Kevin's Watch

Have fun!

I'm stranded to my friends' place due to a blizzard. It's snowing sideways with an insane wind, and had I taken one of the night buses back, it would have required a few kilometers of wading in the unlit countryside. They have been testing all sorts of strange remedies to my hoarse voice and lingering cough, including tea made out of boiled raspberry bush branches. Perhaps one of them worked.

Never tried raspberry bush branches, but I swear by herbal tea as a remedy for cold-type issues.

Back to work tomorrow. Bah.

--A

Sorus wrote:Never tried raspberry bush branches, but I swear by herbal tea as a remedy for cold-type issues.

Well the wild spearmint may have ended aiding more. The concoctions found on a shop shelf cannot beat plants collected in the mysterious confines of Lithuanian woods, but I'll see about buying some equivalent herbal wossnames tomorrow.

Indoor temperature had sunk down to +12C when I finally got back home. x(

And it's tomorrow.

--A

It is certainly that. And Monday, to boot.

An odd thing happened this morning. I was sitting at my desk at work, minding my own business, when someone I'd not met before arrived for a meeting with Travelin' Guy. She said, "Are you Lynne?" and, upon my replying in the affirmative, explained that she was the wife of my cousin's son. She had seen me chatting on Facebook with her husband's mother's sister (can this get any more involved? ) and put 2 and 2 together when I accepted the calendar invite for the meeting on T.G.'s behalf. She works for the same law firm I do, but in our Boston office. So yeah, small world and all that.

That's hilarious to me, ali.

Frosty- yay for them making efforts to take care of you!
You are traveling in the Baltics, or your friend's family has brought dried specimens "collected in the mysterious confines of Lithuanian woods" to Scandanavia?

sorus- I would want closets, cupboards, and cabinets... not to mention dressers, and all manner of containers.
My "ideal" homey-vision-of-what-I-think-I-would-want-things-to-look-like is a mixture of an economical version of pottery barn, and a even-more-frugal version of IKEA.
With plants.
(Or so I think. Now.)

My friend is pretty extreme, though.
But ya know what?
I feel sooo peaceful & comfortable at her place.
So the anti-hoarding habits have got some strengths, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah these girls are super-awesome.
They're Lithuanian immigrants. We speak a mix of Finnish and English together, K. has lived here longer and she translates unknown words to the other, so I get to hear a great deal of their native tongue as well.

Orderliness, containers, uncluttered surfaces...errr that's not me. Mom can juggle such magicks with uncanny ease, but the genes work in mysterious ways.

I suspect the genes skip a generation, given the states of my kids' living spaces.

On the cousin-I-didn't-know thing: I had a friend in high school who would often point out other students to me and say, "That's my cousin. They don't know it, but they are." Then she'd go on to explain the family connection (which in a town full of Polish-American Catholics could get fairly convoluted ). So that's one of the things that occurred to me when this woman stopped at my desk yesterday: "Hi -- you're my cousin but you don't know it."

This morning was one of those commutes where I felt like I'd done my job by just making it into the office. There was an incident on Metro's Yellow Line yesterday afternoon -- an electrical short occurred in a tunnel outside of L'Enfant Plaza station and a train filled with smoke -- and they're still dealing with that. Somehow, that managed to screw up the bus schedules, too. My usual bus didn't show up; nor did the next one. Finally got in about a half-hour late.

Could be much worse, though. One person on the smoky train died from yesterday's incident and a bunch of other folks had to go to the hospital.

That's scary. The train system here is in terrible shape, too.

I feel like Gen Disc is unusually quiet.

--A

That's okay.
I can talk about how I feel to make up for that.
I feel happy but tired.
Had a great day with some good conversations.. we got some stuff done, and people helped us with stuff we needed help with and really came through for my family.

Now that you're done talking about how quiet this part of the Watch is, Av, I dare you to say how you feel today on this thread.


--N

*crickets*

I feel like I really need this weekend.

--A

Behold, cute new shoes! The tall ones specifically for use with miniskirts and Highland kilts. They also sport steel-reinforced caps and heels.

Yes the carpet is apparently pink. Shut up.



Look at the sordid state of my present footwear. Now at the age of over nine years, they can clomp into the halls of their ancestors to spend halcyon days beneath the benevolent gaze of the Cobbler God.



That long-planned purchase drained my budget so eating pine cones for the rest of the month...

Frostheart Grueburn wrote:They also sport steel-reinforced caps and heels.

Hey, we have the same taste in shoes! Can't say I have ever had a pair last nine years though; perhaps I am shopping in the wrong places. Or nothing is designed to last these days.

I love seeing a well-worn pair of boots. Shows they went places and did stuff. I have a pair of DM's that I bought in '96. I wore them every day for 5 years, abandoned them in a London flat when I foolishly thought I would get some different one's, and found them waiting there for me a bit more than a year later, after the new ones had long since fallen apart. I rescued them and still wear them sometimes to this day.

--A

Frosty: Now there's a pair of boots with some stories to tell.

Today is the middle day of a 3-day weekend. I succeeded in not leaving the house yesterday, though I did eventually get dressed. Hoping to get some writing done today.

Just back from a nice weekend away for a pre-birthday celebration. Activities included sushi for dinner Friday night, a lovely dinner from crab and scallop cake appetizer through New York Strip with broiled Roquefort dressing to dark chocolate and white chocolate mousse quenelles for dessert with a glass of red zinfandel last night, followed by a Weezer concert which didn't impress but was more than made up for by the dueling pianos performers in a different area of the same venue.

I just realized I have one of those long weekends surfacing later in the spring as well. Where to go, where to go...no funds to buy plane tickets yet. Arrrr wanderlust strikes again!!!

Sorus wrote:
Hey, we have the same taste in shoes! Can't say I have ever had a pair last nine years though; perhaps I am shopping in the wrong places. Or nothing is designed to last these days.

Yay. Perhaps try handmade/made in USA instead of mass-produced Chinese shoes? The battered veteran boots originate from a small shop in Helsinki which I've favored since 1994; 100% made in Finland in a non-factorized environment. Those shiny new ones with shorter...shafts (What is saappaanvarsi in English???) were purchased in the very same shop. The prices can seem hair-rising at a first glance, but pay themselves back as the materials last far longer.

Those have indeed seen many a curious place such as an American e-fest, the bottom of an Icelandic volcano crater, a path dyed brown with sheepshit somewhere in the middle of Føroyar...Avebury a couple of weeks agone apparently mauled them beyond repair. RIP.