Random bits of my so-called life.

You know, the RTO (Return To Office) “synergy”. I am not under an RTO mandate but I actually felt some of that synergy today.

I dragged the GG to a retirement party for a co-worker. It was at another co-worker’s beautiful house in the country. I was TERRIFIED about attending this party. It wasn’t because of covid. It was my social anxiety kicking into high gear. I have seen exactly two of the attendees in person since you know when (2020).

I really really wanted to bag out of this thing but I also knew that I couldn’t really do that. In the end, it was the absolute right thing to do. As often happens with me, once I got there, my social anxiety melted. A wee bit of whine helped with that of course. But also it was absolutely amazing to see all of these people again. Of the people who attended, I am still the newcomer at “only” 18 years of service. I suspect I am also the oldest. As I have said before, we are a “mature” team and I figured out PDQ after I was hired that I had landed in a good place. You didn’t get hired if you didn’t seem like a good fit and people treat each other with respect without fail.

The GG was a bonus. He is more of a social butterfly than me and quickly made friends. He played a bit of shuffleboard with Mr. Bear 👀 (neither of them know how to play) and promoted the North Country Trail with great success. Telling stories and showing pictures and maps. Wouldn’t you know, he had a few brochures stashed in Cygnus to leave behind. But people *were* actually interested.

We didn’t stay for the whole party because we had another engagement at Dexter’s Pub for dinner but I had a hard time dragging myself out of there.

Cheers to my company and team!🧡🧡🧡

I observed robin nesting behavior a couple weeks ago. I think they nested in a place I can’t see from where I usually hang out in the back yard. We were in and outta town and I’m not sure what happened with that nest.

This egg is something my mouse found in the church woods. Or maybe somewhere else. It doesn’t seem to be in a nest. So maybe it fell out of a nest?

The church woods is across from the mouse/racc house. It’s a woods adjacent to a Black Lives Matter kind of protestant church. Which means anyone from the non-religious (but live by the Golden Rule) parts of my family would be comfortable living across from it. One of the reasons I hate Trump is because he does not live by the golden rule. He’s more an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kinda guy. Bad Orange Man.

A billion years ago I took an ancient history class in college and the prof called me out (silently) in that there was only one student in the class who understood what he was saying. I had written a paper or answered an essay question on a test, I fergit which. He didn’t name me but I knew I was the student he was talking about. The issue was whether or not Jesus was a “divine” messiah or just a person trying to be a messiah. I can’t go any further with that tonight although I would have “argued” for the second option. I don’t think we even know if Jesus was an actual person.

P.S. Trump is in no way, shape, or form a messiah.

So, topics I wanna talk about more in depth but won’t for various reasons.

Trump blaming BIDEN for the economy. Nope. You putchyer big f*ckin’ toddler thumb on a few “scales” here and there and you did this all by yourself. “Sleepy/Crooked” Joe had nothing to do with this.

RFKJR will find a “cure” for “autism” by September (or whenever)? Nope. Decoding what causes “autism” (a huge sprawling “spectrum” of issues) is (IMHO) not gonna be untangled until well after we are all dead, if it ever is untangled. It is much more complicated than changing legacy on-line banking systems to web applications. For example. Also, a lot of people “on the spectrum” do not want to be “fixed”. They want to be understood and treated with dignity. Like we all do.

Apparently our Great Lake State governor Big Gretch has “cuddled up” to the Orange Baboon enough to get a bunch of Democrats to give her “shade” for cozying up to the enemy. Trump IS an emeny, to everyone in our country, not just to Big Gretch. What did Big Gretch do? She helped her state out by negotiating with Trump to get a bunch of fighter jets stationed at an air force base in The Great Lake State. If Trump doesn’t change his mind (as he is wont to do, is he actually a woman?), this will be a good thing for my state. I dunno but I suspect Gretch has enough of an emotional quotient and savvy to figger out how to handle a cretin like Trump. But who knows. I do know that she has NOT changed her value system. This is the kind of thing we want in politicians.

The title is from when my niece Pengie was about four. She was standing in front of the moomincabin refrigerator in the morning thinking about what she wanted to eat for breakfast. That particular summer, the Old Cabin (next door) was uninhabited for a week or so and my brother and his family were staying there. Pengie was probably up earlier than her parents so they sent her next door to us at the moomin and we we were more than happy to have her with us. As a child I was constantly running back and forth between the Old Cabin and the moomin.

So Pengie was looking for breakfast. We (The Commander and my dad and me) sorta forgot about the brain spinning stuff and were talking in the background of Pengie’s brain. And then. She announced, “My brain just stopped. It stopped on salami!” Of course she was served salami PDQ.

I think it’s Mars. Initially I thought it was Venus but when I checked Skyview, Venus was already below the horizon and Mars looked like it was in the right place relative to the moon.

We have a surprise visitor tonight, at least a surprise to me. It’s okay, it’s someone who is always welcome here, the UU, other half of the Twinz of Terror. But it was a busy work day and I had been thinking I’d just phone dinner in by heating up leftovers, probably not enough for three people. So. What do I have? Well. I have some individually packaged seven ounce filet mignons from Meijer. Every time I go to Meijer I check for these little things. They don’t always have them but when they do, I buy a few to top off my freezer stock. They thaw quickly so I can pull out as many as needed at almost a moment’s notice and marinate them in Soy Vay or whatever I have on hand.

We also had fancy little multi-colored potatoes, peas, and a very simple salad. I wanted to make garlic bread but my work got totally crazy today and I totally forgot about the garlic bread.

Other than that, it was 86 (!!!) degrees today and I am kinda done done done. G’night, KW.

Guess what the GG is doing. He is on a ladder fiddling with something on the CEILING, right? Do you know what he is fiddling with? If you guessed “smoke alarm”, DING DING DING! You win the booby prize.

The last year has been a saga of chirping (and sometimes screeching) smoke alarms here at the Landfill. At my INSISTENCE, we installed Nest smoke alarms a year or so ago in the “hall” and the dungeon. They are fine. I tested them yesterday. But we have a complicated situation in which there are multiple other smoke alarms. THREE of them are within a couple FEET of the upstairs “hall” Nest alarm. You’ve heard me say this before. Multiple times. A neighbor’s tree fell on our house in 2008 or 2009 or so (not looking it up) and city building code required one smoke alarm per bedroom. Our three LITTLE bedrooms are clustered around the “hall” (a very small square space) so we have four FRICKIN’ smoke alarms within six feet of each other. You can’t even tell which one is chirping. Bureaucratic bungling run amok. Come out and look at the actual SPACE, you cretins.

So yesterday morning, I was enjoying a wee brek and some word puzzles when, CHIRP. 30 seconds or whatever, CHIRP. F*CK. I called the GG up at the moominbeach and kinda read him the riot act because I thought he had changed out the smoke alarms. Nope. New smoke alarms were available but not installed. The chirping stopped (because there was no blasted faaaar) and a beach urchin helped me change out the battery. I can do this kind of thing myself but standing on a chair or whatever and tilting my head *back* is not fun. These things didn’t used to be ON the ceiling. Anyway, my beach urchin fixed it and we had a wee ‘hattan in the back yard to “celebrate” and all of the alarms were silent all night.

The GG came home today and, as promised, got to work changing out THREE smoke alarms. They were OLD as hell and I think we should replace these things more frequently.

… to extract a wee bit of MAGA from my libtard/social justice warrior consciousness. I did that by meeting my adult daughter Lizard and our cousin npJane (first cousin to me and first cousin once removed to my daughter). We met for lunch downtown at the Jolly Pumpkin.

I won’t go into all the details but it was polly-tickle stuff (we three definitely agree) and cabin stuff and random family stuff. I have said this before but npJane was a young but full-fledged adult when Lizard was born. They formed a strong bond early on, one that continues such that they have attended conferences together for their work. How cool is that?

COBOL programming came up today. I don’t know COBOL but I do know FORTRAN. Are we gonna be able to change the social security system? The one that I actually get payments from even though I still work and have a salary I never dreamed I would ever have.

I have said this before and will say it again. Changing a legacy system (like social security or online banking) is very complicated. It takes years and a lot of careful design work. That’s what I do.

When DOGE says they are gonna re-do social security in a couple weeks, my take is, “Oh no you’re not.” Nope.

One of my Saturday night radio programs played Woolly Bully a while ago and I looked up the lyrics (again) because what the heck? Hatty told Matty… I remember being a young teenager and listening to this on the radio at the Old Cabin and wondering what the heck the lyrics were then too. I couldn’t google them then. Now I can but I am only semi-enlightened. It was a good song anyway🧡

But I’m thinking about ferries tonight. The Lord and Lady of Linden are traversing Canada by automotive vee-hickle to visit their son and his family in Seattle. They are starting their trip by traveling through Ontario and texted pics to the fam today from Marathon, Ontario, and Lake Superior from the north shore. My fam’s moomincabin is on the south shore.

When I was a kid, my parents took us out of school for a couple days to travel around Lake Superior. I have MANY memories of that trip but I won’t bore you with them. The main point is that our trip started with a ferry ride. The Linden folks (the GG’s sister and brother-in-law) did not have to start their trip with a ferry ride. They were able to drive across the International Bridge.

The International Bridge was completed when I was eight. My dad drove us plus my neighborhood friend Laurie across it the first night it was open. I have gone across that bridge and back for many years.

The International Bridge handles a hell of a lot of traffic nowadays. I can’t even fathom how commercial traffic crossed the Sault Ste. Siberia border before the bridge. Of course, they took the ferries. The same ones we used to sometimes take on foot. We parked on the American side, walked on to the ferry, walked up to Queen Street, shop, ate fancy pastries at the Girl in Red (if we were lucky) and walked back.

I found a link to the old ferries. I think the Agoming might be one we took frequently. I didn’t pay attention to the ferry names back then.

Photo credit to mouse.

You deserve a break today. From KW style polly-ticks, not McDonald’s, although you are welcome to go to McDonald’s if you so choose. I am not the food police and we’ll talk about the food police some other day.

So the GG was hot to camp at the moomincabin this weekend. I think he’ll be camping other places over the next few days. He can plug in to lucky-shucky at the moomin and use the wi-fi. Terlets are not available but he is a maaaaaan so most of that is easy to take care of😵‍💫 Nobody’s looking at you when you are on private forested land with big rotting snow piles everywhere. And if you have to do the dirty deed (everyone poops), there is a perfectly serviceable outhouse at the Old Cabin. Thanks to My Dear Uncle Harry for keeping it up all these years. I do contribute a roll of toilet paper from time to time.

There is still ice rimming the shore and some of the “hummocks” that form at the second sandbar. In the summer, we walk out to where those hummocks are in the water. After that the water gets over your head. At this time of year, the second sandbar is not a safe place to walk.

I think the GG is camping behind the moomingarage. Less snow but lucky-shucky and wi-fi are available.

A fashion plate. Knitted hat by grandma, cute outfit from cousins (opened up the bag and IMMEDIATELY STRIPPED NAKED to switch to the new outfit), neon green high heels, and, oh, of course, Speedy Water Janet Pop Mousey Mushroom Ears. A constant companion hanging there at the side. One of my fave pics ever.

Today? Paddling down the Huron River. A force of nature way back then and now.

I am basking a bit after my workday. Our temps were in the low 80s today. Not unheard of at all for this time of year but it hasn’t been the warmest spring season so far so this is kinda welcome and I am hanging out in the back yard watching a pair of robins engaging in nesting behavior. We have three nests that I know of and I think I know which one they are working on. For Landfill folks, it’s the one on the south side of the house around the corner where I can’t see it from where I’m sitting. And y’all know where I’m sitting.

I have decided I am gonna OWN the Libtard label. For myself that is. I know that anything ending with “tard” is not politically correct but I can call myself anything I want, right? I have been called a Libtard (also a Social Justice Warrior) about a bazillion times since Trump took over the GOP and, yes, he DID take over the GOP. It’s not my parents’ GOP and it isn’t your parents’ either. I’m mainly talking about people born in the mid 20th century to be clear.

The Trump party is the party of mean. Also the party of crazy and chaos but we’ll go there some other day maybe. Mean. The Trump Party has absolutely zero compassion for anyone who doesn’t kowtow to the Temple of Trump. What a mean, egotistical little man. How much hate can one person hold? I dunno how we get out of this stoopid MAGA crapola. I never subscribed to it in the first place.

We need to be compassionate toward people who have less than we do. Not all immigrants are “bad hombres”. Not all poor people are “welfare queens”. MOST of us rely on government services for one thing or another. Trump and Musk both come from immigrant families. I dunno if they use any government services. Maybe not. Billionaires certainly do not need government money. Although there are agencies who do things like make sure “hamberder” meat is safe to eat, etc. But I don’t think either of them can fathom what the lives of people who depend on government services are like. Or the lives of the folks they are heartlessly chainsawing out of their jobs.

I’m done for now but not forever. Libtard? Social Justice Warrior? Neither of those labels exactly fit me but I am gonna OWN them anyway. The bottom line is, I CARE! About those who have less than I do, including some of those who actually support Trump. Isn’t that what social justice is all about?

For FlaMan, not me. Wish I had thought to get a pic of *him* because he was pretty well decked out despite some challenges getting ready for the occasion. We celebrated via lunch at Johnny’s Pour House in the beautiful little city of Flushing. Er, the GG says, “it’s beautiful except for the unfortunate name.” We were joined by the Lord and Lady of Linden.

We celebrated here last year and if the Pour House was/were(?)* closer to the Planet Ann Arbor, we would be regulars. Great food and lovely service, although I’m coming to realize if you are a friendly (not crotchety) old bag and you tip well, restaurant servers tend to treat you well. I had a Greek wrap and FlaMan got a BLT (they are on the “secret” menu) with extra bacon. Hey, it’s your birthday, go for that bacon.

Since the Great Lake State is finally warming up enough for Orange Cone Season, it can be challenging to gad about. We managed to miss the main traffic jam by prior knowledge and strategic avoidance on surface streets. The GG was fidgety about it all but I encouraged him to calm down and enjoy the scenic route.

All in all, it was a pretty long day and then we had to pick up Mooon Yooonit from the dealer when we got back into the orbit of The Planet Ann Arbor. But I love FlaMan and it’s hard for him to get out without help and it was a good time. I loved all the gabblety-gabblety with the Lady of Linden. I don’t have any biological sisters but I have sisters in spades via my in-laws. I love them all!

Oh, yeah, it is also my Grandma Margaret’s bday. I am not strong enough to count how many years old she would be if she were still alive. She is not collecting social security payments in any case. Where would they be sent?🤷‍♀️

*Was/were? Mrs. Pratt (8th grade English), where are you when I need you? Oh well, I’ll ask Margaret instead. I mean blahg Margaret, not grandma🤣

Seems like a good day to “dial it down” a bit so I won’t post some of the stuff that’s simmering in my brain today.

The highlight of my work day was when my new colleague caught something I neglected to tell him about on our call this afternoon. After our call, I had been thinking something like, “I shouldda told him that.” But guess what? He noticed it himself. Because of that, I was able to explain it *in* context so that he could understand it in a way he *might* not have been able to if I had just gabblety gabblety gabbletied the whole thing. He’s a smart person and I think I am connecting with him well. I am going on 18 years there though and I know so much but how do I whisper all that stuff to a new person. We’ll get there.

The GG surprised me by heading out to his monthly lunch with his EPA retiree group today. I thought that happened earlier in the month but apparently not this month. A key member of the group had spent months in Crazy Old Florida and has just returned so the group delayed the meeting a couple weeks. I was glad to have the Landfill to myself for a while and the pic is from his luncheon.

At the end of the afternoon, things got crazy at home (sorta). Our quick green lizard wanted to come over to drop off some glubs that the North Country Trail folks might want. That was fine (honey you can come over to my house whenever you want). But then all of a sudden, the GG woke up a bit and, yeah, we need to take Moooon Yoooonit over to Toyota to fix a squeaky brake noise (we had the brakes done a couple weeks ago). I am an early morning person but driving to the Toyota dealer at 7:00 AM is not my fave thing to do.

So we dropped off Mooon Yooonit and then Lizard came over and did a mini cocktail hour with us. I am so glad my beautiful daughters live close enough to us for this kind of thing to happen.

We finished the evening with Easter leftovers and an episode of Queen’s Gambit. We were between TV series’ as of yesterday and Queen’s Gambit caught in the corner of my eye so we decided to try it out. Some of it is difficult but I think we’re gonna go for it. Note that I don’t understand chess at all.

Actually I think it’s in a large wooded park on The Planet Ann Arbor.

This is my small tribute to Pope Francis. I turned on the kitchen radio this morning and the first thing I heard was something about “funeral plans”. They were done talking about the pope by that time but I somehow knew immediately that’s who it was.

I am not Catholic but I sometimes joke that large Catholic families are one of my lots in life (engineers being another). My grandfather and a Catholic buddy/co-worker of his bought adjacent beach properties on Lake Superior when they were young. Their children grew up together and then their grandchildren. I’m one of the grandchildren and our families have remained friends throughout our lives.

My best friend throughout grade school was Laurie, who went to the Catholic school a few blocks away from Stinkin’ Linkin’, my public school. We met up after school many days and every Saturday morning was spent in her bedroom, “cleaning” it. Y’all know that didn’t really happen and her mom would eventually boot us out to “terrorize” the neighborhood. An occasional activity being sliding around on the floor under the pews at St. Joe’s collecting holy cards for Laurie’s collection.

And then I married a Catholic guy, one of 10 wonderful siblings. They welcomed this old heathen with open arms.

So I am not Catholic but I’m kind of familiar with the drill of being a Catholic kid.

I liked Pope Francis. In my opinion, he was a person who did follow Jesus’s teachings. I’m pretty sure he didn’t agree with abortion or gay marriage or [pick an issue]. But he seemed to care about people who *had* abortions or married partners of their own sex, etc. Human beings are extremely complicated and sometimes have to make very difficult decisions. All people deserve to be treated with compassion and dignity. I think that was one of his main messages. I don’t have to be Catholic or even religious to agree with that.

God speed, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

This is a postcard my beach urchins gave me today. I am going to frame it.

If any of y’all don’t know what a trillium is, it is a spring ephemeral (that’s a wildflower) that grows in the Great Lake State and probably a bunch of other places too. It grows in the woods behind The Landfill. It is a protected species. The normally law-abiding Commander was so enamored of trillium that I once abetted her in a trillium heist. I drove the getaway car. She dug up a plant on a deserted forest road in the eastern yooperland, watching warily the whole time for cars coming along to bust her. She took the plant home and but it failed to thrive wherever she transplanted it.

Anyway. I’m sure there are billionaires out there who are worthy of running the United States government. Trump is not one of them. That is, if he is actually a billionaire. That seems to be a question. Actual billionaire or not? I am skeptical that his wealth was attained honestly. Yeah, I know a lot of it is generational wealth but not sure his father was on the up and up either.

At any rate, his little games are really really bad for our country. How are your grocery prices these days? How is your 401K doing? I’m not looking at mine. Fortunately it isn’t my only source of retirement income when that time comes but other investments are in the same damn boat. Why oh why oh why did you vote for him? Can you not tell who he is by the mean, ugly, idiotic things he says and does?

Take his “Easter message” on Truth Lies Social today. A torrent of hatred toward everyone he could think of. Are you Christian? Do you love Jesus Christ? Is any of this a part of Jesus’s teachings? I am not religious but I learned a lot about Jesus as a kid in Sunday School and nothing in Trump’s vile spew today had anything to do with Jesus’s teachings, which are to love all living beings, no matter who they are and what their status is. I’m having trouble applying those teachings to Trump. Those of you who think of him as your savior, what the f*ck are you thinking? We won’t even talk about Elon, who has no business anywhere near US government agencies and (arguably) no expertise in data analysis.

Sorry for the pessimistic rant but my anger at this man and his sycophants is almost indescribable. Love y’all and g’night. May your life be filled with trillium.

Back (ka-whomp) on The Planet Ann Arbor again.

It was a great week at Houghton Lake (HL) ending with gorgeous thunderstorms rolling through late last evening and into the night. It was warm enough we could open the doorwalls in the front room and the storms were persistent but not severe. No power outages. Those are awful at HL because we have well water and when the power goes out, so does the pump. Yer fav-o-rite blagger does not do well without her morning shower🤪

Because we had two automotive vee-hickles up there for the week (yes it’s wasteful but it was also necessary) we had to drive tandem going up and down. Technically that doesn’t mean we have to keep each other in sight the whole time but somehow it gets a little weird when we can’t see each other.

Problem. One of us has more testosterone than the other (guess who). I am not a slow driver and he is a careful driver. But. When we get separated, as we did a couple times today, it is because he is ahead of me (which I prefer overall) and calculates a risk (to run a yellow or pass a truck with tons of traffic coming up behind him in the left lane). I take a few nanoseconds longer to process those risk factors. Meaning I often get caught at a red light or don’t jump out into the passing lane in front of some super fast car or an interminable line of cars. The problem is, when that kind of thing happens, it takes me forever to catch up with him again without going 85 mph, which I CAN do but don’t LIKE to.

This kind of thing happened a few times today. The worst was probably the Zilwaukee Bridge. Or not. Because we didn’t go over the Zilwaukee Bridge today. Why? As we were approaching it there were about a bazillion orange cones and all kinds of “freeway closed” signs. So. Quick decisions in lots of jockeying traffic to get into the correct lane to take the loop west into and through Saginaw. The I75 SUV Speedway was calm in general but the loop through Saginaw was not.

At one point we were behind a semi truck that was not going slow but probably slower than the GG wanted to go. So he JUMPED over into the passing lane without warning. Fine. Except. There was a STEADY STREAM of traffic in the passing lane and I could not to save my life get over there to pass the truck. I did not have the balls to do that (TMI?)🤣

We’ve been tandem driving for a loooong time. In the old days, I’d’ve been totally pissed off. Today I just figgered I would eventually catch up to him. There was one more stress point and that was that I couldn’t exactly remember how the interchange BACK onto southbound I75 proper from the Saginaw loop worked and COULDN’T SEE THE SIGN BECAUSE TRUCK! I knew there was something funky about it and at the last possible nano-second, I glimpsed a sign that reminded me. Hanging a RIGHT would dump you onto NORTHBOUND I75 (to the Mackinac Bridge), where I didn’t want to go. Today. The right turn onto southbound I75 was a half mile or so LATER, which is where I DID want to go. I managed it all and the freeway opened up from two to four lanes and I didn’t even have to pass the truck because it meandered into some other lane all by itself and traffic was pretty light in general (probably because the goddamn bridge was closed so no one was entering the freeway from there). Eventually I caught up with the GG.

After dropping off some peeps and other Easter treats with FlaMan in Flint we managed to make it home without incident. A successful week of telecommuting from Houghton Lake and enjoying the off-season there.

I had three main missions for today (I took the day off). One was to obtain some ham in a not-too-overwhelming quantity. Two, get a pic of the old Ron’s restaurant before it collapses or burns. The third? Lunch at the Spikehorn.

I cook a ham once a year, on Easter (which we observe in a secular way). I try to buy the smallest piece of ham as possible. The best, most reliable way to do this is to get pre-sliced in whatever quantity you need at Honey Baked. But we aren’t anywhere near a Honey Baked ham store and won’t be until tomorrow afternoon and there is no way in hell I’m gonna drive cross-town the day of the spring football game. So I decided to try to get one at Houghton Lake although I figured that would mean a trip to Walmart or Family Fare. As luck would have it, Best Choice was also on our agenda and lo and behold, they had ham there. I bought a half, which is waaay too big for us, but I’ll cut *that* in half and freeze one of the halves.

That stroke of luck left us with a lot of time before lunch so we headed west and took a little self-curated oil well tour through the Dead Stream Swamp. As I have said before, the perimeter of Houghton Lake is chock-a-block with “cottages” but if you drive a mile or so away from the lake, dwellings are much sparser. And POORER! One of the things we agree on is we both like to take slow cruises on the back roads and today’s cruise did not disappoint. Also, the Great Lake State probably doesn’t come to mind as a big oil producer but there is a TON of oil here.

On to get a pic of Ron’s, lunch, then a little bit more touring in the area, then a quiet afternoon. I didn’t like the pics I took of Ron’s so I’ll have to go back another day. Lunch (for me) was whitefish “fingers”. Very good (fried though, this is bar food) and just the right amount of food for me.

Back to the Planet tomorrow. I’ll have to switch out my red hat and for my trusty old blue one🤪

I’ll try to organize a comparison of the Hoton Lake moldy old cabin that this beautiful new one replaced another day. For the moment, this is what I think I can talk about. I was sitting in my chosen work space for the week. My work day was done and we were done eating dinner and I was just kinda mindlessly staring out over the lake.

The pic to the left of the doorwall is the 10 cFam sibs when they were children. The decor was organized by my many sisters-in-law. The GG’s sisters and the GG’s brother’s wives. They did a fantastic job.

I was just dozing. There is a movie on and I think it is probably pretty good but the characters are speaking French and there are subtitles and I normally like those but I am kinda just taaared tonight.

Two looooong meetings today. Good ones but they have left me doing a lot of processing. In the middle of the day, I trekked over to Best Choice, a meat market and small grocery that we’ve been shopping at for many years to get something to eat tonight. They still have plastic up at the cashier counter from the f*cking covid days. I noted that my drive to Best Choice was eight miles. Down on The Planet Ann Arbor, eight miles would probably entail 10-20 traffic lights. Here? One stop sign. Period.

I’ve been going to this little store since I’ve been coming up to Hoton Lake. It’s a half mile down the road and for most of those years, mainly stocked a small assortment of grocks and sundries, beer and whine, donuts on the weekend, you get it. OH! And candy! Including penny candy. One of the first times I went there, we asked if they had olive oil and they had never heard of it! In all fairness, I was a heavy olive oil user by that time of my life but not too many years before I hadn’t heard of it either.

The store has had multiple owners over the years but has managed to hang on all this time. The latest change in ownership has come with a noticeable upgrade. Still a small inventory but carefully curated. No meat or produce, a small dairy case, LOTS of beer, whine, and pop. All kinds of non-perishables (I have bought garlic POWDER and Worchestershire there this week). A small selection of sundries (deoderant anyone?). And a LARGE selection of booze. They still have donuts, ice cream cones, and pizza.

I don’t know anything about keeping a store but I think they have a formula that works. Long Point, where the cFam cabin is, is a good-sized drive from any of the other grock stores in the area so if you went shopping and forgot a random item (like deoderant, duh, except I actually forgot to pack *that* from *home*), They are selling a lot of things (like Worchestershire) that you wouldn’t want to make a half-hour trip to get. And beer/booze? Another thing that could be a last minute thing. Not a lot of non-perishables so not a lot to throw out if they don’t sell quickly. I didn’t think to look for candy but probably there is a good selection. I don’t think anything costs a penny any more.

On one hand, Long Point, where the cFam cabin is, is kind of out in the boonies. Except that it isn’t really the boonies because the entire perimeter of Hoton Lake, including Long Point, is chock-a-block with “cottages”, many of them full-size, year-round houses these days, so there is often a lot of traffic everywhere. I’m thinking that back when the GG was a kid, a lot of moms may have been up here “alone” with their kids and sometimes without automotive vee-hickles so the corner store may have been a go-to grock store for some of them when they didn’t have a car at their disposal? That wouldn’t have been my mother-in-law. But I was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia then so I have no clue. I do know that there were plenty of moms in the Sault without their own cars back then and there were lots of small full-service neighborhood stores.

At any rate, I was impressed by the upgrade!

This was the view sometime in the mid to late morning. It was a very blustery day and I was glad to be in a modern house instead of the moldy old cFam cabin as much as I loved that old place.

I remember hanging around with the Gumper (my father-in-law) listening to him talk about various things. Lake levels and the Dam Man. Stories about serving as the master mechanic on the Hornet aircraft carrier in the south Pacific. He would tear up a wee bit talking about the pilots that got billeted with him that never came back. On a lighter note, there was this mathematical conversation in which I set him straight about something, mainly, that I wasn’t all that bad at math.

Gumper: KW, do you know what a parabola is?
KW: Why yes! I know all the conic sections.

That pretty much stopped him from asking me mathematical questions although he did sometimes ask me some nosy questions but that was what he was all about. He also once divulged some (sorta) NSFW information to me, which eventually earned me the title “The Family Liberal” from another out-law. That is all I will say about that except that I loved him and think he liked and trusted me. And make no mistake, it was not anything sordid at all.

So, a few years after the Gumper died, a quintet of his children bulldozed the moldy old place and rebuilt it. So I took this picture out the window from where I was working today. Large Catholic families are one of my lots in life and I am blessed to be a part of this one, non-Catholic that I am.

P.S. The GG found Coal Miner’s Daughter was on TV tonight, miraculously with no commercials. A great film and when I was young, random strangers would sometimes tell me I looked like “Carrie”, aka Sissy Spacek, who plays Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter. Just a fun fact.

Masquerading as John Bolton. Embiggen a couple times to see the mustache. He kissed me this afternoon when he returned (sweaty as all getout) from a day of chainsawing and his mustache was wet. Fortunately I has just seen him take a swig of bourbon. which is sanitary. I think. TMI? In more ways than one I’m guessing😵‍💫

Meanwhile, back at the ranch aka group home, yer fav-o-rite blahgger could not get her work VPN to work. It’s too long a story but it involved The Mother Ship turning OFF wi-fi on my laptop. She may have detected I was trying to connect from an unfamiliar location. I fixed that but my VPN still didn’t work. Eventually tech support got that resolved. I’ve been spending too much time with those folks lately, lovely as they are.

And I am streaming! Last evening it was just the two of us here and we needed a little quiet background noise. Just enough to distract us from the Ticking Of The Clock. We turned on the TV. Oh. My. God. That was a disaster. Shows we didn’t like. LOUD! Commercials every two minutes (it seemed but probably they weren’t that frequent). But they were even LOUDER than the shows. We very likely don’t know what channels/shows are available to us via this TV service but we weren’t really wanting to figure it out.

I was soooo missing the Sunday night folk and jazz on the Ypsilanti WEMU NPR radio station. The GG doesn’t like NPR as well as I do (but he does listen to it, make no mistake) but he was on the same page as me about the TV. Eventually I dragged my laptop (I mean my personal MacBook Pro) over and started streaming WEMU. We both enjoyed some interesting jazz QUIETLY. Today I flipped between WCMU (for weather updates here at Hoton Lake) and WUOM for the talk shows I listen to intermittently on the Planet Ann Arbor and now WEMU for some evening jazz.

The GG rummaged through the cabin looking for things we couldn’t find, like a radio and a bar of soap. He found a radio and one bar of soap. I’m glad he found a radio but streaming works even better for me. We both prefer using bar soap to shower. I know others are skeptical about how sanitary that is if you are sharing soap. I understand that and usually travel with my own personal bar of soap but forgot it this weekend. As well as deodorant… More TMI…

Anyway, it is great to be here for the week. Lamb stew is in the hopper for tonight.

Oh, come on, it’ll be fun. You can work up there while I’m out chainsawing. To be clear, he will be chainsawing downed trees, not people’s jobs. And I will be here in the rather luxurious Hoton Lake (HL) Groop Home communicating with The Planet Ann Arbor and India and Florida and I fergit where else.

The truth is, I haven’t spent much time at HL since before the pandemic. From the time I met the GG until then, I often came here. It is beautiful here. The picture doesn’t do it justice with the gray skies and water and brownish grass.

At the beginning of covid, I didn’t come here because (duh) I didn’t want to get covid. Who did? I had a hard time that first summer (2020) keeping the Twinz of Terror from rooming together in the Lyme Lounge or wherever. Youz guyz, the covid virus doesn’t care if you were womb-mates.

Time marched on and most people got vaxxed in 2021 and covid numbers went down a bit that summer (and then back up again with the Delta and Omicron variants). I braved an overnight stop here on our way to the yooperland. There were about a bazillion people here. The Uncly Uncle’s family (three kids, spouses, and grandkids) and maybe others I’m not remembering. They are all wonderful fun people and it was lovely and I kinda almost forgot about covid. And guess what? I didn’t get it. But although I had a good time that weekend, a year plus of full-time telecommuting had kicked my introverted ass into high gear and I was dead tired at the end of it. I needed a “freak-out chamber”, usually the Lyme Lounge, but it was at the moomincabin that weekend.

Another overnight a couple years later with one of our Colorado nieces and her kids (we had the Lyme Lounge that time) but other than that I’ve just made quick stops here and there.

So okay. The GG shamed convinced me to come up for the week. Because I cannot be without my own transportation for more than a day or so, we each drove a car. I mean, he’ll be out chainsawing, right? I dragged him away from PBJ for burgers at the North Shore Bar for lunch, then we did a slow drive on the old dirt roads near the “scenic trails”, which seem to be taken over by ORVs these days. Cygnus can do a bit of rough driving but not that rough.

Cheers to Hoton Lake and g’night! KW