Maybe the past couple of winters have been especially cold -- and 2012-2013's winter, when I weighed less (as in, HAD LESS FAT) than now, may have been a shock to my system, telling me You wanna know what cold is? You want me to show you? -- but sometime in the past year, I vowed to never complain about heat again. And yesterday, to hold myself to that, I got outside for plenty of time. On the hottest day so far in Portland this year, 97 or 98 degrees. And reminded myself I've been in Portland when it was 106. I can handle this. And it cooled off nicely -- not night-in-the-desert quick, but in a reasonable amount of time.
For my day off from work yesterday, I donated blood, testing myself beforehand to a hanger steak-and-eggs breakfast at a brunch place called Toast. That'll be a sometimes treat. Donation went fine and uneventfully; things stayed uneventful for me, but after the donation I got to a library, got online, and followed the drama of the U.S.-Belgium World Cup game. All 120 minutes of it, thanks to extra time. Drama leavened with humor, including LOTS of jokes praising goalie Tim Howard. (You may have heard that yesterday, someone vandalized a Wikipedia page to claim Howard is the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Droll.)
My reward for finishing errands after that was getting home, changing shirts (after reapplying deodorant), and going out again, because I went to a bar to celebrate my friend Deborah's birthday. I had nothing stronger than Coke, but I did like the smells of the other people's drinks. (Here's one of the ways I'm lucky: I've rarely been around people who got weirded out or otherwise bothered by me not drinking. In college, when I didn't drink at all, people almost always were fine with me saying "Hey, more for you.")
That bar visit yesterday influenced today, because...I forgot to tip. I'd meant to, I'd planned to, I had the cash to, but it slipped my tired mind.
And then I structured my day to be able to be at the same bar once it opened and drop off a tip. Belated still counts, right?
I quickly explained my reason for being there to a bartender, who seemed briefly nonplussed but was accepting, because hey, money. I wanted to say "A Lannister always pays his debts," but that probably would have been showing off, plus I haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire or watched Game of Thrones yet so I haven't really earned the right to say that. I do get hung up on such issues.
Yes, my day led up to that. Though it also included sleeping in, watching an episode of the new Whose Line Is It Anyway? (the Misha Collins episode) on my iPad in my bed, taking care of phone business -- yes I am about to move slightly further into the 21st century and have a cell phone! -- and going for a drive, mostly avoiding the worst of afternoon traffic and seeing scenery I don't usually see. Said scenery? Hillsboro, partly because I wanted to go home via NW Germantown Road, a hills-and-farmland route I'd never been on, and partly because Sonic is out there. MAN OF SIMPLE TASTES, I tells you.