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the day before Donnie Dipshit's last day
Monday, January 18 2021
[REDACTED]
Gretchen has a faded coffee mug from the 1980s with the text "January 19, 1989/Ron's Last Day" and a crude drawing of a crowd of faces. Someone had given it to her to commemorate that day, which was both her 18th birthday and Ronald Reagan's last day as President of the United States. Today I made a similar mug to celebrate Donald Trump's last day in office, which would be Gretchen's 50th birthday. I used acrylic paint to decorate the mug with a commemoration similar to the one on Gretchen's old Ron's Last Day. Since that paint seemed unlikely to survive for long, I then covered the whole outside of the mug with a layer of polyurethane.
This evening Powerful and I drove to the bookstore in Woodstock to meet up with Gretchen just as her shift was ending. Around that time, Sarah the Vegan showed up for our small day-before-Gretchen's-birthday party. (Sarah is informally part of our pandemic pod, since she doesn't have much of a local family aside from her yoga people.) As we had once before, we went upstairs to the reading room, which would allow us to dine together indoors without having to leave Woodstock. Gretchen hadn't wanted a sweet birthday cake, so she had requested for Sarah to make her a savory "spaghetti pie," which we ate while waiting for our order from the Garden Café to be prepared. In this case, spaghetti pie was just spaghetti with red sauce in a spring-mold, though I suppose it could've also been put in a crust. It was one of many recipes in a book Gretchen recently got called Mississippi Vegan, featuring not-especially-healthy vegan food made southern style. I thought the spaghetti pie was good, but Gretchen's super-taster tongue found some note in there she didn't like.
Powerful had been scandalized by the idea of a birthday without a proper birthday cake, so he'd also gotten a pair of fine cakes from Sweet Maresa's in Uptown Kingston.
For my main course, I had my usual go-to dish from the Garden: the vegetable quesadillas. In addition to that, I drank not one but two Abbey Ales, meaning it was best for me not to be driving on the way back home.
Gretchen's mug from 1989 (left) and the new one I made today (right).
The other side of Gretchen's mug from 1989 (left) and the new one I made today (right).
Ramona in the closed bookstore this evening.
Click to enlarge.
Neville in the closed bookstore this evening.
Click to enlarge.
In the upstairs reading room of the bookstore this evening. From left: Sarah the Vegan, Neville, Ramona, Powerful, and Gretchen.
Click to enlarge.
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