Random bits of my so-called life.

All right. This is one of the more interesting sunsets I’ve seen albeit it a subtle one. As it turns out, my mouse sent a very similar pic from the ocean off North Carolina. Except it probably isn’t an actual sunset there because that shore faces east. Very similar pic though.

Among other things, I did a recycle run today and then I did a little exploring before I headed back out to the moomin. When I was a young child, my parents owned a piece of property on the western end of Sault Ste. Siberia. “The Lot.” (I *think* we owned it.) I think the plan was to build on it but we never did. We did drove past it quite frequently. We had to drive past Sherman Park over to the Lakeshore Drive subdivision. I used to know EXACTLY where The Lot was but I cannot really find it now although I can certainly find the Lakeshore Drive sub. I’m wondering if “The Lot” was private property then (ours) and has since become part of Sherman Park. Alas, I can’t really ask anyone.

I’m not sure what all of the machinations involving our (infrequent) moves were but… At some point we sold “The Lot” (assuming we ever actually owned it but I think we did). My parents were within minutes of closing on a house up on “The Hill” but lost out. I was happy. I really really really did not want to move out of our shabby little Superior Street bungalow. It was across the street from my school, Stinkin’ Lincoln, and I did NOT want to move schools. And I loved living on the scrappy south side of Sault Ste. Siberia, where I had good friends. And quite a few adversaries. Like the FOUR Waisenen boyz down the alley from us who were accomplished rock throwers.

So we didn’t move up on “The Hill.” We stayed in the shabby bungalow until I was in college and my grandparents were dead and then my parents moved up into their house on “The Hill.” Instead of spending money on upgrading to a new house when I was a kid, we built the moomincabin. I think that was a wise choice.

I finished reading Joan (novel about Joan of Arc) on Saturday. Great book but boy oh boy do I wish I was better versed in history. I picked up The Rabbit Hutch after that and loved it. Foster care system young adults trying to live together in a fictional rust belt mid-west city. Beware that there is a sub-theme about animal sacrifice albeit not in gory detail.

What to read next? Hmmm. In the end, I didn’t start another book today. Instead, I watched the first two episodes of season five of the Handmaid’s Tale. On my phone.

Dum de dum de dum de dum. I recently had a conversation with a relative who thinks the handmaid’s tale is, uh, HISTORY? Whut? Where in the hell this person got THAT IDEA, I do NOT KNOW! As far as I know, a separate nation, The Republic of Gilead, has not EVER formed and seceded from the United States of America. So nope. BUT. It is very discouraging that our country has taken a disturbing turn down a path where women cannot control their own reproductive systems. And don’t give me that states’ rights shitola. That is NOT A REASON for overturning Roe v. Wade. There was NO reason to do that at this point in time except to try to exercise control over women’s reproductive rights. If you agreed with that decision, you are NOT pro-choice.

So I read the original Handmaid’s Tale around the time it was written. I looked that up recently during a convo with my older daughter about the books she was “allowed” to read as a child. Basically I never banned ANY books from my children. She knows that and hey, have you ever read Roald Dahl? As I suspected, at the age she was when the book was published, she was probably more interested in Charlotte’s Web and Wind in the Willows and not thinking about reproductive rights. I mean, once when my daughters were very young, they asked about the tampon supply in the bathroom closet. Trying to do my best to be open with my children, I started to explain and one of them almost immediately dismissed me with, “Moom, you take care of your own problems!” Okay then! Whew!

I could go on and on about reproductive rights but I won’t for now because I’d likely be more or less incoherent. I like Margaret Atwood but enjoy some of her books better than others. I LOVED the Handmaid’s Tale. I read The Testaments (belated sequel to Handmaid’s Tale) and although I liked it a lot, I felt the ending to be a bit, I dunno, rushed, maybe? I have been following the TV series for years. I love it although it is a bit flawed. For one thing, as many others have pointed out, there is too much emphasis on the main character’s face (who is also the director). I love her but sometimes I am thinking something like JUST GET ON WITH IT.

I do NOT understand how ANYONE could think the books or TV series are history, at least not history of the United States. As disturbing as the story is, especially as it evokes recent politics, I enjoy it because it is a STORY and a very good one.

First of all, my cousin the mean old grunchie old grinchy dropped by this morning. He was a bit too late for coffee but we sat on the deck with him for quite a while. He and the GG discussed some of the usual crapola including airplanes powered by nuclear reactors. I think that’s what they were talking about. I don’t really understand a lot of that stuff.

So the Grinch was sitting on one side of me and the GG on the other. I can’t really describe the conversation except that the Grinchie was LOUD albeit not angry. They are on totally opposite sides of the political spectrum but they were not really arguing. I tried to some extent to figure out what they were talking about but mostly I just chilled out and read Twitter stuff like Ask Prudie, ocasionally fact checking some of the stuff they were talking about on Google. BTW: I am firmly on the Grinchy’s side when it comes to politics. I totally disagree with the GG. I can’t really talk politics with either of them 🐽

Late in the afternoon, the GG was taking a nap and I was hanging out on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench when my childhood friend Kate walked by. I told her come on up and sit for a bit and so she did. So much fun to talk to her. We didn’t really get into politics but I suspect she agrees with me about a lot of things.

If you couldn’t guess, that’s Chainsaw Man there.

It’s September and it’s almost the autumnal equinox and it was still hotter than Hades here on the shores of Gitchee Gumee today. When I was a child, we were all hanging out on the beach one LABOR DAY and Old Man Winter was spitting snowflakes at us. Us kids went swimming ANYWAY and our parental lifeguards put on their winter jackets to watch us.

I retreated to the deck this afternoon and even then I had to put on my big sunhat to keep my eyes shaded enough that I could read my book. On my phone.

G’night! Kayak Woman.

It’s Friday and we got porterized over at their place on the other side of Birch Point from us. And then came home to finish (and eat) our fave shrimp scampi portofino. Shrimp with scallions, spinach, tomatoes, cream, and sherry. Over rice.

One of the things that is NOT a problem around here is that the GG spends a LOT of time out at the garage. I have finally sussed out that one of the things that happens out at the garage is that various people VISIT him there as they are driving down our one-lane road. Judd, George, Jeep and Pan, and occasionally Grinch. I’m not sure my dad and brother would have expected the garage they built would end up being that kind of meeting place but it is, at least when the GG is out there mucking around. I love it. I am sad that my dad and brother are not there to participate in garage activities but glad the GG gets along so well with the beach community.

Actually it’s been a while since I’ve been in the yooperland but here I am again for one last fling before the whole place freezes solid.

I think I am finally getting over my pandemic freeway driving phobia. We drove up here tandem again with me in Cygnus following Mooon Yooonit. It was a smooth smooth drive except for a frightening slow-down north of Flint. I saw some kind of emergency vee-hickle merge onto the I75 SUV Speedway at the next on-ramp but I couldn’t see what kind of vee-hckle it was. A bit north of that on-ramp, we hit a major slowdown. After creeeeeeeping along for a while and merging four lanes into two, we finally got to where we could see a state police car blocking the right two lanes. Then another. And I think a third. And finally, a fire engine, ambulance, and tow truck with an SUV of some sort loaded on to it. The scary part of all this was the vee-hickle still on the road. Totally burned up and fire fighters were spraying something into what remained of the truck or whatever it was. It was hard to tell and OF COURSE we were also focused on our own driving so couldn’t gawk at it a lot.

Anyway, I wasn’t even freaked out by that. We got here without incident and I even used a public toilet in a freeway rest area without having to quell a panic attack. Yeah, I know that isn’t all that rational. It is what it is. I was the only masked bandit anywhere near the bathrooms. (BTW, I only wear my mask INSIDE.)

Oh yeah. There was this one guy 🐽 who repeatedly jumped out to pass slow traffic in front of faster vee-hickles, who then had to put on their brakes. This person then complained that they were tailgating him. There are times when you have to jump out but traffic was mostly sedate today so why not wait a bit and let the speed freaks pass first?

It’s pretty warm up here for now. September is often (but not always) warm and it looks like the overnight lows will be in the 60s for the next week or so. And we had RAIN this afternoon. We sat on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench as it moved in and as an affirmed pluviophile, I loved it!

Meijer in the morning for grocks. What should I cook? Trying to be minimalist.

It’s always the last day before vacation when your normally calm job goes to sh*t. So Missing Button Day. First I needed to send a zip file to somebody and I had to use a corporate application to do it securely. I only do this a couple times a year so I am often a little nervous about going through the whole complicated process.

Today I was not nervous at all. Until. I got out to where I could compose an email message and attach a file. There was no way to create a message. I muddled around as I always do and found out that if the “Compose” button was missing, I had to file a support ticket. Okay then, my second ticket this week! Both access issues. Apparently this issue affects a LOT of people. If so, why did they not give us a heads up? For now, we have a client that isn’t getting what they need from us in the fast turn-around time we usually provide… … …

Then I went to “join” a one-on-one meeting with my new supervisor. This meeting is part of our performance evaluation stuff and I don’t talk to him very often so OF COURSE I was a little nervous. But there wasn’t a JOIN button… It got worked out and it was a good meeting.

At the end of the day, Lizard Breath texted to ask if we needed anything from Plum. Well, as a matter of fact I had planned to get a couple of Uncle Peter’s pasties from there tomorrow morning to schlep up to the yooperland. A good quick dinner for tomorrow night (I have some leftover frozen gravy from last xmas) and I can hit up Meijer Friday morning.

What are we eating tonight? Shrimp fried rice and spring rolls from Panda House and some leftover pizza slices from the freezer. Talk about cognitive dissonance! At first I was annoyed that combination of food was even suggested, which is where the “cognitive dissonance” statement came from. As I eased into an after work ‘hattan I decided all I really needed was enough fuel for tonight and maybe a bit leftover for tomorrow morning because I will need to eat SOMETHING before we leave, whether or not I’m hungry.

This afternoon has been difficult. I am trying to EMPTY MY BRAIN and weird things keep coming up. That is all. Those are bird tail feathers there. More on that some other day.

What a day! Can we start with RUMMAGING? Rummage rummage rummage rummage. Drawers were being opened and shut with wild abandon. Bags and boxes and murses and various other containers were being opened and shut. FINALLY… After a half hour of this crapola, The Pensioner held up a wallet-sized thingy and said something like, “I FINALLY found this. It was in the first place I looked.”

My opinion? He has tooooo much STUFF. If you don’t have too much stuff, it is a lot easier to find things. I especially do not understand the number of bags and cases and things. I have gotten rid of a lot of that stuff and I am gonna get rid of one of my TWO rolling suitcases. I bought one of them and “inherited” the other from The Commander (i.e., it was in her house after she died so I took it home).

For a few years, I was using both of them to schlep clothing up to the moomin in the summer. But they are too bulky so this year I bought a couple of small duffels. A Cotopaxi and an LL Bean. I used to have a huge LL Bean duffel but I kept losing stuff in it. So now, I put the stuff I expect to use frequently in one small duffel and the other stuff (Smartwool leggings, etc.) in the other. I bought them from different companies because if they don’t look different, I will definitely get mixed up about what is in what. I mean, I suppose I couldda bought two different LL Bean colors but I LIKE Cotopaxi. Guess what? I am still losing things!

In the last couple years before The Comm died, when she was diligently working on de-acquisitioning her possessions, she would occasionally lament that her grandchildren didn’t really seem to be interested in all of her bags and things. Moom, it’s because they already own too many of their own bags and things. The GG did adopt one of her purses so if you see a guy with a big leather satchel-type thing, you know it is the GG with his murse. He keeps implements of too much fun in it. Actually he says to say he keeps guns and ammo in it. The Commander may not have approved. On the other hand, she loved the GG and would probably laugh about how her purse is being used. And my dad had plenty of guns too although I can count on one finger the times I saw him shoot one. I wasn’t there for the pajama-clad goose-hunting episode but he did not shoot anything that time either. Still it’s a good thing it’s a private beach. (Yeah, it’s a weird pic. The GG thought the blue dish towel would provide contrast. It does but it doesn’t really work for other reasons. Oh well.)

We have been a bit nutsy about scheduling for the next month or so and our beach urchins were wondering what our plans were.

This reminded me of when Lizard Breath was a couple months from being born and I actually didn’t know where my parents were. I *thought* they were with some of my aunts and uncles, traveling out to the Canadian maritime provinces. But I hadn’t talked to them in a while and back in those days the only way to get in touch with someone was via a landline. So…

I was like seven months pregnant and we were talking to the neighbors and when I told them I would still be working after the baby was born, they wondered what my *parents* would think of that. My response? I’m not even sure where my parents *are* right now. As it turned out, they did NOT take that trip. I can’t remember why but it wasn’t due to any kind of horrible reason.

Of course it was nobody’s business whether or not I would continue to work after having a baby. As it happened, the GG and I worked for the same company and we were able to arrange for me to work PART TIME so that he worked from 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM and then I met him in the parking lot with the baby. He drove the car (with the baby) home and I went in to work and drove the other car home in the evening. It wasn’t EASY but it saved us dealing with daycare for a newborn. BTW the GG was probably better at taking care of babies than I was.

The pic is my parents and my uncle and aunt Don and Katie. You can’t see Katie’s face. I’m not sure why everyone looks so distressed in this pic. I don’t think there was anything awful going on, just a funny pic in a weird moment.

Don and Katie were wonderful as my uncle and aunt and there were so many good times in their cabin next door to ours. I miss them but sigh… I do love hanging out with their children (my cousins), grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

We will make sure our kids know where we are in the next couple weeks. Nowadays we have the technology to do that although there may be some periods of time when the GG is out of service. But he will be with other people and will be okay.

Love y’all, KW

The Uncly Uncle usually posts photos of himself with beautiful women at Lions games. Today his identical twin (the GG) accompanied him and they encountered ANOTHER set of identical twins who were more than happy to pose for a pic with these baggy old guys. The Twinz of Terror gave me permission to post this. I couldn’t ask the female twins because I wasn’t there but hopefully my little blahg of blather will not attract enough attention for these ladies to recognize themselves. If it does, I will happily remove the pic if they want. But I think they are gorgeous and am glad to have them grace my boring little blahg.

As for me… I got a loverly day of space-ification here in my loverly little house. I have been needing that. An upcoming series of hiking events has got the GG’s undies in kind of a bunch and between the phone calls (please don’t pace!) and general spazzing around about scheduling and things, I am going kind of nutso. This stuff has to be done but it maybe could be done a bit less frenetically.

And yes, the Lions lost AGAIN. The Lions pretty much always lose. The cFam has had a couple of season tickets to Lions games for about a gazillion years and they still go to the games. I guess it’s fun for some people to spend a whole day going to a football game, which is what happens here since we are more or less an hour away from Detroit. But *they* were going to the game and *I* was happy to hang around here on The Planet Ann Arbor. Wondering when the Twinz of Terror would be returning after the game, I googled and was delighted to find that Google itself would keep me updated on the score, the quarter, and whatever time was left in it.

There was a block party a bit earlier and I made two lasagnas for it, Italian sausage and veggie (spinach, carrots, and pattypan squash). I knew that one of the next door neighbors (who organized the party) was vegetarian but the GG made sure to tell me about it anyway [snort]. I’m sure there were other vegetarians too.

Anyway, I had spinach on my farmers market list because I usually put spinach in BOTH veggie and meat lasagnas. I got to the farmers market and bought a bag of greens that I THOUGHT was spinach. Sometimes the farmers bag spinach and I didn’t ask. Once I processed it, I realized it was NOT spinach.

My best guess on these greens is mustard greens? I love mustard greens and if these lasagnas had been for private consumption, I may have tried it out. But I didn’t want to feed the neighbors weird greens in their lasagna, so I schlepped over to the Plum to get a box of spinach. It was my second trip over there today. Let me tell you, going to the Plum at 8:00 AM is a LOT easier than going at noon.

The party? I spent a lot of time trying to build up my social energy before attending. The party itself took a while to get going, which was FINE! The GG was hopping around back and forth until he finally came home and suggested that people were waiting for me to make an appearance, so I did. It worked out fine. When I arrived, I felt a bit like the GG had prepared people for a queen or something so I immediately said to the GG, “I am NOT the queen.” I sat by Marsha for a while but eventually branched out.

Everybody is younger than us. When we moved in to the neighborhood, everybody was older. Marsha’s parents-in-law lived in her house when we moved in. I got along okay anyway but too tired tonight to philosophize about any of that. You’re welcome. Around the time I was running out of social energy, it started raining and I bagged it. The UU arrived a bit after that and the Twinz of Terror pretty much closed the party, social butterflies that they are.

G’night, KW

Midway through the day between the onslaught of news about QE2’s death and KC3’s ascendance to the throne came a wee scrap of good news for those of us in the Great Lake State who are not MAGAts and actually care about other people including those less fortunate than ourselves.

Two ballot proposals that were OVERWHELMINGLY approved by VOTERS in early August are now approved to actually be on the ballot. These are the Reproductive Freedom for All (yes, it’s about abortion rights) and the Right to Vote Initiative. Despite the overwhelming voter turnout to support these proposals, various mean-minded (yes, I mean that) folks tried to block them. This was purportedly attributed to technical formatting issues (word/letter spacing and I fergit what else). Fortunately our state’s supreme court saw through this crapola and ordered the state elections board to put them on the ballot anyway.

C’mon you guys, formatting issues were NOT the problem. It was a partisan GRAB to try to continue to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, even when those pregnancies are not viable and/or the pregnant “person” is not capable of carrying a child not to mention providing that child with a decent chance at a quality life. Again, most 10-year-olds are NOT in that position, especially not if they were impregnated by their father (or their mother’s boyfriend). At another point on this RGB-type continuum, what is the point of carrying a dead fetus to term? (Note that RGB is a reference to COLOR gradients – red/green/blue, not Ruth Bader Ginsberg. That would be RBG.)

This is mindful of the US Supreme Court’s recent reversal of Roe vs. Wade. You can talk about “states’ rights” until you are blue in the face. I am not a constitutional scholar and (likely) neither are you. This decision had NOTHING to do with states’ rights. It was ALL ABOUT restricting women and their families from CHOOSING. States’ rights may (or may not) be a good thing. But this badly though-out decision threw many many many people’s lives immediately into chaos and not only pregnant “people”. If states’ rights is preferred, there has to be a slower, more carefully thought out way to make that change that doesn’t jeopardize the lives of women and their families.

Sorry, I had to get that outta my system. Disagree if you want but you will not change my mind.

This was a couple weeks ago when the swan family still had five cygnets. The original hatch was eight. I’m trying to think what happened to the first two that died. Did they get hit by cars? Maybe. They were too big by then for turtles to pull them under and eat them. A third was found dead a while later and people were all upset until someone knowledgeable pointed out that they were fledging and this one had probably hit a power line.

A week or so after this pic, THREE more disappeared, leaving two. After some initial panic, someone pointed out that no bodies had been found. So maybe they flew off to another pond? No one knows. It’s always sad when “we” start losing cygnets but there is a reason that swans hatch five or six or eight cygnets. Because they DON’T all survive and if they did, we’d have swans EVERYWHERE. If you have ever encountered Daddy Swan while in a small non-motorized bote… Well, it isn’t quiiiite like encountering a bear but it’s not too far off.

Of course, QE2 is the hottest news everywhere. I’m sorry for her death but she could not live forever. She did beat out The Comm by five years. The Comm was older than the queen but succumbed at age 91. I am not really a British monarchy fangirl but I did admire QE2. She was a queen with no real power and she knew how to conduct herself with poise under those circumstances. I have to wonder how many times she might have wished she could say, “Off with his head!” I’m looking at the Orange Baboon but I’m sure there were plenty of others. Class act in any case!

When I was five years old QE2 visited my hometown’s sister city, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. I have no memories of this and until I looked it up a minute ago, I was thinking it happened before I was born. I’m not sure if she visited our Michigan twin city or not. I’ve tried to look up Canada’s British history but it seems a bit more twisty than I remember. I do know that Canada was more closely connected with Britain in those days. If she did visit, I’m sure she didn’t have issues with the border patrol. Unlike me, I’m sure she didn’t have to use an outhouse but I’ll just about betcha she could rise to that kind of occasion if she had to.

Godspeed, Queen Elizabeth. You will be missed even by those of us who have only the most passing fancy with the British monarchy.

And LONG LIVE THE KING! I think King Charles III might be interesting. I may be a (minor) fan.

After a book conversation at the moomin this summer, I re-read Hatchet. And then I read the other four novels in the “series”. First of all, I LOVE young adult literature although I don’t read it very often. I read it more often when I had readers of young adult novels. Although they were also mature readers who read more advanced stuff. I love this author, who I think writes well. Note that I am not really qualified to opine about writing YA novels so that’s as far as I’ll go. You’re welcome.

The nit that is picking at my brain is that it felt a bit choppy to read this young person’s story in five books, most of them quite short although that may (or may not) be a characteristic of young adult fiction. If I get it right, YA writers try to draw some of the more tentative readers in as well as providing some good [what word do I want?] for more mature readers.

I enjoyed all of the books but when I was finished, what I kind of wanted was a longer book that told the whole story more fluidly and fleshed out some of the background stuff a bit better. I loved the story line(s) of the young man learning to survive in the woods. I guess I wanted a bit more about his struggles upon returning to society with a bureaucratic high school environment, etc. And maybe more fluid transitions between the two environments.

I am kind of riffing along here. I read the author’s afterword at the end of the fifth book and he talked about how he keeps thinking he’s finished with this character but people keep bugging him about “what happens next”. So he goes on and he might still go on. If he is not finished, I will read whatever comes next, perfect or not. None of us are perfect and these stories are umpteen times better than “Gone Girl,” which was just plain stoopid.

One of the things that made me pick Hatchet off my TBR list was my explorations into the Dog Lake area in Ontario, see a few entries ago.

So my cousin in Sacramento posted on Facebook that it was *116* at his house yesterday. I think that is a historic high for Sacramento? 106 is the highest I’ve ever seen The Planet Ann Arbor, twice, I think. On the radio they were talking about school kitchens (in California) being 121 degrees. I want to say they should declare a “snow” day (you know what I mean) and close the schools but how many of those kids don’t have cool places to go besides school although it wasn’t clear to me from the article if A/C was standard in the schools either. And then there’s the question of what happens to the lucky-shuckial grid if everyone turns on their A/C at once… … …

And I can’t believe I wrote that last paragraph without mentioning covid, even though I am still a covid pessimist… … …

Whaddo I wanna write about? I do not know. You do not want to hear me rant and rave about certain polly-tickle figures or issues so I guess you’ll have to make do with this sunrise from a few days ago. It’s been foggy/cloudy the last couple mornings, which has been fine with me because it was also cooler. Happy trails, KW.

Jeebus, things sometimes go south fast! Last night I was innocently scrolling facebook. A Soo Ontario group I follow was talking about where thunderstorms struck last night. Not in Soo Ontario. But one woman in the group reported big storms on Dog Lake. Me? Where the heck is Dog Lake?

I didn’t reply to the group with an idiotic question like that. I did goomaps. OMG! Dog Lake is northeast of Wawa. I have been to Wawa umpteen gazillion times in my life but I had no clue that something called Dog Lake existed. To be fair it is many kilometers away from Wawa and I won’t go through the geography of all that right now. I am still learning it myself.

In my Goomaps process I came across a hunting/fishing lodge for sale! 1.3 million dollars. I was trying to have a general conversation about the Dog Lake area with the GG and I sent him a link to this place. For TWO hours after that he was bugging me about how we could not afford to buy a $1.3 million piece of property.

Okay. For one thing, this is not a residence (although I’m sure the owners actually live there). It is a LODGE with a bunch of cabins that rich (or not) folks from the south (aka The United Snakes and other places) can rent for hunting/fishing or maybe paddling or just relaxing vacations. Northern Ontario has always been a place people who can afford to go there travel for this kind of thing. Many places are pontoon plane fly-ins. I think you can drive to this place, more or less. It looks to me that the most recent owners have UPGRADED this place to be more comfortable. I’m not sure it has wi-fi but heat and lucky-shucky and indoor plumbing are probably relatively new. That’s a good thing.

The thing that’s cracking me up is that the GG thinks I’m interested in spending my hard-earned money on buying this place. I think he’s kidding but it’s going on a bit looooong. For one thing, the moomincabin is 350 miles away from The Planet Ann Arbor. Wawa is 142 miles north of that, not to mention that you have to endure Canadian customs to cross the St. Marys River. And once you get to Wawa, you have umpteen more kilometers to get to Dog Lake.

I am glad that the folks who run lodges there are able to prosper. I haven’t been there but I know it is beautiful country. Do I wanna move there? No I do not! As the GG was leaving for FlaMan’s place this morning he looked me in the eye and said something like, “While I’m gone, don’t get any ideas about buying property on Dog Lake.” I THINK he was kidding.

After last Sunday’s long meander along the Maumee River, I had thought I would be all jazzed up to take a second day trip down to Napoleon and Defiance. We happened upon Napoleon January 2021 and I soooo wanted to get a pic of that courthouse to add to my meager courthouse collection. We didn’t stop though and on the way back we took a freeway route and didn’t pass through Napoleon.

The GG has spent a LOT of time in O-haaa-o over the last year hiking the North Country and/or Buckeye Trails (sometimes they are one and the same). This fall (which will begin before he takes off) his focus is mainly Minnesota. It’ll probably be a while until we get down into Ohio again.

Anyway, he was gonna visit FlaMan today but FlaMan wasn’t quite up to receiving visitors today for whatever reason so the GG took a LOOOOOONG walk out to Dexter. He called me for a ride home MUCH later than I expected but I wasn’t worried. I actually figured he had decided to walk out and BACK.

It turned out he walked out to Dexter via the Mouse House, which is exactly seven miles from our house, then had a beer at Dexter’s Pub, THEN called me. Should he have called me to meet him for a beer? Nope. Not unless Dexter’s has outside seating and I’m not sure it does.

I picked him up on Huron River Drive but then I returned him via the back roads including the Mouse House. He noticed that LEO wasn’t there when he walked by but was when we drove. Ruby, a visiting vee-hickle, was there both times. Honestly we were not spying. We have driven that road forever and are ecstatic that our mouse and raccoon now live on it. I did not think to drive him by his fav-o-rite MAGA Bunker on Gregory Road. There is a loverly sign about Dark Brandon (Joe Biden) in front of the bunker and how bad his policies are affecting “us”. Uh, not me…

The pic is from last Sunday. It’s where the Wabash Cannonball rails-to-trails portion of the NCT/Buckeye trail crosses Ohio highway 109 (aka Michigan highway 52). This part of the trail is named after the Wabash Cannonball train, which is long gone. I have to say that every time I think of the Wabash Cannonball, I remember my boss Byron from my childhood job schlepping boxes of printer paper with Wabash written on them through the computer room. Byron didn’t have a whole lot of hair and my friend Jim C from that job and I would joke that the Wabash Cannonball was coming through. Yes this was nowhere near politically correct but we were young and stoopid and we all got along with Byron who was definitely non-PC himself.

Well those are what the pics show but those come around early in the summer. We call them fish flies at the Hoton Lake Groop Home but another name for them is May Flies and my granddaddy called them Canadian Soldiers. The live a very short period of time – 24 hours or fewer, mate and die. I believe I’ve heard that in some areas over by Detroit near the river / lake, their carcasses carpet the roads so thickly that they are slippery but don’t quote me on that. They are TOTALLY HARMLESS but they squick some people out. Not me although I am squicked out by a surprising insect that I won’t mention and I would appreciate tactful silence from others who DO know 🐽 Eetz a phobia and it is actually not an uncommon one.

Anyway, we are not dealing with fish flies right now. Actually we never have fish flies on The Planet Ann Arbor. But boy oh boy, do we have FRUIT FLIES! Jeebus! I did two grock runs this morning (farmers and Plum) and a lovely co-worker of 🐭 also dropped off a bag of garden surplus a few days ago (lovely cantaloupe BTW). I HAD PRODUCE! And that meant I HAD FRUIT FLIES!

I “processed” all of my fruits and veggies and put everything in the refrigimatator, not to mention several runs out to the compost. I even put APPLES in the fridge. I know that’s not the best place for them but I do NOT want teensy tinesy little bugaboos flying all over my chitchen. I am at WAR!

So, kebabs and grilled corn plus left-over yellow wax beans for dinner. And a cuke salad (the vinegar-y kind) to use up some cukes I bought at the farmers market a week ago. I have scraped the kernels off of 12 ears of corn in the last few weeks, eight of them grilled plus four raw today (from the 🐭 friend). They are in the freezer.

The GG CLEANED out Mooon Yooonit today. She NEEDED IT after a summer of hauling North Country Trail (NCT) crapola around. She is now ready for a fall of hauling NCT crapola around 🐽 He is now entertaining himself by feeding chipmunks in the back yard. Hot today!

P.S. In case I was not clear, these big ugly bugs are NOT what’s in my house today. Fruit flies as y’all know are too small for iPhoneography.

Well, at least I was exhausted this afternoon. I have since recovered.

It’s a file format prodject. We do these ALL THE TIME! I am a SPECIAL MASTER [snort] at file format prodjects and so are the others on my team. We had to deal with outside folks today. I hardly ever do that but they want a custom file and we spent like a month trying to dredge details out of them. Like is this field’s static value “A” or “B”? Because you have sent us conflicting specifications.

And then there’s the whole fixed format thing. If you want to send sample records for a fixed format file, PUT THEM IN A MONOSPACE FONT! Please. Otherwise there’s no way to tell which column each character is in. Especially if you send a PICTURE, and not a file. If it’s a file (word or .txt or whatever), I can CHANGE the font to something monospace… … …

Sorry. After that plus some afternoon heat, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. It’s okay. I didn’t get much productive work done this afternoon but despite the sleepiness, my brain was in background gear and Tuesday morning I will knock it all out choppity chop.

I was a bit astounded when I heard a story on NPR this week about how some misguided companies were trying to track white collar and professional folks’ productivity by their keyboard activity. No no no no no… We are coders and writers but we are also THINKERS. Sometimes what looks like downtime to an outsider (feet up on the desk or doing word puzzles or whatever) is active brain work. When I used to do my Zen Commute I can’t COUNT how many times I would leave Cubelandia struggling with something and the answer would surface as soon as I turned left onto South State.

Last I heard, the covid numbers from the high school reunion I didn’t attend had reached 11. That’s approaching 10%. The problem is not so much the numbers from the reunion though. It’s how many other folks the people infected at the reunion will spread it to. Not that we truly know if all of the 11 were actually infected AT the reunion. covid is a trickster. Mask up please.

On the one hand, I re-connected with my aunt Charlotte’s granddaughter on facebook today. Charlotte was my favorite aunt on the MacMu side of the fam. Since all of my MacMu aunts and uncles are dead now, I guess I can say that. I tried to get along with Aunt Roberta but she was a piece of work to say the least. The Commander (her sister) had difficulties with her too although there were some good times.

Charlotte was always just, well, fun. Once, she sent her young son and one of his friends up to the moomincabin on the bus for a week. They were like 12 or so. She called once to check up on how they were doing. I answered the phone (wait! did we actually have a phone at the moomin then? I guess so). I said he was doing fine. She told me that when she drove up to pick them up, she would make sure to sleep in her black lace negligee just to embarrass the heck out of them. I was probably around 18 then and of course I cracked up.

Doug and his friend were DYING to row the dinghy to the island. We were having a lot of northwest winds that week and The Comm was wringing her hands about letting them do that. Finally one windy wavy day, my uncle Duke, the old air force pilot said, “Oh just let ’em go. They’ll never get off the shore.” And they didn’t 🤣 Years later I took Doug and his daughter to the island in kayaks and I’ll talk about that some other time.

Charlotte died way too early and then her daughter (my cousin Cathy) died, also way too early. I don’t know Cathy’s children all that well but I am friends with her daughter on facebook (Charlotte’s granddaughter, my first cousin once removed). So when she posted pictures from Sault Ste. Siberia, I reached out to say that she was welcome to visit the moominbeach whenever she was in the area. We had a bit of back and forth. She remembered the one time her uncle Doug took her and her brother to visit their great-aunt Fran (my mother the Commander) at the moomin but wasn’t exactly sure how to get there. Maybe one of these days she’ll get there again, maybe not. I know The Commander (and her sister Charlotte) would be happy that I connected.

I do struggle when the GG tells people he knows in the yooperland that I am related to various people in the area. This is FinFam relations, not MacMu. Yes. I am related to various people in the area but I MOSTLY do not know them. I know my first cousins and their kids/grandkids. For whatever reason, I did not know most of the others when I was a child. I’m not sure why but, well, it’s all very awkward and I would rather not y’know GO THERE for the most part. They are good people as far as I know…

Covid count from the class reunion I didn’t attend was up to nine last I heard. Cheers!