I had a nap dream in which I realized I had left the steaks in the shopping bag that went in the tunnel to the garage. I woke and realized that I had no memory of putting the steaks where they should go - and even though this was yesterday, I would have recalled. Checked the bag in the tunnel. It had steaks.
While I am grateful to my brain for that, a bit more timely notice would be appreciated in the future.
Entering the botheration part of the week, where it’s just one thing after the other. Of course, it’s always one thing after the other, unless time is out of joint and the sequence is rejiggered. If that was the case, would you have to rejigger it again, or would a jiggering suffice?
If it happened for everyone, I suppose they’d blow the sirens to indicate the jiggering, but what would you do? Write down the out-of-sequence events that had already happened, and how they went, in case you had to do them again? It would be annoying, for example, to have a podcast at 7 PM, but you did it already at 3 PM, and it went well, and then you had to do it again and you didn’t know whether everyone else had already done it, because they didn’t have to jigger in different time zones.
Something to think about, maaannnn.
No, I haven’t been into the Work Gummies.
You know, the Work Gummies. Some companies sent THC gummies to our office in hopes of publicity. I wonder if they’ll take out ads. I looked up the prices, and they’re expensive - you can get a good bottle of scotch for the price of a bag, and there’s actual experience to be had in the act of consumption, not passive staring at the wall waiting for the candy you ate to give you fuzzy euphoria.
Let’s see, what was today . . . more hazy skies from the fires somewhere. Empty office, big surprise. Full gym, actual surprise, with only one panter / grunter letting everyone know he was WORKING OUT. The sprinkler repair guy came and fixed everything for a lot less money than the bid I got from the first guy - he said the problem might be the vacuum breaker had been ruined during the blowout, and needed replacement. Huge bid.
The guys who did the blowout where dismissive of that possibility instantly, quoting the PSI they used and the exact ratings of my device, and so I asked them to take a look. The guy said it was a gasket, which was about 1/450th the cost. Now the sprinkler system is ready for the rest of the summer, insufficient as it really is. The chick-a-chick pop-ups just don’t soak like an oscillating fan fed by a hose that’s running down a long steep hill - that baby has pressure and it’s high and wide. Thanks to it my lawn is better than it’s been in a long time, except for the dead spots in the backyard which are cursed and will not sprout. I’d be happy if there was spurge or other weeds in the dog-made holes, just because they’re green.
So: another account of an internet peregrination, as we go . . .
I was going through some ads - yeah, I know, I know - and came across an encouragement to serve malted milk at your child's next party. No one ever served malted milk at any parties I went to. Why? Everyone loved malted milk. But somehow we thought of a "malt" as a "shake," which was basically a glass of melted ice cream.
I can’t tell you the last time I had a malt. Back in college I used to eat once a week, if not more, at a place called Annie’s Parlour, and in retrospect it’s a miracle I didn’t weight 200 pounds. The hamburgers were great - I had the Plaza Burger, named after a Wisconsin place; dark bun, onions, sour cream - and the fries bounteous and fresh. Hand-cut, skin-on, deep-fried to perfection. And of course a maltshake, which they always delivered first to ruin your appetite.
Not a trace of the place today.
Nor can you find the 400 bar, on the same block. Good dive. We can go back in time and see how the block lost its charm.
Annie’s still exists in Dinkytown, though. This led me to a search in the archives to find the first reference to Dinkytown in the paper. The name of the neighborhood has always been something of a mystery, and my theory - probably wrong, but possibly right - has entered lore, thanks to Wikipedia. I found a housing ad in 1948. That’s the first mention in the paper.
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Looking around the rest of the want ad pages, I realized that this is a sociological gold mine. The things you learn here you’d never learn elsewhere. People put ads in the paper declaring that they wanted a room, and I guess people who had a room called them up. This is typical: |
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The Norwegian Counsel General is asking for a room in the want ads?
Here’s the location today.
The view from the consulate is an old Philips 66:
The NGC is Eivind J. Heiberg, formerly of the Sons of Norway. He was born in Halden, which looks like a lovely town. (That's the source of the "there" photo above.)
There are two pieces of public art in an adjacent square. The first is a family only partially deformed by abstraction:
The second sums up the cultural poverty of the entire post-war era, Nordic division.
Art.
O the joy it brings.
Instead of murals, there’s the universal language of the wall-letterers.
Huh. Just married. Hope they found a flat.
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