Bags

    This was going to be a grumpy pet-peeve post, but then the sun came out after days of rain, so now I'll be telling you how much I LOVE the freezer bags grocers use. OK, not really. The pet peeve is that when stores sell frozen foods in reclosable bags, they use old-fashioned zip lock (note lack of registered trademark spelling) bags which are almost impossible to reclose properly and which, if you ever succeed at reclosing them you cannot then reopen them without tearing them. The same stores sell freezer bags with an actual sliding zipper; these bags open and close so easily it's silly. It can't be that much of a savings going with the old-timey bags; even if it were, what's the use of ticking off all your customers?
    Dangit; sun went away again! Well, I'm glad I stuck with the griping.:)

Edit: To be more precise, if less clear, the ones with the actual zippers are called "slider bags," presumably because the ones without zippers were already called "zipper bags."

Baking mix!

    The world is coming to an end, but in the good way. Aldi has gluten-free baking mix! (Also gluten-free brownie mix, but I'm still not eating caffeine so that doesn't help.) Unfortunately, this being Aldi it's in the temporary section, so they'll probably not have it very long. In the mean time, though, I have a cheap, gluten-, dairy- and soy-free mix to make pizza-free pizzas with. Or so I hope.
    Aldi's private label items, particularly the ones they have for a limited time, almost always turn out to be a major brand's product repackaged. So I looked it up. The big gluten-free baking brand at the moment is Betty Crocker, but I was a little bewildered since Betty has always been focused on desserty type stuff. And it turns out that the baking mix, oddly enough, is labeled Bisquick by Betty Crocker. Go figure. Anyway, the B by BC version is made in Canada and warns that it might contain soy. The Aldi version is made in USA and has no soy warning. Aldi is usually good about labeling for sensitivities. My only guess is that Aldi, rather than repackaging as I always suspected, got an actual US outfit to make an imitation of the Bisquick version, but found an outfit that doesn't handle soy. Why they would go to all this trouble for a temporary item is one of those "go figure" questions that I'll probably never work out. But I'll make my pizza and if I like it, I'll buy them out. Regardless, it's cool to have something cheap and easy to make pizza crust with. Yay!

Boom Boom

    The home plate umpire in last night's South Carolina-LSU baseball game was named Fred Cannon, and the radio color guy started calling him "Boom Boom" because that was the nickname of long-ago pop star Freddy Cannon. And I thought, no, that can't be right; he's thinking of Freddy Washington, the Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs character on "Welcome Back, Kotter." Now anybody with more brains than amoeba (apparently I don't qualify) can see straight away that this is ridiculous. Though I did look it up, even I figured out immediately after doing so that of COURSE a guy using the stage name "Freddy Cannon" would have the nickname Boom Boom. And of course the Hilton-Jacobs character is called Boom Boom because of the then still somewhat famous singer. I was very fond of Gabe Kaplan's pre-Kotter standup work, in which the characters that would become the Sweathogs played a major role, but I don't remember whether Freddy was one who predated the show. However, a character named after the guy who sang "Palisades Park" would probably appeal to a New York guy like Kaplan.
    Long way to go from a home plate umpire, isn't it?

Buddy's buddy!

    For my first three years here in Olympia, there was a guy up the street with a great dog named Buddy. Some kind of beagle or beagle mix probably; anyway, a terrific, sweet, friendly dog. The guy himself was a bit crazy, but I liked him, too.
    About a year ago, they vanished, but no for sale or for rent signs never appeared on the house. I decried the loss at the time in this blog; I've been scared to ask the neighbors all along for fear of hearing that the man had died and Buddy had been taken by the county.
    Today, though there was no Buddy sighting, I saw the man again. He appeared to be showing the house to prospective new tenants. He recognized me and waved (and I waved back). He had cleaned up a lot. I think it's reasonable to infer that he and Buddy are living in new quarters and that Buddy is well. (For once I wasn't being shy or scared of bad news; the guy was trying to show a house after all and didn't need to be bugged by neighbors.) It made me a lot happier anyway. Buddy lives! (Probably.)

Marcel

    Long ago before the dinosaurs went away, or anyway before high school graduation, my girlfriend and I were out in my parents' front yard and saw a most adorable little cat. He had no collar nor any other sign of ownership, so we decided that he was ours. As it turned out, I feel pretty badly about this decision thirty-odd years later, but until I get that time machine completed what can I do?
    Her parents were OK with taking in a second cat, so he had a home. The debate broke out immediately: I declared that his name was Marcel; everybody else said that his name was Mickey. Well of course everybody else won, but I still called him (and in my mind still do) Marcel.
    This is the part I hate: they already had a declawed cat. They declawed Marcel/Mickey, too. I still feel rotten about it. I guess he got a safe place to live for years and years. (Our relationship unraveled due to distance during my first year in college, so I never heard how things turned out.) But I hear nothing good about what happens to the emotional life of a declawed cat. I think it reflects poorly on anyone who thinks that their furniture and curtains are more important than an animal's health. Amelia keeps her claws for as long as she lives; if she destroys stuff, well, stuff can be replaced. But I'll take it out in hoping that we gave Marcel a better life than he was going to have otherwise. He was a pretty good fellow.

Nintendo

    Last night I had another one of those dreams that was simultaneously a video game I was playing, a movie I was in and a movie I was watching. Nice work if you can get it, I always think. Before that, though, I was looking for a video game, which seems to be a much more recurrent dream. Apparently a significant part of my subconscious mind believes that there is a lost Nintendo game out there that if only I could find it, it would bring me happiness. All I know about it (besides that I want it very badly) is that it's in a yellow box. Does that help?
    I seem to have been looking for it in my dreams for ages now. This is fairly odd only in that while I played a hell of a lot of Nintendo back in what I am required by law to call "the day," I never really enjoyed any of the games enough to be obsessed by an imaginary one decades later. But maybe that's the whole point! If only I could find that one game in the yellow box, all my problems would be solved! Except for, you know, finding a working Nintendo machine in 2013.
    I remember that the role-playing games that I gravitated towards used to make you save games by remembering a password, and this password would get more and more annoyingly involved the longer you played. In this connection, I especially remember an otherwise delightful game called Faxanadu. Then with Link, the Zelda sequel, they started putting batteries in the cartridges. These were supposed to last five years or so if I recall correctly; I wonder if any of those games still work?
    (I looked it up and sources say they actually last up to 20 years. If true, we'd still be SOL. Maybe I'll look into it if the old Nintendo is still at the ancestral manse.)

I'm in love with the DMV

    OK, I'm not, but I live to string these sentences together that have never been said or even thought before. However, dealing with the DMV at least in this here state is no longer the nightmare (or as we say, "noughtmar") that it used to be. In fact, it was damned close to fun. My brother ran into a problem with his license tag sticker. As he isn't physically in the state at the moment, he was pretty stressed out about it. It turned out to be child's play to straighten out, whereas the last time I had a problem to take to that agency (on my OWN car) it required jumping through hoops backwards with my hair on fire. And singing the Marseillaise. While juggling. So I gotta say, way to go DMV! Keep up the good work!

Snow delay

    So what do you think? Is this a permanent change in the weather, or are we just having a funny Spring? Did Pinatubo erupt again when nobody was looking? After a semi-normal week for these parts, we've lapsed back into comfortable, actual Spring-like weather again. And while I'm the last to complain about further delay in the return to the inferno, still it's a bit odd. The Atlanta Braves are playing in Denver, or would be but for the snow. I get that Denver really is a mile high and snow-outs in April there are hardly unprecedented. But still. Anyway, they're slated for a doubleheader today and the forecast is calling for snow. For some reason, I'm tickled by the idea of tuning in to hear a snow delay. What can I say? Maybe it gets commoner as time goes on, but I don't believe I've ever heard one before. Hope I don't have to hear too many more.

I invented pound cake!

    Marzipancakes went approximately as follows: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover bottom of a 1/2 cup measuring cup with EV olive oil. Fill the rest of it with honey. Dump in mixing bowl as best you can. Add one large egg. (You can break it and scramble it first.) Add a tsp of vanilla extract and a tsp of Ceylon cinnamon (or regular; do NOT go buy Ceylon cinnamon just for this.) Add half a cup of almond milk. Add 2 tsps of baking powder. Add 2 1/2 cups of almond meal.

(I note parenthetically (see those parentheses?) that I found a recipe online for marzipan calling for 2 1/2 cups of almond meal, 1/2 cup of honey and a tsp (maybe two) of almond extract. So I was pretty faithful, especially by my standards!)

This would be a good time to add 1/4 cup of slivered almonds (the flat ones; Aldi calls these "sliced almonds" and calls something else "slivered almonds," but I'm pretty sure they're mistaken. Something lost in the translation, as Paul said.)

You may now want to mix all this stuff up. Hopefully you were doing so right along without me telling you to (you're so smart!) so this is no chore.

Now when I'm hatching these fiascoes, as I've mentioned before, I just pour all the batter onto parchment paper on a pizza pan, rather than think out the ideal way to cook a cake or bread or pancakes or whatever the heck what I'm making turns out to be. (I'm not very good at this, so I seldom know in advance.) I cooked for 20 minutes, which proved to be a scotch (or rather, a scorch) too long. So I'd recommend 15 minutes @ 400, then turn off the oven, flip the pancake/cake/whatever and put it back in for another 5 in a cooling oven. Or perhaps 3 or 4 more minutes would be safer.

Upshot, as I say, is an alarmingly pound-cake-like confection. Made out of almond meal, however, I suspect it's a good deal more high-energy (or anyway protein-packed); I further suspect it would be a good trail food if, say, you're climbing the Matterhorn. Anyway, I like it. It's probably a one-off considering how insanely expensive almond meal is, but I already had a bag and needed to use it up and this did a perfect job. So yay!

Slightly tricky

    There's a local used bookstore that's gone through a lot of locations and ownerships over the years. They used to have three locations around town and then two and now they're down to one, and it's a relatively new one. Paul and I visited last week and the clerk, an attractive 40ish woman was trying to draw us into answering whether we had visited before. It turned out that this was because they were giving out $20 in trade value to people who hadn't been to that location before, but at the time it was a little uncomfortable.
    Thirty odd years ago at a store by the same name, I completely fell in love with the clerk, who wound up helpfully cutting my heart out for me. And so it would have been a much better idea if she had specifically asked if I had been to this LOCATION before; while I could have certainly shared my history with attractive women working at her bookstore, I think she might reasonably have misconstrued my aims in passing along such an anecdote. So I STFU. But I did get the trade vouchers, eventually, and the final Harry Potter and a suitably creepy Peter Straub from '99. So all ends well.

Four-hole Buick

    At some point in, or at least by, the 1960s Buick chose as a design element four holes along the left front fender. As a little kid, you just take weird stuff as given, not questioning anything in particular (while questioning everything in general; this is the little kid's job). I just figured that a 4-hole Buick must be a really good one. There must be 3-hole and 2-hole Buicks out there, too, right?
    Dad teased me about it very mildly, talking about 4-hole Buicks now and again for the next ten years or so. In my heart of hearts, I still believe that there were 3-hole Buicks out there. So it is with a sense of relief (or something) that I report that I saw one the other week. A new one. Apparently, Buick has decided to bring the holes back as a design element, but to economize. OK, a real relief: googling "4-hole Buick" turns up enough images to demonstrate that I'm not the only one to notice this or to coin the phrase. (Wikipedia notes that they're called VentiPorts, though if they ever had anything to do with ventilation it was very briefly.)

How will you be paying this?

    Sure hope the authorities catch the remaining Marathon bomber soon so Boston can return to normal life, or as near as possible.
    Now for the silly anecdote portion of the program. Yesterday, I was unaccountably very sleepy and mostly brain-dead. On two consecutive errands, I drove right past my turn, which happens very rarely. The second errand involved paying my light bill at a drive-through. I sent the bill up the pneumatic tube and was waiting for my receipt when I hear, "How will you be paying this?" I didn't realize the voice was talking to me, since clearly I had just sent her a check. She said, "You just sent a bookmark." I laughed a lot and asked for my bookmark back, got it and sent my check in return. All ended well and I was very tickled. I thought it would have been simpler just to say, "Excuse me sir, but this is a bookmark instead of a check" since it couldn't be more obvious it was a mistake. But it was funnier the other way, so who am I to complain?

It may be time

    I'm starting to think that it might be time that I admit that I'm not going to attain perfection nor anything close to it, give myself a break, and return from my self-imposed exile from the human race. The human race no doubt will be very relieved at the news.
    I just can't stand not being really great at anything I do. Unfortunately, the only thing I'm really great at is spelling, so that leaves a lot of areas of human endeavor where I fall short, from intercourses both social and the other kind (I'm not being squeamish; just trying to avoid the wrong kind of Google hits) to my performance trying to help my dad, which falls short on every level. Still I'm still in there trying, which I suppose counts to some degree. Or so I hope.

Certified pre-owned

    I got nothing. Really and sincerely. Well I've got one thing, which is that my major depression appears to be at last lifting. Granted, the assorted impossible situations I find myself in aren't any the more tractable, but I can sort of see light at the end of the tunnel. Or it looks like light. And it doesn't sound like a train. So that's good, right?
    On the old computer, I had a planned topic forever atop my Notepad blog-writing file as seen in the post title above. There was just this incredible run of snooty certified pre-owned ads on the radio, presumably because it was getting towards the end of the year, and it got up my nose something terrible. However, most of them evaporated and so I never got around to saying anything about it. Also, there isn't much you can say except that the previous euphemism, "previously owned," actually made sense, whereas "pre-owned" suggests that you're marketing to morons, thus the snootiness is probably not going to be effective. Unless of course the thinking is that the proles are so stupid that they'll do whatever a snooty-voiced person tells them to do. Worked so well for Mitt Romney after all.

Rubber chicken

    In this time of national tragedy, my mind of course flashes back to the silliest memory possible. Call it a defense mechanism. In high school, I participated in forensics. I put it the pretentious way because I only did debate for the first two years, then did extemporaneous speaking for the other two. I was terrible at it. My analysis was always sharp, but I was flat terrified to be speaking in front of an audience, even though my audience was almost invariably just the judge (or in debate, the judge plus my partner and our opponents). I tended to lapse into a monotone and stay there.
    The one exception was when I knew the judge. Since I participated for all four years, some of the people I debated against freshman year had graduated by the time I finished and thus were able to serve as judges by the time I was done. I remember calling out one of them from Spring Valley from the rostrum. This may not have led to a good extemp score, but it least it broke me out of the monotone.
    The closest I came to breaking out in debate was silly. Really, really silly. Shepard McAninch and I were partnered for a tournament towards the end of the year at the College of Charleston, I think. We were bored stupid. So we decided that we wanted to write a rubber chicken case. It was just a gag, and a weak play on words at that, because I think all we proposed was to distribute prophylactics and chickens. There was a munificently funded board-- I don't know about these days, but back then in debate there was ALWAYS a munificently funded board-- and that was it, really.
    Two sets of opponents mopped the floor with us, not surprisingly. We were having a good time, but we didn't do it to win, but just as a prank. But then we ran into a couple of freshman, seemingly at their first tournament. They were so nervous they made me seem calm and collected by comparison. They couldn't think on their feet and had no idea what to make out of our outrageous case. So we actually won a debate presenting a rubber chicken case. Why we didn't go on to become lawyers is beyond me; hopefully, we didn't ruin the debating careers of those fellows. Of course, by now they're probably in Congress.

81 Avenue

    All I've got is a punchline, really, and it amuses me all out of proportion to how much it should. Dad had an eye doctor appointment today. The clinic was an utter zoo, probably because they're installing a new computer system. For the same reason, he had to fill out four pages of forms like a new patient, which he isn't. Dad lives with Margaret on Etiwan Avenue; this should not be news to them, since he gave them that address last year when he returned after almost a year away due to his hospitalization and nursing home stays. Today they gave him a printout telling when his next appointment is. On it, his address is listed as 81 Avenue. Now granted that somebody could mishear Etiwan as 81, what's the point of making you fill out pages of forms if they're not going to look at the forms? Anyway, I thought it was funny as all hell. Think I'll go change the street signs!
     And of course all best thoughts and wishes go out to the people of Boston and those affected by the tragedy at the marathon today. To the best of my knowledge, my Boston area family members are fine. Can't really get in touch with cell phones shut down up there; hopefully they can restore service pretty soon, as that's a town that runs on cell phones as far as I can tell. Hope there are no further explosions and that all who were injured recover fully.

Catastrophization at night

    Night before last I had an odd dream. Or rather an ordinary dream that it was odd that I should have. Lately, my big toes have been slightly sore. Nothing that even I, a committed hypochondriac, got the least bit worried about. Nothing to have nightmares about. And by the time I had the dream it had been maybe a week since I even had the problem, minor as it was.
    So in the dream, I'm walking around with both big toes hurting and bleeding. A very Valley Forge scene on the whole. While it wasn't quite at nightmare level, it definitely wasn't a good, happy dream. One could guess that the kitty had bit me or pounced on my feet, but she hasn't done the former ever and she hasn't done the latter in years, so I think I can rule those out. My toes weren't hurting when I went to sleep and they weren't when I woke up, so it's probably reasonable to infer that they weren't hurting in my sleep, either.
    I think back to my days of deeper depression and dipping into self-help books and I think of one that actually almost helped, "Learned Optimism" by Martin E.P. Seligman. Dr. Seligman wrote at length about learned helplessness and the misery it engenders. A contributing factor that he mentions is a tendency to catastrophization, i.e. imagining the worst possible outcome to any given event. While goodness knows I still do this oftener than not when I'm awake, at least I skip the misery making part ("...and so I'll never be happy again.") these days. I wonder if the dreaming mind doesn't have these filters and controls, so catastrophization is given full rein. Or I guess I might be tuning into the collective unconsciousness to pick up the whole Valley Forge experience. Could be.

Escape velocity

    I admit it; I'm phoning this one in. However, like so many of these, it just strikes me as funny. Leaving this town (or rather, metro area), there's a route where the speed limit changes with every turn, from 30 mph on State St. to 35 on Frink St. to 40 on the 12th St. Extension and then up to 55 once you're off the curvy part until almost all the way to the beltway. Even reading it back myself, I recognize that there isn't anything weird or unusual about this; I just like the orderly way that the route leads you towards escape velocity. Or maybe I really want out of here, I dunno. Anyway, it tickles me every time I go that way, so that's my story.

Mystery solved

    Oh all right, the Skullcandy earbuds on-off switch (mentioned last week or so) does not in fact control space/time. Much. It turns out that my memory is for poop and I do not have a mini iPod, but an iPod Nano. This is important because for reasons I can't fathom, the radio on an iPod Nano does in fact have a feature that pauses live radio. Because I use the radio mostly to listen to sports, it's hard to imagine when this feature would be useful to me. But I guess if you listen to NPR and there's a Robert Earl Keen show on Mountain Stage (as there was the other week, though I missed it) it would probably be very helpful.
    The real question is why do the Skullcandy earbuds activate the Pause Live Radio feature instead of just cutting the power off and then back on like I would prefer. If I were a reader of manuals, I could no doubt figure it all out. Or so I like to think. However, it's easier just to use the normal on/off switch and not worry about it. After all, who knows what could happen if I keep messing around with space and time? More bigger better bacon commercials, for one thing.

Time I spent some time alone

    Well it didn't quite take 30 years. I finally got around to checking the lyrics on "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)." Robert pointed out to me (and I fully agreed and in fact still do) that the Mike Mills part was "Tie my hands, I'm all alone." Kissthisguy.com, the legendary misheard lyrics site, suggests instead "Tie my hands up, I'm alone," which is also both good and believable. Apparently, however, the actual lyrics are as in the subject line, dammit. I think what threw us all off is that up to that point, REM lyrics were not conspicuous for how much sense they made. That way actually makes sense! Who ever heard of such a thing out of Athens? Anyway, it's nice to get that cleared up. But I still like our way better.

Amusing, I hope

    Last night I dreamed that I visited an eight-story-high McDonald's. One amusing aspect of this was that I plotted the visit like a mountaineering trek. Another is that I brought my cat. Another was that a number of celebrities were visiting the McDonald's, too, though the only one I recognized was Keith Olbermann. I suspect that the rest were fictitious. ("Imaginary" would make more sense if this were reality, but in discussing a dream that word's redundant, isn't it?) All the celebrities were entering two-by-two, and I also had a companion (besides my cat), who was also imaginary or fictitious, I think.
    I lost Amelia the cat on the second floor and was upset and bereft, but found her again on the sixth floor. Somehow she had grown to be eight feet long by then (a clever subconscious commentary on bovine growth hormone? I don't know) but still fit in my arms some other how. The greater part of the building was taken up with bathrooms in every language on Earth, though there were french fry stands on most floors. As a mountain-climbing exercise, it was mostly a washout, however.
    I thought what was neat about the dream was that I lost something important and got it back even bigger. I'm not sure I've ever had a dream where I lost something and got it back, though longtime readers of this blog may correct me. Anyway, it's pretty rare, and I woke up considerably more cheerful than when I went to sleep. Of course, it helped that my back quit hurting. There's something I'd like to lose and not get back!

Name that tune

    The oldies station play "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Stealer's Wheel pretty frequently. Somehow, I recognize it from the first notes of the acoustic guitar intro every time. This strikes me as odd. After all, back in the '70s, DJs talked all over the intros to all the songs. Thus, I never would have heard the acoustic guitar. Fond as I am of the song, I never bought the record or downloaded the song. (I did download "Star," which I like a lot better.) So I can't figure it out, especially as it isn't a conspicuously unique guitar sound. I guess my subconscious has a better feel for what's on the playlists of oldies stations at any given minute than I give it credit for. I guess it wouldn't help on "Name That Tune" anyway; if my memory isn't fibbing to me again, you had to recognize the notes as played on a piano. Strike one more get-rich-quick plan from the list!

Time/space on-off switch

    The other week I mentioned the neat on-off switch on my Skullcandy earbuds, mainly in the context of how embarrassingly long it took for me to figure out what it was. But today, I found out that it's magic! I used it on the mini iPod to listen to the Dan Patrick show on radio this morning. I took advantage of its non-magical on-off powers to avoid commercials. And I kept being bewildered, because as the ten o'clock hour rolled around, the opening for that hour of the show (sports news update, funny pre-recorded open, theme music) didn't. Fifteen minutes later, it did. So I assumed that there was some problem at the network or at the station and didn't worry about it.
    Then I got home and turned on the radio. Leaving on the radio through the earbuds. Tuned to the same station. And the radio plugged in the wall had the live feed, while the iPod radio was still lagging by fifteen minutes. It's beyond me. It's. just. a. radio. It's not hooked to anyone's satellite feed. I don't think the earbuds on/off switch has magic DVR powers. I just don't get it. Maybe the iPod has mad skills that I never suspected, but heretofore it always agreed with regular radios on time/space issues. I did notice that Dan seemed to be reading bigger better bacon commercials a lot when I tuned back in to see if the earlier commercials had ended. Do the earbuds or the iPod know when you're switching off the commercials? What other powers do they have? Will they let me learn to fly? I mean, obviously, it's magic!

True cinnamon

    It was maybe a year ago when I found out about true (or Ceylon) cinnamon. Apparently, the rest of the world calls the spice that we North Americans call cinnamon something else, specifically cassia. What the rest of the world calls cinnamon is called Ceylon cinnamon here, but it's next to impossible to find. The tip was to go to Indian markets. For some reason, this town has a goodly number of Indian markets (five or more), but none of them carried true cinnamon. However, Whole Foods has come to town, and they had it. Ground, mind you, but still.
    I'm trying so hard to like it. In desserty-type stuff, it's OK I guess, adding some degree of sweetness. Mainly, it reminds me of Cashmere Bouquet soap. This may not be a useful reference for the under 50s; although Google indicates that Cashmere Bouquet is still being sold (and apparently has been since 1872!), I'm not sure anybody uses it since they stopped putting it in mid-grade motel bathrooms some time in the '80s. Regardless, there's a certain cloying quality that I don't care for, a slight sharpness that's less interesting and somehow less pleasant than cassia, and the sweetness is more annoying than delightful. But then, I hardly ever like new things and then usually go full 180 on them, so within days or weeks, I'll probably think true cinnamon is my favorite thing ever. So this is just to warn you: if you ever try true cinnamon, you probably won't like it at first. Tip: better with vanilla, though.

Edit: I should note that it reminds me of the scent of Cashmere Bouquet. I don't think I ever ate any, though since I shaved with it in the shaving mug (this being a brush-and-mug family by and large) some may have worked its way into my mouth from time to time.

The year of a dozen Springs

    I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The last five years or so have been the years of a dozen Winters. (Made a typo substituting "Wingers" which is much funnier, but makes less sense.) This is to say that there would be a few cold days, a few nice days, a few cold days, etc. etc. etc. Anyway, according to the Weather Channel's Android app, we'll be staying warm for at least the next week. Usually it would be hot around here by now, but so long as it isn't cold anymore I don't think anyone is complaining. However, since we've been getting Spring-like weather for a few days at a time since February, it's difficult to be really confident still.
    I was scared to look, but I checked and according to Accuweather (which admittedly is not often very accu), the jet stream is at last back from Mexico. There were studies indicating that with the Arctic melting, the jet stream had migrated south and that's why chilly weather kept coming down from up north. The details are above my meteorology training, but had me very worried for a while there. I'm just as happy to have the jet stream on the northern border of the US rather than the southern one again, and temperate weather back. I'll try to be even-tempered for the first week or so when it finally gets hot around here. I may not succeed, but I'll try.

Yop

    OK, I've solved the problem. You know, the all-important problem of how to make clearer the difference between 4-way stop signs and regular ones. The problem that cropped up when traffic authorities had to add "Cross traffic does not stop" signs to regular stop signs. (Or in other words, "this isn't a 4-way stop sign.") It's so simple! Instead of having 4-way stop signs, we should have yop signs. After all, the 4-way stop is a mix between a stop and a yield, so the sign should be, too. I think it should be a square (half an octagon, one more than a triangle). Much as I'd love it to be orange (between red and yellow, or at least a mix of red and yellow), that color is already taken. Dang those road construction signs. So I would suggest a white square with YOP written in red. Simple!

Working my way back to you

    If you'd asked me two days ago who did "Working My Way Back To You," well frankly I wouldn't have remembered, but the version I would have thought of would have been (I looked it up) the Spinners from the late '70s. Yesterday, though, I heard the Four Seasons version from 1966 and now I'm absolutely convinced that I've always known it. This isn't unreasonable; it came out when I was old enough to be somewhat alert. But up until yesterday, I would have thought that it had been a new song when the Spinners brought it out.
    I can't decide if this is the wondrous power of Frankie Valli or if I do in fact remember the 1966 version. I guess the key is if I start hearing in my mind's ear Frankie singing the "Forgive Me Girl" part, which it turns out was written by the producer of the Spinners record. It's called a separate song and part of a medley, though it sounds more to me like he just wrote a bridge for the older song. I also never knew it was a medley, so at least I've learned something. Yet again, nothing major league consequential; just an oddity of memory where one day you've completely forgotten the existence of a song and the next you're convinced that you've known it all my life. (Note: Frankie's great, but the Spinners are still better!:))

Goats

    I kept hearing this sound like a goat bleating wherever I went in my apartment. I thought it was pretty weird. Mind you, this is a neighborhood that frequently hosts chickens including very, very chatty roosters, so I can't say anything would surprise me. So when I looked out the window and saw two kid goats and a puppy in a neighboring yard, my reaction was less surprise than along the lines of, "Ah! THAT would explain it!"
    The goats are almost as cute as the puppy, a grey pit bull. My friend Gypsye was around to sample my latest culinary adventure (almond butter fudge; recommended) so we went out to introduce ourselves. The goats were shy, but the puppy was not. Eventually the neighbor came over to talk with us. To the question whether they were going to be dairy goats, he said no, that they were getting rid of them in about a week. This sounds more than a little ominous, but of course, he may have thought that I harbored anti-goat tendencies and was just trying to head off getting reported to the authorities. Anyway, at least he didn't make any finger-across-throat gestures, so I guess we can take it to mean that they're just fostering the goats and that they will go on to good home. Anyway, so I hope. Awful cute goats; awful cute puppy.

Magic!

    This brief anecdote unfortunately will require me revealing how weird I am. Five mornings a week, I take kelp (ie iodine) tablets with breakfast. The other two mornings, Monday and Thursday, I take half a multivitamin instead. This is because I eat fish at lunch those days and I don't want to take a chance (however small) of getting too much iodine. Also, I probably need the vitamins.
    Anyway, the anecdote: yesterday, I got a kelp tablet out of the bottle, realized it was Monday so I didn't need it, and so left it on top of the bottle for today so I could go get my half-vitamin. Today, I forgot there was a tablet on top of the bottle. Thus I went to open the bottle and the tablet on top went flying... or so I thought. I didn't hear it hit the ground, or hit anything. I was all flummoxed. It had to be somewhere, though, so I checked up my sleeve, and there it was. I'm a magician! Not as good as Bullwinkle, mind you, but still a magician.

Mustang turn signal

    Well, it was going to be a writing exercise, but I widgied out and googled. The thrust of the post was going to be that Mustang turn signals were really cool when I was little, and now they are again. The writing exercise would have been (and might still be) describing what was cool about them. What it's called is sequential turn signals and why it might still be a writing exercise is that I'm not sure how helpful this name is. I'll give it a try.
    Most years that they have been made, Mustangs have had three rear turn signal lights on each side. When the driver makes a turn signal, the lights light up sequentially from the inside to the outside (in other words, apparently moving in the direction of the turn). Mustangs are only slightly younger than I am, so from earliest memory they were the coolest thing on the road. Also my coolest uncle had one that I got to play in. So the turn signals would have impinged on my little mind from a very early age. I'm not sure if the sequential aspect has been there all along and I just didn't notice it or if it went away for years or perhaps decades. I'm betting on the latter. If so, it's cool to see it back again. If not, it's cool to notice it again.