I am learning all kinds of things from Pet recently. After decades of using Character Map for HTML coding, I never understood how to use the ALT key to enter characters into a document - until Pet told me this week. I learned the word teasan last year, and thought it was an alternate spelling of tisane. An email from Pet this evening told me that she hadn't been able to find teasan in her dictionary. (Pet knows words.) It reminded me that I hadn't been able to find it, either. A review of a Numi teasan box tonight informed me that teasan is a word coined by Numi. It's a manufactured word. Oh.

Human nature is an interesting study. The more public service jobs I work, the less I understand human nature. Typically, we hear complaints from patients that we aren't able to schedule all of their appointments for one day. Instead of driving back and forth to the hospital several times over the span of a week, it would be nice to do it all in one trip. It's a reasonable request, and I do feel bad that it's not always physically possible. Today, for the first time, a patient complained to me, very loudly, that "they" keep scheduling all her appointments on the same day. "How am I supposed to keep it all straight if I'm running all over the hospital all day? Why can't they do one test in one day, the next test the next day? How am I supposed to remember where I'm supposed to go next?"

My 2004 tea/teasan log:

1. yerba maté, 1 January
2. genmaicha, 9 January
3. South African Rooibos (with honey crystals), 10 January
4. chamomile lemon herb, 15 January
5. Northwest blackberry, 17-19 January
6. lime herbal teasan, 6 February
7. aged Earl Grey, 17 February

I had a dream this morning that I was watching television. An announcement was made: "Due to recent events, our scheduled presentation of Jurassic Park III will not be shown. Please stay tuned for this special presentation of Live And Let Die." That was all there was to the dream.

Yesterday afternoon, I started to move a heavy wooden stool. It slipped out of my hand and landed on my toe. For the rest of yesterday, and today, the middle toe of my right foot is a solid pattern of bright red and deep purple. Phillip and I determined together that it's not broken. I have a couple of great photographs, but when I started this blog, I decided that it was going to be about words, not pictures. I can get around just fine as long as I'm barefoot, which I almost always am at home, but with my Converse on I was limping up to Communion and hobbling up to dinner at The Deluxe Bar & Grill.

I decided this weekend that Captain Marvel had the best disguise of any super hero. Clark Kent has to worry that if his glasses fall off, someone would notice that he looks a lot like Superman. Batman and Spiderman both have to worry that someone might pull their masks off. If The Hulk calms down, he turns back into David Banner - and he has to worry that a witness might be around when he does. But lucky Billy Batson said "Shazam!" and he turned into a completely different person. He didn't need a mask, and he stayed Captain Marvel until he said "Shazam!" again. What better disguise could there be? (Of course, he had to be smart enough to change indoors, which he rarely seemed to be.)

The Deluxe Bar & Grill is the only restaurant I know that offers Royal Crown Cola as its only cola.