A Saturday

It is great to get out of the house, as much as I love to be in my house. 

Look at me right now. 

Happy. 

In the house. 

Looking for things to do that do not require me to move. 

Ahhh.

Yesterday was quite different. Precious nephew and I met up in the city to go see Josh Johnson.

First stop off of public transit was the jewelry store to pick up a repair. My new friend at the jewelry store is very complimentary about how I managed to find such an expensive ring for so little (used). I only spent $175.00 to get the ring replated. I felt guilty about the vast amount of cat hair I left on the chair.

I made better time than I thought, so I walked around looking for somewhere to have lunch. The jewelry store was pretty close to what mrguy calls the International Bad Behavior Zone, so I took my time and found a sunny spot to check my phone before going anywhere worse. I wanted to go to that place that has creamed spinach. Closed until 5. The fancy cafe where mrguy and I have been? Also closed. Permanently. So I walked and walked. Took photos of interesting architecture, and signs for clubs I'd never seen that I could look up later.

Finally I kinda gave up. There was a pub across the street and a marginal looking Japanese restaurant. Marginal Japanese sounded depressing, but I was hungry. It was marvelous.

My waiter resembled Edna Mode, only super nice. They had anago on the menu and in reality, which made me an immediate fan. Plus they had tenzaru soba. Cold.

They served me an immense mountain of food and I was convinced it would take me an hour to eat it. It almost did. The ladies next to me were telling each other their origin stories. One was married to a man whose ambition only derived from his wife's prodding. The other actually said that he felt uncomfortable if his wife was more educated than he was. Both men, it turns out, had lied to their wives about finishing college. The wife who wanted the Masters degree took the kids and got it. Her daughter resents her choice of a career to this day. The woman must be in her 50s. I excused myself, told them that I was not doing a good job of minding my own busines. That I thought their stories were fascinating, and I advised the woman who wanted the career to record what she'd just said, as she'd just said it, and share it with her daughter. Their stories were *fascinating* and there just isn't enough testimony out there about the lives of women as they began to enter the workforce in a time that simply wasn't ready for it. She worked for Nelson Rockefeller -- all so interesting. Then I tried to find something more interesting than the ladies and finished my meal.

Where was the venue, anyway? Maps told me it was only about 400 feet away. But it was at a 15% grade, looking like this:

Once I got to the top, and our venue, our seats were several flights of stairs above. I didn't feel so bad about the vast lunch after all.

Josh Johnson was great. His show was amazing -- all the performers!! Woo to my Ivy Leaves!! The warm up act was Mia Jackson. She told a funny story about being a tall lady of a certain build, and how someone came up to her to ask a directional question about the bus or something. She said that she realized that she had "transit directional body". Reminded me of the time in Ikea where tiny but mighty and I were shopping for a sofa for work, and wearing our crew jackets for the latest forklift, which were Ben Davis bomber jackets. Someone stopped us and asked a directional question -- "Where is the..." and we looked confused and he looked confused and it was clear that he thought we worked there. 

Anyhoo...

We had a great time and I got to share the latest company mishegoss with the nephew, who is in HR and therefore interested in all things personnel related. AI says we can expect more layoffs on November 6th, December 6th and January 2nd. 

Any of those work for me.