Three Beautiful Things 11-13-2024: Quick Labs, Relaxing at Great Harvest, Lunch with Shelley (and Shopping)

1. Lab day! 

I'm always eager to get going to Spokane on lab day and so I bolted out of bed at 4:15 this morning, got cleaned up, gathered a few things, completed Wordle, and by 5:45 I was on I-90 for a fairly uneventful drive to Spokane. 

Until November 1, I went to a lab in the same building on Sacred Heart's campus for labs as houses the transplant clinic.

Sacred Heart closed that lab.

Now I go to the main hospital, check in at the surgery check in area, and wait to be called in.

It was all quick this morning and lo and behold the superb Angela drew my blood -- it was good to see she came over to the hospital when Sacred Hearts bosses closed that other lab. 

How quick? 

I was out of the parking garage I use in under a half and hour and so parking was FREE! Ha ha ha!  I saved three bucks!

Test results came quickly, too, and I hope the transplant team is happy with the numbers.

I sure was. 

2. My day continued to be fun when I left Sacred Heart.

I immediately blasted over to Great Harvest and bought a loaf of Harvest Blend bread, a magnificent Morning Glory muffin, and a 16 oz cup of Cravens Earth & Sky dark roast coffee.

I dove back into Haruk Murakami's book Underground and learned that I was reading a newer edition with material added to the book that had not been in the original. 

Originally, Murakami's plan was to interview only victims of the gas attack along with a few medical personnel and a few relatives of victims. 

But, reader responses to his original book moved him to interview members of the cult, Aum, who perpetrated the attack.

I'm reading those interviews now. 

I relaxed and read. 

Mornings at Great Harvest are quiet. 

Morning customers tend to be, like me, older people, often in small coffee clatches. 

Today, the counter person who took my order lit up when she saw I was reading a book by Murakami, told me she enjoyed his fiction, and asked me to report back to her when I finished Underground. 

I'll do that. 

3. Back around the time of Don Knott's Celebration of Life, Don's sister Shelley and I agreed to get together for lunch some time. We made some plans that fell through for good reasons, but today our plan didn't fall through. 

I arrived in Coeur d'Alene about an hour so ahead of our appointed time to meet. 

I spent that hour happily wandering around Fred Meyer, looking at what coffees they sell, checking out kitchen ware, browsing their men's T-shirts, and seeing if anything else caught my eye. 

I wasn't in the buying mood, so I left the store empty handed.

I buzzed over to Tomato Street and met up with Shelley.

We had a splendid lunch. 

I enjoyed a plate of spaghetti topped with a sauce of brown butter and myzithra, a Greek cheese made from goat or sheep milk. I splurged and added three meatballs to my pasta and enjoyed a small green salad and Tomato Street's garlic bread. 

Shelley and I had a lot to talk about. We told each other what we experienced in the time period around the celebration of Don's life. Shelley filled me in on how the area around the Kellogg cemetery was a place where she and her brothers spent fun times growing up and how she and Don had returned to that area not too long ago and that some of Don's ashes are now scattered there. 

I enjoyed how wide ranging our conversation was and that I got to know Shelley better, a delight. 

I lost track of time, but I think we talked for nearly two hours. 

I wanted to check out the Trader Joe's that opened Tuesday in Coeur d'Alene, but, ha!, the fairly ample parking lot was full with several cars driving around looking for shoppers to leave. 

I almost immediately gave up. I'll go back later. I also wanted to buy some groceries at Pilgrim's Market and so drove across the street (its parking lot was almost full!) and purchased produce, Cravens Earth and Sky coffee, Nancy's kefir, raw almonds, and maybe one or two other items. 

Back home, I was happy to find Copper was relaxed and content despite being behind a closed door for nearly eight hours. 

I was tired.

I napped. 

I relished that I had done today what I enjoy most: expanding my post-transplant trips to Sacred Heart into fun times in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-12-2024: Winter Tires On, *Underground* Changes Gears, A Simple Soup

 1. I loaded the winter tires into the back of the Sube, dropped the Sube off at Silver Valley Tire Center, dropped Debbie off at school in the Camry, dropped the Camry off at Silver Valley Tire Center, walked home, got a call that the tires had been switched, walked, drove the Sube home, stored the spring/summer/fall tires in the garage, walked, paid, brought home the Camry, sighed a sigh of relief, and felt happy that our cars both are equipped with winter tires. 

2. The book Underground suddenly turned philosophical. It's a different book now that interviews with victims, family members, and medical professionals are finished. It's as if I'm reading two books in one. 

3. Because Debbie had to work late tonight, I fixed dinner for me alone and had fun sautéing onion and mushrooms, adding chicken bouillon and hot water, and finishing my simple soup by adding Trader Joe's Thai Wheat Noodles. Easy. Quick. Warming. Satisfying. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-11-2024: Mending, Plumbing, Carry Out -- A Day of Relief!

1. It was my fault. A misunderstanding (not related to the election) transpired between me and a longtime (not Kellogg or Whitworth) friend. We exchanged a few kind and honest emails that cleared up everything and I'm confident our friendship is right back on track again. 

I'm immeasurably relieved. 

2. Another source of relief: the three small plumbing problems that needed fixing are repaired. Our toilet is running as it should; a basement drain is unclogged; our basement sink has a new faucet. 

I'm immeasurably relieved. 

3. The plumber and his helper worked on these jobs in the afternoon around the time I usually fix dinner for Debbie and me. 

When she got off work, Debbie drove by the house and saw the plumber's truck was out front. 

She buzzed up to Radio Brewing where she enjoys getting work done after school.

She also ordered sandwiches and pasta salad to carry out. I was no longer responsible for figuring out dinner. 

I was immeasurably relieved. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-10-2024: ZOOMing and Goodness, Cooking Wild Rice, Minnesota Themed Family Dinner

 1. Bridgit, Diane, Bill, Val, and I jumped on ZOOM this morning and got right into an intelligent discussion of the election results. I prefer to keep the content of our discussion private,  confidential. 

I thought a lot after we were finished about something I find remarkable. Bill, Bridgit, and Val were all students of mine at Whitworth forty and more years ago. In fact, Bill was in a writing course I taught at Whitworth in 1977. 

That's 47 years ago.

I met Diane at a get together at Bridgit's mom and dad's house on the Kalama River on August 28, 2010. 

Here's what I wrote about meeting Diane, in this very blog, referring, when I say "we", to Susan-Louise, Bridgit, and me:  "We reunited with Bill and got to meet Diane and within minutes we were all talking with each other as if it had been 20 minutes, not over twenty years since we'd seen each other and it felt like those of us who went to Whitworth had known Diane forever."

I kept thinking, as we talked today, not only how fortunate we are to be continuing to grow together as friends, but what deep thinking, caring, alert, and good people we've become as we've aged. 

All of us went to Christian colleges, Whitworth and, in Diane's case, Pacific Lutheran University. 

We've lived out our spiritual lives in a variety of ways since our Whitworth and PLU days.

It's awesome to listen to each other talk about where our paths have taken us, where we are now, and where we might be headed.

What's unwavering in each of us is our commitment to goodness and this came through urgently and admirably as we talked today. 

Even as we moved away from talking about the election results and talked about food and cooking and other lighter subjects, our discussion, our laughter, our enjoyment of each other was grounded in our commitment to goodness, making the two hours we ZOOMed together uplifting and nourishing. 

2. Speaking of cooking and nourishment, in preparation for today's family dinner, I cooked up a batch of wild rice, something I can't remember ever having done before. 

If you've cooked wild rice, you know that it can take as long as ninety minutes for the rice to cook. That was exactly my experience today. 

First, I chopped an onion, some celery, and some mushrooms and sautéed them in butter in our smaller cast iron Dutch oven. 

Then I poured in the uncooked Minnesota wild rice and about five cups of chicken broth.

I put the lid on the Dutch oven and, following the recipe Christy sent me, I set the oven at 375 degrees and let the rice cook for 75 minutes. Upon checking it after that amount of time, Debbie and I determined the rice needed more broth and gave it another 15 minutes to cook.

Ah! Success! I was a little late for dinner, but the rice turned out pretty good. 

3. Christy's longtime friend Tracy visited Christy this weekend. Her family's roots are in Minnesota. Tracy and Christy put their heads together and planned a Minnesotan family dinner. The main entree was a tater tot hot dish with venison that Christy made. I contributed the wild rice with celery, onion, and mushroom. Christy made a loaf of wild rice cranberry bread and Tracy fixed a fruit salad. Tracy told us about traditions around food in Minnesota and her family. We rounded out the meal with a dessert Carol made, a cake with the words apple and donut in its title, but I didn't quite get the name of it right. 

We visited about Minnesota and midwestern food. I got kind of carried away talking about The Band and their song "The Weight", but the rest of the family nicely balanced me out as we commented on different Light Rock from the 70s songs that played on Pandora while we ate and yakked. 

It was a fun and delicious dinner with a lot of fun and sometimes funny conversation. 

I'd be just fine with the idea of returning to Minnesota cuisine again, if Tracy returns for another family dinner or if we decide to repeat it on our own! 

Three Beautiful Things 11-09-2024: I Will Call Sparky Judy Now!, *Underground* and Bach, Five Day Old Casserole!

1. For over thirty years, I've known her as Sparky, although I always knew her name was Judith or Judy. She and I are having a splendid email exchange and now I know that Sparky has reverted to being known as Judy. I also know that her calendar is wide open when I come to Eugene (fingers crossed), starting December 4th, so, knowing that, I will now contact other friends to see if we can make plans to see each other. In our exchange, I learned more about how Judy is doing. It's been a rough several months -- her partner, Joe Cronin, was receiving in-home hospice care until he passed away on May 15th and about six weeks later Judy suffered her own health problems, from which she is recovering.  (If you and Judy and I are friends and you don't know what happened to Judy, contact me privately and I'll let you know.)

2. Reading Haruki Murakami's Underground has been like listening to a Bach variations composition. In much the same way that Bach holds a series of variations together with a musical theme he establishes early on, so Murakami, as he tells each interviewer's story, comes back again and again to the details of what happened on the Toyko subway trains when the attackers released the sarin gas. 

The variations come as each interviewer tells his or her response to the gassing. Many had the same physical reaction -- difficulty breathing, pupils contracting, legs giving out, etc. --, but the variations come as they tell Murakami about their lives, how they responded to the emergency, their lives in the following weeks, even months, and in these variations, the book offers up a fascinating look into these people's lives and psyches.

The last interview I read tonight was unique. It was the first (and only?) interview with the spouse of a person killed by the sarin. The victim was a young man and his wife spoke at length, fascinating length, about her life, his life, the day her husband died, and how her father and the victims' parents provided her with loving and material support in the aftermath of his death. 

3. Tucked away in the back of the fridge, I found a small container containing a helping of the chicken enchilada casserole we served on Monday for family dinner. I had fixed Debbie some spaghetti to do with what she would when she returned home from The Lounge, and on this night of eating what we would for dinner, this leftover casserole, combined with some left over rice, eaten cold, satisfied me unreasonably well! 

Three Beautiful Things 11-08-2024: 25th Meningitis Anniversary and Work Ethic, Contemplative Copper, Homemade Ginger Beef Stir Fry

1. As I write this entry this morning, on November 9th, today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day when the bacterial meningitis I contracted began to aggressively assert itself. I ran a skyrocketing fever, had an unbearable sore throat, walked around the house disoriented, and was starting to be jaundiced. Debbie correctly determined earlier that morning that I was too sick to leave alone at home and she canceled her day of work. Late in the morning, at Eugene's Sacred Heart hospital, medical pros treated me first in the Emergency Room at Sacred Heart and then, for three nights (I think) in Intensive Care. 

They saved my life. 

I think I was hospitalized for another 7-10 days, but I don't remember precisely.

One aspect of that illness and my recovery connects closely to the victims of the Tokyo subway system sarin gas attack whom Haruk Murakami interviewed in his book Underground. 

Work ethic. 

Like so many of the victims in Tokyo, I felt compelled to return to work as soon as possible. 

I returned to the classroom, working a full teaching schedule, when the winter quarter commenced early in January.

I taught classes both during the day and at night. 

I ignored, or worked in spite of, headaches, depression, and fatigue.

The first two weeks of the quarter, I came home on Friday and slept the entire weekend, waking up only to eat, and then returned to work on Monday.

At the time, I thought this titanic effort I made to push myself to act as if I were recovered and things were normal was admirable, but I now think doing this was harmful and set back my recovery. It was another year or so before the headaches and fatigue subsided and the depression continued for many years. 

2. Today I opened the bedroom curtains for some natural light and took a handful of pictures of Copper. Unlike so many cats whose pictures I see daily, Copper is not a humorous cat, nor is Copper an interfering cat. Therefore, as a subject for my pictures, Copper is either lying down or sitting up, almost always on my bed. He strikes poses, but he's not into what's commonly called "cuteness overload". 

Copper is handsome. He's serious. I don't know if cats can be said to have a lot on their minds, but Copper often looks like he has a lot on his mind. 

Every since I learned from the transplant team that I didn't need to stay away from Copper, ever since we resumed spending a lot of time together in the room where we sleep, and ever since the gate went up between the living room and the short hallway connecting our house's two ground floor bedrooms and the bedroom doors are always open, as long as a human is in the house,  Copper has been the most contented he's ever been since moving into our house nearly three years ago. 

As contented as he is, Copper doesn't plant himself on my chest, climb into my lap, or initiate much contact with me at all. If I lie on my back under the bed covers, he will press himself against my lower legs, but that's it. 

He does, however, welcome it and purrs mightily when I pet him, rest my hand on his back or underside, or if I scratch him under the chin or behind his ears.

He likes me to initiate physical contact, but rarely initiates it himself. 

I'll put a few of the pictures I took today at the end of this post.

3. I bought a package of small tri tip steaks a while back and thawed two of the steaks today. Suddenly, I had an idea! Debbie and I enjoy a ginger beef entree at Wah Hing, so I thought I'd try to cook up a similar dish -- not replicate Wah Hing's effort, but approximate it. 

So, it was time for some no recipe cooking with the wok. 

I sliced a white onion, chopped up some cauliflower, sliced half a red pepper, and cut the two small, narrow steaks into small chunks. 

After heating up oil in the walk, I got the vegetables cooking first, pushed them up the inside wall of the wok, and then cooked the beef. I'd covered the steak chunks with red pepper flakes to give the dish heat and I put a generous squeeze of minced ginger out of a bottle on the meat. Once the meat was nearly cooked through, I added a handful or so of sliced mushrooms, combined all the ingredient together in the wok's well, and, once the basmati rice I'd started cooking earlier was done, mixed the rice into the ginger beef and vegetables.

I liked the ginger beef dish I made a lot and so did Debbie. It was fun knowing it wasn't
as great as Wah Hing's dish, but, at the same time, really delicious. 

Here are three of the pictures of the handsome, apparently deep thinking, Copper:

Three Beautiful Things 11-07-2024: The Past Lives in Me, Current Responsibilities, Salmon and Squash Dinner

1. I simply don't have either the music reviewer chops or much of an understanding of 1990s alternative rock music to articulate in any meaningful way why I enjoy Luna's 1994 album Bewitched so much. 

I know my enjoyment of this album is rooted in my long lasting love for the short film, Family Tree, which, along with Pieces of April, are my two favorite Thanksgiving movies. 

Luna's song, "California (All the Way)" is central to the soundtrack of Family Tree. That one song inspired me to buy Luna's second album, Bewitched, and there's something about this album's dark undertones and dreamy sound that appeals to me. 

Playing this album also takes me back, oh, I don't know, let's say just about twenty years when I played Family Tree in one of the writing courses I taught and asked students to write about this movie and what it says about living a well-lived life. 

I don't want to go back to those days. 

I don't long for the world to be the way it was twenty years ago. 

I don't live in the past.

But, the past lives in me.

Playing this Luna album, thinking about watching Family Tree again, and remembering the joy of working with students at LCC stirs up warm and satisfying feelings from the past that I'm really happy don't fade away. 

2.  I suppose part of what's fun about having past experiences I enjoyed come to life with the help of music is that I no longer have the responsibilities I had back then -- grading papers, department meetings, holding office hours, and the other things that were, at times, a grind. 

No, I don't have those responsibilities any longer, but I have ones in the present and tended to some of them today. A plumber is coming next Monday in the afternoon. I'll have another blood draw Monday morning. I'll have winter tires put on our cars on Tuesday. Our fridge needed some stocking today. I went to Yoke's. Every day, three times a day, an alarm goes off on my cell phone, and I have the responsibility to take pills. I'm staying on schedule and, thank God, maintaining my post-transplant discipline. 

The present responsibilities are all good, not a grind, but these things are not as much fun as showing twenty-four community college students at a time of all ages a short movie I love, introducing many of them to the band Luna, and enjoying that many of those students got kind of fired up about the movie and had a lot of fascinating things to say and write about. 

3. I thawed a perfectly sized chunk of salmon for two that I bought at Trader Joe's, seasoned it with Trader Joe's Salmon Rub, roasted pieces of butternut squash, air fried Debbie a batch of potato wedges, and warmed up some leftover brown rice for myself and this combination of food items worked splendidly. 

We enjoyed our dinner a lot! 

Three Beautiful Things 11-06-2024: A Day of Reflection, A Box of Personal History, Ground Beef and Vegetables with Rice

1. I was grateful today. 

I spent a quiet day at home, alone until Debbie arrived home, and meditatively thought a lot about the election results, the USA, North Idaho College, and all the other things that inevitably occupy my mind after such a momentous day. 

Some years ago, I began to find this blog, Facebook, and other social media sites frustrating and unsatisfying for discussing perspectives on government, policies, and elections. I enjoy private conversations, especially with Debbie, and emails/messaging. And that's it. 

2. I hadn't looked in a particular box in the basement for several years and today I went through about half of it: I found writing I did when I was much younger, the Register-Guard City/Region section from November 12, 1999 when the paper did a story about my bout with bacterial meningitis, a short and beautifully crafted and touching essay that Craig Thomas wrote inspired by Ben Jonson's poem "On My First Son", and more, including some programs from tournaments and games back in 1969 through about 1981. I'd forgotten I had kept some of this memorabilia and it was fun looking at these things along with a bunch of photographs. 

One disappointment: I thought I'd find our third grade class picture from 1962-63 at Sunnyside, but if I still have it, it's somewhere else. 

3. For dinner tonight, I cooked ground beef and then did one of my favorite things: I started adding vegetables to the beef: red onion, white onion, zucchini, cauliflower, green beans, peas, and mushrooms. I'd cooked a pot of brown rice, blended some of it into my meat and vegetable mixture and, in my bowl, topped it with Frank's Red Hot Sauce. 

It was a simple meal and very comforting, perfect for bringing a day of intense reflection and nostalgic reading and viewing of pictures toward a close. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-05-2024: Voting in Person, Teaching Myself to Use an App, A Duty to Get Oneself to Work

1. Yes, when I lived in Oregon, I enjoyed the convenience of voting by mail. But, I remember when Oregon first instituted this practice, I felt some melancholy. I'd always enjoyed joining fellow citizens in a march to the place where I cast my ballot. 

In 2016, I voted early in Maryland. I drove about seven miles to a Senior Activity Center north of Greenbelt and joined a mob of voters.  I relished that experience. I genuinely felt like I was a part of an enterprise much bigger than me, involving an uplifting mix of people of various ages and different racial and ethnic identities -- and, again, so many of us turned out. 

I looked back at my blog entry for that day and now I remember how impressed I was with how the polling place was so well staffed and how they were able to move people efficiently in and out.

This is all to say that I enjoyed blasting up to the Elks today to cast my votes in person and to do so in the company of other community members. It stood in line for about 5-10 minutes, got to have a quick conversation with Candy as she efficiently logged me into the voting system, and before long I had marked my ballot and returned home. 

2. Debbie has a very modest amount of money invested in a private retirement account that required some attention.  She had a form to fill out and submit related to decisions about that account. Today, I decided to use the Apple Preview app and teach myself how to fill information in the PDF file/form using my laptop's keyboard so that I could attach the filled out form to an email and send it to our financial pro. 

It took some patience, but I think I succeeded.  I attached the filled out PDF file and a photo of a cancelled check to an email,  using the company's secure email program, and hope to hear from the pro on Wednesday that I did everything correctly. 

This learning, my trials and my errors, I suppose should have stressed me out.

But, I came out from my work area to see Debbie in the living room as I was wrapping up this small project and said, "I'm really having fun with this." 

3. As I read more deeply into the book Underground and read more of the stories about people who survived the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in March of 1995, I'm struck how determined, for better or worse,  gassed individuals were to get to their workplace, despite being in terrible shape and being driven by a deep sense of duty. These injured people, upon arriving at work, were eventually sent by their supervisors to a hospital. 

On the one hand, it's an admirable work ethic. 

On the other hand, many of these victims later questioned why they put getting to work ahead of the medical peril they were suffering and questioned what they came to see as a cultural materialism that put money and earning money ahead of looking out for one's own health. Many also questioned how the urgency of getting to work, for some, was more pressing and important than helping others who were incapacitated by the sarin gas. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-04-2024: (A Milestone), Family Dinner Prep, Easy Dinner, Fascinating Conversation

*I meant to note this milestone yesterday.  My post on Monday was my 6,600th entry on this blog, reaching back to October, 2006.

1. It was my job today to spiff things up around the house. Debbie and I hosted family dinner. 

Things were in pretty good shape and Debbie made dinner preparation very easy for us: some time ago she prepared pans of chicken enchilada casserole, so we thawed one out for today and all I had to do was heat it up. 

2. Dinner was very simple. I mixed margaritas using a store bought mix. Christy brought tortilla chips and salsa and guacamole. Carol made a Mexican cabbage salad -- I think she invented it! And we dove into the casserole. 

It all worked really well.

3. Our conversation tonight took a fascinating turn when Carol told us about reading Thomas Moore's book Care for the Soul and read a passage to us about what a dead end revenge is, especially in contrast to love, written by Richard Rohr. Paul is reading Wendell Berry's novel, Jayber Crow and his thoughts about that book took us into stimulating directions about all sorts of subjects, most of them related to how we understand living a Christian life.