Diane von Austinburg came out to visit last week. As usual, it was delightful. Diane remains the best house guest I could ask for. I stay up all night, sleep all day until about 2:00 in the afternoon at which time I get up and wander down to Peet's for my afternoon constitutional, come home and go directly back to bed for a few hours until dinner, after which I return to bed for perusing random useless internet sites on my phone and start all over. And Diane adopts that ridiculous schedule as her own. God love her.
An important part of the bacchanal is that the evenings we don't cook, we go out for dinner and this time all of the dinners were ridiculously successful. Since I no longer have a car, getting to a restaurant now involves somebody else driving. I've been using Uber all this time, but now I have switched my allegiance to Waymo, the self-driving cab company. Diane was very suspicious of the whole idea of wheeling about with no human pilot, but I think any time I can complete a task without dealing with another person, it's a win. The cars are very clean and comfortable, the ride is smooth, and there is no driver bothering me with attempts at conversation in a language still heavily influenced by the Old Country, whatever that might be.
One of my favorite things about Waymo is that apparently when I set up my account, I was asked how I wanted to be addressed and I specified "peenee" probably assuming I would never hear about that again. But no. When you get in the car, the computer cheerfully welcomes you, in my case, it chirps in a perky voice, "Hello peenee" which I think is absolutely hysterical, mostly because I am easily amused. Initially I responded with "Fuck off, cocksucker," but now I have calmed down.
Boys who I hope will never be replaced by technology:
