My dish pan frustration struck a nerve. I dunno why companies make the decisions they do to discontinue tried and true product form factors in favor of new-fangled stuff. It’s not like you can’t *get* good old Rubbermaid dish pans anywhere, it’s just that you can’t count on going to a full-service grokkery store and pick one up. I LOVE Ace Hardware but it isn’t on my beat. Well, actually it is, since I drive past it every evening commute. But at that time of day the last thing I want to do is hang a louie into a crowded shopping plaza and then try to hang ANOTHER louie back out on to Stadium. For a dish pan? Nope. I just wanna get home!

Anyway, I’m sure there are folks out there who want collapsible dish pans. I actually know one of them but it’s for a speshul purpose, not for a regular chitchen sink (aka MY SINK). I think it’s fine for a retailer to experiment with stocking “new technology” but I think comprehensive grocery stores should be careful about getting rid of “old technology”. Like Rubbermaid dish pans. Jeebus!

Productive day in a slow way. I slow-prepped enchilada stuff for tomorrow night (beach urchin and friend coming for dinner). I went to the Plum early in the day and hand-chopped/Cuisinarted/sauteed/etc. ingredients as I got them out of the bags. And cleaned up dishes as I went (in my new Rubbermaid dish pan), leaving them to dry. Reading Dead Astronauts in between…

The pic is a short tour of the Landfill Chitchen Sink with its new old-skool “sink solution”. The dish soap is from the Lyme Lounge. I normally buy bigger bottles of dish soap. To the right is my compost container. You are lucky that I dumped it and cleaned it this morning. To the left, next to the white sponge and just out of sight, is my melamime foam sponge, aka Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

In between all of this I let my fingers do the walking as I continued to purchase a few meaningful xmas gifts for the people in my life who have more than they need. I wanted to link to the old “let your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages” ad but I cannot find it…

Oh and there is this, which I am posting without comment.

G’night. KW.

Alternate title: “Ting Tang, Walla Walla Zing Zang”.

Soooo, I jumped around a whole bunch this morning and then met up with some hiker guy drinking a Bloody Mary at Dexter’s Pub for lunch. I had to do a double-take to make sure this person was indeed my date because 1) he was drinking a Bloody Mary and 2) he was gabbling away with a Woman. But yes, it was indeed The Pensioner and he has developed a minor fascination with Zingzang lately so I guess he was trying a BM out instead of his usual stout. As you can see, this BM did not come with a teetering tower of bizarre garnishes, which is a good thing in my opinion. I also don’t like them if they are too hot (I mainly mean picante but also calore, I guess).

The Woman? The last time we hit up Dexter’s Pub for a Saturday lunch was quiiiiite a while back and we sat next to the same woman *that* time too. I don’t remember if she told me I looked Scandinavian the last time… Anyway, she is chatty and fun up to a point but I wouldn’t want to have lunch with her every Saturday. I think she was on her fourth big glass of beer when we left and had a big container of pickle juice to go. I hope she made it home without dousing her vee-hickle’s interior with pickle juice. Or worse.

Got home and sat down on the Green Couch… Aaaannnd… A dog-like aminal came trotting down the street. There was no owner in attendance and it moved like a wild aminal (I cannot explain that in words today). At first I yelled, “Fox running down the street!” The GG caught sight of it as it was heading off down the next block and between us we decided it was too big and the wrong color to be a fox. Coyote? We do have them around here so that is our best guess.

Finally, I got a new dish pan today. I’m talking about the Rubbermaid dish pan that has been around since we were kids. My most recent one was white and even though I cleaned it *almost* every day with Barkeeper’s Friend, it was stained and fugly. (Don’t tell Fly-Lady that I don’t “shine” my sink *every* day. Five out of seven days per week.) Anyway. Problem? I have not been able to find a simple Rubbermaid dish pan at my usual utility grocery stores, mainly Meijer. All Meijer seems to have (in the “sink solutions” aisle🐽) are “collapsible” dish pans. Not a fan.

Today I looked up good old-fashioned Rubbermaid dish pans on line and figured out that our trusty Ace Hardware store carried them. The Pensioner headed over there this afternoon (he needed to get “out”, after walking however many miles it is to Dexter earlier today) to obtain one plus a couple canisters of Barkeeper’s Friend, which I *also* could not find at Meijer today. I did find Kleenex at Meijer, which I am using a *lot* of right now so don’t want to run out. He took the fugly old dish pan over to the hardware store to make sure he got the right thing.

Okay, typos, run-on sentences, and word salad be damned. I’m ending this before I get going on orange lights and 15-flush terlets. I’ll do that some other day.

I did not post audio of this loverly session anywhere on them thar intertubes. How do I explain it? Some background here. 1) Neither of these two people have any kind of serious musical background. 2) The Red Puano has probably not been tuned since something like 1960. 3) It is also a player puano and that part is broken somehow. 4) You can’t see in this pic but there is a goat hanging out over in the reading chair watching/listening to this.

We got porterized at the Oscar Tango tonight. When the GG arrived, both window booths were open but the two parties immediately ahead of him snagged both of them and all the other booths were taken too so we ate at the old table we used to always sit at for years.

As luck would have it, a couple of work friends ended up with one of the window tables. It was so much fun to run into them downtown even if they did steal our seats🐽 Midnight madness was happening downtown tonight but we didn’t end up participating in any of that, opting instead to porterize ourselves for a nightcap at the Landfill.

Of all things, JP got all interested in the “red box” aka the red puano. And yes, it is painted red. My mother-in-law’s fave color was red and she had it painted red back in the day. So JP and the GG spent a half hour or so playing “duets” on the Red Puano. It was absolutely hilarious but also beautiful and I *totally* enjoyed it.

Once upon a time I was a pretty good music snob. If you were out of tune or played wrong notes or couldn’t keep time, I would stick my stubby little nose as high up in the air as I could make it go. Somewhere along the line, I have changed my attitude. Music is for everyone and everyone who wants to make music should make music. If you are “properly trained”, fine. If not, so what. If you are totally untrained and ditzing around stumbling through heart and soul with a guy who is equally untrained and having a great time? I may laugh a bit but I am also on my knees in awe. Keep it up guys🧡🧡🧡

P.S. “Puano” was the word my first beach urchin used for “piano” when she was a new talker. I thought it was a wonderful word and rather than correcting her, I adopted it.

Almost 12 years ago when I was first working at Cubelandia, I dragged myself over there because I had something I had to finish and I have a work ethic that knocks me upside the head sometimes. It turned out that I didn’t really have to be there and when the LSCHP saw me there and knowing I had a Man Cold, he boomed out, “GO HOME!” And I did. With that cold, I also didn’t feel all that well, which usually indicates a low-grade fever. It’s okay. I recovered.

Today, almost 12 years later… Well. Lots of folks at work have had this Man Cold. FZ has actually worked from home all week, which is unusual for him but he is a short-timer so maybe he is just kinda dun dun dun. I dunno if I picked up my cold from work folks or the beach urchin who had a Man Cold on Thanksgiving. It doesn’t matter and I don’t even know if my current cold will turn into a Man Cold or not. But.

Amazon Woman told me at least three times today to GO HOME. She doesn’t boom stuff like that out like the LSCHP did but I got it. Two problems… 1) I don’t feel unwell except for being congested. 2) If I work from home, The Pensioner is likely to provide umpteen gazillion weather reports that I don’t really need. In other words, “I married you for better or worse but not for weather reports.” Or lunch…

The LSCHP was a wonderful boss and when they laid him off I felt like I was losing my father. But Amazon Woman maybe even tops him. But that’d be a whole ‘nother entry.

And then there was my first job at “Your Tempo Store” up in Sault Ste. Siberia. I am not good at job interviews but Mr. Drysdale ran the store and he was one of my dad’s buddies and so he gave me a shot. However, it was Mr. H who called me up to tell me I had a job and asked if I could come to work the next morning. Problem. I was sick as a dog. I said that but I also sucked it up and went into my first day at my first job the next morning. Mr. H obviously saw that I was sick and didn’t schedule me again until a couple days later, by which time I was healthy again.

I ended up rocking that job and became friends with so many of the folks who worked there, including the managers. I was a cashier and I LOVED doing that. Cashiers deserve much more money than they are paid.

We had a gorgeous sunset this afternoon but I was driving so I could not get a pic.

We are not north of the arctic circle but I can’t remember the last time Mr. Golden Sun has made an appearance. A few minutes on Turkey Day maybe? When I parked at Cubelandia this morning there was the teensiest tinesiest little peek of blue sky overhead. I went inside and the next time I looked out the lunchroom window it was snowing. Not that we got a lot of snow today. Driving was fine as was walking over to Knight’s for dinner.

Which we did because I guess the GG is taaarrred of me cobbling together bits and bobs of leftover crapola all week. I originally had a different plan, which was turkey tetrahedron on Saturday, which would use up some of the turkey leftovers, but that was for Saturday and *Saturday* turned out to be an exhausting day what with traveling to a baby shower and FlaMan’s dog dying. By the time we got home, it was late afternoon and we both agreed that heating up Tday leftovers as-is would be just fine. It’s a long boring story but we had salmon on Sunday and then leftovers from both on Monday and Tuesday. So when he texted me about Knight’s, I was like okaaaay. I had scallops.

I do not mind the gray weather all that much. I get outside before the sun comes up and the morning dark energizes me even when I can’t see the stars, etc. Getting home in the dark? LED light strings rock!

Do I have a cold virus? I think so. It is taking its time coming on. Two days of vague throat “tickle” and today I have felt the urge to cough occasionally. We’ll see what develops. It is the season.

My dad had a “Jack Finlayson” plaque that designated a parking space for him at the Sault Ste. Siberia First National Bank when I was a kid. Although he walked to work a lot… His parking plaque is now hanging out upstairs at the moomincabin.

It was always okay for us to park in the bank parking lot no matter what we were doing downtown. “Oh, we’ll just park in the bank lot.” For a while, when you exited the bank lot you had to deal with a barrier of sorts. Did we have to put coins or tokens in it to make it lift up and let us out? I can’t exactly remember. I do know that once, The Commander was trying to exit and it came down on her car. No one was injured.

For most of my duration at Cubelandia I have had a designated parking space. I do not have a plaque. I am just the only person who parks over in the third row. By the pond.

It always cracks me up that (I suspect) my dad didn’t really know what the heck he wanted to do when he grew up but he ended up being a banker. He was very good at that career but I kind of think he took it up to try and make sure his family had enough money. And we did although we were certainly not rich.

To me, it is ironic that I work for the online banking industry. My dad knew that I was good at math and stuff like that but what he didn’t understand was how my math stuff would translate into the systems analyst I am today. I don’t think dad knew that term…

He did know me though and I think he would have approved of my career and my parking space at Cubelandia. And yes I/we have a new car. Last summer. But I will still be driving my Ninja at least for a while longer.

P.S. The main reason I wrote this lame post was to say that somebody asked me if I had a new car yesterday and I’m thinking the only reason they noticed it is because I always park in the same place, in the third row over by the pond, where nobody else ever parks except the occasional bird watcher. And I forgot to write it!🐽

I was standing in the chitchen after work today, post dishioshio washing and pre foot-washing (TMI?). The GG was in his lair and he had a kind of strange look on his face that I didn’t understand so I said, “What?” Well, it was my red plaid skirt and red leggings tights. They were “cute”, said he. They were kinda cute and I shouldda tooken a pitcher but I didn’t. I’ll try to remember next time I wear that outfit uniform.

I’ve been passionately and obnoxiously proselytizing about Smartwool balaclavas for a few years now and this year I actually stealthily sent one to a couple of people. I mean, if you don’t know the difference between “balaclava” and “baklava”, I figger ownership of a *balaclava* might cement the difference forever. So maybe I have turned into the Balaclava Bomber. (I am harassing you, my longtime beloved blahggy friend 😉🧡).

So my latest balaclava recipient posted a photo of her wearing it on social media and I showed the instagram version to the GG. He said, “Tell her she might be cute!” Well. She *is* cute. She is a lot cuter in a balaclava than I am…

Oh man, do you guys remember MySpace? I once had a MySpace account. I went out to myspace.com today and it seems to still exist but I don’t think I have an account there any more and I don’t feel like figuring it out. Anyway. I was up at the moomincabin back in the mySpace era and I was looking at my account on my then laptop. I was 50-something (52? yeah prob’ly) and some 27-year-old guy messaged me. His pickup line was “You might be cute.” I showed the message to The Commander and she gnoffed and gnoffed and gnoffed. I did not respond to his message… I was not looking for a boyfriend and *he* was not all that cute.

…To Florida Man’s House we go (and no, this pic was not taken in Fla). Seriously, it was raining catz and dogz when I took my 0-skunk-30 walk this AM and we didn’t even consider that 45 miles north of here there would be a couple inches of snow. Our bad. This is the Great Lake State and it’s December…

So we drove up to Grand Blanc and took our brother out to breakfast this morning. He is distraught about losing his dog. But as FlaMan does, he got rolling from talking about his dog into other stories about his life now and in earlier days. Do NOT misunderstand! He is not in any stage of dementia. Not at all! He loves his family but he has had an interesting life and is more focused on his own memories than my life or your life or the GG’s life. He sometimes strays off into not-safe-for-work-territory but it is what it is and what worked today was to let him talk and I think it’s what he needed. I am a decent listener [usually] and that’s what I did today.

I do not lie when I say that Jax Junior was a sweet dog. He was popular with both FlaMan’s neighbors and the housecleaning staff. Jax was a small dachshund and he wasn’t a lickety dog, nor did he jump on people. The first time I met Jax, we were in Florida for an actual FUN vacation and we went to pick up FlaMan to take him out to dinner. We had the Frog Hopper and I was about to jump around into the back seat so FlaMan could ride in the front but FlaMan pulled out his scooter, put Jax in a box mounted onto the front of it and said, “Follow me!” And so we did. FlaMan and Jax led us to a wings-type bar just outside the trailer park and we had a wonderful dinner sitting outside there.

A little over a year ago, the GG and I took what turned out to be a Rocket LSD Trip to Fla to pick up our brother and his dog and move them to The Great Lake State. All right, we were traveling with a UHaul trailer, various oxygen contraptions, and a dog. Our brother and Jax turned out to be wonderful travel companions but. It was interesting for me to stay in dog-friendly motels because yes, the first thing Jax did when we entered our Best Western room in Macon was mark his territory (and why am I not wearing shoes in here?). The second night (Dayton) I went to bed and next thing I knew, there was a sweet little doggie snuggled up next to my side.

You know when you are at the store and you can’t remember if you have, oh, say, peanut butter or not? So just in case, you buy some *anyway*. THIS is the result. And we don’t even eat a lot of peanut butter. We have it as much for baiting mouse traps as for anything. Oh, occasionally (like maybe once a year), I go full-tilt boogie and scarf up several spoonfuls of it right out of the jar. Definitely not typical peanut butter consumption though.

So this morning, I pulled everything out of the pantry cupboard, washed the shelves and left for the rest of the day.

Today’s event was a niece’s baby shower over in Megalopolis and the GG tagged along to go out to a driving range with two of his brothers and the father-to-be. It was all good. Except. That. About a half hour from the venue, the route got a bit twisty and the traffic was squirrely and I had to put my book down and actively navigate for a bit. In the middle of this, he got a call from our brother FlaMan informing us that his sweet little dog had crossed the rainbow bridge. They were constant companions and this was not expected. Fortunately, since just about every family member anywhere near was either at the shower or the driving range, the Lord of Linden was willing to abandon his date with the UMich/OSU football rout and step up to the plate to retrieve Junior’s remains. He is a hero.

The shower itself was hosted by our niece’s mom and two sisters and it was lovely, with plenty of food and gifts and “momosas” and catching up on gossip, etc. A bright spot on a chilly gray ultimately tragic day and that is about it. Well, except to say AGAIN that my cFam sisters-in-law (and their daughters, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters) more than make up for the biological sister I never had.

By the time we got home, I had totally forgotten about the mess on my kitchen counter so I had to sort all the triplicates and quadruplicates and quintuplicates together (yes there were other multiples) and put everything back in the cupboard. That was a “lovely” end to the day.

P.S. Please don’t buy me any peanut butter. I have enough 🐽

I rilly don’t even have a pitcher today. I got a bit of the dreaded Second Wind when I went to bed last night. It was waaaaay too late to watch the Green Acres re-run. Nevertheless, when I did get to sleep, it was sweet sleep except for a few horrible shoreline dreams. All I can remember is that both my parents were alive and for some reason, mom and I had to ascend/descend a vertical three-story snow-covered ladder on foot before we could get back in the car and cross the Big Mac (which was misshapen in a way I can’t remember) into the yooperland and then after all that there was major confusion about where various cars and people were and nobody’s phone was working. And then… I WOKE UP!!! YAY!

Despite all that, I felt WONDERFUL this morning and got up early enough to take my entire walk before sunrise. I managed to find my balaclava and other outdoor gear without turning on any lights other than my iPhone flashlight. The Landfill has only a couple of private bedrooms so lights are liable to disturb anyone sleeping in the back room. When I returned, the house was still silent and relatively dark, so I grabbed my laptop and sat on the Green Couch until the folks in the back room began to stir. It was only then that I got into the chitchen and started to rock and roll on finishing up the few dishioshios remaining from yesterday.

We hit up the Griz for lunch. Tammy was on Janel’s side today and she is a sweet server, calling me Ms. Anne. That’s not a name I would want just anybody to call me but it was fine from Tammy. I had a moment of 21st century reality today when I went to use the “ladies powder room”. As long as I have been going to the Griz for lunch on Janel’s side, I walk back to the bathrooms and turn left to go into the side labeled “Women”. If the door is locked (it’s a single stall), I wait. I did that today and a… MAN… walked out. I was not freaked out at all. He looked totally benign. He smiled and I smiled back and went in to do my bizness. I said something to Lizard Breath about it and she replied that those restrooms are now labeled “Restroom”, without specifying a sex/gender. Okay then. I had not noticed the change in signage. It is okay with me, just wasn’t expected. I wondered aloud if there was a urinal in the room formerly labeled “Men” across the way. Not, according to Trapoisal Bull (as he is apparently now calling himself).

The beach urchins trundled off to their homes and we chilled out a bit until it was time to porterize ourselves. We did something a bit different tonight and Trapoisal Bull drove us all out to Dexter’s Pub. During the period that my dad was incarcerated in the Henry Ford Hoosegow, we would often drive out there for dinner after I returned from yet another looooong day down in Dee-troit helplessly watching him decline. Sometime after that, I fell into my job at Cubelandia and we started walking to the downtown Planet Ann Arbor for dinner instead. We still occasionally go out to Dexter’s Pub to eat chili at the bar for lunch. For various reasons we decided Dexter would be a good choice for dinner tonight and it was and McLean (not sure of spelling) was our attentive albeit long-suffering young server.

Okay, this was just about the laziest Turkey Day I’ve spent since one year back in the Jurassic Age when I had a Man Cold. That year I had a good reason to sit on my you-know-what most of the day. This year not so much. I was finishing a book. Ursula, Under. My 91st book this year. Nine more. Think I’ll make it?

Highlights? If you can call them that. We exchanged the usual gobble gobble audio file with family and friends. That led to reminiscing about a certain scary story. About a cylinder. In the case of the scary story, the mere mention of the word “cylinder” set a bunch of beach urchins to screaming and the rest of the story was lost. But rumor has it that there *is* a “cylinder” out in the bay somewhere in front of the old Doelle house. It used to spook my brother but I’ve never found it. Actually I’m a little spooked by it too and if I am solo kayaking, I kind of don’t look down when I’m in that area.

And that led me to The Cheerio. The Cheerio was not exactly cylindrical but it was a round concrete type artifact that lived in the water in front of the Old Cabin. It was between the shore and the first sand bar and when my cousins and I were like five years old, we used to play on it. Playing on The Cheerio to my best memory meant standing in a circle around it.

Do I really remember this or am I crazy? I think I remember it. The Cheerio disappeared for a long time and then a couple years ago, what looked like a portion of it suddenly appeared on the beach, a quarter piece of it or so. I was talking to a Piedy friend at the time and I took one look and yelled, “The Cheerio!” She looked at me like I was nuts and gave me her signature “Get out!” Apparently she didn’t remember it.

That’s about all y’all are gonna get outta me. I am dead taaaared and better rack it up before I get the dreaded second wind.

Oh, day before Thanksgiving. Coffee at Barry’s with MMCB₁ and Barry’s was SLAMMED! Day before Tday and no school, I guess. I can’t figger what else. Then a quick stop at Meijer on the way to work for a few non-perishables (i.e., things that could survive a few hours in Mooon Yooonit).

Late to work? Sshh, don’t tell. But. Absolutely NOBODY on my team was at Cubelandia today. Some were probably telecommuting but I had no need to interface with them and Amazon Woman was planning to come in for a bit in the afternoon to help Building Mom put up an xmas tree. I was NOT productive today and finally bagged out at about 11:30 (I had put in for the afternoon off anyway). Went to Plum Market for the *rest* of the Tday supplies and NAILED my list, or so I thought. I told my fave cashier Joyce I hoped I wouldn’t be back later and as soon as I got home, I realized I had not purchased prepared lasagna for tonight, as I had planned. I had a good afternoon of pre-tday cooking ahead of me and did NOT want to add dinner into the mix.

So, got home and spent a few hours of blissful spacification in the Landfill Chitchen. Mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, hollandaise sauce, chex mix, and a couple of veg prep chores for tomorrow. Five minutes after I “sat down”, the GG arrived followed in short order by the beach urchin who is spending the night. The GG left to buy gas for the generator in case we need it (VERY WINDY!) and Lizard and I walked over to the Plum AGAIN to get something for dinner and a few other things.

Oh yeah, I did NOT get lasagna. Why? Because the Plum’s prepared lasagna is made with *turkey* sausage and when I suggested it to the GG, I made the mistake of calling it “Turkey Lasagna”. He focused on the word “turkey”. “Well, aren’t we eating that tomorrow?” Yes (you are cooking it on the grill, roight?). But. Lasagna tastes like lasagna pretty much no matter what you put into it. It is the antithesis to turkey even if it contains turkey. I bought a couple of burritos instead. They have chicken in them. I hope that’s okay.

And so, I have a few dishioshios to wash and a few things to do tomorrow but I am in a good place in terms of being prepared for a mini-feast for a mini-crowd. In general, I don’t like to have to do major work in the chitchen on holidays. I like to do as much as I can ahead of time and I think I am pretty okay. My table is not set yet, like MMCB₁‘s is.

It wasn’t exactly dark when I started over to Cubelandia this morning but I turned the headlights on (to auto, which I always used on the Frog Hopper but don’t totally understand on Mooon Yooonit 🐽).

I guess I am still traumatized about the time when I was 17 and I went to a downtown address to meet some friends where we were practicing to audition for scholarships to the Interlochen All-State music camp. I drove my grandparents’ Ford Fairlane 500. Grandaddy was dead and Grandma didn’t drive any more and my family took her vee-hickle in for a while. I was a fairly new driver and I was soooo proud of myself. And then I managed to leave the lights on the entire time I was at the “musicale” and the battery died and my dad had to come out and rescue me. I was sooooo embarrassed. But probably not as embarrassed as the time I got into an ACCIDENT with that vee-hickle (on GLARE ICE in Sault Ste. Siberia, right in front of the funeral home). I didn’t have very good luck with that car I guess.

Nevertheless, it was my one and only accident (KNOCK ON WOOD). I don’t count the time I was sitting in a parking space in the Commie High parking lot waiting for a beach urchin and a kid with an old beater with a fake leg sticking out the back of the trunk tried to swing into the empty space next to me, missed, and hit my rear end with enough force to shove me over the concrete barrier. The beach urchin came out and was like, “Moom why are you parked like that?” I don’t remember any issues with backing *out* of the parking place but The Indefatigable *was* a Jeep Wrangler…

Anyway I was about halfway over to Cubelandia in our brand-new top-dollah Toyota RAV4 Adventure and, for the second day in a row, I heard DING! and I had a dashboard message: Roads may be icy! Well, not. It was 37 degrees. That was the same temp as yesterday when the DING! happened. I can’t figger what the trigger was for that alert. 37 degrees is well above freezing and *usually* means dry roads but also, at that point in my commute, there was fog and I have encountered icy roads in similar conditions. So I don’t really know what my hi-tech vee-hickle’s sensors were detecting.

I will have to note the outside temp when I *leave* the Landfill and try to figger if it is simply a temperature threshold that triggers the DING!. That won’t work tomorrow because it’s supposed to be “warm” (50s) and the predicted precipitation is rain (lots of it) and possibly thunderstorms. I wonder if Mooon Yooonit has a lightning detector…

Mooon Yooonit is a wondrous vee-hickle and I appreciate some of the high-tech crapola but some of it annoys me, especially the “stay in your lane” beeper. Off Off Off. And the Patriot Radio setting but I’m trying to listen to that a bit to TRYYYY to understand…

Oh, and “sunset”? The sun set at 5:06 today and since there was heavy cloud cover at that time of day, it was pitch black by the time I got halfway home. If you love living in the Great Lake State, you live with this.

I know at least one of my nine reglear nucular taggers is waiting with bated breath to hear more about the Suspicious Outside Thing. Well. I am here to tell you that the mystery was solved without sending off all the equipment to some mothership satellite somewhere. The camera was put up by… Dun dun dun… The snow removal folks, so they could monitor the snowcover in the parking lot. So it was an innocent situation and we are giving the cams back with the advice that next time they decide to mount a cam on private property, they might do well to let people know in advance.

In one of the two books I’m currently reading, Virgil Wander, a character owns an ancient movie theatre in a town on Minnesota’s north shore of Gitchee Gumee. In a small side story, he is puzzled by little “volcanic cones” of powder that keep showing up. Well, guess what they are? Old Cabin folks, do yooooouuuu know? I’ll let this be a little quiz 🐽. My curious reader already knows because she read the boooooook (and recommended it although it turns out it was already on my to-read). I am enjoying it, btw.

The other boooook I am reading right now is Ursula, Under. This one is set in the yooperland, quite a bit of it in my home town, Sault Ste. Siberia. I could not get this boooook online so I am reading it in paperback, which is why during this dark season, I am reading two books. I read Ursula when there’s enough daylight that I don’t have to turn on a light and Virgil when it’s dark so I can read on my phone. Ursula was recommended by my cuzzint The Grand Poohbah and I am enjoying it too.

I am in the throes (if you can call them that) of Thanksgiving. I am not overwhelmed by any means. We will have a small crowd here and I can do our traditional dishes with one hand tied behind my back. That would be mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, some sort of green veggie (brussels sprouts with BACON this year), and salad. I don’t mess with the turkey, the GG roasts that outside on the gas grill. And beach urchins are filling in with appetizers and dessert (which I do NOT do well) and a very welcome carrot side dish.

I am not overwhelmed except… I dooo make the gravy and I make it ahead and freeze it. But. This is waaaay more gravy than we need for Thanksgiving for our small numbers. This is two 4-cup containers. Yes, it is frozen and I won’t have to make more for xmas but still. I gotta remember to figger out how to half that recipe next year…

These pieces of art are what I look at every afternoon when I’m standing in the Landfill Chitchen doing my blahg or whatever. The clay pieces were created by a beach urchin back in an elementary school art class. The fishy was made by a Lake Superior beachcomber artist based in Duluth that I follow on Instagram. I remember picking up beach glass on our moomincabin beach when I was a kid but not so much these days…

The GG came home from various perambulations today and I was sitting on the Green Couch reading a book. He thought I had been sitting there all morning reading. What? Nope. I had just sat down after spending the morning jumping around doing prep for our small Thanksgiving.

I am suddenly getting emails from “BlabberBuzz Conservative”. I am not sure why. Maybe some troll has given them my email address? It’s all about Make Christmas Great Again and purveys tshirts and things with The Orange Baboon’s grinning face next to Christmas trees and whatever. Nope. I grew up celebrating Christmas and still do albeit in a secular way. The colors were red and green and gold and silver, not orange.

I don’t have a pic of the late model SUV-type thingy that parked in front of The Landfill this afternoon but it startled the heck out of me. I thought that Mooon Yooonit was home. Yikes! I had xmas-y type “surprises” for the GG right out in plain sight in the Landfill front room! I moved those PDQ and then I got to looking at the vee-hickle and one thing I could tell for sure was that the color was NOT Lunar Rock. Nope. Uh-uh. Still, I wondered, is this a RAV4 or what? If this vee-hickle had been at a laundromat, I’d’ve probably tried to put my laundry into it. I had to look up a pic of Mooon Yooonit from its landing at the moomincabin last summer to determine that it was NOT a RAV4. If nothing else, the hubcaps were different. The mean old grunchy old grinchy is right. They all look like jeeps nowadays.

For the first time ever, I submitted a couple of words to the Lake State banned words list. My words? “Woke” and “quid pro quo”. I wrote about quid pro quo a few days ago. I have nothing against the phrase in general, I just don’t like how it gets bandied about by people who don’t know Latin to describe a situation that needs much more specific language. “Woke”? This one just annoys me. It seems to be slang for being alert to social injustice. Well. Why do we need a special word for that? Shouldn’t we all be alert to social injustice *anyway*? Yes. Yes, we should. We don’t need a special word.

I am reading two books right now and one of them is in *paperback* format, which is kind of driving me nuts. I read almost everything on my phone these days and a couple times I caught myself touching a word to try to look it up. Nope. That doesn’t work with a paperback book. Also, I need LIGHT to read this book… I could not get this book online. I’m reading it anyway.

The pic is a bear paw print the GG and his friends encountered yesterday. It kinda almost looks like it has six digits but I think that sixth circle is some other kind of artifact. I am not sure why I am so fascinated by polydactyly.

You know how it is when social media “follows” you based on stuff you buy or even click on? Like the time I decimated our shop vac’s filter cleaning up after a xmas tree. I bought a new shop vac filter on line and was subsequently inundated with ads for shop vac filters. I just *bought* this. I’m not gonna buy another one for a while. And I haven’t. More recently, I clicked on an eBay picture of a socket wrench set and am now receiving emails about socket wrench sets. I clicked because I didn’t understand what was in the picture and was curious. Curiosity killed the cat, I guess.

Today Instagram served up something a little different: the Askov Finlayson company, a purveyor of clothing. What the heck? Who is this Finlayson person and where is this company based? That’s *my* last name. Is it in Scandinavia (where my family is not – at least immediately – from)? Or maybe somewhere out in western Canada… There were a lot of boyz in the Fin generation that emigrated to Canananada and some of them ended up in the Mounties out there and there are rumors that the fam mixed it up with the Native Americans out there…

There was very little information about the Askov Finlayson company on their website (that I could find) but WikiP had some. It is named after two small Minnesota towns, Askov and Finlayson. I had never heard of Finlayson, Minnesota! The owners are named Dayton, grandsons of the man who took over the J.L. Hudson department stores. They were renamed Dayton Hudson for a while. Nowadays most people are probably more familiar with Target. Same company.

The Comm’s first job after college was at the downtown Dee-troit Hudson’s store and I loved our occasional outings at that venerable old store when I was a child. Lunch on the mezzanine? Yes. Occasional outings because going to the downtown Hudson’s for us in those days required a 5-6 hour drive down from the yooperland.

Finlayson, Minnesota was incorporated in 1905 and named after David Finlayson, who owned a sawmill. I doubt I am related to him but I have to say that Sawmill Owner seems to be in line with the kinds of professions my branch of the FinFam pursue. Hardworking honest people to a man (or woman), some with more letters after their names than others.

I am not following Askov Finlayson on Instagram for now. Their clothing is nice and I like their philosophy but I am more of a smartwool gal.

So yesterday, Amazon Woman delayed a meeting a few minutes because there was something “suspicious” outside that she and Building Mom needed to investigate. When I arrived this morning there was a strange truck outside and someone from that truck was talking to Building Mom and I could overhear bits and pieces of various conversations about the Suspicious Outside Thing but I couldn’t really put it all together until AW announced it at the stand-up meeting. Apparently I got to work after the cops left.

Okay. So. The Suspicious Thing was a *camera* mounted to a utility pole and pointed at our sparsely populated parking lot. The geekier members of our team proclaimed it a “professional” job. It was mounted on the pole with plumbing clamps and a solar panel was mounted above it to keep the battery going. (I guess, I am a geek but these people are waaaaay ahead of me.)

The question? Who mounted it? Weeeee didn’t mount it. The landlord didn’t mount it. Was it some grad student doing waterbird counts? Or a disgruntled husband checking up on the comings and goings of his wife? Or?

The person talking to building mom this morning was a security person contracted by Cubelandia. He took the cam off the pole and it will be sent to a mothership satellite for further inspection. It was apparently equipped to send pics/video to a cell phone somewhere and we have the sim card, so.

This afternoon. A few of us were in an impromptu meeting that was suddenly interrupted when we noticed this pickup truck stopping right in front of the utility pole from which we had removed the camera. Somebody said, “That’s an odd place to stop.” We watched with rapt attention! What is he gonna do? He got out of the truck! He started walking around the back. He kicked some dirt/salt around a bit. He didn’t look up at the utility pole at all. Not our man. Actually we figured out he was associated with our lawn/snow service. Poor guy. I wonder if he knew how intently he was being watched.

It’ll be a while before we know what the heck the cam was for, if ever. If we ever find out and if it passes the “I-can’t-blahg-about-that” test, I’ll provide an update. Don’t hold your breath.

P.S. Only a pluviophile would have enjoyed today on The Planet Ann Arbor.

So, remember when the stereotypical high school/college flute player was a skinny white girl with long blonde hair? That was me albeit looking pretty dern scraggly in the pic. Or maybe it was always scraggly. Whatever, boys didn’t seem to mind.

Us flute players were actually a bit more diverse than that. In the yooperland and the northern lower, we were mostly Caucasian but when I got to go to the Interlochen All-state summer camp, there were at least a few boys among our ranks (also Caucasian). Back in those days, if I am remembering correctly, most *professional* flutists were male. It was VERY HARD to carve out a “creative” career then (and now) so maybe some of the better female flutists gave up their dreams to marry doctors/lawyers/Indian chiefs. Or maybe they did what I did and fell off a cliff into an entry-level IT job and turned it into a career.

I joined a flute email list many years ago and via that, I know that it’s still hard nowadays to make a career playing or even teaching classical flute. But people do and there are a LOT more women making a success out of a flute career than when Rampal was still around and many of them are not blonde. I am not dissing Rampal. I saw him at Hill Auditorium once and he was wonderful.

And then there is Lizzo! Holy toledo! You’ve probably heard of her and so have I but this evening is the first time I have checked out her flute playing! She is the antithesis of skinny little blonde girls nervously lining up for chair auditions (although I bet she has done those damn auditions, because everyone with a music degree has). Besides being classically trained, she incorporates the flute into her rap routines. She ROCKS. Honestly, in my day, I had her technique. That’s about as far as it goes. I struggled to find a *decent* link to Lizzo and her flute playing. This one was pretty much the best I found. OMG. I am now following her on Twitter and will be watching what she does.

P.S. The pic shows a bit of, uh, can we even call it cleavage? My BROTHER took this pic! I am sure he did that on purpose!!! Jeebus, what a character. He’s been dead since 2005 (long after he took this pic). He was an accomplished jazz trombone musician (and auto engineer) and I’m guessing he’d’ve liked Lizzo as much as I do.

Beware because this is a rant. It’s somewhat political but not entirely. Just saying if you don’t want to read my rant, look at the purty li’l pitcher and move along.

“Quid pro quo” has been bugging the crapola outta me for a while now. Do we know what it means? It’s Latin. I had three years of Latin in high school. Even after all the talk about “quid pro quo” in the last couple months (is it really *months*?), I have a pretty fuzzy idea about what it means. It isn’t a phrase that anyone (that I know of) has defined and associated in any meaningful way to the Orange Baboon’s dealings in Ukraine. Well yeah a friend of mine said, “tit for tat”. I was looking for something more specific. “Quid pro quo” isn’t English and “tit for tat” I suppose uses English words. But “tat”? Last I looked, that was a lace-making technique. And “tit”… Well, what comes second to mind is a bird species or two and I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what comes to mind first.

We need to use words that most people in the country know and can be applied to the actual issue. With Twitter’s light-speed dissemination of any old garbage, any new word/phrase someone vomits up in a spew of Word Salad spins very quickly out of control to the point that we lose the focus of what the issue is and both “sides” are using the word to denigrate the other. So let’s try to pinpoint the correct words for what the Orange Baboon is being accused of and if it’s bribery (for example), let’s examine whether or not he has engaged in that.

None of this means that I in any way shape or form support the OB. For ANYTHING! I have NEVER held a high opinion of Trump. This goes back decades before he got “elected” president. Back in those days it was more disinterest than dislike. I mean, what the heck do I care about a “billionaire” slum-lord real estate “tycoon” turned reality TV “star”? There are plenty of slimy characters like Trump in the world but I think most of them have the brain power to know not to get into politics. Except from the back room. And that’s awful too but out of scope for today.

I could ignore him back then. I cannot ignore him now.

Within scope for today is that I am just sick and tired of people thoughtlessly using words that they may or may not understand and the whole social media universe mindlessly “sharing” these words without looking up what they mean or using critical thinking skills to associate them with a particular act or situation.

Love y’all, KW