Day 29, Books 19 &20

The Whole Enchilada by Diane Mott Davidson and an anthology titled Dangerous Women, which was a mixed bag but included a short story in the Outlander universe by DIana Gabaldon.

Day 25, Book 18

Dead Ever After, by Charlaine Harris. The end of the Sookie Stackhouse series.

Day 24, Book 17

Timetraveler's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer. Fascinating.

Good news on homefront - obnoxious neighbor found guilty of disturbing the peace - judge gave as much punishment as allowed and warned him hard.

Day 23, Book 16

"Mad about the Boy" by Helen Fielding.
Plus, drunken aggressive neighbor found guilty at bench trial. Terms of probation? Among others, leave me (and others) alone!!!!

Day 18, Books 13, 14 and 15

Critical Mass, by Sara Paretsky
A Pledge of Silence, by Flora Solomon - this book didn't know what it wanted to be - historical fiction, romance, whatever. The story of the Amrrican nurses interned by the Japanese in the Phillipines deserves better focus.
Honor and Betrayal, by Patrick Robinson - SEALS betrayed by command.

Day 17, Book 12

Deceived by Randy Wayne White. Set in the Sanibel Island area of Florida.

Day 15, books 10 and 11

A Fool and His Honey and Poppy Done to Death both by Charlaine Harris, both nice fluffy murder mysteries.

On to chewier reading know that I'm off the knitting binge.

Pretty in Pink

There was no reading last night to speak of, just a rush to finish the blanket and surprises for Chloe's new baby's impending arrival

Had to bring this to work for the beauty shot  - it's not small and I knew this conference table would be the perfect place to lay it out.  Sadly, I did not get it blocked perfectly, it's got some ruffling, but it's a baby blanket, not a lace shawl, and baby will not mind.

The extras for Chloe's tesoro are:

wee tiny booties with mother of pearl buttons.  Too cute.

And:

A roll brim hat with corkscrew curl tops.

I'll be taking this to the post office at lunch and getting it on the way. 

Day 12, Book 9

Dead Over Heels by Charlaine Harris from back when she wrote fluffy murder mysteries and not vampire stories.  She nails small-town South perfectly and Sunday evenings - except for Downton Abbey - are fluffy reading time.  I'm gaining on goal.

Day 12, Book 8

The Litter of the Law, by Rita Mae Brown.  Yup, pretty light reading, but I've been a fan of hers for a long time and even her fluffiest fiction has good characters and plots.  The element where the animals are all communicating unheard by the people is an amusing bit for anyone who has ever been servant to a dog or cat or horse and wondered what they were thinking about us ...

Book 7, Day 10

The Broker, by John Grisham. Kindle, borrowed from library.  Decent read.

Book 6, day 10

Vicious Circle by Wilbur Smith.  He used to write a rich, textured plot and engaging characters, but this was  full of cardboard characters and wooden dialogue. Sad - I think he phoned this one in and his editors didn't do him any favors. Pass on it.

book 5, day 9

Kindle freebie, Brightside by Mark Tullius.  Worth what I paid for it because the author took an interesting premise (telepaths rounded up and confined together from the rest of society) and did little to nothing with what could have been fascinating.

Book 4, day 9

The Shadow Tracer, Meg Gardiner;  garden variety thriller, OK read, nothing special.

Onward.

Blanket finished, Book 3 completed

Just finished washing and blocking the baby blanket I made for my Italian cugina Chloe who is expecting a baby any minute now. I had yarn left over so I made a little bonus. Booties and a wee tiny hat.  Pictures to follow.

Irony moment? The yarn I used, Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Baby is ... made in Italy. So this will be a well-traveled blanket!  Even without the fact that the blanket traveled with me through Alabama to Mississippi and over to South Carolina as a work in progress.  Pictures to come.

Also finished my 3rd book of the new year, Paris, by Edward Rutherfurd, which was a nice fat novel and started my fifth book. Eight days, three books.  I need to read faster.

OK, it's COLD!

I'm sure it's not all that cold compared to people accustomed to weather in the more northerly reaches of the continent, BUT 25 degrees with a brisk wind is pretty darned cold by Atlanta standards.
And the low tomorrow is supposed to be 5 degrees.
Ouch.

Still working my way through the 4 inches of "Paris" by Edward Rutherfurd, which will be book 3 for the year. 

January 2014 and annual goals

One of Ms. Packratty's goals for 2014 is to record all her reading 

for the year to see how close to a book a day she actually comes.

So here's the opening day tally: 

January 1
Going Away Shoes - Jill McCorkle
Rage Against The Dying – Becky Masterman

More about sewing lessons and Rome2014 later 

Memories of David - Hurricane David

As I have been watching the weather reports with Labor Day weekend approaching, and having just returned from visiting family in Beaufort, it struck me that 33 years had passed since the Labor Day weekend when Hurricane David came calling.  I was a young reporter at the Beaufort Gazette that year, my first year as a reporter after putting in apprenticeship time as a copy clerk at the St. Petersburg Times and the weather and obituary writer at The Charlotte Observer.  After a summer of quiet weather, the first wild breezes that heralded the oncoming storm brought me back down from a visit to friends in Charleston.

Zipping down Highway 17 I had my first real inklings that the storm really was coming – in the four or five miles of road near the Combahee River bridge, I spotted a small alligator and a number of other animals – turtles, snakes and a deer - crossing from the east side of the river toward the landward side.  Not a skeptic when it came to the wisdom of animals, I pushed on into Beaufort, stopping to gas up my bright blue Karmann Ghia and stock up on apple juice and granola bars at the A & P. 

I stopped at my little rental on Mossy Oaks, glanced at the live oaks that overhung it and said a word of prayer that they wouldn’t come down in the storm.  I rolled up my living room carpet and put the couch up on blocks and stacked the rug on top of that, cranked all the windows shut and made sure my cat Minerva had food, water and clean litter.  Dumping my grocery purchases in the car, along with a sleeping bag and a change of clothes, I drove out to the Gazette offices on Salem Road.  I was almost immediately dispatched out to St. Helena, Fripp and Land’s End to check on evacuation progress, making a fast stop to make sure everything at my parent’s house on Fripp was closed up and that the fulltime resident neighbors were packing up and heading out.

Driving across St.. Helena, I was reminded of a history account I had just recently found in the Beaufort County Library talking about the Sea Islands hurricane of 1893 which had happened at almost the same time of year and had resulted in several thousand deaths from the massive storm surge in coastal Georgia and South Carolina.  The book had recounted that skeletons were found decades later flung up in trees from the wind and the storm tides.  I knew Hurricane David might be just as bad and that even though we had satellite weather forecasting and modern communications, none of those could stem the forces of wind and water.

As the afternoon progressed, the winds whipped harder and harder and the rain, at first sporadic, started ranging from heavy to torrential.  At times, in the Gazette office, we could not see cars parked in the side lot less than 10 feet from the door.  The US Weather Service kept reporting the storm’s progress as it hit the coast and seemingly came to a halt for hours.  The electricity flickered off and on inside the brightly-lit offices at the Gazette as reports came in from the county disaster preparedness office and the Beaufort and Port Royal police departments.  Around 9 or 10 p.m. after hearing reports of ball lightning and St. Elmo’s fire on the power lines near the old bridge to Parris Island, I drove to the bridge and hanging on to the jacket of a Port Royal policeman named Officer Angell, pushed against the wind to the Port Royal side of the span.  Unfortunately, the electrical light show was almost over and my efforts to capture it on film were in vain. That was the old metal trestle bridge, later replaced after Hurricane Hugo damage.

I went back to the Gazette through steaming rains and winds pushing my little car around and ran in, soaked to the skin despite my yellow raincoat and dried off as the reports continued to come in that the Hurricane was barely moving.  Around midnight, I fell asleep in my sleeping bag on the floor of the publisher’s office to awaken to clear skies – shortly after I’d been sent to sack out, David had started moving inland and I’d been left to sleep to take on the “mopping up” coverage first thing in the morning.

Getting back in my car, I headed out as far as Highway 21 would take me and checked with the police at Fripp.  The damage to the beaches was bad, and the last mile of road – the unpaved part, was still knee deep in brackish water, so I put on sneakers and slogged down to talk to one of the people who had ignored the evacuation orders.  Making my way back to town, I stopped at Hunting Island, where possibly the worst damage had been sustained – the old beach road was completely washed out in places and park rangers were assessing the damage and trying to see how and when they could reopen the park.  At one point where the old road had washed out, it was at least 10-12 feet from the sand to where the road ended at the washout.  The amount of debris on the beaches was incredible as well.

St. Helena and Frogmore had fared better, although the power was still off and people were driving back from the mainland – and the electricity was still off on Lady’s Island and most of downtown.  The new marina was a wreck – floating slips damaged beyond repair and a general mess, but none of the great trees on Bay Street had fallen and the oldest buildings had beaten back the storm with little or no damage.

 I took my film to the office and wrote my morning after piece and then, finally, headed home – as I drove down Ribaut Road, the power came back on and I turned in at my rental, drove around a few small fallen branches and opened the door to get soundly berated by my cat.  Then I took a long shower, made a cup of coffee and collapsed.  There was no amount of caffeine that could have kept me awake one more minute.

I was so grateful that the storm had not been a recap of that horrible 1893 storm I had read about.  And I was grateful, as a young and inexperienced reporter, to have had a storm like David during my first year.  I left Beaufort in 1980 for Greenwood and then onward, ending my reporting days 12 years later as I faced the shrinking pool of reporting jobs and my growing fascination with computers and made a career change.  I come to Beaufort still, regularly, and I never drive over the bridge at Whale Branch without remembering that Labor Day weekend and the storm clouds whipping in and the smell of wind and rain across the marshes.

A lot has changed in Beaufort in the intervening years – Fordham’s is no longer a hardware store where you could find almost anything;  the Gazette has moved from Salem Road.  City Hall, which had moved into the old Post Office Building, now has an even more imposing home on Boundary Street, Koth’s where you could track down attorneys for comments during courtroom breaks and get a Coca-Cola is gone.  So is the A&P and the little house I rented was torn down the next year and replaced with an apartment building.  But the city itself remains so much intact that as I drove away a few weeks ago, I found it hard to believe that a third of a century had gone by.

Well, now that all the drama is over, Ms. Packratty wants to talk about her garden.

The garden outside her doorstep where she planted 3 tomato plants in an Earthbox is like something out of the Little Shop of Horrors.  The plants are sprawling with abandon across all the other pots, although the oregano and thyme seem to enjoy the shade.  And the first fruits (and tomatoes are fruit) have started to ripen.  Tasty.  The basil in the pot and at the garden plot is growing vigorously and Ms. Packratty needs to remember to let some of it go to seed as it is the Italian blistered leaf variety Napoletano.  The cucumbers had to be uprooted, they had burned, but the zucchini continue to produce the lovely little round tondo squashes. The leeks I planted in October I plan to uproot this weekend and chop and freeze, along with the second year crop of parsley.  I will replace that regular parsley with Italian flat leaf when I replant.

Not sure what I will plant where the leeks and cucumbers came out – maybe another round of cucumbers and possibly start some arugula for the fall.

We are hoping for a quiet weekend, but you know how that goes – hope may spring eternal, but Murphy is always around to throw a surprise or two one’s way.  The girls will return from camp soon and then it will be time for .... back to school shopping.  Aiieeeeee

Seattle on the Chattahoochee?

Ms. Packratty is not one to complain about rain, but things are getting just a tad soggy here.  We've had torrential rains the last three or four nights (cue rumble of thunder outside window).

Unfortunately, the rains didn't arrive in time to cut off that string of 100+ degree days and the first $200+ electric bill arrived.  Happily, it appears that the weather - and the electric bills may be more moderate for a couple more weeks.  One can hope.

The cyberstalking/lying drama has been resolved.  Posting will resume.