It took me a while to process this photo, sent to me by the GG. We are looking down into the Old Cabin terlet (the one inside the cabin, not the outhouse terlet).

For many years, cousin npJane would arrive to open the Old Cabin in the spring and there would be a dead mouse or two or three in the toilet. I’m thinking she posted the mouse count on facebook for a while. She finally came up with a solution that has been working (so far). This board with a ROCK on top of it keeps mice from getting into the toilet.

The Old Cabin has a lot more trouble with rodents getting in than the moomincabin. I’m not sure why, maybe because it’s old enough that there are a lot more nooks and crannies for rodents to get in. A couple of times throughout the years, we have found dead squirrels inside the moomin. The are not invading to look for food. I remove anything remotely edible every fall. They somehow find their way down through the chimney and then can’t figure how to get back out.

At any rate, all family seasonal cabins at the moominbeach are closed for the winter. This always makes me a little sad but it is what it is and I feel very fortunate that our extended family still has the property.

I was unloading a few grocks from Cygnus today (she’s back again but she may be pressed into service again if Oriole isn’t ready for a couple more days). I turned around and looked down and whoa, FUNGUS! This tree, by the way, once fell on The Landfill, at least about the top third of it did. That’s a story for another day.

Okay, I re-read a whole bunch of Dune, the sci-fi books, sandworms and all. I had this memory of somehow getting bogged down at some point when I was reading it umpteen bazillion years ago but maybe not because I had a great time with my re-read. Although I eventually put it aside for a while (more in a minute). I also thought I had read that there was a new Dune TV series but my wimpy attempts at googling it haven’t turned up much. I’m pretty sure I remember there were movies or something quite a few years ago. I am intrigued by the idea of a TV series. I kinda like the long form, if it’s done well.

I interrupted Dune because Partita “hit the slopes” the other day. I’ve loved Kingsolver since the bean trees and have been waiting for this one. I am just starting it but it totally hits home. Long-haired blonde girl from a rural outpost has a talent for music and goes to college in a big city to study it. That’s meeeeee. Well, not exactly. Long story short, I was not a farm girl and my family totally valued education, including higher education and even pursuing “frivolous” majors like music. More on *that* some other day along with some other differences. It’s all navel gazing in the end but a lot of the stuff the protagonist talks about resonates with me..

I’m not sure I can define “partita” off the top of my head. I googled but I got AI results and… The partitas in the book are all piano pieces, mostly Bach. I can play the piano and am not terrible at it but I am nowhere near a pianist. A quick google tells me that there are pieces for flute (my main instrument) with “Partita” in the title. I’m pretty sure Bach didn’t write them.

That’s me for the moment. I have always been adamant that our little family has at least two working automotive vee-hickles at our disposal. And we usually do. In fact, we have from time to time had three or four such vee-hickles. That happens during your kids’ teenage years. I remember those days from when *I* was a teenager plus we usually had the Bank Car parked at our house. Why it was safer at the Dillon House than at the bank, I do not know.

Pam’s comment yesterday got me thinking about my brother and how I have never really “mourned” him or other close relatives. Except “mourn” is a weird word because everybody does it differently. My way was apparently to continue moving forward.

My brother was 3-1/2 years younger than me. I think there was a miscarriage between us (vague memories of staying at Grandma’s house for a couple days while mom went to the hospital). If that child had lived, I’m guessing we wouldn’t have had Jim. Instead I imagine a bratty younger sister who was more outgoing, pretty, and popular than me.

But then again, that “sister” might not have survived, as my brother almost didn’t because of rh negative incompatibilities that only a complete blood transfusion could mitigate. My uncle doctor and a visiting pediatrician scrambled a musheen that could give a newborn infant a transfusion because there wasn’t such a beast at our small town hospital.

At my early age, I had spent a week at the moominbeach while my mom gave birth. I had a great time! I was with my grandparents and aunts/uncles and cousins. But I have a clear memory of when my parents finally came out to Aunt Katie’s cabin to collect me. I asked, “Where is the baby?” They answered, “We don’t think he is coming home.”

He did come home. He put my nose out of joint big time because I had been a “princess” for 3-1/2 years. He was healthy, as far as we knew. Here he is playing the trombone in the Soo High pep band. Probably a freshman. He was a GOOD jazz ‘bone player who actually played with Woody Herman a few times. But he was also a car aficionado and his paying career was automotive engineer for General Motors. It took meeeee a lot longer to find a lucrative career than it did for him but eventually I managed it.

He, unknowingly to anyone in the era of his birth, brought home the hepatitis C virus. Who knew to test for something like that then. It eventually killed him. It took a long time and he was healthy throughout most of that time.

It’s too long a story for tonight but here I am standing next to the sign for his namesake trail, up on the Lake Superior escarpment behind the moominbeach. The Little Traverse Conservancy owns the property and created the trail, the GG helps with trail maintenance, and I (well, we) donate money. We have become friends with some people who live on the escarpment. I miss the days when my family owned all that land but we are moving onward.

P.S. I sent the pic of my brother to the family chat and my bonus daughter aka my niece and his (beautiful) daughter, sent back a picture of her making that same face.

So I started watching the new Carrie series (don’t take her to the prom) but last night I got waylaid by “Munster Go Home” on Svengoolie. An internet search tells me this is the original of SIX Munster movies. Who knew? I watched it. It was fun. I don’t think I’ll watch the other five [snort].

The Munsters… KW needs to take a deep breath to remember a time in her family history where the Munsters played a bit of a background part.

My brother died. The next morning, I launched from the Planet Ann Arbor at 0-skunk-30 to drive to the yooperland to pick up our parents to drive them down to Trollandia for his funeral.

I remember when I got up there, we decided to get lunch at Clyde’s, which is a drive-in and therefore my parents would not have to interact with people they knew who didn’t know yet that they had just lost a child. They weren’t ready to talk about that yet. It was a beautiful day in the yooperland and my dad and I went out to the moomincabin and I think I kayaked and maybe even swam. It was June, so maybe I didn’t swim.

Dad and I went back in to town to the Dillon House and, as The Commander and I were getting dinner ready, the TV was playing the Munsters over and over and over again.

A Guy Weekend P.S. The pic is from the Little Boots Diner and that is (I think) a Smokin’ Gun Quesadilla, apropos for Guy Weekend. It’s my fave although my choice of meat for this is ham.

Evidence that pumpkins were used as targets on Guy Weekend. If shooting up pumpkins squeeks you out a bit, I would remind you that when we make pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, they end up getting decimated by candles and squirrel activity and whatever and end up in the compost. The guys survived and have sent post-Saturday activity pics from a restaurant. And yes, I’m sure they had access to cee-gars although none of them are smokers (except for the occasional cigar).

On another subject, do y’all remember the old movie Carrie from Stephen King’s debut horror novel? Did you see the movie? Did you read the book? I read the book, then I saw the movie. I saw the movie *in* a theatre in Sault Ste. Siberia. Uber Kayak Woman and I drove in from the moominbeach. She was fascinated by the tagline (or whatever) “Don’t take Carrie to the prom.” Indeed.

I recently became aware that there is a new Carrie TV series set in modern times (think active shooter drills, etc.). Yes! I am gonna watch it and so I started it last night. I do not think this is a series the GG will want to watch with me but who knows. By the pictures I saw on the internet, I was not sure I would like their choice of actress for Carrie. Too “cute” and not the naive, closeted daughter of a religious fanatic. So far, I have been wrong about that. Yes, she’s “cute” but she *is* naive, etc. She’s encountering an American public high school for the first time as a sophomore. A pox on religious fanatics. I’m convinced Jeebus would not approve of them.

Carrie has another soft (or maybe weird) spot in my heart. For YEARS, people would walk up to me in the grocery store or wherever and tell me, “You look like Carrie.” Wait a minute, I am not covered with blood. Of course they meant I look[ed] like Sissy Spacek, the actress who played her. I was flattered (I guess). I never really saw the resemblance except for long blonde hair.

Here’s a random Smashing Pumpkins song I remember from the 1990s when I was carting the beach urchins and their tween/teenage friends around The Planet Ann Arbor in my old POC minivan. I miss those days (and the days when I supposedly looked like Sissy Spacek).

It’s a guy weekend at Hoton Lake. You know the kind. Where the guys get together to drink whiskey and shoot guns. So three brothers (two of them identical twins) and one twin’s adult son are up there. A grandson was tentatively scheduled to attend but apparently he has better things to do. High school freshman. I am not even being snarky! I so remember those days.

Drinkin’ whiskey and shootin’ guns. First, they are not gonna do those two things together. Second, at least one of them has a concealed carry permit (CCP) and you can’t just order them off the intertubes. You have to take training classes. The only time I have heard of the CCP person actually firing a gun except at a target was when a BEAR was (slowly) approaching him and he fired into the air, which scared the bear off. I doubt that his pistol would’ve done much to the bear except to enrage it and make it more dangerous. He knows that.

I am not either anti or pro gun. I have never shot one but I (technically) own the lion’s share of the family arsenal. Mostly rifles. Why? Because I inherited them from my dad, who I never saw shoot a gun growing up. My brother knew where they were hidden (and showed them to our cousin Jay when they were young children). I was oblivious. Guns? Whut? We have guns?

There was a hilarious story (after I was an adult with children) where my dad got so annoyed with all the Canada Geese walking on the beach (and shitting) that he was gonna load up and go shoot some. He got down to the beach with a rifle and… Stopped. 1) He was in his pajamas and 2) What are all the grand dames (like Barb Mullin) gonna think if they hear/see me shooting geese? He backed off to what I’m sure was The Commander’s GREAT RELIEF!

So I dunno what the guys will do this weekend. I’m sure they’ll tipple a wee bit of whiskey. Guns? Who knows whether they’ll get around to that or not.

Photo credit to the UU (aka the GG’s ID twin aka my brother-in-law). I stole it off facebook without permission.

I don’t often drink beer but I didn’t hang up because I knew Cleary’s Pub would have cab too. And margaritas, as I heard someone ordering in a booth behind us. (We were at our fave spot at the end of the bar.)

Since the GG is off on another junket tomorrow (albeit not a 3-week junket) I made him take me out to lunch. I was thinkin’ either Casey’s or Dexter’s but he came up with Cleary’s, which was a great idea because it was a beautiful day and would be a longer ride than usual on the back roads. Except we took the freeway out there because the GG was *hungry* and looking for hardware stores. (Don’t even try to make sense of that.)

After lunch, I made him drive me out on the little roads by the Discovery Geology Center and then we trundled home, stopping in the little burg of Dexter, where there is a hardware store. He went in there to get a key copied. I stayed in the car. It is an Ace Hardware and they always have tempting non-hardware-type things and I didn’t want to impulse buy anything. He came out with a paper bag, not needed for a key. What was his impulse purchase? A junction box. Of course.

I have been unsettled the last couple days because of the rummaging rampage that was going on here at The Landfill. It turns out that most of that rummaging wasn’t related to packing for a trip to Hoton Lake and the yooperland. HE WAS ORGANIZING STUFF TO GET RID OF IT! AND HE *DID* GET RID OF A LOT OF IT THIS MORNING! Yaaaaaay! I would *not* let him get rid of the elegant filigreed silver serving platter that Radical Betty gave us as a wedding gift. Other silver I own is not mine. I have no attachment to it and I dunno how to get rid of it aka “your children do not want your china”. But I’m not ready to get rid of that particular platter yet.

Note to self: *use* that platter the next time folks come over and you are serving them smoked salmon and crackers and fancy goat cheese and whatever…

Oh, not mine, so much. I spent some time today *finally* figgering out what was in the goddamn freezer here at the Landfill. I threw some stuff out. I don’t think it was bad exactly. I just couldn’t figger out what the heck it was.

I did find some actual whitefish in there today and cooked it tonight. I found no fewer than FIVE singly packaged chicken breasts. With just myself to feed here for quite a bit of the last month or so, I was making some sorta Greek salads for lunch with sauteed chicken breast. The problem has been that I had no clue how much chicken breast was already in the freezer so I kept buying more! So, no more chicken breast until it’s gone.

I also spent a lot of time sorting out the financial records for last year’s moomincabin expenditures. I have an affinity for bookkeeping. but I was behind. I would say it’s weird but both my dad and granddaddy were small-town bankers back in the day and I think I inherited some of whatever it is that makes my family tick. Both my daughters have that “bug” too. When they were teenagers, they kinda disparaged that but now they laugh and say stuff like,, “Yeah, I’m just like mom.” (At least in that respect.) When I hired on to my online banking career, dad and granddaddy were both dead but it wasn’t lost on me that I landed (albeit ass first) into the banking biz, even though it wasn’t anything like what my forebears did for a living.

I dunno. What else. The GG was doing a lot of rummaging again today. He’s gearing up for *two* trips to the yooperland. I cannot keep up with his schedule and neither can he. At the end of the day, he could not find his phone. He eventually found it in the passenger seat of one of our automotive vee-hickles. But sheesh.

So my blahggy friend Pam was wondering what yesterday’s photo was and how it might relate to my post. Answer: It doesn’t relate at all (LOL)! I didn’t have a related pic to post and the GG was futzing around with this thing (charging device for something) so I posted this random pic because it illustrates a little slice of life at the landfill, which is loaded with tools and various other crapola (more on that in a bit because boy oh boy was it a day around here).

I will explain today’s pic, although I can’t totally remember what was going on (and no, I don’t have dementia) it’s just that it was a looooong time ago (2008) in a refrigimatator far far away (not). It is an electrofragmathermoglobulator, at least that’s I called it. It’s just a thermometer of some odd sort. We were having issues with that fridge and the GG was monitoring the temperature. We ended up getting a new fridge, exactly the same model as that broken one because it was the only one that would fit in that spot. We still have the replacement fridge and, knock on wood, it still works.

This pic is only tangentially related to today’s post, albeit in a couple ways. First because the GG spent HOURS (or it seemed like hours) rummaging the house, cars, trailer, and shed for a missing solder gun. He thinks it was in a “bag” (I think). He has bags upon bags upon bags with tools and other crapola in them, including one of The Commander’s old purses albeit one that looks kinda like a man purse (murse?). He never did find *that* solder gun but he got *another* one *working*. How many solder guns can a guy own?

The other thing is, I have GOT to get the Landfill freezer cleaned out. I could swear I had some frozen whitefish in there. Quick dinner, right? Nope. What I pulled out was a duck breast. I didn’t figure this out until it was partially thawed. I mean, it’ll be quick to cook so that’s not the problem. The problem is there is sooooo much crapola in the freezer (fridge/freezer side-by-side) that if I don’t clean it out soon I am gonna die by big frozen blocks of things falling on my head. Or more likely my feet. Which won’t kill me but…

NPR rolls along in the background of Life at the Landfill most of the time. The person who once called it National Petroleum Radio now calls it Commie Radio (or something like that). But he also listens to it… Yes, we have a mixed marriage.

Anyway, I wasn’t really listening to it this afternoon. I was re-reading Dune (hi Margaret, I’m enjoying it). The audiobook version this time, the last time was paperback and probably 50 years ago. More on the whole Dune thing another day. I walked into the kitchen, where the radio is, and Here and Now was interviewing a person with a familiar name to me. I’m like, is this a woman I (kinda) know. I mean. I haven’t ever met her in person but we are Instagram friends and the state and county were familiar and she is a writer and journalist. So, I am like whut? Who?

The other thing is that she is my BFF’s sister-in-law or so I was thinking. So I texted BFF. BFF and the Guru were on the “toad” (what my family calls the road), driving from their seasonal yooperland cabin to their primary (posh) residence in Atlanta (okay I have given away the state all of these people live in). I can’t even imagine how much conversation and texting was going on it that car as they checked this out with their relatives all the while approaching Atlanta and their home. Have you ever driven in Atlanta traffic? I have. Cincinnati is also notorious although I have actually “droven” through Cinci pulling a U-Haul trailer with FlaMan and his dog and a bunch of oxygen stuff in the car and was there a storm that day or not? I can’t remember. I just trundled on. But yes it was their sister-in-law!

Here is what she wrote on Bitter Southerner. It’s a great article but the upshot is something like, “If you are concerned about election fraud, VOLUNTEER TO BE A POLL WORKER!” I know people who toil at the polls every election and they are TRAINED! They are often my friends and neighbors and relatives of mine do this in other places. They are all sincerely concerned about doing their jobs. Show some respect or sign on as a poll worker and learn the process.

User experience (UX) design: Gah. The GG spent TOO much time trying to deposit a check into an account at a large WELL-KNOWN bank today. It is our bank but it is not our account. I won’t go into the details (it’s routine family business). The banking app has changed recently and he couldn’t to save his life, find where to deposit a check. I showed him (on my phone) how to find the “deposit” button. Oh ho! His user interface didn’t look anything like mine. Eventually he had to re-log in, the new interface showed up, and he successfully deposited the check. This was bad UX but back in a minute on that. Little Cat Z and I just yesterday had annoying issues with the website for the cabin insurance. I won’t go into it except to clarify that our policy is up to date and we did not owe money. But still… Looping back to the bank thing, the company I retaaared from develops our personal banking app. I think. I don’t really know (long story). Not my team though. My team handles corporate systems, not consumer (personal) banking.

A house divided can laugh together… Apparently Eric Schmitt (a Republican US senator) questioned Jack Smith (independent special counsel, who oversaw Justice Department criminal investigations into “our (!) favorite president” (Trump, just ask him). I saw memes on the internet (from people I generally trust) that said Eric asked Jack if he had translated the Book of Mormon from some golden plates to “the true gospel”. Jack replied that it was Joseph Smith who did that. I’m not sure if this is exchange is exactly true and it seems like there’s some basketball game that might also be involved? So there’s a lot I don’t know and may not want to know. But Joseph Smith is looooong dead but he started the whole Mormon faith on Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan (if I have it right). But whatever happened made the two halves of a politically divided house laugh! We need to do that sometimes. People on both sides of the political spectrum say really stupid things.

Sunday night folk radio on NPR. Where oh where is Taj Mahal? Every Sunday night for years, Taj Mahal singing about cake-walkin’ into town would settle me into Sunday night. WEMU changed some of their programming and I no longer hear Taj Mahal cake walking in to town. My favorite lyric from that song is “throw your big leg over me mama, I might not feel this good again.” Without going into detail, my thighs are thin enough that there is space between them and the GG has never complained.

Okay, the GG was in and aut (“out” in Canuckian) and around and abaut (“about” in Canuckian) alllll day. “I am going aut of the haus to get a Pahbst.” (In the snow, of course.) Back in the day, Canadian radio, etc., used to say (on 25-below days), go sit in a bar or something. We were supposed to go x-c skiing (in Canada) on one such day. Radical Betty was rarin’ to go. Thanks to Uncle Duck for tamping down her intense desire to ski that day. Jeebus. We didn’t go to a bar (they weren’t open yet but we did end up at Tim Horton’s.

Not all Canadians have pronounced accents but there is a nuanced accent that’s different than the yooperland, one my ears often pick up. My grandparents had a bit of that accent although as teetotalers, they would have been the last people to go aut of the haus to get a Pahbst (aka Pabst Blue Ribbon beer). A&W root beer? Yes.

I have segued into a nutty little soliloquy here when what I really want to report is that the GG spent a lot of the day eradicating a MOUSE NEST from the Lyme Lounge. What I wanted to know was HOW LONG HAS THE MOUSE NEST BEEN IN THERE? The answer was he THINKS since last summer. He has been SLEEPING in the Lyme Lounge more often than not since mid-summer. He also fixed the Dometic mini-fridge in the Lyme Lounge. He did not fix it in the same way that I “fix the refrigerator” when the sun goes over the yardarm.

Svengoolie served up none other than The Wizard of Oz tonight. I mean the version my generation watched every Saturday before Easter when we were kids. My only gripe is that I think some entity has bought out Svengoolie and there are umpteen bazillion more commercials than there used to be. Svengoolie is still there though. I did NOT watch Night of the Living Dead a few weeks ago. I was terrified when I tried to watch it 50 years ago or so. Then again, a while back I took one of those stupid facebook quizzes about how long I would survive if zombies took over the earth. Answer? Forever. I only took that quiz because my then nemesis posted her zombie quiz status on FB (I did not) and she would only live one year. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah. For one thing, I answered a (multiple choice) question about how long could I go without a shower with “I take two showers a day”. Like f*ck off zombies (and nemesis, who was probably lurking at the time but may not be any more). I have also been known to bathe in Lake Superior but that wasn’t a quiz choice.

Okay so now I am totally babbling (and I know it and I don’t believe in zombies) and so g’night!

P.S. My mouse sent the airplane pic from the North Country Trail yesterday. I dunno what this was all about but I think she was road-walking at the time.

Today was Plaidurday. First Friday in October. I did not wear anything plaid. I have a couple plaid skirts but they are knee-length and I only wear them with black tights. Short wool skirts with bare legs are not a good look. Unless you are a Scottish man wearing a kilt maybe and even then you would probably have some knee socks or something on. Today was not cold enough for tights and I haven’t owned knee socks since I was a kid and they wouldn’t be compatible with my rather stylish skirts anyway. I suppose it will be cold enough for tights soon. Anyway, I wore my “uniform”, which features a long tie-dyed skirt.

Spider webs? Yes. The GG encountered this one on the Sheltowee trail in Kentucky. Why he didn’t text it to me when he first encountered it, I do not know. It reminds me of a time long ago, when we were at the moldy old cFam cabin at Hoton Lake. It was late summer and the evening was warm and the GG and I stood inside the open garage door watching a spider build her web, sipping wee bits of bourbon throughout the process. The Gumper (my beloved father-in-law, pretty long dead now) was futzing around with his toys so he was in and out but stopped on occasion to check out the web and have a wee sip. Or maybe he was nipping into the cabin for his preferred Triple Sec…

For various reasons, we haven’t been porterized on a Friday night on the Planet Ann Arbor for ages. We were thinking Dexter’s Pub would be a good restart. But. We went there for lunch yesterday and when the GG asked if we could make a reservation for tonight, they were all full up. Homecoming football game for the Dexter Dreadnaughts. A parade and the whole nine yards. That’s okay, we’ll come back another Friday. Instead we went to the “sports bar” on Zeeb and Jackson, where they don’t take reservations and it’s “seat yourself”. We were a bit nervous when we arrived and saw all the cars in the parking lot but we were able to snag a booth and it was lovely as it always is. When you are old and baggy but friendly and tip well, you get great service.

“Landfill report” is a text I received from a beach urchin this afternoon. It means something like, “What are my doddering old parents doing today?”

Well, okay, it’s pretty boring. The GG walked to Dexter. I did my word puzzles. I got queen bee with “homonymy” but now that I’m thinking about it, I didn’t finish the wordle… I went to the Plum Market. I drove out to Dexter’s Pub for lunch with the GG. We had lunch and then he wanted me to drive home. He’s been doing a LOT of driving in the last few weeks. So I did but I didn’t drive straight home. I drove by the Blast Corn Maze (near the mousenest), then by the llama house (no llamas out and also near the mousenest). Then I went north of North Territorial Road and ended up getting “lost”. Not really lost but getting back on track involved a short trip on the freeway, which I didn’t want to do. But okay. Arrived home and the GG did some trailer maintenance on the Lyme Lounge.

It’s throwback Thursday and I don’t usually participate in that but the Chippewa County Historical Society (CCHS) does. I donate to them and once when I commented on a post about my dad/granddaddy’s old bank, which I VAGUELY remember (I was three), I was rewarded with a reply from the CCHS director talking about how much my dad had helped with his first mortgage. I know my dad (and granddaddy) were not that helpful to everyone, I mean people who didn’t pay their debts, etc. But that topic is for another day (or days). I’m still figuring out why we *still* don’t patronize various businesses even though their original owners are long dead and the businesses sold. And why I didn’t get a waitress job at a certain restaurant as a teenager. Was it my name? It’s okay, I worked for Mr. Drysdale at “your Tempo store” instead. He was a friend of my dad… … … It *was* my name but I was also a very good employee.

Today, the conversation veered from another topic to Coty’s Hill! I dunno how many blocks from my shabby little Superior Street house Coty’s Hill was but we used to schlep our sleds over there. It was at the end of John Street, where my grandparents lived although much closer to downtown. Although we sledded there many times, my main memory is walking home from there in the dark past huge mountains of snow. Life as a child in the Great White North.

TMOTU, that is. The Master Of The Universe. He’s been gone for three weeks. The first thing he did hen he got home was to turn the heat up. I was like, WHUT? I have been existing here at The Landfill for the last three weeks without heat or air conditioning. Everything was off and I was fine! It was never really hot enough to turn on the A/C. There were a few mornings the temps dipped into the 40s. I was okay wearing my nice light blue polar fleece jacket and didn’t even need to put tights or wool socks on. It was kinda like being at the moomincabin in the summer although I sometimes turn on the propane heater for a bit. It doesn’t even begin to heat the whole place though.

I was scheduled to pick our mouse from her work and take her over to pick up her car from service. As I was walking out to get into Cygnus, I saw that the GG was following me out. He wanted to see his daughter and got into the back seat. So I was a chauffeur for a bit.

We’ve been watching Andy Griffith reruns for quite a while but I asked him if wanted to watch Silo season 3 with me. I’ve been watching it while he was gone. I think he does want to watch it but he was too tired tonight.

And I was today. Mouse’s Oriole needed some service and so I drove Cygnus over to pick up my mouse after she dropped the Oriole off. We went to Star’s Cafe in Westgate for wrap sandwiches and then I dropped her off at Plum for her work. Later, she came over here to the Landfill to pick up Cygnus X-1 for an overnight. Cygnus’s gas tank was getting low so I gassed her up before my mouse needed her.

I am not the best at dealing with car problems or even regular maintenance. I can do it but I am amazed at what my daughters manage to do. These days I let the GG handle all of that stuff and he pretty much does it. Way back in the day when I was driving a crappy old minivan (the POC), every time I drove into my brother’s driveway (in Grand Blanc), he would emerge from his garage with a tire pump and a sly grin on his face. I miss that guy so much.

So Cygnus X-1 is a Subaru Crosstrek. I was looking for a new car back in 2021. I was driving the Ninja, a 2008 top dollar Honda Civic with a 6-speed manual tranny and “performance tires”. It was a great car but at 13 years old, it was time to change. We were looking around online and and then one day, my mouse drove into the driveway with an ORANGE car. It was a Subie Crosstrek. I was in a Teams meeting with my boss Amazon Woman and I screamed. “She bought a car?”

Amazon Woman gave me leave to go out and take a pic. My mouse had bought a used vee-hickle (with MUCH research). I bought a new car but it is a Crosstrek. And I love it. It’s an automatic and although I love driving stick, Cygnus is okay for me.

I’m generally kinda bothered by having my phone or facebook or whatever serving up unwanted crapola. Like memories. But the photos I’m posting today came from my iPhone reminding me of what I was doing 19 years ago today. What exactly was that? Well, it was a Friday and I got up at 0-skunk-30 and drove from The Planet Ann Arbor to Sault Ste. Siberia. I was gonna say I took the day off work but on this date in 2007, I was employed, but as a student intern, I only worked about 12 hours a week and Friday was not a work day. Boy did that change a couple months later but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

After the requisite five hour drive up the I75 SUV Speedway, I landed at Karl’s Cuisine, meeting The Commander and Radical Betty and probably Barb and Cam for an 11:30-ish lunch. All of those grande dames have now left the building. Karl’s Cuisine was a fantabulous restaurant directly across from the Soo Locks. It didn’t survive covid but Karl has installed a restaurant kitchen on his property and supplies local farm markets with stromboli and pot pies and other goodies.

So, here I am at the tollbooths after crossing the Big Mac. Did I have to stop and pay cash on that trip? Or did I have a card or tokens or something? I don’t remember. I know I didn’t have a transponder on my windshield until quite a number of years later. I wonder what car I was driving. The Ninja was a 2008 so I didn’t own her yet. Hmmmm… Dogha or Daisy maybe.

Next up, The Commander.

And Radical Betty.

Pretty bad photos unless you want to conjure up all that glare to be halos or something but these women would be laughing their asses off at that because they were not religious.

Also, this commemorates (kind of) my first iPhone. The photos are from my first iPhone, which I bought either earlier that September or late August. I could probably look that up but I don’t feel like doing it now. I swore I wouldn’t be an early iPhone adopter but we walked into an AT&T store one (rainy?) Sunday and walked out with two iPhones and $1200 poorer.

Lemme see… A trip to the post office to drop off some old clothing past the point of usability to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way. Then Meijer and Plum Market.

I cleaned up the grill (ugh). In a way, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. I was able to use wet microfiber cloths to remove the birdseed and whatever other bird/squirrel detritus I don’t even want to think about. On the chair in the right corner behind the plaid beach urchin, are those cloths and the cloth that covers the grill. I am contemplating putting them through the laundry tomorrow. We HAVE to figure out a better system for the grill and bird feeder though.

I bought smoked salmon and friends for appetizers and I made a green salad (with mozzarella balls). Meijer has some decent packaged potato salad so I bought some of that. The beach urchins fancied up the ground bison with herbs, etc., and served as grillmistresses. They even toasted the buns. I do not grill things, at least not usually.

And so g’night. Onto another Silo episode.

First, to explain the pic, this is a “baby” (?) copperhead snake the GG and friends encountered in Kentucky earlier on their Sheltowee Trace hiking expotition. Knock on wood, this was the ONLY copperhead they encountered. There was a water snake yesterday or the day before but not a venomous species. I hesitate to post snake pics. I am not categorically snake phobic but I have another even weirder phobia and I get why people don’t want to look at surprise snake photos. I’m not sure I would have stopped long enough to try to photograph a snake of unknown species, like copperhead would be to me. I dunno how many snake species we have in the Great Lake State but only one of them is venomous and it is rarely encountered.

Okay, so I cleaned Gertrude’s top oven yesterday. I went outside to read this afternoon. We are gonna cook bison burgers (and friends) tomorrow night. As I passed the gas grill on my way back into the Landfill, I caught a gander in my peripheral vision. Man oh man, does that grill need a cleaning. I don’t mean the interior (where you cook things), although that could probably stand some attention too. I’m talkin’ ’bout the outside.

The GG loves to bird watch so he hangs a bird feeder outside his lair AND directly above the gas grill. So there is bird seed all over the grill and I don’t even wanna think about what else. So I guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow…