Don’t let her shiny hood fool you, her sides are coated with mud.

Power outage update? City mouse power FINALLY came on this afternoon. Country mouse power is STILL out. No one is staying overnight tonight. Everyone is here for dinner. Actually that was the original plan way last Monday or so. Sunday night family dinner. Instead people have been over here for three nights in a row. Chinese takeout on Friday, tamale pie yesterday, and SIMPLE grilled chicken thighs, mashed potatoes, and veggies tonight. We needed simple food because we are ALL psychologically exhausted, even those of us who didn’t lose power. Don’t get me wrong, we get along with our kids and their SOs just fine and love having them here.

COVID update? Our two grock workers tested negative this afternoon before they came over for dinner (and showers and laundry). Why did they test? Because there have been a few cases at mouse’s work. She doesn’t think she was exposed (she was out of town when they had it) but… When the HELL will this be over? I guess I could say that about the power outages too.

Shower update? Four people took showers at the Landfill this afternoon. With my morning shower that makes five total.

Cheers! KW

Although we did wake up to a bit of snow, this is not from today. Our wee bit of snow looked fugly at four in the morning when I peeked outside during a trip to the water closet but ultimately it quit and with temps in the upper 30s, it was mostly gone by the end of the day.

This pic is from 2016. My whole office was telecommuting for a couple months while we did a “major” office remodel. Mostly putting in new carpet but it was a messy job in Cubelandia and we had to move all the cubes out to semi truck storage spaces in the parking lot and then move them back in after the carpet and a bunch of cleanup stuff had been done. In the middle of all that, I received a new laptop at work. The LSCHP notified me and I said I HAVE CABIN FEVER! I WILL COME OVER AND PICK IT UP! When I got there he was dragging a cube around and kvetching about the movers.

We did NOT replace the cubes, just moved them in and out. I never had that much in my cube and that was good because LATER when COVID forced us into permanent TELECubelandia, there wasn’t a lot to clean out. A few personal items, some stuff Brucie gave me, and a few ancient items (even a few crumbs!) from previous occupants. Our cubes were HUGE, dating from a time when people had big desktop computers, sometimes printers, and stored a lot of paper documents. Way overkill for my job and way of doing business. I had a laptop and a minimal amount of office supplies and sometimes a stack of papers so I could compare things to what was on my laptop. I have been 100% paperless since COVID and permanent telecommuting.

On this Ice Skirt day, I was on my way home from walking to meet MMCB at Barry Bagels. It was dry when I left to go over there and on the way back I got blasted by all this wet shitola. Did I stop at the Plum on the way home that day? I can’t remember.

So for the moment, both the beach urchins are STILL without power. The city mouse is here. The country mouse is at work, where they were on intermittent generator power a lot of the day. A third (SO) is hanging out in a 50-degree house but apparently the neighborhood is slowly coming back on the grid so… The one who is ALREADY here will probably spend the night even if she does get power restored tonight. Not sure about the mouse and raccoon. I know that everyone is grateful to have a warm place to stay but also I know how nice it is to be in your OWN space.

Challenging few days for those without power and many people are still without. Just to say that our power workers are fantastic. But I do think our society needs better planning for power infrastructure.

Hello world! This big boy fell out of the woods into the schoolyard during Ice Ice Baby. The part that landed in the schoolyard was already chainsawed up. I thought I heard chainsaws yesterday afternoon but couldn’t place where they were coming from.

The beach urchins were hunkered down at the city mouse’s house when the power went out. It came back on during the night but then went out again. So everybody ended up at The Landfill today. The city mouse was working (her office was also out), the country mouse and raccoon had the day off and were out gallivanting around.

One of the things that’s been going on in our largely liberal city is that the city council wants to outlaw natural gas connections in new construction. My position on this is complicated. I was long ago dubbed The Family Liberal (of the cFam) by another outlaw, The Beautiful Becky (she and I are largely on the same page). I am quite liberal in terms of politics and am not a climate change denier although I ALWAYS want to know what the “data” is and where it came from. Facts please. With the caveat that I don’t personally have the “chops” to understand and analyze the “data”.

But wait. I think we need to take a step back from getting rid of natural gas. It was cold during this storm and MANY people lost power (I have no idea why we didn’t). Those people are suffering. If you are all electric, you don’t likely have hot water and if you have a well, you don’t likely have ANY WATER. Hotels are full and not everyone can afford to relocate to one.

Clearly our city’s electrical grid is not terribly robust. I don’t think we should ban natural gas until we have beefed up our electrical grid (and other power sources). I don’t see any evidence that anyone is seriously thinking about this. If we want to do away with natural gas, let’s PLAN ahead and build a sturdy power infrastructure. Because this storm, although not the worst I’ve experienced, was a MESS!

Ice storm? We did not lose power at least not in a sustained way. Several flickers early this morning but not enough to upset the kitchen radio settings. I did have to reset Gertrude’s clock (easy) and a set of under-counter LED lights (not easy after the latest app upgrade – whose nephew did they hire for that?).

Speaking of nephew-designed web/app stuff, our lucky-shuckial company changed their outage map since the last time I looked at it. Which was only a few weeks ago when the GG encountered a substation blowing up. The new map thingy is AWFUL. The old one showed approximate outage areas with colored shapes. This one keeps the shapes but adds some other weird little icons and the shapes keep DISAPPEARING and REAPPEARING seemingly randomly. I dunno who they paid to redesign this thing but I’m guessing they got what they paid for? Next door neighbor folks were fuming (a lot of them didn’t have power today).

I’m not saying I could’ve done any of these redesigns any better, just that I have first-hand experience in how much guzzinto it takes to design and code user-friendly websites and apps.

Okay. We have power today and so does the city mouse. The country mouse does not. So… She and our raccoon are going to spend the night with the city mouse. I also offered my house (and Chinese takeout) but they had already made arrangements. This is OKAY with me. I am elated that:

1) We all live in or near the same city now. In a way I would’ve liked to live closer to my parents (5-hour drive) but I have always loved The Planet Ann Arbor and our little family has thrived here. But it’s fun for us to be close.

2) I am soooo happy that my children get along so well. It isn’t always that way for everyone although it is generally that way in my family and the GG’s.

At any rate, the country mouse sort of apologized for choosing to stay at the city mouse’s house instead of ours. But really? I do not care. Anyone and everyone is always welcome here. I got along with my brother but we got along better when we were at each others’ houses, rather than at our parents’. I want my kids to have that experience too.

So the GG and I are gonna try to make inroads into a bunch of leftovers. I’m sure we will not finish them all.

BTW: Ice fell down ALL DAY, sometimes in large dumps. If you embiggen the pic you can see some of it on the ground beside the driveway. The driveway looks icy but it is not. Temperatures at this point were in the 40s.

I couldn’t really do my blahg today until I had heard that all of my adult kiddos were home safe because we are in the midst of a big ice storm. They are home safe (and the roads were fine for the one who had to drive six miles on back roads) so here we go.

Ice storms are fairly frequently predicted around here butcha nevah know whathca gonna get.

1997. I think it was actually March. This was before weather was as accurately predicted as it is now and we did not have a clue what was coming for us. We woke up to a thick coating of ice everywhere. We had power for a while and then we were on brownout for a few days. Brownout meant we could heat water in a pan on low heat on our electric stove and MORE IMPORTANTLY it ran the BLOWER on our ancient furnace. So we had heat. Until the lucky-shuckial companies who were cleaning up our city’s huge mess decided they had to take the whole power grid down to finish the job. So we were without power for maaaybe 24 hours? I can’t remember. But we survived. I think it was 45 degrees by that time. We built a faaar and layered up and used our gas grill to cook.

When the power came back up, our ANCIENT refrigerator (which came with the house) made a kind of a sick seagull noise and did not seem to want to work. It was a Monday and the GG wanted to go to work but I grabbed him and said something like, “Nope! We need to deal with this fridge NOW!” And we did.

Okay, I am signing off now because the GG has seen some non-LED lights flicker. I’m scheduled to meet with New Boss tomorrow for my first performance evaluation with him and I have already proactively notified him that we are having an ice storm here and I have no clue what infrastructure will be available for me to meet with him tomorrow. It’ll probably be fine butcha nevah know and I really don’t want to be AWOL.

G’night, KW

I hate hate hate door-to-door solicitors. There was the time a car pulled into the driveway and some sketchy guys came up to the door with cleaning supplies(?) I don’t even remember what their “pitch” was. Probably because I kicked them off the porch pretty directly. I watched them go on up the street and stop at random houses. What was it about my house that prompted them to stop. I was actually blagging at that time and my little brother was still alive. He read it and was concerned about my safety. Thanks bro but these guys were kinda like the three stooges.

Then there are the magazine sales folks. This was a scam where young college students were dropped off in a neighborhood by van and earnestly went door to door trying to sell magazines. One time when this happened at MY DOOR, the “guys” seemed more clownlike than usual. I SLAMMED MY DOOR AND LOCKED IT. I heard one of the guys say [laughing], “She just slammed the door on us.” Yes. I did. You idiots! That was a billion years ago and they’re probably all U.S. senators now💩

It takes a lot of chutzpah to do door-to-door sales/soliciting and also to run for political office. I don’t have it so that’s why I am not running the world. Or selling Girl Scout cookies. You’re welcome.

I will ALWAYS buy girl scout cookies. We bought Girl Scout cookies a week or so ago and from a second salesperson today. They were both going door to door. The first was with her dad and a wagon and a leashed dog. There were cookies in the wagon. Today’s scout was with her mother and they were taking the orders on the traditional form, to be delivered in a few weeks. We didn’t care if we got them today or later. My kids were in the Girl Scouts and I was a leader and we support groups like the Girl Scouts. I never liked the cookie sale all that well but that would take a whole ‘nother blahg entry.

The parents of both of these girls both stayed down on the sidewalk while their daughters came up to ring our bell and we love girl scouts so we bought some both times. The GG is more interested in eating them than I am but I like them too and maybe we’ll take some to FlaMan? Hopefully no one will be throwing them out in six months.

I hope it’s okay to post this pic that I did not take. I know who the people are but they are not all that recognizable to anyone who doesn’t and it’s a cool pic.

I *think* they were grilling in this pic but maybe they were just outside. This isn’t here on The Planet Ann Arbor. It’s at the Hoton Lake Group Home. We have not had snow (or ice) here since the end of last week and what ice we got then melted over the weekend, thank you very much. I took Cygnus out this morning and did not even have to egregiously idle her. Her windows were perfectly clear and dry and it was warm enough that I could manage with just my polartech vest over my holey-elbowed turtleneck. Cygnus is dirty as all getout but we can live with that.

One of my fave times hanging around outside the Hoton Lake Group Home was in the late summer. We stood in the garage entrance for what seemed like HOURS watching a spider spin a big web. The Gumper was still around in those days so he was in and out and there was a wee bit of sippin’ bourbon involved, at least for us. The Gumper liked Triple Sec, go figger. He would sometimes sip a bit of that and get a little teary-eyed (I thought anyway) talking about his WWII experiences on the Hornet aircraft carrier, where he was the master mechanic if I have it right. He bunked with a lot of pilots who didn’t return. To the Hornet or home or anywhere but the bottom of the South Pacific. Why do people want to go to war? Rhetorical question I guess. I’m still reading Game of Thrones (book 4) and they are opening somebody’s throat or running a sword through someone every five minutes or so. And Brienne! My name is Brienne! You go girl!

When we get a warm spell at this time of year I sometimes want to think winter is sorta over itself. Alas, it most likely is NOT. We’re getting something coming through in a few days. Ice ice baby maybe? Probably. Again. Still. The sun is much farther north now and when it comes out (and it has been out a lot lately), it has a lot more power to melt whatever slippery crapola there is.

And yeah, this is all just filler on a regular boring work day. I spent the first half of it trying to wrap my brain around some NEW stuff I have to learn, then ended it putting together a “training” document that I have to present every release. Mostly a no-brainer but since it’s for a different audience than usual, I have to do some re-phrasing and editing. But I like to do that.

G’night, KW

I do not have ANY ideas today but I know that if I don’t try to write SOMETHING, I will get a “no blahg today?” text at some point. I suppose I could send my own text message to say something like “not posted yet” or “no ideas, no blahg” but I will try.

The truth is it has been a REALLY slodgy weekend around here and I could not get motivated to do anything interesting in any way shape or form. I did get this photooo from the GG. He took a looooong hike today, which was a good thing because I needed some alone time. Not for a bad reason, just it was what it was. So I will leave you with this loverly squoil lineman type pic and very little commentary.

We’re more than halfway through February and it’s that time of year when IF the sun is out, the sky starts to look a bit like summer.

Here are my once little skiers. We got them started early. We put Lizard Breath on skis when she was three. Mouse was an infant then and rode in a backpack. At one point, Liz was momentarily alone skiing from the GG to me. I heard a woman ask her if she was alone and heard her reply, “No, I’m with my mommy and my daddy.” A moment later there I was.

I’m thinking Mouse was not quite three when we first put her on skis. There was a very small RED rental pair at the Ski Ranch and she took to skiing like a duck in water. The first day. The second day she was kind of done with it. The GG took Liz out on the Rolling Hills trail or wherever. I made the mistake of saying something like, “I’ll take Mouse out on the Little Kid Loop.” Yeah. BIG MISTAKE. A tantrum ensued. I picked her up, skis, poles and all, hauled her into the Ski Ranch and turned the skis in. I (laughing) told Bob (the owner), “We’re DONE for today and probably the year.” BTW, little kids do NOT really need ski poles but they like to have them because everyone else has them.

So here they are as adults, on a ski weekend under summer-like February skies. Their shapes and stances remind me of my dad and his sister Radical Betty although both of those folks were taller. They were lucky to get enough snow to ski. Ours is completely gone as of this afternoon. Photo undoubtedly taken by our raccoon. Look at those shadows!

Of all things I got a facebook friend request from “Joe” today. That’s not his real name although he used it for a long time. We were in the same school grade and he lived up the street from me and once for some reason he came to our shabby little bungalow, took one look around and said, “Finnelsons is rich”. The Commander had a mixed reaction to this. Anger (mild) because he mispronounced our name and WTF because our house did not indicate wealth in any way shape or form.

At some point “Joe” met with an accident that took out one of his eyes. I can’t exactly remember what happened. When we were in high school, he was in swim class once when his glass eye fell out. It’s really hard to describe our high school pool but it was very small and girls and boys swam separately. Us girls wore fugly swimsuits. Boys swam nude. That’s probably illegal nowadays. Anyway, “Joe’s” eye fell out and the teacher ordered everyone out of the pool and made them sit on the sides and look for the eye. Someone eventually spotted it and the teacher said, “Go get it!”

The funniest thing about this is that I think he knows my cousin the Mean Old Grunchy Old Grinchy. I’m not sure how it came up but a few years ago I mentioned “Joe’s” name during a conversation and the Grinch was like, “how the heck do you know Joe?” Okay. I grew up in Sault Ste. Siberia but left town to go to college and live on The Planet Ann Arbor although of course I still own property in the yoop and spend time there. The Grinch was an air force “brat” who lived all over the place as a child. He settled in Siberia as a young adult after his dad retired and he helped his parents (Radical Betty and Dcuk) build a chalet on our family beach. I love all of my cousins but the Grinch and I have always had a strong bond. But I grew up in Sault Ste. Siberia and he did not. We mainly knew each other at the cabin in those days.

The Grinch has been a construction contractor in my home town for many years and so has worked with many people I grew up with. I suppose because I have a professional career and live and raised my kiddos in an upscale college town, he probably doesn’t realize how much of the scrappy old south side Sault Ste. Siberia kid is still in me. Since he didn’t grow up there, he doesn’t really know where I come from, at least not from my perspective. At any rate, I welcomed “Joe” to my Facebook community and I refrained from asking him if he knew my cousin, whose real name is Ed, just like “Joe’s” real name is Ed.

Photo credit to Lizard Breath who is at the Hoton Lake group home with her sister and our raccoon.

Result of the sustained high winds yesterday? The GG saw one tree fall in the woods but there are two down so I don’t know which one he saw. I’ve been kind of avoiding the woods lately because at this time of year the trail can be very muddy. The school or whoever lugged a big pile of wood chips or whatever last spring or summer and they are still sitting in a big frozen heap outside the woods. Or maybe it’s not frozen since it’s been pretty warm lately.

I dunno what kind of trees are in the woods. I want to say oak but aren’t oak trees a symbol of strength? These trees are always falling down. Over the years:

There was the Sunday afternoon that I kept hearing a lucky-shuckial buzzing noise coming from somewhere. It wasn’t in the house (I didn’t think…) so I walked down to the street and saw a HUGE (van-sized) sparking event at the end of the street. Bzzzzzzt bzzzzzzt bz bzz bzzzzt and clouds of smoke surrounding it. The Nice Firefolks asked us all to please go back inside our houses. Okaaaay, we will. If I remember accurately, it turned out that a tree in the woods had kind of imploded. Was it waterlogged? I think so. A whole bunch of power lines somehow got pulled down and a neighbor a block away had a fire burning along the back of their yard where there was some kind of waaaar connected to the power grid.

Then there was the time we had a thunderstorm in the middle of the night and the GG got up to use the water closet and saw lightning hit and explode a tree. And explode it did. It splintered and shot shrapnel all over the neighborhood. One stick speared the Frog Hopper’s moon roof.

Then there was the time we had an ice storm. Lizard Breath was visiting and was about to walk downtown to meet friends when the GG came home and gave her a ride instead. While they were gone, I heard a muffled thudding noise. I was thinking it was the neighbors’ playing frisbee with their toddler and the frisbee had hit the house. But frisbee in an ice storm? The next morning I went out to walk at 0-skunk-30 and when I got to the entrance to the schoolyard (between the two woods), I realized I couldn’t see jack doodly. There is usually a streetlight there. Then I ran into branches? Yes branches. BIG tree down. I used my iPhone flashlight to navigate through that mess.

Those are the most dramatic incidents I can think of but there are always trees falling down. This one is a problem because it blocks the path although I managed to navigate around it today. And it wasn’t even very muddy!

So the GG went to Tahq last weekend. He was winter camping (in the Lyme Lounge) so he took three heaters with him. He came home with two. Where is the other one? We do not know.

He has rummaged in the Lyme Lounge. He has rummaged in Mooon Yooonit. He has rummaged in his lair. He has rummaged in the Dungeon. Is it in the UU’s driveway (where he spent a night)? Nope. Did he leave it at his campsite? Who knows.

The thing that is driving me nuts is that he seems to intensify his on and off rummaging at 10 PM!!! If you know me in person, you can probably imagine that this drives me ABSOLUTELY STIR CRAZY! That’s time to chill out for the night if not earlier. I have not been much help. I don’t even know what this dern heater looks like.

In the last year, there have been multiple missing item incidents. A missing key fob led to a chain of unfortunate events ending with Cygnus running over an empty wine bottle. She is a late model vee-hickle and her taaars were tough so she was fine. But I was totally p*ssed off, partly at myself. And then there was the where’s my phone thing. In the Lyme Lounge it turned out. This is not due to senility, it is a consequence of having TOO MUCH STUFF TO MANAGE.

A good (and weird) thing from today. A few years ago I bought a new dryer (my dryer was old enough to drink). I don’t do appliance shopping for the most part. I use maybe two dryer settings. But my laundry appliances are in a dark dank grey-green greasy Limpopo type corner of the Landfill Dungeon and I wanted a dryer that texted me when it was done.

I got what I wanted but user interface? Whose nephew designed this? I bashed my way through installing it and it worked for a long time. But last summer they updated the app and I stopped getting texts. I could not for the life of me figger it all out so I’ve been living with this for maybe six months or so. TODAY? RANDOMLY. I did a load of laundry and I got a notification when it was done.

I sure hope he finds his heater…

I opened up Facebook this morning. I go in order, email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blahgs, then I get to do the xword and spelling bee.

So what was on Facebook today? One, two, three, four, five, six(?) in a row pictures of Sparty, the MooU mascot, with a tear dripping from his eye. There were NO WORDS in any of them. I was like “What the heck?” I mean I figured it was probably some kind of shooting. Because they happen just about every other day nowadays. But I had to go way down the page to find a link or anything that said what happened. If you are going to post a picture like that, at least link to an article or write a few words about it.

This tragedy became more personal for me than others have. I didn’t know any of the victims at all but there were fewer degrees of separation between me and one of them than usual. A young cousin of mine coaches volleyball in Clawson, a northwest Detroit suburb where the GG once had an apartment. One of the victims had been on her team as a high school student. And then when I joined the daily standup meeting, talk soon turned to the tragedy and I was reminded that three of my colleagues have children at MSU. Fortunately all of their children are safe.

Columbine High wasn’t the first but it’s the first my memory can dredge up. I had a daughter at our own Community High then and a friend and I were walking when a neighbor came up to us and asked if we’d heard about the shooting at Columbine High. We mis-heard “Columbine” as “Community”. What a jolt! But nothing had happened at Community and my kid was safely home from school via the city bus when I got there.

I don’t have any words. I’m not going to make some kind of incoherent political rant. If I could manage to get my words out straight they wouldn’t change anyone else’s mind. Even if they did, there are crayzees out there on both ends of the spectrum, those who shoot things up and those who are terrified of “Beto” taking their guns. And everything in between.

How ’bout this cute li’l valentine the GG made for me? I think he made it on his computer this morning. I could hear the printer going. I thought he had drawn it himself but he says he found it on them thar intertubes. Um, I’m not sure about the udder 🤣 but he knows I like COLORS!❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Ever ice fish? I have not. These feet are our nephew and his friend. I have never fished. When I was about three years old my dad “promised” to take me fishing. I was sooooo excited. Guess what? It never happened. I kept asking him about it for a few years but eventually it got to be a joke. When I was old enough to actually understand a joke, that is. I don’t think my dad had any real experience at fishing. Maybe he went out in Doc Read’s bote a few times when he was a kid?

Many years later, like a few years ago, the GG got himself a fishing license. It’s really easy to get them nowadays. I mean maybe it always was but you can do it online now and I think all you need to do is show the DNR guys your phone if they catch you. We went out in the Flote Bote and he and the UU, uh, fished. Their intent was not to eat their catch. They wanted to release them. I mean, who would clean them? Not meeeee. Okay. I thought this would be a quick process. It was not! And it freaked me out watching the fish struggle during the long process to remove the hook.

Marching bands? I marched throughout junior high and high school. I was a flute player although as soon as the first chair flute person I couldn’t unseat even though I was better than her graduated (a whole ‘nother story and she was also my FRIEND), I grabbed the piccolo. It was old and in HORRIBLE shape and MY PARENTS ACTUALLY PAID THE SCHOOL DISTRICT TO (TRY TO) GET IT FIXED. Anyway I thought I was hot shit to be “commanding” a line of flute players? Who can’t even be heard in a marching band. A teenage dictator. (Game of Thrones anyone? At least I couldn’t order anyone to be beheaded, not that I would want to.)

We marched in snow and mud (I’ll never forget somebody’s shoe coming off in the mud). When I went to college as a flute performance major, I did not march. Partly it was because flutes didn’t march (there weren’t even piccolos), partly because I was a flute snob. You MAY know the stereotype. Blonde, female, etc.🐽

I do miss the marching bands. I hate the caterwauling at the super bowl halftime shows. Playing music while trying to march from formation to formation is much more interesting. Oh well. I suppose a lot of people disagree with me. And that’s okay.

One of the few news/political-type things I DO agree with the GG about is that the Chinese balloon was a news distraction. I’m not sure what it was supposed to distract us FROM and I probably disagree with him about that.

But WTF is going on with all these other UFOs? I’m calling them that because that’s what they are. Unidentified Flying Objects. Unidentified = we don’t seem to know what they are. Flying = they are moving through the air without falling (until we shoot them down). Objects = do I need to explain what an object is?

This was not on my radar screen to write about at all until today when one was shot down over Lake Huron, near the (Canadian) Bruce Peninsula if the GooMaps screenshot I saw was accurate. That’s pretty close to home.

I dunno what to make of all this. I’m just a baggy old moom. Why are “we” suddenly seeing these things every day? Are they around all the time and “we” are not noticing them? Or is this a new phenomenon? After the last few crayzee years with TFG and COVID and all, what could be next? I do bet there are some air force fly-boys who are having a good time with this.

The GG is watching the Superb Owl with his brother. In Gaylord. That means I’m not gonna watch it, basically because I don’t care about feetsball but also because I don’t really know how to work the TV🐽 I’ve got Mountain Stage on instead (Janis Ian tonight!) and man oh man, I will NOT miss the Super Bowl ads or halftime show. Bring back marching bands!

I bought salmon Thursday to make salmon piccata. It was early in the morning and instead of waiting for the seafood counter to fully open, I bought a package of pre-cut filets. I do this all the time. It’s not as good as the fancy stuff but it’s fine for what I do with it.

That night. I opened the package and yeeecchhh, what is that smell? This fish was past its prime. The GG couldn’t tell so it’s a good thing we can use my nose. It turned out okay because I had a bit of frozen salmon (the fancier kind) and I managed with that, then threw the bad stuff out the next morning, which was garbage day.

But there was still a funky odor in the refrigerator. So today I took everything out of it and WASHED all of the shelves and drawers. I do this every few weeks anyway. There ALWAYS seems to be something that spills down the back behind the shelves and settles below the bottom crisper drawer. So it was about time. I found one or two items that were past the sell date but nothing rank or odiferous. So I dunno. Lingering spoiled fish odor? Note to self. INSPECT the package the next time. Or buy the fancy stuff.

I am now frustrated because: 1a) there is a f*cking basketball game on EMU NPR so I can’t listen to folk or Cuban Fantasy tonight. 1b) Umich NPR has non-musical shows on. 2) I CANNOT GET THE HOMEPOD TO CONNECT TO MY IPHONE. I think we need a new pod. Prob’ly “need” a new iPhone too but the phone is not the issue.

P.S. Oh yeah. I got to the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones!

6:00 PM is the time Mr. Golden Sun set tonight. He is swinging back up to the Great White North, which is not all that white at the moment, at least down here in the south. The south of the north, meaning the Great Lake State that is. If that made any sense and it probably didn’t but I don’t really care.

I stole this pic from a beach urchin. I’m not sure if this is the vernal pond behind her house but apparently there were a lot of dcuks there this morning. This is probably somewhere else though. The terrain looks less woodsy and Thursday and Friday are usually her “weekend” so she was probably scampering about somewhere else.

I saw the same kinds of cloud formations today (we live six miles apart) but wasn’t in a good place to get my own pic because I was at teleCublandia grinding against some horrible old css. I can certainly do css but I’ve been dreading the eventuality of untangling this particular bit of css. It was created before my time at the company and I’ve been there for 16 years. It has grown “organically” over the years with various people sticking their fingers into it. I’m not even sure a lot of it is even used but I’m afraid to delete anything because changing things willy-nilly sometimes results in a big KABOOM! Like navigation menus disappear. That’s actually usually a javascript issue but maybe you get the picture if you have any experience at trying to get a computer to follow your instructions aka coding. If you don’t, you are going WTF? (I only code our high fidelity html prototype aka the “demo”. Not the actual application. But the application and the demo share css and that is on me.)

I’m just downloading crapola outta my brain today. The GG worked as a computer scientist and I can barely explain my job to him. You are probably having a much more interesting day so please carry on.

At least I didn’t write about periods today🤣

I dunno what my fave person is eating but he is doing it loudly enough that I can hear it from the chitchen. I am not one of those people that write Dear Prudie or whoever because they have such a high sensitivity to eating noises that they can’t eat with loved ones who make a lot of noise. But still.

Once we were at the moomincabin and it was breakfast time and there was an even louder than usual eating noise going on across the room from me. I was like, what the heck is he eating? It turns out that while he may have been eating, he was eating quietly. But he was watching a video of a fox eating a trail cam. I imagine an alligator wouldn’t be quite as noisy🤣

DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH ABOUT WOMEN’S PERIODS

So is “crazy old” Florida backing off on their period laws? The ones where girls have to report details about their menstrual cycles to their coaches or whoever. Although there can certainly be menstrual health disorders, the whole bleeding thing is what women do… It isn’t a health issue by definition. In the Game of Thrones books they call it “flowering” and if you are a high-born “lady” it means you can be married off, usually to some stinky disfigured “lord” you would never choose, given your, uh, choice. Even if you are only 13 years old.

In my relatively affluent American family it was something to be hidden, at least when I was a child. So when I got my first period, I hid the first little bit of blood and prayed in my own godless way it wasn’t happening. But alas, it came back and when it did I interrupted my mom from a phone call and she IMMEDIATELY ended the call and tried to help me out.

She did the best she could but the tools were not all that great in those days. Big fugly pads that you couldn’t attach to your underwear without some kind of contraption that I can’t even remember. Tampons? Not appropriate for young girls and who would teach them how to wear them. Not my moom. What about sports? Swimming was the worst because you had to change in a big locker room with other girls (who were probably going through the same issues you were but I didn’t have a “bestie” then who I felt comfortable talking about it to). Gym teacher? Nah. She was more interested in volley ball and stuff. Actually she was a good gal and probably WAS sympathetic but I was too shy to approach a teacher about that stuff. And why do “they” always point to the gym teachers to deal with this stuff anyway?

I have an inkling that the generation after me has better tools to deal with the blood, etc., but I won’t go there.

A woman’s menstrual cycle should have NOTHING to do with whether she can participate in sporting events. If there are other related health issues, those are best not managed by any school district. The young woman can participate or not. It is her decision and maybe her coach IF she trusts her coach.

I hope this isn’t all TMI but I am concerned when school officials want to know about menstrual cycles.

I actually answered TWO phone calls from unknown numbers today. Why? They both came from 906-632. That is my home town and where we still own family beach property. So with some trepidation, I took a chance.

First call? Soo Historical Society. The Commander made an annual donation and I have continued that tradition. This is a small organization so you can’t just get online and feed your credit card number in. You have to fill out a paper form and mail it in. Problem? I filled everything out except the amount. I cracked up, told her the amount and that I couldn’t believe I had done such a stoopid thing.

Second call? Cloverland Electric robocall to inform customers that they would be doing chainsaw massacre in the area this month. That one couldda been done via email but okay. I took a risk to answer calls from unknown numbers but in both cases it was fine. I used to frequently get calls from 734-417, which is *my* phone (and I NEVER answered them) but I rarely get 906 calls. Not to mention my 906 friends and cousins talk to me via facebook or text or whatever.

Can I just say I am SO SICK of current events I can’t even… I’m as horrified as everyone else about the massive earthquake in Turkey but I don’t have the psychological energy to even think about it let alone express my horror. It’s a natural disaster and all we can do is move on, provide humanitarian aid if we can and help them rebuild.

Horrific stuff on a smaller scale is going on too. An Escanaba family lost their parents last weekend. The parents were driving to Sault Ste. Siberia last weekend to watch their son play basketball and were killed in an accident on the way. I don’t know these people at all but I remember a similar accident when I was in high school. And then, a Pictured Rocks hiker slipped on ice today and fell off the cliff into Lake Superior. He hasn’t been found… (and he won’t be) The GG and our friend Joan hiked that area in ICY conditions in the late fall. They were ultra careful and obviously survived.

I purposely did not watch the SOTU. From my seat on the other side of the wall from the TV it kinda sounded like a baseball game. From news reports and opinion pieces I read today, it sounded like “Dark Brandon” held his own with the harpies aka the GOP hecklers. I’m sure my housemate disagrees. But we’re not gonna talk about it. I love him anyway.

What I do want to talk about is what is up with women’s fashion today? Kyrsten Sinema dressed as Big Bird. @MTGREENEE as Cruella Deville? Those characterizations were actually made by other people on the internet. I was just looking at photos and thinking WTF? Um, various state legislatures are making dress codes for their female members (but not the males). I’m kinda like is there a dress code for not looking like a character from the comics?

DO NOT GET ME WRONG! I do not think there should be dress codes anywhere for either sex except to cover up so-called private parts. But ARMS are NOT private parts. So I am ALL FOR Kyrsten and Marge wearing whatever the hell they want to. Their ARMS were covered at least🤡 I also reserve the right to look at their stoopid outfits with goggle-eyes and laugh like hell.

Because around here you have to take photoooos of astronomical objects when you can actually seeee them.

I was walking back through the schoolyard this morning when I got this. I got another pic but although it was maybe more interesting, I decided not to post it. When I entered the schoolyard, I heard sirens somewhere. I couldn’t tell where. I mean this is a city if a small one and there are always sirens. It also didn’t sound really urgent like the sirens I heard years ago when one of the low-rent apartments across Maple was burning and if I remember correctly, a child was rescued. You could tell by the sounds of the sirens and horns that they were in a hurry and meant business. I met with one of my young reading partners at the school later that morning and I dunno how that subject came up (I did NOT bring it up) but I was happy to be able to tell her there was a good ending.

So when I got around the corner of the back of the school I realized that the whole side of one of the houses that back up to the south side of the school fence was flashing red! It wasn’t on fire, it was reflecting some sort of emergency vee-hickle parked in the street (which I couldn’t see). So I guess someone was not have a great start to their day. I do hope it improved.

Mine was fine except that I texted the GG to pick up some wrap sandwiches from Plum on his way back from breakfast with the UU. They were walking and the restaurant is across the parking lot from the store. Of COURSE The King of Cryptic Text Messages did not look at his texts so he came home empty-handed. He did STOP at the Plum where a certain bunch of folks were all excited about the Twinz. He redeemed himself by making a separate trip over there later. This time he came home with wraps and shrimp-fried rice from Panda House, which is also near the Plum.

Plenty of excitement, right? 💩💩💩