Work Week Halfway Done

I like lingering around a little bit when I drop Johnnie off at the yard. It's been so long since I've seen the kids play around with each other that I actually find myself just watching the kids in a space of gratitude. And of course that would include Johnnie playing with Brooklyn still. They sure look different from the first day of TK 3 years ago. Today I got a note from Johnnie's teacher asking about a comment Johnnie made that his heart is in his right side rather than his left. I guess the exercise they were doing was one on imperfections and being different. Boy did Johnnie nail that one with a heap of self-awareness. I guess the class got super-interested. Wait until I email his teacher about the specifics of his genetics LOL. So I dropped Johnnie off, made myself some bacon and eggs for breakfast and swigged down a fresh pineapple shake and got quickly dressed to head downtown. It's Wednesday FRB day after all and this morning, I locked in a meeting with the IS Team for the 2nd day in a row simply because of Noriel's fiasco yesterday, I keep telling the guy he has a problem with confidence. After all, I sent Jorge to look over his shoulder and guess what? He not only did the piece-by-piece install that I had recommended to him upgrading from 2008 to 2012 then 2016 then 2019, each taking a day to complete. His problem was he got stuck and couldn't go on at the first step. When he had Jorge looking over his shoulders everything got to working and he actually did get to the next step. 'And it was the hardest step too, so he has the rest of the week to get it all done after all. Why it took him all week to get going is beyond me. Same thing with Sheng. The guy gave me this report as if he didn't think about what I was actually asking for him to extract. And so I had to step him back and ask him what he thought it would take to clean up Active Directory. It was easy enough to break into steps after that. And so my meeting got done quickly and we had really good progress from yesterday. The rest of the morning I just stuck around the FRB, caught up with people (Finance was there) and of course I did an upper body/pull-up workout in the gym. I actually did 12 reps 3 times on the pull-up, the lat pull, and the tricep rope. I got 120 reps in all in all. And I went home and had myself a tuna sandwich and tomato basil soup. I had all kinds of food in my fridge after all. Might as well save money and eat at home.

So this being a Wednesday, I basically spent the rest of the afternoon logging in steps and watching some videos until it was time to pick up Johnnie. It's Spanish class at Lisa's office night and then dinner after. Hopefully Lisa would NOT be in the mood to eat at home and I already floated an idea in Johnnie's head that he would want to eat at Mitsuwa for udon noodles. Or maybe we could even go to Maria's. First things first, the class. WE did it in the kitchen because Lisa and Angie were doing something that looked like a strategy meeting in her office. <She would tell us later that she thinking seriously about downsizing her practice. I thought it was a good idea>. Look at the pic of Johnnie on the floor of the kitchen. Anyway when we got done with the class and floated the idea of eating out to Lisa, she surprised us both by actually suggesting we eat at Oops. For sure we all hadn't eaten there together in a while, although I myself had eaten there each week for the last couple of weeks. And so I had some really good sashimi, followed by some sushi hand rolls, and Johnnie of course had his tempura udon. And the nice part was that we actually had a stress-free eezy-peezy time just talking. Lisa did have a trigger at the end of the evening, and this time it was Johnnie that got targeted. She got angry because Johnnie didn't have his seatbelt on properly. Imagine, if you were Johnnie and Lisa made you do a body roll in the street. I had to translate all that afterwards. What Lisa was actually communicating was that she loved Johnnie so much that it would break her if something were to happen to him and so she's angry because she perceived he was putting himself at risk. Never mind how many times in the past Lisa put HIM at risk on a bike or doing other wackily daredevil kind of things. Johnnie seemed to understand. I told him it was his turn because usually she would be finding something to yell at me about. Still, we were all full afterwards and epecially Johnnie and I. I looked forward to walking off the food by doing some more steps. Johnnie had it in his mind that he wanted to go to the jacuzzi at my apartment. So I found a way to get him to the spa, while I took Claire out for he nightly poop and run, AND got my steps in the process as well. And then it was back to Ninjago for Johnnie, and another chill evening for me. And I so look forward to a chill end of the week.

Blowing My Top Right Off The Bat

It is a short work week. And I had a pretty restful 4-day weekend. It should have been a quiet day albeit I'm at Westlake North all day today, doing Health Center babysitting. Already on my drive to work I am hit by traffic on the 10 Freeway though you couldn't tell from the pic I posted. What you COULD tell is that the sun is already high and it is already warm, meaning it was going to be more of the same in terms of high temps today. Good that I'm going to be in an air-conditioned office all day. I had my usual 9 AM meeting with the IS Team and I started the meeting in transit since I didn't actually get to WN until it was past 9 AM. It was not a good thing. Noriel informed us that his Domain Controller upgrade failed over the weekend. And I blew my top. I asked him for a date (he agreed to 9/1 but put it off until this past weekend) and I reminded him a week ago to try to do this in stages since he's going from Server 2008 (had i KNown that myself I would have made him do this long ago... and it is my fault that I was not more proactive) all the way to 2019. That's 3 upgrades in one. Of course it would have taken a while. Which is why I was urging him to try in on a sandbox. For the life of me I do NOT understand how someone working in IT does not have an inherent curiosity at the very least to try new things, and at worst, to be able to get comfortable with these upgrades in a sandbox. I mean that is simply standard operating procedure. And the fact that Noriel didn't do any of these contributed to the fact that he failed this past weekend. Which made me angry. I took it out on the team. I told them that they should have known better. It felt like 2013 when EVERYTHING needed to be upgraded. And I absolutely lost patience. My next phone call after the meeting was to Jorge. And I asked him to look over Noriel's shoulder remotely today and to find out what in the FUCK he was or wasn't doing! 

It took me a while to blow off steam. I was so angry. Don't these guys know by now how much I don't tolerate mediocrity? Fortunately for them and me, I had lots to work on, lots to catch up and I was kept pretty busy for the entire morning. I try to stay out of the way of the staff pretty much but this morning they actually had some questions for me so it was all good. For lunch I did venture outside in the heat and went to Chipotle. And noticed that my heart rate got to 120+ pretty quickly. No problems getting 60-70 active minutes today I don't think. I ended up staying the entire day at Westlake, the entire day defined as until 4 PM. The only reason I went home at that time was because I had already left Claire for almost 8 hours. I got in, took her out for a quick walk, updated with Jorge about the Domain Controller thing, and then it was already time to get Johnnie. He had a big day today. Not only was it the start of basketball sessions at STAR, Lisa also enrolled him in the Spanish Academy for an hour twice a week. That would mean that he is doing Spanish for at least a half hour for 4 days  a week. Pretty sure he will pick it up then. I wanted to give him a bit of a reward for being so engaged in school today. We went to Panda express for dinner and he and I ate there and then went to McDonald's right after so he could get an ice cream sundae. Now THAT is a reward. I will say that Tuesdays have evolved into my favorite day of the week. That's because Johnnie and I get to hang out just he and I after school. We could do things like grabbing ice cream spontaneously and not have to worry about anything or anyone (hint hint: his mom). And it's cookie night too. AND these days he watches Ninjago videos. How did he pick THaT up? Now we have one more attraction to see when we go to Legoland. And so it was that I actually had a pretty good day, the blow-up in the beginning notwithstanding. Jorge urged me not to be so hard on the guys. I think he had probably experienced that from me when HE worked for me LOL. At the end of the day, didn't all I have to do was to focus on the outcome that everything worked and no one knew it didn't? I was pretty tired by the time Johnnie got to his bedtime. I ended up walking 80+ active minutes today. That is to follow up yesterday's 150 active minutes. I didn't go to bed immediately though. Now I'm stuck in a loop watching GoT reruns. Ay! Had to watch 3 episodes before going to sleep. Now I'm going to need to catch up tomorrow again. sigh.

Happy Labor Day

Today is Labor Day and so today is the symbolic end of the summer break. It is also a day off for us and so I of course welcome the short week. On the flip side this also marked the fourth straight day of high heat and so I had no intentions of spending a lot of time outdoors today. This being a Monday I still intended to do 15000 steps today and as much active minutes as I can given the heat <I had memories of that day I pushed myself likely when my body was in full ketosis and I started bleeding again in July> Today I knew I had to start early and get to at least 5000 steps before it even started getting hot. And so out I went by 8 AM and I already noticed it was warmer than usual. As in I was already starting to sweat not even 5 minutes into a walk. As it was I did manage to get to not just 5000 but 6000 steps after 9 AM and although I worked up a sweat, I didn't feel physically stressed at all. As in this was just like a normal walk out in the golf course. Takes the place of all that walking I didn't do yesterday LOL. And with a cold homemade pineapple smoothie, I was good to go. I could enjoy the rest of my day off. If I could spend the rest of the day napping on the couch and just listening to healing audios all day long I would have done so. And I actually tried but then there were little nagging things that sort of caught my attention as if bugging me and making me feel guilty for having a lazy day. Shouldn't i be learning options i heard in the back of my head? After all, don't I want to build passive income? Yes of course. Shouldn't I be working on various knicks and knacks like my eyesight that gets blurry every now and then but then goes away just as fast? And of course I'm still peeing at least once in the middle of the night. And lunch? What about lunch? Tuna salad would be great if I added pickles wouldn't it?! All these thoughts seemingly flitting in and out at random. I should have just meditated them all away. But I didn't. And so I ended up doing stuff here, stuff there, cleaning the bathroom sink but not the bathroom floor. Putting away the cables from all the equipment I returned yesterday. Must admit, the TV stand looks sleeker.

I never did get to my nap in the afternoon. Although it was hot out I still managed to do exercise indoors this time. And I got to 10,000 steps seemingly without that much effort and I was already well past 100 active minutes and it wasn't even 3 PM yet. You can see from the pic I posted how I felt about the heat outside. I don't seem to remember it being all that hot the past couple of Labor Day weekends. For the first time all summer, my A/C went on. Oh well, at least I hung on until September. Still, this being a Monday I did think about the rest of the week and reflected that last week seemed to have a potential blip in that Lisa came down with a cold and so did Johnnie actually. And it did affect me in that I wasn't really able to have the kind of time I would have if it wasn't all that hot and if he wasn't coughing a lot. But I'm still grateful that I did manage to spend some time. And tonight of course it's back to the usual pick-up routine at Lisa's house. They were supposed to go to a barbecue at Joah's house today but since I saw Lisa's mom leaving just as I got there I don't think they went at all. Again the combination of heat+cold virus did them in. I think they ended up watching a lot of TV actually, something of a rarity with Lisa. But I know she was on Netflix watching Schitt's Creek again because I had to upgrade my Netflix subscription so we both could watch at the same time, although really I was watching Game of Thrones reruns most of the day. Blended in well with the new episoded of House of Dragon i thought. Anyway I focused on this week being an eezy-peezy week and looking at the calendar there doesn't seem to be anything big on tap. Which makes it kind of a trap week. This means I need to just allow an eezy-peezy week to unfold. And anyway, I got the day off today and I did not even once look at emails and texts. Those can wait until tomorrow. In the end, I ended up having a pretty quiet day. And I don't complain about those one bit.

Too Hot To Play

So we're supposed to be at Altadena Golf Course this morning, me having picked that because I knew I wouldn't be playing with Scott the next couple of Sundays because he is out of town. I was saving Penmar for me to play solo during that time. Of course I didn't know it would be over 100 degrees in Altadena today either And so Scott called first thing asking if it was such a smart thing to go out and play in that heat. I was sensitive of course to that time we played at Hansen Dam and it was well over 100 degrees. Scott ended up having a stroke that week and I am not so sure it wasn't because we DID play in such heat. And so it was ok to call off golf today and try to cool off indoors instead.  Besides, I had already dealt with the heat on 2 consecutive days Friday and yesterday. Ok not to add a third day. The funny thing is that whenever I don't end up playing golf, I turn into Lazy Couch Potato Man. Still ok I thought since I had done enough activity during the week that even if I didn't do anything today, I was already at 480 active minutes AND over 71,000 steps. I did think for a split second about going to see Johnnie and Lisa sort of spontaneously. Then again I thought a little distance is ok too especially since I had already spent the entire day yesterday with them. Ok to give myself some ME TIME. I thought about all the stuff I could be doing but I also realize that when I do that, I get disappointed in myself later because I end up never getting to do any of it. And so I kept it simple. I had not done any grocery shopping and I had not gotten to the errands I wanted to finish up, the main one being to turn in my Spectrum gear after finally disconnecting the Internet and cable TV Service. I was absolutely NOT going to pay over $200 a month for it. And getting Frontier at near 500 Mbps wireless and nearly 1 Gig wired at less than $80 a month is definitely a better deal. What I ended up doing was dropping the gear off at the Spectrum by the 3rd Street Promenade and kind of like the reminiscing stuff I did last week, I remembered many a time when I would spend my Sunday afternoon at Barnes and Noble right there at the Promenade. Maybe catching an afternoon movie. I would have done it today except there really wasn't anything to watch that I hadn't downloaded already. I did take a pic for old times sake of the shops along Third and Santa Monica Blvd. Some stores were still there, some not. I remember a La Salsa that is now a Bulgogi place. And walking down the block, there was now a Target near where I parked so I had to stop in and pick up Johnnie's Lunchables for next week.

Finally I got around to doing grocery shopping and I picked up some chicken kabobs for dinner tonight too. Hey it's Labor Day weekend right? What's a Labor Day weekend without a barbecue LOL. Looked pretty good on the grill, when I bit in to them not so much. I did overcook them... but that's ok. And it had cooled off by dusk so I could at least venture outside and do some more walking. After all, golfing pretty much made sure I got at least 80 active minutes in and almost 10000 steps by morning. Not today obviously. Today I spent the afternoon figuring out a way to access Spectrum Sports Net LA since I now don't have Spectrum TV. I did a trial of DirecTV but I had to have an enhanced subscription. What in heck does that even mean? I just want to watch the Lakers and Dodgers. And after October, no need to watch the Dodgers until next year. In the meantime, tonight I watched the latest episode of House of Dragon, the prequel to Game of thrones and when I got done with that, I kept on watching Game of Thrones reruns on HBO Max. I am just wallowing in Digital entertainment aren't I? Heck even Lisa is now watching Schitt's Creek regularly on Netflix. I know this because I can't get on Netflix when SHE is watching. Only important when Johnnie is in the house though because all his favorite stuff is on Netflix. The good thing about tonight is that the weekend is not over yet because tomorrow is a holiday. Hopefully it won't be as hot as today so I can do stuff outdoors. But if not, a rest day is just fine with me. At least I don't have to obsess about what I did or didn't do on the golf course today. I keep reminding myself it is ALL about focus, all about VIBRATION, and all about LETTING GO and ALLOWING MYSELF to experience the golf game that I want. And maybe, a break from golf isn't so bad today anyway. After all, I can't even remember the last time I didn't play golf on a Sunday. Many months at least. It would have nice to have gone out with Candace too, whom I have yet to see face-to-face. But she did ping me today. Maybe we can work something out next week. We will see...

A Family Day

So my day with Johnnie yesterday didn't go exactly as planned. But today Lisa planned a morning at the California Science Center to see the Angkor Wat exhibit. I was skeptical that she would actually go because of how late she got in last night, but she did ask me to come by early for breakfast before we went to catch the 10 AM entrance.  When I got to her house at 8 AM, Johnnie was already ready to go so I knew it was on. We even got to USC on time, and found parking a couple of blocks from campus so we thought we'd just walk on over across the street to the place right next to the Coliseum. Of course, I didn't realize that today is Saturday game day, and the first USC game of the season at that. Still, the game must not have been until later on in the afternoon because we did find that parking spot. Of course, it seemed closer than it actually was. Because when we started walking it became apparent that it was going to be a long, hot walk. We went through the USC campus simply to find shade. And we walked through the paths I would normally take going to my office at USC Stevens. Same Taco Bell in the corner, same Supercuts where I had many a haircut. Same old parking structure I used to park at. And when walking through the campus, the tailgaters had already started putting up their tents. Anyway, Johnnie was a trooper walking in the heat and we finally got to the Cali Science Center. And then it was on to the exhibit. I will say this: the last time we went to an exhibit all together, it was for the Dead Sea Scrolls when Johnnie was still a baby, and it was disappointing. This was actually more than I expected. Amazing how Angkor Wat had some parallels to other advanced civilizations like the Mayans, Aztecs, and Egyptians.  I thought Johnnie had a lot of fun building temples and putting scrolls together. And then when we got done with the exhibit, Johnnie took me to his other favorite exhibits like the island exhibit, and the Space Shuttle. By the time we got through I actually had gotten energized. At least, that was what walking through the air-conditioned areas did because it was really really hot outside. Anyway we had pizza for Johnnie, a beef/mushroom/cheese sandwich for Lisa and an Impossible burger for me. And then when we got done, we braved the hot walk back to the car. We had to stop a couple of times in the shade to allow Johnnie to rest. But the rest was good for all of us too. And at least we were hydrated. Anyway the morning excursion was a success. And I was already satisfied that we all got to spend the morning together and actually had fun. Wjen we got back to Lisa's house, all I wanted to do was take a nap. And I decided I'd stick around for as long as tolerable. Maybe I was trying to set a new personal record for how long I could be around Lisa. She did promise to make it through the day without getting mad at me. I thought she had done just fine already. She played the piano while I took a nap an when I woke up she kept on playing while Johnnie and I played balloon badminton in the backyard. And we had so much fun. We went through at least half a dozen balloons that popped and we kept on playing until we had no more balloons. Finally dinner time came around but Lisa had to do some talking to Johnnie. He had gotten irritated because she had made him wash the dishes. He felt like he was being overworked. He even wrote her a note telling her not to go into his room. Awww. Hey, I had gotten one of those notes from him before too. While they talked I went back to my apartment and picked up cabbage, apples, and carrots from my fridge. Lisa did not feel like eating much and quite frankly neither did I. I had eaten so much at lunctime. The cabbage apple carrot salad with balsamic vinegarette was perfectly fine and perfectly adequate.  Johnnie had his penne and chicken broth, which was really the only time all day that Lisa would lose it. That's because she couldn't stand me mixing up the old penne with the noodles in the can. I was 100% sure Johnnie didn't care, heck I gave that same meal to him many a time. So of course she had to cook new penne for him. And he waited another hour before he ate. But that little incident was a mere blip in the course of the entire day. By then Lisa had started to complain again about her throat and her cough. Johnnie had already mostly recovered from yesterday. Maybe there is something about Lisa having a damaged immune system. How can I help her with all this knowledge I have gotten? How could I help anyone that doesn't want my help? It was 9 PM by the time I went home. I had spent the entire day with Johnnie and Lisa, probably the most time I had spent with both of them.in years. Or at least as long as I can remember after I left the Maplewood house. And it was a very good day. 

Not Quite The Day I Wanted But It's Ok

I took the day off for my birthday today and I planned to spend the entire day with Johnnie who had an off-day from school as well. California Admission Day the school calendar said. I think it was just Friday-before-Labor-Day day off and that was perfectly fine with me. Anyway the agenda today was to go to the LA Zoo which has become sort of a ritual with Johnnie and during late summer. But Lisa warned last night that he didn't sound well with all his coughing and I did have to take him out of school early. She urged me to just keep him home today since we're also all going to the Angkor Was exhibit tomorrow at the Cali Science Museum. But Johnnie seemed determined to go so I got the tickets anyway. What I did not factor in was that we were in the middle of a heatwave, as summer seems determined to go out with a bang. This after all was the symbolic last weekend of summer. And the LA Zoo being near Burbank is right smack in one of the hottest zones in SoCal. Anyway what made it worse for me was that I stayed up past 1 AM last night watching Heaven Can Wait. What the fuck was I doing staying up that late watching an inconsequential movie? Now I woke up tired. And on our way to the zoo, I really felt it. The heat does that to you. I was wondering how I was going to drag myself through the day. Turned out it was Johnnie that also got affected by the heat. He still does have that dry cough. We were barely through the entrance and I noticed he was already sweating pretty bad. We had to stop to get water immediately. I got him a hat to shield him from the sun but we made it as far as the flamingos near the entrance before he had to stop again. He did not feel well. And so alas, we turned around and went home from there. He immediately knocked off in the car, poor thing. I went and got Claire, got me some tuna melt from Marie Calendars and went on home. It had been in the high 90s at the zoo. Oh well... at least we got one souvenir pic to show that we at least made it there LOL.

I made Johnnie some udon for his lunch and then he immediately took a nap. And wouldn't wake up until it was nearly 4 PM. Not exactly how I wanted to spend the afternoon with him but under the circumstances, with him not being 100% I thought it was ok. If he were 100% we'd be doing the Panda Express/Poquito Was Friday night dinner run. But instead I got us a half-half pizza. Half for me and half for Johnnie and Lisa. After all, she did say she'd be home immediately after her last patient was done today. She herself was still not 100%. I really did prepare myself to drop Johnnie off at 5:30ish. I figured if Lisa did get home after she got done, then I'd get a phone call right? That phone call never came. Not at 5:30, not at 6:30, and 7:30. In the meantime, Johnnie seemed to have made a full recovery simply from his nap. He was back to his bouncy self, and not only ate some pizza, but also the rest of the udon he barely touched at lunch. I may have had a different mindset thinking I'd be dropping him off at 5 PM rather than much later. But then again I remind myself that I myself am feeling a little tired too from not having had too much sleep last nigwhilht and I would have appreciated an early evening. While Johnnie went bak to watching TV, gravitating back to Llama Llama episodes today, I basically tried some audios that would get me back to a place of relaxation so I could catch up on sleep that way. Sleeping without sleeping as I call it. In the end I brought Johnnie and Claire to Lisa's house around 8:45. Got him ready for bed and actually had him already dozed off by 9:30. It would be almost 10 PM when Lisa would get home. And when I saw her in the kitchen to say goodnight, she must have anticipated that I would tell her how tired I was and met me with a snarky comment about not wanting to hear about that. Ok then. Of course you would have had a long day. What did you expect after taking the last couple off? Anyway all I did was tell her about the zoo and then wished her a good night. I WAS tired and I was already half dozing off myself next to Johnnie anyway. What I did get today was to spend the entire day with Johnnie, albeit we didn't get to do what we wanted to do. Getting an entire full day with him was still pretty rare and I was thankful for whatever time I got with him today. And when I went home, it didn't take long before I myself got to sleep. I still got to watch Samaritan, the new Stallone movie on Netflix. But I looked forward to catching up on rest. Another museum day beckons tomorrow, this time with Lisa. I wonder if she will find some excuse to muck that one up?!

Another Birthday and I am Glad

Happy Birthday to me. I looked at my&nbsp;last couple of birthdays which were of course during the height of the pandemic still. I didn't really do anything special. In fact, if there was anything that marked my birthdays during the pandemic, it was that I had to attend to a Johnnie medical issue. Last year of course was when he came down with smallpox right when school started. And so basically I just hung out with him at home. Funny how it would be like that this year again. Although you can see him mugging out and singing me Happy Birthday in the video what happened today was that I had to pick him up from school early. The Office called me and let me know he was coughing a lot and was saying he didn't feel well. Of course I had to go get him. And I already knew that somehow Lisa is going to link this to HER illness or whatever illness she is experiencing now. She stayed home the last couple of days due to a bad cold. And I believe that's what Johnnie has too. I thought it started out ok this morning although he did have a diarrhea poop, which was what happened last year when he got smallpox and when he got COVID. In the back of my mind, I was hoping he would make it through the day. And he almost did at that. He went from energetic playing as usual when I dropped him off in the morning <see pic> to coughing every couple of minutes when I got him from school. It was already 1:30 and he had an hour left before school was done anyway. I got him to nap off the rest of the afternoon and hopefully he would be feeling ok enough to do Spanish class. In the meantime, the original plan was to drop him off after Spanish class and to go on my first date with Candace Uyehara in Torrance. In the middle of the afternoon, she texted me that she wasn't going to be in Torrance after all, she would be in Irvine. So the date got called off. Man, my birthday is falling apart wasn't it? Then again, compared to the past couple of years, it really was just another day wasn't it? Just that I did get pings from friends and fam. Karl exchanging texts. Gina in Santa Rosa one of my oldest friends from the General Dynamics days exchanging texts. And Jorge even surprising me with a phone call first thing this morning telling me he wanted to take me to lunch since he is in the area. I said SURE with my usual 'we'll see if you actually follow through' thought pattern. Same SURE I gave to Karl when he said we should get together. People get busy and I get that. I'm not going to get suckered anymore from all those years expecting to do something different with Lisa and then her doing nothing at all to mark the day. I remember one year I had to WALK all the way to Crimson from her office just to celebrate myself at the end of a long work day at her office. I was all set to make myself a nice steak or something different like that for dinner. Maybe go to the Century City mall and catch a movie too. After all, my work week was done. I got Johnnie through Spanish class and dropped him off at Lisa's. And then I got a call from Jorge again. He's still right down the street. And this time he was on his way to Lisa's. So he could take me to dinner he says. I love that my friends assume I nothing going on in my life that I could do spontaneous things. They are right of course but who's checking LOL. And so it was that we had a really good conversation and a nice catch-up at Oops over sushi and sashimi. And I got myself celebrated for my birthday properly after all. THANK YOU JORGE. Thank YOU Universe. It turned out to be a nice birthday at that. Upon further reflection, I got to be DAD, which was all I wanted to do. And I got to be A FRIEND, which I appreciated a great deal. AND I got to appreciate where I am in the here and now.  What else do I need?