Starting off reading

Books to date include:

Conquistadora - so-so
Three bedrooms, one corpse - amusing
Art and Madness - eh
Kingfishers Catch Fire - slim book with lots of texture
Gone - Rumer Godden short stories - lovely bits
Falling palace: a romance of Naples - BORING, read 1/3 and gave up
Subterranean Rome - not just the what, but the why and the hows and great background
The leftovers - interesting
The Cypress House - - ditto, good read
Blood Maidens - slightly different vampires
A secret rage
Shakespeare's landlord
On Borrowed Time
Robopocalypse - scary
All Wound Up funny as always

So that's 15 books in the first 11 days, not including several guidebooks for Rome and central Italy, but can't count as literature.

I also finished a sock, started its mate and have lugged out 3 giant bags of trash and spent a couple of hours on the bookbinding bench.

And am currently enjoying a miserable case of attempted bronchitis (I think I got to the antibiotics in time) but not enjoying the fever at all.

A Rerun Post for the 4th of July

A is for All of the citizens serving to protect this country and the peace of the world.

M is for Mercy. America has proved time and time again to be a terrible enemy but a merciful victor. This is another tradition I hope and pray we continue to follow even though it undoubtedly makes us appear weak to barbarians.

E is for English, our common tongue. Yes, we butcher the King's version, but American English is vibrant and lively and borrows freely from almost every culture we encounter. Barbecue from the Arawaks, amok from the Moros - if we find a useful word, we'll appropriate it. Look up boondocks, for example!

R is for our Revolution. We won our freedom and we have tried to spread the gospel of freedom.

I is for Invention. America was the first country to recognize intellectual property with a patent system and trademarks. The US Patent Office has patents that you can view online going back to 1790, when our country was barely a going concern. One of our Presidents has even held a patent.

C is for Charity. We excel at it both at home and abroad. If tragedy strikes a community or a country, Americans will be sending soup, bandages and cash within hours - and not primarily through government agencies, but through groups such as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and dozens and dozens of smaller groups.

A is for ambition. In America, ambition and hard work can make you. Who your parents were or where they came from is much less important than what you want to achieve and how hard you are willing to work to do so.

The truth about this country is illustrated most vividly in the fact that all over the world in countries of every type, there are people standing in line and staking all they have on a chance to come here, whereas, I am informed, the line to leave here is small.

An honest prayer for President Obama

"Pray
for Obama. Psalm 109:8".

Psalm 109:8 ~ "Let his days be few and brief; and let others step forward to
replace him."

I was in a small accident a couple of weeks ago and got bounced around the interior of the SO’s car. I had my seatbelt on and the airbag deployed and all that, but it’s been a potent reminder that when you have fibromyalgia, everything can be a bit more difficult.

My right leg is still swollen and sore, even though the visible bruises have faded. I have to elevate it every evening for the swelling and aching to go down. And I’m sore and stiff all over in a way that is a continual reminder of the accident and I’ve been very worried that the physical stress from this would put me into a flare up of the fibromyalgia. I think I may have dodged the bullet on that, because I actually got some decent sleep despite a> being on-call and b> sleeping on the guest bed because the waterbed sprung a leak and I’m waiting for a replacement. A week on a regular bed is a potent reminder of ALL of my sore spots.

But I’m getting better – eating lots of fresh cherries and the amazingly sweet Athena cantelope that will be gone in another week or so not to return until next year.

And my garden has started to yield. Mostly tomatoes, but I've had arugula, sugar snap peas (eaten in the pod tossed in salads) and some lovely radishes. Since it is a small, not quite 4 foot by 8 foot bed, the yield has been quite generous. However, it only stokes the desire for a yard where vegetables and flowers and a happy little dog could all have space.

Gardening

After about 3 weeks of scant or no rain, we had a fabulous drencher Wednesday night, followed by late afternoon soakers on Friday and Saturday.

My garden at the North Fulton Community Garden is growing well and I expect to have ripe tomatoes in the next week.
Pictures to come

Whew!

It's been as hot as the hinges of hell's barbecue grill this week and no relief in sight, although we usually get a brief cool spell in June before the bronze bowl of summer heat closes over us for the duration.

On call this week, so up at 7:30, waited until after the office opened at 8 to walk Charlie, then zipped down to the Peachtree Road Farmer's Market at St. Philips. http://www.peachtreeroadfarmersmarket.blogspot.com/ It was already steamy by 9 and by 10 a.m. I was happy to be back in my car with the ac on. Ran by Trader Joe's and then by the community garden to water my plot and Mar's and clip away some of my beautiful, pungent arugula and lettuces. I even found a couple of the watermelon radishes big enough to pull. Whee. Picture of the garden soon. The tomatoes are fruiting like mad - I have all Romas in my plot and an assortment of heirlooms in Mar's - all but one of my Italian starts from seed were flattened in our late April hailstorm. The sole survivor is doing well. Ah, next year - a girl can hope.

It's time for more housework as well as trying to fix the disposal. It whirs, but grindeth not, so I have tried the reset to no avail and wend and bought a set of Allen wrenches looking for the size that fits in the bottom to try to clear whatever is ailing it. If that fails, I'll have to buy a new kitchen pig, darnit. Not something I want to do. For the moment though, I'm, loading the dishwasher, catching a shower and waiting for 1 when I have to got online to my computer at work and publish the June schedule.

Housework done properly can kill a woman

I have:

gone to church
done 4 loads of laundry
washed out the fridge
cleaned the stove
two dw loads of dishes
gone to the library
walked the dog 3 x
handed out pool keys and parking permits for an hour
grocery shopped

and I have to clean the cat box
take out more trash
do one more load of laundry
and cook dessert and make a salad for the staff potluck tomorrow
and walk the dog at least 1 more time
and I'd like to get down to the community garden and water my bit, but I'm kind of thinking that's not happening today.


As far as the community garden goes, it's chugging along, especially since hail trashed all the first planting of tomatoes and then it's been on the dry side. My arugula is awesome, awesomely pungent and the other lettuces thriving. The watermelon radishes have started out well, as have the sugar snap peas.

I'm so thrilled by having a real garden space, small as it is

Roundup

We got back to work Wednesday after the great snowstorm. A skeleton of the loyal came in, the usual suspects failed to show. We closed up at 5 prompt on both Wednesday and Thursday and we got paid for the full day. Those who didn't show lost vacation or floating holiday time or pay. Dumb. By Friday, there was absolutely no reason why anyone shouldn't have been at work. And not very fair to the rest of us who did come in and handle the whole horrid pile. But that's about what I expect from a significant cross section of my co-workers - slackness.

Today the sun was out and the temperature close to balmy - a lot of melting, but the entryway is far from clear and I suspect it may take through Monday to clear it up. I picked up my new glasses, went to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and also got a new filter for the humidifier and some goodies at Tuesday Morning - including some rain boots - because I don't think the snow and ice are over and I discovered that none of my shoes were really great for coping with soggy snow.

Read "Citadel" by Ringo; "Intrigue" by Mercedes Lackey; "Finders Keepers" by Craig Childs and an utterly forgettable continuation of the Pern series by the son of the original writer - who, sad to say, does not have enough of his mother's skills. By the end of the book, I had no clear image of any of the protagonists, no desire to read an more about them and no real idea what had happened other than a lot of action and running around. Off to the library for a refill tomorrow.

Charlie drank some meltwater in the parking lot and sicked up - have to keep a firmer grip on him - even if he's just had a quart, any standing water interests him - silly beast.

Impending snow?

The weather people are going bonkers, but no snow in sight yet. On call this weekend and hence have not done much - other than mislay a piece of jewelry that is quite dear to me. And tear the house apart trying to find it. Unsuccessfully.

Ms. Packrat has been very tired this weekend, possibly as a result of being on call and constantly having one ear cocked for the phone.

Books for the weekend "The Room and the Chair" by Lorraine Adams. Odd, vague, meandering. Not a great read. "Body Work" by Sara Paretsky, good thriller. Have a nice stack of fresh reads, most light, for the week ahead. 10 books read by the 9th. Could I possibly go 365 for the year? Actually, I read two utterly frivolous and forgettable bits of fluff Saturday morning, but I really can't bring myself to count total fluff. A good mystery - yes, but chickfic? Nope.

Find of the week - a thick tome on sharepoint at the library from 2005 but 50 cents instead of $49.99 The basics of handling data can't have changed that much.

Latest books; knitting progress

Finished "All Clear" by Connie Willis and "If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This" by Robin Black. That's 8 for the YTD.
Finished and Kitchenered Xmas sock for MPU, working on hat for PPU, need to start hat and mittens for nephew.
Have a lace edging for a bride's hankie to finish, finish a scarf for Mark, a market bag for a friend's MPU, the edging on my Aestlight, the beginnings of a Citron. So 7 UFOs and one pending project. Oh and I have some pretty alpaca to make a burgundy scarf for moi to match new leather gloves.
Speaking of Kitchenering, there's a blogger called TechKnitter who is a total GENIUS. Her Kitchenering with knitting needle instead of sewing needle is nothing short of brilliant.
On call this week, looking forward to the weekend being mostly spent at home and hopefully productive - err, well, if you can call getting rid of things "productive" ...

2010 kind of vanished...

And here we are in 2011. A new decade.
Ms. Packratty is still at the same employer, but there have been many changes, almost all for the better, including the departure of her manager for a non-managerial job. Ms. Packratty is always distressed when another woman makes a total hash of it, and severely disappointed when a woman behaves worse than men. And that is all she has to say. Suffice to say that her desire to come to work has returned to a great degree.
Charlie is well and happy and somewhat calmer and this is approximately the 5th anniversary of when I went to Alabama and got him from the foster home for Louisiana Westie Rescue. Yes, it's odd, but Charlie was rescued in TN and the closest formal rescue was Louisiana and the lady in AL was the closest person to pick up Charlie and the little girl Westie with whom he was found. Not a day passes that Ms. Packratty is not thankful for Charlie.
The latter part of 2010 brought back a return of Ms. Packratty's knitting mojo and she has completed quite a few UFOs and started a couple of small amusing projects, while staying focused on finishing things before casting on new stuff. However, there always needs to be a relatively mindless project for work. Useful to prevent foaming insanity during printer and scanner installs.
Much progress has been made toward the elimination of debt and savings - although it may be the end of this year before all but the house is discharged. Still, even with making extra payments on things and savings, Ms. Packratty often finds a bit of money remaining at the end of the month. This was facilitated greatly by a bright young AC repairman who discovered that the reason the AC was not cooling was because some aged fire dampers in the ductwork had snapped shut from old age and metal fatigue and were preventing any real airflow between the cooler and the vents. Although the summer was nastily hot, the portable wheel around ac upstairs was not pressed into regular service and the upstairs remained tolerable most of the time.
And on a final note - Ms. Packratty discovered a wonderful product and a lovely service during 2010. The product is Firefly vodka's Sweet Tea vodka made in SC and the service is organic vegetable and fruit delivery from Nature's Garden Delivered which is a special benison during the 4 long months when the Peachtree Road Farmer's market is closed. Ms. Packratty is also enamored of Malabrigo's Chunky and Rasta yarns, but yarn pashes don't count.

She does have three friends who are suffering from long term unemployment and asks any readers to think good thoughts in their direction. For some reason she is quite sure that 2011 will be a better year and hope this is true, especially for these friends.

2011 Reading to Date:

"The World Made by Hand" and "The Witch of Hebron" by James Kunstler.
"The Garden Angel" and "Secret Keepers" by Mindy Friddle.
"The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating" by Elizabeth Tova Bailey.
"Provence A-Z" by Peter Mayle.

In progress "All Clear" by Connie Willis.

I am only counting new reading, no rereads and no books on tape count.



bout to start "All Clear" by Connie Willis.

Coming up on Christmas

St. Philips Cathedral held the last farmer's market of the season Saturday.
Purchases: arugula, butter and red leaf lettuces; watermelon radishes (white outside, red inside), carrots, local organic vanilla yogurt, 4 ounces locally produced pancetta, 2 ounces of fantastic Parmesan, 2 ciabatta; a pound or so of baby turnips and kohlrabi mixed; small Hubbard squash and a bundle of rosemary. There was also a nice bone from the homemade dog treat lady for Charlie.

Sunday - cold, cold and mostly gray - There was shopping with a certain young lady who needed to finish her shopping and then a library run for Ms. Packratty.

2009 - fairly productive - the bookbinding classes were the most exciting part of the year. Still at TVCC under conditions I consider less than ideal, but with 5 years in at one place, once the economy starts improving, I should be significantly marketable. Ms. Packratty is beginning to come to terms with the things in her lie that are't going to change and better about not having false hopes that other people will ever change their behavior.

The laundry calls, Ms. Packratty has only a 3 day workwekk ahead, but she needs to disassemble the computer tonight and try to get the DSL working.

Religious tolerance and Mohammedans

It seems the Swiss citizenry has voted not to allow minarets on mosques. Mosques will have to go unmarked by their traditional emblem of violence, the crescent moon of the scimitar.

The Swiss, who DO live in a country with state recognized and supported churches and do practice toleration of non-recognized churches and their adherents, are largely Christian, with 88% reporting that they are Christians of some flavor. Apparently the citizenry there recognizes the swelling Mohammedan population as a distinct threat to their religious freedom and their social values.

However, the really droll part of this is the remarks being made about the Swiss by various Mohammedans.

"The Swiss have failed to give a clear signal for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights," said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was "grief and deep disappointment."

Mr. Al-Rawi is Iraqi - Iraq being a country where members of the Christian and Jewish faiths have been persecuted diligently for centuries. Where women are and historically have been, treated as legal inferiors of men. Let's talk about diversity, Mr. Al-Rawi, shall we?

"It's a sad day for freedom of religion," said Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British youth organization. "A constitutional amendment that's targeted towards one religious community is discriminatory and abhorrent."

Mr. Shafiq is a Briton, born to Pakistani parents. Pakistan - that beacon of religious toleration, where Sharia is the law and where waves of anti-Christian pogroms and violence have swept the country repeatedly since 1971.

For a Mohammedan to complain of lack of religious toleration is as silly as hearing a Daley of Chicago complain about political corruption or hearing Hugh Hefner complain about a lack of chastity in the community.

Bravo for the Swiss. They've got more sense and more courage than most of Europe.

Sheepish

Last week at the Peachtree Road Farmer's Market, Charlie and I were quite tickled to see Karen Fincannon and her sheep. Well, Charlie is always delighted to see anyone who will scratch his ears and tell him he's a handsome boy - which is nearly everyone.



Anyway, Karen www.karenfincannon.com had a fresh crop of sheep and a new flock of chickens.




Ms. P suspects a few will become presents for friends this year. Karen's work is charming and a good part of the charm is that every one of her animals has a face that is very much its own and not a carbon copy of the next sheep or chicken.

Falling into Autumn

Although we had an early first frost, autumn has been a bit on the slow side. We've had a few warm days, but mostly, the weather has been normally cool. A couple of frosty mornings, with rime on the car windows, but not yet a blast of bitter cold. So the leaves have mellowed slowly, at least up until Sunday morning. Saturday, this is a tree that struck me speechless as we rounded a turn on the way to The House At The Top of The Hill.



And then there was this beauty on the grounds of the condo complex:



Sadly, Saturday was the only pretty day. By dawn's sullen light on Sunday, the sky was pewter and blasting down a cold, bitter rain. When Ms. P came in with Charlie from his morning walk, and the poor little devil was soaked and shivering so that we threw him in the tub and sluiced him down with warm water before popping him into his crate with a clean towel.

Weather like that was, however, ideal for Ms. Packratty's major projects - sorting through junk and making soup.

There are 2 soups Ms. Packratty loves to make and feels she makes well - one is leek and potato soup (with bacon) and the other is ham and bean soup. There's only one trouble with ham and bean soup. You need a ham bone to make it. And generally, the only way to get a hambone is from a ham. That means eating the ham. Which is simply not a practical matter for Ms. Packratty who most of the time is cooking for one. So she was delighted to discover mention that HoneyBaked Ham stores that have attached cafes use their own hams to make sandwiches and then sell the resulting bone. So a week ago, while erranding, Ms. P nipped into the Sandy Springs HoneyBaked and purchased 2, depositing one at Marleen's house.

Well, such a deal. The bones cost $5 and they were hardly mere bones. Ms. Packratty sliced off ham sufficient for 2 sandwiches, a large batch of ham salad, breakfast for 2 and then tossed the bone in with 2 large packages of assorted beans (having found some bagged beans that included the beloved chickpea)and put them in the nice Calphalon pot with the dome lid and put it on the very lowest of simmers. There were also a couple of onions and a few other oddments tossed in, but other than that, all it got was a long slow cook. Sunday dinner and Monday lunch came from the pot and there are now about 12 serving either in the Packratty freezer or waiting to go to Mar's downstairs freezer. Total cost for about 18 servings of good soup? $8. Ms. Packratty is also very pleased with the inexpensive set of food storage items purchased at Ikea, although she figures she will toss at least 2/3 of the teeny-tiny containers and their lids. Typically, she does not need to store 4 tablespoons of anything and anticipates that keeping track of the teeny tiny containers and their lids will be an exercise in futility and a waste of space. At $5 the set, Ms. P can afford to keep only the sizes that please her and toss or give away the rest. The tiny containers would indeed be ideal for someone with a baby to feed, but that is not the case at Chez P.
Deciding that it is OK to toss items that she will not use and which will just take up space and be annoying is a big step for the Packrat. Formerly, she would have felt compelled since they were new and MIGHT be useful SOMEDAY to try to hang on to them. Not anymore. She might keep 2, but not 6. And the set is still a bargain even with the discards.

Ms. P also tracked down a pair of pinking shears and stuck them in the laundry where she has already used them to turn several t shirts and a nightgown that were too holey to wear into cleaning rags. Putting the scissors in the sewing basket might make more sense for most folks, but for Ms. P, having them at immediate hand when she decides to render something into rags is far more likely to be sure it happens. Sometimes you have to work with your quirks instead of trying to iron them all out.

Veteran's Day

Thinking about tomorrow - Veteran’s Day - I started remembering the July 4th and Veteran's Day parades of my childhood.

When I was a very little girl, perhaps 4 years old, there were plenty of World War I veterans. By and large, they were men in the late prime of their lives – a few years older than my grandfather, who came of age just as the war ended. Men who had fought and returned and worked through the Great Depression. Of course, to a child, they were elderly, but now I realize they were just men in their 60s, by and large. They were sturdy men, most of them, having survived the rigors of war and then the Depression.

I think I even remember having a few superannuated veterans of the Spanish-American War pointed out to me.

The ranks of the WWII veterans were immense – these were men and women just a few years older than my parents.

By the time I was a teenager, the Spanish-American War veterans were gone and the WWI veterans were showing their age – by 1970, most of them were in their mid 70s or older, but they’d still straighten their uniform caps with age-gnarled hands and
march. In turn, the WWII veterans were starting to grizzle – lines and gray making their presence known. And a new bunch of veterans – the Korean War vintage – had joined the parade.

By my 20s and 30s, it became rarer and rarer to see the occasional WWI veteran – by now, they were withered men, propped up in wheelchairs or tucked into a convertible, waving feebly or simply staring basilisk through thick glasses. Now, out of the millions who served in the military during WWI, there is only one former Doughboy left in the US and no actual combat veterans. In Britain, there’s not a Tommy left from WWI, but one sole naval veteran, now living in Australia, survives. He would, therefore, be the last combat veteran alive from that war.

Now it is the turn of the WWII veterans – their ranks thinning by the day. My high school principal was a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge and dozens of the officers just a bit older than my father had fought across Europe and the Pacific. Grey Wyman, who flew bombing raids across eastern Europe, night after night. His brother, Austin, a pilot lost on a mission he never came home from. Oscar “Ozzie” Duttweiler, fought his way up the spine of Italy with the 10th Mountain Division and
later married Valeria Fulvio. They were heroes, but everyday heroes. One of the unique aspects of growing up as a military brat is that you grow up surrounded by quiet, everyday heroes. Our WWII vets are in their 80s and 90s. Many, like Grey and
Ozzie, have died and left memories in their place.

Honor them tomorrow and remember that in a very few years, they too will have shuffled off this mortal coil. And pray for us that we have other generations as brave and disciplined as they to follow.

I have a little list, they never will be missed ...

Add this mook to the top of it. Someone with a Barrett and good aim needs to deal him out of the game.

WASHINGTON – The personal Web site for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers is praising alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero.

The posting Monday on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military base last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Anwar said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal."

And I'm thinking that mosque in Virginia would look sooooooo much better after a bulldozer treatment - preferably with all the devout gathered inside, if this is an example.

And, yes, I *am* a bigot. I despise Mohammedans and their degenerate, violent and woman-abusing creed.

Damn Political Correctness and "commitment to tolerance"

That commitment to tolerance just got people killed and it will get more killed in the future.

This paragraph from the Associated Press says it all:
Dr. Val Finnell, a classmate of Hasan's at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, attended a master's in public health program in 2007-2008. Finnell says he got to know Hasan because the group of public health students took an environmental health class together. At the end of the class, everyone had to give a presentation. Classmates wrote on topics such as dry cleaning chemicals and mold in homes, but Finnell said Hasan chose the war against terror. Finnell described Hasan as a "vociferous opponent" of the terror war. Finnell said Hasan told classmates he was "a Muslim first and an American second."

Did you read that? A Muslim first and an American second? Uttered by someone in the US military to OTHER members of the military in a US military educational institution and he wasn't summarily bounced out of that medical school and sent off to Alaska to break rocks for 10 years? And his classmates who heard this didn't report it? Or has the military become so "tolerant" that it too has abandoned common sense?

Fort Hood - another consequence of political correctness

Can we please just make all the Mohammedans into martyrs? All of them. Because it's becoming increasingly clear that we can't trust them as part of our society and institutions.

They need to hang this Nidal Malik Hasan. For murder and treason. For violating his oath and betraying his citizenship. And while we're at it - the family who raised this serpent whom we have sheltered? Deport them. The penalty for any immigrant's child taking arms against this country should be the explusion of the clan, entire. Root and branch.

And to hell with the idiots on the tube calling him the "alleged shooter".

Atlanta Bizarre

Last week, while checking out the future relocation site of one of Ms. Packratty's favorite restaurants, she was flabbergasted to see this at the intersection of Buford Highway and Clairmont Road.

Ms. P reminds any readers that Atlanta is a good 5 hours from the ocean and notes that this "vehicle" appears to have wheels - not just be trailered.

One wonders. Deeply.








The restaurant in question is a planned reincarnation of the beloved and massively shabby Havana that formerly occupied a bright yellow/green building on the lower end of Buford Highway. Since junior high in Tampa, Ms. P has retained a great fondness for Cuban food and when the Havana burned down last year, and the owners announced they were not rebuilding, she was sad. Other allegedly Cuban restaurants have been found lacking and it was a joyful day for Ms. P when she checked The Blissful Glutton and discovered that the Havana was to be reborn.