A fashion plate. Knitted hat by grandma, cute outfit from cousins (opened up the bag and IMMEDIATELY STRIPPED NAKED to switch to the new outfit), neon green high heels, and, oh, of course, Speedy Water Janet Pop Mousey Mushroom Ears. A constant companion hanging there at the side. One of my fave pics ever.

Today? Paddling down the Huron River. A force of nature way back then and now.

I am basking a bit after my workday. Our temps were in the low 80s today. Not unheard of at all for this time of year but it hasn’t been the warmest spring season so far so this is kinda welcome and I am hanging out in the back yard watching a pair of robins engaging in nesting behavior. We have three nests that I know of and I think I know which one they are working on. For Landfill folks, it’s the one on the south side of the house around the corner where I can’t see it from where I’m sitting. And y’all know where I’m sitting.

I have decided I am gonna OWN the Libtard label. For myself that is. I know that anything ending with “tard” is not politically correct but I can call myself anything I want, right? I have been called a Libtard (also a Social Justice Warrior) about a bazillion times since Trump took over the GOP and, yes, he DID take over the GOP. It’s not my parents’ GOP and it isn’t your parents’ either. I’m mainly talking about people born in the mid 20th century to be clear.

The Trump party is the party of mean. Also the party of crazy and chaos but we’ll go there some other day maybe. Mean. The Trump Party has absolutely zero compassion for anyone who doesn’t kowtow to the Temple of Trump. What a mean, egotistical little man. How much hate can one person hold? I dunno how we get out of this stoopid MAGA crapola. I never subscribed to it in the first place.

We need to be compassionate toward people who have less than we do. Not all immigrants are “bad hombres”. Not all poor people are “welfare queens”. MOST of us rely on government services for one thing or another. Trump and Musk both come from immigrant families. I dunno if they use any government services. Maybe not. Billionaires certainly do not need government money. Although there are agencies who do things like make sure “hamberder” meat is safe to eat, etc. But I don’t think either of them can fathom what the lives of people who depend on government services are like. Or the lives of the folks they are heartlessly chainsawing out of their jobs.

I’m done for now but not forever. Libtard? Social Justice Warrior? Neither of those labels exactly fit me but I am gonna OWN them anyway. The bottom line is, I CARE! About those who have less than I do, including some of those who actually support Trump. Isn’t that what social justice is all about?

For FlaMan, not me. Wish I had thought to get a pic of *him* because he was pretty well decked out despite some challenges getting ready for the occasion. We celebrated via lunch at Johnny’s Pour House in the beautiful little city of Flushing. Er, the GG says, “it’s beautiful except for the unfortunate name.” We were joined by the Lord and Lady of Linden.

We celebrated here last year and if the Pour House was/were(?)* closer to the Planet Ann Arbor, we would be regulars. Great food and lovely service, although I’m coming to realize if you are a friendly (not crotchety) old bag and you tip well, restaurant servers tend to treat you well. I had a Greek wrap and FlaMan got a BLT (they are on the “secret” menu) with extra bacon. Hey, it’s your birthday, go for that bacon.

Since the Great Lake State is finally warming up enough for Orange Cone Season, it can be challenging to gad about. We managed to miss the main traffic jam by prior knowledge and strategic avoidance on surface streets. The GG was fidgety about it all but I encouraged him to calm down and enjoy the scenic route.

All in all, it was a pretty long day and then we had to pick up Mooon Yooonit from the dealer when we got back into the orbit of The Planet Ann Arbor. But I love FlaMan and it’s hard for him to get out without help and it was a good time. I loved all the gabblety-gabblety with the Lady of Linden. I don’t have any biological sisters but I have sisters in spades via my in-laws. I love them all!

Oh, yeah, it is also my Grandma Margaret’s bday. I am not strong enough to count how many years old she would be if she were still alive. She is not collecting social security payments in any case. Where would they be sent?

*Was/were? Mrs. Pratt (8th grade English), where are you when I need you? Oh well, I’ll ask Margaret instead. I mean blahg Margaret, not grandma

Seems like a good day to “dial it down” a bit so I won’t post some of the stuff that’s simmering in my brain today.

The highlight of my work day was when my new colleague caught something I neglected to tell him about on our call this afternoon. After our call, I had been thinking something like, “I shouldda told him that.” But guess what? He noticed it himself. Because of that, I was able to explain it *in* context so that he could understand it in a way he *might* not have been able to if I had just gabblety gabblety gabbletied the whole thing. He’s a smart person and I think I am connecting with him well. I am going on 18 years there though and I know so much but how do I whisper all that stuff to a new person. We’ll get there.

The GG surprised me by heading out to his monthly lunch with his EPA retiree group today. I thought that happened earlier in the month but apparently not this month. A key member of the group had spent months in Crazy Old Florida and has just returned so the group delayed the meeting a couple weeks. I was glad to have the Landfill to myself for a while and the pic is from his luncheon.

At the end of the afternoon, things got crazy at home (sorta). Our quick green lizard wanted to come over to drop off some glubs that the North Country Trail folks might want. That was fine (honey you can come over to my house whenever you want). But then all of a sudden, the GG woke up a bit and, yeah, we need to take Moooon Yoooonit over to Toyota to fix a squeaky brake noise (we had the brakes done a couple weeks ago). I am an early morning person but driving to the Toyota dealer at 7:00 AM is not my fave thing to do.

So we dropped off Mooon Yooonit and then Lizard came over and did a mini cocktail hour with us. I am so glad my beautiful daughters live close enough to us for this kind of thing to happen.

We finished the evening with Easter leftovers and an episode of Queen’s Gambit. We were between TV series’ as of yesterday and Queen’s Gambit caught in the corner of my eye so we decided to try it out. Some of it is difficult but I think we’re gonna go for it. Note that I don’t understand chess at all.

Actually I think it’s in a large wooded park on The Planet Ann Arbor.

This is my small tribute to Pope Francis. I turned on the kitchen radio this morning and the first thing I heard was something about “funeral plans”. They were done talking about the pope by that time but I somehow knew immediately that’s who it was.

I am not Catholic but I sometimes joke that large Catholic families are one of my lots in life (engineers being another). My grandfather and a Catholic buddy/co-worker of his bought adjacent beach properties on Lake Superior when they were young. Their children grew up together and then their grandchildren. I’m one of the grandchildren and our families have remained friends throughout our lives.

My best friend throughout grade school was Laurie, who went to the Catholic school a few blocks away from Stinkin’ Linkin’, my public school. We met up after school many days and every Saturday morning was spent in her bedroom, “cleaning” it. Y’all know that didn’t really happen and her mom would eventually boot us out to “terrorize” the neighborhood. An occasional activity being sliding around on the floor under the pews at St. Joe’s collecting holy cards for Laurie’s collection.

And then I married a Catholic guy, one of 10 wonderful siblings. They welcomed this old heathen with open arms.

So I am not Catholic but I’m kind of familiar with the drill of being a Catholic kid.

I liked Pope Francis. In my opinion, he was a person who did follow Jesus’s teachings. I’m pretty sure he didn’t agree with abortion or gay marriage or [pick an issue]. But he seemed to care about people who *had* abortions or married partners of their own sex, etc. Human beings are extremely complicated and sometimes have to make very difficult decisions. All people deserve to be treated with compassion and dignity. I think that was one of his main messages. I don’t have to be Catholic or even religious to agree with that.

God speed, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

This is a postcard my beach urchins gave me today. I am going to frame it.

If any of y’all don’t know what a trillium is, it is a spring ephemeral (that’s a wildflower) that grows in the Great Lake State and probably a bunch of other places too. It grows in the woods behind The Landfill. It is a protected species. The normally law-abiding Commander was so enamored of trillium that I once abetted her in a trillium heist. I drove the getaway car. She dug up a plant on a deserted forest road in the eastern yooperland, watching warily the whole time for cars coming along to bust her. She took the plant home and but it failed to thrive wherever she transplanted it.

Anyway. I’m sure there are billionaires out there who are worthy of running the United States government. Trump is not one of them. That is, if he is actually a billionaire. That seems to be a question. Actual billionaire or not? I am skeptical that his wealth was attained honestly. Yeah, I know a lot of it is generational wealth but not sure his father was on the up and up either.

At any rate, his little games are really really bad for our country. How are your grocery prices these days? How is your 401K doing? I’m not looking at mine. Fortunately it isn’t my only source of retirement income when that time comes but other investments are in the same damn boat. Why oh why oh why did you vote for him? Can you not tell who he is by the mean, ugly, idiotic things he says and does?

Take his “Easter message” on Truth Lies Social today. A torrent of hatred toward everyone he could think of. Are you Christian? Do you love Jesus Christ? Is any of this a part of Jesus’s teachings? I am not religious but I learned a lot about Jesus as a kid in Sunday School and nothing in Trump’s vile spew today had anything to do with Jesus’s teachings, which are to love all living beings, no matter who they are and what their status is. I’m having trouble applying those teachings to Trump. Those of you who think of him as your savior, what the f*ck are you thinking? We won’t even talk about Elon, who has no business anywhere near US government agencies and (arguably) no expertise in data analysis.

Sorry for the pessimistic rant but my anger at this man and his sycophants is almost indescribable. Love y’all and g’night. May your life be filled with trillium.

Back (ka-whomp) on The Planet Ann Arbor again.

It was a great week at Houghton Lake (HL) ending with gorgeous thunderstorms rolling through late last evening and into the night. It was warm enough we could open the doorwalls in the front room and the storms were persistent but not severe. No power outages. Those are awful at HL because we have well water and when the power goes out, so does the pump. Yer fav-o-rite blagger does not do well without her morning shower

Because we had two automotive vee-hickles up there for the week (yes it’s wasteful but it was also necessary) we had to drive tandem going up and down. Technically that doesn’t mean we have to keep each other in sight the whole time but somehow it gets a little weird when we can’t see each other.

Problem. One of us has more testosterone than the other (guess who). I am not a slow driver and he is a careful driver. But. When we get separated, as we did a couple times today, it is because he is ahead of me (which I prefer overall) and calculates a risk (to run a yellow or pass a truck with tons of traffic coming up behind him in the left lane). I take a few nanoseconds longer to process those risk factors. Meaning I often get caught at a red light or don’t jump out into the passing lane in front of some super fast car or an interminable line of cars. The problem is, when that kind of thing happens, it takes me forever to catch up with him again without going 85 mph, which I CAN do but don’t LIKE to.

This kind of thing happened a few times today. The worst was probably the Zilwaukee Bridge. Or not. Because we didn’t go over the Zilwaukee Bridge today. Why? As we were approaching it there were about a bazillion orange cones and all kinds of “freeway closed” signs. So. Quick decisions in lots of jockeying traffic to get into the correct lane to take the loop west into and through Saginaw. The I75 SUV Speedway was calm in general but the loop through Saginaw was not.

At one point we were behind a semi truck that was not going slow but probably slower than the GG wanted to go. So he JUMPED over into the passing lane without warning. Fine. Except. There was a STEADY STREAM of traffic in the passing lane and I could not to save my life get over there to pass the truck. I did not have the balls to do that (TMI?)

We’ve been tandem driving for a loooong time. In the old days, I’d’ve been totally pissed off. Today I just figgered I would eventually catch up to him. There was one more stress point and that was that I couldn’t exactly remember how the interchange BACK onto southbound I75 proper from the Saginaw loop worked and COULDN’T SEE THE SIGN BECAUSE TRUCK! I knew there was something funky about it and at the last possible nano-second, I glimpsed a sign that reminded me. Hanging a RIGHT would dump you onto NORTHBOUND I75 (to the Mackinac Bridge), where I didn’t want to go. Today. The right turn onto southbound I75 was a half mile or so LATER, which is where I DID want to go. I managed it all and the freeway opened up from two to four lanes and I didn’t even have to pass the truck because it meandered into some other lane all by itself and traffic was pretty light in general (probably because the goddamn bridge was closed so no one was entering the freeway from there). Eventually I caught up with the GG.

After dropping off some peeps and other Easter treats with FlaMan in Flint we managed to make it home without incident. A successful week of telecommuting from Houghton Lake and enjoying the off-season there.

I had three main missions for today (I took the day off). One was to obtain some ham in a not-too-overwhelming quantity. Two, get a pic of the old Ron’s restaurant before it collapses or burns. The third? Lunch at the Spikehorn.

I cook a ham once a year, on Easter (which we observe in a secular way). I try to buy the smallest piece of ham as possible. The best, most reliable way to do this is to get pre-sliced in whatever quantity you need at Honey Baked. But we aren’t anywhere near a Honey Baked ham store and won’t be until tomorrow afternoon and there is no way in hell I’m gonna drive cross-town the day of the spring football game. So I decided to try to get one at Houghton Lake although I figured that would mean a trip to Walmart or Family Fare. As luck would have it, Best Choice was also on our agenda and lo and behold, they had ham there. I bought a half, which is waaay too big for us, but I’ll cut *that* in half and freeze one of the halves.

That stroke of luck left us with a lot of time before lunch so we headed west and took a little self-curated oil well tour through the Dead Stream Swamp. As I have said before, the perimeter of Houghton Lake is chock-a-block with “cottages” but if you drive a mile or so away from the lake, dwellings are much sparser. And POORER! One of the things we agree on is we both like to take slow cruises on the back roads and today’s cruise did not disappoint. Also, the Great Lake State probably doesn’t come to mind as a big oil producer but there is a TON of oil here.

On to get a pic of Ron’s, lunch, then a little bit more touring in the area, then a quiet afternoon. I didn’t like the pics I took of Ron’s so I’ll have to go back another day. Lunch (for me) was whitefish “fingers”. Very good (fried though, this is bar food) and just the right amount of food for me.

Back to the Planet tomorrow. I’ll have to switch out my red hat and for my trusty old blue one

I’ll try to organize a comparison of the Hoton Lake moldy old cabin that this beautiful new one replaced another day. For the moment, this is what I think I can talk about. I was sitting in my chosen work space for the week. My work day was done and we were done eating dinner and I was just kinda mindlessly staring out over the lake.

The pic to the left of the doorwall is the 10 cFam sibs when they were children. The decor was organized by my many sisters-in-law. The GG’s sisters and the GG’s brother’s wives. They did a fantastic job.

I was just dozing. There is a movie on and I think it is probably pretty good but the characters are speaking French and there are subtitles and I normally like those but I am kinda just taaared tonight.

Two looooong meetings today. Good ones but they have left me doing a lot of processing. In the middle of the day, I trekked over to Best Choice, a meat market and small grocery that we’ve been shopping at for many years to get something to eat tonight. They still have plastic up at the cashier counter from the f*cking covid days. I noted that my drive to Best Choice was eight miles. Down on The Planet Ann Arbor, eight miles would probably entail 10-20 traffic lights. Here? One stop sign. Period.

I’ve been going to this little store since I’ve been coming up to Hoton Lake. It’s a half mile down the road and for most of those years, mainly stocked a small assortment of grocks and sundries, beer and whine, donuts on the weekend, you get it. OH! And candy! Including penny candy. One of the first times I went there, we asked if they had olive oil and they had never heard of it! In all fairness, I was a heavy olive oil user by that time of my life but not too many years before I hadn’t heard of it either.

The store has had multiple owners over the years but has managed to hang on all this time. The latest change in ownership has come with a noticeable upgrade. Still a small inventory but carefully curated. No meat or produce, a small dairy case, LOTS of beer, whine, and pop. All kinds of non-perishables (I have bought garlic POWDER and Worchestershire there this week). A small selection of sundries (deoderant anyone?). And a LARGE selection of booze. They still have donuts, ice cream cones, and pizza.

I don’t know anything about keeping a store but I think they have a formula that works. Long Point, where the cFam cabin is, is a good-sized drive from any of the other grock stores in the area so if you went shopping and forgot a random item (like deoderant, duh, except I actually forgot to pack *that* from *home*), They are selling a lot of things (like Worchestershire) that you wouldn’t want to make a half-hour trip to get. And beer/booze? Another thing that could be a last minute thing. Not a lot of non-perishables so not a lot to throw out if they don’t sell quickly. I didn’t think to look for candy but probably there is a good selection. I don’t think anything costs a penny any more.

On one hand, Long Point, where the cFam cabin is, is kind of out in the boonies. Except that it isn’t really the boonies because the entire perimeter of Hoton Lake, including Long Point, is chock-a-block with “cottages”, many of them full-size, year-round houses these days, so there is often a lot of traffic everywhere. I’m thinking that back when the GG was a kid, a lot of moms may have been up here “alone” with their kids and sometimes without automotive vee-hickles so the corner store may have been a go-to grock store for some of them when they didn’t have a car at their disposal? That wouldn’t have been my mother-in-law. But I was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia then so I have no clue. I do know that there were plenty of moms in the Sault without their own cars back then and there were lots of small full-service neighborhood stores.

At any rate, I was impressed by the upgrade!

This was the view sometime in the mid to late morning. It was a very blustery day and I was glad to be in a modern house instead of the moldy old cFam cabin as much as I loved that old place.

I remember hanging around with the Gumper (my father-in-law) listening to him talk about various things. Lake levels and the Dam Man. Stories about serving as the master mechanic on the Hornet aircraft carrier in the south Pacific. He would tear up a wee bit talking about the pilots that got billeted with him that never came back. On a lighter note, there was this mathematical conversation in which I set him straight about something, mainly, that I wasn’t all that bad at math.

Gumper: KW, do you know what a parabola is?
KW: Why yes! I know all the conic sections.

That pretty much stopped him from asking me mathematical questions although he did sometimes ask me some nosy questions but that was what he was all about. He also once divulged some (sorta) NSFW information to me, which eventually earned me the title “The Family Liberal” from another out-law. That is all I will say about that except that I loved him and think he liked and trusted me. And make no mistake, it was not anything sordid at all.

So, a few years after the Gumper died, a quintet of his children bulldozed the moldy old place and rebuilt it. So I took this picture out the window from where I was working today. Large Catholic families are one of my lots in life and I am blessed to be a part of this one, non-Catholic that I am.

P.S. The GG found Coal Miner’s Daughter was on TV tonight, miraculously with no commercials. A great film and when I was young, random strangers would sometimes tell me I looked like “Carrie”, aka Sissy Spacek, who plays Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter. Just a fun fact.

Masquerading as John Bolton. Embiggen a couple times to see the mustache. He kissed me this afternoon when he returned (sweaty as all getout) from a day of chainsawing and his mustache was wet. Fortunately I has just seen him take a swig of bourbon. which is sanitary. I think. TMI? In more ways than one I’m guessing

Meanwhile, back at the ranch aka group home, yer fav-o-rite blahgger could not get her work VPN to work. It’s too long a story but it involved The Mother Ship turning OFF wi-fi on my laptop. She may have detected I was trying to connect from an unfamiliar location. I fixed that but my VPN still didn’t work. Eventually tech support got that resolved. I’ve been spending too much time with those folks lately, lovely as they are.

And I am streaming! Last evening it was just the two of us here and we needed a little quiet background noise. Just enough to distract us from the Ticking Of The Clock. We turned on the TV. Oh. My. God. That was a disaster. Shows we didn’t like. LOUD! Commercials every two minutes (it seemed but probably they weren’t that frequent). But they were even LOUDER than the shows. We very likely don’t know what channels/shows are available to us via this TV service but we weren’t really wanting to figure it out.

I was soooo missing the Sunday night folk and jazz on the Ypsilanti WEMU NPR radio station. The GG doesn’t like NPR as well as I do (but he does listen to it, make no mistake) but he was on the same page as me about the TV. Eventually I dragged my laptop (I mean my personal MacBook Pro) over and started streaming WEMU. We both enjoyed some interesting jazz QUIETLY. Today I flipped between WCMU (for weather updates here at Hoton Lake) and WUOM for the talk shows I listen to intermittently on the Planet Ann Arbor and now WEMU for some evening jazz.

The GG rummaged through the cabin looking for things we couldn’t find, like a radio and a bar of soap. He found a radio and one bar of soap. I’m glad he found a radio but streaming works even better for me. We both prefer using bar soap to shower. I know others are skeptical about how sanitary that is if you are sharing soap. I understand that and usually travel with my own personal bar of soap but forgot it this weekend. As well as deodorant… More TMI…

Anyway, it is great to be here for the week. Lamb stew is in the hopper for tonight.

Oh, come on, it’ll be fun. You can work up there while I’m out chainsawing. To be clear, he will be chainsawing downed trees, not people’s jobs. And I will be here in the rather luxurious Hoton Lake (HL) Groop Home communicating with The Planet Ann Arbor and India and Florida and I fergit where else.

The truth is, I haven’t spent much time at HL since before the pandemic. From the time I met the GG until then, I often came here. It is beautiful here. The picture doesn’t do it justice with the gray skies and water and brownish grass.

At the beginning of covid, I didn’t come here because (duh) I didn’t want to get covid. Who did? I had a hard time that first summer (2020) keeping the Twinz of Terror from rooming together in the Lyme Lounge or wherever. Youz guyz, the covid virus doesn’t care if you were womb-mates.

Time marched on and most people got vaxxed in 2021 and covid numbers went down a bit that summer (and then back up again with the Delta and Omicron variants). I braved an overnight stop here on our way to the yooperland. There were about a bazillion people here. The Uncly Uncle’s family (three kids, spouses, and grandkids) and maybe others I’m not remembering. They are all wonderful fun people and it was lovely and I kinda almost forgot about covid. And guess what? I didn’t get it. But although I had a good time that weekend, a year plus of full-time telecommuting had kicked my introverted ass into high gear and I was dead tired at the end of it. I needed a “freak-out chamber”, usually the Lyme Lounge, but it was at the moomincabin that weekend.

Another overnight a couple years later with one of our Colorado nieces and her kids (we had the Lyme Lounge that time) but other than that I’ve just made quick stops here and there.

So okay. The GG shamed convinced me to come up for the week. Because I cannot be without my own transportation for more than a day or so, we each drove a car. I mean, he’ll be out chainsawing, right? I dragged him away from PBJ for burgers at the North Shore Bar for lunch, then we did a slow drive on the old dirt roads near the “scenic trails”, which seem to be taken over by ORVs these days. Cygnus can do a bit of rough driving but not that rough.

Cheers to Hoton Lake and g’night! KW

Moom! Look who’s up ahead! And there he was, the Easter Bunny, or maybe the Energizer Bunny by the way he was bopping around in and out of Dexter’s Pub and up and down the street.

The original idea was that me and Lizard would meet up for lunch on Sunday. When moom is Home Alone, the beach urchins like to make sure she is properly socialized and since moom has shaken off her covid cowardice, lunch at a restaurant is an option once again and I am loving it. Various gyrations in schedules flipped our original plan on its head and we met today instead. At Dexter’s Pub and joined by the GG. He is not unwelcome at these lunches although today he was a little stinky after walking 10 miles from The Planet Ann Arbor to the satellite village of Dexter. And his John Bolton mustache is starting to look scary enough that even *he* admits to being a bit scared of it.

So my beach urchin Lizard drove over to my house and I was like, “Baby you can drive my car!” When this beach urchin was an emerging talker, she once grabbed my keys and said, “I d[r]ive.” How do you explain to a toddler that no they can’t drive? And then all of a sudden they are 14 and in high school and taking driver’s ed. 14? Some might ask. Some parents get freaked out about putting their kids in driver’s ed as early as is legal, which is 14 in Michigan. Why oh why oh why? The longer your kid drives with adult supervision, the better. Er, unless YOU are a bad driver… Or afraid of driving, as some people are, which I am sympathetic to.

So my daughters are wonderful drivers and I enjoy riding with them any time they are willing to drive me. And it’s usually my car. There’s nothing wrong with their cars but I think there might be more “stuff” in them than Cygnus X-1 has. Which is somehow typical of younger folks? I’m guessing because there used to always be a bunch of crapola in my cars. You know. Old dried out McDonald’s hamburgers that the kids didn’t eat and whatever. Also, Mooon Yooonit usually has a lot of crapola in it and the GG “stores” a certain amount of that overflow in Cygnus. I am not happy about this but I tolerate it.

First task of the day. Not too long after 7:00 AM. This was to drop off two of the five checks I will write this year. Most years, I write three, all for various property taxes. This year I was tasked with writing two income tax related checks.

The GG was in a minor panic because the tax stuff got delivered a day later than expected, a day when he wanted to be out of town. Well. I *can* write checks. I *can* follow instructions (from the accountant). I drove over to the post office to mail them because people have been known to grab checks out of the drive-up drop boxes, “wipe” them clean (how?), and put their own name and amount on them. I would have thought this was an urban legend except that I first heard about it from a good friend, one I talk to weekly, because it had happened to her. And then somebody blew up the drive-by mailboxes at one of the Planet Ann Arbor post offices. I mean exploded them. With some sort of bomb. I went early today because there’s almost no traffic then. After dropping off the checks, I texted this photo to the GG and I could FEEL his relief through my phone when he texted an emphatic THANKS. Don’t wanna be late filing the taxes. (We have documents that don’t arrive until sorta late.)

I didn’t go early to the grock store as I had tentatively planned. Bad thing but I had morning meetings I needed to do some prep for so there you are. When I did go, it was NOON and traffic everywhere was a frickin’ mess. I did manage to get “my” u-Scan though. The Plum Market checkout process is always fast even the day before Thanksgiving or xmas.

Man oh man, coaching a new colleague is challenging my poor old brain but in a good way. They are helping me remember all the stuff I forgot years ago Keeping me young?

Actually I did not have any big plans today. Except to work and this view is from my work space. The last few days have been *filled* with meetings. Today was pretty open. Tomorrow has filled up.

Anyway. The Twinz of Terror were up and out at 0-skunk-30. They did allow me to get the first shower (they know how I roll) and hung around long enough to have a wee bit of coffee. Then they took off to the Albion/Marshall area to hike on the North Country Trail. They were gonna get more coffee at the Zeeb Road McDonald’s. They took two cars for various indescribable reasons. Imagine if you are working the McDonald’s window and the same guy (in a different car) buys coffee from you as the last customer.

This is kinda my annual “April snow” pic. it’ll probably snow again this month. It might even snow in May. Probably not June although it can get pretty damn cold. Growing up in the yooperland, the only months I haven’t ever seen snow are July and August. This is the Great Lake State and that’s what happens here. This morning’s crapola wasn’t slippery and shoveling wasn’t required. Despite predictions of low 40s temps, I think 37 was the highest it got today so there is still a bit of it hanging around.

There was the usual chorus at today’s work stand-up meeting. “I was so surprised when I woke up to snow”, etc. I kept myself on mute but NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! We *almost always* get snow at this time of year. Usually it’s a nothing-burger, like today. But not always. I had a glacier in my back yard the April after the Polar Vortex Winter (2014). Actually we mostly stop shoveling/snow-blowing in March. Unless there’s a large accumulation of snow/ice, it usually melts quickly. Like this morning’s minor accumulation did. It did not ice the streets or sidewalks.

What a day! It began early when I returned to bed from the water closet for a few more minutes of shut-eye. Beeeep. What was that? (You know what it was.) After 30 seconds or so. Beeeep. Lather rinse repeat. At least it wasn’t SCREEEEECHING! I checked my Nest app. All was well. Alas, we also have non-Nest smoke alarms. It turned out to be intermittent so we endured it until we returned from dropping off Mooon Yooonit at 7:15 AM, then the GG scurried around changing batteries like mad. I have said this before but I’ll say it again. I will never understand why we need to have FOUR smoke alarms within a six-foot radius. Yeah they are in different rooms but you can’t tell which one is beeping. Rules be stoopid sometimes.

Then I had to deal with my broken token. Man oh man, what a big mess. I won’t try to detail this ordeal. The high-level overview is my VPN app expired and due to VERY confusing emailed instructions for how to replace it, I deleted it before I installed the replacement app. Bad thing. So. I couldn’t get to the support folks on my laptop. Instead I would get to a page saying, “You are not logged in.” Yeah, I knooooow.

I resorted to filing a ticket by phone. It took something like six tries to process all of the instructions for just getting into the phone queue for a callback but I FINALLY did it. What I didn’t do was disable the setting (on my personal phone) that silences all incoming calls from unknown numbers. So I missed the callback and then went through all kinds of search gyrations to try to figger out if my employer had an office in Podunkville, Lower Slobbovia. I never totally figgered that out but I finally sucked it up and turned off the phone setting. A while later I received another incoming call from that same number and a lovely tech support woman took over my screen and totally sorted me out, then thanked me for “all I do for the company”.

This was all going on while I was in meetings and/or I/Ming with various people via Teams (and picking up Mooon Yooonit). I was taaaared by the end of the day and I am now celebrating that end by having a ‘hattan with the Twinz of Terror (the UU is visiting). I am in the Landfill Chitchen writing my blahg and they are in the GG’s lair talking MAGA and economics and surfing the internet. Hundreds of Beavers anyone? And now guns.

And now mouse is here and the shouting is over.

We totally spaced it out this year. I didn’t even realize it was this Sunday until after it was over.

We used to go to Festifools most years, at least when we were in town. I guess we got out of the habit when covid shut it down for a few years. Back in the day, we would watch the parade for a while, then grab a ‘hattan at the Old Town before heading home.

What is Festifools? It is a “parade” of sorts with huge puppets constructed from various materials. The Detroit Party Marching Band (google it) participates whenever it feels like it. And all kinds of other people, large and small. The dictators in the top pic are Papier-mâché (I think). The pic is from 2017 when those of us (meeeeee) who hate Trump (and Putin) were still trying to adjust to our new horrible reality. This float was actually a rotating trio. Kim Jong Un is on the other side. Little did we know another new reality awaited us so many years later. I am so taaaared of people who care nothing about anything but themselves but I am kinda done for tonight.

So here is the GG in the ghillie suit he got at the army surplus store south of Gaylord a buncha years ago. Can you believe that *women* were walking up to him and hugging him in this suit? Maybe it was because his accomplice (meeee) was wearing biz-caz (red pencil skirt, black tights, black t-neck, and polarfleece vest) so they might’ve felt he was safe? And he is “woman safe”. Four sisters and two daughters. But not sure these women saw me at all. I think they thought he was adorable. I mighta been jealous about all this hugging when I was a much younger woman. Now I just gnoff and gnoff and gnoff. You want ‘im? You’ve got ‘im. I am kidding of course. I need somebody who can fix terlets and things

We never quite made it past the Ark (in the photo). But later in the spring we were opening our cabins at the moominbeach with npJane and she mentioned that she and some friends were a little further on in front of Conor O’Neills or wherever that day. Some sort of drama was going on in their friend group (npJane has a bazillion friends) and I said something like maybe it was a good thing we didn’t get that far down the street. But then she said a wee bit more about the drama and I thought maybe a guy in a ghillie suit with big googly eyes might have lightened up the moment. But we turned around before we got there.

I wore the ghillie suit to work one Halloween. At least the top part. I do not dress up much for Halloween except for my aurora borealis costume sometimes. When I heard the Benevolent Despot’s voice booming over to my cube (he LOVES Halloween), I put on the ghillie suit top. He expressed amazement at my costume (or more likely it was amazement that I was actually wearing a costume). I took it off as soon as he left my cube

It’s spring and all the lovely little critters are coming alive!

First, Amazon Woman’s cats brought a LIVING vole into her house this morning. Actually, further research revealed it was a deer mouse, not a vole.

I don’t really know much about rodents but I have a working vocabulary of some of the various kinds, mouse, vole, mole, etc. Why? Because my daughter (as you know if you’ve followed this bunch of blather for any length of time) decided at the age of 18 months that she did not like the “government name” we had assigned her at birth and changed it to “Mouse”. She named herself after a stuffed aminal. This is the name she still uses. It took a little getting used to and there were awkward-ish conversations over the years about what she would be called at school. But she has always been enchanted with any kind of friendly rodent (and a whole lot of other living creatures too).

Actually I am sympathetic as I am not crazy about *my* “government name” either. It never “fit” me and when The Commander was angry at me for whatever, it sounded like a buzzer. “Anne!” When I discovered that Anne of Green Gables (also an Anne-with-an-e) didn’t like her name either, I felt better about it.

Maybe a better system would be to wait a bit before naming a newborn baby? People *do* do that. I remember we were all hot to get the birth certificate squared away (we did have her name pretty much picked out before she was born though, after family members). For reasons I can’t totally remember, we had to return to the hospital to finalize that piece of paperwork. This totally *freaked* out her 2.5-year-old big sister. “Don’t take my sister back to the hospital!”

The kinda fuzzy pic? That’s *moe*-skee-*toe* larvae swimming around in there. The Mad Scientist got them from a vernal pond near mouse’s house and has a setup that somehow ports a video onto a computer.

Speaking of rodents, we watched a *bizarre* movie last night: Hundreds of Beavers. I’m not necessarily recommending it. It was pretty funny (and creative) but also very very violent although most of the characters are BIG stuffed aminals (actually humans in suits). The protagonist is named Jean Kayak (he’s one of the few human characters) so how’s about that?

Cheers, Kayak Woman

This morning’s 7:10 airport run was made much easier because we didn’t actually have to drive over to Metro. The beach urchins, returning from visiting their cousin (my niece) in Hawaii, grabbed the Michigan Flyer, i.e. the *bus*. All we had to do was drive downtown and I mean downtown *Ann Arbor*, which is less (fewer?) than two miles from our house and absolutely deserted early on a Sunday morning. And it wasn’t even snowing or anything.

I am glad, as I always am, that their travels were safe. I don’t really ever worry much but that tragic crash in DC in January did rattle me. I wish that Pengie (niece) lived closer to us but she has an important job that bases her in Hawaii and she is needed there. I’m very very proud of her and so would my brother (her dad) be if he had lived long enough to see her grow into the talented, respected woman she is. I’m glad my daughters got to go and see her and hopefully we’ll see her in the summer

I made CPP (chicken pot pie) today. I don’t make it with a “traditional” pie crust. I top it with a biscuit crust. I am not a born and bred biscuit maker but drop biscuits from The Joy of Cooking work and people seem to like it. So. I made CPP mostly because I had a crazy craving for it but also because it would feed a small crowd if the beach urchins were up to dinner at The Landfill. As I sort of expected, they weren’t. And that is A-OK with me. Overnight flight anyone? No pressure, no guilt is one of my mantras. We’ll have leftover CPP and it also freezes well.

After the bus station, we dropped the city mouse off at her house and then we dropped the country mouse at her house and I made the GG turn around to retrace our route because I had spied Mr. Golden Sun rising as we were heading *to* the rodent’n’raccoon ranch and I wanted to get a pic on the way back. So this is from the eastern terminus of the country road mouse lives on.

In other words, we welcomed our travelers home early but it was an otherwise boring day. I only made one trip to the grock store Kathy was there working the guest counter but I didn’t interact with her, trying instead to slide under the radar.

Because I’d rather not try to write about arrogance today, except that I CANNOT abide it. You know who I’m talking about.

Triple grock store day. Why?

First grock store, Jackson Rd. Meijer at 0-skunk-30. Among other things, I bought some little mini-filets (steak) that are individually packaged (I know that’s environmentally bad). These grill up nicely when you don’t run out of propane like we did last week. I finished those in the broiler and they were wonderful. Today I bought four. I scanned the first one and then I got ahead of myself and managed to drop the second one on the floor. That triggered the uscan to call for a cashier to come and HELP (HELP HELP)! Of course the u-scan cam caught the whole thing Good thing it was just a little piece of meat encased in plastic and not a whine bottle or something. More staff would’ve been required for that.

Second grock store, neighborhood Plum Market. But. Where the heck did all this traffic come from? I know it is not a Football Saturday but it feels like one and I am a little later than usual because I stopped at home after Meijer to have some coffee. I could not make a left turn onto Maple to save my life so I had to go right and left and around the “block”, where the roads were blocked by people exiting Alanon. I did fine at Plum and didn’t do anything stoopid enough to need help with the u-Scan from Kathy at the guest counter but…

Third grock store (Plum again). When I got home, I opened my phone and there was a voice mail from Kathy at the guest counter saying that I had left a bag of coffee beans at the u-scan. I was like done done done but Chainsaw Man rose to the occasion and drove me over so I could just hop in and retrieve it. And THANK Kathy. She knows me as mouse’s mom, not sure she knows my government name and I know she doesn’t know my phone but, when I swipe my phone app, everything gets stored and my phone number is on file. So she even knew I had PAID for the coffee although it took me a hot minute to remember if I had scanned it or not.

Then I ran roooomba. There were some initial mis-communications but after a bit I heard her beep and she was going great guns… Until she encountered an error. This roooomba cleans herself but occasionally she needs some help. This time there was blonde/white hair wound around her “brushes” in such a big mess that when I was trying to remove one of the brushes, I broke a part and couldn’t put the brush back in properly. A new set of brushes is on order.

Is that enough? It pretty much was. The pic is from our table at Dexter’s Pub last night and I have no clue what Lewis 1863 means.