Politics and Phytobezoars

This post is woefully outdated, but I couldn't let it, half-written, go to waste.

Today is my last day of staycation. I should do this more often. I attended a four-day German genealogy conference, binge-watched the current season of Real Housewives of New York, made soup and lasagne, planted some new things in the garden, continued my work on cleaning out the Etsy closet, worked on the excel doc of the family vacation duties (mom day concierge, mom night concierge, cooking, cleaning) and had a great heart-to-heart with the oldest neph. I did not talk to the mama, except once.

Last week's German genealogy conference led to some awesome discoveries. I found my 5th great grandmother's death record, and did some research on her surname. It's so uncommon that only one fellow can really be her father. I still need to prove it by finding her birth record, with the help of a researcher. The putative dad is a guy who wrote many books  under at least 13 pseudonyms. Even though he is primarily known by one name, that name is so rare that I wonder if he invented it. Could one of the other names be his real name? Since I first wrote this post I have found traces of his great grandson who, in 1905, asked in German genealogy periodicals for help tracing the mystery man's origins. I'm not the only one who couldn't figure this out.

The day I was writing this post I paused to have coffee and discuss the state of world affairs with mrguy. He said that perhaps the body politic would surround the current occupant of the White House and eject him like a hair ball. Which led to a discussion of hair balls in general, and my love of the fact that there was a hair ball oracle in Huck Finn. Which is now un-love, after looking it up and reading some of the passages.

On to happier things. Turns out that hairballs are a type of phytobezoar. I love this name. Did you know that there are experiments with treating human phytobezoars with Diet Coke? 

Well now you do.

A Break In The Rain

The last few weeks have been something. Rain. Rain. Rain. Discovering why the floorboards in the Lady Room closet were discolored when we bought the house (oh, it leaks in there). And some good stuff.

The Real Housewives and I got together in our home town. This is the first time I've been there with them since high school. The old place was looking pretty. I'd forgotten about all of the Art Deco buildings downtown. We ate lunch at the restaurant where we had our 50th birthdays. Completely delicious. Parking meters are freakishly cheap, but when you've got that much tax revenue, parking meters are probably there just to make sure people move their cars every once in a while.

At the factory, I discovered a new flavor of Torani syrup that is oddly compelling. I just open the bottle and smell it. Then I put it back. Also the head of our bigger company came to talk to us about things, which was super interesting and reassuring. He's the only person I've ever seen in person who had almost as much charisma as our former CEO.

Today there is a break in the rain. I'm going to the city to watch 8 hours of films about the Japanese Internment. They do this every year, but this year it seems like the important one, since our orange overlord probably considers incarcerating Americans as a viable option in the future.