(And the Frog Hopper is apparently rounding a twuk on the Big Mac.) What I really need is about a week off when I get to just rattle around the Landfill picking at this and that and flinging it here and there. I’ll settle for the loverly MarineTraffic app I just downloaded to my iPhone. It gives me the location and all kinds of other data about all of the freighters and tugs and ferries and whatnot in the area. I think this little app may even beat Grandroobly’s scanner, although the crackly voices emanating from that device lent a certain ambience to cabin life (especially when they woke you up in the middle of the night). Maybe the app designer will include those in some later version.

Back in the day, we would all be sitting on the beach in the afternoon. “We” being pretty much whoever was around but always Radical Betty, who in the later years would appear around 4:00 or so with her beach chair and a basket of beer (“beeeeer is goooood for-r-r you”, she would say in a fake foreign accent attempting to emulate a Dutch friend). Grandroobly would be hanging out up in the moomincabin listening to the boats call in, downbound 15 miles above Ile Parisienne, downbound at Ile Parisienne, downbound at Light 26. He loved to appear at the top of the bank with his binoculars, peering out into Gitchee Gumee and announcing the approach of this or that freighter, one that none of the rest of us could see. And neither could he. He knew it because he was listening to the scanner. He did not get along with computers and I doubt he would have managed the iPhone with all of it’s swiping and double-tapping and apps and stuff. But I am looking forward to having a great time with MarineTraffic this weekend.

I am exhausted though. I missed a kayak / canoe work expotition this afternoon to come up here to work on The Commander’s house, which is now on the market but needs some carpet and a bit of cleaning and there is still some stuff in it, although we are really at the bitter end of that. It’s all the stuff that you wish you could just throw out in the swamp and look the other way, “Who me? I didn’t throw any old junk in the swamp. La la la.” But being the recycle queen of the Great Lake State, I cannot do that. And I am NOT (NOT NOT NOT) gonna to spend my whole weekend *cleaning* The Comm’s house. Maybe my real estate guy can recommend a good cleaning service for that kind of job. I am not up to it.

Anyway, it was a loooonnnng day but we are here and the moomincabin is warming up pretty well and, with luck, it’ll only go down to 40 overnight. Our trip took a somewhat different trajectory than usual because we were scheduled to attend a north country trail dinner and presentation in Rudyard but, by the time we got across the Big Mac, we were something like an hour ahead of schedule, so we detoured over along the waterfront in St. Ignace and actually stopped at a barrooooom for a cocktail. And I know about the MarineTraffic app because someone at the north country trail dinner told me about it. What can I say? We are easily amused here in the Great White North.

Okay, I am totally incoherent tonight and so good night!

P. S. I was talking about Boat Nerd and I accidentally said Boat *Turd* and I could not stop laughing. Guess you can be 50-something and still be into bathroom humor.

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