Catching Up

Posted on May 29, 2009
Filed Under Blather, das kiddo, daytripping, family, friends, music, this old house | 2 Comments

Time marches on, and progress continues.

Over the last couple of weekends, Ez and I ran about a million errands, and at the end of it all we had an assembled crib with mattress and crib skirt in place, nursery curtains hung, fully-stocked kitchen cabinets, and cheerful new plants to add to the new-life vibe we’re cultivating. We also found time to go to the beach on Memorial Day.

May 19 we went to see St. Vincent at the Somerville Theater. Opening act Pattern as Movement was… well… hideous in my opinion. My attempt to describe them: Opera jazz rock with ethnic yodels and sea lions. Ezra’s attempt, perhaps more on the nose: Catholic liturgical prog mass. I’m sure they’re lovely people, but… no. St. Vincent is always good stuff, and the new album sounds like another solid effort, but the show felt too short. After seeing her from the front row at the Middle East last year, the whole thing felt much less intimate to me. The Somerville Theater isn’t a bad venue for her, but really small venues are often best. Tuesday’s show was the first of her current tour, so perhaps later shows will feel a tad more spontaneous.

Recently, I also got to visit with dear friend Heather and meet her adorable doggie, Mischa. No joke, I’d say at least 15 groups of people stopped on the street to admire the pup and chat with us. That Mischa is a charming pooch.

We went to our first childbirth class this week. Seems good so far. Ez made me giggle–probably without even trying–during the relaxation exercise.

Ooo–we are finally getting a new dryer. Whooppee! Dry clothes.

Okay, so this post is pretty boring, with no fun pictures. I plan to follow it up with a silly post, less relevant to anything at all, but with pictures (not mine). Prepare for visual stimulation! Ish!

Pretty days in Somerville

Posted on April 30, 2009
Filed Under Blather, art, das kiddo, family, knitting, the 'hood, this old house | 3 Comments

Except for Tuesday, which was super hot, it has been really lovely recently. Each day has been filled with clear sunshine and the temps have been in the upper 50s-upper 60s. I’ve been enjoying my little walks (mostly to True Grounds, my current favorite coffee shop/work spot).

This week our nursery furniture arrived. The crib and dresser came on Tuesday. They both require assembly, so they’re in pieces at the moment, but last night we did open up the crib box just to make sure everything looks okay. It does. Yesterday the comfy glider arrived. Looking at the measurements online I was a little worried that the chair would be too big to fit through the doorway to the nursery, but Ez got it through with no trouble. I like it! We’ll have to be vigilant about de-linting it… microfiber, you know.

chair

This week I also finished the second knit hat for our little muncher. It’s the same as the first, but in a different yarn and color. I liked working with the wool yarn a bit better–I think that’s a general preference of mine. In my experience, wool just tends to be softer and to produce better stitch definition. I think both of the hats are super cute, though. He’ll have one for summer/fall and one for fall/winter! Oh, and I finally (after–what is it now–13 years of knitting?) got some little double pointed needles to finish the top of the hat instead of improvising and probably stretching out the yarn. I’m not sure what I was nervous about–that I’d drop stitches or lose the little needles, I guess.

nursery paint tests
Last night Ez tried out two paint colors in the nursery, so I’ll be periodically wandering in there today to scrutinize. It’s a sort of drab green at the moment, so the effect of the new (light, slightly greenish blue) paint is going to be very different. We’ve been pondering leaving our Miro poster where it is in the nursery–all those bright colors and interesting shapes!–challenging and exciting!–perfect for our kid, right? But we’re thinking maybe not. It’s not Miro’s “friendliest” work. It’s open to interpretation, but it might be a bit angry-looking, even war-like, for a fresh-hatched type. I can see just the spot where we can move it in the living room, in fact. He can worry about war and anger later.

Why we love Suki, part 3876559

Posted on April 22, 2009
Filed Under Blather, family, photography, the pusses, this old house | Leave a Comment

Suki

There’s nothing like the ways of a cat to make you stop what you’re doing, forget about stress and tasks, and just say “tee hee!” and be happy. I recently went through a lot of papers and files in my office and produced 5+ bags of recycling. In the midst of moving furniture out of the office, we discovered Suki as you see her here. Never to be deterred from perching in the sun’s rays, and as much a fan of little nesting places as the next cat, she found that this particular bag of recycling would do quite nicely, thank you.

A Monday in New England, or an excuse to catch up on the ol’ blog

Posted on April 20, 2009
Filed Under Blather, craft, das kiddo, daytripping, family, friends, knitting, sports in general, this old house | Leave a Comment

So it’s Patriot’s Day, which I didn’t even know existed before I moved to the Boston area. And it’s Marathon Monday–this year it’s the 113th running of the Boston marathon. A guy Ezra works with has already finished. He came in 60th overall. Yeah, that’s right, 60th out of 26,331. One of Ezra’s other co-workers and our friend Randolph are still hoofing along and seem to be doing quite well. Whoop whoop!

Suki is at my shoulder as I write this, accepting kisses and purring.

Some New Englanders have today off; Ezra is working from home.

We had quite a busy weekend. Saturday we met up with friends John, Sonya, and their wee spunkmeister Lydia. Pictures of Lydia eating and generally checking out the world are coming soon. After a nice little visit with the pals, we decided to go to IKEA. Our goal this trip out was to get some lamps for the nursery, but of course we ended up finding a lot of other things that we genuinely need as well–a new bathroom rug, some little pads to prevent our furniture from scratching the floor, that sort of thing. Then yesterday we rented a U-Haul van and moved some assorted furniture out of the home office and into the studio. I’m not yet totally useless for such things, though anyone watching me push my wheeled cabinet up the ramp at the studio enjoyed quite a little comedy routine, and I did wake up this morning with an assortment of aches. We moved the larger part of the desk through our (open) front window… we’re just a couple of engineering geniuses is all.

Last Friday we had a doctor’s appointment, and afterward I wandered over to Windsor Button, where I found two skeins of Sirdar Sublime yarn–one a washable merino and one a washable cotton. They’re in such nice colors–I had to get them to make hats for our mini muncher. I finished the first one last night–they’re so easy! Pictures to come.

Delinquent blogger tells all

Posted on March 26, 2009
Filed Under Blather, Literary, das kiddo, family, films, knitting, me and my brain, this old house | 3 Comments

So I’ve been very bad about blogging.  Some blame facebook.  I blame life, which has been sort of too busy to report on and somehow at the same time too dull (?).  Maybe it’s just that I haven’t had a lot of time to reflect on things enough to actually write about them.

So.  I don’t think there’s anyone I know who would be reading this who isn’t already aware of the situation, but in case there is–I’m pregnant!  Our little man (doc said it’s a boy, but we couldn’t tell from the ultrasound one way or the other) is due August 3rd.  Makes him sound a little like a library book.  Okay, that’s just me.

That, of course, is our biggest news, but there’s more.

We’ve been contemplating a move to a bigger house.  It’s a complicated time to be considering a move for many reasons–even moreso maybe than it would be at any time.  We’ve seen one place we like, but it needs a lot of work and financing would be complex (if even possible).  We haven’t really seen anything else of interest in the months we’ve been looking, so if this place doesn’t happen, we may take a step back and try again next year.  In preparation for possibly moving, we’ve been taking care of a number of issues with our condo, so if we end up deciding not to move now, we’ll have a nicer place to live in for a while longer.

We’ve both been working our little noses into nubs–Ezra especially.  Things are getting more managable, I think, but for a few weeks there it was high-speed working seemingly 24/7.  We got a little trip to New York out of it, which is always good.  While Ezra slaved away in the Lux New York offices, new and old, I slaved away in our hotel room and in various Starbucks across Hell’s Kitchen. We got to see a few friends for dinner while we were there, and, of course, I made sure to take at least two trips to The Strand (or was it three?).  My haul this time included:

The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits

The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits

Exquisite Corpse by Robert Irwin

Exquisite Corpse by Robert Irwin

Rides of the Midway by Lee Durkee

Rides of the Midway by Lee Durkee

Blue Boy by Jean Giono

Blue Boy by Jean Giono

Clockers by Richard Price

Clockers by Richard Price

The Grifters by Jim Thompson

The Grifters by Jim Thompson

The Dark by John McGahern

The Dark by John McGahern

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

While in New York I finished The History of Love by Nicole Krauss–good, easy reading, sentimental but pretty satisfying–and then dug into The Dark.   John McGahern’s writing has been compared to early Joyce.  I’ve never read any Joyce (yes, another hole in my English-major reading), but I liked The Dark pretty well, so maybe one of these days I’ll give Dubliners a try.  Now I’m reading The Dud Avocado.  It’s fun–very different from the last few books I’ve read.  Up until a day or two ago I was feeling pretty stressed, so it’s been good to have a lighter (but far from insipid) book waiting for me at my bedside.

I am knitting a blanket for our little guy.  I started it a while ago, but it’s been kind of slow going.  I sort of made up the pattern–cables, of course!  I’m using Mission Falls 1824 yarn (washable!).  So far I like it, though the yarn has been prone to little pulls.

Last night right before bed I watched the very beginning of The 49th Parallel (1941).


I set Tivo to tape it because it stars Leslie Howard, but I now realize it has a lot more to recommend it.  It gets three and a half out of four stars, so that’s something.  Besides Leslie Howard, it also stars Laurence Olivier–that’s a pretty fancy cast!  It’s about a U-Boat crew stranded in Canada, trying to get to the still-neutral U.S. to avoid internment–seems like a nice bit of propaganda urging the U.S. to enter WWII on Britain’s side.


It won an Oscar for best writing.  I’m not usually big on war films, but I’m looking forward to watching this one.

And it’s only 9:00AM

Posted on March 17, 2008
Filed Under Blather, christmas, me and my brain, the pusses, this old house | 5 Comments

This morning I drove down to the post office to mail a package and to pick up my postcards.  When I arrived home I found the cats in the kitchen batting around the tiniest little mouse you’ve ever seen.  Eek.  I am not the best for dealing with these things, but I couldn’t just let them bat it around all day.  It’s under a box top, under a pile of phone books.  Suki has given up but Edie is still going crazy.  I know I shouldn’t leave it for Ezra to deal with, but…

The postcards… I’m just starting to look at them.  The very first one I pulled out is colorful and in nice condition with a bell, holly (I love holly), and lots of gold.  It’s in pretty nice condition, too.  The kicker, though, is that it’s addressed to Spring Creek, PA, and it’s written in some other language that I can’t identify.  This is gonna be fun.

Terri and Ezra move one step closer to the 21st century!

Posted on January 31, 2008
Filed Under Blather, this old house | 6 Comments

OK, perhaps that’s not quite right. I mean, we do live in 2008 with the rest of you. Now, like most of you, we have a functioning refrigerator. It arrived today. Much as I expected, it’s a lot like when we got our new dishwasher. It just seems like it’s going to be so much better than our old one. It seems to hold a little more, it’s MILES more energy efficient (apparently it’s off the low end of the chart in terms of energy usage), it’s brighter inside, and it has movable buckets on the doors and shelves that slide in and out. Oh, and we got the bottom freezer kind. It just seems to make sense.

There’s nothing like putting your magnets on a new fridge.

Saturday framing extravaganza!

Posted on May 13, 2007
Filed Under Blather, art, this old house | 2 Comments

Ez and I spent several hours–yes, HOURS–yesterday at the framing store in Porter Square picking out ready-made frames and planning and selecting custom mats and frames. This has been a long time coming. Two of the items we’re framing date back to our honeymoon (that’s end of September 2001), and we bought two of the others at the arts festival in State College a couple of years ago. I’m really excited to finally be getting everything framed, especially because it means we can do some decorating! We’re framing nine items in total. Woo hoo! I think the woman who helped us with our order was a little bit new. She was very nice and I think she did an OK job, but I got the feeling we were giving her a real crash course with our three custom orders plus six custom mats. For some reason nothing we get is ever a standard size. Go figure.

Not just the books, but the place where I live with them

Posted on June 22, 2006
Filed Under Blather, Pennsylvania, me and my brain, the written word, this old house | 2 Comments

Some of my fondest memories from childhood–in fact, from adolescence, too–are of spending time at Schlow Memorial Library in State College.  As a kid, I loved going there and scanning through the rows and rows of butter yellow, blue, and dark green bound picture books.  The Lonely Doll, A is for Annabelle, and A Dolls’ Christmas were early favorites. Later I found The Finch’s Fabulous Furnace, and, later still, Chronicles of Avonlea.  But it isn’t just the books that I loved then or that I hold in my memory, but the place itself… It’s the reading tables and bean bag chairs from the old children’s room, the hard shiny floor at the entrance by the circulation desk, the old winding staircase up to the adult section, the record albums with their dog-eared sleeves (we practically wore out that Mary Poppins read-along record, and years later I taped XTC’s Skylarking from the Schlow copy), the recent periodicals in red-edged plastic sleeves.  It’s the hushed echo of the outer vestibule and the weird isolation in the narrow adult stacks. 

Schlow 2003 

The library has just been expanded–for the second time in my lifetime (and I’m only 31).  There’s both a lot to love and a lot to hate about State College.  That the public library is so busy and so valued in the community–now as it was when I was a kid–is one of the things to love and hang on to.

sunny bunnies

Posted on April 16, 2006
Filed Under Blather, Red Sox, this old house | Leave a Comment

Happy Easter, friends.  I am spending the day with my honey, removing dead leaves and shiny things with barcodes from our yard.  Later we will probably throw the windows open and watch the Red Sox with cool drinks in our hands while our cats’ little noses twitch away with the breeze.

Spring greens and dancing shadows to you!

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Song of the Day

The Essex Green-Sorry River 

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The Knitting Turnip

On My Needles

Rhapsody in Tweed cabled pullover for Ezra! using Tahki Donegal Tweed in Forest, from Fall 2004 Interweave Knits. I've just picked this one up again, so it's moving up in the queue!

Sweater with Cable Patterns pullover using Araucania Nature Wool Chunky in Mauve, from Rebecca Magazine Number 28

Heather Pullover using Classic Elite Wings in Larkspur, from Rowan’s A Season’s Tale... This needs the knit doctor. I'm going to have to frog back a little bit and redo the shoulder area. Long story.

Hush Pullover using Jo Sharp DK wool in Wine, from Rowan’s Calmer Collection

More scoop on my knitting endeavors can be found at my home on Ravelry (clicky here).

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