Enemy of Entropy

Time Flies

4 May 2009, 6:06 pm. Comments Off. Filed under General.

I used to get so annoyed when my mother would say, “Twenty years from now, nobody will know the dif­fer­ence.” She was wrong in a sense — I cer­tainly still know the dif­fer­ence, about so very many things.

On the other hand, I do under­stand the longer view much bet­ter now. Twenty years seemed like such a long time then, and now? It’s so very short.

In any case, Katie did get home from her trip to the great north­west. She had a mar­velous time and thinks she has found her school.

I’m really proud of her. She planned this trip, to a place nei­ther she nor any of us had ever been before, all by her­self. She went with­out a qualm, had a mar­velous time, man­aged her money mar­velously, and made some great new friends.

Since then she also went to her first LARP. Again, she had a mar­velous adven­ture, lots of fun, and found a new thing she enjoys. I think we need to acquire camp­ing equipment.

Sam has started play­ing Burn­ing Wheel with a group of local peo­ple. He really enjoys the game. I’m glad to see him get­ting out and hav­ing some social time with others.

I had a big thing hap­pen, but I’m going to stay quiet about it a lit­tle longer, ’til it’s also a sure thing.

In the mean­time, I’ve found a nice out­let for my OCD urges as a “librar­ian” at Good Reads.

Um, Thank You?

10 January 2009, 8:53 pm. 3 Comments. Filed under Family, Needlework.

Look! TWO posts in ONE day! Maybe I’m finally crawl­ing out of my pit of depression.

My very help­ful child dis­ap­proved of how I was treat­ing my small stitch­ing project, so she sweetly put it in a huge Ziplock bag and “put it away.”

I have absolutely no idea where “away” might be, but it isn’t in my stitch­ing bag, or near my recliner, or in the area where I’ve been sit­ting in the liv­ing room. Now she says she didn’t put it any­where. Buh?

And we stopped at Michael’s yes­ter­day to get the DMC I needed for it!1

I also got the fab­ric for two big­ger pieces, though, so I can start one of those. Tech­ni­cally, I know that I have the fab­ric for Deep Peace around here some­where, but I couldn’t find it, so I got a new piece. Now the orig­i­nal fab­ric will, of course, make itself known.

Smaller, less involved projects are bet­ter to do while in com­pany, though. And it’s date night. The girl is, her­self, out on a date, so I can’t even shang­hai her into help­ing find the small project. Grump. She found sup­plies for a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent art projects while we were at Michael’s, too, so I expect heavy art­ing from her shortly.

We picked up din­ner for the three of us at Lit­tle Azio’s on the way home, which was as deli­cious as usual. That was a lovely way to end a tir­ing, but reward­ing, day.

1 I pre­fer shop­ping at an LNS, but my favorite went online-​​only and this was an instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion thing.

Cur­rent Mood: (cheerful) cheerful
Cur­rent Music: Dead­man “Where the Music’s Not Forgotten”

New Year’s Eve

31 December 2008, 8:52 pm. 4 Comments. Filed under Family, Needlework.

I hate com­ing up with titles. Can you tell?

Happy New Year to all of you. I hope to see more of you in per­son this year!

I’m still not feel­ing well at all, so I haven’t been online much. Despite that, my wrists have been aching as if I were work­ing again. How does that happen?

Our Yule was qui­etly pleas­ant. I hope your win­ter hol­i­day was as good.

I did finally fin­ish stitch­ing the Fairy Tale Sam­pler for Sam. It didn’t take that much stitch­ing (so it can’t be blamed for the wrist pain), but I did have to re-​​purchase some Mill Hill beads. That gave me an excuse (like I needed it) to talk to Susan of Nease’s Needle­work, which is always lovely. But now it’s finished!

My cam­era bat­tery won’t recharge any­more, so I’ll have to con­vince the girl to take a photo of the piece for me.

I think I’m finally ready to do Deep Peace. It’s a gor­geous piece, and some peo­ple I love dearly got all the sup­plies for it as a gift for me a few years back. Unfor­tu­nately, we broke up right after that, and every time I started to work on it, I cried. I think there’s been enough time now that I can focus on the happy mem­o­ries instead of the hard stuff.

I think I need to start a smaller project, too, that I can carry around with me. Com­plex projects don’t lend them­selves to pro­duc­tiv­ity while doing any­thing else, any­way. Sam tends to get me so inter­ested in gam­ing that I can’t get much stitch­ing done. Multi-​​person games are bet­ter for needle­work, because I stitch while the focus is on some­one else.

I’m not really into New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions, and if I made them seri­ously, I’d be more likely to do so at Samhain than the end of January/​beginning of Decem­ber. Still, I’ve been real­iz­ing how much I’ve missed needle­work. My eyes are still giv­ing me trou­ble, but I got out an old, portable magnifier/​travel light and that helps. I think it may be worth­while to check into a mag­ni­fier attach­ment for my Ott Lite (after get­ting new glasses). I’m going to try stitch­ing more reg­u­larly, and I’d really like to learn needle­point and knit­ting and/​or cro­chet­ing. I think I can man­age the needle­point on my own, but not the yarn stuff. Hope­fully I can find some­one local who is will­ing to teach me. Appar­ently there’s a group meet­ing at a local library that may be a possibility.

I thought my DMC was get­ting too old for use or some­thing, because it kept fray­ing apart while I was stitch­ing. I finally real­ized (after buy­ing 3 new skeins of black floss) that I’d been using those nee­dles that doesn’t require thread­ing (which I love), and that they stress the floss (and the floss slips out eas­ily). I switched back to a reg­u­lar tapes­try nee­dle and presto! the prob­lem was gone. I can’t find those no-​​thread nee­dles any­where online, so I guess other folks fig­ured that out far more quickly than I did! I have a two-​​sided nee­dle that came with a mag­a­zine or some such, but I don’t know that I can quite fig­ure out how to use it.

Sam and I are stay­ing in this evening, avoid­ing all the obnox­ious drunks in favor of our own cel­e­bra­tion. The girl is here, too, because her beau is in Europe with his fam­ily and most of her other friends are also out of town (some­thing about a Flam­ing Lips concert?).

After get­ting caught up with all the shows I enjoy, I went look­ing for some­thing else to view. I enjoy Bones, but I find the sizist com­ments (and plots) highly offen­sive. I tried to watch the first episode of The Men­tal­ist online, but it keeps tim­ing out. Sam got the first disc of The Tudors from Net­flix, and it’s inter­est­ing at times. I tend to get annoyed with the lib­er­ties they’ve taken with his­tory, though.

Anniversary!

12 September 2008, 4:16 pm. 2 Comments. Filed under Relationships.

Ten years ago today, Sam took me out on our first “real” date (as in, with­out the kids or any­one else). Thank you, love. Here’s to many more decades!

Between Naps

12 September 2008, 4:03 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Health, Reading.

I gave in to my body and stayed in bed all day yes­ter­day. It helped. If I’m not try­ing to do any­thing else, I can take my break­through pain meds and mus­cle relax­ants. They make me too floppy to walk around safely or use dan­ger­ous tools like but­ter knives.

I’m doing pretty much the same today, but wanted to post an update. Not that there’s really any­thing much to talk about, other than napping.

I have con­tin­ued to read when I’m awake, thanks to Sam’s will­ing­ness to go to the library to sup­port my habit. I fin­ished the first four books in Eileen Wilks’ World of the Lupi series. I think book 4, Night Sea­son, was bet­ter than the first three. The focus switched from one cou­ple to another in this book, and both of those peo­ple were def­i­nitely grow­ing and chang­ing — always a plus in my mind.

I did fin­ish Caitlin Kittredge’s Pure Blood, but it was a close thing. The main char­ac­ter is a whiny, imma­ture brat who blames every­thing on the fact that she’s a were­wolf. The other weres in her world don’t seem to have such poor con­trol over them­selves, so that just doesn’t wash. She’s also stu­pid, con­stantly run­ning off into dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions with­out let­ting any­one — like, say, her fel­low police offi­cers — know so they can back her up.

I finally got my hands on Hands of Flame by C.E. Mur­phy, the last book of her Nego­tia­tor tril­ogy. It was won­der­ful! All the impor­tant threads from the series were tied up, includ­ing some that I’d thought merely back­ground. There are five Old Races liv­ing silently among humans in Murphy’s uni­verse, and I love the way she avoids most of the clichés about them. I would like to have seen a few more shades of gray in the por­trayal of one race, in par­tic­u­lar, but all in all she did a very nice job. It’s easy to imag­ine many, many more sto­ries in this uni­verse, focus­ing on new characters.

I haven’t decided what to read next. Sam was so enthu­si­as­tic about Halt­ing State by Charles Stross that I might switch over to sci­ence fic­tion for a bit. It really depends on how well I’m able to com­pre­hend it — Stross’ writ­ing is really good, but more chal­leng­ing to the reader than any of the urban fantasy/​paranormal what­sis books I’ve been dawdling over.

 

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