Friday miscellany: Bereft of the phone

This week has been a doozy, as described in the birthday post. But I did manage to get my car battery and brakes replaced, and my cracked iPhone screen repaired. Apparently there’s a whole chain of stores called iDropped Inc. that specialize in phone repair. The young man who was running the location I visited told me that Fridays were busy because people had been partying early for the weekend on Thursday, and dropped their phones, or else they wanted to have their phones repaired to go out for the weekend. Who knew?

Anyway, I dropped my phone off around 10:45, drove home, and came back to pick it up around 12:45. So I didn’t have that long a time without my phone. But it was funny how often, within those two hours, I felt like I needed it. What’s the weather like – can I run outside? I was going to look at my weather app, despite my just having gotten out of my car, into the exact temperature I would be running in. I had to use my car’s GPS to get home, and it didn’t have updated information about a closed road, like my traffic app would have. So I had to recalculate the route. I had a thought that I really hate parallel parking, and this phone store was in a place featuring only parallel parking, so maybe I should just Uber over but…that wasn’t going to work (fortunately both times I found spots that had more than one space open, so I could just pull in instead of doing that whole pull-forward-back-in move). I was happy to be reunited with my phone soon enough.

Some highlights of the week: I took myself out for a birthday dinner on Tuesday night. Yes, I was eating solo in a hotel restaurant in Deerfield, Illinois, but whatever. The steak was good. On Wednesday I flew to NYC to meet my husband for one of his work events. The work event was a work event but then we met up with some friends for drinks and stayed in a hotel over night. (Alas, we were both on the 8 a.m. train the next morning, so it was a short night). We had a rehearsal for my choir’s Christmas concert with strings on Thursday. And we heard the soloists (our staff singers ) – so amazing. I want us to do the Bach B-Minor mass sometime, solely so I can hear our alto soloist do the Agnus Dei. There are touches of the same suspensions in the Magnificat, which we are singing, and…whoa. There will be another Christmas party tonight, and the concert this weekend, and an official birthday dinner, so I’m looking forward to all of that.

Other random stuff: I’ll be doing a time-tracking challenge in January – the first full week of the month. You can sign up for motivational emails here.

I cooked some acorn squash that came in my Hungry Harvest box. I’ve been enjoying these shipments of random discount produce. Inevitably, some goes bad because I don’t have that much demand for cabbage or mangoes in my life but we do eat some interesting stuff. Like the acorn squash with butter and brown sugar. (Hat tip Martha Stewart).

I’m writing a Verily piece on preserving time for your own pursuits while surrounded by family during the holidays. The holidays are for family but sometimes you really want to read your book too, right? If you’ve got tips, as always you can email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com.

Photo: steak, asparagus, and truffle fries.