Packing

We are about to pack ourselves and our children into the Eurovan and drive 900 miles through the desert.  I would not necessarily say it is the bleakest drive in the world (that stretch along the border through El Paso is pretty bleak, but we’re not going that way this year), not is it the most monotonous (SharpSticks wins that one for her drive through the wheat fields of, hm, Alberta was it?), but it does have a certain featurelessness that is typical of much desert driving.  

Just to make things interesting, we’re taking a hard right at Fort Stockton, Texas, detouring from the Interstate this year and going through Carlsbad and Roswell in New Mexico.  

For those of you unfamiliar with NM geography, Carlsbad has what are among the most famous caverns in the world situated nearby.  Aptly titled, Carlsbad Caverns National Monument.  (I love that web address.  The simplicity.)  And Roswell has made itself famous for association with extra-terrestrial life.  Our terminal point in this grand tour is Albuquerque, city of my childhood.  We are still deluding ourselves that we will make it there in one day.  

We are two drivers, and the drive from here to there is 14 hours, not counting pee breaks, leg stretching, dinner, and stops to appreciate the cultural/ educational/ social/ geographical/ historical/ silent and/or childless significance of any given place.

So today we are deciding what to pack into the van with us and the three Sonars.  So far we have packed two audio books and a bucket of car-appropriate crafty/fiddly things.  Oh, and need I say there will be a bucket of legos and a kilo of stickers?

Perhaps clothes and sunscreen would be wise additions?  And of course, some knitting.  I can’t decide between a very weird sock (I tried to link directly, but it was weird… it’s the Conservative sock, which will be decidedly unconservative in some actual colors) or a sweater for Partner (The Hacky Sack Hoodie from Son of Stitch and Bitch—though I tried to talk him into the totally hot Messenger sweater with the skull on the shoulder).  Go ahead and laugh.  Oh yeah, sure, ‘take the sweater,’ you might say, wiping away a tear of hilarity, ‘to knit in the 100+ degree (Fahrenheit) New Mexico desert.   Good plan.’  But I will need some knitting to wile away the hours, knitting that isn’t too challenging, so that I can follow the pattern over the wailing and gnashing of teeth (‘My butt hurts’ or ‘I know we just stopped ten miles ago, but I will not pee in a cup!’).  

So, what must you have with you when you go on a trip?  Sedatives?  A travel guide?  A nanny?  Earplugs? 

Still Nothing

I love these teas.  The peachy Black Tea is my favorite, with the Energizing Black running a close second (oooh, but the Chai is good too).  Besides their amazing depth of flavor, the cool company vibe, and the bald little old man who used to be on the box, I love the quotes on the tea tags.  

Each tag has some pithy quote on it.  

“The palest ink is better than the best memory.  —Wise Saying from the Orient

“The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.”  —Mark Twain

I love them so much that for a while, I kept my tags every day and entered them on my googlepage.  (Aside:  that rose was in my front yard, on a bush that has now expired, which is a bummer because it was such a lovely coral color and it smelled great too.)

Now you can go talk amongst yourselves about how crazy I am.  Go on.  It’s ok.  I already knew.  

Next:  Who says I can’t blog while on vacation?

Jelly Dungeon

We had breakfast for dinner tonight.  A someone-in-this-house-was-born-in-a-Southern-state dinner of biscuits, sausage, milk gravy, and eggs (do these parents ever feed their children fruit or vegetables?).  I can’t even remember what we were talking about.  The conversation meandered around for a while, and somewhere Sonar X5 popped off with that phrase.  

Jelly Dungeon.  With giggles on top. 

He was just being silly.  Rhyming or stream-of-consciousnessing or something.  But I love the phrase.  What could a Jelly Dungeon be?

Partner suggested an irc chatroom for people with food fetishes (a whole other kind of foodie).

I thought of a sticky, secret basement room.  

‘Jelly’ is such a wholesome word.  Sweet, good to eat with peanut butter or on a hot biscuit.  ‘Dungeon’ conjures other, more punishmenty or at least dark things.  Put them together and what do you get?  Bippity, bobbity, boo.  

What’s in your Jelly Dungeon?

P.S. I’m making a turtle.

Pic-less, sort of

My digital camera is broken.  I have procrastinated the fixing of it for no good reason.  

I could chat you up about all of the stuff I’ve been making.  I finished Sonar X5’s Ravenclaw-ish socks.  Started a pair of ballet slippers for me.  And have worked nearly a foot of the red mohair scarf.  I’ve recently decimated the mending pile, made a pair of shorts (also for Sonar X5), and will today cut fabric on a dress for me (Simplicity 3877, the sleeveless v-neck style).  

But there is nothing more boring than crafty chat with no pictures.  I can tell you about the fabulous floral print for the dress, with it’s splashy combination of orange and red and hot pink, but without a picture to catch your attention, to show you just how yummy it is, well…  *sigh*  It’s not even any fun to write about without the pictures.  

Ok, so, actually, I do have a picture of the fabric (and my reading stack from last October).  You may have seen it before.  Halloween costumes must have intervened.  

This fabric came from Hawaii, purchased by my grandmother, and shared begrudgingly a few years ago.  

I will take 12 pattern pieces, cut no fewer than 30 separate bits of fabric, and magically assemble them into a smoking hot dress to wear—well, perhaps to the grocery store or the library?  I hope I have enough fabric.

Now, I just need to clean the drying fennel blossoms off the sewing table.  Either that or make a fennel-scented dress. 

Licorice anyone?

The Digital Home

Not too long ago, there was one computer in my house.  A trusty old Compaq Presario laptop.  It was fresh and new way back in grad school, but has stuck with us through thick and thin.  No longer does it travel, but lives in the center of the living room, shared by the whole family, leaned on to keep our digital lives on track.  

Then we brought home the SNB*, which now sits next to the Compaq here at the big desk.   We have grand plans to tidy up and refresh the trusty old Compaq, to extend its life as the demands for computer time in our family of five become greater.  

Bringing home the SNB, however, seems to have opened a floodgate.  Where we had one computer, suddenly I find myself looking at four.  Yes, FOUR computers sitting around me on two tables.  The Compaq, the iMac, Partner’s work laptop (which he has brought home with him on summer vacation—which started today for him), and a clunky IBM Aptiva (now christened the Grey Ghost), complete with a rolling computer cart/desk thingy.  

Partner adopted the Aptiva and its table last weekend from his folks, in an ambitious, if possibly misguided, adventure in Linux-land.  He plans to “tinker” with it a bit.  To “experiment” with some open-source stuff for a while.  So while penguin-ware loads onto the Grey Ghost, he fiddles with his work computer, trying to catch up on an email backlog (some summer vacation, huh?).

And this does not even count his “old” work laptop, still in his office, which he plans to go retrieve, so that over the summer he can wipe it and rebuild it for some other use when he returns to work in six weeks.  

Now, while I’m not so much the tech-geek myself, I can recognize the allure of tinkering with computers.  There is something very exciting about staring at a computer’s guts and wondering about the way the electrons flow.  Something thrilling about the puzzle of understanding and putting together code.  About compiling a set of software that is a little bit (or a lot) off the beaten track.  But I admit that I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the stuff piled around my workspace.  All of the cables and beeps and hums that we now have crammed into this corner.  

I wonder if anyone would notice if I took the SNB back to my room and shut the door?  

*Sexy New Beast, i.e. this yummy iMac.