I’m sure I will reflect upon our COVID anniversary from time to time in the coming days but only when my thoughts are somewhat organized. They aren’t today so we’ll talk about food instead.

So the GG peered at me this afternoon and asked, “corned beef and cabbage?” I peered back at him and queried whether he expected meeeee to make corned beef and cabbage for St. Paddy’s Day. Because noooooo. I think my main ideas about how to celebrate the green day up until that point involved draping Froggy with his green Mardi Gras style beads, including the ones with the big lips, and posting a pic.

I have tried to cook corned beef a few times in my life. It did not go well. I supposedly have some Irish DNA (I have not done any of those tests) but apparently it didn’t transmit an innate ability to cook corned beef. The GG then kinda volunteered to cook corned beef. Um, he *may* have more Irish DNA than I do but I don’t think he knows anything more about cooking corned beef than I do. Plus it kind of drives me a little crazy to have him rattling around in the chitchen. Breakfast and preparing things for the grill are fine. Other stuff not so much. Rattly-bang-crash.

I knew that the Plum Market was offering take-home St. Pat’s dinners and PDQ I was online showing him a St. Patrick’s Day corned beef dinner for two. He’s picking it up on Tuesday. Yes that’s a day early. It’s okay. We have modern refrigeration here. This way I don’t have to TRY to cook corned beef and I don’t have to eat whatever he ends up with, which may or may not be any good. I dunno what the Plum does with corned beef but it’s gotta be better than what I do with it.

After all that, I checked out facebook and there was a thread the Uncly Uncle started about Pepe Le Pew a few days ago. Pepe is an obnoxious skunk cartoon character from our childhood days in case you aren’t familiar. The original post was about the “cancel culture”, which is a phrase that I don’t really understand but we won’t go there tonight except maybe that I wanted to cancel Pepe Le Pew when I was a child… What caught my eye in the meme the UU shared was Pepe Le Pew saying, “You are ze corned beef to me and I am ze cabbage to you”. Okaaaaayyyy. So that’s what got the GG going on corned beef and cabbage🐽

I know a lot of people are writing about today being the one year anniversary of the pandemic lockdown but it isn’t exactly the anniversary for me although it was close.

TWO years ago today, I threw my full sink-side compost container into the GARBAGE. Why? Well. The compost bin was in the back right corner of the yard, kinda behind that big tree (it’s since been moved, hence “was”). Our yard was covered with glare ice with a couple inches of water on top of that. It was all too much for me even with Yaks or Katoolas. Nope. Not goin’ out there. I was telling MMCB₁ about that this morning. She doesn’t remember the ice we had that March because she was whooping it up in Australia on her annual trip there, oblivious to all of our slip-slidin’ away here on the Planet Ann Arbor.

ONE year ago, MMCB₁ was scrambling to get HOME (early) from her *2020* trip to Australia and I was nervously standing in line waiting to vote (blue) in the Michigan presidential primary. We knew the virus was amongst us but who knew where. I always vote EARLY (I mean early in the morning! “early voting” has taken on a whole new meaning since then). I was third in line that day. We were all keeping a pretty good three feet away from each other, which was the recommendation at the time and avoiding talking about the virus. Santa Claus was outside the door welcoming everyone in and, well, you can read about it if you want. I did NOT want ORANGE to win and so was nervous about that as well as the virus. But I voted and then I commuted to work – at Cubelandia.

When I look back on this date in 2020, I know that it was the beginning of the end of the Baboonian Reign of Idiocracy. Unfortunately, I don’t think the OB or his wannabes are gone forever plus now we have this gun-totin’ screamin’ mimi from Georgia in the House along with some of her quieter but equally as ignorant cronies. I often wish for more women to attain positions of leadership. In this case, it’s a reminder to be careful what you wish for 👀

It was weeks later that I learned some young essential workers I know had been experiencing COVID-like symptoms since about that election day. But who knows? It was almost impossible to get tests then and they weren’t able to. If it was COVID, their cases were mild with no long-haul crapola, thank you zeus or whoever.

P.S. Apologies to my childhood/FB friend Mimi who I doubt reads this but she is ANYTHING but a screamin’ mimi. Highly intelligent and always gracious with a wonderful sense of humor🧡

I didn’t see any sun dogs today although I certainly have seen them in my lifetime. They happen in extremely cold temperatures and they can be spectacular so do The Google if you are interested.

It’s meeeee who is the Sun Dog. We have had a LOT of sun lately (more than usual) and decently warm temps so I carefully plan how and when to move TeleCubelandia outside for a bit. The back yard is blindingly bright in the morning but doesn’t warm up until mid-afternoon and by that time the sun doesn’t shine on the “lee” of the house. First world problems. And BTW, the “S” word is in the forecast. This is the Great Lake State and it’s winter.

I don’t really think about the British royals (or any celebrities) much. I have mixed feelings about the whole “break-up”. On the one hand, talking about suicidal thoughts should NOT be taboo and maybe if a celebrity discusses them on TV it will help others. I don’t really know because I have never experienced depression, not to mention suicidal thoughts. Short-term bouts of “blues” is about the extent of it for me and WALKING usually fixes me right up. But also. The British royals are who they are and I’m not sure M&H were being realistic if they thought she would “fit in” or whatever. They should have enough cash to survive on with or without the support of the family business but I do wish them well. To the minimal extent that I DO follow the British royals, I guess I was hoping for a different outcome. Oh well.

I had other complaints to post but I can’t remember them now, except that Mr. COVID Mohawk got a letter from the Secretary of State yesterday and since it was addressed to HIM, I did not open it. It turned out that it was the usual vee-hickle license tab renewal but the letter came in a different form factor and I didn’t recognize it. I ALWAYS renew the license tabs but this time heeeee did it and suddenly there was a crazy-haired mad scientist looking person in my chitchen talking about what an ordeal he had just gone through to renew our vee-hickles. Oh my. Back in the late 1990s (yes really), this online process was pretty easy. It is now (unbelievably) more difficult but I always manage to bludgeon my way through it. I am a business analyst who designs user experience stuff for a living. I think the state needs to hire some business analysts (like meeeee) to design their user interface. Well, except not meeee because I am happy working for TeleCubelandia.

One way to say it is in the absolute horror of having something show up in your chitchen that smells SO HORRIBLE that you find yourself running to the bathroom because your gag reflex is threatening to kick in and you want to be right next to the terlet just in case. It was okay. I managed to control it. It helped that we had temperatures in the low 60s today so I could open the bathroom window and let some fresh air in.

Where did this smell come from? It turned out to be what caused the warshing musheen first world problem the other day. An unidentifiable cloth item got stuck somewhere and stayed there long enough to get, well, icky, to put it mildly. It was not a mask but it has me thinking I should put masks in a mesh bag to wash them because it was about the size of a mask. Whatever it was, the warshing musheen is fixed now (darn it!🐽) (or not) and the offensive item is in the garbage cart OUTSIDE, zipped into a ziploc bag. The chitchen window is open and the fan is on. I can still smell it but I think I’m okay now. Also, I am about to put meatloaf in the oven and that should provide further help with masking the smell.

The other inflection for aaaaaahhh is how good it feels to sit out in some actual warm sunshine. 63 or whatever it was does not feel all that warm at this time of year if you are not moving and I wasn’t because I was working on my laptop. Still, I didn’t need a balaclava or a blanket and Mr. Golden Sun felt sooooo good.

P.S. No, the warshing musheen is apparently NOT FIXED yet. Stay tuned. (Not that you care or should care.) And don’t worry. If we need a new one, we can buy one.

Randomly looked out my front window and WOW! Paper jails! We used to call them vapor trails when I was a kid. Do we call them contrails now? I dunno. One of our childhood beach friends called them “paper jails” when we were young, mishearing the words, I guess. I wasn’t always a very, uh, nice child and I teased her about that. I wish I could apologize to her but she died a number of years ago.

It’s Sunday and I was home alone because the GG is trying to hike as much of the Ohio NCT as possible before it gets hot and buggy. I am okay with being home alone. Although I am old enough to retaaaar, I have resisted it because “I married you for better or worse but not for lunch”. (Also I love my cozy little career and the nice chunk of change that comes with it.) The pandemic has given me a taste of a 24-7 marriage and I am not a fan. I don’t think the GG is either.

I went for a Ninja ride this morning. My destination was Swan Corners and I eventually got there (no swans though) but not until my Ninja took me over to Cubelandia. My company still leases the building but that will end in a couple months. I am kind of amazed that despite YEARS of empty office/lab space in our office park and more since the pandemic, a nearby field has now sprouted the steel bones of a big office/lab (?) building. I KNOW the pandemic will end (someday, maybe) but so many of us have demonstrated our ability to run complex businesses online FROM ANYWHERE. Does it not make sense to hold off on erecting huge new buildings? Who will work there?

Oh man, I miss the geese. I made the turn into Cubelandia today and almost immediately had to brake because Mr. Gander was looking at me like he was ready to step into HIS road. Although there is plenty of wildlife to watch here at the Landfill, I miss watching the Cubelandia wildlife, especially the yearly life cycle of the geese.

The Landfill warshing musheen is down in a “corner” of the Landfill Dungeon. This warshing musheen is fine until it isn’t. It was NOT fine today.

This warshing musheen was purchased the same weekend the Planet Ann Arbor’s third high school — Sky[line] High — was finished and open for the public to visit. And we did visit it. It was so big it almost made me dizzy but we’ll go there some other day.

I put a small load in this morning, ate breakfast, started in on chores, went to get curbside grocks, took a little river ride. Came back thinking the warshing musheen would be done. Not. H-F-H-F flash flash flash. I’ve seen that behavior before but don’t know how to fix it. This time I couldn’t even figger out how to turn it off! Anyway.

I can do laundry pretty much any place as long as there is water and some kind of soap. So I dragged all of the wet stuff from the stalled warshing musheen upstairs and I double warshed most of it and then I put it all in the dryer FOREVER.

The GG will most likely fix this warshing musheen but there’s a part of me that hopes he won’t be able to because I really want a warshing musheen that texts me when it’s done (like my dryer does). The warsher does do a weak little beep beep beep when it’s done but it’s very hard to hear unless you are in exactly the right place upstairs. I do usually hear the spin cycle. I didn’t today. Which ended up meaning the musheen wasn’t working.

Back in the day, I’d’ve schlepped everything off to a laundromat. Can’t do that with COVID.

Sometime during the afternoon after chores, I went outside with my rumpl blanket (gifted), my iPhone (book), and a glass of whine. I hung out there until after the sun sunk over the Landfill.

This was a year ago today. It was a Thursday and I stopped at the Saline Road Meijer on my way home from work for a few things and I mean a few. I remember the days when I shopped (with small children) twice a week and bought tons of stuff including two packs of stickers for the older beach urchin who certainly had me well trained. In recent years, I do not shop like that. How I do shop (even pre-COVID) would be too long for this post.

In this pic there are still some Clorox wipes in stock. I did not buy any. I do not know why. I had some? I can always get more? Right? I learned to ration Clorox wipes PDQ. One per day on the terlet rim (TMI?). I somehow can’t bring myself to use a reusable cleaning implement on the terlet rim. Even though my terlet rim gets swabbed EVERY DAY, something about that grosses me out.

This was probably a GOOD thing. Clorox wipes are made from FABRIC (if I understand accurately) and therefore probably do not degrade as quickly in landfills as other substances. One day (after COVID began) I couldn’t find my one canister of Clorox wipes. Turned out the GG was in the back yard using Clorox wipes with wild abandon to clean some apparatus or implement. NO NO NO NO NO! We can’t buy those now.

For months and months and months, Clorox wipes were unavailable from Amazon. I used to check just for fun. “Only available for health care facilities.” Mouse got me some 7th Generation wipes (which are FINE!) from Plum (and some TP). Eventually I scored some wipes on Amazon (but not sure what I paid for them, probably beaucoup bucks) and they are now a bit easier to get and I have some on order that might be delivered next week.

I have learned to clean things (except for the terlet rim) via other stuff and that’s a good thing.

Yuck yuck yuck. A spec review and doing the taxes on the same day? Really?

I get why “people” feel the need to “do the taxes” before sending them off to the pros. I probably wouldn’t do it myself, at least not at this stage of the game. I have “done the taxes” in the past, both for us and for a couple of non-profit orgs. I’m capable. Accounting is probably one of the careers that would be right up my alley but I am not formally educated in it and I know enough to know when I’m in over my head. Nowadays if it were totally up to me, I’d probably just collect all the papers, fill out the organizer, throw it all in an envelope and send it off to Nancy.

Wait? Who’s Nancy? I’m not sure exactly which accountant is assigned to “do our taxes” this year but I don’t think there’s a Nancy. Somehow I woke up this morning thinking that the GG had ADAMANTLY told me that our taxes were not going to the usual folks. They were going to NANCY! I do not know if this was something I dreamed (I had some crazy dreams last night) or if I am conflating this with some kind of North Country Trail conversation.

Anyway, doing the taxes means that I get peppered with random questions about how much did we pay in property taxes for this or that and where is the invoice. I am usually conscientious about putting all invoices in THE TAX ENVELOPE but this year I failed in a couple of cases. I found the amounts online and I will sniff out the invoices this weekend. WHEN I AM NOT WORKING!

On the other side of the screen, Mr. Bear was also peppering me with questions. Actually he was peppering other people with questions and “ordering” me to do this or that. No, he is not my boss and don’t worry, this kind of behavior is typical and doesn’t bother me a whit. In the end, a potentially contentious spec review went smoothly because of his peppering. But I have another spec review tomorrow and we’ll see how that one goes.

DISCLAIMER: The red plaid maskless photo is NOT RECENT. It is a little over a year ago at Beggar’s Banquet in the “cowtown” of East Lansing. We were over there for the annual Quiet Adventure Water Symposium and Old Weird Mac and the GG are play facing it off at dinner. And yes we were all worried about COVID then but things had obviously not been shut down yet and I think we were all doing more hand-washing than anything at that time.

We certainly weren’t talking about our fears. We were sitting next to each other everywhere and hanging out with each other and about a bazillion other people wandering through the pavilion. At one presentation I went to, a guy WAS SITTING UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL TO ME. Believe it or not, I was less worried about COVID in that situation than I was about somebody invading my personal space.

We’ll talk about Squirrel Luckyshuckification some other day. Just try to say that without stumbling onto the F-word once or even twice 🤣

I posted this pic a year ago today AS I WAS LEAVING CUBELANDIA FOR MY COMMUTE HOME. It wasn’t my last commute. When I got home, I wrote this blahg entry, which obviously turned out to be WRONG WRONG WRONG. Aerosolized virus anyone? Yep, that’s what we were dealing with. One thing I wrote a year ago continues to be true and that is that we still don’t totally know the science behind this virus. We won’t talk about the fossils who run Texas and Mississippi except to say that, at least in Texas, some of the mayors and businesses are putting the brakes on the Big Unmasking. What a bunch of fools our ignorant semi-educated masses have elected. If y’all don’t want to vote for “socialist” candidates, at least run some Republican candidates who actually care about someone other than themselves, not to mention science.

I am deep into a very interesting novel, Moloka’i, which is about a girl/woman who spent her life in a leper colony there. After a long confusing day deciphering one of the worst spreadsheets I have ever encountered (I DID NOT CREATE IT), I did a reading session after I logged off from TeleCubelandia this afternoon. And had a terrible time putting the book down. Leprosy was a horrible disease for those who contracted it but that I know of it never reached pandemic proportions. Eventually it was renamed Hansen’s Disease and apparently is now easily cured by antibiotics, which is why I said “was” in the last sentence. At any rate, I am not [too] freaked out reading it given our ongoing pandemic, although I certainly feel empathy for the afflicted characters. An actual pandemic novel Earth Abides (do The Google) is on my re-read list but I am not ready to revisit that one just yet…

Just for fun, a text message play…

A beach urchin, arriving at the Rifle River Rec Area: [picture of safe arrival at rental camp cabin]
The GG: Which cabin?
KW: Which cabin? [jeebus]
Beach urchin: Bitch
Beach urchin: BIRCH
Beach urchin: OMG!!!!! 😳
[a couple more texts]
KW: You callin’ yo mama a bitch?🤣

I love iPhone autocorrect, don’t you?

I do not have ANYTHING in my brain worth writing about today so we’ll see where this ends up if anywhere.

The pic is Mr. Golden Sun lighting up the trees in the Haisley woods just enough after dawn that he’s high enough in the sky to, uh, light them up. We’ve got another 10 days where this kind of photoooo is a possibility, then daylight savings will put me back in the dark for a while. Which I actually kinda prefer. I like to be “invisible” and I am because I wear black/dark gray. Yeah, the usual worry warts will fuss that automotive vee-hickles can’t see me. Well, I am mostly on sidewalks and I can see (and hear) automotive vee-hickles that are blocks away. I am ALWAYS on the lookout.

I also look out for Stinkerbelle the Skunk. ’tis the season. Once at around this time of winter we got eight inches of snow or whatever overnight. I went out at 0-skunk-30 to start shoveling out and figured out that the funny little trails UNDER the snow were from skunks burrowing around the neighborhood. I think that was in the years before “they” started finding rabid skunks all over this side of town. Suddenly we had a lot fewer skunks. We don’t know for sure but we suspect the city embarked on a quiet little eradication program. I am an aminal fan and I have nothing against skunks. They’re an important part of the ecosystem and I just avoid them. But rabies brings a different variable into play. (Sshhh, don’t tell the folks on Next Door Neighbor any of this!)

Anyway, I have been trapped here for the last couple days with a COVID Mohawk person who has been frenetically bopping around like crazy and talking at me while munching on Trenary Toast right smack in my face. Trenary Toast is a yooper thing but I am not a fan. Dry dry dry hunks of cinnamon flavored bread. In my book, cinnamon toast is “Bunny Bread” that is toasted, BUTTERED, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Having somebody crunch Trenary Toast in your face? It reminded me of the time somebody was crunching pistachio nuts on a Family Trip to the Badlands. You know the kind of trip. The one where the car breaks down, the kids get sick, and the dog runs away🐽 That was a generally stressful day and the noise associated with aggressive pistachio chewing did not help lower the stress level.

Love y’all, KW

P.S. Also on that trip? Nobody got sick. We didn’t have a dog. The POC didn’t break down but on our last (and most stressful) day, the fuel pump (we figgered out later) made a humming noise for at least 100 miles. Cheers!

At least not unless you are EXPECTING Microsoft to call.

Not only did I earn my pay as a systems analyst in the online banking industry today, I had the rather dubious “pleasure” of helping untangle a mess with a money transfer app. It wasn’t my mess and I won’t out the mess-ee. It wasn’t the GG’s mess either except for his role in sorting it out. Short story, canceled card.

That said, I use a money transfer app on my phone. It doesn’t really matter which one it is although it wasn’t the same one as was used in today’s mess. I use my app to send money to a VERY limited number of people. When I send money to them, they don’t get asked to enter any kind of personal information in order to collect it. We have to accept a connection with the first transaction and after that, it just goes.

I spent a good amount of time this afternoon (between the cracks of doing my PAID job) helping the GG get set up on my app so he would understand how these things work. I transferred $10 to him and, in the end, the transfer was successful. No this wasn’t a useless transaction from our bank account to our bank account. He set up a different receiver for the money. One that I am not even privy to. Which is okay.

I am here to remind everyone, if anyone calls/texts/emails/whatever telling you that they have money for you if you click a link and provide personal information: 1) DO NOT CLICK THE LINK and 2) DELETE THE MESSAGE PRONTO!!! It is not Microsoft. Microsoft doesn’t hand out money to random people. *I* do not hand out money to random people, so if you get that kind of message from meeeee, it is NOT MEEEEEE!

If you want to use a money transfer app, make sure you are connected ONLY with people you know and trust. And make sure you TALK to them offline (outside of the money app) to agree to be connected. The online banking industry is diligent about keeping up with security but it’s still a whack-a-mole game.

Willya look at that “gawky” looking kid? Gawky is her word. I agree that she is wearing a funny (but happy) expression but this person has NEVER been even one iota of gawky. Yah, I know I’m her moom. She obviously doesn’t take after meeeeee. This pic? Over the weekend, I found some old photos with the .pict extension. I think they came from a Quick Cam(?) that we used to use. My brand new laptop/OS couldn’t display them. I did The Google and found a conversion site and they are now little (38K) jpgs.

March came in more or less lambish (except for the wind) here on the Planet Ann Arbor. Sault Ste. Siberia was by all reports another story. Whiteout conditions and icy icy icy roads.

Love y’all and g’night, KW

The pic, that is. The moooooooon rises in the back yard so if I am hanging out in the front of the house, I sometimes miss it if I’m not thinking about it. Or if it’s cloudy.

So, we go in and out of marriage phases (don’t worry, this isn’t gonna end in a “hold onto your shorts” moment). When I was a “kid” and first married to the GG (and we were 28 then so we weren’t really “kids”), I used to be nervous if he was outta town and I was in the house alone. That feeling intensified when we had our children. What if someone breaks in or a weird person comes to the door? No one has ever broken in (knock on wood) and weird people sometimes came to the door pre-COVID and I dealt with them.

Fast forward to middle/high school kids. I got less nervous and there were weekends when it was kinda Girls Alone and Dad with his Twin Brother. Which was okay with me. And there were all the times I drove with my daughters to the yooperland to hang out at the moominbeach with the moominfam.

When they were young, I drove but I’m particularly remembering a time when we were driving tandem with me in the POC (crappy old ISLAND TEAL Plymouth minivan) and them in the Indefatigable (ancient Jeep Wrangler). The 16-year-old was driving and when we stopped to gas up at Indian River, a young couple next to my vee-hickle were changing a newborn baby girl and I remember thinking that in 16 years, they might be driving tandem with their daughter in another car.

Later on, at a time when the GG was still working and I was not, I was frequently traveling solo to the yooperland and The Commander once wondered if our marriage was okay. She figgered out that it WAS. And it WAS, *I* was checking up on The Commander and Radical Betty. And spreading my wings.

Now. In the COVID days… We are together all day every day. When he goes outta town, I am happy. We love each other but we both need space. And (knock on wood) I am never a-skeered of staying at the Landfill alone. Not even when I hear people drag racing on N. Maple. Yes, really.

What can I say? Took my 0-skunk-30, then settled in to a morning of vacuuming, mopping, laundry and…

…ordering stuff on the internet. Lemme see, cleaning/household crapola. I’ve been ordering a lot of that stuff from Amazon since waaaay before the pandemic. It usually works out well. Aaaaand… Monkfish from Luke’s Lobster. Yeah, Julia Child’s fave fish. I have a vague memory of that episode and also think I have it in a cookbook. And then tamales I randomly ran across online. We’ll see how that goes. I’ve ordered from Luke’s before but not from the tamale place.

And yes, I know I can probably get both of those things locally, the monkfish when Monahan’s has it, the tamales probably any time. I do like that Luke’s is (according to a NYT article) involved in supporting the Maine fishing community and other folk. As much as I try to reduce my Pandemic Food Stash, I seem to also keep increasing it. I guess we have a “complicated” relationship?

In the afternoon, I settled in to finishing Echo Wife, which I started after work yesterday. This is a REALLY STRANGE book and I highly doubt it would be everyone’s cuppa but I enjoyed it a lot. I was gonna give it a 4 (out of 5). There were three instances of “exact same” and other flaws that I can’t easily articulate. But the story hung together for me despite many moments of “wait, what?” and after I read the author’s acknowledgements I bumped my rating up to 5. I dunno what to say except google it if you don’t know me well enough to have an idea of my sometimes weird taste in reading material.

Amazon Woman and I usually touch base on Mondays (which I GREATLY appreciate BTW). I love a boss who keeps in touch and provides support where needed but doesn’t micromanage. Anyway, she always asks how my weekend was and more often than not my answer is “boring”. Her life is a lot more interesting but then, she has an almost-teenage child. My life was maybe more interesting when I had teenage children. But inside my head it is NEVER boring.

So here is “my” woods (i.e., behind the Landfill) today. Wet and muddy except for the “trail”, which is totally glare ice. I climbed up on a big pile of leaves to get this pic. I have plenty of water and mud in my back yard but the paths are not icy and the glaciers are melting. A beach urchin reports that the weather forecast for tomorrow includes possible thunderstorms. I’m a bit skeptical but if so, bring ’em on!

Not the best pic. I wouldda at least tried to “frame” it better or get a better angle without such a busy background. But it’s an interesting sculpture. And better than the COVID Mohawk pic I also got. Or any of the pics I took today, which is a big fat ZERO!

One of my recent book goals (or whatever), was to re-read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation “trilogy” along with its sequels and prequels. Seven books in total. I didn’t think I had read the sequels before but it turned out I did because I remembered the ending. The prequels were new to me.

I started at the beginning with the first book in the original trilogy (Foundation) and it took me a while to get, I dunno, re-acclimated, maybe? I used The Google and found that quite a lot of the original trilogy was written as short stories in the EARLY 1940s. With that knowledge, I plunged ahead and began encountering little bits and pieces of memories. Hari Seldon, Bayta, Arkady, Trantor, Terminus. And more.

I greatly enjoyed this trip through my own time musheen as well as Isaac Asimov’s. Along the way, I read all kinds of criticism, mostly about his sequels. I have to admit I understood the flaws and as I was re-reading, I wondered (as amateur critics claimed) if his publishers had pushed him to write the sequels so he came up with some “crazy” stuff. I dunno. I enjoyed the sequels way back when and I enjoyed them this time around.

The prequels were about Hari Seldon’s life and I thought they were pretty solid.

All that said, this stuff is what I think of as “classic” sci-fi. Were the characters multi-dimensional? Naw. But who cares? Asimov clearly had an amazing array of creative ideas in his head and so what if his stories weren’t perfectly thought out. I’m thinking that he had SO many ideas that he couldn’t figure out how to fit them all into books before he died.

I’m gonna take a little break but at some point, I may dive into his robut robot stuff.

I’m reading an almost crazier book now, Echo Wife. I’m enjoying the book but every time the phrase “exact same” comes up, I get a grinding noise in my head. Isn’t that what editors are for?

O-haaaa-o has a lot of canals and some rivers but… bdah bdah bdah… I was gonna say no Big Water but then I remembered Lake Erie. Duh.

So this pic is a text I got today. The person is Urban Hiking in Dayton, on the Buckeye Trail, which shares trail with the North Country Trail. 20 miles a day, took a Lyft to get from point A to point B today. Yes, masks are required on Lyfts. You know I asked. His Lyft gal (Kathy? or is it Barb?) is gonna watch for his “order” (or whatever it is) tomorrow. Yes, he’s a popular guy, especially with the wimmen. Even with his COVID mohawk, I guess.

Kayak Woman? Blaaaaaahhhhhh… Yes today was a work day. Most of the team had an “exciting” start to the week and are now all dead taaaarrrrred. I wasn’t involved in their excitement but their lack of energy somehow transferred to meeeee, even though we are now totally working in cyberspace.

I do have stuff to do (I always have stuff to do) but I am waiting for information on a lot of things and I wasn’t in the mood for some of the “bookkeeping” aspects of my job today. Late in the afternoon a couple of training sessions showed up so I did those. The typical online banking stuff about fraud and money laundering, etc. I have absolutely NOTHING to do with any of those things at work. Believe me, we have teams upon teams of specialists in those things. But everyone has to take the training. And pass the QUIZ at the end. I used to be nervous about the quizzes but they are just multiple choice and in the end it’s all common sense stuff. Like don’t give/accept expensive gifts in exchange for special services. Duh.

The Commander used to tell me how much I hated multiple choice tests when I was in grade school. “But sometimes there isn’t just one right answer”, I would say. I don’t really remember this. I learned how to rock multiple choice and nowadays when I take these little quizzes, if I miss one it’s always because I didn’t CAREFULLY read the question and/or options.

So I am about to heat up leftovers again. I am on Mother’s March this weekend, trying to slowly make my way through more of some frozen stuff that is still perfectly edible but not what I would want to serve for dinner, even with our extremely relaxed standards. And I am awaiting the [temporary] return of the Frog Hopper to our driveway, which should be happening any minute.

And here it is (the Frog Hopper (and a couple bottles o’ whine)). Thank you 🐭. G’night, KW

One of my PacNW blahggy buddies posted about her cousins yesterday. I’m not gonna link to her this time because, well, mainly because I think (like me) she sorta likes to fly her blahg a bit under the radar and this entry is about family “stuff”. I did offer to be her pretend cousin because she is what my Jewish buddies call a MENSCH and I think she deserves well, not *better* cousins because these folks are HUMAN and humans are imperfect (ask my kids!). But I have been blessed by wonderful cousins from both parents’ siblings and I wish that kind of family for everyone. I have my own family “stuff” but it doesn’t involve cousins.

One thing she wrote about made me go, “WAIT! WHAT?” for the second day in a row. When she was a kid, her extended fam took family vacations at a hotel called Gitche Gumee. IN WASHINGTON STATE! WAIT! WHAT?

Throughout my entire life, Gitchee Gumee is one of the names I have called Lake Superior, the big body of water I grew up on. This tipped my world a bit sideways so googly googly googly. As near as I can figure out… YES it is a Native American term from the Ojibway language. There are many spelling variants, which I won’t list. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow spelled it Gitchee Gumee and that’s how I have always spelled it.

It means “big sea” or “huge water” but is usually associated mainly with Lake Superior. In 1878, Bishop Baraga (google him), wrote a dictionary that included “Otchipwe-kitchi-gami” meaning “the sea of the Ojibwe people”. That would be Lake Superior but apparently “kitchi-gami” applied to ANY big body of water. I’ve been to the Pacific Ocean and it certainly qualifies as a big body of water. I dunno who named that hotel or why. Maybe they had Lake Superior or Ojibway tribe connections or maybe they were simply honoring the old poem. There has to be a connection but I dunno what it is.

I was a little kid, like six maybe, when I drew a picture of Gitchee Gumee. To me at that age, he was kind of a “monster” albeit not necessarily a scary monster. My picture was very colorful and full of carefully crafted “designs” (I learned this kinda stuff from my older MacMu cousin Sally) to fill in his face and clothing, etc. That thing hung up in the moomincabin beside the Sunfish sailbote trophy for many years. I wish I could share it today but it is no longer around and has probably disintegrated. Alas.

I have owned Gertrude for going on 10 years now. I went to turn her top oven on to heat up some leftover enchiladas for dinner tonight. As I leaned in to click upper-oven bake 200 start, somehow “chicken nuggets” caught my eye. Wait! What? Gertrude has a SETTING for CHICKEN NUGGETS? I use the timer function just below all the time. That is I use it twice a year when I make Chex mix (three times this year because I didn’t want the leftover cereal to get stale and end up in the compost).

We bought Gertrude BEFORE we gutted the crappy old 70s Landfill Chitchen. Why did we buy a new stove? I’m not sure how old the stove that came with the landfill was but it was OLD when we moved in and occasionally one or another of the electric burner coils (or whatever they are) would crap out. The GG would go over to Master Tech and order a new one, install it, and we’d be good to go.

So once, I was over at Cubelandia and a beach urchin was cooking something and one of those old burner coils burned out in a SPECTACULAR way. As much as I’m glad she wasn’t injured in any way, I’m also kind of glad I wasn’t home. I’m sure she was a lot calmer than I wouldda been. This time when the GG went over to Master Tech, he could not get a replacement.

Well, okay. Being US, we couldn’t agree on a replacement stove so we lived with a three burner stove for a couple years. Eventually we took another stab at it and there was Gertrude big as life. That’s my stove, I said, and even though she is a brand that isn’t particularly highly rated for quality, she has served us well (knock on wood).

I have never baked chicken nuggets in Gertrude and I doubt I ever will.

And other trivia.

Like two (count ’em) recent postal experiences. One, I got a text from “Marc” at the “USPS” that he had tried to deliver a package but no one was home and I could click the link to discuss delivery options with him. Um, noooo. For one thing, this is a known scam. Even if it had a chance of being real, there is someone here (usually meeeee) 99% of the time. I see almost ALL deliveries of everything from my vantage point at TeleCubelandia The Green Couch. So, NOOOO, I did not click the link.

The funny thing is that I was actually expecting a delivery from Amazon via USPS. Amazon kept telling me it was late, then it said it was probably lost. Did I want a refund? I clicked the tracking link and guess where it was last seen? Anyone guess Texas? Houston. I cracked up. I decided to wait a bit longer. Lo and behold, it arrived today. It wasn’t anything critical to my existence or even my happiness. Just a package of Windex wipes. I started buying cleaning/household supplies via Amazon waaaaay before the pandemic. The short story is I don’t enjoy spending any more time in the big grock stores than I have to.

So a few postal thoughts. 1) I don’t blame either of these issues directly on DeJoy or tRump or even the postal service. Really, I don’t (as much as I HATE tRump). 2) I believe postal service reform is necessary but probably not for the same reasons as DeJoy and tRump might think it is. 3) I think designing positive changes to the postal service will be extremely complex and I doubt that DeJoy is the person to lead the effort. 4) This has nothing to do with our neighborhood carriers who typically do their jobs competently even when under stress, like they have been doing throughout this pandemic year and recent snow storms.

Can I just say that I CONTINUE to be NOT READY to dine INSIDE a restaurant or even OUTSIDE one. I don’t care if case numbers are plummeting. We (aka SCIENCE) don’t really know why they are declining or whether they’ll go back up. Vaccines are still not readily available, at least not in our county, except for folks in elder care facilities and medical workers (who SHOULD be getting them). I strongly believe that other essential workers should take priority, like grocery/retail/restaurant workers. And TEACHERS if we continue to talk about returning to in-person classes. More on that if I ever get my writing chops together on that subject but I seethe when parents complain about their kids’ their struggles with online school without mentioning that teachers have needlessly lost their lives.

I love the Dexter pub. It was one of our go-to places back in 2006 when my dad was incarcerated in the Henry Ford Hoosegow with a smashed pelvis and The Commander was staying in a hospital campus apartment. I drove over there almost every day, usually in Daisy (2005 blue Honda Civic, still in the fam but likely to leave soon). Fortunately, it was a very dry winter. Many nights I would get home and send out a daily status email to family and friends and then we would drive out to Dexter for dinner.

Alas, the Dexter pub would not be my first choice for a return to indoor dining. They may well follow the rules for occupancy and seating, etc., but I wonder what their ventilation system is like.

Also, a lot of us have COVID hair (including me) but I do not like to be out in public with a baggy old guy sporting a COVID Mohawk🐽🐽🐽

We will eat chili at the Dexter pub bar again someday🧡🧡🧡

Oh, not today. That weak sun was my late afternoon view out the front of the Landfill.

Yesterday we went to Argentine. Actually we went to Flint (yes, that Flint). We went to Flint to participate in a can exchange with FlaMan. The deal is, if his empty cans are fully drained of beer and neatly bagged (or even just bagged) when we get there, they are magically replaced with full cans. It was a while before the GG managed to train FlaMan to follow that procedure but a man does need his beer so Pavlovian conditioning eventually yielded a result. Last time the GG brought a haul of cans down here it was Recycle Eve, so he put them out in the street and the neighbor across the street IMMEDIATELY snagged them.

Another rule the GG has adopted, after narrowly missing a black ice accident in January 2020, is “I don’t do 100 mile beer runs in bad weather.”

I didn’t really want to go to Flint yesterday. I was up for a road trip and the weather was fine and the roads were dry but the easiest way to get to Flint is up the freeway and I was NOT up for a freeway trip. So the GG offered me a trip up “through Pinckney”. We turned in the wrong place and didn’t ever end up in Pinckney but we meandered the back roads through and around a number of other little burgs and that was cool.

Including Argentine. I often follow along on our meanders with GooMaps on my phone. When Argentine Road came in to view I squeeed just a bit, silently to myself. But I couldn’t remember why it was familiar. Then we crossed Clyde Road and… Oh yeah, when we used to take our girl scout troop for overnights at Camp Linden, we would exit the freeway at Clyde, drive a bit west to Argentine and turn north to… Hmmm… What was that road? It was a little road on the left and I don’t think we took ONE trip to that camp that we didn’t MISS THE TURN and the whole convoy of mini-vans had to do u-ies to get back on track.

I looked for the turn on our way north but missed it. But. We ended up taking Argentine partway home too and this time, I looked up from my phone to see a road sign proclaim HOGAN ROAD! YES!!! That was it! We didn’t explore any further yesterday (the drive was getting to be a little looooong) but we’ll go back some other time and check it out.

Because a couple of area girl scout camps have closed since my kids were troop members, I wasn’t even sure Camp Linden was open but according to The Google, it is alive and thriving. And has a rifle range… I’m sure the GG was interested in that little tidbit.

Yesterday I was kinda telling a story about my late brother and not trying to tackle feminism and sexual harassment and whatever all in one post. I don’t have the writing chops to do that in a daily blahg or ever. But well, what *about* female trombone players?

Yes, they exist! There were/are three in the FinFam. My [late] aunt Bubs, a niece, and a relatively new in-law. I dunno what it was like for Bubs to play in the Soo High bone section back in her day. There was ONE female trombonist in my high school band and she seemed to be able to dish it out as well as any of the guys. I actually have NO MEMORY of how many female trombonists were in the groups I played in at Interlochen or in college. Interlochen? I’m sure there were a few. College? No clue.

I was participating in virtual Oscar Tango porterzoomation when I wrote yesterday’s blahg so you get what you get. Were we arguing about the Russian Revolution again? If so, why? (Don’t answer that!) Upon reflection, I have been thinking that some of the stuff those old trombone players said and did would probably get them kicked out of school nowadays. I probably remember it more fondly than some others because people didn’t really try to mess with me that often. I was [usually] wind symphony first chair flute and there were a handful of [male] band members who knew me (and my brother) from high school in Siberia and I suspect there was a third reason but I’m not gonna go there.

I will go on record to say I don’t think people should EVER bully or harass ANYONE. BUT. I also think that our society is not oriented towards providing young people with the tools they need to stand up against that kind of crapola. As a young music student I watched so many of my female peers struggle with harassment mainly from male professors and I had ONE episode of my own, which I LEARNED FROM. Why these old fossils think they might be attractive to the average 20-year-old, I will never figure out. Hint: it isn’t because of your musical proficiency. We admire your playing but we want to LEARN from you, not SLEEP with you. Young ladies, stand with a fist!

Floating around out on social media somewhere is a wonderful high school pic of my brother and a couple of his friends playing their instruments wearing Mexican style PONCHOS! It’s probably a yearbook pic but it isn’t in any of my yearbooks because I was in college by then. Instead you get this pic of him after destroying our old moomincabin outhouse. He sent the pic to his colleagues in the auto company and yes my blahg seems to have taken a dive from G-rated this week. I am sorry. Or not.

To balance this one out, the second pic is of our parents BUILDING the outhouse back in the day. I have a LOT of outhouse stories but let’s not go there today.

P.S. Apologies to Joel, a fantastic trumpet player who could play a mean screech trumpet (google it). He was also one of my brother’s best friends and a good friend of mine who, while we were both at Moo-U, braved many rides to and from the yooperland in the snow with meeee at the wheel of my CRAPPY old rusty green Pinto Wagon. I haven’t seen or heard from him in years and I’m sure he knows nothing about this blahg of blather but when I stereotyped trumpet players I wasn’t thinking about Joel and feel compelled to make it right by him.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »