Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Recent college graduate Mason, peering through the Gov Docs stacks at Wesleyan University

We have actually been home for a while, but, for some reason, this time I feel like I've been struggling to catch up with everything. Our house is currently a warren of boxes--all of them somehow containing everything Mason had brought with him, bought, or otherwise accumulated, over the past four years as a student. As I noted while we were still on the road, we shipped most of his stuff back via the United States Postal Service. A fine service, I might add. Still, by far, the cheapest and most efficient way to send things. I hate seeing it in crisis. (And it clearly is. I spend a lot of time at post offices and all of them are chronically understaffed right now--from Middletown, CT to Minnesota.)

On the road, however, I managed to listen to a lot of audio books. I finished up the last of the Singing Hills Cycle novellas. Then, because I had to wait to get to the hotel to download the book I actually wanted next, I ended listening to David Levine's Arabella of Mars, which I wanted to be more queer than it was, but oh well. The book I'd wanted was Martha Well's Exit Strategy, which I had apparently forgotten to read when I was reading through the Murderbot Dairies some time ago (or maybe it wasn't out yet, but somehow I missed it.) Then, to fill in a short gap I listened to  another novella: A Strange Bird by Jeff Vandermeer. Apparently I needed to have read the Borne Series, which I had not. I mean, I would say that it stood on its own, honestly? Though I could tell in the second half that there was a bigger story in the City that I didn't fully grasp.  It was weird in the way of Vandermeer's stories, though. A bit depressing, too. I have since started, but have been slow to get into. Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs. But, as you will see below. I've been a bit scattered and distracted.





Mason (right) and his partner Jas (left) in their robes on the steps of the Chapel at Wesleyan

I am probably feeling so very rushed an unsettled for a number of reasons. Firstly, we are actually headed off to Bearskin Lodge on the Gunflint Trail (for my non-Minnesotan friends: Think Cabin in the Woods. Only with 99.9% fewer demonic sacrifices.) We'll be up there for a week--from Saturday to Saturday--and it is, in essence, Mason's graduation gift to him from us, but it does mean another day on the road!  I was just talking to Shawn and it's kind of amazing that (if we drove with no stops) it will take us about as long to get to the Lodge as it did to drive from Youngstown, OH to Valparaiso, IN. Minnesota is a BIG state. Saint Paul is kind of in the middle of the state, and it will take us that long to drive the same distance we drove through all of Ohio and most of Indiana. INSANE. I mean, when you look on a map all of Minnesota is North and South Dakota length and then some.

Anyway, I don't mind the driving. Our family usually finds fun places to stop and hunt for agates or just take in the view of Lake Superior. This time, however, we may be going past some active fires, which I can't say I'm excited to see. 

The air quality has been bad here, y'all.

But, I'm stressing out because the idea of packing my clothes again just seems like a LOT. 

The other thing that has me generally unsettled is that we just found out that Shawn's brother Keven has a lump on his kidney. The doctors are fairly certain it's cancer and they're already talking about chemo and all the works. Keven didn't used to be my favorite brother (Shawn has two), but in the past several years Keven has gotten some diagonises and meds and therapy. He's not anything like a changed man, but now he's tolerable and curmudgeonly in a more charming and amusing way.

And, now, it seems, the gods have kicked him in the teeth.

Keven only just got his first tests, so it's not necessarily any kind of immediate death sentence. But, fuck. You know?

 
Image: whaling ship in the grey, cold rain

Shawn and I have made this trip to Connecticut (and back again) five times. Once to move Mason in, and then four times now to move him out. We have never, ever been able to see anything more off the coast of Connecticut than mist. I was pretty sure that the whole fog-of-nothingness/evil was supposed to be a Stephen King thing for Maine, not Connecticut, but here we are, our fifth trip, and there is clearly NO OCEAN OFF THE COAST. It is all greyness and LIES.  

But, we managed a fun sight seeing trip anyway. 

We went to Mystic, CT, bringing along with us both Mason and his partner Jas. 


Mason, our grad, (left) and Jas (right) at the Black Sheep in Nantic, CT. 

The Seaport Museum was probably an interesting choice given the foul weather, and, honestly, I would have hoped that pouring rain would mean that we'd have the place to ourselves. No, every school group in the history of school groups were all there, making trying to get into the litttle faux village shops somewhat of a crapshoot. It was a lovely little space, though. Mason and I explored the whaling ship and I got inspired to do a better job explaining how cramped berths on sailing ships (in my case space ships) can be.  

I'm going to say, however, that my favorite thing was seeing a family of geese and their three little goslings. 

And getting to see Mason hanging out with the person he calls "love."

We did not get any packing done today, but the four of us got very moist and a little cross, so it's back to the AirBnB for us. Clothes are in the dryer and my wet toeies are tucked under the covers. We are giving up for the day, with only dinner out for plans. I wish we'd had better weather, but we had excellent company and that's what it's all about.

 My deepest apologies. I've been busy doing the things I do, including the podcast.  

I did a lot of TTRPGing since the last time we chatted. I ran a D&D game on Saturday, played in a somewhat disasterous Star Trek: Adventures game that same night, and ran a Thirsty Sword Lesbians game Tuesday night. I don't game nearly as often as this list makes me seem. I just swear to all the gods that whatever day my D&D group has agreed to play that month, I also have Star Trek game that same night. Likewise, the TSL group will just somehow fall in the same week. I literally play/run at least TWO of these three games MONTHLY. How they all end up clustered like this is, indeed, a mystery. 

I'm also in the last few hours of nominating for the Hugo's. I pulled the trigger and bought virtual tickets to Seattle WorldCON at the same time. When I virtually attended Glasgow's WorldCON, one of the tech guys told me that they'd be using a lot of the same program/technologies and I hope that's true. I found the virtual version of that con particularly robust and, perhaps more importantly, decently inuitive to use. 

I should also report that part of my lack of communication/updatery here is the fact that Mason is home for Spring Break. He's currently off at a coffee shop working on his senior thesis, so, if y'all are so inclined, I'm sure he could use white light and thoughts and prayers. ;-) My understanding of his thesis work is the intersection of science fiction and environmental justice. I mean, pretty cool stuff!  And perfectly aligned with his majors, which are, in fact, English and Environmental Studies. 

Otherwise, how the heck are you all? 

 
Image: bread made from steel cut oats (leftovers).

Yesterday was Mason's TWENTY-FIRST birthday. For some reason, despite the fact that he's been an official adult for some time now, 21 feels... old. Like, I have a grown-up child all of a sudden. It feels very weird.

At any rate, we had a lovely day. Shawn took the day off and I cancelled all my usual plans.

However, we didn't have a huge agenda. In fact, one of the gifts Mason wanted to give himself was a long, solitary walk--for three hours. One of the things Shawn and I have been doing when we have spare time is to go through the zillion and a half cookbooks we've collected over the years. In one of them--a vegetarian cookbook from 1978--was a very gnarly recipe for bread using leftover steel cut oats (though I think their recipe might have called for oat groats.. I know for sure that it absolutely wanted wheat germ.) At any rate, I thought to myself, "Huh, I have some leftover steel cut oats in the fridge. I wonder if there is a modern recipe out there for bread that could use those up?" SURE ENOUGH. I found one immediately. 

Unfortunately, this recipe made THREE LOAVES of bread. I... do not know what we're going to do with so much oatmeal bread??? It's tasty, but very.... let's just say it still vibes very 1978. It is... CRUNCHY in a granola-head way. My family is very uncertain about the steel cut oats because my family mistrusts any food over three days old. Mason generally laughed to see me making this stuff and rolled his eyes because he has noticed that I've been gravitating towards these kinds of cookbooks lately. I've been threatening "something with tempeh" for dinner for several days now. This is an empty threat... mostly (though I did buy some when I saw it was still in the stores.)

Is it nostalgia? Maybe? Although my mother never cooked like this. I didn't even really hang around people who did, either. I think it's some version of FOMO nostalgia. Like, I always thought the hippie granola-heads were COOL in the 1978s, so now I am attempting to be one. Which is so me... because now is not the right time as finding bulgur wheat is damned near impossible these days. I know because I looked for it a couple of years ago and EVENTUALLY found somewhere unexpected (I had STARTED at the coops, and maybe found it at Target??) Anyway, the point is, I not sure anyone even really liked this food when it was popular. I am probably chasing some FOMO nostalgia I won't even be happy to have recreated. :-)

And now I have three loaves of it. As it were.

 
Image: Dr. Evermore birds... in Madison (Me for scale. I am only 5'2" but not ant-sized as picture might have you believe.)

I must apologize for the radio silence. After we packed up Mason, we did a LOT of days of just driving. I can report for "What Are You Reading Wednesday," that I finished up the audiobook of Darcie Little Badger's A Snake Falls to Earth. I tried to start a number of other books, but bounced out of them due to narrators that drove me a little crazy for various reason, the most annoying of which was a female reader who decided for reasons known only to herself to read the one female character on the crew in a falsetto. It was oddly off-putting, so I sent that one back, unfinished. 

But, so, other than just driving and listening to audio tapes, we only made a couple of stops on the way back. The first was to see my mother-in-law, Margaret, whom I think I noted is in hospice. She apparently waited for our return and a chance to talk to Mason because we just got the news that she's taken a downturn. She's now on oxygen and morphine. You wouldn't have known it during our visit though. She rallied for us, following the conversation like a trouper, even offering candies to Mason, like she did when he was just a smol. 

I'm glad that we had no other plans that day and so we could spend as much time as we needed. Then we only made the short jump from Indiana to Madison. I really wanted to be sure to devote some time to the Deke Slayton Museum (more on that in a moment) and so didn't want to be rushing through Chicago traffic to try to get there before it closed. Because it was such a short drive, we ended up at our hotel super early and the room wasn't ready for us yet. Luckily, I am always ready with roadside attractions. 

The first place we stopped was the site where Elvis broke up a fight...


Image: a really bad silhouette of Elvis and a long description of the event of June 24, 1977.

Roadside America is one of my favorite resources because, literally, this plaque is on the corner of a car dealership. I mean, they actually keep it up and it's not as difficult to find as you might think given it's obscure history, but the gas station where this fight took place is long gone. 

From there, we drove past a gold Civil War Statue, but did not stop for a photo op because it wasn't really worth a detour. If you follow the link, you can decide for yourself. Then, we checked out the scrap metal birds (picture above) which were ABSOLUTELY worth the detour. 

By the time we were finished with all that, we were able to check into our hotel room and take a short nap. When it was time for dinner, we briefly thought we wanted Japanese fast food, but it turned out that fast food is always kind of gross no matter which country of origin. So, Mason and I headed to State Street (Shawn opted to eat some of the not-great food to save her arthritic knees.) I think it was just as well that we left Shawn at the hotel, because Mason and I ended up being storm chasers when the TORNADO SIRENS went off. Luckily, that was after we ate at a really wonderful Taiwanese place, and were headed back to the car. As the sirens were wailing and our phones were yelling at us to shelter in place, we sat in a the car parking ramp for a long time trying to judge just how green the sky was and whether or not it was smarter to go or stay. But, after the second call from Shawn, who was worried sick, of course, we decided to make a break for it. We timed it between bursts of storm, but it was pretty harrowing. There were branches down and whatnot, but other than very threatening skies we never saw (or heard) anything truly scary, but it was still freaky, you know? Not going to lie. This will be an adventure we'll talk about for awhile.

Back at the hotel, we sat in an interior hallway with a bunch of other Midwesterners. The tourists were all outside watching the storm. 

Today, we struck out for LaCrosse to visit my dad the day after his 83rd birthday. But, we got up early enough so that we could be at the Deke Slayton Bicycle and Space Museum around when it opened at 10 am. 


Deke Slayton statue (me for scale.)

I absolutely LOVED this museum. The bicycles and Deke really aren't connected in anyway that is obvious in the exhibit, but both stories are told well in their own way. There's a TON of astronaut memorabilia, specifically around Deke's story. And, if you're at all a fan of space, real life NASA stuff, and/or For All Mankind, this is an absolute must of of detour.  It's a very unassuming little museum, tucked into the top floor of a historical Masonic Hall. Likewise, Sparta is a surprisingly lovely town--given how many Trump signs we saw in the other small Wisconsin towns we tried to visit for these kinds of things. 10/10 would recommend. 

 In LaCrosse, we had a great visit with my folks and got to have the traditional poppyseed cake for my dad's birthday and a lunch out at Rudy's Drive-In. (And, yes, our food was delivered by a young women on roller skates!)

Now we are home with a pizza delivery on the way. I'm just relieved to not be in a car anymore. Though we could not have asked for better driving conditions along Scenic Highway 61. 

 Mason has left the building.

This morning was like old times. All three of us were up before the crack of dawn and bundled into the car. I took Shawn to work first and then, instead of taking Mason to Washington Tech, like the old day, I took him and his backpack (and duffle bag) to the airport. Any minute now, he'll be winging his way back to school in Connecticut. 

We'll miss him.

Per my previous blog, one of the things we did this last weekend was go out to Tavern on Grand, as it will be shuttering some time this year (early June is what the papers said, I think.)  The place was packed, which was a little freaky for us, since we are still avoiding crowds as a general rule and masking in most public places. We decided we really wanted to do it, anyway, so we we masked as much as possible, and managed to have a decent night out. Hopefully, we did not tempt fate. Fingers crossed.

Otherwise, it was a quiet weekend around chez Morehouse. I'm still working on finishing up my gaudy Valentine's quilt. There is so much glitter, so many hearts. I will be surprised if anyone wants this thing when it's finished. But, it is kinda cute? I should have it pieced fully by tonight, so perhaps there will be in-progress pictures tomorrow.

Tonight is going to be a long one. Shawn has a Friends of the Ramsey County Library board meeting tonight that she can't skip. As I am the family chauffer, I will be in attendance as well--just skulking around the stacks, looking for manga to read. I just finished a couple of first volumes. Last time I was stuck hanging out at the library, I was in the grown-up section and picked up Mieruko-chan by Izumi Tomoki, which... I'm uncertain why it ended up shelves with adult materials. The horror elements are reminiscent of Ito Junji, who somehow, always ends up shelved as adult. My biggest guess is that the art style is fairly ecchi? There's a lot of fan service--but, like, not all that much more than you might find in standard shounen manga, many of which are shelved in teens. I really wish I could be a fly on the wall for some of these decisions. I mean, I'd be fine with all the fan-service stuff being shelved as "adult"? or all as "teen"? But, be consistent is all I ask. I mean, maybe something very ADULT is on its way in this series, but volume one was very typical of "girl sees horror stuff."

The other manga I picked up and read the first volume of was a very strange series from the 1970s called Orochi by Umezu Kazuo, I say it's weird because our titular heroine doesn't appear to be human, and clearly has some supernatural powers? Like, she has the ability to reanimate the dead, but isn't aware enough of human nature to understand why this might be a VERY BAD IDEA. I picked up two volumes of this one and will probably try to read the second before I pass too much judgment on it as a series. The library had all five volumes, so if I decide I like it enough to continue, I can read the whole series.

I'm also still doing a few things for Cheryl Morgan at Wizard Tower, but given the Chengdu blow-up, I suspect she's not in a hurry to hear back from me.... https://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=29370

 It's snowing again and is basically supposed to do this all through the weekend. Luckily, I don't have very many places to go, so it's fine with me.  (Check in with me again, later, if Saint Paul doesn't declare a snow emergency and doesn't plow.) 

As for reading, I've been doing something new. Most of the time when I am working on a quilt, I'll watch something mindless--an anime or Critical Role. But, a friend of mine suggested trying a "book on tape," which of course isn't ON TAPE any more and which you can download as an audio file directly to your phone from the library. So, I tried Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi and it was... tough. I mean, it's meant to be a hard, serious examination of the lives of Black men in America (with magical realism) and the baseline for that is pretty hardcore. On top of that, Onyebuchi doesn't pull his punches either, (nor should he.) HOWEVER, this was not the book for me at the moment. I have been craving low-stakes, light romps. Riot Baby was the polar opposite of that vibe. I hope to finish it some other time.

But, for now, I returned the book early. I am currently a couple of chapters into the audio book of Charlie Jane Ander's All The Birds in the Sky. I had bounced out of this book when I first took it out of the library the year it was up for all the awards, but, ironically, at that time I was not in the mood for light, fluffy magical stuff. I'm hoping that now is the right time for this book, finally. 

It's funny how this stuff works.

As for paper, I've been working my way through T. Kingfisher's Saints of Steel series and am currently on Book 3, Paladin's Hope. I deeply enjoy this series and will probably have to read everything in the World of the White Rat, as well. 

My D&D group, which normally meets tonight, is down two members due to dumb job stuff for one, and not-quite-recovered from illness for another. So, the rest of us decided it would be unfair to continue the main campaign with two players out and so we're doing a side campaign. I've long had two alternate characters ready to roll, as it were--Idyril's sister Ave and a figure known only to his family as "the bastard."

So, tonight I will be playing Idyril's sassy sister, Ave. The person all of his angst-filled letters have been sent to. I'm kind of unreasonably excited about this? I have been waiting to unveil her, but of course, I never wanted Idyril to have to DIE so that I could play her. I will try not to be a boring RPGer and talk too much about her here on the blog. Let's just say my favorite thing is that she's a monk and her spymastering family wanted her to chose "the way of the shadow" (think: ninja assassin) but she's a Drunken Master (like Jackie Chan, in the movie of the same name.) 

The only other fun thing of note that I shall mention about her is that because she's a Drunken Master, she carries brewers supplies. I've decided that due to this, she has access to brewer's yeast, which means that tonight, instead of the usual cookies that I bring, I'm making a loaf of cinnamon bread.

That should be fun.

Mason is coming home for Spring Break this Friday. He'll arrive to snow, but I think, so long as planes are not delayed and such, that will make him happy. He often complains that Connecticut doesn't understand Real Winter. My son is totally That One Kid in Flip-Flops in 40 degree weather. 

I think that's all the news fit to print. What are y'all reading or consuming lately of interest?

I had been most looking forward to today. We had Mason with us and the on stop I was SURE we would all deeply enjoy was Centralia, Pennsylvania. If you know this town at all, it's probably through the video game "Silent Hill," which took the idea of what happened in real life Centralia and expanded it. So what happened in real life? A garbage fire ended up igniting a coal vein... the ground underneath the town has been burning ever since. It will apparently burn for many, many more years yet before the coal is depleted.

There wasn't much to take pictures of, thought I did snag one of the Orthodox Church that stands watch over the remains of the town.


The Centralia Orthodox Church.

But, there really is almost nothing to see. A couple of years ago, someone covered "graffiti road" with dirt, probably to discourage tourists like me and my family: https://allthatsinteresting.com/centralia-pa

Plus, my family and I probably should have eaten before we tried to find Centralia. We get notoriously bitchy if we don't eat by a time, and we missed an opportunity to grab a sandwich and so by the sixth time that I was turning around on a tiny, narrow highway there may have been some yelling... which was not at all how I wanted this particular leg of the trip to be. I had really hoped we'd get out of the car and wander around, but we ended up turning around so many times that by the time we ran into some other people on one of the side road who were also exploring the ex-town, we were all so fried that we never even got out to stretch our legs.

:-(

But, we made up for it by finding a spectacular waterfall outside of Clarion, PA, called Rapp Run Falls. 


Image: The falls


Image: Rapp Run River, looking like something out of Middle Earth

The other thing that amused us today were the Pennsylvania mile markers. Apparently, they mark every tenth of a mile and they have never heard of reducing factions, so there were 1/10, 2/10 (instead of 1/5), 3/10, 4/10 (instead of 2/5ths) and the one that drove me insane, 5/10th... I mean, okay, for consistency I get maybe doing everything else as tenths, but why not mark the half mile as HALF MILE?? 

Can you tell we were pretty bored of driving?



It was a long day, but we are safely back in Youngstown, OH again. Having liked out hotel so much the first time around, we simply booked it again for the return trip.

 
My family walking towards one of the Wesleyan Libraries (Mason's favorite,) Olin.

Today was not a day for the road. We did travel the very short distance from where we ended up staying last night (Metamoras, PA) to Middletown, CT, but it only took us a couple of hours. We arrived in plenty of time for Shawn to do some of her packing miracles to save Mason a bit of space in the storage unit that he and a couple of his friends rented together for the summer. But, otherwise, our job was to offer assistance and/or stay out of the way. We mostly did the latter, as it happened, as he and his colleagues had everything under control. Our big job was to make sure that all of the books Mason wanted to bring home would, in fact, fit in the car. (THAT was a challenge.)

The weather looks great in the photo, but it was warmish here and weirdly humid (ocean air???) 

The library pictured above, Olin, is where Mason has one of his two work study jobs, as circulation staff at their government records collection. He showed us the stacks and his private fiefdom of books deep in the bowels of the library (very cool, honestly.) His mother, the State Archivist of Minnesota, was well impressed. Me, I just love any place that smells of old books and red rot.

Tomorrow, we are going to have more fun adventures to post about as we will be doing the same again, only in reverse. Shawn picked up a few books about fun roadside sites at the Wesleyan Bookstore, so I'm going to be doing some extra reading tonight. We already have several stops planned and we are not intending to even try to leave this state tomorrow. This is, after all, a big chance for us to explore this state that Mason is making his home for the next three years. 

Hope you all are safe and dry! See you after more hours on the road tomorrow!

 
Image: The view of Minnesota Lock and Dam #1 (Mississippi River) from the Minnehaha Dog Park.

I went walking with some friends of mine early Saturday morning at the Minnehaha Dog Park. Not having a dog myself, I had only ever been there as a visitor once or twice before. It's actually quite lovely, if you are cool with random doggos bounding up to you on occasion to check you out (which I more than am.) 

The sky-blue asters were blooming.

Image: A flower growing on the banks of the Mississippi that I initially thought was called fleabane, but is actually "sky-blue aster."

To be fair to me, fleabane is in the aster family, and t's kind of a shame that these aren't fleabane, because fleabane does (to some varying degree of efficacy, which is to say almost none) repel fleas. Obviously, whether or not it actually works, fleabane seems like the perfect flower/weed to encourage in a dog park, doesn't it?  But, these, I'm fairly certain, are actually sky-blue asters, so there you go. They were everywhere along the sandy banks of the Mississippi. One of the few natives in bloom in the dog park. 

Anyway, it was a lovely walk followed by donuts and coffee shared with new friends, whom Shawn and I met at a backyard concert held by the neighbors-across-the-street. Shawn declined to go on the hike with us, being far more "indoorsy.". She stayed home and finished up a few rugs on the loom. 

But, Shawn and I went for our own neighborhood stroll on Sunday. During the height of the heavy lockdown part of the pandemic, Shawn and I used to go on neighborhood walks in St. Paul regularly. I started photographing some of the cool architectural details / nifty houses that I came across, and I posted them on Facebook. I did the same on Sunday, which you can feel free to check out, if we are Facebook friends, otherwise I will simply share this one very TERRIFYING bit of sidewalk poetry that we came across.