MarQ1

I’m on VACATION.

I cannot remember when I last felt this relaxed. Not that a sane person would call me relaxed.

I’m on vacation for only a week; and at the end of the week I turn 49. My joy is not unmitigated.

Spring. Finally. Maybe.

Five weeks after the false hope of March, it finally warmed up enough to get out on my bike and flap my love-handles in the wind. I work a loose shirt to protect the innocent. This was a marvelously perfect day for biking. Not too cool, not too warm. Steady, but not too insistent breeze. Light traffic.

Today will probably be the best day Brooklyn will have all year. Everybody was out. People on bikes—some cute guys, too— everywhere. McCarran Park, between Greenpoint and Williamsburgh, was packed, as were the sidewalk tables at the restaurant on Smith St.

Feather & Fan Update

I’m ⁷/₈ through round 165. This sounds like a lot, but that’s only 72% of the total stitches. Only twenty-five more rounds, mostly plain knitting until I get to the crocheted cast-off, which will be the end of me.

I finished a scarf, too, since we last met. I’ll take pictures eventually.

Confession

Sometimes blogging seems like Work. Some days at Work are 90% e-mail.

In Other News

• We’re having a home office installed tomorrow. We had to move everything out of the office in preparation. It seems quite large now, but the living room is cramped.
• A table, two good-quality bookcases, a mirror and a black plastic cylindrical trash-can went out to the curb to make way for the new furniture. All found homes, good ones I hope. The trash can went first—odd, since it was the cheapest thing out there. The last to go was the six-foot bookcase. I was surprised, How often do you find a six-foot, maple-veneer, mahogany-finish bookcase in excellent condition with all the shelves on the street FOR FREE?
• My elder sister turned 50 today. This is not a consolation to me. I did remember to call her. Eventually.
• I warned my younger sister that in the two years after I turn 50 I am unlikely to forget that she is relatively right behind me, so she should be nice to both my older sister and me.
• I have realized that my the vacation I had (vaguely) planned out of the country next year to avoid spending my 50^th with anyone but J will probably not happen. We have a major system conversion due at the end of April next year at work.
• Of the tens of people I saw biking today, I was one of the four oldest. I’m almost certain the other three are gay. And they looked pretty good. I’ve got some work ahead of me.

Literally. Somehow I’m continuously picking up an electric charge. Everything I touch gets a little zap. I rounded a corner at work and heard my shirt discharge against the wall. I’d like some humidity please.

Astonishingly cold and clear tonight. We aren’t happy.

Sometime early this morning I was awakened by my partner, who in his sleep pulled the pillow out from under my head, hugged it to himself and rolled over so I couldn’t get it back. He claims to have been unaware of this.

Literally.

Clear and excruciatingly cold. My sympathies to the folks in Minneapolis, Chicago and Columbus and everywhere in between.

Binge Organizing

I’m tagging my swatches by yarn, needle size and type, and date. I was probably inspired by my newly organized notions and needles drawer.

We also installed new shelves in the bedroom closet, discarded unneeded furniture, took a few boxes to the basement, consolidated tools into a storage box under my desk and laid out plans to reorganize the office.

And I want to get a new stove.

Assault & Battery

Last Wednesday around 5:45 am, I was lying on the sofa reading the Times when I heard an beeping sound. Beep, beep, beep, pause. Beep, beep, beep, pause. First I thought it was a truck outside, but ruled that out when it continued for more than ten minutes. Then I thought our next-door neighbor was having trouble waking up, but dropped that hypothesis after a half hour of beep, beep, beep, pause, etc. The sound was definitely in the building and it wasn’t in our apartment, so i stepped into the stairway. It was coming from our upstairs neighbor’s apartment—our upstairs neighbor who had left the day before for Florida for a month.

Apparently she shut her electricity off for the month, but neglected to consider that her CO alarm would have a battery back-up that would eventually died down and cause the alarm to beep warningly. And annoyingly.

The alarm counts to three, but where I am on F&F, I need to count to 22. I can’t nap on the sofa for the beeping and napping would be good for my head cold. The battery is now weak enough that it stops for hours while the battery gathers its reserves, but inevitably when I think the alarm is done, it starts up again. I don’t hear it now, but that’s no promise.

J can’t hear the beeping in the apartment. Lucky.

Am I the only one who is annoyed by the sound that dimmer switches make?

The bulbs in our canned lights in the kitchen hum in an irritating way when they are about to burn out. J claims to not hear them. Anybody else notice this?

I went to the gym this morning at 5:45am. As I stood in front of a locker beginning to undress, I realized that I left my gym shorts at home on the kitchen counter.

I went home and knit.

About 80% of my way through a nice, soft, end-to-end scarf in Reynolds Rapture—a holiday present for J’s sister—like the one I made last year for my niece, but somewhat shorter—I get this feeling that I gave her a scarf last year in the exact color palette. I did. Either she’ll think I have no imagination or she’ll compare last year’s effort unfavorably with this one because Reynolds Rapture is a more luxurious yarn than Debbie Bliss Soho. Also, she might hate the colors and think, “Damn, another scarf in those colors?!”

Since I had intended to give her the green Fleece Artist scarf before I discovered it’s itchy, fiberglass-like qualities—it’s still pretty—I will soon be starting scarf #3.

My hop bine once looked as if it could command a good bit of our terrace railing, even after an aphid infestation. Then my neighbor neglected to water it enough while we were on vacation. Then it suffered more during a hot, dry spell where one day without water was too much. Then last weekend I found it almost leafless and covered in caterpillars, disgusting spiny caterpillars. I pushed them off or cut the leaf stalks they were clinging to, letting them fall to the pavement below. When I found them trying to crawl back up the buliding wall, I crushed them.

I thought I got them all. I was wrong. I missed one.

This one has eaten its last leaf too.

The few green leaves you see are new. The hop plant survives.

I’ve said it before, but it there anything grosser than raw chicken? Within, of course, the rather limited range of foods I eat.

The rubber gloves help. Without them I’d be cleaning up puke now.

The dishwasher is now on the two-hour-long sanitizing cycle. I’d get in if I could.

Dinner, btw, is skinless, boneless chicken breasts breaded with reduced-fat sour cream and a mixture of breadcrumbs, walnuts, parmigiano reggiano, sage, (a dash) nutmeg, salt and pepper, all whacked together in the food processor. And a salad. It will be good.

If I didn’t dislike vegetables so much, I’d be a vegetarian.

And there’s a giant pot of tomato sauce on the stove as well.