Animals speak for themselves
I Wear my Sunglasses at Night*
A lot to catch you up on. I can summarize the last few days for you.
Quick! Before the porch collapses!
MOVERS DAY: Movers started later than planned due to some last-minute shuffling of their teams/vehicles. As we waited at Rob’s, the co-owner of his house (the man) was literally building the front porch and the city was LOUDLY breaking holes in the street and digging holes all around. The moving truck parked next to a pair of busy construction vehicles. The owner was laying down boards within a foot or two of where the movers proceeded to remove all the furniture.
So anyway the movers came to both our places and got all our stuff outta’ there. The lead guy claimed that we had done the best “non-professional” job of packing he’d ever seen and had specific details of things we had done right! You betcha’ we did and also I take pride in the effort I spent to collect a hundred or so boxes from the recycle bin in my apartment building over the last 2 years: worth it!
Then we stayed at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis overnight and guess what the room number was? 612, which is the Minneapolis area code!
MOVE-OUT DAY: Rob got a nice surprise when the owner of the cleaning service he hired met the other homeowner (the woman). They were like two peas in a pod as they both knew the ins and outs of how to get a place clean. I’m sure they bonded over the pitfalls of self-cleaning ovens and the how to clean baseboards. It was a relief since he had been worried that the cleaners may not pass the incredibly high standards set by the homeowner. Rather, she was asking for her card!!
At my place I found it ironic that the only thing that didn’t readily exit the apartment was the Comcast cable which required the maintenance guy to use a wrench on to disconnect it from the wall. Comcast causing trouble until the end! Resistance is futile: I cancel my subscription!!
One thing that got way too much attention was my chocolate. I had a box of many bars of my favorite (88%) dark chocolate and I feared that if it wasn’t kept cool it may melt in the car! So we setup a little cooler just for my chocolate. We had a few beers left that I threw in there and some carrots. More on that later.
DRIVING DAY ONE: We left after lunch as soon as our “walkthroughs” were over. It went OK except that I happened to drive ahead of Rob (in leader position) and my GPS inexplicably spoke incorrect directions - completely not matching the route we were supposed to drive!! I had to call him when traffic lightened up to ask him if I was on the right road. I was, but later on I exited when the sign said “35” to the right but that was Business 35 not the Freeway 35 so of course I messed that up. Naturally, I nominated Rob to lead the way on the rest of our trip. We stopped in Osceola, Iowa for the night and I was thrilled with my dinner which was a baked potato with toppings, asparagus, and a couple of Toppling Goliath Pseudo Sues which are made in Iowa and are AMAZING.
By the way, the previous weekend we had an overnight drive to Iowa and I kid you not, there was a lake or broad river with a whole bunch of pelicans in it. I saw them on the trip out and the trip back and they were pelicans!
DRIVING DAY TWO: I was too tense and tired to plan ahead on podcasts and just kind of played radio on the drive. The whole country seems to want to hear Sweet Child ‘O Mine a lot. We stopped for lunch in the most desolate place you can imagine in the middle of Kansas which apparently was TallGrass Prairie. We had a fast food chicken sandwich and just marveled at how weird it all was. I dropped a couple of my carrot sticks in the parking lot and I bet they are still there and will be forever? Unless a tornado whisks them away there’s nothing to eat them and but let’s say there are birds they probably wouldn’t recognize them as it’s not an Arby’s Buffalo Chicken Sandwich & fries.
There were some severe thunderstorm warnings around, we did see lightning, we did have high winds, but we stuck with it and basically remained on the fringe of these storms. Phew.
South of Oklahoma City we called it quits for the day and had dinner at a Buffalo Wild Wings. What a shock to discover that the ENTIRE BAR was SMOKING and the sub-par remaining part of the restaurant was for the NON-SMOKERS. Yikes!! Also a guy was wearing a cowboy hat just like regular.
In general hotels were OK but neither of us slept great. Just too pooped out, stressed, wound up, and all that stuff. I wore my noise reduction headphones to sleep with which was good but very uncomfortable. I am still getting up at 4:15 so until that stops I’m still going to be fuzzy.
Seen before starting our 3rd, and last, driving day. YES!
DRIVING DAY THREE: Can we just get there? I had accumulated 3 hotel apples by now. Note that hotels always have raisin bran as a cereal option. Finally, I was mourning the loss of ALL MY CHOCOLATE! Somehow, despite putting ice in a ziploc bag and all the chocolate bars in ziploc bags, water had seeped into the ziplocs and I had to throw it all away. (Rob gently pointed out I had put the top of the cooler on wrong. Classic.) Profound sadness.
That was all boring, I realize now, because what comes next is ****THE BEST****! That’ll be the next post.
* Why in the world are people listening to this song still? U.S. Radio stations seems to like it.
"Pleasant" Street*
You can’t step out the front door!
I neglected to inform you about another worrisome array of concerns as our move-out date approaches: the factors working to impair the mover’s ability to get stuff out of the house Rob is renting in South Minneapolis.
So many impediments (I attribute to Rob’s uncanny bad luck)…. and I probably won’t recall them all, but one you can’t overlook is the fact that the front door is not usable because the owner has chosen to demolish and rebuild the front deck this month. The front door, is, of course, the desired doorway to use to get the furniture out as it is the largest entryway. This homeowner does all the work himself, and in fact we’ve seen in past projects that his progress can be slow and so the odds of completion within a week seem dim.
OK, on top of that, Rob’s neighborhood is undergoing a complete re-paving this spring. He called the city and guess whose street will be repaved the day we move out! Yep, no kidding. Nothing the city can do to change it (mother nature, however, could shift the schedule if there’s rain and stuff).
So where the moving truck can even park is a big question. Perhaps the back alley? It’s going to be FUN!
Other interesting excavations literally in his front hard have to do with cable work and um I forget is it water?
On a positive note, Rob emailed some folks today to confirm our movers/new landlord and those things were all systems go (the cleaner he has hired has been a headache, though, so that’s still iffy). And our future landlord’s reply included this tasty tidbit at the end:
the pot bellied pigs come in the yard-- they are super friendly, and you can feed them!
Of course since there was a large, black potbellied pig in the yard the day we saw the property, I’m quite excited to know we will see them on a regular basis. I’m like a kid going to the petting zoo- I can’t wait to feed them!
* Rob lives on Pleasant Street. Note that despite the irony, his old street address in St. Paul had home address of “666” which is arguably worse (and actually turned out to be cursed as that was where that messed up landlord was that made up bad stuff about Rob as mentioned in previous post).
View from Rob’s house. Could it get any worse?
Stir-crazy Javelin-Loving Worrier-Warrior**
Actually I have nothing much new but I’ll make some stuff up because I wish there were more things and that we were already on our way.
I do a lot of pacing in my apartment which is kind of just my personality but also the building antsy-ness manifesting itself. Oh also I am not jogging now since my calf has some kind of mildly pulled muscle or something so just taking walks so there may be excess energy. But then thinking maybe in Austin I’ll just be walking anyway as it’ll be TOO HOT to run! TOO HOT :)
Various low-level concerns about the move, aka the HYPEROBJECT:
Bass Lake showing some life. The high tomorrow will be about 45 degrees.
Wait, did we verify that rental house actually has central air?
Will that concerning rattle in front of my car lead to a break-down in the middle of Oklahoma?
How will I get sleep en route since I can’t sleep in same room as anyone else (one of my mental problems) ?
Will our landlord actually remove her stuff from our side of garage/locked room? (if not, where will all our stuff go??)
Will our address become one giant headache? The address we were given has a “B” after the street number, and this is not recognized by USPS, etc.
Will internet actually get installed the day the tech comes out? Issues already apparent with address, etc.
Will I get to eat breakfast on schedule en route and first couple of days in Austin (before movers arrive)?
Will unanticipated noise-makers such as airports, dogs, coyotes, javelins* keep us up at nights?
Likely the worst problem we’ll encounter is one I haven’t even thought of yet! YIKES!
Reminder: There’s only one month in Minnesota where snow has never been reported (July).
I took a picture by Bass Lake this week (included in this post) which garnered ~70 likes in my lichens, mosses, ferns and fungi group!
I am really really enjoying the book, Suburban Safari. Would you guess this book is good given the cover?
I read a lot of science-nature books and this one is far better than most.
Did you know that the unfortunate squirrels that lose part of their tails is typically a result of….other squirrels tearing it off? This book would make some great summer reading for you. Also, another shout-out to Half-Price Books.
* I mean javelinas. I had never heard this word before this week when I stumbled across it in Suburban Safari. But I keep saying javelins instead of javelinas. Also I did know “peccary” already which is the other name for the cute critter. I did a quick look-up and no, not recommended you have one as a pet.
** Warrior doesn’t at all match the content of my post but I thought it looked good in the title.
Boxes, Cowboy Boots, and the Rebellion
Since my last post, things did finally settle down regarding Rob’s previous landlord. Rob finally talked to the guy directly and apparently months after Rob had vacated the landlord discovered a scratch in the kitchen and spent the last year or two stewing about it- ?? Or something?? The man seems to be semi-crazy, possibly senile, and mean. Anyway, the lady we are about to rent from seemed to come to the same conclusion so we should be good now.
A mere fraction of the stuff
So the packing continues. We started in Rob’s basement (where both of our “storage stuff” was located) and now we’re moving on to our living areas. Since we plan to rent for a year and then move to a more permanent residence (and this place doesn’t have closets) I’m inclined to mark 99% of boxes “STORAGE”. We can store these in one side of the two-car garage as well as the “locked room” on first floor we didn’t actually see when we toured the home. Hopefully that’s enough space!
I’m also impatient and even though we are labelling each box’s contents, numbering, and logging digitally, I tend to mix different types of things in boxes and really it’s still kind of a jumble. I wonder how many years before I can actually have some of my favorite things out and visible?! Boy that’ll be fun if that ever happens.
Because Texas is a place you CAN HAVE A TORTOISE OUTSIDE!!
I have a not-so-secret urge to keep a tortoise in the yard. Which is crazy since: no pets allowed. Also, farm animals occasionally roam the yard so I don’t know why I need a tortoise. Maybe someday though, a mini-menagerie of tortoise, pig, a couple chickens and dogs would be the thing to do. I did happen to pick up a kid’s book at Half Price Books about owning tortoise because I couldn’t help it. There is also a “Real need for turtle and tortoise rescue (and adoptions) in Texas” according to a Texas newspaper so I’m practically obligated to adopt one at some point.
I’m also in a Mastadon group for Texans and I’ve started to ask questions like do I really have to wear cowboy boots to ward away snakes? Helpful tips include these from a future neighbor in Austin:
1. It's going to be really really hot really soon
2. Cowboy boots are not to be referred to as shoes
3. Don't ask how many acres someone's ranch is
Last, more serious note. Austin appears to have an active Extinction Rebellion group and I’m planning to help them out. Got to start actually doing something as we all sit on precipice of our self-destruction. I have to decide if I am willing to get arrested or not. (I was asking Rob if he knows if we could still possibly buy a house if I’ve been thrown in jail at some point due to environmental protest. I think probably it would still be OK. I’m just admitting that I am indeed that selfish even as we are confronted by OUR IMMINENT DESTRUCTION but ya, I am.)
Hyperobject
Today’s word of the day in my inbox was hyperobject. Wordnik provided this definition:
noun. Any object so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend localization, such as climate change and styrofoam.
I am completely mystified about the styrofoam reference so can someone explain that to me?
But it struck me that “the move” is our personal hyperobject…in fact what could be a more perfect example?
Accordingly, I am at a loss to know where to begin to describe the events of the last week. I will sketch it out and try to keep it short.
The very first morning in Austin we toured a home for rent which was way far out of town and although we differed a bit on our ratings of the home itself*, it was just too far out of town!! And three homes we had found on Zillow were snatched up by the time we arrived in Austin!
Naturally, we decided to reflect on the situation at a brewery that afternoon. As I waited for Rob to bring over the beers, I flipped through an Austin free fitness mag and found lots of neat random things including an article about some new business that features mushrooms. Very interesting! And it is located in the neighborhood called MONTOPOLIS which is my favorite name and I want the t-shirt. So we saw where that neighborhood was and Rob recalled we had once seen a home on Zillow near there and he pulled it up on his phone, contacted the owner, and we arranged to view it that very evening. The house is actually in “East Riverside” neighborhood but I would prefer to describe it as being just outside MONTOPOLIS.
And that’s the house we ended up renting! Assuming it doesn’t fall through** but you can learn about that part later. We did view some other homes but even ones that were fine seemed like regular homes you might live in in Minnesota and we wanted to enjoy the warm climate! Anyway, the place we chose has lots of deck space (1st and 2nd floor), a large screened porch, and in general feels like a fun vacation home!!
Also I couldn’t understand why so many homes have fireplaces but just so you know, they do.
The only downside as we see it to the place we chose is that we can not walk to stores, restaurants. We must drive. However, we can get anywhere in 10 minutes! That’s including downtown and all the cool neighborhoods.
I’ll spare you more details about the search but today we are trying to plan some details… so Rob was trying to setup the internet stuff and naturally there’s gonna be complications. Our house is on the same patch of land as the owner’s and we were told ours is “B” and hers is “A”. Well the internet company, Spectrum, has a different nomenclature so we are either “main house” or “A”? There was also a choice of “B” or “N/A” when the address was entered into Spectrum’s system. So anyway the point is you know this is just not going to be easy.
On top of that, when applying for our lease, Rob provided the name of a prior landlord who apparently complained about “scratched furniture” to our prospective landlord! Perhaps the guy is senile as the facts are incorrect since Rob never used any of that man’s furniture, also the final walkthrough went great and Rob got his whole security deposit back! And that man had given a good reference to Rob’s last landlord! The thing is Rob is like the ideal tenant too! This, btw, is classic for Rob—he always seems to get weird bad luck on things like this…so we are both wondering when we move in together whose luck will prevail- Rob’s or mine? I think I have regular luck which is way better than his bad luck.
As I write this, the plot thickens. That prior landlord also advised her to do a background check and mentioned something about Chicago…??? I think he should be locked up for slander! Unbelievable.
So also this house is next to a farm or something so the day we looked at it there was a huge potbelly pig in the yard eating some flowers. There can also be goats and ducks (they were in pics of the property) and there was a cat that was outside our kitchen pawing at the screen.
Crucial finds: grocery store nearby, H-E-B, seems acceptable. Also the best market I’ve ever seen, city center market, is a 12 minute drive. Also Jackalope bar in our neighborhood. And trail is maybe 1/2 mile away or so? Pretty close.
We took a 30 minute drive our last day to check out the town of San Marcos. The funniest part of that excursion was when I was discovering that beers are designated on an IBU scale which stands for International Bitterness Unit and so we were all about looking up our favorite beers’ IBUs and in the process of this (while drinking beer at a brewery) I started to talk about my beer’s BTU’s and Rob started laughing and I realized that I had used the term for British Thermal Units instead of IBU. Actual LOLs were happening.
Another observation in Austin: pretty much everyone*** has a Texas lone star decoration on the front of their homes. I started to count them and in two days I counted 21 of them.
*We did use our spreadsheet with our weighted preferences. It did provide some good discussions when we found we varied our ratings on certain criteria.
**We already signed the lease and mailed the security deposit so we should be good. The concern is just the poor reference from that landlord but hopefully that’s not enough to cause the owner to renege. Clearly there will be follow-ups as this is an ongoing issue.
***Hyperbole but you’d totally notice if you spent a day there.
Rational or Rash-ional?
Since we leave Monday night for Austin with the purpose of viewing potential rental homes and hopefully securing one for June 1, we are scrutinizing the listings even more carefully. Listings include Zillow, Homesnap, Craigslist, and those generated by Stacey’s algorithm (Stacey is a real estate agent helping us).
In order to help us make rational decisions, we setup a spreadsheet yesterday with criteria that are important to us, and weighted them, so we can rank each house we view and have each aspect get valued according to its importance. Make sense? I was DYING to do this weighted thing on the original spreadsheet I made a few months ago which was about what city to move to, but we didn’t ever get that far and the thing is I wasn’t savvy enough to now HOW to set it up! Fortunately Rob could create it in a few minutes!
Weights are subject to change. We also reserve the right to override any rational conclusions derived from this spreadsheet.
And truth is, although we plan to use this spreadsheet this week to compare homes, it is most likely that our impulses will drive our decisions even more than the spreadsheet. Which is too bad but expected for humans obv.
In general, it would be nice to find a “sweet spot” where we are pretty near city things and in a house with a bit of character, but still have a space to spread out and be able to unpack some stuff and pursue “projects” and host our kids comfortably at our house. In our price range, of course. So far it feels like we are either seeing homes in prime locations with some severe downsides or, as you move away from the city, expansive, gaudy, boring executive-style homes in the broader area. Are there in-betweens??
Random thoughts on homes
Started brainstorming about what I’d plop into my house just regardless of cost if I were just daydreaming. And then I was thinking about things I just could’t live with or would hate to live with.
So then I made a spreadsheet and you’re welcome I added columns for you to comment. I intend this to be a living document but no guarantees. We’re all fickle these days.
This Home, That Home, everywhere a Home Home
dirty snow which is the closest to green you’ll find
As if Zillow wasn’t good enough, I end up looking on Craigslist too for potential rental homes in Austin.* But Craigslist is, I admit, “kinda weird”, which I believe is the phrase Rob** used for it. However, I did once find a condo for rent on there that I moved into! I will forever point that out as my high point on Craigslist.
But I was thinking that a good 2 years have elapsed since I last searched for property on-line which is a LONG time in digital marketplace so I googled around and discovered Homesnap which seems to have some duplicate properties from Zillow, which makes sense, and behaves similarly, which is fine, but also it has a recommended phone app where you can take a picture of a place and it will automatically pull up all the details on it (whether for sale or rent). Will have to try that out.
We’ll be spending a few days in April down in Austin specifically to look-in-person and hopefully choose our next place of residence. I’m sure I won’t be excited or nervous at all so no need to pack the xanax. That was a joke.
In the meantime, I’m basking in what Paige described as my “victory lap” in Minneapolis, where I am welcoming the signs of spring ——->
Meanwhile, my building is informing me of what needs to be done in my apartment before I move which obviously is a whole lot of cleaning. The list is daunting and who exactly can get things like ovens and showers clean? The last page has an itemized list of all the ways I could fail along with the price they will charge me when I fail to meet their standards. For example, If microwave not clean they will charge…$35. Wow, $35! And I like this one: $50 per stain on the carpet. Oh! haha Excessive Odor Removal $350!
This terrifying list appears to be their way of ensuring we will give it our best shot. Am I buying more cleaning supplies? No, I’m lining up some cleaning service references…I’ve never been able to rid my shower of the water stains (which are extra triple bad in St. Louis Park which I attribute ultimately to the fact we live in a superfund site and really at least I know about that and I drink the water anyway as it’ll be something I’m unaware of that will likely kill me).
* In rereading that first sentence I think the tenses are all wrong but I’m not going to fix it I just want you to know I noticed.
** Rob is one of possibly two readers of my blog.
Facts, Figures & Frogs or Tallies & Toads
38
So we have obtained two bids from movers to take our stuff from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Austin, Texas. We have one from Atlas Moving (Alexander Van Lines) and United (Suddath). So keep in mind that this involved having the representative visit my apartment to assess its contents and then visit Rob’s 3-bedroom house to view its contents and listen to our input regarding what is going to move vs. what is not.
Besides providing a dollar estimate, they also provide overall weight of our stuff in pounds…. and the bids of the two competitors only differed by 38 pounds! Is that not astounding?!
35.7
Number of inches of snow we’ve had in February so far. Snowiest on record. Likely to also be "38” by the time February ends.
3
Today I decided to pool together and organize the contents of both bathrooms. We have three hair dryers and three tubes of antibiotic ointment.
Bathrooms aside, I’m pretty sure I also have three shovels, one of which is mini which I keep in the car in case I have to shovel my way out of parking space (see “35.7” above).
8
Number of sunblock bottles. Except during trips to exotic locales, they don’t get used a whole lot here in the godforsaken hellhole of MN. Plan to use more often in TX.
Eight is also the number of seconds for this Texas Toad to sing his thing.
Image from Wikipedia
Image from Wikipedia
What will survive?
I have so many stashes of fragile things. Mostly nature things. For example, yesterday I found a small box that had a few treasures. I thought maybe I’d get a good picture of this shell that has a crab poking out since already one of the legs has broken off and how in the world has it lasted years already? I suppose when I originally found this shell I didn’t know a wee crab was hidden inside. Later, he peered out, and just saw crumbled up junk in my luggage and is frozen to this day in a state of shock.
So I will just wrap this up in some bubble wrap with a bunch of other shells and delicate sea urchin husks, sea sponge (I do have one that’s years old! For real! I’ll post another pic below). This is just one little box among many. It’s sad that a lot of this stuff may not make the move in one piece. Or who knows, a whole box may get lost!
But let’s say they did. Daydreaming about how to have them visible in next home. Like a conveyer belt that runs along the wall which constantly updates its contents. Or some other ever-changing-display.
I need to read about crabs versus spiders. This sure looks like a spider with an exoskeleton to me.
I looked at the sponge under the microscope and it was like what you’d expect. Looked like shattered glass—it is dried up after all!
Correction: not shocked, just bored.
Chew on This
I was looking at my cereal box this morning with the three Rice Krispies guys and, not for the first time, I feel cereals need a big re-think in their design. You’ve got the Rice Krispies, Cheerios and other vintage classics that don’t change all that much which I guess is reasonable (if it ain’t broke..) but all the others have the same tired tropes going on with stupid mascots for kids or emphasizing wellness.
Not sure if this relates to Austin yet. We’ll see.
In school I designed a cereal where consumers submit their creative writing to the cereal’s website, people vote on the submissions, and then they get “published” on the cereal box.
Recently I came upon my physical mock-up I still have when I was packing boxes for our move.
So that’s one idea. Or, how about a line of cereals each with a theme: History Flakes, Science O’s, Civics Mix. Each box has informative articles about the topic. You could interview experts or feature research enterprises, etc.
How about a cereal which features crafts? There could be cut outs on the box itself you cut-out and build into airplanes or dolls, for example. If it were paper dolls you could include paper “clothes” inside the box.
How about Loving Languages cereal? Feature a different language every few months. Learn simple words and phrases.
Back to Rice Krispies and the 3 guys on the box. So I don’t know if they’re little people or what but they’re also 3 white guys. So of course we need more diversity. How about just an entire cereal called Non-Binary? It would be supportive of LBGTQ with information and personal submissions on the box. More on the website. And of course, the cereal itself would probably be rainbow colors. Unless that’s passé? Maybe there’s a more progressive option. Anyway.
Then if you want to be more controversial you just go ahead and have political cereal. So a line of chewy, crunchy bits with rotating design on the box maybe with all points of view of a controversial topic. So one box would have a bunch of concrete blocks covering the front: THE WALL. On the back would be points of view, pro and con. Then you just switch up the content every few months. Maybe consumers could choose the next topic themselves by voting on the website.
Then I wouldn’t need to find supplemental reading every day at breakfast anymore.
Cleaning up after ourselves
So I have started listening to some of Austin’s news and recently the big story is about the zebra mussels that are causing the water supply to taste like “rotten trash”. I only just finished reading “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” which spent quite a bit of time talking about these and other invasive species.
I can’t believe we’re still alive!
I was hearing again about how they are filter feeders and the water bodies they live in become crystal clear because the mussels have eaten up all the stuff in the water. Which got me thinking.
Could we adapt water-based filter feeders to the terrestrial arena…and get them to eat greenhouse gases?
Probably would take an awful lot of updates to the genotype. Besides the fact they live in the water so that’s one big hurdle, they also don’t eat greenhouse gases!
But then I realized that there already are microbes that DO eat greenhouse gases. Aha! So we just need to get them out of the deep sea and dot them throughout the terrestrial landscape. Seems to me we just have to use some of our CRISPR technology and embed the stretch of microbe DNA which eats greenhouse gases into a land creature.
Stepping back, I’m just guessing we’d work with animals not plants? I’m just guessing it’d be an easier blend but maybe I’m wrong. There’s insects but it’s already such a mess with bees dying and mosquitoes killing us and bed bugs and I just think it could get out of hand too easily.
First megafauna that comes to mind is humans but I’m ruling that out since everyone would freak out. OK next thought is dogs as they kind of go hand in hand with people. Ok fine, no to dogs and not even cats (more freaking out). So then I was thinking about what animals do you find in all urban areas? How about pigeons? Seems perfect choice!
But then actually, there are mushrooms (fungi) which we’ve been overlooking! They are actually more like us than any plant. And what I’m discovering (as I write this) is that they are already being harnessed (without gene editing) to do environmental cleanup.
Mushrooms are potential miracle workers, capable of cleaning up oil spills and radioactive contamination, filtering bacteria-tainted wastewater, speeding reforestation of clear-cut woodlands, boosting agricultural yields, controlling insect pests and treating ailments ranging from cancer and bird flu to diabetes and dementia.
I’ve had a growing interest in mushrooms the last couple years after discovering a nice patch of “chicken of the woods” mushrooms growing behind my apartment building. Thanks the the facebook group, Lichens, Mosses, Ferns & Fungi, I was brave enough to go ahead and EAT them!
Last Habitable State?
Easy enough for fun to see how big Minnesota is compared to Texas. I mean they’re both pretty big compared to Massachusetts, where I grew up.
Massachusetts looks deformed here but whatever, you get the idea.
But then I realized that if you follow my life trajectory, going from MA to MN to TX, then if I were to move out of Texas, I’d choose an even larger state. That would be… Alaska. NOT HAPPENING!! Way too cold. So what does this mean? It means that if we find Texas unsuitable we’d have to look abroad. Just using basic logic here, that’s all.
Slow Life
Rob informed me that comcast is not a provider we can continue to use in Texas. That’s fine but my email has been via comcast for years so I have to setup a new one and get everyone switched over.
Obviously, everything normal or easy is taken on Google. So I’ve decided on alliphonous.buckustus@gmail.com.
All the reasonable people are vociferously against it, which is everyone I’ve talked to. So naturally I’m sticking with it. What if I have to spell it out to someone? Well, then I will! It’s like the joy of slow food. Or Slow Life. Have you seen that video?
Even better is it has a Roman sounding flair which reminds of Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the skit with Biggus Dickus. If that’s not enough, it’s another reminder of the impermanence of everything and why not be impractical while there’s still time left (see previous post: EXCUSE ME?) ?
Excuse me?
So this an example of straying from the theme of blogging about the move. There’s several things knocking around my brain today. A co-worker recently sent an email to several people at the end of a work day. The sign-off was,
“Enjoy the remainder of your evenings”
It was startling, as in, wait, how many do I have left? I was also saddened to think I was likely the only person to notice this alternative interpretation… because everyone is “too busy” which is totally true but I wish people didn’t stay so serious all the time.
Which reminds me: we should only have to work 4 days a week. Everyone’d be happier and we’d wreck the planet more slowly. If any economist has good reasons to dispute this proposal then I’m all ears.
Last night I dreamt that when I looked out the window of a high-rise building, a school of oversized-blue tang swam up in unison to the beach. Then I noticed a whale up on side of a mountain and the weirdness grew until a huge wave came over the mountain and I ran to the interior of the building and then it proceeded to get pummeled by the giant wave. I think the dream was inspired by the spotting of oarfish near Japan.
Last happy note is that I decided to replace my Vikings football horn sound with a new sound on my customizable car horn that Rob made for me.:
Baby Stroller Mystery
What have we done
A couple of weeks ago I first noticed this baby stroller a few steps off a busy pedestrian/bike trail. Seemed odd but I just went on by.
It was still there the next 3 or 4 times I jogged by since then and I can’t help but imagine there’s a dead frozen baby in there and I’m part of a vast number of people who just passed it by, like a Kitty Genovese story in slow motion.
Dogs
I still can’t think about Nimbus “face on” because thinking about him dying is too painful! Even though it was essentially old age, there were seizures and things at the end that I refuse to fully recall. If you skip that part, oh and the part when he bit the substitute mail man, and all the other times he was out of control….well he was great and here’s a couple pics.
It’s been really nice not having the burden of dog walks 3 times a day.
ButI sometimes I think about hot dog dogs and how cute they are. Only the short-haired ones.
Having a dog is a huge responsibility and such a pain a lot of the time! I don’t think I need to go into the details. It just is and that’s why so many people are choosing to get cats (which I wouldn’t want).
On top of that, Rob is one of the many people who don’t really consider hot dog dogs…desirable. My daughter, Paige, suggested that we solve this by getting 2 dogs so the hot dog dog would clearly be “mine” and Rob could associate with the other one.
While I do want to enjoy the outdoors in the move to a more climate-friendly city, not sure I want to deal with the dog thing now that we’re both “empty-nesters”.
However, I am fairly certain that at least one of my daughters would be more likely to visit if there were a dog on the premises.
Thinking about moving
Thought it might be fun to have a bit of a journal about the time before, during, and after the move from Minneapolis to Austin, Texas. Maybe just for me? Or if anyone is interested in the ins and outs or mistakes and random events that we encounter.
The “we” part? I’m moving with Rob, my boyfriend of 2 years or is it 3? He keeps track of that better than me. Anyway, we don’t live together yet, so with this move we’ll be making the transition to sharing a household. Merging cool kitchen gadgets I expect will be one of many life improvements with that merger.
We just endured the polar vortex which I memorialized with this picture of ice forming inside the window.
It was during that cold stint that we hired a moving company to come and provide us a bid. He had to visit Rob’s house and then my apartment. Still waiting for the bid and plan to get a couple more of those before choosing a mover.
Meantime, Rob was able to find a real estate agent that is willing to share listings of rental spaces that are available! While we aren’t moving until end of May timeframe (when our leases expire) it is still useful and fun to view what kind of options exist.
We’ve also started packing boxes, starting mostly with what’s in “storage”. We’re going the extreme nerd route where each box has a number on it which is logged digitally along with description of contents.
I’d say about 80-90% of my stuff is art materials, homemade “art”, and collections of shells and rocks.
Sometimes I think about how the entire environmental encyclopedia of knowledge and behaviors relating to MN (weather mostly) will now be turned on its head and I guess I will have to be ready to deal with snakes or cockroaches or whatever instead. And extreme heat stress symptoms instead of the familiar sting and numbness of pre-frostbite.
Meantime, Paige, my daughter, is already asking me about getting a dog and when… and frankly I thought it was kind of nice not having one right now (our family dog, Nimbus, died of old age about a year ago). You know, I have so much to say about this I think I’ll just make it a blog post of its very own.
I used a macro lens that I can stick on my phone!
Anything else I can “DESIGN” please?!