Hey, where have you been?

It's been a very long time since I posted anything, and it's been a very, very busy five months.

The kitchen is 90% complete. Only a few tiles and the floor are to be finished. Finally! And we love it. 

From left, Kent (aka DH), Peanut (aka Samantha), and Kat (no aka). The photo is a little dark but check out those GORGEOUS cabinets (mahogany-stained hickory) and beautiful backsplash. Highly recommend Costco for kitchen cabinets. 

'Tis the spring/summer concert season for the Tidewater Concert Band, and we've had many gigs recently. Musically things tend to quiet down after Independence Day then pick up again around Labor Day. I'm struggling to get that Stars & Stripes piccolo solo under my fingers but it is hard. I'm not the principle piccolo but we wanted to have at least two piccs playing - for fun, you know? So, earplugs firmly in place. I continue to work. 

Did I mention I got another floor loom? La-la-la-loving it...I know I romanticize the idea of refinishing and reselling old looms but I'm sure the reality is much different. I did have fun with the first one, though.

Speaking of WORK, that ugly word, I am once again managing a software project. Ah, the glamorous life of a m******f******s***f***** business analyst. Nah, I'm kidding, it's not so bad. I am doing another project, a web app again, quite a major addition to a web reporting application that I already manage and previously implemented. It is very challenging to have two developers in one country, 10 hours ahead, and one developer in another country, two hours behind, and none in my own country. The phrase "never the twain shall meet" comes to mind. It isn't anywhere near as awful as The Project From Hell three years ago. Four years ago? Time flies. We are scheduled to "go live" next Wednesday, and we are only a week behind schedule. I would not call it an Agile project, although it started out that way, but it was definitely a rushed project. 

The last day of school was today. DH brought all his stuff home. Three bins. The foyer is again a disaster area with things to be donated and/or loaned, a large stroller and a pink Disney walker (Peanut's), a Bow-flex (anyone? Bueller?), my gig bag and music stand, and the stuff that actually lives in the foyer - salmon sofa, key table, green throw rug. 

Kat and the Peanut are staying with us for a short time. It's a little stressful having a ten-month old in the house, but also quite wonderful having them both here. They are a delight and I get to play gramma to a sweet dimpled little girl whose first words seem to be "doggie." Maggie Doggie has made sure Peanut feels welcome and has allowed herself to be used as a pillow. Tasha Doggie is gentle with her, and Sarah Doggie has kept her distance and let Peanut come to her. DH and I are both charmed, and Momma Kat is getting on her feet again.

DH has officially started his summer gig with the Google CAPE program and there is a great deal of travel occurring over the next couple of months. 

Primo (aka Nick) is still at BB and living in Ghent. Secundo (Patrick) is working, and rescuing stray baby birds, turtles, and tarantulas in Kansas. He's not a dog person, but that apple didn't roll too far away from the tree. 

Much package mailing to do and weaving photos to post. 

All is well.  

For Gramma, From Scotland with Love

 Gramma thought George was so nice. He was. Unfortunately, his Scottish brogue was strong at times. From the back seat I heard a great deal of "what did he say?" from her. Mom did most of the translating.

 Okay, yes, she HATED the walker but she dolled herself up just the same. You just never knew who you would meet!

 One of the drizzely hours. Our energy was on the wane. By now she'd mostly ditched the walker for a wonderfully carved cane that we found on Skye.

One of my favorite pictures.

BE the garden

"Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, and are then prepared to ignore them until the spring.  I am quite sure that a garden doesn't like to be ignored like this.  It doesn't like to be covered in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter.  Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance."
-   Beverley Nichols

How I try to cultivate winter gaiety in myself, I'm giving it a chance, but I loooooooong for spring.  February will tease us with warm weather - summer in the sun, winter in the shade, as Dickens says (although he was referring to March) - and follow promptly with a dastardly spell of something rainy and cold. 

Aaaaaagh.

The sky is blue. Light beams into the yard and the dogs covet each patch of sunshine and give me looks of reluctance when I invite them back into the house. I feel the same way.

Each season has it's joy and beauty. I've had enough of Winter's joy and beauty. Give me Spring.

Warm and Almost Clean

The heat pump is cured! Not before it got down to 42 degrees in the house on a couple of the coldest days this month. I praise multi-zone heating systems.

The fan fell off it's peg inside the heat pump. Really. One bolt. I mean, really.

"My computer won't turn on."
"Okay, ma'am, is your computer plugged in?"
"Is that the black snake with the prongs? It's just laying there on the floor. I smacked it with a hammer a few days ago. I think it's dead."

Humiliation is free. Heating technician labor is not free.

In other breaking news, the dryer works. Two years ago, and I really thought I'd blogged about this, we had a spectacular nor'easter which made the water table rise which flooded our basement a foot or two b and prevented it from draining for about a month. Hard to gauge how much water there was, but all of us up and down the street had our sump pumps going 24x7 for several weeks. After all the excitement we were able to determine that the washer and dryer, only a couple of years old, were goners. Whirlpool came out and said, sorry, it's flood damage and even though you're under warranty, you'll have to go through FEMA. Riiiiiiiight.

For the past two years we've been schlepping to the laundromat with clothing, soap, and entertainment gear in hand. Did you know they use re-loadable swipe cards now? Instead of cash? Meanwhile, I didn't know DH was checking to see if either of the appliances had come back from the dead, but a few weeks ago he sprung this info on me, that being the aforementioned dryer.

Me: happy dance.

It appears that by this weekend we'll also have lucked into a washing machine.

Me: happy dance, including a few tap moves.

I'm sure it's a basic run-of-the-mill washing machine but that's more than acceptable as long as it resides in my house and sitting atop two courses of cement blocks.

Right, then, on to other life tasks. Like taxes.

Brrrr!

The cussing heat pump is rattling like a jar of pennies and we think a bearing is on it's way to the big HVAC in the sky, so we've turned that heat pump off. Good news: two zones! so the second floor is comfortable. Bad news: it's about 50 degrees down on the first floor. Maybe colder. Really chilly down there. Instead of catching up on our Tivo recordings (downstairs) we're hanging out in my lair (upstairs).

Help me name my office/craft room/place where I spend 8+ hours of my day Monday thru Friday. I telecommute from this room. My knitting stash is here. My spinning stash is here. Sometimes my spinning wheel is here, too, but lately it's been in the dining room. My silversmithing equipment is here. My sewing equipment is here. My flutes and music are here. My ginormous Ikea Galant desk is here. And right now I am here. It's a good big room. It has no name. Calling it "my office" sounds a little pretentious. "My room" sounds presumptuous, although it is my room and DH has his room/office/playroom wherein resides his computer(s), misc electronics, big honkin' man desk, theatrical paraphernalia, and Yamaha keyboard.

I also need a name for my spinning wheel. I've been referring to it as Betty but that just doesn't have the right ring. Also, I would like to tattoo the wheel. Or, paint tattoo-type images of Koi and Japanese waves and things.

I don't know why I like this so much: So Now You Know: World's Heaviest Snow Plow, but this blogger shared an amusing caption written for an old wood block print: Cupcakes?

I upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 last week. As if I didn't already have enough on my plate what with trying to launch that darned scorecard I mentioned in the last post I wrote in 2010, oh back in August. Yes, since that time I've been pushing developers, negotiating with stakeholders, and writing project documentation all in a race to launch a new online executive scorecard before the end of the calendar year. We would have made it, too, if one of the developers hadn't (a) resigned and (b) failed to actually complete (like he said he did) some key components of said scorecard prior to leaving. He was supposed to leave at the end of December and decided to leave ten days early. What a smeg head. I worked over my Christmas vacation on this. My manager worked over her Christmas vacation on this. We discovered last week that even if the defects we found had been resolved by 12/31, we never would have been able to launch it because, lo and behold, our erstwhile developer did not build the space on the production web server and the new owner of the web server says "oh no, server not stable, can't use it, go elsewhere." No amount of escalation was able to break through that barrier. We have a solution, we repoint the URL to a different web server (found one, owner says "sure, come on in, mi casa su casa," then build the new space, load the code, and test. It was an eventful week.

But you know what? It's friggin' done. The code is complete, all the functions work, the interface is as clean as my stakeholders have allowed (we disagree about flashy thingies) and I'm getting ready for a JAD session to design requirements for the next release. I gave life to this monster but did I mention I have to feed and water it? And, I expect that sometimes it will poop on the floor and I'll most certainly step in it. This has been an enormously valuable learning experience. I've learned that it's okay to break an egg as long as you say "yep, my egg. Does anyone have a towel?"

I wonder how many other metaphors I can mix and destroy tonight. DH will be counting.

I need to upload pictures but there are obstacles. Windows 7 upgrade. Right. Photoshop isn't loaded, but I'll probably do that tonight before bed. MyPad won't sync with iTunes on the laptop. It wasn't syncing before the upgrade so not a step backward. I have an assortment of lovely photos on the iPad from Christmas and, lamer that I am, might have to...I don't know...upload them to a cloud and then download them back again. Google Docs might be the ticket and I haven't tried that yet.

Cya anon.
Erin

New Year, New Blog Goal

That being "do more blogging." We'll see how that works out. I sure do like the idea of doing this while sitting in bed, though, and it might be the perfect incentive.

Christmas at Mom's in Silverdale was relaxing and lazy and full of good cheer. We walked through their neighborhood of Klahowya, visited one of the best yarn stores I've ever seen (Linda's Knit n' Stitch has a WALL of Koigu, dude), spent some time with my grandma and Uncle Stan, we ate Ivar's at the airport before we bothered to pick up our luggage, and didn't go to Seattle at all. We did some shopping, naturally. One must aquire accessories for one's new toys. Best Buy was conveniently located across the parking lot from Costco. The Silverdale Costco positively dwarfs ours here in Norfolk. You could put two of our Costco's inside theirs.

Note to Mom: My Costco has that yummy sheep's cheese and hopefully not just for the season.

Our plan this year is to really get moving on our kitchen remodel, but we'll be doing it in stages. We agreed to sacrifice some important events this year to make this all happen. This weekend we'll be scouting ranges, and two base cabinets. We badly need a new range, and the base cabinets allow us to make the first major modification: moving the sink from the peninsula to the wall and getting rid of the butt-ugly peninsula. Did I say butt-ugly? What I really mean is grossly, sadly, spectacularly butt-ugly. Hyperbole: not a thing of the past.

So unless I get a really spectacular bonus (I did well but not five-figures-well), and no more horrible automotive issues, I won't be getting a second spinning wheel this year, I will only be going to a little fiber festival locally, and am scaling back my fiber purchases this year. It's not a fiber diet, just a tightening the belt thing. DH is giving up a couple of conferences, although we might still be able to do the yoga teacher training.

Meanwhile, I've been configuring the heck outa my new iPad. I love these apps right now:

• Flickpad because I can see all photos my friends have posted this by the week to Flickr and Facebook.
• Flipboard because I can do basically the same thing with this and the blogs I follow as I do with Flickpad. Flipbook formats it all into a magazine-like format, which is very lovely. If only I could drop Flickpad into Flipboard...
• Angry Birds. What's not to like? It's so fun!

And I'm going to stop right there and post the damn thing! And by the way, typing on the iPad isn't nearly the headache I thought it would be. It works just fine, thanks.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

When In Rome...or Greece, if you like

I procrastinated about this post. I've spent the last month thinking about blogging, what it is about, what it does for me, what my blogging might do for others. I have not led a unexamined life. In fact, I'm definitely guilty of over-examining. I don't know when it happened but sometime recently...a few years ago?...I lost my taste for over-examination. For taking stock every damn day of every damn thing. It's exhausting. I have better things to do with my time. I'm evolving into having a simply examined life. Because, let's face it, what is blogging? Examining...in public. A form of exhibitionism. To paraphrase a much-maligned company's(1) catch phrase, What do you want to exhibit today?

(Why yes, today we have footnotes.)

Shall we put this into perspective? When we were smokers, DH and I would spend HOURS on the front porch talking. Smoking and examining, examining and smoking. And then analyzing ourselves and our motives, out friends and their lives and their motives. Almost daily.

We stopped doing so much of that when we stopped smoking. There was a catalyst, eh? And it didn't even hurt.

I should have made an outline to follow because, after stepping away for an hour to wind off some new yarn, have a cuppa Joe, and listen to DH explain the complexities of creating momentum against a soccer ball from within a minimum amount of space (he needed to think out loud to someone)...well, I sort of lost my place. Which is okay because there's a part two to my disjointed thoughts.

I have this friend. Let's call her Maureen. That's her name. No changing names around here to protect the innocent, and she's anything but innocent, ha ha ha. I asked Maureen why she didn't come read my blog very often. Apparently, I talk about fiber and knitting too much, two things she's not at all interested in. Ok. I hate Facebook, which is where she lives HER life, and probably wonders why I don't visit out there so much.

But this is sort of what led to a little recent self-examination; not about blogging per se but more about how we share our lives and at what point do we fall on our collective swords and follow our friends on Facebook and Twitter and their blog and the lot, as opposed to actually communicating with them on a one on one basis. But the question is more basic than that. Do I want to know the outer sheen of Maureen's life, as exposed and exhibited through Facebook where I can see that she has killed three dragons and is sending me a drink, and is going to go to bed now, or do I want to know what's going on in her heart and mind? (Answer: the latter.) I don't know if if you can really KNOW someone through Facebook. I guess it depends on what a person posts, but I dare you to have a long stream of ideas on Facebook. And don't get me started on Twitter. Life encapsulated in under 144 characters at a time. Now we can all submit our own soundbites to the world. Shit.

Lest my friends who use Facebook are offended or get defensive by my little rant: get over it. I am guilty of a little hypocrisy. "We all have our hobbies." I heard Shelley Binder(2) say that at the Hampton Roads Flute Faire yesterday and thought how wonderful a comeback it is and was determined to use it immediately.

Back to things. So here I sat, spinning quietly and thinking about whether I should expand my writing/ranting topics, or just STFU(3) and carry on. And I'm thinking about this fiber that I'm spinning that my friend Ashley gifted me. I don't know how I lucked into a friend as nice as she is but dang, she'd give you the shirt off her back if she thought you could use it. Anyway, she gave me this Superwash Merino top that she didn't care to work with. I think we have different spinning styles, her and I, so for me this was a nice, nice fiber to work with. I spun three bobbins of singles that I started plying as a sock/fingering weight 3-ply. I just wound off, a few paragraphs ago, the first 258 yards of this beautiful plied yarn.

Merino: wool from Merino sheep, very soft, not exactly cashmere but probably the most affordable of the yummy soft wools on the market.)
Superwash, or SW: a process that somehow changes the quality of the wool in such a way as to allow it to be machine washed. If you have something that is "machine washable wool" it's almost certainly been processed by what we fiber fanatics call "superwash." As a knitter there are minor trade-offs to using SW, as in: it doesn't felt so don't use it for felting projects, and don't expect to be able to join broken ends with spit.

Top: "Top" is the result of a fiber preparation that uses combs, very sharp spiky combs, to separate long yummy fibers from short not-as-yummy fibers from shorn wool. You've heard that "long-stapled cotton" is super soft. Long staples, or fibers, are soft no matter what the fiber. A basket of natural ivory colored wool top looks a little like someone's guts if they were fluffy and ivory-colored. I'm really not kidding.

And no kidding, I'm thinking about all this, including those definitions, as I'm spinning because my mind just...you know...wanders. Not unlike this blog post. It's quiet, I'm NOT listening to the radio, DH is somewhere (doing robotics or across the room working at the computeror in the kitchen), and the only sound is the occasional screech of a YouTube video, the hum of his laptop fan, and the constant quiet swoosh of my spinning wheel. It's unbelievably pleasant.

And finally, after three bobbins of singles, I realized that spinning and knitting is such a big part of who I am right now that it would be insane for me not to talk about it. So is making jewelry and so is writing in this format. So is playing the flute, my very longest running habit. Every few years the primary focus of my obsessions changes but for now: fiber, flutes, silver, writing, pretty much in that order. There it is. For awhile, none of them had any prominence but I finally learned that taking care of myself meant engaging in these activities because they make me happy.

At the end of the day, isn't that what's important? Know thyself.


Footnotes

(1) no, not Toyota. Microsoft. Gosh, do they even still use it?
(2) Shelley Binder, PhD, University of Tennessee, flutist, recitalist,clinician; attended her master class at HRFF.
(3) "shut the fuck up"

It's...so...white...

All that snow the forecasters have been suggesting we might get here in SE Virginia? We're getting it this time. Every time I look out the window, which has been frequently over the past few hours, I'm struck by how very white it is. And really it's more like shades of gray, but my brain goes "whoa, white." This is a stay-home-and-not-feel-guilty-about-doing-absolutely-nothing kind of Saturday. Nothing, that is, except for knitting, spinning, computing, blogging, drawing beads on little pieces of sterling wire, charging our respective portable media devices, watching movies, making soup, napping, reading, and paying the neighbor kids to shovel the walk every six hours so the mailman has a route to the mailbox up on the porch. $2 per boy (three boys) plus a cup of hot chocolate. Such a deal.

Through the back door to the back yard. The first view of the snow the dogs had.

I must tell you that the Camellia on the left looks like it's slightly taller than the Camellia in the center, but it really reaches as high up as the 2nd-story eve of the house behind it, and for perspective the fence there is about four feet tall.

The view from the front porch, and I admit that my first thought when I saw this car motoring along without it's lights on was "you dumb-ass, why are you out driving in this weather?"

View from the back porch to the back yard.

My cast iron rooster bell. I bought this years ago in New Mexico at a junktique store and I have a fondness for it whose origin is unknown and I can't shake. We took it down from it's post when the porch was rebuilt and haven't put it back up yet. The photo isn't turned the wrong way; the rooster is lying on the porch rail.

Them's the photos for now. More to come if I can find my boots to go wandering around the neighborhood.

Have some fun

I love this. Siraz: Is it a cheese? or a font? While everyone else is playing Bedazzled, I'll be over here playing this game:

http://cheeseorfont.mogrify.org/

And here's DH in his new extra-long stocking cap in Norview colors to keep you busy in case Cheese or Font is boring...

And then...poof!...there was Christmas

It really really snuck up on me this year. I mean in a way that it has never snuck up on me.

I probably say that every year, come to think of it.

Two Wednesdays ago I said "holy shit, Christmas is a week and a half away. Holy shit!"

Cards: Done, sent.
Gifts: uhm...got some for DH
Shipping: shipping? what shipping?

This is the first Christmas where Patrick isn't here to put up the tree, so I put up two mini-trees side by side on the console behind the sofa. I just couldn't bring myself to do the big one. Could just be laziness. 9 feet of majestic Monterey Spruce, a beautiful thing when it's up. Not as beautiful sitting in it's box in the dining room. It's in a box in the dining room. For the last four or so years, though, it has been Patrick's family duty to bring the tree up from the basement and assemble it. I informed him that he will have to resume this task for all subsequent Christmases. He didn't fight it. Smart kid.

Got fleece?

Ain't it purty? This is all from one sheep - or one type of sheep, Gotland, and the three pounds of gorgeous locks that DH gave me still have a bit of lanolin in them. Tigger's don't like "spinning in the grease," so I have some washing to do, which I started tonight. This group was part of round two. I only have a little colander so I can only do a little at a time. The first round was almost a disaster when I didn't separate the locks. Whadda mess. This time I separated BEFORE soaking and I didn't have to spend 20 minutes afterward teasing them apart. Aren't those colors something? It's even better in person, but this is tedious work to bring them into spinnable format. Soak, soak, rinse, rinse, dry.

Here's the drying stage, tucked into the shower in the spare bathroom. Finally, a use!

I just can't get over the colors and the luster. I don't know whether to separate them or spin 'em all together. I'll need suggestions.

No, I haven't spent my entire vacation spinning and working with fiber.

I trotted out the tools and made earrings and a pendant for Kat using freshwater pearls she had from a broken bracelet. I finished those tonight and thank goodness had a chain for that pendant. I see from this picture I could have done a better job of polishing that pie shape. Too late now! Dime included for scale :)

DH also gave me a share from Juniper Moon Fiber Farm. Funny thing about that...I had purchased a share for myself back in October! So now I have two shares.

Moving right along. We have a new tradition: open all the holiday cards on Christmas Day. Yay, that's actually a lot of fun...watching them stack up then opening them all and looking at photos that family and friends have included...then I hung them on the mantel with the stockings.

The guitar necks are from Rock Band, which we all played Christmas Eve. I played drums. It was hysterical, especially because we didn't have the drum sticks so I used wooden mixing spoons. I'm sure that was a sight. By the way, I suck at drums on Rock Band. So, don't rely on my musicianship to translate. I've got rhythm but you wouldn't know it.

Ok, that's a wrap. Oh. And, go out and rent Inglourious Basterds. If you like Quentin Tarantino, it's a major hoot. It almost resembles a Coen brother's movie. But...not.

Really, there was a Thanksgiving

And I started writing about it. It involved:

• a turkey (not BBQ'd) and the standard trimmings at my SIL's in South Carolina, although there wasn't a traditional pumpkin pie to be found in the lot
• lots of driving
  
• lots of knitting in the car
  
• hot dogs and chips at Maureen & Walt's place in Summerville
• lots of knitting with my nephew
• lots of eating

I had this big ol' other post that was very funny that I just never got around to finishing. So, there it is.

And then there's Christmas.

Show & Tell

This is way too adorable. Knit-themed cupcakes. Not your standard knit cupcake, lemme tell ya. While you're at it, go here to Juniper Moon Farm's blog, where I ran across the knit-themed cupcakes. This post has a Hey Jude flow chart that is wonderful.

Meet Tasha, the backseat driver. Believe it or not, she is just small enough to sit behind me in my ergonomic work chair. She loves that I telecommute, but this situation prevents the chair from achieving it's full purpose in life. And yet it hasn't complained. Yes, she does actually prop her head on the arm of the chair. Yes that is her right paw dangling lazily off the seat. She's a goofy gal. We're a good team.

So, DH bought me a Lendrum spinning wheel for my birthday. Meet Betty, the wheel. Tasha, whom we met above (again, for some) felt she needed to art direct the photo shoot. Not sure how the name "Betty" happened but it did. Too much Mad Men? By the way, Don Draper is Maureen's boyfriend. If you aren't Maureen you won't get that joke. Or, maybe you will...Next to Tasha is the lazy kate I also got. If you look closely, you'll notice a piece of driftwood perched behind the front maiden. In English, that's "top-front of the contraption behind where that vertical post thingy is." That is my makeshift "hold the fiber while I'm off doing other life things" tool. The wheel doesn't have the attached orifice hook so I can't wrap my in progress work 'round it. However, this brings us to...(next slide, please)


The Orifice Hook. This happens to be the humongous plying head with the humongous orifice which makes everyone else look like 90-lb weaklings. So let's put this into a little more perspective.
Better. This hook is about 4 1/2" long, and the spiral head is just shy of 7/8" diameter. If you operate in metric (which I do when I'm working in metal), that's 11.5 cm long, with a spiral diameter of lets say 22 mm. I had a makeshift one I made from a paperclip but the head was so small that I was having difficulty controlling it. 14 gauge copper, Chainose pliers, a hammer, and a little flex-shaft-driven polishing and we have my little copper beauty. I can tuck the in-progress fiber into the spiral and, if I don't want the thing just dangling around, I can hook it on the drive band. I also had to repair the cable that attaches the footman to the treadle. While the part was on order I managed to concoct another 14-gauge copper thingy to operate in its place. Thank goodness that was fast, though, because it was a little rough. But it worked!

I'm so MacGyver.

One last picture...my yummy purple Mountain Colours "Heather" targhee. 2 3/8 ounces, 265 yards. I think that would be about 1700 yards per pound, rounded down. DK weight. This is only my second 2-ply EVER, so it doesn't suck too badly and it'll only get better. Oh, come on, let's be real about this. The first skeins are horrible. It's really uneven but it is balanced, and it's hanging up drying. I see fingerless gloves in my future...


*can we just all think of something other than "orifice"? Really? Orifice? Wouldn't "aperature" be nicer? It's not that I'm a prude, but...orifice? Most of the parts of a spinning wheel are strangely named...mother-of-all, maidens, orifice, orifice hook...well, the other parts aren't so bad, like treadle and drive band and table and wheel and footman...orifice? Really? Can I start a revolution?

No. pun. intended.

One more thing...Mom came to visit and The Nor'easter That Ate Virginia swept through and the power was out for a few days and it didn't completely suck, especially when DH tromped through the rising tide in the basement with garbage cans on his feet. Nope, no galoshes or boots or waders, and we didn't get to go to silversmithing class or Yarn For Breakfast. The former was cancelled, and the latter was in conflict with showers at the gym. See Mom's post for the gory and not-so-gory details, soon to come when she arrives back home. She's at my brother's in Wisconsin at the moment. Mom: did you find the tartar sauce recipe in your email? When I say minced, I mean really minced. There's a special mouth feel (gawd, foodie talk) when it's minced. Just crunchy enough. Not too crunchy.

The Lame Post

I stalled after Williamsburg Consort (aka Band Camp). I'm tired, frustrated, angry, disappointed...and it keeps me from having fun with my bloggy self. None of the tired-frustrated-angry-disappointedness has anything to do with Consort, as we call it. Consort was a blast. It challenged me as a musician and it was a pleasure to play under such a professional conductor. An absolutely joy. It's the difference between an 18 micron Merino and grocery store twine. There's simply no way to connect the two. So that was terrific. I learned some great things from Janet, the flute section leader. I'm already seeing improvements from the advice I got from her. It inspires me to keep playing.

The tired-frustrated-angry-disappointedness (oh hell, let's just call it what it is: TFAD), the TFAD doesn't mean there aren't events to look forward to in life. My mother is coming to visit next week and I'm excited-anxious. We're titivating like crazy. Actually, I think we're beyond titivating and have moved into full on spring (fall) cleaning. I sweep the back decks at least once a day. That's something.

No, this is mostly about the triplets. They turned three months old last week and we haven't seen them since July 28th. They broke up and she didn't waste any time requesting child support, and also didn't waste any time telling him he couldn't see the babies, for any number of reasons which all equal no visits.

My best friend moved to South Carolina. I love her, I question her judgement on this, and I support her 100% because that's what friends do. Exciting for her, not so exciting for me. Now I'm just whining.

The Hateful Project is in someone else's hands now, more or less, while I finish my not-quite-as-hateful-project. Remember...Erin doesn't like managing projects. Strangely enough, The Hateful Project has gotten alot of recognition because on paper it returns a ton of productivity hours back to the teams involved, and this is big bucks. So, yay. Ironic. It doesn't make it any less hateful, though.

The uncomfortable part about wrapping up projects is that there isn't anything waiting in the wings. What happens when my six sigma project is done? What happens when The Hateful Project is done? I like having something to look forward to (remember that phrase...I'll come back to it...maybe not today, but sometime, and it troubles me...the phrase, I mean).

DH (Dear Husband) started rehearsals for Brave New World last week. I think he gets to "get nekkid" but we aren't sure yet. He really likes working with this group partly because of all the suzuki theater method they use in rehearsal. I couldn't explain it to you. It's a little weird. Sort of like competitive yoga, but not.

So, this post is about me saying: I'm here, the last few months have been a little crappy and I've mostly been trying to just deal.

Soup or...

Harris Teeter has impressively expanded their salad bar menu. For lunch we had a coastal South American country.

Cone of Uncertainty

We were not in it.

By "we" I mean Hampton Roads. By "it" I mean the projected path of TS Danny, which us weather watchers have been hoping would strengthen and throw up some severe weather, but not enough to make us evacuate. The projected path has bands and it's all known as The Cone of Uncertainty.

By "us" I mean Nick and me.

So every few hours we're checking out The Weather Channel or Wunderground. I've lost some faith in TWC's integrity ever since they started pretending to do "morning show" type stuff. Now that Al Roker is involved...well, gimme a break, huh?

But I love the term "cone of uncertainty." I intend to use it liberally.

---

Speaking of liberally, we are cooking liberally from our America's Test Kitchen cookbook. We love the French Onion Soup, and have mastered the art of cooking a whole chicken in a covered pot (chicken en cocotte) . Sounds straightforward, and it is. The question is: why doesn't EVERYONE cook it like this? It's so simple and makes the best gravy and the meat is tender and juciy from the thigh to the breast. Oof, is good.

---

I'm so late with this post...T.S. Danny is a dim memory.

Today's Quote

"It’s ok if there are better players than you on your team; sometimes your job is not to be brilliant yourself, but to enable others to be their best."

WENDII, http://www.manager-tools.com/2009/08/cricket

Door to Shore: 35 Minutes

I'll grant you it's kinda gruesome, but this was the scene of some dastardly crime at the oceanfront this morning. I don't know if any actual crime was committed, or how all these fish died...but they are very dead. Might have been someone's bait.

This morning I went to the oceanfront to take my morning constitutional, as in the Virginia Beach oceanfront, that bastion of touristy tackiness. I've been going up to the Ocean View section of Norfolk, the Chesapeake Bay version of the oceanfront.

Whatever.

Anyway, OV doesn't have the great white expanse of sand that the oceanfront has but it's really pleasant, not as many persons, and the beach combing fairly decent. Yesterday I ran across a beached porcupine fish and many blue crabs that had been picked over by the seagulls. I guess they were tossed up by the storm from the previous night.

It takes me 10-15 minutes to get up to Ocean View. I thought, well, the oceanfront isn't that much farther...so I timed it. 35 minutes, door to shore at 31st street, including finding a parking spot at 6:55 am which, on a Saturday, wasn't difficult. The punchline, and I swear there's a point, is that when you live that close to the ocean, it's really dumb not to spend time there. However, I'll reserve my oceanfront time for the Labor Day to Memorial Day season, and stick to OV for now.

1" = 3 miles or something like that. The red star is Home Sweet Home. Despite the proximity to several rivers, none of them have beaches for walking. Sad.

Old House, This

If you ever again hear the words"We're buying a fixer-upper" come out of my mouth, take me out back and shoot me because clearly I've lost my grip on reality. It seems like just when we're ready to make an improvement, something breaks and we end up spending money on that broken thing, and the improvement is delayed once again.

No, no, nothing major happened. It was just a small sequence of events in a 100-yr old house. The the two-year-old dishwasher died...again. A year ago the motor had to be replaced. Under warranty. Now it's the "harness assembly." Not under warranty. A basement drain backed up. This happens when the wind blows from just the right direction, pushing the bay and it's tributaries inland, which makes it harder for the runoff to drain properly. A new pump station was installed a few blocks away but the problem has actually gotten worse. These events have all come together at the same time, but I don't know if they are causal. In any case, I did a load of laundry yesterday and there's rinse water all over my basement floor. I was reminded of this awful cycle of horrors. Houses always cost so much more to maintain than I expect in both time and money. Makes condo living look veeerrrrrry attractive.

Okay, the dishwasher wasn't part of the "old house" thing, but still...

One Year Later...

Yes, it's been nearly a year since I posted a blog entry. I feel I've lost a certain anonymity that I prized for so long. Is the time for anonymity gone, and am I being completely unrealistic? Probably. Maybe I don't know how to be who I am online. And yet it feels pretty good to lay down some words and walk away.

In other words, I'm ambivelent about this entire blogging thing. And maybe that's exactly who I am and I just don't need to apologize for that. An epiphany a day it good for the soul.

Much Ado About No Snowthing. We were scheduled to get 2-5" of snow yesterday. It stopped in Raleigh and then went out to sea. I know the state border is a virtual boundary but you'd think it was physical the way the storm just bumped along it. All the schools were closed. City services were closed. Many people got a four-day weekend out of it. To this storms credit, about twenty-three snowflakes fell in the driveway. Can you have snow that is less than flurries? We did. For five minutes. The 2009 Blizzard That Wasn't.

Compare that to the fourteen inches of snow we got over Christmas at Mom's house.

MANY projects underway. Two pairs of knitted socks, two knitted hats, a 10-link bracelet, three pendants. Not much photography at the moment but I think that'll be picking up a little. I'll at least photograph my projects.

What kind of knitter am I?

This is how I behave in all my creative endeavors!

What Kind of Knitter Are You?

You appear to be a Knitting Adventurer. You are through those knitting growing pains and feeling more adventurous. You can follow a standard pattern if it's not too complicated and know where to go to get help. Maybe you've started to experiment with different fibers and you might be eyeing a book with a cool technique you've never tried. Perhaps you prefer to stick to other people's patterns but you are trying to challenge yourself more. Regardless of your preference, you are continually trying to grow as a knitter, and as well you should since your non-knitting friends are probably dropping some serious hints, these days. http://marniemaclean.com

Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code