Blogger Makes Me Want to Throw Things!

And we're back.

Please read the last post before this one. Good grief, Blogger makes me mad! It stopped uploading pictures (I'm used to that) and then it stopped taking instruction on what to do with the spacing. It was ignoring the return key. I am soooooo ready to put my blog on our website. I just have to figure out how. Also, for whatever reason, I can't upgrade to the new Blogger. The message boards are suspisciously quiet.

Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, there is a good chance that this will be a "Middle Blog". Think of my blogs like siblings. The post just before this (the oldest child) set up the general format and will have grand aspirations of literary genius that didn't come to fruition. This post (the middle child) might get lost in the reading, or be the point where my language lets go, but it will hold its own and will be the most stable. The post I assume will come later (the youngest child) will be the one that stands out because it will be the most visible- but by the time I get there, I'll probably be less concerned about the format - and the language.

So anywho, this post is about old event number 2 - The Snowstorm.

Gene, snow-mo-blowin' with no hat. I am a knitter extrodinaire (in my own mind) and my husband is not wearing a hat. What's really wierd about this is that Gene almost always wears a baseball cap. The snow is coming down in increments of feet and Gene thinks, "Snowpants? Yes, I should wear snowpants. Boots? Absosmurfly. Hat? Naw, there's no reason I should cover my head." *boggle*























The neighborhood was so snowy we couldn't even see where the street started.


I am, by the way, thrilled that I am able to present these pictures to you (Blogger can go...to a warmer place). I have spent some time picking out *just* the right ones - this blog must be pretty, after all! I wanted to convey the awesome feeling of being caught at home in a snowstorm. It's one of my favorite feelings. I love being warm and bundled up in turtlenecks and woolen socks, sweaters and looking out at the snow that is falling quietly outside my window. And actually, the quiet might be the part I like the most. I love the muffled sound of everything when it is covered with snow. I love the evenness of the landscape. I think I was meant to be in Alaska, or at least further north from here. Snow just makes me happy.











The dogs all loved the snow, too. You can see them romping - romping, I tell you! - in the fun fluffy stuff. Pelli played for a bit, but then got tired of walking through cold wetness that was as tall as she was. She walked in the other dogs' footprints for a while, then decided she'd had enough and that I should let her in.

















Sasha is entertained by...well, just about anything. Snowflakes that move? Wow! Fluffy stuff in the backyard? Neato! The other dogs want to run amok with her? Fantastic! She is completely oblivious to cold and wet (I'm guessing because she is a long-haried German Shepherd) and also because she is Sasha, and Sasha is not affected by trivialities such as cold and wet. Not when there are things to do, and watch, and play with and alert everyone to. If ever a dog could be ADD, this dog would be their poster puppy.


















Emma is a dog that was created for the snow. I think in terms of evolution, she is the pinnacle of the snow dog. First of all, she's the same color as the snow (a problem when she escapes in the winter and we have to catch her and we can't find her until she turns around and we see her black eyes and nose). Then she has all that fur. So. much. fur. Wait until the spring and the pictures of all her fur floating around my house like fluffy tumbleweeds. You simply will not believe it. Finally, she loves to dig. Typically, we discourage the digging - it is really not that great for our backyard to have the mulch distributed evenly throughout the yard, rather than in just the beds. But when it's snowy - she digs, she burrows, she lays in the snow and kicks her legs up. She becomes one with the snow. To see it is to believe it. She makes herself a little bed in the snow and does not want to come in the house. She is completely content.

The final snowstorm image for this particular post - the view of the backyard. Everytime I look at the woods, I know that this house was worth every penny.

Old and New

I have so much to say – and I’ve tried to say it a few times, but Blogger and I are having a disagreement. I think that I should be able to upload my blog, save drafts and include pictures. Blogger, for whatever reason, does not agree that I have these priveleges.

ANYWHO…

I’ve decided to sum up the last two and a half months in a single post. It may (nay, will) be lengthy. Get a snack. I’ll wait.

Ready? Let’s start with the old, shall we?

The last real post I made was just before Halloween. That’s quite a while ago, and there are several major holidays in between then and now.

To wit:
1) Thanksgiving.















All hail the Celebration of the Dead Bird. Which I cooked. Which was apparently tasty. (I didn’t have any until about 4 days later, then it was just…leftover dead bird.) We also had friends and family in the house.

Dad in the brown sweater on the left, Sasha the German Shepherd looking for food in the front, Kat at the island, Adam eating snacks next to her, Mom behind Kat at the sink and me cooking - COOKING, people! - next to the stove.

And in this photo we have Dad, still on the left and still in the brown sweater, Adam entranced by Finding Nemo, Travis on the Man-Eating Chair (if you’ve sat in it, you know), less than entranced by Finding Nemo, and Taylor, almost 2 in this picture, who thinks Finding Nemo is the pinnacle of American cinema.

The table nearly rivaled those previously seen at Sharon’s Thanksgiving Events ™.

Yes, those are menus on everyone’s plate. No, there was no ordering of what folks wanted, but if you didn’t want a thing, you didn’t put it on your plate. If you look very carefully in the middle left, you will see Nemo Orange on Taylor’s plate. Quite the hit.

Speaking of hits, how cute is this:

2) Snowstorm on December 1st.

Looking back, now, I realize Chicago got all its snow at once. Since that storm, which shut everything down, especially in Lake County, we have yet to see a single flake. In fact, it was in the 60s a few days ago – January! 60s! Global warming, anyone? But I’m jumping ahead, so let’s stay at December 1st for the moment.

The dogs were thrilled to see the snow. Even Pelli got into it for a minute or two. Emma did not want to come in. She lay down and made Emma-shaped snow angels and buried her head to make tunnels in the snow. (Ok, total aside. I hate the verb ‘to lay/to lie’ – I don’t even know the infinitive. The conjugation is horrible and I can never remember it. It’s sad, considering I just yelled at a piece of paper from a vendor at work who put an apostrophe after DVR to indicate the plural – DVR’s [sic] - *shudder* and I hollered, “It’s your native tongue, learn to write it.” Forward 5 minutes later and I don’t even know how to conjugate a verb. Feel free to comment with the rules you use and my apparent OCD approach to the English language.)

J is Just for fun!

I loved this song. Sing along! It will make you feel good!

Just Look

Look at this October 24th Post from Stephanie Pearl McPhee (the Yarn Harlot). Remember when I said that what men make is Important and is Art and what women make is mundane and craft? No? It was here, when I first started talking about the quilt show.

Anyway, this is what I meant. What Stephanie has made is Art. This is not craft (in the pejorative sense). This is Craft. Synonymous with Art. Regardless of the tools used - yarn and pointy sticks rather than paints and brushy sticks. Why do the tools make a difference? Why does the level of functionality make a difference? The fact that an object can be enjoyed more when it is on someone's shoulders than when it is on someone's wall should dictate its value as an artistic object. Not how esoteric it is.

Let's let go of the Artistic Cult of Personality (thank you, just the same, Andy Warhol), and re-embrace the idea of artist as creator.

Or, you can do like I do and hang on Stephanie's every blogged and published word, call her a Genius of the Highest Order, and imagine that someday, there will be a Yarn Harlot wing in MOMA.

Two Left Feet

So you've all (both of you) probably been wondering when the hell I was going to post. If ever. I have written a post probably thirty times in my head, and never put it onto the puter. They were poetic, they were funny - and they are no longer relevant. For example, I was going to tell you about my first pair of socks.

I don't have three feet, of course. I made mine (the fraternal twins on the outside) and the middle is Gene with his single sock. You are witnessing the grand total of my sock production.

I made mine two weeks ago. They are comfycomfy, and great car knits, since I don't have to pay attention, really. Just keep knitting in a circle. They are also, you may notice, fraternal twins, since the yarn is patterned and I didn't get the matching up quite right.

For Gene's, I have switched up the pattern to be all ribb-y around the leg and on the top of the foot (plain bottom, for Gene is very particular with texture.) Speaking of Gene's particularness with texture, he has warned me that he may not love these socks as much as I demand he love them. I have considered guilt as a method of making him wear them. I think I'm okay with it.

I was also going to write about how softly Fall seemed to be coming. The leaves were turning gently, no frost had come, the weather was delightfully crisp without being cold, and my front garden looked superb. I had planned to take pictures. Instead, we got this:

Tom Skilling, WGN-TV chief meteorologist

Colder, snowier weather's never hit earlier

Published October 13, 2006

It's got to really snow for it to accumulate when soil temperatures hover near 54(degrees) as they did Thursday. Whiteout conditions were reported for brief periods Thursday morning and early afternoon, a testament to the intensity of the snowfall. Flurries have reached Chicago earlier on ten occasions since 1885. But, never in 121 years of official observations has measurable snowfall occurred earlier in the city. Thursday's 0.3" at both Midway and O'Hare beat by 6 days the previous record for earliest measurable snow here--Oct. 18 in both 1972 and 1989. It also preceded by more than a month, Nov. 16, the average date on which measurable snow first typically occurs here. Thursday's 39(degrees) at O'Hare and 41(degrees) at Midway were the coldest readings ever so early in the season at each site.A chill of Thursday's intensity rarely lingers this early. It's likely to be nearly two months before daytime temps as cold as Thursday's 39(degrees) high dominate.

Which I didn't get any pictures of, either, because I couldn't find Gene's camera in his laptop bag while we were on the highway in those whiteout conditions. Instead, I offer this:

Ok. It wasn't this much snow, but it definetly stuck, and it was definetly hard to see out the windows. In between snowy episodes, we got snow pellets - was it hail? Just strange. (How is it that no one took pictures of this year's early snow in Chicago? Google had NOTHING.)

Returning to Fall, though, I have also done a smidge of paper crafting since my last post. My grandma's birthday was on the 23rd (of September). My grandma is one of those people who think that the wrapping is almost more important than what is inside. She always is very careful unwrapping, using scissors to break the tape, keeping all the ribbon intact. You know. So I spent a little extra time and made a card and wrapping paper and tags for her birthday present (mostly Yankee Candle stuff and a Halloween charm bracelet).

I was going to say that I was being considered for the Chapter (Colony) Advisor for the Sigmas at UW Parkside. Well, I've since been actually appointed and that has taken up a good deal of time. I'm not unhappy about it - in fact, I'm thrilled! But I don't have any pictures, so you don't get a visual for that one, just yet. Needless to say, like all Sigmas, they are pretty rockin'. :)

Work has been pretty consuming - in a good way, though. We are definetly picking up. That means I have a bit more to keep track of. I have been doing some graphic designing, too, for the business.

That's me, working ever-so-hard. I was going to crop this, but art historians and archaeologists (the inner me) like to see objects in situ. The office, in all it's non-neatness, is shown. The three framed pieces on the wall are the three images I made to make our office look more...office-y. I couldn't deal with the cheesy Teamwork posters. Besides, these are relevant to our business. See the locks? The say things like "Security" and "Safety".

In other news, I went to Toledo for a super whirl-wind trip this weekend. My next door neighbor growing up just got married. It was pretty cool to see all the old neighbors again. Mom enjoyed the evening as well - Gene and I had to drag her out! On the way back home, we got stuck in construction traffic. If you are coming to Chicago, AVOID THE DAN RYAN. It's a disaster. I was driving this particular leg (lucky me!) and the dogs were standing up in the car. This is a problem 1) because they bounce around and 2) because they have a tendency to barf if they bounce around too much.

Since we were in Gene's car, he was very concerned about this. So he jumped into the back and made the girls lay down. Gene, as many of you know, gets bored easily, so he started to entertain himself. This is the result:

Pelli is our hoodlum (groan). It did actually make her nice and calm, although Gene was eventually laughing so hard that all the dogs were up and around. Luckily, by the time he got to this point, where he had his camera out taking pictures of his poor dog, we had moved on to normal traffic.

Finally, I wanted to show you the little piece of Animal Planet that is at our house. We've been watching a few spiders get fatter and fatter. We've watched them catch bugs and wrap them in spider silk and then eat them. We are absolutely fascinated with these spiders. Since it's almost Halloween, I thought it might be nice to give you a little taste of our spider friends. Don't worry - if you are squeamish about spiders (and I'm always shocked by who is and who isn't), our fat little buddy is nowhere to be seen in this picture. It was pretty cold tonight - 34 with a wind chill of 26 - so he may be hanging out somewhere else. The chance that I will post again before Halloween is very, very slim, so I will wish you all a very Spooky Halloween!

P.S. - Send get well thoughts to Steph, who had to go to the ER today, her bronchitis was so bad. Ick!