ArtieShaw

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Under cabinet manual jar opener. It’s flat and mounts under your cabinet of choice. Easy to use, but also easy to forget it’s there! I sometime find myself jar in hand and half-way to wherever my husband is before I remember that I no longer need his skills.

Electric candle lighter. Rechargeable lighter with long neck. Eliminates the need for matches or standard lighters. The noise it makes does scare one of the cats, though. I haven’t tried it on campfires yet, but I think that was something the ad said it could do.

Chicago suburbs. It’s sort of an interconnected area, so this takes place over two adjoining towns.

There was a very public and stupid feud that took place between two middle aged men. Some of it played out in real life and some was documented on that now defunct website, Topix. One of them had been close friends with the the police officer who was convicted of killing at least one wife. I think he was also a cop. In any case, he was very vocal in defending Drew and anything the other guy said about the murder trial really seemed to get his goat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Peterson

The other guy claimed to be connected with the Chicago outfit. Or the cop claimed he was. I don’t remember.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Outfit

Basically, it was two vaguely mobbed up guys in their 50s engaging in a very public and embarrassing battle of fists and wits in an otherwise unassuming suburb. They would trade insults on Topix, get into slap fights with each other at the local supermarket, and generally just behave like leaded gasoline sniffing idiots. Neither could just walk away from it. Both used their real full names.

$70k USD - 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 1400sq ft., 0.3 acre lot, two stories and a detached garage. The interior needs plenty of non-cosmetic work (e.g. - new flooring)

$75k USD - 2 bed, 1 bath, 800sq ft., 0.15 acre lot; newly redone floors, electric and paint.

After that, there’s about 10 more in the 125-150K range.

I watched the Gormenghast miniseries on the Space Channel many many years ago and eventually read the books. They were interesting. Not something I’d want to revisit, but definitely weird.

It’s time to pay the price.

I like some of the names from Puritan New England.

Cutting Moody

Tristram Coffin

I like some of the names from Puritan New England.

Cutting Moody

Tristram Coffin

Yes! Let your imagination run riot.

The Netherlands is in an interestingly unique position when it comes to rising sea levels. They’ve been fighting the sea (and winning) for centuries. I’m sure they’ll be at the forefront for engineering future sea incursions.

Having guys make me mix tapes.

Anyway, this one really cute guy at college had an epic cassette collection and he was also artistically talented so he made custom covers/inserts for each one. The original tape is long gone, but somewhere I still have my favorite cassette cover that also includes the hand-printed play list.

He had other excellent skills, so I eventually married him.

Once, and only once, the dream ended with me deciding to enter the mystic portal and me subsequently finding myself standing alone in the hallway of a Hampton Inn in Salt Lake City at 3:00am.

I was in my jammies. No socks, no room key, no phone. I contemplated many options to get myself out of the situation, but they were all objectively bad. The only high point of the experience is that the breakfast bar hadn’t opened in the lobby, so this remains something shared between only me and the night clerk. Neither of us were happy, but she was wearing more clothing.

My main takeaways for hotel stays and dreams:
-jammies must have pockets
-jammies must have full coverage
-spare key cards are in the pockets
-never enter the mystic portal that you summoned

Mystic portals: never again

Lentil soup. The only fresh ingredient is the greens (and you can freeze them to use later). The finished soup can be frozen.

2 cups black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 28- ounce can crushed tomatoes
2 cups water
3 cups of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped

1. Boil the lentils for 20 minutes, drain and set aside.
2. Saute the onion until soft
3. Add everything else except for the greens; bring to a simmer
4. Stir in the greens and cook for another couple of minutes
5. Adjust seasoning

Not so much an etymology, but how it was used in pop culture:

Our local paper used to publish a cartoon and poem every fall. The piece was called Injun Summer, and it was printed every October from 1907-1992.

It’s very much a relic of its era, which is to say “it was weird; really fucking weird.” The image is lovely. The text is an old man telling a young boy a totally made up story. It’s folksy, wistful and nostalgic. It talks about the past and how native spirits (literally ghosts) return to the land each fall. It’s also written in the vernacular of what an old man in 1907 might sound like.

Personally, I don’t think the complaints about racism were what caused them to stop printing it. I think it was the weirdness that just didn’t appeal to anyone under the age of 50 (in 1992!).

The fist link shows the image with text. The second shows how it would have looked in print.

http://www.sewwug.org/images/injun_summer_2.pdf

https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-history-of-john-t-mccutcheons-1907.html

There’s an older form that goes back to at least the 1970s when fuel efficient Japanese cars started to become popular in the US: “Rice burners.”

There was some made-in-America angst at the time because of the oil crisis, coupled with some quality issues that made these cars more appealing. The phrase was definitely used pejoratively. I can remember my dad muttering about it well into the '80s.

My family always pronounced it “chewing them down,” so I was surprised to see it written the first time. I was probably in college.

The thing about Canada geese for me is the weird little poos. I don’t mind the aggression, the flocking behavior, or any of the other antisocial nonsense that they’ve adopted from their namesake country.

It’s the poos. They linger around for weeks.

I could do without those hammerhead fuckers. They’re invasive in our area, eat the regular earthworms, and really hard to kill.

I also immediately thought of hedgehogs.

That’s awful! I’ve heard that tinnitus is an absolute misery.