1 November 2006 It's pretty near too cold to hang clothes outside today. This morning when I went to spin out the socks I'd left in a bucket last night, I found that I'd forgotten to wash the sheet and a few other whites that I'd put in to soak just before my nap on Monday. So I've been washing most of the day: The whites, the socks, a load of blacks and reds, and a load of light colors. Haven't unplugged from checking my morning e-mail yet, and it's time for lunch. 5 November 2006 And this morning, I'm tempted to go back to the sofa and read the epilogue to _The Final Key_. Things in Scolia were getting very tense at bedtime, and I didn't put the book down until after three. Woke up when Dave did anyway. They continue to work and work and work in the bike trails, with no progress visible. Dave walked to Roy Street during my nap one day -- probably Friday -- and noticed that concrete had been poured around one of the drainpipes under the road they are passing off as a Greenway, and forms had been built around others, but that was nowhere near enough to account for the countless cement trucks we've seen, and they don't make enough noise to assure that we'll notice them passing, so there must have been many more that we didn't see. My theory is that the truck goes in there, fills a wheelbarrow, and takes the rest of the concrete to the sea wall or the sidewalk. They widened the sidewalk about halfway, then broke the old walk and swerved a wholly-new walkway to the lake shore. Then they swerved a short curve of new walk to make the stub of the old one meet the Greenway at right angles. This forces people using the sidewalk to go around two sides of a triangle, which nobody will do except when the beaten-bare dirt is muddy. Not something you want right in front of the super-luxurious condominiums you are trying to sell. I was quite offended when I first saw it, and thought many hard thoughts about the designers who didn't consider it possible that people might walk on a walkway. Then when Dave and I walked down there, and saw it from the other side, we realized that they *don't* expect people to use the old walk; the connection was just put in to finish off the broken end so they wouldn't have to dig it out until after the Boathouse Restaurant gets permission to expand its parking lot. This is also why they swerved the walkway instead of widening the old one the whole way. Kidneys, man. Expanding the parking lot into the park would have been seen as a bad thing; expanding it over a sidewalk nobody uses any more is only logical. The town council -- or whoever -- also managed to include the construction of badly-needed sea walls along the canal in the budget, so not all of the money spent has been wasted. Did I tell you that the hills I mentioned after my first trip through the Greenway have been dug off and filled in? No doubt this is a first step toward turning the "greenway" into a roadway that will funnel all the Southtown traffic through Park Avenue -- at a very small savings in distance and a large increase in time, because the bypass is straighter and has only one stop sign. But it's good that a fire truck could use it if something blocked King's Highway. Grump. I was all caught up on the laundry -- and it's time to change the bed. I've got a lovely day to hang the sheet out. National radar shows a big blob of weather in Illinois that might sweep over Alice's place and interfere with the well-digging, but it will go south of us. Seems queer to be hoping it won't rain on her because she has no water. 1142: Wha? A load of *sod* just went down Boys' City Drive. Goes with the load of topsoil I saw headed that way a few days ago. (That was even queerer, because a road-building project has topsoil to get rid of, but you can't re-use dug-up sod.) (Grasping at straws) Maybe they were taking a roundabout way to Stone Camp. 10 November 2006 Yesterday, with the T-shirt I'm making down to the hems, I decided to devote the whole day to cutting out so I wouldn't lose momentum. I cut out two patches, and sewed one of them on. The one I sewed on was an impromptu: I'd found a hole in the knee of my worse pair of ragged pants when I was getting dressed. Despite having completed the job, I'm wearing my better pair today: that's where I left my pocket knife, lipstick, etc. The other is a four-piece patch for my black linen slacks, which have been hanging on the to-do hook for over a year. I've still got six pairs of slacks on that hook. (It's a "giant storage hook" I'm using for extra closet rod.) Two of them are "oakwood" twill; being out of oakwood-colored scraps, I'm thinking of sacrificing one to patch the other. Al had a very nice nap on the interlock I'd got down to make my short slip with. My previous project was an ankle-length slip from the same pattern and fabric. May not cut it today either: today's plan is "get something done outside". Al says I may begin by emptying the cat box. Dirt needs changing every day, and it's been two or three. One book added to the Goodwill box. A thousand or so to go. 11 November 2006 I've finally cut out my short slip. I have six or seven yards of black interlock left -- how much of that stuff did I *buy*? Ten days, I think, until our Earthlink account expires. We had a little problem that forced MasterCard to assign us a new number -- which hasn't come in the mail yet -- so instead of telling Earthlink the new number, we told them that they are fired. I may have to change my fabric.com account; I don't need to check until I buy something, though. I *think* I type in my card number every time. The day the card crashed, the Deal of the Day was wool gabardine. I doubt that I'd have bought any anyway, since they didn't have black -- and I have two pieces of wool *and* a nearly-new wool suit. 13 November 2006 Fellowship committee meeting tonight. I brought up the matter of a key, but nothing was done about it. The lake has a long way to drop yet, but has noticed that the dam is open. I think this started Friday. Dave found a web site that said that there are very few bi-level lakes in the state, and each has a different reason. On ours, it's to protect sea walls from ice damage. Dave and I both went tank-lid hunting, but couldn't find it. I find it hard to believe that a trash-can lid on the lake side of the house could blow clear off the property; Dave accused me of having put it away. I've dumped the water out of the bin and put it in the garage -- I plan to dump used litter in it when it's too nasty out to go to the garden. One of the tubs of clean litter is full and the other nearly so; I should dig some more tomorrow, but _Harald_ has arrived at the library, so I'm going bike-riding instead. Hung two of the three loads of wash out today, but it didn't get dry. Left what I had on the rack on it, and set up the other one. Draped the king-sized sheet over the shower rod. 14 November 2006 I got rained on, but not wet. Thought at first that I should have worn the Capilene tights instead of the cotton ones, but didn't get cold. Both the books that caught my eye at the library were on the seven-day shelf, so I left them to look for when I bring _Harald_ back. While I was looking at the space-opera anthology, the loudspeakers announced that an alarm was going to be tested in five minutes, so I left hastily. I'd forgotten to put my power bars in my pocket, so I stopped at the health-food store for a macaroon. And also almonds, dried figs, and sesame sticks. Got a double whammy when I paid for Dave's prescriptions: it was a hundred ten dollars instead of the eighty I'd expected -- and when I dug out the fifty-dollar bill I'd brought in case of just such an emergency, it was a twenty! Still had enough money left to buy the shampoo, calcium chews, and milk -- but I had to count carefully. They poured the last square of the new sidewalk while I was gadding about, and when I came back a man was troweling a little triangle of fresh concrete at the junction of the new and old walkways. When I passed the canal, they were pouring the sea wall, but Dave wasn't home when I got here -- perhaps if I'd stopped to watch the pouring, I'd have seen him. [He had been there, he said when he came home, but probably not when I was passing.] I had sesame sticks and a pickled egg for lunch. The egg wasn't very pickled, so I suppose I'll hold off for a while before eating another. Grump. Come salad-making time, I realized that "lettuce" should have been on my shopping list. Then after supper we walked to the church, I tried all the doors, and we came home. I don't mind knitting all by myself when nobody shows, but being locked out is getting *old*. Come next Fellowship meeting, I may serve up an ultimatum. 16 November 2006 I've got to get another pair of socks started so I'll have some portable mindless knitting -- the socks I'm repairing are down to the toe shaping, which makes them incompatible with meetings and movies. So for "After the Thin Man" last night -- Dave got it from NetFlix -- I unwrapped The Afghan of the Century for the first time in months, and left it on the sofa after the movie was over. Al-the-cat has been sacked out on it pretty much ever since. It's been so dark and gloomy all day that I felt like joining him, but I did get the darts sewn in my new knee-length slip-with-sleeves. It's way past time to replace the ratty old rag I've been wearing under my old winter dress. My next project ought to be a new Sunday dress -- I've a border-print linen blend that will make a lovely salwar kameez-ish outfit -- but I feel more like making pajama pants to go with my twinkle-twinkle shirts. And I *don't* have any decent pajamas. 18 November 2006 On the other hand, things are going to start falling out through the gaps in my bull-denim wallet pretty soon, and the black linen-cotton canvas I bought before deciding to repair my old cycling knickers after all is perfect for making a wallet and the purse I put off making because I couldn't find suitable fabric. This summer we bought a big plastic trash can to hold lake water for the flower beds, and the summer turned out so wet that it was of very little use. Some time back the lid blew off and I dilly-dallied about hunting for it; when we did get serious about finding it, it was nowhere to be found. Yesterday Dave found the lid on Boy's City Drive just past Chestnut Street. It's very thin and might have blown that far, but we suspect that the neighborhood children found a very large frisbie on Park Avenue. ----------------------------------------------------------- On the day his father died, David Friedman's blog post was the same quote -- from the Edda, I think; the book doesn't say -- that ends _Harald_: Cattle die, kindred die, Every man is mortal. But the good name never dies Of one who has done well. 21 November 2006 Got four "unknown user" messages from Earthlink this morning, deleted four accounts from Thunderbird. Ah, this means I can use the broken-link detector to find any overlooked links to my old web sites. Now I have to remember where the broken-link detector is. While hanging out the sheet this morning -- didn't change the bed yesterday because of the bike trip -- I heard heavy-machinery noises from Boys' City Drive and commenced thinking about the road-building project. Near as I can make out, what they have been doing the past few weeks is hauling in loads of yellow dirt, spreading them thin with the grader, and packing them down with the roller. This, of course, doesn't show much change when you walk past -- though I noticed, when we walked down Union Street a couple of weeks back, that it was farther above the terrain than it had been. After a while the heavy-machinery noise got louder and the leaf-sucker hove into view on Boys' City Drive. Finally found the little piece of sanded plywood I use for an iron rest and, sometimes, as a lap support for the mouse pad: some idiot put it where pieces of plywood belong: leaning against the wall behind the footlocker of notions. Interesting lecture about weather spotting at the Mentone firehouse yesterday evening -- Dave came home with a rain-and-snow gauge and a folder of papers. Still no mindless knitting in hand, so I dug out my emergency back-up tatting shuttle and discovered that the ball had started to disintegrate and I had begun to re-wind it. So I spent most of the meeting winding thread, which was a good concentration aid. I brought home two Pratchets from the library. I meant to get _Going Postal_, but I wasn't sure I'd read _Night Watch_, so I looked at the front; sure enough I'd read about the assassin in the cesspool before, but it was a funny scene so I read on to the end, at which point I started getting into stuff I hadn't read, and after a bit I'd gotten hooked, so I brought both books home. And didn't stop anywhere but Owen's, having fiddled around long enough to get hungry. At least this time I'd brought my Snickers energy bar. Which tasted like sawdust; how do they do that when the main ingredient is peanuts? I think that the first time I read the cesspool scene, it was from the assassin's point of view. I rode out Pierceton & Packerton, and got rather lost finding Roy. Forgot that I'd meant to see the tree farm while I was out that way. Took about an hour to get to the library. We have an appointment with our new financial adviser this afternoon. I forget what's on tomorrow. Busy week. [It was a telephone appointment with an insurance company.] 27 November 2006 Read the end of _Night Watch_ last night -- skipped all the tense events leading up to it and may leave them skipped. Then I couldn't stir up any interest in _Going Postal_ -- I knew at the time it was a mistake to check out two Pratchets at the same time. Got into the church last Tuesday and finished one sock; finished the other during the Thanksgiving party, and wore them Friday and Saturday. (It's a good idea to wear new wool socks two days in a row before washing them, to set the shape.) Still haven't started a new pair. Hope I remember to steel-wool the needles first. We saw a sparkling rain of spiders Thursday afternoon. When Sara Lee got home, she called Alice to report that she'd driven through another cloud of them. There were webs on the front of her car when she came for the shopping trip Friday. 28 November 2006 When we walked to Roy Street on Saturday, there were paint marks on the dirt, which suggested to me that it was the final layer. Lots of trucks and machinery going in and out of Boys' City today, but the only one that looked like asphalt was going away. (The rest, I didn't see from the rear at all, and you can't see the load from the front or sides.) Changed the bed & washed clothes today -- didn't get much else done. I've cut up vegetables to bake the garlic pork roast that I bought at Aldi's yesterday. 29 November 2006 Left for Sewing Circle a quarter-hour early, so we walked to the end of Boys City and came back by Union. No work done on Oakwood, save for a narrow ramp to allow machines to get over the cliff they'd made the day before by chipping back the edge of the pavement. So we were a bit surprised to see that the parking lot had its first coat of asphalt, as did the trail from there all the way to Chestnut street, including the part of Union that had been a street before. I hadn't seen any signs of preparation in that part; Dave says that there had been pavement, rather than gravel, under the dirt. Dump trucks are coming and going frequently, but I can't see what's in them. And, great shock, when we got to the church, the ramp-room door was unlocked. So I went in and darned a pair of socks that really aren't worth darning, but once one gets started . . . Stayed an hour and still have two thin spots to darn. Just before eleven, I saw the pavement roller departing on a flatbed. Dast I assume that that means the top coat is in place? 30 November 2006 It isn't. Dave thinks they be letting the bottom coat firm up. Or, rather, it wasn't at walk-time yesterday. It rained all of today and I never set foot outside -- not even to empty the catbox, come to think of it. Hope I don't forget in the morning. Finished the slip, all but the bottom hem, which I sprayed with starch and hung up to dry. Then I put on the old slip for a nightshirt and took my nap. I've started cutting out a new wallet. Found the wallet-making manuscript I started writing once -- filed under "articles" instead of "needlework" -- but there is no salvage in it. And with the Greenway story yet unfinished, I think it's time to mail this. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather) west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.