Random bits of my so-called life.

In this case, “ping” is short for pee-ing. Outside. Something I have done my whole life, mostly but not always with aplomb. Embiggen to see what’s on the mug.

First off, I have also had access to indoor plumbing my whole life, just not in the summers of my childhood and early adulthood. I have blahgged about this before (a few times or more🐽) but I spent my very early childhood summers at the Old Cabin. The moomincabin aka the “other cabin” (I *love* my very young emerging talker first cousin twice removed’s name for the moomin) was not yet built. There was cold water in the kitchen sink via a garden hose and an outhouse.

It’s hard to describe this but there was a heavy wooden door between the kitchen and living room and when it was wide open, which it was most of the time, it hid a lot of things behind it. Clothing hanging on the back of the door and little kids pee-ing in a potty in there. The summer I was three and my brother was about to be born, The Commander was trying very hard to get me to go to the outhouse instead of using the potty. But moom, the outhouse is stinky.

Once she tried to shame me with “there are MEN in the living room so you can’t use the potty.” I looked around the room. There was my dad and my Dear Uncle Harry and my uncle Dcuk… And Lewie… My dad and uncles, “man’s men” that they were, were well accustomed to the potty (as long as they didn’t have to empty it) but Lewie was a bachelor friend of theirs and I’m sure Lewie was who The Comm was referring to when she said “MEN” are there…

Anyway, I can use outhouses and I can pee outdoors without a problem. Woods pee is almost always easy. Urban pee is a bit more difficult because you can be arrested for indecent exposure. But I have done it, usually in the the small woodsy parks that dot The Planet Ann Arbor and always looking carefully in every direction for interlopers and voyeurs. And sometimes, even if you are an experienced female outdoor pee-er, dribbling happens. TMI?

My uber-smart daughter (they are both smart but this is the older one) gifted me with a pee cloth. If I have it right (and I may not), it absorbs “liquid” in such a way that if you can’t hide in a copse to woods-pee, you can just, um, go in the pee cloth. I haven’t used it yet but I will.

Update: The pee cloth is Kula Cloth and you don’t pee *into* it!

The first pic is one of my all-time faves. It wasn’t taken on my first-born’s birthday. That was today and I won’t tell you how old she is but when I turned her age, my parents sent me a card in which my father wrote “Unhappy Birthday”. He was not actually wishing me an unhappy birthday just wishing himself younger.

An alternate title for this photo might be “Mooooo”. It is meeee (in the striped bikini), Radical Betty, Baby Liz, and The Commander walking out into the water at the moominbeach. Note that the wee one was hanging on to me by one finger. That’s how much she trusted me, I guess. Once, a relative did not recognize me upon seeing this pic. Whose finger is Liz hanging on to? It wasn’t because of the bikini although I haven’t worn one for umpteen bazillion years (back in the day I probably owned five or six bikinis at a time, all hanging on the clothesline strung across the back of the partition between the living room and bedrooms at the moomincabin). It was because they couldn’t figger out who that “dark” skinned person was. Well. It was meeee. I used to use what limited time the SUN shone down on our beautiful yooperland beach to get tan and my purportedly fair northern European skin does in fact tan nicely. I don’t do that any more mainly because I stopped caring a long time ago.

My birthday girl started out today by taking her coffee over to the neighboring park. After a run and a shower, she and her partner walked downtown where they met up with the GG for lunch at the Oscar Tango and then toured some of the local museums, including the newest incarnation of the “dinosaur museum”, which opened shortly before covid hit. I haven’t been there yet but I am not a huge museum fan plus I fear I might miss the “old” dinosaur museum, the one I visited throughout my and my children’s childhoods.

We took gifts (Dyson vacuum cleaner and a couple other things) and ‘hattan makings over to their house, then headed down to The Earle for dinner. She has never been to the Earle before!!! In response to that statement, I told her that we couldn’t afford the Earle when she was young 🤣

I didn’t include a recent picture of the birthday girl today except for the coffee in the park pic that she sent me. She is beautiful and looks a lot younger than her age.

I was hanging around in the back room watching a TV show. I think it was Hill Street Blues. Oops, I think that was a contraction. A meaningful one. I won’t report all the gory details but by morning, our family had grown from two to three. It was an easy journey.

If you know me or have been of my reglear nucular taggers (aka blahg readers) you might know that I am rabidly against Trump but I live with a pro-Trump (or at least pro-MAGA) person.

I have lived with this person for umpteen bazillion years. He is a wonderful person. He was (and is) a fantastic father. I love his family. He gets along with all of my relatives and takes care of the moomincabin and when The Commander was in her later years, he took care of her better than I did.

Anyway, I’m not sure the GG and I were *ever* totally aligned in terms of politics, but we never really argued about it much until Trump.

I’ve been listening to a show that NPR airs on WCMU (which I get at the moomincabin on Sunday mornings). It’s called “Left Right and Center” and participants from different points of view cover political issues politely. I’ve been streaming it since we returned to the Landfill and yesterday they talked about (among other things) a couple who were totally opposed (like the GG and I are) about Trump and Harris. This couple somehow found a news/commentary source called Tangle that looks at things from both sides and in between. You get opinions from the left, right, and center and then you get the website’s owner’s own point of view, which is clearly labeled as his own opinion and seems balanced. When the site happens to post mis/dis-information or errors, they disclaim it right at the top of the page.

Tangle did not dissuade either of these people from their political positions but it did dissuade the husband from his mistaken belief that the 2020 election was stolen. I do not think the GG will try to follow Tangle or, if he does, it might not change his opinions on anything.

There are a lot of married couples out there who are totally opposed about Trump and Harris. I don’t really understand why Trump appeals to anyone but I am resigned to the fact that I have to live with one of those people. And some of his relatives. The married couple listening to Tangle that Left Right and Center interviewed seemed to be kind of coming together a bit although I bet he will still vote for Trump. Not sure there’ll be any coming together here but I think I like Tangle and its approach so I’m giving it a try. If anything it may give me some insight into where the “right” is coming from. Er, not that I am on the “left” exactly…. I prefer to call myself a pragmatist.

Yes, there is a new Matlock series! It stars Kathy Bates. I love Kathy Bates. I heard about this on the radio (National Petroleum Radio, (don’t ask)).

So when I started writing this, I thought the new Matlock was a “reboot” of the old series from the 1980s-1990s? Apparently it’s not (but?) What I heard on NPR the other day seemed to make it sound like that. But I was probably working and not listening closely.

I didn’t watch the old Matlock at all. Looking at the years it was on, I was in the throes of raising young children. Our TV was more often tuned in to things like Mr. Raj (Rogers) and Sesame Street, although one kid was NOT entranced by “those silly guys” aka Bert and Ernie. This was waaaay before they came out so it didn’t have anything to do with that. And then they were getting to be tweens and there was Clarissa Explains It All (which I greatly enjoyed) and then, I dunno, Nick at Nite and I’m probably forgetting a whole bunch of stuff. Then again I was watching things like 30-something, Dallas, and Dynasty. Yes, really.

A thing I don’t remember about the old Matlock? That Andy Griffith played Matlock.

A thing I do remember about the old Matlock? There was a Detroit Free Press columnist back in the day that I enjoyed reading. He was an older guy named Jim(?) Fitzgerald. The name is interesting because he was somehow related to the person the Edmund Fitzgerald freighter was named after. You know, the one that sunk and Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about it?

His column was not usually *serious* in that it was mostly slices of his life as a retired reporter. What I remember is when he wrote about walking (in Detroit) past a man sitting next to the sidewalk drinking out of a bottle in a paper bag. The paper bag bottle drinker looked up at him and said, “Lookin’ like Matlock.” I dunno why this cracked me up so much but I still remember it all these years later and it still cracks me up🤪 Sorry.

Doing some googling, I feel like the “jury” is out on whether the Kathy Bates series is a reboot of the Andy Griffith series. I dunno but I think I might have to watch both of them (the Andy Griffith Matlock is available on Netflix or somewhere) and try to come to my own conclusion.

Love y’all, KW.

So COVID kicked my natural introvert tendencies into high gear and I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with having a lot of Alone Time. Which I do this weekend as the GG is outta dodge.

I will always be introverted but I was happy to receive a text from a beach urchin this morning wondering if I wanted company. And yes. Yes, I did. I always love to be with my adult daughters but they are both VERY busy and the last thing I would ever want to do is to take away any of their down time to hang out with me.

But okay! C’mon over and have a beer. And yes she did. We are having an extended bit of bonus summer here so we sat in the back yard. Did we talk about MAGA? Of course we did. How could we not? But we are on the same side of that issue and don’t understand what the f*ck people see in Trump. “The economy”? Whut? People who talk about how well he does with “the economy” are not remembering the havoc the covid virus wreaked upon “the economy”. Trump totally mishandled the covid pandemic and doesn’t have a clue about “the economy”. To be fair, I don’t think anyone could have handled that crisis. But Trump was probably the worst president to be in “power” at that time.

What else did we talk about? TV and books for one thing. There is a second season of Silo out (sci-fi stuff)! I am watching Bad Monkey (Florida crime stuff based on a book by Carl Hiaasen) by myself and Joe Pera (again) with the GG. Joe is a quirky yooperland guy explaining life, the universe and everything. I will be watching season 2 of Silo. I don’t think the GG would be all that interested in Silo. He might like Bad Monkey. We’ll talk about books another day but Jane Smiley was an author of interest in my backyard today.

A prism in our front window made the rainbow colors on one of our dining chairs when I walked into the front living room tonight. I figure there was about a 10 second interval for those colors to show up and I caught it and somehow managed to fumble my phone camera open to capture the pic.

I mean, I can play clips of Trump rambling aimlessly too but when I am hearing them from another room and know that the person/people playing the clip are all rah rah about him and his likely second idiocracy? I could NOT focus this morning. The GG? “She’s supposed to be working but she’s doing the xword.” Yeah, that’s because I can’t tune you MAGAts out. Plus you are jumping around in a frenetic way and I can NEVER concentrate when that is going on. At least the UU dragged the empty garbage cart up before he left. Thanks!!!

So are identical twins rare? I’m not sure “rare” is the word I would use but they are certainly rarer than singletons. I have always been fascinated by multiple births. I think I first encountered this topic reading about the Dionne quintuplets (identical) as a kid. I’m not sure what the highest number of multiple children have been born from a single pregnancy is. Was it “octo mom’s” eight? Or have there been women who’ve birthed more? I’m too lazy to look it up. (Nonuplets. I looked it up. Or is it decuplets…)

Recently I realized that my Instagram feed was getting filled with moms of triplets, etc. This was getting annoying. I mean, I have probably clicked on a few of these posts over the years. Like I said above, multiple births *are* interesting to me. (There is a set of triplets in my extended family and I have been married to an ID twin for umpteen bazillion years.) But it was getting to the point where multiple births were like every other post and they were all people I do NOT follow. I idly complained about this to a beach urchin and she showed me how I could mute all of that stuff. On social media, I really only want to see posts from people/entities I have made a conscious choice to follow.

So, how well do I get along with the UU’s wife (my sister-in-law via my husband’s twin)? We are friends and kindred spirits. We are not alike in a lot of ways but we *are* alike in other ways. Some of the ways we are alike are very subtle and when we first knew each other I would never have guessed we had those traits in common. I’m not gonna list any of those things because 1) it’s nobody’s business and 2) she may not agree with all of it, which is okay. We all look at things through different lenses. But I love and admire her and love having her in my life.

Can I tell the twins apart? Oh yes. When I occasionally have difficulty, it’s when I’m not LOOKING at a twin. And even then, at least after all these years, there are subtle differences in their voices and choice of words, etc.

Babies born to a parent with an ID twin? Hmmm, once we helped the UU move house. In the late evening after a long day, the UU and I went out for a beer at a bar. We left my daughter (a year old or thereabouts) with the GG (her DAD!). She didn’t have fluent words yet but complained BITTERLY the entire time we were out at the bar. Over and over the GG tried to explain that he was her DAD. She wasn’t having it😵‍💫

The Twinz of Terror and I dined at The Grizzly Peak tonight. I made sure to tell anyone I interacted with that in no way shape or form did I agree with the Trump hat. I do agree with the Dee-troit Li-ons hat (even though I am not really a football fan) but I didn’t feel as though I needed to point that out. As it turned out, the only person I disclaimed that to was our server. She was a young Black woman and I have no clue what her politics are but it is the Planet Ann Arbor, a Blue Bubble, so I can only guess she is NOT a Trumper.

She was a good server and I tipped well but I almost always do. As the GG will sometimes say, “Give her [meaning meeee] the check, she’s a better tipper.” And I am. I always support service workers. They do not make anywhere near as much money as they are worth.

When we left The Landfill to head down to the Griz, our young neighbor was outside doing some yard work. It turns out HE IS AN IDENTICAL TWIN?!?? So identical twins (the Twinz of Terror) meet another identical twin? Except the neighbor’s twin brother was not there. How weird (and cool) is it that two houses in a row on our street are owned by families in which the husbands both have identical twins.

What a day. It was a regular work day but at the end of the day I provided dinner for the Uncly Uncle, aka the GG’s identical twin.

I usually give the Twinz some time to get MAGA outta their systems but they didn’t have time to even talk about that tonight because by the time the UU got here, the GG was already on a North Country Trail zoom meeting. The UU joined up pretty dern quick. Me? I was cooking coq au vin, aka chicken (boneless thighs) plus onion, mushrooms, kalamata olives and white whine.

I provided a freezer ‘hattan for the UU. He drove down from Gaylord today and he spent a good amount of time at FlaMan’s pad where he installed a table (or something) for FlaMan’s new TV.

I am in the front living room and the twinz are in the back living room. They seem to be getting escalated about the upcoming presidential election. I am terrified about the upcoming election. That is all I will say tonight. How can anyone listen to anything Trump says and think he is a reasonable presidential candidate? I do not know. Cognitive dissonance maybe?

In the lower right are little buggy flies. They are outside not inside and I don’t think they are biters.

This is about all I have tonight. I have lots of thoughts swirling through my very little brain but they are either about family (oh, no problems there) or polly-ticks (plenty of problems there). But let’s just pause a moment and look at that beautiful waxing gibbous behind The Landfill. I actually feel like the power lines add to the pic somehow.

Love y’all, KW

I was working from TeleCublandia and somebody yelled at me from outside. It was the GG. He made a particular gesture that means (in our household) “Make me a drink!” Meaning a Manhattan. I couldn’t describe the gesture if I tried. I don’t even think I could replicate it. My brother did get it🤣

Except I somehow misinterpreted the gesture. He was actually alerting me to the fact that he had the snowblower running and thought I might want to take a picture. I did take a pic because that’s what I do and then I made him a freezer ‘hattan. Which he appreciated. BTW, a freezer ‘hattan is when I put the ingredients into a glass and stick it into the freezer and he retrieves it when he’s ready and puts ice and cherries in it to taste.

So when he came in, after he retrieved his freezer ‘hattan, he began enumerating the small engines we own. Um, let’s see… Lawnmower, snowblower, leaf blower, I’m probably forgetting some and I’m not even counting bote motors because we don’t use them here. But then. Three chainsaws. WAIT! THREE chainsaws? Whut? We have THREE chainsaws.

There’s the first one we owned (I think) that I bought for him from Sears at Briarwood Mall umpteen bazillion years ago because he asked for it for xmas. He probably doesn’t remember that I’m the one who bought it. I wouldn’t have been ABLE to do it if he hadn’t provided me with the exact model number. And then there’s one The Gumper (his dad) left behind. The GG seems to be the only sibling who can start it? And a third one is on long-term loan from a moominbeach neighbor-cousin. And oh there’s a fourth one in the moomingarage that my parents or brother bought There are probably one or two or four in the garage at Hoton Lake but I dunno.

BTW: Sears at Briarwood has been demolished and is being replaced by an amalgam of apartments/condos/whatever and shop(pes). I think.

I have mixed feelings about this. I know we need “affordable” housing on The Planet Ann Arbor but I’m not sure this will end up being “affordable” and I KNOW I would not want to live on the Briarwood Mall footprint. I mean, it’s a big frickin’ parking lot! On the other hand, I admit that I do not know what it will end up looking like. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised?

There was a time when I LOVED Briarwood Mall and shopped there a LOT. As a baby, Lizard Breath practiced walking there and although she wasn’t quiiiite in the “Mom drive me to mall crowd” as a tween, I remember “Papa” next door driving Liz and his twin grandchildren over there to “hang out” (that’s my phrase, not the kids’). I miss Papa and I hope they had fun.

At least it wasn’t “Limberder” cheese. Stupid MAGA joke 🐽🐽🐽

This is a wee glimpse into our MESSY back room Aaaa-dition during a football game. Go Li-ons. The Kindle belongs to a beach urchin who is happily ensconced in The Reading Chair. I did not show her face but you can see the GG over there watching the football game. It’s a cozy evening at the Landfill but it is not cold enough for a faaar in the faaarplace.

I had so much fun today! I went to the fabric store! Joann’s to be specific. The only one open on Sunday but I needed the kind of stuff Joann’s sells anyway. I have to phrase the next bit carefully so the beach urchins don’t think Old Baggy (their moom) is losing her marbles. I didn’t exactly get lost on the way there but the left turn into the back way to the Tarjay shopping plaza came up a lot earlier than I expected so I had to do a quick maneuver to turn on time. The problem is that there are umpteen bazillion more condos (I hate condos) there than there used to be. I drive by those all the time but haven’t made that left turn in a bazillion years.

Okay. I don’t think I have been in Joann’s since well before covid. I used to go there ALL THE TIME. I stopped buying fabric for a while (sorta). I even donated a bunch of my fabric but then I kinda regretted it.

Today? I didn’t get lost in the store but I kinda felt like a stone age person. I did buy some stuff and I easily found the cutting table. Okay. Zzzzzzip. Fancy lucky-shuckial scissor-type thing to cut the fabric. Cutting the fabric took the longest time of anything because it is still a MANUAL task and the woman who cut my fabric was careful to line it up properly. (The Commander would have approved.) And then, when she was all done cutting, she used a phone-looking device (but I don’t think it was a phone) to zippity-zip scan whatever information was on the ends of the bolts. She printed out a paper slip of what I bought and I handed it to the cashier at the front and paid. I told the cashier I didn’t need a bag or a receipt. She tried to force the receipt on me anyway and I told her if I didn’t end up using the fabric, I would donate it.

I somehow ended up with the receipt anyway and that was a good thing because it gave me most of the information on the end of the fabric bolt so I could look around online and see if I could get alternative colors, etc. Note to self.

He did buy guacamole.

I’m riffing off a meme somebody posted on Facebook today. Like, are you still an artist if you work a day job and don’t have time to create “art” or haven’t created art in a while? It’s a question I have wrestled with from time to time.

I was an uber good musician as a kid/young woman. I could probably have made some kind of career out of that albeit probably not a Jean Pierre Rampal or Lizzo type of career. But I didn’t. I took an entry level tech job because it paid better (actually my first tech job paid like crap but we won’t go there today). I also love to create colorful fiber art stuff but I haven’t done that in a while either. Because I don’t have a lot of time because I have a highly paid (for me) tech job now.

But what defines “art”? I have spent more of my adult life messing around with spreadsheets, programming computers, and writing documents of various sorts than performing music or creating visual art. I’m not sure if I have the bandwidth to articulate what I’m trying to say but there is “art” in almost everything we do. Engineers (one of my lots in life) often drive me crazy but they are also artists.

Communicating information via an elegant spreadsheet is every bit as artistic as painting a landscape or performing a Bach flute sonata. In my current job, among other things, I write functional specifications to clearly describe what our online banking application does. This involves writing but also calls for fitting in flowcharts and other diagrams, tables, and detailed annotated screenshots from the high fidelity html prototype of our application that I code. Is that not artistic? I certainly would like to think it is although it may not be appreciated by a wide audience. But who cares?

Of course, not all jobs offer opportunities to be creative and many people have to deal with toxic job situations. This is a complicated topic and I don’t have all the answers or even all the questions. This is just a rudimentary attempt to put my life experiences into words. We are ALL artists in our own way. I do get that someone who loves to paint (for example) feels frustrated at not having enough time to PAINT because they have to pay rent and put food on the table.

P.S. The photo is from October 2012 at the moomincabin. There is no snow here or there this October. Here on The Planet t-storms are rolling through. We need them.

We always welcome people to use our bench even when we aren’t at the moominbeach. I dunno if very many people actually use the bench but today our friends of porterization visited.

They are on their way downstate to The Planet Ann Arbor and of all things, they are staying at the Hotel Ojibway overnight. Growing up in Sault Ste. Siberia, the Ojibway has always been a fixture in town, not to mention one of the tallest buildings. Six stories.

I have dined at the restaurant at the Ojibway many times throughout my life. Sometimes good times, other times really really bad service. I think our friends went to the Lockview restaurant tonight though.

Way back in the day, Cube Neighbor was following the Umich hockey team and she encountered a pic of my doc-uncle in the Ojibway. Yup, I knew that guy. He’s the one who brought flu shots out to the beach. The Commander: “Get outta the water. It’s time to get your flu shot.” Yeah, right mom…

The Twinz of Terror took The Comm out to dinner at the Ojibway for her 90th birthday and she was treated like a queen. Her take on the whole evening? “Those boys spend money left and right.” Yeah mom, they were spending it on *you* and they can definitely afford to buy you dinner.

After The Commander died, we stayed at the Hotel Ojibway on quite a few occasions for the next couple years when we were in town and the moomincabin was closed for the season. And we were selling Command Central, The Comm’s house up on Dillon Street. Some day we’ll talk about the day I managed to end up in Sault Ste. Siberia with two cars and one driver (meee). Both cars were in the Ojibway Hotel parking lot and we (I) did figger it out.

We dredged ‘lectric Jack up from the Landfill Dungeon today. Here he is a couple years ago projecting his face onto the ceiling.

My thoughts have been a bit a-swirl today. Besides doing an archaeological dig through SWIFT financial file formatting and translating it to BAI data. Don’t ask😵‍💫 I love doing archaeological digs through online banking functionality so it was actually fun. I sometimes wonder if my banker dad has a clue about what I do for a living? Probably not.

The mis/dis info stuff? I cannot believe this. People? Please don’t just throw out anything any yay-hoo puts on social media for the rest of us unwashed masses. I am NEVER unwashed BTW. I am one of the cleanest people you know. But just sayin’.

Winning the prize for most egregious lie (or was it just the most cray-zee) is Marjorie Taylor Greene for accusing the “democrats” of creating hurricanes. Say what? This is miles above Trump using a sharpie to add Alabama to a hurricane that was projected to hit Florida but NOT Alabama. I also haven’t fact checked MTG’s claim but knowing MTG’s particular brand of nuttiness…

The whole Trump Party’s take on the recent hurricanes? Okay, FEMA screwed some things up with Hurricane Katrina. FEMA is undoubtedly not perfect with more recent hurricanes. Who’s perfect? It sounds like FEMA has improved a LOT though. That’s called learning from your mistakes. But despite Trump’s statements about how horrible the “democrats” response to recent hurricanes were, state governors (many GOP) denied his statements. And hurricanes? Every hurricane is different. For one thing? Helene did not spawn tornadoes. Milton? Tornadoes caused many of the casualties although casualties were far fewer than those of Helene. Hurricanes cannot be easily predicted. Who knew North Carolina would be one of the areas most affected by a hurricane that initially made landfall in Florida? North Carolina is not known for hurricanes.

The US government is far from perfect but it was created to serve The People (you and me), NOT the president. Changing our government does not happen quickly and I think that is by design. Although I find myself wishing we could jettison the electoral college.

The Republican Party is NOT what it used to be when I was a kid and my parents voted for its candidates. It is now the Trump Cray-zee Party. The Commander became an Obama supporter in her later years (before Trump of course) and her ashes have certainly been churning throughout Trump’s presidency and subsequent candidacies. Unfortunately I believe the Trump Party is pulling in young people who do not understand what World War II was all about and why otherwise carefree young men like my dad joined the service. A main mission (there were others) was helping to destroy authoritarianism in Europe. Do not vote for Trump. He does not care about anyone except himself. Dangerous person.

G’night, Cassandra

We are watching the latest hurricane with horrified fascination. Our (late) sister The Beautiful Suzie’s (and she WAS beautiful, a gorgeous redhead) husband Mr. Ed lives in their house in Bradenton, just blocks away from the gulf coast and only a few feet above sea level. He is a native Floridian and by that I mean not just that he was born in Fla (although he was) but that at least a couple generations of his ancestors were born there before him. In other words he knows how to deal with hurricanes. I doubt he is evacuating but I don’t know. I’m pretty sure he isn’t mired with the masses on the freeways.

We ate dinner in front of a video of a young female pianist playing a Mendelssohn piece accompanied by an orchestra. This was something the GG found. I was pretty fascinated although in general I don’t really like to watch/listen to classical music in an active way. Back in the day I used to like to PLAY it. I am (was) not a bad pianist but my hands are a wee bit too small to allow me to do the finger gymnastics required for pianistic brilliance. Flute I could do and I may have had a future in that but somehow computers snatched me away.

I heard an interview with Yo Yo Ma (did I spell that correctly?) a while back during which one of the many things he was asked about was an incident when he was 15 or so. He obtained an illegal ID and skipped out of orchestra rehearsal to get drunk and landed in the ER. He giggled yes yes yes to every question he was asked but also expressed regret at how ashamed his father was. In other words, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. Yo Yo Ma is a joyful person and I love him. I am not as good a musician as Yo Yo Ma. Not by a long shot.

The beach urchins were urging me to get the GG to watch Joe Pera Talks With You. I wasn’t sure it would fly even though in some ways the GG is more of a yooper than I am. I grew up there but he didn’t. Turns out he seems to be kinda digging Joe Pera.

The pic is the GG’s camp setup on the shores of Ruth Lake in the western UP a few weeks ago.

The pic is from 12 years ago. This was MY parking place at Cubelandia.

It wasn’t like I had a nameplate or anything on my space. My dad had a nameplate “Jack Finlayson” at the Sault Ste. Siberia First National Bank. That was his spot when he was president or whatever. I think the nameplate is in the moomincabin nowadays.

I didn’t have any kind of nameplate. I was able to claim my personal parking place because it was the farthest away from the entrance to the building, like three rows away, and nobody else parked over in that row.

I worked over at Cubelandia for 12.5 years and I’ve been at TeleCubelandia for the last 4.5 years. I had an eight mile zen drive over to Cubelandia after I decided that taking the freeway every day was risking my life. Getting on to eastbound I94 at the Jackson Rd. hairpin turn entrance behind a gravel truck? Nope. Taking the slow route around the south side of town was blissful. Well, unless it was snowing but I have always been able to work from home and usually didn’t drive over to Cubelandia in the snow. As a non-essential worker, why put my vee-hicle on the road?

Cubelandia didn’t close totally because of covid. Cubelandia was always under utilized. Covid was just the tipping point. Why pay all that rent for a half-empty building?

G’night, KW

Gertrude is my stove. I am not trying to kill her. We bought her sometime in the 2010s, after our old stove (the one that came with the house) blew out the front right burner in a rather spectacular way. I was at work and my mouse sent me a pic.

Actually we bought Gertrude pretty LONG after that happened. We used a three burner stove for a few years until we decided it was really stupid not to get a new one. I mean, The Landfill had been paid off forever, we were both working, and both our kids had graduated from college. Why were we still living the Student Ghetto/Early In-law life? I decided I needed a Big Girl stove. So we bought Gertrude. Glass stove top and two(!) ovens. I have to admit I don’t often use both ovens but they are handy on holidays and sometimes other occasions. Like when I want to bake something while keeping other stuff warm.

So the other day, I put a pan on a burner and I turned on that burner. Or so I thought. Nope. I turned on another burner. Problem? The burner I turned on happened to have a plastic utensil sitting on it. By the time I noticed what was going on, the utensil had melted big-time and the burner was a total mess. I have cleaned up Gertrude’s burners many a time. This time I wasn’t sure I could.

So I got on the internet and snagged this razor blade thingy (and the associated kit). And looked at the unopened package for a couple days. Eventually I opened it and… It took a few tries to get the hang of it but I did and this is the finished product. There are a few little issues but I think I’ll get them cleaned up.

Why did I name my stove Gertrude? Back when I was a little kid and we lived in a shabby little bungalow on Superior Street in Sault Ste. Siberia, The Commander had a comic taped up on the inside of the broom closet. Gertrude was the name of the comic and the main character. In this particular comic, she was reclined on top of an ironing board looking very tired. I have tried and tried to find that comic but no luck. I’m sure The Comm was tired sometimes when we were kids but I don’t ever remember her being ultra tired or depressed or anything. I was just a kid then but I always remember that comic as being funny.

The first pic is my first apartment on The Planet Ann Arbor. It was an upper flat in this rickety old house and I “inherited” it from my cousin and her boyfriend. I also inherited his landline phone number and kept it for many years. This place had its perks. For one thing I got paid doodly-squat at that point in my life and I could afford it, if barely. At that point in my life I didn’t want to share with a bunch of random roommates. The pic is from 2010 but the place looked about the same then as it did when I inhabited it umpteen years before.

Hello? A year or so ago, THIS was where that house used to be. I’m kinda not surprised someone decided it was a tear-down. I remember the floors upstairs were totally rock-and-roll. Among many other things.

Today.

As a confirmed introvert, I had to really PUSH myself to attend the neighborhood block party today. The GG is outta town taking chainsaw training and for a split second I thought about asking a beach urchin to attend with me. But I jettisoned that idea. As I jettisoned a thought of hiding out in my hermit hole. Naw. That wouldn’t fly. I live next door and they know I’m here because Cygnus is here. So I sucked it up and went, exiting the Landfill through the back door so no one would notice me right away.

Second thing. I usually make lasagna for potluck type things and I did make lasagna for the last neighborhood block party I attended. But I was wavering all over the place about meat or veggie or both, meat or veggie or both… Finally I decided I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time making lasagna so I picked up some shrimp and some Durham’s Tracklements smoked salmon from the Plum Market. Those were a huuuuge success and this is what was left of the salmon (see empty plate) and when I went back to the party to retrieve my stuff after a wee break, the shrimp thingy had already been thrown out or whatever.

Am I glad I went? OF COURSE I AM. One of the first people I saw was our beloved neighbor Gail. The first time I met Gail was a kinda warmish winter day when we both had our infant daughters (5 months and 2 months) out for a walk in strollers. Wouldn’t you know, those kiddos became the bestest of friends and still are. So good to talk to her and she helped ease me (the neighborhood hermit) into meeting some of the younger folks who have managed to brave the HORRIBLE housing prices here and move in.

And then. I won’t say much about this (I actually don’t know much) but the young couple next door brought their infant daughter to the party. This baby was born with health complications and I think they have been through some tough times and I was a little surprised to see them come to the party. As challenging as it was for me to attend the party, it must have been much harder for them. The baby is beautiful and very alert and got a lot of attention. She has the same name as my older beach urchin but they shorten it in a cool way. The parents seemed in good spirits and all I can do is wish the best for them. They are wonderful neighbors.