Today is Wednesday, April 9, 2025. It’s pretty late here owing to us being out with our adopted “niece” “Esther,” so I won’t belabor you with any more venom directed toward our moronic president who just announced a 90-day pause on his disastrous trade war which clearly demonstrates he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing with these tariffs. This patently demonstrates that he’s the most economically illiterate president in U.S. history. But enough of him!

Before meeting Esther at a local Chinese restaurant, Spicy C, on Austin Street, I drove to my usual comic book store by the name of Royal Collectibles close to 11. The extent of the traffic snags encountered on just this 15-minute drive could cause anyone to suffer agita. Not only did I encounter the usual number of double-parked cars in every major road, which is so exasperating, there was also a clogged line of traffic on 71st Avenue and Continental Avenue that forced me to go another way to Metropolitan Avenue. I had to wait several minutes longer for the directional light to flicker allowing me to turn left onto Continental Avenue which I avoided this time. So my complaint is with rude drivers who fail to show any common courtesy to other drivers by parking willy- nilly in narrow roads, thus blocking cars from getting around them. Before I got to that turn on Continental Avenue, I was driving in back of a Rogue driver who positioned her car in back of a car pulling out of a spot. She positioned her damn car in such a way that I couldn’t get around her, so I honked her right away which caused her to abandon the spot. This is the kind of discourtesy that I’m referring to here. It’s infectious just like the Dump virus these days.

We met Esther around 7:30 and had a wonderful dinner with her, as we ordered scallion pancakes, steamed pork dumplings, won ton soup, hot and sour soup, and chicken rice noodles. Esther ordered mapo tofu. The only one to take food home was Esther who retained a lot of her tofu dish as a take-home supper for another time. After dinner, we walked down to Martha’s Country Bakery where we sat down for dessert: Elliot and Esther had some gelato (Elliot enjoyed chocolate gelato, while Esther asked for mango gelato) and tea, while I ordered a piece of strawberry banana cake and coffee.

We got home close to 10. We asked Esther to text us when she got home and she did.

And so it went!