Random bits of my so-called life.

It came today! Ordered yesterday and shipped from Kentucky. I’ve had this exact thingy in my head ever since we gutted the Landfill Chitchen but it hasn’t been until recently that this actual form factor started cropping up in my searches. Bonus that it came in red. My kitchen is white and teal (backsplash tile, not shown here) with red accents (and clutter). Certified Kitchen Lady replaced my red accents with yellow for photo shoots back when they were entering it into design contests and yellow works as an accent color too. And yes they really did enter it into contests and no it didn’t ever win 🤣

What pushed me over the edge to finally ACT on this thingy was that I received yet ANOTHER countertop appliance for xmas. A Keurig musheen. This was a wonderful gift but I was like where am I gonna put it? My kitchen is NOT LARGE. That led to yesterday’s outlet installation and today’s kitchen “island” delivery. Eventually the coffee grinder will join these appliances. Bonuses are the drawer to put small accessories in, the wire basket that provides a place to put fruit and the wine rack, which I am using now for a rolling pin too pretty to hide away but didn’t really have a designated “home”.

Big thanks to the GG for installing the new outlet and assembling the cart. Also breaking down a couple of big cardboard boxes. Fortunately the recycle went out today for tomorrow’s pickup so that won’t be haaaaannging around. Quite a bit of styrofoam too. I can’t recycle that in the curbside cart so I shut my eyes and trashed it. Sorry. Speaking of recycling, I am well aware that kcups can add a lot of crapola to the waste stream so I will definitely research re-usable kcup paraphernalia.

Oh yeah! Roooomba fits under the coffee station and you can lock its wheels so no chance Rooomba will push it down the stairs like she once did with the stool to the right of the coffee station.

When we gutted the Landfill Chitchen back in 2014, right at the end of the Polar Vortex winter, I knew that I wanted an outlet in this wall. For whatever reason, an outlet was not installed. We have outlets everywhere else but not here. I’m not sure how this specification was missed but as much as anyone I blame myself for not keeping track. I was working at Cubelandia back then so wasn’t around and TP was not as rabid about wanting an outlet there. And overall, our kitchen reno folks were top notch over and above. Started early and finished in three weeks! And Jerry the carpenter managed to safely preserve a bit of old wall with “Mouse” written on it by our once 2-1/2-year-old. (The GG: Jerry is a genius.)

For reasons that I will divulge later this week (hopefully tomorrow), this issue came to the surface on xmas and here is Himself, TP, installing an outlet. This prodject would be waaaaay beyond my skills and talents. He managed to locate a stud, make an outlet-sized/shaped hole without destroying any drywall and installed the new outlet without electrocuting himself. Yes, he turned off power to wherever he needed to. About the only thing I did besides serve as a “noisy paintbrush” was to locate pictures of the gutted chitchen from back in 2014 to help him figger where the studs, etc., were. He called me from the hardware store (only one trip!) to ask if the switch plates were white or ivory. Well. Dirty but white. To match the white cabinets.

So yay for TP. Such a handy guy.

After this and quite a bit of rummaging for lunch, TP crashed and burned in the back room for a couple hours. This was a longer nap than the one he took yesterday after walking to Dexter and most of the way back. 15 miles and I picked him up on Stein Rd. a couple miles from home.

I make Chex mix twice a year, Thanksgiving and xmas. I have posted about this before. This year…

Thanksgiving: I did not have any seasoned salt. It was Wednesday afternoon before tday. (If I make it any sooner than that, “people” disappear it.) There was NO WAY I was gonna go to Kroger or wherever. So I googled seasoned salt and made my own. I dunno. The finished product tasted “off” to me. Bitter. I figgered it was my homemade seasoned salt. I did eat some anyway but then when the GG left on a junket two days later, I dumped whatever was left into the compost.

xmas: I had real seasoned salt so what could go wrong? I didn’t eat any until the day after xmas. It STILL tasted “off” to me. Obviously I couldn’t blame the seasoned salt and this time I managed to isolate the Real Culprit. You can make Chex mix out of all kinds of different ingredients. I mean it helps if you actually use CHEX CEREAL but I long ago switched out pretzels for sesame sticks. And that’s what I used this year. Problem? I was using a bag of sesame sticks I bought and opened LAST YEAR! Guess what? They were RANCID. Thinking back on it, my Super Nose* was telling me that but for once in my life, I DIDN’T PAY ATTENTION TO IT! 🐽🐽🐽

At least this didn’t make anyone sick! (I hope!) Just a horrible bitter, acrid taste. I put the rest of the sesame sticks AND the Chex mix in the compost and advised those who took some home to do the same. YUCK YUCK YUCK! I AM SORRY! I AM SORRY! I AM SORRY! LESSON LEARNED. Hopefully the baked brie en croute I ordered online helped make up for that.

*My Super Nose: Years ago, arriving at the Landfill from Up North somewhere, I was greeted by a college-age beach urchin asking, “Moom can you use your Super Nose to figure out what that smell is in the refrigerator?” KW [sniff sniff]: “Old dead broccoli.”

Pay no attention to Froooogy. He is dressed up fancily, using my striped witch tights as a scarf(?) and wearing a pair of my UNDERWEAR! Black Smartwool bikini style. TMI? Guess who dressed him up.

I never comment on next door neighbor. No matter how carefully people choose their words when posting, the comments quickly find a way to go south into a cesspool.

This weekend a poster launched into a kvetch about how the city was not clearing snow out of the bike lanes. This was posted only 24 hours after a snow event. We didn’t get a LOT of snow (2-3 inches?) but high winds created havoc for the plows, quickly re-filling the streets with snow. This person apparently does not drive an automotive vee-hickle, choosing to bike downtown to their work. That’s FINE but isn’t necessarily a viable option in the immediate aftermath of a snow storm, depending on your bicycle and your skills and about a bazillion other variables.

People kvetched about the city snow removal crews (and that service *is* better some times than others in my experience). They pointed fingers at each other for various modes of chosen transportation. Some proudly proclaimed that they don’t own a car. Others wished they *could* go car-free but can’t for various reasons. One guy helps his elderly mother get around town. Been there, done that, car needed. Yada yada.

During this same storm, Sault Ste. Siberia got THREE FEET!!! also with high winds. I didn’t see ONE Soo facebook post complaining that they couldn’t ride their bike downtown. People were checking up on others. EVERYTHING was closed down, even xmas church services. The idea was to keep EMERGENCY RESPONDERS SAFE, allowing them the space to do their jobs, aka HELP PEOPLE without having to navigate a bunch of buried, abandoned vee-hickles.

Comparing one community’s response to three feet of snow to another’s response to (maybe) three inches left a really bad taste in my mouth. I FULLY SUPPORT efforts to improve transit infrastructure for cyclists. But snowstorms are what we used to call “an act of God”, right? Life sometimes has to stop or at least slow down to give those whose job it is to clean up the mess the space to do it. Our little storm was annoying but we have a wonderful bus system, it was up and running, and seems like this person could have taken a bus. Patience please!

Can you believe this is the only pic I took on this xmas day? Good mornin’ Mr. Zip Zip Zip. (Embiggen if you dare.)

Can you believe I also spent a fairly significant amount of time on xmas dealing with banking fraud? Yes, really. My main bank texted me yesterday that a fraudulent transaction may have happened. Well. Not only was there THAT fraudulent transaction, there were four more. They were all on my debit card and all for the same company. Fingertip axolotls are one of the items it sells. Cute but NO THANKS! The bank let four transactions go through before they notified me. I canceled the card before the fifth (and largest) transaction cleared. I had very minimal trouble with debit card fraud until the pandemic but I have had a few issues since then. Consequently I don’t use my debit card any more except that it is still attached to a couple autopays (will have to change that). I use a credit card for in-person transactions now and have an alert set up so that I remember to pay the balance weekly.

To dispute these fraudulent charges I had to go through a long online form, mostly radio button choices but I also had to tell them the last time I used the card in person, where, and how much. I could not remember or find that. In the end, I downloaded ALL of my 2022 card transactions into a CSV, uploaded it into Excel, and sorted it. Bingo. May, gasoline, 40-something dollars. So my dispute is filed and we’ll see what happens. It’s $220-something total so it won’t break the bank if I don’t “win” (but I think I will) but jeebus. Even getting to this point in the journey was fraught with server errors and inscrutable usability issues and whatnot. I finally had to switch to a different browser to get it done.

Oh don’t worry. Once I got serious about this, it maybe took 20 minutes. I am a ninja when it comes to beating up on computers.

We had eggs benny this morning, various snacks throughout the day, and Mr. Zip cooked dcuks (two) for dinner. He also plowed snow for us, the next door neighbors who are across the pond for the holidays, then put his Santa hat on and plowed our block’s sidewalks on both sides of the street.

Ho Ho Ho!

My car can sometimes talk too much. Lemme see. You can see that I got parked at the Plum promptly at 8:00 AM today and the temperature was four degrees, which was an improvement over the minus one of the night before. And the interior is set to 85 via remote start. All other settings are normal EXCEPT this screen doesn’t show the taaaaar light, which came on as we were driving home from across town last night. It’s all right, just frigid weather. My Subie app also reported the issue, which is the first I’d known about it since I wasn’t driving.

What I don’t like is that the big weather alert screen comes back on every 5-10 minutes or so and I can’t make it go away and not come back. As The Commander would always say, since I was a very small child I did NOT want to be told ANYTHING more than ONCE! (Spirited child.) Anyway I KNOW there is WEATHER. I can SEEEE it. But wait. When I am driving and this screen flashes on, it’s all I can manage to do to reach over and hit the “X” to make it go away. Since it came on THIS time when I was PARKED, I could see there is a “settings” button. So maybe there is a way to turn it off? Except the next time it comes on I’ll probably be driving and so won’t be able to figger it out.

So today my make-aheads were mashed potatoes, hash browns, Hollandaise sauce, and Chex mix. A more or less double batch of the last. We have a Chex mix fanatic (actually two) in our midst and I will be happy to not have partial boxes of cereal hanging around forever because we really do not eat dry cereal for breakfast any more.

So it was a pretty boring xmas eve day, which wasn’t all that bad. Except that I did not get space-i-fied in ANY way today, not even for five minutes. We have one overnight guest and two more coming over tomorrow. And a faaaaar in the faaaarplace, bluegrass type xmas music on the radio (not Spotify, at least not yet), beef/veggie kebabs on the grill, and wild rice on Gertrude.

He was moving so fast I could barely grab my phone in time to get a pic.

After all the super hype about blizzards and things, that isn’t *exactly* what we got. We got a couple inches of snow at the most. The temperature dropped from the upper 30s last night to -1 now and the wind howled all day.

We did not venture out onto the roads until evening. I was surprised that the main surface streets didn’t seem to be very well plowed. It was okay (kinda). It is so cold that nothing is very slippery. When I say that I don’t mean it’s okay to drive like a bat outta hell and the GG didn’t, slowing well before intersections, etc.

We weren’t afraid of the roads, there just wasn’t any good reason to go out. In addition to little cleaning/laundry type chores, I slow-cooked a bunch of stuff for xmas eve and day. By slow-cooked, I don’t mean I put things in the oven at a low temperature for a long time. I prepped brussel(s?) sprouts. I cooked lentils and squash and chopped scallions for a salad. And made the dressing (which includes pomegranate molasses, a new thing to me). I made marinade for beef filets (or kebabs depending on my mood) for tomorrow night. And I fergit what else. This kind of slow-cooking means that I can also clean-as-I-go. Very UN-stressful overall and glad I saved enough vacay to take today off. And I get to do a similar thing tomorrow so yay!

We learned today that we can only remote start Cygnus TWICE (total 20 minutes) before getting IN the car and actually pushing the start button. The GG claims this is because of the “nanny state”. I hate that term but then I also hate the term “woke”. Plain English please! I don’t know who made the design decisions for the Subie app and whether or not they are complying with gubmint regulations. I agree that egregiously idling is not conducive to reducing carbon emissions or whatever they’re called. But if you live in the Great Lake State and it is 1 degree above zero and you don’t have a garage, it is nice to get into a semi-warm car and not have to scrape ice off zee veeeendsheeeld. Of course the work-around is what I used to do with the Ninja (who, as a manual could not have remote start). I would get in and start her (with an actual key) and let her idle until I was ready to drive. Where there is a will, there is a way. And most of the year we don’t need to remote start our cars at all.

Shout-out to our friends of porterization and pizza at their house. Last night they were headliners. Tonight they just get an honorable mention.

Of all things, we slept in the Lyme Lounge last night. Why? Go figger. I woke up at five o’clock in a minor panic. I did not want to sleep late so I decamped to the Landfill to get my last hour of sleep. But I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and did laundry and some other chores and looked over my grock list. I planned to snag my pre-ordered dcuks and anything else on my list plus whatever. Not only is it xmas, people are panic buying ahead of a predicted snow storm. Wouldn’t you know, if I hadn’t put dcuks on my list, I’d’ve forgotten them! Jeebus.

I always shop at Plum at eight AM when it opens. There are almost never more than 3-5 cars in the parking lot. Today I’ll guess there were maybe 15? More people inside than usual but NOT crowded at that hour and I did NOT have to wait at all to check out. Except that I needed help figuring out how to pay for the dcuks. But I was home by 8:30 or earlier and watched facebook posts fly by all day about how long the lines were at Meijer or wherever. Work? Yeah it was a work day for me. I was not all that productive. Sorry.

We are getting porterized tonight and ordering Chinese. Every time I am asked what I want from the Chinese menu, I say “orange beef”. I can’t figger out why I can’t be asked something like, “Orange beef, right?” Actually I don’t really care that much what we order. I didn’t want to cook tonight and I didn’t really want to have anything to do with ordering. Somebody else’s turn. They know who they are.

Of course, sometimes left to those folks who know who they are, things like Beenie Weenies end up on the menu. No thank you. But then again, I don’t think most Chinese restaurants offer beenie weenies even to their American customers.

On Spotify: a solstice playlist sent to me by Lizard Breath. And at 10-something PM, we still have rain and upper 30s temps. What will we wake up to?

The GG space-i-fied yer fave-o-rite blahgger today and headed up to drop some xmas stuff at FlaMan’s place. He was gone for a few hours and when he got back, I remained space-i-fied for quiiiite a while longer because he crashed and burned. We love FlaMan but visiting him can take a lot out of a person.

Actually SEVERAL times this afternoon I found myself nodding off in TeleCubelandia. There is almost NOTHING going on at work this week because just about everybody has signed off for the duration. I am NOT a napper. On the rare occasion I take a nap, I wake up extremely groggy and unable to get re-started. So I fought this mightily and eventually won the battle.

Super hype? We are getting some kind of winter weather over the next few days. The question is how much snow? Nobody knows. This has been a major news topic ALL WEEK! Butchya-know? It is winter (as of today actually) and this is the Great Lake State. It’s good to be prepared but this is not our first (or even hundredth) rodeo. We have a yooper-sized snow blower and shovels (remember those?) and a drywall bucket of salt or whatever. And plenty of clothing layers (put it on and take it off). And YakTrax. And two AWD vee-hickles with new taaars. And a generator if the power goes out.

The biggest pain will be running those last-minute xmas errands that always crop up. I’m scheduled to pick up a couple dcuks at Plum tomorrow morning at 8:00 and I am gonna stock up on as many things as I can then. I am NOT gonna stock up on silly things like terlet paper (we have plenty), just enough stuff to get us through the weekend. Also, we can always WALK to the store if we need something. And it’s supposed to warm up again next week. One weather app even showed a t-storm icon for NEXT Friday but that’s a loooong way away so we’ll see.

P.S. On Spotify tonight: Cranberries Radio. Dolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan (RIP) and friends.

A message from a Linked In friend reminded me that it is the 15th anniversary of my employment start date. Actually that’s not exactly true. I began a few months before that as a student intern. So I sorta have two start dates. Anyway, cheers!

It was a really really odd day to start a job. It was a Monday and it was the day after the cFam xmas party. And then I got there. The parking lot was largely EMPTY. And… And… And… Well, I had been using a fugly old desktop computer in what they called a “bullpen”. That means a space where four people (or whatever) share a space. I was the only person in that bullpen. There was a printer and a mini fridge and I fergit what else.

Anyway, I got there on my first day as a full-time employee and the bullpen was empty. I mean my fugly old desktop was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. My boss (the LSCHP) was nowhere to be found.

So, as an intern I only worked about 12 hours a week. Since the last time I had been there, which was Thursday noon, the LSCHP had MOVED me into my own cubicle. Which was fine except I didn’t know where it was.

Eventually it all got sorted out. As it turned out I was also issued a laptop. It was the laptop previously used by our team’s then “technical writer”. He had been laid off… So… I could be hired. I wasn’t EVER told this but I figgered it out and have always felt a little weird about it because he was a nice young man and I hate to see people get laid off unless they’ve done something awful. But people do get laid off and maybe someday I will too. As a business systems analyst, I do a lot of technical writing but I am kinda more than a technical writer and we have not employed a technical writer since then. I hope he is having a nice life.

So cheers to me for my 15 years. At the time I got the job I hadn’t been sure I would ever have gainful employment again. Managing to put together a tech career after the age of 50 and umpteen years of unemployment (albeit voluntary) is probably one of the things I’m proudest of in my life. I guess I have to tell myself “you go girl!”

Another horrible gray fugly day. Sounds like it’ll get worse before it gets better. But after the sun goes down it isn’t really all that bad as you may be able to see here. I was plugged in to work today but I won’t say I was the most productive I’ve ever been. The GG was in and out doing hardware store and xmas errands, etc.

I figured out how to get Spotify to play music on our home pod tonight. I was hoping the GG would be surprised by that but he didn’t really notice it for a while. Of all things, when I came clean about having a Spotify account (a gift from my daughter) he said he’d had an account for years. Well. So. If you have a Spotify account, why are you always fiddling around going nuts with the banjaxed music system?

I am happy my older beach urchin moved into a house on The Planet Ann Arbor yesterday but I will miss the occasional sleepovers we had throughout the summer and fall. She can (and does) work remotely but likes to spend the occasional day in the office and it worked out for her to sleep here or at the mouse house for a night.

Getting to know my new boss, I once mentioned that an adult child was moving back into our city, her home city. His reaction was that he hoped she wasn’t moving into my basement. I gnoffed and gnoffed. Nope. My kids love me but the last thing they would want is to live in my basement! And they don’t have to because they are successful enough to afford their own residences. My boss has teenage children and from what little he says about them, I don’t think he is truly worried about that potential outcome.

The truck came to the Planet Ann Arbor today and the GG was there to meet it, shovel in hand. I’m kind of kidding about the shovel. There isn’t enough snow to shovel (YET). What did come down was very light but it froze and the sidewalks were slippery. Last year we barely got any snow at all. Only a few minor storms that I remember. I’m guessing this year we’ll be back to more of the usual. It’s okay, I’m a telecommuter. Yay!

Anyway, the GG helped unload the moving truck, then decamped to the Landfill back room where he watched the Lions WIN (yes, really, they are on a roll this year) and I dunno how many other football games. Three partial ones, it turns out.

I did not help with the move. I figured I’d just be in the way. One of my “parent of adult children” mantras is “stay outta the fray” and I’ll see the house when things get unpacked. Instead I made a lasagne and finished my make-ahead gravy. And read my 101st book of 2022. I finished my 100th book yesterday, which means I met my goodreads challenge for the year. I read a lot of good books in 2022 but I’m thinking maybe fewer that I rated five stars than usual. I rated a lot of them four stars. They were good, just didn’t have quite the oomph I needed for five stars.

My 100th book was Nightcrawling, which I did rate five stars. Young (teenage) black woman trying to hold what remains of a dysfunctional family together without a stable income. I loved it but awful things happened so I don’t think it would be everyone’s cuppa. I loved the protagonist. As a white teenager with an intact, educated, relatively affluent family, I’d be dead if I’d had to do the things this child did to survive. The author is 20 years old. With this book as her debut, it’ll be interesting to see what else she’s capable of.

I used lower case for black and white. I know people are capitalizing those words nowadays. I have done so myself but I’m not sure I feel comfortable doing it so I’m struggling a bit. My thoughts about that topic are so complex I can’t easily put them into words. I guess one thing is it feels like stereotyping and as both a “yooper” and an “Ann Arbor hippie” and once “the brain of Lincoln School” (as a child), I am uncomfortable with stereotyping. I also know that that’s only a thin sliver of the pie and there are a lot of things I don’t understand. But I’m not too old to learn.

Love y’all, KW 🧡🧡🧡

Despite various expert cooks trying to teach me how to make gravy right in the turkey pan, I have never gotten the knack so years ago – before the Google – I came across a make-ahead gravy recipe that worked for me and I haven’t looked back. The problem is that turkey parts are one of those things that you can’t necessarily just waltz into a grock shop any old time and expect to find them. So I start keeping an eye out around the beginning of November and snatch ’em when I see ’em.

I have bought turkey parts at Plum before but I have yet to see them there this year. Meijer is usually a good bet but I haven’t seen them there either. My mouse has some turkey stock in her freezer she made from our tday turkey that would’ve worked but she she was at work early today and I wanted to make my gravy this morning.

The Westgate Kroger was my main go-to grock shop pre-Plum. I love Kroger but I was elated when the upscale Plum opened up three blocks away from the Landfill. So I switched. Post-pandemic*, Kroger has struggled to keep enough stock and employees around. I kinda gave up on it after some less than successful trips in post-vax 2021. But what the heck, I gave Kroger another try today. I had to look around a bit but in the end I hit the Turkey Thigh Jackpot! And it seemed well stocked and staffed in general so yay!

Although I have been known to go into grocery stores at times other than early morning, that has become my fave time to shop. It isn’t only because of COVID. It’s also that THERE IS NO TRAFFIC at that time and I don’t usually have to stop for every single blasted stop light – which is 10 between here and the Saline Rd. Meijer, which is five miles. I am less rigid about timing shopping trips in the yooperland. That’s because driving the 11 miles or whatever it is from the moominbeach to the Soo Meijer, I do not encounter ANY traffic lights and usually VERY LITTLE traffic.

Anyway I have my gravy started and ready to finish and freeze tomorrow.

*When I say “post-pandemic”, I do NOT mean I think covid is over. It most certainly is not. I mean that a lot of grock shops have struggled to return to the consistent levels of goods and services they provided before covid. I still mask when I shop and I am happy when others do also but I don’t get angry when they don’t. I can’t even get the GG to mask 💩

At the end of the day I looked back and realized this was my annual bah humbug day (fingers crossed that I don’t have another one). Usually my annual bah humbug day is related to a disappointing xmas shopping excursion. Today it was crappy weather. And I don’t mean we had an ice storm or something. Old Man Winter threw some half-hearted flakes at us off and on throughout the day but nothing that stuck to anything although a bit of light snow is on the ground now. It was mostly just gray, cold, and fugly.

Other than that I can’t really complain. A beach urchin is moving back here to the Planet Ann Arbor this weekend. Today her dad drove over to DayTwa and loaded up Mooon Yooonit and her roof top luggage thingy with boxes and stuff and dropped it off at the new place. The urchin texted me to say that the the GG was back on the planet and giving the UU a tour of her house. A looooong time after that text, I texted back to say that the Twinz of Terror were either spending a LOT of time at her house or they had gone out to lunch. And yes, they were indeed having lunch at the Fleetwood Diner. Hippie Hash? Prob’ly not for lunch. The other beach urchin drove to DayTwa independently of the GG, filled Oriole with houseplants, and dropped them off at her sister’s new place.

I have to laugh when a beach urchin tells me they’ve caught themselves channeling their moom. About the last person teenage girls want to be like is their mother. Having been a teenage girl, I KNOW! Now that they are full-fledged adults they LAUGH about it. Today it was accounting systems. I’m not sure if spreadsheets are involved or what but I was the Spreadsheet Queen beginning from when I took over the co-op nursery treasury back in the Jurassic Age and dragged all of the bookkeeping onto my MacPlus or whatever it was. From there I did the elementary school, two middle schools (long story), and high school PTOs. And youth theatre guild. It was all fun but and I still maintain various spreadsheets but I at least get paid for it now, if only the ones that are part of my job.

Oh! I ordered two dcuks from the Plum Market to pick up Thursday! And a special hors d’oeuvres from an online company that shall remain a surprise. (Hopefully it’ll also be GOOD!)

And that’s a moose track in the pic. There’s nothing in the pic to show the scale but the GG reports that it is six inches wide.

So… I wasn’t terribly optimistic when I asked the GG if he wanted to watch Game of Thrones with me so I was surprised he showed interest. Problem. It’s on Hulu and Hulu was not on either of our bigass TVs the night he arrived back on the Planet. So we bagged it. As one of the beach urchins has been known to say, our entire home entertainment “system” is banjaxed. That’s why when I am Moom Alone, I watch movies and things on my phone. When I’m not reading or playing word games.

I think he did figure out how to get Hulu on the TV in the back room but he had another idea yesterday. American Pie. (Bear with me here.) I asked why he would pick American Pie. Because it’s a really good movie, said he. Something felt “off” about all of this but I couldn’t quiiiite think what so I decided I’d go along with it. I did mention that he never wants to watch anything *I* want to watch but sheesh, it’s not like I am trying to get him to watch Handmaid’s Tale. That’s my guilty pleasure.

Anyway, the movie came on and I pretty quickly realized that what he was thinking of was AMERICAN GRAFFITI!!!! !!!! Which IS a good movie. American Pie? Maybe even worse than Canadian Bacon! Think Brett Kavanaugh “frat boy” style teenage parties, and no, I am not a Kavanaugh fan. Ugh Ugh Ugh. I didn’t last long. I decamped to the front room where I read my current book* and tried not to listen to the shenanigans and hijinks on the TV in the back room. Teenage sex noises? Nuh-uh.

He agreed that it was a terrible movie but he watched it ANYWAY. Why? Because he paid for it. How much did he pay? FOUR DOLLARS 👀 👀 👀.

Maybe it’s just that you get what you pay for. I’m not sure what I pay for Hulu but it doesn’t break the bank and I don’t have to pay every time I stream something or whatever it is that I do.

I love the GG and I loved my father-in-law, the Gumper, but this kinda reminds me of once when were at Houghton Lake and there was some kind of rebate on an item they bought at the hardware store. Problem? You had to mail very specific documentation somewhere to get the rebate. I can’t remember exactly what the whole sequence of events was but in the middle of it all, the Gumper moved back to his winter home in Crazy Old Florida and all of this stuff got mailed back and forth from the Planet Ann Arbor to Fla so many times that I have always believed the postage exceeded the amount of the rebate, which I think was something like $2.00. I don’t remember if they ever got the rebate.

*Current book was Jellicoe Road, which was very good YA set in Australia but I couldn’t quiiite give it five stars. I have now finished it.

Photo credit to Joan, his recent hiking partner. Her blog.

I have been side-eyeing the whole controversy surrounding the Cryptocurrency Boy Wonder. His actual initials are SBF but I’ll just call him CBW.

Today the GG watched Senate hearings regarding CBW. I am not EXACTLY sure what went on in the hearings. I didn’t watch them but I’m told they were discussing how to regulate cryptocurrency and good luck to that. CBW seems like just another get-rich-quick (at someone else’s expense) kiddo to me. If that’s true I hope it does bite him you-know-where. I don’t really care which political party he supports. That seemed to be an issue of some sort.

What got my attention? Well. These were *Senate* hearings. I’m not sure many of our senators can even begin to understand cryptocurrency. I sure don’t and I am employed by the fintech industry. What was scary to me was that someone in the hearings was suggesting that ACH needs to be replaced. Say what? Every time you write a check or buy something with a plastic card or send somebody money via Venmo or autopay your electric bill, an ACH transaction is involved. How many billions of ACH transactions happen every day?

Yes, ACH is probably outdated but it is GLOBAL! It is one of the main technologies that drives the banking industry. I wrote a specification for my company a few years ago when we moved our ACH processing from old “green screen” technology to our web application. I certainly didn’t spec the ACH industry standard, just how our organization was going to incorporate it into our product. I think of that spec as my magnum opus. I have written some specs that I’m not proud of. That is not one of them.

If the world needs to move on from ACH (and it’s possible we should at some point), it will be an arduous task that will require very very careful planning and design. We can’t just flip a switch. It will have to be incremental. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time with PLENTY of quality assurance testing. I have NO confidence in our elected legislators (as a body of people) to be able to figure that out or even to understand what the heck ACH does.

Do they even know what an ACH file looks like? Do you? I do.

Man oh man, what a morning. I found myself sashaying through the Plum Market this morning WITHOUT MY MASK! I was pretty freaked out. After some wild dithery dathery thoughts, I parked my cart and ran toward the front door to go and get my mask out of Cygnus. As luck would have it, I ran just about smack dab into my mouse and she snagged a Plum mask for me. It helps to have friends / daughters in high places.

I can’t believe how freaked out I was about this. All day… There was hardly anyone in the store and I was never close to anyone (even mouse) for more than a few seconds. In my defense, it was a scrambled morning of sorts. I didn’t plan on grabbing grocks today but realized that I needed a key ingredient and my time frame was limited. Traffic was nutso and there was weirdness in the parking lot in that some other person had parked in My Spot. So I was not mindful about my standard procedure for shutting off Cygnus and exiting her with the correct items. I did have my debit card. If I hadn’t, I knew I could hit up my mouse to pay for my grocks and repay her via venmo. I can’t do that at Meijer 🐽

Speaking of covid, an article flew by on Twitter this morning listing the most common symptoms people are experiencing now as opposed to earlier virus variants. Runny nose was one of the top symptoms and I don’t think it was even ON the original list back in 2020. In fact I think I remember folks saying runny nose was NOT a symptom. Well. Almost two weeks ago ONE of my nostrils ran for about five hours (TMI?). The other remained dry as a bone. I was kinda like what IS this? Pre-covid I would not have even thought anything about a runny nose. I mean, I am an aminal. I cough and sneeze and experience runny noses on a regular basis. Most of them are from some sort of random situational thing.

This was waaaay before I read this morning’s article but I was monitoring it anyway. It stopped and did not resume. I had no other cold-like symptoms. I did not test. I hadn’t been near anyone for more than a twinkling in DAYS and I was masked at all times. I am 99% sure it was not covid but if it was, I am 99.999% certain I did not give it to anyone else.

Still, mask up. Covid is still out there and is still dangerous for some folks plus there is always the flu and RSV. Take care of your family, friends, neighbors, and service workers.

“Drizzle drazzle drizzle drone. Time for this one to come home.”

I can’t say the last weeks have been terribly productive, at least not in such a way that you would walk into my house and marvel at how decluttered it is and how much stuff I have flung. But somehow I managed to empty out some head space, which may be just as important. The last few years have been tumultuous in various ways. At the beginning of the pandemic I was navigating unexpected 24-7 time with the GG. (I married you for better or worse but not for lunch.) That with a low but CONSTANT anxiety level humming along in the background.

My terrification of covid ended when I had my own breakthrough case in which my ONE symptom was a mild cough. I have long shopped without fear, albeit masked and via my own rules. But the last year has been tumultuous in the sense that certain people have traveled a lot and they do not travel light with their trailers and trail maintenance tools and other paraphernalia. Clothes. Food. Flyers. You name it. So stuff is constantly being schlepped in and out of my house, which can be stressful.

So Himself is returning tomorrow. Probably just in time to beat what could be rough driving weather later in the week.

I managed to get a few things accomplished while he was gone:

1) My refrigerator and freezer are as emptied out as they have been in three years. They aren’t EMPTY but close enough. Of course, Himself will probably load them up with whatever is left over from his trip. I hope it’s not mustard, French dressing, peanut butter, or hot dog buns. And yes I know that peanut butter doesn’t go in the fridge but you get my drift.

2) I managed to cobble together a reasonable xmas list for myself. At least I think it is. I think it is enough that people won’t feel bad that I don’t have any gifts to unwrap. There is only one thing on it that is anywhere near expensive and it is something I probably don’t need.

3) I have BEGUN to make my way through the fog that surrounds buying furniture and have some fairly solid ideas for a couch davenport SOFA, a buffet and shelf units.

4) I got a pared down version of “my” Santa collection set up. If Mr. Golden Sun ever shines down on me again, I will take a picture. (The usual disclaimer: I do not ACTIVELY collect Santas. The Comm would send me a Santa most xmases and I also inherited her collection. I do not need any more.)

P.S. On the radio: Subie is recalling some SUVs because of a faaar risk. Park your car outside, they say. And whew. It’s something called the Ascent, which I haven’t heard of. Cygnus is a Crosstrek and she has not reported any problems since she was new and there was a bad taaaar sensor. Park your car outside? Hahahahahahaha. I ALWAYS park Cygnus outside. I do not have a garage!

It’s okay, I don’t have seasonal affective disorder. I actually love the dark times of the year and at this time of day, it has been dark outside for almost two hours. I am inside my house with all of the lights out except screens and various strings of LEDs, white and multi-colored.

I finished the book Horse (Geraldine Brooks) today. I loved this book. It is a fictionalized account of a REAL race horse, Lexington. A REALLY GOOD race horse. You can google him. I didn’t until after I finished the book. Also his trainer and constant companion since his (the stallion’s) birth. Before reading this, I feared that I might have to slog through all kinds of boring details about horse races like which horse was ahead when, ad infinitum. There was very little of that.

Instead, well, I don’t have words or organized thoughts about this but some of the things… Bones/skeletons of many creatures including Lexington’s. Horse racing in our country in the 1850s or so and a lot of slavery related issues plus how Black people are treated even now. Art history. Who knew that painted portraits of thoroughbred race horses is a genre. I certainly didn’t, not that I am well versed in art history. I certainly am not.

Many of the characters in this book are based on real people and horses, at least Lexington the horse was real. The main character is fictionalized. His father was a real person (free Black man) and we know that he had a son (a slave in the book) but no one knows the son’s name or what he did during his life.

The first Brooks book I read was Nine Parts of Desire. It was non-fiction and I read it at the Shores of Gitchee Gumee in the Eagle River Inn on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula.

Gray, cold, and dry. Well, not actually all that cold. 35-36 degrees is well within the seasonal temperature range for December in the southeast Great Lake State, but it is on the higher end. I am okay with that because it means I don’t have to totally suit up to go outside. The pic is not southeast Michigan. It is along the dunes on the shores of Gitchee Gumee, west of Grand Marais (the Michigan one, not the Minnesota one).

I’m pretty sure this pic wasn’t taken from the top of the Logslide but it is similar terrain. I’ve been to the logslide a few times in my life. I have never climbed down the dune. I’m sure I wanted to as a child but my parents wouldn’t let me, probably for good reason. It’s a loooooong way back up. And the whole thing can be darn dangerous as “hidden overhangs” can form near the bottom. I have heard it called “cliffing”.

The last time I was there it was summer and Mr. Golden Sun was brilliant. The beach urchins were elementary age and all four of us were wearing tie-dyed t-shirts. An annoying woman was trying to convince her kids to go down the dune. They seemed reluctant (smart kids) and I was ignoring the whole thing. Until she turned her attention to us and our t-shirts. I forget her exact question but the ensuing conversation involved me saying “Ann Arbor” and her saying, “Oh, you’re old hippies.” Well. Nooooo. What I didn’t say was “We’re just a cute li’l fambly who like to dress alike” in a cutesy little voice🐽🐽🐽

I admit to being a hippy wannabe back in my youth. Truth told, I would NEVER have survived commune style life. Water, cleanliness, and privacy to name a few things that are important to me. Free love (sex)? Yuck. And yes, I am stereotyping here. I know not all self-identified hippies lived in communes. (And a few hundred other disclaimers.)