Stealth Natal Day

Up early, ducked into Spot's room, topped up his water fountain. Out on time, at work 5 minutes late.

Brought the two fruit crumbles in, grabbed bowls and flatware and napkins from the break room and set both pans on top of a low cabinet near Boss' desk. NP and NNP also sit there. Despite there being many visitors, only a tiny bit was eaten. Bummer.

Mostly just checked the news and watched live streams on Twitch.

Lunch was beef teriyaki steamer, no dessert. I grabbed some crumble when NP messaged me to join the crowd at her desk who were inconsiderately running audio tests which attracted lots of annoyed engineers. This testing is why they set me up in an office with a door. Boss doesn't care anymore.

NP came into my lab to double check those tests and we got one to fail, and two others passed. Progress.

4:30, took the untouched crumble into the main break room and went outside to plug in my car. The smoke from the northern fires was thick as fog. Didn't smell as bad as it had. But humidity was high which made it feel heavy.

5:50 out the door with the barely eaten crumble, the one in the break room only had one piece left. It is probably gone by now.

Home by back roads, no mail, no deliveries.

Fired up Tivo and watched an episode of Long Lost Lives, this one took a lot of cold calls and leg work to find the families. One woman searching for her son, another for her dad.

7:30 or so, got back in the car and headed for Big T's Seafood, which I'd found on Yelp. They advertised Maine Lobster and lots of other shellfish. You choose the item, the sauce and the way it is cooked. So I ordered Maine Lobster in garlic butter sauce steamed.

Waitress was cute but scattered, I had to get my own fork & shell cracker. It got noisy when a gang of blue collar workers came in for beer and fries and to watch the basketball game. This used to be a sports bar, and they had big TVs all over the place. The Seahawks game was on the screen in front of me, and I watched them not give it away to the Packers for a change.

The lobster arrived in a reasonable time, but the tail was overcooked and chewy. The claw meat was excellent. The garlic sauce was more like soup than sauce and the whole thing was served in a Vietnamese pho bowl 1/4 filled with the garlic butter soup. It was messy.

The price was a little high, but they gave me a 15% discount for checking in on Yelp. So I gave a 15% tip.

The garlic bread I'd ordered was also not very good. Left most of it.

Home, watched PTI and had a couple of mochi for dessert.

Streaming now, have people from Canada, Mexico, upstate NY chatting.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe start a new project
Home

Last Day of the Week

Up early, out early but it was all for nothing because there was a huge accident on 101 just past Shoreline which reduced 6 lanes to one lane. The good news is the Shoreline exit, which is usually a long slow line of 4 lanes merging into each other was totally clear, so I took it and still got to work early, but not by much.

Once again nothing to do. Lunch was messed up because a team of inconsiderate cretins decided to set up a video shoot in the break room during lunchtime. Some advertising thing which had nothing to do with our group. They set up between the pool table and the ping pong table, and took over the whole place for 4 hours. No warning.  When they finally started actually shooting at about 2:30 they unplugged all the fridges and coffee machines. They were still cleaning up after themselves when I left at 6.

After lunch I gave up on anything new coming for the sound bar so I hooked up a set top box which is my next project. Also watched a lot of storm chasers on their way to the midwest chasercon in Indianapolis.  And there is a stream from a couple of blondes in San Diego who were buying clothes and getting ready for one of them going on a date at 7.

Home, back roads were pretty light, lots of people stayed home because of the smoke. Many schools closed, some events canceled.

Delivered was the replacement webcam, which I set up and put into Spot's room to replace the spare. Now you can see it again on my web site.

Dinner was baked chicken thigh & drumstick on rice. The chicken was dry so I made some bullion to pour over it. Watched PTI, set up my Twitch stream, and watched the date on Twitch. Handsome guy, the blonde was wearing a dress which showed a lot of her endowments - shoestring laces criss-crossed in front. Very sexy.  Then back to the livingroom to polish off the last piece of the peach crisp. Watched the wrap-up of Are You The One?  on MTV. Bottom line is maybe one of the 11 couples are still together. Three or four had been hiding the fact that they had an SO back home. MTV got played. One guy seduced five or six women from previous seasons (this was season 7).

Spook has been playing with her toys, lying on the sheepskin rug as I watched TV, ran up the office cat tree and back down. Spot is not enjoying his confinement. He's getting fatter. I wish I could let him out to exercise more, but he would just mess with Spook again. Last night I put the litterbox where Spook had been pooping, and she has been using it. Yay.

Got email from someone who works at a college in SF asking about Spot. I invited him to call and come over, but he didn't call, and emailed he was booked this weekend. We'll see...

Plans for tomorrow:
Tempted to get a lobster from 99 Ranch market.
Meet Janice at 6 for dinner and then see Cabaret at Sunnyvale with her. Frankly, that's not a show I think she needs right now.