What made you smile today?

watch some birds (grackles) trying to carry off some twine still hanging from some gardening contraption i had set up last year to support the snowpeas i had seeded. they weren't very successfull because the string resisted their attempts to take off with; so they'd pull for a while (another grackle standing guard about two to three feet away) and give up in frustation. i finally decided to go out and cut the string into smaller pieces to allow the birds to pick up the pieces and fly off to do some nest-building. i hope the grackles will thank me some day. hbg

With little gracklettes?

My friend who is a contractor (business partner's son) came over this late afternoon to consider with me what to do about the stucco column holding up the beam, rafters, and glass over my front porch.
Stuff had moved a quarter inch or so when the guys sledged out part of the front porch wall in order to move my front steps a while ago. Me, picturing deep rot within the column... and no. Cosmetic fix-up, piece of cake.

(I guess I should explain, after that quarter inch, part of the top of the column fell off.........)

Whew, and smile.

IRL? whaz dat?

In Real Life.

oh? setanta came for a visit? how cool!

I am moving from north north in a while, as I have intimated once or twice or three times recently on a2k, and I suppose I will write one grand post on that one day, but the experience is incremental.

Today's main pleasure was walking out my front door to put giveaway boxes in my car and sit on my stoop to await businesspartner's son to look at my porch. Along the walk came two neighborhood women, Margaret and Sandy and Sandy's dog. I have been hitting myself upside the head in the past week for not trying harder to get to know them, as I've liked them both in passing, and they, me.

This was our third sidewalk colloquy in as many weeks. One is retiring from local government bureaucracy, and had reenergized my awareness of her recently when I went to her door to tell her her car lights were on and she dove on out the door and she and I, and then Margaret who showed up, chattered away getting to know each other in verbal shorthand. (did I see one in the women in black?) and the other, here lo these many years from Ireland, has just retired from 35 years of running a preschool, just about the time her husband who was working as a produce stocker as an older man slipped, cracked his head somewhat, and didn't get any recompense from his company because of his limited hours.

Well, I don't know the story on that but I start on their side. In any case, she is suddenly free and not at all, as he has improved but is not a happy camper socially and fairly although not entirely immobile..

Well, they know about my punting on fixing the house up much further, and are interested in my interest in Albuquerque. They both know more about who I am than I know who they are. We all have dogs of a certain age.

The irish one asked me what I thought about the new pope and I mentioned agreeing with Hans Kung decades ago and they both laughed. Damn, these bright women were within a block of me all this time.

Well, one has a brother in ABQ and the other likes it and can imagine moving there.

No, I am not thinking commune. But I like the new old pals.

You're moving, Osso?

To Albuquerque, perchance?

Perchance, and for complex reasons, I just said yes right away as I exited the airport (long picture windows of the Sandia mtns and the western sunset) on my visit a while ago with Dys and Diane.

The complex reasons take some elucidation, even to me. But I'm going there.

At this point, I am housesitting Fred the Bird and Sally the Dog while Dys and Diane sequester themselves in nooks of Europe. [I hesitate to admit I think of england as in europe]. I'll be reading local guidebooks and local garden books and looking at real estate in my tiny range.

I'll also be looking at the area for some other folks who are interested, in my life, that is, my ophthamologist and my contractor. I even consider their interest not good for mine.
But, who cares.

Ya gotta understand (I have always hated the phrase, you have to understand), it never gets over 64 here, or hardly ever, in this town. Various cravings for heat accrue.

Oh, I understand about cravings for heat. That describes me every winter from November through March. I am just now beginning to calm down.

My sister moved from here to Seattle to escape the heat, so I know there are those who can live happily without it. As for me, I couldn't stand living in a place where it rarely hits 75. It is cravings for cold that I do not understand.

rarely hits seventy five... salivating. I can't afford Seattle, personally. I have some attraction to there and thereabouts.

When it rarely hits sixty three, that is a bit of a juggernaut.
Plus, we have moist cold here. Not to dump on here, but it ain't good for me. I've never had full blown asthma before...

but again, many here don't have this problem and it is an unusually wonderful place. I don't want to dump a plump as I leave.

I am not into karma, but if I were, would it help if I recruit new folks for the north north?

Yikes, sorry, just realized where I am blathering, on our daily diary.

Stop/blather.

You're moving, oh my! Definitely looking forward to more details, I really don't think nimh would mind if they are here.

Interesting about new/old friends. That happened just before I moved, too. Some people I thought were kind of snooty turned out to be super-nice and way more interesting than I'd expected. And our next-door neighbors who had been a steady 40 degrees or so (nods, smiles, occasional brief chat) turned it up to at least 70 (invites inside for lemonade, hugs, "best neighbors ever" declamations.) I don't know if it was me, them, or the fact of moving.

Dag, Setanta, sozlet and I met for lunch yesterday.

What made me smile today was the cleaning of my sidewalk by the city of Montreal.They actually steam the streets and sidewalks making all pretty and perfect.

Found my favourite CD that i lost like 4 months ago to be fair... it's not so great anymore (absence makes the heart grow fonder!!) but it's more of a memory thing: this CD reminds me of so many things.

ossobuco : the problem with the frontporch/collapsing column sounds like one of the "fawlty tower" episodes, "the contractors", when basil calls in the "cheap" contractor in defiance of his wife's order. i'm sure you may not have found your problem as amusing as i find basil's pluck. hbg

they were playing "walk like an egyptian" in the supermarket today.
this old man walks by.
he has a pronounced limp.
jes & i look at each other and crack up...

Goin out to dinner later for my birthday (well technically it's not my birthday til Tuesday - but still!!) and i've got a Dougal cake - if you could've seen my hair b4 i got it cut on tuesday you'd understand why my nickname is Dougal!!

Amsterdam. I love that city, man. Went there today to buy two photobooks, go to the hairdressers and see my friend Y. for the last time, have dinner at her place. Anyway, I love the city. Bicycling down the canal towards the Nieuwmarkt, criss-crossing through oblivious packs of tourists, cars pushing past, car hoots at group of three men in the street, they yell back, "hey, you should snort less, snort less [cocaine]!", woman in the car yells back and from the distance still flips the finger to 'em through the open roof, before getting into a next spat of curses ("bitch!") at the streetcorner - and still I easily keep up on my bike. Gotta love this place. Then over at the Jodenbreestraat where they've got an amazing childrens' toy shop (that I've unhappily lost myself in once or twice, when I was less in control), inside they're playing a song I know, "There's something wrong with the weather/now we're no longer together/it's raining now, all the time" - British big band singer from the 40s or 50s, its on one of the Singing Detective CDs. I ask the older lady behind the counter about it, she smiles, nods, starts to look, nods again and says, "I love that music ... it's so calm ... and they could still sing!". My husband, she says, he still has a large collection of old wax records [not 45s or 33s but orginal 78s] ... they dont make music like that anymore. I concur, and am reminded of how I entered a small second-hand bookshop by the Nieuwmarkt two weeks or so ago. The owner was an older man who kinda mumbled beneath his breath all the time and was a typical Amsterdammer, spiritedly grousing about everything. I asked to see photobooks of Amsterdam, and we got to talk a bit about what the city used to be like, what changed. The man still seriously got angry about how they demolished Kattenburg, a poor neighbourhood between station and port. "Those houses were still good! Not Wittenburg, but Kattenburg they still could have renovated!" Note, Kattenburg was demolished sometime in the sixties ... some fourty years ago.

<smiles>

Walking into my kitchen just now and seeing the stuff my friends got me for my birthday. Now before i start this (rather impressive) list i should point out that this isn't what most of my friends got me, as my birthday isn't until Tuesday. This is what Jon and Tim got me between them. You should also understand that we have a policy of "impulse buying". Rather than buy a 'normal' present you buy whatever you see first in tesco / woolworths / cargo / bwise.

Ok so between the two of them they bought me:
1. A ball of string
2. Some 'rocket fuel' coffee
3. A tiny sachet of options low calorie hot chocolate
4. Some Tesco's finest dairy fudge
5. some ground cumin (my mum was v happy - she's running out)
6. A terry's chocolate orange
7. Some "Xtreme" cheddar cheese...
8. Detangling spray (very handy - it's the brand i use!)
9. A bikini.... which bizaarely fits me... well kinda... it's a double D - which i am not, but if i wear it tight enuf then it still fits :O - i've never owned a bikini before in my life!!
10. A garden trowel and fork
11. A wooden whisk
12. Matches
13. A vat of vinegar
14. Some "tire magic" spray
15. 12 bottles of very cheap white wine :O
16. An indian meal for 2 from sainsburys
17. Some tupperware
18. A peg set to go with my
19. A wooden banana

WHIRLY WASHING LINE!!! :O Like one of those ones you put up in the garden that folds out and turns around in the wind!! It's huge!!

And my 'real' present which is a tiny little crystal guitar - it's gorgeous!!

Anyway we had a really really great night out - my god i finally had a birthday (party) that i enjoyed!!! :O :O :O

Oh yeh and Em bought me a tea-pot!! hehe i love my friends

picked up ehbeth's dogs today. they'll be staying with us for the next two weeks. bailey has some problems with tartar on his teeth, so the vet put him on a diet of special dog-biscuits that should clean the tartar. ehbeth asked that we try and feed him the special biscuits, knowing that mrs h usually prepares some tasty dish for the dogs - they particularly like a broth of veal and vealbones with carrots (a modern version of jellied calf's foot).
well, we got home and since they had not been fed much in the morning, they both took a few of the special biscuits - cleo isn't very fussy, she just about eats anything, bailey is more of a gourmet and prefers the finest food only. so after a few of those biscuits he went over to mrs h who was standing at the kitchen counter imploring her to come up with something better.
he looked as if he was praying that pope benedikt might send an angel with REAL food. no barking, just a really, really sad look ... well, mrs h was ready to break out in tears, so she finally took a spoonfull of the special veal-gravy and poured it over the detested buiscuits ... bailey was not beaten yet, he quickly licked the veal juices off the biscuits ! one smart dog ! hbg