Tuesday

Today would have been my husband's 78th birthday.  I believe it --- the math checks out and everything, the harder thing to get my head around is that he's been gone 28 years.  That's one of those "It seems like yesterday / It feels like ancient history" situations. 

No Tiny Needle work to show.  I did finish the Subversive CrossStitch piece.  I decided not to do the border around the words, because it really is painful to stitch.

This little guy has been hanging out above my master bathroom sink for a couple of days.  This seems to be the favorite spot, though he has moved back and forth across the moulding.

There are three round bulbs above the sink;  maybe he's trying to be fair and give each one attention.

Monday

 Whopping headache today.  Out of nowhere.

And I need more craft paper, don't you think?

That box is half-empty!  My unnamed Highland heifer is appalled.  Cutting things with scissors is the only craft "thing" I can do.  It was maddening for a while, now it's depressing.

Saturday, I got Tap a new bed.

IIt works, some of the time.  Mostly he makes his usual sleep route: against my feet, then under the coffee table, then against the recliner, then back to my feet.  He's at the under-the-coffee-table stop at the moment.

Of Dining

Their Last Suppers is bound for being recorded on Goodreads.  With all of the interesting things this book taught me, this is one passage I shall remember:

It took a concentrated effort for me to read "Groucher" instead of "Groucho."  "General specific" is one of those nice phrases that self-contradicts.  And if you made the neighing sound on reading General Blucher, we share a friend wavelength.

I may not have mentioned that the book also includes recipes for preparing all the suppers.  So, if you ever need to know how to grill eel, I'm your girl.  Your adventure might begin like this:

Food and Footsteps

 One of the people featured in Their Last Suppers was Elvis.  According to the book, his favorite meal was breakfast.  Breakfast was available to him at any time.  Except mornings.

What I found most interesting, though, was that the famous Fool's Gold sandwich holds 8000 calories.  I guess if you're gonna fire up your private plane to go get one, it better deliver.

On sandwiches: why are Publix subs so much better than anyone else's?  Seriously.

Today has been a puttery day.  Spackled holes in various walls.  (My uncle always preached, "Paint will never fill a nail hole.")

Oh, and the No Kings protest.

Best sign of the day.

Emergency?

 Are y'all watching "The Pitt"?  Things are so tense, and characters are right.  On.  The.  Edge.  I'm nervous for everyone.

For the last couple of days, I have felt so odd.  Sluggish.  Heavy.  Not like I'm getting sick, just peculiar.

 

Shoulda Waited

 In my haste to provide photographic evidence of The Pollen yesterday, all that was needed was patience and a breezy night.

Pushed up against one of the rugs on the front porch, courtesy of breezes that brought in season-appropriate temperatures, your sneeze and headache inducers, folks.

The Yellow Returns

Before moving to here, I'd never given much thought to pollen.  I don't suffer with hay fever, and hadn't even seen pollen that I knew of.  In Georgia, though, it lets you know IT'S HERE.

A better picture would have been of my neighbor's car, but getting it would have looked weird.  This has all just started, but there's enough to make footprints.

That's the book I'm currently reading.  It's fascinating.  If I had written a dissertation, it would have been either on the Sociology of knitting (we learn from one another) or on the last meals of inmates (what we eat has social and cultural roots.)

Some Art

This is stunning.

This is familiar to many of us.

 

No, You Can't Have Any

Because glorious Twinnie sent all these fabric remnants to me.*  All this and nowhere to buy patterns for Barbie clothes. . .

My mother could stretch fabric (or as we called it, "material") extremely far.  I was lucky if there was a piece big enough for even a vest.  She would make garments, self belts, cover buttons, then cut quilt pieces.  Seriously --- a very thin strip is all I had to work with sometimes.  My Barbies had lots of tie belts and scarves.

*Remnant House was a store where we bought lots of material.  Fabric.   Whichever.

How Wonderfully Sweet is This?

You know that house is neat as a pin inside.  Oh, just to have a cup of tea with her...

We're still in the cold snap, I think.  Mornings have been --- and I believe will be for a bit --- quite cold, but the days are nice.  Sweatshirt weather, which delights me to no end.

 

This Was Supposed to be Posted Before Today

Last night, I ducked in and out of Oscars red carpet online (an overwhelming number of underwhelming clothes), and got updates from the ceremony in texts from Briton.  Yay, Michael B., and all of the sweet, tearjerking moments around that.  Fell in love with Plemons' acting here, glad to see Michael B. again after "The Wire."

Yay Jessie Buckley and Amy Madigan, too.  (Madigan's husband Ed Harris is one of my favorite, favorite actors.)

I Raised an Actor

My son is an excellent actor.  For a lot of years, we all thought that would be his career.  For a lot of years, any televised awards show meant we'd get Zaxby's takeout and watch from the Red Carpet to the SO LATE ending.

He has begun watching the Oscars with his podcast friends, and will again tonight.  I will periodically check online sites for who wears what and who wins what.  As usual, I have not seen many nominees, so my opinions are few.  Still:

"Sinners" is impressive for many reasons.  The Dance Scene, yes.  Wunmi Mosaku stole her scenes.  Michael B. Jordan couldn't be any more charismatic if he tried.  (Anyone for "The Wire?")  It's all Delroy Lindo for me, though.

"Frankenstein" has spectacular costuming.  And Oscar Isaac.  Jacob Elordi is very good.

"Train Dreams" is meditative and beautiful.  It seems like a "little" film, but deserves "big" film accolades.

"Hamnet" has Jessie Buckley, and I am a very big fan of hers.  For all the screaming hype about the book, it didn't impress me.  If I ever watch the movie, it will be wholly to watch Buckley.

Chalamet has always irritated me.  DiCaprio has always been *shrug* for me.  Michael B., if only for another photo like this:

What Do You Know...

A couple of days this week, the temperature was perilously to 80.  Eighty, as in, t-shirts without jackets to walk Tap.  Just a couple of minutes ago, I saw this:

The old saw "If you don't like the weather in [wherever], just wait..." sets my teeth on edge, but I can hear people saying that about this.  All I can hope for is that there will be snow.  Here.  Right here where I live.

I've been trying to knit and cross-stitch a little every day, first to feel productive, second to possibly make a difference in how my fingers feel.  First, I have made a tiny bit of progress, second, my fingers feel worse.  There's just lots of shrugging on my end at this point.

Taking Time to Read

This afternoon, while my septic tank was being cleaned out (told you there were plumbing problems), I read a news article about a historically "energetic" neutrino field found in the Mediterranean Sea.  

(Graphic representation of said energy.)

This is intrinsically fascinating.  The detector is at the bottom of the Mediterranean.  This lead me to why the detectors had to be placed underwater.  That lead me to a few more articles to explain the new words I was seeing: blazar, lepton, muon, weak isospin.  I wound up at a chart that included quarks.  Any time you can spend time with quarks is good time.

Well...

...one thing got accomplished over the weekend.

I'm so glad to have gotten lights in place that the wonkiness of the boots isn't grating on me. There'll be lots of switching out, I'm sure.

Why?

This has been a stupendously bad day.  Plumbing issues, which I'm trying to muscle through to avoid a Sunday service call charge.

 Yesterday, I got both a blistering letter and a nasty message from AT&T telling me that I have to make an appointment to have fiber lines installed now.  (Actually by April 18, but that doesn't sound menacing enough.)  A website address was provided in both, but is utterly useless.  There is nowhere to schedule an appointment so that my service won't be interrupted.

Thank goodness my lamps arrived.  Lamps make things cozy.  The rest of the house is a train wreck, but the lamps are nice.

More Athens Chamber of Commerce Stuff

 

Note the date of the article: March 2, 2026.  Weaver D's closed on February 26th.  We stood in line that day for some last broccoli casserole, sweet potatoes and pork chops.

You can still go down Broad and see That Green Building.  GREEN.

The menu, though, y'all --- look at that.  Peach cobbler that would make you willing to slap someone for more.

In the middle of the menu board, though, is how most know about Weaver D's: "Automatic for the people."

I recommend "Find the River."  My food recommendations don't really work anymore.

Joe Blake

Now, I don't enjoy coming across a snake "in the wild."  The surprise is the thing.  But if I came across this particular ophidia, I do believe I'd be a little charmed.

 First, I'd never considered whether snakes could carry things in their mouths.  I'd never thought about whether they ever needed to carry anything.

Second --- and this is where I take off into fun world-building --- what is the snake going to do with the penny?   Save it?  (Here is an opportunity for a side quest, figuring out what type of piggy bank a snake might have.)  Give it as a gift?  Use it for show and tell at snake school?  Only you can't have all the snake students come up front, or you might wind up with one of those awful, awful rat tails' tangled things.

Third, if snakes can hum and smile and be excited, it's a pretty good bet that's happening there.  That's probably a happy snake.

Fourth, can a snake flip a coin?

Let There Be... You Know

 There's a very nice article on a website called decorhint.com about Jittery Joe's here.  Since I'm not a coffee drinker, hot chocolate is my go-to there.  One of their muffins (famous) or a cake slice, too.  This is the JitJoe's (locals call it that --- not me) closest to me:

I know people joke about Starbucks having stores on every corner --- that's Jittery Joe's here.  They are everywhere.

Tap is better today, though still a bit crotchety.  He's hungry, but I'm trying to go easy there so yesterday won't repeat.

I'm still mulling the boot shelves over.  I did order table lamps for the den, so I'm on a lighting binge, it would seem.

Dogs and Swearing

Briton's second grade teacher was, and continues to be, a light in our lives.  She made him I don't know how many pans of Chicken Parmesan when Dale was sick, and on until she moved out of town.  She's now a ceramics artist, and for my birthday I ordered a little trinket dish for myself.  The business card she included featured this

Could you just die?  Hi, Biddle!!

I'm going back and rewatching Season 1 of "The Pitt."  As I watched an episode last night, I picked up my last cross-stitch project.  It was painfully (in all senses) slow going, but there are a couple more letters here now.  *Not for the faint of eye.*

Do you think professional censors also use strategically placed measuring devices?

Tap isn't feeling too great today.  One end of his gastrointestinal tract (I shan't say which 😳) is, um, actively troubling him.  He is understandably cranky, and doesn't want me to touch him, yet will crawl into my lap if he has a chance.  Let's hope it's a one day thing.

Ears

 The bunny is wise.

I didn't say "Rabbit, rabbit" first thing yesterday --- "Good morning, Tap" slipped out first.

How's your March going?

Better than Charles here, I suspect.

Why wasn't the head taken off?  If they were worried about upsetting children, the handcuffing probably took care of that already.

 

Bags and Breads

That weird little closet I wrote about a couple of days ago is also where my tote bags are stored.  If I ever have a yard sale, there are going to be SO many totes and pouches and bags...  Knitters probably accumulate bags in quantities second only to skeins/balls/hanks of yarn.  A friend of mine since high school sent this one:

Oh, if I only could.  A couple of rows (and this is on a hat) wear me out.  I'll keep at it, though.

Yesterday, I made my go-to bread: cheese.  Which cheese(s) are used makes a lot of difference;  I didn't use extra sharp cheddar this time, and it's a just a tiny bit bland.  Every time I've ever made it, it's come out moist and delicious.  I have a fail-safe banana bread recipe, too.  Everything else is sort of a crap shoot.