Friday, February 10, 2012


Well, I told you I was wondering why I wrote this blog and I haven't come up with enough things of import in the past 2 months to write about. I have come out of my depression without intervention by a professional (fortunate, since my appointment with the shrink isn't until April). I have started work at the Library as a volunteer doing not very interesting material but it was good to see all the friendly faces. My physical well being improves. My back no longer hurts except for occasions when anybody's back would hurt: long time spent bending over, etc. I continue to have pain in my leg muscles after I walk any distance which is disappointing because walking was how I wanted to get fit. One day of walking means I am very sore the next day. I've had my enthusiastic Bhutanese gardener go after weeds in my garden. The Canberra weather has been extremely bizarre: cold and wet which is hardly a typical summer. My tomatoes don't know what to do when we had an all-time record low for January of 1C. They produce a handful of tomatoes. The lima beans are still going and have produced pods. I made 2 batches of zucchini pickle relish from blimps produced in the garden. We are at this moment having a hailstorm. Housewise, I got the drains cleaned out, have been nagging my gutter repairman to do the job he signed up for in November, and had to get my old DVD player wired into the new digital set-up because my new whiz-bang DVD player/recorder won't play region 1 DVDs and there is no hack for it that I could find. Since I have hundreds of American DVDs, this was not permissible so I had to take a step back to an older DVD player that has been hacked.

Otherwise, I read, watch TV, spin, work on my family history. The photo above is one I scanned from a collection of photos my sister had. I've made a couple of contacts with distant, previously unknown, relatives. I managed to get some data for my MIL's genealogy search as well. Books: I finished Judgement of Caesar by Stephen Saylor. I love his Roman mysteries and have read every one. I also finished Stephen Fry's second volume of autobiography, The Fry Chronicles. I raced through the Steve Jobs biography which I found absolutely riveting. What a complicated, driven, genius of a man. We will miss his mark on society since he personally approved of every tiny detail of every Apple product. I have been an Apple fan for a long time and now know some of the why. I bought a first generation Macintosh the first month they were on the market. My BBBB is now is
Thames by Peter Ackroyd. My previous BBBBs proved not to be sleep inducing and are therefore languishing half read. I've been reading science fiction on my Kindle. I go through so many hard science/space opera novels that it hardly bears listing them.

I spun coffee brown BFL, some hand dyed BFL in blues, browns, and roses, and am now into 15 oz of merino & tencel in a lovely aqua/sea green. Bought two lots under different colour names from two different vendors and it turned out to be the same thing. I spin so much and knit so little that I wish I could sell some. My current new favourite TV show is Homeland partly because I love Damien Lewis. I am also a fan of the Canadian series The Republic of Doyle and Flashpoint. I am watching the British mini-series Exile because I love John Simm.

Next week I see the eye surgeon, have a mammogram, and I intend to make appointments for my teeth, the cat's annual check-up, and my hair. I am finally tired of the locks enough that they're coming off again. This weekend I am going blackberrying in the state forest with some of the girls. This assumes there are blackberries given the weird weather and that it doesn't rain.

Is that enough for 2 months? Don't know whether there is enough interest in what I do write, but I'll continue to update my waiting audience when there is something to post. Maybe after I start the weaving course in 2 weeks.