Ruff and ready

As I mentioned in passing the other day, the Man received a knitted item for his birthday.

While he did thank me very kindly for my time and effort in making it, even I have to agree that actually he looks pretty silly in it.  It's a neckwarmer - supposedly to keep him cosy on ski days.  However, on him it somehow ends up looking like a 17th Century ruff. 

Very Shakespeare.  Not very Man.

But luckily all my knit 2 purl 2 ribbing and fancy cabling has not been for nought.  The Girl has taken a fancy to the thing - and, forsooth, she manages to carry it off. 

Winging it

The Boy enjoys skiing, but is not an enthusiastic ski student.  Having discovered last year that he can get down just about any slope in a firm wedge, so far as he's concerned that's his method, it works and he's sticking with it.  Who needs instruction?

So he's not developing into the most elegant skier on the piste - but he really can get down almost anything. Yesterday he descended the full Colonel, including the nearly vertical "black diamond" bit at the top, and he made it all the way without falling once. Wow.

Speaking of reluctant students (adds the Man), the Girl cheerfully admits that Math goes in one ear and out the other because she "can't see the point" of it. So she can't fully appreciate the enormity of the fact that an estimated 1.25 billion buffalo wings were consumed during yesterday's Superbowl. Nor can she calculate how many chickens (assuming six wings per chicken, as my omnivore friends advise) were involved. To say nothing of all the buffalo.

Ski special

Although I did manage a few runs down Joe's Special (one of the slightly harder slopes) at Willard last winter, so far this year I've been wary.  Until today. And though I say it myself, I did rather well - several times - in spite of the icy conditions that made the descent quite fast.  Of course, what to me felt like hurtling may to others have looked more like ambling, but still...  What is more, I was enjoying myself - just scared enough, without heart-actually-in-mouth.

It probably is true what they say about comfort zones - that all the really good stuff happens outside them.

Not too far outside them, of course.  I also just about made it down the lower three quarters of the Colonel today, briefly losing a ski along the way.  Hmm, not quite so much fun.  But at least I'm still in one piece.

The parking lot emptied particularly promptly after the lessons today.  Something to do with a sporting event that everyone had to rush home to watch - the Superdish, is it?  Go Giants!  Go Patriots!  Honestly, I don't care which of you wins.

It's a cop out

It's never a great idea to start thinking about what you're going to write in the blog when it's already quarter to bedtime, and you've just been having a little doze through a DVD (The Golden Compass) with the kids.  Even less of a good plan when anyway you've had one of those perfectly fine but not-much-to-write-about sort of days.

So I'm copping out and handing over to you:  if you happened to have been there, who won Linton Infants School Quiz and Chips on Friday night, what was the clinching question and who (if anyone) managed to walk home in a straight line?  And to everyone in general - got any snow where you are?  A little or a lot?  Fancy sending some to us? 

Snow-blower

It's the Man's birthday today.  39 again - how time stands still!  I don't know where the years don't go.

Birthday preparations had been somewhat hampered by the fact that every time I started pointing the car store-ward this week I'd get a call from the Middle School inviting me to come and fetch my poorly daughter.  And today of course I had her at home with me all day (where she seems to have been getting better).  Ah well.  For now we've focused on home-made celebrating instead - a card, a knitted item and a home-baked loaf, and a powerpoint presentation in praise of Dad.

And a cake, of course.  This year the decorative theme was our odd "winter", represented by a snowman (wishful thinking) under a parasol.  Only when it was time for the Man to blow the candles out did I regret the addition of the dredged icing-sugar "snow" - which ended up in drifts all over the table. 

Fractious over fractions

The Girl hasn't been quite right for the last few days, and I've been called in to pick her up early from school.  She starts out fine - indeed, full of beans and chat - but runs out of steam.  And she has an awful honking cough - as she says herself, she sounds just like a Canada goose.  Poor Girl.  The doctor thinks it's something viral.  I plan to keep her off school altogether tomorrow and hope a good rest will sort her out.

The Boy is wishing it could be him having the day off, as he's keen to avoid a science test.  After running through some of his work with him tonight, I can't say I blame him.  It seems to be all about buoyant forces, hydrometers and calibration and other words that our poor lad can't even spell.

He also had some Math homework which involved adding and subtracting combinations of whole numbers and fractions.  He claims this is a "waste of my time" as it will not be a skill useful to him in later life.  What does anyone else think?

Community store

The weather took an even more unseasonal turn today, hittting 61F in the middle of the day.  Maybe it's the spring-like weather that is prompting me to keep turning out closets and cupboards.  Anyway,  lately I'd managed to assemble a good bag or three of pass-on-able materials and today went looking for a place to pass them on to.

I'd heard about a "community store" that opened a few months ago.  It's in fact a place where people in need can go and pick out free resources (clothes, housewares, books etc), but it's laid out so that the recipients can choose what they need as if shopping in a real store - adding a little dignity to the experience.  I sought it out in downtown Albany.  It's in an upstairs room in the Sheridan Hollow Drop-In Center, which is run by the Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless.

Annoyingly, I forgot to bring my camera, otherwise I'd I've taken a photo for you - but there's one here, plus some more information about the store and how it operates.  It's really a good place, and happily it sounds like it's doing well - people are glad to donate stuff they no longer need; other people who can use that stuff are glad to receive it; things are getting re-used that otherwise might not.  All in all, what's not to like?