General

OK, I admit it, maybe I bit off a little more than I can chew…

I still have three pair of pants that are pinned but not shortened,
a (lined) coat whose sleeves are three inches too long,
a tote bag with only one strap done that still needs felting and lining,
a leather purse/camera bag that is still in more pieces than it should be,
and a suitcase that only has various things I think I might pack piled in it.

How many hours are left until Saturday morning? How many of those hours need to be spent sleeping and working?

I thought about having the shortening done by someone else, but the super-fast place at the mall is gone, and the I can’t find anyone else who will do it in less than 5 business days. Which wouldn’t be a problem had I just decided to get this all done last week…except that I didn’t even get my coat until Monday. Gah! (Can you tell I’m a little panicked?)

Let’s see…

I only have the straps on my tote bag to finish knitting before I can felt it and make a lining, a couple of small alterations left on my purse/camera bag, and a pile of laundry left to fold. Oh, and a suitcase to pack, dog stuff to get ready and…

How did it get to be March already?!?

Blogging may continue to be a little sporadic. Too much to do, not enough time to do it all in – even with the leap day yesterday!

If you want to laugh – or maybe cry – get your hands on the Star Wars episode of the Muppet Show. Denis got the DVD for Christmas, and we watched it then, but I watched it again last night…it’s bad. Really awful, in fact. But it’s also funny in a “can-this-possibly-get-any-worse?!?” sort of way.

Images of C-3PO tap dancing are currently stuck in my head…

…Time to go spin or knit something pink…

I realize that complaining about the weather does absolutely no good – I live in Rochester, so snow is a fact of life for a good portion of the year. But this is getting ridiculous! The snow out on the deck is at least 2 feet deep. The deck is fairly sheltered from the wind, so we’re not talking snow drifts. How much does snow weigh, anyway? I wonder if I should start worrying that the deck will collapse…

Molly is rather indifferent about the snow. I think she’s got cabin fever, because she keeps asking to go out even when she doesn’t really need to. I wonder if she’s hoping that if she keeps going out, sooner or later it will be warm out there. I do feel badly, but it’s much too cold to walk them, plus there’s no shoulder anymore (in fact the road gets narrower every day) so it would be very dangerous. Murphy, on the other hand, literally bounds through snow that’s deeper than his legs are long. He digs in it, sticks his whole face in it, and loves to play any sort of snow game you can come up with – especially snowball catch. (Well, Molly likes that game too!)

I’m just ready for winter to end. That groundhog had better not see his shadow Monday morning or…or…or else!

How disappointing. I signed up for an Italian course that was supposed to start tomorrow night, but they called today to say it had been cancelled due to low enrollment.

I was also looking for a beginner’s spinning class, and found out that the most likely place to take one around here had one starting at the beginning of this month – and they’re not having another one until August. I hope I don’t still need a beginner’s class in August!

Oh, well, obviously I’m not supposed to take any classes this winter. I’ll just have to stay home and work on my spinning and knitting, and try not to get cabin fever. (Is the sun ever going to come out again? Will it ever be warm again?)

It’s. Too. Blasted. Cold.

I had to skip Sit & Knit tonight, because I wasn’t entirely sure I could get there and back in one piece – too many accounts of cars off the road. Plus, the poor thing wasn’t too happy about starting when I had to move it earlier today.

So, I watched Sister Act (yay for fun songs that are now stuck in my head!) and knitted for a bit here – not quite the same, but at least mildly productive. Oh, well. I suppose I could have at least made myself a cup of coffee…

Hey – tomorrow it’s supposed to be 10 whole degrees (F). I think I’ll open up the pool, it’ll be a regular heatwave! (Sorry, I’m feeling quite sarcastic towards the weather tonight. As if the weather cares.)

It’s downright icky out there – howling wind, blowing snow, the works. So, I’m taking advantage of being able to work from home today. Now I’m all cuddled up under a blankie, with my toasty laptop on my lap, and a mug of coffee on the table next to me.

Hopefully, the snoring puppies won’t make me too sleepy!

I’ve just been consumed with non-blogging activities lately…

Such as trying to figure out if it’s a) me, b) my camera in particular, or c) all canon digital rebels that take such horridly underexposed flash pictures. All I did to that one was re-size it for the web, although I can manage to edit it to something decent-looking. Just for clarification, that picture was taking during the day, in a room with plenty of windows, and with a big honkin’ flash (technical term) on top of the camera…and it’s not the only one I’ve taken that looks like that. I’d like to think I know what I’m doing with an SLR (I’ve had a film SLR for almost 10 years), and what I’m doing with a digital camera (I’ve had one of those for 3 years). And working for the big yellow box had perks like photography courses and darkrooms, of which I took full advantage…so, I’d like to think it’s not user error… Of course this would become a crisis just a couple of days before the end of the return period… I don’t know what exactly I’m going to do yet.

Then, there’s the fact that I spent a good portion of the week in waiting rooms at the hospital, leaving absolutely no time to clean up my house, so the disaster area turned into…well…at this point, if I torched the place it might be easier to deal with. :) So, that’s what I’m spending the weekend working on. (No, not torching the place – cleaning it.) Really. No knitting for this blogger until the craft room has a floor again. And the living room looks like a living room again. And the tree is out, the decorations are down, and the bathrooms sparkle. (How many hours are in a weekend, anyway?) Of course, I have great motivation to stay indoors, since it never even reached 6°F today.

Anyway. So, if I don’t blog too much over the next couple of days, that’s why. I’ll be cleaning. Or knitting…no, no, no….cleaning…mostly…with a little knitting, maybe? Please?

Grandpa came through the surgery fine, and was awake and talking when I left the hospital. Supposedly, they’re going to have him up and walking sometime tomorrow, which is amazing to me. He’s going to have a good bit of recovering to do, but all the doctors and nurses were very happy with his progress.

It was a very surreal day. A lot of my family was there (obviously), and we spent the day talking, laughing, crying, knitting (and crocheting), learning Italian (ok, I was the only one doing that) – it almost felt like a holiday at Grandma’s, except we were in the waiting room of a hospital. Yeah, surreal is a good word for it. When all was said and done, there were about 18 family members in and out all day – in fact, for dinner, we had a sheet pizza and a bucket of wings delivered right to the waiting room! (I didn’t know they could do that!)

Thank you all for your good wishes. They really meant a lot to me!