Today's Daily Double is... heaven, then the nine pm office!

finally watched the gaddamn sumo. the todo item i have rewritten daily for two weeks with mounting profanity, and the universe rewarded the procrastination: final day of the basho, a playoff no less, and aonishiki takes the whole thing. two in a row! a shin-ozeki lifting the cup, which if you don't follow sumo, just trust me, that is a rookie winning back to back with the whole sport watching to see if the first one was a fluke. it was not a fluke. up early with coffee shouting quietly at the laptop while Lady judged me from the rug. march we'll be there in person (Al and me, in the building, where the salt actually flies).

then it got better: borscht with Al, then the banya. steam so thick you breathe it, cold plunge that slaps your whole nervous system awake, back and forth till your body forgets every deadline it ever met. said heaven on earth out loud on the sidewalk after. meant it.

then the phone rang. the boss, friendly enough: yo, you figure the thing out yet? and the honest answer was no. the realtime problem, still standing, customer meeting monday morning on the other side of it. so i kissed my wife, patted my dog, and got on the 5pm ferry going the WRONG direction, everybody else on that boat coming home from their weekend and me riding into an empty office.

by nine pm I was dejected and feeling stupid. cold office, teammate dialed in remote and patient, the problem giving up ground maybe an inch an hour, and me thinking i am cold and i miss my wife and i miss my dog and i do not like being in an office at nine on a sunday. all true. but also true: nobody hands you the interesting problems wrapped in reasonable hours. this one is hard bc it's new, nobody's fully cracked it, and some stubborn part of me wants to be in the room when it does crack. it did not crack tonight. late bus home over the bridge, Al left the lamp on, Lady met me at the door like i'd been to war.

We'll see about monday.