I don’t think I can write anything tonight because I am reading a booook I can’t put down and I think I need to get back to it. I just finished three boooks I couldn’t put down so this is the fourth in a row. Also, we were porterzoomed tonight with the GG still in O-haaa-o, which is where he met this loverly doggo.
Back to my booook. G’night, KW
I heard through the grapevine yesterday that my fave grocery store would no longer require employees to wear masks. My OTHER “big box” grocery store has not required them since I dunno when. A mixed bag of people have been wearing them there. The guys who clean the floors early in the morning don’t but I can stay way away from them. The cashiers always mask and I go thru the UScan where they don’t have to get close to me at all except for the five seconds it takes to approve my whine. I was hoping my neighborhood upscale store would keep mandating employee masking for a while… Alas. I went there today and it was a mixed bag but I was okay (I was masked).
I do see that cases are falling precipitously around here but I will still be masking and keeping a distance. I hate big crowds anyway. I do hope that EVERYONE will pay attention to the metrics and reinstate masking if the numbers go up. I mean, we’ve been here before, right?
That said, I now know that CASES are not the only metric. That reality didn’t really sink in until I had my own breakthrough infection. In fact, I did not take a test at all, not even a home antigen test. Since the GG was positive and I shared air with him, when I developed symptoms a couple days later, I figured there was no point in wasting a test. They were scarce at that time. So I am an uncounted case. (And I did not get it from a grocery store.)
In even more boring news, this is the first Thursday since maybe early February that I didn’t have to haul my carts down to the curb in YakTrax. All of the ice in my driveway has finally melted (for now), even the mess where I park Cygnus. The sun don’t shine there and it would semi-melt every day and then re-freeze at night. For a couple days I was sanding/salting the heck out of it but eventually it got to be bitsy little *patches* of ice instead of big rinks. We’re being threatened with 60-plus temps on Sunday. Really? We’ll see.
The pic? Sent by the GG from O-haaa-o today, where they hiked five miles more than planned due to a missed turn. It’s a little hard to count the legs but yes it is a nursing calf and its mooma.
If you do Wordle and finished it today, I thought the word was appropriate to our world these days. I hope that wasn’t a spoiler.
“Zoom” coffee with MMCB this morning. Both my coffee buddies have Ukrainian origins although they were born in the U.S. as were all but one parent (I think). That one parent escaped and embarked on a remarkable journey, alone at an early age. 10 maybe? Yeah, really. Another U.S. citizen I know was born in Kharkiv and still has family members there. Praying in my own godless way.
I used to write umpteen bazillion checks all the time. All of the utilities, etc., grocks, and whatever. I actually REMEMBER when the grocery stores started to accept plastic. I don’t remember exactly the year but I was an adult with two children. Before that, I would write a check before I left for the store and fill in the amount when I was checking out. Efficiency…
My first job in life was cashier in the Sault Ste. Siberia Tempo store (a KMart-like store). I loved it. Ringing people’s stuff up, punching in the department number and price on the old fashioned cash register, calculating the sales tax, giving people change. Most people paid in cash back then. A lot of people wrote checks, which was annoying because I had to wait for them and ask to see their driver’s license. A few people used credit cards. That was an ARDUOUS process involving dredging a big swiping device out from under the counter, putting a receipt with triplicate carbon layers just right on it and SWIPING like crazy. If the total was over $50, I had to call the office at the back of the store and THEY had to CALL Mastercard or VISA. And the person I was checking out had to W-A-I-T, along with MEEE and all of the other people in line. I was a fast fast fast cashier and that drove me crazy.
Nowadays I write maybe 2-5 checks a year. Two of those are property taxes for the family-owned seasonal cabin, the others are for random things that come up. I do plastic or autopay or paypal or venmo for EVERYTHING ELSE. Tap/swipe, clickety-click. Venmo is really cool to transfer money to another PERSON but if I need to pay someone I know isn’t tech savvy and doesn’t wanna learn I just bite the bullet and write a check. I keep a few envelopes and some stamps in my TeleCubelandia desk basket so I don’t have to rummage around for them.
Man oh man, I recently sent a check off to the township treasurer and SOMEHOW I overpaid by $300. Read a “2” as a “5”. I am NOT dyslexic so I dunno. This set off a clusterf*ck of stuff in which the GG was contacted and did he call the county clerk? I’m not sure but he apparently talked to someone but it wasn’t the county clerk because I called the county this morning and they had no clue about our taxes🤣 It was okay, the township gal (who’s probably who he did call) emailed me a bit later and it’s all good now except she has got to think I am a cretin. We are actually acquainted because of previous bungling on my part and the county’s (on different occasions) and she is fantastic.
I wanna say I wish the township would upgrade their technology to allow online payments. I pay our Planet Ann Arbor taxes online ALL THE TIME (even though there’s a wee fee). But I know they probably aren’t able to do that easily and there’s something to be said for the personal service provided by our township treasurer.
I was in the Water Closet when I saw the sun lighting up Pekak back there in the back yard. In the few minutes it took me to put socks and shoes on, the sun had set a bit but here ya are.
This particular March came in like a lamb. Not always the case.
I have been draggin’ my *ss outta the rack all winter. That means I don’t get up at six, not that I sleep until 10 or even anywhere near eight. Again, it’s NOT Long Covid or Covid Brain Fog or anything like that. I couldn’t do my job (or word puzzles) with Covid Brain Fog. It is probably partly related to Covid but it’s a mild psychological thing. Like not one that I need to go and talk to a therapist about, just one I have to live through. I can and will do that. MILD is the operative word here. I’ve pulled myself through various other things throughout my life. Like “heartbreaks” and bouts of “what do I want to do when I grow up?”.
The heartbreaks? I don’t even think about those guys now. Some of them are probably dead… And I guess I’m finally doing what I was destined to do when I grew up. But then there are all the other jobs and things I have done as an adult, including raising two exceptional people. I was good at figuring out the jobs. The kids raised themselves. I can get through this too. It’s actually a lot easier than those other things.
Today? I woke up early and could not stay in bed until six for the life of me. So. Up. Shower, laundry, cleaned whatever bits were left in the kitchen, a FEW ITEMS TO FLING are now in the garbage cart (hey, we can’t recycle EVERYTHING) or in Cygnus to donate. Word puzzles and a bit of leftover brek, then settled into work.
It doesn’t sound like much but today was heartening and it got me thinking more about flinging… Maybe I need to dip back into Flylady again to help me chunk big jobs into small tasks. She helped me out when I felt overwhelmed back in the 2000s. I got things kinda under control and then The Commander died and we had to clean out the Dillon House… And no we did not have an estate sale despite pressure from a former relative to have one. Funny thing about friends and relatives with all kinds of ideas is that they usually aren’t willing to put serious elbow grease into it, just provide a Noisy Paintbrush or whatever. I know estate sales can be a great way to get rid of stuff for some people. We cobbled together our own strategy mainly involving the moomincabin garage as a staging area. It worked for us so at this point we’re back into our own flinging…
G’night -KW
P.S. The Commander did not leave a big hoarder mess at all. She got rid of a LOT of stuff the last 10 years of her life. I so appreciated that.
Despite brilliant sunshine all day I anxiously awaited the temperature to rise high enough to MELT THE ICE! It seemed to hang out in the low 20s forever but eventually made it alll the way up to 40. Plenty of ice and snow melted today but some stubborn patches of ice in the driveway, which is on the north side of the Landfill absolutely refused until I attacked them with some salt. It’s gonna get cold again overnight so anything that melts and hasn’t been treated with some kind of de-icing agent will re-freeze.
Not much exciting today. A beach urchin spent the night here and we had a wee bacon/hash brown brek this morning, then I had her drive us in Cygnus along the river and downtown. We tried to think of someplace to get a take-out lunch but couldn’t come up with anything. That is CRAZY because this is “restaurant city” but I think we both had something like the Griz in mind and we were too lazy to look up their Sunday take-out hours plus it is Downtown and I at least didn’t really want to deal with Downtown except to drive through it. And then we TRIED to drive Main Street but there was such a long line of cars we bailed out onto Washington and headed home. In the end we cleaned up some of the taco leftovers from last night and I call that a win-win.
I’m cooking salmon piccata tonight, which’ll probably feed me for a few days. The recipe, which I ran across on them thar inter-tubes, drives me NUTS. It describes EVERYTHING starting from selecting the salmon in GREAT DETAIL. I guess some people like this kind of thing but me? Just list the ingredients and provide a TERSE description of what to do with them. I mean, this kind of recipe is actually so simple that it doesn’t even really need a recipe. Know what I mean? I do like an ingredient list because otherwise I forget things unless it’s something I’ve made umpteen bazillion times (and even then…). Like eggplant parm. I started with the old Veg Ep recipe and that’s usually what I use but if I happen to have some extra pasta sauce in the freezer I am just as happy using that for the sauce, even if there’s meat in it. (Don’t tell Veg Ep🤣) Anyway, this is my second time cooking this salmon piccata thing. A couple more times and I’ll have it memorized. And hey! It’s helping me use up the “lifetime” supply of capers I bought online during the early days of the pandemic.
Cheers!
Me and the beach urchins and the raccoon and npJane. I felt comfortable with this event unmasked even. We are all vaxxed and some of us have had COVID. I dunno what’s next with COVID but I feel safe for the moment. Without masking in my house. I will STILL avoid crowded indoor spaces and mask any time I am around people. Yeah, it’s a mild disease yada yada yada. It was for vaxxed me. But. It’s only mild except for when it’s not. It’s not over yet but I felt pretty comfortable with our small gathering today. Soooo good to see all of these folks again. Especially npJane who I haven’t seen since summer.
There he is. I can only assume that his drive was smooth despite light flurries. No snow where he is. We have it here but it’s not significant.
We’re at the end of February and winter doesn’t feel DONE yet. Who knows what March will bring. I remember a year when February ended with a couple weeks of very mild temperatures and NO SNOW. And then. I had been called to jury duty on March 1st (a Monday) and it was zero degrees. I reported for jury duty and actually served in the weirdest way you could imagine, maybe I’ll try to write about it some other day if I can manage to reconstruct it. And then the first couple weeks of March were cold and snowy as all frickin’ getout.
There have been other Marches when we have had temps in the 90s, Like the year all the trees flowered and we had the Dexter Tornado.
This year? I’m guessing we’re gonna seesaw up and down temperature wise and we’re probably gonna get a few more snowstorms but they are going to melt quickly.
G’night, KW
I had big plans today. I mean besides work. I was gonna make veggie casseroles for the GG and his Ohio NCT hiking friends. Eggplant parm and enchiladas. The non-veggies can put chicken on top or not.
So I got up this morning and took a shower like I always do and then I put a load of laundry in and then I chunked up some onions and green peppers and put them into the Cuisinart to process after I got some garlic at Plum. And then I went downstairs to move my load of laundry into the dryer. Except. That. There was a big lake down there. Jeebus.
The GG went downstairs and I took off to the Plum, wondering if I would be able to actually cook anything today or if we would have to decamp to a hotel or whatever. I really did not want to do that.
Roto-rooter came out and (knock on wood) we are safe in our own house. Our guy was talking about our BIG TREE maybe sending roots out. It may be that we need to get rid of that tree and I am not averse to that. Being meeee, I had to make a joke. That tree has only fallen our house once.
Knock on wood we are okay for a while. I eventually finished my cooking stuff but took a wee bit of time off this afternoon to complete it.
This morning MMCB2 was mildly lamenting that she didn’t keep a journal through the pandemic. Another of her monikers is Bubbe and she has been watching her local grandkids throughout most of it. They have all avoided the plague so far. I hope it stays that way but the younger child is not yet eligible to be vaxxed and I don’t think I know ANYONE who hasn’t had at least a potential exposure at this point. Fingers crossed for them.
As she talked about journaling, I just cracked up. Because I have been “journaling” on this platform for, well, it’ll be 19 years sometime this summer and that definitely includes the pandemic. MMCB1 was giggling because she does know that I am an incorrigible blahgger. I don’t think she reads me, at least not often. She does look at what I post on Facebook but that isn’t all that much these days because Facebook drives me nutsier and nutsier all the time and it is NOT because of the Wordle posts. They drive me a little nuts but I think the habit of posting them will be short-lived.
I have blahgged through the later years of my kids’ high school and college careers, my later theatre guild management years and the end of them, my sojourn at community college, my brother’s, dad’s, mother’s, Radical Betty’s, and other relatives’ deaths, my decision to embark on my Adult Career and the going on 15 (YES!) years of that. Carefully, of course. You can’t really blahg about your job although I have never been able to think of anything but good things to say about mine and it continues to save my SANITY during the pandemic (which isn’t over no matter what anyone says…). I wonder if I’ll ever be able to sort anything incoherent about the pandemic out of my blahg…
Really my blahg has always been mainly a way for me to dump some crapola out of my brain. If people want to read it, that’s fine. If not, so be it. I love comments but I am not a comment whore. I am not a big commenter myself 🧡
In other news, winter is NOT over yet here in the Great Lake State but I heard bird SONG for the first time today. Not just grokking and grackling around. I mean SONG. Like, here I am, let’s make babies. And life goes on.
Another solicitor. Mask dragging along down by her chin. She was NOT intimidating at all. Just about the opposite. Mumbled her name, asked me to grab a gas bill and give her [mumble mumble] information from it. Did she work for the gas company? I could not tell. I told her I didn’t HAVE a gas bill around to grab. That surprised her. Um, I have auto-paid the gas bill since back in the wild wild west days of the internet. Like before this young woman was born. She looked genuinely surprised when I told her how long I have been auto-paying my gas bill. I mean approximately. I can’t really remember when I switched over to auto-pay. Don’t most people pay their bills that way? Maybe she doesn’t have a gas bill?
She mumbled something about the meter and I thought that meant she could go get whatever info she needed from the gas meter, which is outside. I did NOT want her in my house. Oh no, mumble mumble mumble. I could NOT figure out for the life of me what she wanted but something about once she had this information, she would lower my bill. Um, I don’t even LOOK at how much I pay for gas. I know that whatever it is, it is NOT breaking the bank. If it WAS, I would notice it.
I was WORKING, duh, so at this point the GG got involved. He gently but pointedly asked her questions about who she worked for and was she trying to get us to sign up for something we didn’t want. She became more and more discombobulated and finally said she was starting to feel uncomfortable. I mean, anyone who feels uncomfortable with me and the GG is NOT cut out for door-to-door sales. Neither of us projects “serial killer” and he really was being very gentle with her. And SHE came UNSOLICITED to OUR door. What am I missing here?
There are two reasons I didn’t immediately send her packing. One was that she acted soooo unlike the usual pushy salesperson that I didn’t think she was selling something. The other is that there is an effort in our city to become “independent” from Big Gas Company. People are angry at what they think are more power outages than necessary. There is some truth to that. It’s why we bought a generator. But. I am against HASTILY “firing” Big Gas Company and replacing it with something untried. For a while I thought she might be connected with that movement but she “worked” for a company we have never heard of as the GG finally figured out. I suspect if “we” do decide we need to consider privatizing our energy, there’ll be petitions and hearings and all that kind of stuff.
I actually felt sorry for this young woman. She was NOT an effective solicitor. I’ve been wondering if she gets paid to do this or is being exploited in some way.
The pic is from the Big Mac a couple weeks ago when the Twinz of Terror crossed it. That “trail” through the ice is from an icebreaker.
Maybe some disjointed thoughts here…
I read an NYT article about people moving across country today that didn’t quiiite ring true to me. The main story was someone who moved from LA to Spokane. I was thinking sight unseen but upon a re-read, a son of theirs went to college there and they “liked” it. Well okay. The husband turns out to have a job there but then again he had never shoveled snow before. HUH! It didn’t say if he enjoyed his first snow shoveling experience. Maybe he did. Maybe he hired a service PRONTO! I have been shoveling snow my entire life. I am now spoiled by the yooperland style snowblower “I bought” the GG a few years ago.
We haven’t had any new snow of any significant depth since last Thursday. What we DOOOOO have now is a loverly thaw and freeze cycle. Like the temps got up into the 30s or whatever yesterday so some of our snow melted into a thin layer of water across the sidewalk and driveway. And then the temps re-froze overnight… This morning there was a sheet of glare ice in front of Cygnus (not to mention the sidewalks). I keep two pairs of Keen sandals by the front door, one tricked out with Yax, the other not. I put the Yaxxed sandals on to throw a bunch of sand out in front of Cygnus to create a safe path around to the driver’s side door. Then I switched into non-Yaxxed sandals to actually GO to the Plum for THREE grock items. It’s okay. I got to see my 🐭 and, uh, I almost grokked 🐸 one of her co-workers who has similar hair but not similar footwear.
Where was I?
I get why people move to other cities. There are new jobs to be had and to be near family members and and and… I am happy here. Since I was a little kid and visited my cousins here on the Planet Ann Arbor, I have always loved this place and wanted to live here. And so by the twists and turns of my young adulthood, here I have been. Childhood Career, volunteer crapola, Adult Career, two children who were born along the way and went through public school here.
We have been fortunate (I KNOW THAT!) to be able to work at decent jobs here our entire adult lives. And we have never been all that far away from most of our family members. It’s a five hour drive to the yooperland where my (late) parents lived but it was do-able and we still go there because of the family beach property.
But mostly we are here because we love it here. I can’t even imagine deciding to start over in a new place.
I am probably more of a snowbilly than a hillbilly but whatever.
Credit for this entry idea to one of my PacNW blahggy friends, Margaret who has been struggling with her fridge’s ice-making musheen. DISCLAIMER: I think anyone who wants a working built-in ice-making musheen in their fridge SHOULD HAVE ONE!
Me? Except for the fridge at the fancy NEW (2005) Cfam cabin at Hoton Lake, I have never had an automatic ice-maker. I need to also say (for reference) that the Moldy Old Hoton Lake cabin had two fridges but NEVER a built-in ice-maker.
Here at the Landfill, we don’t have the kitchen space to install a great big fridge. I think my last two (or is it three?) fridges have been the same GE model. Yeah I know GE isn’t the best but it’s what FITS in my kitchen. I could probably have gotten an ice-making musheen in any of those but opted not to so that I would have more freezer space for other stuff. The Hoton Lake fridge/freezer always seems chock-full to me but it is bigger and has more space. And there are frequently big crowds up there although not anywhere near as often in the last two, y’know, years.
But here’s my snowbilly setup at the Landfill. Three ice cube trays and an ice cube container. The moomincabin has an even more snowbilly setup. It has two ice cube trays but uses a Ziploc Bag for ice cube storage. The problem with the moomincabin fridge is that the freezer DOES NOT HAVE A LIGHT! Moom, what the heck were you thinking?
I think I am done done done today. One of the beach urchins facetimed us a while ago. This has been a loooong winter and we haven’t seen her in person since xmas. She originally planned to come over here for my bday (mid-January) so I wouldn’t be alone because the GG had planned (with my blessing) to hike down in Ohio with some gals. I wouldda been okay with being alone on my bday but then breakthrough COVID threw everything sideways and we were alone on that day because we were quarantining and my main bday gift this year was COVID. It’s more than a month later and we are probably immune COVID-wise (FOR NOW). I am STILL masking on my limited grock trips and I am not restaurant-ready yet.
My kids want to visit next weekend and I will LOVE that but I don’t want them to drive through whatever Old Man Winter decides to throw at us. And they don’t either. I hope it works out but if it doesn’t, it won’t be too long until snow and freezing rain are not in the forecast. Knock on wood.
Started a new boooook today, What the Fireflies Knew. I’m not sure what this book will turn out to be but here are some of the keywords.
Detroit. Ths kids in the story were originally living in Detroit. Until their dad died. My granddaddy and [beloved] step grandma Bolette lived in Detroit when I was a kid, well until the riots made them decide their neighborhood wasn’t safe for them any more. I loved visiting them at their art deco house on Mark Twain. Most of mom’s fam was close enough to visit so I got to know all of my cousins on that side of the fam (and we are still connected). And we would go to the auto show at Cobo and the downtown Hudson’s where The Commander worked as a buyer when she was young before she moved to the yooperland. The kids in this book are Black and poor. My fam was, uh, not really.
Lansing. The kids in the story moved to Lansing. We would visit mom’s brother and fam in [East] Lansing. My late uncle Austin MacMu was director of the DNR back in the day and he would tour us through the capitol building. About all I remember about that is the glass floor. I know a lot of schoolchildren probably take field trips (probably even my own) but you didn’t take a day trip to Lansing from the yooperland, even when it wasn’t snowing.
Granddaddy! This family calls the mom’s dad Granddaddy. I called both of my grandfathers granddaddy. Dad’s dad was just plain granddaddy. Mom’s dad was Funny Granddaddy. He wasn’t always funny but had a particular joke about his hat (that I can’t remember) for YOUNG grandchildren. You know dad jokes? I think this was a granddaddy joke. My dad was also granddaddy (as was his brother). The GG’s dad was Grandpa Garth at least to my kids. When my little munchkin Liz was learning to talk, my dad was Jack and the GG’s dad was Bumpa. I’m not sure where Bumpa came from but it definitely fit. Jack was my dad’s name. His government name was Kenneth John but he was JACK! Jeebus.
Anne of Green Gables. Anne-with-an-E, like meeeee. I can’t really describe the relationship(s) I have with those books. We (beach urchins and I) started reading the first book aloud when they were approaching middle school (Liz was probably already there). Everyone including me took off from there and read all eight books. And. We discovered the BBC series and all of us including the GG watched it over and over. The Black child narrating the book snagged a ragged paperback copy of Anne of Green Gables in the lost and found at her former school in Detroit and is reading it. She seems to recognize Anne as a kindred spirit as do I.
P.S. I have never liked the name “Anne” but my moom once let slip that Anne of Green Gables was an influence for that name. It also might be a woman who may have been one of her best friends in life. Annie, a woman I have heard of my whole life but have never met. Anne of Green Gables hated her name too and wished for a name like Cordelia, which wouldn’t have been my choice. But I’m okay with Anne (with an e) for now.
I’m sure there’s still ice under there somewhere but it won’t deter me from taking out the compost (for now) although I didn’t actually do that today. I spent three hours meeting with Amazon Woman today and I was fried after that. It was a FUN meeting, we were “translating” a document from corporate policy-type verbiage into stuff that applied to our product.
Three hours is a long time to focus on one thing (and my damn internet kept crapping out to boot) so we occasionally veered off into other topics. One of which was Olympic ice skating. A disclaimer: I am not really watching the games this time around. For one thing, I have no clue about where they are on TV.
And what about that ice skating stuff, huh? I can’t sort it out but some of my facebook friends are sure trying.
First. I was never much of an ice skater but I could make my way around an ice rink without difficulty. Most of the winters of my youth there was a homemade ice rink literally steps away from my house. For a few years the next door neighbors made one between our houses (on our property mostly). I sorta remember they had hockey boys. But there was usually also one on the basketball court DIRECTLY across the street from our shabby little Superior Street bungalow. Skating there was particularly fun because it was lined by waist-high snowbanks so you could get going really fast, then LAUNCH yourself onto a snowbank, turn over and look at the stars, laughing like a hyena the whole time.
We were not wealthy but I always had DECENT if not fancy ice skates. I was born with a toe that turned in and had to be “corrected” with a “brace”. I don’t remember wearing the brace but I knew that I had worn one and in baby pics of me I see a sock-like thingy. We were NOT wealthy but The Commander did NOT mess around about any kind of footwear.
So. The facebook gals. A lot of girls my age took figure skating lessons down at the local hockey arena. Some of them were really good although I doubt anyone was landing triple jumps, not to mention quads. Every year there was a big Saturday afternoon extravaganza that we went to and I was always envious. Part of it was I envied their skating abilities but you have to know it was also about the SPARKLY COSTUMES.
Mom would not let me join up. I don’t think this was about money. I think she sensed there was “drama” going on, if not with the kids, with the Skate Moms. And she didn’t want anything to do with it. Having managed a youth theatre guild for a number of years, I know about that kind of thing. I became a skier instead. Oh never anything more than a competent amateur but it was more in line with the stuff my family did up in the land of the ice and snow. That’s a YouTube link and may come with an ad. oo-oo-oooooo-oo.
At any rate, all of my childhood skater friends are buzzing about this on Facebook even though I don’t think most of them have skated in decades. They think the young Chinese Russian skater was paid to fail? I dunno. Just what a frickin’ mess. And she’s 15!!!
P.S. I am not watching the Olympics this year.
See all that water back there? Guess what’s at the bottom of it. Did you guess a sheet of ice? Ding ding ding! You have won the booby prize. Needless to say I did not take the compost out today, not that I really needed to. Mostly coffee grounds and some little bits of apple core and clementine rind. No old dead broccoli.
Actually the roads were great at 0-skunk-30 this morning as I knew they would be. It was raining cats and dogs but in the 40s, at least at the start of my grock grab trips. I didn’t even need my jacket, ski band, or glubs, just a turtleneck sweater and polartech vest with zip pockets for my phone, debit card, and key fob. I usually wear my ski band when I’m going somewhere people can see me because I look like a bank robber in my balaclava. Albeit a bank robber in a skirt. But y’know, some women rob banks and some men wear skirts.
It doesn’t look like that in my back yard this evening but it’s too dark for a pic so I’ll show you the “after” pic tomorrow. Ice started coming down in the early afternoon, just after the GG set off in Cygnus to do some errands. I could hear it more than see it. Needles from the sky. DON’T WRECK MY CAR! All was well and he returned just as conditions were going rapidly southward. Being a moom, I always worry about my [adult] children driving to and from work. The one who can work remotely did (as far as I know) and the other had the day off. They are great drivers but the traffic here is heavy and sucks even on a good day.
The ice eventually turned into snow and although there are aspects of Cubelandia I miss, I am soooo glad I don’t have to even think about commuting on days like these. Back in my childhood career at “that darn EPA”, I had no choice. Once we got something like 10” of snow overnight. It was still coming down when I was driving over there at something like 6:00 AM and there was thundersnow, which I could hear only because the Jetta we had then had some issue with the ventilation system and zee veeeendsheeeld kept fogging up so I had to drive with the windows open so I could seeee, don’tcha know. I was going along Plymouth Road (ALMOST THERE) and I got to the intersection of Plymouth and Barton Drive. There is a slight incline there and the LIGHT WAS RED! I wasn’t sure I would get through the intersection if I stopped. SO. I. RAN. THE. LIGHT. There were no other vee-hickles out there at that ungodly time of the morning. Just me and god-or-whoever and he/she/whatever gave me a pass that day.
It’s winter and this is the Great Lake State. Cheers!
Water draining slowly in the bathroom sink? Call the plumber! Veeeeelhelm! Oh Veeeelhelm! And quick as a wink, Veelhelm heads to the phone booth and changes into Super Plumber. Sneak peek of Ecoterlet in the first phooooto. Yes, her seat is up! A maaaaaaan lives here and I decided a long time ago that terlet seat position was not a hill I was willing to die on 🐽. I keep her scrupulously clean, swabbing her down every single day, even throughout stupid ailments like COVID, mild breakthrough that it was. At least now I don’t have to ration Clorox wipes but I have learned how not to use a lot of them. I do have a germ phobia about using “re-usable” things (sponges and cloths, etc.) to clean the business parts of the terlet. TMI? Sorry.
Super Plumber cleans up after himself (he lives here too) and all of this crapola moved back into the cabinet under the sink after the sink was successfully unplugged.
My status. Second day of spreadsheet evisceration. Today was more like massage and I think I’m 99% there in terms of a document I can WORK WITH! Jeebus. Then there’s Wordle. Someone turned me on to Quordle… Actually I think Pengie originally found it but I didn’t get it directly from her. It has a frickin’ PRACTICE mode meaning you can actually play it more than once a day… Dangereuse dangereuse dangereuse. Ol’ Man Winter? Warm tonight but deteriorating tomorrow with 3-6″ predicted. I’m making a grock run EARLY tomorrow before that happens. It’s not a panic run. I ALWAYS go early anyway, especially since COVID but you know that if you are one of my five regular readers 🤣. 3-6″ is not really much for this area but still.
Winter is on the down side of the season but it is never over until it’s over, especially here in the Great Lake State. Cheers!
I spent my WHOLE DAY tearing apart the most confusing spreadsheet on earth and putting it back together.
DISCLAIMER: This spreadsheet was NOT created by anyone in my organization and I will not say where it came from. But it was my job to analyze the information in it and I KEPT GETTING LOST!!!
Like. If there were five (for example) related items, they were jammed into a single cell, carefully numbered 1., 2., 3., 4., 5. With blank lines between them BUT IN THE SAME CELL. Every time I tried to scroll up or down to the previous or next cell, I totally lost track of where I was and what I was trying to do. PEOPLE it’s a SPREADSHEET! Put each one of your five (or whatever) related items on a separate row and either repeat the information that relates them in every row or put it at the top and remove the borders for that information. I do NOT recommend a whole lot of cell merging. That has its place but makes sorting impossible. This is all not to mention the extraneous rows and columns that did not add any value to the spreadsheet in general. Noise vs. signal ratio? Off the charts. It’s okay. It’s all cleaned up now.
The first spreadsheet app I encountered was called Visicalc. I was totally enamoured. I can balance my checkbook with this! Well, not really. We were running Viscalc on an Apple II+ and for many reasons, checkbook balancing on it was not viable. That came later when Visicalc morphed into Excel and we got a MacPlus or whatever it was. I moved my checkbook onto it and as I took on non-profit org treasuries one after another, I dragged all of those books onto the computer too.
I gained some notoriety in the spreadsheet business when I took over the treasury for a large middle school. I have a habit of collecting as much “data” as I can so when I took the papers and checks from registration, I had a huge spreadsheet with everything including things like people’s exes, etc. Looking back, this was probably not “legal” although most of that stuff was in the school directory but… Nowadays I would be much more careful about collecting that kind of info but I’m also guessing the schools may now have different processes than some PTO Lady entering stuff off paper forms into her own computer.
The funniest thing was once at a PTO meeting, my then walking buddy Vic called me a Spreadsheet Queen. Another mom said that at least I wasn’t a Bedsheet Queen. Actually given all of the gazillion times I have washed bedsheets in my life I suppose I am also a Bedsheet Queen.
Those folks got along with this nerd well enough that they asked me if I wanted to “take” over the high school PTO with them when our kids got there. Alas, my answer had to be that I would but only if my child did not “get into Community” (alternative “open” high school and her choice although I certainly supported it). She did (whew!) and I eventually snagged THAT treasury but I think about those old middle school mom friends fondly.
Okay, I am not big on romantical type things. But. It’s winter. It isn’t the worst weather we’ve ever had but I am kind of over it. We’ve survived COVID (albeit very mild breakthrough cases). It’s a holiday of sorts. And it’s my late mother-in-law’s birthday. Sweet Sally Grandma, mother of 10, grandma of 19. We are celebrating this day in our own quiet way. If not Valentine’s Day, Grandma Sally’s birthday. 🧡
I bought filet the other day to cut up for kebabs. I went back this morning to try to snag a couple lobster tails and YES, they had them. I also bought the GG a little box of chocolates. The beach urchins also sent chocolate and fancy nuts. We are well supplied.
I was surprised when I arrived at Plum when it opened this morning. Usually there is almost nobody but me in the parking lot at that hour. Today? It wasn’t slammed but there were quite a few vee-hickles. A month ago I wouldda been nervous about this but armed with my current weird (and probably temporary) COVID invulnerability, I masked up and charged on in.
Valentine’s Day is a weird holiday for retailers. Back when my kids were teenagers, we were in the midst of a play production “tech week” and I went to Kroger On V-Day because I think I had actually run out of TOILET PAPER! (Little did I know what was to come.) There were all these men zombie-ing through the store grabbing wildly at candy and flowers and cards and whatever. Took me a while to figure out it was Valentine’s Day. Me? I just needed toilet paper.
Years later my grocery rodent worked in a fancy candy store. Her take on holidays was that people who were buying chocolates at xmas were cheerful and having fun. Valentine’s day was just plain stressful.
Valentinia has all of the letters for today’s spelling bee but it is not a word. Hope that wasn’t a spoiler.
I won’t be watching. We were invited to a mini Superb Owl party but the GG is off gallivanting in the northern lower and it’s snowing a bit and my fave activity during Superb Owl is to fall asleep on the couch. Also it apparently starts at 6:30 and that is a little early even for me to crash out.
So here’s the GG’s feet at the UU and TBG’s house in the woods in the northern lower (the UU is his identical twin and TBG is his beautiful wife). This is a much fancier house than the Landfill and TBG is much better at decorating than yer fav-o-rite blahgger. A few summers ago (pre-COVID) we spent a night at their house during heavy rainstorms and she turned on a XMAS TREE on one of the decks. Sooooo fun.
One of the reasons I will not be “watching” the super bowl is because I cannot find things on our television sets to save my life. We have Comcast or is it Xfinity? I can never remember although I think they are kinda the same thing. The TV in the bedroom is set to channel 169, which is where Green Acres re-runs and Svengoolie are and last night after Svengoolie was over, there were Star Trek re-runs. I am not a Trekkie but I enjoyed crashing out to that.
The GG was bugging me a bit about my ineptness at operating TV sets. But. I reminded him that most TV user interfaces are not designed with USERS in mind. I do UI design for a living. I know. And he agreed with me. I said they should be hiring more people like meeeeee. Not that I would want that job. I’m perfectly happy with the one I have as long as it continues to exist. Would NOT want to get used to a whole new bunch of people. I like our team just fine.
The only reason I know which teams are playing is that they were in the Sunday xword today. LARams and Cincy. I have never been to LA. I have been through Cincy on various road trips to and from FLA and can I just say the freeway system is crazy but not as crazy as LA’s probably is. If I cared about sports, the Lions are my home team (I knoooow) although I can remember my yooperland dad following Green Bay back in the day.
P.S. Someone more clever than me invented the Superb Owl thing so I cannot take credit for it.
