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Pottery Barn End Tables

Okay, I suppose I should give them some credit for using sustainable materials like bamboo and jute in some of their furnishings, and working on getting some organic fibers into the bedding materials (organic fiber producers aren't geared up for big mass production, which is why I usually go for locally-produced fibers if I can get them -- then production level doesn't matter). But anyway.....

The above link is to a picture of end tables made of chunks of Argentinian Cypress that died of natural causes, and have then been cut up, sanded and polished. Two size ranges, cost for smaller one is US$199 and for larger one is US$249.

Um, if any here would like a chunk of wood for an end table, I'm sure we could arrange one from right here on the farm -- most (if not all) of the wood my BIL Warren brings down off the hill are trees that have died naturally (trees have a lifespan, just like people and other creatures). I'm sure we could sell it for less -- heck, if you want, we could probably sell you a chunk that you can finish yourself... just come on by the farm sometime.

Health Update
Since I neglected to do this earlier.... finished up PT at CDH two Thursdays ago, saw doctor for signoff this past Monday. Still have to do the stretches and exercises indefinitely, but will be able to taper off to fewer times per week as time goes on.

Helping out with sugaring has occasionally been a little challenging, but more often it's my right hip and/or knee that bothers me, not the shoulder (well, the legs are doing most of the work on the hillside, except when we have to dig a line out).

I don't have to take ibuprofen on a daily basis anymore either. Stretching, resting, relaxation exercises, and a variety of energy healing exercises seem to be doing the trick most of the time.

Current Mood: busy

Sunday was an excellent day. Breakfast at South Face Farm, which is another sugarhouse in Ashfield, but they have a restaurant as well as the sugarhouse. My MIL Marian's treat, for my b-day. Blueberry pancakes, among other things. Marian wanted french toast and came prepared, bringing a type of bread with her that she's allowed to have -- regular wheat being a no-no. They were great and took the bread and did it up nicely.

Home again for a short bit, then off again with

gwynt_y_storm and Jeni and Tali, who took me up to Shelburne Falls. We met up with the Cat clan there, and hit Wandering Moon first. By far one of the best book stores in the area, in large part because they're focused on particular types of books, many of them being the kind we're all looking for... herbal, brewing, nature (general), nature (New England), various home crafts and homesteading interests, books on different types of building construction, carpentry and woodcraft, stone craft, etc. Also some esoteric books, children/youth books of a useful/entertaining sort, and so on. Wandering Moon also has all sorts of lovely handcrafted items and some gorgeous jewelry -- alas, my tastes run on the expensive side... but I did put two books aside, and may have a third one if it comes in before Alfdis comes over to return the demo items. The card reader was down and I'd neglected to bring the check book... The others came away with many books, so there was much happiness. Definitely a win-win shopping trip, since with the harsh winter weather and the fire that happened down the block from them (street was closed during the building removal), it's been a poor winter for these good folks.

Then we went wandering down the street, stopped in at a yarn shop where we ran into an old SCAdian friend, Gudrun, and her sister Bing. Haven't seen them in maybe 20 years.... she'd gone out of state, but is back now, in the Boston area. Some lovely yarns there, and they have a gathering on Wednesday nights (spinning? knitting? both?) that may be worth considering down the line. Also went to the glassblowers gallery (same street), but no glassblowing -- one of the guys injured himself snowblowing, and they work as a team. Still, some lovely things there as well. Then outside and to the end of the street to look at the dam, falls, and all the water roiling and pouring over the boulders and potholes -- the water level is high this time of year of course, so only one pothole was really visible.

Then over the bridge, where Jeni spotted Mo's Factor, and so of course we had to go in there and be treated to the young man's sardonic humor. He was actually quite friendly and helpful, and we all came away with various treats. I bought some black forest truffles, some 70% dark chocolate truffles, and a handful of dark chocolate peppermint patties. Believe it or not, aside from the sample piece I had in the store, I didn't eat any of it! Since I'd had the pancakes and also some hazelnut coffee at breakfast (and coffee means sugar!), and no real food since, abstinence was the better part of valor.

We then went to check out a pottery gallery, but it wasn't to anyone's liking -- still, it got us close enough to see the Tregellys Farm Fair Trade store, and that was definitely worth seeing. I only acquired a couple pair of clipback earring findings for converting some earrings I have that are for pierced ears, but they have a lot of lovely Tibetan, Nepalese and African items there, including pashmina shawls for $60. I was rather enamoured actually of the hooded, lined, pullovers, with pouch pockets -- 100% cotton and a classic multi-colored narrow-striped weave. Possibly might get one in the different shades of green at some point...

Then back across the bridge, where we tried to see the Vav Stuga, but it was closed. Then

gwynt_y_storm spotted a store a little further down the street, the Goose and Boot, which had all sorts of interesting odds and ends. I got some 6" Mole Hollow candles there for less than at the store,

etainmbw picked up some cast iron cooking dishes among other things, and Jeni also found some candles and a couple of lovely ceramic flower pots.

Then home again, home again, jiggity-jig! The Cat clan had other business, but

gwynt_y_storm et al stayed for a little chat, before going home themselves. We then went off to East Heaven in Northampton, a lovely hot tub establishment, having a couple of granola bars on the way.

fitzw had arranged for one of the wood tubs, of course. These are quite deep, with benches around the sides, and you can have the jets on or off. If you go on your birthday (and provide proof of course), you get a very nice discount on your hot tub.

We stayed for an hour, listening to a CD by Enigma (who I didn't know I'd already heard some of, before -- they're very good). It was an absolutely marvelous time, and many sore/tight muscles were soothed. Plus, my skin seems to be much healthier now - yay!

So... by now the observant may have noticed I hadn't really eaten much this day.... we stopped at a Friendly's on the way home; it being rather late on a Sunday night, not much else is open. The steak tips are pretty tasty though, so one can have some decent food there if one is careful. We did give in and have a bit of the ice cream -- which, while tasty, is perhaps something I should give up...

I did finish up doing most of my PT exercises when I got home. Usually when I've been on the road all day I give most of it a pass, but I consider getting in better shape a gift, so that's one I'm giving to myself!

All told, a most excellent birthday day indeed. Probably one of the best I've had in a while! (Sugaring season doesn't lend itself to being a good time for birthdays)

***
Today is going to be fairly warm, so L will be going back up on the hill to clear more pipeline. I've decided to go up as well, although likely not for as long as he'll be up there. Still don't have the stamina, but most of the work on healing the shoulder is done, so I'm into the strength- and endurance-building phase.

Also bookkeeping and typing to do today, and then the business meeting tonight.

Freezing rain and sleet to come, Tuesday/Wednesday. L says tapping will be waiting until Thursday now.

Hrim Schola on Saturday!

Current Mood: busy

Water, water everywhere, and not even the high mountain waters are safe to drink

***
Got my driver's licensed renewed today. Still pass the vision test. Have temporary photo until the new id comes in the mail in a week or so. In the b/w photo I look startled and in the color version I look like a dumpy middle-aged woman -- which, pretty much I am at the moment, I guess, especially with a cold trying to catch me.

***

fitzw got his eyes checked out today -- it's all good. Yay!

***
PT progresses. Added a new weighted exercise (just 2 lbs.) this week. Am discovering how pitiful my conditioning is, but hey, if I keep up the PT plus stuff around the farm, I should be in better shape than I've been in a few years. New exercise is lying on my side and using the topside arm, with elbow resting on my torso, to externally rotate the lower part of the arm, holding the weight. Basically, my external rotation is taking its sweet time catching up with everything else. Oh, and now half of my slant wall/counter pushups are on-the-floor knee pushups.

***
MIL is going to have a small bathroom put into the hall closet adjoining her bedroom (but so she get use it from her room, so moving door, etc.), and also having another closet put in where part of the music room is. Things are moving or will be moving, such as a small organ is supposed to move up to our apartment. That should be interesting... it's very pretty looking though.

Part of getting ready to build the closet was taking out the old chimney at the west end of the house, so L had to move stuff up in the attic, and we also moved stuff out of one of the closets in the apartment. Workers were in most of the day, taking the chimney down and then blocking the holes in the floors/ceilings. More tomorrow, I expect. There'll be a bit more storage space in the attic and 2nd floor now. Yay!

***
Made decent progress on re-typing of Mom's book today, putting in about 4 hours straight. More tomorrow. Slow-going really, with trying to make my old files from 2005 match the newer hard copy she sent me (PC crash), plus putting in her handwritten changes. But I'm cranking along now because in a week or so I'll probably be starting another project that's going to take serious, dedicated time. Hm, have to remember to do the downstairs bookkeeping tomorrow as well....

Current Mood: busy

Beautiful night last night! We viewed the eclipse of course, but also some of the rest of the night sky. Too hard to go out into the field but we can see some things from near the house. Although there were some clouds going by, still I enjoyed seeing Orion, the Dippers, Casseopeia, and others. The maples nearby were star-diademed with a startling intensity. Up here, seeing the band of the Milky Way is commonplace... I find I do not miss the city at all.

prince_hring took photos over the entire period of the eclipse and then merged them so that you can see the overlapping images. They're really something, you should go see them! He's quite good with the telescope and camera, among many other talents.

***
PT visits are down to once a week now. Still a long ways to go, but getting there. I moved a lot of stuff yesterday, and will move some more today. My limits are duration, amount of weight, and speed. That last means that moving the arm suddenly is a Bad Idea. Also jolting it is a bad idea... no, don't ask how I know...

***
Work. I don't have a regular job, and don't expect I'll be getting one any time soon. I do part-time stuff like bookkeeping once a month for my mother-in-law, and I just got in some typing work on my mom's book that I'll have to take a poke at later today. I may do some massage again, part-time, in a few months (right now I might be able to work on one person, as long as it's mostly Swedish). If I get the book contract, I'll be doing some illustration of cards this year. I make things, and sometimes they get sold. I do the bookkeeping, and we have discussions on what purchases to make now, and what can/should wait.

I could be a career person, or run my own serious business, but I don't think that's what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm very lucky, I have

fitzw, who has a great job, so I have a lot of freedom. This is good, since eventually we both want to be doing something different. And that's my real job -- gathering info, figuring things out that will fit into the big picture, etc.

I think my only "problem" is trying to explain to people what I do, when they ask if I work and what my job is... I don't think there's a name for it. Oh well, their problem I guess. I don't really have a lot of time to think about this sort of thing, because I have work to do.

Have a great day, everyone!

Current Mood: busy

As I sit here looking out the window at all the snow, reading about how hard the Midwest is getting hit with the storms...

1) Click here: Pedal-A-Watt Stationary Bike Power Generator and page down to get to the actual text and info. Very interesting stuff... you can buy it assembled or get the plans and build your own (or both...)

Definitely looking that over, although we'd probably go with getting the plans first, and go from there.

2) Crank LED Lanterns for your camping and emergency needs. Good for if you want to save electricity when doing some basic tasks around the house too. Great for the folks with asthma!

One lantern
Another lantern
And one more

There were a couple of the Coleman ones at the family Christmas gathering that we were all messing around with - easy to crank, brighter than you might expect, and IIRC, cranking for a minute gives you an hour of light.

****
Well, didn't stay off the PC completely yesterday, just off email. Read an interesting article on dopamine and a study they did with monkeys, measuring dopamine levels while giving them juice. Seems that while dopamine levels shoot up or down when the amount of juice is increased or decreased, once the amount stabilizes between feeding times, so does the dopamine level. The article went into quite a bit of detail on how our brains work on remembering positive things and memory-related stuff... positive feedback means you'd like to do it again (food, sex, sports, internet, information, entertainments, etc.).

Problem is that a person can want too much of something. Living in a society with so many stimuli, the body weakens the dopamine receptors to damp some of it out. Then a person may want more stimulus -- kind of like a drug addict - at first it feels good, then one needs more in order to just feel normal.

Which can make diets, cutting back on things that use electricity, driving, etc., more difficult. The best intentions can be undercut by the crash from the lack of stimuli one is used to. Like being on the PC... I should have asked L to move the loom sooner, but checked out the blogs I usually check instead. I did have him move it later though, and did do quite a bit of weaving yesterday - 20" on a scarf!

***
So, weather wasn't great yesterday so I stayed indoors. Did Tai Chi (Yang 24-form), PT, walked/jogged in the apartment, read more of William James (it was right after that book that I got online), cooked, looked out the window, meditated, and started research on the next Ogham letter. Haven't heard back on the art/book project, but I want to learn more about the Ogham anyway.

fitzw made more linguini with our new pasta maker; large batch this time. I set up the drying rack and helped with hanging them up to dry.

We've only used the pasta maker once before this, a few weeks ago. They take a little while to make as the dough needs a lot of conditioning before it holds together properly. Conditioning is running the dough through the pasta maker ~25 times at a wider setting. He made a few noodles, then he tried out conditioning several pieces and letting them rest. Then he went back to the first conditioned piece and made it into noodles -- this seems to work pretty well.

Homemade noodles take time to make, and they are only good for 7-10 days. Which makes you wonder a little about the ones in the stores.... although that could just be really good commercial dehydration. Anyway, they do take time to make, but they are _incredibly good_. The texture and the taste are simply better. Richer, fuller, almost buttery smooth, even though there's no butter in them, just eggs and flour. Yum....

Going back to the dopamine thing, I'm thinking one of the reasons that changes in diet and lifestyle can be hard to keep up -- what's new needs to be sufficient to replace the old ways and old comforts. Hm, maybe it's time for me to start up some other projects again... in the winter it's more difficult for me to keep busy, since there are still things I can't do, or in weather like today, can't do right at the moment. I can still only do so much reading at a time (although I do pretty well reading aloud to L in the car), and weaving is also a limited activity. Even painting and drawing have limits... probably why I end up on the PC so much right now. And time to get back to playing cards and backgammon and such too!

One of the new habits I'm trying to develop is changing up my activities every hour or so. Each activity uses the body in a different way, tiring different sets of muscles while resting others. I have it down pretty well for summertime, but not for winter. It's actually a healthier way to live, for anyone not just me.

***
We did strength testing at PT this morning, and I did pretty well on most of them. The failures were pretty dramatic, and made me laugh because of the contrast between the successes and failures. ROM is good and continuing to improve, but I have a lot of work to do on the mid and lower traps. Learned a new stretch today and got reminded of another one that I should still be doing (probably forever, since it's for the forearms and I use them a lot).

Today, I have some ground beef (grass-fed) defrosted and also some of the tomato puree from this past summer's garden. We'll be having a lovely homemade marinara and linguini for dinner tonight.... Yum!!

Current Mood: cheerful

Acorn Tree Syndrome, Part 2, by Gene Logsdon. Now, even I know potatoes are harvested from underground and how a blackberry looks vs. a black raspberry.... but I didn't know navy beans were white... Interesting thoughts on people in general today and their connection (or lack thereof) to their food.

***
Didn't go to PT yesterday because of the lack of sleep and not feeling well. Achey today, but no migraine. The jury is out on how the stomach is doing, but okay at the moment... cats seem to be doing better this morning and were interested in food.

Took two naps yesterday, one for over two hours. Candlelight at night was definitely kinder to my eyes than electric would have been. Did get in some reading of the William James book on religions. Interesting how he finds the weak point in people's thinking processes.

It's raining but we have to go out and get some supplies. L observed that most of Peredur's problems began with the change in kitty litter, so we are going back to Swheat Scoop. We'd tried the local wheat-based litter, but it isn't the same. And since this might be what's affecting Roz as well... we'll spend a little extra if it keeps everyone neat and happy. Also, I have to say that I think the current stuff doesn't smell as nice as the Swheat Scoop.

Hopefully we can pick up a few things for CNY while we're out, but no guarantees with this weather.