Monday, July 31, 2006

Making Progress on the Home Front

This weekend I ran around to Ikea, JC Penney, Lowe's, and Joann's to start some of the projects from this list. At Ikea, I bought some curtain hardware and thought about getting something like this for the living room. We have this huge picture window which is currently dressed with vertical blinds. I hate them, but I haven't found anything I love yet. Something easy to open so that we do open them and something that will attain the level of privacy the dude is after. Penney's is having a huge sale, including the dining room chairs we so desperately need (#86). They didn't have the furniture on display, but we got a lamp and a giant picture frame. I mean giant--it holds 4x6 pictures 7 across and 5 down. This will replace the shelving we were going to get (#89). We only needed the shelving because we have a giant wall that we can't put any furniture on--it's in the traffic pattern. The only trouble was it's not the right color. At Lowe's I got spraypaint for the shutters (#97) and the giant picture frame. On to Joann's where I bought six 12x12 frames for the maps we have to hang in the guest room. We've chosen the maps and put them in the frames, but we haven't managed to put them on the wall (#88).

I've scheduled myself to complete a few of these projects during the week. We'll see...

Saturday, July 29, 2006

#60 Understand my job well enough to set significant goals

I went to a CASE conference for communication and marketing people. (I'm a communications person.) And I've learned more about it in four days than I did in the previous 8 months of working with my boss. He was a real idiot. At any rate, now I'm full of ideas but lack the staff to carry them out... Soon, soon the group will double in size. Then the two of us will be able to do all kinds of things.

Friday, July 28, 2006

#15 Read 16 Works of Non-fiction

This past week as I traveled to Nashville and back, I read Joan Didion's Where I was From. I enjoyed it. It was an interesting mix of history, memoir, genealogy, and sociopolitical analysis. I think it went a long way in explaining California (I lived there for 15 years). Her analysis of the Spur Posse, which was one of the notorious incidents I lived on tv, was the best and most sophisticated that I have read.

What does that mean, lived on tv? It's something more immediate than seeing it on tv. I saw the planes fly into the World Trade Center on tv, but in speaking to friends in New York and Washington, I just didn't experience the event in the same way. I would say there is a sense of the local that is missing, of not quite understanding the social context. I also lived the '92 riots, the '94 earthquake, and the '95 slow speed chase. It's not that I don't think outsiders can't understand it, there's just something missing in the analysis. Anyway, Didion got it right. And it was particularly fascinating to find out what happened to some of those boys. It would be even more interesting to me to find out what happened to the girls, but they've never been the center of that story...

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

#34 Finish current WIPS

WTF is a WIP? WIP is cyberstitcher (as in needlework) jargon for "work in progress." Some projects take so long, or are put aside in favor of other projects, that they can be "WIPS" for years. TakeToy Gatherer for example. I started stitching it in 1995, but it got put aside often so that I could stitch the 100 or so projects I have completed in the past ten years. I just have to add beads and charms to this one. I'll definitely finish it this year.


Some of the other projects I am working on this month (see below), include Hardanger Napkin Rings (sorry, these are white on white and don't photograph well) which were started at a class in 1997--this is now my official travel project, so I will get some good time on these; Treasured Tulips also a class probably later 98? or 99?, this project has about 20 hours left on it; Enchanted Alphabet will be finished soon, but I did start it in 2000 when my niece, a kindergartner, was a fetus; and Anna's Bird which is a fairly recent start, but gets put aside during the dark months because of the black fabric.

Monday, July 10, 2006

#96 Plant something in the pot by the front door


One upped: got rid of the fading old plastic pot that the previous owner left on the lawn and hung a basket of fuschia on a shephard's hook. Nice.