A Belated Toby-versary

I knew I was coming up on 4 years with the love of my life, but I'm ashamed to say that last night I realized I had missed the actual date (March 23rd). I can't feel too bad, though, because the love of my life also missed it (unless one of his highly varied and operatic "MEOW!!"s was meant to be a reminder).

Dates aside, happy anniversary to my friend, my "something to love," my entertainment. He meows, he chirps, he sings, he knows many, many words and phrases, he knows our routines, he lets me know when those routines are different ("MEOOOOOW!!"), and he pulls an endless variety of faces:

Wise.


Crazy.


Unconvinced, with a side of disapproval.


Wondering.


Helpful.


Approving, yet tired.


Darling.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. As a work field trip, the creative team went to The Leonardo museum yesterday afternoon. Did you know they have a huge collection of photos from the civil rights era? It was really moving to read about something that changed so monumentally less than 50 years ago.

2. Another thing that moved me (to tears) yesterday was this video, the title of which sums it up: "Blind Dog Rescued from Trash, Regains Sight."



You may also be moved to donate to the rescue organization.

Trying Times

I have felt off for the last few weeks, and I can't tell if it's because of the unsettled weather, having less time to myself, professional issues, or just not going to enough yoga classes with my awesome teacher.

For times like this, there are hippie platitudes--I mean, quotes from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature.

Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation.

Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing.

And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

(From here, via said awesome yoga teacher. Yes, I visit that site nearly every day.)

Grammar Wednesday #4

(Today's tip was a request from a friend, which made me feel absurdly gratified. Grammar matters to more than just me!)

Probably because of their visual similarity to "chose" and "choose," people tend to confuse "lose" and "loose" as different tenses of the same word (the way "chose" is the past tense of "choose").

My friends, they are NOT the same word. They are not related in any way. Lose is, of course, "to cease to have" something--a verb; something that is loose (an adjective) "is not firmly fixed in place."

So how do you keep it straight? You can think of the adjective/verb difference, or you can use this tip: If you mean "to cease to have something," use lose with one O. You can remember it by thinking that it has ceased to have the second O.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Almost

So yet again, a leopard-print knit dress has not turned out the way I pictured it. But on the bright side, I think I can fix it.

Here it is with the skirt attached. See how the top part blouses out above the waistband and the skirt a little?

Yeah, that effect is being accomplished with pins right now.

Since my fabric is a knit, I didn't take into consideration the fact that a knit waistband would stretch. Without pins, the waistband slides down and pulls the top down with it, giving the whole thing a much straighter, drop-waisted effect:

But as I said, I think I have a fix for this: I'll add some elastic in a channel behind the waistband to keep things where they should be...just not this week. You can only struggle so much with something, right?

"The wind. The wind."

It's a dramatically stormy Monday morning here (but at least it's rain, not snow) and it made me think of parts of a Neruda poem:

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

(The whole thing is worth a read, because it's Neruda, obviously, and because of that famous last line.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I took the day off today. So far I have slept in and received a gift of cognac-fig ice cream made from goat milk (thanks, Amber!). If these things have happened before 10:00, what greatness will the rest of the day hold?

2. Actually, I think the "greatness" will be working on house projects and professional projects and maybe even sewing. I will think of this Isak Dineson quote:
When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.

Space News

Another new supernova has been found as of March 16. This one in barred spiral galaxy M95, which is roughly the size of our own Milky Way galaxy and about 37 million light years away. Supernova SN 2012aw is the really bright point at the end of the spiral arm that goes down and to the right--see it?
Oh, space. You provide such good perspective.

(Picture from APOD; you can read more about the supernova on Bad Astronomy.)

Happy Birthday, Johann Sebastian

It's Bach's birthday today, in 1685. Here's a happy little piece from the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin: the Prelude from the E Major Partita.



I love the ending, starting about 2:40.

The E Major Partita has always sounded like spring to me, which is appropriate since yesterday was the equinox.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Half A Roar

Well, all my hopes for more time to work on this leopard knit kind of got blown out of the water last week and into the weekend, but I did manage to make some progress before then:

The pattern I'm using is for a woven, not a knit, but I the only modification I'm making for the knit is I'm leaving off the side zipper, as a knit should stretch enough to pull it over my head. I'm happy to report "so far, so good" on the fit.

Now it just needs the skirt. Surely I can find time to attach two rectangles to this top, right?*

(*This is where you say, "I don't know. And don't call me Shirley!")

Reassurance From The Beatles

Oh yes, I'm still getting my hippie on with late Beatles tunes. I never cared much for this one until I listened to the lyrics (past the "love, love, love" part); now, I like hearing that there's "Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time" and there's "Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be."



Bonus Ringo at the end. Mr. Conductor!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Adding cat heads to something makes it funny. (It's a law, I'm sure of it.) That's why Cat Scientists of the 1960s is so great:

There's even a Cat Carl Sagan!!


2. I don't really have anything else this week. But come on--there are cat heads AND Carl Sagan. I think that's enough, don't you?

Hippie Quote Thursday

“Quietly go to work on your own self-awareness. If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.”

- Lao Tzu

3.14

Happy Pi Day and happy birthday to Albert Einstein. (How perfect is that?)

Tuesday Poem

I've been able to get some sewing in this week but not very much, so I don't have anything to show today. Instead, how about this poem? It's a good one for spring, for being sad, for navigating tricky times.

Horses At Midnight Without A Moon

by Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Happy Birthday, Ti-Jean

It's Jack Kerouac's birthday today, in 1922 (his parents were French Canadian, so "Ti Jean" was the family nickname for him).

I blame Kerouac (and Salinger) for nurturing my hippie tendencies--open any page of The Dharma Bums at an impressionable age, read about hitchhiking and backpacking and mountain climbing, and then throw in something like this? No surprise there.

There were now early spring mornings with the happy dogs, me forgetting the Path of Buddhism and just being glad; looking around at new little birds not yet summer fat; the dogs yawning and almost swallowing my Dharma; the grass waving, hens chuckling. Spring nights, practicing Dhyana under the cloudy moon, I'd see the truth: "Here, this, is It. The world as it is, is Heaven, I'm looking for a Heaven outside what there is, it's only this poor pitiful world that's Heaven."

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I'm going to see this little guy tonight:
Yes, he's sitting in a pot, and he looks so unsure about it, he needs a hug from his auntie.

2. How about a little MST3K for Friday? I feel like Gypsy all the time when I deal with people:

No Thaw

The 2-4 inches of snow we got Monday night disappeared by Wednesday. It made me think of the part in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe where spring comes to Narnia in about four hours:

And now the snow was really melting in earnest and patches of green grass were beginning to appear in every direction...Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. [...]

"This is no thaw," said the Dwarf [to the White Witch], suddenly stopping. "This is spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan's doing."

Birthdays

It's the sixth "birthday" of this blog today, which took me by surprise. (I have big plans in the works to give the blog a facelift and get a new portfolio site up, and I wanted to have it done by the blog birthday. Obviously, I thought it was later in the month.) But 1,565 posts, 3 jobs, several relationships, and one cat later, here we are.

It's also the birthday of my oldest friend, who I think has been reading for all six years and has helped with the technical end of things for the same amount of time. Happy birthday, Amber!

Tuesday Project Roundup: Cat Lady Goals

I cut out the next sewing project Sunday and it's another attempt at a leopard-print dress in knit fabric. You may recall I tried the same thing last spring, but I am undaunted: I will look like Toby in a wrinkle free, easy-to-wear style!


I'm not working so late these days and the time changes on Sunday, so I'm feeling cautiously hopeful I may get this one done in under two months.

"Morning Poem"

Oh Mary Oliver, you are a hippie poet extraordinaire. I love how you put this: "there is still/ somewhere deep within you/ a beast shouting that the earth/ is exactly what it wanted".

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead--
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging--

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted--

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. If being creative makes me distrustful, as yesterday's science news said, what can I blame on this study of personality changes and the single-celled parasite--found in cat poop!--that causes toxoplasmosis? "How Your Cat is Making You Crazy"

2. My nephew has discovered the piano. If you listen carefully to the video my brother posted, you can hear Skyler tell the piano "hi" before he plays it.

3. This llama has something to tell you:


More delightful drawings here.

Come To The Dark Side

As you know, I'm working on trusting the universe in my personal life, and I've been thinking about being creative in the context of my work. Now I have an article that unites the two: "The Dark Side of Creativity," which presents research that shows us being creative apparently isn't all right brain and Steve Jobs quotes--and maybe it's the reason I have a hard time taking good things at face value:

Consider this: being distrustful means being more likely to distrust surface appearances and have a desire to work out what is really going on. In other words distrust breeds a sort of 'what-if' mindset: exactly the sort of mindset associated with creativity.

Distrust may also breed flexibility in thinking. Instead of taking things at face value, people with suspicious minds try to see things from different angles. That's yet another marker of creativity.

I like it. I'm not neurotic; I'm creative.

Grammar Wednesday #3

Are we ready for more grammar? This one is a pet peeve of mine, so hopefully my tip can spread throughout the world and end the egregious practice of using "everyday" when we really mean "every day."

What's the difference? "Everyday" is an adjective, i.e., it can describe things. "Every day" is a another way of saying "each day." It's a phrase. But because it's one thing to know this and another thing to use them well, here are my tips:

Check to see if "everyday" is correct:
Try to substitute an adjective (such as "normal" or "blue") for "everyday" and see if it works.
"It was an everyday occurrence" = "It was a normal [or blue] occurrence."
"These are my everyday pants." = "These are my normal [or blue] pants."

Check to see if "every day" is correct:
Try to substitute a day of the week with "every day".
"I come here every day." = "I come here Tuesday."
"Every day, I get the blues." = "Tuesday, I get the blues."

Now that we know this, we can apply it in any situation. Is the phrase "Lunch specials are available everyday" correct? Well, are lunch specials available blue? I hope not.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Done and Mostly Done

Check it out--the yogi legwarmers are done:

I can give them to the teacher at class next week. I hope she likes them!

And the dress I was making out of the fancy Liberty of London fabric I got over the new year just needs some hand sewing and a hem:

The pattern is the basic shift from the Built By Wendy Dresses book (again), modified this time to have a round neck and bell-ish sleeves. I wanted to copy something like this, but I'm wondering if the sleeves get a little too "1970's Sleeping Beauty" when combined with a print that includes owls, horses, bunnies, deer, and roses.

I guess we'll see if I start singing "Once Upon a Dream" while wearing my little forest friends.

Courage

Here's some Rilke to get your inner hippie on board for the week. (My new thing is trying to trust the universe, so of course I liked this):

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; if there are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples--the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are waiting for us, beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. This has been making the rounds lately, but I like it. Sadly, that last one isn't currently true. (Click for larger.)

2. It would have been the 57th birthday of Steve Jobs today. Here he is on creativity:
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people...The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

(from Wired, February 1996)

Better Than A Space Picture

Can you even stand the cute?

In the words of Napoleon Dynamite, "There's more where that came from."

Happy Birthday, Edna

It's the birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay today. You have to love a woman who wrote sonnets and built an artists' colony.


IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And vows were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,–
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

(From from A Few Figs from Thistles (1922).

It's Tuesday (That Feels Like Monday)

Sit on a dining chair and turn your back on it.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. For cat lovers and font lovers: 20 Cats as Fonts. Including:




2. Comic Sans Cat looks like I feel after this week.

3. I continue to cope with hippie songs. Any song where you can sing "Om" is a good one:

The Universe Loves You

The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not. --The Upanishads

(Image from the Heart and Soul nebulae via Bad Astronomy; quote via my inner hippie. )

Grammar Wednesday #2

Today's tip is courtesy of my lifelong friend Amber, and is dear to my heart after all the years I spent working in social stationery:

How do you remember which spelling of "stationery/stationary" is the correct one in a given situation?

• Stationery that means paper you write on and send in the mail has an E in it, for ENVELOPE. Envelopes go in the mail!
• Stationary that means standing still and not moving is the other one. (You can also remember it with an A for stAnding still.)
  

Tuesday Project Roundup: I'm Glad I Knit

I'm glad I knit because yarn is much easier to buy than anti-anxiety meds, and nearly as effective. (I don't travel well, if you couldn't tell.) Look what I got (nearly) done on the business trip yesterday:

These are the legwarmers for my yoga teacher. I think I will knit the fold over cuff, as discussed before--probably because I just. kept. knitting. on the plane and the ribbing got a little long anyway.

Guess Where I Am Today?

One-day business trips, you are brutal. But at least this destination gives me a catchy tune to have stuck in my head.

Friday Unrelated Information2.

1. Have you seen Better Book Titles yet? It redesigns book covers "to give you the meat of the story in one condensed image"--one hilarious condensed image, that is:





So many more here.

2. Happy birthday to Marxist/alienist playwright/composer Bertolt Brecht today. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be singing "Show me the way to the next whisky bar" when this week is finally over tonight.

Bad Days

Sometimes all you can do is accept that the bad day wins, get takeout, make a drink, and listen to Bob Dylan (who I find soothing; your mileage may vary). My inner hippie really loves "Mr. Tambourine Man," because my inner poet thinks the lyrics are so pretty:

Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves:
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

That last line is like a tagline for bad days! Also, be sure to watch the video soon if you find Bob soothing; I found it on a Turkish (?) site and it may not be up long.

Something To Consider

Does anyone else do this? Build up events so they seem to "mean" more than they really do? I didn't even clearly know I did it (just wondered why I felt disappointed so much) until I encountered this part of The Hours years ago. So let's revisit the helpful quote for the third time on this blog:

It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than 30 years later, to realize it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book.

[...] What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond while the mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.

"It was happiness...that was the moment, right then. There has been no other." Michael Cunningham, you simultaneously destroy me and make my life so much better.

Tuesday Project Roundup: The Longest Project Of All

This week will mark the one-year anniversary of my being in the house. Since it's really the biggest and longest-term project I'll undertake, why not look at the progress made through the year?*

Still under construction.


Moved in, with cat head.


With an Eames chair and real window coverings.


And with a coffee table and Arco-esque lamp. Things are getting fancy...


And here's the orange sofa and grown-up art over the fireplace.

And on the other side of the room, there are curtains and fabric art I made (and more than two people can dine in comfort).

Hooray for home decorating!


*No, I haven't finished any sewing this week. Can you tell?

Mountain Things

What does Millcreek Canyon look like on a hike in February? Oh, you know, some mountains, some trees, a waterfall, some snow:





It's my inner hippie's happy place.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. If you ever wanted to branch out from "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," here's a list of pangrams--even some in other languages!

2. This was on kottke.org this week, but I find it hilarious: Fake pronunciation guides. They're eight seconds of pure awesome.




Celebrate the weekend with a glass of chimpoopisto!

3+2 Things: Book Report

So it's February 2--how about that goal of reading a book a month? I picked Brideshead Revisited as the first one, as I knew the Granada series from the 80s well but had never read the novel all the way through.

However, it's slow going: Because I know the plot from the TV series, I'm tempted to skip ahead, and I keep hearing Jeremy Irons in my head as I read. I'm also out of the habit of reading, I think; I tend to open my laptop instead of a book lately.

But I'm pushing through--can't get too behind on the year of book already!

A Grammar Tip

I have a few tricks I use to keep things straight mentally (and to help explain my copy edits at work), but I've never shared them with anyone. Are you interested? Shall we see if this makes sense and start a Wednesday grammar tip series? Let's try.

Today's tip is about getting the possessive version of "its"--that is, the one WITHOUT the apostrophe--right. My tip? See if you can substitute "his" for "its".

So, for example, take this sentence:
"The chair was missing one of its legs."
Using our trick, we can pretend we live in a cartoon universe and say,
"Mr. Chair was missing one of HIS legs."
Yes, this makes sense! DO NOT add an apostrophe to that "its" in the original sentence.

Another example:
"Paris is famous for its lights, its food, and its wine."
Let's use our trick again and substitute "his":
"Bob Paris is famous for HIS lights, HIS food, and HIS wine."
Yes! Resist the urge to add an apostrophe to "its" as it is used here.

You can also reverse this if you see an "it's" with an apostrophe and you're not sure it is correct:
Does changing "It's going to snow tonight." to "HIS going to snow tonight" work?
No, that makes no sense. Therefore, this apostrophe is OK.

So remember: If you can substitute "his" for "its" in the sentence you're worried about, that "its" does NOT need an apostrophe.

Tuesday Project Roundup: More Fabric

I don't have anything finished to show today, but how about pictures of my latest fabric wants?

This past weekend, I started working with the grey fairy-tale print Liberty of London I bought myself over Christmas--my first time using any really "nice" fabric in over a year. So of course I now want ALL my fabric to be Liberty, and of course Liberty has obliged me by coming out with new spring prints:

Becci C--can't you see this as a tunic with contrast bands around the neck?

And here's Gilliam A, which is telling me it wants to be some sort of ladylike tie-neck blouse.

(Hey, my budget and I can dream, right?)

It's Monday

Lay on it like it's clean laundry and pretend it's still the weekend.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Let's just say, hypothetically, that you are going on a date for the first time in 4.5 years. What do you do? How do you act? Fortunately, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has found us this educational film, "What to Do On a Date."


"How about a weenie roast?" "Nick, NO!"

2. Related but not as funny, this essay about a first dance could have been written by me, down to the dress I was so convinced I had to have and the inevitable disappointment:
I cried because I’d believed with all my being that once I put on eyeshadow and a turquoise dress, I’d turn into a heroine of any of the slumber-party movies I’d watched. [...] I cried because at that moment, in a gymnasium decorated with crepe paper so that the gifted kids could feel not just smart but glamorous, I began to understand that not everything would come easy to me, and that some forms of failure could be intangible, inexpressible, and nonetheless undeniable. I cried because I wanted to be seen, and because nobody was ready or willing to see me.

3. And unrelated: Happy birthday to our friend W.A. Mozart.

Music History

In late winter I always revisit Russian music, and lately it's been Shostakovich. How about the finale to his Fifth Symphony to get your blood going this morning?


He wrote this after managing to get on Stalin's bad side with an opera and after pulling his Fourth Symphony to not further anger the dictator. The party was pleased with the Fifth (which the composer subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism"), but, as Shostakovich later wrote:

I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat... It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,'' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.''...You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.

More music history here. Happy Thursday, comrades!

Things That Made Me Happy Yesterday

1. Cat pictures:


(from my "Happy" Pinterest board, of course); and
2. This quote from M.F.K. Fisher:

A well-made dry Martini of Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature.

(from the final essay in An Alphabet for Gourmets. It's so true.)

Also: Happy birthday to Virginia Woolf today!

Tuesday Project Roundup: Namaste!

Around Christmas, I was talking to my yoga teacher and it came out that I knit. And she asked, "Can you make me some legwarmers?"

Because I feel the same way about my yoga teacher as I did about a few early grade school teachers ("You're so pretty! And so calm! And you're good at so many things I'm not!"), I said of course I would ("Teacher asked me to do a special project! Yay!").


I'm using this pattern but left off the foldover cuff, as you can see. I left it off because I wasn't sure I'd have enough yarn for it, but now I'm pretty certain I will. So do I go back to the first one and add it? I don't know if the drawstring would be fiddly during yoga or if it would help with the fit.

Maybe the legwarmer needs to live its way into the answer....

(And no, that joke still hasn't gotten old. If you couldn't tell.)

"And your heart felt good"

I was up Millcreek in the snow yesterday, climbing through the forest, and thought of the last chapter of A Moveable Feast where Papa talks about spending the winter in Austria, skiing and climbing through the forest:

No one could afford a broken leg. There were no ski patrols. Anything you ran down from, you had to climb up. That gave you legs that were fit to run down with.

[...] But climbing was fun and no one minded it in those days. You set a certain pace well under the speed at which you could climb, and it was easy and your heart felt good and you were proud of the weight of your rucksack. Part of the climb up to the Madlener-Haus was steep and very tough. But the second time you made that climb it was easier, and finally you made it easily with double the weight you had carried at first.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. A dear friend suffered a terrible loss this week, so putting up funny links or MST3K quotes doesn't feel right today. Instead, I will tell you to travel safely and hug your loved ones and try to make your part of the world more full of light.

2. I'll also give you a space picture, since that's how I cope:
(Click the image to see it bigger--every speck of light you see is a galaxy.)

This was the last image featured on The Atlantic's space Advent calendar. As the caption there said:
This Hubble image is one of several, including the Ultra Deep Field, which peer into seemingly empty space, leaving the camera shutter open for hours, and reveal that billions of galaxies made up of billions of stars fill our skies in every direction as far as we can possibly see, separated by almost unimaginable distance and time, yet still reachable, visible as an image of their long-ago selves.

Together We Sit

This is from last week, when it was sunny, but it will be sunny again.