As you can see, I did not dust this little corner of the Landfill universe. It is the GG’s area, along with the Freak-out Chamber and his mothership / snack table. And a few other places that I am chomping at the bit to de-clutter and fling. Not that I don’t still have a lot of my own stuff to fling.

A question: Does anyone have experience with converting old cassette tapes to MP3? We don’t really have a lot of tapes hanging around that aren’t downloadable via iTunes (and yes we can afford to do that, you old coot) but there some ancient “mix tapes”, particularly Agaloogaboogdigby (and then there’s one where [I think] The Commander is playing the puano piano), that I would like to take to the restaurant at the end of the universe. I spent probably a half hour today doing online research on that technology. I was overwhelmed by the choices. If you have done this, what did you use and how well did it work? If your device is not Mac-compatible, it’s of no use to me. And I am not a sound-snob. If you want real sound, you listen to real people playing music in real-time (and making mistakes…) But that’s all a rant for another day…

I did get *some* deep-cleaning done today but I did not pull heavy furniture out from the wall and vacuum *behind* it. I need to do that. Soon. I did make progress though. And I flung some more stuff, mostly clothing I haven’t worn for a couple years.

At the end of the afternoon, I went out to the patio with a glass of whine. It was a mini-bottle of whine that was in The Commander’s mini-fridge in her room at Freighter View and it’s been hanging around for a while and, although I don’t normally drink Lambrusco, I decided it was time to fling it. So I sat on the patio and listened to the usual post-football-game emergency vee-hickles siren around the area and there was a chippy scurrying about mostly ignoring me. Alas. Lambrusco is a sweet wine and I cannot tell you how many insects found their way into my glass, which caused me to dump it. Sayanora.

Last but not least, I toasted the 29 guys who died 37 years ago when the great lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sunk and broke up in a huge storm on Lake Superior. Here’s a video and I will leave you with the news that facebook friends who live on Whitefish Bay report very high winds tonight too. I get a little sappy about the Edmund Fitz and, as I sat on my crappy old patio today, I played the video on my phone and, as I toasted the Fitz, there were tears but I forced them back.

Sayanora,
Kayak Woman

That title is a direct quote from The Commander from back in the good old days of 2006. I was a free-wheelin’ gal in those days other than the community college classes that I knew would kick my you-know-what if I didn’t keep up with them. But I was relatively unscheduled that year and I drove up to the Yooperland on Thursday, October 5th (I know the date only from my blahg). That was the year that a certain congressman from Florida was caught sending sexually suggestive instant messages to teenage male congressional pages. We discussed that and other polly-tickal stuff that afternoon and if you click here you can get a taste of what an 86-year-old formerly republican woman thought about the polly-tickal scene back then.

About the last time I heard The Comm make an actual political comment was the Saturday morning before the c. diff infection that lead to her death last February. When you are really sick, you are oblivious to anything but your own comfort. I called her that Saturday morning and we actually had a coherent conversation and when I told her that Rick Santorum seemed to be doing well as a republican candidate and explained that he was an anti-choice Christian conservative, she expressed disgust at a level that only a nonagenarian can get away with.

She didn’t live long enough to be able to express an opinion about Todd Akin but I would’ve loved to have heard it. This morning, I opened up Twitter (which I use mainly as a news aggregator these days, since everybody is on facebook) and here was Charles Darwin running for election. That is, 4000 voters wrote Charles Darwin’s name in as a protest vote to Paul Broun, who, despite his medical school education (SCIENCE anyone?), believes that the earth was created 9,000 years ago, among other things. He ran unopposed and won. But 4,000 votes for “Charles Darwin”?

He is on the HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE! ALONG WITH TODD AKIN!!! Why under the sun DO these people get elected and WHY UNDER THE SUN DO THEY GET APPOINTED TO THE HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE??? Who checks these people’s credentials? Hmmm?

P.S. The people I have ranted about are all republicans but I’m sure that there are also plenty of democrats who do not pass the sniff test.

Okay, I met up with MMCB at Barry’s this morning and we went through all of the usual conversational gyrations. Who / what we voted for and what our voting experience was like. Our family stuff. Her mom’s condo (in Fla) is [hopefully] selling, my mom’s house (in Sault Ste. Siberia) is still up for sale. (I am not surprised by that.) Her son is doing well and so are my kids. She knows what her son is doing every minute. I don’t know what my daughters are doing every minute. We are both happy with our arrangements with our children.

As we walked out the door, we discussed when we could meet next. MMCB said something like, “I am going to [insert exotic place here] next week and the next week is Thanksgiving.” Uuuhhhh…. The next week is Thanksgiving. The next week is Thanksgiving. The next week is Thanksgiving. The next week is Thanksgiving.

Saaaayyy what!?! My eyes opened wide and my jaw dropped about two feet. Yes. Thanksgiving is in two weeks.

Now… Not that we have any great plans for turkey day. I think we have done something different for turkey day every year that we have spent it together. I am happy with a small celebration at home with a faaarrr in the faaarrplace and whatever. MMCB’s statement that turkey day is in two weeks got me mobilized though. Whatever we end up doing for turkey day and whether or not there are guests any time during that weekend, it is time to deep-clean and de-rodent (again) the Landfill. Make no mistake, I will be doing all that mostly for my own peace of mind, not to impress anyone who may drop in over Thanksgiving weekend. And please do drop in if you can! Deep-cleaning will interrupt my de-hoarding activities for a while. I hope I am up to that. I am missing the months of September and October when I got a lot done…

It was a real cat fight. I was walking down by WWWD’s house at 0-skunk-30 this morning and two aminals shot out into the street in front of me howling away. They were not skunks. Whew. (Skunks do not move that fast.) I tweeted, “Cat fight.” On any other day it would’ve been a throwaway tweet. Cat fight. So what. This morning, I wondered if any of my “followers” would interpret that to be a comment on the election. And so my wonderful daughter Lizard Breath did. Although she also knows me well enough that she knew there was an *actual* cat fight. Her sense of humor is not identical to mine but it is pretty close.

Yes. This election went my way for the most part. And since I am fortunate enough to work with a team who mostly (but not totally) shares my opinions, there were none of those awful water cooler conversations. Truth be told, there was maybe three minutes of very respectful polly-tickal talk this morning (i.e., I like you but I don’t know who/what you support so I will shut up now) and then people were back into video games. I mean, my boss is capable of expounding upon Bender for a half hour or so. Make no mistake, he knows what he is doing when it comes to our product.

Am I ecstatic about the election? No I am not. I am relieved that it’s over! I am relieved that a candidate that I could not support didn’t win the presidency and I am relieved that a party that I don’t recognize any more lost some ground. (Take a note GOP, misogynist old white males without any basic knowledge of biology talking about rape turn most women off.) I think that our country has some serious issues to sort out but I have no idea how to start those conversations. I hope our newly elected officials will work together on this stuff but I don’t have much hope that they will. My thoughts on this are way too complicated to write about today, so I will not go there. I voted for Obama (again) and I like Obama but I am not feeling ecstatic about the next four years.

People yesterday remembered those old ka-chunk voting booths. I kind of miss those things. You went inside the booth and closed the curtain and pulled the levers down for your candidates and your munchkins hung out down by your feet, fascinated by all of the levers and stuff. Then, when you were done voting, you pulled a big lever that opened the curtain. I remember going with The Commander to vote (usually Republican in those days, although she switched at some point and was Obama all the way in 2008). Lizard Breath remembers going with me to Haisley when they still used those things. My only question is, was I wearing my clip-clop shoes? [wink]

The strategy was that I would leave at about my regular 0-skunk-30 walk time and circle the school / polling place until a line began to form, join the queue, and text the GG. The short of it is that, when I arrived at 6:25 AM, a line had already formed. I was the 11th person. Shuggy’s parents were 12 and 13 and the GG ended up being about 16.

It was a convivial crowd and it’s always fun to talk to Shuggy’s parents so the time passed quickly. The last time I voted in person (last spring), I was the first voter and the volunteers fumbled a bit with the process. Which sticker goes where? There was *new* technology today: a *laptop* and a little thingy that scanned my driver’s license. I imagine that there were probably glitches related to this new technology here and there but it worked like a charm for me and I was shooed off to a voting station by The Beautiful Jackie with her 1000-watt smile. Our ballot was *huge* but I had done my homework and I’m a “fast” person when filling out forms in general and an expert at filling in little circles so, although I was the 11th voter, my ballot was the 4th to be sucked up by the ballot-eater.

So, no glitches (except that I managed to lose my “I voted” sticker before I even got out of the school — some second-grader will no doubt be wearing it tomorrow) and I was left to walk down the back hall of Haisley School for about the 1012th time. And then I was home and a huge wave of psychological exhaustion overtook me. It’s done and life will go on no matter who “wins” and I had to get to work but I am kind of “done” with a big prodject (intentionally misspelled) there too. I have stuff to do but it’s pickity ancillary stuff and I struggled the entire day to find a good work rhythm. I just could not get enthused.

If you voted today, I hope your experience was as smooth as mine. I am envious of all you early voters but I had a good time voting in person today. I hope I can stand to watch the results tonight.

Because the truth is that I am almost always bright-eyed and bushy tailed when I get to work. Even on Monday mornings. And I was today although I have to admit, I am a more than a little fatigued from the uber-long electoral campaign and want it to be over with.

It was fun today to talk to a young colleague who will be voting for the first time. He is an immigrant who has obtained citizenship and this will be his first voting experience. Can I just tell you he was excited! Did we have advice for him? Oh, yes we did! Go early. Take your driver’s license (technically not required but simplifies the process). Go early. Bring your smart phone. You’ll need it to play Angry Birds while you’re waiting. If you don’t go early. Do your homework before you get there — it’s a long ballot. Read it carefully when you get there anyway, so you don’t accidentally “over-vote”. Go early. Because the people who vote only for the president or vote a straight ticket will be balanced out by those will take a loooooonnnnnggg time to read and re-read everything on the ballot and stand there hemming and hawing about who/what to vote for. Watch out for “reverse” language on ballot proposals. Go early. If there is a “citizenship” checkbox on your ballot application, you can ignore it. Our Secretary of State got a little greedy but she was squelched. Go early. Go early. I am excited for this young man. We rescheduled a meeting largely to make sure he had enough time to vote tomorrow without worrying about work.

I am not all that excited for myself. I am envious of those in states where early voting is allowed. Well, it sort of is here in that you can vote absentee but you have to state that you will truly not be able to get to the polls on election day in order to vote absentee. I voted absentee back in the August primary here in the 5th ward of the Planet Ann Arbor. I was legitimately out of town on vacation for that election. I *will* be in town tomorrow and the polling place is literally in my back yard. I couldn’t bring myself to lie about my whereabouts just to get an absentee ballot. Anyway, I *like* to vote in person. I just don’t like to wait in line. I have a plan for tomorrow. We’ll see how well it works. I will take my driver’s license.

I don’t want to turn this into an ugly old ranty post but I am disheartened when I hear reports about how long it is taking people to vote early. From what I am hearing, a lot of the people affected by this are already somewhat disenfranchised and may not have the luxury of having a job like mine, where if you are an hour (or two or three or nine) late because you had to wait that long to vote, nobody much cares. They also don’t (that I know of) care who you vote for but that’s a whole ‘nother story. I think we need to make voting more accessible for all of our citizens, whatever their socio-economic status is. That doesn’t seem to be happening with this election. It’s all easy for me. I’m a baggy old white woman with a good job and a polling place in my back yard. Others? Not so much. But I will be voting along the lines of “those people”. Partly because it is in my own interest and partly because “those people” matter too.

I don’t know what my voting experience will be tomorrow but I will probably report it, unless big bugs attack the earth and then I will be a little busy with my rocket launcher in the back yard or wherever. I hope for the best for my young colleague. I don’t care who he votes for. I do hope he has a decent experience. Knowing him, he will have some ideas for improving the process [wink].

Seeya on the other side.

Okay, being a sensitive new age guy is not equivalent to emulating your grandmother, no matter how wonderful she was and how much you loved her. That is about all I am gonna say about that and no this is not a polly-tickal post.

It is a little after six PM and we got home a little more than an hour ago and between then and now, I have unpacked, walked over to the Plum Market and started dinner. A coq au vin that I got from my cuzzint Pooh about a gazillion years ago, which may mean that it originally came from My Dear Uncle Harry, who is the chief cook and bottle washer at his household. Or it may not. Anyway, it is good and it is simple enough that I can get it started and hang out with y’all while it cooks.

What a gorgeous day! We moseyed on over to my new fave Houghton Lake breakfast spot, Little Boots. I got my usual, which is the Gunslinger Quesadilla. It comes in three pieces and I *always* eat two of them and get a box for the third, which I heat up on Monday morning. I love Cheerios but I can’t eat them *every* day (oatmeal either, I’m working on that…).

And then we headed up to hike the Beaver Creek foot trail. It was cold enough starting out that my little knit glubs were actually not quite enough. But I knew I would warm up and I did and then THE SUN CAME OUT! And the red pines became even more beautiful.

By the time we got back to the Group Home, the sun was dazzling. A penetrating cold persisted but still, I didn’t want to leave. Houghton Lake (and all of my CFam in-laws) has been a haven for me over the last few years when The Commander began to have difficulties. When I go to Houghton Lake, I am not [usually] schlepping boxes of cosmic debris around, loading them in and out of trailers, or sorting the contents. My in-laws are fun and they didn’t know me when I was a bratty little kid or an angsty teenager so that’s a whole part of my life I don’t have to think about.

I drove home today and we took a lot of “back roads”. Old 55 to West Branch and then 13 down through Alger and Sterling and Pinconning and Kawkawlin, which is where we hit the frickin’ I75 SUV Speedway again. I love driving the old roads if there’s time to do so. And it seemed like there was today. And we now have standard time, which means it is light in the morning (for a while) but not in the evening. I am okay with that. It is what it is. Being outside as much as I am makes it easier.

Love y’all,
Kayak Woman.

Up here in the area surrounding the Houghton Lake Group Home, there are forests of yard signs at most of the major intersections around the lake. My own very informal yard sign survey finds that there are about a trazillion signs for local politicians, a smattering of United Snakes senators and reps, and *very* few Obama or Romney signs. I do not know what this means. No need for my Republican readers to get their undies in a bunch because I have no clue. I do remember being up here before one (or maybe both) of the Bush elections and seeing Bush Bush Bush *everywhere*. This area tends to be Republican. So, not sure what’s going on.

What I do think is a good thing is that there are so many signs for local politicians. I don’t have a clue as to what party any of these people belong to. I’m just glad that there are some folks who are actually paying attention to local politics because I think that’s where it all starts. I definitely support one presidential candidate over the other but what scares me the most is the “low information” voters, as we are calling them this cycle. Those who will vote *only* for president this coming Tuesday and not know anything about the lower-level candidates or ballot proposals or whatever. We have a full slate coming up on The Planet Ann Arbor and I am feeling a wee bit good about myself that I will actually go into the voting booth on Tuesday and be able to cast an informed vote for more than president. For a long time I *was* more or less a low-information voter. That was my error and I have been working hard to correct it but I have a long way to go… And some friends are probably not happy with m choice of candidates but I do have a choice.

Anyway, I was checking out the yard signs today. I have *no* idea what the yard signs were at Houghton Lake at the time of the 2008 election. I was consumed then by my then-new job and also carving out time to rocket up to the yooperland to hang out with UKW and Radical Betty during what turned out to be Radical Betty’s last year of life. We had a beautiful summer-like October weekend in the Great White North and we spent cocktail hour on a beautiful sunset moominbeach, while the C Fam folks enjoyed a weekend of boating all over the place at Houghton Lake.

And then there was this. Click if you dare.

Whatever your political persuasion, whether you agree with me or not (and I know that some of you do and some of you do not), please vote on Tuesday. I care who wins the election(s) but I love you all whether or not you vote like I do.

I wish I could say it wasn’t so but it is. I don’t even like myself at this moment. The twinz of terror turned on the boob toob and that was okay with me because I needed some kind of ambient noise. Except that the toob was tuned into a benefit thingy (for New York? I think…) and this horrendously terrible horrible young woman was caterwauling away in that pseudo-yodeling style I used to hear on a horrible old show called Star Search 90. I like *real* yodeling, do not get me wrong. Star Search 90 was on such a long time ago (1990, roight?) that I can’t believe people still think it is “cool” to caterwaul like that. And yes, I “watched” Star Search 90. It went something like this. Back in the day, some cable station that we got would play old Star Trek shows on Sunday evenings while I was making dinner. Lizard Breath would usually be sitting at the end of the counter drawing or something and Mouse would be scurrying around getting Mousey new “air bottles” or whatever. I have never been a Trekkie but I loved having Star Trek on as ambient noise. One day… I turned on the TV at 6:00 on a Sunday evening and STAR TREK WAS NOT ON!!!! It had been replaced by Star 90. Star Trek, Star Search 90? Maybe they thought nobody would notice? Roight. Of all things, either because I was too lazy to look for a new ambient TV show or couldn’t *find* one, Star Search 90 became the new Sunday evening dinner-making background show, caterwauling and all. Until life moved on into the next phase and eventually into a virtually TV-free phase. Except for evenings like tonight.

It’s okay, I am just taaarred. Drove up here to the Group Home at HL after work today. I have grown to *hate* driving up here at that time. I spent most of the afternoon in a horse-trading session with a mish-mash of developers and other stake-holders. Er, that would be *software* developers, not real-estate developers. There is a big difference. Then, even though I left work early, traffic was *awful* on the way home. And I had to do a little bit of last-minute scrambling to finish the last smidgen of packing I had left. And then there was the whole drive north. I am getting really sick of the I75 SUV Speedway and we were driving the Trashmobile. Or the GG was driving the Trashmobile. I finished the Friday xword and played some Plants and Zombies, which is a new game for me (so far, it’s not too bad, kind of uses a similar combo of speed and reflexes as the old Spit card game). And. I have work to do this weekend. I mean work work, not domestic goddess work, although I’ll certainly do some of that too. I am not complaining. It’s rare that I have to work extra hours to get my job done but we are currently in a bit of a mini-crunch and, anyway, if I don’t *finish* my work, I will be thinking about it all weekend and having processing dreams.

By the way, somebody on LinkedIn has “endorsed” me for “skill & expertise” because I know how to use Visio? Yeah well, Visio is definitely in my little bag of tricks. But not sure how I came to be “endorsed” for it. I do not understand LinkedIn. Do people *really* find employment via LinkedIn connections? A few years back, I was at a user experience conference and I was in a “social media” session led by a couple of women from a local company that’s regarded as “cutting edge” when it comes to user experience design. Social media? One of these gals made the rather dubious statement that “24-year-olds would be on LinkedIn because they would be looking for jobs”. Oh really? Maybe… I texted California. “Are you on LinkedIn?” “No”, replied the then-24-year-old [employed]. Oh, I am sure that there are *many* 24-year-olds on LinkedIn. I get annoyed when people, especially those who are regarded as experts, make random uninformed statements – all [demographic group] does [a thing] (or whatever). No. I like to fact-check when I hear stuff like that. Oh gooooogle? Yes, I can be annoying. But yes, I have some expertise in Visio. I certainly do not know it all but, if I don’t know it, I can usually figure it out.

Anyway, I can hardly keep my eyes open at this point.

Babblety-gabblety, rambly-grumbly, sleep tight,
Kayak Woman

Yeah, sorry about that. Every once in a while, Froog gets ahold of Garageband on one or the other of my devices. It was easy when only my laptop had Garageband. Now it’s everywhere and he managed to sneak onto my iPad. Sat right there in the front window on his “jacky-lantern” and recorded that “masterpiece”. Maybe that’s why we only had something like four batches of trick-or-treaters.

Because boy oh boy, we did not get many. Back in the day, we usually got a pretty steady stream. Even when various forms of precipitation were descending out of the sky. Part of me wonders if it’s because there is no evidence of children around The Landfill but maybe it’s just that we’re in a low point in some unknown cycle. This is the first year in I don’t know how many that we didn’t carve at least one pumpkin. It is the first year in forever that we didn’t set up Vandergriff on a stepladder. I remember when we were stuffing Vandergriff once when Lizard Breath was in kindergarten. Her kindergarten aide walked by and Liz excitedly announced, “We’re stuffing our dummy!” And then there was the time that I was dismantling Vandergriff and as I took his decomposing pumpkin head out to the compost bin, I had to reassure Mouse that he would help the flowers grow in the spring.

This year? I hung a bunch of orange and purple lights around and I am putting The Commander’s “electric jack-o-lantern” to good use. Last fall, when she asked to have her electric jack-o-lantern at Freighter View, I was kind of nonplussed at first. What the heck is an electric jack-o-lantern? Well, it is an electric jack-o-lantern. I can’t remember if I found it up at Command Central or if The Beautiful Jan or The Beautiful Connie did the job. The Commander liked decorating for holidays although her decorations became simpler and more subtle in her later years. She didn’t want to take the time to carve a pumpkin (and in the last years, probably couldn’t easily do it) so she found an electric one. I am using it now.

I actually found all of my Halloween stuff yesterday morning at 0-skunk-30. I woke up at that batscope hour the night before and remembered that I had packed it carefully into a plastic box last fall. (Except for the borrowed witch’s hat. That is somewhere else. I will find it.) Still, black clothing (which I wear all the time) and a sparkly purple spider “shawl”, bat mardi gras beads, and jack-o-lantern socks don’t really make a costume. I knew it and I didn’t care about the costume contest. Those who wore serious costumes were very tired of them by the end of the day.

I am still pinching myself that I have a job that I like and there are people there who think my goofy old frog puppet is actually cool. Because, as Froog said yesterday, I did not win any prizes in the costume contest but I *was* officially recognized for reaching my five-year employment milestone. I do not get sentimental about stuff like this except that I totally fell into this job at a time when I was wondering if I would ever have gainful employment again. I don’t want to go into great detail about that but I am not the best at interviewing for jobs, etc. I have a fine arts degree but I am also one of those folks who make the trains run on time plus I can be creative when I need to be. I am good at learning new technologies, for one thing… But I have to believe that I wouldn’t have been offered this job if I had answered an ad for it because I would have had a hard time selling my “skills”. Because it’s hard to quantify them.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing.