kmkat and her kneedles

Random Wednesday.

* The spring peepers woke up today. Smokey said he listened for them yesterday, and they weren't peeping.  But tonight, as we drove to the barbecue place in the next town north, we heard them. And stopped to roll down our windows and listen. Such a glorious sound. Ahhhhh. It was nice of them to wait to come out of hibernation until I truly had a day off.

* Monday was my last day at work. I left at 5:05, stopped at Best Buy to compare cameras, and headed for the Great North. Home by 9pm, in bed by 10. Ahhhhh. Life is good.

* Tuesday was the all-day organizational meeting of the new county board, of which I am 1/23rd. Good meeting, got acquainted with some of the supervisors whom I didn't know, and got myself elected to the finance committee, which was what I wanted. I won't be writing much, if at all, about the board here. It is not appropriate. But I'm thinking I might start a second blog for that topic; time will tell.

* I did knit during the meeting, although not all the time. The project of choice was a sock, but, less than optimally, I was at the turning of the heel. It is a short-row heel, which I have never managed to pull off correctly before, so why I thought I could do it while in a meeting that demanded some attention is a mystery for the universe. I knit half the heel, frogged it, knit it halfway again, frogged it, tried one more time. It wasn't too bad that time so I kept going. After finishing it and knitting a few more rows I inspected it at the end of the meeting and decided that I shall frog it one last time and reknit it, this time when there are absolutely no distractions. And it shall be perfecto. It is a gift for another, after all.

* Wednesday, my first real day off: got up at 8:30, made coffee, caught up (sort of) on e-mail and online stuff, then got sleepy again. Back to bed for a... six-hour nap! I hope to cut back on the nap time a little tomorrow.

* I just flipped a hornet off my hand. Where did he come from? No idea, but he ain't gonna live to see the sunrise.

* My house is a total disaster. Every horizontal surface, including most of the floors, is covered with stuff, and there is a suspicious odor of dog and/or cat *accident*. Must attack all of that, one area at a time.

* The Mason-Dixon dog blanket (scroll down for a photo) is suddenly three-quarters done. How did that happen? I never knit on it for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and not very often at that. Oh, yeah, now I remember: we knitters are taking over the world, one stitch at a time.

Election day: the day after.

Well, it's official. Here are the election results from the county website:

 

That's me in the upper right corner. I'm happy it's official but very sad that my friend and mentor, Jeff, (next one to the left) was defeated. I just found out yesterday about the write-in campaign against him, which was launched/registered last Friday. Damn. But there is always 2010.

It was a beautiful day for a drive north to my little village to vote. All that snow yesterday was slowly melting under the bright sun. I voted, then went out to lunch (the best pulled pork sandwich I may ever have eaten) with Smokey befor e heading back to the office.

Here's what it's like in a rural election. The election judges:

 

I was offered coffee and cookies after voting.

I spotted knitting the wild...

 

being done by another election judge:

 

This is Mary, whom I know through a now-defunct book group. She is knitting Packer and Vikings mittens to sell at the Relay for Life in June. Tragically, she is knitting these mittens from acrylic. They may be cute and washable and Packer-y/Viking-y but they ain't gonna be very warm.

(I am pretty sure that is not a hand-knit sweater she is wearing. Although the more I look at the photo the more admiring I am of it; it looks very warm and cozy and pretty, all at the same time.)

I also found out yesterday that the all-day organizational meeting for the new Board is... April 15. Sheesh, I'm going to have to miss all the fire drills and hijinks that happen here in the office that day. Probably miss the party, too. Oh, well, such is the burden of power ;-)

Election day.

Remember this photo?

Those were my papers registering to run for a seat on the 23-member Board of Supervisors in Polk County, Wisconsin. Today is election day for all local non-partisan (hah!) local offices in Wisconsin. I am taking a half day off work to go vote for myself. So that I will have at least one vote in my column.

Smokey has made himself a Minnesota resident so that our Minneapolis house can be legitimately homesteaded and we save a few bucks on the property taxes. Andrew is in the jungles of Chiapas and can't even file an absentee ballot because he is out of range of the postal service. Matthew is living and working in Minneapolis and has declared his intent to be a Minnesota resident. Good for them; Smokey and Matthew can vote for Al Franken for Senate in November. My only regret about not living in Minnesota any more is that I can't vote for Al.

But I have this horrible dread, rooted in a junior-high fear of rejection and isolation and embarrassment, that the election results will come out and no one will have voted for me. Even though I know at least ten people who will because they are personal friends. So I am driving 150 miles round trip and taking a half day away from the Form 1040s just to assuage my fears. It is not necessary to be fully grown up and rational to hold public office. Just look at our elected representatives in Washington.

Ahem.

I am unopposed for this seat, as far as I know. It is possible someone has registered as a write-in candidate in the week and a half since I last spoke with the county clerk. However, I am operating on the assumption that, come Wednesday, I will be the supervisor-elect from District 6 of Polk County.

Since there was no compelling need to campaign, I didn't. The reason I decided to run was because no one else had registered to run when there were only two weeks left until the January 2 deadline. A couple people already on the Board and whom I respect had been nagging urging me for several years to run, and this was clearly the time. But I did think that, since I am a relative newcomer to the area, I should introduce myself to the voters. It seemed disrespectful not to. (When I voiced this reasoning to the county clerk, she was speechless. She finally said, "It's been a long, long time since I have heard that kind of thing expressed here." Can you see why I felt that I should run?*)

So.

I wrote a flyer, stuck in a couple pictures of myself, and  printed them out (after a few glitches), and distributed them with address stickers to a few friends who had volunteered to help.

Thank FSM for good friends. Where would we be without them?

My pal Colleen, the county librarian, and her friend Alan helped me fold and address and stamp several hundred. Here is Alan, hard at work. Colleen was busy at the copier so she missed the photo op.

The big question in my mind, though, is not whether  the county should build that new highway department equipment facility or how we can provide needed services without taxing people out of their homes or how we can deal with the fact that, although we are officially a rural county, we must compete with the Twin Cities for talent in terms of salaries and benefits. No, the real question in my mind, is this: can I knit during the Board meetings?

Random Wednesday.

It's the first week of February, ergo, I am wearing my CPA green eyeshade once again. The people I work with tell me that it is a mixed blessing to see me again every year. They very kindly say it is good to have me back, but it also makes it officially Busy Season. Ouch.

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Andrew's laptop. Tell us what you really think, Andrew.

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Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

Not quite as well-educated as I thunk:

Your English Skills:

Vocabulary: 100% Grammar: 80% Punctuation: 80% Spelling: 60%

Thanks to Cursing Mama for the link. And thank FSM for spell-check.

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The dog blanket that Amy asked me to knit for the Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary has been my mindless knitting since I finished the preemie caps. An unexpected benefit of the Mason-Dixon ballband dishcloth pattern as interpreted in double-stranded acrylic is that the resulting objet d'knit is thick and squishy, just like a cushion. Perfect for a pooch's nap.

When finished it will be ~30" square; it's about half done now. Smokey has remarked that our dogs each need a blanket like that. To paraphrase EZ the Great, another opportunity to do more of our favorite hobby.

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