Tuesday, February 16, 2010
2-16
posted at 10:04 PM | Permalink | 2 comment(s)
The twenty-something daughter of one of my friends jetted off yesterday to spend a year in Taiwan teaching English and although of course it's hard for the family to have her half a globe away, and hard for her to be so far away, I'm sure, I'm so glad for her because it will be an exciting adventure as well as fascinating because it's such a different culture and useful because of the people and knowledge of people she will accumulate for whatever she'll decide to do afterwards, as travel and unpredictable experiences almost always are.

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Monday, February 15, 2010
2-15
posted at 11:00 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Bright and sunny pleasant and fun day off in which I got a lot of knitting and neatening done and watched/played Jeopoardy at the laundromat with the two teenage sons of the owner.

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Sunday, February 14, 2010
2-14
posted at 7:45 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
I want to wish a Happy Valentine's Day to everyone even though I know it's a greeting card holiday and not "real" the way Thanksgiving is . . . but wait . . . all the holidays that aren't celebrating a specific event are contructs and not anniversaries so what's the fuss all about anyway so I hope everyone has a wonderful loving friendly smiling day.

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Saturday, February 13, 2010
2-13
posted at 9:07 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Pleasantly busy and very enjoyable Saturday with some work, some errands, some hanging out with friends, a fantastic conversation with a young reader (we exchanged recommendations for books, including The Phantom Tollbooth and The Mysterious Benedict Society (me to her) and The Book Whisperer and Walk Two Moons (her to me), among others), dinner at a bookstore, browsing through a bunch of books and magazines, wonderful phone calls with t3tccitw, my sister, and a long many-subject conversation with my brother and sister-in-law, and lots of knitting.

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Friday, February 12, 2010
2-12
posted at 11:44 PM | Permalink | 3 comment(s)
Since at the moment there are hardly any subjects of interest other than snow and weather, I want to mention that at this moment, this year, early in 2010, there is visible snow on the ground in all fifty states - even Hawaii which has snow atop two volcanoes - and I think that is awesome although I'm wondering if someone misread something about "global cooling" and thought it said "global cooking" and, in order not to plagerize plagiarize, said "global warming" by mistake. . . .

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Thursday, February 11, 2010
2-11
posted at 11:21 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Alas they charge $15 for 24 hours of wifi in the hotel and they don't have a shorter or hourly fee so I did not log on this morning to begin the day with a diary sentence and it was too busy to do so during the day; the snow was minimal in NYC and north, I am personally happy to say and when I got home after the previous two days in the City, my lovely neighbor had snowblowed my driveway so I needed only to park and go into my house!

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
2-10
posted at 11:16 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Spent last night and will again spend tonight at a pleasant boutique hotel in NYC and enjoyed last night and expect to enjoy tonight despite our rooms not being ready for almost an hour after we got there seven hours after check-out and then there being no hair conditioner or mouthwash or free wifi (hand to forehead and deep melodramatic Sarah Bernhardt sigh) - the enjoyment being partly because of the good company for our snow-bound pajama party and partly because dinner was delicious (watercress and light cheese on a turkey burger) and partly because the rooms are spacious and clean and smell nice and the tv worked (although I had to watch in real-time - I miss TiVo!) and the bed was very very comfy indeed....

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Tuesday, February 9, 2010
2-9
posted at 5:45 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Will be spending tonight and tomorrow at nearby hotel on account of the rumored snow emergency and because my firm wants to be sure of a staff to cover the most intense of any needs (we operate 24/7/366 as they say); it certainly is a generous way to assure themselves and give us a treat in the process.

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Monday, February 8, 2010
2-8
posted at 11:50 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
I want to sing the praises of a thoughtful and generous friend of mine who had bought some yarn that she wanted to use for a skirt but she didn't like the way it knitted up - a bit holey and not as pretty as she'd anticipated - so she tried a couple of alternatives (smaller needles, tighter knitting, etc.) but to no satisfactory avail - so, rather than trying to sell it on eBay or Ravelry, she gave it to someone who quite liked it and will enjoy making something with it.

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Sunday, February 7, 2010
2-7
posted at 11:15 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Spent a couple of hours about an hour away from home having a quick bite and afternoon tea and, as always, absolutely loved the vittles but I do have to wonder what they're thinking of with their early hours on a weekend and their unwelcoming and slightly surly attitude about "we're closing soon so the kitchen is closing so let's hurry it up," when you consider that staying in business is, presumably, their goal.

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Saturday, February 6, 2010
2-6
posted at 7:05 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Thanks to free wifi at a Borders bookstore, I spent the better part of the afternoon with a huge cappuchino and a bagel, doing work remotely on my (new and fantastic) netbook (thank you, Santa), headphones plugged in and listening to the opera streamed on WQXR, and switching off to exchange emails with friends and a relative getting ever-more inches of snow in Maryland (at last count it was over thirty inches, astonishingly); awesome afternoon.

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Friday, February 5, 2010
2-5
posted at 11:50 PM | Permalink | 3 comment(s)
Having majored in philosophy and studied religious philosophy, I must say I find it heartening that Obama is a fan (for want of a better word) of Reinhold Niebuhr, author of the so-called Serenity Prayer, at least according to this CNN article.

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Thursday, February 4, 2010
2-4
posted at 6:47 PM | Permalink | 2 comment(s)
Two dreadful news items, for very different reasons: one, that ten missionaries - if that's really what they are - have been charged with kidnapping Haitian children in the midst of the worst catastrophe that country has ever known and that's saying something in their case - which inevitably makes me wonder if the Haitian government is simply taking advantage of a juicy newsy item (children + orphans + parents *are* alive . . .) to keep itself on the front page or if a group of creepy people were making financial and personal hay out of the situation and operating a child trafficking enterprise cloaked in the almost untouchable cape of religious do-gooders; and two, that the MTA may raise fares despite having duplicate books (not according to rumor but according to a judge's finding) in an economic time when lots of people who need public transportation are out of work or unable to work overtime because it's been cut back and there are few if any raises even of the cost-of-living kind and there was a not-inconsequentially large fare hike only a year ago.

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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
2-3
posted at 11:55 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
It's one of those sentence-a-day moments when I don't have a clue what to say but I vowed to do this so I have to say something so I guess I'll mention that I'm enjoying "Little Couple" on TV even though it made me cringe that they even had it on because it seemed exploitive but it turns out that Jen and Bill are interesting and smart enough and compelling enough personalities, that it works in that you completely forget the initial reason for it being a show in the first place and just become involved in what they're doing and thinking.

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010
2-2
posted at 10:32 PM | Permalink | 2 comment(s)
The evening train was quite crowded tonight which makes me wonder if the economy is inching back to something approximating where it was in recenet heydeys (sp?) which would be nice considering that the undercrowding made me think a lot of people had quit or been laid off when I think it maybe just mean there was a cutback on overtime.

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Saturday, January 30, 2010
30
posted at 8:58 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Pat Boone is 76 (he'll turn 77 on June 1st) and, although his voice isn't quite as agile and able to hit all the little grace notes as it once was, you can see how startlingly handsome a young man he was partly because he still radiates enourmous charm and a sense of humor about his crazy success and his fortuitous ability to withstand the insanity of the decades that ate and chewed up his main rival, Elvis - and he still wears bright orange jackets and ties!

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Friday, January 29, 2010
29
posted at 12:13 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Observation: my home office / studio is getting out of control as far as stuff that needs shelves and organization but I need to get containers that I can stand to look at, or make shelves in the (very small) closet and I hate taking the time away from doing things I want to do more.

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Thursday, January 28, 2010
28
posted at 9:06 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
A short but surprisingly severe snow storm hit parts of NY and CT this morning without any warning or little drizzly snowflakes on the Weather Channel forecast - nothing - and it makes me a little crazy that the omnipresent "they" can assiduously stir up trouble and anxiety for days on end before many storms only to have us get maybe 4 inches and not be buried alive or incapacitated, but then they don't even notice or mention an early morning storm that had enough ice (black as well as visible) to cause dozens of accidents and actually kill at least one motorist.

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
27
posted at 11:15 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Watched the first part of the new PBS "Emma" that was broadcast on Sunday and I have to say that I think it's pretty good, partly because Jonny Miller is refreshingly rude as Knightley (he's usually played too sticky sweet for my taste) and Romola Garai is charming and substantive as Emma (instead of flighty which is often how she's played) and the Los Angeles Times review - while written far more peppily than my note here - says essentially the same thing, I am happy to report.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
26
posted at 11:03 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
I've been knitting a little girl's tank top - in sock yarn so it has some stretchiness, and it's really looking nice - from a pattern a friend designed; the periwinklie color is lovely.

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