Gave myself the “day off” yesterday, what with it being our anniversary and all. This is technically day 8 of the challenge, but I think I may stop formally counting. It’s clutter in my titles, and anyway it isn’t as though I am saving up for some Cause or other.
And it was a pretty good day all things considered. Had a nice mellow sort of morning, got our grocery shopping done, then ran through a bunch of cleaning operations so that we could have a little company out in the backyard in the evening.
And the chocolate folks sent me a replacement, with a sweet little bonus in the form of the heart you see at right:
I wrote back to the “contact” address explicitly to say that we were really happy with them and that I looked forward to ordering from them again…and also, if any management-type folks happened to be reading this message, the person I worked with was really lovely and I felt they should hear the compliment. (I hope that helped improve someone’s day.)
Later on, of course, there was dinner to do; as it turned out we had something of a celebration of summer produce, with our guests bringing a tomato salad and a strawberry-rhubarb cake and our own offerings being a pile of bright-yellow Ontario corn and these somewhat-fussy-to-build but very tasty Grilled Chicken and Peach Saltimbocca Skewers. (I haven’t got photos just now, but was promised them by one of the aforementioned guests; I’ll get back to you with them later if anyone in the world is reading this and might care.)
We followed that up with a little screening of some episodes of Masterchef before seeing our guests off home. I did propose a screening of the classic Rear Window, possibly my favorite Hitchcock and one that seems quite seasonally-appropriate in summer heat as sticky and clinging as this, but to date I have not been able to get anyone to watch it with me. I’m not sure if this means I am just old, or the tolerance for the more sedate pacing of vintage films is lowered, or what.
Its trailer is rather fun, though:
Afterward, a cozy, quiet time, staying up far too late watching old music videos, walking through the sounds and songs that were most important to him, talking over with him what they might say about him.
He asked me later why I hadn’t done the same, walked him through music that was important to me. “Well, you didn’t ask,” I said. And besides, I was pretty sure the kinds of things I actually listened to Back Then weren’t likely to be found on YouTube.
Today, though, I wonder a little. I mean, sure, there can’t be that big of a market for ballads even there, but there might be something. But mightn’t it be sort of rude to make someone sit through something as long as the songs I used to play while I was driving back and forth between home and university, back in the day?
I wonder.