January 2012
1 post
The last few days I’ve been revisiting my past; and finding it less than what I thought it was. A friend of Drew’s posted a link with predictions Robert Heinlein had made in 1952 for the year 2000 a few weeks ago. So when I was browsing in the library’s science fiction section early this week, a book of his caught my eye: Farnham’s Freehold. I remembered Heinlein being...
December 2011
2 posts
November 2011
2 posts
The things we do for our dogs! It’s a long haul out to the designated potty spot: out the door, down the hall, wait for the elevator, ride the elevator, through the door into the garage, walk the full length of the garage, out the door, down the drive, across the street, and, finally!, a place acceptable to do his business. Teddy’s been a good sport and been making the trek but with...
October 2011
2 posts
The attendees of the 18th Annual Wood Family Camping Reunion!
September 2011
4 posts
Yesterday was the first day I had to go into work and leave Teddy alone for the day. I decided on the “begin as you would go” philosophy, crated him, and didn’t come home mid-day for a walk. I thought it might be just as cruel to get his hopes up halfway through the day by coming home and taking him for a short walk then putting him back in the crate and leaving. When I got...
August 2011
5 posts
It’s Tax-Free Weekend in Missouri! No sales tax on clothing, school supplies, computer software, and computers. I’ve taken advantage of this a couple of times in the past to buy a new laptop. For large purchases especially, it’s worth fighting the crowds.
July 2011
5 posts
May 2011
3 posts
Vacation - Days 5, 7, and 7
Being the inherently lazy person that I am, I didn’t download any of the pictures from my camera last Tuesday afternoon when I made the previous entry so I thought I’d include one of the pictures taken that day at Annie’s Beach, just north of here.
Wednesday I drove back north to the Pennekamp State Park for the glass bottom boat cruise they offer. I packed a sandwich and...
Vacation - Days 2, 3, and 4
Oh, my gosh! Am I already into day four of vacation! Time flies when you’re doing absolutely nothing. :)
Sunday established my pattern for my days here: breakfast on my porch, watching the small waves break over the rocks at high tide. Morning’s lounging in the beach chair, knitting while the world so very slowly turns. Once the sun finally tips over the buildings (and my room)...
Vacation - Day 1
When I left St. Louis it was chilly and wet. When I drove out of FLL airport in my rental Yaris, it was sunny and hovering around 90 degrees! The trip was fairly uneventful…I arrived at Lambert about an hour and a half before my flight boarded. Bought a book (in spite of its having a forward by Newt Gingrich), One Second After, which is proving to be a fairly good apocalyptic novel. I...
April 2011
2 posts
In my on going quest to find television series that I can watch through Netflix, I have found several that I really enjoyed, some that were interesting enough to watch a season or two when nothing else was on, and a few where I couldn’t care enough to watch the second episode.
And then there have been a very few like Deadwood which I turned off after about thirty minutes. I had heard many...
After much dithering, my vacation plans for 2011 are finally set. I took a short trip last year to the Chicago area that turned into a Frank Lloyd Wright -centric trip: his birthplace, his Oak Park residence, the Ken Burns documentary…you get the picture. But that was just a long weekend actually. I didn’t do anything for the two years before that. This year I’m taking a...
March 2011
2 posts
Woe is me…my U-verse is broke! It’s like pulling teeth to find help info on how to reboot the DVR but I finally dug out the few home remedies. When that still didn’t make the DVR work, I used the AT&T chat to IM with a “technical” person. That person happened to be a nice girl in India but I have no problem with that. (I’m all for India workers…one...
By the time I was a teenager, every family gathering included a game of Scrabble. The card table would be set up in the middle of the living room and word play would ensue. Sort through any set of pictures of a family Christmas, Thanksgiving, or whatever, and you’ll probably find a shot of two or more people fiddling with little wooden tiles.
So it will be no surprise when I tell you...
February 2011
1 post
Houston and Beyond
For those of you who read this through Facebook, be patient, there’s new stuff here not published on FB. I actually have friends that read this blog that are not on Facebook. <gasp>
I took a mini-vacation and went to Houston to visit my nephew and his lovely wife: Jeremy and Tracy. Andrew came along…I let him carry my bag and didn’t even require him to walk three steps...
January 2011
5 posts
More Snow
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the weather but thanks to my obsessive daughter-in-law I was made aware last night of the massive winter storm that will be rolling through our area over the next few days. Her advise was to go stock up then but I decided this morning would be soon enough. The store wasn’t very crowded, I got my usual 9am parking spot. But every conversation I...
Out with the Old; In with the New
My first attempt at knitting a sweater didn’t go very well. I finished the sweater and assembled it and blocked it. But it just didn’t look right. It just doesn’t work to take a pattern for a size 10 woman and multiply everything by two to come out with a size 20 sweater. So last week I ripped it all out, gave the yarn a good soak, let it dry draped over hangers, then...
Ah, the pleasures of working from home when it’s freezing cold outdoors! A few degrees below zero this morning, but I didn’t have to drive to work. I was already here! Yesterday, though, was my day to be at the office and the snow storm was just ending during rush hour. Fortunately, my boss called me before I left to tell me the company had declared a two hour snow delay and to...
Socks!
I finished sock #1 and started sock #2 with my Panda Cotton in lullaby colors. I’d post a picture but I’m too lazy…okay…my iPhone is here beside me, I guess since I’d don’t even have to get off the couch:
The k4, p4 ribbing looks better in person than it does in the picture, some of that is probably a problem of perspective
I struggled through the short...
Le Tour Sommeil
I’ve never been to France and I haven’t ridden a bicycle in decades but the other night I had a vivid dream of biking along country roads in France. It was one of those very long, very detailed dreams that you remember for days. But I’ve got to wonder, where did it come from?
Farewell 2010; Welcome 2011!
It is literally the eleventh hour of the final day of 2010. This was a good year for me in that I achieved some goals that had eluded me in the past. A big one was taking a better hold on my health. I got a few things taken care of that I had tried to ignore. Some things just don’t go away even if you ignore them. Some things must be dealt with. And in the coming year, I’m...
December 2010
2 posts
Happy Holidays!
November 2010
3 posts
Done!
At least, almost done. All the major shopping is completed (thank you, internet) If I’m buying gifts for you and you add something to your list now, don’t expect it under the tree from me.
I still have to gather up stocking stuffers. I usually do that all through the year. For some reason I fell down on that job this year. So, sorry if stocking contents are even odder than...
23 of 99
Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 99 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt. State how many you’ve read in the title. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your...
Yesterday I gained possession of something I hadn’t seen in decades: the montage of my high school graduating class: Buchanan High’s Class of 1970. Yikes! That’s forty years ago! There were 133 people in my graduating class and back then in our senior pictures, all the guys had on a tuxedo jacket and bow tie and all the girls had a black V-necked drape. My hair is long and...
October 2010
5 posts
Up until today, I’ve had this thing on my back that I thought was some sort of raised scar. I say “this thing” and it makes me think of some really big thing…but we’re talking about something about the size of a dime. Okay, maybe a nickel. It had been there for years and my primary physician had long ago pronounced it benign but I finally decided to see a...
Last weekend I went camping:
The campfire was especially welcome with the cool nights.
There was a lot of s’more activity going on.
The dinner theme was Wild Things. I tried to bake a cake in a box.
It was only partially successful. I got shown up by a professional cupcake baker who also used a box and aluminum foil.
Andrew had better luck with his dish: bananas foster.
...
Today has me thinking about age. In some ways, I feel no different than I did when I was half the age I am now. In other ways, I look back at that me and realize that even then I had so much to learn.
However, the plans for this post were much lighter. This past weekend was our disaster recovery test at work and at one point I told the other woman on my team that I saw what she was doing,...
Last month I went to the chiropractor because I felt like I was walking and moving like I was about 80 years old. Very stiff and bent over. Not a good look for me. I think I’ve improved greatly over the past month and I’ve been feeling much more flexible and walking with better posture. Because of the accident last week, she ordered x-rays for me. Actually, she was thinking...
Looks like it’s time to buy a new car:
That’s the driver rear and here’s the passenger rear tire:
This happened yesterday, Thursday. See the shiny bits inside? That’s the $1400 I spent Monday for new rear calipers and struts (brake stuff, for those of you like me who don’t have a clue what that is.)
No blood or broken bones…just a lot of inconvenience. ...
September 2010
12 posts
My downstairs neighbor is a big complainer. In fact, she’ll complain about things she makes up. For instance, she was complaining to the guy who did my fireplace tile about the early morning noise that started at 8am. Well, he didn’t arrive any day before 8:30 and I made him wait until 9am to start any work that might cause noise. I had already apologized to her previously about...
Hmmm, my Facebook account didn’t update with the last post. Perhaps there are a minimum number of words. But the picture was worth….well, you know the rest.
When I was a kid, I had this awesome pair of polka dot tennis shoes. Nobody else had a pair like them, at least no one I ever saw wearing them. I loved those shoes and I’m sure I cried when I outgrew them. Darn these...
I love, love, LOVE my new Birki’s:
The company I work for has a women’s professional group that up until now I have not attended the meetings of. (I know that sentence is grammatically wrong but I’ll let some English major straighten it out.) Anyway…this evening after work I did because the guest speaker was Maxine Clark, the founder of the Build-a-Bear stores. The group was small, maybe fifty women, and I was...
The fireplace surround is done and I love it!
The mantle when the handyman finished was not so great. It was a classic case of miscommunication. I didn’t draw nearly as detailed picture of what I had in mind as I had for the tile and what he was thinking and what I was thinking were too very different things. So when I tried to apply what he was telling me to my vision, it just...
The disadvantage to granite (or granite-like) counter tops that they fail to tell you:
This was after emergency cleanup.
I thought I’d make some homemade cookies this afternoon and was checking out what supplies were in my cupboard. Oh! Is that a box of oatmeal in the back? Behind the Worcestershire sauce……..OH NO!
It was one of those times when time slows down and you...