random thoughts – Day 1,234 – (Thursday) – high low

Attending a concert on a Thursday night seemed like a fine idea a few months ago. I usually work remotely on Thursdays, so I would be able to dash downtown to claim the real estate at Boarding House Park as close to 7:00 as possible and return home for work. After work, I would feed Winston and give him his insulin, then make my own preparations and be ready to leave when my friends arrived from out of town around 5:30. Easy.

Then I went and changed things up on Wednesday by deciding to take Friday as a vacation day. That meant I needed to be in the office on Thursday to meet the two days in the office rule (don’t ask). It seemed like a good enough idea at the time, but once I thought about it, Thursday’s stress meter shot straight into the danger zone.

Real estate grab.

The day kicked off well with Wordle in one guess (lucky start word!) then the recently added to the schedule physical therapy, done in work attire instead of the usual workout pants and tee shirt, then directly downtown for work. At 8:20, after parking the car in the usual work garage, it was a walk across the street to Boarding House Park, where the real estate was being snatched up quickly with blankets and chairs for the show. 

The best spot available at the time was claimed with my blanket. It was at the back edge of the tall chair section with immediate access to the path in case of a need to escape. I texted my friends, then I walked/limped the couple blocks to the office. 

The workday was slightly more aggravating than usual, but they had been going mostly ok, so I guess I was due for some grief. I scored a dinner reservation at a popular Thai and Japanese restaurant for 6:00 so my friends and I could have drinks and dinner before the show.

At 5:00 I sprinted to the garage as best I can with a sore leg. The earlier sunny sky had gathered clouds. The vehicle traffic was heavy. The volume of pedestrians toting lawn chairs through downtown was heavy. The street that is my usual route home was closed for the concert I would be back downtown to attend in an hour. Due to the heavy volume entering the garage and the volume in the streets, the two mile trip home took 20 minutes and I was a knotted, swearing ball of stress when I finally arrived to feed Winston and let him out.

My friends arrived and we threw ourselves into the traffic and went back downtown and parked at the same garage I had left 45 minutes earlier. We arrived at the restaurant at 6:02 and were promptly seated and given menus for food and cocktails. Twenty minutes later, we had not been acknowledged in any way by a server. The hostess had disappeared. We walked out.

There is a small place across the street on the next block with signs proclaiming a confusing combination of “Indian,” “Pizza,” and “Vegan.” We were curious enough and hungry enough to check it out. In 20 minutes, we had a bag with two falafel wraps and a sweet chili chicken wrap and were headed to Boarding House Park for a picnic. Not the dinner we planned on, but delicious.

Schmear.

The evening was breezy bordering on windy, was chilly in a most un-August way, and felt like it would rain. We ate our wraps, kept an eye on the sky, and hoped for the best. Lyle Lovett and His Large Band played songs with stories in between for three solid hours. It was great. The band numbered 13 musicians (plus Lyle) so definitely large. 

We lucked out and it didn’t rain. I couldn't get a decent picture of Lyle all night. He was wearing a dark suit that looked white in nearly every photo. Ugh. Somehow, I got a photo of a schmear that looked kind of cool. No idea how it happened.