In a Week

A week  ago today I was sitting talking to my  dad and  complaining how hard  the jigsaw Anne and Peter  gave  him.

A week ago  today I stayed home to be with him while Mum went and did chores that couldn't be put off any longer.

A week ago today I sent my visa paperwork to Dublin by couriers.

A week ago today the world looked  different  than it does  today for us all.

We have had so  many people  help  us,  so many  people  bring us food and gift and  flowers.

People have been amazing.

The funeral mass  was calm and quiet and  respectful. Dad would  have liked it. He would have been  happy to meet the  people who showed  up to the funeral - they were all people he liked - though posibly not all in a group like that ....

The first reading was the one that starts 'to every season'
the responsorial  psalm was 'the lord is my shepherd' and I loved them both.

'Abide with me' played on the way out of the church. It  was so nice.

And, after a terrible, terrible few days weather we got some sunshine down at the grave.

Today is a  beautiful  day and Anne and Peter are outside gardening while Mum, Joyce and I sit in the sunroom warming ourselves.

Today the world is different and my Dad is at peace.

Parcel

Woo hoo, I just got a brown paper package tied up with string!

Thank you!

I hope mine arrives to you ....

Sofa turf-war

It turns out that despite the vast and palatial nature of my apartment me and herself are in competition for a single sofa cushion.

 I was not aware of this battle. Though she HAS taken to sitting and staring at me for long periods of time - I thought it was because she was hungry!

I need to sit there because it means I can put my tea down on the table beside me.  

She needs to sit there because that is where she sits.

I discovered this last night when I very gently picked her up, moved her onto the next cushion, put down my mug and sat down in that spot. Only to discover there was a cat underneath me. The length of time it took her to move back was probably world record beating. Though it was overtaken almost immediately by the speed at which she moved when she realised she was about to get firmly squashed ... :D

Washing

There is some of the loudest washing I have ever heard in my entire life going on beside me right now.

That is one thoroughly washed shoulder.

We have moved on to the left ear... If she intends on a full body ablution at this speed and with this amount of perfectionism then it may be morning before she is done.

She is glaring at me now. She has quite an impressive glare. She knows I am talking about her.

Hat

Not luminous at all, nope ...

Subtle. Yes, subtle. Understated...

(Colinette, Point 5 - Jamboree.)

Pumpkin Carving

Spider Lollipops

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

VCGN

Tommy Thompson and Ethan Allen Gardens

This is the blog for the community gardens. You can see me in a bunch of unflattering poses here :D

Ah the joys of sneaky photography!

Also the stuff we did for the garden is shown here too - which is somewhat more interesting.

I will say that the large rear end in one of the photos is NOT me. And I doubt very much that the owner of said rear end is terribly entertained by the picture.

Cats

What's your cat's name?

Ummm ...*thinks hard* Berry! Yes Berry.

You don't seem all that sure?

Um well, I call her Catface ....

Oh.

My weekend to date

Went gardening

Went to a pig roast (In a barn over a cowshed - everything I own now smells of bonfire and cows)
Listened to country music with a lot of people wearing cowboy boots and baseball caps .... It only lacked a hayride ....

Then today I went to a totally excellent craft fair which you should all be jealous of!

Then photographed waterfalls

Then did something frightening to my car ... but I am not thinking about that....

Then I turned a LOT of the veggies I have collected from my garden into either gazpacho or spaghetti sauce ....

I still have  a lot of veggies unpreserved - mostly squash and cherry tomatoes

But it has been a productive day!

*Goes through bank/cc post*

 *removes about 1/2 of the 'so's*

My posts, they do not post for me ...

Oh I  see - they are posting by draft order . There are old ones further back :)

Pack a gangsters!

I used my credit card and bought, say, $100 dollars of stuff. I then owed the cc company $100. This is pretty easy.

I sent them a cheque towards the end of the owe time and before they sent me one of those 'we will come and take your firstborn and your camper van if you don't pay us RIGHT NOW!!' (BTW here is a survey asking how many children you have/are planning on having, ta) type letters. Which they usually send a 1 day after the 'ha-ha you didn't pay us on time now you owe us $35 as well' letters.

So I paid up.

Next month my cc bill is $1.27.

Why? I say to myself, do I owe $1.27. I am not writing a cheque for 1.27 that's stupid.

I ignore bill (which I freely accept is also stupid)

Next month I get bill for $36.27 which was inevitable. I sigh and send cheque for $36.27.

Next month I get bill for $1.00

I am exasperated and ignore bill for a good while and eventually send the cc company cheque for $36 because I figure they are charging me interest or something and I am in a loop. Also I have probably left it too late again and they charged me.

As it turns out they didn't. So there I am with a nice little buffer so that this interest or whatever comes off the balance when I pay the amount that is ACTUALLY charged me each time.

This seems to flummox the cc for a while and all is quiet.

Last week I got a bill saying that for some reason the cc couldn't work out I had a credit on my cc account and they were  refunding it.

I rang them and said 'oi I didn't ask you to do that feck off!'

Oh no they said we didn't do nuffin you still have a $34 credit and you don't owe anything. You adorably useless to us person you...

'Right' says I (slightly mollified) 'OK while I am on the phone how-comes you keep holding me up for fiddling small change? Is it a scam so I will end up paying late fees?'

'Oh NO' they say like a maiden Victorian aunt turning down a proposition, 'we would never do something like that! How improper! '

We are charging you for paying by cheque.

And where does it say that on the bill?

Oh it doesn't, we assumed you knew. Look the consumer protection agency is preventing us from raising your interest rate to whatever we feel like if you miss one payment, we are only allowed these days to take one of your children in payment on a missed deadline. AND we have to tell you we are going to do that - in less than a page of small print - that is legible - and doesn't need to be translated from Sanskrit. You have to allow us a little fun!

*sigh* sure, OK whatever. And you haven't refunded my buffer money?

Nope.

OK can we help any other way.

No thank you.

Have a nice day!

Hmpf, you too, I guess.....

Two days later I get the refund cheque in the post.


.

cat shaming

Don't look like that. You know what you did!

I mean here you are being all cute and innocent and well behaved (not actually sure why this picture is in this set ...)

And this is you being completely unentertained by being in a leash.

No, you are not barred from going outside because of these holes in my hand (because the bill for the antibiotics and the X-ray and the bloodwork wasn't that high, and I have now had the chance to see all the inner operations of the hospital in detail and that was quite interesting ...).

Best quote: "Your cat did that? Is your cat an alligator?"

You are barred from going out because you tried to kill and eat a (male) cat twice your size and nearly strangled yourself while bouncing yourself off  two walls and a fence trying to get out of the leash to do it...

Hi there *waves*

I still need access to the H&P blog!!

This has been a PSA

Thank you, I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming :D

Some Pizza, Friday

My variant of Hat Pattern

Hat pattern

 4mm needles (3.5 for me) Cast on 60 stitches (loosely!)
Knit 2 pearl 2 for 11 inches
K2 P2 (K2 together P2 to end)
P1 K2 to end
K1 K2 together to end
K row
K2 together to end
Pull thread through remaining stitches

I decided around tea-time I was going to knit a hat.

Hat:

Gotta love nice fat wool and an easy pattern :D

The pattern for the scarf basically reads as follows

1) Cast on 34 stitches
2) Knit 2 Pearl 2 until you run out of wool.

Mayans

EDIT: I told this joke this evening. Jake said the ancient Mayans didn't have fermentation technology (he did his undergraduate degree in tequila, so I suppose he knows). 

However he makes very, very good pizzas so he is forgiven.

You know what works really well at American parties?

Terrible Christmas cracker jokes (because they likely haven't heard them)! For example:

What do you call a fish with no eyes?*
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
What do you call a dinosaur with no eyes?

Mind you somewhat of the punch had been consumed by then....

(extra points if you know why these three particular jokes came to mind)

*This punchline had to be done again in a non-Irish accent ... and then explained ... and even with all that there was some laughing! (Also the spelling when you write it down is cheating...sorry)

The NRA plan?

Wow ... just wow.

EDIT:



Transcript

TL;DR: Have armed response in all schools

Addendum to Previous Post

Parcel has been stuck in Chicago since the 18th due I assume to the gigantic stupid snowstorm interfering with my labwork!