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Yeah, I'm writing two entries on the same day; because not everything I wanted to write about made sense to put in the same entry with all that fretting about repairs.

My mother's developed a habit of wanting to eat at the cafeteria at the hospital where she had her operation last October. At first, this struck me as odd, since she never actually ate in the cafeteria during her stay-- her meals were brought to her room-- and she didn't eat much of the food anyway; she had no appetite for the first couple days, and it wasn't until the day she was released that she finally ate her entire breakfast. But she enjoyed the food so much she decided she wanted to go back and see what they had for their regular meals; and ever since, we've been eating breakfast there a couple times a week. The food is actually better than a lot of the restaurants in the area, and it's cheap-- we've gotten breakfast for both of us for less than $6 on a few occasions (though I think that was because the cashier forgot to charge me for my orange juice).

Today, we went there for lunch, because my mother needed to make an appointment with one of her doctors, and used that as an excuse to go eat rather than having me just call the office on the phone. (There's another building connected to the hospital with various doctors' offices.) The meal was very good, but the people hanging around were a little strange. As we approached the main entrance, I saw a guy in his 20's on a cell phone, insistently telling the person on the other end of the line, "NO! I AM NOT HIGH!" He repeated it three or four times, but I'm sure he was lying. I used to work for an ex-hippie Grateful Dead fan who was constantly high, so it's not hard for me to tell.

Then, when we were eating our food, an older man with two carry-out boxes came up and asked if he could use our salt and pepper. Apparently, our table was the only one in the entire room that had salt and pepper shakers; I glanced around and didn't see any others. So of course we said yes; and he opened up the top box, which contained only french fries. He proceeded to put what looked like the entire contents of the pepper shaker, and about half the salt in the shaker, on the fries, closed the box and shook it vigorously, then opened it again and shook the remaining salt and pepper onto the fries. He then thanked us and left. I don't think I've ever seen anyone put that much salt and pepper on their food; and the irony of him doing this in a hospital didn't escape me.