I mean, I can play clips of Trump rambling aimlessly too but when I am hearing them from another room and know that the person/people playing the clip are all rah rah about him and his likely second idiocracy? I could NOT focus this morning. The GG? “She’s supposed to be working but she’s doing the xword.” Yeah, that’s because I can’t tune you MAGAts out. Plus you are jumping around in a frenetic way and I can NEVER concentrate when that is going on. At least the UU dragged the empty garbage cart up before he left. Thanks!!!

So are identical twins rare? I’m not sure “rare” is the word I would use but they are certainly rarer than singletons. I have always been fascinated by multiple births. I think I first encountered this topic reading about the Dionne quintuplets (identical) as a kid. I’m not sure what the highest number of multiple children have been born from a single pregnancy is. Was it “octo mom’s” eight? Or have there been women who’ve birthed more? I’m too lazy to look it up. (Nonuplets. I looked it up. Or is it decuplets…)

Recently I realized that my Instagram feed was getting filled with moms of triplets, etc. This was getting annoying. I mean, I have probably clicked on a few of these posts over the years. Like I said above, multiple births *are* interesting to me. (There is a set of triplets in my extended family and I have been married to an ID twin for umpteen bazillion years.) But it was getting to the point where multiple births were like every other post and they were all people I do NOT follow. I idly complained about this to a beach urchin and she showed me how I could mute all of that stuff. On social media, I really only want to see posts from people/entities I have made a conscious choice to follow.

So, how well do I get along with the UU’s wife (my sister-in-law via my husband’s twin)? We are friends and kindred spirits. We are not alike in a lot of ways but we *are* alike in other ways. Some of the ways we are alike are very subtle and when we first knew each other I would never have guessed we had those traits in common. I’m not gonna list any of those things because 1) it’s nobody’s business and 2) she may not agree with all of it, which is okay. We all look at things through different lenses. But I love and admire her and love having her in my life.

Can I tell the twins apart? Oh yes. When I occasionally have difficulty, it’s when I’m not LOOKING at a twin. And even then, at least after all these years, there are subtle differences in their voices and choice of words, etc.

Babies born to a parent with an ID twin? Hmmm, once we helped the UU move house. In the late evening after a long day, the UU and I went out for a beer at a bar. We left my daughter (a year old or thereabouts) with the GG (her DAD!). She didn’t have fluent words yet but complained BITTERLY the entire time we were out at the bar. Over and over the GG tried to explain that he was her DAD. She wasn’t having it😵‍💫

The Twinz of Terror and I dined at The Grizzly Peak tonight. I made sure to tell anyone I interacted with that in no way shape or form did I agree with the Trump hat. I do agree with the Dee-troit Li-ons hat (even though I am not really a football fan) but I didn’t feel as though I needed to point that out. As it turned out, the only person I disclaimed that to was our server. She was a young Black woman and I have no clue what her politics are but it is the Planet Ann Arbor, a Blue Bubble, so I can only guess she is NOT a Trumper.

She was a good server and I tipped well but I almost always do. As the GG will sometimes say, “Give her [meaning meeee] the check, she’s a better tipper.” And I am. I always support service workers. They do not make anywhere near as much money as they are worth.

When we left The Landfill to head down to the Griz, our young neighbor was outside doing some yard work. It turns out HE IS AN IDENTICAL TWIN?!?? So identical twins (the Twinz of Terror) meet another identical twin? Except the neighbor’s twin brother was not there. How weird (and cool) is it that two houses in a row on our street are owned by families in which the husbands both have identical twins.

What a day. It was a regular work day but at the end of the day I provided dinner for the Uncly Uncle, aka the GG’s identical twin.

I usually give the Twinz some time to get MAGA outta their systems but they didn’t have time to even talk about that tonight because by the time the UU got here, the GG was already on a North Country Trail zoom meeting. The UU joined up pretty dern quick. Me? I was cooking coq au vin, aka chicken (boneless thighs) plus onion, mushrooms, kalamata olives and white whine.

I provided a freezer ‘hattan for the UU. He drove down from Gaylord today and he spent a good amount of time at FlaMan’s pad where he installed a table (or something) for FlaMan’s new TV.

I am in the front living room and the twinz are in the back living room. They seem to be getting escalated about the upcoming presidential election. I am terrified about the upcoming election. That is all I will say tonight. How can anyone listen to anything Trump says and think he is a reasonable presidential candidate? I do not know. Cognitive dissonance maybe?

In the lower right are little buggy flies. They are outside not inside and I don’t think they are biters.

This is about all I have tonight. I have lots of thoughts swirling through my very little brain but they are either about family (oh, no problems there) or polly-ticks (plenty of problems there). But let’s just pause a moment and look at that beautiful waxing gibbous behind The Landfill. I actually feel like the power lines add to the pic somehow.

Love y’all, KW

I was working from TeleCublandia and somebody yelled at me from outside. It was the GG. He made a particular gesture that means (in our household) “Make me a drink!” Meaning a Manhattan. I couldn’t describe the gesture if I tried. I don’t even think I could replicate it. My brother did get it🤣

Except I somehow misinterpreted the gesture. He was actually alerting me to the fact that he had the snowblower running and thought I might want to take a picture. I did take a pic because that’s what I do and then I made him a freezer ‘hattan. Which he appreciated. BTW, a freezer ‘hattan is when I put the ingredients into a glass and stick it into the freezer and he retrieves it when he’s ready and puts ice and cherries in it to taste.

So when he came in, after he retrieved his freezer ‘hattan, he began enumerating the small engines we own. Um, let’s see… Lawnmower, snowblower, leaf blower, I’m probably forgetting some and I’m not even counting bote motors because we don’t use them here. But then. Three chainsaws. WAIT! THREE chainsaws? Whut? We have THREE chainsaws.

There’s the first one we owned (I think) that I bought for him from Sears at Briarwood Mall umpteen bazillion years ago because he asked for it for xmas. He probably doesn’t remember that I’m the one who bought it. I wouldn’t have been ABLE to do it if he hadn’t provided me with the exact model number. And then there’s one The Gumper (his dad) left behind. The GG seems to be the only sibling who can start it? And a third one is on long-term loan from a moominbeach neighbor-cousin. And oh there’s a fourth one in the moomingarage that my parents or brother bought There are probably one or two or four in the garage at Hoton Lake but I dunno.

BTW: Sears at Briarwood has been demolished and is being replaced by an amalgam of apartments/condos/whatever and shop(pes). I think.

I have mixed feelings about this. I know we need “affordable” housing on The Planet Ann Arbor but I’m not sure this will end up being “affordable” and I KNOW I would not want to live on the Briarwood Mall footprint. I mean, it’s a big frickin’ parking lot! On the other hand, I admit that I do not know what it will end up looking like. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised?

There was a time when I LOVED Briarwood Mall and shopped there a LOT. As a baby, Lizard Breath practiced walking there and although she wasn’t quiiiite in the “Mom drive me to mall crowd” as a tween, I remember “Papa” next door driving Liz and his twin grandchildren over there to “hang out” (that’s my phrase, not the kids’). I miss Papa and I hope they had fun.

At least it wasn’t “Limberder” cheese. Stupid MAGA joke 🐽🐽🐽

This is a wee glimpse into our MESSY back room Aaaa-dition during a football game. Go Li-ons. The Kindle belongs to a beach urchin who is happily ensconced in The Reading Chair. I did not show her face but you can see the GG over there watching the football game. It’s a cozy evening at the Landfill but it is not cold enough for a faaar in the faaarplace.

I had so much fun today! I went to the fabric store! Joann’s to be specific. The only one open on Sunday but I needed the kind of stuff Joann’s sells anyway. I have to phrase the next bit carefully so the beach urchins don’t think Old Baggy (their moom) is losing her marbles. I didn’t exactly get lost on the way there but the left turn into the back way to the Tarjay shopping plaza came up a lot earlier than I expected so I had to do a quick maneuver to turn on time. The problem is that there are umpteen bazillion more condos (I hate condos) there than there used to be. I drive by those all the time but haven’t made that left turn in a bazillion years.

Okay. I don’t think I have been in Joann’s since well before covid. I used to go there ALL THE TIME. I stopped buying fabric for a while (sorta). I even donated a bunch of my fabric but then I kinda regretted it.

Today? I didn’t get lost in the store but I kinda felt like a stone age person. I did buy some stuff and I easily found the cutting table. Okay. Zzzzzzip. Fancy lucky-shuckial scissor-type thing to cut the fabric. Cutting the fabric took the longest time of anything because it is still a MANUAL task and the woman who cut my fabric was careful to line it up properly. (The Commander would have approved.) And then, when she was all done cutting, she used a phone-looking device (but I don’t think it was a phone) to zippity-zip scan whatever information was on the ends of the bolts. She printed out a paper slip of what I bought and I handed it to the cashier at the front and paid. I told the cashier I didn’t need a bag or a receipt. She tried to force the receipt on me anyway and I told her if I didn’t end up using the fabric, I would donate it.

I somehow ended up with the receipt anyway and that was a good thing because it gave me most of the information on the end of the fabric bolt so I could look around online and see if I could get alternative colors, etc. Note to self.

He did buy guacamole.

I’m riffing off a meme somebody posted on Facebook today. Like, are you still an artist if you work a day job and don’t have time to create “art” or haven’t created art in a while? It’s a question I have wrestled with from time to time.

I was an uber good musician as a kid/young woman. I could probably have made some kind of career out of that albeit probably not a Jean Pierre Rampal or Lizzo type of career. But I didn’t. I took an entry level tech job because it paid better (actually my first tech job paid like crap but we won’t go there today). I also love to create colorful fiber art stuff but I haven’t done that in a while either. Because I don’t have a lot of time because I have a highly paid (for me) tech job now.

But what defines “art”? I have spent more of my adult life messing around with spreadsheets, programming computers, and writing documents of various sorts than performing music or creating visual art. I’m not sure if I have the bandwidth to articulate what I’m trying to say but there is “art” in almost everything we do. Engineers (one of my lots in life) often drive me crazy but they are also artists.

Communicating information via an elegant spreadsheet is every bit as artistic as painting a landscape or performing a Bach flute sonata. In my current job, among other things, I write functional specifications to clearly describe what our online banking application does. This involves writing but also calls for fitting in flowcharts and other diagrams, tables, and detailed annotated screenshots from the high fidelity html prototype of our application that I code. Is that not artistic? I certainly would like to think it is although it may not be appreciated by a wide audience. But who cares?

Of course, not all jobs offer opportunities to be creative and many people have to deal with toxic job situations. This is a complicated topic and I don’t have all the answers or even all the questions. This is just a rudimentary attempt to put my life experiences into words. We are ALL artists in our own way. I do get that someone who loves to paint (for example) feels frustrated at not having enough time to PAINT because they have to pay rent and put food on the table.

P.S. The photo is from October 2012 at the moomincabin. There is no snow here or there this October. Here on The Planet t-storms are rolling through. We need them.

We always welcome people to use our bench even when we aren’t at the moominbeach. I dunno if very many people actually use the bench but today our friends of porterization visited.

They are on their way downstate to The Planet Ann Arbor and of all things, they are staying at the Hotel Ojibway overnight. Growing up in Sault Ste. Siberia, the Ojibway has always been a fixture in town, not to mention one of the tallest buildings. Six stories.

I have dined at the restaurant at the Ojibway many times throughout my life. Sometimes good times, other times really really bad service. I think our friends went to the Lockview restaurant tonight though.

Way back in the day, Cube Neighbor was following the Umich hockey team and she encountered a pic of my doc-uncle in the Ojibway. Yup, I knew that guy. He’s the one who brought flu shots out to the beach. The Commander: “Get outta the water. It’s time to get your flu shot.” Yeah, right mom…

The Twinz of Terror took The Comm out to dinner at the Ojibway for her 90th birthday and she was treated like a queen. Her take on the whole evening? “Those boys spend money left and right.” Yeah mom, they were spending it on *you* and they can definitely afford to buy you dinner.

After The Commander died, we stayed at the Hotel Ojibway on quite a few occasions for the next couple years when we were in town and the moomincabin was closed for the season. And we were selling Command Central, The Comm’s house up on Dillon Street. Some day we’ll talk about the day I managed to end up in Sault Ste. Siberia with two cars and one driver (meee). Both cars were in the Ojibway Hotel parking lot and we (I) did figger it out.

We dredged ‘lectric Jack up from the Landfill Dungeon today. Here he is a couple years ago projecting his face onto the ceiling.

My thoughts have been a bit a-swirl today. Besides doing an archaeological dig through SWIFT financial file formatting and translating it to BAI data. Don’t ask😵‍💫 I love doing archaeological digs through online banking functionality so it was actually fun. I sometimes wonder if my banker dad has a clue about what I do for a living? Probably not.

The mis/dis info stuff? I cannot believe this. People? Please don’t just throw out anything any yay-hoo puts on social media for the rest of us unwashed masses. I am NEVER unwashed BTW. I am one of the cleanest people you know. But just sayin’.

Winning the prize for most egregious lie (or was it just the most cray-zee) is Marjorie Taylor Greene for accusing the “democrats” of creating hurricanes. Say what? This is miles above Trump using a sharpie to add Alabama to a hurricane that was projected to hit Florida but NOT Alabama. I also haven’t fact checked MTG’s claim but knowing MTG’s particular brand of nuttiness…

The whole Trump Party’s take on the recent hurricanes? Okay, FEMA screwed some things up with Hurricane Katrina. FEMA is undoubtedly not perfect with more recent hurricanes. Who’s perfect? It sounds like FEMA has improved a LOT though. That’s called learning from your mistakes. But despite Trump’s statements about how horrible the “democrats” response to recent hurricanes were, state governors (many GOP) denied his statements. And hurricanes? Every hurricane is different. For one thing? Helene did not spawn tornadoes. Milton? Tornadoes caused many of the casualties although casualties were far fewer than those of Helene. Hurricanes cannot be easily predicted. Who knew North Carolina would be one of the areas most affected by a hurricane that initially made landfall in Florida? North Carolina is not known for hurricanes.

The US government is far from perfect but it was created to serve The People (you and me), NOT the president. Changing our government does not happen quickly and I think that is by design. Although I find myself wishing we could jettison the electoral college.

The Republican Party is NOT what it used to be when I was a kid and my parents voted for its candidates. It is now the Trump Cray-zee Party. The Commander became an Obama supporter in her later years (before Trump of course) and her ashes have certainly been churning throughout Trump’s presidency and subsequent candidacies. Unfortunately I believe the Trump Party is pulling in young people who do not understand what World War II was all about and why otherwise carefree young men like my dad joined the service. A main mission (there were others) was helping to destroy authoritarianism in Europe. Do not vote for Trump. He does not care about anyone except himself. Dangerous person.

G’night, Cassandra

We are watching the latest hurricane with horrified fascination. Our (late) sister The Beautiful Suzie’s (and she WAS beautiful, a gorgeous redhead) husband Mr. Ed lives in their house in Bradenton, just blocks away from the gulf coast and only a few feet above sea level. He is a native Floridian and by that I mean not just that he was born in Fla (although he was) but that at least a couple generations of his ancestors were born there before him. In other words he knows how to deal with hurricanes. I doubt he is evacuating but I don’t know. I’m pretty sure he isn’t mired with the masses on the freeways.

We ate dinner in front of a video of a young female pianist playing a Mendelssohn piece accompanied by an orchestra. This was something the GG found. I was pretty fascinated although in general I don’t really like to watch/listen to classical music in an active way. Back in the day I used to like to PLAY it. I am (was) not a bad pianist but my hands are a wee bit too small to allow me to do the finger gymnastics required for pianistic brilliance. Flute I could do and I may have had a future in that but somehow computers snatched me away.

I heard an interview with Yo Yo Ma (did I spell that correctly?) a while back during which one of the many things he was asked about was an incident when he was 15 or so. He obtained an illegal ID and skipped out of orchestra rehearsal to get drunk and landed in the ER. He giggled yes yes yes to every question he was asked but also expressed regret at how ashamed his father was. In other words, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. Yo Yo Ma is a joyful person and I love him. I am not as good a musician as Yo Yo Ma. Not by a long shot.

The beach urchins were urging me to get the GG to watch Joe Pera Talks With You. I wasn’t sure it would fly even though in some ways the GG is more of a yooper than I am. I grew up there but he didn’t. Turns out he seems to be kinda digging Joe Pera.

The pic is the GG’s camp setup on the shores of Ruth Lake in the western UP a few weeks ago.

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)