Life Lately

Our first trip to Shake Shack since getting fully vaccinated!

First up, a quick announcement: I'm not sure if any of you rely on the "Follow by Email" widget in the sidebar to get notifications about my new posts. That widget is powered by Feedburner, and they are disabling the email notifications feature starting next month. If you would still like to receive email notifications about my new posts, I'm thinking of using Tinyletter to send out emails when I've updated my blog, and you can subscribe at this link. (I first opened this Tinyletter account years ago when I thought I might have it in me to do an email newsletter, but I never managed to find any inspiration to actually write anything in that format.) If there's any interest, I'll commit to sending out a quick note every time I post here starting in July! 

Today's post is a grab bag of small, not shopping-related things that have been on my mind recently. 

Shockingly, my workplace has yet to announce a formal return date for attorneys to go back to working full-time - or even part-time - at the office. But due to a busy period in one of my cases, I've still been back in the office at least two or three days a week since May 24. Because my workplace hasn't announced new COVID-19 policies since last July when NYC-based offices were first allowed to reopen, everyone is continuing to wear masks in the communal spaces at the office. In other words, we have not yet implemented the new CDC guidance that vaccinated people don't need to wear masks in most indoor settings. 

I totally love Olivia Rodrigo's recently released album, Sour. "Good 4 U" is my favorite track, such an addictive song I can listen to on repeat even if I totally don't have the life experience to actually relate to the lyrics. (I don't think I have the right life experience to relate to any of the tracks except maybe "Jealousy, Jealousy" and "Brutal" for more general types of teenaged or social media-driven insecurity. I didn't really have any experiences of youthful romantic heartbreak or anything like that!) "Drivers License," "Hope Ur Okay," and "Brutal" are also pretty great tracks.  

Now that I'm back in the office at least part of each week for the foreseeable future, our grocery shopping routine will need to change to account for how I typically buy lunch when I go to the office. (I eat Sweetgreen for lunch on most of my office days.) K's still at home all week for the foreseeable future. But between the two of us, I'm by far the more experienced cook, so he relies more on sandwiches or frozen foods when I'm not home to help with lunch. 

Even as the city starts to reopen, we've continued to rely heavily on grocery deliveries, from both Freshdirect and Southeast Asian Food Group ("SAFG"), two locally-based services. SAFG is a small local business owned and run by Asian Americans. Asian Veggies is another option for a similar small local Asian American-owned business for delivery of Asian vegetables and pantry items in NYC.

Although I get all my grocery deliveries from locally-based businesses that only really ship to the NYC area, I understand there are now a few more national options out there for getting Asian groceries delivered to various parts of the US. I definitely have friends in NYC who've tried Weee! and have been satisfied. (I believe they deliver nationwide.) I'm not sure if I know anyone who has tried Umamicart (which delivers to a number of states in the Northeast). 

While we briefly subscribed to HBO Max, K and I finally got a chance to watch some of the last season of Anthony Bourdain's show Parts Unknown, which was released after Bourdain passed away. It made us so sad to watch those last episodes. Bourdain was really special to us, as he was to so, so many people around the world. He was so open-minded and unpretentious, and willing to seriously reevaluate his past viewpoints, and his perspective on the world was really valuable. There's also going to be a documentary - Roadrunner (YouTube link to the movie trailer) - about him and his life. I'll get to watching it eventually after it's released, though again, I think it'll make me feel really sad. 

Speaking of food media but about something happier, I really recommend following Rick Martinez (formerly of Bon Appetit, he was one of those who was denied video opportunities and fair compensation from his appearances on their YouTube channel) on Instagram and for his videos with Food52. I like to live vicariously through his Instagram stories about his day-to-day life cooking delicious-looking food in a lovely little house in Mazatlan, Mexico - a city by the beach - with his absolutely adorable dog.