Random bits of my so-called life.

The negative is that I lost a bunch of files at work today and will have to manually recreate them. For the most part that won’t be bad but there is a nasty javascript file that might give me some trouble, as it did the first time. One teensy tinesy little extra comma or whatever and BLAMMO!

This happened toward the end of the day and I decided not to try to work on it in the late afternoon. Better to wait until morning when a clearer head kicks in and it isn’t hotter than Hades in my office by the westward facing front window of teleCubelandia. In the grand scheme of things, this is just business as usual and don’t even ask. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. C’est la vie.

The positive? That happened at 7:20 or so this morning. I was leaving the Jackson Rd. Meijer and as I turned right onto Jackson and started to accelerate? There was mooma duck and a bunch of small ducklings crossing the road right in front of me. Jackson road is a 45-mph boulevard at that point with “Michigan lefts” (google it) and the whole works and it is a *speedway*. I stopped. I didn’t stop tooooo fast but fast enough that I was a little worried about someone rear-ending me. As luck would have it, that did not happen and people in all three lanes were stopping to let the duck family cross. I saw them make it to the median but didn’t see if they made it across the second half of the boulevard. Fingers crossed.

He (the GG) approached me in teleCublandia this morning with a look in his eyes that meant he had something important to impart. I was in the middle of teaching my new colleague html and javascript (at the same time) and was like “whut is it?”.

I eyeballed the GG and he said, “I guess I’m going to the Apple Store.” Um, I mean, OKAY! GO to the Apple Store. If you want to replace your hand-me-down (from meeeee) 2011 model MacBook Pro with a new one, you have my blessings a hundred times over. I have told him that multiple times over the last few years. As you can maybe see by the baggy old computer case and the fancy new Apple bag, he has finally acted on it. We are not Elon Musk but we have enough cash to buy a new computer every 14 years or so. If it were meeee, I’d’ve ordered it online but he wanted to go to the store and I was happy about that because it space-i-fied me for an hour or so. This was a weird pic of the GG so I cropped it. I left the newly growing John Bolton mustachio in🤪

I will never be a teacher but I LOVE to “coach” or “mentor” people who speak my language, i.e., they are QUICK at picking things up. And my new colleague is. He is learning things he has NO prior experience at and he is able to remember stuff “we” did days before. When I say “we”, I mean he was sharing his screen and I was telling him what to do and ‘splaining things along the way. If you aren’t actually DOING something yourself, you aren’t gonna remember it. Roight? Roight. And there are times when he says something like, “Lemme figger this out and I’ll ask if I need help.” Yes YES YES!

Almost 18 years into a job I wasn’t really looking for and here I am.

Years ago I used to frequently take vee-hickles to the car wash. I would gather up a bunch of quarters – I always had quarters around from being a parent teacher org treasurer. Oh don’t worry, I didn’t steal them. I replaced them with ten dollar bills or whatever. I would pull into one of the do-it-yourself bays, stuff my quarters in, and manually wash my car.

Today, since we and our jet-setting beach urchin were all back in town (she met up with Cally-forny friends in Portland(ia) for a Rilo Kiley concert), we took her out to lunch. That means she came over here and drove us old bags over to a restaurant (The Session Room) in *our* vee-hickle (Cygnus X-1) and we paid for lunch. Not that she can’t buy her own lunch but my parents always paid for restaurant lunches when I was an adult and I feel compelled to continue that tradition. Eventually The Commander got to the point where handling that bit of business became a little too much and I happily took it off her plate. Thanks for all those years moom, I’ve got this one!

At one point in our lunch conversation the GG was grouching about how dirty Cygnus was. So when we left the restaurant, our driver hung a louie instead of a right and, as I immediately figured out, drove us into the car wash across the street. We did not wash Cygnus manually. We hooked up with the conveyor belt. Car in neutral, hands off steering wheel, don’t touch the brakes. And! Maybe most importantly, turn off the collision sensors if you have them, which Cygnus does. I don’t ever turn them off and don’t really know how because I drive like a little old lady and they don’t usually get triggered (unless I’m backing up into a big mullein plant behind the moomingarage). But we figured it out. And that place is sooooo fancy these days! In ways I can’t even begin to explain.

In other news (of the weird), the talk of the northern Great Lake State is that a *possum* was crossing the Mackinac Bridge on the “pedestrian walkway”. It was going north and was more than half way across the five mile span when it was rescued and returned to the Mackinaw City area (yes there are two ways to spell that). I found this link on Reddit. It doesn’t look like you have to pay to get to Reddit but who knows. It shows the possum traveling on the “pedestrian walkway”.

A couple of things: 1) Pedestrians are not allowed on the Big Mack except on Labor Day. This walkway is for emergency use only. 2) I have never seen or heard of a possum in the yooperland and didn’t think they lived that far north. There are plenty of them here on The Planet Ann Arbor including in “my” little woods (behind my house).

Loooong travel day. I was not looking forward to it but we needed to get back to The Planet Ann Arbor. The GG is leaving in a little over a week to the Adirondacks with his rockstar North Country Trail buddy Joan and he needs some time to get ready. And it will soon be Pea Shelling Season (not to be confused with “Spelling Bee Season”, which I don’t think exists) and I will be shelling peas in the Landfill backyard.

Okay. Our first stop was at the Uncly Uncle (UU) and the Beautiful Gay’s (TBG) home in Gaylord. Two hours south of the moominbeach. I managed to over-coffee myself and all the way to Gaylord I was kinda bouncing around up by Mooon Yooonit’s ceiling. We were promised one of TBG’s super-duper breakfasts but I was wondering if I could eat. But we arrived at their house and wouldn’t you know, TBG immediately handed me a MIMOSA. OMG! Yes it was early for drinking but that mimosa counteracted my coffee high and I was pretty chill for the rest of the trip.

Oh yeah, as we were mustering to leave, the UU and TBG rummaged their refrigimatator. They handed me this loverly mini-whine for the road (it’s okay, I kept it in Mooon Yooonit’s door pocket and didn’t drink it). And then they made a lovely little goodie bag for our brother John (who we were delivering supplies to further down the road) with little Jager bombs and candy and stuff. He loved it!

All in all, we made five stops on the way down but then, I schlepped a bunch of stuff into the Landfill and put it away and sat down on the Teal Couch to make a little grock list. And I had a text message from UKW (one of my “triplet” cousins, meaning the three of us girls who share the same birth year). “Do you have time to talk?” Yes yes yes! Can I make a Plum Dash first? I wanted to be stationary before sitting down to talk. And we did talk and it was great. It’s been a while and I had been thinking about her lately.

I had expected a kind of crappy trip today but it turned into something wonderful. I always love when friends and relations from different parts of my life intersect like they did today. As the UU and TBG took care of us today, we all have to take care of each other. I have long known that landing in the GG’s family was a good thing. Not to mention how great it was to be born into *my* family. Don’t mind me. I’m basking in the love I felt today.

This was last night and I post a version of it every year, I think. A friend commented on facebook (where I also posted it) that he loved our big screen TV🤪 We don’t have a TV here so obviously he was talking about the picture window.

This morning started on a bit of a sour note when I was asked why there was water on top of the dresser and in the drawers below. Did I spill my water? Aka the glass of water I take to bed every night. Well. No I did not. And anyway, I don’t put my water on the dresser. I put it on a small side table next to the bed. If I knocked it off, it would fall on the floor and since it’s a plastic glass, clean-up would be a small issue involving an absorbent rag or whatever.

I was annoyed at the accusation but when the mystery eventually cleared up, it was CLEAR that *I* did not cause the problem. In the end, it turned out that water was condensing on a pipe related to the water heater (which is in the bedroom) and dripping onto the dresser and into its drawers. (It’s more complicated than that but this is a high-level overview.) I kept asking if it was related to the water heater and whaddya know, I was right. We aren’t sure how long the pipe has been dripping but the GG rearranged the bedroom so there’s no longer anything under the pipe.

And then he donned his Suzy Homemaker persona and got on a roll, sweeping and vacuuming and dragging furniture all over hell and gone to sweep and vacuum under it. Mildewed linens from the dresser hung on the clothesline all afternoon and will accompany us down to the Planet Ann Arbor to be properly washed and de-mildewed. All of the activity was a bit annoying since I was working and had meetings but I was also very happy that he did all of that cleaning because this place needed it!

I shouldn’t say this on my blahg but it is much easier to keep things clean now that we don’t have my brother’s dogs here, although I miss my brother and loved his dogs. Life is complicated and so are families.

There is an audio file of a gobbling turkey (or turkeys maybe) that somehow found its way into my fam, the GG, me, and my beach urchins including niece Pengo… It’s a toss-up as to who first texts the file out to the rest of the fam on Turkey Day morning. It usually isn’t me.

This summer I am hearing that noise somewhere outside my bedroom window at 0-skunk-30 AM most mornings. I mean like at 5:00 AM. “Thomas” struts around the “neighborhood” (mainly our place and my next door cousins’ place, I think). All fluffed up Thanksgiving style, he struts his stuff and announces his presence to everyone in the neighborhood.

Good thing I like to get up early. And so I did albeit not at 5:00 AM. But I was on my way to the recycle drop-off and Meijer by a few minutes before seven and home by eight (no traffic lights!). I had a 9:30 meeting. That’s early for my team and I was a wee bit nervous about it for various reasons. One because I was in the Hot Seat (sorta), others I can’t explain in a sensible way. As it turned out it was a GREAT meeting and I got some wonderful direction for how to proceed on one of my latest projects. The rest of the day was filled with impromptu “working” meetings and random requests from all points in my work universe. I love that people still seem to value me or at least my institutional knowledge at this stage of my life. How did I get here? I do not know.

We’ll talk about Trump cogitating upon pardoning Big Gretch’s would-be kidnappers some other day. Oh, not that Trump is capable of cogitating about anything except maybe gold terlets, or maybe it’s that he cogitates while sitting ON his gold terlet. Or whatever passes for cogitating in his pea (pee?) brain. Everyone poops. Even wannabe kings.

Ah well, rambly rambly gobblety gobblety. G’night!

Have I mentioned how c-c-c-cold it is up here? When we got here, the propane tank was at something like 38 (percent, I think). We’re supposed to order more gas when it gets to about 30. The GG nonchalantly opined that I wouldn’t have to order more gas until about July.

We have been running the propane stove almost continuously since last Saturday and guess what? It is now down to 28, which means I had to order more gas today. No big deal. I *could* set it up so the gas company would automatically come when it gets low enough. BUT. And it’s a big but. It’s a seasonal place and we don’t have the driveway plowed in the winter. Because the cabin is closed and no one is here.

Not exactly cabinkeeping but the GG’s designated laptop computer is an old MacBook Pro hand-me-down from meeeee. Airdrop was not working (and not working and not working). I said maybe it’s time for a new laptop? Eventually he looked up when it was made. 2011!!! Yes. That was the spring The Commander was doing rehab in the long-term care and I was trying to work from up here. I had ordered a new MacBook for meeeee and then the wi-fi died on my rickety old work laptop and I had to order a new work laptop too. I will say that although Apple musheens eventually need to be replaced, they last a heckuva lot longer than PCs. We have discussed getting the GG a new laptop multiple times but he keeps holding out, even though I have given him my blessing multiple times. I hate having to put up with failing devices.

Finally, the GG was hoping I would post a pic of the woman (?) he saw in Siberia today. She was taking out some trash and was quite, uh, interesting looking. Also scantily dressed. Nope. Not gonna post it. A disclaimer of sorts… I hate when I hear under-educated, ignorant nincompoops state that there are only two sexes/genders, male and female. (I haven’t heard the GG say that, I’m talking about certain politicians.) Not true. At least not exactly. I believe that the vast majority of people are born either male or female. But that is not always the case. As a very simple example, I worked for many years with a guy with Klinefelter Syndrome. XXY chromosomes. I won’t say much about him. I liked him and got along well with him but that’s partly because I was a seasoned mom by the time I knew him and had empathy for people who I could tell were struggling. He may have weirded other women out. What bits and pieces I knew about his life story (mostly from other employees) were difficult. Gender is not always cut and dried and I empathize with those for whom it is not, for whatever reason. And there are about a gazillion of those reasons. Read “Middlesex”. Good book.

Anyway, a couple years ago, the GG took another “odd” picture in Sault Ste. Siberia that I *did* post. It was a BEAR approaching the Border Patrol station🤪

Back to work. I was car-less today. We only have one vee-hickle up here this trip. I figgered I could manage the eight days we are here without Cygnus X-1. I get “yippy” (is that REALLY a word) if I don’t have my own car but I did okay today. Like I was alone at the moomin all day today and although I had to keep reminding myself I couldn’t just bop down the road to the park store for whatever, I wasn’t panicky.

I did want “bread crumbs” (to coat chicken thighs with). I entreated the GG to check the park store for bread crumbs on his way back from today’s chainsaw massacre. I wasn’t sure if they would have “regular” bread crumbs so I suggested Shake’n’Bake would work in a pinch. He suggested wheat germ? He has coated chicken with it before, he said. I said, “You will more likely find Shake’n’Bake than wheat germ at the park store.” Guess who was right and what our chicken thighs are coated with tonight.

The GG was out doing trail maintenance with some other guys today, including a high school classmate of mine. A classmate that I greatly admired way back then. I admired him for his intelligence and that he did not denigrate a woman’s intelligence. I was in the throes of introverted-ness back in those days. I RARELY spoke up for myself or anyone else. My opinion was not heard.

I am still an introvert albeit a more friendly one than I used to be. I do provide my opinion from time to time but I am careful about when and how to provide it.

Love y’all, KW.

Where is my MOE-skee-TOE netting when I need it. Not that I really needed it today. The GG and I went on a North Country Trail Junket today. We hauled a trailer behind Mooon Yooonit with a couple lawnmowers in it. One was my dad’s old mower. I fergit what the other one was but it doesn’t really matter because he only used my dad’s old mower.

The GG did all the work. I don’t really do trail work. I hung out in Mooon Yooonit, reading, fending off whatever MOE-skee-TOES made their way inside the car. And they did sometimes because it was often hot enough that I had to open the door or windows. But not always, because micro-climates. Like there were some places where there were aggressive mosquitos and others where they just sorta floated around but didn’t aggressively try to bite. I have NO bites. I am a good slapper. I am also not sure why some of them don’t try to bite. I have heard many theories throughout my life. I do not know.

The goal today was to mow stuff down so people who want to hike the North Country Trail can see the *signs* indicating where it crosses roads. M-28 was the first and arguably the most important because M-28 is a major yooperland east/west highway. It was two lanes when I was a kid but as more and more traffic traverses it, more and more four-lane passing areas have been built.

That’s good but it’s still a dangerous place for pedestrians (hikers) to cross. After that there was Salt Point Road, Avery Grade Road, Forest Road 3150, Ankodosh Creek, Roxbury Creek, and Silver Creek at M123. Don’t worry if you don’t understand where any of these roads are. I doubt most Michiganders know where anything but M-28 is and it’s probably mostly yooperlanders who know M-28.

I don’t like to do trail maintenance (it’s kinda like “gardening”) so I didn’t spend a lot of time outside but I greatly enjoyed the day and at Roxbury Pond, I went down to take a picture.

I was not taught to use a lawn mower because, uh, girls didn’t run lawnmowers. But boyz do and I think my dad would be happy for his lawnmower to be used by his son-in-law to clear entrances to the North Country Trail. And this GIRL doesn’t really care about mowing her own lawn. Not because girls can’t do it, just because she doesn’t WANT mow her lawn.

The pic is from one of our stops. Roxbury Pond.

One of my [late] brother’s many talents was to be able to BURP the word Tregurtha. Yes, he had a raunchy sense of humor. It runs in the family, although my own sense of humor is probably better described as “wry”. The Paul Tregurtha is the longest Great Lakes freighter at 1013.5 feet. It launched in 1981 and I have watched it go up and down the upper St. Marys River many a time.

Today, we tried out a very popular eastern yooperland restaurant albeit one we have never eaten at. The Cozy Corners (not to be confused with the Cozy Inn in Brimley) is on the lower St. Marys River, just a wee bit north of the Neebish Island ferry and this is what we were greeted with as we approached. Needless to say. we approached with care🤪

The Cozy Corners did not disappoint. I had the cozy wrap (grilled chicken with feta and dried cherries and I fergit what else). The staff was very friendly and they ring a big bell whenever a freighter is about to pass by. All in all it was a great time and we’ll be back.

Well, it was great except for the Trumper sitting next to us. We are in a deep red area and we chose to sit at the bar so you get what you get. This character had Trump written all over him. He opened with a couple dirty jokes. Those don’t bother me and he was also polite enough to make sure I (and the waitress) wouldn’t be offended.

After the jokes, the conversation rambled on and when he said, “I like that Trump,” I CLAMPED my mouth shut. His reasoning (like so many misguided folks in our country) was “he’s not a politician, he’s a businessman.” My silent response? “He’s not a businessman, he’s a MIDGET!” I’m paraphrasing something the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie said a bazillion years ago while ranting and raving about somebody he was forced to work with, “He’s not a dry-waller, he’s a MIDGET!” His sister and I (I am their cousin) were speechless!

Whatever. I will NOT get into an argument over Trump in a yooperland bar. I don’t even bother getting into arguments with the Trumpers I know, love (and live with😵‍💫). And who knows whether my brother would’ve been a Trumper or not. He could sometimes be led astray. When I was in high school, The Commander once enlisted my help in case a certain Christian shirt-tail relative came to call. “Will you be home this afternoon?” “Yes, moom, I will be.” She knew my presence would scare this kid off. I do not and will not ever understand why people believe the crapola that spews out of Trump’s mouth and keyboard.

Back in the day big log booms would come down from somewhere in Canananada. Paper pulp logs to be processed in Sault, Ontario at the Abitibi paper factory or whatever it was. When I was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia, it often smelled like hell in our town. A twin sister to the Canadian Sault.

The fun thing was that pulp logs would often escape the log booms and drift up onto the moominbeach. We used them for all sorts of purposes. A mini-gym that my dad built in the back yard of the moomincabin and various “cocktail” tables on the beach. And we would build forts out of them. This is one that I think I built. It’s a short one. My older boy cousins, Mac and Mike, built really tall forts. Were they dangerous? Probably. But we were more careful than you might think.

I don’t really remember this particular fort but it seems to have logs across the top so that we could lay our beach towels out and soak up the sun. I wonder how comfortable it was🤪 but we look happy enough.

So, in the front is yer fav-o-rite blahgger, hating her pixie style hair as always. To the left is cousin Jay (two years younger) and to the right is my “triplet” cousin Pooh, Jay’s older sister. Sitting up in the middle is beloved guest Becky.

Finn because my surname begins with “Fin”. Family because this land belongs to my family (and another, we’ll get to them in a bit). Moomin because I am a moom. And troll because most of the time, I live in Trollandia, that’s Michigan’s lower peninsula, which is below a bridge, the Mackinac Bridge to be exact. (It’s also a classic children’s book series and I apparently remind “people” of the Groke.)

So I am here and it is brrrrrr🥶🥶🥶, featuring a northwest wind straight off Gitchee Gumee and I would be surprised if the temps are out of the 40s. And looking at my super-duper indoor/outdoor thermometer just now, I am right. It is 46. We are warm inside the non-winterized moomincabin, with two heaters going and the upstairs blocked off.

The excitement this summer is that the neighbors two doors down do not have any water. Their pump has failed and there’s only one pump rodeo in “town”. They are very good but they are so booked up, my neighbor (and lifelong friend) cannot even get on the schedule. Would we be willing to run a hose from the moomin to their cabin?

Yes yes yes yes yes! She seemed a bit reticent about asking but OMG, I was just cracking up. Until I was a young 20-something, the moomincabin and our family’s Old Cabin got our “running” water from a GARDEN HOSE connected to my next door uncle’s well. In the beginning, it was a no brainer because the only water we HAD in the moomin was cold water in the kitchen sink. We heated it up in huge teakettles to wash the dishes and do what limited bathing we could do. I usually took baths in the lake as a teenager, whatever the weather. Our plumbing got a bit unwieldy when we added a water heater and fully-equipped (albeit miniature) bathroom. It still worked but The Commander decided we needed our own well and so we have one. (And I didn’t bathe in the lake nude, I had a system and you do not wanna know.)

After 100 years and multiple generations of sharing this beach with our friends, OF COURSE we will help in any way we can.

We reminisced about how our parents described “running water”. You grab a bucket, run down to the lake, fill up the bucket, and run back up🤪🤪🤪

Oh yeah, we arranged all of this via text messages (the neighbor cabin inhabitants are currently still at their home in Florida). Super easy! When we were kids, the only phone on the beach was my next-door uncle’s and that was because he was a doc and it was a *party line* to boot. We’ve come a long way.

And this is before the GG put the car-top carrier on Mooon Yooonit.

It wasn’t the original plan but somehow we are going to the yooperland for Memorial Day weekend and throughout the next week. I am taking tomorrow off but will be yooperCommuting throughout the week.

Gah. How much stuff can we haul up there? All kinds of North Country Trail crapola for one thing. I think I will have a small bag of clothing, a couple bags of grocks, and a computer bag. Two laptops, as usual. Even if I wasn’t gonna work next week, I would probably schlep my work laptop, remembering a long ago trip to Crazy Old Florida when I spent some time in the Ringling art museum courtyard talking my mouse (who was doing laundry at the Landfill) through logging onto my work laptop, posting a couple of functional specs that I had FORGOTTEN to post before I left, and emailing my boss to notify her that they were posted. Jeebus. The scariest part was making sure the password got entered correctly. And this was all pretty “illegal” but I had verbal permission from my boss to do it.

But seriously, I can’t figger why we have SOOOOOO much shit to take up to the yooperland. Plus, the GG was in and out and in and out and in and out and rummaging around like crazy today. He couldn’t find his kayak rack. “Is it in the shed?”, I asked. Yes it was but he looked there THREE times before he found it. NOT a productive work day for yer fav-o-rite blahgger.

Okay. I am in that space where I DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE The Planet Ann Arbor. When I get to the moominbeach, I won’t want to LEAVE the moominbeach to come back to The Planet Ann Arbor. Seeya on the other side.

Say it in a “radio” voice. Maybe a bit like HAL from the 2001 space odyssey movie. Or not…

I SWEAR I have heard The Guru say “remote data concentrator” in a deep radio-type voice. I dunno if he remembers this or not but he and Sam the Archaeologist (not dog) were here at the Landfill and I’m sure that’s the last time I’ve heard that phrase from anyone.

The Remote Data Concentrator was a snake pit in a closet down the hall from our office at the EPA (“Operations”) when I worked at that darn EPA. I’m not sure I ever knew what purpose it actually served but for quite a while, if we needed Byron for anything and he was AWOL, I knew where to find him. Butt up in the Remote Data Concentrator closet. And yes, it was a closet.

Byron was a great boss. I think he was skeptical about me at first because I got hired because I knew people. But I am a fast learner (and humble) and we became good friends and after a couple years, he trusted me to run the damn office when he was, uh, not there, for various reasons. When I returned from multiple week vacations in the summer, there would be stacks of Data 100 printouts with error messages all over them on my desk. I would start at the top and pick through to solve all of problems. I’ve been told the auto industry depended on me to get new vee-vickles to the showroom floor on time and maybe they did but I am too humble to accept that.

Being humble is one of the many reasons I am not a goddamn politician. All I was trying to do was do my damn job. I do the same kinda thing in the fintech industry.

I also loved my childhood boss Byron because when I started my family, he said to me that my baby was my first priority. He (and my husband and other folks) helped me craft a half-time schedule. Byron is long dead these days but I have always appreciated that he was always willing to accept women as *valued* employees. He was ahead of his time.

P.S. I don’t blame Byron for being skeptical about about hiring me in the beginning. I knew nothing about computers at all. Little did he (or I) know what I might become.

I mean “wires” of course, not wars. We have too many of those going at the moment. You can see a bunch of WIRES in the pic if you embiggen. There are always a lot of waaaars around the Landfill. When I was expecting my first beach urchin, I tripped over a bunch of them in the back room. The GG was johnny-on-the-spot to clean that mess up (he probably doesn’t remember this). He did not want our baby to miscarry. And she sure didn’t. We were both healthy and well past the usual trimester of miscarriage and I didn’t actually fall or anything but gawd I hate waaaaar snake-pits.

So tonight was another YouTube night. I’ll pick three of my faves. Some of them come with ads but they are pretty easy to skip. Or just skip them ANYWAY🤪

1) Delores O’Riordan and the Cranberries with Linger. I had the Cranberries on repeat when my daughters were middle/high school but where I remember hearing this song the most is when we would drive from Hoton Lake over to the Jordan River Valley and up to Petoskey or wherever. Driving around in the northern lower with our teenage children. And sometimes they would be driving us.

2) The Dutchman. This one actually always brings tears to my eyes. “Long ago, I used to be a young man and dear Margaret remembers that for me.” My Sault Ste. Siberian grandma’s name was Margaret and she didn’t really have to remember things for my granddaddy (that I know of) but still.

3) Ziggy Stardust. One of my all-time fave albums back when I was young enough to glitter up and attract (unwanted (sometimes)) attention 🐽 from young men. Bowie is dead and how the hell did we all get so old and baggy?

The one song that didn’t get played tonight was the one about you don’t own me. It used to get played for me frequently and when I didn’t expect it. Not sure what happened. Is it because I am “woke” (a word I think is misunderstood) or a “social justice warrior” (I *own* that label) or a Never Trumper (have been FOREVER, since well before his political crapola)? I guess I’ll just have to play that song for myself. RIP Leslie Gore.

For some odd reason, every time I see the black guy in the pic out of the corner of my eye, I see Trump. When I look at it straight on, it doesn’t look like Trump at all. It is a cFam artifact but I don’t really know its history. The “hat” is a basket that I bought a long time ago. It was in the Landfill Dungeon for quite a while and various insects or whatever ate at it. I apologize to the artist that I didn’t take better care of their work. I can’t exactly remember when the frooog showed up but it pretty much fits in.

The GG and I are still not decided on a TV series to watch so we watched various YouTube music videos and other stuff tonight. In part that’s because we are working on plans to head to the moomincabin for a week or so. I have been been a bit reticent about this trip but he enticed me with a lunch stop at either Fred’s (Roscommon) or The Driftwood (Iggy) and that tipped me over the edge. It doesn’t take much, does it? I’m leaning toward the Driftwood going north and maybe Fred’s going south. The main thing is to travel when the rest of the unwashed masses are not traveling for the holiday weekend.

The last time we went north together (in April), we went to Houghton Lake for a week and when we got there, I asked him if he wanted to get lunch at the North Shore bar. He replied with something like, “I can make us PBJ sandwiches.” Jeebus H. Mackinac Kee-reist! Nothing wrong with PBJ but he (the GG) had cajoled me to go up there with him and he wouldn’t even take me out for lunch? We did go out for a burger at the North Shore (they make small burgers) and of course I paid because I am a bigger tipper. The money all comes out of the same pot so it’s kind of pointless about who pays but c’mon, take me out to lunch!

At the end of the day, after a productive family zoom-type meeting, I was feeling like I wanted a ‘hattan. It wasn’t quiiite cocktail hour so I was heading out to the back yard to read for a bit. (I’m just starting in on “Betty”, more on that in a future blahg.)

Before I got even halfway through the kitchen, the beach urchin who organized and “ran” the meeting texted, “Can I come over for a ‘hattan?” Yes yes yes yes. And so she did. When she got here, we were both a bit confused by the GG’s whereabouts. I heard him slam down the bathroom window (not in anger, just because it’s a cranky old window and slams of its own accord), then I lost track of where he was. Somewhere in the back yard maybe? Lizard had tried to text and call him with no success. I wasn’t really worried but, like, WTF. Oh. Here he is. Riding into the back yard on his eBike. And he had left his phone behind…

As we were drinking our ‘hattans, I mentioned that I had eggplant parm in the hopper for dinner. And asparagus and garlic bread and pesto couscous salad, an impulse purchase from the prepared food section at the Plum (it was good!). Don’tcha know, the beach urchin stayed for dinner.

Thanks to blahg commenters and off-line folks for TV suggestions. Tonight we are not watching anything. Mr. Chainsaw Man is super tired although he may not know it and I am just chilling out like I do at this time of the evening.

I posted about turkeys on the moominbeach a while back and here is a better pic including a Thanksgiving looking turkey dad. Embiggen him a couple times! Why do they seem to be living there? Is our neighbor-cousin feeding them? Stay tuned.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong. The family meeting was really good and the ‘hattans were NOT to de-stress. Any stress we have over these zoom meetings is because of distance. It would really be better to just GET TOGETHER in person. But it is what it is…

We seem to be between TV series. I was struggling with whether “series” has a plural but The Great Google tells me that series is the same word singular and plural. Anyway.

The last TV series we watched together was The Queen’s Gambit. We both enjoyed it greatly even though neither of us play chess. Me NOT AT ALL. The Pensioner probably knows a bit of chess. His eldest (late) brother was a chemist with an interest in chess and wrote a chess program back in the day. I mean like 1976.

So… Whaddoo we watch next… I am temporarily stymied. I have heard a lot about the Succession series. It’s even in xword clues. So, while the GG was out chainsawing for 10 days or so, I tried it out. Ho-hum. I dunno why but I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t like any of the characters and I am not enthralled with billionaires or trillionaires or whatever. I think I watched two episodes (and fell asleep during the second one — twice!). I am watching the last season of Handmaid’s Tale by myself. The GG is not interested in any way, shape, or form for reasons that I only partially have figured out. But it’s only once a week anyway and we need something we can watch every night.

What we ended up watching tonight was a narrative by Steven Garner, a cross-country skier who traversed the North Country Trail from one end of the yooperland to the other this past winter. A couple versions of it are on YouTube. The one we watched was two hours. It was fascinating except that the photos that accompanied his narrative did not match it in any way, shape, or form. If I had to guess, I would guess that Steven wasn’t all that interested in stopping every five minutes to dredge his iPhone out of his zipped pocket or wherever he keeps it (or dig it out of the snow where he had dropped it — been there done that). This was an arduous trek in many places and he had to spend a LOT of time and energy on getting from point A to point B without freezing to death or falling off a cliff or A LOG BRIDGE😵‍💫 or whatever. So someone else set up a random slide show. But it was a GREAT narrative and I think if he had photos to go with it, it would be a great presentation for the 2026 Quiet Water/Adventure Symposium.

I had a meeting with my new colleague today to help him make some changes to the high fidelity prototype (demo) of our web application. He has no experience with html. That is okay because business analysts in general don’t really need to have html coding in their skill set. For our team’s application, it helps if you know it though. Plus some CSS and (fugly old-skool) javascript. We’ll start with html, which is pretty easy to learn and we’re just making little tweaks to existing files. Easy peasy as some say.

Okay, so he was sharing his screen and I was walking him through his first change to an html file. At one point, I told him to hit the CARRIAGE RETURN!!! Whut??? Oh, do you mean the “Enter” key? Duh. Are you showing your age KW? Yes! We had a good laugh about this and y’all are laughing too. Gah! In my defense, in the training I have been doing all week, we were often shown files in which each line ended with “CRLF”. Carriage Return, Line Feed. Welcome back to the 1970s/1980s.

New Colleague is quite a bit younger than I am but not a kid. I don’t think of myself as a good teacher but I am a good coach for a person who is a quick learning autodidact. Like my new colleague. We were online for 2.5 hours and he had little html tweaks to make in random spots all over the damn demo. We did the first tweaks together, then I suggested that I would be quiet and let him find his way until he needed help. And so I did and he needed so little help that I am thinking he might be my replacement one of these days. That’s a good thing🐸

In the middle of this session, a guy in a neon green vest came up to the door and asked, “Is that your Subaru in the street?” Yes, yes, it is Cygnus. Cygnus was in the street because Mooon Yooonit was scheduled to arrive in the afternoon with the Lyme Lounge in tow and the GG would want to back them into the driveway. But some folks were doing tree work for the city and I had to move Cygnus into the driveway. I texted the GG about the situation and when he arrived he had to park down the street a bit. OF COURSE, all the young tree dudes were enamored with the Lyme Lounge.

Dinner of porterization at Dexter’s Pub and g’night!

I have spent the last four mornings in an intense training session for a new software tool that our team is using. I won’t try to describe it except that it is very cool and it is right up my alley although I am nowhere near able to say I understand it all. I don’t think I have EVER done organized training at my company before this. Except for a “crucial conversations” thing once long ago. It was excruciatingly awful. This was not.

This is my childhood dog, Tigger. She isn’t really all that old in this pic. This was probably when I was a tween in the 60s and she lived until my sophomore year in college. She was 13 when my parents (rightly) euthanized her. I was driving my grandmother’s 1965 Ford Fairlane to college that fall (I didn’t get to keep it there and was car-less seemingly forever) and my parents said, “Say good-bye to your dog,” as I was getting into the car. This was a surprise but I was okay (as my parents knew I would be).

Tigger was not really a “trick” type dog. She learned a few commands like “sit”. Maybe that was the only one? She was a very smart dog though and the tricks she learned involved how to get along with people. She was bouncy as a puppy (“Tiggers don’t jump, they bounce” – A. A. Milne). She was a very young stray puppy when we “adopted” her and we treated her very well. When she got older, she learned to approach unfamiliar people SLOWLY with her big bushy tail wagging like crazy. “I want you to pet me.” She was usually rewarded. That is to say she would do that on the moominbeach where she was safe with her family (us). At our house in Sault Ste. Siberia, where boys cutting through the yard would sometimes hit her with geography text books, she could be a bit more territorial.

Anyway. This pic is from our driveway in the back of our Superior Street bungalow. It backed out into an alley. The house and garage in the background belonged to our neighbor Green Thumb McGinnis. The white fence bounds the Oberman house across the alley. One of the few Jewish families in town but YES THERE WERE/ARE Jewish people in our little city. I have heard of people from northern Michigan who don’t think any Jewish people live up there. Yes they do.

I walked past that white fence umpteen bazillion times during my childhood. Sometimes dodging the “Wise” (subbing for a Finnish name) family boys (four of them), who were ROCK throwers. (I didn’t complain to The Commander about the rock throwers, knowing she would just tell me to fight my own battles.) At the end of the alley across the street is the Wood house, I would hang a right and head to Laurie’s house in the next block. She was one of my best friends in grade school even though she went to St. Joe’s and I went to Stinkin’ Linkin’, a public school.