I've been busy the last little while! November update first.

( New York: meandering through Manhattan on a perfect fall day, foliage, serendipitous Brompton test ride, C Pam Zhang reading, finally went up the Empire State Building after 27 years?! )

( Boston: bagel delivery service, proper trains, finally getting to ride the Community Path Extension, never enough time with friends )

( Stravinsky tech week )

( Monterey: Hyoun runs, I find all the good food and the last remaining bookstore in Carmel, you all are shocked )

And amid all this sleep-deprived timezone confused chaos, I may have gotten into overenthusiastic bikesplaining mode with a friend of a friend on Facebook re bike infrastructure, and only realized after the fact that said person was somebody I'd gone out on a couple of dates with back in the day (🔒). ROFLMAO. Hyoun cracked up listening to me come to this realization in realtime. Me: "What, you'd been reading my LJ for three years by the time we got together and you knew me for years before that, you knew what you were getting into!" H, smiling fondly: "Sure did." Some things have changed, but clearly some things remain the same. :D

I *thought* this was going to cover November, but we're already past the 1500 word mark and I'm only up to November 13; Thanksgiving next time, I guess!

Happy belated birthdays, hotsauce and stevieg!

SO GORGEOUS OUT ALL WEEKEND. So glad to spend this time out in the sunshine with people I love. :)

- aforementioned shindig to celebrate david_grana defending his dissertation

- hosting a barbecue Friday night! Learning *how to* actually go about barbecuing, thanks to the visiting rustnroses. ;) jennifer and david_grana brought over Brawl; stevieg and elyssa joined up in time for ice cream at Christina's. :)

- hyounpark wakes me up Saturday morning with, "It's absolutely gorgeous out, let's go have lunch at Judie's!" Judie's is out in Western Mass. We have to be back in Allston for Seder at 5:30 pm. We drive out anyway. Viva Pioneer Valley Food Runs ;)

- richenza has reset the bar for Seder food rather high. *g*

- Her friend T. makes really freakin' funny faces; when I have resolved camera-computer issues, I may share some of those expressions. ;)
- Not enough yarmulkes, so the two rabbis' sons in the room declared the roof a blessed head-covering for all of us. *ggl*
- We failed to MAAAAAAA at fractalspackle this year during Had Gadya. :(
- craftattack_rss made horseradish jelly, which was actually pretty damned good. I'd eat it on all other nights.
- The Manischewitz shots *bounced*. Next year, we'll go one better - make them in Star-of-David cookie cutter molds, so we'll have properly Jewish Jello Jigglers for Pesach Time.
- sandboxdiva was the only newbie this year and thus the only one required to eat gefilte fish, though amusingly enough, said fish is popular enough that we actually didn't have enough. Buh?
- No, you can't have Peanut Butter Pesach Time if you're Ashkenazi and observant. ;)

- Brunch at Z Square Sunday morning before mrieser went back home to DC. Making horrible duck puns on a "Make Way For Ducklings" postcard being sent out to an absent friend.

- Bestowing cider donuts from Atkins on rustnroses, knowing she had a six hour drive to be endured.

- Puttering around Cambridgeport yesterday afternoon - finally dropped that book off at jennifer's that I've been meaning to for awhile; visited with jpallan and acerbic and camieal for awhile and had girly time that resulted with me learning how to put my hair up in a French twist.

- Second Seder at Craigie Street Bistrot last night. YUM. When local asparagus comes in, I am so duplicating the asparagus dish I had last night; I'll just need to learn how to make gribenes. Which tasted rather like chicharones (fried pork skin, about as nonkosher as you can get!) to me. *ggl* (noghri and other local hungry Jews, they are offering a vegetarian version as well - don't know if they've still got spaces open for tomorrow, the other night they're doing this, but if you've got the time, it's well worth it. :) )

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I've also gotten to catch up with many others this weekend via the amazing device known as a cellular telephone. Dear self, stop being neurotic about thinking you're interrupting your friends' lives and being intrusive when you want to call. And also worrying about not being a conversationalist. Srsly.

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7/2/23: It is so delightfully fun reading between the lines here, with the secret hyounpark and I would be holding onto for a few more days. Mostly at my request, because there were people I definitely wanted to tell in person, or at least on the phone, before going public. But "let's go to Amherst for the day!" "Um, we have to be back for Seder and Chris found Passover Coke in Brookline so I was about to go meet him ..." Ha!

And then glowing, glowing, beaming at each other, sitting through most of the seder with the new sparkly on my finger waiting to see who would notice first if I was subtle enough. (My memory says Steve was the first to notice, quirking an eyebrow and wistfully smiling at me, but Micha was the one who, basically as soon as we were two cups in and dinner had been served, went, "Do you possibly have some news to share?" :D Though it's been long enough my memory might be mistaken!) Seeing more friends at Z Square Sunday morning who hadn't been able to make it to the seder the night before; squealing with them. More girly squee with the spr0tties; Heather shrieking as I ostentatiously handed her a bag of cider donuts with my left hand and she noticed the new adornment.

It was a good weekend. :)