Archive for September, 2006

Summer Highlights

Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

Despite having a great time at classes yesterday and today, I was a little down for a while this afternoon (nothing to worry about, those who care ;-)). I couldn’t think of anything to blahg about, so I made myself think of the three absolute top events of the summer. They aren’t really in any order, except chronological:

  1. Kayaking at the Pictured Rocks with Aimee, Radical Betty, Grinch, and Lizard Breath.
  2. Manistique Lake with Sam, jcb, Manette and Nick.
  3. Yarn store odyssey to Alanson and surrounding area with Mouse, The Commander, and Radical Betty.

Yaknow, those were all road trip type things. That doesn’t count all the good times sitting on the beach or in the hollow in front of the Old Cabin or kayaking around the bay or grillin’ on the back of the deck or behind the garage or Anne/Fran/K-hattans and Liz-n-tonics, etc., etc. The local beach stuff doesn’t change a whole lot from year to year. And that’s a good thing. And then there were great times with friends here on The Planet A2. And Houghton Lake. More fun times than I can enumerate. Love y’all. Sappy? Yeah! I’m all travelin’ funeral today. At least I didn’t write a whole blasted book! So, deal! 😉

Where Were You?

Monday, September 11th, 2006

When John F. Kennedy was shot?

I was in 4th grade at Lincoln School in Sault Ste. Siberia. Mrs. Scott had left the room. I can’t believe that teachers used to leave classrooms full of grade school kids alone even for a minute. Can they do that now? Anyway, when she came back in, she was staggering a bit and her voice broke as she said, “the president has been shot!” CRASH!!! Patty McKerchie tipped her chair over backwards and landed on the floor. That wasn’t an unusual event but this provided a better excuse than usual.

I was sick! I don’t mean that the president’s assassination made me sick. I mean that I had been sitting there all day quietly incubating a loverly little bacterial infection in my throat. I think we were sent home early and I had plans to play at a friend’s house after school that day. I can’t remember her name but I wasn’t really all that excited about it. She wasn’t Laurie Pingatore, my main partner in hooliganism, just some other kid that wanted to play with me for god knows what reason. Why I didn’t say I was sick and just go home, I do not know.

*Finally*, that long afternoon ended. I dragged myself home and admitted to The Commander that I didn’t feel well. I spent the next few days in and around bed, becoming highly irritated as I recovered because we got a couple of days off school and there was a wonderful “early” snowstorm and everybody else was out sledding and I was stuck inside. Sick. And there was nothing on TV except JFK’s funeral. Come to think of it, there was never anything much on TV anyway, with the two channels we had up in the yoop back in those days.

Yes, I do know what today is. I just don’t have much to say about it. It isn’t that I don’t care or that I’m disrespectful, just that there are plenty of others to do the talking. What could I possibly add? I do remember where I was five years ago and it was even mildly interesting, given that I was oblivious to the events of the day until hours after they happened. But my brain ricocheted back to an earlier memory of another unforgettable day.

Where were you? What do you remember? About either of those days.

The Eagle Has Landed

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

And it took off with a brown mammal of some sort with a long thin tail. Larger than a mouse. This occurred right smack in front of my vee-hickle on the southbound I75 SUV Speedway somewhere near Houghton Lake. I felt rather lucky that I didn’t collide with it.

Ghost Ship

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

When I got up this morning, it seemed pretty cold so I looked at the thermometer. 48 degrees. Okay. I sashayed down to the beach in my bare feet like I always do. The air was colder than the water so there was mist above the water all over the bay, partially obscuring my view of the shipping channel. I was walking along thinking “my feet are FREEZING” and trying to figure out if I could get frostbite at 48 degrees and experimenting to see if walking in the water would actually be warmer than walking on the sand.

I looked up and out toward the shipping channel and spied a ghost ship gliding out of the mists in the unmistakable shape of The Edward L. Ryerson, I didn’t even need binoculars to recognize it:

http://www.wellandcanal.ca/shiparc/inlandsteel/ryerson/ryerson.htm

An all time favorite boat of many people, including my brother and Grandroobly, and for a moment, I almost wondered who was in the pilot house. 😉 The Ryerson has been out of service for a few years but, at the beginning of the summer, Pete told me that they were going to run it again this year. This was my first sighting. And for me, it’s the last boat of the season. Goodbye until next summer.

Now, excuse me while I go thaw out my feet. Turns out, I had looked at the *indoor* thermometer this morning. The *outdoor* thermometer read 36! Bare feet? Yeah!

The Last Hurrah

Saturday, September 9th, 2006

Brrrrrring. Brrrrrinng. “Hello.” “Hey Radical Betty, it’s the last beach day. Come on down to the beach. Pete left some beer and we need to get rid of it!”

And so it goes. It’s the end of another summer here on the shores of Gitchee Gumee. It is a beautiful, clear, sparkling sunny day and the wind is out of the northwest. The Commander and Radical Betty and I sat down there and drank the last beer of the summer. Grok grok. Froggy too! Grok grok. We tried to conjure some boats but none appeared. A woman came out of the woods down at the end of the beach and we couldn’t figure out who she was so we discussed that subject absolutely to death. Until we finally figured out it was our friend Kay, minus her kayak. Too cold. We schlepped all of the boats up except for one kayak and if it is anywhere near kayakable tomorrow morning, I’ll be out there for one last hurrah. Oh, and, uh, I might be cute? Hmmm.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Friday, September 8th, 2006

What the heck are those blinkin’ red lights out on the horizon there?

Got off the I75 SUV speedway at exit 386 last night. Heading down M28 to the Piche Side Road I saw a long line of blinking red lights on the northern horizon. I knew what they were but it took me a minute.

I’ve been up here on this blasted beach a lot of times this summer. When I first came up here on June 12th with Aimee, we walked down on the beach and I looked over at the Canadian hills like I always do and there were there things sticking up above them. What the heck were those?

Well, folks, the Canadians are building a HUGE wind farm. I can’t even count how many windmills are over there on the Canadian hills. When Mouse and I were up here last, there were, I dunno, 6-9 flashing red lights at night. They turn the lights on as they turn on the windmills. Now the number of flashing lights is uncountable but it stretches along the entire Canadian hill horizon.

I’m not sure what I think about these things. I do not feel totally hostile though…. Stay tuned. Or not.

Some things never change: PETE AND ESTHER were here when we got here. They are almost like second parents to me but I haven’t seen them in YEARS. They have not changed in years, except in the way we all change. I LOVE THEM!!! Danny (or Richard or Horace), please google me!! 🙂

School Crank

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

“I know I should just sit on my hands here but it’s been a slow day. Both of my kids graduated from Community and are (or was, in the case of the recent graduate) very successful paper-writers at what I am told is a competitive college.”

I wrote that and posted it to the Ann Arbor school cranks email listserve. I’ve been on that list since it began eight years ago but I hardly every post anything because it’s just about the most contentious listserve on earth. One time people spent about a week bashing Slobodan Milosevic. Yes, that *is* off topic but this listserve was deliberately set up to be a free-for-all and this *is* Ann Arbor. (Y’all can do whatever you want with that. ;-)) The school cranks list is lots of fun but you have to be wearing some pretty heavy duty flame-proof clothing if you decide you want to play. I usually don’t.

Although the list has gone rather dormant in recent years, yesterday it sprang to life when one of the more abrasive participants tried to engage in a little Commie bashing. That’s Community High, not the Communist Party. The claim was that kids who graduate from Commie are not prepared to write acceptable college-level papers. This was misinterpreted from something that happened on the Diane Rehm Show that I can’t even begin to describe.

Say what? Elizabeth: “Moom, I gotta go. I have three 10-page papers to write tonight.” “Moom, I got honors on my SIP.” (huge thesis-like beast) Hmmm. This is a Commie High graduate. Not prepared to write papers? My kids may not be Rhodes Scholars but they are hard-working, conscientious students who get good grades. And despite graduating from Community, they can write papers, fer chrissake. Good ones. Come to think of it, when I got to college so could I, and I graduated from some stoopid ol’ yooper high school. grok GROK!

So I unglued my hands, put on my flameproof suit, and wrote that little reality check, injecting a bit of what I hoped would be interpreted as humour. Held my breath and hit the send button. None of our schools are perfect. They all have the good, the bad, and the ugly. I think there are probably kids in even the “best” high schools who emerge after four years minus the skills to write college-level papers. I don’t know where that woman was coming from. Well actually I think I do but we won’t go there. But she is not gonna let something that ridiculous get by me!

Thor, God of Thunder!

Wednesday, September 6th, 2006

Kee-reist! What the heck did I do to deserve that? I knew that the potential for pop-up thunderstorms existed this afternoon. Thunderstorms are one of the four weather conditions I don’t [power]walk in but, when it was time for my afternoon [power]walk: 1) it was sunny, 2) I took a [broken] umbrella, and 3) my afternoon walking route snakes throughout the neighborhood in such a way that I can get back home fairly quickly from most points. So, off I went. And then it started to rain. And then it started to rain great big drops. So I opened my [broken] umbrella. And then it started to thunder. And lightning. And big gusts of wind. And, uh, HAIL!?! My [broken] umbrella was really no match. I made it home safely and Mouse did too, reporting huge vee-hickle-drowning puddles in the streets. Now there are sirens everywhere. Accidents? Lightning fires? I dunno. Hey Thor, what did I do to deserve this? Was it that I was handling [human] ashes today? Or was it that I posted to the A2 School Cranks’ listserve today? Heck, I was just trying to shut down a Commie High basher!

And the (Crackerjack Box) Prize Goes To…

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006

I had made it out of the WCC parking lot and down the road and was waiting in line to make the right turn onto Washtenaw, when I heard a huge engine-revving/tire-screeching noise behind me somewhere. I looked in the rear-view mirror and, to my horror, I saw all kinds of white smoke coming out of the car directly behind me. It was an old beat-up white Camaro. Remember those? Do they still make ’em? My brother would know and he’d be the first to leave a comment. Vee-hickle blahg? Vee-hickle blahg? Yeah! I once knew a guy who had a Camaro. No, he wasn’t my boyfriend. That made it easy to refuse to ride with him.

If the smoke hadn’t been accompanied by all that noise, I’d have probably just thought, “call the EPA!” or maybe, “get the fire extinguisher!” Instead, I was a bit concerned that my trip home from school might be a little more exciting than I wanted it to be.

As I turned onto Washtenaw, the Camaro kept his distance behind me. Okay, so he’s just into noise and being macho or whatever it is. That’s fine, he’s just a kid. And then. SCREEEEEEEECH! VROOOOOOM! He peeled out from behind me into the next lane and passed me, accelerating like a bat outta hell. Now, that would have been pretty much okay with me had we been out on I80 in Nebraska or someplace. But we weren’t. We were in the middle of Megalopolis negotiating the area surrounding the Washtenaw/US23 freeway interchange. A traffic flow nightmare featuring traffic lights about every ten feet and the worst cloverleaf in the universe. You know, the kind where the people merging onto the freeway have to *cross paths* with those exiting. And vice versa. Huge semis everywhere, people accelerating onto the freeway ramps, people decelerating at traffic lights. Criss-cross, criss-cross. *Why* do they design those that way?

I dunno what he was thinking. Did he not *notice* the chaos or the traffic lights or the umpteen gazillion vee-hickles that were everywhere going every which way? Or was his vee-hickle outfitted to lift off and fly over it all? I don’t know, but — to my total horror — at the moment he made his escape from behind me and my dirty old Honda, some poor little econo-car a couple of vee-hickles *ahead* of me made the hapless decision to change lanes too. Y-iii-yyy! They’re gonna crash! To my great relief, the Camaro managed to screech to a stop inches away from impact.

I didn’t have time to watch anything else because my next task was to get onto the tight little circle that passes for an entrance ramp to US23 and then accelerate just precisely enough to merge into a tiny little spot in the middle of all the big semis that were screaming along in the right lane. I stopped shaking at about the State St./I94 interchange. I hope the little econo-car got home okay. Grok grok. Was it my cute l’il ol’ car? grok grok. Th’ orange ‘n’ yellow Li’l Tykes car? Grok grok. Y’all know where I think the driver of the Camaro got his driver’s license, roight? grok GROK!

Grok Help!

Monday, September 4th, 2006

torifrog.jpg

Mumbo Jumbo

Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

There is no way I can even begin to write a coherent post today. Sam had a nice post about the state of education in the USA that made me want to do a little ranting but I’ll save that for a rainy, ranty kind of day. So, here’s a blow-by-blow, more or less, of another day during another holiday weekend at the Houghton Lake Group Home:

  • Got up and walked “around” the point.
  • Scrounged the refrigimatator for breakfast materials and put a breakfast together for six, more or less.
  • Checked email and read my regular blahgs.
  • Kayaked around the point and into the canals, one of my favorite places in the Houghton Lake area.
  • fiftyfeetofboat.jpgWas forced at gunpoint to take a powerboat ride. 😉
  • Went to The Limberlost to get a drink (this was during the powerboat ride) and sat around for something like 15 minutes without attracting the attention of a server.
  • Left The Limberlost without being served anything. Note: I do not recommend The Limberlost and refuse to ever go there again, thankye veddy much. 🙂 Amazing how many Houghton Lake area bars/restaurants are getting to be on that list… Either that or they have suddenly closed! 😯
  • A lot of light reading. You know, MySQL and stuff like that.
  • Figured out what to eat (me, Gay, and Kathy). And we’re scrounging leftovers and stuff from the rather random contents of the refrigimatator.
  • Walked again.
  • Blahggin’.

Ding ding ding! You won! If you’ve read this far, you get the prize! And the prize is, 20 Questions online! I tried “flute” and 20Q guessed it after 19 questions. I beat the game with “kayak.” 🙂

Lola. Lo-lo-lo-lo Lola. Lo-lo-lo-lo Lola-a-a.

Saturday, September 2nd, 2006

It was about 10:45 AM when we parked The Indefatigable at the Chase Bridge canoe put-in on the South Branch of the Au Sable River after a morning *on* the river when… PHWOMPH! Civilization arrived. A convoy of about ten pickup trucks came over the hill, pulled to the side of the road, and parked. I don’t know why I felt this way but it seemed like a guy trip. A little male bonding maybe? Hey guys, let’s go up north and rent canoes. We can drink beer and shoot guns and crash into fallen trees and capsize each other’s canoes. Lola was blasting from the first truck.

We had already been out on the river. Bob and I put in at Chase Bridge at 8 AM. The GG drove The Indefatigable up to the Smith Bridge, parked it, and began the eleven mile hike back down to Chase Bridge. Bob and I kayaked to Smith Bridge, loaded the boats up onto The Indefatigable, and drove back down to the Chase Bridge, then started up the hiking trail (on foot, of course) to meet up with the GG.

It was a beautiful morning, cool, a little foggy in places. Our only company was Great Blue Herons, ducks, kingfishers, and all kinds of other birds that I couldn’t even begin to identify. A few fly fishermen. No boats anywhere. It was too early for the majority of the weekend warriors, which is why we were out there early. It is a holiday weekend though, and I bet that convoy had a great time out there this afternoon. Drinking beer and shooting guns and crashing into fallen trees and capsizing each other’s canoes.


An Old Crow Lives Here

Friday, September 1st, 2006

No! You canNOT change the words on that “Old Crow” sign!!!oldcrow.jpg

Once upon the Jurassic Age, when I was 21 and looked about 15, The Commander sent me out to buy liq-wire. Radical Betty and Duke were coming for dinner and we were out of bourbon. A tragedy! As I now know, it can be handy to have a kid who’s legal so you can send them out on a booze run. She gave me some money and said, “Go buy a fifth of Jim Crow.” In those days, I had no idea what brands of bourbon existed. My repertoire was pretty much limited to beer, maybe gin and tonic, and some of the other oddball things that college kids experiment with — you know, drinks with things like blue curacao in them, etc. So, I said, “okay, Mom,” and off I went.

I got to Neville’s and there were a whole bunch of other people buying liq-wire too. When it got to be my turn, I piped up with, “I’d like a fifth of Jim Crow.” I knew who the woman behind the counter was. She had been only a few years ahead of me in school but she looked like she was about 40 — one of those rather large, no-nonsense women that you wouldn’t want to mess with. A perfect person to work in a liq-wire store. She looked at me incredulously and thundered, “We don’t have any Jim Crow. We have Jim Beam and we have Old Crow!” Ouch! Um, you didn’t have to say that so loudly, did you? And by the way, where is the nearest trap door? So I can make a quick exit.

I don’t remember whether I picked Jim Beam or Old Crow. I’m sure it didn’t matter to the cocktail folks eagerly awaiting my return. But boy, was I glad to get outta there! Eventually Grandroobly discovered Ten High, a less ambiguously named brand of bourbon. But please do not change the words on that sign because every time I see it, I think about trying to buy Jim Crow at the liq-wire store when I was just a kid!

(Uh, Froog, didja realize that your nostrils are inside-out? [scramble scramble] eek-grok grok! What?!?? Whadabout my nostrils?? Grok eeek grok help grok [scramble] Uncle Bob did that! grokhelp grok eekgrok [scramble scramble])