Started off the morning FaceTiming with Grace. She lives in Berlin but has an inherent ability to find pockets of overlap in time zones to catch up. We spent 1 hour and 44 minutes filling in gaps since we last chatted.
I now keep a notepad open during our calls so I can reference them later. Here are some random bullet points:
- In Germany you can get popcorn sweet, salty OR A MIX OF BOTH of the movies
- Speaking of movies: the docuementaries Teaches of Peaches and Eno by Gary Hustwit have been added to my watch list. The latter is currently only available IRL and each showing is unique
- The Eno doc has a solid soundtrack
- Grace produced a podcast about a disastrous payroll system in Canada
- We discussed what sorts of things show up on our default Instagram search page. (Grace: Beading, ceramics and cats. Mine: Thirst traps from bearded men.)
- I’ve been learning about social media. There is a subreddit for lunacy on LinkedIn. This post in particular made me laugh.
- David Hasselhoff released a single titled “Pingu Dance“, a song based on an animated program in Switzerland about penguins
- We also talked about: the Tina Fey television universe, the problem with AppleTV+ series and when our Swarm (Foursquare) coins will be vested
- Added Girls5eva to the tv queue
Always a fun hang. I would very much like to go to Germany and have this session over a roll with butter and ham.
Afterward, Casey and I scratched a thing off our bucket list and visited the Mt. Washington Creamy Whip (Instagram link). The banana shake used flavoring instead of real bananas, so next time I’d get a sundae. They used soft serve as the shake foundation and I could tell it was quality. The whole joint was chock full of fun tidbits and memorabilia.
The Phoenix payroll system is indeed a debacle. Has cost billions so far and has been an embarrassment to multiple Federal governments. There’s supposed to be a replacement system coming – I’m sure that will work flawlessly!!
I enjoy a good conversation just as much as I do an old-fashioned ice cream shop. But I especially love that it happened on my birthday. ❤️