2008 the bad and the good

I'll readily admit that 2008 was a pretty lousy year. Beyond the national and international economy stuff which admittedly is pretty big and important, my personal life was particularly challenging in 2008. Two really awful things happened. First, my husband's brother, who we all knew wasn't quite right in the head, completely lost it and physically assaulted me Memorial Day weekend. I spent the entire summer recovering from my injuries and undergoing Physical Therapy.

Then in early June, our basement flooded. It really could not have happened at a worse time as I was in no condition to deal with it. How do you pull down drywall, when it's too hard to pull on your own socks? It could have been worse though. Our house did not wash away like some did in Lake Delton. We decided to have a sump pump installed to prevent future floods. I have to wonder just who thought it was a good idea to build a house in southern Wisconsin without a sump pump? This area floods and not infrequently. Having a sump pump installed after the fact is expensive, but it seemed to be worth it. We also hired a construction company to come in and gut the basement. There was mold everywhere and mushrooms growing on the walls. Ick!

So that was the worst of 2008 for me. I am thankful that it was not worse. Although our house flooded, we still have a house. We both still have our jobs as well. Certainly not everybody fared so well in 2008.

All of the negative aside, there were some good things that happened in 2008:

• Barak Obama won the presidential election!!!
• We had a great vacation in November to Las Vegas and the Mojave Desert.
• My parents are in good health.
• My husband and I are both in relatively good health.
  
• Our cat Doc recovered from his enucleation surgery and is doing quite well.
• Sid and Falcoon, our other cats, are happy and healthy.
• I reconnected with an old friend who I sorely missed and got to spend her 30th birthday with her this summer.
• My grandfather had his 90th birthday party in January.
• I had a great time at the Chicago and Milwaukee cat shows hanging out with my sister and other cat folks.
• My sister hosted an awesome Thanksgiving party.
• We hosted an awesome Halloween party (power tools + pumpkins = lots of fun).
• I learned how to knit socks, and I also knit my first sweater.
• I enjoyed working with my church's prayer shawl ministry to knit and crochet shawls for people in our community needing comfort.

Let's just hope that for all the good of 2008, 2009 is a much better year for all of us. I hope that a new administration can be the wind of change that we need to turn some of our problems around.

A New Use for a Seed Spreader

This tip came from my sister who lives in the greater Chicago area. They get a lot of freezing rain down there. You can use a seed spreader to spread salt on your driveway and walkways! All you have to do is dump salt in the main compartment, open it wide up, and start walking. I have to admit that I've never actually used my seed spreader for spreading seeds, but it works like a charm for spreading salt! We had freezing rain last night and into this morning, so there's a good layer of ice on everything.

My Goldfish, Mir

I spent more time this weekend with my goldfish than I normally do. My MacBook crashed, and I spent a lot of time on the phone with Apple tech support. The technician I spoke with was tremendously helpful and helped me get my computer all fixed. Looks like the operating system got corrupted. Anyway, when you are on the phone with tech support, there isn't much to do while waiting for things to load, so I watched the fish.

There are two goldfish in my tank: Mir and Pacman. Years ago, I decided to get an aquarium with pretty tropical fish. I was told that the first thing you need to do in a new aquarium to get the bacterial colonies growing is to get a feeder goldfish and wait for the colonies to grow. Well, I never did get those tropical fish. The goldfish just kept right on living. Our cat, Sid, was fascinated with watching the fish. He was a kitten back then, and he'd hop up on a chair next to the tank and say, "Mirrrrr." That's how we named the fish. We let the cat do it.

She (when a fish is big enough, you can determine gender) lived in a 10 gallon tank for several years until we could no longer keep the tank clean. It lived on the bathroom countertop to assist in this cleaning. Having to keep the tank by the sink is pretty silly! So, I bought a new fish tank on eBay. Well not really a new tank... It was 55 gallons though and came with a stand for only $50. Even though I had to pick it up in Green Bay, it was cheaper than buying one new.

She's gotten to be a fairly good size; Craig estimates that she is 12 inches long. I think she's somewhere around five years old. We feed her pellets for goldfish, and she will eat from your fingers, if you let her. She doesn't have teeth so no worries about biting, but it does feel kind of funny. If I am picking up the tank decorations or cleaning the tank, she'll rub up against my hand. That feels kind of funny too.

Our other goldfish, Pacman, is much smaller, probably only 3 inches long. While Mir is very long, Pacman is very round. That's how Craig named him or her. Pacman is a little too small to determine gender, but given the lack of breeding between the fish, I'm guessing they are both females. Maybe we ought to get a bow and name her Ms. Pacman. Pacman has also learned to eat from fingers, and is also quite insistant about being fed. Both fish go up near the top of the tank and move around a whole bunch to get the attention of whomever is in the room. Mir can also make quite a splash with her tail if swimming frantically is not working to get my attention!

Periodically I consider putting in a pond to expand the living quarters for my fish even more, but I have not yet gotten around to it. I am intrigued by the idea of an indoor pond though because it just gets so cold here in the winter. There's a Chinese restaurant in the Milwaukee area (actually Mequon) that has an indoor koi pond with some mighty big fish.

Gas and Snacks

Here's another weird thing I am wondering about. So where I live, gas is down to $1.74. Whoo Hoo! Yay. Do you think that now that gas prices are less, people will buy more snacks at the gas station?

I read or heard somewhere that gas stations make most of their money on snacks and stuff sold inside of the gas station, rather than from gas. If gas costs less, are you more likely to buy a candy bar than if it costs more?

I think so for most people, but even when gas prices were so high this past summer, I still bought snacks. The difference between this summer and now is huge though, even with my 10 gallon gas tank. $4.25 a gallon translates to over $42 a fill up. And $1.74 a gallon translates to $17.40, so that's a big difference.

I'm glad my car isn't bigger though. I know a woman who drives a Suburban, and she was paying over $100 a fill up this summer. I could not have afforded that! Although a Suburban isn't exactly in my budget either... I'll keep my Civic with it's 36 miles per gallon average for city and highway. (I calculate my gas mileage periodically.)

A stumper...

I'm trying to design a pattern for knitting socks, and here's something I am wondering about... If a number is divisible by both 4 and 3, is it also divisible by 12? If so, then I could make the number of cast on stitches divisible by 12 and life would be easy.

I want to do a ribbing pattern of 3 and 1, hence the 4. I like my stitches evenly divided among my 3 sock needles, hence the 3. I am strange, I know. Although I could do a 4x1 rib and deal in multiples of 5. I'm inspired by a cool sweater I saw somebody wearing. It was either a 3x1 or a 4x1 ribbing. I didn't want to stare though, so I couldn't determine which it was. But I thought, hmm that would look good in a pair of socks. And the numbers wouldn't matter so much, but I want to carry the ribbing down the top of the foot too.

What's an Alberta Clipper?

Alberta Clippers are dominating our Madison, WI weather, and will through the week. We've got one on the way tomorrow and one following that on Friday. So what's an Alberta Clipper? A new hockey team from Edmonton?

It's a low pressure system that originates in Western Canada and brings snow, high winds, and unseasonably cold weather to the Great Lakes region. These are not the systems that bring the most accumulation of snow to our region, but they can bring up to 6 inches, just enough to make driving challenging. Once it passes over the Great Lakes, it can produce lake effect snow and if it goes into the Atlantic Ocean, an Alberta Clipper can become a Nor'easter. And I believe, if I am not mistaken, that Alberta Clippers travel along the Jet Stream.

I wonder how much snow we'll get tomorrow. I'm hearing 3-5 inches on the Weather Channel.

death valley

Craig and I just got back from our Mojave Desert Vacation. We visited the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and Death Valley, all of which are in the Mojave Desert.

This is me at the Devil's Golf Course at Death Valley National Park. It's all salt deposits like the chunk I am holding up, and apparently only the Devil could play golf here (don't ask me). The elevation was somewhere between -182 and -282 feet below sea level and the temperature was 91 degrees F.

This is Craig at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. He's surrounded by salt deposits and extremely salty water. You wouldn't want to drink it, hence the name Badwater.

Death Valley is a funny place. It's between two mountain ranges made by two faults, and it's still sinking today because the area is still seismically active. What's weird though is that although we were so far below sea level, it didn't feel that way. The ocean was nowhere in sight, and all we could see in any direction was mountains.