So this is what we got from the GG today. He is southwest of Munising, Michigan. I don’t really like the looks of this so-called bridge much more than the “pole bridge” of a couple days ago but at least it has a flat surface as opposed to a rounded one and I didn’t hear that anyone fell in.

I can’t complain too much. I remember when our own section of the north country trail was not quite as good as it is today although I don’t remember pole bridges. A dedicated group of volunteers worked hard to improve it and we’ve partnered with the US Forest Service to replace some bridges and other things. I dunno how organized the folks who maintain these other sections are. So much of this is volunteer work.

Me? With the usual amount of trepidation, I presented some stuff at work today. I do not enjoy public speaking even when my audience is the wonderful folks I have worked with for 15 years (and it’s teams and all they can see is my work photo, which was taken a few years ago). There are always wildcards and today they were Mr. Bear and the BB. Also today I was feeling a little iffy about my designs because I don’t have fluency with the “backend” processes that we are replacing with user interface.

As luck would have it, Mr. Bear was on his best behavior today. I’m not sure if that was because the BB was there or what but WHEW! I only felt stoopid once during the whole presentation and that was my fault for totally misunderstanding something in a totally ridiculous way. Ridiculous enough that one of my dev pals laughed out loud.

P.S. NPR article right this minute says that bats can make sounds over SEVEN octaves. Does a piano have that many octaves? I think so…

I would bullet these but bullet points don’t work very well in my blahg space because floats and I don’t feel like messing with css. That’s one of the things I do for a living.

Cautionary tale: a friend (with much trepidation) and her family had multiple gatherings over the tday weekend and guess what? If you guessed covid, you win the booby prize. Everyone is vaxxed and boosted at least twice but… It is not over. Our own *one* holiday gathering was much smaller and after a week no one has symptoms.

I made an 0-skunk-30 Meijer run today. It was pitch black all the way over there and back (and WINDY) and I FORGOT to lock Cygnus while I went in the store. Yes, really. Fortunately all was well. I was in there 10 minutes tops but it only takes a second. I leave my purse in my car when I go into stores. That way I can shop unencumbered with anything that’s not in my pockets. Phone in one zip pocket, debit and fob in the other. My purse is well hidden but still. I wouldn’t take my purse at all but my drivers license is in it and I am driving.

One of the things on my grock list was REAL seasoned salt. My homemade stuff didn’t really hit the spot (Chex Mix), at least not for me. Hopefully it won’t take 20 years to use this stuff up.

I am almost done with the tday leftovers. Been making cran-turkey wraps for lunch among other things. That also used up a partial package of tortillas I had in the freezer and some of the arugula that got left here.

Yesterday the GG complained that I didn’t post a pic. Well, my friend, I didn’t really have one. It was dark when I walked and gloomy all day and I worked. So. Here’s a horse pic he sent me a few weeks ago.

Last but not least: No one fell off a log into a river today, at least not that I’ve heard about.

90s TV that is. I did not miss Clarissa Explains It All. That was on Saturday afternoons or some weird time and we watched it on the little TV in the Landfill Chitchen. I often fell asleep to Nick at Nite after play rehearsals. Taxi and other shows. But I didn’t watch prime time TV at all. And so I missed out on sitcoms like Seinfeld.

I dunno what’s on prime time TV in terms of sitcoms today. Do they still air stuff like that? I’m lucky if I can figure out how to turn on the TV let alone find one of the old networks. CBS, NBC, ABC. CBC if you are Canadian or you grow up in an isolated northern border town where the only TV channel you can get is Canadian.

So I don’t EVER think about Seinfeld but the other day, an Atlantic article flew by on Twitter. The writer had (like me) never watched Seinfeld so he decided to binge it. By bingeing, I mean one episode a day, not a full-fledged pig out. This intrigued me enough that I surfed around on my phone and found reruns. I am enjoying them and sometimes actually laughing out loud. Yes, really. I am still making my way through Westworld and an episode of Seinfeld is a nice little palate cleanser between that and sleep.

I think my kids thought I was nuts when I fessed up about this🤣🤣🤣 But I’ve also been known to watch Green Acres re-runs, although I also watched the originals as a kid.

P.S. I do miss the 90s. Those were the years the beach urchins were growing up and I loved ferrying them and their friends all over town with the radio playing “dinosaurs on” (Wee Sing Dinosaurs) at the beginning of the decade and alternative rock at the end.

“Sorta” exciting day? Crossing a small river over a “pole bridge”. A SNOW-COVERED “pole bridge”. Hey buddy, that eez not a breedge! Eet eez a LOG!

Why yes! He did fall in! How deep was it? 1-3 feet. How wet did he get? Wet enough. He hiked “fast” for a couple miles until he could get to where someone could pick him up in her warm car. Thank you Sue! His phone was apparently undamaged. His feet did not get frostbitten.

I was thinking something like, “I would NEVER cross a river on a ‘bridge’ like that!” I was feeling a bit embarrassed about that until a beach urchin piped up to say she crosses those kinds of “bridges” CRAWLING. Like on her hands and knees. Good choice.

I used to cross a log bridge as a child. Before there were modern houses at the west end of the moominbeach, we would launch onto the path at the Mullin cabin, run like bats outta hell to the “pond”, stopping briefly to inspect the woodpecker tree along the way. The “pond” isn’t really a pond, it is a stream and the log was how we crossed the stream at that point. If we crossed it on the beach, we just sloshed across it. So our log bridge was shorter and thicker than the one in the pic and we were agile little monkeys, not baggy old bags. And there was no snow because in those days we closed up our cabins for the winter and went to our houses in town. Meaning we weren’t there in the winter.

I don’t remember anyone ever falling off that little bridge but my (older) cousin Mac managed to TERRIFY me anyway by telling me there were water moccasins in the stream. Well. Not. We have ONE poisonous venomous snake in the Great Lake State, the Massasauga Rattler. It is RARELY seen and non-existent in the yooperland. Garter and grass snakes in our biome. I knew all that (I was about five) but it still scared me. But not enough that I was afraid to cross the bridge!

Oh not here (the pic). A beach urchin sent this pic today from her apartment. It is The Commander’s Christmas cactus and it still thrives going on 11 years after her death. I’m not sure how long The Comm had it but probably a number of years.

It’s a good thing some of whatever “farming” DNA exists in the Fin/MacMu/cFam ancestral pool made it to somebody. I absolutely did NOT get any of it. I kill plants just by looking at them. Houseplants, garden plants, whatever. Sometimes it’s neglect but mainly I just do not understand them. We have babysat house plants over the years. We have one right now. The GG is better at nurturing them and in this case, a main guardian of the plant will be around to check on it.

Fortunately, The Comm’s houseplants found friendly homes, mainly with Lizard, after she died.

We had a struggle with one of her plants. It was a HUGE potted thing (in a huge pot). The beach urchins called it “that tree”. I wasn’t sure how we were gonna even get that thing out of her house, let alone transport it to The Planet Ann Arbor. We deliberated throughout summer of 2012, when we were emptying The Comm’s house in preparation for selling it. The “tree” was among the last things to go. The laundry musheens were still there but I was using them that summer and left them for the next owners.

Then one day I got up there to The Comm’s house and the tree, pot and all, was in the Trash Trailer, which was in the driveway behind the Frog Hopper. I dunno how he got that thing outta the house and into the trailer but it has lived in The Landfill all this time. Alas, it has never regained the health it enjoyed in The Comm’s house. I know the GG pays attention to it so not sure why. Maybe it was a One Woman Plant?

I texted this pic to the beach urchins when the GG finally took off on his latest boondoggle to hike parts of the North Country Trail. Yes, it’ll probably be at least partially a snow hike.

What a day. It started yesterday when he decided (surprise) he would leave today. Then this morning, he couldn’t make up his mind whether to leave today or tomorrow. There was gumbo making (don’t ask) and LOTS of rummaging throughout this morning and to top it all off, today was the Umich / OSU football game. He watches this game pacing around the Landfill, jumping up and down in front of the TV, and generally driving me nuts. Like, just LIGHT!

The game started out with OSU seemingly in control. They seem to win it most of the time so I wasn’t expecting much. He watched some of it here after making a final decision to drive partway north today. So I’m sure he listened to it in Mooon Yooonit, then finished it off at Flaman’s place before continuing on to the Uncly Uncle’s house.

I told him to leave the TV on (it’s in the other room) but I didn’t watch the game. I don’t understand football well enough to know what’s going on. I did open up a tab on my phone browser after hearing a lot of cheering from the TV. I figured OSU had done something but no, it was Umich. They sneaked ahead and never looked back. 40-something to 20-something? Something like that.

So Hail Michigan. We are now blue not only in polly-ticks but “we” have won the OSU game!

Okay. Thanksgiving is over and the next chapter begins. This morning, after a walk and a trip to Plum, I… started some bacon. Put away all of the clean, dry dishes the beach urchins left in the bamboo drainer last night. I ate the pumpkin parfait I was too full to eat last night for breakfast (and bacon). Others ate pie (and bacon). Ran the dishwasher load I forgot to turn on last night and two loads of laundry. Lots of futzing around with the blasted laundry app that decided all of a sudden to not recognize my dryer via our wifi connection.

During a session in the dungeon where I contorted myself down and sideways in order to read the sticker on the interior of the dryer door to get the “password”, it wouldn’t connect and it wouldn’t connect and I was about to give up when it suddenly recognized me again. User interface design anyone? Whose nephew designed this? Or was it a bazillionaire? It is a DRYER! Why don’t they print the frickin’ password PROMINENTLY across the the top of the dryer? Who is gonna try to log in to my DRYER? If somebody breaks into my house, they are NOT gonna want to steal a bunch of old clothes, clean or not. And if they did want to steal old clothes, they certainly wouldn’t need the dryer password. They could just open the dryer door! Or rummage through our dressers and closets. Jeebus.

So turkey tetrahedron tonight. So good. Spaghetti, turkey, peas, mushrooms, sauce (milk, broth, whine, pepper, and nutmeg), topped with parmesan/bread crumbs and baked. There is a pretty good ton of food left but probably not more than we can deal with if we’re creative about leftovers.

The pic has nothing to do with today. It is from May 2000 when a tree fell on our house and the POC (Chrysler minivan). It doesn’t embiggen much because it was taken with our first digital cam, a Sony Mavica. That thing actually saved photos to FLOPPY DISKS!

Another turkey day is in the books and this is what it looked like as the sun was rising this morning.

I was the energizer bunny all morning, making eggs benny and cleaning up dishes as I went. The GG took a walk, hiking toward the mouse house until the mouse herself picked him up on her way over here for eggs benny. She brought a few friends including this one.

We took turns using the Landfill Chitchen throughout the afternoon as the workload shifted from the taaaaring energizer bunny to the younger generation. We have pretty darn warm weather for Thanksgiving. It was too warm to build a faaar in the faaarplace. We were all excited yesterday about having an outdoor faaar this afternoon but it never happened. It was a football afternoon for some and a crash afternoon for others and that was all okay. In the late afternoon big black clouds rolled in and it has been raining for hours. Which is okay. We have needed rain and at least it is NOT snow.

Here’s the obligatory pic of my turkey platter with clutter and today’s undumped compost to keep it real. The GG was just starting to carve the turkey, which is why there are only a couple legs on the platter.

Those of us overnighting at the Landfill ended our evening by watching (randomly) a bunch of the first Godfather movie (and more football🐽). I read the Godfather as a teenager (yes even that part) and watched the movie ONCE in its entirety and a few other times in bits and pieces on TV. I am thinking it may be time to revisit the book and maybe even read its sequels. We’ll see. Great literature it is not but there’s nothing wrong with reading a crappy book from time to time. The trick is to keep reading.

Oh yeah, our mouse revived a tradition of having an afternoon holiday snack involving samosas and mimosas. We squeezed fresh oranges and clementines for the juice. Good times, good tradition. Not that we exactly *have* holiday traditions. Thanksgiving has been a mixed bag throughout the years.

This year our low-key turkey day celebration returns to the Landfill after a bit of a covid-type hiatus. That’s not totally correct. Two years ago, pre-vax, we did do tday here but me and the GG were alone with a huge turkey (pandemic ordering snafu and it was okay, I am good at using up leftover turkey). Last year we were all vaxxed but people were having breakthrough infections, some of them pretty severe, so we cautiously met at the mouse house with the younger generation testing beforehand. It was great and I did almost NOTHING but I couldn’t get the GG to leave at what I thought was a decent hour so this year I volunteered the Landfill again.

I designated today as my day to prep almost everything. And I got most of it done. Mashed potatoes are done. Brussel(s?) sprouts and delicata squash trimmed in prepration for roasting with I dunno what yet, dried cranberries and cherries, a bit of red onion (to use a partial one up), herbs, and maybe a dash of pomegranate molasses? Cranberry sauce is in a pan waiting for later tonight or morning. And it’s so full of sugar it can sit there all night. Dressing? Bread is cubed. Using pre-cut celery and will chop an onion in the morning. And I’ll put some other stuff in it including some chicken broth that got my late afternoon grock/beer runners a lecture on the difference between stock and broth. I don’t know the difference so I was okay with what they bought which is what I wouldda bought. Gravy? I usually make that waaaay ahead and freeze it. This year Sparrow Meats posted that they had some homemade frozen turkey broth so it’s thawing and I’ll use it for my gravy base tomorrow.

Chex mix? Chex mix? I was all set to throw that together but… Where is my Lawry’s seasoned salt? Oh yeah. It was umpteen bazillion years old and I threw it out last year. By this time it was heading toward late afternoon. There was NO WAY I was going out to a grocery store in Cygnus late afternoon on tday eve and Plum is an easy walk but did not have Lawry’s (that I could tell from an exploration of curbside ordering). So… Whaddo I do? Hmmm… I could run out to Kroger at 0-skunk-30 tomorrow morning and hope they have some (they have struggled to stock things during the pandemic). And then… A light bulb came on. What are the ingredients in seasoned salt? Googly googly and I’m sure I don’t have everything in Lawry’s recipe but what the heck, I made my own seasoned salt and I think it’s gonna be decent! Where there is a will, there is a way.

Oh plus, eggplant parm is in the oven for dinner tonight! It wasn’t the most productive work day but oh well.

P.S. I have the delicata squash because the GG was walking around downtown and called me from the farmers market to ask if I wanted anything! Yes! Facetime with veggies ensued.

[That’s why it’s such a piece of crap.] Jeebus. This morning. I can now remote start Cygnus (YAY) so I’ll do it. Problem. I needed a PIN number. I did not KNOW the PIN number but I was able to change it. So I did. But then. I got hung up on two-factor identification. MySubie was gonna send a text to the GG’s phone. The GG was still deep in slumber but I was not gonna give up on this.

So. I woke him up. Is your phone around somewhere? Mmmph. Can you check your text messages? Mmmph. He then surfaced and after a few minutes told me the code. And I managed to get it to start. It would be easier to just use the blasted fob like we have done with every vee-hickle we’ve bought since 2011. In this case, we’d’ve had to buy a SECOND fob for that functionality. We are tech-friendly so the phone option seemed okay at the time. It was MAY so there was no need to remote start for MONTHS. So I guess we were like okay, we’ll figger it out when we need to.

I don’t blame the sales folks at the dealer. They were wonderful. But who the heck made the design decisions on this thing?

I read somewhere that Tesla cars require the driver to use the touch screen to TURN ON ZEE VEEENDSHIELD VIPERS? Really? I dunno if that’s true or if it’s just Musk bashing. But really? I can manage my veendshield vipers just fine with the levers attached to the steering wheel and what’s good is that I can do it without taking my eyes off the road and traffic.

Not everything in an automotive vee-hickle should be handled via a touch screen or iPhone app. And I am not impressed with whoever some of these companies are hiring as designers. My remote start issue is a minor thing but touchscreen control for basic automotive functions while driving is not.

I wonder what my brother (GM automotive engineer and talented amateur jazz trombonist) would have thought about all of this. He died in 2005, before facebook and twitter and touch screens in cars.

I don’t really have much today because my brain is flying wildly all over the place. ADA compliance stuff at work. I am an expert now? Nope. But after a five/six year journey through this transition, my name keeps coming up. And okay. I’ll take it. It was a HUGE learning curve for our whole team and we have come a long way but we don’t know it all. But I know enough to be able to provide a few of those proverbial (and often elusive) bootstraps to others who are staring the beginning of that journey in the face.

Oh when my name comes up, I mean only on my small team. The company at large has no clue who I am or what I do. I am just a cog, albeit a happy one. And I am NOT an ADA guru in any way, shape, or form.

So I was thinking all day about how to respond to an email. And thinking about turkey day, which I am not really prepared for but it’ll all work out and if we need anything at the last minute, the Plum will be open and we’ll send someone over there who doesn’t WORK there. Like the GG. And then there are xmas gifts, which I do not really want and don’t think others want a lot of either. Not to mention a few clutter piles around the Landfill (one reason I don’t want gifts), which are GOING TO RETURN TO WHERE THEY LIVE or else!

And then there’s my beloved Cygnus. She’s fine! But I was able to access her via the MySubaru iPhone app for the FIRST TIME since I bought her, which was May 2021 so I spent a whole winter without being able to remote start her. I love her but apparently only one person can have a MySubaru account. Which SUCKS since TWO people are on the title and she’s nominally “my car”. So what the f*ck? Logging in via the GG’s account allowed me to FINALLY remote start her without whining, “Dear will you remote start my car?” Or suiting up to go outside and start her manually. I had to do that with the Ninja but she was a 2008 6-speed manual. (I still miss my little Ninja but I love Cygnus.)

The pic is the GG putting some ancient sparklers into the faaaarplace. We have so much fun.

Actually they are calling them “sofas” now. At least that seems to be the best way to get search results on the internet. When I was a kid we called them “davenports”. At least The Commander did.

If I want to buy a couch sofa, I have to go SHOPPING. For furniture. Did I want to go furniture shopping today? No I did not. Do not get me wrong. I am not afraid I’m going to get COVID (again) by going (masked) into a few furniture stores. That train has left the station.

I just plain hate shopping, especially at this time of year. But more to the point I really hate shopping for furniture. What I would really like is for someone to get an idea of what I’m interested in and locate a few options that I can pick from. I know Certified Kitchen Lady would be a great help but they do *renovations*, not just single pieces of furniture. I don’t think I can get the GG to agree to renovating our two main living spaces as much as I’d like to.

I get so overwhelmed in furniture stores. There’s tooooo much. I can’t envision ANY of it in MY house. I don’t really like the colors. I want teal, they have taupe, etc. Taupe is not a color. I can’t STAND the intrusive sales personnel. I want somebody there if I have questions or I’m ready to buy. Trying to push stuff on me is likely gonna send me out the door in a panic. I couldn’t do that kind of job if you paid me a billion dollars.

So today we tried facetime shopping where the GG did the walking and I looked at (and rejected) about a bazillion couches sofas. At some point, I know I will have to go out and look myself. And I cannot buy a couch sofa on the internet although I can certainly surf to look at styles (but that’s overwhelming too). A couch sofa is a big enough item I need to meet it in person and maybe even sit on it.

Bah humbug😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

P.S. This is a first world problem and one I am no doubt overthinking!

I am so glad “we” (our country) are not bickering about football players taking a knee any more. At least I don’t think we are but maybe I’ve missed something. I never had an issue with it. It seemed like a form of peaceful protest against some things our country doesn’t seem to “get”. Like people are people are people no matter what color they are and should therefore be treated as, well people.

It was/is a football Saturday and although I couldn’t care less about team sports, I do like the ambience of football Saturdays in our Big 10 town. I also don’t mind it on TV especially when the weather is bitterly cold like it is today.

So the GG walked down to the Big House and then (eventually) over to get porterized. I enjoyed my space-ification and used it to clean the refrigimatator and READ. The Marriage Portrait and having trouble putting it down.

Late in the afternoon, I received this pic. It is a requested xmas gift. The problem is (or was) what IS it? The instruction with the pic was something like, “pick it up soon to get the sale price.” Okay… WHERE do I “pick it up”? Turns out it was REI and there ain’t no way I was gonna drive over there to buy it. I mean, I can just order it online, roight? Like I’ve been doing with REI stuff for years, even before the pandemic. So, ordered. And yes he knows this. Why? Because he thought I would have to GO TO REI to get the sale price. No no no no no! I did talk him down off that ledge.

Whaddo I want for xmas? Well nothing really but I do have to provide some ideas because I always get asked. My answer THIS YEAR? Couch. Couch. Couch. Couch. Mid-century modern. Couch. And. This is a two-part request. 1) Couch. 2) GET RID OF THE OLD COUCH.

That would be the Green Couch. I didn’t want to adopt the Green Couch in the first place. But I made my peace with it. But now? After going on three years of telecommuting from it, I am done done done.

And by getting rid of it I don’t mean putting it down in the dungeon to further molder. I mean taking it outside, putting it in the trashmobile, and dumping it in an appropriate place.

Mother’s March means the chief cook and bottle washer (aka meeeee) is trying to get rid of leftovers or whatever. I got that term from My Dear Uncle Harry who did a lot of the cooking for his family. (He is alive and kicking but not doing the cooking any more.)

I worked on Mother’s March tonight. I concocted a pasta/veggie/sausage dish that incorporated the remains of a bag of mixed frozen veggies that the GG bought on one of his northern boondoggles. I do not buy veggies in that form factor although I do occasionally buy frozen peas and lima beans, etc.

To be fair, I also used up some fancy blueberry bratwurst that *I* had purchased at Sparrow last June. It was really good but not the right size to put into a bun (waaaaay too long). I wish I could get to freezer zero before turkey day but I will definitely not.

The pic is one of Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Benches. Except this one is on the North Country Trail near Tahquamenon Falls. A hiker who encountered this bench a couple months ago posted to the facebook group that they thought someone was burning wood from it (the remains of a campfire was nearby). The GG saw the pic and replied with something like, “Naw, it’s rotted wood and I’ll fix it.” And so he did that this weekend.

We are into snow around here now and so I didn’t really want to ask how his drive back to The Planet was. It turns out that it was intermittently AWFUL. From the Big Mac bridge to Gaylord yesterday it was White Knuckle. Today was better except when it wasn’t. Intermittent snow and sleet and whatever. Himself got home safely this afternoon 🧡🧡🧡

So I am omnivorous. I have ALWAYS been part carnivore and definitely plan a lot of menus around meat, although we do also have meatless days. I can’t really say why this is. My dad was a pretty darn good carnivore. He didn’t touch fish and even complained about chicken (khkhh was his opinion or sometimes SHIT). As a kid, I loved both chicken and fish. Of course we ate vegetables too. The Commander made sure of that having grown up on a farm and possessing a home economics degree. (She would kill me if she knew I called her degree that but I can’t remember what the heck it was actually called.)

I don’t know what is really going on but I sometimes wonder if whatever DNA created me makes me NEED to eat meat. Like how much protein my body needs and how it processes it and what kind of protein… Well, who knows… It’s got to be different for everyone. I do like a wide variety of foods but a nice little beef filet on the grill remains one of my faves. With friends. FinFam Steak Dinner. By “friends” I mean sides that go with steak but also family and friends to share it with. I certainly don’t eat steak every day, more like every few weeks.

I was intrigued when NPR’s All Things Considered ran a piece on cultivated meat this afternoon. I didn’t listen to all of it so I didn’t totally understand it but it sounds like “they” are figuring out how to grow actual meat from well, I dunno, meat “cells” or whatever. Which means you don’t have to raise aminals just to kill them to eat them. Which we have been doing forever but… (Here’s where I run out of words).

There are so many issues to think about. The most personal one for me at the MOMENT is would I like this cultivated meat? Can they actually create a beef tenderloin or ribeye steak or whatever from cells or whatever. I am all for reducing the need to raise aminals and kill them on a large scale but I would like to know more. And will this fancy new meat cost more at the grocery store than the regular old meat?

I know I would never be happy eating the proverbial “beans and rice” every day (although I do love beans and rice!).

The book I’m currently reading (Lungfish) finds a young mother and her child isolated and destitute on an island with a drug-addicted husband/father. They eat native flora/fauna when they can’t get to the mainland. When they can get to the mainland, they can only afford to buy cheap grocks. So the native foods aren’t enough to satisfy them in terms of quantity and taste. The food they can afford on the mainland fills them up but isn’t always very nutritious. In both cases, they are probably not getting enough protein.

Emphasis on the “GAG” part of the word. A disclaimer here? I did NOT come up with this tag for Make America Glorious And Great Again. I am not that clever. I dunno who did come up with it but it is now all over them thar intertubes, the ones ol’ Al invented (not).

I was going to title this entry “Here we go again”, which referred to the first snowfall we’ve had that stuck, although it is gone now. I guess that title would also have been fine for the Orange Baboon’s third run for prez. I hope “we” (aka his “base”) aren’t stoopid enough to fall for him again but who knows. I do NOT want to look at his mug and listen to his Word Salad for the next two (or six?) years. I wish somebody would put him out of his misery. Oh, I don’t mean kill him. Just get one of those big old hooks, pull him off the stage, and feed him a hamberder.

I also don’t want to give him any oxygen at all, even the teensy tinesy little bit my blahg might generate. So let’s talk the S word for a bit. No it is NOT an early snowfall. November 2014 the first half of the month emulated the previous winter’s Polar Vortex, when Canananada got drunk and fell asleep on the upper midwest (I cannot take credit for making that up either). I have seen snow in September. I have seen snow in June. I think. Maybe that was in the yooperland.

This bitsy little snowfall was earlier than last year’s first but not by a whole lot. Even people who have lived here forever are constantly commenting on how weird the weather is. Not. This is the Great Lake State. It does EVERYTHING here. In just about every month. We can have days and days of 70s temps in the winter and I keep glubs at the moomin for those nice cold July days we sometimes get. Radical Betty one particularly cold July: We just get a little BOX of summer.

G’night! I’m not gonna support the Orange Baboon (I didn’t before) and neither should you. Bad Orange Man 💩💩💩

P.S. Another good one: “Florida Man makes announcement”

Grock worker beach urchin texted this afternoon to report that she had been Courtoised. That could mean a lot of things. In this case it meant that two members of the cFam visited her at work today and then proceeded to get another cFam guy on facetime or whatever.

Yes, they were all guys. Having guy fun I might add. Our oldest nephew called the GG today about meeting for lunch since he had a prodject going on here on The Planet Ann Arbor. So he and the GG met at the Village Kitchen (VK). I did not accompany them but if I had not just stocked up on wrap sandwiches at Plum this morning, I’d’ve maybe asked for a take-out gyro. I have to keep reminding people I’m still not doing indoor dining but also, friendly introvert that I am, I wasn’t up for cFambly style chitchat today🐸

The VK is across the parking lot from the Plum so OF COURSE being cFam guyz, they visited my mouse (who was at work, I hugged her there this morning) after lunch. And THEN. They got the UU on the phone just to make it all more fun and cFambly-like. UU being the GG’s identical twin and therefore also nephew’s uncle. All this while my mouse was trying to get to a work teleconference.

And yes, “service workers” do have meetings. One that is burned into my brain is when I worked at Tempo umpteen bazillion years ago and Mr. Drysdale called a meeting to educate employees about shoplifting techniques. He used a package of “men’s briefs” as a prop, which cracked me up🤪 but… Dun dun dun… The reason the meeting was called was because I alerted him to the fact that certain customers were wandering around the store filling their carts with items that they then brought to the office to “return”. For a refund. I hadn’t really glommed on to what they were doing. I worked in the office and I was taaaared of trying to process their “returns”. Mr. D. TOTALLY GOT IT! And called me out (in a good way) for catching it, even though I didn’t really know I was catching anything at the time.

All that said, [again] the cFam was the BEST family to marry into. There’s occasionally sibling stuff but every family has that (mine did). But it’s not serious stuff and no one hires lawyers to bully and harass people (like happened in my fam). We recognize that we are all different and have our own unique strengths and weaknesses. We do what we can to help others if we have the means to. And we, the cFam boyz at least, are not above visiting relatives at their work places and doing our best to try to embarrass them.

BTW, that’s Gorilla in the pic. Our pandemic-gifted outdoor propane heater. (Don’t ask. About the name, I mean.)

Oh not this woodpecker. I can hear this one rat-a-tatting around here and there sometimes but it does NOT peck on the metal fireplace chimney. DR-R-R-R-R-R-R!!!!

Today it was apparently in some kind of competition with another woodpecker. They’re downys, little ones. Chickadees often nest in this birdhouse in the spring. I dunno what these characters were doing. The GG sent me the pic. He was typing away at a North Country Trail newsletter, a little too frenetically for my taste since I was picking away at a glacially paced archaeological dig. Frenetically? Pacing and sighing and other activities.

And then. Dun dun dun. “Is it okay if I go back to the great white north?” Well, yes. And no, I do not want to go. You are gonna be out playing with DR mowers and fixing benches and I am gonna be working and it’s all fine but I can’t stay at the moomin because it’s closed (and wouldn’t be easy to keep warm at this time of year even if it weren’t). And I don’t wanna stay in a motel. I’ll stay here and get ready for turkey day.

Another day at the Landfill.

I have been on the WARPATH! The Clutter Warpath. I hereby declare that I pick up after MYSELF, not anyone else. Take a note.

What was it today? Not much really. An [empty] igloo cooler that has been squatting in a corner of the living room for what seems like months. Move it move it move it! A plastic pail with some kind of a squeegee tool that was IN the living room but I moved it to the “foyer” a while back so it wouldn’t be in Roooooomba’s way. Move it move it move it! A “shim” hanging out in my kitchen. I had to ASK what it even was. I was trying to clean counters and not only was it in my way, it fell OFF the counter. Move it move it move it! We won’t even talk about the remainder of the NCT/camping/whatever BS that was piled in the back room. Move it move it move it!

Tools and other non-decorative crapola do NOT belong in the living areas of the Landfill unless they are actively being used. Thanksgiving is coming up and I think it’s happening here this year. I am not messing around. And guess what? The Landfill Refrigimatator is not actually jam packed with crapola! The freezer is not so great but I have made progress. There is still a Pandemic Stash in the living room but it is down to one box and that box comes in handy to block Rooooomba from trying to go over the step down to the “foyer” so I am living with its supreme fugliness. Note to beach urchins: don’t buy brown sugar or oregano or nutmeg. I HAVE TONS! Probably some other stuff I’m forgetting too.

A couple days late but how’s about Blue keeping Senate control? Yay for everyone who helped keep it from flipping. Special thanks to all the college students who kept the polls open until after midnight so they could vote (and register and it is legal in the Great Lake State to register on election day *at* the polling place). Now if we could just get rid of Lauren Boebert who I feel especially antagonistic towards. Sorry, I know there are others equally ridiculous and likely some Dems too. Apologies to the republicans I know and love (even the MAGAts🐽).

Weird mix of folk/blues music (kitchen) and football (back room) tonight. I’m actually getting along with it 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

We didn’t get our first snow today. That happened I can’t remember when but the last time it was little spitty bits of snow in the air. Too warm out for real snow. Today it was in the upper 30s and snow did actually fall for a couple hours. Not enough to stick anywhere. I’ve been doing rain dances for a while now. Does this mean my “prayers” have been answered?

It was cold enough at 0-skunk-30 this morning that Cygnus warned me the roads could be icy. They weren’t. They were bone dry. The ice warning triggers at 37 degrees.

This is the first Saturday I’ve been to the farmers market in a while. Reasons? Complicated ones involving road construction and changes to long-term traffic patterns (think one-way streets now two-way plus dedicated bike lanes separated from auto traffic by curbs). Navigating the constantly changing streets in the pitch black mornings we get at the end of the EDT season was just not worth it. Plus I have been alone a lot this fall and so have not been buying a lot of food.

Today? Construction is done, EDT is over (meaning it’s light at 7AM), and the GG is back from his boondoggles. Sparrow Meats flew by on facebook with some prepared turkey broth so I followed that siren song inside. Maybe I’ll use that as the basis for tday gravy this year (I make it ahead). While I was in there, I noticed that no one was crowding Monahan’s seafood counter so I bought a big salmon filet AND HEY, you have swordfish scallopini! I cleaned them out of what was currently on display. Outside to the market proper for yams, apples, onions, broccoli, and lettuce. Hydroponic lettuce although we can usually get fresh lettuce throughout the winter because hoop houses. And no, I don’t HAVE to go down there at 7AM but it gets crowded FAST and I do not do well with crowds. And that’s not because of COVID although COVID has exacerbated it.

I do wear a mask at the market even though I am mostly outside. We keep hearing about hospitals filling up with RSV and regular old flu viruses and I can’t help thinking those cases might not have materialized if people would just continue to mask up.

The GG put a fake log on this afternoon and hunkered down to watch Umich beat the crap outta whoever. Nebraska I guess. I prob’ly shouldn’t have said that. It might jinx them against O-haaaaa-o State in a couple weeks. But still. Hail Hail Michigan and not just because our home football team is actually winning this year.