his first (bought) wheels

 ye gods, it's been a long and busy day. i woke up tired as usual this morning - though i never napped, even though it was a friday - and i read some more of stranger in a strange land. look, it gets off on the wrong foot, but it becomes apparent (apparently) at some point that the author's writing is about a fictional society with extreme attitudes, as opposed to him simply sharing his opinions. and while it starts off a bit simple, his postmodern understanding and its delivery mechanism become far more interesting.

i spent an hour or so doing another agentic skills evolution (cleaning up the leftovers from yesterday's romp in AI frustration park), finally managed to give away mr smear's old jiujitsu gi's, then let myself be dragged out for a shopping run with gd. it was a fairly successful run, although by the time we got to the last shop i was already over it and feeling decidedly claustrophobic in a store with heavy friday morning traffic and very narrow aisles.

we came home, gd rushed something to eat, and then we bussed to the mall. mr smear was nervous (panicky) about meeting us there, and then ended up in the bizarre situation of being blocked "by nuns" (we think they were muslim women) at his stop and unable to get off, and then laughed at by a shitty bus driver who refused to open the doors again so he had to get off at the next stop and find his way back.

anyway, he made it eventually and in one piece, and by that stage gd and i had had a coffee and enjoyed quite a while watching a guy with his tiny puppy unable to take more than a few steps at a time before being crowded by women who simply couldn't resist the adorableness (not to worry, we encountered them later and couldn't resist either 🤣), and found the two stores we needed.

we began with the sports store, and although it wasn't a simple process, we managed to find mr smear a decent pair of rollerblades and a set of pads that should last him a year or two and the price was considerably less than i'd been worried about.

then we hit the shoe store, and for the first time ever gd had a very smooth process finding and fitting sandals that he didn't fight about. of course, they turned out to cost considerably more than the rollerblades 🤦‍♂️

in any event, great success!

we came home and i made him take his brake off first thing (no arguments, and it was awesome helping him doing it with his own two allen keys). we had a delicious leftover meal, with mr smear and i discovering a) that chrain works really well with shuwarma and rice, and b) that mr smear likes creme soda just as much as i do (i suddenly realized he'd never tasted any before).

things were calm and quiet for a while, i played some slay the spire 2 and watched some stuff, and read some articles, and then it was time for all of us to sort out the kitchen, which involved a hell of a lot of dishwasher unloading and loading, and washing the big stuff, and then washing All The Containers that i've purchased over the past few days. some of it was fine, but mr smear wasn't cooperating very well (his idea of helping and ours...) and at some point i properly lost my temper.

for a while after that, i was angry with him, and embarrassed for losing my temper, and frustrated that i'd yelled so loudly that i hurt my throat :/

anyway, things calmed down eventually and we got through it, and the challah-peño is in the oven and smells great even though it was hard to work with, and mr smear and i have showered, and i've had a generous shot of rum, and i think the world is kind of okay right now.