No useful title comes to mind.

First, my grandma is likely to go home today. She was looking a lot more like herself last night, and they had her off the oxygen and IV's. They finally found the right combo of drugs to get the fluid to stay out of her lungs, I guess, and had a physical therapist come and watch her walk around (verdict? she ought to have a walker, but she did ok). Also, her kidney "numbers" have been improving (not sure exactly what those numbers are, but presumably they measure how efficiently her body removes toxins via the kidneys).

Second, there was an interesting concert at ISU last night. It was a big band/swing group from Europe. Good music, lots of energy. Not perfect, but they were running on a handicap: 6 of their members missed the flight from Florida. I don't know the details, but the director did say "security problems." So maybe they got to the airport too late, or got singled out for a search, or something like that. At any rate, they found two replacement saxophonists from around here (one from Pocatello and one from IF) and had to reshuffle their program. Which is probably why there were no printed programs at the door. They handled the disruptions very well. I suspect we got more vocalist music than we would have had the entire crew made it, but the singers were mostly good. It's a bit disconcerting to hear someone speak with a European accent (Netherlands, I think) and then sing in perfect American, though.

Third, I ran across a list of the 100 most influential novels of all time. The ones that I have read are below:


Animal Farm: George Orwell
Catch-22: Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis
The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkein
Neuromancer: William Gibson
1984: George Orwell
Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash: Neal Stephenson

Hmmm... 7 were ones I read on my own and the other 4 were required in some class or other.