Category Archives: Mysteries

2022, Business, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Corraling

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On Wednesday, I pulled into the parking lot of Cub Foods at 5:50 a.m.  I love doing errands early but this was early even by my standards – it was still dark.  As I pulled into a parking spot, I noticed that there were shopping carts all over the lot.  Not in their nice, neat corrals but stranded in various spots, one here, another couple there.  It struck me as funny because you never see this during the day – most folks are pretty reliable about putting the carts where they belong.  Are folks who shop in the very late and very early hours (when nobody is out shagging carts) lazier than daytime dwellers or not willing to spend more time in the dark in a parking lot than necessary?  Or does somebody come between midnight and 5 a.m. and free the carts from the corrals?

What’s the most boring job you’ve ever done?

2022, Automotive, Business, Food, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Ooops

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I like to think of myself as a decent person – not a saint, just a person who likes to do what she thinks is the best thing to do in the moment.

A few years ago Dunkin’ Donuts opened a shop on the corner of 66th & Penn.  This is smack in my stomping grounds – the area that encompasses my hardware store, the library, the post office, the gym, the drugstore, and on the rim of the perimeter, Target.  This means I have way too many excuses to be driving by that intersection; I stop at DD at least once a week, sometimes two.  Did I mention they have a drive-thru?  Once this past winter, I still had my pajamas on when I picked up my two long johns and coffee.

Yesterday morning, just after I had placed my order through the speaker, I looked up to see the driver of the black SUV at the pick-up window drop their box of donuts onto the ground.  The box flipped upside down but didn’t open.  The driver’s door opened and I expected to see someone bend over to pick up the box.  Nope.  The door just stayed open and eventually the Dunkin’ Donuts employee passed out another box.  The black SUV drove off, leaving the box of donuts on the ground.

When I pulled up, I said to the employee “Are those donuts in the box?  Shall I pick it up?”  The employee rushed to say I didn’t need to do that.  But the idea of some employee having to put on a coat, walk out and around to pick up the box that the SUV driver have dropped really bugged me, so I opened my door, picked up the box and handed it through the window.  Two employees thanked me profusely.

As I drove home I had several thoughts.  Why didn’t the SUV driver pick up the box after it was dropped?  Why didn’t they take THOSE donuts?  (I know my donuts – I can’t envision any of the donuts were damaged in that short fall.  Was it really such a big deal that I picked up the box – to have TWO employees thank me?  Why didn’t I KEEP the box myself? 

Who would have thought one quick trip to get two long johns (I had other stops, this wasn’t the only reason I left the house – I swear) could generate so many questions and considerations?

If you were going to get something free today, what would it be?

2022, animals, Mysteries, Nature, News, Science, space, Uncategorized

Half a Giraffe

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You’re giving a announcement to the press about a small asteroid that has managed to get through our atmosphere without completely burning up.  The small space rock is named 2022 EB5 and hit above Iceland last Friday causing a boom and a flash of light as it whizzed across the sky.

You haven’t found any evidence of the asteroid actually making it all the way to the ground, but you want to make folks feel secure about how little damage it would have caused.  So you describe the size of the asteroid as small, 10 feet/3 meters across, “half the size of a giraffe”.

What?  I think a lot of people have probably seen a giraffe in a zoo and have a fairly good idea of how big a giraffe is but it’s certainly not the first thing I would think of when trying to tell someone the size of something.  Especially when 10 feet or 3 meters isn’t that hard to imagine.  But a giraffe…. actually HALF a giraffe?

Isn’t half a giraffe the same as a baby elephant?  Or six dolphins?  Are we picking on animals?  Should we say the asteroid is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle?  And even if we stay with giraffes are we talking half a male giraffe, a female giraffe, a dwarf giraffe?  Are we talking head to halfway through the torso or halfway through the torso to the feet?

Possibilities are endless.

What do you think is a measure of size that the world is missing out on?

2022, Fantasy, History, Movies, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That

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Some movies are just so weird.

I was clicking around last week, looking for some good background noise while I addressed some cards and discovered 2001: A Space Odyssey available.  I remember seeing 2001 in the movie theatre when it came out and I remember a good deal of it; but even 5 decades later and a lot more science fiction under my belt, it is still weird.

Research led me to things I didn’t know.  First off, 2001 was a collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke; it was not first a book and then turned into a movie.  The movie actually came out first followed by the book, although by the time the book was published it only had Clarke’s name on it.  I also found out that all the colored lights and psychedelic effects at the end were Dave becoming a “star child” after going through a star gate.  Of course I’m not sure what a star child is – I haven’t actually read 2001 (although you all know it’s on my short list now) – and the movie certainly doesn’t elucidate any of this.

It seems as if Stanley Kubrick got a little lost in his special effects.  And for 1968, they are great.  And the whole Hal sequence is, of course, fabulous:

I’m hoping the book will make a little more sense than the movie.  Fingers crossed.

Any special effects that you particularly like?  Cinematic or otherwise?

2022, books, Fantasy, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Color Me Surprised

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I’m surprised and embarrassed. 

Surprised because two weeks ago I discovered by accident that Andre Norton, a prolific science fiction/fantasy author was a woman.  I didn’t have a clue.

The embarrassment is because not only do I read a lot and consider fantasy one of my chosen genres, but I worked in a bookstore for six years.  Six years of shelving Andre Norton titles with my own hands and not knowing.  How could I not know this?  And despite knowing the name and the genre, I have to admit I’ve never read any Norton.  I’m really don’t know why – it probably has more to do with the fact that at any given moment, there is a list of about 100 books that I’m thinking about as “next on the list”.  I just never got around to her. 

Her very first book wasn’t in the Hennepin County Library, but I did get it from InterLibrary loan, so we’ll see if I go for more after I read this one. 

But I’m still flummoxed that I didn’t know she was a woman.

What’s a big surprise you’ve had recently?  Extra points if you feel like you should have known….

books, Business, Fantasy, Media, Movies, Mysteries

Evil Abounds

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Today’s photo credit: Justin Lim

You’re a minion.  You work for an evil warlord.  For years you have cheated, stolen and even killed for him.  He pays really well and the benefits package seems great. 

One day the malevolent machinations of your boss are uncovered.  He decides to blow up his solar energy plant to cover his tracks and he heads to the helicopter pad with the damsel in distress to head away from the mess he’s made.  He closes the door of the helicopter, leaving you standing on the helipad.  Right then, as your boss flies away from his bomb-ridden plant, one of the good guys shows up.  You fight him and fight him, even though it’s just a few minutes to the big boom.

You are part of a long-standing tradition.  A truly loyal evil minion – you continue to plague good guys and fight until the bitter end, often for a boss who clearly kills off your peers rather than pay retirement and who always abandons you when the going gets tough.

Can you tell me why?

2022, Business, Media, Mysteries, News, Uncategorized

The Hat

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Melania is selling her white hat. 

Apparently this is big news and you can find it spun in several different directions.  Personally the most interesting thing about this news item is that I don’t remember ever seeing a photo of her wearing it.  I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me; for the past 5-6 years, I’ve really worked hard to stay away from the news.  Too much coverage and drilling down was just making me anxious and miserable, so I quit.  I look at CNN usually just once a day and the StarTribune every few.  I do Facebook but not too much (I’ve actually only posted once) and no other social media platforms.  It’s actually made me feel better.

So back to the hat.  In all the photos I could find, she wore it so far down that you couldn’t see her face most of the time and I’m not sure how she could see either.  But it is a very striking hat.  I wouldn’t want to give up a hat like that although I’m not sure where I would wear it these days.  It would be a little out of place at Target and Trader Joe’s.

Tell me about something of yours that you’d like to auction off.

2022, books, education, Family, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Chip off the Old Block

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I’m a little verklempt.

I’ve always been a reader.  I have a photo of myself “reading” to my little sister when I was about three.  I knew all my books by heart, even when to turn the page; many folks thought I was reading well before I actually was.  For all of my school life, I was reading above my grade level.  When I was in fifth grade, I pulled “Hunchback of Notre Dame” off the school library shelf and the librarian told me it was “too old for me”.  Like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

I’m also a serial reader; there is a book on CD in the car, audiobook on my laptop and assorted books in the bedroom and the living room.   Right now I’m reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini (dragon book – thanks for the nudge MiG), Elementary She Read by Vicki Delaney (murder mystery), I am Thinking of You My Darling by Vincent McHugh (science fiction recommended by our Steve), Selected Poems by Amy Lowell (she was a fairly well-known poet in her day, writing at the turn of the 20th century) and finally The Peacocks of Baboquivari by Erma Fisk (memoir of a woman who lived alone for five months banding birds for The Nature Conservancy – I have NO clue where I got the idea about this one). 

But why am I verklempt, you ask?  Because I did not raise a reader.  Saying this out loud is a little like committing hari-kari.  I read to her constantly when she was young, she had a good library of books, she learned to read easily but to no avail; she has just never wanted to read.  Right after Christmas I was amazed to see her toting a book around the house. Some kind of inspirational/self-help/current events thing.  I teared up a little.  Then three weeks ago she came to me and asked if she could use my Amazon account to buy.. wait for it… books!  Now what you need to know is that asking to use my account is YA’s code for “will you buy it for me”.  “OF COURSE YOU CAN USE MY ACCOUNT” I yelled as I hugged her.  When the books showed up on Friday I was so excited — as I was taking the photo, you could have heard her eyes roll from a block away.  She did tell me that I could read the books as well if I wanted to.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had already read two of them.

Have you infected anybody with the reading bug?  What are you reading right now?

2022, Family, home, Kids, Mysteries, sports, Uncategorized

Olympic Multi-Tasking

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YA cares way more about her hair, her make-up and her clothing than I care about mine.  I think I’ve said here before that I don’t even own make-up and I only take the blow dryer to my hair about once a year.  And these days, wearing a pair of jeans instead of sweatpants is really dressing up.  So it didn’t surprise me when she wanted a pair of really sharp “hair scissors” for her birthday recently.  I assumed it would figure greatly into her quest to rid her world of split ends.

On Saturday we were watching the Olympics (the new mixed speed skate relay is fascinating) when she turned the scissors on me.  She’d been hinting (rather aggressively) the last few weeks that my hair is getting too long and scraggly.  Although I was a little worried she would chop off more than I wanted, which she has done before, when she brought it up again, I relented. 

I should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it.  Then she wanted me to blow dry it – I told her if she wanted my hair dry right away, she would need to do that herself.  After she spent way too long (in my estimation) drying and fluffing my strands, she decided that she needed to bring the straightener into my room as well because my ends were “curling too much”. 

All of this cutting and blowing and straightening took about 45 minutes and I will admit that I’m not the most patient.  For some reason that I don’t understand, the commercials showing on the tv coverage of the Olympics were bothering me — and more than usual since I was already ramped up about the hair fuss.  To combat my annoyance I grabbed a book off my bedstand and muted the tv.

So there we were, watching the Olympics, reading and running a hair salon in my bedroom all at once.  Multi-tasking at it’s best!

Do you have a favorite winter sport?

2022, home, Mysteries, Technology, Uncategorized, work

Lost & Found

82 Comments

I am one of those folks who keeps all my passwords written down.  I know lots of people use online password software these days, but it seems to me that if you need a separate password on almost every internet site that you visit in order to protect your data, that having all your passwords on the internet isn’t the smartest thing.  Considering how good hackers are at what they do, why should I give them a helping hand?

Starting at least 10 years ago, I realized that my method of post-it notes wasn’t going to cut it any longer and I made a spreadsheet that I saved onto a thumbdrive after I printed it out.  And since I often needed passwords at home as well, I printed two copies.. always on really bright paper (I kept my office copy in the middle of a binder, so the bright color helped me find it).  Any changes got penciled in and then every year or so, I would update the file and print new copies.

About five years ago I was cleaning up in my room and ended up once again picking up my password printout off the floor.  In fact, it was two versions… I don’t remember why.  As I picked them up I thought to myself “I should put these someplace safer where I’ll remember where they are”.  You know where this is going.  The next time I needed those sheets, I couldn’t remember where I had put them.  I spent A LOT of time looking for them, but clearly wherever I had put them, they were definitely safe.

Fast forward five years.  I’m doing a massive cataloging project in my studio and a couple of days ago, I emptied out the drawer in which I keep my stencils.  Now I open this drawer a lot to get to various stencils but I haven’t actually dug down to the bottom of the drawer for quite some time.  As I was sorting through everything, I found the password sheets.  What possessed me to put them in the stencil drawer?  I have never ever put anything else in there for safekeeping.

This experience has made me realize a couple of things.  #1 – I need to use my stencils more often.  #2 – my password situation is still out of hand.  #3 — every time I say to myself “I’ll put this someplace I’ll remember it”, I should just slap myself.

Have you ever permanently misplaces something?