Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Driveway Grand Opening

Sure, most people can use their new driveway after a week, but Gary always doubles down. We parked the cars in the street for two weeks.

Now, finally, the cars can drive in to the garage.

Of course, this photo is just staged. He kept the tape uncut, because only  OUR cars are allowed on the driveway. He says, “If trucks park on our driveway in the first month it will crack - I read it on the internet.”  So we have to move one of the stakes every time we drive on our driveway until the end of the month.

Saint Louis Museums Not Safe for Puppies

There is a video in the Saint Louis Science Center that discusses the science behind the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse.

The science center video is narrated, and to add some drama to the dry theory of why the bridge fell, it tells the story of the last man to drive on the bridge, which you can read here. Short version: man is driving a family dog to his daughter, bridge begins to collapse, man runs ... and the narration ends with the dog dying. No details. Just, oh, that dog we mentioned, kids? It died.

Evidently introducing children to the mistreatment of dogs is a Saint Louis thing. I saw this at the new Arch museum:

Update on Dennis Day, Mousketeer

I know you come here for the latest news on the murder of Dennis Day, Mouseketeer.

A suspect has been arrested: a former handyman. Details are sparse but evidently he used Dennis Day's credit cards immediately after Dennis went missing.

The suspect is quoted elsewhere as saying, "This is messed up."

I can easily see myself with a spouse with dementia, at the mercy of a handyman, without any of the protections Disney fame would provide, so this story speaks to me.

Moon Misapprehensions

Moon week! Anniversary of launching to the moon!

I have done nothing for the last week but watch Apollo space program documentaries. My brother would say this is because we were not allow to stay up until ten to watch the lunar landing.

There is a problem with having been a child during the Apollo program: if you learn something that is wrong you can't shake it, even as an adult who obsessively watches every moon shot documentary there is.

I visited Johnson Space Center once when we lived in Houston, because my father worked there, and somehow in my child mind I decided that all of NASA was located in that one building where he worked. Granted, Mission Control was in that building, but I always thought that the modules were built there and the rockets blasted off from there. I think part of my confusion was that they re-named Cape Canaveral to be Cape Kennedy, and for years I thought Cape Kennedy was the launch site in Florida and Cape Canaveral was the launch site in Houston, you know, outside the building where Daddy worked.

I am fairly sure I asked where the rockets were, and he said "very far away," and I assumed that meant the next exit on the highway or something.

And I still can't shake it. I'll see the launch pad and think "Houston," I'll see people waiting for a launch sweltering in the Florida sun and I'll think "Houston." 

I know I should go back, especially since they've reopened Mission Control. Perhaps that'll get me straightened out.

New Arch Grounds and Museum

The Arch grounds have been improved.

• Thankfully there is no zip line, as we discussed.
• There is a better Arch entrance.

The old entrance is now the exit. It's still too easy to fall into.

• The pokey bridge over the highway has been replaced with a landscaped wedge that utterly hides the highway.
• The Arch museum is now huge.

 The old Arch museum was entirely submerged, and small enough to fit between the Arch legs: 630 feet. It had a theater where you could watch a film on the building of the Arch, and air conditioning, and an old editorial cartoon arguing that the Arch looks like a giant croquet wicket.

The new Arch museum stretches from the highway to the Arch, and it must be ten times larger than the old museum. It’s big enough to include:

• a cafeteria where they serve toasted ravioli
• a giant sideways floor map of the US
• a charming exhibit detailing the architect's original plan for the Arch grounds, which included a "campfire theater," statue gardens, and zip lines (kidding)

It is not big enough to include all the regret for taking the West from the Native Americans and Mexico. The museum designers finally dealt with the ugliness of our national expansion in what was formerly called the Jefferson National Expansion monument. At least the Louisiana purchase part of the country was paid for, everything else was grabbed from someone else.

Even as a Saint Louisian, I learned a lot. I didn't know (or had forgotten) that there was a steamboat fire that took out much of the riverfront and sparked a cholera epidemic. I didn't know that the Chouteau family didn't live on Chouteau, or any of the rest of the Chouteau family drama. I understand now how you can use a barrel to drink Mississippi mud water. I still don't understand why we flew the flag of Spain for a day after we were bought from the French in the Louisiana purchase.

The only improvement I would recommend is a spot where the air conditioning from the museum is blasted through the ceiling and flutters the grass to cool off the actual park.

Summer Heat at the Arch

I knew it was going to be a hot day (over 90 Farenheit /32 Celsius), but I am so sick of being inside that I thought the heat wouldn't bother me. We went on with our plan to visit the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park ...

...which has thankfully just been renamed the Gateway Arch National Park.

I was fine walking the four blocks from the parking garage to the front doors of the new arch museum, but then we also wanted to see if the roof of the Old Cathedral had been repaired. It had been ripped up by a high wind on April 15, on the same day as the Notre Dame fire. We couldn't tell, since we were on the ground. If only there had been a high observation point nearby would could have taken some kind of tram up to ... oh.

After that we went down to the riverfront to see if the steamboats were running (nope, river too high for boats). That put us four blocks plus one national park away from our car. We got back by darting from shade tree to shade tree - and the shade trees were all newly planted during the park rebuild last year, so the give as much shade as a child's umbrella.

The heat didn't keep Gary from testing to see how hot it was by doing a typical tourist activity: touching the metal arch on a hot sunny day.

He reported that yes, it did feel very very hot, but he is a man and he can take it.

Clothes Shopping

I went out shopping for clothes, because my personal fashion pendulum has swung again.

Three years ago I turned against all shirts with patterns and buttons. They all looked messy and the collars were always askew. I gave away anything buttoned. Every shirt I own now is in a solid color with a scoop neck that I can pull over my head.

Recently two things have happened:

1. My plump little wattle has morphed into a turkey wattle terminating in a stack of neck rings echoed by the scoop collar and
2. I have been watching old episodes of The West Wing and admiring C.J.'s style.

Before and After

"I could do that," I thought, "I could get a white shirt and pair it with a suit and a shell and leave the top three buttons open."

Because that look is TIMELESS, not dated at ALL, only of course it is. Still, I wanted a shirt with buttons and a collar to hide my neck, if only in profile.

After two days of shopping I have grown to appreciate my current wardrobe, because everything I have tried on either flattens me or plumps me in the wrong spots and somehow I gain thirty pounds in the dressing room. It's like I've been living in a clothing bubble, surrounded by friendly flattering clothes, and now I've had to meet clothing that hates me and does not share my views.

After two days I ended up with three shirts, none of which look at all like the shirt above, only two of which have buttons, but at least I look like a human in them.

Trolley

About a million years and 51 million dollars ago, one businessman pushed for Forest Park and the Delmar Loop district to be connected by an old-school Saint Louis trolley, as in "Clang, clang, clang went the" etc.

We rode it on Saturday, when our expedition to see the new museum under the Arch was waylaid when we realized half a million other people were at the Arch grounds for the Fair.

I was excited to think I might be on the same trolley my fifteen-year-old Mom might have used to chat up boys. Mom and her friend Carleen would ride the trolley from one end to the other and practice the art of conversation. She said the boys who came in on the Forest Park Stop were the best, especially the ones who had been visiting the art museum. Sadly, though, it seems these are some imported Australian trolleys. They are lovely, if not original.

The tracks are not original, either. There are original tracks in other parts of the city, but the ground had to be dug up for these.

So, people in the Delmar Loop area and the Forest Park area had to suffer through streets being torn up, tracks laid, electric wires hung, cement poured, cement not being walked on for a month, hosing down the cement every day, and on top of that they were being taxed for ten years on top of that.

They. Hate. The. Trolley.

1. For quite some time, people who parked on Delmar would have their side mirrors clipped off the by the passing trolley.
2. The trolley only goes ten miles an hour, so that means if you need to actually need to get somewhere on Delmar, you have to drive ten miles an hour. I heard the honking as cars waited behind the trolley as it plodded up a hill. Not just one car honking. A block-full of Delmar Boulevard honking.
3. And then, later, as we drove through an intersection, a women waiting at the light leaned out the window of her car and shrieked, "YOU WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY!" at the trolley.

I felt bad for the trolley. I am certain no one treats trolleys this way in Australia.

Pompeii

Last week, while I was on "vacation," Gary didn't wake up before 2 pm and I stalked off on my own. I ended up at the Science Center and saw the Pompeii exhibit.

You walk through the statues of gods and goddesses, elect to view the Phallus Corner or not with its Pompeian phallus wind chimes, and then get a taste of what the earthquake was like with a movie complete with surround sound and a fog machine. Then the fog lifts to reveal a museum guide, standing in sillhouette, who tells you not to touch the dead bodies.

Technically, though, you'd be touching the volcanic ash encasing the dead body.

I was wondering why I felt so much more uncomfortable in this exhibit compared to the Body Worlds exhibit. You would think both groups were equal, just that one group had nothing over its organs and one had too much. I think it's because the skinned Body Worlds bodies were posed dancing, or enjoying leisure activities, while these bodies were  in genuine raw terror. It made me sad.  Not a good exhibit for the kiddies.

Staycation Movies

In addition to seeing Kinky Boots The Musical the Movie, we saw three other movies, because it isn't 90+ degrees in the movie theater.

Spiderman: Far from Home - this caused me a little emotional pain because it was filmed on location we'd been to during an earlier, more enjoyable vacation in London, and the contrast was great, given that I was not Far From Home. Still, I only fell asleep one time, and that's saying a lot for a superhero movie. (Nap time: Battle with the Fire monster.)

Annabelle Comes Home - (Again with the "Home" theme.) This was clearly this was part of a deal I made with Gary that if I went to see this dreck he would go with me to see Yesterday. If you don't like scary movies, you should go see Annabelle Comes Home. It is relaxing. I didn't even jump once. My right foot might have twitched in one scene.

SPOILERS AHEAD. The secret is that they used the same rhythm for every scene that was supposed to scare you:

1. Music swells
2. Creepy scenario
3. Nothing happens
4. Music fades
5. Wait three beats
6. Something jumps out

If I had not just erroneously consumed a caffeinated beverage I would have been lulled to sleep. (Nap time: Any scene in the basement.)

Yesterday - First off, the theater was full of people, not empty seats, so that was a good sign. Second, the crowd laughed at the same spots I did, and Gary laughed at the same spots I did, and that's a good sign as well because I sometimes see the joke coming and laugh early. All the jokes surprised me. I wasn't sure I would like it, because critics didn't rave about it.

Those critics seem to complain that it was "silly" and did not do enough to honor the Beatles and their "legacy." Happily, no one in our theater was in the mood for a Beatles documentary. (Nap time: any rom-com scene.)

Kinky Boots the Musical: the Movie

Last weekend we went to a local cinema to see a filmed production of Kinky Boots, the stage musical based on the 2005 movie.

I suppose I expected a one-camera shot of a stage where a production of Kinky Boots was taking place. Instead, there were many cameras and close-ups and the like.

In addition, the actors all wore diminutive forehead microphones that were painted to match their skin tones. They looked like they shared an outbreak of forehead warts. Don’t actors have to learn how to project anymore? That surprised me.

I also didn’t expect to see reaction shots of the audience. It took me entirely out of the movie. Instead of feeling like I was sharing a communal experience, I felt like a scientist observing a London audience who was really enjoying a performance I did not attend. 

That is until the finale which of course had me in tears, but ... not full-on sobbing. 

Odd. Don’t know if I would rush to do it again.

Pilgrimage to Big Joel's: Deer

Big Joel's Safari has a new feature called the Deer Encounter. You are allowed to go into an enclosure where there are several deer who are so familiar with humans that they will let you walk among them. I knew about it because a staffer told me personally because we were one of two couples there at that time, because there was an impending thunderstorm. (I asked Big Joel himself: he said it had been very busy earlier in the day. Everyone else was avoiding the rain.)

The sign on the deer enclosure warned me that I needed to walk slowly and calmly, and not shout, and the deer might even let me touch them, but I couldn't touch their antlers. I slowly crept in and was greeted by a staffer who pointed to a spotted deer lying down 10 yards away. The staffer said the spotted deer was pregnant.

"Won't that make her cranky?" I asked. "I've never been pregnant, but I understand it makes ladies very cranky."

No. It makes ladies hungry. I was just coming into the pregnant deer's peripheral vision, when the deer hopped up, came over to me, and bumped my jumbo plastic cup of feed with her nose. And then for ten minutes I fed her. She chewed, bumped the cup, I put more food in my hand, repeat. I was unable to pet her, because I held the cup with one hand and she ate out of my other hand, and she was running the show and there would be only eating: none of this petting nonsense.

I really wanted my husband to see it, but animal behaviorist Gary was protesting the unnaturally tame deer. He turned his back on the enclosure and tried to bond with the naturally skittish deer behind the fence. I couldn't call out to him because of the no screaming rule.

He eventually turned around after I was set upon by two more dark brown deer. The spotted deer was still knocking the cup, so one of the brown deer decided that she would communicate her desire for food by chewing on the front of my shirt. So then I had two deer to feed, and still no hands to pet them with. The third deer was not interested in the grain I was handing out; she just wanted to be nearby to taste some flesh when my body fell to the ground and was trampled.

Eventually, when I was down to the dregs, Gary turned around and came over and consented to feed the deer so I could pet them. He then insisted we walk on a gravel perimeter path to the other side of the enclosure so I could see the deer he had bonded with. All three deer trotted next to me like they were my pet deer now. "Take us home so we can enjoy some onion soup or whatever else you have left over." Eventually after three minutes the two brown deer gave up. I had to pointedly put my hand over the feed cup and shake my head sadly at the spotted deer before she left my side. But for a good twenty minutes I felt like I had my own deer.

Pilgrimage to Big Joel’s: Goats

Gary has finally recovered from the driveway experience and feels safe leaving the house. I really expected him to stay at home and nurse the driveway all week, especially because he read that you are supposed to water a new driveway up to ten times a day. (Evidently the longer it takes to dry the fewer cracks you will have.) He's also rounding up all numbers. If he heard that you don't walk on it for a day then we can't walk on it for a week. You can't park on it for a week rounds up to you can't park on it for a month.

We took our yearly trip to Big Joel's Safari Park and Petting Zoo, where all goats are either pregnant or nursing. My favorite was one that sounded just like a screaming goat. I had no choice but to scream back at it.

Goat: "AAAAAAA!"
Me: "AAAAAAA!"

After a few minutes of this, I heard two staffers. "Do we have another one?" "No, it's that lady."

I felt a little proud that I had mimicked a screaming goat so well, until I spoke to one of the staffers.

1. There is no sub-species of goat called a screaming goat, I was thinking of fainting goats.
2. The goat I was parroting was a momma goat who was calling for her child (clearly because she was full with milk).

I was worried that I had come between a mother and child.

"Enh, she'll figure it out."

There must be 100 goats at Big Joel's this month. I think they sell the goats at the end of the season. I could buy that mother and child and set them free in our yard.

Spam Email

I’m pretty impressed with Charter mail’s spam filter, especially when I’ve missed an email and I have to dirty my hands sorting through the trash in my junk email folder. When I look there it seems I get spam every hour.

That’s why I was surprised to see that some spam made it through all the defenses and landed in my actual inbox. Even better, it was a “sextortion” scam.  

“Subject: seen you Mastrubating” 

I can truly say that I have never spent even a moment “mastrubating.” 

“Hi, I'm a hacker and programmer, I know one of your password is: [followed by a ten year old password]”

I am a programmer as well, plus I know the difference between a comma and a semicolon. Additionally, I would have added an “s” after “password” because otherwise the sentence makes no sense.

This is followed by a bit of terminology, and then the big gotcha:

"I collected all your private data, recorded few videos of you (through your webcam) and I RECORDED YOU SATISFYING YOURSELF!!!"

Well! Good for me. What kind of "mastrubator" would I be if I couldn't satisfy myself?

What follows are threats that:

1. This "mastrubation" video will be posted on the dark web where "very sick people" are
2. My contacts will see me "mastrubating" (Hi Friends!)
3. The "mastrubation" (it never gets old!) video will be sent to social media

... followed by a promise that I can save myself by sending "exactly" $800 in bitcoin to a specific address in "3 days time."

"It's a very good offer, compared to all that HORRIBLE shit that will happen if you don't pay!"

Well, bring that horrible shit on, because I Googled the Bitcoin exchange rate, and that is $320,000 dollars.

New Restaurant

I ate a big pile of crab at Red Lobster. I tore those crustaceans up. Gary had to dodge claws. Crab juice was flying. Eventually a pound of crab was in my belly and a pile of shells were on the table.

I asked the waiter, if one day I became unable to crack open the crabs, was there an option on the menu of pre-shelled crab with butter.

"Nope," he said, and then volunteered that he was sure Gary would always be glad to shell my crabs for me. I lied and said, "Of course!" But of course: not.

However, it got me thinking: how about an all-crab restaurant in which bare-chested waiters come by with crab legs? Then as you sit there daintily, the waiter takes the crab in one massive hand and crushes it like a beer can. Then he deftly sorts out the crab meat and arranges it on your plate.

And then he dips it in butter and feeds it to you. No. That's too far. I just need the shell gone.

I also need a name. It's down to: Exoskeleton, Crab Kings, or Mussels.