The Pickleball Question

Are any of you pickleball players, or familiar with it? Can you help me understand why the players shout so much? So Much Shouting!

I gather that the popularity of pickleball is spreading, but it’s certainly a big thing here. And that doesn’t bother me, except that people play on the tennis courts of the building across the street from us, and they’re so loud!

Let me set the scene. The courts are in their parking area, so coming this way, there are parking spaces, then a strip of landscaping around the fence, then the driveway, then more landscaping. The sidewalk, the swale, two lanes of traffic, wide landscaped median, two lanes of traffic, swale and sidewalk again. Our pool is at the front of our building, and then I’m on the sixth floor. Like this:

The court is mostly blocked by trees, which you might think would cut the noise, but not so much.

What I’m saying is, we’re not really close to the game. And if the plonk-plonk-plonk of the racquet noise was the extent of it, with indistinct conversation, I wouldn’t be writing about it. But instead, I hear lots of OHHHH! and HEYYYY! and YAYYYY! and OOOOHHH! and WOOOO! Just, why?

Updates, Including Knitting

• Spam: I'm still getting about a hundred spam emails a day. Even more disturbingly, a few spam messages have appeared in my regular inbox in the last few days. Gmail is usually very good about catching those, but maybe the onslaught has worn the filter down.
• The time change continues to bother me. 😴 The resolution to stop it passed the Senate, but would need to go through the House in order to get to the president to be approved; dare I hope that will happen? I'm so tired. Just stop changing what time it is.
• Sometime you need rain to appreciate it not raining. (Click on the picture to see it bigger.)

Knitting! This is the Close to You shawl, which I am knitting in blue and yellow to show I stand with Ukraine.

The yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Featherlight, in Blue Ribbon.

Oh, and as always, I have a sock going. The yarn is Knit One, Crochet Too Crock-O-Dye in Seaglass; the pattern as always is the Simple Skyp Sock.

Then there's the social-knitting shawl, which is Purl Soho's Wheelwright Shawl, a free pattern that uses DK yarn and short rows. Yarn is Three Irish Girls Springvale DK in the colorway Pride in the name of love.

I'm enjoying how the colors are popping!

And yes, if it reminds you of the Roam shawl I recently finished, you are not alone!

After having seen me working on Wheelwright, someone on the trip saw me wearing Roam and exclaimed, "You finished it!"

Roam is in lighter-weight yarn, and the main color is a dark blue, almost navy, while the other is really purple. But I get it, there is a strong resemblance. I love them both!

Ow

Daylight saving time sucks.

Headache. Ow. Bed.

Cat Break

Cuteness overload on my lap this morning:

A Little Sarasota

Time to show some pictures I took on my little trip to Sarasota! As always, it's a random assortment (leaving the Ringling Museum for another day--lots of photos of that), because that's how I roll. Photographically speaking.

For instance, my room at the Westin. Quite large! It was a handicap-accessible room, so that may have had something to do with it.

Sitting area:

Sleeping area:

Huge bathroom:

Nice view through an unfortunately dirty window (not that they could help that):

The closet, which had only a low bar to hang clothes.

Shirts? Fine? Slacks or dresses? SOL.

I made my own way.

Whatever works.

View of sunset from the rooftop bar/pool area:

Art in the dining room:

Statue in St. Armand's Circle; I assume the glasses were not in the original plan, but he carries them off well.

I didn't get a picture, but we had lunch at the Columbia there and it was excellent! Highly recommend.

A large hot coffee for a chilly morning on the roof deck, knitting and looking at the view of the marina. 

I had been hoping for sun, but it was still rather pleasant. And better than the arctic air conditioning in the lobby!

I made quite a bit of progress on the shawl. It did turn out to be excellent social knitting. More details later.

Noticed this sign on a wall by the elevators. The fire alarm sounds ... like a sound ... okay then.

We had lunch at Der Dutchman another day, and of course shared tastes of the different pies. Yummy! 

We listened to a very interesting speaker; I learned a lot about Amish and Mennonite history and the differences between them.

Checking out of the hotel, I saw they had these gift bags set up for a group that would be checking in ... fascinating! Fans of the band? Electricians convention? Who knows!

That's probably enough for one day, anyway! Stay tuned for part two.

Other Pictures

"What?" says Maggie. "You haven't put up trip pictures yet?"

Look, cat, my head is only better than yesterday, not good. Cut me some slack.

Here, look at what I started today, when work slowed down: 

The pattern is Close To You by Justyna Lorkowska (Ravelry link).

I bought the yarn at A Good Yarn in Sarasota two years ago, it's Featherlight from Blue Moon Fiber Arts (Ravelry link), in the colorway Blue Ribbon; it's 100% Merino wool, fingering, and does indeed feel very light.

And of course I picked it out of the stash because of its colors, to do my little bit to show that I #StandwithUkraine. 

Best-Laid Plans

Yesterday was a busy day, and while I planned to blog about my trip today, I didn't *plan* to wake up with a headache, so ... not today. I will leave you with this.

What do you think is happening here?

Home Again!

I'm back! I had a good time, but instead of returning rested and rejuvenated to get back to work, I feel more like, wow, I'm ready to be retired! Ah well. That time will come. Someday.

The trip was fun, with more ups than downs, and more social interactions than I had probably had in the previous year put together. I took plenty of pictures, which I will be trying to organize and post hopefully this weekend. In the meantime, have a picture I took yesterday, walking around the block.

And here are a few of the princess, who has been demanding much of my time since I returned from my three whole entire days away from her.

By the way, while I was away, I didn't look at the emails in my spam filter, and in fact forgot about the whole spam-flood issue I was having. I was startled, therefore, on Wednesday evening, to see over 300 messages there, before I remembered. This morning, when it got to 400+, I deleted them again, and already it's over 60 more. When will this stop?

Girls Trip!

Preface: There is so much terrible shit happening in the world right now. Russia attacking Ukraine, Texas and what the governor wants to do to trans kids, banning books, limiting free speech, voter suppression ... I'm not writing about it today because if I think about it too much, I can feel myself start to spiral downward, and it's hard to look for the helpers. Just a reminder that the parts of themselves that people put online are not their whole selves. 

What a week it's been! I'm wiped out. And I leave on Sunday for my three-hour tour three-day girls trip! Time to get cracking and get packing!

Tomorrow, though, we're going out to try to get some Girl Scout cookies. Has anyone else had trouble finding them? Even using their cookie finder, we've struck out on a couple of places/times when a booth was supposed to be there and wasn't. I'm really hoping that tomorrow will bring me some thin mints. Just to give me energy for packing, you understand.

I have got to get to bed. If I'm not on here again before midday Sunday, well, I'll let you know after the trip how it all went. Fingers crossed!

Here's the Princess!

Time for some Maggie pictures, don't you think?

Cutest thing!