Kat with a K

Snowy Sunday

We got our first real snow of the season over the weekend, so I took some pictures for you while my car was warming up on the way to church Sunday morning.

The house is prettiest in the snow:

"It's always been one of my dreams to live near a brook."*

The "snow-covered mailbox" thing is pretty and all, but it would be better if my mailbox closed the whole way. This way the mail just gets all wet.

They are talking about building dozens of houses down past my house this way, but this time of year it's mostly just hunters who go down there. I'm surprisingly okay with hunting in general, but guys walking down the middle of my road with guns always kind of freaks me out.

Really, this whole set could be called "Why I Live in New Hampshire."

Directly across the street:

It was the nice heavy kind of snow that stays on the trees. (And causes power outages, but that's a different issue.)

This sort of down-the-road shot always reminds me of a shot in the credits of something. Avonlea, maybe?

* I was going to offer bonus points to whomever got the quote, but, really - Hi there, Rachel! (And Courtney?)

Football in the Snow

I'm trying to ignore the fact that it will likely be raining during my brother's game tomorrow, so hey, how'd you like to see some pictures of last week? I was somewhat surprised to arrive in Maine and find snow on the ground. I don't know why I was surprised, since it's, you know, Maine, but I was.

There was enough snow that the game had to be delayed so they could clear the field and pile the snow on the sidelines:

Here they are getting ready to play and somehow not freezing. My brother is #70, about nine guys from the right:

I may or may not have taken this next one because there are certain people on that team who are rather more attractive than nineteen-year-olds have any right to be. Moving on!

I picked a bad moment to take a picture of the scoreboard, because they actually won! 34-31! But I was focusing more on making sure I took the pictures at pretty moments than on, you know, accurately reporting on the game.

This was taken in the second half, when it was getting pretty cold. You can tell because Dave (#70, second from the left) had actually rolled his long sleeves all the way down. I almost passed out from shock at that one. (This is the boy who used to wear shorts pretty much all year. Until he moved to Maine.)

I love the sky in winter:

Trip Pictures Part 1: Adare

So, I went to Ireland! And Wales! And then took a ridiculously long time to start uploading my pictures! But here we go. We stayed in a pretty little town called Adare the first day/night, to give ourselves some time to wander around and rest and get acclimated. Here is the first of many, many pictures of gravestones I took on this trip:

See the rest of my pictures from Adare here.

Ice Storm

Hello! I really didn't mean to be gone this long. Sorry! I promise I will be back.

But for the moment - yes, I am among the hundreds of thousands of people in New Hampshire with no power after Thursday night's ice storm. I stayed with a friend last night, but now I know how to use the woodstove, so I will be sleeping home tonight. At the moment, I am at Panera - thank God for free wifi. But I'm okay, I promise, and I have several back-up options if I decide against staying home.

Frosty!

Yay! Today was the first morning of the season with real frost on the ground and my car as I was leaving for work. Now I'm watching out for the first snow sometime in the next few weeks...

Pretty Pictures

So I went on a quick trip to Canada over the weekend (more about that later), which meant I got to do one of my very favorite things - drive through Vermont. I love Vermont. And coming home yesterday, I finally had time to stop at the 100-mile view at Hogback Mountain. I'd noticed it when driving past a few times before, but never had the time to stop. This time I parked and took pictures until my camera batteries ran out. I've put my favorites below, and you can see the rest here.

Another Autumnal Milestone

I heard it this morning - they're predicting FROST tonight. Okay, not where I live, exactly, but in the same state. And it's a small state! So it totally counts. I am wearing snowflake earrings in celebration.

I just checked Weather.com and the low in my town tonight is supposed to be 46. I am beside myself with glee.

Why can't the whole summer be like this?

I hate hot weather. Hate hate hate. Well, okay, I might like a few really hot days in the course of the summer, if I could pick which days they would be, and schedule them for a beach trip or something. But in general... blech. I'm so much more of a fall/winter person, and I'd be happy if the temperature never got above eighty. This summer, though, has seemed particularly hot, so I've been miserable.

But we finally got some decent storms last night, and the heat broke, and this morning it was in the 70s and sunny, but not humid. Crisp, almost. Breezy. I drove to work with the windows open, with a big mug of Irish Breakfast tea and some nice Debussy on the radio. Heaven.

(How long until fall?)

A spring surprise

I woke up this morning and discovered that, seemingly overnight, the tree outside my bedroom window had leaves! Little baby leaves, but still exciting. And then I saw that the forsythia a few doors down is in bloom - again, it seems to have happened overnight, although I realize I've probably just been unobservant. I love forsythia. My parents have a whole row of them along the driveway. I wonder if they'll be blooming when I go home for a visit this weekend?

Strategic Error

Yesterday, I had caffeine way later in the day than I usually do - I had to stay alert for an evening event, and I had to grab dinner quickly, so that meant a bagel and iced coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. Of course, that then meant that once I was home, I couldn't sleep for a while. And now it's Friday, and I'm tired, and I have a weirdly large amount of work to do for a Friday. And lots of it - a big project I'm currently working on - is the sort of work that is both monotonous and finicky, so it doesn't really hold my attention but I can't go on autopilot either. Bah. I think this all adds up to the sort of day when I need to stop at Starbucks on my way from my pre-work volunteer gig to my actual job. Mmm, mocha.

Chinese food? Maybe?

There's a Chinese restaurant in the center of my little town; I hear that a bit ago, someone new bought it and it was closed for remodeling, or something. Today I noticed several signs in the windows with the following message:

"WE HAVE BEEN CLOSED FOR SEVERAL WEEKS"

Um, what? Does that mean it's open now? Wouldn't it be more useful to say that they will open in several weeks? Or that they are currently closed? Or something? A lovely case of grammatical issues making it unclear what the message is even supposed to be... unless they really are just telling us that they have been closed for several weeks. I think that is in fact true, but I don't see how it helps me know when I'll be able to get some lo mein.

Not jinxing it.

Hello from my hotel room! I'm in MA for a friend's wedding. As I was packing, I checked the weather, and it looked like it was going to be pretty warm all weekend. (I mean, relatively. Warm for New England in March, which is not really "warm" by any objective standards.) And I almost did the unthinkable - I considered not bringing my parka. Now, I'm a good New Englander, so I immediately realized that if I left my parka at home, there would be a sudden unexpected blizzard, and my friend's wedding would be ruined, and it would be ALL MY FAULT. So don't worry: my parka is hanging here in my closet at the hotel.

Small miracles

I checked the 10 day weather forecast this morning, and I was astonished to notice that the predicted high was above freezing on every one of those days. This is one of the reasons why I love New England so much: even though I know it will happen, every time the seasons change it feels like a miracle.

Eek.

Sorry about the messed up entries over the weekend. I ended up deciding last-minute to go visit my family, and I posted those two entries right before I left, and didn't notice that the links were all messed up.

Rainy afternoon

It's lovely and cold and rainy out, which is my second favorite type of weather for September. (My favorite is cool and crisp.) I worked ridiculously late last night: I had a project that I just wanted/needed to finish. So I listened to podcasts and ate microwave popcorn for dinner and drank lots of cocoa and just got it done. At 9:30. Ack. At that point, there's not much to do but go home, go to bed, get up, and go back to work.

But at least that meant that I got to leave early today (and will again on Thursday). I was going to do some errands and shopping, but as I mentioned above, it was rainy. Really hard, at that point. So going in and out of lots of stores did not seem particularly appealing. Plus there were flood warnings, and my main route home floods out at the drop of a hat, so getting home as soon as possible seemed like a good idea. And, you know, it was just one of those days, when I wanted to be all cozy at home in my pajamas, cuddling my kitten, watching the rain from inside, instead of being out in it.

So I came home a little after three, and it was lovely. It's now 5:30 and I've scooped the litter box, cleaned the bathroom, done laundry, paid the bills, and finished a freelance assignment, so I'm feeling very virtuous. :) The kitten and I are ready to watch Heroes and knit Christmas presents and read all evening.

Perfect Evening

Yesterday after work, I'd planned to go to the library, make some stir-fry, maybe watch a DVD. But by 3:30 or so, it was raining, hard, and cooling off, and I realized that I was going to be useless that evening for anything but making soup, drinking tea, knitting, and reading a British novel. So when I got home I ransacked the cupboards for vegetable stock and barley, dug random CSA veggies out the fridge, and threw together some vegetable barley soup:

While the soup spent most of the evening simmering, I drank tea, knit a sock, and reread the sixth Harry Potter book in preparation for the new one tomorrow.

Ahhh. Lovely.

The world must be ending.

This weekend is the Milford Pumpkin Festival. And the Wool Arts Tour. (And honestly? Aren't those two of the worst Web sites ever? What are people thinking?)

And look at the weather forecast.

Yeah. They're saying it's not going to rain. As I said, clearly the world is ending, because this can't be right.

No really, I'm rather freaked out about it.

(Yes, going to both. Pumpkin Fest tonight and maybe Sunday afternoon; Wool Arts Tour Sunday early.)

Steep steep steep

Meet the newest addition to the Kat with a K Hot Beverage Creation Apparati!

Yes, it's an adorable little tea steeper with cute celestial objects cut in. We sell them in our new café at work, and I've been coveting it for a while, but putting it off because it seemed a bit silly and unnecessary. But I finally broke down and bought it today, because I just adore it. And it fits perfectly on my favorite red tea mug, and is easier to clean than the tea ball I'd been using, so it's just as well. I just used it for the first time and am currently sipping some pina colada herbal tea from Adagio.

Also note the Doctor Who DVDs, knitting book, and dice in the background. That pretty well sums up my life the past week or so. Well, except for the work work school school school work work part.

Oh my goodness.

It's sunny outside. I think. That's what it means when it's all bright and eye-hurting and there's no water falling from the sky, right?

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Random Wednesday

1. New hair again, in its natural (i.e. not blow-dried straight) state:

I think I like it. More pictures here, here, here, here, and here.

2. I'm actually feeling remarkably focused about knitting recently. I'm re-enamoured with my Trekking socks and they're coming along nicely. Tonight I'm making myself work on the Clove Stitch Shawl I want to bring to Florida. Next week. Yeah.

3. One of the reasons for my focus is that the roommate has decided to try a sweater: he's chosen Beau from Vintage Knits. In a show of, um, moral support or something, I've promised I'll start a sweater from the book as well. Contenders at the moment are Fleur, Bridget, Faye, Oriel, and Salina. Opinions?

4. Right before midnight last night, I finished Guns, Germs, and Steel. More about it in the upcoming January Reads post, but I am veyr proud of myself for managing to make it the whole way through this time. My new lunch reading is Elaine Showalter. Yeah, I'm a dork.

5. My semester started last night. My class - Literacy and Service to the Underserved - seems like it will be really interesting, and the professor actually encouraged me to knit in class.

6. I just ordered my luggage for my trip. Which is next week. Yeah. Good thing L.L. Bean delivers so quickly. I should probably start thinking about what I'm putting in said luggage, eh?

7. Ugh. My favorites were voted off of Skating with Celebrities. How can anyone not adore Kurt Browning? Does not compute. qw21?

New boots!

I know, I know. Boots. I'm really stretching. But they just came today and I'm very excited. And they're the little sisters of my roommate's boots. Look how cute:

The next morning

Downtown again, the morning after the snowstorm:

And, just for fun, this is me and jaQ eating breakfast in the much-coveted car-shaped booth at a local restaurant:

Winter wonderland