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A View From the Field |
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March, 2003
March 31 Well, the longest month is finally over. It even had five Sundays. I don't know what it is about March, but it always seems so much longer than any other 31-day month.
Besides, after our taste of spring on Friday, it has cooled down, and this morning there was a frosting of snow all over everything. It melted quickly, and the sun came out, but still...
They ended up with 27" of snow from Thursday through Saturday in Phoenix, which is close to the highest point in Keweenaw. There was an 8" or so drift on my deck, which has now sunk down to 6" at its deepest. After the snow came lots of sunshine, and I have one picture. There was a little cloud on the horizon last night, which made it really easy to see how far north the sun has moved. It's still going north at a great rate. You can also see the snow on the deck, and the ice on the harbor is all snow-covered.
By sunset tonight it had clouded up again, and they apparently had a few more flakes this afternoon. We are supposed to get something from the same system tonight, but it will probably be all or mostly rain.
Yuck. Just what I love most - cold rain.
Yesterday I buckled down and created a pot of pea soup. I always like to have some soup stashed away in the freezer. This batch turned out pretty good, so I kept out a quart and put four more away downstairs. I am down to one quart of bean soup, too, so I may get some more ham hocks and make some more. I've had a container of mixed beans around for quite a while now, and I may just use it up. I really like soup, and it's a shame that most prepared soups are so full of sodium.
On that subject, the new diuretic isn't working quite so well as I'd hoped it would - I'm used to lasix, which is quite violent. I don't think my feet are quite so swollen, but there is still quite a bit of fluid in them. Tomorrow I have my potassium checked, and when the doctor calls to report (or if he doesn't) I will tell him I don't think it's working well enough. Or maybe by that time it will have.
I really need to do something about the kitchen again. Unfortunately, I missed a freezer container and there is dried pea soup all over the stove, so it really needs some work. However, I have to get that blood work tomorrow, and besides, the cats need food, so how much time I will have is debatable.
I am slowly getting my hours under control, although when we go on daylight savings time, they will be all off again. I finally got up at 9:30 this morning when, after a telephone call, DC got up on the bed and started shouting at me. The privacy manager catches a lot of the telemarketing calls but not all of them, and I haven't been able to discipline myself enough to look at the caller ID and let the answering machine answer. I will have to work on that.
Otherwise, it's been pretty quiet around here...well, that's not true. Saturday afternoon and this morning the gardeners were around doing their spring cleanup with all their noisy machinery. I am not convinced that leaf blowers really do a better job of cleaning up the yard, the sound of their motors just appeals to the guys. I noticed that the gardeners were wearing earmuffs when they ran them. They should give me and the cats some, too.
So March is over, its 39 days and counting, and one of these days I'm going to have to start getting organized to go north. It's not that I haven't been thinking about it...
March 28 It's been another quiet week away from the field, and March is almost over. Again, no news is no news.
I got together as many of my mounted embroideries as I could (I misplaced one - oh, well!) and went to see Carey on Tuesday, because it was such a pretty day. I came back with a very small bag and a very big bill, but some of the designers are coming out with pretty things that have additions, like the one that has a neat little wall pocket with a band to put around it, and those are expensive. Oh, yes, and I ordered the frame for the latest angel, and came home with the mounting board, so now I have one more to do.
Yesterday I had a visit with my internist. My feet have been swelling so much that I have been hard pressed to wear any shoes at all, and I hoped he could come up with something to help that. So we're trying a new diuretic to see if it will work. Tuesday I will go back to get blood tests, to make sure it isn't leaching out all my potassium, or the potassium supplement he is giving me isn't too much
I waited as long as I have to talk to him about this because I really didn't want to start taking something else, but it gets terribly hard when I can't wear any shoes at all, or I have to stuff my feet into something that hurts.
I can't tell yet how the diuretic will work, because I was all off schedule today. Last evening my window washer called, and today I had my windows washed and the screens put on the doors. As a result of that, I took my pills late. We'll see tomorrow...and maybe tonight. I can always tell when I'm getting rid of the fluid, because I get up more than three times in the night...
Today was an absolutely gorgeous day here, even though it clouded up late in the day. The temperature was about 71º when the washers arrived at 11am, and it stayed there all day. There was a pretty strong southwest wind, but if felt wonderful. The first day I could go running outdoors without anything on...well, you know what I mean.
There are some very strong thunderstorms apparently on their way (although I haven't heard any thunder yet), and I guess it will cool off considerably over the weekend, but today was a real spring day.
Unfortunately, DC and Buster didn't enjoy it too well, because they don't like wind, and besides, they are getting worried. The snow is gone, and the temperature is going up, and that means that horrible car ride is coming up...not to mention a visit with their doctor. I don't know for sure if Buster realizes what is about to happen, but DC certainly does. He's been hanging around me and purring very loudly, as though by being really nice he can convince me to stay put. Ha!
The storm that is producing our incipient thunderstorms has clobbered Keweenaw with the blizzard of the season. It started snowing yesterday afternoon, and it was still coming down hard, with strong winds, at sunset tonight. There was lots of snow on the deck, and it is warm enough that the heavy snow was dragging down the pine branches, and a big chunk fell off the railing during the afternoon. I didn't save any pictures, because there is absolutely nothing to see...sometimes I can see the birch tree down by the shoreline, and sometimes I can't, and everything beyond that is solid white. The window is covered with water droplets and splashes of snow. Wow! What a pity this didn't happen a couple of months ago! John reported 10" this morning in Lake Linden, and it looks to me like there will be at least that much more before tomorrow. March seems to be going out like a lion at least there!
In the week since the equinox, sunset in Copper Harbor is now nearly half an hour later than it is here, and days there are getting longer at a great pace. Pretty soon, they will be an hour or more later than they are here. It never ceases to amaze me what a difference 5º of latitude can make in the times of sunrise and sunset. Of course, next weekend, we go on daylight savings time, and that will screw things up royally, especially my internal timers.
I'm sorry, but even after all these years, I still think daylight savings time is a stupid idea and should be abolished. If you want people to have more free time in the summer, well, just adjust their work hours. Don't change the entire clock time.
Okay, rant over. That's all the news in exile. Six weeks from today, God wiling, I will be safely ensconced in Copper Harbor. Of course, what I will be doing between now and then is another story...
March 22 Oh, my goodness! It's been a week since I wrote, another whole week is gone, and I haven't done a thing worth reporting.
I will apologize for the camera, which went down at about 6:45 Wednesday (I never got on the computer at all that day) and didn't come back up until after dark on Thursday. Apparently there was some kind of weird telephone problem Thursday. I had to power fail the computer three or four times before it would make and hold a connection long enough to upload a picture. Fortunately, the last good one it got was a beauty - the sun setting due west, just to the left of Brockway. I was so annoyed with it, I didn't even keep the picture.
The weather has been yucky, cloudy and rainy and sometimes foggy, both here and in Copper Harbor, but it's been warm enough that I have been able to put aside the down parka. All the snow is gone here. Most of it disappeared in about two days, it seemed. The temperatures have been in the 40s mostly, and it's just the dull, gray, soggy weather we usually have in March. There was a little sunshine both places, but not a lot.
Not that I did absolutely nothing. I got my tax stuff together for my accountant, I shopped for food (me-food, as compared to cat-food), and I cooked a little, although that was nearly a disaster. They had a really lovely package of pork spare ribs at the market, and I haven't had them for a while, so got them. Since I also bought lamb chops, I didn't do the ribs until Wednesday.
The plan was to start the ribs early, have a nice leisurely dinner and get to church in an orderly fashion. Well...just after I put the potatoes in the oven with the ribs, Shirley called from Copper Harbor, and since I haven't talked to her in ages, we had a nice long conversation...so long that I didn't start eating until 6:45. Fortunately, the ribs and potatoes both overcook just fine, but I scarfed down my dinner in a big hurry, put everything away, and ran off to church so fast I forgot my water bottle. Whew!
Shirley and Sully are both fine, although she is glad they have finally closed the motel until sometime in May. In the winter particularly, she and Cindy end up doing most of the work, and since Cindy spends a lot of time with her friend in Calumet in the winter, it ends up being just Shirley. She sounded very relieved not to have to worry about that for a while. I was sorry to hear that a couple of her kids have been ill, but I was glad to hear that she and Sully are fine. In fact, she sounded great, so it was worth hurrying my dinner to talk to her.
Thursday I saw my accountant, and since she is in West Bloomfield, that shot the afternoon. Driving across town, and especially north on Orchard Lake Road, reminded me again that there are entirely too many people around here. I left here at noon and got home about 4pm, so I didn't even see the rush hours, and both I-696 and Orchard Lake Road were solid bumper-to-bumper cars. What a zoo! At least the weather was good and there weren't any accidents, but I was glad to get home.
I was also glad to have a chance to do some driving. I think I've been driving long enough now that I don't need to practice, but I do like to get out on the freeway a couple of times before I head north on I-75. I'll get another chance on April 3, when I go up to Ann Arbor for my yearly visit there.
Sometime during the week, I spent a while trying to make sense of the humungous pile of magazines, catalogs and newspapers that has accumulated in the kitchen. I now have about five Kroger bags full of stuff to take out (I just didn't feel like it Thursday night), but there is still a big pile of stuff I am saving. There is also a large box of books in the middle of the floor, because I haven't had time to really look at them after I got them. If things continue as they are, I won't ever have time, and before I leave here, I will just haul them all down here to the basement and try to find a place to pile them up.
Needless to say, I didn't clean off the treadmill and I didn't work on mounting the needlework until today.
I guess I will visit Carey next week and just take what I have. I had a disastrous problem with three pieces which ran when I washed them, and another one had some brown spots on it when I started to mount it (oh, that's why it had been washed when its companion pieces hadn't! I wonder what got on it?). The spots came off, and now that I have some Oxi-Clean, I will work on the others. I know that's drastic, but two of the three pieces that ran will have to be done over if I can't get the stains out, so there is nothing lost if the Oxi-Clean destroys them. I'm not hopeful.
I did a little 7" x 11" piece this afternoon, and it took two hours to get it straight on the mounting board and laced on. The big ones, which I did first, took a lot longer to do. That is why Carey usually uses tape to mount things, and why, if she does lace, she charges an arm and a leg. But I'm picky, and I like my things laced. Besides, several of these are done on very thin linen, and since I am doing it myself, I have covered the board with a matching piece of cotton fabric before I mount the embroidery. That enhances the color of the fabric and makes it look much better, I think. However, it's labor-intensive work and pretty boring besides. I should have known better than to order the frames for so many pieces at once anyway. I have a vast reluctance to start putting holes in my lovely walls, so much so that I never got the birds hung last summer!
So that was my week, and it's now time to trundle off to bed (I've been spending a lot of time in bed but not sleeping very well - a function of the warmer temperatures and the change of seasons).
Another week is gone, and only 7 weeks left in exile.
March 16 I wasn't going to write tonight, because nothing of note happened, but then I saw the sunset picture from the livecam, and I just had to share. My goodness, how I wish I was there and had been able to take that picture with the Nikon! The temperature in Copper Harbor got into the 40s today and it was extremely foggy, but that spectacular picture was the result. You can see that there are puddles on the ice, but it must be frozen a foot or more deep by this time, so there is no open water yet.
It was warm here, too. The Weather Underground reported it was 61º, but I have to confess I didn't stick my head outside this afternoon to experience it. It was 52º when I got out of church, and that felt like midsummer. It was hot in church, too, especially in the choir loft, and it was so hot in my bedroom that I didn't sleep very well. We had some thick fog right after sunrise, but it dissipated by the time I got up.
I don't know if anybody has ever researched it, but I know that I get acclimated to whatever temperature I'm in (hot temperatures less so). It has been so cold for so long - after all, it was a cold fall in Keweenaw and it got really frigid right after I got here and never warmed up until now - that my body is quite used to it. And temperatures which would feel cold in September (and did) feel balmy now. I'm sure if I had gone out this afternoon and done anything, I would have worked up a real sweat in no time. I know I did while I was getting dressed for church.
Because I didn't sleep very well, I didn't do much today, and I will shortly trundle upstairs and probably sleep forever tomorrow morning. I just wanted to share the picture.
March 15 A funny thing happened on the way to writing a journal. Last evening, I came down and logged on with the vague idea of doing a journal, since it had been a week since the last one. When I opened the live cam, its last picture was at 9:49am. Since that usually means that the computer is hung, I called the computer phone line and got...nothing. There was a little ticking in the background, like you used to hear when a pulse dial was converted to rotary, but nothing else happened. That sounded like a line problem to me, so I called the other phone line into the house, Shirley, and the PastyNet dialin number, and got the same results...nothing. Now, that really sounded like a major line cut. Not for nothing was I the tech support person for a telecom-intensive application. Also, the PastyCam, John Dee's site, and the Eagle Harbor Cam had all stopped updating about the same time. There was a message on John's message board (he must have an out-of-area backup, because of his business) saying that apparently the phone lines were down.
I hauled myself upstairs and got the SBC repair number and called it to find out what was going on, but of course the person I got didn't know a thing. When he called the numbers, he got "try again later". Why I didn't, I don't know. After a little more fiddling around, he hung up to try to call the central office, which I think is in Houghton. Apparently he also called a few other people, because he said he couldn't get the central office either, but he said there had been a major fiber cut (duh!) and they were working on the repairs. So I canceled the idea of a journal.
Before I went to bed, I tried the computer line again, and it was up - at least the phone rang. I figured that Charlie at PastyNet would report on the gory details eventually. I was curious, because all the fiber is buried and the ground is frozen (down to 8', they're reporting). It turns out that a road repair crew around Michigamme cut the one and only fiber cable for the entire western Upper Peninsula. I suppose they can be excused, because any warning signs would be buried at this time of year, but really, they ought to be more careful. It would also be nice if there was more than one fiber cable to all that area. Remind me never to try to run a major network from up there.
I don't know enough about how the telephone network is put together to understand why, but the fiber cut also cut all local service in the western half of the 906 area code. Apparently SBC doesn't think that part of its area is important enough to configure its network so as to prevent the entire telephone system from going down.
I was concerned, because there are several thousand people living in Keweenaw in fairly isolated places, and some of them are old. What if somebody had had a heart attack or a stroke and needed EMS? Or somebody's house caught fire? Or, as actually happened some years ago, somebody living out in the bush started to have a baby and needed a snowmobile and an ambulance to get her out? I don't think the telephone companies are immune from lawsuits, and that would make an interesting one, if the parties involved had enough money. I never had any regard for Ameritech, and SBC seems no different.
Anyway, we are all up and updating today, so except to complain, the emergency is over. I am proud of the little camera feed I put together. It has performed very well this winter. Someone had written to me suggesting it would be fun to have a camera that had a tilt and pan mechanism so that I could change the view every so often. Well, I finally got a catalog with some cameras that will do that...and I'm sorry to say it will have to wait until I win the lottery. The cheapest one ran about $900, and the full-featured ones started at about $1200. With the stock market down the tubes, if I had that much money, it would be going to something like dining room or bedroom furniture. Remember. I'm still eating on a card table up there.
Anyway, that's about the extent of the excitement around here. The weather started the week cold, cold, cold, and it has slowly warmed up, until today it was around 50º (plus or minus 5º) both here and in Copper Harbor. It was sunny, but there was a lot of fog in the harbor.
Actually, when I woke up in the night on Thursday morning, I could tell it was snowing. When it snows around here, the clouds get a pinkish glow from all the lights. And low and behold, Thursday morning, there was 4" or so on the ground. It was kind of nice to have all the dirty stuff covered up, and it had rained earlier in the week, which didn't help. It's actually rather difficult around here now, because all the sidewalks, which have banks around them from being plowed, have turned into skating rinks or lakes, depending on the temperatures. I almost ran into somebody walking their dog on the way home from church Wednesday. There was no way she could walk it anyplace but in the street (which is actually illegal around here, but I doubt the police would give anybody a ticket with the sidewalks underwater).
I do have one picture to share. Sunset is about 15 minutes later than the last time I got a picture, and look where it's setting! It jumped Brockway in the couple of weeks since I last saved a picture. Daylight is just about the same length here and there, and it will be for another week or two, then Keweenaw days will get lots longer than Detroit's. I'm afraid that by the time I get there to reset the camera startup and shutdown times, we won't get to see either sunrise or sunset.
Oh, yes. One more bit of excitement. Early this morning when I awoke, I could hear some thumping and thudding going on downstairs that sounded peculiar to me, and this morning there was a dead mouse in the living room. The Black Mouser strikes again. While I wish he would dispatch them instead of playing with them, I really appreciate having an excellent mouser in the house. I know my mother had terrible problems with mice when she didn't have cats, and I can do without that. It comes from having the kitchen extension built over a crawl space. There just is no way to totally mouse-proof that area, And I'm afraid DC isn't up to mouse-catching any more, if he ever was. He sat on the end of the bed with his ears at full alert, but he didn't show any desire to go down and share the fun.
They tell me there isn't any way to keep the mice (and voles, too, probably) out of the house in Copper Harbor, so it is a real comfort to be sharing with a certified mouser, no matter what he does with them after he catches them.
This, by the way, was a field mouse, not a house mouse. It was brown with a white belly. We've had the other kind, too, but I think the super-mouse that I put out of the house one morning several years ago has taught them not to try to get in here. Now, if only we could send the same message to the field mice...
Oh, well. Fifty-five days...just under eight weeks!
March 8 Well! One reason I enjoy watching - and talking about - the weather is that you just never know what will happen next! It warmed up into the upper thirties here today, and along about the time the opera - La Boheme - ended, it began to get really dark, and the next thing I knew it was thundering. Buster said "meow!" like he didn't believe it either. Pretty soon it was black outside and pouring rain and thundering. The center of the storm passed south of me and out over the lake, but the rain was really heavy for a while. Now, at 8pm, the temperature has dropped into the upper 20s, and if anything is coming down, it sure won't be rain. It's supposed to clear up, however.
Rain at this time of year is always a problem, because the ground is frozen and any water either collects in the streets or just sits until it freezes and makes a real mess. I'd rather have snow.
I got to bed fairly early last night, but that didn't keep me from sleeping until almost 10am. So much for my plan to get back on the day shift. I will try it again tonight and see if maybe I can't make it to church tomorrow.
I don't know where DC was most of the night, but when the heat started to come up, he was behind his door as usual. He is such a creature of habit that I am always a little suspicious when he does something different, but there isn't anything wrong with him. As I was waking up, he came in to see me and noticed a little ball of yarn - left over from a crazy sock - on the floor, and the next thing I knew he was batting it all around the room, leaving a long tail behind. He felt good! I always thought cats responded to changes in the weather, but apparently not all the time.
So Buster came by to see what the thumping was about and sniffed at the ball as if to say "Is that all you're playing with?" Buster tries to act like a really cool cat, but DC and I both know he's not at all.
I was in the middle of mounting a picture when it thundered and Buster started rubbing his head against anything he could find, so I picked him up for a cuddle. DC doesn't cuddle, but Buster does. As a result, however, I ended up with a lot of black hairs on the picture. I cleaned up the front, but there are some on the back, too.
It appears, then that Buster is starting to shed, since he doesn't lose much fur at other times. I'd say it's a little early, but I suppose the shedding is determined by daylight more than temperature, just like the birds singing and the squirrels making nests. If that's the case, I will have to start some serious grooming, to keep the hairballs away. DC sheds all the time, but Buster doesn't.
It was cold (so what else is new?) in Copper Harbor today, just above zero, but the clouds rolled away around 2pm and it got sunny and clear. I guess it's supposed to get seriously cold again tonight, with a 10 to 20 mph wind. Not a good time to be outside.
Time to burrow under the quilts again.
Only nine weeks...
March 7 It's amazing how quiet things can get at this time of year. while it's been cold in Keweenaw - they've set low records all week - it hasn't been too bad around here. The great snowstorm ended up being a dud, just as I suspected: The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Only it didn't. We got about 3 inches. It was nice, because the snow already down was beginning to get really cruddy looking, and now it's all white again. In fact, it was little enough that the parking lot where Canton Express is located (which includes a CVS and a Blockbuster) wasn't even plowed.
The reason I know about that is that Wednesday afternoon, I finally got my WaterPik back. The hose cracked about the middle of last month, and it took the repair place a while to get the parts. Since I rely upon that thing to keep me from the dreaded gum disease that plagued my mother, I was anxious to get it back, and besides, I was beginning to get hungry for Chinese again.
The streets were dry by the time I got out, and the sun was shining, and as usual I misplaced my sunglasses (I found them yesterday on the floor - where else?). The parking lot wasn't bad to drive in, but walking was interesting, because it was still in the mid-20s and the snow was about the consistency of wet sand.
Anyway, I got enough Chinese food that I'm finishing it up tonight, and I discovered that egg rolls don't warm up very well, but the rest of the stuff does. Yum. What I like about it is that you can eat and eat and eat and you don't feel totally overstuffed.
Since I had to do trash yesterday, I took the opportunity to make a little sense out of the total disaster in my bedroom and dig out all the old kleenex that had fallen behind the bed. I like a kleenex near at hand because my nose does run during the night, but it seems that every time I stuff one under my pillow, it ends up on the floor behind the bed. There was some other stuff there, too, and plenty of dust bunnies.
Today I got all the clothes upstairs, except what's in the basement to be washed, and sorted things out, and as I think I've said before, I have far more clothes than I could possibly need, and I certainly brought home enough that I shouldn't have to wash more than once or twice more before I go north. The only critical item is jeans, so I will have to wash them soon. Then will come the decision of what to take back with me.
There is also the little item of the corduroy jumper, for which I found a bill the other day. I seem to vaguely recall such an item, but it doesn't seem to be in my closet, so now I'm wondering whatever happened to it. Unless it never got shortened and is hanging in the sewing room...really strange. There are also two short-sleeved dresses which need about 6" cut off them. Working on spring or summer clothes isn't what I am really interested in at this time of year, but I know last year, I wanted to wear one of the dresses and couldn't.
I know that there are women who are wearing ankle-length or low-calf-length skirts these days, but I've only seen about two people who can really carry that off, and I'm not one of them. When I get into a skirt that long, I look like somebody hit me on top of the head with a sledgehammer and shortened me about 6". Besides, they are hard to walk in or drive a car in, and in this slushy weather, the hems would be a mess. So I have to chop off the skirts and hem them over. Mid-calf looks pretty good on me.
The kitties are happy because I finally changed their trays yesterday, and I seemed to have a lot of trash to take out.
Wednesday night, choir was late because it was after church (Lent, you know), but I thought maybe I could get to bed early and try to get myself back onto a human-type schedule. I am definitely working the afternoon shift these days. No such luck, however. For some reason, my sinuses started draining and I coughed and blew for two hours before I finally got to sleep. I think I will try again tonight and hope that doesn't happen again. I think I have some kind of little upper respiratory thingie (lower intestinal tract thingie, too, but we'll ignore that). Not surprising, with the weather and all.
The only item which has been neglected is the picture mounting, and maybe I can get back at that tomorrow.
Oh, I did get another shot of the moon on Wednesday, but I didn't keep it, because all you could see in the picture was the moon and the two little dots in the middle of the black screen. Not real inspiring if you're not there with the moonlight falling on your bedclothes. The sun is moving steadily north, and is now setting just to the south of the peak of Brockway. Spring will come.
And that's all the view from the field in exile. 63 days...
March 4 Please excuse the hiatus, but there hasn't been much to talk about except the weather, and that can get boring after a while.
When I logged on at about 5 pm Sunday, the temperature in Copper Harbor was -8º F. Sorry, but that's just a bit too cold for me. Overnight, maybe, but not in the middle of the afternoon! I forgot to check how cold it got overnight, but Houghton set a new record, so I imagine it was pretty cold in Copper Harbor, too. It was 8º above when I logged on today, and it's now 1º and dropping.
One reason for the drop is the thing that prompted me to write today. It was a beautiful day in Copper Harbor, cold or not, and it cleared up around sunset. And - I shot the moon again! This is just the little baby new moon, and I'm sorry that it is just at the pixel limit of the camera (the picture is only about 640 x 480). When I enlarged it, at about 200x, I could just barely make out the old moon in the new moon's arms.
So while Sunday and Monday I was just as glad I wasn't there, tonight I really wished I had been standing on the deck (brr!) with the Nikon and taking a really good picture of that gorgeous twilight.
There is an obscure opera by a Czech or Slovak composer called Rusalka that has an aria in it which had a vogue a few years ago called "Oh Lovely Moon". It was kind of a pretty tune (for soprano) that I can only vaguely remember, but every time I see the moon shining in the clear night sky I think of it. Oh, lovely moon!
Sunday and Monday were seriously cold here, too, although I don't think it got below zero in my neighborhood, and there was some nice sunshine. Today, I assumed it was still cold, but I didn't check because I realized at 10:15 that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet and I was due at the doctor's office for my Hepatitis B shot at 11:00! So I ambled out in my fleece shirt and down jacket...and the temperature was nearly 40º! Needless to say, as soon as I got home, I changed to a cotton sweater and when I went food shopping, I wore my lightweight jacket.
There was a little sunshine this morning, but it clouded over, and according to the maps (I haven't looked outside lately) it is now snowing, and we could have several inches by morning, although in the current forecast they are backing off the numbers. You know, it's the usual "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" and when it's all over, it might be six inches or so.
One of the things I hate most about the media world we live in these days is that everything is over-hyped. Besides the weather, a case in point is the terror threat warnings. They had people thinking about sealing their houses and building bomb shelters ... and for what? If there ever is another terrorist attack, they will have cried wolf so many times nobody will do anything, and there will be another September 11 -type debacle.
Anyway, I don't have much to report personally. I spent most of Sunday afternoon with the papers again (I can only tolerate doing that stuff for so long), and 2000-2002 are now in a file box in the basement, the two Sterlite boxes I brought home full of stuff are now 3/4 empty (although there are a couple of folders clearly marked "go and stay". I think they were marked that way last year, too, but I brought them back anyway. Get the idea I don't like to file? There is also one box full of stuff that still needs to be sorted out. Some is more stuff that goes north, but more of it is just the miscellaneous pieces of paper that drive me crazy - too important to just pitch, but what to do with it? There are probably eight or ten boxes and crates of that kind of stuff in the basement, that I just turn my back on and try to ignore. I've asked several people, over the years, what they do with it, but they all either throw it all out or they like to file. Unfortunately, my financial situation doesn't permit me to have a personal secretary, which is what I really need.
Mounting the embroidery is coming along, but slowly. That's another boring chore, which is also hard on the hands. However, when the sun is shining, the sewing room is a wonderful place to be, so it will get done.
And now I will go back to looking at my beautiful view from the field...Oh, lovely moon!
66 days...
Last updated 08/04/11 08:45 PM |