Random bits of my so-called life.

Y’all prob’ly don’t wanna know about the title. Two NON-libtards are zooming (in the cozy room) and one of them (the GG) mentioned libtards. Laughter ensued even from me.

I PROUDLY OWN the label Libtard! Some people seem to equate libtardism with communism or socialism or whatever. I think those folks need to look back to what they learned in their high school classes umpteen bazillion years ago. I am not about to try to provide definitions for those isms at this point. I also probably need to revisit those definitions. But I’m pretty sure that those systems don’t match what’s going on in the United Snakes nowadays.

But if I am a libtard, it’s because I want to take care of others who have less than I have if I possibly can. Yeah, there are the “welfare moms” who try to game the system but far more of the recipients of our tax dollars are in great need and facing huge obstacles to overcome them. I have more than I need and I don’t mind sharing a bit. I did a stint taking community college classes and I saw a lot of those struggles first hand. So many people have so few resources. I include intellectual, psychological, and family resources. We need to help those people if we can and I think a lot of people can. That is a lot different than forcibly taking resources from the “rich” and distributing them to the “poor”.

In other news! Yaaayyyy! We ordered a COUCH today! TEAL! We ordered it from a store in Gaylord and we will have to go and pick it up and trailer it back ourselves. That’s okay. I guess we’ll use the cFam Trash Trailer. Also okay is that it won’t be ready for 4-8 weeks. I’ve loved to hate The Green Couch for umpteen bazillion years and I can love to hate it for a few more months. I may actually need a long goodbye.

HAHAHAHA! A woman who joined the zoom meeting is also NOT a Musk fan. One of a few reasons why is she is reluctant to change her shaky eastern yooperland internet connectivity situation to Starlink.

Meaning I bought some beer yesterday. I don’t really drink a lot of beer any more. Sometimes on the beach but a little goes a long way. But we were having young guests yesterday who will drink beer so I needed to replenish our dwindling supply. Like I think there was ONE can of beer. If you don’t count the four-pack of 16-ouncers that we wanted to palm off on some those young folks. Both me and the GG have accidentally bought these 16-ouncers this year.

So I bought a 12-pack of utility beer. Utility beer used to be stuff like Pabst or Miller Lite or I can’t even remember. (Hamm’s beer, refreshing Hamm’s beer🎶) These days utility beer is Bell’s Two-Hearted. Bell’s is a Michigan company (Kalamazoo born, I think) and (I think) the [retired?] owner is a big North Country Trail Supporter. We own a North Country Trail lamp made out of a Two-Hearted keg at any rate.

The Beach Urchins both attended Kalamazoo College. They couldda prob’ly gone to UMich but I think they didn’t want to stay In Town and/or go to a huge school. They differed from me in that but that is a whole ‘nother story and I totally supported their choice. kzoo was a wonderful college for them and I loved that they were NOT in town but an easy (usually) 100 mile drive away.

I also bought a six-pack of the beer in the pic. It seems to be a recent fave. I was glad I took a pic because when I got to the Plum, I was looking at a six-pack of beer with similar graphics but it wasn’t quiiiite the same but I also couldn’t quiiiite remember. So I opened my phone photos and quickly found the correct beer.

Y’all know what MLK Day is roight? NPD is No Politics Day and that day was today, which happened to fall upon MLK Day this year. That means yer fav-o-rite blahgger got the day off work.

I spent NPD exactly how I wanted to. Got up and took a walk, then hit up the Plum for grocks (and beer, which I seem to have trouble remembering to keep in stock these days). Then. Coffee and puzzles and a slow progression of prepping for dinner. FinFam steak dinner. Filet mignon (eight 7-ouncers I happened upon at Meijer last Friday and yes there are some leftovers). Mashed potatoes. A sauteed onion mushroom garnish. Garlic bread. My lizard contributed a roasted veg dish and I fished some frozen shrimp cocktail outta the freezer. Oh yeah, and Chex mix with no rancid ingredients!

Did I decide on a couch yet? I am getting sick and taaarred of being asked that question every five minutes. But yes, I think I have settled on what I want. Did I want to go for a ride? Well. NPD is usually an occasion for a ride somewhere but for reasons I can’t articulate today was not the day. I dunno why. I didn’t have an idea of where to go and the GG has been traveling for five days or so. It was beautiful hanging around here this morning. Sunny although it eventually changed over to heavy rain and maybe even a peal of thunder? We weren’t sure but definitely not a meteorite.

Grateful for no significant gifts (except the yet-to-be-ordered TEAL couch). In fact I was able to actually off-load some oregano, acquired via an early pandemic online ordering snafu.

At least nobody has COVID this year including Ragtime Cowboy Joe here. Knock on wood big time.

On Spotify? Sons of the Pioneers.

Sigh. It was a time-lapse on facebook and it showed a light plummeting to the earth at the end. I really shouldn’t comment on facebook at all. It just gets me in trouble. But really. Some people thought it was the “green comet”. Others thought it was an airplane landing. Or the ISS.

Comet? Nope. Because of a lot of ancient art, people seem to think when a comet comes by you can walk outside your house and look up to see a spectacular sight in the sky. A big star-like object with a brilliant tail. Guess what? We went to Crazy Old Florida during the last orbit of Halley’s Comet. In order to see the comet, the GG got up ultra early many days and drove miles out into the interior, where he set up his telescope. That was the only way he could see the comet. Not to mention that when you view a comet through a telescope, you don’t see a big star-like object with a brilliant tail whizzing by. You see a very small object in the sky. It will not be apparently moving and you MAY be able to see a sort of tail. Airliner? Nope. No airports near there. And the ISS (another guess) doesn’t LAND.

A few years ago (pre-COVID) it was this time of year and we were having dinner here at the Landfill with our mouse and there was a thunder-like sound and maybe even a flash of light. We occasionally have thundersnow here but it was a cloudless night so no snow, right? As it turned out, a meteorite crashed onto an iced-over lake somewhere in the general area. It happened to be my birthday that day and that made it one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. What a trip! (Today is not my birthday.)

I wish I hadn’t commented because I got the usual crapola from the original poster. But really. Most commenters seemed to have no clue about y’know SCIENCE?

The pic is our Softy Beanbag and her twin, acquired after much searching by the GG.

Mr. Golden Sun shone down on us ALL DAY! I took this pic almost an hour after sunset, which was 5:25 PM or so. As you can see, the western sky is still light.

Me? My major accomplishment today was to clean out the “hall” closet. What I am calling the “hall” is a small sorta square area with doors opening onto three bedrooms, the bathroom, and the small closet I cleaned out. It isn’t really a hall. Anyway, I decluttered cleaning products that we don’t use (Pledge anyone?) and vacuumed the floor, then slathered it with Spot Shot carpet cleaner. And how many odd light bulbs do we have? You do not wanna know and I did not get rid of those but what a mess.

If I am a bit behind my yearly Goodreads goal (100) it is because David Copperfield was my second read of the year. 1100 pages on my phone. I am a fast reader but I also have a full time career and household chores and yada yada.

So, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon Copperhead in the fall. I had NO CLUE at the time but it is a retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield. I found that out via my blahggy friend Stargazer so of course I had to re-read David Copperfield. Problem? I figgered out PDQ that I had not READ David Copperfield before. I DID read Nicholas Nickleby so I guess I was thinking of that.

So of COURSE I had to read David Copperfield. And yes! Demon Copperhead is David Copperfield. Except with modern day pharmaceutical addiction and the broken US foster care system. Not that England in that era cared for orphaned children any better than our “system” does but that’s part of the plot in both novels. As always, that’s not to say that all foster parents are bad.

This is not from today. Today was not foggy.

I had Meijer-type errands today, like cereal that the Plum doesn’t carry (you get to guess what kind of cereal🐸). Meijer is a beloved big box grock store and more. I like to do those runs by 7:00 AM. I dragged myself outta the rack extra early and checked my phone weather apps a bazillion times during my neighborhood perambulation. It was changeable. Old Man Winter was threatening snow. Or not. He wasn’t specifying accumulation and it was DRY… Until… I mobilized for my grock run, got into Cygnus (egregiously idling) and noticed water droplets on zee veeendsheeld. Okay (peering). Is this snow or is it SNOW? I set off anyway and it turned out to be snow and that was intermittent. Dry pavement all the way there and back. Old Man Winter can be such a trickster.

When I got back, it was still pitch black and they were just picking up my garbage cart so I met them down in the street to wheel it up. And then I schlepped my grocks inside and decamped to the Green Couch to read social media and start on word puzzles and my work day. It was *still* pitch black (and dry) and very cozy hanging out watching my neighbors stir before Mr. Golden Sun came up. Although he did not show his face today, not even for one second.

I started doing early morning grock runs because of covid. I am still concerned about covid but am mainly continuing to do my pre-dawn runs because there are no crowds or traffic anywhere EVER. I couldn’t really do this when I worked at Cubelandia unless I either wasn’t buying perishables or the temperature was okay for keeping perishables in my vee-hickle all day. I coulda put a bag of grocks in the work fridge but knowing me, I’d probably fergit to take it home that evening.

The days are getting marginally longer. Sunset is marching along rapidly, a minute or so later every day. Sunrise inches earlier at this time of year, 8:04 for days, then 8:03 for a few more. I think tomorrow it comes up at 8:02.

This is what I encountered when I got to the Plum this morning when it opened, which is right about at sunrise. So dark and gloomy I think the streetlights were still on. 40 degrees though. I waltzed on in with a turtleneck sweater, vest, skirt, and tights. No hat or glubs. We often have days like this at this time of year (if Old Man Winter isn’t dumping snow on us). This one did not particularly improve and when I went out to roll my carts out to the street, it was in the mid 30s and the wind had kicked up.

I was so full of myself yesterday with that mis-sent text. When she (I still think she’s female) didn’t totally go away (told me what a kind person I was a few times🤢), I ghosted her. Enough is enough and I don’t need any new friends. Also suspicious is that her area code matches mine but she claims to live in New York. THAT wouldn’t be all that unusual but she is from another country? I could see this going quickly into the territory of asking for money or whatever. Nope. I did NOT give out any identifying information.

And then. At work, somebody somewhere in the world (maybe India?) accidentally copied a group email address (1400 members) on a message intended for two people. I have no clue what the group is for but I am apparently a member. Who knew? The offending sender apologized almost immediately and told people not individually copied to ignore it. But people DON’T READ so for an hour or so various idiots kept replying to it wondering why they had received it and asking to be removed. I ignored it. Jeebus, people. READ!!!

We’ll talk about remote couch buying another day. Note that I am doing it remotely not because of COVID but because I HATE furniture stores.

Received an odd text message this afternoon with just this photo. Most of my text messages are from the beach urchins and most of those are about the word puzzles we do every day. I fairly frequently text with The King of Cryptic Text Messages (aka the GG) and sometimes with others. And then there are spam messages, which THANKFULLY I do not get a lot of.

So here was this photo with no text. Was it spam? Well, no I didn’t think it was. It was from my area code. I sometimes get text messages or calls from my area code and whatever you call the middle three digits of my phone number and I KNOW they are spam but this was just the area code. Also, I have never received a whine bottle photo from a spammer. This was more like someone trying to text a friend something like, “I am at the Whine Castle. Should I buy this?”

I could’ve ignored it but I plunged in and replied that I thought it was mis-sent (except that got autocorrected to mid-sent🐽). A few back and forth messages ensued: Are you so-and-so? No but the first name is close [a clue that I was also female and therefore not a particular threat]. In the end I was told I was a kind person and I reciprocated with wishes that she enjoy the whine. A small interaction but I felt good at the end of it.

The King of Cryptic Text Messages? Jeez. Like the time he was walking around town and I kept texting him and then CALLING him and he didn’t respond and he didn’t respond and… This was back when Twitter was new and it turned out he was TWEETING his replies at me🤡. Then there was the time he was texting with an “emotionally fragile” relative and that relative was getting freaked out because she didn’t understand what he was saying and interpreted it as threatening in some way. He was driving (I knooooowwww) so I grabbed his phone and headed the whole thing off by explaining that he had a weird style of text messaging. I love him anyway.

OMG! HB to my sister-in-law The Beautiful Gay! ❤️❤️❤️ The Twinz of Terror are celebrating with her.

P.S. Do you know your LATA?

I thought the GG was gonna take off on a boondoggle today but instead he continued to be totally wrapped up in computer / phone flinging. I dunno why I put “phone” into a separate category since the iPhone functions as a pocket-sized computer.

This display is the result of today’s activities. There are a bunch of phones that aren’t shown. One of the laptops in yesterday’s photoooo is also in this one. It’s the 12″ G4 powerbook at the top, a beach urchin’s, not mine They all look like they are in fine working order but some have more functionality than others. Like one has a dead battery. I’m not sure if any of them can run the latest operating system. The one on the bottom lost its sound at some point. Whatever, they are all slated for the glue factory. Well, maybe all but the one on the right, which is being used to stream satty-lite radio when I’m not using Spotify with my iPhone (a system that is MUCH more user friendly, just sayin’).

BTW: I am not trying to pimp my blahg here. I mean if you are reading this, you are already AT my blahg for better or worse. But I also posted the pic on instagram and if you embiggen the photo, you can see the ababsurdo.com url. I well know that my blahg is just a big bunch o’ blather and occasionally toy with changing the tag line to “Watching Paint Dry”. But hey, it’s for meeeee to do a daily brain dump. Mostly it’s higgledy-piggledy. Occasionally I actually have a good idea and sorta nail it. Similar to iPhone photos, if you write umpteen bazillion blahg entries a small percentage of them are actually decent. “Hydroxychloroquine Blues” in April 2020 comes to mind. I was soooooo angry! [ugh, search doesn’t find it. Maybe I misspelled it?] Downloaded my blahg xml database and here it is!

Anyway, the GG set this display up.

Cheers and here’s to flinging! -KW🧡🧡🧡

How many old laptops and iPhones can a couple of baggy old people hang on to and for how long? The latest flinging prodject has involved wiping old phones and laptops of everything and turning them into the local Apple Store.

I’m not sure how many of these devices have been flung. I’ve been staying outta the fray. One box went over to the Apple store this morning. They will salvage anything salvageable and recycle most anything that’s not. We hope they are doing all this anyway. They actually got excited about this old stuff, particularly an original iPad from 2010. There’s more to fling…

I’m not sure if any of the devices in the pic were in today’s box. Most likely none of them. This was taken at the moomincabin in 2003 or thereabouts and includes my original 12″ PowerBook and other devices belonging to my daughters, nieces, and The Commander. Mine was definitely a 2003 model. I opened up a New Yorker (dead tree version, now I read it on the internet) early that year and there was ad for it and I HAD TO HAVE one!

It would be PERFECT for my then “job”, which was youth theatre administrator and I was forever lugging big binders full of paper to theatres and rehearsal spaces all around town. I LUSTED after this thing. I figgered the GG would balk at letting me buy one (I didn’t get paid a lot then and we were into the college years) but I REALLY wanted a laptop for my “job”. In the end, The Commander bought me one. This is a long story involving an overheard conversation, an icy road delay, Guinea Pig, and a quick trip to kzoo to drop off my mouse to visit her sister. It’s probably the last time I let my mom buy me anything more expensive than lunch and believe me I pay it forward whenever I can.

Anyway, that’s where it all started. Eventually power books morphed into MacBooks and I have owned multiple ones over the years and umpteen bazillion iPhones, although I’ve been getting along with my last one for a few years, like since pre-COVID. I’m not sure the GG has ever bought a post-2003 laptop but he has adopted or repurposed a few of my old ones. He likes great big “mother ships” and if I get it right, we have two of those.

What we did not fling? Two Apple II+ computers from 1979. They still work. You can play Sticky Bear ABC and write little BASIC programs🤣

My Pandemic Stash has left the building. The beach urchins paid a visit today and one of them took the box and most of its contents. She left olive oil, shelf-stable milk, Old Bay seasoning, and I fergit what else. These are things that I have purchased recently and actually have plans to use, i.e., I am almost out of olive oil. Most of what she took were duplicates or triplicates of stuff I already have.

This box (and it is a beautiful one) has been hanging around for almost THREE YEARS! When covid first forced most of us into isolation, getting grocks was difficult. My grocery worker brought us a couple big loads of grocks, then she got covid. No masks in those days, in fact some stores were PROHIBITING their employees from wearing them. I should qualify my earlier statement: she THOUGHT she had covid. Covid tests were as hard to come by as masks in March 2020. She had very mild symptoms (thank you very much) but obviously couldn’t help me get grocks. Or go to work.

Trying to schedule grocery pickups at the big grocery stores was near impossible back then. You might be able to find a slot a week or so out. (I’m sure I blahgged about this a LOT back then.) Enter some of our small specialty grocery stores which began to offer curbside, masked pickup. Sparrow Meat Market (which also has LOTS of good produce and other stuff) and Monahan’s Seafood down in Kerrytown. The Whine Castle over here on the west side. I could get darn near everything I needed and Sparrow Market is where the box came from. It’s a random box but it did actually include a bag of gorgeous Yukon gold potatoes.

I got back to in-person shopping a long time ago but the box has been actively used for overflow grocks. This fall it gained another function, which was to block Rooooomba from trying to go down the step to the “foyer”. She doesn’t actually try to go down steps. She stops and sings a Sad Song and I have to rescue her. I’ll have to find a new strategy for that. I will probably get the box back but without a whole bunch of heavy grocks in it, it won’t block Rooooomba.

I hope it’s okay to tell about this very early probably-covid case. I have generally not talked about other people’s covid on my blahg but by now just about everybody I know (including me) has had it and it’s really old news. It was so much scarier back then and I remember getting up every morning and (being a mom) anxiously awaiting a text indicating all was well. When she returned to work it was a different place with required masks and other protocols. Can I just say to anyone who cares to listen? When you are shopping and choose not to wear a mask and need to ask for help with something, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t get right up in the employee’s face and breathe on them, especially if you are coughing, etc. That person is somebody’s child/parent/grandparent/spouse/whatever. Don’t get them sick. Thank you!

Double Disclaimer: 1) This is another old pic from 2016. 2) It is a lie for today’s date because this particular astronomical phenomenon doesn’t happen for another few weeks. IF Mr. Golden Sun makes an appearance and that is a BIG IF!

Incremental progress today. Cleaned up a Greek olive “spill” in the refrigimatator. When you get your olives from the olive “bar”, don’t let the plastic container tip onto its side. For days every time I opened the fridge I saw it in its tipped-over state. Dooya think I had the presence of mind to put it back upright? Nope. The fun part of this is every time I have to clean the bottom of the fridge, I have to pull it out 8-10 inches from the wall. Which is okay, just a pain. All clean now.

Then I vacuumed the (carpeted) stairs to the Dungeon. I’ve been looking at little bits of debris (and a few spider webs) for WEEKS now. One of my FIVE (count ’em) vacuum cleaners is a purple Dyson cordless thingy and that’s what I used. Actually I have two of those, one we take to the moomincabin in the summer. So I guess I actually have six. Plus 2-3 more at the moomin.

I have a love-hate relationship with vacuum cleaners. I love Purply and Rooooomba (who I also ran today). Vacs with cords drive me NUTS but sometimes they are necessary for certain jobs! The Cyclonic Storm (big upright Hoover) is a pain in the butt but I’ve pretty much off-loaded that one to the GG. The ancient Electrolux canister vac is a workhorse and I used to use it on the dungeon stairs but Purply is so much easier. The shop vac is great when it’s needed, which is not very often, thank you very much.

Like the GG, I remember my dad was always happy to run the upright vacuum when need be back in the day. And back in the day, we had a terrifying old vacuum my step-grandma Bolette gave us when we were first married. In its heyday it could propel itself but by the time I “inherited” it, it was just a beast. She also gave us an old TV that emitted smoke the first (and only) time we tried to turn it on. I loved her ANYWAY! She was one of the few adults I knew when I was a child who would ask me INTELLIGENT questions and LISTEN TO THE ANSWERS!

So that was my day. Pretty damn boring but sometimes that’s okay. Love y’all, KW 🧡🧡🧡

Gray gray gray gray. Every day. Rain or no rain. Bitsy bits of snow. But mostly gray. We’re missing the full moon (Ice or Hunter?) because gray. It’s okay. I’m not really upset by that. I’m more upset by the ludicrous polly-tickle discussions that keep going on around here but I’ll TRY to tackle that topic another day. I’ll just say I’m weary of it all. Facts and data before discussion please. From reputable sources.

The GG is in my good graces this evening largely because he flung some stuff today! He took two collections to the Scrap Box and they happily accepted them. One was a bunch (30 pounds?) of hardware – screws and nuts and bolts and things. The other was pieces of leather.

When I was a small child in Sault Ste. Siberia, we lived in a shabby little bungalow. The second story had sloping walls and in one room, several big drawers set in to the eaves. In at least one of those drawers was a collection of leather scraps. My dad’s journey from Army Air Corps pilot and flight instructor to bank CEO was an interesting one. I won’t go into it in detail for now but one of the stops along the way was tannery worker. I mean factory worker in the old tannery in Sault Ste. Siberia. It closed long ago and at one point was an EPA superfund site.

By the time I was born, dad had hired on as a teller at “his dad’s bank” and successfully completed “banking school” somewhere in Wisconsin. As my grandfather had done, dad worked his way up from there, not without some interesting twists and turns. Dad was a great banker and well regarded in our little city.

I’m gonna guess that The Commander may have originally had designs on the leather scraps. But she worked until shortly before I was born and then she was raising kids and she eventually started a new career as a teacher and the leather scraps have been moved from house to house to house until they finally landed in the Landfill Dungeon. The GG asked me if he could get rid of them and I said, “YES!” I’m sorry to any of The Comm’s grandchildren if they had designs on them but I know that NOBODY has time to play with them or space to store them. The Scrap Box was happy to take them on and I bet they will go to someone who will USE them for something creative. Or store them for another umpteen bazillion years as people will do with craft materials 🤣 Either way they are now somebody else’s problem.

The Snow Witch pic is from 2016. As I said earlier there is NO SNOW here at all right now. Temps are on the warm side of normal. Old Man Winter did spit some snow at us today but not enough to stick and at 37 degrees or whatever anything that hit the ground melted immediately.

I never know what the GG is gonna get into next. Today there was a lot of glass-clanking going on in his lair. When that was done, a box of empty OLD booze bottles was on the kitchen counter. Apparently he had de-cluttered The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Faaaararms.

Note that most of these empty bottles have been around long enough that they have collected dust. Meaning this was quite a few YEARS worth of empty bottles. They were mostly from fancy sipping bourbon but for whatever reason, a NON-empty bottle of vodka also emerged. We rarely drink vodka but I seem to have something like THREE bottles of it around right now. I once went on a de-cluttering rampage and dumped the dregs out of a bunch of liqueur bottles. We don’t drink those either but occasionally they are recipe ingredients. I decided that from then on, if I needed a small amount of a liqueur, I would buy an airplane sized bottle of whatever from the Whine Castle. And that’s what I have done except that I haven’t DONE it because I haven’t encountered a recipe that needed a liqueur since then. I’ll never forget the time I asked them to help me find kirsch (for a dessert type thing a beach urchin was cooking). They sell EVERYTHING there but they struggled with that one but in the end we were successful.

I can’t quite throw out the vodka but I don’t want it around so what to do with it? I’ve tried to give it away but people either don’t want it or seem to feel like they might be depriving us (not). A few weeks ago a penne alla vodka recipe flew by and I decided I would COOK the vodka away. Penne alla vodka is basically pasta with tomato sauce (and vodka). So I am making that tonight and I will seek out other recipes that call for vodka.

At the end of the day (and still) the GG is working on de-cluttering hardware collections. Nails and all kinds of other stuff. I’ll take it.

I read a book by Samuel Delaney back in the Jurassic Age, Triton. I loved it. This author created a world where our earth and moon and Mars were populated and there were well developed colonies on some of the rocky moons that circle the gas giants. The book was set mainly on Neptune’s moon Triton.

I loved this book when I read it back in the Jurassic Age. I loved it so much more now. As always, there were many things I didn’t understand the first time I read it (it was first published in 1976 or so). I understood most of it better now than I did back then. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t remember very well like gravity cuts and a crazy trip to a restaurant on our earth. I didn’t even remember that the main character traveled to Earth. The worst thing is that I couldn’t find the book at first. Turns out it has been renamed “Trouble on Triton” and eventually became available as an ebook.

So a couple of points that stand out. One. The author used the n-word a few times in the book. That took me aback a bit but I finally googled the author and discovered that he is a Black man. Thank god for the google. I wouldn’t have known that back in the Jurassic Age without going to the “libes” or whatever.

Two. The author includes many many erudite topics in this book although he doesn’t dwell on them ad nausem. One of the things he briefly touched on made me turn on my newly gifted Spotify app! He mentioned the 20th century composer Anton Webern. I thought “I know about him”. So I Spotified him. One of these days when the GG is not around, I will play his music. I don’t think the GG would like Webern butcha nevah know. But I think I want to experience him alone.

This is a very disjointed entry but if you are in any way shape or form a sci-fi buff, this is a book worth looking into.

The pic? My mouse in her handmade raincoat and “matching” grocery bag. The GG was looking for a pic of this raincoat to send to a hiking buddy, who has also made her own raincoat. I have actually made MY own raincoat too but it was back in the day and the fabric wasn’t all that great so I don’t consider it a successful prodject. I *think* my raincoat fabric had a snake skin design.

The GG took down the xmas tree today – during an all-day rainstorm 🤣🤣🤣 So I guess another holiday season is in the wraps.

For the last week or so or maybe even a FEW WEEKS, every time I walked across the front room, something would rattly-tap with every step I took. Whut? This morning I finally got fed up enough to try to seek out the cause. It was Dino-tree-us here tapping her tail against the wall. She doesn’t usually do that so I must have inadvertently repositioned her when I put out my Santa collection. Which I put away yesterday and I never posted a pic but you didn’t really miss anything.

So the GG got the tree out and vacuumed so the back room is back in order more or less. And then I heard him on the phone saying something to someone (probably the Uncly Uncle) about how he’d “like to have it but he didn’t know where he would put it”. I galumphed into the kitchen and said, “NOPE!” I dunno what it was, somehow I thought it might be a chair. It apparently wasn’t. But we need to get RID of furniture.

After he was off the phone I “confronted” him about this and was told I shouldn’t be eavesdropping! EAVESDROPPING? LOLOLOL! When he is on the phone my super ears can hear him from wherever I am in the house. I DO NOT HAVE TO EAVESDROP BECAUSE HE IS LOUD!!! Eavesdropping? OMG! Anyway, NO NEW furniture of any sort is coming in to this house unless one or two pieces go. That didn’t apply to the Coffee Station of course. That has been in my dreams for YEARS and solves a long-standing problem.

And then? Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go. After being off beginning Friday the 23rd. It was fairly quiet as a lot of folks are still not back to work or even India yet. But I found plenty to do.

We are settling into evening with a Clannad mix on Spotify 🧡🧡🧡

P.S. We got Dino-tree-us from one of John Leidy’s Ann Arbor shops. Miss him so much. My yooperland parents loved to shop there (as did I). Mr. Leidy always remembered them when they came in and it was not because they bought a lot of expensive items.

Last book of 2022? Carrie. You know the one. Don’t take Carrie to the prom. This was a re-read. If I’m not mistaken it was Stephen King’s first novel? Or close to that. I saw the movie first with UKW in a Sault Ste. Siberia theatre. We probably went to the Back Door barrroooom afterward.

I’m not sure how Carrie flew by me but I decided it deserved a re-read. I was not disappointed. I am not a huge King fan. He’s a wonderful writer. It’s just not one of my preferred genres, whatever that really means. As so often happens when I re-read something decades after my first read, I understand a LOT more than when I first read it.

First book of 2023? The Weight of Blood. Guess what? It’s a re-telling of Carrie (and homage to King who the author greatly admires). Discovering it is what prompted me to re-read Carrie when I did (Carrie was already on my TBR). In this story, the Carrie character is Black (I guess I’m using capitals today), and racial issues are a central point. The author is not quite King but she’s pretty darn good and I greatly enjoyed the book.

Postscript. The GG does not like it when I talk about this next, I guess because he thinks I am bragging? I am not. But several times when I was young, complete strangers walked up to me, like in the grocery store or wherever and told me I looked like Carrie. I mean the actress who played her. I don’t suppose if a movie is made from The Weight of Blood, I’ll get told that and not solely because I am OLD. Then again, a Black man I had a “hi” acquaintance with long ago once told me I looked like Cicely Tyson. And then there was the guy who walked up to me in Kroger and asked me if I was a “lady minister”. These things do not boost my ego (the lady minister thing was just plain weird). What they do is CRACK ME UP!!!

I did another re-read of note recently but I’ll save that for another day.

The 2022 edition via LSSU (the college in my home town). (Google “LSSU banished words”.) Okay, I always love this list but I don’t always agree with every single word so here are my opinions on this year’s list:

“GOAT”: yes yes yes yes, this should be banned. This word or acronym or whatever it is has been the bane of my xword existence over the last year. I CAN NEVER REMEMBER WHAT THE HECK IT STANDS FOR!!! I think it finally clicked the last time I encountered it.

“Inflection point”? I have no strong opinions about this. Apparently people are using it in place of “pivot”? Who knew? I am still a pivoter.

“Quiet quitting”: I have read some articles about this and my reaction is a big meh although I don’t totally understand it. I have complicated thoughts about this but the short story is that I don’t think employers should EVER require people to work more than 40 hours, at least not for extended periods of time. Mine doesn’t. If I got pressure to put more time in on a regular basis, I would just plain QUIT albeit probably quietly. I know not everyone has that privilege. I certainly didn’t back in the day. But also, what do you do when your new boss installs bedrooms in your office?

“GASLIGHTING”? Really? Gaslighting is a real technique often used in abusive relationships. I was the butt-end (not gonna use “victim” here) of it when a former in-law hired lawyers to harass me after The Commander died. They did their best to make me feel like I had done something wrong. I had followed her simple instructions to the letter and in the end I realized that my only wrongdoing was that I was not born clutching a law degree in my clenched little newborn fist. I was never in any real danger but some people are, depending on a whole bunch of variables.

“Moving forward”: My only issue with this one is personal in that someone I once knew overused it ad nauseam.

“Amazing”: I hate “awesome” even more but it was probably on some previous list. Superlatives (and these are superlatives in a way) usually drive me nuts. Way overused.

“Does that make sense?” I actually use THIS a lot at work when I am trying to explain a complex piece of functionality to a very specific audience, usually to make sure *I* understand it myself. It’s what works for me and I’ll keep using it, at least in that limited context.

“Irregardless”: Isn’t and hasn’t EVER been a word. People are still using it?

“Absolutely”: This one doesn’t really bother me depending… Sometimes the word “yes” can be mis-heard depending on the means of communication. Pretty hard to mis-hear “absolutely”.

“It is what it is”: I agree with all they say about this but probably won’t stop using it.

I sooooo agree with the statement “Stop resorting to imprecise, trite, and meaningless words and terms of seeming convenience!” Yes yes yes yes! Plain, SIMPLE English is always best to convey a point. Start using vague or fancy words and they can mean different things to different people. And yes, “gaslighting” fits that category but I still like it, probably because it’s personal to me. Language is weird but that makes it interesting.

Gratuitous pic of my lizard taking off to meet friends downtown in The Indefatigable on another New Year’s, 15 years ago. I think she returned to SanFran the next day. And I began my second full-time professional career. This New Year’s is warm, gray, and rainy and we didn’t have to take anybody to the airport.

There’s this meme going around (maybe you’ve seen it) in which a person is trying to decide what to wear to their living room on New Year’s Eve. Except maybe they won’t even bother to go to their living room. I hate memes in general but this one resonates with me because I couldn’t care less about staying up to ring in the new year.

I expected to haaaaannng around the Landfill this evening. The GG would watch football and I would put together a shrimp dish with a couple lobster tails on the side. Text messages this morning! Moom, do you guys want to come over here for dinner? 🐭 and 🦝 will be there. Well. I admit I panicked just a wee bit at first. Wait. What? Someone is inviting us to their house for NYE? I hedged a bit and then I full on got into my brain that this invitation did not involve driving an hour over to megalopolis. It’s a quick mile or two drive over to our own little city’s Waterhill neighborhood to our daughter’s newly acquired house. Our other daughter is a few more miles (like six) from her house in the country a bit north of town.

Well, yes of course we’ll be there! They cooked. I brought ‘hattan stuff (it’s okay, we only had our usual couple and are home safely). We had a great time and it’s so much fun having them so close. I was always happy for them to pursue their lives elsewhere but it’s cool that they have migrated back to our town. I moved away from the yooperland as a young adult and did not return. Except to spend time at the moominbeach, which my generation and beyond now own.

I did spend NYE in a living room. Actually two. The living room in the pic, where we had dinner and a couple cocktails, and my own living room where I am now sitting on the Green Couch looking through our outdoor xmas lights at whatever is happening in the street, which is not much. Oh, here comes the moped guy.

Happy New Year to y’all, KW 🧡🧡🧡

Here is what the counter to the right of my kitchen sink looks like today. After we set up the Coffee Station and I did some further de-cluttering and rearranging.

One of the reasons I redid the kitchen (besides that it was FUGLY as all getout) is to get more counter space. And it HAS more counter space but people keep buying appliances to put on the counters. All three coffee appliances are now set up on the Coffee Station. The Cuisinart will live there forever. I don’t really use it all that often any more but I DOOOOO use it. The canisters (red) were hanging out under all of the Carefully Curated hanging tools clutter and I like them a lot better down at the end.

One item that doesn’t really belong on the counter is the HUGE container of oregano to the right of the Cuisinart. You may have to embiggen to pick that out. It was an early pandemic ordering snafu. I got better at carefully checking quantities throughout the pandemic but I am still not perfect. This was not as bad as the 18 cranberry goat cheese logs but I offloaded most of those to local friends/family via Facebook/Instagram. Of course I am not ordering as many things online now. If I need something like oregano (or cranberry goat cheese logs), I get it at the plum. Of course I obviously DO NOT NEED oregano.

I also eyeballed what was still leftover from xmas dinner, etc. We are almost at the end. Most of the leftover dcuk at this point is legs and wings and I’m not gonna mess with trying to get eensy weensy slivers of meat off those so they are in the freezer ready to go in the garbage cart next week.

That is about it. It was a rainy 50 DEGREE day, dreary but warm and I am feeling like I am actually a few inches ahead for the moment. KNOCK ON WOOD BIG TIME!