I felt it the moment the cold hit me. It was about 12:30 Friday night. At 12:25, I was fine. At 12:30, I was sniffling and my nose was running. I did the podcast anyway and then Saturday I did Cathy’s good-bye picnic at Kailua Beach. Spent all day Sunday in bed and then more of the same Monday.
Actually, Sunday night I got a little crazy (too much sleep and bad dreams to boot), so I walked down the hill, picked up some groceries, and had dinner at McD’s. Monday night I did the same thing. It’s not a lot, but it’s fresh air, it’s getting my body moving, it’s getting out of the house. Made a big difference both nights, too, but then I got home sorta amped and I’m worried about getting my body clock back in sync with the rest of the world in time for the start of school.
The best thing this week is the phone call I got from the director of the M.Ed. program I’m trying to get enrolled in for the fall. She worked the phones as if it were her own son’s education at stake, and finally convinced the business office at UH-Hilo to release my transcripts, meaning I’m pretty much good to go, once I secure the tuition money. Whew.
I ordered a couple of books last week and one of them, the new Boondocks anthology, has kept me pretty busy between naps. The first collection, Because I Know You Don’t Read the Newspaper, was the funniest thing I’d read in ages. Subversive, creative, unpredictable, and just hilarious. Aaron McGruder has moved almost completely away from the cultural stuff and totally into the political stuff, which he explains in the intro to A Right to Be Hostile, which I didn’t purchase because it was made up of the first two collections, plus some new strips. I appreciate his convictions and his willingness to walk where other artists don’t go, but he sacrifices humor in order to go there. A lot of humor. I’ve chuckled a few times, but mostly my response is just a quick nod. The first collection had me howling. It’s kinda sad, but as I’ve said, I totally understand why McGruder feels he has to go there.
R has come home from her trip and has been strangely friendly. It’s still not what it was — I mean, if I don’t call her first, we don’t talk at all — but she’s actually picked the phone up when I’ve called a couple of times, and when I called last night because of my bad dreams, she at least called me back the next afternoon. I don’t know if that’s progress or what. She and Mr. HBA have come back from their trip apparently still close. I was kinda hoping they’d come back hating each other. I’m terrible, I know.
My latest cooking project has been whole-wheat biscuits. I started with the most basic of recipes (whole-wheat flour, water, oil, baking powder, and salt) with the intention of working with one or two more ingredients at a time. The trouble is the whole-wheat flour. Most of the recipes I’ve seen call for half whole-wheat, half all-purpose. It’s not the easiest of ingredients to work with, this whole-wheat flour. You can see why flour became what it did — I mean, who doesn’t prefer light and fluffy to dense and hard? Then, it seems that all the things that make biscuits good are on the bad list: eggs, shortening, milk, and butter. What’s the point of making something with whole-wheat flour if you’re going to mix it with an equal amount of all-purpose flour and then add all that other stuff? There’d better be some point, or I’ve got four and a half pounds of whole-wheat flour that’ll just go to waist.
The best thing about the picnic at Kailua (a beach I have never liked) was Harry Potter talk with Anto. I’m playing with the idea of planning a talk-about-Harry get-together for grownups. Some decently priced restaurant with a party room, like the Wisteria (r.i.p.) used to have would be cool.