Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

dmk is here, along with her mom. We had Italian food earlier and it was very, very good. They oohed and ahhed over the kitty apropriately (well, apropriatly by the standards of cats and cat-lovers, anyhow -- it seemed right to me). The house is an oven. I am very tired (just waiting for the Mg and drugs I took to take effect so that my calf muscles won't keep me awake all night despite my being sleepy). I had a whole lot more I wanted to say, but I'm too tired and the office is way too hot. (Still need to string some Cat5 up to the 3rd floor.)

Shortly after we got back from the restaurant, a neighbour rang the doorbell. That almost never happens. He was carrying corn. He was from the drug-rehab program two doors down (I've lost track of who's a patient and who's staff, so I'll just say that he was from that house (thinkthinkthink ... I think he's someone I've seen over a long enough period that he must be staff ... ). He explained that they'd had a cookout on Saturday (yah, I know, the music was too bleeping loud) and they had made Way Too Much corn and had to get rid of it. He had rung the bell of the house in between us at the same time (our front doors are right next to each other). Now I seldom attempt to eat corn on the cob (I have an underbite, which makes properly ripping the kernels off the cob with my teeth difficult), and this was a lot of corn, so I said I wasn't sure how much of it I could eat before it went bad. He insisted that they needed to get rid of it and didn't care if some of it got wasted as long as some of it didn't, and that they needed to empty the tray it was in so that someone could cook chicken in it that night. So now I've got three plastic bags of already-cooked corn in my fridge. While I was too full to try an ear (well, half-ear -- they were cut), I nibbled a couple of kernels that had fallen off. Not the best corn I've ever tasted, but good enough to be mouth-tempting. (Note: Maryland grows some Corn To Be Taken Seriously, quality-wise.) I really hope I do manage to not have to throw much of it away -- God knows I can use all the help grocery-budget-wise I can get, and it'd be a shame to have food show up literally on my doorstep and not be able to use it up. I'm guessing that if I strip it off the cobs and freeze it, that won't be too much unlike the frozen corn I buy at the supermarket, right? (Except for having come from better corn to start with (and having a lot of larger kernels)....?)

(The only gripe I've had about the drug-rehab folks is that once in a while they play a stereo too loudly out back, and it bounces off of all those other nearby walls of the other row houses, and comes in through my windows on the other side of my house so I hear it in my office loud enough to interfere with whatever I'm trying to listen to and disrupt my concentration. But they don't do that very often, thank goodness. In face-to-face conversations, they've so far ranged from polite to friendly (including one or two who started merely polite and a bit wary but warmed up to neighbourly after a bit of conversation convinced them that this weird guy in a dress was okay after all, and a musician, of course, which makes lots of things seem less wrong to a lot of people for some reason). They're the other folks on my side of the block who take clearing the sidewalk seriously when it snows, and one of them planted a bunch of pretty flowers in the wood-bordered square around the tree in front of the house next door (uh, right where the next door neighbours usually pile their surprisingly large amounts of garbage a day or two before trash day).)

That wasn't what I was going to write about before I got too tired to write what I wanted to write. That was just the "oh, one more really brief thing" that got away from me. The other thing will come back to me later, probably. And the cat just decided to use my left hand as a pillow, which is a little awkward since I'm touch-typing. Poor thing. Office is too hot for her but she want's to cuddle. I can type reasonably quickly one-handed (either hand), but my left hand is already over those keys, blocking my right hand from them. Kitty just has to endure a few more seconds of having her pillow twitch.

Think my legs may let me sleep now. Wish me luck.

theferrett wrote:

It is a little-known fact New Englanders require Southerners to breed as a part of their lifecycle; without Georgia, all of New England would cease to mate and eventually die. You see, a good solid Connecticut party consists of twenty terrified strangers, clutching wine glasses in glum silence; we do not speak unless spoken to. So there we stand, bumping back and forth like ice cubes in a drink.
 
But then the Southerner comes in! And thank God! The Southerner, whether she knows people or not, is happy to talk to anyone! The Southerner flits about the room like a bee transferring pollen, inadvertently starting up relationships along the way; couples, finally introduced at last, marry immediately out of sheer gratitude. And thus more New Englanders are born.