I’ve been working working working … hence the unfortunate but necessary negelct of the blog. But now, now it’s Chrismas! Christmastime in Montana this year is delightful, snowy, and very very cold … supposed to be well below zero tonight. I’ve been so busy and fried that I hadn’t really thought much about Christmas — a couple of weeks ago I got sucked in at the grocery store and bought some of those icicle lights — they twinkle! So tacky but I love them — hung them on the front porch and they’re sort of like having a fire —…
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Home after a week in San Jose for work — it was a good week — I actually got a lot done, and spent two days talking to folks from the other theaters about translation and localization issues, which was nerdy, but interesting. It’s nice to be engaged in my job again — I officially made the transition back to editing a couple of weeks ago, so I’m back to what I do best — strategizing how to document these products, thinking about the pedagogical project that an admin or user guide represents, and then just doing a lot of…
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I went off for my annual doctor’s appointment about a month ago, and while all was well, that scale thing had crept up to a truly frightening figure. My clothes were still fitting pretty well, but shall we say, my face was a wee bit more full than I’d like — and of course, just as I was realizing that middle-aged spread was indeed happening to me, work got really busy, the bears got into their annual fall frenzy, the out-of-state hunters with their scary high-power rifles arrived, and somehow we just weren’t getting out for our afternoon walks in…
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Sometimes a person just needs a weekend where you really don’t do anything. This is a concept I came to late in life — until I moved to California and got my job at the Big Corporation, I’d always worked at least two jobs, and one of them was usually retail. Which means I didn’t have weekends — I’d have a day off somewhere in the middle of the week, and after a while I managed to get out of working Sundays, and so it was something of an adjustment when Patrick and I moved in together, and those weekends…
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I woke up this morning thinking about a comment that Leah, over at Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen posted on her website. Apparently, by blogging about domestic life, and in particular, blogging about cooking a nice dinner for her husband and young son on Valentine’s Day, she called down the Voice of the Disapproving Feminists upon her head. Apparently, choosing to love one’s family, and to think about the ways one cares for them, and to blog about this “does next to nothing to promote woman as a healthy, vitally aware, culturally meaningful being in the world.” Clearly, something about…
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I have a perfect bowl. My cousin Elizabeth made it for me many years ago. It’s exactly the right size for a single-girl meal, and tonight, after a very blinky day brought on by one of those nuits blanches a full moon sometimes brings, I made some dinner in the Perfect Bowl. It was very monkey-brain in my house last night — I have a totally different job at my Real Job, and I don’t really know how to do it yet. So, it was one of those nights where one thinks about everything including many things one has no…
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When last week’s article in the Boston Globe about food blogs came out and it listed Pim’s full name, I got to wondering. So I googled her and it turns out that Pim, of Chez Pim, and I not only work for the same very large computer company, but we’re in the same division, and even in the same building (which considering there are about 45 buildings on campus, is pretty interesting). Who knew? So I emailed her, and she IM’ed me this morning, and we made plans to go out next time I’m back in town. Small small world…
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The weather has been wonky lately, which is one reason for the light blogging. There isn’t much to talk about in the garden because, well, it’s been raining. Which is good, and up here in drought country, we’re not complaining, but it is getting just the tiniest bit boring. Summer is so short that it’s hard to lose a whole month to cold and rain, but on the other hand, maybe we won’t have fires all summer. So anyhow, we came back from a little hike yesterday afternoon just as the clouds were gathering and took refuge in my kitchen.…
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Last night we had a perfect dinner in the garden. It was a beautiful day — sunny and warm with those big blue skies for which the state is famous. My friend Jim Fergus has been here for the past few days and so I invited Bill and Maryanne to join us for dinner in my backyard. I miss cooking and miss having people over. And so it was lovely to have a normal dinner in the back garden — the daisies are starting to bloom, as are the iris, the columbines and the pink shrub roses I planted last…
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Look at that — my very own white picket fence! It’s taken a couple of weeks, and when the guys first came to build it, somehow we’d agreed on a four-foot fence (to match last year’s big investment, the board fence on the south side of the yard). When they put the posts in I nearly had a heart attack — at four feet, it was going to look like Fortress Charlotte. They were nice enough to cut the posts down some, and build the three-foot fence I’d envisioned. So I spent my Memoiral Day weekend painting the fence —…