Friday Pedestrian

Friday continues for me as a pedestrian. Air Volvo is at the mothership with the parking brake failure, shutting down the Volvo for safety reasons. Thus, I will not visit IKEA, the various tree-lighting celebrations, or the Chinese Garden today. I will stay home, and that is good as I am not feeling quite right anyway.

It was cold on Friday, with a stagnant air warning, but the air quality was good (no small particulates).  I was coughing, and my nose ran, meaning the poor air quality (humid with extra CO2) impacted me.  I stay inside and let the air filter help as much as possible.

The blog was short as Thanksgiving filled the day before. As usual, I spent time downloading and updating all the transactions from my bank accounts, reading all my emails and news updates, and making liberal coffee. The coffee, Equal Exchange brand, reminded me of Justice, Compassion, and love for Community. Hope is always in the cup when one focuses on these three things. I had reheated quiche for breakfast that I made the day before. It was good reheated.

I spent hours ordering fruit cakes from the monks at Gethesemani Farms in Kentucky. The prices are higher, and shipping is very high—I once paid $27 for shipping for one gift! I got a few address checks by email and messenger and made the updates on my list to ensure the bounty would arrive soon. I had one broken cart and one that was addressed to me (I sent one to myself for high shipping costs–Kentucky is not near Oregon), but with one exception: the cakes and fudge are outbound. Yes, ‘Release the Fruit Cakes!’ followed by evil laughter was running through my mind.

Deborah and Barb are not fruit cake folks (and likely others are too polite to tell me), so I will arrange other mailings for them. Some younger folks (who would find a fruit cake a strange and likely unloved mystery) would get cash instead, but I worry about that as it is now weird to hold US currency and is not taken in all places (even in the USA). Until I get a better option, Dead Presidents and Dead Postmasters portraits (college and post-college get Franklins) get sent. I will also send gifts to the Heffer Project to honor various folks who need nothing more and resist fruit cakes. More to come.

I kept thinking I should go somewhere, only to remember that Air Volvo was in the shop, so I chatted on the phone and did laundry instead. I made dinner of baked chicken with a microwaved (and then baked) potato with sour cream and some green beans I managed to overcook. I also overcooked the chicken. I was watching the long Director’s Cut of the movie Napoleon and let some things drift. The chicken was well done, 175F, and not great, but I accepted it as the movie was good, and I was enjoying the film on my Apple computer for free on my Apple+ account instead of paying attention to the cooking.

I used a curry spice for chicken I brought back from Morocco, which was good on the overcooked chicken thighs. I have always been worried about undercooked chicken and successfully avoided that mistake today!

Returning to the story, I decided to read. I changed books. While Graham Greene’s The Penguin Book of Victorian Villainies was fascinating, I think shorter works would be better. I found this book in The Curious Books store in East Lansing and thought it would be intriguing. Three hundred pages for one complete story is too much for me, with each chapter obviously being a section of a series, and the writer paid to keep going. The story moves, as would be expected, at a glacial pace. However, the language and word usage are unfamiliar. It would be interesting to try to use the words and sentence structure. More to come. I will likely return to the serial.

I nodded off and soon slept for hours. It was a nightmare. Something was chasing me in the house. I heard it tell its master it would search the bedroom for me. In my dream, I jumped out of bed and quietly walked down the hall, trying to hide in the kitchen, which seemed safe to me, following the illogic of dreams. It jumped out of the bathroom, and it got me. The arms grabbed my legs. I shouted for help.

I woke, and my leg was in a cramp where it had grabbed me. The cramp soon passed. I decided on some lighter to read.

The new book is a translation from the Greek of a fictional story about three girls growing up in pre-WW2 Greece, Three Summers. The English is modern, and the story, told in the first person, is idyllic. It is a good break from murder mysteries and Victorian writing. I read about ten pages before sleep started to overtake me.

I had to use some Benadryl cream as the lousy air had me breaking out in hives. I was soon comfortable again. Soon, I was falling asleep, and I thought I had left the music to sleep by running on the Amazon Echo device, but when I woke up this morning, it had stopped. I slept into a dreamless sleep, and nothing chased me.

Thanks for reading.