Iroquois Mountain aka Mission Hill. The pic is one my uncle Don took. He was involved in the original project to create this ski area, which had one chairlift, a couple of rope tows and three/four runs, plus the bunny hill. Somewhere I have pics of the ski hills but I can’t find them so all you get is the lodge.

I took my first lessons on the bunny hill, which had its own rope tow. I graduated to the intermediate rope tow hill and eventually to the chairlift. For the first few years, I stuck to run Number One but eventually ventured on to 2, [3], and 4. I was never a fantastic skier but could make my way down those runs without any problems and sometimes even a bit elegantly, at least on number 1.

There was a ski school xmas week, which is when I took lessons as a kid. Weber’s Ski School. When I was a teenager, The Commander and her friend Ginny Boult volunteered me and Ginny’s daughter Helen as teachers for young skiers. It was a free ski school and they wanted us to pay back for our own free lessons. I am not the best teacher (of anything) but I had a pretty good time teaching 8-year-olds. The ski school was only in the morning and we got to ski for free in the afternoon.

My parents were always happy to drive us out to Mission Hill, even on glare ice roads.

Quite a bit later, I tried to get my high school boyfriend interested in skiing. It wasn’t all that successful. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the bunny hill (LOL). So I took him up the intermediate rope tow. He didn’t want any kind of lesson, at least not from meeeee. He got off the rope tow and immediately headed down the hill without waiting for me. And his not-ski-pants ripped. Jeebus.

I fergit what happened next. I think I lost track of him for a while? I skied and when I eventually caught up with him, he was in the bar (he was 19 and legal and I was 17, not legal). I eventually dragged him outta there. I was pretty pissed off that day but he really was a good guy, don’t get me wrong. He just wasn’t all that interested in skiing. Bowling was his thing.

Not something I say to myself (or anyone) very often. Friends, I “fixed” my Rooomba yesterday.

The last time I had run her, she errored out at the end of her run. There was a link to instructions about how to fix her (and I had actually followed them before) but I didn’t feel like doing it right then. I had GREAT TREPIDATION about embarking on that prodject, to tell you the truth. By the time I got back to it, the link to the instructions had evaporated. Bad user interface design (UX) although a lot of Rooomba app UX is actually pretty okay.

Anyway, what did I do? I procrastinated, of course. Like, nobody is coming over this weekend, etc. etc. Like, who cares? Actually *I* care but I let inertia take me over.

Yesterday, I opened the Rooomba app. The error had cleared and everything looked all right. So I ran Rooomba. She was okay but I could tell she was struggling because she emptied her bin umpteen bazillion times. Okay. I have done this once before. Maybe I can do it again even without the instructions. And so I did. Non-mechanical meeeee. I knew that there were parts to take off and clean and eventually I figgered out how to do it without breaking anything.

The deal is the more recent Roooombas empty their own bins but occasionally stuff builds up inside the works and they need help getting it out. My poor Rooomba has to deal with my long(ish) hair, which gets wound around the ends of the rollers (not a technical term and don’t ask). I pulled those wrapped coils of baggy old bag hair off the ends of the rollers, dumped out some other bits of detritus, and put her back on her charging station, hoping I hadn’t mucked something up.

Today? She started up without a problem. No error messages. She cleaned her entire “map” and only emptied her bin once.

So a bit of mechanical success (I have also fixed my garbage disposal via YouTube videos). I don’t think I will try to do car or warshing musheen repairs any time soon.

The pic is outhouses at Tahquamenon Falls State Park. Don’t you love their “hats”?

Or without the GG as the case is this year. It’s okay. At this age I am pretty jaded about spending the “holiday” with my partner although make no mistake, if he were here we’d be grilling filet and having a fake log faaar in the faaarplace. And watching the Olympics.

But he’s not here, so I’m gonna heat up leftover (homemade) pizza and blahg and make a grock list for tomorrow morning. And watch the Olympics. Oh wait, are the Olympics still going? If not, I guess I’ll have to find Svengoolie but I think the Olympics are still going.

So we delivered the GG’s handmade cards and chocolates to the beach urchins on Thursday and yesterday I started thinking, “Hmmm, where’s mine?” I didn’t dwell on this, it just crossed my mind a couple times. By this morning, I had totally forgotten about it. An odd thing though. When I got up and made my way to the Water Closet, I passed the bookcase, as usual. But this time I actually NOTICED Trunky. I guess Trunky lives there these days but I don’t usually notice him.

So shower, etc., and I was working on word puzzles when text messages started coming in, as they do. One was from the GG to meeee saying, “I left something for you under Trunky.” Ohhhhh, *that’s* where my Valentine loot is.” And it’s probably why I noticed Trunky this morning because with a Valentine box of candy underneath him, he is a different height.

The first pic is of *one* of the interior pages of his handmade card. I love that he actually somehow found a RAINBOW series of feathers. WITH ALL SIX COLORS! (I actually think he has a stash of craft store feathers somewhere in his lair.) I clearly remember learning the color and order or the rainbow colors in kindergarten and have always been annoyed when some misguided person leaves one out (orange usually or sometimes purple). Or adds indigo. Nope. Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple. The thing about the million dollars illustrates his penchant for tracking down odd facts and/or making complex calculations. I’m not sure this is a typical Valentine sentiment but it’s how the GG rolls and so it suits me fine.

Fun fact: My dad was a banker and on one of his trips to the federal reserve in Minnesota (I think), he was handed a million dollars. Just to hold for a minute, I mean. I don’t know what the denomination of the bills making up the million were or how much they weighed.

Last but not least is a photo of Trunky on top of a messy bookcase in the messy “master” bedroom, if you can call it that. It’s small but what the heck, all I ever do in there is sleep. Trunky technically belongs to mouse but like many entities from her very creative childhood, he lives here. He even has some money in him. Mouse used to regularly empty him and give the coins to me to trade for bills.

Years ago when the beach urchins were in middle and high school and doing theatre productions and I was the theatre guild administrator, Valentine’s Day fell during “tech week” of our February play. Because I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, the Landfill ran completely out of toilet paper, like there was ONLY the roll on the holder. Okay. This cannot be. I schlepped over to Kroger to buy TOILET PAPER and found the aisles crowded with drunk looking men grabbing candy, cards, and flowers left and right. Oh! It’s Valentine’s Day. I better get movin’.

Iggy being St. Ignace, Michigan. Immediately north of the Big Mac bridge.

Iggy is where the GG is staying the next two nights (with a trip to Tahquamenon in between). There is Pond Hockey this year! Pond Hockey is scheduled every winter but it doesn’t always happen. Ice always forms on the Great Lakes, at least in places. Whether or not the ice is safe to walk/snowmobile/drive on, is a whole ‘nother story. And it varies according to where you are and how much water movement is going on under the ice.

Mackinac Island is a short ferry ride from the mainland most of the year. If the ferries aren’t running (because ice), it can be difficult to travel back and forth. It is possible to snowmobile (or walk or drive) across the ice but the recommended way to go is to fly back and forth from Iggy (a seven minute flight).

A lot of people think driving their snowmobiles across the ice to the island is a kind of “bucket list” thing. Problem? A lot of the folks who try this are not *from* the area and have NO CLUE about whether the ice is safe or not. Heck, even a lot of people *from* the area probably have no clue. So people go down and when they go down, they go down fast and then quickly drift away from where they went down. UNDER THE ICE. Pretty hard to rescue someone if they don’t have time to call for help and pretty hard to recover their bodies when it’s almost impossible to do an underwater search.

Area folks used to line the ice path on both sides with discarded xmas trees but they aren’t doing that any more, probably so as not to call attention to the path.

Winter can feel like forever in the upper great lakes but the ice isn’t always safe for a very long time, especially in locations like this.

Now. Pond Hockey ice is as safe as it gets. For one thing, it is near shore in a lee-side bay where the ice gets a chance to set up unimpeded by high winds and rough water. And the event sponsors check the ice thickness regularly throughout the winter. If it doesn’t get thick enough, Pond Hockey gets canceled. Sad but better to be safe than sorry.

It wasn’t canceled this year and the GG is there and he walked around on the ice and took some pics.

Now that I’m “retaarrred” I have put my foot down to have a once-a-week weekday lunch. Lunch sometimes also happens on the weekend but it’s usually something with a beach urchin. The plan for today was to take a drive in the country and wind up at The Sports Bar Westside, which used to be (I think) Banfield’s West.

The GG was acting a bit secretive this morning and stranger noises than usual were emanating from his lair (usually computer keys clicking and occasional siiiiggghhhs) but he finally approached me with a “plan of attack” or whatever. “We have some deliveries to make.” Okay, I knew what was going on. Do not open until Saturday, if you want a clue.

Our first stop was Little Cat Z’s house, where she (working from home today) caught us red-handed making the delivery. He was going to put it in her gas grill, but being a meticulously organized person, it wasn’t hanging around outside (like ours is). Probably carefully put away in the garage.

Second stop was mouse’s house. It was mouse/racc’s day off but both cars were there. The GG knocked but there was no answer. I suspected that they were ignoring the knocking. I mean, I’m sure not a whole bunch of people knock on their door out there in the country. So he put the delivery in the garage and we drove off and then… I had a mom moment! Will I ever stop having those? “I hope they’re okay in there.” We texted and everything was fine (of course) except for a cold virus.

BTW, we are not in the habit of “bombing” our kids at their homes without advance notice.

So, on to more back road driving and then the sports bar. A lot of TVs were on but we were GLUED to the bobsled/luge/skeleton events. We weren’t sure exactly which event we were watching. Did we care? No, we did not. We love every form of bobsled.

The GG: I wonder if they train in Michigan? KW: I wonder if they train in Jamaica? Cool Runnings was a family fave when the beach urchins were, well, urchins. We watched it multiple times both here at the Landfill and at the Moldy Old Hoton Lake Cabin. If I get it right, it was based on an actual Jamaican bobsled Olympic team.

A couple other movies we watched a lot were Free Willy and Anne of Green Gables. ALL of us, INCLUDING THE GG, knew all of the words to the Anne of Green Gables movies. Trivia: The only reason I can tolerate my name, Anne, is because The Commander claimed she named me after Anne of Green Gables (and not my eccentric great aunt).

My fave scene in Cool Runnings is when the Jamaican team gets off the airplane in Calgary. They walk out the door of the airport and immediately hustle back in. John Candy is standing outside dressed lightly (for Calgary) and smoking a cigar (I think).

Cool Runnings was a good John Candy movie, at least my family liked it. There are some other good ones. There are also some very bad ones. Do not even try to watch Canadian Bacon. But still, RIP John Candy.

Anyway, we had a great time at this sports bar and were served by a sparkly young waitress (I mean sparkly personality, not pasties, she was wearing a sweatshirt). She’s heading to a university in the yooperland next year and of course that got the GG going on the North Country Trail.

Cheers!

The GG: I gotta get OFF the computer.

KW [silently]: YES!

[A few minutes later, keys are clicking at the computer again.]

KW: Are you at the computer again?

The GG: Yes, but only for a minute.

KW [silently]: Jeebus Kee-reist.

I’m trying to figure out if this snow capped mushroom resembles a classical music composer from days gone by or an aging punk rocker or something else.

I wish I had a pic of the little ice rink across the street from my family’s shabby little bungalow on Superior Street in Sault Ste. Siberia when I was a child. It was a basketball court for the most part but in the winter, the city or school district or whoever turned it into an ice rink. My parents definitely bought me figure skates so I could hang out over there. I learned a few eensy weensy tricks on my skates but mainly I raced across the ice and crashed into the big snowbanks that ringed the rink, laughing uproariously and flipping onto my back to gaze at the star-studded winter sky. Thinking about it a bit, for a few years, a hockey dad lived next door to us and he made an ice rink between our houses. So two ice rinks next door to my house.

I wanted to learn to skate with the “pretty” girls who took lessons at the Pullar Stadium, where the Red Wings used to practice when I was a kid. My mom did not let me do that. The reasons were complicated but I think she didn’t feel like she fit in with that particular mom crowd, even big city (Detroit) girl that she was.

I always envied my figure skater friends but in the end, skiing was more my thing. My parents always supported that sport for me and my brother and all of our cousins skied.

In the end, The Commander came out ahead in life, so to speak. After a number of years of being a stay-at-home mom for me and my little brother, she eased herself into teaching, then got a masters degree and taught high school a number of years. In her later years, she became a revered elder in the community. I am so proud of her.

The year my dad spent a few weeks at the Henry Ford Hoosegow, the Olympics were on. It was 2006 if I remember correctly. I would drive over to the hoosegow and back every day and crash out in front of the Olympics every night. After dinner (which was often Dexter’s Pub) and my blahg and an email to family and friends.

At that time, I collected a lot of family and some friends who wanted to hear updates about my dad. Sometimes people would ask how I could write these daily emails. Well, first, writing helps me think things through and process them and writing those emails helped me as much as anything else. I was AMAZED at how many people wanted to hear about our journey through my dad’s injury, surgeries, and eventual death. It helped me that people seemed to care about this. When I was writing those emails, we were optimistic that my dad might survive but a few weeks after we moved him back to the yooperland to a rehab facility, he succumbed to sepsis and made his exit. Actually I wasn’t all that optimistic throughout any of this journey but I was holding the world on my shoulders and all I could do was think positively and carry on.

Tonight the Olympics are on again and I was a bit ambivalent about watching. We’ve been watching Andy Griffith and when we heard his whistling, I kinda wanted to watch that. But we turned to the Olympics anyway and whaddya know, it was giant slalom! I downhill skied a LOT as a kid and I love to watch skiing on TV. I was never really any good but I could manage my way down ANY hill, no matter how many moguls, if not elegantly. So we watched giant slalom and then some pairs skating (and learned the word “twizzle”) and now we’re watching what I think is slalom (gates are closer together than giant slalom).

I am not falling asleep in front of the TV tonight but I will probably not last all that long.

G’night, KW

After a couple weeks of kvetching about the SuberbOwl, the GG now has it on and plans to watch it. I do not know who he’s rooting for. I am rooting for the Seahawks of course, not that I’ll actually watch the game, as if I could follow it…

I am rooting for the Seahawks for two reasons. 1) Because I have two cousins who live in the area (and their families) and some bloggy friends I have known so long they almost seem like local neighbors. Just to say, one of my cousins is hosting a SuberbOwl party, the other one couldn’t care less about football and I don’t think she even has a TV. 2) Because I kinda hate renaming teams things like “Patriots”, although the GG informs me that the team hasn’t been renamed. That is its original name, I guess. Fair enough.

I have mixed feelings about renaming teams in general, especially if for “politically correct” reasons. I don’t really like “patriotic” names. I *am* patriotic, believe it or not. Just that “patriot” is taking on some different connotations in this day and age and I am not a fan. I am not a big fan of renaming teams with Native American names but I think that the Native American communities should have some say although I gather that the Native Americans’ opinions sometimes vary. Now. My high school was (and is) the Blue Devils. I thought that was a cool name and fortunately any attempts to change it were foiled. I think there *were* such attempts but am terribly fuzzy on the details. But who wouldn’t want to be a Blue Devil? I was proud to be one. “We are the devils, the mighty mighty devils…” Memories of being on the band bus and SING-SHOUTING that to the world. We did that when we rode the junior high bus, the high school bus was more subdued. For one thing, as cool a name as Blue Devils was, our team did not win a lot of games. Needless to say, we were a bit cynical by then.

My relationship with MAGA continues to evolve although I am NOT AND NEVER WILL BE MAGA OR pro-TRUMP no matter who I live with. But. A Sault Ste. Siberian facebook friend shared a post from a local animal shelter yesterday. An older gentleman cat’s family had experienced a sudden major disruption and the cat needed to be re-homed. The shelter posted that they were waiving the adoption fee to try to get this cat a new home as quickly as possible. Well. Within an hour, my MAGA “friend” Mushie had snagged the cat. (For clarity, Mushie is not the same person as the woman who shared the post from the animal shelter, just a commentor.) He tried to pay the adoption fee *anyway* and when it was refused, he made a donation. Later he posted a pic of his wife and their (now) two cats in their cozy living room. People are complicated.

Other than that, we met up with Little Cat Z for lunch at The Griz. Haven’t been there for a while and the mac’n’cheese side tasted good, especially loaded up with bacon.

This is inspired by my cousin Jay’s latest post.

She was breaking up and jettisoning an old box. I do that frequently. When my father-in-law was alive, he saved all kinds of boxes at the Moldy Old Hoton Lake cabin (since rebuilt). Every once in a while (when he wasn’t there), the Twinz of Terror would rampage through the cabin gathering old boxes. They would build a big bonfire and burn baby burn. They also cleared the cabin of old pieces of wood. If you are a mechanical engineer of a certain sort, you keep little pieces of wood because they can be “useful”. And I guess they were, to the Gumper. Me? I am laughing so hard writing this that I can hardly stand up.

Do not get me wrong. I loved my father-in-law dearly and I think he reciprocated that. That said, he had a whole lotta people to love with 10 kids and 19 grandchildren. But I landed in a good place in terms of in-laws.

So the Dewar’s box I will NEVER get rid of! It is wooden and it had been around since before I was born and I think it moved from the Old Cabin to the moomincabin when we built the moomin. It is also the box that my cat Twinkle’s second litter of kittens (I knooooow) was born in. We knew she was pregnant and one morning, her water had broken. I was maybe seven and my mother did not explain this to me in detail. But suddenly there was a tiny orange kitten in the box (Butterscotch nee Butterball). That was the signal for us kids to run down the path to the Mullin cabin to get the Mullin kids to come and watch the rest of the litter get born. They had a phone but we didn’t.

And then there’s the Red Owl box. This is a close up and you can’t see that it isn’t an exactly rectangular box, the top is larger than the base and there are handles on each end. I think this box is in the moomingarage and I hope to hell “no one” has thrown it out or burned it. When I was a kid, there were three “main” grocery stores in Sault Ste. Siberia plus some smaller ones and bunches of mom-and-pop stores. We most often went to the A&P but fairly frequently to the Red Owl and occasionally to the Piggly Wiggly.

The Red Owl handed out free stuff on a weekly basis. We got the Currier and Ives “china” from there, which we still have in the moomincabin. I think that’s also where we got the Golden Book encyclopedia set. The one with pictures that I read as maybe a second grader, up until maybe about the “E” book. I do remember reading about daguerreotypes (but don’t really remember what they are).

Tomorrow is the 57th I-500 snowmobile race in Sault Ste. Siberia.

The first race lasted all day and way into the night. I went there with Bad Boyfriend. We had a stoopid fight and he left me way on the other side of the loop in the damn dark. I walked around the rest of the track alone, wondering how I would get home. I mean, nowadays, I would just WALK home but I was a little high school girl then and I was terrified about who might be lurking in the dark. When I got back to the grandstand area, of all things, THERE WERE MY PARENTS! What the hell were they doing there? I dunno. Bad BF told me later that he had been looking for me. I believed him. He was not really a bad person and I think he felt some remorse.

I may have gone to the I-500 a couple more times before I left town. I do remember playing my piccolo (with glubs on) with the high school band once or twice.

The next time (after childhood) I went to the I-500 was when The Commander was in hospice care in 2012. My sister-in-law was visiting (yes, that one…) and I took her there. At that time, it was an easy walk from The Comm’s house, where we were luxury camping. It was a weird year though. The temperatures were approaching 40 and it turned out to be more of a mud race than anything.

This year, temperatures are c-c-c-cold and there’s a lot of snow so conditions are much better for a snowmobile race.

Today featured gray skies and snow flurries ALL DAY. Oh, Mr. Golden Sun peeked out for 15 minutes or so but otherwise… At least the flurries were actually flurries and the roads stayed easily navigable.

It was a little angsty around here today (again). I’ll just lay it out there. It was time to roll over my 401K. I mean, I’m not sure there is a time limit exactly, just that it needed to be done and my “Landfill” financial manager decided it was time. This involved a trip to [insert financial institution here] (a car trip, I mean), a call to a relative, and some monkeying around on the financial institution’s website, which had been a bit inscrutable on a previous visit. I suspect I would’ve been able to bash through the user interface, “retaaared UX designer” that I am but I had no interest in dealing with the whole thing (and did not even go in person to the financial institution).

So that got taken care of with a minimum of shouting (actually no shouting) and the landfill guy even apologized to me if the whole thing was causing me anxiety. It was but I was okay and I appreciated his thoughtfulness. I worked for Corporate America for 18 years and the only time I remember doing anything with my 401K was when my “official” financial advisor (the one I pay) said, “kick it up to the max that they will match”. He was right and I did. Pronto.

I was fine with the whole thing but it is a little weird when you have to “close out” (roll over or whatever) something you have been basically ignoring for 18 years.

I hesitated to write about this because it’s kind of private and I am careful about what I share. But everybody (at least those of us fortunate enough to have first world problems like 401Ks) has to do this at some point, so I’m just one of the many trying to protect (and hopefully grow) their retirement income as long as they can (and our currently shady government will let us). I have sanitized this as much as possible to provide an “every woman’s” experience.

But yesterday? Look at that sky! Mr. Golden Sun doesn’t always show his face but he is swinging up again!

P.S. My brain (at the moment) cannot think of a better word than “shady” for our current federal government. There is shadiness but “shady” doesn’t begin to comprehensively describe what’s going on. If you can think of a better word, I’d love to hear it!

Wednesday chili and whine lunch sitting at a bar somewhere?

Once a week lunch (more or less) might not always happen on Wednesday. But it was a beautiful (if cold) day and I wanted to get out into the countryside. I encountered a little, uh, “friction” about it at first but that was due to some computer room “stress” that I interrupted. Who knew? Words were exchanged, including the F-bomb (me, pretty quietly actually), and a few things in the kitchen were slammed around a bit (not violently) but life went on. As it does. I don’t really get computer room stress. 99% of the time working on spreadsheets or code or whatever is zen for me.

We chose Dexter’s Pub for chili today. I actually got chili, the GG got a BLT. As we were mustering to leave, who walked in? The Grinch (the real Grinch, not my cousin), The Cat in the Hat, and I dunno, was it Yertle the Turtle? And others. I didn’t recognize all the characters. I was puzzled about this gathering at the pub until the GG reminded me that there were Seussical (the musical) signs all over Dexter. Oh, duh. We’re guessing this group had done a school presentation. That brought up memories for me of the YAG Lydia Mendelssohn Friday morning school performance. Good and bad memories but we’ll go there some other day. And I can laugh about the bad memories.

Oh, and then. I turned on the oven so I could put a baking tray of American Mom Chicken Shawarma in and turned it on. Or so I thought. I mean I did turn the oven on but, after not hearing the ding telling me preheat was done (which is important on Gertrude), I turned around and was greeted with this chicken nugget display. That thingy on the left ROTATES! I was like, what the hell am I looking at? Is Gertrude broken? Nope, cooking in the “dark” like I often do, I hit the wrong button. I owned Gertrude for at least 15 years before I discovered her ovens have a chicken nugget setting.

Cooking in the dark? I like to live by ambient light. There are LED lights on over the sink and if I need more light, I can turn other LEDs on. These days we don’t really need great big overhead lights (although I have some). I use small twinkle (LED) lights all over my house, my phone and laptop screens, and my Nest smoke alarm lights my way on middle-of-the-night visits to the Water Closet.

I took this photooo in February 2012, a few weeks before my mother The Commander died. I don’t want to talk about all of that for now but it was a very warm winter and there usually isn’t open water between the moominbeach and Round Island at this time of year. In 2012, there was open water. Ice walkers beware.

The yooperland has gotten a lot of snow this winter and it might take a while for it all to melt but it is February and that means we are on the downside. We’ll get more snow and frigid temps but the birds are already trying out snippets of their SONGS (as opposed to noise) and if the sky is not cloudy, it almost looks like a summer sky.

Note to the GG (and me). Do not schedule a vee-hickle for an afternoon service appointment. Man oh man. Cygnus went in yesterday morning (actually it got dropped off Sunday afternoon) for routine maintenance (we did let them replace the rear brakes). Mooon Yooonit went in at 3:00 PM today for routine maintenance and a new battery (deedly-deedly-deep). I was not enamored by the fact that the service area was open until 8:00 PM and we hadn’t heard from them about Mooo Yooonit’s status by about five. I like to be home at The Landfill by 6:00 PM unless we are going somewhere for FUN, not picking up a car from service.

The GG ended up walking over to the dealer while I cooked salmon piccata. It wasn’t their fault. It was ours for not mindfully scheduling a car appointment at a convenient time for *us*.

I did take Cygnus to Meijer today where I got things I can’t get at Plum or other fancy stores: Triscuits, frozen lima beans, frozen potato patties, and drumsticks, the ice cream kind. I also picked up a couple filet mignons (individually packaged), some salmon filets for tonights piccata, and I scored some lamb stew meat. Filets and lamb stew are in the freezer.

In other words, I stuck my head up, saw my shadow, and hunkered down for another six weeks.

I’d had sorta plans to hit the grock store this morning but Cygnus was in for scheduled maintenance and Mooon Yooonit needs a new battery (scheduled for tomorrow afternoon). So no viable car. And it was SNOWING. I mustered enough psychological energy to wash and change the sheets (they needed it, I’ve been a bit neglectful) and empty the dishwasher, and that was about it.

Oh and, I did my NYT word puzzles. Wordle (SPOILER) not a problem if you hang around occasional cigar smokers. I got queen bee on the spelling bee. And the xword was easy since it was a Monday. It was also weird (SPOILER ALERT) because all of the theme answers were “Ground Hog Day”, i.e., the movie. It was weird enough that I checked out what Rex Parker had to say about it. Like Mikey in the cereal commercial from my childhood, “He hates everything.” He had some words to say about it but (surprise) he didn’t seem to totally hate it. We won’t talk about the Connections puzz. I got yellow and green and put it aside. Will I get back to it? I do not know.

After I wrote last night’s blahg entry, I remembered the Stable Bar on Portage Ave. in Sault Ste. Siberia. It was a pitcher-of-beer/peanut-shells-on-the-floor type place and it could get wild. I used to go there frequently with my second high school boyfriend and his friends beginning when I was a high school senior and he was a college sophomore. He had grown up in Sault Ste. Siberia, so we went to the same high school (*probably* didn’t know each other but I think he asked me to dance at a mixer when I was a freshman and he was a junior), and he was attending the local university (LSSU). We drank beer at the Stable illegally at first but on January 1st of my senior year, the drinking age dropped to 18. He was immediately legal and I became legal on my birthday a couple weeks later.

In the winter when it was snowy (and it was ALWAYS snowy), snowmobilers mobbed The Stable and it was always a huge party. I dunno exactly what clothing snowmobilers wear nowadays but it is surely a lot more high tech than it was then, which was kind of a one piece snowsuit with a hood. I *think* people wore helmets? I was in the bathroom one night and in the stall next to me, I heard a splash and then some kind of expletive. Pulling her suit down to use the toilet, that poor woman had dunked her hood in the bowl. I bet she had a cold ride home that night.

The Stable burned down not too many years later, then the adjacent Northview Lounge. They had the same owner, a guy who lived about a block away from my family. He was kind of a weird guy, not in a good way. Once when I worked the cash registers at Tempo, I thought he was gonna KILL me when I made him wait until the customer ahead of him got their credit card approved. Those were the bad old days when us cashiers had to CALL THE STORE OFFICE, which then had to make a call to a credit card “hotline” (or something) to get a “code”. I was as annoyed as he was but there was not a god damn thing I could do about it. Some people in town (including my dad probably) suspected arson, i.e., he had burned down his own bars.

P.S. That’s my dad in the pic. It’s a scan so not sure what year it was. He was in his early 70s maybe?

Where do I start with this post? I dunno. A facebook friend I have known since probably kindergarten (a popular guy I have never known well) posted a picture of some snowmobiles with commentary that people who complain about snowmobilers should think about what visiting snow-mobilers contribute to the yooperland economy, which is and has been very depressed for many many years. My lifetime and before. And still.

I don’t know this “friend” very well and I don’t think we agree about politics but he also seems to actually CARE about people, etc. I am trying desperately to find any little bit of common ground with MAGA folks so I wrote a polite comment agreeing with him. Because I DO agree with him. Tourists of any sort help struggling economies. My comment was well received by him and others.

I *have* complained about snowmobilers throughout my life. But life is complicated and so are people. As a high school kid, my brother was dying to have a snowmobile. My brother became a mechanical/automotive engineer and snowmobiles were right up his alley. So we had one for a while. I actually drove it once or twice, across the schoolyard and back. I had a guy named Nick Sherman (cousin of my friend Danny Sherman from yesterday) riding behind me. He was apparently impressed with my ability (as a girl) to drive a snowmobile. I was much less impressed with my snowmobile driving abilities. He may or may not have had a bit of a crush on me and vice versa. But he was only visiting us for a few days and his cousin Danny will always be the first “love of my life.”

What mainly bothers me is when trails get mixed. What I mean is that snowmobiles do NOT belong on hiking trails. Those belong to pedestrian traffic. Most snowmobilers are responsible about this but there are always a few of those, “Well! I drive my snowmobile when I’m drunk!” folks. This is an actual quote from a (long dead) moominbeach neighbor at a county meeting where the agenda was supposed to discuss a part of our two-track road. (I was not there.) The road issue didn’t come up until another neighbor rattled along about, “I don’t like when those snowmobilers drive drunk” (blah blah blah). And that didn’t even bring up the road issue, it just prompted the drunk snowmobiling guy to get up and leave, hollering on the way out. My parents and Radical Betty were totally cracking up about this whole thing.

A cautionary tale. My uncle Don was a popular GP in Sault Ste. Siberia. He delivered about a bazillion babies and to this day, when people see/hear my last name (which I didn’t change when I got married), they ask if he was my dad. Nope. He was my uncle. My dad did not do anything involving blood, guts, or amniotic fluid. He was a banker (like his dad). A couple other things my uncle did… 1) Sew somebody’s nose back onto their face. 2) Deal with (in the ER) a person (maybe two, I can’t remember) who snowmobiled across a wire and got beheaded. I’m pretty sure he/they were dead by the time they got to my uncle at the ER. Jack of all trades…

Where do I end with this post? This pic is not from the yooperland. It is from Tip-up Town at Houghton Lake, an event we are not at this year. This event began long ago as an ice fishing event but now incorporates snowmobiles and helicopters and all kinds of stuff.

You might guess that this is an old photo. Even if you don’t know the age of the purple beach urchin (four and a quarter, I think), there is a vintage van (VW bus I think?) in the background that probably hit the junkyard decades ago.

Our snowbanks at the moment are sorta equivalent in size to the one the beach urchin is sitting on. The last several winters whatever snow we got didn’t last long. Is it global warming or weird weather patterns? I do not know. I do believe that using less energy in general is a decent strategy. I’m not sure I will ever be able to adapt to a fully electric vehicle though. It might work for me if I were just driving it around town and could plug it in at home. And if I also owned a robust gasoline engine vehicle to drive me up to the yooperland.

The VW bus belonged to our (late, alas) neighbor Hans’s son, who must have been visiting his parents at the time? The GG and I can’t remember what he did for a living but we think we remember it involved something to do with botes on the Great Lakes. The GG looked him up and apparently he went to the Great Lakes Maritime Academy and “worked the engines”. He also said, “like my dad”. The Gumper was the master mechanic on the Hornet in WWII.

Anyway, a VW bus is in my history but not via my family. We had VW bugs. But the Sherman family, who encamped at the moomincabin for two weeks a number of summers when I was a kid, could not fit their family of seven in a VW bug. So they had a VW bus and I rode in it many times. Usually us kids were on adventures with my dad and Pete Sherman, his childhood friend. The Commander and Esther Sherman would be back at the moomin, cruising through the Joy of Cooking, cooking up stuff to feed all of us kids plus community dinners with the relatives at the Old Cabin. Just a slice of my idyllic childhood.

Beth, Paul, Danny, David, and Willy. Beth was Beth Frances and her dad was insistent upon that as her middle name. I can only guess to honor my mother Frances. Danny was my age and also my first boyfriend (at age six). We play-acted our “wedding” on the beach many times. It took place at Niagara Falls (the Shermans lived near there) and there was something about “let’s go honeybunch!” at the end of it. Oh, we didn’t kiss or anything like that. We were little kids.

I kinda wanna say something like thank god but it’s all good fun to be oot and aboot (as the Canuckians say) in the dark and dead of winter.

Today was a birthday of porterization, JP’s to be accurate. We met at the Earle. They took an Uber to the restaurant (good choice) and we drove them home. I have never taken an Uber but I have taken a Lyft. It was right before the covid shutdown and Little Cat Z ordered one to show me how they worked (at my request). We were downtown and wanted to be dropped off at the Plum Market and we were able to show the Lyft driver (a woman, as we requested) the “shortcut” to the Plum. (Dexter instead of Huron.)

The Earle has a wide-ranging menu and I don’t remember what everyone else ordered but I definitely ordered a duck breast dish. I sampled some small bits of appetizers and took a bite or two of dessert. I ordered two ‘hattans, I swear I ordered the second one no fewer than THREE times. Other than that, the service was fine, as always.

It turned out that one of the beach urchins was at the Grotto, a block or so away. I figured out where it was PDQ. Nevertheless, a long conversation about the Grotto vs. the Zal Gaz Grotto ensued. Nope, not the same thing. The Zal Gaz has been there since before I even lived on The Planet Ann Arbor. It is (if I get it right) a Masonic organization providing support for various good causes.

My grandparents were involved in Masonic organizations but not my parents. I was in Job’s Daughters for a while but only because it was a “cool” thing to do in my little town and my much admired older female cousins were in it. I quit after having my stupid white shoes stolen and being forced to shame another girl (a pregnant girl before Roe vs. Wade). That is all a (weird) story for another day. I think two of my cousins did a turn as Honored Queen. Not me. I don’t really have the “right stuff” for that kind of position anyway. Same with Homecoming Queen.

Anaway (as the British say), HB to JP. Another trip around the sun for all of us frozen ice January babies.

Oh yeah, now that I’m retaaared, I am no longer limited to choosing to drive north (or back) on a weekend day or taking a vacation day to do it during the week.

When COVID was “over” — but it really really wasn’t — the unwashed southeast Michigan masses returned to their weekend mass migrations to and from the yooperland and the northern lower. This was in 2021 and I had a brand new car (Cygnus X-1) and my first couple trips driving down on a Sunday were horrific. I have never been a timid driver but covid somehow knocked me down a bit on that. And, man oh man if I wanted to pass somebody slow, I could NOT get into the passing lane to save my life. One Sunday featured MANY motorcycles (there was a motor-sickle event in Iggy that weekend). The motorcycle riders were driving safely for the most part. Just too many vee-hickles on the road and most of them going way too fast.

The GG and Little Cat Z were driving tandem with me in Mooon Yooonit. I can’t remember the exact logistics of what we were doing but they were ahead of me and at some point the GG “panicked” because he couldn’t see me. He called (doo doo doo doo doooooo… cue the Twilight Zone). His ring tone always startles me, even though I assigned it to his contact on my phone. “What mile marker are you at?” He was at mile marker 180. “I’m at 180 too. Y’know, I don’t think I’m that far behind you. I just don’t think you can SEE me.”

Anyway, we drove up last Monday and came back home today. If you are a regular, you may have seen that our trip up was riddled with black ice, etc., and all kinds of “crazy cowboys” going too fast and sliding off the road. Or crashing into somebody else. Once up there, we had a bit more snow but we were mostly dealing with smaller low traffic roads, not the I75 SUV Speedway. Part of me wanted to stay another day but we have a speshul event tomorrow night and we wanted to make sure we were home in time to attend it. This winter, that could’ve been dicey but our drive home was smooth and dry.

It was a kind of a slow “weekend” (except it wasn’t a weekend) and, after a few years of not hanging out much at the cFam cabin at Hoton Lake, I am looking forward to more.

There’s plenty of snow up at the cFam cabin but (obviously) this big pile is from a plow.

Where should we meet for dinner? We were meeting the UU and The Beautiful Gay (TBG). They drove down from south of Gaylord (Michaywe) and we drove up from Houghton Lake. Our drives were roughly equidistant (half an hour or so), with ours probably being a wee bit shorter. It was a snow drive but not the terrifying kind.

We met at Spike’s Keg O Nails and I wish I had remembered to take a photo but we were all gabbling like crazy and I didn’t manage it. You’ll have to make do with this reflection of the interior of the cFam cabin with some outdoor items. Kinda like a double exposure almost.

We had never been to Spike’s before but Little Cat Z went there a while back and gave it a good recommendation. I was encouraged that they (very happily) substitute gluten free buns for their sandwiches. I mean EVERY sandwich. There’s a small fee but nothing unaffordable and one of our party does not do gluten so that was a bonus. You can also order every sandwich as a wrap unless it already comes as a wrap (mine did). Spike’s Keg O Nails may not sound like the name for a gluten free friendly restaurant. It sounds more like an old sailor’s bar. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. But it was great and our servers were wonderful!

I don’t avoid gluten but I like wraps as opposed to sandwiches with big slices of bread or large buns. A little bread goes a long way for me.

That’s about it for today. I am just out of steam. Packing up and moving out tomorrow. Alas. It’s really nice up here on winter weekdays when there are no tourists around.

P.S. I just have to document this. At one point TBG asked our lovely servers if they had noticed the ID twins. One of them said she would have pegged US (TBG and KW) as the identical twins. I take that as a huge compliment because TBG is so much more beauteous than I am. But as my (late, alas) Jewish friend Sari once called me (even though I don’t think I deserve it), TBG is a mensch. We are (of course) not identical twins and in a lot of ways we are not alike. But we are kindred spirits and I am honored to be able to call her my sister-in-law.