Motivation to go out and get some ice cream.

The other week on a Saturday night I was home listening to this one radio program that I listen to and I was so very tired, but I was also thinking of maybe walking up the street to this one nearby ice cream parlor to go and get some ice cream.

I had just decided not to, when the power goes out, right in my room and across the street.

As I sit there figuring out what to do, it goes back on across the street, but still not in my house, or on my side of the street.

So, I go outside and end up talking to my (older) (Mexican-American) neighbors, who also had decided to go outside, and then since it's still not coming back on, I decide to go and get some ice cream.

"Someone upstairs must have wanted me to have some ice cream," I told the wife of the couple.

"It might be a couple hours until it's back on," she was like.

"Hunh," I was like. "Then maybe I'll have two."

Why one resthome resident says she doesn't like fish.

This one resthome resident has some kind of memory and language processing issues with age, and so a lot of times she's out of it, or just improvises off of the last thing or two that you've said.

The other week she was saying how nice dinner was, so I asked her if she had had the chicken or the fish, and she said the chicken, since she doesn't like fish.

"Why don't you like fish, [her first name]?", I was like.

"Well, I used to be a captain," she began, and then she told me how once her ship sank and she was on it and there was this little window in the ship and she was inside looking out and there was all these fish outside the window looking in, and ever since then she doesn't like fish.

Find in an old language book of mine:

A check for $40 from this one tenured prof who hired me to give her one language lesson and set her up for self-study on this one language I had written a major academic paper on.

It was from 2015 and uncashed, so I've since emailed her to see if it's still good and if it isn't, if I can somehow get the $40 from her somehow else.

She hasn't responded yet, but I could certainly use that $40!

Dream of broth boiling.

The other week I dreamnt-

I am nowhere in the room, but I can see my stove in my kitchen, and in my little pot that I make broth in, some corn cobs are boiling, and the water is getting low.

I worry to myself and think that I should get up and add some water to the pot or shut the heat off on it or something so that it doesn't boil all the way down and heat up and cause a fire, but then, I wake up.

. . .

(For the last few years since a work acquaintance from a previous job gave me the tip, I save my old corn cobs to boil down for broth, which makes the broth taste like corn, even if there really isn't any kernels left on the cobs.)

Seafood boil restaurant secret.

Like the past three to four years, there's been an emergence of "seafood boil" restaurants in my city, where you go in and buy a ton of shellfish by the pound and you get them boiled in spices, a lot of the time Cajun ones, but sometimes Asian ones, if it's an Asian restaurant.

(For some reason there's a lot of Asian seafood boil restaurants, like not the majority here in the city, but more than you'd think of, when you think of seafood boil restaurants.)

Anyhow, one of them is on my way in to work at my one resthome job, and the other month when I was walking past there, a delivery guy was walking in there with a big stack of boxes from a refrigerated truck, and all the boxes said something like "SPICY SEAFOOD (BULK)", and the company address on the box was a big city from a couple of states over.

At at least one of these places, they don't even spice their own seafood boil!

What a letdown.

My one (placid) (Tibetan) coworker on different ethnic cuisines.

The other week at the resthome, I mentioned to my one (placid) (Tibetan) coworker and my one (pensive) Tibetan coworker that the vegetarian lasagna from the staff meal was kind of good.

"Yes," my one (placid) (Tibetan) coworker was like, and then she added, "I think so, but I don't know."

"What do you mean?", I was like.

"I know it is Italian, but I do not know Italian food," she was like.  "What is lasagna usually, if it is not vegetarian, is it fish?"

At that I was a bit dumbfounded, since she simply had no idea about what Italian food was like, and so I explained to her that it was the same noodles and cheese, but with a tomato sauce and ground beef.

"Oh," she was like.

I then asked her what other types of food she eats, if she ever eats out.

"I eat Asian food," she was like, "Wietnamese, Chinese, Korean."

(She said a "w" instead of a "v" in "Vietnamese," though I'm not sure why, if it's because of the phonology of Tibetan, or if it's because that's like the name of the country in Tibetan, and so she carried through something of their name for "Vietnam" into English.)

"Have you ever had Mexican?", I was like.

"No," she was like.  "I hear it's spicy."

I then asked her if she had ever had Greek food.

"I think no," she was like, "But I do not know.  If I see Greek food, I do not know it, because I do not know."

I then said that sometime after work one day, we should all go out for Mexican food, if they wanted.

I don't think that they knew what to make of that invitation, so I backpedalled any perceived overfriendliness. I really do think it would be a blast to go out for Mexican food with my (Tibetan) coworkers, though; I wonder what they would think, and what they would like.

Subway ice-crunchers and gum-chewers.

Like twice recently lately when I've been coming home from work on the subway I've hit people who've been loudly chewing on an otherwise quiet car:

1) A (young) (black) girl with long neon green-painted nails, looking at her phone and holding a Taco Bell bag as she fishes out ice cubes from the top of an open Big Gulp-sized cup of queasily yellowish-green soda, who then places each ice cube in her mouth and chews it, crunching it loudly, and just so obliviously.

2) A (middle-aged) (clean shaven) (slim) (Hispanic) man with a baseball cap and light grey jogging pants and all this nervous jittery energy like he's on cocaine or something, who just sits there and stares at his phone and maniacally chews his gum and snaps it so rapidly, all the while while his mouth is open and his jaws just go up and down, and in such great and decisive motions.

. . .