Mom Stowed Securely Under the Seat in Front of Me . . .

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This weekend I was out in LA to visit my sisters and pick up my half of my mother’s ashes and her banjo. While I did fly home with mom, we decided my sister would ship the banjo since it would have been truly cumbersome. We pored over our mother’s old letters, photos and books. It’s hard to not feel like we’re prying into her life a bit, but all we will ever know of her or her life is from these bits of paper, song lyrics, instruments and journals. She kept a lot of journals. Some day when I have a whole bunch of time I’ll tell the story of how we only met her 3 and a half years ago.
It was our own little memorial weekend.

We ate such great meals, shopped for makeup, yarn and laughed and screamed all night as sisters do. . . K’s husband was a good sport.

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Sunday we had a perfectly girl day… brunch, pedicures, cake and yarn.

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I think K deleted her solo pics, so here’s J but no K

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This is what I ate, mmmm… crab hash.

After our pedicures, my toes are silvery, we drove to Knit Cafe before they closed up shop. The shops owner and author of Greetings from Knit Cafe, Suzan Mischer, was at the shop and was super nice and helpful. Love the store decor! I did buy a little BSA Melange in a yummy chocolaty brown and a handful of candy colored Daisy plastic needles. I can never seem to find them in smaller sizes so I bought one of each. Sometimes I just love they way they feel.

J bought yarn and some needles…K bought a beautiful crochet book… I think it may be this one… I can’t recall. It was fun to hang out knitting with J while K beaded a necklace for me out of the beads I picked out.

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After stopping into Knit Cafe we strolled across the street to Sweet Lady Jane for its famous Triple Berry Cake and a pot of mint tea.

My flight back to Austin was full of guitars, tattoos and piercings, which is typically Austin but everyone was flying in for SXSW . The airport here was packed when I arrived home. Listening to all
the musicians talk about all the places they were going to go eat and shop made me feel proud of
Austin.

The magazine’s offices are at a downtown hotel. I wasn’t here yesterday but R.E.M was spotted downstairs eating lunch at the hotel restaurant. Most everyone’s on Spring Break, it’s 75º outside and I can hear music from the streets from 16 floors up. I think I need to go take a walk outside and get some coffee. I’ll let you know what I see.

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Bound & Blushing

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I seem to get a lot of comments on my Ravelry projects page about this book here. Many of you have this book, but are jealous of the spiral bound issue that I have. I’ll let you in on a little secret… I simply took the book to a quick copy center and had them cut it about 1/8" in from the perfect binding, cover and all, then rebind it with spiral binding. Voila! A soft cover book that I can fold over and lay flat. It costs between 3 & 4 bucks and is very helpful. Since I work in publishing, specifically in production, I really geek out at these little things. This would be really great for any soft cover cookbooks too, wouldn’t it?

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Why am I blushing?

Though I’m not one prone to blushing, I was tickled to see my blog listed on one of my favorite blogs Iguana Banana as one of her faves.

I love stopping in to see what’s going on in Ahna’s very rich life. Beautiful kids, actively submerging them in a life filled with the arts. . . wish I was one of her kids, but seeing as we are very close in age . . . would be weird.

Ahna, I loved looking at the other blogs you listed and will visit them often.

Thanks Ahna!

I’ve decided to try to learn a little bit each day on my commute to Austin.

These are some Podcasts I’m listening to:

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing So that I don’t cringe every time I push send on an email or blog entry.

Coffee Break Spanish I must admit that I have a little trouble understanding these two when they are speaking English, are the Scottish? Even so, their accents are lovely.

One Minute Irish I’ve yet to listen to this one, will let you know.

and the others for entertainment:

Stash and Burn

CRL with Vickie Howell

Cooks Illustrated Video Podcast

NPR: All Songs Considered

        Hidden Kitchens I freaking LOVE this one

       Thistelpod with Fiona Ritchie  I miss this radio broadcast

        This American Life  d’accord

        Kitchen Window

        StoryCorps

Are there any others that you love? I’m all ears?

 

Happy Birthday from DefensiveDriving.com

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Okay, this must be the single most depressing birthday wish I ever received via email. Well, happy birthday to me anyway. I feel the need to clarify here . . .  I am not a bad driver, this was from the FIRST and ONLY speeding ticket I’ve ever received . . . a little over a year ago.

After moving to Texas (1/1/1996) I longed for the snowy Winters I had always known… for years really. But now I gotta tell you, once Christmas is over and most certainly after my birthday, I am ready for Spring. Here in Central Texas we start planting around Valentine’s Day. . . I’m serious. I’m not trying to make you jealous, really. That said, I may want to undecorate the Christmas tree tomorrow so I can make the recycling deadline. I can’t wait to start building my raised bed… I did get a head start on the composting a few months ago.

Twist (pictured above), what can I say. . . I may not be too far along but I am really enjoying it. It’s been a tough deadline week so I was smart enough to not pick this up at night with my tired eyes and screw it up. I’ll sit with it some over the weekend as we will have NO ELECTRICITY for at least tomorrow. May be a good opportunity to see Juno too.

Well, I must wash my face and head off to work. Wish me a short day at the office, please.

4 short years ago Roscoe was my birthday present….here’s how he looked then at 6 weeks.

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