Yarnivorous

G'day all! One thing about grey days - today I sat down and put in a decent chunk of time on my work.  Admittedly, I spent double the hours fixing things up that I expected I would take, but some of the stuff I was fixing is not exactly cooperative, or at least the program I'm using isn't.  Plus I'm using an older version of the program and it doesn't work the same way that the current one does and the fixes that worked on the newer version don't work as well on the old version. All very mysterious.  It will be fixed eventually, just not as soon as I would like it to be. Capitol Hill got a bit of sun late in the day So today was grey.  Gray, as can be expected when the sad and tattered remnants of a cyclone pass by.  Winds were negligible, but the rain sure hung around for long enough (and we got 14 mm) and the grey for longer.   The clouds were moving along at a good pace though and we started to see a bit of blue sky by the end of the day. In...

G'day all! Oh what a brain dead day I had yesterday. eg walk a block over to a friend's house to pick up my keys and the car.  Get said keys, chat a bit then decide to go out the front door cos it is closer.  Walk out the door with the keys in my hand, down the front stairs and then realise that I came around to pick up the car as well so I could go shopping. And the car is around the back, in the alley. And that wasn't the only brain in neutral moment. Get to the supermarket, do the shopping, joke at the register, "And now is when I realise I left my wallet on the couch." Umm, yes, I had taken it out and put it on the sofa. Sigh. Rain since yesterday at about 11am. And there were more than those two moments! I will blame the rain, the three hour time difference, a gluten hangover with concomitant lack of desire to eat food whilst my guts still hurt and several days of going flat chat. At least we saw some sun today!  More on that la...

G'day all! Move ahead!  It's not too late!  To whip it, whip it good...  Sorry, just a little diversion there, an indication of how my mind works.  The US goes onto daylight savings tonight I believe.  Oddly enough, my favourite corner of Ravelry has not erupted in a screaming hissy fit yet. Meteorological Spring has sprung here, though the US does seasons by the equinoxes and solstices.  I always think this is odd because winter certainly doesn't start on the 21st of December - around here it starts in November with the first of the winter storms (nb what this part of the world calls storms, my part calls cold fronts and intense low pressure systems).  Spring is already getting underway - the cherry plums are blooming, the daffodils are flowering, the crocuses are nearly done, the forsythias are in full flourish and some of the local deciduous street trees are starting to leaf out (between Wednesday and Thursday, to be precise) - though in the U...

G'day all! The weather is glorious here at the moment.  Cold - below freezing at night and if we are lucky hitting 4C at best during the day, but it is sunny with very little wind and is dry and gobsmackingly gorgeous. If I can't have warm, I'll happily have brrr! with sun :-) People are asking if I miss summer at home and given Melbourne has been hitting around 40C then dropping to 25C and then back up again, I think I'll put up with freezing and sun... given I'm a bit of a lizard and love the heat, that is saying something, isn't it? Frost!  Hoar frost! Looking east at the Ballard locks Sunset! Great bikini weather!  It's hitting 37F some days. Girls, get your gear off and into one of these little numbers.... I love the way the shops bring in such appropriate clothing whilst putting the winter clothing on clearance/sale.  (I picked up some bargains, but not in bikinis so you can live without fear of me showing them off.) A li...

G'day all! Two months ago, we arrived in Seattle.  It feels like we've been here a lot lot longer than two months.  Almost like two years, except if that was really the case, we missed out on two summers. Love the shadows of the curlicues by the fish ladder by the Crittenden Locks I am understanding what people mean when they say Seattle's weather is changeable.  I thought I knew what changeable is.  After all, I've lived in Melbourne for most of my life and my darling Melbourne has weather that can be very excitable indeed.  But not quite as changeable as Seattle's it seems. However, is it worse than when DH lived in Scotland (St Andrews) for a year when he was a kid and the local saying was "It's a nice day at the moment?"  And if it hit 25C (say mid-70s F) everyone died of heat exhaustion? Love these crocuses. Spring is starting to spring around there.  The crocuses (croci?) have been out for a couple of weeks, the daffodils are com...

Gday all! I was hoping to fly out to Sydney this evening but well I think the attached pic tells a story... All flights delayed and the storm is about an hour wide... dangit! Anon!

G'day all! What an interesting summer we are having here in Oz. I hope the subject line has told you we are not talking craft today... Three quarters of Queensland was/is flooded. Cyclone Anthony had a go at Perth (the only major city on the western coast of Oz). Cyclone Yasi (category 5, not quite as big as Katrina but jeez she worked on it) hit the parts of Queensland that weren't really affected by the earlier floods. Now Cyclone Anthony, who has devolved to just being a low pressure system has dumped well over three inches of rain on us this evening after wandering across the southern part of Australia. He's the colourful blur near the bottom of the continent. (copyright 2011 Commonwealth of Australia, Bureau of Meteorology) (We live down the bottom part of the Oz mainland, where the blue/green spots are. You might just be able to see a patch in the middle of the blue/green spots. That is aroundabout where Melbourne is.) Yasi has also been downgraded and will fade a...

G'day all! I just realised that yesterday was the third monthiversary of my last chemo. ie three months ago I finished chemo. What has changed? Well this: has changed. Yep, I have hair up to 3cm long now, and people keep commenting how dark it is. Well duh! This lot hasn't been sunbleached yet. I even have some white hairs (it seems that the thick red hairs I used to have are now white, thanks, chemo!) My eyelashes are regrowing as are my eyebrows. Think yourselves lucky that I am not showing you what other hair is growing back ;-) I can now sprint across the road if I have to (and then I puff for a while). By the end of chemo, I could barely shuffle. It really attacked my legs (technically the neuromuscular junction). I can walk all day if I have to. I can walk up ramps - couldn't do that by the end of chemo! Just couldn't! My calves were too tight, felt like I had been wearing high heels all my life and had to walk in flat shoes again. I can garden - get...

G'day all! What an exciting afternoon it turned out to be! It came over all dark and stormy and then windy and it poured rain, totally heaved down. I was thinking we just had a nice bit of rain from a thunderstorm, a very needed bit of rain cos it is a couple of weeks since we had any and the garden is really starting to suffer. I had been watching the weather radar and then decided to look at the weather warnings. After all, it isn't often that we see the radar image displaying black (actually dark brown) spots, the most intense precipitation possible on its scale. When you go to the BoM site and find a warning like this: you think things might be exciting! (If you are me, you also think that maybe they need a better picture editing program?) Not just one but two supercells approaching! So I trawl the web to find all sorts of mayhem has broken out across the city! Trams up to the top of their steps in water (I note we aren't seeing pics of the newer, very low load...