Transplanting a Seattleite

I wonder if this counts as too much rain? It’s not heavy (yet?) but it looks like it’ll be continuing for quite a while.

ETA: Delightful zoom with I, and family zoom while driving back from Fletchers in Longmeadow. Fletchers was absolutely fantastic — great drinks, the bao were amazing, the duck fried rice was awesome, the ribs were really really great. 10/10 Highly recommend.

I watched the Mandalorian and Grogu (A. was out at around 2 or 3 pm, after being up about 40 hours again). I definitely understand the criticisms around pacing, but it was still a pretty enjoyable 2+ hours. This TV is ludicrously enjoyable. I ordered a speaker for the pool room (move 2); I will likely get a second, but they are expensive enough so that I’m going to just try one first.

I had a delightful chat with KC.

FF was fun.

However, the big news is that MB tracked down the yellow house picture. Woot!

I walked with M. I walked with B. after we had lunch at West Village Tavern. I picked up bread at Nashoba. Lots of fun!

R. and I went to the Glendale Grill. It felt very Pennsylvania and I enjoyed it very much, despite the difficulty identifying something I could. I eventually had the potstickers and the wings, which was slightly too much food but very fun. I’d had chicken and salad for lunch, so it all worked out.

I picked up a variety of things at the other house, and distributed them at home. R. has set up the small, bar height bistro table (he picked it up yesterday, and it is very nice. He got the picture on the wall with the soundbar, altho the TV needs to move up a bit more; it’s too low and too close to the sound bar. Sounds nice, tho, and the TV is now in A.’s office holding up T.’s old TV.

Good day!

I had a delivery window of the adam recliner today 1-4 pm, and I needed to be at TD Garden for a 7:30 pm Rush concert that I had absurdly good seats for because R. was very excited to go see them. I attempted to move the delivery to the following month, failed, called to investigate, was told it had been rescheduled, chair arrived anyway BUT early in the delivery window which was a huge relief. Chair is gorgeous; color scheme in living room really pops now. Reds are tricky. Two different reds get into a fight, unless you keep them separated but a non-neutral but compatible buffer, but if you get four or more different reds, it’s a happy party instead. So. Weird.

We had dinner at momosan — a 20 minute waitlist that gave us barely time to go to the bathroom and return to the stand — no more than 7 minutes. Drinks were good, food was good. I got the pork belly bao and the tuna poke; R. got a ramen with cold noodles. I had the spicy shochu drink; he had the sidecar. All around good, quick experience.

We had second row on the floor in the center, which I don’t think I’ve had seats nearly that good since a Hall & Oates concert back in the ‘80s. I am not a Rush fan, but I have dated Rush fans, I have friends who are Rush fans and R. has nostalgia for Moving Pictures. Fortunately, they played all of Moving Pictures in a row after the intermissions, with other stuff before intermission and after Moving Pictures. Anika Nilles is impressive; I’ll be looking for her work because she managed to make Peart’s stuff almost lively. I was never big on prog rock, and that has not changed with age.

Demographics were intensely masc autistic, heavy on snark directed at random strangers, absolutely no awareness of who might be overhearing. You can definitely see why I have been around fans of this so much. Less clear why I dislike it as much as I do. Oh, and Geddy Lee’s color match between his shirt (first button down especially, second button down less obviously) and his shoes (chuck taylors, presumably) was so good, in all lighting, and it’s not a typical color (a dark, non-navy blue) that I suspect custom dye. I was extremely impressed. [ETA: I think they are the current chuck blue / navy. So he may just be astonishingly good at picking out shirts that match. Or have a competent stylist that does that for him.] Lee’s singing style these days is much less grating than on the albums. R. says age; I think he had to go improve his vocal technique or stop singing, but perhaps it comes down to the same thing in the end.

It’s now easy to turn off the HVAC at the thermostat, so we’ve been opening windows. It has been delightful and cool and appropriate humidity. And quiet. Altho I think I hear one going upstairs so I will probably head up and make adjustments because it’s still low 60s outside. At 10:14 am. Mmmm.

R. and I walked over to the quarry yesterday. That was really nice. The pink bistro table is set up in A.’s office. The Fuschia Shark Rocket is adequate for the main stair.

I watched the Hannah Gadsby comedy special on netflix over the last few days, a showcase of genderqueer standup comedians. Totally awesome in every possible way. I loved it.

I made breakfast for A. and for me (she got up yesterday around 5 pm, and has been up since).

We are expecting company, so I’ll probably make blondies next.

In the news, there’s a story about the Dorchester hotel going to court over a massive (460K pounds) hotel bill, to sell a car owned by the person who incurred the bill in an effort to recoup some of the money. Nothing in the story — which is getting fairly broad coverage, mostly from a Rich People Being Rich perspective — mentions the ownership of the Dorchester hotel (Brunei), or the fact that the person who incurred that bill used to own a soccer club but got run out of that ownership because of bad behavior and the whole EuroZone was trying to track him down while he was busy running up that massive bill in London. Son posted a pic on the ‘gram of living the life in mayfair, and this was Noticed.

I hope someone makes a movie, and that it turns out that the Brunei owners are actually friends of al-Thani, and are just, no, hey, we didn’t know we were harboring a criminal look we confiscated his car he totally scammed us we’re the victims here.

But I’d be real interested in about a dozen other possible narratives, too. Such a rich text. Har de har har.

E. of the appliance company showed up and is working with R. to deal with the trim kit issue, and has a plan for the Mystery Leak issue. I like E.; he is clearly extremely capable, and very good natured.

The pillow fillers arrived at my front door! Usually when the tracking says near front door on porch wtf, it’s still in the package box. But it is actually making it to the front door! Wonders will never cease! I took the down fillers out (still don’t know quite how that happened, if it was a mistake when I ordered, or a mistake in fulfillment — this is the 2 contrasting throw pillows that come with the Norwalk couch) and vacuumed thoroughly and put the down fillers out in the garage and the poly replacements into the covers. Looks fine — I probably could have gone an inch up, but I kind of like them softer anyway, especially since I brought the purple pillows over from the other house. This has definitely kicked off my allergies, but hopefully they’ll settle down. I think I forgot to take a pill last night so I’d already done that this morning.

It’s _really nice_ having the govee thermo / hygro meters to monitor what’s going on around the house; saves me from getting frazzled patrolling to make sure things aren’t nuts with the HVAC.

Off to do Duo next! And then to go spend time in the to do note, getting spun up on Try to Get A. to Learn to Drive project. When I think about the relative value of having the ability to drive and the license to do so legally vs. other educational credentials, I have so many questions about all of our choices as parents and as a society.

I also sent an email out about R.’s proposal for the rain chain. I am still thinking that my Use a Fucking Sink idea is better.

And we got it set up. It is lovely, and A. is binge rewatching Gravity Falls.

I had thawed ground beef and we all had burgers. R. and I finished off the potatoes; A. had fries.

She got up really late, felt very rested and was finally able to commit to NOT going to Fusion (she was NOT going to Fusion, but kept saying she wanted to go … while every single day refusing to go). Her concerns revolve around how to be influenced by other people (vs. just pursuing her own interests in learning) and making friends. We talked about learning to drive, and how every young adult finishing schooling has to figure out the Make Friends problem.

Elevator guy came by so we have a friendly face to the person we reach out to for serve; techs will be by on Friday. We learned an element of elevator maintenance we were not previously aware of (vacuuming the sill, where cruft can collect and interfere with sensors.

HVAC mystery of the day: switching the thermostat from the hall to my room changed nothing in my room. The “new” thermostat promptly did what the old one did and the “old” thermostat behaved normally in the new location. What.

I had a delightful zoom with I.

I went to bed really, really, really early, when it became apparent there was no way in hell that A. was transferring to the other house and attending school tomorrow. I think I had a migraine, but maybe I just finally crashed after months of full-out effort, interrupted sleep, and entirely too many demands.

R. and I walked down to the package box and back again. This is such a lovely little walk. It’s about a third of a mile each way. My life in my 50s is largely incomprehensible to my remembered younger self.

R. and I had a late lunch / early dinner at Paul and Elizabeth’s. I got the peanut noodles and the mousse thing again, minus the fish chowder; I’d had a big salad an hour or so earlier.

He drove out midday, and I made A. a breakfast before heading to Tanglewood around 5 pm, aiming for a 7 pm show. Mavis Staples and Alabama Shakes. Obviously, Mavis was amazing, and I really enjoyed Alabama Shakes as well. I’ve never been to Tanglewood before (that I recall), and look forward to returning. Also, Lenox center has even worse cell service than Concord. It is just astonishing.

A. went to bed around 9 am, so she got up around the time we were heading out. I’m making her a second meal as I’m typing this. Her previous awake cycle was around 23 hours, so not the worst but not great. I went to bed and had to get up a couple times to try to get her out of the shower (she described being trapped by a combination of autism inertia and OCD, which is a pretty advanced form of self-insight) and then to make her a meal and get into an argument about whether or not I had to learn and use a bunch of terminology that I think of as being under the ace umbrella and boy does she not like the idea of ace being used as an umbrella term. When we got back from Tanglewood, she wanted to revisit this, and apologized, but immediately dove back in in true ‘tism fashion. I, however, managed to hang onto my adulting long enough to evacuate without arguing or committing to anything.

I’m making her a meal, and then I’m going to bake my cinnamon roll(s) and then I’m headed off to bed.

In good news, she was asleep by 1:30 am, and up a little after 8 am, so we are at least staying on something close to a 24 hours schedule. She was excited about the workbooks arriving and then proceeded to totally ignore them. It turns out — and I kind of knew this from when she was really little — if she is busy ignoring basic needs, she will ignore _everything_ except the thing she can most easily hyperfocus on. Can’t blame her; I’m similar. Also, if I had to work this hard to get better about paying attention to and responding to basic needs, it’s worth it to teach her to do the same.

She opted not to go to school after asking if she could try again next week. Obviously, I said yes because it’s a completely reasonable request and also because I suspect the decision to not go is going to require some days or even weeks of thinking about before committing to. I was also quite happy she opted not to go to school, because I wasn’t sure how I was going to pick her up after school and also get to my dinner reservation, and I am completely done with canceling my social plans because Kid.

Last night I cleaned the master bathroom (mostly — I didn’t do the mirrors, which I realized this morning). I had planned to run the Eufy, but the battery was dead (apparently was not fully on its charger?), failed, and got out the Miele instead. Today, I cleaned the hall bathroom, because theoretically someone is coming to measure in there for the project of replacing the combo bath with a shower with a low threshold.

Also last night, some of my dinking around involved figuring out YouTube TV, and finding something to watch. I watched some episodes of the Librarians the next chapter, and in the Pan episode, it quit playing, which was annoying, so I went looking elsewhere for where to watch it and found the earlier series over on Amazon Prime, so I went and watched some of that.

My sister’s bedding strategy has turned out to work pretty well for A. also (the waffle blanket), and it’s way easier to wash the waffle blanket than a comforter. So I ordered some more, and I think I’m going to wash an entire bedding setup and bring it with us to the other house today, so when she inevitably asks to have the bedding washed (to be fair, it does need it), I have an immediate clean replacement and can wash the other bedding … later.