Walking through downtown Ann Arbor, I was seeing lots of openings for cooks and servers and they were, you know, I think the highest I saw was twenty-two an hour. Also saw sixteen and eighteen, I think, which is, you know, before the pandemic, that would be considered high right? But now, you know, I took two semesters of Econ. I'm not an expert, but that's supply and demand, right? The, the supply of labor has decreased, so the price needs to go up for these companies to be competing for the same employees. Frankly, I mean, it's painful in the short-term. I mean, I worry that — I mean, a lot of companies did go under. We already know that from the pandemic. But I guess I worry that we're gonna see a lack of access to goods and services which, of course we already did see in the earlier pandemic. But just like further disruption to the supply chain, which would be bad. Yeah, I just really don't have too much Insight on that. Like I said, I'm just seeing the couple job postings with the newly inflated wages. Seems good to me, frankly. Cause that was the thing back in the early pandemic. When suddenly all these workers that were low paid were considered essential, of which I was not one. So why am I earning so much more money than this person who's an essential worker in a grocery store or in a hospital or, or whatever the case is? If they're essential and I'm not, presumably, their wage should reflect that. And you know, maybe it's, I think, you know again, I'm not an expert in Econ by any stretch, but I think it's just because the skills are relatively in a broader supply so that means the wage for that person is lower. I mean in a like, sort of cold sense it's because they can be replaced. But now, you know, eighteen-ish months after the pandemic started, suddenly these people can't be replaced easily. So now the wages are going up. And that seems like good news to me. Those are hard jobs.

I also think of the song Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. And that song makes me think of my dad, and he would -- we'd have the a.m. radio on back in the day, be down in the barn in the evenings milking cows. And he would -- that song would come on the radio, which we'd have turned up loud so you could hear it through the barn. And he knew we didn't enjoy -- we being me and my sisters, enjoy having to be down there at night, working to help him with milking the cows. But he did like to try to make it be fun and when that song came on, I remember him stepping out from between the cows, we had a stanchion barn, and into the aisleway and we would both sing at the top of our lungs "Shalala lalala lalalala deeda la deeda boom boom ba doom." Anyway, if you know the song it's a really fun song to sing. And him singing to me "You My Brown Eyed Girl" and I felt so loved. My dad was not a very affectionate man. But when he sang that song and called me his Brown Eyed Girl, I felt so special and loved and appreciated. And it actually wasn't probably until I was an adult and married myself and -- before he started telling me that he loved me. Which was so nice to finally hear him say that. He was always so busy, worked so hard on the farm. To take a moment of time for some tenderness just meant the world. And when I was younger, you know, like ten or twelve years old, him singing that song to me was like the epitome of making me feel loved from my father.

Across the street I have neighbors who have three skeletons that they unveiled probably three years ago, and they -- the three skeletons have developed a personality and a story line over the past three years. And every week that neighbor of mine will take those skeletons and shape them into another scenario. For instance, last week they had a kiddie pool that which had one skeleton sitting in the kiddie pool while two others played, I don't know, maybe, badminton, I think it may have been. And this week one of the skeletons is in their tree, stuck in their tree, presumably, with two other skeletons down below reaching out to help and one has a stepladder. So I guess I do -- I guess I do have a favorite decoration now that I think about it, and it's right across the street from me. So, a tip of the cap to that guy who keeps the Halloween decorations fresh. It's not brutally scary or anything. It's in good fun. He's got like a three skeleton family thing going on over there, where the child skeleton's always up to no good.

I think Nutella is delicious. It's chocolate and hazelnut in a spread form. A good portion of my grad school like exams and paper writing, was like staying up really late night, drinking a lot of coffee, trying to find things to eat that were fast but felt rewarding for all the hard work I was putting in. So there were times where I would just eat Nutella and have a jar of Nutella and a jar of peanut butter and just kind of alternate between spoonfuls of that. So I would say, yeah, it's definitely worth the hype.

When was the last time my power went out? I don’t, it’s been actually quite a while since my power went out. Knock on wood, I guess, right? Hopefully, it doesn’t go out anytime soon here. But I think that when I was in — I lived in Indiana for a little while and we had a tornado warning there. And the power went out and I was actually — I was at the library working, and we had to take all the patrons and staff that were in the building at the time into the bathrooms. And I, you know, I’ve never had to do anything like that before. I’ve never lived anywhere else where there’s kind of tornado warnings and tornado shelters, and things like that. And the power went out when we were in there, and I remember, kind of thinking “wow, this is a little bit bizarre.” And I think there were some sort of like, emergency lights or something that were in there. Or maybe people just had their cellphone lights. Now I can’t even remember that. But my mom was actually visiting from northern Michigan at the time and I remember, you know, she wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on. So I told her to go into, you know, the closet in my apartment you know and she, you know, she was at my house at the time and I came home and, you know, after everything had been cleared and she was still sitting, still sitting in the closet in my apartment. And I said, “Mom, you know, we’re safe, everything’s good.” But the power had come back on but she was still sitting in there. So I don’t know. That was — I think that was maybe the last time.

Have you ever tried to make yogurt or cheese? No, but my grandma does it all the time. She's from Jordan and she makes a Arabic or Middle Eastern yogurt called laban. It's a white yogurt. Kind of like Greek yogurt, maybe a little thinner. You eat it normally, on top of -- we normally eat it, like, on top of rice. She has a dish called maqluba, which is rice, chicken, cauliflower. I think there might be some onions in it too, and it's pretty good with yogurt on top that she makes, the laban. And then -- then the cheese is called labneh and it's thicker. It's kind of like cream cheese. I think it's a little more sour and that's pretty good in like a sandwich with -- on bread. You eat it with like, tomato and cucumbers and other, you know, vegetables, lettuce. And you can make a pretty good sandwich out of that. Or sometimes on za’atar bread. Za’atar is like a spice. And you can eat that with like tomato and labneh. And then there's a third type of yogurt called mansaf laban, which is made out of dried yogurt balls. You like mix it with water and it's kind of like a soup and you eat it on top of like a rice dish called mansaf, which is rice and then it has lamb meat. And then you drown it in the sauce made from the yogurt balls. And that's really delicious.