That is just about all. At least it’s about all I have the energy to write about. Just try to keep up with those women. I did manage to pay a visit to Fin Family Moomintundra this morning, before the snow got too soft to walk on top of without breaking through. The bay is still iced over but I did not try to walk on the ice beyond the hummocks that form along the second sand bar. I am a scaredy cat about lake ice at this time of the year and I was alone. The Great Lakes Trader went up and I didn’t get the name of the boat that went down because, even though I remembered to pack my binoculars, I FORGOT to take them out to the beach tundra!! Click here or on the pic for more.

Okay, okay. It isn’t exactly Hollywood and Vine. Or even Haight and Ashbury. And it is definitely not some corner in Winslow Arizona. Too much snow. And it is, oh, lemme see, how many streets away from the infamous corner (Ashmun and Easterday) where I once stalled learned to drive a stick shift? I wonder if I can do it from memory… Court/John, Bingham, Young, Augusta, Minneapolis, Kimball, Superior, Johnston, Swinton, Lizzie, Seymour. 12 streets. Or 11-1/2 if you consider that Court and John kind of come out on to Easterday in one big mouth. I feel like I missed a street. Or two. What did I miss? No googling… Okay, you can google if you want.

It is warmer here than this picture might suggest. I was wearing a skirt (yes, I rock skirts!) and tights and polartech socks and Chaco sandals and a Chico’s tank top with an REI polartech jacket (that I should’ve bought three of) over it and a silk scarf. Green/blue/aqua, thank you very much. And some little knit KMart-type gloves. But no ski band.

I do have to report that Clyde’s Drive-In is open again. I remember my Grandma taking us there when we were kids and ordering a hamburg with everything but. When the Beach Urchins were little, we used to load ’em all up into the old red minivan with cafeteria trays and washcloths. The oldest urchin would take orders en route, writing them down on a pad of paper, so we’d be all ready. Heck, they only liked one or two things on the menu anyway. In those days, we’d get the food to go and drive over to the adjacent Goose Poop Park to eat and then the urchins would play on the playground stuff while we watched the boats. And the beach urchins, of course.

Today we just ate in the car in front of the restaurant, watching the ferry and the Laurentien and the border patrol car and the Bay Mills po-lice, who sat by the ferry and watched the traffic disembark, taking off after one rattly old pickup truck. And nabbing him. Not sure what the deal was. He didn’t look very dangereuse to me but who knows. No seagulls today, now that I think of it. Guess what I got. Hamburg on a bun with everything but! And I got some onion rings to share.

…and gone tomorrow. At 0-dark-30. Kinda wish we could stay here this weekend but The Commander and Radical Betty are always an adventure. And wow! Just watched a big hawk-like bird dive down into the lake, grab a big fish, and fly away with it! All big as life, right in plain sight! We have decided it was not an eagle. Party on!

Yiiy! “The crazy, lazy old bag has gone beyond blather,” y’all are thinkin’. “Now she is speaking in tongues!”

Yes, that’s just about where I am today. I don’t make it a practice to blahg about my work, actually I love my work, but let’s just say I spent most of the day with Visio and I love Visio and I am pretty fluent with Visio but I am taaaaarrrrred. So randomness reigns…

I am intrigued with the little Puma vee-hickle that GM and Segway have cooked up. But I am not sure I could ever ride in a personal motorcar without paying attention to what’s happening on the street. I am not a good passenger! Ask any one of the [very few] people I ever ride with. Remember that “look at the big picture” stuff from driver’s ed? I’m a “big picture” kind of gal. If I have a passenger, I don’t turn my head to *look* at the passenger when we talk. In fact, if something is going on on the road, I am more likely to focus on *that* and forget the conversation. I have been known to use my phone while in the driver’s seat but it is not a regular occurrence and I don’t try to do any kind of typing unless I am sure that I’ve just stopped at the beginning of a very long traffic light cycle. Or I am at a dead stop on the I75 SUV Speedway because the blasted Zilwaukee Bridge is unexpectedly closed. Like, hey, y’all have an hour or two to sit around on a beat-up freeway? Big picture gal. That’s me. Watch everything every second. One accident. 17 years old. Glare ice. Oncoming car drove left of center. Crash! No one hurt. Ruled not my fault. Parked the battered up Fairlane at the *funeral* home of all places. And of course, my parents just happened to drive by. What can I say? It was a small town and they pretty much *had* to pass the funeral home to get home. Anyway. I’m not sure I can trust any motorized vee-hickle to manage to get out of the way if Mr. Toad is coming along in his motorcar. Poooooooop pooooooop! Look out!

I had other randomness but that paragraph took me back into the Jurassic Age and now I can’t think of what else I had to say. I know it wasn’t much!

G’night. Happy Easter and Passover and Spring Break and Skunk Cabbage. It’s all happenin’ at once this spring!

My good old friend the POC, that is. There are no leaves in our street right now, just some sorta moldy looking piles of snow. And I don’t own that vee-hickle any more.

I had a love/hate relationship with the POC, which I won’t recount in too much detail for the moment, except to say that it was the Queen of Dashboard Lights! (((Er, and serpentine belt failures.))) I *hate* dashboard lights. Especially dashboard lights that either tell me what I already know or don’t tell me anything at all. There was the time I went outside the morning after an ice storm and tried to open the POC’s right sliding door and COULDN’T. Because it was frozen shut and would not budge. Or so I thought. I loaded the beach urchins and all of their kid paraphernalia into the old gal (i.e., “Get in the car!”) through the front passenger door and we got about a half mile away from home and… Ding! Door ajar! And then the “door ajar” light went out again. And about 10 seconds later. Ding! Door ajar! And again. And again. Clearly, I *had* managed to just barely budge the blasted door just a bit open and now that the vee-hickle was thawing a bit, the door was opening and shutting as we accelerated or decelerated or turned or whatever. I got over onto a side street and slammed that sucker shut! And we won’t even talk about the   AIRBAG   light. On. Or off. Or on and off. Or…

The Dogha is probably my favorite vee-hickle ever. It has 125K on it and it has been almost virtually problem-free except for the kind of wear and tear you would expect on an 8-year-old vee-hickle with 125K on it. The “side airbag” light has come on occasionally throughout the vee-hickle’s life. Whenever somebody sits in the passenger seat in some strange position or when whatever work-type pararphenalia I am taking to work is just a bit too heavy for that seat. I actually think there’s a related recall but we haven’t ever been inclined to do anything about it. Today. I was driving to work and I had one laptop and my lunch on the seat and for whatever reason, they weren’t situated correctly and the blasted side airbag light kept coming on. And going off. And finally I shifted my stuff so that it went out permanently. And then. The “check engine” light came on. All right. I had a moment of panic, got off the freeway an exit early, and called the GG to report. Remembered that a yellow check engine light doesn’t mean get off the road immediately unless it starts flashing. Calmed down. Drove the rest of the way to work with no problem whatsoever. And then home, after a day of intense analysis, which is at least partly what I get paid to do and I earned my pay today, boy oh boy. The light probably indicates a bad oxygen sensor or some other benign condition. I could probably drive forever with a bad oxygen sensor. So why the HECK does my vee-hickle have to light a blasted *light*?!?

And yes it was your favo-rite blahgger who did the loverly parking job in the photo. Back right wheel on the curb. Yes!

The question appeared on my own beloved little Twitterverse this morning. Should the denizens of the Planet Ann Arbor shovel their walks today or not? I had already made my own decision not to shovel. I think I swept about six inches of heavy wet snow off of the Dogha this morning. So, yes, we had some significant snow. But it’s April and even though it’s Michigan — hence snow — my rule of thumb is to quit shoveling after April 1st. It’s a rather risky rule of thumb. There are rules about shoveling snow around this place and they are randomly enforced, usually when some neighborhood crank complains. I decided to take the risk. I didn’t feel like shoveling water.

I do have to laugh at all of those who are surprised by snow in April, not that I encountered anyone in particular today who was. This *is* Michigan, yada yada yada. Mouse’s birthday is in late April and I know that I have at least two photos hanging around of her standing in a snowstorm on her birthday. And we are in the *southern* part of the state. Growing up in Yooperland, snow was a regular feature of April and our salt-encrusted winter boots were more often than not part of our Easter outfits. Up there, you couldn’t make a rule of thumb about whether or not you would shovel in April. I don’t remember that there *were* any rules about the sidewalks. Actually, when I was a kid, there was a little sidewalk plow that would come around and do the sidewalks. But you might have to shovel your driveway at least, or you might not be able to get your vee-hickle out.

Anyway. It’s April and this is Michigan. And it snowed six inches or more last night but it is already melting and by the weekend, I bet it’ll be gone. And I *had* some crocuses in my back yard although Sam (archaeologist, not dog) was right that a photo I posted a few weeks ago was daffodils, not crocuses. But she grew up with The Botanist and I grew up with engineers and I have a black thumb. I *think* this is a daffodil. There *were* some crocuses out there the other day, in bloom, no less. I couldn’t find them today. I guess they are under the snow somewhere and I kept myself from kicking around with my big black [salt-encrusted winter] boot. Sorry, I was *not* wearing an Easter bonnet today.

Happy spring! -KW

Sometimes, despite your clumsiest attempts to do all the stuff that the “parenting” “experts” say you have to do with your kids and beat whatever politically correct crap is de rigeur into their busy little brains, they manage to grow up pretty darn successfully *anyway*. “I’m going to do it *anyway*!”, the toddler Mouse would often say, in perfectly enunciated English that was almost too fluent for her own good. [Er, actually, Grandroobly probably negated any kind of politically correct crap I may have spewed out but that’s a whole ‘nother story.]

Today, we dragged over to Kalamazoo early in the morning to take Mouse out for breakfast and then watch her play Cynthia in The Real Inspector Hound. If you know the play, Cynthia is quite a departure from the last role Mouse played, which was Sister Mary Ignatius. And I didn’t know the play, but I *should* have known it because during my tenure with YAG, I believe we produced The Real Inspector Hound twice. But I don’t like to sit passively in an audience so I tended to hang about backstage unless one of my kids was on-stage. If it was a particularly long, drawn-out Shakespearian-type play, I would often sneak into the back of the theatre only when my kid was on stage and then retreat to the backstage area again. Yes. I am that bad.

Today? I was rapt with attention. Mouse was on stage a lot *and* she did the costumes! (Er, and it was only an hour. I can sit for an hour.)

This was a completely student-produced play. The Kalamazoo College class of 2009 has 13 theatre majors. That’s a larger group than usual and this particular group elected to forgo the drunken stupor of a beach vacation in a warm place to spend their last spring break rehearsing/producing a play. They had the use of college theatre facilities but there was no faculty intervention at all.

So, in addition to having to rehearse as an actor, Mouse handled the costuming. That involved pulling together various pieces of outfits from wherever and also making the dresses. She managed this in large part from her small one-bedroom apartment. The one where the GG took an after-breakfast nap today. I am going to miss that place, but that’s a whole ‘nother story too. But do not walk barefoot because there are probably pins on the carpet. She learned how to do that early because my house is the same way.

I worked extra hard on my UFP today. Most of the way over there and most of the way back and listening to the GG snore in Mouse’s apartment. Why? Because I cannot believe what a lazy old bag I have turned into. Never really finishing anything that’s not work-related. And I am gonna finish this blasted thing. Look at what our kids can do! They are so fantastic! All of them, not just mine! I marvel every day at how my kids managed to survive me and my parenting skills. Or lack thereof!

Oh, and for Mouse’s role in this play, she has had to learn a totally un-Mouse-like skill, hair-dressing. She probably spent an hour this morning (I was there but wasn’t watching the time) in her apartment curling and hairspraying her hair. Fortunately there were only a few performances… Last night, a woman from the [“sold”-out] audience approached Mouse after the show and, uh, *touched* her hair. She couldn’t figure out whether it was Mouse’s real hair or a wig.

Bravo Mouse and the other cast/crew members! And after strike, Mouse went to a rehearsal for the next play…

G’night. –KW

That’s where the GG was all last week. He was at an information security conference down in San Antonio. He loved the area and I think he had fun at the conference but I doubt he had as much fun as I did at the conference I went to that was situated at our own community college, which has free wifi everywhere on campus and you can bet there were tons of laptops and a twitter stream going on. I could do that every day. Except that probably two out of the three times I was brave enough to open up my yap, I stuck my foot into it.

So today. An impromptu MacMu gathering over at Don and Marcia’s. A MacMu cousin up from Atlanta and a MacMu cousin over from Washington state with her daughter who’s looking at grad programs. I have always absolutely loved having cousins that I knew and got along with. For the most part, throughout life, I have known the Fin cousins the best but that’s probably because we have Fin Family Moominbeach in common. On the MacMu side, we mostly have met for funerals, at least in the last few years. Today was fun. It wasn’t a funeral for once. And there was a baby! The first member of G5! He is a beautiful one month old. The GG was right in there holding him. Me, I resisted for a while. But finally. I held him and fed him his bottle and I looked into his blue eyes and, I dunno, this is a beautiful baby and he’s my cousin’s grandchild and even though she has been on the other side these last few years, life is going on.

One of the most fun things for me was that when I first walked into my MacMu uncle Don’s house, I heard my Fin Fam Uncle Harry’s voice. Love y’all.

Usually when I pick people up at the airport, by the time I get there, they are already waiting at the curb. It isn’t really my fault, just that usually the planes land early. And the GG’s was scheduled to land early today. When I checked it at like 5:45 PM (EDT), it was hanging out somewhere over O-haaa-o. That means something like “git in th’ car and go, KW”. So I did. And I got to the cell phone lot and sent a text message: “cell phone lot”. Figgering that the GG would text back right away with something like, “landed.” Not. (Actually, I found out later that he didn’t even know what the cell phone lot was but that’s a whole ‘nother story.) Anyway. I got onto to flight tracker or whatever on my phone and, wtf? His plane had turned around. In a kind of a circular motion. I hadn’t been totally stupid. I knew there would be no computer-strength wifi in the cell phone lot but I did manage to through (through?) throw my UFP into a Plum Market bag before I left and so, I hand-sewed while I impatiently waited. And kept checking the plane’s progress. Wondering why it continued to circle over the SW end of Lake Erie. Hand-sewing is somewhat calming even at the worst of times and I checked again. And. No plane anywhere. Say what? Calmness… Refresh again. Landed 15 minutes ago? What? about 30 seconds later, “dooooooo doooo doooo doooo.” That would be the GG calling. “Just landed.” Okay. A little more sewing and another phone call or two and finally pulled up in the usual chaos of arrivals *just* as he was walking out. And then. Beat tracks to get back to the Planet in time to meet the Porters at Knights for our 8 PM (EDT) res. Pulled into the driveway, walked into the house long enough to grab my ski jacket and some gloves etc. and walked over to Knights, leaving the GG for 10 minutes or so of switching gears. It was all good and other friends were also there and we all ended up at the same loud, obnoxious table. I am fried. G’night.

So. I have spent the last two days at a wonderful internet usability conference at our local (and wonderful) community college. All of the presenters at this annual event are passionate about web usability and all of us who attend are too. The biggest problem is that, on Thursday (that’s today, of course), you have to choose between four presentations every hour and, well, how do you choose? I and my co-workers all had a very hard time.

But this is my personal blog space of blather and I know most of y’all do not want me to recount a blow-by-blow of what happened at the conference. So I will limit it to KW’s conference flubs.

I think of myself as a *very* shy person. But not really. It depends. But if I get clanked up about something, I just about have to clamp my mouth shut or sit on my hands, depending on the media in use. It’s the generational stuff that gets to me. Today, in one presentation, there was dissent amongst the audience about whether 24-year-olds (aka, the “Millennial” generation) would be likely to be on Linked In. Those who spoke up said that, yes, they would be on Linked In because they are all looking for jobs. I not-so-humbly (and, er, maybe a bit too er, assertively for my co-workers (or maybe not)) dissented. I am on Linked In. I have, oh, I dunno, maybe five contacts on Linked In. I just don’t quite get it. Is it a “social network”? It seems so stodgy. Do people really get jobs on Linked In? I just didn’t think my children would join something like that. It was an open question for a few minutes… I texted my 24-year-old. Are you on Linked In? She texted me back — no, she was not on Linked In. Actually her response matched the *research* that the *presenters* had done that they showed at the end of that discussion. The Millennial generation is not a huge presence on Linked-In. I am a big fan of collecting data and not just guessing about things and my one tiny data-point matched the presenter’s data.

Not sure why I didn’t pay more attention to Mrs. Velde in Latin class back in the late 60s but somehow that quote by Socrates is how I have been living my life for a long time. In my world it means that no matter how much you know about your field of work or study or interest, somebody else might come along and say or do something, however shy and humble, that will completely change your point of view. In other words, it is never a good idea to get too big for yourself.

First of all, a shoutout to NP Jane: I don’t know why yesterday’s pic won’t load for you (it’s only 30K, so it’s not size) but I also haven’t been able to email you so there must be some kind of problem in the pipeline somewhere, probably temporary. The bottom part of the pic is just brush, nothing exciting.

Okay. So today that baggy old kayak woman (aka me) went to a usability conference with some co-workers. After a loverly continental breakfast, it was time to take a seat in the auditorium and I thought that probably a stop at the restroom was in order. So I grabbed my bags and schlepped down the hall to where the bathroom is and I encountered the sign in the picture, which, as you can see, obviously says, “Women’s Restroom”. And there’s that open doorway next to it, so I went in the open doorway. Now, I have been in this particular bathroom a couple times before but something was just not right about it. It went the wrong direction and there was another open door that seemed to lead in the correct direction but it had a sign on it that said “Authorized personnel only”. So, feeling very puzzled, I headed back in the other direction, at which time I was HORRIFIED to see a young MAN about five feet taller than me exit a stall!!!! Yiiiiyyyyy!!! How the heck did I get in *here*? Quick, totally undignified exit! Hello! The “Women’s Restroom” sign is *on* a blasted *door*!

As it turned out, I used that restroom again later in the day and this time, I figgered out what the problem was. Since the *Men’s* room door was open, I couldn’t see the sign! I don’t know what I was thinking. I was in a hurry at the time. But I do know that if I had approached the whole restroom scenario from the other direction I would’ve seen the sign on the *Men’s* room door (see second pic) and I would *not* have made that mistake. And yes, the second pic is fuzzy. I am not totally shameless and when I went to take that second picture, somebody was coming down the hall and, yes, I was just a leetle bit embarrassed to be caught taking a picture of bathroom doors. Fer Kee-reist! Even though I don’t have a clue about who that person was because I clicked quick and skeedaddled and I will no doubt never see that person again.

I am not sure why the dern men’s room door was open like that. It was open all day. I say this is bad usability. Several co-workers of mine say my little foray into the wrong room was user error.

What about the conference? It was absolutely wonderful! As usual. Er, the conference organizers didn’t have anything to do with the bathrooms, just to clarify.