I knew that today was November 10th and, therefore the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior. I was gonna blahg about a lot of mundane things today. Like how, after being outta town last weekend, it has taken me all week to get even some of the laundry folded and put away. And how many times I have gotten home from work and had to walk to the Plum Market in the dark to get some grokkeries so I could cook dinner. And how we had [beautiful] snow today for the first time (I think).

But then Dogmomster posted a video on facebook that reminded me about the day the Fitz went down. Our beach was somewhat decimated by that storm. All of our logs and other beach debris ended up down by Doelle’s and the post-storm beach was kind of like a moonscape. I am beyond trying to detail that tonight and I didn’t have any access to the internet back then, so I can’t link to anything (it was 1975). My brother [who loved the lake boats] was in high school then and he had a multi-band radio in his bedroom and it picked up ship communications. He listened all night to the Arthur Anderson (which was behind the Edmund Fitzgerald) calling for the Edmund Fitzgerald. No answer.

The video is below. It’s long but it’s Gordon Lightfoot. You know you love Gordon Lightfoot. Thank you Dogmomster for finding this.

NPJane brought up an interesting question in yesterday’s comments: “following [t]his logic, the former principal would also object to the bald eagle as the national bird/symbol?” The answer is, “I don’t know.” But this threw me into memory lane big time.

Haisley School was built in 1950 and if I’m not mis-remembering, that’s the same year that my loverly old grade school was built. Stinkin’ Lincoln. I’ll save my Stinkin’ Lincoln memories for some other day. A series maybe? Suffice it to say that when I first set foot inside Haisley, it was pretty familiar. Nowadays, it seems as though the Planet Ann Arbor school district plays a yearly game of musical chairs with principals. Back in my time, a principal was allowed to rule the roost for any number of years. At Stinkin’ Lincoln, it was Mrs. Morrow. At Haisley, it was Mrs. Ritsema. Back in the 1990s or thereabouts, when Mrs. Ritsema was long retired but still living in the neighborhood, I once heard an interview with her on the radio. One year during her long tenure, the superintendent decided to shuffle principals and wanted to move her to a different school. She told him in no uncertain terms that she was NOT going to move. And… That was that. He backed down. Not so in this day and age. Principals come and go.

One of the things Mrs. Ritsema contributed to the school was a collection of stuffed birds. I mean stuffed by taxidermy, of course. Those birds were very important to Mrs. Ritsema and they were still in the school during the era that the Beach Urchins attended and would get trotted out when she visited. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the school’s hawk mascot or even if any hawks were among the specimens.

At any rate, by that time, Mrs. Ritsema was long retired and we had another principal. One who did not like stuffed birds hanging around her school. Or politically incorrect Halloween costumes. Ask me. When I was the newsletter *co*-editor (read: tyrannograph slave), I was once called into her office because my *co*-editor had illustrated the newsletter with a cartoon graphic of a kid in a robber Halloween costume. Guns drawn. Not politically correct. Bunnies and fairies, people. We won’t talk about the parking lot. Or the lobby furniture.

Or maybe we will mention the lobby furniture. Because I got her back for that Halloween infraction big time. I got myself out of the newsletter job by taking on the PTO treasury, which many schools regard as a bank but that’s a whole ‘nother story. I am *good* at bookkeeping. I am darn good. When I inherited that job, the previous treasurer handed me this big old business checkbook and said she couldn’t figure out why the checking account didn’t balance. And there were these threatening letters from the IRS that I don’t even want to begin to explain. 501c3, that is all.

Aaaannnnd the dictator principal was after me to hide money. Yes. She wanted to buy new lobby furniture. Others disagreed. I basically stood up as straight as I could and told the dictator principal that I could not *hide* money. I said that there were a lot of problems with the books and the IRS was after us and we may even need to hire a CPA to straighten it all out. She backed off. I fixed it all. I spent several weeks tracking down transactions for the last six years and balancing everything. I had so many spreadsheets linked together on my old MacPlus it was smoking and I was knee deep in papers. The Beach Urchins taught themselves how to cook during all of this. They cooked spaghettios. I found the pan on a front burner and a stool in front of the stove. You go girls!

In the end, we got the new lobby furniture. I didn’t care one way or another about the damn furniture but I finally broke character and gave my opinion that we should buy it. I just wanted to shut the dictator principal up. At some point, I was told that the dictator principal said that I was the best PTO treasurer EVER. Go me. I guess.

The Haisley mascot is not the hawk anymore because that (long gone) principal hated the stuffed birds she had inherited *and* didn’t want the mascot to emulate the predatory nature of hawks. If I have it straight, the school kids were allowed to vote on a new mascot. I liked the hawks as a mascot. I’m not sure where all the stuffed birds are now. The GG hopes they didn’t get put in the trash but I suspect they did. And there have been three or four or five principals since then.

As I approached my polling place, our own Haisley Elementary School, home of the Haisley Huskies Goat Things, I thought that I might actually have a ghost of a chance of being the first voter. It is a local election and we have low turnouts for those. As I was walking in the door, my iPhone proclaimed that it was 6:59 AM and, as I reached for a voting application, a poll worker proclaimed, “7:00! The polls are open!” Alas, there was one guy ahead of me. He looked like he was dressed for a cycling commute. I was dressed like a baggy old and rather bedraggled skunk-walker but the poll workers were impressed that I had my driver’s license at the ready. Hey, I am a rule follower, assuming the rules are reasonable and I know what they are. They were a little discombobulated and the ballot-eater had to be reset or something before it would eat ballots. I understood. These folks are [mostly] volunteers and this is not an 8-5 everyday job. There’s a bit of a re-learning curve every time they set up shop. New volunteers, etc.

I don’t know if you voted or not or even if your state or locality had an election this fall. If there was an election and you didn’t vote, I’m not going to try to lay a guilt trip on you. My own voting history is a bit spotty. I can wrap my brain around a lot of things in an analytical way. Mathematics, music, computer programming, and I fergit what else. Politics? I dunno. I have my own little hot-button issues but I can’t always figger out how to take political stories and translate them into how they will affect our country or my state or municipality or meeeee. I don’t really have the chops for that. So, for many years I voted kind of randomly. After an embarrassing experience at the polls, I actually quit for a couple years.

I finally got myself going again and these days, I have been trying to actually understand who / what I am voting for. I have been subscribing to all kinds of news and politico blogs and tweets to my feeds. I have been trying to read and understand all of this stuff and make my *own* decisions about how I want to vote. I don’t know it all and I don’t think I ever will. But I am trying.

I am keeping my eye on the state and national elections that will be happening next year but I am focusing on local elections for now. Again, I don’t know it all but today I actually had an idea about who / what I was voting for. In fact, I knew enough that I flip-flopped about two of the little ovals I had to fill in right up until I was in the voting booth. I may talk about that tomorrow or I may not. If I run into a unicorn (or a skunk) on my skunk-walk, you’ll probably hear about that instead.

Good night. I hope you voted and that the candidates you voted for win.

P.S. Our own beloved Haisley Elementary School used have a hawk as its mascot. The Haisley Hawks. A former dictator principal thought that hawks evoked a predatory image. At some point, a school-wide election changed the mascot to the Haisley Huskies. Mouse (a former Haisley student) saw this photo on facebook today and she thought the “huskie” was a goat. That totally cracked me up. However, I don’t see anything wrong with having a hawk as a mascot. Raptors are just as honorable a bird as any.

I was walking up W1.5’s street this morning and when I was crossing the street just east of his house, I heard this kind of light cloppity cloppity noise. It was still very dark and at first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Dog? Nope. Too big. And no human on a string dragging along behind it. Horse? Waaayyy too small and we don’t usually have horses around the neighborhood anyway. Although I’m sure Mouse would’ve kept one in the back yard when she was in middle school if it was possible. So… Deer? Bingo.

Deer are not unheard of inside the Planet Ann Arbor city limits and there is a large woods near where I walk, so I’m sure that deer occasionally do get into the adjacent neighborhood. Still, this is the first deer I have ever seen on my walking route (I did once see a fox but I digress). I see deer on my Houghton Lake walking route all the time and I have seen them on my work walking route. Neighborhood? Not so much. I was transfixed. The deer loped up the street and then back and headed off through various yards. I bet most of those folks were still asleep or maybe doing their morning routine and never knew they had a deer in their yard.

I spent five minutes or so watching (and twittering) and then I headed on toward home. It was light by the time I got home. Last week when I would arrive home after my walk, it was still pitch black. On the flip side of that, my GPS flipped over to night mode as soon as I got into the driveway tonight. I needed grokkeries and so I made my walking trip to the Plum Market mostly in the dark.

I like all of the seasons. I love when I am at the Moominbeach in June and I can still see light in the western sky at 11:00 PM. On the other hand, I love to drive home in the dark in the winter.

I guess the hoosegow finally got tired of having The Commander over there telling them all what to do all the time because they discharged her earlier today. She is back at Command Central. She’s probably telling people what to do. She’s definitely calling me up to complain about her phone and food and various other details. (Moom, if you are reading this, picture me sticking my tongue out at you! :-))

So where was I? The Commander is still in the hoosegow but I actually think that is a good thing. She is recovering very well and seems almost normal but I would rather she not get discharged until she is totally over this damn bug. The FV staff agree with me about that and the hoosegow staff are treating her like a queen.

At any rate, we drove back down to the Planet Ann Arbor today. We arrived later than I really wanted to but it was for a good reason. We took a detour over to Megalopolis to greet a new child into the Courtois family. I am not going to give you *any* details here, well, except that that this is a beautiful baby. But it’s up to the parents to announce their child to the world. Us great aunts and uncles need to stay in the peanut gallery.

We knew that this babe would be born this month but we didn’t know that it would be born today. It wasn’t our job to watch. Exactly. Except that this gorgeous newborn babe is the first grandchild of the GG’s identical twin. In the GG’s mind, this means that it is his biological grandchild. And I guess that’s true. Anyway as soon as I knew that it would be “baby day” I knew that our odyssey down to the Planet Ann Arbor would involve a detour over to a megalopolis-area horsepittal. The GG loves babies and I knew he wouldn’t be satisfied until he met this baby.

So we went from the wonderful little Yooper horsepittal to the posh megalopolis horsepittal. We met the new baby and then we traversed back over to our beloved old planet. And after I flung all of the garbage, recycling, and laundry that we generated (and found) up in Siberia, I dragged out a bunch of leftover food that I stuffed into the freezer before we left last Thursday, heated it up, made a salad and voila!

Good night. Love you all.
Kayak Woman

If you go to visit somebody in the hoosegow (or Woldemort’s Halloween clearance sale), you may end up looking like this. Honestly, he did not look like this when I married him or even this morning (going on 30 years later) when he helped lead cat herd another loverly North Country Trail hike. This afternoon (while he was down for a long November’s nap) I was out running errands walking the beach, and he texted me to pick him up at the hoosegow. When I arrived there, the GG had been replaced by this entity.

A North Country Trail (NCT) hike was scheduled for today and The Commander insisted that I accompany the GG on it. I love the NCT folks and the Hiawatha Shore to Shore Chapter has got to be one of the most active chapters. And the GG somehow got to be a favored hike leader. They schedule a hike every month. If I weren’t gainfully employed and didn’t have a 90-year-old person five hours away from my house to keep my eye on, I would hike with them *every* month. But I can’t. But I did today. Because The Comm insisted that I go. And she would be okay. And not fall over dead. And she was okay and didn’t fall over dead and even managed (with Gabby’s help) to call me via her iPhone. And answer me on her iPhone when I called her back when I finally got cell phone service again… On the freeway…

I hate the cat-herding involved with these hikes. Who is starting where and ending where and where do we have to transport people and spot vee-hickles. Today was relatively easy, although a few of us borderline Aspies (me, maybe) were quietly going haywire until the details got worked out. Which actually involved *us* driving a friend’s *hummer* to spot it at Burma Road.

Great hike! *Our* hike was 5.76 miles via my iPhone pedometer app. There were many hike options today so many folks got different mileages. The GG knew that I needed to walk at least five miles, so he planned our own personal route accordingly. With other folks who like to hike fast and can be social but don’t need to be. We all kind of met in the middle near a brand new bridge across the Carp River. We roasted hot dogs and life was good. I love the NCT folks but I am so anti-social these days that it is hard for me to make small talk most days. Fortunately, people engaged me… Thank you and keep trying, you guys… I love you and I’m in there…

I guess if they can set up wifi at various OWS encampments, we can sure set it up at the Squatter’s Paradise. And we did today.

Staying at the Squatter’s Paradise these days is a bit like camping. Pack it in and pack it out. I was hoping to manage to stay here all weekend without preparing a meal here but, as it turns out, I have a love/hate relationship with eating out. I love eating restaurant meals and being served food and we can afford it (in moderation) and, well, yada yada yada. Except when I don’t. I love to cook too. And so, last night, we ate at the wonderful Palace Saloon. We had a fantastic waitress and great entertainment by way of the ambulance that came and picked up a beautiful young woman who had collapsed in the Palace doorway and couldn’t get up. The waitress had no idea what was going on (or maybe couldn’t say) and neither did we. The horsepittal (that we are all too familiar with in recent years) is two and a half blocks from the Palace Saloon, so they didn’t have far to schlep her.

Where was I? Oh yeah. This place is a luxury camp site. Everything anyone has in a modern home: full-size refrigerator, stove, washer, dryer. There is every kind of cooking dish or pan or whatever you might need here and cooking books too. Running water, flushy toilet and shower! Water that comes from Lake Superior, more or less. I can remember being a kid asking for pop or whatever and The Parents saying, “You can have a Lake Superior cocktail.” Gee thanks, mom…

Internet? Well. We didn’t have broadband Internet here last night. We moved The Commander’s phone service down to the Command Central @FV a while back. FV has built in broadband wifi, so the DSL that went with the Comm’s service got canceled so last night we were relegated to using our iPhones/iPads on the Edge network. Not fun. Brings back memories of dial-up internet service. We did a lot of errands today in between visiting The Commander in the hoosegow (yes, but it’s okay, she’s okay and will be sprung tomorrow). One of our errands was to obtain a cable modem and so we did and the GG installed it and we are again broad-banded and wi-fi-if-ied here at our luxury camp site.

At this point in my life, I’m not sure I could do without internet service for more than a few days, unless I notified folks beforehand how they could contact me. I know that there are people who want to get off the “grid” and that’s okay. But there are so many things that I do these days that rely on internet connectivity that I almost can’t envision my life without the internet. When I need to contact various people about family related things, email is the most efficient way to contact them. Except for text messaging, which I use for quick, immediate messages.

I made a pizza tonight and we have just finished dinner and are about to go “down boat” as yer fav-o-rite blahgger used to say to her parents when she was a baby and wanted to go for a waterfront ride. And the then-young banker, former army air corps pilot and tannery worker would always oblige.

Signing off from the Squatter’s Paradise.
Love y’all
Kayak Woman

P.S. The photoooo? I was walking barefoot on fin family moominbeach this afternoon. In November!!!

@ Squatter’s Paradise.

Exhausted.

No decent Internet access. Router works but svc prob’ly moved 2 Command Central. Can situation b mitigated? Stay tuned.

All well.

Dinner @ Palace Saloon. ‘hattans here.

More 2morrow. 2 tired 4 2-fingered typing.

I flung some Halloween paraphernalia. Yes I did. I’m flinging a lot of stuff. This box used to be jam-packed with Halloween paraphernalia. It is now half full. I USE this stuff. My spiderweb socks and my Halloween Mardi Gras beads and my spider deely-bobbers and my spider-web fabric. It does not contain any of our skeletons (we have three) or our Halloween lights. Those all have a place. I will not fling them.

I am not really into dressing up in full-fledged costumes. You won’t ever find me dressing up as “Bender” like Valdemort did. I saw that on Facebook and I thought, “Is that really my niece inside there? How does she see where she’s going?” It was so cool I showed it to the Long Suffering Cat Herding Person. *He* happened to know who “Bender” was and he was so excited about it that he launched into a half-hour soliloquy about Futurama. Okay. Now I know who Bender is. These days, I accessorize for Halloween. Socks and beads and stuff. I’m giving a nod to the spirit of the holiday without sacrificing comfort.

Things I cannot fling… I won’t give you a complete list but I cannot fling the tiger costume. Even though it hasn’t fit anyone in the family for about a gazillion years and even though the original wearer never did like it very much. As you might be able to see. I tried to get her to say “Grrrrr” and she learned to say that but I think she was just humoring me because when she actually went trick-or-treating, she said “shoe on” everywhere she went.

I’m not really sure if the costume was uncomfortable or if my Mouse may have been thinking something like, “Jeez moom, you have picked the wrong aminal.” She probably *was* uncomfortable. She did look happier once candy was involved. Mouse was forever taking hats off. It would be 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) with blowing snow and I’d be carrying her from the car into the Westgate Kroger and she would be pulling off her blasted hat. But it could also be that she was already calling herself Mouse at the ripe old age of 18 months but wasn’t quiiiite able to articulate that to us. Even though she could count to 10 and string together perfectly enunciated sentences like, “Would you please read this book to me?”.

Hat tip to Stargazer (who you know as Margaret) because it seems one of her girls was once a tiger cat for Halloween.

One hand is exactly what was required to count trick-or-treaters last night. And I am not a polydactyl, so you know that means *five*. No, not a very good turnout. We never did get hundreds of kids but we used to at least get a steady stream. 50 or 60 or thereabouts. I’m not sure what’s going on any more. I see people pushing strollers around. Where are they? I hope people aren’t afraid of us! If they only knew how many hours the GG and I have spent doing volunteer work with schools and youth groups. Maybe people are going to parties instead?

Oh well, onward. At least I already have all of the Halloween stuff packed away. Except for the black light and the old Indefatigable tail light covers. And the candy. Last year I bought so much candy that when Lizard Breath arrived for Christmas, the first thing she noticed was a bowl full of Halloween candy.

I don’t know why but it always seems like forever from Labor Day until Halloween and then I turn around once or twice and suddenly I’m standing over the turkey bin bumping carts with all the other old bags at Meijer or wherever. We have yet to figure out how we are going to handle Turkey Day and xmas this year. I am sorta late to the sandwich generation in some ways but it has finally asserted itself.

The wondrous new Planet Ann Arbor crosswalk ordinance has resulted in at least one serious accident This is exactly the stretch of road I kvetched about last week. We are all greatly relieved that the leaning tree on the way into the schoolyard has been cut down. And who the heck is Kim Kardashian? Should I know her? If so, why?

Oh yeah. I probably take a photooo like today’s every fall. There were about a billion geese in the pond in front of my parking space today. You can only see a few in the photooo. I say “my” parking space because I park there *every* day. And I *can* park there every day because nobody else parks anywhere near that space. Except for a couple of weeks where somebody with one of those boxy vee-hickles was parking right next to my space and one day *in* it. Furnace contractor? Visiting dignitary? I do not know. That vee-hickle has been gone for a couple weeks now and I can park in peace.