The Fredösphere

Saturday we arrived in Traverse City, Michigan, for a week-long vacation.  I learned a few new things that day:

The CDC kills children.  That one came from a bumper sticker I saw on I-75.  It was news to me.

There is no rule that says a dog cannot play on a high school basketball team.  In light of all the Disney movies made involving various dogs, chimps, pigs, cats, donkeys, etc. that play sports, you'd think they would have covered that contingency by now, but apparently not.

That late stage of drunkenness sometimes depicted in movies from the 50s and 60s, where everyone becomes sentimental and gemütlich and sings a cappella together at length, and badly out of tune?  That really happens, at the 3:30am stage of a drunken party. Before that (2:00-3:00am) comes the loud stereo fading in and out stage, and before that comes the 1:30am shooting off fireworks and applauding stage. (Impressive, illegal fireworks that shower your neighbor's yard with burning embers. Your neighbor's drought-stricken, dry-as-tinder yard.)  I confess my research is incomplete regarding the earliest stages of drunkenness, because before the fireworks display, I was irresponsibly asleep.

More fun facts:  The Leelanau Peninsula is the pinkie on the hand of Michigan.   It's ideal vineyard country, or as ideal as the Midwest can hope for.  I was pleased to learn of Leelanau Natural Beef, which "offers grass-fed hormone and antibiotic free premium ground beef" at a "unique self-serve site."  Wow. Self-serve grass-fed beef. You don't find that just anywhere. Grab a big ol' knife from the rack, walk out to the pasture, pick out a cow that looks good, and as it stands there, chewing its cud, carve a chunk of self-serve beef right out of her backside. Mmm, mmm, good!

The kids are old enough to be deeply impressed with Traverse City, with its miles of beaches and its light years of tourist traps. They will have fun, I predict. I'm having fun just knowing we made it:  four months ago, I would not have guessed Julie would be healthy enough to pull it off. She tires more quickly that the rest of us, because of the whole-brain radiation she received back in December, but otherwise, she's doing okay, thank God.

I'm posting this from Horizon Books on Front Street in the heart of the retail district.  I'm using some kind of community-provided free wifi via my new laptop.  (The operating system, which shall remain nameless, but which [hint, hint] is new, sucks.)  Get this:  wifi is a system for communicating with the internet by means of invisible rays of energy!  Amazing!