This furniture store has a great façade in downtown Parma. And it’s right next to the library.
There wasn’t much else happening in downtown Parma other than these two buildings. But with 1,949 residents, that’s understandable.
I was nearly raised in Parma. My parents built a house there, but they moved to Boise shortly before my birth. (Phew!)
There is so much discussion of cats in this election. I’d rather hear about candidates plans to improve healthcare, but since I don’t get that, this poster made me laugh.
Scares and Squares is the Rosetown Ramblers annual fly-in. While I enjoy the dancing, it usually falls on my birthday weekend, and I don’t love that. However! this year they moved the weekend of dance to the second Saturday weekend, which was great!
Aside from really fun dancing, I volunteered for check-in on Saturday morning. Ted was running the 50/50 raffle and setting up ticket packs. I don’t remember the exact breakdown, but for the raffle, your dollar gets you 10 tickets, and five dollars gets you an even bigger number. So, to save time, Ted pulls out 10 tickets, separates the keep-this-coupon ticket from the drawing tickets, tears each drawing ticket, and then stacks the whole thing in a neat pile that is held together with a rubber band. That way, when someone hands over a dollar it’s very easy to hand them their half of the tickets, and drop the entry tickets in the bucket.
As we were both sitting at the same table, I also helped set up ticket packs. While we worked, we discussed the differences between the different colored rolls of tickets (they very much varied in quality!) and techniques for quicker packaging. As I observed to Matt, it was not unlike temping, where there is a boring task, but that task can be broken down into steps and those steps improved. Plus, Ted is fun to talk to.
At the Saturday evening dance, Ted came over to show me yet another satisfying part of the process: getting to the end of a ticket roll.
This postcard came from a postcard pack that Shawn bought from LiarTown, a site in which I also now want to purchase postcards from. They have a funny Portland, Oregon, series, like this one called the Emerald Village.
Sara reports she is having a bit of a catch-up day.
When I am in the office, I sit next to the lost and found. Today I noticed that someone had lost a sticker.
It is, of course, Alfredo Linguini and Remy the rat, stars of Ratatouille and Carmy Berzatto and the bear, stars of the Bear, the series that has most of the country saying, “Yes, chef!”
I like that the year is listed on this tiny poster/large postcard. Often they are not, and I get annoyed because why wouldn’t people want to know in what year the concert took place?
Sara got to see the Indigo Girls at this concert with Shawn and her sister Jess. However, as you can see from the postmark on the wrong side, she sent it to me after she got home to Arcata. She reports that the Indigo Girls did “Galileo” as one of their last songs. It seems like an apt closing song.
Wandering around downtown St. Johns while waiting for my movie to start, I came across this flyer:
What a fun activity! If only I had known about it earlier.
I wandered by, and it looked like a pretty good turnout for the cakeluck.
While I’m three weeks away from being officially 50 years old, the AARP doesn’t want me to forget about their grand organization I will soon qualify to join.
As with all things that mark the passing of time (that aren’t my body breaking down) I enjoy the milestones. And while I think 50 is a little early to join the retired persons association (especially since full retirement isn’t until age 67 for my age cohort) I look forward to their mailers.
Matt channeled his worried energy re: the 2024 presidential election into writing letters for Vote Forward encouraging people in Georgia to vote.
He wrote 300 letters, for which he had to get extra permission. 200 is the letter-writing max.
This is not the first year Matt has done this. He wrote letters last fall, and for previous elections. Here is 2022, for comparison.
*Book group selection | Bolded means favorite
*Time to Make Art by Jeff Mack
*The Spaceman by Randy Cecil
*Not Nothing by Gayle Forman
*Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
*Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang
Geek Girl by Holly Smale
We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Lizzie & Dante by Mary Bly
Between Two Strangers by Kate White
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell
Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen
The Summer Wives by Beatriz Williams
The Bridesmaids Union by Jonathan Vatner
Vatner’s Carnegie Hill charmed me by being about self-involved rich people, but also incredibly relatable. I was less charmed by the Bridesmaids Union because the main character really needed to say no. And she didn’t. Repeatedly. So the novel could happen, I guess?
I’m also quite happy that my era of attending weddings was much more low key than the one this book depicts.
That Summer by Jennifer Weiner
Weiner finds an interesting and multilevel way into #MeToo.
The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther by Ruth E. Carter
*Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States by J. Albert Mann
