Do you worry . . .

. . . that Mr. Banality will find it impossible to sit around on his keister for hours a day while recuperating?

Well, you needn't.

A hospital volunteer (usually an older gentleman) drives a "courtesy cart" to shuttle hospital visitors from the parking lot to the hospital entrance. Every single time I have gone to the hospital to pick up Mr. Banality from his PT appointment, the cart man has seen me pull into a parking spot, has driven the cart next to my car, and has waited for me to get out of the car so he can shuttle me to the entrance. There's no reason to shuttle me (I'm quite mobile and it's not very far), yet I feel compelled to accept the ride in the courtesy cart. Then I often feel like an ass because while shuttling me to the entrance, the cart man will pass other hospital visitors in the lot (including older men with obvious hip problems and extremely pregnant women).

This morning I tried to time things to avoid the cart man, but as I pulled into a spot, he began driving toward me. I jumped out of my car and literally ran in the opposite direction of the cart man. He drove by me as I was bounding up the stairs. Life is so stressful.

When Mr. Hyde and Mr. Vrendenburg created their general store in 1930 that would later become the Midwestern grocery wonder that is Hy-Vee, could they have imagined that someday a shopper would be in one of their stores buying soy sausages and goji berry granola accompanied by the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated?"

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• Due to the excessively low temperatures, I forgave the sweatpants/Uggs combo. But only for this week.
• Mr. Banality is sleeping in the guest room so he can RICE to his heart's content without waking me up. The first couple of days he was home he needed my help during the night, so we needed to figure out a way for him to wake me up (it needed to be loud so I would hear it sans hearing aids) without scaring the living bejeezus out of me (in case you didn't know: I am anxious). After vetoing yelling (too scary), we settled on a loud bell. And it's LOUD. The only problem? This middle ear disorder I have doesn't just cause hearing loss--it features bonus tinnitus. And tinnitus comes from the Latin tinnire, "to ring." So, there were a lot of false alarms.
• When Mr. Banality did finally ring the bell, it didn't wake me up immediately. Instead, I experienced stimulus incorporation, and suddenly began dreaming of Meredith Vieira playing a toy xylophone.
• Why Meredith Vieira? That was day residue. After spending time in the gym locker room, surgery waiting room, hospital room, and PT waiting room, I've now seen more of the "Today" show than I have . . . ever seen.
• Now you have the answers to two intro psych exam questions over states of consciousness. The Banality is an educational blog!
• Say, are you afraid that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world? I used to be, but this helped me feel better. (Be sure to check the source code.)
• It's easy to feel stupid when you're carrying a 20-lb bag of ice through a parking lot when it's -19 degrees outside.
• A tip for students: When you give a formal presentation, you should not point to a picture of the stomach and say, "I think this is the kidney." I'm no human anatomist, but I know it's a stomach and not a kidney.
• I'm sure everyone has heard this. I don't care. I'm posting it anyway because it's SO GOOD. Thank you, Lee. You have saved my life this week.

match.com is AWESOME (when you're not the one looking for a match)

• One of the most enjoyable activities I took part in during my holiday break was searching Match.com with a friend. She lives in NYC, which makes the process different from what one might encounter in other parts of the country. For example, a search resulted in something like 30 pages of potential beaus within a five-mile radius of her zip code. I continue to follow her progress because she gave me her username and password. Many of the men who contact her are singers/writers/filmmakers/shoe designers/etc. A tarted up crossdresser (SexyLisa875) took a look at her profile as well, and she's currently corresponding with someone who is a contributing editor at a little magazine with a name that starts with "Vanity" and ends with "Fair." So, it's all fairly interesting and adds some excitement to my otherwise not-so-fascinating life. And I don't have to go on any awkward first dates, which is also a plus.

• Mr. Banality will be having surgery to reconstruct his ACL on Tuesday. Good, but ugh. Cross your crossables that I will improve as a caregiver before Tuesday because I stink at it. Also, he'll have general anesthetic, and I hate it when he's mentally incapacitated. Isn't it amazing how everything is about me?

• I just finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and I loved it because it fits so well with social psychology's assertion that people tend to underestimate situational factors that contribute to behavior and performance. Gladwell profiles a number of highly successful individuals and then provides evidence that much of their success can be attributed to date of birth, cultural background, and special opportunities that other people didn't have access to. I used to think I was just a loser, but after reading Outliers, now I just feel less lucky than some other people.

• My friend (and favorite pianist), John Harmon, was interviewed on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on NPR. He is soooo cool.

• Speaking of cool pianists, I'm reading The World in Six Songs by Daniel Levitin, and guess who also just happens to be reading that book? Niece's incredible jazz pianist boyfriend. No wonder she likes him so much: HE IS EXACTLY LIKE ME. (Again, all about me.)

Auntie Banality Writes a Boring Family-Oriented Post

I had a nice weekend with my family, including my siblings and their kids. My brother's daughters are awesome:

• The 14-year-old is crafty. We gave her The Big-Ass Book of Crafts for Christmas, and she spent the rest of the evening reading it. She and Mr. Banality bonded over craft-related discussions. Then she made everyone make a bookmark and praised the merits of each one (even the not-so-great ones).
• The sophomore in college is majoring in exercise science, and she did an assessment on Mr. Banality's knee. It was cool to see her do her thing, and it was cool that Mr. Banality trusted her enough to do it. Who knew that observing knee palpation could make me teary-eyed? This niece is also dealing with a difficult roommate situation, and it sounds like she's making one good decision after another.
• The 22-year-old niece recently graduated with a degree in music education. She plays the French horn, and she's somewhat snarky, so I have always had a special appreciation for her. One highlight was that she brought her boyfriend to the gathering so he could meet the family. He's a delightful young man: polite, unassuming, smart, and personable. Also, HE'S A JAZZ PIANIST. In addition to playing a great mini-concert for us, he let my sister and me warble behind him while he played, and he was incredibly gracious and enthusiastic about the whole thing. The next morning, he was curled up on the couch reading Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within, an obscure book that I HAD JUST FINISHED READING, and we had a lovely conversation about mindfulness and improvisation. He is adorable, and if he and my niece break things off, I will be incredibly disappointed. But supportive. Because I'm like that.

New Year, Old Stuff

• Mr. Banality is a bad ass. Proof: the MRI results just came back today, and he has a torn ACL. TORN. Not sprained or stretched or partially torn, but TORN. (Also, it's the ACL, not the LCL, which was the doctor's original diagnosis, but that's another issue.) He should be whining and making me wait on him rather than running errands and swimming. So, to those of you who have heard me say that he's doing fine and it's probably not a torn ligament? Yeah, I take all that back.

• I played Guitar Hero the other night. Previously, I had only watched someone playing it several aisles over in a Best Buy, and I had been reluctant to walk over and gawk at the person, but now that I think about it, if you're going to play a video game in public, you should be prepared for an audience, so I should have gawked away. Anyway, there are a couple things I learned about Guitar Hero:

1. I totally understand why people like it. When you "play" something correctly (which did not happen too often for me because I kind of suck at Guitar Hero), it does seem like you're playing a musical instrument, and who doesn't want to play a musical instrument? (Answer: NO ONE. EVERYONE WANTS TO PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.)
2. I also totally understand why people who play this game are not inspired to try to play a real guitar because I'm sure playing a real guitar is a whole lot harder and takes a lot more practice before fancy music comes out. It's similar to the deal with my keyboard. It has an "auto-chord" feature that allows me to play chords with one, two, or three fingers, and that feature has not inspired me to try to play the actual chords. (I realize that actual chords are sometimes played with three fingers, but not minor seventh chords, which is what three fingers gets you with the Yamaha PSRE 413 61-key digital keyboard.)

• Here's a tip: if you have a problematic tail light, do not drive home from a party hosted by the lovely CAD and her charming spouse because this combination of factors substantially increases the likelihood that you will be pulled over. Very early on New Year's Day was the second time this has happened to people in the Banality household. I was surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Must have been the champagne I chugged shortly before we left. HA.
• I must end now so I can update my super secret blog about Ben's sweaters. JK, Ben! (For others: not kidding--check for a new post soon.)