All posts by verily sherrilee

Directionally challenged, crafty, reading mother of young adult
2025, Media, Music, Poems, Songs, Words

Tom Lehrer – RIP

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Like many musical artists, Tom Lehrer was introduced to me on the LGMS.  I loved his funny songs and they way he crafted them with language and great satire.  This is probably my favorite:

Sadly, Tom passed away four days ago at the age of 97.  He was born in New York City and began his musical studies when he was seven.  He entered Harvard at the age of 15, studying mathematics as well as entertaining his fellow students with his comic songs.  His mathematics career and his music career existed together for many years.  His last performance was in 1972 and he taught until 2003.

Another of his most popular songs puts the table of elements to a Gilbert & Sullivan tune:

There haven’t been too many artists who can skewer the world quite the way he could.  His voice will be missed.

Do you have a favorite Tom Lehrer song?  Or another satirist?

2025, Automotive, Fantasy, Government, Poems, Words

Mixed Messages

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As bunch of errands had me on the freeway yesterday.  A little congestion slowed everybody down in time for me to look up and see this on the highway signage:

Keep your speed down
Wear your safety gear
Get home in one piece

It was more interesting than the usual signage and as it was three lines, I automatically starting counting the syllables, wondering if it was MNDots idea of highway haiku.  Not haiku.

When I got home, I wondered if I could find any information online about the signage.  I was surprised to find out that there is actually a program called “Message Monday” that encourages safe driving.  You can even submit your own idea for a message on the website.  Some of the messages are actually quite funny:

Fly under
The radar by
Obeying speed limit

Give blood
The right way
Not on the highway

Don we now our
Fastened seatbelt
Fa la la la la la

I’m not sure I want to increase my highway time on Mondays to see more of these messages, but I do find it intriguing that this program exists.   Of course, if I submit something it will have to be

Speedy Gonzalez
You’re not.  Please keep the pedal
Off of the metal

What message would you like to submit?

100 Words, 2025, Fantasy, home, Mysteries, Technology

Random Robot?

36 Comments

Imagine my surprise as I was heading out to run some errands and discovered the little robot vacuum at the back porch door.

As I carried it back into the house and hit the “dock” button so it would return home, I felt a little bad.  Was I keeping it from its freedom?  Had it been trying to escape from the onerous duty of trying to keep the fur and dust at bay in our house?  Did it hear the clarion call of others of its kind?  Was it a quashed robot uprising? 

What do you think?  Should I have given it its freedom?

2025, Family, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Swing Time

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There has always been a vision in my mind for the backyard.  Over the years we’ve added a patio, then a little bigger patio.  A table and chairs for the patio.  An umbrella for the table.  A friend of mine gave YA a fire pit years ago.  Another friend gave me a swing when they moved to an apartment.  Of course, there are all the flowers and the bales.  About 15 years ago I had enough credits at work to purchase a hammock, which I installed toward the back of the yard.  Over the years I’ve had to replace the fabric several times as well as having to MacGyver the suspension a couple of times when the fabric wasn’t exactly the right size.

YA has always detested the hammock.  First is that it is a collection spot for leaves and twigs that come off the trees.  Then there is the issue of having to mow around it, requiring moving it about.  YA thinks it makes the backyard look “cluttered”.  When I suggested we get right of her Adirondack chairs and little table, she didn’t respond well.  She has a point.  We use the Adirondacks quite a bit and truth be told, I probably only lay in the hammock once or twice a summer.  It’s not actually all that comfortable and I get impatient really fast.

As I’m pursuing my pre-downsizing project, I decided that I really needed to pay attention to the reality of the hammock instead of my emotional attachment to the idea of a hammock.  To that end, YA and I carried it down to the boulevard.  When we got down to the boulevard with it, YA had to shore up my determination.  The miracle of my street worked as usual – within an hour someone was taking it apart to shove in their truck. 

I thought I might be unhappy in the first few days after the hammock was gone but that hasn’t happened.  That says to me that I made the right decision.

Tell me about something you have an emotional attachment to. 

2025, Family, Food, State Fair

Too Soon

25 Comments

You all know I’m a little obsessed with a certain event each August.  I like to be organized but normally don’t start getting going until a couple of weeks before (athough before retirement I used to request the days off several months in advance).

YA and the State Fair, on the other hand, are rarin’ to go now.  In the past couple of weeks there has been a barrage of emails.  Grandstand announcements and ticket offers. Highlighted fair beverages (of which there seem to be A LOT).  New vendors and new foods. 

YA has definitely inherited some of my love of lists; over the weekend she came into my room with a pad of paper and announced that it was time to make our food list.  She started doing this a few years ago so that we remember what we want to get while we are at the fair.  This list includes our favorites as well as items from the new foods email that look interesting to us.  It looks like a long list but it’s spread out over several days and we don’t always get to everything.  I did notice that nothing from last year’s new items have jumped to our “old favorites” list.

The floodgates are open now.  I printed off all our tickets as well as my fair packing list.  Can’t go off to the fair without all we need in the turtle bag.  We even started a little pool of cash for the big event.

Anything you’re preparing for (or obsessing over) this summer?

2025, Art, books, Family, Government

Time for Coffee

21 Comments

On Friday YA made our annual trek to pet deer and goats and llamas at Fawn-Doe-Rosa.  The route to get there is straight through Lindstrom, which is a pretty little town with deep Swedish roots and one of the cutest water towers ever (see photo above).  But it turns out that it’s not actually a water tower any longer. 

Back in 1992, the city built a new water tower because the original was no longer able to meet the demand.  At that time, the older water tower was “repurposed” as the world’s largest coffee pot.  A local business owner funded the conversion – adding the spout, handle and knob along with repainting it.  Initially there was a steam function but it hasn’t been working for years.

Several months ago the city council approved an initiative to spruce up the paint job and also to restore the steam function.  This time around, much of the cost was raised by the said of small water tower replicas.  Four weeks ago, the steam poured out of the pot again for the first time in years.

Just by luck, we were driving through Lindstrom at exactly 10 a.m., which is one of the two times per day that the steam functions.  YA was telling me about all this so I did a quick u-turn so we could circle back and get a good look.  There were folks hanging out on the street corners to watch as well.  It was cloudy, so while we could see the steam, I think on a clear day it would be more impressive.

A fun tangent, I recently read Off Main Street by Michael Perry and one of the essays is called “You Are Here” which is about water towers in the Midwest.  It was entertaining and I learned there’s more to a water tower than meets the eye.  Highly recommended reading.  Fun confabulation of reading and traveling!

Have you seen any fun water towers?  Ever climbed up one?

2025, Food, Mysteries, Technology, Weather

Donut Joy

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I had a fun surprise yesterday morning.  As I stood in my kitchen, thinking about breakfast, I got a text from one of my donut haunts, telling me that I had a reward coming – a free donut or a free coffee.  So much more exciting than eggs and toast.  Since I was going out for a couple of errands anyway, I decided to go the donut route for breakfast.

In order access this reward, I had to use my phone but since I didn’t have a younger person with me, I sat in my car until I got onto the right screen, or so I thought.  The young man waiting on me was very patient when holding the phone to the “register” didn’t seem to work.  He said he’s do it the “long way” and put my phone number in.  He then said I had a $5 off, free donut or 5% discount.  Which did I want?  And then he said “or all three?”  You all know what I said.  He started punching in stuff; on my side, the screen was showing 3₵.  I kept waiting for it to get to a higher number and it never did.  When he confirmed the 3₵, I told him I’d have to go to the car to get a quarter since I didn’t have any cash on me.  He smiled and said “let’s take it out of the penny jar” which was on the counter.

So I had my donuts and diet pop for free.  And it was a gorgeous morning to boot.  What could be better?

Any unexpected joys over the weekend?

2025, Gatherings, Music, Mysteries, Uncategorized

A Bell Curve

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Cantus refers to itself as a low-voice vocal ensemble.  Sounds a little sterile; it is anything but.  They do a wide variety of mostly a cappella offerings: a lot of internation, classical, commissioned pieces.  Yesterday it was an entire program of Frank Sinatra covers – amazing. 

My BFF and I have been attending Cantus concerts for 30 years; we do six to seven concerts a years, depending on the season’s program.   We attended their concerts all over the place – St. Thomas, a church in Excelsior, the McPhail Center, the Ordway.  Yesterdays was at Westminster Presbyterian downtown.  Over the years we’ve been to the Westminster dozens of times; it’s a great space with wonderful acoustics. 

Two thirds of the way through the program, Chris Foss, a bass, stepped up and began a beautifully rendition of I’ll Be Around by Alec Wilder. 

About a minute into his performance, which had a piano accompaniment, the bells of Westminster began to rang.  It was just loud enough that you could certainly here it but not loud enough to completely drown Chris out.  The bells ended very shortly before the song ended.  In all the times I’ve been in Westminster for concerts, this has never happened before.  Not sure why the bells were ringing at noon on a Thursday.  I’m guessing that many performers would have stopped and waited for the bells to stop, but Chris kept his composure and kept going.  He got wild applause after his number; I guess because it was a great song but also as acknowledgement of a rotten situation. 

I didn’t see Chris in the lobby after the show but I hope that anyone speaking to him praised the other song he did during the concert – not just for his calmness during the bells.

Do you live near a church that still rings their bells? Would you have stopped singing?

2025, Automotive, Government, Mysteries

Bureacracy!

41 Comments

Well, things didn’t out like I expected.  I was completely figuring that today’s post would be a full-on rant about bureaucracy.  Didn’t turn out that way.

I got the dreaded yellow card in the mail about a month ago reminding me that my Class D driver’s license needed to be renewed.  It also went on, at length, about the Real I.D. 

Pretty sure I chronicled the last time I had to renew; it was during Covid and I ended up arriving at the AAA location at 6 a.m. for their 8 a.m. opening since I had waited too late to get a coveted actual appointment (who knew you needed an appointment).  Being one of the first 25 in line meant you could get service that day.  I had heard several stories about the trouble in getting the Real I.D. so I had a file folder, papers, copies of papers.  Turned out to be fine.

That’s why I was a bit surprised to see all the verbiage dedicated to Real I.D.  You’d think in this day and age, it would be easy enough to sort a mailing list by whether or not somebody has already jumped through those hoops. 

Checking on line I found that you can’t to appointments any longer, which seemed weird so I picked up the phone and called.  (Now I do have to say, even if I were ranting, that one of the reasons I like the AAA is because they do answer the phones.)  The gal on the phone confirmed that they don’t do appointment anymore but that weekdays are relatively slow.  She also confirmed that I had to re-present all my Real I.D. paperwork again.  Sigh.

I gathered the same stuff as four years ago and headed out yesterday morning.  I was expecting this process to take at least an hour and I was fully prepared to whine about the insanity of having to basically re-apply for Real I.D. when I was clearly Real already.  Full transparency – I was crabby.

Well, I got there at 9:05.  I was called 5 minutes later.  The little gal behind the counter laughed when I told her that I had been instructed to bring all my Real I.D. stuff; she said “not needed” and didn’t even look at it.  I didn’t have to fill anything out except to sign and date the application that she printed off.  Picture and eye exam was fast although I’m sure in the history of bad DMV photos, I’m now in the top ten.  Final paper and current license snipped and I was out the door at 9:19. 

So what do I complain about now?

2025, Farming Update, Food, Kids, Nature, Seasons

Corn Time!

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When I was down on the farm last Friday, Ben took me on a tour around the fields – it’s one of my favorite things about visiting.  The corn was tall but weren’t showing any ears yet.  Ben explained about where the ears start to form and we also talked about the difference between field corn and sweet corn.  He commented that sweet corn is a bit ahead of field corn and in Iowa, there might be sweet corn already.  I’m such a city girl – I love earning about farm stuff.

He was proved incredibly on the mark.  As I was driving home, YA texted me that our former neighbors had dropped off some sweet corn for us; they had been visiting the grandparents in southern Iowa!

YA and I both love corn but for some reason the first sweet corn of the season is really special.  We dragged the grill out of the garage on Saturday and roasted all the corn along with some veggie brats.  Ate on our little patio in the backyard – it was perfect weather for the first corn lunch.

Yesterday, I used up the last of the ears.  I was too impatient to drag out cookbooks and look for recipes so I just kind of made it up as I went along.  This is what I made:

Corn Salsa
2 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob
½ red onion, finely chopped
1 hot pepper, finely chopped (I used a pepper from our garden called “salsa pepper” – it was hotter than I anticipated, but not too hot to eat.  A less hot pepper would be fine.)
3 T. chopped cilantro (also from garden)
Juice of one lime
Salt & pepper to taste
Mix it all together.  Eat.ll

Elote Off the Cob
2 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob
¾ c. cotijo cheese, crumbled
1 roma tomato, finely chopped
About 1/3 c. mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip because YA doesn’t like it)
2 T. cilantro, chopped (from garden)
2 T. chives chopped (from garden)
¼ tsp. tajin (if you don’t have tajin, you can use chili pepper & cumin)
Juice of half a lime
Salt & pepper to taste
Again, mix it all together!

Neither of these were big recipes, so I don’t expect the corn will last long.  We’ll do plenty more corn this summer, but these first six ears were the best!

Favorite summer foods?