The two-hour rabbit hole we did not plan

Sarah texted at two saying she wanted to show me something on her new phone — one of those folding ones everyone kept saying was finally worth it this cycle. I said sure, come over. I had approximately zero plans for the afternoon and I’d just gotten off a shift that had wrung me out completely. The archive stuff could wait. The heritage binders were already giving me that look from the kitchen table and I chose to ignore them.

The two-hour rabbit hole we did not plan

She arrived, sat down, handed me the phone. And then something happened with the camera system — some AI processing thing that apparently does something wild with low-light portraits — and forty-five minutes disappeared. Then she found a playlist someone had built specifically for late-night studying and we had to listen to at least part of it. Then I remembered I’d been meaning to show her this app Margaret mentioned for cataloging archive photos and suddenly it was four-thirty and neither of us had moved or gotten a glass of water.

she said ‘just look at this one feature.’ she was lying.

Jake came home at some point, took one look at us, apparently took a photo, and went to make himself a sandwich without disturbing the ecosystem. Smart man. Sarah and I eventually peeled ourselves off the couch around five, both slightly dehydrated and a little ashamed, but honestly — sometimes an afternoon of doing absolutely nothing productive with someone you actually like is exactly what tired looks like when it’s going right.