Random bits of my so-called life.

New iPhone weirdness of the day? MMCB tried to call me for our weekly facetime coffee session and I wasn’t getting the call and wasn’t getting the call and… We finally (by hook or by crook) got connected and I realized that my phone was on “do not disturb”. I did not (knowingly) turn that setting on.

Then? MMCB wanted to know if my new phone has gotten hot? No. I have read about overheating iPhone 15s. They can get so hot you can’t touch them. Instagram is one of the apps that is apparently blamed for the issue. I use Instagram all the time but I nip in and out quickly so am guessing I’m not on there long enough at any one time to trigger the heat. Why does this happen? My semi-educated guess is bad programming? Spaghetti code maybe? App developers, design elegant code. If I could do it with old FORTRAN, you can do it with whatever code builds apps.

So ALSO at some point, noises got turned on. Key clicks, alerts, etc. I could turn them waaaaaay down but it took some muddling to get them OFF. Key clicks drive me the craziest. When we had our first iPhones, the GG would routinely wake me up in the middle of the night by typing stuff on his phone with the key click sound on. He KNOWS things like that drive me nuts. A couple weeks ago, in the middle of the night, a soft beep-beep-beep-beep started up. Just four beeps. Not a smoke alarm and not a phone. I would just be getting back to sleep when… beep-beep-beep-beep. What the f*ck is that beeping? Turned out it was the battery that powers the fiber optic wifi at the moomincabin during power outages. Because the moomin freezes solid over the winter, we have to take it down to the Planet Ann Arbor for the winter so it doesn’t discharge. But you have to PLUG IT IN!

Our friend Joan of North Country Trail fame stopped by and took the GG out of the house for a bit. She has hiked the whole trail twice, not contiguously either time, very hard to plan that kind of trip. The last two years the GG supported her and hiked with her a lot.

Mooma Duck’s “formal” wedding attire so far? Sort of a mishmash. One black sequined maxi skirt on the way. Another (preferred one) on a wait list. The wait listed one has an emerald green version that I miiiight like more. We’ll see what happens. Flat black shoes because I (for god knows what reason) got rid of a pair at some point. I canNOT wear my ripped up Keen sandals to this wedding. Black/silver tights. They’re not from Snag or We Love Colors so I’ll have to make sure they’ll fit such that I don’t have to keep hiking them up. I hate that. Green beaded evening bag. Still figuring out what to wear on top. Tank top and minimalist cardigan or wrap is what I’m aiming for but haven’t quiiite hit it yet. But also didn’t have much time to search today.

Yes, all of this shopping is online. It’s not that I am afraid to go shopping, just that I’m not sure where to GO (and have kinda forgotten how). J. L. Hudson’s (now Macy’s) mighta been my choice back in the day but I have no clue what shopping there is like now and don’t wanna take the time to find out.

I will get there, with MUCH help from my uber cool daughters.

Today’s coffee buddy was not MMCB, it was the UU, the “other” half of the Twinz of Terror (not to be confused with the Unitarian Universalist church). The puzz buddies were the usual culprits, my beach urchins, and they were undoubtedly drinking coffee too.

The UU and I had a lively discussion mainly about AI. I won’t speak for the UU but I am skeptical about AI and I think we are largely on the same page. Note that I am in NO WAY an expert in AI or even well-versed. “AI” to me is a label that is not clearly defined and like so many other things, I feel like people bandy it about without having a clue what they’re talking about. Facts and data, folks.

Besides the puzzles, today’s text thread with the urchins had an extra topic, which was how to dress mooma duck for an upcoming “formal” wedding. All I will say is we are making progress.

Whatever, although one of my main mantras is “stay outta the fray”, this little fray was pretty fun. Talking to a person in real life and two others by text. Three different topics. A nice change after 10 days or so of solitary mornings, although I enjoy those too. Of course we have the puzz-buzz going on every morning. Xword, Spelling Bee, Wordle, and now we’ve added Connections, which scares me to death!

It was 81 last I looked at the kitchen indoor/outdoor thermometer. The one in the bathroom *lies* because the sensor gets the morning sun. Sometimes in the dead of winter it can read 60-something degrees if Mr. Golden Sun deigns to grace us with his presence. Anyway today I am basking in my back yard after my workday. The sun is on the west side of the house so it’s shady and cool back here and very pleasant except for some moe-skee-toes but they are few and far between.

That fuzzy stuff in the pic? I *think* it’s a spiderweb of some sort. We had a foggy morning over the weekend and these appeared overnight.

I put together a mini-feast for their return. Baked chicken thighs, rice, delicata squash, green beans with almonds, and the last local corn of the season. I think. I modeled this after the Twinz mom’s feasts I was invited to participate in when the GG and I were first a couple. My dishes tonight were maybe not exactly what Grandma Sally served but the point was that it was a bit of meat plus a variety of harvest veggies.

You’ve heard of the little girl who went missing from her family’s campsite in upstate New York? She’s been found, thank the gods. It turns out she went missing from very near where the Twinz were staying. I don’t think “we” know much about her abductor at this point but why? Oh, I know why. Some people are evil.

The Twinz did a Story Corps interview while they were over in upstate New York. I’ve been listening to Story Corps for years. When I was still driving over to Cubelandia, I would usually hear it on Friday morning just about when I got to the vicinity of the notorious State/Ellsworth roundabout. The roundabout is an issue for many people but never for me.

I don’t expect to hear their Story Corps interview on the radio any time soon or even ever. I turns out that they don’t necessarily interview in an actual booth. Instead, a North Country Trail official interviewed them on a couch in an old house. Their 45(?) minute interview will be cut to five minutes. Both will be archived and NPR stations will pick up the short interview and broadcast it if and when they want to.

I’m gonna try to get up early enough tomorrow morning to kick off a bacon and hash brown breakfast. People can make their own eggs if they want them.

G’night, KW

The pic is actually from yesterday morning. Today started out clear and stayed that way all day.

For complicated reasons, I wanted to get some sweet corn, knowing it would be the last of the season or maybe I was already too late? I did not go to the farmers market yesterday morning (for complicated reasons). Plum had packaged corn, which I’m sure was fine for what it was but if I could get the REAL stuff, that’s what I wanted. So I figgered I’d go to the little corn and veggie stand in the liqwire store parking lot. I had driven by it on Friday so I thought it’d still be there. Wrong…

Okay, I’d had Cygnus out in the county up in the area of the mouse house and I thought I remembered a little farm stand around there somewhere. I hadn’t looked carefully but my mind’s eye remembered corn. I couldn’t remember exactly where it was but I was driving down Joy Road toward Dexter and slammed on my brakes when I saw Pete’s Produce. With CORN! And some gorgeous cherry tomatoes.

Chores, puzzles, and read my current book (The Cider House Rules, have read other books by that author but not that one). Until lizard got done with her pottery activity and we schlepped over to HOMES Brewery for beer (her), whine (me), and bibimbap. We tried to sit outside but it was too hot and too bright so when a table opened up “inside” (except it was really totally open to the air), we moved. I even wore eye makeup today. I have totally forgotten how to put eye makeup on in the last few years and it was a total mess.

And then I kinda crashed. Going out to lunch makes me so tired “post”-pandemic. I’m quite a bit revived now and sitting outside writing this boring blahg entry.

I just wanted to snap a quick pic of the super moon before it got lost in the trees (and fog, which happened later). So I pointed my phone at the moooon but before I snapped this pic, some weird stuff came on the screen, like a quarter-circle with some radii with numbers at the end? I can’t exactly remember. I was in the moment and just wanted a pic so I hit the button and this is what my phone served up. Seemed like there was a way to make adjustments…

I guess I will have to figger out how this camera works. I’m not even sure if this stuff is new for the iPhone 15. I do know that it’s new SINCE the iPhone Xs. MMCB₁ is signed up for classes at Apple. She doesn’t have a new phone so I’m not sure how that all came to be except she LIKES to take classes. Since I am a muddler when it comes to personal technology, I do not take classes from Apple and I probably won’t. For one thing, I THINK I would have to go to the MALL, a place I LOVED when I was young but have avoided like poison since waaay before COVID. It’s okay, I’ll figger it out.

A bee-yoo-ty-ful day here. I reset the refrigimitator and cleaned the shelves surrounding the front window and everything on them. And sorted out iPhone power cables. Because Apple changed to a lightning(?) connector to the phone, all of the umpteen bazillion cables we own are now obsolete for our iPhones (and I just bought a few new ones at the beginning of the summer). The beach urchins will probably take some and I will save some and also take some up to the moomincabin next summer for people who don’t yet have the 15.

In the late afternoon, I took Cygnus out into the country. When I returned, my neighbor was cleaning up leaves. He had cleaned up the leaves in MY DRIVEWAY! These are the Little Leaves. The Big Leaves (oak mostly) have not fallen yet. The little leaves get tracked into the Landfill and are very hard to vacuum up. Of my six or whatever vacs, Purply gets them off the carpet but not off tile or wood. But maybe I’ll try a different attachment. Rooomba is very good at vacuuming most things but she doesn’t reliably pick up these leaves. But I have a new rooomba since last fall so maybe I should try her out.

At any rate, it turns out the tree that drops these little fiends is in the neighbor’s yard. In all the years I’ve lived here, I didn’t know that. So I think he was trying to clean up after his own tree. He said he was thinking about cutting it down. I don’t care whether he does or not but I did tell him I wasn’t annoyed enough about the little leaves for him to lose a tree. I’ve been living with the Little Leaf Season for going on 40 years. It’s annoying but it lasts for about a week or 10 days. This is the first time the neighbor who owns the house next door (and that tree) has cleaned up the leaves.

When I thanked him he said, “I had to wait until you left.” 🤣

In a long cFam text thread with various topics, the missing adding machine came up. Wait. what? There is an adding machine at Hoton Lake?

Okay, I did not take it although I would be a prime candidate for being an adding machine bandit. When I was a little kid, my banker dad used to schlep adding machines home from the bank from time to time. Why? Because he knew I LOVED to play with them. I can’t really remember what I did with them, added numbers I guess, but they were fun. I think it was partly that they were REAL things that I could play with, not just toys.

Later on when I was a teenager and early 20-something, I worked at “your Tempo store” in Sault Ste. Siberia. I was primarily a cashier (which I LOVED) but I also worked in the “office” sometimes, where one of my tasks if I had the early shift was to balance the previous day’s deposit. That required various pieces of equipment, including an adding machine! Tappity tappity ching (something like that). So much fun.

I hope the Hoton Lake adding machine is found because I think it is an important artifact to keep. Not too many years after I left Tempo for good (and Tempo is long gone now), the GG and I got an Apple II+, onto which we could load (via floppy disc) a program called Visicalc. It basically allowed me to do what adding machines do and much much much more. Alas, it wasn’t all that useful at the time. But then our computer evolved into a MacPlus and Visicalc evolved into Excel! I used Excel to computerize more than a few non-profit orgs plus I use it at work ALL THE TIME.

Well, the Twinz of Terror are staying in a bunkhouse but Himself has sent me a couple of different pics of the setup. There has been absolutely NO text accompanying these pics. Like are you and the UU staying in THIS bunkhouse? Or the other pic you sent that LOOKED like two twin beds in a room. What are the bathrooms like? How about showers? Group showers?

I wasn’t sure exactly where they were going because I was stayin’ outta the fray and there was quite a bit of fray. Today I remembered I could google “North Country Trail Celebration” and find out where it was. And so I did, and that helped me figure out why they went to Vermont because Chestertown, NY is very close to Vermont.

Getting dangerously close to pollytickle stuff. Is Biden too old to be running for prez? I think yes. Is the Orange Baboon too old to be running for prez? BOTH of these folks are too old to be running for president. We need to bring some younger blood into the mix. The younger folks are going to have to live with whatever happens in the future. I am not planning on going anywhere soon but I think my contributions (besides voting, etc.) are better focused on my family(ies) and local community(ies).

I have some personal experience with elders (my parents in this case) refusing to listen to my Cassandra-like warnings about things they and their generation wanted to do with family property. The outcome was NOT good. I loved them *anyway*.

That doesn’t mean our elders are not important. How do I say this? In a perfect world, elders are (among other things) our story-tellers. They don’t shove advice down other/younger people’s throats. Instead they tell stories from their lives (and their own elders’ lives) and hope it makes the younger folks think about how they want to proceed with situations their parents may or may not have encountered.

If the next presidential contest ends up being Biden/Trump, I will vote for Biden again. Trump is only in this stuff for himself and is a cancer on our country’s democratic process.

One of the clues in one of the xwords I do was “like many covered bridges”. The answer was “one lane”. This one is not. It’s a pic that the GG sent me from Vermont (I think).

My first almost-experience with a book club was when the Haisley Mafia suggested we all read The Bridges of Madison County and then get together to discuss it. Probably with plenty of whine. I read it. I dunno who else read it. We never met to discuss it and I had mixed feelings about it. Mainly that it was a decent read and kept my attention but not necessarily great literature. In fact, I was kind of annoyed by it at the end but I can’t remember why. Maybe I’ll have to re-read it. I do remember reading it in the living room at the Moldy Old Hoton Lake Cabin before the cFam tore it down and rebuilt it. That old Bad Boys cop reality show was on the TV.

And no, thank you very much, I am not watching tonight’s Republican debates. I would not vote for ANY of them even if I were disposed to vote for a Republican candidate at this stage of the game. Are they all going to kowtow to the Orange Baboon again, even though they are supposedly running against him? Nope. Also, I will NOT EVER vote for any candidate of any persuasion who is not pro-choice. My thoughts on that are too long and complicated for this blahg entry. Later or if you are one of my regulars, you’ve heard my rants about this before.

…I ordered replacements for some “Mexican” glasses I began buying before I was married.

Once upon a time, I was in Kitchen Port down at Kerrytown with the Twinz of Terror. I dunno what I was buying but I was in line behind the UU and he was buying a couple of glasses that matched mine. When I asked why he was buying them, he said he was buying them for his sister-in-law. I wondered which sister-in-law. It wouldn’t be me because we weren’t married? Little did I know, it WAS MEEEEE. I dunno if the GG had told his twin of his intentions or if the UU had kinda guessed it.

I loved these glasses but when we gutted the Landfill Chitchen, I kinda wanted to change things up a bit.

I didn’t get rid of my old glasses because the beach urchins were horrified about that idea. I bought a couple new sets of glasses. Turquoise from Crate and Barrel or somewhere and a rainbow set from Uncommon Goods. I think? Both of these were beautiful but they are just a bit large to fit my hands.

For complicated reasons, we started using the Mexican glasses for cocktails a while back. In the last week, I have moved them down to a more easily reached shelf and purchased a couple more on eBay.

Sharp-eyed beach urchins might notice that these are a bit different than the ones we already own. I did not notice this when I ordered them. It’s okay. They are close enough. By the way, if you have a blue-eyed two-year-old who has just pointed out a bird to you, do NOT tell her she has sharp eyes. She will retort with “Mama, I don’t have some sharp eyes, I have some blue ones!”

So this BIG truck backed up into the driveway across the street. This big conveyor belt thingy going up by the roof conveyed packs of shingles up there and big strong young men unloaded them.

When I first moved to the Planet Ann Arbor, I had no clue how to get a job. How many words can I type in a minute? I was fast but probably not enough to qualify for a secretary type job I didn’t really want. Remember those days? Maybe you don’t. A MacMu architect uncle in town took pity on me and hired me to do odd jobs for him and some of his buddies. I am not really good at odd jobs but I tried. One of those jobs was actually a roofing job. Me and another young woman worked with this guy and, well, hauling that stuff even up to a roof on a one story house was difficult for even a strong young woman. Being ON the roof? Well, hmmm, acrophobia anyone? Plus there was the boss, who made, you know, overtures to me. I lasted ONE DAY. I do not have a history of quitting jobs willy-nilly but I am not cut out for construction work of any sort and I will not put up with sexual advances from anyone (not that I get them as a baggy old bag).

As luck would have it, I was hired for my childhood tech job very soon after that. I didn’t get paid jack shit at first and it was never a really high paying job but I was successful at it and respected by most of the people I had to work or interact with once they got to know I was on their side and could (politely) fix the errors on their data sheets or whatever. Although my “career” has taken some loop-de-loops between then and now, that job changed my life. I have to add that my childhood job was when I was having my children and I was treated VERY well during that period. Long story for another blahg entry.

So the iPhone 15 is fine but THEY LOGGED ME OUT OF EVERY GODDAMN APP AND WEBSITE I USE. Some of this stuff was easy to recover, some not. XFKAT (Twitter) was scary but I managed. Did I have to reboot? I can’t remember. Netflix? I FINALLY got logged in but after a bazillion two-factor authentication codes sent that DIDN’T WORK, I am not exactly sure what my password ended up being. So I may have to change it again…

Plum Market? I was at the store and I went to open my app ($10 off every so often) and it wanted me to log in. Total failure and I was afraid I’d have to file a ticket with them… I didn’t mess with it at the store but when I got home, I PERSISTED, and I am now logged in again.

I dunno why Apple chose to roll out this phone with this kind of shitola. I know there are security issues with passwords, etc. I work for the online banking industry. They might’ve at least warned us when we were going through the iPhone15 setup process that this might break current login stuff.

Somehow we both took similar first pics on our new iPhones.

Other than that, today was bubble bubble toil and trouble. Among other things, I finished washing ALL of the moomincabin curtains today and reattached the hardware (curtain rings). I didn’t do a perfect job of spacing the rings upon the reattach but since they weren’t perfect before I took them off, it’ll do. Most of the time, the curtains are not closed so who would know. I did actually use a ruler to try to space them. I am halfway through washing the sheets and WHAT A MESS! It is a huge mishmash of sheets and pillowcases and even some unidentified items and it is stressing me out way more than I want it to. I want to get rid of maybe 75% of the whole mess…

I did not play around with the new iPhone cam much today. I was busy and I am pretty much a point and shoot person who occasionally gets a lucky shot. I will never be a photography snoot. I am ALL FOR people who use fancy high-end cameras of any sort. I am ALL FOR people who use film cameras even though I suspect most of those folks ALSO use digital cams. Photography for many people is a hobby and it’s very cool that there are so many kinds of equipment to experiment with.

Years and years ago when digital cams were new, I was sitting next to an aunt at a family function. She was “still” using a film camera to do whatever artistic photography she was interested in. A young male relative strongly opined that the only way to go was digital. Say what? This woman was a decent amateur artist in various media including photography and who the heck cared what technology she used to take photos.

So this boring photooo is the first photo I took with my iPhone 15. Well, except for the Cloverland “refund” check or whatever it was that I uploaded to my bank. It had my dad’s name on it c/o meeee but I think they will accept it (they have before) but maybe I should straighten that out one of these days?

These are the Twinz of Terror. They’re pretty calm looking here. This morning. Oh my gawd. How much more stuff can we pack? And how noisy can we be making breakfast. I managed to get up and take a shower BEFORE them and after that I stayed outta the fray. The scariest part was maybe when — after they left — the GG came back in for a minute. TO RETURN ONE OF CYGNUS’S FOBS, WHICH HE FOUND IN HE UU’S CAR! They are driving the UU’s car out to NY state and the UU moved Cygnus out of the driveway last night so they could [over]pack his vee-hickle, which is why he had her fob. Not sure why it was in his vee-hickle but whatever. Of all things, now that they are gone I kinda miss them. But I wasn’t psychologically up to traveling with them or staying in a bunkhouse… I need my own private bathroom…

I spent the day unpacking clothes from the summer and sorting clothing out in general. And ordering new charging blocks and cables for our new phones but not getting rid of the old ones so as to be able to support family and friends with older iPhones. And doing TONS of moomincabin laundry. Curtains and sheets. Making good progress but more to do tomorrow. But I am done done done for tonight!

This very fuzzy pic was taken with whatever digital cam I had in 2007, a Canon I think. These were our first iPhones. The second pic is the first picture my first iPhone took. It was an accidental pic taken by MMCB₁. We were having coffee at Barry Bagels and she accidentally opened the camera and took the picture. I kept this pic as my screen photo for a long time until a beach urchin changed it, not knowing it actually meant something to me.

Man oh man, do we set ourselves up for stress. We pre-ordered the iPhone 15. It came (as promised) today. The GG is leaving tomorrow for a couple weeks. Was our journey from our X/Xs phones (yes they are old) to the 15 a smooth one? No it was not. Both of us had a lot of problems with it. We are computer professionals, the GG a computer scientist and me whatever it is that I am, user experience design is what I get paid to do but I am not *usually* lost when the developers are talking.

In the end, I think we both managed to get our new phones working albeit via different paths. I cannot imagine what people without our skills and experience at bashing through tech problems are going through right now. I can only guess that Apple’s tech support phone lines are glutted with calls. The Google suggested that the release was buggy and it sure felt that way. I struggle with why. Where are the user experience designers? Where are the quality control analysts? My work team is not perfect but we test like crazy with every release to try to ensure our users will have a smooth experience with whatever changes we’ve made. And we do not release updates to our product to millions of users in the general public like Apple does.

At any rate, all is now well. I was concerned about the slightly larger size of the phone (from the Xs) but it is really not that much bigger than the Xs. It fits my small hand and into my zip pocket and that’s what counts.

The UU came down for the night and Lizard Breath came over for dinner. Mixed grill (filet mignon and salmon) and friends. The Lizard took it upon herself to do the dishes and uber clean the Landfill Chitchen. I am beyond thankful for that. I do keep up with dishes and kitchen cleanup but she did a little deep cleaning that has been neglected. I sat outside with the UU watching the half moon traverse the sky and slap a few MOE-skee-TOES until they went to bed, as they do.

That was the GG wondering why the refrigerator was broken at 6:00 PM. All right, all right.

Yes, he did fix the dishwasher. It’s a loverly Bosch but it’s nine years old and a while back, I opened the door and it clunked straight down. Bonk. A fix was elusive at first and I was lobbying for a new musheen if he couldn’t find the right part. Having the door clunk down like that would drive me CRAZY and I can afford a new one. On the other hand it still washes dishes beautifully and maybe somebody else would be willing to put up with that issue for a free dishwasher. In the end, he couldn’t get the exact part but he got something close and somehow made magic and VOILA!

The warshing musheen was a bit easier. I actually diagnosed the problem myself. From time to time it starts to get r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w and I remembered there is a part that gets clogged (or whatever). Replacing that part fixes it right quick and on top of that, he bought an extra replacement part the last time this happened so we didn’t even have to order a new part.

I do not know what I would do without such a handy person around. I am not intuitively mechanical AT ALL. If I can’t figure out how to take something apart without brute force, I’m afraid to do it.

I have actually fixed the refrigerator twice today. I was grumptastic the first time. I walked in with a few grocks this morning and when I went to pull out the top crisper drawer to put something in it, a precariously placed container of leftover rice with an ill-secured cover toppled into it. Cleaning up this mess required pulling the refrigerator OUT from its nook (don’t ask) so I could get the drawer out and wash the rice out of it. BTW: this whole thing was MYYYYY fault!

Fixing the refrigerator the second time was a snap. I measured a ‘hattan into a glass and put it in the freezer. All he had to do was add ice and cherries.

When the world was beautiful, right?

This is September 2019 and we are at the moomincabin and I *think* it’s Lizard Breath out there swimming. I could search my blahg database to find out for sure but I can’t think what the data base file name is offhand so not gonna break my brain.

We were so innocent in 2019. Covid was not on the horizon. Back in 2003 the SARS virus derailed a middle school trip to Toronto that MMCB₁ was scheduled to chaperone. That trip got changed to DETROIT (yes, really) because of the SARS virus, a relative of COVID-19 if I have it right. We were rolling our eyes at that. People were being warned not to travel to Toronto but it didn’t seem to be very transmissable and nobody (that I can remember) was talking about masking or closing the borders. Little did we know.

So it was how many months after September 2019 that we started to hear of the novel coronavirus “coming out of” China? Was it November or December? It crept closer and closer throughout January and by mid-February I remember being nervous about our annual trip to Tahquamenon with group lodging and restaurants. I still remember a whole bunch of us crowding around a table at the Camp 33 Tahquamenon Falls Brewery.

After that there were a few more outings, (Griz, Knight’s) like is this really happening? I voted (nervously) in person (for Dark Brandon!) in the Michigan March primary on a Tuesday. Two days later I was sent home to telecommute forever (and I’m still doing that). My last in-person grock trips were freaky. For the first time in my life, I wiped down my cart before touching it. Really the best thing to do would be to wear a mask but we didn’t know that then. Then my grock worker said, “Moom, you’ll probably be fine but you really shouldn’t be in grocery stores.” Yes.

That was then. Things are not as scary now but covid is still around. One friend was out of town last week (helping an older relative in Fla) while her husband had lunch with friends who subsequently tested positive. Fortunately he tested negative. Another couple we know went to a significant reunion and now HAVE covid (maybe for the second time but I’ve lost track). I did not attend my equivalent significant reunion a year ago and it also turned out to be a super spreader.

After attending a wedding shower on Sunday… Small basement room, pretty well packed, sitting at a table with Liz and about five or six strangers, no one masked. There is NO WAY I could have missed this shower so I braved it. I have no symptoms. Knock on wood.

The good! I read the entire Silos trilogy, Wool, Shift, and Dust. I loved this series. I love a good sci-fi dystopia. I’m sure there are many flaws (most books have them) but I enjoyed the characters and the author’s world-building – I think that’s the word for it. In a way I didn’t want it to end but the ending was satisfying and it is a TV series so I will try that out. What became the first chapter (or maybe prologue?) of Wool was originally a short story. I found that as a free download and then I fuddled around a bit figuring out how to find the REST of the full novel it became. And then I read the other two.

The bad!! Malibu Rising. Why did I choose this book? I do not know. I was interested in learning about the area and surfing. I mean, I’m not interested in actually surfing, except for the low key body surfing we do at the moominbeach when the weather is right. We don’t have a surfing CULTURE on our beach although there are places on Gitchee Gumee where people surf with boards, even in the winter. But the book had almost no info about surfing at all except about how beautiful its beautiful characters looked when surfing with their wet-suits unzipped enough to reveal, well, revealing bikinis.

But. Oh. My. God. What a bad book. Beautiful messed-up people up the wazoo, literally and figuratively. Boring detailed descriptions of 1980s clothing and hair and whatever. The most horrible party you could imagine with beautiful messed-up people getting more messed up and destroying the party mansion. That is about all I will say about that except the party was pretty much the whole second half of the book. The whole time, I was like “I don’t care if they are Dynasty cast members (and I watched that show), kick those people out!” Blech blech blech!

And guess what? It is being made into a TV SERIES! I sorta guessed this book was written to pitch as a series so I googled and I regret it. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Head-banging. Will old Dynasty actors be in this?

After that, what could be the fugly? It is a book that is not published yet. By MTGreene, NOT my favorite politician and shouldn’t be yours either. Sorry. She is apparently calling it a “tell-all”. Well, do tell. If she can string a sentence together but probably there’s a ghost writer to do that. The Orange Baboon uses them to mitigate his own Word Salad. Will I read this book? Part of me wants to just to try and figure out where this screaming mimi of an uber bitch thinks she is coming from. But I certainly do NOT want to pay for her book… Library? We’ll see what I do. Hopefully this book won’t be something that can be made into a TV series 🤮🤮🤮

The pic is from last September when we were up at the moomin to enjoy the last bit of a warm summer and close it. This year we had to close a bit earlier so the Twinz of Terror can launch out to New York State for the yearly North Country Trail celebration.

Facebook served up a decent “memory” today. It is a view from Cubelandia’s nature trail from 10 years ago. Those trees in mid photo don’t really look elephantine in this pic but if I could get them at the right angle, it looked like a couple of elephants walking along. I miss the nature trails there although long before the end of my days of slogging over to an office to work, they were not well maintained and TICKS (yick) were a problem.

Thinking about wedding/baby showers, etc., no I do not like to play the games. One of the reasons is that I do not want to win! As wonderful as shower swag can be, at this stage of life, I am trying to get rid of stuff.

When I was very young and I went to showers for people who (usually but not always) weren’t really old enough and/or prepared for marriage and children, the main game we used to play was to put the bride’s and groom’s first names at the top of a piece of paper. The game was that everyone had to make as many words out of those letters as possible. As you might guess, The Brain of Lincoln School (meeee, but I HATED that nickname), always won… And nowadays we have the NYT Spelling Bee? Why am I good at that? Duh. Although I am one word, nu7, down from Queen Bee today. DON’T TELL ME!

Shower games are different nowadays and it’s pretty easy to be a non-participant without attracting attention. The Shoe Game (google it) was actually kinda fun although I was a side-liner. I know the bride pretty darn well but I don’t know everything about her. I hardly know her fiance although he reminded us yesterday that he had crashed out on the moomincouch last summer in his sweats. Oh yes, he fits in with our cousin-y branch of his bride’s fam. As Lizard Breath pointed out, our young cousin is very social but she probably wasn’t crazy about sitting in the middle of the room back to back with her husband-to-be holding up a shoe to answer questions. Still, it wasn’t bad and these functions are for the young folks who are getting married and their young friends.

My fave shower ever was our for the surprise baby of our oldest nephew and his wife. Their (wonderful) story is not appropriate for me to tell on my blahg but I LOVED that people were encouraged to NOT wrap whatever gifts they brought to the shower. Those gifts were displayed on a table for people to ogle over if they wanted to or we could just sit, eat, drink, and gossip.

First, I did not take this pic. Chloe Belle posted it on facebook and I grabbed it. I decided to post this one instead of their standard “us with beautiful women” pic. The Twinz of Terror can get a little crazy and at least one of their daughters (three between the two of them) does not think they should post such photos. Last year they found another set of (female) identical twins for the photo and that seemed okay. How do these old guys get beautiful women to pose with them? I do not know. (They are watching the Detroit Lions snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.)

I had my own event to attend today. A wedding shower brunch for my late cousin Terri’s daughter. Terri started bringing this young woman to the moomincabin every summer since she was a baby. I remember the summer Terri was stressing about toilet training and I (with teenagers) was going “been there done that.” They grow up fast. And Ana (the baby) certainly did. She has become a successful young woman getting married to a guy we like and who can tolerate the rusticity of the moomincabin, at least for a few days. Alas, my cousin hasn’t been around the last couple years and won’t see her daughter marry. I am not all that crazy about showers and I knew I would know almost NO ONE at this shower but there is NO WAY I would have missed it.

Problem. I was kinda roto this morning. The GG had some kind of ticketbastard confuzzlement with his Lions football tickets. These are SEASON tickets that his family has owned forever so I’m not sure why ticketbastard was involved. His stress poured over onto me and then I had a second cuppa coffee which I probably didn’t need. And I wasn’t really sure where I was going although it turned out the venue did NOT involve messing with the I275/I696 Maze. I had anticipated this so I asked my older beach urchin to drive Cygnus over there so I could kinda, y’know, “chillax” a bit. The drive turned out to be a breeze but I’m still happy she agreed. Also it allowed me to have two mimosas. (No *sam*osas – inside joke there.)

He wanted me to deal with the debris in the Landfill front living room. It was hard but I did it. So hard to combine all the stuff I hauled back from the moomincabin to the Landfill. That was my main task today and I did it.

And then I poured myself a glass of whine and sat out in the back yard reading “Dust”, the third in the Silos trilogy. Dystopian sci-fi kinda stuff. Right up my alley.

Lamb stew tonight, farmers market early this morning. As I was approaching Cygnus after the farmers market, a young man tried to approach me with “Ma’am do you have five dollars”. Nope. Of course I did have five dollars (more like $140) but I skedaddled into Cygnus and took off. I don’t know if the young man really needed money (probably) but it is not my job to randomly give cash to whoever asks me for it in a parking lot.

This is my best pot of impatiens here at the Landfill at the end of summer. The other two pots are kinda okay. One of them has a big dandelion in it and the other has some other huge plant. It is almost the end of summer and I am kinda done with caring what my impatiens are doing.

As the title says, this is just filler. Letting my beach urchins know I am alive and kicking even though we just texted a few minutes ago. Love y’all, KW.