Worked from home today. My only vee-hickle for the weekend is my sweet little Ninja. It wouldda been fine around my side of town but I knew it wouldn’t be happy with the big piles of snow on top of glare ice over at Avis, not to mention that infamous stoplight, so I wimped. It was okay. The Queen Bee has a similar Outback to mine and turns out it slid too. Fortunately not into a snowbank, pond, or other vee-hickle.

Bitter cold returned today so I suited up in all of my cobbled-together zero-degree gear for my brisk walk over to the bank this morning. I had business that could only be taken care of face-to-face. I don’t go to the actual bank much these days so I was a bit surprised to read the notice on the door that all hats, hoods, and sunglasses, etc., must be removed before entering. Um, it was like three degrees Fahrenheit and I was wearing a blasted balaclava! So I could be warm, don’tcha know. I walked into the entryway and pulled off my balaclava and when I got inside the inner door, Eleanor yelled, “Hi KW!”, even though I haven’t been *inside* that bank in about a year. I love Eleanor. She used to put up with me when I did PTO treasury work and brought big ugly cash / coin deposits in. Carefully counted, bundled, and labeled, thank you very much! Banker’s daughter turned non-profit treasurer turned on-line banking systems analyst. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, roight? In truth, my dad and I had very different careers but I think he would approve of mine.

Alas, Eleanor couldn’t help with my business today. I needed one o’ them thar young whippersnappers aka “managers”. He looked at my last name on my debit card and said something like, “I’ve never seen that name before.” Which made me totally crack up. My dad and grandaddy never worked for PNC but they were bankers in a small-town bank that eventually got snarfed up by a precursor to PNC (and spat out last spring *by* PNC). I didn’t go into too much detail but I told the whippersnapper a little about my family’s history with his bank. Really, he was an okay kid. Took care of my business, didn’t miss a beat when I had to blow by dab doze (I dod’t hab a code but by doze was running a wee bit because of my brisk walk to the bank in the extreme cold), and listened to my words of wisdom. Of course those words of wisdom were that I love to spend money on my kids, in general but especially when it’s the kind of thing that can easily set a young person back a bit, like vee-hickular repairs or plane rides. And, on the rare occasions we are at the grokkery together, I always pay. Why? Because I love my children and I can. I was young[er] once and I’ve been there, done that on the being young and trying to make my way thing. I’m paying it forward now. Without any blasted strings. The whippersnapper liked that and then, when I told him I had *walked* to the bank, he advised me to walk *briskly* back. Okay I will. And I did, running across streets and jumping over snowbanks. Have YakTrax, will travel.

I am missing a trip to the yooperland this weekend. And a loverly hike (ski? snowshoe?) at Tahquamenon. I am in time-banking mode at this time of year. The GG had dinner with Jeep and Pan et al at their beautiful home on Gitchee Gumee and I miss them. He’s spending the night at our fave Hotel Ojibway and last I heard, was having a cocktail at my all-time fave Palace Saloon. The folks there took such good care of us on all of those emergency trips we were taking a few years ago. But I had a good day here on Ice Road Asteroid. I yakTracked downtown and met up with npJane for cocktails and dinner and we got a cameo appearance by Mouse, who was able to walk over from her work for about half a beer’s worth of time. It’s okay, the other half didn’t go to waste.

At dinner I was bugging the GG for moomincabin photoos and he sent me a couple. I showed them to npJane and (of course) she wanted to see one of the Old Cabin. We *all* spent our first summers in the Old Cabin but, by the time npJane was born, my branch of the fan-damily had built its own loverly little cabin. npJane’s fam now owns the Old Cabin and after npJane dropped me off tonight, I found that the GG had texted me one.

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