Below Zero

The auxiliary head weather guy did a little stand-up this morning showing how this winter's got the second highest number of below zero days since they started recording, the fourth highest number of below -10 degrees days, and the sixth highest number of days with at least 10" of snow on the ground.  I knew this was a champion winter; it's been soooo cold and it's soooo cold again today, and it ain't ending anytime soon.  And it's supposed to snow tonight.  Feh.

I got all the laundry washed and dried yesterday.  Yay!  Not folded yet, but I'll haul it all up and Durwood will sort and fold.  Teamwork, that's us.  VJ, the prez of Bay Lakes Knitting Guild, emailed me the other day to ask who's in charge of updating the guild blog.  Well, I'm not sure what happened but as of Monday, I'm back on guild blog duty, so I got the pictures from MW, changed them from billboard size to something usable, and then blogged the last meeting.  You should go look.  (If you're a Guild member, please talk it up to your friends and fellow Guild members, so we can use it as another vehicle to get info to the membership, for instance I'll post the homework for the March meeting on there so people can come prepared next month.  Thanks.)

My friend and yogi, MH, and her sweetheart/lover (what do you call your boyfriend when you're in your 40s? boyfriend seems so high school), DG, (who is a sculptor) have made this art challenge, Beware the Idiots of March, to make a sculpture of a person 8" tall any way you'd like.  I'm in AND I had a brainstorm during yoga last night so I came home hoping I have all I need to make my guy.  I do!  So Durwood helped me get started after supper (four hands are better than two sometimes).  Here's a peek at my raw materials and a bit of wire.  (Lala, I'm thinking of that art exhibit we saw at the John Michael Kohler Art Center last spring.)  If I can pull it off, it should be interesting.  If I can't, it should be interesting for a whole different reason.  (I don't play with frustration very well.)

February 26--Claude Monet, The Four Trees.  The row of trees marched along the riverbank like soldiers on parade.  Someone very precise had planted them using surveyor's tools because the row was so straight if you stood at the end it looked like one tree.  Nan had carved her initials into the bark of the third one in line.  Just her initials, no "plus someone else's" initials, no boy that's for sure.  She didn't have time for boys.  She was too busy doing things to bother with them.  Right now she was making a sculpture of a person using wire and fabric her granny had given her. 

And if you think authors don't put the things they're doing or what's happening around them into their stories, there's your proof.  I've got to figure out something warm to wear to work today since it's supposed to top out just above zero.  Ugh.  But I get to spend my evening with LC again because the band's ramping up for its concert March 9.  You should come.
--Barbara