Wednesday, but with overtones of Thursday

First long weekend of the year and it’s a supersized long weekend!  Four days off, four days off, chant it with me!  Whoo hoo!  Okay, fine, I know it’s not the FIRST long weekend of the year.  That would have been New Year’s Day, but really, isn’t that just a tag-a-long to the 15 levels of hell that are the holidays?  Exactly!  So, as I was saying, it’s the first long weekend of the year!  Yay!  The full moon this week has made work, erm, interesting to say the least.

Not much going on around here lately.  Watching Stella’s ear heal (slowly), trying really hard to do 15 minutes of spinning a day, and getting the household finances in order.  Visited the bank yesterday to rewrite the mortgage and roll the renovation line o’ credit into it.  I’m not feeling to good about interest rates in the near future, I think the banks are getting ready to hose us, (again), so I wanted to get it all done before that happened.  I do hate going to the bank, I always feel like I should have a cap in my hand, be ready to pull on my forelock, and say ‘gov’nor’ a lot.

Oh, and I won this award at work where I get to choose my prize.  Not from a preset catalogue or anything, just something tangible (no gift certificates) that you can have to remember.  It was awesome when I told them I wanted yarn.  I have firmly cemented my spot of the office weirdo.  Go me!  I did get renewed for another year though so I guess I’m not quite serial killer weird or anything.

I’ve also been thinking about what my favourites are lately too.  Favourite movies, favourite books, favourite foods, favourite yarns, etc. (did all the US resident’s heads just explode from all those extra U’s?  LOL).  To that end, here are my favourite, oh I don’t know, six movies.  Keep in mind, these probably are NOT great movies, they are just flickies that I love and have watched over and over again.  If I’m channel surfing and hit one of these babies, I will stop and watch them to the end almost every time.  In no particular order:

1. Resident Evil - liver attached to Doberman Pinschers, need I say more?
2. The Quick and the Dead – Sharon Stone (pre-creepy/weird), Leonardo DiCaprio, Dabney Coleman, and Russel Crowe.  The level of crazy attractiveness in this movies is almost off the scale.
3. Love Actually – Every time Emma Thompson opens the Christmas gift and it’s not the necklace – tears running down my face and don’t even get me started on how cute Colin Firth and Lucia Moniz are together.
   
4. Jane Eyre - Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke.  If I’m home sick I’ll either be watching all 239 minutes of this or something with Hugh Grant in it.  Try it, the best cold remedy ever.
5. Demolition Man – don’t judge me, I love this stupid movie so much.  Hubby got it for me for Christmas a few years ago, one of my favourite gifts ever.
6. Withnail and I – seriously, if you have not seen this, you really should.  Richard E. Grant is brilliant, all the cast are brilliant really.  Let’s see if I can find a Youtube video of my favourite scenes….right, my fave bit starts around 1:10 when their drug dealer is telling them about his new foray into the toy industry:

Also, Uncle Monty just might be the best character ever written.  So funny.

Brilliant stuff.  Seriously, go rent it, steal it, whatever.  Just see it.

Right, time for a bit o’ dinner.  An maybe a movie.    And hey, now I want to hear what your faves are.  Consider it a meme, name as many as you want and for whatever reasons you want.  It’s all very loosey goosey.

Food

We watched Julie and Julia last night.  I so enjoyed Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci.  They were the most wonderful on-screen couple.  I really hope that Julia and Paul Child were that happy and fun as a couple, they sort of made my heart sing a little bit.

Anyway, this morning I woke up obsessed with making Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon for Sunday dinner.   Right, need to have the right mood, ambiance, if you will.  Hmmm, okay, a glass of wine.  What?  2:00 pm on a Sunday is NOT too early for a glass of wine.  I have to do it right, no?

Okay, now for some music.  Ah, I know:

Good, good, that’s perfect.  Right, ingredients.  Ah, and this is where we hit a bit of a snag.  Hmm, 6 oz chunk of bacon.  Nope, not currently in the house.  18 – 24 small white onions.  Nope, we don’t have those either.  Shoot!  Button mushrooms for sautéing?  Nope, we only have some mini Portobello.  That might work?!?!?!?

No, no, no!   Then it’s not Julia’s Boeuf Bourguignon, now is it?  Darn it.  Now what am I going to make for dinner?  Let’s see, what can I make with similar ingredients so I don’t have to go to the store?

Well, we do have all the ingredients for chuckwagon chilli.  Yeah, that’s going to need a different soundtrack though.

Ahhhh, that’s better.  Huh, I prolly should have opened a beer or a whiskey instead then, eh?  Oh well, c’est la vie!

Honest, it was the best ball in the world!

Which would explain why a fight broke out over its amazing bestnest.  Actually, it was the standard green racquetball ball.  Unfortunately, this one must have been special because it caused a dog fight of epic proportions in the backyard.  Unfortunately for Stella, the holder of the sacred ball, she refuses to drop a ball once she has captured it.  Not even if a small and amazingly aggressive terrier named Abbie is hanging off her ear.

If Stella had just dropped the ball and taught an incredibly overdue lesson to the aforementioned savage terrier, she would not have spent Wednesday night like this;

Note:  doesn’t she sort of make you think of the cover of Plague Dogs?  I haven’t read that book in years, made me weepy for days.

Anyway, she looks pretty cool, right?  Also, did you know that the canine ear bleeds like no one’s business when it has been bitten by a wee terrier?  Yes it does! Especially if the Stella that was bitten continuously shakes her head after the attack.  My kitchen looked like we had been entertaining the local chapter of the True Blood fan club by the time the evening was over.  Up the walls, over the cabinets/windows/doors, heck it was even on the ceiling.  I guess spring cleaning will be happening this weekend. 

So, I can hear y’all out there saying to yourselves, ‘Really?  Stella just accepted head bandaging and wrapping with no fuss at all?’  Yeah, no.  Which explains why today, things look a lot more like this:

The blue tape?  Yeah, that’s painter’s tape.  Hubby was afraid the Cone of Silence would scratch the new cabinets.  It also seems to help her understand her new peripheral depths, so that’s a bonus.

Sure hasn’t slowed her down though,

She still wants to see what you have in your hands.   Cause hey, it could be edible!

And that pretty much closes out this week.  Oh, and I turned 41 today.  I really don’t feel 41.  Most days I’m lucky if I feel older than an idiot teenager.  That’s probably a good thing though, right?  Sort of a bimbo young at heart feeling?  LOL.

Tomorrow, breakfast with the knitters at the local greasy spoon followed by an orgy of fibrey goodness, followed by dinner with hubby and my parents.  My mom is making me my most favourite dinner in the world, roast beast and tortured pudding.  Mmmmmmm, I don’t even need the roast beast, just the Yorkshire Pudding and gravy.  Nirvana!  My mom spoils me rotten.    She’s the best!

Really? No! That cannot be right!?@?!!?!?

My Blue Faced Leicester is almost dry.  I did some of that mathematic magic (counted strands and entered the number in the spreadsheet I created for such things), and it turns out that this big boy is 795 metres/869 yards.

Um, that is the most yardage I think I’ve ever got out of 8 ozs.  Boorah!  It also feels super nice.  I think this is my favourite yarn that I’ve spun thus far.

Yep, it’s official, I’m completely won over to this whole spinning 15 minutes a day.  Once you sit down you almost always spin more than 15 minutes.  Then, suddenly, you have a some snazzy new yarn.  Sweet!  Now, what to spin next?

If necessity is the mother of invention,

then surely Mickey Mouse is the father.  To explain my point, Exhibit A.

He made it himself and he’s ever so pleased with it.  We couldn’t possibly have unevenly sliced bread maker bread.  Could we?

Why so many pictures?  I thought it was important that you got to see just how many pictures he took of it.  Oh yeah, we’re cool!

In other news, that whole spinning for 15 minutes a day thing?  Totally working out.  Mainly because I have a supervisor who makes sure I’m getting it done.  Actually, I have two supervisors.

I got the job done though.  Eight ounces of Blue Faced Leicester.  It’s from the Spunky Eclectic fibre club and the colour is Myrtle.  It’s really nice stuff.

I don’t now the yardage (is it metreage in metric????) yet.  The skein is currently having a nice soak in the bathtub.  Now, what to spin next?

A new season, a new war…

A war on weeds that is.  Behold, my arch enemy, the Creeping Buttercup aka Ranunculus Repens:

Oh worthy foe, let this finally be the year that I finally vanquish you from my flower beds!

Anyway, here is today’s before shots:

Add some backbreaking labour, okay, perhaps not exactly backbreaking, but I totally broke a sweat a number of times:

Okay, yeah, it doesn’t look a lot better, really.  Well, it does to my eye, but perhaps not to anyone else.  I also switched a couple of plants around to different spots.  My placing of perennials last year was a little off.  Hopefully this new layout will ensure that everyone gets plenty o’ sun.

We also took our three tomato plants outside for some quality sunshine time.   They are getting pretty big now and starting to flower.  Soon, little baby tomatoes to eat.  Nom, nom, nom.

The dogs were very helpful of course:

Yep, super helpful alright.

I also found a skeleton leaf.  So pretty!

The most intricate lace I’ve ever seen.

Then, when all the work was done for the day, baby took me to McDonald’s for my yearly McNugget fix.  Fan-freakin-tastic.  Even if it did take a year off my life.

And that, is how Saturday looked in this neck of the woods.

Definitely spring time

How can I be sure?  Here was my best hint yet:

Still not convinced?  Here, look at all this green & growing stuff:

Please ignore the small squatting dog.  Sigh.  So classy. 

It was almost 17 degrees today.  Crazy warm.  The dogs were also feeling springy.  Lots of barking and attempts to interest anyone in chasing them.  Why do dogs so love to be chased?

And all was watched over by matriarch Jane.

She’s going to be 13 next week.  I can’t believe how fast time is flying by.

I also got an award at work today.  Sort of a recognition for being the go-to human.  The problem solver, I guess.  Felt kind of bad leaving early to go to a job interview afterwards.  Awkward!  The interview went really well, but I won’t know for a couple of weeks or so.

Okay.  It’s Friday.  Must rest up before tomorrow’s festival of yard fun.  Gonna cut the lawn with the new mower, dontcha know!  Happy Friday y’all.

More questions than answers really

All winter I stare up into the trees, looking for crows nests.  I mentally set the place of every one that I spot, so that I can remember them come spring.  You see, I really like crows.  I could watch them for hours.  Heck, who am I kidding, I have, on occasion, sat and watched them for hours.  Anyway, as I was saying, I keep marking out these nest sights in my head.  Every winter.  All winter.

Come spring, I have thoughts of going back to one, or more, of them and standing under it and listening to baby crows.  I’ve never heard a baby crow and I’d quite like to.  Then spring leaps up its green leafy head and poof.  I can’t see any of the blessed nests anymore.   Because when I was setting those sights in my mind, it was using all those bare black branches and tree shapes as landmarks.

I know, I know.  Why don’t I just write it down.  Well yeah, it’s easy enough to say that now.  Hindsight being 20/20 and all.  But, all the leaves are out hiding the nests aren’t they.  I guarantee that I won’t remember about the whole ‘write it down’ thing come this winter either.  I feel like Sisyphus, I swear I do.  Granted, a rather silly and not very forward thinking version, but Sisyphus nonetheless.

Probably. But it’s just rude to throw that in people’s face at 6:20 in the morning!

Spring is so very sprunging

Today was supposed to be book club.  We were going to talk about Gen-X.  That didn’t happen.  Unfortunately, Stella the wonder dog has been a little off and seizure prone the last couple of days so I stayed home to be the good puppy mom.

The weather was perfect, the sun was shining, the yard looked like crap.  Soooo, while Stella was snoozing, hubby and I got some stuff done.  First off though, before you can do yard work, you need some extra cool boots.  Like these:

Got them yesterday at Canadian Tire.  I feel like I’m 8 years old when I wear them.  Then we got busy.  Chopping down a bunch of nasty cherry trees that were growing outside our fence and out over the ditch.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love cherry trees.  Unfortunately, these had never been pruned properly, kids had broken half the main trunks pulling the trees down over the ditch to pick the cherries, and then last year’s snow was the final straw.  They just fell and drooped and generally were destroyed.   So, here they are:

For scale, that pile is taller than me, is as long as our garage, and is about 15 feet wide.  Oh yeah.  That was some work cutting all that down and dragging it into the yard to be ‘dealt with’.  What do I mean by ‘dealt with’?  Let me show you.

Uh huh.  That’s a Bear Cat chipper shredder.  She’s a beast.  We decided that hubby was the logical choice for using the chain saw to make the branches more manageable for the chipper shredder.  I’ll tell you my vacuum story one day.  It will become obvious why I was not the choice for the chainsaw tasks.  First hubby showed me the ins and outs of the beast.

It was loud, scary, and had a definite possibility for injury.  I think you can best understand my feelings for this process from this shot:

I was scared of her, to be perfectly frank.  But, you know, we worked on our relationship.  Got to know each other’s limitations.   After about 2 or 3 hours I was looking a little bit like this.  So tired!  Also, all those little random nasty branches slapping and scratching at me just really sucked.

Yeah, its a good look, right?

Eventually, we were done and look, it’s magic!  The big pile o’ branches was conquered! 

Okay, not magic.  More like mulch.

How cool is that?   Slightly chubby dog for scale.  And now, I’m going to go eat dinner.  A gorgeous chunky stew that’s been cooking away in the slow cooker all afternoon.  Mmmmmm.  Oh, and onion/cheddar bread!  Gorgeous!