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Valentine's Day 2024
Wednesday, February 14 2024
Gretchen wanted to see if she could just take Neville to the bookstore, leaving Charlotte behind. But when I tried to hold Charlotte while Gretchen was walking to the car with Neville, she bucked her way out of my arms and Gretchen had to abandon the idea.
The cleaner unexpectedly arrived this morning to clean our house, something neither Gretchen nor I expected. But Gretchen had us signed up for a monthly cleaning, and today was the day. So I ended up holed up in the laboratory with the dogs and all the cats not named Lester.
Meanwhile there's that cashier keyboard at the bookstore with an "A" key that has fallen off, making typing on it difficult. Today I gave Gretchen a loaner USB keyboard to use, assuming it would "just work," but for some reason it was unrecognized, something I have never seen any kind of computer build this millennium do. It turns out that laptop is prepared by some company specifically to be used as a cashier terminal, so perhaps its hardware is locked down. I managed to walk Gretchen on the phone through the steps up bringing up the Device Manager, but that didn't help. So I ordered a replacement keyboard, though replacing it looks like a painful job; it is held on by dozens of plastic rivets that will have to be cut away and then replaced (when the new keyboard goes on) by little blobs of hot glue. The alternative is replacing the whole laptop.
It being Valentine's Day, Gretchen and I continued our tradition of going out for pizza this evening. In the past we might've gone to Catskill Mountain Pizza, but in recent years more options for places with vegan pizza have emerged. This includes Apizza in New Paltz, which is the place we went for our Valentine's Day meal last time we celebrated the occasion in a place other than Costa Rica (that is, in 2022). But this evening when we got to Apizza (which would normally be closed on a Wednesday and was only open today because of St. Valentine), we found that today they were reservation-only, and of course we hadn't made one. So we sat in the entranceway and considered our options, which included getting spaghetti at the nearby Plaza Diner or perhaps going to Darling's in Tillson. But then one of the Apizza staff came up to us and gave us the option of sitting at a big six-person table currently occupied by another couple. That sounded great to us, and apparently the other couple (who looked to be a little older than us) didn't have a problem with it. It was still a little awkward, just because etiquette demanded a certain amount of chit chat between us. But they were just finishing up, and then we had the whole table to ourselves. At that point the waitress wondered if we would be okay with another reservationless couple sitting with us. I was fine with it, but Gretchen seemed reluctant, which seemed a bit hypocritical, but later she mentioned how unpleasant it is to be near someone eating meat, and I understood better. And the waitress was perfectly fine with not seating someone at our huge table. As for food, I hadn't remembered loving the things I'd eat at Apizza. But tonight, everything was great. This included the ministrone soup (with tiny ditalini pasta), the deep-fried artichokes, the broccoli rabe, and even the bread. As for the pizza (my half included mushrooms and eggplant), it was everything I wanted, but by the time it came out I was already half full. Meanwhile, I was drinking a glass of Montepulciano red wine while Gretchen had combined our two glasses of complimentary prosecco and was drinking that. Most of what we talked about was how great the food was and where we'd eaten on past Valentine's Days. Gretchen also had some juicy intelligence on one of our newer friends.
Wed'd parked in back of the restaurant, and when we were driving out, we found a stupid Tesla (of course!) parked in the "parking space" where the driveway to the parking lot was. At first I thought that was the only access the parking lot had, so I kicked the Tesla in hopes its alarm would go off (or its camera would tell its computer to send an alert to its owner). But it didn't do anything visible. And then Gretchen pointed out that this wasn't a problem because the parking lot was connected to the street by at least one other driveway that wasn't blocked by a Tesla.
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