Chris Berman

    Chris Berman was on the Dan Patrick radio show this morning. It was really rather moving, even though they never got weepy weepy huggy huggy in any way. For those who don't know, Dan was on ESPN, mainly doing "SportsCenter," for 18 years. Chris Berman was the big dog on that network, before, during, since, and still. Since Dan left, ESPN has consistently refused to allow any of their talent on his show, as if that would somehow sink him. Anyway, it was neat to hear them together, and their reminiscences of the good old days were both interesting and funny.
    My best memory of Berman was when Cal Ripken, Jr. broke Gehrig's consecutive games played record and Berman S.T.F.U. I think this was Berman's Hall of Fame moment as well as Ripken's.
    The moving moment in the Patrick/Berman interview came when Dan asked what it would be like for Chris when he finally retires. Once he conveyed that he meant "for you" rather than "for ESPN," Dan made like Berman and STFU. Berman said that he had always felt lucky to be making a living doing what he does, and he was sure he would still feel the same way at the end. Maybe you had to be there, but it was very cool.

The frog is boiling

I think the frog's already boiling
but hasn't even noticed
Did you see who was on Celebrity Frog Diving last night?
Amazing!
Hey, who won Dancing With the Frogs?
I don't know either.
Could you believe Keeping Up With The Kardphibians?
Wow! That little tadpole is sure coming soon!
Is it hot in here or is it just me?

Thousand words exercises

    Well yeah, I know; a picture is worth a thousand words. So I could just post a couple of photos and have done with it, couldn't I? A writer's answer is, "That depends on the words, doesn't it?" Some writers are painterly; some camera-eye sharp. I'm largely blind and highly astigmatic, and it shows. So I need practice. Also, sometimes I'm flat bewildered.
    For instance, I took Paul around the other day to look at a Frink St. (Cayce) phenomenon, just to make sure it wasn't just my WTFometer going on the blink. There's a building on Frink St. that once was the Frink St. Pub. Lately, for some reason, there's been a lot of metalworking going on there. Even more lately, for some other reason the building got a new roof and a yellow paint job, though the latter (for still another reason) only on the facade. What they have now is a jeep. With red ribbons tied to the hood. Under the framework of an awning, but without any awning. Pulling a trailer. With three or four Christmas trees on it. In late January. Now either this is an art installation with a very limited audience or somebody is really lollygagging about throwing out his Christmas trees. (And on finishing his awning.) The go-figure index here is fairly high.
    Less weird, but a little odd: Aldi has a single-serve blender for sale for $20. I already have a single-serve blender. The thing with it is that the glass part (which Google tells me is called a "jar") is all one piece, meaning that the blades are in the bottom and can't be removed. This means that cleaning it is painful and thus never exactly happens. So it's disgusting-looking is what I'm saying. Aldi's also has the jar in one piece, but if I'm inferring correctly from the picture on the box, the blades and the jar are completely separate. You put the stuff you want to blend in the jar, then screw on (presumably) the motorized part and flip the whole thing. This seems somehow weird to me. Especially as you'd have to flip it again and unscrew to drink your smoothie. Not really WTFometer territory, but does anybody think this sounds smart? Dumb? Brilliant? Do I at least make myself clear? Don't worry; I'll work my way up to painterly.

Note to oldies stations

    The Steve Miller Band sucked in the '70s. Their records have not improved in the intervening decades. There were almost certainly other songs released in 1971 besides "Do You Know What I Mean?" by Lee Michaels. The band War recorded many other songs besides "Low Rider"; great as it is, it might be nice to hear some of them sometimes. Fond as I am of the band Boston, I'm not sure stations need to play them more often than we heard them on the radio when they were new. "Every Breath You Take" is still creepy, and not in a good way. "Sultans of Swing" and "Hotel California" have been played enough, forever.
    I've got a million of these, and will add them all on edit as I think of them or as oldies/ classic rock stations get on my nerves. Only tangentially related, but I finally looked up the lyrics to the refrain of "Domino" by Van Morrison. "Roll me over Romeo/ There you go." Really? No wonder I couldn't figure it out! (I still prefer "Yody yody yody yo. There you go.")
    Edit: Also, Linda Ronstadt did other songs besides "You're No Good." Ditto Steve Winwood and "Roll With It." Ditto Sly and the Family Stone and "Everyday People."

Hogwarts U.

    I had this epic dream last night. As so often, I was back in college, but it was a more confusing college even than usual. Sometimes it was Penn, sometimes it was Harvard and sometimes it was Hogwarts. However, the dining hall was somewhat down-market from all three. I picked up a bowl at the start of the cafeteria line and it was still full of soapy water. So no house elves here.
    The first Hogwarts aspect came when a bunch of young women emerged from a door and I wondered where their house's common room was. The Harvard aspect came when I was outside and surroundings looked more like Harvard Yard than College Yard at Penn. Then there was a long, long walk home in the dark. Apparently Penn is just the other side of town from my dad's house in dreamland. Still a long walk, though. I had the iPad and kept trying to slide the virtual lock, but couldn't stay in the light from each street light long enough.
    The second Hogwarts aspect was when it occurred to me that being a student of magic I ought to be able to break into all these houses I was passing using magic. I didn't try, though. Finally I got to my Dad's house. Ernie "Bubbles" Whitman, a '40s actor and radio personality who happened to be on the iPod at that time in awakeland, congratulated me on making it. I think he also made fun of me for not being able to figure out the iPad, but anybody would.

A place for everything

    This morning I couldn't find my kelp tablets. I thought, "Somebody stole my kelp tablets!" I mean, that makes perfect sense: ignore the two notebook computers and the assorted valuable and highly portable personal electronic devices and go STRAIGHT for the kelp tablets. OK, I knew that somebody stole my kelp tablets, and it was me, but this didn't help much. The limited number of places I might have left them did help though, and I quickly found them one shelf too high.
    The experience brought home to me that my efforts to get less autistic haven't been too successful. There is still a place for everything and everything in its place around here. The only reason that the soup cans aren't in alphabetical order, labels to the front is because there aren't any. On the other hand, it no longer seems like the end of the world if things are less than perfectly in their places. Except of course for the kelp tablets; that shit's important!

Gossip

    I don't like to think of myself as a gossip. The problem is that it's impossible for me not to tell a good story if I know one, and if it concerns somebody I know I have no brakes that automatically activate and say "Whoa! Not a good idea!" I caught myself doing it again yesterday. My excuse is that most of my social interactions are with a cat, and as she's fairly unlikely to repeat anything I say (intelligibly at least) my instincts for discretion have atrophied. I guess I should work on that.

Keanu cookies again

    OK, this time the keanu (that is, quinoa) cookies are really good. Possibly really, REALLY good. (Guinea pigs haven't turned up yet.) Also healthy. Shhh!
    Again, you begin by cooking your quinoa. As before, 1/4 C of quinoa and 1/2 C of water magically produce a cup of cooked quinoa. I use Ancient Harvest boxed quinoa because it's prewashed and follow package instructions. By and large, cooking 20 minutes with the burner set at 1 1/2 (once it had been brought to a boil) works pretty well. Then I sit the whole pot in a sink of cold water to cool it down.
    Start the "throw it all in a bowl" part by mixing 2T of EV olive oil with 4T of honey. I'm still getting good results by doing half a tablespoon of oil followed by one of honey, repeated four times. Unless you have a miraculous non-stick tablespoon, you might want to do the same. Crack, scramble and add a large egg. Mix in a quarter cup of almond milk. Mix in 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Mix in a small tub (1/2 C, or in any case 4 oz) natural or organic apple sauce. Mix in 1 tsp of Saigon cinnamon.
    About now is a good time to start preheating oven to 400 degrees.
    Add 1 C of brown rice flour. Add quinoa (hopefully one cup). Add small box (1.5 oz.) of seedless raisins. Chop 1 C of raw almonds (I use a food chopper) and add.
    Lay out parchment paper on your cookie sheet, pizza pan or whatever. Spoon out whatever looks cookie-sized to you. (Mine are about two inches around.) Bake for ten minutes. I turn off the oven, flip the cookies and put them back in for five minutes to firm them up. Makes a damn lot. (Two dozen, say. Hard to say, as they're so great I ate a half dozen or so before they went back in the oven.)

Further non-nightmares

    I think I've mentioned that I am the host of the local chapter of Drinking Liberally. At the moment we are on a tour of the bars and restaurants of the South Carolina Midlands in hopes of finding a congenial permanent home. At last week's meeting, a new member suggested a bar called Jake's. The next day, a person who had been a member years ago messaged me that Jake's was a client of hers, and if we would check out their new menu, they would give us a free pint with every food purchase. I considered this a sign, and went ahead and scheduled last night's meeting there.
    I guess I was a little nervous about it. The previous night, I had my first DL-centered dream ever. It was another "nightmare because it said so." In other words, nothing bad happened, but I felt stressed and nervous, so it was nightmare-like. The only bad thing in the dream was that everybody was eating pizza. (I'm gluten- and casein-free.)
    Anyway, in real life, the meeting turned out to be one of those fun-filled fiascoes that I so specialize in. The bartender didn't know we were coming and knew nothing about free pints with purchase. The tables were all nailed or glued down, so we couldn't rearrange them to something to accommodate our numbers (ten when we all got there). And the bartender was the only one there, so we all had to order at the bar and then wait endlessly. All the same, it was a hoot. I've got such a great group that we always have fun. I have such a great group that I can't get them to go out for jazz anymore after the meeting; they just stay and have more fun. Which is great and glorious, except for my other friends the jazz musicians.

Chores

    One of the less fun things about living alone is that anything that comes up, you have to take care of it. At the moment, the shower has started draining slowly again. It's no big deal of course; it's not any problem at all to go to Publix and get something to unclog it. It's just another petty little annoyance, another little uptick on the stress level.
    Back when I was married(ish), we could at least share chores to some degree. I think in three years living together, we cleaned up the back yard only once, but it was huge fun. I have no idea really why we didn't do it again. (Oh yeah, under the leaves there was poison ivy. Fairly good reason!) Now I know perfectly well that sharing chores isn't a source of joy in any relationship, and often becomes a source of strife instead. But it's also true that anything annoying is a little less so if all the responsibility of fixing it doesn't always fall on you alone. And sharing onerous duties often make them a lot less onerous. Sometimes it even makes them fun.

Comedy killers

    Once again I will not bury the lead: Dad is fine. He was all better by the end of the day yesterday. As it turned out, it just took longer to recover than we were expecting. If going to the ER and getting tested and passed as relatively healthy helped at all, then it was worth it. And now back to your regular silly blog post.
    The biggest comedy killer is death, of course, with serious illness another contender. I was going to post about the lighter side of a visit to the emergency room, but it turned out not to be that light. (Not the visit to the ER itself, which was pretty merry really, but the thing I wanted to post about. That was that on one of the cupboards was written "Peel away introducer," which I thought was a dang amusing phrase. Unfortunately, googling revealed it to be connected with pacemakers and thus not exactly a laugh riot. Still a damn peculiar set of words, though.
    The other thing that tickled me about the emergency room (we were there a loooooong time, the TV was off, and we got bored rather quickly) was the Variable Intensity Control. This had something to do with fire detection or fire suppression equipment. I do not know whether it controlled the intensity of the fire detection, the fire suppression, or the fire itself. Probably not a laugh riot either, but again I enjoyed the odd turn of phrase.

Emergency room

    Do not be alarmed. We spent all last evening in the emergency room, but it was something less than a nerve-wracking experience. Dad simply wasn't getting any stronger four days after his procedure Wednesday and wanted to get some tests done to make sure there wasn't something unobvious causing the problem. He also figured that if he needed to be in the hospital for a couple of days, this would be the best time since he doesn't have dialysis until Tuesday. So we called 9-1-1.
    "He's really, really, really weak" isn't the usual emergency call, but I guess "He's 91" and "He's diabetic" helped. Anyway, they sent an ambulance. The attendants were really great and managed to maneuver him out of the house in spite of the tight doorways. They thought he might be having heart problems and wouldn't let him walk, but they managed to get the walker with a chair seat to him and then to get him to the front room where the stretcher was.
    At the hospital, I got press-ganged into getting him checked in, so I missed most of the action, such as it was. They drew blood and went away, basically. Far away, apparently. Eventually the room nurse came around and gave him a saline IV, but that was about it. Later a male nurse (well, Dad thought he was a doctor, but I'm not sure) came to tell us that Dad's labs were fine, there was nothing out of line except that his creatine was a little high. His heart function was in line with what it had been at his last appointment at the Heart Hospital. He wanted to know what we wanted to do.
    We explained that he was too weak to function in his house, and we hoped he could check in until he was stronger. We also explained about the procedure Wednesday and that weakness afterwards was in line with out experience a couple of weeks earlier, but that recovery hadn't taken this long then. And we noted that Dad thought he had heard one of the doctors during the procedure telling somebody to give Dad morphine and we wondered if that could be affecting him.
    He said that morphine goes through the body very fast, even if you're relatively inactive. He said that he doubted that a couple of days in the hospital would get Dad up and dancing miraculously, and said he'd go talk to Dad's doctors and see if they could authorize checking him in.
    A year later he came back to say that the doctors were fine with him being admitted (that's the phrase, isn't it?), but that there was a good chance that insurance and the government would decline to pay since there were no test results to say that he particularly needed to be in the hospital. He asked what we wanted to do. Dad looked at me. I said, "Well you're the rich one." Dad said he would just go home then. The fellow said he would get that cleared away and tell the nurse to call an ambulance.
    Two years later, we started getting antsy. I asked and the nurse said that the ambulance had been called. My best guess is that nobody was lazy or incompetent; they just had to get all the paperwork (and billing) squared away before they could call. Anyway, leaving exaggeration behind, it was about an hour between him saying he would tell the nurse to call and the nurse actually calling, and then it was another hour before the ambulance actually came.
    This set of attendants was really great, too. They got Dad all the way to the living room and his favorite seat, and he was feeling stronger and better at the end of the ordeal than at the start. I left him getting ready to eat cake. He accepts that if he doesn't get better soon, he will need to have a doctor declare him homebound and get home health care (which the gubmint will pay for). Hopefully not necessary, but I'm glad he recognizes this.
    One thing: if I have to choose between a nerve-wracking night in the emergency room and being bored stupid there, I'll choose the latter every time.

Lowe's

    Once again, can't bury the lead: Dad is still weak, but feeling much better and significantly stronger. Hopefully we're well on our way to back to normal.
    As to Lowe's, one of the good things about getting older is that it gets harder to carry grudges. This is not because you get nicer or more easy-going (easier-going?) but because you can't remember anything. The last time I went to Lowe's, I swore that it would indeed be the last time I went to Lowe's. However, yesterday when the need to get something from Lowe's rolled around again, I couldn't for the life of me remember what had made me so mad.
    Then I did. Lowe's has an every man for himself approach to checkout. Unlike Barnes & Noble, say, or most banks, where everybody lines up in one line and then the next person is called whenever a checker is free, there's just a bunch of checkers and everyone lines up at each. If you get behind a bad checker or a slow customer, you wait and wait while other people who arrived later but who are quicker get checked out ahead of you. This happened to me last time and I understood that it happens. But when I finally got to a checker, he wanted my phone number for some reason. They have a program called MyLowes where you can register with your phone number. I hadn't and had no interest and just wanted to GET OUT OF FRIGGING LOWE'S and told him so, succinctly.
    Yesterday, the air purifier alerted me that I needed a new filter. I went to Home Depot. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, they carry a completely different line of air purifiers, so I was left with Lowe's. Dreading it, I went. And got in and out inside of ten minutes, with nobody asking me anything about a phone number. It's just possible that when I told that young man that if they want any repeat business they ought to think about making it less rather than more of a pain in the ass to shop there, that somebody listened. Or maybe somebody at Lowe's has maybe a tiny bit of common sense.

Toddler

    The six hours in the waiting room while Dad had his procedure Wednesday would have dragged considerably worse except for the joy of watching the antics of a toddler who was there (unfortunately for him) for most of it. His grandmother had an equally protracted appointment (or maybe more so; I don't think she had come out by the time Dad did). The child was one year old as of Thanksgiving, and very pleased to be (more or less) walking and talking. He made many, many escape attempts, and had definitely mastered saying and waving bye-bye. He also knew how to change the channel on the TV, unfortunately finding "Full House" reruns. Presumably, this was unintentional.
    He brought a lot of joy to the proceedings and a much needed sense of life continuing. Life continues here, too, though yesterday was very bad. Dad couldn't walk after dialysis either, and I didn't have an ambulance handy. So I had to get him out of the wheelchair myself, and out of the car myself when I got him to Margaret's, and we just got him inside. Later, I had to come back to help him up and on to the living room. I suggested buying him Ensure or Boost since he was also having trouble eating and had missed many meals. He said he didn't need it but Margaret said to go get it. So I got him chocolate Boost. Hopefully, it helped.
    Today he's much better and ate his breakfast no problem. He says that it's just the sedative that they give him for the procedure making him weak for a day or two. Hopefully he's right and hopefully we don't have to do this again. (Just full of hope today, aren't I?)

Really moving

    After missing a session of dialysis, after an extremely protracted procedure yesterday, and after having trouble getting much breakfast down this morning, Dad was pretty weak for dialysis today. He couldn't get out of the car by himself after several tries. One of the other patients waiting for his ride home stepped forward and gave us a hand. Meanwhile, another of the patients brought out a wheelchair for him, chocked the wheels, and said, "Take a seat, Doc."
    I don't know if it was because of his poor hearing or because he just didn't realize the other patients knew or cared who he is, but Dad was actually trying to get around the wheelchair with his walker. We had to tell him, no, turn around and sit down, which he did. The fellow who got the wheelchair also banged on the door to the back to see if they were ready for Dad, which I wouldn't have done for all my bulldog tendencies regarding my dad's health care. They weren't ready, but came for him in reasonably good order. I explained that he's walking fine, just feeling a little weak. At the moment, it's about the time they called the previous two times to say that he had clots and I had to come get hime again, so I'm a bit on tenterhooks. But I'm hopeful, and really really moved by the friendship, fellowship and teamwork shown by Dad's fellow dialysis patients. We really are all in this together.

Wire sculpture

    Not to bury the lead: Dad is fine. The procedure was again, apparently, straightforward. It was just the appointment that was protracted, not the actual operation. We got there at 9 (well, earlier really). It was 12:30 before they actually started. When they were done, it took at least an hour to stop the bleeding. So we got out of there about 3. He was doing much better than last time. They had checked his labs and found that he could get by without dialysis today and because of that and the lateness of the hour, we didn't have to go to the dialysis clinic, wait another hour and then have him starve another 4-6 hours. We'll be back on the normal schedule again tomorrow. Crossing all fingers and toes that this is the last time we have to visit the nephologists for this procedure.
    The wire sculpture was just a silly memory that came along with earlier Philadelphia reminiscences. When I was a property manager, I had a very, very charming building (maintenance) manager named Joe. I believe his last name was Pellegrino. At length, we found out that in the basement, he took unused cable, unwound some of it, and made whimsical structures out of it. I guess it was steel cable; anyway it was silver colored. (Whatever solder is made of would be the other possibility.) Fortunately, we worked for a bunch of architects, and they were boundlessly delighted. So Joe's sculptures got displayed at office parties, and I think they left one on permanent display in the offices. I seem to recall an elephant. This was one of the few really fun aspects of my property management career. I don't know if Joe went on to become a famous sculptor, but wouldn't it be cool if he did?
    (PS: Google says solder is made of tin and lead. So hopefully not solder.)

Redo

    There are those second chances that you long for and there are those you don't want at all. I had dropped Dad off at dialysis, come home, heated lunch and just started eating when once again I got a call I didn't want a bit. His access had clotted again, so he wouldn't have dialysis and I needed to come get him. They made him another appointment at the nephrologists, this time for 9 tomorrow. Last time, as I may or may not have mentioned, it turned out that they had put a stent in his arm. That might be the problem or it might be totally unrelated.
    Regardless, we get to do it all over again for the second time in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, this time will fix the problem for good. Or maybe they can get him on a dosage of blood thinner such that he can stop clotting all the time without risk of not being able to stop bleeding at the end of dialysis (which was why they took him off blood thinners in the first place). So color me worried, but not overly so; primarily optimistic, but certainly concerned that this thing that only happened once before has now happened twice in a few weeks. Have I mentioned that I hate odd-numbered years?

Dan Patrick

    I very much enjoy Dan Patrick's radio show and hardly ever miss it of a morning. Its corporate ownership is a little bit confusing though, since Dan is part of the Fox Sports Radio lineup (at least according to their commercials) but he never, ever mentions them. He will mention some affiliates, but never says anything about being on Fox. This is because he is also on NBC TV and writes for Sports Illustrated. He used to have his video feed go out on DirecTV (owned by Rupert Murdoch, if I recall correctly) and mentioned this frequently, but never the Fox Sports Radio aspect. (The latter isn't owned by Murdoch but by Mitt Romney's old company Bain, if I also remember correctly).
    Lately, CBS has returned to the radio field and so the local affiliate has ditched Fox Sports Radio for the new CBS Sports Radio network. However, they hung on to Dan. The rest of the Fox team has skipped across town and bands to the AM side, where no doubt their promos still mention Dan Patrick in spite of his show staying on the FM. All this makes everything even more delightfully confusing, but certainly rewards Dan's wisdom in not mentioning Fox Sports Radio for all that time. I think after ESPN, Dan decided to make sure he is always a free agent, a decision that seems to be working out for him. Long may he wave.

Please hold

    Back when I was young, or anyway younger, I had the great pleasure of inadvertently big-timing a Philadelphia city councilman. These days, in a world of cell phones and voicemail, big-timing might be a little less prevalent, but somehow I doubt it. Regardless, the procedure (back in the innocent 20th century) was for the would-be VIP who was returning your call to get a flunkie to do it for him. The flunkie would wait until you were on the line, then hand off the phone to the VIP.
    I don't even remember why Robert was at my place at the time, since it was long since we had been living together. Nor do I remember why I was unable to answer the phone myself, though one suspects it might have had something to do with a bathroom. The point is that Robert answered the phone, and when the flunkie handed off to the councilman (the totally non-crooked Jim Tayoun), Robert hadn't handed me the phone yet. So of course he said, "please hold," and then gave me the phone and the inadvertent big-timing was complete.
    This was all about some item that one of the partners I was working for wanted addressed. 25 years on, I don't remember the details, and I didn't work for them that much longer. (My choice.) I like to think that the big-timing didn't adversely affect my boss's application. On the other hand, since the Google hits for Jim Tayoun include the words "convicted felon," maybe I did him a big favor if it did.

Most foul

    Last night I woke at 4 overheated. This is a fairly unexpected development in January. I got back to sleep fairly quickly, but had an unprecedentedly bad dream. I like to think that it had something to do with a certain lack of comfort.
    It was such a bad dream that names are being expunged to protect the innocent. I dreamed that I was back with an ex-girlfriend. That isn't the bad part; the bad part is that we had murdered somebody. Apparently, we were just curious. There was a great deal of anguish about whether and when to turn ourselves in. I think in the end, we decided not to, but to wish the police luck. I had somehow gotten rid of the victim's body and car, but couldn't remember how. At the end of the dream, a (fictitious) friend of ours who must have employed the victim told us that the car had mysteriously turned up in New Orleans with the victim's possessions inside. This woke me up; presumably, it meant that we were going to be caught.
    Now what I found interesting was my reaction. As so often, I found that for a while after I woke up, I took the dream as if it were both totally real and totally normal. It was as if I were thinking, "I don't remember us murdering anybody," though if I actually verbalized the thought of course, I would have stopped myself. ("WAIT a minute!") Anyway, for the record, no murders in my past, unless you count trying to hit high notes.

Train

    Last month, not surprisingly, I threw a Christmas party. (I mean, it would have been a lot more surprising if I had had it in June, say.) Somebody actually took the BYOB thing seriously, with the result that I wound up with more beer than I started with. This week, my friend Gypsye had some musicians staying with her, so she suddenly got enthusiastic about taking the excess beer off my hands. Thus, taking my Dad home from dialysis yesterday afternoon, I got a call from her asking if she could come pick it up. I told her where I was and that I would be home in fifteen minutes.
    Funny thing happened on the way to Olympia. At the bottom of the Rosewood Drive hill at Assembly Street, there was a truly humongous coal train crossing in front of me. So I called Gypsye to tell her why I was going to be late. She replied that she was in the same jam, second car in the second lane from the left. Seeing her two cars ahead of me (and that the train was going to be at least another 5-10 minutes), I got out and ran up to her car. Pretending to be impatient, I looked at my watch and said, "Where have you been? I've been waiting for ages!" (I like to think that I didn't quite give her a heart attack.)
    Then I went back to my car and texted her while driving, because I'm just a rebel like that. For once at least, the train didn't stop and sit for an extra five minutes (which is what truly makes us crazy about having trains run through the middle of town all day), but it was still a while. We felt that five o'clock on a weekday afternoon is probably not the ideal moment to run a gigantic freight through a major intersection. I'm sure somebody somewhere sees the logic in this, but it's beyond me. Excellent opportunity for madcap physical comedy, though, and Gypsye got her beer and a chance to visit with the world's greatest cat. So there's that.

Edit: Pronoun issues.

Recycling

    Where I used to live, the Mob controlled trash hauling. By extension, they handled a lot of recycling as well. Of course, the world has changed a lot since the 1980s, and maybe this has changed, too. But I was thinking about what would happen to my smart phone when the contract on it runs out and I presumably get a new one. Where I live, if there's any Mob activity they're keeping it on the QT pretty successfully. But I was wondering about New York, Philadelphia or Chicago, what happens to old cell phones, and who recycles them? On one hand, some of the components are very rare and valuable. On the other, the personal information stored inside is even more valuable.
    So if you live in a somewhat more Mob-riddled (or crime-ridden, or smart-people-dominated) area than I do, be sure to think about what happens to your cell phone when you're done with it. Or tell me I'm talking out of my ass; in this one case, I'd be MUCH more than glad to find out that I'm totally mistaken.

Puzzled in my sleep again

    Last night, I dreamed that an acquaintance, well, a friend but one who has moved away, had sent me a very unusual Christmas present. It was a will, a last will and testament to be clear, from 1977 from someone with no connection to either of us, but which he had somehow made out to me. It was a very weird will, almost like it was in a dream or something. There was nothing about property or heirs or assignees. It was more like a stream of consciousness novel. The will and another gift of a more ordinary nature (but which I can't remember any details about) were just lying in the yard of an imaginary house I was living in with a number of imaginary people and one real person I know. On the whole, a very peculiar dream and probably the 300th time in the two years of this blog that I've had one so odd as to wake me up. I wonder what dream books say about "dreams about wills from 1977"?

September 4th

    No, I'm not going to try to make any brilliant deductions about life before September 11th. I'm not even going to jump up and down about stupidity or silliness among my fellow human beings. I'm just honestly bewildered.
    On the herbie-curbie today (or if you prefer, rolling garbage can) was a yellow sticker saying that as of September 4th, a list (provided) of items would be added to those in the roadside recycling program. Now on August 8th, say, this would be perfectly reasonable, but on January 8th I'm a little confused. Do they mean last September 4th and it just took this long to print the stickers? Or do they mean next September 4th and they just want to be WAY ahead of the curve? As I say, bewildering. Not important, but bewildering.
    As it happens, every now and then I put something in the recycling that hasn't previously been accepted just to see if anything has changed, and it seems like at some point last year the list of items did expand. It just seems like it was some time before September 4th. Unfortunately (and incredibly) I didn't blog about it at the time, so it'll just be another of life's little mysteries. I will try to cope somehow.

Seen any alligators?

    I had a brief attack of common sense today, but it passed. It was getting far along in the afternoon of a conspicuously gorgeous day and I still hadn't taken my walk yet. Common sense said that it was too late to go strolling into the wilderness. Also it had rained a bit, so the wilderness was likely to be slippier than we normally like it to be. Thus, I was going to walk at the highly paved Canal Park rather than hit my beloved Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve. Then I remembered who I am, and made the turn for the wilderness instead.
    When I arrived, a fellow who didn't seem to have the greatest, uh, cognitive abilities asked if I'd ever seen any alligators there. (There are warning signs at the parking area to the effect that alligators are present.) I told him that friends of mine had seen one, but that I personally would much rather not. I told him that if he wanted to see any, his best bet was to turn right at the fork.
    I turned on the iPod and forgot about him. At the fork, I went left, heading for the pretty area rather than the get-eaten-by-alligators area. In the late afternoon, the Spanish moss was crazy beautiful. Next time, I'll be sure to bring a camera.
    On a curving part of the trail, I found that my new friend and number one fan was following me. Anyone who has ever been mugged does not like being followed, ever; anyway, I don't. In case he turned out not to be a benign presence, I showed him that weedy old blind guys can go very, very, very fast. I don't run, but I don't get tired, and I generally accelerate the farther I go, too.
    Eventually when I got to the alligatory part of the trail, where footing gets more dangerous, I slowed up and made sure he didn't fall or get lost. I also turned off the iPod since alligators have a VERY recognizable call and it's a good idea to be able to hear it just in case.
    He kept asking me how long the trail was. I forebore from mentioning that I didn't ask him to follow me and I had told him to go right instead of left. I just told him when we had gotten back to the easy (and guaranteed alligator-less) part and sped up again since the sun was sinking rapidly.
    As it's a yoyo trail (what I call a loop trail with a short connector to the parking lot), I hung back to make sure that he didn't go around the loop forever and ever, and also dawdled pulling out of the lot to make sure that he was coming back. I'm such a shitty social Darwinist!
    I know I should have been friendlier and more helpful, but at the same time people need to know their limitations. Neither did I volunteer to be a tour guide; I just wanted to take a walk, and was genuinely in a hurry due to the lateness of the hour. Anyway, it was a lovely walk and nobody got eaten by alligators. Unless a really wily one got him in the parking lot, and I can hardly be held responsible for that.

I'm home

    In all this time, I've probably posted this before. But it's really just a syntax exercise, and I could probably stand a little fine-tuning. If I've posted it before, maybe I'll get it right this time.
    Years ago when I lived in Philadelphia, I noticed that when I got home if I saw a light on in my window, I'd think, "I'm home." This meant not that I had arrived home, but what you would think if you were visiting somebody else's house and saw a light on inside: "Oh good, they're home." I'm pretty sure that I was aware at all times that I wasn't really inside. Although I sometimes bid for sainthood, bi-location isn't going to be part of my application. It was just a transitory thought; normal people might have this kind of idea and immediately correct themselves without even thinking about it. I thought it was funny, and still do.
    In the wintertime, I have my lights on a much greater percentage of the time, so I'm relatively more likely to get home and find the lights on. And yes, I'll admit it; I still think, "I'm home." Well I am!

Wait a minute

    Today, Dad is feeling much better. He thinks it was the sedative that they gave him for his procedure that made him feel so weak. I still think that hunger was more likely the cause, but all that's important is that he feels much better today. That has nothing to do with what I'm posting today, but some readers might have missed the Facebook updates, and anyway it's so much to the front of my mind I figured I'd better address it first.
    Also what I'm posting about today is of infinitesimal importance, just a minor pet peeve. At the station where I most usually get gas, after you've finished pumping (assuming you're using a credit card), the screen asks, "Receipt Y/N?" If you say no (also presumably if you say yes, but I always say no, er, N), it then says "Wait a minute," then resets for the next customer. I know it's just lazy programming. I know I can just substitute in my mind whatever appropriate phrase should in fact be there ("Thanks for buying gas here," say) and just not worry about it. Generally, I just look away so it won't annoy me yet again. But still; dumbness just gets on my nerves. My transaction is done! I don't need to wait a minute! There. I feel better now.

Eerie

    OK, it isn't eerie at all, but I'm not at all sure that "schizy" is really a word. It's a bit schizy to visit your dialysis facility when it isn't your regular day. The building is the same, but all the patients are different, much of the staff is different and even a lot of the ambulance drivers are different. Dreamlike, I would almost call it. More than a little odd, to say the least.
    Oh, sorry, I buried the lead. Dad is fine. The procedure was perfectly straightforward, if a bit time-consuming, and they fit him in at dialysis immediately if you neglect to count the hour and twenty minute wait. At the nephrologists, they gave him a sausage biscuit after his procedure, which helped, but as far as I know he didn't eat anything else between 11 last night and almost 6 this evening. Not surprisingly, he felt pretty weak and tired. He asked Margaret to make him a very, very late breakfast and she was starting on it as I left. So hopefully he's feeling all better by now.
    Unfortunately and as predicted, they want him to come back again for dialysis tomorrow, precious little sense as that might make. So he's going to have really, really, really clean blood. At least we'll have the old familiar crew in the building again. My dreams are already weird enough without reality tearing a page from them.

Crisis? What crisis?

    I dropped Dad off at dialysis today with an unusual absence of any problem. They called him back (which is to say from the waiting area to the dialysis area) before he could even sit down, which is very unusual and really great. I went home and heated up my lunch and started eating. Not far in, I got a call from Margaret. The dialysis facility had called her instead of me for some reason. She said that I had to go back and pick Dad up, but she couldn't understand quite why. I called the facility straight away and the office manager said that my dad was clotting and that he had an appointment with Vascular in the morning.
    Now if you're paying attention to our adventures, you know that he has a clot in his leg that nobody but me seems all that concerned about. I pretty much make up for the rest of them, though. So this news alarmed me greatly. However, when I got there, I found that he had clotting around his access (the point on his arm where they hook up the dialysis machine) so they couldn't dialyse him. This has happened before; just not at the very start of a dialysis session. So we have to go to the nephrologists roughly at dawn to get it cleaned out, and he can't eat after midnight. (Presumably, he turns into a gremlin if he does.)
    When the access is cleaned out, they'll probably be able to fit him in for dialysis on the wrong day. The interesting question becomes whether they will insist on him coming back on his regular day, Saturday, as well. Bets are that they will; he seemed resigned to it. I'm hoping sanity will prevail, but we'll have to see. The point is that what sounded like an immense scary crisis turned out to be nothing of the kind, just a slightly unusual incident. I can live with it.

Coinkydink

    Continuing on the theme of finding odd music on YouTube, I suddenly got an urge to hear Gregorian monks chant "Bohemian Rhapsody." (I mean, doesn't everybody?) Googling bore no fruit, not surprisingly, but I did find a lot of rock songs done by something called Gregorian: Masters of Chant. (I dug "Kashmir" quite a lot.) Turns out to be a band called Gregorian which has released a series of records called Masters of Chant. (How they could have skipped "Bohemian Rhapsody" I'll never know!)
    The coincidence is that one of the singers is named Gerry O'Beirne. Perhaps Ireland (or Germany; it's a German band) is littered with Gerry O'Beirnes, but I sort of think of it as an uncommon name. One of my favorite singer/songwriter/guitarists has that name, but doesn't look anything like the picture of the guy in Gregorian and has been touring with his own projects during the time (since 2005) that the other one has been in Gregorian. The one in Gregorian was born in 1959; the one I like looks to be a bit older than that, but not enough older to be his father.
    Anyway, the coinkidink caused me to look up the Gerry I like and found that he has put out two records since the last time I looked. So although I'm unlikely to buy any Gregorian, I will no doubt be getting me some new Gerry O'Beirne pretty soon. So yay.

Blame it on the bossa nova

    For whatever reason, I wanted to find a bossa nova version of "New Year's Day" by U2 for, you know, today. There is a YouTube video identifying itself as such, but it was really odd. I just couldn't pick up anything particularly bossa nova about it. It was a fairly faithful cover with maybe a little extra percussion. There was a prominent acoustic guitar sound in the mix, but again it didn't sound remotely bossa nova. The vocals sounded like Bono with a faint Brazilian accent.
    This caused me to follow a bunch of links to bossa nova covers (at least ostensibly) of other pop songs. I tended to like them a lot ("Sympathy for the Devil" and "Sweet Child of Mine" particularly) but I still wasn't hearing anything particularly bossa nova about them. One song, I forget which, had a remarkable Astrud Gilberto impersonator (or maybe it was really her), but otherwise I just wasn't hearing the resemblance.
    Of course I'm no expert; as I've remarked before, I never liked bossa nova until my last bout looking for bossa covers as a joke, which eventually got to be less of a joke. Maybe that strumming the acoustic guitar on the offbeats thing has gone out of fashion. Or maybe I just don't know anything about bossa nova. Or maybe Brazilian musicians just call whatever they're doing bossa nova to keep a toehold in the international market. Anyway, if anyone is curious about this, it's an easy Google videos search. You might skip "New Year's Day," but "Sympathy for the Devil" really is pretty cool.
    PS: Happy new year!