Obsessed With Food

We were without power for 8 days - we got lights back yesterday around 3PM. I've been updating on facebook for the whole week, keeping my foreign friends informed, and yesterday I decided to change up my update:

Science Officer's Log, Day 8. We are still running on auxilliary power. The Chief Engineer thinks maybe we'll have the warp engines back online sometime today, but the attack from the Sand'ees damaged quite a lot of the ship and repair crews have been working ceaselessly for the past 8 days.

The shift in duties has become routine and wearying. Keeping the alternate life support systems functional takes up much of our time now. Much of the ship's life support has been restored, but we are still under general quarters rules.

We are fortunate that the Captain chose to leave the low- and medium- tech systems in place. Otherwise we would not be here to warn people of the coming invasion.

We lost a magnificent spruce tree in the back yard. Photos are here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104522672600158508854/albums/5805126783777838289
It fell across the entire back yard, and into the parking lot of the condos next door, killing 3 vehicles in the parking lot.

Work was closed for 6 days, and I almost knitted an entire sweater.

I've been buried under all sorts of projects, work, and deadlines, so I haven't been keeping up with the blogging here or anywhere, really. Getting readiy for the Big Quilt Show this weekend, and neice's wedding the next. The only good thing about it is that once these are over with, they are OVER with, and I can get on with the rest of my to do list. None of this would have been possible had I been cast in that play. I don't even have a spare weekend evening to go see who they DID cast, and how the production went.

Chaos Theory is quilted and bound, and only needs a label made and then affixed on the back. Also needs to be photographed.

I also made a mug cozy for the Iron Craft challenge this week (I've managed to submit things for the last 2 weeks, and we'll see how that goes). I am actually using it this morning, as my tea mug is much to hot to hold.

I'll be updating my quilt blog later today, after the pictures have been taken and uploaded.

In other news, yesterday, there was a starling in the house. We still aren't sure how the hell that happened, as there are no openings for the bird to get in, except the door while someone is using it. In any event, the 3 cats were busy stalking the thing and keeping it busy for the apparent 3 hours it took between when R left for a job and I got out of bed and made my way downstairs.  A has some photos which she hasn't shared with me yet. I was too busy trying to trap the thing to take pictures.

It finally flew to the 2nd floor hallway, where A had cleverly shut all the doors so it only had the hall to  fly around in and not too many perching places (also a ceiling that was reachable with my cotton throw), and I managed to trap it within a cotton throw in a few minutes. Probably because the poor thing was exhausted.

I handed the lump of fabric to A, so I could get something on my feet, and we had this actual conversation:

A: "Is it dead?"

Me: "No, it's resting."

And then I cracked up, because, it's the exact dialog from Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch.

I got my boots on, and went to the porch, where I put the fabric down and opened it up. The bird took off like a shot, flying across the street.

And now my porridge is ready, so I have to go for now...

I keep wanting the costume sewing to be finished... but I think I'm short some poufy shirts. I stupidly handed out a bunch of things over A MONTH AGO to the kids and said "take these home and wash them" and most of them are not back yet. So it's really hard to tell what belongs with what at the moment. I don't have a dedicated wardrobe mistress (I suppose that's supposed to be me? Oops.) and I think with a production this size, they need one.

I look at the racks in the costume room at the school and I can't believe that I made all those garments. The output is at least as much as a season of Project Runway. The difference being that on Project Runway, the contestants aren't also simultaneously working a full time job. Feh. Enough bitching about costumes.

In other news, the treadmill I ordered arrived yesterday and the bulk of it is now sitting in my bedroom. I plan to get it assembled by bedtime on Friday night, and then all of us will vie for treadmill time. Apparently, everyone in the family wants to use it for working out. I got it for me, so I can attempt to improve my quality of life (i.e. lose weight, get my stamina up and keep my bones healthy). Walking outside just doesn't happen for me when the weather is not ideal (rain, too hot, too cold, etc will keep me inside - this we know from experience).

The only other thing to do up there is install the "extra" TV  and a DVR so I can watch my meaningless shows while I"m walking/running instead of watching them while sitting on my ass and stuffing food into my mouth (which is my normal routine at the moment). If I can walk while I watch my 1 hour of Judge Judy and 1 hour of the Closer reruns, I will get fit in no time. Or I'll get blisters on my feet...

I also need to do this if I want any chance of being able to perform the lead in Gypsy in May (still no word on when the auditions are), or get back out in front of a band and sing/entertain. Mick Jagger used to run a few miles every day to get ready for touring.

So my resolution that I made 11 months ago has an actual chance at happening finally.

I also finished knitting all the gift hats for the holidays. They went pretty fast, and I only messed up a "test hat" and the ears on another one (but someone's getting that hat, too, dammit).

and I have 3 trash bags full of shredded papers that were in my father's large file cabinet, still. I also have a sizable stack of bowling award patches. Apparently, he was a pretty good bowler. I didn't want to simply toss them, so I'm thinking of making a bowling pin costume and covering it with the patches. Or something like that. I find it strange that he never wanted to put the patches on his bowling shirt, yet he kept them for decades (well, to be fair, he kept EVERYTHING. So it could be part of the overall pack-rat mentality).

I'm rather burned out, and I didn't get much of my own filing done today as I had planned. I only sorted through 1 1/2 boxes of my unfiled papers - I still have 2 1/3 left to do. But I think I'd rather spend some time in my newly reorganized sewing room, now that it's usable again (that was last weekend's project).

I have also moved the dictionary stand to the office and made room for it. It's holding all my really "fat" books underneath, and I'm keeping the angle part empty so that one can use it for looking at a ginormous book. I also recovered all my studio equipment from where it was buried in the garage, and it's made it into the house, which is progress, even if it's not in the office yet.  I also found this antique sewing machine, which I'm going to have restored and use it.

I can't wait for everything in this office to find a home and be relocated from piles on every horizontal surface.

Yesterday, around noon, the last subcontractor finished their work and received their payment on the current round of home improvements and renovations that started 17 months ago, with my surrendering my parking spot in the garage to things that used to be stored in the attic. There are no photos of the finished room yet, because the camera battery died and I don't know where the charger is just now. However, I did upload some progress photos before the carpet.

( photos and more chitchat )

I received a draft contract from my (my mother's) agent, and it looks like I'm going to be responsible for the initial conversion of mom's books into RTF that then get turned into e-books. I don't have to deliver all of the books at once, and the initial contract is only for 6 of them, but that's still 1500 pages to scan, OCR and proofread/correct. I will have to purchase or rent a high-end document scanner (and I may as well scan in ALL her books at once - which will be closer to 8000 pages - and proof/correct over time). This is not a trivial task, especially since I have no experience in this.

I'll also probably have to purchase some high-end OCR software - I have some that came with one of the flat bed scanners I own, but it's dodgy and if there's a more accurate OCR out there it will be worth the money in the time savings. I really hope there's a market out there for mom's back catalog because I'm going to have to invest a serious amount of time and money getting these done.

( more things I have to do ) 

Work is somewhat analogous to the Gulf spill - you see the disaster coming, in slow motion, and there's not much you can do about it except complain about the terrible planning of the people in charge. The work fan will turn all brown and stinky next week, but I have no time to worry about it.

Because...

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

The parent group had a "wind down" event at one of the member's homes last night.  I decided to park on the dead-end street in front of her house, a few feet from where her family and the family across the street had set up two portable basketball hoops <i>in the street</i>. A young boy was playing ball on the other side of the street, and I did feel a little uneasy about leaving my car there. I even asked the hostess "is my car going to be safe if I leave it there on the street?" and she said "I'm sure. He [the boy] will keep to his side of the street". OK, fine. I went in and we hung out chatting about tthis and nibbling on that and the other ladies were having maragritas and beers and wine and we were all having a nice time on their backyard deck, away from the 3 young boys and their friends who were also over at the house doing whatever they do.

In The Meantime, I was telling the women this story about a feral kitten that I rescued out of the woodpile the night before and that we spent an hour or so in the rain trying to coax it out from the bushes where it was hiding invisibly. The kitten was terrified of us and wouldn't let us near him. Apparently, at around 2AM, the kitten was screaming so loudly, the neighbors across the street sent their daughter out with a can of cat food to leave on our front porch which was half-eaten this morning and we haven't heard from the kitten and thought it moved on.

Well, at 9:25, I get a cryptic text from my daughter "I want it and you know I get what I want" I text back "What?" and she texts me "The kitten. We caught it and it likes me" I call my husband to confirm and then bid the women good night, because I need to go home and help deal with this kitten trapped in the hav-a-hart trap. (apparently, they heard it crying underneath our next door neighbor's porch and R got the trap, baited it with a can of cat food, and in 10 minutes the kitten was in there, bashing his head on the sides, trying to get out.)

I get in my car to go home. I feel something on my face - I thought it was a bug. I brush at it. And a few seconds later, something else. I look up and the top of my car looks... strange. Like the moon roof is covered in some sort of schmutz.. I touch it and it <i>moves</i> the glass is shattered. Luckily, there is a metal sliding cover to enclose the interior of the roof, and I close this before I and the interior of the car are showered with glass shards. I drive back to the house where I had been and speak to the hostess. One of her sons is also in the kitchen and I ask him "Were you guys playing basketball outside?" and he says yes, and that he didn't do anything and he didn't see anything and he doesn't know anything. Sigh.

I get home, listening to the sound of glass hitting that sliding door on my roof, and falling into the inside of the body of my car the whole way home. We get the trap open by upending it. I have on R's work gloves and I scruff the kitten, and he's very relaxed. I check him over, and discover he's a boy, and that he doesn't have fleas. I decide to hold him on my lap. He relaxes pretty fast, and after a few minutes is purring and fluffing me and looking for something to nurse on. After a few more minutes, he's licking one of my fingers and starting to chew on it, so I get a spoon full of the, until now, ignored cat food from the trap and he eats it ravenously. I let him hang out with me some more (we take some pictures ) and I get him into a large pet carrier with a towel and a small litter pan and we put him in the basement bathroom to separate him from the other critters and we go to sleep.



So today, I have to take the car into the auto body place, file a report with my insurance, take the kitten to the vet to make sure he's not carrying FIV or worms or something else nasty, get him his shots, and wait till the "all clear" to allow him to interact with the other cats in the house. When all I wanted to do was finish a quilt.

What's interesting is that I adopted Panzi on memorial day weekend so we had 3 or 4 days before we left her alone in the house.

I don't know that we're keeping him yet, but we'll see how the next few weeks go.

I sent R to the post office this morning with 3 packages to mail out: the 2 green purses my "patron" bought from my Etsy store, a "squishy" for girlx512, and my 2 Quilts for Kids quilts (blogged about here) . Last night, I had him deliver the baby quilt for the Tricky Tray auction at the high school to the "wrapping party" which I didn't attend, as I was busy sewing.
( more stuff and a photo under the cut )