Packing, Packing, Packing

I think we may have a little too much stuff

Living Room, three layers deep

My bedroom, as you come in

My bedroom, as you go out

Muffin Man's room

Living Room, different view

And there are more boxes, in the hall, and in MM's play room, and in the kitchen. And we're not done packing (though it's really only the bathroom cabinets that are left. And my desk. And a few things in a closet. And the stuff we're wearing and eating. And three place-settings, two pots, and a pan. And the coffee machine. And this lap-top I'm typing on. Dear God, just how did we accumulate so much stuff?

6 Years And Two Days

April 6, 2005 was my first blog post here. I blogged on the anniversary, about my fun sweater, but I forgot it was a special blogging day.

Thank you all for reading, commenting, and being a huge part of my life.

Today is most certainly NOT ninety degrees and sunny, but you make it so for me.

That tells me

The image is from Pandora. It says,

Why this song?
Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features acoustic rock instrumentation, a twelve-eight time signature, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping and use of a string ensemble. [emphasis mine]

.
Well...I don't like that Pandora doesn't use a serial comma...so there!

But really, I've been listening all day while I've been working on stuff and there's only been a couple of clunkers. Pandora is way cool.

Boooooookkkkkkksssss!

Or more accurately, BOOK!

Just ordered the latest Sookie Stackhouse from Amazon. Should be here in about a week. I CAN'T WAIT.

And yes, I've watched the first season of True Blood (thanks Dear Friends who loaned it to me!), haven't yet seen the 2nd season (will request it as a present for Mother's Day).

But I've been a fan of the books now for...oh...since before I started blogging, it seems, since I can't find a post with a start date them.

Books! I love books! I love to dive into them like a porpoise, I like to burrow through them like a gopher. I love to toss them up and let them hit me on the head. BOOKS!

Gah.

Someone said something to me today and it hit me pretty hard. They said it in anger, and my initial reaction was to get angry and defensive. But I need to accept that my reaction is because part of what they said is true. It is.

So, I will work on that. And I will defend myself against the part that ISN'T true.

Welcome

I'm pleased to have new visitors to this blog. I've been blogging here for quite a while. I do have some guidelines for commenters (over there on the sidebar). Feel free to make yourself at home and take a look around.

I write mostly about knitting, and mystery books, and politics, and tell the occasional story about life at home or at work.

If you'd like, leave a comment and let me know you've visited!

Blogging for Donations: How We Met (redux)

As anon guessed, I have written about this before. I left out some stories, however.

Shortly before we started dating, MS woke up at 4 in the morning to wait in line at a science fiction convention to get one of my books signed by an author I love (he wasn't fond of her). Yeah, he's a keeper.

He used to bring me lunch at the bookstore: Delicious tuna fish sandwiches, Hershey's Kisses, and 8 oz bottles of Coke. The real glass bottles.

When we lived on 96th Street, he introduced me to that amazing time stealer, Myst. The number of nights I stayed up until three playing that game...I wore the Myst t-shirt he gave me for Christmas that year until it fell apart.

He built a ladder for the loft bed, because I had trouble using the one he had. It was ingenious: to allow us to get into the bathroom (small apartment! two rooms!), it folded up against the bed when not in use, and then swung out and locked open when we were ready to climb it.

That apartment felt bigger than it was, because it had a little tiny hallway between the two rooms, and two large closets. It was at the back of the apartment building and, while it got very little sun, there was also next to no noise. The "kitchen" was obviously an after-thought, not in the original design of the apartment. It was a stove, a sink, and a refridgerator stuck in a corner of what we used mostly as an office. There was no counter, so we put the drying rack in the sink.

The oven had to be lit with a match. I still have the scar where I wasn't quick enough.

He didn't tell me for a long time that he doesn't like lasagna, something I made often. He's not fond of ricotta, amazingly.

And then there was the Dracaena Marginata. The plant that wouldn't die. It moved with us from 96th Street (where it survived despite next to no light), to 3rd Street in B'klyn, to Tyson's Corner, to our old house...where it ended up over 10 feet tall. It finally started to look peaky and it went the way of all good plants. Perhaps we should get another one.

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He is sooooo my son

Reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in bed, an hour after lights-out, with a flashlight.

MINE.

One Thousand

One thousand posts.

Some long.

Some short.

Some happy.

Some sad.

Some funny.

Some really, really not.

Some thoughtful.

Some less so*.

Some self-absorbed.

Some less-so.

Some arty.

Some crafty.

Some industrious.

Some lazy.

1000 posts in 1322 days.

When I started, I thought I'd be talking more about books. And I did do some talking about books. But somehow, I ended up being more Mommy than Mystery. Or perhaps more Life than Lit. You don't always see the best of me here, but there are also things I can't won't don't talk about here for various reasons.

*Hmmmm....it seems I've never enjoyed knitting that sock. And yet...I keep knitting it. WTF?

What was I thinking?

1 year ago today

2 years ago today

3 years ago yesterday

More random bullets

• I scored the sole Boston Cream donut at the cafeteria today! Yeah, baby!!!!
• MM anticipated the misfortune that befell Lockheart last night. "It's not going to work! Ron's wand is BROKEN!!!!" he chortled. And lo, it was so.
• I praised his brilliance and his mad predictive reading comprehension skillz.
• Did any of you catch last night's celestial magnificence? Wow.
• There's a dress in the Travel Smith catalog that I'm drooling over. Alas, I don't think it will accomodate the ever-expanding Rack of Doom. What do you think?

B+B+B+B+

3.55 GPA overall.

Cum Laude BAYBEE!!

Three things I do do that many other people don't for whatever reason

1. Get my eyebrows waxed (though not while I'm not earning money). and just eyebrows people, that hurts so much I wouldn't like to try it elsewhere.
2. Bite my cuticles. and beyond, to be honest. It looks awful and I really need to stop.
3. Wear white socks with black hightops. And I'm truly, truly sorry. I know you hate it. But the white socks are so comfy. If I'm not stopping biting my cuticles, I'm certainly not stopping this.




And re: the post below. Except for smoking, which I try to convince everyone who does it to stop...I mean, it can kill you, the fact that I don't do it doesn't mean I think others shouldn't, it just means it's not for me. I like my grey. I'm wishy-washy about my look (although I've worn the same brand of black hightop for over 20 years), my ear piercings always got infected when I first got them so I can't imagine what that would be like on a place more intimate, etc.

I'm loving your lists!

Three (No! Four!) things I have never done or wanted to do that other people do.

1. Smoke cigarettes. Family history. Plus they're stinky.
2. Get a tattoo. Yeah. Right. You know me. Long hair, short hair, long hair, short hair, glasses, contacts, glasses, contacts, makeup, no makeup. I would get sick of a tattoo within a year.
3. Get anything other than my earlobes pierced. And I hardly ever even wear those.
4. Dye my hair. Perms, yes (but never again). Dyes, no.

What about you?

Dark Chocolate

I just ate a piece. Slowly. Letting it melt in my mouth and coat my tongue. Noting the sensation of sweet and bitter, feeling the silken texture. I've wrapped up the rest and hidden it, my own hoarded treasure.*


*While my husband hates dark chocolate, MM would expect me to share.

Backstory: I went to the campus bookstore last week to buy a chocolate bar, but all they had were milk chocolate and fruit-flavored which is so not what I wanted. Filled with sadness, I bought a cheap-o candy bar from the convenience store. Two minutes after I'd eaten it, I saw that there was a theater-arts guy selling candy bars to raise money for some theater-arts club or other. And he had dark chocolate. But I'd already eaten an inferior bar. But it was for a good cause! But...

Anyway, I bought the bar of solid dark chocolate-y goodness and I put it in my backpack and went home and...forgot about it.

Which makes me an idiot, because I got my period the next day and I could have used it. And I only rediscovered it tonight.