Your fears have been realized. I have nothing to write about tonight except for my day. Which makes it a post about nothing. And I’m no Seinfeld. My apologies in advance.

Today I ventured out into the world, after several days spent at home on purpose. I looked over the instructions for my recovery (from surgery for a detached retina, as you may recall) and discovered I shouldn’t have been driving at all these last couple weeks. Maybe not even now. But I feel like I’m ready – except for night driving, which I think I’ll avoid for a while, because of glare. (I drove at night once, and decided it was a very bad idea.)

But now I have 3D vision again. It’s a great relief.

What they did during surgery (among other things, I have no doubt) was to inject a bubble (nitrogen, if I recall correctly) into my eyeball so everything would be held in place while it healed up. At first that bubble covered most of my field of vision, which is why I took to wearing an eye patch a lot of the time. Having one working eye was preferable to looking through that annoying opaque bubble.

But the bubble is diminishing, as they promised. Now it’s perceptually about the size of my little fingernail, and it bobbles around at the bottom of my sight like a bubble in a carpenter’s level. Almost amusing. Almost.

But anyway, the rest of my field of vision is clear. Sadly, it’s not clear in the sense of clear vision – my sight is fuzzy in that eye, and will be for a while, I’m told.

But I’ve got stereoscopic vision again, and my accustomed peripheral vision. And that makes driving a lot better. And safer, for myself and (as the saying goes) others.

So I went out for lunch today.

I went to one of the best nearby places that’s survived the Great Sorting of the pandemic. It’s called 50s Grill, and its gimmick is that the waitresses wear poodle skirts and the walls are decorated with movie posters from the 1950s. And they play oldies over the speakers. And, just incidentally, the food is really good. Like you remember, if you’re old enough to remember the ‘50s. There’s no ashtrays or ambient cigarette smoke, but you can’t have everything.

I had the hamburger. They do a great hamburger at the 50s Grill, the best I know in this area.

Now I have to add a caveat here. There are all kinds of tastes in burgers, and I know I am not one of the majority.

Most Americans’ idea of a good burger involves cheese. It’s gotten to the point (and I complain about this a lot) that you have to specify if you don’t want cheese when you order. Many places just assume the cheese unless you inform them elsewise. (I suppose I should appreciate their intentions. They mean well. “You say you want a burger? Why don’t I enhance the experience for you, just out of the goodness of my heart!”)

But I don’t like cheese.

The American model nowadays tends to involve a lot of lettuce and tomato slices and pickles and sauces, etc. And, of course, that ubiquitous cheese. The whole Big Mac/Whopper scenario.

For me, a good burger is meat and bread. I’ll add ketchup on my own. Onions are good, because they enhance the meat flavor. (Sautéed is best, except that kind is hard to find. You can get sautéed at Hooters – don’t ask me how I know. But it’s embarrassing to go to Hooters. Especially when you’re an old man alone. Or so I’ve heard.)

Now I won’t say the 50s Grill burger is the kind of austere burger I just described. It in fact involves lettuce and tomatoes and pickles and a special sauce, plus the onions I tolerate. But I can pick off the tomatoes and pickles, or ask to have them “held,” as we say. And I’ll tolerate the lettuce, because I’m a magnanimous soul.

But the meat there is great, and – wait for this – they bake their own buns fresh every day.

The bun is an underappreciated element in a really fine burger.

Of course, such a meal (especially with dessert, which is a whole other rave review) eats up all the calories on my diet for the day.

It’s worth it. I’m sitting here in the evening, still full.

And that was my day. Except for all the translating. Which I can’t tell you about.

So, The End.