kmkat and her kneedles

Sunday random.

1. Waste :: excess.
2. Excess :: baggage.
3. Play :: -book.
4. Heartbreak :: Hotel.
5. Purchase :: ebook.
6. Fear :: Aggression.
7. Ages 2+ :: toddlers.
8. Conform :: clay.
9. Reduced :: calorie.
10. Change :: the oil.

* * * * *

Younger Son's new phone, a Sony something, does tricks.
My phone did something similar, but for a much shorter time.

* * * * *

I don't think I ever showed you one of my adventures during the yarn-caking marathon. I had read on Ravelry that Zauberball was impossible to pull from the center without massive tangles, so I pulled from the outside.

It was not entirely successful, although by the third ball -- I think this one was the second --
I had figured out how to minimize the tangles.

* * * * *

I took a class on brioche stitch from Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark at Yarnover this year. Of the 20 or so people in class, nearly everyone had attempted brioche before ::raises hand:: but were unable to master it from a book/handout/pattern. ::nods sheepishly:: 

The class was an excellent idea for all of us. We found that brioche stitch is easy and that the knitter develops a rhythm with it after a bit, just like ribbing. 

The two swatches I made during class.

On the way to Yarnover that morning, I suddenly remember that I had left the two balls of required worsted weight yarn on the seat of a different car. Oh well, I thought, I can probably mooch some yarn off someone else in the class. People always bring more yarn than they need.

When I walked into the Yarnover venue, which was filled with yarn vendors, I had a good chuckle at myself. Gee, do you suppose I can find some yarn here?

Actually, it was not as easy as I first thought. Most vendors bring lace- and fingering-weight yarn and/or fiber. I was more than halfway through the place before I found some worsted weight.

 
What you cannot see in the photos is the wonderfully woolly-but-soft-squishy texture of the yarn. 
50% CVM/30% alpaca/20% angora, oh my!

I bought the one on the left first, but after the class I went back to buy the second, contrasting one. They are in the process of becoming a cowl that is a larger version of white and green swatch. The best way to cement a new stitch is to make something immediately to get the process into muscle memory.

* * * * *

 

This, that, and a few other things.

I am currently in the midst of a yarn-caking drive. Every skein, no matter what kind, is gonna be wound into a center-pull cake. 

Because I say so, that's why.

I prefer knitting from my own center-pull cakes to knitting from whatever configuration the yarn manufacturer uses. And, oddly enough, I enjoy playing with the stash almost as much as knitting it.

No before photos, but here are the sock yarn and the laceweight & fingering-but-not-necessarily-sock-yarn bins posing for their glamour shots after their respective winding binges were over.

Sock yarn.

Laceweight & fingering-but-not-necessarily-sock-yarn. Those are cedar balls resting atop the cakes,
all the better to repel moths*. The other bins have blocks of cedar screwed to the underside of the cover
(thanks, Smokey!) but I ran out of blocks before I ran out of bins.

* * * * *

I stayed at Younger Son's apartment a couple weekends ago when I went to Yarnover (someday I will blog about Yarnover, too). He was in the midst of moving from his basement apartment to a third-floor one in the same complex**. I noticed some odd-ish decor items scattered about.

Aha, methought, blog fodder!

On the kitchen wall.

 
(formerly) on the bedroom wall.

 

 
On the desk.

 

 
Also on the desk.

 

 
Last, but not least, the deer skull he found in the woods back in middle school, 
and which inspired the greatest Halloween costume ever in the history of Halloween costumes***.

* * * * *

Observed at the home of friend. Yes, Friend is a snorter when she laughs.

* * * * *

During one of the warm spells this spring -- they come and go quickly, interspersed with cold, rain, snow, and tornado warnings -- we put the top down on Smokey's convertible and took the dogs with us when we went out for lunch. 

Lucy The Senior Dog enjoying the view.
 

Misha The Formerly Timid Dog letting her ears blow in the breeze.

  

* Another advantage of storing yarn in cakes rather than skeins is that it limits the surface area available to an invading moth larvae. Ask me how I know.

 

** When I say "apartment complex", do not picture one of those suburban ghettos with a pool and a game/party room. This is four, three-and-a-half story brick buildings built in the 1920s that share a tiny parking lot and are entirely studio and one-bedroom apartments. It is situated at the edge of downtown Minneapolis and inhabited almost entirely by singles. They have communal barbecues in the parking lot and bi-weekly movie nights and go out for brunch en masse on Saturday mornings.

Here is the view from his new living room. That tall building at the right edge is where Al and Frannie Franken live.

 

*** Not sure if I ever blogged this. He found a deer skeleton in the woods and brought home as many of the bones as he could. He strung several on a piece of twine as a necklace, dangled several  rib bones from the top of a staff he made from a sapling, and had me make a black hooded robe like one of the ringwraithes in Lord of the Rings. (The actual movie robes each had 35 yards of material. The one I made used somewhat less.)  Best costume EVAH.

Sunday, silly -- and random -- Sunday.

I started this post several weeks ago. You get to read my Unconscious Mutterings (or not) as I catch up.

1. Language :: teacher.
2. Obvious :: -ly.
3. Skull :: -duggery.
4. Insidious :: sneaky.
5. Struggle:: class warfare.
6. Unspeakable :: mysteries.
7. Orchid :: fuschia.
8. Fish :: oil.
9. Annoyingly :: patronizing.
10. Payroll :: tax. The tax accountant scores!

1. Astrology :: utter crap.
2. Funeral :: black.
3. Candor :: refreshing.
4. Dynamic :: IP address.
5. Oh my god! :: O.M.F.G.
6. Cancer :: Aries.
7. Ross :: Perot.
8. Heroes :: TV.
9. Rachaell :: Friends.
10. Effortlessly :: aahhh!

1. Greatness :: Grand Canyon.
2. Struggling :: underway.
3. Noise :: white.
4. Doorway :: to happiness.
5. Soap :: in the eyes.
6. Cancer :: ewww.
7. Sipping :: coke.
8. Stacks :: computers.
9. Perfect :: cake.
10. Test :: run.

* * * * *

Things you might have overheard at our house recently:

Smokey, reading the answers to an online trivia quiz: The marine creature that has no bones is, yes, the shark, just as we said.

Kathy: Neither does ice cream!

Smokey: ...

 

Younger Son: Me and Daryl* are  gonna be going to Kuala Lumpur for two weeks!

Kathy and Smokey, who had just last evening had a discussion about whether the Petronus Towers in Kuala Lumpur were the tallest man-made structure(s) in the world: Will you be going into the Petronus Towers?

Younger Son: There is no such thing as the Patronus Towers. A Patronus is summoned by the, um,... patronus...

Kathy: ...spell?

Younger Son: Yes.

Younger Son, after hearing the backstory of the Petronus Towers reference: Okay, but the tallest man-made structure is still Mt. Everest.

* Daryl is his boss. And, yes, Younger Son DOES know proper grammar, he just doesn't bother to use it all the time. 

* * * * *

Elder Son had to get an actual mailbox at his house. There was a mail slot in the door and he hung a bag inside to catch the mail before Moose The Ginormous Dog could trample it, but he was getting SO MUCH MAIL FROM BIG PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES INVITING HIM TO FREE CONFERENCES IN TAHITI that it overflowed the bag.

And that is why my prescriptions today cost me $97.13.

* * * * *

It may be SuperBowl Sunday, but we may or may not watch. It's just a bunch of overpaid, over-ego-ed, over-steroided, wife- and child-abusers running around after a funny-shaped ball.

Not that I am stereotyping them, no.

* * * * *

I went into the Twin Cities on Friday and Saturday: got my eyes checked, ordered new glasses, had dinner with soxanne, knit with the Knit Night Orphans at Starbucks, stayed overnight, packed many boxes of stuff from our bedroom at the rental house, had Younger Son carry them to my car, and came home. Now that neither Smokey nor I work in Minneapolis any more, we will rent out the third bedroom in that house. By a stroke of luck, my friend Julie's son was looking for a place to live right when we decided to rent it. The bed and dresser and desk and bookshelf will have to stay there until spring, but we are busily emptying the rest of our stuff out of the room. 

ETA: Younger Son brought up another load of stuff on Saturday, including the LazyBoy rocker. He said that when he moved the chair he found a circ and a crochet hook under it. Funny there were no stitch markers; I seem to move through the world strewing them wherever I go.

On a slightly related note, did you know that a person can pay their rent via PayPal? Welcome to the future!

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!

    

If this is Sunday, it must time for another parade.

This was our group in the last parade. Lady in light blue shirt is
Kelly Westlund, running for Congress from our district.

Gonna drive in the Lucky Days parade this afternoon. Got a big bowl of candy to throw to the kids along the route. I tell myself all through every parade, "Don't drive over a kid. Don't drive over a kid. Don't drive over a kid." It's a good rule. 

* * * * *

Mutterings.

1. Joke :: practical.
2. Away :: game.
3. Reaction :: time.
4. High :: times.
5. Movie :: times.
6. Decide :: later.
7. Afternoon :: delight.
8. Contrarian :: Smokey.
9. Understand :: grok.
10. Zone :: no parking.

* * * * *

I continue to knit on the fingerless glove project. Four pairs mostly done, and cast on for a fifth pair last night. Only one pair is completely done; the others all need thumbs, one pair needs its hems sewn down, and most need their ends woven in.  I am saving all that finishing for some night when I am watching TV. 

In other TV-related news, we just joined the rest of the US and* got a flat TV. I think it is 46", maybe 42", plenty big for our cozy living room. Younger Son set it up for us on Saturday morning. It took me roughly 30 seconds to get used to having a bigger screen. The viewing experience changes a little -- I find I am more aware of the rest of the picture, not just the main action/actor. Our old TV, a 32" digital CRT model, will go to live in Elder Son's house. 

 

* I have found it a little disconcerting to see huge flat-screen TVs in the living rooms of pretty much every house that leaves its curtains open. Why does everyone else -- even people whom I know are on a severely limited income -- have a fancy-schmancy TV and we don't? Well, because we were waiting for the prices to come down to cheap. And they did. 

 

 

Randominity and navel-gazing.

I have noticed that any number of [non-fiction] books have a premise that would be perfect for a long article or a pamplet*, but which do not warrant an entire book. Not that that stops the pundits and analysts and socio-political commentators from writing them. In that vein, I present any number of my recent thoughts and occurrences that do not warrant an entire blog post but which are perfect for the blog equivalent of a not-book.

* * * * *

We have been taking care of Elder Son's new dog while he is at Bonnaroo. Said dog is bigger (105 pounds) than our own two dogs put together (45 pounds + 55 pounds). This means we are buying twice the amount of dog food and cleaning up twice the amount of poop. This dog's name is, most appropriately, Moose. In the photo at left, he is standing on the floor with his paws on my chair. Notice how I am eye to eye with his collar. When he wants to get on the bed, he doesn't need to jump -- he just walks onto it. Happily, he is a big softie who wants nothing more than a head rub and to be told he is a good doggie. And to be fed. 

He also drinks what seems to us to be an incredible amount of water. Smokey and I marvel at how frequently we find ourselves filling the water dish; Elder Son remarks, "Wow, I wonder what his medical term that was gobblety-gook to me rate is?"

Moose was a bed hog the first couple nights after Elder Son left. I would wake up at 3am and find him occupying the entire lower two-thirds of the bed. Then I would discover that moving a 105-pound inert mass of canine was not as easy as I might have hoped. But after rolling him out of his spot those two nights, he seemed to understand that his place was between Smokey and I, not in the place where I wanted my lower body to be.

* * * * *

On Father's Day I saw several gifs and posts about things people were taught by their fathers. My dad was a very shy and insecure man not much given to being a father, although he tried. What he taught me was never to walk on ice with my hands in my pockets. Not exactly a life-altering lesson, but not a bad one, either. It has saved my butt -- and wrists and probably hip -- any number of times. 

* * * * *

I was out running errands one sunny day last week and saw four convertibles with their tops down. The next day was stormy and Younger Son reported he saw four accidents on his way here from Minneapolis, one of said accidents requiring an ambulance. Coincidence or enemy action? Hard to say, really.

* * * * *

Haven't done the unconscious mutterings for a while. Time to re-start my tradition, albeit on a different day than before.

1. Today :: is Monday. I wrote this yesterday.
2. Lips :: that long to be kissed.
3. Seethe :: rage.
4. Desired :: under the elms.
5. Patrol :: plane. A P3, to be exact.
6. Nails :: long and red.
7. Pastry :: chef.
8. Jacket :: potatoes.
9. Button :: -hole. The Lion Brand blog just posted a little tutorial on making buttonholes. I need to get on that, stat.
10. Feel :: good.

* * * * *

I think I mentioned I have been binge-watching House for the past few weeks. His character seems to me to be a medical version of Sherlock Holmes, right down to his affinities for music and drugs. (I realize that this similarity  has probably been remarked upon years ago by TV reviewers, but I just noticed it. Never read any reviews of the show when it was new.) Imagine my delight when there was an exterior shot of his townhouse, showing its number: 221B. 

Smokey was watching it with me last night and pointed out that the House character also has a lot of similarities to the Doc Martin character in that PBS series. Both are arrogant and abrasive, but other characters put up with them because of their life-saving brilliance.

* * * * *

Smokey had an appointment last week with his ortho's physician assistant to get shots of rooster comb in his knees. This PA is the one who started and did much of the CPR that kept him alive when his heart stopped just before his knee surgery in March. He brought her a bouquet of flowers at this appointment. She was quite touched. I told him he should bring her flower at every appointment from now until the end of time. She is our hero.

 

* Does anyone besides the Jehovah's Witnesses write pamphlets any more? Save some trees! Bring back the pamphlet! I say.

Bouquet photo credit: anne arnould via photopin cc

Handyman corner: cable management.

I think I mentioned that Younger Son started a new job last November with a small company that designs, builds, and installs storage network systems, specializing in the media and entertainment industry. Companies like Netflix and HBO have huge storage needs. (One or both of those may even be clients. I don't remember.)

He has progressed from being the tech flunkie to doing solo installs around the US, lately in both LA and DC. Proud mom here.

Anyway.

Back when he was a wee young thing helping Smokey fix our cars or install the wiring in our addition, he had no interest in the aethetics of the operation. Smoke tried to impress upon him the value of tidy wiring: easier to troubleshoot if there is a problem, easier to upgrade if necessary, and generally just all-around better. YS was having none of it. Just get 'er done was his motto. 

Some of that fatherly advice may have embedded itself in the youthful brain, however, because in recent years YS has demonstrated his belief in tidy wiring. There was the time he installed the magical electronic thingie wall-mount patch panel to clean up our internet router nook. And the time he cleaned up the cables in the server room at his old job.

Observe the progression.

   

Why, yes, he DID send me photos of the whole process.

On a visit a couple months ago he told us how cable management has become a bit of an obsession with him. Beyond just tidying up the cables, he has been researching new and improved ways of doing it.

The cable in the photos above are secured with cable ties, a modern invention. Back in the day cables were held in bundles with a particular kind of waxed string. When YS found out that Smokey had nearly an entire humungous spool of it left over from his days in the Navy as an electronics technician, he was in awe, especially when Smokey let his have nearly the entire spool.

This is the small spool he wound off to leave with his dad.

Did you know there are two schools of cable lacing, using either the Chicago stitch or the Kansas City stitch? Did you know Wikipedia has an entry on cable lacing?

He is fully aware that cable management as an obsession is laughable, and he laughs at himself for obsessing about it. But that does not dampen his enthusiasm for it.

I told you all that to tell you about what I got him for his birthday.

After he got it he sent us this photo of his latest creation.

Success!

23 years of schooling are about to come to an end.

Elder Son called this morning to say he had turned in his master's thesis, Long-Term Medical and Psychiatric Effects of Juvenile Incarceration. He emailed me a copy, but I will not reproduce it here for copyright reasons, not because I fear you might click away long before reaching page 32. Let me give you the punch line.

A history of juvenile incarceration was significantly associated with hepatitis C and post-traumatic stress disorder...and with suicide attempt in the past year, migraines, and depression.

Speaking of migraines, he also sent me this:

which explains why I no longer have migraines, yay! Also, did you notice that migraine is misspelled two of the three times it appears on the chart?

Younger Son was in Washington DC last week doing his first solo install of a storage system. It was at a Coast Guard building. He sent us a photo of the elevator buttons arranged as though on a ship:

 

Sunday as usual.

1. Shame :: anguish.
2. Business :: as usual.
3. Cats :: yes!
4. Green :: Green Party.
5. Politics :: sooo tired of.
6. Boston :: driving.
7. Healthy :: as a horse.
8. Pint :: ale.
9. Owner :: car.
10. Sorrow :: sad.

* * * * *

Elder Son had his last day of medical school on Friday. This was a red-letter day, one he has been waiting for for a l-o-n-g time. Finally he can escape the Evil Upper East Side Medical School Dedicated To Wealth And Prestige. When he went to retrieve his car from a friend's apartment parking lot in Jersey where it had been stored for two months, he found it had a flat tire. 3am call to me, asking for Smokey's phone number at work: always call Dad for car advice. He had planned to drive into Manhattan during the wee hours so as to avoid traffic as he picked up his stuff from the dorm. Didn't happen. He did manage to have the car towed to a tire place, get the tire fixed, drive into Manhattan with somewhat less traffic than on a weekday, get his stuff, and escape, all without any tickets or accidents. He is now back in Ann Arbor and is finishing his grad school thesis.

Graduation ceremonies for med school and grad school are both in early May. Which means, for us... road trip!

* * * * *

Younger Son is back from Las Vegas and here for the weekend. Ser Percy was very glad to see him. I haven't seen that dog's tail wag that fast ever before. The reunion reminded us of YouTube videos of returning vets being reunited with their dogs.

YS said that, yes, he did gamble while in LV -- one dollar into a slot machine. "I lost the whole thing!" he reported.

* * * * *

Both the back and sleeves of Fairfield are done to the armhole shaping. I haven't had the undisturbed time to knit that that will require so I started a mindless project.

The first six rows of a linen stitch scarf.

The knit get-together that would have taught three of us how to make a linen stitch scarf got postponed until later this month because of a blizzard. I had cast on the 600 st required for a long narrow scarf and had knit the first three rows from the pattern before the blizzard, but I decided my colors did not contrast enough with each other (yellow, pale blue, and pale green -- Easter egg colors). So I frogged and restarted yesterday with different colors. The new one will be a regular riot of color -- NOT! -- dark gray, light gray, and this:

Marks & Katten Fame.

of which I used the first half of the skein in my Daybreak scarf:

Right now I seem to be in the blackish part of the skein so it doesn't show up well, but that will change. Aside: 600 stitches takes a lot of yarn. This scarf may be narrower than I expected..

 

Muttering on a Sunday.

1. Rabbit :: Hop.
2. Judged :: American Idol.
3. Produce :: Lettuce.
4. Bank :: Money.
5. Standard :: Normal.
6. Mister :: In-Between.
7. Tissue :: Kleenex.
8. Summon :: Court.
9. Selfishly :: Mine!
10. Chatting :: Online.

* * * *

Last weekend Younger Son got into cleaning my kitchen. (Be still, my heart!) When he got to the stove, he decided I needed new burner pans and rings; not only did he decide that, he went onto Amazon and bought me some.

I still can't figure out why he thought I needed new ones.

* * * * *

He is currently at the NAB show in Las Vegas, as I mentioned in an earlier post. He sent some photos from his first day.

Airport? Conference center? Hotel on The Strip? Doesn't matter -- palms and sun and 60˚!

 

Pre-show.

 

Where to start? (Not YS in photo.)

 * * * * *

In other fabulously fascinating news, I watched The Avengers yesterday. Having seen numerous references to Tom Hiddleston, Loki, and Thor on the 'net, I decided I wanted needed to know what it was all about.

Actually, I lie. I watched the first hour, got interrupted, and decided I didn't need to watch the rest. I know who Loki and Thor are and what Asgard is now.

Edited to add: Looks like I watched that movie just in time. Or I wouldn't have understood this.

* * * * *

In knitting news, I am up to the armholes on the back of Fairfield and nearly to the armhole shaping on the sleeves.

As usual, red yarn is impossible to capture accurately.

There is a faint possibility that I may knit my way straight through this sweater, which would be a first for me. I always get distracted by smaller projects -- scarves, mittens, hats, what-have-you. Let's keep our fingers crossed...

Remember when I used to do Sunday posts?

Younger Son drove up yesterday afternoon. 

This is how he drove that last 20 miles.

Let's do bullets, shall we?

• My Mac Mini had been slowing down unmercifully over that last few months. Adding an external hard drive for docs, spreadsheets, photos, and music helped a lot,
• In an effort to make it better yet YS and I wiped the internal hard drive and we he reinstalled the OS.
• Did it help? Yes, but I have spent a lot of time over the past month trying to recover stuff that seems to have gone missing -- my calendar, my address book, all my iTunes playlists, a huge chunk of photos in iPhoto.
• Happily, my calendar, address book, and playlists are intact on my iPhone.
• Tragically, my computer is being extremely stubborn about synching with those apps.
• I may need to resort to hand grenades. Or nuclear weapons.
• What are the chances that will work?
• [/whine]

 

Elder Son:

• Finished his coursework at UMich in Ann Arbor, went back to Big Nasty Med School in Manhattan to finish his last credit there.
• Last credit had been left unfinished to prevent four years of med school loans from coming due while he was in grad school.
• On March 17 he found out he had *matched* for his residency.
• (The Match is a complicated nationwide thing that matches fourth-year med students with residency programs in their selected specialty.)
• His mood, which has ranged from frustrated to sullen to depressed to righteously angry during his med school years, improved dramatically.
• Four days later -- a brief period during which those students who didn't match and those residency programs that didn't fill scramble frantically to interview each other via Skype in hopes of falling in love -- he found out his match was with a hospital in Sioux Falls SD.
• While he would have preferred to be in Duluth, he thinks the program in SF is actually a bit better.
• His mood improved even more.
• He has been bombarding us with links to 1, houses for sale in SF, and b, pictures of Newfoundlands.
• He has wanted a Newfie for years.
• We think buying a house is just so he can be sure he will have a place to have a Newfie.
• Priorities, people, priorities!

 

Smokey:

• Had a cardiologist appointment last week.
• All good.
• He returned to work a couple days, er, nights ago.
• He has found that the stents in his coronary arteries seem to have improved the circulation to his legs, which used to cramp at night and/or be restless.
• This equals better sleep.
• He has also found that he no longer needs to sit down to put on his pants. His balance is improved so much he can do it standing up.
• I am jealous of that.
• He bought a zombie mask to wear when he went back to work (since he had risen from the dead).
• Black/weird humor is our specialty. Also popular among psych personnel.

 

Me:

• I am rolling along on my Fairfield cardigan. Back is done to the armholes, sleeves are about 6" long.
• This is a delightful knit -- just enough cabling/lace to make it interesting, but lots of stockinette so it doesn't take forever.
• I just hope I have enough yarn. 
• I made the back 2" shorter than the pattern called for, but the pattern length seemed to be for someone taller than I. The shorter length is the same as most of my sweaters.
• I have been working way harder than I necessarily wanted to on my campaign for my fourth term on our county board -- lit drops, knocking on doors, making phone calls, putting up signs.
• It didn't help that I had lost MS Word from my computer (see above) or that my computer was not talking to my printer (ditto) during the time when I was making flyers and drafting my answers to survery questions from a local newspaper.
• Smokey's coal-fired computer running MS Word 97 and his printer (that used to be mine and is at least ten years old) came to the rescue.
• I spent a couple weeks running back and forth between his office and mine, dodging piles of crappe in both places.
• My entire campaign is contained on a thumb drive.
• When Big Money rolls into the county to back a slate of candidates, it makes the rest of the candidates work harder than has ever been done before.
• But I have met a lot of people I didn't necessarily know before, and I have had a lot of help from others who believe in me.
• Tuesday is Election Day. 
• Keep your fingers crossed, m'kay? Thanks.

Update 4. And stuff.

This is why Smokey's sternum and ribs are sore. Link shows the Lucas chest compression system, a device that can do chest compressions at a precise rate and pressure and eliminate the exhausting part of CPR. Smokey seems to have at least one cracked rib, maybe as many as three going by the number of times something clicks! in his chest.. Every time he complains about his rib/sternum pain, he follows it up with, But I am glad to be alive.

Funny story #1: Last Sunday Younger Son made pancakes for breakfast. This has become a tradition since he started visiting every weekend. He makes the pancakes, Smokey or I cook bacon, we all feast. This got even better for me when Smoke discovered gluten-free Bisquick in the supermarket.

Anyway, last Sunday while the bacon was cooking I melted butter, nuked the bottle of maple syrup, got out the orange juice and milk, set the table. When it was my turn to eat, I doused my short stack with melted butter and maple syrup, at which point Smokey asked, "Why are you putting teriyaki sauce on your pancakes?" Yup, I had grabbed the wrong bottle out of the fridge door.

For the record, gluten-free Bisquick pancakes doused with melted butter and teriyaki sauce are not bad at all.

Funny story #2: Smokey has liked this song*, Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars, for a couple years. Ever since he learned that he was dead for eight minutes, he has been singing the first line: I'm a dead man walkin'. Yes, we do have a slightly warped sense of humor here.

Funny story #3: Younger Son was with me in the hospital for the first two days, until Elder Son flew in. He did a great job of keeping me distracted from too much worry, to the point where, near the end of the second day he confessed he was running out of things to talk about. Did I tell you about the weird customer I helped on the phone last week descended to Let me show you what I carry in my wallet. When he told me what he had been doing it was further distracting -- we laughed heartily.

Not-so-funny story: That building in East Harlem blew up while Elder Son was here. The building where he lived during his last year of undergrad at NYU is about 1" from the lower left corner of this graphic, on 116th Street on the other side of Park Avenue. He could see the Metro North line from his window.

That young man has at least as many lives as a cat. He was held up at knife point in Durban, South Africa; has survived two potentially serious car accidents -- one a T-bone on his side, the other a rear-ender that totaled his car -- with little or no injury; and lived through the remnants of a hurricane in Chiapas, Mexico. Now a building a block from his former residence has blown up. What next, a meteorite will bounce off his head on the only day in his life that he was wearing a motorcycle helmet?

Life has calmed down here. Smokey won't go back to work until cleared by the cardiologist; he is waiting to get an appointment. In the meantime I am working diligently on my campaign for a fourth term on our county board. A little over two weeks until the election -- on April Fool's Day [appropriately?] -- and I have a lot of work to do. Anyone want to come to n.w. Wisconsin for a delightful vacation to help out ;-)

* I tried to embed the YouTube video into the post, but the SHARE information that used to appear below the video is no longer there. It flashes momentarily, then disappears. Anyone else have this problem? Did I unwittingly mess up my YouTube settings? Help!

Edited to add: After discussing this with Erika (thanks, Erika! Great to finally talk to you!), we figured out the problem was my browser (Chrome). Safari displays the YouTube page correctly, allowing me to share the video:

Sunday stuff on Thursday because Thursday is the new Sunday. Or something.

1. Wine :: cooler.
2. Cooperate :: -tion.
3. Dropped :: like a hot potato.
4. Painter :: drip cloth.
5. Binger :: drunkard.
6. Knot :: -worthy.
7. Collar :: button.
8. Barefoot :: in the Park.
9. Town :: -house.
10. House :: in town.

* * * * *

Progress continues smoothly on the baby sweater. I coerced En Esch into modeling it last weekend.

Clearly, En was entirely bored with my knitting and picture-taking.
I told him to shut up and model or I would cut off the cat food supply.

 

He reluctantly and sullenly complied.

It is, of course, much further along now. I am done with the body and nearly done with the sleeves. Still need to find the perfect button. And perhaps a better model.

* * * * *

Smokey's knee replacement surgery that was scheduled for last Monday was rescheduled for March 3 because he had a URI that was not fully cleared up. I emailed the boys to let them know the status, which prompted the following email exchange.

Elder Son, the almost-doctor: Good.  You don't want infected hardware. (He went on about how Smokey has several of the risk factors for post-surgical infection.)

Younger Son: I can provide my fridge for secure storage, if need be.

Elder Son: I also volunteer [Younger Son's] fridge.

* * * * *

Last weekend we participated in the first Trivia Night at a local coffee house.

It was surprisingly well-attended. All the tables were filled. I cannot tell you
how many events of one kind or another that I have attended here in Polk Count where,
counting me, there were fewer people than you have fingers.

 

My team was poised and alert and ready with answers.

 

Example of a question in the presidential trivia category: Which president was featured on the $500 bill from 1928 to 1934? (Click and drag to see the answer.)McKinley. Smokey knew that one.

Musical trivia: What two-person French musical group had a hit in 2013 with Random Access Memories? Daft Punk. Younger Son knew that one.

Science and nature trivia: What bird is this? (audio of a bird song) Cardinal. I knew that one.

Sports trivia: What year was the first SuperBowl and who was the quarterback of the winning team? 1966 and Bart Starr. Smokey knew the quarterback but was off by one year.

Events in 2013: Name the musician who died in 2013 and opened Woodstock with a two-hour set. Richie Havens. Smokey had to think about it for awhile, but he knew that one, too.

It was a lot of fun. We were ahead most of the night but ended up in second place.

Wait 'til next time!

 

Monday.

I read another excellent book: Until Tuesday : a Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him by Luis Carlos Montalván. I think I probably requested it because it was about a dog, but it turned out to be about so much more. Nonfiction, it is about the author's Army tours in Iraq, his multiple injuries, his treatment by the VA hospital system during the Bush administration, his PTSD, and how his service dog saved him. Montalván's worldview and personality is so totally different from mine, but his eloquence and sincerity helped me understand how someone can be proud to be a soldier. 

And, of course, there is the dog. Tuesday is the beautiful golden retriever who daily saved Montalván from the effects of his PTSD.

From the book:

"The defining state of PTSD is not fear. That's a complete misunderstanding. The defingin state of PTSD is hypervigilance. Psychologists describe it as the flight-or-fight syndrome because PTSD is essentially the superarounsed state normal people enter when thay are suddenly in danger, the one whre the blood rushes to your head, your muscles coil, and your breathing slows. You are in survival mode, ready to fight or flee for your lifte. For ordinary people it only lasts a few seconds, but for combat-scarred veterans like me, hyperarounsal was a near-permanent state.

"...I felt exactly the same way. Most people walked down the street oblivious to the world around them. I could see it in their eyes, and I was both jealous of the mindless sense of security and appalled by the carelessness. I analyzed everybody I passed, watching the expression on their faces, their body language, the way they held their hands. I took note of the way they dressed and the places they looked. If a person glanced at me twice, I locked onto them as a potential threat, and I remembered that not just for a the five minutes but for days and weeks as well...

"...Most veterans like me don't suddenly think we're in combat or have visual flashbacks like movie scenes. I experienced the feeling of being there: the adrenaline the hyperarousal, the awareness of imminent danger. My mind jumped at every movement in an upstairs window, calculating the probabilities, while my eyes scanned doorways, parked cars, and garbage bins. Especially garbage bins. They were always overflowing with bottles and wrappers, the perfect place for an improvised bomb."

I highly recommend this book.

* * * * *

Younger Son was here this weekend. He and Smokey worked on Da Yeep on Saturday; it is possible that we may be able to plow the driveway. ::cheers!::

On Sunday Smokey and Kiera The Teenage Helper worked on sorting and packing model trains, so YS didn't have much to do. All on his own he decided to straight the mess that is the entryway.

Before.

 

After! Percy approves, and so do I!

 * * * * *

We like to give the dogs bones to chew on. One bone each, and they are good for hours days. On Friday Smokey decided to pick up the bones that were scattered around the living and dining rooms.

No wonder I kept stubbing my toes.

Publicity!

That's Younger Son in the the background.

Right there!

Photos cheerfully lifted from a website, which I am not going to identify, devoted to the industry his new company serves.

I won Christmas!

Every single gift I got was something I wanted. Srsly.

Smokey gave me got a pristine copy of cookbook I had coveted: Eat It by Dana Crumb, wife of R. Crumb, famed illustrator and inventor of the iconic Mr. Natural and Keep On Truckin' images. Why, yes, I AM a child of That Era.

Smokey assures me that he paid nowhere near what it was priced at Amazon used books.

Back story: when we first met and for the first five years we were married, we lived in a very large house (eight bedrooms, three baths) with six other people. Jim, one of our housemates, had this cookbook, which is the source for my fabled enchilada recipe. The last time I made them I decided to see if I could find the cookbook on eBay. I did, and told Smokey that a, it was out of print, no surprise there, and 2, that copies were going for as much as $50 or more. We chuckled at how valuable it had become, and I thought no more about it. 

Now I have my very own copy! Try to imagine how happy this makes me; just try.

I remember the recipes as being very, very tasty. Smokey said the reviews confirmed that. One reviewer said she had worn out two copies of the book and was now on her third. I think I probably made a few recipes back in the day, but I don't remember any more. Will definitely try them now. A blast of fond memories and the prospect of noms -- priceless!

 

Elder Son got me a set of Knitter's Price interchangeable bamboo circs -- w00t! When I opened it, I was flabbergasted and asked how he knew I wanted them. Both sons replied that I had told them. (Yeah, the memory is the first to go.) Eventually I remembered that I had emailed them both sometime this fall and said that if anyone were interested in a gift for me, I would really like these.

I need to knit some silk. Stat. If I had some.

 

Younger Son had told me a couple months ago that he was thinking of getting me an iPhone for Christmas. He had recently switched his existing phone to a different carrier but had not taken advantage of the new carrier's deal on a new phone; thus, he was able to get me a fabulous phone for far less than MSRP and add it/me to his contract quite cheaply. We are a family that loves us a deal.

Suh-weet!

Here are some photos I took with it at Younger Son's apartment last night in dim room light, no flash.

I may never have to carry a separate camera again. 

To those many of you who already have an iPhone or some other magical telephonic device, this may seem mundane. But to me, who has carried a dumb TracFone for years and years, this is a quantum leap. Now I can do things like find a map when we are driving or look up a restaurant when we are somewhere unfamililar or tweet photos or... many, many other things I cannot imagine right now*.

An unexpected plus was when last night on a whim, after noting with surprise that I had one bar of service, I tried to call Younger Son (in Minneapolis) on my new phone from my bedroom (in our house in Wisconsin, where NO ONE has cell service). And it worked!  Since the house is by the lake, it  -- and every other cabin and house here -- is down in a hole. No one has cell service the last time I asked, about a year ago. Cellular coverage keeps improving, but I was still very impressed. We chatted for a few minutes, then the call dropped. He later emailed me that he has found the reception here to be good, not great. Texting should be fine, but voice may be somewhat iffy.

Color me one Happy Kat^TM.

 

* Just remembered a big advantage. Now I have a phone that will sync with my computer. Every Tracfone I have had has required me to re-enter my entire phone book from the previous phone. I got a new phone every year or two, and the last one? I only entered Smokey and the boys because it was such a pain to re-enter everything. Happily, I never needed any other numbers because I could look them up on my iPod**, which is always in my left pocket.  

** That iPod will be going to Elder Son as soon as I get everything synced up on the iPhone. The headphone jack on his iPod is bad so he hasn't been using it. Even though mine is a couple years old it works fine (except when I take it outside and the temp is below zero)(and even though one corner of the screen is shattered from when it fell out of my pocket onto a tile floor).

 

 

If this is Sunday, it is time for the Sunday Stuff.

1. Games :: Hunger. Duh.
2. Younger :: woman.
3. Propose :: marriage. To a younger woman? Sheesh, I must be feeling insecure.
4. Closer :: to heaven.
5. Cleaned :: and polished.
6. Fresh :: produce.
7. Crunch :: Cap'n.
8. Centers :: of interest.
9. Shiny! :: Firefly!
10. Horrific :: nasty.

* * * * *

A friend just posted this on Facebook:

So [husband] just told me that the useless dude we had to see 27 years ago for pre-marriage "training" (<-- parent-pleasing move) was one of those named on the recently released Mpls/St. Paul Archdiocese list of abusive priests. I thought that guy was terrible back then, just on general principle, and now I'm glad we walked out of there and did pretty much the opposite of everything he suggested.

My friend is a GREAT judge of character.

* * * * *

 
While writing Friday's post about South Africe I found this photo that Younger Son
took in the men's room at the Madrid airport. Love it!

* * * * *

Winter arrived this week... with a vengence.

Actually, the above reading on our (internet-connected!) thermostat represents a slight heat wave. Yesterday at about the same time it was -12˚F (-24˚C).

Yup, winter. I have been making good use of my warm woolly scarf-y shawlettes  and hand-knit socks and LLBean flannel-lined jeans. For some unknown reason, the power company has not seen the need to turn off the interruptible power yet this winter, plus -- unlike last year -- the heat pump seems able to maintain the desired indoor temp. All in all, the house is balmy :-)

Speaking of hand-knits, the cabled hat I blogged about a couple weeks ago is coming along swimmingly. I know, I know, I complained about it in the original post, but I managed* to get the actual pattern -- Celtic Bunny Hat. Now, the knitting is slow -- lots of cabling -- but not difficult. Good pattern! This cable chart is much more logical than the one for the Saxon Braid. I actually experience joy when knitting it rather than anxiety and dread. 

The horizontal panel has short rows to duplicate the effect of the first decreasing rounds as a hat approaches the crown. I have not seen short rows in a cable pattern before, but they work just fine here. As some long-ago cooking program host used to say, Very simple very easy! 

* We shall not discuss precisely how I got the pattern. Just know that knitters are delightful people.

* * * * *

Younger Son just did a customer service call on the land line behind me. (Computer service people are never off duty, apparently.) Lots of technical jargon. When he hung up, he said,"You understood all that, right?" Then he smirk-chuckled. And proceded to explain to me what he had just told his client, which involved terms like "kernel panic" and "LUNs" and "disc arrays". Before he started I tried to tell him that I didn't need to know -- because I knew I wouldn't understand -- and he insisted, "No, this is fun!" Um, sure. But it makes me happy to know he loves his work.

Stuff.

The shirt Elder Son was wearing when he left.

Slayer is one of his favorite groups. He said the name was an acronym, standing for Some Lads Always Yearn to Experience... [Younger Son jumped in to help] ... Ravelry.

* * * * *

As I have mentioned, Younger Son has been working for us on the weekends. This weekend he finished straightening the attached garage.

 
Use your imagination to put these two photos together.

Previously, I was taking my life in my hands to attempt to walk through here. Now there  is a clear path, plus they moved that car* on jackstands about a foot and a half to the right -- not only can I put my car in the garage this winter, I can open the door to get out of it. This is the first time I have been able to put my car in the garage in at least ten years. Baby steps...

Other highlights:

Part of cleaning always involves throwing out crappe.

 

Misha and Percy always get along better outside. This was the best photo I could get
of the two of them... running at top speed.

 

YS admires the shelves he filled.

 

Heavy stuff is heavy because batteries.

 

Remember Picasso's Blue Period? This chair is from YS's Stenciling Period.
"Put your butt on Dubya."

* The car is a 1990-something Subaru SVX that Smokey bought about ten years ago to be my winter car. It has 4WD :-) plus it is zippy and sporty and fun. But it needed some work done to the rear end (I think, can't remember) and has been up on jack stands nearly its entire life with us because the repair coincided with the time when Smokey's back and RA began to get really painful. Now that I have the AWD Volvo I have little interest in the SVX. 

 

Wednesday stuff that happened last weekend.

My computer has been running v-e-r-y slowly lately. Multi-tasking, like editing photos and uploading them to the blog, has been like molasses in January. I haven't been able to play music in iTunes while I work since [nearly] forever.

I turned to my tech guru, Younger Son. Two weekends ago we deleted a bunch of unnecessary programs that might have been clogging the system. No perceptible improvement. By last Friday the thing was running so slowly and locking up so often that I had to reboot three times before noon. And I don't climb out of bed until nearly ten.

Apparently that frightened the computer so badly (anthropomorphize much, Kat?) that it worked perfectly on Saturday. He and I fiddled with it some more because we knew the improvement was only temporary.

 He works in a terminal window "...because that's the only way to really get stuff
done in a Unix-based systems." Um, sure.

 

"See this error right here? I'm trying to get rid of that." Um, sure.

 

 
Researching the problem on his newest phone.

 

At the same time he was also following the emails flying back and forth between his boss and a customer in Saudi Arabia. Did I mention he changed jobs? He is now a technical services representative with a nearly brand-new company that designs, builds, and sells storage area networks. And stuff.

From the time we got our first home computer in 1989 I was the family IT person, but I began to fall behind the curve a bit when PCs went from being stand-alone machines to networked ones in the late '90s. I can still sorta hold my own, but I am delighted to have passed the torch to YS. He had advanced to sysadmin at his previous job and could go no further there; the new job has a lot of potential for learning, international travel, and financial rewards. 

Proud mom signing off here.

I learned how to make an animated .gif!

Ser Percival The Energetic watched the process with great interest.

Younger Son used my car (with all-wheel drive) to pull the pontoons -- all that was left of the old, sunken pontoon boat -- from the lake edge to the trailer up by the pole barn, from whence they will go to be recycled. I photographed him from the decks, first on the lake side, then on the driveway side. 

 I haven't figured out how to make it play any other way than on the site where I made it, so you will have to go here to watch it.