Decades-old mystery solved

    Or rather, decades-old mystery noticed, then immediately solved. I was relating one of my favorite anecdotes about myself. It concerned an occurrence at Penn, when I lived in a rather strange dormitory called Kings Court/English House. (As far as I know, I was the only one who called it The King's English.) It was strange only in that you could not enter Kings Court (where I lived) except through English House. This family was trying to get in through one of Kings Court's exit only doors.
    I said, "You can't get in that way. It's a fahr door." It took me two tries to correct my drawl to "fire door." I guess that's when I started trying to polish up the accent a little bit. Anyway, I always assumed that they were a prospective student and her family, but now realize that that makes no sense. We were a few blocks off of campus proper; there's no reason a prospective student would be trying to get into a dormitory by the wrong entrance when there are untold numbers of places she and her family would more likely be visiting only a couple of blocks south.
    Thus the mystery and its immediate solution: they were probably the family of a student living in Kings Court/English House. This makes much more sense. I probably should have asked. "Y'all got kin up in hair?," I can hear myself saying.

Aw I can't do it

    A couple of years ago, when I first started hosting Drinking Liberally, a nice young man and his nice young female companion came to a meeting. I thought they were fairly enthusiastic, but alas, I never saw them again. He handed me a business card that had nothing on it but his name. I thought this was fairly great, but then I put it on the seat of my car and never saw it again either. Until yesterday. I have no idea where it had been hiding; in the course of life, you search your car for various things and usually find things you weren't looking for, but it never turned up until out of the blue it just appeared on the floor under the driver's seat. No doubt there's some quantum physics explanation.
    Anyway, what I thought I was going to do was title this blog entry with his name, figuring that anybody who would print a business card with only his name on it would probably also be given to googling his name now and then. If he wanted to get in touch, he'd find my contact information on this blog. But I find I can't do it. For all that I am fundamentally a town crier by nature, it doesn't seem right to publish a stranger's name without his permission, even though I'm not saying anything bad about him. But that leaves me with another content-free blog entry. You'll just have to take my word that it's a cool-looking business card. Printed by Schrodinger? Well I have no way of knowing.

Aitch-ee-double-toothpicks

    As an agnostic, I don't have a lot in the way of theology. However, I'm increasingly convinced that my own eternal destiny will be decided by a committee of ex-girlfriends. How they'll be convoked is another question that fortunately is not my problem. I have a pretty shrewd idea what their decision is going to be, though. Gee, you make ONE "You don't HAVE a small of the back" joke!

What? A happy dream?

    Not that there was that much to it. Interestingly (I hope), I think that's the way the dream happened. In other words, it isn't that I'm not remembering much of the dream, but that there wasn't much dream to remember. I was a detective; my partner was a Chinese fellow. I was able to clear a bunch of young people (think the kids from "Fame," more or less) of underage singing and dancing. This is odd, of course, and not the usual thing I would expect as a result of sleep-listening to "Inner Sanctum Mysteries." What's odder is how happy it made me. I was beside myself.
    The Chinese fellow was less thrilled. Or anyway unenthusiastic. Then I had a different Chinese partner, whose name I somehow inferred from-- nothing, really. This made me extremely happy, too. It's a bewilderment to me. I guess my brain just figured (correctly) that I needed a little gratuitous happiness about now. But such peculiar things to be happy about!

Is it a phobia if the fear is justified?

    Taking Dad to the dialysis facility has been complicated slightly since I backed into the guy's pickup truck some months ago. I've never seen him again (or at least, not the pickup truck) and I've had no further accidents, but the place now permanently makes me nervous. Vehicles come out of nowhere too fast. You look both ways, and look both ways, and look both ways, and pull out, and poof! Somebody magically appears.
    It would be really great if they would cut down some of the greenery to create better lines of sight. It would be really great if they would put in speed bumps (or speed humps, as they now seem to be called). Or if people would just slow the @#$# down on their own. My common sense move is to park on the side that isn't the one most people use as an entrance. This cuts down magically appearing automobiles markedly. It's also the side with better shade, so I prefer parking there anyway this time of year. Of course, other people often figure that out, too, but I don't mind using the non-shady spots if I get to feel safer. It'll hold me until I get my robot-driven car, and then I can have phobias about that!

Not much of a gag anyway

    There's a billboard next to the Gervais St. bridge with a giant photo of the back of a car. Being the grownup that I'm not, I wanted to take a picture and caption it: "Shocked! Shocked that they're putting rear ends on billboards!" However, taking a picture while driving 40 mph in the left lane of a fairly narrow bridge is not the shrewdest idea ever. Taking a good one would require taking one's eyes off the road in a manner that would probably be fatal. So I snapped a shot with my eyes on the road instead. No idea what I actually photographed; some portion of the interior of the car, judging by the color.
    Anyway, it's not much to brag on, but I'm proud that I let it go. I like to think I would have been able to let it go even if the joke had in fact been funny. Now THAT would be a sign of growing up. Let's not rush things.

Aged cookies?

    So the Dates with Assorted Nuts cookies weren't particularly good at first. They weren't particularly good at second. Today, however, they're absolute world beaters. Did they age well? Did I have a cold for two days? Did I do a terrible job of mixing and all the flavor got stuck in half the cookies? I can't figure it. But boy do I ever love them now!
    I guess next week I'll make them the same way except for making a greater effort to mix harder. One thing I noticed even when I wasn't loving them so much was that I can definitely see why people combine dates and walnuts in baked goods. Even though I'm not so taken with walnuts as a rule, the two flavors go well together. Maybe I'll amp up both the dates and walnuts next time.
    Sorry, I had a really intelligent, deep post for today but I completely forgot it. Oops. These senior moments get ever more frequent.