Love these cats

    I keep saying it. I just keep saying it. And it isn't in hopes of making it true; I DO love these cats. But I have to remind myself because I'm also highly allergic to at least one of them and it's a colossal pain in the-- well, ear, at the moment. I'm waking up with a stopped up right ear, which went away quickly until today, but today it took hours for it to clear up.
    All this means that it would be really wonderful if I could get somebody to take the second and apparently more allergenic cat, but I can't seem to raise much interest. He is truly a lovely, wondrous fellow, with only slight behavior problems which seem to be abating with time. Fundamentally, he is more playful than I am, just like Amelia is. I wish I could place both or each of them with a family or families with children but not small children, but I don't really know anybody like that.
    Fortunately, it's warm out now, and the rotten little fella will probably be spending most of his time outside. And hopefully getting a new HVAC filter will help and changing out the litter boxes will, too. Common sense says that if I'm keeping two cats, I can't really stay in a small apartment. So maybe the hunt starts soon for a small house with neither chimney nor carpet. Heck, maybe someday I an even breathe! It's a thought.

Dad's marker is up

    I was expecting to be bummed out about it, really, but I am very well pleased. It's very nice indeed, for one thing; I'm pretty sure he would have liked it. And I guess the long wait before it was installed allowed for a lot of settling and getting used to the idea. I mean, I had something in my eye for a minute there, but in general I felt pretty good about it. And the flowers Margaret put there before the marker was put in are still there and gorgeous and helped, too. So yippie yay, it's there and it's a good one. A picture will be added for non-Facebook folks at the merest hint of a request.
    Other things are falling into place a bit, too, but as usual I can't talk about that so much. What I can talk about is Dad's 2014 taxes and my almost total lack of desire to do them. But after all the stuff I've handled so far, I kind of think I'll be able to manage them. Or anyway an extension request. So long as I don't have to sign my full name. I had to do that the other day and it's really hard! (Middle initial is usually my limit.)

Stinks

    I don't know if it's my autism spectrum disorder giving me heightened sensory powers, but the urinal cakes used in public restrooms make me more than a little crazy. This would be OK if it was happening when I was actually visiting the restrooms in question, but my problem is when I'm twenty, even fifty feet away, and on the other side of a closed door, or often two. Now in a restaurant, this is extra disgusting, as smell affects taste so strongly (like we all were supposed to learn as children by tasting a chunk of onion and a chunk of apple while holding our nose(s)). The restaurant where this happens weekly is about to close for a few days to renovate and change its name; I'm hoping they chuck out their urinal cakes, too!
    More astonishing, though, was a new and gigantic Goodwill that we visited the other day. The scent from the deodorant cakes nearly knocked me down from 30 feet away through a closed door. Obviously at the restaurant the scent isn't that annoying or I wouldn't keep going back, but this experience made me scared to return. I just don't understand why anyone would think that a scent so repugnant would somehow be an improvement. Not that I'm a fan of the scent of urine, but this is worth. As I'm pretty sure that the scent is also masking napthalene, I seriously doubt that it could be healthy. And what I'm wondering about is am I the only one or does everybody hate this? I'm thinking about taking up smoking to blunt my sense of smell, to tell the truth.

That dampened excitement

    This happens over and over. A new restaurant opens in town. It features one of my favorite cuisines. (Boy did that sound awkward! And I call myself a writer! Wait... I make fun of myself when I call myself a writer. Well there may be a reason!) I stop around. It smells great! I'm so excited! Then I ask, "Is it gluten-free?" At both Ethiopian places in town, the answer was a definitive no. At one Jamaican place, a yes-but (macaroni and cheese, of course). However, I went back there and felt very uncomfortable after eating their takeout, so I don't know if I can go there again. And the new Jamaican place? I'm scared to ask. However, they have a lunch buffet with jerk chicken and plantains on it, so I'll be risking it soon. Worst case, I'll just stop by whenever I'm in the neighborhood and take a deep breath; it REALLY smells good!
    Thing is though, it sucks that this keeps happening. Especially since I aim at cuisine from countries (still awkward) where gluten isn't usually used. That's what made me extra-crazy about the Ethiopian places. I had to wait 30 years for one to make it to Columbia and when two got here, I couldn't eat at either. (Also, by definition, they're inauthentic if they use wheat instead of teff.) Then again, 30 years ago I didn't know I was celiac. Maybe I'll send '80s John by to give them a try. Ah heck, that way madness lies.
    I appreciate that everybody gets excited by new restaurants and then goes to visit and is then disappointed. But by and large, I don't even get to eat there first. Is bummer drag.

Self-editing

    Now my brain isn't even letting me write about my dreams. Correction: now my brain isn't allowing me to remember my dreams long enough to write about them. Lately, I'm playing old-time-radio show Escape as my overnight drown-out-the-freight-trains-and-cats entertainment. It's pretty consistently my favorite and I have it loud enough that I can hear the dialogue if I wake up. I do pretty frequently, too, and think, "This is a good one! Maybe I'll stay up!" but then wake up a half hour or an hour later only to hear the start of a different episode and think the same thing again.
    In the mean time, I'm having pretty vivid dreams, but can remember practically nothing about them later. The only one I remember had me driving a very attractive young woman home repeatedly. I could never remember her name, nor that she smoked, nor that I always took her to the same place, which was a fairly working class Philadelphia type suburb near an airport. That was also a mall. Unless it was a beach. Because I wandered around and wound up on a beach, where there were seals, or sea lions. Except I suddenly decided I was in Australia, so maybe they were sea koalas or some damn thing.
    They're all like that, pleasant dreams that make no sense but are fairly amusing even while I'm having them. Oh and the cats seem to turn up a lot, although I'm still having trouble visualizing Harry correctly. Amelia usually does look like Amelia. Yes, yes, I know this is extra-pointless, but the alternative was discussing the temperature drop, and I think I've made the point already that 55 degrees seems really cold when it was 80 yesterday as against a few weeks ago when it seemed really warm when it was 30 degrees yesterday. Even at my ridiculously advanced age, I still find this fascinating, but I fully understand that everybody else figured this out at 5. What can I tell ya? I'm a little bit slow.

The worst thing

    The second worst thing is having to tell somebody you made a mistake. The worst thing of course is admitting it to yourself.
    As usual, I can't explain this in any detail. So I'll just mention that I took advantage of the warm day to visit Congaree National Park, where the mosquitos are still absent, to no one's disappointment whatever. A small child with three women held up his visitor's guide to me on the low boardwalk and exclaimed delightedly, "I found it!" I couldn't work out at all what he had found, but was delighted on his behalf and congratulated him warmly for whatever it was. I wish I could find happiness that easily, but then at that age I guess you find misery just as easily. Everything's close to the surface when you're tiny.
    All the walking was good for my ongoing nervous breakdown, kicking it down a notch or two. Resuming semi-weekly vacuuming did similarly for seeing and breathing. Hopefully waking up with headaches (my favorite) will become a thing of the past. Or efforts to find a new home for Harry the cat may become much more in earnest.

What's funny?

    I was showing a real estate guy my Dad's house, which is in somewhat rundown condition after 50 years almost of our benign neglect. He asked what we were looking for? I suggested that we wouldn't say no if somebody offered a million dollars. He laughed heartily and I put on my straight man face and said, "What's funny?"
    And that was funny, but I wasn't in every way kidding. Not that I had any illusions about the house being worth more than it is (my illusion was that it was worth less than it is) but more a question of replacement value. Owning a house outright is quite a thing. Buying another is a tremendous undertaking. It's probably worth more to us to keep the house, have William able to stay rather than go out and get an apartment, and also for us not to have to get all our stuff out of there.
    For all that each of us would get a nice pile of money from selling, that amount would be nowhere near enough to allow any of us to buy another house. A nice car, yes, but not a house. So crazy as it might be to keep a run-down house 50 years too long, it may be crazier still to sell it. Ironic, I suppose.

OK, maybe I'm a little dense

    I have, I believe, blithered in the past about my wish to get a copy of the British edition of the first Harry Potter book, on the grounds that the American edition has been Americanized (Mum = Mom, public school = private school) and it makes me crazy. After the first one became a hit, Rowling got the traditional "nobody changes a word" clause in her contract, so all the other volumes are fine. But I want the first one in proper British English.
    I've been looking for years and found British editions of #2 and #4, not that it makes much of a difference. Anyway, I thought they were from Britain. #4 proves to be from Canada. Now I've been to Britain and I've been to Canada, so it shouldn't be a surprise that Canada would use the British covers and formats. I guess I just assumed that Scholastic Books owned all of North America by now.
    Dumber than that, though, is how bad a job I did looking. I searched Amazon and it appeared that to get "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (different title outside the US), I would have to order from UK Amazon and pay in English pounds. This is silly and I have no idea how I jumped to this conclusion. Anyway, searching apart from Amazon shows that I could get damn thing through Abe Books for about $3, no shipping charge. What a storm in a teacup that was! Wait, do Canadians say "Mum" or "Mom"?

Golden age

    Continuing on the theme of reruns, Casey Kasem's rebroadcast this past Saturday morning was from this weekend, forty years ago, of if you prefer, March 22, 1975. For a change, I was able to listen to the entire show and I was awed. Here ya go: AT 40 forty years ago There was the usual array of stuff that I thought was from years earlier or from years earlier, but what really got me was how much really great music was on there. OK, sure, the Bertha Butt Boogie was on there, too, but still!
    It occurred to me though that 1975 certainly should have been a golden age. Leaving aside the fact that I was 13 at the time, certainly impressionable and that it should have seemed to be a golden age to me then and in memory, the point is more that I, as a representative of the tail end of the postwar baby boom was 13 and the oldest members of that group were not yet 30. Marketers today fantasize about having a group of 13-29 year old consumers to sell to. As such, the best-selling singles of any given week were pretty likely to be, maybe not Bach cantatas exactly, but not Robin Thicke either. And if you don't think so, shame shame shame shame shame shame shame shame on you/ if you can't dance too!

Art Bell reruns

    When the world was a slightly younger place and there was no cable TV and only three or four channels, we all hated reruns. More recently, I remember a big advertising campaign to the effect that, "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" Basically, that network was bragging that nobody watches broadcast TV anymore. It was probably a better approach than, "You didn't want to watch it the first time, but maybe you'll want to watch it the second time!" Or not.
    The reruns that dominate my life are all from radio. I'm a huge fan of old-time radio. For the purposes of this post, I'd better specify that this term refers to shows from the '30s, '40s and '50s, the Golden Age of radio. But I also listen on weekends to rebroadcasts of Casey Kasem's American Top 40 ('70s on Saturday, '80s on Sunday) and of Art Bell's old overnight shows, rebroadcast fortunately earlier in the evening, Saturdays.
    I'm finally about to give up on the latter. I have no idea who is picking the shows to rebroadcast or why. I can only assume that it's somebody who isn't interested in making money or ratings and who hates Art Bell. Art had a show where anybody could call in and tell him about the spaceships they've seen, the space aliens they've met, or the monsters they've caught and are keeping in the basement. (Well, it may have been the refrigerator.) Tips on what hell is really like, remote viewing of Jesus (I'm still not making any of this up), just crazy, crazy stuff. And virtually none of this ever makes the rebroadcasts.
    Instead you get endless political discussion of issues from 20-odd years ago, including many viewpoints that Art later repudiated. Last night was a new low: hours of discussion of a UPS strike from 1997. I mean, MAN! What could be more fascinating in 2015? ANYTHING!
    The other favorite kind of show to rebroadcast is one of the ones where Art talks to a self-styled prophet, all of whose forecasts (except for stuff like "War in the Middle East") have long since been proven wrong. All this is very funny, of course, but still argues for selection on the basis of making Art look foolish. Where my damn space aliens? Where my damn screaming monster in the spare fridge? Or if you have to do fraudulent forecasts, why not run that great one about putting a gold capstone on the Great Pyramid which would turn it into a huge machine that would kick off a New Age for the new millennium?
    All this thought about the reruns in my life makes me feel like a "You kids get off my lawn!" type of oldster, but I'm not sure that that's fair. I don't think the old stuff is better or even as good as the entertainment of today. It's just that the great thing about the past is that there's so much of it! If I have a couple hundred episodes of the old-time radio show Escape and 3/4 of them are good, that's a lot of good entertainment there. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Mad Men and Breaking Bad (or whatever the show of the moment is) are absolutely brilliant. But A) I would have to track them down and I have my radio episodes already; and B) I bet they don't have Boris Karloff. So there!

Sad, sad, sad

    Margaret asked me if I could get Dad's voice off the phone for her so she could listen to it again because she misses him so badly. I don't see how his voice would be on her phone except at the end when he might have called her from the nursing home and left a message, and I'm not sure we want to remember him like that. Nor am I sure that I would be able to do anything with such a message assuming that I could find one. People always seem to be overestimating my technical skills. Nor does it seem any wise healthy. I'll certainly try, but I'm not optimistic about being able to help her. I hope she can start healing a bit. Maybe when the cemetery marker is in place some time next week it will help. I hope.

Whatever you do, don't take these!

    As I have blithered already, I take kelp tablets for the iodine with breakfast every morning. As I have also blithered, I get these from GNC, and recently have had reason to think that their dietary supplements are not what they are advertised to be (extensive news media coverage to this effect, for instance). So I went looking for another source. The only kelp tablets I could find at Whole Foods contained folic acid I think. And there was a warning on the bottle saying that this product contains ingredients known to cause cancer and should not be taken on an ongoing basis.
    I was like, so why are you selling them?! It's a supplement! The supposition is that I would be taking it on a daily basis; that's what supplements are for! Isn't it?
    Not surprisingly, I didn't buy these. I went to a locally owned natural foods store (my preference anyway). The only reason I hadn't gone there in the first place is that the previous search that led me to GNC showed that they sold supplements with significantly more than the RDA of iodine in each pill or capsule. This time out, though, they had some with only 2 1/2 times the RDA. That's more than I would prefer, but shouldn't be in any way dangerous. As I blithered long ago (this blog has been around 4 years and all), I'm slightly worried that the maximum RDA of iodine is only about 6 times the minimum RDA, and the stuff can kill ya. But I don't salt my food incredibly much. I'm reasonably sure I won't get in any trouble. You can bet that I read the entire label to make sure there weren't any "This stuff will give you cancer" type warnings. Just, you know, cyanide and stuff.

Closure, or its lack

    Something about distributing Dad's estate feels more like an ending than his death did. I guess because he was so concerned with providing for others his entire life, especially us. But it isn't like coming closer to what they call closure. It's more like another reopening of wounds. I guess that word closure just reflects our need to put a lot of words into as few as possible, preferably one. I suppose it more nearly means an end to the reopening of wounds, rather than a permanent healing, which never really happens. Or anyway it never happens to me.

Auto-generate faster!

    As I noted, I'm delighted by the new auto-generated YouTube videos that include a LOT of recordings that there weren't videos for before, including a lot of my obscure favorites as well as unobscure ones like Bob Dylan. However, there are still a bunch missing. For the life of me, I can't figure out the criteria for how these get produced. My first idea was that the records have to be still in print, but I've found some where I'm sure that they aren't and failed to find ones where I'm sure that they are (still in print). Of course my idea of still in print might be different from Google's and YouTube's; a lot of my heroes are bigger in Europe than here.
    I tried searching Google (they do own YouTube), but YouTube apparently auto-generates a lot of stuff, nearly all of which annoy somebody or other, so finding hits about their actual auto-generated videos (which after all haven't been around long) has proved impossible. All I can say is, you guys need to get on the stick with auto-generating a video for "Closer" by Steve Wynn. And I don't mean the butthole in Vegas!

Snakes, Jock!

    I went to Congaree National Park today for a walk, because I had to, man! It's 85 degrees today and will top out at 55 again by Thursday; I just had to! Parenthetically (see?) I was embarrassed that I forgot to carry water; hey, it's been winter for a while now. Anyway, the anecdote portion of our anecdote is pretty brief. There was a snake basking on the low boardwalk. I was tickled (and later the rangers were, too) that it was basking in the shade. Hey, I don't want to tell you your job, Mr. Snake, but wouldn't over there in the sun work better?
    I showed the picture to the rangers to verify that it was a brown water snake (it was) and an older lady described a snake that she and her husband had seen. She asked him to show us the picture he had taken and he did. Unfortunately, his camera couldn't blow up the picture on the screen at all. Neither the ranger nor I wanted to admit that we had no idea what in the picture was supposed to be a snake. Eventually, she decided that the little green stick in the middle must be a garter snake and I left them looking for a field guide to reptiles to verify. But that uncomfortable minute or so of, "What is this supposed to be a picture of?" was pretty funny.
    If anyone in this area code is reading this, the mosquito meter at the park is at All Clear. Also the rangers said that work on rebuilding the elevated boardwalk (after-- cough-- more than a year) will start at the end of the month. So yay all around!

It helps when they're sorry

    For the second time, I did a bit of sit-down standup comedy with a rep from an investment company about the difficulties and depth of the paperwork required to make a simple change in status and for the second time, the person played along. I think it's clear that they know perfectly well that all their procedures are a pain in the ass. It makes me feel better that they're willing to joke about it and that they seem to be sorry about it.
    In this case, though, somebody made a mistake. It may have been me, but I don't think so. I was told that I could just name myself plan manager. (Wait-- let me try it. I'm the plan manager! It worked! It worked! Naw, I guess not.) I pooted around for a month or so, and now find that I can't. I have to send the letter from the probate court naming me personal representative and a letter of instruction naming myself plan manager. And they have to have the embossed original, so I can't fax it. None of this is any major deal; just a minor pain in the butt. At least the nice lady said I don't really have to fill out the forms at midnight on Wednesday under a full moon while jumping on one foot with one hand on top of my head. So there's that. She DID say that I Love Lucy has to be on, however.

And then the never-ending crisis ended

    So now that I have all the liquid asset problems defeated, there's nothing left but real estate and probate. Of course, these problems will put all that went before in the shadow. But the thing is, and I've probably said it a hundred times, I'm relaxed about problems that are impossible. It's the difficult ones that throw me, that intimidate me, that freeze me. And I did all of those. Impossible? No problem!
    I'm fairly goofy about feeling done with the hard part. The chief problem of course is that I now want to go look at flowers or climb mountains, and I still can't. I actually have to do all the other stuff, no matter how convinced I may be that it'll all fall into place as soon as I wave my wand. Darn it! Should have gone to Hogwarts!
    Also my friend who is a wealth adviser delivered the bad news that I'm not actually rich, and I'll either have to continue living like a junkie or go get a job. It was not a major surprise, as I can count and everything, but still a mild disappointment. Still, being able to choose my opening and being able to live off part-time earnings sounds pretty cool. Of course, my plan A of writing a bestseller and recording a big hit single is still more appealing. Well, it's a more realistic plan than becoming a 53-year-old major league rookie! (That was plan B.)

Domestication

    With these kitties sleeping on either side of me, I was wondering if one reason we could domesticate cats has to do with the size differential. I'm not sure I'm up either for the math or the English, but what I was wondering more or less is whether we're about as much larger than an adult cat as the mother cat is to the kitten. I think it's pretty definite that the essence of domestication is pushing back the adult to childhood (feeding it as much as it wants to free it for a life of play and napping). So I guess what I'm wondering is whether the relative sizes involved make this easier, are just a coincidence, or if I'm talking out my butt again.
    It would make kind of a cool sci fi story, though, especially if cats were more like dogs. Giant, humungo, vastly advance aliens come and decide not to eradicate us because we're cute and let us follow them around as pets. Of course, the story doesn't have to reveal immediately that the pets are humans and the owners are aliens. Of course, it's probably been done a thousand times (like most things). Still might be fun, though.

The marker

    So it's been 8 weeks, and Dad's marker should be there by now. I'm waiting for a call back from the cemetery office people. (I was going to say, "I'm waiting for a call back from the cemetery," but that sounded more than a little creepy.) Obviously, I can just go over and look, and on a nicer day (tomorrow, for instance) I may. But today is too grey (heck, let's just make the whole thing rhyme) for feeling much like visiting a cemetery.
    I don't know why it seems like such a big deal, but it does. I know it's a big deal for Margaret, since she's had a potted lily for him since his birthday almost a month ago. I'll be happy to take her there to deliver it, and I'll be happy to bring my own flowers to put on the grave, too. I guess the big deal is that the marker creates a place, instead of just a stretch of empty ground. A marker, in other words, marks. And I know it will be great because we designed just what we wanted and I know there won't be any misspellings because they're very professional. I guess though that it is an extra measure of finality that's both sad and glorious. I'll try to focus on the latter.

Edit: She called back and while the marker has come in, they have some surveying and engineering to do to get it installed, so it might be another two weeks. She'll call me when it's in place.

Stamp 2000!

    I got my last two bank medallions today (I hope!) and will soon be able to forget again what a bank medallion is. One of the receiving companies insisted that it be a Stamp 2000 bank medallion. The lady from the bank wasn't sure if it was or wasn't, but later looked carefully and found that it was. My own sense was that the company can jerk me around but they can't exactly jerk my bank around, so either all banks use Stamp 2000 or they could just lump it. I just thought it was a funny name; it sounds so... formerly futuristic.
    I've been a very good boy this week and my things to do list has shrunk markedly. It's amazing what not being sick does for one. I fully admit that I've been in shock and in mourning all year, but mainly I've been coughing my head off, not really good for concentrated thought. If I can just avoid further lung infections for a few more days, progress should be noticeable, even dramatic. (Knock on wood!)
    Anyway, my checklist now has more checks that blank lines, which is something. This new John who actually perseveres sort of worries me. Did somebody kidnap me and replace me with a reasonable, but non-lazy facsimile? One truly wonders!

Edit: There's a Stamp 2000 display at Office Depot! Now all I gotta do is go out and open a bank!

AnybodyButYouTube

    My friends who are aspiring musicians are mad at YouTube because they say that independent artists can no longer post videos, but I haven't seen any evidence of this; independent cats seem to do just fine. But in honor of my angry friends, I coined the subject line above (or title I guess they call these), which tickles me to no end.
    The change in YouTube that I have noticed is one that thrills me perhaps even more endlessly (if that's possible). Every song that has ever been recorded, or anyway the ones that are still in print, has a video auto-generated by YouTube. Nothing fancy, or in other words, not an actual video; just a still of the record cover and of course ordering information. I can certainly live with the latter. I posted here long ago how annoyed I was that Sony wouldn't let Bob Dylan videos put up by fans stay up for more than minutes. I was thrilled finally to see, well, hear a video for the studio version of "Shelter From The Storm" after all these years. So color me thrilled with AnybodyButYouTube so far.

Walk faster

    And then you get a message from a Cayce cop delivered by another Cayce cop to "walk faster." I was walking on the Cayce Riverwalk, the new section with the name I can never remember, when I stopped to let a young Cayce policeman on an ATV pass. Instead he gestured to me, so I pulled out the earbuds and he said he had a message from the policeman who used to patrol there. It was, "Walk faster." He was perfectly affable, and I'm comfortable that it was a joke, but I totally don't get the setup. I've been walking there for a year and it's been patrolled for some of that time, but obviously I was also on an emotional roller coaster for most of that time and a lot of the time is a blank. Still, even without knowing why, I thought it was funny and thanked the young man. In case you're wondering what makes me recognizable to strangers, I'm one of the few people out there always wearing a hat.
    Also on the new Riverwalk sections, SCE&G has put numbers on each light pole. Some of them are in order, some of them are in order but skip a few and some of them are wildly out of order. It is a measure both of my autisticity and my recovery from it that I am both made crazy about the out of order ones and boundlessly amused that they make me crazy. I'm going out there and sticking on Post-its with better numbers later. Much, much later.
    Meanwhile, in the stuff I can't talk much about-- oh wait, I can't talk about that either. This blog would be so much more interesting if I could just be absolutely certain that nobody would read it! I guess I'll have to go buy a locking diary.

Pay your attorneys

    Since I finally have bank accounts both for the estate and for the trust (if you don't know the difference, just don't ask) and what's more, there's money in them (!), I could finally pay (as the radio guys say) some bills, including those from my lawyers. It was an oddly liberating experience. As peeved as I am to be paying for every single em effing email exchange, I feel a lot more in control. I would guess that this is simply because I AM paying these guys, and so feel less halting and more in charge. Either that or the space aliens' enfeeblement ray wore off. I mean, you never can tell.
    So I spent the morning knocking nearly everything off of my things to do list. While the enfeeblement ray has not switched on again, the WHERE THE HELL IS THAT FEDEX TRUCK?!!! ray certainly have, so I may hold off on making any further important phone calls to avoid answering every question with "WHAT?!!!" FedEx asserts that they have returned to normal service, but can't quite bring themselves to say when my package is coming, though it supposedly has been on the truck since 8 this morning. WHAT?!!! indeed.

Something-ament

    So a gazillion years ago, the major college in this town hired a New York Catholic basketball coach (Frank McGuire) who brought in a lot of New York Catholic players and brought USC a measure of basketball respectability for a few years. As I was a small person at the time, it made a big impression. All these New Yorkers pronounced the word "tournament" as if the first syllable was "tore." My mother, on the other hand, pronounced it is if referring to a mint tuna, as she is from Charleston, where talking funny is a legal requirement.
    All these years later, tournaments are all the talk at Downtown U. as the women's basketball team has at last brought us back to roundball respectability. And the broadcasters working for the school both also pronounce it the "tore" way, although I'm reasonably sure that they're both Midwestern, and am even surer that they aren't New Yorkers. It's beyond me; wouldn't it be more normal to pronounce this word just like the word "tour"? I wonder if the domination of basketball by the New Yorkese in the '50s and '60s just led to all hoop peoples pronouncing that word that way. I think we need a revolution! My mom was right all along! Tuna mint for all!:)

Oh all right!

    I really really was much more productive last week than I had been previously, plus I have the excuse that a couple of new things came up to, uh, give me an excuse to be less productive than I might have been. Still, I spent the majority of my time not doing what I ought to do. Without indulging in a further exercise of whys and wherefores, my actions suggest that I'm looking on all these tasks as an imposition and begrudgingly making time for them in my busy schedule of doing practically nothing.
    However, since I can't get this job off my back without, you know, doing it, it makes most sense just to take it on as if it were, in fact, my job. And anyway, the stuff needs to get done. So (boy, this is hardly worthy of the drum roll), I'm turning the radio off. I spend all my mornings listening to local sports talk radio and the Dan Patrick Show. I tend to try to fit grownup tasks in during commercial breaks. This, clearly, is insane. So I'll take a radio vacation, and get on with things. Or read more. But I'll hope for the former.

Dear USAA

    It's probably childish, like every other aspect of my personality, but I really hate leading off letters with Dear Sir, Dear Sir or Madame or pretty much anything conventional. During the course of this marathon of business communication, I have tried out Mesdames/Messieurs, My dear friends and I think, Hey Dumbbutts! (All right, I didn't really.) When I was talking to a representative from USAA and she was telling me what I needed to put in a letter of instruction, she led off, just as a for instance, I think, with Dear USAA. "That makes sense!" I thought, and that's what I used. Other companies, of course, don't have the courtesy to make their name so short, so I probably won't be able to use that trick again, but I was well-pleased to be able to use it once. In future, I expect I'll go with Dear Friends and hope that I don't confuse any Quakers.
    The President is in town today, so travel is a little iffy. I actually ran three errands successfully (including a business meeting in an Arby's parking lot; I swear I wasn't buying smack) without hitting motorcade gridlock. I think I'm ready to call that a win and stay in until the evening. The weather is chilly and was highly overcast this morning but has been gloriously beautiful this afternoon since his plane touched down. Thanks, Obama!
    One of the errands was to pay the light bill in Dad's house using the estate's checking account; another was to pay the proceeds of the Arby's meeting (selling timber from what was once my grandfather's farmland) into the same account. There I found that there was still a hold on my previous deposit and the light bill check wasn't going to clear. I grovelled properly and the manager removed the hold, fortunately. I was REALLY glad I had run that errand, especially since I had chosen not to have overdraft protection. Probably a mistake, on retrospect.

Novel weather complaint

    No doubt you grownups have experienced this often, but it never even occurred to me that Federal Express could be held up by a winter storm. I am tickled that my package is in Memphis and the estimated delivery time still says forty minutes from now. I'll be so impressed! I think though that it's another case of failure to communicate; it should say something like "Estimated delivery time as of time of sending." Elsewhere there's something that seems to be saying that the revised time is two or three hours from now, although that isn't clearly phrased either. I'm not holding my breath.
    Here, the actual weather was fairly alarming for a few minutes, and we get another delightful cold snap. The delightful part is that it's actually a snap; just one day or less. And maybe then the Arctic is done with us.
    In general, I'm having bad delivery luck. Apparently, the postal service has forgotten about me, too. I put the flag up and two items for pick up in the mailbox yesterday morning, hours before our mail has ever arrived, and the flag is still up, and the items are still there. I saw a mail truck in the neighborhood this morning making deliveries, but he never got here. It's getting to time to figuring out to whom do I complain. Calling the postal service was no fun back before they started firing everybody; I can't imagine it now. Hope the mailman comes eventually and makes it unnecessary.
    Meanwhile, the guy who planted the trees on my Dad's farm property (formerly my grandfather's) called this morning to say that it was time to cull and wanted to pay me for it. Everybody wants to give me money these days! Too bad I don't get to keep it.

Problem? Solution!

    I don't want to admit this. I don't. The thing I was stressing out about and procrastinating about was not the difficulty or size of the task. It was ink. I had all these complicated forms that I had no idea how to fill out, true. But I also had a lot of very, very nice people whom I could call and ask how to fill them out. However, the forms have to be filled out in blue or black ink. My handwriting is iffy at the best of times, and my dictation skills are minimal. So I just couldn't figure out a solution.
    Do you know that they have these things called Post-its? They're just amazing! I wonder when somebody came up with them! Yes, yes, perhaps I'm being a tad sarcastic about my own dumbbuttedness, but still. Anyway, through the simple means of putting a Post-it everywhere I have a question, I solved the pen and ink problem forthwith. And progress is again being made. Now does anybody know when Dad's estate was created? Date of the will or date of death? I'm still a master at coming up with dumb questions though!

Do you have the key?

    Dreams last night were mainly the usual things like being in frustrating situations in a place vaguely like my dad's house, but then things got creepy. Well, odd or frustrating things. For some reason, there was a water cooler (or whatever those Deer Park water dispensers are called) in the bathroom; for some other reason, I was pleased by this. Then there was some business with a remote control. It had a battery, but then there was further wiring inside that needed to be connected. In other words, a problem that never happens with a device that I barely use in real life.
    Then the doorbell rang. The person at the door was facing away from me. He or she had very long hair and was in a witch's outfit, more or less. Turning towards me slowly, he or she said, "Do you have the key?" He or she had enough hair that features did not identify as male or female, nor was the voice much help. In the light of day, I don't guess it sounds very creepy, but it was a bit to my sleeping mind. I think I'll just sleep all night in my comfy chair. I never seem to have any dreams there. Only problem is that the cats think that there's only room for one of them. (There's plenty of room for two, but they don't get along so well.)

Blip

    If I'm going to complain about the bad weather, I guess I can brag about the good weather. Today was a blip in the midst of the odd non-South-Carolina-like winter weather. It got over 70 today and was mostly lovely. Tomorrow, I am assured that it will revert to being cold and rainy again.
    I'm fully aware that within a week or so I'll be complaining about the heat. Or at least the "Ah! This again" phenomenon of today, where the apartment is cold, the car is hot, and outside is nice. Maybe I'll just go sleep in the park!
    In general, everything is great again, except that I'm still totally intimidated by the forms I have to fill out to separate money from investment companies. Mostly I just don't want to make a mistake, particularly when they ask me about accounting methods. I'm thinking of just putting, "The one that leaves me with the most money, what do you think?" Hey, maybe it will work!

Do you even read these things?

    Speaking of Dick Francis (and we were, weren't we?): he had only one series character. I learned from his autobiography that even that one was somewhat accidental. The first Sid Halley novel was made into a movie for British TV, which was very popular and increased Mr. Francis' sales more than somewhat. So then he wrote another one, and later a couple more.
    The problem was that the first one had a more or less happy ending in which Sid took over the detective agency he was working for, making it the Radnor-Halley Agency. Wait, that's not the problem, or it was just one for Mr. Francis. To start another novel, it was necessary to get Sid loose again; otherwise, he would just be sitting in an office sending other detectives out. And the PROBLEM is that Francis had written ten or more novels in between, in at least two of which the prestige of the Radnor-Halley Agency is mentioned. Unfortunately, in the second Halley novel, it isn't implied but outright said that before the Radnor-Halley Agency ever got started, an unexpected heir turned up and wrested Radnor's away from Sid. Oops! Oh well; I guess I'm the only one reading his back catalogue anyway. Still funny though.
    I seem to be bucking up a little bit, and feeling better and healthier every day. It may be safe to take me out in public any day now!