Random bits of my so-called life.

Sorry about the higgledy-piggledy blahg entry yesterday. There is such a fire hose (to borrow a phrase from others) of crapola going on these days that I couldn’t in any way sort out the soup that was in my brain last night.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of writing draft “placeholder” posts. What do I think about this? What do I think about that? To be fleshed out and researched before publishing at a later date. I am sure there are blahggers who do that but I never quite manage it. And then I think, “That’s okay.” I mean it’s okay to write something imperfect on a blahg, especially an obscure one like mine. It’s ephemeral in a way even though it is still out there until I delete it. Who takes a deep dive into a baggy old kayak woman’s blahg?

I would call it a mommy blahg but although I have had children throughout my blahg’s life, they were in high school and college when I started it. I can’t say I have *never* blahgged about them but I have [mostly] tried to be respectful of their privacy and dignity, etc.

I followed a bunch of mommy blahgs for a while. I was fascinated by how many photos and details about their children as babies and toddlers they posted. I was a lurker but not a troll, just curious. A little voice in my head said, “These blahgs are gonna start disappearing when their kids learn to read” and I believe I was largely right. When my first child was born, we had an Apple II+ computer. I don’t think we could get to the internet for a few more years but if we could have, there was no way to post pictures. This was probably a good thing because my younger self might not have thought through the issues surrounding displaying your children on the internet. But most people weren’t surfing the internet in those days anyway. But still.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight
Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning

(Debating about that apostrophe in the first line and lack of it in the second line.) The sky lit up at dawn and this photo is just barely apped (via instagram). The colors are very close to the original. Alas, that was the last we saw of Mr. Golden today. The weather quickly deteriorated into heavy snow (too warm for ANY accumulation), then rain, and finally just plain gray and fugly.

Fraud waste and abuse has been a federal government mantra (maybe that’s not the right word) since *I* worked for the gov’t in my “childhood” career (for a contractor, to be clear) and probably before that. I get that part of downsizing the federal government is to get rid of some not very productive employees.

But how do you choose who to get rid of? Does Musking an email to (how many people?) asking them to list five things they did in the last week seem like a good idea? My job is “brainy” (yes really 😵‍💫). It’s really hard to come up with “metrics” for what I did last week or even during the last performance evaluation cycle. I do the same thing(s) all the time but the projects are always different. If I could even try to write five bullet points about what I did in the last week, I’m sure I could make up some sort of bullshit. Because *one* part of my job is to WRITE! Which I am not terrible at although I won’t be writing the next Pulitzer Prize novel any time soon. Or ever.

But how would Musk and his young crew evaluate whatever I might list in my bullets. Oh, they would use AI? Nawwww. AI may someday be able to analyze my bullet points but I don’t think it’s there yet.

Musing over. Sorry MAGA but Elon’s email is insulting to the vast majority of gov’t employees who are serious about their jobs. There has to be a better, more careful way that doesn’t yank people’s perfectly competent livelihoods out from under them with little to no notice.

This is a bit snarky but I can’t help wondering how many federal employees who VOTED for the orange idiot have lost their jobs. Is that what you voted for? Or did you vote for the “economy”, whatever that really means? I’m sorry that you lost your job but I DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM. Because I know what he’s all about. Which is himself.

The pic is from the day I returned to my office after my mom died. I did my best to work from the yooperland while she was dying but I know I wasn’t all that productive during that period. The LSCHP (my boss) welcomed me back anyway. There was a big ladder in my cube when I first arrived. The LSCHP thought I would find that funny and yes yes yes I did! I was ecstatic to still have a job.

This was in 2012 and another 13 years later, I am still employed at this company. I was valued enough for my boss to let me slide a bit while my mom was dying. This is how you treat valued hard-working employees. Not sending them an email asking what five things they did last week.

Love y’all, KW

Move along. Nothing to see here. Just my own personal warlord as we were getting ready to watch a Silo episode over the weekend. The blanket was because he was cold. He made the tin foil hat after he retaaarrrred from “that darn EPA”. Trump hadn’t quiiiite been elected yet if memory serves me. I posted the pic on facebook and a bunch of his fans came out to “like” it. Yes, he really does have fans. Big time North Country Trail volunteer and Chainsaw Man and “Michigan’s Designated Helper”, as his daughter has been known to call him.

Somebody else said that bit about the EPA, I fergit who but it was funny at the time. I imagine it was someone whose automotive vee-hickle didn’t meet the emissions standards.

Back in the day when they first started putting emissions stuff on cars, my dad paid a guy (“Mac”) down Superior Street from us to remove some of it. I don’t know if that was illegal in those days. I’m sure it is now.

We knew Mac because my brother used to hang out in Mac’s garage with him and and his young son. They were all garage kinds of guys. This family (father and son anyway) was also into snowmobiles at a time when they were just beginning to take over the yooperland and any other areas that got a lot of snow. We bought our first and only snowmobile from Mac. An off-brand musheen of some sort. Snow Hawk maybe? Don’t laugh.

Although my dad was an expert automobile driver and pilot, he never really had an interest in snowmobiles. Not sure why but he preferred to traverse snow on x-c skis. He also didn’t really do mechanical work on his own cars, preferring to pay Soo Motors or whoever to do it. Or “Mac” down the street when the work was a bit shady, like removing emissions “stuff.”

As an adult, my brother eventually switched from snowmobiles to x-c skiing. He called it a “silent” sport and I think he was at a point in life where he needed that. Also his wife did NOT like to go snowmobiling. Snort! That was one thing I agreed with her on.

I know (more or less) what normalization means in the data base world. Don’t ask me to define it. I’m talking about life actually getting back to the kind of normal I knew before covid.

Like today. The GG walked out to Dexter. It was wonderful to be space-i-fied for a few hours. But I asked, “Are you gonna have lunch out there?” Meaning Dexter’s Pub. Well, yes. So I met up with him for lunch. At the bar, because the Sunday brunch was just finishing up when he got there and there weren’t any other seats. And that was fine with me. I love to sit at the bar. When the server came to check on us after we finished our food, I said, “I would love to sit here and drink wine all afternoon but here is my VISA card.” And so we left and drove home via the river road.

If you don’t look closely at the pic, it almost looks like he is picking his nose. He is not. He is waving at y’all. Some people might have wondered why he was reading a book and I was looking at facebook or whatever. It’s not that we don’t get along. It’s just that we weren’t feeling like talking at that moment, or I wasn’t at least. It’s okay to exist beside another person (that you love) without talking to them. It was probably the best thing today since I was ULTRA angry at the country’s current administration and un-elected “president”. Not to mention those who voted for the actual president. The GG doesn’t necessarily agree with me.

Again. And again and again (and again). I will never understand how so many people that I regard as intelligent do not see through to what Trump really is. He cares about no one but himself and will say anything he thinks he needs to say to get people to support him. Biggest liar ever.

So after crowing about how comfortable I am going out to restaurants and bars now, I had a massive sneezing fit this afternoon. It’s gone now. It was NOT covid. Butcha nevah know. I could wake up with covid a couple days from now.

This is the original version of yesterday’s pic, un-apped by instagram. The window is the middle left pane in a 9-pane 3 by 3 arrangement. At the bottom is a “ledge” that I can stand on to angle my body around to look up and down the street and spy… Gladys Kravitz here.

I love this window and can’t figger out why so many solicitors seem to think I might want to “upgrade” it. Only if you can make a duplicate, which I highly doubt they are offering. Probably an “alcove” window with a much smaller area. Sorry but I want *light*. Anyway, this window is also in my “office” and I cleaned my office today. It’s been a while and various pieces of detritus have been sneaking their way in. We won’t clean the actual window until Old Man Winter has released his grip. And BTW if you have ever watched the Silo TV series (or read the books it’s based on), window cleaning takes on a whole new meaning.

I was schlepping grocks into the Landfill this morning (beef stroganoff and friends) and. I. Heard. A. Mourning. Dove. I heard my first heard my first little snippet of bird *song* a few weeks ago. Birds make noise all winter (cheep cheep squawk) but this was more organized song. And then this morning was a mourning dove. I stopped in my tracks to listen. The birds will sing more and more and by April, our crappy little landfill (with a woods behind it) will sound like an aviary, as The Commander once said when she was visiting.

And yes, I worry about bird flu. Not so much for us (yet) but for our feathered friends. Which, as we know, ends up wreaking havoc throughout the food chain. I can afford eggs (we don’t use a lot of them anyway) but lots of people can’t and some stores are running out of them. Costco and Trader Joe’s? That’s what I’ve heard. This isn’t either the former or current president’s fault but going forward we need to deal with these kinds of issues in a common sense way, where scientists are consulted (instead of fired without cause) and pandemics (etc.) are approached with sanity.

I guess that’s enough. I heard my first mourning dove of the year this morning. It was lovely.

Terlet paper and dishwasher detergent and various other things from big box Meijer, and pizza stuff for tonight. I’d’ve done it all at Meijer today but I couldn’t find frozen pizza dough, which is my fave, so I went to Plum for that and other pizza stuff.

When I got home, I put both of my round pizza pans on Gertrude’s stove stop, sprayed them with olive oil, and put a frozen blob of dough on each. By the time I was ready to build the pizzas, the dough was completely thawed and it was very easy to spread out it out.

Two pizzas because we were porterized at home tonight and I wanted to make sure no one went hungry. And they didn’t. Faaaaar in the faaaar place and vinyl Vivaldi on our old turntable courtesy of the GG. I didn’t know he even knew about Vivaldi. I didn’t recognize it at first, classical musician that I purportedly am. I have always enjoyed *playing* music more than listening to it. It’s really hard to describe, as most of my personal traits are. Yawn.

The GG spent a lot of the day preparing for our North Country Trail booth at next weekend’s Quiet Adventure Water Symposium. It involved a lot of in-and-out and rummaging but I endured it. I took a break from attending the symposium for a while, covid and beyond. I went last year but was still a bit intimidated about attending the presentations, which are in small crowded rooms. Instead, I spent a lot of time reading in Moooon Yooonit in the parking lot to avoid more social interaction than my personality can handle. This year, I think I will go to some presentations, covid be damned. The GG and others (many of them) can do the promotional social interactions. Not my thing although I can rise to the occasion at times.

Same as the old boss.

I got on to the daily “standup” meeting today and the team lead who usually runs it said, “This meeting is going to be different today. For one thing, I’m turning my camera on.” And she did. And then… She proceeded to report that the company had hired a development manager for our team. And then, the new dev manager appeared in the frame. And. It. Was. My. Old Boss. BELOVED boss. Amazon Woman starts back on Monday.

That is all I am gonna say about that. For one thing, I don’t know anything. So that’s easy enough. Also, I do not like to talk about my job on the internet in any way that identifies who I work for. Not a good practice even though I can’t remember ever having a serious complaint about the company or my co-workers. All competent, professional, respectful, and friendly. But those of us who knew and/or reported to this *awesome* person are ECSTATIC!

A small bright spot in all of the Musking that’s going on?

Double good? The GG jettisoned four boxes of old books and a bunch of obsolete electronic accessories. There was a lot of rummaging in the process, which drives yer fav-o-rite blahgger cray-zee, but the end result was fantastic. A small dent but any progress is good.

You know I’m talking about DOGE. “Slash and burn.” “Throw the baby out with the bath water.” “Blow things up.” Pick one or make up your own.

I can’t write coherently about any of this stuff at the moment. I am sorta flabbergasted at the flood of firings spewing out of president Trump’s Musk’s big ugly mug (sorry, I’m pretty pissed off).

To pick one issue. I am a systems analyst and when I heard about the “zombie army” of 150-year-olds collecting social security payments, I thought, “there is 000000.01% truth to that statement.” Later on when some diligent journalists started to dig into this, it became clear that Musk was not looking at all the available data. Well, maybe it wasn’t available to Musk, not that I think it should be. I can’t ‘splain what I read but later on I found an article that explained a bit more about how the social security association (SSA) handles dead people’s records. And yes, there are people who defraud the system, like trying to hide their grandma’s death so as to collect a couple more of her checks. It’s 1% or less that do this (I believe that) and most of the would-be defrauders get caught quickly. The issue with the 150-year old folks has to do with ancient records and an old database (not on the internet) and the fact that not too many folks can sort that stuff out. I’m one of those who can but they aren’t asking me and I’m not looking for a job. Although maybe I should be…

I guess Musk has expertise at something but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe inheriting a lot of money?

And BTW, if a relative dies and you are dealing with a *reputable* funeral home, it almost *always* contacts the SSA for you. I’m not sure it’s a requirement but there’s a form they can fill out along with all of whatever paperwork they do when people die. I did *not* have to contact SSA when mom died. The funeral home my family had used for several generations did it for me. When I was 17, my parents were driving home from downtown and saw one of their cars (crashed) in the funeral home parking lot but that would be a whole ‘nother story and I was not injured. And I am NOT collecting my mom’s social security money but I am goddamn collecting my own😵‍💫.

The photo is from a Tahquamenon Falls lantern hike a few weeks ago. National Forest Service employees plan these events plus many other important duties. These events are very popular. I hope they don’t get Musked out of their jobs.

This pic is of my moom sweeping pine needles and other detritus off the roof over the back of the moomincabin. She was in her *eighties* and I can’t believe she is doing this. I am enough acrophobic and afraid of the *edge* that I cannot do this. I dunno who she is yelling to. Probably the GG.

For context, she was standing outside the window on the second floor at the back of the moomin. We really want to build an outdoor staircase in the back here.

We love the cabin as it is but the only way to get to the second floor is via an interior ladder. Which is not up to code.

I was just thinking about this quilt the other day. I don’t know where it’s physical location is these days and will probably never know. But I searched my photos app for “jeep” and this is one of the photos that showed up so at least I have a pic. Go figger.

I made this quilt for my little brother’s 40th birthday. He was stressing about that and people at his work were making jokes about black balloons. I was struck by the idea to make him a black balloon quilt. This was a gamble but my hope was I could make it funny. I *think* I succeeded.

I chose to make “crazy quilt” squares of things he liked or that defined him in some way. Dogz, cars, skiing, music (TROMBONES!). At the bottom middle is “The new morning look!” That would be him one morning at the moomincabin when his (young) daughters were harassing him and he mugged a fugly face at them, then said, “It’s the new morning look”. I fergit the exact circumstances but we all totally cracked up as FinFam folks are wont to do even when it might not be appropriate. The central square is rainbow-colored dogz and black balloons.

This is kinda gaudy. *I* can be kinda gaudy. And it’s a little wonky in terms of perfectly straight seams, etc. I definitely got some sewing DNA but not sure I got a perfection gene to go with that. I think that skipped a generation down to my mouse. But then again, some of the internet quilters I admire the most do not do “perfectly” seamed quilts but are also very artistic. There’s room for any and all approaches in the fiber arts world, not to mention in *art*. And I define art very loosely. There’s plenty of room for art in so-called STEM fields, for example.

So how did Photos serve up this pic today since I had been recently wondering where the quilt was? Did God hear my “prayer”/idle thought??? Naw. I think AI(?) picked up a little car in the right middle block and decided that was a jeep. Not gonna talk about AI tonight…

P.S. A funny for tonight. The GG is plotting a mid-June trip to do some surveying in the Adirondacks with his buddy Joan. I said, “That sounds okay, it’ll be shelling pea season here.” At least an hour later, he asked, “Is there really a spelling bee season?” 🤣🤪😵‍💫

It was a snowy blustery day but it didn’t deter us from a family dinner. Whole chicken on the gas grill, eggplant parm, spaghetti with pesto, garlic bread, and salad. And a perfect amount of food was left over so I don’t have to seriously cook tomorrow.

This morning, the GG blew all of our snow (not really a whole lot) plus a few of the neighbors’ with his frickin’ big yooperland blower. The plows came along in the afternoon (ON A SUNDAY!) and made multiple passes up and down the street. I wouldn’t have wanted to be traveling the freeways today but around town it was pretty darn good.

My daughter listens to a podcast called Scotland Outdoors and a while back, they were talking about x-c skiing and mentioned lessons on how to do it. My daughter (who is braver than I am) sent in a comment about that. She mentioned where she lives (Ann Arbor) and how she often listens to the podcast while driving to our cabin in Michigan’s yooperland, where many Scot immigrants landed including a branch of our fam from Caithness via Cananananada.

And then she talked about how when she was a kid, her parents (us, that is) put her on x-c skis as soon as she could walk. You’ll figger it out, we said. It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say she was skiing as soon as she could walk but our kids met their first skis by the time they were two or so, depending upon the time of year they turned two.

Note that a two-year-old is not necessarily ready for five hours of skiing every day for a week. Or whatever. I will never forget the time I made the dreadful mistake of telling my other daughter (the day after a very successful day of skiing) that we would just do the “little kid loop”. Nope. That wasn’t gonna work. It wasn’t quite a tantrum but I picked her up, skis and all, walked into the ski ranch, and turned in her rental skis. “We’re done for the year!”, I said. Bob, who owned the ski ranch and had kids of his own, totally understood.

Anyway, Scotland Outdoors apparently liked my daughter’s message enough to read it in one of their podcasts.

Check out the moustache in this fugly ugly. We’re on the moomindeck and I am slouching in my cheap plastic deck chair after a work day with my covid hair in a ponytail.

I could hear the GG futzing around in his lair Thursday afternoon (February 13) and when I heard the scanner going, I knew he was making valentine cards. Of course. He does this every year. I get him candy, this year fun and fancy custom chocolates from bonbonbon.com, over in Hamtramck. A couple of those were included with my birthday flowers this year and I was like “where have you been all my life”? And the answer would be “not alive yet” because I’m sure the bonbonbon gals are I dunno gen Y or Z or whatever we are on now. I can’t keep track.

Anyway. This year’s crop of valentines numbered five. One for meeeee. One for each daughter (delivered on foot and by car). One for niece Pengo (mailed to Hawaii). And one for the female person of porterization. The male person of porterization looked a little bereft until the GG quickly said, “I don’t give valentines to guys”.

My card is multi-page with a page for feathers, a page for a dollar bill, and one for a crappy photoooo. He made a trip to a craft store for the feathers and googly eyes. Actually it was Staples. Who knew Staples had stuff like that?

MAGAt that the GG is, he also has some endearing traits. People are complicated.

These Valentine “stealers” were drawn long ago by a certain four or five year old and digitized into a MacPlus computer via a very laborious process involving multiple musheens and applications. I used to have the process down pat but cannot remember it now in any way, shape, or form. It’s kind of amazing that I can actually still find the pic in my sprawling digital image archive.

We had a Valentine dinner of porterization at Dexter’s Pub tonight and I ordered the lobster ravioli off the “specials” menu. This was despite the fact that we had lobster pot pie last night, courtesy of Harry and David’s mail order service. So. Lobster lobster.

I “threw a tantrum” on the way out to Dexter. The GG was driving and he was trying to make a left turn out of our neighborhood on to busy Maple Road, an almost impossible task during anything resembling a rush hour or a football Saturday. The GG’s phone rang. Oh dear. Don’t answer your phone. For one thing, it’s illegal in our state to use a handheld device while driving. Oh, but it was “his” (our) daughter, so he answered it, still trying to gauge a break in traffic and rarin’ to hit the gas. I was panicking telling him to put the phone down so as to concentrate on, y’know driving. I was loud but it wasn’t a tantrum. And yes, our vee-hickles support hands-free stuff but his phone was not connected. “His” (our) daughter would have been more than happy to wait a bit for him to return her call. Or he could’ve handed his phone to meeeee to explain the situation.

Anyway, we made it safely (and calmly). I am not really a fan of Valentine’s Day but it is an excuse to have a good time with family and/or friends and I am all for that. It was also Friday night and we traditionally (except during covid) go out to eat on Friday night. If ValDay falls on any other night, we’re more likely to eat in. Maybe grill some filet mignon or whatever.

Fortunately my nose was almost totally dry today so I felt pretty okay about going out to eat in a crowded restaurant without fear of infecting anyone with virus du jour.

Blah blah blah blah blah, g’night. KW

But it was enough that the GG got to run his big yooper-style snow blower. The next door neighbor blew our sidewalk before the GG even got out of bed. I think he has a new snow blower because I have never seen him use one before. But there was still a fair amount to do (which we would NEVER expect a neighbor to do). Driveway and various paths. That path in the pic leads to the compost bin.

Apparently we’re supposed to get more snow throughout the weekend. I’ve been putting off getting grocks all week but will have to venture out at some point. On the list? Well, Kleenex is the main thing. I “bragged” yesterday about not having any kind of illness (except norovirus) since I got covid. Which was in January 2022! Today, an hour or so after I got up, *one* of my nostrils started running. It kept up all day although it is (knock on wood) slowing down now… I am FINE (albeit annoyed) but there is only one partial box of Kleenex in the house. I thought there were more. I don’t always keep up with the Kleenex supply because we so rarely need it for the usual kind of reasons.

A couple other things (besides food) are sweet vermouth and dishwasher detergent. And maybe utility beer if people show up for dinner this weekend. That’s up in the air but I should probably buy some beer anyway. I don’t usually stockpile a lot of grocks here at the Landfill (except during covid) but since we seem to be having a little slice of “real” winter, maybe this is the time. Not because the stores might run out. They won’t. It’s just because I don’t want to play demolition derby with other drivers. I do enough of that when the roads are dry.

We’ll talk about DOGE some other day. Or not🤮

This photo is from the last day of our last FUN trip to Crazy Old Florida. We stayed at the Sea Club 1, which is on the Gulf of Mexico beach on Long Boat Key. It was April 2017.

The Sea Club was perfect for us. A renovated retro motel with a small but fully equipped kitchen. And we were right on the beach. When we left the Sea Club our last morning there, I posted this pic with the caption, “So long Gulf of Mexico. Seeya in the next episode.” We both wanted to go the Sea Club again but our trips to Florida after that were either end-of-life or rescue missions.

I love Florida but after I’ve been there for about a week, the Great Lake State pulls me back up north.

Gulf of America? Fer kee-reist! Who the hell is stoopid enough to propose re-naming a gulf that has been called one thing (Gulf of Mexico) for I dunno how many years (500, I think) to something else. No, it isn’t the Gulf of America and also America is not really our country’s name, only part of it. North America and South America are named after Amerigo Vespucci, who I learned about in 4th grade. Mrs. Scott must’ve been a good teacher because I am not good at history but I still remember learning about those explorers. Should we have renamed the indigenous people’s territory? And why are these tech billioniare assholes going along with this? I dunno but not sure I have the bandwidth to talk about that tonight.

Except that there’s no reason we can’t be USA patriots without renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

We have been threatened with significant snow tonight on the Planet Ann Arbor and it seems like it’s finally arriving. I was working in the kitchen and smelled smoke but the faaarplace was going so I wasn’t really thinking about the smoke alarm. Until it went off. Jeebus. Oh, I was playing around with the flue, said the GG. Okay. Don’t do that again. But love you anyway.

This is Mooon Yooonit and the Lyme Lounge at the Tahq Lower Falls campground two years ago. The GG was there. I was not. I can handle outhouses but I need showers. Not available in the winter.

So I posted this pic on facebook and said something about how I was on The Planet Ann Arbor with a nice shower and flushy terlet. Ya nevah know who yer gonna get on facebook so I was surprised when a, ah, hmmm, how do I describe this childhood acquaintance, uh, friended me. I accepted his request and then he responded with something a bit unintelligible about how “you will get that down there”. Modern plumbing in Ann Arbor, I guess. We interacted a wee bit but after a month or so, he disappeared.

This kid was in my grade and he and his quite large family lived down the street from us in a big ramshackle house. The Commander was not a fan of the family. In part because she thought they stole my little brother’s bike. I’m not sure I was ever told who actually stole the bike but The Comm managed to recover it. South Side Sault Ste. Siberia could be “rough” if you were a kid but the parents of whoever stole the bike knew who The Comm “belonged” to and I’m sure they decided it was best to surrender it. And no, we were not the mafia. Not even the Scot-Irish mafia🤣

I went through school with this kid. One of The Comm’s memories about him was that when he was very young, he once came into our living room. I mean he knocked and was welcomed in. He looked around and said, “Finnelsons* is rich!” The Comm, standing in our shabby little living room, was a bit flabbergasted.

I have a few memories of him but one I didn’t personally witness happened in the high school swimming pool. By high school, he had lost an eye. BB gun accident? I can’t remember. So he had a glass eye. In that slithy little pool, the boys swam naked so I was definitely not there when this happened but I have heard it from many male classmates over the years. He lost his eye. His glass eye. “Coach” ordered all the boys to get out of the pool and sit on the edge and look for the eye. After I dunno how long, somebody said, “There it is!” Coach said, “Go get it!”

So during my short facebook connection with him, I asked my cousin The Grinch if he knew this person. The Grinch did not grow up in Sault Ste. Siberia. His dad (Uncle Dkuc) was a career Air Force pilot so they moved fairly often. But after his dad retired, my cousin helped his parents build a chalet on the moominbeach and he ended up living there and launching a construction career. So he actually knows and employs a lot of the people *I* grew up with. Whenever I encounter one of them, I ask if he knows them. His reply is always, “How in the *heck* do you know *him*?” Oh, grade school, or his brother was my high school boyfriend. Etc. Snort!

Just because I have lived my adult life on The Planet Ann Arbor (an ivory tower to some folks) doesn’t mean I have left my scrappy old South Side Siberia childhood behind. So yeah, Grinchy, I know some of your friends.

* “Finnelson” was how a lot of folks in Sault Ste. Siberia pronounce my family name (Finlayson). This bothered The Commander to no end, being a “properly” brought up person from the Detroit area with a college degree who married into the family. Did it bother me then? Maybe a little. Nowadays, the GG has encountered people in that area who *still* use that mis-pronunciation and I just crack up. Personally, I avoid telling people up there my last name at all costs.

It’s notable because I haven’t seen the moon in a while and had lost track of where it was in the cycle. But you don’t get a moon pic today. Instead, here are two different views of the Tahquamenon area in the winter. (Taken by my daughter.) First, we have the money shot of the upper falls. There are probably a bazillion similar shots of this out there in the world. On the internet, in photo albums, wherever. I think this one is pretty damn good.

The next is the beaver dam which is a decent trek from the upper falls. Obviously the terrain is a little different.

Breaking news: our taxes have been pronounced “done”, except for some stuff that doesn’t come until sometime in March. *Lots* less moaning and sighing this year🐽 Thinking back to the days I would sit on the floor in the back room, spread all our papers out around me and do them by hand. No TurboTax or accountant then and, in the early days, no computer. The GG would then give it a go and when our independent accountings agreed, we were good to go.

If it does, it doesn’t stick around all winter.

Someone dubbed these “ranger stations with chef’s hats”. I like that fanciful description but obviously they are outhouses. If you camp at Tahquamenon in the winter, outhouses are what you get. I don’t think these are in a campground though. Lizard and the Twinz of Terror stayed in a motel with showers and flushy terlets on this trip.

The topic of a recent conversation asked why Ohio’s state parks keep their “facilities” open all winter. Facilities meaning warm buildings with sinks, toilets, and showers. My answer? Because Ohio is just far enough south from Michigan that they don’t deal with anywhere near the winter weather conditions we do.

The Planet Ann Arbor occasionally gets blizzards but we don’t get them with anywhere near the frequency the yooperland gets them or even the northern lower peninsula. We are way south and not a frequent target of “lake effect” snow. I shoveled a sniggly inch or so of snow this morning. Facebook friends of mine in Sault Ste. Siberia are drowning in snow. Some of them are having more “fun” with it than others. Shoveling big mountains of snow is less fun than grooming snowmobile trails with a big musheen. I’m sure there is a whole array of yooperland snow experiences. Those are the ones I saw on facebook.

We have the super bowl on. For a while we really really wanted the Li-ons to win or even get *to* the super bowl. It didn’t happen. We should’ve known it wouldn’t. I think we *did* know it wouldn’t. As usual, the game is on but I’m not watching it although I am enjoying the ambience of football on TV. This is kinda the last football until next fall. I don’t care who wins and I’m not watching the commercials.

So, there have been multiple days we haven’t had our mail delivered this winter. No notice or anything. Turns out they are not doing their walking routes during inclement weather. Like back in January when it was in the single digits for a few days. And yesterday when the sidewalks were sheets of ice. To confuse matters further, we also didn’t get mail the day of Jimmy Carter’s funeral, which I didn’t expect but should have.

I am not complaining about this. I know the old saying about rain, hail, sleet, and gloom of night, etc. But. I don’t want postal workers to risk their lives delivering piles of catalogs and spam. And believe me, when the sidewalks are sheets of ice, those folks are definitely risking their lives. We are diligently salting our sidewalk and driveway but there are recalcitrant patches of ice that refuse to go away (due to weird micro-climates, mostly). The streets are fine (or were until it started snowing this afternoon). Most days, our mail goes directly into the recycle cart without coming inside the Landfill. I bet way back when that unattributable saying was coined, there were many people who didn’t *get* mail every day, making it a lot easier on postal workers. To be totally truthful, *we* don’t even get as much spam snail mail as we used to but there’s enough that a postal worker has to interact with our mailbox on most days.

The Twinz of Terror and Lizard Breath are at Tahquamenon this weekend. I hope the twinz are not Trumping my “baby” too much but she can take care of herself. They have been sending pics to our group text (our nuclear family of four and our Pengo). I had to post (again) this ancient photo of The Commander, me, and my cute (late) little bro. Pengo’s dad. He was born when I was 3-1/2 and although I was anticipating him with some excitement, his birth also threw my nose totally out of joint. I mean, I was a “little princess” up until then. He became the talk of the town and old ladies who used to dote on me would always exclaim over his beautiful eyelashes. That totally cracks me up now. What did I care what those smelly old ladies thought anyway? And although those old ladies were cooing over a cute baby, they were also expressing relief that he lived and was healthy despite being born with deadly Rh-negative issues.

Anyway, my brother and I had a pretty typical sibling relationship but the bottom line was that we loved each other and our arguments were short-lived. I will never forget that every time (as an adult and mom) I drove into his driveway in the POC (minivan), he would meet me out there with a tire pump 🤣 He was a GMC automotive engineer and life-long car nut.

Done for now. Love y’all, KW

I mean you Trump voters. Don’t answer that. I’ll answer it myself at the end of this post. (And I’m not southern so I probably mangled the title.)

Me? Not a Trump voter. Totally exhausted. Let me count the ways. Or not. What I will say is that 2025 has been so chaotic that when I heard the radio talking about “the” New Year’s Day attack, I HTG (Had To Google) “attack New Year’s Day” because I was totally lost. Oh yeah, NOLA Bourbon St. truck massacre. Sigh. What next?

I can see through the little woods behind my house in the winter when the trees don’t have leaves. Tonight I saw a lot of taillights over in the Haisley parking lot. On Friday evening? What could be going on? They don’t do basketball games there. It’s an elementary school and I think the gym is too small. Friday is an odd night for a PTO event. I HTG and I found out that they are still doing the Valentine’s dance after all these years. They are calling it the Haisley Heart Dance now. The “dance” got started when my kids were still at the school and I was the PTO treasurer. I was a bit skeptical (can’t put into words why) but as it turned out, it was a HUGE success. The principal mentioned that it attracted families that didn’t usually show up for anything else.

Two things: 1) I am a bit surprised that they are now calling it a “dance”. We didn’t call it a dance. Although there is music and dancing, it is a *family* event with other stuff and we were careful when promoting it so as not to encourage young kids to use it as a “date night”. Although I’m sure a few of the older ones did 😉 2) It seems to have lost any reference to Valentine’s Day. Maybe that violated someone’s religion or whatever? I dunno. But apparently this is an event that “stuck” and I’m happy about whatever hand I had in it. Probably just collecting money.

To answer my original question? Yeah, all y’all think Trump is doing a wunnerful job and “getting a lot of his campaign promises done.” Drinken the orange Kool-Aid again. Forgetting that he did not win the popular vote by anywhere near a “landslide”. Which means that approximately half of the country does NOT approve of his “policies”.

My fav-o-rite Trumper actually admitted he was having a hard time disagreeing with me that the Gaza folks should NOT be moved to some other country. Me: NOOOO we should not move anyone out of their homeland unless they WANT to go. This doesn’t mean that he has budged from his overall opinions (or even the opinion we were talking about) but it was a welcome little crack of, I dunno, something. Maybe he actually listened to something I said? I will also note that he is off climbing snowy stairs at Tahquamenon and will probably not read this, at least not right away.