Winter

January 25, 2008

I am off to where winter is winter.

The Best

January 24, 2008

Sylvia has been timesharing between Liz's and my bed and night lately. She came into my room this morning and I must have been down under the comforter and she couldn't see my face. So she jumped so gently onto the bed, came up to the top, moved the comforter down and put her nose right up under mine, not touching. I could feel her breath so I imagine she could also feel mine. She did that for about half a minute and then went and laid down, assured that all was well.

January 22, 2008

I am cleaning off the top of my desk today and tying up loose ends. Why do we all feel a need to do that when we are getting ready to go away for a few days? Am I really worried that Liz may sit down and say something like, "Oh, let me clean Mom's desk off for her and put everything away in its place?"

A while ago I finished reading the book on the shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. Amazing. Michigan is one of those places we just know is there and unless you are from the area or live in the area you don't pay a lot of attention to it. But there, that is anywhere and anyone, not just Michigan. "The Great Lakes contain the largest surface of fresh water water on our planet. There are 8,117 miles of shoreline shared about half and half between Canada and the United States. During the twenty years between 1879 and 1899, some 6,000 vessels were wrecked on these inland seas, and of this number more than 1,000 were total losses: ships, cargoes, hands. Nowhere in the Atlantic or Pacific is there an expanse of 90,000 square miles to muster such a record of death and destruction." Pretty impressive.

Started a new book by Jesse Kellerman. He is the son of Jonathan and Faye Kellerman whose books I really enjoy. Faye Kellerman is probably one of my top three favorite authors. I am not as crazy about Jonathan and although Jesse is OK, it feels like he is trying so hard. It is his second book so I will go back and read the first one. I have only read about 60 pages and the story is good and promises to be better but it seems like he is adding a lot of flourish, a lot of familiar words but not everyday ones. Maybe if I didn't know who his parents were I wouldn't be thinking this way at all.

23 more days until Pitchers and Catchers Day. Last Wednesday was the day that you could order your season "package" of tickets for games this year. So we went with the usual package of 20. Of course, we were shocked to find out that the tickets went up $15 a game per person. We have good seats so I can't imagine what people behind home plate are paying. Well, it was probably necessary. We really do need to pay these guys more money, right? Thanks again, Nick, for your know-how and patience in doing this for us.

Just such a good picture of you two.

Ladies' Day

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The ladies arrive and Sylvia checks them out.

Elizabeth Theresa

Meghan Rose

First things first. Mom feeds Meghan.

Susan feeds Elizabeth

Lizzie

Meghan

These sweaters will fit someday.

And the grand prize goes to Liz! The original reason for the day was to brush up on crocheting skills. Tara finished a baby blanket, her first crochet project. Liz made herself a hat. And Susan learned how to crochet, earning a seat on the big girl bus. Next time the girls will have hats and so will Susan. It was great fun.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Excellent book.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

29 more days. Pitchers and catchers.

The sweaters are coming along fine. Sleeve #1 on sweater #2 well under way. Although I haven't been plying the needles the last couple of days, they are coming along nicely. All I have to do after the sleeves are finished is sew up all the seams and block them.

Liz and her friends went to a club in the city Saturday night to celebrate Tara's birthday. The funniest line of the night, and perhaps the only funny line of the night, was Liz saying, "The last time we were in a club none of us had cell phones."

What is it with this "male" thing in this world? It is just that it gets a little tedious at times. I had lunch with the head of the volunteers at the New Rochelle Humane Society today. She was telling me that last Monday they saw a woman pull up in front of the shelter, take a 11 x 14 inch box out of her car, about 10 inches deep-like a Macy's coat box-and place it on the bench in front of the shelter and start to get back into her car. They went out and spoke to her before she had a chance to get away. Inside the box were three mother cats and 16 kittens, all crammed in and piled two or three deep. The woman has a 16 month old male cat at home but she thought he probably wasn't old enough to bring in to have fixed. Let's see. He was old enough to impregnate these three females but not old enough to have his little testicles "altered"? When asked to bring in the male to effect this alteration she hemmed and hawed and said she knows she should, etc, etc, etc. but just hated to do it "to a male". What?

A good thing that may come out of today? They would love to have lots of pictures of the animals at the shelter and to post on their website. They had them for a while but they have slacked off-the usual political "stuff" that goes on in an organization. I told her that is something I would love to do so we are going to start working on that.

Finished reading "Bootlegger's Daughter" and am starting the chat book.

NYIP

Tuesday January 15, 2008

On line courses, at home study, learn yourself study. All have sounded very lame to me in the past. No way can you get what you should out of something like that. "Learn at your own pace" when maybe what most of us need is assignment deadlines, taskmasters pushing deadlines on us.

Nick gave me a "distance learning" digital SLR camera course for Christmas from the New York Institute of Photography. What Nick didn't know is that I have gone to their website several times and looked at their courses and just decided that it would take too much of my time, I would never have the discipline to do it, etc, etc. That was actually before I retired and I hadn't looked at it since.

The first "unit" came Christmas Day all wrapped up and ready to start. I decided that I was going to schedule time every Monday or Tuesday and sit down and work with this. Last week it was Monday and it was excellent. This particular learning experience has many many texts and audio tapes with the instructors going over the material. They do it so well that it keeps you very interested. They stop talking, refer you to the text and then you go back to the audio, etc. etc. The speakers are very conversational and hold your attention. It is actually two people who are talking to the student but almost sound like they are talking to each other as well. I have an advisor, phone number, email, office hours-the whole deal. I also have to submit two photo projects before it is over. They encourage you to submit prints as that is part of the learning-how to make excellent prints. Then I will receive an audio critique of my work. I have no idea the nature of what I am supposed to photograph as I refuse to look ahead.

I sat down for my second class today and before I realized it three hours had gone by. They are most gracious in supplying breaks along the way but it all went very quickly and today's topic included the mechanics of a camera which they actually made interesting. Most interesting of it all though was that the camera that is used in the text to demonstrate all of the dials and controls, etc. is my camera. How perfect could that be?

Obama and Hillary have decided to take the gloves off and stop sniping at each other. Congratulations!

I started a new book a couple of days ago. Back to murder and mayhem!

Margaret Maron is an author I have not heard of before but my niece Margaret has told me twice now that she is good. Margaret has about the same taste in books as I do. So I found the first book of one of the series she writes and am giving it a try.

The knitting is coming along quite well. First sleeve of the second sweater. Maybe these actually will be done for the girls' birthdays. I showed them to the mother on Sunday who keeps telling me that she wants to make baby sweaters for her girls. I can't convince her that they aren't babies any more. Toddlers works better.

I made reservations to fly to Michigan to stay at my sister Karen's for a week or so. You know-a good break, change of scenery. After I had the reservations and the car rented I decided to just see what the weather might be like although the forecast only looks at the next ten days and it is maybe 11 or 12 days before I go. A high of 13 degrees. Are you kidding me? Who does that-actually willingly goes somewhere that the high temperature at the hottest part of the day is going to be 13 degrees? Who?

Not Much Going On

Saturday January 12, 2008

Someone asked me at 8A this morning what I was going to do with my day. I didn't have an answer and that has bothered me all day. It hasn't been a wasted day, have gotten a lot of "stuff" done but somehow that falls short of what I think I should be doing. But then, really, does everyone do something momentous every day? Probably not. I think when you are working full time you have so much going on that you have to pay very close attention to how you schedule your time-work time as well as off time. Then all of a sudden you are not working and it is a different life completely. You have to figure out things like when to take your shower now. You don't want to take it in the morning if you are going to the gym or to walk the dog or are going to be cleaning the basement that day. You don't want to take it at night because why would you spend that time blow drying your hair only to sleep on it? Ah, the issues of retirement.

Finally finished the books-Chris Matthews and the one about the shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. I kept asking myself why I was reading Chris Matthews because it actually never moved beyond fluff, things we all know and we have all known for years. The Great Lakes book was pretty fascinating. Will write more tidbits about that tomorrow.

Knitting is coming along fine. Second sleeve of first sweater. The twins birthday is a month and a half away. That wasn't my plan but it looks like they may be getting sweaters for their birthday.

I made reservations today to fly to Michigan. It is the first time I have been there since my Mom passed away that the trip wasn't Mom related. Everything about it is weird. I have spent years flying into the Saginaw airport and Dad and Mom and then Mom and then my cousin have been picking me there. This time I am flying into Detroit and renting a car and driving to my sister's home and staying there for a week. It is most unusual to not be thinking about what days I will spend with Mom while I am there. All very strange and, yes, sad.

A Number

Thursday, January 10, 2008

How can something as simple as a number change your mood instantly? My doctor just called to tell me that my cholesterol is 151 and my HDL is 81. Certainly made my day. Thank you , Lipitor.

What Have You Done Lately?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Happy Birthday, LMK!

Last night Liz and I went to see "Come Back, Little Sheba". What a wonderful play and two such strong performances in the husband and wife roles. William Inge made a career of writing plays about the sad human condition. This is basically the story of a strong wife who stands by her alcoholic, extremely abusive husband while living in the past when everything was romantic and the future looked so delightful.

Congrats to Ms. Hillary and Mr. John. It is still a very long way to go but it is definitely interesting to actually have a race.

Speaking of John McCain, I am still reading Chris Matthews book, slowly for sure. There is a chapter called "Rites of Passage" where he writes about moments that changed peoples' lives.

"For Senator John McCain, his moment of testing came on a very specific date: October 26, 1967. It was the day his plane was shot down over Hanoi. ............When a surface-to-sir missile sheared off his right wing, McCain ejected. Knocked unconscious, both of his arms and one leg broken, he parachuted into a lake. An angry crowd, bitterly weary of the American bombing, dragged him from the water. One Vietnamese broke McCain's shoulder with a rifle butt. .......McCain was denied any medical attention. There were to be five and a half more years of imprisonment and beatings. For two years he was kept in solitary confinement."

Then we have JFK. We all have heard about his PT109 whatever.

"PT-109 was three miles from shore. To get his men even to relative safety...Kennedy swam for five hours. He did so with the strap of a badly burnt crewman's life jacket in his teeth."

Like I said-what have you done lately?

Can I explain something about Lidocaine? You know-Lidocaine that your dentist injects into your mouth before he rips it apart. You know-Lidocaine that Roger Clemens claims his trainer injected into his ass. Lidocaine is a local anesthetic. It only affects the tissue in the area where it is injected. It does not travel systemic and offer relief anywhere else. So unless Roger was looking to relief a pain in his ass? No one would inject Lidocaine in his ass otherwise.

Challenge

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Why do we challenge ourselves?  What is it that drives us?  

I spent time last night with three young women who all auditioned for parts in a play with a small number of roles.   These three women are best of friends and yet are competing for roles in the same play.  They put themselves in this situation on a regular basis.  No matter who is casted,  feelings are hurt.  But, does one not try for fear of hurting a friend's feelings?   I don't know the answer to that.

The same thing is going on in the political arena.  Why do all of these people want to be president?   The power.   That is always the real answer although they offer rhetoric about wanting to fix what is broken.  There are so many ways to work at what is broken without having to be president. 

I watched The McLaughlin Group Sunday morning.  They are always interesting and irritating and whatever else but this week John raised an excellent point.   He pointed out the difference between Obama running for president as compared to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.   Obama is not running as a black man.   He has no black agenda, in fact, he has actively avoided the black controversial issues-Duke, Imus, etc.  He is running because he wants to be president and try to fix so many things that are wrong, not correct years and years of black oppression.   One could say that it is because he is half black.  Let's be real.   Americans are looking at him as a black candidate.    Mr. McLaughlin has given me a cause to pause here and take a better look.  His inexperience is scary though.    A lot can happen in ten months.

"Stuff"

January 6, 2007

Feast of the Three Kings. Little Christmas. When I was a kid the Christmas manger was much more prominent in my home than it has been as an adult. It had its own table and I can remember the figures so well. One of us always hid the baby Jesus until Christmas morning and the three kings started their trek across the living room from the opposite end of where the manger was set up. Someone always moved them a little each day until they arrived on January 6.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to and attended a "Ladies’ Brunch" at the home of one of Liz’s friends. She had a beautiful manger set and there were the wise men off by themselves on another table. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the hostess about it but found it amusing.
The Three Kings. The Three Wise Men. Strange. To use both words to mean the same men. Maybe everyone assumed that all kings were wise men? I wonder if there might have even been a woman in the trio. I doubt it as women still knew their place then.

The other day I heard Hillary and Obama and Romney referred to as "The Mod Squad"-the white dude, the black guy and the blonde.

The work on the sweaters is coming along. I started the sleeves last night but I think I have to tear out what I did and redo it today some time. I have been looking forward to the sleeves since I started as they look like the fun part.

I went to Border’s on Friday. Big mistake. Sort of like going to a yarn shop. I have always been a big reader and when Liz worked at Border’s I was surrounded by more and more books all the time. When she quit and moved on to a nicer job I was determined to read the books I had before I bought any new ones. I had made significant progress, was down to only 13 books on the "to read" shelf although I was reading two others simultaneously. But I was pretty good on Friday and only bought five and with a $25 gift certificate, my Border’s rewards card and a coupon I d/l from their site, I only spent $34 on five books. That is practically stealing them any more.
Speaking of books, Chris Matthews’ is coming along. I gave it one more day and I am still reading it but have to admit that it is going quite slowly and every single night I fall sound asleep reading it. The Great Lakes book hasn’t been picked up for a couple of days. It is really interesting once I get into it each time but I don’t find myself feeling like I can’t wait to read it.
Have to go to the library this week and pick up the book for our book chat. My sisters and nieces and I have been doing an online book chat for almost ten years now (yup, April of 1998). It is good fun as we are spread all over the country. About 5% of the time is spent chatting about the book and the rest of the time it is about everything else. It is fun to see how different everyone’s taste in reading is. I have read books I would never think of picking up and starting on my own. It is like so many other things in life, not trying something new is just so limiting.

Caucuses

January 4, 2008

First of all, doesn't it seem like it should be CAUCI?  Four years of Latin weren't wasted on me. 

 

I am embarrassed to say that I have never paid attention to caucuses before.  This is a pretty fascinating process.   The Democrats all meet in a room and if  you want Elton John to be the Democratic presidential nominee you sit in the chairs on the right and if you want Mike Wallace to be the nominee you sit on the chairs on the left and if you want Britney Spears to be the nominee you stand over there, etc. etc. etc.  (Actually you should probably stand in the bathroom if you are talking about BS).  If your  candidate doesn't get the minimum number of votes then you have to move and sit or stand with another's candidates' group.  

The Republicans, of course, do it by secret ballot.   Walk in and vote and go home.   How boring is that?

Rules I've Lived By

Now these are important.

Rule #1. Only knit or crochet or cross-stitch one project at a time. Unless it is for twins. I sewed the shoulder seams and finished the neckline on one yesterday. It is fun to do it the first time but then I want to do something different. That is the fatal flaw. If I "do something different" it will be forever before I return to do the second one.

Rule #2. Only read one book at a time. I am already breaking that one as I am still giving Chris Matthews a chance and still reading about the shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. Interesting fact. On the open seas, the oceans or what they refer to in the book as "salt waters", any diver can claim anything he finds for himself apparently. On the "fresh waters", whoever owns what goes down continues to own it. If an insurance company pays the owner for the loss, then the insurance company owns the object. Divers cannot remove anything from the bottom of the lakes without the owners' permission.

Rules are made to be broken. Even twice. Liz brought home this book from work last night that someone loaned to her for me to read. "Good Dog. Stay" by Anna Quindlen. She is one of my favorite writers and this is really an excellent book. Not earth shattering but really a wonderful read. It is about her family putting down Beau, the black lab they had for 15 years. It is all too familiar. 80 pages. Lots of pictures of dogs. A very quick read.

Books

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A colder day in New York with promise of it getting even colder tonight. No snow and no sunshine. Ugh.

Speaking of cold--I bought this book a couple of years ago when I was roaming around the upper peninsula of Michigan. I almost never read nonfiction books but it looked pretty good and I decided I needed to educate myself a little once in a while. It took until a few weeks ago for me to start reading it and even then I was reading it as a "second". I read a lot but I never, ever read more than one book at a time-until now. It is quite a fascinating read, focusing on one lake at a time. I had no idea how much "stuff" is on the bottom of the lakes. It must just be piled so high down there. I am currently reading the part about Lake Erie and there is quite a bit about Niagara Falls in this section. In the 1830s it used to be a huge attraction to send boats, ships, whatever over the falls to destroy them and let them sink. Then one wise person started putting animals on them and sending them over the falls, another set them on fire to send them over. Apparently this was the beginning of the tourist trade as that was when they opened lodges along the water's edge and people came to enjoy the "sport".

The strangest thing about reading this book is that I just get so cold. There is so much written about how cold the water is and about the hundreds and hundreds of people who literally froze to death almost immediately upon hitting the water. Frozen bodies don't float to the surface again. They have to be warm to produce the gas necessary to float them up. Frozen bodies are found years later looking very life-like. Well, except for being totally stiff and having icicles on them.

Like I said, I needed to educate myself. Continuing with that theme I also started to read the Chris Matthews book. I think there are only about ten books I have read in my life that I didn't finish. Mr. Matthews' book is probably going to make it onto that list. It just seems to be pages and pages of name dropping. I keep reading it and reading it but am very bored and my #1 rule about reading is that life is just too short to read a boring book. I'll give it one more day.