Progress ... not our most important product.

If you are older, like me, you will remember the ad campaign from the 60’s or 70’s, in which progress was their most important product. Obviously, they didn’t live chez Ravelled.

I came home last night, made a fresh pot of Texmati rice, chopped up half of one of those Dolly Parton chicken breasts, topped it with a reasonable portion of rice, and called it dinner. Left the pot on the stove to cool a little before putting it away, except I realized upon waking this morning that I forgot that little detail.

So, none of the chicken was wasted, but three-fourths of the rice is going out to the trash this morning, because I have no desire to be singing that famous Clapton parody, “Ptomaine”. You know the chorus:

It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right ... PTOMAINE!

And you know me. I hate wasting food, because I remember when we didn’t have much.

I frogged about two-thirds of the new guy’s hatband at lunch yesterday, but in the quiet hours last night [while the rice on the stove was going sour], I got it all re-knitted, plus a little more. Listened to some of the new podcasts, and early issues of some of my favorites. Just about dropped my teeth when I realized who one of my blog readers is: a former officer of one of the yarn companies I support, who loves Jacqueline Fee’s Sweater Workshop Book every bit as much as I do (yay! for thinking knitters).

Emails are once more flying back and forth betwixt the new guy and me, and considerably more substantive than in the last few weeks before his surgery, wherein they consisted of my asking him how he was doing, and his giving me witty and non-whiny accounts of his latest symptoms.

I sent him that eight-page dissertation yesterday. He sent back a well-reasoned, if considerably shorter, response. We have some talking points, and I no longer feel quite as stuck as I did.

Feeling less-stuck is not exactly progress, but it is a lean, if not quite a step, in the right direction.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my new computer set-up? Blogger on one monitor, a Word transcription of the new guy’s latest on a second, and a fresh Word document awaiting my ramblings on a third.

I’m going to see if I can cobble together an intelligent response to his reply, before I hit the shower and then hit the road. But first, there is rice to be bagged. Sigh.