Category Archives: Mysteries

2024, animals, holidays, Mysteries, Travel

Risky Business

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A 22-year old from Taiwan was apprehended at the Bangkok airport before Christmas after he was found to be carrying two Asian small-clawed otters and a prairie dog.  The man has the critters in socks, taped inside his boxer shorts; security officers were suspicious of the big bulge below the man’s waistband.

If I were a man, I’m not sure I’d put anything with claws and teeth (much less three of them) in my shorts.

I noticed this because I was just thinking about taking a small bag of spices with me to St. Louis last week.  I needed to recreate my sister’s mac and cheese recipe while I was at Nonny’s and was pretty sure that Nonny might not have all these spices.  I didn’t want to buy whole jars of them in St. Louis.  Putting spices in a ziplock made me think about another time I had spices in my suitcase.

About twenty years ago, my bag was the very last one to arrive on the luggage belt after I had come home from Thailand.  The sniffer dog did not alert on my bag but the fact that I had stood there so long waiting brought me to the attention of the sniffer dog’s handler.  Of course this was the one time I ever had something a little suspicious in my bag.  I had purchased some spices at a road-side stand while in Thailand… just baggies of powder with no labels.  Luckily none of them were white and one of them was filled with whole nutmegs, so it was easily explainable.  I was very glad I had the nutmegs and had not purchased anything even remotely white!           

Have you ever transported something you probably shouldn’t have?

animals, Art, Mysteries, Travel

Helping the Javelina

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This is the last post about Nashville.  I swear.

When I did the blog last year about Henrietta (my stuffed javelina) going to Madison, it was kinda funny and I enjoyed it.  So I thought it would be fun to do it again on my trip to Nashville.  What I didn’t expect was that others would take on the cloak of silliness with me.

My friend Pat was absolutely obsessed with getting a photo of Henrietta wherever we went – zoo, Strawberry Café lunch, shopping, pizza place, the winery.  You’ve already seen the photos at the Goo Goo Cluster store and the Moonshine distillery and the breakfast place.  But she wasn’t the only one concerned that I get a good photo with Henrietta. 

A complete stranger at the zoo volunteered to take a photo of me and Henrietta with some flamingos that we out doing “meet & greet”.  Is demurred, not too sure how close I wanted to get to a huge (they are much bigger up close than you think) strange bird.

The woman working the bookstore at the Belmont Estate also noticed Henrietta in my bag and asked about her.  We were waiting for our tour to start so Pat was happy to go on and on about all the places that we had taken Henrietta over the past couple of days.  The woman got all excited and led us to a spot we would never have seen on our own… under a staircase on the second floor of the mansion.  There was a small statue of a pig, complete with a red bow.  This was a photo I couldn’t resist. 

Although it’s been fun, I’m not sure I need to keep it up.  I will probably take her to Tucson in March; it is after all her birthplace (my friend purchased her for me while I was there last year) but I’m not sure she will go to St. Louis with me this month.

Do you take selfies when you travel?

2024, Kids, Mysteries, News, Uncategorized

Alarming Trends

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I have noticed over the past year or so a really alarming trend for people to back into parking paces in parking lots. At the grocery store, it means that if you have a van or you put your groceries in the trunk that it is hard to access the rear of your vehicle. I guess people do this so that they have better visibility when they leave their parking space. I think it is really dumb. It takes longer to park, makes it harder to park, and also makes it quicker for someone to steal your vehicle since they can just drive off instead of having to take time to back out.

People at my agency also noticed over the past year a trend for Middle School and High School female students to try to convince us that they have Dissociative Identity Disorder aka Multiple Personality Disorder, and watch TikTok videos to practice the symptoms and the shifting into the other personalities. They are so disappointed when we dismiss the symptoms.

If you haven’t noticed, I wrote this when I was really crabby. That is usually not a trend for me, but this has been an annoying week. I will be alarmed if my crabby trend continues.

What has made you crabby this week? What were the passing fads when you were in Middle School and High School.

2024, Family, Gatherings, Mysteries

Dressed to Impress

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YA and were invited to a nice party over the weekend – a surprise 70th birthday party for a friend.  The invite didn’t mention any particular dress code but the party was held in a big lovely home up in Kenwood and it seemed like dressing up would be the right way to go. 

Dressing up is not something that I’ve ever been good at.  Pandemic, furlough and retirement has not helped.  I do have a pair of black palazzo pants so I started there but was struggling with a top to go with the pants.  Static didn’t help.  At one point YA came in and said “why don’t you just wear a dress?”  

Well, because I no longer own a dress.  I decided to look in the attic to make sure I wasn’t forgetting about any dresses but no, nothing.  I don’t even remember the last dress I owned or when it left the house, presumably in a goodwill/value village bag. 

I did find a top to go with the palazzo pants and the party was great but I kept thinking the rest of the weekend, “should I invest in a dress”?  Probably not a good use of income since I also can’t remember the last time the thought of wearing a dress even crossed my mind. 

When was the last time you dressed up?

2024, animals, Media, Music, Mysteries

More Baader-Meinhof

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It’s been quite a while since I experienced the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon… when something you’ve just become aware of suddenly pops up seemingly everywhere.  It’s also called “frequency illusion” – even though you think you’ve discovered something for the first time, it’s just that you’ve noticed it for the first time.  Anyway, I’ve had a bunch lately:

Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Friends visited there this fall and wrote about it in their holiday newsletter.  First time I had heard of this city.  Then a couple of days letter, Ljubljana was mentioned in the National Geographic that I was reading. 

Tasmanian Tiger.  Also in National Geographic (although a different issue), there was a mention of the tiger.  Then the next day there was a sidebar in Scientific American.  I’d never heard of this dog-like “tiger” that went extinct in Tasmanian in the 1930s.  It’s been in the news because a paper came out in 2023 that they may have survived longer in the wild before the species died out.

Straight No Chaser.  While baking cookies right after Thanksgiving, I heard a funny carol on the radio – turned out to be a men’s acapella group called Straight No Chaser.  First time I heard of them (but I adore them already).  Then a week later, a friend of mind posted on Facebook that he was going to a Straight No Chaser concert that night. 

I do understand that the universe is not trying to send me coded messages but it’s hard to believe that the information is all around you and you’re just not registering it.  I do wonder why all three of these just popped up in the last month for me!

Any coincidences in your life lately? 

2024, animals, Farming Update, Mysteries

Time For a Change

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I have 4 analog wall clocks at the college that I reference often. All four are showing a different time. The one just off stage, that I knocked off the wall while changing a work light and it dropped 12 feet and bounce off the ladder, quit working. Go figure. I replaced the battery and reset the time and it went around to 12:10 and stopped there. That was about a month ago.

Another clock, back in the shop by the sign in sheet for the students, is running slow and it’s way off.

In my office is a clock with the Tasmanian Devil from Bugs Bunny on the face. It’s too much trouble to climb on the desk to change the time, so it’s accurate, but an hour off some of the year.

And down in the dressing room is another clock that’s off. If you plan your day and route accordingly, you can make all these work in your favor.

I got a lot of work done in the farm shop the last week. Threat of colder weather and snow prompted me. I got the carburetor installed on the 630 tractor and had it running last week. Cross that off the list! Yay! Here’s a short video just so you can hear the sound. It needs some adjustment yet, but at least it runs!

Or it did. The next time I went to start it, the starter shorted out and wouldn’t stop running and I had to disconnect the ground cable to make it stop. Sigh. Hang my head. Add that to the list. I used another tractor and pulled the 630 out of the way so I could get on with the rest of the projects. Pulling a tractor by yourself isn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had; thank goodness the ground was level. The tractor not running kinda messes up my parking plans for the machinery. I think if I crawl under and disconnect the wire from the starter, I can put the ground wire back on, pull start the tractor to get it started, and then drive it to get it tucked away. We will worry about getting it out next spring. Always something.

While working on the shed, and talking out loud to myself, at one point I said, “Well, that’s not right.” And I thought to myself, ‘there’s a lot that’s not right in the world’. Later on, finagling three sheets of 14-foot pole barn steel, I said out loud, “This is not going at all like how I thought it was gonna go.” That’s about when I figured out I could do 2 sheets, but not three. Fourteen feet being taller than my center of balance, and all, created some issues. Anyway, I got the NE corner done and started moving stuff in.

It was just really nice to be home, and have the time, and do these projects. It just felt so good to “be of use”.

WHY CAN’T THINGS BE EASY?

Automotive, holidays, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Driving Me Crazy

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When YA was first driving, I asked a good friend of mine, who had two daughters older than YA, “when will I be able to get in a car with her while she’s driving, and not fear for my life.”   Without even a blink, Lori said “when you stop getting a car with her.”  I laughed at the time but 13 years later, I realize she was absolutely right.

YA wanted to drive on Thanksgiving.  She said it was to see if she could get better mileage on her new car (she bought it in July) but I think it was really to show it off to the Thanksgiving crowd.  She drives closer to other cars than I do and it makes me nervous.  I put my foot out a couple of times as if I could brake.  YA thought this was pretty funny.

She did NOT think it was funny on the way home.  It was dark and a couple of times she pulled into a lane with very little space between us and the car in front.  I tell myself that she actually drives more these days than I do and she hasn’t had an accident yet.  But I’ll admit that at one point I gasped and threw my hands out in front of me.  It was involuntary.  She gave me a stern warning and I sat on my hands the rest of the way home.

I don’t have these kind of issues when I’m riding with other folks.  I went all over Nashville two weeks ago with my friend Pat driving and never flinched once!

Do prefer to be the driver or the passenger?

2023, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Bad Habits

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I bought my house in 1991. 

The bathroom light switch was on the wall OUTSIDE the bathroom.  I don’t know why.  But for 30+ years I have switched on the light before I go into the bathroom and switched it off when I come out of the bathroom.  Also for 30+ years, anytime a guest has used the bathroom I have cautioned them “the light switch is on the wall in the hall”.

Since the entire inside of the bathroom got ripped up for the remodel, including the wall where the electrical box was located, I figured we might as well move the switch to the inside of the bathroom.  The electrician also moved the fan switch and overhead heat lamp switch over as well, so all three switches now live together. 

Here are the three switches in their new location:

This is where the switch used to be:

It’s been two weeks.  I still try to turn the lights on/off outside the bathroom at least 5 times a day. 

How long does it take you to change a habit?

2023, books, Mysteries, Travel

Hurry Up and Wait

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My mother trained me well.  Get to the airport with PLENTY of time.  My travel career cemented this for me.  2 hours for a domestic flight, 3 hours for an international flight, 1½ hours for a connection – this is my general rule.  Too many variables, too many possibilities for things to go wrong (flights late, long lines for security, people behaving badly, etc.)   I will admit that I do make an exception for flying out of the Humphrey Terminal – usually just 1½ hours prior is OK for me. 

Last week as I was heading to Nashville it seemed as if every employee at Humphrey was in a hurry.  I stopped at a check-in kiosk to get a paper boarding pass (just in case) and when the attendant saw that I had my phone with an electronic pass, she tried to shoo me through (unsuccessfully).  At security, where you normally have to wait behind the line until it’s your turn, they were pushing folks up in line – like social distancing had never been a thing.  Then the TSA folks were practically putting your stuff into the plastic bins themselves.  They did still make everyone take their shoes off (except the man in front of me – not sure he could have stooped down to take them off anyway) but they were gung-ho in arranging your stuff and if it was too crowded, THEY were grabbing an extra bin to accommodate things.

Of course it meant we all got through check-in, security and TSA in record time.  In time to sit at the gate for 1½ hours!  Oh well, I had a good book. 

Tell me about your travel habits!

2023, animals, Family, holidays, home, Mysteries

Pumpkin Eaters!

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Today’s post is inspired by Anna’s “I went for a walk in my neighborhood” posts.

I normally wait until right before Halloween to buy pumpkins for our front steps, with the hope that they’ll last until Thanksgiving.  This is a fool’s errand, as it usually only takes my neighborhood squirrels about a week to figure out there are good eats on the front steps.  I almost always get the pumpkins from Mt. Olivet near my house.  The prices are in line with other pumpkin vendors and the money always goes to one of the youth groups. 

This year YA went with me to choose the three pumpkins that would grace our front steps – normally she leaves this to me.  While I always choose standard orange pumpkins, usually all about the same size, YA wanted a big pink variety this year.  After she had decided on the big pink one, she let me choose the other two.  I stuck with my orange tradition.

As other years, it took several days before I noticed the first teeth marks on the pink pumpkin.  By Halloween, it had a good hole so I just turned that side to the back.  As the days have gone by, more and more of the pumpkin has been eaten up – as of yesterday, it looks like a shallow bowl filled with seeds.  I’m happy that critters get good meals out of the decorations – I hate to think of them just going into landfill somewhere.

What I don’t understand is why they are only eating the pink one?  Is this a squirrel mania, like eating one course of your meal at a time?  Will the pink one have to be completely gone before they start in on the orange ones?

Are you feeding any wild critters these days? t