People die without our knowing it.

The older I get, the more I’m struck by how people die without our knowing it, and we don’t find out till some amount of time later, and then you suddenly discover that the world isn’t the way you thought it had been for a while, since the people who you thought were in it aren't anymore and hadn't been for some time.

Like a few years ago I had heard through people that a guy I knew from college had gotten cancer real young and passed away, and at the time I had meant to write his mother, since I had met her because she was an administrator at a place where I worked for a few summers.

Then, like a two years after that guy died, I had met up with a friend from college, and the guy’s death from cancer came up, and I said I really should write a note to his mother since I knew her and she’d appreciate it, even so long after.

“But she died too,” he was like, and he filled me in that her life had also gotten snuffed out, actually before her son had, I believe.

And at that, I discovered that someone who I thought was alive had actually been dead for years.

The other week, I had gotten the newspaper from the campus neighborhood and didn’t read it, but for some reason kept it out on my kitchen table to read, even when the new issue came out and I read that one first.

Then, one evening at a new bar, I was going through the newspaper, and there in the back was a death announcement for the old (white) (retired) woman who I knew from school, and who I had set up a birthday dinner for with my one (black) friend who used to staff the security desk just inside the entrance to the main library on campus.

It turns out that she had had a short illness and was in hospice for 2 weeks, and then died on April 3^rd – and I didn’t find out for more than 2 weeks after that.

Oddly, I had been thinking of her just that past week.  I had been talking with someone about all the weird shit that people who are nurses see, and after that conversation I had been thinking about a story she told me from years ago when she was a nurse.  One time she was in the ER, and in came this young beautiful tempestuous Russian woman who to spite her boyfriend in an argument had impulsively gulped down a glass of lye, which ate through her esophagus and upper organs.  There was nothing they could do but just link up tubes to the gaping holes in her chest as best they could and clear away fluid as she slowly died and her organs shut down one by one, even though the Russian woman had thought that doctors could fix what she did when she did it, and she didn’t really mean to kill herself.  If I'm not mistaken, they gave her several weeks to live like that, but death was inevitable.

That happens more and more as you get older, I hear, that people pass away and you don’t realize how many people you know among the dead already.

Espresso maker story.

I usually set up my espresso maker with coffee right before I go to bed, so when I wake up in the morning all I have to do is just flip on a burner and wait and there's coffee.

I did that the other day, and coffee was a bit weak, but I thought maybe I had put too much water or too little coffee in or something like that.

Then, when I went to make a second round of espresso mid-afternoon, I opened up the espresso maker and looked at the bottom half and discovered I hadn’t put the filter in.

I must have been so tired, I filled the bottom up with water, thought I put the filter in but actually not have, then scooped espresso straight onto the water surface, which I didn’t notice since coffee is so lightweight and since surface tension must have kept it afloat so it looked like I was just putting espresso into the filter part like normal!

Story of my one Dutch friend.

So my one (Dutch) friend has been dicked around a lot in Israel since he’s not Jewish, and even though he studied there, has a wife from there who’s lived in other countries with him, and they have a son together, he still gets dicked around.

Right after his wife gave birth, for example, the hospital people put him down as “alleged father”, a category usually only used when the father disputes paternity, and they wouldn’t change that designation till after he took a DNA test.

My mother’s shopping adventures: Sporting goods store, then pharmacy.

My parents are taking care of my brother’s (aging) Labrador Retriever for a while, and they’re always out walking and playing with her, and my mom was saying that the dog was super-excited the 1^st day the ice cleared from the lake and was even straining at the leash to get to the shore when they were walking down the road.

The dog’s eyes aren’t good, but she could probably smell the open water, my dad was saying.

Anyhow, my mom found out that there’s a kind of duck chewtoy that sporting goods stores sell that Labs love, and she was talking with the guy there and he said that for dogs losing their sight, you can always buy pheasant scent in a bottle and apply it to the chewtoy so that they can locate the toy by smell when you go play fetch, though the best thing to do is actually to just get a needle and inject the scent straight into the toy, since that way the scent lasts a lot longer and you don't have to go re-apply it so much.

So, my mom popped into a pharmacy and was like, “Can I buy a hypodermic needle?”.

“What for?”, the pharmacist was like, suspiciously.

She told him, and he sold one to her for like 30 cents.

Neighborhood bartender was pissy.

The other Thursday I got back to my neighborhood around 1:30am (bars close at 2am in the city) and I popped into a hipster bar for a nightcap only to discover that last call had already been called – “Sorry,” the guy at the door was like – so I went a few blocks to another bar, getting there by like 1:35am, which is plenty of time even with bartime to slide in before last call and get one more drink.

The bar was pretty full, and as I walked to the bar, this (mid-40s) (white) (balding) (pig-eyed)  bartender who’s served me a few times was like, “Hey, it’s been last call,” so I took out my cell phone and looked at the time, and it was only 1:33am.

“It’s like 1:33am,” I was like, quizzically.  “What time do you call last call here?”

“It’s last call whenever I say it is,” he was like.

Nice martini order.

The other weekend people I know from Wisconsin were in the city for a concert, and some of their associated friends were along when I went out to dinner with all of them.

One of them was a slightly boozy (late 40s) (white) woman with long black hair, a lower cut dress, and a zest for life.

She ordered a dirty martini.  

“Borderline filthy,” she told the waiter.