Redline, late

Notes:  Mon Stacy’s day off, jfk park, clean, cook, dishes, shower, drinking at Sheraton, Redline

I came home after work not thinking that it was Stacy’s day off.  First priority for me was my 360.  The three of of us went to JFK park in search of an interesting backdrop for my photo.  The fountain seemed good enough, and while I ran back and forth taking a number of photos, Stacy and Jessica chatted with some people they knew.  Library people, I think.  They wanted to engage me in conversation, the people wanted to take my picture for me, but no thank you, I was in my own little world with my camera.

Stacy and Jessica wanted to go out then, but after cleaning, cooking, and cleaning again, I wasn’t about to go out without a shower.  We made plans to meet in an hour at the Sheraton Commander, and I went to my office to get cleaned up.  We closed the Sheraton bar at like 11:30, and skipped over to Redline.  I don’t remember if we closed Redline, but the timestamp on the photo above is 1 am.

Dead Pool Surprise

Notes:

Sat – wasted

Sun – rachel DTX, new dress, then office, shave, change, dead pool

I think I took the photo at right while Rachel and I were shopping Downtown Crossing.  (Click the photo to see her blog entry where she comments on it.)  The girl’s shoulders caught Rachel’s eye, and so I flipped on my camera, pressed zoom, and snapped the photo.  Then I saw the guy was carrying the purse!  Then…just look how cute he looks, shoes, clothes, haircut, everything.  If you want to stretch and look for even more gender reversal,  look at how widespread her footsteps are–and how close his are!  Almost one foot in front of the other.   Ah, could be the camera angle, chance, imagination…still a fun photo.

I’m modelling the dress she bought me in the photo at left.  It was on super markdown at Tello’s.

Dead pool with Stacy was a blast. I didn’t tell her ahead of time that it was Goth music night. She had asked me earlier what I was doing that night and I said only “going to Flat Top Johnny’s, want to come?” I saw that she was already wearing a black blouse and looked just fine for Goth night. I made her watch me eat some non-vegetarian thing from the bar, I had a beer, she had wine. We took a very long time to finish one game of pool, we listened to cool music, people watched, and chatted with a few people, I think. There’s a set of eight photos on Flickr, if you want to follow that link as well.

Turning Point?

So Sunday wasn’t the happy turning point it sounded like.  The date on this entry is July 15, but I’m writing most of it four months later, on November 26.  I wrote the previous entry, July 14, and then didn’t post again for a month.  The entry “Despair,” on August 18th, would be my next public post.  My physical health might have been better by my mental health was going nowhere.  Although I stopped posting, I continued scribbling a few notes, for the next couple of weeks anyway.  Entries from today through the end of July are reconstructed from these terse notes and my flicker photos.

“Yesterday,” Monday, July 14, notes read “lucy, ssn came in mail, mtpc, cambridge 1, first beer in months” and my Flickr photo for the day is this, shown to the right.

The photo was taken at lunch time.  While I used it for my 360, Stacy actually held the camera and pressed the shutter.  It took a number of tries of me coaching her on how to hold the camera in the right place and press the shutter at the right time, but we finally got something usable.

“lucy” is a reference to a story of passing.  At 7:30 am, Stacy wasn’t home yet and everybody else was sleeping.  I killed some time by dropping off some laundry and then getting coffee and a lemon square at Darwin’s.  A woman came and sat next to me and after a while struck up a conversation.  It was Lucy, whom I guess I had met before but didn’t remember.  She said that she knew me and sees me all the time.  We talked medical stuff, she asked all about my tracheostomy, and at one point she asked, “is that why your voice is so low?”  I’m sure I didn’t suppress smiling incredulously, but I said that no, that’s just way my voice is.  She said that was good.  Good that the trach didn’t change my voice?  Good to have a low voice?  I don’t know quite what she meant, but I wasn’t eager to continue a conversation about my voice and moved on to something else.  There was a time not long ago when I would have come out to a person in this case.  Not now.  If I pass, I pass.  Let it go.

An even happier event was later in the day when I got a care package in the mail from my mom containing my social security card.  She also included a nice little letter of course.  I had had her dig through old boxes of my stuff to look for it and she found it.  I desperately needed this to get a new Massachusetts ID card.  This, I hope, is the last of several documents required by the RMV.

After work I went to the MTPC meeting.  The special guest for this meeting was someone who talked about voter registration, the idea being that we (members of MTPC) need to enable, encourage, and help people to register and vote, especially people who are likely to be sympathetic to our interests.  It was educational for me.

After MTPC, I went back to Stacy’s to see if she and Jessica were planning to go to Ceremony with me.  Stacy and I had talked about going out.  Jessica had asked about Ceremony and I said that yes, it’s every Monday.  I asked if they wanted to go and they both said yes.  At home though, I found them both sound asleep.  I started to gather clothes to go by myself, then quickly lost interest.  Truth was, I wasn’t feeling that energetic and suddenly going out for a long evening wasn’t compelling.  I scrapped those plans and went out for just something to eat instead.  Went over to Cambridge 1, had pizza and watched the Tour de France on TV.  Perfect low key, nice atmosphere, comfort food.  With dinner, I was also brave enough to try my first alcohol following radiation treatments.  Wow, wow, it was a challenge for my tongue.  Took me the whole dinner to finish.

Soup

Stacy likes to send lunch along with me to work.  In particular she likes to give me these instant soups from McDougall’s. The flavor of the day was Minestrone, and while my instant soup went uneaten, perhaps the suggestion was all I needed to decide to order the minestrone soup at Sarah’s Market today.  Tim asked me if I wanted to walk over there for lunch and not even thinking of the instant soup, I said yes.  It was a victory that I could eat the minestrone, since it has tomato in the broth and up until now, the acid in tomatoes has made any food containing tomato very difficult for me to eat. I’m slowly getting better.

I had more soup at dinner then.  At Stacy’s, I decided to make more of that summer vegetable chowder that turned out so well last week.  The exact vegetables from the recipe weren’t in the fridge any more, but that was ok; I’d lost the recipe by now anyway.  Who needs a recipe for something so simple, anyway?  You pick several vegetables that both look and taste good together, cut everything up, pre cook the vegetables that need some extra cooking time, put it all in a pan, cover with water, boil to finish cooking everything.  The only spices in the recipe were basil, salt, and white pepper.  (I skipped the salt and pepper since everything tastes like salt to me already, pepper is challenging, and I was too lazy to load the white pepper corns into a grinder anyway.)  Puree 1/3 of the soup in a blender and return it to the pot.  That’s all.  I like to cool the soup before putting in in the blender to avoid damaging the rubber seal.  Also, it purees better if you get 1/3 of the veggies, but then scoop out some extra soup liquid.

It was Friday and I was staying home sick.  If I felt well enough to go out, my choice for the night would have been Guerrilla Queer Bar but no, that will have to wait until next month.  I took my soup in the bedroom and popped Peyton Place in the DVD player.

Sick Day

I couldn’t even pretend that I worked today. I was at Stacy’s all morning. The day started like any other, with blueberry oatmeal, but I had housework I wanted to do. Tuesday I’d had a little diarrhea accident and my hip pads still needed to be washed. I do hate to go without them (what was that on the bicycle yesterday, a boy or girl?) and I wasn’t about to let them sit dirty another day. On the bicycle yesterday, and at right, here, I’m without hip pads. I hate this look, and I’m self conscious of having boy hips. *pout* (Note to self, after looking at this photo:  Never wear the large breast  forms with without hip pads.  Always go with the smaller ones.  Gosh that’s a weird shape.)  Before laundry, to have space to work in the sink, I had to do dishes. I started on that, Stacy could see that she was of no use and so she went on to bed, leaving me alone. Once started on housework, I also found myself at the limit of the mess I could tolerate in my little space I had claimed in the living room. Clothes and stuff that used to be organized into boxes, sorted, and folded neatly, had grown to an unruly and unsearchable pile. With my energy level so low these days. Housework ended up taking all morning long. My 1:30 appointment with the ENT was approaching and I’d long ago written off getting to the office beforehand. I left Stacy’s with just enough time to pick up my antidepressant prescription from CVS on the way. At CVS, frustration. No, there’s no prescription for you. Two different people searched the computers and baskets of filled prescriptions. Nothing. And nothing else could be done at the moment. I had a doctor’s appointment to make.

The visit with Dr. Kiskaddon, the ENT, was very encouraging. He said I looked great and that it was great to see, just looking at me without instruments, the lumps gone from my neck, and my neck having a natural shape again. He was also amused at how easily I was talking compared to when he had seen me before. I told him all about how well the tracheostomy had gone, how draining the radiation turned out to be, and also about this recent infection. He used the scope to look down my neck then. This was a big moment for me because this was the first time a doctor was getting a before and after look at the tumors with some special instruments. After using the scope on me that first time, two months ago, Dr. Kiskaddon was the first doctor to say to me that I might have cancer, so this was kind of momentous for me, to have him look again, post treatment. Well, concerning the tumors, it turned out he didn’t have much to add to his assessment from just looking at the shape of my neck. The bulk of the tumors was gone. What he had much more to comment on was the state of the infection. He saw edema and inflammation, and it was serious enough that he didn’t want to remove the trach tube today. That’s right, he would have removed it this day otherwise. Well having an infection sucks. It was mildly reassuring to have him take such a close look and say that yes, it looks like an infection, and that therefore it was being treated appropriately. It was hugely exciting though, to hear that there was nothing else holding up removal of the trach tube! He seemed to think a week would be plenty of time to get the infection under control, so I made an appointment for next Thursday. Cross your fingers!

Lunch time. I decided to try the newly opened Market in the Square, a Sarah’s-like place not only in Harvard Square, but on the side of the square closest to Stacy’s. They have a food by the pound buffet and after looking it over, I was pretty sure I could find enough to eat. I got a pile of mashed potatoes, half a hard boiled egg, a little tuna salad, a few pieces of fake crab meat, and some yellow squash and zucchini salad. I pulled a bottle of iced tea out of the cooler and my grip wasn’t enough to hold it. It fell on the tile floor and smashed. An employee was there in a moment telling me not to worry about it. I tried again, this time concentrating on gripping it harder, and got my lunch to the register. Finally, on impulse, I asked for a piece of key lime pie from the dessert case. Again, lunch took a very long time to get down, but I finished it. I started on the key lime pie then, and was devastated that I couldn’t taste it. I thought to myself that it could be a slab of rotten fish and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Then I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind. Rotten fish, rotten fish, rotten fish. I was stuffed anyway, near tears that I couldn’t taste this pie–with only a couple bites of it eaten, I picked it up and dumped it in the trash.

I wandered into the office then sometime between three and four and told Muazzez that I was counting today as a sick day, that I had just come from the doctor and that now I had to talk to another one. I went in my office and called the doctor’s office to find out what could have gone wrong with my prescription. The receptionist verified everything for me, assured me that CVS had the prescription, and gave me the secret words to drop for them. “e-scrip” and “pocket.” Cool. I checked emails and piddled a bit at work, then left to try CVS a second time. Again, they claimed at first that they didn’t have my prescription. I used my secret words, “e-scrip” and “pocket,” then, and one of the pharmacists gave me a serious look and went to a different computer without saying a word. A few minutes later she reported that she had it. “Can you wait ten minutes?” “Sure. I’ll be back in 30 or so” and I left. I left to go check in with Stacy and tell her that I wouldn’t be at dinner. I’d decided to go to Gender Crash this evening. Stacy was in bed, but awake from Jessica bouncing around, so I sat on her bed and talked for a bit as I reassembled my almost dry hip pads and wiggled into them. Ah, I felt like Sonia again. CVS then, third time was the charm, and I had my Prozac. It was a good day.

Thinking I should have food again soon, I got a hotdog from the Ashmont hotdog vendor who is temporarily relocated in the Harvard station. I’ve bought hotdogs and sausages from him a few times and he recognizes me and talks with me. “What do you want on it?” “Nothing. My mouth is sore from radiation treatments and I can’t tolerate anything on it” I explain. “You get salt on it then!” he says, part joking, but part warning me that there is salt on the grill and that the hotdogs are salty. “Ha! salt is all I can taste. This will be perfect.” And it turned out it was a good dinner for me. Pretty easy to eat. Through the gates and walking down the platform, a young girl smiled and waved. She looked vaguely familiar, but at my age and with my social skills, all strangers look vaguely familiar. I walked by her and continued walking to the end of the platform. (Changing at DTX, the end of the train would be closest to the tunnel that leads to the Orange Line. You learn these things.) I sat down on a bench and dug the hotdog out of my purse and took a bite. Seconds later, there was the girl. She had chased me down the length of the platform. “Hi” she said again, “do you remember me from Pride?” I did recognize her then, of course now horribly embarrassed at having walked by her before. It was Kaveri, who I had met riding the train downtown the morning of the Pride Parade. Kaveri is Indian and the kind of social creature that makes friends with everyone she comes into contact with. She was with another girl, Aperna, that day, and the three of us talked the whole way to the Parade, got off at the same stop, and then I ended up running into them later in the day and talking with them more. I’d given Kaveri my email address that day and she’d promised to write, so today I said, “You need to give me your email address..” and without hesitation she said “yes, I do!” So that was fun.

Red line, Orange line, and I was at Gender Crash before doors were open. I said hi and traded introductions with a couple of others that were waiting, and killed time playing with my camera. The flower picture is nothing much, but I just couldn’t believe that I could take this picture of the moon. This is a hand held photo taken with a point an shoot camera. Simply amazing.

The Gender Crash crowd is one that doesn’t have much intersection with my social circles, so I don’t generally recognize too many people there. One person that walked up while I was playing with the the camera was–Aperna! What a crazy coincidence that I should run into both of them on the same day!

Inside, I wasn’t too surprised to find Rachel. I sat next to her and she seemed happy enough to have me talk with her all evening. Also there, as a fun surprise to me, was Genevieve, whom I knew from Tiffany Club! She had a guitar and did a song later in the evening. Gender Crash was fun. It was good to be back.

Gender Crash was over early enough that I made it back to Stacy’s before she left for work. I just needed to grab a few things for the night. I was trying to do that fairly quicly, but Stacy had no time to spare. “You ready?” she asked. We walked out together, just to walk for that one block before we headed different directions. It was a little bit silly. A little bit silly because half way to the office, I realized I had forgotten to pack a sheet. Shoot. I didn’t have the energy to walk back and get it, but no way could I sleep on the bunk in the women’s room without it. I decided to sleep on the floor in my office. Yes, the floor is hard, but there are some advantages. For one, I can control the temperature in the room. For two, the cleaning crew comes much later and I get more sleep. I did, in fact, sleep very well.

Better luck at Porter Square

Around noon there was a knock at my office door and surprise, it was Stacy! I don’t even remember what little excuse she had for stopping by, but I used the excuse to get out of the office for a bit. I asked if she would take my picture of the day for me, and we had a fun little photo shoot at the bike rack at work.

Minutes later at her place, I was fixing lunch. I nuked a few new potatoes, and with Stacy there, it was time to pump them up a little with nutrition. She put flax seed and quinoa in the grinder and I mashed them in to my potatoes along with imitation butter and soy milk. The result turned out inedible. I don’t quite understand why. It’s possible that she just didn’t grind the grain enough. My rule, when grinding stuff like that, has been to grind it until it’s quiet–that is, until there is no more sound from the seed shells being ground. Anyway, it hurt too much to swallow. The steamed collard greens, on the other hand, went down great. Sadly, that was lunch.

I’d had my door closed at work because I wasn’t feeling well. I think I had my head on the desk when Stacy knocked. At this point the bed called to me from the next room and there was no way I was going back to work. I lied down for nap instead and woke up about three hours later. There was still time for errands, I thought. CVS for medicine and and ice cream bar, then the train to the doctor’s office. One thing I wanted to do there was drop off my last antidepressant prescription and ask if the nurse practitioner would refill it for me. Another was to ask for a copy of my last physical, to take to the social security office. It was about five o’clock when I got to the doctor’s office, but the receptionist happily did both for me. Feeling much better now, with some sleep, some calories, and some successful errands, I took the train one stop to Porter to try Kitty Haas again. She was there this time, and I got my gold stud earrings. I was on a roll. So it was dinner time, I hadn’t had much to eat today, noodles at the Asian food court would be perfect. They took a long time to eat, but I was in no hurry. I almost finished the bowl, only the last little bit I couldn’t eat. After just watching Tampopo, I wondered if that was an insult to the chef. I doubt it, but even if so, well, the noodles were no work of art. I think I’ll try one of the other shops next time. My day was complete, except for the part about blowing off work for the whole afternoon. I headed to the office next and with no reason for privacy, was working with my door open when Muazzez walked by. Hmm, interesting that she would be working so late, but no matter, at least she saw me there late as well.

Oh, and I almost forgot the big news of the day.  Mom found my social security card!  I had her look in a box of mine that is kind of a time capsule of memorabilia, and there it was.  It’s on it’s way to me in the mail now.  Should be trivial to get a Mass ID with that and my expired Missouri drivers license now.

Busy, busy

Monday morning Lisa had a nice present for me, a box of cookies with a get well soon note on the front. Aww, I wish I could appreciate them! They’re from Germany and it would just be a terrible waste for me to eat them now. They went in my desk unopened. A second edible gift came at lunch time. Muazzez was heating her lunch in the microwave, which is right outside my door, and asked if I liked kale. Yes! I said, explaining that the very dark green vegetables turned out to be something that I can tolerate very well with my mouth in it’s current condition. She then just gave me a jar of kale soup she had made at home. It was half of her lunch, and I protested, but she wanted to give it to me anyway. It turned out to be my lunch for the day and was great. A perfect lunch for me, and yes, I liked it.

I called the doctor’s office first thing in the morning and explained my concerns about infection. I got a 3:15 appointment. There, the nurse practitioner scolded me for not calling the doctor on call over the weekend, sent off a sample from my trach tube to be cultured, and prescribed an antibiotic. I stopped by CVS, they said 15 minutes, I was on my bike, so I popped over to Stacy’s to see what she was doing. She was just getting ready to run shopping errands, so we agreed to run together. My stops were first: CVS to pick up my prescription, then Kitty Haas, to look for gold stud earrings. Kitty was away and we had no time to wait for her. Next was Burlington Coat Factory, right there in Porter, except we discovered they had closed that location. Hmm…that sounded vaguely familiar. Maybe I should have known that. I had suggested BCF as a place that might have bed sheets, something that was on Stacy’s shopping list. I wasn’t doing so well at helping Stacy yet. I suggested Tag hardware, which was right in front of us. They have a pretty nice housewares section and Stacy thought that was a great idea. I started walking to the back of the store where I expected to find them. Stacy just asked the first sales person she saw. “No, we don’t have any bed sheets” was the answer. “We used to carry them but they didn’t sell well, so we don’t have any at all now.” “The only place I can think of is Target” they offered. Thanking them, we walked out.

Now, I didn’t confess anything to Stacy, but I felt a bit reproached. It’s a guy thing to independently look for something, a girl thing to ask. Stacy did the perfect girl thing to ask the sales associate if they had sheets. I never would have done that. *sigh* I should learn.

Our next destination, which was really originally Stacy’s first destination, before I interjected all these other stops, was going to be TJ Maxx, to look for these bed sheets. Outside Tag now, as we unlocked our bikes, Stacy asked if I thought we should go to Target since bedsheets were a known thing there. I said I still thought TJ Maxx was a reasonable place to look and Stacy was quick to support that idea. “There is still one thing I know I have to get at TJ Maxx” she added. “Let’s stick with our plan then” I said, and we were off to TJ Maxx.

I was leading at this point because Stacy wasn’t quite sure of the route. Normally the route would be Ringe Ave, but it was being resurfaced and she wanted another route. The bike path, I was saying, but she couldn’t quite picture it. Living in Davis though, I knew it well and led the way up Mass Ave to the place where the bike path crossed. In fairness, it’s totally invisible from Mass Ave at that point. You just have to know when to cross the street and look for it. Minutes later we were at TJ Maxx! Hmm, now that I look at the map, there was a better route for us, but whatever, that’s how we do things in Massachusetts. We navigate by routes that we know. Anything else is insanity.

TJ Maxx was a huge success. I bought bras and socks. Stacy found her sheets, and then there was the other item that she knew they would have…except they didn’t. She was looking for a certain perfume, and the perfume display was particularly bare that day. She picked up something that was close, but not quite what she wanted. Going through the check out line, they have all the impulse items on display and I said, “Oh Stacy, look for your perfume here, they might have it!” She wasn’t optimistic, but pawed through it anyway. “What are you looking for?” I asked. She held up a bottle of the same brand, but the product wasn’t the perfume. I blinked and right next to it was a different product. It was in French, but it looked to me like perfume. I held it up for Stacy. “This isn’t it?” She blinked. It was! I had found it. That made our trip a complete success. One last worry Stacy had was about the color of the sheets. (Both the perfume and the sheets were gifts for someone else.) She wanted light blue, and these were a blue-green color. “What color is this?” she asked me as we waited in line. “Lichen” I said. She frowned. I had come through with an interesting color name, but she wasn’t sure it was an attractive name. “Sea foam” I tried again. That made her happy.

For dinner I fixed myself green beans and baked potato, topped with hummus. I thought the hummus would be mild enough for me but I guessed wrong. It burned, and went down only with lots of water. I was moaning that I wanted to taste really good food again and was talking about blueberry pancakes, so what did Stacy do, but go in the kitchen and fix me blueberry pancakes. She’s too sweet on me, I think. But, the pancakes were really good. Stacy and Jessica were starting to watch something on TV then, but my poor body was exhausted. My head hit the pillow and I woke up some hours later. Horrifyingly, I woke up with my head in a huge puddle of slime that had drooled out of my mouth while I slept. Now, I was well used to this phenomenon, just not in someone else’s bed. The instant I woke up though, there was no time to deal with it. I had to run to the bathroom to cough and clean my trach tube–all part of the slime routine. And only then could I return to the bedroom to see Jessica’s long face over the wet spot on her side of the bed, and see the the tiny little washcloth that Stacy had put over the pool to mop it up. That wouldn’t do for me. The sheets had to be changed. I went to the linen closet, and…there were no sheets. How was that possible? I knew there should be some. Stacy came and looked. No, none. The problem was that I was still sleepy and disoriented. As I slowly came to, it hit me that the clean sheets were still in the bag of clean clothes from drop off laundry the week before. I had just never put them away. Whew. I took clean sheets to the bedroom and cleaned up the mess. Still working very slowly with sleepiness, I packed up what I needed for the next day and walked, er, trudged, to the office.

Fourth of July holiday weekend

This three day weekend was a total loss. Friday I was suddenly very worried about infection. The infection in my ear piercings, which I first noticed Tuesday, had returned yesterday and so I had taken my earrings out and left them out to give my ears a chance to settle down. They hadn’t. The next day here, they had become bright red, fat, swollen, and tender. A hangnail on my finger had inexplicably become infected as well. A huge bulb of tissue was popping out of my finger next to the nail. It was painful and oozing puss. And then most alarming of all, the secretions in my trach tube had not only increased dramatically, but were now a dark yellow color and had a terrible odor. And it’s the Fourth of July–everything is closed, including doctors offices. Along with the infection, I felt like crap. My energy level was as low as it had been. Yes, I had a new camera with a “fireworks” exposure mode, and just outside was one of the best fireworks displays in the country. I sat indoors this year and just listened to the booms of the fireworks shells outside.

Listened and popped a movie in the DVD: Panic in the Year Zero. Total government propaganda to sell the cold war, but, highly entertaining.

Saturday morning it took a very long time to drag myself out of bed. I managed to do so just in time to call Holly and cancel plans with her. She had invited me over for the day. She was going to fix lunch, we were going to walk in the woods, and just hang out. I could barely sit up. Saturday passed like Friday: The highlight of the day was watching a movie in the evening. The flip side of last night’s DVD was “Last Man on Earth.” Kind of a zombie vampire thing with a fun twist in the end.

Also I started something with out realizing it. I had this new camera… I took a picture of myself. I wasn’t planning it or thinking of it at the time, but that turned out to be the first picture of a little project, taking a picture of myself every day, no matter what, and posting it on my Flickr site. We’ll see if I can keep it up. Take a picture no matter how I’m feeling or how I look. Will I get creative with the pictures? Will I learn anything? Will it change me? We’ll see.

Sunday was a repeat of Friday and Saturday. I felt like crap and sat around and did nothing. I was a bit relieved that I had survived the weekend without a trip to the emergency room. I’d done my best to keep all of these infection sites clean, keep myself fed, and otherwise just rest. It worked. I wasn’t exactly better, but I hadn’t gotten any worse.

Arriving at Stacy’s house at some point, I found a nice surprise. A day or two ago she had mentioned seeing a recipe at the grocery store and had some reason she thought it would be pointless to take it, and I told her no, that I would love to try the recipe. So today I walk in and find not only the recipe, “summer vegetable chowder,” but in the fridge, all of the vegetables. I did make it and it turned out perfect for me. All mild stuff that I could eat. It was really good. Maybe not Z Square good, but on the list of what I’ve been eating lately, it was way up there.

Speaking of food, the movie for the night was “Tampopo.” Very fun movie. I highly recommend it.