December 8, 2022

It's an office holiday, and so Gladys visited to pick up her copy of _Cubao Ilalim: Unang Aklat_. She brought me a bag of Batangas barako, a welcome addition to our coffee collection.

Treated her to a parmesan cheese buffalo wings meal at M.'s cafe, and gave her a faux Han Dynasty hairpin I've never worn before: the much-vaunted phoenix hairpin, which, as all wuxia fans will know, is the hairpin reserved for very special persons.

I was painting before she arrived. Note the sweat on my Mountain Dew T-shirt. And, yes, I cropped off my orange Spandex shorts.