Today was the official grand opening of the new yarn store in Davis and from all accounts, it sounds as if it was a success. I swung by on the way home from work and there was a small crowd there, either browsing the yarn or gathered around the table, chatting and knitting. I pondered my options – going home to an empty house (since Richard was off at a writers group tonight) or hanging out with friends, and chose the latter. I’ve missed these people – since I can no longer go to the Monday night gatherings (the women’s group rehearsals are on Monday nights), I rarely get to see most of them anymore, so it was nice to be able to relax and catch up. Luckily I had a sock-in-progress in my purse so I got quite a bit of work done on that. There were new yarns to fondle, including some gorgeous plant-dyed wool from a local yarn producer, and new knit samples to check out, and lots of goodies to taste, and best of all, lots of talking and laughing.

I came home late, and tired (because this almost-but-not-quite-a-winter-cold is still occasionally putting in an appearance) but very glad to have gone, and very happy for my friends and their new venture. And it’s nice to know that even if I cannot meet up with the group on our regular nights any more, at least there’s somewhere I can go where there’s a pretty good chance I might run into a few of them, so I can stay in touch.

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This morning was one of those mornings when I felt as if I wasn’t just shuffling around, going through the motions to get ready for work, but instead capable of doing productive things. One of the main things I wanted to do was to felt the new slippers I made for myself, so they would have all day to dry. Ha. I’d forgotten how long these things take to dry, especially since I ended up taking them out of the washing machine before the spin cycle had ended. By this evening they were still quite damp.

But as I have been finishing up these slippers, and remember how much fun it was to dye the wool, I came up with a really fun idea to do for my niece and nephews for Christmas. This year, because my younger sister’s in-laws are doing their whole family celebration *after* Christmas, she and husband and my niece will be able to come down not just for Thanksgiving, but for Christmas as well. Which means that, unlike any other year, all three little kids will all be in one place at two times.

So today I placed an order for some undyed, feltable wool, this year the kids are going to get to help me make their Christmas presents. I figure they’re all still young enough to have fun playing with Kool-aid to color their yarn, and they’re also still young enough to see the magic in felting big floppy knit booties into slippers that are just the right size for their feet. A little puffy paint decorating party once the slippers are dry (to decorate the soles of the feet, and also to provide traction) and it’ll be something they can wear that they helped make.

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I have, throughout most of my adult life, sung primarily as a tenor. Occasionally I am recruited as a soprano in times of dire emergency in choir (like a distinct lack of any other female singers at the time), but most of the time, I am just one of the men. And that’s really quite okay with me. I like singing tenor, and I’ve gotten pretty good over the years at modulating my voice to blend in so I sound as much as possible like just one of the guys. But every once in a while I think that maybe, just maybe, it might be fun in choir to get to be, well, a woman.

A few months ago, the director called to ask me if I’d be interested in being part of a women’s ensemble that he directs in Sacramento, since they were in need of someone who can sing the low alto parts and as a female tenor, that would be right in my range. Unfortunately, the upcoming concert was the same weekend we were already scheduled to fly up to Seattle, so I had to regretfully decline. And I didn’t think much more about it until a few weeks ago, when he called to see if I was still interested. After I pondered it for a little bit, especially the part where I would actually be able to sing like a woman instead of like a man, I decided to give it a try.

Ever since then, there have been more than a few times when I second-guess my decision to do this. I am not used to singing as high as some of the parts require me to sing, and relearning how to swap between low voice and high voice has been a bit rough at times. I am also one of the least talented singers in the group, since I lack the professional background or vocal training most of the others have, and sometimes I feel as if I am more than a little out of my depth. It is one thing to be part of a church choir, performing in front of people who will love whatever you do, no matter what happens, because they are your extended family. It is another to be part of something like this.

But I am getting there, slowly. The music is coming to me, bit by bit, even the parts that frustrate me the most, and I have surprised myself by being able to somehow make it up to those notes that can be up to two octaves higher than I am used to reaching (although if I am ever required to actually *hold* one of those notes more than a beat or two, panic may ensue). I am slowly figuring out how to modulate between the lows and the highs without straining my voice, and even though the thought of the concert we’ll be performing in far too few weeks still fills me with no small amount of nervousness, I am still glad that I was asked to be a part of this.

Tonight was my third rehearsal with the group, and as usual, we ended late. But we only end late because most of the time no one is paying any attention to a clock, because we are so focused on getting through the music and nailing those notes that continue to elude us. The music is challenging – sometimes extremely so – but it is refreshing to be so challenged. I had almost forgotten how much fun singing can be.

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I realized late last night that I had not done everything I intended to do yesterday; the main forgotten item being arranging the next few songs for the recorder group. So this morning I got up at my usual early time and after feeding the cats (so they would thus leave me alone), spent the next hour or two at my computer, painstakingly entering three songs in three-part harmony, one single note at a time.

The software I use was probably top of the line at one point, but that was at least a version or two of Windows ago. Now, it’s kind of clunky and has an exciting tendency to, occasionally and without warning, freeze up and then shut down. Since the tendency for the program to do this seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of time it has been since I last save whatever it is I happened to be working on at the time, I have learned (the hard way) to save my files often. One of these days, however, I really need to find a new music writing software – something that doesn’t require a separate piano keyboard hook-up and that also does not cost a lot. I’m not a composer – I just need something that will let me transcribe songs, change the key and time signature, and perhaps most useful of all, provide the abilty to enter such items as song title, page number, and those little curvy lines to tie notes together that I currently have to do all by hand.

But I digress. I got the songs set up and printed and the program only shut down on me unexpectedly once during the entire session, which is actually quite good, all things considered, and still had plenty of time to shower and dress and eat breakfast, and then poke around at a website that we are hopefully going to be able to fix for a friend, before I had to gather everything together and zip off to the church for the recorder group practice.

We were a very small group today – only three of us out of the usual five, and alas, none of the three of us present plays an alto – but we managed to muddle through half a dozen songs and pick out four that we swore to practice in time to play at the Open House next weekend. I am crossing my fingers that at least one of our alto players can be there next weekend, if only because I do not relish trying to learn how to play a new instrument in one week. Not, mind you, that I have not already determined I probably need to just break down and learn the alto anyway, because the hallmark of a good group leader is the abilty to be flexible, and thus to be able to cover all the parts. Now if I can just track down an alto recorder to actually learn on, I’ll be all set.

There was choir practice and then there was church, and in between I gulped down my only coffee of the day in order to wash down what has recently become my daily decongestant. The winter cold seems to have mercifully gone away without doing much damage at all, but my sinuses still hate me. And after all, there is something to be said about having to rely on medication that, according to a fairly new law, requires proof of identification and signature before it can be purchased (apparently pseudoephedrine can be used to make meth. Or something. Go figure). We met my parents for lunch and talked about local politics, because the side effect of living in a somewhat small town where the prime industry wears wool is that there is always something interesting (and usually stupid) going on. And then we came back home, where I snagged thisIrish Diamond Shawl I made during the Knitting Olympics this past winter, and headed off to the new yarn store in Davis to pick up the thing I have been trying to pick up for the past few days.

I left the shawl there, because the other one on display was actually being used by its creator and since I never wear mine (I love knitting lace but I most assuredly do not love wearing it) I figured it could be put to better use selling yarn. There was a small group of knitters at the store, amid a clutter of boxes and we all had fun taking my new knitting design equipment (ha) out of its box and trying to figure out the name of all its parts. I should note that it actually was never meant to have anything to do with knitting, and I suspect that its designers would be quite dumbfounded to learn what I intend to use it for (a use that I cannot mention until after Christmas, because the recipeint of the item I intend to make reads this). They also helped me pick out a few balls of feltable wool in just the right colors so I can start poking at designing a pattern, and then one of them mentioned that they needed someone to do another sample hat for the store, and so I came home with pattern and yarn, and the intent to make a very adorable pineapple hat by the time the store has its grand opening on Wednesday.

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Today was one of those rare days where not only did I have the time to sleep in, I also had the ability. Too many weekend mornings I am wide awake by 6:30 and can only make myself lie in bed another half hour at most before I finally give up and crawl out of bed to do something productive. This morning, however, fate, and the cats, were very kind to me and I was able to sleep in until almost 8am. And eventually I did get up and go about doing productive things, but it was still a fairly laid back and sometimes lazy day.

Richard went out and picked up breakfast at Starbucks while I puttered around putting things in the kitchen away. We picked up my car from the dealer, where it got its 45,000 mile tune-up and a new hood-opening latch (to the tune of $-ouch). I baked another batch of pumpkin bread and stashed it with the other three loaves in the freezer, and also determined that unless we do some serious clearing out of the freezer, I’m not going to have room to store any more bread between now and next Saturday, when the bread will all be sent off to be sold. I ran a few loads of dishes through the dishwasher, and threw some laundry into the washer, and then made a pumpkin spice bundt cake, which I later covered with cream cheese frosting, mainly to hide the fact that I have never in my life been able to make a bundt cake that came cleanly out of the pan. I also stirred together some homemade fruit and granola breakfast bars because now that I have finally found a dried fruit mix that I actually *like*, I feel the need to use it in as many ways as I can. And in between all of this, we watched Over the Hedge, a movie that had us both practically rolling with laughter by the end.

We did a quick flurry of house cleaning and Richard zipped off to the grocery store to pick up cider for mulling and sodas, and then a small group of local Nanowrimo particpants came over for a party to celebrate the fact that they have (almost) hit the halfway point. It was a fun gathering. We all crowded around the breakfast nook table and ate soup and chips with homemade guacomole, and followed that with pumpkin spice cake, and we talked about a whole list of things that had nothing whatsoever to do with Nanowrimo or writing at all. I found it highly amusing that the two women in the group had brought their knitting with them, and so occasionally the three of us would sideline into a conversation about yarn or patterns or needles and all the non-knitters in the group would get the same look on their faces that half my family gets when all us computer nerds start talking about hardware or operating systems or some other nerd thing. Sebastian, Tangerine, and Rosemary did their best to charm everyone,. And even Azzie came downstairs because there is only so long a not-very-bright cat can maintain the illusion of being shy before he cannot stand it anymore and come out to be seen.

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It’s a good thing that today is Friday, because I do not think I would be capable of doing much in the way of productive work that requires actual thought if I had even one more day at work this week. Today, luckily, was spent doing stuff that is mostly mindless, and so far the decongestants I’ve been taking to ward off the oh-so-fun sinus pressure that’s been slamming me the past two weeks seem to also be keeping this little winter cold at bay.

I wasn’t the only one looking a little ragged around the edges. I think everyone’s had a hard week, in some way or another. We’re all tired and very much in need of a weekend, and so it was no surprise that the office started to empty a bit earlier than usual for the end of the week, until my boss and I were the only ones left.

I’d made an appointment to drop off my car for regular service today, before I discovered that Richard had today off (in my defense, he didn’t actually discover this until yesterday), so he had to get up early and drive me in to work after we dropped off my car, despite having an extra day to sleep in. The plan had been for him to also come out and get me in the afternoon, but the traffic coming back toward Sacramento was even more horrendous than usual (as per yesterday’s comments, there *is* traffic in our area, but I am usually traveling against it instead of with it, and so in this area, at least, we can usually pretend it isn’t actually there). So instead I caught a ride back with my boss, who very nicely dropped me off in Davis. The plan had been to swing by the new yarn store to pick up something left there for me (there is a long, involved story about this, but since it has to do with something I plan to make for someone who might read this, I will wait to tell the story until later), but my timing was off and the store was closed.

I was supposed to pick up my car this evening but it turns out that the handle to open the hood is broken (I am very baffled by this, since I don’t think I have popped the hood since the first month we owned this car) and they cannot get the part until tomorrow, so Richard waited for me in Davis so he could drive me home.

I was so exhausted by the time I got home on Wednesday that I could barely keep my eyes open to check my email, so we did not get around to watching Wednesday’s episode of Lost until tonight, and…sigh. For the last episode before a show goes on a two month break, it was disappointing. Again. At least there was also a new episode of Battlestar Galactica to make up for it.

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The past two days I have been driving down to San Francisco with my boss for meetings, and at this point I am so tired I can barely think at all. The traffic going down was nightmarish both mornings; yesterday we left at 6:30 and it took three hours and we were late for the start of the meeting, so this morning we left a half hour earlier, and it still took us three hours and we were still late for the start of the meeting (but at least not as drastically so as the first day). This kind of traffic is one of the main reasons why I could never live in that area. Yes, there’s a fairly decent light rail system, but that doesn’t go everywhere, and I cannot imagine having to face that kind of struggle to get *anywhere* at all, any time I decided to get in my car.

Still, though, the meetings were fairly calm and standard, and I did nothing more strenuous than sitting all day – either in the car or in a chair, madly typing in preparation for the report we’ll be asked to produce later, and even though driving can be tiring, neither of those explains why I am feeling so utterly drained.

The soreness tickling the back of my throat, and the fact that my nose is starting to run, however, do explain it. Hello, first winter cold.

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Last night, while we were watching the election returns come back, and getting more and more excited, I told Richard that even though I could be happy if the Democrats took only the House (and oh my, how they took the House!), I wanted so badly for them to take the Senate too. Because as humiliating as it would be to the current adminstration to lose the House in such a deliciously resounding way, I had little faith that they would ever *get* it, as long as they still held some form of power.

Last night when we went to bed there were two seats in the Senate still undecided. This morning I got up and headed off to a meeting in San Francisco while it was still dark outside, a meeting where I woudl have no internet access at all, and I asked Richard to please text me updates throughout the day.

Oh, what beautiful, sweet words he kept sending. Montana went blue. Rumsfeld ousted. Prop 83 already challenged (and likely to be declared unconstituional). And then the most marvelously wonderful words of all. The Democrats have not only taken the House, they’ve taken the Senate as well.

I feel like, for the first time in six years, there is hope. I am not naive enough to think that the Democrats aren’t just as capable of royally screwing things up just like the Republicans, but right now, it is just too damn hard to feel anything right now but giddy optimism.

51% in 2004 was not a mandate, no matter what Dubya claimed. 2006, however, sure screams “mandate” to me.

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Richard and I have been on permanent absentee ballot status for the past few years now, ever since we were working for that company that had us traveling all over the state, to the point where we could never guarentee we might actually be home to vote in a polling booth. The past few times we’ve had to vote, however, we’ve been a trifle lazy about getting them mailed, and so have ended up dropping them off in person on the actual voting day. This year was no exception. Richard filled his out last night, but I didn’t finish mine until this morning. I dropped my ballot off at the closest polling place to our house, and as I walked out, much to my surprise, I was asked if I would be willing to take part in an exit poll. Why anyone thought our little podunk town was worthy of exit polling, I will never know, but I cheerfully agreed because I am all about manipulating the statistics any chance I can get.

I have decided that we really ought to declare the day after election day End of Election Spam Day, and make it a national holiday, complete with the ceremonial burning of the lawn signs, and shredding of the election fliers, and most important of all, erasing of all those horrible recoded election spam messages on answering machines across the country. Really, do people actually ever pay attention to any of that stuff? No, wait, let me answer that one myself. There was exactly one piece of election spam in our mailbox that I not only paid attention to, I actually saved it so Richard could read it too. It made us laugh so hard that we both immediately decided to vote *for* the person the flier was so rabidly against, because it was for a local city council election, and the guy in question is admittedly an annoying loon, but really, sometimes the loons should be encouraged, if only to give us something to laugh about. And really, these past few election cycles there’s been precious little to laugh about.

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When we got married, my little sister and her husband bought us a coffee maker for our wedding present. It was a lovely coffee maker, being the type that could be preprogrammed, so that many mornings we would wake to the rather abrupt sound of the bean grinder starting up, followed immediately thereafter by the massive skittering of cats who had just had their wits scared out of them by the aforementioned grinding of beans. The coffee pot worked hard, brewing up pot after pot of coffee for us and our house guests for the past five years.

Notice I am speaking of this wonderful appliance in the past tense? A few weeks ago, the grinder part of the coffee maker started to go. No problem, we figured, since luckily not only had I saved my old coffee grinder, I knew where it had been stashed in the kitchen. But last night, as Richard tried to brew a pot of decaf, it suddenly decided to shut off, mid-brew. At first we thought maybe there was a problem with the power connection, but the outlet wasn’t tripped, and restarting the pot didn’t seem to work, and plugging it into other outlets didn’t fix the problem, and we were forced to conclude that our wonderful little coffee maker had finally decided to pass on to wherever it is trusty kitchen appliances go when they die.

It is hard to buy a new coffee maker. It’s not like you can just go out and grab one off the shelf. Research is required. Brands must be compared. Reviews must be read, and merits must be weighed. Do we go with another pot of the same brand? Do we pick one that has a thermal carafe? What about one that dispenses coffee one cup at a time? Which feature is more important – the abilty to grind the beans in the same contraption as the brewer, or the ability to program the pot so that one wakes up to freshly brewed coffee (with or without the preceeding cat skitterage as noted above).

Richard worked from home today, so he decided to go out and see what kind of options we could pick off the shelf, while I spent a small amount of time online, reading about the pros and cons of all the major brands. He called me from the store and as he read me the brands, I looked them up and then listed out all the points covered in the various user reviews, all without any success, until finally we decided that this sort of thing should not be rushed, and that we should take our time in finding a suitable replacement, So after more research, we finally found the one that looks right for us.

Our new coffee maker has been ordered, and will hopefully arrive soon. In the meantime, we are having to make do with a cheap and flimsy (temporary) replacement Richard picked up – the sort of thing that will likely fall apart if we look at it cross-eyed, but which ends up cheaper in the long run than running to the coffee shop every morning on the way to work instead.

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