What Color Crayon Are You?

I took the color quiz, and it turns out that I am a yellow crayon.
Take the quiz.

Your world is colored with happy, warm, fun colors.  You have a thoughtful and wise way about you. Some people might even consider you a genius.  Charming and eloquent, you are able to get people to do things your way.  While you seem spontaneous and free-wheeling, you are calculating to the extreme.

 
I don't agree with all the bullet points, but I do like yellow. 

Looking for Lincoln (and other Pursuits)

Thursday, June 23

Vincennes, Indiana

            George Rogers Clark Memorial
                        purchased my National Parks Passport
            lunch – downtown
                        Pea-Fections
            Grouseland – William Henry Harrison’s “Mansion”
                        excellent and informative tour

Lincoln City, Indiana

            Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial

Elizabeth, Kentucky

            Ramada Inn
            supper – Texas Roadhouse

Friday, June 24

            leisurely morning

Hodgenville, Kentucky

            Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park
                        nice talk by the park ranger about the history of the "birthplace" cabin 
                        Sinking Spring Farm – cabin
                        Knob Hill Farm

Georgetown, Kentucky

            Cousin Reunion
            Fairfield Inn
            supper – downtown
                        Fava’s Restaurant – I had a Kentucky Hot Brown

Saturday, June 25

Lexington, Kentucky

            Mary Todd Lincoln House
                        excellent and informative tour
back in Georgetown

lunch – Culver’s
Mass – St. Francis de Sales Church – home parish for a distant Worland ancestor
supper – BBQ: beef brisket, chicken, and pork; green beans; macaroni and cheese; baked beans; cornbread muffins

Sunday, June 26

            Farewell

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lincoln Memorial Bridge - U.S. Route 50 Business
over the Wabash River between Vincennes, Indiana and Lawrence County, Illinois
photo from the steps of the George Rogers Clark Memorial

center - main entrance facing south
right - facing east

Should I or Should I Not?

Dropped a green M&M on the floor.  It rolled under the desk.  I used my foot to retrieve it across the carpet.

Sadly this treat went into the garbage.  Had the circumstances been different, the end action would have been different, too.

Generation Gap

Young co-worker (roughly age 30) asked me what I was listening to this morning.  “Simon & Garfunkel – long before your time,” I said.  She said that she knew who Simon & Garfunkel is and liked them.  I said, “I like Glenn Miller.”  She looked puzzled.  Me: “Big band from the 1940s.”

The 40-Year Plan

The College has a reception for retirees and service award recipients each May. Retirees are asked to speak for a couple minutes if they desire.

This is sort of what I said:

Three months ago I never expected to be here. I was on the 40-year plan. I wanted to know what the award would be for 40 years of service. [Someone in the audience said "a new car."]

My grandfather worked for 50 years for the U.S. Postal Service. He started in 1912, and was a rural letter carrier in Cumberland County, Illinois. He delivered the mail on his route by horse and buggy.

Grandpa was a "people person," and he enjoyed talking to people. Sometimes he was the only person the families on his route would see that whole week, and he exchanged news from town and among their neighbors with the folks he delivered to. He didn't gossip -- men do not gossip -- but he would tell them stories.

Later he became postmaster of his small town, and he enjoyed conversing with the people who would come to the post office to pick up their mail each day because there was no home mail-delivery in their town.

I think it was the people that my grandfather enjoyed most about his 50 years working for the USPS.

And I think "people" is the thing that kept me here at Parkland College for 38-and-a-half years ... because I am really going to miss Parkland Library's subscription to People magazine.

Dream A Little Dream Of Mom

Last night's dream:

My mom was living alone after my dad died.  We siblings had been watching over her, and she felt like we were telling her what to do too much so she ran away.  We eventually found her in a small town in Indiana – somewhat like GC or her childhood hometown.  I went to see how she was.

I found her along the main street “working” at a diner.  She wasn’t actually employed there – just that the owner-grill cook (a sort of Aunt Jemima-type person altho I never saw her and she could have been a man) kind of looked out for her and let Mom help.  There were café-type tables for the customers to sit at on the sidewalk in front of the diner.  Mom stood outside near the door holding a tray filled with cheeseburgers.  They looked really delicious: tasty, greasy, melted-cheesy burgers.  I guess Mom was sort of serving the hamburgers altho she wasn’t waitressing and I never saw anyone take one.  At one point Mom did pick up a triple-thick cheeseburger (3 meat patties) and take a big bite then put it back on the tray I suppose for someone else to select.

She was happy as a clam.  Pretty oblivious to anything going on around her, at times kind of flighty but able to focus on whatever it was we talked about.  At some point Mom removed a bunch of silverware she had stored in her pocket.  She took two forks and intertwined the tines together to straighten the ones that were bent.  I got the impression that she was familiar with the priest and church in town – that they watched out over her.

She told me she worked at the hospital, too.  I think she just sort of hung out there and they were used to seeing her around and treated her like a likeable stray dog, come and go as she pleased, everyone pleasantly greeting her.

We must have gone to her “apartment.”  [Reminded me of Harrison Ford’s apartment in The Fugitive – the one in Chicago that he rented from the Polish woman – altho Mom had only one room.]  I remember Mom pointing to her green rocker-recliner and saying Susan had given it to her.  She mentioned Susan a couple other times in the context that Susan had told her something or given her something.  And this made me wonder why Susan had never told us that she was in communication with Mom and where she was.

There was also something in the dream about Mom being barefoot and walking on stones along a railroad track.  I don’t quite know what that was about, but it reminded me of the train tracks that run through the center of her childhood hometown.

Basically, Mom was daft but happy.  She giggled and brushed aside anything that could be worrisome.  And everyone in the town looked out for her.  Kind of like Alfie Landau in GC.

Hospital Meals

I was a little disappointed when I learned that my surgery would be out-patient because I had thought I'd get a couple "free" meals, supper and breakfast.  Then it was explained that out-patient could include an overnight stay in the hospital, that I just had to be out in less than 23 hours. While I know the meals were not "free," I was anticipating having a meal served to me that I didn't have to prepare or clean up.

I chose from the "liquid diet" portion of the menu for my first food after being situated in my room: jello, iced tea and grape juice.  The juice was too sweet so after the first taste, I did not finish it.  The jello was ... well, jello.  I was just happy to have something to eat after having fasted for 20+ hours.

I knew that I wanted my dinner meal to be something easy to eat: nothing that needed a knife, nothing that required too much chewing, nothing that needed what I perceived to be a lot of internal breaking down.  I chose meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, and chocolate pudding.  Sadly, none of this tasted "good."  I can't say it was bad or that there was anything wrong with it.  Just that my taste buds were "off," and I simply was not interested in eating it.  Not even the chocolate pudding.  I nibbled on the meal, then set it aside with maybe only a quarter of it eaten.

(I managed to barf up what little was inside me.  That surprised me since I seldom throw up.)

One last chance for someone else to make me a meal:  For breakfast I chose oatmeal, a banana, bran muffin, and skim milk.  I was hoping the muffin would be commercially wrapped in plastic so I could take it home.  It was not.  It was dry and not very flavorful.  The banana did not taste like a banana, possibly because of screwed up taste buds so I only ate half of it.  I did like the oatmeal sprinkled with sweetener.

Overall, the food on this overnight "vacation" was a real disappointment.  It's not that I think it was poorly made, but I guess my taste was just off.

Once home, J. fixed me a lunch:  He heated up a slice of leftover Little Caesar's Pizza and brought a glass of water to me.