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?