Monday, January 25, 2010

A Rainy Day

Monday, January 25, 2010

11 more months until Christmas.....

It is raining so hard out. The cable has been off and on probably 15 times. I really am not complaining as I am thinking about California and what a nightmare that is. And Haiti. We have just so messed with our environment. We didn't know 50 years ago what we were doing. I watched a Season 2 episode of "Mad Men" recently where they went on a picnic and afterwards just stood up and shook out the blanket, leaving all the garbage on the ground where it fell. Watching "12 Angry Men" today I was struck by one of the men just balling up a sheet of paper and tossing it out the window. I often think about when I was first a nursing supervisor and would walk onto the oncology unit and the nurses would be mising their own chemo. No ventilator hoods, no nothing. They would draw it up in a syringe and push the plunger in to expel the air and inevitably some of whatever was in the syringe would spray a microscopic amount into the air. But still...like I said, we didn't know what we were doing.


The knitting needles have been flying. The blue is a blanket that was knitted for BBB. I don't think I have had to rip back so much knitting on any project I have every worked on before in my life. But it did turn out lovely and reports are that mom doesn't really use it with the baby as it is "too pretty" and the whole thing about not putting blankets on babies. There was a skein of the blue yarn left so I knit some fingerless gloves for Liz but the yarn is so soft that it stretched quite a bit and I had to remake the gloves, cutting out an entire cable. Still pretty stretchy and soft but certainly OK to use sitting around doing nothing.


I am actually now knitting a tunic kind of thing for myself. A tunic with a hood on the back. OK. I guess where else would a hood be? I like the yarn. I like working with the yarn. I like the pattern. This is probably the first time I have ever actually used the exact yarn that the pattern called for. Should end up being perfect, right? We will see.



Knitting.....reading. Did finish "The Good Husband of Zebra Drive" from the Alex McCall Smith series"No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency." I enjoy the read immensely. It is simple, the story is simple. The look into the culture of Botswana is delightful. It was a short TV series a couple of years ago and it was probably the only time I have seen a TV show being true to a book that I have read/seen. I think there are two more books in the series currently but I haven't bought any books for a while. Well, not very many. I am not any further into "The Pentagon's New Map" but it is still on the coffee table waiting for that absolutely boring day that I will pick it up again. My current read is "South of Broad" by Pat Conroy. It is a fascinating look into life in Charleston for a couple of generations, the very deep south and the rigid, old money and culture that existed in those beautiful homes. Pat Conroy wrote "Prince of Tides" which I didn't read. His writing is kind of wordy, the story is interesting but the visualization of that life style is quite excellent.






Knitting ....reading.....movies. Today I watched another of Liz's DVDs...."12 Angry Men". Such an excellent movie. I have seen it as a play in community theater once but did find the movie quite riveting.




Ah, retirement!
































































































































































































Saturday, January 16, 2010

Lists


Saturday, January 16, 2009
One of the side effects of travel anywhere is coming back with renewed enthusiasm for my everyday life with this past trip being no exception. After putting 1777 miles on the car, ending up in a snow bank in a cemetary for two hours, being stopped in traffic on I8O West in PA and traveling 55 miles in 40 hours, and driving 150 miles through the mountains in a snowstorm, I arrived home pretty tired this time. I learned a lot about patience. In any one of the situations it took about three minutes to realize that I could do nothing about it so I just needed to chill and go with the flow. It happened that I had my iPhone with me, OnStar working, food, books, knitting, heat, XM radio...all of which helped to pass the time.
So I get home and it really took a few days to get rested and unpack, get the laundry done. I still have newspapers to read and TV shows in the DVR to watch. I had told Liz to leave all the Christmas stuff up as this is the year that I am cleaning through it and throwing out anything that doesn't mean anything to us. This year's additions to the Christmas tree are "Hounds on the Sound" magnet and am looking for something that says "World Series 2009" to add to the ornaments. The last of the tree ornaments and the tree will be down today and Christmas will be cleaned out. MLK Day is the new Three Kings Day, right?
Now....the overwhelming thought is to get my life into some kind of order. I need to really crank up my lists of things to do. I need to get everything straightened financially. I need to get my photographs into smugmug.com and get them tagged. I needed to read more books, watch more movies. I need to get my email and computer cleaned out. This is the year I need to buy a new computer, new luggage, and a macro lens for my camera. For what? A macro lens? To take yet more pictures, of course, that need to be put into smugmug and tagged. I need to really work at going through this house room by room and throw out stuff, take pictures of anything valuable for insurance reasons and so that the kids will understand what some of this stuff is some day.
I need to......I need to......I need to......I need to... wait......I am retired. I need to take a nap.