Category Archives: Mysteries

2026, Automotive, books, Family, Mysteries, Travel

Road Trip Reading

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I’m rarely without a book at hand.  I always have a CD in the car, CD player also in my studio.  Libby on my laptop.  Libby on my phone.  STACKS of books in my bedroom (library books in one place, my unread titles in another).  Even when traveling, books come with me; my packing list on the computer has books as a box to tick.

Even though I didn’t think I’d have any time for reading on this trip, I brought books.  No books on CD in the car with YA but I had my laptop with Libby, had my phone.  STILL brought books with me. I did make a conscious effort to bring things on the lighter side…

    • The Mysterious Affair at Styles (CD) by Agatha Christie. I’ve read this before but all my BritBox the past two months stirred up a desire to read a few of her early works again.  I’m actually almost done with this.  Maybe I can do an errand by myself today to finish it up!
    • Serial Killer Support Group (Book) by Saratoga Schaefer. I haven’t started this yet but it’s called a “dark, witty debut” about a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her younger sister’s murder.  Hopefully the “witty” is true.
    • Family of Spies (Libby) by Christine Kuehn. This is non-fiction; written by the author when she discovered her dark family roots. I’m about half way through this one; although it’s not a feel-good subject (spies during WWII), it’s written pretty much as a straight-forward history.  I think the author was putting some emotional distance between herself and the story.
    • Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (Book) by Leslie Thomas. I also haven’t started this one yet but I have seen the first three episode of the TV series thanks to BritBox.  The TV series was a little on the lighter side so I suppose the book could swing either way.
    • A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks (Book) by David Gibbins. This is the last of the “listicles” books that I picked up for Blevins Book Club.  I was trying to cram it in two weeks ago and then the snowstorm happened, so I haven’t picked it up since.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through.  It’s not nearly as good as I was hoping.  Writing is a bit dry and I was hoping for much more interesting photographs.

Of course, the chances I’ll finish any of these (well, maybe the Christie) is pretty slim, but where reading is concerned, hope springs eternal.  A bit like the cat and the grocery bag from Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater!

What do you like to read when you’re traveling?

2026, Art, Food, Music, Mysteries, Songs

Went To a Bar

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A few weeks ago, here in Winona, there was an event at the Two Fathoms Brewing, a bar-and-grill downtown, on the river. Here’s the press release:

Silent Auction & Benefit Show for Winona Sheltering Network
Sunday 2:00 – 5:00 Free Event, All Ages
[Music by:] Ironstill; Mike Munson; Sheep for Wheat

When I got there around 3:00, the place was packed – standing room only. I got a lucky seat when a person sitting beside my friend Cherie left for the other room, where the Silent Auction was taking place. I eventually stood in a long line for a Cold Milk Stout (really a delicious thing – look it up).  It had been a year or more since I’d been to Two Fathoms – it hosts weekly Beer Bingo, weekly Trivia Night, live music on weekends, and a monthly Karaoke, et al. Best, though, are the monthly Jazz Jams on a Sunday afternoon – with the local H3O Jazz Trio and an open mic;  each month a portion of the proceeds go to a different local cause. Here’s a photo to give you the “flavor” of the place…

I enjoyed some of the changes that had been made in my absence – they’d relocated the bar, which left more central space for the stage. But since the noise level made conversation close to impossible, we just listened to the music and WATCHED people – best people-watching I’ve done in ages:

– people seeing each other and hugging, or just being delighted to reunite
– lots of little kids, some in tutus and other fancy dresses
– a guy in the corner talking to his friend, holding his mug and a baby
– so many different ages of people, and everyone seemed in a good mood
– a singer pauses to announce that there’s a pizza looking for a home – can anyone please claim this pizza???
– and the pizza smelled SO good..
–  felt good to be among these people; everyone there was in support of the Sheltering Network
– there were great silent auction items – “knocked it out of the park”, someone said – and they raised around $12,000 for the WSN

 When was the last time you were in a bar? Or attended a fundraiser?  Was it enjoyable?

Where is your favorite place to “people watch”?

2026, Art, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Scrappy Do

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My neighbor Don once asked me about how I keep up with supplies for my paper crafts.  I think I snorted.   I’m pretty certain that if I didn’t buy anything else ever (except for tape, which I go through at a prodigious rate), I could keep making cards until I’m 105.

You’d think that with stacks of paper, I wouldn’t be so stingy with it.  I keep almost every scrap, unless it’s thinner than 1/2”.   There are two plastic bins in my studio with paper scraps – one is for solid-colored cardstock and the other is for patterned paper.  Both these bins are full and I spend a bit of time sifting through to see if there is something I can use rather than cut into a new piece of stock/paper.  I try to keep it organized, but many days when I’m straightening up after I’ve crafted, I just toss the scraps into the bin willy nilly.

That means that a couple of times a year, it’s time to sort out the scraps.  I go through each bins separately; solids get divided up into colors (blues, greens, purples, etc.) and patterns get laid out by pattern type and/or season (stripes, dots, floral, Halloween, etc.)   At this point I usually jettison a lot of the smaller pieces, especially the patterned stuff.  The header photo is what it looks like (this is the solids).

This whole process takes about an hour.  It’s not hard by any means and I can’t say that I actually enjoy it but it does feel quite good when it’s done.  And I don’t have to think about it for another six months or so!

What do you have that needs periodic organizing?

2026, books, home, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Rocks & Hammers

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Not quite sure where I got the idea to read And Then We Hit a Rock by Greg Buenzli – it had a catchy title – sometimes that’s all it takes.  Greg and his family bought a catamaran and sailed around on it for a year and a half.  Four stars. It would have been five stars if the good stuff / bad stuff had been more balanced.  It was about 90% the bad weather, the things that broke (legend!) and other things that went wrong; only about 10% (most of it in the last 10 pages) of why it was a good experience.  An OK read, just not as good as it could have been. 

The reason I’m telling you this is a warning.  Do not attempt any home improvements projects right after finishing this book.  It’s cursed.

Now that YA has finished painting all the hallways, she’s been at me to re-hang all the pictures.  I was ready; I had purchased some new picture hangers, I’d sorted through the photos and stacked them by where they should go, I’d dusted everything off.  No worries – I’ve certainly hung pictures before.

It was a nightmare.  If it could go wrong, it did.  Hallway is just dark enough that everything I dropped (repeated little nails, anchors) needed the flashlight to find it.  I only dropped the hammer once – the only luck of the day was that it didn’t land on any of my toes.  Two photos had to be re-hung because I just did a bad job the first time.  The wire on the back of one photo ripped off after it had been on the wall about 15 minutes. The box with the various tools was right underneath it at that point or the glass would probably have shattered. Also the number of tools kept expanding as I went along. Level, hammer, pliers, painters tape, scissors, flashlight, ruler. And have I mentioned my poor fingers?  Mashed, crushed, banged, pounded, beaten, whacked, smashed, bashed, battered…. I’ll stop now.  Suffice it to say I hung 17 pictures and bashed a thumb or finger at least 20 times.  I did try using a little pliers to hold the nails, but it wasn’t very effective.

I couldn’t bring myself to do the destination photos that go down the stairway after getting the upstairs done; hopefully I’ll have the nerve tomorrow.  Maybe 24 hours between me and the cursed book will make it not so painful!

Ever read a cursed book before? Bashed a finger recently?

2026, Business, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Derby Delights

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YA and I actually have a lot in common.  I probably mention the ways we are different more often than not – makes for better stories sometimes. 

Anyway, we both really like the Derby cookies that they make at Great Harvest Bakery.  Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, pecans (plus all the other good cookie ingredients).  And they are huge – really too big to eat one a day, but yummy enough.

Great Harvest doesn’t make the derby cookie very often.  They make four or five cookies a month but for some reason they only make the derby a couple of months during the year.  At the beginning of every month, both YA and I scour the bakery’s monthly newsletter to see the monthly cookie listing.  I was expecting that we wouldn’t see our favorite until May.  I don’t know much about the Kentucky Derby but I do know that it’s in May.  YA was the first to see the newsletter this month and when I asked her how many I should get (the packages of six are a much better deal), she responded, two now and then maybe two the end of next week and two more at the end of the month.  She figured we can freeze any “overage”.  Like the two of us can’t eat 36 cookies in a month.  Snort.

Anyway, I obediently went up to Great Harvest today… ended getting three packages because once you purchase a certain amount at the bakery, you get a discount.  Did the math quickly in my head (and had the math confirmed by the bakery clerk) that buying one extra package of cookies actually made the price go down a bit.  Win/win.  I put one of the packages in the freezer for now. 

The capper to this story is that when I bought all these cookies and bemoaned the fact that the bakery doesn’t make them very often, the clerk concurred and also said that since the base of the derby cookie is the same as the base of a couple other cookies, we can special order our favorite on any month those others are made.  Which is most months.  Wish I had known this any time during the last several years!

Will you watch the Derby this year?  Will you wear a fancy hat?

2026, books, Fantasy, History, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Surfing Queen

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Halfway through my BritBox “gift”, I have not yet developed a British accent, but wouldn’t be that surprised; the majority of the voices I’m hearing these days are British (or Australian).

As you can imagine, I’m getting my fill of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie.  It’s been years since I saw all of the Jeremy Brett/David Burke episodes.  I do think they are my favorite.  No offense to Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman or Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce but the Brett/Burke are more accurate to the original stories.

I’m a little hit and miss with Agatha Christie.  Some of her stuff I can’t get to because it’s “Premium” and some of the stuff I’m finding is just dreck.  But I’m getting enough.  “Why Didn’t  They Ask Evans” was excellent and I’ve watched a lot of David Suchet as Poirot.  One of the most fun things was a documentary that followed the Christies on a worldwide trade mission trip around the world in 1922-23.  Archie Christie was on the trip as an assistant to the British envoy and the Agatha was part of the mission to support the support.  Although her first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles) had been published two years earlier and was a huge success, she still wasn’t the wildly famous author she was later to become.

The best tidbit in the documentary was that Agatha Christie learned to surf in Muizenberg, South Africa during that trip.  In fact, she is believed to be the first Western woman to stand up on a surf board.  She apparently adored surfing.  This is an excerpt from a letter to her mother:

“Oh, it was heaven! Nothing like it. Nothing like that rushing through the water at what seemed to you a speed of about two hundred miles an hour.  All the way in from the far distant raft until you arrived, gently slowing down, on the beach, and foundered among the soft flowing waves.”

There were also trips in her life to Hawaii, where she again spent time riding the waves.  It’s wonderful to think of Agatha as young and vigorous, since most of her fame came after this and most of the photos we see of her are from her older years.

Makes me hope that some of my favorite authors have a secret life that we don’t know about.  Maybe John Scalzi has swum with dolphins.  Maybe Andy Weir has time traveled to another planet and back.  Maybe Naomi Novik has flown dragonback.

What fun facts would you love to know about your favorite authors?

 

2026, books, Family, holidays, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

BritBox vs. Libby

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For the holidays, YA gave me a marvelous (albeit completely unnecessary) gift:

Since the discovery that I could get Libby to work through my hearing aids, my reading has been up a bit and I was happy when I had hit 14 by January 31.  I was thinking that maybe it might be a banner year.

Another gift that I received this year was also an unnecessary bit of fun.  When I visited my friend Susan in Madison last year, one of our conversations was about television and all the shows we liked.  I mentioned that I loved a lot of the British shows that I could find and that I wished BritBox wasn’t so expensive; I’m just not willing to pay anymore for tv in our house than I already do.  When I opened the envelope from Susan, I expected a gift card; it turned out to be a coupon for two months of BritBox paperclipped to $22 cash.  I laughed and laughed.

I launched the two-month gift on February 1st.  I took the book counter photo yesterday morning.  Not one book added since January 31.  That’s because I am flippin’ LIVING on BritBox – part of my psyche says I should get as much seen as possible while I have this two-month gift.  Death in Paradise (Season 15), Vera (just a few shows…on the edge of too dark for me), Ludwig (the whole first season – can’t wait for Season 2 later this year), Hamish Macbeth (only a couple of these), Poirot – Death on the Nile.   I’ll stop here.  So far I haven’t wandered off the murder mystery path, but I’m sure I will eventually.  

It’s actually really enjoyable since I’m pretty good at skipping shows I don’t like.  Heaven knows there are enough available.  I turned off Riot Women 10 minutes in; ABC Murders lasted about that long as well.

Truly the only regret I have about having this two months is the hit it’s taking to my reading.  Truly, if it weren’t for cds and Libby when I’m doing errands in the car, I wouldn’t be reading at all!

Do any of your hobbies/past-times fight each other for your attention?

2026, animals, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Scrambled?

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It was YAs birthday in the middle of the month.  She was out of town for work so she requested a birthday brunch this past weekend.  She had the jalapeno hash with a wide of pancakes; I had the blueberry pancakes with a side of scrambled eggs.  

I used to always order fried eggs, over medium.  No waitperson ever blinked an eye over this, but apparently chefs and fry cooks weren’t up to the task.  Either the yolks were rock solid or the whites oozed out.  After several years of this, I finally decided to switch to scrambled.  Easy peasy, right?  Nope.  It was right about this time that “soft” scrambled eggs started to trend upwards.  I remember seeing chefs online and on tv raving about them.  I always just thought of them as “wet” and certainly not appetizing.  These days when I order scrambled eggs, I specify that I want them “dry”.  Again, no waitperson ever questions this description and I always get the eggs the way I like them.

On Saturday however, YA informed me that I’m ordering wrong.  I’m supposed to say “hard” instead of “dry”.  Since she chose that outing to also inform me of several other things that I do wrong, I didn’t think about it too much.

Then I read Ben’s blog and when I was looking at the chicken pictures, it made me wonder if on the egg point YA was correct.  I can’t imagine what the internet thinks of me based on some of my searches but now it has to add “ways to scramble” eggs to my weird list.  Turns out that most folks do say “hard” although there are enough that use “dry” to make me feel like I’m not completely on my own.  I also discovered that the culinary world also refers to this method as “American Method”.  Hmmm.  I found a lot of videos about how to scramble eggs but nobody seems to know why hard/dry is American.  I did also find that there are “diner” scrambled; the eggs are cooked flat on a grill and folded up. 

When I do eggs at home, my preferred method is fried.  Over medium of course.

Anyway, thanks to Ben and YA for my latest rabbit hole – egg research.  I have frittata and shakshuka on the menu for the next week!

Poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled, over-easy, sunny-side up?

2026, Automotive, Fantasy, Mysteries, Weather

Mystery Car

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As I was backing out of my parking space at Michaels yesterday afternoon, another car, two spots up starting backing out at the same time.  I looked toward the driver to make sure that they had seen me and was startled to see NO ONE.  No body in the driver’s seat, no body in the passenger seat. 

You can imagine, I’m sure, that this completely freaked me out.  It also caused me to doubt myself.  I had just mis-seen that, right?  The mystery car was behind me at this point so I drove very very slowly toward the exit lane.  From my rear view mirror, it really didn’t look like there was anyone driving. 

YA will tell you that I know nothing about cars, but I would have bet money that cars couldn’t drive themselves.  Even Teslas have to have somebody IN the car, don’t they?  And, of course, I can’t tell you what kind of car it was – I really am hopeless in this area.

As I pulled into the exit lane, I kept my speed slow – barely moving slow.  I saw the mystery car pull over to the front of the Michaels and saw a man and a woman leave the store and jump in the car.  At that point, I decided I couldn’t just sit there with them coming up behind me, so I headed home.

Here’s my real conundrum about this.  This car was four parking spaces away from the store.  And it was 13 degrees, not 13 below.  Cars that you can warm up seem weird enough to me, but having a car that drives 4 parking spaces to pick you up doorside is just too too bizarre for me. 

When hover-cars are invented, will you get one?

2026, Fantasy, Mysteries, Technology, TV

Keeping Track

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I didn’t have a big to-do list yesterday.  Normally when this occurs, I fill in with other little tasks around the house or I plant myself in my studio but for some reason sitting on the sofa and watching tv.  Three episodes of Perry Mason and then a handful of Columbo.

I’ve seen them all repeatedly.  I know who the murderer is in every Perry Mason and, of course, you know who the murderer is on Columbo from the get-go.  Since I don’t have to spend any mental energy on figuring out the mystery, I can while away the time looking at small details and wondering at how the world has changed.

Yesterday what stood out the most was that no matter where Perry or Columbo happen to be, somebody can always get ahold of them.  Perry is interviewing a suspect; the phone rings and it’s for him.  Columbo is at his dog’s obedience academy; the phone rings and it’s for him.  It happened all the time.

Now Perry had Della to call him however the calls weren’t always from her and quite a bit of the time she was with him.  Was there a whiteboard with all of Perry’s stops left in his outer office?  For many years, there was Gertie who took calls.  Maybe she was letting folks know where Perry was?

But Columbo?  He was always portrayed as such a loose cannon – if there was some administrative assistant somewhere back at headquarters, it was a highly kept secret.  Did he really leave the phone number of the dog obedience academy with someone somewhere?

It made me think about the scene in Woody Allen’s Play It Again Sam in which Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts are leaving Woody’s apartment:

Dick:
I’ll be at 362-9296 for a while; then I’ll be at 648-0024 for about fifteen minutes; then I’ll be at 752-0420; and then I’ll be home, at 621-4598. Yeah, right George, bye-bye.

Linda:
There’s a phone booth on the corner. You want me to run downstairs and get the number? You’ll be passing it.

Obviously these days detectives and lawyers are never without their cell phones, so the whiteboards with everyone’s every move and destination are not longer necessary.  Of course, now that I think about it – they probably hadn’t been invented yet?

Do you have a whiteboard?  Whiteboard equivalent?  What do you use it for?