Apparently at least one airline

gives frequent fliers a 30,000 mile "bonus" when they have flown one million miles. This is not necessarily news that one wants to learn, especially when that doesn't reflect all airlines flown.

Finally!

(and I am sure at least some of you know what I mean) I have been wanting to share this this with you since yesterday morning. But you might want to take a look at some of his other work as well.

It is happening again,

Project Spectrum, that is. Information here and more here, cool pictures at this link, and a few more spots at those places. May is red and orange.

 

What to fix for dinner?

Hmmm. Look in fridge and find a wheel of Camembert. Look in cupboard and notice that an onion is starting to sprout. OK, Risotto it will be.

Ends

Each block has two ends per color per miter, there are four miters, plus one end for the edging (because you don't cut after the last miter), so 17 ends per block and 12 blocks. Then there are ends for putting two blocks together (2 or 4 depending on which method you use, I am not that far yet so haven't decided) and three blocks per row, ends for putting rows together, and then ends for putting the edging on.

 

Squares (2x2)x4+1=17x12=404
Squares into rows 2(2x2)=8
Rows into afghan 2(2x2)=8
Edging 2 (Hopefully that is, as in I am hoping there are no knots in the skein and that it only takes one skein.)
404+8+8+2=422 ends (or more) by the time it is all done.

 

There is a reason I weave in and take care of each block's ends before I declare it done and go on to a new block.
Almost done with another block, and then there are only two more to make before I start turning them into rows.

Last night

Hubband and I went to a small social gathering/celebration/thing related to his work. There was champagne, opened just like this (well, except it was done outside in the yard). It was pretty amazing to watch in person I must say. Geeky details here for those of you that want them.

Last night

I opened the preheating oven the oven to put the first part of dinner in, and saw something I have seen in an oven once before, about twenty years ago. Guess what? This is not really something you want to see happening to your oven element. I decided to go ahead and chance cooking dinner in there and see what happened.

Dinner cooked, and apparently the problem moved along too, which I have to admit to not really expecting. The last time I had an oven element look like that, it flamed up and made a puddle of melted metal in the bottom of the oven. This time it kept sparking its way along the element, around the curves and turns. Yes, I know I should have turned it off and I probably spiked our electrical usage for the month (or more), but I really wanted to eat dinner. I did check on it a couple of times to make sure it wasn't doing anything drastic (and Chan, I promise the fire extinguisher was right there).
Sometimes when I checked it, the element just had a red hot spot, and sometimes it was white hot and sparking like a sparkler.

Which is pretty much what it looks like all cooled off and ready to have a new element installed. We are hoping that Home Depot sells them so that life can be back to baking as normal around here before Tuesday.

I can't believe

the Brooklyn City Council actually thought this was a good idea, or that it was an effective strategy. (Transcript version of the news brief heard on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday.)

Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

Forget bedbugs. Brooklyn has a larger pest: opossums. The New York Post reports that three years ago, the city tried to curb its rat problem by setting opossums free in local parks. The idea: opossums would eat rats, and when that food supply was gone, die off. Today, the nocturnal critters with twitchy pink noses are still around. They rejected rats. They eat garbage and climb fruit trees. And the rats are OK, too.

(FYI: It is very rare for opossums to carry rabies due to a low body temperature.)

Well now,

that was interesting. Not as nice as it used to be, or as cool as it could be, but better than it was.

She is so weird.

It is a well established fact that everything belongs to Oribel, even stuff that she has clearly shown she doesn't want anymore. Suddenly its Oribel's again, and no one else can have it, just because they showed some interest in it.
Last night I was just about to pick up a large fluff of cat hair that she had pulled out and left on the floor (she tends to shed mostly in fluff blobs and pulls them out when they are loose) at least a good hour before I went to pick it up. (This timing part is pretty accurate as it hadn't been on the floor when I started watching the DVD of Castle from Netflix but it was after two episodes, and I had seen her pull it out and toss it on the floor.) So just as I am about to pick it up, she dashes over, grabs it with her teeth and starts to eat it. I try to get it from her, but she backs up out of my reach, still looking at me, and manages to get more of it into her mouth. I try again, she backs up again, and the last bit of fluff disappears. Somehow, I have a feeling she'll give it back to me at some point in the future. For the record, she has been known to do the exact same thing with tufts of Sadie's hair.
See, told ya she is weird.
(No, I did not get a picture of her eating fluffy bits of fur, I was busy trying to get it away from her, but I did get a picture of her a few weeks back, kicking the dishtowels out of her cabinet to make room to watch stuff happening in the kitchen. She doesn't need opposable thumbs to open the cabinet door by herself.)

I know it has been rather quite around here.

Last week (the last week of April) I was away on a trip, which turned out to be much, much harder than I had ever imagined. (Well, not the trip itself I suppose, but stuff I had to deal with there.) Fortunately the trip was to a place where I have a dear friend who held my hand and let me vent, rant and rage, and cry. Mind you, ranting and raging isn't really something I do often, but i certainly did a lot of it last week. Unfortunately I now foresee that there might be more in the future at some point; at least this time I guess it won't come up on me as such a surprise. (Funny thing is that it didn't surprise Hubband so much, or a few other people.) As it happened I also had some, but very limited access to the Internets while on my trip, mostly just email and all of it was on a computer that didn't belong to me, thus making it very difficult, if not impossible, to do any posting here while I was away.
Any hows, now I have a very busy rest of the month ahead of me/us, between getting ready for a very important college graduation (well, important to DTE and the rest of our family at least), having both D's home (one for a bit over a week before she goes to her summer internship and the other for the summer before she starts her "year-long, post-graduate thing while I decide on graduate school/what do I do next"), getting ready for a real-live vacation with Hubband at the end of the month, and of course, all the regular stuff that I do. Oh, and due to some fall-out from my trip last week I have extra stuff I need to make arrangements for. Le sigh. Never fear, I/we will manage to get through; all in all we have made it through much worse in life.
In other exciting news around the Coffee Yarn Household, we have an other new appliance. Sunday afternoon I went to the basement to get something from the freezer and noticed a medium sized puddle under and around the water heater, so by 2 PM Monday afternoon we had a new one installed and heating water for me. (Me, since by 2:15 PM I was delivering Hubband to the airport.)
I have finished knitting from April to report (well, that is if you all aren't horrible bored with knitting content) and of course there are lots of green things growing about here as well as some bulbs have bloomed and a few other flowers are all decked out in their spring finery. Sadie had her annual spring "find something really, really gross/wonderful and disgustingly smelly/lovely to roll in" last week while I was gone (hopefully that means she has gotten it out of her system for the year) so that was a plus for me, and Oribel is doing her "I really, really need to go outside into the sun! Wait! What is this wind crap? I need in! Oh look! It is sunny I need out! Wind? I need in!" thing that results in her having to stay inside after about two or three in and outs. Of course that results in the "I am not happy in so I shall try to dig through every door in the house to find a way outside."
OK, so for right now I need to go do "stuff" but I will do my best to get back to you soon with some pictures of the yard, flowers, animals, and knitting if you all want to see it. I might even mention my vacation again.

Guess what?

Digging a hole to transplant chives into is a lot easier if Someone isn't sticking their head in the hole to see what you are doing in their yard. Also, if you don't want the fut of your back leg getting stuck to your stomach, you shouldn't go about in the cockleburs.

I remembered to eat breakfast today.

It seems that Hubband is

my favorite hand wrapper; sadly he isn't the most recent one to wrap my hand. The doctor was very impressed with how well my hand is healing and said we seem to be doing everything the right way for it. (We, since I have had lots of help with the wrapping up part.) It has no signs of infection, no signs of binding up, lots of bright pink, new skin growing in, all that sort of stuff. I am supposed to keep doing what we've been doing until it doesn't have the couple of tiny open spots left and doesn't hurt when exposed to the air. Then the nurse wrapped it up so I could drive home. She did a fine job of course, but I guess she didn't want to get tit too tight, so it feels all loose and weird. Well, loose and weird compared to the way Hubband wraps it up so perfectly. Unfortunately he is gone for a few days and can't redo it for me. Either I am going to have to figure out how to do it myself, take someone up on their offer to skip out on their housework to drive 40+ miles to do it for me, or draft someone else to do it before he gets back home. I wouldn't want all this wonderful healing to be for naught.

My hand seems to be healing

fairly well. At least hat is our guess at this point since it starting to itch and the blisters are gone (plus no signs of infection). I have an appointment next Monday for it to be looked at by a doctor. It doesn't feel like any of the joints/bendy parts are binding up, but I suppose there is still time for that to happen. Some of the skin feels funny, kind of dry and leathery, and it looks icky and red, but it really is doing well. I am sure it will look red and obvious for some time to come. (I am guessing there will be some visual evidence for at least a year.)
I can still do most stuff with it all wrapped up, knitting doesn't seem to be a problem and for the most part cooking works out OK, if I am careful about chopping stuff up. I'm still not washing dishes for now and am beginning to think it would be easier to just pin a sign to myself for whenever I go out in public.
The biggest drawback to this? There are a couple of important stages of bread making that just can't be done with my hand in this condition. I am starting to go into bread-making withdrawal here (especially since there are certain things I always make this time of year). It is a good thing we had some back-up bread in the freezer, but those are going to run out really soon!

Sunday afternoon I asked Hubband

if he wanted to go investigating with me. He did, so we went off to get an up-close-and-personal look at something I had noticed one day when I was taking my dad home. I had seen evidence of some interesting activity at the edge of a major parking lot and wanted to see if it really was what it looked like.
It was, but doesn't seem to be currently inhabited, though it couldn't have been abandoned very long ago.

Well, last Thursday or Friday you

were supposed to get a blog post sponsored by a cooking experiment. Yeah, the post didn't happen, but then, the cooking experiment didn't really either. It got started, but then was interrupted by a kitchen accident that resulted in Hubband being call and asked to come home from work an hour early. Said accident also precipitated a call the next day to the Ask-A-Nurse line, which resulted in another call to Hubband, who insisted on coming home for the trip to the Emergency Room, rather than letting me call a friend to drive and meeting me there. Not that this was a real emergency mind you, but apparently the ER is more prepared to deal with burns than the regular doctor's office or the Express Care clinic.
So now I suppose you want to know what happened to cause all these phone calls and driving to and fro, don't you? Well, I had started said cooking experiment, which involved frying some (gasp!) tofu, and then I did my normal thing of pouring off the leftover oil into a can from the freezer. I did a few more steps in the cooking experiment and then went to move the can of oil. Turns out it was either fuller than I realized and/or I moved it faster than I should have and some of the still hot oil splashed over the top onto my hand. So of course I did the proper thing and ran it under cool/cold water right away and was able to use some soap to get the oil off the burn. After it was so numb from the cold that it was driving me nuts, I pulled it out of the water long enough to look at it and call Hubband. It wasn't blistered or charred or anything like that at that point, so that was a good thing. I kept it under cool/cold running water as much as I could until he got home and was able to add his opinion to the subject. Still no blisters, so with a few directions Hubband finished fixing dinner, but it didn't wind up being the planned on experiment. (It is way easier to change what is being cooked than it is to try to explain how to do something when you don't know exactly what you are doing ahead of time. I know I can't be the only one that makes up food while it is cooking.)
Anyways, cool/cold water continued all evening and there was still no blistering (and the burn was only on the top part of my hand) so medical attention was deferred until the next day. In the morning, there were a few little blisters and they grew a little bit as the morning went on. Since we have access to the Ask-A-Nurse line, it made sense to call them to find out what should be done regarding what venue would be best to seek medical care. I know burn first-aid, but I also know there is second- and third-aid for burns that I am not qualified to cover. (There is a reason why First-Aid is called "First" after all, no matter what the situation is.)
The nurse said I shouldn't drive myself due to potentially breaking blisters, hitting it, etc. and since Hubband had wanted a report, he decided to drive home and take me into town. I told him he could just drop me off and I would call him at the office when I was done, but he wasn't willing to do that, so he hung out in the ER waiting room with me.
So, the deal is I have first ans second degree burns on a small part of the top of my right hand, it is all wrapped up in gauze to protect the blisters from popping and keep it clean and germ free. It is also supposed to stay dry as possible (washing my hair with a plastic bag on my hand is just silly, but one does what is needed) and we are to change the gauze once a day and put new antibiotic goo on it when we do. (Fortunately the doctor said driving with it wrapped up is OK.)
Said cooking experiment has been rescheduled for a later date.

Today it was cold.

Not only outside, -2F at 8:30 AM; but inside too, 55F at the same 8:30 AM. It turns out our twenty-year-old furnace decided during the night that it didn't want to see another birthday. Of course, we didn't know of that final decision until after the repairman had come out to look at it. The fan had some issues, as did the circuit board, both of which could be fixed. Apparently the furnace has decided it would rather have cracks in its main and secondary heating chambers than reach a legal consumption age.
(With any luck the temporary fan fix will last until tomorrow. Right this minute, it isn't looking as likely as it was at noon. I think we might know around eight tonight.)

Today I give you

a picture Hubband took of Oribel and me,

 

winter garden boxes,

 

and the male half of the Pileated Woodpecker pair that live in the dead trees in our woods and come hang out at our feeders.

 

 

This morning,

our coffee maker made 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of coffee and then biffed it. Fortunately, we happen to have some coffee in the cupboard already ground for the french press pot.
Le sigh. One more thing for me to fit into my upcoming week.