It’s been an interesting week at work. One of the main people has been out all week on vacation, and another was gone 3 of the 5 days. Tuesday morning we discovered that the voicemail system had gone kaflooey and they didn’t make it out to fix it until the following afternoon. The service guy pointed out that we apparently had some issues with our battery back-ups, which we were already aware of due to the incessant beeping and the fact that during the last week or two our server has now rebooted itself (not always successfully) several times without reason. And he noted that unless we did something to fix the issue, we’d likely lose our voicemail system again.

The new battery backup arrived this afternoon. It’s a heavy, compact little piece of equipment. And as we were lugging things around in the tiny closet that is our de facto server room, we discovered what might be the main problem for all the issues we’ve been having lately with the server and the voicemail. We already had two battery back-ups, but for reasons unknown to any of us (since we were not the ones who initially set the whole system up), the first backup had a multiple outlet extension plugged into it, and someone had plugged the second battery backup into this extension. This meant that the second was plugged into the first and why the first hadn’t just up and melted by now none of us can guess.

Somehow we got everything moved around, although in the middle of it my coworker and I inadvertently shut down the entire phone system – while a third coworker happened to be on the line with a client (oops). And it’s possible we also rebooted the voicemail system, also by mistake. But at least none of the systems are plugged into each other any more, and that annoying beeping has finally stopped, and maybe our server will no longer feel the need to reboot on a whim.

All things considered I’m not sure any of us are holding our breath.

It’s been a musical build-up to this Easter – the service on Thursday night, where the choir sang, and then the service on Friday night with the only musical accompaniment our little recorder group. We’ve all been practicing these songs for a few weeks now, and I think we sounded better than we’ve ever sounded – which is high praise for a group where most of us still dive for the fingering chart any time we see a sharp or flat in the music. It doesn’t help that some of us play other woodwind instruments where the fingering is almost, but not quite, the same as for the recorder. The clarinetist and I both find ourselves playing recorder fingerings on our woodwinds, and vice versa.

Easter began with two services at church – and since the choir had to sit up front on the alter behind the wall of lilies (aka the flowers of doom – and if you’ve ever had to sit close to lilies and smell them for more than about 30 seconds you know what I mean. Shudder), this meant we couldn’t exactly sneak out after singing at the second service. Ah well. But it did give us more time for Richard to lean over and pass me sacriligeous notes about the meaning of Easter (which had nothing whatsoever with the real meaning, and earned me a dirty look from the alto section, since they made me giggle). And it also gave us an opportunity to clear out all our miscellaneous candy in the house and bring it to the church to feed to small children and others, all so it would no longer be sitting there to tempt us.

After church, Richard and I eyed the clocks, and there was just enough time to meet my older sister and her family, and my parents, for a quick lunch at a local fast food place. There is a new Wendy’s in town, and while I usually try to avoid fast food in general these days, due to our goal of eating healthy, the allure of a chocolate frosty is sometimes too hard to resist.

Then it was home to change and grab the muffins I made Saturday night, before climbing back into the car and driving down to spend the rest of the day with Richard’s family for the traditional Easter dinner. I brought my latest pair of socks I’m knitting, because I figured there’d be lots of sitting and chatting time (I was right) and managed to get most of the first one done. Granted, I’ll likely rip it all out again because I think I want to make it on smaller needles and with fewer stitches in the round, but I’m getting to the point in my knitting where I really don’t mind the occasional need to frog a project, even if it’s the whole thing.

We talked and laughed and caught up on what’s going on in our lives. We marveled over how the ‘new’ puppy has grown. We ate roast lamb and pork and corn fritters and salad and potatoes and my muffins, which have just a hint of nutmeg that makes them sweet, and then for dessert there was a fruit sorbet and chocolate peanut butter pie. There were also chocolate eggs and silly stuffed animals and back at home Richard had his Cadbury eggs and I had my caramel eggs, and we drove home in the dark and the pouring rain and it was a very long but lovely day.

A week or so ago, while I was at the grocery store, I noticed something new in the holiday-of-the-moment displays near the front door. Nestled amid great piles of pastel colored Easter baskets, oversized stuffed animals, and shelf after shelf of candy were boxes of do-it-yourself marshmallow treats. Paas, apparently, has been branching out beyond just providing yet another way to turn boring hard-boiled eggs into works of art.

Naturally, we had to buy a kit to try it out. So in honor of Easter, I present to you a pictorial demonstration of how to make your very own marshmallow Easter treats that go very, very wrong.

We start with the box, which is brightly colored and covered in pictures that assure the unsuspecting marshmallow treat ‘chef’ how easy this will be. Ha ha ha.

Here’s what’s inside the box. We are pretty sure that the mold made a butterfly, a turtle, an egg, a rabbit head, and possibly an entire rabbit. We never quite figured out what the sixth shape was supposed to be, but in the end none of them looked much like the box, so I guess it isn’t all that important.

Here is Richard stirring up the goo. You poured in the first packet with a teeny bit of water and stirred it until it became a sticky mess that refused to let go of the fork, and then you were supposed to stir in the second package for only about 30 seconds, at which point the whole thing was supposed to be soft and fluffy.

I ask you – do these look soft and fluffy to you? They didn’t taste soft and fluffy either. Luckily the package came with two sets of marshmallow ingredients, so once the first batch was scraped out of the mold and dumped into the garbage disposal, where I am sure it is merrily congealing into a hardened mess, we tried again.

Here is the second batch. For some strange reason there was one batch of white and one batch of yellow. Yum. Don’t these look ever so appetizing?

Once the marshmallow treats set for five minutes in the fridge we got to sprinkle them with colored sugar. Considering just how yummy they looked, all lumpy in the mold, it was kind of hard to make them look any less unnatural once they were set. We did start out making them each individual colors, but then it sort of turned into a free-for-all. Mm. Nuclear colored festive squishy lumps.

The last step of the instructions on the box said, quite clearly, that these were to be eaten immediately. I dutifully ate one, but it had an odd eggy taste – a flavor one does not normally associate with marshmallows. So Richard got to eat all the rest. I may or may not have been making ‘help me!’ noises while he was eating the thing that we suspect was a turtle.

Now that we finally have access to the attic and have seen just how much room there is up there, I have been toying with the idea of expanding the plywood flooring to provide even more storage space. I should point out that we have more than enough storage space in the house without the attic, but there is something about the prospect of having even *more* which is far too compelling to ignore.

The problem, however,is that with the exception of where they put the 8×8 square of flooring when the house was built, the attic is covered in loose piled insulation. And as the little yardstick things stuffed into the piles of insulation here and there suggest, the quality of the insulation (its rating) is dependent on the height. Putting flooring over that would squash it down, reducing its insulating capacity. We could, I suppose, go through and replace all the loose insulation in the main area of the attic (where I’d like to see flooring) with the more solid, condensed form, to avoid losing any insulating capacity, but that’s a much bigger and more complicated task than I’m sure we want to tackle. There is also the possibility of building the flooring up, so that it ‘hovers’ over the piled insulation through the judicious placement of some 2×4’s and bracing, but that is going to take some careful calculations and thought.

In the meantime, however, there is at least a little space available up there. So today, after breakfast, Richard and I dragged all the holiday stuff out of the closet in the library and transferred it from the various huge bins and cardboard boxes into five clear stackable bins bought specifically for this purpose. Then Richard stood on the ladder and I handed him all the holiday decoration bins and the boxes of lights we put up around the house, and a few other things, and he shoved them all up into the attic because now we finally can.

Next I tackled my ever growing yarn stash. It took an additional trip to Costco to pick up another set of the 10 clear plastic bins I bought for that purpose, but when I was done, I’d managed to stuff all my yarn into smaller and more manageable containers, and stacked them all into the newly emptied closet. Not very exciting, maybe, but it’s nice to feel slightly more organized, and better yet, to be able to actually *find* things in my stash, instead of having to rummage through a huge green tub and never quite knowing what I might find.

While we were out picking up the second set of plastic storage boxes for my yarn we took a slight detour for a little shopping, because we were both desperately in need of new shoes. I find it highly amusing I at when we left the store, Richard had more pairs of new shoes than I.

We got up this morning a little earlier than usual because we needed to clear out the closet in the computer room. Richard laid out a big sheet of plastic in the bedroom and we carted all three litter boxes out of the closet and into that room. And then, after he vacuumed the excess litter off the floor, he went off to make coffee and I spent the next ten minutes or so cleaning the floor. It’s really quite disconcerting to see what your floor looks like underneath the litter boxes. Ick.

Once we were done setting everything up, we locked all the cats in the bedroom – a task made ridiculously simple by the application of three plates full of extremely smelly wet food. It may be impossible to herd cats, but anyone who lives with multiple cats knows it is far better to simply lead them to where you want them to go. And bribery is well within the rules when cats are involved.

There was a really good reason for doing all of this, however, besides just some random need to scrub fossilized litter off the closet floor. When we had the house built the general contractor put in about 8 square feet of basic plywood flooring up there for us to use as storage space, but since the existing attic access consisted of a tiny square in the ceiling of the closet in the computer room, getting things up to the attic was pretty much impossible. Setting up a ladder in a tiny closet is bad enough; trying to climb a ladder wedged into a tiny closet while carrying anything larger than a flashlight was pretty much impossible.

We’ve been looking for someone who could put in a new attic access for us for quite some time, but general contractors who are willing to do this sort of thing (and have time to do it) have proven rather difficult to find. A few weeks ago, somehow the topic came up as I was talking to a friend, and I bemoaned the fact that no one seemed to know anybody we could call. Luckily, it turned out she’d worked with a guy several times in the past and had been very happy with him, so she gave me his name, and I promptly tracked down his phone number and called. We set up the time, he faxed over an estimate and a contract for us to sign, and today was the day. While I was off at work today (Richard worked from home so he could let them in), the general contractor came in with his assistant and put in a new dropdown ladder attic access. And because the litter boxes live in the closet where the existing access was, plus there would be loud noises and banging, we figured it was best to move the cats – and their litter boxes – behind closed doors.

The first thing I did when I got home was go immediately upstairs and check it out. Instead of having to wrestle with a ladder and a closet, the new access is in the computer room. Instead of having to drag the ladder up from the garage, this one comes with a ladder that drops down right from the ceiling with the (determined) tug of a cord. And it’s sturdy enough, and there is enough space around it, that climbing up there with boxes of stuff for storage is no longer such an impossible task!

Of course once we climbed into the attic – the first time we’ve actually been able to do that since we moved into this house – I was amazed at the sheer amount of space available up there. I think we could easily put in four or fives times as much plywood flooring for storage space up there and still have room left over. Due to the design of the house our attic is big enough to walk around in – in fact, if we were willing to deal with licenses and codes and inspections and a lot of work with drywall and insulation and air conditioning, we could add another entire room up there. It’s huge! This picture doesn’t even come close to doing it justice.

Climbing back down the ladder was a challenge, since I’m not a fan of heights, so we’re thinking we may want to try to put in some kind of railing or something on the edge, just to have something to hang on to. And since the access into the attic has moved, we’ll need to figure out a way to reach the light switch, since it’s now just out of reach. But these are all really very minor issues. After being in this house nearly four years, we can now finally *use* our attic the way we’d always intended.

I’d been toying with the idea of replacing the mostly dead pine tree in the back yard with a grapefruit tree, but had not yet worked up the motivation to make a special trip to a nursery just to find one. But then, there we were at Costco yesterday afternoon, on a trip spurred mostly by my desire to pick up a box of the cutest handmade cards ever, and we were greeted with a huge selection of brand new citrus trees, and right there in the front were ruby red grapefruit trees. So what could I do but pick one up and put it in our cart and bring it home with us?

We did go out on this afternoon, after the choral fest that was the Palm Sunday service, and ponder how best to remove the aforementioned mostly dead pine. But that’s when we discovered that mostly dead pine trees are quite painfully prickly, and that even one year is long enough for a tree to set down enough roots that you can’t exactly just rip it out of the ground with your bare hands, and we also couldn’t seem to locate the shovel, even though we know we have one, so the cute little grapefruit tree is currently still sitting in its pot right beside the back porch. I’m not too worried about it right now, mainly because we keep getting rainstorms, so it’s getting plenty of water, and even a little sun when the storms break and psych us into thinking spring might actually be right around the corner, before promptly dumping several inches more water on us one more time. But I know we cannot leave it there indefinitely, and one of these days we are going to have to go out there and remove that stupid mostly dead tree, prickly bits or not, because the whole point of getting the grapefruit tree was to plant it so that some day, years from now, I will have grapefruits of my very own, and leaving it in its pot is sort of going to defeat that whole purpose.

Last night I zipped home from work and wolfed down dinner, and then grabbed one of the baby blankets I’ve been working on these last few months, found an appropriate gift bag, signed my name on a card, and dashed off to the first baby shower of the weekend. Our church, this year, is having quite a pile of babies – one born in January, one born in February, three within days of each other in April, and one more in May. And that’s just the ones we know about, since that would only take us through the first half of the year. It’s going to be babypalooza come summer, and baby showerpalooza kicked off on Friday night.

The mom-to-be’s house was overfull of women, and the noise level was a little overwhelming. We all had to pick nametags (I decided to be ‘Diaper Genie’) to play a variation on the clothespin game – instead of worrying about not crossing your legs, we had to instead remember to all people by their nametag moniker instead of their real name. Not so much a problem for me, since I didn’t know most of the other attendees there, and not so much a problem for most of the rest of the crowd, since it was so crowded and loud you could barely hear a conversation anyway. The congestion did make the second game of the evening a bit more participatory, since I’m not sure we were supposed to be discussing it amongst ourselves, but really there was no choice. They passed out 6 diapers, into which some enterprising person has melted six different chocolate bars. By smell and sight we were then to identify the mangled treats cradled carefully within the cushy padding of the diaper. After correctly identifying the Mr. Good Bar I gave up, if only because that one was a little too realistic for my tired brain to handle, and I found an empty seat in the living room near a few people I knew. Turns out it was the right spot to sit, since once the present opening began we were right next to the mom-to-be and actually got to see all the cute little things she was given.

Today was the second baby shower – held this time in the social hall at the church so there was a little more room to maneuver. This friend knows she’s having a girl (the one last night wants to be surprised) so there were oodles of adorable little dresses and booties and accessories in pink and purple and pastels. At one point she opened a present and pulled out a dress in pastel plaid and I think every single woman in that room immediately demanded to know if they made it in adult sizes because it was just the perfect ageless sundress for spring.

The baby born in January was there, being just as cute as he could possibly be. At one point I ‘stole’ him from his mother (by asking if she might like to actually eat her lunch with both hands instead of balancing a baby with one and trying to juggle a fork with the other), and we all had fun merrily ignoring the guest of honor and the party games and focusing on a chubby cheeked, dimpled little boy who is just getting old enough to figure out how best to charm everyone he meets.

I have, apparently, been far too blasé about the fact that I have so far not been sick this winter (unlike in previous years, where I have constantly battled the sinus infection from hell for weeks on end). Yesterday I spent the entire day with a feeling of impending doom as the pressure in my sinuses grew and grew. Add to that the fact that my eyes were dry and irritated all day, and I think I spent most of yesterday looking as if I was quite likely on something (due to the slightly reddened eyes). This might not have ordinarily been a problem, except that yesterday I was in Oakland attending a meeting at the office of the president of an extremely large statewide organization, and I would have preferred to look a little less like I hadn’t slept in the last two weeks.

I finally gave up after choir practice last night and took the last of the decongestants we have in the house. I figured maybe I would be lucky and the spiffy side effect of insomnia would kick in while I was already asleep and so I would just sleep right through it. But it is 1:30 in the morning now and I have spent the last 45 minutes lying in bed wide awake, my brain racing furiously in a bazillion useless directions, so…so much for that theory.

At least my sinuses no longer feel as if they are trying to kill me by making my head implode so I suppose a little insomnia is a small price to pay. Especially if it makes me actually sit down and write a journal entry, right?

I feel as if the days are slipping by lately and while I have been fairly busy, there really isn’t much to say. I finished my socks (and wore them to work and lo, they were comfy and very blue). I started making a birthday present for my little sister, and while the yarn I am using is a huge pain to work with, the project is turning out so gorgeous that I may have difficulty not just keeping it for myself. Our sprinkler head magically fixed itself (with, I suspect, a little help from the gardeners). There are strange blue flowers growing amid the climbing roses on our side yard arbor and while I suspect that they are some kind of weed the effect of blue flowers amid the white roses is so pretty I am loathe to actually go out and hack out the offender. Spring sprung early, which means the trees in the front are full of flowers and leaves, the nutmeg scented geranium in the pot by the front door is spilling over its sides with tiny white flowers that have no scent at all (nutmeg or otherwise), and the white peach tree in the back yard went through its far-too-brief explosion in pink blossoms and will, I suspect, be even more overloaded with fruit this year than last. Sadly it is still too small to actually handle everything it wants to produce so I also suspect I shall be doing some serious culling later in the summer. I am also pondering replacing the dead pine tree in the corner with a red grapefruit tree but since that would entail actually going to a nursery and buying the tree and digging a hole and planting it, so far it has gone no further than just speculation.

Speaking of the back yard, after taking last summer mostly off from any yard improvement projects, we’re starting to mull around the idea of this year finally tackling either the reading nook or the courtyard area. Since each one will require lots more lugging of large heavy stones and manual labor, I suspect that the reading nook (which is about one quarter the size of the courtyard area) will win out. Oh, and we finally found someone to come out and give us an estimate for putting in a drop-down ladder for attic access, so I am eagerly awaiting his call to set up an actual time for that. I have such plans for that attic. The instant we can finally get *into* it, the closet in the library is going to be emptied of all its piles of holiday decorations, so that my slowing growing stash of yarn will finally have a (cat-free) home of its own.

I am still wide-awake, and I am half afraid that I just may not ever get back to sleep tonight. So I think I will close this for now and go do useful things, like run a load of laundry, and load up the dishwasher, and feed the cat who is currently sitting on my chest and making it very hard to type, and pretend that when this decongestant wears off later today and the lack of sleep can finally hit me like a brick wall, that it will all have been worth it. Oh yes. I am sure of it.

A few months ago (possibly around November) Richard and I were awakened far too early one morning by the sound of water pouring on our roof. At first we thought it was a heavy rain storm, but looking out the window quickly showed that it was either an extremely small, localized storm (a storm which rained from the ground up, no less), or one of the sprinkler heads in the front yard had gone kaput. We weren’t going to get up at that time of night to do a sprinkler inspection, but later in the day Richard went out to look.

Our answer to the problem, at that time, was to turn off all the sprinklers, since it was nearing the rainy season and the sprinklers really weren’t required at that time anyway. We figured we’d deal with it later – when spring hit and the rainy season was over and we once again needed to water the yard.

Well guess what? Apparently spring has sprung. This morning, at about 3:30, I was abruptly jerked out of sleep by the sound of water pouring onto the porch roof right outside our windows. Gah. Since neither Richard nor I flipped the switch, nor do I think burglars make a habit of sneaking into people’s back yards and turning on their irrigation systems, I can only assume that the gardeners made the decision for us.

That early in the morning I couldn’t do much about it except mutter nasty things under my breath, get annoyed at Richard because the sprinklers did *not* wake him up (although to my credit I did decide against poking him awake so he would have to experience the geyser too), and give up and crawl back into bed and hope that I would eventually get back to sleep (in case you were wondering, I did not). Because it is still March, and history tells me that despite the uncharacteristically sunny days we’ve been having lately, the rain and the gloom will return, the sprinklers were turned back off this evening. But the fact that the gardeners did it once means that they are just as likely to do it again. So it appears that this weekend we’ll be doing a little irrigation system repair – and hopefully it will be as easy as everyone tells me it should be.

Yesterday morning we decided to do something a little different, so we headed into Davis to the (relatively new) crepery for breakfast. Next we headed off to get more cat litter (always an exciting trip) to the one tiny little store in our area that carries the stuff we use. I took the opportunity to see how much improvement the allergy shots have given me so far (it’s been about six months since I started them). While I was able to be in the store for a brief period of time, I eventually gave up and went outside and watched the chinchillas through the lovely allergen barrier of the plate glass window while I waited for Richard to finish buying the litter. The combination of tiny store plus large quantities of small furry animals, plus a distinct lack of any kind of air circulation whatsoever is still a little too much for me to handle. But I only ended up doing a little sneezing, and I didn’t have to go diving for the inhaler, and there was nary a hive to be seen. Ah. progress.

Last night was the latest installment with the Davis Musical Theater Company – Annie. Richard and I discussed before the play that we might have to set up a new rating system. If the play was really bad (as some of them have been), we would deem it ‘crepe worthy’, and leave at intermission to go to the crepe place for our after-play dessert. If it was not so bad, we’d stick it out for the whole thing, thus deeming it ‘pie worthy’, which meant that we’d do our usual after-play trip to Baker’s Square, which is the only restaurant actually open late enough to be an after-play destination.

Surprisingly, for a play where a large number of the main characters were kids, this one was definitely pie-worthy. The kids could not only act, but sing quite well for their age. The dog provided quite a bit of unintentional humor when he made it quite clear that he really did *not* enjoy the high notes in the play’s signature piece (“Tomorrow”). Overall it was actually quite enjoyable. Of course, having only ever seen the movie version of Annie, I was a bit blind-sided by the fact that the original play was actually quite the political statement for its time. But it gave us something to talk about later with my parents over pie. And even though I was very much in the mood for a crepe instead of pie, I much prefer the pie-worthy plays over the crepe-worthy ones.

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This weekend I finally decided that it was time to get over my fear of sock knitting once and for all, so I grabbed a set of double pointed needles and the skein of yarn I got from my knitting secret pal, sat down with the pattern, and got started. And, much as I expected (since this is what happens every time I try something new in knitting), it turned out to be not nearly as impossible as I was sure it was going to be. And in fact I finished off the first sock this morning.

I am ridiculously proud of this. I know it’s a silly thing to be proud of in the grand scheme of things, and there are a lot of people who make far more complicated things out of yarn, but I don’t care. It’s my very first sock. Plus, unlike my very first sweater (the one I made for my nephew with the neck opening too small for his head), this sock actually fits. And I have already cast on for the second one, so I expect by the end of the week I will be showing off my socks to everyone I meet. I am sure they will all be either impressed and amazed, or else will just back away slowly from the giddy woman showing off her blue striped feet.