I went to NY last week to do this and this.

And I haven't knitted in at least a week. I'm developing some sort of arthritis in my right index finger from mousing (and I'm going to blame all of the Photoshopping I've done in recent months) and I plan to rest it for a while before I pick up the needles again.  Almost done with my simple triangular shawl though! 

I found a new funny photo site. Here are some of my favorites:




see more pwn and owned pictures

Last month, when I received my credit card bill, I noticed that I had been charged twice for my monthly bus pass.  I called the MTA and was told that everyone was double charged and someone had been assigned to credit accounts.  I got my credit card bill today and hoped to see a credit for $80.  Instead, I find a credit for $.80.  F*ckers! 

Hate them all with a white hot passion.

There's a big blonde bunny that's been hanging around Dad's property in Bel Air.  We saw him on Sunday evening as we were leaving Chez Dad.  I've never seen a rabbit like that in the wild, so I think he's probably an escapee pet.  He didn't seem afraid of us big ugly humans, and we got within a few feet of him.

This morning, blonde bunny was attacked by a hawk.  Dad scared the bird off, but the rabbit had been injured.  So Dad spent the morning calling various vets to see which of them would take in a wild animal.  He found one and took Mr Bunny in.  The vet said they'd give him steroids and see if he improved, otherwise they would probably have to euthanize him. 

The doctor who runs the clinic is a man I call "Doctor Death."  He used to be at Falls Road Animal Hospital, and every pet of mine he ever got his hands on died.  Two died young.  So I don't have a good feeling about Mr Bunny.

Dad and I are both sad. :(  But isn't he a good daddy? 

I'm not usually one to post political content, but I couldn't resist this one.

Haven't posted all week - sorry.  Been busy here.  Lots to do at work on our big annual project and I've been having issues with the data and all that.  I hate when work interferes with blogging!

Still knitting that bamboo shawl I started eons ago.  Down to my last ball. I should order another color to use for trim. My right index finger has been killing me recently, from mousing while cruising the Interwebs and Photoshopping, so I haven't done a whole lot of knitting, but I try to do a couple rows a week at least.  I know, pathetic. :)

Have a good weekend - maybe I'll have something more to say next week.

more cat pictures

Because Kim asked:

As I 'splained in an earlier post, I don't have most of the family photos in my possession. No photos of the houses in their formstone glory. But...I do have these older shots, pre-formstone, when the houses were merely painted a sickly pink and adorned with blue shutters.

Here's me, age two (notice the 1967 date stamp?), frolicking on the sidewalk near the house. Beyond my chubby frame, one can see both 530 and 528 South Ann, and a teensy sliver of Grandma in front of the doorway of 530.

Here I am inside the house, in the living room of our third floor apartment (the front room of 530), age 4, in what was probably my Halloween costume, although I most likely didn't go trick-or-treating that year. Behind me is my mother's green secretary, which you can see in the photo below, my living room today, sans the decalomania Mom added and I always hated.  I also have that black chair in the older photo, and it is displayed next to the green desk (although not at the time the photo below was taken).

On Friday I took the bus to Fells Point to meet my friend Melinda for lunch at the Black Olive. Fells Point is where I spent my formative years. In these two houses, as a matter of fact. 

My Grandma owned both 530 (on the left, in the sun) and 528 (right, with ground-level entrance) South Ann Street. My parents, brother, and I lived on the third floor of both buildings (there was a door cut between them) and the 4th floor of 530. Back when we moved in 1984, the houses were still covered with formstone. 530 was gray; 528 was pink and yellow. Many years later, someone tore off the ugly old fake stone and attempted to recreate the original look of the exteriors. When I was a kid, that doorway on the second floor was a window; we used the "basement" entrance below it, which led into my grandmother's living room. Once upon a time, that same front room was used as a confectionery store, but that was when my mother was a kid and they still had an outhouse in the back yard.

I am so curious to see what the insides of these buildings look like now. My former home.

After taking my photos, I continued down Ann Street to Aliceanna (pronounced by locals as "Alizan." If you say it the way it's spelled, you're from Towson or something) to visit my favorite Fells Point boutique, Maja. I looked across the street from the shop and saw my old elementary school, St. Stanislaus, where I had spent four happy years.

That building is not my school (I can't remember what it is). The empty space around it is. Or was, when the school was still there.

 

I knew they had torn down the rectory, which is the big empty lot next to the Church in the photo above, but the school must have come down recently.  Seeing it gone made me sad.  I didn't really have any friends at St. Stanislaus, but I had loved my teachers and enjoyed my time there.  I hated having to switch schools in the 5th grade and go to Holy Rosary up closer to Patterson Park.  St Stan's was merging with St. Casimir's to become Father Kolby, and my mother didn't see the point of my having to take a school bus to the new place if there was another Catholic school a few blocks in the other direction.  Plus, Mom went to an earlier incarnation of Holy Rosary, when it was on Eastern Avenue, just West of Broadway.

(A related story - when we had decided to move away from Ann Street, one of the homes we seriously considered had been the convent of Mom's Holy Rosary, a big 4-story stone building with large bedrooms and a concrete back yard.  Then we decided we didn't want to get away only from Ann Street but all of Fells Point, so we moved to Guilford instead.)

Later, after lunch and a bit of shopping and a doctor's appointment, I was back in the place that I currently call home, only the third place I've ever lived.  Someday I'll probably have nostalgia about this house, with its clutter and cat hair.  But as long as my husband is with me, that's my true home.

Oops! It's been a while since I posted here.  Just thought I'd give my three readers an update. :)

I'm still working on the simple shawl of SWTC bamboo.  And that's about it.  It's nice and mindless and I just don't feel like working on anything that requires reading a pattern or paying attention at the moment.  That will change, because I'll get bored with this before I finish ball 2, and I really should think about finishing those mittens...and a couple more Christmas gifts!

In the meantime, here's Pete in a rare cute moment.  He was curled up tightly, but when I got near him he unfurled a bit and let me rub his tummy.  He's been having poopy problems so the rubbing probably felt good.

Ok - let me rant here.  Pete is on thyroid meds.  One of the side effects of said meds is diarrhea.  One of the side effects of not taking the meds is diarrhea.  However, before he started taking the meds, he didn't really have a problem in that department (he was more of a vomiter).  I thought we should call the vet and ask if we could lower Pete's dosage by 1/4 of a pill per day.  In the past, it had been determined that half a pill a day was too little, so we give him twice that amount.  But we never checked the effects of 3/4 pill, and I wanted to try that now because his diarrhea was unpleasantly out of control.  (I won't go into the gory details.)  So Neal calls the vet and he wants to see Pete.  Of course - to get more money out of us.  They take blood tests, do a stool sample in case he had a parasite (not considering that there's nothing wrong with our other cat who eats the same food and uses the same litter box).  Neal comes home with flagyl to control the diarrhea and expensive bland catfood.  

We have two cats - Pete will eat anything, but Julie doesn't want the bland food.  So should we feed one cat and starve the other?  As for the flagyl - it seems to have constipated Pete, but when he goes, it's still runny.  :::headslap::::  So starting next week, I'm going to cut his dosage by 1/4 and see how he does with that, because obviously the vet isn't bright enough to consider that option.