in which I visit Pt Defiance park

Rather bored and lonely this afternoon, so I went to Pt. Defiance Park to visit the gardens. I wanted to see the Japanese garden, because Japanese gardens are my newest obsession.

Anyway, lovely day, lots of people. Here are some very amateurish pics (which for some reason uploaded out of order):

Lovely little waterfall in the Japanese garden

A view of downtown: the Bridge of Glass on the left with its large blue sculptures (which remind me of big sticks of rock candy but this is Art) and the Museum of Glass on the right (the silver conical building)

Gunnara plants with some lilies between them. According to the information plaque, the common name for Gunnara is "Dinosaur food". No joke!

Lovely path leading to the fuschia garden. The hydrangeas were a far more spectacular color than I could capture.

A view of the shrine in the temple style Japanese garden.

A little island in a pond with a nice water fall and lots of happy geese, ducks, and turtles.

The other side of the hydrangea path. Those big plants are Gunnara. 

Seriously, these leaves were about 4' (1.3 m) across. Dinosaur food indeed!

Pt Defiance is a lovely park. It's really a gem.

in which I take the first of several steps toward fitness

I did it.

I registered for the Whidbey Island Half Marathon in March 2009.

Weather is always a crapshoot at that time of year. Please start sending good wishes for a race day free of precipitation.

in which I have an earworm

I woke up this morning with "Margaritaville" running through my head.

No, I am not hung over.

I hate it when songs I can't stand are stuck in my head. 

in which I wonder just how many cats are here

I haven't seen black and white cat all day. I know cats can hide in some really amazing spots, so he may just be hiding really well or...he may have gotten outside because I had the back door propped open for awhile this afternoon. 

If he did escape, at least his wound got treated. 

in which my side hurts from laughing

Cats on treadmill

(link to YouTube video)

One cat just can't quite get the hang of it, and the other keeps up but uses only his front feet. 

Hysterically funny...and not in a cruel way.

in which new cat is adorable

Taken without flash so as not to wake him up

Kate's keeping a watchful eye on the new houseguest

pictures!

Remember the sweater I made and how it stretched out after washing?

Well, here you go: 

(EDIT--picture deleted because some jerk decided to post it on a fetish site without my permission)

I can fix the sleeves but I'm not sure what to do about the neckline, which should probably be renamed the buxom line in my case. I have a tank top I can wear under the sweater (the limits of the tank top are visible as the tan line on my otherwise creamy skin. That makes it a bit more modest but still not quite suitable for cold-weather wear, which since it is a wool sweater would be its most likely time to be worn. Maybe it's time to knit a wrap.

In other photographic news, here are some pictures of new stray cat, still unnamed. The vet gave him a tentative name of "Spade" since he has a marking on his back that looks like that card suite. He's actually rather hard to photograph without a telephoto lens because if you are near, he'll come right up, but he's a bit squirmy when he's held. 

He doesn't normally look pissed off but I was holding up his chin to get a picture of his soul patch.

Suggestions for a name?

We've come up with Charlie, Chaplin, Elvis, Elwood or Jake (blues brothers, you know, 'cuz of the soul patch). I like Charlie, but I'm not sure I want another animal name ending in "-ie". But I like the two syllable names; they seem to roll off the tongue well. 

in which the humans are way outnumbered

Household population

Canines: two

Felines: four

Humans: two

Do you remember the black and white cat that has showed up a few times? We've seen him around but never able to get near him. However, this morning, Oscar found him under a car, mewling loudly. He was had been injured and had a terrible gash at the base of his tail, so Oscar took him to the vet. We don't know if he's a stray but he's skinny and kind of scraggly so even if he has a "home", he is probably outdoors only because he certainly has the look of a street cat. But he is super sweet. The vet had a hard time hearing his heartbeat because he was purring so loudly. 

So now he's here, recuperating (and pissing Sasha off with his mere presence). He doesn't like to be held but he loves to sit on laps and be petted. And he loves to be around people. He gets lonely and starts complaining when he is left alone. 

in which I share a musical tidbit

After reading through some of my older posts, I came to the shocking realization that I never told anyone about my current musical fascination with Rockabye Baby. 

What is Rockabye Baby? Quite simply, perfect music for us Gen Xers who are starting to have kids while maintaining a healthy quota of self-referential irony. (and pretty darn perfect for those of us without kids as well.) 

More accurately, Rockabye Baby titles are lullaby versions of rock/punk songs from the 70s to the present. Each album centers on a specific band, and about 12 songs are rearranged lullaby fashion (no vocals). 

I came across them while searching the library site for Green Day and saw one of the titles was "Lullaby Green Day". After an initial "what the hell is that" reaction, my interest was piqued and I checked it out. 

And lo, it was good. 

So good, in fact, that I searched the library for other titles. Here is a sample of bands who have allowed BabyRock Records to create lullaby versions of their songs:

AC/DC, Bjork, Coldplay, Black Sabbath, Bob Marley, Coldplay, Led Zepplin, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, No Doubt, Pink FLoyd, Queens of the Stone Age, Radiohead, Beach Boys, Beatles, the Cure, Eagles, Pixies, Ramones, Rolling Stones, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, and U2. And these are just the ones that are available through the Seattle Public Library.

I played a sample of some of these CDs to a colleague of mine who has very young children and he was really interested. "This is a hell of lot more interesting than the crap I normally have to listen to with my kids!"  

Of all the songs/bands I've heard, most work quite well. In the Luneray School of Musical Criticism, that means that the lullaby version is interesting and enjoyable on its own, yet still retains the essential core of the original song. Recognizable, but different. In my humble opinion, of the ones I've heard, the best ones were AC/DC, Green Day, Led Zepplin, and Radiohead. In fact, the Radiohead versions are very good and I think that album stands on its own merits and doesn't need any ironic indulgence. The Nine Inch Nails didn't quite work because Trent Reznor's songs apparently really resist breakdown into tri-instrumental arrangements with a strong melody. 

And speaking of irony, it's hard to not enjoy a lullaby version of Metallica's "Enter Sandman"--a song about a child's nightmares. Rockabye Baby indeed. 

the mouse that whimpered

Many thanks to Katze who suggested I come out to Pittsburgh where she could teach me how to develop a spine. 

I think that's a good idea, becoming a bit more assertive. 

Y'all okay with that?

movies, movies, movies!

Kind of weird that I do these movie memes since I don't watch all that many films...

Anyway...

Movie Meme -  
1. One movie that made you laugh: A Fish Called Wanda
2. One movie that made you cry: Finding Neverland (I almost never cry at movies so I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that this movie made me cry)
3. One movie that you loved as a child:  Raiders of the Lost Ark
4. One movie you've seen more than once:  Harold and Maude
5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it:  can't think of one
6. One movie you hated: Sleepless in Seattle
7. One movie that scared you: Silence of The Lambs 
8. One movie that bored you: Pet Cemetery 
9. One movie that made you happy: Wall-E 
10. One movie that made you miserable: No Country For Old Men 
11. One movie that you weren't brave enough to see: Tetsuo, The Iron Man (I gave up after the first five minutes)
12. One movie character you've fallen in love with: Clay from Gods And Monsters. Also, Tyler Durden from Fight Club
13. The last movie you saw: Wall-E 
14. The next movie you hope to see: Hell Boy 2

100 hundred pushups-redux

I've restarted using a different pushup style, because apparently my fat lady, big busted weak upper strength self can't even handle the girly style. (Seriously, I want guys to strap on about 7 extra lbs on their upper chest and see how it affects their pushups!)

I hope you can sense the sarcasm in that previous statement. However, I'm not being self-defeatist. One of the things I like about the challenge is that it's very flexible with the style. While I knew intellectually that with practice, the girly style would become easier, mentally only being barely able to do two while having 100 as a goal was just too, well, hard. So I switched to the wall-style, which are easier but still challenging, but because I can actually do more initially, I feel like I can actually accomplish 100. And then I'll try the girly style. 

However, I didn't do the initial test (in which you to do as many as you can to find out which column you should follow). I did column two (which assumes you can do between 6-10), but the last rep has you do as many as you can and I did 15, so I think I should have done column 3 (which assumes you could do at least 10 initially). 

Anyway, I did my reps; I feel a sense of accomplishment and just a bit of muscle burn. Yay me!

So, 100 pushups. check it out. 

Quote of the day

for all the knitters out there:

"This one has suffered more frogging than a large nature pond in the tadpole season."

--Celtic Memory Yarns

how does Paypal work?

Seriously. 

I admit that I like using Paypal if I have to make an online transaction. I thought the business model worked by drawing money from my account immediately and then holding it for a few days before releasing it to the recipient (Paypal holds the money for a few days to earn interest on it). But on the last three paypal transactions I've done, the money has been released to the payee immediately but not withdrawn from my account until several days later. This seems totally backwards, as well as confusing for me. I don't like having to check my bank account transactions to see if those payments had gone through yet. 

Ah well. I guess I have to think of Paypal as if the transactions were actual paper checks. Annoying. 

in which I have modest gardening success

My first ever carrot! I planted a carrot seed mixture called "Rainbow" that had three colors of carrots--orange, yellow, and red. I'm not sure this is completely "ripe" because it's six inches long but I wanted to harvest it anyway. I had a great idea of interspersing radish and carrot seeds in a checkerboard manner, with seeds planted 1" apart. Since carrots germinate so slowly, I figured that the carrots would have sprouted by the time the radishes were ready for harvesting. In theory, it would have worked really well except that the cats went crazy there, and so I lost a lot of seeds. 

Keeping cats out of the raised bed has been the biggest problem. Short of building a fence around the garden bed, I'm not sure what I can do. Any ideas?

in which I wonder about internet searches

You know, I thought internet searches worked by using keywords/tags/labels but reviewing Sitemeter data listing various visitors who stumble upon this blog from searches, it's really apparent that it's my blog titles that are coming up in search results, not any of the labels. 

For example, one visitor was looking for "funny picture of radish", and the result was not the actual post of my uber-manly root vegetable, but this one in which I reference the radish in the title.  

(I've also noticed that all the searches leading here were done on Google. Blogger is owned by Google. Coincidence? Or perhaps no one really is actually using any other search engine?)

in which the joke is on me

Note: I normally shy away from discussing politics of any sort at any time, but I have decided to share the following anecdote because it highlights my particular brand of spinelessness and is not a dig at anyone else's voting preferences. It's a free country, and I am happy that people can actually vote. 

During lunch, I usually walk to the library and to get there, I pass through a very lovely plaza next to the downtown bus tunnel entrance. On a beautiful day like today, the plaza is packed with people from the local businesses enjoying their lunch in the fresh air. Because it's so well populated and strategically located, the plaza is also a hotspot for any sort of person whose job it is to engage random passersby to sign petitions, donate money to a charity or some other organization, what have you.

The scene: one plump transportation engineer, walking briskly through the plaza carrying a bag full of books. She must walk quickly because she only gets 30 minutes for lunch and it's almost a mile to the library. She notices a well-groomed young man, wearing a DNC T-shirt and carrying a large signature board which looks an awful lot like a petition. He is right in her way, and there is no way to avoid him unless someone else walks in front of her, but a quick glance around confirms that all the other people in her immediate vicinity are sitting down in various locales eating their lunches. Selfish bastards.

Because our protagonist has lived in the Pacific Northwest for her entire adult life, she has adopted the particular local custom known variously as "extreme politeness" or "passive-aggressiveness". Refusing something flat out is just not polite, and our protagonist just doesn't have the time to go through the elaborate ritual of mournful, faux sincerity. ("Oh, I'm sorry but I'm just not interested" with a sad expression on your face which conveys that you are just as sad not to be interested in whatever the other person is so clearly interested in as you are to actually refuse.) 

So our protagonist mentally rehearses her arsenal of stock excuses so that the proper one would be at hand. She approaches. Well groomed young man in DNC shirt makes eye contact. Smiles.

DNC guy: "Excuse me. Are you interested in supporting Barack Obama?"

None of her oft-used excuses will quite fit this situation.

"I'm not a registered voter." Lie.

"I'm not actually a citizen." Lie.

"I've already signed that petition." Usually a lie, but sometimes true.

Keep in mind that our protagonist has always voted Democratic and will be voting for Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election, and has given money to the DNC on more than one occasion. 

So what popped out of our spineless protagonist's mouth instead of just saying "not interested" or "don't bother me" or even "can't talk because I'm in a hurry"?

"I vote Republican."

in which I admit that yes, I will drink that

Smoothie made with Spirulina protein powder

Is there anything more appetizing than drinking a liquid that's the same color as bread mold? 

Yum!

in which I Get Stuff Done and eat well

It was a busy weekend chez Luneray. Granted, this isn't saying too much given that my usual weekend routine is hanging around the house, either reading a book or working on some fibery project. But this time, I actually got stuff done on my to-do list--very soon after these items were actually put on my to-do list. This, my internet friends, is a great victory for me, because I have grand ideas and am a compulsive list maker, but unless I can get around to it right away, things sit and sit and sit, and eventually just become part of the scenery. (However, the leaky shower faucet that I kept meaning to get around to fixing actually seems to have stopped leaking. I don't understand this, and I do hope that it doesn't mean that the leak has just moved inside the wall but in my naivetee/wishful thinking/sheer laziness, I will assume the best.)

1. I acted the responsible car owner and got the oil changed and taillight fixed. I've known for a long time that one taillight was burned out but I kept forgetting about it. 

2. A colleague gave me a large quantity of her older clothes and I took all the ones that I didn't want to the Goodwill while the car was being worked on. (The two businesses are located right next to each other. I'd call this an effective use of time management, thank you very much.) We also scored a large Rubbermaid storage bin WITH A LID and a brand new Weber grill. (While in the shop, I was also approached by a guy who tried to sell me some watches and a bunch of ladies underwear. Even he admitted that the underwear thing was a bit creepy.)

3. Oscar and I went to the Farmer's Market in the Proctor neighborhood (one of Tacoma's nicer areas). The market is small but it is a real farmer's market. No boutique-y jewelry or clothes, etc. There are a few plant nurseries, some food vendors (I wish I'd known beforehand that there would be a vendor selling Hungarian cuisine, but we ate before we went there. Bummer. Hungarian cuisine is Yum.) We got some fruits and veggies--peaches and cherries, chioggia beets, green beans, and some weird-looking curly garlic shoots type things*. But no berries because the they were all sold out before we got there. Good for the vendor. Bummer for us. We also got some fresh chevre and oysters. It was a lot of work to shuck the oysters, but Oscar did it all. I didn't even want to be in the same room as him while he was shucking them because Oscar is easily distracted and my mind was filled with horrible thoughts that knife slipping as his attention wavered because I'd distracted him. But the oysters were all shucked without any visits to the emergency room, and Oscar broiled them with a topping that he just made up, consisting of those weird-looking curly garlic shoot things sauteed in butter and mixed with a bit of parmesan cheese and panko. Oh.My.God.Were.These.Good.

(Note: if Oscar ever, EVER offers to make you something to eat, say yes. He is a fabulous cook and even stuff he just "throws together" is always really good.)

4. I finally got my spinning wheel assembled. I expected it to take about an hour but it took most of the afternoon. I assembled it outside and when I started, I was in the shade but after awhile the shade moved on and I think it took so long because my brain started to fry. But it's all put together now, I think correctly, and tonight I will practice a bit. I wonder if I can card all that freshly washed fleece in one week?

5. Planted some new items in the garden: a passionflower to grow around the front fence and some Thai basil and garlic chives for the kitchen garden. I need to get the winter crops started now, but I didn't get around to preparing that bed.  

Oscar was again very hopeful when he bought all those heirloom tomatoes, but given that it's the middle of July and not a single tomato has set a single fruit, I don't think it's going to be a good year for tomatoes around here. It always a gamble, even for the varieties developed for this region. But odds aren't good for that Brandywine, with its 100 days needed for maturation...as long as it doesn't rain until October...

*EDIT--I've since found out that the weird looking curly garlic shoot type things are garlic scapes, the stem from hardneck garlic. The ones we got were much curlier than the ones in the picture I linked to. Oh, and Oscar did slice himself while shucking the last oyster this evening. He cut his wrist and the base of his palm but thankfully, the cut is shallow and doesn't need stitches. 

Two happy dogs

Kate showing off her big smile.

Seamus, always a happy boy. 

in which I am humbly reminded that every journey begins with a single step

100 pushups.

Week 1, day 1, and (ahem) column 1. 

Barely. 

And not without extended rest periods. (You are supposed to rest at least 60 seconds between sets. Between sets 3&4 and 4&5, I had to rest 120. Yes, I used a timer.)

And I really need to vacuum the carpet too.  And kick the animals out next time. It's hard enough for me to do even a single girly pushup without my cat deciding he wants to hang out right under my chest.  

in which I become a buffet

I am a tasty dish indeed. Warm, succulent, sweet and salty.

Just ask any of the two million or so mosquitos who feasted on my lifeblood this evening.

I can imagine a dining review in the Mosquito Blog. "Four stars for fat chick in S. End Tacoma. She doesn't smoke and she drinks lots of water, so her skin is soft and her blood pleasingly textured. Most importantly, she is so engrossed in reading/knitting/gardening/yelling at the dogs to shut up that she won't even notice you!"

Anyway, dabbing the bites with rubbing alcohol helps alleviate the itch as well as anything else I've tried. It's certainly cheaper than calamine lotion and it doesn't turn your skin pink!

in which the animals are freaking out

July 4th is not a happy day for the animals chez Luneray. Although fireworks are banned within the city limits, many people are ignoring it and it does sound like I imagine a battle zone would sound like (because happily, I've never been in a battle zone). 

Kate is seriously freaked. She is curled up under my desk, as close to my body as she can possibly be without actually melding with my legs. Seamus seems to be doing all right, and the cats are hiding somewhere. Kate will be ok; she is calmer now than she was. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and I kept tripping over her. Now that I am sitting, I'm sending the message that I'm calm, everything's all right, and she is not shaking anymore. 

Best firework stand name? "Ill Eagle Fireworks" on the Puyallup Reservation by the Emerald Queen Casino. I admire a good pun.

by popular request

Here's a picture that Oscar took of the new cat that recently showed up

in which I am almost done washing fleece

The final bit of fleece is being washed right now. I have a great deal more respect for my foremothers who had to wash fleece without the benefit of running water in their houses. Ok, washing fleece isn't nearly as labor intensive as washing clothes by hand, but it still takes an awful lot of time. 

I changed my procedure slightly based on something else I've read. This time, I let the fleece presoak in a tub of room temperature water for an hour before actually starting to wash it. This gets off a great deal of dirt (but probably very little lanolin). The first batch of fleece that I presoaked seems to be much cleaner than the first batches I washed, but it also may be because I used a different cleanser. The first few batches were washed with "wool washes", stuff sold to wash wool. These are expensive. But then I read that you can use almost any sort of cleanser... including dish detergent and shampoo. (Clothes detergent was discouraged though, because of all the added brighteners, etc.) So for the second batch, I'm using Suave Shampoo at $1.99 a bottle (vs. Kookaburra wool wash at $10 a bottle.) 

It'll be several hours before this last bit of fleece is cleaned but I will be very glad once it's all done!

Now to finish staining my spinning wheel so that I can assemble the darn thing.  

in which I wonder who the first person on the block will want one of these

The Grass Scanner

Measures how green your grass really is, and will settle once and for all whether it really is greener on the other side. 

in which I am sucked into the latest internet craze

Well, one of them anyway.

One Hundred Pushups

Hell yes, I'm doing them "girly-style".

After having to wrestle with Seamus at the vet, I think I need all the upper body strength I can get. 

What happened? Well, he got really anxious and started to jump up on me. Please remember that he was there to get his nails trimmed. Within a single minute, my arms were covered in scratches (one was bloody) and he left deep scratches along the vet's erstwhile pristine, beautiful green wall. Everyone thought it would be a good idea to sedate him, so I helped the vet tech lead Seamus into a kennel and she gave him a shot (no problem). 

After a while, the vet came into the exam room and said that the sedative was having an unusual effect on Seamus and instead of calming down, he was trying to dig his way out of the kennel. They took Eddie to the back, and brought Seamus into the exam room, where he kept pacing back and forth. Eventually, the sedative started to take effect because the vet noticed that his eyes looked a bit glazed and we were able to get his nails trimmed. Me to put the muzzle on him, the vet tech to physically lie down on him and hold his front legs, I held the back legs, and the vet clipped his nails. 

I highly recommend Metropolitan Veterinary Hospital if you are looking for a good vet in Tacoma.  It's a good place, even if Seamus doesn't agree.

 

in which I need your good wishes

In less than 30 minutes, I'm off to take 3/5 of our animal family to the vet. Eddie, formally stray cat, needs a checkup and all his shots. In exactly four minutes (I have the timer on), I will commence the search for said cat so that I can crate him. 

Also, Kate and Seamus are getting their nails trimmed. Last time we tried to trim Kate's nails, we ended up having to take her to the canine emergency room because we screwed up. Also, last time I took Seamus in for his nail trim, it took two techs, one receptionist and me to hold him. They gave me some sedatives for the next time...which I can not find anywhere in the house. So Seamus is going in sans sedative. 

This should be interesting.

P.S. A new stray cat has been hanging out in our yard. He's black and white, very friendly, and has the same weird kinked tail that Eddie has. Is there some sort of cat messaging service that is advertising our house as a good place for felines?

in which I wash more fleece

Screw the 100g at a time method. 

I washed half of my remaining fleece today (about 2lbs/1 kilo). I haven't weighed it; I'm just going by a visual of what's remaining in the bag. I did it in two batches, and I used the bathtub. Yes, I'm taking a risk of clogging the drain with lanolin, but I've poured a few kettlefuls of boiling water down the drain in an effort to rinse it all out. We shall see. If I clog the drain, then I know not to do this again!

I followed the same method of filling two plastic tubs with water, but since they were in the bathtub now, I could fill them much fuller and thus wash a greater quantity of fleece. (It takes a stronger person than I to carry two 15 gallon (about 55 liter) tubs full of water out to the backyard, so in the bathtub they sat.)

Other than that, same method. Wanna see how dirty the water is?

No, the little brown bits floating around are not sheep poop, but bits of fleece that got poured out with the water. Sheep poop is green. 

And the final product:

in which there is more evidence that gender is learned

This is a very interesting article from the New York Times about the "sworn virgins" of Albania.

In this tribal, very patriarchal society, an unmarried woman in a family which has lost all its men can take a vow to be a "sworn virgin" and assume the male role in the family. They live like men. They know they are physically women, as does everybody else, but they live as, and are respected as, full male members of society except that they don't marry.

in which I learn a new skill

I got my spinning wheel today. It's an Ashford Kiwi, a budget wheel but good quality. I bought it unfinished, which lowered the cost by 1/3 and made it even more budget-friendly. Oscar picked it up from Roxi's shop today and I've been trying to wash the fleece that I bought at Black Sheep Gathering. 

For the first time, I regret getting rid of our old top-loading washer. I know the new, front-loader is much more water efficient (even if I have my doubts about how well it works. Sometimes things seem to come out not very clean.), but it doesn't have the traditional wash-rinse-spin cycle of the top loader. With the old washer, I could put my woolen garments in on the wash cycle without actually agitating, then just let them sit there in the water for as long as I wished, drain, rinse again, and gently spin. Woolens cleaned without danger of felting, and they dried much faster!

Oh, I wish I could do that with the fleece that I bought. As it is, I am washing it by handfuls following this technique and it's tedious. I have a four pound (2 kg) fleece and it doesn't seem like a lot but remember that sheep fleece is very fluffy. An armful weighs just about four ounces (about 100 grams) This one fleece fills an entire large plastic garbage bag. I also found out, to my chagrin, that I need to examine the dirty fleece for the bits that have poop on them because that doesn't come off in the wash. I knew that washing wouldn't get rid of the bits of vegetable matter in the fleece (the worst bits are usually discarded during shearing and the rest usually comes out when the fleece is combed or carded). 

I'd wash the whole darn thing in the tub if I didn't have to worry about all that lanolin clogging up the drain. And raw fleeces contain a LOT of lanolin. How much? Almost half of the raw weight is lanolin. My four pound fleece will weigh probably weigh just a little over 2 pounds after it's been washed and dried. (The man from Philosopher's Wool in Canada wrote very eloquently of his troubles with customs. He'd drive his raw wool from Ontario to a mill in Pennsylvania to be washed and carded, and he'd have trouble because the weight of the fleeces would vary so drastically pre-and post-preparation. Plus, sheep fleeces can absorb a lot of water, so if it were a rainy or even a really humid day when he crossed into PA, his fleece weights would be even higher.  He had to go in great details to explain that he wasn't selling any of his goods in the US, and thus didn't need to declare nor pay taxes on these goods he wasn't selling.)

Thankfully, the weather is warm and sunny so the little amount of fleece that I have washed should dry pretty quickly. I guess I could always stain my new wheel while the fleece is sitting in its water bath...

in which I wonder if the male half of the population could possibly please explain this to me?

Male readers, help me understand your half of the population.

(And, no, I'm not talking this time about the repeated visits to this blog based on Google searches for "low cut sweater pics". There's at least one visit per day, if you are curious. From all over the world! However, this is outnumbered by visits from people looking for the sheep sculptures, and for some reason, this little blog has become a top search result. Most of the searches come from either Australia or New Zealand, for some reason. Welcome, Antipodeans!)

At Black Sheep Gathering last weekend, I bought a freshly shorn Rambouillet sheep fleece. I'm not quite sure why I bought an entire fleece, because I don't know how to spin. And if I wanted to learn to spin, there was plenty of cleaned, prepared fiber to choose from. (I have to wash this fleece, and then prepare the fiber for spinning.) But the fleece did smell quite nice. It had a pleasant barnyard smell, and all the lanolin in the wool actually smells really sweet and rather floral. (I thought lanolin baby oil was scented with something, but now I think that is really just the smell of the lanolin itself.)

While researching on teh Interwebs for some information on how to prepare a fleece for washing, I found a link for a site called Icanspin.com. Sounded like a good site, so I clicked and found that it's being cybersquatted. Perhaps in the past, that domain name was actually occupied by a site dedicated to spinning fibers, but no longer. Now, it's just a list of the search terms that led to the site which are mostly fiber arts related; but one really stands out: "make my dick bigger". 

Gentlemen, how the heck are spinning and dick size related? Is "spinning" some guy phrase that us estrogen-blessed folks are not aware of? Like some sort of Mason secret handshake?

(oh, and I like how there's an option to make Icanspin.com my homepage.)

in which I am home again

Before I tell you all that I can remember about the Black Sheep Gathering, let me shout from the rooftops that my car gets 34 mpg with freeway driving! 250 miles on only 7 gallons of gas!!!! Also, the hundred miles of I5 north of Eugene are quite possibly the most boring miles to drive, even if you do pass through the grass seed capital of the world. (Kat said the scenery was quite nice but a flat, perfectly straight road is rather dull to drive). 

Lots of sheep and goats and alpacas. Next time I take a lot of pictures of livestock, I should take detailed notes because I can't remember what all the different sheep breeds are.

Anyway, some photos:

These are Jacob sheep.

Check out those horns!

I think this is a Shetland sheep, the traditional source for all those amazing Shetland shawls.

 

There were fleeces for sale, but Shetland fleeces were really expensive. Part of it may have been because it's a popular sheep wool, but I think another bit is because the sheep are rather small. One sheep just doesn't yield a lot of wool compared to other breeds. 

I think this is an angora goat (not to be confused with an angora rabbit).

Angora goats are the source of mohair fiber. 

This is a pygora.

Pygoras are a cross between a pygmy goat and angora goat. This creature was amazingly friendly and curious. Pygora fiber is also extremely soft and lovely. 

And this is my favorite animal of the entire fair--a Babydoll Southdown Sheep

These little guys are great. And I mean little, about 1/3 of the size of the larger sheep breeds, even smaller than the Shetland sheep. (I swear the Babydolls could walk under a merino or Rambouillet with room to spare.) They are about as tall as my dog Kate (about two feet high at the shoulder), extremely mellow and good natured. If I ever do decide to get a miniature sheep for natural lawn care (and wool), this is the breed I'd get. 

And the final pic for today:

One very annoyed sheep, breed unknown.

as if the radish wasn't funny enough

By NutandBee

Now click the link and find her other charming items.

in which I prepare for a road trip

This weekend, I will be going down to Oregon with my friends Kat and Ickyfishy. I met them both at the weekly knit group and joyously, both have morphed from "my knitting friends" to "my friends who also happen to knit".

That being said, we are going to Eugene to attend the Black Sheep Gathering, a wool/fiber festival. I've never been to wool festival before, and I thought it might be nice. We'll be there for two days, and if it turns out to be dull, there are plenty of other things going on in Eugene (like the Olympic Track and Field trials, which made finding lodging very challenging!)

I'm just happy to be going away somewhere. I'm really a homebody, but once in awhile I get the urge to travel somewhere. 

Since the cheap gas is now $4.50 a gallon (approximately $1.15 per liter), I figure there won't be too many other travelers on the road. :)

in which my garden delivers the unexpected

in which I reveal that Oscar is in love

Yes, it's true. Oscar is in love...with Stray Cat Edmund. 

How much in love? Well, Edmund just loves being around people, but doesn't like the dogs (he gave Kate a lovely scratch across her nose the other day) and the other cats are giving him some grief. 

So Oscar spent the night on the couch so that Edmund would have someone to snuggle with since the other animals hang out with me. 

in which Maggie makes a dramatic entrance

sick, wrong, but incredibly cute

A knitted dissected frog. 

I love it. 

in which this dog person muses about cats

For someone who considers herself a "dog person", I've been engaged in a lot of feline activity lately. 

1. My neighbor across the street found a litter of kittens in his garage and asked for some guidance on caring for them. He didn't want to take them to the Humane Society because he was sure they were just going to put them down because they were feral cats. I was able to convince him that young kittens can be socialized and make good pets, that the HS has made a commitment to being a no-kill shelter, and that young kittens are usually adopted within 48 hours. I'm glad that I was able to convince him to take the kittens to the shelter, because he was going just to put an ad on Craigslist. Nothing wrong with that, except that by taking the kittens to the shelter, they would get vet care and be spayed/neutered. His wife brought them by yesterday (they didn't want to go to the shelter) and the kittens were just the cutest things. They were younger than I thought, so something must have happened to the mother. The family did a good job of caring for them and socializing them because they weren't scared of us at all. 

2. We had let Stray Cat outside the other night. Before, he always hung around the yard but this time he didn't come back. I really goofed up when I introduced Stray Cat inside. Since he'd hung around the yard, and Sasha and Maggie were cool with that, even sleeping next to each other on the cat bed outside, I thought it would be ok to let Stray Cat in the house, without having to seclude him and introduce him to the house gradually. That was a mistake. Sasha does not like Stray Cat on his turf and has taken to bullying him inside and out. Last night, I found him at a neighbor's house and brought him back. I've secluded Stray Cat in the office now, and I hope things will work out all right. Maggie and Sasha had some spats right after we got her but now they are just fine together.  I posted an ad on Craigslist under lost pets and will call the HS tomorrow to see if anyone has reported him missing. 

3. I almost forgot about Kat's cats last night. I am caring for them while she and her husband are out of town. I've been going over during the evenings, and last night almost forgot because we had to take our dog Kate to the pet emergency clinic. We were clipping her nails and clipped on too far and it bled. A lot. I've clipped the quick on a dog's nail before but I've never seen that much blood. We tried alum powder, ice, pressure...nothing stopped it. So we took her in and got her bandaged up properly.  I didn't get to Kat's house until 10pm, and her cats finally seemed happy to see me. Day 1, they were a bit anxious. Day 2, completely indifferent. Day 3? "Ohmygodyouarehere!GiveuswetfoodNOW!" 

4. Kate's fine. We took off the bandage this morning and it was soaked with dried blood but thankfully, the bleeding had finally stopped and had started to heal.

5. Oh, and the sun finally came out this weekend and it actually feels like spring/summer might make an appearance. Yay!

in which my handknit sweater continues to surprise

I washed it several days ago and spread it out on the wire shelf in the office to dry. The yarn is a wool/silk blend and guess what? Silk really stinks when it's wet. It smelled so bad that I was sure that a cat had peed on it. Nope, that's just the way it smells. I guess that's a good thing.

Before I made the sweater, I was a good knitter and made a gauge swatch. When knitting, the number of stitches per inch will determine your final measurements, so you do a gauge swatch of approximately four inches square (10cm x 10cm) to determine, and from a section in the middle of the swatch, count how many stitches there are in the four inches and divide by four to get an accurate stitches/inch. The bigger the item, the more important an accurate stitch count is. When making something which is 48" around (like the bust of a Fat Lady Sweater), the difference between 5 stitches/inch or 5.25 stitch/inch is a couple of extra inches. 

(It mad math skillz like this that make me such a good engineer. Hah! People think that engineers must be So Good at Math, but civil engineers are not the math geniuses. C'mon, we work with geometry and concrete...just like the ancient Romans!)

I even washed the gauge swatch, and measured after it had dried. Lovely! That was a smart thing to do because after washing, my sweater actually measured the dimensions I'd calculated.

Except I didn't bother to check for the difference in length before and after washing my swatch. Most knitting patterns just say "knit until item is so many inches long".  So I did. 

Guess what. Not only does silk really stink when it's wet, it also stretches out in length. A lot. Even though the sweater was dried flat, it lengthened about 3 inches everywhere. The sleeves that once reached my knuckles? Now they hang way past the fingertips. And the low cut bosom? Let's just say the depth of that neckline wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of one of those bodice ripper romance novels. 

Sigh.

in which Stray Cat settles in

Black Cat sitting on a white computer.

Denied the computer, I decide to write a letter the old fashioned way (note that I am actually using a fountain pen). I persevere, despite purring feline impediment.

in which I get the result of my Professional Engineering exam

1. The email notification consisted only of a .pdf attachment named "WA_Fail" so there wasn't too much need to read further.

2. I did anyway. Here's my breakdown:

Knowledge Areas Percent Correct
Breadth--Construction 63
Breadth--Geotechnical 75
Breadth--Structural 50
Breadth--Transportation 88
Breadth--Water Resources 50

Depth--Construction Module
Earthwork Construction and Layout 50
Estimating Quantities and Costs 57
Construction Operations and
Methods 67
Scheduling 57
Material Quality Control and
Production 0 (yay me! that's a single digit there, folks.)
Temporary Structures 40
Worker Health, Safety, and
Environment 67
Other topics 75

3. The sad thing is that I did better than I thought I would on the afternoon section--with the exception of Temporary Structures (which I swear was half of the afternoon questions) and Material Quality control (which is impossible to do worse). I didn't expect to do well in the Breadth Structural but I did expect to do better with the Water Resources.

October 2008 exam, here I come! Woo-hoo!

in which I am a creature of habit

Tonight, I carried an armful of clothes into the laundry to put in the clothes hamper. I didn't bother turning on the lights because 1) my arms were full and 2) the hamper is always in the same spot.

So I dumped my armload of clothes and immediately remembered that last night I'd moved the hamper because of Stray Cat and soon realized that I had just deposited my clothes in a recently used litter box.

And the cat came back/the very next day

Meet Stray Cat.

  

He needs a name.

 

Yesterday, I was calling him "Spike" but today I've begun calling him "Edmund" after Sir Edmund Hillary because that feline climbs on everything. (Last night Sasha got renamed "Motherf**ker" because right after I set up a brand new litter box, he got in the box and then proceeded to spray on everything that wasn't litter in the box.)

Stray Cat/Spike/Edmund is truly one of the friendliest, most loving cats I have ever met. (Oscar calls him "stupid adorable cat")

See Seamus after discovering the new cat box.

 

Stray Cat Strut

At least I think he's a stray. 

A few nights ago, Kate was barking furiously at something in the backyard; and when Oscar went outside to see what was going on, he'd found that she'd treed the most incredibly friendly black cat in the lilac tree. He was so happy when he saw people! He has an incredibly loud purr and a terribly kinked tail. It looks it had been badly broken in about four places and healed in a very strange S-shaped kink. 

We weren't sure if he were a stray so we just put out some food for him and went back outside. I've asked some some neighbors if anyone knows whose cat it is, and people think he's a stray. He doesn't have a collar, he is skinny but not as skinny as many stray cats I've seen. 

He came back tonight so we brought him in. He is so sweet and friendly that I want to make sure that he gets a good home. But I'm also concerned that he might be a neighbor's cat but from another street. I'll take him to the vet to have him scanned for a microchip but I doubt that he has one. I'm just assuming that someone who would go through the trouble of chipping a cat would have also had the cat fixed, which he is not. 

in which I share Seamus's new trick

Seamus, big lovable goofy dog that he is, gets upset when I sit at the computer because it means my hands are busy typing and not petting him. When I sat at the desktop computer, he learned that he could shove the keyboard tray back under the desk with one quick flick of his nose and stick his head in my lap...and dog head on lap prevented me from pulling the tray back out. Clever beast, isn't he?

Now that the office is somewhat organized and I'm using my laptop computer on my desk (instead of using Oscar's desktop computer at the computer desk), Seamus has had to figure out another way of getting my attention. He can put his head on my lap since there is no keyboard in the way but I can effectively ignore him. But now the beast has discovered that he can use his nose to press that long lever on the stem of the chair, which instantly lowers the chair seat from the highest position where I like it down to the lowest position where he can put his face in mine. I so hate that sudden elevation drop that whenever I notice him even looking behind the chair, I instantly stick out my hand to pet him. 

Dog 1. Human 0.

in which I elicit a cry for help

I've never considered myself a women attracted to "cute" things.

So why do I love Nut and Bee's charmingly cute designs? 

In which I discover I have a high Google ranking

Yet more visits to this site based on the search words "low cut sweater pics".

Who knew that I'd become an internet celebrity? Of sorts, anyway. At first I was a bit squicked out but now I'm pretty amused. 

Not quite as funny as when Katze got the top hit for the search term "hello kitty pantyliners" but I take what I can get. :P

in which I make progress on the office

Nothing helps alleviating the blues like making some progress on unfinished projects. (Actually, single malt scotch is more effective but I didn't have any.)

 

I am now sitting at my desk for the first time since we moved in to this house nearly 18 months ago. The office is definitely not yet perfect but it is somewhat functional. I have set up my computer on the desk and am typing away, and the other computer desk is still functional and useable! I did steal the computer chair, though. The kitchen chair I was using has a seat as hard as a deadly sin and even my callipygous assets aren't enough to counter that discomfort.

While cleaning off the desk, I found a hat that I bought while in Estonia. Tallinn has a beautiful old town that dates to the late Middle Ages. All the buildings are still in use and most date from the 16th and 17th century. I think the oldest dates from the 15th century. Every weekend during the summer, there is a market fair in the main square and I bought a medieval style felt hat made from raw wool. I wore it once but didn't like it all that much because it really smelled funny, to be honest. But I never got rid of it because hey, I bought it in Estonia! After coming across the hat in the bottom archaeological layer of my desk, I decided that I could use it as a bowl to hold knitting supplies (naturally). It's shape was pretty bowl-like already but I decided to get it wet and shape it around a real bowl for a better shape.

After chucking it in the sink, I found out why the hat always smelled so funny:

I think the hat was made from really raw wool--straight-off-the-sheep fleece. Uncombed, unbrushed, and most importantly, unwashed. I suppose the little bits of straw should have tipped me off but I bought this before I learned to knit and at the time only knew that wool came from sheep. So the erstwhile hat is now cleaner--and a much lighter color--and is stretched over a colander to dry.

in which I've got the blues

I used to get the blues all the time. In fact, it was rather my default state. Now I'm a generally pretty content person, sometimes even happy and occasionally even cheerful, and don't get the blues all that often. So when they come, it's really kind of a shocker, and I seem to have lost all my defense mechanisms save one--crawl in bed and pull covers over head.

It's not a great long term solution; in fact, it's not even a good short term solution. But it's comforting. At least until Kate stepped on my face and made me realize that I really need to trim her toenails sometime soon.

in which I am called "Toots" for the first time

First off, a special thank you to Kat and Crash and Oscar, who took my super-rotten Friday and gave it a happy ending. Salut!

The next morning, Oscar and I joined them and Kat's sister for a leisurely bike ride through five-mile drive in Pt Defiance Park. The drive is very scenic and is closed to vehicles on Saturdays It's a fairly gentle ride, but that didn't stop me from stopping to rest and/or push my bike on the hilly bits (other people called them "speed bumps". I call them "hills".) I'm a pretty fit walker but I had forgotten that cycling uses different muscles than walking so I was really feeling it. The total loop was just five miles, but Crash must have biked at least twice that because he kept doubling back to see if everything was all right.
"Hey, Toots! Everything ok?"
"Did you just call me 'Toots'?"
"I didn't mean any offense!"
"No, I'm not offended. It's just that no one's ever called me "Toots" before."

From him it was completely charming and perfectly acceptable. However, anyone except my mother who ever calls me "Baby" will be kicked. Very hard. Probably more than once.

It is one of my deep dreams to actually do a triathlon, and getting back on the bike this last weekend was a good start. All I need now is a pair of running shoes....

in which I telecommute for the first time

I got permission to work at home today because I had to had to be here for the plumber. (It was a corroded pipe, but it was an easy plumbing fix. Two feet (60cm) of pipe replaced and a new spigot. I don't know how much damage was done to the foundation or the siding because I can't get under the house to check. The crawl space opening is far too small for me, so Oscar has to do it. It's almost too small for him. It was also much cheaper than I had expected.)

I thought I'd enjoy telecommuting but I really didn't. I wasn't any more productive here than at work because I still have distractions. They are different distractions, but fending off the affections of four separate animals (yes, even Maggie wanted some attention) during the day wasn't all that much different than dealing with colleagues who wander over to chat. (Although my colleagues have never walked over and slammed my keyboard tray back under the desk, which is what Seamus does with his nose. He also decided to start howling when I was on the phone with a colleague.)

In fact, there was a distinct disadvantage to working at home today--no coffee. I don't have any at home because I only drink it in the mornings and on weekends, we usually go someplace. Around 12:30, desperate for a coffee fix, I walked over to the local Safeway with its Starbucks bar for a jolt of java. I had been up since 7am, and the back door had been open the entire time so that the dogs could go in and out as they please. But during the 20 minutes I wasn't home and the only 20 minutes of the day the back door had been closed, Kate had an explosive accident on the carpet. (She got into the cat food last night and I think it was too rich for her.)

So while I like being home, I don't like actually working from home because I feel like I should be doing stuff around the house (like washing dishes or pulling weeds) and am tempted to do stuff that I know I shouldn't do (like take a nap or knit). I resisted all the temptations but still feel like I've kind of wasted my day. Not anymore productive at work, not productive at house stuff, and no leisure activities...the only positive was not having to spend 2+ hours commuting to and from the office.

In a complete change of topic, here are some more pictures:

Maggie, continuing her habit of sleeping in seemingly uncomfortable spaces.

An iris blooming in the back yard.

My latest sock, finished last night and blocking nicely. Unfortunately, you can't see the cuff detail, which is a lace pattern that reminds me of the capital of a Corinthian column. I can hardly wait to finish the second sock.

A Homeowner Haiku

Broken water pipe
Floods my garden; incentive
rebate arrives soon

in which Oscar discovers the secret to my decluttering strategy

Him: "Why did you put all my stuff into the garage?"

Lazy Sunday

While I spent most of the day working on getting the office straightened up (along with what seems like tons of other tasks) , and Oscar spent the day scrubbing the kitchen and constructing a water barrel, Seamus and Kate soak up the sun:

Man, if these guys had opposable thumbs, you can bet I'd put them to work.

Will you believe me if I tell you that this is an improvement?

Really, I spent several hours working tidying! Obviously, still more work to be done.

in which I wonder just how long it will be before gardening will get me in shape

Yesterday, I spent another two hours dealing with the lawn. (Yes, more audio lectures to accurately track time). Now, the only reason I can even stomach the thought of doing all this work is that I actually want the workout. Remember, in Weight Watchers world, it's not back-breaking labor...it's accumulating activity points! It turns out to be a zero sum game because after all that labor, all I want to do is consume a large quantity of scotch to offset the muscle pain that will inevitably develop.

Actually, there are a few reasons why I insist on using old-skool style tools. One, I'm rather cheap. A push mower doesn't cost anything to use it, and it requires less maintenance than a power mower. Ditto with the weed whacker. Although Oscar found the weed whacker at a thrift store, he still has to buy the cutting thread. Each of the spools costs 10 dollars. I bought some sheep shearer clippers at the hardware store yesterday, and they are just great for edging the lawn. I have more control than with the weed whacker (there are some things that I don't want to get whacked) and they are very comfortable to use (can be used with either hand); and in all honesty, doesn't take that much longer than using the weed whacker. And I won't accidentally cut any of the plants that I've planted near the fence (although I did nearly snip my headphone cord neatly in two while I was leaning over. I tucked it into my shirt after that.)

Another reason, and this is becoming more and more important to me as the weather warms up...old skool tools don't make any fracking noise. All weekend, at all hours of daylight, the neighborhood is filled with the sounds of godd*mn power gardening tools. Power mowers, lawn edgers, leaf blowers, air compressors, power washers. Dear god, it's enough to drive someone insane. The height of insanity was the sight of watching one of the local residents try to mow a 100 sq foot (10 sq meter) patch of lawn using a riding mower. I'm not against riding mowers, per se, and there are definitely some lawns in the area where this would be a useful tool, but on that tiny lawn? She could barely maneuver the thing. And diesel is almost $5 a gallon right now!

(Last week, one of my neighbors saw me mowing my front yard with the push mower, and asked me in a really concerned voice if I wanted to borrow his "real lawn mower". I thanked him and said no and that I wanted the work out. [The lawn wasn't very tall, so it wasn't much work.] He said that it still seemed like a lot of work, and then I said that I didn't need any gas. "Ah yes," he said, and the look on his face made it obvious that I really wasn't a weirdo, but that the current price of gasoline made a push mower not such a bad idea. One tiny victory for me!)

in which I discover it's payday and help the local economy

We Washington state employees get paid twice a month--on the 10th and the 25th. If either of these dates falls on a Saturday, we get paid on Friday; if on a Sunday, payday is Monday. This month, the 25th falls on a Sunday, but Monday is a holiday so I assumed that payday would be Tuesday. Nope, it was Friday, May 23rd. Perhaps the Office of Financial Services felt that waiting one extra day would cause hardship on employees, or perhaps they just thought it would be nice for the employees to be flush on a 3-day holiday weekend--the first big holiday of the summer. I don't know.

And it does feel like summer today, too. Although the forecast predicted rain, it has been a warm, cloudless day and really pleasant. The temperature is a lovely and moderate mid-70s F (low 20s C) and just a wonderful day to go for a stroll to downtown and hang out.

Oscar and I went for a decadent breakfast at Hello-Cupcake. (You think a cupcake for breakfast is weird? Any weirder than a muffin?) We each at one cupcake and got another for later. Properly cupcaked, we walked over to BKB & company to check out the Art-O-Mat, which is an old-fashioned cigarette dispenser remade into an Art dispenser.

BKB had lots of neat stuff. A lot of local artists were represented as well national and international ones. There was jewelry, glass art, fine fabric wear, funky metal sculptures, big felted toys, handmade soaps, ceramics, candles, and greeting cards. I really loved the funky metal garden art. No pictures on the site, but imagine a group of mutant insects with gaping jaws and big teeth carrying off a plastic garden gnome. There was another one of a group of these mutants decapitating a plastic lawn flamingo.

And I found a wallet. I have been wallet-less lately because I am incredibly picky about my wallet (really, who isn't) and I can almost never find one that fits my needs. I'm one of those weirdo women who actually doesn't carry a purse around (never mind that I always have my backpack with me) and I always want my essential stuff in my pocket. Money, bus pass, bank cards--all in my pocket. Traditional women's wallets are all too large. Rather, they are all too bulky. Even a lot of men's wallets are too bulky because I carry stuff in my front pocket rather in the rear pocket. (Part of the problem is that pockets in most women's trousers/jeans are barely functional...but that's a rant for a totally different post.) When I find a wallet that actually serves my purposes, I will use it until it literally falls apart.

But I found one, and I am very happy. And apparently very lucky. I checked the company's website for a photo to share with y'all, and the model I have has apparently been discontinued.
But mine look a lot like this (photo from the website), except it doesn't have a snap (a good thing, IMHO) and it's brown with an orange interior instead of having an orange exterior (which I would have liked). But seriously, if the only color available would have been hot pink, I would have bought it. Function over form, in my book.


My bus pass fits in the outside pocket, and there's enough room to carry around the stuff that I may need (like bank card, driver's license, etc) but not so large that I can stuff it full of crap.
The company is MyWalit and they offer loads of neat stuff. BKB carries a lot of their line, in case you find something that catches your fancy.

I also bought a few greeting cards that had been printed on letter press. They were very beautiful. I also found a great mug. I have the perfect (for me) coffee mug. Everything about it's form and function is wonderful (the design is ugly but I don't care). I found it while helping my brother and sister in law clean out her mother's house after she had died. Amongst the 50+ sets of salt and pepper shakers was the world's perfect for me mug and my SIL let me have it. I live in perpetual fear that it will break someday and I will be left with a poor substitute. I have found mugs that come close but nothing quite as good. Oscar did manage to find a nearly perfect mug when he visited El Salvador with his mom. In fact, it was so perfect that I was sure that his mom found it (because she has this incredible sense of knowing exactly what I will love), but no, bless his heart, Oscar "picked it out all by (my)self". (And he was rather annoyed that I assumed his mom found it.) Sadly, the only thing that wasn't perfect about that mug was that the ceramic was rather thin, and it developed a crack from rim to bottom soon after I got it. I still have it though. I use it to hold my lunch utensils at work.

Anyway, the mug I bought today doesn't actually have a handle. Instead, the artist created a fold in the clay so that you insert your fingers in an opening, kind of like a mitt. There were left-handed and right-handed versions as well. It's not quite perfect, but it's close. It's comfortable to hold in the hands and that's really important to me.

So after buying artsy stuff, Oscar and I headed down to McLendon's Hardware store. I love McLendon's (as much as one can love a hardware store) because they have great customer service (they hire a lot of retired contractors so the gray-haired guys in the plumbing department are very likely Master Plumbers) but the closest one is 12 miles away. A friend had given me a gift card for the shop last Christmas, so it was time to use it. The gift card paid for the Japanese maple, which I will plant in the parking strip as soon as the sun goes down.

And in case you are curious, I haven't yet started organizing the office. I've got two more days...

in which I reveal my grand ambition

My plan for this weekend is to actually turn the spare room into functional space. I have put this off for a long time (basically since we moved into the house 18 months ago) and I'm tired of it. The key to a pleasant life in a small house is organization. Both Oscar and I suffer from clutteritis, and both of us have made halfhearted attempts at some sort of organization, usually when an area gets too out of control even for us. Unfortunately, at that point, any change is a vast improvement so nothing ever gets to a really good state.

Here's what it looks like now:



I've got a good start because the shelves have been put up. (Thank you Oscar!) And really all that needs to be done is some organization. There are two large boxes of Important Papers that need to be filed (yes, there is a two drawer filing cabinet tucked in the back). Getting that done will clear up a lot of stuff off my desk (the table to the left).

On the left is a freezer taking up the entire closet (not large to begin with). Yes, there is a freezer in the closet. It came with the house and we need to get rid of it. I was using it as yarn storage (go ahead and laugh if you want, but it was perfectly fine storage space since the thing isn't even plugged in) but now I just want it gone because I want the closet to be used for real storage--like the tools that are right now just kind of laying on the floor.

Wish me luck.

in which a picture says a thousand words

nice surprise

How well my friend Mr B knows me.

He saw a whisk shaped like a squid and bought it for me because he thought I would like it.

He was wrong.

I love it.

cute dog picture Sunday

Kate with her "I'm about to lick your nose" look.

I know there are a lot of people who don't think that pit bulls can be cute, but I'm pretty fond of mine. (I too was quite wary of this breed until we found Kate on moving day and found out that her sweetness and adorableness are actually quite characteristic of the breed.)

excuse me, but you are making me uncomfortable

Site Meter is an interesting thing. It gives me a chance to see who is visiting this blog, since I otherwise wouldn't know unless y'all leave a comment each and every time you visit.

A good majority of visits are the result of search engine results and most of those are "mistake" hits, because the time spent at this here internet address is less than one second. (Apparently, lots of people from the UK and France end up at my blog, but I'm assuming they are looking for information on the town in France, not the life musings of a 30-something denizen of Washington state.)

But a few people have come here and browsed. I can tell this by the time spent on the site and the number of page views. That's pretty neat. Total strangers think my writing is interesting enough to keep reading. 'tis very gratifying. Some of 'em come back regularly. 'tis even more gratifying.

But the dude in New Jersey who came to this site from a Google search for "pictures sweaters low-cut"? The only good thing about this is that this site didn't provide what he was looking for (based on the visit length of two seconds), which is quite the relief. Move along, move along.

(There's no need for readers to be concerned about privacy issues. I don't know the identity of anyone who visits. If someone types in this blog address directly or has it as a favorite link, then all I see is internet provider information; e.g. comcast or click-network.)