Caffeine free Diet Coke.

At the resthome, the one resident with a good sense of humor would sometimes invite me to have a caffeine-free Diet Coke with him, when I was in his room assisting him and sometimes staying a little bit longer to talk with him a bit.

Only, though I like that stuff, it was completely the wrong time of day always, and I never felt like a Coke just right then, and I always told him that.

Then, after he passed away, his daughter was cleaning out his room, and she left a bunch of Coke at the front desk for whoever wanted it and the front desk person called out for anyone to come claim it, and I said I'd take it if no-one else wanted it, and no-one did by the end of the night, so I ended up taking it home.

Then, whenever every once in a while I'd pull out a Coke and drink it, I'd think of that resident; it's like I finally was taking him up on his offer.

Good memories.

Language app binging.

Since I downloaded that one new language app, I find that I binge on it quite a bit. It has all these bells and whistles like a slot machine and a competition part where you try to rack up points against people and advance in rankings, and I find that I stay on for just a mini-unit or two longer in order to kick myself up a ranking or two.

A part of me doesn't like the addictiveness of it - I really find myself being compulsive and unable to put it down! - but, on the other hand, there really are worse things to be addicted to.

So nice to be in an academic library again!

Since the pandemic started, academic library access went to all heck, and even as stuff has started opening back up again, members of the public have still tended to be excluded from being able to show up at an academic library and waltz in like they used to.

Only, a few weeks ago I went to go request an interlibrary loan book from the public library in the city like I usually have been doing nowadays, and when I went to WorldCat to locate the catalog reference and find a hyperlink to drop into my request, I saw that the book that I was looking for was held at a conveniently-located academic library whose access policies I hadn't checked lately.

And, I checked, and not only was the library open again, but it was also open to members of the public!

And, they had several related books to boot, besides the one that I particularly needed to check.

It was so nice; I just showed up and spent almost 2 hours there, and I found pretty much everything I needed. No need to request 1 book by ILL and wait almost like 3 weeks to get it.

Homelessness paranoia.

A few weeks ago when I was out and about in the city for some errands and then to meet a friend, I was accosted by a (homeless) person in front of a major government building, and then I saw another (homeless) person plopped on a corner and begging right out in front of a Whole Foods in a yuppie neighborhood that I went to.

And, I thought to myself, that I had never been accosted like that or seen a beggar there like that before. 

But, I also was wondering if my perceptions were off, so I texted 2 of my friends who were in those places more often, and both had said that they had seen that before and that it happens, even going back to before the pandemic.

I wonder if I'm getting paranoid about signs of increased homelessness in the city?

Chit-chatting with my mother, on the 20th anniversary of September 11th.

So, this past weekend, I called up my parents on my day off like I always do, and it happened to be the 20th anniversary of September 11th, and my mother said that she had been watching college football and that they had a group of high school kids on singing "America the Beautiful."

"I like it when they have groups of young people singing patriotic songs," she was like. "It's just so nice."

Then, she asked me what I was going to do after we hung up.

"Think about your incipient fascism," I was like.

Resthome confusion: Books that I set free.

Last month at the resthome, I had to go in for some trainings, so I schlepped in some books that I had cleaned out of my house, to go put in one of those 'free little library' things that they have outside there on the street there, like I sometimes do when I'm getting rid of books or recent copies of magazines that I've read.

Only, I was running late, so I didn't do it before my trainings, but afterwards, like right after I had left for the day, like right when the residents were getting out of dinner.

And, like 4 days later the next time when I was at work, the one retired school nurse said that the one resident who's an introvert was confused and had mentioned to her that she was wondering if I had left some (Russian) books there, since she had seen me putting some books in and had run out there to go check to see what they were, and those were some of the books that she had seen.

"She didn't think so, but I thought, 'Maybe,'" the one retired school nurse was like.

. . .

(I had left there these 3 little slim [Russian] small-publisher religious pamphlets about contacting the spirit realm, that I had gotten on my travels years ago.)

A day at the resthome last month.

At the resthome last month, the one retired school nurse resident was saying that this one resident who's an introvert was out for a dentist's appointment just that day, and that she was shocked by the number of tents of homeless people out in this large park that's kind of nearby and a little bit to the south of us. 

Oddly enough, I had also been by there just that day, and I honestly thought that there were like honestly twice as many tents of homeless people out in the park as usual (like maybe sixteen, to around like maybe usually eight or so).

Towards the end of the shift, too, I mentioned all of this to my one (Filipina) coworker who I was on shift with, and she said that just that past week she had seen a guy out by a bus stop midway between work and where she lives, and he was sitting out there with all of his stuff and suitcases, and you could tell that they weren't suitcases like a homeless person had, and he seemed confused, too, like he didn't know what to do, and she said that he must have just gotten evicted.

"It's starting," she was like.

Then, at the very end of shift, I was talking with my one (Tibetan) coworker with an inappropriate sense of humor and the subject of studying other cultures came up, and she said that she loved to learn about all other cultures, and I asked her how much education she had, and she said just high school, but she was also a paratrooper in the (Indian) army.

"I never show you pictures?", she was like. "I jump out of plane once a year."