Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: March 2025

  • New Word for the Day: Anodyne

    Someone at work casually sniffed and described something as “anodyne” and of course I got all excited, because I have never used this word. Another new word? Hit me up. Anodyne is strange in that there are two definitions, and they seem to have very little in common. an·o·dyne /ˈanəˌdīn/ adjective not likely to provoke…

  • TWIL: The return of the pickles

    This is actually a callback to a previous TWIL: the one about the pickles on the median. It’s been over a month and a half with no pickles. Yesterday the news dropped on the Facebook site: there’s a new jar of pickles in town. Reaction is subdued, though. This new jar of pickles seems to…

  • Whose Live Anyway?

    Went out last night to watch a live performance at the Factory in Chesterfield. The Factory is very airy. I felt very confident that there’s no Covid fluttering down into my face. The show I watched with Friend #3 and Friend Anne was a live offshoot of the improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway…

  • Alarming change in Ticketmaster

    I am going to a show tonight, and for some reason, my eyes landed on the Ticketmaster terms and conditions. Essentially, it says it’s not their fault if you catch Covid. It makes me wonder when this showed up and when it will go away.

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 3/27/2025

    Okay – a challenge again. I am up for the glass, and I don’t know how I’ll do on the ellipses. Totally using tracing paper and carbon paper. Don’t care.

  • Getting car work done

    As I have said before, I need to start taping Gary. Last fall the Mini people said there was a recall on the electric Mini Coopers. Batteries may catch fire. Fire.The thing I fear most. Fire in the garage. especially. I can already see the Disaster Autopsy episode regarding the Great Saint Louis Fire. At…

  • Vignettes

    Vignettes from Gary’s visit to the allergist. She looked at his back and said, “This looks like psoriasis.” Yes, it does, but Gary explained the dermatologist had run four biopsies, and each came back as Not Psoriasis. (Saint Louisians of a particular age will remember Patty Stallings, who was wrongly imprisoned for infanticide because half…

  • How to do your taxes with ease

    Even though someone else does our taxes, it takes me an afternoon to assemble all the information, and even then the adorable tax lady has to call me and ask for whatever page I mislaid or form I forgot, because it’s a new form, just for this year. Finally, after years of this, I have…

  • TWIL: Aniiiiiiimals in spaaaaace

    Lots of space news recently, with 50% unsuccessful lunar landings and the stranded shuttle astronauts. I know I take the space program too much to heart — if anyone wanted to low-key trigger me they could change my Outlook alert to the NASA coms beep — but it made me think, why do we need…

  • A spoiler-free, and as such, cryptic post

    Seriously, this was the best Emmy-worthy acting I’ve seen in a long time.