I’m finally warmed up. This time yesterday morning I was sitting in my stadium chair outside the Aldis in River Falls. That’s right, the annual advent calendar day at Aldis.
Even arriving at 6 a.m. (store opens at 9), there were already two gals there – they have been the first in line for three years straight now. So I set up my chair in the #3 spot and since it was 22°, I retreated to my car and the heater. I was in good company – for awhile it was only carts holding spaces.
I got stiff and tired of sitting in the car so I settled into my chair with my blanket and big mittens at 7:45 a.m. At that point, the other four women and the man in the #6 position came out as well. I brought cookies this year and shared them around.
Aldis corporate made changes this year (because of course since it wasn’t broke, they tried to fix it). No tickets to guarantee an alcohol advent calendar and no limit on quantities per customer. The manager did come out at 8:30 and explain the changes and he repeatedly suggested that everybody have a little consideration for those further back in the line. You know that didn’t happen; the picture above was taken at 9:03. The two women in front of me were particularly piggy.
But I got the one I wanted as well as the cheese advent calendar so I’m happy. Can’t wait to get started on December 1!
You wouldn’t think that making a batch of cupcakes would be a full-morning event, would you?
First, I had to decide what cupcakes to make. I have a couple of cookbooks that embellish box cake mixes so I started there. First there was a good looking lemon filled cupcake but this would require going to the store for lemon curd. (In addition to the contractor being here, I’ve been trying to make inroads into what I think is just too much foodstuff in the house.) Then I moved on to a cupcake made with juice concentrate – oops, no concentrate except apple. Coming off the autumn, I’m a little appled-out. Maybe a cinnamon toast cupcake – shoot, no pudding mix. By this time I was thinking I should just use the box mix and be done with it.
Then I saw the white chocolate cupcake. I knew I probably had the 1 cup of white chocolate chips (or the equivalent) and I knew I could approximate whole milk with the skim milk and the heavy cream I had in the fridge. Of course, when I was pulling out the chocolate chips, I found an unopened jar of lemon curd. Oh well, next time.
So I finally had cupcakes in the oven by 10:30 (a full hour and a half after starting this project). Luckily I did have cream cheese for the frosting so at least I didn’t have to spend time looking for alternatives. The cupcakes turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!
When was the last time it took you too long to make a decision?
When I was growing up my family and I used to drive around at the holidays to look at homes all decorated up with festive lights. But that was the only time of year that folks decorated outside. At Halloween, most folks put out jack-o-lanterns but usually just on Halloween or a couple of days beforehand. It just wasn’t a thing that people did.
Well, it’s a thing now!
YA and I spent a little time driving around on Saturday, looking at the fall colors and some of the fascinating displays in yards around South Minneapolis. Lots of ghosts hanging from trees, lots of skeletons lounging around on porches or adirondack chairs and, of course, pumpkins galore. We saw one house with their long windowbox filled with little bitty pumpkins and squash of all colors. We also saw a huge blow up arch that looked like a monster with outstretched arms that you had to walk through to get to the front door. Wondering if that will too scary for small kids on Halloween night.
There were two stand-outs of the afternoon. First was the class of skeletons, apparently waiting to have their school photo taken. Very creative and very funny. Also a LOT of work I bet. I kinda wish I lived across the street from this house so I could have watched as this scenario was set up.
The second photo YA snapped was such a mish-mash of stuff that we couldn’t resist. Little ghost lights along the sidewalk, a funny looking ghostbusters car (looks a bit like a VW Beetle), a dog with a pink hat, a minion, pumpkins, and over-sized skeleton and (my favorite) a dragon! We did see two other yards with this blow up dragon but this one won the prize for being part of such an eclectic collection.
I’ve never been big on decorations outside, although I will admit to a cornstalk along with my pumpkins this year, but I do enjoy looking at others’ displays. And I did look up the inflatable dragon online – not horribly expensive, but a bit much for someone who isn’t prone to overdoing décor outside.
Any Halloween/fall decorations (outside or inside) at your place?
We have a new church Worship and Music director, who also directs the choir. She is our son’s age, and we have known her since we first saw her at her infant baptism 35 years ago. She was an elementary music teacher and has a lovely mezzo voice. She has purchased lots of new, challenging music for us. We had got pretty entrenched with the same pieces with the former director.
Our church choir is pretty small with about ten regular singers. We are often short on sopranos, which we were yesterday on Reformation Sunday. This is a big day for Lutherans, and there was a display of Luther’s 95 Theses in the front of the church. Our choir director planned big, and we sang three very challenging choral pieces, and recruited the high school band director to play timpani, a college trombone student, a high school trumpet player, and three sopranos who sing in the Badlands Opera organization. Ironically, four of our visiting musicians were Roman Catholics, but they sat cheerfully through two services and sang “A Mighty Fortress” with gusto. They even took communion!
Our bell choir director is also the organist. She has been taking the choir director’s lead and giving us very challenging music, too. It is fun, but sort of daunting to try new things and stretch ourselves in ways we haven’t had to before. The congregation is very happy with our efforts. I believe it was Gustav Holst who said in reference to small church choirs attempting difficult musical pieces that “anything worth doing is worth doing badly”, which I take as encouragement to keep performing these challenging works even if we don’t do them perfectly.
What are some of the positive challenges you have had lately? Have you been part of an organization where positive “shake ups” have happened? What is the most challenging musical work you ever performed?
This week has all been about the theater. Well, Covid and Theatre, I guess. Wait, Covid was last week. It’s all a blur. I’m over the symptoms, but still testing positive. Good thing I work alone most of the time. And by now I shouldn’t be contagious anymore.
It’s rained a lot lately. And now it’s getting cold. We’ve had more than six inches of rain since the end of September. Oh well.
We open a show Saturday, and then next week will be two shows a day for all five days. Kids are bused in from the local area elementary schools. This kid show has always been a big hit for us, and of course we haven’t been able to do one since 2019. We were afraid we had lost a lot of the contacts at the schools and weren’t really sure what kind of reception we’d get this year. We feel really lucky to have an audience for all 10 shows, including three that are sold out. The play is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth night’ called “Lions in Illyria” by Robert Kauzlaric. Very cartoony and big and goofy and the kids should enjoy it. And short at 65 minutes. The three days I missed with Covid would have been helpful about now. I’m sure the paint will be dry by Saturday afternoon. Things will be ‘good enough’. I did take a few shortcuts, I called in some favors. The show must go on. As long as we can keep cast healthy.
I have a can full of stir sticks at the college. I’m pretty sure some of them were here when I started the job 17 years ago. I do know that I threw out a bunch a few years ago and for this show I decided to put all the ones that I’ve used a different container, because I feel like the sticks at the back of the first can were being neglected. Kelly was in to help paint one day and her goal was to use up all the stir sticks. She made a good dent in it. The can on the left is the unused sticks for the show, and the can on the right are the ones that I have used.
I learned how to paint marble for the show. The white and pink one I painted using a ripped T-shirt. My friend Paul came in and painted the green one. He makes it look so easy. And he enjoyed having an easy project like this.
I’ve talked with Crop Insurance about my soybeans. We started some preliminary claims just so the paperwork is out there. I’ve got until December 10 to get them harvested. After that we just write it off and let them go to insurance. This week of 20° temps at night will certainly freeze everything, but honestly, I’m not sure if the beans will ever dry down enough to harvest. We would need a good week of clear sunny, warmish temperatures and that’s really pushing it this time of the year. But with these weather patterns, who knows. I get home about 10:00 PM these nights (after rehearsal) and I was out picking up hoses and taking the outside faucet off the wellhouse. I need to pick up the pressure washer and hand sprayer yet.
Luna has moved right in and made herself at home. Our bed is her favorite place to be now. She loves to play catch and Tug-O-War. She’s shredded a few toys. And we’ve left her home alone and she’s just fine. Doesn’t like it, but at least she’s not chewing up the furniture.
Yesterday was a snow day for me as my agency was closed. Husband had a morning Zoom meeting for his Bismarck agency, which he did on his computer at the kitchen table. It didn’t last long, and we made a somewhat treacherous trip to the grocery store before the snow got any deeper. The city plows hadn’t been out and it was very slippery.
I made banana bread when we got back from the store, which filled the house with a wonderful aroma. Smells can be so evocative. The smell of Charteuse brings me back 45 years to memories of warm summer evenings in Moorhead having a drink after dinner with friends. I wouldn’t touch the stuff now with a ten foot pole, but the memories are good ones.
Kyrill has a very powerful sense of smell, and he can tell whenever we have been to the pet store and picked up treats for him without even taking them out of the bag. He mobs us when we walk in the door and tries to get to the bags. He can smell wrapped hard candy in my pants pockets, and tries to put his nose down my pocket to extract them. He may not see the bunnies as he walks past them, but he can smell where their holes are and tries to dig them out. I think it would be very distracting to have such a keen sense of smell.
What smells and tastes are evocative for you? What are your favorite smells to have wafting through your home?
The main north-south highway route through my town sports a deep underpass beneath the east-west rail tracks that pass through the middle of town. It is prone to flooding, and for many years it was the only way to get from the north side of town to the south side of town when a train was passing.
The underpass has large cement walls. About 10 years ago a civic minded friend, with the blessing of the City and State authorities, commissioned a California mural artist to paint the sides the the underpass. He painted regional images, like Ukrainian dancers, rodeo cowboys, wheat fields, and Badlands on the cement walls. It was really lovely.
Over the years, moisture has leached through the paint and it has become unstable. The paint was peeling off with no way to restore the images. There was surprisingly very little vandalism, I should add. A couple of weeks ago, the city closed the underpass and painted over the murals with white paint. It was sad, but there wasn’t anything else to do. I wonder how much public art we have lost over the centuries due to problems like this.
What are your favorite public art works? What would you want to paint on a mural?
Besides NDSU in Fargo and UND in Grand Forks, there are five other smaller, State-funded four year colleges in ND. That is in addition to the State-funded technical college in Wahpeton and two smaller State-funded two year colleges in Bottineau and Williston. That is a lot of State colleges for a place as sparsely populated as ND.
The five smaller four year colleges are enshrined in the ND State Constitution. That means they must continue to exist unless the Constitution is amended. The colleges are expected to be financially self supporting with tuition and not with tax dollars. What is a college to do, though, if, as national trends tell us, there will be fewer and fewer students attending college due to declining birth rates?
The college in our town is facing this very issue, and has made the very unpopular and draconian decision to eliminate the Music and Theatre Departments. They even are firing the guy who is the main tech person who is the only one who knows how the electronics in the auditorium work. It is traditionally a Teacher’s College and has strong Nursing, Agriculture, and Business Departments. I am sure they didn’t even consider eliminating the sports teams. They have told the Music and Theatre majors they need to find somewhere else to go next year.
What is a college without a band? It is hard enough to find elementary and secondary music teachers out here, and now it will be doubly difficult. State law requires that State property like the band instruments, band and choir music, and pianos, can’t be sold and must be given away. Our church is going to try to snag the timpani and big percussion instruments. I might try for a bass clarinet, as that is my instrument. It is all very sad.
If you went to college or technical school, what were your most memorable experiences? What makes a college a good place?
I’m not a huge fan of the self-checkout. Mostly because I’m not good or fast at it – nor are a lot of folks that I see – meaning an employee still has to come deal with me. In trying to be kind to corporate America (yeah, I know, I know), I like to pretend that the employee hours saved at the check-out areas get shifted around to other parts of the store.
Friday morning, with YA working from home, I was freed up from staying home with the contractor so ran a whole bunch of errands; one of these errands was at Michaels. They installed a couple of self-checkout units in my local Michaels – about 8 months ago. Usually if there is a cashier, I let them do the work. On Friday when I came around the corner, there weren’t any cashiers to be seen and I only had about six items so I went with self-checkout. Of course, since I’ve only done this a couple of times at Michaels, I was VERY slow, checking the sale price on every item and then logging in so I could see if I had any coupons.
While I was poking along, a family of three followed into the check-out area, an older woman and what was probably her daughter and son-in-law. She did not know how to use the self-checkout and she was NOT in the mood to let the younger generation to show her up. So now both of the self units were occupied and the line behind us was piling up. The daughter was getting impatient and called in a very loud voice for casher assistance. As I was finally finishing my session, the daughter called again, even more loudly. As I exited the store, I counted the line waiting to checkout – nine folks – and still not a cashier in sight.
I know that many retail establishments would prefer that all of us just get with the twentieth century and embrace self-checkout but based on what I experienced and witnessed at Michaels, it won’t be happening any time soon!
What are some of the oldest chain stores in America?
We have purple grapes hanging all over the place on our deck. They were particularly plenteous this year because of our snow last winter and the summer rains. You can see some of them in the header photo. The late fall migrants as well as the birds who stay around all winter have been gathering in droves to eat them. I used to make grape jelly but we don’t eat that much jelly, and a little grape jelly goes a long way, so we leave them for the birds. The grapes will dry and be a nice food source for them and the squirrels all winter. Squirrels have also made off with all the nuts on our hazel shrubs. I hope they ate them and didn’t just bury them in random places like they usually do.
Birds like to congregate in our yard with all the shrubs and protection from the wind as well as the feeders. We use black oil sunflower seeds in the feeders. I don’t care if the squirrels eat them, since they get hungry, too. I like our yard being a favorite hangout. Husband and I sat on the deck this afternoon in the calm, sunny weather listening to all the bird song after finishing our winter preparations for the yard. It was lovely.
Where were your favorite hangouts as a kid and as a teenager?
Trail Baboon 