Category Archives: Mysteries

2023, books, Movies, Mysteries

Tomatoes of Wrath

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Remember last May when I watched all those killer tomato movies?   I watched some of them online and so found a lot of assorted information, including several sites that said the initial movie was based on “the best-selling novel The Tomatoes of Wrath” by Paul Watkins.  I couldn’t let that pass by, now could I? 

Couldn’t find the title either in my library system or the inter-library loan, but I did find it online.  Please don’t ask me why I thought this was a good use of $12 – I don’t remember what mania overtook me that day.  It showed up promptly and then sat on my nightstand for several months.

I’m here to say that whoever says the movies were inspired by this book is a lunatic.  The book is subtitled “Adventures of a Tentative Traveler” and there isn’t a killer tomato in sight.  The chapter titled Tomatoes of Wrath is ostensibly the account of Watkins when he picked tomatoes for a day in California however most of the story is a reminiscence of the three days he spent sightseeing in San Francisco.  And not a very well-constructed nor interesting reminiscence.  (And I have to admit that after reading this chapter, I didn’t read the rest so I haven’t the vaguest idea WHY was traveling around with no money, hence needing to go out to pick tomatoes.)

When he finally gets back to the tomato picking, it is more of an expose (although a very short expose) on farmers vs. pickers and the injustices meted out by the tomato industry onto workers.  On the next to the last page there was a mention of Grapes of Wrath, comparing the Joads’ struggle to survive picking fruit in California and how unfairly and unjustly they were treated.  Hence the title of the chapter and the book.

All of this is to say, I didn’t like what I read of the book and to think that the Killer Tomato movies were inspired by it is ludicrous.  After this critical review anybody still wants to borrow it, just let me know!

Do you read the book before you see the movie?

2023, books, Mysteries

Long and Short of It

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Several weeks back Linda (I believe it was Linda anyway) recommended The English Understand Wool. I don’t even remember what we were talking about but I thought the title sounded quirky so I looked it up on the library website.  It had a good-size waiting list and I noticed that the author was Helen DeWitt.  I almost didn’t request it because I remember how long DeWitt’s first book was… The Last Samurai… almost 600 pages and DENSE. 

The Last Samurai was enjoyable, although a little sad in some places.  I try not to let long tomes scare me off so I went ahead and clicked on the “Place Hold” button for Wool.   Imagine my surprise when I went to pick it up on Saturday… just 69 pages!  I read the whole thing in about an hour – so I read it again. 

I’m reading another fairly short book this week – The Pluto Files by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I requested it (yes, I know I could look up page numbers on the library site if I wanted to….) but I would have guessed that it wouldn’t be too terribly long.  Neil’s books aren’t usually really long; I assume he works hard not to overwhelm his readers with all he knows. 

Not sure how long my upcoming requests will be but I feel like a massive tome would be OK since I’ve had a few short books in a row now.

Do you know the longest book you’ve ever read?

2023, Food, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Decisions Decisions….

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You wouldn’t think that making a batch of cupcakes would be a full-morning event, would you?

First, I had to decide what cupcakes to make.  I have a couple of cookbooks that embellish box cake mixes so I started there.  First there was a good looking lemon filled cupcake but this would require going to the store for lemon curd.  (In addition to the contractor being here, I’ve been trying to make inroads into what I think is just too much foodstuff in the house.)  Then I moved on to a cupcake made with juice concentrate – oops, no concentrate except apple.  Coming off the autumn, I’m a little appled-out.  Maybe a cinnamon toast cupcake – shoot, no pudding mix.  By this time I was thinking I should just use the box mix and be done with it.

Then I saw the white chocolate cupcake.  I knew I probably had the 1 cup of white chocolate chips (or the equivalent) and I knew I could approximate whole milk with the skim milk and the heavy cream I had in the fridge.  Of course, when I was pulling out the chocolate chips, I found an unopened jar of lemon curd.  Oh well, next time.

So I finally had cupcakes in the oven by 10:30 (a full hour and a half after starting this project).  Luckily I did have cream cheese for the frosting so at least I didn’t have to spend time looking for alternatives.  The cupcakes turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

When was the last time it took you too long to make a decision?

2023, Business, Mysteries, Technology

Checking Out

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I’m not a huge fan of the self-checkout.  Mostly because I’m not good or fast at it – nor are a lot of folks that I see – meaning an employee still has to come deal with me.  In trying to be kind to corporate America (yeah, I know, I know), I like to pretend that the employee hours saved at the check-out areas get shifted around to other parts of the store. 

Friday morning, with YA working from home, I was freed up from staying home with the contractor so ran a whole bunch of errands; one of these errands was at Michaels.  They installed a couple of self-checkout units in my local Michaels – about 8 months ago.  Usually if there is a cashier, I let them do the work.  On Friday when I came around the corner, there weren’t any cashiers to be seen and I only  had about six items so I went with self-checkout.  Of course, since I’ve only done this a couple of times at Michaels, I was VERY slow, checking the sale price on every item and then logging in so I could see if I had any coupons.

While I was poking along, a family of three followed into the check-out area, an older woman and what was probably her daughter and son-in-law.  She did not know how to use the self-checkout and she was NOT in the mood to let the younger generation to show her up.  So now both of the self units were occupied and the line behind us was piling up.  The daughter was getting impatient and called in a very loud voice for casher assistance.   As I was finally finishing my session, the daughter called again, even more loudly.  As I exited the store, I counted the line waiting to checkout – nine folks – and still not a cashier in sight. 

I know that many retail establishments would prefer that all of us just get with the twentieth century and embrace self-checkout but based on what I experienced and witnessed at Michaels, it won’t be happening any time soon!

What are some of the oldest chain stores in America?

2023, Family, Mysteries, Nature, space

The Eclipse

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Of course there were clouds here on Saturday when the partial eclipse was gracing the late morning sky. 

I got my fascination for astronomy from my dad.  He loved following the space program and I remember when the Hubble started sending images back to Earth; he was enraptured. He sliced several photos out of Scientific American and kept them in a file in his living room drawer.

When I traveled to see the 2017 eclipse, I thought a lot about my dad.  Of course, as much as he would have enjoyed the eclipse, I don’t think he would have enjoyed how I experienced it (cheap motel the night before, five hours waiting in a parking lot with other folks, huge traffic issues getting home).  But it was fun to imagine sharing the observation with him, even when the clouds and rain meant there were only a few clear views that day.

For last weekend’s annular eclipse (when the moon is the farthest from Earth and you get a bright ring effect), we got only a partial eclipse here in the Twin Cities.  Since I’m making a trek to Indianapolis next spring for that eclipse, I decided to stay home for this one and enjoy the partial.  When the time came, I got my eclipse glasses and headed out onto the back stoop, which turned out to be a great vantage point.  YA followed me out, laughing at how dorky I looked.  She’s right; unless you’ve invested heavily, you’re stuck with rectangular cardboard frame glasses that resemble the cheap 3-D glasses you get at the movies. But then her curiosity got the better of her and soon she was standing out on the stoop with me, using another of my pairs of glasses (I have several).  The clouds were moving in quickly but at the apogee of the eclipse, we did get several good views, a few seconds each. 

A little later, she shared some websites she had been looking at which showed the eclipse from various locations in the west and southwest, where they could see the whole shebang.  She’d been watching for over an hour!  She says she doesn’t want to go with me to Indianapolis next year but I feel like at least for the day, I passed along a bit of my father’s interest in the heavens!

What’s the dorkiest thing you’ve ever worn?

2023, Fantasy, Gatherings, Media, Mysteries

And Then There Were None…

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The news these days isn’t usually much of a laughing matter.  And then, every now and then…..

Two weeks ago, in Chapel St. Leonard’s, a seaside resort village on England’s east coast, a ritual mass murder was reported to police.  Bodies were seen inside the Seascape Café by passersby.  Unfortunately when the police arrived, the bodies were mysteriously gone; turns out the passersby had witnessed the end of a yoga class, when all the participants were doing a final yoga meditation.

I couldn’t find any comments from those who had reported the mass murder but the yoga instructor took it very seriously and made sure that everyone in the community was reassured on her Facebook page that the group is not a “mad cult or crazy club”. 

What kind of activity do you prefer at a seaside resort village?

2023, Business, Food, Mysteries

Betcha Can’t Eat Just One

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YA and I had some Subway last week and we each got a bag of chips to accompany our feast.  We’ve had  chips plenty of times but last week was the first time I noticed that there is are lines of colored dots along the bottom of the bags.  I checked other bags in my house and about half had dots similar to these, although they weren’t exactly the same colors.

Didn’t take me to long to research this.  These dots (apparently sometimes squares) are called “Printer’s Color Blocks” and they are used as quality control markers for the ink used to print on the bag.  If there is too little or too much of a particular color, it affects the colors on the dots and the printer (human or machine) and adjust as needed.

The reason that I didn’t see these color blocks on all my chips bags is that it’s completely voluntary.  Some manufacturers don’t use them and some manufacturers trim off the numbers after printing.

According to online articles, the most common colors are the four major colors used in printing: black, magenta, yellow and cyan, although depending on the manufacturer (like my bag above) can use more if they want/need.

This was a much more pedestrian explanation than I was hoping for and has absolutely nothing to do with the food inside the bag.  I was really looking forward to some secret code that I could learn and apply when shopping.  Oh well; if it had, I’d be spending way too much time standing in the chip aisle at my local Cub!

What’s your favorite salty treat?

2023, books, History, Mysteries

Quitting

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Pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I’m reading biographies of the English monarchs in order.  It’s been awhile since anything got added to the list and when I clicked on the tab of my spreadsheet, I realized why.  Richard II is up next.  I suppose there might be a few more controversial English kings than this one but it would be a close race.  I don’t know all that much about Richard II but I do know that his death ended the reign of his line and that victors always write/rewrite history.  So when I went looking for a biography, I tried to find something more recent and hopefully balanced.

I did watch the series “The Hollow Crown” a ways back but never read the book so when I found Within the Hollow Crown I thought I’d give it a shot.  After two pages it went back to the library.  I’d prefer to have a more straight-forward biography without the author writing whole swaths of what they believe the historical figure is thinking.  If I had known this book was historical fiction, I wouldn’t have checked it out.  Just not my cup of tea.

Now I’m back to a hunt for a balanced biography… or even if I can’t find one that doesn’t absolutely vilify Richard II, I’d at least like one that doesn’t try to fill in the mental gaps!

If you start a book, do you feel compelled to finish it?  What was the last book you abandoned?

2023, animals, Mysteries, Nature, pets

Ginkgo Conundrum

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I don’t think of myself as clueless but I will admit that most of the time my brain is going 100 miles an hour and I’m not always as observant as I would wish.   

Dog walking has returned to my schedule now that I’m RE-retired. We normally go for 45 minutes to an hour.  I tend to wander around Tangletown or towards Lake Harriet; I like the neighborhoods and I don’t think Guinevere cares where we go as long as we go.  So if you count all the walking we did during pandemic/furlough as well, we’ve probably trekked down Belmont Avenue 50 times in the last couple of years.  But it wasn’t until last week that I noticed the ginkgo leaves on the sidewalks.  The first one I noted, the second one I noted and after the third one, I looked up and down the street.  With few exceptions, all the boulevard trees from 51st all the way to Minnehaha Parkway are ginkgos.  And they are big, sturdy trees – obviously planted decades ago.  Just lovely.

I did a little bit of research and found that the city has always controlled the boulevard trees but I can’t find anything on why this particular stretch was planted with ginkgos.  The current policy, thanks to Dutch Elm disease and the Emerald Ash Borer, is to diversify trees on the boulevards so going forward I doubt any replacement trees on Belmont will be gingkos, although if it were my boulevard, I might petition hard to get a gingko replacement!

How should I focus so I can be more observant?

2023, Family, Food, gardening, Mysteries, Nature

Overheard in the Raspberry Patch

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Man:  This is a good year – lots of good berries.
Woman:  That doesn’t mean we need more than usual.
Man.  I think it means exactly that!

Girl.  Yada, yada, yada, yada…..
Grandpa:  Just stop.
Girl.  Stop what?
Grandpa.  Talking.

Woman #1:  We ended up having to rent a u-haul to get everything to college.
Woman #2:  Makes you wish they would just go to college locally, doesn’t it?
Woman #1:  Absolutely not.  Two u-hauls would be OK with me!

Girl:  He’s throwing berries at me.
Boy:  I am not.
Girl:  Are too.
Boy:  Am not.
Field Worker:  Wouldn’t you rather just be eating them instead of throwing them?
Boy:  I’m only throwing the white ones.

And then awhile later…..

YA:  What are all those scratches on your arm?
Me:  From the raspberry brambles.
YA:  Why don’t you wear long sleeves when you pick?
Me:  Well, it’s hot and the scratches are kinda like badges of honor.
YA:  SIGH (and biggest eye roll this side of the Mississippi)

What shall we do with all the fresh raspberries this year?