Skip Day Blog Post! Doctor Visits and Voting

⊕ show captionAbout the Title Picture: On the way home from Concord, I saw that the New Hampshire Donut Company was open! Usually it's closed if I'm in the area, so this was a rare opportunity to try them out.

Today was an extremely long day, so my sharepiece is permission to take a break so you can get other stuff out of the way. Today I had to drive up to Concord, New Hampshire through single-line construction traffic for a doctor's visit. With traffic, this took much longer than usual. I did several explorations and errands on the way home, and I was completely wiped out. Allowing myself skip days is sane, I think, when I run myself out of energy. Instead of working on a build challenge, I can write a regular blog post. Which is this post :-)

Unexpected Donuts

There was good news from the doctor: my A1C blood sugar had dropped yet again, and I had even lost around five pounds! So, on the way home I decided I deserved a treat and planned to stop at Sun Shui in Bedford, a Chinese restaurant that serves authentic Sichuan food alongside the staples that are popular in New England. Alas, they were closed on Tuesdays! However, I noticed that the neighboring New Hampshire Donut Company was nearby, and they were open. They have quite limited hours so I've never seen the inside of the store, so I popped in and talked to the owners for recommendations. They suggested the "Spiced Chai Cheesecake" cronut and a "Bostom Cream". They are awaiting tasting.

Unexpected Good Chinese Food

Still, I wanted some Chinese food as I haven't had any authentic dishes in quite a long time, so I figured I would try another restaurant in the area. I made my way to what I thought was "Zhong's Restaurant", but they seem to have moved to a new location and I ended up at House of Noodles & Sushi in the old location. I didn't realize it was a different restaurant until I got home, but I was delighted to find that they were not only serving some Dim Sum options all day, but also Xi'an food! That's really uncommon to find up here in New Hampshire, particularly in a suburb like Merrimack. I ordered twice-cooked pork, a hot and sour soup, peapod leaves with garlic, and some turnip cakes. They were all generous portions (though pricey as all things are these days) and not overly salted compared to other restaurants in this part of New England. Also, not a lot of "filler vegetables and brown sauce" that is typical in a Chinese-American restaurant; my twice-cooked pork had leeks, shallots, and proper fermented broad bean sauce. This restaurant is quite the find! I need to round up some Asian food friends and properly tour their menu.

⊕ show captionNew Hampshire has this series of I Voted stickers featuring children's submissions. Yeah!

Paws up and Vote!

After eating at home, I then went to my local polling place to vote in the local midterm elections. Largely they were new Aldermen candidates with other local city government officials running, but it was good to participate. I even ran into a neighbor from my neighborhood's Landscaping Committee there who was manning the electorate ballot table! And I saw a cool license plate that said PAWS UP on it, which made me happy. I raised a fist in solidarity, because we were all there to vote!

Sleepies Strike

I had brought my laptop with me, planning to go to Starbucks to get some work done for today's BUILDING CHALLENGE, but I was drowsy and headachy, so I went home and promptly passed out. Waking up, I was feeling still pretty tired, and by the time 8:00PM rolled around I decided I should take a personal day. So here we are. This is just a regular blog post, so it doesn't count toward the Building Challenge. I'll treat it like a "Snow Day" when you're a kid: you don't have to go to school, but the last day of school gets pushed out too.

So that's it for today!

BUILD CHALLENGE COMMENTARY

Tomorrow I'll likely get back to work on the Word Counting Calendar, as this is one of the products that I could immediately adapt for digital sales.

Tonight, I need to hydrate and get some rest.