Random bits of my so-called life.

User experience (UX) design: Gah. The GG spent TOO much time trying to deposit a check into an account at a large WELL-KNOWN bank today. It is our bank but it is not our account. I won’t go into the details (it’s routine family business). The banking app has changed recently and he couldn’t to save his life, find where to deposit a check. I showed him (on my phone) how to find the “deposit” button. Oh ho! His user interface didn’t look anything like mine. Eventually he had to re-log in, the new interface showed up, and he successfully deposited the check. This was bad UX but back in a minute on that. Little Cat Z and I just yesterday had annoying issues with the website for the cabin insurance. I won’t go into it except to clarify that our policy is up to date and we did not owe money. But still… Looping back to the bank thing, the company I retaaared from develops our personal banking app. I think. I don’t really know (long story). Not my team though. My team handles corporate systems, not consumer (personal) banking.

A house divided can laugh together… Apparently Eric Schmitt (a Republican US senator) questioned Jack Smith (independent special counsel, who oversaw Justice Department criminal investigations into “our (!) favorite president” (Trump, just ask him). I saw memes on the internet (from people I generally trust) that said Eric asked Jack if he had translated the Book of Mormon from some golden plates to “the true gospel”. Jack replied that it was Joseph Smith who did that. I’m not sure if this is exchange is exactly true and it seems like there’s some basketball game that might also be involved? So there’s a lot I don’t know and may not want to know. But Joseph Smith is looooong dead but he started the whole Mormon faith on Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan (if I have it right). But whatever happened made the two halves of a politically divided house laugh! We need to do that sometimes. People on both sides of the political spectrum say really stupid things.

Sunday night folk radio on NPR. Where oh where is Taj Mahal? Every Sunday night for years, Taj Mahal singing about cake-walkin’ into town would settle me into Sunday night. WEMU changed some of their programming and I no longer hear Taj Mahal cake walking in to town. My favorite lyric from that song is “throw your big leg over me mama, I might not feel this good again.” Without going into detail, my thighs are thin enough that there is space between them and the GG has never complained.

Okay, the GG was in and aut (“out” in Canuckian) and around and abaut (“about” in Canuckian) alllll day. “I am going aut of the haus to get a Pahbst.” (In the snow, of course.) Back in the day, Canadian radio, etc., used to say (on 25-below days), go sit in a bar or something. We were supposed to go x-c skiing (in Canada) on one such day. Radical Betty was rarin’ to go. Thanks to Uncle Duck for tamping down her intense desire to ski that day. Jeebus. We didn’t go to a bar (they weren’t open yet but we did end up at Tim Horton’s.

Not all Canadians have pronounced accents but there is a nuanced accent that’s different than the yooperland, one my ears often pick up. My grandparents had a bit of that accent although as teetotalers, they would have been the last people to go aut of the haus to get a Pahbst (aka Pabst Blue Ribbon beer). A&W root beer? Yes.

I have segued into a nutty little soliloquy here when what I really want to report is that the GG spent a lot of the day eradicating a MOUSE NEST from the Lyme Lounge. What I wanted to know was HOW LONG HAS THE MOUSE NEST BEEN IN THERE? The answer was he THINKS since last summer. He has been SLEEPING in the Lyme Lounge more often than not since mid-summer. He also fixed the Dometic mini-fridge in the Lyme Lounge. He did not fix it in the same way that I “fix the refrigerator” when the sun goes over the yardarm.

Svengoolie served up none other than The Wizard of Oz tonight. I mean the version my generation watched every Saturday before Easter when we were kids. My only gripe is that I think some entity has bought out Svengoolie and there are umpteen bazillion more commercials than there used to be. Svengoolie is still there though. I did NOT watch Night of the Living Dead a few weeks ago. I was terrified when I tried to watch it 50 years ago or so. Then again, a while back I took one of those stupid facebook quizzes about how long I would survive if zombies took over the earth. Answer? Forever. I only took that quiz because my then nemesis posted her zombie quiz status on FB (I did not) and she would only live one year. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah. For one thing, I answered a (multiple choice) question about how long could I go without a shower with “I take two showers a day”. Like f*ck off zombies (and nemesis, who was probably lurking at the time but may not be any more). I have also been known to bathe in Lake Superior but that wasn’t a quiz choice.

Okay so now I am totally babbling (and I know it and I don’t believe in zombies) and so g’night!

P.S. My mouse sent the airplane pic from the North Country Trail yesterday. I dunno what this was all about but I think she was road-walking at the time.

Today was Plaidurday. First Friday in October. I did not wear anything plaid. I have a couple plaid skirts but they are knee-length and I only wear them with black tights. Short wool skirts with bare legs are not a good look. Unless you are a Scottish man wearing a kilt maybe and even then you would probably have some knee socks or something on. Today was not cold enough for tights and I haven’t owned knee socks since I was a kid and they wouldn’t be compatible with my rather stylish skirts anyway. I suppose it will be cold enough for tights soon. Anyway, I wore my “uniform”, which features a long tie-dyed skirt.

Spider webs? Yes. The GG encountered this one on the Sheltowee trail in Kentucky. Why he didn’t text it to me when he first encountered it, I do not know. It reminds me of a time long ago, when we were at the moldy old cFam cabin at Hoton Lake. It was late summer and the evening was warm and the GG and I stood inside the open garage door watching a spider build her web, sipping wee bits of bourbon throughout the process. The Gumper (my beloved father-in-law, pretty long dead now) was futzing around with his toys so he was in and out but stopped on occasion to check out the web and have a wee sip. Or maybe he was nipping into the cabin for his preferred Triple Sec…

For various reasons, we haven’t been porterized on a Friday night on the Planet Ann Arbor for ages. We were thinking Dexter’s Pub would be a good restart. But. We went there for lunch yesterday and when the GG asked if we could make a reservation for tonight, they were all full up. Homecoming football game for the Dexter Dreadnaughts. A parade and the whole nine yards. That’s okay, we’ll come back another Friday. Instead we went to the “sports bar” on Zeeb and Jackson, where they don’t take reservations and it’s “seat yourself”. We were a bit nervous when we arrived and saw all the cars in the parking lot but we were able to snag a booth and it was lovely as it always is. When you are old and baggy but friendly and tip well, you get great service.

“Landfill report” is a text I received from a beach urchin this afternoon. It means something like, “What are my doddering old parents doing today?”

Well, okay, it’s pretty boring. The GG walked to Dexter. I did my word puzzles. I got queen bee with “homonymy” but now that I’m thinking about it, I didn’t finish the wordle… I went to the Plum Market. I drove out to Dexter’s Pub for lunch with the GG. We had lunch and then he wanted me to drive home. He’s been doing a LOT of driving in the last few weeks. So I did but I didn’t drive straight home. I drove by the Blast Corn Maze (near the mousenest), then by the llama house (no llamas out and also near the mousenest). Then I went north of North Territorial Road and ended up getting “lost”. Not really lost but getting back on track involved a short trip on the freeway, which I didn’t want to do. But okay. Arrived home and the GG did some trailer maintenance on the Lyme Lounge.

It’s throwback Thursday and I don’t usually participate in that but the Chippewa County Historical Society (CCHS) does. I donate to them and once when I commented on a post about my dad/granddaddy’s old bank, which I VAGUELY remember (I was three), I was rewarded with a reply from the CCHS director talking about how much my dad had helped with his first mortgage. I know my dad (and granddaddy) were not that helpful to everyone, I mean people who didn’t pay their debts, etc. But that topic is for another day (or days). I’m still figuring out why we *still* don’t patronize various businesses even though their original owners are long dead and the businesses sold. And why I didn’t get a waitress job at a certain restaurant as a teenager. Was it my name? It’s okay, I worked for Mr. Drysdale at “your Tempo store” instead. He was a friend of my dad… … … It *was* my name but I was also a very good employee.

Today, the conversation veered from another topic to Coty’s Hill! I dunno how many blocks from my shabby little Superior Street house Coty’s Hill was but we used to schlep our sleds over there. It was at the end of John Street, where my grandparents lived although much closer to downtown. Although we sledded there many times, my main memory is walking home from there in the dark past huge mountains of snow. Life as a child in the Great White North.

TMOTU, that is. The Master Of The Universe. He’s been gone for three weeks. The first thing he did hen he got home was to turn the heat up. I was like, WHUT? I have been existing here at The Landfill for the last three weeks without heat or air conditioning. Everything was off and I was fine! It was never really hot enough to turn on the A/C. There were a few mornings the temps dipped into the 40s. I was okay wearing my nice light blue polar fleece jacket and didn’t even need to put tights or wool socks on. It was kinda like being at the moomincabin in the summer although I sometimes turn on the propane heater for a bit. It doesn’t even begin to heat the whole place though.

I was scheduled to pick our mouse from her work and take her over to pick up her car from service. As I was walking out to get into Cygnus, I saw that the GG was following me out. He wanted to see his daughter and got into the back seat. So I was a chauffeur for a bit.

We’ve been watching Andy Griffith reruns for quite a while but I asked him if wanted to watch Silo season 3 with me. I’ve been watching it while he was gone. I think he does want to watch it but he was too tired tonight.

And I was today. Mouse’s Oriole needed some service and so I drove Cygnus over to pick up my mouse after she dropped the Oriole off. We went to Star’s Cafe in Westgate for wrap sandwiches and then I dropped her off at Plum for her work. Later, she came over here to the Landfill to pick up Cygnus X-1 for an overnight. Cygnus’s gas tank was getting low so I gassed her up before my mouse needed her.

I am not the best at dealing with car problems or even regular maintenance. I can do it but I am amazed at what my daughters manage to do. These days I let the GG handle all of that stuff and he pretty much does it. Way back in the day when I was driving a crappy old minivan (the POC), every time I drove into my brother’s driveway (in Grand Blanc), he would emerge from his garage with a tire pump and a sly grin on his face. I miss that guy so much.

So Cygnus X-1 is a Subaru Crosstrek. I was looking for a new car back in 2021. I was driving the Ninja, a 2008 top dollar Honda Civic with a 6-speed manual tranny and “performance tires”. It was a great car but at 13 years old, it was time to change. We were looking around online and and then one day, my mouse drove into the driveway with an ORANGE car. It was a Subie Crosstrek. I was in a Teams meeting with my boss Amazon Woman and I screamed. “She bought a car?”

Amazon Woman gave me leave to go out and take a pic. My mouse had bought a used vee-hickle (with MUCH research). I bought a new car but it is a Crosstrek. And I love it. It’s an automatic and although I love driving stick, Cygnus is okay for me.

I’m generally kinda bothered by having my phone or facebook or whatever serving up unwanted crapola. Like memories. But the photos I’m posting today came from my iPhone reminding me of what I was doing 19 years ago today. What exactly was that? Well, it was a Friday and I got up at 0-skunk-30 and drove from The Planet Ann Arbor to Sault Ste. Siberia. I was gonna say I took the day off work but on this date in 2007, I was employed, but as a student intern, I only worked about 12 hours a week and Friday was not a work day. Boy did that change a couple months later but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

After the requisite five hour drive up the I75 SUV Speedway, I landed at Karl’s Cuisine, meeting The Commander and Radical Betty and probably Barb and Cam for an 11:30-ish lunch. All of those grande dames have now left the building. Karl’s Cuisine was a fantabulous restaurant directly across from the Soo Locks. It didn’t survive covid but Karl has installed a restaurant kitchen on his property and supplies local farm markets with stromboli and pot pies and other goodies.

So, here I am at the tollbooths after crossing the Big Mac. Did I have to stop and pay cash on that trip? Or did I have a card or tokens or something? I don’t remember. I know I didn’t have a transponder on my windshield until quite a number of years later. I wonder what car I was driving. The Ninja was a 2008 so I didn’t own her yet. Hmmmm… Dogha or Daisy maybe.

Next up, The Commander.

And Radical Betty.

Pretty bad photos unless you want to conjure up all that glare to be halos or something but these women would be laughing their asses off at that because they were not religious.

Also, this commemorates (kind of) my first iPhone. The photos are from my first iPhone, which I bought either earlier that September or late August. I could probably look that up but I don’t feel like doing it now. I swore I wouldn’t be an early iPhone adopter but we walked into an AT&T store one (rainy?) Sunday and walked out with two iPhones and $1200 poorer.

Lemme see… A trip to the post office to drop off some old clothing past the point of usability to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way. Then Meijer and Plum Market.

I cleaned up the grill (ugh). In a way, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. I was able to use wet microfiber cloths to remove the birdseed and whatever other bird/squirrel detritus I don’t even want to think about. On the chair in the right corner behind the plaid beach urchin, are those cloths and the cloth that covers the grill. I am contemplating putting them through the laundry tomorrow. We HAVE to figure out a better system for the grill and bird feeder though.

I bought smoked salmon and friends for appetizers and I made a green salad (with mozzarella balls). Meijer has some decent packaged potato salad so I bought some of that. The beach urchins fancied up the ground bison with herbs, etc., and served as grillmistresses. They even toasted the buns. I do not grill things, at least not usually.

And so g’night. Onto another Silo episode.

First, to explain the pic, this is a “baby” (?) copperhead snake the GG and friends encountered in Kentucky earlier on their Sheltowee Trace hiking expotition. Knock on wood, this was the ONLY copperhead they encountered. There was a water snake yesterday or the day before but not a venomous species. I hesitate to post snake pics. I am not categorically snake phobic but I have another even weirder phobia and I get why people don’t want to look at surprise snake photos. I’m not sure I would have stopped long enough to try to photograph a snake of unknown species, like copperhead would be to me. I dunno how many snake species we have in the Great Lake State but only one of them is venomous and it is rarely encountered.

Okay, so I cleaned Gertrude’s top oven yesterday. I went outside to read this afternoon. We are gonna cook bison burgers (and friends) tomorrow night. As I passed the gas grill on my way back into the Landfill, I caught a gander in my peripheral vision. Man oh man, does that grill need a cleaning. I don’t mean the interior (where you cook things), although that could probably stand some attention too. I’m talkin’ ’bout the outside.

The GG loves to bird watch so he hangs a bird feeder outside his lair AND directly above the gas grill. So there is bird seed all over the grill and I don’t even wanna think about what else. So I guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow…

The GG took this photo somewhere in Kentucky and thought the rock on the bottom left might need some lipstick. His adventure is ending soon and he is expected to land back here on the Planet Ann Arbor mid-week.

I will be happy to have him home but I’ve also been fine here alone. As I always am. I gave Gertrude’s top oven its yearly cleaning today. I know we’re only hanging out at the end of September but I also know that it’s a hop, skip, and a jump until Halloween and then Thanksgiving. I will need both of Gertrude’s ovens on Thanksgiving, plus the gas grill. The bottom oven almost never needs cleaning (it only heats things up) but the top oven needs it occasionally, as careful as I am about keeping things from spilling or spraying or spattering.

I don’t have a whole more to say so I’m gonna end this and watch the next episode of Silo season 3.

First, we’ve just passed the autumnal equinox and already the light here is very different. When Mr. Golden Sun is out, that it is. Our yard is so heavily tree-covered that we don’t really see a *lot* of Mr. G even when he is out although we can tell he’s out.

Anyway I was standing at the kitchen sink and there was a weird flashing reflection on the window. What the heck is behind me? In the GG’s lair, there is a radiometer on the window sill and it was rotating in bright sunlight and the kitchen window was catching it and its own reflection. Brightly! I tried to get a pic of this phenomenon but (as you can see) it didn’t really turn out very well. I can’t even identify some of the detritus in the pic.

The book? Glorious Exploits. Author? Ferdia Lennon. It was recommended to me by Little Cat Z, a bookworm I accidentally (or maybe not accidentally) cultivated. I’ve been doing audio books for a while and when I first started to listen to this book, there was a huge disconnect. Kinda like the time we gave then toddler Little Cat Z a little bottle (with a nipple) of orange juice. She was expecting milk and when she sucked in a slug of the OJ, she immediately spat everything out and then used her tongue to eradicate every OJ molecule remaining in her mouth. Parents can be so stupid sometimes.

My disconnects with the book were: 1) I expected Ferdia (author and reader) to be a woman. 2) I didn’t expect a book about Euripides plays in an ancient Greek setting to be read in an Irish accent. LOLOLOL! Okay. A little knowledge seemed to be needed. I looked up the author and, oh, okay, an Irish man. I restarted the book (I wasn’t that far in anyway). It didn’t take long for my ear to adapt to the Irish accent (which I love in general) and I was off and running.

I don’t know much about Euripides or Greek history. My fractured education gave me only a very high level overview of Greek, well, anything. I was a music major in college… What I do know at least a little bit about is play production. Mostly all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes and all the crazy stuff that can go wrong. I know this not because I ever studied it in school. I know it from hanging around with the youth theatre guild (YAG) my kids were involved in. I could write a trilogy about that period of my life but all I will say tonight is when play production stuff goes sideways, people deal with it. And guess what? The audience doesn’t usually know anything is wrong. And some of them are snoring

YAG could’ve probably pulled off a play in a quarry with prisoners as actors and potters as directors and children singing. That is all I will say.

An early wake-up today via a text from the Mackinac Bridge told me it had closed because of an “emergency incident”. First place my brain went was “jumper”. There aren’t very many jumpers off the Big Mac but occasionally people do. Turns out it was a serious auto accident.

A childhood/facebook friend left Sault Ste. Siberia (MI and Ont) this morning to return to his home in Florida and happened upon the bridge while it was closed so he had to wait. He posted a fuzzy, far-away pic of what looked like a vehicle on fire on the bridge. A little later he posted that it was a drag-racing incident and there were two fatalities. He isn’t an unreliable person but who knows where he got this information. TV 9 & 10 later posted that it was a high-speed rear-ender, that four people were involved, all were injured, two seriously, the others not. I’m thinking the truth is somewhere in between my friend’s and TV 9 & 10’s accounts and that a lot of details are not yet forthcoming and may never be known.

The speed limit on the Big Mac for cars and small trucks is 45 mph. I won’t lie. We all used to speed over that bridge. Until the Yugo went overboard. High winds were a factor in that tragedy but I have kept it to 45 tops ever since then, high winds or not.

The GG (still in Kentucky) had an interesting day, not all of it blahggable although nothing tragic or anything, just inconvenient. This was supposed to be a “down” day. I misinterpreted this. I thought it meant since they don’t have to move camp for a couple days, they would laze around their current campsite or maybe go to “town” (wherever that is) to do a load of laundry and get some coffee. Nope. Five hours of driving to scout out the best option for the next campsite. Oh don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the GG had a wonderful time with today’s junket. Given the terrain he was traversing today, he’s probably glad he did that wheel bearing repair job on Mooon Yooonit that ended up requiring SIX trips across the Mackinac Bridge. Good thing we have a transponder.

They also looked at arches. The GG sent me a bazillion arch pics. How do I pick just one? This one looked to me almost like some sorta prehistoric creature got frozen in stone. Brachiosaurus legs, anyone?

A more appropriate question in this situation would probably be where is the suspension bridge (see second pic)? But it’s a similar situation to one that occurred a few years ago with the same couple of hikers. That one involved a log bridge.

The GG and our friend Joan were hiking the North Country Trail (NCT) in the yooperland in the late fall (early December, maybe?) and at one point, the only way to cross a creek/river was via a kinda skinny log bridge. The GG fell off the log bridge and got wet up to mid-torso. It was COLD and he was a couple of miles from whatever car they were driving at that point. So he ran (to stay warm). By a total stroke of luck, Joan had a cell signal (not guaranteed everywhere in the yooperland) and she was able to connect with one of the “Trail Angels” who were supporting the hike. So when the GG got to the trailhead, a Trail Angel was there to meet him with a warm car and some nice warm, dry thrift shop clothing, including a beautiful NCT blue* jacket.

Since he did not freeze (or drown), we can laugh about this. He texted me and the beach urchins to notify us that he had fallen off a log bridge but was okay. Okay. Friends, he fell off the log bridge no fewer than THREE TIMES! How did we figure this out? Did he ‘fess up to this? No, he did not. But Little Cat Z and I read Joan’s blog (My Quality Day) and she had written a more comprehensive description of the incident.

In today’s event, the weather (and water) were much warmer than the yooperland as Kentucky (usually) is and nobody fell in. As you can see, Joan is maybe knee deep so fording/wading that creek was easy (as far as I know).

*There is an actual “NCT blue” paint color, believe me I know from years of the GG filling up empty peanut butter jars with paint to hand out to volunteers to blaze trees. We still save peanut butter jars toward that effort. Ever tried to clean one of those things? Since I have known the GG, I have always thought blue would be a good color for him. He was not all that interested. Brown brown brown. After the log bridge incident with the “new” blue jacket, he has adopted that color and has multiple blue clothing items. Not probably official NCT blue but similar colors.

At first glance, this “arch” in Kentucky looked like rock but then I was thinking it might be a downed tree? But no, it is rock.

The GG and our friend Joan continue dealing with extremely high temperatures on their Sheltowee Trace hike in Kentucky. Here on The Planet Ann Arbor, the temperatures didn’t get outta the 60s today. I am a little chilly at the moment but I am not complaining. It’ll be good sleeping tonight. And I have clean sheets! Thanks to meeeee!

I am outta steam so g’night! KW

I am not on the Mushroom Planet, I am on the Planet Ann Arbor. Where my yard is absolutely COVERED with mushrooms. They are all over the place. I’m guessing the last two days of heavy rain have something to do with it? I dunno. We have owned this house for 40 years and I haven’t ever seen the likes of this.

It’s kinda like the year our apple tree went crazy and we had apples up the wazoo. That was after YEARS of having a measly couple or so of apples each year. This happened a year after the Polar Vortex Winter. Alas, that apple tree completely faltered after that last effort and we eventually cut it down so Jim’s Amish Sheds could haul the She Shed into the back yard. Although I am not a climate change denier, I don’t really think our tree’s demise was climate change related. Unless you count changes in our yard’s micro climate I would say it’s more related to owner ignorance and incompetence.

My mouse and the racc came over tonight for enchiladas and salad and smoked salmon. I took a chance and bought fresh greens (red butter lettuce) but I *washed* the hell out of it, even though I bought it from my go to Plum Market. An unnamed inside Plum source confided that early on, they had carried lettuce from the potential contaminator. I bought my lettuce from farm stands all summer. I think we’re over that plague now and this lettuce was fresh and likely local and but I still washed it.

Here is a long ago photo of mouse tethered with a couple of her stuffty friends in our old apple tree. Quite the apparatus with all of those bandanas, etc. Looking a bit like Granddaddy (my dad) in this pic.

P.S. “The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet” and its sequel “Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet” are excellent sci-fi books for elementary school-age kids. Independent readers can handle them but I read them aloud to the beach urchins at ages when at least one of them could have read them herself.

Outta the mouths of babes. Little Cat Z once said that to me (and mouse) when we were hanging around at the Landfill kitchen sink. Liz fully believed it although she can be a little sneaky. mouse was probably a bit skeptical. But it’s true, for a while at least, until your kids do as they are supposed to do and leave their mama’s home to make their own life. If you (the mama) trust them to make good decisions and choices et al, they will be okay. And mine have been. They’ve probably made better decisions/choices than some of the ones I’ve made in my life but we’ll go there some other day (or not). And I think I’ve turned out pretty darn well, considering.

But I (the mama) am the one who is stuck to the beach urchins nowadays. Too many words to describe that. Anyway, the beach urchins did a bangup job of closing the moomincabin for the summer. Because of work schedules, etc., Little Cat Z ended up doing the final closing alone, i.e., draining the water, which I HATE to do. I also hate the antique fuse box but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

What I really hate is when the storm windows cover “my” “big-screen TVs”. Aka the picture windows that allow us in the moomincabin to look out at the lake, the Old Cabin, and Don and Katie’s cabin where Judd now resides. When we built the moomincabin back when I was six, my family didn’t have a lot of money but my dad (a young banker) had some friends, as good bankers do. He said to Kenny Steve, “I have this much money, what can you build with it?” One of the things Kenny Steve cut costs on was to salvage old store windows for our picture windows.The Commander once told me that my Grandma Margaret used to come over from the Old Cabin to the moomincabin because she could spy on whatever was going on at Don (her son) and Katie’s cabin. True? I don’t know/remember.

Anyway, Little Cat Z closed the moomincabin today and I think she did a good job via the pictures she sent. She has made some notes to update/clarify “the procedures” a bit.

At least we don’t have to put the sailboat inside the moomincabin for the winter any more. Actually my dad sold the sailboat to his friend Pete Sherman (for a dollar) a long time ago. But we have tons of botes nowadays. Two motor botes and a bunch of kayaks and canoes, etc. We could not fit all of those inside the moomincabin if we tried, which means the garage is a good thing.

Thanks to my beach urchins for closing this year. I love you.

Yesterday was a beach day, that is. I was not at the moominbeach but The Planet Ann Arbor has been pretty pleasant so I’m not really complaining. The pics are all from my mouse BTW. First up, a beach towel with a knitting prodject, looking out into Whitefish Bay. Iroquois Point (USA) on the left, Gros Cap (Oh, Canada) on the right, Round Island (USA) in the middle.

Next (and I’m breaking one of my blahgging rules here) a person who sometimes reminds us a bit of Granddaddy (although make no mistake, he is his own person). A tall person (taller than granddaddy by a few inches) standing on the bank. I mean my *dad* BTW, not my granddaddy. Granddaddy (my dad) would often stand on this spot on the bank at the top of the beach but instead of a camera, he would have binoculars in hand, watching our beloved lake freighters and salties go to and from Gitchee Gumee. So I broke a blahgging rule but this so reminded me of my dad… Oh. But my dad, binoculars or not, would already know what goddamn freighter was going up or down because he would have been listening to the goddamn Marine Traffic scanner! Thunder Bay Coast Guard Radio. I think the racc is focused on things to photograph, probably not botes.

Finally we have Lizard Breath, looks like she’s wrapping up in a beach towel after a swim maybe?

Mouse and the racc returned to The Planet Ann Arbor today (they actually inhabit an asteroid just outside the planet). Lizard Breath will finish the closing tomorrow and return.

What is the GG up to? Well. His fugly legs and feet have improved a bit. They were more itchy than painful. He and his hiking buddy encountered a baby copperhead on the trail today. Another reason I’m not crazy about hiking in Kentucky. I know that people in many places live with dangerous snakes. We have only one venomous snake in The Great Lake State, the Massasauga rattlesnake. It has a very limited habitat and it’s very rare to encounter one. Also, it isn’t one of those snakes whose venom kills within seconds or whatever.

If you haven’t read or watched Outlander, you may not know what the heck the title means. It means something like “don’t worry, outsider”. An “outsider” in this case is most likely an English person. The speaker is a Scot.

The other evening, I texted my nuclear fam that tstorms were rolling in. They were not severe storms but the GG texted back with a worried tone. Was I OK? Well, YES! I mean, not every goddamn storm turns into a tornado and if one does I am now warned both by the outdoor sirens the Planet Ann Arbor wisely decided not to decommission and the LOUD alerts on my phone. So I can cower in the dungeon or I can go outside, like the GG always does. Adult children: “Are you guys in the basement?” Me: “Dad outside.”

I was happily ensconced (NOT in the dungeon) so I told him “dinna fash yourself Sassenach”. I am a Scot (75% according to Ancestry.com), born in the USA. He is probably not Scottish but he hasn’t done the spit test so who knows. Irish, German, French mainly. He has a French surname but not sure that’s where most of his DNA comes from.

He was like “duh?” so I reminded him of the hero of Outlander, Jamie Fraser, “every woman’s hero”, as I like to say. I am kind of joking when I say that but I also think he is a great character and male role model. All that to say I finished all of the Outlander TV series episodes over the last week. (Yes, I have also read all the books.)

So… Whaddoo I watch next? I knew that Silo season 3 had dropped so I am watching that now. I will watch it again with the GG when he comes home from his boondoggle. It isn’t always easy for us to find shows that we both want to watch. We *have* watched every version of Fargo that’s ever been aired. If that gives you an idea of our mutual tastes. Wood chipper anyone?

I am currently reading Exit Party by the author of Station 11. I am *immersed*! Double mice, double people, parallel universes and I can’t wait to find out how everything turns out. I’ve read some other decent books so maybe I’ll do a more comprehensive book blahg soon. I also hope somebody makes a TV series out of Exit Party. Station 11 is one series the GG and I watched together.

After a summer of Too Much Togetherness, I have been space-i-fied for a bit. This is one of the photoos the GG *texted* me (thank you for texting, email doesn’t always work very well for photos). What are all those fugly marks on his legs? Sand ticks? Chiggers? Poison ivy? Stinging nettles? I do not know and neither does he. The word “tick” when used to refer to an arachnid context makes my hair stand up on end but a bit of googling indicates to me that “sand ticks” are coastal beings and probably aren’t where the GG is. But I am not an expert so who knows.

So. Where the heck is he? He is hiking the Sheltowee Trace in Kentucky with our friend Joan and a friend of hers. I had to keep going back to Joan’s blog to get an accurate spelling for Sheltowee. If pesky insects and plants were not enough, they’ve been dealing with 90-something degree heat. They are being careful, starting out early in the morning and taking it easy.

Kentucky is beautiful but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a chigger, I do NOT get along with urushiol oil (i.e., poison ivy), and I HATE heat. And I’m not sure they have access to a shower every day. So I am here at the Landfill trying once and for all to recover the place from when it was pandemic central. It ain’t easy. My most exciting errand today was driving out to the Country Mouse’s house to pick up a package.

I suppose I should prob’ly alert LukeOfPNet (across the street) that the GG and I are not separated or something (as much as we disagree on polly-ticks). A few years ago, the GG was gone for something like three weeks and I met Luke in the woods one day and he kinda sheepishly asked me what was going on. Like, are you guys still together? I explained that the GG was hiking with Another Woman but that all was well. And there she is in the second pic, beating tracks through the heat.

I constantly puzzle over why the GG and I have been together so long and have survived our MAGA differences. I dunno. He is a part of my family and I am a part of his. That’s about the simplest way I can put it.

Just a quicky to show them moom of the kiddos who are up at the moomincabin having fun and eventually closing it for the summer.

I have seen this pic (of meeeee) forever but it wasn’t until today that I realized it was in COLOR! Because my parents did not have color photography until I dunno when but it was later than the 1950s, my uncle Don “Fin” (I had an uncle Don on the MacMu side too) had to have taken this photo. I also didn’t ever think about the fact that my uncle had color photography while a lot of the world did not. Including my dad’s branch of the family because all of my baby pics (and my brother’s) are black and white. At some point my cousins Mac (late) and Sandy shared photos with me. I don’t think my uncle or any of my cousins in that branch of the fam will care that I posted it.

The pic is the to-be woman beach urchin who birthed two female beach urchins and took care of two bonus daughters (and a few dogs) throughout the years. “They” say it takes a village. We grew up in one (or two or three) but the main village was the moominbeach. We spent summers there with our grandparents aunts, and uncles, and cousins galore. And the McNaughton/Piedmont fam.

I have tried to carry all of that on as much as I can<./p>