Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Breakfast: leftover veggie fritatta; plain greek yogurt with blueberries, toasted coconut, and roasted and slivered almonds; hot water. Patrick and I rode Uber to City Hall and got married. Andy and Chris were our witnesses. A bit of paperwork at the beginning, then a ceremony in the rotunda that took about 10 minutes. The officiant left us to attend to other couples, and we remained a while to take photos in the beautiful space, having to wait at times because there were many other couples getting married. Afterwards we four drove to Dalida for lunch. We started with complimentary Champagne (or sparkling wine?). Cocktails: Lemon Kalispera for Andy, Shahmaram for Chris, Bodrum Negroni for Patrick, and Saturnalia for me. We shared: breaking bread with one extra pita, cured trout, kayseri manti, half chicken, truffled potato borek. Patrick and Chris each had ottoman coffee. Dessert: we shared visnell ekmek tatlisi cherry cake and chocolate hazelnut tart. All food, drink, and service were excellent. Andy and Chris drove us home. We rested a bit then I assembled and we installed a Grovemade Desk Shelf (aka monitor stand) for Patrick's desk. The assembly was relatively easy even for just one person. One wooden shelf top, two cork risers, one cork support, one metal shelf panel, and only two long screws. The only trouble I had was the cork risers initially did not fit correctly, and this was obvious because the metal shelf panel was not level, but I realized that with a little firm push in the right spots it would fit into the wooden shelf top properly. I spent about 25 minutes reconfiguring the CalDigit TS3 Plus Thunderbolt 3 Doc docking station, and this part took longer than the shelf assembly, I'm sure, only because Patrick has a lot of things plugged into the dock. We first tried the TS3 on the metal shelf part of the Grovemade stand, but there wasn't enough room or leeway for its power connector to fit through the rear openings due to the power connector's ferrite bead, so we instead put it on the lowest level, which was on the desk, and completely underneath the Grovemade stand, and that worked well. The instructions for the Grovemade shelf are surprisingly in full color—unusual for installation instructions of any kind—and use 3D isometric diagrams, including unnecessary and slightly confusing shadows. (Confusing because the metal panel has a shadow, but the cork risers do not.) Color, arrows, and callouts are used effectively. The instructions do not show details about which way is up or down for the cork support between the risers, but that probably doesn't matter much whichever way it gets installed. (I put ours with the cutout touching the wooden shelf.) "Clear your assembly area of anything that might scratch the shelf top" ought to be step 1 and appear at the top of the diagram instead of unnumbered and at the bottom. The steps numbered 1, 2, and 3 would have been better left-justified instead of aligned along the diagonal matching the diagram. Since English readers read left to right, creating instructions that read top to bottom but right to left is a bit disorienting; my brain kept starting with step 3, and it took extra effort to not do that for these instructions. I expected each piece to fit snugly, but for each fitting there was considerable leeway in opposing directions that left me uncomfortable that I would install it correctly, but it turned out to not be a problem. When inserting the screws I was uncertain that the screw tips were correctly fitting into the holes drilled for them because you can't easily see it happening because too many parts are in the way, but a little wiggling and feeling for each tip falling into place helped me overcome that fear. The quality of the materials seems excellent; everything appeared to have no flaws. Later Sam picked up Patrick and me, and we drove to Kerry and Mom Ryan's place with a king cake that Patrick had made yesterday on a very large platter which he kept on his lap during the ride. We celebrated at their place with a Mardi Gras wedding king cake because Mom wasn't feeling well enough to come over to our place. The king cake was coated with silver and gold sugar and had a chocolate-cinnamon filling and no baby. We ate slices of king cake and chatted a while before departing. Sam, Patrick, and I then drove to Mama Ji's for dinner—Chinese food to celebrate lunar new year, year of the horse. Upon entering we waited perhaps five minutes before anyone greeted us and sat us at one of the many empty tables. Within a few minutes we received ice water and menus. After making our decisions we placed our order, and our server was personable, knowledgeable, efficient, and repeated the order back to us to prevent errors. Our server asked us if we wanted rice, and we declined because we had ordered chow mein. We shared potstickers (which were not spicy), kung pao chicken (which was too spicy for me even though our server suggested and ordered it mild), dry-fried green beans (which was not spicy), combination chow mein (which was not spicy, and they were out of combo chow fun which we initially wanted). During the meal a bowl of rice arrived, and we didn't know whether it was a mistake or if it came with certain dishes, and we ate it anyway. Food temperatures were uneven. Some dishes arrived very hot whereas others arrived somewhere between lukewarm and hot. The potstickers were delicious—plump and dense in a good way. We were surprised to find that there are only three to an order, but each one is notably larger than potstickers at other places. At the end of our meal we must have waited about 10 or 15 minutes before our server had returned. When returning our credit card, our server apologized for the very slow service. I said it was okay even though I didn't mean it. I tipped normally—20%. I probably will not voluntarily return for a long time if at all, mostly because of the slow service but also because the majority of dishes are spicy, and I do not trust that a dish called mild will be mild. There seemed to be only one server for the 49-person capacity restaurant when there probably should have been at least two if not three and a greeter. Even a small sign on a pole saying "Please have a seat at any table with place settings" would have helped. Sam drove us home. Patrick and I went to bed.