Pizza - An answer to what do we eat tonight? (a short post)

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How many of us have had this conversation:

"What's for dinner?"

"I don't know."

 

Well, this was the dilemma posed to RQS and I the other day.  Since I was not in the mood to cook, I was leaning toward pizza.  But where?  The only thing RQS remembered about the place we both liked was that the platter holding the cooked pizza was supported by a stand, so that there was more room on the table for dinner plates.  

Not being ready to eat around 6:00 pm, I decided to take a scenic drive around Northern Westchester county while thinking of inexpensive places to eat.  So we got in the car, and RQS decided to look for pizzerias which we've gone to and where she enjoyed the pizza.  And she found the one that I suggested we go to in the first place.  Now that we knew the place where RQS wanted to go, we decided to head there in the most direct way possible via side roads.

Once at the pizzeria, we knew it was the right place - and we feasted.  It was a nice way to kill some time and figure out what's for dinner.

I didn't do much today, save for grocery shopping and laundry.

 

I wasn't able to get to sleep last night.  So, all my plans for the day were fouled up before noon.  Originally, I was supposed to go out for an exercise walk while it was cool outside, contact an electrolysis operator for a consultation, contact my sleep doctor's office to find out when I should expect a call from the people setting up my sleep test, call the lab to set up the brain scan for a study I'll be participating in, and then get around to both laundry and food shopping.  It's not as much to do as it sounds.  But when one has no energy until mid afternoon, one can only do so much during daytime hours.

The first thing I took care of was to make the brain scan appointment.  It's a larger study than I might think, as it is being coordinated from a site in California.  Next, I tried to contact an electrolysis operator for a consultation, but both of the local operators were on vacation.  Finally, after getting showered, dressed and made up, I was out the door and off to Trader Joe's.  $35 later, I was returning home in time to get a load of laundry in before the soft deadline of 9:00 pm (start) / 10:00 pm (finish).  So, I carted my laundry downstairs, and got it done in time for RQS's arrival tomorrow.

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While I write this, I have MSNBC on in the background.  Earlier, I had our former president's news conference on for a while.  As much as MSNBC panders to an educated elite, the ex president panders to an uninformed audience, an audience who lets authority figures feed them misinformation to be ingested without critical analysis.  Sadly, a significant part of our population believes his nonsense, as he is the leader of a political cult.  I can tolerate the left's talking heads, as they aren't feeding their audience the message that "White America is being overrun by illegal aliens that have come to take our jobs."  But I have to turn off Fox News' propaganda, as they have targeted people who are afraid of any cultural and economic changes that put "White Privilege" at risk.

After sitting down to write this entry, I opened up a letter from one of my credit card banks.  Seems like $3,700+ was credited to my card in error.  Next time I'm out as Mario, I'll visit the bank to see what's up.  If this was a debit, I'd take off my nail polish and visit the branch before picking up RQS at the train station.   Hopefully, I can get this error fixed AND have the service charge removed.

Chatting with an Ex-Girlfriend, followed by Drag Queen Bingo

 

Why does the image at the top of this entry focus on health issues?  The answer is related to the first part of my day, when I had the chance to speak with my ex-girlfriend from 25 years ago.  She has been dealing with health issues which the doctors have been unable to diagnose, and I'm glad that I was able to catch up with her.

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The day started with me feeling lethargic, and unwilling to go out for an exercise walk as planned.  Given that I had walked 3 miles the day before, I figured that I could catch up on my walking tomorrow.  By the time I decided to have something to eat, it was already afternoon.  So I made a Tuna Melt sandwich and got back to chilling out in the apartment.

Around 4:30 pm, my Ex called, and we chatted for a while.  She told me of her hospital visits, her tests, and her doctors' unwillingness and inability to do much for her, save to prescribe some medications to help reduce some of the pain she was experiencing.  Although I won't go into all of her symptoms, I will say that the pain in her knees that she experienced when standing up made her dread each time she had to transfer herself from her bed to the bathroom to relieve herself.  If her medical problems weren't enough to ruin her summer, the health of her family and friends also was a factor in making this her summer from hell.  In addition to scuttling plans to vacation with a couple of friends due to that friend's health, my friend is currently unable to visit her ailing sister in her hospital.  And with all of this going on, she had to scuttle plans for a "bucket list" vacation.  (Hopefully, she'll be able to reschedule this vacation when she's feeling better.)

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By the time I got off the phone, I was starting to run late for the second thing scheduled for the day - Drag Queen Bingo.  (The first would have been lunch/dinner with LK, but she wasn't feeling well.  We've tentatively rescheduled a lunch for Friday.  We'll see what happens on Friday.)  So, I got shaved, showered, dressed, and made up, and was out the door by 7:00 pm.  Bingo was fine, although the place was almost empty.  For a change, I won something cheap - a gilded "Dust Collector" figurine shaped like a left hand with fingers crossed.

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This wasn't much of a day to talk about.  At least it wasn't a total "nothing burger."

Fogo de Chão with RQS - NYC Restaurant Week

 

Fogo de Chão is a chain of Churrascaria restaurants which specialize in what I describe as Brazilian BBQ.  No, my description does not do this kind of restaurant justice.  It is the place for Atkins Diet feast!  Grilled meats keep on coming until you have to say "Uncle!  Food Won!"  And for NYC Restaurant week, I decided to take RQS to their Midtown Manhattan outpost to feast like there was no tomorrow.

One of the problems of taking the train into Grand Central is that it is awkward to make an easy transfer (in midtown) to a "B Division" subway line to access one of the former IND system routes' subway stations.  I could make it to  Grand Central Terminal easily.  But to get to a station associated with the 6th or 8th Avenue lines, I either have to make an awkward transfer involving a block's walk underground, an out-of-system transfer involving a 2 block walk underground, or simply take surface transit to the desired location.  Given that I had time to kill and mistakenly forgot one transfer point, I ended up walking from 42nd Street and Park Avenue to 53rd Street and 5th Avenue (give or take a few hundred feet).

My timing ended up being perfect - Both RQS and I arrived at the restaurant at 6:00 pm.  And from there, we went inside to feast.  RQS had forgotten that I had planned to get a Mani-Pedi earlier in the day, so she was a little surprised to see me arrive in Marian mode.  Yet, the dress I was wearing had grown on her a little.  (She said that if I buy more dresses like this, that I will have to try them on before committing to them.)  After getting enough salad and veggies to empty a farm (I have to mention how good their Caesar Salad is here - I could have feasted on that alone), the meat began to come. And boy did it come!  Chicken, Lamb, Sausages, various cuts of Beef all came around to our table, and within an hour and a half we were stuffed like Thanksgiving Turkeys.

All too soon, it was time to leave.  I went back to Grand Central the long way, and she was able to take one train home.  By 9:30 pm, both of us were at our homes and ready to go to bed.  Both of us enjoyed this mid week get together.  I think we'll do it more often if I can find a few excuses to do so.

RQS has gone home. (But I'll see her tomorrow.)

This past Friday, RQS came up to spend the weekend.  Because I had purchased tickets to Lawrence of Arabia for a Sunday evening showing, she stayed over until Monday morning.  It was unusual for her to leave so early in the day.  But she had to get her hair done before meeting me tomorrow.

Once RQS was safely on the train, I took care of some business for the co-op at the bank, then went home to chill a little before meeting with my sleep doctor.  Soon, I'll have an appointment to take a sleep test (hopefully, at a lab and not at home) as a precursor to getting a new CPAP machine.  And then, I went home to rest some more before having the first interview for a study I've volunteered to participate in. Around 6:45 pm, I had my interview for the study, and all went well.  So I know what I'll be doing for the next 3 months or so.

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Tomorrow, it'll be my turn to meet RQS in Manhattan for a nice dinner.  Thankfully, the weather will be nice enough for me to dress relatively nice, so we won't look like Mutt and Jeff.  Since RQS will have her hair nicely done, I'd like to get a nice picture of the two of us together....

I've just enrolled in a scientific study

 

I won't go into details, but I've enrolled in a scientific study on brain performance that will last the better part of 3 months.  It will involve MRI Scans at the beginning and at the end of the study, zoom interviews, and use of some software for 15 min/day for 12 weeks.  This will be the first time I will be participating in any kind of study, and I think I should have fun doing so.

Why do I note this?

As I get older, I want to contribute a little to the world.  Doing anything related to politics is a non-starter, as I have way too many skeletons in my closet that, if exposed, would cause me a lot of grief.  The idea of leaving money to a scholarship fund still has value to me, but the logistics of setting it up may make this idea a non-starter.  Volunteering has lost its luster for me, given how little I enjoy many of the grunt tasks I once did.  So, when RQS told me about this study, I figured that I'd apply and see if I would be accepted.  And I was.   (More on this study later....)

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What I'd love to see is a scientific study on the types of people who hold rigid social/political/religious beliefs.  Is there something that can be gained by knowing how people function better than they know themselves?  Would this information be abused?  We already know how well political pollsters can gauge how the masses will react to certain messaging.  We already know how people react to selected advertising campaigns.  But at what level should this information stop being collected and analyzed?  Could we figure out why people join cults, and how to break their ties to their cults?  Could this be used in politics?  What about marketing?  Just because I'd like to see research in this area, I'm not sure if it wouldn't be misused.

We have extreme political polarization right now.  I'd like to be able to use scientific methods to end that polarization, as well as prevent it from happening again.  Sadly, populist leaders have an innate sense of how to manipulate people, and society at large doesn't have the tools to prevent populism from becoming a cult.  Life isn't simple as I'd like it to be....

I could ramble on  for a long while and say nothing of note.  So I'll end this entry here for today.

Lawrence! (A Quick Post)

 

I always find it amazing that the younger generation knows so little about the past.  Even worse, I find it appalling that it knows so little about the world as a whole.  And yet, there's a certain logic about this, from a quote (that I'll paraphrase) from the movie, Lawrence of Arabia. 

"It is up to the young people to fight the wars.

 It is up to the old people to make the peace."

Hidden the above are the attestations of valor and courage to the young, while the older generation is associated with the treachery that causes was in the first place.  In short, as I see it, younger people fight, while older people try to settle disputes.  Lawrence the man was one of those singular young people who was in a place to influence how the world would look 100 years later, and he did just that.

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What can I say about this movie that reviewers haven't said for the past 62 years?  Since RQS has never seen this movie, I bought tickets for us a few nights before.  I knew that she'd enjoy the movie, and that it would make an extra night up here well worth it.

Arriving at the theater, the two young ticket takers commented that the movie was 4 hours long.  They asked me what the movie was about, and I mentioned the birth of Saudi Arabia as an independent nation and the Arab world as it is today.  (I was amazed that they didn't know about this being a classic film, working in a movie theater.  But then, youth don't learn much about their recent past and it's culture.) We then took our seats, and sat down to watch the film.  While the film played, RQS asked me several questions about the film, as she wasn't aware that this story was based on real historical events.

Later on, when we got home, it was too late to do anything but go to bed.  It was a nice evening, and a good chance to watch a film on the big screen that should only be seen on the big screen.