Sean Gaffney

1. We finished up another puzzle today. This is the first 500 piece one we've completed. It actually didn't feel much more difficult than the 300 piece ones as the characters are all pretty well differentiated colorwise (which is why I bought it). A fun one for sure.



2. This afternoon I had to drive around to four of our stores (three of which were our more distant ones while still being in the greater LA area) with a couple guys here on a business trip from our Hawaii branch. Didn't love that I had to change my schedule when this week is already pretty packed (this was only decided on Friday) but it was a pretty enjoyable afternoon showing them around the stores.

3. I have one of those phone wallets that sticks on the back of your phone and holds a few credit cards/driver's license, and tonight after work I picked it up from my desk and noticed all the cards were gone. I knew they were there yesterday because I got gas, but I couldn't remember when I'd last seen them after that. Thankfully they had just fallen out in the car and not somewhere else! I'll have to be more careful about it from now on.

4. Look at that cutie curly tail Gemma's showing off.

1. We walked up to the little independent coffee shop this morning and got matcha (Carla) and hojicha (me) lattes. They have a bunch of really interesting sounding lattes on their menu but so far the best have been these really creamy ones called einspäaut;nner. Carla has been getting the matcha one every time we go there, but this was my first time trying the hojicha and I think it's my new fave.

2. Monday is often a work from home day recently and I usually don't have meetings so during the week I tend to put all sorts of deskwork on my next Monday to-do list. Usually it's not an overwhelming amount but today was kind of a lot. Thankfully it was mostly all small things, but the quantity was a bit overwhelming. I did get almost everything done, and was able to put a few lower priority things off till Friday or later (unfortunately I have a jam-packed Tuesday through Thursday and will have little time for deskwork so that's one reason I had so much on my plate today).

3. Chloe has such impressive whiskers.

It's officially Disneyland's 70th anniversary (Friday was the first day) and there is a ton of stuff going on. Thankfully there are several months to take in everything.

( 70th anniversary! )

1. We saw 43 dogs today. A new record!

2. We walked up to the farmers market this morning and I finally got a jar of the orange almond butter I love so much. The last time I bought some, they were out of the orange so I just got the honey almond butter, which is good, but not nearly as good as the orange one. But I didn't want to buy a jar of the orange until I finished the honey, which I just did yesterday.

3. Apparently there are some interactive things for the Disneyland 70th anniversary, so I found my magic band and got that charged up today so I'm ready for tomorrow's trip. I can't wait to see all the anniversary stuff.

4. Gemma hardly ever goes in these little cat apartments but she was in there yesterday.

Last time we saw They Might Be Giants it was an outdoor venue and was raining the whole time, so while it was a great show, it was not the most pleasant experience. Thankfully this time it was indoors (and not raining).

It was at the Orpheum, which is one of the many old theaters in downtown LA. This was my first time seeing a show there and it's really nice, as well as being just a few blocks from a train station, so we were able to take the train down there and save ourselves the hassle of rush hour traffic and money on parking, too.

I had checked the venue's website the day before to see if there were any opening acts and there weren't, but instead TMBG were going to play two sets (which is what they'd done at the previous show we'd gone to as well).

Doors were at seven and I wasn't sure how long it would take us to get down there so allowed plenty of time. We got there a bit after doors opened and there was no line outside anymore. Carla wanted to get some merch, so we got in the merch line, which was pretty long at that point, but there was still like 45 minutes before the show, so what else were we doing.

After that, we got some food (a very tasty cheeseburger and very mid fries) and ate awkwardly in our seats before the show started. They actually started at about 8:15, so we ended up having plenty of time to finish our food first.

For the first set they played mostly songs from Mint Car, and I did not know any of them. I'm not as big a fan of the band as Carla is, so while I like the songs I know, I am not actually that familiar with their whole discography. But it was still very enjoyable.

They took a twenty minute break, during which Carla got some lemonade (which had mint in it and was super tasty) and a surprisingly good chocolate chip cookie, and then they came back on for another set, which also ended up being almost all songs I didn't know lol.

After the encore, we started heading out and the lights didn't immediately come on so I wasn't sure if they were just waiting for the band to get on stage or there would be a second encore. In the lobby, a woman was telling someone they should go back since it looked like the band was going to come back on, but we decided to just head out. As it happens they played two more songs, including Birdhouse in Your Soul, which we both really like, so I wish we had stayed, but oh well.

( set list )

This was them performing Dr Worm:



Despite not knowing most of the songs, I had a great time (and Carla had an even better time since she actually did know the songs). For sure would go to that venue again, too. Very nice and convenient.

1. After seeing cimorene's post about chocolate lava cakes, it made me want to get the ones from Domino's again, so when we got pizza tonight we ordered a side of lava cakes as well. Annoyingly, they now come in a three pack instead of a two pack, so we have one random lava cake leftover. But they are very rich, so we could just split that one and it would still be satisfying.

2. We finished another puzzle today.



3. Jasper looks so kittenish in this picture for some reason.

1. It was Gemma's turn to go to the vet today. After the whole thing with Molly's claw, we want to make sure that doesn't happen again to anyone, and Gemma is so suspicious and spicy that we have never been able to trim her claws. (We did get Chloe's done the other day, though, and that was almost as easy as doing the boys, so shouldn't be an issue going forward.) So since Gemma was overdue for some shots, I went ahead and made an appointment to get those done and have them trim her claws while we were there. It was very stressful for her and she had an accident in the carrier (both poop and pee) but she got her shots and her claws trimmed and doesn't need to go to the vet for a while now.

We really do need to find a solution to trim her nails at home. Does anyone have tips for highly suspicious/spicy cats who do not like to be held? The biggest problem is catching her, and I don't want that to be super stressful, but she is so suspicious of us that sometimes even just taking her picture or even looking at her make her run away.

2. Someone left a puzzle in our little library and it looks like an interesting one, so I added it to the collection. The one we're working on right now is fine, but not one I think I'd want to do again, so I was already planning on putting it out there when we're finished. So maybe the person who left that puzzle will find ours.

3. Love that coy look.

1. It was definitely still warm today (really didn't appreciate it while vacuuming!) but was nicer than yesterday, and aside from a walk to the store in the morning and another around the neighborhood in the evening (by which time it had cooled off a lot), we mostly spent it indoors and the house was very pleasant.

2. I totally forgot to mention this in yesterday's post but we ordered dinner from Shake Shack last night and the order was two burgers and a shake. The order arrived later than expected, and whatever, I'm not going to complain about that or the food being cooler than I prefer, because that's just always a possibility with delivery. But although the shake was in a cupholder, someone had put it in sideways, rather than upright, so the whole thing leaked out and not only was my shake ruined but the burgers as well. I can't imagine someone at the restaurant packing the shake like that, so I can only imagine the delivery driver repacked it that way for some reason??? Anyway, thankfully the restaurant is not actually that far away, so I just took the bag with everything back and had them remake it. Annoying to have to do that in the first place, but at least I wasn't left with no dinner (I'm sure I could have gotten a refund over the phone, but I wanted the actual food, especially the seasonal banana shake, which I'd been excited about and was indeed delicious).

3. Gemma!

I set my alarm this morning so we could get down to the park before opening and beat the heat. High today was mid 90s, supposed to peak around one, but it was already 70 when we got there at 7:30. D:

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