Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

• Most creative tribute to George Carlin today at Indexed.
• King Arthur Flour has an awesome baking blog. Complete with step-by-step photos for the tricky (and non-tricky) bits. I can feel like I’m baking even if I’m too hot or too busy to actually do it! Seriously, it’s an awesome blog. Late summer there will be baking motivation!
• Here’s some random Neil Gaiman. Just because.
• I have a large amount of basil growing fiercely in my raised beds. I have a Fop who likes hazelnuts. Has anyone ever tried hazelnut pesto? I see a couple of different recipes floating around the web. (And if anyone in the area wants some fresh basil, let me know!)

tags: baking, basil, gardening, george carlin, indexed, king arthur floure, neil gaiman, photographs, tributes

So, I have mentioned to several people that my rose bush exploded with flowers this spring. Here’s some evidence. Now, a week after this photo was taken, it’s looking a little calmer, but this rosebush bloomed through October last year so it’s just a matter of time before its second round of buds show up.

It’s gray again today but the tornado watch is over. It comes as no surprise that no tornadoes whisked through the neighborhood. Some impressive thunderstorms blew through though!

I’m on my second big cup of coffee for the day in hopes that will wake me up a little more. Right now I’d be content to go take a nap.

tags: coffee, gardening, gray day, roses, weather

Another favorite quilt from the quilt show last month - this one is titled “Persephone” and was quilted by Peg Collins of Alamosa, Colorado. (Sometimes I did successfully get the info card in the photo!) I love that the edge of her gown is the edge of the quilt. The division between winter and summer is perhaps predictable but beautiful all the same. Persephone seemed an appropriate quilt to post for May Day.

More garden work is planned for today after work, which also seems appropriate. I want to get those beds prepped for planting before I go away next week. (I fly out Sunday, actually.)

No cat casualties yet today but Tennyson is definitely pushing it.

Coffee was applied early and will be applied often today. I didn’t sleep well and needed my brain to be awake for my 9 a.m. meeting. And my 9:30 meeting. Whee! All went well and productively so the coffee must have worked. But how long will it last?

tags: chicago, coffee, gardening, international quilt show, may day, persephone, quilts, sleep

The flights to South Carolina Saturday were easy and uneventful. We had to call the owner of the house to find out where the wireless router and cable modem are located because the network wasn’t working. (The prospect of a week without internet was actually kind of scary-sad…) After standing rather precariously on a chair to power cycle the network equipment, all was well with the world. We had lunch at Fudruckers and dinner at Lonestar because they’re easy and reliable and required absolutely no decision making of our tired brains. There’s nothing worse than having to actually read a menu when you’re foolishly tired from travel…

Sunday we walked down to the beach where there were many dead cannonball jellyfish. (There are photos, they’re just still on the camera. We figured out what type they are but we’re still not sure why they’re dead. Perhaps they were having a jellyfish party and didn’t notice that it was time for the tide go out. And some of them might not be quite dead yet as they were closer to the water.)

The weather is gorgeous despite the dead invertebrates. We had lunch at my favorite pizza place down here (yum), learned about kayaking tours (which I now want to do at least one of) and bought sandals, hung around and did very little, etc. I’ve been assured by a very nice man at the Outside store that I an unlikely to flip the kayaks they provide. Eventually we went out and had dinner at Frankie… er.. something. Frankie Bones! Divine steak (which I fully plan to try to reproduce myself), a string of tasty drinks and smores for dessert. That’s right, smores. They let me play with fire at the table. It was awesome.

Today, there are no plans yet… I could quite happily sit around and read or write or nap or go to the beach again.

tags: beach, food, frankie bones, jellyfish,, outside, pizza, smores, steak, travel, vacation

It’s the day of green, hurray!

I have doubled my coffee consumption this month so far… which isn’t horrifying. I don’t drink that much coffee (at least when I’m not traveling) but doubling is still doubling. I got a couple things done that I really wanted to get done at work today so that was more than a small comfort for a Monday. I still can’t wait for this month to be over. I’d like to be less fried.

Weekendness happened and was lovely. I toddled over to a St. Patrick’s day party on Saturday and had fabulous potato soup created by the lovely ownedbytwins. And cake balls, which are tasty little bite-sized balls of cake mixed with frosting - these happened to be decorated somewhat suggestively as well. And adorable little children and great company. Oh, and Pampered Chefness, because I might as well admit that I’m a bit of an addict.

Sunday was totally thrown off by the fact that the Fop got stuck in New Orleans the night before. Suddenly all of my keen plans for Sunday were less interesting because I wouldn’t be picking him up until 4 pm. Ah well. It was a good weekend for tidying and general organization tasks at least. The laundry was all done in for the briefest of moments (and narrowest of definitions). My desk is down to two and a half piles. I actually did Monster Cat last night instead of at lunch or after work today.

Today I booked my (free!) plane tickets for Chicago (Bernina event in April) and made sure I had the hotel room for an additional night so I could stay an extra day for sight-seeing. I’ve never been to Chicago! This evening involved dinner out with friends as well - always a good thing.

So a lot of little things got done that made me feel like I’m neglecting my personal life a little less in the face of Too Much Work[tm]. This is a relief since towards the end of last week I thought I was going to be chained to my work laptop forever. It’s a ThinkPad, so that’s not a very appealing thought… maybe if it were a new MacBook Pro I wouldn’t feel the pain so acutely… Um… no, forget I said that.

tags: coffee, getting things done, green, house, socializing, soup, st. patrick’s day, stress, travel, work

I think I will blame my fuzzy brain on both the “Spring ahead” beginning of Daylight Savings time and the fact that I was up at 5:30 EDT this morning to run the Fop to the airport. At least it was quick. And cold - it’s still chilly and windy here today. My pajamas were still warm when I got home and put them on to go back to sleep. I then proceeded to sleep until almost 2 pm. The house was so beautifully peacefully this morning that apparently I couldn’t help myself.

I have successfully gone grocery shopping today and picked up some seeds to get started out on the sun porch. I need to make a list for transplanting so that I can get supplies for starting seeds and making the houseplants happy. I still need to find some hot pepper seeds too. I did find more seeds for cat grass so the cats will benefit from my planting glee as well. Monster Cat is a lawnmower. Tenny’s taste for greenery is one of the reasons the doors to the sun porch remain closed. Other reasons include the leaky windows and the intense heat when the sun is hitting those windows.

Yeah, I had such high hopes for today’s productivity levels but I have been thwarted.

However, all is not lost! I have been randomly wandering the web for my amusement and yours!

Today I have learned that coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet. So, while that cute little girl in the commercial puts her glasses of grape juice in front of her closet to protect her from monsters (”My antioxidants will protect me, Daddy.”), I’ll be brewing up a big french press full of coffee to keep the boogie man at bay. Well, if he’s nice maybe I’ll offer him some coffee too.

I also found a neat new idea for a flash diffuser on the cheap. I’ve been using a 3×5 card to bounce the flash up lately. The only thing I’m worried about with the film container idea linked above is heat. If taking a lot of photos in quick succession, it might get a little warm in there. But I like the effect shown in the examples - subjects are still brightly lit without the obvious glare of a compact flash. For my next trick I’ll find a white film container to try it out with.

Monster Hoodies… cute, toothy, googly-eyed sweatshirts.

A presidential candidate I could get behind… (and lots of cute Mac-head t-shirts are over there too…)

tags: antioxidants, coffee, daylight savings time, flash diffuser, indoor gardening, photography, random, sleep, weather

The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee has new itty bitty kitties!!! This is the purest cuteness on the web.

Monster Cat has been participating in a lot of conference calls lately. If only we could get my cat and my boss’ dog on the payroll. They have broken the ice at critical times in meetings.

XKCD has my favorite Gary Gygax tribute.

King Arthur Flour has their own blog of fun baking stuff.

Friday night conversation… I’m taking The Fop to the airport Sunday morning for a 7:45 a.m. flight.
Me: You fucker.
The Fop: What did I do now?
Me: Guess what Saturday is.
The Fop: Uh… what?
Me: Spring ahead. You fucker.

Yes, that means that when we get up at 5:30 to leave at 6 our bodies will be thinking it’s really 4:30 a.m. It’s not his fault really, but it made me feel better. But the thought of delivering him to the airport in my pjs and getting back into bed when I get home sounds better and better.

tags: comics, daylight savings time, links, random, silly, travel

More moon photos! I cropped the first one and played a bit with the color for fun. The second is cropped to show off the various other objects visible around the moon during the eclipse. I love how the light changed as the eclipse progressed and regressed. Just amazing really. I’m also still incredibly happy that I was inspired to find my tripod… (I blame Mike.) More cool night photos may happen now.

The green reflection in some of the photos? It was caused by my UV filter. It didn’t occur to me to take it off. Apparently this is a common side-effect of leaving on the UV filter when taking photographs of points of light. The earlier photos didn’t have as intense a light source as the last bunch I took of the moon emerging out of the eclipse. I admit it, I’m lame and use my UV filter primarily as a protective shield for my lens.

Oh, Very Happy Friday to all of you! Buon Weekend! Hurray! I think I may have lost Thursday this week but I’m not sure. Hopefully it won’t reappear in the future to make another week longer… that is unless it picks a week I’m on vacation.

I did survive the week though and for that I thank my lucky stars. And my unlucky ones too because they weren’t too horrible this week. I did make the big french press of coffee this morning instead of the little single-serve press but I think it was a good decision. I *know* that it was good coffee. I felt vaguely on top of things when I shut down the work laptop this evening. Monster Cat was later rather than earlier (in the day that is) most of the week but I have some ideas that I want to play with this weekend so that next week’s Monster Cat episodes are posted first thing in the morning instead of at lunch.

Most importantly, at least to me, is that it snowed today. We got about 2 inches of accumulation then a bunch of misty wet in the afternoon. We might get a little more snow overnight and tomorrow but the radar isn’t promising. Still, it was fun to shovel the walks this afternoon and the world is a better place when it’s covered with snow.

More than anything I want more free time… specifically free time when I’m not already mentally spent and exhausted. Seriously.

tags: lunar eclipse, moon, photographs, photography

This older photo of Tenny really sums up what I feel like at the end of the week lately.

My week was long and rather bothersome at times as you might have guessed from my lack of posts or commentary on Monster Cat. The trip to New London was productive but kind of intense. One of the teams I work with clued in to some important stuff and wanted to absorb it all at once… always fun. Wednesday, I got to clean snow off my rental car! Okay, it was kind of icy and more like accumulated freezing rain, but I think of it fondly as snow. That same day, I attempted to fly home on a mid-afternoon flight and ended up hanging out in the airport until that night. Why? Because Philadelphia still can’t handle landing planes in the rain. We had our plane at the gate in Providence but Philly kept us on a ground hold until 8 pm. I did eventually get home, and only 5 hours later than expected, so I guess that’s not horrible just bothersome. I think I was in bed less than 45 minutes after I got home. Happy, warm, snuggly blankets improved my day immensely.

Thursday was, of course, V-day. I am so lucky I planned ahead this year on the whole gift thing because I’ve had so little sane time the past couple weeks. I had a call run past 5 pm which made us late for our dinner reservation but luckily it didn’t matter. Dinner was fabulous. The rub on my steak included coffee beans - a subtle addition yet delicious. I foolishly ordered hazelnut chocolate cake for dessert. I say foolishly because the slice that came out was bigger than my head. We took home 3 meals worth of left-overs and I am stretching the cake 4 meals or so.

Friday was another day of crazy work. I feel like I’m going to need Monday to catch up on stuff I was too frantic to address yesterday.

Today is much more relaxed. I woke up earlier than I wanted to and gave up on going back to sleep. I cleaned my desk before lunchtime though I’m still contemplating how I can rearrange things better. I’ve got some throws in the washer - I bought them to turn into curtains… if I can get them to smell like something other than diesel that is. The dishwasher is running, a round of trash has gone out, and I’m getting a handle on the paper recycling in my office. I like visible progress. And I like being able to slow down and take the time to breathe.

tags: airports, busy, home, rain, snow, travel, weather, work

There was almost a tragedy in my house this morning. I had barely enough water in the tea kettle to make coffee. As you might have guessed, coffee is Serious Business in my world.

But you see, I couldn’t refill the kettle this morning.

Why? Because there was no water in the tap or the fridge water dispenser.

Annoying, right? Yes. The Fop had to turn off the water to the entire house in the wee, wheeeeeee hours of the morning.

Why? What horribleness could cause this? Oh, because we couldn’t figure out how to cut water to just the hot water heater.

Goodness! Why would we want to do such a thing??? Probably because the hot water heater was spewing water at a quick pace out of itself and onto the floor of the basement. (Thank goodness for sump pumps!)

I can’t wait to find out why the hot water heater decided to explode sometime before 5 a.m. I am quite the zombie today.

But my coffee tastes wonderful this morning.

tags: coffee, hot water heater, house, water