Force of habit

    I use the front left burner on the stove much oftener than any other. When I need to use the back burner, force of habit nearly always makes me turn on the front one instead. Sometimes, this leads me to burn up my non-stick saucepan a bit. The other day, I turned on the wrong burner three or four times while trying to make beef stew. (The three or four times were due to having to leave the house several times.) Fortunately, I didn't have anything on the front burner any of those times, but I wasted a bit of electricity and a lot of cooking time.
    Fortunately, Paul suggested going out for pho, which we did. So I didn't need the beef stew, which was just as well since it wasn't ready until 9 or so. Don't know how to shake off force of habit. Just got to pay more attention, I guess. Brain transplants don't appear to be feasible yet, darn the luck.

Nutty

    It annoys me mildly whenever something is said to taste nutty. It comes up a lot in gluten-free world when someone is describing the flavor of an unfamiliar grain. It's just unhelpful. There is a hellacious variety of nuts in the world, and all of them taste different. To me, teff porridge suggests pecans somehow, so I throw in pecans. Amaranth somewhat evokes pistachios. I threw some in, but as they were years old, this wasn't the most brilliant move in history. Need to go out and get me some fresh(er) pistachios. I just don't think "nutty" is a helpful word since nuts don't have one flavor. Perhaps I need to learn how to generalize.
    Last night I dreamed that Dad was trying to get around in an M.C. Escher house without his walker. I brought it and that somehow helped him negotiate all the stairs better. A little stressed out about the situation still, me. But at least it wasn't an MC Hammer house!

Seeing red

    Back in the day, when I was in another living situation but with the same cat, I slept under a red comforter and said kitty tended to pounce on my foot much oftener than I like. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I brought the comforter out of exile and started sleeping under it again. And the kitty started pouncing my foot again. Since kitties are colorblind, it couldn't be the redness. Though since the blanket I had on top in the interim was white; I guess even a colorblind creature would perceive a difference between red and white. Or maybe she's just more rowdy because it's warmer. When it gets warmer still momentarily, the comforter will go away again and it will become a moot point. Unless she keeps pouncing my foot of course.

Bob and Carole and Errol and Lana

    As I've mentioned, I'm a fairly big fan of old-time radio. There were a lot of radio shows offering condensed versions of contemporary movies. I would guess that this was mostly so that the studios could promote their movies at relatively low cost. Synergies, a later decade might say. I have several sets of several versions of the same movie.
    One of the sets is of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Not the Brangelina vehicle, but another one. A couple learn that the town where they had been married was in Nevada rather than Idaho. Thus, they were never married. Carole Lombard starred in the movie, but I don't recall if anyone mentioned the male lead. (OK, IMDB says Robert Montgomery. And directed by Alfred Hitchcock!)
    One of the radio shows features Carole Lombard but co-stars Bob Hope. The other one stars Lana Turner and Errol Flynn. The scripts are different, but there aren't any major story changes. The plot involves the husband's best friend and law partner trying to persuade the wife to marry him instead. In the Hope show, the law partner was also a former Alabama football player; for some reason he became a Michigan man in the Flynn one. The accent didn't change much.
    The big change was just not having Bob Hope. He was a lot funnier back in the day than he would be later, but a romantic lead he wasn't. The Hope-Lombard pairing was just uncomfortable, though she soldiered through well. Errol Flynn and Lana Turner were a lot more smooth. Maybe a bit less funny, but a lot less jarring.
    OK, so I didn't have anything particularly deep to say about the shows. I just liked the subject line!

Vacation

    Or evacuation. My brain seems to be taking this opportunity to take a little vacation, or possibly evacuation. I don't have anything on the ball at all. All I seem to want to do is play elderly computer games. So forgive it please that this blog entry is about not making a conspicuously cogent blog entry. I do have glimmerings of bright ideas, but then they run away again.
    Continuing my second favorite theme, I had another interesting dream, this time just as I was waking up. I was on a train that had a lot more grades to traverse than any train I've been on in real life that wasn't a roller coaster. When it crested one, I saw the last light of a copper sunset reflected on a great river to my left. I thought "Copper dawn-- sunset." Which is about how my brain's working in real life, too. Anyway, a rare lovely vista in a dream, or at least in my dreams. When the train reached the station, of course, it was no longer a train  but rather a school bus. I had been on a field trip with a group of adults. Hey, it could happen!

And he's out

    In the end, it wasn't any big deal getting Dad out. We needed one of those clothing racks on wheels, but none were available since other people were also moving in or out. So I just carried everything out myself. Everything fit in my car, so I sent Dad ahead with William. I took all the stuff to Margaret's, though she most likely won't want any of his sweat clothes with his name written all over them. I figure we can move the superfluous stuff over to his house later.
    The nursing staff was great. They were going to give him his medication information on a printout, but he said he couldn't read it. So the really nice nurse recopied everything by hand in large print. Margaret needed me to get her a few groceries, so I did. Dad was trying to get his doctor on the phone to get prescriptions written. Though Rice Home sent along a pretty good supply of everything he's taking.
    So it all went well. Hope things keep up that way. Today, I have to take him to dialysis from Margaret's for the first time. It sucks that her birthday falls on a dialysis day. But they'll get to celebrate sooner or later.

Free to go

    Dad is leaving the nursing home today. As ever, communication is slightly less than ideal. So I'm standing by waiting for somebody to call to tell me it's time to come pick him and his stuff up and William's standing by waiting for me to call him in turn to come help. As we both have small sedans, neither of us is likely to be able to take everything alone. Since most of Dad's stuff is clothes on hangers, it isn't really workable for us to get his stuff down from the room without help. And they probably would have liability problems with us barging through with armfuls of stuff. So we wait. Probably for hours yet.
    On the brighter side, the morning forecast featured showers; the afternoon sunshine. So it might well be worth the wait. Anyway, hope all goes well, and that he and Margaret are very happy. Her 91st birthday is tomorrow, so she's certainly getting a very special birthday present!
    Noon update: Dad called to say they had started getting his stuff together, but he still wasn't clear when this would finish. Guess I ought to be getting out there.