Random bits of my so-called life.

Another photoooo from my mouse at her Pigeon River camping site. (Last night. She’s home now and works tomorrow.)

As I write this, the Michigan/Michigan State football game just kicked off and it is on TV. College football games have been on TV since the early afternoon. I am okay with that. As I have said many times, I don’t give a crap about football or other team games but I love the ambience of football in the fall.

I think the first football game I went to was with my dad and granddaddy. I was in sixth grade and my cousin Mac was a ninth grader and on the team so we went to watch him play. It was really exciting sitting up in the bleachers and I’m sure they bought me pop and popcorn or whatever. I don’t remember that and I don’t remember anything about the game but except my dad yelling out, “Come on Soo! Buckle down!” I was amazed. Just to say, my dad did NOT play football in high school (or any time). He was a cross-country runner. His older brother (Mac’s dad) played football.

The next year I was in junior high and began my marching career in the high school band (long boring story about why I was in the high school band). Fast forward a bit more. I was a high school senior and my brother was a freshman. My parents took a two-week bank trip to Hawaii and my brother and I stayed with Don and Katie (our aunt and uncle).

I had one of my parents’ cars and was responsible for driving my brother (and me) to school every day. It was fall so most mornings that meant marching band practice at the football field. One morning we got there and the bleachers et al had been vandalized with all kinds of paper crapola hanging everywhere. Alas, I knew who had done it. It was my boyfriend and his buddy “Foot”. Foot had organized it. My little brother was absolutely gobsmacked. I can still remember him laughing his head off and yelling, “Foot was here! Foot was here!” I don’t think Foot and my boyfriend got in any kind of trouble. My boyfriend was well known for being very responsible. He was a college accounting student at the time and had a good job. Foot went on to join the army and rose to a high rank, I know not what. Of course, it’s also possible that they didn’t get CAUGHT!

I loved staying with Don and Katie for those two weeks. Their four children were all born before I was and they gave me a lot more leeway than my parents did. My parents were wonderful but I was their first (after *11* years of trying) and were, I dunno, somewhat stricter than Don and Katie who seemed to trust me to drive around town and go out with my boyfriend until all hours of the night. And they were right to do that because I was definitely pretty responsible.

Yep. Forgot to hit Publish last night.

Not much to say today. Very quiet in general. Nothing going on at work, at least not that I had anything to do with. All dev stuff. My Replacement didn’t need anything or at least didn’t ping me about anything so maybe they were beating through it on their own. I love that My Replacement likes to do that. Also that they ask if they don’t understand some bit of idiomatic jargon. I have been there 18 years and I still do not understand all of the idiomatic jargon.

It is a strange autumn with not a whole lot of brilliant color, at least not on The Planet Ann Arbor. Mouse and the racc are up north. They stayed at the Hoton Lake Group Home for a couple nights, where they eventually found the teakettle. In a jointly owned cabin things get moved around. Not so much at the moomincabin because the owners are few and not there frequently and we close it for the winter. Well, except *I* was there for two months last summer but I keep things *mostly* in the same places The Commander did. Not that we don’t ever “lose” things but it’s a small place and we eventually find them. The Hoton Lake cabin/cottage is a modern house with modern utilities and stays open year round. A lot of people visit frequently throughout the year and stuff gets moved around.

Anyway, mouse and the racc hiked locally (Mason Tract) while they were staying at Hoton Lake and are now camping. Quite a bit more color at their camping site.

And that’s about the end of my boring bunch of blather for today. We porterized ourselves at Dexter’s Pub tonight and I won’t talk too much about the political stuff I didn’t really want to talk about but did. I could talk about many things but all I will say is that demolishing a whole wing of the White House does not in any way shape or form compare to converting a tennis court to a basketball court. Nope. I don’t think big demolition equipment was needed for that. Somebody stop him!

P.S. Trying out “My Replacement” instead of “new co-worker”. I hope he will *be* my replacement when I ride off into the sunset in the not too distant future. I have not pulled the plug yet so best wishes are not yet in order. I still have some work to do.

In the middle of a virtual maelstrom of messages this morning, work and family, email, facebook messages, work I/M, and text, I managed to text my work “team” that I would be AWOL in the middle of the day. Why? We took Little Cat Z (our daughter) out to lunch. Where? Casey’s Tavern. Why? It is her birthday. The message maelstrom was FUN! I am not complaining.

We’re at the point in our lives (all our lives) that we don’t do big birthday bashes with cake and candles and Japanese lanterns and a bazillion packages to open. We’re gonna do the usual FinFam steak dinner faaaar in the backyard kind of party on the weekend when mouse and the racc are home from camping. I asked the bday gal if she wanted to do dinner with us today. She is adjusting to EDT (and life) after a week in San Francisco and really wanted to have a quiet evening. Which was A-okay with me! But then. She rallied a bit and said, “How ’bout lunch?” Yes yes yes.

I like to post this pic on her birthday (and sometimes other days). We are walking out into Lake Superior. Little Cat Z is holding tight to ONE of the bikini clad woman’s fingers aka her mother aka MEEEEE. She seems to think that one finger keeps her safe and actually she is right for reasons I can’t articulate. The two women ahead of us are Radical Betty and The Commander, good friends since they met in college and how my mom and dad met but that’d be a story for another day. The bikini woman hasn’t worn a bikini or tanned herself into that dark color for many years.

But happy birthday to Little Cat Z. How the heck did we raise her into the beautiful, capable woman she is? To quote my dad responding to compliments (not necessarily deserved) from co-workers at my childhood EPA job, “We didn’t raise her. She raised herself.” Indeed.

What a stupid mistake. I corrected yesterday’s entry but I neeeeed to call attention to it. We owned that jeep for *17* years, not 7. There is only one vee-hickle that we ever got rid of at seven years and that was our 1985 VW Jetta. It was a really nice car for a while but in the end it began $50 and $100 dollaring us to death, as my auto engineer brother once said about HIS VW Scirocco.

Of course he replaced vee-hickles left and right. He was on the General Motors (GM) discount. I guess apparently *I* could actually use his GM discount but I went sour on American-made cars a pretty long time ago Long complicated story but when I switched to Japanese cars it was on my GM engineer brother’s advice. It was a good switch.

My brother was always trading cars in for new ones. One time I was at the moomincabin and I was checking email. It was back in the days of dial-up internet and my messages were taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r to load. When they did, a message with the subject “Twuk” popped up from my brother, with a picture of a white pickup truck that he had just bought. I showed it to The Commander and she kind of gasped! He bought that? Yes, moom. This wasn’t a replacement vee-hickle, he had added it to the fleet. He bought it because it was languishing on some dealer’s lot and he felt sorry for it.

Alas, he didn’t get to enjoy Twuk for very long because he died less than a year later. As my sister-in-law and I were walking to our cars after that event, she turned to me and asked, “Wanna buy a Twuk?” Well, sorry, but no thanks. That was in the years when we had three or four cars if you counted the kids’ cars, NO GARAGE, and not a terribly long driveway. And I didn’t really want a pickup truck, not even a relatively small one, if I remember Twuk accurately. To tell the truth, I felt a bit sorry for Twuk too but our fleet just couldn’t absorb him.

We usually drive our cars for over 10 years. I would be happy to drive them until they fell apart (like the jeep more or less did at 17 years) but I don’t like the idea of them falling apart when I am traveling solo on a long freeway trip. We sold my beloved Ninja when she was 13. She was still beautiful (we’d had her re-painted a few years earlier) and ran like a top but I figured that sooner or later her time of reliability would be over. We sold her in ONE HOUR! The GG listed her on Craigs list and within seconds after she was posted, somebody called. He came over with his son (the intended driver). They test drove her and off she went. We picked up Cygnus the next day.

That’s yer fav-o-rite witch blahgger in the pic. Her broom is on the left and there is a hedgehog on the right. Which isn’t really a Halloween aminal but yesterday morning I turned on the porch light and there was a ‘possum on the porch! I could not get a pic but this kinda looks like the possum.

We bought this loverly vee-hickle in 2002 1992? I think? We bought it from a dealer in megalopolis (greater Detroit Metro off Telegraph Road) and it seemed to take an age to complete the transaction. I drove the the child with the ear infection home in the Exxon Tanker Valdez (our first of two Chrysler minivans). Little Cat Z rode in the new as yet to be named jeep with the GG.

I quickly learned to love the jeep — a basic Wrangler with five speeds and NO air-conditioning. We had some hot and windy rides in that car, kinda like when I was a kid and we didn’t own a car with A/C until dad bought the “banker green” Buick around the time he became bank president. My brother and I used to joke about that car. We were so young then. No partners yet and no kids. And he has been dead for more years than I am strong enough to count.

The GG had been hankering for a bare bones Jeep Wrangler for a while and I finally gave in. I took to it immediately and the first time I picked up mouse at nursery school in it, Teacher Annie was doing curb duty and she marveled at my new vee-hickle. I told her it wasn’t a car, it was a mid-life crisis. We were in our 30s then.

The GG’s brother Don (long dead, alas) decided we needed to name the jeep “The Indefatigable”. I was skeptical but that name stuck and wouldn’t you know, we drove the damn thing for 17 years. It taught our kids to drive on the two-track forest roads of the yooperland as well as many of their cousins and some friends. And they learned how to drive “stick” no less.

I can certainly drive “stick” although I don’t own a car with a manual transmission any more. I wonder if I will transition into the EV age. We’ll see. I’m an old dog but I can learn new tricks.

I had a vague inkling that a comet was passing by our solar system but I didn’t really have the details so I was surprised when the GG asked if I wanted to go out and try to catch a look out on Joy Road. Well. I know from my experience with Halley’s Comet that it can be difficult to see comets without a telescope. And it wasn’t dark yet and I had leftovers in the ohh-ven, etc. So I scooted him off with the promise of dinner and a freezer ‘hattan when he returned.

Okay, so we did see Halley’s Comet back in 1986. We took a trip to Florida that March. We drove our 1985 VW Jetta (5-speed manual) and we had us, Little Cat Z (18 months old), and The Beautiful Susie (one of the GG’s little sisters) with us. Susie LOVED Little Cat Z (and all of her many nieces and nephews) and she and LCZ totally bonded on that trip. Suzie taught her how to say alligator (“erderator” was LCZ’s rendition). Susie was a special friend of mine too and I miss her.

When we left The Planet Ann Arbor for that trip, our Jetta was topped by a hard crust of ice/snow. I don’t think it melted until we got past O-haaa-o. After our first night in a motel, Little Cat Z freaked out when we were packing the car the next morning and made extra sure she was outside the room and next to the car. I DO NOT WANT TO BE LEFT HERE ALONE was the vibe. I held her and looked into her eyes and explained that we would NEVER leave her in a motel and I don’t think we ever had that issue again. Small children are a lot smarter than everyone thinks they are.

So we were in the GG’s parents’ Florida condo and we had a great time. Because of Halley’s Comet, the GG spent many early mornings (like 5:00 AM) driving a half hour into the interior of Florida with his telescope to observe Halley’s Comet. He would arrive back in Bradenton just about when LCZ was waking up, which was still way early and we would take her out somewhere for scrambled eggs and friends.

The pics are from Coquina Beach. In the first pic, LCZ is pointing at a seagull. In the second you can see the seagull.

So for a while now, every time I drive, my left peripheral vision occasionally tells me there is a Bichon Frise (or other little white dog) on a collision course with Cygnus. When I turn my head enough to actually LOOK at the “dog”, it is obviously a little dollop of dried bird poop on the driver’s side window. This afternoon we were driving around pulling Halloween pranks and I noticed that the “dog” has mostly disintegrated, probably from the heavy rain we had overnight. It was a warm night and we slept in the Lyme Lounge so we could hear the rain on the roof. And yes, I could’ve cleaned the bird shit off but I kept forgetting to💩

The first thing I managed to do this morning was to knock a full glass of water (a BIG one) off my couch table. Bad things about this? It was stoopid and it happened just at the GG came into the house from the Lyme Lounge so he witnessed my clumsiness. Good things about this? 1) It was just water. 2) There was no open laptop on the table at the time (or any laptop). 3) It was a plastic glass so nothing broke. But still, off to a good start KW.

Two grock trips today. The GG to Kroger (where I don’t really shop any more) and meeeee to Plum where I do shop (a lot) and I knew my mouse would be there. Then, after Halloween pranks, an afternoon of food prep and reading (me) and feetsball and blowgunning (the GG).

The pic features Dr. Frankenstein power-carving a pumpkin in preparation for our Halloween pranks.

Finally. It was mid-morning when I first heard of the Trump shit-bomb AI generated video. I actually googled a BIT but couldn’t find a source I felt I could trust. A facebook friend that I DO trust shared it so I eventually saw it. I dunno. People keep asking me various versions of why don’t I support him or what is he doing that is “bad” (for lack of a better word). Um. First. Lemme count the ways. Insurrection instigation. Chainsawing federal employees who are dedicated to their jobs without having a CLUE to what they DO. All of his immigration “policies”, too many to enumerate. But really. Dumping shit (AI generated or not) from from a fighter jet (or whatever it was) on peaceful protesters? Who created this? Some junior high kid? Or the president of the United States? It isn’t funny and I don’t know why y’all voted for him.

Hahaha. I started out with shit (bird) and I ended with shit (Trump).

I didn’t attend a protest today. Oh, it isn’t because I don’t agree with the No Kings movement. Not at all. If you know me in real life or ever read this boring blahg of blather, you know what a low opinion I have of Trump and his Sycophants of Stupidity.

I finished a memoir today by Beth Macy (Paper Girl), who grew up poor in rural Ohio (not far from JD Vance’s hometown). She clawed her way into COLLEGE and out of poverty and became a journalist. When her mom and other relatives needed help in later life (no college and still mostly poor), she began to travel back and forth to help them and ended up writing a book about the whole “project” (her word). The “project” meaning what had happened to her home town in the years she had left and how poverty (and drugs and lack of educational support and lots of other stuff) had changed her childhood community. It’s a complicated story. She is 10 years younger than I am but her eldest sibling contracted polio before the vaccine was available and has lifelong disabilities because of it. That means her sister is around my age. Yikes.

I did not get polio although I knew kids my age who survived it with disabilities. My parents (RIP) and I thank whatever gods there are who believed in scientific research enough to create a polio vaccine. And I thank those same gods that my parents believed in vaccines.

I didn’t go to a protest today. I am not really a protester. I didn’t have a sign. I loved the photos posted by my friends here on the Planet Ann Arbor and those in Sault Ste. Siberia. I live in a BLUE bubble but Sault Ste. Siberia (where our cabin is) is a RED area but there are definitely anti-fascists there. Some of the folks who protested I wasn’t surprised about. Others I was. Happily. A lot of us live in divided families. It’s hard.

I did not wear a witch’s hat but I was in simpatico with all the gals who joined the Dexter Witches Night Out festivities. By the time I walked out of the pub and took this pic, the festivities were basically over (although some of them may have continued at the pub) and taaaared but happy looking women were walking along the sidewalk with witch hats in their hands and toting bags of clothing or props or whatever.

We porterized ourselves at Dexter’s Pub tonight. We haven’t been there much since last spring and I laughed when our waitress recognized the Porters immediately. It had taken a split second for her to recognize the GG and me. Having spent my childhood as the child of a prominent small-town family and a wannabe wild child, I like to be a bit incognito in general so this made me happy

“Remember who you are and act accordingly” was what Moi Mama would often tell me. And just about had a hissy when I wanted to wear jeans to stay at the “fancy” Book Cadillac Hotel in DayTwa. There was some kind of bank meeting that I have very few memories about. I probably wasn’t even at the bank meeting. Mom probably took me and my brother shopping at the downtown Hudson department store where she had worked her first job out of college. My branch of the prominent family was not rich in any way shape or form but I always managed to come out of Hudson’s with a couple of new and stylish outfits. (Thank you mom.)

I appreciate modern hotel room amenities nowadays but that hotel room was NOT memorable. I would’ve rather have stayed with my Detroit grandparents in their quirky art deco house on Mark Twain. Breakfast nook? A basement display of artifacts and pictures from their wedding trip “around the world” that I never tired of? Yes. My grandparents were married a year or so before I was born. My bio grandma Emily died in a car crash when mom was 15. Bolette did not have any children of her own but was a wonderful grandma to me.

Back to the 21st century, what we were a bit unprepared for was how crowded Dexter was tonight. I had an inkling that a warm fall evening and uMich football game tomorrow might bring a lot of people out EVERYWHERE but I had no clue about the witch event. But we know enough to reserve a booth at the pub and it all worked out.

Cackle cackle cackle and g’night🧙‍♀️

A chicken coop (at the mouse/racc house) that doesn’t get used. It isn’t my business why but probably lots of reasons. Bird flu being one (a couple years ago) but also just general maintenance issues.

My mouse lives outside the Planet Ann Arbor city limits so she can have as many chickens as she wants, including roosters. For a while, we had a neighbor who had chickens and there was a rooster. I loved hearing him cock-a-doodle-doo early in the morning but others did not and someone (Luke of Perry Net) turned him in. Make no mistake. I love Luke. He is a new granddaddy and is gleefully scouting all over the place for toys for his grandson. A great guy but I do miss the rooster.

The GG spent umpteen bazillion hours today trying to get our webcams working, here and at Hoton Lake. For complicated reasons I was involved in the whole thing even though I didn’t wanna be, especially since I was involved in stuff at work today that made big whooshing sounds over my head, They always say BAs (business analysts) are not supposed to be involved in “technical stuff” but somehow we are still asked to deal with that stuff.

The GG had another zoom meeting with North Country Trail folks tonight, this one with an Ohio chapter. I don’t know those folks as well as our home chapter, the Hiawatha Shore to Shore up in my homeland, I don’t join these meetings but I love listening to them from the kitchen. The cultural differences are fascinating. The person who was running tonight’s meeting had a “midwest twang” that another person couldn’t understand. I could understand it but then I talk to “Indiuh” every day, So. Everyone is passionate about the North Country Trail and that’s the important thing.

Tonight the GG is zoom meeting with North Country Trail folks.

The first time he did a zoom call was in March 2020. You know when that was. I had just become a permanent telecommuter. I still am. My company has recently instituted RTO (return to office) policies but it doesn’t affect meeeee. There isn’t an office within 45 miles of me (any more) and in any case, I would just retaaaar if they really tried to make me drive in to an office. At the time I hired into this job, I didn’t think I would ever have a job again, And then I ended up with this one. 18 years. Jeebus.

So the first North Country Trail hike we took was in the yooperland when the beach urchins were teenagers. They stayed back at the moomincabin with their grandparents. We hiked from M28 to Naomikong. It was a long walk and we got lost a couple times because at that time the trail was not terribly well marked.

A few years after that, the GG went to meet up with a bunch of folks that were trying to start up a sorta formal North Country Trail chapter. If I get it right, none of them knew each other and nobody knew exactly what they needed to do. Fast forward a bunch of years and the Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore portion of the trail is very well maintained. No way to get lost any more and there are all kinds of folks who maintain the trails and a few certified chain sawyers who take care of downed trees. The GG is one of the certified sawyers.

I was asked today if there was anything positive I could say about Trump. (‘scuse me while I blow the dead MOE-skee-TOE off my laptop screen.)

Um, nope. I think the same thing about him as I did when he ran for president the first time and when he was a “reality TV star” [snort]. Anything Trump does, he does for HIMSELF. He does not care about anyone else, including (I think) many members of his own family. When he says he’s gonna do things like end wars “on the first day” or whatever, he’s lying. He did not do that and could not have done that. We’ll see how long the Gaza ceasefire lasts. And whatever it was he said, late in his campaign, about how wonderful he was gonna be for women? That so pissed me off. He is not wonderful for women, from the reversal of Roe v. Wade to all of the chainsaw cuts he has made to lifelines for poor single mothers to obtain food and health care for their families. This doesn’t apply only to women BTW. It applies to all people who are struggling to raise families without decent jobs or other forms of support and often mental health issues, etc. And don’t forget, many people do not have any bootstraps to pull themselves up with.

I kinda hate memes but one of the memes that resonated with me today is the one that says something like “There are two types of Trump supporters: billionaires and idiots. Check your bank balance to figure out which one you are.” My bank balance is fine but I ain’t no billionaire by a long shot. Why are all of us little people, i.e., not billionaires, voting for him. Well. Not me. I cannot stand him, I don’t think he gives a flyin’ f*ck about me and the middle class that I belong to, and I didn’t vote for him in any of the last three elections. Flim flam man. That is all. Well, except insurrectionist. And yes he WAS an insurrectionist.

Sorry about the rant. Some days are easier than others.

I was hanging out slapping MOE-skee-TOES in the Landfill back yard after work this afternoon thinking something like, “dum de dum de dum, whatami gonna blahg about today?”

So Bob next door was making noise in his back yard. Not annoying noise, sounded like he was trying to muster a prodject. After a bit he air-knock-knocked at us in our back yard and asked the GG if he was up to helping hoist a patio table up over his fence. He had recruited a couple other neighborhood guys and one of them was extra friendly.

After a few fleeting comments from us and him about the yooperland and where the FinFam beach is he said (I think) that he had grown up in Sault Ste. Marie. And then he told me who his grandparents were. Ozzie and June. My jaw dropped just about to the floor.

I GREW UP LITERALLY NEXT DOOR TO OZZIE AND JUNE! Ozzie owned a garden/feed shop downtown and drove a truck with Green Thumb MacInnes painted on the side. Every year he grew a patch of corn in his back yard. The Commander always tried to do that too but it never came to much of anything and she would kvetch about how meager her corn patch was compared to Ozzie’s.

It turns out Ozzie and June’s grandson lives around the corner from us, in a house once owned by one of my best Haisley School PTO friends but that’s a story for some other day.

His aunt Bobby (Barbara) has been in my thoughts lately. She was something like six years older than me and I so looked up to her. We liked when she baby-sat us but she wasn’t our most frequent baby-sitter. I’m not sure she liked baby-sitting all that much and I am gonna guess me and my brother were known as brats. But she is still alive and doing well and I am happy about that.

Small world, eh?

This trip was kind of a rocket trip to the yooperland. He came home a bit earlier than he had planned. Of all things, he decided he wanted to hang out with meeee rather than other relatives. I dunno why. I think his siblings et al are much more fun than I am and most of them also agree with him about pollyticks.

I also wonder if he decided to come home because I texted that the refrigerator was fixed and beef stroganoff was in the hopper.

I can always tell when he is at the end of the block because I can hear the Lyme Lounge squeaking.

Back when the beach urchins were tween and teenagers, we never expected their friends to knock on the door or ring the doorbell when they arrived. Nope. If you knew us you came in the door and either squeaked or grokked. Our doors were unlocked throughout the night for the most part. I miss those days…

Okay, I kinda fell off the world when I tried to switch (or not exactly) from Goodreads to StoryGraph last spring or whenever it was. I was successful at transferring all of my Goodreads stuff to StoryGraph. What I struggled with (and I knew I would) was keeping two book apps up to date. So I haven’t been updating what I’ve been reading in either app. My bad.

Also, I have been doing audio books since the beginning of the summer. I dunno why. I never glommed onto them before. They’re working for me now. I dunno if this situation is temporary or not.

The Glassmaker is one book that has left me with a book hangover. There is an interesting structure to this novel, which it set in Venice and begins in the 1400s and ends in the COVID era. That is all I will say.

Another that I read was Buckeye. It’s set in Ohio. A lot of the North Country Trail goes through Ohio, plus there is the Buckeye Trail, which often intersects and/or joins the North Country Trail and the GG has hiked a lot of it. I just finished this one this afternoon but I think I’m going to have a book hangover from this one too. A lot of people like to disparage Ohio. If you are snowbirding south to Crazy Old Florida on the I75 Snowbird Geezerway, it can be a drag but Ohio has a rich history and a varied terrain. And Lake Erie is its northern border. Buckeye was a good book although I was appalled at some of the choices the characters made along the way. No one hiked the North Country or Buckeye trails.

That’s the Lyme Lounge and Mooon Yooonit parked at the Tahquamenon Falls lower falls campround.

What are you doing/looking for? I must’ve asked this question umpteen bazillion times this week. The GG was getting ready to rumble and, as usual, where is it? 10% of his stuff is always missing and it’s always a different 10%. That’s a quote from his dad but it applies to the GG too.

This refrigerated bag was missing. He was wondering where the heck it was. I couldn’t remember *what* he was talking about. Oh yeah, I ordered candy from BonBonBon for him last Valentine’s Day. I never heard how he liked the candy. I didn’t expect the bag and I wondered if it was a wee bit “girly” for him but nope. (He uses one of my mom’s old purses too.) He couldn’t find the bag yesterday and was gyrating all over the house looking for it. Obviously he eventually found it.

At the end of yesterday, after a whole week of in and out and around and about, he was fussing with TAXES! Oh, the rules have changed (like they do every year). Okay. That’s what we have an accountant for, roight? Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s great to understand these things even if you hire an accountant to actually file the taxes. Just. Oh. My. God. The kind of frenetic energy involved in tax stuff drives me nuts.

On another kind of topic, of course I can retire any old time I want to. I am feeling better about the whole idea knowing that when I do decide to, I will be leaving a big part of my bailiwick to someone who seems to be able to learn the part of my job that involves html, css, and some fugly, gnarly old javascript. “I’ve always wanted to learn to code,” he said today. The opportunity had never arisen. Man, this “kid” is a fast learner. He isn’t even intimidated by the javascript. I have to keep hanging back from hand-holding. That is a good thing.

I stepped in it a bit this morning during the daily standup. A colleague based in Florida is an expert kayak fisherman who reported that sometimes the bigger fish down there can pull a fisherman in a small bote along a bit. That reminded me of Nantucket Sleighride. It is a song by Mountain from 1971 when I was still in high school. It’s kinda long and I won’t be insulted if you bag out.

I always loved the song (and Mountain) but it wasn’t until a couple years ago that I actually looked up what a Nantucket sleigh ride was. Which is when you are on an old-fashioned whaler and you snag a whale and it takes you for a ride.

I work with a whole bunch of people from all over the USA and world. I don’t know where all of them live and they don’t always know where I live. When my fisherman friend told about being towed for a bit in his kayak, I un-muted and interjected “Nantucket sleigh ride, when you are being towed by a whale.”

A new person (to our team but not to the company) immediately said, “Oh you are from the east coast?” Nope. I am from Lake Superior. No whales in Gitchee Gumee. I said that the reference was from an old Mountain song. I’m not sure anyone actually got the Mountain reference but this person lives in Massachusetts albeit not near the shore. I was dating myself but I didn’t care. At this point we moved on into the actual meeting.

Way back in the day one of my nieces was giggling about my mom leaving her purse in the Mission Hill cemetery during a family excursion there. An excursion that my nuclear family was not part of. Oh, not that we weren’t welcome to join it, just that we weren’t in the yooperland at that time.

The photo is of the Spectacle Lake overlook. I have been there many times since I was a child. The graveyard is behind me. Native Americans are buried there as well as immigrants like most of us USA citizens are. (Take a note, Trump.)

Once when we were all young and childless, me and the GG and my brother and his wife took an evening drive up onto the Spectacle Lake overlook. We were joined by several young Native American men. One of those guys kinda glommed on to my brother in an ominous way. I was nervous about that. The rest of them were more interested in the WWII telescope kinda thing the GG had set up and were having fun talking to him. We made it out of there with no altercation. The place is usually flooded with tourists and I think that is the only time I’ve ever been nervous about being there.

Grandma (before she was Grandma) and I once ended up on the Spectacle Lake overlook on a garbage run. The dump was (and still is) on Plantation Road but mom and I were talking a blue streak (I was about 22) and she missed the turn. I knew she had missed it but I didn’t say anything and the next thing I knew, there we were up on the overlook. Of course we didn’t dump our garbage there.

Grandma’s purse was found right away but that began a mini-career of me sweeping behind people and watching for their purses. Henry Ford Hoosegow (downtown Detroit) bathroom anyone? My mom’s purse. I keep everything important zipped into my right-hand polar fleece vest pocket. That’s my purse.

At least not today*. You get a random mishmash instead.

Um, how ’bout the Greek omelet the GG brought home for me from the Coney Island near the Toyota dealer where he had Mooon Yooonit in for scheduled maintenance early this morning. As is usual I ate half of it (came with hash browns – yay!) and saved the rest for tomorrow.

Our unseasonably warm weather finally took a dive today although it was still very warm this morning. Rain moved in and now at the end of the day, it is something like 54, a more seasonable temperature for our area.

Among the many tasks my own personal “task rabbit” undertook today was replacing the screen in the outer front door with the glass door. As much as I hate this, if he hadn’t done it on his own, I would’ve asked. It’s gonna get warm again but the temperatures are on a general downward trend and I don’t like the big wooden front door shut during the day because I love whatever outdoor light I can get.

*Zip-tying ANYONE is an atrocity. Children? Jesus, save the children at least. One of the other atrocities is the hint that furloughed federal employees won’t get back pay and the gleeful (via my lens on this issue) way it is being presented.The GG and I have been there done that. Thankfully, the GG did get back pay and so should the folks who are furloughed by the Trumpian Idiocracy. I’ll go there again someday when I am calmer.

A quote from an Indian woman (“East Indian”, not “wild Indian”*). I picked up the GG, this woman, and another EPA person from Metro one night. Had they been in DC? Probably.

It was long enough ago that the beach urchins and I went inside the airport to the arrival area. On the way to the airport, I saw through the rear view mirror that Mouse had totally fallen asleep in the middle seat of the Exxon Tanker Valdez (1987 minivan) and was sorta flat out with her head hanging off the seat into midair. No shoulder belts in that seat in those days and child seats weren’t required for kids her age. Three, I think.

I took a deep breath. I said, as calmly as I could, “Lizard Breath? Could you take your seat belt off for just a moment, pull your sister up into an upright position, and put the armrest up so she can rest on it?” Little Cat Z, all of 4-5 years old, was ON IT.

The other issue we encountered on that trip to Metro was that going through security, Speedy Water Janet Pop Mousey Mushroom Ears had to go through the scanner. I fabricated an explanation that calmed my mouse down about that.

The passengers were successfully picked up and we made it safely back to Ann Arbor and it was when we dropped the Indian woman off that somebody asked what was going on in the ditch outside her house. I laughed (silently) when she said the quote in the blahg title. Because I live with a guy like that too. (I bet the GG doesn’t even remember this.)

*”East Indian, not wild Indian” was how a once 5-year-old neighbor described her family. The mom is American (but not Native) and the dad is from the Indian subcontinent. They had six kids, the then 5-year-old was the youngest, in kindergarten with Lizard Breath. Dad was a truck stop preacher but I believe they now own and run a church across N. Maple from us. It used to be a Black church…

They are a good family and friendly. The mom once accompanied her daughter on one of our girl scout trips. We (30s and a few 40s moms) were a little freaked out. Like, will she care about the wine? It’s kinda verboten but I’m sure the girl scout organization knows it gets smuggled in. As we were packing up, she reminded us with a giggle that someone had left a bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge. Oh, ya don’t say?