This has been my office for the past three years. I won’t provide the rest of this couch’s history tonight.

This arrived in the driveway this afternoon. It contained a bee-yoo-tiffel new teal couch.

I didn’t get a pic of the new couch coming in but I got a few of the old couch going out. There was a moment of suspense when the GG was asked what was going to happen to the couch. My heart was in my throat until he said it was going into the U-Haul to be taken to its final resting place. So here it goes into the kitchen.

And here it goes through the “window” between the kitchen and the back room. Needless to say, getting large pieces of furniture in and out of The Landfill requires a circuitous route and temporary removal of a doorwall. And a bit of tetris.

Safely in the U-Haul. Whew! The GG was feeling a bit sad and expressed a desire to sleep in the U-Haul. He was KIDDING but I was kinda wishing we had a SLEEPABLE trailer here, aka the Lyme Lounge because I AM NOT SLEEPING WITH HIM UNTIL HE STOPS COUGHING. He really isn’t very sick but again, whatever he has, COVID or not, I DO NOT WANT IT!

And voila! Here it is!

MANY THANKS to 🐭 and 🦝 for all their help! The GG at one point started to say something about whether we (he and I) could manhandle it into the house. I told him in no uncertain terms that I was NOT HELPING HIM. I am NOT his identical twin and we do NOT move furniture well together. Plus the Green Couch is extremely heavy.

There is a covid test (probably long expired) on the dining table. It is there because the GG told me last night that he had a “chest cold”. Um, right. He is coming home tomorrow from a couple weeks on the North Country Trail and whatever it is that he has, covid or not, I DO NOT WANT TO CATCH IT.

It’s not like he has been oot and aboot with a whole crapload of maskless humanity, although he himself has been maskless since May 2021 when the idiots (yes) at the CDC told us all we could take off our masks if we were vaxxed. That worked well, didn’t it. Omicron survivor here.

Folks, covid is NOT GONE. A friend of mine had tickets to see a play last Friday. It was canceled/postponed because… Why? If you guessed the cast had covid, DING DING DING, YOU win the booby prize.

The GG has NOT been partying down at all the northern bars. He has not even been going to restaurants. He and Joan each have their own small trailers and are cooking food in them. They have been hosted for dinner by a couple people and I’m aure the GG has gone (unmasked) into various stores. But he is engaged in low covid risk activities. His symptoms have abated and he’s thinking sinus infection now. I hope so.

As you might see, the sun is now starting to rise during my 0-skunk-30 walk.

Looking for a new “spring” facebook profile pic, I found this. No you can’t tell what season it was but it was April. (This isn’t on facebook yet because I’m still trying to decide whether it’s too weird to post there.)

This is PRE-pandemic and look at my fugly scraggly hair 🤣. I’m pretty sure I got my hair cut pre-pandemic. I mean after this fugly. But it was already getting a bit shaggy when we locked down. Mouse cut it summer 2021 when we were in that stupid “I’m vaxxed so I’m immune” era. I had a gift certificate to my fave hair gal winter 2022 but then I got COVID myself and that zapped my psychological energy enough that I never got around to following through. So. I’ll get mouse to do it again when it’s warm enough to cut hair outside and I’ll go from there. (Hair gal is “retiring” from the biz.)

I have a complicated relationship with long hair. I ALWAYS wanted long hair as a child but The Commander mostly got me pixie cuts. Which I HATED. I wanted waist-length hair. Alas, my hair, as abundant as it is, does not do waist length. It gets about to the length in the pic and gets scraggly. Eventually I figured out that what I really liked was what I call a Mom Bob – a longish one. I love when my hair feels bouncy. It does not feel bouncy right now. It feels scraggly.

And that expression? I was just fooling around but my FinFam is showing in this one. When The Comm and my old coot got married and moved from the American southwest through Detroit to Sault Ste. Siberia (long story), they lived with my grandparents for a short while. They got married when they were 22 and 24 and in her later years, The Comm once told me she thought my grandma was a bit leery about their marriage because they were so young. I always remember mom and grandma getting along fine and I think that was real. I’m also sure the newlyweds were relieved when they moved to an apartment downtown.

Anyway, she remembered my banker grandfather making collection calls to repossess houses and cars. And cows. She said the kind gentle man I remember would put some steel into his voice to make those calls. I imagine an expression similar to mine in the pic and I remember my dad being capable of making a similar expression. But in this pic, I’m just being silly.

P.S. I still have that iPhone. Will have to remedy that soon!

Yes I listened to coverage of TFG’s arraignment today. No I didn’t listen to his “speech”. Maybe he hasn’t done his oration yet. Last I heard, he and his entourage were headed toward whatever airport he parked his plane at. As exhilarating as it is to know that he has been charged with a bunch of crimes, felonies, if I have it right. I am sure he will slither out of them as all rich, slimy narcissists do. Never did like TFG. That dates from WELL before his flirt with the oval office. The difference is that when he was a real estate “tycoon” and reality TV “star”, I could ignore him.

At any rate, I don’t think I can stand his word salad tonight and speaking of rich narcissists, I gotta get back to Game of Thrones. Cheers! KW!

JEEBUS! I settled down to an afternoon’s work after what passes for lunch and there was a small brown thing on the carpet across the room from me. It was a MOUSE🐭!!! A scurry mouse, NOT a puffalump mouse. What the heck?

Here at the Landfill… Well, the mice come in, the mice go out, the mice play pinochle on my snout. (Not really. I hope.) I have not seen rodent droppings or other sign of mouse for eons. This one was running around the edges of my front living room. It’s rare but not unheard of to see them any place other than under the kitchen sink. That’s where the traps are so they are usually (but not always) dead when we see them there. I hate when they are caught in a trap and not dead but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

I had a few moments of magical thinking about how I could stage-manage THIS mouse OUT of the HOUSE. Could I prop the front door open and “broom” him out? Could I trap him under a container like we have been known to do with insects? Like I said, this was magical thinking. Traps will have to be set and I suppose I will have to deal with that in the short term since the Lord High Executioner is outta town. For the moment I am living with the idea that a very small aminal is my housemate. Or probably multiple small aminals since when there is one mouse there are always more. I’m sure YouTube will instruct me in how to set a mouse trap. Where is my dad with his diazinon?

The pic? Two of these long flat rectangular plastic storage boxes have been in the Landfill for more years than I am strong enough to count. They belong to a beach urchin and they both left yesterday! Yay! I have long been at the point in flinging that I have gotten rid of everything that I feel confident to make decisions about, i.e., it belongs to MEEEE or I’m absolutely sure that the owner doesn’t remember it or wouldn’t want to deal with it. I wasn’t sure about these boxes. The one in the pic is empty, the other is filled with yarn. I’ve offered a few times to take the yarn to the Scrap Box and was politely rebuffed. After all, it is not MY yarn.

Finally, guess what I did at lunchtime today? I went outside and BASKED in Mr. Golden Sun’s WARM light. It was suddenly in the 60s(?!?) and I was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and polarfleece vest. I was hot. I did NOT wear a sunhat. At this time of year, us northerners NEED sun. My walking hours are still before the sun comes up. It didn’t last long enough for me to get a sunburn. Clouds rolled in just about the time I needed to get back to work and rumbly thunder rolled around in the late afternoon.

How many times can two people screw up a simple grock list. I had my (very short) list to pick up at the Plum this morning. Lizard had her own list for Sparrow Market and the People’s Food Co-op. We tried to make sure that Mouse didn’t HAVE a grock list because she WORKS at the grocery.

Things went downhill fast from there. KW was supposed to pick up some produce items and totally manhandled transferring them from one list app to another and therefore did not get them. Lizard experienced some chorizo confusion and had to make a trip to the Plum to get the right kind of chorizo. Then. Dun dun dun. Moom, where would you put red peppers? Oops. I wouldda bopped over to the plum to get red peppers and an onion but Cygnus was parked in. So we texted Mouse. We knew she wouldn’t want to go back into the store after working there all day but fortunately the Raccoon was willing to do the job.

The one positive thing is that garlic bread was also in the plan. We had ingredients for that but nobody had to make it because I had set some up a while ago and it was in the freezer!

Skillet Basque Chicken and Rice (The Lemon Apron) ensued and was very successful, so much so that we’ll do it again!

So everyone left around eight and yer fav-o-rite blahgger didn’t waste any time embarking on the next GOT episode. Blahg? What blahg? So this mish-mash is what you get tonight.

The pic is from the river this morning. It was a quick point-and-shoot out of Cygnus’s window (parked in a safe place). Today was also robin day. Robins were EVERYWHERE including one on the N. Maple “speedway” that I don’t *think* I ran over. Usually small birds are agile about dodging automotive vee-hickles, flying off just in time. I wasn’t sure if this one made it or not. I couldn’t slow down because I had a f*cking tailgater. I didn’t notice any kind of thump. I couldn’t see if there was a carcass behind me. Is a robin too small for me to notice if I ran over it? I do not know.

G’night and typos be damned, KW.

Pet facebook peeve of the day. People who post OTHER PEOPLE’S photos without permission and/or CREDITING the photographer. A FB high school friend does this constantly, all gorgeous photos of Lake Superior, et al. ALL taken by PROFESSIONAL photographers. No credit given. Well, okay, this person now seems to be commenting to credit the photographer. I think if you are going to post someone else’s photo you should 1) ask for permission and 2) credit them in the original post, not way down in the comments.

I said above that ALL of these re-posts are from professionals but actually this person has posted one of MY photos once. I am NOT a professional photographer nor do I have any aspirations in that direction. As I like to say, if you take 10,000 photos, a few of them are gonna turn out nicely. This one wasn’t even all that special. It a quick-and-dirty pic of the stop sign at the top of the moomincabin road with a homemade paper “Don’t Stop Believing” banner taped across it. A low stakes “prank” by my triplet cousins (first cousins twice removed) who were in high school at the time. The photo thief is a big Journey fan. Journey did (does? I dunno) a lot of energetic feel-good rock and I enjoy them but I’m not a huge fan. In a way I didn’t really care. After all, it was a silly photo. But this is a person who poses as being impeccably honorable and I was annoyed so I POLITELY called them out by noting that I had taken the photo.

Rant over I guess. Boomer does not refer to myself although I am one. We were the generation that wanted to change the world and then we turned into the ME generation and then a lot of us (NOT ME) turned into MAGAts. I don’t blame young people for thinking we’ve “ruined the world”. I just know that we aren’t the first generation to “ruin the world”. Us boomers once blamed our elders for just that. I don’t have the chops to write any more about that tonight.

The boomers in today’s pics represent the beautiful thunderstorms we had last night. I love thunderstorms, even severe ones. I do NOT love tornadoes, which too many people in the midwest experienced last night. The photos are me standing in the Landfill doorway with my iPhone. The first was easy to get. I had to be quick to get the second lightning view.

I hope I am never indicated. I live my life in such a way as to avoid legal difficulties.

Here on The Planet Ann Arbor we are experiencing rain and a fair amount of lightning plus a bit of thunder of the rumbly sort. I wanted to say it’s the first thunderstorm of the season but we had thundersnow a few weeks ago.

My thoughts tonight are not organized enough to deal with anything more than a short bit of porterzoomation and a couple eps of Game of Thrones.

P.S. I INTENTIONALLY misspelled indicted as indicated just for those who may not quiiiite understand my often sarcastic sense of humor. It was the Orange Idiot (or one of his idiot lackeys) who misspelled this on Truth Social. I do not follow ANYONE on Truth Social but this idiotic misspelling was shared on other social media by people who do. Yeah, I know it’s probably just an autocorrect. It happens to all of us. But jeebus. And BTW, I don’t have any hopes that the OB’s “indicatment” will lead to anything he can’t slither out of in his slippery, slimy way.

G’night, KW

The reason the GG and his hiking partner were escorted across the Big Mac yesterday was high winds. When the beach urchins were babies, my dad called me from the moomincabin one evening at cocktail hour and held his phone out the door so I could hear the wind screaming on the shores of gitchee gumee. News came the next morning that a woman driving a Yugo had gone over the side of the bridge. (The link is from the Detroit Free Press. I did not face a paywall although as a non-subscriber, I sometimes have. If it doesn’t work, google Mackinac Bridge Yugo.) This horrific accident was terrifying because we cross the bridge often enough to have commuter passes. If you don’t read the article, rest assured, this was a RARE event. Only one other such incident has occurred and that was ruled a suicide. Seems like an awful way to go in any case.

Yesterday was a bad weather day in the yooperland but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the night of the Yugo incident. But the bridge authority has become a lot more careful in recent years. I did not know they were escorting small campers like the Lyme Lounge and Sunny yesterday but I subscribe to bridge authority alerts and did get a high wind alert.

One of the main reasons for closing the bridge in the past few years has been falling ice. At first I was wondering what the heck? But then I saw some pictures on FB of vee-hickles with smashed windshields from falling ice. Okay then.

In general, if you have any kind of automotive trouble on the bridge, the authorities are ON IT! A few years ago some yooper friends of mine had a flat tire somewhere mid-span. The bridge patrol got there STAT and changed their tire for them, a job I’m sure they could have handled on their own on a yooperland back road. With two lanes in each direction, backups are not a good idea, especially now that the yooperland seems to have become a red hot travel destination. Of course that doesn’t take into account CONSTRUCTION backups and the bridge constantly undergoes maintenance construction, at least in the warm months. Traffic backups or not, ongoing maintenance is a GOOD thing on a five-mile suspension bridge.

But not necessarily the weather here on the Planet Ann Arbor. It was mildly interesting in that we got a really mixed bag featuring high winds and a snowball from Ol’ Man Winter this afternoon, a very ineffectual snowball that didn’t stick to ANYTHING. Cygnus was covered with water droplets. Late in the afternoon, Mr. Golden made a strong reappearance but it is cold and blustery out there. Do you have a hat? I do.

I told MMCB this morning that if we got any more snow, I was NOT gonna shovel. They replied that any snow we get this late is not shovel-able anyway. They are right, although I doubt either of them has wielded a shovel in many years🤣 Let it melt, let it melt, let it melt.

None of that was worth blahgging about but then I looked at facebook and a Soo Facebook/real life friend had shared a post from Chippewa Country Central Dispatch (9-1-1 dispatcher) with a FUGLY photo. STAY OFF THE ROADS! A stretch of M28 (major two-lane artery between the Soo and Marquette, etc.) was closed for a while this afternoon so emergency responders could sort out NUMEROUS accidents, some of them involving multiple vee-hickles. What caused those crashes? Significant snowfall, wind, and the resulting low visibility. White-outs anyone? No reports in that post of any injuries or fatalities. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, our intrepid North Country Trail hikers decided to abandon post-holing in the deep, wet spring snow on the eastern yooperland stretch of trail. They headed to Petoskey today for some easier urban hiking on the Petoskey section of trail. I totally approve of that decision. But. Crossing the Big Mac Bridge, they were both pulling small camping trailers, therefore they were tagged for an escort across the bridge. This was a first. I did see a FB post sometime this morning showing semis lined up waiting to be escorted.

Winter in the yooperland ain’t over ’til it’s over. Drive safe (or preferably don’t drive). Oh, and wear a hat!

Mr. Golden Sun continues his travels northward and last evening he lit up my coffee station quite spectacularly. He did a similar thing tonight but less spectacularly so Mr. GS is moving north fast. I am in the thick of the Game of Thrones (GOT) series tonight. I limit myself to one or two episodes an evening. I think I have time to watch a second episode tonight. So g’night!

P.S. As a northern gal, I am totally puzzled as to why the GOT night watch guys DO NOT WEAR HATS when they are oot and aboot in snowy winter conditions. I mean, Jon Snow has a lot of hair but hair doesn’t really protect your head or EARS! Lord Mormont is practically bald. Neither of them are wearing hats. Here on the Planet Ann Arbor I have actually ASKED hatless people (on below freezing, snowy or even just blustery days), “Where is your hat?” Who is the costume designer and has he/she ever spent time in the yooperland in the winter?

Okay, we don’t hoard Toby mugs (google it🤣) but we have been known to “hoard” iPhones. This stack is from BEFORE 2014. How do I know that? Because the Red Puano is to the right of the table the GG’s mothership used to reside on. That’s before we renovated the Landfill Chitchen.

But we are trying (again) to de-hoard, at least in fits and starts. I wrote about stuffed aminals yesterday. My cousin commented that maybe crisis nurseries or shelters could use some. For about five seconds, I thought that was a really good idea. I mean it IS a really good idea. But then… First I would have to do “research” to find an appropriate place for my particular collection. I know myself well enough to know that this would quickly turn into MAJOR PROCRASTINATION. I mean, I would have to search around and actually CONTACT, you know, other people. I am an introvert?

Also, I have a LARGE collection and not all of them qualify as the kind of “lovies” you might think a baby or kid in crisis would be comforted by. Like there is the LARGE SNAKE (Folktales puppet) that is capable of “eating” things. So I’m not sure it’s an appropriate donation although I’m sure there are some rapscallions in the shelters that wouldn’t mind having a snake for a comfort aminal.

But like I said, there are a LOT of aminals and I decided in the end that Kiwanis is a better destination for this collection. They have armies of volunteers who sort people’s STUFF and arrange it into artistically arranged displays. They currently have a huge collection of Toby mugs. And we can just DROP STUFF OFF. No long conversations necessary. Introvert here?

Apologies to my cousin Pooh for turning her thoughtful suggestion into a blahg post. If y’all have small numbers of CUDDLY stuffties hanging around (I do have some cuddly ones), I’m sure there are organizations who would love to stuff one into a sick or traumatized child’s arms.

We have flung a bunch of laptops and (maybe) iPads. I’m not sure we have gotten to the iPhones yet. It is tricky to offload computing devices because they need to be erased. We can’t just drop them off at Kiwanis.

I am really struggling with flinging right now. I have a small bag of cheap “costume” jewelry ready to go. I really do not wear jewelry at all any more. (Heck I don’t even wear certain undergarments any more although I do keep a couple around for “emergencies”.) I am not flinging my earrings. I did not get my ears pierced until I was 37 (long boring story) and for a while I wore them all the time but generally jewelry is kind of a PITA for me. What I am getting rid of are other things that I bought and haven’t ever really worn. I am also saving my childhood jewelry, that which remains, which is not a lot.

An area of extreme indecisiveness is the stuffed aminals. There are three garbage bags full of them in the Landfill Dungeon. Why am I having such a hard time letting go of them? Is it because they played such a large part in helping our little family function? I mean they were FUN but with the “spirited” beach urchin they were also used as tools to help settle tantrums down or rein in inappropriate behavior. If I tried to provide “guidance” in whatever was going on it would almost certainly backfire and escalate the situation. If I talked through Chrissy the Police Mouse or whoever, more often than not calm would return. Froggy was of no help in these situations. In fact he was so AWFUL the GG banished him to the dungeon for a couple years. (We are not getting rid of Froggy.)

We certainly won’t get rid of ALL of them. WE (the parents) have our own faves. But we have way more than we need to be storing for our kids to get rid of some day. I think we got into this situation because I was still buying them when the kids were aging out of them and I wasn’t ready to face up to that. They still loved receiving them but they were beyond playing with them. But hanging out in garbage bags in the dungeon they are not feeling anyone’s love. It’s time.

So what do we do with them? I sometimes dream about hosting a stuffed aminal adoption day in the Landfill driveway. Kind of like a garage sale but everything is free. But I don’t know if I can manage that. I am an introvert and the necessary personal interactions would undoubtedly exhaust me. And what if somebody comes along and greedily takes all of them (because they are free). Of course that’s what we want, to get rid of them, right? And what about the leftovers that don’t get adopted? I know I will feel bad (and I KNOW HOW STOOPID THAT IS!).

Probably best to take ’em all over to Kiwanis and let the experts deal with them.

When I went to the Plum this morning, I had not egregiously idled Cygnus beforehand. It wasn’t really that cold (mid-30s). But. It was raining cats and dogs and it was pretty cold in that car. I turned the heat way up and put the bush warmer on high.

I was in Plum less than 10 minutes and missed my mouse, who was probably in the “office” or whatever it is, getting coffeed up for the day. This was a little sad but I HAD been invited to a sleepover at her house and I declined so… Anyway when I was done I decided to do a short river ride. Just over to downtown and home, long enough to get Cygnus thoroughly warmed up. Alas, I had to turn around when I encountered this (fallen tree removal operation). Really bad pic but I didn’t wanna get too close to the po-leese. I’m sure they did not need any looky-loo old bags with iPhone cams to interfere with this operation, as minor as it looks.

I’ve seen everything on Huron River from the tragic to the ridiculous. I mean I haven’t ever SEEN a tragic accident but they do happen. It’s a narrow well-paved two-lane scenic road (35 mph) that automotive vee-hickles have to share with beeceeclettes and some pedestrians. I am always respectful to cyclists and pedestrians and if I can’t see well enough to pass (curves and hills), I slow waaaaay down and hang out behind them. Others are more impatient and there are some rather militant cyclists around town that can be less than friendly.

The tragic? We did not see this happen but a number of years ago two motorcyclists traveling in opposite directions at much higher rates of speed than the limit (like 60 or something) crashed head-on. No they did not survive. When we drove by a few days later, we could see bloodstains on the pavement. These guys (if I remember accurately) were both 50/60-somethings, not crazy young motorheads.

The ridiculous? Taking a slow drive one day, there was a mini-van in the water. It was upright in a shallow spot right beside the road (I know it’s shallow there because I’ve kayaked it). Some high school gentlemen were sitting hanging their legs out the open slider door. I remember athletic socks and big tennis shoes. I don’t think the cops were there yet. I don’t think anyone was injured but I couldn’t help thinking somebody’s moom was about to have a bad day.

So, fugly weather here today but worse in the yooperland where the GG and Joan are hiking. Click to Joan’s blog for what they did today. They are okay but lots of oops.

This is not the first freighter to traverse the Soo Locks this year. This is from I dunno 2011 or something and it may not have even been the first freighter of that year because The Commander was still alive and kicking and I would’ve walked down from her house to the locks at 0-skunk-30, which means other botes had probably already been thru the locks.

The first freighter locks through at midnight tonight. I am not there to see it but they have a sorta March Madness thingy going on about freighters, like sweet sixteen, elite eight, and final four. I only know those terms because a recent xword puzz threw them at me.

Busy night tonight with VOT porterization and I’m currently in between GOT episodes. I was invited to a sleepover at the country mouse’s house but declined b/c VOT and I want to be up and out early tomorrow morning.

Cheers!

I’m watching the Game of Thrones TV series. Now that I’ve read the books, I have a better idea about what’s going on although I am well aware that the series eventually diverges from the books and if I get it right, goes beyond them.

The pic is of a weird bunch of wooden poles and waaars, etc., that we encountered on our recent Sunday drive. We have no clue what this really is and couldn’t get a good pic of it. Alien communication grid? I dunno. Back to GOT. BTW, I am not bingeing GOT like watching umpteen episodes in a row. My brain has not been wired to binge watch since the Saturday morning cartoons back in the 1960s. I am watching a couple episodes each evening.

Maybe we should just call the GG Mr. Fidget? He is off on another North Country Trail (NCT) boondoggle, this time the lower upper and the western northern lower. He will again be hiking with and supporting our friend Joan on her quest to finish the NCT for the second time in her life. I am hopeful that the weather will cooperate. The forecast for the lower upper is like five inches on Saturday when they will start hiking. Snow, that is. At least at five inches there will be no post-holing.

I am always happy to have the GG home (if he isn’t too fidgety). I am also happy to have him go off on junkets (so he can be fidgety somewhere I am not). He has been fidgety a LOT in the last month or so. Last night it kinda reached a peak. He couldn’t decide which day to leave. Should he leave today? Or tomorrow? Or even Friday? The plan was imprecise (and that is OKAY!). But fidgety? Oh my god.

For a while last night the GG was thinking about all the stuff he could get done around here today. In the end, I don’t think he felt like he could focus on Landfill-type chores. He was fidgety as all getout to get north. So that is where he went and he is now safely in Gaylord with the Uncly Uncle and The Beautiful Gay. He’ll probably find some death marches to do in the next couple days before he moves the Lyme Lounge up to the yooperland to meet up with Joan.

He likes to put this mask on Mooon Yooonit’s passenger seat head rest and it ALWAYS makes me jump a mile when I go to get in that vee-hickle and see a FACE there. Also the title is a spoiler for today’s spelling bee puzzle.

Yeah, you are not gonna get much outta me tonight because I cannot concentrate. The GG has been playing music videos on youtube for what seems like hours. I was into it at first (although it was LOUD). I eventually moved into the front room but it was still LOUD. Finally I asked him to please turn down the volume. He did but it was still a bit loud for me.

I seem to have acquired a new name. The Google. I’m not sure why but various people keep asking me random questions and expecting me to actually have a quick answer to them. Example: Yesterday the GG was searching his memory banks for a book called The Voyageurs. I was like, I bet there are a gazillion books with that title. And yet, it rang a bell and I was pretty sure I had read it but it was a couple years ago. I asked him what made him think of that particular book. Well. Our daughter and his twin brother had both recommended it to him. I got to wondering why he didn’t he ask one (or both) of THEM? In the end I texted our daughter and she responded with the author. I texted him (he was off walking somewhere) and he EVENTUALLY read his text messages.

I know a lot of things. My brain remembers all kinds of odd little things. But I do not know EVERYTHING. So next time you have some odd little question floating around your brain how about YOU google it? Googling things for other people is not my job and I do not get paid for it. I am good at sussing out information. I actually do a lot of that at work but I get paid for that. Outside of work I get really tired of it, especially when you have interrupted me from whatever I was doing to ask me a question that YOU could research yourself.

And yes, I am a little cranky tonight. Partly it’s that I am tired of listing to music at a loud volume. I need some quiet at this time of night.

Before I get around to addressing the title, I want to say a bit about the sometimes extreme violence in the Game of Thrones books (and series). Although I can handle this kind of violence, early on it would sometimes exhaust me. But then I realized that there is a LOT of black humor involved (to me, your opinion may vary). Like in one scene, Brienne fights three people and kills them all. One of her companions feels compelled to behead the dead bodies and then (if I’m remembering accurately, it was a couple books ago), ties their hair together and they haul the heads off to I fergit where. I got the impression Brienne was rolling her eyes (and I don’t know if this is in the TV series).

Another pic from our southern drive yesterday. The last time we took a Sunday drive down this road (south of Saline), we were COVID positive. It was a Sunday in winter 2022 and IT WAS MY FRICKIN’ BIRTHDAY. We took a bit of a different route that day, ending up in the Milan area checking out the drag race tracks. At one point I remember thinking how HOT it was in Cygnus. Because of our positivity I took a minute to assess myself for additional symptoms. My only COVID symptom was (and remained) a mild cough. But had I developed a fever? Nope. Then I saw that Cygnus was set to 85 DEGREES! That is a function of her remote start feature, which we weren’t used to yet since we bought her in May 2021. I think the remote start temp can be adjusted but in a Great Lake State winter, 85 degrees is a good setting. Also the sun was out. I turned down the heat and things were fine. Except for the mild cough and the HUGE annoyance.

When I emailed my then boss about having COVID the previous Friday, I told her I was taking a “mental health” day but wasn’t feeling sick, just HIGHLY ANNOYED at being exposed and I explained the context. She replied with something like, “I hope you don’t end up in jail [for killing your husband].” 🤣🤣🤣 I did need a mental health day, if only to sit with the reality of positivity for a bit. The following Monday was MLK Day, which I get off and by that day, I was almost regretting taking Friday off. That long weekend was a loooooong sloooodge. It was actually another week or so before the cough finally trailed off and I was totally cabin feverish by then. I will say the “bounce” from the temporary immunity of an actual infection was pretty cool but I still masked in the grock store and still do.

Although the day didn’t turn out exactly as I might have planned it, it was fine. My plan was to slowly put together dinner for us and the beach urchins. Chicken divan with rice, and a simple salad.

Just before Sunday Morning (jazz) came on, the GG remote started Cygnus. I figgered a trip to the hardware store was in order but no, he wanted to go for a drive. I asked where. Oh out in the county. Where in the county. North, south, or west. I chose south. North and west is glacial moraine, which we love but south is interesting in its own way. Flat flat flat, think Kansas. Sparse, mostly rundown housing and Trump signs if there is an election looming (none of those today). Very little traffic anywhere so we could take a slow drive. So that’s where we went today.

We did not actually arrive at this railroad crossing as the train was approaching. When we first crossed it, I was looking at GooMaps but the GG spied a train headlight to the west. So. We turned around. We crossed the tracks AGAIN and determined that YES, there was a train over there and it WAS heading east (toward us), not stopped.

So we turned around AGAIN and stopped BEFORE the tracks even though the crossing hadn’t yet closed. So I was ready with my phone cam when the crossing bars went down and the train DID approach the tracks.

It was a loverly drive but by the time we got home, I was kind of exhausted. Maybe 15 minutes too long plus the last 15 minutes were in the usual Planet Ann Arbor traffic.

So I got started on my dinner prep a little late. Just as I DID get started, the GG chose that moment to haul a bunch of crapola in from the Lyme Lounge to CLEAN IT. In my kitchen! It was okay. It needed to be cleaned. I put my chicken breasts in a pan to slowly saute and decamped to the Green Couch to read until he was finished.

I finished the last Game of Thrones book today and I am now 13 books behind my Goodreads 2023 challenge. I will work on some lighter shorter fare for a while, I guess. I will (maybe) blahg about GOT more some other day. For now… I knew that the fifth book would not bring resolution to all of the story lines. I knew the author was struggling to write another book. If he does, I suggest he try to wrap things up. I knew that the TV series diverged from the books at some point. I watched about one season of the TV series before I started on the books. I’ll probably revisit the series eventually. I did like the books just PLEASE finish them.