HVRW - Dinner and Lunch reservations (a short post)

 

I look terrible in this old picture  But I was having a good time eating out at a meetup.  Now that Hudson Valley Restaurant Week is near, I'm looking at going to 3 restaurants to enjoy nice meals.  The first 2 will be with Vicki, both places which have been around as long as this country has been around.  The other will be at a bistro where RQS and I can get some French Vittles.  (Why make French food sound fancy?  French people simply consider it proper dining.)

It would be nice if I could afford to eat at these places after restaurant week.  But it is a special deal offered only twice each year.  So, Vicki and I try out new places when we can.  If I can afford it, I may add another dinner to my choices, but this will stretch the budget a bit.  Dining at nice places isn't always affordable in the New York region.

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Soon, I will need to pack for my next cruise.  It feels strange to have had so many cruises in one year.  And then, we will again be eating hearty for the better part of two weeks.  Hopefully, when I pass away, they will place a bucket of KFC, a sausage pizza from Frank Pepe's, a couple of Big Macs from McDonald's, and a few liters of Diet Coke to send me on my way to the afterlife.  😆😇💭 

 

My internet is still out at home, and I'm connected to the world by a thin wireless tether.

 

It's now almost 48 hours since my cable went out, and I'm hanging onto the internet with a thin wireless tether.  What I mean to say is that I'm using my cell phone's data connection for my internet until the cable company fixes its equipment.

On night 1 of the outage, I called the cable company around 11 pm, and they went through some exhaustive tests on their end to find out what the problem was.  No help.  So we scheduled a service call for 11 am today.  During day 2, my next door neighbor's internet went out, and they placed a call to the cable company.  That night, I went through a form of withdrawal.  No longer could I watch my nightly dose of Perry Mason reruns, nor could I watch any of the YouTube channels from which I get solid information.  (I make sure that the channels I watch reference original source media, and not opinions on that media. In short, I don't let outlets such as Fox "News" cherry pick media clips and distort the news.)  Luckily, I kept in touch with the world via my cell phone.

This morning would begin the 3rd day of the outage, and I had the following exchange with my neighbor:

Neighbor: I think they're fixing something down stairs.

Me: Do you see their truck outside?

Neighbor: They came to our apt. It means we have to wait for a different service team to come fix the transmitter that is downstairs. The guy said probably no one in our building has Internet right now or it's very spotty because the transmission is very low. All he could do is put in a referral OSP, which is another service team. He said he marked it as critical, so hopefully it will happen quickly.
 
Me: I'm glad you got a call on this.  And yes I hope they fix it quickly.

Wonderful!!!!  When the service man comes to my apartment in 1 hour (as I'm starting this entry), I'll have to show him this text as well, so that he doesn't blame it on the wire on my side of the wall.

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The service technician came around 1 pm and checked the wire.  Seems like the cable was disconnected outside the building.  I wonder how that happened, and whether it could be connected to my neighbor's outage as well.

"Just because one is paranoid, doesn't mean that one doesn't have good reason to worry." 

Assuming that this is a benign disconnect, I'm not going to worry much.  The technician told me that the line for the 3 apartments in my group of apartments was disconnected.  Given that the ground floor apartment is vacant, that the people on the center floor are never around, that leaves me as the only one connected to the cable company's services at the moment.   Given how much our federal government has turned our national guard and other protection agencies of the government into personal "enforcement" agencies, I wonder whether they are tapping all of my communications mechanisms (with or without warrant).  Although I am probably too low on the food chain to take notice of, I could still be a target of theirs due to being a vocal TG.  

I can't bother to worry much about these jerks.  If things go sour here, I intend to be out of the country, safely ensconced in a retirement haven waiting for things to change.  As for younger people, I will give them as much help as I can while obeying the laws that the International Criminal Court would expect all "Civilians" to adhere to, and not assist in any crimes against humanity. 

 

My internet is still out. AARGH!!!

It's absurd that my internet/cable hasn't been restored, and it won't be until tomorrow.  So, I'll have to give my readers abbreviated descriptions of what's been going on here, and hope I'll be fully back online tomorrow.

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My cable/internet went down yesterday (Monday, as I write this) and hasn't come back yet.  I have a service call scheduled for tomorrow, but I don't know if that will fix the problem.  This makes it impossible for me to have a zoom meeting with my friends tonight - we may be able to reschedule for tomorrow night.

While I've been disconnected from the internet (I'm using a tethered connection to be online with my PC), we had a banking emergency with my co-op which would have forced me to change plans and present as Mario for the day.  (I won't go into details, but it involved a money movement.)  Since I was already going to the doctor today, this wasn't an additional headache.  What was the headache, however, was the fact that I got almost no sleep last night, and my heart was racing when I went to the doctor's office.  And this resulted in a new prescription added to the list of pills I take on a daily basis.

So, in 2 weeks, the doctor wants to see me again to make sure that my heart isn't racing, and see where my blood levels are at.  AARGH!

Keep your fingers crossed for me - I need to relax soon.... 

My internet is out. Please come back tomorrow. (A very short post.)

 

Sadly, I am using a tethered connection to make this post, as the internet I use has been our for almost 10 hours or so.  When I called the cable company to report an outage, they default to sending a technician the next day.  I don't have time for this.  In the past, they pinged equipment in my area to tell if the outage was associated with a home or one of their switches outside the home.  Now, they assume it's something wrong on the consumer end, even when they show an outage centered within 3 miles of my apartment.  AARGH!

I have some stuff to write about that I don't want to spend time on here.

So, I'll sign off for now, and hope (as truckers used to say in the USA) to catch you on the flip flop. 

Dinner with Vicki

 

No, this is not what Vicki and I had for dinner.  Yet, this is a place I want to go to again with RQS when we're next in the city together.  Tonight's dinner couldn't be further from Jewish Deli fare, as we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner.

But first....

This was the second Sunday in 2 months that I had free.  Did I go to church as planned?  No.  I had no energy.  Instead, I lazed around all day until I had to get ready for dinner.  So, around 3:30, I started to prepare to go out.

One of the minor problems I've been having lately in the bathroom is that I have a small shelf in my shower which is meant to be attached by vacuum cups.  Unfortunately, one of those cups no longer wants to stay fastened to the wall.  As a result, I have to put my shaving gel, my razors, and soap on another shelf near the shower head.  This makes it very inconvenient when I shave my torso, arms and legs prior to going out as Marian.  Sooner or later, I'll find out a way to get this shelf to stay adhered to the wall tiles without glue.  Unfortunately, I did spend much more time than I wanted in the bathroom due to my GI Tract issues.  I think I'm going to talk to the doctor again when I see him this week.  Maybe, he has some ideas that will help me in this area....

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Finally, I was ready to shower, shave, dress, and get ready to go out as Marian.  What surprised me was the fact that I made it to Vicki's place earlier than expected.  And even more surprising was that I ended up driving to Brewster for dinner.  At dinner, we ended up talking about politics.  She sees the GOP having the upper hand at messaging, while I feel that if things get really bad, that even "Red State" GOP loyalists may abandon their leaders and put new people in charge.  Vicki doesn't understand the hold that the Snowflake has on people, where I do - it's the same problem Germany had 90 years ago, albeit with modern technology.  Unlike 90 years ago, we know what has to be done to preserve societal knowledge during a reign of terror.

Once done with dinner, I dropped Vicki off and went to the supermarket to pick up some stuff.  Lately, I've been using baby powder to keep from chafing and to absorb sweat in areas where it is not polite to scratch in public.  So, baby powder, chocolate milk, eggs and some crackers jumped into my shopping cart and made their way home with me.

With the exception of changing into Mario mode to do laundry (and to be ready for lunch with TCL tomorrow), I called it a night.

It was 3 pm before I decided to get ready to go out (a short post)

 

My original plans for the day were to get showered, dressed, and out of the house by 3 pm.  This would have given me enough time to choose a summery dress (the temperature broke 80° today) for a trip into NYC to see a Broadway play.  Well, that didn't happen....

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I woke up early again, and had no energy to do much more than sit on the couch all day.  Yes, I cooked breakfast for a change.  But I won't count that much for doing anything.  By the time I was ready to get moving, I had time to make it to the city.  Yet, I didn't do so, as there weren't any good/cheap tickets left for the play I wanted to see.

Instead of trekking into NYC, I decided to make a run to Costco to pick up a few things, and then get a couple of slices of pizza.  Was the pizza good?  Yes, but it was not the meal I first contemplated for the evening.  But this was just as well, as I spent more than enough month today.  I made the mistake of charging two garments to the wrong credit card by accident - I had $125 in credits on my Amex card and wanted to burn them off.  Instead, with a couple of other things, I now have $200 on my Visa card.  Thankfully, I have the cash on hand to pay these bills.

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As the winter comes closer, I will look to flesh out my winter wardrobe a little.  Going out in dresses all the time is not what a cisgender woman does during the winter.  So I will need to find a few more tunics I can wear over leggings for the colder weather.  Let's hope I can find things in my size that will both fit and look good on me.

 

For some reason, it was a jammie day. (a short post)

Again, I didn't have much energy today.  I stayed in my jammies almost all day, and watched YouTube videos to relieve the boredom.  Although I woke up early, I had no energy, and fell asleep on the couch in the afternoon, losing my chance to do things in the daytime.

Why have I been so tired lately?  God knows, I don't.  I have a feeling that I'm suffering from the effects of depression.  Yet, I don't feel down.  So, around 7 pm, I finally started to get ready to go out for dinner.  Unlike yesterday, I decided to get dressed as Marian and go to the local buffet. 

Now, I have some of my winter wardrobe available to me, but I didn't want to deal with putting on tights to be worn with a dress.  So, I found a pair of leggings and tried on a dress that I bought from Target.  One problem - it was a size too small for me.  Now, I had to figure out what to wear.  And I decided to wear a summer dress with the leggings, and go out wearing a denim jacket over the dress.

When I finally went outside, I was glad to be wearing the leggings and the denim jacket.  It was too cool for the dress alone.  Then I drove to the buffet and chowed down for an hour.  (I'll pay for this when I get on the scale in the morning.)  Eventually, it was time to go home for the evening - a short evening out, but one I needed as Marian.