It’s always fun to go into a new restaurant and see what the bathrooms are like. Some are very nice, some are small and rather “quaint” and some barely qualify as up to code.
I was in a hotel that had black mold on the shower tile and that one still qualifies as the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at.
There’s a business I get to a few times per year and the mens bathroom there has had a broken fluorescent light fixture leaning in the corner for several years and one urinal has had a bag over it just as long. And I have no idea what the womens bathroom is like. Not even sure where it is to be honest; it’s not right next to the mens anyway. I keep thinking there must be a nicer bathroom for employees someplace. Or maybe that’s just a ploy by the owner to be sure no one spends too much time in there.
I had to take pictures. Here are the signs on the four stalls:
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And the fun didn’t stop there:
Oh my….
Our townhall still has an outhouse. It’s insured for $500.00. Mens and womens side. Two hole-er on each! But no lights… plan accordingly.
Every Spring, Husband and I look around at our flower beds and say “We don’t need to buy any perennials this year. Our beds are just fine.” Every year, we manage to find reasons to buy more perennials. This year we outdid ourselves and bought 31. We got 7 Bleeding Hearts, 6 Maidenhair Ferns, 6 Veronica Speedwell, 5 Lupines, 2 Helenium, 1 Missouri Primrose, 1 Rosemary, 1 Baptesia, 1 White Coneflower, and 1 Little Lamb Hydrangea.
The logic that went into the Speedwell purchase was pretty lame. We were at Menards looking for seeds to start our late season spinach, beets, lettuce, carrots, and parsley crops, and Husband found these Speedwells in need of transplant. He said “We just saved a lot of money buying things on sale at Herbergers, and these really need a home”, as though we were talking about kittens or something. Well, of course I said “let’s get them”. We egg each other on in greenhouses and plant stores like alcoholics in a liquor warehouse. Husband says “These will help keep the weeds down. You know how much you hate weeds”. I say “We are just increasing the value of our home as well as its curb appeal when we want to sell”. I think this is all faulty logic, and gives us excuses to feed our plant habits.
How do you talk yourself into things? When do you use faulty logic?
With humble gratitude for Meredith Wilson’s en-chant-ing opening to The Music Man.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Plastic for the orders.
Plastic for the downloads.
PROGRAMMER 2:
Visa for online.
Visa on the phone.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Credit for the software.
Credit for the hardware.
PROGRAMMER 2:
Credit for the needs, and the wants, and the bibelots.
PROGRAMMER 3:
Amazon for the hogs feet, cakes and longjohns.
Amazon for the crackers, and the pickles, and the computer paper.
PROGRAMMER 4:
Look, what do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
PROGRAMMER 5:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
PROGRAMMER 2:
You can script, you can program, you can script,
You can chat. You can twitter, twitter, twitter, you can chat.
You can chat. You can chat, chat, chat, chat, twitter, twitter, twitter.
You can twitter all you wanna, but it’s different than it was.
ANALYST:
No it ain’t, no it ain’t, but you gotta know the database!
PROGRAMMER 3:
Well, it’s Jeff Bezos made the trouble,
Made the people wanna buy, wanna get, wanna get, wanna get it in a box.
7,8,9,10,12,14, 22, 23 orders to the front porch.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Yes, sir, yes, sir!
PROGRAMMER 3:
Who’s gonna patronize a big box store anymore?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
NEWSPAPER READER 1:
Where do you get it?
ANALYST:
It’s not Amazon alone.
Take a gander at big box stores,
At the postmodern store,
At the out-of-date store
At the passe, postmodern,
Departmentalized big box store.
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
CONSULTANT:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
CONSULTANT:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 1:
You can chat, you can twitter.
You can chat, you can twitter.
You can twitter, twitter, twitter
You can chat, chat, chat.
You can twitter all you wanna,
But it’s different than it was.
ANALYST:
No, it ain’t, but you gotta know the database.
PROGRAMMER 3:
Why, it’s I-need-it-easy thinking
Made the trouble
Need it easy, need it easy.
Put the order in a box, in a box,
What I-need-easy
In a box with a smile
Made the big box store obsolete.
ANALYST:
Obsolete, obsolete, obsolete
SALESMAN 4:
Malls out the window.
The smiling box
Takes the job of the sales clerk.
Closing all the stores.
ANALYST:
Who’s gonna patronize the big box store any more?
PROGRAMMER 3:
Gone, Gone
PROGRAMMER 1:
Gone with the mall and the outlet and the discount store.
Gone with the chain and the retail store with clothes on a rack.
ALL
Who’s gonna patronize a bog box store any more.
Big box store.
What are the long-term implications for America and the world, assuming I dare worry about the world?
First week of August, our quiet little lives will be interrupted by five visitors – Husband’s son and his fiancé, and their (combined) three girls, ages 15, 12, and 9. Though I’m pretty relaxed when having just one or two guests, I tend to get somewhat anxious with lots of company, and am trying to think ahead – prepare now so it’s a bit more manageable while they’re here. (You can also read this as: I like to be in control of things.) Since our place is just 900 sq. feet, and we would be practically on top of each other if we all tried to stay here, we’ve arranged with a friend two blocks away to sleep in her guest room – let them have the house – on the nights they are with us. (They will spend some time with other family.)
Average temps for this time of year are around 83˚ F., and we do have A/C if needed. We have enough beds, if we include futon, and bedding. I’ve deep cleaned recently, so can do a surface cleaning before A-day (A = arrival). We can stock the fridge and pantry. We have been exploring places in the area that this family might like to visit.
I’m sure there are things I could prepare ahead of time. Several of you baboons have had grandchildren – or other family members or friends – visit you, and probably have some coping mechanisms for when you have guests for more than an afternoon.
Although I love cooking, I also love any gadget that makes it easier or quicker. So when I saw a strawberry huller online last week, I was intrigued. Between the jam and the bags of berries that I freeze every summer, I spend a lot of time over the sink hulling strawberries with a little sharp knife. I searched around, discovered that the huller was carried at Bed Bath & Beyond and headed over there on my way down to Northfield to get strawberries. I faced the wall of kitchen gadgets and finally found it, a steal at $7.99 if it made the hulling process easier! Here’s a quick look at how it works:
And it does work, however, not better than my little sharp knife. After all these years I’m pretty fast, transferring the hulled berry to a bowl while picking up the next strawberry with the hand holding the knife. With the huller, I ended up having to add an extra step of pushing the button to “dump” the stem and sometimes having to pull twisted stem out of the berry. After the first batch of jam, I went back to the knife. It does make a very nice uniform hole if you want to fill the strawberries with something but for a big project, it’s not helpful. Oh well.
This means that my cherry tomato slicer is still my favorite summertime gadget. I usually have tons of cherry tomatoes every year and the little slicer quickly and easily slices the little tomatoes into four bits. Did I mention it’s fast? And easy? At this time of year I use it almost every day.
We had four inches of rain the week leading up to July 4. That probably doesn’t sound like much to most Baboons, but out here it is really something. The rain came perfectly, an inch at a time every other day or so. The weather on July 4 was also perfect. It was a comfortable 75 degrees with a slight wind, just enough to keep the biting insects off. My best friend was visiting from the Cities, and we decided to take a hike in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, just a 40 minute drive.
We have lived here for 30 years, and I have never seen as many wild flowers and berries as I did on our hike. The rain led to perfect conditions for plants to show off their petals. There were the usual wild roses, clematis, tiny bell flowers, flea bane, and sunflowers. We missed the flowering prickly pear cactus by a couple of days. They had all set fruit. It was amazing to see less common flowers, especially ones that have a counterpart in our garden in town.
There were tons of wild Monarda.
Here is our city counterpart.
We also found wild lupine.
Our city lupine is currently spent , with nothing but leaves.
Cone flowers are showy natives.
The City ones are somewhat over the top.
We found lots of buffalo berries and this old fellow all alone, without a herd. He seems to be ancient.
We don’t have buffalo berries in town, but we have red currants.
Some of the wild flowers stay where they are, like the country mouse. Others make the leap to be like the city mouse.
For the most part I’m not a fan of new words. I like the words we have and I always have to remind myself that we only have the words we have because at some point somebody made them up.
But every now and then a word comes along that I can embrace wholeheartedly. One of those words is “staycation” – a perfect way to say you are vacationing at home.
Today begins my first day of a nice, long staycation. Because I’ve been with my company for quite some time, I have a generous number of vacation days and also because of my workload, I don’t get to use too many of them for a chunk of the year. Now that my big program is out the door, I have to get cracking on these vacation days. This means a week plus off now, the rest of the Mondays in the summer off and then the entire of State Fair off.
This week though is strictly for hanging out and working on some of the stuff that hasn’t been getting done the last few months – cleaning, straightening, cleaning, yardwork, cleaning. Did I mention cleaning?
On Day One I’m going to make strawberry jam and make some basil-infused oil. I know that doesn’t sound like cleaning, but I do have a mammoth list and it has cleaning projects for every day as well as some of the more fun stuff.
Twenty-three years ago today, a little bundle with a shaved head was put into my arms.
I was half-way around the world, in a hotel in Hufei, China and there were five other bundles being handed off to five other sets of arms at the same time. We spent 8 days in Hufei while all the last bits of paperwork were filled out, signed, stamped and copied (the copier only took one page at a time and after 45 minutes had to sit for a bit to cool down). Then we headed off to Guangzhou where we had 2 more days of paperwork, but this time U.S. paperwork.
Then the group broke up; Baby and I flew to Hong Kong for an extra day, taking a long taxi drive to the Stanley Market to get a few trinkets, including a Chinese chop with her name carved into it. Then we said goodbye to China and took the long flights to get back to Minnesota.
Most of you know that we celebrate this day every year (usually by going to The Melting Pot). We used to call it “Gotcha Day” since that was when we “got” each other, but when Child was about 10 she announced that she preferred “Family Day”. She said that “gotcha” made her feel like a package being picked up at the post office. So now we have Family Day. Some years we do cards, although never gifts. I already have the best gift.
Do you have a family tradition that needs re-naming?
Many babooners will remember in Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacree from the late 1960s. One detail that always tickled me was that The Police located them after finding one of their names on an envelope at the bottom of the pile of garbage they’ve thrown over a cliff.
Well, laugh all we want: I found this recently in the Police Blotter from the Winona Post (our twice-weekly rag also called “The Shopper”):
At 6:21 p.m. deputies received a report of garbage dumped illegally on McArthur Ravine Road. Deputies located a shipping address in the trash, and made multiple attempts to reach M___ A___ of Plainview, MN, without success. M. A. was mailed a citation for illegal dumping.”
Husband and I have been reading the Police Blotter lately, mainly for comic relief from the grim and alarming news that we encounter elsewhere. Here are some gems (italics are my own reactions):
At 10:07 a.m. an adult male moved furniture from a vehicle and dumped it on his lawn… (More shades of Alice’s Restaurant)
At 3 p.m. an adult male reported that the key to the trunk of his vehicle had been stolen from his keyring inside the vehicle, parked on the 650 block of W. Sarnia St. (Remind me to not leave my keyring IN the car…)
At 8:46 a.m. officers received a report from an adult female that her car had been scratched on the hood and door while parked near County Road 12. (Must have been a slow day.)
At 7:30 p.m. deputies received a report of the theft of a goat from an adult female in Altura. The woman reported that one juvenile presented the goat to another juvenile, and when the two ended a relationship, the first juvenile requested the return of the goat, but the second party would not comply. Deputies recommended that the parties involved resolve the matter civilly. (If this solution works, maybe we can do away with courts, jails, etc.)
And my personal favorite:
At 5:03 p.m. an adult male on the 200 block of E. Garvin Heights Road reported that 40 goats with pink spots were in a field near his home. The reporting party believed the goats had been fired on with a paintball pistol. (I am speechless; for the entire story: )
Anything fun or interesting in your paper’s Police Blotter report?
Pastor Mike married us. And he baptized both kids.
A few years after that he moved back out to the West coast; a place where his soul really belonged.
We’d message on FB occasionally. He was learning to play guitar and I’d ask what he was listening too or what he was learning to play.
Johnny Cash was a common subject for both of us. Johnny’s ‘American’ series of recordings were some of our favorites. Mike would give me a verse from Tennessee Stud or Delia’s Gone and I’d give him the next. It was a neat way to connect with one of my favorite people.
Mike died of a brain tumor this winter.
I’m lighting a production of ‘Ring of Fire’ at the Rochester Civic Theater. It’s a Johnny Cash retrospective. Not much story, just a lot of his music played by 5 different singer/musicians. The other night at rehearsal they practiced Delia’s Gone.
I thought of Mike and how, maybe to no-one but myself, this show was for him.
I left rehearsal and headed for home. Checked some fields along the way. Stopped to check on our neighbor’s house since they are gone on vacation, stopped to close the gates at the end of our driveway and saw a motorcycle coming down the road. And I sort of groan inwardly… dang bikers. Thought I better get the gate shut quick.
As the bike gets closer I see it’s more of a scooter and a couple about my age on it. I say Hello and pull one gate shut. They pull up a little closer and call my name. And when they take the helmets off, it’s John and Mary.
Pastor John who was associate pastor with Pastor Mike.
I’m pretty sure Mike sent them out to see us tonight.
And I thought of this group of Baboons and Serendipity again.
Trail Baboon 