Today, in between doing the things I get paid to do, I’ve been thinking about what sort of entry would be appropriate to wrap up my Holidailies effort for another year, but finally realized if I waited until I came up with something special, I’d miss the midnight (1 a.m. here) deadline to post to […]

Looking through old photo albums for my early quilt pictures, I could not escape being reminded of my Multiples period in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Multiples, for those of you who did not experience this phenomenon, was a clothing system consisting of mix and match one size fits all (that should have been […]

  I guessed it was a cat toy when Mr. Karen showed it to me. We don’t have any cats, so I wasn’t sure why he’d bought a toy for them. Turns out it’s a scarf, or at least claims to be, and I suppose it would keep one’s neck warm in spots. What he […]

In the dream I was dreaming just before I woke up (to the light of the alarm clock, now featuring no beeping thanks to Mr. Karen, who figured out that pressing three of the buttons at the same time and holding them for 10 seconds would turn off the noise feature), a squirrel turned into […]

This morning I awoke not to the sounds of NPR but to a simulated sunrise, thanks to Mr. Karen, who got me a new alarm clock for Christmas. The one we’ve used our whole married life, and which he’s had since high school, I think, maybe earlier, is still working, but sometimes it’s good to […]

When we were in Florida, Mr. Karen and I made a stop at the thrift shop the church runs–two stops, actually, because we weren’t sure when they were open and missed by five minutes the first time. We don’t make it to the shop every time we visit, since they’re not open every day or […]

  I am sorry I didn’t get a picture of the other shoe. I am also sorry I didn’t talk to the girl who was wearing them. How hard would it have been to say, “I like your shoes”? Not hard. Probably she would have said “thanks”, and then I could have asked her how […]

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from the guy who runs ManHole.ca, asking if I’d be interested in submitting some of my photos from Japan to be considered for inclusion in his gallery of fine sewer art. Sometimes e-mails with subjects that include phrases like “pictures on your website” are spam, but this […]

Mr. Karen and I once gain went to Florida to visit his parents this holiday season, flying down on Christmas Day and back yesterday afternoon. We did something new this trip–canoeing in a state park that’s really quite close by their house but which we’d never been to before. It being our vacation, and a […]

  The cool thing about this picture is that to take it I didn’t have to go to a zoo or an aquarium or on a guided nature experience–I just strolled out the back door of Joan and Dale’s house in Florida and looked into the canal at low tide. ***** One year ago, I […]

The museum at my alma mater, Michigan State University, is having a quilt silent auction. I first heard about this when it was mentioned in the quilt guild announcements back in September, I think it was. Since I not only graduated from MSU but volunteered as a docent at the museum for a while when […]

I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to spend over at Distributed Proofreaders lately and wonder what gems of projects I’m missing. Since DP only works on publications that are out of copyright, the books and magazines being proofed are a window into an earlier time. Sometimes it’s not a pleasant view, like […]

This is my latest quilted creation, a small wallhanging made for Dale and Joan to commemorate our trip to Alaska and the Yukon Territory, finished just in time to give to them for Christmas. That’s fitting, since it was during our Christmas visit last year that we started planning for that trip, picking the dates […]

  We didn’t put up a tree this year, but Mr. Karen put lights on this one in the corner of our yard. This tree was knee high when we moved in almost fifteen years ago and now it’s so big it takes a ladder and a rake to decorate. Merry Christmas to those of […]

  We have a mantel now, but we didn’t when we started the tradition of hanging the stockings from the bookcase. I made these during my needlepoint phase, which lasted just long enough to complete an eyeglass case, a stocking for Mr. Karen, then later one for me to coordinate, and a piano bench cushion […]

Just getting to work feels like enough of an accomplishment for today, as the first big snow storm of this winter arrived overnight. It would have been a good day to stay home or at least go in late, after the worst had passed, but I had an important customer meeting scheduled so Mr. Karen […]

I spent most of the day typing things like this: select a.account_no, cast(e.opening_bal as decimal(18,2)) from external.dbo.tb_upload as e with (nolock) left outer join dbo.account as a with (nolock) on a.customer_no = 48582 and a.account_no = e.account_no If you worked where I worked, you’d say “hey Karen, that doesn’t follow our standard for capitalization”. Well, […]

This morning I was going through my big box o’ mail and other miscellaneous paper I need to deal with (which sits next to the stack o’ mostly catalogs–after the holidays I might just be able to eliminate both of those and get back to using just my in-box like a normal person) and found […]

This is my second quilt, which I finished in December of 1989, just in time to give to my mom for Christmas. I didn’t use a pattern–the Mariner’s Compass blocks were preprinted on fabric my mom gave me (even before I finished my first quilt, I started answering “quilting supplies” when asked what I’d like […]

Eli decided not to come, so I got to go see the Vikings play the Lions this afternoon. I also got to go to a pre-game lunch and a post-game dinner with friends of ours who have season tickets, so I didn’t get much else done today, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. The […]

Yesterday I saw something I’d never seen in real life before. Driving to Nia, I pulled up to an intersection and saw that oncoming traffic was blocked, one lane by a dark green SUV and the police cruiser behind it, and the other by a second police cruiser that had pulled up beside the SUV […]

I’ve been up not quite an hour and have another two before I have to leave to pick up Erica for our Nia class. Normally I’d use a half hour or so of this time to write morning pages, but today I’ve instead unpacked my dirty clothes from the Colorado trip and started a load […]

Like the last one, this quilt was finished just in time for the baby’s first birthday. In deciding on the design, I started with a picture of the quilt I made for the baby’s brother a few years ago and then went through my baby quilt ideas folder and pulled out patterns with half-square triangles […]

  One good thing about the days getting shorter is I have a better chance to see the sunrise. In the summer, I sit down at the desk in our home office to write morning pages and it’s already light outside, but in the winter I get to watch the day arrive, stealing glances out […]

  Froggie went a-courtin’, and he did stride, Uh-huh, Froggie went a-courtin’, and he did stride, Uh-huh, Froggie went a-courtin’, and he did stride. With a goofy hat and cape he tied, Uh-huh. Well he strode up to Mister Cat’s door, Uh-huh, Well he strode up to Mister Cat’s door, Uh-huh, Well he strode up […]

Last night I uploaded the pictures I took in Colorado. Given that it was a ski trip, one might reasonably expect shots of mountains and skiers, but I mostly focused on other things. The only mountains I captured were the ones in the range that formed on the window of the rental car as the […]

So yes, before the oversized luggage hassles of last night, there was skiing, three days of sliding down mountains on skis punctuated by occasional falls. I didn’t take any really spectacular tumbles, fortunately, and came home with all my joints and bones and muscles in no worse shape than before, and probably with stronger thighs, […]

I am back from my annual Holidailies hiatus. This year I again went west to ski–Copper Mountain, Vail, and Beaver Creek. There’ll be more on all that tomorrow, but right now oversized baggage handling at the McNamara terminal is topmost in my mind. In almost every respect, this two-year-old terminal is a great improvement over […]

I am having one of those days when it feels like my head might just explode at any moment. I was not in the office yesterday and will not be in tomorrow so I’m trying to cram three days of work into one and my whiny customer is pitching a fit (not to me, of […]

This is me with the first quilt I ever made, soon after I finished it in January of 1989 (it is also soon after I finished making payments on my first car, which is why there are so many balloons around, but that’s a story for another entry). It started when I ran out of […]

I have slid a little farther down the slippery slope of music piracy. No longer am I just getting free music from other people; I’ve become a supplier of free music to others. It was as easy as deciding to participate in a mix exchange that Mel instigated. It was the holiday theme that did […]