He was 11 1/2 years old, and seemed to be in good health.  He helped me with my bath Thursday morning, and tried to steal Sweetie's special food at about 5 Thursday afternoon.  When we got home at 6:30, he was dying - probably from a stroke or heart attack.  He'd crawled into a box.  I found him there, comatose and with his legs paralyzed. There was no reaction to light at all when I checked his eyes.  He died in my arms - not that he knew it, but I had to hold him and tell him we'd miss him - about 30 minutes later. 

He was a funny cat.  His fur was long and short, grey and white, he had tufts between his toes and on his ears - he looked like he was made of left over kitten parts.  His tail was stubby and he wagged it like a dog all the time.  It was actually deformed; the bones had fused in a tight circle that you could feel and which our vet said is a SF Bay Area birth defect.

Originally Ken called him Little GreyGuy, but as he grew larger than his mom, we dropped "little".  GreyGuy was incredibly sweet.  He loved us fiercely, and was a champion cuddler.  He had the sweetest little meow, often preferring the heart-breaking silent meow as he pawed the air with one front paw.

When Sylvia had her next litter of kittens, GreyGuy was about 6 months old, and he was the best big brother!  He baby sat the kittens and made sure they stayed together.  If one got out, he carried it back just like Mom would.  In fact, the first time I "met" GreyGuy he was babysitting the kittens of another feral Momcat, and he hissed at me when I got too close.  He might have been 3 months old at the time.

Sylvia and GreyGuy made the huge leap of faith to become formerly feral house cats, and GreyGuy was never comfortable outside again.  He loved sleeping in the sun, playing with laser light beams, catnip and people food.  He'd try any people food once.  Yoga was always more difficult when he was around - he was sure that the poses were excuses to play kitty games.

Say hi to Sylvia, Myrddin, Echo, Maya, KittyHawk and FunnyFace when you see them at the Rainbow Bridge.  We miss you.

With the current economic state of affairs, I can't be sorry that I have enough work to feel overwhelmed much of the time; from a personal standpoint, I wouldn't mind a little less craziness.  From now until the end of 2009, my weeks are already full of meetings and projects and deadlines.

Much fun was had in October!  In fact, because I spent most of last weekend stuck in a high-end hotel in San Francisco for work, tomorrow is a rare during-the-week day off and I expect to have even more fun then.  It's amazing how much less fun it is to be in an expensive hotel when you know many of your co-workers are also there, and that work is scheduled to start at 4 a.m.!

In early October I attended Create Art Now! which is a workshop / adult day camp / play day sort of thing.  There were tables and tables of craft materials, items for inspiration, tools and such.  We were given a box to fill with things that inspired or interested us, and then let loose for 6 hours of creating! (I was there to introduce people to knitting with wire and beads, and will follow up with a few folks for 1 on 1 instruction.) This was so much fun!  It's been years since I sat and played at creating for any length of time; I'd almost forgotten how!

Here's what I made:

An IKEA frame decorated with dominos.

Another IKEA frame decorated with buttons (still needs more buttons to cover some bare spaces).

An unidentified frame with Scrabble tiles.

A pin made of colorful jigsaw puzzle pieces.

None of these are real art or masterpieces or anything like that, but they all amuse me and make me smile.  They were fun to make, and it surprised me how easily I was inspired to create something when the raw materials and tools were collected and provided for me to use.  I came home with seashells, more buttons, watch pieces and many more odd items and ideas for ways to use them.

As a reward, I took Friday off and had a 3-day weekend.  It was all the sweeter because Ken and a friend were on a road trip to deliver a car to Darrell's son in San Diego (and drive the old car back home) and I had three whole days to myself!  It's the first time in 10 years I've had this much time alone, and I really wanted - needed - enjoyed it.

Friday I headed to San Francisco for some shopping.  I ended up having lunch with a bunch of co-workers who are moving to a new office in a nearby town, shopping at Britex for fabric, Macy's for shoes and such and finally went to Sephora for the first time ever and got a make-over for fall.  The only fabric I really wanted at Britex as Scottish wool, and for $225 a yard I think it should sew itself!

Saturday I went to San Jose for a spa day at my favorite spa, La Concha.  The massage was wonderful, even though Sofia finally gave up on the knots in my back.  The pedicure came with a leg massage, and the facial (my favorite part) included an arm, shoulder and upper back massage.  I practically had to be poured into the car!

Dinner was lovely!  Joan and Will grilled burgers for some delightful neighbors that I've "met" electronically and it was great fun to meet them in person.  Dinner was wonderful, especially Joan's potato salad creation.

Today was catch up day - grocery shopping, refrigerator cleaning, laundry - all the stuff that must be done.  Some knitting has been done, lots of reading and football-watching occurred, and I'm rested, relaxed and ready to spend time with Ken.

I hope your weekend was wonderful too!

I knew it had to be lace of some sort, with glossy dark beads.

(Don't panic.  Never mind that I don't knit lace, I don't knit with beads and I don't design knitted objects.)

I found the perfect yarn in my stash:

Well aged KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud in the Autumn color.  (How well aged?  How long has KnitPicks been in business?  This was from my first order from them where I ordered 1 skein of every yarn to try.)

Today I finally found the beads I've envisioned:

I like them together too.  My apologies for the wicked glare; nothing I did made it better.

All that's left is to find the perfect stitch.  And swatching.  And learning to knit with beads.

The likely stitch candidates are all from the Barbara Walker books, mostly the 2nd one.  I'm considering Starlight  Lace, Star Cluster, Porcupine Stitch, Lace Background Stitch and Shell Pattern.  There's a pattern for sale called Star Mesh Scarf and I love the stitch - hate to buy the pattern just for the stitch but I might have to. 

It's the beginning of a new month, and soon Autumn will be here.  Already leaves are starting to fall from the trees - not is great drifts, but single leaves that are crisp and dry.  No beautiful colors yet, but perhaps this year we'll have some color.

August was a tough month, work-wise.  Lots of work to be done and not enough hours to do it in makes for few blog posts and a grumpy writer.  A few good changes were made last month, and even though September promises to be busy too, I'm more centered and happier.

Facebook finally became part of my daily routine.  I don't expect it to replace blogging, but it's interesting: my nephew and 2 nieces are there, and I've had some nice chats with my brother and friends I haven't seen since high school and college.  Moving away from my family and friends was the right choice for me, but now it feels really good to reconnect with people who knew me way back when.

The garden is what it is this year.  I've not replanted what the gopher took, but am examining my options for gopher control next year. We've eaten cherry tomatoes (red, yellow, green grape and black), beans and lots of herbs from the garden, as well as spinach and rainbow chard.  We've even eaten the first tangerines from the tree we "discovered" covered by old climbing roses in the yard, and they were wonderfully fragrant and sweet.  The tomatoes are finally ripening, and we may be buried in tomatillos and chiles! The figs are just getting ripe and are almost too sweet, if that's possible.  Soon we'll have pears, apples and pomegranates too.

Knitting continues.  Big surprise, huh?  The realization that I don't have to knit every sweater I wear finally whacked me over the head, and I'm spending more time on smaller quick gratification projects.  The sweaters are still in rotation but not to the exclusion of fun knitting.  Same with sewing and quilting.  

The title pretty much says it all!  Life and stuff is getting back to what passes for normal around here.

• As of 1:15 PT today, texting from my ancient Treo 650 is possible.  Getting voicemail is possible.  Internet connectivity still eludes me, and that's annoying, but the basic functionality is there.
• Our water heater has been replaced and Ken says the hot water is better now.  (PG&E noticed, when relighting the pilot after replacing the gas line from the main to our meter, that we had a rather major-ish leak in the plumbing going into the water heater.  Of course it needed replacing.
• Telephone, Cable TV and Internet connectivity have been restored.  We came home one night last week, and had no connections to those services.  The Comcast rep said they'd made "minor transparent change" and that "we'd never notice it" which didn't exactly give me warm fuzzies since I was calling because we'd noticed it!  Forty-five minutes and 3 recycles of the modem and switch and we were back online.
• Power has been restored to the master bedroom and bath.  Same might as the connectivity issues we went in to watch the newly-restored cable TV only to find no electrical power in that part of the house.  Found a tripped circuit, reset it and watched it trip every 30 seconds for about 5 minutes until we realized what had happened.  PG&E has been replacing plain vanilla electric meters with SmartMeters that send a signal about usage back to PG&E, allowing them to shut off or restart power remotely.  That signal trips one circuit breaker every time.  This happened about 6 months ago when our meter was initially replaced.  11 pm found us outside with the nice repairman, replacing the old meter and putting a big old red tag on it: Don't replace this with a SmartMeter.
• I have a new crockpot.  It is the first of 2 that will replace the wedding gift version that finally wore out.  It's hard to eat dinner at a reasonable time without one!
• Socks have been finished!  A pair of Jaywalkers, and 3 single socks.  I'll show you when the camera and the socks are in the same room!

My ancient Treo 650 stopped recognizing my internet user name and password a couple of months ago.  No biggie, but I was passing an AT&T store the other day so I went in to ask them to check - was I using the right ones?

Somehow, it ended with them insisting I needed a new SIM card - sounded reasonable, after all the phone is almost 5 years old - so one was installed.  

Since then, it doesn't notify me of voicemail.

I can't send email.

I can't text.

I can't tweet!

Oh, and my internet connectivity is non-existent. Worse than before.

Tomorrow I get to go back to the AT&T store, and demand: 1) a new new SIM card, 2) a substantial credit on my bill, 3) a new phone of my choice.  (That bums me out; I want a Pre, and AT&T doesn't carry it. Sprint / Nextel is unreliable in our neighborhood and in downtown SF.  Poop!)

Thanks for letting me vent!

Now I'm waiting for the commercial...

We went over budget by $92.94!  Not so good, and this is harder than I thought.

First some good stuff:  I took breakfast in every day (except Friday, when I worked at home), and saved $32. 

(That's Irish Breakfast tea with non-fat half and half, one hard cooked egg, and a mini bagel from H&H in NYC with Smart Balance and home-made sugar-free blackberry preserves.  Yum!)

I also brought lunch (or it was provided) 4 of 5 days, saving $40.  I did have lunch out with a friend once.  $75 was transferred to our savings account tonight.  (I've always felt we couldn't possibly tuck more money away in savings, yet this was relatively painless and it will mount up quickly.)

Ken actually ate lunch twice this week - he usually has just an orange - so that was some unanticipated spending.

Here's the breakdown:

• Farmer's Market and Planet Organics spending:  $29.01 
• Grocery store spending on people food:  $65.73
• Grocery store spending on cat food:  $33.20
• Meals out at work: $20.00
• Dinner out Friday night: $30.00
• Brunch at a new-to-us deli in SF Saturday:  $40

TOTAL: $217.94

As it turned out, the cats were out of much of their food, so we needed 3 bags of dry Iams this week; usually it's one or 2.  Sweetie was almost out of her favorite dry food, and needed more canned.  She's 16 and showing her age so she gets whatever she is willing to eat.  Still, that's only $8.20 of the overage.

Meals away from home were the real culprits.  I completely forgot to defrost anything for Friday night, and Ken really wanted to eat at a favorite dive, so we did.  Brunch at the new-to-us deli was a treat we'd promised ourselves for quite some time, and it was good enough we'll be doing it monthly if possible.

Good stuff 2: The total included a Caprese salad we took to a potluck one night (where it fed 6), and we're finally making use of meat and poultry from the freezer.  It's quite well stocked, and I usually forget to take anything out for dinner in time for thawing. We also fed a friend who dropped by unexpectedly one night, and it was easier than going out.

More good stuff: We enjoyed our dinners at home, although Ken would still prefer to eat out several times a week.  He likes no cleanup, and that's just not possible at home.  There was much less wasted food, and the fridge is empty enough for me to pack breakfast and lunch in my insulated bag the night before, so I didn't forget it this week.  

So what did we eat?

(Sunday I don't remember!) Monday, we had Hebrew National reduced-fat hot dogs on whole wheat buns (Ken loves hot dogs and would eat them a couple of times a week!) with spinach salad.

Tuesday was burger night, also on whole wheat buns, with Caprese salad.

Wednesday we had marinated steak (from the freezer), baked potatoes, Italian broccoli sauteed with garlic and red onions, tossed salad and whole wheat bread.

Thursday, I sauteed chicken breasts with Mexican spices and chicken broth.  We had Yukon Gold potatoes, green beans and onions and green salad.

Friday we ate out, and Saturday we had left-over pastrami and corned beef sandwiches from the deli, potato salad (from leftover Yukon Gold potatoes) and green beans.  

So far, so good.  This is a challenge for me, and I'm enjoying it!

This bed was full a week ago!  There was a "3 Sisters" planting of 12 corn plants in 2 circles around an Israeli melon in one and a squash plant in the other.  Squash plants filled the empty corners and there were 50 bean vines using the corn stalks as support.  Now?  Lemon thyme, oregano and a couple of volunteer tomatoes and beans are all that's left.  (I did rip out a couple of blackberries just on general principles.)

See how the stem is just chopped off at the root?  Gopher's eat roots, and just like in cartoons, they try to pull the whole plant into their tunnel.  The corn stalks just disappeared!  Others like this bean, wilt and get dry because they have no roots.  (This bed had Blue Lake Green Beans, Kentucky Wonder Green Beans, Romano Bush Beans, pickling cucumbers and long red beans.  The coffee grounds seemed to be a deterrent for a couple of weeks, but no more.)

Want to see something funny?

THis lovely 6+ foot tall plant is Gopher Purge, an herb that's supposed to repel gophers.  There's a gopher trail running right at the base of this one.

That's a Gopher Purge seedling right next to a rootless bean vine.  Doesn't appear to work well, does it?

But you know, as unhappy as I've been over losing plants to gophers, it dawned on me today that I have more seeds and can plant them anytime.  Our growing season will last at least 3 more months - last year I had fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving - and there's plenty of time for a new planting of everything lost to mature.

Pffft!  Take that, you gopher vermin! 

That pretty much pushed me over the edge.  Well, that and the fact that I cleaned out the refrigerator in the kitchen this week.  (I'm specifying, because we have a freezer and another refrigerator in the shop.  That one will get cleaned someday, right after I find my bio-hazard suit!)

We eat well - probably too well - and we are too wasteful with food.  This is not the royal American we, this is the two of us who live in this house.  I filled a grocery bag full of dead and dying veggies that got pitched into the green waste bins - carrots, leeks, kale, radishes, romaine, green beans and other things I've managed to forget. I also pitched a few science experiments and alternative life forms while I was at it, and now the fridge is almost empty.

I try to have a healthy breakfast every morning at work, because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  (I really do believe this.) I've sampled all the oatmeal offerings within a couple of blocks of my San Francisco Financial District office, and find that Starbuck's is the one I prefer.  (Tully's is a close second, Jamba Juice would be 3rd, Portico is 4th - theirs was cold and gloppy, and San Francisco Soup Company should stick to soups!)  That and my preferred Venti non-fat no foam no water extra hot 6 pump Chai sets me back $6.40 every morning.  (You know I go to Starbuck's way too often.  They take my re-used bag and fill it with oatmeal and my chosen toppings, and the baristas all know my drink preference.  Breakfast is generally ready by the time I get to the register and I don't even have to talk!)  That's $32 a week, plus tip.

Lunch should be easy to bring in, but when we leave the house at 6:40 am I am happy if I have my clothes buttoned correctly and my shoes match.  Getting a lunch packed and into my bag just never happens.  Even packing lunch the night before doesn't always work - I have to remember to get it out and stowed. So I buy lunch, which probably averages $10 to $12 daily.  That's $50 to $60 a week for lunch.

That's pretty appalling - I spend $80 to $100 a week on food to eat away from home!

We also eat out a lot for dinner.  My commute is about 45 minutes on BART, and I get to the station at about 6.  Often I have no idea what's for dinner, so Ken makes his favorite: reservations!  (Actually, most of our favorite dining establishments either don't take reservations or don't require them for "regulars".)

Really, I'd rather cook.  I love to bake.  So why don't I?  

It's a pain to cook for 2 people.  Ken doesn't like many of the foods I like.  I haven't planned weekly menus since I was in college and married to my first husband whose cooking skills consisted of reheating TV dinners.  We  tend to buy produce at the Farmer's Markets without a plan and often don't get around to using it.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that we're going to try eating on $50 a week per person, with an additional $25 a week to cover food for our 12 cats.  Obviously one goal is to spend less and waste less.  I hope we'll try some new foods and recipes.  We will be eating healthier and I want to lose some weight too. 

Menu planning and planning ahead for my breakfasts and lunches will happen this weekend.  I'll be planning around the Planet Organics delivery (which I'll review to make sure we get produce we'll actually use), whatever the gopher leaves in the garden, and the various Farmer's Markets offerings.  (We are quite luckly to have 4 Farmer's Markets each week; sometimes it's too much of a good thing!)

Wish me luck!

Instead, tonight's post is a list of things I've spent time on recently.

1. Gophers.  This is self-explanatory to anyone who has a garden or gophers or both.  I've lost all my corn plants, at least 2 dozen bean plants, 6 large squash plants, Israeli melons and cucumbers to gophers this summer.  They've climbed up the side of my raised bed (can't burrow under because the beds are lined with wire mesh) and are making me angry!  Coffee grounds work a bit as a deterrent and I've ordered a solar-powered noise generator.  We'll see. 

2.  Weather.  It's been hot.  It's been cooler than normal.  SF is back to normal, which means fog and maybe drizzle every morning, and a high temp of about 65*.  This makes it really interesting getting ready for work, because at home it's generally 65* when I leave the house at o'dark thirty, and in the high 80s or low 90s when I come home.   We even had another heat wave this past weekend, when it was too hot to do anything and so I didn't.

3.  Cats.  Gotta love 'em!  They've been driving me nuts.  Clawdette has decided my old leather sofa is the best ever scratching post and now Murphy and Maynard agree.  I see trips to the vet and declawing in my future.  (Yes, I know what declawing is, and I've not declawed a cat in years.  I will not allow a cat to destroy leather furniture - or in Clawdette's case, calls and doorjambs - and I have tried all the remedies and tricks learned in 30 years of cat coexistence.  Don't tell me how cruel I am.  Really.)

4.  Housework.  Laundry keeps piling up.  We have to eat and that generally creates dirty dishes.  Groceries must be purchased and put away.  Cat boxes must be scooped.  Bills have to be paid.  Yadda yadda yadda.  What did Phyllis Diller say?  Wash clothes, clean the house and 6 months later you have to do it all over again?

5.  Putting food by.  Canning.  Freezing. Drying.  Preserving.  Love to do it, but it takes time.  It's so worth it in the winter when fresh veggies and fruit are hard to find, even in CA.

6.  Work

7.  Decluttering

8.  Volunteer work of various sorts

9.  Reading

'Nuff said for now.  Photos await the next entry, which I think will be soon!

That's me, after a wonderful Independence Day weekend.

I didn't have a holiday from work, although Ken was off on Friday.  Still, we slept in on Saturday and Sunday, but were awake and up before the alarm both days.  I read, did laundry, gardened, volunteered, planned a quilt, finished a sock, started a new sock...all things that make me happy.  The only fireworks we watched were on TV, and we saw all the best - the Capital, Macy's New York and Boston.

It was lovely and much cooler than last weekend, which was much more normal for most places, just not for the Bay Area.  Most homes here have no AC of any sort (other than fans), so 98* is pretty miserable.  We grilled and ate on the porch Saturday night, and we both wore sweatpants, sweatshirts and socks; we went in at 9 because it was too cold to stay out - 61*.

I made a wonderful - we thought - potato salad with basil, and I will post the recipe later.  Right now I'm going to fold some laundry, take a luxurious bath, and get ready for work tomorrow.  I don't want to be rushed, and I hope the contentment lasts a while!

I love (usually) the end result, but I often hate the process.  It's hard on my hands - and knitting needles - and it makes me crazy trying to get nice even stitches.

Still, every so often I just have to do it.

Several years ago, we spent Christmas with my family at their cabin in the mountains of New Mexico. It was cold and snowy, and I spent the evenings knitting wire and bead bracelets.  Here are a couple of them:

The pattern is from Interweave Knits, I think.  I really should find the issue, because I want to make more of them!

As part of my Summer of Indulgence, I bought lots of beads.  See?

Beads and 26-gauge copper and brass wire in colors I love and will wear, and a progress photo of my first (and possibly last attempt at this pattern.  Have you ever tried k3tog with wire?)

Using the pattern in Lace Style, I made this:

I do like it, but the cuff style is not my favorite.  It would make a lovely candle ring or something, and itwill certainly serve the desired purpose: showing knitting as an art to hig school students!

Yes indeedy, I'm going to indulge myself in any way that pleases me.  There will be no knitting to a deadline, no  veggies planted because they're good fo me, no weekends full of to-dos.  Instead, there will be weekends left open to explore new places and new things, plants grown because they make me happy and knitting - whether sweaters or swatches - because it makes me smile.

I've begun laying in supplies, much like frontier women did for the winter.

So far, I've amassed many (20?) new knitting magazines for my reading pleasure.  I'm also digging out some old issues that inspire me.

There's a pile of beads, 24- and 26-gauge wire and metal knitting needles.  Several years ago I knit bracelets from beads and wire - quick, fun and different.  I've been asked to take part in a "craft and hobby as art" demonstration this Fall, and knitted wire might be just the thing!  Tonight, Ken showed me a pile of multi-colored twisted pair telephone wire, and immediately I had a project in mind for it.

Yarn has been purchased.  Not a lot, mind you, but yarn for specific sweaters that I've wanted to make for several years, and that will be worn a lot.  Some yarn is being re-purposed; bought with a specific project in mind, and now I've changed my mind.  Other yarn is becoming available as sweaters are picked apart and unraveled.

There is a summer quilt in my future.  It's bright, silly, funny and quirky, and the owner of the quilting store is reserving judgment until she sees the finished product. It's going to be great fun to make.

Fabric for clothing has been purchased.  There was a time when I made all my clothes - tailored suits for myself and the then-current spousal unit too.  Now I rarely even sew on a button and I miss the impeccable fit that self-made clothes have.  We'll see if I can remember how to tailor.  Britex Fabrics had 50% off on remnants sale last week (their remnants are divine: 1 to 3 yards and more of the most wonderful Italian wools and blends, for example, already 50% off of ridiculously high per-yard prices) and I got enough Italian stretch wool fabric for 2 suits and a skirt for less than $100!

There's a pile of flour sack dishcloths next to a pile of embroidery transfers.  Crewel yarn and canvas, needlepoint yarn and different canvas.  

The vegetable garden is well under way.  I've planted 16 tomatoes, some herbs and lots of beans.  There are still cucumbers, squash, corn, more beans, eggplants, greens, carrots and radishes to plant.  Fortunately for planting - but not for getting veggies - it's still cool here.  Aside from the week of hot weather in May, it's been at least 10* below normal for the past couple of weeks, and will continue that way to mid-next week. 

Fun gardening is happening too.  The formal rose garden is becoming an English cottage garden.  The new patio plantings are tropical.  Areas of the yard that have been ignored for years are being turned into secret garden hideaways.  I'm having such fun!

In other news, I've started making new recipes that sound good.  Mr. Ken isn't always thrilled with them, but he's eating them anyway.  We've found a couple that are keepers.  Ken is eating some things he's not crazy about, and not minding too much. 

The front room is full, completely full of (mostly) donated bookshelves, desks and the like for the museum where I volunteer.  We should have a new gift shop sometime this summer, and I'll have a front room again.

Photos, inspirations and an updated blog and new links to follow soon, but now it's back to work.  (Yes, it's 10 pm.  I'm working on an install that will probably take at least 3 more hours, but that's OK.  I love what I do, and it allows me to do all these other wonderful things!)

At the end of 3 days (which felt like 4 because I telecommuted on Friday) I was rested, refreshed, sunburned and happily tired.  I'd also accomplished many tasks and realized that I was rapidly becoming a grumpy, frumpy drudge.

And it's really true.  Daily life was drudgery, work was drudgery, weekends were too. The house was a cluttered mess, I was behind on answering email, sending packages and cards, and I resented every responsibility (real or imagined), even Ken and the cats.

And I finally realized it was because I hadn't done anything just because I wanted to in ages.  Examples:

• much gardening work on the front flower beds
• lots of volunteer work at several different places
• working too many hours and too many late night
• craft projects that "should be done"
  
• cooking the same "safe" meals over and over
• exercise? diet? 
  

There are more examples, I'm sure.  But now, let's examine these.

Gardening:  I wanted to plant lots of veggies - tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, corn, herbs - and build more raised beds.  I wanted to finish my Roy G. Biv garden, which had gotten pushed off again.  I wanted pretty pots of plants by the door that we actually use.

What was I doing?  Lots of work on the front yard, which does need to look OK since it faces the street; however, we don't use the front door or front porch currently.  The side and back porches and doors, which we use daily,  were boring and badly in need of sprucing up.  The patio serves as our living room in the summer, and it certainly needed work.  Veggies?  Just a tiny little plot.

Volunteer work: Necessary to nourish my soul; 'nuff said for now. 

Work Work:  Necessary on many levels, especially since I like being able to buy yarn and plants and food.  But is it really necessary to work 50 and 60 hour weeks?  Why haven't I taken time to go home for "Christmas" yet?   All work and no break makes Diann a grumpy woman!

Craft projects: Our master bedroom needed a new look, so I was trying to make a quilt.  My MIL loves the socks I knit for her and wants a purple shawl, so I've been working on those.   And on and on...

This soft green silk yarn is calling me, I want to knit Sandrine, I really need some embroidered dish towels, there's wreaths and clothes and mending and needlepoint and crewel and sewing and quilting and yarn to dye - what am I waiting for?

Cooking: Ken is a picky eater - he's from NYC, and there's nothing in CA to compare; just ask!  His mother is a continental-trained European cook: when asked what food he remembers his mother cooking, his answer is Coq Au Vin, Sauerbrauten and the like.  I remember enchiladas, pot roast and so on.  Ken won't eat mushrooms, olives, okra, sweet potatoes and yams, Granny Smith apples, figs, plums and squash, and most fish.  My cooking rut is enormous - I make the same 5 meals over and over because Ken will eat them.

I love to bake: bread, pies, cakes and cookies.  I love preserving food, and making sauces, and experimenting with new recipes.  

Exercise? Diet? Me time? : Last fall, I started using SparkPeople and lost 10 pounds (3 between Thanksgiving and New Years Day!).  I've kept those 10 off, but haven't lost any more.  Exercise takes a back seat to everything else and that's bad.  Going out to lunch is SF is a great excuse for a brisk walk, unless you head to the food court in the building and get take out!  We have 2 pianos; you'd think I might make time to play once in a while.  Personal tune ups?  The monthly massage-pedicure-facial hasn't happened in at least a year and maybe 2!

This may all sound negative and sad and stupid, but it's been a revelation and a relief! 

1.  There's a lip balm in my purse, in my DayTimer, on the vanity and on my home office desk.  Two are Chapstick Mint, 1 is Burt's Bees and the one in my home office is new: Good and Plenty (licorice) flavored!  It's so good I'll have to be careful or the chapped lips will get worse, not better.

2.  Ken's parents survived the recent Santa Barbara fire, as did their house.  They were evacuated on Wednesday; by Thursday night both sounded stressed.  FIL played golf Friday morning and MIL had a massage and got her hair done - they sounded much better that night.

3.  We went to the symphony on Saturday night on a whim.  Back when we dated, we had season tickets to the symphony but that seems like centuries ago now.  It was fun, and we are planning to get season tickets to the SF Symphony so Ken can see Michael Tilson Thomas.

4.  Work continues to kick my butt!  This week is the last really crazy one for a while, and I'm ready for a calm patch.  I do love it, but the constant deadlines are making me a little nuts - I was dreaming about installations last night, which is so NOT a good thing.

5.  Knitting progress is suffering.  I am making lots of swatches, but have a hard time concentrating on anything very complex - more than 2 x 2 ribbing, for example.

6.  Naps are wonderful.  (I sat down Saturday afternoon to have a cup of tea and read for a bit.  Ken woke me 2 hours later so I could dress for the symphony!)

7.  I'm behind on gardening too.  The seedlings are growing and healthy, but this weekend I've got to plant the beans!

8.  Even though little progress is being made on real projects, everything inspires me.  The color of the sky, lacy leaves against a building, petals falling to the ground - all suggest new projects to me.  I'm capturing as many ideas as possible in photos so they can tide me over the next completely uncreative phase (which I know will come).

9.  Life is just plain wonderful!

That means I'll probably leave the office early again tomorrow!  More hooky playing!

(Last week, I did the grocery shopping while playing hooky.  Not very exciting, but it freed up Sunday for gardening.)

Speaking of gardening, besides the little veggie garden, I also worked in one of the flower beds on the patio.

  A couple of years ago, I ripped out some pathetic ferns and planted tropical-ish house plants.  They're protected from frost by the patio roof, but still can get rained on.  The experiment has been quite successful so far, and this year I started trimming and shaping the plants.  That created a bit of space under the larger plants for some color - geraniums and impatiens.

This is the rest of that particular flower bed.   It's about 10 feet long and a couple of feet wide, separating the house from the workshop.

Usually the raised beds are planted by mid-April at the latest; this year I've not even ripped out the remains of last years plants yet.  It's been raining at odd intervals, and while we do need the rain, it's not good for tomatoes to get rained on in cool weather.

This is a brick-bordered flower bed at the edge of the covered patio.  I haven't planted anything in it for a couple of years because I'm planning to redo that section of the yard, including ripping out the brick border and lots of concrete paths.  This year it dawned on me that I'm not going to get that done this summer (more likely in the fall) and that vegetables are annuals!

The little tomato plants sure look silly in those big old cages!  If I wait a couple of weeks, the plants are big enough to make it difficult to cage them without damage.  

Here's the rundown:  2 tomato plants (yellow pear, red cherry), 1 habanero chile (Ken's choice*), 2 basil plants, 6 spinach plants and 24 marigolds.  The marigolds are to protect the other plants from insects and such.

The weekend was fabulous - gardening and plants and knitting and reading - and Monday I had jury duty.  Fortunately this county has a "one day or one trial" rule, so that's over with for another year.  Just in case I actually had to report, I telecommuted for work, which meant I was able to garden from 6:45 to 8:15. 

It's amazing how much gardening can happen in 90 minutes.

Last year I started a Roy G. Biv garden along the driveway.  (It's a long driveway; Roy G. Biv is 50 feet long - up to the front edge of the carport.)  Starting at the carport end, last year the violet, indigo, blue and green sections were planted with mostly perennials or self-seeding annuals.  It's filled out nicely and some of the annuals I'd forgotten about (Antique Shades pansies) wintered over and are flowering!

Yesterday I planted the orange section - Lion's Tail, orange Siberian Wallflower and an orange gallardia or African Daisy as well as California Poppies.  Ken loves them, and Lord knows, they do reseed.  A couple more perennials are needed - daylilies, perhaps - and then it's off to the yellow and red areas.  I have a couple of plants for each, as well as a couple for the blue and violet (which shades to black) areas.

There was even time, while watering in the new plants, to weed and trim the green and blue sections.  It looks much better!

A little knitting has been done, but I've been so drained - not tired, just out of patience and concentration - that it's been mostly swatches.  

Reading has been mindless murder mysteries which are familiar and comforting.  I ordered a bunch of books from Amazon - they arrived last Wednesday - and I finally opened the box Saturday.  Knitting magazines are piling up too. 

It's going to be a great couple of weeks!

This week may be almost as long.  When I left last night, I'd worked 33 hours, and I've worked another couple at home since.  Right now it's 9:30 am, and I'm sitting in my bathrobe, eating cereal and drinking tea.  I have an install in the office that cannot begin until 6 pm, so I won't go in until 2 or so.  

The crazy part?  Conference status calls scheduled for 10 pm, 1 am and 4 am!

The bad part?  Since it's in the office I can't take the sweaters to be seamed and work on them.  Later in the evening/earlier in the morning I can knit (something simple) while we're paused for a stage check, but I know that the brain power to do anything complex just won't be there at all!

Wandering around the garden this morning was wonderful.  It's been 40* (or less) at night the past week or so - which is about the same as in the winter here - and I was a little worried about the plants.  Everything is fine, especially the weeds and native grasses!  The chard and lettuces are growing well enough that I see chard with dinner this weekend.

The roses are blooming nicely.

  This is Glamis Castle, an English rose.  It's covered with smallish (4 inch diameter) blooms.  Not much fragrance on a cool morning, but the warmer afternoon really brings out the sweet, heady scent.

It's suppsed to be a lovely and warm (hot?) weekend.  Bay area spring weather is truly schizophrenic - cold and windy, cool and sunny, rainy and warm - until June when it settles into foggy mornings and nice afternoons.

I'll be back with FOs, Stitches West purchases and who knows what else after this installation is complete.

I managed to sleep in this morning until 7:25, treated myself to breakfast out, worked a few hours, napped a bit, and did stuff around the house.   Here's what I've accomplished that isn't work related, while doing my job:

1.  Ordered flowers for my Granny to enjoy on her 98th birthday tomorrow!

2.  Ordered books (knitting, of course, for me) and a surprise for another blogger - who lives elsewhere, but whom I've met. 

3.  Cleaned out my files, tossed 2 bags of paper junk from the office, packed up a shipping box of office/school supplies for the neighborhood freecycle equivalent.

4.  Managed to get Advantage on 8 of the cats.  They hate the idea and the application, but we all love the end result.

5.  Laundry - does it ever end?  Sheets, a comforter, whites, reds, greens...this always reminds me of Ken's observation of why men and women are different:  men have white laundry and black laundry; women have red laundry and green laundry and delicate laundry...

6.  Wandered in the yard and photographed some of the early roses.  Here's Peace, one of my favorites:

  Note the raindrops on the petals.  We had a lovely rainy day today, and it was great napping weather!

7.  Finally finished the Serape Sweater, seen only in a slightly arty shot:

Noro Kureyon, colorway 83.  The pattern is from Saturday Knits, which I love.   It took about 15 skeins of yarn, and special buttons from Britex Fabrics.  

I'm so wearing this to work tomorrow!

8.  Ordered more sweater patterns.  There were a couple from Lion Brand that I've coveted for ages, Garter Yoke Cardigan from Knit 1 (an issue that I seem to have missed) and Sandrine and Cassidy ,  new designs from Chic Knits.

9.  Replaced about a thousand burned out light bulbs.  Oddly enough, and I'm not happy about this, every bulb I replaced was fluorescent, including several that have been in the fixtures a shorter time than the incandescent  bulbs they should outlast.  What's the deal?

I'd planned to spend my downtime knitting, perhaps finishing the seaming on a sweater, but instead I'm cleaning my home office.  It's turned into a sty, largely because the door is always closed and it becomes a convenient place to put things.  So far, I have a shoebox full of pens, pencils, staples, paperclips and such that I'll never use so I'm going to offer it to a school or teacher.  Many local teachers are dipping into their own pockets for paper, pens and other supplies as schools run out late in the school year.

Cleaning can be fun too.  I found a $25 gift certificate for FTD, and it just so happens that I need to order flowers today for my Granny's 98th birthday!  There were seed packets, recipes, Christmas lists, paint chips, gift cards, checks, my passport, knitting needles, patterns - sewing and knitting, yarn and pistachios!

It's 2:30 am now, the install is complete and successful, and I'm off to bed!

My mind is scattered all over, so it's time for some general foolishness, or in this case, a list.

1.  My iPod is finally reloaded and I'm loving listening to my music on BART and at work while writing technical docs. My musical tastes are quite eclectic; today I listened to Roy Orbison on BART in the morning, Dave Brubeck while writing, and Bruce Springsteen on BART coming home.

2.  Painted Lady and Red Admiral butterflies are migrating north right through my little town.  At times, several butterflies per second flutter past about 4 to 6 feet in the air.  Some people have reported as many as 1000 an hour!  They fly until exhausted and starved, rest and eat, then fly some more.

3.  Next week is going to be intense, work-wise.  I have 4 production installs, 3 of which can't start until 6 pm and at least one will take 10 hours.  The others will take 6 to 8 hours.  I also have all the pre-staging tasks for a project that goes into staging and then into production the next week.  Good thing I love my job!

4.  My first docent shift at the Essanay Silent Film Museum is Sunday - I'm so looking forward to being part of that group.  

5.  The Wildflower Trains start Sunday on the Niles Canyon Railway . We rode last weekend, and the flowers are really spectacular right now.

6.  Knitting continues. So does startitis.  So does finishitis.  Knitting life is good!

7.  I'd forgotten how sore Pilates and Yoga can make me.  And how quickly.  It's getting better, and that's a good incentive to keep up with the classes and DVDs this time.  Oh, not to mention how good it feels and how good the instructors look.  If I keep it up for 5 or 10 years I can look that good too!

8.  Fresh tiny asparagus.  Yum.

9.  More goodies from Stitches still to come.  More FOs too.