scifiknitter

I have been following Dawn (The Dawnminator) for about as long as I have been reading blogs. She lives in my home town, and writes in a stream of consciousness style that is very honest. In fact, honesty is what she probably values the most from other people. She’s intelligent and perceptive, and often very, very funny. She also recently announced on her blog that she is expecting a baby. My sense is that this is what she has wanted to happen some day in her life, but she wasn’t sure it ever would. It’s a boy. I dropped her a line last month telling her that I would be in her area over Thanksgiving. We made a date to meet for coffee, in a neighborhood that we both used to live in, though decades apart in time. I decided that I had to give her my own little baby shower. I bought the baby two books, because I nearly always give board books, always with the same advice: you gotta let the rugrat chew on them. One book was about a baby’s nighttime routine, because babies love stories that a...

We have finally realized that we need to do our part and slow down the selfish jag we’ve been on of paying down debt. We are doing our part to help the American economy by upgrading some of the technology around here. Upgrade #1: Snow be gone Snow removal is always of concern here as we go from one imperfect solution to another to keep our quarter-mile of driveway cleared. We’ve hired it done (the good snow plow guy is no longer in business, he’s in charge of the town’s highways), tried to plow with a truck ourselves (long abandoned, we can’t afford to keep a reliable truck going), a big snowblower (a good solution except for the first snowfall of the season), a smaller snowblower (didn’t hold up), and a garden tractor with a plow (passable). Snowblowing has an advantage over plowing: the snow doesn’t build up at the sides of the driveway. A year with steady snow and few thaws results in a driveway that gets narrower and narrower when we rely on plowing. The edges tend to get soft as w...

On October 9th, I ventured southward to attend my 41st high school reunion. Why 41st? Apparently a few people from my graduating class got together last year, and bemoaned the fact that there was no 40th reunion. They decided to organize one themselves the following year. They did a bang-up job, too; I think they could write a book about how to hold the perfect high school reunion. The main organizing tool was the Web - a website, Classmates. com, and Facebook. Facebook was the most powerful tool for finding and communicating with everyone, though there is still a long list of missing classmates. The last reunion our class held was our 20th, and I attended it with my husband. I had a 15 month old child at the time, and was just about to quit my job to go back to school full-time to study accounting. Neither R. nor I had a particularly good time. I had few close friends in high school, and none of them were in the room. The party was in a restaurant, and it was hard to mill about and ta...

Yesterday was a very, very, very, very, very big news day in my world. Here are two news links: http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20101002/NEWS05/310029965 http://northcountrynow.com/news/politicians-laud-next-step-foward-creation-municipal-electric-system-st-lawrence-county-010769 My husband has been part of this effort since 1996, and has served as chairman of the coalition group for the past several years. If we were to add up the number of hours, the number of phone calls, the number of meetings over the years... I can’t even hazard a guess as to what the numbers would be. Almost anyone who pays attention to political news these days must believe that polarization reigns supreme and that collaboration is impossible. This event proves that this state of affairs doesn’t have to exist, and that people can work together across party lines and political boundaries, and that they can be steadfast in pursuing a long-term goal over many years. This effort has been bi-partisan. It ...

Beautiful Soup BEAUTIFUL Soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen! Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! Beau--ootiful Soo-oop! Beau--ootiful Soo-oop! Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, Beautiful, beautiful Soup! Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish, Game, or any other dish? Who would not give all else for two Pennyworth only of Beautiful Soup? Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup? Beau--ootiful Soo-oop! Beau--ootiful Soo-oop! Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP! - Lewis Carroll The best part of making soup is that you don’t need a recipe - just an imagination that can combine what you have on hand. It’s getting cooler here, with night temperatures in the 40s and fog in the river valleys in the morning. It’s time for some soup. Yesterday was CSA pickup day, so it was also a good day to use as many vegetables as possible, to make room for the new arrivals. My soup of the evening, beautiful s...

Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main. For many a stormy wind shall blow E'er Jack comes home again. Ah, yes. Minuet is safely tucked into her new home at the Chaumont Yacht Club, but we had an adventure along the way getting there. To back up a wee bit, we’ve been keeping our sailboat in Cape Vincent this year. We left Clayton because of low water levels on the St. Lawrence River and because management of our former marina fell apart after the sudden death of its owner. We were also attracted by the lure of more ready access to Lake Ontario. There was one little issue that we didn’t know about: the infamous waters of Tibbetts Point. You have to go through those waters to get from Cape Vincent to the lake. Tibbetts Point is where the waters of Lake Ontario enter the St. Lawrence River. There is a lot of water pouring in from a wider, deeper place to a narrower, shallower place, with the prevailing winds blowing in the same direction as the current. It tends to be a little choppy...

I don’t know if this thought is original, but it feels like one that arose without outside assistance. I don’t take the concept of originality too seriously, though. I have been haunted for decades by the words of Lenny Bruce: “Believe me, I’m not profound, this is something that I assume someone must have laid on me, because I do not have an original thought. I am screwed. I speak English. That’s it. I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to somebody else.” With that out of the way, here’s the thought: No matter how you spend your time, each day is full to the brim at its end.