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drooping, delaminating pizza
Monday, February 14 2022
I was sitting at my computer today when I noticed a cloying stank that I thought might be coming from my pants. It eventually led me to take a shower and do a load of laundry (I was down to my last teeshirt). But still I could smell that stank whenever I sat down at my Woodchuck workstation in the laboratory. Eventually I realized that the smell was coming from a steel bean can I'd been pissing in lately (as my flushless urinal system had frozen solid).
It being Valentine's Day, I drove to Woodstock to meet Gretchen just as she was getting off work, and I drove her in the Prius to nearby Catskill Mountain Pizza. (It was so brutally cold that it would've been unpleasant even to walk a few blocks outdoors.) The brake shoe on the Prius' rear driver's side wheel was rubbing the whole time, something that was especially noticeable at slow speeds.
We sat back in a corner in the Catskill Mountain Pizza dining room and looked forward to our usual Valentine's Day meal of his & her pizzas and an order of fries. But then it turned out that CMP didn't have any vegan cheese on hand due to delivery problems stemming from the recent ice storm. So we just had an order of fries and I drank a beer (Sip of Sunshine IPA; it was excellent) while looking around at the mostly older people there at 5:30pm on a Monday.
After some research, Gretchen found us another pizza place that offered vegan cheese: a new restaurant called Apizza in New Paltz. Normally I don't like to be driving all the way to New Paltz just for a meal, but it was special occasion, and so away we went.
Apizza is a fancier restaurant than a place like Catskill Mountain Pizza. This was apparent from the start, when we each got a glass of rosé prosecco and some bread with our order. The place was sparsely-peopled when we arrived, but by the time we left, there was a line of people waiting for tables. As always in New Paltz, the customers skewed young and didn't look like the kind who had been taking risks with covid. I only heard one muffled cough the whole time we were there. As for the pizza, it was the kind that needs to be flung into the air. The crust was very thin, and ours particular pizza ended up being enormous. The thin crust, though, made it a bit of a mess to eat, which wouldn't make Apizza a good destination for a first date.
Our conversation tonight spent a lot of time on the topic of murder. Gretchen said that she probably had it in her to commit murder given the right circumstances. I said that I had my doubts I could ever do it. "Morally?" Gretchen asked. No, I thought the issue with me was deeper and more biological than simple morality. Hell, I said, I find it exhausting just socializing with people. Killing them would be so much worse. For Gretchen, though, I thought her effortless ease with socializing would likely make it easier for her to kill, since a characteristic of an easy socializer is someone who doesn't expend too much energy thinking about what the other person is thinking. Gretchen wanted to explore this further, but it was not a topic I wanted to spend much time discussing when I was trying to have a relaxing meal out on the town, especially while wrestling an enormous and deeply uncooperative slice of drooping, delaminating pizza. I also made the mistake of ordering a beer, which turned out to be a sixteen ouncer, and there wasn't really enough room for it in my digestive system.
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