Cruising Thursday

I thought in my mind to many a Thursday when I was working at the FRB. Usually in the afternoon I would slip out and go take a walk around Grand Hope Park or something and usually find myself getting a cold drink. I remember getting a hazelnut iced blended coffee drink with no whipped cream at Coffee Bean on the corner of Grand and 9th right next to Ralphs. Of course said store closed well before the pandemic but if I had a Thursday afternoon to remember when I worked downtown, that would be it. And so I tried to replicate the moment, at least the Hazelnut iced blended part. I picked up a couple of things at Trader Joe's and on the way back, picked up said drink at the Coffee Bean next door. Thursday afternoon coffee drink work-at-home style LOL. Did I mention it was a very nice day out?  I do have memories of Thursday afternoons getting a coffee drink... at Starbucks when I was working at USC. That was a long walk then. That move alone would kill about a half hour at least LOL. Hey it's summer right? I will admit I spent the morning not really working all that hard. I did the IS Team meeting and then did a meeting with the Salesforce developer group for a possible upcoming project. Hey I even TRIED to do a couple of my staff evaluations. Not due until next week but might as well get it all done and over with. The goofballs didn't ping me back though so I get to wait until tomorrow morning tp finish them off. So yes I can characterize the day with a lot of YouTube videos about dividend investing and learning about tax strategies. I might not be moving too fast on these things but I'm at least trying to learn some nuances. I even let Claire hang with me on the couch for a while. I will admit that in such a lazy mood, I caught myself waiting until almost 4 PM before I started doing steps in earnest. I mean I was barely at 2600 steps then. I reminded myself though that many a time I wouldn't move around the FRB when I would leave work and still be at that many steps when I got home. Did I end up doing most of my steps when Johnnie was home with me during the pandemic? Today I could cruise into 11,000 steps pretty easily reminding myself by 7 PM that usually this is the time I ping Lisa to pick Johnnie up anyway. No such activity today. No cleaning the house either. Not with the dog around. What I did though that was different was that I made myself my own steak and cheese paninis. I got the bread from trader Joe's and then cooked up that strips of steak. The panini was fresh from my own oven too. AND I ate it with tomato and sweet basil soup I picked up from Ralphs. It reminded me of the French dip and tomato soup I used to order from Champagne when it was open. And this was a pretty good dinner and a totally different one from the Asian fare I would usually make myself. Just felt like doing something different is all. I kept on watching dividend stuff the rest of the evening, finally getting myself going in my own edification for my own investing. If I'm going to reposition my assets to live off dividends, I got lots to learn and lots to verify. And I have to do it NOW.