Complex Numbers

Past Perfect

I've actually had a perfect day. Several of them, in fact.

PROMPT November 17th

In your entry today, plan yourself the perfect day. Who would you see? Where would you go? What would you do? How do you spoil yourself?

Each of those days was different, but they all had three things in common: friends, booze, and food.

The food part shouldn't be surprising. Most people eat every day, anyway, and I would never call a day of fasting "perfect," regardless of anything else that happened on that day. But for me it's more than mere sustenance; it's a destination and experience in itself.

I'm sure the booze part isn't surprising if you know me. But I'm not talking about overindulgence; just something to add to the pleasure of the experience.

The "friends" part surprises even me, though, because I tend to be solitary. And yet having other people around to share the experience is a good thing; I just need some time alone afterward.

Location doesn't matter much, either. I've had excellent experiences close to home and on the road.

So let's look at what a perfect day for me might look like... assuming, of course, that a certain disease is no longer a concern. I should also point out that in this scenario, the temperature never dips below about 65F. I don't care how hot it gets, though, as long as the places we go have a/c.

Morning

First -- and this is absolutely critical for a perfect day -- I'm not woken by cats, people, weird noises, or, most importantly, an alarm. I just wake up when I'm ready. Hopefully this isn't too late for breakfast.

Breakfast itself could take one of several different forms. Cooking is work, so I'm at a restaurant or diner. They'll want to give me coffee; I'll request tea instead. They'll look all kinds of confused and thrown off stride. This is good; keeps them on their toes. Hopefully they'll have something besides that puke-orange Lipton bullshit. If not, I'll order a Coke. They'll try to pass of Pepsi as Coke. This is insupportable. Water it is, then.

Sigh. Okay, that's not a "perfect" day; that's just how breakfast usually goes for me on the road. Ideally they'll have an English Breakfast tea. Fortunately for me (and for servers everywhere) I'm not nearly as picky about my food as I am about beverages. Eggs Benedict, or a bagel with lox and cream cheese, or waffles, pancakes, toast, whatever, with some variety of eggs, and bacon. But really, any sort of breakfast food is fine.

The places I want to go don't open until 11 or so, usually, so I take my time with breakfast. That's when I'll meet up with my friends and we start drinking.

Not serious drinking, but visiting wineries, breweries, and/or distilleries and sampling small amounts of their wares. Wineries can be tough because they tend to be out in the country and you need to find someone who's not drinking to give you a ride. Some breweries are, too, but a lot of times they're in town and if you can't walk to all of them, there's rideshare. Even though I'm not drinking all that much, I'm not going to risk driving.

Afternoon

Lunch -- probably at one of the breweries; lots of them have decent menu selections. Then more samples of fine adult beverages, and maybe a walk in a park or a fun section of whatever town we're in. If we see something interesting, great, we can stop and check it out. I'm pretty flexible in that regard.

After all that hard work, I'll need a short nap.

Evening

No, I'm not cooking dinner, either. And I'm not too picky about where we eat: American, Italian, French, Japanese, Indian, whatever, as long as it's not lousy chain food. And the place, of course, has an appropriate selection of booze to go with the meal, preferably including expensive single-malt scotch that I can enjoy as a dessert. Even more ideally, they'll have some sort of music as well. Just not jazz. Fuck jazz.

And then, after dinner... dancing? No hell no. A movie? Nah, can see a movie anytime. A romantic walk on the beach? No squared to the power of nope. There's very little I hate more than having sand in my shoes, but one of those things is walking barefoot on the beach. And the only thing I hate worse than walking on the beach in the daytime is walking on the beach at night; I don't care what the scenery is like. So, what then? Well, more drinking of course, again somewhere that has decent music ("decent" still being defined as "anything other than jazz").

Night

Uninterrupted sleep.

Such a day could happen again, I think, though it may be a while. In the meantime, I'll just have to make do with hanging around with my cats, reading or watching movies, and writing.

There's still beer involved, anyway.