Incongruous nostalgia

 Wordle 275 2/6

🟨⬜🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Woo hoo. The hardest part was thinking of any word at all that fit the letter pattern I had at the start.

Yesterday I left the house at the crack of 9 to get eggs. Breakfast was much simpler than usual on weekends: fried eggs and the last of biscuits from a kit that T. and the kid made Thursday.

Later in the morning I took the kid to the park. She practiced with her new roller skates some more. She's taking to them fast - not actually setting speed records, but enjoying them and more comfortable with them than with ice skates or her bike, for whatever it's worth. Meanwhile I called my parents and sister. (Thursday was my sister's birthday and I didn't call her. I suck. I can only blame how rough it was.) No big news but it was nice to catch up. 

We had a quick lunch at home. In the early afternoon we went to the Because concert at the Kennedy Center. We drove there and looked for parking within walking distance. It took a little driving in circles but we found something eventually. It was a good show, although it taxed the kid's attention span. After that we walked around a light show/photography exhibit they had, juxtaposing global warming scenes with scenes of working in the fossil fuel industry. E.g. a melange of images of rivers running through glaciers which would look pretty if not for the fact that it indicates that they're melting, and tropical storms and wildfires in progress and their aftermath, and workmen incredibly dirty because they're covered in coal dust. The kid is already aware of environmental issues in some sense. I wasn't sure how much I had to explain to her about capitalism, developing economies, and other stuff. 

Then we drove to Arlington to see our friend C. (Maybe I'll edit this later and make up pseudonyms instead of all the initials I've used, since they aren't specific enough.) Driving there I made something like three wrong turns in a row. Directions were unclear and it's an unfamiliar route to us, but still, ugh. I felt like I needed a drink more than usual after we got there. We got there a little after 4 and hung out at her place for a couple hours. The kid drew in multiple activity books/sheets while the three grownups chatted. We had dinner reservations at Bangkok 54 at 6:30. The last two members of our party joined us about an hour late, but we didn't wait for them to start eating.

The kid got to bed more than an hour after bedtime. 

Sleep issues

The cat went to bed with us last night, and asked to go out around 1:45 this morning, like clockwork. At least he's learning that he doesn't get to have a snack between waking us up and going out. I don't know what he's going to do when next winter comes. I also don't know what the problem is; his litter box is pristine. (The simple solution is, put him in the litter box when he wakes us up instead of putting him outside.) Something to ask about at his next vet appointment I guess. That reminds me, he's due for one soonish.

Musing

I enjoyed going to the Kennedy Center partly because it's near my old office. Coincidentally, I wore my black leather loafers, which I've worn maybe as little as three times in the past year. (Too warm for boots but too cold for sandals, and I didn't think my sneakers would be comfortable for ~6 hours either, so...) I feel nostalgic and weird about feeling nostalgic. My desk in that old office was in a cubicle in the basement. The building was a faceless concrete office building owned by or on a long-term lease to the government. The neighborhood is a mix of similar buildings, George Washington University buildings, and the sort of eatery that caters to college students and office workers. A soulless, boring place by most definitions. Just to make it even worse, walking between the Kennedy Center and where we happened to find parking, we passed a dozen homeless camps. 

But I miss it! It was my soulless boring place! For eight hours a day, four days a week, I could be either focused on technical documents or an anonymous face in a boring crowd. The modern rat race, with food trucks, smartphones, and support for commuting by bike. Then when I left that neighborhood I'd go back to being a husband, father, and neighbor. Now I have to switch back and forth between those roles and mentalities every five minutes.