Ugh. This cold isn’t a terrible one, but you know how it goes: You’re chugging along, sniffly but fine, and then it’s like a sad trombone plays wah-wahhhh, you eyes roll up into your head and you drop onto the nearest fainting couch.

Meanwhile, current temperature is 9 degrees. Supposed to dip below zero tonight, and pretty much ditto for the week. There is icy lumpy fuck everywhere; just taking the trash out today was a mufu’in’ ordeal. But one day at a time, one step at a time, we’ll get through it.

I hope you folks in Arizona and Florida are very, very happy now, because you have to carry it for all of us.

There’s been lots to talk about in the world of late. I haven’t fully formed an opinion on the Dr. V’s Miracle Putter story and its ugly aftermath, but as of now, I’m finding it hard to climb on the LGBT bandwagon. At this point, I’m coming down closest to Gene Weingarten’s middle path: The story was absolutely defensible, the transsexual angle is absolutely fair game, but there’s a tonal problem with parts of the piece that his editors should have caught. And if anyone knows tone in long-form journalism, it’s Weingarten.

I will admit to frustration with LGBT people whose reactions are, essentially, that the author of the piece is the next best thing to a murderer and these issues of changing gender identity are as plain as day to everyone with a heart and a conscience. They are not. They are not, and they won’t be for a while, and even sensitive people are going to mess up on this one from time to time until that day comes, and even after, it’ll happen.

OK, then.

You know that old urban legend about the guy who drives home blind drunk, falls into bed and wakes up to find a dead body stuck to the grill of his car? Sometimes it happens, only the guy lives. In Wisconsin, the drunk-driving capital of the U.S.

Bridge had some good stories on the festival fatigue in Traverse City yesterday; you can find them in the links on the right rail, or here, here and here. Anyone who lives year-round in a tourist area should be able to identify. The middle link is a Q-and-A with Michael Moore, who never fails to drop a bomb. In discussing what Traverse City needs, he suggests a four-year university, and adds: “Plus it’s always better to have smart people around than ignorant people. The ignorant and intolerant are never the ones who make progress happen.” Boom.

OK, then. Off to brew some tea or something else warm and stare gloomily out the window.

The things we do for our animals. We’re going on vacation soon, for the first time since Wendy’s been part of the family. After four months in a shelter, I couldn’t bear the thought of her sitting in a kennel-type situation. So I investigated a group boarding facility, the main business of which is dog day care. Before they’d accept her, she had to have a dry run, a get-acquainted day to make sure she could follow the rules and so forth.

And yes, she passed:

You will not be surprised to learn they have webcams. (And that Alan checked it today. She was running around like a happy maniac.)

Well, I do want her to be well-cared for when we’re gone.

I’m not 100 percent comfortable with the elevation of pets to human status in middle-class culture, even as I acknowledge they are better companions than many members of our species. I can take a laughing reference to “fur babies,” but I think many of the people who throw around terms like that aren’t doing so lightly. There’s a new pet store in my neighborhood that should be called Thanks to the Chinese Juggernaut! because if it weren’t for the pet poisonings of a few years back, surely there wouldn’t be this vast market for organic, 100 percent natural pet food, would there? It’s frightfully expensive, and there’s nothing like spending $50 for a 20-pound bag to convince you every penny is worth it.

Wendy eats Eukanuba. It’s not cheap. ($38/20 lbs.) It used to be considered gourmet. The pet-store people smile indulgently when I lug it to the counter. You’ll come around, their eyes say. Your fur baby deserves it.

Pals, after the revelry of the weekend, I have finally been felled — a cold, nothing serious, but the last thing I want to do is stare at this laptop another damn minute. You guys play nice, and I’ll try to rally tomorrow, OK?

Not a great bunch of pix this year, and I’m not sure why. I wasn’t really drunk, and I think I had it on the point-and-shoot, go-ahead-and-decide-the-exposure camera setting, but nothing really stuck out on the roll. But hey, let’s jump in.

I think part of the weirdness of the North American International Auto Show Charity Preview, i.e., the Car Prom, is the lighting. The wattage at Cobo is aimed and amped to set the shiny sheet metal off at its most flattering; that isn’t necessarily the best for human flesh, but there you are. Anyway, here are some tarts on the People Mover, en route:

We always go on the People Mover. The parking is easier at Alan’s office, and then there’s a pre-game at the next-door hotel bar, to which all the people who put in the inhuman hours early in the week get to come, and then it’s a block to the PM, which drops you off right in Cobo Center. (The fur came from a Grosse Pointe estate sale, and the lining is rotten silk. Fortunately, I have the self-esteem to hand it over to a coat-check staffer without shame.) The other two nice ladies are Alan’s colleagues. We’d had a couple at this point.

But then there we were, under the Fellini lighting. For some reason I was entranced by this lady’s chinchilla stole:

That’s in the Jaguar display. Pronounced British-style: Jag-you-are.

It was hard to spot a simple theme this year. We’re back! was the message of the last couple of years, since the bailout. Also, Electric cars! There were plenty of them — stay tuned — but the big stories were the new F-150 and, and… I’m drawing a blank. The Corvette was North American Car of the Year, and we spent some time gawking. You know I’m pretty practical, but even this out-of-focus shot gives you a sense of the ground clearance on this ‘vette; how do you drive one without freaking the hell out about every bump and change in pavement smoothness?

There were many tail ends to be seen throughout the night; here are two:

Don’t judge. Winters here are long, and subcutaneous fat is frequently your best friend.

Speaking of back ends, women here are not afraid to climb up on running boards and check out the bed liner while wearing evening gowns:

This may be just me, but I love these new-style headlights with all the LED action:

They’re a little off-putting to come upon as a driver of, say, a 10-year-old Volkswagen coming toward you, but they are bright as all get-out, and very stylish, no?

Here’s Alan, regarding a Chrysler:

It is, what’s the word I’m looking for? Blue.

Speaking of blue, I was entranced by the reflections on everything. That is my blue dress, and that is my necklace, but that is not the Jessica Rabbit bustline suggested; it’s just some weird distortion.

Finally, I always like to eavesdrop on the car-guy chatter. Two stopped behind me while I was examining this Honda concept; I believe the quote was, “Speaking of things that will never be built…” And then they moved on. Honestly, I can’t argue. Some concepts are just there to be looked at and become part of the creative mix, like early drafts or outtakes:

After two hours or so, my feet were screaming so loud they could be heard above the crowd noise, so we booked for a restaurant with some amusing cheap house wines. But before we go, another plastic flute of champagne? It’s for charity:

Until next year, I remain your correspondent, The Crone in the Tatty Fur.

At least you can get a parking place this time of year. (Note the pig head on the counter.)

If I get through the North American International Auto Show Charity Preview tonight, aka the Car Prom, it will be a damn miracle. Things just aren’t going my way. For weeks, I’ve been wondering if my poor knees can stand three hours in high heels, and to be sure, the heels I have don’t really work with my dress, but fuck it, these are about the most comfortable heels I can find (they have cork soles), and some things have to give when you’ve recently lost an ACL.

But now it’s worse, as today, I was fetching one from the closet for a final try-on, and what happened? I dropped it on my foot. The heel landed with the feeling of a scimitar to my third toe, just blinding pain. Hours later, it’s a vivid shade of purple and it hurts to walk. Oh, well — pain is how ladies roll at formal events.

It’s been snowing, anyway. I may well schlep to the event in my L.L. Bean boots with my shoes in a bag. We’re already going on the People Mover; you can call me the Spirit of Detroit.

Ouch.

OK, I have to make this short, because the end of the week is nigh and, well, see above. I see Neil Steinberg is no fan of the new Chicago Cubs mascot, Clark the Cub. It puts me in mind of when the Fort Wayne Wizards moved to a new stadium, and rebranded as the Tin Caps, the historical reference for which can be found via Wikipedia. I got an email from a lurker on this blog, asking if I could come up with an alternative team name on very short notice. I suggested “the Rivermen,” which I’m still sort of fond of. But the Tin Caps is what it was, and what it has stayed. Go with God, Tin Caps.

A not-safe-for-work photo array, but hugely beautiful — a lovely yoga practitioner, doing so in stark nakedness. It’s one of those photo essays that’s so beautiful it transcends sex; I found myself mostly examining her musculature. I’m sure you guys will be examining something else, but be forewarned. Not for the office.

Finally, I know some of you remember Marcia, who used to comment here a couple of years ago. You might not know that her family hit a rough patch for a while, culminating in the death of her nephew, just weeks before his graduation from Duke law school. There’s a final chapter to the story, and it’s a good read. Drink it in.

A good weekend, all!

Our old refrigerator started making a sound Alan diagnosed as a death rattle recently, and the thought of it going toes-up in the middle of the most stressful week of his work year drove us to Sears last weekend for a replacement. It was delivered Wednesday. Looking at its pristine, LED-lit interior, I considered styling it like a refrigerator ad, with a crown roast of pork and a whole, pristine cake, just for the hell of it. But instead, I put all the stuff from the old fridge inside and now I offer you this intimate glimpse of our family’s refrigerated life:

It’s pretty full, I know, but that’s the way it usually is. In the bottom drawers: Kale, beets, way too much spinach, celery, garlic and a red bell pepper. In the meat drawer: Sliced ham, Italian sausage, chicken filets and way too much bacon. Up top, citrus, yogurt, a pie crust (secret shame! Pillsbury!), pico de gallo, leftovers and a lone Lender’s bagel (don’t blame me; Kate likes them). And yep, there’s plenty of likker in there, too. Did I mention it’s auto-show week?

Every so often I’ll see a magazine feature where a reporter/photographer team takes us into the refrigerators of famous people, and even when it’s allegedly a surprise pop-in, they always seems suspiciously perfect. Maybe the rich and famous employ servants to color-coordinate the fridge and stack all those pop cans and bottled juices. But this is my actual fridge as of Wednesday morning.

The sweet vermouth is due to an excess of bourbon in the house at the moment. We’re fooling around with manhattans this winter. Last year it was vodka cocktails. We are not alcoholics. For the first time in my life I have a through-the-door water dispenser. GOD I FEEL RICH.

OK. Since we’re already into all-caps, I also feel the need for a YOU FUCKERS roundup. I was reading about the retired cop who shot the man in the movie theater for texting. He certainly is a fucker, but I’m thinking the all-caps YOU FUCKER has to be reserved for the people who made him so crazy and paranoid that he felt the need to pack heat to watch a movie. Unfortunately, that is pretty much the entire culture, except for all of us. Too many FUCKERS.

Have you heard of the Shriver Report yet? Apparently Maria Shriver — born into wealth and privilege and never left it for even a minute — has discovered her own gender, and wants to uplift it. So she made a report, and it was bound in book form, and she presented it to the president! And then, because there is no media story that cannot be made even more appalling, she did a piece for NBC News about her own report, and how she presented it. And then, because this report is truly in touch with the American woman and how she works today, guess who is in the report, quoted as an expert on gender-based pay inequality? Beyoncé! Because even though Queen Bey earns on a roughly equivalent level as her husband, she has to dance around in revealing clothing in high heels, I guess.

You can’t make this shit up.

Here’s Shriver, that FUCKER, presenting her report to the president. You can tell from the look on his face that he’s going to cancel all his afternoon appointments and read this thing from cover to cover:

Jon Hamm isn’t a FUCKER, but he plays one on television, and he’s back at it. April, folks.

And with that, I have some chores to do. I will not have to clean the refrigerator, though.

So I had a follow-up visit to my ophthalmologist today, just to see if the eye was healing the way it should. (It is.) Scanning the thousand-year-old periodicals in the waiting room, I opted to check email instead, via my phone. The first ad Facebook served me was for Starling Eyewear, makers of funky reading and sunglasses.

This could have been a coincidence, but I don’t think so. Because I was thinking about glasses and hey, look! An ad for glasses.

This happens often. A friend of mine stopped in a store on the way home from lunch, and when he returned to his desk, why look, here’s an ad for the store on his social media page.

Another was in Ann Arbor, and thought hey, maybe we should see a movie. Punched “American Hustle” into his phone and was told, It’s playing right down the street, and the show starts in 20 minutes. Want to buy tickets?

This is what I’ve come to call the Benevolent Internet, referenced yesterday in connection with the sale of the Nest thermostat company to Google for more than $3 billion. Do you want a helpful machine in your pocket to read your mind and tell you those pants you were admiring are on sale? Or, looked at from another angle, would you like to tell Google how warm you keep your house, even when you’re not in it?

You might think that’s none of Google’s business, but they just spent $3 billion to make it their business.

When I was looking at the very first Macintosh computer in the mid-’80s, my mother wondered what I might use it for. I told her there’s a program that, once you input all the contents of your cabinets and refrigerator, suggests things you might make for dinner based on what you have on hand. She said, “That’s what I do every day of my life, only I do it in my head.”

I use the internet for work, which means I go to a lot of pages I’m not particularly interested in, but need information from. My Amazon “recommended for you” page is a mess, because I look up books I wouldn’t take free of charge if they were offered as fireplace kindling. I sometimes browse $4,000 dresses on Nordstrom’s site, just to see what a $4,000 dress looks like. I root around Tumblr because teenage girls are fond of it, and I know a few of them. I think it’s my responsibility to know what pro-ana and fitspiration is. I shudder to think what the cloud of my surfing would look like, and who might be interested in it.

Not long after I took my job in Fort Wayne, they instituted a drug-testing program for new hires. The editor proclaimed he wasn’t in favor of this, that it was imposed from above, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker for the right candidate. “What you do on your own time is your own business,” he said. What a concept.

Now, what you do on your own time is the wealth creator for all those Silicon Valley fortunes.

I don’t want to sound paranoid, but this is making me edge in that direction. And I’m a person who lives pretty out loud already.

I think I’ll compromise by putting a sticker on my webcam. I never use it anyway.

OK, some bloggage:

I am absolutely no fan of Chris Christie, but enough with the fat-shaming, OK? On the other hand, maybe the problem is just that he lacks confidence. (Link fixed.)

Conan O’Brien, joker.

And me, I’m outta here.

I love eavesdropping. It’s my favorite vice, and I will do it without apology anywhere I can get away with it. The other day, at the bread store, a single clerk was left in charge as yet another impending winter storm sent half the world out for French toast supplies. Fortunately, the two college-age women ahead of me in line were chatterboxes.

“They get mad because I don’t want to get up at 7 a.m. on my vacation and go work out with them.”

“You work out with your parents?”

“They made us all do it, starting when we were kids. They also tell me the calorie content of every single thing I put in my mouth. Sometimes my mom freaks out because she thinks she’s getting fat, so she goes on these juice cleanses. I want to tell her, ‘Mom, if you’d lay off the wine and chocolate, you wouldn’t have to do that.'”

Oh, this is good stuff. Go slower, clerk. I want to hear more of this. And I did. Mom and dad went to Hawaii the year they both turned 50, a trip they called “Hawaii five-oh.” When they retire, they’re moving to Italy. At least that’s what they say now. It might be Hawaii. Anyway, the daughter is in some sort of professional program where client confidentiality is important, but her mother “makes her” talk about her cases, which she then aired at the Christmas dinner table.

(This last made me feel a lot better about eavesdropping.)

Then it was on to her roommate, who is the world’s biggest slob — she spills chili all over the stove, cheese all over the carpet, and never cleans them up. Also, she’s neurotic about men. “She’s always crying, and then they’re lying together on her bed watching TV.”

After a good 10-minute wait in line, it was finally her turn. She got a loaf of pumpkin bread. Lots of calories in that one.

So. It’s auto-show week, which means Alan left the house at 5:15 a.m. and hasn’t been seen for the last 14 hours — at least by me. The end of the week brings car prom, and I expect to be doing another photo …something from the big night. I actually got an email about this today; called it a “fan favorite,” in fact. Fans, you can see better pictures at the dailies’ websites, but I’ll do what I can.

Now, for some bloggage? From the Department of Kids These Days, the sad tale of the Delta Chi fraternity at Central Michigan University. The frat was suspended for four years last fall, after an incident at a party the previous spring. And what happened? This:

She woke up around 4:30 a.m. “with a man on top of her,” according to the email. The student said she could not recall anything that happened after midnight and she only had one drink at the party. The email states that similar events happened to four other women who were at the party.

The assaulted woman’s phone disappeared during the party, but it is unclear whether it vanished before or after she blacked out.

The phone was used to take nude photos of her and of male genitalia. The images were later emailed to the woman’s parents and posted to her Twitter account.

There’s a punchline, though. One of the women — there were several — involved in the complaint heard from one of the guys in the frat:

One of the women received a text message from the Delta Chi man under investigation that read, “thanks for ruining my life,” according to the police report.

Yeah, poor kid. Who raises these boys?

I asked for a Nest thermostat for Christmas, but Alan said it was too expensive for what it does. I said fine, then give me one that actually fucking works. (Our allegedly programmable thermostat? Didn’t.) I got one. It’s not as sexy as the Nest, but it works. The Nest was sold to Google today for $3.2 billion, yes billion. And now I’m sort of glad I didn’t get one:

Nest is billed as a thermostat and smoke detector company, but it’s really in the data-collection business. Once Nest’s sensor-equipped devices are in a user’s home, they can pick up all kinds of information — when people enter and leave, when lights are turned on and off, how patterns of energy use change throughout the day — and use that information in various ways. Google has long been interested in this kind of data collection and use — in 2011, it shut down a pilot project called PowerMeter that tracked energy use in the home and suggested ways to be more ecofriendly. But it never had its own proprietary devices to put in people’s homes. Now it does.

Yich. I’ve had a post percolating in my head on the Benevolent Internet vs. the Evil One. I’m thinking this is part of it. Of course, I also just bought a Google Chromecast today, to get some use out of an under-utilized TV in the bedroom. So I haven’t gone totally NSA-paranoid. Yet.

And so the week gets under way. I hope it’s not snowing where you are.

I did a little more stuff reduction today, tackling a little box that sits amongst a heap of dust-gathering crap. Perhaps I could move some of the crap into the box, but there was stuff in the box, including a ticket stub from the very first Brickyard 400, and — Kirk, you’ll like this — a pay stub from the Columbus Dispatch, March 1979. I earned $215 a week in what would have been my third month of employment.

The inflation calculator says that’s the equivalent of $690.22 today, and I sort of wish I hadn’t looked it up, because it shows how very un-remunerative my newspaper career has been. Only in the past year has my income recovered to its 2003 level, but oh well — I’ve always been a saver.

I kept the ticket stub, pitched the pay stub.

As I vacuumed up the dust — and may I just say, there is nothing like low winter sun to magnify every mote in the damn room — I recalled March 1979 was when I was cruelly snubbed from the pot-brownie distribution list before the Clinic, the Dispatch’s annual all-staff professional-development event. (Too early; no one knew me yet.) Kirk was not, and neither was Borden, and both were so stoned during the program they were lucky the entire management tier consisted of fossilized old men whose knowledge of intoxicants began and ended with Canadian Club. The keynote speaker was some guy from the AP, who pronounced the name of the 50th state “how-ah-ya,” after which I heard my colleague Karen (ate the brownie) say, “Fine. How are you?” Snickers rippled up and down the row.

Years later, Kirk and Karen would get married. And that’s about where anything even remotely interesting about that story ends. But the reverie made the cleaning go a little faster.

How as everyone’s weekend? The thaw came, and it is ongoing, but that was a lot of snow, and much of it is still out there, even as the gutters gurgle and the wet sidewalks become treacherous as soon as the sun goes down. Wendy and I had a miserable walk — more like a mince — this morning. There’s at least two months of winter left, and there’s only one thing to do: Head down and push on through.

Fortunately, this is why the lord gave us Bulleit rye. I just had two fingers, neat.

Man, am I sore, the result of an unfamiliar workout and a case of overdoing. So here are a few links, and I’m out:

How one-party rule came to pass in 36 states. Lengthy, depressing, infuriating.

For you Bruce Springsteen fans: Which albums are under-, over- and correctly rated. From Grantland.

Now I have to watch “True Detective” and read Tom & Lorenzo’s Golden Globes tweets. Enjoy the week ahead?

I was briefly watching Chris Christie deliver his Sgt. Schulz defense – he knew NUT-ting – and reflected that I’m sure I read somewhere that he had lap-band surgery, and I did. But he doesn’t look like it. I briefly had a boss who had it and became unrecognizable within months, but I guess Christie’s on the slow-diet plan. Good thing, because his fat actually a) looks OK on him, in the sense that he  seems to be one of those born-to-be-fat guys; and b) it makes him more believable, for those who do that trust-your-gut thing.

Not that I believe him. I mean, come on.

Of course, heads are rolling, and the first is Bridget Anne Kelly, the aide who first called for traffic problems in Fort Lee. She’ll be fine in the end. The Tracy Flicks of the world always seem to land on their feet. I won’t speculate on how Christie will end up. Republicans don’t trust him, and anyone who would punish an entire city because its mayor wouldn’t endorse a guy with a more than 20-point lead is not going to be beloved by Democrats.

Tough break. I don’t know if a two-hour apology will do it, but we’ll see.

Spent part of the evening at a two-beer confab with a friend, working on a piece of writing. Came outside to discover, hoo-boy, it’s snowing again. It won’t last. Because this weekend it will rain. Character feels fully built right about now.

I don’t have any links today; do you? If so, post them in the comments. I’m going to bed and hoping next week, nobody dies. Happy weekend, all.

UPDATE: Please don’t miss the note from Prospero’s brother, which he left in a previous thread.