Cell phone test

A woman talks on her cell phone while riding a train.

Love your cell phone?

• Do you have it listed as one of the six things you couldn't live without on your OK Cupid profile, followed LOL?
• Do you talk on it at full volume in public places?
• Do you fear putting an app on it that counts the number of times you look at it per day because the number may shock you?
• Do you have it on the table when dining with family or friends?
• Do you have it on your night table?
• Do you get anxious when you've forgotten to take it with you while doing a brief errand? 
• Do you use it when you drive and tell yourself that while it may be dangerous for others, you're an exception to that?

If you answered yes to more than two of these, you love your cell phone and you look just like the woman in the picture above (or a male version of her) to other people who aren't like you. You don't think you do, but you do.

A day to treasure

Yesterday I had the kind of day I won't be able to have more of as my disease progresses and then kills me over the next year or so.
A friend came out from the city in the late afternoon and we had dinner. Her husband was with friends watching a football playoff game. She and I have no interest in the sport. We've known each other for over twenty years, though good times and some bad ones. I've learned a lot from her, far more than I could possibly have taught her, but that's not the basis of our friendship.
I met her at a train station less than a mile from me, we went to my house and had coffee. At dusk we took the walk I do around my neighborhood. She liked it and understood the beauty I see in parts of it. 

My friend getting off a train for a visit.

Around six, we went to a good Japanese restaurant near me. (She's Japanese and I lived there for three years. We met in Philadelphia.) We ordered a boatload of food. Literally, a boatload: the food came on a small wooden boat. We'd stopped at a liquor store beforehand and bought a very nice brand of sake she'd wanted to try and drank that. 
I haven't told her of my illness, so our conversation was about normal things. The funny things her husband—who I've met several times and like—does and says. How her parents are doing in Tokyo. Her job. The cat she got as a Christmas gift.
She brought me special noodles that the Japanese prepare at the beginning of the new year. (I'll make some tonight.) She caught the 8:35 back to the city.
Yesterday was a day I'll look back on with great fondness many times over the coming months.

Waiting

Commuters wait for a train.

This is one of the many weeks the Complete and Total Loser simply waits. In this case, he waits to find test results that may (will; you watch) indicate that he has a good enough chance of having prostate cancer that a biopsy will be needed, which will interfere with the pending second try at knee replacement surgery, and the Loser will have to continue being on crutches, his ruined right leg dangling uselessly, probably indefinitely.
It is not fun and the Loser is tempted to do something as corny as make a list of things he's grateful for. Why not? It's not like it could hurt.

His type

A woman rides a train with her bicycle.

Oh, nerd girl, with your big book and your little fold-up bike on the train, you wear your helmet even now! You will get a master's degree in something and work for a non-profit organization where you will be much appreciated. You will marry a burly man with an unkempt beard who wears sweaters well. The apartments and then houses you share will feature much wood and weavings and be comfortable places for you and visitors. Your children will have unconventional names and learn more from you and your husband than they do in school. Yours will be a good life.