Still Life, With Cats

It is soggy in this part of California lately.

Very, very soggy.

I keep reminding myself that once upon a time, this kind of heavy rain was the norm during the winter – before the big long ugly drought hit and the whole state was focused on finding ways to cut back on water usage. Now that things seem to get getting back to ‘normal’ (albeit rather suddenly), there’s a sense of relief as the reservoirs are all filling up and the snow pack is growing, but in the meantime, it has begun to feel a bit as if we really ought to be investing in small boats, in preparation for the impending flood.

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Today’s snowflake is #36 in the book.

Why yes, there are a lot of similarities between this snowflake and yesterday’s snowflake. The difference, however, is that the longer points are *joined* in this one and they weren’t in yesterdays. Also the center is bigger and the points look more like hands reaching out to grab you.

Or you could just pretend they look like frogs legs instead. Your preference.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

I’ve seen people mentioning Santa Clarita Diet on Facebook but didn’t know anything about it until my parents mentioned that it had to do with zombies. Naturally my ears perked up because, well, zombies! So this evening we decided to give the first episode a try during dinner.

Four episodes later, we’re hooked. I know the zombie thing is so last year, but shockingly, someone came up with something entirely new to do with the zombie genre for this show. It’s absolutely hysterical.

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My enthusiasm for picots was never high to begin with. It is even less so after today’s snowflake (Snowflake #34 in the book).

Picots. So very many picots. Shudder.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

Today I had to go to a giant plumbing showroom to meet with a guy to review and then place the order for all the appliances and what-not for the upcoming bathroom remodel, and while I was there I needed to use the necessary and….

…the toilets in their restrooms have heated seats.

I can see how that would be a delightful thing on cold winter mornings when one really doesn’t want to place one’s delicate buttocks on ice cold porcelain, but I admit my mind went immediately (as it often does any time I ponder appliances/furniture/what-not for the house) to how this would work in a house full of cats.

Alas, the high potential for amusement as the cats vie for positions on the toasty-warm seats, and accidentally fall in is simply not enough to justify the price. So instead our cats will just have to suffer with only two big heating pads and the heated bed and a houseful of furniture and blankets to keep them warm.

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So these snowflakes. The book I’m working from arranged them (mostly) in order of difficulty and size, which means the ones I did last year were all the really easy ones (HA HA HA) and now I am making my way through the intermediate ones and I think it is important to point out that my crochet skills have not improved all that much since last year, and would it *kill* the book publishers to have done charts instead of a solid giant block of written directions that result in my losing my place multiple times and having to do a lot of ripping out and swearing, grr.

Anyway.

Here is snowflake #32.

It is 4 1/2 inches across, which is *much* bigger than the ones last year (I think maybe the largest from last year was about 2 inches in diameter, and I’m using #30 crochet cotton thread and a size 1.9 mm crochet hook – same as last year). There was a lot of under-the-breath swearing involved in this one.

A lot.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

I flew home last night. The plane I was on was less than 60% full. I know this because they called up all the people in rows 8 – 11 and re-seated them elsewhere because apparently if the plane is that empty and everyone is in the front then it gets nose-heavy and isn’t safe to fly or something. Of course, the fun part of this is that rows 8 – 11 were all the economy-plus seats, where the frequent travelers who didn’t make the first class upgrade cut get to sit with a couple inches more leg room.

I am not sure how I feel about the fact that a massive piece of machinery capable of traveling great distances through the sky can be apparently be brought down by 24 people sitting in the wrong spot. But luckily, despite the great lamentations and woe that all the re-seated people expressed, many at length, to the gate agents during the entire re-seating process, everyone stayed in their new seats and we all made it to SF in one piece. Yay.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

The hotel room has a bathroom scale. Why? Who decided this should be a thing?

There is a bench in one of the elevators in the hotel. I am confused by this. The hotel only has ten floors. It isn’t as if it takes a really long time to travel up or down. I mean, major high rise, okay, it could be useful for a quick cat nap, but 10 stories?

“Our restaurant just earned a Michelin Star,” I was told when I first checked in, “so if you’d like to dine there, you’ll need to make reservations.” After the very long meeting yesterday I brought up the restaurant website and took a look at the prices. HA HA HA NEVER MIND, and this is why one doesn’t dine at Michelin Star restaurants when one is traveling for business and I totally earned that peanut butter shake after I had to walk all over the damn place to get more reasonably priced food so STOP JUDGING ME hotel bathroom scale.

There is an ice bucket in my room. This is normal for a hotel room. What isn’t normal is the loud crackling noises that startled the patooties out of me as I sat there, enjoying my (locally sourced, hipster-produced) cheeseburger in complete defiance of Judgy McJudgyScale in the bathroom, and continued until I realized that the sounds were from the ice in the ice bucket, settling. The ice that I DID NOT PUT THERE. So, apparently policy in this place is to fill up the ice buckets. This perplexes me on so many levels, not the least of which is that they did this alongside the notice about conserving water.

One final note. I realize that the world is changing and technology is taking over, but it is very cruel to make a tired person who is suffering from jet lag and also insomnia (because hello, wide-awake at 3am – whee!) try to figure out a complicated coffee making doodad in order to ingest the caffeine that is required in order to figure out a complicated coffee-making doodad.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.