This post is for the locals. This weekend, May 17-18 is the Willamette Valley Music Fest. In its 38th year, Music Fest features over 30 bands on two stages, an art expo, food vendors and beer and wine concessions. Sponsored by the UO Cultural Forum it is free to everyone! There’s a wide variety of music from indie rock to bluegrass, from folk to reggae.
It should be a really warm weekend, and sunny, so folks should wear sunscreen and plan to drink lots and lots of water. TheBoy and I will be there for part of the weekend (I’m not sure which part yet). I’ll be running around with my camera, likely getting sunburnt through my SPF 85. If you’re local, come out and enjoy some good music. You can find all the pertinent information on the website, and there’ll be an insert in this week’s Weekly if you want to see it all printed out on paper.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have no financial interest in the WVMF, but I am connected to the Cultural Forum.
Ever since our encounter with the stray cat at Nanie’s house last October, my husband and I have been talking on and off about getting a cat. We really want a dog, but our current circumstances are not amenable to that. Last Thursday, a small, sad black cat showed up at our door. He cried and pushed his way in as TheBoy left for work in the morning. He stayed there, pressed up against the door until the afternoon, crying intermittently. Not able to stand his suffering, I brought him in and shut him in the bathroom and headed to talk to the apartment manager to see if they might keep a record of who owned what cats in the complex. No such luck.
This left us with a dilemma. Pay the pet deposit and keep the cat, while looking for the rightful owner? Take the cat to the shelter? Shoo the cat away and hope he didn’t make it out to our very busy street? We opted for the first option and, I admit, to our chagrin, his owner was found before dinner time. However, we were determined that now was the time to adopt a cat. And so we did.
Friday, TheBoy left work early to go and visit the humane society (Greenhill) and spent some time in the Cattery. What a trip that place was! A large open room full of toys and cat trees and cats everywhere! There are also ancillary rooms that hold more specific types of cats ranging from new arrivals to the elderly and from kittens to special needs cats. We wandered around, petting cats and trying to gauge their interest in us. Not much from most of them. So we set about the ancillary rooms. In the second room we found our new girl. White, medium length hair and with grey tabby spots, she began purring immediately and reached out to touch us. That was all it took, we were sold. We took care of the paperwork and now, she’s ours!
Introducing Pica (pee-ka, which is after the unit of measurement in typography. Admittedly, we’re pronouncing it wrong, but she responded more to it as pee-ka than the correct pie-ka.)
We took her in for her free wellness check-up on Monday where she got her rabies vaccine. All is well with our little girl and we are spending much time playing with and loving on her.
Dear Meatloaf,
As a child, I spent many hours listening to Bat Out of Hell (on vinyl!), singing and dancing whilst doing household chores with my sisters. I cannot count the number of times I have watched you sing “Hot Patootie” before you meet your untimely demise at the hands of the world’s favorite sweet transvestite. I even gave Bat Out of Hell 2: Back into Hell a good shot, even though it wasn’t as good as the original. I’ve heard you were fabulous in Fight Club, and I loved you in Formula 51. However, while watching tv this morning, I saw this:
Occasionally, my husband looks at me and says “my toes are cold. I have no hand-knit socks.” Now, many people would say it was cold hearted of me to live with him for going on four years now and have not knit him socks. These people would be the ones who don’t know that he wears a size 13 wide (US Men’s) shoe. Thems some big, wide feet. And because he is frequently too warm, they can’t be too heavy. And, they need to be knit at a tight gauge so that they won’t wear out in the first month that he wears them. Enter some lovely yarn and I embarked on what is proving to be a somewhat arduous journey.
Knit to 9 stitches per inch on very pointy size zero crystal palace bamboo double pointed needles, these socks started with a figure 8 cast on. In that cast on, you cast on a smaller number of stitches and increase to create a toe pocket. In this case, that number? 40. Total number of stitches in a single round once I finished the toe increases? 88. To give me an unstretched size of 9.75, 90% of my husband’s foot circumference. Once the toe was done I knit a little further with pagoda (the orange) to get a toe that looked right before I switched to the seaweed (green yarn). And then I just kept knitting for, well, a while.
Right now I’m stalled a bit, I haven’t been knitting much. I’ve reached the point where I need to be thinking about the heel. Because my husband also has big ankles, the afterthought heel I was originally going to use would make it difficult to make sure the sock will fit up and over his heel. My current thought is to put the sock on waste yarn, knit a heel (using the same figure 8 technique I’m using for the toe) and graft it on, then go back to knitting as scheduled, up the leg. I just need to get around to picking it back up. Stay tuned for the further adventures of the giant man-socks.
And now, apropos of nothing, I give you the pig butchering guide:
Today, the joyous occasion is in honor of my much beloved husband who–much to his chagrin–is 29 years old today. He refused to let me bake him a cake, he doesn’t want a party and in general wants to pretend April 1st is not happening. I love him far too much to let this day pass without a schmoopy, sappy, public note devoted to the celebration of his birth. Because, of course, he couldn’t be my husband if he’d never been born.
So happy birthday my love, it’s happening whether you want it to or not! And remember, from now until June 4th, you can tell people you’re three years older than me. It won’t really be true, but I love you enough to play along.
Mim over at MimKnits wants to see our favorite harbingers of spring. I haven’t had much time to go out and take photos this spring (although it has definitely sprung here!) I took this photo of a bud on a star magnolia tree in Portland on the 16th of March. The tree was already in full bloom which is one of the things I love about Oregon, allergies notwithstanding.
My one consistently favorite sign of spring is the budding of the crocuses on campus. Here’s a shot from last spring, taken in mid-February.
And mine certainly haven’t been idle! Two trips to Portland in the past three weekends, projects and all kinds of other things have kept me from having the time or energy to blog. I certainly have the fodder, just not the mental process.
The Pi Day trip to Portland was a great deal of fun. We were finally able to cash in the wedding gift from TheBoy’s bosses; a two night stay at the hotel of our choice. And what was our choice? McMennamin’s Kennedy School, one of our favorite places to stay in the city. Formerly a school, each classroom is now split into two bedrooms with a shared entry from the main hall (opening onto a tiny hall leading to the rooms). There is a cinema grill, a restaurant and two bars as well as a soaking pool and conference-type rooms. The best part? Chalkboards in the rooms and a distinct lack of TVs! Here’s what the main entrance looks like:
The weather was grey, damp and cold all weekend. Friday meant a trip to Ikea, where I picked up a new stool to use while spinning for a whopping $6. It’s wonderfully bright green as well. I’m hoping that it will get lots of use in the coming months.
My Pop-pop would have probably been horrified by this but may I point you to Danny Boy as sung by the Swedish Chef, Beaker and Animal. Pop-pop was American by birth location only, my Nanny and Granpa (my dad’s grandparents) came to the States from Ireland in the early part of the 20th century. My sisters and I are the last generation to carry our family name, which is pretty sad for me, even with its horrible silent G.
For the more traditional amongst us. My family always celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with a family dinner of corned beef and cabbage, something I try to make every year for my very much non-Irish husband. At least he appreciates a good slice of corned meat. May you have a great day, whether you celebrate quietly with family, raucously with green beer or not at all. Sláinte!
