Do dreams come true?

    Last night I swear to you I dreamed that I wrote a captivating blog entry. Now if only I had taken notes.
    Let's see, captivating but not in a good way: Harry the cat stayed out all night, killed a squirrel in the yard and spent the morning eating it. His stay as favorite cat was very, very brief indeed. (Well, he had been purring like all get out earlier.)
    Moderately captivating for the nostalgia crowd: I got a '60s Estey toy organ from Goodwill for $6 today. It is crazy stupid fun, although since it won't work on the carpet, I don't anticipate getting either cat to play with it. But it's a delightful throwback to childhood; we had one similar, if more broken, when I was little.
    Captivating to my siblings, I bet: the lawyer called and has gotten over the idea that anyone needs to sign anything much of anything except for me. This certainly hastens the closing process wonderfully. Yay!
    Captivating to me only, I bet: The other week when I boneheadedly removed all my pictures from the folders they had been in (which identify the date they were uploaded), I figured it was no problem since I could just sort by date. However, I completely forgot that the camera on the drone was unclear on the concept of dates and dated everything the same. So the non-drone pictures can be sorted easily enough. But the drone pics (more than half of the total, and the ones that need sorting the most) cannot. Have I mentioned lately that I'm a genius?

Sleep solves all problems

    I have been concerned for all the four years that I have been host of Columbia Drinking Liberally that my choice of venue affects the chronically low turnout. Anyway, my choice of venue is something that I can control; my obviously obnoxious personality not so much. Last night, I dreamed that there was a massive bar in the back of Shoney's. (For persons not from the southeastern United States, Shoney's is a not spectacularly good chain restaurant, once connected with the Big Boy uh, franchise maybe, but no longer.) I immediately said, "I've found my venue!" It is a good reflection on my subconscious mind that I was pleased that there were a lot of black people there. Also how my waking mind feels.
    Meanwhile in real life, they are cleaning up Olympia Avenue astonishingly. This is only odd in that the football team has already had two home games and they didn't do it then; this week they're in Missouri and they do it now. On the other hand, the State Fair is coming up in two weeks, so there's that. I am especially pleased that they are clearing out an almost impassable thicket on the inside curve, where one REALLY needs to be able to walk since cars invariably drive in the bike lane to avoid slowing down for the curve. I can't help but think that some senator's daughter complained to daddy after almost getting run down on the way to last Saturday's game, but clearly I'm romancing. Anyway, it's great to have the way cleared for whatever reason; I've only lived hear 6 years and this is the first time.

The meaning of precipitation

    Lately, we've been having misting rain almost constantly. This is not my favorite but it does not bother me per se except very slightly intellectually. It seems like for this quantity of mist (i.e., you need your windshield wipers, sometimes on the medium setting) it ought to be foggy. And it just isn't. As ever, I totally get that this is of no significance, but it bothers me very very slightly.
    Yesterday, the weather kept me from taking my walk, or anyway I didn't bother. Today I took my walk and went Oh. When the relative humidity reaches a certain level, the moisture precipitates. (Hence the name.) Thus, it isn't fog we're walking or driving through; the air is just that freakin' wet. I was carrying an umbrella and it was still misting on me under the umbrella. Nuff said or too much; sorry for this kindergarten lesson. It was mainly just for me. As I keep saying, I'll be ready to learn finger-painting any day now!

Dead toy dog much less sad

    I've been finding amazing toys at thrift stores for practically no money for a long time. This includes a stuffed Wakko Warner (if you don't know, for god's sake don't ask) for 50 cents the other day, a cool toy robot for 75 cents some weeks ago, assorted toy cars that leave the kitties totally cold, a wooden model of a dinosaur, and, today, a robot dog. Apparently, Tekno the robot puppy was a huge seller in 1999. If you can find one that works for longer than ten seconds, I recommend it in the strongest terms. Unfortunately, this one isn't that. It ate one set of Duracells which I believed to be new. Still, they had been in a device (if unused) for months, so I went out for another set. Another ten seconds later, Tekno was again silent and still. Boy were those 20 seconds fun, but still I don't think I'm going to be fooled a third time. Mind you, when I looked Tekno up online, I saw that battery life wouldn't be long. But the minimum time they were talking about was two hours, not ten seconds. Still cute, though.
    One of the many themes I've picked up in my years of blogging and probably also in my years of non-blogging is that when I dream, it's a nightmare if it says it's a nightmare. I dreamed last night that the power windows in my car wouldn't go down. In real life when the reverse happened (went down, wouldn't go up), I just got on the phone, found a dealership that could work me in immediately, and drove there to get it fixed. But in the dream, man, this is a disaster! Even in my sleep, I think I was going "that doesn't make any sense" at least a little. Or so I like to think.

Slideshow

    I did something borderline brilliant and borderline idiotic. (This, perhaps, marks me for borderline disorder.) I made my desktop background on the laptop a slideshow of my favorite pictures. Why this might be brilliant, I hope, is self-evident. Why it might be idiotic, well: I could have done this one of two ways. I could have gone through my pictures using Search and Picture Viewer and copied and pasted my favorites into a new folder, Favorites (say).
    What I did instead, knowing it was probably dumb, was to copy and paste my pictures from the Search Results to the window where you actually pick your desktop background. Non-Windows persons might want to know why I need Search Results. The pictures are in their own folders for any individual day that I uploaded pictures from a camera. Over a few years, that's a lot of folders. So it's better just to search for .jpgs on the hard drive and display them all at once.
    The problem with this method was that from the window where you choose the desktop background (which if it ever comes up again, we're calling wallpaper) there is no obvious way to make the thumbnails bigger, so it's easy to pick a picture you don't actually like. The other problem is that if for some mad reason I ever want to use this method again, that window will totally forget that I put 1,700 pictures in that directory so I would have to do it all again. So if I ever do this again, it's back to plan A.
    It's likely to be soon, because in fact I've already seen several pictures that looked way better as thumbnails than as full screen pictures. But another neat feature of the slideshow is that I don't have to wait 30 minutes for the next picture; I can just tell it to skip ahead. I tell you it's almost as fun as that electronic picture frame I always wanted!

Do I or don't I want two inside cats?

    Before I start, a minor note: I've been at this for so long that my Notepad file where I do the actual composition got very large, so large that it takes forever to, say, put in or delete a couple of hard returns. That even though the first year or two of the blog was done on another computer. So I started a new file. Exciting? No. But it should make this considerably less frustrating for me.
    Also the whole thing is a minor note. Harry spent most of today inside, too, but that isn't much of a mystery. We've had flooding rains all afternoon. But it does point up the question. Since he turned up, I've regretted turning him loose on the neighborhood, where he has a tendency to maraud through the bird and small mammal population. Putting a bell on him slowed him maybe a little, but not much. I've always told myself that I really want him inside all the time, and even tell him this. (Yes, I do know it's crazy.) But I really am allergic and my eye was killing me all morning. Just like it did all the time the last time I lived with two indoor cats. Still, I seem to recall that Benadryl helped somewhat. Now that I'm no longer lactose intolerant, maybe I can move up from the children's version. I'm sure it's a moot point; he won't move in anything like full time until and unless it's actually below freezing. But maybe it's something to think about.

Rock steady

    I had an unusual day in that young Harry the cat actually wanted to stay indoors. This meant that I could walk the neighborhood in peace. The little weirdo tends to follow me, whining all the way. Apparently, the idea that if he doesn't like it, he doesn't have to follow me does not enter his little head. I always get the cats who think that they're dogs.
    Olympia isn't incredibly scenic, so I didn't bother with the tripod, but brought the Nikon anyway. I saw a lot of pretty stuff, some a fair distance off, and took advantage of the telephoto function to photograph those without getting eaten by chiggers like I usually do. And my hands were rock steady. Apparently, I don't have to use a tripod to take zoom pictures without shaking; I just have to own one. Go figure. (I did shoot the tea olive flowers, but they still aren't very interesting to look at. Smell crazy good, though!)

Nature not cooperating

    You would think it was the last day of autumn instead of the last day of summer the way all of nature has run and hid. They must have heard that I have a tripod, would like to photograph them, and are sniggering at me from just around the next corner. I did get a couple of nice pictures of a baby skink and can say pretty confidently that I like having a tripod, but as to brilliant results I'm not seeing a lot. It may be necessary to go down to Edisto Gardens in Orangeburg and shoot roses. (They have a lot!) Or walk around the neighborhood and get pictures of tea olive flowers, which would be easier with a telephoto setting, a macro setting and a tripod. (They're teeny!)
    Anyway, it was a wonderful, temperate day at Congaree National Park, so there's that!

Big fun

    I got a $5 tripod and a $3 receiver ('90s stereo component) at Goodwill yesterday. The latter might be big fun if it works, as I can eventually get my component system up and running again and even one day play LPs again. Zippiest! The tripod was already big fun today, as I found that a tripod is really a boon to a boy with shaky hands who likes taking closeup pictures. I also found out why it was at Goodwill (one leg falls off readily, along with the missing feet I already knew about) but it worked pretty well. I also found out that big cameramen don't leave their digital cameras switched on, since the battery ran out before I ran out of things to try to photograph. So I don't know if any of the pictures turned out. It was still fun, though.
    I find that I already skipped a day of blogging this year, since February shows only 27 entries. Time will tell whether I'm actually anal-retentive enough to post two entries in one day to correct this. I know how everyone on Earth is betting, though.

Who's that nun?

    When my mom's memory started going seriously downhill, I went down to Charleston and took a bunch of pictures of what I hoped would be recognizable landmarks for her. One of the pictures was of me in front of her mom's house. (It was taken by the woman I was going with at the time.) I had comparatively long hair for me and was wearing a long dark coat. When I got back with the pictures, I went through with them with my mom and picked out the ones of places that she remembered best, including her mom's house. I got them professionally blown up and framed and hung them up. When my mom saw the picture of me in front of her mother's house, she asked who the nun was. I wasn't too busted up about it; I thought it was funny then and find it funny now.
    For some strange reason, since I moved to this apartment I've just taken it as it was when I arrived, hanging pictures on the nails that were there but not adding any even though there are many holes from past nails, meaning there would be no problem with making more. I'm going to get some nails (already have the hammer) and those Charleston pictures and add a little more color and history to the place. And of course I'll know to call the assisted living facility when I start wondering who the nun is.

JUST about ready for kindergarten (still)

    Years ago, my sister gave me a Nikon Coolpix camera. Once I had a smart phone, though, I pretty much quit using it. When that smart phone filled up and I had to get a new one, I became gradually dissatisfied with the new one's camera. So lately I've been carrying the cool camera again. However, in the interim, I've gotten really interested in shooting bugs. The camera has a macro (flower) button but no amount of pushing that button produced any change nor any good closeup pictures.
    Sigh. This is the RTFM moment, isn't it? Hitting the menu button produces a confusing display of what looks like a dozen identical choices. However, pushing the camera button when you're already in camera mode (as against playback/display mode, which has its own button) displays a useful menu. And this menu conveys that I was in Easy Auto mode. Among the other modes (including assorted portrait modes and some other I don't recall) was Auto. (Just plain auto? Regular Auto? Otto the autopilot?) And in just plain Auto, suddenly the Macro button started working. Of course, then the bugs all vanished. But I did get a fairly happening spider shot. (Granted, I shot the same spider with good results the other day without the macro button. But still.)
    I also figured out how to edit pictures while they're still in the camera, which is way easier than using the software. Way easier even than on the phone. So suddenly I like this camera way way more than previously. And I might be ready to learn cursive soon!

Here's I am

    Long ago, there was a site called KissThisGuy.com which featured untold numbers of misheard song lyrics. There was also another one with a less creative name, something like MisheardSongLyrics.com. Maybe they're still around, but as of still a long time ago (say, ten years), they weren't being updated, so I quit looking. Anyway, they never put up my submission. (The idea!) I mention them because one or another asked you to put your misheard lyric, the correct lyric, and whether you liked your way better.
    It's a long way to get around to the fact that yesterday I heard "Because the Night" as covered by 10,000 Maniacs, which I have heard many times, especially as I have the record. But for the first time, I heard that the first line is "Take me now, honey, here as I am." Now in my heart of hearts, I always thought that Bruce, Patti and Natalie were all singing, "Here's I am," as a sort of nod to the speech patterns of the tri-state area. And I went into all that rigmarole in the preceding paragraph because I definitely like my version better. And now I desperately want to do a cover version in the voice of Popeye the Sailor Man. (Insert Popeye laugh here, because "Kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh" captures it phonetically, but doesn't exactly convey the sound.)

He wanted to ride the bus

    This is a measure of how great my dad was. After he went on dialysis, after he needed a walker, after we finally convinced him he really couldn't drive anymore, he was planning to take the bus to dialysis. He wanted me to find out the routes and the prices. He didn't mean the handicapped bus, but the regular bus. I steered him gently toward the idea of the handicapped bus, and then right past it to letting me take him to and from dialysis. But that was a thoughtful, thoughtful guy trying not to be an imposition.
    I had weird wacky dreams last night but all I really remember was the usual thing about having two separate apartments, one of which I had forgotten about, both in some strange city. What's odd about these dreams is that they aren't at all upsetting; I just take it as it comes. As such, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. Least nightmary nightmare ever! Also at some point my dream was being narrated by Tallulah Bankhead who was appearing on old-time radio at the time in real life. That didn't seem weird, either.

Internet remedies

    For once, I wasn't being a crazy person, but rather a senile person. I couldn't remember whether it was calamine lotion or some other one that you put on bug bites, so I looked it up. I wasn't looking for an Internet miracle cure, but just a little jog to the memory. However, what I got was a miracle cure. OK, a fairly effective palliative. The person recommended putting 2 tablespoons of water in 5 tablespoons of baking soda (or vice versa, depending upon point of view) and adding a little tea tree oil. I believe the word was 1/8 of a teaspoon and that was too much. I seriously doubt that anyone reading me has any tea tree oil in the house. I have toothpicks supposedly suffused with tea tree oil (because making them out of tea trees would make too much sense) so I soaked a couple in the two tablespoons of water for a while. No idea if this produced any tea tree oil, but it couldn't hurt.
    What I got was a white paste. Spread on my flea bites, it didn't want to go away, but the itching did. And it has stayed away. Maybe the flea bites had just progressed to the point that they weren't going to itch anymore, but I was well pleased. I would say that if you encounter any Internet miracle cures that involve baking soda, consider trusting them. Hell, it works on everything else!

Victory!

    I finally got the check from Fidelity for my share of Dad's Keogh. Even though it was the smallest part of the inheritance, it was the biggest pain in the butt and thus the only part I feel I actually earned. Not surprisingly, the final amount was 20% smaller than what I was expecting. I told them not to take out taxes, but I expect that they ignored me. I'll be calling to verify that that is the explanation. Since I still have to deal with William's share, I can't jump up and down, scream and throw things. Well, since it's over the telephone, I guess I can do two of those. But it probably isn't a good idea.
    I did in fact go out and get an SD card for my digital camera, an 8GB one for $10 from Kmart. So now it'll take a little longer to fill up the camera's memory. Although I went to a much more natury place to hike today (Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve, opportunities for pictures were very few on the ground. However, what pictures there were came out much more betterly. Apparently, I am remembering how it's done. Alas there were no alligators, or at least none visible. On the other hand (ha!), I still have all my arms and legs, so there's that.

Your pal John = not the brightest

    My favorite trail most days (or walking path-- the concrete surface kind of undercuts the "trail" ethos) has a lot of names. I could pad this short entry by listing them all, but I'll just call it Cayce Riverwalk phases 3 and 4 for short. I walked the whole thing today, as we're having glorious, spectacular, perfect, highs in the low 80s lows in the mid 50s weather with clear skies. The kind of weather I want year round. So I walked for three hours or so and took many, many pictures, very few of which came out. But I was still grinning at the end, not bothered in the least by this. Nor that: I just noticed just how dumb I am. At one point, the path crosses a boat landing. There's a blue painted trail across the parking lot (well, really across the actual boat ramp) which snakes around in an odd way. And I was thinking that this was just arbitrary. I should have noticed that blue is the color for handicapped access; it snakes around to follow the level part so people in wheelchairs don't go rolling accidentally into the river. That only took me a year or so to figure out!
    I am a little sad that my great awesome digital camera produces even less good pictures than my not very good phone camera. I feel wholly responsible for this. I'm sure it's a matter of user error. Then again, if I had an SD card, I could take more than 22 pictures so there would probably be more good ones mixed in. Note to self: get SD card.

Fanaticism abating?

    People often point out that "fan" (as in "sports fan") is short for "fanatic." This presumably is because the word is used so often that it's easy to forget. It's easier to remember in any major sports town (in the sense of major league or major college). On a personal level, I feel like my fanaticism is finally abating or maybe sanity is asserting itself. Downtown U. lost their football game last night in embarrassing fashion to an opponent that should have been inferior. While I'm not thrilled nor doing backflips, I'm not noticing much in the way of the long-familiar "somebody shot my dog" emotions. Whether this means that I'm going sane or just always ready to adjust to the football team's return to their decades-long devotion to mediocrity is an open question. Hopefully it's the low point of the season and I don't have to explore the question further. But if I do, I hope the shot my dog sensation never returns; it's really a drag.
    I wrote a Donald Trump parody song. I will share it at the least tiniest provocation. Paul didn't laugh even a giggle and he was the one who came up with the idea, so don't get your hopes up. I was already counting my millions, but maybe I was getting ahead of myself. Al Yankovic apparently has nothing to be worried about. Maybe I'll follow his lead and parody "Lump." ("He's Trump/ He's Trump/ He's Trump/ He's in my head...")

I got nuthin'

    No I don't (just) mean in the blog sense, I mean $0.00. I got the letter today and everything! So let's review. Three weeks ago, I got an email from Fidelity saying that my check had been cut and would be in the mail shortly. Wednesday, I got a call from Fidelity from somebody having no idea that I wanted the inherited IRA liquidated, but who talked to the people who talked to the people and found that indeed, my check would be on its way shortly. Yesterday, I got an identical email to the one from three weeks ago saying that my check had been cut, etc. Today I got a statement from Fidelity saying that my inherited IRA amounts to $0.00-- but it was postmarked Tuesday, a day before the guy called asking what I want to do with my IRA. So long as I get my check, I'm fairly relaxed about it, but still.
    I had a disturbing dream last night which we're all happy I'm sure that I don't remember more about than I do. It involved that d-bag in Colorado who shot all those people in the movie theater. In the dream, he had also dyed his hair Joker-style (green in the dream and possibly also in reality; I don't feel like looking him up). I don't remember anything else except that he was clearly not in prison. This may be in fact what woke me up. I need spree killers in my dreams like any number of additional holes in my head. Judging from the atrophy of my typing skills, I have quite enough of those already.

Weed garden

    I want a weed garden. I suspect that I have always wanted a weed garden. I like the flowers I see trailside or along roadsides. They aren't wildflowers exactly. They're mostly really just weeds. (This whole wildflower thing is getting silly, though. I don't know about other states, but in this one, on interstate medians, you will sometimes run across something badged as a Wildflower Test Plot. Well if you PLANTED them, they aren't WILDFLOWERS, are they?! Sorry; just me being a hairsplitter.)
    Today I was walking down Old State Road, which is the sort of thing you do on a solemn anniversary when it's even less socially acceptable than usual to get goofy on Facebook and was crazy mad loving the weedflowers-- wildweeders-- whatever. Also digging on the butterflies, although when they used me to play Ring Around The Rosie, I was not best pleased. Then I saw a lovely butterfly (since tentatively identified as palamedes swallowtail) on a lovely purple wildflower (tentatively identified as tall or giant ironweed, I swear to heaven also known as Iron Butterfly) and my course is set. I must have a weed garden!

All that angst for that?!

    So I finally got around to going into the office at SC E&G (still the power company) to get Dad's light bill switched to my name or at least to my billing address. When Dad was still living, I tried to do this and they required my power of attorney, which I didn't have on me. Possibly because it was a stressful time generally (for "living," read "dying"), this did not seem a reasonable request, or anyway particularly sane. I was trying to improve the probability that their bill got paid; you'd think they would be all about this. Paying somebody's light bill might be a good way to steal their identity, I don't know, but there are probably better ones that don't require a monthly outlay of funds.
    Regardless, I was very, very, very wary about going back, but finally did. I think I even saw the same lady, who was certainly in no way rude last time but was maybe a trifle intransigent and not noticeably helpful in any way. If it was the same lady, she was certainly different today. Maybe it was because I had my big expanding file folder and clearly showed potential of burying her in paper. She never asked for a death certificate nor letters testamentary. She did want to see the papers making me trustee, but when it developed that I didn't particularly care about putting the account in the name of the trust, she gave me those back and just made it a second account under my name, mailed to my address. Simple. Why couldn't we do this last year?

Vot a coincidence!

    Update on Dad's Keogh. It becomes five IRAs, assuming all five of us fill out the voluminous paperwork to make that happen. I did and sent instructions to cash out immediately and send me the money. I received an email on 8/24 that the check had been cut and would be sent along presently.
    I got a call from Fidelity in New Hampshire this afternoon. (New Hampshire? That's what I said!) The young man thanked me for opening my IRA and inquired what were my plans for it. Without jumping up and down, screaming or throwing things (not counting the cat) I noted that I had already told them that there had apparently been a grave misunderstanding, that I had already told them that I was cashing out, and had already heard back that the check was in the mail. He put me on hold for a long time (he asked permission first) then came back on and asked if he could get to the bottom of it and call me back. I said sure.
    He did, quite soon. He said that they just had to sell the securities and the check would be on its way. He gave me a work item number to refer to if I didn't have the check within a week. I thanked him, but then checked the news from the past few weeks. As I suspected, 8/24 was pretty much exactly when the stock market crashed due to the troubled Chinese economy. Now I'm not mean-spirited and wouldn't particularly want Fidelity to take a loss just to get me my money faster when the Dow Jones was likely to recover again within days. (And anyway it's likely that I'm completely misunderstanding how securities work.) But, uh, the difference between getting an email on 8/24 saying the check was already printing and hearing on 9/9 that the securities to finance such a check haven't been sold yet does make one think a bit. Anyway, I'll be glad to see the back of this, hopefully within the week. Until I have to do exactly the same thing with William's IRA, of course.

Sad anachronism

    Dad taught me a lot of what I know about nature, but even as of almost 20 years ago when I was working on the hiking book, much of what he taught me was sadly out of date. I heard some Bob White quail out on the trail, even saw them, but only once. I like to think that they're still common in the part of the state Dad is from, which isn't exactly crawling (haha) with trails. I also think that he taught me the call of the whippoorwill, well, I know he did, but I think he did because we actually heard it on our street. It may be my imagination though; it certainly would be now. I can't remember ever hearing it in real life as an adult, only on CD or on the Internet.
    What brings it up is that I am reading Last Chance To See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, which is very sad and very funny. It is about some of the rarest animals on the planet as of the mid to late '80s. I don't want to know what has happened to them since the book was published in 1990. The Northern white rhino I know about because it was all over the news not many months ago. The rest I don't feel good about; I feel better about the Bob White and the whippoorwill. Them I'm sure are still around. Somewhere.

Further brilliancy

    Old-time radio is an odd thing to get enthusiastic about. Or ironic maybe. Because you're listening to stuff from so long ago that it's in the public domain. Thus on the one hand you're listening to material from 70 years ago, but on the other hand the best way to acquire shows is via high-speed internet. However, when I got started, I didn't know that and anyway wasn't on high-speed internet. So I bought a big pile of CDs with colossal numbers of old radio shows. But nobody told me that the files could corrupt.
    Fortunately, I copied a lot of the best shows onto my old laptop. Unfortunately, I filled the hard drive so full that after a certain point it wouldn't boot up anymore. This is why I switched to this here laptop. But also fortunately the guy in the other half of the house is by way of being a computer expert. He couldn't boot it up either, but he could get the MP3s off it onto my dad's old computer. He did. Some of my favorites, which had corrupted and thus would quit playing ten or fifteen minutes in, are now back. Yay! If I've already told all of this story except for the happy ending part, I apologize. I'm all excited. Also the other brilliancy to talk about would have been gluten-free chicken noodle soup.
    Also in radioland, I found a CD I made (also a data CD) with a lot of great old-time radio shows on it. It only works on this computer, but is big fun. Further brilliancy still is that I bought a set of speakers a year ago in hopes that it would work with my Casio. It didn't. I plugged it up to the laptop, but had to put up with a constant buzz from them. That was annoying but I could live with it. But today, I tried to listen to the OTR data CD and no sound came out unless I partly unplugged the speakers. And even then, if I turned up the sound, the hum turned up, too. It was a bridge too far. They're dead to me. I'm using the Big Lots speakers I long ago bought for my ancient (2001) PC which I never use anyway. They're not great either, but there's suddenly no hum. (Also as I said, the shows are 70 years old; the sound quality isn't that great in the first place.)

When difficulties aren't

    So lately (I understand that one isn't supposed to start sentences with "So"; So?) I've gotten ever more obsessed with the flavor of pico de gallo, starting with the Puerto Rican restaurant I fell in love with recently and continuing with the pico de gallo gluten free crackers that Aldi has been selling more recently. Stumbling block is that you use key limes rather than regular limes to make pico de gallo, and they're teeny and have seeds. And Genius Boy here was actually seeing this as a problem. And. Then. I. Remembered. About Strainers. I swear, if I could get in, I would go to remedial kindergarten. Anyway, that problem's solved! Now let's put pico de gallo in everything!
    Weird stuff from American Top 40, The '80s: "Invincible" by Pat Benatar was the theme from "The Legend of Billie Jean." I sense that the former was on the charts considerably longer than the latter was in theaters.

My Grandfather's Clock

    Dad was very fond of and often sang an old song called "My Grandfather's Clock," which it turns out is a bluegrass standard and later a record by Johnny Cash from 1959. It starts off that his grandfather's clock was too tall (Dad's version) or wide (Johnny's version) for the shelf so it spent 90 years on the floor. Since the next line is that it was taller by far than the old man himself, Dad's version makes more sense, but I guess the writer or Johnny didn't want to say "tall" in two straight lines.
    (Spoiler alert) The upshot is that it ran 90 years but never again when the old man died. It would be fairly poignant even without having a dad who lived past 90 and died this year and who loved the song and sang it a lot. What brings it up is that his watch has stopped. It did not run 90 years or even nine, but still. Margaret had bought him a fabulously expensive watch that disappeared during dialysis or a hospital stay. Maybe he lost it or maybe it was stolen. I didn't go out of my way to get him a cheap replacement, of course, but obviously when you've lost one expensive one, there may be less stress in your life if your next watch is less expensive. My brief was to find him one with numerals large enough for him to see and I succeeded with an Armitron. It was maybe three or four years old; they usually run longer than that. I could get a new battery, but I prefer a watch with an alarm and stopwatch and such like. Also he didn't have my girly little wrists, so I would need a new battery and a new strap. I'm happy letting it go out with him. Sort of an everyday song cue for a wonderful song.

Big bowl of joy

    OK, maybe that's strong, but I was pleasantly surprised that one of my food fixes worked. Some weeks ago, I bought a bunch of discounted spices from Ollie's Discount Warehouse. According to the labels, which of course can be faked, they were top shelf brands and, unusually for Ollie's, the expiration dates hadn't passed yet. One item I bought we a McCormick's Gourmet Collection Moroccan seasoning blend. I keep putting it in things, but haven't really fallen in love yet. It doesn't remind me as much as I had hoped of lost days in France eating couscous. But it's nice and all. Just a lot like paprika.
    My go-to seasoning for popcorn besides salt is Crystal hot sauce. I like it a lot. But it turns out that I like it even more with a lot of Moroccan seasoning blend added. Who knew? One suspects that McCormick has discontinued this item, but you can always try paprika. See? I do simple recipes sometimes!
    I set a new standard for weird/dull dreams. I was supposed to be in an improv group, except that I just landed there with no idea what I was doing or supposed to do and holding a notebook filled with somebody else's handwriting detailing how improv is supposed to work. And I had to interview somebody, presumably a prospective improvver, whom I mainly was quizzing about what in hell I was supposed to be doing. In real life it could be a funny improv skit.

Which is weirder?

    I will admit to sometimes having difficulty telling dreams from reality, at least for a little while. But this week, the problem has a different dimension, as it is only hard to tell dream and reality apart insofar as they've been so very odd. On the dream front, last night I dreamed that the University of South Carolina had hired Bernie Sanders as their new head football coach. And I kept saying, "Wouldn't it be weird if they made him the football coach instead of the university president-- oh wait."
    At another point I was trying to make a sandwich out of a hunk of burger the size of a tabletop and two slices of bread the size of two slices of bread. I was having difficulty and my brown kitten (if you don't know, you can probably guess that I've never had a brown kitten) was trying to get some of the hamburger. I kicked at him and was horrified when he jumped up on the furniture and my sightline and started crying. Heck I still feel guilty.
    Reality may not measure up. I got my new car title, on which my make and model are listed as "Actual Mileage." I know I should have it corrected, but I think I'll photocopy it and frame it first, it's so surreal. Also I now have a purple shag carpet steering wheel cover. The Toyota Campy has been born. Also Aldi sells tilapia loins; I wasn't the only one to be surprised that tilapia have them. Also one member of West Columbia City Council is named BJ Unthank, which I swear I am not making up. Oh, and the other day, I received two calls from a woman trying to reach a guy named Shady. The second time, she hid her phone number, like I wouldn't recognize her voice. Ma'am, I don't think that was the real Slim Shady you were talking to.

Too many funerals

    My friend from high school Paul Lacoste died a week ago and the funeral was today. Apparently he had skipped a year somewhere along the line and was more than a year younger than the rest of us, something I never knew. We had never been extremely close, but we got along. He dated my high school girlfriend after she broke up with me, but it was all perfectly amicable. I never held it against either of them. (I was going to college 600 miles away at the time.)
    In more recent days, he had trouble. His marriage broke up and he was living in a men's shelter, then a Motel 6. One infers that drinking was involved. Because we're of the same political orientation, he expressed an interest in Drinking Liberally and made sporadic efforts to come to a meeting, but only made it to one, about a month ago. He seemed unmoored, adrift, in disarray. He also seemed that way on Facebook, often responding in ways that didn't strictly speaking make sense. He did not, however, seem on the verge of doing anything drastic.
    I don't know what happened; I may never know. He may have drunk himself to death or committed suicide more directly. The only thing clear from the pastor's homily is that it wasn't natural causes. He said that Paul had never recovered from his mother's death in 2000 nor from his father's hospitalization and incapacitation in 2010. ("Boy I heard that!" I couldn't help thinking.) About the only difference between me and him is that I have a sense of humor, not in the "Boy is he funny!" sense but in the sense of finding all aspects of life both absurd and humorous. Long may it wave.
    Being in a Roman Catholic church was no weirder nor less weird than it was when I was in one regularly. I wish they would have gone easier with the incense, though. It was neat to see altar girls, which I doubt we had back in the day. And it was cool to learn that "How Great Thou Art" is a little older than I thought, and the hillbillies in question were from a different set of hills. Insert your favorite Swedish Chef joke here.

His brother John

    When I was a little fellow, I was very taken with Bob Dylan's "Watching the River Flow" and especially the piano work. I asked my brother (not sure now which brother) who was playing it, and he said that it was Bob Dylan's brother John. Now this was a pretty shrewd answer. I'm not sure that all little kids worship all with their own first name nor that all little kids believe everything they are told, but I did and I did and in I think that in my heart of hearts I believed this until maybe a week ago.
    What brought it to mind was hearing a cover which my song identification app said was by Ben Waters on a tribute CD to Ian Stewart. Naturally I took this to mean that the piano part had been played by Ian Stewart and that the mystery was solved. Nothing like that simple! Turns out that the song was on the tribute record because Stewart had been quoted as saying that the song was the only decent thing that Dylan had ever done. And the part was actually played by Leon Russell. As he was already famous as the leader of Mad Dogs and Englishmen and a major contributor to the Concerts for Bangladesh, both of which I knew about (I wasn't THAT damn little) and would be famouser a year later for "Tightrope," I think I could have handled the actual personnel information. But then, we didn't have Wikipedia back then, did we? Excuse me, I have to go looking for John Zimmerman piano records...