Daily Adventures

There's a pen, made by Pilot, where the ink is "erasable". You can buy it here at Jet Pens.

The funny thing is that the ink is actually erased by the heat of friction, and it reappears if you cool the paper down below 14° F (-10° C), which is pretty easily done in most freezers (or outside today... whew it's cold). So it kind of works as a disappearing ink that's the opposite of the usual kind of disappearing ink (most of which appear with heat or UV rays or... ).

Speaking of the Cold. It's been -10° F (-23° C) outside at night or in the early morning. Jet and I have been blowing bubbles outside, catching them on the blowing ring, and watching them freeze. It takes a little while, and you can also blow them onto a pan of water (so long as the water doesn't solidify on you). You can see the crystallization of the soap solution and then the whole bubble shrinks just a little before the film goes solid. Usually they just collapse, but occasionally you'll get a really strong bubble in which holes will appear and just stay and the rest of the structure remains stable. Jet's even poked his finger through the ring of the blower and held it there with the rest of the bubble all around it. It's really... cool. (or so she says as she's freezing her BUTT OFF... ahem)

Hope you're all doing well! Hope Thanksgiving was fun and that the shortening days are inspiring you instead of bringing you down. I managed to do Nanowrimo before I left for San Diego, but I'm sitting here with half a novel of my David finally finding his true love (and Afghanistani fissionables, Ukrainian nuclear power, and Russian politicians who were once Russian Bratva) and wondering if it's even what I really want to do to finish it, but I might as well just finish it so that it's done and David is finally settled down with the love of his life, and then get on with the 'real' one. *laughs* I may just finish it so that I can publish it as a weekly somewhere (including here, since I'll likely do it for free). Nanowrimo certainly made me realize that there's lots of ways to publish on-line content.

I dreamed of having a undulating, giant black and white dragon made of thousands of gleaming Lego® pieces on my shoulders as I flew it over a detailed, intricate model of Tokyo, with Catherine Zeta Jones as we tested out a part of the story together. And I crashed the gigantic, gorgeous, powerful thing into the city in a beautiful explosion of pieces and the peaceful knowledge that I and the special effects department would be able to put it all back together again.

It was the third story trial we'd done together, each one testing and perfecting another part of the movie/story we were plotting and planning and writing and filming together.

Pretty nice first dream... *sighs happily*

This morning it was 7° F (-13 C) with horizontal blowing snow. I guess our unseasonal weather has left for a bit. *laughs* I really do actually like shoveling snow from the sidewalk for exercise, especially after seeing the one girl that habitually wears leggings and slippers in the snow actually have a real coat on. What she does for fashion... *shakes head*

( Cooking beans and Jet's Pinewood Derby )

Written: 11:23 p.m. January 2, 2009

In which the weather does yet another about face, waffles, an icy shoreline walk with warm rewards, rose and lavender chocolate ice cream, getting out of the snow, and a lovely dinner with shaterri at Sakuma.

( Read more... )

I should have said, "They *were* having warmer weather than we were." *grin*

Peering at weather.com, today, Minnesota and Chicago got hit by the cold front, this time, same as we were. Perhaps more so. Plus the East coast has gotten it's blast, now. Poor trees, I'd heard they'd started to bud out there!

We're not getting out of below freezing temps until Thursday, and there's some hint that, perhaps, this coming weekend is going to net us even more snow. I'll have to admit this is the first time it's happened like this on the Front Range that we've experienced. Mostly we've had snow, then sunshine to melt it all off and clear, and then the next storm, not this week after week of snow.

John actually wore pants yesterday and got a ton of flack about it. "You sick today, John?" "You feeling okay?" "Woah... what happened?" *giggles* Single digits will actually get him to cover his legs, though the teens didn't. That was pretty funny.

My bite is much better now, and my body is finally settling down on the fact that the change is real and solid, now. Unfortunately, Jet decided to get up three times last night, so John and I are pretty tired. He normally gets through the night, no problem, but... wow... when he's up he's up... and really wants someone to be with him. I ended up sleeping in his bed with him for a few hours just so we could all sleep.

At the moment it's 1.2° F (-17° C). The highs around here have been in the teens and lows have been a bit below zero without wind chill, with wind chill it's down around -16° F (-27° C).

It's not Minnesota or the East Coast. They're actually having warmer weather there than we are. Hmph. We usually have warmer weather than they do and it's just a bit weird to have snow so fine and dry that the only way to get it off the sidewalks is to use either a squeegie or a push broom. It's powder fine and even after a few days on the ground it still crunches under the feet.

It definitely is cold enough that my body *knows* it'll die if I stay out there much. But Jet seems to ignore it cheerfully in order to kick and push every single bit of snow he can find. Boys. *laughter*

It's been about this cold since Thursday afternoon, on Thursday you could watch the thermometer just start to drop down and down and down. Wednesday was in the 50's and we were thawed enough we could actually see a bit of ground between the white and a bit of black top right in front of the house. But about an inch or so fell on Friday, half an inch the night before Saturday, and then another two or three inches today. Powdery fine stuff. Excellent if we were a ski resort, but we're not!! Hmph.

It is beautiful, though.

( And for something completely different... )

The four days out at the Oregon coast were wonderful, mostly overcast, one brilliant day, and we ended with a real soaker, which was exactly the right time for it. We camped with John's parents, whom I was very impressed with, and his brother and his wife, whom I've always admired. It was a lot of fun to be with them, and Walt's cooking made me fascinated with Dutch ovens. The rainy day was good in that we could pack up, tour the Tillamook plant, have ice cream, and just go home, get everything hung up to dry, and have a wonderful dinner at Yeh's Wok.

The only problem is that, during camping, my Visor spazzed when I put new batteries in it, so I've now lost contact information for just about everyone. Also, given how full John's made our social calender until we leave on Sunday, I'm not likely to get to visit with any more folks, realistically. *sigh*. Sorry about that, Kirby and others. I apologize for spazzing on that.

Yesterday John and I wandered the new Bellevue Square and Lincoln Square and then got to see Pirates 2. ARRGH! I say, "ARRGH!" It's great but there's another movie coming, which should be great. I'm really looking forward to the next one.

Then I lost my voice as we went to the old Rosehill Ale House (which is something else now) and celebrated the retirement of someone that had joined Data I/O a year before John had. And, consequently, met up with nearly 30 people that we haven't seen for nearly a decade. It was astonishing. The pub was, as usual, quite loud, so I pretty much lost my voice trying to talk with far too many people.

It was odd, though, in some ways. Meeting and greeting folks that I hadn't seen for that long. I felt distanced, but also like I *should* know how to act with them, but also knowing that that really wasn't the case. It was very cool, though, to see Patricia Blair, the wife of Nello, whom we used to work with. she's now Mrs. Washington! Hee. She won a beauty pageant!! And is now the traveling Mrs. Washington with engagements, parties, and doing judging at beauty contests herself. Lots of charity work in there, too, which is making her very happy. That's very cool.

I had enough voice left, when I got back and had a mug of tea, to read Jet his good night books, and that was very good indeed.

You know you're alive when you go out into -14° F (-25°C) with wind chill taking it down to -28°F (-33°C), even bundled up like crazy.

We went to Abo's Pizza Friday night, in that weather, and the place was just hopping, as everyone was getting delivery and we were the only ones fool enough to go out ourselves, and the place was COLD, except right by the ovens and the heater vent, and the guys were all working like mad within a two yard radius of the ovens because the delivery guys were going in and out so often that the place was just one BIG DRAFT.

The thing about being out in weather that cold is that you can feel the wind whipping away the tendrils of life from your body. When I breathed that air into the lungs without a scarf to filter it, I could feel my lungs start an instant asthma reaction. I could feel the warmth sucked right out of my body and parts of my lungs doing their tiny best to not just freeze. Any exposed flesh tingles and even stuff behind one layer of cloth starts to ring the alarms of the nervous system going, "GET OUT OF THIS."

We did not take the vehicle with fuel that can curdle.

We did go into Denver the next day, with a high of 7° and wind chill taking it back down below zero and John wore shorts to the Home and Garden Show, which was two whole blocks from the parking structure. He got a lot of "Do you know it's COLD out here?"s and "You're insane!" and one lady, whom we adored, who said, "Hmmm... got a pass out for the day, did you?"

Hee.

Jet was bundled up like a little Stay-Puff Man, fur hat, polar-tech mittens up to his elbows, three layers of coat, and a scarf bigger than he was to cover his nose and mouth. He's over the fever, all right, and was happy as a clam at all the exclamations of "How CUTE!" and "How warm!" he got for his hat.

We had a good, long weekend. Yesterday Jet got a hair cut and asked for yellow gel in his hair, and he showed everyone and anyone, "I have YELLOW hair!" My boy. :-) He also did melty bead art, and had a good time shopping for Mikayala's birthday party.

I went on a knitting spree. I did some simple fingerless mitts, sideways, with garter stitch. It was satisfying to finish a pair in about the length of a bronze-metal women's hockey game, when I'm STILL working on the Adama's shawl. Last two repeats of the pattern, though, so I'm getting to the finish line on that.

I made the mistake of borrowing Meg Swanson's Knitting from the library on Friday, while Jet and I puttered about. On Saturday, I ordered it from Schoolhouse Press, not Amazon. Yes, I paid full price for it and went through a bad-enough website format to do it, on purpose. *sigh*

Usually, with knitting books (in the last week, Weekend Knitting, Debbie Bliss for kids, plus some that weren't even memorable enough to mention), there's one, maybe two things I really want to make, in that book there were a clean dozen, plus a whole section of just handy tips that I really liked and wanted to keep close, plus lots of cardigans with cut steeks (courage!) that looked just gorgeous on the real women 'modeling' them. Too many of the Vogue knitting books (a Hollywood knitting, a stylish knitting, and a few other books that made me squint) have sweaters that make even super models look like bag ladies. This one was too good to pass up and not pay full price to the author.

Plus I got the yarn for the "Crying Sun/Moon" sweater, yes, the name is definitely evocative of the pattern, itself. Yes, I'll have pictures.

I've resolved to now have pictures of everything I knit. I got called, Monday night, by the mom of a little girl that I'd given a sweater to on Sunday morning. She told me that the little girl had worn that sweater to bed, and then all day, and she'd struggled, every time they went out, to put the sweater under her favorite coat, and the little girl had finally given up the coat to have on the sweater... the same little girl loves the little pink socks I'd made for her, so much that she wears them All The Time, to bed, to rise, indoors, outdoors, to the point where the mom can't even wash them. I made her another pair, but without a sparkling lace edging, so now I may as well just add edging to the other pair. :-)

That was good. Very good.

I have two HUGE hurdles to get over today, at work. It's lending me the energy to get through the uncertainty. I will likely do just fine; but I'm still nervous/scared. Emotions aren't always RIGHT, but they are. *sigh* Once they're done I'll likely to better as I do these things again, but so it is.

Woohoo!

-17° F (-27° C) last night!

The biodiesel in the Passat finally jelled. Poor John was trying to get our dinner last night and it coughed and choked and only when he stopped and let the heat of the engine melt the incoming gel did it go another few feet. He nursed it home and then took the Eurovan the rest of the way.