Category Archives: Mysteries

100 Words, 2025, Fantasy, home, Mysteries, Technology

Random Robot?

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Imagine my surprise as I was heading out to run some errands and discovered the little robot vacuum at the back porch door.

As I carried it back into the house and hit the “dock” button so it would return home, I felt a little bad.  Was I keeping it from its freedom?  Had it been trying to escape from the onerous duty of trying to keep the fur and dust at bay in our house?  Did it hear the clarion call of others of its kind?  Was it a quashed robot uprising? 

What do you think?  Should I have given it its freedom?

2025, Food, Mysteries, Technology, Weather

Donut Joy

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I had a fun surprise yesterday morning.  As I stood in my kitchen, thinking about breakfast, I got a text from one of my donut haunts, telling me that I had a reward coming – a free donut or a free coffee.  So much more exciting than eggs and toast.  Since I was going out for a couple of errands anyway, I decided to go the donut route for breakfast.

In order access this reward, I had to use my phone but since I didn’t have a younger person with me, I sat in my car until I got onto the right screen, or so I thought.  The young man waiting on me was very patient when holding the phone to the “register” didn’t seem to work.  He said he’s do it the “long way” and put my phone number in.  He then said I had a $5 off, free donut or 5% discount.  Which did I want?  And then he said “or all three?”  You all know what I said.  He started punching in stuff; on my side, the screen was showing 3₵.  I kept waiting for it to get to a higher number and it never did.  When he confirmed the 3₵, I told him I’d have to go to the car to get a quarter since I didn’t have any cash on me.  He smiled and said “let’s take it out of the penny jar” which was on the counter.

So I had my donuts and diet pop for free.  And it was a gorgeous morning to boot.  What could be better?

Any unexpected joys over the weekend?

2025, Gatherings, Music, Mysteries, Uncategorized

A Bell Curve

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Cantus refers to itself as a low-voice vocal ensemble.  Sounds a little sterile; it is anything but.  They do a wide variety of mostly a cappella offerings: a lot of internation, classical, commissioned pieces.  Yesterday it was an entire program of Frank Sinatra covers – amazing. 

My BFF and I have been attending Cantus concerts for 30 years; we do six to seven concerts a years, depending on the season’s program.   We attended their concerts all over the place – St. Thomas, a church in Excelsior, the McPhail Center, the Ordway.  Yesterdays was at Westminster Presbyterian downtown.  Over the years we’ve been to the Westminster dozens of times; it’s a great space with wonderful acoustics. 

Two thirds of the way through the program, Chris Foss, a bass, stepped up and began a beautifully rendition of I’ll Be Around by Alec Wilder. 

About a minute into his performance, which had a piano accompaniment, the bells of Westminster began to rang.  It was just loud enough that you could certainly here it but not loud enough to completely drown Chris out.  The bells ended very shortly before the song ended.  In all the times I’ve been in Westminster for concerts, this has never happened before.  Not sure why the bells were ringing at noon on a Thursday.  I’m guessing that many performers would have stopped and waited for the bells to stop, but Chris kept his composure and kept going.  He got wild applause after his number; I guess because it was a great song but also as acknowledgement of a rotten situation. 

I didn’t see Chris in the lobby after the show but I hope that anyone speaking to him praised the other song he did during the concert – not just for his calmness during the bells.

Do you live near a church that still rings their bells? Would you have stopped singing?

2025, Automotive, Government, Mysteries

Bureacracy!

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Well, things didn’t out like I expected.  I was completely figuring that today’s post would be a full-on rant about bureaucracy.  Didn’t turn out that way.

I got the dreaded yellow card in the mail about a month ago reminding me that my Class D driver’s license needed to be renewed.  It also went on, at length, about the Real I.D. 

Pretty sure I chronicled the last time I had to renew; it was during Covid and I ended up arriving at the AAA location at 6 a.m. for their 8 a.m. opening since I had waited too late to get a coveted actual appointment (who knew you needed an appointment).  Being one of the first 25 in line meant you could get service that day.  I had heard several stories about the trouble in getting the Real I.D. so I had a file folder, papers, copies of papers.  Turned out to be fine.

That’s why I was a bit surprised to see all the verbiage dedicated to Real I.D.  You’d think in this day and age, it would be easy enough to sort a mailing list by whether or not somebody has already jumped through those hoops. 

Checking on line I found that you can’t to appointments any longer, which seemed weird so I picked up the phone and called.  (Now I do have to say, even if I were ranting, that one of the reasons I like the AAA is because they do answer the phones.)  The gal on the phone confirmed that they don’t do appointment anymore but that weekdays are relatively slow.  She also confirmed that I had to re-present all my Real I.D. paperwork again.  Sigh.

I gathered the same stuff as four years ago and headed out yesterday morning.  I was expecting this process to take at least an hour and I was fully prepared to whine about the insanity of having to basically re-apply for Real I.D. when I was clearly Real already.  Full transparency – I was crabby.

Well, I got there at 9:05.  I was called 5 minutes later.  The little gal behind the counter laughed when I told her that I had been instructed to bring all my Real I.D. stuff; she said “not needed” and didn’t even look at it.  I didn’t have to fill anything out except to sign and date the application that she printed off.  Picture and eye exam was fast although I’m sure in the history of bad DMV photos, I’m now in the top ten.  Final paper and current license snipped and I was out the door at 9:19. 

So what do I complain about now?

2025, Family, Health, Kids, Medicine, Mysteries, News, Stories

A Little Hard to Swallow

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In weird news this week, it’s been reported in the South China Morning Post that a 64-year old man has undergone surgery to remove a toothbrush from his stomach.  The kicker is that he swallowed the toothbrush when he was 12.  Apparently he was afraid to tell his parents and figured that it would just dissolve.  Turns out even stomach acid is no match for hard plastic – his stomach started to bother him last year.

It took the surgery team 80 minutes to remove the 7-inch toothbrush – it was stuck in “a crook of the intestine” where it had been living happily for decades.  Yikes.

I’m not sure how you can swallow a toothbrush but as Hamlet said “more things in heaven and earth”.  Maybe he is one of those folks who brushes their tongue with their toothbrush and got a little carried away?  Maybe the dog surprised him in the bathroom while he was brushing?  Maybe he was practicing to become a sword swallower?

What kind of toothbrush do you use?  Toothpaste?  Floss?

2025, books, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

Turn the Lights On!

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Dreams mean different things to different people.  For me, my dreams (the ones that I remember) tend to be my subconscious sorting through all my conscious flotsam and jetsam.  Over the years I’ve come to recognize that intense dark stuff – television shows, movies, books — can give me some whoopers to sort out.

This week there has been a perfect storm of dark stuff.  I’m reading Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee.  The author calls it a “biography of cancer”.  It is EXCELLENT, however it is a bit gruesome in places and, of course, not very uplifting.  I’m also watching a series on Netflix named Dark Winds, loosely based (very loosely) on the work of Tony Hillerman. It’s much darker than the Leaphorn/Chee Skinwalkers tv show of twenty years ago.  Yesterday I fast forwarded through a bunch of the third episode because it was giving me the creeps.

As usual (I think I’ve talked about this before), I’ve been careful to only watch a couple of episodes a day and not after 7 p.m.  But the combination of the book, the tv show and my underlying low level of anxiety about our current political hellhole was a doozy.  I don’t even remember my dreams last night but I remember waking up three times pretty tense and anxious. 

Guess I might have to cut back to one Dark Winds episode a day and come up with some kind of soothing ritual before I go to bed. 

Any suggestions?  Thoughts?

2025, gardening, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Surprise!

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Not long after we moved to our current house 37 years ago, Husband and I planted some roses. At that time, hybrid tea roses were advertised as only hardy as far north as Zone 4. We knew we were pushing it a little given how close we were to Zone 3, but we put in about four hybrid tea roses on the south side of the house.

We did all the things that you are supposed to do regarding tea roses, putting cones on them in the fall to protect them from the cold, pruning appropriately, etc. They flourished. One in particular was our favorite, named Taboo.

We loved its intense color. About 20 years ago we even stopped putting cones on in the fall, and yet those roses on the south side of the house returned year after year. Within the last 5 years, though, most of them seemed to age out and die, but Taboo kept going until last summer, when all there were in its spot were dead branches.

Imagine my delight this weekend when I encountered some new rose shoots just a few inches away from the dead Taboo stems while I was weeding the south flowerbed. They look healthy. I hope we can have one last Taboo blossom before we move. Hybrid tea roses are now advertised as only hardy through Zone 5, and I don’t know how we did it, but what a lovely surprise!

Any pleasant surprises for you this last month, gardening or otherwise? What have you succeeded doing even when the odds were againt you?

2025, Business, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Too Many Boxes

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My guess is that I’m more aware of post offices and postal boxes than the average person.  As you know, cards are my thing and I figure I send out over 400 cards a year: I spend a lot of time stopping by post offices during my regular errands.

About a month ago, I noticed that one of the two postal boxes outside my Nicollet post office was gone.  I didn’t give it much thought.  Then two weeks ago, I swung by the Edina post office.  For years they’ve had a “go around” that had four postal boxes – now there is just one.  I still didn’t think too much about it.  Then as I was going to the drive-through at the Richfield branch last week, there was a massive truck in the parking lot and it looked like one of the six boxes was being hoisted onto the truck by two big burly guys.  Shy isn’t a word that applies to me so I walked over to ask them what they were doing.  They were really nice and told me that they were removing postal boxes as part of the “reduce redundancy” strategy that the USPS is going through.  They said they were taking five of the six boxes; luckily it’s the drive-by box that remains.  Phew!

I couldn’t stop thinking about it though and had to do some math (and a bit of research).  I’m being pretty conservative with these numbers, also rounding down.  31,000 post offices in the U.S.  Wild speculation that the average number of boxes per post office is two.  Then I’m figuring 3 minutes per box to unlock it, get the mail out and re-lock it.  Times 2 boxes per post office, times 4 for how many times a day they clean out the box.  Times 6 days a week brings us to 4,464,000 minutes or 74,400 hours per week, 3,868,800 hours per year. The average postal workers wage is $25,000  which means  we’re talking $96,720,000 to keep these postal boxes cleaned out.  So by removing all the extras, USPS is saving $48,360,000 – $1,560 per box.   Sounds like impressive savings except for one thing.  It was a massive truck taking away the boxes.  And if I had to guess, those two big burley guys make more money than the average postal worker.  I can’t imagine how much money is really being saved in the end, but my guess is that it’s significantly less than $48 million.  I suppose if you add up future years it will eventually be worthwhile.   Here’s the actual math if you want to scrutinize my work:

post offices 31,000
average # of boxes 2
total boxes 62,000
# of minutes per box 3
total minutes 186,000
4 times a day 744,000
6 days a week 4,464,000
hours per week 74,400
hours per year 3,868,800
average wage $                             25.00
total wages 2 boxes $            96,720,000.00
wages for one box $            48,360,000.00
total wages savings $            48,360,000.00
per box savings  $                       1,560.00

Any other “redundancies” you’d like to address?

 

2025, Family, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Is YA really ET?

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YA works in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.  Occasionally she also goes into the office on a Monday or a Friday.  When she has a big project, she likes the quiet of the office as well as the big screen on her desk. 

There is a fairly complicated (from my perspective) process for her to get ready for work.  During her junior high and high school years she started wearing make-up and taught herself how to apply it.  As part of her beauty routine, she has a massive number of products, from masks to foundations to mascara to eyelash curlers to lip glosses.  Massive.  She can sit at her make-up table for upwards of 30 minutes some mornings.  It’s exhausting just to watch.

She learned none of this from me.  Not one smidge.  I think I’ve told the story of when I quit wearing make-up; it was well before she was born.  Even when I DID put on make-up it wasn’t anything as robust as YA’s routine.

Every now and then, when she is in a rush (usually when we’re going some place on the weekend or if she’s gotten up really late), she can cut the time down but very very rarely goes without.  On work mornings, I don’t usually pay that much attention.  I have my morning stuff to do (feed animals, make bed, eat breakfast, gym, errands, etc.)

Last week on Friday, she came rushing down and out the door before I even had a chance to look up.  After 15 minutes, our ring doorbell dinged my phone, which was in my pocket and as I was opening the app, I heard the front door open and YA’s footsteps running up the stairs.  She didn’t come down for almost 10 minutes, way too long for a forgotten key card or computer mouse.  When she was headed for the front door I asked what she had forgotten and she replied “I forgot to put on make-up.”

I’m still thinking about this.  First off, how do you forget something that is so much a part of your every single day routine.  And mostly, why get 10 minutes from the house (about half way to the office) and turn back to put on make-up when it’s Friday and there’s next to no one in the office?  Her answer when I asked her later was “just in case”.  When I asked “just in case what?” all I got was a shoulder shrug.

So, yet one more instance of my certainty that I live with an alien from another world!

Do you have anything that is an every-single-day-no-matter-what routines?

2025, books, Media, Mysteries, Technology

Browsing

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When I read Scientific American, it’s not usually a deep dive; I admit that a lot of the detail is over my head.  I would also say that most of the ideas, while interesting, don’t usually seem too personal to my life.

Until now.  Turned the page and found “Wiki-Curious” which described research about how people reign in (or don’t) their curiosity when they are online.  Apparently there are three different types of rabbit hole styles: busybody, hunter and dancer.

A busybody is someone who is all over the board, often going from topic to topic – not always topics that are closely related.  They found that in countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, more folks browse like busybodies.

A hunter is a person has a more intense focus, circling around a fairly small number of related articles.   Hunters are more numerous where there is less higher education and lower gender equality. 

A dancer “links together highly disparate topics to try to synthesize new ideas”.   Don’t ask me to explain this.  This is the smallest group type.

I am normally a busybody until I hit on a topic that sends me down a rabbit hole, then I can be a lot more focused.  The one thing that is different for me is that once I go down a rabbit hole, it doesn’t take very long before my browsing leads me to books and then the browsing is over.

I’m currently on two book treks that started online.  Watching a show online by Lucy Worsley (a British historian) about the British love of murder mysteries has led me to several books about early female detective in literature.  Susan Hopeley, Loveday Brooke, Lady Molly, Miss Gladden – some of the earliest women detectives in print.  In addition of these, I have a couple more books coming from the library.  Fascinating.

The second rabbit hole started when I was reading an interview by Michael Perry about why he wrote “Forty Acres Deep”.  This was right before the Rivers/Ridges Book Festival and that was when I decided that I wanted to read all of Michael Perry’s stuff, in order.  I’ve read four so far and number five is on its way via InterLibrary Loan.

Who knows where the next rabbit hole with lead but I’m sure it will lead to books.

Are you a busybody, a hunter or a dancer?   Any interesting browsing lately?