Our Beautiful Katie

You know our sweet baby Katie. She just turned 9, and was looking forward to all the treats and present-opening on xmas. (She loved her pearl necklace and the extra attention it garnered). She'd been a little tired this weekend, but nothing concerning. On Wed. morning she didn't feel well, didn't want to eat or really get up. She was worse when I got home and we took her to the vet. She was so lethargic she barely lifted her head. They found splenic cancer with metastases to her liver and possibly lungs. Sitting there seeing the blood counts and xrays, hearing the options was horrifying - too close to home. Clinging to a hope she might be ok like I was.
Coming to terms that it wasn't an option. We spent 8 hours at the emergency vet, and left without our Katie. There really wasn't any hope to even extend her life without suffering. OMG I can't believe this happened. Until the day before she was perfectly healthy and happy. Chasing Windy and loving life. Once we decided, I went home to get Windy, and stopped to get some french fries, Katie's favorite. She ate a couple, then lay back down. Darin snuggled against her, the vet gave her the injection and Darin pet her and whispered in her ear until her last breath. It was really beautiful, she was so happy and peaceful and content. We should all be so lucky. It was so sudden and unexpected. One lousy day took away our Katie, when we should have had so many more with her. We love her so much, and always will.

I love this hotel

More photos from my recent trip. The sun started to rise while waiting at the gate to board on my way there. This picture is special for more than just the sunrise. For those of you who fly out of the same airport -- Look! A jetway! Can you believe it? Made me feel all high-dollar not having to go out on the tarmac to board. I always do an extensive yoga routine at the gate before boarding. It helps get the blood flowing and keep limber during many hours of sitting. I really wanted to get a photo in Warrior II (my fav. pose) at the gate but just couldn't bring myself to ask a stranger to take a pic. Esp. since most of them were staring at me surreptitiously over the rim of their coffee cups that early in the morning. Even knowing that no amount of embarrassment is worse than regret/failure, I still couldn't get the nerve to ask. Maybe next time.

The hotel is famous for its "View from the tub". It has plantation shutters that you can open to see into the room, and since my room overlooked the ocean it was possible to sit in the tub and see the water. Very cool, and I made sure to take a bath one day to experience it. Actually, the shutters were a great feature. I kept them open the whole time, and it made the room feel really big, plus kept the bathroom from steaming up. It was easy to keep my iPod dock on the ledge separating the rooms and access my music wherever I was.

Stepping out onto the balcony, this was the view:The rectangular pool bridged the lower one with waterfalls sheeting down on each side into the bottom pool. The "hole" in the middle is actually glass, so you could see people swimming in the other pool. It was fun to be in the bottom pool and have someone swim down to the glass from the top. The ocean was great too, warm enough so long as you stayed in the water. No waves though, which was disappointing. And the water wasn't nearly as salty as I had expected (my last ocean experience was the Pacific, which was really salty tasting). So many people went from the ocean to the heated hotel pools that the pool water was slightly salty instead of chlorine-tasting.

Stepping back into the room, you had to step over this 5" lip on the door frame. I don't know why it was so high, it's not like the floor had a flood hazard that high up. Now, given you knowledge of me, why do you think I'm including this in my post? Could it be that I tripped so mightily over the lip the first few min. in my room that I went almost 10 ft. before landing? See where the bed and my shoes are? That's where my shoulders impacted. I hoped the scuffs on the carpet from my fall would show in the photo, but alas they don't. And I neglected to take a photo of my carpet burned, bruised, slightly bloody knees. Though I'm sure they looked great the rest of the week with my skirts.

One final thing that was a nice touch. The in-room coffee maker was pretty neat. No steamed milk or froth, but far better than the dreck one normally gets as in-room coffee. Until next time...

Tasty foods from travels

I took all sorts of random photos from my trip to Southern FL. I figured it's the odd ones that make you smile later. Going through them when I got home, I apparently took a lot of photos of food. You already saw the steak pic, and I thought I'd share some others.

This Gingerbread house was actually the coffee shop in the lobby of the hotel. It was made out of real gingerbread and icing, and there was a continual parade of people mugging for the camera pretending to eat pieces. I probably would've done it too, but alas was by myself and too embarrassed to ask a stranger to take a picture of me doing it.They were giving out these juice drinks along with the sodas and water, and I picked up a couple to try. They are basically just pressed fruits and juice with no added ingredients, thick like a smoothie but not pulpy. Mixed really nicely with fizzy water. Very tasty and filling, made me wish I'd grabbed a couple more. Great to take the morning hunger edge off before getting down to the conference and your real breakfast.And for the piece de resistance - the scariest piece of sushi you'll ever eat. Sorry for the bad image quality, I took the pic with my phone. I'd never had a spider roll before, and wondered if there would really be legs hanging out. Boy it did not disappoint. It looked disturbingly like the face suckers from the Aliens movies, and I made it scrabble across the plate while making scary noises. I played with it for several minutes before getting up the courage to eat it. I bit the sushi part off, and was left with the legs, which I planted in a wad of wasabi at the prow of the serving boat. There was one other piece with slightly less scary legs, and later in the evening I ate it in one bite, feet first. It was damn tasty, and next time I'm at a good sushi restaurant I'm going to order it again. Although after doing a GIS for spider rolls, I think mine might be one of the scariest presentations I've seen. Hope I'm not disappointed in the future ones.

The terrorists won - here's proof

Just returned from a trip that included several airports. I've grown to accept the 3 oz. toiletries in their magic ziploc bag. Having to take off my shoes and go barefoot through security. The inability to bring a drink through. I do appreciate the airports that have the segregated lines for "black diamond" travelers who know what their doing. And being allowed to carry scissors and knitting needles again. Overall these "security measures" are pretty ridiculous and certainly don't make us any safer.

But having dinner during a layover I encountered the final straw. I ordered a steak at TGIFridays. I somehow never eat red meat on business trips, and usually by the end really crave it. See, I'm not really a vegetarian, I just play one on TV. A lot of meals are sponsored and usually chicken or veg., and we always seem to eat sushi as our late night supper. Anyway, I get my steak and silverware. Instead of the normal big steak knife I'm used to seeing, I get this instead:A cheap plastic picnic knife. Not even a high duty one, just the crap that would come with a fast food salad. It was a pretty thick steak cooked medium-rare. I almost called the server over about it, but then realized I was already through security and could have stolen my steak knife and done nefarious things with it on the plane. No point in complaining. I started cutting my steak. No, I started sawing at it, shredding the meat. Each stroke of the "knife" got through about a millimeter of it, and it made a horrid sound of muscle fibers tearing. It took almost a minute LITERALLY to cut off a couple pieces. I kept at it, rapidly losing my appetite and thinking this is the type of meal that makes me lean towards going veg. It wasn't long before my knife broke and I gave up.

So now, 7 years later, the response to the terror attacks are still far-reaching. The point of terrorists is to cause terror and disrupt normal life. And they've succeeded. They prevented a tired American traveler from enjoying a grilled steak as her last meal before heading home. And made her worry about using buzzwords like 'terrorist' in an innocuous blog post. Really, I have a slight nervous feeling, like the PATRIOT police are gonna come get me. Tsk tsk.

Lipstick on a pig

I'd never heard the phrase "lipstick on a pig" until the media furor over Obama's use of it after Palin's convention speech. Since then I've wondered how often it really gets used in daily conversation. I'm glad (sort of) to finally have a use for it. Last week I stayed at a hotel near the airport for an early am flight. Based on the chain name and online photos I was expecting to be pleasantly surprised by the quality and accomodations. Instead I arrive to find out it's a renovated Holiday Inn. No, wait, it's in the process of being renovated. Sure the bedding was updated (thank god no synthetic spongy under blankets) and the toiletries very nice, but underneath it was still a Holiday Inn. I was playing with the unstable bathroom faucet and thinking - you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig. Even with a high dollar veneer, I'm still stuck at a rickety holiday inn. Leaving the next morning clinched it for me, when I tripped rolling my luggage into the elevator because it had stopped several inches above the level of the floor.

Wormies

The weather has been most unusual lately. We've had a surprising number of snows already, though none last through the next day. The other day I let the dogs out and was pleased with the warm wet wind blowing instead of the biting cold dry wind we've had lately. The cars were covered in rainy dewdrops, and when I ran my fingers across the windshield I was shocked to discover it was ice. I swear it felt like it was in the 40s, and here I have to scrape my car. When I went back inside for the ice scraper, I looked down at the front stoop and was horrified to find countless tiny worms slowly dehydrating and freezing to death in front of my door. A few waved their little heads (or butts - never can tell), but most were stuck down to the cement. The dogs didn't like it, and took running leaps to get inside without getting worms in their toes. I looked at the neighbors and we're the only house graced by the wormie goodness. Blech.

Freakin' pattern idiots

There's a good reason I never use knitting patterns, and why I have yet to successfully knit a sweater for myself. Because most knitting patterns SUCK! I'm sorry, but if you're using a pattern published in Knitter's Magazine, the highest rated knitting mag in the US, it should not have so many errors that even an experienced knitter (with the full backing of the Ravelry community) can't follow it. Huge glaring errors, like telling you to start a design element at one spot, then several inches later (hours of knitting time) realizing there is no way that's correct. Yep, look at the photo right next to the pattern text and there is NO WAY AT ALL it is correct as written. Ravelers agree, and one even wrote the magazine for a list of errata without success.

So now I'm torn. I really really like this sweater and want to make and wear it. I have the perfect handspun yarn for it, and except for the chunks of errors it is relatively easy to knit. BUT, I'm already pissed and I'm only 1/3 through the front left piece, and the Ravelers warned the back is where all the frustrating problems are. I can keep working through it, hoping to avoid most errors by carefully reading, and tearing out hours of work when I do find yet another pattern mistake that's not visible immediately. Does not sound like fun. But it took me forever to find this pattern and I haven't seen any others that were as attractive to me. I'm pretty sure I definitely want something asymmetric or angled. Preferably a cardigan. My yarn is sport weight (size 3 needles) and fairly dark - so complex cables or such would be lost. Le sigh. I will frog this current craptastrophe back to the last correct row, then try again altering the pattern to match the photo. If I hit another major error after this one in the next couple days I probably will say something unladylike and find a new sweater to knit. Wish me luck.