kmkat and her kneedles

News from the family

Younger Son (Matthew).

He forwarded this to me with the comment, "I was just thinking you could rally some of your fellow knit/blog moms to try and make it a little tastier/safer."

Dear Friend;
 
Did you know that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is formulated differently for countries in Europe than for the U.S.?
 
Crazy, but true! The fact is, that in 2008, Kraft removed artificial colorings, like yellow #5, and chemical sweeteners, like aspartame, from the products that they distribute in Europe, Australia, and other developed countries due to consumer concern over scientific studies that link these synthetic ingredients to hyperactivity and asthma in children. But, they haven’t done the same thing here in the U.S., our voices are needed to make that change here too!
 
Please join me in writing to the Kraft CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, a mother of two herself, requesting that Kraft remove these same ingredients from their products here in the U.S. 
 
http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27297
 
Kraft took these chemicals and additives out of their European products. If we want Kraft to do this for us in the U.S., then Kraft needs to hear from us!  Their products are in the vast majority of American households. Together, we can affect remarkable change and have these ingredients removed from the products that Kraft distributes here in the U.S

Thanks,

Along with this:

Dear Charlie Super [not her real name],

Thank you so much for sending a letter to Kraft.  As I'm sure you know, the more letters Kraft receives, the more impact we'll have, so take a moment to spread the word. Just forward the email below to your friends, family or co-workers.  Together, we can move mountains and have these terrible ingredients removed from the products that Kraft distributes here in the U.S.

Thanks for all that you do,

Kite [not her real name either]

So in answer to the question, Do I use my power for good or awesome? I choose good. Write to Irene Rosefeld @ Kraft if you are so moved. 

Smokey Bear.

When he picked me up from the hospital yesterday, this self-described lazy, good-for-nuttin' bear had just worked 4 out of the past 5 shifts. Hospital is a bit short-staffed this summer in the mental health units -- nurses on vacation, others taking their own mental health day(s), a slight surge in admits -- so the opportunity for picking  up double shifts is there, and he is taking advantage. I don't remember the exact figures, but when we counted up his shifts in August he is working something like 365 shifts in 31 days. Heh. That's good for the old bank balance...

Elder Son (Andrew).

I don't remember if I blogged about this, but Andrew failed anatomy last fall in his first semester in med school. There were multiple causes -- it was a pure memorization course with zero logical thinking required (not his kind of thing); the US and world were going through the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, and my summa cum laude econ graduate couldn't resist following the news closely; there was a presidential campaign and election going on, and my intensely political son, ditto; and he didn't particularly like the professor. These are not excuses -- he knows now that he should have allocated his time differently. Live and learn, kid...

When he failed the mid-term exam he called home in utter shock and despair. This was the first thing he had EVER failed. Mom and Dad didn't give him a lot of sympathy. If I recall, my comment was, Remember all the times you have told us about not studying for a test and somehow pulling it out of your as and getting an A because you knew just enough and could bullshit your way through the rest? Eventually that tactic will bite you. And it did.

He studied his ass off the second half of the semester, conferred regularly with the professor, did everything he could to ensure that he passed the course. But it didn't quite work, he failed by 1 point.

The remedy was that he would have to take anatomy again and pass it; the first available opportunity was to take it in summer school with a bunch of undergrads at NYU, his old alma mater. He borrowed some more tuition and rent money from whatever source his med school funding is coming from and prepared for a less-than-exciting summer. 

In May he learned that there was another alternative: a nationally administered test given twice during the summer, that, if he passed it with at least a 70%, would satisfy the professor that he had learned anatomy well enough to proceed in med school. He signed up to take it the first time it would be given, late June, I think. As soon as second semester finals were over he began to study in earnest.

Taking the test in June meant that he had freed up the rest of his summer, so he arranged a trip to Senegal; he would replace another student who, due to family health problems, would not be able to go and perform a public health research project. Andrew has been particularly interested in the health situation in Senegal for several years; he and another med student have been trying for a year to create a (501(c)(3) (non-profit) group to work there and to raise funds for their efforts.

But once again, the best-laid plans, etc. He emailed in mid-June that he didn't feel he was ready for the test and so was rescheduling it for August and canceling his Senegal trip. He was being ultra-responsible but was extremely (and understandably) bummed at how things were going.

Well, to make a long story short -- oops, way too late for that! -- he passed the test and is now walking as though he had dislodged a 16-ton weight from his shoulders. Which he has. Congrats, kiddo!

* * * * *

My knee and ankle surgery went just fine. Very little post-op pain, probably due in large part to the constant cold packs on the affected areas and the steady level of Vicodin in my blood stream. I can walk fine if I need to but have orders to keep the leg elevated for 72 hours.

Here is the *foreign body* that the surgeon removed from my knee. It is a piece of cartilage that looks and feels like a baby tooth:

The hardware the other surgeon removed from my ankle:

I am sure those two longer screws at lower left are from somebody else's bone. There were only seven short screws in mine -- I counted them on the X-ray, plus there are exactly seven holes in the plate. The surgical nurse came into the post-recovery room once to take back something that had been originally put into my show-and-tell package; I think she screwed up, pun intended. (But I have complete faith in the surgeon, so I won't hold the nurse's little error against them.)

Thanks for all your good wishes here and on Facebook and Twitter -- y'all are great!

Bits and pieces.

And the Black Hole award for excess packaging goes to...

 

GNC!

I took your advice and searched out arnica gel to use on any future bruises. Too soon for any verdict on the gel, but it was easy to give this award.

Did they really need a 6"x6"x8" box for a plastic tube barely 5" long and 1" in diameter? ::le sigh::

* * * * *

Today is Tuesday (yeah, I wrote this yesterday), and it has been...

::counting furiously on fingers and toes::

five (5!) weeks since I last fell down!

Sort of like AA's medallions for x weeks/months/years of sobriety, I intend to award myself something similar for every week I manage NOT to injure myself by falling.

The perspicacious among you may notice that "NOT injuring my self by falling" is not exactly the same as not falling down. Last night I was walking around the van to the driver's side after putting my tote bags and purse into the passenger side. It was dark and I was tired -- perfect conditions for a mishap -- and I ran into the trailer hitch on the van; it sticks out about a foot beyond the rear bumper. I got a little bruise on my leg (arnica gel used, but no verdict yet), but more importantly, I did NOT injure myself by falling onto the pavement. I attribute this 100% to my newly-acquired habit of walking more slowly. I did sort-of fall, but caught myself on my hands; if I had been walking at my usual speed I would have landed -- on my bad knee! -- before I could react.

Now, to decide what my reward should be...

* * * * *

A couple more images from the Thorogood/Lang concert.

 

Why in the world would anyone pay $30 -- let along $45 -- to go see this turkey? I can be annoyed by him for free any time I want.

Besides the Harley Davidson apparel that was so evident among the audience members, there was, of course, a fair bit of brand-new Thorogood apparel.

 

The very best Thorogood-inspired t-shirts, though, and ones that I tragically failed to get a photo of, were worn by three guys who hung out near the video cameras. Each had on a light green t-shirt; the back of the first said, "1 BOURBON," the second, "1 SCOTCH", and the third, "AND 1 BEER". When they were shown on the big screens the crowd cheered.

But not everyone in the crowd was an aging boozer/low life.

And lest we ever forget that I live in the great Scandinavian north:

* * * * *

A sign at the Bristol zoo snack bar that cracked me up when I saw it at boingboing.net:

From my email: rice paddy art.

"Stunning crop art has sprung up across Japan. But this is no alien creation - the designs have been cleverly planted. Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.

"As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants, the colours created by using different varieties.

"The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Toyko, where the tradition began in 1993. The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry, and this year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall.

"More than 150,000 visitors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals. Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields.

Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the skies, created by precision planting and months of planning between villagers and farmers in Inkadate.

Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife Osen appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa, Japan.

"And over the past few years, other villages have joined in with the plant designs. Another famous rice paddy art venue is in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture. This year's design shows the fictional 16th-century samurai warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives feature in television series Tenchijin.

"Various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan this year, including designs of deer dancers.

Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers.

"The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September. The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields. From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work. Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew out of meetings of the village committee.

Closer to the image, the careful placement of thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.

The different varieties of rice plant grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces.

"In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention. In 2005 agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art. A year later, organisers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to life."

This is a local industry that enhances the communities' tourism revenue with virtually no negative environmental impact. Looked at in that light, it is brilliant! Too bad rice cannot grow in northern Wisconsin...

The other half of the concert.

As we all know, the featured performer is only half the fun of going to a concert. Particularly if one spends most of her time in seclusion with her knitting and her cats, venturing out only to small-town venues where she already knows everyone, an excursion to a place where there are crowds! of various (and variant) peoples! is an entertainment in itself.

I took more pictures of the crowd than I did of the performers on stage.

We fit into this crowd quite well. There was plenty of gray hair.

   

 

Before we left home we discussed whether to bring along Smokey's walker. It was still disassembled from the Wyoming vacation, so would have fit into the car easily. His arthritis makes it difficult for him to walk any distance, and since we had never been to the Grand Casino amphitheater we didn't know how far we might have to walk. We ended up leaving it at home, and since we got to park in the handicapped parking area, we didn't have to walk far.

But once again, we would have fit right in.

I coveted some of the wheelchairs we saw -- any one of them would have been a big step up from the one I used last year.

The Harley Davidson look was extremely popular. Just one example:

 

complete with well-earned wrinkles.

Once upon a time we were all young and svelte and lithe. Nowadays, not so much.

 

That could just as easily be a picture of my own sit-upon except that it was too difficult to take a picture of myself.

So if you are ever wondering if the median age of the population may be increasing, rest assured that it is. But also know that just because we are aging, we ain't dead yet.

And we can still party like it's 1999... as long as we can spend the rest of the weekend recovering.

Bad to the bone.

I'm sure you all guessed which of those guilty pleasures I mentioned yesterday was the one we indulged last night. We saw the show here:

The amphitheater is an outdoor venue.

 

An outdoor event is a risky venture pretty much anywhere in the US except maybe the desert. Rain, snow, wind, excessive chill or heat -- all are possible, perhaps even in the same day. But as you can tell from the above photo, we had ideal weather last night. The sky was perfectly clear, there was no wind, the temp was about 70℉ at the time of the photo, dropping to the high 50s by 11:30 when it was all over. Luckily Smokey had reminded me that the concert was going to be outdoors so I was prepared with heavy socks, fingerless gloves, a wool scarf, warm sweats to pull on over my jeans and t-shirt, and my Calorimetry. (Turned out I didn't need the scarf or Cal and only needed the gloves for a short period -- as soon as I started clapping again my hands got warm.) We even brought a down comforter stuffed into a tote bag just in case; never took it out.

You cold-weather-phobes are shaking your heads right now, while many of the Upper Midwesterners are nodding in agreement with my assessment of the weather. So be it. Let's agree to disagree and move on, 'kay?

Jonny Lang (first link has audio of Bump in the Road that starts automatically when the page loads; turn down your sound if you are at work and crank it up if you are at home) was the warm-up act, although any number of people at the concert were there specifically to see him; George Thorogood was "...just the icing on the cake", to quote the guy who was sitting next to us. 

[digression] When that guy slid onto the bench next to me, he said looked over and said, "Well, hey, Smokey! Small world, man!" Turns out he a CD counselor on one of the chemical dependency units at the hospital where Smokey works. They have worked together many times, and Smokey likes him a lot. Rick is a good man: good with the kids, good to work with. It was a treat to meet him and his wife. [/digression]

Jonny Lang is an awesomely talented blues musician, a semi-local boy from Fargo, ND, who already sounded like a 40-year-old blues singer when he hit the charts at age 14. I saw him once at a Twin Cities Best Buy store in the mid-90s. Didn't know who he was at that time. I just saw this pimply-faced teenager who looked like he should be bagging groceries at Super Valu sitting behind a table autographing CDs for a long line of people. Had to ask who he was. Duh.

Anyway.

 

Like all good [blues] musicians, he really gets into a song.

Having trouble seeing it?

 

How about now?

 

This is actually a very mild grimace. That young man really, really feels his music.

Disclaimer: I don't mean to sound snarky, even though I do. He is awesome and I love him and his music. It is just that displays of emotion are disquieting to say the least to us Scandinavians.  Hence, my comments.

It is always a plus when, in addition to being talented and entertaining, the performer seems to be a decent human being. Jonny Lang gave us that plus.

On to the headliner, George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers. (Note: once again, the first link automatically cues up and starts an audio; turn down your speakers if you are at work and crank 'em up if you are at home.)

It was dark by the time George came on, and I wasn't able to get good still photos of him. (The two photos in the Wikipedia article could have been taken last night, though -- he wore that same black t-shirt and pants and coordinating headband and played that same white guitar.) Here is the only video I took that turned out to be in focus. The sound sucks, but that is because it was LOUD! and overwhelmed the microphone in my little camera. Rest assured, it sound way better in person.

Notice how bored the bass player looks. That was actually the most animated performance he put on all night. I guess when you have an exhibitionist in the front, you don't need to put on a show in the background.

As good a show as GT & D put on, I cannot say that he came across as a decent human being. An extrovert and a flamboyant rocker, but not necessarily someone you would want to have coffee with or have as a neighbor. (Gee, ya think, Kath?) Happily, that quality of decency is not required of a performer, only that they entertain us, which he most certainly did. At one point, right after he had made some overtly sexual remarks apparently directed at a woman in the audience, he laughed and said, "I'm so full of shit I don't even believe it myself."

I find it amusing that Smokey and I -- about as far from party animals and drinkers as two people can be -- enjoy this performer and his music so much. Thorogood and the Destroyers are the ultimate down-and-dirty bar band. Another comment I heard: "I don't even like to drink that much, but when I hear these guys I just want to go get hammered."

And that is the perfect compliment to their style of music. Total fun and a rollicking good time; just don't take it too much to heart.

Guilty pleasures.

Bottle of scotch stashed in the laundry hamper.

Chocolate chip cookie consumed in a bathroom stall.

Qiviut yarn smuggled home with the groceries.

An inordinate fondness for George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

Guess which one we are going to indulge tonight?

Customer service. Or not.

I recently bought something on Amazon, which order was filled by another vendor. That second vendor screwed up part of the order, requiring some more email correspondence on my part.  The error was fixed, but I left negative feedback on the transaction at Amazon. My feedback was honest: the original transaction went perfectly, but when I tried to redeem a $20 coupon the vendor sent me the transaction was error-prone, and I was charged the $20 instead of it being credited.

Today I got this email:

Dear Kathryn,

Thank you for providing an opportunity to be of assistance.

This is with regard to your order number [123456789].

We express our profound apology for the complexity you have experienced during the purchase process from our online store. We are sorry; it was purely unintended.

We would like to inform that the $20.00 gift coupon issue was resolved on the order number [123456789].  We have applied the gift coupon and provided the refund to your credit card on 6/26/08. 

We request you to remove the negative feedback posted on Amazon and we will be more than happy to refund on the shipping charge ($6.95) on the order number [123456789].

Please feel free to contact us for further assistance.

Sincerely,
xxxxx

.

to which I replied:

Thanks, but no thanks. My honest feedback is worth more than $6.95. Your company had the opportunity to do this right the first time and largely blew it. Your time would be better spent training the customer service people in India with whom I dealt. If my experience is an isolated instance, your overall feedback rating will still be fine; if it is more common, future customers deserve the warning.

.

What say y'all? Did I do right, or should I have accepted their apology and removed my negative feedback? I will stand by my action, but I'd like to hear some more opinions.

Here is a little more information. After I sent my reply I checked the vendor's ratings on Amazon.

Their feedback ratings are definitely improving. Is it because they are doing a better job or because they are buying the approval of dissatisfied customers?

Why can't we all just get along?

...as well as these guys do.

Clapotis.

Found somewhere on the internet:

"Now many knitters will know the word clapotis as the name of a popular scarf/stole pattern, published at Knitty.com (I've knit one and am getting ready to cast on for my second). Designer Kate Gilbert cites French women and their penchant for wearing scarves nearly year-round as the inspiration for the pattern. She doesn't say how she came up with the name. I assumed it was French and to be honest I worried much more about how to pronounce it (so as not to sound like an idiot when in the company of other knitters) than about what it actually meant.

"Today my friend Melinda mentioned that she was familiar with the term clapotis from her time kayaking. To quote her, 'It is that chop of irregular water that you get when waves are coming in and mixing with waves that are created from water bouncing back after hitting a rock cliff. It makes for unpredictable and bouncy paddling.' Her comments so intrigued me (while simultaneously making me feel the slightest bit guilty about not being more curious about the genesis of the pattern name).

"I did a bit of digging on the internet and found out that clapotis means 'lapping of water' or 'standing waves' in French and that a French physicist named Joseph Valentin Boussinesq coined the term in 1877. The American Meteorological Society glossary, points out in part of its definition of clapotis that 'a standing wave is a periodic vertical motion of the sea surface that does not propagate horizontally. It can be thought of as being created by the superposition of two identical waves propagating in opposite directions' (AMS Glossary).

"The diagonal patterns created in the clapotis, through dropped stitches and patterning yarn, do seem like waves coming from opposite directions. Now I know where the pattern name came from."

The first image, above, of the clapotis we are all familiar with, is from my friend Heather's blog. Used with absolutely no advance permission at all, but let's just all agree it is beautiful and deserves to be displayed everywhere. I checked with her and she said it was okay to use her photo. Isn't it lovely? Don't you just want to run out and buy some Noro Silk Garden and cast on for one just like it?

The second image, also used with no permission at all, is from here. It was taken by Mark Pecot and is of Marius Asipauskas; the location is the Lake Erie coastline, Lakewood, Ohio. Many thanks to Mark for letting me use his amazing photo. (Unlike Heather's photo, his does not make me want to run out and buy a kayak and try this. I have used up eight of my nine lives in the past year; I need to make the one I have left last as long as possible. Hazardous hobbies are right out. I'll stick to my knitting...)

Let the whining begin.

When we got home after our two vacations I had my knitting future planned.

First, I would frog the Summer Chevron up past my ill-thought mods and reknit it. With a little luck I would be able to wear it before the weather turned chilly. Once that was done, I would pick up the kimono sweater again and knit the sleeves. When the sleeves are done, the sweater will be done and ready to wear, since I already joined the fronts to the back and picked up and knit the the front and neck band. And wove in all the ends. When those two sweaters were done I would start a Clapotis using the three skeins of midnight Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud, either for myself or to have a gift in reserve. The Clap would be my carry-along knitting, and I would start swatching for a sweater that has been swimming around in my head for three years.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans, right? Well, mine gang aft a-gley, too.

Summer Chevron was going fine. I was powering through all that stockinette on US#4 needles when I decided maybe I should throw it on the mannequin to see how it was going to fit.

 

Ignoring the whacked-out hemline -- which I plan to fix with some severe blocking -- it looks pretty good, doesn't it?

How about now?

 

Yeah, it's a little big.

Summer Chevron went into time out. That means I can move on to the kimono sweater, right?

Wrong.

Somehow I managed to commit myself to a smallish stealth project; another chemo cap, this one for my sister-in-law in Houston, who has a new cancer caused by the radiation treatments a few years ago for her (successfully eradicated) breast cancer; a second chemo cap for Smokey's co-worker; and some felted wine sacks to sell in a fund raiser. All nice, fun little projects and ones that I am pleased and excited to do, but all with deadlines by mid-September. Oh, and I have some Noro Silk Garden to knit a Red Scarf, too; that one at least has a later deadline.

How did this happen? Dunno. I just looked at my yarn and whammo! deadlines!

Here is a glimpse of part of the stealth project.

 

The pattern stitch was a PITA for the first couple inches, but I have it down now. Happily, mistakes don't show much :-) This is a slip-stitch pattern from Barbara Walker #1. Two-color check, maybe? The book is back on the shelf now so I can't look it up easily. I hope to finish this by Monday, then on a wine sack. And the chemo caps.

And someday, maybe, a sweater for myself...

Linkety-linkety.

Periodic table sweater.

# # #

Supermodels go natural.

# # #

"Ever find yourself sitting down at the computer just for a second to find out what other movie you saw that actress in, only to look up and realize the search has led to an hour of Googling? ...It is our unquenchable drive to discover, to explore. And it is hard-wired into us."

# # #

A wedding dress made of wool.

Friday confessions.

Remember those eagles I wowed you all with? My friend Jeff informs me -- and I trust his judgement 100% on this -- that they are not eagles, but rather...

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(wait for it).

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...turkey vultures.*

Crap. But thanks anyway, Jeff. I prefer to be educated and disillusioned rather than happy but stupid.

* * * * *

And now for the moment you have all been waiting, for: the contest results!

The winner is...

Dani B for her story about her grandmother:

True story: My grandmother can't quite manage on her own any more, so she lives with my aunt's family. No driver's license and a new neighbourhood have meant a big upheaval, so to help keep her social life active all of the grandchildren take turns driving her to church euchre nights or the local senior's centre or to visit girlfriends. She always protests that she doesn't want to be any trouble, we say that it isn't (because truly, it isn't), and she puts on her earrings and goes.

Last week we had this conversation in the car on the way to euchre: "Let's skip this and just go for a drink. Or I'll take you for ice cream. You don't want to play cards, do you?"

"I'm lactose intolerent Nanny, and I do like euchre. You taught me, remember?"

"Oh, piss on it, I don't want to go! I hate going to cards because all the people there are so OLD. All they talk about is their joints and their teeth and their feet and they never tell new stories!"

"Nanny, last time I checked, you were 87. How old ARE these people exactly?"

"What does my age have to do with how OLD I am?!" *scandalized stare*

Confession: It was the "Piss on it!" that did it for me.

RANDOM.ORG tells me that #3 in my list -- Lene! -- is the random winner. Yay, Lene!

Congrats to Lene and Dani. I have emailed both of you, so check your spam folders just in case an email with the subject line "You are a winner!" got tossed in there. Yeah, like that could happen.

Thanks to everyone for their good wishes and for all the giggles I got from reading your comments. A special thanks to lisa, who gave me the perfect answer to any and all stupid remarks I may ever hear: "Yes, isn't it FABULOUS!"

As in, "My, your hair is getting gray." "Yes, isn't it FABULOUS!"

"Have you put on some weight?" "Yes, isn't it FABULOUS!"

I plan to use that at every opportunity.

ETA: Smokey reminded me of what his grandfather said on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. "Ninety isn't old. Why, it isn't even 100!" I wish I could have known the man, but he died the year before we met. By all accounts he was quite a character.

* I would have put a picture of a turkey vulture here but TypePad is being pissy uncooperative and not offering the click-able icons for easy insertion of pictures (or fonts, or indents, or any of those fun things). Just so you know, I did any and all formating in this post by editing the HTML myself. ::self-administered pat on back::

...and also on the way home.

I forgot that I took some other photos to post today, so you get a two-fer Thursday. Please curb your enthusiasm.

As I drove down the long hill into the river valley I caught a glimpse through the trees of several large canoes clustered in the center of the river. But, as was true with the earlier view of the eagle flock, it was impossible to get a picture. In my efforts to find a place from whence I could see the canoes, I saw something else.

First, let's set the scene. Here is a nice, traditional shot of the St. Croix river gorge at Taylor's Falls.

 

I had parked my car (illegally) in the lot reserved for people who were going on the riverboat cruise.

 

However, I was only parked there for less than ten minutes, and there were still plenty of spaces left. So I didn't feel too bad.

I could not see the canoes from my vantage point; they were downstream and around a bend and probably getting farther away from me at every second.

What I did see, on the other side of the river:

 

 

Ah, to be young, strong, supple... and immortal.

The eagle has... circled.

Had a follow-up appointment this morning for the infection in my knee. All is well, infection seems gone, surgery still on for the 28th. The bursitis/fluid buildup is also going away so I probably will not have to have it drained.

Once again I thanked my lucky stars that I get to live where I do. As my car climbed up from the St. Croix river valley on the way to the clinic in Wyoming, Minnesota, I saw this.

  

 

What? You are not impressed with my photos?

Understandable. I was not actually able to get a photo of what I saw, which was a veritable flock of bald eagles -- at least 20, too many to count safely, let alone photograph, while I drove -- circling overhead. They frequently hang around over a particular quarter-mile of highway. Don't know why exactly, but they love it there. There was no way to take a picture when I saw the flock, so I took these on my way back home a couple hours later. Still a few singletons circling, but no flock.

* * * * *

Contest results tomorrw, and maybe even some whining about knitting.

From my email.

* * * * *

JayWalking. (That one has been removed from YouTube so you will have to download it this way.)

Today is the day!

Yes, it is official. 

Today I am Old.

Okay, enough of that. I'm still kicking, so let's move on.

 I promised a contest, and a contest we shall have.

Here's the deal: make me laugh about turning 60.

There will be two winners, one chosen at random by some means yet to be determined, and one chosen because s/he made me laugh until I peed my pants. That's not really so hard to do when the laugh-er is a 60-year-old female.

    

And the prizes? Oh, the prizes.

One is this skein of hand-dyed silk from Chamomile Connection (she has an Etsy store, too)(Huh. I bought this yarn at Shepherd's Harvest, a fiber festival in a northern suburb of St Paul, but she lives in New Mexico. So much for *local* fiber.).

100 grams and 650 yards of lusciousness.

  

Am I generous? No, not really, I bought two skeins but have since decided that a 650-yd scarf would be plenty, no need for a full scale shawl.

The second is this skein of hand-dyed sock yarn from Pippi Knee Socks. The link is to her Flickr stream; her website seems to be gone.

  

The colorway is Free Tibet and is guaran-damn-teed to be full of good karma; she chanted Tibetan prayers or some such over the yarn as she dyed it. Once again, I have two skeins and one is plenty for a pair of socks. 3.6 ounces, approximately 400 yards.

  

While googling for images of "60" I came across this, where a 20-year-old model was photographed to look like 10 years old, 20, 30, 40,50, and 60. Here she is at *60*:

 

Yeah, that's how I look at 60, all right.

But the comments are interesting. I especially liked this one.

Besides, 60 is the new 40. Look at Sophia Loren, Raquel Welch to name a few... No, nothing to fear about being older. Enjoy it to the maximum.

Check!

ETA: Let's make the deadline for entries midnight on Wednesday, August 12. That's CDT, although midnight anywhere is acceptable :-)

Tomorrow is the big day.

Tomorrow is my birthday. It is one of those n-zero birthdays, and the one that officially takes me out of middle-aged and into old. Phooey. How did this happen? Oh, I remember now -- I kept having birthdays and continuing to wake up in the morning. Funny how that works...

I have never had any trouble with getting older, maybe because people generally didn't believe how old I was. Vanity lurks, no matter how much I try to suppress it. The only birthdays I had any trouble with were 17 (I liked being 16) and 58 (that's the one that mentally tipped me over into old).

True story: A couple weeks ago I was in a drug store, the kind that stocks everything under the sun. There were some 10-yo boys playing in the toy section, bouncing balls around and back and forth. One ball got away from a kid and rolled between my feet. Because I am being extremely cautious since my last disastrous falls, I managed to stay upright. Gave the kid a dirty look and walked on. But a store employee, and a middle-aged one at that, told the kid, "Be careful! Keep those balls away from the old people!"

That hurt a bit. But when I told Smokey about it, he reminded me that we ARE old. Sixty is the beginning of old age. (He is a year older than I am and so has had longer to get used to this. Although given his everlastingly sunny outlook on life, I doubt that he has ever worried about it.)

I know some of you will say that a person is only as old as they feel/think/act. There is some truth in that, but one aspect of good mental health is to have a firm grip on reality. And my reality says that sixty is the beginning of old.

So be it. I intend to continue to feel (mentally, at least; I certainly have my share of physical aches and pains), think, and act like I am much younger.

Not that I have much choice in the matter; I keep remembering hearing older people say things like, "How did I get old? I feel like I am still 40/30/20/16!"  Funny, no one ever seems to want to be much younger than that. In our inner selves we know that childhood wasn't necessarily the best part of our lives, and that growing up was A Good Thing. We just don't want to continue the process that inevitably follows, and we certainly don't want to think about its unavoidable conclusion.

Anyway.

In honor of tomorrow's monumental significance I think I shall have a contest. Don't know yet what it will be or what the winner(s) will get, but the latter will probably involve yarn in some form. Perhaps there will be chocolate, too...

Emergency knitting bag. Sorrow.

 

Several of you were intrigued by my red emergency knitting bag. I won mine in a blog contest over at 1870 Pearl, but I worked the google fu and found that you can get them here. That site has them in red, green, and blue, $19.95 with free shipping.

* * * * *

A moment of silence for Carrie/pacalaga/Strickerin, whose husband Rick passed away. My heart aches for her.

Go. Hug your loved ones. Life is too short.

Eye candy Friday.

Just in case you found my other Friday post a bit too disturbing, here is a deer we spotted as we were leaving the campground one evening when we were in Wyoming.

I was not even tempted to kill it.

Maybe I could.

Your result for The Can You Kill a Man? Test...

Maybe you could...You scored 25% Cold and 59% Level-Headed!

In a pinch, you could do it, but you'd need a damn good reason to. And you're not going to be too happy afterward.

Take The Can You Kill a Man? Test at HelloQuizzy

I think that is accurate. If I could have seen all the possible categories of results, that is what I would have predicted for myself.

Thanks to soxanne for the link to the quiz. Be careful around that lady; her quiz results were that she could kill "...as necessary. If threatened, you will respond with equivalent force, and most likely have the nerves to carry you through the act."