Unraveling

Sparkle Plenty

I am a big fan of birthday weeks. The festivities continued on Saturday with a CAMP trip to The Nail Spa, a new salon right around the corner from home. Anna, Pamela, and I got toasted with a bit of bubbly, while Meryl snapped a photo. My awesome friends supplied champagne and delicious nibbles.

The incomparable Liz is the proprietress, and this family-owned business is full service (there are massage chairs to sit in while having a pedicure!)

She even made us cupcakes and made everyone sing Happy Birthday!

The manicurist added sparkles to my San Juan-bound toes.

Forty beautamous and very relaxed toes.

This is What Fifty-Four Looks Like

My guys at the restaurant.  The Boyo wore his suit!

We met The San Francisco Twins! They ate their dinner right across from our booth! Mr. Celia tried to take a sly photo of them in the mirror, while pretending to take one of me.

Then the Boyo asked them if, since it was my birthday, they'd mind posing with me.

They were - how can I say this - DARLING, and very gracious. Honored, I am, to have met them.

We all loved The Show and there is telltale evidence of a snowstorm all over the place.

And this is what my guys gave me

Nano.  Just in time for my ten hours of travel time to the conference. I've already downloaded The DaVinci Code and Redwall. Ah, audiobooks and knitting.  Sweet.

And thanks to all who sent birthday wishes. Biggest. Comment. Day. Ever!  How could I not have a great day with all of you sending good wishes?

Sunny Day

Sunny day

Sweeping the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet.....

It's amazing what two days of sun will do for a person who is sun-starved.  I've had two ten-thousand-step days in a row. Wowie. And it looks like tomorrow will be another. Yeah!

And it's a week of celebration, beginning on Sunday with an Easter brunch at our neighbors'. They have seven-year-old twins, Jane and David. Pistols, the both of them.  They had the Boyo tied up in knots most of the morning, and after he retreated to the quiet of the Boyo Lair (across two backyards), they went after Mr. Sal and tied him up. They are animals, I tell you, but fun and f-u-n-n-y.  And Jane knits. Seven years old and she knits, friends. And she is a very interesting conversationalist. And she knits. We have a date. Her mom said, "I'll take you over to Celia's on Saturday and we'll knit together."   And Jane said, "Do you have to come?"  See, I'm HER friend. OMG!

So there's more celebrating. Today, I had lunch with Mom & Sis. It was lovely lovely lovely and I got presents, nice ones, because I will no longer be fifty three as of tomorrow. Fifty four.  Count 'em, friends. That's a lotta candles. Hard to imagine. Don't feel a day over...fourty four. Actually, it doesn't seem that long since I turned fourty. But if I look at the photos, I can tell. Fourty looks...young. Fourty, yeah.  The year Mr. Celia gave me an artsy, naked photo of himself on Easter, which also happened to be The Day. I'm telling you, that photo was so a-r-t-s-y. And we were so young...

It's a whole week of celebrating. Tonight, I picked up my high school chum at the airport. Tomorrow, on the actual day, my chum, Mr. Celia, and the Boyo will all go with me to the City (San Francisco) for dinner at Taditch's and entertainment at Slava's Snowshow.  You may recall (or not) that Brother Tim and I saw this show in NYC, during the Republican Convention in August 2004. It is well worth seeing again. And sharing with other people, especially the ones I like the best.

Thursday's a chiropractic appointment. A celebration in itself, really. I will feel so much more like myself afterwards.

And Friday? Lunch with Jill and perusing TKGA's market in Oakland. And Stash is having a party Friday night - and a s-a-l-e. And I've got a gift certificate left over from Christmas. Woo hoo!

And Saturday? Mani/pedi with my CAMP gals during the day and Aurora Theatre at night. I'm wondering if I can fit in knitting with Jane (& her mom).

By Sunday, blessed Sunday, I will probably be so tired it will be time for a Pajama Day. I will need to stay in and get ready for traveling to the conference in San Juan. Anybody game?

Places I've Knit

I found Kat's contest through Chris' blog.

Name 5 places other than your house or a knitting store where you have knit...

1. On the Golden Gate Bridge
2. Onstage, in Shiftings (my friend Joan Merwyn's show)
3. On the Great Wall of China
4. At a sidewalk cafe in Rome
5. At a Knitter's Picnic in the park

Where have you knit?

H is for...

Harold!

Mr. Celia's Uncle Harold. He turned 99 last Sunday. NINETY-NINE, friends, so we flew down to San Diego to join in the festivities.

We celebrated Harold's 98th birthday with hula girls. This year the party was cowboy themed, podner!

Mr. Celia does not make a very convincing cowpoke.

But he brightened up considerably in the early evening when the rowdys started playing cowboy golf.

Yer ball went thataway, podner.

And as the sun sank into San Diego Bay

What more could we say?

Looking forward to the big 1-0-0!

Pink

It has continued to be dark, dreary and dangerous here in the land of Unraveling.  But I've been thinking pink the past couple of days.  Will send these off to Cynthia tomorrow.

And this morning?

The rain cleared up, but we're expecting more tomorrow. 

I sure don't feel like working today. I'd rather sit in the sun and knit my sockpal socks.  But off to work I must go.  At least I have noontime knitting (We started a group at work) to look forward to!

G is for...

Golf!

These are Mr. Celia's golf clubs.

Normally, they reside in the ass-end of Mr. Celia's car. They are in the basement because there is no golf to be had right now in our neck of the woods.  That's because it's soggy, been soggy for over a month, and the end of sogginess is not yet in sight. Poor Mr. Celia. He is golf-starved.

Normally he's a once-a-week golfer.  Twice, if he can fit it in. We support golf around here.  We tried to like it. Even went so far as to take golf lessons and buy our own clubs. But we are not good at it.  About as good as golfing as Mr. Celia is at knitting, which is not good. And golfing takes up a lot of time.  Time that we could spend knitting. So we leave the golfing to Mr. Celia because he is good at it. And we support it because he likes it.

Normally, when you turn on the television around here it will be tuned to the Golf Channel. That's the all-golf-all-the-time channel.  We don't get an all-knitting-all-the-time channel (we don't even get a knitting-every-once-in-a-while channel), but even if we did, we would not fight over the TV, because Mr. Celia really, really gets a lot of satisfaction from watching golf on TV.  Lucky for him, it's the Master's this weekend, which means lots of important golf is happening. Unluckily for him, though, we will be gone most of the weekend, so we'll, sadly, miss most of the Masters.  But there will always be highlights.  Nothin' better than golf highlights on TV.

Normally, it might be a surprise that a (former)hippie chick from Berkeley has a husband who loves to golf.  Well, if you're the (former)hippie chick, it might just blow your mind, to know you're married to a golf nut. Maybe none of the rest of you have even thought about it that much. But I have.  It's just that golf seems so, well...normal.  Not counter-culture. Not cutting edge. Normal. Middle-aged suburban kind of normal. But, come to think of it, I saw a commercial for osteoporosis-fighting drugs, you know the kind of thing that middle aged women need, and one of the women says, "Far out!" FAR OUT???? I haven't heard that for...35 years...

Crap. We are normal.

I think Mr. Celia would like things to get back to normal as soon as possible.

Change is Good

Blue sky up above

And maybe blue sky tomorrow, too. That's good.

Sock Pal sock? Feather and Fan with those wide stripes is looking kinda like the Jaywalker.

Sock Pal doesn't like chevrons, particularly the Jaywalker. Ribbit, ribbit.  Too bad.  I liked the Feather and Fan, particularly with this yarn.  But I'm not wearin' them.

Now we've got a little Lace Rib pattern going.  Change is good.

Again

The rain, again, is really quite a pain.

I wish the rain would find the plain in Spain.

Blue Monday

Need I say more?

To be fair, it isn't just the rain that's got me down. Daylight Savings Time always kicks my butt.  It takes my mind and body time to adjust, and it was dark this morning at walking time.  Plus, I just learned that my cancer-fighting friend, Melissa, is in the hospital because of a rare complication of her treatment. That's probably got me the bluest.

But it was a lovely weekend. The highlight was this:

It was a beautifu wedding.  Everyone was so happy. And, jeez, right about now they're getting legally married in Vancouver, BC.

There were plenty of knitterly companions: Nancy, Ryan, Nathania, Janine, Joanna, Christine, Silvia, Becca, Anne... I hope I didnt leave someone out. It was a pleasure to meet The Mysterious K, who maintains an aura of mystery, even in person.

And a pleasure to meet the various and sundry partners, who tolerate the knitting obsessive.  Mr. Celia and I were honored to be there.  The Shut-Ins entertained us with fabulous music and we stayed until the crowd began to dwindle down to a precious few.  I could say more, but I'm sure there will be plenty posted by others, and (probably) embarrassing photos of moi to boot (hah! typo - booty!).

Finally, one month before the deadline, I cast on my Sockapaloooza socks. Feather and Fan, Machine Knitting to Dye For workshop yarn, hand-dyed by yours truly.

I think this pattern is working well with the yarn, don't you?

All that rememberin' has me in a much better mood.  Time to get something done!