Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Successfully lived through the bbq-pool party this weekend with a lot of help from friends. We’re very lucky to have some serious corn shuckers amongst us. And cleaners. I’m not ready to do it again soon, but our friends rock. Oh, the party was great too, but my favorite memory from the weekend will be going downstairs to clean Sunday and finding out that two somebodies already did the bulk of it. There’s still some minor stuff to do, a few more runs of the dishwasher and putting stuff where it belongs, that kind of thing… but we have the most awesome friends ever. Thank you to everyone who helped and attended and was generally awesome.

This did not mean I wasn’t a total zombie yesterday. (I wasn’t the only one!) See… we were having so much fun Saturday that I didn’t want the day to end or to go to bed, despite being dead on my feet by 1 a.m. I procrastinated until almost 4 a.m. I hit the pillow around 3:50 and was asleep by 3:52. Sunday involved zombie-ing, new sneakers, awesome antique cars, lunch at a new place and friends offering to help clean because they’re still awesome the day after.

I’m mostly recovered today. Sleepy but not a zombie today… which is good because work was crazy today.

No more wild parties for a while… but Saturday was wicked fun. Thank you to everyone who came by and especially to everyone who helped with prep and/or clean up!

weekend

It’s so warm this lily may burst into flame! We still have less than ideal AC to the bedroom, but the house is otherwise cool, thankfully. I would still prefer to have some cooler days though… I’d rather have windows open than be running the AC. The house feels so comfy with the windows wide open.

My morning has already had a crisis… the k-cup machine didn’t want to work. I have coffee now, thankfully, but it was touch and go for a little over an hour. Every once in a while the water system fails to produce water. Usually turning it off and turning it back on has worked, but this time it wanted a rest before it decided it was ok to actually function.

As a result of this trauma, I’m now on my second cup of coffee. With whole milk. Yum. I’m so decadent.

In completely random science news, it’s been a year on Neptune since Neptune was discovered as a planet. Neptune was discovered in 1846.

coffee, heat, neptune, random, summer, weather

I have a ton of open tabs that I think are cool and worth sharing and they’re starting to take over my browser.

Clearly, it is time to share.

Atlantis Spotting! Researchers think they may have found the lost city of Atlantis, under the mud in Spain.

Restoring A Beetle Dress A huge restoration project for a unique, 1888 theater piece. Beetle wings were used to glitz up the costume. I want to see pictures of this dress under period lighting conditions because it must have been marvelous.

2GB Lego Man! He’s cute, he’s perky, his hands can hold a Lego light saber (not included) and his guts will hold 2GB of data!

Radiation Chart An excellent reference chart from the creator of XKCD. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yakuza helping Earthquake Victims I’ve seen similar stories about the organized crime groups helping out via various news outlets, which makes me hope this true. Initially it sounded like the plot for a feel-good movie.

Knut has Died If you missed it over the weekend, the adorable polar bear at the Berlin Zoo died. Preliminary necropsy reports show possible brain changes and damage that could have caused his sudden death. He was rejected by his mother at birth and was hand-raised by a zookeeper. Baby polar bear nutrition is rather like rocket science and there have been very few success stories.

IBM Watson vs Wolfram|Alpha This is an excellent exploration of 2 approaches to supercomputer answer-finding. Like everything I’ve read on Wolfram|Alpha, this article is long, pithy and incredibly geeky.

Pepsi Throwback made permanent In less consequential news, Pepsi Throwback, aka Pepsi made with sugar instead of corn syrup, has been given a permanent spot in the manufacturing line.

Oh, I also have the first daffodil spotting in my garden…

random, links

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Two little green poppets ventured into the garden today for a quick look at the crocus. Some of the daffodils have started to show buds too. I’ve opened a window to let in some fresh air which pleases the cats.

I’ve also replenished my supply of Zyrtec, so bring it on, Spring!

Tomorrow we’re supposed to see temperatures in the low 70s. And it’s still March. Weird. Luckily it drops right back down to 50 on Saturday. It’s not summer yet!

With apologies to my mother in Maine who probably still has snow drifts…

crocus, gardening, green, photography, poppets, st patrick’s day

My Winter is apparently a series of photographs of my car under snow. We got 4 or 5 inches of snow last night which I find delightful. There’s just enough to make the world bright and shiny for a day or two before the warmer weather melts it off again. Spring is definitely coming but Winter isn’t through fighting yet. Before the snow, I had bulbs starting to come up. I’ve been assured that they’ll be fine with a little snow on them, which makes sense, but they do make me start looking forward to Spring and seeing the results of the planting I did in the Fall.

In random photography news, I’m considering getting an Eye-Fi card for my camera. (These are cards with built in wireless networking that can send image files directly to your computer via your wireless network.) They’ve come down significantly in price and, ultimately, yes, I am lazy. My biggest concern is that I will be constantly reconnecting it to the network or that it will be finicky about when it does or does not connect. Have any of you used an Eye-Fi card extensively? In the meantime, I have a practically-new-but-old Polaroid SX-70 to play with, thanks to a visit with Lisa this weekend.

A mere hour and forty-five minutes later than the top picture, the sun is doing an excellent job of clearing the snow off my car for me. It’s still below freezing outside, but we always get amazing afternoon sun on the front of the house. If only my car would stay that shiny and clean-looking.

Speaking of weekends, I had a great weekend visiting with Lisa in NY. There’s something fabulous about looking at killer traffic and saying, “Well, handily we’re not in a hurry and it’s not like we’ll get bored talking as we inch through the construction zone.” There was shopping, eating, closet-cleaning and general conversational glee.

See, truth in titling: this was a post of little content.

gardening, photography, snow, travel, weekend

I had a fabulous birthday yesterday! I baked sourdough bread and brownies, bought lots of Girl Scout cookies and hosted fondue happiness for some awesome friends. On top of that, there are now so many balloons in the house that I’m rather giddy. I love balloons! The mini-cats are wary of the balloons. I think Abby is designing zeppelins while Tasha is trying to figure out how to climb them. So far, no balloon has come to a premature end at the hands… er… paws and claws of the mini-cats, but that may change soon.

This morning I had heavy cream in my coffee, a perk of hosting fondue and having leftover cream from the chocolate course. We had lots of other leftovers too but I’m getting a better eye for how much food we need the more we do this. Shucks, we’ll just have to do more so I can perfect the portion planning.

Since January was such a whirlwind, I’m starting my new year with my birthday. I have a few plans for this year, though they’re more goals than resolutions. Resolutions are so easy to fail at and have a bad reputation for being unachievable anyway. Goals are much more reasonable and you get a sense of accomplishment even if you don’t make the full goal. At least, that’s how I look at it.

• Use the 100 stamps I bought, preferably for personal correspondence.
• Cook something out of each of my cookbooks with an eye towards streamlining the collection.
• Get ComicPress up and running finally.
• Sew up some of the fabric lurking in the fabric closet.
• Write more.

By the by, if you’d like to help me with my first goal, you should make sure I have your mailing address.

baking, birthday, cats, cooking, goals

It’s been a crazy busy month! Here it is, almost my birthday, and I feel like New Year’s was last weekend. Work has been busy, life has been busy, and I’ve been slacking off on exercise so I’d much prefer to pretend that a month hasn’t passed since last I was at the gym.

This week has been wonderful for snow. The top photo is of my Mini Clubman Wednesday morning. We got a bunch of wet, sticky, heavy snow, maybe 3-4 inches total. I dutifully shoveled the walks for myself and our fabulous neighbors before it got even wetter with rain and then froze solid. Then last night, the snow started again. The bottom photo is of the Clubman this morning. Notice that it’s flipped around? That’s because I cleaned it off to go out yesterday afternoon. And then it got subsumed by the snow again. We got another 7-8 inches over night. This morning, our fabulous neighbor used his snow blower to clear most of our walkways because he is the best neighbor ever. I do enjoy shoveling (except when the plows push the snowbanks back onto the sidewalks) but I’m just as happy to let the machines do it.

Last week was a whirlwind of all-day meetings, driving, more driving and an SCA event up north. I still need to post the photos, but the videos I took of the finals for King’s & Queen’s Rapier are here. I’m impressed with the quality of the video from the new camera… now I just need to get the focus right. The Fop is the King’s Rapier Champion again. Hurray for him! His schedule just got more exciting.

There’s also been black tea gelato and cardamom gelato, a haircut that took 5 inches off my hair (not that anyone could tell), a crazy road trip with Tadcaster rife with silliness, 2 rather impressive bruises and a spectacular fall caused by a cat toy. Ice is nice.

All in all, a whirlwind month!
fencing, rapier champions, sca, snow, work

I’ve had MLK’s birthday off at some companies and had to work the day at others. Today, I kind of have it both ways. I’m off to Virginia later so that I can be there for 2 days of meetings starting at 9 tomorrow morning. I’ll probably spend the evening slogging through email in an attempt not to fall too far behind whilst in meetings.

Oh the topic of Dr. King… Once upon a time in the 90s, and very briefly (8-9 years), New Hampshire celebrated Civil Rights Day. I liked it. It spoke to me in a different way than MLK’s birthday, gave me a fuller picture, and provided a richer, more detailed picture of the Civil Rights movement. Dr. King still featured heavily but he shared the spotlight. Memorial Day, originally Decoration Day, originally existed to commemorate the soldiers who died in the Civil War but was expanded after World War I to include all wars. Personally, I’m hoping Martin Luther King, Jr. Day can be expanded in time or perhaps we’ll add another holiday entirely. (4 day weekend anyone?)

Speaking of 4 day weekends, technically I had Lee-Jackson Day off on Friday too. This is a holiday in Virginia that our whole company gets the day off for. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were both January babies too. Amusing fact: for 16 years, VA celebrated Lee-Jackson-King Day. In 2000, the governor split off the Confederate generals and gave them their own day once again.

holidays, lee-jackson day, martin luther king day, mlk, random

2010 was good, bad and ugly, depending on the moment. I think this about par for the course. I took 5,785 photographs, mostly of cats, but also including snow, flowers and medieval events. This is actually down by over 1000 shots from 2009 but up over 300 about 2008. I actually picked 12 photos, one from each month, to represent the year. By the by, it’s hard to pick just one per month. It’s also hard not to put in the photos of the various damage the house suffered this year. (That would be the ugly: hail and plaster giving in to gravity.)

Unsurprisingly, I take a lot of photos of cats. Occupational hazard, I guess.

I’m not sure my photography saw any significant improvement this year. I took lots of shots but didn’t really work on my technique. I did take more shots of people this year and spent more time thinking about composition in those photos but I really only did that on two occasions so I’m not sure it counts as real work, despite the 1500+ shots from those two occasions.

However, the future looks rather promising.

In exciting photographic news, I got a new camera for Christmas from the fabulous Fop! (A Canon Rebel T2i.) And there was also an Epiphanie Bag. (Ginger in black with BRIGHT PINK lining!) This means the camera will probably hang out with me more often. And there will be more photography-oriented adventures this year too. I haven’t been to see the polar bears in ages.

2010, photographs, random

Many packages of holiday alchemy have been mailed and delivered. A few more await delivery. Goodies are packed to go to NH and Maine as well. 22+ pounds of butter gave their lives for this year’s baking. 18 batches of caramel corn came out of the kitchen. (Keeping in mind that each batch bakes for an hour, I think I’m done with caramel corn for a while.) The coffee machine, who has been dubbed Massimo, was my constant partner in baking and the Fop helped too. The cats were not so much with the helping.

The best part is that all this baking gets me out of wrapping gifts – the Fop gets to manage the paper, tape and such. This works well because I suck at wrapping and he claims to suck at baking. (Though I’ll have you all know that the Russian teacakes he scooped did NOT burst into flames or otherwise end the world.)

In tree news, I found 2 ornaments on the floor this morning. The cats showed incredible restraint for many days. I’m actually impressed. I also achieved the right magical relative height for the tree-watering thingie to work its siphoning magic. Which is great until the 2 liter soda bottle that supplies the water is about 2/3s empty and the cats knock it over. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the mini-cats knocking it over, probably Abby…

The remaining to-do list for between now and leaving for New England Thursday morning:
- Laundry (UGH!)
- Spice rub experiment
- Wrap gifts I can’t let the Fop wrap
- More laundry (double ugh!)
- Pack
- Sleeeeeeeeeeeeep
- Ponder writing holiday cards

I’m procrastinating cleaning my desk. Is anyone surprised?

baking, cats, holiday alchemy, random, to do, trees