Actually that’s a moot question because I will likely leave my job (in good graces, I think!) before that can happen. Rosie the Robutt is not gonna barge into my house and confiscate my laptop. But it’s a question a lot of us in the tech industries are asking ourselves these days.

It might (arguably) be more likely that developers/coders’ jobs could be taken over by AI although I am a bit skeptical even of that and think AI might need at least some *sane* human oversight. I mean we can’t let our AI “assistants” (if I can call them that) insert stuff about Hitler into the code, or even name variables after him. Or even name a variable bOOBA, like once happened in my office. It was a female co-worker who (quite inadvertently) did that — to great hilarity. Hey, women can be just as nerdy as men and she was following an established variable naming convention.

The thing is, although I do some crap html/css/javascript coding that an AI actually MIGHT be able to take over, the main thing I do is *write*. In English. Coherently, at least most of the time. I have been paying a little attention to AI and how it’s being “taught” to write. I remain skeptical that it can do what I do, at least when I am actually *on* my game.

An NPR segment of On Point was on the radio yesterday when I was doing stuff in Sault Ste. Siberia in the rain. I will maybe have to re-visit it because I couldn’t catch all of it but what caught my attention was how different kinds of writing “activate” different kinds of brain activity. Hand-writing, typing, whatever. This totally resonated with me.

I can’t put it all into words but hand-writing is definitely different for me than typing. And writing (and brains) can be just plain weird in general. I cannot count how many times I would be at work at the end of the day (back when I had an office but it happens at home too). I would be trying for the life of me to figure out how to explain something in writing to my audience and nada. I would go out and get in my car and before I even got out of the parking lot, it would all come together in my head. The tricky part was to remember it the next day.

In general though, when I need to write something, sometimes the best way to start is to “just START”. Start writing things down as you think of them. If they come out of your brain organized, that’s fine. If not, they can be organized later.

I dunno know if any of this makes sense. It doesn’t necessarily make sense to me. But I wrote it down! And I can tweak it later. Or not.

And the turkey pic is the best pic I have gotten of turkeys yet. Unfortunately it also includes a damp beach towel or two draped over a deck chair. And a clothesline. Gotta keep it real🤪

I abso*t*utely had to do laundry today. Towels and a few sheets and dish cloths/towels. Everything was a mess. When the GG and I are here alone, it’s manageable but when others are around, not so much. To any beach urchins or others who may be lurking, that is A-OKAY! It always gets that way when there are a lot of people around and I *love* when there are a lot of people around. So did The Comm, which is why she did NOT want a visiting schedule for the future owners (aka “us”).

But. Problem. It was raining cats and dogs this morning. That was okay too except I like to put my laundry in and sit on the bench outside at the Up North Laundry. That wasn’t gonna work this morning. So, I dumped my laundry in (two triple-loaders) and headed over to Pat’s Grocks for a very short list. I can get to Pat’s and back to the Up North before the washers are done, which is 25 minutes. Traffic lights? Who needs those in Sault Ste. Siberia? Actually there are plenty of traffic lights but almost NEVER any backups of any sort.

As luck would have it, when I got back to the laundromat, the rain had stopped. The benches were wet but what the heck, I was wearing a cotton skirt. It would dry out quickly. (And did I mention it was HOT out.) I sat down and made quick work of the spelling bee with hyoid (huh?) for 👸🐝 A friendly (and impressively tall) woman also sat down and said she didn’t care if her “bum” got wet, it was hot inside. She lives part-time in an RV and it sounds like she uses a lot of different laundromats. I mostly avoid laundromat conversations but I liked her and I assured her that I’ve been using this one (and some of its predecessors) for umpteen bazillion years and it is THE BEST! And sure enough, when the owner arrived, he set up some decent fans inside and it cooled down. It doesn’t have A/C but, hey, this is Sault Ste. Siberia.

I should qualify this by reporting that the bathroom was broken for something like two years but. 1) They made arrangements with the business next door so that laundry customers could use its bathrooms. 2) I avoid using laundromat bathrooms like poison just because I know enough about laundromats to know weird stuff happens in them.

Anyway, rain off and on throughout the day, sometimes very heavy, and now we have heavy rain again.

P.S. Why the H-E-double hockey sticks are we treating Trumpty Dumpty like he’s a reasonable person. Tariff CHAOS is on the radio right now (turn it off, kW) but martial law in DC and maybe other cities? Um MAGA folks, is THIS what you really want? Don’t try to ‘splain it away by repeating his lies about how horrible crime is. Statistics say otherwise. It seems like a dictatorship rehearsal to me. I don’t want a dictatorship and neither do you, whether you know it or not. And if you are my age (71), your dad may have served in WWII to help get rid of Hitler. Read some history, please please please.

I woke up a few times during last night. I woke up when the cousins bunking next door got up to make coffee for their trip down to DayTwa Metro for an afternoon (I think) flight. They did not *wake* me up, I woke myself up. I dozed a bit, then woke up again in time to see them drive out at 4:30. I beeped a master salute (lake freighter language) to them in my head.

They texted from Metro to say they had arrived safely and their flight seemed to be on time. They took a planned side trip to Belle Isle to see the aquariums. Belle Isle was a favorite place of mine when I was a child as I went there many times with my parents and Detroit grandparents, Granddaddy and Bolette, who lived in a cool little art deco house (9975 Mark Twain Street). I love(d) the aquariums but my favorite thing on the isle is probably the periscope in the Dossin bote museum. The aquariums were the right choice for these young children, who may not understand the periscope and to whom the rest of the bote museum would likely be pretty damn boring🐽

I woke up a third time hearing a dad-blasted beeping alarm of some sort. It wasn’t inside the cabin and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was or where it was coming from. In the morning, when the GG stumbled a bit haggardly up the moomindeck steps, he solved the mystery by reporting that the Lyme Lounge SMOKE ALARM went off in the middle of the night because of HUMIDITY!!!

The rest of the morning was occupied by the stress of waiting for our own adult children to pack and depart. I tend to kind of cocoon into myself, staying outta the fray and not wanting to hover like my poor mother used to do when I was packing. Her hovering was to make sure we didn’t forget anything. Unfortunately, it interrupted my focus and that’s when I would forget things😵‍💫 Eventually, I devised a strategy of handing her a grocery bag to collect things that might be causing her stress.

The GG does a kind of different thing from both me and The Commander. He doesn’t cocoon and he doesn’t [exactly] hover. Instead he fidgets and jumps around a bit randomly making everyone a little crazy. I usually settle down after they leave but I am always greatly relieved when they text their safe arrival home on The Planet Ann Arbor and thereabouts. Texting is so handy. I used to have to remember to call The Commander on the Landfill land line to let her know we were home although I eventually farmed that task out to the beach urchins.

So we are alone again and it is a mixed bag because it’s quiet again but it sure was fun having a party here every night. The moomincabin is in between the Old Cabin and the cousins’ cabin where our left coast guests were bunking so it was a convenient gathering place especially when it was warm enough to hang on the deck and it usually was.

I didn’t personally put the leftovers away last night so I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t immediately find any leftover steak and friends because that was kinda what I was planning for tonight. We had a lot of steak but we also had a lot of guests. Could we really have eaten it all? Nope. There is some left and it’s gonna go into the oven to warm as soon as I transfer it to an oven safe container.

Miss all the folks who have left us and continued safe travels to those flying to the PacNW.

After a string of long hot sunny days, the last evening for a bunch of us cousins to be together began with a beautiful thunderstorm rolling through.

Cousins of several degrees from all four branches of my grandparents’ family. I mean descendants from each of the four children my grandparents birthed. We did FinFam steak dinner tonight with filet mignon, potatoes, corn, salad, and dessert. Lots of people are leaving tomorrow and I will miss them all so much.

There was a bit of talk about ghosts tonight. Other people seem to feel them. I don’t think I do. I lost my brother and dad in pretty quick succession and during that time, it always felt like I was holding the world up in my own two hands. I’m not sure if others perceived that I was doing that but it felt that way to me. Mostly I was driving. Back and forth from the Planet Ann Arbor to the yooperland. Sometimes with passengers, sometimes not. Top dollar Honda Accord six cylinder automatic tranny. Vrooom.

It’s okay that people feel ghosts. I’m not trying to negate that feeling. I just haven’t ever felt it. I’ve felt the presence of vampires and werewolves out by the moomincabin outhouse when I was a young teenager. I don’t think that’s the same thing. It was just meeee feeling freaked out from watching horror movies in the theatres in town back in those days.

There is so much about our lives we don’t understand. Who are we? Who created us and our universe? If there is a creator, do they call it a universe? Why are we here? Etc. Tonight we were on the moomindeck with a whole bunch of relatives during a beautiful thunderstorm. Gabbily gabbing away about everything under the sun. Sometimes even politics although we shut that stuff up PDQ.

To me, that’s what life is all about and I wish I could’ve made this evening go on forever. Love y’all, KW.

I didn’t expect any storms last night so I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up to some distant thunder at 2:30 AM or whatever. Also? Lots of turkey noise. Not gobbling, just noise.

We didn’t get the full brunt of the storm for another couple hours so I slept fitfully all night, tossing and turning. It was okay and I enjoyed the storm when it did actually arrive. After it blew through, I fell into REM sleep for a half hour or whatever. Dreaming of a totally crazy fabric store with at least 50 rooms of fabric and all kinds of levels with staircases to get to them. The Commander and Mouse were there with me although I lost track of them. I was trying to call them on my iPhone when I ran into all kinds of phone dialing trouble and then I woke up. Phone dialing dreams have been a theme since back when we used those old rotary dial phones. Apparently they still haunt me now. I mean I think I could just say, “Hey Siri, call The Commander.” Er well, maybe that wouldn’t work very well.

Anyway, I did a Meijer run to up our steak dinner game and get some more sipping bourbon and some night light bulbs and then dumped off some (more) recycling. After at least half a day of the GG frenetically jumping around between the moomincabin, garage, and camper, he left to join the UU to camp the night before a hike and then UKW wandered over wondering if the refrigerator was fixed. Nope but I’ll fix it pronto. And I did and we hung out on the moomindeck with Liz for a while, then threw together a leftover dinner.

That’s Heinrich (snowshoe hare) in the not-very-good pic. And I am taaaaared so g’night and typos be damned.

Kinda almost looks like the back roads of Appalachia. Or northern Michigan. I mean, there’s even a fridge (you maybe can’t see it way at the back right). It’s a mini “beer” fridge but still a fridge.

I looked at this mess before this evening’s dinner crew arrived and I had a moment of wondering something like “What would The Commander think about this?” And then I thought something like, “I don’t care what she might’ve thought. I am not gonna neaten this mess up.” After all, I have the whole rest of the summer to do that.

Tonight was chicken and tofu stir fry dishes, engineered by UKW and her d-i-l with me and mouse attending as dishwashers, etc., and Lizard distracting just about the chillest five-month-old any of us have ever met. Smiles anyone? Yes. Lizard herself was a pretty chill baby but she was our first child and had plenty of adult attention in her early babyhood. This child’s older sister managed to somersault (in slow motion) down the (four) back steps from the deck to the ground but she was pronounced to be intact by GoGo, her grandmother, also an RN. All’s well that ends well.

Sipping spirits ended the night along with more MOE-skee-TOES than I was happy about although I don’t think any of them actually bit me. We are semi-battened down for predicted thunderstorms that I personally think will be a plassover, that is they will “plass”-over Whitefish Bay and totally miss us. We’ll see though.

Sayonara, KW

Michigan’s Designated Helper (aka The GG) and I were on the moomindeck this afternoon enjoying the undertaker’s wind (outta the swamp) when a beach urchin came up from the beach. “Dad dad dad. The neighbors have capsized a few times and we think they are all right but maybe you should take the motor bote out there.” She wasn’t in a panic, just trying to get his attention.

Yes. By the time the GG got down to the beach, a passing pontoon bote had already done whatever rescuing needed to be done. I do not know what happened but there was some bailing going on and someone was in the water. I thought they were VERY close to the second sandbar where adults and most children can easily stand up but others are dissenting about that. Apparently one of the sailboaters got into the pontoon bote and the pontoon towed the sailboat back to shore. Sounds like everyone was safe. If they hadn’t been, there’d’ve been ambulances and maybe even Coast Guard helicopters.

We have yet to have a fatal water accident on this beach in the 100 years the family has owned it. But we’ve had some near misses over the years. Usually not someone who LIVES on the beach. All of us beach kids had water safety rules drilled mercilessly into our heads since we were babies. Don’t go swimming without asking an adult to watch you. And guess what? We could *always* get a parent to lifeguard for us, even on the days they had to sit on the beach wearing winter jackets. There are many of those frigid summer days but not today. Hotter than Hades.

We’ll talk about testicle festivals some other day. Or not… Look up “Last Bus to Wisdom.”

Tonight was the fourth community dinner in a row. We’re thinking we might give that a rest for a day or two. During our weeks together, we usually need to do that. Tonight was two whole lasagnas, meat and veggie. I was thinking that was a lot of lasagna but although there is some left, it isn’t anywhere near as much as I thought. It was also a really good beach day and I swam. I needed that.

We’re all tired though and it’ll be good to eat in smaller groups tomorrow night. I’m not sure what we’ll eat but we’ll figger it out. For now I am tooooo taaarrred to think and so good night.

So last night I was tucking myself into bed and all of a sudden, the moomincabin living room exploded with “Rikki don’t lose that number.”

What the f*ck? It turned out that the beach urchins were (upstairs) texting things back and forth and something they texted had the “Rikki don’t lose that number” song attached to it and one of the pods in the living room started playing it.

It took a while (and a lot of giggling) for the beach urchins to communicate to their baggy old moom what the heck was going on. Eventually the pod got turned off but somehow that led to a bunch of muskellunge flinging, which of course led to a whole bunch more giggling. As these “kids” are closer to 40(!) than 15, they ended the giggling PDQ and crashed out. When they were teenagers, the four of them (my two and their two cousins) were giggling so much once that I finally threatened to fling a muskellunge at them. There was a few seconds of silence after that (they didn’t really know what a muskellunge was, for one thing), then they collapsed in more giggling.

We had community dinner at the moomincabin tonight, us and the Old Cabin and Don and Katie’s cabin folks. Indoor and outdoor seating was available. I chose to sit inside with cousins Grinch and Judd.

The photo is just before I went to bed a couple nights ago. I was still alone here at the moomin at that point. I looked out the back window and all of these harmless little bugs were congregated there trying to get to the light I guess. Around this time every summer, we get a hatch like this and sometimes when I arrive in the kitchen in the morning, they are plastered all over the side of the refrigimatator with a bunch of dead ones in the sink. Their life span is very short.

This happens because the back door doesn’t usually shut unless you pull it shut. Unless it slams itself but that’s a whole ‘nother thing and it hasn’t done that this summer. Yet.

Our day began with coffee and a wee brek on the deck, then a mega-grock run to Meijer by three badass women. We had three carts and I think we all had so much stuff that we went through staffed checkout lines this time. I usually do the uscan but I am not crazy. Alas, something not fun was going on in the line I was in. The cashier seemed to be having a conflict with a couple other employees and I couldn’t tell if she was crying at the end or what. Ugh.

Eventually we all reconvened out at Cygnus. After an afternoon of making corn chowder (mouse) and eggplant parmesan (meeee), I was getting ready to head to the beach when the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinch appeared. We fed him corn chowder and eventually dinner. We ended the evening with the next door cousins visiting the deck and that’s about all I have for tonight. I MUST get to bed SOON! Typos and other writing weirdness be damned.

UKW texted me from next door this morning asking if there was coffee. I texted back, “I’ll make some.” A hurried call to Coffee Boy aka the GG ensued. “How much coffee do I put into the coffee maker?” It’s one of those small Mr. Coffee thingies and it takes more or less three scoops.

Okay, I was kinda wondering what mug would be appropriate to serve UKW’s coffee in. We have about a bazillion mugs here because my dad collected mugs. Big Ass (on the right) is “my” mug. My dad named it that and he purchased it at the Columbia Ice Field. The GG usually uses the f*cking rabbits mug, which is not shown but is described in “The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingsolver. After I read that book (a looooong time ago), I found that mug on line somewhere. Or maybe I didn’t even find it online. Like I said, it was a loooong time ago.

So, what mug do I give UKW? Oh! There’s my Queen of F*cking Everything (QOFE) Mug. That was just the ticket for a badass woman like UKW. BTW, in my book, badass women do more good than bad in this world. We are coming for Trump and his clown car (or is it just a gang of thugs). The QOFE mug is really mine but somehow I like to use Big Ass. Maybe they both mean the same thing?

As we were drinking our coffee, folks started drifting over from the Old Cabin and we ended up hanging out on the moomindeck all morning. It was loverly.

Noonish, a bunch of people went up to the Iroquois lighthouse to watch the start of the Trans Superior sailboat race. I did not participate in that trip. Been there done that and didn’t feel like being around a bunch of tourists. Then beach time and dinner at the Old Cabin including pizza from Superior Pizza in Brimley and salad from the moomincabin with ingredients from Adaawegamigowaa and mouse’s garden, which also means mouse drove up here today.

G’night. Zzzzzzzzzz…

Picking up somebody at Daytwa Metro involves a freeway drive, umpteen bazillion traffic lights, mega-traffic and whatever mayhem the airport decides to throw at you on any particular day.

Once, picking up the GG, there was some kind of “incident” and I had to circle on the terminal road for something like 10 times before I could actually get to the pick-up area. Another time, I was picking up Lizard Breath and there were about a zillion DayTwa po-leeese parked willy nilly in the pick-up area, standing outside their po-leeese cars blowing their whistles. Also the usual 3-4-5 lanes of cars there to pick up passengers. What were those whistles telling us to do? I do not know. No rhyme or reason to anything. Something like the Trump administration.

Today? I picked up UKW from the Chippewa County International Airport, formerly known as Kincheloe AFB, where B52s took off and landed when I was a kid. I could’ve taken a freeway, the I75 SUV Speedway, for a few miles. Instead, the three-way stop in the bustling burg of Brimley was the most difficult traffic of the trip and even that was nothing.

Heading south outta Brimley I located Bound Road and traversed that south a few more miles, then snaked my way over to Kinross, where the airport is located, on Thompson Road. I parked in the pick-up lane with three or four other vee-hickles, got out and leaned on Cygnus so UKW would see me, thinking she might not remember my car but she would certainly remember me. No po-leese anywhere to be seen.

She got in the car and I asked if she wanted to go straight to the moominbeach or have a late lunch at Pickle’s (on the way to the moomin) instead. After 30 hours of travel, Pickle’s won and that was a good choice because it gave the two of us a chance to do a bit of one-on-one “downloading” before we got to the beach. Family talk but also political (anti-Trump) talk.

So what’s wrong with this picture? If you guessed “you parked in a handicap spot”, you win the booby prize. Yes, I did. Neither of us saw that sign when we parked. I mean, there is a lot of vegetation around it but it IS visible. Fortunately the tribal po-leese were not inclined to patrol the Pickle’s parking lot this afternoon. Late afternoon beach and swimming, then a noodle dinner at the Old Cabin finished off the day.

I owe a few people some emails/texts🧡🧡🧡

It was a day I didn’t have to do anything or be anywhere except for going to the Adaawegamigowaa up on the res, where I made a great big haul but no shelling peas, alas.

I didn’t really interact with the neighbor cousins until the late afternoon but I’ll likely barge in on them in the evening. I *did* interact with BFF via text and email. My blahg was doing a really weird thing and I could’ve asked the Guru, since he runs the whole shebang, but BFF is his wife so I contacted her instead. I haven’t talked to her in a while and I didn’t know how much I NEEDED to talk to her, even just text messaging/emailing. And my problem is resolved (via the Guru). It was one of those things I feel like I should’ve been able to troubleshoot by myself but… 1) I do tech work for a living and I am on vacay and 2) I got to text with BFF. (And 3), I had no frickin’ clue🤣)

After that, I got a text from UKW to say they were in line for the ferry. The ferry is the first leg of a loooong trip across country. The last leg of the trip will be a short ride in Cygnus X-1 from the local airport to the moominbeach tomorrow. Or maybe to Pickles if UKW hasn’t had anything of substance to eat in a while. Whatever.

After that, of all the stupid things, I burst into tears. Jeebus. I hardly ever cry about anything. I didn’t cry when my brother, dad, and mom died (in that order). And it’s not like there was anything to cry about. Talking to people you love but hardly ever see is a GOOD THING. I think my emotional state just kind of boiled over for a minute and leaked out my eyes.

There was a wedding on the beach this afternoon. It was a few cabins down at our late friend Barb’s old place. This wedding joined a Piedy child (bride) to an MS child (groom). I’ll let you guess what “MS” stands for in this case. Your first guess might not be right. The Piedy family is lifelong friends with my fam but there are a lot more people in that fam. I know only the *grandparents* of the bride and I interact a lot more with a couple of their siblings. So no, we were not invited and that was just fine with me. After all, I was having a meeeee day and no way was I gonna share that with some bride. Joking and meaning no disrespect. I wish them all the best. My wedding was on this beach too.

It’s been Saturday all day for me. But it is NOT Saturday because WCMU NPR is playing a talk show, not folk music. What it IS, is Wednesday, and the first day of my summer vacation, yay!

Uck, I am usually a good sleeper (unless the GG is thrashing around) but last night was one of THOSE nights (and the GG was not thrashing around, at least he wasn’t thrashing around with me👀). I’m kidding. He was at Hoton Lake with siblings and nieces and nephews and great nieces and great nephews and outlaws of all description. I was not with him because I have my own incoming family members here at the moominbeach. I love his family and miss being there with them. but I need to be with my fam too.

Anyway, just before I crashed out for the night, a text message came in to our family group from our “bonus daughter”, who was in a area that was under tsunami evacuation protocols. After some deliberation, she evacuated but then regretted it when the tsunami ended up being a nothing burger in her area.

I wasn’t really worried about the tsunami and I fell asleep quickly but woke up two hours later and did I ever get back to sleep? I dunno. Maybe. It was a bit windy all night and at one point, I realized I heard seagull cries mixed in with the wind. Okay, it’s morning then. Time to get up. I learned long ago to just ride with non-sleeping overnights. I don’t get them frequently.

So, okay. I got up and outta PDQ and early and… Kitchen and bathroom cleaning. I scrubbed the moomintub (an RV tub, yes really) but it needs attention from the MoominQueen of Bathroom Cleaning. I hung around for a bit waiting to see if new colleague would text that he wanted to meet. He didn’t and that is great although I still feel guilty about missing meeting with him yesterday.

A quick romp through Meijer for a few grocks, then a trip up to Brimley to mail the summer property tax check for the moomincabin and to get cash for the farmers market tomorrow from the ATM at the credit union.

I spent some time on the beach (chilly northwest wind today) and then on the moomindeck with our next door Old Cabin cousins as they waited for one of their sons to arrive with three women. His Significant Other and two other long-time friends. I think he had to meet two different planes at our local airport. which used to be Kincheloe AFB, which launched B52 bombers over our beach (on training missions).

And so after my own loverly leftover dinner I visited the Old Cabin and its guests just about forever. So much fun. G’night.

A volunteer squash is growing out of one of my impatiens pots. I actually think I pulled up a squash plant earlier in the summer. I had no clue what it was. I do recognize the flower on this one. The impatiens seem to be doing very well. Too bad I’m not there to enjoy them but being there would involve sitting in a closed up air-conditioned house. We never got around to potting any impatiens at the moomincabin this year. Very complicated summer with people traveling here, there, and everywhere.

I am technically off for the rest of this week and the next two weeks. Due to a series of snafus that are too complicated to describe, I may have to hop on line for a half hour or so tomorrow. It’s okay. I don’t really have anything much on the schedule for tomorrow except maybe a quick trip for grocks.

I am kinda done done done for the night. Hung out on the beach until almost 8:00 tonight. Will I have enough stamina to watch an episode of something or not. Maybe not. But I’m also kind of done with NPR for the night. Cheers.

The first pic is my old coot walking back from the Doelle end of the beach with his cane or whatever it was. I don’t know what I had done to inspire him to wave his cane at me. The dog’s head is my brother’s old dog Sam, a rescue mutt. I joke that Sam was protecting me from my old coot but he was just as good friends with my dad as he was with me and he is just coincidentally between my dad’s playful cane wielding and me.

And then there is The Commander, who may have had a more serious reason for aiming a cane at me.

The moominbeach is slowly filling in with extended family, with a young cousin arriving last night. More cousins and their friends to arrive later in the week.

How often do you pull your stove and refrigimatator out to clean behind them. That is, if you can pull them out. I pull out the Landfill refrigimatator all the time because it’s the only way I can get the crisper drawers out to wash them. Yes, bad design. I blame us, not Certified Kitchen Lady. Gertrude (the landfill stove), cannot be pulled out.

Today was apparently a cleaning day. Who knew? I had no plans to deep clean, even though this place needs it. The GG aka Suzy Q. Homemaker had other ideas and got into it bigtime. I long ago learned that when he(she?) is on a roll, I had best stay outta the fray and so I did. Windows and floors and sand magnets aka throw rugs and I dunno what else. I did word puzzles and read. I did clean the terlet and bathroom sink.

The entire day was not a work day. We introduced the current next door cousins to the Cozy Corners bar/restaurant in Barbeau, one of our new fave places to eat lunch. One of the Cozy’s features, besides the lake freighters that pass by, is that getting there from the moominbeach requires a beautiful drive on almost totally deserted country roads. No need to go near the bustling metropolis of Sault Ste. Siberia, not that it is all that bustling.

On the way back, we investigated a bitcoin mine that is in a conflict with a charter school across the street/highway because apparently bitcoin mining is noisy. We agreed after pulling up next to it and listening although a whole ton of hay bales were piled in front of it apparently to mitigate the noise. (Hay is a major crop in the eastern yooperland.) I don’t know jack-doodly about bitcoin mining so I didn’t know what to expect this operation to look like. Basically it was six small blocky looking structures lined up in a row. I’m not sure how else to describe it.

Anyway, it was a slodgy day for me but it is a whole lot cleaner around here, no thanks to me. I work tomorrow and Tuesday and then I am off for 2-1/2 weeks. Cheers!

This pic is probably a Piedy great-grandchild water skiing or whatever they are riding on.

When I was a kid, water skiing was a big thing on the beach. Chicken that I was, I did learn to water ski. I will never forget sitting back in the water with skis on and being pulled up by the motor bote. Was I good at it? Nope. Did I like it? Not really. I was pretty freaked out. There were older boyz on the beach who were so good they skied slalom. That means they skied on one ski with one foot behind the other.

My water skiing “career” ended early. I went to camp fire girl camp and was bitten by some kind of frickin’ spider. It was just a little itchy thing at camp. When I came home, I water skied with it and I fell. I was well taken care of but that spider bite got worse and worse and turned into a big fugly cyst-like thing on my inner thigh. I ended up having to go to the emergency department, where they “lanced” it. All kinds of fugly shitola came out and there was a huge rainstorm going on all that day and I was crying my eyes out the whole time.

It was a couple weeks before I could walk without a “stick” (that we found outside somewhere) and I never really tried to water ski again.

When the weather says that, it means the Great Lakes. We had an on-shore breeze going all day and even when it got to be 70 degrees, I was still wearing a Smartwool shirt and a polar fleece vest.

I don’t have much to talk about today. It was a work day and I shluffed off some kinda boring stuff to my new co-worker. Mostly I needed a second set of eyes on work that iDeep and I had already done but also because new co-worker will have to deal with this stuff without me sooner or later and I figgered at least he will know where it all is when when he has to deal with it without me.

After dinner we decamped to the Old Cabin to visit our next door cousins du jour. Lots of talk about flinging parental stuff (and our stuff) and that is about all I have the strength to say at this point.

Next to me at the farmers market🤣 I had to sneak to take this pic because the guy who owns this vee-hickle kept coming in and out of the farmers market in his neon green shirt. Also, he can’t be all bad because he has a stuffed rabbit(?) attached to his front right bumper (just noticed that now).

Not that you would never see a Trumpmobile down on the Planet Ann Arbor but you would be MUCH more likely to see peace signs and rainbows, and “coexist”, etc.

My haul today was whitefish right outta Gitchee Gumee, onions, lettuce, TOMATOES (this early in the summer?!?), cucumber, little potatoes, a few carrots, SHELLING PEAS (AGAIN!), and I fergit what else.

I texted this pic to FinFam (my daughters and bonus daughter/niece and the GG) and one of the beach urchins reminded me of the story that inspired today’s title.

I was up here with the POC. That was my bee-yoo-tiffle Island Teal Chrysler minivan that probably shouldda been lemon colored. It was acting up and I fergit why but it was at the dealer and I borrowed the Traf for the day. The Traf was my parents’ Geo Tracker and Traf is “fart” backwards if you didn’t already figure that out. This vee-hickle is not a Traf but it has a kinda similar form factor.

The parents left to do octogenarian-type errands and when I came up from the beach, there was a post-it note on the table. It was from my dad. It was *written* by my mother. And SIGNED “Jack” by my mother. It said something like, “Don’t drive it over 50 or the engine will blow up!” Ooooookaaaay…

I emailed my brother the automotive engineer and he got back to me PRONTO with, “WHO THE HELL SAID THAT!?!” Of course he knew FULL WELL who the hell said that. The funny thing is that once I got out on 6-mile Road, it didn’t feel all that comfortable going much faster than 50.