Watching

You gotta watch me.....all the time.   Today was no different than usual.  Sigh.  All my techie gadgets give me no end of trouble (some of it not my fault! really!).  The Tramp is my geek god.  (there should be some sort of balance there, don't you think?)  For a couple of days my laptop has been locking up for no reason that I could see.  It's made by Apple for goodness sakes.  I expect it to be trouble free.  (cue laughter from behind the other desk in the Sandbox)   As a trained professional The Tramp worked on the issue for several days, asking me questions which I have no answer for, browsing forums for answers from people who hopefully do, opening the machine up and putting it back together again,  disconnecting and reconnecting all the peripherals, backing it up in case it had fatal problems and almost deciding we were going to have to take it to the Apple Store.  Bummer.

On the desk, attached to the laptop, I have an additional monitor, a bluetooth keyboard and the Apple Magic Mouse.  Because the Magic Mouse can be such a pain sometimes, I have a "regular" wireless mouse as well.  After my screens froze again this afternoon and I fussed and whined for a bit, The Tramp asked if the dongle for the second mouse was plugged in somewhere.  "Yes," I said.  "Where do you keep the mouse?" he asked.  "Right here, kind of out of the way in this memo cube," I answered.   "Ah," says he.  "Just dumped in there so the mouse buttons are pressed?" Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh nooooooo.  I really do need to be watched.  ;-)

Julianne knows this too.  This quilt top was due yesterday.  (oops)  But I got it done today in record time.  Whew.

Ivy and I went for a walk early Thursday morning.  It was cold, and now it's supposed to get up in the 70s again in a few days.  Crazy.

It was trash day and also leaf pickup day, so there were massive piles of leaves all along the roads.  Ivy thought they were put there just for her to walk through.  :-)

When we got home I had to de-leaf and de-pine needle her.

The breeze that was freezing my ears was doing neat things to the reflections in the pond.

 What's that on our roof?

Wow.  That must have been some big bird!  I wonder what's been hanging out up there.

This round of leaves are gone.

Today was another Project FeederWatch observation day.  Once again I got the impression the birds were watching me.  :-)

Isn't he a cheeky fellow!

This evening we sat for a while in the dark and watched our Christmas lights twinkle.  Nice.

 

Looking

This is a pre-emptive post.  Pre-empting the phone call from New Zealand wondering if we are still alive.  Tee hee.

As I gathered the photos (warning! photo heavy) they all seemed to relate in some way to "looking."  So here goes.....

My mermaid is looking kind of...well...like a decapitated Venus de Milo.  I've bought and borrowed some beads and am looking forward to embellishing her "tail."

I made another Tiny World pin cushion on the weekend and gave it away at quilting bee in Monday.  I think it will be enjoyed.  I'm pretty sure it looks better than my lousy photo.  :-)

Look at that!!  The last four of the set of six memory quilt tops are finally done and delivered.  Whew!

And looky here.  Mom is helping me cut out the circles for two of the above quilts.  ED, LZF and the Viking joined us for Thanksgiving weekend.  They brought along their two small dogs, Patrick and Bella.  Bella is a strange little rescue who doesn't like anybody, but look!  There she is cuddling up to Mom.  And now when I look even closer I'm noticing that Mom's knitted vest matches my quilt.  :-)

The Viking turned seven weeks old while he was here and his bright eyes took in everything, though we were never quite sure exactly what he was looking at.

"Look at the camera!"  The Sailor Son and boys were here too and cameras were flashing all weekend.

And when you give the camera to small children you never know what you will get!

Here is Dad looking very pleased to be photographed with his namesake great-grandson.

Even The Tramp helped me out with a few minutes of babysitting, happy he could still look at his computer monitors while doing it.  :-)

While the "youth" were out doing a bit of Black Friday shopping I found myself suddenly in charge of three small children, but we all survived.  (Oh goodness.  Please don't look at me!)

"Look at me, Mimi!  I'm walking the dog!"

"Look at me, Mimi!  I'm pushing the baby to the park!"

Some of us enjoyed a lookout position at the top of the "spiderweb."

"Look Mimi.  No hands!"  (Gulp.)

Yep.  They plumb wore me out.

Ok Charlie.  I'm looking at you too.

Look carefully.  There are three dogs in this photo!  You'd think black dogs would be poorly camouflaged.

One.

Two.

Three.

We were shopping in Staples last week and The Tramp called me over to look at this display of six Epson printers.  Someone had fun with the shelf labels and we got a good chuckle out of it.

Our other house is looking so much better!  Repairs have happened, it's been painted inside and out, flooring is in progress, a bit of roof repair is still to be done and some landscaping along the front.  After a thorough cleaning hopefully it'll be on the market in a week or two.  Yay!

There are blooming Christmas Cacti to look at all around the house.  They've bloomed at Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Valentines Day, but never ever Christmas.  Heh.

It's been a year since I last made Chop for Charlie.  It's a cooking and chopping marathon.  Thank goodness I don't have to do it very often.

Looks pretty good!  Tastes fine too.

Ready for the freezer.

Ah look!  I've used this bag three times.  I wish I could cook for us just once a year!  :-)

I've also joined Project FeederWatch.   This means I'm spending some quality time looking out the front window.   The summer birds are gone and the winter birds are showing up.  I'm also playing around with my new camera which has a 20x zoom.  Very cool.

Sometimes it looks like the birds are looking back at me.