End on the car that is…

Apparently the story wasn’t interesting enough for car talk… so I sent them an email. They noted that although SOMEbody would read the missive, they likely would not. They suggested posting my question to the forums, and what a great idea that was. Within the hour I had a really good suggestion.

These cars have what we might call a roll cage/roll bars, and the suggestion was that I inspect these for damage when the roof came off. Which it did today. It was weird seeing my car all apart like that. Turns out they did body work on one door and the rear quarter panel, but will get a new rear door. The roof is new from the factory. But the gate (=hind end, or, um…) is from another car. This one has a special extra, the wind faring or whatever it’s called, it’s supposed to keep dust off of the rear window. We’ll see…

So after “inspecting” the car, we went for lunch, a beer, and some recycled clothing shopping. All of which I very much needed.

snow

On Saturday, I was out for a snowshoe (didn’t ski) and was thinking how pretty the snow was…

more snow…

And then it started snowing last night…

Welcome to our house,

OK OK, doesn’t look like much…

Here’s looking across the front yard,

And the end of the driveway where the snowplow piled up mounds up to my waist!

This is the view out the back door,

There’s a set of concrete steps under there someplace…

They didn’t know what to do with themselves…

Since there was only about 3 inches left of the four foot fence on the side of the yard,

I dug a trench…

The girls were having quite a time with something on the other side of the fence,

I worried it might be a skunk, but see that little dark upside down V over the fence? There are two canoes there, one stacked on the other, under some spruces… so the snow is a little lighter, and it creates something of a shelter. Where a cat was hiding. It’s probably still there.

The State offices have a delayed opening, in, um, 3 minutes. Don’t think I’ll make it. All that shoveling (and a bit of roof raking) wore me out! And then there’s the whole matter of not having a snow-worthy car to drive to work at the state because ice from the state’s building crushed it and it’s off becoming the frankenmonster car. I’m thinking it might need some detailing afterwards, suture lines and maybe little bolts.

Kat sent me an email about getting your call on the air on car talk. I learned two things, Louie Cronin (the Barbarian) is the gatekeeper for what calls go through, and they tape the show on Wednesdays. (I called on Thursday, so there’s still a chance my story is interesting enough for them). Read all about it in this She’s the Car Talk Traffic Cop article.

spinning

My first single on the ladybug, 4 ounces of just wool… (Amy says its from the wool pool, has some of this and that in it)

I’m hoping to get lots of hints and advice at SPA… mostly about tensioning and keeping things even. I’m pleased enough with this, but I know there’s loads of room for improvement!

and then there were three

Goldfish that is…

We had another jumper. But didn’t really know about it until we heard Gracie crunching on something and then hacking something up… DH keeps saying “she ate part of the family…” It was one of the “little” gold ones, I think the one I at one time called Stumpy because its dorsal fin was really short lengthwise. But, look, the Floater is swimming more normally! I thought it was hogwas (or fishwash), so I did some googling about the frozen pea thing, and kept running into it as a cure for goldfish swim bladder problems. Seems to have worked!

I was eyeing them up the night I was cooking the smelts…

Coffee Swap

My partner is Rose, who is a graduate student in California. Her package arrived yesterday! (I only shipped mine to her yesterday…)



She was inspired by my comment about wanting to be in the tropics having a rum boy attend to my needs! So there’s Jamacian coffee, a tiki spoon, Indonesian teak scented tea lights (these smell really good!), and little tropical umbrellas! The color on the yarn is perfect for me! (I may make and give away some baby item with it). And quite a load of chocolate, numm numm! You can’t see the mug so well, it looks like it has little tribal tattoos around the rim!


Given that we’d just gotten yet another few inches of snow, this was perfect. Here’s what my yard looked like at about 5:30 last night (note of importance, there was enough light to actually see at that hour!! woooo!!! the days are getting longer!!!!).

(front and back yards)

Thanks so much Rose!

Contest Winnings

Emily had a blogiversary contest a couple of weeks ago, and I won! Even though I got a bunch of other visitors over to Emily via Chris because y’all know I don’t need more yarn. But want? Oh yeah. And this is lovely, and just my colors too!

Bearfoot in the Sierra colorway

What Lisa Needs

Lifted from Mel. Here’s what you do… type your name in google, followed by “needs” and see what comes up.

Lisa Needs

1. Lisa needs braces (pages of results says this… I had them for a bunch of years, all’s I know is I started with oral surgeries when I was 9 and got my braces off in the 9th grade. One would think my teeth would be straight, but no.)
2. Lisa needs to get a life (I thought mine was interesting enough thank you)
3. Lisa needs a tree (apparently I’m a lemur living in a rain forest)
4. Lisa needs a home ASAP (gasp!)
5. Lisa needs your help (don’t we all need each other’s help? This one for a singing contest… truth be told here, if I was in a singing contest, you’d be the ones needing help, because, and I have this on the good authority of my brother, I can bring a nation to its knees, and not in a good way)
6. Lisa needs a new concealer (not that I wear makeup…)
7. Lisa needs a bigger grin and lots more warmth from an overly conscientious Julia Roberts (I had no idea Julia was even conscious of my existence…)
8. Lisa needs help with her vertical blinds
9. Lisa needs an init script (I have no idea what this is or why I might need it!)
10. Lisa needs to get away from her family (well, I almost did go to work this morning, with those nice tea light candles, to fix a couple of broken links on the web page…)
11. Lisa needs her gimmick! (OK, so this is more than 10, but it cracked me up… I think today my gimmick will be a bit of skiing, some knitting, some spinning… sure sure)

OK… you’ll have to hang on for a moment while I vent some extreme frustration… I had a post well-along, hit save, and got a 404 error. So I went back and found the draft, and the only thing on it is the title.

waaa waaa waaaa

SO…

The winner of the $25 gift certificate is CC! Congratulations!!

The runner up winner for the superwash navy is Blogless Joan! Congratulations!!

AHA! I got another paragraph along and had the same error problem… a little sleuthing shows it is CC’s blog address that somehow isn’t being read. Go visit her here: wwwDOTthreadstringandtherestofitDOTblogspotDOTcom.

I’ve been telling people all week that my favorite entry was “oh, it’s totaled, $2450″, but can I find that comment? Nope! Clearly I am delusional.

So, my other favorite entry came in this afternoon, from my god-daughter, who is 8, and who guessed $8888. Clearly she needs something special.

waaa waaa waaaa, I just lost more! It’s the list of what they will do. Hmmm, maybe if I present it as a paragraph instead.

So, here’s what they intend to do. OH, they did not consider it totaled. (I am hitting “save” every other sentence… this slows things down a lot!!) AHA, it’s something about telling you what the damages are that is also holding up the save process… $5579.90! The winner’s guess was $5575! (AHA, that was it, can’t type her name, go figure).

(In case you don’t remember…)

OK, trying a list again,

• CUT OFF THE ROOF!
• Replace it with another roof
• Replace the two passenger side doors
• Replace the rear quarter panel
• Replace all or parts of the roof rack
• Replace the side mirror
• Replace the gate with a recycled gate (hatchback part)

So I asked, What exactly is a recycled gate? It’s from a car that was totaled from the front end! I’ve been reading about unibody, or monocoque, construction, so I asked, You can cut off half the car, and it doesn’t affect the frame? Nope, it’ll be fine, guaranteed in writing. I have my doubts, so I have a call in to the Car Talk guys. Wouldn’t you think they’ll love it? Ice falling from above crushing a car, nobody hurt and good insurance so no tale of woe, and the question… Is this Frankenstein car really safe???

She’s gone!

Last day… and did I have to see her too many times this week thinking last week was her last? Yes. Would she look me in the eye? No. Did I give her dagger eyes or say anything to her? No. Did I want to? Oh. Yes. Did I count down the hours? Um, yes, and the minutes too.

I hadn’t realized until Monday, when I unexpectedly saw her upstairs, how much this has been bothering me.

So, next week… Fresh start. I think I’ll bring in some deodorizer or something. Maybe I’ll go in over the weekend and burn some sage.

I do have happy news (as in my contest winnings and a swap package arrived), but weird things keep happening with the computer… so I will post about that later, or tomorrow!

I have car news but cannot blog about it until Friday night!!

If you didn’t make your guess for the damage estimate, do so in the previous post and you might win a $25 gift certificate or some superwash navy wool.

I did learn that the State has something called Sovereign Immunity.

Secret Knitting

It’s all on Ravelry… one project completed, here, and one in progress, here.

Odd Bird

So yesterday, we went outside and paused because we heard a turkey! So we headed over to where we heard it, but saw no turkey, only another bird. And then that bird flew away and landed on a light post. Well, maybe the turkey ran and hid… And then the bird on the post gobbled again!

Crows are known to be mimics, and they are really bright birds… but I don’t know that mimicking a bird that people like to eat makes this the brightest crow in the bunch.

Odd fish

Have I talked about my goldfish? They are ginormous. Nine years ago the kiddo asked some magician if he could have one of the fish from the show…. we got the whole bag. Four still live to swim (the other two either jumped or were pushed out… they were the biggest fish in the tank at the time each landed on the floor… one even got slammed back into the water to live for a little longer). Anyhow, one of them is really odd, it swims upside down.

It isn’t dead, just upside down, like it usually is… here out of the tank, which was getting cleaned (it’s clean now).

So I went to the pet store, and bought a bitty Plecos (algae eater). And the fish person told me that a single frozen pea would cure the swim bladder problem this goldfish seems to have.

Have you ever tried to get a fish to eat a single frozen pea? It landed with a little plunk on the bottom of the tank… and now, the upside down fish is now swimming more normally. And the pea is still sitting there in the gravel. I have no idea what is going on. Any goldfish experts out there? Don’t turn me in! These fish really should have a much larger tank! The biggest one is about 5 inches long and the next biggest is pretty close, and the tank is only 10 gallons.

More fish stories

It’s smelt season. I cooked some the other night, because they were cheap at the seafood counter and their lovely silvery skin was calling to me. They were good, but two days later cold with salad greens? Not so much.

This is how many people get them.

Smelt shacks along the Abagadasset River in Bowdoinham. I think it’s really an excuse to go out and sit around a little stove in a cold little shack and drink lots of alcohol…

It isn’t just women who groom and drive

You’ll have to embiggen to see…. he’s shaving! And he had no idea that I was snapping pictures of him as we drove around the rotary! I was not driving… I was a backseat passenger.