The New Routine

Well, healthy reader, I think we can all agree that it's going to be tough to keep this up on a weekly basis for any period of time. Anyway, this week we have a whole host of exciting things to share with you, so let's dive straight in and worry about that when it happens!

The unprecedented times we live in create new routines as we find new things to do. Long ago, we initiated "Together Tuesday", where I don't work on Tuesday nights and we do something together. But since the shelter in place, we've added a few more things to the weekly routine too.

"Takeout Thursday" is our opportunity to show our support for the local restaurants by ordering a takeout. We're spoilt with some great restaurants here in Palo Alto, so we've done the American BBQ stuff from Dan Gordon's, we've had the delightful pizza from Pizzeria Delfina, we had the Chinese from PF Chang's, and this week it was the Vietnamese food from Tam Tam. Unfortunately by US standards we don't eat a lot, so tend to spend time debating whether we need to order 2 dishes or 1 to go between us. Still, there's plenty more to get through on "Takeout Thursday".

Following that is "Milkshake Friday", which I think explains itself. We visit my favourite place here in Palo Alto, the Palo Alto Creamery, where they make a mean milkshake from ice cream. They've also started to recognize that I'm in there ordering a shake every Friday, and they're very nice people (allowing me to pay for a shake later when I went there without my debit card one time).

It's also my birthday today, so Helen made this tremendous cake for me. Plenty of chocolate here, and left over, so it's going to be a hastily-arranged "Stuff it Saturday"!