No. Yes.

    Credit/debit card payment stations in retail establishments normally give you your total and ask if you want to pay and offer the answers Yes or No from left to right. Lowe's for some reason has it No or Yes and I came within a millimeter of saying No. I suggested to the checker that they REALLY don't want to set it up that way, that it's awfully easy to give the answer you don't mean to. She said that I wouldn't believe how many people hit No and I said that I could well believe it since I had nearly done it. We were very amused about it all; hope the people who hit No are, too.
    This WAS going to be about how magnificent my beef stew is and how my half-assing in the kitchen is getting completely out of hand and how I really have to start writing down what I do so I can replicate these outstanding results. Then I realized that all I did that I don't usually do is put in Trader Joe's Green Dragon hot sauce and McCormick's Gourmet Collection garam masala blend. I may have put in a little more turmeric than usual, but let's face it, turmeric doesn't add much taste. So there you have it: green dragon and garam masala. Magic!
    I just pointed my finger at Amelia and said bang and she ran away. I said, "I didn't really shoot you!" I'm not sure which one of us is the drama queen.
    Dreams last night were weird and detailed but I remember very little. The really odd thing was being on the beach with a woman's voice complaining about the poor quality of the shelling. This should have reflected something from old-time radio, but I just can't remember anything like that ever coming up, nor why it ever would. Then of course a gazillion ants came from nowhere and I was no longer worried about someone else's complaints about shelling. Just damn odd.

Toy isn't well either

    My cold is getting better. My drone is not so well. Mainly, the Krazy Glue repairs have failed utterly. The blade guards are flying around instead of the drone itself; they get in the way of the blades and the motors shut down. So I'll have to follow the advice of my online friends and remove the blade guards. Considering my proclivity for crashes, one expects that the life expectancy of Toy can be measured in minutes. I will check in a hobby store for spare parts; it's likely to rain for the next several days so flying is not too likely too soon.
    I got to see my friend Walt for the first time in ages. I also demonstrated the drone for him, such as it is. It mainly hovered near the ground and fell over a lot, but did get off the ground well and truly once and did ok one or two other times. This is highly reminiscent of the previous drone, which seemed to get moods and then get over them for no apparent reason. Gremlins maybe. Walt lost his house in the flood but is holding up pretty well so far.

Further microscopically detailed dreams

    Don't worry; I don't remember much. It was a library with new policies. The reading room now was rented to you like a parking place, ten cents at a time. And I'm counting my change with great specificity. As I've mentioned, my dreams are usually non-visual, so it's a surprise when I'm seeing things accurately. Pity it was nothing more interesting than coins. Then I dropped a dime and chased it, by which time I was outside on the pavement. Then I was back inside but unable to find the reading rooms, which were either on the fourth or fifth floor. As there hadn't been any upstairs floors a minute earlier, I was a little confused. Also there were some fellows talking the entire time I was going through the coin rigmarole. I assume that this was due to old-time radio playing in the background as I slept.
    Now I fully understand that this isn't the most riveting anecdote in history. I'm just puzzled by it is all. It doesn't seem to have any relation with reality; it doesn't seem to have anything with processing events, emotions or anything really. It isn't a useful suggestion for how to run a library. Puzzling is what it is.

Living Years

    I should probably first apologize for the earworm. Sorry! Second, if I posted this already, double sorry. I remember mentioning it on Facebook, but I don't think I have here, but my memory is affected by cold virus. All apologies where appropriate.
    The other week/month (time slips away), I heard "The Living Years" by Mike + the Mechanics for the first time this year. I hadn't been dreading it exactly, but back when Dad was alive and I would hear it, I would wonder how I would react. It was roughly what I would have expected. I cried a bit, but not out of regret for anything unsaid. Just because I miss him and wish he were back. So that's OK.
    Since then, in the way of radio since the '80s, it's been on heavy rotation a bit, so I've heard it another two times. Both times there was no tears or sadness, just a kind of rueful smile. That and a tendency to want to lampoon the lyrics. These ARE the same guys who did a song called "Silent Running" with the refrain, "Can you hear me? Can you hear me running?" And you want to say, "DO YOU PEOPLE KNOW WHAT 'SILENT' MEANS?!" Anyway.

Memory and happiness

    I've had this topic at the top of my Notepad for months. I can't get it clear in my mind, perhaps obviously. The idea though is in line with the truism that older people are happier because bad memories recede. Well maybe we aren't happier but we do tend to go on about the good old days, and tend to forget about the bad old ones. I'm wondering if this is in any way connected to Alzheimer's and I'm wondering if there's any evolutionary pressure to have happy old people around.
    I guess it would be good for the species to have elders who are considered wise, and it might be easier to consider us wise if we're comparatively happy-go-lucky. Moreover, we might be more useful if we're able to share good things from the past that might be applied in the present. Of course, in the current political climate, it would be helpful if some old people would point out that the Trumps of the world are trotting out the same arguments that led to ships full of Jewish refugees being turned away and sent back to the Holocaust. So there are limits to the argument.
    What I'm mainly wondering is whether Alzheimer's or other forms of senile dementia are just an extension of natural memory loss. And then there's the question whether the kind of memory loss I'm talking about in elders (i.e., focusing on the happy ones) is a physical problem or a decision. Maybe as you get older, you just decide to define yourself as happy and thus to filter out the unhappy memories. I don't know. My memory, like the rest of me, doesn't have a lot in the way of filters. Gradually the unhappy memories have less sharp teeth. But they're still there, they're still there.

It's still yesterday, believe me

    I missed yesterday's entry due to being sick. It's not exactly the worst illness ever, but is whacking me over the head a bit, hence missing things like blog entries. Yesterday, it was a burning sore throat. Today, the throat has improved a bit and symptoms have moved into the boogers boogers boogers stage. And that was before I drank or ate anything. Eating breakfast now and expecting some drama as the day wears on.
    I'm skipping Thanksgiving totally or at least postponing it. I don't think interacting with other people would be the most thoughtful thing ever. I think I'll ask William if we can put it off until Monday or so. I will try to take a bath eventually at least.
    Yesterday I did take the printed version of one of my drone pictures over to Devon around the block who asked for it and also demonstrated the drone. I managed to crash it in someone's yard but they weren't home so I recovered it without gunfire or conflict. The Krazy Glue repairs didn't hold so I did it again; I don't think they'll hold this time either. Prop guards have very awkward fracture lines. Well, the Krazy Glue will dry up eventually anyway; might as well use it up instead.
    Right, that was yesterday's post; today's is coming up. Happy Thanksgiving either way!

Crash!

    Today was another nice day, if cold, so I took the toy through its paces at nearby Pacific Park. Didn't I just say that all the experts were telling me to take off the blade guards because they create huge wind resistance? Yes I did. Boy does that not seem like such a good idea! I had a crash or two today. None were anything I took very seriously; toy operated fine afterwards. However, two of the blade guards were split along one (of three) arms. I may be an idiot, but I suspect that without the guards, those would have been the blades all broky and useless. Mind you, I have extra blades, but they were a pain to put on and I have to assume that they would be a pain to take off, too. I don't have extra blade guards, but I do have super glue. 1,001 uses!
    If you thought that was dull, you should have seen my alternate topics! I finally went back to play Civilization IV without the expansion packs. To make a long story short, I was correct that the starter level was much, much easier on the basic game than after expansion. But a lot of the stuff that was added in the expansions is sorely missed. Still, it's much more of an edge of the seat game, even in spite of being very easy. I appreciate that that makes no sense, but there you go. There's a lot more stuff to do I guess is what it is.
    Also my dreams were as ever very odd last night, but you catch a break since I can't much remember them. The bewildering part was that I was sort of on a major league sports team but sort of a coach or sort of otherwise connected with them. Apparently my job was to keep their wildest player in line. I guess my brain woke up enough to say, You're 53; other than bowling, you're not getting on any major league team. Or something.

Toy test flight

    We finally got clear, dry weather today. Although it's both cold and breezy, still it was a nice day to take out the quadcopter. So I did.
    A good place to fly is a very underused park called Southeast Park. As it isn't exactly photogenic, I thought I would be able to forebear from using the camera and instead practice flying. I did do the latter but failed to do the former. The pictures aren't exactly electrifying, but look about as good as the terrain permitted. I would have been happier if downtown in the distance had looked clearer, but heck, it's probably 10 miles.
    People in the Syma quadcopter discussion group on Facebook keep saying to take off the blade guards, that they catch the wind and hinder flying markedly. I guess I can trust to their greater experience, but it looks impossible to me. (The blade guards are little pieces of plastic that protect the blades slightly (on only one side each) from hard landings.) However, something is certainly catching the wind. This copter is much, much heavier than the previous ones and much more powerful, but still got carried away by the wind like crazy. So the flights weren't too long.
    I did finally learn to land without crashing at least, which is a big plus. The smaller lighter drones were easy; when you got near the ground, you just hit the control for up and it came down in a more or less guided landing. This one is so heavy and falls so fast that that trick never works. So I have to let it fall and start the controlled crash much higher up. Is tricky but fun to learn to master. I just wish we could get Indian summer back, this time without any more rain. Darn it.

I always dreaded it

    Long ago when I was newly published, I visited Costco and saw all the deep deep discount books, including some from my publisher. So I knew I would one day be on the remainder shelf, and felt deeply sad about it. Well not so much personally, but deeply sad for the novelists who poured themselves into their dream worlds and now see their stuff marked down 90% at Costco.
    Today I experienced something similar, finding my hiking book at Goodwill. I mean heck, it's been 17 years, and there is another edition and everything. I must say I wasn't very blue about it. It was just a big giggle. I took a picture and posted it on Facebook ("I'm in Goodwill! I'm in Goodwill!") and Paul's mom, with whom I'm Facebook friends, saw it and asked for it. So I had an excuse to buy it, but Paul was nice enough to pick it up for me.
    Being kind of humble, it never occurred to me that she might want it signed. Only later when ex-girlfriend Susan (who took some of the pictures, mainly the ones where I'm wearing a beard) said she was still waiting for her signed copy did I think that somebody might actually want one. Well I have a pen and it's some days until Thanksgiving, so I imagine we can manage this. I PROBABLY still know how to sign my name!

And another thing

    As I mentioned, I somehow skipped another blog entry, so here's another extra one. It may not be too electrifying either. Harry the cat got in a huge fight last night. Anyway a noisy one. When I went out and hollered, he came running with another cat in pursuit. I hollered again and the other cat gave up and went away. Harry had gone up on the roof.
    I wonder if he was trying to protect us by going up to the roof instead of going through the open door. In here is much safer than the roof is. On the other hand when you're little and fast and good at climbing, I guess the first choice is to go up.
    He stayed up there for a while, but came down when I was ready to go to bed. It's funny that he happened to come in when I turned the lights out. "I don't want the other kitty to see me!" Well I thought it was funny. He was pretty subdued all night and all morning, but seems none the worse for wear. He was outside most of the day and doesn't seem to have gotten into any further tussles. It's rained all evening, so he's more or less willing to stay inside, although he's agitating for something at the moment. Probably sees a millimeter of space at the bottom of the food bowl.

Still dumb

    This would be a longer entry, but Downtown U. managed to lose a football game to The Citadel. Wherever you live, just think about the biggest college losing to one of the littlest colleges. At home. Frustrating. So one-word sentences may predominate.
    The new dumb thing is dumb indeed, but I can't make myself feel bad about it. For years now, I've kept the laundry detergent on top of the washer-dryer. This seemed reasonable, or anyway not crazy. Today I ran out of detergent and noticed this brown crud on the bottom of the bottle. So I checked the top of the dryer. The brown crud looked like rust, but smelled like bad fish. So the message is this: don't leave your laundry detergent on top of a non-enameled metal surface. Ew! Anyway, I wiped off as much of the gick as I could, then wiped it down with a wet paper towel with bleach on it. So hopefully whatever germs were up there have been killed. Why laundry detergent would feed germs I don't know.

Spaghettification complete

    It's odd, probably only to me, but it's still odd how long it's taken me to get back to what I consider my normal life after the flood. I'm finally just about there, which is nice, again at least to me. I made spaghetti for I think the first time in a month. I still haven't gone back to my go-to lunch, vegan chili, though I'll probably do so Monday. And THEN I'll start feeling normal. Ish.
    Funny how I did an extra blog entry to catch back up and then immediately missed another day. So now I'll probably double up again just to prove how retentive one person can be. But I'm just not feeling that fluent right now, and am all out of zany dreams. A little bummed that I still haven't done the forms for getting my brother's money, but I swear I'll get on it. Soon. Hopefully not late.

Oh stormy

    So there were incredibly noisy (if not exactly violent) storms overnight. However, my brain did not wish to be awakened. Thus when the rains were loudest, my brain sunk me into a dream where I was living in a store at a mall and the person living in the next store over was Jack Black. His employers, whether in the real life movie industry or in a dream life mall industry, were very very unhappy with him. Shoot missiles at him unhappy with him in fact. But the missiles hit my store instead, destroying my car.
    Now in the midst of this dream I woke up enough to realize that what I was hearing was actually a king hell rain storm. But I was kind of digging the dream and wanted to know how it turned out, so I went back under. This is kind of strange because in the dream I was mad as hell that my car was burned up; usually I'm glad to get an excuse to wake up out of heavy anger.
    I dreamed on to the extent that I would want to go somewhere and then realize that I had to walk there, but I'm not sure I ever learned any more about Jack Black and his battle with mall management. Gee, I hope he's OK!

TOOOOOOOYYYYYYYY!

    My wonderful sister sent me a new quadcopter, this one of a different type. My reasoning was that the Syma X5C I had before, while very awesome, tended to burn out its motors quickly. To replace them, you have to take up soldering, which is not my idea of fun. This one has motors that are connected by plugs. Not that getting to the plugs is likely to be a picnic (just putting together the largely already assembled copter took me 2 hours or so, as against the 15 minutes by the dreaded People On The Internet).
    This one, the Syma X8C, is much more powerful, much larger, and much heavier. It hurts a lot more if it falls on you and it draws blood if the spinning blades hit you. (I found out the latter the hard way.) So probably not the ideal choice for an idiot like me. It isn't safe to take into popular play areas, parks or schoolgrounds. This instantly sucks a lot of the fun out of it. On the other hand, I just got it and have barely flown it. (Weather, though not rainy, has been cloudy and windy and also not much fun.) So perhaps when I master it, I'll be less worried about making cole slaw out of the citizenry.
    The camera is bigger and better mounted, so hopefully there will be good pictures when there is better weather to photograph. On the whole, I think it's going to be a blast.
    Meanwhile, awesome sister outdid herself by also sending me a Swiss Army chef's knife and case. I mean, how can you learn of the existence of a Swiss Army chef's knife and not have one? I would be delighted to report that it has many attachments including a whistle, but alas, it's just a very, very, very good chef's knife. It's an open quesion whether it's better for peeling potatoes than for other applications. I am most abundantly grateful for this as well as for the toy.

Answer: Pretty bad

    Well, yesterday's pecan pie recipe didn't quite work out. Oddly, it wasn't so much the substitutions I made but the conversion calculations I didn't make. The peanut flour didn't taste unpleasant nor do I believe that peanut butter is all that different from cashew. However, using dried dates rather than fresh pitted ones, though probably not a culinary sin in itself, meant that I should have found out how many cups of dried equal how many fresh. I couldn't find it on the Internet and thus winged it. For that reason or for another (like, it wasn't a very good recipe), I made a pie that is pleasant enough unless say you're expecting an actual pecan pie. Still, I would do it again except that I already gave away the maple syrup. (What can I say? I don't use maple syrup at all ever. I don't dislike it; I just never use any.)
    So bummer drag. I wish it had been great so that I would have a go-to pecan pie recipe. The PS on maple syrup, though, is that I can't think of anything maple-y about traditional pecan pie either. So maybe I'll do it again with more honey. Yes!

How bad CAN it be?

    Half-assing my way through life and cooking, I'm surprised again and again how often I accidentally produce something that I would be willing to pay a lot of money for in a restaurant. It must be obvious by now that my philosophy of cooking is to use good ingredients and then just say, "How bad CAN it be?" Today is pie night at the celiacs group. While it's an open question whether anyone will show up, the very suggestion of pie night made me want to make some kind of pecan pie. This is pretty tricky for a guy who is celiac and doesn't eat GMO corn products. But I found a recipe.
    The thing about the recipe is that it was written by someone who must be a billionairess. Either that or we're having a desperate worldwide cashew shortage. Because she called for a jar of cashew butter, which turns out to be $20! Thus I substituted peanut butter. Sue me. Also I couldn't find almond flour and had no confidence that my equipment would turn almonds into flour like she suggested. I found peanut flour on sale and got that instead. (Also past the best by date, so if anyone has any peanut flour recipes, I'd LOVE to hear them.) So it's a darn peanutty pecan pie. I haven't tried it yet. But how bad can it be?

Rocket science again

    Broken record, aren't I? So today's mad Goodwill purchase was 2 enormous Fisher speakers for just under $10. Enormous as in 3 feet high. The receiver that I bought on another Goodwill junket earlier in the year connects to speakers using plugs. These speakers though connect via stripped wires. So I can cut the plugs off the connectors the receiver already has, I can get some cables with exposed wire and a couple of plugs that I can connect one end of each to, or I can buy another $5 receiver with the same kind of contacts. (This is a very '80s-sounding blog entry, isn't it?)
    Fortunately, in a world without Radio Shack, I know where to go for cables and connections. (They're called Cables and Connections.) But I still feel like an idiot for not remembering how the receiver connects, fully realizing that this is silly, that nobody would. But still.
    Last night, I had this very, very, very vivid dream that there was a flashing red light just above and outside my bedroom window and I was extremely pissed at the landlord for putting it there. I had to wake up to get over it. I assume this had something to do with morning breaking, although that doesn't look much like flashing red lights. As the lot on that side is vacant, I'm reasonably sure there was no fire truck there, but anything is possible. I still think it's funny, though.

3D as in dumb

    One dumb thing was that I turned on the front burner when meaning to use the back, thus burning up my ceramic saucepot. Amelia tried to tell me that I had, but I just thought she wanted to play. Dumb also was not cleaning or renewing the theoretically nonstick pot properly but just heating up lunch in it. I did put oil in it first, though, which leads to the 3D dumb thing. Because it was GREAT! AWESOME! Borderline unforgettable. And the dumb thing is that I've never done this before. I always added water in hopes of keeping reheated food from sticking. I wasn't even trying to eat low-fat; the rationale, such as it was, was that there's already oil in the food. Why add more?
    Mind you, this was a rice dish, so reinventing fried rice could be expected to be really good. I'll try it again with future leftovers. At worst, it ought to help a not very nonstick pot stick less. But I hope it's crazy mad delicious every time.

Make! Me! Stop!

    I'm grumpier than I need to me because I keep playing Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword and it keeps being no fun. That is it's crazy fun up to a point and then something annoying and frustrating happens to make the map I'm playing no longer fun. So a waste of time even within the context of wasting time. I do not understand why anyone would release a game where at the lowest difficulty setting anything particularly bad can happen. These guys have been programming a long time; they must know that somebody out there wants a sandbox setting. Well I do at least. Still addicted, though; I WISH I could quit any time I want, but that seems to be a dream.
    The really childish thing is that I could go back to regular Civ IV, which was much easier, but that requires me to keep the CD in the drive. For some reason, this annoys me abundantly. I'll try to get over it; then I can be addicted to something that is at least consistently fun. If, as I recall, boring at the end.
    Downtown U. has a home football game tomorrow at noon, meaning that I'll be under house arrest most of the day unless I can rent a helicopter real fast. This however only affects grumpiness if we lose the game. Snakebit as this team is, that is not unlikely. Tomorrow I resolve to blog about puppies and kittens regardless.

Ollie's Ollie's Ollie's

    The last time it happened I wasn't too upset and this time I'm not either. Ollie's is a discount outlet like Big Lots/Odd Lots. They send out an advertising circular on Tuesdays which says that the items in the ad will be in the store no later than Thursday morning. Implied but not stated is that they likely will be in the store before Thursday and already gone by then.
    Twice now they've had a camera quad copter for $60; the picture looked a lot like my Syma X5C but the brand name looked suspiciously unfamiliar. The first time, I missed the Thursday part, went out on Tuesday, found nothing, looked at the circular again, went out on Friday and was told they were sold out. This time, though, I was there at 9 sharp, opening time, this morning. Sold out already. I must confess to being more than a little relieved, as I'm pretty sure these are the ones with the really REALLY bad reviews on Amazon. I was hoping both times though that they would turn out to be the styrofoam ones (the ones with the really really REALLY bad reviews) just for comedy purposes. Ah well. Maybe next time I'll phone on Wednesday afternoon.
    Also in the circular and the real reason I went was a cat toy AS SEEN ON TV that every cat will play with. And I tell you what: they dug the heck out of it for an hour or so. It's called Cat's Meow. It's a disc with a wand sticking out. The wand goes around and around, back and forth, pretty much randomly. It's under a cloth skirt so it's both somewhat hidden and it makes cool mousy type noises on the fabric. Both cats were fascinated, although the appeal waxed and waned. Once they found out that they could catch the wand, they were a bit less captivated. It cost $8, though the three C batteries cost nearly that much. But hey-- kitties having a good time is worth anything, right?

It stopped raining! It stopped raining!

    That's it, really. Is there anything else that needs to be said?
    It stopped yesterday, and the sun came out, and we were crazy happy. This morning you could tell by the brightness that the sun was out, but it was incredibly foggy. After an hour or so, though, it was all burned off. I started singing and dancing at random, which is not usual, but then a month of rain isn't, either.
    The last thing I'll say about the weather (I hope!) is that all this clearness doesn't exactly bring down the indoor humidity. It's fairly warm in here by the thermometer, but I'm in a sweater and knit camp because it's so dank. This is the time of year that I would usually have to bring out the humidifier soon. Instead I may finally buy the dehumidifier I've been threatening to get for year. I hope we get a chance to dry out finally!

And then there are the memories that are simpler to pretend were dreams

    Let's see, how to go about this. My siblings were born in 1951, '52, '53, then there was a gap until '59; finally I came along in 1962. The first bunch went to parochial school but when Frank came to school age, he was having none of nuns. So he and I went to Heathwood Hall Episcopal School for a while. Therefore, we also went to CCD (Catholic Sunday school, on Wednesdays of course) also for a while. I made it to third grade, when I found out that goofing off on my own was WAY more fun.
    Because I'm talking about Catholic stuff and childhood memories and am male, you may be thinking that this is about some horrible event. But it's just weird. I did make it as far as First Holy Communion. I remember usually being paired with another boy, and he was the weird part. He had some paste or pastes, or mustard and ketchup, coming from his mouth. Or he was a robot and his fluids were leaking. I remember that it was always there and that it looked like mustard and ketchup, and I seem to remember him sucking it up from time to time. I have no recollection of how long Communion instruction took, nor how much of the time I was actually paired with him. I remember some class room time, mainly because I remember sampling matzoh and grape juice there. I suspect that I was only paired with him for a rehearsal and for the actual communion with the monsignor. So maybe it was as seldom as once and he had had a sandwich and was a very sloppy eater. I've been bewildered about it for 40-odd years now. I still think he was a robot.

Shoulder

    Nothing major. I have a knack for having aches and pains in great profusion, but none of them rating more than about 1/2 on a scale of one to ten. But this has been a nagging one. My left shoulder has been bugging me nearly all the time for the past month and more. Of course it would be the left one (which makes hypochondriacs of a certain age think "Heart attack!) but it's no big deal. I did eventually notice that it gets bad when it rains and magically goes away when it doesn't rain. And that was all the point of the story. You know you're getting old when stuff starts hurting when it rains. Darn it!

The battle against bro' country

    I don't know if I ever blogged about it but I've definitely mentioned it in real life and on Facebook: about a year ago, Goodwill went nuts and started playing some of the best music ever, all the time. Like a really, really reliable oldies station, playing nearly all '60s and '70s R&B. I found myself hanging out in Goodwill on purpose to listen to the music.
    Fast forward to now and they've lost their minds in the other direction. Only one store plays R&B anymore; mostly their playing other oldies, but less old and less good. A couple of stores, however, are playing new stuff. Awful, awful, awful new stuff. Mostly something called bro' country. One song was so bad we had to look it up, and there we learned of bro' country and the wonders of Georgia Florida Line. (I'm not upset if I got that backwards.) Worst thing is that this had been the best store until they started playing horrifyingly bad music. I found myself dreading going there.
    (Subtext is: does this mean that they're trying to run off black customers? I really have no idea. It's a very uncomfortable idea and I hope they're just being dumb in the sense of choosing bad music, not suicidally dumb in the sense of choosing bad music with an agenda. Eventually, I'm going to ask if there's any way to go back to the good music.)
    Today, though, I cut the gordian knot most readily; I brought my iPod. Play a crappy song; I drown it out! I told Paul to wave his hand in front of my eyes if he needed my attention. It did make the visit much much more pleasant. Hey look at me! All problem solvy!

Forgive another writing exercise

    Yesterday on Facebook, I said that one good thing about all this rain is that it's been good for the tea olives, and that's true. It seems like the tea olives (a tree with tiny sweet-smelling flowers, flowers so tiny it used to make me crazy trying to find where that smell was coming from) in the neighborhood have never been blooming (thus fragrant) this often. Bu-ut the rain seems to be helping in another dimension, and I don't quite know how to word it.
    The humidity seems to make the smell spread farther. Does humid air carry scents better? Does bad weather make you seek out nice smells harder to make up for grey skies? Does more rain make the flowers bloom harder? Does humidity carry pollen better? I don't know! But what I'm trying to say, I think, is that frequent rains make tea olive (and presumably all flowering plants) bloom more frequently and high humidity seems to make their scent more powerful. Might be my imagination, but I love it regardless!
    In wacky weather news, we're almost at air conditioner need today, whereas it's supposed to go down to 40 by Monday. People always say, "If you don't like the weather in _________, wait a minute," but I think Columbia is living up to it this week!

Sun break

    My friend Terry, the famous Irish president-greeter, told me that Seattle offices will shut down and take sun breaks when the sun actually comes out during cloudy seasons. Perhaps he was winding up. Lately, though, I could easily believe it. Today, I was in no mood for more effing clouds and rain. Right from the first. I woke up from the daylight in spite of my sleep mask, so I was absolutely sure it must be brilliantly sunny outside. But no! Furthest thing in fact.
    I wish I could call it the result of superior planning, but it was just the result of farting around all day. However, when I finally went out to take my walk, I was shocked, even bewildered, that the sun was out. Sort of. Enough. So I announced it on Facebook. And people actually ran out and took pictures. And dug my picture. This is an indication of how much it's been raining lately.
    On the whole, I feel a little robbed. Normally, November in Columbia is crazy sunny and beautiful. Cool, but still with flowers. Chamber of Commerce type weather. That's been in short supply lately. Any day, they'll be changing the tourism slogan from Famously Hot to Famously Wet. It'll be great!

Chucks

    Are there no more Chucks in the world? What has happened to the Chucks, and who is responsible? I'm thinking Chuck Norris. Maybe it's the Internet Chuck Norris = Superman type jokes, but I think he was the last of the Chucks. When I was a lad, the land was awash in Chucks. From Chuck Howley to Chuck Taylor, from Chuck Noll to Chuck Tanner (not far; that's what started this: did a couple of Chucks really make Pittsburgh the City of Champions?). Chuck Daly, Chuck Connors. You'd think there'd be a quarterback Chuck, but I can only think of baseball and basketball Chucks (apart from Howley).
    Google does refresh my memory about a current Chuck, as well as confirms that the Chuck quarterbacks were pretty obscure. The current one is coach Pagano; maybe THERE'S your problem!

Checks

    Lately I can't write checks. I already mentioned writing very large ones where I wrote the numbers-in-words line wrong (apparently). More recently, I wrote the checks fine; I just sent the rent check to T-Mobile and the T-Mobile check to my landlord. The latter came around to let me know, so I give him a correct check. I called T-Mobile and the robot said that they had received my check for (amount of rent). Now maybe they just process checks by putting them through an electronic reader that gets the routing number and account number and then they just type in the amount. If so, that's OK. But if they do it at all the old-fashioned way, the bank will not be best-pleased. Therefore, I called this morning, spoke to an actual human, read off my routing and account number, and paid the actual amount due. If I wind up way ahead, I can live with it. I was also glad that I had followed Dad's procedure of paying a week in advance; the second payment wasn't even late!
    So while this is a happy ending, I'm starting to worry about my brain function. I hope it's just a matter of cat dander allergies acting up due to not vacuuming often enough (due to all this damned rain keeping both kitties inside, and I figure vacuuming with both in would incite a riot). I did vacuum today, so hopefully I start thinking clearer. Ly. Er. Early onset dementia is not really something I had planned on, and would rather not. Maybe it'll cause me to speed up setting up online bill paying at least. That would probably be a good thing.

All I want to talk about is lentils, man

    But it isn't lentils, really. I go on and on about how dumb I am and how obtuse at grasping the very, very, very obvious, but usually I'm mostly kidding. However, it's a matter of awe to me that I couldn't figure out the simple concept of flavoring everything. If you're going to eat mostly rice, beans and steamed vegetables, rather than just flavor the chicken or beef or whatever you're mixing in with the rice, beans and vegetables, how much smarter is it to spice up the other three, that make up the bulk of the dish? How could I not figure this out before. No matter, I've got it figured out now. It may be time finally to reopen the test kitchen!
    As to lentils, I made the same thing I made the other day which turned out so well but this time added a little (flavored) brown rice. The during taste was less wonderful but the aftertaste was outstanding. I think I could be said to be a fan of cloves. And I think lentils carry flavors better than other, uh, I think they're legumes. Basically, I'm making a dal (dahl) that could pass for hummus. I'm about ready to live on it.

Glub glub

    I believe I've mentioned already that since the flood, I at least have a slight degree of panic every time it rains. My rational mind, though, gets that a thousand-year flood is fairly unlikely to be repeated in one month. However... forecasters are suggesting that this batch of rain might again lead to historic flooding. At least they're not suggesting it's a lead-pipe cinch like they did last time. Monitoring weather radio (via TV, of course) suggests that while flooding is possible, the worst we're likely to get is the usual flash floods, not neighborhoods wiped out like last time.
    Still, you can probably imagine that if regular rain is a little nerve-wracking, another frog-strangler (apparently that's supposed to be toad-choker, but frog-strangler just sounds so much more dramatic) so soon is a lot more than anyone here needs. Well, except for the mosquitos. They're probably having a big party!

Grasp of the extremely obvious still touch and go

    I made one of my go to meals, basically lentils, vegetables, onions, garlic, cloves, cumin, salt and pepper. I was wondering a) why it was so crazy delicious and b) why it made so little. The obvious answer: I usually put this over brown rice. Lots of brown rice. Now, you can call that a senior moment (I don't mind) but then, everything's a learning experience. Maybe I need to flavor up my rice some more. Cooking it in broth was one good idea, but more spice is a good thing. It seems that something yellow is traditional.
    Anyway, it WAS crazy delicious, so there's that! I guess more onions, garlic, cloves, cumin, salt and pepper is never a bad thing.