Molly Bee's Attic

It’s been so long since I’ve updated, that I don’t know where to start. So much has happened over the holidays that I’d have to write 20 pages to catch up! I guess I’ll just cover knitting content this time around! This is the felted hat I made for friend-Donna. The photo doesn’t show it well, but it’s just a basic brimmed hat, navy blue with blobs of color in it. She had mentioned that she would like one when we saw an example of it at The Ear. She used to have one but she left it on a train in Switzerland. The next picture is of a mitten pattern I test drove, but don’t like it that well. The finger cab is boxy and too big because my Fair Isle is fairly tight. But I did like the afterthought mitten. All in all, I believe that this is destined to be a stag mitten. Maybe I’ll try again and drop a needle size for the finger cap. But not any time soon. I made my Mum a cardigan but forgot to take a photo. She will send one soon so I can post it. I also made Gram a pair of socks but forgot ...

How can a person who got all of her shopping and wrapping and errands for Christmas done before Thanksgiving get to be so frantic the week before the big day??? There is some weird voodoo, fung shui, mystical thing at work here. This week is Christmas Party central-one tonight, one Thursday night, two Friday and then up to Mr. Bee's folks on Saturday. Got the gifties, but forgot about all of the cooking! Whew! My Mum sent this picture of her cute piggies in the God Awful Green Socks I knit and then pawned off….ahem…that is to say… gifted her with …when I was in Maine this summer; thus making me have to pay up since I bet that they would never grace her feet. Note to self: always use ‘inside voice’ when betting around Mum. This is a link to my new favorite thing. http://www.elfyourself.com/ I’ve made one for everyone that I have a photo on my computer for. Tooo funny! Thank you Joey T. for being the first to humiliate yourself! The countdown is on to being able to post more pictures...

I am still alive. I’ve just been working on Christmas stuff that I can’t talk about! There are mostly finished project, roving and yarn bits exploding out of every corner of my house. Suffice to say, it’ll be about three more weeks before I can post pictures! Mr. Bee is counting down the days until he is done with college! He has exactly three, count ‘em three, more classes before he’s done. His last class is the evening of the 14th he has taken the 15th off to celebrate by staying home and doing exactly what he wants to do all day! It’s been 4.5 years of homework, books and teacher’s dirty looks. He’s ready to veg on the couch for a couple of days and he deserves it. I'm am so proud of him. I went with Mrs. M., as her guest, to her quilt guild’s Christmas party a couple of nights ago. The speaker was a wonderful woman named Katie who spoke at length about Underground Railroad quilts. It was a wonderful presentation and she had beautiful quilts. The buffet dinner was yummy and we ...

I just love my job. Just when you think I’ve heard it all, I have a day like yesterday. One of my ‘kids’ came to me and asked for my help. His problem? His computer screen ‘was turned completely upside down’. And you know what? It was! The monitor was upright, but the image? On its head completely! So I poked around and fixed it. Just as I was laughing that weird things like that don’t pop up too often, another ‘kid’ came over and asked for help getting her ‘air pump needle unstuck from her bouncy ball’. No joke. She used exactly those words. She was filling up one of those exercise ball [because the current trend here is to sit on them instead of your chair which amuses me] She finished blowing it up with a bike pump and the needle wouldn’t come out. I fixed that too; two new skills to add to my resume, image uprighting and bouncy ball unsticking. That’s what you get working for scientists. They can split the atom, but they can’t change the toner in the copier….or apparently b...

Apparently the thing on my it WAS a corn (and not a horn!)….results came back benign-thank goodness. Still waiting to hear about Mr. Bee’s. Was more than a little blue this Turkey Day so didn’t do much by way of celebrating. I launched an assault on my messy house on Friday while Mr. Bee was out. How do two people create such a mess!? Put up some outdoor Xmas decorations because it was warm out. I refuse to turn them on until at least the 1st of December though! I’m still not ‘Christmassy’ yet. Although all of my shopping is done which is good! I spent Saturday scouring the countryside for my favorite Celestial Seasoning Holiday tea. Walgreens had them on sale 2/$5 (and one Walgreens had them entered into their computer incorrectly as buy one get one free so it was $2.99 for two!). I got enough to do me for the year if I ration wisely. I may even give a couple of boxes away to special friends….but they have to be VEEEEERRRRYYYY special. No pics but I am working like a fiend on the...

So Mr. Bee goes to Dr. W. today to have a thing removed from HIS arm. Not only did Dr. W. rat me out about me trying to con him into a big bandage for my tiny head boo-boo yesterday; he bandaged Mr. Bee’s arm up like he had broken it at the shoulder or something. He only has three stitches on his forearm and he’s got this groovy ace bandage thing going on all up his arm. I’ve been hosed! I think they are in cahoots. To add insult to injury, Dr. W sent him home with a roll of the ace bandagy stuff 'in case I want to wrap it around my head’. Hardy Har Har! A little late to get a free supper out of it now! Especially since the jig is up! Revenge is mine sayeth Molly Bee! I started a pair of socks at lunch today for my Grammie for Christmas. I got the softest, light, plain, peach Jaarwool. No funky stripes for Grammie. Then I got a skein of Trek in yucky browns, tans and greys-boy colors- to make a pair for my brother. Don’t know if he’ll wear them or not, but he tromps around in the ...

So I had this little ‘thing’ removed from my forehead today. Don’t know what it was. Public opinion varied from, ‘I don’t see anything at all’ to ‘I knew your horns would come in some day’. Dr. W. is having a biopsy done on it and will let me know if it is indeed an actual horn. I hope so. What a proud day that will be. There may be photos involved. So in my ongoing effort to get out of cooking dinner, I tried to bully….eh…that is…gently coax Dr. W. into a turban-esque-whole-head bandage. My plan was to milk this puppy for all it was worth and guilt Mr. Bee in to talking my poor, injured-now-recovering-from-what-must-have-been-major-surgery body out to supper somewhere tonight. Anything that looked less that a full-blown brain surgery was not going to get me even take-out Chinese. But I'm thinking that a bad-WWII-movie-style-bloodied head wrap, possibly accented with a limp, slight cough and a strategically planned swoon or two might do the trick. But he’s a tough cookie that Dr. ...

I took my button class this afternoon. I made10 misshapen ugly-ass lumps and lost aproximately $100 and three hours of my life. Mistake! I have been practicing Celtic Knotwork and made this card for a friend. I've got a long ways to go but I love how intricate they look. Knit night was fabulous on Friday night. I finished one pink sock and got the leg done on the other. I also finished a secret Christmas project so it was productive as well as entertaining. Schooner Fare cancelled on Saturday night. Chuck was ill and couldn't fly so the concert got postponed. I was so excited to go. Guess I'll just have to wait a little longer. Off to start a new secret project. Will try and blog more next week.

Deep Breath. OK, I’ve been thinking about this long enough…I’ve made a decision. I made a top-down v-neck cardigan for myself last spring. Once finished (including sewing on the buttons) I discovered that the button band was way too short. It hauled the front of the sweater up. So I did what any good knitter would do. I stuffed it in a bag and put it in storage. I checked periodically to see if the button band had decided that it had been punished enough in the cold and dark, come to its senses, and grown to the appropriate length. It hadn’t. And I checked a lot! Button bands are wicked stubborn that way. So back into storage it went. All the while this time-honored process was going on, a little voice in my head was planting the seed, “Pssst…if you’re gonna to rip out the button band anyway, why don’tcha frog the whole thing and make the crew neck version from that pattern you got in Maine? You like that version better." [See, that’s the way us arithmetically challenged, folk...

Countdown to Knit Night on Friday night! I’m sure now that it is snowy and miserable, The Sow’s Ear will be really hoppin’. Better get there early if you want a seat! I have a gift certificate just burning a whole in my pocket. I’d like to get some not-funky-colored sock yarn to knit Gram some socks for Christmas. She likes them because the cuffs don’t make marks on her legs, but she isn’t a glitz, glam, stripy, Fair Isle kinda gal. Solid colors…the lighter the better thank you! I really want to try the scarf that Jerry is doing over his the When Knitting Was A Manly Art blog. Multi-directional and textured! I have the perfect yarn for it, but that probably isn’t a project to take to The Ear on Knit Night since I’ve never tried multidirectional before. I get too involved in being a social butterfly and craning my neck to see who’s coming through the door to actually follow a pattern. Best stick to the socks. I can do those with my eyes closed! This weekend is the bi-annual open house ...

Haven’t updated for a couple of days. Still getting over my dust up with Stephen King. :-) Started a new pair of Socketta socks; pink purple and blue. Winter dropped by on Friday and it made me think about warm wooly socks again.! A combination thundershower/sleet/ice/snow storm dumped about 3 inches of yucky mush on us and it’s still here. Our neighbor across the street spent today putting up his Christmas lights. I am NOT ready for winter this year! Bah Humbug! My doc gave me some medicine that is taking a little bit to get used to so I’ve spent a quiet weekend at home. Mr. Bee is studying and I am vacillating between feeling great and doing housework and then feeling crappy and napping. Wee doggy has been ecstatic since napping is most favoritest thing ever! He’s very very good at it. He’s thinking about turning pro. I forgot to call Philosopher’s Wool on Saturday to enter their free kit contest. And I was home too! I just spaced it! Rats! Makes me want to get back to the sweater k...

I went to the Podiatrist today and the first thing she said is “Wow! Are your arches high!” I couldn’t decide if it was a compliment or not so I took it as one. (Why thank you very much, I’ve worked very hard to cultivate the highest arches in all the land.) Bottom line is that I damaged my heel tendon while I was out Geocaching in April (plantar’s faceitis-sp?) and didn’t do anything about it until now when it is so bad I can barely walk on it. What can I say, I have a high threshold for pain and a low tolerance for the medical community in general! In between I walked like a fiend an hour or so almost every day which she says was very, very Bad (with a capital B) but that my family practice doc says is very, very Good (with a capital G) for me and my diabetes. I guess the only thing to do now is to put them in a ring and let them duke it out while I sit on the sofa with a box of Godiva and watch. I give up. So I got shoe inserts and a sheet of exercises which I am to do in my bare fe...

I am knitting the coolest shawl right now. I call it my REY (Ridiculously Expensive Yarn) shawl. It knits up quick on big needles and is a really easy pattern. I saw one worked up at ‘Off The Beaten Path’ and had to have one of my own. I bought some Cherry Tree Hill purple, blue, teal variegated and some metallic variegated to match. Don’t know if I’ll wear it as a shawl shawl or as an over the coat shawl with my long grey wool coat. Ahhh…decisions decisions. I’m in a such spendy mood lately. I spent all of my birthday loot on a quilting frame and REY and now I’ve spent my work bonus on joining the Blue Moon 'Socks that Rock' sock club for next year. They sent me an invitation to join. Would have been rude not to! They send 6 sock kits containing their AWESOME yarn and lots of other goodies. Ooooo! And I also signed up for a class on how to make polyclay buttons for all of the future sweaters I will knit. It's coming up in a couple of weeks. Sigh……today it’s very very good ...

I found a guy just like this in the parking lot today on the way back in from lunch. He was very dead and a little squished but still in possession of most all of his parts. So I brought him in and asked my scientists to identify him. It took them a while, but he has been identified as Mort, the big, dead, water bug- also known as a “Toe Biter”. I can see why. He is proudly on display at my desk for Halloween. We almost learned a lesson the hard way when he was displayed much too close to the finger cookies and the line between which hideous looking things are edible and which are not became blurred. There was a quick intervention and so far, Mort remains safely uneaten, but I will remain vigilant. (These guys will eat ANYTHING.) I will perform a proper circular file burial for him at 5PM because, though he is an impressive wee beastie, quite honestly he is beginning to smell a little questionable. Happy Halloween!

"> Happy Halloween all! Here are some photos of the fistfulls of 'finger food' I made tonight. I'll give them to my scientists at work tomorrow for the big day! They love gross stuff! They're scientists! (Don't worry, it's just peanut butter fudge, gel frosting and almonds. But there is the matter of the pretzel stick in the middle to give it a nasty little boney crunch when you bite it. Surprise! Heh Heh Heh!) Raise mayhem where you can!

I went to the Belleville UFO festival with a friend on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. Went to a craft fair and had lunch at a local diner. But the best part was the parade. Lots of fun homemade floats about aliens and alien patrols. A million little kids dressed in their Halloween costumes (and some adults too) getting candy that the parade folks threw. The Shriners were there an their ATVs. There were approximately 172 Dairy Princesses and Queens. Why it was such a stellar parade that folks came from other galaxies to see it! A couple of them even traded in their vehicles down at the Ford dealership for hotel money so that they could stay the entire weekend, it was so much fun! We also went to a new yarn shop. Well, not new…it’s been there a year but the name of it is “Off The Beaten Path’…and it was...so I didn't know about it. It was really nice though-in a house-and the rooms were filled floor to ceiling with lots of yarns that I haven’t seen on other shops around. The staff wa...

Mrs. M. and I sallied forth to Belleville (UFO Capitol of the World-really check it out!) this evening to try a new restaurant there-Belle’Bleu. It is Continental/Rustic French cuisine, much higher than my normal Mcstandards, but Mon Dieu, it was magnifique! We started with a cheese plate that included a poached pear stuffed with blue cheese-two great tastes that taste great together as it turns out...who knew? Then I had the pistachio encrusted roughy with an orange marmalade sauce. It was really good too! Mrs. M. had a chicken dish stuffed with goat cheese, peppers and olives and wrapped in prochuitto that was sublime as well. We dined in high style-even had a glass of merlot. And it was less expensive than the new steak house down the street-go figure! Great food-great company…I can think of worse ways to spend a cold rainy Wisconsin evening! Now I should go continue on my acrylic fingerless gloves for Friend-Lu. Got one two- thirds done yesterday-maybe I can complete it before ER i...

Because of the verigation in the Cascade Yarn, you can't see the cables-or any of the definition really-oh well. I've already given them away so it doesn't matter. I will make my next pair with a solid purple. We'll see if those photograph better. At any rate they are warm and comfy! Friend-Lu thinks so too! They will keep her hands toasty while she types! At least I got to love them for a little while! (And no, I can't explain the angle of my bangs in this photo!They are straight across, I swear!) UPDATE! The Good News: I just got my gloves back! YAY! The Bad News: Seems Friend-Lu has a wool allergy and thinks I tried to kill her with them. BOO! I think some fuzzy acrylic ones are in order for her! Tuit suit!

So Mrs. M. comes over last night to watch The Bachelor. Oh. My. God. Will someone please hold Erika down for me so I can rabbit-kick that tiara off her spoiled little head?!?! Being a selfish, immature, whiney, little, rich girl from TX does not make you a princess, Princess! But anyway. I digress. We had tea and watched Lorenzo and I nearly completed my second fingerless glove. Photo coming soon I promise. Doesn't matter anyway because Blogger won't let me upload any photos today I guess. I was going to include the magazine pics of the glove and one of that princess-wannabe, Erika, but I can't. Oh well. I’m beginning to cave! I promised myself that this year I wasn’t making nuttin for nobody for Christmas. But there are so many cute patterns out there! And if I quit my job and work every nanosecond from now until December 24th at midnight…I could maybe get everything done…..Heavy sigh...There must be some kind of a seven-step program for this kind of problem.

Knit Night Friday night was great. There were quite a few folks there and I sat next to an interesting lady who farms silk worms and was knitting from the most fabulous yarn that she had harvested, spun with Merino and dyed a beautiful goldenrod color. She was knitting it in to a shawl. I found a pattern in the new Interweave Knits Holiday Gift magazine for fingerless gloves with a couple of cables up the back. Got one ¾ finished by 11PM. Finished it this weekend. I really like the pattern although I am knitting a little under gauge and they are still a little big. I will go down a needle size for the next pair. Would make a quick and easy Xmas gift for friends. Will put a photo up when I get the other one done. Saturday I had an at-home-alone day. Mr. Bee was away so I did a bunch of catching up and finishing. When he got home we went to see The Prestige which was wonderful. I love a film that keeps you guessing until the last frame. I give it an 8 out of 10-mostly due to some s...

It's nasty outside-cold and rainy. It's nasty inside-one of my favorite kids* just resigned and will leave in two weeks. I'm still snottin' and blowin' from my cold. I have a heel spur that's getting so bad that it's murder to walk on and my appt. to see about it isn't for two more weeks. I just want to curl up on the sofa with a box of See's chocolates and watch Oprah but I can't because I'm diabetic and Oprah doesn't come on 'til 4. Woe is me! There! This whine has been brought to you by Molly Bee. Thanks for letting me get that out of my system. Bossman is gone today so I am dealing with the general mayhem and disharmony that always accompanies his absence. My kid with the...hmmm....how to put this...'least people skills' likes to try and assert a command position much to the dismay of his peers. His orations are getting more lengthy, as well as more pompus and more condescending in tone (in so much as that's possible)....

It's been quite a whirlwind the last few days. Mrs. M took me out to dinner Monday night in an ongoing celebration of my most recently completed solar excursion. We went to Grey's Tied House. It is the yummiest! And the company was wonderful. We topped the evening off at her house watching The Bachelor on her new mega-huge TV. That little Italian prince guy looks even better life-sized! She recently finished a beautiful pair of socks and is starting another. Not to be outdone, I started another pair too-from a heavyish, tweedy-type yarn. It's really soft. Will make good slipper socks. Yesterday was one of those days I love. There were a lot of little things at work and at home that had been piling up and I managed to churn through all of them in record time; got my hair cut, got a lot of holiday shopping done,did laundry, took my old sewing machine out to the mall and gave it to friend Scott, cooked a nice dinner-roasted green beans, steamed broccoli and steak. The only ...

Yay! The Snot Sox are finished. I love the colors. I did indeed finish them before I finished the actual cold I'm sorry to say! Today is my b-day and Mr. Bee has certainly outdone himself. He started on Friday by having 3 dozen peach, pink, yello and white roses delivered to my office. He woke me up with breakfast this morning from the Pancake Cafe;Portabella Mushroom and Havarti Omelete and Blueberry Pancakes. I finished breakfast and picked up the Sunday Paper only to find a TQ Diamonds jewelry gift box underneath. In it was an amazing white gold topaz/citrone/peridot/amethest/garnet bracelet. Then he took me an hour north to the casino for an hour or so. Came out $200 richer than we went in! Then we went to an orchard and I got some of my favorite honey crisp apples and some cider donuts to take in to work tomorrow. We stopped at this roadside historical marker and got an easy geocache. And the perfect ending was coming home and walking down to the new Tied House at the end of o...

It snowed yesterday and last night! We even had a skiff on the deck this morning. Wee Doggie took one look when we let him out to pee this morning and decided he could hold it 'til spring. He hates rain and cold. I would too if my bits were low to the ground and dragged in the wet and cold too! Four-Layer Pumpkin Cake ! Click for the recipe! I made the cake part for this last night. It smelled heavenly and came out perfectly. I will go home and frost it in time to take it to Stitch and *itch at The Sow's Ear tonight. It's to celebrate my 41st successful mission completely around the sun. Well, if I make it to Sunday that is. I plan to embark on my 42nd trip first thing Monday morning! And as Steven Wright says, "I plan to live forever...so far so good." I was hoping to have my 'Robbing Peter To Pay Jack' quilt ready for the binding by tonight but that didn't happen. I actually went to bed at 7:30 last night I was so exhausted. I will finish up my secon...

I put my pedal to the metal last night and finished my Halloween Quilt top. It's a variation of the old Robbing Peter to Pay Paul Block. It looks really blue in the photo but it's actually mostly deep purples. Gotta love any holiday that lets you put purples and orange together. Off to get a bat tonight-machine quilt it tomorow night and hopefully put the binding on it at The Sow's Ear on Thursday night-just in time for the big day!

Since I am a football widow almost every Sunday afternoon-at least when the Packers play, I decided that I am going to do something I want to do by myself...for me. This afternoon was spent at a nearby park. I sat on the rocks by the roaring dam, soaked up the autumn sun, wrote in my journal and visited with this guy: You have to look really close but there is a huge heron fishing in the shallows below the dam. On the top pic he is on the left side of the dam. In the next one he is more in the center. He didn't seem to have much luck so after about a half an hour he moved over to deeper water above the dam. See his long neck and head? Then I moved to the other side of the park and just sat by the blue water under the blue, blue sky and meditated in the cool breeze: Sorry Wisconsin, but this afternoon was waaaaaaay better than a Packer Game!

Not much knitting going on this weekend. I will still have my Snot Socks done in a couple of days but that's it. Yesterday morning was spent in a neighboring town at a Fall Festival. It was a beautiful day-just check out that sky: There were polka dot alpacas... And baby ones too... Teeny Tiny Kittens... And pumpkin kitties too... And even a quilt show Doesn't get much better than that!

Do you ever have those days when if just one more person states the obvious you're going to crawl up on your desk and jump? There are, conservatively estimated...oh I dunno...say... 57 bazillion people where I work. I met up with at least 49 bazillion of them in the hall today. They said ‘hi’. I said ‘hi. Then all 49 bazillion of them said, “Oh…do you have a cold?” Since I work with scientists, let’s look at the scientific evidence shall we? My nose is chaffed, beacon red, and running. I have a box of tissues permanently attached to my left hand. My eyes are swollen, watery, slits. My normally melodious tones are now somewhere between Kermit the frog and an actual frog of some very nasty-sounding variety. I’d say that is pretty solid evidence. Yes, I have a cold! But toward the end of the day, I got over being so cranky about it and got to thinking that maybe folks aren’t as intellectually challenged as I was making them out to be. There could be other, very valid, reasons for my ...

Good Ol' Mr. Bee. He's such a generous man. He shared his cold with me and now that he's showing signs of improvement, I'm starting in snorting and blowing. My head feels like it's going to explode. I can only breath through my mouth and I sound like a muppet. Oh well, lots of knitting time while I recoop I guess...

This weekend had such promise. And now it has turned into a real bummer. We were supposed to go a couple of hours north to spend the weekend with friends at their cottage on Roch-a-Cri Lake. I was so exited. I love these friend and I love camping and I love the water. I scurried and made chili and fruit salad and dessert. I had a list of all of the games and warm clothes we had to pack. Camera was loaded with new batteries. Then we got up bright and early this morning…too bright and too early….because Mr. Bee was sick. Poor guy hacked his way through the night; he latest new and exciting symptom of his week-long journey to actually getting this cold. He felt so guilty about all of the cooking and planning and all that our friends have done as well… and he wanted to go so badly that he hated calling to tell them that he thought he’d better stay home. He debated about it until daylight. Turns out it was a good thing he did stay home as he has gone decidedly downhill since he got up this ...

Based on my recent experiments here in The Ark, all rodents like to rearrange furniture and do housekeeping during the wee hours of the morning. Sneakers-the-Bunny has always enjoyed making thumping noises about 2 AM by gleefully picking up her litter box and dropping it repeatedly. Enter Flake, Rosebud, and Key, our three new gerbil friends. Two of them bumped their respective houses around the fish tanks all night while the other one ran hot laps on her squeaky wheel. It went something like this: Sneakers : THUMP! Gerbil 1 : bumpbumpbump Gerbil 2 : bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpumpbumpbumpbumpbump Sneakers : THUMP!!!! THUMP!!!!! Gerbil 3 : squeeaaaaky squeeaaaaky squeeaaaaky squeeaaaaky Sneakers : THUMP! (Always has to have the final word!) Repeat ad nauseum throughout the night. I laid there for quite a while trying to figure out if they had devised some kind of rodent Morse Code and were talking to each other: Sneakers : Get used to the kisses and cuddles. I’ve been captive for over three...

Oh My God! I need a keeper. Just got back from lunch. I made Mr. Bee and myself sandwiches with some roast beef and cheese I got at the deli. Every single bite I took was tough and had gristle in it. I got to the very last bite only to discover that I had eaten the entire little piece of paper (less one bite) that they put between the cheese slices. Deeee-liish!!!!! I dare say I added fiber to my diet in an unconventional way today! And maybe my keeper will be my personal secretary as well. I was fretting and stewing about how busy my life was going to be last week. It was my first week back from vacation and I had Hospice on Wednesday, dentist on Thursday, Knit Night on Friday. Busy! Busy! Busy! Not so much as it turns out...Hospice is this week. My dentist's receptionist informed me when I arrived at my appt. last Thursday that it is, in actuality this Thursday and Knit Night was two Fridays ago and I missed it. There is something to be said for writing things down on a piece ...

I went to an interesting workshop at the hospital this evening. It was called “Bashing Through Barriers”. The presenter, Jane Birr, gave tips, tricks and tools to establish where you are, where you want to be, and how to deal with the excuses and obstacles that arise between you and your goals; be they health, emotional or spiritual. It was all common sense stuff that we’ve all read in women’s magazine and heard from Doctor Phil, but there is something about sitting in a room full of people in the same boat that you’re in that is a little more motivational. I’m always hopeful that I’ll be told that there is a ‘magic bullet’ or that if I just wait and hope long enough things will turn out the way I want/envision. As usual I was told that the cards we’re dealt often suck but the only way to change them is through motivation, determination and persistence. Still no magic bullet…..Maybe it’s time to try determination…again. Why does there seem to be less determination and motivation eve...

Back at work: Day Two. Everyone I meet tells me how much my boss missed me and that he was running around like the proverbial chicken while I was out for two weeks. When people asked him how to do things, he just told them that he didn't know; that he always just gave them to Molly Bee and 'they got done'. I've had more than one suggestion that now is the time to ask for a raise-LOL. It's been crazy busy of course, dinging out my desk and emails. We had a new phone system installed while I was gone so we are suffering all of the snafus that involves. It's all computerized so if the system goes down we are toast. The cool thing about it is that all voicemail messages go into .wav files in the email box. There's good and bad in all change I guess but some of my 'kids' always go kicking and screaming. They are scientists for God's sake. One would think that they could handle figuring out a couple of different options on a telephone! Not so much ...

Well… I wrote an update while I was in Maine. It was a good one too-possibly Pulitzer Prize winning material. And Blogger ate it. I was too ticked to start over. The world will forever be deprived of my witty observances of life in Aroostook County. And now my streak of writing genius has ended. Too bad you all missed it and are stuck with the same old same old. We arrived home yesterday. We drove from Crystal, Maine to Erie, Pennsylvania on Friday and then left at 6 a.m. from Erie and made it home at 5 p.m. Central time. It took us over two hours to get through Chicago. It was bumper to bumper, ten M.P.H. traffic for mile after mile. There was no apparent reason. The road looked like Shriner’s parade with all the lane switches and fancy maneuvering. We were both tired and grumpy before we hit Chicago. I thought we were going to end up in divorce court before we finally got to Schamberg. But made it we did. And I finished one sock and turned the heel on the other during the trip so it ...

We're all packed and ready to roll. Leaving at 4AM tomorrow for my home State of Maine ! I may get a chance or two to check in while I'm there, but if not, see you all on the 16th!