Moving time!

I am prepping to move into my new-to-me condo on  Thursday of this week. I'm a touch busy.

The carpet was laid in the bedrooms last Monday. I got the thickest pad I could, so the footing there feels lovely and squishy.

This is but a nightmare of a memory now

The electrician came last Wednesday to install many light fixtures and remove a) that aesthetic horror of a fan in my bedroom (see above) and b) lots of my money.

See how nice my kitchen looks now? I added pendants and under cabinet lighting, plus I replaced DREADFUL track lighting with something more discrete.

At home, I'm packing things and deciding what I can truly live without until after the move, like hair curlers and spices. And drinking glasses. Also what is all this shit in my freezer? Who knows?

So I'm trying NOT to buy anything that I absolutely can't live without, mostly food. Cat food is an essential item - the cats do not like to wait. Lucy meows at me piteously in the morning like she is STARVING and then I go down and find her bowl is half full and I'm without real sympathy. Bitch that I am.

Lucy - I do not feel sorry for her

There really are some weird things in my refrigerator/freezer. Why did I buy that prosciutto and cheese log? And all these eggs? Why do I have 4 different kinds of mustard? And frozen fried cheese ravioli - why? Goat cheese with cranberries on it?

There seems to be a cheese theme here.

I also have lots of frozen veggies with cheese sauce. Cheese and broccoli - yum. But I also have like 4 individual 1 lb. packages of frozen ground beef, uncooked. What the hell? And packages of Hot Pockets. I've never eaten Hot Pockets in my life. These must be Moe's - they need to go to his house.

I think hoarding all this stuff goes back to the days of having All The Stooges in the house, as They Ate Everything. So I had to Be Prepared. Even now they show up at my house and stand in front of the open refrigerator, noshing on whatever is there.

St Paul's Cathedral from One Change Place

Oh, I forgot to show pictures from my recent visit across the pond! I was in London on business, and made a side trip to visit an Old Git!

Recognize anyone? Recognize the decoration on her blouse? (This is in her own garden.)

Jane was kind enough to take me to Anne Hathaway's cottage, which is SO beautiful. No, not the actress - Shakespeare's wife.

The cottage is quite lovely, especially the gardens. Really grand to be there. I got in a nice visit with Nick as well, and Tilly allowed me to pet her. I felt honored.

But now I must get back to The Horror of Packing. And someday, perhaps even this month, I will tat again....
 

Happy New Year And..

What the heck have I been doing?

I have been tatting, just a little.

This is an earring set done for a friend, my own design. The HDT is Coral Reef size 40, by TatsKool.

I've been working like crazy at my new job. It involves a lot of contact with folks hither and yon, such as London and Cape Town. (Really!) One of the benefits of my new job is having my cell phone set up (on the company dime) so that I can call any place short of the moon with no special charges. It's great!

But talking to folks hither and yon means dealing with them in their time zones. Mine is GMT plus 5 hours, or Eastern Standard Time. So I have to talk to people at odd hours.

Here's a picture I took of the sunrise - taking while I was both driving to work and on the phone with the London office. It was lunchtime in London.

(Don't worry, I use a headset. I have a very excellent driving record.)

Anyhow, I've been working my TAIL off! Lotsa hours! Working on weekends! Video Skyping with my developer in Hyderabad! Conference calls with people in Brazil and Paris and Toronto! Working through lunch! Staying really late! On the phone with London before 7 am!

In short, not much time for other stuff. Like tatting. Sad face.

But - the folks at my company are super nice and the office is in a great location. And it pays really, really well! Woo-hoo!

I have had nice holidays - all the Stooges were here for Thanksgiving (tho Larry couldn't come for Christmas). Thanksgiving was fun and restful. Larry is doing well in Florida, seems happy. He's been enjoying Growing Facial Hair and came home sporting a goatee that dragged his chest. He got spaghetti sauce in it immediately when he came home - yuck!

 

This week Larry sent me a picture of himself. The goatee was longer, and he's now sporting a Mohawk. The caption of the picture was "I pity the fool"!

Pretty awful.

Moe and I traveled some during the Christmas holiday, driving 500 miles each way on various interstates. We noted several things on the road.

• Most folks living in Ohio seem to own RVs. 
• Lots of people from Ontario do too. 
• There are rude drivers on the road - and those of us from the South are generally not part of that group. 
• Some of the RV drivers from Ontario want to OWN the road! There was one (driving an enormous late-model RV & pulling a car) that seemed to be going 80 mph most of the time.

Moe drove part of the time. He did ok - only tried to kill me once. That was when he took BOTH hands off the steering wheel to eat a hamburger, allowing us to lurch across the center line on I-75. I made him pull over immediately. New rule for Moe - no eating and driving.

Lily liked Christmas. She was very excited about the mess. (That's Moe's stuff.)

Santa Paws brought the Kittahs a present. They love this.

Hope your holidays were happy....

Travels with Moe

Moe and I recently took a trip. We were visiting some family out of town, and we took some side trips for fun.

Vader helped me pack. He loves my suitcase.

One place we went was the Carter Caves state park in Kentucky. I'm not necessarily fond of the state (sorry to you folks from there), but they do have some nice state parks.

Moe went on a tour of the saltpeter cave there. I would have gone, but there were a bunch of stairs and NO handrail. I can go up, but I gotta have a railing to go down. Bad balance.

This is in the saltpeter cave. This cave was used to make gunpowder in the War of 1812. Apparently  in the Battle of New Orleans, gunpowder created with the saltpeter from this cave was used up in a very few minutes. BANG!

Moe liked the cave and took a lot of pictures. And he gave no explanation. All I can tell you is that the saltpeter workers liked to add their mark to the cave walls. Graffiti, circa 1869.

Outside the cave, there was an area where kids could pan for fossils and different stones. It was a pretty day, and the children had fun.

Another day we stopped a a cool KY state park, Ft. Boonesborough. This was Daniel Boone's fort. The original fort was built in about 1775 to assist settlers in the area. In 1778, the fort was attacked by Shawnee Indians and the French, who laid siege over 13 days but did not prevail. We saw a cool film about the history of the fort.

There were a lot of cabins that made up the fort. Some had people in costume doing demonstrations and showing how people lived. Here's Moe in the tavern admiring a bison skin. It was really soft!

Here's a weaver demonstrating a 2 harness loom, weaving linen. I learned the difference between linen and linsey-woolsey and why the settlers preferred the later. (It didn't catch fire as easily!). I asked about the striped cloth to the left of the weaver and why it seemed crooked. It was because the warp was linen (which lays flat and doesn't stretch) and the colored weft was wool, which has a wiggle to it. She stretched it like it would be on the loom, and it all laid flat.

There was even history shown in the restrooms! Click on the picture for a better view.

We saw a craftsman working on powder horns - really nifty.

Also a blacksmith. Moe loved it all.

Being a settler was a hard, hard life. But we enjoyed learning about it.

We also stopped in Berea, KY at a great arts center. Berea has a lot of artists there, and we went into a neat shop and checked out lots of stuff. I bought a chicken! He's so cute.

And Moe had to have this huge hunk of chocolate. Which he woofed down that night.

We had a good trip!

What did you do this summer?

Travels

I did some traveling recently, and here are some pictures from my trip.

These are great bags someone had made and was showing at Finger Lakes. Aren't they GORGEOUS?

The Finger Lakes conference is held in the Lodi NY Volunteer Fire Department hall. And here's a piece of antique fire fighting equipment, right behind the vending of Zig Zag Corner.

 

I went to a software conference in Denver right before Finger Lakes. Denver has a lot of public art, like this 40 ft tall blue bear sculpture looking into the Denver Conference Center. It's called "I See What You Mean". He's huge and cute!

 

As part of the conference, we got to go to the Denver Art Museum. It was WAY cool, lots of spectacular Native American art and Western themed tradtional art. When we got to the museum, these Native American folks were dancing and drumming. I really liked it.

Here's an example of tribal art in the museum. This carved statue was about 20 feet tall.

Here's some examples of the gorgous Native American blanket making. I have no idea what tribes did these, but they are really wonderful.

 

This is a contemporary Native American sculpture called Mud Woman Rolls On. It's quite large, and was created on site. There's a cool video of its creation here.

I liked Denver. It's a really hip city, very walkable, very pretty. And they have great views of the Rockies.

This charming 7 month old was on my row of the plane leaving Denver - isn't he a charmer? He was good as gold. And yes, he's watching a video, a Baby Einstein one. His headphones are lions!

 

Miss Lily was glad to see me when I got back.