in which I respond to reader comments

Well, just one reader anyway.

Regarding home produce delivery, there are a couple of options. Several areas have programs called CSA or community sponsored agriculture (although it may go by different names). This is a program in which a person subscribes to the service for a certain time period (in the Seattle area, it's six months), and every week, the subscriber gets a very large bag containing a bounty of freshly harvested, locally produced fruits and veggies from participating farms.  Some programs may deliver; you'd have to find the details from the local CSA.  The Seattle CSA does not deliver to individual homes, but it does drop off the packages at pre-set locations and you pick up your produce at the location you choose.

Other areas have produce delivery. In Seattle, there are several services to choose from (TerraOrganics, New Roots Organics, Spud, Pioneer Organics to name a few) but here in T-town, the options are a bit more limited. Each service offers a "bin" for a set price filled with organic produce. We get our produce from TerraOrganics for two reasons:

1) they are a local company (I found out about them by seeing the vans parked in front of a house during one of my walks) and I'm happy to support this local business. (We used Spud for awhile but they are more like a full-service grocery store. They do have a fixed-price produce bin but they also charge extra for delivery.)

2) their business model is simple--fixed price produce bins, nothing else. You elect the size of the bin and what mixture of produce you want (all fruit, all vegetable, mixed, or all locally grown). You can let them know if there's anything that you will not accept (in our case, green bell peppers and celery. I hate green bell peppers with a passion and Oscar can't eat celery) but it's best to be flexible, and often you get stuff you never would have tried and end up being pleasantly surprised. I found out I love root veggies. Parsnips, rutabaga, beets, turnips...scrumptious.  We get the small box since we are just two people, and it's plenty of produce for us.

I guess the easiest thing to do is google for "produce home delivery (my town) or (my zip code)" to see what's available in your area. 

in which there's always one in the family...

In every family, there is one child who has a knack for getting injured. In my human family, that honor was held by my brother, who miraculously made it adulthood with all the bits he was born with still attached, even if many of them had acquired a new shape from the constant breaking and squashing they were subject to over the years. He managed to break his left big toe no fewer than three times during his childhood. (Wait, not all bits survived. He had his appendix removed when he was a teen.)

In my little animal family, Kate is the one so blessed. When we found her, she was covered with terrible scabs and scrapes in addition to being bone-thin. Given her emaciated state, we were sure she had been beaten as well as starved (the vet didn't think so since she didn't shy away from people's hands), but now knowing Kate, I think she may have just run into stuff at full speed. Our home's previous occupant planted lots of broken crockery and glass around the yard (I'm guessing to deter cats or maybe it was just an available to use to improve drainage). Kate has a real talent for uncovering these pieces. (In fact, the only one she didn't find was the broken crockery in the flowerpot in the front yard. That was me.)

I don't even remember how many times she's sliced her paw pads. She has scraped her nipples raw and bloody jumping over stuff and not.quite.clearing. She gets acne. Last month, we took her to the vet because she had a weird growth in her eye, and our vet referred her to a veterinary opthamologist (it is episcleritis, if you are curious. Nothing to worry about.) A few weeks ago, she split a toenail, all the way back to the paw. I don't know how she did it. I kept an eye on it, and soaked her paw every night in an epsom salt solution but it was getting worse, so back to the vet she went yesterday so now she's on pain meds and antibiotics. I know she doesn't like having the capsule shoved down her throat but she minds it less than having her paw soaked. The worst bit about this most recent injury is that I can't take her for the long walks she loves so much. (I know I can walk Seamus without taking Kate but Kate will be totally bummed if she's left behind.) It's kind of bad for me, too, because those long walks give me plenty of exercise. Of course, I could just go on a walk by myself, but I feel kind of weird doing that. First off, I need a good reason to go for a long walk in the cold and dark, and walking the dogs is that reason. It's for them, not for me! (Not that this works all the time. I haven't taken them for a walk in a few days, 'cuz I've been tired and lazy.)

But I hope Kate's foot heals quickly, for her sake as well as mine. I kind of need those walks too.

in which I celebrate the office Thanksgiving potluck

I came.

I saw. 

I ate.

I ate some more.

Nap?

in which I bake some more

My fledgling baking career continues. As one of my friends pointed out, I do make a b*tchin' blueberry cobbler, and he's right. Maybe the trick is to stick with baking things that are mostly fruit to begin with? Perhaps fruit I can handle; it's everything else that's giving me trouble.

So, I guess it's no surprise that the past few things I've made have been mostly fruit. It also had something to do with the fact that we had a huge amount of fruit from our weekly delivery.
So, what do you do with a bunch of extremely ripe pears and that red wine leftover from when Oscar made coq au vin? Make poached pears, of course. Now, in true Luneray fashion, I followed the recipe enough to realize that I didn't have enough pears. I had only three, but the recipe called for six so I chopped up a few apples to mix in with the pears. Then I realized that we didn't have a half bottle of wine that I thought we did. The recipe called for two cups of red wine. Eyeing the level in the bottle, it looked a bit less than half full so I guessed we had a cup. I poured it out and found out that the bottle contained one-half cup, exactly. Then I wished I hadn't chopped up the apples because my pear/wine ratio was about right. Oh well. I used the 1/2 cup wine and water for the other 1 1/2 cups and made the recipe using all the fruit. The fruit is tasty but intensely sweet; the wine flavor would have balanced the 1 1/2 cups of sugar much better.

Next up...persimmon bread. We had eight persimmons in our last fruit delivery along with a recipe for persimmon bread. These were fuyu persimmons, which are actually edible when they are firm (other types are extremely astringent and are eaten only after the fruit is soft), and they are tasty but I turned them all into bread anyway. (It's not like we don't have a few pounds of other fruit ready to be eaten raw, after all.) I followed the recipe that came with the delivery despite my initial distrust. No eggs? Agave nectar? The substitution given for the agave nectar was 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar mixed with 2 tbsp water, and I was sure that was a typo until Oscar mentioned that agave nectar is incredibly thick. But I mixed it up according to the directions and that dough was incredibly stiff. You know that the baked goodness called "banana bread" but is really a cake? Well, this persimmon bread really was more like a bread. A very sticky bread dough, but a dough instead of a batter. Too thick to pour into the loaf pan but far too sticky to shape it, so the loaf pan contained a rather lumpy mass.

After 40 minutes, I opened the oven to test the loaf for doneness and had my newest baking mishap. I pulled out the rack too far and the damn pan flew off the rack and overturned and the loaf flew out of the pan and landed upside down in the middle of the oven. (I should be glad it didn't land on the floor because it would have been immediately gobbled by Seamus whose food instincts (Food! On Floor! Mine!) override his pain instincts (Food! On Floor! Mine! HOT! HOT! HOT!).) Well, the bread wasn't done yet but it was done enough so that it kept its shape as I grabbed it and plopped it back into the loaf pan, only slightly smashed.

Despite its mid-baking flight, the bread turned out all right. It is very dense and chewy and not really sweet. It's really good sliced thin and spread with butter (and would probably be really good sliced thick and toasted), and Oscar suggested it would make really good French toast as well.

This weekend I plan to try making apple dumplings. With butterscotch sauce. Made with real scotch. :)

in which I am happy that it's almost Thankgiving day here in the US

Although it's not yet Thanksgiving here in the United States, it's not too early to start thinking of that day.

I'm not deliberately an iconoclast but I'm not a very enthusiastic celebrant for most holidays. Christmas? I had a tree once as an adult but never bothered with decorations since then. I give gifts (and occasionally remember to send out cards) but don't decorate. (One of my colleagues was shocked to her very core when she found this out. "Why don't you celebrate Christmas?" she asked, once she was able to pick her jaw up off the floor. "Well, for starters, I'm not a Christian." "It doesn't matter! Christmas is a secular holiday!" It's funny how Christians are the only ones who think that way. I know some secular Jews have embraced the secular Christmas tradition and get trees, although a much more common practice seems to have been inflating Hannukah into the "Jewish Christmas". Since I'm not Jewish, I'm just parroting a conversation overheard between some some Jewish colleagues. In case you are curious, you can file my religious affiliation as Christian Apostate, although there are plenty of people who will argue that the Christian tradition I grew up in isn't actually Christian at all. Since so many people have strong feelings about that particular tradition, I almost never tell people what the tradition is because what follows is a lot of prejudice from those I'm talking to. This often puts me in a very uncomfortable position of having to defend that church. I left it based on my own personal experiences, but I've never conflated my experience to damn the whole tradition. It's kind of like saying that since you had a bad marriage, that the institution of marriage is inherently flawed and that everyone who is married is just brainwashed or victimized. Yes, I know there are some people who do feel this way about marriage, but how seriously do you take them?)

My lack of enthusiasm for Christmas certainly didn't spring from my family background. My grandmother and mother both loved Christmas and all the decorations, music, etc that went with it. The day after Thanksgiving, my grandmother would start decorating the house first thing in the morning and it was always decked out by lunchtime. I don't ever remember her having a big tree; she had a tabletop ceramic tree with little colored glass (or plastic) "ornaments" illuminated from a lightbulb within. Yes, a bit kitschy, but then, so was my grandmother. (Unironically so.) She would whip up Christmas excitement to a fever pitch, so much so that we always opened gifts on Christmas eve because she couldn't wait until Christmas morning. But Dec 26th? Christmas is over and done with baby. First thing in the morning, everything came down and was put away. Contrast this to my mom who never, ever wanted Christmas to end and never hurried to take down the decorations (we had a fake tree, so there wasn't even a slowly decaying piece of shrubbery to serve as a memento mori. How long did it take to remove the Christmas decorations? One year, I found an Easter egg hidden in the Christmas tree.)

But I've always liked Thanksgiving. How can you not when the whole focus of the holiday is a really great meal? I don't go all out with decorations (you might have guessed that I'm not one for decorating--not my house, not my yard, and not even myself. I appreciate the effort that others do but really, it's not for me. Honestly, I think people should only go through with decorations because they want to, not because they have to. But with that thought, we have new neighbors on our street who put up a big display for Halloween and I wonder what they will do for Christmas. I really hope they won't have anything inflatable.)

I've also found that people are extremely particular about their Thanksgiving meal traditions, as becomes obvious when people outside of your immediate family try to share a meal. Oh, the mashed potatoes aren't quite right. What, where are the candied yams? No ham? Green beans with pearl onions? It's like every family has a set of dishes that are only eaten on Thanksgiving and that's what Thanksgiving dinner is.

In our family, it was roasted turkey and gravy (no giblets), mashed potatoes, green beans, candied yams, and jellied cranberry sauce (you know, the stuff straight from the can, which still retained the shape of the can even in the serving dish) and for dessert was pumpkin pie, mince meat pie and this weird dish called "ambrosia" that my grandmother made. I never liked it but everyone else did. (All I remember was it had colored marshmallows, some creamy stuff that was probably Cool Whip but may have been mayonnaise, and toasted coconut. I think there was canned fruit in there too.) I liked everything except the candied yams and minced meat pie (and the ambrosia). In fact, I don't think anyone ever ate the candied yams except my grandfather. (I think they were always fed to the dog.)

Well, for all this talk about people being so traditional with their Thanksgiving dinner, I'll be a big ol' heretic and admit that I really prefer ham to turkey. I'll eat roasted turkey, of course, but if I could only choose one to make or eat, I'd take ham. I have since found out that candied yams (which I still loathe) are not the same as sweet potatoes, which are actually pretty good when roasted and not drenched in caramel and marshmallows. Freshly whipped cream is way better than Cool-Whip. Cranberry sauce is super easy to make and there's no reason to buy the canned stuff. (This is the one thing that I am a purist about. Cranberry sauce is cranberries and sugar. Period. Keep your orange rind, coconut, carrots, apples, and what-have-you far away from my cranberry sauce.) My mom's basic mashed potatoes (made with plenty of white pepper and garlic) are really hard to beat but mashing freshly roasted garlic in with the potatoes is worth the extra effort.

But you know what my absolute favorite Thanksgiving food memory is? Saturday after Thanksgiving in La Paz, Bolivia, 1992. I was joining Oscar's family at his grandmother's house for their large weekly meal, always an elaborate affair. For dessert, she surprised me with a homemade pumpkin pie because she knew it was Thanksgiving in the US, and that it was an important holiday and she didn't want me to miss out. It was so thoughtful of her and so unexpected! And absolutely delicious too. Pumpkin pies aren't traditional in Bolivia but she had the recipe right and it was scrumptious.

in which I am not crazy for knitting a blanket out of sock yarn

For every knitter out there who thinks that knitting a sweater out of fine yarn, with color work and shaping is just too much work...get thee to Bugknits, Althea Crome's website. She knits miniatures. Incredibly beautiful detailed clothing inspired by ancient Greek vases, Egyptian frescos, or Picasso's paintings.  Knitted at approximately 60 stitches per inch. (Oh yeah, you've always complained that something knitted at 8 stitches per inch is too much work, eh?) 

I guess these garments didn't provide enough challenge for her because she has also knitted "micro-garments", items at 1:144 scale.  As she puts it, "this is dollhouse scale for the dollhouse."

Six completed sweaters fit side by side on her index finger. 

in which I talk to the animals

Dear Mouse,

I hope that you understand that I am truly happy to provide you with a loving, secure foster home until your forever home is found. I've never had a kitten before, and I've enjoyed seeing you grow from this shy, wee grey ball of fluff to a confident, playful bigger ball of grey fluff.

That being said...keep your paws off my knitting. Oh, I'm sure you had great fun when you jumped up on my lap and decided to carry off that small ball of yarn I was knitting my blanket with. Oh yes, glad to accommodate your pint-sized physique by working with a ball of yarn small enough for you to carry in your mouth while jumping behind the chair and curling up behind the bookcase to play. Oh yes, I get great fun moving large pieces of furniture late at night to retrieve my working yarn. 

Oh, and that size 2 double pointed needle that I'd stuck in the blanket? You know, the identical twin of the other size 2 double pointed needle stuck in the blanket? Give it back. I don't know where you've hidden it but playtime has gone on long enough. I'm a pretty skilled knitter but even I can't knit with a single double pointed needle. 

Yours truly, 

Luneray

P.S. what's the sudden fascination with lip balm? I'm glad you have found a new treat but do you really think that I enjoy waking up to a kitten french-kissing me?

in which I start out sulky but cheer up

YOu know that song "I'm a loser, baby..."
Yeah, that can be the theme song for my life lately. Not only did I oversleep AGAIN this morning, and not even notice Oscar's various tries to wake me, but I apparently reset my alarm for a later time, but have no memory of doing it. Kind of like sleepwalking, only it's "sleep-alarm-clock-resetting".
I went to the doctor to try to figure out why I've been having so much trouble sleeping, but it's not so much sleeping as it is waking up. ONly once in the past month have I woken up on a weekday feeling rested, and then I fell asleep on the train going into work and was literally jolted awake when the train came to a stop at my station. So instead of coming into work all rested and alert, I was completely groggy and sonambulent for most of the day. Anyway, previously, the doctor suggested regular exercise, just walking. And I've been doing that, but while there are definite benefits (like increased aerobic endurance, noticably firmer leg muscles, and looser jeans), my sleeping hasn't seemed to have been affected either positively or negatively. Alcohol doesn't really work either, which is actually a good thing because I can't use it as a crutch. In fact, past a certain point, I don't feel relaxed but actually anxious and restless.
Maybe I should train one of the cats to wake me up. Sasha sometimes would be very annoying in the mornings, but he wasn't a reliable alarm clock. Maggie is far too relaxed and refuses to move when she's snuggled up. Seamus and Kate would rather bust a gut then go outside into the cold (unless they are going for a walk, of course. They can hardly contain their enthusiasm then. Which reminds me that I need to spray my raincoat with ScotchGuard. It's a Gore-Tex coat but Gore-Tex rainproofing qualities has a lifespan. Who knew? About five years, if you are curious.)
So, I sit at work, not busy enough to keep me occupied and the stuff I do have to do is so uninteresting that it's hard to motivate myself. I broke a longstanding rule of mine the other day and started reading a book. I had completed everything on my to-do list, and so was essentially just keeping my chair warm until it was time to leave. I wonder if this is one of the reasons I have trouble waking up? I feel like there's no purpose of me being here? I feel so guilty about having a good job that pays well and for most of the time it's interesting enough but when it's not interesting, I really can't stand being here.
I have it better than so many other people, so why do I feel so ungrateful? In a stunning bit of irony, one of my colleagues just came up to congratulate me on my 10th anniversary with the agency. Yep, I started here 11/16/98, and was really excited about it, to be honest. She told me that a group of my colleagues had planned to take me out to lunch so I promised to act surprised when they offered. :D
Let's move on to a bit less whininess, eh?
None of my recent blogging seems complete without a kitten anecdote so here's the latest: Mouse has developed a fascination with Oscar's ears and my nose. She loves to perch on shoulders, and when she's hanging out on Oscars', she is overcome with a desire to nibble his ears. Oscar is hyper-ticklish, so it's extremely amusing to me when this happens. Yesterday, I tucked Mouse into the hood of his sweatshirt, and she hung out there, reverse-kangaroo style for a bit. Lately, after I've gone to bed, she joins me and settles down tucked under my chin and starts licking my nose. I have no idea why. It's a very ordinary nose. Thankfully, kitten tongues aren't nearly as rough as cat tongues.
In knitting news, I may have finally jumped off the deep end. Some of you who know me may be surprised by that declaration as you have no doubtedly come to the conclusion that I jumped off a long time ago. You may know that I enjoy knitting socks, but I almost never use up the entire skein of yarn for the socks that I make. There's always a little bit left over. I've been keeping these mini-balls of yarn, figuring that I'd find a use for them sometime.
And I have. The Yarn Harlot featured a knitter who was making a mitered square blanket out of her leftover sock yarn and a lightbulb went off. What a great idea! And I've found out that knitting mitered squares is insanely addictive. You can make the squares any size you like, as long as you start with a stitch count in a multiple of 3+1. Then you decrease two stitches in the center every other row until you are left with a single stitch. Bind off, and you are done. My squares (actually, it's a rhombus, not a square) are about 3inches at its widest dimension and to make a blanket the size I want, I will need about 228 squares. In case you are curious, each square has 511 stitches in it. That's 116,508 stitches for those who are curious but don't feel like opening the calculator feature on your computer. Not including the edging.
I don't know what size I will end up with. I don't know if I have enough sock yarn to make the size blanket I want nor do I know if I will get sick of it and end up with either a lap robe or a funky scarf. However, right now, all I want to do is knit mitered squares. It's a perfect little object. Each one takes about 20 minutes (yes, I'll let you guys do the math on that one) but I'm attaching each to the other as I go along so I won't have to sew them together. I've put together enough of it so that it is starting to resemble something instead of a long, unwieldy strap. I've put all my yarn bits into a bag and I pull out a color at random. The only rule I have is that two squares out of the same yarn can't be next to another. So, it's kind of a crazy quilt approach and I hope the final result will be interesting. But, trust me when I say it's really fun to make. Making mitered squares is completely addictive, and they are so small that I can easily convince myself that I can make just one more.
But another thing that's cool about this project is that since it's knit out of leftover yarn, each square has a story. "Hey, these are the socks I made for Katze. This is from Ms Swann's socks." And some of my knitter friends have given me some leftover sock yarn, too, so now their stories are knitted in. "This is from the socks Lana made for her husband. He loves yellow."
I'll post a picture of it when it's a bit more cohesive.

in which the animals are entertaining

This was how I woke up this morning:

Mouse the foster kitten was sitting on my chest with her little front paws resting on my upper lip. I opened my eyes and she was bent over, staring me right in the face, her grey kitten's face filled my entire field of vision. I'd exhale and she'd lift one of her front paws, lick it, and set it back down on my lip. I'd exhale again, and she'd repeat the gesture. Exhale, lift, lick, set down until she got tired of that and jumped off.

I can usually tell how cold its gotten in the house by how many animals try to get on the bed during the night. Seamus, the big baby, always wants to sleep on the bed, but I usually kick him off. But the past two mornings, I've woken up to find myself draped with felines.

Sasha is ok with the foster cats, which is good. He tolerate MamaCat but is actually affectionate toward the kitten. He's played with her a bit and even groomed her, although he did draw the line when she tried to nurse from him. She must have bit him rather hard because he let out a yelp. She is a very affectionate kitten loves to snuggle up, although she doesn't purr.

I think we have a pretty happy home for the animals, but the dogs will soon have a reason to be even happier...I am going to supplement their kibble with homemade food. We feed the dogs a high quality dog food, and I don't intend to switch to a different brand but the price just went up by $5 a bag at the same time the company decreased the size by 10%. It used to cost $45 for a 33lb bag, now it's $50 for a 30lb bag. (The cat food went up too, but the bag size didn't change.) So now the canines' diet is going to consist of 20% homemade food, which will be whatever I throw in a pot. There are literally hundreds of recipes for dog food, but dudes, I am not going to put more effort in making their food than I do my own. My plan is to cook a large pot of stuff and feed it to them throughout the week.

And the basic recipe is really easy: 1/2 lb protein, 4 cups cooked grain (rice, oatmeal, barley), 4 cups starchy ingredient (potato, pasta, yam), 4 cups vegetables and/or fruit, 4 cups liquid, and 2 tablespoons oil.  Seamus will get one cup a day; Kate 1/2 cup. Seamus will eat anything I put in front of him; Kate is more picky, but I think she will eat this. I'll make a batch, see how much it costs and how long it lasts and then find out if it really is cost-effective

in which I make comfort food

Cooking update: I gifted two cupcakes to my neighbor as a "just being nice" gesture. This was before I had even sampled the cakes myself and realizing how horrid they were. So I wanted to apologize as soon as I could. My neighbor works very long hours and it was a full week before I saw him home, and so I was finally able to tell him that I had no idea how awful they were. 

He just looked at me like I was crazy, and said, "get out of town. They were great!"

"Thank you, but you don't have to say that just to be nice."

"I'm not! I really liked them! "

I don't entirely believe him, but even if he's lying, that's very nice of him, isn't it? :)

In other food news, I'm trying to cut back on expenses, and I've done a good job but an area that still needs work is the food budget. I've joined the coffee club at work (the Agency That I Work For does not provide coffee for its employees. We have to buy it ourselves (including the coffee pot), which is okay by me.) which sometimes makes me wonder how much I really need a morning cup of coffee. Seriously. I'm a bit of a coffee snob; I know what I like, and I'm willing to pay for quality. So with the coffee club, everybody is on a list, and each person is responsible for bringing in a bag of coffee when it's their turn. But there are always arguments about the quality/type of coffee brought in. I'm not fond of French Roast and was  a bit glum when someone brought in a 3lb bag of that, but was even more unhappy when someone else brought in a 3lb container of Folger's coffee. Now that's completely unacceptable. This is Seattle, people. Ground zero for Starbucks? Say what you will about that company but it has succeeded in raising the average person's awareness for quality. Even drip coffee at  McDonald's and 7-11 is premium coffee now.  

But I've sucked it up (or down, as it were) and drunk not very good coffee for the past two weeks. It's much harder to cut back on eating out for lunch. Lots of frugality bloggers say that brown-bagging your lunch will save you lots of money, which I think is quite true. But then almost all of them say "and it's healthier too!" Not necessarily. Now, if a person habitually eats at McDonald's for lunch, then yes, it's probably hard to bring a lunch that's less healthy than that. My problem is that I'm surrounded by lots of super-fresh, super-healthy, high-quality lunch establishments and it's so easy to let laziness kick in and not bring a lunch, especially when the alternative is something far tastier than I can make for myself. (This isn't the case if Oscar makes lunch for me, though.)

But today, I started acting like an adult and made a pot of Ethiopian lentil stew (out of the Sundays at the Moosewood Restaurant cookbook). I've made this a lot in the past, but haven't made it in awhile but I had all the ingredients and whipped up a batch. I think the whole cost of the stew was less than $5 and there's enough for several days (depending on how much Oscar eats). I served myself a small bowl when it was done, and you know how sometimes you eat something that just satisfies just about every craving you had, even though you didn't even realize you were craving anything? It was a bowl of heaven. Filling, nourishing, and warm. It was the culinary equivalent of a long hug. Yum. 

in which I give a quick update

PE exam--two alarm clocks. Slept through both of them. 'nuff said.

Election 2008--I wasn't too concerned about the presidential election, but I was suffering some acute anxiety over some local elections. Governor's race, I-985 (citizen sponsored initiative to open the HOV lanes to general purpose traffic--just trust me when I say this was a bad idea from a financial and traffic point of view), Proposition 1 for Mass Transit. 

And for the first time in my entire life that I've been able to vote, everything on the ballot that I cared about actually turned out just the way I'd wanted it to. Our governor was re-elected (the agency that I work for is a cabinet agency, so the Governor is the Boss. Her re-election means that there probably won't be a managerial shake-up in the agency), I-985 was soundly defeated, Proposition 1 for Mass Transit passed overall (it failed in Pierce County but only by the slimmest of margins, which is surprising in itself since Pierce County didn't stand to benefit from taxing itself to build light rail in King and Snohomish counties.)

But what really surprised me is the voter turnout. The page tallies the number of ballots cast (which means ones that have been officially counted) against the number of registered voters, and in some counties the turn-out is more than 80%--and many places haven't yet finished tallying the ballots yet. King and Pierce County have the greatest number of ballots yet to be counted; King county is the most populous county and Pierce County has a high number of absentee ballots due to military personnel.

Oh, and it stopped raining today. Blue sky and the fresh scent that comes after a thorough cleansing. Yay!

in which my new career plans fall flat

Well, I know that I'll probably never be a baker. I made cupcakes from scratch today for the first time ever, and they are possibly the worst cupcakes you could possibly imagine. 

They are rubbery, strongly egg-y in their flavor and let's just say the frosting puts the "butter" in buttercream.

I'm bummed about the texture, and I can't figure out what I did wrong. Probably overmixed the batter, even though I used cake flour. (However, the instructions weren't very helpful..."mix until batter has a curdled appearance". Well, maybe that is helpful except I didn't know what it meant. Curdled milk?)

But the flavor was the real disappointment. I followed the yellow cake recipe from "The Best Recipe" by America's Test Kitchen, which has a LOT of butter in it. So much that the cupcakes are actually a bit greasy. And you can really taste the eggs. 

And the frosting? I've had "real" buttercream frosting before and it definitely had a better texture than what I made. Perhaps I didn't beat it long enough because it's not very fluffy and it's not even very sweet. It really does taste just like butter with some sugar and lime (I didn't have any lemon) mixed in. If there is a difference between handheld mixers and stand mixers in the amount of time needed to achieve the results, I wish a recipe would note that. The cake recipe did, but the frosting recipe (from the same book) didn't.

Bah.

in which I discover the perfect diet plan

Yes, I will consume only food that I grow myself.

Given that the total garden produce from June to October has been less than four quarts of vegetables total, dramatic weight loss is sure to ensue. I would probably die from starvation after a few months, after which weight loss is even more rapid!

Yeah, so the garden is a bust, although I did make a salad for lunch in which all the veggies came from the garden, picked about 20 minutes before consumption.

I have learned a few things about gardening, though. 

1. You must stake your tomatoes. Otherwise they fall over and you have to dig through the plant to find the ripe ones. I hate the way tomato plants smell. Absolutely hate it.

2. Cucumbers have spines. 

3. Supermarket cukes are not waxed for aesthetics but to keep in moisture. They shrivel up really fast.

4. Just because a product is called "garden soil" doesn't mean it's necessarily good for all gardens. Especially if it says "great for flowers!" on the label. It was probably great for flowers, but it sure sucked for root veggies. 

5. Despite what I've read to the contrary, you probably should put a liner at the base of a raised garden to keep the grass from growing up into it. Several layers of cardboard and the weight of several inches of compost is not enough to smother the grass. 

6. I'm glad I like green beans because that's about the only thing that I seem to be able to grow well. Even the second crop of radishes didn't do well (see #4).

in which I try not to talk about kittens but fail

Nadja, the white foster kitten, is back at the Humane Society for observation. Over the past week, Mouse has gotten very active and playful, but Nadja remained very quiet. She loves people and would jump up to your shoulder at every chance she'd get, but she wasn't very active. On Sunday, I picked up both kittens to put them in the spare room for the night and noticed that Mouse was substantially bigger and noticeable heavier than Nadja. Just out of curiosity, I weighed them on the kitchen scale. Mouse weighed about 700 grams, but Nadja weighed only about 400. She's not eating for some reason; don't know if she's being bullied by Mouse or has stomach issues. I hope she's ok; and that's she's not ill because of something I did or didn't do. 

(At this moment, Mouse is fascinated by the end of my nose. She's sitting on my chest--why does every single cat love to sit on my chest?--and keeps sniffing and nibbling the end of my nose.)

In non-feline news, I am participating in a Value Engineering study this week. I only agreed to it because I am rather slow at work and this is a whole week of project chargeable work, but while I find it very interesting to listen to the project, I don't think I'm actually adding anything. In the whole two days so far, the only thing I've contributed was knowing what is the minimum height of a bike path (8 feet for bikes/pedestrians, 10 feet if equestrians are allowed). So I've been feeling bored and useless which is making me a bit depressed. I wouldn't feel quite so bad except my boss is a participant as well, so I can't even head out and go back to the office. 

And the PE exam is on Friday, which has only increased my stress. I am so unprepared. I am unprepared because I am unmotivated. But I am stressed because I feel like I should be motivated. I've been working as an engineer for the past eight years, and I've pretty much chosen this as a career path, so suck it up all ready! Everyone I know who studied engineering was really interested in the subject. I was not interested in the subject and so I didn't study engineering at university, and a lot of my career anxiety stems from ending up in a profession that doesn't really fascinate me. Parts are interesting, yes. But am I motivated to read Engineering Today and find out about new types of bridge construction and different types of retaining walls? Not especially. So I feel like a fraud. And so I feel like a fraud like me shouldn't even have a PE license. And so I am unmotivated to study. But I stress anyway, because I feel like I should be more interested.  blah blah blah in an endless cycle. However, since I was slow at work, I was spending my down time studying the topics I didn't do very well in last time. Which was essentially the topics I wasn't all that interested in. 

Ah well, enough bellyaching. Back to the books. Fluid dynamics!!! 

in which I update the animal situation

1. Nadja, Mouse, and MamaCat are back at the Humane Society under vet observation. I spoke to someone on the vet staff who seemed rather irked that I didn't keep Jasper's remains, but I explained that I didn't know that I was supposed to do that. (In Foster Cat Training 101, they don't cover Death of Foster Animals.) Besides, keeping a kitten corpse in my freezer is going above and beyond the call of duty, if you ask me.  She said she'd call the emergency vet to see if they could get the remains for testing. 

(On a side note, the emergency vet faxed the visit summary to my regular vet, and Dr Warren called me this morning to express her condolences. That was very nice of her, and unexpected too since Jasper wasn't one of her patients.)

2. My friend HippieChick give Eddie a new home. I'll miss the guy, but I know she's a great human to her pets.

3. I spoke to my neighbor and told him we'd foster his dogs until they could find a good home if he wasn't able to rehome them by the time he had to move. I'm 95% sure that he won't look very hard for new homes and that we will end up with them. This is actually what I'm hoping for. I know you can find good families for pets via "free to a good home" ads (after all, that's how we found Seamus), but these are an Amstaff and an Amstaff mix and I'm really concerned that they'd fall prey to a not-very good home. Both these dogs are really good dogs, and they deserve a chance.  

in which there is balance in things

It's been a pretty rotten past couple of days. Things could definitely be worse; I am a disaster minded person, so trust me, I can think of many ways that things could be worse. But there's balance right now. 

Here's a summary of my life since Thursday.

1. My near death experience on the streets of Seattle. 

I'm not joking. I work in an old, six storey building in Pioneer Square. Old brick buildings and ancient glass? Super high on ambience, character, and charm. Not so great with safety factors. I left a little bit after lunch to walk to a meeting held at another office in downtown, and I noticed the window washer had set up his cone of safety on the sidewalk. I walked around the cone of safety, and heard a crash. I looked up, and a giant chunk of glass was falling from the sky right towards my head. I quickly stepped to the right, and the glass crashed on the pavement right about where I had been standing. It was a windy day and the window washer had been caught in a gust of wind and crashed into a window, which shattered. The large chunk of glass obviously hadn't completed its 40 hour occupational health and safety course because it completely ignored the cone of safety and smashed to smithereens well outside it. The window washer was all right; he wasn't cut by the glass. 

So yes, I avoided grave harm by luck. The broken window was on the fourth storey. This is probably what saved me from harm. If it were on the second storey, it probably would have fallen before I'd even processed the crashing sound. If it had been the third storey, it most likely would have struck me right as I looked up. 

Strangely, I wasn't really affected by the whole experience. No shaking nerves of a narrowly averted disaster. I was ok, the window washer was ok, so that's that. He had set up his safety protocols like he was supposed to, and I avoided the work area like I was supposed to. Later, I told my boss about it, and she had the attack of nerves. "Oh my god, do you realize that you could have been killed?" "Yes," I said, "at the very least concussed, possibly gashed, depending on whether it hit me in the scalp or in the face. It probably wouldn't have hit me in the neck." (See, I told you I was disaster-minded.) "I'm so glad you are all right," she cried, and gave me a big hug. "Who would have done your job if you were hurt?" 

Friday: 

Ms Swann, our office administrator and my friend, had called in ill all week. She had surgery a few months ago and it's been a slow recovery for her. She never called in sick before the surgery so when she's ill, she's ill. On Friday, no one had heard from her. She has alternate Fridays off, so most people assumed it was her day off. Later, we realized it wasn't her Friday off, and since she didn't call in, we all got very worried. There was no answer at her home phone, nor on her cell phone. After a few hours, my boss called her emergency contacts to find out any info. Ms Swann lives alone and we were all concerned that she was at home, too ill to contact anyone. Finally, late afternoon, Ms Swann called me. She did call in that morning; to the same person she'd called every day. Unfortunately, that person just happened to take that Friday off. Ms Swann had been at the doctor's all day. She's developed a complication to the surgery she had, and so had to undergo a battery of tests. 

Saturday:

Well, y'all already know about Jasper. Perhaps it was a silly thing to authorize euthanasia on a kitten that was already dying, but I couldn't bear the little guy to suffer. However, the other kittens seem to be all right. Alert, active, stools look ok. And...slowly but surely, they are getting better at using the litter box. In these potentially tough economic times, I encourage you to buy stock in Nature's Miracle. I foresee brisk product sales, at least in S. End Tacoma. 

Sunday: 

Dead car battery. Our neighbor kindly gave us a jump and we went to Sears to get a new battery. It was packed, "crazy busy" as the attendant told us, so we had no choice but to try to kill 2. 5 hours until the car was ready. Yes, changing a battery is really easy, but it's first come first served at Sears, and there were 10 cars ahead of us. Oscar and I walked the length of the mall (kill me now), then walked over to TGIF for a late lunch/early dinner, and got a craptastic, overpriced meal. My mood was really foul by the time we got back to Sears. Between the kitten care and the car, I've spent nearly $300 this weekend (does not include craptastic TGIF meal).

Some good news though. Our neighbors next door are moving, and the woman has already moved out ("staying with friends") and took the annoying, yappy dogs with her. Yay! But the bad news--they aren't taking their other two dogs, who are still here. These are good dogs, good natured and very sweet, and this just pisses me off. I'll call the Humane Society and get some advice on fostering, and then approach the neighbors saying I'll take them and get new homes for them through the Humane Society. One of the dogs is a pit bull, and I fear that a "free pit bull" will attract the wrong sort of home for him. 

I think I will go to bed now. 

in which I find a silver lining on a sad day...

It's October, and that means it's Halloween candy season. 

and Halloween candy season means....

CANDY CORN!!! 

Yes, I love candy corn. Unapologetically. 

RIP Jasper

Jasper was very lethargic this afternoon and after a few hours, it was obvious that he was very ill. Oscar and I took him to the emergency vet where we found out that he was very close to death, and his body temperature was so low that it didn't even register on the thermometer (meaning it was less than 80 degrees F, instead of the healthy 100 degrees F). The vet estimated his chance of survival at less than 25% so we opted to let him go. (Based on the symptoms, the vet is concerned that he had panleukopenia, a highly infectious virus, so I need to notify the Humane Society tomorrow and keep a close eye on the other kittens.)

Even if he were my own cat, I would have made the same decision. If the vet had said his chances were higher, I would have elected treatment. But I am incredibly sad, because Jasper was the sweetest and the friendliest of the bunch, and he was my favorite. And just a few hours ago, he was fine.

in which I am not safe

The kittens figured out how to get out of the office this morning so they've been wandering freely around the house, exploring and searching for Mama Cat (who is a remarkably indifferent maternal figure). They actually like being around people; in fact, it's really hard to get away from Jasper and Nadja. Mouse, however, is more indifferent. She's happy to climb up to my shoulder and hang out but doesn't seem to enjoy being petted or held. 

Unfortunately, the kittens remain clueless about the litter box and since they are wandering freely, they kind of drop a load wherever. Arg! Even Mama Cat, who so far has been really good about using the litterbox, decided to relieve herself on the kitchen rug. 

Our house definitely won't win any tidiness awards but dammit, even I have standards, and they don't include kitten piss and poop everywhere! Mama Cat doesn't clean them so I've given them towel baths for the past few nights. It is amazing how stinky a kitten can get. 

kitten photos

triumphant kitten resting after reaching base camp 4, before attempting  the summit of Mt Luneray

All three kittens on Oscar's lap.

Oscar's not really sideways but the photo is. 

Hanging out after a rough day of climbing up people's bare legs and not pooping in the litter box

Kitten madness

I am sitting hunched over my computer and I am covered with kittens. They are all either sitting on my shoulders or trying to climb up to the top of my head. I'm also covered with kitten scratches, because they all climbed up my bare legs to get to the summit of Mt. Luneray. 

I've figured out names for the kittens. The white one is Nadia, because she is rather a gymnast. She is very sociable and active. 

The male grey kitten I'm calling Jasper, because he purrs very loudly. Jas-PURR, get it? 

The female grey kitten was a bit harder to name. Both grey kittens look identical to me unless I look at their gender bits so it's usually by their behavior that I tell them apart. Grey kitten #2 is more shy and a bit smaller. She also has a very squeaky voice. So she is called Mouse. You know, grey, timid, and squeaks? Plus I like the idea of calling a cat "mouse". 

Now, if they'd figure out that the big box of litter is for pooping in, things would be much nicer. I know they can get in to it, and Mama Cat uses it. Ah well, they are young yet. At least they mostly use the towels that I've placed on the floor. I've found one non-towel deposit; hopefully, that's the only one. Sadly, the office is kind of stinky right now. 

in which I show off most of the new foster cats

Mama cat. Very sweet, but painfully thin. Keeps trying to climb onto my lap when I'm sitting in this chair, but I don't know if she's trying to cuddle or just trying to take the chair over for herself. 

Grey kitten #1. The bold one. Also very noisy. 

Kitten #2. A beauty. Also very friendly. She reminds of a ragdoll in her looks. 

No pictures of grey kitten #2. That one is shy, and is hiding somewhere.

These guys will stay with us until the kittens can be altered (when they weigh two pounds/1 kilo). After the kittens are weaned, Mama cat will be spayed. My guess is three weeks until they will be ready for adoption? 

Apparently, every cat in this house loves me except for Sasha, who came up to me this afternoon, nuzzled a bit and then peed all over my shoulder. This was the final straw. As far as I'm concerned, he's turned himself into an outdoor cat. 

in which our household cat population has increased by four

Currently residing in the office is one very skinny mama cat and three fluff ball kittens. Mama and two of the kittens are grey and the other is cream colored with light grey ears, tail and feet. (Or perhaps it's just dirty, I don't know.) One of the grey kittens is very adventurous and bold and the other one is not. They look identical to me so the only way I know which one is which is that the shy one will hiss. 

Right now, they are all romping around the office. Apparently, it's a great kitten playground. And my toes are a big hit. One or more of the kittens will wander by and nibble a bit and then walk on. 

in which I show off my new hat

Made by me for me

Pattern: Porom by Jared Flood

And now me being all faux-artsy by trying to take a self portrait. Mapplethorpe, I'm not.

in which I rave about technology

I am not really a gadget freak. In fact, I tend to be slightly suspicious of new and shiny things which supposedly make your life easier. I think I was the last person in the Pacific Northwest to actually get a cell phone and that was only after I had to pick Oscar up after his evening courses at Cornish and there was that one night of spectacular miscommunication and I wished he could just have called me to tell me where the hell he actually is instead of where I though he would be. 

So my personal cell phone causes embarrassment to just about everyone except me. It's a Nokia pay-as-you-go phone, but it works for me because no one ever calls me anyway (just about everyone contacts me via email). After we moved to Tacoma, we didn't even bother getting a landline in the house, because we never used the phone. Why pay $20 a month for a service you don't use? When I say never, I mean "never". 

I do have a Blackberry, but I got that through work (I didn't want it; I just wanted a cell phone.) Despite what Kat and Crash think, I am not addicted to it. I do find it useful because I can access my personal email on it, and there are some very fun games. I also like it because it allows me to surf the web while at work. Non-work internet use is verboten and tracked and I've already gotten into trouble for it. However, you have to be very, very dedicated to goofing off and surfing the web on my particular Blackberry because it's rather slow (Think dial-up speed) and so many sites don't render well for mobile phones (like my beloved Ravelry). 

But I did say I was going to rave about technology, didn't I? Well here's one piece of technology while I can certainly live without, I love very much and I will miss it when it's not available. 

The iPod. 

I had a first generation shuffle, which bit the dust about a year ago. Then Kat gave me a first generation Nano that she hadn't gotten rid of when she upgraded and lo, it was good. It was so good that I put it in a very secure place and couldn't find it for-freaking-ever so I ended up buying a refurbished Shuffle from apple. (Then I found the Nano stored in one of those pockets in my backpack that I never, ever use.)

They are both very useful and for different reasons. Right now, I generally listen to audiobooks and the shuffle has a weird (actually annoying) quirk of reverting to the beginning of the recording after charging. While it's mildly annoying if it's a book on CD with each CD broken into 26 "songs" (it reverts back to the beginning of the CD), it's maddening with a single audiofile from audible.com that's 8 hours long. The long audiofiles have bookmarks that the shuffle didn't recognize, and that's where the Nano is great, since it has a screen and I can scroll through the file and see where I am. 

I like that the shuffle is very small and can clip on to your shirt, belt, whatever. But it's tininess can also be a liability because it's very easy to misplace. The thing is the size of a US quarter coin, not very big! I've learned to clip it to my backpack when not using it. 

Love, love, love the iPod. 

Love it. It's a fundamental piece of my commuter care kit. Not only do I get to "read" and knit at the same time, it also drowns out the conversation of fellow commuters. Actually, train commuters tend to be a fairly quiet bunch, but there is often one person who is either having a very personal conversation at full volume on their cell phone or a group of colleagues griping about work. (Not that I blame them, I just don't want to hear it.) 

Oh, and a personal opinion about cell phone etiquette. If you would not have this certain conversation on the train if the other party were present, then don't sit on the train and have this conversation on the phone either. (To the woman who spent 30 minutes on the phone discussing the problems facing you and your daughter since you found out she was doing meth? I had real sympathy for you until you said "well, at least the meth has made her thin." Now I hate you.) 

in which I do find something to share

Artist Tara Donovan takes the ordinary and makes beauty.

Go see her a sample of her work

in which I check in

Not dead

Not injured

Life is just rather dull lately and I just don't have much to say. 

However, the day after tomorrow I am getting some foster cats from the Humane Society. A mama cat and two kittens. I've never had kittens around; it should be fun. :)

And I bought two cans of Spam today. Go ahead and mock me. I love Spam and I'm completely unapologetic about it. 

in which another cat video on the internet makes me laugh

Link to YouTube:

Ninja cat approaches without visibly moving

in which I do hard physical labor

Who knew that removing a shrub would be so freaking hard? There was a large shrub next to the front door that I didn't like so I've spent most of the summer hacking away at it. Just a bit at a time so that it didn't become too onerous. 

Well, it was hacked away and only the stump and root ball remained. Last week, Oscar and I drove out to Calendula Nursery and got a replacement plant (yellow twig dogwood-yes, I know they need to be pruned) and today I did my best to get that damn stump out of the ground. 

Shovel and spading fork did a good job up to a point, but I finally gave up and walked over to my neighbor (who happens to be a master gardener) and asked for her advice. She lent me a digging rod, which turned out to be a very heavy, 6 foot long steel pole to use as a lever. Still no success. I had to expose more roots. I excavated around the roots with a trowel and pretended I was some urban archeologist unearthing a fabulous find instead of a frustrated neophyte gardener nearly weeping with exhaustion. Sometimes the lies we tell ourselves do help us get through the day. 

I took a break and Oscar took up the digging rod and pushed and prodded for several minutes, working up quite the sweat because did I mention that the rod was really heavy? Finally, there was that satisfying loud thunk which signified that some major root had been broken and the stump actually started to move. A few more minutes of levering and some more excavation and the giant root ball broke free. Yay!

I don't know exactly how much that root ball weighed but I'm guessing at least 45 lbs. Probably more. I don't have any trouble lifting a large bag (40lbs) of dog food over my shoulder but I could barely lift this thing into the yard waste bin. 

Oscar says, Finally!

Kate wants to know if it's edible. 

in which I share some neighborhood gossip

I think my neighbor is involved in some extramarital activities. I do not care about that, but there's a part of me that is hoping that she'll end up leaving her husband and taking all those yappy dogs away.

in which I discover that physical fitness does have its benefits

I've been walking. A lot. It's been fairly easy since the weather is nice. I may have mentioned that I stopped going to Weight Watchers because I was losing my motivation and I wasn't really following the plan anyway. Why pay that much money for nothing. (And besides, it really bugs me that they weigh you to the 0.10 of a pound. That's 45 grams! I guess they do that because it can be inspiring to know that you are losing something but far more often people seemed to stress that they'd gained 0.2 pounds.) But even though I'm not really following the plan, my pants are definitely looser now. And that's what I really care about. I don't care what I weigh.

I've been trying to walk home from the train station. It does require some advance planning; Oscar has to give me a ride in the morning* and I have to make sure that my backpack isn't too heavy. (It's enough of a workout to lug my own 220 lb frame up these hills, much less adding another 30 lbs of library books.) This is not quite three miles, and there is a rather spectacular hill right near the beginning, but for the most part it's fairly flat and there are sidewalks. The downside to this is that I'm usually not interested in taking the dogs for a long walk when I get home. 

On other days, I've been taking long walks through my neighborhood with the dogs. They enjoy it. While sidewalks are rather randomly distributed in my section of the 'hood, east of M street all the streets have sidewalks so it's a much more pleasant walk. I've mapped out paths of various distances, and I'm glad to find out that I can do a five mile walk while staying fairly close to home. Today I did 3.5 miles and I have to admit that I was starting to feel pretty tired near the end. The dogs went straight to the water dish and then collapsed on the living room floor and immediately fell asleep. :)

*Oh yes, I could walk to the train station in the morning, and I did do that once. It's definitely easier since it is all downhill and I definitely felt more alert and awake. But this would mean that I have to leave the house an hour earlier than I normally do and I have a hard enough time waking up as it is. The only reason I'd be able to do it is if I had no other option. Like Oscar being out of town with the car.

in which I am inspired to poetry

For you, dear readers, a haiku

Little yappy dogs

Live next door and bark all night

I hope they die soon

in which I see my future

Your result for Reincarnation Placement Exam...

Reclusive Artist

We think we've found a place for you.

 

Your answers indicate that you're very fond of the fruits of civilization... for example, education and technology. But, in some twist of irony, you're not too fond of the pressures of civilization... you know, human beings and crowds and working together. We found you a place where you could enjoy an erudite existence, live a life that's intriguing and not entirely secure -- but far from the madding crowd.

 

Removed from civilization and humanity, yet educated and sophisticated, you'll make the perfect reclusive artist... An eccentric that produces irresistibly attractive masterpieces. Your art will make people swoon, and yet you will despise your audience. Your audience will probably dislike you as well, though they will go on admiring your work. So it all balances out, and your patrons will leave you alone to shape beauty in the wild, dangerous parts of the world where people won't pester you so much. Probably, you will write under a pseudonym, and mutter a lot when a rare admirer comes calling. If you feel really adventurous, you can pursue the role of a political dissident.

 

As you age, you will grow into the role of an incorrigible curmudgeon.

 

You artists, you're all the same.

Take Reincarnation Placement Exam at HelloQuizzy

in which I am saved a lot of wasted effort

You know how you look at clothes in a catalog, and they seem so lovely and flattering, so you buy the item, and then when you try it on, it just doesn't look all that good on you? Now, I've long since grown out of the hope that a particular shirt will make my size 18 frame and DD bust look waifishly thin, and have recently learned that baggy clothes on a fat frame not only do not make you look thinner, but in fact make you look fatter. (In fact, baggy shirts have a tendency to drape ONLY the bits that I want to hide, perversely emphasizing said attributes.)  And so, after nearly 20 plus years of wearing baggy clothes, I am finally taking baby steps toward more fitted clothing. (Hey, give me a break. I came of age in the 80s, when oversize was mandatory. No shoulder pads for me though. Ever.)

'tis not so different with knitting. Now that I feel confident enough to knit a sweater for myself, and have read enough knitting books and am armed with plenty of skills to customize a sweater to fit ME, I feel ready to tackle such a project.   Yes, I've been measured accurately. The numbers don't frighten me.   

A few years ago, I fell in love with the Nantucket Sweater.

Is it truly not gorgeous? All that wonderful texture, the panel shaping, the sheer interestingness of knitting it. I bought the yarn, and even cast on for it (flush with confidence because I'd recently completed a sweater for Gusano Medidor), but completely screwed it up about half way up the back piece, and so I frogged it in tearful fury and stuffed all the yarn back into the bag, where it has sat for the last year and a half.  

Like the pain of childbirth, the pain of Mis-Knits eventually fades to the point that you are willing to try again. Mothers-to-be have Parents Magazine and Dr Spock and knitters (and crocheters) have Ravelry. What is Ravelry? It's kind of like the best of the internet-based knitting/crochet community in one spot. (If you knit or crochet, and aren't yet on Ravelry, get thee now to the site and sign up. It's free. You'll thank me for it.) One of the many, many, MANY things I like about Ravelry is that you can search for a pattern, like the Nantucket Sweater, and see who else is also working on it, and learn from their experiences.   And what I've learned is that the Nantucket Sweater looks like absolute crap on any woman who is, shall we say, buxom. Really slim, really fat, or somewhere in between, the sweater doesn't look good on the well-endowed ladies. Why? Because there isn't any 3-D shaping in front for the bust. I know the theory for shaping for a bust, but I can't figure out how to do it in this sweater with all its intricate texture without destroying the intricate texture, which is what makes this sweater so beautiful in the first place.

So, no Nantucket Sweater for me. I've already put in several 10s of hours for a sweater that doesn't look very good on me. No need to repeat the experience.    

in which I show off my neighborhood

Here's a collection of photos I took today during the walk, just in case you are interested in seeing what my neighborhood looks like. (What you don't see is the comedy of me actually trying to take ANY photos while walking two dogs and constantly pulling up my yoga pants which kept falling down.)

In no particular order are some snaps of South End Tacoma:

A variation on the American Folk Custom of a pair of  shoes tossed over powerlines: headphones tossed over powerlines

A scarecrow! This woman has a fabulous garden and also keeps geese.

The VW bug graveyard. Right across the street from Geese Lady. A connection?

S 47th St. Not the most interesting place. At least their are sidewalks. That thing in the foreground is a portable basketball hoop. Notice the lack of people outside? I walk through my neighborhood almost every day and rarely see anyone. It's like a ghost town. 

Not the greatest picture, but this tree is loaded with apples. There were a lot on the ground, too, and the air smelt like applesauce. 

Just an old detached garage, charming in its dilapidated state.

Our neighborhood actually has alleyways! This one is actually useable, unlike the one behind our house.

I like this house. I love the big porch. 

Curbside garden. Very nice. The neighborhood has varying levels of infrastructure. All the streets are paved but curbs, gutters, and sidewalks are kind of randomly distributed. I guess this is more accurately called a "drainage ditch-side garden". Still nice. 

One happy dog, enjoying a good roll in the early autumn sunshine.

Sing along with me. "Our house. In the middle of our street."  Our house is the one on the far left. We do have sidewalk, curb, AND gutter!  (No, that brown car doesn't belong to us. That's our neighbor's, whose house doesn't appear in the photo.)

One block away. Sidewalk, no curb, no gutter. 

Two blocks away. Freshly resurfaced roadway. No sidewalk, curb, or gutter. 

This guy turned his backyard into an RV storage barn. 

I like how the city put in wheelchair access to a patch of grass and a steep staircase.

in which I wonder how that staff meeting went

You may have heard about the publicity stunt posed by Lush Cosmetics. Several of their female staff stood in Westlake Center in Seattle wearing nothing but aprons that said "Ask Me Why I'm Naked". The stunt was to promote the minimal packaging used by the shop. 

But really, how do you bring this up in a staff meeting. "Which of you minimum wage staff is willing to stand outside naked on a chilly Seattle day?" 

Of course I have link to pictures.

in which I meet a Servant for the Public Good

Friends, acquaintances, and colleagues all know that I am a dog slut. I have to stop and say hello to every dog I meet. I work in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle, and there are lots of residences that it's quite common to see people walking their dogs. 

The other day, there were two ordinary looking gentlemen sitting outside of a cafe with a sweet looking black lab and I asked if I could pet her. One of the guys said yes, and so began puppy adulation while the guys continued their conversation. Then one of the guys handing me what looked like a baseball trading card, but it turns out that it was the dog's business card.

A business card for a dog? 

Yes, because the super friendly lab turned out to be none other than Henny, the Seattle Fire Department's Arson dog (and the guy who handed me the card was her handler, Lt. Baer). She's trained to sniff out "accelerants", chemicals like gasoline that are used to start arson fires.   

It must have been a day off duty, because Henny wasn't wearing her jacket and Lt. Baer wasn't in uniform. (I may be a dog slut but I won't bother service dogs. )

Here's a photo of her from her website. 

in which I share a wonderful blueberry cobbler recipe

This recipe turned me into a blueberry cobbler fan. 

"Cobbler with Butter Cookie Dough Topping"

from The Best Recipe by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine

The filling:

3 pints fresh blueberries or 36 oz frozen

1 tbsp cornstarch

1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

juice of one lemon (or 2 tbsp)

The Topping

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

8 tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 large egg yolk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. adjust the oven rack to middle position and heat the oven to 400 degrees. Scrape fruit mixture into 9-inch deep pie plate and cover with aluminum foil. Place pie plate on rimmed baking sheet and bake until fruit begins to release liquid, about 15 minutes. 

2. Meanwhile, mix flour, baking powder, and salt in small bowl and set aside.

3. Beat butter and sugar in medium bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla until smooth. Stir in dry ingredients until just combined.

4. After 15 minutes, remove baking sheet with pie plate from oven, uncover the pie plate and stir fruit. Drop the cookie dough topping by heaping tablespoonfuls evenly over fruit.

5. Return pie plate on baking sheet to oven. Bake until topping is nicely browned and fruit is bubbly, about 40 minutes. Remove from oven and cool 10 minutes in pan before serving. (Cobbler can be kept at room temperature for several hours and reheated just before serving.)

in which I'm surprised that's comfortable

Eddie's favorite spot to nap...in the windowsill between the window sash and screen. I wouldn't think it would be very comfortable but he's so lanky that perhaps he fits between the sash runners?

in which I finally finish my big project

Not complex, but big. And it takes a special kind of person to start an afghan during record breaking heat. 

But here it is, the TV Test Pattern Blanket:

So when it cools down, I'll be covered. Literally. 

in which I discover a most curious phrase

The book I'm currently reading is titled Weeds in the Garden of Words: Further observations on the tangled history of the English language.

On the back cover, with all the laudatory bits normally found on book covers is this curious bit of praise:
"A delight to read. Only Pinker can write this engagingly about language."--Professor Charles E. Meyer, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

That is nice praise. However, if I were the author, I think I'd be crushed by Professor Meyer's adulation because if I were the author, my name would be Kate Burridge, and not Pinker.

in which we take a road trip to visit the Seattle Arboretum and sit in traffic for 90 minutes

What the hell was going on in the Emerald City today? It is Sunday, for Christ's sake (literally), and traffic through Seattle was as bad as it was during rush hour on weekdays. Seriously. It took use just as long to drive the three miles from exit 164 to 167 (downtown Seattle) as it did to drive the 31 miles from exit 133 (Tacoma) to exit 164. 

We ventured north to visit the Japanese Garden in the Arboretum. Unlike most other gardens within the Seattle Park system, this one does charge admission but it is quite lovely. I'd brought my camera to take lots of pictures to share but forgot to recharge the batteries. There was just enough juice in the batteries for the camera to give me a message to recharge the batteries before dying. For the curious, there are some pics on the garden's website. 

My newest obsession is Japanese gardens, so I'm trying to learn as much about them as I can. I have this great plan to landscape the front yard in the Japanese style using as many native plants as possible. (So the next visit is to the Kubota Garden, which was a private garden in Seattle done in the Japanese style but using native plants. I figure if it's a native plant, I have less chance of killing it. My brother teases me that I have a gangrene thumb, and he's not too far off the mark.)

Of course, the type of garden we visited today is not the kind of garden we could install at our house but it was very lovely and the koi were more than happy to splash around, showing off their lovely colors in exchange for koi food. (These koi are well trained to respond to people. All you have to do is stand on the bridge, and even if you don't toss anything in the water,  the koi will still approach from all areas of the pond.) I don't know how large koi can get but there were a few that were about two feet long. One of the bigger ones was completely gold, except for a round dark blue dot on the back of his head. There were many that were patterned in variation of white/gold/orange but also several that were dark blue/orange/white. And one that was just a most mundane mud grey but it was the largest koi I have ever seen. 

Unfortunately, the teahouse was closed so we couldn't visit that. It's separated from the rest of the garden by a living fence of some sort of shrub pruned so that it's just a few inches wide. It actually made a great fence, but I don't know how much of that was due to the characteristics of the shrub and how much to pruning. That is, I am pretty sure that the "faces" of the fence were trimmed but I don't know how much of the interior branches were pruned to keep it from being a solid mass of vegetation. Anyway, I didn't want to get tea so much as examine the garden surrounding the teahouse, because that's about the scale that our front yard would be.     

Still lots to learn, and next time I'll make sure that the camera has working batteries. 

in which I see two films in two days

Batman--the Dark Knight is well worth the full price admission. It's not a perfect film, but aside from a slightly clunky narrative bridge in the middle of the film, it's really quite well crafted with solid performances all around. 

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull--we saw this at the discount theater tonight. It was such a stupid, mind-numbing boring waste of time and I want my money back. Cate Blanchette made a good villianess but even she couldn't save this film from tedium.

in which denial ain't just a river in Egypt

by Natalie Dee

in which I want the world to know I am merciful

I noticed Eddie the cat playing with something in the yard this morning. I wandered over to see what was going on and discovered he was toying with a baby rat. 

Moral dilemma. I fracking hate rats. Seriously. Nothing will reduce me to a quivering blob of hysteria faster than an uninvited house guest named Rattus rattus. But I really hate it when cats "play" with their prey. I know, I know, this is not abnormal cat behavior but it still bugs me. 

Oscar and I shooed Eddie away from the mini-rat and I asked Oscar to put it out of its misery (because I assumed it was injured and because being within two feet of said rodents gives me the heebie-jeebies), but Oscar was vacillating so I shot him a nasty look, walked over to the side yard to get a cinder block, walked back, and actually told him that apparently I was the only one that actually had any balls and prepared to drop the cinder block on mini-rat. Oscar stopped me and said I'd have better chance of success if the rat was on a solid surface instead of on the lawn. He had a good point (the whole point was to kill it quickly and end its suffering, not to botch the job and make it worse). 

I put the cinder block on the lawn and Oscar picked up the mini-rat (its body wasn't even an inch long) and positioned on the surface, and I hefted another cinder block to decrease the world's rat population by one...and then we realized the rat wasn't actually injured. 

As much as I hate rats, really really really hate them, I couldn't kill it just because I hate the species.  So I let it go. 

Fracking rat bastard.

in which my pursuit of physical fitness is starting to get hard

100 pushups. Week 3, day 1, column 3 (don't be impressed. Remember, I'm doing wall pushups.)

For the first time, I wasn't sure if I could actually physically do the work out. I barely made it (and that was with gritted teeth), even with extended rest sessions between reps. And, boy, do I feel it. 

However, it might just be wishful thinking, but...my triceps do feel firmer. And I know I've made progress. I think I've done more pushups in the past two weeks than I have in my entire life up until this point.