Addendum.

After my trip, I texted my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend to see what all the different eggplants tasted like.

She said they made a curry with them, which I said probably meant that you couldn't tell what they tasted like, and then she said they had a nice texture, and so I told her that that was a nice save.

I wonder if she meant it, about the texture.

Flashback to a travel story: Produce.

On my most recent trip to the city that I used to live in, I brought up corn and tomatoes and eggplants from the farmers market, as a gift for the family of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair).

I also brought up like 3 different kinds of craft beer for my one (Romanian) colleague, as a thank-you for all the help he's given me recently.

So, although I had my backpack on my back, I had one canvas bag of vegetables on one side of me, and one canvas sack of beer on the other, and I felt like I was coming from the grocery store, rather than going on a train trip.

After I sat down, I showed the heirloom eggplants to my one seatmate, this (younger) (white) co-ed who had been in town to go to a college football game with some friends.

"Those are so cool," she was like, as I showed her these small round eggplants that were a bright orange with occasional dark green veins.

After I put the bags up above in the overhead rack, I started chatting with her again, and I told her that I was afraid that we'd hit a bump, and all these vegetables would start spilling out from up there and onto the floor, and no-one would know what the heck was happening.

"That is so funny," she was like.

A sight the other week...

...at the lake park just north of my house, in the college town that I now live in:

A (very dark) (very slim) (mid 40s? early 50s?) (presumably African) man in light (white) slacks and a light-weight (purplish light blue) short sleeve shirt and (big) (dark) sunglasses, who's like walking around in small halting circles like ten feet off of the path with his head bent down, and very occasionally leaning down to touch the ground.

I watch him warily, and then when he's kind of turned towards me and touching the ground, I see him come away from it with a big white goose feather in his hand, and I remember that that's the area where the local Canadian geese often congregate, as you can see from the shit on the ground there.

And, as I walk past him, too, I wonder if he's making some sort of jewelry, or using them for magic.

A metastasized word lately:

"Bandwidth."

I'd noticed that I'd begun using it myself lately to say that I don't have the time or energy to take something on, and then I came across it being used in a magazine article and maybe like one other place.

You also see people using the word "kerfuffle" a lot now lately, though that's been going on for a few years.  I still remember seeing it in a freshman paper back when I taught freshman writing, and one student complimented another on using it, in a peer-review feedback session that I was running.

Two feats of environmental neuroticism.

1) All of my used family-size pretzel bags that I crammed into the trashbag area that I established in one of my many cabinets in my little kitchen area in my little back alley cottage in the college town that I now live in, I'm now using them for my vegetable scraps like the husks from all of the corn that I've been eating, and I'm going through them pretty rapidly, now.

2) My rags that I chop up from old t-shirts and wifebeaters and whatnot, I used two strips of an old wifebeater from them, to rub in the dye from furniture scratch repair markers that I had gotten the other week, to repair up some minor scratches in my old (black) IKEA furniture.  And, since they were all stringy and small and finally full of dye marks, I was finally able to go and throw them out!

A back-story to (Spanish) culture: Jamon.

So, when I was back in the city that I used to live in, my one lawyer friend from (Missouri) was showing me some pictures on her phone of her recent trip to Spain, and in the background of all these pictures, there was jamon hanging everywhere.

"Is that their cured meat?", I was like, pointing to some large dangling hocks in the background of yet another picture.

"Yeah," she was like. "They had jamon *everywhere*."

"Oh," I was like.

And then, I was like, "The sad part is, you think it's a cute native foodway, but then you learn it's actually a superstition to ward off the Jews."

. . .

(That's a joke, but when I recycled it and texted it or told it to a few people, no-one knew if it was true or not, just like she wasn't sure! And, I guess that tells you something about the nature of European cultural anti-Semitism.)

Catching up with a (British) friend (2 of 2): Idea.

So, because of the impending energy crisis in Europe, my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) says that he wants to develop an app that will teach people how to engage in ancient meditation techniques, so that they can lower their body temperature.

He says that maybe he can get some start-up money from the government, as a public-private partnership.

. . .

(These are jokes.)