Is this the end?

    The new versions of Firefox and Thunderbird led to new versions of Adobe Reader and Java. (Each of the latter two also gave me the opportunity to download in addition software I didn't want, and each thoughtfully checked the Yes box for me as well. I unchecked each, thinking again how nice a life without Java and Adobe Reader would be.) The downloads were lengthy (this is still dialup) but manageable. Then I decided to restart, since that's usually a good idea after adding big new software.
    A week later, here I am again. When Windows makes you restart, at least it gives you a Blue Screen of Suspended Animation saying something like "Updating... don't turn off your computer" but all I got was a black screen and no explanation. Annoyed, I turned the computer off many times, which no doubt didn't help. But eventually everything booted up. 'Course, I probably didn't reboot after the Firefox and Thunderbird updates, so it was 4 rather than 2 new programs that Windows had to make way for. But still. Seems like somebody could have thrown in a little box telling me not to panic, that Windows is updating files. Don't you think?
    Dreams last night were gothically peculiar, including being in somebody else's gigantic house for a change, but all I remember apart from that was that for my birthday (which it isn't) my friend Walt gave me pictures of my friend Robert in imaginary places from other dreams. I thought that was a nice bit of thorough work for my subconscious mind, or anyway I did when I woke up.

Rice cakes

    The Jack Sprat situation has improved by adding rice cakes to nearly every meal. This makes no sense, as rice cakes are practically nothing but air, but I'm not complaining. I guess it takes my digestive system just long enough to figure out that hey, there's no food here such that my bowels or liver or bile ducts or whatever the hell otherwise gets irritated to chill out instead.
    Still, I plan to scale back my fat intake a bit, and I may still go vegetarian. I'll probably stop eating my (unusually healthy, but still) sweet Italian style chicken sausage. (Al Fresco brand, available at Publix. Really excellent, assuming you aren't having trouble with fat intake, which isn't to say that it's particularly fatty. Just easier to cut out than EV olive oil.)
    But the takeaway is that I'm feeling a lot better, if maybe a trifle grumpy. A LOT of people seem to feel that way when they add rice cakes to their diet. All that air I guess; normal brown rice tends to make me happy. Another one for the GoFigureAThon.
    Dreams last night suggested that I might be feeling a little frustrated. I absolutely had to get to NYC immediately, but I kept forgetting to call the airlines to see if I could get a flight. It was for a week-long conference. I know what you're thinking: I didn't know that elderly derelicts HAD week-long conferences in New York City. Well there you are.

Ma Belle Amie

    The other day, something reminded me of the old song "Ma Belle Amie." More on that something later; it's fairly mortifying, too. But I couldn't remember the name of the song, nor as it turned out anything else. I always thought it was by the same guy who did "Montego Bay." More embarrassing still, I thought that that was Bobby "Blue" Bland. (Hey, I was close! It was Bobby Bloom.)
    "Ma Belle Amie" proves to be by a Dutch combo called The Tee Set. The something that set me off was a request on Facebook for a song containing a specific lyric ("when the one that left us here/ returns for us at last," I think). That proved to be "Get Together" by The Youngbloods, but reminded me of what I thought was a line from "Ma Belle Amie," "for the man on the hill waits there." Google searches featuring that line were supremely unsuccessful and I'd already found out that Bobby Bloom had been a one-hit wonder, which ruled him out.
    Turns out that the line is "for the man after him waits here." The song is a whine about how his belle amie left him for another man, but he's confident that she'll come back to him. Which makes it a lot less poetic than I had thought, but at least it makes sense. But I still like it better my way.:)

That guy

    OK, I'm going to stop starting these with "OK." (Dagnabbit!) Today, I was That Guy. I was entering an intersection, perfectly legal, the light was green and I wasn't shooting off any firearms (much) or anything, when a car on the street I was merging into ran the red light and barreled right through where, but for a second or two, my car would have been. And I pulled up behind him or her and just stuck my horn. I didn't like being That Guy, but I didn't like being almost killed either.
    I hope (not very optimistically, I'll grant) that it will make the moron in question think a little more the next time the situation comes up. Or maybe get that red-green color blindness checked out, or possibly that up-down direction blindness. (Even if you're colorblind, you can tell the red light's on top and the green one is on the bottom.) Once we had merged onto still another street, the moron in question slowed to a crawl and stayed that way even after I had gone around and driven away. She or he may have thought I was some kind of dangerous psychopath but the worst he or she got out of it was the mouthing of "moron" as I went by. Maybe it was just a fabulously interesting cell phone conversation. I didn't see a cell phone, but neither was I looking that close. I mostly pay attention to the road. That's where I stay This Guy.

Jack Sprat

    OK, so I'm STILL an idiot. So! While adding two cans of coconut milk to Lowcountry shrimp boil results in an undoubtedly delightful dish, that there is a lot of fat. I've been feeling awful lately at the start of the week, but then better as the week wore on. Eventually, I worked out that this correlated pretty strongly with the start of putting coconut milk in my shrimp boil. It's just too much fat for my body to digest.
    However, it's a GREAT dish, assuming you only have one smallish bowl, and a lot of salad or other vegetables to go with. Sort of a Thai shrimp bisque; too rich to live on, but wonderful in small quantities. I could still open a restaurant on this; I just can't eat it three days running. I'm trying again today with one can (instead of two) of light (instead of regular) coconut milk. Won't be as good, probably, but ought to be a lot more digestible.
    I wonder if there's an actual condition (besides a rare one which really is called something like Jack Sprat Syndrome) where you have a particular difficulty digesting fats. Because my mom, though anything but thin, had the same thing: eat anything greasy, and run straight to the bathroom. I appreciate that we have miles (OK, feet, but the other way was more impressive) of intestines and the stuff I eat now isn't flushing out of my body ten minutes later. But it seems like the guts want to clear the decks to make ready for the greasy stuff. Or something. I guess it's what they call irritable bowel, but this has always seemed to me to be more like a description than a diagnosis. I'll just cut back on the fats and oils and not worry about it too much.

Must be the radio

    OK, my brilliant stratagem of sleeping better by playing the radio at a level that is audible but not comprehensible fell through due to actually sort of wanting to hear the show. I was listening to the Art Bell rerun last night (which, in the usual Bain/Premiere Networks very, very poor taste was, on the night of Neil Armstrong's death, an interview with an idiot from Britain doubting the moon landings) and so the subsequent current day Coast to Coast was audible to sleeping me.
    Or must have been, because even I don't usually get the POLITICALLY crazy dreams. In this one, all our oil is running out in 2014. EXCEPT new vast reserves have been found in Somalia. So once we get all the Somalis out, we'll have oil for another ten years. Now I'll grant that I have some pretty crazy dreams, but that sounds more like a caller on Coast to Coast AM. (Also, in the dream it sounded like someone talking rather than anything I was coming up with.) I got up and without waiting to see if they were really talking about oil in Somalia switched off the radio and went back to sleep.
    Subsequent dreams were more tolerably odd. I seemed to be running a drive-in movie and was friendly with a guy who ran a hardware distributorship. (What's a hardware distributorship? Dunno; I'll have to go back to sleep and then maybe I can find out and explain it.) I was trying to figure out promotional tie-ins between drive-in movies and hardware. This is probably how I would handle such a situation in real life, actually. Even in my sleep, it seemed pretty funny, though.

Salma's movie

    All I can say is I continue to hope that crazy dreams mean you're sane. This time, I was called to the jail. The jail didn't look much like a jail but rather like a fairly airy office suite. There were two staffers, a man and a woman. The woman was the nice but honesty-impaired technician from Dad's dialysis facility. I was there, not due to any crime, but because Salma Hayak was casting a movie. She chose me, presumably for my astonishing charisma. (Hey, it's a dream!)
    She and the director gave me a ride home in a convertible. I was thinking of borrowing her shoes, but then noticed that I already had mine on. Home in this instance was a multi-story mansion. Somehow I could see the finished basement from the outside. (OK, they picked me for my charisma and my superpowers.) I was telling my dad, my mom and my brother William about being in the movie, distracted a lot by the eighty or so people milling around.
    Then I was in a skyscraper, trying to get to the basement. Apparently. I was now a subway's ride away from Hollywood, and the subway was in the basement. I was also trying to reach the director by cell phone, but even in my sleep I worked out that that isn't too workable inside a skyscraper. There were many attractive women coming from offices and I considered that they ought to just shoot the movie here.
    Tragically, I never found the basement. Presumably, I'm still there.

Itchy palms

    The other day I went for a walk on the boardwalk at Congaree National Park, aka Congaree Swamp. We've been in a drought for about 20 years, so chances of seeing the wetland forest (sounds so much nicer than swamp, doesn't it?) inundated have been few. Recent rains though meant that the park should be picturesquely wet, so I brought my camera. Somehow, though, there just wasn't enough water. It was pretty, but not photogenic.
    Bu-ut... I saw a squirrel run under the low boardwalk. But it wasn't a squirrel; it was a bunny! And it came out. And started munching on river cane leaves. (Hereabouts, we tend to call that bamboo. I speculate that the bunny might be trying to evolve into a panda. Maybe it heard that "Kung Fu Panda" did better box office than "Space Jam.") So I stopped to take pictures. And the mosquitoes caught me. I murdered them in cold blood, but unfortunately, it was my blood. They hit me twice on the left palm. So now I have itchy palms for real. Am thinking of hitting up strangers for money just on general principle.
    Dreams last night were as peculiar as ever. The only one I remember though was pretty straightforward. I was driving my (much younger and healthier than in real life) dad around and he was asking me about my career plans. I told him I wanted to run a hotel. That isn't so far from real life; I want to run a b&b. Coincidentally (or not) at Congaree Swamp. Isn't life symmetrical?

And we're back

    One thing that drives me crazy in advertising is the fake newsman or the fake DJ saying "And we're back" to try to fool idiots into thinking that this isn't really an ad. In magazines, ads that are set up to look like legitimate news stories have to be bracketed with the word "Advertisement." I appreciate that the continued corporatization of this country and concomitant deregulation has proceeded pretty far. However, obvious and bald-faced false advertising needs to be reined in. Think of the idiots!
    Dreams last night were pleasantly weird. The young woman to whom in a more ideal world I would be married had quit her job to become a crime solver. I don't think she had any clear notion how to do that. Then there was some kind of weird business where I was standing by a river periodically swimming out to rescue articles of furniture floating by. Now THAT would be a job for me!

Recent

    Just noticed that in my post the other day about old songs, I referred to a brace of them all at least 40 years old as "recent." What I was meant was that they were recent, even current, at the time I was thinking of them as sounding at least 40 years old back then. Although I can certainly accept the alternate explanation, i.e., that I am really, really, really, really old.
    Amelia bopped me on the head this morning. So there goes the last female of any species to like me. Oh well; back to the kitty store with her!

ESP

    No, not THAT kind of ESP. Latest weird dialysis facility phenomenon is that the TV in the waiting area is switched to Spanish even though there are no Spanish-speaking patients in the facility that I have encountered. The other day, it was switched to Spanish but there was no Spanish feed, so you would get the incidental music and the commercials but whenever anybody talked, you would just see their lips move. As this was one of those A&E shows about real people and their real work, I found it a great improvement. Apparently, somebody hit the ESP button on the remote without realizing it, and now they don't realize that they could fix the situation by hitting the ESP button again. Maybe if they read my mind...
    Dreams last night were peculiar to a new and infinite degree. William Devane was starring in a remake of "All In The Family." (This alone is a great idea.) As Archie, he was talking to an acquaintance, trying to find a prejudice that would let him justify in his mind disliking the man. The acquaintance knew this and was messing with Archie, identifying himself with various ethnic names, then saying that each wasn't really his name. I can't even blame the radio; due to a short it had fizzled out. Weird, huh?

Nonplussed

    How do you blog a puzzled face? I saw a van with a corporate name and a slogan: Johnson Controls: Ingenuity Welcome. Huh? Should I drop off my CV? (Yeah, I know we say "resume," but I don't think I can make a sharp accent with this thing.) I mean, I'd be glad to hear that they sell welcome ingenuity, but I'm not sure that I'm interested that they welcome ingenuity. Or perhaps welcome ingenuity is what Johnson controls. Maybe they heard enough jokes about controlling johnsons that they figured that if they just made their slogan bewildering enough, people might stop noticing how funny the company name is. You know what? They almost succeeded.

Can't you see

    I still can't figure out how to word it. There are songs, mainly from your childhood (or anyway from mine) that you can't believe in your heart of hearts were written by one person, or recently. Songs that you believe are traditional even when there's a writing credit on the label of the 45. (I count on the fact that there are no young people in my audience. But in case there are, a 45, otherwise called a single, was a single song played on a phonograph at 45 rpm. Sort of like the dinosaurs' answer to an mp3.)
    I guess the primo example of this is "Proud Mary," though Ike and Tina kind of ripped that one up enough to make it seem new and hip again almost immediately. My big one though is the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See." No part of me will ever believe that they wrote this; it just always was. Similar is "Goin' Down," by Don Nix. Today I heard "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night, which might also qualify. And although by now they ARE traditional and certainly aren't recent, Johnny Mercer and Stephen Foster numbers don't seem like they were written by anybody either. But then, "Ol' Man River" is from "Showboat."
    Dreams last night were infinitely weird and somehow involved cannibalism. I think it was more mentioned as happening rather than in any way happening to me. This will teach me not to play "Coast to Coast AM" overnight.

Nothing sadder than a dead dog

    I don't walk around in my neighborhood often this time of year because there isn't much shade. But a week or so back I took a walk here due to being pressed for time I think. Less than a block from my door I was adopted by a little brown dog who walked with me all the way to Olympia Avenue. She didn't have a collar so she might have been a stray or she may have just lost it. Either way, she was a very friendly dog and I wanted to persuade her not to cross Olympia Avenue, which is a very busy street and not a good place for dogs.
    She did anyway. On the other side, there was a lady with several brown dogs running loose, seemingly healthy and happy. I told her that this little dog had tried to adopt me; the little brown dog in turn tried to adopt her, or rather her brown dogs. I left them to it, and never found out if she kept the dog, or if the dog went home, or what.
    This morning, beside Olympia Avenue was a dead brown dog. I would guess it was hit by a car; at least they had the decency to get it out of the road. It looked to be too big to be my little friend. Since it was near her street, I'm afraid it was one of the brown dogs belonging to the nice lady. It was gone by the end of the morning, so somebody who loved it brought it home. I sure hope that little brown dog got home all right.

Junket

    Paul wanted to go up to Greenville to see what was up at their art museum. I'm easy to get along with, so we went. We got there about lunchtime and so walked around on Main St. trying to find something good. At length we settled on Handi, an Indian place with a lunch buffet. It was really great! We were very well pleased. The ginger chicken had no ginger that I could perceive, but it was nevertheless excellent.
    We felt the same way about the museum. The (Andrew) Wyeths gave the impression that there are perhaps too many Wyeths, but everything else was outstanding. There was a very small exhibit of two Cape Cod Colorists, Dodge MacKnight and E. Ambrose Webster which impressed mightily. There was an astounding exhibit by a man named Winfred Rembert working in dyed and tooled leather. And there was a small exhibit of portraits of Greenville including one in batik that I still think is impossible. Oh and there were pictures by Stephen Scott Young, including the preliminary studies with his notes, a very interesting glimpse into the process. On the whole, some very nice offerings and even a neat little museum store.
    We then had more fun than you would think getting lost in rush hour, which was strangely less stressful than non-rush-hour Greenville traffic. We dawdled at Whole Foods waiting for rush hour to pass and I discovered something conspicuously wonderful: Jennies chocolate macaroons. They may lead to the formation of a new world religion.
    Dreams last night were odd in that they were terribly non-terrible nightmares. Let's see, my carpet was inexplicably covered in little colored balls of fluff which were very difficult to remove. And I think the kitty was acting up in some more or less realistic way. Tough life I have!:)

Collar stays

    Another entry in the already voluminous "Boy I'm an idiot" file (now housed in the Grand Canyon, as the Pentagon proved to small): About a year ago I bought three very nice shirts from Kohl's, each with collar stays, since they didn't have anything all-cotton and button-down in my size. I like the shirts, but hate the stays. In all this year of laundering the damned things roughly weekly, I never noticed that one of the shirts has smaller stays (and presumably smaller collars) than the other two. I finally noticed yesterday and with today's laundry found the culprit. I also found as if on schedule that the collars are fraying, so it's time to send them off to the thrift store and get some new shirts. Button-down or bust, this time.
    Dad and Margaret continue feeling better. After his haircut yesterday, they went out to their favorite seafood fast food joint. So again yay!

Apparently my subconscious doesn't much like Bi-Lo

    I had this very odd dream last night where I visited a very tiny Bi-Lo (it's a supermarket chain in these parts, but in real life there aren't any tiny ones) and minutes later went back and it was stripped to the walls, with one or two employees cleaning up and a sign pointing shoppers to the nearest location. I was familiar with the nearest location, though it was imaginary, as it was in a sketchy (though also imaginary) neighborhood. All this may have something to do with my honest bewilderment in real life with two area McDonald's uh, I think they may call them "stores" now, which is an improvement over "restaurants" being knocked down to be rebuilt in exactly the same place for no known reason. Well, two that I know of.
    In the dream, there was also some business about my companion, probably my friend Robert, sitting at some kind of picnic table situation unsurprised that he couldn't get any lunch from Bi-Lo but apparently waiting for it to drop from heaven instead. Which would also be an improvement. (My conscious mind doesn't much like Bi-Lo either.)
    Taking the dang hippie to get his haircut later. He and Margaret were both feeling much better yesterday. Yay! Hopefully this is the start of a trend.

Dang hippie

    Margaret, unfortunately, is still having trouble with shingles. Thus, she still isn't getting out much. She thinks Dad needs a haircut, and asks that I be sure to take him for one this week. I'm not sure that he's all that hyped up about it. Anyway, he hasn't asked. For my part I can't see that his hair looks long at all; he just looks good, as ever. But if he wants to go, I'll definitely take him. Dang hippie!
    They were able to get out last Friday evening for an alumni dinner. (Whose alumni was not specified.) They had a good time in spite of getting caught in the rain. So there's that.

Fan

    It only took 3 1/2 years (how many times am I going to say that?) but I finally figured out that if I turn off the ceiling fan over my bed before I go to sleep, I don't wake up parched and needing to emulate a racehorse at 4 in the morning. Also most of the nightmares go away, since they seem designed to get me to wake up so I can go do the racehorse thing. I also tried reversing the ceiling fan, and that's actually more comfortable (even though you're not really supposed to do it until the winter) but still desiccating. Obviously, what I really need is a canopy bed or mosquito netting. I'm sure these would go over great with the Monkey.
    A day late, I realized what I should have said to the young woman with the great puppy: "Best puppy ever!" Simple, straightforward and to the point as well as accurate; EVERY dog is the best dog ever.

Nothing but trouble

    I suck at pickup lines, not least because I'm never trying to pick anyone up. But I could probably improve my social gambits anyway. Yesterday on the Cayce Riverwalk, there was an extremely attractive young woman with an infinitely cute puppy. I just said, "Nothing but trouble!" in what was supposed to be an ironical, isn't that cute sort of voice, but I think she took me seriously. I guess a better idea is to cut straight to "So cute!" and not make other people interpret whether I'm being sarcastic, sincere, nice or mean. They don't know intuitively that every day is Opposite Day at my house. Sweet dog anyway.
    Boy I had wild, wacky, kookoo-nuts dreams last night. You are fortunate that I don't remember any of them, but I woke both rested and energized at 6 a.m. Definitely an advertisement for kookoo-nuts dreaming.

Everybody blogs about the weather

    but no one ever does anything about it. Here, the rains have been unrelenting for, uh, days now. It's not like we're having dangerous floods or anything. (Other than the flash variety, which are not to be sneezed at, but neither are they Johnstown.) It isn't the rains per se, it's just that it's irritating that we get them when the rest of the country is in an historic drought. If this keeps up, we might have to plant actual crops. (This state mainly grows sod for golf courses these days, and pine trees for paper.)
    Mind you, we probably can't take over for the corn-growing regions. I'm pretty sure we get too much rain for corn. We're actually coming out of a very long drought ourselves; these rains are just a return to what used to be normal. Anyway, so much for that Atacama Desert post from earlier this year. I'm going to end this rain right now; I'm going out to get an umbrella!

Popcorn

    Of course it's 2012, so this isn't going to be useful to a lot of people. But say you're roughing it in a cabin with no microwave. (This, clearly, is a pretty loose definition of "roughing it.") Or, ya know, the microwave breaks. Work with me on this!
    Point is, having given up soy and dairy, my microwave popcorn options are few. Also I don't have a microwave. So I take care of my tragic popcorn addiction by popping corn on the stove like it's the '60s again. It never worked out all that well since I didn't know what I was doing. Then Food Lion, of all places, helped out. On their popping corn bag were more and better directions than I had seen before, including the information that you have to let the steam out or you won't be happy.
    I wanted to be happy so I started popping the corn with the lid slightly ajar, and I got significantly better popcorn. I also got a very messy kitchen, which obviated the happiness from better popcorn, and caused me to quit popping corn. THEN I remembered that I have a splatter screen that I never use. So I tried that. The bad news is that while it prevents the flying grease from landing on and burning me, it doesn't stop the grease flying. So the kitchen is at least as messy as before. But the popcorn is freaking unbelievable. Just absolutely perfect. So there's that.
    Conclusion: if you worry about the additives in microwave popcorn and don't mind cleaning up a greasy kitchen (and are too cheap to get a popcorn popper:)), popping corn on the stove using a splatter screen works really great. Next: I try to make cocoa popcorn again and make a world-class mess!
    Update: I got my electric bill. John is receiving his mail again. That whole "Please Mr. Postman" thing finally worked. Yay!

Babies at dialysis

    There were two babies visiting the dialysis facility this morning, making the day much more cheerful. One was the new granddaughter of the office manager. She appeared to be something less than six months old (the baby, not the office manager). The other one must have been the granddaughter of a patient and was four months old. Both were infinitely cute. It reinforced my idea that bringing in remembrances of life of any kind in a place centered on illness and (eventually) death is wonderful for morale. They haven't been showing A&E's wall-to-wall police procedurals lately, which I've mentioned before is also probably good for morale (not showing them, that is).
    The dialysis patient who wears the pixie shoes (patent leather shoes four inches longer than his feet, really fashionable if he were a woman and this were 1995 or so) offered to hold the office manager's grandbaby. She was having none of it. Actually, she didn't let anyone else hold her; I think she wanted to maximize her visiting time.

O.M.G!

    I use coconut milk in my pizza-free pizza (or if you prefer, gluten-free casein-free soy-free pizza), but there is always a great deal left over. As I have mentioned in the past, I will put some in the assorted stews I eat the rest of the time, and that always goes pretty well. However, the other day I was making Lowcountry shrimp boil and thought, why not put in coconut milk? I chickened out, and somehow managed to forget about with the first day's batch of leftovers. However, today I put the leftover coconut milk container on the leftover shrimp boil container so I couldn't possibly forget. Wow! Zowie! OMG! That there was a good move. Yowza! The best!
    Now, I don't know how it would work out cooking the stuff. I suspect that you add the coconut milk at the end after the shrimp, but maybe I'm just romancing. Or maybe I can add it a little before the shrimp so the vegetables will be a little more coconut-milk-infused. Dunno; all I know is I wanna have a party and serve this stuff!

Forward

    Phoning the postal service to try to get my mail service reestablished proved impossible. (As I've mentioned before, I put in a forwarding order for my dad and my mail went with him. Or just went away. Presumably, most of my bills and stuff aren't forwardable.) There's no way to talk to an actual human. But I FINALLY caught the mailman on his daily rounds. He explained that since the piece of paper inside the mailbox says Dantzler COA, that means that all Dantzler mail gets forwarded. He's going to change it to say "Malcolm Dantzler COA, John Dantzler stays," which hopefully will fix the problem. Yay!
    I have finally mastered turning the overnight radio down to the point where it's a reassuring voice in the background, but not one that's loud enough to awaken or otherwise bother me. I do recall a dream where some beeping was going on, presumably due to something on the radio. But it didn't wake me.

Trifles

    It took me all these 40 years to figure out that "Mother and Child Reunion by Paul Simon is supposed to be a reggae song. Of course, this may reflect that he didn't do all that sharp a job making a reggae song, or that I'm an idiot. Bets are as usual on the latter.
    Last Monday, Greg at Palmetto Seafood (where I buy shrimp for shrimp boil practically every Monday) asked if it was hot enough for me. And you know, I had just been reflecting on that, because it was unbelievably hot and humid that day. So for the first time in my life, I just went ahead and answered yes. The universe has yet to crumble as far as I can tell, though I guess that since it's a largish universe it might take a while.
    Last night, my dreaming went on a rare and brief junket outside. I had for hours been in one of those gigantic buildings that I always dream about and when I went outside I found that I had parked in a towaway zone and my car had been towed away. Presumably I just shrugged and went back in because that's all I dreamed about that and the rest of the dream was also in the gigantic building or another one. This one was strange because part of it was realistic and part of it was a video game. It was a very non-violent video game at least. I had a lot of allies helping me search the building, and I got to see what areas they had searched. Strangely, it would be the kind of video game I would enjoy, but I doubt anyone else much would.
    What?! I TOLD you they were trifles!:)

Bleach

    So if you're watching the news closely, you may have seen that some imbecile very near here, suspended from the dialysis facility where he had been working, poured bleach into the machines. This was one of the facilities owned by the company that owns the facility where my dad goes, but not the one he uses. Many people would have been killed, but fortunately the company and the facility's manager make many checks and the bleach was caught before it got near any patient's bloodstream. The imbecile is under arrest and asking the judge to release him because he is the single parent of a five-year-old. And I think the judge and every single other person in the area is saying, "Gee, fella, you might have thought about that BEFORE you tried to kill dozens of people."
    It was much the topic of discussion among the folks in the waiting area yesterday. The ambulance and transportation drivers all knew the guy. Said he seemed weird, but not the type for attempting mass murder. Gives you pause.
    Last night in dreamland, my subconscious came through big time. There is a matter that I have been very, very worried about lately. My brain resolved it with a very happy ending. I doubt that anything like that happens in real life, but I was very grateful for the rest.

Yes I remember

    The rage on Facebook lately is nostalgia. Assorted radio stations and other outfits post pictures of old-timey items, and everybody. you. know. hits Like on each and every one of them. For the record, I remember 8-tracks, dimmer switches on the floorboard, Captain Kangaroo, Hazel, Silly Putty, the Little Rascals, mucilage, Mercurochrome, GAF View-master, S&H Green Stamps and on and on and on.
    I also remember stagflation, oil embargoes, wage and price controls, assassinations, and most pointedly, the Nostalgia Craze. My good old days were mostly taken up with people reminiscing about their good old days, and I didn't enjoy it that much the first time. We don't need another nostalgia craze. If you can't find things that you enjoy in the present time, look harder. If you think the good old days were unmixedly good, remember harder.

The Incredible String Cat

    I guess it's "You are what you eat," not "You are what you want to eat," so Amelia won't really turn into the Incredible String Cat. But she really wants to eat that string. Maybe it's being kept inside for all these years. Her hunting instincts haven't atrophied; instead they've tightened into a laser focus. (Considering how cats feel about laser pointers, that might be an especially good term.)
    I worry about it because string isn't normally what you would think of as edible. I looked it up, trying to find out where I can get twine for cooking, since it's used in many food applications. Most sources suggested that you just go get all cotton twine from the hardware store, which is what we were playing with anyway. However, it's from China. A nation that exports children's toys with lead paint on them is probably not to be trusted on something like string. So I try to keep it from her mouth whenever possible. But it makes her so happy to catch the string sometimes. And she deserves to be happy. I don't think it will knock down her test scores much.

The cucumber matter reconsidered ad nauseam (unfortunately, literally)

    Ooh! Ow! The English cucumber REALLY didn't work out. I guess they can fairly call it burpless, since I burped barely at all. But I had a really sour stomach (or digestive region) yesterday, and I'm looking to have one again today. It seems like being seedless doesn't help all that much. The seedy section is bitter and unpleasant whether there are seeds there or not.
    Of course, I can cut the center out, just like I did with the seeds of regular cucumbers. It's a pain in the butt, but at least with a seedless cucumber I won't be able to let some seeds slip in accidentally. Also one English cucumber is probably cheaper than four small or two large regular cucumbers. So maybe I'll stick with them anyway. At least they don't seem to rot. So far. ('Tis a bit burpy, though.)

Drafty

    I'm the host for Columbia Drinking Liberally (now Cayce Drinking Liberally). As such, I write the weekly email, in which I am as silly as a person can be and also sometimes, sheerly by accident, somewhat informative. I send it out Monday afternoon for the Tuesday evening meeting, but I draft it anywhere between Friday and Sunday. And the weird thing is that every time, when I complete the draft, it's already sent in my mind. I always feel like everybody knows what I said, even though nobody but me has read it yet.
    Apparently, my brain thinks that once the words are set to paper or to software, they have been delivered, dammit. I'm not sure how this would apply to fiction. I think I just think of myself as my only audience in that case, so I don't have this problem. But who knows? I'll just have to write me some fiction and find out.