It's 7:00 am I'm sitting here at the laptop in the TV room, home finally, after getting in late last night (this morning) after a 2 hour delay flying home from Ft. Lauderdale. I'm not munching on any breakfast (yet) and I need to wake up the kids to get their day going.

(It's 4:05 pm now when I add more to this post.) OK, I'm obviously back from my trip south to rain country, USA. It rained on and off so much yesterday I didn't even try to get a round of golf in. I ended up trying out some drivers at a golf shop and hit the equivalent of an extra large bucket of balls under the swing monitor. When I hit the ball well it was going about 140-150 yards and my swing speed was over 60 mph. (slow, compared to the pros, but I'm not Tiger.) I don't normally hit the driver in my bag that well at all. When I hit it poorly in the monitor, well, um,lets just say I didn't memorize those stats. I could definitely see differences in the results of each driver after hitting 30 or more balls with each. I had fun, even though I was tired after a while. I probably ingrained a bad swing pattern into muscle memory. Oh well. I hope I'll get to try out my new club soon.

Then I hung out at a yarn shop for a couple hours and knit and chatted with the wonderful women there. I showed off my socks (they were impressed) and bought yarn for a toe cover for AM whose toes are getting cold sticking out of that cast.

Then I headed back up to the airport for my flight home. Instead of dragging this post on forever, I'll post the rest of my adventures tomorrow.



Ft Lauderdale airport at sunset.

I'm sitting in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express in Ft. Lauderdale, munching on my free breakfast. My husband found an incredible fare on Spirit Air and here I am. By myself. It's kinda cool, and a bit scary traveling alone. I've got a tee time later this afternoon and tomorrow at 2:00 at a golf resort (I'll be checking in there later today, too). I've been told it rains every afternoon so maybe I'll try to move tomorrow's tee time up in the day.

The flight down yesterday was two and a half hours and of course I checked in early like a good traveler, so I knit (knitted?) a lot. I got the heel done on the sock and now I'm working down the foot. I also got another inch or two done on the sweater.

The hotel is a block away from many restaurants so I walked over to a Thai place for dinner. There was lightening in the distance, but it wasn't raining. Right as I paid my check the skies opened up and poured. And poured. I sat on the bench outside the restaurant (talking to my mom on my cell) and waited. The waiter from the dinner came out several times and walked people to their cars with umbrellas and offered to take me to mine, but I told him I walked over from the hotel. Ten more minutes go by still pouring and he comes out again. On his way back in he offers me the umbrella. Yay! Now I just have to get it back to them. Maybe I should drive it over there instead of walking.

Art & Craft

Art

Common Buckeye Butterfly

Craft

The first sock is finished, the second sock is started. I found this pattern and fell in love with it, then found the perfect yarn for it. So I had to order some.
From England.
The price was good, so why not, right?
I'll just finish the second sock and maybe the yarn will have arrived by then and I can start on my sweater.
Ha! My package came from across the pond on Monday, less than a week after I ordered it and you can see my priorities:



I've got about 3" of the sweater done and maybe 3 rows of the sock done since Tuesday. Oh well. Well, maybe not even 5 rows, I've got to rip back several rows because I have to fix an error I can't fix now on the fly. Grrr.

I've posted before about our new office building and moving out of the old one. Today is the official ceremony to demolish it. The old one, not the new one, although given the problems here, it wouldn't be such a bad idea. The ceremony started at 10:00 and at 10:40 nothing has happened, so I'm back at my desk. I didn't go out for it, but went to watch from windows down the hall where the view is pretty good. But I had no idea what's going on because nothing is happening that we can see, so I called a colleague who went to watch from the adjacent garage and he can't tell what's going on, either. I guess you can hear the speeches if you are closer.
—
Finally, an hour later, they sent Stanley the Steamshovel into the side of FOB 3, wing 7 room 2755.



The exterior of this new building is still under construction, landscaping and such. This week they are pouring sidewalks over what had been for the last year a field of mud for what we can only guess to be a park-like green space. I so want to carve my initials into the wet cement every time I look out the window.




I took video with my digital camera, but, silly me, I take a LOT of vertical photos, so I naturally took the video in vertical mode, except now what you see is sideways. Enjoy it anyway, it's my first attempt at posting video, next time I'll keep it horizontal.

Added at 1:15: After an hour and a half, this video has still not finished uploading. I'm canceling and either will try later or not, we'll see.
Added at 3:25: I finally got a message blogger couldn't upload my video. drat.

Ever have one of those days where you're standing in yoga class in the triangle position after having done your warm-ups in the table position and moved on to the seated spinal twist and hero (my favorites) and your feet are stretched out pretty wide and you hate this position because it hurts your feet and you're facing the folks across the room facing you and your arms are up, stretching, reaching, and you realize the woman across the room in looking in your direction but you continue to gaze at your own spot on the wall and then you start wondering what she is looking at?, and ohmigosh, when was the last time I shaved, think, think, not this morning, not yesterday, oh and I can't very well check right then and there, can I?
Yeah, that was my Friday in Yoga at lunch at the gym at work.


Oh, and on a creative note, here are my batch of hand-dyed fabric I did when I had my quilting bee over on Tuesday. It's a set of fuchsia to black. Today I did a dark to light set of one of those middle purple colors. I'll post a picture of those when I have time to rinse them out, hopefully sometime this week.

I have several things about autism rolling around in my head, not quite fully formed, but I wanted to post about this before I forget.

Last night Husband and I were lying in bed trying to fall asleep. Kevin is in the adjacent bathroom taking a long time with his evening routine. So I try to urge him on towards finishing.

I holler into the bathroom:
"Kevin, time to get in bed."
"No, Mommy"
"Do you want to go to the circus on Friday?" Yes, we bribe our son to persuade him to do as we desire. Don't you?
"Yes"
"It's time to go to bed."
"No, Mommy."
"What are you doing?"
"Washing. Washing. I am washing yourself."

He is trying so hard to use pronouns. A couple days ago the answer would have been just "Washing." Now he has two pronouns in one sentence, not quite the correct one, but still! We both were amazed and pleased with his new accomplishments in speech. It's great to see new developments, sometimes they get lost among the everyday.

And the Winner is...

I just got back from the fairgrounds to pick up my quilts. I didn't get to so see any of the exhibits over the weekend so I have no idea about the quality of the other quilts entered. Generally, if you're an accomplished quilter, you enter your stuff in juried shows or the state fair, the county fair is kinda like playing double A ball. I still enjoy it, and right now, it's a great place for me. If I ever have time and desire to get lots better, then I'll raise my standards. Now, quilting is a hobby and so is the county fair.

So, based on the comment cards for my pieces from the judge(s) and the ribbons attached, I can assume I've done OK this year. I entered 3 quilts, here's what was written:


It looks like the mariner's compass quilt was considered for best of show by the "Did well in final competition" comment. :)

 

Tonight is quilt bee night. We're meeting at my house this month and we're hand dyeing fabric. I'm looking forward to it. I have almost nothing ready, though. I got my box of dye out and have two jugs ready for dye activator solution, but the solution is not made and I don't have the family room vacuumed and I don't have my muslin washed. I did get the kitchen mostly cleaned up this morning, so that's something. I plan on dyeing some fabric for this year's guild challenge so I will be aiming for magentas and blacks. I'll post pictures when it's rinsed out.

 

The first sock of the pair I'm working on is coming along. I work a couple rounds in the morning at work while my machine is booting up. They have so much security stuff loaded on our PC's and networks, it can take up to 15 minutes just to log in to where you can start to work. You can't go anywhere because you still need to key in passwords, so I knit. Ta-da:

Working on my sewing badge....

I have officially started my business. It's a small business I run out of a plastic Sterlite tote box which sits on my front porch.

Fern's been a Girl Scout for several years now and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to getting her badges on her vest or sash in the correct place. It's gotta be perfect. It would drive me absolutely nuts to see other girls' vests with the badges all caddywumpus and in the completely wrong place. I never said anything to the other parents, but, boy, I wanted to. I've even held myself back from ripping the offending vest off the poor child.

Then, sometime ago, AM asked me to sew Suzy's badges on her Brownie vest and gave me $20 to do it. So, I got to thinking: they don't teach Home-Ec anymore, I bet a lot of parents don't know their way around a sewing machine, and those plastic-backed patches are murder on your fingers to sew through by hand, so they'd need help, too.

So I made up a flier and emailed it to some troop leaders and parents and put my drop-off box on my porch and I'm ready. I'm charging $1 per badge or $25 per year. It's the start of a school year, the troops are forming, money should just start rolling in now!

Wish me luck

I drove 3 of my quilts over to the fairgrounds yesterday, our county fair is this weekend. Earlier on in my married life I entered a lot of things, in a lot of classes, sewing, gardening, photography, even won a ribbon for relish. I entered every year. Then I went cold and went a couple years with no real "meaty" entries, just some cuttings for the horticulture division.

So I stripped off the quilt on my bed, took the Autism quilt off Kevin's wall, and took the mariner's compass quilt off my husband's office wall and trotted them in to the entry table. I'm not sure what to expect, I hope they fare well, ribbons even, but you never know what you'll be up against. I like showing off, it's fun, even better when the ribbon is blue or purple. But, on the other hand, if everyone in my quilt guild had an entry, I'd have no hope, a lot of talent there. I'm humbled looking at some of their work!

I'll post pictures and results next week.

In the mean time, I have no exciting news about the kitchen or homwork or any other mundane aspects of my life. But there is a new episode of Top Chef on in 10 minutes.

Spice Cabinet (Quiz of the Day)

One shelf of the spice cabinet before I put it back in the new kitchen.
Click to enlarge and study this picture for 30 seconds. Then go to the comments and answer the questions. Have fun!

And the winner is...

A few days ago I posted a photo and a memory game-type challenge. Props to Mark for coming closest by identifying the two thermometers which didn't belong in the kitchen, a lab thermometer —useful for various science fair projects— and an aquarium thermometer, I was wondering where that went....

I'm still putting stuff back in the new kitchen, this evening it was a bin of food from the dry-goods cabinet. I have a whole row of boxes of stuff to get rid of because the average "best by" date is January 2006. Tomorrow: the spice cabinet.

I'd like to have a kitchen warming party when it's done but that might be a while because my painter is booked until November unless it rains when he has outside jobs scheduled, then he can fit us in. At least it's a functional kitchen without paint, I just don't have a functional livingroom, it still looks like a yard sale in there.

Sheesh.

Compilation of Failures

Yesterday is over. Thank goodness.

I volunteered to coordinate my office picnic, sorry, summer off-site staff development meeting. Two years ago I planned it, it went well, but decided to hand over the reins to someone else. It never got off the ground.

My boss asked me to coordinate the outing again this year and I agreed. One reason for me to do it is because I am a member of a pool club which has a nice place for a group gathering.

In the beginning I polled office mates as to whether they'd like a planned menu or potluck. The results were split. I took the diplomatic approach, those who wanted to bring potluck could and the rest could just give me $5 each and I'd purchase extra food for the group. Good plan, yes?

The pool club opens at 11:00 am in the summer and noon when school is in session, so the plan was to have everyone start arriving around noon and we'll start the grills at 12:30. Instead of going into the office, I stayed home bought and prepared the food from the monetary contributions. I bought brownie mix, chicken to grill, chicken to make my curried chicken salad, cucumbers, and a gallon of milk to make another batch of mozzarella to go with the tomatoes someone else was bringing.

The batch of cheese completely failed, didn't come together at all, the curds never formed solidly enough to create the cheese. I think it was too hot when I put the rennet in.

I ran out of my favorite curry powder for the chicken salad. My neighbor was visiting and ran to the store to get some for me, thank you.

Do you need anything else while I'm there? "No, thanks, I think I have everything." Out the door and down the driveway and I remember I need tablecloths for the picnic tables. Darn, now I have to make another stop on the way to the pool.

I arrive at the pool at 5 till 12:00 and the gates are still closed so I run over to the grocery first. I'm back at 10 after 12:00 and the parking lot is still empty, whew, nobody is there yet. and the gates are still locked. Uh oh. The club opens at 1:00 pm when school is in session, not noon. D'oh!

On the bright side, no one showed up until about 25 minutes till 1 and I remembered the printout of the guest list to give the gate guard and remembered to bring the grill tools.

Forgot to have someone bring napkins with other paper goods, and forgot to write down the person bringing hamburgers so I forgot burgers would be on the menu.

Then there's the whole part when I left the picnic —and Kevin—to pick up Daughter so she can attend, but her bus was late, thus I abandoned my guests for much longer than intended. And most were gone when I got back. Argh.

I hope everyone had a good time despite my oversights and failures.

Can't wait till next year!

Right now I'm on the brink of a full blown headache, it's waxing and waning at the moment. I might have to search out a coke for relief. I hate having a headache.

 

Ever since I bought the yarn in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, I've been on the fence as to where my creativity is taking me. I hadn't planned on going back to knitting, and I have plenty of quilting projects that need my attention. Daughter still wants her quilt finished, all I have to do is quilt the border and bind it off, and I have a John Flynn laser cut Storm At Sea kit I've been working on since March. The blocks are in a sewing-order stack ready to go. Sheesh. Then there's the next bee meeting. It'll be at my house, we're dyeing fabrics. I love that, it's so much fun to play with color. And I really like sharing fabric dyeing with others.

But the knitting. I've made at least 4 attempts at starting a sock, different pattern, different needles, with the new yarn. It's be knitted, ripped and rewound so many times, it's splitting very easily when I work with it. And I want to keep going on this project, I'm not to the exasperation point yet.

So on one side of the fence, I have a cool new quilting bee with cool new bee friends and on the other side I have cool new yarn and a cool new sock pattern book and I just ordered two new sets of birch double point sock needles because I can't find my others.



Maybe I just need to get off the fence and mow the grass.
 

Thanks to me all the local fire trucks and some from the next town over were parked in front of the grocery store last night.


You're thinking, I know she's klutzy, but the fire department?

Daughter and I rounded the corner down the milk aisle and we saw a blue-white light flickering on the lighting power cord for one of the shelves. So I went down to check-out and told them they had a fire back there. A friend from church was also shopping so we chatted about our respective kitchen renovations, picked our selections, speculated whether the boys would walk over from the fire station which is across the street from the grocery, or arrive with lights and sirens.

By the time we were finished shopping and all paid up there were at least 4 trucks outside, lights flashing. But nobody inside was really in a panic, the calm in the store didn't balance out with glaring scene outside. It was kind of aerie.

Measuring Spoons, Thermometers and Paintbrushes

I've been slowly getting the yardsale in my living room (contents of the old kitchen) back into the new cabinets. This morning I started on the utility drawer next to the stove. I haven't dug back in the depths of that pit since Clinton was in office. Beyond the spatulas and basters and the ice cream scoops I collected all the measuring spoons, thermometers and paintbrushes (what?) for a picture.



Click to enlarge and study this picture for 30 seconds then go to the comments and play along.

Meet My Brother

My little brother, sorry, younger brother is the taller of the two, about 6' 7" and today is his birthday. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of him when we got together earlier this month to show him off properly. He is heavily involved in a church-based youth soccer league and loves it, he really likes working with the kids and seeing their skills improve.

Many years ago he married a woman who shares my first name so her married name is the same as my maiden name. I like my sister-in-law so it's OK, but you can imagine the confusion it causes. Like the time my dad never called me to tell me my Grandma was ill. Mom: Did you call Anne? Dad: Yes. Actually she had gotten sick in October and at Thanksgiving I was told "...we won't be going to the beach at Christmas if Grandmother doesn't get better..." Huh? What are you talking about? Boy, was I mad.

Anyway, this is not supposed to be about my parents, it's to wish Happy Birthday, Little Brother! I love you, have a good day.

I'm mourning the loss of Target for a source of clothing for my 14 year old son. He keeps growing and is now about 5'8" (taller'n me!) so he'd wear a size 18 or 30" inseam pants. Except he's the approximate diameter Nicole Richie, so his waist would be about a double slim or 26 inches. The boys' section in Target goes to size 16 and the men's department starts at 28x30.

JC Penny's has sizes 18 and 20 in boys with slim and adjustable waists so I just have to adjust my thinking and put Penny's on my radar. But they are not convenient to get to. Argh. What do you do when a source for something dries up?

Kitchen Renovation Week 5

It's getting there. The painters will come in next week. You can see the seams on the back splash tile and they are wider than I'd like in places. And I selected off-white grout, so, of course, the mismatched seams stand out. Argh. I'm going to try to live with it for a while and go with my back-up plan if I can't stand it. That would be to grout over the existing "Silk" with "Cinnamon," a color that is closer to the tile color. Then the seams should nearly vanish. Why I didn't think of that after I saw the seams is killing me.



For the most part my husband has left all the decisions to me, which is usually fine. The other day Husband and I were at Target and I picked out and bought two stools for the counter while he was off window shopping with the kids. The stools match pretty well with the cabinets. Modest, nothing crazy (lower right in photo). Yesterday, he and I were in the Target close to the office at lunch to buy pants for our ever-growing son—another story entirely. He sees these (in a dark red): and wonders why we couldn't have had these instead. Sheesh. I say the ones I bought still have the tags on them, we can exchange them. No, that's alright. Criminey, I like these, but didn't pick them because I thought the others went better and were less expensive, but if you like them, then why not? You just can't win.

First Day of School

I'm back to an almost normal schedule now. I can leave for work as soon as my son is on the bus. He's been sleeping later and later all summer, and sometimes staying up until 4:45. Yes, in the morning.

This morning he came down at about 10 till 8 and made himself chocolate milk while I scrambled up one and a half eggs. (I take one of the yolks out.) Yesterday I bought two new bar stools for the new kitchen counter, at which he sat and ate his breakfast. Then he went out and set up the folding chair and waited for the bus, scheduled to come at 8:15, but came at 8:25. Not bad for the first day.

Daughter got picked up at 7:45 for school. She's carpooling with two neighborhood boys for an early class before school officially starts at 9:30. There was a change in scheduling this year, which necessitated the odd time for her and the rest of the kids taking band or chorus and Spanish I. If you're confused, just think about how us moms are, only some of us got called by guidance, others of us called them ourselves. Oh, didn't I call you with the start time information?

I fell asleep last night stressing about how much homework the girl will be getting. Last year there were two sections of honors kids. One got a lot of homework, the other got off easy. Fern's class was on the easy side. Her gaggle of friends got split up into the two classes this year, so I'm hoping she'll win the homework lottery again and get off easy. I hate homework, it stresses our family out too much when there's a lot to be done. And there's not that much time in the evenings since she doesn't get home until close to 5:00 and I'd love for her to have time for fun things and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

sheesh.

Another shot from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; it reminded me of my husband's blog photo.