Darkfoxx 67: A Rejoin To The Flow, Perhaps

[darkfoxx]

 As we slide into this next challenge cycle, the place I live is on the cusp of entering Phase 3 of reopening. 

 

According to the Ministry, Phase 3 will include:

 

• Medium-sized gatherings of less than 40 people allowed
• 54 mosques reopening for Friday prayers
• Low-risk inbound flights for returning residents
• Driving schools opened
• Playgrounds and skate parks opened
• Team trainings in groups of under 40, amateur sporting events with no spectators
• Hospitals operating at 80% capacity
• Nurseries and childcare facilities opened
• All malls open full hours; souqs and wholesale markets open with restrictions
• Restricted restaurants open with gradually increased capacity
• Gyms, health clubs, pools, beauty parlors, spas and hairdressers open at 50% capacity

 

What I’m looking forward to is my yoga studio(s) opening back up, the probable return of IRL Tuesday coffee group, and maybe changing my haircut up eventually - when I find a new hairdresser I like. I was in the middle of finding one that I liked who was sticking around; aaaand who knows who is still here after months of being out of work. So we shall see. I most likely won’t actually get a haircut scheduled for the first month open; my salon is popular and I can imagine they will be packed to the rafters. 

 

What this means for me: 

 

A potential gradual rejoining of the flow of at least somewhat “normal” life (or whatever you call what I had Before Corona). We won’t be traveling for a bit yet and 2/3 of my friends have scattered to the winds, but it will be good to rebuild myself a new-new-new normal for a bit. I plan on hitting the yoga studio as much as I can fit into the schedule I’m liable to make happen (read: morning classes that aren’t too early), have a once-weekly scheduled social outing over breakfast, maaaaaaaaybe plan a wine by the pool day with a girlfriend, and maaaaaaaybe go out to dinner with DH. This will also mean a return to taking Ubers all over creation; yay, during the heat of the summer. Fingers crossed that I get better Ubers with adequately-powered air cons. 

 

As such, my goals are shifting a bit for this cycle as I find my footing for the umpteenth time. 

 

Goal 1: Nutrition. Always nutrition

 

This goal is largely the same: don’t eat like an asshole, don’t eat things that I know are going to cause gastric distress, and eat moar veggies. 

 

Actually kind of happy that buffets aren’t returning and that a chunk of my ‘let’s go eat a ton of shit and drink all day’ friends have bounced. That will help re: not eating like an asshole. 

 

Goal 2: Physical Movement

 

I need more of this in my life. Go do yoga as much as I can make work with my actual schedule (I have 1 set social thing I could actually be late to but hate being late so won’t), the schedule I tell myself I have (100% have to be home in the evenings because DH is), and the schedule I can commit to without anxiety paralysis (anything between 10am & 4pm except Tuesday, when even 4pm is a stretch but I make happen). 

 

Goal 3: Creativity Outlets

 

I still need to keep this up because I like it and it’s good for me to actually accomplish things. Currently planned projects include: another bed gown, another quilt, finishing my peplum top, finishing more of my fake lace, a corset, fixing or remaking my walking skirt because the damn hook and eye closure came off (the last of it while I was walking around the mall - so I held my skirt shut behind my back while I continued shopping for half the afternoon. Don’t think I remembered to tell y’all about that hilarity), maybe another article of clothing - probably yet another dress - maybe pants instead. Depends. 

 

Also planning on continuing with Animal Crossing, just maybe not for hours every day; maybe quick check-ins on the days I leave the house + longer on days I don’t. Depends on how draining leaving the house turns out to be. Shoehorning in-person being social is going to be incredibly draining for a bit, I’m certain. I need to find ways to deal with that drain that isn’t just watching hours of true crime and historical documentaries on YouTube while semi-napping on the couch. Yoga, man. Yoga. Build some shit on my island. 

 

And that’s it. Not terribly different than the goals I’ve had for the last while, but some new challenges to navigate and minor course-corrections to help with that. 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Following along for more tales of the sandpit.

[Zaphine]

You were on the verge of dropping trou for half a day at the mall?  Adventure!  

[Scaly Freak]

Gradual adjustment to in-person social events sounds like it cold be exhausting. Be careful not to over-do it!

[darkfoxx]

18 hours ago, Zaphine said:

You were on the verge of dropping trou for half a day at the mall?  Adventure!  

Oh, yeah - it was quite the adventure. I ended up attempting to get a refill on my contacts (and failing because the machine was down, I couldn’t remember my prescription on my own, and in order to get another exam I’d have had to have been wearing my glasses), shopping in general, shopping and having to sign a receipt, and navigating Starbucks. DH tried at many points to get me to just relent and buy some damn pants - but I don’t *need* any new pants, so no. Wasn’t gonna. 

 

15 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Gradual adjustment to in-person social events sounds like it cold be exhausting. Be careful not to over-do it!

Yep. Just contemplating it is exhausting. 

 

And we’ve gotten an update for Phase 3 - looks like it’ll be enacted a few days early; just in time for Eid 2. 

 

Phase 3:

 

Pretty much what it was supposed to be according to the original outline, but: 

 

1. Indoor gatherings (minus mosques) are limited to 10 people (outdoor is 30)

2. Restaurants are still limited to 4 people from different households per table. So, no real return to coffee mornings yet - as I still don’t want to deal with RSVP policing for that few people. That, and I 100% do not want to get stuck with people who drive me insane with no buffer. Nooooooooooooooooooope. My bucket fulleth of fucks to give is empty. I have zero desire to try for diplomacy or anything but bullshit-calling when faced with the level of jackassery that would most likely happen. One of the obnoxious crew has been continually messaging me throughout this lockdown to see when things will be open, to ask the rules, and to see if I’d like to circumvent them with her. Because reading comprehension. Smh

 

We did, however, have our first foray into outer-world dining this past weekend - steaks out with friends went swimmingly and we hope to be able to make it a monthly affair. 

 

I even wore my newest me-made article of clothing, and it worked well. No major wardrobe malfunctions to speak of. 

 

And I even got to wear lipstick. Mask be damned. 

 

Restaurant protocols included: masks in the Uber by both driver and us, I believe the Ubers are supposed to be sanitized as well; temperature and tracker app checking at the entrance to both the hotel and the restaurant (for reference: the maitre d can see the door), hand sanitizer upon entry to the hotel; masks on all restaurant staff, tables were well spaced apart, menus were printed on placemats with drink menus available via QR code; each couple was given their own little pots of bread toppings, and masks were required when sojourning to the bathroom. We were pleasantly surprised that the restaurant we chose also wasn’t swamped. 

 

Weekend food:

 

Friday was bread & butter, chicken & rice, delivery Mexican and Triscuits during game night

Saturday was bread & butter, delivery club sandwich and steak dinner out

Sunday was bread & butter, a bizarrely military-themed shawarma in a ridiculously sturdy box we almost felt guilty for pitching lunch, and pop chips in lieu of dinner during game night #2 of the week 

 

 

[Big_Show]

That dinner looks delicious, I've missed being able to go out and eat like that 😋

[darkfoxx]

Monday

 

Zoom yoga was skipped in favor of running my National Address registration in - a day late but luckily there was a grace period - because in 6 months they *still* haven’t fixed a good way to register online. Wandered afterward a bit because it was hot but I didn’t melt. 

 

Breakfast was oats & peanut butter

Lunch was leftover boiled potatoes with butter & some of last weeks’ dressing

Dinner was our usual Beyond Burger Monday with me-made bread and a hand full of tortilla chips 

 

 

2 hours ago, Big_Show said:

That dinner looks delicious, I've missed being able to go out and eat like that 😋

It was quite good. Hadn’t been to Astor Grill at St. Regis before for more than a glass of wine between business lunch and happy hour, but it will definitely make it on the list. 

[miss_marissa]

On 7/27/2020 at 6:11 AM, darkfoxx said:

We did, however, have our first foray into outer-world dining this past weekend - steaks out with friends went swimmingly and we hope to be able to make it a monthly affair. 

 

I even wore my newest me-made article of clothing, and it worked well. No major wardrobe malfunctions to speak of. 

 

And I even got to wear lipstick. Mask be damned. 

Very pretty! I haven't worn lipstick in a while due to the mask situation either lol Glad you had a fun date night! 

 

2 hours ago, Big_Show said:

That dinner looks delicious, I've missed being able to go out and eat like that 😋

me too! somehow takeout just isn't the same

[darkfoxx]

Just now, miss_marissa said:

Very pretty! I haven't worn lipstick in a while due to the mask situation either lol Glad you had a fun date night! 

 

me too! somehow takeout just isn't the same

Thanks! 

 

And that it is not. We’ve been doing nice takeout on Fridays for date night - which is good, but we really don’t enjoy it more than cheapie dinners - at least not in an amount commiserate with the extra cost. We were really missing the experience too. 

 

On the plus side, it made dinner out more special than it can be - more of an event. 

[Big_Show]

35 minutes ago, darkfoxx said:

It was quite good. Hadn’t been to Astor Grill at St. Regis before for more than a glass of wine between business lunch and happy hour, but it will definitely make it on the list. 

 

 

I thought I recognised it - I had a couple of friends who liked going out and trying different restuarants and that's one of the last places I went with them before I left!

 

 

[darkfoxx]

21 hours ago, Big_Show said:

 

I thought I recognised it - I had a couple of friends who liked going out and trying different restuarants and that's one of the last places I went with them before I left!

 

 

Nice! Thought you might know it   St. Regis has had a revival of sorts lately - 2 new restaurants in the apartment towers out front (decently reviewed I think or just hope tacos from the UK & not so greatly reviewed Middle Eastern - can’t remember if the new Indian is still on the property or if that’s what burned on the ground level of one of the towers); Opal just left due to the quarantine and has been replaced by a pan-Levantine kind of joint (keeping Opal’s good sushi though), and Astor Grill receives little love in the Facebook groups but was good. I think Vine is still there? I wasn’t a fan of the one evening buffet thing I went to there. Loved the wine bar and I can’t imagine it’s gone anywhere. 

[darkfoxx]

Tuesday

 

Coffee morning hangout with friends, cleaned a bit while I was chatting, reveled in the dog-free silence, pulled some items for my next sewing project (finishing the embroidery on a peplum for a top), and rebuilt part of my island on Animal Crossing. 

 

First breakfast: Me-made roll, butter, rhubarb jam

Second breakfast: Me-made roll, butter

Lunch: The last of the leftover boiled potatoes, the last of the leftover chicken & rice, a leftover fried egg

Dinner: Salmon soba bowl (recipe hitting the blog in the next month)

[WhiteGhost]

Hi there fellow expat, I thought I would pop over and visit your challenge after getting to know you a bit on a call last night.

 

On 7/28/2020 at 8:29 PM, darkfoxx said:

Astor Grill at St. Regis

I wonder if all St. Regis hotels have an Astor Grill. I know the one here in Beijing does, and I am pretty sure the one in Hong Kong does as well. 

[darkfoxx]

8 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Hi there fellow expat, I thought I would pop over and visit your challenge after getting to know you a bit on a call last night.

 

I wonder if all St. Regis hotels have an Astor Grill. I know the one here in Beijing does, and I am pretty sure the one in Hong Kong does as well. 

Hello! It was great commiserating   And that’s interesting - I wonder if that’s one of the hotel brand restaurants, then? It’s pretty underrated here and I was pleasantly surprised. 

[darkfoxx]

Wednesday

 

Sporadic cleaning instead of one big chunk seems to be the way to go this week - de-molded more things. 

 

Breakfast was me-made bread with butter & jam

Lunch was leftover salmon with soba salad

Dinner was my first stab (ok, not first stab but I’m not about to try and track down casings and suet) at making something approximating sausage out of chicken. Went fairly well, though I definitely needed to add more fat. I haven’t seen suet for sale here - pork fat is definitely out - duck I’ve seen but it doesn’t crumble as well - I’ll have to monkey around with things to find something that works well. My seasoning mix wasn’t half bad, despite not being able to find fennel.

 

Popped in to my RPG group for a bit and then hung out with some NF peeps. 

 

Not much else was accomplished for the day - no crafting or yoga. 

[WhiteGhost]

14 hours ago, darkfoxx said:

Breakfast was me-made bread with butter & jam

Lunch was leftover salmon with soba salad

Dinner was my first stab (ok, not first stab but I’m not about to try and track down casings and suet) at making something approximating sausage

Me-made bread and something approximating sausage is basically the cliff notes summary of my current challenge  

[darkfoxx]

10 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Me-made bread and something approximating sausage is basically the cliff notes summary of my current challenge  

Great minds and all that

 

I had great luck with the book Charcuterie: The Art of Salting, Smoking and Curing by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman when I was first learning the ins and outs of sausages and the like - and had access to the ingredients. We made some fantastic cased sausages and the duck prosciutto in the book was one of the on-hand ingredients I kept around in case of visitors or potlucks. Or pizza. It’s great on a pizza. 

 

https://g.co/kgs/qNfDMF

 

And I’d be super curious to see if the wild yeasts from all our locations makes our sourdough taste the same or just slightly different. 

 

[darkfoxx]

Thursday

 

Still waiting for the now two yoga studios I want to frequent to get their ish together and release bookable schedules for next week. That’s not a good excuse for no yoga still this week, but: lazy. 

 

Cleaned a bit more, de-molded a bit more. 

 

Colored in my app and continued on with my massive redesign in Animal Crossing. Hate all of it for now - but I’m only about a third of the way done; have to wait for staircases to be moved and supplies (shocker: more outdoor lighting because apparently I’m a light hoarder) to come in the mail. Also finally got the ability to make the bed I kinda wanted for my en-suite and some plant-y decorations I wanted for the witchy basement lair. 

 

Breakfast was more bread & butter

Lunch was leftover “sausage” hash with eggs

Made dinner because I was feeling antsy and like I wanted to cook despite it being leftover night - dinner was potatoes roasted in sun dried tomato oil + the rest of the sausage spices + my chili tuna love 

Had a snack of salt & vinegar pop chips + plain lentil chips 

 

Worked on my embroidery a bit as well. 

 

 

 

[darkfoxx]

Friday

 

One of the studios has gotten some of their ish together and is at least populating on the Mindbody app again - no schedule past this week yet, but that’s something. I think they had technical issues all day yesterday as it was the go live day for the new and improved website. 

 

The RPG friend had her baby, so yay there - let’s see when we get back to our scheduled games. Luckily, we are good note takers. I think. I wasn’t really around during last week’s campaign wrap up session. 

 

Bwahahaha. Our A/C in the living room has decided to go rogue and we’ve been waking up to 19C temps in the mornings. DH is playing CoD blowing on his fingers and complaining about his hands clawing up from the cold. He says he turned the a/c off, but I swear i hear it. 

 

I would also estimate the bedroom to be 21 or 22C with the a/c on constant and a fan blowing. 

 

This apartment is weird, and I’d open the door for warm air (it’s 10 am and 103F outside), but it’s another high humidity day so I think I’ll just go sit outside again until my fingers are pruny. 

 

Friday was fine - coloring, embroidery, ACNH, cleaning - the usual. 

 

Breakfast was bread, butter & rhubarb jam

Lunch was leftover roasted potatoes & tuna

Post lunch snack was mixed mangoes

Dinner was delivery Indian from a nice hotel place: chicken tikka, chicken korma, tea chicken momos, paratha, garlic naan, basmati rice. And I’m happy to report that we both left half of our dinner as leftovers. Go us for exercising self-restraint. 

 

No post-dinner snackage as such, but we calculated how quickly we’ve been going through whiskey lately and discovered at the high end we are having 8 drinks/week for me and 11 for him. That’s if he has 1 drink/night + 1 extra Fri-Sun & Wed and I have 2 drinks/night Fri-Sun and 2 on Wed during game night. 

 

We don’t always have that many drinks on game nights - but some we definitely do. I like to finish my can of Diet Coke if he’s drinking Old Fashions. 

 

Not a big problem, but it’s interesting to see the trends. For reference, I absolutely hated alcohol until I was in my mid-30s. Drank maaaaaaaaybe a hand full of times in college. Used to get flaming red cheeks from 2 sips of anything that sat next to alcohol. Would throw a hissy fit if there was wine in my spaghetti sauce as a kid. 

 

DH spent years getting me to drink anything but sugary garbage - I had to work hard on any kind of wine palette - and the bite of alcohol still bugs me (hence the Diet Coke mixer and preference for cheaper whiskeys/bourbons to mix with it). 

 

Interesting to see how the palette changes over time. 

[Jean]

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

7 hours ago, darkfoxx said:

(hence the Diet Coke mixer and preference for cheaper whiskeys/bourbons to mix with it). 

I appreciate that you don't mix the better whiskeys. I have a coworker who was having a drink with his boss. The boss had a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue (Very expensive, hard to find Scotch). The boss put the Scotch in coke. My friend almost lost his job over his reaction.

[Scaly Freak]

2 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I appreciate that you don't mix the better whiskeys. I have a coworker who was having a drink with his boss. The boss had a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue (Very expensive, hard to find Scotch). The boss put the Scotch in coke. My friend almost lost his job over his reaction.

 

 

And I'm personally offended, and my sympathies to your friend.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

13 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

 

And I'm personally offended, and my sympathies to your friend.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would have been very diplomatic at that moment either.

[Jean]

3 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

The boss had a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue (Very expensive, hard to find Scotch). The boss put the Scotch in coke.

We need to know the name of this company so that we can send offended letters about the importance of manners and how people in a position of authority used to have class. I mean, where's the world going if we let these kinds of demeanour unchecked and unpunished? Taste, dammit! Is that too much to ask?

[Renate]

4 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

My friend almost lost his job over his reaction.

 

I have never understood when people order fancy whiskey to put in coke 😅 I do not drink a lot but have always enjoyed tasting/learning about it