Between Meetings & Meals — Episode 011
The same curiosity that starts a conversation might be the same thing that shapes what comes next
The Pour
We opened a bottle called Drama on Friday night.
It was one of those easy picks. The label had a 90-point rating on it, and it just felt like a good, no-pressure wine to open after a long week.
We got home, poured a glass, and just sat for a bit.
It ended up being better than expected. Nothing complicated about it, just smooth, balanced, and easy to keep going back to. The kind of bottle where you’re not analyzing anything, you’re just enjoying it.
By the end of the night, we were already saying we should probably go grab a couple more bottles to keep around.
It did exactly what we needed it to do.
The Table
We tried a new spot this weekend called Tony’s Kitchen.
It’s in an older part of town, tucked into a strip center you wouldn’t really notice unless you were looking for it. I had seen a few things about it and figured we’d give it a shot.
Walking in, it felt different right away.
It’s small. Really small. Maybe four tables total, with booths built into the corners to make the most of the space. At most, you’ve probably got 12 to 15 people in there at one time.
But it didn’t feel like it was missing anything. It felt intentional.
We sat down, ordered an appetizer, and started looking over the menu. There was a guy moving around who didn’t seem like he was part of the normal staff. No uniform, just kind of present.
I noticed he had a golf cap on from the country club, and since it was Masters weekend, I asked him if he had been watching.
That was it.
We got into a conversation about golf, and pretty quickly realized we were talking to Tony.
From there, it just kept going.
We talked about UT, A&M, his son being at A&M, my son and his golf journey, the Masters, just life in general. It didn’t feel like small talk, it felt like one of those conversations where you’re just in it and not really thinking about time.
By the end of it, we had traded numbers and talked about staying in touch.
Anisa joked on the way out that I somehow make friends everywhere.
But it didn’t feel like that.
It felt more like we were just open to the moment, and something came out of it.
The Edge
I’ve been noticing something as I’ve spent more time working with AI.
Not all of it works the same.
At first, I thought it was just about learning one tool really well. Get good at it, figure it out, and then maybe move on to the next.
But that hasn’t really been the case.
What I’m starting to realize is that each system has its own strengths, and you kind of learn that by just using them. There’s no real guide for it. You just spend time with it and start to feel out what works best where.
Lately, I’ve been spending more time in Claude, within the Anthropic system. Claude Chat, Claude Code, Claude Co-work… just getting more familiar with how it thinks and how it responds.
At the same time, I’ve been using Gemini more, mainly because of how it connects to everything else I already use.
Since most of my work lives inside Google—Gmail, Drive, Calendar—I started to notice little things.
I’ll see an event or a flyer and just open Gemini and ask it to add it to my calendar.
Or I’ll be writing an email and ask it to help me pull context together.
Recently, I was drafting something to my attorney about a project, and I needed to reference a board meeting. I asked Gemini to help me build it out.
It pulled in the board agenda, the meeting minutes, and even referenced a previous email I had already sent.
And when I looked at it, everything was cited and linked back to my Google Drive.
That part caught me off guard.
Not because it worked, but because I didn’t realize it could work like that.
And I probably wouldn’t have found that if I had stayed inside one tool.
That’s been the shift for me.
It’s less about picking the “right” AI… and more about staying open to figuring out how each one fits into what you’re trying to do.
The Lesson
I think this ties back to something simple.
Curiosity.
The same way a conversation started with one question… a lot of this starts the same way.
You try something.
You ask a question.
You see what happens.
Most of the time, we move too fast to do that. We stick to what we know, what’s comfortable, what already works.
But when you slow down just enough to explore a little, things tend to open up.
That showed up at dinner this week.
And it showed up again while I was working.
Different settings, same idea.
You don’t always know where something is going to lead… but you usually have to give it a chance first.
If this resonated, the newsletter is where it continues — one honest email at a time.