Scattered bits of brainage

I just counted.
I have seven incomplete posts.

I have stuff in mind, I sit down to write, I get sucked into Twitter or something on Netflix or Prime or I get up to flip laundry or toss some dishes into the dishwasher. If a load of laundry is ready to come out of the dryer, I fold it and try to put it all away immediately.

That's something new, by the way. I'm trying to keep up with the laundry a little better. So I go to put my socks away and see something else that needs to be put away and go into a different room and remember I forgot to refill the TP dispenser so I go get TP out of the pantry cupboard in the laundry room and while I'm there I may as well grab a roll of paper towels 'cause we're almost always low in the dispenser and then I'm back in the kitchen and there are more dirty dishes in the sink because I turned my back for five minutes so I handle that, then some other damn thing distracts me and the next thing I know, two hours have passed, I haven't written a post or accomplished shit and it's about time to get up and make something for dinner.

Speaking of which, I need to go look up a recipe.
Don't go away...

Okay, I am back. I hope you weren't bored while you were waiting.

Tried something new the night I started on this post. Cornbread and hamburger and other delectable things in one casserole dish. Oh. And cheese. There had to be cheese.
Sadly, it wasn't that great. I'll toss that in the 'don't do this one again' pile.

I've made a bunch of new things during this enforced stay at home thing. When I'm working full time, I don't cook dinner  most evenings since I don't usually get home until 6:40 or so.

I've done a bunch of old favorites from the days when I didn't work full time.

Made Beef Stroganoff tonight.
Simmered the scorched-just-enough meat for an hour and a half with beef stock and cooking sherry and garlic. Mushrooms, sour cream and other yummy stuff, served over egg noodles.   

I find it amusing that the grocery checkout pops up a little notice that I have to show ID to buy cooking wine.

They never actually ask me for ID, they just bypass it.
I definitely look over 21.

I can't eat that dish without remembering my Aunt Sue Ann and Uncle Mike taking me to Top of the Rockies, a restaurant at the top of a skyscraper in Denver back in 1972. I'd never eaten stroganoff before. I thought it was great. And 6th grade me was impressed by the tall buildings and eating in a nice restaurant, something I wasn't familiar with after spending so much time living in Eastern Oregon.

I'm not casting aspersions, it's just a different way of life.

But my 8th grade class sold magazines for months to earn the money to take the Oregon History Trip!!! at the end of the school year. Our fundraiser covered all the travel and food and admissions to various attractions.

We got on school buses and went to Astoria and up the road into Washington to the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant. We hit the beaches, a movie theater, a museum or two. Slept in school gymnasiums. Parent chaperones went along... can't imagine who'd sign up for such an exhausting thing.

The highlight of our trip was a visit to Lloyd Center, at the time the only shopping mall in Oregon. We all had a little spending money, I think maybe 10 bucks for the whole week.

Many of the 46 kids spent the entire two hours riding the escalators.
Up and down and up and down.
They'd never seen one before.

A lot of the kids I grew up with never left Grant County. They're still there. Married to their third or fourth person from Grant County. Still no escalator there, but when the new bank was built about 10 years ago, the school kids rode the bus downtown and rode in the brand new elevator.
Still the only one in the county.

Another interesting John Day, Oregon fact? When they put a center turn lane in front of the shopping plaza, they had to take out a full page ad in the local paper to explain to the populace that the turn lane was not a travel lane and should never be used to pass a school bus.

Okay. I actually finished a post.
It's 11:25 PM, I am sleepy (finally) and heading off to bed.

How are you doing?