The pic is from 12 years ago. This was MY parking place at Cubelandia.

It wasn’t like I had a nameplate or anything on my space. My dad had a nameplate “Jack Finlayson” at the Sault Ste. Siberia First National Bank. That was his spot when he was president or whatever. I think the nameplate is in the moomincabin nowadays.

I didn’t have any kind of nameplate. I was able to claim my personal parking place because it was the farthest away from the entrance to the building, like three rows away, and nobody else parked over in that row.

I worked over at Cubelandia for 12.5 years and I’ve been at TeleCubelandia for the last 4.5 years. I had an eight mile zen drive over to Cubelandia after I decided that taking the freeway every day was risking my life. Getting on to eastbound I94 at the Jackson Rd. hairpin turn entrance behind a gravel truck? Nope. Taking the slow route around the south side of town was blissful. Well, unless it was snowing but I have always been able to work from home and usually didn’t drive over to Cubelandia in the snow. As a non-essential worker, why put my vee-hicle on the road?

Cubelandia didn’t close totally because of covid. Cubelandia was always under utilized. Covid was just the tipping point. Why pay all that rent for a half-empty building?

G’night, KW

Gertrude is my stove. I am not trying to kill her. We bought her sometime in the 2010s, after our old stove (the one that came with the house) blew out the front right burner in a rather spectacular way. I was at work and my mouse sent me a pic.

Actually we bought Gertrude pretty LONG after that happened. We used a three burner stove for a few years until we decided it was really stupid not to get a new one. I mean, The Landfill had been paid off forever, we were both working, and both our kids had graduated from college. Why were we still living the Student Ghetto/Early In-law life? I decided I needed a Big Girl stove. So we bought Gertrude. Glass stove top and two(!) ovens. I have to admit I don’t often use both ovens but they are handy on holidays and sometimes other occasions. Like when I want to bake something while keeping other stuff warm.

So the other day, I put a pan on a burner and I turned on that burner. Or so I thought. Nope. I turned on another burner. Problem? The burner I turned on happened to have a plastic utensil sitting on it. By the time I noticed what was going on, the utensil had melted big-time and the burner was a total mess. I have cleaned up Gertrude’s burners many a time. This time I wasn’t sure I could.

So I got on the internet and snagged this razor blade thingy (and the associated kit). And looked at the unopened package for a couple days. Eventually I opened it and… It took a few tries to get the hang of it but I did and this is the finished product. There are a few little issues but I think I’ll get them cleaned up.

Why did I name my stove Gertrude? Back when I was a little kid and we lived in a shabby little bungalow on Superior Street in Sault Ste. Siberia, The Commander had a comic taped up on the inside of the broom closet. Gertrude was the name of the comic and the main character. In this particular comic, she was reclined on top of an ironing board looking very tired. I have tried and tried to find that comic but no luck. I’m sure The Comm was tired sometimes when we were kids but I don’t ever remember her being ultra tired or depressed or anything. I was just a kid then but I always remember that comic as being funny.

The first pic is my first apartment on The Planet Ann Arbor. It was an upper flat in this rickety old house and I “inherited” it from my cousin and her boyfriend. I also inherited his landline phone number and kept it for many years. This place had its perks. For one thing I got paid doodly-squat at that point in my life and I could afford it, if barely. At that point in my life I didn’t want to share with a bunch of random roommates. The pic is from 2010 but the place looked about the same then as it did when I inhabited it umpteen years before.

Hello? A year or so ago, THIS was where that house used to be. I’m kinda not surprised someone decided it was a tear-down. I remember the floors upstairs were totally rock-and-roll. Among many other things.

Today.

As a confirmed introvert, I had to really PUSH myself to attend the neighborhood block party today. The GG is outta town taking chainsaw training and for a split second I thought about asking a beach urchin to attend with me. But I jettisoned that idea. As I jettisoned a thought of hiding out in my hermit hole. Naw. That wouldn’t fly. I live next door and they know I’m here because Cygnus is here. So I sucked it up and went, exiting the Landfill through the back door so no one would notice me right away.

Second thing. I usually make lasagna for potluck type things and I did make lasagna for the last neighborhood block party I attended. But I was wavering all over the place about meat or veggie or both, meat or veggie or both… Finally I decided I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time making lasagna so I picked up some shrimp and some Durham’s Tracklements smoked salmon from the Plum Market. Those were a huuuuge success and this is what was left of the salmon (see empty plate) and when I went back to the party to retrieve my stuff after a wee break, the shrimp thingy had already been thrown out or whatever.

Am I glad I went? OF COURSE I AM. One of the first people I saw was our beloved neighbor Gail. The first time I met Gail was a kinda warmish winter day when we both had our infant daughters (5 months and 2 months) out for a walk in strollers. Wouldn’t you know, those kiddos became the bestest of friends and still are. So good to talk to her and she helped ease me (the neighborhood hermit) into meeting some of the younger folks who have managed to brave the HORRIBLE housing prices here and move in.

And then. I won’t say much about this (I actually don’t know much) but the young couple next door brought their infant daughter to the party. This baby was born with health complications and I think they have been through some tough times and I was a little surprised to see them come to the party. As challenging as it was for me to attend the party, it must have been much harder for them. The baby is beautiful and very alert and got a lot of attention. She has the same name as my older beach urchin but they shorten it in a cool way. The parents seemed in good spirits and all I can do is wish the best for them. They are wonderful neighbors.

I have been called “the family liberal” (by probably a more liberal cFam outlaw than me), so maybe you can decode who I voted for (for prez anyway) from the title. School board members? I actually just asked MMCB₂ who to vote for. I have known her “forever” (since our kids were in middle school). She is heavily involved in local school politics and this particular election (and we’ve had some problems here, which is why she is involved). She is a former school board member and MENSCH and I trust her judgment. Although we all know that people sometimes say anything to get elected and then turn on their supporters. Is that politics? I guess. I don’t personally have the “stomach” for it.

I am not all that optimistic that Kamala will win. I will never understand why people continue to support Trump, a guy who lies constantly (among other things). Immigrants are eating people’s pets in Ohio? Debunked by many in Ohio, including the GOP governer. Joe didn’t call the governors of the states affected by Hurricane Helene? Um, those governors DID receive calls and said so. Trump is nasty to everyone who opposes him in any way, including some of his supporters and why do so many of them continue to support him? I could go on and on and on but suffice it to say (again (and again (and again))) he is just in it for himself. He doesn’t care about anyone else and I don’t think he (“businessman” that people call him, whatever that means) understands economics. Not that I understand economics either but I don’t think he is inclined to listen to the experts who do understand economics.

Cherry-picking some issues? “The economy” and “immigration” and I guess some of us still care about reproductive choice. “The economy” is ALWAYS important. The president has very little control over it. Immigration? I am a descendant of immigrants and most of you are too. Not to mention Trump is a descendant of immigrants and has married two immigrants. OF COURSE, we cannot let people from other countries flood our borders. Mass deportation and separating all children from their parents who are trying to legally enter our country are not good solutions. Pro-choice? Not tonight.

I am for Kamala. Please join me.

Or maybe Gas Can Fam since the cFam, at least the boyz, have emulated their daddio’s engineering talents. Some of the girls too, and definitely a couple of granddaughters, including the one who is gonna come over to the Landfill tomorrow and put some air in one of Cygnus’s taaars.

I love that I can display Cygnus’s tire pressure on her dashboard but it also drives me a little nuts. But it’s better than just having a taaar light come on and have no clue which tire is low like in the Ninja. In 2008, there were no fancy dashboard screens.

Both of Cygnus’s front taars seem to have slow leaks. This morning, the right front tire was at 26. Not good. This was not a dip due to cold weather. It wasn’t THAT cold this morning (low 50s) and just a few days ago, the tire was at about 31, which is low but not drastically so. I really need to learn how to do this stuff myself. There is a pump in Cygnus after all. I just don’t know how to use it.

I grew up in a patriarchy, albeit a friendly one and one in which the matriarch (my mother) ran a lot of family things. My dad and brother were car guys and I never really learned how to do much more than pump my own gas, which I do with aplomb.

As an adult, whenever I arrived in my brother’s driveway, he would meet me with a smirk and a tire pump. Once when we were in the yooperland, he didn’t like the looks of my POC’s tires so he personally took my vee-hickle into UP Tire and bought me new tires. At my expense of course. I had no problem paying for it.

Then there was the day mouse and Pengo were gonna drive into town to buy I dunno what. They were teenagers and mouse was a newly licensed driver. Well. Moooom, the van makes a funny noise. Oh man, my brother was johnny on the spot when he heard that. It had been a boring day and this was exciting for an automotive engineer with a sorta silly sister when it came to cars. Within minutes we were all heading into the local Chrysler dealer. Steering wheel fluid or something like that.

The GG has gotten toadily roto about car maintenance since then and mostly keeps up with it at the dealership or Discount Tire or wherever. Maybe my brother is poking him from wherever my brother is? I dunno. The POC (Chrysler minivan) was also the last American made vee-hickle we bought. Honda, Toyota, and Subaru since then and those cars almost never let us down. And make no mistake, many of them are made in the USA, employing many of our country’s citizens.

Photo from the Hoton Lake garage in 2010 sometime after it was dry-walled.

I did watch the VP debate. I dunno. Yeah they were pretty friendly. I am so taaared of all of this. No matter what JDV says, in the end, his “running mate” will use his venomous rhetoric to negate any of the “friendly” things JDV said in the debate. And I don’t trust JDV from the getgo anyway. We’ll go there some other day.

Kind of like a puppet show maybe? Apparently the formerly orange man went ballistic on his Truth Social platform, “tweeting” throughout the debate. Sigh. I am not on Truth Social. Why would I be? I’m not sure but there are a number of factors involved. At any rate, when he does post there, many mainstream media platforms post screenshots of his crapola. So I see them or at least some of them. Rants and tirades usually all in capital letters. We learned not to write in all caps a bazillion years ago. Maybe he’s not listening to his grandchildren?

I’m done done done. And a wee bit verklempt. Not about the debates. Because a Sault Canananda facebook group posted some close-up and personal pics of Gros Cap and I commented with a pic of Gros Cap from the moominbeach. I was a wee bit nervous about doing that partly because I don’t like to engage too much with people on facebook and partly because I wasn’t sure it was acceptable to comment with a pic. To my great relief, my comment got a very kind reply from one of the group’s frequent contributors. He said that people at Gros Cap are looking at us too. Much laughter and great love. I have been looking from “my” beach out at Gros Cap my whole life.

I asked for photos. This is what I got. You are welcome to not embiggen if you don’t want a closer view😵‍💫

The GG has been in the yooperland and last night he was camping alone in a campground following the departure of his lady friends, The Softies. This group of women prefers (like I do) a shower in the morning and whine in the evening and a decent bed to sleep in. Actually, I can sleep just about anywhere unless there’s dog poop in the bed. The Softies also like to have a male companion and the GG, as a woman-friendly guy, fits the bill. Another guy (somebody’s husband maybe?) also accompanied the group.

I was almost feeling a little sorry for him being alone until I started receiving dead bear pics. Some bear hunters had arrived with their kill and set up camp. Gee thanks. Actually they don’t bother me. Once when I was a “baby blogger”, I posted some dead seagulls and things. One photooo was just a cormorant head floating around near the shore. My brother was still alive then and his reaction was a gleeful, “Dead aminals on the blog!” He also sent me a HUGE dead sturgeon. That would be he sent me a PHOTO of the sturgeon, not the actual fish! And he had to email me his reaction because that was when I was still “rolling my own” blahg and there was no way to comment.

When you live on a beach, dead things are always washing up and you get used to it at an early age.

Has our warm weather begun to break? I dunno. It was pretty warm until the late afternoon when a mini-storm rolled through and the temperature dropped significantly. Still warm enough to hang out in the back yard after work but I switched my polar fleece vest for a jacket. And, jeebus, what was up with the car alarm that went off something like eight times over on Walter! That kind of thing doesn’t usually annoy me but today I was like, DISCONNECT THE DAMN THING!

The pic is from 2011 down at Liberty and Main on a Friday night. It was cold cold cold. Brrrr. Today? Same date. Not so cold. I hung out in the Landfill back yard at lunchtime and after work and did not need socks or leggings or whatever. Is this global warming/climate change? I’m not sure. We often have warm weather in September so this is not unusual. On the other hand, it was pretty darn scary that many inland *mountainous* areas in the southeast flooded as badly as they did. That’s not an area that you might usually expect a hurricane to hit in such a devastating way.

I do think it would be prudent for the human race to try to live in a more ecologically sustainable fashion. I try…

I thought I had finished the Joe Pera TV series last night. But there was something odd, like I had missed a few episodes somehow. The streaming service I was using had a kind of wonky user interface that I won’t try to describe. Anyway, I delved into it and discovered that YES, I had missed a whole bunch of episodes in season 2. And yes I had missed something BIG.

It took me a few episodes to kinda get into Joe Pera. It was an acquired taste. But I loved it in the end and was happy to go back and watch the episodes I had missed.

Easter eggs for yoopers? 1) Tahquamenon Falls! Joe takes us on a cruise through the yooperland including the falls but does not name them. Okay, I have been there umpteen bazillion times. 2) RACO!!! Richard Avery Corporation if I have it right. A long defunct air base, maybe never active in any way, plus an adjacent village. The GG taught zillions of children to drive on the old RACO runways and the adjacent two-track forest roads. They learned to drive STICK no less and most of them were well below driving permit age. 3) What the heck was the third frickin’ easter egg? It was a good one but I can’t remember it now. Hopefully I will be able to remember and update this later or tomorrow.

I still have one more Joe Pera episode to watch but I am done done done for tonight.

Aha! Easter Egg 3 is not a yooperland thing, it is Rick Steves from the PACNW! World traveler and author and radio show host. An episode ends with Joe and Sarah going to listen to Rick Steves on the radio! Like Joe Pera, Rick is an acquired taste but he is uber cool!

First of all, what a boring weekend. Warm but rainy, which prevented me from spending early Saturday morning hanging around outside listening to the Umich band practice before the football game and then after chores and errands from reading in the back yard. Today was better and that made me more energetic. It isn’t unseasonably warm for the end of September but it also isn’t often this warm so I’m trying to eke out as much backyard time as I can. But okay, it is raining again and on NPR Taj Mahal is cake walking into town so I am heading back inside.

Would you let Trump babysit your children/grandchildren? How about Trump as a pre-school teacher?

So these questions were asked on a long, complicated facebook thread yesterday. They were only two of many issues discussed. I have to say that I don’t think there was even *one* disrespectful comment. I could tell when people were bending over backwards so as to not indicate that they thought someone was full of you-know-what. I did not interact. I know (well) the original poster and some other folks. Others I do not know at all. Given the recent debacle I inadvertently started on facebook via a post I intended as humor, I stayed out of the fray, respectful as it was.

The thing is, some people (women!) said they would be happy to let Trump babysit their grandchildren. And teach pre-school classes? Whut?

Um, Trump a babysitter? Really? Well he *has* grandchildren, right? So he would automatically be an appropriate babysitter for Other People’s Grandchildren? I can’t speak to what kind of relationship Trump has with *his* grandchildren. I heard his teenage granddaughter speak at the GOP convention and she did a great job (and I mean that sincerely) framing him as “everybody’s silly grandfather” or whatever. The key word in all of this is *his*. They are *his* grandchildren.

Although I am not an expert in Trumpism, I have spent a lot of time reading/listening to him over the last how many years is it? I thought he was a nutcase before that but it didn’t matter because he didn’t have anything to do with our country so I didn’t pay much attention.

I do not think he gives a rat’s ass about children. Except maybe the unborn but I don’t think he really cares about them either except to gain political points with the anti-choice crowd. If I had grandchildren, I would NOT hire Trump to babysit them. And I can’t FEATURE him “teaching” a pre-school class. Really? What would he teach? (Can he teach?) Can you imagine Trump kindly helping a small child use the bathroom? C’mon. [Insert every LOL and cray-zee emoji that exists.]

Y’all, Trump is only into the presidency for HIMSELF! He has usurped the GOP. Do not vote for him! He is not the Messiah, he’s a plain old shyster.

G’night, Cassandra of Birch Point Beach (and the USA)

The first pic does not include the GG. Why not? Because he was not on the bridge (over Cole’s Creek in the yooperland). Why was he not on the bridge? Because he FELL OFF! THREE TIMES! As you can probably detect, it was “winter”. Not technically winter. It was November but it was in the yooperland where there is often snow in November.

The water wasn’t over his head but it wasn’t ankle deep either so he was cold and wet. He made a quick exit and high-tailed it down the trail as fast as possible in order to stay warm. Cell service allowed his companions to call a rescue car and the rescuer arrived with some spare (dry) clothing from a thrift store, including a Blue Jacket. Blue isn’t a color he would choose for himself and the beach urchins and I were a bit perplexed when we saw pics of him in the Blue Jacket until we heard the whole story. I would note that he still has the Blue Jacket and even wears it from time to time.

Yesterday he sent the second pic, which is a successful crossing of the log bridge. September this time, no snow and warm weather.

P.S. I got my ballot today.

Can you see it? It’s blurry and blends in a bit. It’s more or less at the center bottom of the pic. Embiggen. I thought I had taken multiple pics of this birdie but somehow only this one showed up and the birdie had moved on. I was hoping it would come back later but if it did, I was inside telecommuting.

I came really close to taking the afternoon off. A meeeee afternoon if you will. I didn’t, mainly because I was too lazy to have the required Come to Jeebus meeting with my paid time off balance. I think there is plenty left in there for me to take an afternoon off but I wasn’t sure. I like to take the days before and after Turkey Day off and then around 10 days for the winter holidays. There were soooo many years that I had a stinky little two or three weeks of vacay a year. It’s not like that (for me) any more but I’m still PTSD about it… Corporate America? People need more time off.

The Commander used to hang hummingbird feeders on the deck at the moomincabin. It’s a little bit risky because sometimes bears approach them. My uncle Don who built the cabin/house to the east of the moomin caught one in the act. I don’t think he did anything about it, just waited patiently until it left. We don’t hang feeders out these days but we pot impatiens every year and the hummers visit those. But these impatiens are at The Landfill on The Planet Ann Arbor. Deer ate the ones at the moomincabin.

I don’t know what kind of interactions went on between my uncle/aunt and their hummingbirds but The Comm’s hummingbirds used to approach our picture windows, looking for her. Where’s my food?

The son of one of my cousins (grandchild of my uncle Don) once pranked my parents by whittling a hummingbird and positioning it on the feeder. The parents were gobsmacked that this hummingbird was completely still. Until they figgered it was a fake. That’s the kind of thing that sometimes passes for excitement at the moomincabin.

That kid was (and is) a force of nature although I’m not sure he was given credit for it at the time. I remember one kinda warm but gray day when he joined a bunch of us “old” folks (me, my parents, Radical Betty and I fergit who else) down on the beach in front of his grandparents’ cabin. One of his older sisters observed this and told his mom, “He’s hanging around with all of those *old* people.”

Old but good, young at heart, and often pretty dern funny. And to be clear, my uncle Don, my parents, and Radical Betty are all long dead. I miss when they were around. And that kid? Husband and father now and uber-talented at many things. What I see the most are his home reno projects, posted by his wife on Instagram. Super impressive work.

Just when I thought Trump couldn’t get any farther off the rails, blahggy friend Pam alerted me to the whole Giant Faucet stuff that was all over the internet today — at least in the PACNW and Canananada. Cue the Giant Faucet memes (this isn’t a meme, just the first pic I saw of such a thing with a nice codgerly op-ed piece to go with it).

Apparently this giant faucet if turned on (it takes a “day” to turn it on according to Trump) will divert water flowing “aimlessly” to the Pacific Ocean through Oregon down to California. I think the Giant Faucet is a metaphor for a complicated and EXPENSIVE design for re-directing huge amounts of water from where it naturally wants to go (the Pacific Ocean?) to somewhere else (California). Not that I think Trump knows what a metaphor is🐽🐽🐽 He went to “bidnis” school roight? Gimme a liberal arts major any day. I know there are folks who disagree with that but we’ll go there some other day.

Subject Matter Experts on “water” are, I’m sure, laughing their asses off. The scientist in this clip (YouTube from Canada News Today) is being very polite as she explains how full of shit Trump is. Water may look like it is moving “aimlessly” but it is not.

I am not any kind of a water scientist but when I was a kid I spent many hours down at the “pond” on the moominbeach. It wasn’t really a pond. It was a “stream” that drained water from wherever into Lake Superior. Us kids would spend hours and hours damning up the stream with sand and driftwood and I’m sure we learned a lot about how water flows. None of that knowledge stuck with me exactly but it was a whole lot of fun.

I do remember the day my big teenage boy cousins Muck and Muck (a beach toddler called them that at the time, it was actually Mac and Mike) were playing “hydroplane” with flat pieces of driftwood and an errant piece accidentally sliced a teeny little corner of my little brother’s mouth. I usually teased my little brother terribly but when I saw the blood, I kicked into HIGH BIG SISTER GEAR, grabbed him and ran him down the beach to the moomincabin, screaming the whole way🤪, which probably scared him half to death. The Commander took us into town, my uncle/doc put a couple stitches in and he was right as rain.

So, MAGA friends? How can you vote for an idiot like Trump? This whole Giant Faucet stuff reminds me of when wildfires were raging in California during his presidency and he was telling people to clean the forests. Hence the title Make America Rake Again. It would be okay if he would actually listen to some Subject Matter Experts but naw, he’s smart (so he says) and he knows what to do. Our country deserves better and the GOP needs to Dump Trump. (Er, not that I would vote for *any* Republican in this day and age anyway.)

This was last week and I think we were driving out Huron toward home from downtown. Our visitor has gone back to her Pacific island and our own jet-setter is off to Cally-forny. I washed everything including my shoes today. They are washable (and were actually a wee bit odiferous) but they do not go in the dryer.

I don’t have much of ANYTHING today. It is a ho-hum regular work week except for the part where a software application I have been using ALL THE TIME (for 17 years, no less) somehow got removed from my laptop over the weekend. And I have been unable to file a ticket to try to get it fixed.

The stupidest thing I heard Trump say today was to brag that he could work [something, I didn’t catch what] at McDonald’s better than Kamala any day. Whut? Does he REALLY want to compete with Kamala for a McDonald’s job. What an ignoramus. MAGA friends, WHY are you supporting him? It isn’t because of his “policies” because he really doesn’t have them. He is now promising to do all the things he promised to do in his previous presidency AND DIDN’T! People have such short memories.

I think I will give it up for the night. I watched a few episodes of “Joe Pera Talks With You” last night and I will do a few more tonight. They are short, which works well for this show with its quirky characters. I’m enjoying it but I wonder if folks unfamiliar with the old yooper schtick would “get” it. Even though I grew up in the yooperland I wasn’t actually immersed in yooperism but I get the stereotypes. That said, I was not a fan of “Escanaba in da Moonlight”. My fam does not hunt although we spend a lot of time in the woods, just not in deer “camps”. It’s complicated…

Ratatatatat. Loud. Things have settled down a bit recently but for the first week or 10 days that I was back on the Planet Ann Arbor, it was NOISY around here. Why? Because acorns were hitting the roof like crazy. Also branches, according to the GG, which were being knocked down by squoils, who were trying to get at more acorns. A chipmunk was in the Landfill yesterday but I haven’t seen it since and don’t smell anything so it must’ve made its way out again.

We live under oak trees so there are always acorns but I don’t remember being under quite this much of a barrage EVER. And these are all over the yard! And that’s all I have to say tonight because Imma gonna watch a series about a teacher (I think) who lives with his mother (I think) in Marquette Michigan (which is three hours west of the moominbeach). My kids have suggested this and tonight one of them “poked” me to get a move on with this so I will do that.

I am certainly not but as the eldest of five FinFam women at dinner tonight, that word kept floating through my head. But nope. Actually I think my female cousins and I could compete to be “the” matriarch if we wanted that “title” but I don’t think any of us want it 🧡

Us five (me, cousin npJane, my kids and niece) ate at Miss Kim tonight, down in Kerrytown. I have a long history with Kerrytown. It is of course where our legendary farmers market resides, as well as Sparrow Meats and Monahan’s Seafood and once the now defunct Kitchen Port. I took my parents there ALL THE TIME when they visited us! It was probably one of The Commander’s favorite shops ever (except for John Leidy (which was not in Kerrytown)) and my old coot would happily hang around wherever. This courtyard is one of the places Lizard Breath practiced walking.

As I sat in Miss Kim tonight, I was trying to remember what it was way back when Lizard was a baby and before. Was it Pastabilities? Yes, I think it was. There was a cafe there but what I most remember is buying a wonderful pasta salad there. I think I was eating Korean food in that old space tonight. We ordered a bunch of small orders to share.

Sitting in Miss Kim wishing I were better at using chopsticks (‘poons were also available and I mostly used one), I also remembered my first Chinese restaurant, as a teen or maybe a tween. The Pagoda was across the river in our sister city Sault Ste. Siberia, Ontario in Churchill Plaza and we went there pretty frequently. I ALWAYS ordered sweet and sour pork but what I remember the most (or maybe I was just told this) was that my Scot/Canadian/American grandmother was a master at using chopsticks, having never used them before.

My grandma was a matriarch. A lovely, kindly one. I am just a baggy old kayak woman and I like it that way.

Babblety babblety g’night.

We’ve had umpteen bajillion hot, dry days. Wouldn’t you know the day we planned a FinFam steak dinner, it would rain. I think the rain had settled down by the time our grill master got to work. It was dark inside the Landfill, hence the candles.

I only did two grock shops today. The first was at the Argus Farm Stop to get some local produce. They had some corn! Yay! Argus is an amazing place. They get goods from local farmers and sell it to the public. They also serve coffee and pastries and things. During the early, scary days of covid, back when people were dying (and YES, they were, do not forget), Argus set up an on-line ordering system where you could order stuff and they would deliver it to your door.

Garlic bread was part of today’s menu and wouldn’t you know I managed to get into a mess with that. We needed to make garlic bread with “regular” butter and also vegan butter. I made some with regular butter and then I got all set up to make a half loaf with vegan butter. I started to butter that half loaf with vegan butter and then… I was listening to my fave political podcast (Left Right and Center) and I went over to adjust the volume or whatever. When I got back to my buttering task… I finished that half loaf with REGULAR BUTTER. It didn’t help that I had both kinds of butter right next to each other on the counter.

Okay. I schlepped back over to the Plum for ANOTHER baguette. I buttered both halves of that one with vegan butter. One went into the freezer, the other got baked. I figger we aren’t gonna be able to tell the difference between the dairy and vegan butter so what the heck.

I dunno if that all made sense (probably not) but it was a good time. And ignore those remote control thingies. I did not even see those things until I downloaded the photo to my laptop and optimized it.

P.S. If Fox News et al and facebook “friends” who post inflammatory crapola are your main political information sources, the podcast Left Right and Center might be an alternative. There are always participants from both sides of the current political spectrum and they discuss issues respectfully and even with a sense of humor. I’m sure there are MANY other alternatives.

I guess it was a gorgeous day on the moominbeach, never mind that the GG has put the fugly coverings over the picture windows. I HATE those window coverings and if I were there, they would not be installed until the last nano-second. But I am not there and I don’t think they bother the GG as much as they bother meeeeee.

He sent me this pic from Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench, just above our beach. For a mini-sec I wished I was there but y’know what? I am glad to be back on The Planet Ann Arbor. Soooo hard to live in two places. Well plus the weather at the moominbeach is supposed to tank overnight. npJane was scheduled to join him on the bench and then they were gonna roast hot dogs in the Old Cabin faaaarplace. Good times.

So grock expotitions today? FOUR OF THEM! 1) Jackson Road Meijer for things I can’t really get at the upscale grock store (Plum) or farmers markets. Usually it’s because I can get a cheaper brand at Meijer. 2) Plum Market for filet mignon and a few other things I CAN get there but not necessarily at Meijer. 3) The corn trailer behind and up from the Plum. Alas, I was too late for corn but I got some apples and potatoes. 4) Pete’s Produce out on Joy Road where I *did* get some corn but maybe I’ll try Pete’s again tomorrow to see if he has more.

The GG and npJane were treated to a pretty good air show today by the Canadian Snowbirds. The Soo Cananada airport is across the St. Marys River from the moominbeach and the Snowbirds occasionally touch down there. A fighter jet of some sort passed over The Landfill this afternoon. It wasn’t screaming along, just flying over. I dunno what it was. The interwebs tell me that the UMich football flyover today was Warthogs and I’m not sure what those are (and not inclined to look it up). I did not see the actual flyover.

The GG *did* manage to remember to snag my tie dyed maxi skirt (and also a black one) from the “closet” in the back downstairs bedroom. I was relieved to hear that.

Another gorgeous day but on this one I got to play hooky from work for a bit and drive out into the country north of town.

Kiddo: a package is coming to my house, can someone pick it up? Yes yes yes yes! It is Friday. Nothing much is going on at work that I need to be johnny-on-the-spot for. If something comes up I will deal with it. I would love love love love to drive the back (dirt) roads north of town to pick up your package. And so I did. And then (as expected) another package came to myyyy house.

I was given permission to open these packages. They were just fabric (just?) and so I did open them and sent this pic to the recipient, who is currently down in South Carolina but will be home soon. Opening packages that were not addressed to me was kind of an end-of-week mini-reward. And the beach urchin recipient does not have to deal with recycling the boxes because I have already done that. So I got to be useful today.

Reading? Count the Ways. So far? Yes but… A quick enough read though. Oh, maybe a few too many mix tapes… Watching? My Octopus Teacher. It is beautiful and I love it but oh man, the underwater scenes lull me to sleep when they don’t make me nervous (delete a bunch of blargle about my iffy relationship with water over my head). So I have paused it for the night. I AM FASCINATED by octopuses and will definitely finish it tomorrow.

This time to the Session Room, an old pre-covid fave of ours for occasional weekend afternoon decadence. We have been there a couple times since covid. They have wonderful outdoor seating for one thing. Tonight we took Pengo out there and braved the indoors. It was fine. I am working on getting more restaurant dining back into our rotation. Working on myself, mainly. The GG has been eating out pretty much throughout. One of the problems is that I actually like to cook at home but I do miss some of our old favorite restaurants. One thing I am noticing is much abbreviated menus. I do not think this is an entirely bad thing. Some of those old multi-page menus took a lot of stamina to get through. I do miss the shrimp/rice side dish thingy the Griz used to make. But they ended that well before covid. Maybe I could recreate it? If I could remember all the ingredients? Parmesan was involved.

Have not been back to Knight’s yet but soon. After dinner, we dropped Pengo off at Lizard Breath’s house where she can do some laundry before heading over to her (and my) old college town tomorrow for a wedding. Things have changed a lot over there since she went to school there and CERTAINLY since I went to school there a generation earlier. America’s Cup and Lizard’s Underground are long gone, Dooley’s is now Harper’s, Coral Gables focuses on food instead of rowdy partying, and the city has sprouted a skyline. Unfortunately the skyline has obliterated an old favorite surface parking lot of mine. A common theme these days. They’re not just paving paradise these days, they’re taking over the airspace.

Anyway I am taaared and babbling.

Sayonara, KW