General

Remember those commercials with the cartoon people who got medicine head, and their head was shown floating on a balloon string above their body? I think that would be preferable to my head right now, which feels like it weighs an extra 50 lbs. I’m assuming that it’s allergies, since except for sinuses I feel just fine. It just makes it really hard to think very hard when your head weighs this much. Is it time to go home and take a nap yet?

I just got my digital camera back from being repaired, and they threw in a lens-cap holder – the one thing it had been missing since I got it 18 months ago. It’s like Christmas! Now if I could just get my sweater pattern in the mail, it would be even better. :)

How is it that one stupid little thing can throw an entire day off? I collided with someone carrying a full cup of hot coffee coming around a corner, and my poor yellow tank top is stained beyond recovery. Fortunately the coffee wasn’t hot enough to burn, as it hit my arm and my face, too. But now I can’t let it go. I’m sitting here in an ugly, uncomfortable polo shirt (I am happy that I could borrow a shirt, mind) that doesn’t go with my pants, and all I want to do is go hide in some corner and cry. I don’t usually let stupid stuff like this get to me. I feel like an idiot, since I actually did cry a bit in front of a couple of people. At work. How humiliating. And I can’t even use the excuse of hormones, since, well, it’s not the right time for that. Bleah. This day can’t end soon enough.

You realize how much you depend on electricity when the power goes out for an extended period of time. When we got home from work yesterday, the power had been out for at least a half-hour, and it took another hour before it came back. No biggie, I could play piano – if it wasn’t digital. OK, I could work on my quilt…the sewing machine and iron both require electricity. Clean? No hot water. There was battery life in my laptop, but no internet connection. I ended up working on my quilt, doing prep work that didn’t require sewing or ironing. It was rather pathetic. And hot. Air conditioning and fans, after all, require electricity. :)

I think I wake up better without an alarm. Saturday, I woke up at 6AM, rolled out of bed, and spent the next two hours happily working on my quilt while waiting for everyone to wake up. No alarm. Sunday, I dragged myself out of bed after hitting the snooze button several times so that I could get ready for 8AM mass. That felt like torture. But it was nothing compared to the ordeal of getting out of bed this morning. You would have thought somebody drugged me last night. I don’t know if it’s just Monday, or the realization that instead of doing something fun – like quilting, gardening, cleaning bathrooms, etc. – I had to go to work. OK, work isn’t as bad as cleaning bathrooms. But it’s nowhere near as fun as all the other stuff I could be doing right now. :P

In other news, it was a very fun weekend visiting with my one-year-old twin nieces. I might post a picture or two when I get home tonight – as well as pictures of the four quilt blocks I finished over the weekend.

So after the hottest, driest three weeks I can remember, my mom and I went out and dug three huge holes in my weed-choked back garden. Why? To save some very pretty Russian sage. My parents had some landscaping done, and didn’t have a place for their Russian sage – besides which, my mom is allergic to it. Now I have something that isn’t weeds in my garden, and sore muscles to prove that I dug the holes. I also figured out why my pepper plants are dying one-by-one…some little critter is chewing through the base of the stalks. Grrr. On my way home, I’m going to get some wire mesh to wrap around the base of each remaining plant. Hopefully that will help. As it is, I’m down to three completely undamaged plants, and a couple that probably won’t survive.

Last night we introduced my brother and his girlfriend to the world of sushi. We went to Plum House, which Denis thinks has relatively authentic Japanese food. I think they enjoyed it – I even got to try a couple of new rolls. I also got to see both of their apartments, and check out S’s collection of quilts – ones she made, and ones that were gifts. I was inspired by the quilts and went home to my craft room, finished one quilt block and cut all the pieces for two more. Now if only I didn’t have to spend this evening cleaning house in preparation for out-of-town guests, I’d actually be caught up with the first set of quilt blocks. Oh, well.

So, over the past 72 hours, we’ve dumped 11 gallons of liquid chlorine in the pool. It’s slightly better – you can see the bottom of the deep end, but it’s still murky-ish – but when we test the water there is zero chlorine floating around in there.

Not only that, but one of the chlorine bottles tipped over in the trunk and leaked all over my favorite brown corduroy jacket. We did some emergency surgery and cut off the pocket that had a big hole in it to prevent more damage to the rest of the jacket, but there are other, smaller holes and it bleached the brown completely away in various random places. It’s years old, and Land’s End doesn’t have them listed on their website. I could maybe patch up the holes and put on new pockets, but it will never be the same. <sniffle> A search online turned up this jacket. It doesn’t come in chocolate brown, it’s expensive, and it might make me look shorter than I already am, but it’s a very pretty jacket, and, well, you can’t have too many jackets when you live in Rochester.

I finished the Mystery Knitting Project – and gave it away – so I can finally blog about it. Yay! There are all sorts of neat pictures on my craft pages.

I can’t have a get-together involving the pool. It’s just not possible. If the weather manages to cooperate, the pool doesn’t. Ignore the pool for a few days, and the chemicals just go completely out-of-whack. It was such a beautiful day. The water temperature was ideal. You just couldn’t see the bottom of the blasted pool, due to the lovely dead algae. Of course, we couldn’t find the problem before the pool stores closed on Saturday. Amazingly enough, Wegmans had liquid chlorine and algicide, but it was just too late. BTW, how on earth do you spell “algicide”? That really doesn’t look right. :P