KnitBot

Leesburg VA reports 27.5″ of snow from the storm.
I’m still miles away on
a different continent, but, here are the reports I’ve gotten from
home — digging out.

08h00 Sunday, February 7, 2010 –
the sun does come up, post-snowpocalypse

16h00 Sunday, February 7, 2010
– dug out, to the road,
anyway

Read Full Post »

Here’s how the current winter storm  is playing out in the
Washington DC area:
Reporting from the LA
Times (!).
“As of late afternoon, a total of 32.4 inches was recorded at Dulles
International Airport outside of Washington, according to the National
Weather Service. That two-day accumulation topped the previous record,
compiled during the blizzard of January 1996, the weather service said.”
I’m [...]

Read Full Post »

Many buildings in Amsterdam are old.  And they have a “native population”, that survives transfer of ownership.  To help deal with this, it is not unusual for restaurants to employ “peace keepers” of the four-legged sort.
I recently met Mavis:

Mavis was not above supplementing her rodent-chasing diet with handouts from the restaurant’s kitchen:

While I’m not naming [...]

Read Full Post »

I do mean fog…

It’s like somebody turned off the CGI rendering of the background (cove, boats, rest of island…).
Or, here’s a different perspective of Flaggs Cove, Grand Manan, not in fog:

The fog can also play tricks — fading here, and thickening there.  Here, you see a glimpse of Castalia.

But, here it’s all equally fuzzy:

Read Full Post »

Here’s a fine example of something that should be seen, and not heard:

These pheasants make a noise that sounds something like a car starter being turned after the car is already running.

This guy & his missus have taken over our property, strutting about in full ownership mode.
They might be even better tasted than seen, but [...]

Read Full Post »

988 miles, blue carrier, pink blankie…
Window!

No, really — quite happy:

Read Full Post »

Merry merry!  Best wishes of the season.
 It’s certainly been merry here.
An important point about message fragmentation.  Here are 2 very
different messages, each starting with the same first chunk:

We found the roasting pan we thought we’d given away.
We found the roasting pan we thought we’d given away, but it’s
not in fit condition to use for food [...]

Read Full Post »

Last week, I did my Christmas (cookie) marathon, constructing and
baking 4 different batches of cookies through the week, and another 4
on Saturday.  It’s not like there’s  a lack of other things
going on this month — I just broke them up into stages and wove the
different stages (dough, shaping, resting, baking, decorating) in and
around other things.
Usually, [...]

Read Full Post »

Let me explain something. 
This:

is a cheese plate.

And this:

is a wanna-brie .
Opening up the familiar wood box, I was astonished to find a sealed
plastic tub inside.  Think of the “hankie” scene from the opening
of “The Commitments”.
Look more closely at the labelling — from the country that has to
label when its cheese is food:

It is, indeed, [...]

Read Full Post »

I have found one sure fire way to make 3 lbs of butter seem like not
much of a big deal — and it has to do with Christmas cookies.
For whatever reason, even as there is no time for (m)any of the usual
sorts of holiday things, such as decorating our home, I hang on to
making Christmas [...]

Read Full Post »

The other day, DH approached me with a box of yarn in hand, prompting
me to retreat and utter some sailorly language.  The attentive
will note that this is not my expected reaction to yarn; certainly, it
was not what DH might have expected.
The problem was that it was a box that had been hiding in the basement
(no [...]

Read Full Post »

And so endeth the month (of blogging daily). 

There was a post for each day in November 2008 (even if the timestamps
sometimes pushed an entry into the next day!).
I found it an interesting experiment.  It was definitely
challenging to come up with something
for each and every day.  Some days were particularly challenging
– when there’d been nothing [...]

Read Full Post »

Beach:

Beach glass:

Wikipedia gets it right in observing that beach glass is a strange
phenomenon — an odd case where something more valuable is created from
man-made litter.  “Beach glass” is remnants of (usually coloured)
glass articles that have been broken and distributed in the sea,
carried and tumbled by time and tide, to the point where it is
smoothed, etched, [...]

Read Full Post »

Faced with the question of “what are the top kitchen appliances you
would bring to an island”, I can tell you I include “slow cooker” on my
list.
This week’s culinary challenge was to prepare a reasonable Thanksgiving
dinner in a kitchen that has virtually no staples (can’t reasonably
keep liquids between visits — they’ll freeze) and an incomplete
battery of [...]

Read Full Post »

Today we recognize that we have much for which to give thanks, not the
least of which is captured in the views from our driveway — that it is
our driveway, that we’re here to enjoy the island, that the weather was
so stupendous that it was impossible not to smile :-)

Today we particularly enjoyed the service here [...]

Read Full Post »

Same socks,too.

Not used to seeing this place with snow.  Was a little stormytoday. Much happier to have been on the ferry yesterday, rather than today –might have had a roughride.

Read Full Post »

Dashing home from a week of meetings, sliding in by 7pm, time to
unpack, do laundry, repack and take care of some work deliverables, so
that at 6am I’m on my way to our favourite place on Grand
Manan.
We transited Halifax, which is still digging out from 30cm (a foot) of
snow.
      

And clambered onto the Beechcraft
18-seater for the flight [...]

Read Full Post »

Things seem a little quiet around here to me — do they seem a little
quiet to you?  Yeah.  Something to do with being busy in
meetings all day/evening every day for the last 10 days.  I think
it was a productive trip; I think the meetings moved stuff forward,
which is a win.  But there’s something about constant
concentration [...]

Read Full Post »

I coined a new word today — “ultitasking”.  As in:  theULTImate in multiTASKING.  It has to do with doing a number ofapparently-divergent tasks simultaneously and achieving some coherentand successful outcome.
Consider it “ultitasking” if you are leading a meeting whilesimultaneously handling several instant message chats and updating apresentation (for the same meeting.
Or, carrying out a discussion [...]

Read Full Post »

I
mentioned that this burst of blogging is somewhat inspired by the
(writer’s block busting) activity of NaNoWriMo.
It turns out that I am hardly alone in this aspiration.  Someone
else has coined the NaBloPoMo
term for national blog posting month — blogging every day this
month.  That certainly captures the spirit of what I’ve been
trying this month, although I am [...]

Read Full Post »