Category Archives: Mysteries

2022, Family, Food, Mysteries, State Fair, Uncategorized

Corn Fed

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I remember the first time I saw someone take a picture of their food about 20 years ago.  It was dinner with a client at Swan Court, at the Hyatt in Maui.  It was a lovely evening and we were seated outside along the lagoon when we noticed a young couple sitting close to us taking photos of their plates before tucking in.  The client and I were too polite to laugh out loud, but we did roll our eyes and we talked about it more than once over the next two days. 

Little did we know that we were witnessing the beginning of a worldwide trend.  These days social media is filled with pictures of people’s snacks, meals, drinks…. any edible will do.  For this trend, YA is all in; we can’t ever eat anywhere without the obligatory photo before she begins to eat.  And often I have to move my plate or my glass or my coffee cup so it doesn’t mess up her photo.

State Fair is about the only time I join in the food photo frenzy.  Cheese curds and cookies subtitled “Breakfast of Champions” got texted to several friends.  My pretty Margarita lemonade made the cut as well as the French Toast Bites but most of my comestibles went undocumented.  YA took photos of everything, including her roasted corn in the photo above. 

Considering how common food photos are these days, I was really surprised when a woman standing near YA said in a loud voice “Oh it’s just food.  Eat it already!”  YA just ignored her; as the aggrieved mother, I was mustering up a zinger for this woman but she had already disappeared into the crowd.  I was really stunned by this, first because YA wasn’t obstructing any traffic at all and second because taking pictures of food is so very common these days.  I can only surmise that this poor woman had been driven to distraction by her kids that day at the fair, keeping her from all her first bites of fair food by taking photo after photo!

Tell me one of your favorite corn recipes!

2022, History, home, Mysteries, The Future, Uncategorized

Digging Up The Past

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Things took a grisly turn in Grand Forks last week when police dug up someone’s yard where a presumed murder victim was thought to be buried. The disappearance of the young woman occurred about 25 years ago. The current residents are unrelated to the murder victim or the alleged crime. The location was a construction site at the time of the disappearance.

Nothing was found. I can’t imagine how the current owners felt about the prospect of a corpse under their front yard. Would they hope something would be found, or would they be disappointed the search was unsuccessful? I would worry the remains were still there and I would think about it every time I mowed the lawn.

Other than finding some Wedgwood porridge bowls buried under several inches of spruce needles when we trimmed off the bottom spruce branches (they had been left there by daughter and her best friend when they were little girls and used the space under the trees as their fort and hiding place), we have never found treasure or horror as we have gardened. Our neighborhood was originally the town’s first golf course. We have found nary a golf ball or a tee.

What would you like to bury in your yard for future generations to find? Where would you hide a corpse ?

2022, gardening, home, Mysteries, Nature, Seasons, Weather

Mystery of the Week

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I can’t remember a summer when so much of my psychic energy is spent thinking about rain, or the lack of rain.  Usually my “flowers not grass” protocol does just fine without much H2O intervention on my part but not this summer.  I’m trying to use as little as possible but it’s been an issue. 

So why is it, that the ONLY day of any precipitation in recent memory was also the one out of two days a year that a case of toilet paper is delivered and left on the steps.

Any ways that Murphy’s law is messing with you this week?

2022, Mysteries, Technology, Travel, Uncategorized

Experiencing TSA

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Last week when we were coming back from St. Louis, we got shuffled into a TSA line where they are apparently testing new equipment.  No taking off our shoes, no pulling out our little baggies of liquid, no requests to dump water bottles. 

At first I thought this would be great but was very shortly disabused of that idea.  After your bags went through the scanner, anything that looked funny got shoved off to the side for additional scrutiny.  In the regular line this happens as well but since our line had been specifically told NOT to pull out anything including liquids or toss water bottles, it meant that more than half of the bags going through got held up.  Water bottles were opened and examined with some kind of test strips, bags were opened and rifled through; it was not a quick check. 

Neither YA nor I had anything unusual but we were behind a few people who did.  So we stood back and waited while watching everyone else’s problems pan out.  The family who went through right before we did were a hot mess.  Three kids, all under the age of five and already hot and tired after waiting in line.  Four adults – it was hard to tell who belong to whom but they were clearly all together.  Because they were told not to take things out of baggage, there was a plethora of sippy cups and water bottles.  Every bag was opened and pawed through (sorry, my bias is showing here).  Every sippy cup and bottle was opened and tested. 

As the kids started to melt down, one of the adults started to melt down as well.  She was angry – about everything.  When her anger did nothing to make the situation better, she got angrier.  Her voice got quite loud, she got in one TSA agent’s face.  The folks with her tried to calm her down, but she was having none of it.

I’ve never seen anything like this in person but it was amazing how fast other TSA agents were in coming to their co-worker’s defense.  And how MANY TSA agents came over.  I was extremely glad right then that TSA agents do not carry firearms or any other weapons but there were enough of them that could have taken this woman down with ease.  They did end up asking her and one of the other adults into a side hallway (six TSA agents for the two adults).  When they came back a few minutes later, the distraught woman seemed a little calmer and she didn’t say one more word.  I can only imagine what they said to her. 

I asked one of the agents who was standing behind us how long this new process/equipment had been in place.  He sighed and said “one week”.  I wished him luck.  Then our bags came through.  All they did was confirm our little baggies of liquid/cream which was easy because we both had them in side pockets of our bags; off we went, plenty of time to get to our gate despite the delay.

Have you ever been a test case for anything?

animals, Family, History, home, Mysteries, Nature

Cat Salvation

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I was thinking about Ben’s question about stepping up as I was doing errands yesterday morning.  My mom is also giving up some of the responsibilities that she’s been shouldering (some a little unwillingly) for quite some time.  It’s not going as easily as she would like.

When I drove back up into my driveway, the neighbor girls were eager to tell me that there was a cat out front.  The grandparents were visiting as well and it was clear that between the two girls, the two parents and the two grandparents there wouldn’t be anyone who did anything except report the existence of this cat.

So YA and I ventured out the front door to deal with the cat.  It was a big white cat w/ black and brown markings, very happy to come to me and get scritched and petted, purring quite loudly.  It allowed me to pick it up and that’s when YA said she thought it belonged to one of the houses across the street.  We took it over and talked to the owner through the door – apparently it’s an outdoor cat; there was food & water there on the front step.  When I put the cat down, it went for the food immediately so we headed home.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been elected as official “animal wrangler” in the neighborhood.  I’ve been called to deal with bats twice.  Once an obviously pet rabbit was found in a yard and I got a call; signs up at the vet and around the neighborhood didn’t result in owners coming forward but luckily we found a good home pretty quickly.  I’ve rescued four dogs who have been loose on the street (all four had tags so got home to their owners).  And for several years there was an escape artist two doors down (Duffer) that everyone was afraid of except me, so I had to drag him home repeatedly. 

I’m not sure why I somehow have been designated the animal problem solver but it seems my lot in life.

Have you ever been involved in a rescue mission?

2022, Automotive, education, Family, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Park It!

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It’s been a parking lot few days for me.

There is a strip mall near Nonny’s place that we visited more than once (Panera, post office, UPS store, Walgreens and Starbucks – we had a lot of errands to run).  It is very poorly designed, with parking spaces laid out every which way and with some one-way arrows that everybody ignores.

YA’s game of choice on her iPad this weekend was Parking Jam – in which you have to get all the cars out of a parking lot without jumping any berms to crashing into other vehicles. 

Then when I ran out to get a few things this morning before work, I drove by the backside of the Hub parking lot.  If you have ever seen the backside of the Hub parking lot, you’ll know that it is just wasted real estate.  All the entrances to the mall are on the other side and no one parks in the back – not even employees.  But this morning I noticed that in the last week they have re-painted all the parking lines back there.  What a complete waste of paint and time!

I mentioned to YA when I got home that clearly parking lot design must be a completely neglected part of architecture school – they can’t teach this and have so many folks be so bad at it?  Or can they?

Were you a good student at school?

2022, Business, education, Food, History, Mysteries, Travel

Where in the World is VS?

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It’s been awhile…… here are some clues.

The Botanical Garden, which opened to visitors here in 1859, is the oldest public garden in the US and among the top three public gardens in the world.

The first US kindergarten was started here in 1873 by Susan Blow.  (You can still see her original class room!)

The Eads Bridge, completed here in 1874, was the first arched steel truss bridge in the world. The bridge continues to carry automobiles, pedestrians, cyclists and light rail trains!

Several new foods were popularized here in 1904: the hot dog, the ice cream cone and iced tea.

Famous folks from here:  Maya Angelou, Yogi Berra, Daniel Boone, William Burroughs, Vincent Price, Stan Musial, Marlin Perkins.

What do you think?

2022, Family, gardening, home, Kids, Mysteries, Nature, Technology, Weather

It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature

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Mother Nature is just messing with me. 

With my front and back yards full of flowers, I do need to think about water during the summer months, especially if there are going to be so many 90+ degree days.  I watch the weather forecasts like a hawk to try to determine if Mother Nature is going to gift me with any free precipitation.  If it’s going to rain, I really don’t to pay the City of Minneapolis for extra water.

It seems that almost every forecast of rain the past month has been a chimera – it shows as 50% or 60% and the radar shows the dark green riding right over my location – then nothing!   Or else it does a very insulting sprinkle for 3 minutes.  Last night I had the sprinkler on in front and when I went to water my baskets in the back, YA gave me grief.  She said “it’s going to rain… it’s 80%”.  I continued along, watering all the baskets and the bales while she made fun of me.  As I finished up, it started to lightly sprinkle.  She smirked as I came in the back.  Then 5 minutes later I smirked when it hadn’t even rained long enough to wet a tissue. 

I know weather is capricious but I would have thought that by now, forecasters could get a better grasp on this.  I’ve said many times that if I were to look for another job, it would be as a weather forecaster.  Then I could get a big salary to be on tv and the fact that I was wrong half of the time wouldn’t count against me on my annual review!

I guess for the rest of the summer, I’ll just assume there will be no rain, unless I wake up to it in the morning!

How much do YOU believe in weather forecasting?

2022, education, Media, Mysteries, News, Stories, Uncategorized

I Missed It

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Boris Johnson resigned?  When the heck did that happen?

I know I’m not thrilled reading the news these days but I do check in every few days.  Yesterday I saw a couple of things on Facebook that drove me to CNN.  Lots of news about the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination but nothing about Boris.  So I thought I’d check out BBC.com.  Absolutely nothing.  Thinking it was a fool’s errand, I just typed “Boris Johnson” into Google and finally found the news.  Seems as if four days later, it isn’t a headline any longer.  Like you shouldn’t blink or you’ll miss big chunks of what’s happening in the world.

The year after I graduated from high school, I spent 8 weeks living with a family in Mexico (their 2 daughters had spent the summer with us the year before).  Back then – yes, when dinosaurs roamed the planet – no BBC.com, no CNN.com, no streaming.  Just the daily newspaper, which in that corner of Mexico really did not carry any international news at all.  I felt a little cut off from the rest of the world while I was there – I’m assuming it’s how those bio-dome folks must have felt.

I came home from Mexico on a bus through Nogales to Albuquerque – stayed in a hotel one night and then flew home the next day.  That morning in Albuquerque I took a long walk and before returning to the hotel, I stopped at the corner drugstore and bought copies of several news magazines (Time, US News & World Report, Newsweek, even the Atlantic Monthly).

Apparently while I was in Mexico, there was a problem between Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.  Despite having the top news magazines of the day in my hands, I couldn’t really figure out what had happened.  If you don’t read the first news stories, it’s hard to “catch up”.  To this day, I’m not really 100% sure exactly how it all played out although I know that Cyprus is divided by a Green Line with the Greeks in the south and the Turkish in the north. 

I’m a little worried that this is how it will be for me and Boris Johnson.  I’ve found a few op eds and I THINK I’ve got it down, but am still a little surprised at how fast the story came and then went!

Anything gone missing in your world this week?

2022, Family, Fantasy, home, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Dessert Anyone?

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I am not usually a procrastinator; in fact, I’m usually the opposite.  I almost always start with the thing I don’t want to do and then reward myself with the more pleasure task afterwards – unlike Oscar Wilde, I like to have the dessert at the end.

But every now and then I encounter a project that just throws me for a loop – a project that lingers and lingers while I find excuse after excuse to not get to it.  It tortures me and I keep putting it off, even though I remind myself that it won’t take as long as I think, it won’t be as hard, I’ll feel so great when it’s finished.  About the only way I’ve found to counteract this is a deadline.  Once there is a deadline, then I’m all in for getting it done. 

My front porch (yes, she’s going to talk about the front porch again) is right up there.  I didn’t have any problem scrapping (although it was taking forever), no issues with sand blasting (although tim helping did set up a deadline if I’d needed it), no issues with replacing the broken glass panes, no issues with getting all the glass to the correct recycling center, no issues with sanding the window frames.  

Getting the ceiling done – I’m just tilting at windmills.  I simply cannot get myself to stain the ceiling.  It started with taping up the plastic – took me a month to figure out how to trick YA into doing it with me.  Of course, I could have done all the taping on my own in less than 30 minutes, but I just couldn’t make myself.  Now that I don’t have plastic on the to-do list, you’d think the staining would be easy.  But no… again, every time I think about it, some other thing that is much more enjoyable “needs” to be done. This past weekend, I spent close to 10 hours in my studio…. cuz I really need more cards, right?  Right now I’m trying to think of how to trick YA into the staining as well.

Any projects you’re procrastinating on right now?  Any thoughts on how to get YA to do the ceiling for me?