It is Friday, and Fridays are for fun. We no longer have to wonder when democracy will die. We are under the autocratic rule of the Trump regime.
If you participate in protests this weekend, be sure to bring an American flag. It is the American flag, not the conservative flag, or the right-wing nut job flag. Let’s take it back.
Additionally, protests must remain peaceful. We do have the right to freedom of speech and peaceful protest, at least for now.
It is Friday, and Fridays are for fun. If you haven’t gone to Raspberry Island to see the art exhibit from the Minnesota Latino Museum, you must go.
It is Friday, and Fridays are for fun. I am so thankful that I won’t spend any of the holiday weekend at the airport. I remember a time when we could go to the airport and watch the planes take off and land. A time before passengers were herded like cattle through a maze before being packed like sardines into an airplane.
Your flight may be on time or maybe cancelled. I recall waiting on a tarmac for around four hours due to a maintenance issue, and that time we stayed overnight in Philadelphia on the way home from Florida because they didn’t have an airplane.
I just love the way passengers have to be at the airport an hour or two before the flight but the flight can be a day late.
I am happy to be home for the holiday.
It is Friday, and Fridays are for fun. A few weeks ago, I bought a set of queen-size sheets from the local Goodwill store. They are 100% polyester, not something I want to sleep on. I bought them for the fabric and made a new shower curtain and other curtains for the bathroom. My total expenditure was less than $15, and between measuring, cutting, and sewing, I completed the project in an evening. I call this upcycling.
I consider my use of the sheets to be upcycling because curtains are a much better use for polyester. The pillow cases will be used for storage bags. I may remake them or just leave them as they are, and use one pillow case as a liner and the other as the outside of the bag.
What some folks call upcycling, like cutting up a wearable sweater to create mittens, seems more like downcycling, but I suppose if the sweater is worn out, then it is being upcycled.
Repurposing household items can be fun. After the lid to the cookie jar broke, I started using the jar as a flower pot. To me repurposing means using an item for some purpose other than what I bought it for. If my new use required modifications to the item, then I would call it upcycling.
In the picture, I have an old barbecue grill and the soap holder we used to have in the shower repurposed.
If I repurpose items that I already have, I won’t have to pay extra for the tariff. If I upcycle items that I bought at a thrift store, I don’t pay tariffs on those either, and maybe I am keeping fabric out of the landfill.
It is Friday, and Fridays are for fun. I just put my new Minnesota State Park Sticker on my car. It is my new aspirational sticker because we all need hopes and dreams.
I sold my car last fall with a Minnesota State Park sticker that is good until May 2025. I never used the
sticker, which is alright. It was an aspirational state park sticker. I am excited about this year’s aspirational State Park Sticker and hope to use it at least once during the next 12 months.
I feel the same way about my passport, which is good until April 2027, and my TSA pre-check, which is good until sometime in 2028, and hasn’t been used since I renewed it in 2023. I aspire to use them both.
It is Friday, and Fridays are for fun. In the last week, I have made a couple of trips to the Ramsey County yard waste site near my home. I am actually ahead of schedule on my yard work this year. Hazah!
I bring my yard waste and hope to leave (pardon the pun) with “free” compost. So far, no luck. The compost pile is full of 70-somethings, and I can not get near it. They sit on the compost and in it, too. I suspect that some of them sleep there. They sort the stuff and strain it, too, methodically and thoughtfully.
I decided not to take pictures; you will have to check for yourself if you don’t believe me.
The food waste I compost in my backyard will have to be enough. At least I won’t have to compete for it, or sit in it or on it.
If, for any reason, you want to attract people in their 70s and older, you can probably do it with a pile of compost and a “free compost” sign.