A stash is a good thing to own

Do you have piles of stuff for projects waiting for you to attend to them? On my J & P Coats oak spool chest are folded pieces of fabric and 2 hanks of yarn just waiting for the right pattern to get pinned to them. I was really bored yesterday, so I dug around and found the yellow silk I had dyed black, so that it turned burgundy (go figure, but that is what happens when you dye things, it can be a real surprise). I have a great Loes Hinse blouse pattern that made up spectacularly, so today I get to cut it out and swing by Fabrics R Us and pick up buttons. Life's good when one gets to start a new project, even a little one.

Passages

My friend of 10 years is leaving the company today. Due to an injury, she can't walk the campuses where she does her daily sales rounds. I can't believe there wasn't a desk job for her somewhere for a few months. At breakfast this morning, a number of us expressed the sentiment that we feel like we are married to the company, but the company doesn't feel a similar attachment to us. It's all, what have you done for me lately? Ah, well, life here goes on, but I am sad.

I lost an old friend yesterday

I only had on one gold hoop erring last night when I undressed. Sigh, I am so sorry to have lost it. They are my faves, and probably 25 years ago I bought them, one of the few jewelry pieces I have ever bought for myself. I must have pulled it out of my ear with my radio headset, when I pulled the headset off my head in the garden with my knee. I thought I would find it in the garden, but it wasn't laying around where I could see it. Awwww.

I'm eating chocolate for breakfast

and feeling very smug about it. We all knew chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is good for you, right? Now we have some documentation (go here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101110141247.htm ) Turns out a new study, which I unfortunately can't access as I don't subscribe to that journal, says that dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure. Yup.

There is a small peptide hormone called angiotensin that causes arteries to constrict. That raises your blood pressure, and it's the normal way blood pressure is regulated. Too much angiotensin, too high pressure. Blood pressure medications mostly work by inhibiting an enzyme that converts the precursor to angiotensin to an active form. So does chocolate, and it can lower blood pressure. Probably great for your cardiac health in general.

So don't be shy, pass the chocolate.

I kinda miss Ma Bell

I remember when I turned 13 and I came home from school one day and the telephone rang. The reason I remember it is that when I left for school there was no telephone, so I had to hunt around to find the ringing. My folks said that now that I was a teenager, we should have a phone. I presume while I was at school the nice man came to the house, hooked everything up, and left when it worked, because that was how things were done when I was a girl.

Fast forward a half a century. My company sent a new IP phone to the house in a box. It doesn't plug into the phone jack on the wall any more, it uses a wireless Internet connection with a little antennae on a box. Nor is there a nice man to come to install it. There were instructions sent to my computer from the IT people on how to get the Internet and the phone to communicate. Some place during the instruction list, I got derailed and several phone calls later (from the old phone still plugged in the wall), I got it straightened out. There were two part numbers for a wireless or a corded headset, so I ordered one. It came. It had a USB connector, not a phone jack. My new phone had a phone jack. Call Plantronics, get the right part number. Out with the old box, in with the new. Get the next headset assembled and plugged in. No dial tone on the hand set. No dial tone on the head set. Speaker phone worked. More calls on the speaker phone. Yep, the directions did say you needed to adjust the little dial on the side, but I missed them. Hand set cord was loose, got that fixed too.

Several hours, at least, of troubleshooting later, every thing works. It's all magic any more. There is a directory on there, but I can't figure out what it wants for a password nor how to set one. That's OK. Shortly everyone I want to talk to will have called me or I will have called them, and I can access those numbers.

Years ago my MIL had Alzheimer's and eventually she forgot how to use the telephone. Well, I am not there yet, I can still use the @#$! phone, even if I couldn't hook it up. Sigh. Magic.

It was the BIGGEST party I have ever seen

Yep, I played hooky yesterday. Well, sure, just how often do the Giants win the World Series? G & I went to the Giants parade with (literally) about a million of my closest friends. I had no idea there were so many Giants tee-shirts and jerseys in the bay area, and they all showed up to see the parade and rally in front of City Hall. Their photos are better than mine, so see the link http://www.mercurynews.com/giants/ci_16516990?source=most_viewed It was the biggest crowd estimated to ever convene in downtown, and I believe it, because there was literally no more room left for more people to stand. It was a happy, smiling, friendly crowd, and everyone had a good time cheering and yelling. And there were a lot of champagne bottles on the street as we all cleared out. Happy, happy.

Why the Giants won the Pennent

We settled down to watch the pre-game hoopla on the TV last night, and G reminded me I had not washed his Giants tee shirt. I had my jersey on, of course, but since I didn't get anything on it the night before, I could still wear it again. Black tee shirts are apparently not so resilient, so I jumped up and dumped a mixed load of clothes in the washer. At the end of the second inning I checked the things in the dryer, and it was just barely damp. I told G he could put it on if he wanted to, but he said if it wasn't dry it wouldn't work, and I could look it up, it was true. So sure enough, as G walked into the living room in the top of the 3rd inning with the Giants at bat, pulling the shirt down over his belly, there went a line drive into left field. It was the start of a beautiful thing.