Another New Start

Another new month means another new start. And today is still Friday payday to boot. In particular, my new deductions without Lisa's healthcare expense kicked in so there was more in the check than usual. $300 more than usual!! October in particular means its Johnnie's birthday month and at the end of the month, his favorite thing: Halloween. But although by now we're square into Fall, it sure doesn't feel like it outside. It was warm. Summer warm. Mid-80s warm. I looked at last year's October entries. It sure was a memorable month. The Lakers won the NBA championship and then the Dodgers won the World Series weeks later. An LA sports month that could never be beaten in terms of significance. Not going to have that kind of month this year although the Dodgers will be playing in the playoffs soon, and going for a repeat. The Lakers have just opened training camp too. But already Lisa had talked about scaling down and not having the usual Johnnie Birthday party with his brothers in the backyard. With all the stuff going on in her practice, she sounds like she simply doesn't have the energy to plan it, although even without said practice dramatics I doubt if she would have had the energy anyway. And that's ok. I will make sure he remembers it was special.  I remind myself that SHE thinks she is dealing with some kind of debilitating physical condition. And that is enough to make it manifest. But hey it is still Friday and my Friday routine calls for a near-tank day. I actually have to check in at work though because of the monthly FRB Birthday party and that's ok actually. I miss my FRB peeps. I hadn't gone to the last 2 months of birthday parties. This morning was spent balancing my attention between the stock market, to sort of keep in my radar and keep in somewhat in my attention span. And then I also did a lot of meditating. I had gotten up early as usual to get Johnnie's Daily Pass for Lisa and then to lock in a tee time for next next Sunday. And so I had plenty of time to do my meditation for the day. As far as wins for today, I wanted to do something with trading just to take a step forward. I also wanted to focus on what I wanted to happen this month. Although really taking steps towards an early retirement is still the goal and I am still hopeful I can accomplish that by the end of this year. I still have 3 months after all. Even as I keep stacking on wins at work. And then later on, Lisa had mentioned she wanted me to watch Johnnie while she played the piano for an hour or so. I used to do that a lot more during the first part of the pandemic. That's because none of us had anything better to do. There weren't really any new movies this week so I didn't have anything better to do either. Watch Johnnie it was.

And so it was that I took a nice little walk around the neighborhood around mid-morning which is how I took note of how warm it was. I was going to walk to BK to get me a Fish Sandwich and a couple of tacos for lunch. I decided it was too hot for that and did the drive through instead. And I even managed to close my eyes for a mini-nap for about 20 minutes after. That is the stuff I couldn't do if I were still at the FRB. And I made it to the 2 PM Birthday deal in plenty of time. Everyone seems to have caught on with doing an online trivia game and this month of course the theme was Halloween-y. I managed to win one of the bonus questions too! The "party" lasted about 45 minutes and I have to say that I really do miss my FRB peeps. It was nice to hear them all, especially since i know for sure we wouldn't be seeing each other in person for some time still.  Right after the meeting I headed over to Supercuts for my fresh haircut, making sure to note that this is my haircut to last until the NACHC talk in October (3 weeks). By 5 PM I had locked in 7000 steps already and so I was good to watch Johnnie tonight. The thing was though that Lisa was supposed to call me when she picked up Johnnie and by 5:40 I still hadn't gotten a call. Does she really wait this late to pick up Johnnie?? I decided that maybe I'd take a reconnaissance drive-by at the school. True enough as I was driving by, Lisa was just picking up Johnnie. It was 5 minutes to 6 PM at this point although I will say there were a lot of other kids being picked up still. At least half a dozen. And so I really couldn't say anything. I asked if I was still invited to come over and Johnnie quickly interjected that he wanted to have pizza for dinner. I volunteered to bring over ingredients to make a DIY pizza. And the pic I took of Johnnie prepping it himself was very cool. He really did most of the prep work. Not to mention the pizza actually turned out pretty good. For Lisa and I Lisa had brought back lemon chicken (baked) and salmon (baked) that her mom had made for her. I was perfectly fine putting the salmon over salad for my dinner. And so it was that we had a Friday night family dinner and then I watched Johnnie for about an hour after. Of course I had to listen to 2 versions of Lisa's piano piece before I left. And on my way home I figured I was still kind of hungry. So I made a 5-minute detour to Taco Bell and brought back 3 tacos. And watched it while watching another new Netflix series. I got to bed by 11:30 PM tonight. I'm back at Lisa's before 8 AM tomorrow morning. So the first day of October, though not necessarily all that memorable, was still pretty good. Any time I got to spend with Johnnie already makes the day pretty good.