Just a note for anyone who might read both our blogs: Keep the Coffee Coming was ousted from Blogger, but Kat has made herself a new home on WordPress. Head over to visit her new digs!
Arriving home last night at 1:30 in the morning and needing to be up and working (from home for the first bit) at 7:30 this morning was … painful. Luckily, my boss was a dear and sent me home when she left because I just wasn’t concentrating the way I should have been.
Three more days of work left this week… And they just can’t be done with soon enough…
The good news is that warm weather arrives after tomorrow and daylight extends quite a bit in either direction of my day. Maybe toward the end of the week I’ll even feel up to a pre-work bike ride down to see the cherry blossoms before they all fall off the trees!
I’m back in Salt Lake today, sitting at a cafe for a few more minutes before the yarn store opens up. Tonight we’ll have a dinner out with an ailing Jenny before packing up and heading back east tomorrow afternoon.
I’m not sure I’ll get to post tomorrow, but, if not, definitely expect something new Tuesday. In honor of such a beautiful morning spent outside (after a sunny day spent outside yesterday netted me a slightly pink nose for Rudi’s reunion), I offer you three beautiful things from my Friday:
1. A man on a recumbent bike rides in the bike lane with his small black poodle on a leash running alongside.
2. A violet patch next to a walkway to a nondescript cement building acts as a temporary burst of color.
3. A tree along my walk boasts a medallion. A bottlecap has been painted cheery colors and hangs from a bead-bedecked string. Inside, tiny ransom note-style words read, “This is Zen.”
What’s been beautiful in your world recently?
I’m writing from Park City, Utah, where Rudi’s ski academy reunion is taking place. He’s up on the ski hill doing his crazy plank-footed thing, and I’m spending the day bumming around this old mining town nearly two miles above sea level. I’ve been here before, but never just to hang around and explore, since previously I’ve come to dinner and to an Olympic skiing event back in 2000. Although the day began overcast, the sun has burned away the clouds after yesterday’s storms, leaving us with a gorgeously blue, clear day.
Right now I have found public internet access in a park and am sitting next to an unlit firepit with the laptop (appropriately) on my lap. There are several coffeeshops in town, so I suspect I will seek shelter again in one when my fingers get too cold to type. I have also found a bookstore that hadn’t yet opened when Rudi and I rolled into town and several day spas. Maybe a massage is in order?
And a (free, I think) bus ride away is a TJ Maxx and a yarn store if I get really desperate. Although, there is a yarn shop back in Salt Lake I hope to visit tomorrow, so maybe I’ll save my fiber enthusiasm for then. There are also a couple of cinemas, which could manage to fill up my day until the reunion dinner this evening should I need to escape it all into a movie.
I do wish I could find a chairlift that would take me up the mountain and then back down again. I wouldn’t mind seeing the view from the summit, but I have no interest in the more conventional means down the hill. Some entrepreneur should really consider that for the lazy folk like me…
That’s all for now. I’m going to sit and knit or read for a bit until I get too cold. Have a great day!
I’m writing from a coffeeshop near my MiL’s house, where I have a view of outside. Roughly every five minutes the weather changes. Right now, for instance, it’s sunny, but there is an ominous sheet of clouds overhead. Just after I arrived a few hours ago, it began sleeting. There have been snow showers — several an hour — and a little bit of misty rain, as well. However, nothing sticks to the ground and because Salt Lake is a desert, the pavement dries quickly. I hope Rudi’s weather up in Park City involves less rain and more snow for his skiing adventures.
I know I promised you book reviews, and it’s still possible I’ll write them this weekend. But I’m just not feeling the love at the moment. All three books I’m behind on posting — The Help, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and Shades of Grey are each deserving of a thoughtful review. I don’t want to rush them. But I also know that the longer I wait to write them up the more I’ll forget of the nuances of each novel, so I’ll try to get to them soon.
Three beautiful things from the past week:
1. Last week, when leaving the office way too late, I decide the bus/walking will be faster than taking a late-night train. The bus passes me at Farragut Square, but I catch up to it at the K Street light. I knock on the door to see if the driver will let me on, but she shakes her head and points up a block to the next stop. We leave the light at the same time, but the bus arrives far sooner than I do. When I see the bus door close, I slow my trot down, figuring I’d just have to walk the rest of the way. But the driver re-opens the door to signal that she’s stilll waiting for me.
2. Being so far from Rudi’s mom (who has no other relations) means some challenges for us. Yet, her friends care deeply for her and share some of our concerns, so it’s good to know that they’re also looking out for her and at a closer proximity.
3. On Sunday, as I’m driving to pick up Sarah for our yarn excursion, I pass a group of circus clowns walking down the street carrying huge bunches of brightly hued balloons.
Despite staying awake the whole plane flight west, I still failed to finish my Sock Madness socks in time. Apparently having to kitchener like a bazillion of stitches at heel, toe, and cuff was just too much for me. The more frustrating part is that although the socks fit me (a common complaint was that they were too tight for many competitors), the seam on the bottom of the foot drives me nuts when I put them on, let alone actually stand up…
Alas!
Rudi and I will be hopping on a plane to Utah in just over 12 hours and will be away for a week. My internet connectivity will be spotty (as Rudi’s mom still believes we’re living in 1982), but since I will be doing office work a couple of days from someplace with wi-fi, I expect to continue posting regularly. I’m particularly hopeful that I might get caught back up with my book blogging, which seems to have derailed right around when I headed out to California last month. I figure that my mojo must be stuck out west someplace and perhaps we’ll reconnect in Salt Lake…
This post will have to be brief as I need to head to bed. Sock Madness is taking it all out of me and I find myself picking up stitches, knitting madly away and grafting even in my sleep. (Okay, that part’s not quite true. But it does feel a bit like that. The good news is that I have a heel and most of a cuff on sock one, but I still need to bind that off (using a new-to-me technique) and give it a toe. Sock #2′s body is done, but it’s lacking toe, heel, and cuff still. It will be down to the wire as we discover whether I can get this all done and posted properly (with photo) by the time the buzzer goes off at midnight Tuesday. The plane flight out to Utah Tuesday evening will give me plenty of time to knit, but any delays could sink my chances of getting the online component done. Here’s hoping (and knitting)…
Sarah and I had fun at the Homespun Yarn Party this afternoon and each came away with a few skeins of woolly goodness. I also came home with a used cookbook and a game that I played with Grey Kitten when I visited him last month. Rudi and I capped off the last of the nice weather by hanging out at Starbucks on their patio until we could barely see the text and stitches in front of our eyes.
The rain may move in tomorrow, but I definitely feel like I did my part in spending time outside this first spring weekend of 2010. I’m looking forward to many more!
Today, a gorgeous day pretty much up and down the East Coast, was spent at a picnic table with knitting, a book, and hummus. Totally a great way to mark the arrival of spring, even if I did fail to work in the garden the way I’d originally planned to.
Sarah and I will celebrate the first full day of the season Sunday by trekking northeast of the District to an indie yarn festival. I’m hopeful the car radio will work, but either way I’m optimistic we’ll have fun.