Archive for May, 2017

Go ask Alice

Thursday, May 11th, 2017

So, last night, sometime between the time I got home from Cubelandia and when I later angled out the front door and around the corner to throw some bits of recycle into the cart, a BIG BOX arrived. I did not hear it arrive but that may be because I was in the back yard for a while. Apparently I did not have to sign for it. It was addressed to The Pensioner. The return address was inscrutable to me. It was HEEEEAAAAVVVVYYYY! I am not a weakling but I struggled to get it in the front door. What was in it? Oh yeah. It is a new wheel for the Trash Trailer! The last time TP used the Trash Trailer to transport some piece of trash or other somewhere, one of the wheels disintegrated. This is a *very* old trailer and he had to surf around quite a bit to find a replacement. If I had known what was in the box, I would’ve just left it outside.

I’m still reading Marlena but nearing what I think is going to be a bad ending. Will Pollyanna show her face? Dunno but doesn’t seem so. As NpJane pointed out, there is another somewhat similar novel set in the northern lower – The Lake the River and the Other Lake. It’s been a while since I read that one but I am guessing the setting is actually Charlevoix. I could be wrong though. I liked/didn’t like that book. I liked it because it was a story I could get into and there were a couple of characters that I felt empathetic with.

That said…

<not-safe-for-work-alert>There was more sex than I was comfortable with. I am not a prude in any way, shape, or form. I know that teenagers are, well, you know. I WAS a teenager once. I didn’t just materialize as Old Baggy. Where I got off the train is where the main male protagonist and the female antagonist did the dastardly deed in a crumbling old lighthouse and they did it so vigorously that the lighthouse crumbled. Really?</not-safe-for-work-alert>

Besides that, I wasn’t crazy about how neatly the story wrapped up although I was happy for the *female protagonist*, a young woman who wasn’t all that different from who I was as a teenager, although I didn’t have a parental divorce/mid high-school move to deal with (I *think* I am remembering that correctly from the book).

But read the book and form your own opinions!

If you are a Trump fan, you may not want to look at The New Yorker’s most recent cover but I got a huge laugh out of it and I needed that. If you *do* want to see it and my link takes you to a pay wall, just google it.

And finally… Go Ask Alice. When she’s 10 feet tall. [Youtube link, may or may not be an ad.]

Florida to Michigan by way of Idaho (and Nazi Germany)

Wednesday, May 10th, 2017

The plan was that I would read novels about Florida while I was in Florida. Simple plan, right? Then, something flew by on my daughter’s Goodreads update (I stalk my daughters on Goodreads) about a novel with a Michigan setting. There aren’t a whole lot of decent novels set in Michigan that I know of (and no, Jim Harrison is not exactly to my taste and yes, I know he is a highly acclaimed writer, yada yada). So I added to my plan to return to Michigan reading Marlena.

Best laid plans? First of all, we did a lot of driving and I am not the best passenger in the world. Just ask the GG how many times I freak out. Or maybe don’t ask. But I do not sleep in the car and I cannot [usually] get engrossed in a book in the car. I can: check the news on Twitter a billion times, check facebook for updates, and do xword puzzles. Those activities allow me to keep one eye on the road. Also, here I was, thinking I would get to the Sea Club and spend my days sitting around *reading*. Uh, yeah. How about walking boardwalks through the mangrove swamps, visiting Floridian Cfam members, an afternoon at the Ringling Art Museum, “shopping” at St. Armand’s Circle. Took us a couple days to settle into a somewhat relaxed (I will not say sedentary) routine but by the time we got to that point, it was time to pack up and leave. Nevertheless, I read two Fla books although I finished the second one literally on the last five miles of the trip (I have written about this before but am too lazy to look it up).

My Michigan book plans got way-laid at BFF’s house in Atlanta by a book called Idaho (by Emily Ruskovich). Did I want to read it? She didn’t exactly understand it but I think it prompted a lengthy discussion at book group so I think she understands it better now. I put off Marlena for a bit and read Idaho, which I enjoyed greatly. Did I understand it? Not exactly sure but yeah I think so but can’t exactly put it into words, especially not after the chaos I had to write about at work today. I guess the best thing I can say is that I like to get *inside* books and their characters and I definitely did that with this one. There is some difficult content to read though, no Pollyanna in this book, but I still liked it. I kind of wish (sometimes) I had a book group but not sure I would fit in very well…

And then somehow I still put Marlena off because I read The Women in the Castle (by Jessica Shattuck), which I heard about on a Sunday morning NPR show. I am still processing this one but in the end, I did get *inside* the book and loved it.

And now. Finally. I am reading Marlena (by Julie Buntin). It is set in the Kewaunee Petoskey area, and most of the characters range from poor to destitute, scraping a living together honestly (cleaning houses) or dishonestly (cooking meth). And how tenuous both those means of earning a living are… … … I am not finished with the book yet but I am liking it even though the characters are teenagers and I want to shake them sometimes. Or probably in part it’s their parents who need the shaking.

I am not sure how I feel about renaming Petoskey and some of it’s surrounding towns and enclaves. I mean Gaylord is Gaylord and the Mackinac Bridge is the Mackinac Bridge, and those are real. But “Coral” for “Bayview”? We don’t have coral in the great lakes that I know of. That’s a Florida thing.

The nitty gritty

Tuesday, May 9th, 2017

I love the new (?) trend where breakfast restaurants, etc., serve coffee in a random mashup of donated cups. Little Boots Diner at Houghton Lake, which is one of my fave places to get breakfast ever (because they have the gunslinger quesadilla (I always eat two thirds of it and take the rest home in a box)), has all kinds of mugs. I randomly got this “Kiss my Grits” mug when we ate there on Sunday.

After my parents retired, my old coot started collecting souvenir coffee mugs from all of the places they traveled. I mean he *bought* them, not that he was a kleptomaniac. I think this was fun for both of the parents for a while. They named some of the mugs, like Big *ss, which has a rear view of a great big bear on it. They got that at the Columbia Iceberg. Sometimes (but not always) The Comm would serve particular people coffee in that mug at the moomincabin. There was usually a reason for picking out the person and it had nothing to do with the size of their corresponding body part matched the bear on the mug. I have received it quite a few times and nowadays the GG definitely serves me coffee in it. My *ss is not all that big but my attitude is!

In later years, I think The Commander got a little bit overwhelmed by the mugs. Storage was difficult and I think she yearned to fling things. Eventually I ended up with the task of disseminating the mugs. Well, a lot of the mugs. Big *ss and some others are still at the moomincabin. Some family members took some of them. A few of them got donated (I think). I found a Gatlinburg mug in the moomincabin garage last summer and I tried to foist it off on a Gatlinburg resident to no avail. (It’s okay, I figgered he wouldn’t want it and I was just harassing him and we all laughed.)

So, who remembers the TV show that Kiss My Grits comes from? (The phrase probably pre-dates the TV show but that show is the first time I had ever heard of it.) My “childhood” boss Byron used to sometimes call me Alice after the Alice in that show. I was actually flattered.

Harbingers of spring

Monday, May 8th, 2017

The title is a bit of a misnomer because here on The Planet Ann Arbor, we have been having spring for a while now. Really nice weather in April, some of it when we were in Fla of course, but my facebook/timehop “memories” tell me that things were getting going a week or so earlier this year than last. Well, and then there was the Polar Vortex Winter back in 2014… You know the one, when Canada got drunk and fell asleep in the northern midwest and great lake states.

Here is my annual jipt (jack-in-the-pulpit) pic from the woods behind my house.

And here are the birdies in the birdhouse on the north side of my house. I know that the momma bird was freaked out that I was there (the birdhouses are at eye-level). But I took my pic and got outta town so momma could continue to feed her babies.

And here is the Moomincabin.

Just kidding. That big snow drift is gone and this is what is left.

Smoooooth Ninja Ride…

Sunday, May 7th, 2017

And so I am back here on the Planet Ann Arbor. I drove my cute little 2008 Honda Civic SI 6-speed manual up to the Group Home at Houghton Lake on Friday and then I drove it back down to the Planet Ann Arbor today. I had a bit of trouble today when four lanes were turned into two for construction issues but that was short-lived and I knew that Flint (yes, that Flint) would be a problem so I took the I475 Flint bypass.

I am happy to be home but I sooooo miss Houghton Lake. This morning, I walked and then we ate breakfast at my fave Little Boots with the GG’s brother Jim. And then we drove over to the Reedsburg Dam area. It was so comfortable to be sitting in the passenger seat of the Ninja with the GG driving us through all of the usual Houghton Lake area dams and things that we have been checking out ever since we were young.

Oh, but… The speed limit in many places on Michigan freeways is now 75 mph. I am not sure how I feel about that entirely but I do think it shortened my trip a bit. Man oh man, I am remembering when our freeway speed limits were 55…

Working from Lyme Lounge

Saturday, May 6th, 2017

Working for an afternoon’s worth of hours this morning was a *good* thing. I managed to sort out signal from noise enough to make major progress on a couple of prodjects that have been escaping comprehensive solutions for weeks now. Interruptions, interruptions, interruptions. Okay. So, here is my cozy little Cube Away from Cubelandia, nestled up next to the Group Home. It’s also a good Freak Out Chamber for introverts who need a leeeeeetle less discussion for a bit.

Here’s part of the interior minus my work laptop, which was on the *other* table at the *back* of the Lyme Lounge, the table I was sitting at.

This lumberjack was at play while I toiled away. And yes, that’s a pole barn across the road. No, it is not ours (aka, the Cfam). We do not own the land it’s on. It’s a long boring story and it doesn’t involve The Nature Conservancy. Although we would prefer it was not there, there is actually a bit of a silver lining involved, one that defies description.

The Lyme Lounge is a bit too small for Victoria’s Protective Fish but we have some have some mini versions. Also Protective Moose, Protective Beaver, Protective Squoil, and, oh yeah, a Protective Mouse.

And now, four out of five Group Home owners (out of the 10 original siblings) and three of four significant others and Daisy and Chloe Belle are here and yer fav-o-rite introvert is about to put some bells on and head on in to join the party. Lemme see… Chicken and bratwurst on the grill, red-skinned potatoes, asparagus, corn on the cob, and salad. And the Kentucky Derby! My bets are placed! Are yours?

Haven’t been here in toooooo long…

Friday, May 5th, 2017

Uuuuuuugly on The Planet Ann Arbor this morning. 42 degrees, heavy rain, wind. Did I say wind? When I got to work this morning, I tried to open my car door and the wind blew it right back at me. I simpered to myself for a split-second and then I pulled up my big-girl underwear and pushed the dern door back open, grabbed my laptop and schlepped into work.

I exchanged this afternoon for some weekend work hours so I schlepped back out into the muck and sloshed home, packed up and headed north out of Ann Arbor. For about the first 15 miles, I. thought. I. was. gonna. die… Heavy rain. Big lorries EVERYWHERE. Construction (they’re building a “flex lane” in the middle of the freeway, not sure what that means exactly) Horribly uneven pavement laced with rumble strips or whatever they are.

And then I ran out of the rain and construction and for most of the rest of the trip, it was smooth sailing. Until I got a few miles south of West Branch, where I had to make a Hard Stop and for the next several miles I switched between first and second gear until I passed this part of the construction. Michigan freeways are baaaaad but if I had known about this bit of construction (hint to people who *did* detour it yesterday and could have warned me but didn’t, ahem), I could’ve easily detoured it.

As I drove north, the temperature climbed from 42 to 60. Go figger. And this is the lake skyscape that greeted me when I got here. After our epic trip to Florida, I had some trepidation about driving to Houghton Lake this weekend. But I did and I did it with aplomb. I arrived to an overwhelming amount of information via the GG jumping out of the Lyme Lounge and asking me a whole bunch of questions. What horse do I want to bet on? Do I want to go to Fred’s for dinner? Well. Give me a few minutes to get my breath, please?

I took a small walk and then I chose my horses and we did go to Fred’s for dinner. Of course I wanted to go there! We met up with the Lord and Lady of Linden who were a bit behind me on the freeway (and I’m sorry I didn’t have the presence of mind to warn them about the West Branch construction since I also went through it). So much fun!

Protective Fish

Thursday, May 4th, 2017

Things about today? Hmmm… Coffee at Barry’s with MMCB2 is always a plus. What do we talk about? just the usual things baggy old bags talk about. Husbands, kids, other family members (problem or not), travel, polly-ticks, technology, you name it. I could’ve sat there all morning today. It was raining and I was comfortable sitting over at Barry’s with my friends and I really didn’t want to go to work because…

…I well knew what work would be like today, which was banging my head against one ridiculously complicated issue after another all day long, sometimes having to switch rapidly between ridiculously complicated issues. Do not get me wrong! I LOVE this kind of stuff but I was exhausted by the time I got home, not to mention that I had an echo all day.

Did I mention rain? It rained ALL DAY and getting home meant piloting my little Ninja around the gigantic puddles that formed here and there on the secondary roads I have to drive while I can’t get to my beloved (yes) traffic circle and therefore the I94 18-wheel Slogway that dumps me off (after five miles) onto Jackson Rd. Flooding? A little in the back yard but I’ve seen worse.

So, Protective Fish? Mouse’s photo (above) shows two examples of Protective Fish. Our friend Victoria exhibits these at the A2 Farmers Market every Saturday pretty much throughout the year. I think she goes to Fla for a bit. I don’t blame her. When I was young and poor(er than I am now), she was making St. Nicks (and she still does those). I always coveted those but there was no way I could afford one. At some point, she branched out into fish (she still makes St. Nicks, hint for xmas gift) and the GG discovered her and we are now friends and there you go. At this point, almost everyone in my little branch of the Fin Fam owns at least one Protective Fish and we also have a couple at the Houghton Lake Group Home.

Alert Alert Alert

As I speak, a spider has “rappelled” down from Froggy’s mardi gras beads onto my MacBook Pro keyboard and BACK TWICE. I watched the whole thing. I could not get a good pic of Spidey, even with the iPhone burst feature. I thought that I lost the spider but now I see it scuttling around the stuff on the counter to the right of my laptop, iPhone, etc. If I were The Commander (my mother, who hated spiders), I would squelch it with a Kleenex from the box to the right of my laptop. But I’m gonna let it live. I am reasonably sure that it isn’t a poisonous spider and one of the things I will remember forever is the time when the GG and I were at Houghton Lake and his dad was there and we stood in the garage watching a spider spin a web for what seemed like hours.

Love

When in doubt, color code

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2017

One of my mantras at work is something like, “if you find that you are writing Word Salad, that means it’s time for a picture”. I use the term picture loosely. It could mean a flow chart or a table or an annotated screen shot. Or whatever it takes to get the point across. I rocked it this morning with a color-coded table that helped a bunch of us sort out an extremely complex issue. But pride goeth before a fall so the next issue had me going something like bdah bdah bdah.

The other thing that’s going on today is that we FORGOT to give our Mouse a couple of IMPORTANT birthday gifts including a PROTECTIVE FISH! Actually two. I cannot explain in this space at this time why we call them protective fish. Maybe someday when I am wearing purple, I will let all of the family crap out. Not yet. Actually, I DOOOOO wear purple quite frequently. But I do NOT wear one of those red hats or whatever they are..

And then there was some other stuff that happened today, including the Bookhouse Books but we’ll talk about that another time. For now, it is spring on The Planet Ann Arbor and we are color coded for spring, which I believe has happened at least a week before it usually does around here.

Where are you, Mr. Mxyzptlk?

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017

Here’s your May 2, 2017 Planet Ann Arbor voter election experience from a baggy old voter’s viewpoint.

Somehow, I managed to remember to throw my driver’s license into one of my raincoat zip pockets at 0-skunk-30 this morning. I don’t *technically* need an ID to vote. I can turn the ballot “application” over and sign an affidavit that I yam who I yam, not to mention that I am acquainted with a couple of the poll workers from back in the days of the Haisley Mafia.

Brrrrr… I was warm during my walk but when I got to the polling place in the back yard (the school), it was 6:56 AM and that meant that I sat on a bench and shivered for four minutes. Sometimes the poll workers invite people into the building before the polls open but I understand when they don’t. Getting set up to do something that you only do a few times a year is tricky and it doesn’t help to have a bunch of vultures staring at you as you work. It was okay. I didn’t freeze.

Missy walked by with Java and said she was gonna go get Bob and come back and vote. And commiserated with me about the crappy weather.

I wasn’t [exactly] trying to be voter #1. I actually figgered that Mr. Mxyzptlk would get there before me like he almost always does. I was prepared to let him be first even if I got there before him. He was not there. At 6:59, another woman approached and, when they opened the doors, she went in first. And then, I got a little competitive. How fast can I fill out the ballot application? Pretty darn fast, as it turned out, and so I was able to skirt behind her and get that coveted status of Voter #1.

That coveted status can also be tricky because when you are #1, sometimes the folks operating the technology are not quite into the swing. My driver’s license did not scan and the person who looked me up the “hard way” [typing in my last name] was definitely not a touch typist. Hunt and peck was slow but he did locate me. I felt a little sorry for him because he seemed a little nervous about the technology at hand. Can you imagine how that might have gone if Mr. Mxyzptlk had been voter #1? (On the other hand, if you are doing hunt and peck…)

I had one circle to fill in today, a school millage, a rather big one, a sinking fund thingy. I do not know if the GG voted or not. I thought about reminding him but since he was walking downtown this morning I knew he would pass the polling place and it would be up to him if he voted or not (he did). I’m pretty sure he canceled my vote out but who knows.

I am always nervous about whether or not the ballot-eater will eat my ballot. I shared that with the poll worker who was stationed at the ballot-eater and she commiserated with me. This is voter #1 and there’s only *one* thing to circle on the ballot, so if the ballot-eater does not eat the ballot, maybe we are in for a troublesome day.

The ballot-eater ate my ballot with no problem and I kind of wanted to high-five that poll worker but I think her fingers were crossed for the rest of the day so I picked up my “I voted” sticker and galumphed over to the woods and home.

Where the heck was Mr. Mxyzptlk? He usually arrives on his bicycle. I hope he’s okay and has merely moved to a different polling place, in town or in South Dakota or wherever. Or maybe he is traveling in Africa or Asia or Florida or somewhere and has already voted absentee.

M-I-C(eeeee)… K-E-Y(iiiii)… M-O-U-S-E(eeeeee)

Monday, May 1st, 2017

I won’t go into all of the gyrations that came in to play when we were in the “planning” stages of our recent Fla Road Trip. We ended up with solid reservations at a very cool retro-type Fla vacation rental and for the most part we flew by the seat of our pants for other rented lodging and pretty much lucked out, largely because we were traveling down at the end of almost every spring break and back after Easter. You have to know that we spent two nights on the way back north with friends in Atlanta. Their house is lovely and Atlanta is beautiful at this time of the year and we were able to catch our breath there before the last leg of our trip back up to the North Country.

Anyway, long before this trip happened, the GG asked me if I wanted to go to Mouseland (Disney World). No. Thank you but no. I have been there *once*. We took our two daughters plus their cousin The Beautiful Renee on a long ago trip to Fla when they were all kids. TBR looks enough like our kids that most people thought that we had three daughters. Disney World was fun and I’m glad we went there but I decided at that time that I never really wanted to go there again. There was a bathroom incident but that’s TMI. I don’t like roller coaster type rides and I don’t like fake nature and, well, nowadays I don’t like tourist shops but back then I was probably okay with a weeeeee bit of shopping, like I think we bought someone (Mouse, maybe?) a pair of flip-flops at a tourist shop.

On our way north, we drove through/around the Mouseland area and landed for that night in a beautiful lake area of Fla. We did hit up Silver Springs State Park the next morning. This was once a private place that exhibited exotic aminals, etc. Thankfully the State of Florida made Silver Springs a state park and therefore has gotten rid of the exotic aminals and the petting zoo and “monkey island” is now “cormorant island”. This is a good thing. You can rent kayaks there now but we were in transit and I just wanted to go on a glass-bottom boat tour and so we did and it was gorgeous and that’s about all I have to say.

I love Florida. I loved our trip there this spring. I don’t think I could EVER live there. I was so glad to be back up here in the north country and here are my kids hanging out with Gertrude.