Loraine PMed me on Ravelry to point out that I haven't posted recently and wondered if I'm okay. I am, but there's nothing going on that I consider post-worthy. However, let's run through some items.
- One of my co-workers died 2 weeks ago. I guess as clarification, I could say that Mary worked in a company office about 1 hour's drive from where I work, so I suppose is not technically a co-worker. I hadn't seen or talked with her much in the past year or so, but I had worked with her on a file in the few days prior to her passing. The night before I heard of Mary's death, a friend told me that her son was in a bicycle accident: he'd had to swerve suddenly in traffic and was thrown over the handlebars, breaking his neck at C5. Doctors figure he'll never walk: they think he may have some use of 1 arm.
- The above seems to be feeding into my general anxiety about turning 50 this year, and the meaning of life. I thought I had better handle on that.
- Supper tonight (and for several other nights) will be this bean and vegetable chili, which is very good. Vegetarian cooks can replace the chicken broth with vegetable stock, and the meat eaters in the crowd can replace the bulgur with a pound of ground meat. Chicken, beef, pork will all work well. Yes, you really do want that much chili powder. (I use the generic stuff from the grocery store.) It's the cayenne powder that supplies the heat.
- My passport has been renewed, which means I needed new photos. They have me looking like Charles Manson's overweight twin.
- In the past few weeks I have knitted 2 pairs of socks. No pictures, because they have been worn and are in the laundry hamper. There's a third pair of socks on the needles, and I've realized that 2 pairs in a row is about all my attention can hold. So I've started spinning some pin-drafted merino (at least, I think it's pindrafted) from Ewe & Me Merinos : I bought it from them at Rhinebeck last year. Very open, drafts easily.
- I found this very nifty YooToob video of a French baroque pipe organ. It's very interesting to see the simplicity of the instrument and how much manual operation is required to change registrations. (The clicking sounds are caused by the mechanical action of the instrument as it's played.)
- Compare that with the the complexity of the organ Cameron Carpenter's demonstrates in this video. This instrument includes some nifty digital media and electronic controls to control registrations.
That, I think, is all for now. I'm off to the office for a couple of hours.
