woke up at 9:30 and nothing was on fire.
algos running clean. BTC bot up 0.6%. SPX options book flat to slightly positive. colo heartbeat normal. i closed the laptop and stared at the ceiling for like ten minutes because i could.
A. was already gone on her run. she always starts the coffee before she leaves, which is the most quietly thoughtful thing a person does and she never mentions it. it’s just there when i wake up. five years ago i would’ve said “she’s training you” as a joke and also meant it completely seriously. now i just appreciate it.
the furniture argument #
she wants a new bookshelf.
not like, a regular bookshelf. a specific bookshelf she’s had saved on her phone for four months. floating shelves, the kind that look like they’re defying physics, for the wall above her desk.
she brought it up three times this week, which by A.’s standards is a full-press campaign. she mentioned it once in february when she found it. once in march, casual. now three times this week. she knows exactly what she’s doing.
the thing is, i don’t care about the bookshelf. she can have the bookshelf. my objection - and i have maintained this publicly and internally - is that she has a perfectly functional bookshelf five feet away that she’s already made into an organizational catastrophe, so why would we add more surface area for this.
her counterargument is that it’s her desk space and she has a system.
her system is not a system. her system is “pile things in the general direction of where they should be and then know where everything is telepathically.”
but she does always know where everything is. i cannot explain this.
we’ll probably order the bookshelf this week.
comfortable quiet #
she got back around 11. 5.4 miles. she does a route along the water when the weather’s like this, which in san diego in april is basically always.
showered, made herself a second coffee, sat down at her desk. she had this thing she was building out - some data pipeline for a client, she was deep in it. i could hear her typing from across the room in that specific fast-and-certain way that means she’s in the zone.
i got back into algo work. been sitting on a regime detection adjustment i want to test. not urgent, just something i’ve been picking at.
we spent like three hours like this. same room, completely separate, absolutely fine with that.
i don’t think i understood how rare this was before her. the ability to exist with someone without needing to fill every silence. her first week here she asked if i was mad because i went quiet. i said no, i’m just thinking. she said oh, same. and then that was it. three years later, we have a whole language of quiet.
almost a year #
she mentioned offhand that our first anniversary is thirty days out. may 11.
i know. i’ve known for a while.
i have something planned that she doesn’t know about. i’m not putting it here because she occasionally reads this blog and will absolutely look for clues. (if you’re reading this, hi, you’re not finding out.)
what i will say is this time last year we were four weeks from getting married and i was checking my algorithms obsessively between seating chart conversations and my mom’s old friend was crying at the rehearsal dinner and A. grabbed my hand under the table and didn’t let go for about 20 minutes and didn’t say anything.
she knew what to do. she always knows.
the balcony thing #
san diego does april correctly. there’s a reason people move here. the light comes in at a specific angle around 5pm that makes everything look like a screen saver.
we ended up on the balcony around 6. she brought out her laptop to do one more hour of work and i brought out a beer and we both ended up just sitting there watching the neighborhood do its evening thing. dog walkers, a couple arguing over which restaurant, some guy on an ebike doing that thing where you stand up on the pedals for no reason.
she said “this is the best part.”
i said “what part.”
she said “this. whatever this is.”
i couldn’t really argue with that.
the hour turned into three. we didn’t do the one more hour of work. we ordered thai food and ate it on the balcony and she stole all my spring rolls immediately, which is a pattern i should’ve addressed at the start of the relationship and did not, and now it’s just my life.
april feels easier than march. the grief stuff is still there but it’s in the background instead of the foreground. dr r says that’s what healthy processing looks like - it doesn’t disappear, it just stops being the loudest thing in the room.
it’s not the loudest thing today.
good saturday.
-AK