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!