The Rainbow near my house has recently shut down. Last weekend I went to another store in the shopping center and saw all the grocery cart corrals lined up together. It was like they were all sitting in a big meeting room, listening to a motivational speaker!
What’s the weirdest party you’ve ever been to?
Today’s post comes to us from Steve.
It is always interesting, after the fact, to remember the decisions you made that caused some bad thing to happen. Looking back, you can see the errors. But at the time, you were doing things that made sense.
One of the staple foods I have in my kitchen cabinets is honey. I grew up eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches. In the poverty of my first year of graduate school, I sometimes had peanut butter and honey sandwiches three times a day. I couldn’t afford anything else.
But honey has a nasty habit of crystallizing. The honey gets dull and solid until it will no longer come out of a squeeze dispenser. That just happened to me. But I had an inspiration for melting the crystallized goo back into liquid honey. I popped my honey dispenser in the microwave and nuked it for just 20 seconds. The photo shows what happened. The dispenser will never be the same, and I had to mop up honey from all over the microwave.
That’s one dumb stunt I’ll never do again, for I learned that lesson the hard way.
In the summer of 1970 my erstwife (let’s call her Carol in this story) and I lived along the Saint Croix River. We discovered a wonderful fishing hole north of us, just upstream of Osceola, Wisconsin. Night after night we’d go upriver to our fishing spot at the foot of an island and—quite literally—catch fish until our arms got tired.
Then Carol got busy, and I began fishing alone. The canoe wasn’t stable without a person in the front end, so I found a large boulder that I called “Carol.” I put the rock in the front of the canoe to keep everything steady while I fished. The rock worked so well that I safely walked around the canoe standing up, which is not something the experts recommend.
One afternoon in September I enjoyed what I knew would be my last evening of fishing for that season. Grad school and work were about to start up, so I’d not fish there again until next year. I canoed back downstream to the Osceola bridge where my car was parked. I realized I no longer needed my boulder. With the canoe close to shore, I walked to the front of the canoe, grabbed “Carol” (the rock) and chucked her overboard.
In cartoons when Wile E. Coyote has just made a fatal error there is a terrifying pause. Time stops as he processes what he has done and what is going to happen to him. The cartoon is absolutely true to life. On the river I had my Wile E. Coyote moment. For several seconds I contemplated the fact that I was standing upright in an unstabilized canoe. Then the thing spun like a birling log under a lumberjack. I went sailing, my fishing rod flew even further, and soon we were both in the river. I survived. The fishing rod was never seen again.
And I never walked upright in a canoe again. Well, you don’t forget a lesson you learn the hard way.
What have you learned the hard way?
Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.
At 74, I’ve been experiencing increasing physical weakness. A year ago, my three kids did a one-by-one intervention on me to get me to move and gain some physical strength for my upcoming trip to Africa. I still can’t believe that my first trip away from Minnesota was to Africa! It’d been years since I’d even walk to my mailbox. I’d pick it up when I drove past it a couple of times a week. They were very adamant that my excursion to Africa would deplete me because I was so physically weak. Finally, I took them seriously.
Photo credit: Associated Press
The news out of Poland last week included an item about a tanker truck that crashed and dumped its contents all over the highway. Its contents? Liquid chocolate.
Luckily it happened pretty early in the morning and no one was injured in the accident. But that wasn’t really the end of the story. The fire brigade sent to clean it up needed to bring in hot water because the chocolate was solidifying too fast to be able to scrap it up easily. And then the story went viral, hitting so many news feeds that people began to think it was a hoax. It’s even listed (and verified) on Snopes.com.
What unusual thing have you spilled?
Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.
I made a big mistake. I decided to paint plastic stackable lawn chairs to match my flower boxes, shutters, and screen doors. I spent three days painting them. They looked great and I loved having everything match. The first time I stacked them, most of the paint peeled off. I was disheartened after all of that work.
Not to be defeated, I googled “How to paint plastic chairs”. Off to True Value to buy a special cleaner, primer, sandpaper, a scraper, and a quart of paint closer to the color I wanted. Then, I set upon laboriously scraping paint off one chair. The first one took 1.5 hours. I decided that since these chairs only cost $5 each, I’d just order six more. $5 dollars aren’t worth 1.5 hours per chair!
In the background are 70 bags of cypress mulch. I’m still trying to find some guys to spread them. My age is catching up to me, and after 15 years of doing this myself, I really do need help! Spring on the lake is labor-intensive and I can’t keep on top of it anymore, hard as I try. I’ve learned to ask for help. This winter, I couldn’t find my cell phone in the house. My neighbors are all in Florida for the winter, so I walked out to the county road and flagged down a car. I asked the man to please call my number. I lost my car in a parking ramp, walked to the door and asked the first person out, “Are you in a hurry to be somewhere?”. She kindly drove me around until I found it. I guess that with age comes with people who feel good helping me?
Now, I’m looking for someone to shovel up a dead, maggot-filled raccoon on my yard.
Do you ask for help?
Jupiter has been in the news this week as well as more discussion of the first manned mission to Mars. In honor of these events, here is a repeat of a fun blog from 2015!
Today’s post comes from Captain Billy, skipper of the pirate ship Muskellunge.
Ahoy!
Me an’ me boys is crazy-excited t’ hear that NASA has discovered a underground ocean on th’ largest moon of Jupiter!
Not that we’s lookin’ fer other seas t’ sail, on account of this one here is fine, an’ plenty large enough. Plus, a Jovian Lunar ocean with a roof over it made of 95 miles of ice raises serious questions about navigation an’ winds an’ how tall can yer mast be t’ keep from scrapin’ th’ underside.
There’s no disagreement among me boys on this point – a ocean up in the stars don’t have th’ same allure as th’ one under the stars that we all enjoys so much.
But th’ possibilities is what has us thrilled.
If there’s oceans out there orbitin’ that vast gas giant, then what’s there t’ prevent there from bein’ Jupiter pirates? An’ if there’s Jupiter pirates, don’t it follow that there’d be Jupiter grog an’ Jupiter booty?
All of it incredibly massive, of course!
So naturally our imaginations ran away wit’ us, an we began t’ wonder what sort of sea shanty we might sing up there if we went, even though there’s no way we’d go (so don’t ask)!
Th’ song we made up is t’ th’ tune of one of our home world favorites – Stormalong.
O we’re sailin’ under an icy dome.
Way,hay, Ganymede.
We’re a long long way from our Earthly home.
Aye aye we’re on Ganymede.
An’ there ain’t no wind for to fill our sails
Way, hay, Ganymede.
It ain’t clear what sailin’ here entails.
Aye aye we’re on Ganymede.
But the ocean’s salty an’ dark and deep.
Way, hay, Ganymede.
If there’s monsters in it, let them sleep!
Aye aye we’re on Ganymede.
If there’s fishes swimmin’ beneath our feet
Way, hay, Ganymede
Please be slow an’ fat an’ O.K. to eat.
Aye Aye we’re on Ganymede.
Though it’s scary here an’ th’ water’s cold,
Way, hay, Ganymede
May the seas be calm an’ the booty gold!
Aye Aye we’re on Ganymede.
If you’re voyaging to a distant planet, what song do you want to take with you?
I blew through four cashiers this afternoon!
It’s straw bale time at my house – I’m doing the conditioning of the bales right now, which means I need to add fertilizer to the bales twice a day for six days. This morning I used the last of the bag of fertilizer so needed to stop at Bachman’s on the way home.
Just one bag of fertilizer. The first cashier was clearly just starting out and got hosed up trying to enter my “frequent buyer” number, so enter cashier #2. When I handed her my Bachman’s charge card (yes, that’s what I said), she looked at it a bit and then swiped it. The register clearly didn’t like that and I commented (nicely) that for the Bachman’s charge, they don’t swipe it. This didn’t help so she called over a third cashier who took the card. I mentioned again that it doesn’t get swiped, but he swiped it several more times but this time pushed some other buttons and got a completely different error message.
All of this was combined with profuse apologies from all three, who appeared to be high school students. Finally they called someone on a walkie talkie. An older woman came over and immediately said “Oh, with the Bachman’s charge, you enter this here and this here… you don’t swipe the card.” More profuse apologies. I was not in a hurry and wasn’t really bothered by the wait and the confusion, although it was really hard not to smirk and say “I told you so” about the swiping of the card.
What was YOUR first job?
My daughter is attracted by Name Brands. She would almost always prefer a Name Brand if possible. I’m not sure how this happened as I’m the opposite (although having just typed these words, I may have answered my own question!) With very few exceptions, I go with generic and cheap. I do buy Prell shampoo because I love the smell and Birkenstocks because how can you argue with sandals that you wear constantly and after 10 years, they are still OK. But that’s about it.
Except Kitchenaid. I had one of the earlier Kitchenaid stand mixers – the ones made back in the day when the company was still an offshoot of Hobart, the big commercial baking mixer company. Because I loved this mixer and never had a moment’s trouble with it, I bought several other Kitchenaid products over the years – all because of the name.
I think most of you have heard my sad story about my old Kitchenaid finally giving up the ghost and the new Kitchenaid not being as durable. I did eventually talk Kitchenaid into sending me a check for half of the amount that I spent on the repair, but considering the initial expense of the machine and the expense of the repair (not to mention my angst), I would not call myself satisfied. Not satisfied as to the durability of the machine, the length of the warranty on such an expensive appliance, the way my complaint was initially handled and the difficulty of finding someone to repair the machine.
So now I have to say that my love affair with Kitchenaid is over. No more appliances in my house based solely on the Kitchenaid name. And unfortunately I no longer believe that the new stand mixer will be the last one I own (something I thought at the time I purchased it). What this means is that my next stand mixer won’t be a Kitchenaid.
What brands are you loyal to?
I have a medium-sized yard. Last fall YA and I raked up 22 bags of leaves and yard waste. Always more bags than the rest of the neighbors. How can we possibly have this much stuff to be bagged up now? And we’re not even finished!
What do you have way too much of?
“But see! nearer and nearer the great fish comes, mouthful after mouthful of the fishes falling into its horrid jaws. It must be starving; so eager is it for its prey that is seems unconscious of the fact that the tide has turned and is moving outward. Now it discovers its danger and turns, but too late. The water has gone back to the dep, leaving it struggling for breath in a shallow pool. It thrashes wildly about with its tail, whose sticky secretions help to envelop it more and more thickly with mud and slime, until at last its struggles cease.”
This is from the autobiography The Life of a Fossil Hunter by Charles Sternberg, written in 1909. I stumbled upon this title in the afterward of Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton. His widow Sherri did a nice epilogue and mentioned the Sternberg book as one that Michael had used in his extensive research for Dragon Teeth.
As you can read in the section above, the style of autobiography and memoir was a little bit different back then than it is today. In today’s memoir, we would learn about how abuse in his childhood caused him to seek out a career in the wilderness, how his career caused lifelong challenges in all his relationships and he overcame all kind of obstacles to achieve his desires. That’s pretty much how every memoir written in the last few years read anyway. In Sternberg’s autobiography, he mentions a son about 1/3 of the way through the book. Then he mentions a son about 2/3 of the way through. We he mentions in the conclusion that he has “raised up a race of fossil hunters”, we learn that there are at least two sons, but that’s it. No courtship, no marriage, no discussion of any toll his work/travels took on his wife… in fact, the word “wife” doesn’t even come up in this book.
But he did know how to breathe life into his fossil finds!
What’s the oldest book you’ve read recently?
Trail Baboon 