Random bits of my so-called life.

Yeesh! It is Thursday and I was rolling along at work when I checked Twitter on my phone (don’t tell). Shooting on N. Maple. In the block that is just across N. Maple from my little neighborhood. The block that I walk on over to the Plum Market every other day or so.

A while later… Accident at Ellsworth and State, maybe involving a police car. Well, that is the penultimate intersection that I have to negotiate to get to work every day. It is a busy intersection but by the time I get to it, I am usually pretty much relieved because I am almost there and the last mile or so is pretty easy. They’re gonna turn the Ellsworth / State intersection into a round-about. I have mixed feelings about that…

Anyway, yes, a police car driving west on Ellsworth Road was responding to a call and broadsided another vee-hickle whose (distracted?) driver did not pull over. Bad but all too typical. The disconnect? These cops were responding to the call about the shooting on N. Maple. Why in the *heck* was a police car *eight* miles away called to this incident? Weren’t there any police cars any closer to my neighborhood? I know that the city has been cutting police and fire department personnel in the last few years (and I strongly disagree with that) but I have a hard time believing that the closest police car was waaayyy over on the south side of town. Anyway, the shooting turned out to be accidental and all injuries were treatable. Ho-hum…

And so, the GG and I walked over to Knight’s for dinner tonight. We hung out at the bar for a short time and when we were taken to our table, I was surprised to see that it was set for *three*! I shouldda known by the text messages flying back and forth before we left the Landfill that he was making arrangements to surprise me with Mouse! And so she arrived, big as life. I won’t bore you with the conversation but it was so much fun.

Hey, I downloaded a book to my phone while we were at Knight’s. Crypotonomicon. Maybe I’ll read it.

I have hated faaarrrr drills since kindergarten. When Mrs. Ryan said we were going to have a faaaarrrrr drill, I thought she said “grill”. I was pretty excited about that. We had never grilled hamburgers at school before. I figured we’d set up the grill on the kindergarten playground. I was *not* happy when it turned out that the faaaaarrrr “grill” was a horrifically loud buzzer. BZ BZ BZ BZ! I categorically do not like sudden loud noises.

I also don’t like dashboard lights. I especially don’t like dashboard lights when they are accompanied by a faaarrrr drill. Like the last couple of days have been… I got into the Ninja on Monday morning and got halfway down the street and HELLO! the taaaarrrr light was on. Again. Excuse me, AGAIN!!! Wait a minute. The dern taaaarrrr light was just on a few weeks ago. And a few weeks before that. But these are “new” taaaarrrs. We bought them last August! We haven’t put *that* many miles on the Ninja since then. Defective taaaar, maybe?

When I got home that night, I texted the GG: “Tire light is in again.” (Yes, “in”, walking and texting…) He did not reply but when he got home, he checked the tires, put air in the left rear (again) and, oh by the way, was uncharacteristically grumpy. I may call him the Grumpy Growler on the web but he is not the grumpy one in the fam, although he will rant about politicians and various “authorities”, etc. But usually when he gets home from work, he swings in the door yelling, “Luuucyyyy, I’m home!” so that the whole neighborhood can hear.

Not that day. Grumpy. I couldn’t figure it out. I mean, I did NOT make the tire light go on. I don’t think it was me or the tire light but, at any rate, there was a little kerfuffle about *who* would take care of the defective tire. *I* did not want to. I mean, I can *do* that kind of thing but it just seems more expedient for him to do it. As a person who put himself through college working at the old Chrysler Hamtramck assembly plant and is a decent amateur mechanic in his own right, he knows the lingo. But he was so darn grumpy that I begrudgingly agreed to take the Ninja over to the Honda dealer (hold that detail, it becomes important) and get the tire fixed or replaced or whatever. The Honda dealer is not too far from my work and getting from the darn EPA to the *Honda dealer* is like running a gauntlet these days.

So, I got up the next morning, sucked it up and called Honda to arrange to get the tire fixed. A neanderthal took my call but I won’t bore you with those details. The essence was something like, “you probably just have a nail in the tire, don’t worry your pretty little shaggy old head about it”. There is not a nail in the tire but I didn’t tell him that. We agreed that I would bring it in the next day (that would be today). I made all kinds of complicated arrangements for getting to work from Honda (via Mouse) and back to Honda when it was done (via a cube neighbor).

But then… It turned out that… Remember when I said to hold that thought? We bought the tires at… Drum roll… Discount Tire!!!! Fortunately, that information was, uh, remembered, last night so I didn’t end up embarrassing myself at Honda asking about a warranty that they had no record of, thank you god or whoever.

So, the GG, who seemed to be a bit incensed that some neanderthal expressed the opinion that there might be a *nail* in the tire, took the Ninja today and got the tire fixed. Me? I took the Frog Hopper today and I was happy to be driving a vee-hickle without a dashboard light this morning. Except that… I got halfway down the street and realized the oil light was on. Don’t worry, this isn’t the *real* oil light, it is the lite oil light. It is definitely okay to keep driving with the lite oil light and actually it turned itself out halfway to work. But I was not a particularly happy camper.

So, the GG is back to his “Luuuucyyyy I’m home” routine and all is well. Knock on wood big time that I don’t have a damn dashboard light tomorrow!

P.S. Thank you dear for getting the tire fixed!

Is that how it goes? I always loved the Alice in Wonderland books, at least until the loverly youth theatre guild I used to work for put on a production of “Alice’s Great Adventures in Wonderland”. Yes, that was the title. That’s because we didn’t use a published script. Our wondrous executive / artistic director wrote our script herself. I am not using the word “wondrous” sarcastically at all. Our director was (and is) one of the most talented people I have ever known. I loved her then and I still do and now that I am back hanging out in the corporate info-tech world, I don’t see her often enough. But like many people who are gifted with creative genius, working with her could sometimes send the sanest of us (and I am not necessarily among the sanest) screaming out into the snow in stocking feet.

“Alice’s Great Adventures in Wonderland” was one of our large venue, large cast plays. I think there were 55 kids in that play. There were three Alices and two or three of most of the other characters who had any lines at all. We would double or even triple cast these large plays so that different actors played their “major” roles in different performances and most actors had more than one role. So if you were Alice in two performances, you might be an oyster and maybe something else in the rest of the performances. This method of casting was wonderful in terms of providing more kids with acting opportunities. It could also be a logistical nightmare, especially when the *parents* got involved… “But Uncle %K@Ld9 from the Planet Zephron III can only come to the Saturday night performance, yada yada.” People? Research your kids activities *before* you sign them up and then leave it alone.

And I’m not even gonna talk about the costumes. All I have to say about that is that the *volunteers* who coordinated the costumes for those plays were goddesses! I will never forget one play when we were a few weeks into the rehearsal schedule and hadn’t identified a *competent* costume coordinator. Board members were wondering why one kid who usually auditioned for our “big” plays and whose mom was an uber-competent costume mom hadn’t shown up. Hmmm… Then I ran into her at the Westgate Kroger! She hadn’t received the audition postcard! I rather warily said, “Yaknow, if your daughter wants to be in the play, I think she could probably have a role…” I reported this back to the director and wouldn’t you know, not only did that kid get a role (or two or three) but that costume mom ended up on our board of directors.

I had fun doing that “job” for quite a few years. I loved driving all over town running errands or hauling kids to rehearsals. I loved running around backstage in whatever venue we were in. I loved doing the website and creating forms and flyers and tickets and play programs and whatever else I needed to create. I loved hanging out in Office Max making quazillions of copies of things (except when their copy musheens weren’t working well). I didn’t like holding hands with the panicky parents (why didn’t my incredibly talented kid get the “lead” role, yada yada). In the end, the info-tech cube world is a better fit for me. I’m still trying to figure out if I chose that route or if it chose me… It definitely pays better!

I am extremely grumpy at the moment. The immediate issue falls squarely into the category of “first-world problems”, i.e., it has to do with vee-hickle dashboard lights and we’ll leave it at that for now, because, despite the damn dashboard light, we have two late-model *working* vee-hickles. Who can complain? I can and I will. But not in this venue tonight.

More seriously. What is up [AGAIN] with the damn banking industry? I’m not talking about my local branch bank folks like Gladys or Tiffany or even Brandon. They are going to work every day and doing their jobs and probably getting paid piddly shit to do them. I’m talking about the folks up there in the stratosphere. The ones that are trading and hedging things around like crazy (no, I do *not* know the lingo) but it seems like some of what the “top talent” in the banking industry is doing is crazy unsustainable and that they are probably more interested in lining their own pockets than providing financial services to the public in return for a decent living.

There is a school of thought that says you have to pay big money to the folks at the top to attract the top talent. I understand the concept but I don’t totally agree with it. First, how are we defining “top talent”? What have these people done that makes them so fantastic? Or have they been encouraged to find a new job (because they were horrible at the one they had) and given glowing recommendations because everyone fears retribution? I don’t think the “top talent” should automatically be paid salaries that are exponentially greater than their lowlier employees unless they actually produce something. I’m not sure all of this current crop of bank folks are producing anything much. Well, except for lining their own pockets. Did they not learn *anything* from the 2008 meltdown? I don’t think so.

Y’all are bored with this story by now because I have posted it before but my dad and grandaddy were both bankers and I think it bears repeating. In the last couple years of my dad’s life, he occasionally told a story of when he was a boy and went with his dad to collect a cow. Yes, a cow. The cow was on an island and they had to take a ferry to get there. They walked on to the ferry, walked a mile or so to the farm, collected the cow, walked back down to the ferry dock and walked the cow on to the ferry. Somebody was waiting on the other side with a truck or whatever. This was a story that always ended with a little bit of a moral. “When you are in the banking business, you can get into all kinds of shit.” Yes.

I know that the banking financial services industry is a lot different today and that if cows are ever collected, it’s probably whole cattle farms and I don’t even want to think about what happens to those cows but because I am an omnivore who enjoys a good steak once in a while, I should really just shut up. That said, come on. We all have to earn a living but I wonder if those who are at the higher (or more esoteric) levels of the banking financial services industry could at least think just a wee little bit about their customers and the sustainability of our country’s economy.

I do not have cockroaches here in the Landfill Chitchen. I periodically have mice and I have had ants, little moths, and fruit flies. No cockroaches here.

I do think there are plenty more cockroaches in the banking kitchen.

As I think I have blahgged about before, I couldn’t care less about Mother’s Day. Hanging out at a fancy restaurant wearing an fancy uncomfortable pastel outfit and beauteously permed hair and eating too much heavy-duty food is not my thing. Breakfast for me today was yogurt, a half-bowl of Cheerios, and orange juice. Still, I literally could not remember what I did on Mother’s Day 2011. I couldn’t even remember where I *was* on that day. It was right smack in the middle of my sojourn as a 21st Century Nomadic Enigma and I had no memory. Fortunately, I am an obsessive-compulsive blahgger who blathers away every day whether or not I have anything interesting to say. So I looked it up! It turns out that I drove down from the yooperland that day and spent the afternoon on Mouse’s beauteous balcony and shopping at Cost Plus.

Okay, now I remember… I felt so much relief that day. I loved my mother, make no mistake, but our relationship was complicated (like *many* mother-daughter relationships, including those I have with my own beautiful daughters). The Commander had some difficult times during the last few years when (I think) she was starting to need more help and refusing to admit it. And she was able to pull the wool over my eyes to a great extent but that would be a subject for another blahg entry (or maybe it’ll never make it onto the internet).

So, the crisis I knew would eventually occur came last spring and I will just say that, when I read that 2011 Mother’s Day entry, I feel the relief I felt that day. The Comm was forced to live temporarily in the last situation she wanted to be in, which was a hospital long-term care unit with several roommates, two of whom had serious dementia. Sigh. She could not safely live at her house. She did not want to leave the yooperland (after 60 years there). But she was all there mentally and boy oh boy did she push my buttons! Anyway, I was sooooooo glad to be able to return to the Planet Ann Arbor that day. The GG was in the yooperland taking some of his huge number of vacation hours and he hung out with The Commander so that I could actually work over *at* my loverly, dog-poopy cube and decompress in my own house and yard in the evening. It was all good. The Commander liked the GG better than me in a lot of ways but that would be still another blahg entry that I may not ever write.

Eventually we got The Commander into the beautiful assisted living facility that was our choice (mine and hers), albeit grudgingly on her part. At that time, I figured The Commander had a few good years left so I was pretty surprised when her health started to deteriorate and she became sort of a frequent flyer to the ER. She recovered from all of those trips but each one of them took more out of her. And then, during her last trip over to the hoosegow, she contracted a Clostridium difficile bacterial infection. That one did her in. Although she actually beat off the infection, she was too weak (at 91) to keep on keeping on… This was not something I had the capacity to help with except to absorb about a gazillion existential questions that I couldn’t answer. I hope that makes up for all the times she changed my diapers or cleaned up my vomit but it probably doesn’t…

Mother’s Day today? Knock on wood, We went off shopping for plants and stuff. Clematis plants that we *hope* will climb our new arbor. A couple of tomato plants. The “salad bowl” in the photooo. I love leaf lettuce but I am wondering if this thing will actually provide me with salad or give Henry some fast food. We’ll see.

Love you Moom wherever you are. Both of the beach urchins texted me their good wishes. I was okay with that!

That was the clue for the first word I entered in the NYT xword this morning. For a long time it was the only word I entered. I’m still maybe only about 10% done with it. Just cannot get any traction today. Not sure if I eventually will or if this puzz is just not in my wheelhouse. Anyway, I was doing the xword on my phone down at the Planet Ann Arbor farmer’s market a little after seven this morning, eating a donut with chocolate frosting and sprinkles and drinking coffee from Roo’s Roast. Between hoop houses and our unusually warm spring, the farmer’s market was hopping today!

We bought a few things, hoofed it back to the Landfill, then filled up the loverly old Courtois trailer with the rest of the wood from Hans’s old tree (the one that fell on our house a few years ago) plus some other old, crappy wood. Filling up the trailer entails walking by this birdhouse, which is about at eye-level. It is occupied. You might need to click to embiggen the pic. (Don’t worry, the mama was not all that freaked out about our presence).

So with our trailer filled with junk, off we went, snaking down around south and east of town to get to the landfill. I mean the real landfill, not the Landfill that I live in. I feel a little less like the Beverly Hillbillies when we pull the crappy old trailer with the Frog Hopper than I did when we used to haul it with The Indefatigable. I still feel a bit like a hillbilly (and that is a good thing).

We paid $20 to dump our crap but we were not quite finished with the trailer yet. Why? Because one of the things we *took* to the landfill was an old arbor that disintegrated some time in the last few months. And one of the things we *bought* at the farmer’s market was the beauteous arbor in the pic below. We have been eyeballing it for months. We aren’t sure if it is in its permanent location or not. We’re auditioning it there for a bit. Anyway, we couldn’t exactly haul something like that the two miles home on foot, so we bought it and went back to pick it up.

All in all, a pretty darn productive day. When we got home with the arbor, the mail had arrived and there was an astounding number of packages on the front porch but I’ll tell y’all about that some other day… I triaged the latest ton of papers to arrive from Siberia, recycling or shredding most of it (because I have online access to it all). Potted some little basil plants, walked to the Plum Market, drove through the bank (ATM) and post office, laundry and a little weeding and I dunno what else. The GG went to war against the Urushiol Oil Cartel, the one that operates rather clandestinely in our own otherwise loverly back yard. We are grilling tonight. Hope y’all are having fun whatever you’re doing.

Good night,
KW

In other words, just another Friday night on The Planet Ann Arbor. And here is Mr. Roboto at the Oscar Tango. Note to self. Get better at staging these iPad shots…

I can’t exactly remember but I think we were subject to an alien invasion at some point.

We got a little Frampton fix as we were hoofing it back over to the west side courtesy of the Breakers playing at Mark’s Carts. Of course the GG just kind of pooh-poohed this. “Heck, Frampton played over at Woodward and Catalpa all the time.” His neighborhood. Er, this may be a mis-memory as neither of us seem to be able to goggle up any info about Frampton living anywhere near Royal Joke (Gogol was goggle-eyed!). But I was soooo envious of all the big-city kids when I was a kid up there in the god-forsaken yooperland. Or so I thought at the time… I want you-ou-ou to show me the way…

And so goodnight from the GG to you from a big sewer pipe up on Dexter, which is totally torn up at this point and hosing traffic in the whole area. Welcome to summer in the Great Lake State.

That thing looks like it’ll hold a lotta poop.

Actually, it isn’t really a “political” opinion. At least I don’t see it that way. It’s *my* opinion. One that has evolved over time. You might guess that I am talking about “gay marriage” and you are right.

I just don’t see what the big deal is. I have to confess that I didn’t always feel this way. But that’s probably because, when I was growing up, I didn’t have any idea what “gay” meant except something approximating “happy”. I do remember getting in trouble when I was about 10 for using the word “queer” to refer to some neighborhood kid that “me and Laurie” were “fighting with”. I couldn’t figure out why it was a bad word and no one would explain it to me. It was just a kid “me and Laurie” didn’t like for whatever reason and we were pretty scrappy little comrades. But we had to be because the Waisenen boys lived just down the alley from me and they were ROCK THROWERS! But whoever “that kid” was, he may or may not be gay…

As a kid, I was taught that when you got married, you married someone of the opposite sex and it couldn’t be your brother or your father or your cousin. Those kinds of families were pretty much all I knew. My grandparents and my aunts and uncles and most of my friends had those kinds of families. That all fit with my world view. I liked boys from an early age and, when I wasn’t being an insufferable tomboy, I was dreaming of my someday beautiful white wedding. I remember being squicked out at a junior high sleepover when some of the other girls wanted to “make out”. I know that they were just experimenting and probably most of them were pretending they were making out with Paul McCartney or that cute boy in 4th hour or somebody. I just didn’t want to kiss a girl… Of course, to be honest, I am squicked out by most males too. I am picky picky picky…

It wasn’t until MUCH later (like when I was in my 30s (yes really)) that it occurred to me that those two women who lived together that my family knew (and loved) were probably lesbians. My parents *knew* it! But they never told us kids anything about it. That subject was pretty much taboo in the small northern city I grew up in. And then I realized that my first boyfriend Danny (we were six) was probably gay. And he is. I know because his mom was one of The Comm’s BFFs and she has called to check on me quite frequently in the last year and we’ve talked about that. And, you know, I live here on the Planet Ann Arbor, where it has been pretty easy to be openly gay for a long time and I have interacted with gay folks on a fairly regular basis. Yaknow what? They are mostly regular people who are doing the same wide variety of things in their lives that I do with mine. Working. Raising children. Buying grokkeries. Trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage. Hiking, skiing, kayaking. Things that I do.

I don’t believe that people choose their gender identity. I also believe that gender is not a black or white issue. One of the things that is being ignored in all of this controversy is those who are born with ambiguous genitals and/or chromosomal abnormalities and are assigned a gender at birth which maybe does not map to what they will become as they mature. I don’t know what those people do or how they decide how to pick a life partner. Some of them don’t and I think that is sad.

As far as I am concerned, people should be able to marry whoever they want and live their lives the way they want to with all of the protections that a married heterosexual couple has. Trying to legislate biology is just crazy. If you are a heterosexual woman married to a heterosexual man and you both treat each other (and your children) with respect, that is wonderful. But that is not always the case. There are *people* who abuse their partners and/or children. I don’t think it matters whether they are gay or straight. It’s all bad.

PS. The photooo is cropped from one Mouse took in Zion. I didn’t ask her for permission so I hope she’s okay with that.

As I kind of expected, our school technology bond passed (resoundingly) yesterday. I am neither happy or unhappy about that. I am absolutely utterly in complete support for our schools to have up-to-date computer stuff. As I think I said the other day, there are probably some computers still around from when the beach urchins were in middle school if not earlier. And then there’s the infrastructure. Somewhere I read a quote from a school administrator that so many students received wifi-capable devices for xmas 2011 that many school wi-fi systems were brought to their knees. Yes, we are an affluent district. Our middle-schoolers (grade-schoolers?) have smart phones. Mine wouldda had ‘em too if they’d been available back in the Jurassic Age.

Also, I have long been an advocate for computer/internet technology in the schools. When one of the beach urchins was stuck in a huge, bureaucratic middle school where all the cool kids ruled the school (exaggerating but not by much), I locked horns with the principal* on many occasions because there wasn’t an email list (or group or whatever) that the administration could use to get messages out to parents. You know, things like “report cards were sent home today”. But nooooo. He insisted on using backpack mail. That did not work all that well for me and probably a whole bunch of other parents for reasons I won’t fully disclose on the internet but can be summed up by a classic statement from back in the Jurassic Age: “Moom, you *keep* yourself *out* of my business!”

I think most schools are way beyond that mindset now. I’m sure that they are all sending out mass emails on a regular basis and some of them are requiring teachers to post stuff on the web, etc., etc.

Here’s the thing… The technobond campaign relied heavily on language like “support our kids”. I dunno. The public schools *are* all about the students and maybe that’s what it takes to win a technobond issue. But, at least in our affluent district, I think it’s more about outfitting the *teachers* with up-to-date equipment and the software applications that they need. C’mon, it’s 2012 and you cannot run any kind of organization (non-profit or not) without up-to-date technology. Many of today’s students are surrounded by computing devices of all description and they know how to use them and so I don’t think we need laptops for every kid funded by the taxpayer. Parents are providing those to a lot of kids. We MUST make sure that we provide students who CANNOT afford those devices with access to them. And we certainly do have many students in that category. We need to help level the playing field for them.

I don’t think that (in 2012) bond issues are the right way to fund computers in the schools and all of the infrastructure that surrounds them. This stuff needs to be included in the general operating budget (or whatever you call it). We’re beyond the days where a school could get by on a few computers running Sticky Bear ABC or Oregon Trail. We need to make sure our schools are provided with new technology on a regular basis.

* Dean Mike was a pretty good buddy of mine. I was PTO treasurer under his watch at two schools and he once managed to convince me to actually get up on a stage and hand out “prizes” to kids who had earned the highest points at one of those awful “gift wrap” fundraisers. I went home and took a shower after that.

Doooo you want to dance? Tell me. Tell me!

I was the Number One voter in my precinct. Of course I don’t mean that I am Super Voter or whatever. Actually my voting history has some holes in it. But I took my skunk walk this morning and arrived at my polling place *exactly* when it opened. My phone proclaimed the time just as a poll worker opened up the door to the school and said, “The polls are open!”

I have some of the weirdest voting experiences. You would think that being the first voter to arrive, everything would run smoothly. And it started out that way. First off, people were surprised that *I* was number one. “Where is that guy who always arrives five minutes early?” asked one worker. Another replied, “Maybe he’s dead.” If he is dead, I guess maybe I am now the First Voter, uh, until I die… And then a new generation of poll workers will be wondering where the baggy old kayak woman who always arrives early is. Maybe she died…

Anyway. I was first and the two volunteers who were charged with finding my name and checking it off could *not* remember what they were supposed to do. Opening night jitters or something. Meanwhile… I was standing there… I honestly think it took about five minutes for them to sort it out. “Where do I write the ballot number?” “Where do I put this little sticker?” “Where does her ballot application go?” (If I am number one even one more time, I will be able to tell *them* what to do… ) Even though I knew everything would be all right, I was a little nervous by the end of that.

But what could possibly go wrong? There was only one measly bond issue on the ballot. I couldn’t possibly over-vote, like I supposedly did in a previous election and was humiliated to hear the poll worker announce it to the room. That didn’t happen today. Today, when I finally got my ballot, I headed straight over to the ballot eating musheen. Hmmm, did I fergit a step? The poll worker caught it. “You haven’t VOTED yet.” Er, duh… Earth to KW… I walked over to one of the voting carrels (tail between legs) and VOTED, i.e., filled in one little oval. The ballot-eating musheen ate my ballot without complaint. Because it was the FIRST ballot, I could even hear it softly ker-plunking down to the bottom of the musheen.

I took my “I voted” sticker and walked out and that’s another election done and we’ll see how it turns out. I think there will be a very light turnout today. When we are voting for a new president, I have to get to my polling station at like 5 AM to be the number one voter. That seems topsy-turvy to me. I think that these local elections are extremely important. I think more people need to start paying more attention to the election process at the local level. Who is running for city council or county commissioner or school board or whatever. I know how hard it is to keep up with all of this but often the decisions made at these levels have a more immediate effect on our lives and our pocketbooks than state or national decisions.

If there is an election wherever you are, please vote if you can. There are 22 minutes left to vote here on The Planet Ann Arbor.

Love y’all,
-KW

I will have to do that tomorrow morning. Our school district has a technology bond up for tomorrow. I am totally unsure about whether to vote yes or no on this bond.

Our school district *needs* new computers and “stuff”. I certainly hope that they aren’t still using the old Apple castoffs that were installed (one to a classroom or something like that) back in the 1990s when the beach urchins were in elementary school and the GG was on the district’s technology committee*. Back in those days, we were in the beginnings of outfitting our schools for the online information age. You know, the age that allows me to actually have a career in something that wasn’t even dreamed of back when I graduated from college back in the 1970s. But that would be a whole ‘nother story.

What to do… Do I vote for the bond even though that at this stage of the game, I think that up-to-date computer equipment should be standard in every building in the school district and, therefore a part of the regular budget. I have a lot of things to say about this but probably not tonight. We’ll see how I vote tomorrow. But I am gonna vote. Make no mistake!!!

* I remember when the GG was serving on that technology committee and the district was advertising jobs. Someone asked the GG why he didn’t apply. Answer? You can’t afford me. Hee. But make no mistake, this did not mean that we were in the 1%… Never!!

Honest to kee-reist, I spent the whole blasted day thinking it was Mother’s Day! Don’t get me wrong. I could not care less about the greeting card “holiday” Mother’s Day. (Except that it rings a bell that Mother’s Day is *not* a “holiday” created by the greeting card companies. I’m too lazy to google). Nevertheless, I lived today as if it were a holiday created just for us taaarrred old mooms. First of all, I took a small holiday from flinging! Instead, I dredged out my fake plastic terra cotta pots and headed over to English Gardens, where I bought a couple flats of impatiens and some potting soil. Yeah, I know I can *make* potting soil right in the back yard. I didn’t want to be bothered with that today. It was Mother’s Day, roight? (Roight.)

Around quarter to two, I put my backpack on and headed out the door to walk over to the Water Hill neighborhood for their annual music fest. I didn’t even get past the next door neighbors’ house when the Ninja came wheeling around the corner — the GG returning from his northern boondoggle. What the heck, you are home, do you wanna walk down to Water Hill? And so we unpacked the Ninja and set off.

Waterhill is my style of concert! Various people play (or host groups) in their front yards or on their front porches or in one case, someone was playing the piano *inside* the house. You can walk all over the neighborhood and hang out at any of these little concerts for a minute or five or 60. Popcorn, cookies, and lemonade are everywhere. Everyone was playing, professional bands and amateurs having fun. And kids like this wonderful young girl.

These folks attracted the biggest crowd I saw over there.

There are lemonade stands and popcorn sales and cookie sales. I bought lemonade from one youngster and ended up getting it all over my phone camera… And there are Water Hill Water Closets! People who have opened their bathrooms to folks who have to go. Not sure I would be comfortable with any old Tom, Dick, or Harry coming into the Landfill to use the Blue and Only Bathroom. I would probably be hanging out nearby with a bottle (or two or ten) of Lysol and a dozen rolls of paper towels. (Well except for My Own Dear Uncle Harry who is welcome to use my bathroom whenever he wants, of courserous! I have been known to use his outhouse in the Moominbeach off-season.)

For whatever reason, I have been thinking about the term Water Closet a lot lately… After our hike over to Water Hill, I had a loverly little “Mother’s Day” glass of whine, shown here on the loverly little table I bought today when I ran out of potting soil and decided to hit up Ace Hardware for more instead of English Gardens. It is a double-decker (you can’t see the bottom deck) and it was on sale. It is a backwards step in flinging in a way but a forward step (I hope) in making our back yard more comfortable.

It was while I was sitting out there sipping my whine that I googled around and found out that Mother’s Day is actually NEXT Sunday. Duh! That is okay. I celebrated it today. All by myself (except for the walk to Water Hill). And I had fun! So nobody needs to feel obligated to do anything for me next weekend! Don’t I just take the cake? <cheesy-grin>

Except I can’t figger out *how* to turn him on… Other than that, not a bad day albeit not without some moments of angst and/or frustration. Dumped a few old computers and things off at the annual Pi-High eWaste event — easy as pie, just sat there in the Frog Hopper while a small army of folks emptied the trunk. There’s another one of those giraffe-style iMacs that didn’t make the cut. It’s Its disk drive needs to be cleared of porn I guess. [Oh, I'm just kidding, y'all.] That black printer is almost brand new. What a piece of crap. Won’t copy or scan any more and not worth fixing. No laptops. We seem to be able to repurpose laptops.

Later on, Mouse served me brunch on her loverly balcony. With coffee in an owly mug. Lots of wildlife around and about Mouse’s otherwise rather typical apartment complex.

And where I am not? The GG’s purpose in heading up to the yooperland was not to open up the moomincabin but that’s what he ended up doing.

Today was a beach day and I am missing out on that but I managed to get quite a bit of flinging and some paper-sorting done (I could spend 40 hours a week sorting out papers) and running my cute little Rooooomba through her paces and even managed a few cupboard cleaning activities. And walked to the Plum Market where I realized — before I got inside the door, thank you very much — that I did not have my debit card with me. So I walked back home and *back* to the Plum Market. And back home again. It’s okay. I needed the walk.

Now I am sitting back here in the raggedy looking Landfill back yard thinking about stuff. About all the times I sat out here watching my cute tow-headed little beach urchins play on the swingset or splash in one of those little KMart pools. And wondering whether or not I have the gumption to attempt some teensy tinesy little gardening prodjects. Will I overcome the inertia that almost always overtakes me? If I do, will my black thumb cooperate with me? Stay tuned…

Oh yeah, are we getting new neighbors? Twice today (that I saw) a couple of white vee-hickles pulled into Hans’s driveway and people (including children) got out of them. But the real estate sign is still up. A mystery. Stay tuned…

Today I got to put on my archaeologist hat! I bet you didn’t know I even *had* an archaeologist hat. I do! And what does an archaeologist hat look like? Well. My fav-o-rite archaeologist hat is a white baseball type of hat with sun wings sewn on to it. By hand with red thread. (If I’m remembering accurately. I’m pretty sure I at least have the sun wings right.)

Actually my archaeologist hat does not resemble the Sun Wings Hat at all. My archaeologist hat is just a regular knit hat with a pair of big caribou antlers attached to it. A double-shovel, I believe they call it. I don’t have to put my archaeologist hat on very often but when I do, look out world!

So today I was trundling along doing my regular job, coding html pages, unsnarling old javascript, and s-l-o-w-l-y writing requirements. Tink tink tink. All the while, in the back of my mind, collecting issues that will have to be discussed and planning for how we will incorporate the next bit of new and different functionality into our product. A low-pressure multi-tasking kind of day working on one prodject while occasionally answering questions about others via email or I/M or simply yelling over the wall.

And then I clicked a link to a page way over in an obscure corner of the “demo”, our product’s very high fidelity prototype and, well hello. What is that? I won’t try to describe what was wrong other than to say there were no borders where I expected to see borders. Don’t ask. You do not want to know. This launched me into an entirely different direction. Something like, “Hey, KW, we are re-directing your space capsule from the planet Mars to the planet Pluto.” Roight.

So I put on my archaeologist hat. Note that when I am not wearing it, it hangs on my cube wall, so beware when you are entering my cube. And I dug into the way-back machine. When did this obscure little page get designed? What kind of conversations led up to this design decision? Or maybe it just got overlooked and the dev team did their own thing. That would be unusual but it does happen.

In the end, I did not find the answer, despite the best efforts of a yelling-over-the-wall convo with my new cube neighbor FZ. That is, FZ has been with the company many many years longer than I have but moved to a cube kitty-corner from me today. I have decided that this issue is not a major issue although I will probably bring it up when we get serious about my next prodject. For now, I’m gonna hang my archaeologist hat back up in my cube and plod along into the typical future of my loverly IT job.

I do okay with info technology “archaeology”. I would not make a good archaeologist. I would probably get bored with some of the digging and cleaning and classifying and I do not know what else. If I were an on-site type archaeologist, I would be uncomfortable if I didn’t have regular access to a shower (that means at LEAST once a day). Yeah I know. I live in the god-forsaken Great Lakes State. We have a lot of problems but we have fresh water pretty much everywhere.

But yay for archaeologists! We need them and we need to value their knowledge and skills more than we do. Just like we need musicians and artists and those very valuable folks who can’t quite quantify their skills but have a way of making the trains run on time. And TEACHERS! Fer kee-reist, how did I fergit to include those often thankless, underpaid professionals! All of those professionals are just as important as engineers and doctors et al but that would be a whole ‘nother post and I am about done for today.

Baggy the Washerwoman wanted nothing more in life than a Beauteous Titanium Tiara. It would make her look so young and bee-yoo-ty-ful perched atop her scraggly old dishwater-blonde/gray hair. Grok grok. The ol’ bag is off her rocker! Baggy the Washerwoman heard that there was just such a tiara available but it seemed that she needed to go through Quacky the Duck to get it.

So Baggy the Washerwoman trudged over to Quacky the Duck’s cluttered office in the back of the neighborhood pet frog accoutrement store and asked how to get the Beauteous Titanium Tiara. Quacky the Duck said to Baggy the Washerwoman, “Go and get that battered old yellow plastic sippy cup out of your cupboard and take it down to the Great Gray-green Greasy Urinius River. Hungry the Heron will exchange it for a beauteous titanium tiara.”

Baggy the Washerwoman trudged back to the Landfill, grabbed the battered old yellow plastic sippy cup and trudged wearily down to the Great Gray-green Urinius River. She timidly approached Hungry the Heron. “Quacky the Duck said that if I gave you this battered old yellow plastic sippy cup, you would give me a beauteous titanium tiara. It would go so well with my crappy old washerwoman hair and clothes.” “Harumph!” said Hungry the Heron, “Where’s my five-tier birthday cake with red, orange, yellow, green, and blue layers and purple frosting? I can’t give you your stoopid old tiara without my birthday cake.” Baggy the Washerwoman lowered her eyes in shame and dismay and replied, “But I didn’t *know* that you required a five-tier birthday cake with red, orange, yellow, green, and blue layers and purple frosting. Quacky the Duck didn’t tell me that.” “No birthday cake, no tiara,” said Hungry the Heron.

Meanwhile, back at the Landfill, Froggy was getting hungry and Baggy the Washerwoman was not around to catch fleas and flies for him. So he reached into the refrigerator, snagged a slimy five-week-old cucumber and shoved it into his gullet with a chaser of laundry detergent. Grok grok frogksg burp.

Baggy the Washerwoman trudged wearily over to Quick Green Lizard’s bakery. “I want to buy a five-tier birthday cake with red, orange, yellow, green, and blue layers and purple frosting. It’s for Hungry the Heron so I can get my beauteous titanium tiara. “Sneedly-deedly-dee tinkly-winkly argly-bargly blippity-bloop,” said the always accommodating Quick Green Lizard, as fast as lightning. Now Baggy the Washerwoman could not understand most of that lizard talk but since Quick Green Lizard swung into action and, quick as a wink, produced a beeeeeauteous five-tier birthday cake with red, orange, yellow, green, and blue layers and purple frosting, Baggy the Washerwoman figured that Hungry the Heron would be ecstatic, so she paid for the cake and trudged off back over to the Great Gray-green Urinius River.

Meeeeeeanwhiiiile, back at the Landfill, Froggy was still hungry. Baggy the Washerwoman was stiill not around to catch fleas and flies for him, so he reached into the refrigerator, snagged a whole hunk of the GG’s stinky 12-year-old cheese and shoved it into his gullet with a chaser of Listerine. Grooooook grlbok glubrok buuuurp.

Alas, when Baggy the Washerwoman arrived back at the Great Gray-green Urinius River and presented Hungry the Heron with his loverly birthday cake, he roared, “What is that sparkly stuff on top of my cake? This cake does not meet the requirements for the beauteous titanium tiara and you can’t have it! Anyway, why do you think an ugly old bag like you should have a tiara?”

Tail between her legs, Baggy the Washerwoman trudged wearily back to Quacky the Duck and said (meekly), “I didn’t know I needed to give Hungry the Heron a five-tier birthday cake with red, orange, yellow, green, and blue layers and purple frosting to get my tiara.” Quacky the Duck said, “What? You went to Hungry the Heron for that stoopid tiara? You were supposed to go and talk to Larry the Lion. But you have to be careful about approaching Larry the Lion because he will EAT you if you don’t present all of the correct requirements.”

Baggy the Washerwoman was too tired to even think about approaching Larry the Lion by that time. She decided to put off that encounter for a while, like maybe a lightyear into the future. So she trudged wearily back to the Landfill…

…where she found that Froggy had shoved a whole chicken (the one Baggy had been defrosting for dinner) down his gullet. She wasn’t sure if he had chased it with anything. grokka grokka grokka BUUURRRRRPPPPP!

My favorite book. Well, maybe not my favorite book *ever*. That would probably be Parsley. I think I checked Parsley out of the Sault Ste. Siberia Carnegie Library every week. Our Carnegie Library had lions and if you click this link and then click the picture, you will get a slideshow with the lions and some other random photos of stuff in Sault Ste. Siberia from one early May morning in 2009.

When I was small, we went to the library every Saturday for a story hour with our beloved children’s librarian Bobby Krieger (not sure about spelling). I’m sure Mrs. Krieger is long dead but I still remember her voice from 50 years ago or so. I loved story hour and she must have loved her job.

I looked and looked and looked for Parsley when the beach urchins were young. Ludwig Bemelmans is (was?) a very popular children’s author (think Madeline) but I wondered if Parsley was not politically correct enough for 1980s-born children. After all, a hunter tries to *shoot* Parsley and ends up falling off a cliff to his death, if I’m remembering accurately. His last words were (I think), “My luck, she is running out!” I am too lazy to go get the book and check. Because, although I did not find the book, The Commander was a bit more tenacious about the search for Parsley than I was so yes, I own a copy. (Thank you Moom.) And that was before them thar intertubes were worth anything to the average consumer, so she did her search mostly by phone.

I don’t remember exactly when my Microbe book came into my life. Maybe I was seven or eight. I do remember reading it many many many many times in my bedroom on Superior Street. (Note to self: look up and post photos of that long-gone bedroom. It was pretty cool for a small bedroom in a little bungalow.) I loved to read about science back then. I loved the pictures in my Microbes book and I think I probably had the text memorized. I still love it now, although I remember the pictures better than the words.

And so I was kind of freaking out during the last year when I could NOT find the book at The Commander’s house. Where the heck could it be? I knew she hadn’t gotten rid of it. She got rid of a lot of children’s books many many years ago before I had my own children (and I was okay with that) but there were some books that she kept and I knew that was one of them because I had seen it there. She must have known it was a fave. Last weekend, I was mucking about moving books around the Landfill and getting rid of some of *my* children’s books and right there, on a shelf in my house, was my Microbe book! Apparently I snagged it a while ago.

Does anybody else have favorite books from childhood that they still care about and wish they have or maybe have saved from their parents’ house or whatever?

Speaking of that, I think that I left Pockets up there! How could I have done that? I will have to rescue it on the next trip…

Yes. This is it. We have adopted the “Small House” philosophy, where people live in houses that have less than, oh, I dunno, maybe 200 square feet. So this is our new house. Except that there’s a problem and that is that this house is in Bird Hills Park. Which is a public park and we would have to park our vee-hickles outside the park. Somewhere. I do not think that the parking lot allows long-term parking.

I am not sure who built this dwelling. Was it homeless folks in the park? Was it neighborhood children? I don’t think so. I am gonna guess it is adult males living in the neighborhood of Bird Hills Park. Adult males who may or may not have children. I may be wrong but I do not think too many folks try to actually *live* in Bird Hills Park. I suppose one could live there but it is a long hike to get from there to any kind of a grokkery store. Like I already said.

I am taaarrred tonight and I am wishing I knew exactly where the heck I need to put my foot next.

Love y’all
KW

What? You want me to stop playing Bejeweled and try to actually write a blahg post? Yaaaahh, okay. I’ll try. I do not know what to write about and I am not sure I am in the mood to blather away about mostly nothing today. So let’s change the universe…

Let’s make “working from home” a *real* option for most of the folks on the planet. Or if not from home exactly, from cool work “centers” that are a walking or bicycling distance from home. We have too many damn automotive vee-hickles on the roads and that is not a good thing. Driving should be fun! It is not fun when you are sitting through four traffic light cycles. I also know that there are issues about how much energy large server “farms” use. I am not very smart but I am guessing that people who are smart are studying this too. I can only *guess* that server farms use less energy than the massive numbers of cars that people use to commute to jobs that they could do somewhere else.

As a society, we *need* to have fewer vee-hickles on the roads. But I love to drive and I don’t want to give up that privilege, at least not until I am 90 and might need to, heaven forbid. So, why can’t we redesign our cities so that driving is [largely] a fun activity and people can walk, bike, or take a bus/train/hovercraft to work. Last winter when I was hanging out with The Commander in the small city of Sault Ste. Siberia, I frequently walked to the hoosegow and/or FV and/or various restaurants and/or grokkery stores and whatever. In short, I walked all over that city. I couldn’t walk to Waldemort or Glen’s but [mostly] I didn’t need Waldemort or Glen’s. I certainly used my vee-hickle when I needed to. But as horrible as this last winter was for mom and me, I will always remember those walking trips with fondness. Walking kept me sane.

I love this story playing on NPR right now. A man’s wife dies after a long illness and the next morning, he finds his young children getting ready for school. He questions them, saying, “You don’t have to go to school today. Mommy just died yesterday.” His daughter says, “We are going to school because Mommy would want us to keep it movin’.” (“Keep it movin’” was a favorite saying of the mom.)

That’s how I feel. Keep it movin’. It reminds me of the morning so long ago when we received the news that the beach urchins’ beloved Grandma Sally had died. They were in 4th and 1st grade and I told them that they didn’t have to go to school if they didn’t want to. I had some sort of half-baked plan to go out for breakfast and, oh I don’t know what else. Drive down by the river or whatever. They were having nothing of that. Of course they were going to school. They *had* to go to school. “We can’t miss school!” Okay. So they went to school. And *I* went to school too. To read to my “pirates”. After school we went out and got the beach urchins’ ears pierced.

I am keeping it movin’. I don’t think that keeping it movin’ means never slowing down enough to look back and remember people that are gone. I think it means continuing to put one foot in front of the other. Moving forward. Keeping up with our responsibilities and our relationships with the *living*. The pace may be slower on some days than others and it is okay to take little breaks when you need them but onward is the name of the game.

I am feeling pretty good about things this weekend. (Knock on wood for me please!) We have actually made enough progress in our flinging activities that I was even able to do a little bit of *cleaning*. I mean cleaning in the areas of the Landfill that aren’t cleaned as a matter of daily routine. Cleaning kitchens and bathrooms is a *requirement* for me. I can live with a little lot of dust in other areas. My goal is to get rid of enough “stuff” that I can *easily* clean any nook and cranny of the Landfill that I want to, without moving a whole bunch of stuff. But rodent turds *anywhere* send me into a fury. And so I was flinging books (mostly around, not out) in the Landfill Dungeon and I discovered rodent turds in yet another place. Off I went, looking for the rickety old Eureka canister-style vacuum and some windex or whatever. But as I was galumphing up the stairs, I heard the vacuum cleaner start up. The GG was cleaning out my cute little Ninja. Probably about the first time the poor little thing has been vacuumed since maybe a year and a half ago. No way was I gonna disturb that activity!

I have to give the GG a big bunch of kudos here. He has also been flinging and he’s been helping me fling some of The Commander’s stuff that I’m sure she had her own plans to fling… AND. He vacuumed out the Ninja today and mowed the grass in the back yard (new grass in the front) and did all kinds of other maintenance-type things too numerous to list.

Plus we started the day (I guess I am going backwards through the day) with a loverly urban hike from the Landfill up to and through Bird Hills park, picked up the Washtenaw Border to Border Trail at Barton Dam and hiked along the river to one of our fave breakfast joints, the Northside Grille. Back home through Kerrytown, up Miller, and through Miller Woods, where we encountered the loverly bracket fungus in the photoooo.

Bracket fungus seems to be a good way to end this higgledy-piggledy entry.

Hope your weekend was good. Love,
KW

It’s Saturday and… The band is playin’… And we are here on The Planet and I wanted to fling today and I did. The problem is that I flung enough stuff last weekend that I couldn’t exactly think of where to start today… The GG has done some of his own flinging and thanks to him, the Frog Hopper was full of old computers and things that we had planned to drop off at Pioneer High for the annual Umich electronics recycling event. Alas, we were wrong about that date. It’s next week. But we *were* able to drop off the old World Book encyclopedia that my parents “invested” in back in the 1960s (who knew about the darn intertubes back then) and a bunch of plastic containers of varying sizes at the Kiwanis Club. Yay for those wonderful people. The old computers will stay in the Frog Hopper until next weekend and then we *will* drop them off.

About 10:00 AM or whenever, the GG grabbed a stool and started looking up in the area of the “liqwire” “cabinet”, which means on top of those gold-painted cabinets on the south wall of the Landfill Chitchen. And I remembered, oh yeah, just last weekend I was thinking about getting rid of all that liqwire that we don’t ever use. Like kirsch and cassis and schnapps and creme de cacao and even that one bottle of tequila that only has a couple of shots in it.

So, while the GG was sleeping or reading or whatever, I dumped a whole bunch of liqwire down the drain. Yes. It is stuff that most people would not want to sit around and drink. Some of those bottles were purchased because a recipe required a small amount and we used that and they’ve been hanging around here for ten or fifteen years.

Wasteful? Maybe. I am not leaving old liqwire for my kids to clean up.

If I ever again use a recipe that requires a small amount of some odd kind of liqwire, I will go out and try to buy the airplane size. Usually that’s about all that’s needed.

And so, these little bottles were collected by my dad over the years and when The Comm was forced to move to assisted living we helped her move them down there. I think her idea (and mine) was that she would have a teensy little snort while watching a movie before going to bed. It is sad that she was never again in good enough health to be able to partake. So these little bottles are now here at the Landfill.