was a Laker game at Crypto.com arena. Against the Jazz. Should I go? Can I get not-too-expensive tickets? Answer was a resounding yeS YES YES. I got a ticket for $100 10 rows behind the basket. Awesome. And so I headed off to Crypto.com right after dropping Johnnie off. It was like a do-over for the disastrous Wednesday night with Silvia and crew. And this time I did it right. Got there by 6:30 PM. Parked at the FRB. Had dinner from the buffet at Whole Foods. Got to my seat by 7 PM. Awesome awesome awesome. The ONLY thing that didn't go right tonight was that the Lakers lost. But it was a competitive game until the middle of the 4th quarter. The Jazz simply had more firepower. Played together better. Lakers did not defend well. But as far as spontaneous games to take in, this was a damn good one. And a good reward I think for a pretty good week. Pictures below.