Day in the Life of an Idiot

This last weekend my parents came up for a visit, something we called "Christmas in May," and maybe we shouldn't have, given that it seemed determined to SNOW on Sunday, it was so cold and miserable. The idea, however, is that the road (and even the train) have become un-fun ways to travel for my folks, for reasons of age and weather. And, no one in my family is Christian, so there's no particular reason to celebrate Christmas at all, but certainly there's nothing binding us to to the traditional time. Though, everyone likes getting presents.

We exchanged gifts on Saturday. My folks came up late in the day because Mason works at the Science Museum. Normally, he's out by 2 pm, but last Saturday they went on an excursion to a hydroponic basement "farm" at a local restaurant and didn't make it home until almost 3 pm. That was fine because we all eat ridiculously early so by the time we all made it to my folks' hotel and did a little chatting, we could walk over to a nearby restaurant for dinner.

On Sunday morning, we set off for MIA. This is second time in so many weeks that i've been to that particular museum, but there is so much there that it's impossible to not see something new each time. Ironically, my mom also loves contemporary and modern art, just like my visiting Canadian, so we ditched Mason in the "Asia" galleries and booked it to the Modern/Contemporary galleries.

I got a great shot of my dad being captivated by a piece of art:



My art savvy friends have told me that the name of this piece is "The Father of Aviation II" by Santos Dumont. (The link should take you to MIA's page about it.)  It's very striking. I'd love to see more of Dumont's stuff, honestly.  

For me, that's my favorite part of any museum trip. Having a "wow!" moment. It's almost never a piece that anyone remembers from the one art history class they maybe took, except the first time I went to the Chicago art museum I was dumbfounded when I saw Seurat's famous pointillism piece, "A Sunday Afternoon..."  But, usually, it's some side gallery piece that makes me stop and take a moment to think, "Wha?? How is that so...???" This time, for me, it was a picture of pots and pans made of copper that just... there was something about how the artist had showed the light and reflections that took my breath away. I'll post the picture, but there's an extremely low chance that it will hit you the same way. Next time I go, I'll probably walk right past it. That's how museums work for me, anyway.



Yep, just a bunch of metal pans. 

So, that was my weekend. I spent yesterday running around like crazy. I sent back the contract for Unjust Cause (Whoo! I am officially contracted again!!) and spent some time frantically working on the first chapter at my favorite coffee shop. Then, I went to the bank to get cash from the change in my piggy bank because I joined an office bet at the library for the women's world cup and I wanted to be able to bring the cash in when I went to do my data practices training. (Fun times, though I'm always amused when it is mentioned that one can not delete records without permission from the state archives, to which I ALWAYS mentally add, "Or, as I like to call it, my wife.")

So, that was me over the past few days. I will try to be better about this.

But, hey, do you have a museum experience you want to share? I want to hear it.

Despite the fact that three people asked after me by text and Twitter, I was not at WisCON. Perhaps one of my many dopplegangers were, however. Being a short, pudgy, butching-looking woman whose con-wear consists of jeans, shirt and vest (and sometimes tie) makes for a lot of confusion, particularly at WisCON, the Feminist Science Fiction Convention.

Instead, I went to my hometown of LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

Some things I'll bet you didn't know about LaCrosse. It is the home of the World's Largest Six-Pack. The six-pack is actually a beer aging vat, so it is, in fact, full of beer. http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/world-s-largest-six-pack LaCrosse has always been a brewing town and one of the reasons that I hate beer to this day is that the sickly, over-powering smell of hops is the smell of a hot, muggy summer day to me.

Also, LaCrosse is part of the "Driftless Zone," a geographically unique part of the United States defined by the fact that it has several odd rock formations carved and/or deposited during the first ice age, and was missed by the second ice age, whose glaciers flattened the Great Plains. So, even though I grew up in the Midwest, which people typically think of as flat, I was surrounded by sandstone bluffs (mini-mountains, people tell me they're akin to foothills), swamps, and deep river valleys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driftless_Area#Wisconsin.

Here's the view on an overcast/rainy day from the top of Granddad's Bluff looking out toward a nearby bluff. On a clear day, you can see three states (Minnesota [across the river], Wisconsin [of course], and Iowa [just to the south].)


My father tells me there's going to be a documentary about the Driftless Area on some National Geographic type show, and one of the things he learned when listening to people discuss this is that the Driftless Area supposedly has as much biodiversity as the Rainforest. This does not surprise me in the least. More often than not, the hatching of the mayflies in LaCrosse is VISIBLE BY DOPPLER RADAR.

Great Blue Herons are such a common sight, we caught this picture of one on our traditional hike through the RABBIT (River and Bluff Bicentennial Intra-City Trail) trail:


Because a swampy marshland seperates the North Side from the South Side of town, my North Side high school's mascot was "Swampy" a red-and-white faux fur swamp monster whom I regularly portrayed at football games and school rallies.

Yes, that's right, I was was a high school mascot.

Oh, and another last bit of trivia: supposedly there's a Native American legend about LaCrosse (which was supposedly named for the games the Voyageurs saw the American Indians playing that reminded them of LaCrosse) that where three rivers meet there will never be a tornado. We have three rivers that converge in LaCrosse (the Black, the LaCrosse, and the Mississippi Rivers). That was all good until about two years ago, when my dad was in the hospital and a tornado jumped right over Gunderson Clinic (which we were in at the time) and tore a path through the South Side. People didn't want to call it a tornado, but I actually saw the debris field.

If you can't tell, I adore the town I grew up in. It was ultimately too small for me, but if my partner weren't the State Archivist of MINNESOTA, I would seriously consider returning there once Mason was finished with school.

One family tradition we have at every visit is "porch time." We often combine "porch time" with "talking smart," but here's Mason engaged in reading on the "veranda" (which was also jokingly call the lovely three-season porch my folks have in the house I grew up in [built in 1890-something, I believe. It has an open staircase, among other things...])


Here's Mason participating in another LaCrosse tradition: rocket ballons--


My folks and Mason at the top of Granddad's Bluff (on the way to check out the new observation area.)


Mason and me investigating a hollowed out, collapsed tree on the Marsh (RABBIT) trail:


I hear I missed a good WisCON, but I had a great deal of fun catching up with my folks.

... for I have sinned. It's been fourteen days since my last confession... er, post.

I can't really say I've done anything terribly interesting with my time, either -- which I suppose is a fairly big sin.  My folks came to town over the weekend.  On Friday night we were supposed to drive out to their hotel to hang out, have Red Savoy's pizza, and go swimming.  We were already running late because I'd mis-timed getting Mason to the library and back again to Shawn's work in time to take her to the clinic for her B12 shot.  We stopped at home long enough to change, but when we got back in the car and drove about a half block, the engine light came on. 

I'm usually the sort to say, "Aw, whatever," and keep driving, but several years ago (okay, probably more like several decades ago at this point,) when I was driving up to visit Shawn in Grand Rapids, MN where her folks were living at the time, I ran over an ice chunk in the road. It made a god awful sound, but when I pulled over I couldn't see any damage, so I got back on the road.  I drove until my engine light came on, but thought, "ah, whatever," and then.... in the middle of nowhere the car sputtered to a halt and died.  It was minus twenty degrees outside. On Christmas eve.  Luckily, a family stopped and gave me a ride to the next town's diner, where I was able to call (this was before cell phones) and have Shawn's dad come and pick me up.  Turns out I'd totalled the car.  The ice block had smashed the oil pan and as I'd driven the car, it had less and less oil, until suddenly the engine seized.

Ever since then, I don't disregard engine lights, even though I know they're often just one of those lights that come on randomly.

But I did risk the half a block back to the house so that I could wait for the AAA guys in the comfort of my own heated house.  I had them tow the car to our favorite mechanics, Sinclair Grand (on Wheeler).  I called my folks and told them we'd just have to see them on Saturday, and after a few bitter tears of disappointment, we all settled on our brand new chairs.  (As part of Christmas sprucing up, we bought three matching chairs from LL Bean to replace our ratty old couch.)

The evening was made much better by the discovery of a free app for the iPad called "Moxie."  It's a very fun word game, and so we were able to play that and forget about the car for a while.  When the AAA guy came I decided to let him take the car without me since the problem was pretty self-explainatory, and I went back in and made flautas for dinner.  I had accidentally bought the fixings for flautas when I went to Whole Foods earlier in the day, because I spaced on the fact that we'd be having diner with the folks.  (I guess it was actually some kind of psychic impluse, however.)

Saturday morning, we got up early to start bread and cook a squash for squash muffins. My folks came around nine and we all hung out chatting on our fancy new chairs.  (Have I mentioned the chairs?)  I'd wanted to show off kuk sool wan to them, but no one but me was feeling up to it.  So I got out voted.  Shawn made her wild rice soup with turkey leftoves, and we all had a nice lunch before my parents took off to try to race the snow storm on the way back to LaCrosse.

I had them drop me off at the car mechanics on their way out of town, and I found out that the engine light was indeed a fluke, but they wanted to see if they could get the engine to stutter.  (I had noted that it had been doing that just as the light came on.)  So, I left the car there and picked up cat food and some other necessities at the nearby store and walked home.  It's probably a mile, but it's an easy mile, even in the cold and a walk I've made a dozen times.  On the way I listened to an audio book that I got for review called CINDER.   (It's a retelling of Cinderella in a dystopian future China, where Cinder is a cyborg.  It's really fairly awesome [so far] and I'm looking forward to giving it thumbs up.)

The rest of the weekend was low key, even the walk back to get the car.  The mechanic never did find anything wrong with it, so I got to take it home free of charge.  (This is why I love this garage.)  The only other excitment of the weekend was on Saturday evening when Shawn and I watched the third episode of "Case Histories."  I'd been only watching it half-heartedly because the storylines tend to be darker than I usually like, but this particularly one was very good.  (I usually end up not watching with any kind of seriousness, but get caught up by the end.)  Afterwards, Shawn and I were talking about how awesome it was and she decided to look up information about it.  Turns out the main character Jackson Brody is played by none-other-than Jason Isaacs, known to most of us as Lucius Malfoy.  The two could, in many ways, not be more different.  Dude is an awesome actor.

I spent much of the rest of the weekend trying to wrap my head around this discovery.  I think some part of my brain may have exploded. 

Also in the attempt to discover if the Scottish accent Jason Isaacs affects in "Case Histories" was real or not, I discovered that he was born in Liverpool in a very insular Jewish community. 

All of this information just made Lucius Malfoy/Jackson Brody/Jason Isaacs all that more hot.

*sssss boom!*