Goodbye Olympics

Ms. Packratty has pretty much given up on the Olympics since they opened competition up to professionals, but the latest, where some jock-sniffing law student working as an intern for USOC wrote a very snarky letter to the Ravelry website complaining about their Ravelympics - a knitters observance of the Olympics in which knitters were challenged to start and complete projects within the duration of the Olympics, tackle new techniques or dig out ancient Works In Progress and finish them.  Mr. Brett Hirsch found it necessary to comment that a "sweater triathalon" somehow denigrated the efforts of our noble athletes.

Clearly, Mr. Hirsch needs a humor transplant and, frankly, I suspect that some of this attitude stems from the perception of knitting as women's stuff and relatively valueless.  Although he appears to be from New York, apparently he's never priced a handknit at Ralph Lauren or Barneys.  And after this boner, I rather suspect that not only will he never own a pair of hand-knit socks, he's probably going to be the laughingstock of his final year in law school

Now, Ms. Packratty was not going to participate in the Ravelympics - her nod to the Olympics was going to be to pledge to swim every day during the games and NOT spend the time in front of the tube because between the adverts and the endless commentary and color, Ms. Packratty has just flat out found the last 4 or 5 Olympic Games utterly boooooring.  However, this reminded her of what complete tools the USOC was during the Atlanta games when they nearly forced a 30 year old institution on Marietta Boulevard - the Olympic Diner - out of business.  Not to mention the high handed and abusive way some of the visiting Olympic committee members behaved.  So Ms. Packratty will not be watching any of the Olympics and she will be looking up the names of major sponsors and putting them on her "buy from these people LAST" list.
Too bad there aren't enough of us to really make stupidity painful.

I did agree that there were patterns on Ravelry that were for sale that did infringe on the Olympic trademark - although a pattern that was free that just shows how to knit 5 interlocking rings - well, face it, no one knitter making cotton dishclothes is taking money out of the USOC coffers with it.  It's not like it's competing with a commercial product.  But the tone of the letter was appalling and the pettiness of it, as well.

If USOC had a brain at this point, they would offer to license the term Ravelympix for a peppercorn charge and turn it into a public relations plus on how ordinary people can be challenged by the Olympics to be more and better and motivated by the Games.  But I bet they won't have the brains, humor or the imagination to do anything but continue on their heavy-handed way.

Cool and Rainy

So far (knock on wood) this summer hasn't had much in the way of teeth.  Of course, technically speaking it doesn't arrive for another 11 days, but anyone who has ever enjoyed a summer in the Deep South knows that the calendar has little to do with the heat.  There have been a few days in the 80s but ever since Beryl gave us that little sideways smack, we've been getting rain even when the weather people have been predicting sunny and dry.  Ms. Packratty does not mind and she really enjoyed standing outside Marleen's house this evening smelling the damp gardenias and listening to a cacaphony of frogs breeeking and braaacking in the foliage.  Ms. Packratty is remembering a summer 12 or 15 years ago when it rained so consistently every weekend that the Lenox Mall 4th of July Fireworks were postponed week after week until they were finally cancelled when summer was clearly gone.

Whoops

Whoops, time has gotten away from Ms. Packrat.

Work in the temporary quarters has turned out to be immeasurably more pleasant than she expected.  There are windows and we can actually see the light of day more often than when we are scurrying in and out of the building.  It's near I-85 and there is some traffic noise on one side of the building, but it is also not on the fringes of the city's red light district and it is near Buford Highway, which is Atlanta's ethnic food paradise.

Ms. Packrat's commute is slightly longer, but it is also somewhat faster because it is almost all highway and runs counter to the normal commute pattern at that time of day - and although she's driving about 30 extra miles a week, she is also skipping $1 a day in GA 400 tolls.  That toll has given her a certain amount of dyspepsia ever since it was ended (because revenue had paid off all the road costs) and then brought back a week later to fund more porkbarrel projects for the Georgia Department of Transportation (aka) We Build Roads, Roads and More Roads and You Don't Need No Steenking Mass Transit - she finds not seeing feeding the toll booth rather soothing despite the couple of extra miles.

Sadly, this move takes her a long way away from Il Bacio but the aforementioned proximity to Buford Highway is something of a consolation.  The range of ethnic spans the globe and ranges from Rather Americanized to Utterly Authentic.  Some of the Packratty coworkers are showing a bit of culinary courage, but there is one who has eaten nothing but Chik-fil-a, Mickey D's, etc. since the move, despite the fact that it takes a lot more effort to find chain food here than good food.  Sad.  Oh well, more for me.  Ms. Packratty finds herself particularly fond of the roast pork bahn mi sandwiches at Lee's Bakery and the proximity to the beloved Havana's new digs.

The other new thing in Ms. Packratty's life is a Kindle.  She finds herself quite surprised that a> she purchased one and b> that she really really really likes it.  It started with an email from Amazon Local offering a $20 voucher on a refurbished $79 Kindle, which sells for $69 and has the same guarantee as a new Kindle.  That dropped the price down to $49 with free shipping, so Ms. Packratty took the plunge.  Between free books offered on Amazon (of varying quality and age, to be sure) and the fact that Ms. Packratty can "borrow" Kindle books from the Atlanta Fulton County Library, she is delighted with the little gizmo, although she is still sure that it will never replace the paper and ink book for bedtime reading.  It is a game changer for the possibility of living overseas, though - because it means that American books, magazines and newspapers are available on the device.  Living someplace without bookstores or libraries with English language books was never a reasonable possibility for Ms. Packratty before.

The garden is going OK, although we have had a tomato wilt scare.  Ms. Packratty had to pull up a couple of plants, and trim some others, but it looks as though there is some hope for the tomato crop.  Maybe.

We made a trip to the Roswell Farmer's Market and bought some gorgeous strawberries and blueberries with the idea of making a berry fool.  Otherwise, Saturday kind of slithered away, leaving quite a bit to be dome before Monday, but Ms. Packratty is rested and that's a good thing.  And the allergy attack that hit her last week has subsided.  She suspects the residual sleepiness is just the aftermath of that attack. Next week is on call, so Ms. Packratty will not be a sound sleeper lest she manage to sleep through the phone ringing.

The sad news just keeps on coming

Ms. Packrat just found out that the second gentleman she was affianced to has died.  Although she had not seen him in close to 30 years, she's found herself quite sad to hear that this particular man is dead and that after the end of their engagement, that he never got his feet under himself again.  One of the things that caused Ms.Packrat to end their engagement was a major issue with money management.  She has been told that the money issues later turned into alcohol issues and then into drug issues, all three problems feeding each other and making bad situations far worse. His daughter from his first marriage, whom I remember as a delightful redheaded sprite,  gave me the news.  He was a talented photographer and a very interesting, humorous man - I'm so sorry to hear that his demons won.
It was good to talk to his daughter though - brought back memories of that time in my late 20s when I was a reporter and all things seemed possible.  She has turned out well, although she said her baby brother struggles with the same demons their father did.
Time passes, events and memories recede and then you find yourself smacking into news like this.

moving matters

Ms. Packratty's department at work, almong with most of the rest of IT got moved to a satellite location some miles from the main office.  The move did not go as planned, but it was not as messed up as Ms. Packratty feared it would be and long before noon, things were operational at her desk.  There are a few things broken in a softwware sense, but they should be cleared out shortly and Ms. Packratty was able to nip out to the Havana for a #17.  Yum.
It's on call week and Ms.Packratty hates that, but she likes the on call pay going to pay off the art work she commissioned and once that's done (sometime next year), it'll go into more trip savings.  The present on call pay structure for a year will pay for about 4 pro-rated days doing something without scrimping, 3 days if an overseas flight is involved. That's worth the early morning people who don't understand that locking out their password is NOT an emergency.
The garden is thriving - lots of sprouting action when I checked Sunday.  Still have a few blank spaces to fill in - I wish there were lettuces that would hold up better to the heat, but they bolt too quickly to spend the limited space on them.
Storm warning tonight, but no "action"  just a lot of distant rumbles.

Sad and angry - garden vandal

We had a fierce rain last night and this morning, I looked at the five tomato plants thriving in the Earthbox outside my front door and realized they needed stakes.  Came home this evening and two of them had been neatly snapped off halfway up.  I'm fairly certain it was my downstairs neighbor or her boyfriend's bratty little boy, but it makes me sad and angry.  I'm staking up the others and just pulling these.  Unhappily, I think they were two of the six yellow pears I was able to find after checking every Home Depot and Pikes within5 miles of work and home.  The other four are at the community garden, but what a crappy thing to do.  Or if your kid did it - to fail to apologize for.  The downstairs neighbor is undoubtably angry at me because I am on the condo board and she was almost 2 years in arrears and we just notified her to pay up or lose parking privileges.  Either neighbor or kid, though, it's tacky and I'm really really irritated.  The trouble with living in a condo or a neighborhood of any kind is that you can't pick your neighbors and when you get someone low class in, well, you have this sort of thing.

Garden update

Stopped by the community garden on the way home and watered.  The tomatoes seem to be settlng in.  No basil, squash or cucumber sprouts yet - I have space for a few more tomatoes and then some sort of mixed greens, I think.  Pictures when things sprout!

Big move at work Friday, we'll be in temp quarters for about 4 months while the space we work in now is used to house another group while their space is reno-ed and then they move back and our space gets reno-ed.  Wondering how much can go wrong - suspect quite a bit.

Old losses

It's a very odd thing to find out that an old friend - one you drifted away from long ago, but for whom you had still good feelings - not only isn't off somewhere living their life, but to find out that they've been dead a double decade is a bit of a shock.  Ms. Packratty had a friend in college and just found out last night that she had died, well shy of 40, more than 2 decades ago.

This friend was one of the few milbrats I knew in college, but unlike Ms. Packratty, she had not found milbrat life tolerable, let alone comfortable.  While Ms. Packratty did have times when she was unhappy in a particular place, overall, the adventures of always going someplace new were sufficient to outweigh the pain of change.  This particular friend had also been hampered by the fact that her parents made it quite clear that they valued her brothers more.  For example, her younger brother died in a car wreck driving back to college, which his parents were paying for.  Car, college, dorm - while his sister was scraping grants, loans and part-time work together to try to finish school.  After the older boy died, the family's affections turned to the youngest, another boy.  I'm not sure she ever finished college or attained anything she might have wanted to.  I do blame her family for not valuing and supporting her, although I wish she could have put some of her injuries behind instead of apparently letting them rule her.

I also still wonder deeply about my friend from high school and the swim team, who was married and a dentist serving in the US Navy who apparently killed himself, leaving a wife and 3 children behind.  It was years before I found out what happened to him and I guess I will always truly wonder what really happened to turn the unfailingly sunny person I knew into someone who would wreck his car to take his life.  I know the suicide rate among dentists has been reported to be higher than other professionals although some recent studies disagree. I have kind of wondered if the move away from mercury fillings might be a factor in changing that statistic.  Mercury exposure HAS been linked to depression, violence and suicide so I'm guessing the move away from mercury based amalgam is a good thing.  Still, I'll probably wonder until my dying day about that friend and mourn my other friends whose lives ended too soon.

I'll always miss Kathy and wonder what her life would have been like if she'd lived long enough for the new therapies which turn her type of leukemia into a chronic thing to live with.  I don't see her in my dreams anymore, not since that dream where she told me she was well now and smiled brilliantly and was gone.

I don't really know what killed Bob Birkler in Florida - they said pneumonia.  I got that stack of books we'd been trading back and forth in the mail and a copy of his obit and nothing else.  Just gone.  I wasn't a romantic connection with him, but I wish someone had told me what truly happened. And his family lived overseas, so there was no one to ask. 

And then there's the couple of friends I can't *find"*.  I last saw Dorothy Messer in SC and then lost touch;  she was married to a fellow named Richard Fahey.  Same for Stephanie Miller from HS - she's disappeared from view and I can't find her.  I'd love to say hello to Lucy Boynton from USF days too.  We were always on the edge of being really good friends but never turned that particular corner.  Other folks - we might not be in touch, but I know they are alive and well and that's all I need to know.  What brought us together years ago might be gone, washed or worn away, but I know they're OK and that's enough for the old affections.

Rain and coolness and gardening

The rain came in and cooled Ms. Packratty's world down and it is Saturday, so she will be venturing off to get her tomatoes and basil in the ground at the North Fulton Community garden.  It looks like a beautiful day for it with overcast and coolness, so that she won't sweat to death or sunburn and her transplants will suffer minimal shock.
Charlie is itching to go along and Ms. P needs to get the tomato stakes from The House at the Top of The Hill, so perhaps he'll get a chance to play with his buddy Charm.  Even though she's been a mother, she still loves to tussle and cavort with Charlie - who will be turning seven next month but still cats like Mr. Puppy most of the time.

Pictures to come of the garden.  We did get quite a bit of lettuce all winter and the little round carrots were good.  The cabbage never headed even though it was planted in late September as sets.  The leeks are still too small to cut and the parsley is thriving, although I THOUGHT I planted Italian flat leaf.  Maybe not.

Sweaty weather

It's warm at Chez Packratty.  The temperature has been in the higher bit of the mid-80s every day this week, dropping to the mid-60s at night.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really drop fast enough for Miss Packratty, who is trying to stave off turning on the air but is finding bedtime a bit warmer than she likes.  In order to not use the extra a/c unit upstairs, she has been thinking about moving to the downstairs bedroom for the summer and needs to put away luggage and other items if she is going to do that.  Perhaps this weekend.  It has been the dreaded month-end close time at work along with the usual seasonings of crisis and politicking and Ms. Packratty is looking forward to having Friday off.  She has to work Saturday in exchange, but only until 3 p.m.

So she got five tomatos popped into the new planter - we shall see how it does - and has a whole mess more that she plans to try to plant in the community garden space Saturday evening. And basil seeds to plant once she empties out pots and figures out which ones are still OK and which are beyond use.  Friday she has to get her hair cut - it's a terrible mess - and then she plans to go play.

She received a note from Alessandro, her delightful Italian landlord,  with the name and address of the store where the marvelous little over the sink hanging dish drainer thingie came from - their website is down, but perhaps it will be repaired.  If not, that store and c.u.c.i.n.a. will go on her list of must visit shops in 2014.  We have been thinking about going back through the guidebooks before she puts them away and trying to figure out what has to go on the must-see in 2014.

And call her "Hoping For Rain".  A good thunderstorm or three would make things much more pleasant around here.

 

An Eventful Week

Last week, Ms. Packratty went to STITCHES South, the big knitting expo.  She bought some yummy yarn to make some socks for Miss Adorable, her niece.  And learned a new knitting technique.  Entrelac.  Well, new to her, anyway.

Despite having to rip back when she overthought something and went astray, she's finding it addictive and interesting. Not sure exactly what sort of project it would be good for other than scarves or a pillow, but it does produce interesting fabric.  I wonder what felted entrelac would look like?







Work has been challenging and Ms. Packratty has been very tired when the end of the week arrives, but she got up bright and early and went to the Inman Park Festival and met up with her third cousin Stephanie.  Ran into Mark M. en route to the booth where Stephanie was volunteering and chatted a bit.

Finally got home around 6 p.m., tired and a wee bit sunburnt, but picked up a cute birdhouse at the request of Miss Jane, to be delivered next week.

Along with a couple of huge projects at work, Ms. Packratty is being headhunted by a company in the DC burbs.  She is quite ambivalent about moving - if she was going to move, DC would not be one of her first choices, even though it would put her closer to family members.  It is a ton of money more than she is making now, but living in DC is horribly expensive, so it really would not be more, plus which Ms. Packratty would have to still pay the mortgage on Chez Packratty as she does not contemplate leaving Atlanta permanently unless it is to decamp for Edisto Island or Italy.

In gardening news, Ms. P finally found some of those yummy yellow pear tomato plants and bought some for the community garden plot as well as one for the new planter box she bought to go by the front door.  Some of her herb pots need retirement have cracked and broken in the winter.  So she will put the planter box in their place. It is very clever, with a watering well and casters.  Time to plant basil.  I am always amused by people who buy basil plants already sprouted - the damned stuff sprouts like a weed, people! If you can't grow basil, you probably can't even grow  mildew on your shower grout!

Lovely bullfrog fished out of the condo pool ....

On catlessness

Ms. Packratty has had a cat in residence pretty much continually for the last 35 years. There was a short gap after the untimely death of Kahlua in the late 1970s, then another short gap after Minerva went to the Bridge in the early 1990s. Delilah followed Minerva and Rascal came (and left) after Delilah. I miss them all, but as I said, I think I'm going to let Charlie Rufus be an only child for a while.  On cool nights, though, she does rather sharply feel the absence of a cat.  Or Miranda, who although a canine, could snuggle with the bonelessness of a relaxed cat.  Charlie is too wiggly.

Nature abhorring a vacuum, she rather suspects that Bast will recat her at some point and is content, for now, to wait.

It's that season

Ms. Packratty has been serving on her condo board of directors for several years and serving is right - plus there is no time off for good behavior.  We've recently spruced things up around our modest pool and bought some new umbrellas and fixed up the existing furniture, along with having the pool replastered, putting in some new plantings and scrubbing down the pool deck, etc. 
Well, tonight a couple of the other members dragged down the new umbrellas, just delivered, to unbox them and while we were there we found a large and handsome bullfrog in the pool.  We netted him out and plopped him into the shrubs, but while we were sitting around admiring the pool, we kept hearing incredible croaking coming from the pool and suddenly realized that around the pool just above the waterline about half a dozen more frogs were clinging to the tiles and advertising for mates.  Sometimes there are some unexpected paybacks for otherwise largely thankless jobs.

Sunday Sunday

Made it to the first day of the Peachtree Road Farmers Market and got good food, but before and after had to deal with a migraine and discovered I had *one* dose of Imitrex left. And that means a trip to the doctor and two copays that I would much rather apply to my shrinking little bit of debt or my trip fund.

Got to do a library run and do wash, while staying close enough to home to get to the computer within 15 or 20 minutes because, of course, it's Ms. Packratty's week on call.

But the farmers market haul included some fava beans so I am going to try cooking them with a bit of pancetta and garlic and see how it goes. I clearly can't live on il Bacio lunches and yogurt as a primary diet. So I have to start cooking more and purer.

No, I'm not talking purer in the sense of the no fat, no meat, no taste fanatics, just about using ingredients that haven't been doused in chemicals. I'd like to be in a bit better shape before I tackle that Grand Canyon trip. Note to self, write off for more information this week and see how far in advance I need to make reservations.

Knitting

Ah, Easter season. The moon is full and work has been crazy.

Someone recently asked Ms. Packratty about knitting in Rome. And knitting in general.

Yes, Ms. Packratty did knit in Rome and got a lot of curious glances for it. Apparently knitting in Italy is only for nonnas or grandmothers and although Ms. Packratty is indeed old enough to be a grandmother (without any teen motherhood involved), she has been told she does not look it. So what would happen if Ms. Packratty started to knit while in line or waiting for a bus or whatever would be a lot of very open looking and the occasional bit of yarn petting and questioning, which was always interesting given that Ms. Packratty knew no Italian knitting words at all.
Ms. Packratty took these socks (Zauberball, gift from her mother) and finished the second foot and toe (except for Kitchenering the toe) on the plane over. She only tackled the Kitchenering after she was at the tiny apartment, had a good night's sleep and a fortifying glass of wine.









While she was there, she started a scarf from a lovely kit gifted to her a couple of years ago by Ms. T which had been waiting for the proper time to wade into – so something quick, simple and knitted with luscious yarns was definitely the proper time. The picture makes it less rosy than it really is, but it is yummy and rosy like the last gasp of a truly spectacular winter sunset.


Ms. Packratty knitted it on the Metro, on the Piazza outside the Pantheon, outside St. Cecelia in Trastevere, at the bus stop, in her little rented apartment. It was not done when she left Rome, but was too big to work on the plane, so Ms. Packratty cast on this sock while on the Leonardo Express train to the airport.







Yes, the train ride was smooth enough to cast on and join sock yarn on 00 dp needles, which is impressive and Ms. Packratty got a bit done on the train, in the waiting area from Hell (Note to airport designers – most planes carry close to 200 people these days and they almost always fly packed like sardines. Those same passengers are forced to come to the airport 2-3 hours before their flights, so supplying 75 seats at the gate area, no matter how tastefully designed, is NOT sufficient.) and a little bit on the plane, Unfortunately, the very chubby little man next to me kept doing things that put his elbows into Ms. Packratty’s knitting zone of comfort, (Ms. Packratty herself is not slim, but she is at least aware of the space she takes up and makes all possible effort not to intrude into the space of others. Her seatmate? Not so much.) so she did not get much done on the plane and since she came back, she was occupied finishing off the last of that scarf and starting the 10 Stitch Blanket in a periwinkle wool/acrylic blend for a co-worker whose spouse is expecting their first child.

I’m working it in a solid because I couldn’t find a blue dominant (yes, they know it’s a boy) that I liked that was a> suitable for a baby blanket and b> wasn’t either ugly, all synthetic or way too expensive to be a baby blanket. Love my coworkers, but I am not spending $100 on the yarn for a baby blanket. Maybe when Miss Adorable or her Brother Darling make me a great aunt, but not before then.

So she has 4 UFOs UnFinishedObjects) – a shawls whose edging she cannot for the life of her figure out how to knit on and is thinking of knitting separately and attaching later; a scarf for a coworker which is nine-tenths done but boring; the socks mentioned above; and the baby blanket. That’s a generous plenty, especially with the black cardigan sitting in a drawer in all its separate pieces waiting for sewing up inspiration to strike.

Plus there are other non-fiber related projects that want attention. Lots of attention, like getting the garden planted, washing Charlie, and giving away the last bits of cat related stuff. Ms. Packratty has decided that Charlie is going to be an only child for the foreseeable future.

Culinary Solace

Ms. Packratty has been suffering badly from food issues since her return to Rome. In addition to her issues with corn products in food, she is starting to wonder if all the additives and so forth in American food is part of the problem she has with her digestion. She ate very well in Rome and only suffered grumpy tummy once after a particularly rich meal that also included some bleu cheese. Sadly, within 10 days of her return, her stomach was once again in frequent revolt and she has pared back her menu to try to eliminate as many additives as possible. And it seems to help.

One great help is the lovely little pizzeria down the road from her work, a charming little place in a strip mall called Il Bacio. She has been lunching there since they opened and while she does not love everything there, there are many things that are spot on. For example, this is the sandwich (on foccacia bread) and salad that she picked up for lunch Wednesday.



















That's for well under $10. Ms. P is not mad about the pizza, preferring crustier stuff, but they do a good basic NY style pie and some interesting variations. But the salads are always wonderful and the house baked foccacia is always good. I wish someone would do some really seasonal only Italian cooking in Atlanta and perhaps teach people that there is more than pasta to Italian food.

Friends and changes

Ms. Packratty is rather sad. An old friend has abruptly and without any explanation or any honesty, effectively fired her as a friend. She suspects this former friend had her nose put out of joint by Ms. Packratty’s Italian adventure, although Ms. Packratty extended several invitations to undertake a joint excursion – her now apparently former friend had countered a proposal for a week in Rome and a couple of days in Florence with the desire to do the sort of city hopping that makes your head swim – i.e. if this is Tuesday it must be Turin.

Since we had such opposing ideas about Italy, Ms. Packratty had concluded that she needed to go to Italy by herself and had suggested to this friend that they undertake a Grand Canyon trip, since her FF lives in the West and has made much about her outdoors activities. That was shot down, first with the comment that her FF was not comfortable with wearing a bathing suit and then with the plea that she was no longer very outdoorsy, countering with the idea of taking a cruise to Alaska. Ms. Packratty started doing research and sent her some details for a late summer 2013 sailing and then was flabbergasted to receive a deadpan, unfriendly, unemotional and patently dishonest “I think we have different ideas about what a vacation is.”

Well, what is a vacation?

Some vacations are for learning, some are for relaxing, some are physically demanding, some are all of the above. Ms. Packratty’s Roman holiday certainly was all of those. What other things could a vacation be like? Constant motion, I suppose, or sitting still and imitating a log, but in between those two opposites, what else is there? What a vacation is not in my eyes would be a frantic slog from one city to the next with minutes instead of hours budgeted for museums, packing and unpacking and checking in and out of hotels.

If I go to Naples, I want time to see Pompeii, to go to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli and spend half a day or more without time pressure, or wander through the Pompeii ruins until my feet are ready to drop off. If I go to Positano, I want more than a half day race to “see the sights” – I want to sit under an arbor, sip a limoncello and then go watch ceramic artists at work. You can’t do those things if you have allocated a week and you are trying to see most of the “boot”. You can rush around and do exhausting drive-by tourism or you can stop and concentrate and be in a place. Or two.

Am I sad? Yes, I am. I really treasured FF but apparently she has taken some offense and doesn’t want my friendship. I’m very sorry about that, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do. I know I have many faults as a friend, but lack of honesty and openness is not one of them and I am deeply offended at the way I was treated. However, knowing what I know about FF’s family and upbringing, I’m not surprised. Her family appears to suffer from one of the worst cases of emotional constipation I’ve ever heard of, although the only emotion her parents seemed to be perfectly free expressing was disapproval.

So I don’t know what FF’s underlying problem is. I’m sad about it, but you know – I can’t fix anything if she won’t be honest and open with me and I’m just not able to go digging for it. When someone lives 1000 miles away and you aren’t face to face with them, if they want to be hostile and evasive, there’s no way to get them to open up.

Do I like it? No, it’s always sad to lose a friend.

What am I going to do about it? Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. I’m going to send her the souvenir yarn I bought her in Rome, wish her well, tell her that I’ll be glad to listen if she ever decides to talk and get on with my life.

So next stop? Planning for that Grand Canyon trip. It seems only fair to alternate US trips with trips to la bella Italia.

108

Today would have been the 108th birthday of Ms. Packratty's beloved grandfather. He has been dead since 1989, but there is scarcely a day that goes by that Ms. Packratty does not think of him and wish she could talk to him. Following close on the heels of this is the 60th anniversary of the marriage of the Packratty parents. It's quite a month.

Three weekends to go

Before my trip and I really have to get cracking on getting the house ready to decamp. The biggest issue is making sure that Her Ancient and Exalted Highness Delilah Fuzzybutt has sufficient food, water and litter boxes for the duration. She is terrified of strangers, so I really like to just set her up with lots of dry food left out, water dripping into a bowl in the bathtub and about 7 litterboxes lined up down the hall. But I really need to finish clearing out the unfolded laundry in the laundry room, do a boatload of dishes, clean out the fridge and make a sweep through my bedroom and get a lot of books re-shelved. I think I'll probably throw out a few bags of assorted junk too.

I'm almost over the chest and throat ailment that's been making me miserable for the last 3 weeks, so I'm hoping I can get some real traction on those tasks this weekend - as well as - once again - putting new innards in the upstairs loo. The fancy water saver doesn't - so bah humbug, I'll go back to the old sort with the float. However, kneeling on the bathroom floor while unscrewing and refastening all this stuff is definitely NOT my favorite occupation. I thought the first time would be good for 5-10 years - not less than 2 months.

I also have the newest David Weber in advance reader copy form - A Rising Thunder. This is the one where Manticore and the Peeps ally and - I expect - kick the Solly's asses up around their ears and start to deal with Mesa and Manpower. Although I expect THAT part of the story won't be done for several more books. I must resist the temptation to stay up all night reading. In fact, I hope to use chapters as rewards for getting on with assorted tasks - we'll see how that goes.