Sunday, January 29, 2023

Medium bowl of oatmeal with milk, flax meal, roasted and unsalted slivered almonds, cacao nibs, diced half pear; water. Patrick made mini waffles in the midmorning and we shared three of them. Butter and maple syrup, of course. Continued playing Meridien 157: Chapter 1 for iPadOS. Some of the puzzles don't make sense, and I am enjoying this less than the Prologue. Nap, and Patrick joined after a little while. Rode Muni to the Inner Sunset. The evening was particularly cold. Window shopped. There was a bit of rain despite none forecast. Dinner at Fiorella with Patrick: Cocktails: Shaman for Patrick, Golden Gate Sling for me. Food: baby lettuces salad, pepperoni pizza. We had a nice enough time despite an extremely wobbly table (resolved quickly after the second request) and the worst table on the downstairs level (table 400, directly across from the restrooms) and very loud and arguing young children waiting for the restroom and occasionally awkward service. The claimed baby lettuces were not baby; they served us delicious adult lettuces for sure. The pizza was delicious, but I noticed an alkaline or slightly off taste due to the flour dusting on the underside of the pizza. The occasionally awkward service: While ordering cocktails I had to repeat Patrick's order; I had told him Patrick's order first and a few seconds later he asked what Patrick was having. Our menus were not removed after we ordered, and we didn't know what to do with them, so I placed them on the low wall near us but out of our way. Our server gave us a single extra paper napkin a few minutes before our pizza arrived. Neither of us had lost our napkin, so this was presumably a preventative courtesy which puzzled us. Our pizza deliverator came out with our pizza, nearly got to our table, returned to the kitchen to check the table number on the ticket, and then returned to deliver our pizza. Why don't these people know what they are doing? The credit card receipt was provided without including the itemized receipt, so I had to look at the photo of it I had taken on my phone to calculate the tip. Despite these complaints we mostly had a good time and tipped normally. Afterwards we looked at Hometown Creamery but Patrick was not enthused about their current flavors. We walked to Holy Gelato and Patrick got two scoops in a waffle cup: choco churro and butter pecan (ice cream names approximate since I couldn't recall and since Holy Gelato doesn't list their current flavors online). We watched Beneath the Mysterious Canals Of Venice | Ancient Mysteries (S3, E20) | Full Episode | History via HISTORY on YouTube. The 1996 episode was narrated by Leonard Nimoy, and I learned so much. While watching we each had a small bowl of high-fiber cereal with milk, water to drink. Patrick went to bed. I restored my iPhone 12 mini from a very recent backup because I had attempted to move the batteries widget in its largest form to a different screen and it completely messed up how I had my icons on all my screens. The restore process was successful. I had to redo phone setup and wait a long time for apps to reinstall or update. Unloaded photos from my iPhone and uploaded them to Flickr.