Random bits of my so-called life.

Fixed it! Weird quote character issue…

Or not. I put a few unidentified (to me) things from the freezer into the garbage today. They have been in the freezer since xmas and they are NOT things we (I) will ever eat.

I also put the ONE remaining slice of home-made pizza in there. It was from last Wednesday. That’s more than a week. The pizza was what started the garbage sorting. GG: Where is the leftover pizza? KW: I threw the last remaining piece out. It’s been over a week and I have rules about this stuff. It’s why you don’t ever get food poisoning😵‍💫

The GG identified one of the things in the garbage as the xmas duck carcass. A beach urchin had expressed interest in it so I threw it in the freezer. Welp. That was three months ago and I am done done done, da dun dun dun. If she hasn’t collected it by now, it is no longer on her radar screen and I want to remove it from MY radar screen. So thanks for making me (minorly) stressed out about it…

He comes by this honestly. When we would go to the Moldy Old Cabin at Hoton Lake, The Gumper (his dad) would often take passes through the various garbage containers to see what someone might be recklessly throwing out. Once it was jalapeno cream cheese with MOLD in it. After I threw it out, we took a trip around the lake to buy food and hardware and when we got back, the cream cheese was NOT in the garbage and the Gumper was crowing about making a bagel “with that ‘japaleno’ cream cheese”. He was having great fun at my expense. He KNEW “japaleno” was not the right word and I don’t think he actually ate the moldy cream cheese. More likely he spread his bagel with peanut butter, which I can’t really even fathom. Seems like a bagel with peanut butter would glue your mouth shut.

Anyway, it was funny when The Gumper did stuff like that but I was hoping that trait wouldn’t pass to the next generation. After The Gumper died, his kids took a few years to regroup and then we tore down the Moldy Old and replaced it with a modern dwelling. It is gorgeous but some of us still miss the Moldy Old.

P.S. I can’t really complain too much because yesterday he dragged a whole bunch of scrap metal off to wherever they take scrap metal. How do we end up with all this scrap?

The pic is the last mess I cleaned up in the Fugly Old Landfill Chitchen, the evening before they came to demolish it. It isn’t “garbage”. It is compost and somehow I managed to flip the container off the counter. And yes I cleaned it up and dumped it in the bin in the back of the back yard.

This is not today. This is March 2014, our Polar Vortex Winter. The one where Canada got drunk and fell asleep down here on top of the United Snakes. I did not come up with that thing about Canananada but I wish I had. And that is not a dig at Canadians at all (one set of my grandparents were born there and they were teetotalers). It’s just a weather “funny”.

I had shoveled twice that day. Or possibly my first shovel had happened a day or so before. Whenever it was, it happened at 0-skunk-30 when it was still pitch black. I dunno how many inches fell in that snowfall but I got the walks and the driveway done in the first shovel. I think the GG was still gainfully employed at that time? So I got it done before he had to leave for work. Whatever day this was, when I got home from my work at Cubelandia in the afternoon, the plows had (finally) been by, and there was the usual big berm of cement-like snow at the end of the driveway. I was driving the Frog Hopper and I didn’t think even that vee-hickle (Subie Outback) could get through that berm. So I shoveled it out and parked the Frog Hopper and the GG had no problem parking the Ninja.

A couple years after that, the GG asked for a big yooper style snowblower for xmas or whatever and I bought it for him. And nowadays he does most of the snow clearing. Of course *this* year, 10 years after the Polar Vortex, I can’t remember if the snowblower has been used even once. We have had so little snow. The authorities are threatening us with significant snow on Friday? Maybe? Less than six inches if I have it right. It will snarl the morning commute (if it happens) but it will melt fast since Monday’s forecast is in the 40s and rain. In mid-late March, I don’t usually bother shoveling.

Old Man Winter probably has a few more snowballs to throw at us this year but our street will not look like this.

It is 10 years ago this week that we began the Landfill chitchen reno. We did NOT do it ourselves despite the fact that the GG is a big time DIY-er. This is often handy but it can also be pretty annoying.

We hired Certified Kitchen Lady and her outfit and we were NOT disappointed. It wasn’t exactly cheap but I didn’t care and it didn’t break the bank. They started on time, maybe even a day or two early? That was okay. We were more than ready. And they finished a couple days early. And it was/is gorgeous! At least I think it is.

A problem? This person wrote her name ON THE WALL as a toddler. I took photos of it the night before the demolition. I didn’t expect we would be able to actually SAVE IT. This kiddo figured out how to write her name when she was about two-and-a-half. She started on paper and I wish I had a video that showed how she would write the first letter, turn the paper completely upside down, and then write the rest of her name. I think by the time she wrote this one, she had figured out how not to turn the paper upside down because you certainly can’t do that when you are writing on a WALL.

The GG was a wee bit nervous to get started on this prodject, being a DIY-er. (Yes you were nervous.) And then he met Jerry, the lead carpenter. We showed the wall writing to Jerry. His unexpected response was, “I can get that off of there for you!” And he did. And that little piece of drywall is now framed. The GG’s response to that was, “Jerry is a GENIUS!” Indeed.

I finished the sixth and last season of The Crown last night. As I have said before, I really enjoyed this series even though I am not a particular fan of the British royalty. I wasn’t totally crazy about the last scene but I sorta get what they were trying to do.

So. What do I watch next… I mean what does KW watch all by her lonesome… The GG and I are watching yet another rendition of Fargo together. This kind of stuff works for us to watch together. As I’ve said before, he may have liked some of the early Crown episodes but I doubt he’d have tolerated much past maybe the second season.

A visiting beach urchin suggested All Creatures Great and Small for KW alone. I have read the books (some of them) but I was a bit skeptical. I was on a ski trip to Steamboat Springs in my youth. There were eight of us in my uncle’s big van (license plate BGY747). I was with two sets of aunts and uncles, two cousins, and the wife of one of them. The other cousin was the Mean Old Grunchy Old Grinchie. We were both young (22 and 25) and single and we whooped it up pretty darn good with the locals and other tourists once we got to Steamboat Springs. People were buying us beers and I think that’s the first time I heard the song “Up Against the Wall You Redneck Mothers”. A big part of the fun was that other people didn’t always know the Grinch and I were related. So they thought we were a couple. Nope. We’re cousins. And not kissin’ cousins. Although we did love each other and still do, I don’t think we always clarified all of that on that trip. It was fun to toy with people. BTW: I could HANDLE skiing there but The Grinch was a MUCH BETTER skier than I was! Memories from some of the misspent parts of my youth.

It’s a long drive from Michigan to Colorado and I ran out of things to read on the way. One of my aunts offered All Creatures Great and Small and I enjoyed it and read a sequel or two. Still, yesterday I wasn’t sure the TV series would be the right fit for meeee. But I finished the Crown and I still needed a bit more chill-out time so I started on All Creatures. I think it’s a gonna be a keeper for me.

I don’t binge watch TV series-es(???plural of this???). I mean I don’t spend weekends watching episodes one after another after another. With KW-alone stuff, I usually watch one a night, occasionally I will watch a second. If I don’t fall asleep. If I am watching something with the GG, we watch it in the Cozy Room on The Mothership (his big iMac) while eating dinner. So yeah, we’re eating while Fargo is throwing people into wood chippers and whatever…

That’s enough for now, right? The pic is from Mouse. It’s a vernal pond and the colors are from various minerals in the water.

Actually St. Urho’s Day was yesterday. I do not celebrate St. Urho’s Day. That’s a Finnish holiday. I don’t really celebrate St. Patrick’s Day either except that sometimes I have to dredge Froooogy outta the londry baskit the next morning and try to dry him out. But that’s not really celebrating.

I am [allegedly] Irish. I am not [that I know of] Finnish but it’s entirely possible that I have some kind of Scandahoovian blood in me from back in the days when the British Isles were mixing it up with the Baltic Peninsula, way before reliable records were kept, not that record-keeping has necessarily been reliable since then.

The thing is I never knew anything about St. Urho’s Day until facebook came along. Friends of mine who ARE Finnish celebrate St. Urho’s Day on March 16. Which is A-OK! What got to me is that other folks started wishing meeee happy St. Urho’s Day. Um, nope. I am not Finnish. Yes I have blonde hair and blue eyes and my last name begins with “Fin”. So what?

The GG and a beach urchin are downtown watching a show at The Ark tonight. There was much discussion about whether/where to eat. We all figured that on St. Pat’s day the downtown restaurants (especially Conor O’Neill’s) would be slammed with Irishmen from any and all countries. Eventually I offered enchiladas at the Landfill and that was the chosen option.

On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish. My once boss, the LSCHP, a rabbi, Irish only in spirit, always took us all out to a bar to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. We are a multicultural crowd. One year, one of our Indian guys got a little too much into the green beer. The LSCHP was worried about him driving home but that turned out okay because his car broke down.

I [belatedly] wish my Finnish friends a happy St. Urho’s Day and of course happy St. Patrick’s to everyone. But don’t end up in the londry baskit with Froooogy.

The title is in quotes because I “stole” it from an Instagram commenter. I thought it was perfect. It is (of course) apped with the “color leak” filter which I definitely overuse. I was waiting to make a left turn outta the Plum Market parking lot and what I was doing was totally illegal because in this state there is a law against using a phone (with your hands) to do *anything* while driving. A law that I actually agree with.

Booooks. I finished “Interesting Facts about Space”. I liked it quite a lot (a bit draggy from time to time). I still think it wouldn’t be everyone’s cuppa. I can’t even feature the GG reading it.

Today I read “Nemesis”, a short fictional portrayal of one of the big polio epidemics that happened before I was born. I can’t remember how this book flew by me on the internet but I am at the point where I can read about pandemics without anxiety and polio is interesting to me because just a year *after* I was born, the polio vaccine became available. I got it plus the oral booster some 10 years later. We lined up at the National Guard facility in Sault Ste. Siberia to get our sugar cube.

I (of course) don’t have any real memories about polio but a kid my age contracted it as a baby and walked with a big fugly leg brace. I had a “brace” when I was a baby, for a big toe that turned in. I don’t remember my brace at all but when hearing about it years later, I imagined a big metal apparatus like Shane had. Years later than *that* when I posted a pic of me as a baby, a cousin asked something like, “What is that sock thing?” I looked at the pic again and realized it was my brace.

This was an interesting book and I recognized a lot of the confusion we experienced in the beginning years of covid (although I think we STILL have a lot of confusion about covid). The book disappointed me a bit but that was not unexpected because it’s an author I have mixed feelings about. The only other book I have read by him is “Portnoy’s Complaint”.

I was a teenager when it was published and my mom and I would “share” books at that time. She bought it and I asked, “Can I read it when you’re done?” “Sure!” But then the book quickly disappeared. I found it in a drawer and as I started to read it, I realized why it disappeared. I knew the basic facts of life by that time but I sure learned some things from that book. I also didn’t like it very well. I am not a fan of gratuitous sex now and I think it started with that book. Nemesis didn’t have any of that but it left me unsatisfied in a way I can’t articulate. That said, I am glad it is now in my repertoire of epidemic/pandemic fiction.

You get these new daffs instead. The snake was victim to a controlled burn and I got the pic in a text from my mouse.

This pic is the same ol’ same ol’ bunch of daffs that come up every year. I always have to take a pic anyway. I also found a couple little violet-like flowering plants (tiny ones) on my afternoon trip to the compost heap. And a pair of robins have been out there scouting out nesting platforms. We have three. Let’s fill ’em up! Um, I think only one of the platforms was made (by the GG) to attract robins. Another one is on top of a set of security lights, which we do NOT turn on when robins nest there. And I’m not sure about the third.

Way back when I first started my blahg of blather (2003), my brother was still alive and once I posted some kind of dead aminal. Most likely it was something that drifted onto the beach but I can’t remember. Most of our dead flotsam is seagulls but sometimes other stuff comes in. I remember when I was a kid there was a dead dog and I walked by it for weeks while it decomposed. I don’t remember being freaked out about it at all. One of its eyes was particularly interesting but I can’t put into words why.

Anyway my brother responded to my dead aminal post with, “Oh dead aminals on the blahg”, followed by a photo of a dead sturgeon that had washed up. BIG FISH.

Well, we’ve been porterized tonight and I am kinda done and ready to watch a Crown episode. I am nearing the end and I am still enjoying it but I think the screen writer and producer, etc., made a wise decision to stop after six seasons.

Sayonara, KW.

I meant to say that yesterday but last evening I was particularly scattered and you get what you get. This is not some kind of covid brain fog. I don’t have covid and I did not get long covid from my one case two years ago. It’s just the usual data soup that has always occupied my brain. I have a lot of data in there at this point. Not as much as Joe Biden though. Nevertheless, I feel pretty darn sharp and when I listen to Biden talk, I think he is too. At least he doesn’t vomit garbage pails full of partially digested word salad like his opponent does.

Anyway, I do hate memes. For one thing, they often spell things wrong. I mean, if you are writing two short sentences, can you at least proof-read your work? And maybe get the apostrophes right? Even when the spelling and syntax are accurate, I don’t always understand them. I mean I have NEVER understood that cat meme. Maybe you know the one. The left half is a couple of women apparently screaming. The right half is the Lord High Muckity-Muck sitting at a fancy dinner table looking imperious. What is going on here? I get that cats can kinda rule their owners. I just don’t quiiiite get this meme. I wouldn’t let a frickin’ cat push me around but maybe I am totally misunderstanding.

And I have KNOWN a Lord High Muckity-Muck cat. I didn’t own him. He was a moominbeach cat. Not feral and not a stray.

His name was originally Mike. After my cousin maybe? (Y’all may know him as the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie and Mike isn’t even his real name). My cousin (not the Grinch) originally owned Mike but when she moved west to take a teaching job, her mother (my aunt), The White Tornado, who loved pets, adopted him and he was very well taken care of.

He was allowed to wander as cats were in those days. So Mike got to know Duke and Radical Betty and my family and frequently visited all of us. I will never forget when The Commander allowed Mike to come in to the moomicabin and climb into bed with me. He walked all over my head to wake me up.

The Lord High Muckity-Muck had a lot of names besides Mike. One of them was Muksaslouie (I don’t really know how to spell that). There are a LOT of stories about this legendary catsa but I won’t go there tonight.

And no it’s not the alpacas. My mouse took this pic but I know where this place is and pass by it fairly frequently. But isn’t that big guy on the right actually a llama? I am “cornfused”, as the LSCHP would sometimes say – out loud in meetings in his big booming voice. But I haven’t done the due diligence to look up the differences between llamas and alpacas. I only sorta know them.

Anyway, the meme of the day was this:

Little girl: Mom, what is a contradiction?

Mom: Believing that a 12-year-old is mature enough to give birth but needs parental approval to check out a library book.

Yes, there are many loaded issues within this short conversation. But still.

Today was a day fraught with the damn taxes. I was doing an archaeological dig here at teleCubelandia and the negative, stressful energy emanating from what I will call the Tax Room was driving me NUTS. It’s all done now and the damn taxes have been sent in. I’m not really complaining. I am happy that the GG has taken on this increasingly more complicated task. I remember when I would sit cross-legged on the floor in the back room and do the taxes in like a half hour. Without a computer.

Tonight the GG was on a long phone call with a sibling. I ruled out one (his ID twin) because they talked about the twin (oh nothing bad, just his current whereabouts), another is currently visiting his grandchildren in a western state and I doubted he would be calling the GG about web cams and cloud storage from there. This was a male voice and his other two brothers are dead. That leaves FlaMan. Who sounded like he was in really good form today. So yay!

“He’s parking behind our garage,” was reported to me from the moomincabin. I could feel a weeeeee bit of outrage building in the reporter. My reaction? I gnoffed and gnoffed and gnoffed. I do not care if my neighbor-cousin parks behind the moomingarage in the winter. We aren’t there in the winter and if parking there makes his life a bit easier, it is A-OK with me.

That vee-hickle is his second vee-hickle. I’m not sure how often he even uses it. His main vee-hickle is a big utility van that he uses to travel to and from construction jobs (drywall is his specialty), picking up and dropping off employees who don’t have transportation along the way. That’s business in the yooperland. At least my cousin’s business.

I love all of my cousins, FinFam and MacMu. This guy and I have had a rather special relationship. The first time I remember interacting with him, I was three and he was six. We were in the back seat of our grandaddy’s Studebaker. Our dads were also in the car, Jack and Duke, man’s men, WWII pilots. We had taken a little trip along the shores of Gitchee Gumee to obtain some smoked fish from the reservation. My cousin and I both loved fish and we had a “fight” over who got to hold on to the package of smoked fish. He and I are not totally alike but we are kindred spirits and not only because we both like smoked fish.

The car in the pic is his mother’s car, a Honda Accord. That would be Radical Betty’s car. I was kinda gobsmacked thinking about how old that car must be since Radical Betty died in 2009 and I think she bought it (new) a few years before she died. Biden is not the only person who has trouble dredging up significant dates when blindsided by a question.

This is what the GG woke up to Saturday morning at the moomincabin. He went off on a hike that day and the amount and type of precipitation that fell varied from rain to six inches of snow. Slippery roads but it was slushy stuff that melted quickly.

It is March and if a snowdrift has not formed between the cabins by now, it is not going to. Also, ice will not form in the bay, not to mention Lake Superior, at this point.

The last time I posted about the GG camping in the moomincabin yard, I forgot to mention that although the Lyme Lounge doesn’t have any bathroom facilities, there is a functional outhouse behind the Old Cabin. The outhouse I was taught forced to use at three years old. There was a potty behind the “door” at the Old Cabin but The Commander was trying to get me to use the outhouse. And I did, for many years until we built the moomincabin and its own outhouse, which doesn’t exist any more. I still use the Old Cabin Outhouse when I need to, if the moomincabin is closed or full with people. May that outhouse live forever.

Me? Ugh but yay! After weeks of archaeological digs and re-watching a recorded meeting a billion times, I *finally* understand a complicated piece of our online banking application that dates from our old legacy system. I hired in at the beginning of the transition from legacy to web. I decided early on that my future was with the web application. I was right about that but there are times when legacy functionality rears its ugly head and I have to bang against it.

I thought I heard that the IRS has created their own e-file system. I am skeptical. It took my team something like 15 years to move our legacy system to a web application. We did it s-l-o-w-l-y and carefully. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I hope our government has created (and tested tested tested) this new system with this kind of thing in mind.

I chose to read Baby X because the Goodreads description talked about IVF technology “on steroids”. That’s my interpretation of the description, those words weren’t actually used. This book is set in the near future where people can sort of “design” their own children. That is all I will say about that.

If you know me, you know I am concerned about the constant whittling away at pro-choice rights. I totally do not understand how these same people seem to be against IVF. Um, isn’t that supposed to bring MORE babies into the world? But it seems to me like the anti-choice folks are doing quite some contortions to put their heads up you-know-where. I know I am GROSSLY oversimplifying this stuff but I feel like I am totally missing something. Scratches head. Again. You want more babies to be born but you you prefer “forced birth” and not actual choice? Anyone who goes through IVF is CHOOSING life. At least for babies. Not necessarily for other categories of people but we won’t go there today.

Anyway, I spent yesterday telling people that Baby X was a terrible book. It isn’t great literature in any way, shape, or form. But then I started actually getting in to it. It all wrapped up neatly in the end and I was even sprouting a few tears by that time. That said, I am not really recommending the book but it is a fast read and maybe that’s what I needed this weekend.

After finishing Baby X, I started in on Interesting Facts about Space. I am really enjoying this one. I’m not sure it would be everyone’s cuppa, definitely not the GG’s. But if casual lesbian hook-ups (no graphic sex so far), true crime podcasts, and blended family dysfunction (and more) don’t turn you off, you might have fun with this. I am. Sprinkled into all the other themes are random facts about space. The protagonist (a “space agency” information architect) uses these in part to communicate with her mother.

Not a whole lot of ice this year. I can remember walking along the hummocks on the second sand bar in *April*. Not so much this year. Note that the hummocks are not terribly dangerous on our beach (the water is very shallow) but they are extremely dangerous in other places on the great lakes. We are still very careful about them on our beach and do not climb (or slide) down into them.

But I’m not at the moomincabin. I’m on The Planet Ann Arbor where I made chicken pot pie (but not the purple kind) and salad and various nibblies, shrimp ring, Tracklements smoked salmon, flavored goat cheese and crackers. I cooked for the Planet Ann Arbor beach urchins and their partners and had a great time doing it although I also enjoy when they come over and cook for meeeee.

That’s all for now. G’night!

Well, the GG arrived at the moomincabin this afternoon and he was able to drive in with no problem. There’s a wee bit of snow to the left of Mooon Yooonit and the Lyme Lounge but it is insignificant.

Most years (including almost all of my life), this snow drift between the Old Cabin (in the pic) and the moomincabin has prevented anyone from driving in. The drift is about where Mooon Yooonit and the Lyme Lounge are situated in the first pic but the pic is from a different angle.

We have had an unseasonably warm winter here in the Great Lake State. Honestly it isn’t our first one but the yooperland usually gets more snow and I’m not sure Lake Superior iced over this year. They are opening the Soo Locks a few days earlier than planned but not sure what that really means. The above picture was probably taken in February but that drift usually hangs around through most of April. I dunno what’s going on. I am not a climate change denier. I just don’t know how to process the difference between climate change and weather.

I’ve been asking the GG for more pics (for blog fodder but also for me). He has sent some and they are wonderful but he is missing some pics that I want… He did send me a pic of “Jeep and Pan”, my cousin and her husband. They look absolutely fabulous but in this day and age, I don’t often post pics of people on the internet.

If we ever get VOT going tonight, I will ‘splain to him what I want.

Macy’s is closing stores but I can’t find any conclusive info on whether they are closing OUR local store. If so, it’ll be another anchor store gone from the mall. Sears is already torn down and in the process of being repurposed. It’s okay. I never go to the mall.

I have never been much of a Macy’s shopper. The last time I can actually remember shopping at Macy’s was one summer a LONG time ago when they had a “summer of love” thing going on. I got some nice tie-dyed cotton maxi skirts that summer. But once I discovered Chico’s and JJill and a few others online, around the time I started working again, I stopped shopping for clothes in person. I know what I like and I know what fits and it’s just easier.

Last fall when we were invited to a formal wedding, the only store I could even remember was Macy’s. I talked myself off that ledge PDQ. Would they have anything that would work for meeeee? Probably not. Instead I ordered a bunch of stuff from the internet and literally the morning of the wedding cobbled an outfit together. I dunno if you could call it formal or even elegant but it worked for me. In this case it was more important that I beeeee at my beloved young cousin’s wedding. I’m sure my clothing was not noticed.

Actually, the original predecessor of what is now Macy’s in our local mall was J. L. Hudson. I *did* shop there. I had been shopping at Hudson’s since I was a little kid. I went to the downtown Detroit and Northland shopping center Hudson’s with my parents when we were visiting my Detroit grandparents. I had my picture taken with Santa at Northland. When I was a teenager, mom and I would make a day of it in the many storied downtown store, where she would buy me clothes and we would have lunch on the mezzanine.

The downtown Hudson’s store was Mom’s old stomping grounds. She worked there as a buyer after she graduated from college until my old coot decided Detroit was not for him and whisked her north to the yooperland. She would tell stories about meeting *her* dad (my granddaddy) for lunch back in the day (he also worked downtown) and sometimes they lunched at places where some of the women wore pasties. Which is not the same as the yooperland kind of pasties 🤣

We all watched (on TV) when the downtown Detroit Hudson’s store was imploded. Mom was at my brother’s house and he reported that she was stoic. Which is kinda how “we” are. Usually.

Although I shopped at the local Hudson’s it was never really the same as the old downtown Detroit store. When it became Dayton-Hudson and then Macy’s, I mostly lost interest.

I miss those days. I don’t miss those days.

P.S. River photo by mouse.

Because y’all do NOT want me to grouse about polly-ticks as if I could write coherently about that anyway…

Spring has not really sprung although our temps have been a little and sometimes a lot warmer than most years. But the Lyme Lounge was sprung today. The pics are old but the first one shows the Lyme Lounge in its winter berth in the UU’s huge garage. Again, THANK YOU THANK YOU for storing it. We don’t have a garage here at the landfill.

Here it is outside hooked up to The Mean Green Frog Hoppin’ Musheen. Like I said, this was a few years ago (pre-COVID). We don’t have the Frog Hopper any more so Mooon Yooonit tows the Lyme Lounge these days. And this pic is not even winter. It’s just a random pic from whenever.

The Lyme Lounge did not get stored the last couple years because the GG was using it in the winter on his North Country Trail hiking trips with our friend Joan who has her own trailer, Sunny. They would camp in parks or be hosted by various “trail angels”. Space in their driveways and sometimes in their homes.

It’s been kind of nice not to have the Lyme Lounge, Mooon Yooonit, and Cygnus all in the landfill driveway at the same time this winter but I will welcome the Lyme Lounge’s return. For the next few days, it will be hanging out in the moomincabin “parking lot”, which apparently does NOT have a 10-foot snow drift in the middle this year. The GG will have lucky-shucky, heat, wifi (fiber optic no less), and I think there is a water tank in the trailer. The water in the moomincabin cannot be turned on yet via Old Man Winter’s rules.

I survived the Great Facebook Outage. I am embarrassed to admit how many unsuccessful gyrations I went through trying to change my password, not to mention the low-level panic I felt. Can I just say worst captcha pics on earth? Until. I asked the GG to open Facebook. Guess what? He couldn’t log in either. At that point I did the google and yes, Facebook was down today. When I got back on, I had to log in and my *changed* password was accepted.

Later in the day, the Mad Scientist made a trip to the hardware store and the next thing I knew, he was “cooking” something. I asked what he was doing but when I did so, he was heading toward the Water Closet so his answer started with a “p”. When I asked again, at a more appropriate time, the answer was “manufacturing”.

This is kind of a weird picture in low light but if you can see that tube thingy to the right of the iPhone (an old repurposed one), it is now affixed to a device that rotates it s-l-o-w-l-y over the course of an hour. The “manufacturing” part of the whole thing was “cooking” some plastic in order to mold it or whatever. Which means I have a mess to clean up on Gertude’s glass cooktop. I tried to ask, well, like “why” did you do this prodject? Like, how did you get the idea? I did not get a satisfactory answer. Sometimes Mad Scientists gotta do what Mad Scientists gotta do.

Among other artifacts in the pic are Rat Fink and Svengooli and a tin foil hat down there on the right by the globe.

I’ve been going to the Quiet [Water]Adventure Symposium for about a gazillion years now. Except for three years off during the covid years (which are not over BTW). This year I almost felt like a celebrity, at least within our group of North Country Trail booths. People would ask me who I was and I would say my name and then just point at the GG and say, “I’m with him.” They all knew who “him” was.

I didn’t feel like I was much help during the symposium but there were PLENTY of volunteers there and I have learned a few things over the years. One is that the GG does NOT need help with setting things up or breaking them down. He has the procedures for this stuff totally internalized and trying to delegate tasks to other people just distracts, meaning things get lost or not put away properly. I used to feel guilty for not helping him all that much. Eventually I learned that staying outta the fray was the best way I could help him. There are a couple of long-time regulars that know enough about “the drill” to be somewhat helpful. (There is an element of being an identical twin involved but I won’t go there today except to say they do not communicate telepathically. I don’t think…)

I spent a lot of time explaining to people who felt like they weren’t helping enough with our booths that they didn’t really have to work that hard. For one thing (see above), they really can’t help the GG much with his stuff. And two, we had a bazillion volunteers at this thing. There isn’t much to do DURING the event except for answering questions about the trail and how to volunteer, etc. I can answer many of those questions but I am not an expert so I defer a lot of stuff to others who know more and are better ambassadors. I also encourage our volunteers to attend the many presentations throughout the day. I love those but I am still covid averse enough that I didn’t want to be in a crowded room with a bunch of unmasked people. And most but not all people were unmasked. Including me…

When I told the GG that I was actively deflecting people from “helping” him, he thanked me.

After we got home on Sunday, he unpacked a bunch of stuff and then he was on his computer for a while and then… It was awfully quiet for a while and when I looked into the back room… He slept for a couple hours. He needed it.

When the weather is good, I always try to insist on a slow back road drive home from the Quiet [Water]Adventure Symposium. From East Lansing to The Planet Ann Arbor. The weather WAS good this weekend. 60-something today and sunny. I think last year around this time we had thundersnow followed by an ice storm.

Anyway, we were heading over to Meridian Road and I opened up the xword puzzle. Wouldn’t you know, I did not START the puzz when I opened it up. I was too busy looking at the scenery and Goomaps. The next time I looked down at my phone, the puzz was running at 9:13 minutes and I HAD NOT STARTED IT YET. Jeebus. I do the xword “with” my daughter. That is we both do it every day and report our times to each other (or DNFs…). This is NOT a competition between us. Sometimes one of us does better than the other. Not every puzz is in everyone’s “wheelhouse”. She SOMETIMES admits to looking at the xword write-up for clues. I don’t do that. If I DNF, I DNF. DNF = did not finish in case you were wondering. But the main “rule” we have for this little bit of morning connection is we make our own rules and respect each other’s rules.

I didn’t start the puzz until we got home and when I reported my time, I subtracted 9:13 from it. But I also had to report a few typo/stupid errors. I am like five down from queen bee on the spelling bee. There are two 11-letter answers that I am not getting even though I think we’ve had similar letters before and I DID get them then. Plus a couple others. And I’m missing one pangram. Sigh… It’s been a while since I haven’t gotten to queen bee. I make myself get to genius with looking at the “grid”. After that I open the grid. That’s my rule.

The pic is from a road we haven’t traveled before or at least not for a long time. We took Meridian down to [North?] Territorial. We took [North?] Territorial over to M52, then hung a louie onto Farnsworth Road (not paved) and snaked around until we got to NORTH Territorial. We aren’t sure if Territorial and North Territorial are the same road or not. Or maybe once were before M52 cut through. Anyway the pic is from somewhere on Farnsworth Road. I think. And this is all gobblety-gook if you don’t live around here. And probably even to most Planet Ann Arbor-ites.