So I ran outside, and caught the truck just in time. The driver said good morning, then yelled over the engine noise “What happened to your Porsche?” I stared at him. “Your Porsche, where is it?” I figured it was a joke and laughed and turned to go back inside.

“No really,” he said. “It used to be right there.” And he pointed at an empty parking spot. “Where is it?”

If you’ve never been to my house, I should tell you that I live in a suburban townhouse development. There are 22 townhouses that share my part of the development, and we all face the same parking lot. There are 34 spots in the parking lot, some of which are assigned by number, but the number doesn’t match the number on our doors. There is no way on earth the driver could have known which of the many cars in the lot was mine, unless he spent a lot of time watching me, which I’m not paranoid enough to believe.

Also, it’s not exactly a Porsche neighborhood. When one of the neighbors got a new mini-van, the rest of us marveled at how clean it was. The nicest car I’ve ever seen in our parking lot was a Jag that my husband got on an upgraded car rental. The second nicest was a Lincoln that my husband got on an upgraded car rental. The third nicest was.. well my husband rents a lot of cars, is what I’m saying, so he gets a lot of upgrades, all of which are nicer than the cars usually parked in our lot. As far I as I know, there has never been a Porsche anywhere near my neighborhood.

“I’ve never had a Porsche.” I told him.

“Really? Because it was right there.” He pointed again.

“Have a great day!” I said, and smiled and ran into the house.

[A]cross most of Europe, vaccine to protect against the pandemic flu is mostly given by invitation only to those at highest risk for flu complications.

“That is one of the great advantages of the British health system,” said Dr. Steve Field, president of the Royal College of General Physicians. “We have a list of all the names of patients who qualify to be vaccinated.”

When Britain unrolled its pandemic vaccination program last month, it designed its campaign to ensure that priority groups — including pregnant women, health workers and those with chronic health problems like diabetes, cancer and AIDS — get the shots first.

Instead of advertising that vaccine had arrived and waiting for the lines to form, Britain’s National Health Service sent letters, inviting all those who qualify to make an appointment and get the shots first.

This ensures that the people who are most vulnerable get the vaccine first, reducing the number of severe complications and deaths. This saves the system money by reducing the number of serious flu cases, and it maximizes the number of people who will live through an epidemic, both by reducing complications in the first place and ensuring that resources (money, space, doctors, medication) will be available for those who become seriously ill.

By contrast, in the US we let Goldman Sachs get the vaccine, while high-risk groups still have not received it.

Some will no doubt say that it’s outrageous that European governments are “rationing” the vaccine this way. Personally, I find our method of rationing — letting the rich people get it first — to be far more morally objectionable, not only because it privileges the wealthy, but also because it introduces more risk into the system without providing any systemic benefit. As with the bailouts of the bank system where we privatized profit and socialized risk, America’s method of vaccine distribution privatizes health and socializes death.

Is that who we really want to be?

That is all.

7. My U.S. National Park Passport. At most National Parks you can get a stamp (the kind you imprint, not the kind you lick or peel) with the name of the park and the date of your visit. The park service calls these “cancellations.” The cancellations are freely available at the visitor center, ranger station or shop of most parks. The park service sells an inexpensive spiral-bound book that you can collect the stamps in. I often forget to take mine on trips, so many of my stamps are stamped on receipts and taped into the book later. I consider these paste-ups second-rate — they are better than nothing, but I always wish I had remembered my passport. You can also buy stamps (the kind that you peel) to stick in the book–every year they print one national stamp and one for each park region. I guess the idea is that you save the stamps and then get cancellations of them at the parks. The stamps are of no interest to me — it’s the cancellations that I’m after. We’re planning a vacation to the Outer Banks soon, and not only am I going to make sure and take my passport to get a stamp at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, but I’m also going to buy a US Lighthouse Society passport so that I can collect lighthouse cancellations as well.

I really like these tiny, inky, often blurry mementos of trips to our National Parks. The full spaces remind me of fun trips (and often of scavenger-hunt like difficulties in finding the stamps — there are whole websites devoted to where and how to find them at various parks). The blank spaces in the book remind me of the treasures our country holds, many of which I will probably never see, but this tiny book is a useful reminder that they are there.

My Excellent Things series of posts is a meme started by NowThis — if you are interested, just write about people, places, food, songs, things, whatever. I’d really like to know what things you consider excellent.

4. Roku Digital Video Player. This little device allows you to stream video from Netflix, Amazon video, and the MLB channel. We use it only for Netflix. I really like it because it’s so convenient — and the Netflix streaming library includes a lot of indie movies, cheesy 80’s TV, and zombie movies, which neatly defines my personal cultural Bermuda Triangle. If you want to watch mainstream studio releases or current TV, the Roku is ok (but not great) for that, because the studios and networks are pulling back a lot of content. Supposedly there are other channels in the works (a hulu channel would rock my world), but even if the Roku stays just the way it is right now, I would continue to consider it a great buy.

5. Gaye Adegbalola. Gaye is a member of Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women who I love. Their music is heartbreaking, funny, insightful, and delicious. Sadly, Saffire is going their separate ways. I saw their next-to-last performance on Halloween. Gaye is my favorite member of the trio — she’s charismatic on stage, and her songs are full of rage and passion and wit in equal measure. Luckily, she has several solo albums under her belt and tours alone and as a guest with other bands, so even after Saffire is gone, we can still see and hear her. I recommend Saffire’s many albums, but I’ve come to realize that as much as I like Ann Rabson’s boogie woogie piano and Andra Faye’s amazing voice, Gaye is the reason I like Saffire so much.

6. Folia, a social networking site for gardeners. This website is extremely flexible and can be used as a plant database, a garden journal, and/or as a “Facebook for gardeners.” It’s the total package: keep track of your plants, record what you know about them, document what you did and when you did it, and talk to other gardeners. It’s changed and reinforced my feelings about my garden in positive ways, and it makes gardening more fun for me.

If you feel like participating, consider yourself tagged!

What do you not just like, but think everyone should know about? Can be anything. A food, a place, a website, a product, an idea, a song, a book … whatever.

Since it’s nearly gift-giving season, I thought this was an excellent question. Because I have so much to say about these things, I’ve divided the list into two parts. Here’s part 1:

1. Chatsford teapots. They have a special basket that you insert that makes brewing loose-leaf tea easy, and it’s also easy to clean. The basket is very large, giving the tea enough room for the “agony of the leaves” as they unfurl and move about in the hot water. Those metal tea balls are much too small.

2. Penzeys Spices Tellicherry Indian Black Peppercorns. These look like ordinary peppercorns, but they pack a more peppery punch than the kind you buy at the grocery store. Not hot, not dry, just peppery. I really like all of the Penzeys herbs and spices I’ve tried, but if I were allowed to buy only one, it would be these peppercorns. I’ve tried their “whole special extra bold” peppercorns, and I can’t tell the difference between those and the tellicherry — someone with a more sensitive palate might be able to taste the difference, but for me, the whole specials are not worth the extra cost.

3. Dr. Bronner’s Tea Tree Liquid Castile Soap. Hippy soap with tea tree oil. This soap is vegan, fair trade and organic. You could eat it and it wouldn’t kill you (although it might make you sick). This is the only soap I use — I even shampoo my hair with it. It’s gentle, not drying and helps to heal skin issues like acne, eczema, hives and psoriasis.

I tired on a fantastic frame that had pink leopard print arms. I really, really liked them — but sadly, they had a giant “G” logo on them (they were “Guess” brand). The G looked stupid, so I passed them by. I’m still fairly bummed about that.

Recently though, I’ve started drinking Gen-mai Cha on occasion — on weekend afternoons, or busy evenings out when I need/want a bit of caffeine. Gen-mai Cha means “brown rice tea” which describes it pretty well. It’s a hearty green tea with roasted, puffed rice added to it. The puffed bits look like popcorn. You can also find versions that are made with roasted green tea, but I prefer the unroasted varieties. The flavor is like green tea, but toasty and nutty. I buy all of my teas from Upton (no affiliation, I’m just a satisfied customer), so I can’t speak to the quality of GMC teas from other sources.

For the life of me, I could not see the loops. I turned the light up, I squinted, I cursed, and nothing made those loops easier to see. It was twilight, which is always the worst time for me to do handwork — there’s something about the quality of the light that eliminates shadows (and therefore depth) and makes it impossible to see well. But this was really bad.

I haven’t had an eye exam for at least 8 years. I think maybe I need one.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading about how to be “in the moment” for a performance, and I found this piece by David Leisner enormously interesting: Six Golden Rules for Conquering Performance Anxiety.

I like rule number two the best:

Do not judge what just happened or is about to happen. Self-judgment during a performance is futile because it takes you out of the present and into the past or future and destroys the natural flow of your thoughts and physical actions. Whether the judgment is positive or negative, it introduces a verbal aspect into an activity that is most successful when it is non-verbal.

Although rule number four probably speaks more directly to my problem:

Be on stage, not in the audience. Be in the giving mode, not the receiving one. Be in the music, in the moment. These are three ways of saying more or less the same thing. You cannot be performer and listener at the same time. Leave the response to the audience.

The entire piece is worth reading, and probably applies to most artistic endeavors, not just music.