Christmas Prep

This is my favorite Christmas movie!  And last weekend, I broke it out to start prepping for the season!

I know all of the words to the songs though I usually don’t sing along since I’m not very good, but they go over and over in my head…

 ”I’m dreaming of a White Christmas….”

“Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister.  Lord help the sister who comes between me and my man…”

“What do you with a General, when he stops being a General…”

Where do you think I could find a man like Bing Crosby….though maybe a little taller?

So my Christmas season has started with White Christmas.  I may not have decorations up.  But the songs are repeating in my head, and I got a couple of solid hours of knitting!

This is gradually becoming Kim Hargreaves‘ Breeze Coat.  I’m a little leery of long sweaters, since I am not sure they are all that flattering for me.  But as usual with me, the process is my favorite part and knitting it has been fun!

I am a fan of Kim Hargreaves’ designs, however, this is the first one I’ve actually tried to knit up.  I am getting used to some of her terminology and hope I am interpreting it correctly.  I am a little sketchy sometimes on the row repeats and combine that with my yarn substitution (that is not supposed to shrink like cotton), I am hoping the thing doesn’t turn out WAY too long!

I am off to the No Coast Craft-O-Rama today to continue getting myself in the Christmas spirit!

The reading continues

It is fall here in the great white north.  The leaves are changing and falling and our crazy Indian Summer (8 days over 80 degrees in October!) is hopefully over.  I am ready for cooler temps and cloudy days meant for sitting on the couch and knitting!

In the meantime, my yard demands that the leaves be taken care of and everything else demands something before the snow starts to fly here!  So my downtime has only been before I go to sleep…thus reading.

My quest for finding Miss Silver continues.  As you might recall the library was a bit slow on getting my book.  So I wandered off to Stillwater a couple of Saturdays ago when it was gorgeous and I was tired of working.  In one of their nice used book stores I found….

It is one of the later Miss Silver books…”The Alington Inheritance”.  I was so excited!  I bought it as fast as possible and went home and started to read…

And I will be honest.  I did not enjoy it as much as “The Gazebo”.  There was a romance between two distant cousins that came out of the blue and was rather random.  It reminded me of the Emilie Loring books I read at the public library when I was just beginning to read romance books. …I was never fond of those either.  The mystery aspect was ok, but all in all I wasn’t thrilled.

I did, however, finally get my library book!  And, having started it….I am hooked again!  The reading continues!!

 

Story Hour

Did anyone else love story hour when they were little?  Sitting at the library (public or at school) and being read to was good.  I still love to read, but find that I don’t always take the time to do it.  There are so many other distractions…knitting, movies, cooking, antiquing (is that a word?), yardwork, housework…you get the idea. 

I have found that one hobby/obsession can lead to another.  Knitting blogs and Ravelry all have different knitting-related topics that can sidetrack me.  The most recent one I ran across was a series of books that has an older lady as the “star”.   Her name is Miss Silver.   She is a sleuth (I love that word!), and being of a “certain age” in a different era (the books were written in the 1920′s through 1960′s) she, of course, knits.

After hearing about the series I needed to check it out.  I have always been an avid fan of series books (note the vast Nancy Drew collection in my spare bedroom).  So I immediately starting researching online.  All of the reviews I read were positive so…could I get them at the library, ebay, bookstore?

I found a copy at the library.  It, however, was not at my branch so wouldn’t be available for over a week.  I put it on hold, but I can’t wait that long to see if I like it or not….I already have this feeling I will love them!!  THEN I found another title (The Gazebo by Patricia Wentworth) at a local used bookstore.  SCORE!!

I rushed home to read it and discovered that there is a certain charm and easiness to the reading that I like.  Miss Silver is smart and has a very strong set of beliefs of proper behaviour.   She does knit, but it’s more part of her personality rather than the story.  For me it helped illustrate her calming presence.  The story is definitely not HER story, but instead the story of the people that she ultimately helps by solving the case.  The references are vintage, as are the details (clothes and manners).  I may just be a fan!

I want to be as active and inquisitive when I get older as Miss Silver is.  In the meantime I will be tracking more of these babies down so that story hour continues at my house!!

Happy Birthday to Me!

When I was in college I rarely had time for fun reading.  My classes obviously required textbook reading and lots of projects.  I spent most of my time making boards and floor plans. 

However, when I was growing up in small town Iowa the library had been a very important place to get my Nancy Drew fix!  So in college I would occassionally visit the public library and stumbled across the Mrs. Pollifax books (by Dorothy Gilman).  Mrs. Pollifax is an older lady that walks into the CIA to volunteer to be a spy.  Due to her ordinary appearance, age, and non-suspicious persona she gets the gig!  She had many adventures that were solved due to her lack of experience and common sense.

Looking back it was probably my Nancy Drew “fix” for when I was older.  I can only hope to be that adventurous and active when I get to a “certain age”.    Through the years I have stumbled across a few of the books in second hand stores and I pick them and still enjoy them.  Then last week I saw that there was a movie made in the 70′s!

So what better way to spend my birthday than watching a spy adventure from the 70′s!  There is a certain cheesiness and crazy fashion that makes that era very fun!  I do enjoy the books much more than the movie, since it doesn’t exactly stay in line with the books.  But is was absolutely enjoyable to watch!

Pretty much a great birthday treat!

More signs of spring

When the weather starts to warm up I start getting the itch for motorcycle rides and baseball games.  When I was in high school those 2 activities were definite signs that spring was here and summer was just around the corner.

I don’t know a handy guy with a motorcycle, so I am gearing up for baseball.  We have season tickets at my office for the Twins in their new stadium.  And since I am the keeper of the tickets I am sure I will get to several games this year.  It also means I got to attend the open house to check out the new stadium.    Totally fun (even with a blind date) and I really don’t think there is a bad seat in the house!

However, this cracked me up!

Isn’t that one a little obvious?? 

Who says 60 isn’t beautiful??

Especially when it is 60 degrees in MN!!!!  My flowers are coming up!!!  YAY!!

Dating

Why are men so confusing??  The boy that I have not talked to for 6 weeks e-mails me….”Could I call you?”

My heart does the little flutter, because I have moved on…kind of…I really liked this guy.  I respond that he is always welcome to call me…even though my mind is thinking I don’t know if I want to talk to you because I’m not sure I’m ready to be friends.  I immediately started steeling my heart in preparation….and….

It’s been a week, and he hasn’t called.  SERIOUSLY!!  Why send the e-mail??  Those were some seriously good pep talks I could have saved for another day!!!

There has been knitting, but the drama of online dating and real life dating has been very time consuming too!

Everybody’s working for the weekend…

Or maybe in my case I am working for the phone company.  Don’t you love the fact that you can receive and pay all of your bills online?  For me it is a double-edged sword.  It’s much more convenient, but for some reason the amount of the bill does not register as strongly as it used to when I had to get out the old checkbook and pay the bill.  So when I got my phone bill the other day it seemed a bit steep, but I wasn’t totally sure.  That’s when I realized I couldn’t even remember the password to login to my account, because everything just automatically gets paid…convenience has made me lazy!!

 Finally I got myself logged in and sure enough there was $13.75 that didn’t seem to belong.  I called in to find out what had happened.  The woman I spoke was extremely nice and helpful.  She told me that they had changed their billing cycles and the $13.75 was for the gap between the old and the new cycle.  I asked why there would be a monetary difference….if it was just timing wouldn’t the amount still be the same?  After reviewing it she agreed and told me it was a billing error and she would credit my account.

 Very easy and very painless.  What I found interesting was the total lack of apology.  She was very nice and there was nothing offensive about her service, but no one really seems to feel the need to apologize these days.  I probably apologize too much sometimes, but the occasional courtesy wave (not finger) when you’ve let someone merge into heavy traffic or an “I am so sorry we tried to get you to pay $14 you don’t owe us” can go a long way.

Life Changing Device

I work with a guy that got an I-phone for Christmas.  The thing is tied to his hand!  We tease him about it being his “life changing device” since it has the answers to everything that we ask him.  I personally don’t have a huge desire to own an i-phone or any phone that keeps me tied to technology 24 hours a day.  BUT I do love my movies and my Netflix and I have discovered my own life changing device!

About a month ago I got a Blue Ray player that has the wireless feature that allows me to download instant watch movies from Netflix.  I LOVE it!!  It gives me quality knitting time, and a much better selection than cable (or Dish Network in my case).  I guess we all have our own technological weaknesses!

Changes

For months there has been a man in my life that I thought was a good man.   He opens doors, goes to Church, loves kids, is cute, fixes things, and is basically a man.  He is no longer in my life, in fact, due to the instant status updates of Facebook, I even know that he is already involved with someone else.  She’s been married twice and has a middle school daughter.  Breaks my heart.

We’ve known each other since Jr High.  I have decided that that point right there is where I have made the most mistakes.  The past 2 men I have been involved with have been tied to high school days.  Men I hadn’t talked with for years, and they both reappeared within the past 3 years.  The common history, values, and friends makes it feel like the perfect relationship.  They know exactly what to tell me until it ends.  Then they choose to tell me nothing and just disappear.  It hurts more because they are tied to fond secure memories and the cold reality hits that they are not going to be part of a fond secure future.

I have a house, a good job, great friends, a healthy stash of yarn, and the willingness to travel by myself if necessary.  Why is it so depressing to not have someone to share it all with who will also make me a priority?  I have hunkered in for the past week and have been reevaluating priorities.  

I hate change!