Random bits of my so-called life.

I do not have anything to write about that anybody wants to read about. In general it’s just the same ol’ same ol’ around here. Is it getting old? Yes it is getting old. If anybody calls me “strong” I will smack them! I am not strong. I am totally freaking out that my life has been so turned upside down for so long and I am *trying* to put one foot in front of the other. Whether I can do that with anything approaching grace (or even numbness) varies literally by the minute. I wanna get outta here. I wanna go home.

Well, except for the fact that a frickin’ jury duty “questionnaire” awaits me at home. Do I want to be called for jury duty? NOOOOOO I do not. Actually, since I have been called something like five times in the last 10 years, I am totally, utterly, absolutely pissed off (yes, the P word, sorry). From the get-go, I think if you have been called over and over and over again, you should get a grace period. A grace period that lasts longer than one frickin’ year, that is!

I know that these stupid questionnaires get sent out on a random basis. Er, arguably random, since I seem to get more of them than anybody else I know. I know that the computer that generates these goddamn questionnaires doesn’t know who I am or care what my current circumstances are. I also know that a frickin’ questionnaire doesn’t mean that you are called for a definite date. That will maybe come six months from now. Hopefully by then I will not be living inside a frickin’ movie. Still. Finding out that I got a frickin’ jury questionnaire rubs salt into every single one of my current psychological wounds. I do not need to deal with the frickin’ county court system right now. I do not even want to think about the court system and the scum of the earth criminals that require *me* to have to respond to jury duty questionnaires.

If you correctly guess which (frickin’) movie I am living in, I will reward you with one doozy of a lake effect snowstorm.

P.S. If you actually read this, thank you for letting me rant and rave and vent. And no, this is NOT all about meeeee. It is hard for everyone. But it is soooooo hard.

Things I am missing down on the Planet Ann Arbor:

My job! Even though I can do my job from here, for the most part I have been unable to FOCUS on anything that takes longer than a crossword puzzle or a round of Angry Birds.

Obama’s speech, although I would not have attended it anyway. I did see on fb that our own npJane got to shake Obama’s hand! [Disclaimer: Although I support Obama, I do NOT think he is God or the Supreme Zo or whatever and I doubt npJane does either. But still.]

Hare Krishnas walking and chanting at Fifth and Liberty. I wouldn’t have seen that either because I wouldda been at my, you know, JOB!

Walking down to the Old Town Barrrrooooomm on a Friday night, then walking home, taking my second shower of the day and collapsing.

My loverly dog-poopy cubicle, all of my loverly [not dog-poopy] colleagues, and the wildlife and ponds that surround my work place [probably somewhat dog-poopy].

Walking down to the Farmer’s Market early early on a Saturday morning, getting coffee at Roos Roast.

Urban hiking over by Barton Dam to check on the birdhouses the GG put up last winter.

My Mouse. Even though she is probably not all that happy about me discarding her supply of young mammalian quadruped stomach acid.

Walking to the Plum Market. Ooohhhh, walking to the Plum Market. Those people aren’t gonna recognize me when I finally get back over there.

I emulated Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder today by persisting in some relentless positive action. I am not a particular fan of our current Great Lake State governor. His mantra is “relentless positive action” and although I actually understand what he is trying to accomplish, with some of the DRASTIC positive actions he has pushed through since his election, it often seems to me that he is a bulldozer in disguise, spraying collateral damage in all directions. I’m sure one or two of my five readers disagree. I’m not gonna argue today.

More on that some other day. I am not really feeling very positive right now. I won’t talk about yesterday. Nothing really terrible happened. Some good things happened. It was a long day and I didn’t necessarily make all of the right decisions. I mean small personal decisions, not life-changing decisions for other people. In general it’s the same old same old around here.

Today? Better? I could not describe today if I could. Again, it was more or less the same old same old. It was mostly just my own emotional landscape that got dragged through the wringer. I guess that’s legitimate. But there has been one teensy tinesy wee little bit of a conundrum that has been bugging me for a while now and through the teensiest tinesiest wee little bit of relentless positive action, I have solved it. I am resting a bit more comfortably now, knowing that the heat and lucky-shucky will not be shut off at the Squatter’s Paradise.

Oh, not that it *would* be shut off any time soon. But here it is. Ever since The Commander handed over the keys to her checkbook, I have been picking away at moving all of the Squatter’s Paradise and Moomincabin bills over to autopay. Sometimes it’s as easy as just going online and creating an account with something like “kayakwoman” as the user. No ID required, maybe an account number or address or whatever. Other times, I have to impersonate The Commander. It’s okay. I have her permission.

DTE Energy? Not so fast, KW. Why? Well… It’s complicated. I mean, the bill is all friendly: Go green and pay online, just go to this web page and sign up. Roight. But. The bill is in my dad’s name. He died in 2006. So I have gone online to that web page umpteen million times to try to achieve autopay for the Squatter’s Paradise DTE bill. No dice. “We can’t find that account.” “We can’t find that social security number.” Blah blah blah. So every single month, I diligently write a check out of The Commander’s checking account, put it in an envelope with a stamp on it and throw it into the blasted snail mail.

This month? Where’s my mail? Where’s The Commander’s mail? Where’s The Commander’s checkbook? Where’s MY checkbook? I left the checkbook *I* was using to pay Comm-type bills down on the Planet Ann Arbor (how the HECK did I do that?) almost three weeks ago. I did finally find a couple of checkbooks up here but there are NO BLASTED checks in them. I wasn’t even sure where the blasted BILL was until I FINALLY dredged through a big bag of mail today and found it. The good news? Not due until February 1. Whew! The positive action? Got onto The Commander’s PNC account and set up a payment over the internet. Whew!

I’m sure it would take more than one late payment for the heat / lucky-shucky to get shut off here at the Squatter’s Paradise but I do not think that a bunch of fake faaarrrplace logs would do much to heat the place up and I DO need the derned internet. But I did figure it out and now I am not sure why it took me so blasted long! I, uh, *work* in online banking…

Oh, maybe you are wondering something like, “Why doesn’t the baggy old kayak woman just CALL DTE Energy?” Why???? Sigh… “If you want to report blah blah blah, press 1.” “If you need assistance with your bill, press 2.” Etc., etc., ad nauseam. My problem is more complicated than simply pressing a button. I need a person who can use fuzzy logic to help me sort this out. What do you think my chances are of finding a customer “service” rep with fuzzy logic? Get it? Roight.

G’night. Sorry about the short incomprehensible post last night. Sorry about the long incomprehensible post tonight.

That is about all. G’night!

It was The Commander and it was directed at me. Her eyes had been closed and while I didn’t exactly think she was asleep, I thought she might be off journeying somewhere. Nope. Eyes wide open looking intently in my direction.

Okay then. Yes. I have a job. I have been taking family leave (unpaid) to hang out up here in the Land of the Ice and Snow. And feeling guilty for not checking in to my job and boss and wonderful team of co-workers more often. I am now into my fifth year of working for the Long Suffering Cat Herding Person and sometimes I still find myself pinching myself at my good luck. Because where I work, when someone is in a situation like I am currently in, they are supported by their co-workers, supervisors, and the company. I am lucky. My main problem is that I have a work ethic that slaps me upside the head. *I* feel guilty when I am not in my loverly dog-poopy cube. I even feel a little guilty when I am *telecommuting* from somewhere, even though I *am* working.

Today? The Comm was right so after lunch when I packed up to hoof it down to FV for the afternoon shift (.91 miles, btw), I stuffed *two* computers and their respective power cords into my backpack. Windows work laptop and MacBook Pro. Aaaannnndddd. I worked this afternoon. In fact, Cube Nayber (who has been in a similar situation before) came up with a “brainless” task for me to do. It took me the afternoon and it *was* brainless but it was also *exactly* what I needed. I love Cube Nayber.

Will I work tomorrow? I dunno. It depends on what happens tomorrow. I am still on family leave for the duration. But I can clock hours if I work them. So I will maybe earn a bit of income. It’s okay though. The wooluf is really not anywhere near the door for us. But I do love earning my own money. Yes I do! Having my own money allows this baggy old kayak woman to purchase a few little luxuries here and there, like bulk shipments of YakTrax and whatnot.

Love y’all
Kayak Woman

Okay, so this morning it was LIGHTNING that woke me up here in the yooperland. In January. The driving was not bad here in the city of Sault Ste. Siberia but I guess it was horrendous if you had to drive down the Piche Side Road. At least that’s what the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie says. “[rumble rumble rumble] I almost went off the road about three times and I wasn’t even trying to.” Of course, I was once with the Grinch back in the day when we did go off the road. That was Baker Side Road and the Grinch said, “I just got tired of keeping it on the road.”

So it was 40 degrees around here today, which means it was a really good idea to snowshoe yesterday and not today. I took a sloshy walk down around the locks area during which I realized that we were probably getting low on cab back at the Squatter’s Paradise. So I sneaked into the Co-op and snagged a bottle. Aaaannndd then… When we finally got back up to the Squatter’s Paradise, I stuck the corkscrew into the bottle aaannnddd… The corkscrew BROKE OFF in the cork. EMERGENCY!!! We called the GG, who was waiting for a take-out pizza from Angio’s and begged him to go to the Supervalu on the way home. TWO bottles of cab ([yellow tail] will do) and ONE corkscrew. And then we tasked him to open the bottle with the embedded corkscrew. Which of course took him about 10 seconds by using the new corkscrew. Colace for whine…

I am getting all kinds of sh*t about all this whine fumbling but I don’t really care. People keep asking me if I *need* anything. And I never can think of anything. Because, in the end, I am pretty self-sufficient. I have automotive vee-hickles and a husband and some wonderful cuzzints and [enough] money. And I am okay with what comes next. What help do I need? I am not sure that I would really feel comfortable calling up hospice and asking them to come and get the broken corkscrew outta my whine bottle. But I can call the GG. I am doing okay. Except when I start feeling wigged out. For the most part, I can deal with that.

Oh boy, I am distracted tonight. The GG has his big ugly iMac up here and he’s going through about a gazillion photooos. Hope some of this made sense.

Now that things have [temporarily] settled down to a dull roar around here, after spending most of the morning at FV, UKW dragged me out to the moominbeach for a wee bit of a snowshoeing expotition. We visited briefly with Barb and then, after MUCH help from UKW getting my Iverson’s on (because I am a huuuuuge klutz) and a call from FV (nothing urgent), we set off…

We headed down the beach and “poached” a bit (aka crossed a bit of private property) to get to Little Traverse Conservancy territory. I love the LTC but we’ll talk about that some other day.

Next up is the Doelle outhouse. There is a big road down onto the Doelle end of the beach nowadays. When I was a kid, the people who stayed at the Doelle house (yeah, that would be the Doelle’s, duh) had to park somewhere else and walk or take a boat down there. So there usually wasn’t anybody down there. When I was a teenager, we would all walk down there late at night and pretend there were ghosties in the Doelle house. I didn’t really believe the place was haunted but it still scared the bejabbers outta me at night. I have never told the GG stories about that because after hearing all of his stories about hitch-hiking around the country when he was 16 and getting picked up by serial killers et al, I figger walking down a private beach to a deserted old building are not all that exciting…

I spent a lot of time iPhone-ographing pictures of the “weak” but beautiful sun behind the trees in the swamp.

It was a wonderful hike and I am feeling some muscles that I don’t think I use terribly often. In a good way though.

P.S. Thank you thank you thank you to the young man who ushered me (with my whine and my orange juice) ahead of him at the Supervalu this afternoon. I really appreciated that and I’ll pay it forward.

I’m not sure if this has been the longest day of my life or not. It may be but somehow I think I have said that before. But it definitely ranks up there. It was minus four degrees when I walked down to the hoosegow this morning and this is looking north up Ashmun from the bridge over the canal. And yes, I took this with my iPhone, so I had my glubs off.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, I found myself in this space for about the umpteen millionth time. I think it might have been the last time but we’ll see. Anyway. When I reached “G”, the door DID NOT OPEN!!! Am I never gonna get outta this place???

I panicked for a couple seconds, then I hit the “G” button again and the door opened. From there, I walked through the bitter cold to my next destination and just as I was arriving I was able to salute a couple of ambulance folks who were driving out. Thanks you guys, you did good.

Aaannnddd… Let the night end with this loverly stuff obtained by the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie. (And no that is not a booooob in there, it is the butt-end of a bag of ice.)

Of course, I’m not sure the night is over yet… But let the YouTube wars continue…

So, for the last couple of days of haannngggging around the hoosegow, there’s been this stocky white-haired “old” guy also hanging around. Visiting a relative or whatever. I didn’t think much about it. There are a lot of folks around here hanging about, including me. I don’t generally seek conversation with patients or their relatives although I am friendly if they strike something up with me.

This morning I was sitting there freezing by the big windows and along came the “old” guy and this time he stopped to talk and started asking me a series of questions:

“Old” Guy: Do you work here?

KW: No.

OG: Where are you from?

KW: The Planet Ann Arbor but I grew up here.

OG: Oh, you grew up here, did you? What’s your name?

KW: [gave name (real name)]

OG: So you went to Siberia High?

KW: Yes.

OG: When did you graduate?

KW: [gave year back in the Jurassic Age]

OG: Oh, that’s when I graduated too.

He chattered on with more questions but that last bit stopped me in my tracks. Who what? Finally I managed to get a word in edgewise and ask, “Who *are* you???” His answer: JR. And no, not the JR from the old Dallas TV show. *This* JR happens to be the younger brother of my freshman/sophomore year high school boyfriend. Did I do a double-take! Whoaahhh! Hasn’t even changed much except for the white hair. Now. I did not know JR well at all in high school. BF and I did not hang around with JR ever. Actually, BF hung around with ME mostly when he felt like it. Yeah, that kind of boyfriend. Good person, bad boyfriend, and as an old song that used to play in the POC a lot says, “we were only freshmen”…

Anyway, my enduring memory of JR is of him walking around in the school cafeteria one day singing a little fast-food jingle, “When the hungries hit, when the hungries hit, hit the red barn.” It seems no one is safe from my annoyingly good memory but no, I didn’t reminisce with him about that.

What’s really odd is that he didn’t seem to connect me with his brother at all! At least he didn’t say anything about that. And neither did I. I much prefer to remain incognito in that respect. I don’t really ever think about that boyfriend any more and haven’t in about a billion years. JR prattled on about our upcoming reunion (he’s never been to one) and what was my job and what was I doing on my iPhone right then and was Doc Fin my dad, yada yada yada. I don’t remember him being such a social butterfly in high school. More like the typical Siberian Jurassic Age version of “my posse don’t do homework.”

I dunno who JR was visiting in the hoosegow and I didn’t ask. I hope it is not somebody that old BF also visits because I don’t really want to run into old BF at all. Of course, it’s possible I already have but we didn’t recognize each other. Just another day of hanging around at the hoosegow in my hometown…

It has been my habit during this stintus horribilis at WMH to get up early and walk down the escarpment to the hoosegow. Last night the prediction was for something like 19 degrees with a wind chill of, oh I dunno, but minus something. 19 degrees? That’s a piece of cake, even with the wind. But then this morning, I was sitting right here in this chair…

…and no, there was not a glass of whine there this morning. It was probably just about as dark but picture a coffee cup instead. Made by npJane. She is taking care of me! But I took the picture late this afternoon. Just saying.

Anyway, back to this morning. I was just about to put my winter gear on and head down the escarpment when a HUGE gust of wind complete with blowing snow shook the house. Um, hmmm, maybe I will take the Frog Hopper? I suppose the photo below doesn’t truly show how blustery it was but maybe you can get an idea.

Long, long, long day. Lake effect snow and blustery winds blowing snow around. I took a half hour “off” around noon and slithered my way up the escarpment in the Frog Hopper. When I got to the top, it was whiteout conditions and I couldn’t even tell where to turn onto the Squatter’s Paradise street. There were school buses and cars hanging out (snow day, say what?) and a sidewalk plow (yes, really, they were horse-drawn when I was a small child). And below is what the windows in the hoosegow second floor lobby looked like this afternoon. Yes it was cold hanging out there.

Okay. Still snowing here but not much wind. UKW arrived this afternoon. Dinner at Angio’s. Good night from the Squatter’s Paradise Internet Cafe and Whinery.

The GG was just dying for me to black out my stoopid little blahg today so as to support the defeat of SOPA and PIPA. If it had been any other Tuesday Wednesday in any other week, I may have risen to the occasion. Today? Ugh. Just ugh. Oh, don’t worry. After a walk back up the hill, a wee bit o’ whine & dinner at the Palace with npJane and the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie, and a short visit to the hoosegow where I found The Comm sleeping very comfortably (and left before she woke up and after talking to her nurse), I was pretty well decompressed… …And then I got a phone call and, for whatever reason, I felt compelled to re-do the whole goddamn day and then I was all roto again…

So, I didn’t black out my boring little blahg and actually, I don’t often repost other people’s stuff so maybe those stoopid laws would not affect my boring little blahg? But it would affect my whole Internet experience and I definitely still support it. You damn betcha. I really don’t do things like this (BEWARE: some of the graphics are not totally safe for work or children). But.

What I can’t figure out is why the folks we elect to run the damn gubmint should be allowed to try to legislate the internet. I’m sure that there are a few folks in the congress and/or senate that have a passing familiarity with computer/internet technology. But I will also bet that most of these folks have grandchildren who can do an end run around them when it comes to technology. So why are we entrusting these jokers (I meant that) to try to make educated and informed decisions on Internet piracy? Oh, is it the film industry lobbyists driving this? Let’s kill some of those folks. Don’t shut me down, I’m just kidding, fer kee-reist. I felt that way about the stoopid tailgater that followed me up the hill in this evening’s bit of lake effect snow. I don’t want to kill anyone and the last thing I would ever do is kill a living being. But some people are so goddamn stupid and irritating… Just saying.

We *have* to keep internet content creation as free as we can. We can’t let the nincompoops that we keep electing to national office get their dirty fingers onto OUR INTERNET. These people (generically) do not know what they are doing in the current technical arena. Or in any technical arena. Like back in 1897 when some crackpot tried to get the Indiana legislature to pass a bill that set the value of pi to 3.2 (or something like that). Uh, the value of pi is an irrational (transcendental) number and we mere mortals do not have any control over its value and it is fortunate that an actual mathematician happened to be in the audience as they discussed this. Because, say WHAT??? (Google “legislating pi Indiana”.) Seriously. Think about the value of pi for a few minutes and think about whether it can be legislated…

As one of the nerdiest of computer nerds around, I do not have any faith in our wondrously overly self-indulged C average frat boy elected officials to know what the heck to do when making decisions about the internet. Please, you guys, just let us all do our jobs and innovate in peace.

Long day here in the yooperland but that photooo represents one of the best moments. 1.9 degrees this morning on my way down Prospect Street to the hoosegow.

Love y’all,
KW

Meanwhile… Back on the Planet Ann Arbor…

I do not know what people did when they had to haaaannnnngggg around in hoosegows before wifi and smartphones and iPads and laptops became ubiquitous. Well, actually I do because my dad did a stintus horribilis at the Henry Ford Hoosegow in downtown Dee-troit before he died and I drove down there just about every goddamn day. My beauteous white MacBook 12″ G4 Powerbook could not find a wifi signal at all. Nothing. Nada. People with gunshot wounds getting dumped out of vans outside the ER? Yes. Wifi? Hmmm…

That was 2006. 2012? Our loverly little small-city hoosegow up here in Siberia has an open wifi signal. And believe you me, that thing saves my life. It is my communication line to the outside world. Friends and family. And news. And so, npJane and I were hanging around there this afternoon and The Commander was sleeping pretty dern peacefully and I checked my Twitter feed yet again aaannndd…

Bling! There was this tweet from annarbor.com:

The vehicle idling ordinance will be discussed at tonight’s #AnnArbor City Council work session. Your thoughts?

I had to work VERY hard to keep my eyeballs from rolling totally back in my head in disgust but instead, I rolled them over toward npJane and read the tweet to her. Btw, npJane is a life-long denizen of The Planet Ann Arbor. Sheesh. Our wondrous city council in its infinite wisdom has actually been considering making it illegal to idle your automotive vee-hickle. Okay. I get that idling an automotive vee-hickle *unnecessarily* adds to air pollution, which can cause problems for people with asthma, etc. I remember all the perfectly coiffed Lincoln Navigator (is that even a car any more?) moms picking up their kids at Forsythe, letting their vee-hickles run to preserve the inside atmosphere. That kind of idling *is* egregiously unnecessary. My kind of idling? Yaknow. I do not have a gaaaarage at the Landfill. When it is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit and my veeeendsheeeeld has a quarter inch of ice on it, starting the vee-hickle with the defroggers on and, uh, letting it idle for 10-15 minutes makes it a heckuva lot easier to scrape zee veeeensheeeeld. Well, and then there’s the kind of idling that happens when the left turn signal at the Jackson / N. Maple intersection has one of those hiccupy days when it only lets five vee-hickles through at a time and I have to wait for 4-5 cycles before I can actually, like, turn left. What are we gonna do about that kind of idling, hmmm?

Oh, our fav-o-rite comment?

What’s next for the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor…a no-farting law?

Gooooood night. Who knows what’s next for tomorrow? I wish I had a crystal ball. Oh, wait? Wasn’t that on my birthday list? Or not…

Love y’all,
KW

I have to say it has been one of the more “interesting” birthdays I’ve ever experienced. Take that however you want to. Some of the more regular birthday type things include dinner at Angio’s with npJane and Grinch, a Piedmont-like Chorus on the phone from San Francisco (and I wanted to buy a round for those folks!), plus many best wishes via blahg, facebook, text message, email (that one from Viet Nam no less) and phone. If I haven’t personally replied to you, well, I’ve been a little busy. But thank you! And with that, I am outta words. You are happy about that.

It is the mean old grunchie old grinchie’s birthday. And Paulette’s. I was somewhat numb this morning and so after we visited The Commander this morning, we took a slow ride out to the cabin…

And then we went to the Dancing Crane Coffeehouse…

And Clyde’s, although it is closed at this time of year.

The Commander is marginally better and I loved the hubbub of having two of my fav-o-rite cuzzints here at the Squatter’s Paradise tonight. npJane and The Grinch.

As you can see, the GG had a wonderful time, uh, “hiking” with his buddies in the Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore chapter of the North Country Trail Association. I’m not sure who was pulling him in this big sled thingy. I hope it wasn’t Teresa although she is a pretty damn strong young woman! It was *minus* 17 degrees Fahrenheit when these folks started their hike over by Soldier Lake. The GG has a whole bunch of gorgeous photoooos of his trip today but I’m posting this one. I wish I could’ve been there too…

My day? It totally sucked, thank you very much. You do not want to know the details. Do not ask. I wish I could blame it on bad biorhythms like that one day when Lizard Breath was a baby and we were in Flor-i-duh and I just could not get happy and finally we were at the Sarasota Jungle Gardens looking at the erderators and all that stuff and there was this biorhythm machine. We put a quarter into it along with my birthdate and that little machine spit out a little chart and guess what? My physical and emotional stamina and I fergit what else (there were three things) were all at a low ebb that day. Do I believe in that stuff? I’d like to think that I don’t. But.

I am a high-strung person and I was pretty young then. I am a baggy old bag now. I am still high-strung and I have my moments of sheer, utter panic. Like yesterday when we were standing in the hall at the hoosegow and my phone started jangling and it was zipped up in my pocket and I had to fumble to get to it and then when I answered it, I guess I was loud (it was because we had a terrible connection) and the GG was shushing me and telling me I shouldn’t be yelling in the hall of the hoosegow and he was right AND I *KNEW* THAT but, fer kee-reist! For the umpteen gazillionth time, I do not do well with telephone calls. Sometimes they are necessary and this one certainly was but hearing my phone ring (or chirp or quack or whatever) always puts me into a minor panic.

“Miles, you are off on a tangent.” That was my 10th grade chemistry teacher talking to my lab partner. But boy, that last paragraph got off onto a tangent. What I was trying to say was that today was an extremely sucky day for me despite the beautiful weather. Although I felt like wigging out about a brazillion times today, I (mostly) forced myself to put one. foot. in. front. of. the. other. and tried to carry on. I think the high point of the day was when Uber Kayak Woman called me (all that phone-whining aside) and maybe second was when I stood down by the locks in minus 4 degree Fahrenheit weather watching what the heck was that freighter’s name? slowly glide out of the locks into the lower St. Mary’s River.

Yes, I need a haircut!!! Mouse? Or maybe I’ll be able to get the Goddess Vonda to do it since I am up here…

Babblety-babblety-sheesh! Does any of this stuff make any sense?

Apparently the Planet Ann Arbor got an inch or so of snow overnight last night. This morning my Twitter feed exploded with Ann Arbor folks complaining about the driving. They didn’t plow, they didn’t salt, yada yada. Okay then. Last night Sault Ste. Siberia got about eight inches of snow. This morning, I threw on my YakTrax and set off down the escarpment to the hoosegow. This little city was swirling with snowplows of every description. Big snowplows like the one below, which was futzing around down by the hoosegow doing I dunno what because the surrounding roads were pretty well cleared by then.

And there were little private (?) ones finessing the edges of the main street:

Can I just say that it was absolutely no problem getting around town here in Siberia today? There were slippery intersections here and there but there weren’t umpteen billion accidents because people weren’t driving like maniacs. I know y’all will like this looovverrly photooo of the snowbanks down by the Soo Co-op.

I don’t have a whole lot else to say about today. It was a relatively productive day if somewhat challenging and after a late dinner at the bar in the Palace Saloon (which is fast becoming one of my favorite homes away from home) and another stint at the hoosegow, we called it a night.

Love y’all and goodnight,
KW

I started my day at an internet cafe. Actually, I started my day with a shower at the Squatter’s Paradise, a walk down the escarpment, check-in at the hoosegow (where I overheard The Comm identify herself to a couple of nurses as something like “Judy” [uh, noooo, you are "Fran"]), then cooooffffeeee (and internet) at Kenny’s Pitchen. Upon hearing The Comm call herself Judy, I said to the Goddess Sharolyn, who was in the hall, “Sounds like we’re off to a good start today.” Just to make things crystal clear, The Comm was very sleepy when she said that. She is still all there (and then some) and knows exactly who and where she is. And those nurses were wonderful. I heard them very kindly tell her what her real name was and remind her that she had been a teacher. The Comm: Oooohhh, yes.

It was a long hoosegow-ish kind of day and I was up and down according to the time of day (morning being the best), whatever The Comm was doing or talking about and, well, we’ll stop there. Our friend and summer neighbor The Beautiful Barbara (the most beautiful Barbara in the world), invited us out to her home on the Moominbeach for cocktails. When we got in the Frog Hopper to drive out there in the late afternoon, I was feeling so roto I couldn’t even talk. Can I just say that I needed cocktails at Barb’s? I have known Barbara ever since I can remember. I grew up with her kids and she was my first swimming teacher. I loved her when I was a child and I will always love her. Below is the Moominbeach view from Barbara’s house. Tonight a freighter was parked in the parking place over by Bay Mills and weather was moving in.

We came back into town, heated up leftovers and headed back down to the hoosegow again. You know you want one of these terlet decorations.

And finally the snow started in a small but beautiful town at the eastern end of the big lake they call gitcheegumee.

Good night,
KW

It is not my birthday today but it is The Beautiful Gay’s aka my beloved s-i-l’s. The Beautiful Gay of Gaylord. I will not say how old she is. Let’s just say that for the next five days we will be the same age. Happy birthday, friend. Win big if that’s whatchy’all are doing!

So y’all know what that means, roight? A month or so ago, the GG and I were having the usual xmas gift conversation, you know the one. It’s where he asks me what I want for xmas and I tell him I want a dumpster in the damn Landfill Driveway. We worked that out with new iPhones but I was already thinking something like, “the next thing you know, he’s gonna be asking what I want for my birthday.” I tried to nip that in the bud by saying something like, “I think we should buy a new couch for my birthday.” And if you are one of my five regular readers you know that we looked at couches but didn’t make a decision. The truth is that I had this little nagging feeling that we would not be focused on couches or my blasted god-forsaken January birthday or anyone else’s in the new year. And we are not. We are hangin’ out in the Great Not-so-white-but-expecting-white North, luxury camping in the Squatter’s Paradise and living on hoosegow time. “The doctor will be here in five minutes [hours]“. Sigh.

So, what do I *not* want for my birthday this year? Bric-a-brac, gewgaws, knick-knacks, flowers (please no), food, books (really, no time to read and can’t concentrate), advice, household appliances, kitchen gadgets, clothing, I dunno, anything that’s not useful to the immediate situation. Yes food is useful but only if it fits into your current lifestyle. I am feeding myself (and the GG and probably the Grinch from time to time) in my current lifestyle by: 1) Occasional runs to Glens if I know I’ll need the Frog Hopper to haul the groceries, 2) quick walks from the hoosegow to the Co-op for items that have fallen through the cracks (dish soap anyone?) 3) restaurants, if the schedule doesn’t go according to plan or we are just over the blasted edge. We are not big eaters by any stretch of the imagination and any extra food (and probably some of what little I’ve already purchased) will likely go to waste. I will feel guilty for not sending it to China or wherever.

What *do* I want for my birthday? A clone (or two or three (or four or five)). Floo powder (or an apparation app). A key to the clockworks known as Hospital Time. Answers to all of the existential questions that The Commander asks over and over again [god are you listening?]. A translator for compromised Commander-speak so that I can more quickly interpret her needs / questions. Oh yeah, and whine!!!

Love y’all and gooood night,
KW

Those were some of the first words I heard as I settled myself into a chair outside The Commander’s latest abode at WMH this morning after an ice-trek down the hill in the dark. It was a CNA addressing a patient. For a few nano-seconds I was puzzled. Why couldn’t the patients chew? They had to eat, right? And then I remembered the Copenhagen Chewers of America!* That esteemed group attended my old yooperland high school back in the Jurassic Age. If I remember correctly (and I may not), they managed to get away with chewing in study hall, which was a horrible hour of hanging around in the dilapidated auditorium in the decrepit old building in which I spent my first two years of high school. I HATED study hall! I can’t begin to count the reasons why. An hour of hanging out in a hard wooden auditorium seat without any, uh, *studying* to do? An eternity. And there were, you know, the chewers. They loved study hall. I never signed up for a study hall again. What on earth had I been thinking?

So once again we are luxury camping in the Squatter’s Paradise up here in Siberia. The Comm is still in the hoosegow and I am not going to provide the details of that on the blahg. Instead, I will give you a few shots from our travels in and around Sault Ste. Siberia area today. We’ll start with Lex’s Barber Shop. Lex used to cut my old coot’s hair and we won’t talk about The Commander’s reaction to one “summer haircut”. The GG now sometimes goes to Lex and one day My Dear Uncle Harry went to Lex and ended up getting stranded in town because the parking lot his vee-hickle was parked in was locked down because of a murder at the nearby newspaper. My Dear Uncle Harry has many of these kinds of wondrous little adventures. (Ask him about the time he got hit in the face with a wet washcloth.) And yes, Lex does have a terlet plunger on top of his barber pole. I fergit why. Maybe the GG can edify us.

I think Siberia is about the only place in the Great Lake State with any snow (I admit I have not checked the central and western regions of the yooperland). Still, it is not a lot of snow and this is about the best snow heap photooo I could get. It only sorta dwarfs the Frog Hopper. Sorry but this snow heap in the Glen’s parking lot is the best I can do.

If there was ever a year that Lake Superior could be open for year-round shipping, it seems like this one would qualify. They tried that once. I think it was in 1976. It was so cold that year that the big lake froze completely over and so they gave up on the year-round shipping thing. The locks will close sometime this month. I could look it up but I’m too lazy. Oh, and you can’t go on a boat tour right now either. Cap’n Pete and the rest of the crew are on their winter hiatus. See you in the summer.

A need for some downtime took us out to the Moominbeach, where there is not a lot of snow…

…but ice is beginning to form.

Our day is not yet finished but here is a view of the sunset we were served from the Squatter’s Paradise. It’s a little fuzzy but you get the idea.

Good night,
KW

* Disclaimer: I have no idea who this patient was or if he was ever a member of the Copenhagen Chewers of America or if that club even still exists. I’m gonna guess not. I think today’s teenagers might have different drugs of choice. But who knows. Apparently this patient had sneaked some chewin’ tobaccy up onto the second floor of the hoosegow and finally got caught out. Also, I am sure my high school didn’t have the only such club. In fact, if you type “copenhagen chewe” into google search, one of the suggested search terms is “copenhagen chewers blog”. But still.