Michigan My Michigan
Shortly after I got up this morning, I was pinged with this *loverly* pic from my next door cousin (and his mom sent it to me too) on the moominbeach. There is an outdoor staircase to his second story and this is what that staircase looks like now. Don’t worry, he’s not using this staircase now. There is a spiral staircase inside.
Today was our monthly meeting with the EPA retirees group. Again, I didn’t retire from the EPA but I worked there for a government contractor for 14 years in my “childhood” career. So I know most of these people although I didn’t always know them well then. I am loving to get to better know some of the folks I *didn’t* know well as well as people I didn’t know at all, mostly meaning their wives.
I hope I didn’t flash the guys across the table as I enumerated the green things I was wearing in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. My shirt/base layer was kind of olive green (which counts in my book), my skirt was a lovely tie-dyed green, but I had to hoist a knee to show them my emerald green tights. We were so much older then, we’re younger (not) than that now.
On our way home (slow on the back roads at my insistence), the Uncly Uncle called the GG to say that the power had been out at the group home at Hoton Lake (the cFam cabin) for a couple days and could be out a couple more with potential temperatures in the low single digits. Not good.
This is never a problem at the moomincabin because it gets totally shut down for the winter. It can be a problem at Houghton Lake because we leave it open for the winter with the heat at a low temp. That works well exceot when the power goes out, the furnace blower doesn’t work and that means the place cools down.
There was a lot of discussion about what to do and the UU drove down from his home in Gaylord (not far from the group home) to check things out. When *we* got home (to Ann Arbor), the group home webcam started to update, meaning the power was back on. The rest of the pics are from the UU. Embiggen to see the ice-coated trees. Apparently the drive was okay.
March 17th, 2026 at 6:56 pm
I know John was worried about his mom’s house this winter and finally got up there to take care of a few things. He turns the power off which I disagree with. (have I mentioned that he’s cheap?) Sequim gets nowhere near as cold as your cabins, so I think it would have been safe, but he wanted to make sure.