Category Life

More is Less

Michael 2 Comments

It is said everybody has a number. That might be a number of dollars to commit an otherwise distasteful physical act, or a number of times the car stalls before you break down and finance a new one, or perhaps the number of proposals before you finally say yes. For me it was the number of ways to prepare avocado. And the number is 73.

Seventy-three ways to use an avocado was the subject line on the email. A trusted food magazine’s daily email with a new recipe, a reasonably thought out kitchen hack, and some cutesy new way to do something you’d not previously considered like perhaps how to juice concord grapes at home, had with that one subject crossed the line into click bait. And I wasn’t biting.

It was one thing to occasionally sneak in 5 ways to use a watermelon or six flavors to make your coffee. I’d gladly scroll my way through a half dozen ways to spice up my morning caffeine dose. But everybody knows there are only three things you can do with an avocado – chunk into a summer salad, spread onto a wrap, or turn into guacamole. Anything else is a pathetic attempt to create relevance or justify buying a Tesla. See avocado oil.

CensoredWhile we’re talking about Facebook (I did say click bait), did you hear about the spat going on between Dutch tourism and the harbinger of all things questionable? Apparently the Visit Flanders tourist bureau would like to advertise their museums on the site but because the video they prepared includes shots of paintings by Rubens, the site usually not known for decorum refuses to allow the video to post because Rubens painted, er, nude models. It seems the number for Facebook is 1/4, as in the number of inches wide the shoestring covering the nipple of a spring breaker frolicking on the beach must be to make the post “decent.”

Another number that seems to be is 29. As in dollars spent to be free. Once Wayfair was the only site that blatantly barked “the shipping is free” in their ads but it wasn’t unless you spent a minimum amount, theirs being $50. Not to be outdone, etailer after etailer is including free shipping as one of the perks of shopping with them. It just doesn’t happen to be completely free. Shipping charges still show up at checkout sometimes with a little note saying how much more you have to buy in order to qualify for free shipping. Usually that number is 29 less whatever you have already committed to your purchase. Completely free. At least they tell you how much free costs, unlike the infomercial people who will double your order for free. Just pay a separate fee.

So, what’s your number?

McReally

Michael 2 Comments

I really like sandwiches. I’ve done that bit before so I’ll not bore you twice with it. Maybe even three times. Anyway, I like sandwiches. Today I came close to a sandwich trifecta. I made an egg and sausage on English muffin for breakfast, for lunch I had grilled chicken with provolone and zucchini on a hoagie roll, and I came close to grilling a hamburger for dinner. Fortunately I came to my senses and grilled a pork chop instead and actually got to use a knife and fork for one meal.

But that hamburger got me thinking about the sandwich world. Every restaurant has sandwiches. Maybe not the Top of the Marque type places but I can’t afford them so they don’t count. Yes I said that. If you want them to count, put them in your blog. Anyway…every restaurant has sandwiches but it took one that nobody wants to admit patronizing to have made it an institution. New York delis notwithstanding. Of course that is McDonald’s. And I’m not getting any consideration from them for this.

The hamburger thought that popped into my head when that hamburger got me thinking was the Quarter Pounder. You know McDonald’s recently upgraded the Quarter Pounder. No? You didn’t? That’s right. Nobody actually goes to McDonald’s so of course you didn’t. That’s ok. I did. They recently upgraded the Quarter Pounder and a couple of weeks ago I had one. I’m not going to sit in my kitchen and ponder if I would rather fire up the grill and burger it on my own or make the trip down the road to cop dinner. But if I’m on the road and hungry, and an arch topped sign beckons, I could do another one of those.

McRibAh but there’s more to the story. The hamburger thought that popped into my head when that hamburger got me thinking wasn’t just about hamburgers. Because one of the hamburgers that thought popped was the venerable Quarter Pounder, that particular hamburger got me to think about a non-hamburger sandwich from that chain, the McRib. Or you prefer: the McRoo (inaccurate though since it contains no kangaroo meat although rumors do persist) or the McTripe (actually quite accurate since tripe is one of its 70+ ingredients) (sorry) or even the McOhNoI’dNever which is probably also inaccurate because they sell between 30 and 50 million whenever they are released and I only get one) (really).

It’s true. I am a McRibber. I don’t know why but every fall I start looking for the signs that the everything but the kitchen sink sandwich is coming back because I have to have my McPig Fix. Fortunately, unlike certain potatoes chops, I can stop at one. Fortunately because even I will admit they are weird and they also have over 400 calories and you don’t keep a boyish figure like mine (yeah, right) by chowing down on a bagful of those things.

Yes, I really like sandwiches. Even the marginal ones.

One (Zucchini) Out Of Many

Michael 3 Comments

My last post I said I was going to do something I hadn’t done for a while, complain, which may have been somewhat inaccurate. This post runs to something I don’t do often enough and is surely quite accurate, be grateful. Not any old gratitude is it that I am expressing, but heartfelt thanks for my nearly 19 year old electric range, and my almost 29 year old eccentric daughter.

Most social media platforms are the most antisocial of platforms but I indulge for the special interest groups. Support for chronic illness or rare diseases is easier when you involve most of the planet. And hobbies or interests can be explored more easily when you spend most of your days in a smallish apartment by way of a connected phone, tablet, or laptop while plopped in a comfy chair. It is one of the latter groups of groups that reminded me of how good I must have it. Yes, I seem to be quite more fortunate than others not among those sharing medical burdens but of those who enjoy cookery to fill a few otherwise dull hours throughout the week.

Apparently one cannot really cook unless using a $500,000 range metering gas fed flames unless one instead is cooking over the open flameless heat of natural chuck charcoal or in the smoke of natural hardwoods in a specialized outdoor vessel. Or so those of my cooking aficionado collective extol in their various posts, complete with pictorial evidence.

Yesterday my daughter interrupted my trip to the local farmers market to bring me a basket of bounty from her backyard garden. Included in that were several zucchini, just the right amount for one of my favorite summer treats, zucchini fritters. Or zucchini cakes if you want to think more healthily, but just barely. And handful of readily available pantry ingredients and 60 minutes later we were sitting on the patio enjoying piping hot patties of grated zucchini dipped in ranch dressing enjoying the summer sun’s warmth and shine.

Thanks to my apartment complex provided and now aging electric stove I enjoyed a most wonderful repast on a most wonderful break with the most wonderful offspring. I’d include photographic evidence but we are it.

You’ll just have to take my word that I expressed the right amount of gratitude.

—-”

Bonus recipe! Real good zucchini fritters

1-1/2 pounds zucchini, shredded and drained.
1/2 large yellow onion, shredded
1/2 large red onion, shredded
1 or 2 or even 3 Italian banana pepper, chopped fine
1 egg, slightly beaten
2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 teaspoons coarsely ground pepper
1-1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 tsp adobo powder (or chili powder)
1/2 tap garlic powder

Shred zucchini and onions. I use the shredding disk on my food processor. A real cooking hobbyist would use the large holes of a box grater. Place in a colander over a bowl, or to be like me into a salad spinner, and sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the salt and allow to sit for 10 to 25 minutes.

Mix flour, baking soda, the remaining salt, and the herbs in a small bowl.

Transfer the zucchini and onions to a clean tea towel and wring the devil out of them. Hopefully all the water will also get wrung out. If you were like me first take them for a spin in the salad spinner and then transfer them to the towel and squeeze with all your might.

Heat a large frying pan to medium high and add enough oil to cover the surface. (I use light olive oil but any normal oil will do. I’ve even used corn oil. But don’t get fancy and try to use coconut or avocado oil for goodness sake!) Assemble a cooling rack in a rimmed baking sheet and heat your oven to 250°F (120°C).

Plop the now abused zucchini and onions into a large bowl and fluff with a fork or some other fork like object. Mix in the chopped banana pepper and the beaten egg. (Thought I forgot about them, didn’t you?) Add the flour mixture in 3 installments a making sure each is completely incorporated.

Add a reasonable amount of the mixture to the hot pan and squish down to about 1/4 inch thickness. (I use a quarter cup for six 4 inch diameter fritters fried in two batches but do your own thing). Fry until golden brown, admit 3 to 5 minutes per side then transfer to the cooling rack. In between batches add oil if need to cover the bottom of the pan and allow to return to heat. Once all fritters are fried and resting nicely on the rack, pop the baking sheet into the oven for 15 minutes.

Eat and enjoy. Best shared with a friend or friendly relative.

One of Seven

Michael 4 Comments

I’m doing something today I don’t usually. I’m complaining. Yes, you’re right, I have expressed displeasure from time to time but this is different. This is head shaking, head scratching, “what did you expect” vent-age.

You can tell by how late it is that I wasn’t even certain about posting this, but clearly I have. If you don’t want to think of me as a complainer stop here and I’ll see you again on Thursday.

Yesterday’s paper featured an article, “Why aren’t wages rising?” It stated that although some of the brightest economists in the country can’t agree on the reason, they do agree that wages are not increasing any faster than the rate of inflation. Today’s paper had a headline that a local company’s employees are “set for raises” for the next three years after the company and a local union agreed to a new contract.

So salaries are going up, nobody is losing spending power, yet nobody, or at least not one headline writer, is happy.

Was I the only one to see this 60 years ago? There used to be a time wages were commensurate with results. Now they are time released. Ever year everybody gets more money for doing the same work they did the year before. The widget maker doesn’t make more widgets for the widget company to sell yet the widget maker makes more money from the widget company. The widget company can’t report to the widget investors they are turning a smaller profit because they are spending more money paying the widget makers so they raise the price on widgets. Now that the price of widgets is up, everybody who buys a widget, including the widget makers, go to their respective companies and say next year they will need bigger raises, inflation isn’t making their dollar go as far. The next year the companies, including the widget company, increase workers’ salaries, sometimes by predetermined, contracted amounts. Again there are no more widgets to sell to offset the increased expense so again the price of widgets goes up. And the snowball continues its run downhill.

I never have and never will understand how people believe it is their right to get more for doing no more. I also never have understood and never will understand how the same people upon receiving this windfall instead of voluntarily sharing their increase with their church or synagogue or charity or charities of their choices complain about it being not enough while simultaneously complaining about others getting increases for not doing anything to deserve them. The price of everything keeps getting more and more expensive they say.

NoMoreMooneySo wages aren’t going up but are going up just not enough because they only go up as much as necessary to keep with inflation but that’s not enough because everybody else gets more too.  It won’t end. It can’t end. For it to end everybody has to simultaneously say they want no more increases, even minimal cost of living increases. You can’t do it piece meal because somebody will (with a capital WILL) break the chain and not give back. And you can’t just rely on people. You need industry, large and small companies, profit based and non for profits to agree to no increase fees or prices except for bona fide improvements. Wages will go up in response to increases in output and profits will go up when true efficiencies result in lower expenses. Won’t happen. Can happen but won’t. Too many people have to make the right choice. The right choice never made anybody anything for nothing.

Greed is one of the seven deadlies, isn’t it?

Step 4: The List

Michael 12 Comments

We are making progress. Tuesday afternoon I received a call from the transplant center at the hospital that the test results are in, the clearances have been reviewed, the committee has met, and I can now say I am officially sick enough to need a new kidney if one can be found for me. Have a seat, pour your favorite beverage, and I’ll tell you the next chapter of this story.

Saying I am sick enough for a transplant is really not accurate and was not the point of three months of testing. We knew the level of my sickness of those organs the first time they stuck a pair of needles into my arm, attached the other ends to a dialysis machine, and said it will get easier over time. They were, they still are, and it hasn’t yet so it probably won’t. It won’t.

The point of the tests, the examinations, and the reviews was to see if I am healthy and strong enough to withstand the surgery, recovery and follow-up to replace those pieces of mine that zipped right on passed middle age outpacing the rest of me to done for. And we discovered and now have documentation that I am. Er, healthy and strong (sort of), not yet done for.

Now we just have to find a replacement for those pesky, unproductive pods. Unlike other parts of me that have been unceremoniously replaced, there aren’t any replacements for a kidney other than another kidney. That means finding somebody who is done using his or hers or someone who is ready to part with one of the two that come as standard equipment in homo sapiens.

And now we come to the point of Step 4. The List. People, including me (well, I’m people too), refer to The List. There really is no single, all encompassing, first to last list. If you want to think of a list, it would more appropriate to think of each donated organ having its own list. When a person is accepted into the program and begins waiting for an organ, his or her matching criteria is placed into a database. When an organ becomes available, the organ’s criteria is compared to the database and all those people whose needs match the offered organ are retrieved. With some exceptions they are retrieved in the order they were entered into the system. Thus, The List for that organ.

There are exceptions to being positioned on the list from the order a person entered the system. Neonatal and pediatric patients are given some preference and people in need of a transplant who had earlier in their lives donated an organ receive placement preference.

When my blood was drawn in April at that first test in the transplant center, there were already over 114,000 people waiting for an organ transplant in the United States. When I became approved on Tuesday, 143 other people joined me being added to The List. About 95 transplants were performed that day and 20 people died waiting. The List grew by about 3,600 since April.

A recent poll revealed that 95% of people support organ donation but only 54% have ever signed up to be a donor. Unfortunately, only 3% of deaths result in actual available organs appropriate for transplantation. And so, the list grows. I could wait for 3 to 5 years until I make it to the top of an organ’s list.

There is a way off the list without dying or becoming too sick that a transplant’s benefits no longer outweigh the risks. The living donor. Kidneys and portions of livers can be donated by live individuals directed for a specific recipient. (Some people actually make altruistic donations that enter the general pool and are designated to a recipient as a deceased donor organ would be.) Under very rare circumstances, lung, pancreas and intestine live donations may be possible. Living uterus donations are undergoing clinical trials.

Living donors account for about a third of kidneys transplanted in the United States. Kidneys from live donors not only mean a faster transplant for the recipient but a more successful transplant.

Already four people have stepped forward and asked about making a living donation of a kidney for me. Their evaluations will begin next month and can take two to six months to complete. I’ll take you along that side trip as we make this stop on my journey. That way you’ll know what a potential living organ has to go through.

Just in case.

——

Related posts

First Steps (Feb. 15, 2018)
The Next Step (March 15, 2018)
The Journey Continues (April 16, 2018)
More Steps (May 31, 2018)

 

Stop, Thief!

Michael 6 Comments

I bought a book to read and when I read a book I start at the beginning. The very beginning. Prefaces, forwards, introductions acknowledgements, dedications. I also don’t finish until I get to the end if there should be an afterward. (After words?) If is written I will read it.

This particular book I bought, and after reading the forward I’m so glad I did. I say again, and will stress, I bought this book. With money. American made money in an American book store. Yes there are some bookstores left and I still frequent and patronize them.

I’m not in the habit of stealing books. At least I didn’t think so. Apparently this particular author thought differently. In his preface, his 22 page preface, he says, “what happens in libraries in the U.S. is a theft of services on the same scale as the enslavement of blacks.” A strong sentiment that. It was said, er printed, in reference to authors receiving a single royalty for each book bought by a library though lent to “everybody with a library card … twenty-six times in one year, fifty-two times in two years.” Personally I’m glad he expanded that thought just in case my ability to master multiplication failed me at that critical moment.

LibraryIs borrowing a book from a library stealing? I hadn’t thought about it. If it is I am guilty of it hundreds of times over. Of course many of those times were the first time I had read a particular author and it was that exposure that led me to buy hard or electronic copies of his or her other works. But theft of the first book is still theft I suppose. To that unnamed author I apologize and repent. I suppose I can send him a few bucks in restitution although I don’t recall ever borrowing one of his books from the library. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw one of his books in the library but that’s a different story.

He can use those dollars to pay for the paper he probably read at the diner, the magazine he perused at the doctor’s office, the cable fee for the game recap he watched at the barbershop, or the medical advice he asked me for at last year’s Fourth of July picnic. Ok, it wasn’t last year but that really did make a nice flow, don’t you think?

I suppose he was right in his criticism of the lending library system and he has the right to voice said criticism. And what better way. Really. In a book that somebody might have gotten out of library. That will teach them for sure. If they bothered to read the preface.

I have the right to be insulted by his criticism and to express my dismay at being insulted. I bought that book. At full retail. And waded through it even after I was so insulted 17 pages into it. I could have shown him and not finished the book (or even the preface since I still had 5 pages of that to get through) but to be honest I already paid for the book and he surely spent the royalty so why not get my money’s worth out of it.

Now if I can just figure out a way to get my money’s worth out of it.

 

Shop With An Opp, Err, App

Michael 2 Comments

Just one blog post ago I said how sometimes I can appreciate some mobile based applications like the daily paper. Sometimes I am quite content with the old fashion ways like the Sunday paper. Today I tried a new phone app and I might not ever go back to my previous routine. Today I shopped, scanned, and bagged my way through the grocery store.

Ok, I know some of you are already saying that you don’t even want to use the self-checkout. “If I wanted to check out groceries I would have gotten a job at the grocery store!” and “I don’t see anybody giving out discounts for doing their job!” are just a couple of the reasons I’ve heard people give for not embracing self-checkout. Sometimes while in line for self-checkout. And that’s fine. As far as I know, no store has demanded that you have to check yourself out. At least not ones with a brick and mortar presence. They still have cashiers manning the scanner and till and you are welcome to use those lanes if you want somebody else to do the hard work.

I sometimes had problems with self-checkout at the grocery store. Often it was because of a person attempting to use the self-checkout who had difficulty completing the basic “pass bar code over scanner, put on belt or in bag” motion. Rarely was it the technology itself although the express, 12 items or less, self-checkout registers never understood that I wanted to use my own bag even though they gave me that option at the start of the process. A human was always able to provide some intervention and I moved right along.

The “Scan, Pay, and Go” option as my local market has dubbed the service, cuts the most annoying of the limitations of the self-checkout and still gives me the opportunity to shop in non-contact bliss. The process is simple. You download an app to your smart phone or use a provided hand held scanner. Instead of just placing an item into your cart, you scan the product’s bar code and put it into bag in your cart. And you continue through the store completing your shopping list like so. For security reasons you don’t put any payment information into the app and you pay at the end of the shopping experience. At the checkout area you proceed to an area just for the “Scan, Pay, and Go” crowd and scan the bar code on to the checkout stand which retrieves your order. You are given the option to redeem coupons and select payment method, then off you go.

It might not be for everybody. Some people might want even more automation. But for an old guy like me, it’s nice to have done something relevant to the 21st century. Finally.

I can’t wait till next week’s shipping trip.

 

 

 

 

 

Just Because You Can

Michael 5 Comments

This morning Best Buy announced they will no longer sell CDs in their stores. Vinyl yes, polycarbonate no. Apparently those who had normally opted for the shiny discs are now more likely to download or stream music to their hand held devices.

Last week the local paper announced that in August they will be dropping the print version of the paper from seven days a week to five. Apparently everybody wants their news electronically. This particular paper has not only its news website but two different apps for reading on mobile devices.

When Apple told us they had just the thing for that (with their trademarked and copywrited slogan (copywrit? copywrote?)), did they know they would release an app to reduce mobile dependency 9 years later? In fact, their app for that is only the latest in a string of such aids to reduce our electronic jonesing.

No, I’m not going to embark on a rampage decrying the ever presence of mobile devices in people’s hands. For the most part, I personally would rather hold a paper in my hands for perusal, especially now that they’ve resolved the inky finger problem, and though I never really got the hang of transferring a song from “somewhere out there” to what I still call “the phone,” I think we’ve done well in miniaturizing and availing technology to the masses. Even I am more likely to read the morning paper on my tablet out on the patio and I actually have a collection of favorites in my music folder in “the phone” (thanks to the daughter’s doing). Still, there are some things that shouldn’t completely replace the older hard copy iterations.

TriptikFor example, if you have a cell phone any less than say six years old you likely have a GPS mapping program at your fingertips. When I was traveling for work I appreciated my locating and traffic apps. I’d step out of an airport that looked quite like the airport I departed from, got into a rental car that look quite like the one I returned in a city earlier, and navigate to a hospital that looked suspiciously like one I visited the previous day on roads that held no resemblance to anywhere I’d even been. Yet I never got lost. My “phone” always knew where I was and which way to go.

But even knowing exactly where I was I never had a sense of roughly where I was. Years ago I’d use AAA “Triptiks” to navigate to a specific place. They were flip chart looking collections of mini-maps that specified your travel along highlighted roads. But I also always had my guidebooks and atlas so that at stops I could get a feel for what lay beyond the margins of the designated route. How else could you know that the world’s largest ball of twine was just 50 miles around the next bend, a drop in the mileage bucket when you’re already 1800 miles from home? You don’t get that from GPS.

So although I hope atlases never go away and that I’ll always have a CD player in my car so I have something to listen to while I search for the second largest cactus shaped like a tea pot, I can still appreciate the electronic versions. Now if only the proponents of those would please leave my paper and plastic alone we can live together in peace.

 

Oh Balls!

Michael 7 Comments

I was watching the Father of the Bride last night. The original with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor as father and bride. If you haven’t seen it or the 1991 remake with Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams-Paisley reprising those roles, the premise is that fathers go a little wacky when their daughters and wives plan that most father-unfriendly affair, a wedding.

I bring up that it was the 1950 production I saw because a scene in it made me sit up and say, “Now that’s blog-worthy!” If by the time you’ve finished reading this you don’t agree with me, well, that’s ok, not all of what I think is blog-worthy is blog-worthy but then, isn’t that the fun of it?

Anyway, there is a scene when Spencer Tracey in his attempt to either maintain a little control or save a few dollars decides he will wear his own formal attire, presumably from his wedding 20 some years earlier, rather than buy or rent a new tuxedo. It wasn’t that even formal styles a couple of decades apart are going to be different or that almost everybody’s body a couple of decades apart is going to be different that particularly tickled my questioning brain. Those aren’t blog worthy. Sort of ticklish and predictably funny yes, but blog worthy? It was when he pulled his cutaway from its storage box and a cascade of moth balls poured out across the floor that I sat up and said to myself, “Whatever happened to moth balls!?”

MothballsWe know moth balls still exist. You can find them in Amazon so they are still real. And we still say when something isn’t used anymore that it is mothballed. Is that because we used to use mothballs when we stored things we aren’t using anymore? Or is it because we don’t use moth balls anymore? Or do we? Just because I don’t have a closet hanger filled with moth balls doesn’t mean all my neighbors don’t.

So I did a little search. That’s when I discovered that Amazon carries moth balls. I also found out that hanging them in closets, tossing them in dresser drawers, and adding one or two or twenty to your vacuum cleaner bag (all things I remember my mother doing about the time Spencer was trying on a 29 year old formal jacket) aren’t top search results for “moth balls.” Instead I found recommendations for keeping houseplants pest free, attics bat free, and backyard sheds mouse free.

I don’t have an attic or a backyard shed and my houseplants are already critter free. On a more traditional note I’ve had real wool sweaters in my closet for more years than I probably should have and still they are not moth eaten and I’m not sure what moth balls do, or did for a vacuum cleaner and see no reason to discover what now. So I don’t think I’m going to jump on a moth ball bandwagon and order a pack or case. Sorry Amazon. But if you have a can’t miss use for those little white waxy spheres, please let me know. Maybe I’ll change my mind.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a twenty year old tux in that closet I’d like to try on. Just in case.

 

Summer, Santa, and Selfies

Michael 2 Comments

MeWelcome to Selfie Day 2018. I’m not sure if it’s a National or International Selfie Day. I guess wherever there are cameras, err phones, and selfie worthy backgrounds, err phones, people can celebrate.

Personally I think we would be better off celebrating Half Christmas than Selfie Day. Even though marketing people are very up on doing Christmas in July specials that’s only because nothing else is happening in late July. But if you really wanted a hot celebration (Southern Hemisphere inhabitants understandably forgiven for minimal enthusiasm over the summer Christmas thing in general), now is the time, well, in 4 days is the time for summer Christmas. That’s when it’s really halfway betwixt last Christmas and next. Just because American mattress sellers and used car dealers are wrapping up the Banner Flag Day Specials and putting their Hot Fourth of July Sales on deck is no reason to ignore a natural not made up reason to celebrate.

But since we do relish made up reasons to be as selfish as we can, we instead have Selfie Day 2018. When you can mug for all the world and make it look like an almost natural thing to do.

Happy You! And did I mention Happy Summer?