2014 so far

I keep starting posts & not finishing them in a timely way,  & then they go past their due date (like my Blogger's Quilt Festival post complete with pictures.  Linky closed on Friday.  WHOOPS!).   Also, I don't exactly hate but am less interested in other peoples' posts about why they haven't been posting.  So I thought instead I would just catch up, the big & the small, & maybe get back into the swing of things now that the days are getting shorter & there is just as much as there ever was to fill them.  So here it is, in no particular order:

I met my Goodreads reading quota for 2014 just last week.  Yes, It's a small thing but I am still pleased.  & I am of course aware that some of the books on the list are barely worthy of counting (but I LIKE picture books).  A few highlights- I am almost up to date on Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series.  I will say Broken Harbor was not a favorite but Faithful Place was so good that I plan to continue.  Jonathan Tropper continues to make it work, as far as I'm concerned & I discovered Leanne Shapton (Important Artifacts is my big book recommendation of the year.  Turns out no one who has asked for a book recommendation from me has not gotten this title at the top of the list; even people who asked months ago have received revised lists putting this on at the top.  It is a thing of beauty).  On the other hand Lauren Hillenbrand's Unbroken was just kind of meh for me.  I know there are people who thought it was fan-f*cking-tastic, but I am not one of them.

I have become a baby quilt making machine  There will be AT LEAST three births in one 4 month period (that ends in FEB 2015, unless it doesn't) & that is just the tail end, unless it isn't.  In days gone by I tended to make quilts in pairs or triples.  The baby quilt I prefer (Modern Quilt Studio's Once Upon a Time from their book The Modern Quilt Workshop) which lends itself to this as you can make lots & lots of connecting blocks & be 1/2-way done with one when you are done-done with the other.  Trust me, it makes sense & it does NOT make two of the same quilt.  Generally I make a set of girls quilts, a set of boys quilts &/or a set of gender neutral quilts (that's right, pink, blue & green-sue me).  I try to mix up the sets so I use up the little I-SPY images & avoid duplicate looking quilts.  But so far, for more than two years it has been ALL GIRLS.  & the next one is ALSO a girl.  I have a closet full of blue & green (& yellow & purple) baby quilts & parents who are decorating in pink-stravaganza.  Yes, at some point someone is going to have a surprise baby boy & I am going to look like a genius but until then I am swimming in pink.

Cowgirl had a baby.  Cowgirl had a baby GIRL!!!  No quilt for her, but I am pleased nonetheless. Because Hattie (Hathor, Hattie for short) arrived just a couple weeks before the cold weather we are leaving mama & baby be for longer than usual & plan to start a milking schedule by the end of this month.

My bathroom is still is not working properly. I don't want to talk about it. 

The banana trees went ballistic this year. We cut two more blooms down yesterday (cold snap last light) & they are ripening on the kitchen counter. 

I am up to (down to) a 15 minute mile, which I can maintain for.....two miles. Hey, it's no Paul Ryan speed but still I am pleased.  On Friday I started covering four miles total (run a mile, walk a minute, run a mile, like that) & I hope to keep it up even in the cold weather.  If it seems like I took an absurd amount of time to get here, you are right.  In late 2013 I had a bone density blip & it was suggested that any impact anything would not be a good idea.  For a while.  & I only started trying to run again this past August.  In the meantime, I have been BollyBlasting my way to...nowhere actually.  Still fun, though. 

Yes, I'm sure there has been more, but this is all I can remember.  Or all I care about.  More likely this is all that overlaps in a Venn diagram of things I can remember & things I care about. 

It continues

My hazy July is looking to last right through today.  I guess the good news is August is mostly on track.  So far.  Which is more than I could say for July on the last day of June.

The July block swaps -both sign-up only- were their own mini-disaster.  That's not fair, actually.  Well Preserved went mostly fine.  One person injured herself & was a day or so late but she let me know ahead of time & she has never been late before.  It was Home for the Holidays that got in my grill.  That can all wait for another post.  Today I am trying to remember good things that happened in July: 

• I killed my calendula (not good) but managed to collect seeds before she got flooded & the seedlings are doing well.  So far.
• Last week, I could not face going where I was supposed to be & dawdled in the used bookstore I have not visited in well over a year & there, in the clearance cart on the sidewalk was a good-as-new copy of I Capture the Castle.  I almost wept.  & yes, I bought it. 
• We have our new roof.  This was not actually a July-thing but this business of not worrying about leaks & having way more light (replaced skylight, installed sun tunnel) has enhanced my days.
• My drawing class wrapped & I left feeling like I just might take another in the Fall.  In the hour before I needed to leave for class I would ask myself why I signed up for one more thing, but once I got there I was glad I made the effort.  Another funny thing- no matter how exhausted I was (& trust me I was exhausted) once I started drawing I wasn't.  After class the tired feeling came back but by then I was headed home & to bed so who cares.  Maybe different parts of my brain get used up at different rates.
• I started kettlebelling.  It seems like an odd choice, I know.  Weights have never been my deal, also I have plenty of muscle (hauling 50lb bags of feed around will give you invisible muscles & milking a cow will make you the scourge of men who like to dominate with a hand shake), but I was watching a documentary (that Mariel Hemingway made about her family that I am still on the fence about) & she was flinging this thing around in the yard & I thought I could give that a try.  I love it.  Love It.  LOVE IT.  A***** told me about how boxing/kick-boxing/whatever it was (I am sorry, I love you but I don't remember what it is you DO) was too anger-dissipating for her to quit, despite being the only girl in class & not in a good way, despite the instructor getting frustrated with her, despite everything; getting mad as hell & lashing out just felt good.  Let me recommend kettlebell.  Flinging 7lbs around while screaming "how hard can it be to park in just one space" & other things of that ilk has kept me from killing people.  It probably helps that some part of most days it is nice enough to be outside & we have enough property that I can get well away from windows...& walls.  Because when I lose control of that thing it can take out a fence board (ask me how I know).

I am sure there were other good things in July.  & if these sound like low-grade good things trust me they were a big deal. 

Accidental vacation

Yep, that's what happened.  I took an accidental digital vacation.  It really wasn't planned.  We had been thinking this would be a quiet summer, no trips plans, no visitors coming here.  So....

We had a new roof installed.  Also replaced a very gurney skylight & added a sun tunnel in the dark cave that doubles as our front room (no longer dark or cave-like)

We got the Honda repainted.  To explain why would be this long drawn out story of the floor girl telling us the reason our paint seems to be washing off the roof, hood & trunk of the car is because we had not waxed it properly.  I offered to show her the years-older Tundra I have never washed never mind waxed & looks just fine (dirty, but fine) & then she located a notice that there was in fact a flaw in that particular year's paint.  No shit Sherlock.  They took a week to do a three day job & fixed the door locks AGAIN.  If we ever buy another Honda, you will know the body snatchers have arrived.

Sherlock.  I watched seasons one through three in a week, which I know is no one else's idea of bingeing, but I have trouble sitting for 45 minutes for any reason at all.

Buffy.  After Sherlock, I moved on to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  As a palate cleanse.

I also tipped out our closet, unloaded shoes, bags & clothing, located he TWO separate holes we suspect mice have been using & put it back together.  Still don't have enough room for all our crap.  My crap.

I found a dog that looked just like Jane on-line & gazed at the post on Petfinder every day for three weeks but managed to not dial the phone.  This would be much easier if I could just stop cruising Petfinder, but I cannot.

I have finished no quilts or projects of any kind, but the roses are looking wonderful & the peacock ginger is going gang-busters.  I managed to spend my day-a-week at the herbarium, made it to a new faculty meet & greet reception-thing in a skirt & everything, got the dogs that we have groomed groomed & have mostly kept my head above water.  But when something has to give, it's blogging.

I hope I'm back.  I think I am.

You don't belong here

Like many people, I have been watching the pre-Boson Marathon coverage for the past couple days.  I have also been cough-Cough-COUGHING which I alternate with bouts of lying around moaning & while it would be an exaggeration to say I have been watching a lot of tv, the box has certainly been on.  That's right, I'm sick.  So sick, I missed the Friends of the Library book sale, the open house at the native rose nursery & C******'s birthday.  No books, no plants, & no cake. 

While in my weakened state, I began to notice a common thread through some of the people-stories that have been airing lately.  So without further ado, here it is, my list of recently-brought-to-my-attention illegal aliens...undocumented non-citizens....whatever you want to call them. 

Lets start small, with one of my favorites.  Pamela Anderson.  Oh sure, she is legal now, but when she first came here she wasn't.  She was spotted by a person who spots potential Playboy Playmates (that cannot be the real job title, I hope) & invited her to the US for a photo shoot but didn't go to the trouble of securing a work visa.  Anderson was stopped at the border, searched -seriously, searched- & the letter asking her to come work in the US (yes, what she does...did, is working) & was turned away.  In the end, of course, the paperwork was filed, Anderson did come here & take that job away from some other hard working American & the rest is history.  Except for the part about her being illegal, because while she tried to be an illegal alien, she got caught at the border.  Really.

The entertainment industry also gives us Charlize Theron who was doing OKay here illegally, until she started to get noticed professionally & then got booted & had to work her way back through channels. 

Who could forget Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be illegal?  Pretty much everyone as it happens.   Schwarzenegger came here on a strict no-employment-type visa.  & then found a job, collected a salary & never paid taxes on any of it, not even when he came clean to run for governor.

One of the more infamous illegals was Angel Reséndiz, better known as the Railroad Killer.  We left Houston in August 1998; he arrived in December of that same year.  Also, we lived near a railroad track, so I am delighted to have missed him.  On the other hand we had then, & still have, what I consider to be an excellent crime deterrent:  big, barky dogs.

& last but not least, the man who probably should have been at the top of the list Carlos Arredondo, legal name Alexander Arredondo.  Arredondo did not become a legal citizen of this country until after one of his sons had been killed in combat, through a provision allowing parents of service members killed in combat to apply for citizenship.  At that point, he had been in this country for more than 20 years.  Since becoming a legal citizen, Arredondo has been very active protesting policies he does not agree with, including the war that killed the son that allowed him to become a citizen.  Last year around this time, he was doing just that when a bomb went off at the Boston Marathon & Arredondo became one third of one of the most iconic photographs of that day; he is the one in the cowboy hat.

Living in Florida, I might be more up close & personal with former aliens than most Americans (I married a former legal alien 20 years ago, long before I ever imagined I would live here & long after he was naturalized).  For starters, there are two important people in my wider-life that would not be in it if it were not for the Mariel boatlift.  One came over then & one was born here a year+ later, that's right an anchor baby.  So maybe we are more used to aliens.  On the other hand, V** has been living with her boyfriend for a good long while.  Every so often she is asked why they haven't gotten married, doesn't he want citizenship?  He is Puerto Rican.  Puerto Ricans have been officially recognized citizens of the US since 1917, longer than Hawaiians, longer than Alaskans.  Yes, yes white Alaskans were recognized as citizens in 1867, but Native Americans were not until...I couldn't find the date actually but it must have happened by now, right? 

Yesterday was one of our most well-known American citizen days:  Tax Day.  It was also the first day of Passover. In off-man-made-calendar news, there was a full moon & a lunar eclipse.  Today is just plain old April 16th.

The new year in books

I have said I am not much for resolutions.  But I am a huge fans of lists (I also like songs that count).  I like numbered lists & consecutive lists...oh those lovely lists.  So it should be no surprise that I make a Goodreads book count resolution type thing every year.  Or at least every year since I joined Goodreads. 

2013 was a good book listing year.

2013 Reading Challenge

Marybeth has completed her goal of reading 125 books in 2013!

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135 of 125 (100%)

view books

If it looks like I am some kind of over-achiever, I promise that is just not true.  I read more than I said I would because I include picture books on my list & I want to mark them READ & there is no way to exclude them from the list.  Unless I leave off the end date.  Which I am too crazy to do.  So a good chunk of that overage was read in under an hour.  Well under an hour.

& finally I thought I would start off the year with a Word Of The Day.  Today's word is OVERAGE.  It is not the same thing as "over age" which is a different thing, but not entirely.  It means
the above & beyond count in product.  or money.  Too fixed asset-y?  OKay, it is a surplus of goods.  For a long long long time this was considered a good thing (I grew up in Reagan's America), but maybe more isn't better. 

Who am I kidding, more books read is always better!  So in 2014 I am going to read....130 books.  give or take. 

I've done it both ways

It is that time of year when people make all kinds of resolutions but I am pretty much not a resolution person.  I do things when I do them (I hand over what could be holiday/birthday gifts when I have them & I see you, if I remember making holiday gifts tricky to locate).

As for the usual resolutions:

I am already on a diet.  I can live with it, but I am not losing weight hand over fist.  It turns out I am built for famine.  Seriously.  I have often wondered what my evolutionary advantage might be:  I have life threatening allergies to things that are commonplace, my eyesight is poor, I am clumsy, & while I am not the whitest, most easily sunburned person I know I am the whitest skin person many people know (just last week V** said to me "This chick was WHITE, whiter than you even".)  The answer is I can cruise through my day on 500 calories with very little change in...well, anything.  So I don't have the resources & skills to fight for food, but I can live on a lot less.  There is more than one way to life. 

I am already exercising.  Okay, I was & I will again.  I stopped because...no good reason, I don't want to talk about it.

I don't smoke.

I already enjoy life.

There are typical lists of resolutions everywhere & mostly I already do them, I will never want to or they just don't apply (more time with my kids, for example). 

This year I am making a list of things to do this year, because this time next year we are hoping for a baby cow so by Jan 2015 my resolution will be hauling my ass out twice a day to milk the mama cow.  & if the next time is anything like the last time, that will last 18months or so. 

So this year's resolution:  get whatever it is out of your system in 2014 because 2015  is going to be BUSY.

To that end, I have joined the 2014 Cotton Robin. 

I have also already purchased my tea towel for the Tea Towel Challenge.  I could show you a picture, but it is on order.  I actually have a pile of brand new tea towels, because I have been acquiring them lately (& sending duplicates to my mom when I get those, because I have NO TALENT for saving gifts) & I thought I already had one in my hot hands.  & then I saw this other one...  It is entirely possible I will have the material for more than...two.  I might make two for 2014 because I cannot make one in 2015.

& there it is, already over extended. 

People I have stalked

I have been a bit too quilts-&-dog centric in my blogging lately, so I thought I would clear the decks with another one of my lists.  I make lists & collect them, run them over while I get my teeth cleaned...  One of my oldest yet shortest lists is women who made their ex-husbands' last names famous (Susan Sarandon, Dorothy Parker...there are others I just cannot think of them right now).  Last night when I couldn't sleep I tried to remember everyone I have ever stalked.

A few years ago, my mom & I attended a Writing the Region conference/workshop & there I discovered Rita Ciresi. She was actually teaching a workshop that I had not signed up for but I was so dazzled by her dinner conversation that I followed her into the ladies room (& would have gone into the stall) to ask her if I could switch from the workshop I was signed up for to hers. She so completely did not care, she started to crouch to pee while answering me "yeah, sure" when it became clear I was not leaving without an answer. I have been in love ever since.

I do not know what made me pick up the book That Dorky Homemade Look; I am not much for essays about things I do (except gardening or cooking & there damn well better be specific instruction for a specific task somewhere in the essay).  I also do not understand books about music or books about sports. But anyway, maybe it was the word "dorky". I like "dorky". I like "dorky" as much as I hate "tunes". You are not "playing tunes", you are listening to electronically captured reproductions of someone else's work--get over yourself.   Anyway, I bought the book & later the sequel, I paid full price (people who know me are gasping) & was happy to do it.  I have been cyber-stalking Lisa Boyer ever since. I would like to stalk her in person but she lives in Hawai'i & neither one of us likes to fly.  I have been to Hawai'i but I don't think I was on her island.  Now that I think about it, a real stalker would know that wouldn't she?

I have been loosely stalking Van Halen for more than three decades. Once or twice a year I will google one of them just to see what is new. I have lost or thrown away all my old Tiger Beats with David Lee Roth (yes, I am that old) & I am OKay with that. Still every so often I just gotta see them.   Luckily the internet has been invented so I do not have to actually find a concert near me.

People I have never stalked but everyone else seems to include:

• Oprah Winfrey -I admire her, but I am just not all that interested in what anyone else has to say (funny that, hmmm);
• Madonna - I do not get it, I never did. I am neither offended nor enchanted. I am Madonna-neutral.  On the other hand I might consider stalking Gwen Stefani if only for her responses every time some one suggests she (Madonna) says that she (Gwen Stefani) is really just a rip-off of her (Madonna);
• Martha Stewart - while I am not Martha-neutral exactly. I am Martha-ambivalent;
• OJ Simpson - this is not in response to media overload & it never was, I have declared myself an OJ free zone since day one. I did not watch the trial, I did not watch the white vehicle (SUV, right?) from the chopper, I do not care what he got away with.  He was found not guilty & that works for me.  If he was later found guilty of something else (he was, right?), that works for me too.  Then earlier this year I read (listened to) another one of those Modern Scholars things:  Alan Dershowitz reviewing pivotal cases of the 20th century & I found the whole OJ section fascinating.  It's a pretty good lecture series, all around. But I have no desire to write OJ in prison or anything.
• Any Kardashian, ever - seriously, what is that about?
• Ex-boyfriends - I googled one, once, just because. & when I found his e-mail address on the first try, I e-mailed him. We have been very distantly in touch ever since, but that is not stalking is it?  I mean, I'm not even sure how many kids he has. Although I am pretty sure he does have more than one.

I just feel tired

This week-end, starting last Friday, has been chockfull of little things that fatigued me.  By this morning I was staring at the ceiling & I thought maybe a list would let me get this crap out of my brain & then I could move on.  Also, if maybe I am the one that is wrong someone could let me know.

Friday:

• went to pick up A's over-the-counter allergy pills at Walgreens.  Because of crystal meth mfg this has to be done at the pharmacy, which opens after he leaves for work & closes before he gets home.  Waited in-line while apparent shut-in had a good long chat with pharmacist, asking no questions about his meds.  I know this because I could not help but hear the whole conversation.  Finally my turn, but my purchase needs to be rung up on the special register that scans my drivers license.  I then wait again while that pharmacist ass't waits on the ENTIRE drive thru drop-off/pick-up before ringing up my order, which has been sitting on the counter, in front of him while I waited.

• I get back in the truck, I am putting on my seatbelt, plugging the cell phone to charge etc & a guy starts to beep at me & gesture he wants my parking space.  The space on either side of me is empty as are more than 1/2 the spaces within my view (maybe even more than 3/4 of the spaces, I swear) & I am not parked all that close to the door.  Turns out I am near the redbox video rental thing, but I truly did not register that.  Also, as I mentioned, the space on either side of me is perfectly open BUT as I watch this guy park I see he needs 2 adjacent spaces, which there weren't, right there, in front of the red box, until I pulled out.

• As I pull out, I can see the drive-thru line at McDonalds.  It wraps around the building.  There is a mini-van of people already eating something, waiting in this line.

Saturday:

• I hate SatAM trips to the feed store but Becca gets a specific feed (because of her age, poor health, etc.).  They are supposed to get delivery on Thursday but didn't.  I could have started this list with Thursday:  pointless trip to the feed store.  On Saturday they have her feed....but they cannot sell it to me because they are holding it for someone else.  I cancel the rest of my order as if I have to drive to Ocala (45minutes to an hour away), I may as well get everything there.  They reluctantly agree to sell me 2 bags of feed, like they are doing me a big favor.  I do not reinstate the rest of my order, just 2 other bags of what I need ASAP.  This does not go over well.

Sunday:

• I go to the library & drop off/pick up the week's books.  I also go into the stacks & locate 2 books I returned the previous week that got reshelved without being checked back in.  This happens a couple times a month, always when a particular librarian is working when I check in.  The other librarians have previously expressed irritation with having to redo her work; they check these books in but save these for her to reshelve.  There is quite a pile of books to be reshelved sitting on a cart with her name in it (really, there is a sign, with her name) & they add these. 

• I go to CVS (they have this face cream that I really love (SPF 30 BUT it doesn't dry my skin out-this is like the holy grail of face cream & no one else carries it; on the flip side they are always 'out' of A's over-the-counter allergy pills so I have stopped asking; I get to go to 2 drug stores YAY).  I am ready to pull out, but I am stopped, at a stop sign (in the parking lot, yes).  A minivan makes a right turn off the road & stops as though he also has a stop sign; he does not.  His left turn signal is blinking indicating he wants to turn left, yes, but a left would mean a turn away from me.  In short, if he wanted to turn into the lane where I am stopped, he should have his right turn signal blinking.  He stays stopped.  Did I mention he has no stop sign?  Did you know that if I go & he hits me it is my fault & that this is a done thing, scamwise?  A friend of mine got T-boned (in slow motion, but still went to the ER) & for the privilege, she got to buy the guy a new front end.  Finally, the passenger side window rolls down & the passenger asks me if I am stupid as the driver has been waving me through.  I reply that I am lacking the super-power that would allow me to see through tinted windows.  Those are almost my exact words (OKay I said "hey genius, you have tinted windows, did you forget?").  The passenger actually looks kind of stunned; there is a brief conversation.  I get the impression that they often get pissed at people who do not respond to the waving & it had never occurred to them the tinted windows might be a factor.  I take this opportunity to point out their left turn signal is blinking.  They turn off the signal, roll up the window, drive straight around the building, back onto the road & away. 

• I go to Tractor Supply (to get poultry food which I forgot to get Saturday so shot myself in the foot with that one, yes).  As I check out, I ask how long the roses will be on sale.  The cashier responds "I don't know, I work in the Chiefland store".  I ask if the roses there are on sale.  She doesn't know, she hasn't been there for a week BUT she does page a person named ?Bethanny?Beverly?  There are other employees around, I have seen them, but she summons this particular person.  Bethanny/Beverly comes to the register & first girl asks her if the roses in the Chiefland store are on sale.  It turns out she has not been in the Chiefland store all week either.  Both girls look at me & the first girl shrugs & says "sorry". 

Writing this didn't help much after all.  I am laughing yes, but I am afraid to leave the house.

What else

I realized this morning my blog has been quilt block rich with not much else, so here is the rest (the bulk) of my day:

• The bluebirds are back.  They are flitting around the faux starling house on the highest post of the round pen, just like last year.  I don't know if this means they have moved in there or of it is just a good place to catch bugs.  They are welcome either way.

• On the same note, the back yard bird feeders are seeing some action.  We set up a sunflower feeder, a thistle feeder & a wild bird mix feeder (& plan to add a cracked corn feeder) on a four-way thing A got me last year.

• We had no winter to speak of; no hard freeze so far.  This has meant a lot of work re: weeding because they never died back.  On the flip side, the roses are thriving.

• Becca (the horse) was diagnosed with Cushings late last year.  Did I ever say?  I don't remember.  Anyhow, she is on 1 mg of peroglide a day & doing much much better.  Last week, she was RUNNING. 

• Rebecca (the cow) AKA Cowgirl AKA Her Ladyship has become hand trained.  Kinda.  We have a routine in which she gets a treat from me when I walk into the pasture & when I walk out.  This keeps her from crowding me while I am trying to work.  She learned this routine in a SHOCKINGLY brief period of time.  I mean maybe four days.  I can never eat beef again.  It would be like eating dolphin.  Or dog.

• The kittens are still here, three of them anyhow.  They are just barely kittens now as they are coming up on 1 year old, but they are so much younger than the other two cats I suspect they will be The Kittens for the rest of their lives.  One of them has taken to killing snakes-more on this in another post.

• I am not yet running like I want to.  I am walking.  I am walking a lot.  I usually bring one of the dogs because since the kittens arrived, the big dogs don't get the backyard time they used.

• I  am feeling mostly better.  I still have a catch-cough, but that is likely to linger for quite some time.  The DR gave me an inhaler but it makes me feel weird, so I have never used it.  If I have never used it, how do I know how it makes me feel?  It is the portable version of what she gave me in the office to stop my coughing long enough to do an X-ray, among other reasons.   I liked not coughing, but the other side effects were yucky.  It was like being hyper-paranoid but without the paranoia.  I really don't know how else to describe it.

It doesn't sound like much, but it all takes a shocking amount of time.  It doesn't help that I am hardly a ball of fire these days.

Saturday it rained

Saturday it rained:

It rained, I was drenched, we lost power & the sun came out.

It rained again, the sun came out, I loaded old boards into the truck bed until they were level with the sides.

Then it rained again, the new cow arrived, the sun came out.

It rained, the cow-delivering-family left, I was drenched again, the sun came out.

It rained,  C**** arrived to work on the milking stand & the sun came out.

It rained, A & C**** kept working, C****'s phone died, the sun came out.

We made C**** do other not-cow milking-stand related things, A left to go see what the deal was with our power, it rained again.

We moved the milking stand to the pasture, C**** rode sitting on the milking stand sitting on the pile of old boards.

A & C**** unloaded it, A took the truck to the dump, me & C**** got the cow in & she got milked.

Over night it rained again.  On Sunday morning, there were waves in the sand, but the water was all gone.  On Sunday afternoon, the grass seemed to grow before our eyes.  Monday morning, I ran the sprinklers for 30 minutes, it was already that dry. 

George who

Last October (in aught-nine) when I visited my parents, my step-father gave me some cash the day before I left.  I do not remember why, although in another place I made a note that he was paying back $$ I had given my mother.  This is probably true, actually; ordinarily I don't care how money falls into place but at the end of a visit I am often squeezing around for bills to use to get my truck out of airport parking. 

Anyway...one of the bills he gave me had a strange stamp on it which directed me to a website:  Where's George.  Now that I think of it, I have a vague memory of begging for that one dollar bill.  Anyway, we logged in, confirmed the bill's (then) current location & when I got back home I set up my own account & set the bill back on it's way.  When someone out in the world entered it a few days later, I was thrilled.  & hooked.

It has been a bit more than a year, but I finally got around to getting my own Where's George stamp.  I freely confess this is because we are planning a trip off the mainland later this year & will be passing through more than one airport outbound & return.  I plan to buy a pack of gum in every single one, just to get them distributed.  I accept this is priming the pump somewhat, but I do not care.

Yes, this is a silly way to spend my time, but it was still interesting in a small way.  Since discovering the site,  I have been surprised that more civics teachers did not use it as a point of interest, but none of the teachers I talked to had ever heard of it.  Okay, that's a lie, M****** had heard of it & so had C****, but she was a reading teacher & was not even teaching when we had the conversation.  I should ask if she got the info. from a civics teacher.  Of course, tracking monetary bills is almost certainly not covered on the FCAT & that might be the answer right there.

These longer days

I have not not been blogging, I just have not been posting.  Because I have not been finishing.  Sorry about that.

Sometime in the next week I need to:

-finish the directions for the next three block swaps & get them posted.

-finish not one not two but three baby quilts for whom boy-quilts had been made & then they turned up girls, two of them do not arrive until August/September which is some pressure off but still I am going to stop paying attention when someone says "it's a !".  On the flip side the next three boys are COVERED (get it, quilts, covered?).

-use that Joann's coupon.  Not that I am a Joann's fanatic or anything but if I have to pay full price for batting I will never forgive myself.


-remember to get that info about the bee-hive for sale.  Because a person who is allergic to stinging insects needs a bee-hive.

-pick blueberries.  It is blueberry season & i missed it entirely last year.  Blueberries are (almost) the only fruit I even like & I actually love them, so I need to get out there this time.


& in the next month:

-shop for a GPS.  This one is easy actually.  I just have to say to A that I really want a GPS for my road trip later this year & I will be presented with one.  First though I need to see what features I really care about.  This is harder than you might think because I am a technological fantasist.  that is, I get my heart set on features that are not combined in a single gadgets & then I am never satisfied.

-get those I-SPY swap squares together. I really enjoyed this last time, although I was almost too late, & I am one of those quilters who can never have enough 4" novelty squares.  If you are one of those, too there are still a few spots left.  I think.

It does not look like much but, well that is in addition to all the other stuff I don't do when I should.  Anyhow, one way or another things will be better by the end of the week.  If only because deadlines will have passed & if I miss them, they're gone.  That's the way it is with watersheds.  & solstices.

Collectible collectives

I admit I live in my head. So does A; it is a wonder we ever meet. Or ever even met.

While I was still a child (well teenager) I started collections that could not be taken away: words that mean the opposite of themselves but are spelled the exact same (my favorite was mother & mother, well actually it was catholic & Catholic but I am told the capitalization does constitute a spelling change. That's right, there are rules); women who made their ex-husband's names famous as their own (Dorothy Parker, Susan Sarandon).

While getting an english lit degree I collected opening lines (When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow). All it takes is a piece of paper & you have a collection. If you keep that paper with you & memorize it in spare moments, you can learn to encapsule anything, ready to be released when you read your list aloud.

Everyone knows someone who collects exes. C****** likes to gather musical covers. If I am remembering correctly, she once did a school project on covers of Twist & Shout. I am not all that interested in exes (although I DO like Twist & Shout, Twist & Shout & Twist & Shout).

When I was in my 20's, I began trying to take myself out of my head. Or at least to empty my head 'on the stage' so at least some of what I did had some context. That is when I began collecting collections. There is nothing that delights me more than whatever someone else has seen fit to gather. That is not true of course; I am most delighted by what no one ever meant to gather, or at least the gathering was not so much a goal as a symptom or even a side effect but when that collection is the backbone of something else entirely.

& that is when I began collecting collectives. The first one I realized was a list of so-called subversive & fringe groups that all recognize the international symbol for anarchy. Give it a minute.

Since that day I have made notes on all unintended groupings. Used books stores are fun. Somehow they always seem to have themes that emerge, often quickly, that are obvious to any new customer & invisible to any regular visitor. The used bookstores that sells silver jewlery at the counter-very heavy in the sci-fi department.  The one with the vegan cafe within its walls:  not so much on car repair.

Artisans guilds can be interesting too. I had a ring-side seat (no I was never a member) when one of the local groups had a 'political restructuring'. The theme of the new concept could be summed up in the words of one former board member "I do not care how many G*d damned kids you have, hire a babysitter or leave them home alone, but do not bring them here when you are supposed to be working".  Last time I checked a lot of guild members were child-free.

Farmers markets are another favorite of mine. Less diverse than other markets as they are self-limiting (after all if you are going to grow your own food & then sell it you are probably not doing it to gain entry into the world of industrial food), but still there is variety. The heirloom turkey breeders do not always see eye-to-eye with the vegan soap makers.

There is a new collective in town. A food co-op is trying to form in our area. I could not be more pleased. I like the idea, I agree with the philosophy & I am sure that like minded & agreeing people will provide much discussion & conflict for years to come. & yes, I think that is a good thing.  In the meantime a CSA has formed & we joined.  Every saturday we pick up our basket at the farmers market & go home & try & figure out what to do with what we got.  At last, something to do with all those obscure cookbooks I have been collecting.

Three tips for the bride who wants her OWN wedding

I am the last person who should be giving advice on any aspect of wedding planning. This is probably how I happened to work, ever so briefly, as the facilities coordinator (i.e. the booker of weddings) at one of the nicest places around. & in the end I left for reasons that had nothing to do with bridezillas. They really were not that bad. Even more astonishing, if you google my real name, I still come up in connection with this job & it is all good.

While I was in the middle of wedding-central, I could not help but notice that almost everyone had the same wedding over&over&over again. & the dream of every bride was to have her OWN wedding. For those of you who go around calling this 'our' big day, let me burst that bubble. I never laid eyes on the groom of at least half the weddings we booked. Grooms want you to: not spend so much, not drag him into arguments with his mother, not drag him into arguments with your mother, not spend so much & calm down. Also, they would really like it if you could not spend quite so much.

Let me suggest a few small changes that will make your wedding yours without increasing your bottomline:

Ditch the Wagner
For my own wedding, this was never on the table because of that whole anti-semite thing, but frankly everyone of us has also been Handeled up to our eyeballs. I suggested Baby Elephant Walk to a relative & she did not speak to me for a month; I really did not mean anything by it. Also, it was Mom's idea originally, so there! Forget the jumbo implications & just listen to it, it is charming.

A has said he wishes I had told him what I really would have wanted because he would have wanted it, too: the Theme from Peter Gunne. OKay, your heart is set on classical, even though you never listen to it any other time in your life. Fine. Let me suggest the next runner up by Bach. Frankly I have been to plenty of weddings where the best choice would have been Night on Bald Mountain, but brides get very tense when you tell them that. If you want original & traditional (I could not believe how often THAT request would come up) what about Come Haste to the Wedding? Anyway...tip number one: make a musical decision that is your own, not Bride Magazine's, yours.

Lose the dress
That's right you heard me: get off that wedding dress wagon. Instead find a dress you like. That does not highlight your ass (back interest, puh-leeze). A normal dress. Less than 100 years ago it was perfectly acceptable for a bride to wear her dress out for evenings, etc. If you do not believe me take a break from your wedding planning schedule & read some Edith Wharton: she will give you a whole new perspective on married life, regardless which book you choose.

I am not suggesting that you need to go 'theme'; I do not mean get married in jeans or scuba gear or both, unless you want to of course. I just mean $ for a dress you wear once? & then fantasize about passing down to your daughter? Who (maybe) does not exist yet? & may not be speaking to you on her wedding day? Perhaps, because you made such a big stink about her wearing your dress? Here is it...tip number two: a wedding dress is not an investment.

Postpone the honeymoon
It never made any sense to me: get together all the people that are important to you (& a few that almost certainly are not), make a major change in your life that means you will see all of them less & then leave. Why not take this opportunity to spend some time with them? If you think you will get to do this at the reception you are delusional. Besides, after your wedding you will want several days comatose, you can do this at home. A went to work the day after we got married (I was unemployed or I would have, too). We took a vacation later when we knew we would get more out of it. I am not saying never have a honeymoon just that you will enjoy it more if you are still speaking to each other. Or not still mad about the cheese plate (suddenly we are kosher, what got into her?). & so tip number three: take a break before you take a honeymoon.

In the fairness of full disclosure I should tell you I never walked down an aisle. There was no music. A saw my dress before the wedding; he bought it for me as a birthday gift, in a shop in NYC & it was not bride-specific. There were no fancy decorations. We were married by a judge we did not meet with before & have not seen since. There were no friends & family there. Our reception was about two weeks & almost 2K miles later. It still took.

Happy 15th to me & mine.

April's famous deadline

April 15th is rolling around & that is a major deadline in this house. That's right, it is the final submission date for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Never heard of it, you say? Well fear not, you still have time find out what it is, complete your original entry & get it submitted.

There are so many things to love about Bulwer-Lytton & his writing, but I think what I like best is how sure we are that he was a bad writer. I recently found a quiz that brought home that point to me again; although to be fair I am not the biggest Charles Dickens fan walking the planet either (It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Bite me.).

Writing pulp fiction is harder than you think. I have been trying to write a romance novel since C****** was 11 years old. Somehow there is always a donkey (I do not mean a euphemism for jack ass I mean an actual donkey) & he ends up getting most of my attention. I have tried pretending the romantic nemesis is a donkey, but it just does not translate.

& so, in the spirit, or maybe not, of Edward Bulwer-Lytton & maybe or maybe not the contest that bears his name, I am giving you the opening lines to a few very good books (truly) books that could themselves have been candidates:

...But I should tell you that, come the apple festival of Transfiguration Day, when the sky begins to change from summer to autumn, it is the usual thing for our town to be overrun by an absolute plague of cicadas, so that by night, much as you might wish to sleep, you never can, what with that interminable trilling on all sides, and the stars hanging low over your head, and especially with the moon dangling just above the bell towers, for all the world like one of our renowned "smetana: apples, the kind the local merchants supply to the royal court and even take to shows in Europe.

The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolunged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish plague which occured in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.

I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels; with direction to hire some young gentlemen of either uiversity to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did by my advice, in his book calld A Voyage Around the World.

Spoiler alert: I do not have much respect for people who worry about 'my fair share'.

Several weeks ago I received a Facebook flair from that read: Why do politicians who don't pay their taxes get to spend mine?? Most of the time I ignore this kind of stuff. This is hardly the first "keep your government paws off my hard earned dollars" sentiment that has been expressed near me. This one got my particular attention because the person who sent it does not pay taxes, has not had a job in ?years? & is able to collect a (justified) disability check because of all the people who do pay taxes & the programs those taxes allow to exist.

It put me in mind of a conversation I had many years ago with a computer programmer I worked with. He was complaining that his lifestyle was not an improvement on his parents & that this was the first time in our country's history that this had been so (I am guessing parents in the 1920s & their children who were adults in the 1930s would argue, but none of them were in the room at the time). He was measuring success by the square footage & overall opulence of his home & how many years he had to drive his car before he could afford a comparable new one.

& so I asked him a question (which I thought I already knew the answer to, I admit):

when his wife was recently pregnant, an as-far-as-I-knew perfectly normal pregnancy, did she take advantage of the regular visits & services & medications provided for by our insurance? If such a thing had been available to his mother, would she have considered it a ++ in her quality of life? He never did answer, but I am guessing the answer to both was YES. I later learned the pregnancy had not been normal, there had been a major issue & the issue itself had been discovered during a routine ultra-sound. My point is, maybe quality of life should be measured in more than just the room in which a person watches the best TV that person can afford (or finance).

You don't need me to tell you the latest twist on this particular complaint is "why I am paying for that guy's ____; I lived within my means, why shouldn't he"? It has inspired me to compile a list of things we pay for (well, A pays for mostly ) that on the surface anyhow, mostly benefit some other guy:

School taxes - Let me be clear, we are happy to pay these & think they should be higher. We both believe society as a whole benefits when kids are not roaming the streets like packs of wild dogs & even the career grocery-bagger can read. But the fact remains that people with children have the option of moving their children to a private school & redirecting a portion of public school funds away from this general society benefit & we do not.

We cannot decide that we would rather our school taxes were applied to a local homeless shelter that keeps parents & children together & also provides schooling for both the parents & the kids, but our neighbors can & do get back some money from school taxes & pay their church instead (which has a school their children attend). This is actually twice-irksome; as school taxes here are based largely on local property taxes & these neighbors do not own the house they live in. This means they have not paid in as much in school taxes as they are able to redirect away from the school district.

Health care premiums - Under a previous healthcare provider, we, a married couple with no children, paid the family rate. That means our basic monthly cost to have health insurance was exactly the same as the guy down the hall who had five kids (this was a real guy, by the way. In our small office there was one unmarried man, one married man with five kids & two married men with two kids & us. There was also a married woman with no kids & a married woman with one kid, but they were not on our health plan). All of us (all nine of us, from the first part of the example) were in reasonably good health but the fact remains the consumer of 7/9th of the resource paid 50% of the tab. How many times would you split a dinner check that way before you said "Damn it I had a house salad & you had lobster!"

If you decide you want to spread the cost over the whole office, we paid 1/5th of the bill while using 1/9th of the initital resources, but it was actually bigger than that. In the larger group one child was autistic, one spouse had breast cancer & one employee had multiple back surgeries, but we all had the same monthly fee & deductible. In short, we paid the same amount into a basic plan that we did not use nearly as often. I know because I was the one reviewing the bills that pre-natal care was an option our office elected to pay for (increasing the bill to everyone) & allergy shots were not. Guess which one of these would have been more use to me personally.

We have since changed our provider (nothing to do with this discrepancy) & are now in a plan that is structured differently, although it does still favor families with two children; after that it is pay-per-head. I laugh when I hear people balk at the bill for socialized medicine; as far as I am concerned we have been paying for a form of socialized medicine all this time.

Airfare - our combined weight is, well, lets just say less than 320lb. (& the average weight for men & women in the country is 167.2, so apparently we are absolutely normal). I don't know about you, but I have never been on a commercial flight when at least one person did not weigh in the ballpark of 300lb. I guarantee you, that person did not pay more for a ticket because of body weight. & yet that person will certainly use (fractionally) more resources, every time they fly. I know some big people (I am related to some big people, I love & respect some big people), & I know they gamble that there will be an empty seat next to them (or between them) & that they will be able to take up more room without having to buy that second ticket.

On one memorable flight, a very large stranger was very angry with me because I would not let him raise the arm of the seat between us & squeeze over. He had trouble accepting he had gambled & lost (are there really people who are OKay with being plastered to one side of their seat so someone they do not know can press in on them?).

Many airlines also used to let you take a baby under a particular age at no charge on a flight, so long as that baby sits in your lap. There was a time I flew regularly & I dreaded being pinned in the window seat with a parent & lap-passenger; every time this happened I missed my connection waiting for mom (it was always mom) to juggle the baby & their luggage. Before you assume I did not offer to help, ask yourself how many dry cleaning bills have you have offered to pay after your kid gorped all over the suit next to you; no one ever offered to pay mine. Several did, however, complain loudly that the flight attendants could be more helpful or plentiful... Counting either pounds or heads, most of the time the average Joe Flyer is getting the short end of this deal & has more or less accepted it.

This one has been bothering me more lately because I often fly with a little dog. She rides in a carrier at my feet. That carrier counts as a piece of luggage in my total luggage allocation, so my only other bag costs extra on some airlines. I would be OKay with this (I guess) if I was not already paying the airline over $100 extra per flight to fly the little dog in the first place. There is an element of 'luxury tax' here, I understand that. What I cannot fathom is the passenger-with-baby already getting a reduced ticket who thinks everyone should pay more so she can have more help personally.

Clothing - that's right, clothing. I wear a size 6.5/7 shoe (sometime as a 7/7.5 if the toe is really, really pointy). I have a good friend who wears a size 11. Her shoes use more material, weigh more (therefore cost more to ship), but cost the same as mine. Ditto on jeans, dresses, blouses, etc. Even at my chubbiest, I have never worn the national average size: a ladies 14. But generally I pay the same price off-the-rack as a person who wears an 18. Next time you are shopping, line up a size 10 against a size 18. Depending on the garment, it will be a minimum 1/3rd larger & probably more.

Food - we actually spend a lot less on food than most people because I do not cook beef; I just cannot take the smell, & we do not eat pork (meat being the big part of most grocery bills). But we do pay the taxes that pay the subsidies for these foods to be shipped from large feed lots to processing plants to our grocery store. I confess, this is one why-am-I-paying-for-that-I-never-use-it policy I would like to see change & I do make every effort to buy anything I can locally (not just food, but books & anything else I can. After food & books, there is not much we buy, now that I think about it). Still, we are paying part of the bill to ship a lot of other people's food in.

I realize this all seems like small change but it adds up. & 360+ days a year, I do not mind (OKay, I did mind Fatso bitching about the arms of the seat cutting into him & suggested that next time he buy two seats & maybe this flight he would be more comfortable in the toilet). But really, I do not mind. I do wish, though that before people started ranting about not wanting to pay part of someone else's bills, that they would consider there may already be some one out there subsidizing theirs.

& if that is not enough to make you think twice, there is one group of people in this country who routinely pay higher taxes (often because they are in higher income brackets), have far fewer children than average (& thus are not using either the schools or family health care services they are paying for), & are rarely married (& so pay more in living expenses generally, which is a double-factor here where there is no income tax, but there is a sales tax) & often do not qualify for any spousal benefits, even if they are not living alone.

Rarely married outside of Massachusetts, that is. What happens to the rest of us the day the gay community says "you know what, you are right it is not fair that we have to pay your bills. So we are setting up our own financial system to meet only our needs. Tah"?

//For the sake of this entry, I started looking up our actual numbers. Using the per head model for health insurance alone (if we had paid 1/9th of the office's total monthly bill instead of 1/5th), we would have saved at least 2k every year (or the insurance company would have made a lot more off the whole office). As for the nickel&dime stuff, I bought fabric to make myself a skirt recently: 1.75 yards at $11 per yard. The same pattern size 18 called for 3.25 yards. At this point I decided it would be better to stop.

Lively ladies lose their lunch

My nieces visited for a day last week. They had never been here before & I thought the best way to introduce them to useless ranching was to take them through my normal chores.

1st: we fed & watered the emus. As an extra treat (for the emus), I chopped some apples-past-their-prime into small chunks. They go crazy for those.

2nd: we gathered eggs in the henhouse. We were a little late, so at least one egg had been cracked. Many hens clicking eggs around in one nesting box will do this. We threw the cracked egg against the back wall & watched the cannibals scramble for a beakful.

3rd: we moved Becca, the old Appaloosa, around the round pen a bit. In this cold weather, she gets very stiff & it helps to have her warm up, even if she is not always in the mood. Also, this meant the girls could do a little horseback sitting (you really could not call it riding).

4th: we collected some seeds from the Coontie. Zamia floridana is a cycad native to Florida. For whatever reason (neglect!), mine seem to do better than others through the winter & I always have an abundance of seeds to share.

After (& during) this arduous list of duties, we admired the horses & goats, walked to the back fence to see where the smoke was coming from (& got to meet the firemen who responded to our call), checked on the early azalea blooms, stared up at the redbud tree, stalked the barn cats, & of course, tested the trampoline.

I am told that the ride home was a lot like the end of a pub crawl; the one that managed to sleep it off felt much better than the one that did not.

I am thinking maybe I need to get Mike Rowe out here so he can see just how filthy doing nothing-at-all can be.

Dead grandmother season begins

Let my start by saying my grandmother is actually quite ill. Last week she went into care after living with my aunt for all of my adult life. My grandmother was born in 1916 & was lucid (well, consistent anyway) for most of the time I have known her. That ended quite abruptly, recently.

This has put me in mind of that old college stand-by, the dead grandmother. Tonight is the first exam of the semester & the dead grandmothers will be coming out of the wood-work. A does not but I know of two in his department who do keep a running tally of dead grandmothers for every class they teach. Last time I heard the record for a single semester was 7 but the other prof objected that his 5 should stand on the grounds that he was teaching a much smaller class. That's right kids, some of your professors actually know each other.

I had a roommate who killed off three grandmothers in two semesters. Only one of her grandmothers was above ground before the carnage & the old lady survived it, I am glad to say. A** would have felt very bad had her one remaining grandparent actually kicked while she was killing off imaginary grandmothers.

Sometimes grandmothers actually do die, but lately it is siblings-in-combat. The professors have the same requirement for this as they do for dead grandmothers: documentation from an unimpeachable source. It is always very awful especially as no one ever fakes this one. The student explains why the exam will be/was missed, A grits his teeth & explains the make-up exam process, & a truly horrible event is made just a little bit worse. A is actually relaxed compared to some: he offers a cumulative make-up right around the time of the final (also a cumulative exam). If you miss two exams, that grade counts twice, three exams it counts three times, etc. It just is not possible to do custom make-ups for the 5% that might miss any given exam, even if their reasons are good ones (for you not-math-types 5% of 500 is 25. 25 times three exams plus one final is 100 custom exams per semester).

I admit I do rubberneck all the other reasons an exam was or will be missed: football (I understand the players, cheerleaders, marching band, but random students who did not even travel to the out-of-town game. Really?), fraternity/sorority formal, wedding (not the students own), other celebration of a personal nature, the babysitter was a no-show, car would not start, went to the room the exam was held in last time having no idea it might be somewhere else, etc. This brings us to my all-time favorite, the student who missed his exam because he was doing a religious fast, passed out & did not come to until after the exam was over. No it was not Ramadan or Yom Kippur or Lent. To this day, I am not clear what the kid's religion was.

Before you kill off your grandmother, let me give you some tips:

1-an excuse submitted BEFORE the exam is more credible than the one submitted after. It just is. This is a fine life lesson in general. Someday when you have a job where they pay you to show up, calling in sick in the morning will get you sympathy; calling in sick at the end of the day will get you fired.

2- be consistent. If for example you are missing this exam because of a religious holiday be certain that other holidays requiring your attendance at church or temple or mosque have also been observed. For example, you want to avoid being orthodox for your Engineering final but not-so-much for your Fine Arts final the previous year/same holiday. This just looks fishy. As a rule I would steer clear of this one (unless of course you really are that religious), because it does not work as an afterward reason (did you forget this so-important-holiday was coming up?) & letting prof know ahead of time means there is time to confirm your story. There are few things less fun than saying you cannot take an exam because you need to say rosaries for the Feast of the Ascension only to learn your TA will also be saying rosaries & now you really have to go to church or no one will ever believe you ever again.

3- consider the possibility your professor might not have wanted to be there either. I know a guy who has missed his wife's birthday every year but two for the entire 14 years of their marriage. It is my fault for being born during mid-terms but there you are. When you tell your professor you missed because you had something more fun to do, chances are pretty good he had something more fun as well. The only reason you are not killed-on-the-spot is that there were 400+ other students who DID show for the exam so your not being there did not change whether or not he had to be there. When you ask for the recommendation for grad school or an internship or whatever, though you can be sure this will come up.

There is a trend in higher education to view professors as service providers & students as customers & well, the customer is always right. I naturally come down on one side of this issue rather strongly, but that is not really relevant because with any luck no one will spend more than six years as the customer in this scenario. Then you will be the service provider for the rest of your days.

Employers frown on people who miss presentations because their 5th grandmother has died, they got too drunk at the football game to drive home or they are attending a special mass for Saint Blaze (not the patron saint of strippers, which would be interesting, but the patron of wool carders, so all you knitters out there get to your knees, today is your day) & did not think to mention it beforehand.

If all this sounds a bit brutal, you should know I used to be in the position of hiring newly graduated computer engineering students & nothing surprised them more than the expectation that work (& expense reports) needed to be handed in on time, that they would be at their desks by 9am (not strolling in with a cappuccino at 9:15), & finally that I would rather fire a second-time offender & hire someone new than explain why this would not cut it in the real world. I quickly learned that seeing the guy they cut class with get escorted out of the building by security guards for playing golf on my dime had a way of inspiring a work ethic in everyone else.

Grammar me this

We have recently acquired a new puppy. I was thinking of naming him Thurber, but his ears are not long enough.

I have always been a big fan of James Thurber; we have so much in common. I am mystified by my fellow man, the more I learn about them, the less I want to know & I almost never realize how ridiculous I sound until the words have already been spoken (or typed). & by then, I don't care.

I enjoy his fables, his unsolicited interpretations of other people's poetry (Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight for those of you who relied on school for your education) & of course his cartoons of dogs & men & women alike. As a child I even enjoyed the tv-show (which I cannot find on Netflix or anywhere else, ditto the movie War Between Men and Women with Jack Lemmon).

But my favorite will always be the self-help book Let Your Mind Alone!. This pretty much sums up my opinion of self helps books. If you are thinking about thinking you are thinking too much. There are so many gems in this book with nothing to do with self-help. Unless surrender is a way of helping yourself, which I suppose it is. & I am pleased that this book is classified as fiction while The Secret is not. I feel certain James Thurber would have enjoyed this too.

While I am confident that some of what Thurber claims happened to him only happened in his head, how is that different from, say any Kitty Kelley biography? Some of what she claims happened to the people she is writing about only happened in her head, after all & at least Thurber is sticking to his own head.

I think Nine Needles should be taught right along with Greek classics, after all it happens in real time (as does Greek theatre) & things snowball out of control very quickly until you are left with a complete breach; I think it is a perfect fit.

For Statistics & Geometry, we could read Pythagoras and The Ladder. For your convenience it is the first chapter of this book. For American History: Something About Polk. For Literature: My Memories of D.H. Lawrence. That one could be History, too, sort of. Even Theater is covered in No Standing Room Only.

Closest to my heart will always be Grammar. I love books on grammar. I truly do. If you have never tried to enjoy a book of grammar, let me recommend Karen Elizabeth Gordon's series, beginning with The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. No, really. I have lost track of how many of these books I have purchased, sometimes with my own money even (I am cheap I admit it). I used to travel with my own copies & often the clients asked me to leave them behind & I did (I charged for this, naturally).

I fell in love with Thurber's writing reading Here Lies Miss Groby. I had the same excitement he did identifying a nuance of a metonymy all on my own. In true Thurberian tradition however I have gotten a bit confused & this particular chapter is not in the book I am recommending. Oh well, I am sure you can find it if you try.

Before I forget, here is the puppy. While he does look hammered, you can see his ears are NOT long enough for him to be named Thurber.

Making small change OR you can nickel & dime your way to better karma

I confess I did not watch the inauguration; I was too afraid I would be watching the man get gunned down. I have had trouble with live television news broadcasts since I turned on CNN one September morning to catch up while I ate my oatmeal & well you probably know where this is going. I spent the rest of that day taking messages for other consultants & helping the Village of Northbrook, IL get their fixed asset tracking system up & running. It was not an emergency exactly, but it made their day better & sure as hell beat watching the tv.

After the inauguration was over I called my mom (about something else entirely) & she said how much she missed Molly Ivins & wished she could read one more column. A agreed he would have loved to read that column, too. Other than that (& the red-carpetifying of the festivities) I have not thought much about Inauguration Day. I take that back, I did watch the piece about reswearing in of Obama on the BBC. Apparently, Edwards screwed up the oath & the White House was jumpy enough not to want take any chances.

Now is the return to normal life & thinking about making small changes. I do already volunteer a day or so a week. By volunteer I mean doing something that does not benefit either me or people just like me OR does make a tangible change for the better: spending 40+ hours chairing the workshop committee for a local quilt guild does not constitute volunteer work in my book, working one shift in a homeless shelter does. I have done both & the first just does not cut it in the karma department, at least not for me.

Still, I also know that it is not just about the hours. I am certain I am healthier when I am not just working eating, working, sleeping, eating working, eating, sleeping etc. There is something too much like the hamster on a wheel if I do not stop & take time to give someone else a boost.

So I have begun collecting the ways people have been trying to honor MLK Day & the new president & I am pleased that some of what began as niche one-shot thngs, have grown:

Knitters for Obama, looks will continue to grow; the group on Ravelry was founded in November 2007 & I am optimistic that this is not going to go away anytime soon.

Another has been around a long, long, long time: Project Linus. I have lost count of how many quilts I have made for charity. Even here, in our small corner of the world we have an active chapter.

Both of these & many other would be happy to accept your one-time project or your continued support or anything in between.

A big change would be to give all my earthly goods to the poor & go live with the homeless. I know this idea gets a lot of press (both of the positive & negative variety), but I prefer small change, myself. You can nickel & dime yourself to better karma. Get past your differences & check it out.