Well.  My last minutiae article was posted at the end of November.  The three months since then have involved more personal drama than the rest of the 2020s put together.  I’m not going to get into it here, but you may see references in the months to come that do not line up with my previously established status quo, and the drama is why.  I may even write articles about bits of it (e.g., I did try a new potential treatment for my anhedonia, and it did not go well), but again, that’s for later.  The thing I do want to say right now is this.  They say that it’s at times like these that you’re sup­posed to lean on your friends, and unlike at similar times in the past, I haven’t been totally isolated these past few years: in addition to my partner of nine years, I do have a few friends scattered around various locales whom I’ve talked to on the webcam maybe a couple of times a year.  When the drama started, nearly all of them took time out of their schedules for an emergency chat… except one of them was like, nah, scrap the previous friendship⁠—we are now going to talk for multiple hours every week.  And she’s been an indispensible sounding board for me through all of the ups and downs, and it’s made a world of difference.  She’s found this sweet spot where she can simultaneously offer me guidance and make it clear that decisions I’m considering are unwise, or that feelings I am having could use some deeper examination, without it coming off as adversarial at all⁠—she can somehow communicate that I could use some course correction and yet never leave me in any doubt that she’s on my side.  I mean, I don’t want to go over the top about this, but this is pretty much the relationship that I had hoped that I might have had with my sister if she had survived to adulthood.  So⁠—thanks, Amy. ♡

And as for the rest of you, if you want to buy or just enjoy some space-themed ceramics knowing that it not only is amazing art but was created by an amazing person, this be the link.

I’ve also had some wonderful, unforgettable moments with Ellie over these past few months.  Again, this is supposed to be minutiae, not “profound core memories-iae”, so I’ll stick to a couple of the lighter ones.  One morning Ellie and I were holding hands in bed when her cat Derry decided to add her paw on top, like in that classic sequence from Fantastic Four #1:

Me: “What do you think she’s thinking? ‘Oh, is this what we’re doing? Looks weird, but okay.’”

Ellie: “‘There’s no “I” in “team”!’”

For Ellie’s birthday, her boss got her (and me) a weekend getaway at a country resort in the Sacramento Valley.  It was a ten-acre spread with a Victorian mansion used as an inn, an adjoining tower, a pool and hot tub, multiple gardens, a restaurant, a gift shop, and an area used for wedding recep­tions.  The twist: it turns out that even in California there’s not a huge demand for country resort getaways in the mid­dle of winter, and the staff informed us that we were the only guests that weekend.  So once the staff left in the after­noon, we had ten acres in the middle of nowhere all to our­selves until the following morning.  I’m a pretty slow typist, though, so in that time I was only able to fill up maybe thirty or forty pages with “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

We did go to the restaurant for brunch, where Ellie attempt­ed to order a hot chocolate.  The waiter informed her that while they had not yet taken it off the menu, they were no longer offering hot chocolate, as it was out of season.  Hot chocolate “out of season” in… winter?  Ah, but you see, as I see at the shops and cafés around here, the dead of winter is when you roll out all your spring flavors and fashions!  Just like they all start getting autumnal at the beginning of August.

This doesn’t involve Ellie directly, but I was waiting outside the preschool where she teaches because I was giving her a ride home, when I heard a high-pitched voice say, “Hi!”  I looked up from my Kindle and saw a girl who I’m going to guess was three years old.  “I have a cookie!” she announced.

“Cool,” I said.

“Wanna see?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

She held up a small white sugar cookie.  “Nice,” I said.  I went back to my Kindle.

I few minutes later I heard her voice again.  “Hi!”  I looked up.  This time she was addressing a mom who had come to pick up her kid.  “I have a cookie!” the girl announced.

“Cool,” the mom said.

“Wanna see?” the girl asked.

“Sure,” the mom said.

The girl opened her mouth really wide.

One positive effect of the drama: I lost the twenty pounds I had been trying to lose for ages.  All those pairs of pants I had packed away a decade earlier, thinking that I might fit into them again someday, I have been able to bring out of storage.  But naturally this ended up happening immediately after I finally gave up and updated my weight on my driver’s license.  So now it’s just as inaccurate but in the other direction.

Also, because I often have been unable to concentrate on anything that demands more focus, I have become really good at four-suit spider solitaire.  At first I was always fin­ishing toward the bottom, but nowadays I regularly com­plete a game and the site declares that I have finished #1 of 132, or #2 of 258, or #4 of 976.  I generally suck at games so it’s been nice to have found one I seem to have a talent for.  (But my scores don’t actually register because I don’t have an account.)

I thought I might move back to Albany, but up on the hill this time so it wouldn’t feel like my life was moving back­ward.  The apartment listing I was looking at turned out to be fraudulent, though.  When I said that I would not be sub­mitting an application fee without an in-person showing, I received this reply:

I am usually available to meet in person since I live close to the unit, but I am currently in Juntura, Oregon with my family, making arrangements for my grandparents’ funeral.  They tragically passed away in a car accident on their way to my home for my son’s first birthday.  The news was a deva­stating shock, and I am still grieving their loss while trying to remain strong for my family.

Due to this, I will not be able to meet you in person to show you the unit until we return on February 20th.  The current tenant is scheduled to move out on February 23th and is currently in the hospital, battling cancer.  This is the reason for his move, as he wishes to be closer to his family.  The unit will be professionally cleaned, vacuumed, and ready for move-in the following day.  However, please note that I can­not guarantee the property will still be available after today, as there has been significant interest.

This mystifies me as much as the notion of pitching pro­ducts for the season customers are being encouraged to anticipate rather than the one they are actually experien­cing.  I assume that studies must show that this brings in more money, but I don’t see how.  Same here.  How does going so hilariously over the top (“on their way to my home for my son’s first birthday”!!) actually fool more people than something more plausible?

So I will not be moving back to Albany.  I also will not be moving to San Francisco.  The Algorithm recently fed me an article about how the Ferry Building no longer caters to people across the economic spectrum but is now pretty clearly aimed exclusively at the rich, and I had seen this in action just the day before.  I stopped by on the way back from an appointment in the city to pick up some olive oil at Stonehouse and a bowl of noodles at Imperial Tea Court, and then I thought I might grab a treat on my way out.  I saw that a new bakery had opened, and… the cheapest item I could find was a pain au chocolat for eight dollars⁠—and it was even a fair bit smaller than I’m used to.  Then I spotted a nearby pop-up that also had croissants: just a table and a poster, so less overhead, right?  Would that make a differ­ence in the pricing?  This place offered up a chocolate pis­tachio croissant for… fourteen dollars!  I mean, I have more or less adjusted to the idea that a croissant no longer costs a buck, but is more likely to be five dollars for a plain one and up to six-fifty for a fancy one.  But fourteen⁠—this cannot be borne.  And it’s not just the Ferry Building, either.  I used to get a Ritter Sport pretty much every time I went to Trader Joe’s, because they are great and were only a couple of bucks.  Then they disappeared, and I saw that at other stores they were sometimes priced at upwards of four dollars, so I could see why Joe couldn’t carry them anymore.  But while I was in the city I popped into a Mollie Stone just to kill some time, and immediately saw a big display of Ritter Sports… for $7.89 apiece.  $7.89 for one Ritter Sport!  That’s $35.79 a pound!