The latest issue of Yes! Magazine arrived today. It's the "can we live without oil?" issue. There's an interesting article titled "getting there on less." (Yes! Magazine likes no-caps titles.) The article presents a "12-step program" toward getting around with almost no oil. Number 8 is "hybrid cars." Of course, it presents the newest Prius, which averages 48 miles per gallon. It also presents the idea that if a Prius were equipped with a larger battery - a battery that could be plugged in overnight - it could get 167 mpg. Impressive. Number 9 is "smart cars." It talks about the Mercedes diesel Smart, which has been used in Europe for years, that averages 69 mpg. It was in this article that I learned about a protoype vehicle that Volkswagen is testing on European roads, the One-Litre (I couldn't find an official link), which, so far, is averaging 237 mpg. Yikes!

My favorite section of Yes! Magazine is "the page that counts." From this issue: Number of miles driven per day per resident of Los Angeles: 23, In Seattle: 26, In New York: 14

I was searching this morning for the history of Harborview Medical Center, just because I'm interested. I learned that it began as the small King County welfare hospital in 1877, and that it moved briefly to a location in Georgetown before moving to its present, First Hill location, in the new Art Deco building, in 1931, and became Harborview. Looking at the building now, I figure that it has had two major expansions in its life. I found plenty of information online about the huge expansion in 1986, done in a modern, Art Deco-influenced style.

I have not been able to find out anything about the part of the hospital which must have been added in the 1950's, done in the International style. I figure that addition isn't old enough to be considered classic, and not new enough to be considered a showcase of taxes at work, so no one writes about it. (The truth is, I consider that section rather ugly.) I don't know, though - give it another couple of decades and I'll see how it's viewed.

In principle, Harborview's layout is simple. It's divided into four quadrants: East Clinic, West Clinic, East Hospital, and West Hospital. In practice, though, it's not very intuitive and the quadrants are too similar sounding. Adding to the confusion is the fact that not all quadrants are connected on all floors. At least once a day, someone will walk into our clinic looking for the Adult Medicine clinic. I tell them that Adult Medicine is on the third floor of the West Clinic - they're on the third floor of the West Hospital. (We're a clinic located in the hospital.) To get to Adult Medicine, I tell them, they have to take the elevator down to the ground floor, walk to the other side of the lobby, to the West Clinic, and take the elevator up to the third floor.

That's another source of confusion: Harborview has a ground floor, in-between the basement and the first floor. That's how it's done in Europe, I understand. What Americans call the first floor is the ground floor in Europe. What Europeans call the first floor, Americans call the second floor. But Harborview doesn't quite work that way. In 1931, the entrance to the hospital was on 9th Avenue. That entrance, now officially the back door, takes you into the first floor. When the 1986 expansion was completed, the hospital was turned around and now the front doors are officially on 8th Avenue. The lobby is on the ground floor.

Still, I find Harborview to be a lot easier to navigate than the University Hospital.

I drank 25 different kinds of teas and tisanes in 2004.

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
8. black cherry tea (organic Ceylon tea with black cherry flavor), 5 March
9. black tea blend (organic), iced, 17 March
10. oolong, 19 March
11. iced green tea with apple, peach, ginger, and elderberry juices, 21 March
12. artificially flavored "raspberry tea", iced, packed with dyes, preservatives, and possibly tea, 24 March
13. True Blueberry™ herb tea, 19 April
14. raspberry yerba maté (iced), 6 May
15. white (with orange blosson and ginger), iced, 14 May
16. Morning Dew™ (organic Chinese green), 19 May
17. chai tea latte (iced), 20 May
18. black with apricot, 9 June
19. "The Fire" herbal blend, 12 June
20. Ginger Cameronian (iced), 25 June
21. herbal Wu Wei blend, 2 July
22. Moroccan Mint Green (green with spearmint, peppermint, and honey - all organic), iced, 7 July
23. Organic oolong and black, with organic peach (iced), 17 July
24. Wild Sweet Orange (herbal blend), 18 July
25. Lemon Zinger®, 18 August

I've had a day that started off on a sour note, then went by just fine, then suddenly became great, and then hit two more sour notes.

On my way to work this morning, the driver of the 60 bus got into a verbal fight with a passenger, and the way I saw it, the driver was to blame. The passenger, apparently a homeless man, boarded the bus across the street from St. James. When the passenger walked past the farebox, the driver asked for the fare. The passenger set his bags down, reached into his pocket, and said he had a transfer "from last night." No, said the driver, that wasn't going to work - he had to pay for the bus ride. The passenger insisted, in a soft, almost mumbling voice, that the transfer was still good. The driver, in a loud voice, told the passenger he had to pay up or leave the bus. At this point, a young woman spoke up and offered to pay the man's fare. The driver started yelling that he wasn't going to allow any "panhandling" and ordered the man off his bus. The passenger, for the first time, got angry. "What're going to do," he said, "call the police?" "That's exactly what I'm doing now." The driver picked up his handset. All this time, the bus was still stopped at the bus stop. While the driver talked into the handset, while we sat there, the passenger silently picked up his bags, exited the bus, and walked down the street. We sat there at the stop, the driver talked on the handset, and some passenger called out what I was thinking: "Come on! Let's get moving!" A minute or two later, we did get moving.

It really nagged at me through the day: all that hostility, all that potential danger, all that inconvenience, all that negative energy, over a buck and a half. That bus driver needs a new job. Back in my bus driving days, we were taught to ask for the fare once, and if someone refuses, forget it. (The way I looked at it, I was a bus driver, not a cop.) Of course, back in my day, I gave free rides to the homeless all the time - no wonder I'm not driving busses anymore. If this morning's driver really felt the need to report a non-payment of fare, he should have done so while we were underway - the police can easily catch up with a bus.

I walked home today, and when I got home, Phillip told me I should go to the library right away - there was a voice mail message. I am the Capitol Hill winner of the "Summer Reading For Adults" Booklover's Basket!

Frankly, it was a much nicer prize than I was expecting.

The basket contained: a Seattle Library bookbag, a Seattle Library mug, a four-pack of Celestial Seasonings® Lemon Zinger® herbal tea (which will complete one New Year's resolution), a poster from the contest, a See's Candies gift certificate, a Barnes & Noble gift certificate, two movie passes to Landmark Theatres, the Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure, and three books by Northwest authors: The Alpine Obituary by Mary Daheim; Book Lust by Nancy Pearl; and Pyro by Earl Emerson. It's a nice wicker backet, too.

Then Phillip and I got our Flexcar Notes in our emails. Our hourly rate will soon jump from $5.25 to $7.20. That's a huge, 37% increase. We both agree that Flexcar's rapidly losing its ecomonic advantage. (As Phillip pointed out, that's an additional $19.50 for a day with a Freedom 10 car.) On top of that, Flexcar is dropping its "no hourly rate between 11 PM and 7 AM" policy - which eliminates the incentive for taking a Flexcar home from an evening class and bringing it back the next morning.

Phillip and I went out to dinner at The Deluxe Bar & Grill this evening. We had a 2-for-1 coupon. The Deluxe has been a favorite Broadway restaurant of mine for as long as I've lived in the neighborhood (although I admit I liked it better when it was a grill with a few restaurant items, and not the other way around). The place was packed this evening. We asked the server for a table in the non-smoking section. "Our seating's kind of limited," he warned us, and lead us to a table next to the (smoking section) bar. We were three feet away from lit cigarettes. Smoke drifted all around us. Phillip called the server over to confirm that we were actually in the non-smoking section. Yeah, I know it's kind of bad, the server admitted, but there was a large party over in the other side of the bar (the side that's protected by a full wall from the smoke). We told him that our table was not acceptable. He said he'd see what he could find for us. He came back a few minutes later and told us there was booth open, but it was right next to the pool tables where people were smoking. "At least here the table next to you isn't smoking," the server reasoned. We got up and left. We had dinner at La Cocina.

Jim and Jamie performed an amazing duet during this morning's church service. Jim was on piano, Jamie was on flute. I recognized the piece, but still can't name it. They played around with the rhythm quite a bit during the piece. Parts of it sounded classical, and parts of it blended into jazz. It got a loud round of applause afterwards. I was reminded of how little I understand of music.

There are two major thirsts in my life: knowledge and music. I can't get enough of either one. When knowledge and music combine, however, I find a large hole in understanding. There's something I'm not catching on to. Now matter how much I read about music theory, I still don't get why music sounds the way it does. Why did parts of the performance sound like jazz? Why is it that Jim can play a bar or two of a hymn on piano, and I can immediately know the hymn is of South American origin?

There's obviously something missing. I'll get it someday.

On the subject of music, while Squeak and I were in the vet's waiting room yesterday, I found an interesting piece in the August issue of National Geographic. Mickey Hart, percussionist for The Grateful Dead, and an ethnomusicologist, listed the seven CDs of World Music that everyone should own.

1. "Freedom Chants From The Roof Of The World," The Gyuto Monks
2. "Drums of Passion," Babatunde Olatunji
3. "Sarangi: Music of India," Ustad Sultan Khan
4. "Honor The Earth Powwow," Songs of the Great Lakes Indians
5. "Music of Upper and Lower Egypt"
6. "Voices of The Rainforest"
7. "Mbuti Pygmies of The Ituri Rainforest"

(Looks like an intriguing list.)

The article can be found here.

Again, I dreamt that I worked on a research farm. Again, the dream included a young Indian woman (from India). (See June 14.) In this dream, the farm was in the middle of a city. It was hilly, so you couldn't see all of it from any one spot. There were many modern buildings, built of concrete and metal, on the farm - some were sunk into hillsides, some were five or six stories high. (Looking back on it now, parts of the farm looked a bit like Seattle University.) The young woman was a relative of mine. (Although she didn't look or act like any relative I have in the waking world.)

I was giving my relative a tour of where I worked. She was remarking on how beautiful that little church was back there - the tiny church that was almost hidden among other buildings. Is that a Catholic church, she asked. I think it is, I answered, but I'm not sure. As we walked on, I was able, at times, to watch the two of us from a high vantage point. My relative asked me why family members aren't allowed to visit more often. I answered that the facility doesn't like visitors at all, because it damages the delicate ecosystem. As we continued to walk through the farm, I thought to myself that that wasn't correct - the facility was open to visitors all day. The real reason is that my employers didn't want its employees distracted. I wondered if I should correct my answer, or just let it be. I wondered if I should show my relative the main laboratory where I work, or show her the tiny basement lab where the real research is done. End of dream.