Persimmon Frost

Last Post

2010-02-01T22:31:00.002-06:00

I've moved over to Wordpress. Blogger just wasn't working at all, so now you can find me here: http://persimmonfrost.wordpress.com/

I'm sorry to do this

2009-03-17T22:57:00.003-05:00

But Blogger is not treating me well. It takes about 10 minutes for a page to come up for me. Whether it's doing the same to other people is certainly a concern, but the bottom line is that I like to be able to see what I'm doing when I make a post or change the formatting, and it's definitely keeping me from doing that.

So I'm pretty much abandoning this forum. From now on I'll be limiting my blogging to LiveJournal, where I'm Dargie, and Facebook where I'm MJ Walters. If I find a forum I like better in the future I may move there, I may not.

Thanks for reading.

Knitting for the soul

2009-03-17T11:50:00.001-05:00

I got word that the gal on Ravelry who was collecting caps for troops with brain injuries did get my package of hats in time, so WOOT! She collected 50 hats which are on their way to Walter Reed this week.

I also got some email from a neo-natal nurse, who is a friend of a friend. She told me that hats are great, but they also need other things, and gave me a list. It's surprisingly exciting to think about knitting booties. *g* I have a to-do list a mile long but I really just want to sit next to an open window and knit or read today, and maybe watch the McTwittersons drive the starlings crazy.

Finally, an idea!

2009-03-16T10:23:00.002-05:00

I've been fretting and fretting over what to do about the changes I've been wanting to make around here. The place badly needs painting and in fact Glinda said yesterday "White walls getting on your nerves, huh?" which is about as true as it gets. I've rearranged the living room and the bedroom and dragged the office rug into the former space because really, who needs a rug in the office when the living room floor is bare? And I'm happy with the new arrangements and don't have any other rooms I can similarly disturb just now, so it remains for me to start doing some substantial decorating or remodeling.

I've been wanting to install crown molding in three of the rooms, but given the money situation I'm not entirely sure I want to do that now. I'm going to have to replace a LOT of windows this year, which is going to eat up a good chunk of money. I do need to paint and because I'm really not up to climbing ladders to get it done, I'll probably get Charles' guys to do the big rooms. The sun porch and bath Glinda and I can do. But that still leaves some changes which I'm really determined to make at some point. My kitchen island never suited me, so I'm wanting to get a new... something in its place. It needs to have ample storage either for my baking stuff, or for dishes. I'll happily store either in it depending on what I get. And since a local antique store owes me money/goods-in-trade, I may just go on over there and see if I can't find something that suits me.

I have GOT to have a new sink and countertop in the kitchen. That is an absolute. I just don't know if I can afford to do it right now. I'm going to sand and test stains on the inside of my cabinet doors and that should tell me if I want to change them or not, but I can't help but think that with new hardware and a new countertop, the cabinets will look wonderful and won't need any other changes.

The bath is kind of a problem for me. It's small. Not as small as some I've seen, I admit, but it's smaller than I'm used to which is a bit of an issue since I definitely want to move the cat box in there. I want to put it under the sink, in the cabinet, and cut a hole in the side for Caddy to come and go. There's ample room in there for him; I don't anticipate any problems except storage. So now I'm trying to work that out by shifting stuff around and tossing anything I'm not sure I'll ever need again. The tile in the bath is... well it's not my taste, it's badly installed and the grout is coming out on some of it. I'm hoping that if I just regrout it'll hold, though, since I can't really replace this stuff any time soon.

I've known for a long time that I'm going to paint the vanity and mirror, but one thing which just drove me nuts was the countertop. It's cultured marble. I loathe cultured marble. So my choices are: 1) Live with it. 2) Replace it or 3) Find some way to make it work.

I've spent hours contemplating all three and can tell you that the first is simply not an option. The second didn't seem like one since I'd have to buy a new bowl as well as a new countertop, but the other day I hit upon the notion of having Charles' guys cut me a piece of plywood that I could tile myself. That would mean buying a new bowl, of course, and the tile, but the bulk of labor would be mine and that would be a huge saving. It was a good idea, and I liked it, but it did require a certain level of expense, and running around looking for a new sink, and the tile and all the rest.

I had thought about doing a mosaic or a decoupage on top of the marble. This could work, particularly if I used silicon-based adhesive for the mosaic. I'd have to coat everything with polyurethane once it was finished but that's not a huge issue. Except, I wasn't wholly sold on the idea since I couldn't really tile or decoupage the basin. Now it wouldn't be so bad having just the basin in the cultured marble but there was something about the look of it I didn't like and until last night I didn't realize what it was. Then I saw something which not only made me realize what the problem was but how to fix it.

I was leafing through some books on mosaic work, and came across a group of button mosaics, and it hit me that my issues with the tile-and-cultured-marble look was that I was dealing with very different materials. Cultured marble is essentially plastic. You can tart it up with a fancy name and fancy additives but in the end, it's pretty much plastic. I didn't really want to mix glass or ceramic tile with plastic; I just didn't see that it would look right. But a button mosaic would let me do a piece which would be its own thing, which would work in terms of materials, in terms of the over-all look of the piece, and which would be completely waterproof and really quite cute. It would have humor as well as a practical value.

So I came back to the computer and went on eBay, and I found a seller who had plastic button lots for so little money I nearly wept with gratitude. I bought something like 10 lots in the colors I want to use for about $20, and if that proves not to be enough I know I can always get more. I think I'll have enough to do a button back-splash and some ornamentation around the mirror. And the buttons are just wonderful. Good color, good shapes, and some are even themed! I'll adhere them to the marble with E6000 and I should get a look which is exactly what I'm wanting.

See, I have this theory that if a bath can't be sumptuous it should be whimsical. And my bathroom will never be the former, not at 6x8. So whimsy is the order of the day, and buttons are the answer. Now I can't wait to get my package and start laying out the patterns.

The Bettini Glass

2009-02-24T16:54:00.001-06:00

As promised, here it is:

I'm liking it a lot.

More of the yum

2009-02-24T00:36:00.003-06:00

Friday night I made curry for the girls (as it happened it was only me and Glinda, and the threat of being snowed in) and I tried something different. I sauteed the chicken in coconut oil instead of butter before I added it to the curry. I have to say that the scent of that sautee was so heavenly that I found myself sniffing the air for an hour after I finished it. The flavor was excellent, too, and as coconut oil is said to rev your metabolism, it's kind of a win-win situation.

Also of the yum was the galette I bought on Sunday. It turned out to be an almond one. I hadn't asked because my French is pretty bad, though later I easily remembered "quelle espece de galette?" which is just above an accented grunt, but not by much. The galette is so meltingly good I had to resist the urge to roll in it. I wish I knew who'd baked it; I'd camp out on their door step and force money at them on a daily basis. The baguette was also delicious, and if I ever see that nun again I'm going to buy one of each thing from her because they are clearly all baked with grace.

Caddy threw up all over my pillows this morning, and I got busy and didn't put the laundry into the dryer until almost ten tonight, so my mattress pad remains downstairs for the night, which is okay for a night. I'm just glad I didn't have to wash the duvet again.

I did a lot of sketching today, and made the Bettini Glass. I'll photograph it tomorrow. I wish I had photos of the other two martini glasses I'd made for Betty. Alas, they now sleep with the fishes. The first was painted, and the second was etched. I had thought of creating a vine out of PMC and affixing it to a glass, but as I've never worked with that medium it seemed more daunting than reasonable. So this incarnation of the Bettini Glass is studded with Swarovski crystal cabs and the stem is wrapped with silver wire (non-tarnishing) that has Swarovski bicones strung along its coils. The glass itself is clear but the stem and foot are cobalt blue so the effect is rather intense. I used a jewelry cement on the cabs and I think it should hold even when wet. If not, then it's back to the proverbial drawing board for another design.

Actually after the etched one broke, I took a paper cup, printed "Betty's Booze" on it with magic marker and sent it to her. Apparently she keeps in in a place of honor in the bar. I love stuff like this.

Wherein life imitates life

2009-02-23T11:00:00.002-06:00

I was just sitting here watching the birds feed on the stuff Glinda and I put out for them. It's been kind of a hard winter, and I like to make sure they've got food and water, so there's a heated bird bath in the back, too. I often find all sorts of prints in the snow around it.

I was thinking that I'd be hard-pressed to explain adequately the pleasure it gives me to know that even a few of them will be better off for our intervention. It's as good, IMO, as doing for charity, which has become one of my favorite things. I have said, and will continue to say that generosity has been overlooked in the category of sins. Nothing could feel so good and not be sinful.

Of course in the midst of all this rhapsodizing, I saw something moving just under my windows, something BIG, and I jumped about ten feet off my chair. It turned out to be the meter reader. Sort of brings you back down to earth with a thud.

Anyway, here's a photo of the lovely and talented Hilda wearing one of my adult-size chemo caps:

With Joshua Malina in the background because I've been mainlining "The West Wing" for the last few weeks. I just started Season 6, and I am loving every minute of it.

Finally, Hilda again, wearing a hat and scarf combo I made for a dear friend's birthday. I hope she likes it.

Knitting for the world

2009-01-31T20:20:00.003-06:00

I just photographed all the caps I've made so far, plus a baby blanket. Kind of impressive if I say so myself.

That little yellow thing in the last photo is the preemie hat. It's so little! They're supposed to fit an orange. And on Ravelry I volunteered to make hats for troops with brain injuries who are convalescing at Walter Reed. This is just so much fun.

It's been a while

2009-01-23T13:17:00.003-06:00

I've been a bit overwhelmed by life lately. The holidays took a lot of my steam, but they were a lot of fun; much more so than they have been for several years now, and that's a good sign. On the downside, my new laptop had to get sent back to the shop for some work on the LCD, but she's home now and just as shiny as ever.

I also put a lot of time and emotional energy into the election. I pretty much figure that if you don't know why, you won't read what I have to say about it anyway, so let's just take it as read that it's true and move along.

Dawn and I talked a lot about wanting to do something to give back to our community (in the larger sense, not just this neighborhood) and because I had taught her how to knit recently, we decided that knitting and crocheting for charity was the best thing we coult think of. I could throw cash at a charity and that would be fine and dandy, but if I took the same amount of money and put it towards raw materials, then added my own time and effort, the gift would be more than doubled. It makes good sense, and satisfies my desire for volunteerism. (Though I would still like to work for adult literacy. I think becoming a proficient reader and writer is one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself. Now that I'm typing this I'm betting there'll be just a raft of typos in this post.) It reminds me a little of being involved in Kiva where your donations are micro loans and can be used over and over. It requires some effort on everyone's part, and the payoff is remarkable. If you don't know about Kiva, I urge you to go to the site and read about what they do and why. I think you'll find it inspiring. I began by putting $100 in, and have loaned it to eleven people so far. I just donated some cash to the organization to help with their operating costs, and put another $25 in, so a twelfth person will get help with his or her business from me. It's kind of exciting.

Anyway, I've been crocheting chemo caps. It's a challenge to find yarn which is both soft enough, and which works up into something that doesn't look just like baby clothes. The idea is to give women and children something to wear that makes them feel better about how they look. No, I'm not forgetting men, but men without hair are never considered odd or out of place. No one looks at them and immediately thinks "cancer!" Unfortunately a lot of the really fun yarn in my stash is too rough to use in these hats.

We also want to do hats, scarves, gloves, etc. for the homeless, and blankets for kids in hospitals. I'd also like to do some amigurumi figures for homeless and hospitalized kids. It's a good ongoing project which we can continue no matter what else we might want to tackle. We're also tossing around the idea of starting our own Stitch 'n' Bitch. We'll see.

Anyway, I hope I'm back now, and prepared to blog on a regular basis. Wish me luck.

Justice for Karley

2008-11-12T16:02:00.002-06:00

If you haven't already heard about this, please take a few minutes to read and take action.

Karley, a six month old puppy was so savagely beaten by a neighbor of her owners that she had to be euthanized. Who was this monster who tortured a puppy? Some crack addict? Some crazy loner? No, Karley's killer is Assistant Fire Chief to the L. A. County Fire Department. His name is Glynn Johnson.

What has been done? Nothing. Zip. The fire department has put him on paid leave, the equivalent of a time out with pay. The Riverside Sheriff's Dept. has brought no charges against him. Johnson himself has pretty much gone to ground, though he has stated that he did it in self-defense.

Right. A full-grown man and a puppy. A puppy he took from a neighbor who was returning the dog to her home. Just took her and started beating her. Beat her almost to death. The neighbor has said that there was no threatening behavior by Karley, just Johnson beating her.

I don't pretend to understand why he did it or how anyone could treat a living creature like that. What I do know is that Karley deserves some justice. If you want to help keep this story alive until Johnson is brought to justice, please go to the Best Friends site and take action.

It's Cheating a Bit

2008-11-12T15:07:00.003-06:00

But I'm including my old bits of the Gekko material as I go through them. I will use much of what's here, so I figure it's fair to add them to my word count. Which:

25056 / 50000 words. 50% done!

The approximately 8000 words I just added are all history, and is already undergoing major rewrites to help me with my background work. The story, "Basilisk" is just NOT coming out the way I need it to, and though I'll continue to work on it, it's going to have to be massively re-written after the month is over.

Doctor's office phoned to let me know that my A1c is up from 6.something to 7.5. That's not good, but it's also not a huge surprise considering how lax I've been in the last few months, and how much weight I regained after quitting the Effexor. Cholesterol not great, though the HDL is good. BP is slightly elevated by by any standard, though more under theirs (of course) than by the old standard I used to know.

What I do know already is that I'll take the lisinopril for the BP, the new Happy Pill, and of course the Metformin for the diabetes. But no way no how on insulin or statins. Not gonna happen.

I have discovered that a short walk when I'm blocked really does help a bit. I sort of figure that if I do it every day, I'll be much better by the time I see her again in December. Now to do it every day.

Life just sucks as you get older.

In spite of

2008-11-06T21:32:00.001-06:00

Or perhaps because of this headache, I have managed to pull things together to the point where I'm over the necessary total for tomorrow, and am going to knock off for the night. Today's cumulative total:

11855 / 50000 words. 24% done!

One quarter of the way through the 50000 word goal. Amazing in the sense that I am not writing fanfic, which has always come more easily to me than original fiction. Yes, much of the groundwork was laid a long time ago, and that helps, but this is very gratifying in a way that goes far beyond the rush I got from writing fanfic. This is all me.

Tomorrow, I've invited a bunch of people to come by and have a glass of champagne in honor of President-elect Obama. Some of them won't show, but enough will that I need to clean up around here a bit. If I have a headache again tomorrow, I'll be sending my head out for some kind of tune-up.

Last word on NaNo for today

2008-11-05T22:13:00.002-06:00

I made it. I wrote virtually nothing yesterday because I spent all day fighting with Firefox. Because I never get rid of anything, I had an old version on my backup drive, so I uninstalled the most recent build and went back to 3.0. Of course I lost all my bookmarks and settings and cookies and all the rest because 3.0.3 wouldn't uninstall properly. It kept on freezing up and forcing me to start over again. Do yourself a favor and don't install that build unless you can downgrade in case it screws you the way it did me.

Yeah, I have a lot of trouble with new versions of Firefox. But honestly, I'd seen the notification for this one for a few weeks now, and honestly thought it'd be okay to install, that all the upgrades to the add-ons would be done or nearly done, and I'd at least have some reasonable functionality. Boy did I guess wrong. I don't know what the problem is but it cost me the better part of a work day.

So now I'm just a bit past caught up, which I find annoying since I should've been a day ahead of schedule. But I'm quitting for the night. I have so much to do around here that some of it has to get done before I hit the sheets. And tomorrow, I have to do laundry first thing since it's been two weeks since I washed anything.

Today's graphic word count:

8458 / 50000 words. 17% done!

The story is winding down, and I'm going to have to start sketching out the next one so I can swing right into it when I put paid to the first draft of this one.

Night all.

Hello, have you seen my head?

2008-11-05T17:29:00.000-06:00

I am so scattered today. Part of this is surely the effect of having been up until three this morning, watching the returns and weeping with happiness (And drinking. Don't forget the drinking of wine.) Part, well it's just one of those days when accomplishing anything is a lot like slogging through mud. I've been working in the office since noon or so, and while I did manage to get about 1400 words written for NaNoWriMo, it shouldn't have taken me that long. But I kept on checking email, and walking over to the other side of the room to make some half-hearted attempt at getting my yarn stash put away in some sort of reasonable order. I have a stack of boxes from Ikea but they're miserable to put together, and they don't fit the cabinet in which I was planning to use them.

Caddy has been demanding a lot of attention, too, which is fine once in a while, but not every few minutes and just as I hit my writing stride. Little fiend. He's lucky I adore him so much.

I finished the last two slices of last night's pizza for breakfast and since then have eaten nothing except a Mounds bar. This is Not Good. I have to make some supper. Tonight's political programs should be really interesting.

The great American experiment endures

2008-11-05T01:07:00.001-06:00

To be blunt, I thought we might see the end of it in our lifetime. Democracy can only work with an engaged electorate, and people who care more about a unified country than partisanship.

But now we may find our way back to a government of the people, by the people and for the people as our founding fathers envisioned. Today we pushed past the artificial barrier of color to reaffirm that our country truly is a meritocracy, a place where any child can grow up knowing that he (or she) can be anything he wants to be.

It's going to be a terribly hard road, not just for the new President and his people, but for all of us. But we've dug ourselves out of deeper holes than this and we can do it again. Now I'm certain we can.

I have hope again.

Witness to History

2008-11-04T16:40:00.001-06:00

A day like today makes me think about my life. I've lived for 56 years and seen a man walk on the moon. I saw mankind shake off the bonds of this planet to go into space! When I was nine, the Berlin wall went up and when I was thirty-seven it fell. I saw the end of the Soviet Union, and, by the will of the people, the Vietnam war. I lived through the assassination of one President and the resignation of another. I've seen more map changes than you can imagine with the rise and fall of countries which names you may not even know.

I saw segregation in the south, and I saw it end. I remember Stonewall and Woodstock. I've seen the administrations of nine Presidents from Eisenhower to Bush II. Hell, I remember the first Mayor Daley and the LSD s-curve!

I remember the last time a huge political event happened in Grant Park. It was 1968, and it wasn't a happy day.

This is a happy day. I'm hoping for victory, of course. I'd be insane not to. But whatever happens, I have to tell you, I don't think I've ever been more excited by an election or prouder of my country than I am now. I voted early because the time I spent as a caregiver taught me that you can never be certain that you'll get out to the polls when you intend to, or what might happen when you get there. But I have loved every account of voting I've read today and over the last couple of weeks.

Nobody can force you to vote, nobody can force you to be informed or even to care. My deepest thanks go out to all those who have done all three. No flag, no slogans, no political manuvering can make you more an American than those three things.

5927

2008-11-03T18:32:00.001-06:00

More than halfway to tomorrow's goal, and there are still a number of work hours available to me today. So go me. It's time for me to stop for a bit, though, because invention is flagging. I need to go do something mindless and leave my brain free to work things out on its own.

Those of you who are also doing NaNoWriMo can add me to your buddies if you wish, and I will happily do the same. My profile page is here The site is still as slow as the seven-year itch, though.

Keeping up with the Wrimos

2008-11-02T23:36:00.001-06:00

I can't seem to get the NaNo site to come up (when does the gridlock stop over there?) so consider this the official word: I'm ending the day at 3758, about 500 words past where I need to be at this time.

Since this year's novel is a collection of connected short stories about the mythical country of Fata Morgana and its neighbors, my writing units are more clear cut than chapters might be, and so a bit easier to cope with. And I have more titles than I think I can reasonably use, but that might change. The current story is entitled "Anna Magdalena's Song" but that's all I'm saying about it. (Those of you who remember minute details about Gekko might recall a postage stamp with the image of one A. M. Gnocci.)

Bottom line: I'm having a heckuva good time this year. I'd forgotten what fun writing can be.

G'night!

Homemade Democracy

2008-11-02T17:03:00.002-06:00

This morning Glinda decided that she was going to make a sign that said "VOTE" because, like me, she feels that an involved electorate is essential to the health of a democracy. For too long now, our electorate hasn't really been involved. You'd get the lock-step Republicans out voting in all weather, and the demoralized Dems just staying home because they felt there was no possibility of changing anything. And of course that just made it more certain that nothing would change.

This year we both decided, independently of one another, pretty much, to be the change we wanted to see. We want an involved electorate and an informed one. We talk, we donate, we read, we listen, we check facts, we argue, we exhort people to get out and vote no matter who they're going to vote for. Because the truth is that if a candidate is elected by a majority of the people in this country, then we'll both be satisfied that the will of the people is being done. Sure we'd be disappointed if Obama lost, but if McCain wins by a vote of 75% or 80% of the American people or -- could it happen? -- more than that, then the people have spoken and we're both down with that. Even if the vote is a squeaker, and one man wins by a very, very small margin, it's still the process that is important.

So I hung out the flag, and Glinda made her sign and hung it in her window. Just now we were outside admiring the effect and I said "Democracy shouldn't be slick and commercial. It should be homemade." I believe that. Democracy shouldn't be dictated by corporations or lobbyists, or insiders. It should be you and me telling these men, whose salaries WE pay, what we want done in this country.

Go make a homemade sign, go call your friends and your grandparents and tell them they have GOT to vote this year. Go fly your flag not because of some crazy notion of it being unpatriotic to not do it, but because you are proud of what it represents. Because you want to. That's America.

Today on NaNoWriMo

2008-11-01T22:38:00.000-05:00

I gave up on the site and just decided to keep count myself. Luckily I use a WP program that will do that. Count for today is: 1,801 words. A bit over the 1,600 words a day I figured I'd have to write in order to make 50,000 by the end of November. And as it happened I had a full day planned so I had to snatch the time to write after we went to brunch and Home Despot, and then cleaned up the yard for autumn. The furniture is in the garage as are the clay pots. Anything still in plastic and still in bloom got left out. I got the first composter boxed up and ready to send back, and Glinda and Jim pulled crap out of the ground. We had weeds, basil gone to seed, ivy, and some huge leaves which, when pulled, turned out to be attached to radishes! I had no memory of planting radishes there! Of course they're huge and probably pithy and super pungent, but we kept two and are going to wash and slice them tomorrow to see how they taste. I mean, how cool is that? We grew radishes!

We also took down the H'ween decorations outside, and tomorrow I'll start packing them up.

After we cleaned up out there, Glinda and Jim went upstairs, and I stayed down here to write. We went to supper about six-thirty, and stopped at the Jewel on the way home. Have to say I'm really impressed by the remodelling and the more upscale additions to the product line. I really have to hand it to whoever saw what was happening when Safeway took over Dominicks and ruined it. They made sure Jewel stepped into the void left by the death of the Dominick's brand, and it was brilliant move. I brought home some ice cream, juice, half and half because Glinda and I have coffee on Sunday mornings and we both like something more than fat free milk in it. Also I found gjetost! I haven't seen that in a store in I don't know how long. I was just tickled.

Once I got home, I knocked off about 500 more words which brings me to my current count. Go me! And this is my second blog post today so I'm doing fine with NaBloPoMo, too.

Of course it's only November 1st.

House, Halloween and NaBloPoMo Post

2008-11-01T00:27:00.001-05:00

I promised pics a while ago. Thanks for bearing with me. Abe finally left about four this afternoon, and that should be an end to it for a while, though I may end up asking Charles to send someone over to put up our new door numbers. I want that to be perfect. Anyway, I stepped out to take some photos of the back hall, and got carried away. Hence the cut.

My red door! This is the door from the sun porch to the back hall. The walls are obviously not done yet, but will be a nice off white eventually.

This should give you an idea of what the hall looks like now. The floor is actually a cobalt blue, and the walls are French blue. The trim is yellow, and I've accessorized with some red (the door for one.) Carpet treads went down today.

See, here's the door. The alcove is where the back door used to be, and was wasted space so I asked for shelves. I'm using them for my cleaning supplies.

Looking down to the outer door. Both sides are bright lemon yellow, but we have to wait for warmer weather to finish the outer side. Abe was getting ready to hang that lantern over the bulb.

As usual, Charles and Will both said "Are you SURE you want to ______" fill in the blank with whatever I told them I wanted done, in this case hanging the Chinese lantern outside my back door. Yes it cuts down on the light, but it looks fantastic. As usual, once it was up they agreed with me. Glinda says it's nice that we have our own darkroom now. Beyotch.

Changing gears now. This part of my dining room hasn't been seen since mid-day, March 28. People keep walking to the middle and just standing there as if they don't quite believe it.

So then I took pics of some of the H'ween decorations. I'll do more tomorrow night when the lights are all on. This is on my front door.

Looking into the front hallway. It's better at night when the spooky green light is on. That banner says "Magic Happens" and it's the one sent me. It's made of win!

Pumpkins, half dead mums, a jack-o-lantern and faux spider webbing. These are a few of my favorite things.

The motto of Villa Allegra

The front of the house. Significant for the handmade banner over the steps, and the utter lack of plants growing out of the gutter.

Our house crow. He's very good, he never flies away.

Help wanted. Bwahahahahaha

We have pumpkin zombies. They come around at odd hours and gnaw at our pumpkins.

Just in case you didn't see the original hallway, or don't recall it, here's a link to a photo

Remember those pumpkins being ravaged by pumpkin zombies?

I actually got a lot of photos today. A bunch of Annika, a friend's dog who came to visit, and some nice ones of trick-or-treaters of which we had dozens. We gave out something like five pounds of candy. I'm not going to do another picture heavy post though because I'm sure you would prefer not to wade through a lot more picspam.

The Cad-man watching the pumpkin zombies carry out their hideous plans

Our creepy hallway

The other pics are still uploading. They're over on Flickr, the latest pics in my photostream. I'm tired now and I'm going to bed.

Sandra Evertson: A HALLOWEEN TAIL

2008-10-13T16:13:00.001-05:00

Sandra Evertson: A HALLOWEEN TAIL

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Another weekend at the villa

2008-10-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

Or weekend. It's been hot here, or at least what I consider hot, which is anything over about 75 degrees. Friday, the girls came in for movie night, and Renka joined us. Before she arrived we watched Countdown and were pleased to see that the smear campaign is backfiring on McCain and Palin, though I have to say that the crazies they've been stoking make me very nervous. When people are shouting "KILL HIM!" at rallies, we have problems in this country that we need to address right away. Also pleased that the Troopergate investigation was made public as it should have been. When a public official violates the public trust, the public should know the details. Again, I say that if the guy was as bad as they've said he was, tasering his kids and stuff like that, then he deserves worse than firing, and why he wasn't jailed for those alleged abuses is beyond me. However, it's not the place of an elected official to make use of his or her office to continue a personal vendetta. If no charges are filed, then you've gotta leave the guy alone.

Renka arrived, then supper from Leona's. We opened a bottle of Charles Ellner champagne and toasted the memory of Paul Newman while we watched "The Sting." It was an early night because Glinda was going in to work on Saturday morning, and Renka had to open the store while Gene was at a show in Indiana.

Jim came by late Saturday afternoon with a load of shish kebab meat, but we ran some errands before supper, going over to World Market, and Sam's where we didn't manage to find any more Colombelle. I did pick up four bottles of wine that looked interesting. Glinda bought some hard cider and a four pack of pumpkin ale. Oh yes, it's autumn, in spite of the heat. We made supper, opened the red Zin I'd bought -- Kaboom, it was called. Big flavor -- and watched Casablanca. Another early night because Jim has to work on Sundays, so I took a hot bath and finished "The Tsar's Dwarf."

Sunday, I faced the fact that my laptop is really most sincerely dead, and fired off an email to my insurance guy asking if I'm covered for soup-related damages. There's really not much on the hard drive that I'm going to miss. Just stuff that will be a pain to reconstruct. The only thing that I didn't have backed up and should have was my notes on the Changelings universe. I'm going to have to see if anyone can get the data off the HD for me.

I invited Glinda down for a supper of braised pork chops, rice and chard. The rice wasn't very good and as this is the third of the mixes I got from the same company that wasn't very appealing, I'm thinking of declaring them a real bust, and giving away the rest. I braised the chops in a mix of hard cider and canned pumpkin, and they were pretty good. We watched the special edition of "Help" while we ate. Such a silly, wonderful film. Oh, the sixties. Though I must say the sixties can't have been the only excuse for the awfulness of the early biopics Ken Russell did for the BBC. I'd seen the Isadora Duncan, Delius and Rossetti films and enjoyed them, but yesterday afternoon I sat down and watched the Elgar, Debussy and Rousseau films. Elgar was okay but pretty dull, ditto Rousseau. But the Debussy was awful! It exhibited every excess that made Russell often unwatchable.

I was supposed to go to the doctor today for bloodwork, a checkup, a flu shot and maybe something to tame these allergies, but when I realized that it was supposed to get to 80 again today I phoned and cancelled. I'll go when it's cooler and I feel better. Instead I'm going to do some housework and read. I started "The Ghost in Love" yesterday and am really enjoying it. Carroll's writing reminds me a bit of Neil Gaiman's.

2008-10-08T13:17:00.001-05:00

Words I would surgically excise from the vocabulary of:

1) Anne Rice -- "preternatural" Anne is the queen of over-using certain words, but none are so egregiously over-used as preternatural. Get a grip, Anne. Better yet, get a thesaurus.
2) Sarah Palin -- "maverick" Sarah, I do not think this word means what you seem to think it means. Using it all the time makes you look like a dope.
3) John McCain -- "my friends" Some few people may be weak-minded enough to think that if you say that often enough it's true, and you really are their friend, but the rest of us are tearing our hair out here at home. Give us a break. If you want to show what a good friend you are, buy a round of drinks.

I made an entry on this blog... I don't even know when or what it said, but it's gotten an array of the weirdest comments ever. Today's really made me scratch my head though: You were sketching over the hill tulips? For shizz woman get a job/partner/both. But first GET A FRIKKEN LIFE. Now, it's hard to know where to start on this one. I mean, the notion of dipping into someone's blog at random, apparently based on a Google search, and leaving a comment telling them they have no life is a curious one. I can almost see picking a fight based on religion, politics, sex or some other potentially incendiary topic, but on what I was drawing at the time? Um... huh? Do I even mention the ignorance of how artists operate? The lack of comprehension of the beauty of over-the-hill tulips? And the fact that the life I do have is exactly the one I want? What an utter dope this person must be to assume that a job, like the ones most people go to every day and just hate, is exactly what I should have to make me happy. Or that a relationship is better than being able to create. Maybe it's just sad that they feel that way. Sad little person, carrying the gospel of the lowest common denominator to total strangers.

I wasn't too thrilled with the debate last night. The town hall format was a bad choice for McCain because all that movement underscored the idea that he is not a well man. He looked feeble and his jokes and comments had a weirdly inappropriate quality. Again, very much what I saw with both Mom and Dad. Inexplicable anger/hostility and strange or inappropriate comments = (IMO, anyway) early stage dementia of some sort.

Obama didn't embarrass himself, but I thought he was sort of lackluster. He looked more Presidential than McCain, but he pretty much put himself in the defensive position and that's a difficult place to work from.

Finished reading Bard last night. It's interesting to note that this was once one of my favorite novels, now not so much. I still enjoyed it, but it wasn't nearly as compelling as it had once been. And my response to the characters has shifted over the years. I suppose that's to be expected. As time passes and experience is gained, it only makes sense that our view of the characters and events in a novel will change. Today I plan to restart "The Ghost in Love" since I need to do a review of it for Vine.

Halloween Rocks

2008-10-05T22:52:00.002-05:00

I hadn't even planned on going out on Saturday but Glinda and Jim changed their plans to something less long-term, so I decided to go with them. After an excellent breakfast at A's (Blueberry pancakes, yum.) we went up to Harlem and Dempster to the Eddie Bauer outlet store. Glinda wanted cat litter and a new jacket. Since Eddie Bauer doesn't sell cat litter, it's fortunate that there's a pet store up there, too. I was lounging around, telling Glinda "Get the purple fleece one!" when a woman came up and asked if I worked there. Now I am nobody's idea of retail help with my red socks and shoes, and my needle-felted denim jacket, so I didn't know why she asked, but she pointed to my Obama-Biden '08 button. I said "Obama." She said "Oh. Obama." and looked hopeful that this meant that employed by Eddie Bauer or not I could help her find something to wear. I had to steer her to the back of the store where she was more likely to encounter one of the rare free-ranging sales clerks.

I wanted to stop in at Home Goods and see if could find some new hand towels (Mine are shredding.) Glinda and I both got waylaid by the Halloween decorations. We're mad Halloween freaks, and it was sort of a done deal that we couldn't get out of the store without buying decorations. But we compromised, we decided to run across the street to Michael's and get stuff to make some of our own decorations. And ZOMG, the stuff at Michael's! SO cute, and so much of it. We got garlands and construction paper and a flag (We have a flag!) and bats and ghosts and pumpkins and black cats and blahblahblah... We got glitter! Glitter I tell you. Without which nothing is as good as it could be. There is nothing better than glitter. Orange and black glitter. Yes, I'm six years old.

It was starting to get late so we headed back south and stopped at KMart since we wanted to get some pots of mums to put out in front along with the pumpkins I'd bought this week. We're going for a folksy harvest horror theme. And yes, when we finish, I'll take photos. Then Glinda remembered that it's pumpkin spice shake season at Culvers, so we headed on over to the one out on 25th Ave. And ZOMG again (It was an OMG sort of day with a peppering of Zs.) those shakes were SO good. Jim popped for them which gave them an extra dose of pumpkiny goodness. In fact they tasted like frozen pumpkin cream pies. You can imagine! But if you've got a Culvers nearby, don't imagine, go. Your mouth will thank you.

We finally got home about seven, put the plants out and gave them a spritz of water. The rest of the day's swag is on my living room floor looking accusingly at me because it wants to be used. It wants to decorate things. I have bags of fractious Halloween decorations lying here. If they aren't used soon, I fear they'll begin nipping my ankles and tripping me

Renka and Gene came by about 8:15 and we went out to Great Beijing for supper. I was really tired by the time we finished and begged off book shopping, which was okay with them. Gene had been up since 6:30 and was starting to nod off over his meal. It's just going to get worse until he gets past Tardis, I think. And then there's the holidays. It'll be a miracle if I see him half a dozen more times before the first of the year. He managed to stay awake through the opening of Saturday Night Live, but then Renka had to haul him home.

I sat around watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and doing email. And still was OMG tired. But not quite ready to sleep. Caddy made a nest of throws on the couch and curled up in a nice, warm ball, sound asleep. Having a cat makes even bad weather seem much nicer.

Today, Glinda and I spent the afternoon doing H'ween stuff. We cut triangles out of orange and black foam and wrote Happy H-A-L-L-O-W-E-E-N (cute bats and things) on them. Then when I get some fishing line or something to string them on we'll put them up in place of the prayer flags for the month. We hung a fall swag on the pillar and wired a crow to the top, put out our Halloween flag, and a sign that says "A Halloween without a witch is no Halloween at all!" on the porch. There are pots of mums and some pumpkins arranged artfully on the front steps, and a dirty grey, torn piece of gauze over the front door like a pair of tatty old curtains. It's too dark now to do much more outside but we'll be working on more stuff from now until Halloween. It's going to be a ghoulish extravaganza. And we are having such fun. I will definitely take photos when we get it pretty much finished.

Debate Hangover

2008-10-03T12:10:00.000-05:00

Last night, I was so tired I just turned out the lights and went to bed. This morning I found that the bag of dry cat food that I'd foolishly left on the coffee table, was now on the floor with a big hole in the bottom. Caddy tells me that mice did it.

I'm watching MSNBC now, getting input on both the bailout package and the debate. I'm not sanguine about this new bill which I suspect will pass, but I recognize that the more time that passes without some sort of bandaid, the more jobs and homes will be lost. It's ironic that the "sweeteners" added to the original Democratic-sponsored bill to persuade Republicans to vote for it, include tax breaks for corporate America and to finance them with debt. There are some good things about the bill, particularly the increase in the FDIC insurance which really should have been increased to keep up with the cost of living. And there are going to be some breaks and cuts which will benefit middle America, and clean energy. So yay. Much of what's not palatable in this bill can be addressed in the future, always assuming people push to fix the problems. At least we're not being forced to swallow Paulson's original bill, which precluded any oversight by the courts or anyone else! "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Last night, as with the previous debate, I was stunned to hear the pundits going on and on about how the Republican candidate won. Particularly last night, I found myself wondering what debate they were watching because, gosh darn it, it sure wasn't the one I was watching. Today, though, I am hearing things which hearten me. Joe and Josephine Six-Pack aren't buying that annoying, fake folksy persona. Even Republican women felt that Palin dodged important questions and essentially said nothing unless pressed, and when she was she said what they didn't want to hear. War, war, war.

Essentially what people are saying -- real people, not political wonks -- is that yeah, she did well but that was because expectations of her performance were so low. And I have to admit that given that unit of measure, I agree. She did better than I expected. She was rigorously scripted and she stuck to that script whether it answered the question or not. She was poised, and she did what she felt she had to do to connect with middle America. And middle America enjoyed her, but they are apparently not foolish enough to think that translates into leadership. What they're saying is "She's the sort of person I like. She's feisty, and I'd like to sit down and have a drink with her. But should she be VP? No way."

Our hawk

2008-09-27T14:41:00.002-05:00

This is the only photo I could get of what I believe to be a red-tail hawk that visited our garden last weekend.

And in other news...

2008-09-26T15:15:00.002-05:00

I've also opened an ImageKind shop. If it works out (i.e., if I sell things) I'll probably upgrade to a pro shop. This is sort of a nice site, though. A bit easier to use than Qoop.

A step in the right direction

2008-09-26T13:36:00.002-05:00

It's been an interesting month. I spent a week or so cataloging my media. I finished the DVDs and CDs, and have gotten through about half the books. But my allergies and arthritis have made me miserable, and I succumbed to a bout of despair this week that just overwhelmed all my better intentions. Caddy's discovered that he likes chewing my bedroom curtains which drives me nuts, usually at some ungodly hour of the morning. I wouldn't normally mind except I don't know what's in the dye they use, and the crunching wakes me up. Maybe I should get him a roll of tulle which is his favorite non-edible snack.

Anyway, yes, I've opened up a store on Qoop to sell my digital prints. I originally had a bunch on Etsy, but I'd prefer to leave that store for 3-dimensional product. And if I don't get that store open soon, too I don't know what's wrong with me. Ditto the biz formerly known as "Those Two Nice Girls Next Door" which has been rechristened "Villa Allegra."

Wild happenings in the garden: It was about five-thirty or so on Sunday and I was just about to go outside to plant a couple of irises that Glinda had bought yesterday at the Madison farmers market*, and cut some basil to make fresh pesto. I'd opened my back door and was about to step out when my phone rang, so I came back in and answered, and sat down at the table on the sunporch to talk to Glinda. I heard the fluttering of wings and some birdie fussing, and I knew it was bigger than the sparrows that have been hanging around all day, but I assumed it would be one of our ginormous pigeons. And then suddenly a big hawk -- stood over a foot tall by my estimation -- flew down our gangway and landed on the fence betwen our yard and John's and just sat there looking around.

I just hissed at Glinda "Go look out your back window RIGHT NOW! Look on the fence" and I knew when she said "Oh. My. God." that she saw him, too. We just watched him for several minutes, drinking in his beauty. She tried to get a photo with her phone, and I went to get my camera and he jumped into John's yard and started rooting around for rodents so I could no longer see him. I did get one photo of him through the screen and John's fence, but it wasn't very good and so I snuck out the back door very quietly and saw him under John's lilac bush. Unfortunately he saw me and flew off just as I was about to catch a photo. So I think the second pic may be just empty space. *g* He took off and seemed to be heading towards Carlos' roof. Based on the photos I've been looking at on the web, I'm thinking it was a red-tail.

We have a lot of birds and squirrels around here (I hope he doesn't bother them, but I won't interfere if I see him taking any.) I'd rather he thinned the pigeons. I'd originally hoped he would get some of the mice or even the rats, but now I think about it I worry that they might be carrying poison. We also have bunnies in the neighborhood. I'd feel badly thinking of him eating a baby bun, but it happens. That's life. If I want him to survive, and I do, I have to accept what he is. Like my mother, I tend to be awfully soft-hearted and I like cute little mammals.

We did finally manage to come down, and get the irises planted after pulling out about a bushel of what might be chamomile. We'd put the composter together earlier so we had a lot of green material to toss in. John was barbequeing and asked if we were hungry, but we'd already started working on supper so we asked for a raincheck. Glinda remarked that our neighbors keep trying to feed us. Either they think we can't possibly be feeding ourselves properly or they're very nice people. We've both pretty much agreed it's the latter.

I cut about a bushel of fresh basil, leaving what looks like a full acre still out there (basil is really easy to grow!) brought it in and stripped the leaves from the stems, washed it and threw together a pesto in the Vita-mix. We got about two cups of pesto out of the recipe. It's good and really garlicky (I tend to overdo the garlic a bit when I cook. We made a pizza, smeared it with pesto and sprinkled it with Tiger Sauce which I've been out of for too long. It was excellent.

While we ate, Glinda showed me the first three episodes of "Pushing Daisies" and I loved it! What a sweet, weird show. Of course it took me two-and-a-half eps to figure out that Ned was the brother in "Wonderfalls." That's a big "Duh!" Anyway, now I have to see the rest of the first season as well as the last season of "Black Books" which she's also hooked me on. I totally want to be Bernard Black when I grow up.

*I was supposed to go along but my joints hurt so much yesterday morning, that I couldn't face six hours in the car. She brought back honeycrisp apples, a loaf of rustic bread, tomatoes, a big bunch of French breakfast radishes and some swiss chard for me. So this morning, I fixed us omlettes, and we each had a radish sandwich on the side. We talked about the future of the garden, and what we we had to do that day, which ended up being a lot harder than either of us had planned. Our composter, ecologically sound though it is being made of recycled plastic, was miserable to put together.

Mosaic Tuesday

2008-09-09T13:30:00.002-05:00

It's been a quiet week. The weather has changed rather alarmingly, though I really prefer the cool to the hot. We've had a lot of rain, too, but today is beautifully sunny, so I decided to snap a few pics of the almost finished mosaics. There are about nine new photos up on my Flickr photostream but here are a couple I really love:

I really used too much thinset in some places:

This is the nightstand, pre-grouting:

My boy loves the sun, too. Caddy amidst the mosaic materials and tools:

Time to do another load of laundry.

I can has cookie nao?

2008-08-29T00:19:00.002-05:00

In spite of waking up so congested I could hardly breathe. I ended up taking a Mucinex because I've had such bad allergies for so long that my bronchial tubes are feeling tight and burny. It really did the trick. I even managed to do a few minutes on the treadmill yesterday afternoon while waiting for a load of wash to run.

I also finally unpacked all the stuff from the chemical supply place and threw together a five gallon tub of laundry detergent. It's just plain castile soap, some borax, some washing soda and water. The effect of adding the soda and borax to castile soap is rather startling. It turns into a gelatinous, near-solid. With the addition of plenty of water I created a slurry which is perfect for use in our washing machine. I also added some tea tree oil and some oil of lavender for scent and for their anti-bacterial properties, so it's a good-smelling slurry. I did two loads of wash with it, and my hydrogen peroxide and water bleach substitute, and they look and smell wonderful. Even the whites! The initial outlay of money is fairly high, but I have enough washing soda to last for years, I think, and enough borax for at least one year. The castile soap will have to be bought new each time. The hydrogen peroxide I mix @ half and half, and use no more than 2/3rds of a cup at a time, so two gallons of peroxide should last us quite a while, too. It's more economical and it's far greener than most things on the market. I find it sort of exciting to be doing stuff like that. On Monday we did some yard work, and I sprinkled kosher salt on the weeds and then sprinkled white vinegar on them. I forgot to check when I went out, but I'm hoping they've all pretty much bit the big one. I'm not big on weed killer, but pulling or trimming them is madness. If the two-part application doesn't work, I'll go to a strong mix of the two.

The kitchen still looks like a disaster area, but I can see a huge difference. It's starting to be more usable. All the food is on the stove wall, and my basic dishes are now in the kitchen as well. Cooking and baking pans are in one cabinet and in the drawer in the stove, and prep stuff is on the other side of the stove. Baking ingredients are now in the island so that they'll be convenient wherever I choose to work. They're labeled with peel-and-stick chalkboard vinyl so that I know what I've got now. A major necessity for someone who not only just lost about two pounds of rye flour, but who also baked a whole batch of cookies with some unidentified flour, not of the all purpose variety.

My small appliances are on the bottom shelf of the cookbook nook, and all the coffee stuff -- cups, beans, grinder, etc. -- are on the sun porch so it'll be convenient for our Sunday morning coffee hour. I also moved my liquor out there so that it serves as an all purpose sort of bar, except for the tea which remains in the kitchen because I have so damn much of it. I may relent and move it out to the porch, too, but not tonight. Tonight I'm going to feed the cat, get a cold drink and go to bed to read for a while.

Tomorrow I want to finish arranging and cleaning the kitchen, a massive job since the floor is filthy (I was down there last night, I saw it close up. I was, however, pleased to find that getting up and down has become easier for me, a sign that I'm not in as horrible shape as I was.) I plan to finish that, and mop the bathroom floor as well, get all the garbage out. I really ought to get to the library, too since I have two books on hold for me there: Myths, rites, symbols : a Mircea Eliade Reader, and The Perfect Summer : England 1911, Just Before the Storm. We'll see what happens. I have so much to do tomorrow, I may just wait until next week. I have until Thursday before they send the books back and by next week, the third one -- Uncommon Aarrangements : Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles, 1910-1939 -- should be in. Besides, I have books from Dawn (Holy Cow) and Karen (The Hobbit, a book I have never been able to get into.) to finish and two books from Amazon's Vine program to read and review, The Whiskey Rebels and What Happened to Anna K., and two more on their way to me: Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits and The Brimstone Network I also have a piece of software -- CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4 -- to review, but that's a lot harder than it seems. It takes a good deal of time to evaluate a complex program like this one

I'm hoping the Chicago Public Library site, which has improved greatly in the last year, will offer a wishlist function. Right now I'm keeping my library list over on Amazon's wishlists. It's cumbersome.

I took a Zyrtek about an hour ago, figuring it'd put me right to sleep and I'd rest easier all night being non-congested and drugged to the teeth, but no joy there. One of the few decongestants that doesn't make me sleepy.

I deserve a cookie. Only I'll have to make them. Oh well, over the weekend I hope to make a batch of breakfast cookies, a bread pudding, several loaves of herb bread, and home-made chocolate syrup because I'm tired of paying a fortune for Hershey's high fructose corn syrup laden stuff. I also want to work on the mosaic, and maybe get a start on the little nightstand that's sitting here looking forlorn. It needs sanding, and then a nice coat of paint before I do the mosaic top. This one is for me. The bar I wrote about longingly in a previous post I'll be selling. I can't afford not to.

More pics anon.

Home is where...

2008-08-27T01:20:00.002-05:00

I've been contemplating the notion of "home" since I moved this spring. I said, quite truthfully, that I felt at home as soon as I came here, but I understand now that it was not an all-encompassing feeling. I felt at peace here from the beginning, understanding that it was a place where I could rest, and rest easy.

Later I said to Dawn: "I won't feel truly at home here until all the dirt is my dirt." She understood what I meant. You never feel a place is yours until you've cleaned it top to bottom, until you run your hand across a dusty surface and can think "I forgot that" instead of "Oh god,what is this?" I can feel at home in the homes of friends because I know them. I know their dirt is part of them and therefore something I am familiar with in some way. I am more comfortable drinking a glass of water from their taps than I was drinking from mine when I moved here. Not to imply that the people who lived here were dirty, they were most certainly not. But all homes have dust, grime, forgotten spots, things that just don't get cleaned enough. And, not knowing them, I am not comfortable thinking about what may have been left behind.

I won't feel at home here until I know the change of seasons. On Keystone, I knew every fall of light, every sound and smell of the seasons. I could look out the back window and almost tell you what month it was just by the angle of the shadows and color of the sunshine. But here I am not seeing the signs as clearly. I am confused by the rush of new sensations. I judge time by calendars and clocks these days, not by a scent on the wind, or the color of the shadow of leaves.

But the other day I was taking out my garbage, and when I looked up at the garage I saw it, I saw autumn creeping across the brickwork in a mellower golden light. The sun is no longer white with heat here and that means the seasons are shifting. I see it and I'm satisfied that I begin to understand this new place. It's becoming home.

I won't feel entirely at home here until I feel as if I can go outside in the middle of the night, and not feel threatened. I don't mean taking a walk or even leaving my property, but taking the garbage out at midnight, choosing to sit outside in my garden at three in the morning, or standing out on the front porch, listening to the night. It's true that I'd done these things at the Keystone building, and also true that I didn't often do them because it wasn't entirely safe. But that's the thing I truly mean. I will feel at home when I know when and how it's safe to do those things.

I didn't realize, before I moved, that there were so many nuances to living in a new place, but if I had to be honest, I'd say that I'm glad there are. It keeps me learning, keeps me questioning. Mostly it keeps me mindful of how lucky I am.

Accomplishments, hard lessons, and a Ranty McRanterson

2008-08-26T23:42:00.002-05:00

Yesterday Dawn was off work, so we decided to get some stuff done around here. The most pressing job was my garbage so I hauled it out, and while I was out there I noticed that Carlos had put two big dressers in the alley. They'd had a weekend yard sale, and I guess these were part of the stuff they didn't want to bother trying to sell. I gave a shout to Dawn to come see and we decided that one of them was certainly useable. Then I took good look at the other and realized that we could use the drawers if nothing else. So we started pulling it apart and discovered a bunch of old tools in the drawers and a big, honkin' vise attached to the top. Obviously these two pieces had been used in a work space. So I suggested to Dawn that we could do the same with the second one and salvage all the parts for the first. We pulled them over in front of the garage and then went to paint the front door. The painting went very well, though by the time we finished we were both pretty darn sore. However, we grabbed the garage key and went out to pull the dressers into the garage.

And all that was left were the two dresser shells. Everything else was gone. Drawers, tools, even the vise... all gone. See I forgot the cardinal rule of dumpster diving: If it's in the alley by the garbage, it's fair game. We should have pulled them into the garage right away. So, we put one dresser back because it was virtually useless with the vise gone, and the other is in there awaiting some sort of transformation. It's narrow enough that I may end up fixing it for myself as a liquor cabinet. I can put the bottles on either side and use the center for glasses of all sorts. The space where the drawers should go could be covered with frosted plexiglass, and I can put lights behind that to illuminate outward and downward. It may work out for the best after all, but honestly, it still chaps my hide to think about what we lost because I didn't think.

Yesterday my book about Windows Vista arrived and none too early, IMO. If you use Vista and love it, please avert your eyes because what I have to say about it is not going to make you happy.

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Vista is the worst operating system ever foisted upon the public. I say that as a survivor of Windows ME and that hideous mutant, Windows for Workgroups. It is not fast; it is, in fact, as slow as the seven-year itch. But the worst thing is that while it's set up to ask you for permissions for everything you do, it will still take it upon itself to "help" you by moving things around, write-protecting things you never wanted write-protected, hiding things, and god only knows what else because I've only had it for eight months and I'm certain it's got a lot more ugly surprises in store for me. It is the ultimate OS for idiots who should never be using a computer to begin with because it pats you on the head and says "There, there, darling, I'll take care of all this for you." It is a nanny OS, and I hate it.

It's also a mean nanny OS because you cannot, literally cannot, remove it from your system unless you sell your soul to the devil. If I find that I cannot live with Vista, I will have to buy a whole new hard drive, and hunt down drivers for all my hardware so they'll work under XP.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I've used Windows pretty uncomplainingly for many years now. I have been a Microsoft apologist in the past. No more. Microsoft screwed the pooch with this OS. It gave us something so badly developed, so badly considered, that it feels as if they've done it because they want, finally, to show their contempt for all of us. If they had an ounce of decency in them, they'd release something that would allow us to downgrade to XP instead of making us suffer through fix after fix that does nothing but fubar our systems even more.

If I can't bring this OS to its knees, my next laptop will be a Mac.
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Okay you can look again.

I promised photos, so there they are.

The red door! The first coat didn't get finished because it got too damn hot and humid. The paint wasn't drying properly.

My fern with the hanger I found at Home Depot

A not very good photo of the mosaic so far

The current work space

A much better (and larger) photo of the finished piece.

My fish from Target. Isn't he cute?

Slice of life: The corner of the sun porch. Fern, ripening tomatoes, and my painted chair. And the sun, of course.

There's something immensely satisfying about looking at your hands and seeing them marked by the work you're doing. My fingertips are coated with Wellbond and Thinset tonight. There is a 3-inch gap between the left side of the sill and the middle where I have laid out some tiles but not glued them down. I'll do them tomorrow. Once I do, the mosaic will be about 2/3rds finished, at least with the tiling part. Then comes the grouting. I'm so happy I found those Talavera tiles to set into the piece; they really anchor it. Once the mosaid is finished, I think I'll get some paint and start painting the window a beautiful gloss white. While I doubt I'll often pull curtains over the windows, I may put up filmy white ones just to give it a more finished look.

The place of honor on the sill will go to the Meyer lemon tree when it comes indoors for the winter, but right now I have a beautiful little scheffeleria looking quite happy in the center window. I've missed having plants. I want to get more.

Yesterday I fished a vase out of our garbage can. I don't know who put it in there, and it's just a cheap pink one, but broken up it'll make nice mosaic pieces. My next project is a nightstand. Before I moved I'd planned to do a mosaic on the top, and bought a lot of tiles hand cut from vintage china. There aren't nearly enough but it's a start. And since I have to get up to the library this week, I think I'll stop in the resale shop on the way and see if I can't find more. I need to scope out the second hand businesses in the area.

Kitchen is better but not finished. All the canned goods are moved and the dishes and glasses are mostly put away. It's sorting out where the cooking and baking pans should go that's stumping me because I have the room, but much of it is very hard to access. I think I may have hit upon a solution, though, but I'm not going to bother tonight. Tomorrow is soon enough. And the laundry is screaming for attention, too. Oh, and cookies. I've promised Dawn cookies for days now. I think I'd better actually make them this week.

If you are what you eat, I must have been put together by a committee.

2008-08-20T16:48:00.001-05:00

Here is the "Omnivore's Hundred" as compiled by Very Good Taste. I guess they're just things he thinks you should experience if you consider yourself a good omnivore. Anyway, he says:

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred: (Note: On the VGT site, about half of these have links to pages explaining what they are. I'm not going to take the time to copy those links. If you don't know what something is, Google it or check his site.)

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile -- I've had 'gator. I wonder how close they are.
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. ~~Carp~~ -- I'd spend too much time thinking of pet goldfish.
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. ~~Epoisses~~ -- I understand that this cheese reeks. I've tried to try pultost which is the mild younger brother to gammelost, and couldn't even get it within three inches of my face. I'm guessing I'll never try Epoisses.
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. ~~Foie gras~~ -- I'm ashamed to admit to eating fois gras, but I was young. Now that I know how it's made I'd never have touched the stuff.
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper -- Do I look crazy?
27. Dulce de leche -- Can't abide it.
28. Oysters -- ZOMG, I adore them.
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar -- I've had the cognac part many times. I'm not so sanguine about cigars, though I was known to smoke them occasionally in my youth, along with a little clay pipe decorated with roses. I may try this before I die, who knows?
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O -- I'm past the age where Jell-o shots hold any allure, thanks.
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
~~41. Curried goat~~ -- I love goats, I think they're sweet. I could never eat one.
~~42. Whole insects~~
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more -- Ahhh, the MacAllan! I just priced it the other day and was stunned by the steep rise in price. My friend, Denise, once gave me a bottle of 18 y.o. MacAllan, just out of the goodness of her heart. That was a regal gift.
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle -- One of my favorite foods.
~~57. Dirty gin martini~~ -- Martinis and I do not get along. I discovered the joys of gin late in life, and tend to stick to G&T.
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
~~62. Sweetbreads~~
63. Kaolin -- "What this child needs is a bait o clay!" Guy Davenport in his essay on Geophagy.
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe -- I can't say I care for it, and I get where the louche comes from. That's the sort of face I made when I drank it. I'd prefer louche Pernod.
74. Gjetost, or brunost -- Adore Gjetost. Must find some.
~~75. Roadkill~~
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. ~~Lapsang souchong~~ -- Of all the things I've ever tasted and loathed, this is right up near the top of the list. I can't even imagine why anyone would drink anything so foul, but I guess it takes all kinds.
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
~~89. Horse~~
90. Criollo chocolate -- I have a bag of the chocolate powder sitting in my cabinet but haven't yet used it. How odd.
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish -- It was awfully greasy and I didn't care for it, but I'd try it again.
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta -- I grew up on polenta, but we called it "mush."
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee -- I don't see what the fuss is about. Sumatra is much tastier IMO.
100. Snake

Yet another compilation of a week's mishaps and adventures

2008-08-19T14:51:00.001-05:00

August 13th -- There's nothing so attractive as folding clean laundry in a place so humid that sweat starts to drip down onto the sheets and towels as you work.

I do laundry about once a week, and there's usually a lot of towels, especially with the way the weather had been. So today I started a load and did some yardwork (It was lovely out, not hot at all, though a bit humid.) came back in and because there was about half an hour left on both machines I decided to stay down there and break down boxes for Patsy. I did about a dozen and then went back to the machines which is when I realized that the biggest problem is that there appears to be virtually no air circulation in the back of the basement. This is not a huge problem for us except when we need to work near the machines, or if we want company to stay the night. The work area in front does actually cool down pretty well. Now if we could just get the boxes emptied and stuff put away.

But it has to be fixed. The back area is so hot with no air coming out of the vents, all the mechanicals, and four large appliances that even on a nice day it's possible to break a sweat just sitting down and folding. I need to talk to Charles. In fact I need to start a list of things that need doing. But none of it can be done until mid-March when my money frees up again.

Speaking of which, I cleaned out all my cooking and baking stuff this week. I'm going to be selling it all, and while Patsy's daughter and daughter-in-law get first crack because they're family, I thought I'd make it available to my flist before I put it on Craig's List or wherever. The cookware is almost all Calphalon, bakeware is kind of mixed. I think I also have some small appliances,though theyr'e still packed. I hope to poke around in the boxes a bit and see if I can't find it all.

If you're local (Chicago) and interested, just leave a comment to that effect. No comments means that whatever is left after Ann-Marie and Jackie go through the stuff will go either straight to Craig's list or into a bin for a garage sale. I don't want to mail this stuff out, which is why I'm limiting it to local sale.

I'll be posting photos of other stuff I'm selling from time to time. I'm tired of having so much crap to deal with, so a lot of it is going. Worse comes to worse, I put it in my plastic bins and store it in the garage for a spring garage sale.

Moving. The great leveler.

August 15 -- I went out with Charles this morning, and couldn't believe how beautiful it was. It was this perfect summer day and I actually got out to enjoy it. Unheard of! ANd in fact, because I was asleep on the couch when he arrived, and made the mistake of telling him I wasn't feeling 100%, he kept on saying that he could come back another time. He wanted to take me to the doctor, I could tell. But I refused to tell him her name or location. So we went to the bank and I stopped at Walgreens and got some Claritin, which really has helped a lot. Then, on the way back we stopped at a roadside stand and bought fruit and veggies. I bought five huge peaches because they actually smelled like peaches. Not as sweet as I would have hoped but juicy and so fresh-tasting that it didn't matter. Also, four tiny orange plums, two small pears, two huge tomatoes and two huge potatoes. I love the James Beard baked potato -- scrub well and bake @ 400 degrees for 1.5 to 2 hours -- and these looked like they'd bake up nicely. They said they'd be there every day through November, so I plan to get to them again.

So tonight I made corned beef with roasted potatoes and carrots. Alas, Taylor can't come, being a worn down by a combo of family stuff and physical icks. I felt bad because I won't see her again for two more weeks. But we'll get together in September. Dawn and I want to go up to Devon to shop at some of the Indian stores, have Indian food for lunch, and then hit Marrakech Treasures in Andersonville afterwards. Sounds like a heavenly day, doesn't it? Don't you envy us? *g*

So now I'm waiting for Dawn who is on her way home from work. The CB is good (not great, but good) and the veggies are wonderful. A handful of parsley, and some mustard will make everything come together.

Still no idea where the tomatoes came from. Charles swears he didn't pick ours and put them on the table. The one was good, but I cut the other one before it was ripe. And I rescued a big ol' stripey centipede from my kitchen sink. It was a very full day.

August 17th -- I'm oddly wired tonight. Dawn and Jim left about an hour ago after I finished baking a loaf of bread for Jim to take home with him. I also taught him the 6-3-3-13 recipe for no-knead bread so he went home a happy camper.

I didn't do much of anything this morning, but this afternoon we motored on out to Nadeau more to check out what was in stock than actually buy anything. I found half a dozen chairs I loved, and several tables, all of which would make up a fantastic dining room set. I'm thinking I'd like one bench, but we'll see if that's feasible. The staff was amazingly helpful and kind and the prices were really good.

After that we drove down to Hyde Park to have supper at Dixie Kitchen and Bait Shop. It's a favorite of Jim and Dawn, but I'd never been there before. And we took surface streets all the way down so we ended up seeing a LOT of the city, including Old Town. Dawn and I had just been talking about OT a couple of days ago. She'd told me that there was no point in being nostalgic about it because it's utterly changed. Which it is, I admit. And yet, I also found that I still liked it somehow. It didn't occur to me until just a bit ago that it's because the energy is still there. Not in every place, but in general, and in some areas quite strongly no matter how different it's become. I found it oddly comforting.

Down in Bronzeville we were heartened to see how much the area has come back in the last twenty years. People are starting to renovate those magnificent old homes the way they're doing in Logal Square. Hyde Park is, we agreed, like Chicago's Cambridge. It's a university town and it shows. Everywhere you go there are perfectly gorgeous buildings attached to the university. Of course it has its share of hideous contemporary boxes (Mies van der Rohe, you have a LOT to answer for!) but for the most part it's a graceful and gracious area. Dixie Kitchen is in Harper Court. It's not very big, but the food is amazingly good. We started with fried green tomatoes that made me want to weep with happiness, and then I had the sampler plate -- gumbo, jumbalaya, red beans and rice, and a corn muffin -- and a side of greens. I brought at least half of it home with me. And the peach cobbler and bread pudding were both irresistible. So we didn't resist. I also had an Abita Purple Haze, and I'm of the opinon that Abita is some of the best beer ever.

We took LSD back up into the city. For you non-locals, that's Lake Shore Drive. You might recall an old song by Aliotta, Haynes and Jeremiah by that name. Yes, it's famous. And for good reason. It frames much of our lake shore, so that as you approach the city from the north or south, the view is breathtaking, lake on one side, skyline on the other. I adore Chicago even on bad days and this was a great day, blue of sky, brisk of breeze, and filled with people using the city the way it should be used.

We went all the way back up to Old Town and past it to go to the big Sam's down on Marcy St. We were looking for good prices on Ménage à Trois wines, and some Bell's beers, now that they're being shipped back to Chicago (long, rancorous story, apparently.) I also looked, as I always do, for Champagne Charles Ellner, which is the best champagne I've ever had. And, mirabile dictu, I found it! They had two sorts of champagne and a sparkling rosé. No Seduction, but I didn't think to push my luck. I picked up two bottles, which I must say were very well priced. I also found a bottle of Lillet, which I've always longed to try and Orgeat syrup which I haven't used in at least 30 years. I found a gift for Molerat which I think she'll appreciate, a couple of bottles of Italian red, one German white, and some Bell's Oberon beer as well as a six pack of Purple Haze. Also a bottle of Dead Guys Ale, which I'll be keeping on my desk as I write. And I just noticed that I have Dawn's wine down here. I need to give that to her tomorrow.

We got back and hung out here for a while. Jim and I got to talking about bread and I told him how spectacularly simple this no-knead stuff is. He was curious so I pulled out my dough pail and broke off a big hunk, shaped it and then suggested we go out for ice cream. Once we got back, I baked it, and he clutched it to his chest as he left. It's fun doing stuff like that for friends. Dawn and I decided that I'm going to be Bernard from Black Books for Halloween. I need a long black coat, a cigarette to dangle from my lips and cheap wine in a smudged glass. The hair and the attitude are already right.

I really had the best time today. I'm so lucky.

August 17th -- This morning I made two loaves of bread which used up the old batch, so I used the lazy woman's sourdough trick and just mixed a new batch in the unwashed bucket. Then Dawn came down and I cut up a couple of the peaches I bought on Friday, one of the fresh loaves, and we made coffee. It was a nice breakfast in spite of the bread having a bit of an underdone center. The one issue I do have with the large batches is that it's hard to mix it all. You get pockets of imperfectly blended ingredients which don't bake up well. We chatted about ideas for our business and the garden, and planned what we needed to do today. And then I walked out into the kitchen and saw this:

Eek, bread dough escaping!

It was like something out of a 1950s science fiction film. Only instead of "The Blob" it'd be called "The Bread."

Eek, it's alive!

When it started heading towards Caddy, making a "nomnomnom" noise, I decided it was time to bake this sucker, so I threw a loaf into the oven. It came out a bit ago and looks quite good. I also took two stale loaves and made seasoned croutons which are drying out in the oven as it cools down. I've got to juice my citrus today and cut up my veggies for snacks. I also have to pit those cherries and use them or lose them. Ditto the plums.

We're thinking of taking shares in a CSA or something similar. Timber Creek Farms looks most promising with a huge variety of organic fruit and veggies plus organic dairy, including milk in glass bottles that's not Oberweis.

It's hard to believe it'll be September soon, but the early apples are starting to come in at the farmers markets, and that means fall is on its way. I haven't done half of what I meant to do in terms of setting up a greener, more sustainable household, but I guess there's no point in expecting to be able to do it all at once.

Later: That Urgent QR, or whatever it's called, the stuff that's supposed to stop bleeding immediately? It works. I just sliced a piece of my thumb off. Just skin, and off one side -- please to not be thinking amputation -- but it was bleeding like a mutha, to the point where I had to wipe the blood off the bathroom wall because I shook my hand while trying to get the package open.

The culprit: My new Wusthof chef's knife and a carrot. It pays to have super sharp knives as I barely felt it.

Even later, doing the math: 1 big damn flesh wound + 1.5 C freshly squeezed lemon juice = 1 change of bandage and five minutes of colorful cussing.

Because it's my thumb I've put one bandaid over the top and then wrapped one around that. My thumb looks like someone's bubbie, wearing a brown babushka. I think I'll draw some eyes on the thumbnail.

August 18th -- Yes, I have been a total slug. I've done nothing more strenuous than note that my thumb was still attached. It hasn't even really been hurting at all which is kind of weird considering how big the cut was. Well okay it sort of hurts if I press on it, but since I prefer it to not hurt, I don't press.

Nothing much to report either. It's 81 here and I'm not happy. Dawn likes warm weather so she thinks this is all just fine, but for me it's way too hot. This winter the roles will be reversed.

Charles sent his yard guy over to talk to me and we're going to be transplanting stuff in mid-October. Barbara, I asked him about wrapping up the trees for you and he said no problem. He also said that in spite of having nearly no soil at all along our fence, he thinks grapes would probably do well there, so we'll be putting in a bunch of vines. Dawn and I have been discussing what to do with the area where the wisteria is now, and I think we'll be doing peas, tomatoes and other veggies that grow well on the vertical along that wall, with rows of root veggies between them. Apple tree, bush cherries, kitchen garden with lettuces and herbs, maybe a peach or apricot tree, or a plum, and scads of bright flowers. Ahhhhh, and a fountain or waterfall. It'll be pretty, I think.

Can anyone possibly explain why Caddy will try to drink my La Croix but if I put it in his water bowl, I'd never hear the end of how I was trying to poison him?

Later: A recipe for Fruit Sludge Cake, or Bruise Cake (because it looks like a great big bruise on the plate.

Gather the fruit you've been planning to use for at least a week now. In this case, plums of varying degrees of ripeness from just right, to OMG what's that? Is it dangerous?
Do whatever it is you have to do to prepare fruit for use in cake. For plums, wash, pit and slice. Discard any that have innards which look distressingly like what you might find at the bottom of your current garbage bag.
Sprinkle with some sort of sugar to bring out the juices, assuming they're not all soaked into whatever you're wearing. Let stand for about fifteen minutes or until you finish watching The Closer.
Prepare boxed cake mix because by now it's kind of late for a scratch cake and anyway you're curious about how the lemon cake will taste with the plums.
Arrange plums in the bottom of a tart pan.
Realize that there's no way to fit any cake batter in on top of them, so dump them back into bowl.
Search through baking pans and settle on a highly inappropriate but somewhat larger pan. In this case, springform. Spray with oil.
Throw plums into pan. Pour batter over it. When batter reaches top of pan wonder if this isn't a monumental mistake.
Shrug. Place in oven that turns out to be 50 degrees too cool. Bake for requiste amount of time.
Test. Discover that cake is still completely liquid.
Bake for 20 more minutes. Test. Discover that cake is still completely liquid in spite of the fact that the top is now dark brown.
Note temperature issue. Crank up the heat. Bake for 20 more minutes until the smell begins to be rather frightening.
Test. When you realize that center is still liquid, curse with feeling, then remove cake from oven anyway and put on cooling rack.
Allow to cool thoroughly, or at least until your need to know the worst gets the better of you.
Turn cake over onto a large plate and release spring.
When pan and cake cling together like something out of Italian opera, reach for knife to run around edges of pan.
Lift pan. Watch as cake innards slide out leaving flaps of over-baked top stuck to the pan.
Stare at cake. Reflect that it may not be pretty but it smells good. Note that center is in fact still liquid, but most of rest of cake is solid. Feel accomplished.
Set cake on table. Fetch spoon and carton of milk. Taste test. Discover it's quite good when you close your eyes.
Eat too much. Stir plums and juice into liquid batter and drizzle over properly baked cake bits. Eat a bit more.
Put cake in fridge. Decide that it would do for a group of people who don't mind eating out of the same dish. Reflect that individual milk cartons would be edgy accompaniment.
Wonder how plum juice and sugar syrup will ever come off of pan.

Today, August 19th -- Thumb still attached? Check. House riddled with workmen? Check. Paint and primer bought? Check

Okay I'm on top of things.

Abe got here bright and early to finally fix the front door trim. Then he pulled out all the nails that weren't accomplishing anything, and is now sanding the door so I can paint it a gorgeous bright blue called "Chicago Blues." It's a Benny Moore Aura paint so, y'know, low VOC. Also got the paint for the back door. "Smouldering Red." Hot-cha! And I picked up two sample cans of stain to test them on the cabinets in the kitchen. I've decided to darken the stain, which will give me the look I want w/o having to swap out all the cabinets. That and a change of hardware should put me right where I need to be. Then I'm replacing the sink and faucet, and doing something, anything! to the counterop because it couldn't get much worse. Everything stains it. I wanted to tile over the laminate, but Charles thinks I can get a good granite top for about $1000 through one of his contacts, so I'm going to see what can be done before I make any decisions.

Finally we stopped at Mosaico on Pulaski and the gal who worked there was fantastic! She knew exactly what I meant when I said I was looking for tiles for a pique aisette mosaic, and she rustled up about twenty discontinued tiles for me which I got for free. Then she showed me the Talaveras which were $1.99 per tile and I picked up six to use on the window sill on the sun porch. That gives me a really good focal point to build around. I'm thinking seriously of tiling the front porch, and I saw some wonderful porcelain tile in bright yellow and blue that would be perfect. I'll have to do some measuring and then decide how I want to approach it. It pretty much has to be something other than ceramic because it can get pretty cold here and the freeze-thaw cycle will break clay tiles. The other option is to paint a design on the porch, which might also be fun to do.

She gave me a couple of brochures, too. Artisan tiles and Oceanside glass tiles. And I came home to a White Flower Farm catalog. The house, she will become a diva.

And as for today...

2008-08-11T16:34:00.001-05:00

I can't sleep. I've been up watching the umpty-gazillionth broadcast of "Showgirls" on E!, and if there's a more awesomely awful film in existence I have yet to encounter it. It's one of those movies where you simply can't look away. And the censorship of language and nudity by the network just boosts the delicious cheese factor exponentially.

But all good things come to an end, so I came out to the kitchen and heated up a little leftover mac and cheese, and sat down to play on the internets for a while. As it turned out the Amazon.com one-day sale had kicked in already so I got my shopping done before sunrise. Now that's a kick. How much do I love the internets?

It's cooled off here quite a bit, so it's not unpleasant to work around the house now. I'm hoping that tomorrow will be as nice so I can work in the office and get stuff sorted and put away. One day this week I want to get to Home Despot, and pick up a bunch of things I'm needing to start work on the following:

Shrine in front hall. I mentioned this months ago, but we haven't done much about it. It's the old mailbox. Mike took the old box out and now we have this big, square hole in the wall of the hallway, framed by a very nice piece of wood. We're going to mosaic the interior of the hole, and then copper leaf the framing wood. Because of the shape of the frame it's going to have a kind of iconic look to it. But I need fiberglass tape, and drywall mud, and then some thinset, I think, because it'll set the tiles better than Well-Bond. And I have to find the copper leaf, or buy some more. I pretty much know where the size is.

Bathroom Vanity -- To be painted white as are the walls. All in preparation for more tiling including a two-layer effect in the bath. Also must find stencils for low relief work on door.

Office Desk -- Wood is old and funky. Must be black.

Dawn and I were watching House Hunters International tonight and we saw a door we both thought was gorgeous. It was stained two different colors, a dark stain on the raised parts and a reddish one on the low areas. Then it was heavily varnished. We're thinking about trying that on the basement door. If it looks awful we have about 25 extra doors in the garage; surely one of them will fit. We've also discussed the painting in the halls. I'm going to pay someone to do the back for us because there is no way in hell we're getting up on a ladder to do the high spots. And also to do the upper areas of the front hall. But on the bottom we're fine, and we want to preserve the delicious raspberry puree color there now. I'd like to spiff it up a bit, though and do stripes, but they'd be in the same color, only a different sheen. It's a subtle, beautiful effect. And we really aren't going to do a thing until we decide on a color for the top. Nothing has quite grabbed us yet. The two-tone stripes are going to be a feature of either my bedroom or the dining room, too. Who knows, maybe both.

Caveat: Looooong post

2008-08-11T16:17:00.002-05:00

Being a compendium of my Live Journal posts on life at the Villa for the last few weeks.

July 17th -- I'm hanging out in the sunroom, playing on the computer and doing a bit of cooking-type stuff. I zested six lemons, then froze the zest in little ice cubes for future use. I'll probably do some orange zest later. Then I juiced the lemons and made a lemonade syrup which is now in the fridge. I made a glass of lemonade right away since I couldn't wait, and it's pretty good. There's a bit of zest in it which intensifies the lemon flavor. I'm thinking of juicing the other ten lemons and freezing part of the juice for later. For sure I'm going to juice my oranges because I totally forgot to order any orange juice this week. I may do the grapefruits too, though I won't save any of that zest.

Today's shuffle has been very much World's-Best-Jukebox material. Currently listening to the Kronos Quartet and some Tuvan throat-singers from the Lachrymae Antiqua album. I've also heard some Gabrielle Roth, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Beethoven and Alan Stivell.

July 18th -- I was just about to take out my garbage and water the garden when it started to rain. So I thought, "Good, that's one less thing I need to do today and I'll do the garbage later." Then I sat down and started to play on the laptop only to discover that apparently Vista's service pack 1 now prevents me from changing my user pic. Well that sucks, thinks I, and then I notice that not only is it no longer raining, the sun is back out.

Rather than sit here and be annoyed, I schlep out the garbage and start watering. Let me tell you, that sun is HOT. And then, I notice that my Meyer lemon tree which is supposed to set flowers in winter is now getting ready to bloom. Okay. The sunflowers, which a couple of days ago were just squirrel-chewed knobs, are now in bloom as are the day lilies and the foxtail lilies. Tomatoes getting bigger, basil everywhere as are the weeds, the most invasive of which of which I've finally identified as common pigweed.

Then I decided to go water in front and wrestle the new composter to the back. And lo, what did I find out front? We not only have no sidewalk from the main walk to the curb, we are now missing the segment directly in front of the stairs, which means that there would be no large box wrestling today, at least not in that direction. Every day it's something new. Just one thing, and never enough to actually finish the job. Just one more inconvenience.

Finally I filled the bird feeders. The McTwittersons all flocked to them as if they hadn't eaten in days, which I know isn't true because we have the fattest birds on the block hanging around here.

July 23rd -- It's been coolish for the last couple of days. Not that I've accomplished much, though I have had a couple of energy bursts. Mostly the last couple of days I've managed to clean up the kitchen and dirty it again with my fledgeling attempts at no-knead bread. The first one is a basic recipe very much like the raisin pecan one given to me by Barbara. It's currently sitting in the oven getting all bubbly. I'll bake it tomorrow. The second batch is the basic recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day This last one is a big batch, four loaves worth. It stores well in the fridge from what I gather, getting a sourdough-like quality as it ages. We shall see. The two batches used up the bulk of my flour so I need to order some more. But if this works, I can make bread just about every damn day and not really work very hard at it. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is.

I've also been transcribing recipes from stacks of torn-out magazine pages. I keep a digital recipe book which I shall add to my Kindle as soon as I invest in one. Since they take SD cards, and I just bought three 2Gb ones on Woot for almost no money, I can store a ton of recipes on one tiny card and plug it in only when I want to cook. Someone suggested sealing the Kindle in a plastic bag in the kitchen and I think that's a great idea.

Friday night was Girls' Night as usual, but I didn't feel like cooking since it was so hot, so we ordered out again. Alas, nothing tasted good to me, a side effect of too much heat and humidity, and I ended up throwing a lot of food away. I've also gotten turned off to meat to the point where even thinking about cooking it makes me want to urp. I've discovered an organic produce delivery service I want to try out, too. It's substantially cheaper than the last one I was using, and I can get dairy and other groceries, including milk in glass bottles. I think I'll sign up next week and see how it works out.

On Saturday we (Dawn, Taylor, Christ, Karen and I) went to Can't Stop the Serenity over at the Portage. I've been to two of the three events and have enjoyed them both, so I really recommend them to locals. Yeah, the whole thing is pretty loosely run, and there are a couple of things I think they need to address (I'll be making some suggestions.) but hey, it's a great excuse to sit and watch Serenity with a bunch of fans. We also had dinner at Meisa Cafe, and it's definitely a keeper. Nice people, good food, very reasonable prices, and close to the theater. The only problem is that the six corners area is pretty much a pit right now. Businesses are just hanging on and derelicts are starting to camp out around the empty stores. It's all sort of sad when I think of what that area was like when I was a kid. I do think, though, that if the economy improves the area will boom. It's a great location. Of course then there's the inevitable push-pull between gentrification and maintaining the old neighborhoods. I hope it doesn't end up like Lincoln Square, which, though I love shopping there, is not a place I really want to live. I realized that when we were property shopping.

Adventures in Bread-Making -- My bread makin' mojo? Not at the top of its form. The first batch looked great when I pulled the paper off the bowl. Just exactly the way it was supposed to look. And then I turned it out onto my floured work surface and discovered that I had bread dough soup spreading across the counter. I added as much flour as I dared, and managed to scoop it back into a clean, oiled bowl where it's getting bubbly again, and looking surprisingly sinister.

The second batch more than doubled in size, and looked drier, so I decided to make one loaf of each in spite of not having any cornmeal to dust the bread stone with. I'll find an alternative. I don't think I pulled off enough dough though since the loaf is kind of teensy, and was difficult to work with. Not so bad as the bread dough soup, but not simple. It's risen a bit so far, and since I have about half an hour more to go before I throw everything in the oven, that's a good sign. I think.

Later: Batch 2 has a superbly crispy crust and a soft, almost creamy crumb. I'm watching butter melt into it even as I type. It does, however, point up the single biggest problem with baking bread: Trying not to eat it all within minutes of removing it from the oven.

Batch 1 tastes great in spite of its awkward beginning. Crust is very hard and not particularly flaky. Interior crumb is very creamy. Flavor slightly better than batch 2. Both well worth eating. Go me.

After baking the bread, I stemmed and pitted between 4 and 6 pounds of cherries, freezing half and dividing up the other half for eating and baking. I'm having my own Firefly marathon this week, so it wasn't really much of a chore. Then I made a slap-up cherry galette which is now cooling on the stovetop. I say slap-up because I lacked anything to thicken the juices and so was baking with all fingers crossed. So far so good, but I don't know how the crust will do once it's been standing for a while.

I just finished cleaning out the fridge and freezer. It's been needing some attention for a while, especially the drawers. The ice tray had a build-up where water had apparently dripped out of the glasses that were being filled. And I threw away a lot of stuff. If I looked at it and thought, "Oh God, I'm going to puke." it went out. Now I have a refrigerator and freezer filled with fruit, veggies, cheese and a bit of fish. I feel healthier already.

What I really want to do is take a nap, but I have to finish the laundry first, and the kitchen looks like God came along and shook it. That's never the best look for a kitchen.

July 25th -- I think I have fleabites. Dawn and I did a couple of hours of yard work this evening and now I have three itchy red bumps on my left leg. I just hope that if it's fleas I didn't bring them inside. I know, I know, but I can hope.

We did a lot of trimming of the verge, dead heading and weed pulling, and then we watered and refilled the bird feeders. While we were sitting on the bench, musing about life, a mourning dove came and sat on the feeder post, not more than five feet from us. I said "Wow, aren't you brave?" and it was like he suddenly thought "OMG, what am I DOING?" and took off. After that, three or four others flew towards the post with the clear intention of landing, and then peeled off at the last minute. One big fat pigeon watched us from the electric line and a whole flock of McTwittersons were gathered on the roof of the garage next door, hopping around and looking anxious. It was like "The Birds" but funny. Dawn and I laughed ourselves sick over the show, but finally came in because it was getting late after all, and they were on the clock. It was a nice way to end a day which had been, up to that point, pretty rotten. Since Tuesday I've had several computer problems and at least three pieces of mail that reduced me to tears, mostly of frustration and anger, but one which made me downright despair. Fortunately there's an upside to being moody, the moods don't last long.

I've been cleaning out my bookshelves. I'm going to give stacks of books to the senior center at Portage Park for their September sale. Alas, I have to wait until next spring before I can get myself that Kindle I covet so madly. I'm trying hard to adjust to the downsizing (By about half) of my apartment. It's true there's a lot of stuff in the basement now, but most of the rooms are smaller than what I'm used to. The biggest issue has been kitchen and bathroom storage, and of course downsizing on the book front won't make a huge difference there unless I replace some of my cookbooks with Kindle editions, which I don't particularly want to do.

I can't get Charles to send someone to fix the damn roof, which means that we may be getting mold growing inside that back wall. Not good.

Later: I have a house full of workers, a fridge full of fruit and vegetables, and a rope just snaked past my back window. Yes indeedy, all is right with the world. Dawn's boys are in the office. They wouldn't get off the cat tree so I moved it in there with them on it. Then they got off one at a time and ran out of the room. Goofballs.

July 26th -- Moving things around and around until you get it right, that is. It's all part of moving into a new place, at least one you plan to stay in for a while. Yesterday I moved all the stuff off the kitchen island, and today I used it as workspace for shaping my bread loaf instead of getting flour and cornmeal all over my counters. And it was good. So now my coffee maker is in the sun room and the water heater is back on the counter where it was. Much more efficient use of space, methinks. And yeah, all part of the process.

And suddenly there's this intense garlic scent wafting into the house on the breeze. WTF? It actually smells like someone just burned some garlic.

So last night the girls were over and we had salad and baked potatoes which were awesome. Dawn made baked peaches with chocolate and walnuts for dessert and they were awesome, too. A really nice combo of sweet, tart and slightly bitter from the walnuts. We watched Buffy and Angel, and the last ep of Firefly because Taylor got here a bit early. It was a Joss sort of evening. Relatively simple cleanup, too, which is of the good.

And then I slept like the dead. I don't remember even getting up to use the bathroom in the night. I went to bed about one and didn't wake up until I heard someone bashing around outside. Turns out it was Charles and Abe come to finish the work upstairs. Charles brought me a big bag of plums because I've asked him not to bring whole cakes anymore. The problem is that I eat them. When I make baked goods, I tend to give all or part of them away and so never get quite the concentrated effect. Besides, he always brings the best chocolate-whipped cream cakes ever, and those are just deadly. When I took Abe upstairs Dawn gave me one of the peaches she'd bought at a downtown farmer's market so I'm having a plum and a peach for breakfast. I am totally going to that Farmer's Market this week to get more peaches. And the plums are excellent, too. Charles told me he got them at Sam's club. Now I don't shop at the outposts of the Evil Empire, but as I have nothing to say about where other people buy their food, I have no problem with the plums. But now I have so many plums I really do need to make a cake. I have to look for a good recipe.

Charles also picked our first tomato, which is still sort of orangey, so it's on one of the shelves in the sunroom -- currently all but overtaken by ripening produce; mangos, heirloom and campari tomatoes, avocados and bananas -- getting nice and ripe. It's really heavy for its size so I expect it to be an excellent tomato. Once it's fully ripe, Dawn and I will share it as a tribute to our gardening skills. *g*

My next door neighbor is outside doing some yard work. He's a nice man if a bit taciturn. The ones on the other side are big talkers, great laughers. I have the Beatles to keep me company, and I'm about to put the bread in the oven and mix a new batch or two. And then I've set myself to cleaning out the bathroom. I have too much stuff. I need to carve it all down to manageable levels.

The next block is having their block party today and I must say they really do it up. About noon, the fire department showed up and let the kids run under the spray from their hoses for about an hour. There was some crazy, over-the-top dance music playing and I half expected a big mirror ball and a rain of colored balloons. The music has barely let up since then -- pretty much only during a drawing for raffle/door prizes -- but it has gone from techno to what I fondly think of as "Pepe's Bierstube" music. When I worked at the bead store the people upstairs loved that stuff, but all you could hear through the ceiling was a beat and the accordion, which made it sound vaguely Bavarian.

Anyway, it's still going strong with a wild mambo, though there does appear to be a neighborhood rule about music ending about ten. The partying may go on longer, but I've never known it to go on past midnight. And other than the screaming kids this afternoon, it's been pretty darn quiet. People from other blocks have migrated down there with their beer coolers but nobody has gotten sloppy or nasty drunk that I've seen. Someone has strung a lot of colored lights at the far end of the street and there are a few people dancing, a bunch of kids playing basketball, and toddlers pedaling their little cars furiously up and down the street, safely blocked by the cars parked across the intersection. And lo, there are disco lights where the DJ has set up. People are sprawled on lawns and porches, seemingly having lost the rest of their energy. Our block party was nothing by comparison. If I had the money, I'd hire a DJ and serve grilled hot dogs at a future block party. Not because I want people to like me because lord knows I haven't gone out of my way to get to know more than my immediate neighbors, but because it seems like a nice thing to do. Who knows? Maybe next year or the year after.

I've sorted a bunch of books and searched for public domain replacements online. I hope to fill up a bunch of boxes, but am rethinking my notion of giving them all to the senior center. We're supposed to be having a garage/yard sale on this block next month, and I would dearly love to get a bit of money out of what I've got sitting here. But that means I really have to put on some speed and get things sorted and stored well before then. I don't think it's going to be possible. I think the sale is too soon.

I've also been reading more in the current book-for-review, "The Black Tower" by Bayard. It's good, though so far not what I'd call great. Interesting, not riveting. And well written. Kind of fun. I want to finish this weekend so I can get that review out of the way.

The loaf of bread was somewhat underdone at one end, but it tasted good enough. I'll get better at this. I made myself some black bean soup for supper (out of a can; I'm not that ambitious) and it tasted wonderful. It's been a very long time since I had any. I ate and watched "Reaper" which Dawn got me hooked on, and marked up a couple of catalogs with notes about what I could use here to make life a bit simpler. Mostly cleaning or organizational stuff. Also watched "Midnight" a wonderful screwball comedy with Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore and Mary Astor.

Hee, the DJ just started playing "YMCA." I have the wild desire to dash out and go dancing. LOL. The very end of the party turned into a medley of every song I ever heard at a gay bar from YMCA to Dancing Queen to I Will Survive, and all points in between.

July 29th -- Two days ago I mixed up another batch of no-knead bread based on the Bittman recipe, which is baked in a Dutch oven. All went well until Dawn and I got invited to our next door neighbor's birthday barbeque, and our evening plans had to be pushed back by a couple of hours. (Totally worth it since Grace makes the best rice with pigeon peas ever and they're super nice people.) We did finish the yardwork, but by the time we got indoors, it was late and we were both tired. We collapsed in front of the TV with bottles of fizzy water and the last Design Star challenge (Yes, I hate reality TV, but honestly this thing is like crack. I start watching because I just loathe one or two of the challengers from their commercials, and want to see them eliminated, and then I get hooked.) So rather than leave the dough out for another night, I threw it in the fridge. I figured it doesn't do any harm to the Hertzberg/François bread dough.

Well...I went from a nicely raised mass of herb/garlic dough to a wet herb/garlic pancake. So I took it out of the fridge and warmed it up. It remained deliberately flat. I turned it out onto a floured work surface and shaped it, but it stubbornly refused to hold the shape. I kneaded more flour into it because it was still really wet, and it vindictively spread out and stuck to the unfloured areas. "Evil bread!" I shouted. "You will pay for the misery you have brought upon this house." And I flung it into my Dutch oven now heated to 450 degrees. "aaAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" I said, feeling a bit like the witch from Hansel and Gretel. "Bake or perish; I care not." Then, turning my back upon the carnage, I strode resolutely into the living room to watch "The Closer."

45 minutes later I had a nice, high herb/garlic loaf with a crust that could be used as building material. I don't much mind a hard crust myself, but it was hellish to cut. However, the crumb was really nice, proving once again that in spite of any mistakes you might make, and whatever abuse you wish to heap upon it, this no-knead bread recipe is a pretty darn good one. I hesitate to say it's fool-proof because as we all know, fools are particularly inventive. But it's darn close, IMO.

And the Bread Gods seem to have smiled on me today because I got my Amazon Associates payment today in the form of an Amazon gift certificate, so I treated myself to a banneton (those beehive-shaped baskets used for raising bread) a pastry scraper, a good bread knife, a pastry brush (how can I not have a pastry brush???) and a baguette pan. Between the gift cert and the 4 -for3 promotion on household stuff over there, I made out like a bandit! I essentially got everything but the banneton for free, and then only paid about half price for that.

But hell, it was deserved. Not only do I intend to devote (part of) my life to the Church of Bread, last night at the very stroke of midnight we had a big damn power outage. One minute I was getting ready to turn off the TV and go take a bath (I'd just watched my DVR'd "Barefoot Contessa" and "House Hunters International") and the next, I was plunged into darkness so deep I could not find my glasses. Well, okay it turned out that I'd left them in the bathroom, but the point was that it was really, really dark. I did find my cell phone and using its light I got to the front door and went outside. I met Jesse, another of my neighbors, who seems to always be prowling around at night, and he said "Power out in your place?" which was exactly what I wanted to hear. There were people all over our block and the next wandering around. It was sort of zombieish, truth be told. People walking slowly in the dark, me trying to see the cell phone without my glasses so I could report the outage. Apart from Jesse, who I recognized because I know him, I could probably not identify anyone else I spoke to last night, more because of the weirdness of the situation than absolute darkness since the streetlights were still on. It was only the south side of the block that was out.

I made the call and was told that they expected to restore power in two hours. Then I went back in, figuring I could sleep on the sofa, and when the power came back on, and all the lights woke me up, I'd phone Dawn and get her to reset her clock so she wouldn't be late for work. Then I lay there, listening resentfully to the sounds of someone else's a/c unit. Fortunately it was resolved in about 45 minutes, so I alerted Dawn, got my bath and went to bed. This is what passes for adventure in my life.

July 30th -- I just finished rearranging the desk area in my office. The original arrangement had been bugging me for some time now, but I'm the sort of person who has to think about stuff for a while before she can wade in and start shifting the furniture. My desk now faces the bookcases, and I can see most of the room from where I sit instead of seeing mostly one rather dull wall. I've also fixed it so I can put the laptop on the desk to use in tandem with the desktop if I want. One of these days I'll figure out how to network the two, but right now it's enough that I've got the wireless internet access working.

The desktop is currently all tied up with an installation. Before I moved I got a review copy of CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4, and have been meaning to install it ever since I got here. Once I finish, and work with it for a while, I can do the review and then be all caught up on my Amazon Vine requests. I did request another book today, and will probably ask for more soon. It's kind of fun, especially since it's not all books or media. I got a tea infuser the other day. I guess there are perks to being the sort of person who obsessively offers her opinions.

Speaking of which, my opinion of the latest loaf of bread is that it's gorgeous. It has a chewy crust and a creamy crumb. I can't wait to try different flours, and I just got a bag of light rye, one of multi-grain and one of hazelnut flour which is actually more for pastries, but you never know; I could throw half a cup of it into the mix just to see how it turns out. I also got some tart cherries for snacking, as well as two kinds of edamame snacks. And in the "Gee thanks, FedEx" dept., apparently they delivered my package to the right number on the wrong street today. *headdesk*

I made melon balls this afternoon, and have four mangoes that need to be peeled, cut and frozen because they're starting to look funky. Also a huge mixed berry compote to throw together and freeze, cherries to pit for a clafouti (how long has it been?) and more rice to soak. Maybe some quinoa, too. Supper looks like it's going to be grilled veggie tartines. Mmmmm.

Oh, and some new tee shirts that I got on sale. Now I can get rid of some of the old ones. Wheee!

Still much too hot out there. Too hot even to go out and chase the ice cream guy.

August 1st -- Those of you who were surprised, even stunned that I was making bread in this weather can relax. Today I'm making ice cream. This new ice cream maker is damn noisy, though. On the menu for today: Lemon ice cream. Mostly because it's the easiest recipe I know. Sweetened condensed milk mixed with lemon juice until you're happy with the flavor. Then freeze. Nobody tell Dawn, though. I want it to be a surprise. *g*

I'm nearly finished rearranging my kitchen cabinets. I just have the spices left for later. Also on the list for today: Get rid of the garbage, clean kitchen and bathroom. Melt.

Listening to my Old Dead Guys soundtrack on my iPod; makes me want to write more about them. I love those boys. Come to think of it, I'd rather be writing about them than schlepping garbage or mopping floors. Hmmmm...

We ordered out from a new Chinese place last night and it was a winner. Lots of bang for the buck, and good food. Amazing egg foo yung, to which I am a late convert, so a bad batch could toss me right back into the I-HATE-egg-foo-yung camp. The gravy with this was just delish. Since Taylor won't be coming in tonight -- It's her birthday and she wants to spend it with her husband. Hmph, the nerve! -- I'm thinking leftovers and a movie will have to serve for girls' night this week. It's too freakin' hot for much else. And of course, lemon ice cream.

August 2nd -- I mopped myself out onto the sun porch. Yes, it was deliberate. I'm tired now, having vacuumed several rooms, wet mopped two, and cleaned the whole bathroom. I also got down under the bathroom sink to see if I could possibly swap out the faucet myself. I think I could, but from what I saw under there, it'd probably take most of the day and I'd end up looking like a pretzel. I also noted that a lot of the... what are they called? In jewelry-making it's "findings." Fittings? You know, the stuff that holds stuff to other stuff? Gizmos. Freebistats. Connector Fribble. Anyway, a lot of it is very old and much is rusty, as are some of the pipes. I'm thinking that I'd much rather just get the whole thing taken care of at once. New sink, storage, faucet, etc. For some reason -- we say that a lot around here because so many of the things about this place seem to have been put together by a committee of fractious gnomes -- for some reason, though, the sink and vanity, like the toilet, have been moved off the most logical spots. The sink has been moved about eight inches to the right, which seems kind of pointless to me because there was more than enough room for it in the right place. And the toilet is about six inches away from the wall. I realize that there had to be some adjustment for the baseboard heating, but that only comes out an inch, and is nowhere near the base of the toilet.

I said to Dawn the other day that I'm not really minding that I have far less space in there than in my old bathroom, but I do sort of mind that it's so weirdly put together. The floor tile is badly spaced and everything in here is on some sort of strange angle, like Hill House. Only it's not an evil, crazy house, it's just sort of amiable and goofy. Honestly, I think I could've done a better job of laying the floor tile. And the grout has dropped completely out of the spaces between several of the wall tiles. The shower shucks back and forth into and out of the wall. *headdesk*

However, I have accomplished a lot thanks to cooler, drier weather. I baked the other two loaves of bread this morning, and mixed up a new batch. Then I let it rise and made a third loaf. Like the first two, it's got regular, unbleached white and European artisan flour. But it also has a good, healthy dose of 10 grain flour. It's good, though I like the last batch a bit better. But it's exactly the sort of bread that would be fantastic with jam.

Dawn is out at Ikea with Jim, getting some furniture, and good on her, sez I. She needs more. Jim also brought a stack of old frames, and a wonderful old mahogany (he thinks) secretary which has seen far better days. We're guessing it's over 100 years, but lots of it has been broken, and the whole thing has been painted a nightmarish shade of green. He figured we could practice on it, but I think that if we put it back together again, and decorate it as beautifully as I think we can, we may well be able to realize enough of a profit on it to pay for a goodly chunk of what the front windows will cost us.

I had an unexpected guest today. I was out in the back hall, getting the mop and bucket when a big, orange fluffball raced past me into the apartment. It was Dawn's Tommy who had somehow managed to get the back door of Dawn's apartment open and had gone exploring. Thank goodness he didn't choose to hang a left once he came inside because if Caddy had seen him, things might've gotten interesting. He was very insistent upon exploring but I propelled him back out through the door, and yelled "YOU GET UPSTAIRS NOW!" at which point he seemed to think it was time to take me seriously. By the time I got up there, he was lying on the floor, cleaning his feet, and Buckaroo was standing in the doorway looking like "Why U yellin at mah brudder?" Tommy's response was "I know nothing about this."

August 4th -- The rain has been coming down on and off since at least 7 this morning. I know this because when I stumbled out of my bedroom I hit the wind tunnel that is the hallway between the front and back parts of the house. It was fierce! It was also almost nighttime black outside. I ran around and closed or lowered my windows, then fetched the keys and ran upstairs to do the same for Dawn's windows. It really had been my intention to stay in the apartment until the weather got too oppresive and then run for the basement where, even if the a/c isn't doing the job it should do, it'd be better working down there then up here. Only marginally, but still. Well it's 2 pm and I'm quite happy to be sitting here on the sun porch, watching the rain, eating pancakes, and doing research for my fantasy universe. I was, in fact, up until three this morning doing much the same thing, minus rain and pancakes.

Yesterday was also surprisingly pleasant in spite of the forecasts -- was spent in our usual Sunday way. Dawn and I have brunch together between ten and eleven, talk about what needs doing, and then about noon or so we actually get up and start doing it. Yesterday it was putting together a Hemnes chest that Dawn and Jim bought at Ikea on Saturday. The chest itself took us about three hours to put together during which time we cursed cam bolts unto the seventh generation of bolts. Then we schlepped the drawer stuff over to her couch and watched this week's Reaper, and the "Blink" episode of Dr. Who as we worked. I have to admit that by the time we finished with Blink, I was wanting to see more Who.

Then we went outside to do a bit of work in the front, and buy ice cream from one of the guys who cruises the neighborhood every evening. Unfortunately my back is acting up like mad, and it's hard for me to stand or walk for very long so I fear that I let Dawn do most of the work and buy me the ice cream. I do pitiful pretty well.

Saturday was pretty quiet since Dawn and Jim were out shopping, but they showed up in late afternoon with beer and wine as well as furniture and the spray bottles and storage jars I'd asked them to find for me. Karen and Gene showed up about eight and we went to McNamara's for supper because Gene was jonesing for shepherd's pie. I really wasn't very hungry and knowing that ice cream was inevitable, I stuck to a dinner salad and one of their stuffed baked potatoes. Then we went to Borders where I made out like a bandit with a coupon for 30% off any item plus the money I'd earned for past purchases. I snagged "Barefoot in Paris" which is a compilation of Ina Garten's French recipes which I just adore. Also scored a handful of great magazines including a copy of Dirty Linen which I haven't seen in years. It was up at the checkout area, obviously dropped by someone who thought better of how much s/he was spending, and I chose to take it as an omen. DL was one of the seminal resources for what I wrote about in White Rabbit. Yup, it was an omen. I came home and sat right down at the computer, and started making notes.

And yes, ice cream was gotten. We pulled right up to the Chocolate Shoppe and discovered Dawn and Jim sitting there, finishing their ice cream. This place has started to loom large with my crowd, apparently. I took Barbara there last time we were together, and suspect we'll do the same whenever we have visitors (with cars.) But there's a good reason for that, and it's not all the Zanzibar chocolate.

Later: Huge storm! Sitting here watching it, I'm reminded of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia, post-Derra, when Ali and Lawrence are seeing the sky light up from all the artillery fire, and Ali says "God help the men who lay beneath that." That's just what it looks like here. The sky lights up every few seconds, bright as day. Brighter, even. And the patches of near white are framed by banks of black clouds. The wind is picking up now, and a fork of lightning arced down just to the southwest.

Aaaaand the storm sirens went off just as I was typing, so Dawn and I packed our boys up and took them all down to the basement. They were not amused, but to their considerable credit, they did not fuss at each other at all. I think they were more concerned with why they were in the Carriers of Calamity that routinely take them to Dr. Doom's House of Horrors. We spent about fifteen or twenty minutes down there. Things have calmed down considerably though it's raining like a son-of-a-bitch and there's still a lot of electrical activity going on, but it's not a Big Damn Storm the way it was when we headed on down. Now it's just an occasionally quite loud storm worth watching.

August 7th -- I'm sitting here with sheets of unbaked cookies waiting their turn to be baked into great big, scrumptious breakfast cookies. Some of you may recall the last time I made these, though I barely do. The first batch has spread out into cookies about four inches across, which isn't exactly what I'd had in mind, but hell, there are still going to be 28 of them, so it's not like I'm putting half a batch in each cookie. This batch includes: Tart cherries, semi- and bittersweet chocolate chips, walnuts, almonds, coconut and lemon zest along with all the other good flavorings and stuff. I forgot that I had rolled oats in the freezer so I just used steel cut. I'm sure it'll be fine, although rather crunchy. And this could also explain why they spread so far instead of puffing up more.

I hesitate to say it's been a DAY because I have accomplished a lot. I put a shelf and a pair of hooks up in the bath area so I can keep my shampoo, conditioner and scrubbies close at hand. And the cookies, of course. And I did a bit of cleaning. But I've got the bronchial crud again, and nothing, NOTHING worked right for a while. In fact, I was reduced to tears by my corded drill because the chuck was stuck so hard I couldn't get the bit out. And of course the cordless was out of juice, and anyway wouldn't have had enough torque to drill tile. That, and the fact that every time I try to sleep I end up coughing and choking. You can imagine my fury at life.

But I got the new Ikea catalog, and a copy of Mother Earth News. And I've been reading a wonderful book called "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society." I recommend it unreservedly to anyone who loves to read.

First batch of cookies are out. They're sort of flaccid, but they taste good, which is the important thing. The thing I like best about them is that they're not particularly sweet. Just nice, flavorful cookies filled with things that are actually sort of good for you.

I just want to straighten up the kitchen and run a load of dishes before I go take my bath. That'll give me a head start on tomorrow. After I finished the up-putting of shelf and hooks in bath, I put my coat hooks up in the front hallway, but I did it with industrial strength Velcro because I was out of screws and screw anchors. It worked just fine so I put the stuff on the back of my Cocteau plates and will probably get them up on the wall tonight, too. Dawn came by and had a cookie, and we agreed to meet outside after Olbermann and do a bit of yard work. I'd mixed up a bottle of my green weed killer, and used the whole thing on the masses of pigweed growing all over. She cut down the sunflowers that had been decimated by the squirrels, and watered. I filled the bird/squirrel feeders and took out a whole lot of garbage and let her cut back the wisteria because ewww, that's a nasty job.

We have a lot of tomatos approaching ripeness, so we agreed to use them on Saturday when, whether Jim comes by or not, we will barbeque burgers for ourselves. I'm also thinking of making a bowl of Mildred's mac & cheese to go with it, and a lovely salad. And we have beer! Lots and lots of beer. There will be much enjoyment. And if Jim would rather do yard work than hang with us, well... his loss is all I can say.

Did I mention the beer?

Why is there always so much to do?

August 9th -- I've spent the last three hours working on the bathroom. My day so far:

Remove old, ugly, polished brass doorknob. Replace it with new, pretty, rubbed bronze one.
Strip screw installing it. Cannot now fix problems with plate.
Install strike.
Discover that door will shut but not catch, so that it can be pushed open from outside. Thank goodness it sticks.
Install door pulls on vanity cabinet.
Install first new knob on vanity drawers. Discover bolt provided not long enough.
Rescue old bolt from garbage. Threade new knob onto old bolt.
Hide thoroughly chapped by turn of events.
Install second drawer pull. Have sudden horrible realization.
Try to close bathroom door. Door hits new knobs and will not close.
Uninstall new knobs.
Think.
Think some more. Figure out two places to put knobs where they should not interfere with closing of door. Choose more symetrical one which will also allow use of new bolts.
Try to drill hole. Discover that drill bit sticks while chuck revolves madly.
Try several times to adjust bit and tighten chuck. Finally succeed in drilling hole.
Put bolt through old and thread knob onto it.
Discover that because of new position, bolt is now too LONG instead of too short.
Curse colorfully.
Try to drill second hole in drawer. Same problem with drill bit.
Curse colorfully.
Try to put old bolt through hole. Hole not big enough.
Curse very colorfully.
Change drill bit. Bit sticks, chuck revolves.
Place very potent curse on Black and Decker and wish I'd had the foresight to charge my cordless which never gave me this much trouble.
Finally enlarge hole. Put bolt through it. Thread knob onto it.
Test with door. Door will close.
Call Dawn and suggest that she might not want me and my power tools working on her new furniture today.
Dawn laughs. The gods do not love hubris. I fear for her bookcase.

I need cake or a drink, I don't care which.

Later -- Knobs are installed on bathroom vanity. No fingers lost.
Ikea shelf assembled in Dawn's office. No fingers lost. There were a couple of close calls, though.
Mac and cheese made. Results so-so. Burgers not made as Charles arrived bearing barbeque. He admired my handiwork before he left, which is what a friend does when things are a bit, well, off. We gave him a tomato from our vine and a bouquet of slightly long-in-the-tooth flowers for his wife. I observed that she deserved a gift, too, but that she did get a terrific husband. Charles agreed far too quickly and was gently chided for lack of humility.
Peach lambic quaffed.
The Fugitive watched with Dawn
Ice cream eaten
Long, leisurely bath taken during which I finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I have to say that I am wholly in love with all the characters, even the awful ones, and the only criticism I can level is that we never do get Juliet's opinion of Potato Peel Pie. I, for one, would have enjoyed knowing how it tasted with its festive topping of cocoa and marshmallow.
Have begun writing like Juliet.

There is a party going on a few yards down. Much hilarity amongst both adults and children. Makes me smile to listen to them.

As soon as I locate my colored pencils, I'm going to start sketching out the mosaic I'm going to overlay on the bathroom tile. This is reason enough to get back to emptying boxes.

August 10th -- And a busy one. Dawn is outside firing up the grill so we can have burgers. She's done her laundry and gone to Petco already today. I was a slug and slept until about 10:30 but I needed it I think. Once up though, I made us coffee and we talked about what needed doing. The upshot was that while she was gone I hung pictures and more pictures. Then she helped me with the front windows which needed cleaning and tweaking to make sure all the screens were down properly and all the storms up properly. She also took down the hideous vertical blinds in the hallway, and we hung up some crystals and beads on the door. I also moved the bigger cat tree to the living room.

Now I have to go make some onions for the burgers, slice a tomato (from our vine!) and reheat the mac and cheese.

Too much fun

2008-07-16T09:32:00.001-05:00

I just made this in Wordle

Not dead yet

2008-07-13T18:04:00.002-05:00

Just ferociously busy. And the darnedest thing is that I can't really tell you what I've been doing even though I know I've accomplished a lot. I made lists so I'd be sure to get a few things done in spite of the heat and humidity which always plays merry hell with me.

We barbecued on the 4th and then went to ribfest on the 5th. I think I'd have enjoyed the latter more if it'd been cooler. Our pre-fest trip to World Market was just fine even though I ended up passing up about $200 worth of stuff I really wanted. However, there were other things we needed for the house like a shop vac and compost supplies.

I've been alternating between lying around moaning about the heat and cleaning. I said to Glinda that I wouldn't feel wholly at home here until all the dirt I saw was my dirt, which may sound funny to some of you, but I know others will get what I mean. When it's not your dirt, and you have to clean it up, you not only put it off interminably but you arm yourself with rubber gloves, a hazmat suit and gallons of disinfectant. Alien dirt may harbor monsters. You never know.

Been watching life go on outside, too. Here are a few new pics:

My Little Chickadee

"Hey Bob, it's way shadier over here!"

Gossip hour at the birdbath.

We've had to stop filling the fly-through feeder because we were getting dozens of pigeons coming around, eating all the food. The smaller birds were at a great disadvantage. So now we fill the cage feeder and the pigeons aren't coming around much anymore. Though two of them were carrying on like mad out here earlier. It was either a fight or a courtship, and I'm guessing the latter since they didn't seem upset so much as... fussed, you know? With feathers puffed up every whichway, and a feverish expression. Honestly, I love birds. They're funny as all get out and they bring out my protective instincts.

One of my tasks for today was to process the groceries I've bought this week. I've marinated the pork tenderloin and made up four little meatloaves, packaged up the bagels in separate baggies so I can take one out of the freezer when I want, and next I'm going to wash and bag up blackberries, and wash, pit and bag up some cherries. They'll all be frozen for later in the year when we're longing for fruit. And anyway I bought an ice cream maker today. Glinda made a lime-coconut granita on Friday and it was excellent, but hellish to serve. I couldn't help but wonder if turning it into a sorbet might not be a better idea. And then I started getting all these sorbet and ice cream ideas so I thought "Why the heck not?" Those berries and cherries will come in handy for making ice cream.

I just wish I had the recipe for the Zanzibar chocolate from The Chocolate Shoppe. I had a cone last night when I was out with Karen and Gene, and I was knocked out all over again by how amazingly good it was.

I think I'll watch a movie while I pit the cherries.

Pet Lovers, Attention!

2008-06-27T13:48:00.001-05:00

There's a bill before the Senate which would allow the trapping and killing of "free-ranging" cats, dogs, horses and anything else deemed "invasive." If you think this is crazy, cruel, utterly wrong, go to Care2 and let your Congressmen know.

Let's allow warrantless wire-tapping by all means, but hey, stray cats and dogs? Just kill 'em all. What is wrong in Washington? Is it something in the water? *shakes head*

My, what an interesting day

2008-06-25T09:34:00.002-05:00

So, my doorbell rings a bit before eight this morning, and this is pretty much what I see outside:

Now, we called the water department about two months ago because we needed to find the buffalo box so we could shut off the water to the basement. The response? *crickets* until the other day when a truckload of guys showed up and started painting urboglyphs on the street outside my house. And this morning, they started digging. Please note that the one with the most ginormous muscles is operating the backhoe.

The other day, when we planted our rose tree, Glinda -- who did most of the digging -- commented that it simply reinforced her belief that she should never murder anyone if she was going to have to bury the body since she would probably be arrested before she'd manage even a shallow grave. Well let me tell you, the answer to this is a backhoe. There is now a hole down to China in front of my house. Apparently all or part of this thing called a buffalo box was missing, and now it's being replaced. Cool. A bit late, but cool.

Also in the news: I got a large scum-buster yesterday and this morning I tried it out on my kitchen floor. It works pretty well, IMO, but did uncover an unexpected problem. It seems that my grout is not black.

So now I expect I'm going to have to scrub out the grout lines. *sigh* This afternoon I'm going to wash down the bathroom. Should be interesting.

Below, photos of the most recent pieces of furniture I've gotten:

The kitchen island cart which was the single most complex thing I've ever assembled, and which was missing a couple of parts. Oh, and the ones that were complete didn't fit together really well. I hate cam bolts with the heat of ten thousand firey suns. The cart does, however, hold my baking things with ease, and I like the beverage station on the top. Your one stop top for all your caffeinated needs.

Side table on sun porch. Went together like a dream until I got to the last door which was missing a hinge. I found the hinge in the packaging, but no pin. It also had a couple of significant dings and once again didn't fit together real well. Have I mentioned how I hate cam bolts?

My floor is covered with styrofoam schmutz.

On Sunday, Glinda and I worked outside for a few hours. There was an electrical mishap. We no longer have a fountain. This led to a lot of brainstorming about what the garden should look like, and we both decided we'd prefer to have a wall fountain. We also decided that in spite of loving wisteria, our vines aren't really doing much except threatening the electrical lines. They don't bloom except at the top where they're on a horizontal plane. So I think we're going to replace it next year with an apple tree. I found a semi-dwarf honeycrisp, and since there's an apple tree in the next yard I don't think we'll need to plant another for polination!

Once we clear out the things we no longer like we'll plant a more cottagey garden. We both love banks of flowers. This will open up a larger expanse of lawn for us to use for parties.

It's ten. All the noise has stopped. Maybe I'll just go take a nap.

News of the yum

2008-06-23T15:02:00.001-05:00

I intended to get up early today and go to the DMV to get my new ID and voter's reg taken care of, but my fuzzy alarm clock didn't work so well, and I woke up at ten wondering why I felt so rested. As it's always good to make the best of whatever happens I decided that I'd start working out a weekly schedule for myself based on how things have been going here in the last month or so. Monday, I decided, would be the day to clean the back of the house. Kitchen, sun porch and bathroom specifically. So I went out and loaded the dish washer, managing to break a bottle in the process, and then vaccumed the floor while the washer was running.

As all that put me right off the scrub-a-dub feelings, I did a little reading (Bill of Wrongs, by Molly Ivens) and decided to cook a bit since I have a bunch of things in the fridge that should either be frozen or used, like now. Sadly, my printer is out of black ink so I was resigned to running back and forth from kitchen to office to figure out what comes next, but then I hit upon the idea of printing the recipes out in red. Like a charm. Bit hard to read, but at least it saves me steps.

First up: Broccoli pesto. Now understand that I've always disliked broccoli. Not so much for the flavor which is okay, though not really very exciting, but for the texture of the florets. Frankly they give me the whim-whams and get stuck in my teeth like they've been cemented in. But I do like the stalks, and frequently, when I'm out with Gene, we'll cut up our broccoli with me taking the stalks, which he dislikes, and him taking the florets. I sort of figured that broccoli pesto might help me get past all that, and I'm pleased to report that not only am I not suffering from the wiggins while eating it, I actively love it!

With apologies to those who do not cook the way I do (Karen, I'm talkin' to you, babe.) here's the recipe. Or as close as I ever get.

Chop 1 medium head of broccoli into small pieces. Cook in your preferred way for a couple of minutes until it all goes bright green and you think, "Wow, I would so love a shirt that color!" My method was to heat a bit of water in a skillet along with a tot of olive oil and a liberal amount of sea salt. Transfer cooked broccoli into food processor, and process with more olive oil and some lemon juice until it smooths out. Really, you can leave it a bit chunky if you like, no one will look askance at you.

Add garlic. I added three cloves but I could actually have used four or five and not felt overwhelmed. What you use is utterly dependent upon your tolerance for/love of garlic. Also add a liberal amount of parmesan cheese and a generous handful of whatever nuts you like. I used a mix of pine nuts and walnuts, and was very generous. More oil and/or lemon juice will help you process it all into a lovely paste.

Taste. Swoon. Now at this point you can cook up some pasta and throw a generous glob of this pesto on it. Or you can store it for later, which is what I did. If you wish to emulate my remarkable technique, take a freshly washed 1 qt. Crackovia beet salad jar and spoon the pesto into it. Smooth the top and pour a layer of olive oil on it. Cover with a freshly washed lid (the dishwasher really does a fantastic job of cleaning old jars and bottles. I really recommend it for cleaning and sterilizing storage vessels for things to be refrigerated or frozen.) and put in the fridge. Open door occasionally and smile at your brilliance.

On the list for this afternoon: Tuna cakes, chili or burgers, and maybe chicken curry. All to be mostly frozen for the future. This is what Glinda and I talked about before we moved here and I'm trying to make the effort to cut my food bills by creating my own prepared food.

Invasion of the Zombie Birds

2008-06-12T09:41:00.002-05:00

Or: Braaaaiiiinnnnsssssss.... and can I get some millet with that?

Zombie birds = Grackles. I love their gorgeous iridescent bronze and blue coloring, but then they turn and look at me and I see those round, yellow eyes with the black dot in the center and I get the wiggins big time. On top of that essential creepiness, I discovered that they will also sometimes kill and eat smaller birds at feeders. Eu. So I put my grackles on notice that while they're welcome to feed here they'd best not be bothering my little guys or I'd kick their zombie butts.

My Squirrelflower is in bloom!

This little guy loves to sit and even lounge in this planter, which I never got around to planting this spring. I'll often see him lying there with his chin on the edge, just watching the goings-on in the garden. The first day I saw him I called Glinda and said "Have you been planting squirrel seeds again?"

"We thank Squirrelmother for this food."

I had a reasonably good day yesterday. Charles took me out to a monument place where I finally ordered the stone for my parents' graves. It's going to be beautiful in dark brown granite with a pair of trees, their roots and limbs entwined around the names and dates. And at the very bottom, it will say "Baucis and Philemon." If there ever was a couple who fit that myth, it was my folks. I'll take a pic of it when it's up, but that won't be for some months yet.

Then he and I went over to Time Treasures and I found a cabinet I love , and a wonderful folk art carving. The two came off of my store credit, leaving me with $460 yet to go. And Anna has some wonderful stuff hidden in her basements, stuff on which I think Glinda and I could do some good work. We also stopped at the fruit market where I once again made out like a bandit. I snagged a couple of beautiful eggplants and will be making stuffed eggplant for Girls' Night tomorrow.

When I got home I had a reply to an email I sent to one of the sisters who had owned this property before me. Some of their mail had been delivered here, and it looked like stuff they might want, so I went online to try to find an email address for either of them. You can find almost anything in the internet! I found one for Joy, wrote her and she responded yesterday that she'd be happy to come by with her husband to pick up the mail.

I wasn't sure she'd come in; she's still terribly emotional about this place. But I think she was kind of curious once she saw the outside with its pots of flowers and prayer flags. The upshot was that she is thrilled with the changes, and very happy she came. That made me happy, too. She told me that the people who owned it before her family had an electric company which is why the garage is so ginormous. They kept trucks and equipment in there. And the basement was their office which is why it was such a rabbit warren of little rooms. They had a lot of storage down there. That would have to have been in the forties or earlier, I think. It was a lovely visit, and I hope they'll come again.

I have a bunch of things to do today and no oomph. Where on earth did my oomph go? I'm betting those grackles got hold of it.

Dispatches from Villa Allegra

2008-06-08T14:14:00.002-05:00

It's been a while. I've still got this nagging cough leftover from the bout of flu I had last month, and the weather has been very hot and humid for the last week, which always puts me in a don't-wanna-bother frame of mind. I evicted my workmen on Tuesday afternoon because I'd just had it with having them up here all the time, and my kitchen looking like a resale shop filled with all the stuff from my sun porch. It took five damn days to get that window installed, and I was about to start tearing my hair out.

On Wednesday, I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed floors. I was sick of the dirt and dust, but there was absolutely no way I was going to go to all that effort while there was still construction going on. And once I finished both the house and I went "ahhhhhhh, that's better."

While I was recovering, I sat out on my gorgeous sun porch to do some reading. I heard TWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTER and a flock of birds flew overhead and past the house. There were a few moments of silence and then TWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTER and the flock flew back overhead and to the southeast. Another few beats of silence and then TWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTERTWITTER, and guess what flew back to the northwest? By which time I was laughing so hard I started coughing. Not long after that, the whole McTwitterson clan took up residence in my magnolia and started carrying on with the gossip and arguments and all the various loud and endless discussions that McTwittersons are prone to.

Also in residence: The Cardinals (Mr. and Mrs. It's a liberal church, I guess.), The McCoos, The Robinsons, and a hella lot of very acrobatic squirrels (The Magnificent Squirrlinis.) They come because Glinda and I are soft touches for food.

A few garden photos. I ran out between storms to take these which is why they're rather dark. And wet-looking.

I finally managed to figure out that the unknown vine was a honeysuckle, and that the reason why the wisteria wasn't blooming was because it's planted only on the vertical. It needs a horizontal support to bloom. It is, in fact, blooming on top of our garage.

We've had a couple of barbeques so far, and we're getting better at it. Rediscovering our inner cave people is no easy task, let me tell you. During the last one, our next door neighbors started passing their food over to us, too, so there was much nom-ing and groaning.

And yesterday Glinda, Jim and I went to see the new Indiana Jones film, which we all really enjoyed. I am so happy that Indy and Marian finally got married. It's about damn time.

It's been ferociously windy here the last few days (you know it's bad when the McTwittersons do barrel rolls past your windows) but the temperature seems to have dropped by quite a lot in the last hour, so I'm off to go do a bit of housework before it starts to heat up again.

So... yeah

2008-06-02T11:23:00.011-05:00

It's now June. The basement is finished and my new window went in on Saturday. Today they're drywalling and priming the wall that got torn apart, so by tonight I should have a sun room I can actually use! Alas, the window was installed too high, and though we discussed lowering it, it'll cause more problems than it solves, so it's no go on that. I can still see much of the garden when I sit, and can always put in a higher table and chairs if I really want to. What I want most of all is for this to be finished. Every surface in my kitchen is covered in dust and grit, and I can barely move in there because everything from the sun room is piled up all over.

The flu hung on forever and in fact I'm still kind of gorpy, and I cough a bit at night, to the vast annoyance of my cat who doesn't understand why I refuse to stop shaking him while he's trying to sleep. On my head. And yesterday I had a gonzo sinus headache and got very little done. I did, however, manage to get the rug down in my office, and hook up some more of my computer system. I have yet to find the two hard drives I really need, and the really important cord for my audio. I expect I'll unearth all that eventually. Today I'm concentrating on bigger stuff like the bins that hold my yarn stash, and my dressmaker's dummy.

On Memorial day, Dawn, Taylor, Christ, Jim and I christened my new Weber kettle with Tallgrass steaks, and a lot of excellent cold salads. Charles brought us a chocolate cake for dessert, and we had a lovely time even though we ended up eating inside because the weather was a bit threatening and it was difficult to find a place where all five of us could sit comfortably. That's something that needs ironing out. Pam's promised me a table, but I know it's not easy for her to get it over here so I'm not holding my breath.

The much-anticipated bag of coffee arrived from Dreamtown on Saturday. I don't know if I mentioned this but being a Dreamtown client has paid off in unexpected ways. I get a bag of coffee each month for... well apparently for as long as I live here. And it's amazing coffee, too. Between the wonderful help I got from my agent, and the monthly coffee gifts, my connection with Dreamtown has been a very happy one.

I'm pleased to report that my Marie-Claire Idees magazine actually found me! I thought for sure that it'd get lost somewhere along the way, but it arrived late last week, and was full of lovely, summery ideas.

There's so much to do, and I'm quickly running out of steam. I think I'll go make a glass of iced tea and put my feet up for a while, and think about what to tackle next.

Eddie made me sick.

2008-05-24T10:15:00.003-05:00

Not really, but by the time I got home from the show I had a sore throat and felt as if I'd been hit by a bus. Always the queen of denial, I thought -- I hoped -- that it was just a temporary thing. Not so, says traitorous body. You will be (In Eddie voice) sick. Which I was. Comprehensively. For most of the week. I lay around and sniffed, coughed, sneezed and felt sorry for myself since I couldn't even sleep properly. Usually that's one of the only pleasures of getting sick; you can sleep a lot more without guilt. But could I? Noooo.

At some point along the way I had a really ratty day when I decided that it was time to evict my workmen. They had started to seem like bad guests who not only cut off my electricity and water without prior notice, but made a lot of noise, showed up at all hours, left their garbage all over the place and ran up my utility bills. Don't get me wrong, I love these guys to pieces, but having them around six days a week for the last two months has been a strain on that affection. And while I'd willingly invite them all for Thanksgiving, I cannot wait to see them leave here now. Hey, I know they'll all be back. Whenever something needs doing, I call this crew.

On Wednesday I felt just well enough to go out to the garage and point at things, and say "Shelf" or "Basement" or occasionally "Apartment." We went through every box out there, and along the way discovered the mother lode of mouse poop. It was all pretty much in one place like some giant mouse WC, but the good thing is that it was definitely mouse poop, not rat poop. And once I finally got started checking the bird seed and dry food that had been stored on the back porch, I discovered absolutely no evidence that anything had even tried to get into any of it. So Wilson's assertion that it was a squirrel he saw and my belief that whatever it was didn't stay long seem even more likely to be true.

On Thursday Jorge moved a metric fucktonne of stuff out of my office and down to the basement. The result is that I'm no longer using my computer in a canyon of boxes. Now I need to get things put away.

And today? Overrun with workmen. Wil, Jose and Enrique are all in and out, carrying lumber, paint, spackle and various power tools. Little Sean is back to do more of the electrical stuff (He's up in Glinda's flat right now.) And I need a tissue because my nose will not stop running.

Eh, it's all good. Except for the nose thing.

Where to start?

2008-05-16T14:03:00.000-05:00

Not so much with this post, but in general. There are dozens of things that need doing, and instead of actually doing any of them, I'm making coffee and blog posts.

Let's see, since my last post, I've had rats in the house and apparently out again since the one I saw has quite disappeared. I'm advised that there are several in the garage which gives me the wiggins as well as worries me since there's SO much stuff out there that I need to go through. All I can say is that they'd best not be chowing down on old family photos. The rest? Well, it ain't nothin' but a thang as my friend, Paulle, would say.

The basement is very nearly ready to start moving into, and I have to say it looks gorgeous. A bit more work and I'd have a rentable apartment down there. Certainly it's something to bear in mind, but right now I want the studio space. The walls are white and all the trim is cobalt blue. The bathroom is blue and white, and the shower stall is just so wonderful I want to go down there and sit. Progress slowed this week, though, since Abe and his wife welcomed a new baby into the family, and Charles is taking a much-deserved and much-needed short vacation. The garden is getting prettier, though my fuchsia isn't doing well. I have no luck with them.

This has been swag week with new coffee, new furniture (via Overstock.com -- really nice stuff, very cheap, and honest-to-god, the shipping really is that cheap unless you join club O, and then it's free!) some much-needed storage containers which are even now going through a cycle in the dish washer, and one of those hook-and-go carts for shopping. You hang your bags from the hooks which lets you arrange things so nothing gets smushed. It's perfect for the net bags I've been using for shopping lately, and when not in use, folds up tight into almost no space at all. It's a Bubbie Cart for the 21st Century.

Alas, all I want to do this afternoon is sleep, and I can't. I have too much to do, and have to meet friends downtown this evening to see Eddie Izzard. I love Eddie to pieces but Must. Have. Sleep.

Desperately in need of a bath

2008-05-06T21:42:00.008-05:00

I spent about four hours outside today, planting, watering and rearranging things and I am beyond grimy. Oh, and I took a lot of photos, too. Over the last few days I've posted a lot of photos to my Flickr photostream, most from last month. If anyone is interested, there are a ton of them. But today I want to post the pics I took this afternoon because they're pretty wonderful, I think.

First off, those of you who remember what the basement used to look like (those pics are over on Flickr, too), check this out. Barely even looks like a basement anymore, does it? And here's the bathroom being tiled. I

adore the trimwork here. I keep telling Charles I'm not going to want to shower upstairs after this is finished.

The work down here is winding down, which is nice because I'm sick to death of the dust that renovation raises. But I think I will miss having the guys around. I've gotten so used to it.

So yesterday Charles and I did some errands and then we went to Gethsemane Gardens -- that always strikes me as being an unfortunate name for a garden center, but whatever -- and picked out some really nice plants to round off the garden for this year.

More anon...

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

2008-05-05T08:53:00.002-05:00

Or rather, no attention to the Kindle widget at the left. A friend wants to buy one eventually and if she buys through one of my associate links, I might finally get enough credit in my Amazon account to buy a couple of books. I don't normally advertise on my blog, but the links I sent her in email were just not working. Anyway, I'll remove the link when she no longer needs it. Until then, just ignore it.

Piccys later!

State of the house

2008-05-01T08:06:00.003-05:00

Jenna quite rightly pointed out to me that I hadn't been updating here. I've made a series of short posts over on Live Journal, but had planned to hold off here until I had photos to post. Alas, while I have a flash card full of photos, getting them posted is proving to be beyond me just now. I still don't have my desktop set up, and my laptop doesn't have a compact flash slot. So, gentle readers, you'll have to make do with a short narrative about the joys and woes of a new home.

Renovation is going very well if you don't count the money hemorrhage I'm undergoing. Still, the result is excellent so I suppose that as long as I can pay my bills I'm doing very well. The unpacking? Not so much. I hit a wall a couple of weeks ago and have been spending much of my free time reading instead of unpacking. This is not a bad thing at all, obviously, but particularly because I haven't read much in the last years. Depression and the eye issues that come with uncontrolled diabetes took their toll on one of my obsessions long ago, and I had honestly despaired of ever again being the voracious reader I once was. But suddenly I find myself curled up in my big chair lost in books, and I'm thrilled. I don't even begrudge the time not spent unpacking. That'll happen. I'm going to read while I feel like it.

Caddy's settled in very well. Every morning he goes out to the front windows to watch the birds. As soon as the big windows are installed in back I imagine he'll be back there yelling at the chickadees and doves as they raid the feeders. Birds are voracious. Dawn and I filled the feeders on Sunday and they're more than half empty already. We've attracted some cardinals as well, so I have high hopes of seeing other birds in the garden. I've also got strawberries, herbs and asparagus sets to plant out on Saturday or Sunday, and we should be getting a hanging tomato planter soon. Alas, two of our rose bushes have died during the period when there was no care given to the garden, and a third looks like it's getting ready to call it quits. Even dead, though, they're damn dangerous. My hands are covered in tiny pinprick cuts from pruning out the deadwood, and one of the branches actually attacked me! It leaped out, grabbed my leg and tripped me. I took a faceplant into the juniper in the next bed and lay on the ground laughing until Dawn helped me up. Everything hurts, but it's still sort of funny.

I've got sample colors coming from Benny Moore, which has set up a website where you can match any color from any manufacturer, and get a pint-size sample for a very reasonable price. So far the plan is: Living room: Teal with silver-grey ceiling. Dining room: Violet with silver-grey ceiling. Kitchen and sun porch: Pale cream with red and black accents. Bedroom: Same blue as my old bedroom on the walls, darker blue with sparkly stuff on the ceiling, and a pale lavender in the closet. Studio: Sunny yellow. Bath: I have NO idea. Seriously. I'm totally stymied because of the tile in there. It sucks. As does the vanity and med cabinet. I had a much simpler time picking out the tile for the basement bathroom than I am having even deciding on what color washcloths I want.

And to top it all off I either have a cold or really savage allergies. Since I haven't had a sore throat (my cold alert system) I'm inclined to think the latter, but I feel pretty drained as well as congested and sneezy, and have lost my ability to deal with low temps, all of which kind of points to a cold. Personally, I'd prefer it was that. Not only will it end eventually, but it gives me more of an excuse for not getting anything done. Except that I have a ton of laundry to do, and today I really, really need to scrub the cat box, and strap on my new kneepads so I can also scrub the floors.

Considering how much grime gets raised here every day, I suppose cleaning the floors is a fool's errand, huh? That's the worst part of renovation. The dirt is just everywhere. I dust and a day later can write my name on my furniture. *sigh*

Okay, I"m going to go make some coffee and read a book.

I'm not dead yet

2008-04-18T16:23:00.002-05:00

But it's iffy. Three weeks ago I moved into a new home. I'm still waist-deep in unpacked boxes, and have a steady stream of workmen moving through the house all day. I'm hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, but I love this place already and wouldn't change a thing.

I'm still using my laptop so I can't upload any photos right now, but as soon as I can I will.

What I'd really like is a long nap. *sigh*

2008-03-22T19:20:00.001-05:00

This morning Charles called from Louisiana to tell me that the guys would be sealing the floors on Monday and so no one could walk on them. I said "This is a big problem." AT&T and DISH were supposed to come out and do the installations on Monday. So, instead of getting my shower I had to spend half an hour on the phone with a rep getting the appointment changed. The upshot: We'll have phone service on the existing lines, but the second line, internet and satellite service has to wait until the 31st. Oh dear, oh dear, what shall we do w/o the internets?

Go to American Science and Surplus, that's what. Next weekend is their big sale, and as long as Jim is coming in on Saturday anyway, we figured we'd all go on up and fit out the house with weird stuff. I saw some slot board for $7.50 each and green chalkboard for $7.95. Both are things we wanted for the house. We can also get an outdoor thermometer, and huge bags of flat-backed marbles for $4.95 a bag! I'm not even going to tell you what that stuff sells for at other places.

How do I know all this? Well this morning, as I was desperately gulping down a bowl of cereal so I could take my pills, Barbara showed up to help pack and to see the villa. She and I made a huge dent in the stuff in the studio, so now most of what I have to pack in there will be my fabric. Then we went to lunch at Panera and I had some excellent tomato soup, and an amazing veggie sandwich, half of which I brought home with me because it was so damn big.

I took her to the villa and we dropped off my coffee maker, then I showed her around. She really loved the place even though I couldn't show her my living room or dining room properly because David's crew was there staining the floor. It's going to be gorgeous. And Avery had gotten a bunch of the light fixtures up, so I was a happy camper.

Once we finished there, we went up AmSciPlus where I found a wooden shoe mold painted blue. That's a mold for shoes, made out of wood, not a mold for wooden shoes. It was the only one they had and it was $1.25! It is so completely cool that I'm still humming with happiness over it. Also got some old apothecary bottles with stoppers, a pair of large brown "moonshine" bottles and corks to fit. A French salad dressing bottle with recipes on the side, some shrink plastic, a plastic needlepoint canvas which will probably work well for felting, some freezer labels, and three very large blending stumps for thirty-five cents each. I could have spent hundreds there but I didn't want to have to move it all, so I'm thrilled to be going back next weekend. I may miss the old store which had wooden floors and an indefinably weird vibe, but this place has kind of grown on me. And now that it's been open for a while it's finding its own weirdness, which is a gift. Fly your freak flag proudly, I say!

We stopped at Staples to get some more bubble wrap and I tested some new desk chairs because mine has seen better days. And stopped at Starbucks for coffee to go with our desserts which we'd gotten at Panera.

After Barbara left, Glinda came by with Jim to pick up the mixer I'm giving her, and I gave Jim a light fixture for his (sorta newish) place. They were out and about looking for a new mattress for Glinda and some cat litter, and then were going back to the villa, so I gave them my bags from AmSciPlus to take over. I think our Eddie Izzard tickets had arrived, so I told her where to find the envelope. Woot!

And now everyone is gone, and I've just finished the second half of my sandwich which was still excellent in spite of having been sitting around for five hours. I also got a loaf of asiago cheese bread, an everything bagel and two cookies. The bread and bagel will keep me feeling like I actually have real food in the house for a few days, and the cookies... will be eaten tonight, I'm sure of it. *g*

Okay, back to packing. Before I drop off to sleep.

Random Randomness

2008-03-21T13:51:00.000-05:00

ZOMG, I'm writing again! After... well I don't know how long it's been, but after that long I've begun to write again. I had an idea the other night while watching Ghost Hunters and it hasn't let me rest. So instead of packing I wrote much of the morning. Of course now that I'm writing again I'm craving coffee instead of tea (Each side of my brain prefers a different hot beverage. "Hello, right side, would you like some coffee?" "Oh no, I drink tea. Only tea." "You do not, you liar, I've seen you drink coffee." "Shut up, left side. Go drink coffee and write porn or something.")

God, I forget what the point was. Oh yeah, because I'm making coffee, I have to wait for it to finish its cycle so I packed a whole box full of dishes from the kitchen. Boy, that really drives it home for me. Shelagh said it was taking down her art, but for me it's the dishes, the things of everyday life. It's really happening. Jeez.

Oh, and it's snowing. Not that I think it's related to the writing because, hello? Lots of snow already this winter. But I always wrote better in the winter. But it's spring, isn't it? It's snowing and it's spring, and it's also J. S. Bach's birthday so today is uber special and should be celebrated. So go hoist a cantata or two in his name.

It's The Villa, sir. They have a flag.

2008-03-19T13:15:00.003-05:00

A tip of the hat to Eddie Izzard there. And yes, we do have a flag. I put it out this morning during a brief visit to the villa. It's a flag of daffodils for spring. We'll be the (temporary) Queendom of Daffodils. I'll photograph it next time I go over there.

How on earth do people sand floors without goggles and a mask? I was there for ten minutes and got schmuts in my eyes, and my sinuses still hurt. Alas, my floors are permanently stained, but it's no biggie, IMO. The rest of the place has personality, the floors should have it, too. Nothing should be perfect. Besides, I expect Caddy to urp up on the floors the minute I let him loose in the house, adding his own distinctive personality to the mix.

I have a new back door, broom closet (almost) and book alcove in the kitchen (almost.) Life is good. Except for my scavenger service which sucks. But I told them to talk to my lawyer.

As soon as Anna's crew comes by to pick up the last of the stuff from the dining room, I'm back to packing.

Ooo, and "The Riches" last night? Wow, words cannot express my love for that weird show. I don't know why I love it so much since I spend the whole hour in a state of anxiety, but there you are, I'm hooked.

Cocteau Plates

2008-03-17T22:49:00.002-05:00

I didn't expect the plates to generate such curiosity, but I'm gratified that they did. Cocteau deserves to be more widely known. When I posted over on Live Journal, my Cocteau icon came up of its own accord. Let's hear it for serendipity. Apologies for the rather unorthodox method of display but I simply don't have much horizontal space free just now.

I've never been too inclined to celebrate St. Pats

2008-03-17T21:05:00.000-05:00

Because I don't think it was very nice of him to be so mean to the snakes. But I did put my feet up, turn on the special Irish episodes of "Ghost Hunters" they were showing tonight, and broke open a bottle of ale in honor of the day and all my Irish friends.

Packing the kitchen and bathroom is a progressive activity. First you pack everything you're pretty sure you won't need for the next month, then the stuff you probably won't need for the next week, and finally all the rest of the stuff you're hoping you won't need for the next day or so. As I pack, I consolidate what's left into smaller and smaller spaces so now I have five kitchen drawers filled, mostly with cutlery and gadgets of various kinds, four cabinets filled with dishes, which I'll get to tomorrow, and half the lazy susan filled with various foodstuffs like cereal (I fear I'll be eating quite a lot of that next week) and the various half-used things which I won't be bringing along. The same is true for the fridge. Little-by-little I'm clearing things out. I figure that if I don't care to eat these things now, when the only other alternatives are to carry them with me to the new place or toss them, I pretty much won't be buying them anymore.

I heard from Anna. She wants the dining room set, so that's another big headache over with. I'm going to call the movers tomorrow to firm up the date and get a time from them. Prolly 8 a.m. I've sort of decided to hand my keys to Mike on Saturday and let him take anything from the basement or garage he thinks he can use, and ask him to deep six the rest. That'll pretty effectively empty everything out. And then on Monday, the 31st, I'll turn the keys over to the new owner and it'll be over. Gene is going to be doing lock work at the villa on Monday, too.

The Cocteau plates cleaned up very well. I really am thinking they'd look great on the red wall with my Chat Noir poster.

Someday I'll be able to sit on my sun porch with my feet up, watching the birds in my garden, and knowing that my house is clean and everything is in place. I figure that will be some time in 2012.

Things are buzzing along

2008-03-17T14:02:00.000-05:00

In some cases quite literally. The shredders just came by and did 19 boxes of my parents' old paperwork. That's out of my hair now, thank goodness. And before that, Anna came by and picked up the chests for restoration. She's also going to fix a wood carving and a papier mache dog. Poor thing only has one leg intact!

I asked her if she'd be interested in my dining room set and she might be. I'd actually love to work out a trade with her for the restoration work plus a store credit because I know I'll be looking for furniture for the new place. She seemed to like the idea, too.

While I was down in the basement I finally rescued my Jean Cocteau plates. They'd been underwater in the flood and the boxes were just covered in mold and mildew. So I pried them open and scrubbed the worst of it off the plates. Now they're in a sink full of hot water and soap. I'd like to use them at the house, but I'm not sure how yet. I know they'd be best on display but at the same time I'd love to make use of them. I'll have to think on that. I also found some other boxes of cool stuff and my enamelling kiln. Whatever Robin doesn't take on the next trip I may just have the movers take to the new garage and sort it all out there. If I can do that with the doors open it might be less of a problem to get rid of what's beyond saving. At least I'll be able to breathe. Ten minutes of working with those soaked boxes and the whole right side of my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton.

I started working in the studio yesterday and will prolly continue there this afternoon. Last night I just kicked back and watched the end of "Rear Window" and then "All About Eve" on TCM. It was fab. Two of my favorite films.

Now I need some lunch, and then it'll be back to packing.

Oh and btw, tuna salad topped with sushi ginger is amazing!

D'you remember that scene in "Pretty Woman"

2008-03-16T11:39:00.001-05:00

The one where Edward takes Vivian into the pricey boutique and tells the manager that there needs to be a lot of sucking up because they're going to be spending an obscene amount of money and the manager asks: "Just how obscene an amount of cash are we talking about here? Profane or really offensive?" Edward replies: "Really offensive."

Well... Glinda and I were really offensive over at Abt yesterday. We replaced the stoves, fridges, washer and dryer, and then bought a free-standing freezer for the basement. I also got a new, flat-screen TV (No, not a football-field-size one, just widescreen enough to watch Lawrence of Arabia comfortably.) with a very nice, sleek stand, and a KitchenAid pro model mixer in bright red. The nice saleslady (Dale, for any of you locals who shop at Abt. She's low-key, knows her stuff and rescues kitties.) gave us a good deal on all that, but Charles took her to the side, worked his Charlesmagic (TM) and she came back glowing, looking positively thrilled to be telling us she was going to knock off another few hundred dollars because Charles is such an excellent schmoozer.

We started out the day at my bank because I needed to get cash for Charles and sign the papers for my new CD (invest, invest, invest) Because I'm on hugging terms with one of the personal bankers over there she arranged for Charles to be able to cash my checks there in spite of the rule that says you can't cash checks there unless you have an account. I love my bank.

Then we went to the villa (and yes, there are pics, just hang on a bit) to meet with the ADT guy who had clearly breakfasted on Mexican jumping beans washed down with pure caffeine, as Glinda put it. Nice, nice guy, but he expended more energy in half an hour than I do in a week. Anyway he assessed the building and gave us his best advice on what we needed, so now I'm just waiting for the price quote. The only good solution to the problem of wiring the outer doors (a must) was the we each had portable controls for the other person's apartment. He hesitated over this and said that the problem with that was that if something happened then one of us could say to the other "Things are missing, and you're the only one who could have turned off the alarm." Glinda and I looked at each other and laughed which startled him. "Not gonna happen" we told him.

Charles bought us lunch at the local Mickey D's, bless him, because by that time I was starting to feel a bit woozy. ( Between irregular eating habits of the last few weeks and all the stress, my meds sometimes catch up with me at odd moments.)

From there, I had to drop off my tax stuff with Charlotte. I also brought her Christmas gifts along, still shockingly unwrapped and in a cardboard box, a tin of my favorite tea because I adore Charlotte and want her to be happy, and one of my mother's antique Limoges boxes to remember her by. Charlotte gave me a chocolate chip cookie and a check for a bit more than what I'd just paid Charles so I'd suddenly broken even on the day. That didn't last long.

From there to Abt where we fulfilled a mutual long-time fantasy of pointing and saying "We'll take two of those, two of those, one of these, oh and throw that thing in..." Then we hit a couple of Home Despot stores for Glinda's light fixtures. She chose the same closet lights I did, and a beautiful 6-light chandelier for her dining room. My feet were hurting by that time so we went back to the villa and dropped off all the stuff we'd bought (new brooms -- sweep clean! -- mop, bukket *g*, lightbulbs, painter's tape, an Easter lily and a home decorating magazine to which I am addicted.

Charles dropped us at my place where we made tea and had chocolate chip scones, and made fun of people on HGTV while we waited for Renka and Gene. After a wonderful dinner at Great Beijing (Mongolian Mashup, Mmmmmmm) we took them to the villa for the first time. And they loved it! Renka, Glinda and I talked decorating while Gene inspected locks and made measurements. He's going to do all our lock work, which is great because he's a fantastic locksmith. He also gave me a page of notes to pass along to Charles about what to get when replacing the doors in back.

And finally, home. Caddy was waiting for me, and did his "Feed me, woman, and then get back in mah bed!" thing which I was actually quite happy to do. And I slept hard with a cat wound around my head all night. And now I have to get back to packing.

But first, the photos.

I think you can see from this photo, why my floors need refinishing

All of my light switches look like this

This used to be a pair of old mailboxes in use when the outer door was left open. I had Mike take them out, and Glinda and I are going to make a little niche thingy in it. Maybe a shrine to Frank Lloyd Wright *g*

When the boys move in with their tools, everything starts to look like this

New closet door in my bedroom. Almost.

New bedroom closet from kitchen

We're going to have roses, wisteria and -- we think -- a magnolia.

Fire pit. Not staying.

The old stove with Glinda's shoes reflected in the door

Electric in, gas out (so to speak)

Mixin' up a nice sheetrock cake

There was once a door here!

This is the pot we pulled down from under the porch roof.

So that's it, kids.

Well, I lied.

2008-03-13T11:48:00.005-05:00

Exaggerated, really. That wasn't my last post before the move. There are two weeks to go, and I have changes to document. Unfortunately I didn't think to bring my camera along on my last trip to the villa, so you'll have to see this through my eyes. I am a camera. (No, stop it, this is not Isherwood decadence talking. It's renovation.)

On Tuesday Charles came by and took me over to the villa. On the way in, I pointed out something at the top of one of the brick pillars of the porch so he climbed up and pulled it down. It was a beautifully glazed pot! I suspect it got stuck up there to keep birds from nesting (doesn't do to have them dive-bombing visitors) and then forgotten. I want to make the place bird-friendly, but that's not the best nesting spot, IMO. We'll have to fix that.

Inside, total chaos! Jorge was plastering the wall in my studio where the second door had been, Avery and the other Charles were running new electrical wires almost everywhere since much of the wiring was very old. In the process they discovered wiring for sconces in the dining room so I said "Yeah, leave them, I could use the light." I also now have a place to put a ceiling fan in the living room. Avery said he'd never seen a place with more electrical outlets per room.

My closet has been completely gutted and is now 12' x 4'. The whole floor needs to be replaced which means the bedroom floor has to be refinished to match. I think that since I'm having the living and dining room floors stained to match the woodwork around the windows, I'll do the same in the bedroom. I like a darker finish on floors. It's kind of unusual.

The opening for my back door (which is being moved because of the closet enlargement) was starting when I got there, and I nixed putting it in the middle of the wall. I need it just about 90 degrees from where it originally was so I can open the door without hitting my table and chairs. It's not that big a sun porch!

Then we hit Home Despot for lighting fixtures. For the hall I got bronze-tone fixtures. A ceiling lamp for my doorway and an uplight for Glinda's. I got a perfectly gorgeous bronze-tone fan for my bedroom, and two very girly flush-mount fixtures for the closet. Also a bronze-tone fan/light combo for the bathroom and two replacement fixtures for this place since I'm taking two of my fixtures with me.

Next we stopped at Lee Lumber. Lovely people there! I asked for info on cafe doors for my closet, and am waiting for quotes. Then I ordered the new windows for the sun porch, and found the absolute perfect countertop in Cesar Stone. I okayed the windows but now I'm waiting for the quotes on the counter + installation. When I spoke to the kitchen guy Charles works with, I asked him about pull out shelves and something to make that corner cabinet less impossible, so I'm anxious to see what he has in mind. I also asked about glass-front doors for some of my cabinets. I might not do it, but the variety would be a good thing.

Then Charles, brilliant guy that he is, suggested bumping back the wall of my closet about 10 inches and putting shelves in the alcove. This is a great idea because I can put my cookbooks and teapots on them. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!

Oh god, please let most of it be done by moving day...

Possibly the last post before my move

2008-03-11T08:43:00.003-05:00

This place looks like someone came along and shook it. There's stuff everywhere. Mostly boxes, thank goodness. A friend came over on Sunday and helped me pack. She was amazing! Unfortunately now I seem to be running low on boxes. *facepalm*

In my downtime, I've been crocheting, and felting the results with mixed success. I've developed an obsession with vessels. Here are two recently felted projects:

I've already learned a few things about the process by doing these. Unfortunately I doubt I'll have much time to put those lessons to use until I move.

Work over at the new place -- now officially christened "Villa Allegra" with champagne and everything -- proceeds apace. Very apace. It's going along so quickly that I've been okaying ancillary projects like the moving of doors, which I'd previously avoided because of the time factor. As it stands now I'm going to have a 4' x 12' bedroom closet! Yes, 48 square feet! I swoon. Honestly, this is all such fun, I don't know why people don't do more of it. And if I had to actually live through it I wouldn't be saying that.

Today I get to pick out some new lighting fixtures and a door for my HUGE closet. Also new windows for my sun porch. Calooo, callay!

Must finish tea and get dressed.

There's something wrong with this moving concept

2008-02-24T22:04:00.003-06:00

I mean, you spend weeks packing up everything you own, a few hours schlepping it to a new space and then weeks unpacking it all. There should be some better way of doing things, but I can't quite figure it out right now. In fact, I'm so devoid of any desire to do anything that I've had to bribe myself to pack. For each room I finish I get to buy one thing off my wish lists over at Amazon.com. This is significant in light of the fact that last night I spent a few hours adding about fifty items to various lists. Much for the home (a wok, some interior design books, a new litter box) some music (complete works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart) and a whole lot of books about stuff like amigurumi, quilting, crochet.

I still haven't done much of anything but when I do, there's a lot of treats to choose from!

I'm reduced to standing up to eat unless I take my plate into another room. And I've reinstalled the microwave because I want to box up my pots and pans soon. I'm not supposed to move until the end of March, but what I really want is to get a lot of stuff into the new place so that the move itself doesn't cost me a small fortune. I have so much crafting stuff, so much framed art (which is hard to pack) and a bunch of small appliances that I hate the idea of packing. I'm thinking about trying to get much of that over to my new flat before the move date. Leave the books and furniture for the husky lads from Golan's.

My goal is to have both bathroom and kitchen fairly well set up by the time of the actual move. That way the most critical stuff is in place, and the night of the move won't be hideous.

One of the gals from my live journal friends' list volunteered to come pack in exchange for a couple of the small appliances I'm giving away. I told her it wasn't necessary, but she seems to want to and boy I could use the help with the delicate stuff. Since she says she's a whiz-bang packer of delicate things, I told her she is more than welcome and I'd feed her, too!

And this coming weekend, Dawn, Taylor and I are going up to the Home Decorator's Collection store to check out some items we've been eying in their catalog. Dawn is looking for a sofa and I'm considering a banquette group for my sun porch. And of course we'll be making our traditional stop at Ikea for ideas and measurements.

What I really want to be doing is making stuff. This is all happening too fast and too slow at the same time. But it's a Good Thing. Completely.

Awake at four-thirty. Again.

2008-02-21T04:52:00.001-06:00

Bah.

However I refuse to lie in bed and do nothing so I'm up scouting for sources for hemp yarn. I'm wanting to make washcloths and net market bags with it as an alternative to conventionally raised cotton. So I'm poking around at Yarn Market and one of the brands that comes up is Vickie Howell. For those who don't know, Vickie is the host of "Knitty Gritty" and one of the "Stylicious" gals. She's a lot of fun, and her show is interesting and informative.

So anyway, I got curious and looked at a couple of other yarns in her line. "Love" is a silk-bamboo combo, and each colorway is named after a couple. Some I didn't recognize at all, but then I saw "Mulder and Scully," "Harold and Maude," "Buttercup and Wesley." I have to admit that it put a smile on my face. But what really made me happy was to see a beautiful periwinkle blue colorway named "Jack and Ennis." Vickie, you rock.

If I still can't sleep when I finish this post, I'm going to go and sit down with today's magazine haul. Not only did I get the newest Somerset Studio, but my first issue of Marie-Claire Idees arrived. I know that if I stay subbed for long enough, my French is going to improve dramatically since I've already spent quite a lot of time peering at directions for various projects and trying to suss them out. ("That can't possibly mean 'cabbage' can it? Oh... maybe it does.") Between those two and a garden catalog I'd never seen before, but which has a huge array of bird feeders and houses, I could read well past dawn if I have to. I just don't want to have to.

Finally, my crocheted, felted laptop cozy. It wants some closures and it'll be finished.

Enormous changes make me sleepy

2008-02-19T01:28:00.003-06:00

I find I can't sit down for five minutes in front of the TV without dropping off to sleep for an hour or two. It's nuts. I have so much packing to do and yet today I sat down to have lunch and watch a bit of the Firefly marathon, and woke up at six when Charles called to see if I was okay. Apparently his brother told him I looked under the weather yesterday. I reassured him, we chatted about the closings for a bit (Bless him, he wants to take me to both of them.) and when we hung up I looked at the clock and couldn't believe that it was evening already and I'd not packed a single box.

I made up for that a bit tonight, packing several boxes of fragile things which take a lot longer than tossing books into boxes. I also did a CoA with the post office, though a friend said she wouldn't have done it this early because she doesn't trust them not to just start forwarding stuff now. So now I'm fretting about that. I also made a reservation with the moving company for the 28th. And it turns out that Glinda is moving in on the same day, so it's going to be a hugely busy house that Friday. Eh, it'll give us both the weekend to put our places together.

We both wanted to go to the Home Decorator's store up in the NW 'burbs today, but it didn't work out. There's a banquette group I'm looking at for my sun porch, and she wants a new couch, but won't buy it unless she can sit on it first.

I also contacted a local antiques place about restoring my grandmother's cedar chest, and the woman I spoke to was so cheerful and enthusiastic that I feel very good about the decision. She's coming by on Friday to look at the chest, and I may ask her about the sofa, too. It's terribly comfortable but needs reupholstering.

Dept. of Coolness: Google's street view has extended as far as the new place. I did a virtual walk-through of my new neighborhood the other day. Looks good. Lots of family stuff. A couple of schools and churches. Nice area to live in. I think I've been very lucky.

Shopin kat spenz munny

2008-02-12T23:45:00.002-06:00

Long ago my friend, Karen, said to me: "Everyone has a right price in their head for everything." By which she meant that you and I could look at the same item, let's say... a coat, and I might look at it and think "Well made, good material, nice color, but I don't think it's worth $300." because for that kind of money, I'd expect something very special. You might look and say "Well made, etc" and happily pay $300 for it because it fits within your definition of a properly priced coat. And neither of us would be wrong because it's an individual call.

Today I got an email from Horchow. You know, Horchow-of-the-Horrifying-Prices? Anyway, they were offering an extra 20% off everything on the site today. (Promotional code: LOVELY Just in case there are others out there who hear the siren song.) Anyway, I bopped on over there to see what was up, and it turns out there were a lot of things on sale, so with the extra 20%, I actually found some items I wanted -- and yes, even needed -- that seemed reasonable to me.

I, apparently, have a very strict right price on tableware. I would pay $40 for a teapot I liked, but not $40 for a dinner plate I loved. Though perhaps that's not an apt example since I have a weakness for vessels of all sorts. Teapots, pitchers, vases, and to a lesser extent, cups and bowls; they all delight me. Rather say that I would pay -- had I the money -- $300 for an Alençon or Battenburg lace tablecloth, but ask me $300 for a set of lace-trimmed sheets and I'd say "Tcha, sure. When monkeys fly out my butt." Or words to that effect. It's not that I don't love beautiful bedding. Pretty bedding is a weakness of mine. But for some reason, the right price in my head does not allow that sort of expense.

On websites, I automatically go to the "clearance" or "sale" section first to see what's available. And I can't help but wonder what Horchow's definition of "clearance" is when table runners are going for upwards of $350, or sheet sets for $1000+.

In any event, I got some things I needed, and I feel I got them at a reasonable price. Shopin kat iz happy nao.

Sometimes life just gets a bit overwhelming

2008-02-11T17:37:00.000-06:00

To be honest, I should never have signed up for a class this term. I really should have known that things wouldn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped with the move and all. The weather this winter hasn't made it that much better, and by last night I'd pretty much decided that I wasn't going to go to the last felting class today.

I had a fairly bad night last night, too. I'm not sure what provoked it, or if anything really did since I do have them. You know, when you're alone inside your head with your thoughts and memories, when guilt and grief mix themselves into a frothy cocktail of misery, and it's dark and lonely? When you cry so hard and get so congested you can't even swallow without your ears aching? Yeah, it's kind of funny later, but at the time you think "Oh yeah, of course. Something else going wrong!"

Just about then, some poor idiot on another blog picked a fight with me, and I didn't even try to be polite about it.

But when I woke up this morning I was clear-headed and thought that I might still make it to class, until the phone started ringing. My contractor called, needing to discuss some of the work that has to be done in the new place. And a friend wanted some help figuring out how to get home from Michigan after a near-fatal car wreck this weekend. (She's fine. Car is not. Survival was, apparently, something of a miracle.) By then I was in no mood, and it was late anyway.

In spite of my best intentions I napped for much of the afternoon. You don't sit up until five-thirty in the morning, blowing your nose and trying to find something interesting to read on the computer, and then feel good the whole of the next day. Which means I got nothing done. And getting things done was more or less the original intention of skipping the last class.

There are just some days that should be skipped.

Our money's worth

2008-02-10T01:03:00.000-06:00

Mother Nature seems determined to give us our money's worth this winter. Considering that it's been a long time since we've had a proper Chicago winter, there's not much to complain about really, but we do it anyway. Just to keep in practice. The glut of snow in the last two weeks has raised a lovely crop of kitchen chairs and other barriers on our side streets. This is a city where the concept of "dibs" is still pretty much respected. You shoveled it out, it's yours for the rest of the winter, and those old kitchen chairs prove it.

This morning was sunny and melty. I took the opportunity to get out and run some errands, and soak up a bit of that sunshine. Unfortunately there was so much packed snow in some places that walking was pretty treacherous, so I went with another local tradition: Walk in the street. This only works on main streets, really, since the side streets are frequently as packed with snow as the sidewalks. Chicago drivers don't seem to mind much since they know the inevitable answer to a complaint will be "Oh yeah? You go walk on that sidewalk and I'll take your car home, k?"

I got to one bus stop and nearly fell about half a dozen times, though fortunately there was a chainlink fence to hang on to. I had one hand on the fence and the other reaching for the bus sign pole, and I kind of slid from one to the other. When I got hold of the pole I just held on. The bus pulled up, I said to the woman getting off: "Be really careful here, it's wicked slippery." and she replied "Yeah, and hang on once you board." I found out pretty quick what she meant. Kamikazee bus driver. He wasn't angry or frustrated, just wild, and maybe a bit behind schedule, though I doubt it.

As I was getting ready to get off the bus, he said "Isn't it a beautiful day?" I agreed, and then said not to get too used to it since we're supposed to get socked with some arctic weather tomorrow with wind chills in the -30 degree area. He said he didn't believe that would happen and I said "I hope you're right." You know, the way you do with strangers who clearly don't read newspapers, watch TV or have much of a grip on what's going on in the larger world.

Then he said to me: "If you have faith in God, He'll make spring come." "Well eventually," I countered. "No, today," he said as if it made total sense that we could suddenly see the snow disappear and the whole city blooming in the next twelve hours. "Ah, I said," and got off the bus. I suppose he had to have a lot of faith in God to drive the way he did.

Later it occurred to me that my faith or lack thereof wasn't really the point. It seemed like hubris to me that he thought he could speak for anyone else let alone God. As if he could just phone Him up and say "Enough of this winter. We need spring and we need it today, understand?" Maybe even add "You know... things can get broken." With poor God on the other end going "I have schedules to adhere to!"

People are so funny. Maybe if we didn't assume so much about what our deities want, and just attended to our own actions, the world might be a bit easier to live in.

And the weather? Yeah, it's getting colder. Poor God.

What to do when your city gets buried by snow

2008-02-06T23:50:00.001-06:00

Chicago seems to have disappeared. But I'm snugged up with my cat and a lot of tea, so I'm good for a while. The only thing I'm kind of worried about is whether I'll be able to get to class on Monday or not. I've already missed two, but if this snow keeps up public trans will be a nightmare. Eh, best not to worry this early.

So I spent the day working on a pair of felted slippers. Not ones I'd knitted, but ones I'd bought from a dollar store down the block. $1.49 and butt-ugly, but with just the right texture to the upper that I figured I could probably felt it pretty easily. I did manage to stab myself a number of times and thank goodness I'm using red wool! I did learn that the rubbery matting you use under rugs to make them stay put is an excellent felting pad. It's got more give than foam and it doesn't stick to the wool quite as badly, so doesn't form an underside that looks like Einstein's hair. I wish I'd taken a photo of them before I began, but of course I will when I finish. I still have to line them, though the black and white polka-dot pattern on the sole is kind of growing on me.

Earlier this evening I went to the Tinsel Trading website and found wonderful little velvet pansies that I'm going to use to edge the tops, and a pretty grosgrain ribbon that I'm going to ruche, and apply around the edges of the sole to hide the ugly white rubber bottoms as well as the gaps where the felting needle just doesn't do the job. The color scheme is red and purple (and black-and-white polka dots) so they're kind of, uh, bright. I'm thinking of going totally over the top and embellishing them with rhinestones, too. We'll see how ambitious and crazed I feel when I get to that point.

I can't really wear them around a lot since there's no support in them at all, but to run from the bedroom to the bathroom, I think they'll do. And they'll look adorable beside my bed.

Speaking of shoes, I finally got to see "Kinky Boots" tonight and just loved it. Chiwetal Ejiofor knocked me out, as usual. What an amazing actor. Especially in thigh-high red leather stiletto-heeled boots.

Ow, ow, ow...

2008-02-03T20:25:00.000-06:00

I got slammed with a migrane this afternoon, and have done virtually nothing all day except lie around and hope for oblivion. I found a vicoprofin in a drawer, but it's barely taken the edge off.

Consequently, all I have to offer is this, photos of my new garden in summer.

Obviously they're not mine. I think the agent took them. I swiped them when we were over at the new place yesterday doing measurements. Pretty, huh?

Curious, these feelings

2008-02-01T14:29:00.000-06:00

I just found out that one of my best friends has cancer.

What's curious is that I have not been thrown into a massive tizzy by the news. The old me would have been. I'd have had a knot in my stomach and a sense of impending doom that I couldn't shake. I'd have become so keyed up that I'd have screamed at everyone. Every little thing would have been a huge issue for me. In short, I'd have become unbearable because I couldn't bear the anxiety.

Why the change? Well partly I think it's the Effexor. And partly because her cancer is a relatively slow type which is still in very early stages. There's every chance that she'll be fine.

Perhaps it's something darker. Perhaps it is, as I have long suspected, that once you actively wish for your own death, or experience the death of someone who meant everything to you, it's never far from you. It becomes a kind of silent companion, always sitting off to the side, waiting for you to make your decisions. It's not scary anymore, just... there.

Or maybe I've just learned that fear accomplishes nothing. Or that there's nothing I can do for her. One lesson I've finally learned is that you can't ever save anyone else. Ask Orpheus.

I wrote the above yesterday on my Live Journal. All night, I thought about what I'd written, and the idea kept coming back to me: Death makes a lousy boyfriend. This morning I wrote this poem, and felt like sharing it:

Death is a lousy boyfriend.
Oh, they told you not to get involved with him, but did you listen?
They said “He’ll take everything, leave you with nothing.”
But you were sure they didn’t see him the way you did,
The kindness in his eyes,
The soft forgetting of his kiss.
So now it’s over, and you want to get on with your life, but he won’t move out.
He sits at the table, picking food off your plate
And reads the newspaper over your shoulder,
Commenting on everything.
“Shut up,” you say. “Get out of my life.”
But he just smiles and calls you “Suicide Girl” in that soft voice of his.
“I never lied to you. You knew what I was.”
He tells you “You’ll want me again someday.”
Then he sits down in a corner, or a dark closet,
Or goes to live under your stairs where you never look.
And the craziest thing is that you’re kind of glad to have him around.
He makes you feel safe.

Today is the first anniversary of my mother's death. Much as I miss her and my father, my shadowy boyfriend seems to have effectively hidden himself away so that I'm no longer even aware of him. I can't help but think that this is a Good Thing.

The challenge is over

2008-01-31T15:38:00.001-06:00

Bernie and A Place to Bark did not come in in the top four, they were fifth. That means she doesn't get the $50,000 grant. However, it's still all good. This is from Bernie's blog, though written by Claudine Hellmuth:

The Network for Good grant contest is officially over and even though A Place to Bark didn't win the $50,000 grant, we are still winners!!!!

I just got off the phone with Bernie, she is 180 miles away from Chicago with her 41 dogs and 1 kitten all on their way to new homes and we were talking about how much GOOD has come from this!!! This has been amazing!! We have made new friends, we raised over $42,000!!!!!! and we have a matching grant of $35,000 from the Zoline foundation!! So we have raised $77,000. WOWZA!! and all because of each and everyone of you!!!

We truly felt everyone's support for this cause and it is so touching to see everyone rallying behind Bernie's effort to save the lives of these animals. Together person by person, we did what we thought we couldn't do. This has been an incredible experience and it brings me to tears. Not because we didn't "win" because when you think about it -- we did win!! Each and everyone of you made this fund raiser drive a SUCCESS!!!! We raised a total of $77,000 because of YOU!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!

Bernie says she will still be able to build a shelter with the money raised. It will have to be a smaller shelter but it will still happen. We can all follow the progress on her blog here!

What happens now?
Now Network for Good will audit all the donations from the badges to strip off the duplicate donors to get to the "real" results of individual donors. In 30 days they will notify the official winners. Could A Place to Bark still win? In theory we could if one of the other badges had many duplicate donors. A Place to Bark will still receive $1,000 from Network for Good for placing in the top 8, so that is wonderful!! All the final contest details are on this page here from Parade Magazine who sponsored the challenge.

Thanks to everyone who donated. We really made a difference. What many people don't realize is that there are going to be more and more homeless dogs and cats as their owners lose their homes due to ballooning real estate taxes. People like Bernie do the hard, heartbreaking work. I'm glad we could all help.

And what have you been up to lately?

2008-01-29T14:27:00.000-06:00

This, for one:

I made these in felting class. It was my first foray into wet felting and I really enjoyed it. More than I expected to, in fact since I've been so enamored of needle felting.

The top snake and three balls are all wool. Various types, but all wool. On the bottom are items made from a mixture of wool (Corriedale and English) Bamboo and Tussah silk. I got the bats from Loop, over on Etsy. She has an extraordinary sense of color, and makes the most wonderful batts for spinning. And now, felting! *g*

The snakes are far from finished, being still rather soft and bendy, but the beads are very solid. I'm thinking of trying to make some cat toys out of felt and see how they're received. I seem to recall that all my cats loved toughie mice which were nothing but solid felt and a little rope tail.

Other than that? Packing. And cooking. Over the weekend I made these:

Tomato Casserole
Gathered:
1 casserole dish
3 whole grain hamburger buns torn into pieces
1 28oz can organic whole tomatoes
1/2 bag baby spinach
1 leek
herbs, spices, a touch of sugar, salt
8 oz feta

Layered: bread, leeks, spinach, tomatoes with juice, salt-sugar-herbs-spices, feta. Finished with layer of bread.
Baked @ 350 for 30 minutes, uncovered
Noticed: Bread getting very dark and crisp
Panicked
Covered dish
Baked for 20 more minutes covered.
Removed from oven
Failed to resist temptation to push bread crust down into hot, bubbling vegetables.
Tasted
Swooned

Consistency: Fair. Sort of soupy
Flavor: Outstanding
What I'd do different next time: Precook veggies so it would only bake for about 20 minutes. Bread might stay firmer. Use stale bread. End with cheese layer and bake uncovered the whole time.
How much is already gone: About a third.
Suggestions for anyone who hates any of the ingredients *koffjudymoekoff*: Use something else. Okay, well not the tomatoes, but anything other than the tomatoes.

Spinach with walnuts and apricot balsamic

I wanted a little something else and I still had half a bag of baby spinach to use up before it turned into green slime. So I sauteed it in olive oil with a bit of garlic, a sprinkle of salt, a dusting of cinnamon and a generous handful of walnuts. Then I dressed it, in honor of my mother who loved her spinach boiled or steamed with a bit of vinegar, with apricot balsamic vinegar from Village Harvest. This was heavenly. It hit all the right notes, and I'm having a serious jones for another serving. Fortunately I have frozen spinach so I think that'll be tonight's supper.

And I've been wanting to tell you about Village Harvest. Now seems like a good time. I found them via Local Harvest and yeah I know the point is to buy locally, but I'm also buying from individuals, not corporations, so it's all good. Anyway, Village Harvest in their own words:

Village Harvest is a nonprofit suburban harvesting cooperative in Santa Clara Valley, California, which brings together neighbors and community organizations to provide food for the hungry, preserve our heritage and skills, and promote sustainable use of urban resources. We organize and coordinate backyard fruit harvesting, and provide education on fruit tree care, harvesting, and food preservation.

The fruit that is too fragile to go to feeding the hungry goes into preserves and other delights. I have to tell you, their wild plum jam is da bomb! And the apricot white balsamic really is so good you want to drink it. If you love fruit and fruit products, and think this is a good cause, I highly recommend them. Once I move, I'm going to stock my pantry with their stuff.

No tee more me

2008-01-27T11:46:00.001-06:00

I got this from Taylor who is brilliant in her techno-geekery. This is the most ME tee ever. I'm thinking of letting my dressmaker's dummy wear it so I can see it whenever I work.

What is it about lighting

2008-01-26T12:54:00.000-06:00

That seems to bring out the best in any designer?

Tracy Porter is a designer who I frequently like better as a stylist than an actual designer. There's often a bit too much of the Chinoiserie about her work for my taste. But turn her loose on a chandelier and watch out! I spent about an hour yesterday just mooning over her collection and bemoaning the fact that there isn't enough money in my bank account or enough ceilings in my new place to have all the fixtures I want.

This fixture, to the left, is a restrained piece, certainly by comparison to much of her work, but there's something wonderfully evocative about it. I see history in it, and fantasy, and cultural resonances. And darn it, it's pretty! Why do so many people seem unwilling to admit that pretty just does it for them? Besides, a room should be greater than the sum of its parts... except of course for its artwork.

What do I see here? A delicate Biedermeier scene. Tea in a drawing room decorated in what-the-middle-class-thinks-is-a-simple-peasant-life style. It's a bit silly, but it's warm and it means well.

Tony Duquette is new to me, and to these old eyes, the work I'm seeing is very dated. Well that's fine, it was new back when he was creating it, which is what counted, I think. But for me, most of it is more of a nostalgia trip than some sort of blueprint for design heaven.

However, I stumbled across this chandelier and was enchanted. The fantasy level of this piece just shoots through the roof, and it's not at all dated, IMO. I think it could easily fit into any contemporary design magazine.

I love its boldness, not just of design but of color. In an era when colors were either garish or monochromatic, this is cleverly done.

I'm going to have to see more of Duquette's work.

Tord Boontje is one of those designers I love even though his stuff doesn't really fit any of my notions of how I want my home to look. But when I saw this light fixture I thought that it was so perfect that it didn't matter if I had no place to put it. I had to have it.

Of course I can't afford it, so I'm going to swipe the idea and reproduce my own version of it for the house with a fixture from Ikea, some copper armature mesh, tulle and ribbons.

I love it because life is just bursting from it. It's exuberant and fun, and doesn't take itself at all seriously

I love the way light brings out designers' senses of wonder and play. From now on whenever I find a new designer I'm going to rush right over to see what s/he does with lamps. That'll tell me a lot.

Well, that's it.

2008-01-26T10:55:00.000-06:00

I can finally talk about it. The contracts are all signed. The deals are done. By the beginning of April, I will have gone from this:

To this:

How do I feel? Happy, relieved, energized. Glinda and I will be going over to the new place soon to take some detailed measurements and photos and I'll be busy making drawings of room layouts, and packing. It's all very exciting. Not only will there be new spaces to decorate and more room to work, but there's a whole new neighborhood to explore!

Words cannot express

2008-01-24T20:36:00.001-06:00

How much I love this fabric! The colors just blow me away, and they're exactly what I want to use in my new living room. Two problems: First, it's some sort of soft, sheer material which won't work for upholstery or drapes, and second, I have NO clue where I might find something like this or even how to start looking for it. Do any of my darling, intelligent and well-traveled readers have any good advice to give?

I've already contacted a woman about doing some custom roving for me so I can needle felt some of the accessories in the room in a similar look. But silk, taffeta, satin, even sheers because I could always adapt them... where do I start? How do I find something that even vaguely approximates this look?

Slowly coming back to life

2008-01-23T23:10:00.001-06:00

I am crawling now, instead of just lying around doing nothing. Whatever gave me the world's sorest throat over the weekend, has loosened its grip slightly, and it seems now that all the sleep I was missing out on a couple of weeks ago is now demanding to be repaid. I sleep nine or ten hours a night, and end up falling asleep in front of the television set about eight or nine each night.

Yes, some of it is stress. This illness is almost certainly stress-related. After I had The Talk with my tenant yesterday I felt my throat closing up again. The thing is that mistakes were made on both sides, but I have GOT to move on now. I can't spend any more time or energy on other people.

Never mind all that. Check out this wonderful post about Copenhagen (after Chicago, my favorite city) from Tartine Gourmand. Every time I read something like this I long to go back, but I know it'd be a bittersweet trip because once there I would never want to leave.

This struck a familiar chord:

“You really have to come back in summer,” the amiable lady where P. buys a pair of Trippen shoes tells us. “At this time of year, everyone hibernates and keeps to him or herself,” she continues. “In the summer, the ambiance in the city is completely different, with people everywhere.”

Is that the reason I turn into an even bigger hermit in the winter? Is it my Danish blood crying out for the dark warmth of hibernation?

And to what do I attribute my mania for decorating? The prospect of a new home to decorate without any baggage or fear is just overwhelming! I've been picking out paint colors like mad. Here are a couple of my choices.

Living room. This is evolving out of my current color scheme. Tonight I found some material that would make perfect curtains. I doubt I'll ever find it, it was in a dress in Vogue.

Bedroom. Someone called this "little girl colors grown up" and she was right. The photo I had to use doesn't do justice to the scheme. I'll post more as I work.

Dining Room. I finally found the right shades of purple and green! Ralph Lauren. Amazing.

It's supposed to be bitterly cold here again tomorrow. I'm glad I have my dreaming to keep me warm.

I meant to say...

2008-01-19T23:57:00.000-06:00

How many sounds are more evocative, how many make your heart race with happiness the way the sound of wings do as they catch the air? It's a sound of hope and faith. I never tire of hearing it.

Thinking green helps me from feeling blue

2008-01-19T23:49:00.000-06:00

This... thing that's got hold of me -- cold, flu, sinus infection -- gets me down from time-to-time. I have to skip class on Monday because I doubt I'll feel good enough to go in there and sit for three hours poking at things with sharp needles. And anyway I have an appointment to meet with my attorney to look over what I hope will be the final contract on this place. She'll have to deal with my rasping and snorking, and she is coming here so that's a plus. I don't have to go anywhere.

Now for the green: First, are plants psychic?

And second, plant heirloom seeds. Sources and why it matters.

Really interesting stuff.

I wish I could report that I'd done anything remotely creative this weekend, but the best I've managed was to make jello yesterday. Soft foods are starting to get on my nerves.

Told you so

2008-01-19T02:08:00.000-06:00

You are a Hippie

You are a total hippie. While you may not wear birks or smell of incense, you have the soul of a hippie.
You don't trust authority, and you do as you please. You're willing to take a stand, even when what you believe isn't popular.

You like to experiment with ideas, lifestyles, and different subcultures.
You always gravitate toward what's radical and subversive. Normal, mainstream culture doesn't really resonate with you.

Are You a Hippie?

My lurgy, let me show you it.

2008-01-18T11:59:00.000-06:00

Yes, now I have the lurgy. I feel like hammered shit on toast. Fortunately I also have a laptop with a built-in webcam so I can not only document this, but amuse myself by adding bizarre decorations to the photos.

And I can torture Caddy by grabbing him and taking pics of him with my webcam.

It can be kitteh emalez time nao, plz?

Lest anyone think to suggest that I use this webcam for, ah, less wholesome amusement, I can tell you right now that hell will freeze over before I show any more of myself online than this. K, thnx, bai.

It's snowing!

2008-01-17T11:51:00.000-06:00

Snow always makes me happy. This year in particular it's giving me warm fuzzies, in part because the weather has been abnormally warm, so that we've had little more than rain this winter.

I love snowy nights. The snow damps down all the city noises so that they seem very far away. You can exist in your own world when it snows, one of white silence and peace. Snow clouds enfold us like blankets on an icy night

Even the meanest things look good with a coating of snow, and its softness marks every passage. Snow is the stuff of fantasy and fairy tales. Wolves range just out of sight and soft-winged owls hide within laden branches.

Snow in the sun is blinding, and gives meaning to words like "pure" and "clean." Even city snow is clean for a time, and on a sunny morning dazzles like a field of diamonds. It's overwhelming to think that every flake is different. Every flake which ever fell or ever will fall from one end of time to the other, is unique. How is that possible? How can something so small hold such infinite variety?

When I die, I'd like to die in the snow. I would like to lie down in its arms and have it sing me to sleep, and I would like to melt into the earth along with it. I would like to become snow. I like to think that every flake that falls on me holds an infinitely small piece of everyone I ever loved, so that as they fall on me, on my hair and face, clinging lightly to my eyelashes and fingertips, as they melt into me, I will again feel a whisper of that love.

I love the snow.

The week so far

2008-01-16T09:35:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's Wednesday already. It's been a quiet week so far, what with class being canceled for Monday, and not having the oomph to get out and get my hair cut. And Monday morning sucked rocks. Seriously. Big, gritty rocks. My insurance company called me to let me know part of my insurance was being canceled for non-payment, but I have absolutely no record of having gotten a bill. Fortunately the agent sent me a copy and I sent a check in right away. And then I got a call from my property attorney letting me know that Developer Guy is demanding all sorts of stuff like warranties and window treatments. Warranties? What part of "as is" does he not get? He changes the play book every time I talk to him and I'm getting sick of it. And window treatments for God's sake!

Here's how it stands for me: I'll leave shades or something on every window that's not frosted. I'm leaving a washer and dryer, stove and fridge, microwave, garbage disposal, mini fridge, security system and all the light fixtures except two in the living room which I'll replace. They'll get my new coffee maker by prying it from my cold, dead hands. As for warranties, the deal I made was to sell this place "as is." If that's not what we're doing, then I'd just as soon not do the deal at all. I never wanted to move in the first place, and this packing-and-schlepping business really stinks. And then I have work to do in the new place! I'd just gotten this place pretty close to how I want it, so why should I want to go to all that trouble if I could stay here?

Fortunately the afternoon picked up with the arrival of my new laptop which I plan on making my main computer. The desktop I'll keep for graphics work. I've ordered a wireless router so I'll be able to use the laptop anywhere in the building. Wheeee!

One good thing about planning a move: You get your priorities straight. I'm getting rid of a ton of stuff that I don't want to move. And if I don't want to move it, I don't want to keep it, do I? It's something of a relief to see these things more clearly.

The new computer is gorgeous, and her name is "Persimmon" in honor of my business which will be a prominent part of what I do with her. As for Windows Vista... I can't say I hate it, but I can't say I like it either. Let's just say it's nowhere near as bad as Win ME or Windows for Workgroups, but it's not nearly as good as XP. I'm going to give it a few weeks and if I come to hate it or miss XP too much, I'm going to downgrade. It might be worth it to get some of this crapware off the computer. AOhelL won't let me uninstall! I hate AOL with the fury of a thousand super novas.

Yesterday I cleaned the bathroom cabinets and drawers, and packed one box filled with stuff I know I won't use -- hope I won't have to use -- before I move. I figure two more boxes will do for the rest of the stuff, and that's really only because I have a lot of glass, and some long-handled brushes. I cleaned the kitchen cabinets last week, and got it down to the lazy susan and one small cabinet filled with tea. I cannot live without tea! And I'm systematically cleaning out my fridge and freezer. I figure whatever is left, if I haven't eaten at least some of it before I move, I don't want it at all.

I also got a lot of felting done yesterday. I decided to try an experiment where I felted over a very cheap pillow. I'd say it's about a C+ over all. Some things about it I liked, some I didn't. The corners were hard to do and ended up sort of smushed. And ensuring coverage waas a nightmare. I do like a felted pillow, and I love the combination of wool and silk I used. The silk especially has such vivid colors. I really want to use more of it in the future. I also used Noro Iro yarn (wool and silk) to define areas of the pillow and as piping around the edges. It felts down nicely without disappearing completely. I also broke about 10 needles doing this, and find in general that I like using a single needle best. A needle holder with half a dozen needles is great to do big areas, but finishing and detail work especially really need a single needle.

Today, no more felting, at least not until tonight. I'm going to go fill a box with felting stuff, label it and put it with the other packed craft supplies. Now I have to go chase my cat for a while. A day without a game of Get-the-Kitty is like a day without sunshine!

Department of Irony

2008-01-13T23:31:00.000-06:00

I spent much of the day doing fiber-y things, most particularly felting like a feltin' fool in prep for tomorrow's class. I had read a blog entry somewhere, though I don't now recall where, about a woman who mended socks by felting over the holes instead of sewing. It struck me as being such a delightful solution to a fairly mundane problem that I decided to test it out, not with socks, but with my beloved denim bag. Believe me when I tell you it is beloved. I've had it for probably twenty years, and it was made from old blue jeans. In spite of frays and wear, and stains, in spite of the holes it developed on one side from the stress of carrying small solar systems worth of stuff around on the CTA, and general grottiness, I love it madly. It will have to be pried out of my cold, dead fingers to be taken from me.

Late last year I collected all my orange buttons, and stitched them to the pocket on the outside -- orange is the color compliment to blue which makes the visual effect quite something -- and tonight I sat down and felted over the rips and holes. Actually I felted over quite a bit of one side, and the effect is wonderful. Then I added some padding on the shoulder strap while I was at it. That's just good sense. And then, because once I start I can't seem to stop, I mended the rips in my jean jacket sleeve, and added a couple of little designs on the right breast pocket. All of which I did while watching "The Fugitive" and the first two discs of the first season of "Bones." I also broke four felting needles, and my right index finger feels like it's going to blister. But I'm happy!

This patch will withstand the next ice age. Proof of my mad felting skilz.

The irony? While I was banging away at the purse, the class instructor called to tell me that class was cancelled because she had the lurgy. Poor thing. So tomorrow I'm going to spend the day packing books. And probably knitting with those ridiculously expensive rosewood knitting needles I got the other day. I'm working on a modular shawl of Noro Iro, NuMei energy and Sensations Thick 'n' Thin. (Discontinued by those bastards at Jo-ann who discontinue every one of their yarns as soon as I fall for it.)

And now I'm going to go eat some saffron and honey yoghurt. With almonds. I deserve it.

That's sort of scary-looking up close

2008-01-08T11:47:00.000-06:00

That was my first thought when I saw this photo. However it's my very first piece of felting from the class I'm taking over at Lillstreet and I'm proud of it! Even though I've done some needle felting in the past, I never quite got hold of the technique. But I'm getting it now, along with an appreciation of how much work it really is. I'm going to have huge muscles all up and down my right arm before this class is over.

It was great to find that the instructor, Lindsay Obermeyer, is very internet-savvy, so she's already given us a jump start on finding supplies and tools, information and inspiration. In fact, our homework is, in part, doing some online research for blogs which are felting-centric or have a decent amount of felting content. I'm looking forward to seeing what the others come up with as well as sharing my own finds.

The second piece we started is going to be a flower. I look at my start and think, "Uh-huh, right." I reproduce it here to show the process, but be warned that the ugly, she burns! I may just start over here at home. Don't tell anyone. I'm sure no one will notice that it's a whole different color and size when I bring it in next week.

So today I got kind of curious about the roving I had in my stash and pulled it, and my felting needles out. First I laid out some soy roving and started banging away at it. Prior to this I'd had limited luck with it, only really being able to felt it with other fibers. Now I know why. I'd never realized that it was important to cross-hatch the fibers when you lay them out. The result was that I was essentially felting the roving to nothing. No wonder I never got any sort of fabric out of it. Pictured here is a little wad of felted soy silk which was wrapped with a sport-weight yarn and felted some more. Not exactly Ab Fab, kids, but at least I'm learning what fibers can do.

Next, I mixed the soy with wool and felted it into a nifty rectangle. Woo hoo, right? I tugged at it a bit to see how firm it was and found I could pull the fibers apart right at the center, so I rolled the fabric up and kept on felting it into a rope. Then I coiled the rope and felted it to itself, creating a kind of shell-like form. Again, it's useful to find out what these materials can do. The wool and soy mix is kind of nice. Soy silk has a glossy quality that I like. It's a pretty fiber, and feels so nice to the touch. Definitely something I want to work with.

We're going to be doing needle-felting again next week, and then move on to wet felting. However I'm jumping the gun a bit today because I found a ball of mixed yarn I'd made a few months ago. Much of it is wool, but there are a couple of novelty yarns in it which won't felt or shrink, and I got curious to see what would happen if I threw a swatch in the washing machine. In that respect I'm much like Gary Knox Bennett, who says "I just want to see what it looks like."

I had a heck of a good time in class. I'm glad I made the decision to get off my depressed butt and do something positive.

Below: Soy silk roving. It really is pretty, isn't it?

Eastern Promises

2008-01-05T09:54:00.001-06:00

Contrary to all common sense I started watching Eastern Promises last night about midnight, never intending to watch the whole thing at one go. I thought at the time that it might not be the best thing to go to sleep on, considering all the talk, and in some cases near hysteria about the violence and bloodiness. But I have a high overall tolerance for both, and I was kind of anxious to see the film. And I ended up watching the whole thing!

I'm not a huge fan of David Cronenberg, but when he hits the right notes for me --as he did with Crash -- he hits them big time. Eastern Promises was all that and a bag of fries. It's easily one of the most compelling thrillers I've seen in years, due in no small part to Viggo Mortensen, who has probably never given a bad performance in his life. There are actors who could make a whole career out of what he does in this one film. But yeah, it's disturbing. Not because of the violence, but because of the awful, overwhelming humanness of the film. Over and over again we are reminded of how fragile life is, from the shot of the newborn baby, bloody, wet and terribly silent, to the very last scene of Nikolai in the darkness of the restaurant, silent and self-contained. They look human, there's no glamor here, no Hollywood prettiness. They suffer and bleed like humans. Even the sex -- the most singularly joyless sexual encounter I've ever seen in film -- is so very revealing that you want to look away. There's no voyeuristic pleasure here, nor in the much-discussed nude fight scene. Nikolai's desperate struggle to stay alive effectively quashes that notion.

Eastern Promises is more sad than anything else. It takes place between Christmas and New Year's, a time when the suicide rate traditionally skyrockets. In the Christmas scenes we see, there's nothing of the holiday spirit. The celebration at Trans-Siberian is rich, but without any resonance. Anna's Christmas dinner with her family is marked by disappointment, anger and sadness. This is the side of the holiday season that the media doesn't show us. It's the side of being human we don't often see in film. It's not the raw, bleeding edge, but the wet, overcast, pervasively sad side. Perhaps this is why the relationship between Anna and Nikolai remains so intangible for the viewer. There are no illusions here. Surprisingly, I didn't find the film depressing. It does offer one note of hope, and it's a potent one. And an honest one. That's worth quite a lot, in the end.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely. But with a caveat: While there is not nearly as much blood and gore as you may have been led to believe, what there is is very disturbing. But if you're capable of seeing beyond the film's baggage, it's well worth your time.

Carol Hicks Bolton

2008-01-04T07:08:00.001-06:00

I was poking around in my inspiration notebooks yesterday, trying to find a photo of a club chair that I'd been thinking of ordering. I ran into a photo spread of the most amazing furniture and couldn't believe that I hadn't hunted down the designer before. So last night I googled Carol Hicks Bolton and found her at EJ Victor with an extensive line of furniture.

I can't say I'm as nuts about her wood lines as I am about the upholstered ones. Part of the charm of her work, for me anyway, is the lushness of her fat cushions and pillows. Her upholstered pieces are by turns elegant and tatty, posh and silly, buttoned-up and yet somehow erotic.

And they're familiar, too. This chair struck such a chord for me that it propelled me back into my childhood when elderly friends of the family had such things as a matter of course. They sat like dowager queens on such chairs, speaking of people I never knew and offering me the occasional sweet. Their delicate bones and translucent skin were counterpoint to the heavy carving and dark, deeply mysterious fabric in which a curious and rather restless child could trace odd faces and figures. I long for a chair like this. I know it must have magic.

So too Bolton's sofas, though magic of a different sort. There is an almost country cottage feel to the pink sofa. Often patched and lined with pillows collected here and there over the years, it's deep and cozy. Just the place to nap on a Sunday afternoon.

And the red sofa? Well a friend remarked that it reminded her of certain fin de siècle establishments painted by Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas, and she's quite right. This sofa is ready for a seduction. It's ripe and rich and bursting with delicious naughtiness. One does not nap on such a sofa without a properly improper reason. One poses, one receives a special gentleman caller, one swoons upon such a sofa. Nice women do not own such sofas. they are barely aware that such pieces of furniture exist.

Bolton's furniture may not come with a history, but there is history flowing around them. Surely with a little imagination, one of her chairs or sofas could become a family heirloom after the fact. Certainly that chair could come to be known as the chair upon which great-great-grandmother sat, refusing to take to her bed at the end, determined to meet her maker sitting up. The pink sofa could have come with the family from a dacha outside of St. Petersburg, shipped across country by train as the flames of revolution began to lick at the old establishment, and put on a ship to San Francisco where the family still lives, and uncle Mischa (Mike) likes to tell about how the Tsar once napped on it.

And the red sofa? Well it's said that cousin Elizabet was conceived on that sofa, but she denies it.

People can be SO nice.

2008-01-01T01:57:00.000-06:00

It's been snowing on and off all day. It was a wetish snow, the sort we had on that day when I went out (sans camera) and was rendered speechless by the beauty of it coating the trees all down my street. I recall it looking for all the world like a cathedral celing, a vault of white lit from beneath, and absolutely awe-inspiring. I've tried many times to capture that look with my camera, but the conditions were never quite right.

I thought they might be tonight, so about ten, just after I took the bread pudding out of the oven, I grabbed my camera and went outside. It was pretty, as you can see, but it wasn't what I was looking for. The snow had not been heavy enough, and it was still falling. However it was closer than anything I've managed to capture since, and I wanted to share it with you all.

But what I wanted to share particularly was that I decided I needed to clear the sidewalk a bit, though I don't have a shovel. So I grabbed the broom in the hallway and began to sweep. It did get a layer of snow off, but left a slushy layer of snow stuck to the center of the walk. "Whatever" I told myself. At least I was trying. I had a bag of de-icer in the hall, too and figured that would help. But while I was sweeping, the man from next door, who was clearing the sidewalk and spreading salt, came over to me with his shovel and began to clear the slush for me. He shoveled, I salted. I'd wished him a happy new year earlier,when I was out taking the pics, but when he finished I did so again, and told him I hoped the new year would bring him his heart's desire. And I offered him the rest of my salt. *g*

We didn't really say much other than that. I could have babbled the way I often do when I deal with strangers, which is an off-putting sort of introduction and one I'm determined to fix in the future. Mercifully I didn't, so there was the bare minimum of talk, punctuated by the scrape of his shovel and the hiss of tires on wet pavement. The ability to be silent with someone, especially with a complete stranger, and not feel awkward, is a gift.

Finally I want to wish a very happy birthday to Nancy, who continues to inspire me to be the person I want to be. Nancy, I hope 2008 will be your best year, ever. I hope your gallery acceptance is the first of many, and that before too much longer you'll have the recognition you deserve. Love ya, kiddo.

Welcome 2008!

Eeeek!

2007-12-31T20:05:00.000-06:00

I was doing some paperwork (and waiting for my pizza) when I came across my student ID and class receipt from Lillstreet Art Center. In one week I'll be starting my class!!! Eeeeek. Scary. And yet I can't think of anything more hopeful for a new year than the learning of new skills.

It's a Good Thing.

"Chance is the fool's name for fate."

2007-12-31T12:36:00.000-06:00

If you're a fan of the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers you'll recognize that title. It's from "The Gay Divorcee."

Fred and Ginger were mainstays of my New Year's Eve celebrations for many years along with pizza from Pizza Hut. And this year, TCM is running a mini-marathon of Fred-and-Ginger films starting at 8:00 EST. The lineup:

The Gay Divorcee
Shall We Dance
Top Hat
Swingtime
Carefree

I can't imagine a better way to see in the new year. And on that note, I want to wish you all the very best for a great 2008. May you have an all-singing, all-dancing good time!

Poking around on eBay

2007-12-28T10:32:00.000-06:00

And elsewhere last night. Came to the conclusion that Rachel Ashwell has a lot to answer for with "shabby" chic. Not since Anne Rice used the word "preternatural" to death, has any word been so egregiously overused as "shabby."

eBay sellers take note: Just because it's broken, dirty or otherwise funky and unlikeable, it's not necessarily shabby chic.

Sleepless in front of the computer

2007-12-27T02:09:00.000-06:00

I really was going to go to bed about an hour and a half ago, but I made the mistake of poking around my RSS feeds to see what was new, and discovered a new blog. Okay, new to me. Jennifer Ramos has obviously been around for a while now, and reading her old posts is what's been keeping me up. She's a tireless design blogger, environmentally aware (Which means I now have twenty tabs open in Firefox, and no hope of sleeping any time soon.) and a designer with an eye for the quirky and colorful. The image to the left is from her line of cards over at her site, Made by Girl.

Now I really need to go read.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T12:06:00.000-06:00

(If you'd prefer to substitute another celebration for Christmas, that's fine with me. The spirit of the season should be one of tolerance and inclusion.)

I borrowed the following from a friend over on Live Journal. If you're looking for some green, sustainable, renewable gifts that don't clutter the house and never need dusting:

Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect. - Oren Arnold

May the light of the season flood your lives. May your days be filled with joy and warmth.

Bread!

2007-12-23T12:52:00.000-06:00

My friend, Suzanne, is home for the holidays and just posted her bread-baking adventures. In spite of all my good intentions I now feel the urge to make bread, but what I want is a cardamom loaf, or cardamom buns. I want a warm, fragrant loaf of bread with a slight crunch of sugar and almonds on top. But I'm still cleaning up after the gallon of soup and gallon of applesauce/chutney I made on Friday! There's a soup pot big enough to hold several cats sitting in my sink, filled with hot, soapy water. I must clean before I can cook again.

Perhaps I will bake on Christmas day. As a treat to myself. And the house will smell like heaven. A cardamom braid, saffron buns.

I love to cook.

And again, process

2007-12-22T12:04:00.000-06:00

Rifka is my mosaic mentor, by which I mean she not only produces some delightful pieces, often with unexpected materials, but she blithely goes ahead and covers her door frame with broken Talavera tiles and grout color experiments. I love that assurance and devotion to her work.

Recently she sent me a photo which I wholeheartedly embraced not only because I found it both gorgeous and whimsical but because I have collected more buttons than any one human being should ever own. I couldn't help looking at this photo and thinking: "Wow, that awful pink lamp would look fantastic with a mosaic of buttons!" So I started firing off questions and Rifka, bless her, has been answering them, and sending on illustrations to show me what she means. I asked her if I could share the photos and she agreed. I think you'll find the transformation as wonderful as I do.

Left: Italian pitcher. Nice enough, but not a Rifka pitcher by any stretch.

Below: Work begins. In the background you can see her famous flower mosaic. She tells me she adheres her materials with silicone, even using caulk. I'm going to give it a shot. I've used E-6000 in the past which is great for jewelry, but hellish for big projects.

Later views. Around the top, she's using aquarium stones. She also says she's using Diamond Glaze, Wellbond, Thinset, Liquid Nails... I like a "whatever works" approach. *g*

And then, the finished piece! I just loved this. I'm going to have to make a button mosaic before I get too much older. I just love the way the aquarium stones have taken on a frothy quality now that they've been painted and glazed. It's the sort of thing I look at and wonder how I could reproduce this in a ceramic piece.

Pompeiian Red

2007-12-22T11:03:00.001-06:00

Is not a wine.

It's an exhibit of 100 paintings from Pompeii, currently on view at the National Museum of Rome. Some of the paintings, such as the one to the left -- theatrical masks -- are in surprisingly good condition with rich, vivid color quite unlike the washed out, time-worn pieces which have been shown in the past.

The scope of the images seems to be rather broad, showing not only religious imagery, but scenes from everyday life in Pompeii. What I find most intriguing is how much more contemporary some of them seem, as if they had been painted by Renaissance masters instead of nameless artisans working fifteen centuries earlier. This one, a fresco of Theseus, has in fact, been compared to the paintings of Raphael. (He of the now ubiquitous pensive cherub painting, more properly known as a detail of the Sistine Madonna.)

But the painting which most pleased me was a detail of a larger fresco. It depicts a nightingale among roses, and it's so fresh and simple in its beauty that it could almost be contemporary. I wish I could just drop everything and catch a flight to Rome to see this exhibit. The Pompeiian paintings are so fragile, they're rarely moved from Naples. To see them together like this, and lovingly restored, what a treat that would be.

Process

2007-12-21T15:43:00.000-06:00

One of the more interesting aspects of reading art blogs is sharing, albeit from a distance, the process of creating art. The most interesting art blogs don't just share finished work, but work in stages, and often the thought which goes on as the work progresses.

So it is with my friend, Nancy who is currently at work on a piece called "Afternoon at Cafe Fiore." And while I'm enjoying watching this one take shape, the one I find really interesting is her Sunflowers piece.

It began here with a fairly static composition in watercolor, which is not her usual medium. By her next post on the subject, it was clear she was struggling with the way she was working. And then suddenly she seemed to find her step. At least I think so because what I'm seeing here is miles beyond the flat, static beginning. It's got life and energy, and she's given her colors free rein.

When I was learning to paint... wait, let me rephrase that: When I was attending painting classes, I had a teacher who I liked very much, but who was kind of a stickler for using media in the context of their physical qualities. Watercolors should be transparent and delicate, acrylics should be flat and bold, etc. And while I do get what she was trying to teach us -- how to get the most out of your medium -- I love watching people work with their media in ways which are not wholly conventional. I think Nancy has achieved that here in "Sunflowers." Yes, there's transparency and a looseness commonly associated with watercolor, but I think it goes well beyond traditional watercolor method in the vividness of her color and the strength of the line. I think it's exciting.

Julbord

2007-12-21T02:35:00.001-06:00

I blogged about this over on my Live Journal, but completely forgot to post here. The fact is I was probably still so full there was no room for my brain to work. As it was, I pretty much figured I'd never have to eat again. Because last Saturday I was treated to a Julbord at Tre Kronor. A Julbord is the traditional Scandinavian Christmas smörgåsbord, and when I say smörgåsbord I do not mean a few plates of lunch meat and cheese and a hot dish or two, I mean the real deal, four-course, oh-dear-god-I-ate-too-much-is-there-any-more-rice-pudding? smörgåsbord.

Tre Kronor is one of the few genuine Scandinavian restaurants left in a city which once had a thriving Scandinavian community. Ann Sather's, which has not been owned by Ma Sather in decades, still serves up brown beans and Swedish pancakes, but tends to cater to the upscale market in Wrigleyville, Lakeview and Andersonville. Svea, once excellent, has apparently gone down the tubes (I haven't been there since I worked in Andersonville, but I heard this from one of my dining companions last night, and since June is a daughter of Karlskoga, I'm gonna take that as gospel.) Wikstroms is gone since my mom's old buddy, Ingvar Wikstrom, retired and Erikson's is still more a deli than anything else. And while you can get glögg over at Andie's Middle Eastern restaurant all winter, it's not what I'd call a real Scandinavian dining experience.

Every year at Jul/Christmas Tre Kronor puts on this kickass Julbord which is so good that the folks I was with are actually contemplating going to the Christmas Eve one instead of making their own. Now for those of you not familiar with how these things work, let me break down the experience into manageable units. You start with a tiny cup of glögg. Glögg is a kind of mulled, fortified wine drink served in teensy cups because more than a couple of ounces can seriously impair your ability to walk, and therefore to eat, since the Julbord experience is serve-yourself. I've been served teacups filled with glögg and can tell you that my mind remained crystal clear, but appeared to disconnect from my legs entirely, rendering me unable to get up off the sofa for several hours.

The first course is the herring course. The herring course also includes other fishy goodness, but it's traditionally mostly herring. Last night there were nine different sorts of herring on the bord.

Glass Blower's Herring
Mustard Herring (SO good that I'm actually jonesing for it now.)
Herbed Herring
Matjes Herring
Curried Herring
Hus Fru Herring
Tomato Herring
Dill Herring

I managed to try five types plus the traditional new potatoes, the gravadlax and smoked salmon, as well as the oysters and shrimp. I also cheated a bit and piled on the pickled cukes because if there's anything I dearly love it's pickled cucumbers. Also the pickled beets because, hello? Yum. And a couple of pieces of crispbread because you need crispbread in your diet. I have to tell you, all the herring was excellent, the gravadlax was heavenly and the cukes were to die for.

Step two: Discard plate, pick up clean one. Head for the salads and cold meats and cheeses. Last night there were shrimp, citrus, potato and crab meat salads, thin sliced meats including Goteborgskorv and sult (*shudder*) a delicious country-style pate, and a generous tray of cheese including Danish blue and brie. For me, there was more pickled cuke as well.

Interim step: Recognize that there is still the hot course to come and decide not to go back for more herring, gravadlax, pate and cucumbers.

Step three: Pick up clean plate. Head for the chafing dishes where you find:

Meatballs with or without gravy
Mashed potatoes
Red cabbage
Ham
Roast pork with prunes
Biff à la Lindstrom
Lutefisk (Oh yes, it's not Christmas w/o lutefisk in all its glory.)
Jansson's frestlese (literally Jansson's temptation, a heady casserole of potatoes and anchovies)
Brown Beans
Prinskorv
Potatiskorv (potato sausage, and damn good potato sausage, too.)
lingonberries

Interim step two: Wonder what on earth possessed you to take so much Jansson's frestlese. Observe that the lutefisk isn't a patch on the stuff made by June and have her add that neither is the Jansson's frestlese. Think to yourself that the latter is still pretty good.

Interim step three: Wonder how on earth you're going to eat rice pudding.

At this point the lights go down and one of the servers comes in wearing a white gown and a crown of candles, singing the Sankta Lucia song. It's very pretty, though I can't help but wonder how many hapless Scandinavian girls have been set on fire on St. Lucia's day. I was also rendered half blind because a photographer for Metromix was there, snapping a thousand photos in the darkened room. You know what that's like.

Dessert follows. Mercifully it's limited to: rice pudding (There's a law somewhere that says it's not Swedish if there's no rice pudding. Pam reports that at the last Daughters of Sweden meeting she attended, someone read a report from the Rice Pudding Committee.) Creme bruleé, butter cookies, chocolate mousse cups, more lingonberries, mixed nuts and clementines. There's also good Swedish coffee.

Pentultimate step: Wonder why you ate so much. Revise that to wondering how you ate so much. Pay check. Make no move to leave because you fear your legs will not support your weight.

Final step: Stumble out into several inches of fresh snow, and think how beautiful it all is. Then think it sure sucks to have to walk through this to the car, knowing that if you fall down you'll lie there like a beached whale until you freeze to death.

I don't actually mean to complain. Everything was delicious and it really was my own fault that I ate that much. It did my Danish side much good to commune with native foods, too. If you're local and want a real Swedish meal, I really recommend Tre Kronor, especially their Julbord which is tremendously impressive.

Soap Opera

2007-12-20T20:19:00.000-06:00

High drama. Apparently with soap, the third time is the charm. Alas, by that time I'd run out of printer ink and couldn't print the labels, so I popped for overnight delivery of new cartridges and put packaging on hold.

It still doesn't lather the way I'd like but that's because I used castor oil, excellent for a dog's skin and coat but hell on the lathering. As I go along I'll hit on a formula that I like and stick with it. I really have learned a lot doing this. Most importantly I've learned that dogs are okay with some essential oils -- in moderation -- such as tea tree, peppermint and lavender, but cats are not. Not that I personally would ever wash a cat unless it got into something awful that shouldn't be licked off, but some folks do, and that's why there's a warning at the bottom of the label. Dogs only. I'd love to do an all pet-safe bar eventually, or shampoo, but I have to do more research into what will and won't fly for various pets

I'm surrounded by bottles and jars and labels, and still have to finish the lotion bars, and wrap everything. Though in all honesty I'm not being very good with this last bit. I've even put off opening my Christmas cards this year, figuring I'll do it on Christmas eve. This is my first year without the folks and while I've been invited out, I've decided to stay home instead, and think about them and the good times we had. I'll open my cards instead of the gifts we always exchanged, and maybe even write a few notes to people who don't know they're gone, and have sent cards to the family.

I don't mean to sound morose, I don't see it as a depressing choice. I just feel that I want to spend a quiet couple of days remembering all the wonderful years we had together. I can't hide from the loss, so the sooner I face it and learn to move past it to the good memories, the better off I'll be. I'll miss them all my life, but it's time to move on now. Maybe by next year I'll be ready to send out a few cards and even decorate a little.

And now there's soup to be started. I've got all the fixings for a big old pot of pistou, a soup I used to make on a regular basis years ago. Though there's every chance that it'll turn into a pot of cream-of-what- have-you. Nothing better on a cold, rainy night than a thick vegetable soup and some crusty bread.

Mr. McFlufferton and I are holed up together where it's warm and dry. I have lots of tea. What more could a girl ask for?

And the absolute best thing about melt-and-pour soap?

2007-12-20T00:14:00.000-06:00

It can never be totally fubar'd. Bad batches can be remelted with more melt-and-pour.

Why yes, my soap was somewhat less than successful. Why do you ask?

Marshall Field's Lives!

2007-12-19T17:53:00.001-06:00

At least in the hearts of my friends. ABC Chicago just did a segment on my friends, Annette and Bob, who decorate their home for Christmas with ornaments and other relics of the old Marshall Field store.

Bob has written a couple of histories of Christmas on State Street: Christmas on State Street: 1940s and Beyond and Chicago's State Street Christmas Parade. He and Annette love Chicago the way I do, and have a lot of the same memories. Last time I had lunch with them they gave me a "Forever Marshall Field's" button which I wear proudly and point to when asked why I won't shop at Macy's.