Cat?

 What cat?

I don’t see a cat.

In Twenty-freaking-Twenty-One

What a horrible story this is: Oberlin family denied a burial plot in ‘whites only’ cemetery

And the president of the cemetery association says, “I take full responsibility for that. I’ve been the President of this board for several years now. I take full responsibility for not reading the by-laws.” Which, dude, is not the point. It's not like someone discovered accidentally that the bylaws were never updated. It's that an employee cited that bylaw as justification for not allowing a non-White person to be buried there. This is not a hidden embarrassment: it's right out in the open.

Unreal.

Checking In

The weather has gotten nice again, after weeks of below-usual temperatures that had me in layers and all that. This weekend has been lovely, and I am so grateful. I've been reading, knitting, watching hockey (that Bruins game last night, such fun), all that good stuff, and yesterday I had lunch outdoors with friends. And saw this amazing Packard in the parking lot afterward.

Isn't that glorious? Though I can imagine worrying about being in an accident, at the same time, what fun to drive it around!

Miss Maggie

Other than having to go back to work today, things are going fine/good here, but no time for more than that tonight, so here, have some Maggie pictures: 

She's so cute.

I Finished Something!

How about that? It turns out that if you stop casting on new projects, and dedicate time to working on just one, it actually gets finished. Who knew?

Here it is pinned out and blocking:

This is pinned:

The overall size, spread out:

Compared to before its bath and block:

It looks like it will be a good size. I made this before, in a lighter yarn (Ravelry project page; also blogged about it), so this should be a bit bigger, as I wanted.

Pattern: Seashell by Nicola Susen (free on Ravelry).

Yarn: Adorn Luxe by Three Irish Girls, which is a fingering weight; 2 skeins in colorway Fire Dance.

Now, what to focus on next? Because I still have a bunch in progress.

Brrrr; Yay

Brrrr.

I'm cold.

I know, I know, it isn't cold here relative to a lot of places right now. But we've been running 5-10 degrees below normal for the time of year, and the time of year is not normally a hot one, so for us, it's been cold. 

Yes, we could turn the heat on. But how high do you want to turn it? It's really expensive to run (compared to the a/c). While we can layer up, that's what we do.

But I'm tired of wearing layers. I don't own enough warm clothing, so I'm wearing the same few things over and over. Long-sleeve shirt under sweater or sweatshirt. Long unders or leggings beneath sweatpants. Socks and slippers. Shawls and cowls and scarves and gloves, hoods and hats.

I'm cold. Mom and I don't like to keep it too cold: in hot weather, we set the air conditioning down to 78. Now it's running 70-75 inside here (which feels much nicer outside, in the sunshine, than it does at my desk). Brrr.

I'm cold. Today I put on warm leggings, and then sweatpants over them, then put a blanket over my lap, and was still cold. The socks and slippers worked to keep my feet warm, the shirt and sweater and scarf and hood kept my torso fairly warm, but my legs/hips/lap were cold.

(Maybe I need snow pants? Or something like these sherpa-lined pajama pants from Lands End, which sound delightful [sadly not available in my size]. Or something else, but what?). 

And every time I got up (bathroom, cat, food/drink), I had to unwrap and rewrap.

Brrr.

Yay

However! On the bright side!

I had a couple of vacation days left over from last year that I needed to use in January. We get Monday off for MLK Jr Day, and I wanted to be off for the inauguration on Wednesday (please let that go smoothly), so I'm taking Tuesday as well, and thus have a blissful five days off in front of me. Marvelous. Reading, knitting, relaxing, no alarm clock, and hopefully lots of sitting in the sunshine. Come on, sunshine!

That’s About It

Yesterday was a pretty good day, but I got my period again today (at least this one was four weeks from the last, instead of three), and I feel spectacularly crappy. As I said to my mother earlier, I feel like I’m eight months pregnant with a bowl of angry snakes.

Please let this be running its course. I am too old to deal with this shit any longer.

On the 39th of December 2020

What a year this week has been, hasn't it? Exhausting. As if the first week back from vacation wasn't long enough, let's add serious attacks on our democracy and a strong sense of impending doom.

Sigh. 

Well! To take a moment away from the current clusterfuck that is America:

I suppose technically, since it arrived yesterday, it isn't in my future, but hey, knitting with it will be! Yankee Dyer had a 50% off sale, and I fell into it with these six lovely skeins of Yankee Breeze, which is 50-50 merino-cotton, in colorway Lagoon.

I happen to have a single skein of the same yarn in colorway Sunshine, and they go together beautifully.

One of my knitting friends had mentioned the Blooming Vines pattern, a versatile pattern with multiple length and sleeve options, and I especially like this version, by Ravelry user jbjudyjude, which I am using as an inspiration. I'm thinking tunic length, and perhaps elbow sleeves. Lots of possibilities, and it makes for happy thinking. For a change.

I Am Not Surprised

I am appalled. Horrified. Even shocked. But not surprised. 

Armed, violent, destructive homegrown terrorists broke into the Capitol building because they believed the lunatic rantings of the president and his sycophants, or because they saw something in the situation to profit from, or for some reason even more beyond my understanding than those two.

And instead of facing the heavily armed, threatening National Guard presence that largely black protesters have faced as recently as last year, there were a few Capitol police, who either were completely overwhelmed, or who appeared to be complicit, letting them in. And escorting them out afterward. Not arresting, not enough of them. Letting them go.

I am tired. So tired. Figuratively and literally (I was awake for 2+ hours in the middle of the night last night, for some reason).

I am wishing most strongly that they would invoke the 25th, though it doesn't seem to be happening, or impeach him--again, but will that do anything more than the first one did?

I don't know. I just don't know.

Herself

Isn't she just the cutest thing?

 

Never Seen That Before

Back to work was never going to be fun, but the report I started today is ... ahh ... not very well done (though at least it's short). And it contains a mistake I've never seen before! 

The reports have citations to a variety of sources, most frequently articles in medical journals. These articles might have one author or might have many, might even have "The so-and-so Study Group" listed as an author, but I'm not sure I've ever seen one with no authors listed, which was the case with one of the citations in this report.

I was suspicious from first glance that something was weird about this article, because of the authors it listed. If an article is written by Mary Jones and Sarah Smith, it would be listed in the bibliography as "Jones, M. and Smith, S."; this one, in that format, said "With, T. and Agents, I." 

Now, there are plenty of names that seem unusual to me; the biblio can be a strong reminder that there are more names than are dreamt of in my philosophy. But With and Agents?

So I looked up the article, and along with a puzzling lack of authors listed at all (which is vanishingly rare and weird), there was this phrase at the beginning of the article: TREATMENT WITH IRON AGENTS.

Oh, dear, no. So that's where it came from. but, oh, so wrong!

What I've Done on My Winter Vacation

No alarm clocks. As much sleeping in as cat and biology would allow. Staying up late without paying for it the next morning.

Lots of relaxing. Days of not getting much done, peacefully.

Lots of cat lap time with sweet Maggie.

Watching hockey, real live hockey on TV. The NHL isn't back up yet, but the World Juniors has been on for the last week, and watching actual hockey has been great fun.

Knitting.

Meeting for lunch on a weekday.

Reading; tons and tons of reading. Unabashedly pushing, as I mentioned before, Jonas Jonasson's The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Amazon link), which I and then my mother loved.

It was his first novel, but it turns out he has since written more, which I have requested from the library--and the movie of this one! There was a movie! How did I miss that title, five years ago?

Anyway. Vacation. It has been marvelous, and if my dad wants to pull some strings from the afterlife and send a winning lottery ticket so I can quit working, now would be an excellent time for that, dad. Just saying. I'm rested and refreshed, and yet still not excited for work on Monday.