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In the afternoon, I went and met Laura and Graham for lunch (well, they picked me up) at La Roche, a Lebanese place down the road. It was good! Their roasted chicken is exceptionally good. And I tried a taste of these roasted potatoes that Laura and Graham got and those were incredible. They roast stuff good there! Then we went to their apartment and I got to meet their new kitty Geo (often, Little Geo...a holdover from before they had settled on a name for her and were just calling her Little). Mary Beth got to see her when she was still a tiny kitten but I wasn't there. She's not as small, probably almost full-grown but not quite yet. And has lots of kitten energy and is super duper cute so we hung out and played with her for a bit. Then we walked over to the Park (they live even closer than we do, literally across the street) so we went and walked around. We get there and Laura was realizing she should have gone to the restroom first so we waited outside the park restrooms, she had tried to go in but there were some guys in there smoking pot. We wait a little bit and then they come out and they're all "he's my brother, we're not gay" like, okay dude, who would even give a fuck? And I mean, like you don't think we couldn't tell what you were actually doing in there, smelling it from over here? Anyway, it was just goofy and stuff. We walked around the Old Forest some. Laura ran into some coworkers and we talked to them a bit and they had also seen Natchez (at the Friday screening, Mary Beth and I went to the Thursday one). Anyway, then back home. Not much else to report. Some Golden Girls late at night with Mary Beth. That's about it.

I finished reading The Moviegoer by Walker Percy and it was really good. Then at night Mary Beth and I went up to Crosstown to see a screening of Natchez. It's a new documentary by Memphian Suzannah Herbert and famous Memphian Craig Brewer was doing the q&a so it was a packed affair (they even added a second night and that apparently sold out too). Anyway, it's all about the antebellum tourism in Natchez, MS. It was really good. As I said there was a q&a afterwards with the director and "Rev", the tour guide in it who's pretty much the voice for the movie (it more or less is framed through following his real-history tour, contrasting with the southern-mythology tours of the antebellum houses...and there are more elements to it, but that's the very streamlined summary), and the ceo of Bridges (the director had done Bridges when she was a teenager). Afterwards Mary Beth and I went upstairs to Art Bar and hung out a little bit.

I got a couple cds in the mail: Xiu Xiu: Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1 and Xiu Xiu: 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. Mary Beth had had plans for the lunar new year but they were put on hold as she was still recovering from whatever illness had taken over the night before. She's been improving, hopefully she's much better today.

We ran a few errands in the afternoon. And ended with doing our Superlo grocery run on an off-day. So that's taken care of and we can do another thing tonight! Not too exciting but there's my Sunday update.

I got a few cds in the mail from Dark Entries: Spider Taylor: Surge Studio Music, Patrick Cowley: Malebox, and Nervous Gender: Music from Hell. In the afternoon Mary Beth discovered something weird and obnoxious. A few days ago, some city inspector had put a notice on our Kia (the older car we don't use so much) that it was abandoned and "do not park on the grass" and that in week or whatever if it wasn't moved it would be towed. Now, she didn't find it actually on the car itself, but on the ground in the parking lot, she just happened to notice what looked like trash and was going to throw it away. So we almost didn't even see this fucking thing at all. NOW, it's all so fucking ridiculous on so many levels, but the fucking thing about this being on the grass...our parking lot is mostly dirt and gravel, not paved. When I moved in over two decades ago, all of this area was free of grass and clear. There were also more people cumulatively living in all the apartments and more cars and more traffic so all of the spaces were taken up more often. There's been a trend over the years, just like in my own apartment, of moving from three roommates to just a couple living in the apartment or something similar. Anyway, throughout the years, the grass started growing and creeping into the parking lot area. Still legitimate parking spaces, there's just grass over parts of it now. And that's where the car was. We kept it in the corner as we don't use it so often so it's not too in the way of others needing to park. And then, it's our car, it's legal, they wanna fucking regulate how much we drive it or some shit!? The battery died and it had been a while longer than usual since we'd driven it, because it wasn't urgent and replacing the battery wasn't something I wanted to do in cold fucking weather if I didn't need to. (Like, this is some kind of fucking crime they need to steal my fucking car for!?) Anyway, so in the afternoon I went and did the deed so I could move the car a few spaces over where the wasn't fucking grass growing. At least it was a warm-for-February day. I'd forgotten that this battery has kind of an obnoxious enclosure with an extra bolt that's way down and hard to get to. But I swapped the old for the new and moved it over. Ridiculous, but for now avoid at least getting fucking towed (in my own fucking parking lot!). This is some fucking Germantown shit. Also, not that I care myself in the least, but next door there are cars doing the same parked and left in the actual fucking lawn (which again, I care not in the least, just why the shit going after our car!?). Okay, enough of that absurdity. At night we walked over to Ballet Memphis for their Winter Mix performance. It was nice. There were three pieces. The first was this aliens traveling through space thing. The second was this kind of concept piece about hands (with some Satie as part of the music). And the last was this kind of reimagining of a 50s movie set but kind of abstracted (Lynchian's probably too strong a term, but it did have a little feel of the beginning of Mulholland Dr.) and at times they had a camera they moved about on a tripod projecting what it was capturing on the big screen behind so there were these layers of the dancers and movement and it had this abstract textural quality that was cool (at times I guess kind of Lynchian in the abstract sort of sense). Anyway, that was a pretty dumb description but it was a good ballet and I enjoyed it. Afterwards, we had a sort of Valentines "snack". I had ordered some caviar (the same kind we had at Jewel of the South in NOLA) and I got blinis with it and we had that with champagne and it was nice. Then Mary Beth did up some charcuterie and we ate some more and it was nice. All by candlelight (Mary Beth did all the setup and preparation so I don't want to make it sound like I should get any credit for that!).

After work, I went on another neighborhood walk with Mary Beth. She got a head start as I had a meeting that ended up running over. It was just a bit cooler than it seemed like it'd be, but almost kinda "nice" weather. I wore my jacket and it was almost enough but felt like I could have used something a little warmer, though after I got going with the walking and all my body temperature caught up.

I finished reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. It was okay. Some of it was good and some of it could get a bit heavy-handed and clunky (though there was only one "story" that was really bad...I put it in quotes as it kind of straddles the line between story collection and novel, but overall I'd say it's a novel, and especially as some of the "stories" do not stand alone and are short bits of connecting tissue for the book as a whole...anyway, structurally that's something I like about it). Also after work in the evening, Mary Beth and I went on a walk around the neighborhood. Then late at night we sat out on the front stoop and were talking and ended up getting joined by Peanut. She was very cuddly (though one still has to be careful with one's hands!).

Yesterday was Jacques's birthday and I went and had dinner at Sakura with a few people (Celeste and Courtney and one friend of his from his work who I met the last time he had a birthday and whose name I forget) and I ate some overly-large and sweet sushi rolls. Then we followed that up by going to Mary's Bote. I get there first and don't see anyone so I step back out and was going to go wait in my as it's crowded inside but then I run into David so we go in together and stand around and then just before more people arrive a table opened up so we grabbed it. Jacques and Celeste and Courtney showed up and we were all squeezed in the booth and then when even more people showed up they got them to turn on the light on the outside porch and we continued out there. So we were out in the cold a little bit. There was a little ice on the ground in a few spots and where I sat had some ice on the ground in front and I was playing with it a little bit with my feet. By the end of the night, and my toes were so so cold, I realized it had soaked through the sides of my shoes so my feet were wet with ice water. Oops! (Was happy when I got home and was able to change socks!) Anyway, we hung out and there were some more of his coworkers and Vanessa showed up after a while. I was gonna try some mocktails but the ones on the menu are just stuff with n/a rum substitutes. I probably could have gotten them to make something up but it was crowded and felt like it'd be more trouble than it was worth. Anyway, a nice ol' time was had.

We had our first deployment for the big rushed project I've been working on. I also had my doctor's appointment at 1. Well, I'd initially scheduled the deployment for 9:30 and figured that would be fine. But then in the morning it was brought to my attention that the time had been changed to 11:30. Well, that's pushing it but it's what should have been a simple deployment so, in theory, there should be enough time. Then the infrastructure guy who would be doing the deployment was like thirty minutes late so I was getting nervous. But we got it deployed and the jobs turned off (for reasons I'll explain shortly) and what few things tested as we could. Then I literally had just enough time to get to the doctor's. The snow/ice in the back parking lot seems to have at least thinned a little. Anyway, had my appointment. It went pretty quick. Apparently I've lost some amount of weight, which is very surprising 'cuz I've been certain I've been gaining weight. Haven't been too concerned about it either way, just was a little surprised. Also was surprised to be told my new insurance doesn't have copy and I just have to pay it all until I reach the deductible. (I need to check this again, because I could have sworn we made sure to get copay.) Anyway, I got some cds in the mail: Id M Theft Able: Exhalations in a Flash Light Beam (I'm enjoying the recycled elements for the artwork, the liner notes are glued to a PS1 Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-Zero manual), and in the package he even included a greeting card, for a party invitation with watermelons on it and a pop-up watermelon inside, very nice touches. Okay, then at night it was part two of the deployment. This one external system needed to have something enabled and to do that required a restart so they had to wait til after business hours. I was all thinking 8 pm but then it was 8 pm eastern time so I got a little surprised when it started happening, but luckily I'd just finished dinner. Anyway, that was turned off and they disabled their jobs and we were able to enable our jobs, ran some of them to monitor and see how they're doing. Hopefully they continue to work right and don't cause problems! Yay!(?)

I got a cd in the mail: Slow Blink: Edgelands. At night I finished reading The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood and that was pretty good. It rained during the day, helping to clear out the ice especially on the actual driven-on areas. Our back parking lot still looks pretty snow-covered (but it's finally started getting the dirty snow look...it kept it up looking pristine for so long though). I think that's about it for now.