Better Living Through Literature

Birthday kitty!

Birthday yarn (15 balls of it)!

Birthday shirt The Mama made for me!


Birthday kitty strikes again!

Birthday pie!


Birthday roses!

What a good birthday. Thank you, family. (And thank you, Axel, for posing so nicely.)

Why? Because it’s my birthday! And because I try to make this blog as educational as it is entertaining, here are a few other famous people also born today. Along with me.

J.R.R. Tolkein, the Hobbit guy
John Paul Jones, bassist for Led Zepplin
Michael Schumacher, Formula 1 fancy-pants race car driver

(That, of course, was the name of the play on which the film Casablanca was based.) However, it might be more accurate to title this “Everybody Comes To Ogden,” which is indeed what everybody did New Year’s Eve. Wait, are these the streets of Morocco? Is that Rick? Who’s the lady with the champage? (I always end up with the champagne. In every picture.) I hope we all had a Happy New Year, and that one of us actually said, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” during a toast.

1. I was driving off to see the cat and the house for the night and I saw something cross the road in front of me. I thought, “Wow, that’s a really big hunchbacked cat.” But it was, in fact, a raccoon. On I Street and Third Avenue. Lock down your pets!

2. I found a yarn store in West Jordan that has a really impressive yarn selection.

3. Ditto for a fabric store in Gardner Village, of all places. (Well, almost ditto. The fabric store had a nice selection of fabric.)

4. There was a line in the old movie Sabrina that I liked, spoken by Miss Audrey: “I thought I was all grown up. But I just got a new hairdo.”

Mostly, finishing small knitted projects:

A mostly-completed sock, also known as The Ninja Sock of Death.

A spy hat made of alpaca that gets black lint on your hair.

The last of the Christmas gift knititng. I like this pattern so much, I will make a purse like it come spring. (This is a cosmetic bag.)

Also, house- and cat-sitting without a laptop. (For the love, people–a little patience, please?)

And finally, making lists of what I’ve learned during this seemingly endless week of introspection:

1. I don’t want to live alone.
2. I like brightly-painted walls.
3. I like my job and the structure it provides.
4. Baking is soothing.
5. I really enjoy living ten minutes away from a walk in the foothills.

Come back tomorrow for MORE LISTS! Really!

Absolutely nothing, this week, except finishing small knitted projects:


This is a late Christmas Knitted Gift; it’s a cosmetic bag, but I like the scallop pattern so much I will make a full-scale purse for myself this spring.

Fa la la la la…okay, you get the picture.

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, or Yule. Here’s all sorts of internet knowledge about the Yule log (not to be confused, of course, with the pastry version of it, the buche de noel). I hope God blesses us (one and all!) and that we all enjoy our versions of Christmas. Or Yule. Or Hanukkah, although I think that’s finidhed.

I’ll be posting next week (just for you home readers, Annihilate) but probably not every day. Stay tuned.

Look at Frosty go:

(Yes, from a Hopkins sonnet to jokes about snowman poop. In the SAME WEEK.)

All is calm, all is bright:

Oh night…when orange kitty replaces Mary: