August 23, 2021

Important calendar note

February 22nd 2022 (2/22/2022) falls ona Tuesday so we will be able to call it 2's day - which is really keeping me going.

August 18, 2021

How to help with efforts in Afghanistan

This is from a Facebook post by my niece in law who is (was?) an annual Guest Artist at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music:

She also mentioned:
Also, if you speak Dari and English and want to help Afghans in Kabul who are seeking information re travel please message me.

If you can translate, please PM me and I will put you in touch with her.

August 10, 2021

UPDATE! Well, this is messed up - good news and bad news today

I've been getting tests to get cleared to have an operation. Apparently, once a cardiothoracic surgeon replaces your aortic valve every doctor is paranoid about putting you under anesthesia without a cardiologist's approval.

So last month I set up a series of tests - echocardogram, blood work, and new to me a nuclear stress test. The echo was no problem, blood work was a breeze. Today I got the last test - my heart is fine, no blockages, nothing to worry about (other than the irregular rhythm that the technician had to go ask about). I am cleared for surgery!

Yeah, but - and this is a very big BUT - the hospital is not allowing anything other than emergency surgeries right now because of the overload of Covidiot cases. So I don't know when I will be allowed to get the surgery. I've left a message with my surgeon and will probably hear back tomorrow. I guess I will be put on a waiting list and hope that the midline hernia does not push out more intestine or that the intestine does not get strangled and start to die.



Undate! The surgeon is still doing outpatient surgeries and mine can be outpatient! So right now they are contacting the cardiologist's office to get the approval on paper. Then they will call me back to schedule the surgery. Yeah! I can get it taken care of!

August 7, 2021

We all know Lawrence O'Donnell from MSNBC and the show The West Wing

But did anyone here know that the name "Lawrence O'Donnell" was also a pseudonym for the writing pair Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore?

I didn't realize that until I was reading an anthology of early Science Fiction stories and one was attributed to the pair writing under that name!

"Vintage Season" is probably one of the most famous - published in 1946, it was later loosely adapted into the 1992 American film Timescape, also titled Grand Tour: Disaster in Time, starring Jeff Daniels.

August 3, 2021

Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken

This year for the first time in decades I'm growing my own herbs. Today's experiment with herbs was Lemongrass Chicken. I was happy to find this recipe at https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/vietnamese-lemongrass-chicken

Far too many lemongrass recipes also include hot peppers - something that I can't eat at all. This one has a lovely, lemony flavor and is easy to make. It calls for putting the chicken on skewers and grilling it - I didn't want to bother with that so I just dumped the chicken and marinade into a large chef's pan and cooked until done. Served over brown rice, it was great! We had green salad with tomatoes to complete our meal.

Our lemongrass is only about two feet tall so the bottom white parts that are used in the recipe were not very big. I used more of them. I saved the tops, cut them into about one inch pieces and made tea with some of them. Delicious!