A few years ago my older sister and I went to a Cross Stitch convention in Sacramento. The convention center was packed with displays of cross stitching both beautiful and awesome in its complexity, as well as row after row of vendor booths selling every conceivable cross stitch item known to womankind. There were kids. There was thread. There was cloth of every sort, needles, thread organizing gadgets, lights, sewing stands – the list was endless.

So when my friend (the one who’s been teaching me to knit) noted a month or two ago that there was going to be a similar convention for knitting and crocheting in Oakland, I jumped at the chance to go. And in preparation for such a convention I mulled over how long it has taken me to do the projects I’ve done so far, calculated out how long it might take me to finish a few more projects, based on stitch to length and width ratios and other vague measurements, and decided that this meant that I needed to buy yarn. Obviously, it was fate.

Of course, it being in Oakland, this meant we had to get an early start. I crawled out of bed with just enough time to feed the cats, take a shower, and pack a quick lunch. Then I nudged Richard awake long enough to ask him to sort through a few piles of his stuff in the garage (because the garage organization project could not move forward without it!), drove to the next town to pick up my friend, and we were off.

We got there early enough to find a perfect parking spot right in front of the convention center, and then joined a rapidly growing throng of hundreds and hundreds of woman, all wearing things they had knitted, or carting in-progress projects, or trailing balls of yarn, everywhere we turned. There was a little time before the doors opened so we found a table and joined two other women – one of whom was working on a shawl and one of who was working on a hat. We rapidly traded names and details of our respective projects (since naturally we brought our own knitting along) and when the doors opened we joined the throngs of people lining up to buy tickets to enter knitting nirvana.

I could have spent so much money at this convention. It takes an incredible amount of willpower to walk into this kind of thing and not purchase anything. The fact that I had specific projects to find yarn for was my only saving grace. We wandered up and down the aisles and I fingered dozens and dozens of skeins. There are more varieties of wool available than I had ever known existed, and they come in any color imaginable. There were tables crammed with pattern books or heaped with skeins of yarn in wool and cotton and hemp and any other fiber that could conceivably be spun into yarn, including hair of dog. There were hand carved knitting needles and spinning implements for those who like to start from scratch, and entire displays of specially dyed yarn that knits into intricately patterned socks with nothing more than a simple garter stitch. We spent the first few hours blissfully wandering from booth to booth, daydreaming of having the time and money and wrist strength to not only afford all the yarn we wanted, but to somehow manage to make all the projects we’d have to make to justify the yarn expense.

I did manage to find the yarn for my next three projects, diving excitedly into an untidy heap of alpaca wool to find just the right shades of brown, and then sorting through pile after pile of an entire rainbow of others to find pale green that melts into a watery greenish blue just for variety, and a purple that is more blue than red. I also succumbed to a particularly gorgeous skein of hand-dyed variegated pale purple that included enough yardage for me to make several things – as soon as I can figure out just what I should use it for – just because I could not resist. After all, the other yarn purchases aren’t really for me, so I decided I was allowed to get something for myself too.

It is hard, now, to have all this yarn. I want to start one of the next projects immediately, if only to work with something far more vibrant and fresh than the dark olive green I chose for the sweater I’m working on. But I am trying to be firm with myself. Only one project at a time. Once this one is done then I can have the delicious joy of trying to decide which one to start next.

Tonight was the Robert Burns dinner. The choir gathered at the church a few hours before the event and we ran through all the songs a few times, just to get them fresh in our heads – although I’m not sure at this point whether I’ll ever get ‘Ye Banks and Braes’ *out* of my brain after all the work I have put into that darn song. And then we all piled into cars and drove over to the fairgrounds, where we gathered on chairs at the front corner of the room and waited for everyone to sit down with their food, and for the program announcers to work their way through a series of toasts before we could actually perform.

I will note again, just to make it perfectly clear, that this was a Robert Burns dinner, hosted by the local Scottish guild. So naturally it was attended by a great number of men who were wearing kilts. Men whose mothers apparently never told them that when one is wearing a skirt (or anything resembling a skirt) that one should keep one’s knees together.

Our seating arrangement was such that we were facing the rest of the room. This meant that we had a clear view of all the participants. And it was shortly into the toast to the laddies that we all suddenly realized that we were now being blessed with knowledge that heretofore had been kept secret.

Yes, I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s very hard to keep a straight face when you are face to…er…pleats with finding out just what it is that they wear under their kilts. And once the door to such a mystery has been left so…um…wide open, how does any self-respecting choral member avoid taking the inevitable peek?

Last month the choir director asked who would be available to sing for a Robert Burns dinner, because the local Scottish guild was holding theirs in February. About half of us could do it, and we had all four parts represented, so he tracked down a few songs based on Burns’ poems so we could start practicing.

Except that some of the songs were more difficult than others, which is always a challenge when half the choir doesn’t actually read music, and we had other songs we always had to practice for our ‘real’ job, which is singing in church, even though for this gig we would actually get *paid*, and I think some of the people who said they wanted to do it didn’t take it very seriously and didn’t even bother to listen to the practice CD that the choir director very cleverly put together, even though the rest of us noted over and over how useful it was for learning the songs. And then suddenly it was last night and the Burns dinner is tomorrow night and I’m not sure we could have sounded any worse.

It didn’t help that for the most difficult song it was decided only last week that the men wouldn’t sing, which meant that while the sopranos got to keep their part, the altos were suddenly moved to the second soprano line and I switched from melody to alto line. It’s one of those songs that looks deceptively simple until you start singing it and realize that you are singing in a waltz tempo and there are marvelous little 16th note trills at the end of every phrase and the composer thought it would be oh-so-amusing to not only make everyone sing higher than our normal range, but also toss in a few random octave jumps, and oh did I forget to mention that there’s no where at all to breathe? Needless to say I adored the song – finally something that was a challenge to sing! After all, I could pick my part out on the piano and I had it down pat by the Sunday after he made the switch, but I was in the strong minority in my comfort with it.

After practice last night, we were all feeling pretty lousy about the impending performance – a feeling made even worse by the fact that we are getting paid, which usually implies an expectation of quality that we just didn’t have at all last night. So this morning I tossed out the idea of trying to get an impromptu practice together with my boss, who also happens to be in the choir, and suddenly I was on the phone, leaving frantic messages for everyone I could get a hold of, and it was pretty obvious I wasn’t the only one who thought an extra practice was a really good idea.

Not everyone could come, but there were enough of us to cover all the parts. It was cold in the sanctuary as we all stood in a lopsided little group, occasionally leaning over to stab at a particularly difficult note on the piano. We sang to each other and focused simply on hearing each other’s parts. We critiqued each other and encouraged each other and ran through everything over and over. There was no pressure. There was no feeling of impending doom. There was, instead, relief, and a lot of laughter. So what if in the women’s only song we kept giggling because invariably one of us would end up gasping for a breath in the middle of a word. We blended. We sang. We made music – actual music, not the muddled noise of last night. It was only one extra hour of practice – and in the grand scheme of things, one hour doesn’t seem like it would be worth the effort. But when we left the church there was a distinct change in all of us. Sometimes it’s amazing how little time it takes to make such a difference.

Monday did turn out to be a nice day to stay inside. It was gray and wet and dreary outside – the advent of another bout of winter storms – making it easy to lose track of the time of day. I did a lot of knitting and poked around online, and we watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (we’re up to season 4 now) as well as a movie called Little Secrets which I thought was going to be some silly fluffy teen flick but in fact turned out to be rather thoughtful and sweet.

It was mostly a good way to spend a holiday day, except that later in the evening my stomach decided to rebel rather suddenly, sparking a several-hours-long bout of puking my guts out, long after there was anything left in my guts to puke. Most of Tuesday I spent feeling vaguely queasy, which I suppose is a rather novel way to start off a new diet plan (we’re doing a two week Quick Start thing from Weight Watchers), but not one I would recommend. A quick chat with one of my coworkers suggested that this was just one of those 24 hour things that’s been going around, because by Tuesday night I was back to normal.

Of course, tonight I figured out that it wasn’t so much a 24-hour bug as it was a reaction to a new food. A week or so ago I found Quorn at one of the local grocery stores and since I’ve heard about it from friends online, I decided we should give it a try. We both really liked it, and this weekend we went back to that store (which is one we don’t usually go to because it’s not as nice) specifically to buy more Quorn – this time in a few different varieties. Unfortunately tonight I found myself getting suddenly and seriously nauseous by the end of the workday, but this time I put the pieces together and realized I’d eaten exactly the same thing for lunch on Monday as I did today. Voila. Add Quorn to the list of foods that I might love, but which quite obviously do not love me.

Richard didn’t get home until late last night. So I talked my mom into going to dinner with me, and we split a pizza and then a slice of mud pie because, after all, it was Valentine’s Day and our respective sweethearts were out of town (or in her case, out of the country).

Today has been the usual mix of busy and slow for a Sunday. The instrumental ensemble played in church today, which meant that I had to be there early to lead the practice (And can I note right now how glad I am that my dad will be back next month to take this over and I no longer have to worry about it?). I led a rather abbreviated class on Harry Potter because I think all the usual class members decided to sleep in instead of showing up early for Sunday school, and then after church three of us from choir gathered around the piano in a desperate attempt to nail down the song we’ll be singing next week at the Robert Burns dinner (because one time eating haggis this year simply was not enough).

We actually did our Valentine’s Day celebration (such as it is – neither of us is really into making a big fuss over a holiday inspired by the greeting card and floral industries) by trying out the new fondue restaurant in Sacramento. I’d been to La Fondue in Saratoga twice and had been wistfully dreaming of repeating the experience, but alas, La Fondue is not a chain. However, a quick Google search turned up the Melting Pot, which may be a chain, but there was fondue involved so we really did not care. They seated us in a tiny little two-person alcove and fed us melted cheese which we could not finish and then gave us herbed broth in which to cook a massive amount of meat that we could not finish, and then finished off the evening with a combination of chocolate and caramel and pecans which we did finish because there was no way either of us was willing to let perfectly good chocolate go to waste. One must have one’s priorities, after all, even if that involves eating the remaining dregs of chocolate directly from the pot with the stirring spoon because one has run out of dipping food.

Finding parking was a challenge, but then that’s always the case in downtown Sacramento. In the spirit of cheese and chocolate, however, we threw caution to the wind and took our chances on getting a parking ticket by parking in a one-hour spot. Luckily the gods were smiling on us and our car was ticket free by the time we emerged from our dinner two hours later.

It started raining this afternoon and has steadily gotten drearier and grey outside, which I think means that tomorrow will be a lovely day to stay indoors and do nothing remotely productive, just to celebrate having an extra day at home to try to digest all the cheese and meat and chocolate that we did manage to eat.

For Valentine’s Day this year, I got a day to myself. Oh, it wasn’t exactly intentional, mind you. It only happened because Richard wanted to spend a day at Dundracon (local gaming convention, for those of you non-nerd types) and today was the only day that would work this weekend. But still, it’s been nice – a whole day with nothing whatsoever I had to do; nowhere I had to go; no one I had to coordinate with.

I suppose I could have spent the day curled up in bed reading or knitting or just being blissfully lazy with the cats, but I decided I might as well take advantage of the free time. So this morning I headed off to a hardware store and coerced a nice young clerk to help me heft three huge steel shelf kits into my trunk. And then I drove them home and dragged them out of my trunk all by myself, with absolutely no grace, and spent the next few hours sitting on the floor of the garage surrounded by boxes and random pieces of metal, assembling shelves and rearranging the garage. It’s one of those chores I’ve wanted to do for months now because after almost three years in this house, the garage has started to look a bit messy. It’s not bad yet, but ‘yet’ is the operative word. I knew it was only a matter of time before it would become unmanageable; after all, this seems to be the natural order of garages. So I figured the best thing to do was to try to corral all the stuff onto shelves before it got the chance.

It was actually kind of fun, sitting there, trying to wrestle the shelves together all by myself. The first one was easy, since I turned it into two shorter shelves for all the recycling bins. The second one was a bit trickier, since I made it one single unit and it ended up being taller than I am, so I had to stand on a stool in order to get all the final bits in place. Plus, each of these shelf units weighed about 75 pounds when completely assembled, so dragging them into their final spots was a bit of a challenge. Considering I was dealing with heavy things, sharp things, *and* a hammer, and still somehow managed to not only get them together, but also move them and a few other things around in the garage without injuring myself at all, I would call this afternoon a qualified success.

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There are times when I wonder just what is happening to this country; when I can find no hint of any sort of progress. And then, sometimes, miracles can happen. What could possibly be more romantic, more beautiful, and more right than what is going on in San Francisco this weekend?

I suppose I should have learned my lesson with the last few tons of citrus fruit we purchased, all of which went scarily moldy (fuzzy and blue) within far too short a time. But I had to stop by the produce stand on the way home and while I was there I noticed they still had those ten-pound sacks of satsumas, so I decided to give it another try.

We’ve already made a sizeable dent in the bag, but I think this time I may break down and dump out all the remaining ones and give them a good scrubbing with soap and water. It’s ironic, in a way, that the reason they tend to go bad so fast is because they aren’t processed before they’re sold – they’re just picked and bagged and taken to the produce stand and sold as is. If I’d purchased those previous bags at the grocery store, they’d probably still be mold free. Ah, the allure of pesticides and other useful, yet pesky, little chemicals.

Speaking of chemicals, pesky or otherwise, last night I decided to forgo the decongestant and see how things went. In celebration I was all set to get up early and go biking this morning, but when Richard peered out the window, he said something about it being quite windy, and it didn’t take a lot to convince either of us that maybe we should just postpone our reentry into biking until later. Less you think we are being big lazy exercise slackers, however, we did both get back to our respective workouts yesterday after a week off to be sick.

Not, mind you, that I have completely recovered from this round of the winter crud. It was just as well I didn’t end up going biking this morning, since my throat spent all morning trying to decide whether or not it wanted to be sore, and by the time I left work this afternoon I was feeling achy and chilled – I had my heater up on full blast on the drive home, which should have been enough of a sign that I probably had a fever. At least the sinuses have remained blissfully clear, and after popping some cold medicine and curling up under the covers for an hour to whimper until it kicked in, I am feeling slightly more human. I am getting awfully tired of being sick, however, just in case anyone was wondering. Anytime this thing wants to go away for good would be just fine with me.

In other news I finished off the back of the sweater I am making for myself yesterday. This may not seem all that exciting, except that this is the second time I’ve done the back. I actually finished it about three weeks ago, but then realized that it was too narrow and also about half a foot too long and I really didn’t want to try to figure out how to fix it, and really, the pattern is easy enough that I realized it was just going to be easier to rip it all out and start over. At this rate my friend will have her sweater months before mine is done (her mom – the woman who’s been teaching me to knit – is making her the same pattern, except in a different color), but I actually prefer it this way. I figure this means that her mom can work through all the quirks of the pattern before I ever get to them.

Last night while pondering dinner, I had a craving for something with fruit. So on the way home I stopped by the produce stand and bought, among other things, a bag of Anjou pears. I went home and peeled and chopped four of them directly into a casserole dish with a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon and corn starch for thickening, stirred together something vaguely cobblery for the topping, and then threw it all in the oven and called Richard to tell him to pick up some vanilla ice cream on the way home. And that was dinner – pear cobbler and vanilla ice cream. It was warm, sweet, cinnamony goodness and it tasted far more decadent than it actually was to be eating cobbler for dinner.

Perhaps my craving for cobbler last night was just in anticipation of all of today’s wild partying, because I left the house at about 9 this morning and did not get back until after 10pm this evening. In between I drove all over Northern California and in between all the driving I attended parties. Three parties, to be exact.

The first party of the day was for my youngest nephew’s third birthday. We kicked the morning off to a good and healthy start by eating leftover cobbler for breakfast, and then headed up to Napa in separate cars with my back seat full of presents. Nathan was, naturally, excited, but then at three he is always excited. Of all the niece/nephews, he’s the one that has always seemed to just be eternally excited. He jabbered incomprehensibly at Richard and me – although to be fair, now that he is three, we’re starting to be able to pick out a word here and there that almost makes sense.

My older sister made the cutest train cake, and with the little four year old from Nathan’s day care (too bad he’s too young to care that we were teasing him about his ‘older woman’) and my older nephew, there were three little kids doing their best to get wound up because it was a party.

I had time to stay for lunch and for the opening of the presents but had to leave before the cake because I had a two hour drive from Napa to San Jose for party number two – my Almost Twin’s bridal shower. I felt a little awkward about showing up for a bridal shower in jeans, since one doesn’t wear fancy clothes to a toddler’s party, especially when one is expected to get down on the floor to help said toddler put train tracks together, but luckily it wasn’t a formal crowd. It was, however, a crowd – lots of women were there, and the hostesses had outdone themselves with plenty of food and silly party games. I won a pretty glass and pewter vase for being the first one to whip through the word scramble, and probably would have won the game where you couldn’t cross your legs during the party, except that near the end I quickly foisted all my clothespins off on my younger sister-in-law because I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to win more than once.

Mindful of the fact that I had had pear cobbler for breakfast, and also pizza for lunch (hey, it was a party for little kids), I passed on the cake at the bridal shower. Okay, so the main reason was that it had raspberry filling, but leave me my self-righteous healthy eating delusions. And then it was time to hop back into the car and rack another few hundred miles onto the odometer in order to make it to Vacaville in time for the third and final party of the day. I managed to swing it with just enough time to spare that Richard could meet me in Vacaville for dinner beforehand, and then we continued on to our friend’s house for a rousing evening of games. There were eight of us, which was just the right number to take on two games over the course of the evening, as well as decimate an entire bowl of cheese dip and a large batch of brownies. I think all the kids thought we had all gone just a little bit insane, what with the laughing and the teasing and the noise, but that made it just that much more fun. We all left vowing to do this again, especially the parts with the laughing and the cheese dip. And now I am home, finally, and even though I had a very good day, I am hoping that I do not have to do any more driving, or partying, any time soon.

The good news is that the decongestant-induced mania has been subsiding in the past two days. The bad news is that I think this thing has settled, yet again, into a sinus infection. The few hours that surround the end of one dose and the time it takes for the next 24-hour pill to kick in, breathing gets harder and harder to do. At least the decongestants let me breathe, mostly, for the rest of the day. And maybe if I just keep up with them long enough the sinus infection will go away all by itself this time. In the meantime, at least I am in good company. My boss and I are having a fine time snuffling and coughing, back in our little part of the office, where we have been busy, busy, busy these past few days researching and writing a quick report. I was actually kind of excited about this report, so much so that when it was done, and formatted with pretty colors, I forwarded it to Richard just so he could see what I’d been doing. He was, unfortunately, decidedly unimpressed. I can’t understand why. After all, isn’t everyone fascinated with how the sharp rise in the price of steel is impacting the construction industry? Yes? No? Oh, fine then.

Last week someone on TUS posted a really terrific 50% off deal at Belkin for electronic equipment, so naturally I had to go poking around, and immediately found a few things we’d been thinking of buying. The highest priority item was to get a Universal Power Source for the file server, and considering how expensive they can be, getting one for 50% off was worth it. Unfortunately, once it arrived we discovered that contrary to the information posted about that particular UPS on their website, it really isn’t compatible with Linux, and considering Richard’s goal in life seems to be to convert every computer in the house to a Linux based operating system, that meant that today we sadly packed it back up and prepared to ship it back and get a refund.

The second gadget, luckily, has been far more successful. I found a nifty little device that Richard can hook up to his mp3 player, which then broadcasts to any nearby radio. Viola. Instant car access for his mp3 player. We tested it out driving to and from dinner and choir practice tonight, and it works quite well. And heck, even without the 50% discount it was still one heck of a lot cheaper than installing a new stereo system.

Monday morning I woke up completely in the thrall of the winter crud. Ugh. I called in sick, then crawled back into bed and spent most of the day curled up under the blankets, occasionally honking up more snot than any nose should ever be physically able to produce. Apparently this thing is making the rounds and knocking people out everywhere – three of Richard’s coworkers were out with it on Monday and Sunday afternoon two of our bible study group members were also complaining of the same sore throat and head stuffiness I was coming down with. So at least I was not alone in my being sick. Small comfort, that.

By the time Richard got home I had slightly more energy, enough to make it to the airport and meet my mom’s plane from Chicago, where she got to do the nifty go-through-customs dance on her way back from Germany, and I kept her company (albeit sniffly company) on her drive home so she wouldn’t fall asleep on the road after being up for 24 hours. And then I crawled back into bed and crashed again because oh yes, being sick with the winter crud is just oodles of fun.

Yesterday I felt marginally enough better that I decided to go into work, if only because I knew there was a brand new writing assignment waiting for me that I wanted to get started on, as well as a lengthy teleconference that I really wanted to attend. I tried to make it the whole day, but eventually just gave up and went home around 2, which I am sure pleased my coworkers to no end, since this meant they no longer had to listen to me blowing my nose. And on the way home I finally broke down and stopped by the store to buy some more decongestants. I didn’t really want to take them because I remember what happened the last time, but yesterday afternoon I didn’t really have much choice, so I gave up. An hour after I took it, I could feel my nose finally clearing up, and my energy started to return, and I started to feel cautiously optimistic that perhaps this time I wouldn’t have that really cool side effect of –

Wham. Wrong. It hit me like a ton of bricks at about 8pm, and after that it was a lost cause. I was up until midnight, wired and completely wide-awake. Even when I finally managed to get to sleep, every time I rolled over I was immediately wide-awake again. The alarm buzzed this morning and I did my usual smacking of the snooze button, but it was only a futile gesture. My brain was ready for action. It was time to Wake Up and Get Moving, because to my screwed up metabolism, decongestants are the next best thing to either popping speed or sucking down about ten pots of extra strong coffee in rapid succession, but without that heart-racing thing that caffeine gives me if I’ve had too much. Also, and perhaps more important than the whole pinging-off-the-walls effect, I can breathe without making lovely music through my nose. Is this stuff great or what?

But hey, at least I have discovered a way to combat the early morning lethargy that’s been plaguing me lately. Just pop one of these little suckers and for the next 24 hours I am wide awake and ready to go, go, go. There is also that little unpleasant dry mouth effect (because after all, the whole point of the decongestant is to dry out everything. And I do mean everything), but hey! I am SOOOOO wide-awake!

On the down side, I did not bring another pill with me to work today, which means that the last one started to wear off before the end of the day and I spent a miserable remaining hour or so at work getting progressively more and more stuffed up before I could go home and take another one and start the cycle of ping-ping-ping all over again.