Christmas Doggerel

Four AM Christmas Day, and all through the house
Are so many WIPs I feel like a louse.
Though most of my gift list was truly unspoken
The ones incomplete feel like promises broken.

One goal, handknit socks for each of my loved ones;
I finished two pair for four daughters* and two for four sons*.
I started a scarf and a pair of warm mitts.
One, I can finish, but the other's the pits.

Presents are wrapped-- except one that's back-ordered
And due in on Thursday--hope I can afford it.
The sheet cake is baked, iced, and well covered,
Green beans are casseroled, with mushroom soup smothered.

I sewed one more stocking for a significant other
Too late, remembered Little Man's expected new brother.
I have too many ideas and not enough time
But I always remember just how blessed that I'm!

(*I'm taking LOTS of poetic license here--!)

Merry Christmas, and God bless you one and all!

Thinking about Christmas

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary:

(No, I'm not Jewish; that's not what I said! I'm about as White Anglo-Saxon Protestant as a person can be -- I'm printing a wonderful quote from Ben Stein!)

My confession:
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was
Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those
beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I
don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees.
It
doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don’t think
they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of
like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy
time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on
display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a
crèche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away .
I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think
Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who
believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no
idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country.
I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my
throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that
we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we
understand Him? I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a
lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the
America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another
for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s
not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane
Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (regarding
Katrina); Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She
said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years
we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government
and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has
calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His
protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
In light of recent
events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when
Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained
she didn’t want prayer in our schools , and we said OK.
Then someone said you
better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou
shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr.
Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because
their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem
(Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s
talking about. And we said OK.
Now we’re asking ourselves why our children
have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t
bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably,
if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has
a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder
why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but
question what the Bible says . Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and
they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the
Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and
obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is
suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how when
you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list
because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for
sending it.
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of
us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not
then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought
process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in. My
Best Regards.
Honestly and respectfully,
Ben Stein
Amen

My September

It's me-- I'm back-- don't know why I've been away for so long --

Well, that's not completely true. There just doesn't seem to have been much to blog about lately. I've been working, and knitting socks, and reading, and watching new TV shows.

I think I'm okay on toddler socks now. I got past my mental block on those, and have returned to working on my current Six Socks Knit Along project, the Victorian Lace pattern.

The first one took me about two months - I didn't keep track of time on it very well, but I finished the first sock right after I got back from seeing the Yarn Harlot in Wichita on September 16.

The delightful Ms. Pearl-McPhee was as entertaining as ever. I admit I had wondered if she repeated the same stories every tour, but her material this time was completely different from when I heard her in OKC last year.

She stood behind a heavy wooden lectern, in the auditorium of the beautiful East Wichita High School, and of course had to pull the mic way down to her level. I had a seat on the right side of the front row, and I could see that as she spoke, she mostly kept her hands in plain sight, holding the edges of the lectern, or gesturing, or turning pages in her notes.

When she opened the Q & A segment, I soon noticed that her hands were very busy behind the lectern, and I remembered to ask her something I had wondered about since last year. When my turn came, I asked her if she would step out from behind the lectern so we could watch her hands, and her fingers were simply flying with her doublepoints. She didn't ever seem to look at her hands. I think she said, "I'm knitting. You all know how to knit, right?" But it was like nothing I had ever seen before.

I continued with the second part of my question, asking how she holds her needles when she uses straight needles. She then told us about the history and technique of Irish Cottage Knitting, and borrowed a scarf-in-progress from the nearest knitter using straights, and demonstrated for us, holding one needle stationary under her right arm, tensioning the yarn with her right hand. She said this is the technique used by the fastest knitters in the world.

Yep, there is such a competition - and I seriously doubt if it has ever been mentioned on ESPN.

I cast on my second VL sock at lunchtime Wednesday, September 19, and finished the leg in eight days. That's some kind of record for me. I'm just past the heel turn now. Maybe there is some truth to that YH sock mojo after all!

I miss my knitting buddies. I was just really beginning to feel like I belong to this group, and now I haven't seen any of them for almost a month, and haven't even made it in to the LYS in that time.

We were SO not ready to vote at the last Knit In, but MG made us do it anyway. We were still throwing in new ideas for names after the vote, and some of them were pretty good. DYYSH Night is my personal interpretation of the winning name - we ARE, in spirit if not in name, the -- (drum roll, please) -- Divine Yarn-Yarn SisterHood!

I nagged at myself this week - even told myself I can't go play with my precious grandson - until I finally put some more work in on my living room remodel. Today I put the trim up around the two doors, and put the treshhold edge down at the front door. There is still a gap, but that must be what that color-matched sealant is for--at least it is now! Wonder how many more tubes of that I will use, compared to what a pro would need.

Now I'm ready for another trip to Home Depot for my baseboards, and when I get them installed I can think of putting the furniture in there like a real living room, instead of it being a woodshop adjunct.

Then that reminds me - I've got to find some space in the garage. It's there, I just can't see it for the clutter. Which in turn reminds me that I really want to replace my garage door, but I am reluctant to take that big bite out of my savings.

I have to stop now and get some sleep. I have a very important Play Date in the morning!

My Ravelry Status - 08/31/07

You signed up on June 23, 2007
You are #10804 on the list.
7 people are ahead of you in line.
19091 people are behind you in line.
36% of the list has been invited so far

Seven to go. Only seven people. Yippee!

Note to www.techcrunch.com/tag/ravelry:
Social Network? Is that what Ravelry is? [I signed up for the same good reason lots of other knitters did - if everybody else wants in, let me in too!]

Social Network? This may be like all those blind men trying to figure out what an elephant is, but my view is WOW! A tremendous database, where I can, oh, look up a yarn in my stash and see how it will work up with a pattern I have in mind. Or maybe if I'm near the end of a project and need one more skein, maybe I can find someone who has one to spare. And just think about doing a pattern search all in one place, not on fifty different websites?

Social Network? That will likely be a side benefit, and maybe primary to some people, but to me it looks very like a really wonderful resource.

And that's MHO.

Put away your white shoes now, darlin'

This has been a really strange summer, weatherwise, but with Labor Day fast approaching I guess we can call it gone. Sorry about the dearth of entertaining reading here, but the days recently have seemed awfully short.

A few of my faithful readers have asked for an explanation of the "interesting"events posted August 11, so I'll tell you about one of those days.

I'm a confirmed procrastinator. There, I said it.

Most days it's a struggle for me to get myself out of the house in the mornings--most days I pull into the office parking lot at the last possible minute. On this particular day, I was feeling pretty good about myself; I refrained from hitting that snooze button "just one more time!" and ate a simple breakfast in time to head out of the house with a few minutes to spare. I'm out the door, arms loaded with purse and knitting bag and water bottle, headed for my car which is, as always, parked nose-out in my driveway, ready to go.

Why is there a puddle of water by the garage door?

I looked up, stupidly. The sky was clear. No recent rain dripping off the roof. And then I knew. I threw my stuff into the car, and went back into the house. Yanked open the laundry room door to see what I knew was there-- a floor full of water.

I said a few unladylike words, thanked myself for not having laundered the pile of towels in the floor, shoved them around so I could walk on them from the door to the @#$%@! water heater and turned the pilot to OFF. Went back across the towel bridge, opened the door leading to the garage, and fetched the water key from the garage wall.

Back again to the front yard. Used the key to flip the cover off the water meter, fitted it into the slot and pulled with all my might, trying to turn the water off. The valve wouldn't turn.
No reason to worry; I was wondering why those pieces of rebar were still keeping my garbage cans company beside the house-- I got one of those, slipped it part-way into the steel-pipe handle of the water key to increase my leverage, and gave it all I had. The valve wouldn't turn.

I stood in the middle of my front yard, with tears of frustration rapidly forming, and looked up and down the street, trying to think which of my neighbors might be able to help. Dear Mrs. Carter, a tiny Southern lady who is 80 if she's a day? Mr. Lunday, 90-ish and stone deaf? All the able-bodied souls on my street were off to work already.

I tried the city water department, but I got their voice mail--it was still too early for them. Then I remembered. Our heroic Bethany firefighters are always ready to help. I really didn't think this situation justified a 911 call, no matter how desperate I felt. Instead, I called my younger daughter, who for some obscure reason learned the fire department non-emergency number about 15 years ago and still knows it.

So I called, and my phone call brought me a big shiny red fire truck (quietly - they didn't use their sirens) and two extremely capable-looking bodybuilders, um, firemen. They applied my water key to the valve, added my rebar extension, and rippled all of their lovely muscles. The valve wouldn't turn.

We all agreed they probably COULD break it loose, but would most likely break the meter in the process. So one pulled out a radio and called another city employee. That call brought us a pretty red water department pickup, and another pair of valiant men. (Maybe not as impressive-looking as firefighters, but they had a much bigger water key than mine.) One put the key in the slot, and applied all his strength. The valve wouldn't turn.

The second water department guy went back to the truck and returned with a long wrench to use as a cheater bar, and the two tried again. With much loud complaining of metal-on-metal, the valve finally turned. Our heroes turned it back and forth a couple more times to loosen it up, but we all agreed that they certainly hadn't had to turn my water off in a very long time. So much for paying my water bill promptly all these years.

I thanked them and they all drove away, but my ordeal was not over. I still had a leaking water heater, and I knew I needed to call a plumber. [A moment of silence here.] There is some dark humor in that statement. I haven't had to call a plumber since 1976. I was married to the best plumber in town for 26 years, but he quit this life a couple of years ago, and now is resting where faucets don't leak and toilets don't clog. Probably drinking a cold beer and enjoying a cigarette.

So I called our friend at the supply house, and asked him who I should call. He recommended a local third-generation plumber who came out promptly (Honest! He was there by 10:30 am and finished in two hours!) and did a quick and efficient job of replacing the tank.

We got to talking about his dad (retired) and my husband (deceased) and his grand-dad (deceased), who all knew each other. We shared a few laughs and shed a few tears. I learned that his grand-dad was the same nice old man with a smile in his eyes who, twenty years ago, would order blueberry pie down at the local restaurant, then would say the slice was too big and would give me half.

I love blueberry pie.

More random stuff

On this day in 1953, Nippon Television broadcasted Japan's first television show, including its first TV advertisement. In 1937, Toyota Motors became an independent company. In 1907, UPS was founded by James E. Casey in Seattle, Washington. In 1898, Caleb Bradham renamed his carbonated soft drink "Pepsi-Cola". In 1884, the first known photograph of a tornado was made. In 1859, a geomagnetic storm caused the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it was seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe and as far afield as Japan. And in 1845, Scientific American magazine published its first issue. Happy Birthday LeAnn Rimes (1982), Jack Black and Jason Priestley (1969), Shania Twain (1965), Jennifer Coolidge (1963), Emma Samms (1960), Scott Hamilton (1958), Daniel Stern (1957), Ben Gazzara (1930) and Donald O'Connor (1925).

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." - Ken Olsen, President, Digital Equipment, 1977

Adding to my vocabulary . . .

BACN: Bacn (pronounced "bacon" and a creative misspelling along the lines of site names
like Flickr) lies between e-mail and spam; it's all that stuff you do want but which is low-priority and which you often don't have time to read.
Better than SPAM?