For our Halloween earworm, singer-songwriter Elle Cordova has updated Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” for our times.
What’s terrifying is that it’s all true. And the next round of slashing is SNAP benefits, so millions of Americans will start going hungry as of midnight tonight.
Hurrugh.
©2025 Bas Bleu
When my neighbor moved out of his house in June, it was kind of a mad scramble at the end. I’d open my door in the morning and find bags or boxes of things he was jettisoning—foodstuffs, linens, even small appliances.
Yes—one morning there was a box with a toaster and an
electric kettle. Well—I have a toaster oven, but I thought I might quite like
the kettle. Boy, was I right. That sucker was a game changer—heats water for
tea like a champ and then shuts off.
Until a couple of weeks ago when it didn’t any more. Whenever
it was on the plate, it was heating. Once I didn’t hear it when it boiled and
by the time I got to the kitchen, I had to use a hot pad to take it off.
So, I had a decision—do I buy a new kettle or go back to
using the whistling one on the stove? Or continue to use it in its current
condition?
Eventually I opted for replacing it, but with a kettle that
will heat to different temperatures—for green tea, French press coffee and
black tea, amongst other settings. (I make a quart of iced tea about every other day, and starting in October every year I make a pot of hot tea almost daily.) It cost a few bob (although on sale), but
once again, my life is changed.
I do have to remember to poke the setting for green tea instead of just “boil”, which will take some training. (Also—I'm not quite sure of the point of "keep warm".) But it is da bomb.
©2025 Bas Bleu
Here’s a thing I found mildly amusing.
One of my neighbors subscribes to The Washington Post;
I mean, a physical copy of the newspaper is delivered every morning. By which I
mean: it gets flung from the delivery guy’s car, so it generally makes it beyond
the parked cars, but not on her doorstep.
So, as I walk past, I pick it up and place it on a stand
she has next to her front door. All she has to do is open the door and reach
out for the paper. It’s always enclosed in a plastic bag, which is normally
orange.
Well, on Saturday, I noticed that the bag was blue, and
then I saw this:
I actually checked to see that the paper enclosed was
indeed WaPo, and not NYT.
I reckon the delivery guy may also deliver the Times
and either he ran out of Post bags or mixed them up somehow. (Although
he did, in fact, deliver the right paper.)
Sunday we were back to normal orange. Order has been restored in the universe.
©2025 Bas Bleu
I had a little flare of Civic Duty last week. On my
Wednesday morning walk, I noticed that someone had decapitated a fire hydrant.
Actually, the first thing I saw was that someone had
knocked down a street sign in front of the Kinder Care® center:
Then I twigged to the hole where the hydrant used to be,
and the tire mark that seemed to tell a story of a vehicle coming off the
street, shearing off both the hydrant and the sign, then landing back on the
street.
No water gushing, just the hole and one of the little
flange thingies. Also—no hydrant.
Only, about 10 meters on, there it was, tossed in a little
copse of trees. Presumably the miscreant thought their crime would escape
notice if no one found the evidence?
Well, when I got home I called the Fairfax County
non-emergency line to find out what agency handles damaged fire hydrants. Turns
out it’s Fairfax Water, duh. So I called their report-an-emergency line and
connected with a very nice woman named Leah. She took my information (I had to
look up the address, because it didn’t occur to me that it might be useful,
duh) and thanked me.
(I was a little disappointed that I had to do this by phone, because—I had all those photos. But it turned out okay.)
And blow me—Thursday morning there was a new fire hydrant:
Sign is still down—that’s obviously not Fairfax Water’s
problem.
One more bit of info: while you’re on hold with Fairfax
Water, they play Handel’s “Water Music”. Perfect.
©2025 Bas Bleu
We have a central green—a village “common”, as it were—in our cluster. There’s a tot lot, with slides and a jungle gym, swings, a swathe of lawn and, of course poison ivy. (We’re three months out from the first acknowledgment of the pest and still waiting for the cluster board/management company/contracted landscaping company to actually, you know, do something about it.)
There’s also a metal picnic table/benches jobber, where I’ve
seen parents sit while watching their kids play.
Early last week, however, I noticed someone had ornamented
the table with pinecones. They so closely matched the color of the surface that
their protrusion looked almost organic.
When it was still there the next day, I augmented the
arrangement, just because it made me feel happy.
(Took me a while to get the pine sap off my fingers and mobile phone case.)
I don’t know what it was about those slender cones poking
up from the holes in the table, but it evoked something magical, whimsical and
even promising. Considering everything that’s going on in the world, I’m
perhaps overly grateful for things like this. But gratitude is gratitude.
©2025 Bas Bleu
