The Kumquat In Detox?

My nephew and I named my previous laptop "Kumquat" (we even made a logo) and the name has been transferred to this one too.  It seems that the Kumquat has acquired a virus and needs to go to the fixit place.  My usual fixit guy's company doesn't do computer service anymore which was a terrible shock when I called him last week to schedule an appointment.  I asked for recommendations for other equally honest and reliable service people and called one today.  See, I've been reluctant to take it in because that means I'll be without a computer for a day or more, maybe two or three days, so I want to warn you that this might be the last blog post for a few days, maybe the rest of the week if the Kumquat has to spend the weekend in the shop.  *sigh*  It must be done.  The thing's running slower and slower and my onboard virus scans don't find anything so I suspect that whatever's in there is smart enough to hide from consumer-grade scans.

I heard a noisy truck out front this morning and it wasn't the garbologists, it was the leaf-picker-uppers.  Hooray!  I called the city Public Works office yesterday and she said that they still have a couple leaf collection crews out following the trash routes so I didn't get to call in a special leaf collection strike.  I'm just glad they're gone and I won't have leaf-smothered grass at the curb in the spring.

We had bird visitors again today.  The bluejay was doing its peanut acrobatics, a female cardinal had breakfast on the platform feeder, and a trio of sparrows had a group bath.  There are usually way more than three sparrows bathing at a time but this morning the rest of them must have been busy.

I didn't knit last night.  I just didn't feel like it so here's a picture of the afghan that I learned to knit on.  Each of those fish blocks uses the knit stitch, the purl stitch, increases, and decreases.  What more do you need?  By the time I had enough fish to make a good-size afghan I was a pretty darned confident beginning knitter.  It's been all uphill (or downhill if you're talking about money spent on stockpiling yarn, etc.) since then.

November 29--Lorenzo Lotto, Annunciation.  Imagine sitting in your room when a guy dressed in a blue toga and carrying a stem of lilies flies through the window and tells you that you're going to have a baby.  All by yourself.  No courtship, no foreplay, just, BAM!, you're having a baby.  Oh and, by the way, the baby daddy is God, as in G.O.D., the guy that created Heaven and Earth, etc. then took the weekend off.  Your mother is totally going to believe that story when "that time of the month" isn't coming around anymore.  She'll get you married off to Joe, the nice carpenter a couple blocks over so fast it'll make your head swim.  Joe's such a great guy he'll buy your story and agree to love the kid as if it was his own.

That was fun to write once I realized where it was going.  Man, I hope the Kumquat's brain isn't too badly infected and it'll come home quickly.  Maybe it's just a slight case of a virus that's easy to cure.  Fingers--and checkbook --crossed.
--Barbara