Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: November 2025

  • TWIL: Hot Pockets don’t come with the sleeves any more

    Hot Pockets. Essentially high-fat hand pies, sold so you could pop them in the microwave and eat them in your car. And because it’s a pastry and should be crispy, they had cunning little origami quasi-metal sleeves that would supposedly crisp the pastry in the microwave without making the microwave spark. Well, now we have…

  • Brave!

    Two brave things today: 1. Braving the foul weather to go to the symphony for Beethoven’s Seventh. The weather really is vile: rain snow and sleet all in one day 2. Wearing a half capelet sweater thing with a built in bra to the symphony. This one’s white; mine is black. I don’t think I…

  • Plumber saga comes to a close

    The plumber arrived and seemed bent on saving Gary money, which of course goes against everything Gary stands for.

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 11/27/2025

    This week Tulips 2025 went from this: … to this.

  • Plumber 2025 Bullets

    We are waiting for the plumber, and I realize (now that I am nearing my dotage) that there are few things more distressing than waiting for a plumber the day before Thanksgiving. There are two possibilities. Either way it is a waste of a day. The basement needs to be tidied up: I think I’ll…

  • Three years in my wig falls off

    It was going to happen eventually. I was out doing the fall garden cleanup, and I propped the shovel against a tree. I bent down to the tree roots, then stood up just as the shovel fell. The handle fell right on my wig and there I was, with my wisps exposed to the neighborhood.…

  • Scene from the plumbing front

    After four straight days of the recommended two weeks of drain fly treatment, Gary broke down and called a plumber. Oddly, he talked at length about every other plumbing issue we have instead of the drain flies. Before the end of the call he handed me the phone and solicited plumbing requests from me. All…

  • TWIL: How to send a telegraph by way of the Northern lights

    Since the Northern lights visited this month it seems we now have a daily weather alert about solar flares or increased aurora activity. None quite panned out, though. The massive consecutive solar flares hit us during the day, or made stunning displays just for the Yukon. (I know I’m being greedy. I’ve already had more…

  • I have been fooled often enough already

    I’m preparing for the next symphony visit, and realized I have a new pair of brown pants that really need a brown shoe. I checked the shoe rack that has the pre-pandemic shoes, just to see if there might be one. Miraculously there was. Right color, right heel, just right. I was literally dusting them…

  • Symphony: New Powell Symphony Hall, the Firebird

    There has been a major renovation of our symphony hall for the last two years. They did an excellent job of keeping the historic grand old building and adding modern space. The modern space has a few regrettable spots where the floor slopes down and then rises unexpectedly. so it’s a little disorienting. That might…