Sometimes My Mischief is Not Required

Forgot to post this earlier.  Ridiculous.  Just ridiculous.

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A Mini-Break, Part VI: The Aftermath

The ice cream mochi, bless their chilly little hearts, did not make it as far as the parking lot.  They would not have survived the trip home in a hot car anyway–that’s our story and we’re sticking with it.  They proved to be quite delicious, though the feel of the outside plus the cold of the inside takes a bit of getting used to.

The human female bought some of her favorite sour gummy heptopi, and they did weather the trip home, but they were sadly rendered extinct before the night was out.

Let’s hope these fellows fare a little better.

Somehow, I’m not too hopeful.

It looks like the dinos and these are the only treats left.  The human male picked these out.  Apple Pie Almonds, eh?

What are they covered in?  It looks like sawdust, but I bet that’s not it.  Is there an ingredient list?

Uh, oh.  The label says “chocolate.”  The humans can’t have that.  More for me!  Oh, sorry, I mean, “too bad for you.”  (Sorry, not sorry.)

I figured as much.  They’re “white chocolate,” which is a fancy way of saying “cocoa butter and sugar.”  The humans can eat that, so looks like Sigyn and I will have to share.

 

That is, if I can figure out how to open this teasing little box…

It has mocked all my efforts!  Time for a blast of magic!

That’s more like it.

I still say that coating looks like sawdust.  From the color, possibly held on with guacamole—or wasabi.

(munch, munch, munch)

Hmm.  The almonds are nice and CruNchY, but the coating leaves a great deal to be desired.  There’s the merest hint of apple maybe, but there is nothing pie-like or pie-adjacent.  I detect no cinnamon and no nutmeg.  Nothing but a rather waxy texture and whatever that covering is (pencil shavings?) falling all over everywhere.

Ten points for intent, but minus fifty for poor follow-through.

I bet the human female shovels them into her maw anyway.

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Mini-Break, Part V: The Requisite Visit to the Large Market

It wouldn’t be a trip to the Big City to the South without a visit to the Large Market.  I will admit it—Midgardian food is much more diverse than Asgardian fare.  It’s meat, ale, bread, ale, fruit, mead, cheese, and ale back home, but I never know what we’re going to find here.

Oh!  These, mortals!  Purchase some of these!

I don’t know what they look like inside, but with a name like that, it’s bound to be spectacular!

What do you have there, Sigyn?

Ah.  the sign says, “pepino melons,” but the human female says they’re more closely related to tomatoes and potatoes than cantaloupe or watermelon.  Regardless, Sigyn is hugging the stripey one.  She says she thinks it’s probably sad because it’s not like the others.  Leave it to my beloved to feel sorry for fruit.

One of the best parts is the opportunity to sample all the things the helpers are offering as samples.

It’s sweet, it’s fruit, and it’s red!   It’s the Sigyn trifecta!

The Large Market has apparently started stocking Fine but Overpriced cookware in Sigyn’s favorite color.

And this is new as well!  If  I understand correctly, these are glutinous rice balls filled with ice cream.   We’ve had the plain ones before with the red bean paste inside—but ice cream!  That’s different!

The human male wants to try the vanilla, Sigyn wants strawberry, and I’m stumping for Double Chocolate.  Give me all the chocolate…

As always, Sigyn likes to round out her visit to the Large Market with a stroll through the extensive floral department.  Sometimes she finds exotic blossoms, but today’s she’s quite taken with the roses in her two favorite colors:

Sunny yellow,

and cheerful red.

They are no more beautiful than you, my love.

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Mini-Break, Part IV: In Which We Run Into A Spot (or two) Of Bother in the Gift Shop

We are here in the museum’s Gift Shop, which is always a risky prospect.  How so?  There is the very real danger that:

–The human male is going to find an expensive book that he wants

–The human female is going to embarrass us all by squeeing over scientifically accurate stuffed animals.

–Sigyn is going to find something motion-related and become– like this.

It. Happens. Every. Time.  Pendulums, marble machines, factory equipment–doesn’t matter.  Sigyn is absolutely mesmerized by moving things.  In this case, it’s colored oil drops rolling down little ramps in some sort of desk doo-dad.

Oh, sweetie.  Can you…?  It’s all right… Just look away…  Come on.  Lets go look at…something else.  Something not moving.

Here!  Come see this!

Who doesn’t love a good novelty cutting board?

Or maybe you’d like to check out the rubbery prehistoric beasties?

Jormungandr’s jodhpurs!   Unhand my beloved, you toothy behemoth or I shall render you extinct a second time!  Hang on, Sweetie!  Loki’s coming!

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Mini-Break, Part III: Wondrous and Translucent Lapidaceous Beasties

Sometimes the unexpected is the most interesting.  The humans did not know this exhibit of carved gemstone animals was here.  Magpie-like, the human female has been drawn in by their glitter.  Sigyn has followed and, as I am not in the slightest averse to gemstones, I have come along as well.

I must say, the luster of the agate used has captured the look of a real snail very well.

The card says, “Brazil,” but they were all carved by one man in a little town in Germany.

There’s a purple one as well.

Agate is apparently good for toads as well.

Careful, Sigyn! That amphibious blivet looks as if it could explode at any moment.

This toad-on-a-mushroom is giving me the stink-eye.

Sigyn likes this golden fellow.

Great Frigga’s corset!  There’s a pink one!  This Dreher chap must really have fancied toads.

Toads which, apparently, come in stripes.

Is there *anything* here which isn’t a toad or a snail?

That’ll do, Pig.

That’ll do.

I must admit, this pelican is quite well done.

The human female has decided that it—or perhaps this little rosy mouse–are her favorites.

Sigyn is hard pressed to choose between this ermine…

…and these cavorting otters.

Which one do I prefer?  I think I will have to go with this lovely green chap.

Green, shifty-eyed, and with handsome curly bits.  Yes, this is the one I want.  Give me a moment to disengage the case alarms, and it’s souvenir time!

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Mini-break, Part II: And I Thought the Human Female Came Home From Shopping With Odd Things

We have left the disappointing detective exhibit and are now wandering through an area designed to showcase the museum’s most recent acquisitions.  It’s a motley assortment, for certain.

Sleipnir’s fetlocks!  Why is the human female’s head in this glass case?!

Oh, sorry.  My mistake.  It’s just a reconstruction of some stone-age nonentity.  The horrible hair, the bushy eyebrows, the beady eyes, the hairy chin—the resemblance is astounding.  You can see why I was momentarily confused.

Sigyn is intrigued by the simply enormous seashells.

Sigyn,  you’d need an awful lot of garlic butter for that escargot!

Ooooh!  Pretty!  The exhibit card says what this is, in terms of minerals and cracks and heat and nodules and blah, blah, blah, but all I can think of is…

…what an amazing table top this would make!  I shall have to visit after hours and…acquire… it for my eventual palace.

I saw this armor from across the room, and I had to come over and take a closer look because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it’s made of.

Turns out it’s really, really hard seed pods.  Because nothing is more terrifying than…vegetation.

Oh, look!  Someone has made some cunning architectural models.  Nicely done.

I’m definitely taking notes for my eventual palace.

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You Believe It Wasn’t Me, Right?

By my own pointy helmet, I swear this wasn’t me!

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article218665930.html

One: taking only 5% of a nation’s GDP is too paltry to bother with, and

Two:  Liberian money is just too hard to unload.

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Mini-break, Part I: A Not-so-super Sleuth

The humans have snatched the chance to go see the Knittery Friend and her clan in the Big City to the South.  When you’re trying to arrange things to fit six people’s schedules, it can be quite difficult to find a date that suits everyone.  (The baby is isn’t two yet, expressed no opinions, and has no appointments in his  calendar, so he doesn’t count.)

We are taking the opportunity to go to the big museum while we are here.  There is a big exhibit about a famous, fictitious Midgardian detective with preternaturally keen powers of observation.

Pfft!  I’m the only one with powers here.

The part of the exhibit about the author, his sources, and his methods is really well done.

Sigyn is a bit squeamish around human skulls, so she is busy reading the old newspapers.

There are little displays about what was cutting edge science in the late 1800’s. There’s a stamp you can collect at every “station.”  Sigyn is tickled because botany is included.

Plus, she loves stamps!  (But why is the “optics” stamp a footprint?)

One of the displays shows how a paper with a pattern of slits cut out of it can be held over a text to reveal a secret message.

Hmm.  That didn’t work awfully well, because the rubbing of brass newspaper article they had out for rubbing came out rather blurry.  And the holes their punching machine made in the paper didn’t line up very well with the text.  That resulted in an extra-cryptic message!

Sigyn thinks the slotty paper’s fun to play with, though.

One room is set up like the great detective’s study, with all sorts of books and props from the stories.  The little notebook has a list of items we’re supposed to find .  The human male has found everything, but how he figured out which of the portraits was Dr.  Beecher, I surely do not know.

Ehehehe!  The “V. R.” is spelled out with bullet holes in the wallpaper.  That’s fun!

Fandral’s mustache!  Sigyn, look, we get to try to solve a case!  The whole second half of the exhibit is set up like a crime scene and a lab.

The crime scene has all sorts of clues–a smashed statue, a fireplace full of burned books,  and drag marks.  A seedpod?   Multiple bodies?  Blood spatter?  This is agreeably spine-tingly, don’t you think, Sigyn?

There’s a seed pod we’re supposed to match with actual plant samples, as well as some demonstration chemical “tests” to determine if the seed pod was toxic or had poison added to it.

I don’t think it looks like a worm.  Sigyn doesn’t think it looks like a worm.  The human female doesn’t think it looks like a worm—and it doesn’t appear to match any of the samples.  One of the docents, though, says its meant to be Wisteria.  The human female remains skeptical.

Also, the human female, in her usual insufferable way, has found a wrong translation in the Spanish part of one of the chemical  test stations.  And the text of the demo test stations seems to suggest there are two “tests” to do on the plant sample, but after a quarter hour of looking all over the room, it seems there’s only one.  She’s starting to look cranky.

Ooo! Here’s the blood spatter evidence.  We’re supposed to match it with the spatter patterns produced by several gruesome penny-arcade-like machines.

Sigyn is more than a little uncomfortable.  I’d like to go back through and make the machines squirt “blood” all over again, but Sigyn is feeling a bit queasy.  Moving on.

Here we’re supposed to figure out where the bullet must have been shot from to leave a hole in the wall and a spatter of blood on the wallpaper.

Except some of the text says the bullet hole was above the fireplace, while the bullet hole in the set-up crime scene is to the left of the fireplace, about five feet up.

The machines for making comparison drag marks and footprints in a big sand pit is kind of fun.

Sigyn and I agree that some of the marks were footprints, but we don’t think the drag marks came from a body.

At the end of the exhibit are more slot punching machines.  We’re supposed to put the card in the ones that correspond with our interpretation of the evidence and punch out a rectangle, and then put the stencil over a message to reveal the final truth.

Uh, oh, based on the docent telling us that the plant was supposed to be Wisteria, the human female punched the wrong slot.  And then the right one.  We can see the message, and we were mostly correct, but there was a lot of this exhibit that was  misleading or just plain wrong.

There!  I’ve supplied a more appropriate secret message.

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I Didn’t Do It–But I’m Laughing

I have no reason to pick on Cathay Pacific Airlines, but I’ve been having a right good chuckle at their latest repainted airplane.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cathay-pacific-livery-typo/index.html

Friends, that is a whole bouquet of whoopsie daisies!

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Ummmm! Someone’s in Trooouuuuuble!

Yesterday, the human female came home to find an Ominous Note stuck to the front door.  The fine fellow from Usually Smashes Parcels Significantly had attempted to deliver a Registered Letter. 

Those things seldom mean anything good.

She fretted all last evening and all last night.  Obviously, she is in trouble, but how bad is it?  

The human male picked it up while he was running errands, and here it is.

Uh, oh.  It’s from the University.

Is she being served with a Cease and Desist order for her wardrobe choices and her bad jokes?

Has someone looked at her browser history?

Has someone discovered the scathing remarks I make on this blog–in an account I tied to her name?

Is she fired?

Oh.

Back in March, the human female did something stupid at work and really pulled a ligament in her back.  She’s not been right since.  (Well, she’s never been quite right, but these days she stands up funny and makes faces if she has to heft more than twenty pounds.) She’s had medication and physical therapy and exercises and a whole string of visits to various doctors.  The University has picked up the tab for all of this, but it appears her days of coddling are over.  The doctors have decided that they’re done with her and she’s getting no disability rating.  No lollygagging on the state’s dime!

Hmmm.  I wonder… If I tell them that she often skips her exercises, will they make her pay back all the physiotherapy visits?  Let’s find out…

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