GreyGuy, one of Ken's original cats and eldest son of Sylvia, died Thursday evening. 

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.

I really thought October was going to be easier than September, and that I'd post the various finished objects, newly started objects and other fun stuff that's been keeping me so busy.  Work hasn't slowed down as much as I'd expected - in fact, I must have been delusional when I thought that, because it's been even busier in October.

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.

September went by in a blur as I worked too many hours on a project I inherited when a co-worker was asked to leave.  It went in flawlessly last weekend, but there were some frightening moments all month as we discovered things undone or done incorrectly. 

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!

Late last year, Bess posted this to her blog.  (That should be a link to her post of November 5, 2008, which introduced me to a plant called Devil's Walking Stick, which was totally unfamiliar to me.)  Immediately I wanted to knit something that looked like that, all starry and rusty orange and glistening dark berries.  

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.  

A recent sunset, because the blog needs a photo!

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!

Yes, they did.

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!