Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

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

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

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

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

It’s a weekend for holiday cooking which has distracted me from the disgusting weather. The volume of popcorn I made yesterday far surpasses the volume of snow our area has received this year. I made a LOT of caramel corn - 6 batches. I also made cookie dough to bake up today. I’ve got 2 other kinds of cookies on the list to bake too. I’m beginning to think I might be a little insane. Well, I certainly was yesterday as I bopped around my kitchen. I’m a desk-worker though, and as such not accustomed to bopping around my kitchen all day and all night. Last night when I finally stopped and hung out on the couch, my legs, feet and back started to remind me of that. This morning, Advil is my friend. As soon as the coffee kicks in, I’ll be firing up the oven and KitchenAid. … Oh and clean up more of the popcorn bits that are now everywhere in the kitchen and dining room.

Hmm… I think I should just go have more coffee.

tags: coffee, cooking, popcorn, weather

After a week of Starbucks coffee, I love to come home to my own tasty coffee… Freshly ground Armeno beans, french pressed brew, a cup with whole milk instead of my usual low-fat milk because I used up my milk on my cereal. It is bliss. This is not to say that Starbucks coffee sucks… I do enjoy it. But mine is much, much better. And cheaper. And easily acquired without needing to get dressed or leaving the house. Which is good since it has finally turned into a comfortably cool fall out here and running to Starbucks in my pjs would be chilly.

Another bit of Fall for you all… The farm stand Jon took us to had something called The Observatory. It was a raised deck about 15 feet off the ground that you could climb up and take in the scene. It may not sound like much, but it got us off the ground just far enough to take in the full, breath-taking views of the valley and mountains and fall colors. We went up there first, before the sun came out, so the foliage colors are even more intense in the photos. Gray days really are the best for fall colors.

My kitchen is littered with junk food, much of which I hope the Fop will be taking on his road trip to Crown this weekend.

I started writing for Nanowrimo this morning. I broke one of the usual recommendations. Usually it’s recommended that one not build on a previous short story or world because the writer will end up being too careful and too invested in the content to push out the 50,000 words as slap-dash as necessary. I’m hoping to avoid this problem through the sheer desire to get this world built and some actual plot into the world. I started to sketch an outline for some scene progressions yesterday as well as started to evolve the world around the events of the short story. I got down 732 words this morning before work and I have some time planned later today for writing. I can’t count the short story as part of my word count, which is fine, but I’ve incorporated part of what I wanted to add to the end of the short story from last set of editing notes.

Yes, I got up this morning and was awake enough to write. I got productive things done before 9 a.m. I know that this comes as a shock to those of you who have known me for a long time. Hey, I figure if this stupid allergy medicine is going to make me not get enough sleep, I should take advantage of the extra time!

tags: allergies, autumn, coffee, fall, foliage, nanowrimo, new hampshire, sleep, travel, weather

The impending chaos of my day determines which size french press I use for my coffee and whether or not I wait (and putter) in the kitchen for it to brew or if I carry it upstairs to my office. Two mornings in a row I’ve brought it upstairs. This morning I bumped up to the larger french press.

So it’s been a busy week already. I’ve got a fully populated to-do list and a bunch of new projects to support. I’m certainly not bored! (Okay, the meeting I’m in right this moment is kind of dull.)

This photo is from a farm stand in Concord, NH we went to with my brother on Saturday. Apples just taste better from a farm stand… as do pumpkin whoopie pies! The world needs more farm stands!

In other news… Itty Bitty Kitty Committee will consume your soul with cuteness and adorableness. You have been warned.

Stretching in your chair is good for the soul. Making strange noises while stretching in your chair gets you looks from your cat.

tags: autumn, cat links, cats, coffee, fall, farm stand, links, photographs, photography, pumpkins, work

The dogwoods have been blooming a while now. This is from the tree in my backyard. I suspect the snow from the nor’easter damaged most of the blossoms. All the trees seem to have petals tipped with a bit of brown. I love dogwoods - they have such a simple, uncrowded elegance to their blossoms.

Breakfast came late this morning due to the boys. The Fop needed a ride to the train station first thing this morning which meant making sure he got up and out the door with minimal fuss then taking him in to 30th Street Station. I originally intended to get up and have breakfast but opted to try to sleep a little more instead. Why? Because some cat was howling alllll night. As you can tell from his photo, he’s thrilled.

This whole morning would have been easier if Tennyson had let us sleep. He’s not a happy kitty. He had surgery on his foot to remove a toe yesterday. A growth that had been removed in December came back, so removal of the toe was the best option unfortunately. One foot is all bandaged up and he’s wearing an Elizabethan collar around his head. (Poor little conehead!) This makes for one very unhappy cat and he’s certainly not hesitant to let us know that. Overnight I was up at 3:30 and 6:30 to comfort the poor little thing since he was yowling rather loudly. He’s truly pathetic. He quieted down around 7 a.m. I got up at 8 to find him “resting” in the litter box. So sad yet so funny, especially since he’s so big he took up most of the box and had knocked the top lip askew. Apparently propping his head up on the edge was comfy so I made him a better bed out of a box in my office. (He’s currently on the floor outside the box propped up on it… he lounges like nobody’s business!)

From observing him today, I think the collar is the worst part. He’s tentative on his foot, but it doesn’t seem to be causing him too much pain. I got him to eat and drink a bit. He’s not enthusiastic about the stairs so I will probably end up setting up food and water upstairs for the week. We’ve already dumped 2 cups of water on my office rug. Once he’d had a little to drink he perked right up and demanded attention, hopped in and out of my lap and wandered about knocking things off my desk. He’s calmer today than yesterday as well. The vet’s office says he’ll figure out how to eat and drink and get used to the collar. I hope so because I feel so bad for giggling when he misjudges a corner and ends up coming to a sudden full-halt when the collar gets caught on something. I’m also worried that he’s not getting enough water.

Hopefully he’ll let me sleep tonight. I need to sleep off some of the intense guilt I’m feeling for … putting a photo of him in the collar on my blog… among other things.

tags: cat, dogwoods, elizabethan collar, flowers, mornings, silly, spring, surgery, tennyson