And now, from my list of placeholders, I’d like to take a moment to talk about hamburger.

In order to properly cook hamburger patties, you need to account for three things:

1) The size of the average human jaw, and the size of the SPECIFIC human jaws that will be eating the sandwich your patty ends up in.
2) The tendency of hamburger patties to bunch up in the middle when they cook.
3) The potentially cancerous effect of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).

We’ll start with #3. The research is inconclusive at best, especially when it comes to determining how much PAH you need before you’ve got a measurable cancer risk. The best solution: turn the burger 3 times, rather than allowing it to sit long enough to cook all the way through on a single turning. You’ll get a more evenly cooked burger, less PAH (my favorite carcinogen, by a long shot), and those cool grid-patterns on the burger patty (provided you rotate it 90 degrees with the 2nd flip.)

Now, back to #1. Costco provides these “pre-shaped” fresh burger patties that are pretty close to 2/3 of a pound each. THESE ARE TOO BIG. Unless you’ve got the ability to unhinge your jaw, or can flatten them out to the size of a dinner plate, they’re just useless for sandwiches. Cut ’em in half and reshape them.

#2: When you shape them, make them into concave lens shapes. The rim should be fatter than the middle, and the whole thing should be at least an inch larger than your bun. When they’re done cooking they’ll have flattened out and shrunk inward, and they’ll be just the right size.

I got #3 right when we barbecued last night. I made exactly ONE patty the right way for #1 and #2, though, because I was in a hurry, and I only needed one “small” burger for the kids. The result? My cousin Steve ate his with a fork, Aly, Sandra, and I didn’t finish ours, and Tayler plowed through his with the marvelous mastication only afforded by God Almighty to 1% of the population.

Other than that, the barbecue went well.

This’ll probably be a really short post. My head’s full of stuff from this week, but I just don’t have the cycles to WRITE about it. Mostly I’m hoping that THIS post will serve as some sort of a mental placeholder, so I can write more later.

Steve and Tayler Mayer came to town. Fun.
Costco needs help shaping hamburger patties.
My arm is better.
Gotta get on the Buffer-fu again.
You folks seem to want a FAQ on me and mormonism. Not a bad idea.
Fandemonium is coming right up.
Free penne pasta at work. Yum!

There. Placeholders.

–Howard

It looks like we were flying out to “save the day” rather than “say goodbye.”

Grandma perked up a lot, and while she’s still really frail, and really tired, she’s also more talkative, and laughed a lot with us. Her doctor looked at her yesterday afternoon, thoroughly impressed by her improved condition, and said “Mrs. Vernon, your grandsons have done more to make you better than anything we’ve done.”

We spent three or four hours there yesterday morning, then went out for a little over three hours in the afternoon, and headed back for a couple of hours in the evening. We could tell that Grandma was NOT going to sleep while we were in the room, so it was necessary for us to bail for a while when it was apparent that she was trying NOT to nap, even though she was exhausted.

She had her first solid food yesterday, too. That hospital food is always nasty stuff, but she packed it away, and got hooked on the “Boost” drinks they were bringing with each meal. Mmmm… chalky old-folks milkshake. It reminds me of when Sandra was so sick I had to force HER to drink those things for two weeks straight.

They brought coffee with each meal, which surprised me a bit. That’s powerful stuff, there. Of course as a mormon Grandma didn’t WANT the coffee, so we dumped it and brought her warm water instead. Then in the evening she decided she wanted a Coke. Since there was coffee with dinner, we figured they knew she’d be getting the caffeine anyway, so we complied. I got a picture of her swigging the stuff from her hospital bed, but when my brothers said “label out! label out!” she didn’t understand the joke. Oh well, no corporate sponsorship deals for her.

During our afternoon break Randy, Bill, and I went to the park and played disc golf. The Calvert Park course is really nice, although it’s also really closely packed. Had there been lots of players it would have been easy to get hit in the head with a disc thrown on a hole adjacent to your own.

After we returned from the hospital in the late evening, we watched “Last Comic Standing” and then played a couple of rounds of “Star Munchkin.” Billy won both times, and in the second game he had the Schlock card in play. It’s the lucky card in our deck. I suppose I should be thankful that HE won rather than me. This means I’ll have playmates next time, too…

–Howard

I’ve never seen Grandma so overjoyed to see anybody.

Part of this is that she’s always been, to my memory, just a little bit emotionally reserved. She’s quiet. She’s a slightly silly flavor of dignified. She’s patient.

Tonight, when Randy and I stopped by, she was obviously very drained and very tired, and equally obviously overjoyed to see us.

I keep using that word “overjoyed.” She was happier than she had the energy to express. And when I contrast that with my previous experiences with her, it’s pretty dramatic.

This trip came into being on what seemed at the time like a whim. “I can’t just drop everything and fly to DC, can I?” was my first thought. By the time it was all said and done, THREE of us were dropping everything to come out. And according to my Aunt, when Grandma heard about that yesterday, she perked WAAAAY up. Kay was worried Sunday that Grandma had resigned herself to the slide into the next life, had given up on hanging around here anymore. Well, after hearing that her boys were on the way, she found a little more purpose.

She told me a couple of times that she wished my Mom could have been here to see us. “She’d be so proud.” I told her “Mom knows we’re well. She’s watching over us. I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.” I’ve told that story to a lot of people, but I don’t know that my Grandmother has ever heard it.

It’s sacred stuff. I don’t know that it’ll end up in a public journal entry.

Grandma wanted to be able to see the grandkids, and I remembered that on the plane as I’d been doing some Schlock image prep I’d found a bunch of photos. I THOUGHT I’d purged all the summer vacation shots from my laptop weeks ago, but apparently I didn’t. And it’s a good thing to. I told Grandma I had lots and lots — HUNDREDS of pictures we could look at on the computer, and I’d bring them in for her tomorrow. I just wish I had a way to print ALL of them out on nice paper for her to page through after my laptop and I go back home.

Serendipity. There are more examples of little things that have happened — little coincidences — that seem in league, in happy conspiracy, to ensure that Grandma gets a good dose of joy this week. Tomorrow we’ll see how much of that we can deliver.

–Howard