Airy Nothing Chatter

That's where I've been all day.

My tummy was feeling bad when I woke up this morning (yes! morning!!), so I came and sat here at the computer. Long after my tummy felt better, I was still here... I'm still here! Most of the day I've been looking at various needlework sites. It started out with me catching up on my RSS feeds. I have a lot of crafty sites there and I ended up surfing and even adding a few more sites. LOL I can't read a bunch of them. It's the photos and free patterns that made me add them. Those are the Russian sites. There are also a bunch of French sites. I understand a bit of what I read there. That led me add a French English dictionary and a French Language forum to my list of links. Maybe I'll finally get better at French.

Anyway, now I'm all geared up to work on projects again. I still have my windows, 2 meme projects (one is 90% done) and some mending to get done. I wish thinking made it so (or in this case -- sew).

Actually, I'd settle for just being able to get my thoughts recorded somewhere permanent. Obviously, my brain is not a very good file keeper. I know there was something I wanted to write down when I woke up, but by the time I sat here, it was already gone. I also had various ideas when I got up and moved around, but they were gone when I came back. My ideas are in and out again in a flash. I hope as I start to get better sleep, my short term memory gets better, but I don't see it yet.

Yesterday I got out and cut back the rosebushes, hydrangeas and dead stuff. Anyone who has met my cat, Llyan, might blame this

on her, but they would be wrong. It was the fairy roses that got me. They don't really need to be cut back, but they grow with such abandon, that, in order to keep them from rooting in the lawn, I decided to cut them. Because they grow so well, I probably should have taken the hedge shears to them. That would have save my hands and forearms from damage. The scratches are all stingy and itchy -- no great pain, but annoying.

It rained today, but fortunately not before Iqbal got the lawn mowed. Had he not got out there, I might have had to call it a field. Spots of lawn were about a foot high, already. Shoot! I forgot to cut some of that and bring it in to Llyan. That's the tasty grass. I wish the whole lawn were made of it. It may be a rough lawn, but it doesn't dry out as fast as the softer grass does.

I have misplaced my boring book. I have never taken so long to read a book. The main reason is that, usually, if I find a book boring, I stop trying to read it. I glanced at the reviews on LibraryThing. A lot of people liked this book. I'm just not one of them.

What annoys me, though is that I feel obligated to finish and write a review of the book and that makes me feel guilty every time I pick up another book. As a result, I've finish one book all year and it's March already. I should have finished at least eight books by now. It's not like I don't have a gazillion her to be read.

(1:05 a.m.)



Wednesday
Now it's 2:55 p.m. and I found and finally finished that book! Yippee! I read about two hours last night and another hour this afternoon. It's like a weight has been lifted. I hope to have a review up by Friday. Briefly it will sum up as "Show, don't tell!!!"

I think I'll spend some time reading Louis L'Amour.

Today is almost as gray as it can get. I have four lamps in this room and have them all on. Every little bit helps, but the work lamp is best. It's almost as bright as the therapy lamp. I have that next to my bed, set to come on automatically a couple of hours before I get up. Kinda like a sunrise, I guess. Everything helps, but nothing works as well as real sunlight. But the days are noticeably longer!

Well, if I was going to say something else, I've lost it again. I think I will go spend a couple of hours working on projects

Saturday I spent the whole afternoon looking for the right pipes for the dryer vent. Apparently most people go with the accordion pipes, but the one I always see recommended is the regular tin pipe. Finally, at Ace Hardware, I finally found someone who did more than say "Those are what we have." He explained the different grades and showed me the cleaning tool. I hadn't realized there are two sizes and I hadn't measured, so I had to go back today.

There are some photos behind the cut.

Read more »

Watched Mississippi Masala tonight. I was expecting a typical Indian style love story. It is a love story, but not typical, certainly not typically Indian (R rated with an obvious love scene). It's not romantic comedy and has a lot more meat than typical love stories. It addresses issues of love, family, loyalty and racism. It was fine acting by every one, but especially Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury.

Mississippi Masala is set in Uganda and Mississippi and juxtaposes the racism, both subtle and obvious in each country. It also shows the love and loyalty in each country, that transcends race. The movie also addresses the meaning of home. Is it where our ancestors come from? where we're born? or where we (and our family) are?

Meena's family is forced out of Uganda when Idi Amin takes power. Eighteen years later they are in Mississippi living in a motel run by other Indians. Her mom runs a liquor store and her dad is still trying to get his land in Uganda back. Meena, now 24, is a maid at the motel. She meets Demetrius when she runs into the back of his van. Okay, the romance is fairly unoriginal, but it's all the rest of the movie added to it, that makes it a good movie.

This was too good not to share. I'd like to do this, but how do I pay for online purchases without a card?

Watch the whole thing. The end is fun.

When I was writing this, I was listening to:
Bob Dylan - T.V. Talkin' Song
孫燕姿 (Sun Yan Zi) - 了解
張學友 - 天下第一流
周華健 (Emil Chau) - 一個‧兩個
孫燕姿 (Sun Yan Zi) - Hey Jude
陳奕迅 (Eason Chan) - 情深怎麼辦
Bee Gees - Words

Currently reading
Sweeping Up Glass
By Carolyn Wall
see related

Here are the Garden photos I have so far for 2009. There are about 190 of them (I'm not editing them), so they aren't all going to get posted immediately. LOL As it is, I keep being told to "slow down, cowboy!" They cover from mid to late March until today.

I've been working in the garden, today. So much to be done. Plants can be funny things. I was so careful to put the plants in according to height and then they decide to be different heights than the pot cards said. My "12 inch" perennial geranium is sprawling at about 18 to 24 inches. My Bee Balm is not close to 30 inches. The naked lilies were already here, but I replanted them in new places based on the size they were. This year they decided to double both height and width. That's just the leaves. The flowers show up (after the leaves have been dead for a while) in late August, I think. Are they going to be bigger, too? I don't know.

I lost a couple of plants, probably because of the ice storm in late December. It was a good thing I used the leaves as mulch for the winter. I'm sure I would have lost more without it. Most (all but 2) of the dahlias in the pots died. (They were supposed to come into the house, but we had no room for them.) Remarkably, the big dahlias planted in the border in back have all returned. They're only 1 or 2 inches so far, but I think they will be happy. I thought I had lost my Jasmine, but it only died above ground. It has plenty of new shoots. The same with a white flower vine next to the deck trellis.

I managed to get out in April and trim back all my roses and they look really good now. (as long as I don't forget to water them!)

One of the things I got done this week was putting the drip hose along the back border...

Uh, oh! I better go turn it off!

OK. Most of the back border is well watered. It didn't seem to drip as well at the very end where the border turns along the driveway. I'll see how it looks tomorrow. It's too dark, now.

I will be putting in drip hoses in the deck bed, the corner bed, under the cherry trees in front (both up and down) and along the hydrangea in front of the house. I'll still water the rose garden (all pots) by hand.

I'm going to add some more of the photos and then I need to do my therapy exercises and them I plan to read.

When I was writing this, I was listening to:
張學友 - 暗中的感覺
張家輝 (Andy Lau) - 忠於自己
梅艷芳 (Anita Mui) - 心仍是冷 ( 寒冬版 )