Biden win memory flashback.

I forgot to blog about this till like now -

A few days after it happened, I was talking with my one (Togolese) coworker from the resthome kitchen about the declaration of Biden's victory on that one Saturday afternoon last month, and she said that she was driving in her car with her kids, when all of a sudden people started blowing carhorns everywhere and she realized what was happening, so she started blowing her carhorn, and her and her kids started cheering right there in the car.

This was in the one neighborhood just south of the resthome that has a lot of immigrants who live there, she specified to me when I asked.

So tired lately.

I've been so tired lately.

Part of me thinks it's the early sunset and the change in weather, and a part of me also thinks it's my "ten minute a day coronavirus workout" that I've been doing since March and which has really been increasingly kicking my butt cumulatively since then, thoough I do admit that my butt is certainly looking rounder.

(My one assisted living client with disabilities told me that the other day, in fact; "Your butt has been looking good," she was like.)

My one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker and my one professor friend who studies (modern Czech) literature have also told me that they've been tired the past few weeks, though, so maybe it is just the weather.

Three Thanksgiving memories:

1) My one assisted living client with disabilities said that growing up, her mom used to use a sausage grinder to grind up cranberries and orange pieces to make this homemade cranberry sauce, and it was really good.

2) Putting halved onions and peeled potatoes and stalks of celery on the bottom of a cookie tray that you have your turkey on when you roast it makes all of the veggies really tasty, and it's almost you're doing pot roast vegetables, my one assisted living client with disabilities pointed out.

3) That sound when you pull turkey meat away in great sheets from the inner membranes on the inside of the turkey breast around the rib cage is just sickening, when you go to pull the leftover meat off of the refrigerated carcass.  It's like thin and moist and it just goes on forever, it seems.

What an Economic Change.

Back when I was contemplating a Ph.D. in the mid-2000s and then getting into it, the common wisdom was that you might need a little hustle to transition sectors.

Now, it seems that the common wisdom of the last few years is that you may need a new different degree to segue into jobs outside of academia.

Just insanity.

Consulate mistake.

 Like a month ago, I showed up at the (Romanian) consulate on a Thursday like the consulate official had requested, to discuss some status update in my application.

And, I show up, and it's the wrong day.

It turns out, if you talk in a Dracula accent, "Tuesday" sounds a lot like "Thursday."

Current karaoke list...

 ...for the next time that I go to karaoke, whenever that is:

1) "Dancing in the Dark."

2) "Big Yellow Taxi."

3) "Rhinestone Cowboy."

I've been collecting some good songs to sing in my head, whenever I heard them on the radio or wherever.

I think "Dancing in the Dark" and "Big Yellow Taxi" have quick verses that would be hard to nail, so if you did that, people would be impressed, and both of those songs have a persona that would be fun to sing in (turgid and driven and horny, vs. incredibly and shockingly pure).

I do wonder about some of the rhythms in "Big Yellow Taxi," though; I've tried singing "Both Sides Now" at karaoke easily like two or three or maybe even four times now, and somehow it always comes off leaden with me like I can't quite catch the beat, rather than the effortless emergence that comes out when someone like Judy Collins sings it.

I also think "Rhinestone Cowboy" would make a great karaoke impression, when you get to that part -

 But I'm gonna be/

where the lights are shining on me.../

LIKE A RHINESTONE COWBOY!

- since the lyrics and singing karaoke just go so well together, and the world of the song and the world that you sing in would just merge together dramatically in one single moment, at that moment.

I also think that people will vaguely recognize the verse and know that they know the song, but they won't quite realize what it is until like half a moment before you slide into the chorus, and then you'll have the audience caught up in wondering what it is and they'll all be in the palm of your hand, if you're feeling it and they feel your presence.

A Dream of Something Wrong.

Last month I dreamnt-

I open up the tin of instant coffee that's on my kitchen counter to go take a scoop out of it, and I can see the metal container bottom through the little coffee that is left in there, and there's far less left in there than I had thought.

. . .

(Since I space out going to the grocery store because of Covid, I've somehow been missing sales on my regular coffee that I get and so I haven't been buying any lately.  So, instead, I've been drawing down the supply in my pantry, and so to stretch out the coffee that I have, I've sometimes been using up some instant coffee that I had boughten ages ago in order to collect the unusual tin, and I'm like halfway done with that, not all the way done with it like in this dream.)