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.

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!

A week later…

Posted on July 2, 2005
Filed Under Blather, Red Sox, daytripping, family, friends, music, photography, this old house | 5 Comments

I’m so slow these days with the blog.

So last Monday Ez and I went to see our friend Doug’s band The Hyphens at the Middle East. A fine time was had by all. We took silly pictures, and since we were just fooling around, I guess that makes them “punk rock.” A sampling:

The Hyphens at the Middle East

Hyphens--Friday, June 24th

Hyphens in blue

Hyphens, funked up, at Middle East

RRRAWWK!

So… we’re having our house painted, and it’s all bang-bang-banging and scrape-scrape-scraping all the livelong day. I’m sure it will be good in the end. Really, it could be worse. But it’s nice to have uninterupted summer weekends at home. Aw well…

Other than that, it’s been work…

Oh… and I guess I’m so behind that I never mentioned the swell visit from our Pennsylvania-Ezra-cousin-pals, Margaret and Shannon, and Margaret’s boy-companion-guy, Niall. (BCG… try it on, Niall, see what you think.) That was good fun. We saw another Sox game, which we won handily (yay!), unlike last night (boo!). We also spent what I thought was a really fun day in Portsmouth.

Evidence here:

Yet another on the bench
Niall and Margaret in matching Red Sox garb examine the day’s purchases on the Esplanade

Sisters, Cousins
Shannon and Margaret with more purchases in sunny Prescott Park

Speaking of Portsmouth, they’ve torn down this old theater building that recently had a camera shop in it for some kind of silly condo-type development in the middle of town. Grrr…

Need to do some grocery shopping today, I think. Gonna get outta the house, yo.

Return to Form

Posted on June 1, 2005
Filed Under Blather, knitting, this old house | Leave a Comment

So, somewhere along the way I forgot my initial statement on this blog. I don’t have to write about anything in particular. That worry out of the way…

We painted the bathroom over the weekend. I like it. I think I like it a lot. It’s certainly better than the graying white with crayon we had before. And we liberated the window. We still need to put up the overhead light, so for now we just have these wires hanging from the ceiling. Once that’s done maybe I’ll take a picture or two for the world.

My teeth are clean. I had them cleaned today. I don’t mind the dental hygenists so much. It’s the dentist himself, and some of his receptionists, that I despise. So my chompers are feeling groomed.

I have knitting projects to attend to, among many other things.

More soon, I hope…

New office!

Posted on January 9, 2005
Filed Under Blather, this old house | 1 Comment

Yesterday, in a sloppy, slushy ice storm, our new office furniture arrived. I love it. It smells all new and wood-y. It’s so clean and pretty. I’m excited to file away and organize lots of junk that has piled up.

Ezra was a little concerned before we got it that we’d be cramped if we both tried to work at the desk at the same time. (It’s an L-shaped desk, so there’s a space for him and a space for me.) Last night we tried it out, and I thought it worked out fine.

No more trying to get work done from the sofa. Now I just need a decent chair.

Pictures coming soon.

First Day Back to Work After Holidays (FDBTWAH)

Posted on January 4, 2005
Filed Under Blather, the written word, this old house | Leave a Comment

Sounds like an exasperated expletive, doesn’t it? “Aw, fdbtWAH!” Seems to need a hand gesture to go with it.

And I don’t have it half as bad as folks who have to go into offices and such, though I did ride the subway this morning at rush hour on my way to the gym, so I inhaled the tension.

Our Christmas tree is looking decidedly dead. Boo. Will have to unhang and ungild it later this week. It was purty for a while. I’m dealing with this better than normal (last year our tree was practically turning brown before I parted with it) since I know we’re getting our new office furniture this weekend (rubs hands together with glee). I always need something to look forward to… don’t we all?

I picked up a Garbo biography yesterday and I’m dying to just sit down and read the whole thing. It’s making it hard to get anything done (as if I needed any more difficulties in that department today). Need to change my attitude–as soon as I get this thing done, I can read my book! Ya! Mind over matter… and another thing to look forward to!

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