Week 39, 2026: Cheekbones
The grind: Meal-prepping when it’s still dark and cold because that’s the only time of day where the flat feels like it’s mine. Whatever money I saved from meal-prepping, I have now lost to paying the customs fee for a birthday book from a European publisher that only has US branches in North America. There’s a neighbourhood spot I’d been frequenting as a kind of third place where I don’t think the vibes are quite what I’m looking for so I’m on the look-out again. I was taste-testing their iced tonic espresso on a video call with my father and pulled out the lemon slice for show. He was not impressed. If you want to Frank up a coffee, he said, you use Nescafe, that’s it. I shook the lemon slice on camera and he shook his head disapprovingly. I downed it all in one go and shook my head too.
The grand: I’ve forgotten how nice beans are in a stew. I went to Liberty Village again to build a Netlify blog with someone who knows a lot about the computer. I really miss learning CSS and Javascript, which I’d normally take as a divine signal but it’s going to be so busy after the 30th. My purpose will be singular. Co-working on video calls in the meantime. And dinner at Raku with Jemima. They gave us a booth! Her udon was soupy, mine stewy. Thick soup, they called it on the menu. I’m a big fan of hers. I watched Red Richardson perform for Just for Laughs because I’m a big fan of his too and I’d just been watching him on YouTube when I saw that he was doing a show near me. And then there was Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie in the cinema. After eating french cheese and drinking water with french bubbles, she said what would our movie be? She had asked earlier where I first felt the numbness after smoking and I said above my brow and her answer was cheekbones and I realized, as I thought of an answer to the second question, that cheekbones was my answer too. I said it would be two girls who move to a brand new city in the same week, decide to just be friends and spend a lot of time together. She replied so it’s just Girls and I said except we don’t make it to new york. And we found that very funny like it was something Red Richardson or Matt Johnson had said.