BAH, Bah, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah

(What? No, not sheep. It's the Olympic music. I know, I know, I can't sing...)

I understand it isn't possible to watch all of the Olympics live when they're halfway around the world, but it bothers me slightly to know how much the network will be able to chop and choose what to show me. I suppose I must get over it.

Naturally enough, today's entry at the Big Picture, the Globe's photo blog, was on the Olympics Opening Ceremonies. I didn't look at it right away, thinking I would preserve the mystery, then later decided to look anyway. (That's me: once I make up my mind...well, it depends.) The photos are amazing! I loved this picture of kids making the rings.


They're so into it! They even have their arms linked through each others'. Fantastic.

On the other hand, today's Google home page image creeps me out just a little.


I know, those are the mascot things, so it's not really Google's fault, but ew. No. No.

I watched some of the opening ceremonies, and will watch more as I get ready for bed, but seriously, midnight? Not happening. I think it's my allergies that have me extra-tired lately, but whatever the reason, my heart or my shoes, I am not staying up that late. It's neat, but 4 and a half hours is pushing it.

I will conclude with a Random Photo Moment. Which do you like better, foreground focus:


Or background?



Actually, I will conclude for real by virtually wishing my little twin friends a happy first birthday. How can it have been a year? How?

More cat pictures!

It has been brought to my attention that the blog has been suffering from a dearth of feline photography of late.

What are we, chopped liver?


I don't know if I feel up to a photo shoot...


Oh, all right, I'll try to ... what did you say? Work it?


It's the perspective! My butt is not that big!


Sure, Harold. Sure. Love you anyway, fat boy.

Ironic isn't quite the right word...

Last night, I wrote defensively about how I spent money on a book, but! It wasn't that much! And I buy so few! And I really, really wanted it! And there's nothing wrong with that!

And after posting, I opened the MasterCard bill, and for a moment honestly thought the amount was a mistake.

Well, in a way of course it is, but it's my mistake, not theirs.

(I need to do a better job of keeping up with my running total of charges, to avoid nasty shocks like that in the future.)

It adds up, doesn't it? Yup.

So! In addition to trying harder on the self-control part (ha), I got to thinking about working part-time.

In the past, I have rejected the idea, because thinking of spending some part of my evenings and weekends at Dunkin Donuts or even Barnes & Noble does not appeal. (It fills me with dread, actually.) What I like doing most, such as reading or knitting, is hard to get paid for.

Then I thought of something else I like to do, which might be slightly more revenue-enhancing: spend time with babies.

I'm always the one at parties hanging around the babies, offering to hold one, not in any rush to give them back. Last fall, after my friend C. had her twins, I loved to hang out with them. Part of that, of course, is that C. is my friend, but I spent a fair amount of time just hanging with a baby while she took the chance to "accomplish something" (like taking a shower, or filling the dishwasher, life with twin infants being what it is).

I don't mind giving bottles and changing diapers and making faces. One time when I was there, the night nanny even commented on how comfortable I was with them.

Basically, I'm just a baby person. (I don't think I've ever met a baby I didn't like. As babies get older, they begin to turn into people, and then the situation is more like I am with adults: some I like more than others.)

Perhaps I can find some babysitting gigs, a few hours here or there, and earn a little money while not totally regretting the loss of my free time. It's worth looking into.

************

In other news, I have apparently lost my mind, as tonight for dinner I tried not one, not two, but three new recipes. I know, crazy, right? I generally think of myself as adventurous if I try one. I don't know what came over me. These are recipes I bookmarked a while ago, but I couldn't tell you why tonight became the night.

Of course, at heart, I made chicken, potatoes, and green beans, which doesn't sound like much. But in fact I made Bourbon Chicken:


Crash Hot Potatoes:


and Green Beans:


Not bad, if I do say so myself.


***********

One more thing: I keep forgetting to mention that I finished the baby blanket! I'll try to get a good picture some time, maybe this weekend when I have more daylight to work with. But it's done!

Stop the presses: I bought a book!

Yes, bought, with money. (Okay, plastic. Still.)

Before I get into the subject, may I say that I look forward to returning to a time in my life when spending $15.00 on a book does not seem frivolous and verging on foolhardy.

I've always been a library fan, but over the last few years in particular, I have bought far fewer books than I would like to, instead primarily getting those I wanted to read out of the library. After reading, I would often add the title to my "buy sometime" list, and if I didn't want to put it on the list, I would pat myself on the back for saving the money.

Not that I haven't bought any books, of course. I had to have the seventh Harry Potter book the day it was released, and there have been a few others. Just not as many (as I normally would; as I would like to; etcetera). I can't remember who said it, but someone said that being really rich wasn't so much having a certain amount of money, but would be to have the ability to go into a bookstore and buy whatever he wanted, as much as he wanted, without thinking about the cost. Yeah.

There are, however, limits to my patience, and last weekend was one of them. I've mentioned before how I like Stephenie Meyer's books, and although I didn't check the library website beforehand, I can only imagine how many hundreds of holds there were when Breaking Dawn was released. (Today I checked, and I could be hold number 251 on one library system, or number 320 on another.) No. Not going to wait. I considered spending a few hours at a bookstore, reading a copy in situ, then decided no, damn it. I was already going out on Sunday (so it wouldn't require a special trip), it was heavily discounted (not a lot of money), and I was going to buy it. Yup.

No, I'm not justifying it at all. No.

And it was good. Satisfying. I disagree with a review I saw that said after a certain event (spoiler redacted), "it’s almost impossible to identify with" Bella. Um, what?

Of course, the same review also called it "interminable". Uh? I rather suspect that the review was not written by a fan*. To be honest, the book was written for fans of the series, and I for one really identified with Bella, and didn't find it too long at all. It was just long enough to tell what happened.

*Which reminds me of a very interesting blog post I read recently on a similar topic:

After I saw Mamma Mia! on stage almost four years ago, people would ask me how it was, and my answer was pretty simple: If you love silly musicals and ABBA, you’ll love it. If you don’t love one or both of those things, you’ll want to rip your own ears off. This is the kind of information I would file under, “Duh. Big duh.” And yet, I’ve read several reviews of the movie version that begin with the reviewer confessing that he or she is not really a fan of ABBA, musicals, or both — then talking about just how much they hated the movie, as if this came as a shock. Really?

I'm not going to go into Breaking Dawn more than that, for the sake of those who will or might want to read it, and would prefer not to hear any secrets first. But if (or once) you've read it, I would be happy to discuss! In particular, what you thought of a new character's name. Interesting? Or too much?

This Post is Brought to You by Some Really Big "IF"s

If ... I was ever going to get a tattoo (which I am not because, hello, I fuss over paper cuts: low pain threshold)...

If ... I then decided to get a tattoo of my favorite team's logo (which I wouldn't, though I love the Bruins; I cross-stitched their logo, does that help?)...

Would I feel that the tattoo would look even better if the team logo was on Winnie the Pooh's tummy?

Do what now?

Follow-up question: Would I get a team logo tattoo on my bikini line?

Ow, ow, ow.

The article is here, and a picture of the Islanders logo on an ankle here.

Ow.

A simple grammar/punctuation request

Can I ask one thing?

I try to be relaxed about proofreader things when I'm reading blogs. None of the ones I read are awful about such things, but everyone makes mistakes sometimes, me included, and I roll past it without too much pain. But would you mind one little piece of advice?

Use it's for it is or it has.

Otherwise, use its with no apostrophe.

It's so simple.

Thank you for listening.

It followed me home, can I keep it?

Another victory for the "stick it in the ground and see what happens" gardener. Look!


I didn't pick the little one; it was on the ground. But that ripe one, I just touched it and it fell into my hand. It did not want to wait until Monday. How about that?

There are dragonflies in and around the garden every day. For some reason, I mostly see red ones. I loved this blue one!


Star flower?


Just pretty.


I almost don't believe it's the weekend. It seems too good to be true. Off to be a vegetable now. Later!

Some griping; then, garden

I've been rather out of sorts this week.

Partly, that's normal after a vacation; no matter how short the break, it generally is followed by discomfort when returning to the everyday. It was so good to see my parents...

There have been little, normal irritants, like the litany of tiny things that turned Tuesday night's commute from the usual 30-45 minutes into an hour and 20 minutes.

There's some change going on at work, not bad necessarily but change, and I'm not a big fan of change.

Is it anything other than that? Hard to say.

I think I'm at one of those times in my life when I'm just tired of being the adult in the household. (This feeling strengthens periodically.) It's hard not to be the adult, in a one-person household, where there's no one else to take up the slack. I can put off cleaning the bathroom, I can eat ice cream for dinner, but eventually someone needs to grocery shop, to make dinner, to refill prescriptions and pay the bills and find a mechanic*. That would be me. And I get sick of it.

*And when you put that off long enough, due to a dislike of the dealer, you can end up paying $500 for two new tires on a two-year-old car, which is an expensive lesson to learn. Have you rotated your tires lately? Maybe you should, is all I'm saying.

I know that being in a relationship would not cure all my problems, would only probably change some of them. Still, it's tempting to think that it would be worth it, to have someone else, someone who loved me (of course), to shoulder some of the burden. There's just so much to do, so much I should be doing, when I'd rather read, or knit, or watch TV. Play with cats, or babies (no, I don't have any babies). Or sleep.

And, see, most of the time I'm fine with being single. I love almost everything about living alone, most of the time.

Just not this week.

************

Anyway! Enough whining. Want to see how the garden is doing?

I have many green tomatoes, but finally two tomatoes that are gradually relinquishing their belief that they should be green.


That second one is like a sunrise...

The tomato plants are really much bigger than I thought they would be. They're leaning toward the basil on one side, the green beans on the other, and they're overwhelming the support that the peas need upright, thank you.

When picking basil, I found quite a large ... well, bug. What kind? You tell me.


Now I'm going to turn the basil I picked today into pesto. I'll leave you with this. Across one of the garden paths, two plants are reaching for each other. Isn't nature something else?

Florida trip in words

Well, after a few more pictures...




I had a plan of sorts for last Thursday, an idea of how things would go on my way to Florida. It went something like this:

1. Sleep in a bit, which is always a bonus.
2. Finish packing and getting ready.
3. Friend picks me up and drops me at the airport.
4. Get through security without trouble, and in plenty of time because I am That Way about travel, especially planes these days.
5. Knit and wait.
6. Get on my (direct) flight to Florida, where I can while away the time with eating (brought my lunch) and knitting.
7. Be met by my mother at the airport around 3:30.
8. Proceed to nearby outlet mall for a bit of shopping.
9. Home, and dinner with my parents.
10. Hang out and chat before bedtime.

Instead? Well, life has its own ideas sometimes, or Jet Blue does (though they would doubtless blame the weather). Numbers one through five on the list went fine, and we even (3A?) stopped in Chelsea for really good bagels on the way. But then?

Less than an hour before the plane was supposed to leave, a not-really-apologetic-enough man announced that it was canceled.

Don't line up at the gate, he added quickly, after not really explaining why the flight was canceled at all. Go down there, to the service desk. They've been warned!

So, to pick up where plans changed:

6. Got in line at service desk (about 15 people in front of me, many more behind).
7. Got out cell phone and called toll-free number.
8. Twenty-two minutes later, I'm booked on a 2:30ish flight to JFK, and a 6:30ish flight to Florida. Best they can do, at least it's still today. The woman was very nice, gave good customer service, made me feel less annoyed by the whole situation: props to her. (By the way, apparently what she could do was greatly enhanced by the fact that I had, for once in my life, not checked baggage. I don't know what further hoops people with checked bags had to jump through.)
9. Leave line, which has moved forward about 3 people, and go back out through security to print new boarding passes.
10. Sit down and eat lunch, grumpily.
11. Back through security.
12. Sit at new gate and knit. Got the heel done on my first sock!
13. Cheer quietly when plane arrives. Progress!
14. A little late, but we do board and eventually take off. I'm in a middle seat, not having been willing to pay extra* for a better seat on the short flight. I'm a little worried about the couple behind me with an infant and a toddler; they have my sympathies, but I'm not sure I want to be sitting near them. When they start debating with the boy about his seat belt, I put on my headphones and turn up the volume.
*Which I think they should waive when they are rescheduling someone from a canceled flight. You're inconveniencing me and now you want to charge me for a better seat? Nice, I don't think.
15. Flight is uneventful until we reach the descent stage, when you have to put your seat belt back on. I don't know how the parents handled little Arden on the ascent, but on the descent at least, he had to wear his seat belt and he Did Not Want To. It seems that this was the first time in his life that he was forced to do something against his wishes. He screamed, at the top of his lungs, barely pausing for breath, for about 20 minutes, or until we (finally, finally) reached the gate. NOOOOOO! DADDY! NOOOOOO! NO WANT TO! Over and over and over. Even through the music, it was agonizing. I don't think I've ever been happier to get off a plane. (And I heard barely a peep from the baby the whole time. Trouble never comes from the direction you think, does it?)
16. An hour or two at JFK, which was chaos. Is it always like that? And it was warm and humid inside. What the...?
17. Plane arrives late, loads late, leaves late. At this point, I'm just happy to be going. I also paid extra (see rant below) for an exit row window seat, knowing I would need it by that point in the day.
18. Arrived at 10:30 PM, or seven-plus hours late, and lucky to be there at all.

Me Rant Now. I admit to being bitter that they charged me extra for the exit row, after canceling my flight and leaving me drifting in the wind, though it was still worth it. But hello, Jet Blue?

It's time to stop marketing yourself as better than other airlines. Stop calling it "jetting" and face facts: you're much like all the rest. You may not be worse, but you aren't better.

You charge extra to check a second bag.

You charge extra for seats with more leg room.

You cancel a full flight and tell the people you've just screwed that probably most of them won't be getting where they paid you to go that day.

You are not providing superior service, in my experience. In fact, you cheated me out of half a day with my parents, and on a three-day trip, that's significant. Considering that the last time I flew your airline, my flight was, oh, three or four hours late, it's amazing I'm even considering flying with you again. I know that you can't control the weather, but you could anticipate it (gosh, thunderstorms in summer, who could have predicted that?) and try to get planes where you need them.

Oh, and while I'm whining? I also did something to my right shoulder on Thursday, there was no event or sudden ow, but it's been bothering me ever since. The pain is diminishing, but still there. Go away, pain! Let me sleep in peace.

Anything else? I want to get it all out. Oh! Yesterday morning, all grumpy about the need to get up and get ready for work, I spilled some crackers on the floor. I bent, grumbling, to clean them up, then straightened in such a miraculously coordinated way that I whacked my head on the edge of the table. Yes, hard. I have a dent. Well, not exactly a dent, but a sore, sore spot on my head. So graceful.

I think that's all the whining, moaning, and carrying on for today. I mean, if I tried to tell you all the many, many, tiny, irritating, pissant little reasons why my commute home was horrible tonight, we'd be here until sometime tomorrow, and no one wants that, me least of all.

Anyone still here? Because I am very happy about the knitting I got done. Yes! Happy! I know, who am I all of a sudden?

But the sock was perfect in-the-airport knitting, and shows progress, which I tried unsuccessfully to capture.


Pan was naturally tempted by the yarn, the heel doesn't even show, and Blogger un-rotated the photo. Some days...

The blanket was good on-the-plane knitting, and thanks to the delay in my return flight*, it's almost done.


Yes, almost done, and it isn't even August until Friday. Whew!

*We took off just about on time, but diverted a bit to come in after thunderstorms hit Boston. I've flown from FL to Boston enough to know that we don't usually fly toward Michigan and then over upstate New York. But only about an hour late, pfft! That's nothing!

So it's not all grinching here. Just mostly.

I just flew back from Florida...

...and boy, are my arms tired!

Actually, all of me is tired. Why is traveling so tiring even when most of what you're doing is sitting and waiting?

I had a great weekend (unless you want to talk about delays, a cancellation, or screaming children, but who wants to talk about those?).

See?

It's always good to visit the parents:


Just kidding, not theirs! They prefer a condo to a house. A condo with views of sunsets:


And of course an osprey visiting next door.


Too pretty.


And this beach is the one that has spoiled me for just about all others. I go to beaches up here and ask, where are the shells?


This is the haul from one walk.


On the other day, I carried the camera instead of the shell bag, so that I could show you this:

Packing

Even relaxed packing for a short trip is still packing. Not my favorite thing. But so worth it! I managed (me, the just-in-case traveler) to pack so that I can carry on my bag. I think I've done that before ... once.

The cats were not thrilled to see the suitcase come out, and now there's thunder moving through the area, and they're hiding. They're having a worse night than I am!

I suppose I'd better turn the computer off, eh? We lost power during the day, though it was on when I got home. It could happen again.

It isn't impossible that I'll post while I'm away, but it's unlikely. So, until next week, be good, and if you can't be good, be careful!

Four Days, Three Nights

When you're going to be going on a trip, does your brain go into vacation-mode a day or two before you leave? Mine does. It used to be just the day before that I'd have trouble concentrating on work, but this is two days before, and here I am. Work is so pesky, interrupting my vacation-packing-planning like this. My brain is very busy with should I bring this and don't forget to pack that, and what is this brochure I have in front of me, and what am I supposed to do with it?

So, in lieu of actual content that would require me to engage brain cells (because I can't pull them off task), look at the pictures!

It's wild blackberry season in the woods around work. Yum!


I appear to be between pea cycles. (I am not complaining!) I got a bunch over the last two weeks, and now all the ones on the plants are wee ones.


They're so cute.


The second rose is blooming nicely.


Although I bought a 6-pack of little basil plants, one of them is a ringer. Five plants have leaves like this one, sort of convex:


The sixth one is clearly different.


I'm guessing it's just two different varieties of basil. Still, interesting.

I still admire the tenacity of the pea tendrils.


And by the way, there are lots of tomatoes on the plants, all still firmly green. When will they turn red?

And the baby.


I'm too sexy for my paws...

Rose reborn

As I wrote recently, my little rose plant at work has been growing and blooming again. It had another busy week. In fact, its growth brought to mind one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, Blink, which feature a race of beings who turn to stone if anyone is looking at them (thus becoming statues), and only move, like toward you to attack, when you're not looking at them. So, when they're getting closer, you have to keep looking at them, and don't blink...

Which is sort of like the rose this last week, except I'm pretty sure the rose is benign. But it seemed that every time I looked at it, it was farther along.

The first new growth was noted on July 7:


Then it took until July 15 to get to this:


A bit more by 7/16:


The morning of the 18th:


And the afternoon of the 18th:


I just love it. I hope I haven't missed too much of it this weekend, but there's another bloom to watch as well.

Pretty.