In a parallel universe, I think I could adapt to island life and schlepping myself and my vee-hickle around on a ferry. Actually, when I was a little kid, those of us who lived in the yooperland *were* dependent upon big car ferries if we wanted to travel back and forth between the peninsulas. As I walked the decks of the Washington State ferries, I remembered walking with my dad on the deck of the Vacationlander, putting my hands in my jacket pockets just like he did.

We got up at 0-skunk-30 this morning and boarded a ferry just as the sun was coming over the horizon. UKW had packed a breakfast and a whole bunch of windbreakers and rain gear that we didn’t end up needing because it was unexpectedly SUNNY! Who knew?

We headed to the island of San Juan where we wandered the marina at Roche Harbor with our cappuccinos (and used the bathroom about a billion times, or at least I used the bathroom about a billion times – note to self: don’t drink so much coffee). Our own favorite tour guide took us to a couple other points of interest, including Lime Kiln State Park, where we saw four salties and a… WHALE!! Note that we didn’t get there without taking a wrong turn and ending up in Friday Harbor again. Our favorite tour guide was embarrassed about the missed turn but I blame it on the wondrous outhouse conversation that yer fav-o-rite blahgger instigated.

Back to Friday Harbor (third time if you’re counting). Parked the car in the ferry line, grabbed lunch, and boarded. Said goodbye to UKW at Lopez and headed on to Anacortes. I think every one of us who could nap did, then road warrior Lizard Breath piloted our rental down to Seattle, where we now are, relaxing at Jay and Carl’s.

Seven minute warning to head for dinner somewhere in Pioneer Park, then wheels down at Daytwa Metro tomorrow afternoon.

And so it goes. The wedding is over and it is up to all of us including the newlyweds to get on with our darned lives. Peat must be scooped and rodents slain and whatever.

We were taaaared today. Well UKW was and so were some of the rest of us, even though we served satellite functions to the mother of the groom and her huge network. After a morning of schlepping, a short hike was just the ticket. And then some leftover hors d’oeuvres from the wedding and a wee bit o’ whine.

At one point, we ended up at Watmough Bay and there was the groom! With another woman! Whaaaa?? Of course it was just a doppelgänger.

Anyway, early start tomorrow for a bit more touring in the San Juans, then a drive back down to Seattle for the night. Anyway, babblety babblety kerflop.

Long, wonderful day. R & T are married. More partying ahead tonight. Back off the grid for now.

And now it’s morning and I suspect most people will sleep in today. Yer fav-o-rite blahgger, being stuck on eastern time, not so much.

Here is the result of some of our grunt work. The beach urchins helped UKW’s neighbor harvest the flowers for the bouquets from her yard. We pitched in to help set the tables before the wedding, then scrambled everything off of them when the wind blew up toward the end of the reception. We are not strangers to outdoor weddings with (mostly) volunteer help.

I have to say it is a riot to finally put faces to the names of the Lopezians I’ve been hearing about for so many years. I even startled a few folks by recognizing them outright. Hey, I have seen some photos too! All in all, a great community and not a whole lot different in some ways than the moominbeach community.

And now to mobilize and (quietly, I hope) clean up the cast iron pans and other dishes that got left yesterday before the mother of the groom arises. Hopefully she will have some time to relax and decompress today.

I slept very well last night in the luxurious accommodations generously offered by my cousin’s (aka Uber Kayak Woman) neighbor. But even though I got to bed at something like 1:00 AM EDT, I had to force myself to relax and stay in bed until 6:00 AM PDT. But relax and stay in bed I did because I knew we would be rockin’ and rollin’ all day helping UKW get things ready for her son’s rehearsal dinner and wedding.

And so we did, schlepping things from place to place, scouring the island for an elusive set of plates (never found), and I fergit what else. Lunch in town with more arriving cousins to give UKW the space to regroup a bit, rather than interrupting her preparations to engineer lunch for nine people. UKW is an Amazon and I have learned from being her event-planning lackey in the past that it’s best to just sort of stay on the sidelines, providing a hand when I perceive a niche that I can take ownership of and generally being a sounding board.

And so, this is us at 0-dark-30 this morning, doing I dunno what in the kitchen. I’m sure *I* am probably processing dishes because that is one niche I can occupy in life without turning my brain on. (And my brain isn’t very helpful here anyway because I am unfamiliar with the island and am not listed as a driver on the rental vee-hickle. We didn’t really want to pay for more than two drivers and, thinking it would be a good idea for one of the beach urchins to be able to drive, I yielded that function to Lizard Breath.)

That is all for now. It is always hard to process my thoughts about experiencing a new place while I am in the moment and I am in the moment now. Phone and Internet are spotty. Wifi at UKW’s is solidly reliable. Elsewhere, it’s a mixed bag of service. Kind of like the yooperland… Anyway, I am posting this now because I’m going off the grid for the evening and may not get another chance.

Sayonara for now,

KW

5:59 AM EDT: boarded the Mean Green Frog Hoppin’ Musheen.

6:47 AM EDT (or thereabouts): boarded (after some fumbling) a shuttle from the long-term parking.

7-whatever EDT: boarded a security booth-thingy and got yelled at for not knowing what I was doing and not immediately following her barked out orders. Which I didn’t hear / interpret as English words.

8-something AM EDT: boarded Delta flight 1249.

Whenever: took off.

11:15 AM PDT: boarded a Seatac trainish kind of thing to baggage claim.

11:30 or so AM PDT: boarded a rental vee-hickle shuttle bus.

Ca. Noon (or thereabouts) PDT: boarded late model Chevy Impala — with outlet for plugging in flagging lucky-shuckial computing devices.

10 minutes later: aminal feeding time and regrouping at a Panera somewhere south of Seatac.

Afternoon liqwire-buying spree at the Anacortes Safeway. (Had totally lost track of time by then.)

4:50 PM PDT: boarded ferry to Lopez Island.

Have you been to the Henry Ford Museum? I can’t count how many times I was asked a variation on that question today. And the answer? Well… Drum roll… Yes, about a quazzillion times. But not recently.

If you are one of my regular five readers, you know that I did not grow up in Dee-troit City or anywhere near it. But Grandaddy and Bolette lived there and approximately twice a year, we would make the drive down to visit them for a weekend. If it wasn’t the weekend of the auto show, we would go to the Henry Ford Museum. We would ride in Grandaddy’s Caddy-lac. All three of the boyz would ride in the front seat and all three of the girlz would ride in the back. That was the rule. It was great! I loved sitting next to Bolette! We did not have seat belts. There was a rope-like thingy that was strung across the back of the front seat and I guess you could hold on to that if you needed to. The Caddy-lac DID have power windows! I did not personally own a vee-hickle with power windows until 1989, when we bought The Exxon Tanker Valdez.

We went to the HF Museum in those days because my old coot *and* The Engineer (aka my little brother) were CAR FREAKS! I can remember once when the parents were traveling to Dee-troit *without* us and The Engineer (at the age of maybe five?) told them in no uncertain terms that if they saw any Corvettes with the light covers OPEN (or was it closed, I can’t remember), they were to REPORT that fact! Say what? Anyway, we would go to the HF Museum and look at all the old cars. Was I bored? Hmmm… I remember always being excited about going there but I bet that I was bored after about the 30th old car. I do remember the train locomotives…

The last time I went to the HF Museum? It was a girl scout trip and by the end of it, one of the other co-leaders said something like, “I am a teetotaler but I’m ready to go to the BAR right now!” Yes. If I remember accurately, a couple of kids got sick and at least one pair of “best friends forever” got into a knock-down drag-out fight. I remember said co-leader [wearily] saying something like, “Mr. K and I have been hanging out with each other for 25 years and sometimes we argue but we still love each other.”

I went to the HF Museum today. I went with my work team. I think there were 25 of us altogether. The LSCHP arranged this event to celebrate of a successful software release and we saw an Imax movie about Russian submersible vee-hickles filming the Titanic from the ocean floor and retrieving artifacts. The movie didn’t make me toooooo dizzy and then we went through the exhibit. After a group photoooo on the “bow” at the beginning of the exhibit, (picture 25 baggy old software developers, systems analysts and the like) I floated through it, found out that my person (Mrs. Baxter) survived the tragedy (but her husband didn’t) and then slunk out the exit, hightailed it to the parking lot, and piloted the Ninja to the westbound I94 18-Wheel Slogway. Homeward bound.

I love the HF Museum. One of my very best memories of it is once when Mouse was a pre-schooler and there were hands-on activities and one was hand-sewing. The woman in charge of that activity oohed and aahed about Mouse’s precise little stitches. And now she is a fiber artist (among other things…). In general, I tend to like big museums in small bites. There’s too much in some of these big ones to try to see in one visit.

Of course, another entity named after Henry Ford that I am way too familiar with is the Henry Ford Hospital Hoosegow. It is a wonderful place too but I felt great gratitude that I was heading to the *museum* today.

Oh, he’s very much alive. He’s just heading over to Staples to buy ink. Did you know that when you don’t use a printer for about a gazillion months, the printer “expires” the ink cartridges? Or something like that. I am shaking my head in disbelief.

At any rate, we have stuff to print and one of our two printers can print things but the ink is low so it prints things in a kind of a gray color, which probably won’t work at whatever scanner-type things they have at Metro these days to get boarding passes, etc. I’m not really sure what we’re doing with these printouts and I am irritated that, in this day and age, I still have to tote a ream of paper around the country to prove that I have a ticket. And actually, I probably don’t have to tote a ream of paper around the country but I am pouring my energy into writing this here blahg entry rather than figuring out how to avoid hauling a ream of paper around the country.

Long, long time ago… I purchased a loverly 12″ screen G4 Powerbook. It came with a “free” printer. We didn’t actually have wifi in the Landfill at that time. I don’t think. I plugged the printer straight into my powerbook and printing was a dream. Plus I could check what ink cartridges were low, etc.

We have had wifi printers for about a grazillion years now and they are cool. When they work. I mean that in two ways. First, we had a brand new wifi printer that came with a new iMac. That printer crapped out within months. “Free”. Yes, you get what you pay for. No problem. There were a couple of NEW or barely used printers down in the dungeon. We hooked them up. And, I have had trouble printing things on either of them from my MacBook Pro for months and months and months. “Can’t find this printer”, yada yada yada.

I grumped at the GG tonight because, whether he wants to be or not, he IS the Printer Czar. I am not an computer neophyte by any means (although the Apple Store minions always seem to think so) and I *can* [sometimes] figger this networking stuff out. If I have time and the right kind of mindset to bludgeon my way through it. The Printer Czar doesn’t have any more time than I do [arguably] but he has a better understanding of all the ‘puters, hubs, and waaaars than I do. So it’s much more expedient if he just does it. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. (Read Cryptonomicon and substitute Enoch Root’s Greek names for the gods.)

I am looking forward to the days when we are a truly paperless society. It seems like we’re almost there and I think one of the reasons the Landfill printers don’t work very well is because we don’t print things very often.

Anyway, the Printer Czar did manage to obtain a new cartridge for one of the printers and *he* can print stuff now but I’m not sure that I can.

Good night. Grinchie, call me back. Work is a fire drill but I will get outta there tomorrow if it kills me. And then, Seattle and Lopez Island on Thursday.

One bite at a time, don’tcha know. I do know because I am engaged in several ongoing elephant-eating prodjects (intentionally misspelled) at this time. The Big Fling is one of them and then there’s that thing we’re doing at my work. Fortunately someone smarter than me is in charge of cutting up the work elephant into bite-size edible tidbits. I have to manhandle the Big Fling all by myself. One thing at a time. Live in the moment. The next eight days will be a bit like that. There are a lot of unknowns to face and I am a little freaked out about it all. In some ways, since I travel very lightly if I’m not schlepping tons of crap down from the Yooperland, I am pretty well prepared but I know that I will be doing a fair amount of talking myself down off the ledge. Live in the moment. One thing at a time. Chill out (ducking because Mouse hates when I use that phrase) and if all else fails, take a walk or escape into the tech device of the moment. Actually, sometimes when I act like the nerd that I am, *other* nerds are not afraid to approach me and I actually make friends.

We bagged out of the Houghton Lake Group Home earlier than usual today. We could have joined these loverly gentlemen on a pontoon boat ride over to the Cut River. I wanted to get home. I had (I thought) a lot to do. Cleaning and organizing yada yada yada (ducking because The Commander hates when I use that phrase. Uh, oh yeah…). What did I actually do? Quick trip to the Plum Market, a load of laundry, cleaned the Blue and Only Bathroom, watered the “garden”, ordered a bunch of fall bizcaz-type clothes online (J. Jill for those who care, jewel tones… and black…), finished reading Cryptonomicon.

Finished reading Cryptonomicon. I loved the book. Did I understand it? Not completely but I got the gist. Faced with a plane ride to the left coast this week, I need another book or two. Anybody read anything good lately? I have to be able to download it to my phone. (Speaking of… Grinchie, are you reading this or are you up to your ears in drywall dust? Because, if you wanna read on the plane, we could download stuff to one of my devices for you. We’ll talk when you get here. WEDNESDAY!)

Anyway, we were leaving dodge this morning and as we crossed the bridge over the Cut River, we spotted our guys down there in the pontoon and I took this photoooo. The Twinz of Terror (one on the bridge, one on the boat) exchanged FUs (“FU and anybody who looks like you”) and then we schlepped along down the southbound I75 SUV Speedway. Well ahead of the usual Labor Day jaffic trams, I might add.

Onward.

The Twins of Terror took off for a Death March over at the south branch of the Au Sable River. I had done that trip more than a few times. Today I couldn’t. I opted to take my regular walk around Long Point this morning and hang out at the Group Home for the day. I am not sure exactly what’s in my head these days but I am taking things one step at a time. That’s what I did today.

So, toast and a bit o’ bacon cadged from none other than my b-i-l Wok with Jim. And the then a trip to the “crap show” with The Lady of Linden. Where we bought some little donuts but not much of anything else. After a stop at the Best Choice, we bought some bratwurst to grill and then we headed back to the group home. A bit of leftover grilled chicken and some salad for lunch…

And then I spent hours sitting out by the lake reading Cryptonomicon. It has been a long time since I have been able to actually sit around and read a book. It may be a long time until I can find time to do that again.

First and foremost, I do have my blasted computer back again. I began a system restore at approximately 5:30 yesterday afternoon and when I woke up to take my shower at oh, I dunno, 5:45 AM, or so it said I still had an hour and 48 minutes to go. Sigh. I figured I would have to leave for Houghton Lake before the restore finished. To my great surprise, when I returned to the Landfill Chitchen after taking a shower, the restore was finished and my loverly MacBook Pro was asking me to log in. And I did and all is well. Except for the fact that Apple apparently didn’t diagnose my particular problem…

I do not like to use the F word on my blahg and so I’m sorry about that but yesterday’s events pushed me over the edge. Sorry.

Anyway, we jumped into the Frog Hopper before dawn this morning and spent a loverly day here at the Group Home @ Houghton Lake, complete with a pontoon boat ride across the lake and over to the Best Choice Market for grokkeries. Nothing like taking a boat to the grokkery store. With the Lady of Linden as the Cap’n!

BBQ Chitchen for dinner and there is a durned sporting event on TV tonight involving our own local collegiate football team aka University of Michigan. Apparently some typical MSU fans are actually rooting for U of M tonight. Apparently U of M is losing… I don’t care much about football but I do like to see U of M win. But I am not watching. I was much more interested in watching the sport of alligator wrestling this afternoon…