monday was may 11. first anniversary.
i can tell you what i planned now. the secret is done. she found out. i won.
the reveal #
we got in the car around 4pm. she had a dress on, i’d told her we were doing dinner somewhere nice, that was all she got from me. i drove toward la jolla which she clocked immediately.
“la jolla is not giving me much information. there are forty hotels and sixty restaurants in la jolla.”
correct.
she went quiet for about thirty seconds, which is her processing mode. then:
“you checked out of your algorithms today. you don’t do that for regular dinner reservations.”
she’s not wrong. i cleared the afternoon entirely, had my position management set to auto, didn’t touch the dashboard once.
i pulled into the hotel. small boutique place on the coast, twelve rooms, rooftop looks directly at the pacific. she got out and stood on the sidewalk and looked at it.
“how long did you have this booked.”
six weeks.
she turned and looked at me with this expression that was simultaneously delighted and frustrated, which is a face only she can pull off.
“i checked your browser history. i checked the folder. i even looked at your secondary email.”
“the secondary email is for IB API notifications.”
“i know that now.”
the receipt for the hotel had been in an encrypted folder on a separate volume since march. she never had a chance.
“okay,” she said. and picked up her bag and walked inside. “fine. you win this one.”
may 11 #
dinner was at george’s above the cove. she wore this black dress she knows exactly what she’s doing in and we both knew it. three hours, good wine, the kind of meal where the conversation just runs without effort. we talked about the year - specific things, not the sentimental-speech version, just actual stuff. the renovation fight. the january thing with the algos. the letter i wrote in march.
she said “you’re different this year.”
i said “you’re still annoying about the bookshelf.”
she said “i am absolutely right about the bookshelf and you know it.”
we stayed on the rooftop until midnight. the rooftop is on the list now. highly recommend. she had this particular way of asking for what she wanted that made it impossible to think about anything else, and we took our time with it, and the city was lit up behind us and the water was dark in front of us and it was a solid few hours. i don’t know what the universe thought we were going to be doing on our anniversary on a hotel rooftop at 11pm but probably that.
tuesday #
tuesday morning we walked to the coffee shop in la jolla. the one where she was writing a python data pipeline at the bar and i sat down two seats over and asked what she was building.
it’s still there. same setup. same coffee bar.
she stopped in the doorway.
“you remembered.”
yeah.
we ordered the same things - or close to it, we honestly couldn’t agree on exactly what either of us got in june 2023, which became its own fifteen-minute thing - and sat there for an hour and a half. she was quieter than usual. in the processing way, not the bad way.
she said at one point: “three years.”
i said: “technically three years in june.”
she threw a sugar packet at me.
the other part #
there was a moment monday night, before the rooftop, just after dinner - standing outside the restaurant waiting on the car - where my parents not being there hit harder than expected.
dr r had walked me through exactly this scenario two weeks ago. said grief and gratitude aren’t opposites. said both would probably show up.
both showed up.
dad would’ve had opinions about the hotel. specific, slightly-wrong opinions delivered with complete confidence. mom would’ve asked about food three times and then looped to the grandkids question, which she did annually starting when i was like sixteen.
that version of the night doesn’t exist.
A. was watching me. she didn’t say anything, just put her hand in mine and held it.
she always knows when to not say anything.
we got in the car. moved on.
now #
we got home wednesday. algos had kept running. BTC had a 38-hour volatility stretch while we were gone that my system handled fine. options book came back clean. nothing needed me.
lesson eight is next week. she’s already told me it’s risotto, which requires “patience and technique” apparently, which is her way of saying i’m going to struggle. the floating shelf is installed above her desk and it looks good even though she has already organized it in a way that makes no sense. i’ve stopped trying to understand her system.
first year. we made it. the thing works, it works well, it works on the specific level where you live with someone and see all of it. that version holds up.
good saturday.
-AK