A holiday gift from a resthome resident:

A crocheted penholder with a pen in it, so that you can keep it in your pocket and your pen's snug in there and also too if it leaks, that way it doesn't end up getting on your clothes at all.

She made 30 of them as presents, and after I helped her fix her cell phone, she asked me my favorite color, found one with that color yarn on it to give to me, and said she'd have to mark it in her book who she gave it to, since she's keeping track of things that way.

She also double-checked that she signed it, since it came in a Ziploc bag that had "Happy Holidays" written on it, and a little sticker that said, "From, [her first name]".

I absolutely love it!

I can't remember the last time I got such a nice homemade gift like that.

I'm keeping it, and the bag, too.

Comment of the one retired psychiatrist's wife, the other day.

I've been open about my campaigning with them, and the other day when she was by for dinner and I stopped through to say hello and she asked about the campaign, I caught her up about one endorsement interview where I decided to swear a little bit to be authentic, and I mentioned that I had dropped a few f-bombs.

"Maybe [her husband's first name]'ll coach you on that," she was like.

(Her husband really likes to use the word "motherf*cker" a lot, and it grates on her to hear him say it.)

A person on the subway the other day:

A (young) (white) (hairy) guy with a long brown pony tail and a beard and mustache and scruff on top of that, and with trimmed chest hair peeking out of his t-shirt, and with black jeans with the knees ripped out and a safety pin clipping one flap of a tear to the other side below one of those tear-outs, and a lot of big amber rings on his fingers and some small tatts by his wrists and on top of his hands and knuckles, and on top of all that he's wearing a black baseball cap that says -

DADDY

. . .

A mid-day subway sight:

In front of the seat opposite me, a put-out cigarette butt on the floor, and like five small puddles of water each one with a little bit of froth in the center, like someone had leaned forward and been spitting on the floor every now and then.

Later, a cleanly-dressed (very dark) (middle-aged) (black) man got on with a big clean shopping bag from a local donut place, and he gave off the impression of being homeless, although his clothes didn't look like it.

Later, he took out a beer bottle and he poured some of the beer into an empty plastic apple juice container he had, and it looked like the color of apple juice in the bottle, except there was a head on top of it like there would be from beer.

When he did that, his bag tipped a bit and showed its contents, and it was a bunch of random stuff, no donuts in there at all.

A late night subway sight.

Like last month when I was coming home from work at like eleven or eleven-thirty at night, a (20-something) (Arab-looking) guy got off the train too from a different car and was walking behind me, pulling two suitcases like he was coming back from the airport.

We were going to the end of the subway stop where it's just a small human-size turnstile with huge grates like a revolving door, so when I was unlocking my bike, I looked back to see how he handled that.

He put one bag in the turnstile as far up as he could, then he stacked the other bag on top of that one, and then finally he wedged himself in in the space remaining and he shimmied forward bit by bit, and then he finally got through.

It was really impressive work.  I'm not sure I would have tried exiting at that end of the station with two bags like that, but maybe he's done that before?

How my legs ache.

After a day of canvassing, my legs don't hurt, but they sure do when I get up the next morning.

And then, since sometimes it hasn't been snowing or raining and the streets are dry, I get out my bike and go ride it to the subway to go into work, and I can feel all up in my thighs how sore my legs are, from all the canvassing that I had done the previous day.

Getting elected really is a physical job.

I wonder, how many people with mobility disabilities do you see running for office?

Probably a lot less than you would expect demographically, is my guess.

Resthome antics: A schtick at work.

The other week I was talking baby Spanish with the one (Mexican) kitchen worker who brings us the soup for the staff meal at the resthome, and the (first generation) (Nigerian-American) kitchen supervisor who seems just regular (African-American) joined in speaking Spanish with us for a bit, too.

I was quite floored, since I didn't know that she knew any Spanish.

After she left, I was talking more baby Spanish with the (Mexican) kitchen worker, and I joked that now we'll always have to say nice things when she's around, like how "[our supervisor's first name] es la mejor patron en todo el mundo" (i.e., "[our supervisor's name] is the best boss in all the world").

She picked up on that joke and said some similar comment too, in a voice that was a bit too loud, like if we wanted our boss to hear, but we didn't want our boss to know that we meant her to hear everything.

The next time our boss was around, then, I started up the joke again, asking in Spanish if our boss was listening, and then theatrically saying in Spanish in an overloud voice how great our boss is.

At that, my one (Mexican) kitchen worker smiled and laughed.

Ah, nice coworkers. Love them!