A Reprise

The same feeling of protection always comes over me when we are in the pine woods again.

Looks like we're all set for a wedding.

I wonder where they lead.

My favorite stop between Ft. Worth and Metairie. This time I got fish n' chips. It was great!

I bet you thought I died! It's been a busy week, let me tell you. Henry and I are enjoying the front view with freshly-brewed mint tea, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and vitamins. I am exhausted, but I am coming to life again. I can feel the stirrings. I am emerging from my silent, thick-walled room of contemplation to begin sharing what I have felt in my inward sojourn. I thought my spiritual questions were just a lark, an outpouring of anxiety and stress in the midst of this life change, that they would be forgotten, my little journal abandoned or repurposed in a while. However as soon as I find myself with inner space to think I find myself returning to my spiritual studies.

I was amazed by these switch plates. They are everything I want in a switch plate. I want them in the music room and parlor. Their golden tones will offset the warmth of the floor and contrast with the wall color I have chosen "Spanish Bluebell." Other rooms will have subtle switch plates, but I actually want to replace everything, including the telephone jacks, which we won't use, because the plastic is so old they have yellowed and become dingy. This weekend I weeded one front bed but didn't dig up the bulbs. I think they are amaryllis because I saw amaryllis blooms earlier this year. They need to be thinned out and replanted elsewhere because they have migrated randomly and are really on top of each other. For the front of the house I best like a color scheme of blue and yellow. The side yard will be white flowers, and an accent of red won't hurt. I also see them looking well near the gates. I still don't know where to plant a rose garden. There's no ob...

At the top you can see a strip of paper. When the integrator has a total breakdown we have to enter that raw code in letter for letter. It goes something like else !$2.0;19; etc. We have to get every space and character exactly or it won't work.

This is a chromatogram. Coming off first is a phenylephrine peak. Do you see the hump or deposit at the end of the peak? That's bad. Using a different column on another system I was able to get them to separate but that HPLC isn't working correctly. These instruments are from 1992.

It's rare I have a chance to do a photolog from work. Let me tell you, I am so excited. Last month around this time I stressed and sickened over something, finished it off as best as I could, it was reviewed, but QA rejected it. Here I am again, less than 24 hours before another deadline given this product again, and don't think I haven't spent this last week burning the candle at both ends on several other little surprises. I don't mean to be dark, but I'm tempted to open the bottle and swallow all of the damn pills right now. Everyone was allowed to go home early due to all our hard work, but not me, because I am stuck with this terrible product which I've known from the beginning is just plain wrong. Why is it in quality control that when something is wrong with a product the analyst is made to suffer, and suffer, and suffer? Don't worry, I already know the answer to that one. But really, don't worry, because I have my own means of amusing myself. I f...

I thought this picture the inspector took for the front of our report was rather funny. It is my understanding now that a home inspection is meant to highlight every possible flaw about a home. I could not help but think that this picture is funny with respect to that. Our inspector did uncover a few sources of discomfort, possibly horror for us, that led to some stressful bartering. In the end, it was out of the hands of buyer and seller and then suddenly, placed right into our hands. At any case, our home looks nothing like this picture.

Here's the little table in one of the barns that the former owner made. As you can see, everything is very dusty. This place has been uninhabited for some time.

It is about to rain. The sky is dark, the birds are flying low, and the air is heavy. I have ten more minutes before I have to return. I find I cannot sit in the building any more on my breaks. I have had such a deep need lately to have a boundary between myself and the building. What if we could all experience the sunshine of the spotless mind every day? Somehow life gets so complicated. I put my dressform in the small room I adore as my sewing room. It is just what I wanted. It is a sewing room. I am reading A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe. It is so good! I have actually not read her in my adult life. It's like I'm discovering her for the first time. The Mysteries of Udolpho was too immense for me in high school. Her discernment and discussion of human behavior is rapier-sharp. I have noticed how the Age of Reason authors focus on the nuances of behaviors and personalities that truly resonate down the centuries. I will come up with some quotes when I am on my PC. We can a...

Here are the keys to our new home as of right now.

The more I think about this, the more I keep laughing. I knew my Starbucks was special. Gosh, I love this place. This was taped over the word "slut" engraved in the side of the bathroom mirror. Hey, the tape was peeled halfway back. I wonder how many people had to look.

  Every time we eat at a favorite restaurant, I ask myself, will this be the last time? When we move, we will be far away from these places. We have been going to King Chinese BBQ for at least five years now. It is my favorite Chinese restaurant. I have never eaten Chinese food quite like they do it here. It is not breaded or fried, but marinated with different flavors which are delectable. In addition to their huge menu selection, they have many different drinks, most of which I’ve had, I think. I don’t drink milk tea or jelly tea any more due to calorie concerns, so I had their soymilk last weekend, which was wonderful and grassy. Could it have been the last BBQ?

Well, that is a dove. It seems like my camera has degraded over the years. This Treo is at least three years old now. I still remember that I was listening to Nightwish on my Treo 600 when I dropped it and it lost its speaker abilities. Things have changed so much for me. I look back through the tunnel of years and feel strange and lost. I wonder if I made some bad career decisions, then I wonder if I care about this sort of work at all. Am I going to making mincing steps through life without committing to anything? Always I have said, I'm just here waiting for the next thing. Or, when I was in high school, because I had to be, but my mind was in a "better" place, college, but I learned quickly I couldn't settle my mind there either so lived in my future job. Here I am in, I guess, my fourth job. In one sense I would have been pleased I managed to be hired by four different people. Part of me asks for very, very little in life. And then the other part of me asks for s...

Today Nathan and I went to Tuesday Morning and browsed. It was so fun. We bought random things there and at Tom Thumb. I got this recipe journal kit at Tuesday Morning and spent this afternoon breaking it in. I already have three pages done. At Tom Thumb I found glittering black tea lights on Halloween clearance. This weekend has been full of the unexpected. We saw four houses Friday evening after work in an incredible heat wave. The first two were pretty fascinating. We started putting together an offer on the first house with our realtor this weekend. This morning I checked my email, and the seller dropped the price on the farm house so that we could afford it with our mortgage. We accepted the offer. So the farm house I described back in April, well, that's probably going to be our home. I won't believe it until we're moved in, and I'm not talking about it till it's a done deal. But I did start back embroidering my curtains today, and I felt a deep brooding happi...

On the tops of our trees over the balcony you can see the pale green of new growth.