Yarnivorous

G'day all! Wow, we are in the few days of December, the dying days of 2012.  This has been an incredibly quick year, and I am told that as I get older, they will go faster and faster.  No wonder people cry out, "Stop the World, I want to get off!" A tropical Christmas - tacky!  Fab! Christmas has come and gone, with its good cheer and fellowship.  Christmas carols have been sung for another year, woe and alas - I like singing them even when trying to sight sing the descant or the alto line, depending.  Sometimes I sing the bass an octave up but I won't blame one particular friend for that cos I also latch onto tenor lines as well.  Christmas presents have been opened and admired and as yet are still sitting under the tree except for the camera lenses which have been put to use on the cameras as appropriate (my phone, the Big Camera). We have seen a juvenile Snowy Owl up at Sunset Hill, when I decided to drive up there for sunset a couple of nigh...

May all your days be merry and bright, and we might get to see some of the white stuff here in Seattle! The top of the tree, with birds and gifts. And yes that is a fungus - cos nothing says Christmas like a red and blue toadstool with purple glitter.

G'day all! It is the shortest day, the longest night of the year and I am sooooo glad that the days will not get any shorter.  Indeed sunset is already getting later (though sunrise is also getting later, but that is ok cos sunset is the thing I notice more!).  The earliest the sun sets up here in Seattle is 4:18, but because we have a ridge to the west of us and umm well this is Seattle, often it gets dark earlier than that. In good news on the sun front, we've seen the sun both yesterday and today!  Yesterday was gorgeous for a good couple of hours in the afternoon. Aurora Bridge, Fremont And then I got to see sunset, well the sun go behind clouds, at Sunset Hill. Close enough to solstice. It is amazing to see how far south the sun is compared to how far north it gets at midsummer.  See the Olympics - the little teensy range in the pic above?  Well at midsummer, the sun sets north of them! (Am having difficulty finding pics but trust me ...

G'day all! How did it get to be halfway through December already?  It means we have been in the States for almost a year!  Wow, time flies when you are having fun! I'm hoping this December is not a December when Things Happen. I believe it was December 2005 when we moved into our house - we bought a nice little place.  I thought that move was pretty traumatic, after living in the one rental for nearly eight years.  Ha.  Little did I know that in 2007 we'd move to the States, Fort Collins in Colorado (a place that I really enjoyed but moving?  Nuh-uh). In December 2007, we had to fly to Canada (only from Colorado, thank heavens) to get new visas for DH's new job.  We spent most of a month tooling around there (visiting family I didn't know I had, visiting friends, being given a most generous trip across Canada on the train by DH's parents who had flown across for Christmas with us in Colorado... whoops since we couldn't be in the States any lo...

G'day all! I was looking at someone's blog and thought I'd play along with the 2012 reverb she had joined.  Now that I'm doing it, I'm not so sure about doing it but it might give me and you some insight! Day 1: How are you starting (the month)? By running frantically, trying to get stuff done for a work conference.   It got done in time :-)   Then I slacked off somewhat, well focused on something else - making Christmas presents.  They are now (mostly) sent off so I can get more work done and clean up the house for Christmas. Day 2: Your most significant outlay? For the year?  Hmm, either moving here to Seattle or buying a new car (cos we couldn't get a second hand one as the sort we wanted is extremely popular.  I have to say I seem to have accumulated a certain degree more yarn and fibre and quilting material and rain coats and books and pictures and plants and .... Day 3: What do you really wish for? Imagine a scenario where you only had o...

G'day all! I have a shiny new computer.  It has red and blue LEDs inside it.  Ooh err.  It should be very fast and should last me a while - my laptop lasted nearly five years and still would work if you could get the fan controller to behave. DH installed our favoured operating system on the new machine and umm, well, let's just say I am very, very , very , VERY   VERY disappointed in the user experience so far.  There's been two new iterations of the system since I tried to upgrade the OS in my laptop.  I've been running ubuntu, btw. I don't know if it is my system is not linux friendly (or more specifically ubuntu friendly) but I can't make it do basic things like set up the mouse buttons to do what I want to.  I can't pin programs to the task bar (that we had to reinstall because their new idea about taskbars is show all the programs in a bar on the left of the screen).  I can't configure anything on the system except for the ba...