Ordinary Time

Yesterday I had promised L. that we would go to the Adler Planetarium and take advantage of their free Wednesday night for Illinois residents policy. I even sprang for tickets to a  star show because I didn't have to pay an entrance fee. The budding astro-physicist was extremely excited.  Our tickets were for entry after 4:00 pm and our show tickets were for 8:15. We left at around 3:20 figuring that even with bad traffic on 290 (the highway into the city from the western end) that we would be at the Adler by 5:00. That would give us plenty of time to wander before the show. I've done this particular trip numerous times and I have my timing down pretty well at this point.  Until I didn't. You see, in the fall or on the weekend, I know to check the Soldier Field schedule because it can be impossible to get to the museums in sports or concert traffic. But a Wednesday not during football season? It never crossed my mind. (And there was certainly no alert on the Adler's web...

I've just gotten back from spending five hours and twenty minutes driving through Chicago and only passing by the outside of the Adler Planetarium. L. is incredibly disappointed and if I never see another brake light again, I wouldn't be sad. I'm now eating some dinner and will fill you in on the whole gruesome adventure tomorrow. 

I read about books and put them on hold at the library to take a look at them. Sometimes a book takes a while to arrive, at which point I have probably forgotten about the book entirely. Sometimes it's a nice surprise and sometimes I wonder at what I was thinking when I put it on hold. Then there are the books I'm looking forward to and they end up being a bust. Such is the story this evening.  I'd been waiting for No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity by Ashlee Piper. I'm always up for ways to save money, and if I can save my sanity and the planet... well what's not to like?  I didn't even make it through the introduction. Do you want to know what the easy 30-day plan is? Don't buy anything new for thirty days. After I realized this I did read a little further just to be sure I was understanding, but that's it. I figured since this is pretty much my entire life style that this book was really not ai...

I finished the warp I had recently put on my loom. That means two dish towels and a set of four dinner napkins are done with an eye towards Christmas and things to sell in Fine Line Creative Arts Center's Artisan Market in December.  Here's the five plus yards of fabric. The napkins and a dish towel are woven with a black weft, but for this one I tried a blue weft. And the black for comparison. This is also one of the dinner napkins. The pink lines at the top and bottom give you sense of size. After the last napkin, I had a tiny bit of warp left, so did some experimenting. Instead of doing the treadling pattern the same over and over, I reversed it every other time to get diamonds. I really like this and may use this for another project at some point. This picture shows both treadling patterns so you can see the difference. I'm now going to move on to figuring out how to weave guest hand towels with holiday borders, but I also plan on weaving some more napkin sets. Here...

For P. and D., that is. Both P. and D. have jobs in downtown Chicago now and both have been commuting from the far western suburbs. I think it's safe to say that both are also very much over commuting into the city from the far western suburbs. For much of the summer, they have been looking for apartments that are in Chicago, close to the Red Line, have three bedrooms, at least one parking spot, and has rent that they, plus a friend of D.'s, can afford. They finally managed to find something and were approved this past week. Their lease begins on August 1. It's an exciting new step for both of them. Of course, the jostling for P.'s room here at home has already begun. We're actually going to let P. get moved out before we begin addressing that conundrum.  And P. gave me permission to share a couple of photos of her at work. She is a deck hand on one of the tour boats on the Chicago River through downtown, and sometimes deck hands are allowed to do some steering unde...

This should probably have been titled, "Lots and lots of sunset pictures". The sunsets on the western side of Michigan overlooking Lake Michigan are particularly stunning.  These photos are all by K.  And J. took this of the photographer himself.

Kenzie is a very old man now. We're not entirely sure of his age, but fifteen wouldn't be an unreasonable guess. We decided that it would be less stressful for him to go with everyone to the beach house. To clarify, less stressful for Kenzie, not less stressful for J. because Kenzie has barely medically controlled excessive anxiety and possibly dementia as well.  All that said, Kenzie enjoyed his vacation with many of his people and his people took many photos of him.  Getting ready for the trip.  I'm the car. At the beach. Resting in the house. More beach. More house. Worried that people were moving suitcases again.  Happiness resting on the way home with his people.