A woman on her way to St. Paul really got the goat of auto repairman James Prusci. She went to Tires Plus in Winona Friday, wanting a belt replaced on her Chevy Malibu. While he was doing paperwork, she said she had a goat in her trunk. "A what?" he asked. She told him she planned to butcher it.

It was painted Minnesota Viking colors — purple and gold — with Brett Favre's No. 4 shaved on its side. Favre made his Vikings debut Friday in a preseason game.

Prusci called animal control, which took the goat to a local vet. He was renamed Brett and placed in foster care.

Animal control officer Wendy Peterson said Monday the city attorney was reviewing the case for possible citations.

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crista, were you planning a formal protest or what?

Um. roadriverrail points out, via the community the_recession, that Sweden has just set new interest rates.

New negative interest rates.

They're charging people money for the privilege of keeping their money in the banks.

This happens in a week. Original data here. The money(!!) quote is: The deposit rate is at the same time cut to -0.25 per cent and the lending rate to 0.75 per cent.

Some commentary here.

I'm listening to NPR. They're interviewing residents in Galveston, those that are staying (many have decided to evacuate *now* and are on their way to San Antonio and Austin. *sigh*). One of the common, repeated comments that I'm hearing is baffling me completely.

"We have no food," they're repeating. "Everything was in my freezer, and after two days without power, I had to throw away hundreds of dollars worth of meat."

My point of disconnect is this: Who in Texas doesn't own a grill? Or at least live in an area where *somebody* owns a grill? If we were to lose power for more than two days here, by the end of day two we'd be filling the charcoal grill with hastily assembled hamburger patties, dropping a whole chicken and a few roasts in the propane grill and shutting the lid, and eating like kings carnivores for at least a week. We have flour and water and other baking ingredients in the house, and making flatbread on a grill is no great challenge either.

Why can't they find someone with firewood and firestarting skills? I have no idea why all this food is getting thrown out and they're mobbing FEMA for basic supplies.

(I do totally get why they're mobbing them for ice, though. Oh yes. I've been to the coast and I UNDERSTAND THE NEED FOR ICE.)

Edited to Add: Er. A former coastal resident has stepped in and explained the basics to me. I am now educamated a little bit on this issue, and anyone who wants to know the answers to my questions will find them in the comments.

Fun fact about me:

In my late teens, I got a summer job in an office that used Macs exclusively. I had never used an Apple computer before, so there was the usual steep learning curve of how-to-use-a-brand-new-operating-system. On, I think, my third day there, I was frantically hunting for the "eject" button on the CD-Rom drive ... (if you need an explanation of this, ask and I'll 'splain.)

Well, clearly, Apples don't have eject buttons on their CD-Rom drives, because it's software-controlled. So, being unable to find what I was looking for, I called our ever-patient Help Desk guy and asked him how to eject my disc.

Now it so happens that the computer I was working on was very old, and the drive stuck sometimes. He, assuming that I was having that more complicated problem, proceeded to give me the procedure they'd worked out for it: "See, you have to take a paperclip and insert it blahblahblah."

I faithfully did what he told me and then, well, that's how I opened the drive *every* *damned* *time* I used it, because that's how I thought I was supposed to do it. I didn't find out how to eject a disc from a Macintosh for another two or three years, because I never use the things.

Yeah.

Also: kyeli_unlikely, wyndhover, and ubiquity, I'll see your strange photographs and cold spells and raise you a missing conversation and a stark impossibility.

I had a semi-revelation recently. Semi-, because it was only a confirmation of something I'd internalized before I reached double digit ages; Life is not an ABC Movie of the Week, there usually aren't happy endings.

New revelation, because the details were specific to something I hadn't known before: Forgiveness doesn't make it all better.

The person I've forgiven (my mother) wants to be a part of my life, and I have absolutely no interest. I won't miss it if I never speak to her again, and that fact hurts her terribly. I had a vague idea, that once I realized that I harbored no more resentment towards her, that it would all get better again--we'd hang out, chat on the phone, what have you. It hasn't happened.

The anger is gone, but the hurt remains. I don't *trust* her any more now than I did when I was ten--which is to say, not at all. We have very little in common, and the person I want her to be (a mommy) isn't someone she's ever been. Even if she were to transmogrify into 'a mommy' overnight, it's too late. That's not who I need anymore. In my life now, I need friends--and I don't form long distance friendships easily. My few LDRs are with people I actively like, not with people I'm *obligated* to.

I don't want to get in touch with her just to tell her that I am not interested; my passive aggressive style (learned from you-know-who) is to let her figure it out on her own. I know that that's neither right nor fair, but it's easy, and I've always been a sucker for the easy way out.

OK, OK, OK: This week, I will make an aggressive effort to find her and call her. I don't know how I am going to tell her this *when* I call her, but I will tell her. I will also make sure that she has phone numbers for a very few of my family, and vice versa--should anything happen to me (God forbid, knock on wood, insert your favorite disclaimer here), I will make sure that someone knows how to reach her and tell her.

I'm not angry at her. She was directly responsible for my accutely miserable childhood, but she still did the best thing she knew how to do. The fact that just about any idiot could have told her that she was being, well, an idiot, doesn't enter into it. I won't get into the major whats and whys here, that's for a locked post if it happens at all, but believe me when I say that the difficulty I have had in trusting people is directly attributable to her.

Poor woman. At least one of her three children (my sister) still keeps in contact. My brother doesn't so much keep in contact as stay put; he can't run and hide since the stroke, but before the stroke no one had any clue where he was. I don't know how much anyone cared, either.

Who says you can't choose your family? I have, and the day I realized that that was what I was doing was one of the best of my life. Wasn't very long ago, either. I can't imagine one of my family ever doing something so awful that I would consciously want to avoid them forever and ever amen; I can't imagine ever wanting to seek my blood family out for friendship's sake.

I will track my mother down because it is the kind thing to do. I won't like it, but I will do it. And if anything else needs to be said on the subject, I will very likely say it here.