Seen any alligators?

    I had a brief attack of common sense today, but it passed. It was getting far along in the afternoon of a conspicuously gorgeous day and I still hadn't taken my walk yet. Common sense said that it was too late to go strolling into the wilderness. Also it had rained a bit, so the wilderness was likely to be slippier than we normally like it to be. Thus, I was going to walk at the highly paved Canal Park rather than hit my beloved Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve. Then I remembered who I am, and made the turn for the wilderness instead.
    When I arrived, a fellow who didn't seem to have the greatest, uh, cognitive abilities asked if I'd ever seen any alligators there. (There are warning signs at the parking area to the effect that alligators are present.) I told him that friends of mine had seen one, but that I personally would much rather not. I told him that if he wanted to see any, his best bet was to turn right at the fork.
    I turned on the iPod and forgot about him. At the fork, I went left, heading for the pretty area rather than the get-eaten-by-alligators area. In the late afternoon, the Spanish moss was crazy beautiful. Next time, I'll be sure to bring a camera.
    On a curving part of the trail, I found that my new friend and number one fan was following me. Anyone who has ever been mugged does not like being followed, ever; anyway, I don't. In case he turned out not to be a benign presence, I showed him that weedy old blind guys can go very, very, very fast. I don't run, but I don't get tired, and I generally accelerate the farther I go, too.
    Eventually when I got to the alligatory part of the trail, where footing gets more dangerous, I slowed up and made sure he didn't fall or get lost. I also turned off the iPod since alligators have a VERY recognizable call and it's a good idea to be able to hear it just in case.
    He kept asking me how long the trail was. I forebore from mentioning that I didn't ask him to follow me and I had told him to go right instead of left. I just told him when we had gotten back to the easy (and guaranteed alligator-less) part and sped up again since the sun was sinking rapidly.
    As it's a yoyo trail (what I call a loop trail with a short connector to the parking lot), I hung back to make sure that he didn't go around the loop forever and ever, and also dawdled pulling out of the lot to make sure that he was coming back. I'm such a shitty social Darwinist!
    I know I should have been friendlier and more helpful, but at the same time people need to know their limitations. Neither did I volunteer to be a tour guide; I just wanted to take a walk, and was genuinely in a hurry due to the lateness of the hour. Anyway, it was a lovely walk and nobody got eaten by alligators. Unless a really wily one got him in the parking lot, and I can hardly be held responsible for that.

I'm home

    In all this time, I've probably posted this before. But it's really just a syntax exercise, and I could probably stand a little fine-tuning. If I've posted it before, maybe I'll get it right this time.
    Years ago when I lived in Philadelphia, I noticed that when I got home if I saw a light on in my window, I'd think, "I'm home." This meant not that I had arrived home, but what you would think if you were visiting somebody else's house and saw a light on inside: "Oh good, they're home." I'm pretty sure that I was aware at all times that I wasn't really inside. Although I sometimes bid for sainthood, bi-location isn't going to be part of my application. It was just a transitory thought; normal people might have this kind of idea and immediately correct themselves without even thinking about it. I thought it was funny, and still do.
    In the wintertime, I have my lights on a much greater percentage of the time, so I'm relatively more likely to get home and find the lights on. And yes, I'll admit it; I still think, "I'm home." Well I am!

Wait a minute

    Today, Dad is feeling much better. He thinks it was the sedative that they gave him for his procedure that made him feel so weak. I still think that hunger was more likely the cause, but all that's important is that he feels much better today. That has nothing to do with what I'm posting today, but some readers might have missed the Facebook updates, and anyway it's so much to the front of my mind I figured I'd better address it first.
    Also what I'm posting about today is of infinitesimal importance, just a minor pet peeve. At the station where I most usually get gas, after you've finished pumping (assuming you're using a credit card), the screen asks, "Receipt Y/N?" If you say no (also presumably if you say yes, but I always say no, er, N), it then says "Wait a minute," then resets for the next customer. I know it's just lazy programming. I know I can just substitute in my mind whatever appropriate phrase should in fact be there ("Thanks for buying gas here," say) and just not worry about it. Generally, I just look away so it won't annoy me yet again. But still; dumbness just gets on my nerves. My transaction is done! I don't need to wait a minute! There. I feel better now.

Eerie

    OK, it isn't eerie at all, but I'm not at all sure that "schizy" is really a word. It's a bit schizy to visit your dialysis facility when it isn't your regular day. The building is the same, but all the patients are different, much of the staff is different and even a lot of the ambulance drivers are different. Dreamlike, I would almost call it. More than a little odd, to say the least.
    Oh, sorry, I buried the lead. Dad is fine. The procedure was perfectly straightforward, if a bit time-consuming, and they fit him in at dialysis immediately if you neglect to count the hour and twenty minute wait. At the nephrologists, they gave him a sausage biscuit after his procedure, which helped, but as far as I know he didn't eat anything else between 11 last night and almost 6 this evening. Not surprisingly, he felt pretty weak and tired. He asked Margaret to make him a very, very late breakfast and she was starting on it as I left. So hopefully he's feeling all better by now.
    Unfortunately and as predicted, they want him to come back again for dialysis tomorrow, precious little sense as that might make. So he's going to have really, really, really clean blood. At least we'll have the old familiar crew in the building again. My dreams are already weird enough without reality tearing a page from them.

Crisis? What crisis?

    I dropped Dad off at dialysis today with an unusual absence of any problem. They called him back (which is to say from the waiting area to the dialysis area) before he could even sit down, which is very unusual and really great. I went home and heated up my lunch and started eating. Not far in, I got a call from Margaret. The dialysis facility had called her instead of me for some reason. She said that I had to go back and pick Dad up, but she couldn't understand quite why. I called the facility straight away and the office manager said that my dad was clotting and that he had an appointment with Vascular in the morning.
    Now if you're paying attention to our adventures, you know that he has a clot in his leg that nobody but me seems all that concerned about. I pretty much make up for the rest of them, though. So this news alarmed me greatly. However, when I got there, I found that he had clotting around his access (the point on his arm where they hook up the dialysis machine) so they couldn't dialyse him. This has happened before; just not at the very start of a dialysis session. So we have to go to the nephrologists roughly at dawn to get it cleaned out, and he can't eat after midnight. (Presumably, he turns into a gremlin if he does.)
    When the access is cleaned out, they'll probably be able to fit him in for dialysis on the wrong day. The interesting question becomes whether they will insist on him coming back on his regular day, Saturday, as well. Bets are that they will; he seemed resigned to it. I'm hoping sanity will prevail, but we'll have to see. The point is that what sounded like an immense scary crisis turned out to be nothing of the kind, just a slightly unusual incident. I can live with it.

Coinkydink

    Continuing on the theme of finding odd music on YouTube, I suddenly got an urge to hear Gregorian monks chant "Bohemian Rhapsody." (I mean, doesn't everybody?) Googling bore no fruit, not surprisingly, but I did find a lot of rock songs done by something called Gregorian: Masters of Chant. (I dug "Kashmir" quite a lot.) Turns out to be a band called Gregorian which has released a series of records called Masters of Chant. (How they could have skipped "Bohemian Rhapsody" I'll never know!)
    The coincidence is that one of the singers is named Gerry O'Beirne. Perhaps Ireland (or Germany; it's a German band) is littered with Gerry O'Beirnes, but I sort of think of it as an uncommon name. One of my favorite singer/songwriter/guitarists has that name, but doesn't look anything like the picture of the guy in Gregorian and has been touring with his own projects during the time (since 2005) that the other one has been in Gregorian. The one in Gregorian was born in 1959; the one I like looks to be a bit older than that, but not enough older to be his father.
    Anyway, the coinkidink caused me to look up the Gerry I like and found that he has put out two records since the last time I looked. So although I'm unlikely to buy any Gregorian, I will no doubt be getting me some new Gerry O'Beirne pretty soon. So yay.

Blame it on the bossa nova

    For whatever reason, I wanted to find a bossa nova version of "New Year's Day" by U2 for, you know, today. There is a YouTube video identifying itself as such, but it was really odd. I just couldn't pick up anything particularly bossa nova about it. It was a fairly faithful cover with maybe a little extra percussion. There was a prominent acoustic guitar sound in the mix, but again it didn't sound remotely bossa nova. The vocals sounded like Bono with a faint Brazilian accent.
    This caused me to follow a bunch of links to bossa nova covers (at least ostensibly) of other pop songs. I tended to like them a lot ("Sympathy for the Devil" and "Sweet Child of Mine" particularly) but I still wasn't hearing anything particularly bossa nova about them. One song, I forget which, had a remarkable Astrud Gilberto impersonator (or maybe it was really her), but otherwise I just wasn't hearing the resemblance.
    Of course I'm no expert; as I've remarked before, I never liked bossa nova until my last bout looking for bossa covers as a joke, which eventually got to be less of a joke. Maybe that strumming the acoustic guitar on the offbeats thing has gone out of fashion. Or maybe I just don't know anything about bossa nova. Or maybe Brazilian musicians just call whatever they're doing bossa nova to keep a toehold in the international market. Anyway, if anyone is curious about this, it's an easy Google videos search. You might skip "New Year's Day," but "Sympathy for the Devil" really is pretty cool.
    PS: Happy new year!