Friday, May 10, 2024

Three Beautiful Things 09-09-2024: Transplant Limbo (Again), Breaking in My Wok, *House of Games* (1987)

1. It's 8:30 on Friday, May 10th. 

As I write this blog post, I'm on standby again for a possible kidney transplant. If my daily blog posts stop appearing tomorrow, it'll be because I got called into surgery.  

UPDATE: Soon after I wrote the above sentences at 8:30, a transplant coordinator called me. The whole process has been delayed. Now the plan is for me to start fasting at midnight. The transplant coordinator will call me, I'd say, around 9:00 a.m. to tell me whether things are working out or if the transplant procedure had to be canceled. 

2. Today was a day of just getting things done: recycling, shopping, monthly blood draw for the lab that serves the transplant program, and, most important, seasoning my new wok.

I took my time seasoning the wok and then I made a killer stir fry with onion, tofu, broccoli, red bell pepper, green beans, and mushrooms. I made a Szechuan stir fry sauce and I cooked a pot of jasmine rice enhanced with green onion, ginger, and sesame oil. 

I have a lot to learn about cooking with the wok, but as a first attempt, Debbie and I both thought this dinner was very delicious. 

3. I finished watching House of Games, a neo-noir psychological crime movie from 1987. It features Lindsay Crouse as a psychiatrist and author who meets a con man played by Joe Mantegna and for reasons having to do with her own psychological profile, joins a sting operation. It's a dark movie. I found it both riveting and perplexing. David Mamet co-wrote the script and directed the movie. The script features Mamet's trademark minimalist style. Over the last forty years, I've never been able to decide what I think of his scripts -- and, in the case of this movie, I'm undecided about what I thought of the story -- on the one hand, it was a bit like watching a dark, noir version of The Sting. On the other hand, it seemed to be mining some deeper aspects of human behavior and psychology and I'm uncertain just what the movie was getting at.   

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