atomiccupcakeobservation
Atomic Cupcakes
"I hate Illinois Nazis."
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Retirement
My place of employment offered a retirement incentive package because somehow they thought it would save them some money, although in the end they realized they are going to have to replace all the retiring employees because … we were not over-staffed, and honestly, they’d have a lot of younger people quit if all that work was pushed off on to them, so they could do that work on top of their…
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Easter Blogging
It’s rained a lot in the last month, and we are due for more rain this week.
Today was sunny in the morning, and is now clouding over – although as I write this the sun is peeping in and then hiding behind clouds: so not consistent. Which is … weather.
After a relatively easy winter (one week of intense cold, some snow but not a lot, no big snowstorms at all), we’ve had a spring so far that is…
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Murders, real and imagined
I, fortunately, have never been close to a murder. I am not an investigator, no one in my immediate family has been murdered, none of my friends have been murdered.
However, I have been reading murder mysteries since I was eight, and my mother decided I should move from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie (it was a seamless transition: no, I didn’t get nightmares moving from theft to murders …). I…
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#Books#Death#Documentaries#murder#Murder Mysteries#My Favorite Murder#Starved Rock State Park#The Murders at Starved Rock#True Crime Garage#Unmaking a Murderer
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Primary season
It’s primary season in the US, where the two major parties hold elections to decide their nominees for office.
It’s so desperately boring this year.
The Democrats have cleared the field for the incumbent, an 80 year old man who is fading. And who many people – Democrats I’m talking about – never really liked. Why, you ask? Because he’s been a sellout so many times, mostly as a Senator. Banking…
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Review: Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
Spoiler Alert: I am going to talk about the end of this movie in this review, because it is key to my feelings about this movie. It came out in 2019, it’s now 2024, so no apologies. Also, if you haven’t seen it and don’t want spoilers … don’t read this. Any of it.
First, the compliments. Tarantino gets great performances out of his actors. I can see why Brad Pitt got an Oscar for this movie. I’m…
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#Brad Pitt#Manson Family#Margot Robbie#Movie Review#Once Upon a Time .... In Hollywood#Sharon Tate#Tarantino
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This is the end ... of 2023
This is a list of favorites and things from this year. Because if I don’t list them, will I remember they happened? And will I remember they happened in 2023? Memory and time gets weird these days (was that five years ago? More like 10? Really?? Who knew?).
Favorite Fiction I read this year: Thistlefoot, Station Eleven, The Thursday Murder Club series, The Crow Trap, The Madness of Sunshine,…
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November is a mad month
“Remember, remember, the fifth of November …”
So November starts out with a nod to the Gunpowder Plot, beloved of radicals everywhere, that was devised by some Catholic fanatics who wanted to overthrow the Protestant government in England (because inter-Christian religious wars were still a thing then). Famously celebrated in “V for Vendetta” as a way to combat fascism, in reality it was one…
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Books, Book Clubs, and the joys of friendship
I’m in a phase of life where all I want to do is read books.
This is not new for me: I have always been a reader. But now, now in particular, I just want to immerse myself in books.
Because what is going on in the outside world? At least two wars going in places far away but which will make war profiteers happy. And the USA – we always have money to spend on wars. Not so much universal health…
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Postmortem: September
September was not a good month for me.
The month was filled with work stress, of spending too much time physically there, of horrible commutes that increased the stress of the work, of struggling to sleep well, of not enough downtime.
Why does every road in Chicago have to be under construction right now? There is no way to get from here to there. None.
But the worst was undoubtedly the…
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Cooking
I like cooking. I like trying new recipes, I like tracking those we love, I like making delicious food for myself, my partner, my family, my friends – I like to make small dishes for one or two, and I like to make food that would feed an army. It’s all good.
What I dislike: my small kitchen. I don’t dream of having a large house – all that cleaning, shudder, all that heat/cooling expense – but I…
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Nothing
July was spent mostly on vacation. We traveled to the northeast, we did things, we visited family. It was both busy and relaxing.
I also read Jenny Odell’s “How to do Nothing” while on vacation – and I wanted to be reading something much lighter, but there it is – it was the book for the Book Club I did not attend – so I read it. And perhaps it was the best book to read on vacation at a lake by…
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Thistlefoot/Beloved: or, living with generational trauma
Because I have lovely erudite people in my life, I found myself reading both Thistlefoot (for Book Club) and Beloved (for a work Juneteenth group) at the same time.
Thistlefoot is about a house on chicken legs, transplanted from Russia/Ukraine to the US as an inheritance to the youngest descendants of Baba Yaga – who have no idea of their ancestors’ story of trauma and genocide.
Beloved is a…
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Defense against the cruelty
We see the rise of fascism all around us.
It’s frightening.
We talk about it as if it is obvious: there is no need to explain, we can all see it happening.
Our leaders telling us to “vote harder” is not helpful: we are voting in larger numbers than ever and it is still happening at a frightening pace.
Our leaders seem much less freaked out than we do. They seem to be afraid to defend us with…
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Star
The last two weeks have been very up and down.
On the one hand, April 4 was the best day in many years.
We elected a new Mayor in Chicago, and a certain former president had to show up in court and listen to 34 charges brought against him. May it be the first of many arraignments he attends.
Election day was threaded with news about the ex-president, but in Chicago, we were focused on who was…
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Chicago Elections, part two
Yes, we have another round coming. Yes, it matters.
What we have going on is a referendum on domestic policy since the 1990s, or whether we should try something new.
Are the policies working? Well, no. I mean, all the “right” does is scream about crime (CRIME!) but in actual numbers, most crime is down (if you live in certain areas of the city, it is not … but that leads us to a whole other…
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Elections, Chicago-style
Tomorrow is election day here in Chicago. People are getting jittery. We have a very competitive Mayor’s race – I think the top four candidates are so close together in the polls that any two of them could make the run-off. Seventeen aldermen retired, which means an unprecedented number of races where the incumbents are not running for re-election (often unchallenged) – and most of them are…
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A New Year, a new ?
The snow is coming down now – it won’t amount to much, for this area – we won’t end up with three feet of snow, but we may end up with three inches. Maybe. It seems like it’s been snowing constantly the last week, with some lulls, but we really have just an inch or two on the ground. It’s a bit chilly, but not so cold you feel it in your bones. Well, my elbows are feeling it, but that is because…
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