"What was funny?"

    Paul and I were at the Goodwill on St. Andrews Road, but I was wandering about by myself. We noticed on the drive over some unbelievably threatening looking clouds and shortly after we got in the car, they let loose like crazy. This sometimes can lead to a good deal of crazy in otherwise somewhat stable people. Anyway, that's my excuse.
    I was looking at the artworks when I saw a whiteboard with the words "Safety tip" at the top and a cartoon of a gopher in a toolbelt to the right. I just fell over. A couple of ladies nearby each asked me what was so funny. To tell the truth, I just think it's inherently funny. Heck, the gopher in a toolbelt is inherently funny. I did tell them what I was thinking, which was that I wanted to get a Sharpie and write, "NEVER give a toolbelt to a gopher!" (i.e., as a safety tip). I don't think they believed me; I bet they still want to hear what the REALLY funny thing I was thinking was!
    I later learned that the gopher is a member of the Wonder Pets, apparently big with the preschool set. I am assured that I can hate someone forever just by following his suggestion that I look up and listen to the Wonder Pet theme, but I couldn't handle that much responsibility. Maybe a Wikipedia hunt is in order, though.

"This would help!"

    My total at Aldi was $10.29. I was counting out the four pennies and handing over the quarter when I realized that I was still holding the ten in my left hand. "This would help!" I said, handing it over. Now THAT isn't senile dementia. Decades ago, whatever it was, if it went into my left hand, it disappeared. I have literally looked all over for objects I was holding (one at a time, mind you) in my left hand. It's when the stuff in my right hand goes out of sight and out of mind that I will be worried. Anyway, the checker was amused.

The perils of virtuosity

    Virtuosity may or may not have been a word as of this morning, but it is now. Floyd Cramer was a piano player, most prominent in the '50s and '60s, a father of the Nashville Sound and generally considered to be a virtuoso. I had heard of him and saw one of his Best of records at a thrift store for a dollar and decided to take the plunge. (The fact that I had him confused with Les Paul had nothing to do with this decision.) The tunes were selected (oh sorry, it's 2015; the record was curated) by Paul Williams, a fellow who took a lot of unfortunate acting gigs in the '70s, but who also wrote Evergreen and Out In The Country, so no bozo.
    Still, maybe another curator might have been better. This is a pretty bad record. Or it sounds that way now. Floyd originated (I think) a lot of the little figures and effects that became popular and then run into the ground in Nashville later. Think Charlie Rich. In fact, listening to the record and since then, I can't stop thinking about Charlie Rich. Those little piano figures probably weren't twee when Floyd did them. Hell, they probably weren't twee when Charlie did them on Behind Closed Doors. It was more a problem with it getting played a few million times. One grows tired.
    Anyway, if you ever come across a rockin' Floyd Cramer record, send it my way. I did like his Flip Flop and Bop. (Paul Williams did pick one good one! Oh wait, to be fair to Paul, he was the producer of the compilation. Somebody else curated. Sorry about that, Mr. Williams!) But if you come across The Essential Floyd Cramer, unless you like Muzak, pass on by. Flip Flop and Bop is one of only two cuts on the record recorded during the '50s. That's it; I'm a '50s Cramer aficionado!

Post quick!

    Ow! This morning, I was perusing Facebook, minding my own business, when Firefox announced that a new update was ready and downloaded and did I want to install it? Innocently, I chose yes, and have been away the rest of the morning. Instead of restarting like it usually does, Firefox just vanished. It was gone from the computer. I tried a System Restore, then two more but it stayed gone. The last one though was so far back that Avast wanted to be updated and wanted the computer restarted first. With that, I at least had my Firefox shortcuts back... but they still didn't work.
    This not being my first rodeo, I searched the computer very thoroughly and found a Firefox download from two years (and 16 versions) ago. Then I downloaded the update and disabled Avast to be on the safe side. This time worked. So I'm back again. Miss me?
    Side item (NOW): to complain to Mozilla, I had to set up a Help account at their website. To post my question, I had to give them my email and then confirm it. To do that, I needed Firefox. Hey, didn't that work great? So lucky I could figure a solution for myself!

Your pals AT&T

    When Dad was still living, I went to the power company (SC E&G) and tried to change his billing address such that bills would come to me. They made it sound like such a living hell that I just said bump this, and to this day pick up the bill at Margaret's. It made me a little jaded towards utilities.
    Today I set out to change his landline's billing address, since William apparently is still using it. I went to the AT&T office building where I would pay my bills back during the previous millennium, but they aren't too customer-friendly anymore. In short, it's a fortress. I found that there are AT&T stores all over, though they're mainly for wireless. However, it was the only possibility that I could see so I tried one.
    Boy do I feel like a doof! AT&T doesn't care if you're living, dead or undead so long as you pay. I was expecting to have to show the will, the death certificate, my appointment as whatever I'm appointed as, etc. The guy just got on the phone and talked to the billing people and changed the address. Meaning that I could have done the same. But hell, how was I to know? It was pretty fun to tell the truth. It was also funny that I couldn't actually pay the bill there. Anyway, not with a check. I felt so darned twentieth century again!

New old-time radio

    So I lucked (if that's the word) into a collection of radio plays from mid-'80s Canada. I asked my old-time radio group on Facebook what they thought and they waxed enthusiastic. It was a dollar for 6 cassettes with 12 half-hour shows, so not bank breaking.
    The show is called "Vanishing Point." As one might guess from the title, they were trying for a "Twilight Zone" vibe. They didn't get there. Oh nononononononononono. I've noticed as the decades pass that few movies or tv shows that I see feature what one would call a sympathetic character. This apparently was the start of that trend. "When Bad Things Happen To Uninteresting People" might have been a better title. It's just unpleasant and largely pointless. I mean, apart from the bad writing and the bad acting, the show is fine. It's amazing how quickly the skill of writing for radio went away.
    Part of the problem I would guess is Canadian actors trying not to sound Canadian. So while they didn't go oot or aboot nor do they end every sentence with eh, they pretty much drain all affect from their speech, too, which makes it sound like a zombie party. Granted, I've also heard a lot of bad old-time radio shows. (Understanding that 30 years ago is pretty old-time, too, nevertheless "old-time radio" mostly refers to the period ending about 1960.) But they at least were over the top and accidentally funny. This was just stinkburger city. Any "Vanishing Point" fans out there, I definitely have some tapes for you.

Further non-plagiarism, this time about plagiarism

    I read through John D. MacDonald's "No Deadly Drug" about the Carl Coppolino case. I was surprised that it ended with his acquittal in New Jersey. Since I didn't look up the history until after I finished, I was even more surprised that he was then convicted in Florida. (F. Lee Bailey had considered the New Jersey case the tougher one. But the dingbat wouldn't testify in his own defense in the second trial and got 12 1/2 years in Raiford to think about that mistake.) Of course in 1968 when the book came out, this had been all over the headlines only a year or so before so any reader would have known how the case turned out. It was kind of neat not knowing, really, as was this, a commentary on network TV news of the mid-'60s:
    p. 649: "One evidence of how inadequately the television news programs prepare themselves for this kind of news is their willingness to move in, with lights and camera, when a principal in one of these trial dramas is being interviewed by the press. As the TV-men do not know what questions should be asked, and the newspaper people do, they let the newspaper people ask the questions, and in that sense they hitchhike on the interview and, more often than not, are on the air before the newspapers containing the interview hit the streets.
    "As the pictures and the sound are both going onto the film strip, it becomes a curious kind of plagiarism. Today one does not see anywhere near as much of this on network time as was possible a year or so ago. The reason is that the hard-nosed newspaper people, realizing that they were being unfairly used by another media (sic) in competition with theirs, came up with a curiously effective defense.
    "They merely began to salt their questions here and there with a few earthy expressions, of Anglo-Saxon derivation, unsuitable for television broadcast. 'Mr. Bailey, is Dr. Sheppard -------ed off at the treatment he got in the papers this time?' 'What the ------ does Dr. Sam plan to do now that it's all over?' 'Is he going to sue the Cleveland papers, or doesn't he give a --------?'
    "The roars of indignation from the television crew have been ample proof of the effectiveness of the device. Of late the television people have had to conduct their own interviews, and find out in advance what questions to ask."

    See? You don't get that in "Mad Men"!:)

NO one will be surprised

    No one will be much surprised that I was mistaken when I wrote earlier about getting good customer service from Time Warner Cable. I won't retract the most important part, that I got friendly, attentive service from my representative. However, she didn't quite get the point that I needed the bill to be mailed to me. Therefore, and here's a shocker, it wasn't. I went by today and used their magic bill-paying machine to bring the account current. If I'd really been on the ball, I would have used it to change my mailing address, too. If this keeps up, pretty soon it'll be a good thing that I don't care much about my credit record.

Didn't much mind being the butt of the joke...

    Paul and I were at a Goodwill. He was checking out and I was standing outside waiting for him. Three young bucks came up, and one of them did a little basketball-type fake out move in front of me, the kind of thing you do to ridicule an old guy. Being an old guy, I didn't mind per se. All that pissed me off was that I couldn't think of anything funny to say to turn it back on him. You don't expect people to be assholes for no reason in public situations in broad daylight no matter how young they might be. "You kids get off my lawn!" wouldn't have been very funny, but it would have fit. "Great. You can fake out a 53-year-old" probably would have been much better. Of course, I'd just as well not have to come up against any similar situations. Anyway, I get points for not trying to punch his lights out.

"I don't think it's gluten-free anyway."

    Aldi has a new thing. The staff have little walkie-talkies, or maybe dedicated cell phones, so the ones at the cash register can talk to the ones in back without shouting. Today the checker who wasn't ringing me up needed a question answered and so asked the one who was ringing me up and he asked on his walkie-talkie. (Either she doesn't rate or he won the walkie-talkie coin flip today.) He asked it and started ringing me up and put the walkie-talkie in the cart for me to put in my bag instead of my groceries. We were both tickled and he corrected himself before I made any move to take it or not. When I had paid and packed up he apologized for the mistake. Since most of my items were gluten-free, I just said, "I don't think it's gluten-free anyway." Was funny at the time.

It isn't plagiarism if I give credit!

    In the mid-'60s, a fellow named Carl Coppolino may or may not have murdered his lover's husband and his own wife. He engaged the then-young but already famous F. Lee Bailey as his attorney and therein, I suppose, lies a tale. The very great John D. MacDonald decided to write a book about the two trials, one of which was in his backyard, Sarasota Florida. The book is called "No Deadly Drug." It is not a favorite among MacDonald fans. It would be too strong to say that it's boring; it would be too generous to say that it's fascinating. It is microscopically detailed; the parts that are a fan letter to Mr. Bailey, which is to say most of it, are quite good. Thus if you're a fan of John D. MacDonald but hate F. Lee Bailey, this will be your eternal reading assignment in Hell. However, it has its moments, and to save my attorney friend Terry any temptation ever to read it, I'll present them here (since I've run out of bookmarks):
    pp. 168-9 (The Florida prosecutor also isn't a fan of F. Lee Bailey. One of the great put-downs ever.)
    "I sincerely regret that Lee Bailey has felt it necessary to make a personal attack upon me in the press. My own feelings toward him tend more toward pity than resentment. I accordingly told the reporter Mr. Bailey had delivered his statements to that I did not choose to conduct a running argument with him in the press. I advised the reporter that not only would I not comment upon his statements but in addition do not care to hear them.
    "However, having had my own share of disappointments in the practice of law, I feel that some comment is needed and I certainly hope Mr. Bailey will accept it for the reasons it is given.
    "I have great concern for any young attorney who, as Mr. Bailey has done, advises the court that he doesn't have to read law because he makes the law. I readily appreciate the desperation he presently feels, and I recognize that his inexperience has not enabled him to cope with the frustration he obviously feels he has encountered here.
    Quite frankly I was very impressed at the beginning of the preliminary hearing Monday with the potential Mr. Bailey demonstrated. I felt his comportment, demeanor and fine delivery were the equal of those demonstrated by Bill Strode and many of the other better Sarasota trial lawyers when they also were relying upon a background limited to six years of legal experience.
    "I, therefore, was very disappointed to find that, unlike so many of Sarasota's better trial lawyers, Mr. Bailey has not learned to "roll with the punch".
    "While in his inexperienced exasperation he may have thought a personal attack on me to be based on sound trial tactics, I want to assure him that I do not subscribe to such practices. I really believe Mr. Bailey is motivated by what he believes to be the best interests of his client rather than in accumulating personal publicity.
    "I, therefore, anticipate that after he has been thoroughly indoctrinated into the intricacies of trial practice by such an experienced prosecutor as Vincent Keuper in New Jersey, he will be a much wiser young man when he returns here for trial on Nov. 7.
    "I am confident he will be taught in New jersey to argue his case in the courtroom rather than in the press."
    pp. 251-2 (The Florida prosecutor Schaub from the above note meets the New Jersey judge.)
    "'Mr. Schaub,' said the judge, 'I will advise you that you are under the jurisdiction of this court when subpoenaed. I will remind you that your official position places you in the role of amicus curiae (friend of the court). I will inform you that we are not operating a travel agency here. Nor are we concerned about the travel expenses of persons not subpoenaed by the State of New Jersey. I wish you luck in your travel arrangements and the reimbursement of the expense thereof. But I will tell you that the subpoena is binding upon you. We expect you here when needed, Mr. Schaub.'
    "'Yes, Your Honor,' said Frank Schaub and backed away and sat down. The judge asked the bailiff to bring in the next venireman.
    "During that short wait, a reporter saw Lee Bailey write something on a corner of a sheet of a yellow legal pad, tear it off and reach back and put the note on Keuper's table. He saw Mr. Keuper read it and put it into a pocket. At his first opportunity the reporter accosted Mr. Keuper in the corridor and said, 'Can you tell me what was on that note Lee Bailey handed back to you?'
    "Mr. Kuiper was wary. He glanced in both directions and said, 'Not for a newspaper story, you understand.'
    "'Of course.'
    "F. Lee Bailey had written, 'I will pay your expenses to Florida and give you half my fee if you will let Frank Schaub try your case.'
    "Keuper grinned and said, 'I asked him and he promised me he'd sign his name to it after the trial is over.'"
    pp. 345-6 (Fan letterest)
    "On the evening of October 19, 1966, a Wednesday evening, the day before the bail hearing in the Monmouth County Court House, F. Lee Bailey explained one of the reasons for his success...
    "'By the time I am called onto a case, I'm way behind. The prosecution has had months to put their case together, conduct investigations, take affidavits from witnesses.
    "'They keep working and I start working. But they work the kind of day they're used to. Say they work a forty-hour week at their trade. How much of that is actual work? Three hours a day? Four? So I am working a twenty-hour day and I am driving my people to their maximum effort.
    "'By the time we get up to the point of a hearing, I am still behind, but by not as much. I have closed some of the gap. Then somewhere between the hearing and the trial, I pass them, and I then know more about the facts of the case and the law than they do. And I keep working at the same pressure, widening the lead.
    "'Then we come into court, and instead of their handing me a lot of ugly surprises, I have a few for them. They find out they should have asked a few more questions of their witnesses. They find there are some precedents under the law they didn't happen to locate. This business isn't a lot of spellbinding. The biggest part of it is hard work. And the only thing that counts is the evidence, and the defense lawyer had better know it cold before he walks in, or he isn't going to do a job for his client.'"
    And THOSE were the interesting parts!

You'd think I'd remember

    Or anyway I would. Today's dream actually got me up and out of bed before 6 am, much to the joy of the emergency backup kitty, who felt he'd been starved by not having an absolutely full food bowl all night. I would think it would be a particularly awful nightmare, or at least that I needed particularly to go to the bathroom. But no, and no. Near as I could figure, it was old-time-radio finally impinging enough for it to seem strange to my sleeping brain. I was in the usual sort of place, in that it was architecturally impossible, if in a different way than usual. This one had unending arrays of doors and corridors, and I was trying to get back to where I had been sleeping. When I got back to my own corridor, I found my pillows and blankets and stuff were missing. I was pretty mad and knocked on a door from where I heard voices. I asked a young woman there about my stuff and she said that the woman singing had taken them and I could ask her about it when she came off stage. Frances Langford was singing on a Command Performance from WWII in real life and in the dream. "Huh," my brain said and the next I knew I was awake. Not very horrifying, but darned odd. I'll try to come up with something more creative the next time it isn't a hundred degrees.

Free stuff

    Years ago, I turned up at my dentist and instead of my regular hygienist, I got the remedial one. There seemed to be a general impression that I wasn't doing right by my gums and if I didn't get in line, I would be getting dentures. She scared the bejeezus out of me properly and I've done much much better ever since. She was really pushing a line of toothpicks hard. They're called StumuDent; they worked fine and when they were gone I went to buy more. They turned out to be from China, which is not where I normally want things going in my mouth to come from. I bought toothpicks from the USA and have continued to do so.
    Last month, I got the same hygienist, although I got a lot more chatting than lecturing this time. (Lecturing was about my terrible brushing technique, but I'm not sure that eye-hand coordination can be taught at this late age.) She again pushed StimuDent and I told her they were from China. She was shocked! Looking it up on Amazon, a lot of people there are shocked, too. I just found it odd that somebody recommending these to every patient would never have gone to a store to find out about the actual product. I guess it's the danger of getting free stuff. She's not such a fan of putting stuff from China in her mouth either.

Mandatory distribution

    Last December, when things were very much going to h-e-double-toothpicks in a handbasket, Dad was sent a check from his Keogh. I just assumed it was junk mail and didn't notice there was a check in there until more than six months later, by which time it was no longer valid. The cover letter says that he had sold some number of shares for this amount of money. By that time, Dad was in, "Is this Thursday? Is this Thursday? Is this Thursday?" mode, so I am confident that he didn't sell any shares of anything and that this is just their form letter for a mandatory distribution check.
    Fast forward to now. One of the giant big fun things my siblings and I had to do amidst the blizzard of paperwork to distribute the Keogh was with regard to the mandatory distribution. But of course it was a different dollar amount than the check from last December. When I did notice that there was a check in the envelope, I called and asked if they could reissue it, but was told that they had to have the entire blizzard of paperwork before they could even talk to me about it. Since the figure is larger than last December's, I assume that in includes the amount from the check. And I will be calling to confirm this. If so, that would be nice, since if I had actually deposited the check last December, I would have inherited it in toto, which is hardly fair. It's nice to share.
    Last night's dreams were of course weird and bizarre. First, it was really, really, really, really important to replace a pair of pants that had become too tight with ones of the same size. Now in real life, I've already had years and years of the slowly growing waist, followed by maintaining a stable smaller size during the entire gluten-free period. If it all starts again, I'm confident I'll be able to cope. Or, you know, go back on the smack.
    Then there was the usual thing where I had another apartment in another city that I had totally forgotten about. This time it was Charleston, very convenient to a completely imaginary terrible college. I wanted to move there; I still do. There was the usual business about an incredibly inconvenient mailbox (this one more or less in the middle of the sidewalk) with the added interest of some kind of girlfriend person not interested in moving to Charleston, making her more or less unique in the history of the world. I don't think there was any resolution.

In the revolution, my job will be to help the kitties

    I dreamed last night that I was in a very bloodless (or anyway all the blood was offscreen) revolution in Iraq. I was imprisoned in a suite of three rooms like interconnected classrooms, with two other people who were also totally offscreen and three kitties, one of whom was Amelia. The people imprisoning us eventually took the cats, which upset me more than any revolution. I banged on the door and practically everybody outside had gone except for two people, one of whom was a lady with a machine gun. I asked if we could go since everyone else had left anyway and mentioned the missing cats. She gestured that we could and suggested that the cats had gone to kitty heaven. I was major pissed and wanted to avenge the cats, but that was the end of the dream.
    Now in real life, the iPod was playing the Mercury Theater's adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. Orson Welles as Sydney Carton was about to say that it was a far, far better thing that he did. So I'm glad the weird dream woke me. I hope that my priorities in conscious life are with the people; it's clear that my subconscious is all about the kitties!

What Fresh Hell Is This? Department

    So as mentioned, I finally sent the paperwork to Fidelity so that I can take over as plan administrator of Dad's Keogh, distribute it to five new funds for us five siblings, and then get the money. This required four gigantic forms to be filled out, practically none of which was self-evident. Actually, it was three with one done twice, once for the required distribution, once for the balance. This was pretty insane, but what's really insane is that the sibs then have to fill out exactly the same forms. So being fairly nice, I made copies of mine as guidelines (I hope!) and sent them along, together with the name and extension number of the very nice lady at Fidelity who finally explained how to do all this.
    If this were for some vast sum of money, I'd be a lot more understanding. Mind you, 8 months or so worth of rent is not an inconsiderable amount of money, but nor is it Learjet territory. I really think that the copy of the letters testamentary (or equivalent), proof that somebody like a banker had seen my ID and a nice short letter stating my intentions should have been sufficient. When it's time to invest, I'll remember it-- and Fidelity will be about the last company I trust any money with.

Dull nightmares crack me up

    My friend Walt and I were driving across the country from west to east to meet somebody somewhere on the east coast. For some reason, we took a side trip to the famous lake district of Kansas. (Hey, it was a dream!) For some other reason, we were using two cars. Mine was my car from real life. Walt was in a very randomly furnished waiting area, apparently trying to get his car repaired. I was hungry and getting annoyed about the wait since we still had my car and suggested that we go back to Omaha and get steaks. And Walt said that we might not be able to get there, that Omaha might be in the hands of FEMA. I think I said, "What is this?" and we together said, "The Apocalypse!" Lesson: Stay out of the Kansas lake district.
    In a later dream, I met a beautiful woman who said it was a shame I was such a clown, that she was looking for someone who was devoted to lifelong learning. She was gone before I could say, "That, too!"

Dark skies

    Or rather, lack of dark skies. The thing about having cats is that they are likely to wake you in the night at least once. The thing about being really really old is that one's bladder is likely to do same. So I was pretty confident that I would probably be awake during the dark hours and be able to choose whether to go out Perseid hunting before the peak ended this morning.
    I wasn't expecting it to be a hairball. However, as delightful as that isn't, the cleaning up process meant that I was well and truly awake, with lights on, at 5 in the a.m. I took this as a sign, though from what low or high deity I couldn't say. Thus I gave the meteor shower a try. In the interest of substituting irony for suspense, the only meteor(-ite, -oid, whatever) I saw was just down the block from my door, surrounded by house lights and street lights. Considering that I could only see a couple non shooting stars, not surprisingly I didn't see it well. I went out Bluff Road on a friend's suggestion, but couldn't find anywhere darker. Thus I went down I77 to 12th Street Extension and headed south. This turns out to be where the Amazon Fulfillment Center is. I wish I could say that it is a palace with streets paved with gold, but this might be an exaggeration. Still, it was kind of neat to see, and I hope that the Amazon is eventually filled there.
    I did find some darker skies between industrial properties and headlights, but alas, the northeast section of the sky where I was supposed to be looking was covered with clouds and getting more so. Mere hours later there were no clouds in the sky, but when it counted, there they were just where I needed them the least. So what I mainly learned is that I77 is crazy busy before 6 in the morning and I too live in a City That Never Sleeps. We don't tell anybody about it, though.

Drinking Liberally goes on

Drinking Liberally goes on
    So I went to the Young Democrats' version of Drinking Liberally, which is WAY more successful than mine and was suitably impressed (and said so!) And I explained why they couldn't call themselves Drinking Liberally, which they understood perfectly (and agreed to change the name), and I passed along the info about actual DL. Nobody really wanted to take over for me as host for official DL since they wanted to continue proselytizing (which is harder to spell than I would have thought) for the One True Party. So I will be carrying on as host for DL, but maybe I'll have some nice young Democrats turn out.
    Here's a major silly silly. A store called Ollie's Discount Outlet (like Big Lots, but goofier) sent around a circular saying they had $60 quadcopters. I went and looked and saw nothing, then looked at the circular and found that the items weren't supposed to be in the store until Thursday. So today I went and looked again and still found nothing. Crazy thing is that I don't even want the darn thing. The picture looks like a copy of the quad I already have and OK if that were the case, I would probably go for it. But Internet searching suggests that it's actually a useless styrofoam drone that breaks upon each landing. If this is the case, I just want to see it to giggle and point. Which, come to think of it, is why I generally go to Ollie's anyway. They have some wacky items. Today's top selection was a purple shag steering wheel cover, which I NEED!

Banana spiders!

    Life can be confusing. The term "banana spiders" usually refers to big scary spiders, often tarantulas, that hang out in banana bunches on plantations and sometimes hitch rides here with the bananas, scaring the bejeezus out of all concerned. However, around here, it's more likely to refer to the golden silk orb-weaver, a crazy big (but not tarantula big) spider which kind of sort of looks like a banana. Today, I walked in Canal Park, more formally known as Columbia Canal Riverfront Park. I was in the riverfront part. Back in the day, the park was just a linear path on the canal's old towpath, but nowadays they've paved the old fishermen's trails and there's a very nice, long, shady stroll near the river. It's considerably lower than the canal, but the banks seem to be holding so far. And I saw a half dozen to a dozen golden silk orb-weavers, all with the wisdom and grace to have their webs considerably above head height. I got many pictures; Facebook results suggest that very few are as thrilled about this as I am. But boy am I!

Everything great except the food

    Boy was I ready to write a great, enthusiastic review! My celiac group went to Red Robin last night. It's a joint I would go to sometimes when I wanted a great burger because they would serve them protein-style, which is to say, wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun. But it isn't conveniently located so I haven't been there in ages.
    Last night, we had failed to make a reservation, so they weren't ready for us, but they made accommodations pretty quickly. Back in, as we say, the day, they had a printed gluten-free menu which they updated pretty regularly. (When I say "printed," I mean "on a printer." It looked a little slapdash, but one still appreciated the effort.) These days, they have an iPad. It was really great! You got to choose first which ingredients you want to avoid. This is how the other soy-avoider and me learned that we couldn't eat the French fries. This was disappointing, but way better than eating them and being sorry. So we got to order and everything was going great.
    Some time since back in the day, though, they forgot how to cook burgers. And as grateful as we were that they have gluten-free buns now, they didn't have much of an idea how to cook them either. Mine was just scorched, as was my burger which was very dry. My fellow soy-avoider couldn't even cut her bun with a knife. The steamed broccoli I got instead of the fries was great (and I was offered a refill just like they do with the fries, much to my amusement), but I didn't drive all the way across town for broccoli. So I think it's fair to say that I'll never, ever be back. This is a shame since they so nearly did a great job. Restauranting would be so easy if it wasn't for that darn food!

Hey, I remembered something!

    I was bored with hiking all the same places, so I wanted to go to Peachtree Rock Heritage Preserve. But I also felt pretty sure that the sweet pepperbush was blooming there. And it was! I could post a picture, but can't post the scent. You'll just have to find some sweet pepperbush blooming.
    Unfortunately, I had a less that perfect adventure. Only I could manage to injure myself climbing down from a four-foot high (at most) ledge. I failed to stick the landing, slipping and landing on (and bruising) my butt. The Russian judge gave me a 4 and still hasn't stopped laughing. No such injury has proved fatal yet to the best of my knowledge, however.

Never trust your own blog

    I couldn't remember how I make my gluten-free peach cobbler muffins, so I referred back to my blog entry on them. And it was totally accurate... except where it wasn't. I said I should follow package directions on Aldi's GF yellow cake mix, and this does indeed lead to good results, for about one day. After that, the muffins get nasty fast. So next time, I'm cooking them way way longer than package directions, probably a half hour but maybe more. And I'll probably make them live in the freezer after that. Did you hear that me? Yellow cake mix, at least a half hour. Next time for sure!

Drinking Liberally

    The local Young Democrats are calling their weekly happy hour get-togethers Drinking Liberally. Having been the host for years now of the Columbia Drinking Liberally group with next to no success, I should be bitter about this, but I'm pretty thrilled. The only problem is that Drinking Liberally is a non-profit and thus can make no endorsements, nor can it be affiliated with any political party. I'm optimistic, however, that I can make them understand this, but that if one of them (as an individual, not a YD) would step forward as host, I'd be happy for them to take over as the new Columbia Drinking Liberally group. And I would be free! Free! Hahahahahahahahaha!
    Out here in the county, we switched two years ago from a recycling basket to a recycling rollcart, but the city has just gotten around to catching up this week. Someone I know who shall remain nameless thought that it was just a new rollcart and they would be taking away the old ones. I explained about the new one being just for recycling. Well it's confusing, isn't it?

Rain rain

    I know what you're thinking, but no, I'm not complaining about the weather. I'm not exulting about it per se either, but I am exulting. I'm exulting in the freedom not to go out during a flash flood watch. And it occurs to me that what was stressing me out so much the past few years was not my dad's condition but the fact of dialysis. Dialysis is not flexible. Anyway, dialysis isn't flexible for you. If it rains, you go. If Margaret's yard is flooded, you go. If there's a flash flood watch, you go. So the past few days of flash flood watches (and for that matter, flash floods) have been sort of delightful to me in the sense that I had the option to stay the hell home. I'm starting to think that I don't have PTSD from Dad's death but from the darn dialysis.

Dank food

    The monsoon is again approaching, so don't be surprised if I go away in mid-sentence this time. In this metropolitan area, there's a bar where I was once in a slight beef with the owner. I thought it was all pretty funny or at worst weird, but he was pretty chuffed up. Eventually, all retreated to neutral corners and nothing came of it. It appears that his place is now out of business. I'm not feeling any noticeable schadenfreude about this, just a mild interest. So I looked up their Facebook page. In general, nothing about it is changed but the last entries, a month ago, are looking back to "our last days at (name of bar)," so one infers that they are indeed gone. I went to their About page, which as I say looks as if they were still in business. But you get to the end and they say that they have a pool table and "dank food." Say, I think I know what your problem was there!
    Of course, this being me, I have to try and figure out what they were actually trying to type there. "Bar food" makes sense and would be accurate, but that's a pretty tough typo to make. I have to consider myself puzzled unless there's something I've never heard of called "bank food." I guess I'll never know.

Now that's bizarre

    I've been using this computer for a couple of years now, maybe three. It didn't ship with sophisticated word processing software and I haven't bought any, so I've been making due with Notepad and Wordpad. (The shame, the shame.) They have worked out adequately. Anyway, none of my dad's money managers have written back to say, "We're sorry, we would like to comply with your wishes, but since your letter was written on Notepad, we just can't." Yet.
    Windows maintains a most recently opened file list, and has done a stellar job of doing so for these two or three years. Generally, they are this here file where I compose this here blog (otherwise I can't put in tabs) and a similar one that I use for composing emails to Drinking Liberally members. The latter has disappeared from the Recently Opened list even though I used it Monday. Yes yes yes yes I know I'm plumbing new depths on the Who Cares? Meter. I didn't say it was important; I said it was odd. It is odd. I suspect it has to do with my recent switch to Avast! antivirus. Frankly I may be leaving them just as fast. My power is as of this moment blinking out with fair frequency, so I'm getting hell off this computer, doubly fast since I think I heard a transformer blow.

But on the other OTHER hand...

    I'm still sad about the non-functionality of my drone's camera. Not sad enough to buy a new camera for $20, but sad. However, my first reaction had some truth in it after all. There is some fun in flying the thing without a camera. Mainly, it's an opportunity to work on fine-tuning the controls. My early attempts to do this were a total failure, but my Facebook Syma X5C flyers group (yes, I've fallen that far) had some excellent tips. So someday... someday... maybe I'll actually be able to hover! THEN I'll get the $20 replacement camera!
    I don't remember my odd dreams last night except that they were very very dialogue-heavy and heavy in dialogue that didn't have anything to do with the old-time radio shows that were playing at the same time. I have a damn chatty subconscious, apparently.

Oh THAT'S why I kept putting it off!

    I'm finally dealing with the paperwork for Dad's Keogh. It is a flaming nightmare on wheels. Their Inheritors Services staff strike me as really nice, but overwhelmed. One put me on hold for ten minutes and then called back while I was talking to another person on the staff. She seemed surprised in her voicemail message that I hadn't been willing to stay on hold that long. (This was at least another 15 minutes later, so heaven knows how long I would have been on hold.)
    However, the second person I talked to was much more helpful, so this nightmare may be coming close to the end. I better write my instruction letter while I still remember the shorthand I used. Still, I wanted to mention one more thing: last night I dreamed vividly about spending a year in Russia. The dream mostly revolved around restaurants where I never seemed to get served and trying to decide whether to visit St. Petersburg. But then I was wearing a Who t-shirt and an official was telling me that I couldn't ask people their opinion about The Who but I could ask about Russian bands that sounded like The Who. Strange even by my standards!

Experience NEVER triumphs over hope

    How wrong can you be? I note first that compared to the great issues of the day, or even the tiny ones, one camera on one quadricopter doesn't rate at all. But then it's also as important as the universe. The difference between the brain and the heart, if you will. Because for all that, logically, the loss of a camera that produces good shots no more than one out of ten times should be at worst negligible and frankly a boon. The drone flies better and I don't have to worry about those silly pictures that never come out.
    In fact, it sucked about 90% of the fun out of the enterprise. I'd go high, high, high and think, "I wish I could get a picture from up there!" and be sad that I couldn't. Knowing full well that the pictures would have been in the wrong direction or with the wrong lighting or too slanted or too whatever. Hope adds a lot of spice to life and I have hardly any at the best of times. I went to get Krazy Glue to reattach the loose wire on the camera, but this didn't restore it. (I don't think this reflects on my Krazy Gluing skills; I think the camera stopped working before the wire came loose. I'm slow, but I think I would have noticed a loose wire.) My mind says let it go. It's a camera only Walt Whitman could love. (Lots of shots of Leaves of Grass.) But I'll probably order a replacement camera. Heck, it was a quadricopter with camera that I was looking for in the first place; experience hasn't changed that either.

Not the greatest tragedy

    The camera on the quadricopter plugs into the body; the plug is connected to the camera, not surprisingly, by little wires, three in number. The other day I took way more pictures than ended up on the camera's card, but I just thought I had screwed up hitting the camera button on the remote. Today, though, I didn't get any pictures. I plugged up and synced up the drone again and took a bunch of pictures of Amelia. Nothing. I did it too more times before finally noticing that the yellow wire had come out of the plug. Sad, sad, sad.
    Then again, I know somebody with a soldering iron and a willingness to use it, so this isn't necessarily a permanent situation. In the mean time, I've taken the camera off, which makes the drone lighter and lets it fly better. And I no longer have to worry about which way it's pointed or otherwise worry about getting pictures, which after all seldom came out. Sometimes those grapes really are sour.
    Meanwhile, other drone has fallen out of its tree but is still atop a 30+ foot tall warehouse. I've put out a call for master anglers, but am less optimistic. Still, a good gullywasher might bring it the rest of the way down. It could happen!