I finished my project for the Knitting Olympics yesterday morning – actually got up early so I could finish it because the choir was supposed to sing at a funeral that afternoon, and it was actually a warm, sunny day, and I knew that if I was going to get it outside to block, yesterday was my one chance. In between choir practice and the actual funeral I dashed home – the excuse was so we could change and Richard could use his nebulizer, but I will admit here that I deliberately went to practice in jeans so that we would *have* to go home and then I could get the shawl pinned and outside to block.

Anyway, here it is in all it’s glory. I sent the picture to my sisters and my little sister wrote back a note that my niece said I look like a butterfly.

So now the Olympics are finally over (well, mostly they are, we started watching the closing ceremonies but then gave up because neither of us could work up the enthusiasm to care). We didn’t really watch much of it this past week, with the exception of the women’s ice skating, and of course Ice Dancing, which sort of blew us both away because the things those couples do on the ice is amazing. I vaguely recall watching Ice Dancing before and being a bit bored by it, but that must have been a few Olympics ago, because it is seriously fun to watch. We both agreed that in a way we like it better than pairs’ skating, because the guy gets to do more of the artistic stuff in ice dancing, and the way they do the lifts looks actually far more difficult, and also scary. The women’s skating was nice to watch, but it didn’t have that heart-pounding excitement of past Olympics, what with not having any back-stabbing rivalries going on. And I have to admit that I was actually rather pleased to see the Japanese skater win the gold because she was lovely to watch.

I would like to make a request of the networks for the next Olympics. For the love of all that is holy, do not let that idiot Dick Button anywhere near a microphone ever again. Please, please, please. I do not think he even once contributed anything remotely interesting or informative (unless you count his continual whining about sit-spins and ugly death spirals interesting or informative) and really, I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t spend the entire time watching the skating compeititions wanting to reach in and either slap some industrial strength duct tape over his mouth, or else just strangle him and put us all out of his misery.

Saturday morning I got up bright and early and picked up my knitting mom and we headed off to catch the train (the knitting train, no less – seriously, they had a special car just for the yarn-addicted) and head down to the Santa Clara Convention Center for Stitches West 2006. More on that is posted here. I bought yarn (big surprise), I did a lot of knitting on the train (again, big surprise), we got a little lost on the way home from the train station (the navigator got her directions backwards), and it was a very long day, but we had a marvelous time.

Yesterday morning, despite having gotten home quite late and being very tired and really wishing I could have just stayed home to sleep instead, we went to church because the recorder group was playing and as leader I sort of had to be there. Due to various scheduling conflicts all my alto players couldn’t come, and that left me with only sopranos and tenors, and since we were playing a song in the round, and we could scrounge up enough soprano instruments for everyone but not enough tenors, everyone ended up on the same instrument and it all worked out quite lovely. Also we had to go to church despite preferring to stay home and sleep because Richard’s still teaching the Sunday School class on the Da Vinci Code. I finished the book, by the way, and my impression of it did not improve by the time I was done. Maybe it would be better if I was a repressed fundamentalist who was raised to never question what my preacher done taught me, so the ‘revalation’ at the end of the book would have been so shocking I could have overlooked the hackneyed plot, the gaping loopholes, the overuse of cliches, and the random piles of ‘look what we dredged up from Conspiracy-Theories-Are-Us’, but alas, that was not the case.

Richard headed off to DundraCon for the rest of the day so that left me with time to work on my Knitting Olympics project, and then to go to my third-Sunday-of-the-month knitting group (look, we have a website now). Those of us who went to Stitches West babbled excitedly about our trip and did our best to make the rest of them wish they’d gone too, and there was a little bit of show and tell of our various purchases, and there was drinking of coffee and eating of pastries – two things which I have decided should always accompany large groups of women who have come together for the sole purpose of knitting, but I digress. Afterwards I came back home and kept on working on the Olympics project and then finally when I was starting to fall asleep over my needles, I went to bed.

Today I tried very hard to sleep in a little bit but the cats weren’t the slightest bit interested in cooperating, and it was just as well, because we had to get up and head off to Napa for my older’s sister’s birthday. We wrapped up the really cool pop-up books about silly dinosaurs and silly sharks for my youngest nephew, whose birthday was last weekend, and the present for my sister, and then we headed off to my sister’s house, where we arrived just as they were finishing up the latest dog training session. They adoped a dog a few weeks ago and because she tends to be a little tense around other dogs, they’ve got a trainer who comes to their house and works with all of them there. It seems to be working out quite well, and the dog is just an absolutely sweetheart and so very happy to have a family of her own. The boys, naturally, adore her, especially the youngest, since unlike the cats, the dog actually doesn’t mind when he wants to give her a great big hug.

Mom and Dad had to leave shortly after lunch because my dad had to catch a plane, but Richard and I stayed a little bit longer, to eat birthday cake and chat. And then we came home and we both took naps because it has been a very long weekend, and now I am back to my knitting and I have passed the halfway point on this shawl with just one week to go and as much as I know how much I will like this thing when it is done, I have reached the point where I wouldn’t mind if it would just hurry up and finish itself instead.

Ever since Allegra died there has been a huge void in our house. Rebecca’s death started it, but Allegra’s death made it real. With both of them gone there have been no more snippy, opinionated little cats in the house, and it is amazing how very much you can miss that when it’s no longer around. So we started to toy with the idea of looking for another cat, at some point – maybe even a little tortie – but we decided we would take our time and think about it, because it is the way with cats that something will always show up eventually that is just what you were looking for, even if you hadn’t known you were looking to begin with.

A few months ago I saw a picture on a random feed from Petfinders and the face was pretty cute, and when I clicked on it, the story intrigued me even more. It was a tiny little tortie who was a feral kitten and who was pretty nervous and shy and had a hard time getting to know people and who needed a home with people who would be willing to be patient and understanding. And her story stuck with me because after all, we already have a cat who is nervous and *very* shy and who we refer to as the invisible cat and who only decided that to be brave enough to sit near me on the couch after he turned 12.

Every month or so I would click the link and see if the little nervous tortie had been adopted, but of course she hadn’t because that is just the way of things, and every once in a while Richard and I would talk about the idea of getting a new cat and the idea of getting a very specific cat, and then finally we realized…well, you all knew this was inevitable, right?

This is Checkers (the picture is from the Petfinder’s site because right now the only picture we would have any chance of taking ourselves would be of two little eyes peering suspiciously out of the dark).

We picked her up this evening from her foster home in Folsom and she did not make a sound the entire drive home. We’ve closed the doors to the library and the jack-and-jill bathroom and set her up with some food and water and a litter box. We’ve rigged a towel over the portion of the bookshelves she immediately bolted toward so she can have a little cave to hide in and I made sure that the door to the linen closet is slightly ajar because our other nervous cat really likes hanging out in there. She’s a tiny little thing and she’s just under three years old, and she has the biggest yellow eyes and I do not think I even need to tell you that we were smitten the instant we met her, or that maybe, just maybe, some of us were smitten months ago, having stumbled onto a little thumbnail picture of a tiny tortie with a checkerboard chin who was meant for us all along.

I love the Olympics. I really do. I might get annoyed by the prima donna attitude of some of the contestants and I might want to reach through the television screen and smack a few of the announcers upside the head with large, heavy objects from time to time, but overall, the whole thing is just lots of fun. This is likely due in large part to the fact that the Olympics is the only time when I get to see my favorite sports on prime time television, but also because it is two weeks, every two years, of pretty, pretty people doing amazing things that normal human beings can only dream of doing.

I have to admit that I can only watch one or two runs of luge or bobsled or downhill skiing before I start nodding off, because once you have seen one person go down a hill or slide around a ring very fast, you have seen them all. But there are other things to watch, like the snowboarding, where they strap themselves to boards and zip around in a half open tube and jump really high into the air and try to kill themselves, and the mogul thing where they do big jumps in the air and try to kill themselves, and the pairs skating, where they fly around the ice and occasionally the guy picks up the girl and throws her into the air and they try to kill themselves. You know, I think I see a pattern here….but anyway. We have been watching them on and off the past few nights and this year it feels as if there have been some really amazing highlights so far. First of all, kudos to Michelle Kwan for being so gracious and classy and knowing when to walk away, even though it must be killing her inside. She shows a level of maturity that is sorely lacking in most of our major league sports associations these days. There have been the women skiers who crashed so horrifically that if the announcer had not preceded the clips of their spectacular wipe-outs with a reassurance that they were all okay, I would have been convinced at least one if not more of them had done serious damage. And then there were the medal winners in pairs skating – all three teams recovering from something dramatic and powerful and showing the courage and determination to get over the fear and the pain and all the obstacles, physical and emotional, and keep on going right into performances that had every right to deserve to win.

It seems so strange to not be writing here. I feel like I hit this dry spell where nothing seemed worth writing about. I guess I can see why people go on hiatus. I’ve been doing this for six years; it’s only natural to occasionally hit a wall, right? Doing Holidailies this past December was harder than I expected, only because I felt as if it was a struggle to get the words out. It’s only in the last week that things seem to have shifted. I’m not sure what changed; just that they did, and I suppose I ought not to question it.

So. Life. I am taking part in the Knitting Olympics, because it is just the sort of crazy thing that appeals to me. Plus, I’ve wanted to make the thing I’m making ever since I saw the book, so this was as good an excuse as any. I’m actually making pretty good progress, considering I only started on Friday. I’m going to three knitting groups each month, and I am taking part in my third hand-knit sock exchange.

This knitting thing that has pretty much taken over my life, by the way, feels good. I’ve even written up my very first pattern – something that brings in my old nerd tendencies, since it relies heavily on a number of calculations, including the use of the Pythagorean Theorem. And I’ve got two more patterns – both of which are going to involve a fair bit of math, at least for me to map them out, brewing around in my head that I will eventually bring out in yarn, both of which I think could turn out really amazing, if I can just get through the next two weeks of knitting insanity.

In non-knitting news, life is going along as usual. After 8 months of leaving messages and trying to contact our gardener through phone (before the number was disconnected) and then through his staff, we finally gave up. I still feel a little guilty because he used to be really good and I’ve been using his services for a very long time, but there is only so far you can go when you are paying someone to do things that they are not doing. We found someone else, and I have had a number of ‘wow’ moments since the switch. They actually trim the shrubs we asked them to trim. They actually unearthed the stone toad and the gnome from the front yard (shut up, it’s a family thing and it has to stay outside if only because we are the only ones of all of Richard’s family who have the *guts* to stick the darn thing in the yard for all the world to see, and if we have a stone goose with interchangeable outfits for the seasons for my family, we can also have a silly little gnome for his). They trimmed the flowers in the raised flower bed in the back yard, just like they are supposed to be trimmed, even though I didn’t ask them to and was starting to feel guilty that I couldn’t even muster the enthusiasm to go out and trim the damn things myself (I really do hate yard work). Every week, when I see everything they have done and how nice our yard looks I am reminded of how bad things had gotten with the other gardener, and how we really did let things go far too long.

Richard picked up every book by Christopher Moore available in the library and we’ve been working our way through all of them. He also picked up a copy of the Da Vinci Code, since he’s currently teaching a Sunday School class on it. I have had no desire to read it, even before the class, but his obvious distaste with the book made me even less willing to devote any time at all to the darn thing. However, the class is half over now and I still haven’t read it, so I decided to make it my breakfast reading for the week – something I can pick up, plow through 50 or so pages in the 10 or 15 minutes of breakfast time each morning. And it is good that I am doing this only in short bursts because I think if I had to sit and read this non-stop my eyes would just roll right out of my head from the sheer badness of it all. The clichés, the useless, irrelevant, boring detail, the random ‘facts’ that are thrown in to bury the entire stupid story in a mountain of…well, lets just say if I’d really wanted to wade in such a huge pile of sh…uh…cat poop, I could just not scoop the litter boxes for a few days and get the same result. But I am determined to finish the damn book, even though I think it is possibly one of the worst accumulations of drivel ever published, just because I cannot let a book this stupid beat me.

This morning I headed off to Napa to meet my older sister, and the two of us drove down to San Francisco, to Pier 39, to join a large crowd of people, many of whom were wearing some form of pink. My sister, as leader of our team, had purchased hats for all three of us, although my little sister won’t get hers til she comes down in July, so at least we had our own pink on, and could blend in with the crowd.

We found what was quite possibly the very last parking spot available in the garage across the street and had a little discussion on how best to stuff our purses under the seats so we would not have to carry them – an effort which was made completely moot by the fact that when we showed up at the registration table we were handed goody bags, full of samples and magazines and lots of paperwork about the organization. And there wasn’t enough time to go back to the garage and drop off the bags, nor was there enough time to get lunch, so we bought pretzels at a stand right near where the practice team was gathering and inhaled them while the perky young leader gave her spiel about safety, and then as a group, we all headed down the pier for the very first practice walk of the San Francisco Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.

We do the Sisters Only weekend every year, but this year, instead of going off to a cabin or a hotel or a resort, we are going to spend our nights in tents with thousands of other people, and our days walking the streets of San Francisco for areally good cause. In a way, it will be just as much a sisters bonding thing as our trips to Reno and Las Vegas, and walking 26 miles in two days will be our ‘extreme’ activity this year, instead of singing karaoke in a bar full of strangers or rappelling down a rope into the vast emptiness of a very deep hole in the ground, like we’ve done in years past.

We’ve signed up as the Sisters Only team, and our team goal for fund raising is $5400 total ($1800 each). We’re each going to have to do a lot of preparation to get to the point where 26 miles of walking is doable, but we’re committed to making it work.

The money raised is managed and disbursed by the Avon Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity with a mission is to fund access to care and finding a cure for breast cancer. The Avon Foundation funds both local and national organizations in five key areas: medical research, education and early detection programs; clinical care; and support services, all with a focus on the medically underserved.

Please help to support my efforts and this important cause by making a generous contribution. You can make your donation online by simply clicking here. Please remember as you’re making your donation that in less than the time it took to read this e-mail, another woman in the U.S. was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Good grief – how did I forget my very own journalversary? I’ve now been at this for six years (well, technically, six years and 8 days).

Here’s the obligatory link to my very first entry, posted on January 15, 2000. I haven’t woken to green mice since I posted that entry, and my little grumpy tortie is long gone, but Azzie still purrs at me and tries to bite my nose, because despite being nearly seven years old, he remains perpetually under the impression that he is still a kitten. Some things always change, and some things always remain the same. Ah, life.

* The title of this entry taken from A.A. Milne’s poem “When I Was One”.

Accomplishments for January:

• DVR installed so we can record Lost and Battlestar Galactica without missing a minute when are not home, or perhaps out of the country – check
• Wills, living wills, durable power of attorney, HIPPA release documents (and other signs of actual adulthood) signed, notarized, filed – check
• Person who prepared wills amused by request to include pet clause and designate Pet Executrix (and back-up Pet Executrix) – check
• Prettiest socks I have ever made completed in time for Mom’s birthday – check
• Tickets reserved for (very delayed) three week honeymoon to Ireland – check (squee!)
• Plans made for this year’s Sister’s Only Weekend – check

Not bad for not even three weeks into the year. Not bad at all.

I was sitting at my computer, idly poking through my regular haunts, checking the latest entries on my Bloglines (and why everyone does not have RSS feeds I do not know, because they make life so much easier), deleting spam in my inbox, that sort of thing. Azzie was sitting on my lap so I had my feet propped on the desk and was leaning back in my chair, half turned so I could actually see the screen. It was evening, so the room was mostly dark, except for the glow of my screen.

And then I saw it. Moving across my screen. A black shape – something I didn’t recognize. It was an image – I couldn’t tell quite what because it sort of blended in with the dark background on the current Charles Wysocki picture that serves as my wallpaper – and it was on my laptop and it was *moving*. I started to panic. I’ve been getting the little reminder notice from Norton for…um…far too many weeks now, telling me that I need to renew my subscription, but it usually pops up when I am in the middle of something, or in a hurry, or have a cat on my lap and cannot get up and fetch my credit card so I can pay the yearly fee. So every time it shows up I’ve been telling it to remind me later. I’m usually extremely careful with email and downloads and such, so I’ve been feeling like I really didn’t need to worry.

But now, I was worried. This shape was moving around on my screen and worse yet, I couldn’t click it with my mouse. It was at least two inches across. There was nothing on my tool bar for me to turn off. I checked my list of processes but there was nothing there I didn’t recognize. I mentally kicked myself for not renewing my virus protection and resigned myself to finding a way to save any files I could before giving the hard drive a complete brain wipe and starting from scratch.

And then, as I sat there panicking, the shape turned and finally came into focus, about two seconds before it moved off the screen, disappeared into the dark frame of the laptop, and reappeared on top of the screen edge, taking a moment to pose perfectly, just so I could finally see what it was.

Yeah. It was a bug. But not a computer one, a real one. Luckily not the kind that would make me panic again.

I did what any good cat owner would do, now that I realized that my computer was still safe. I called for the cats and pointed out the extremely large house fly (aka coolest cat toy ever) and then, once it had their attention, I left the room.

And later on, I came back and renewed Norton. You know. Just in case.

Happy Holidailies

It is odd to be back at work after nine days off. Richard went back yesterday, but I didn’t go back until today. And we all stumbled in yawning and bleary, and mostly wishing we could go back home and crawl back into bed and try again tomorrow when we might be more ready for it.

I’d heard there was some flooding around the office but I was completely unprepared to pull onto Garden Highway and see how high the Sacramento River has risen. There are a number of buildings that were built right on the levee, so that half of the building stands on poles and the parking is usually found underneath. Our office building is just such a building, and as I drove toward it I was amazed by the fact that the lower level parking for every single building along the levee was completely underwater. It looked as if the apartment buildings and office complexes and restaurants had all been built in the river itself. And it is disconcerting to walk across a wooden boardwalk and look down between the cracks in the boards and see nothing but water underneath, or to stand on the deck outside our office door and look down at water instead of a grassy bank. It is also more than a bit unnerving to look out the window to my left when sitting down at my desk and realize that the boats which docked right outside our office are practically at eye level, when normally they are down at the same level as the parking garage.

Richard was feeling a bit better, now that he’s on a higher dose of Prednisone (the drug of choices for severe asthmatics with bronchitis!) and also giant horse pills of antibiotics, which he picked up and started on today. So we went out for sushi for dinner, and then came home and watched the last few episodes of the first season of Monk. Richard sat on the floor for part of it, assembling his telescope, and I muddled through directions I printed out this weekend, and managed to get three of the five fingers finished on the pair of half-finger gloves I’m making out of leftover sock yarn.

Things are sliding slowly back into normal, now that the holidays are over and vacation is done with and we are back to work as if nothing had ever changed. I like being home and having the time to putter around on little unimportant things, sleeping as late as I want and actually having time to cook if I can work up the enthusiasm and we have the ingredients in the house. But after a while I get to the point where I need to have something a little more to do. Even if it is just going in to work and marveling over the fact that the park across the river is so far under water that only the tip of the guard shack is visible, or pondering whether the water beneath the deck is deep enough that if we accidently fell in, it would break our fall.

Happy Holidailies