Katie and her mental meanderings

making: My Dad’s Marmalade: the main difference from other marmalade recipes is you boil the fruit before chopping it up, which is SO much easier.
knitting: a red devil hat with (for knitting geeks) Malabrigo in Valentine. Sooooooooo soft…. Not sure The Spouse™ is too keen on the idea of the horns, though. Can I wear it to church, do you think?
reading: Do Not Pass Go by Tim Moore, and also one of the Green Knowe series… revisiting my childhood

In re-installing the Firefox extension Adblock, and the new one I’ve just found Flashblock (block those annoying ads…) I discovered one called Time Tracker. It works out how long you’ve spent browsing – you can exclude work sites – but this could be EXTREMELY depressing after a day working at home!

Don’t normally do these (and no-one passes them on to me anyway, I just lifted this from Alice and Jack), but I am hungry and waiting for dinner so it will help pass the time!

4 jobs you have had in your life:
Hotel chambermaid and kitchen helper
Postie
Lab job getting blood from a stone
Biology teacher

4 Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:
Passport to Pimlico
Casablanca
Pride & Prejudice
Calendar Girls

(That is hard, actually, as I tend not to watch films over and over again).

4 Places You Have Lived: [what, just 4? Ed]
Copenhagen (I was 4)
Laramie, Wyoming (I was 7)
Ndola, Zambia
Bagamoyo, Tanzania

4 TV Shows You Love To Watch:
Desperate Housewives
Shameless
Miss Match
Judge John Deed

4 Places You Have Been On Vacation:[see above - Ed]
Baja California
Zanzibar (about 10 times – see above)
The Namib Desert (but only for about 3 days)
Gol, Norway

4 Websites You Visit Daily:
Ship of Fools
Wibsite
Various non-Wib blogs
Knitty.com’s coffeeshop

4 Of Your Favorite Foods:
Chocolate spread
Cottage cheese (yes, really)
Tofu and paneer (yes, really, truly) (not together but they are similar)
Weird meat including ostrich, guinea fowl, venison, wild boar and crocodile.

4 Places You Would Rather Be Right Now:
Downstairs eating dinner
On a warm beach with someone bringing me dinner
In a nice restaurant with someone bringing me dinner
In front of the telly eating dinner (pizza probably)

The Spouse™ has just received a circular email at work saying that “business casual” is now the order of the day, and jackets and ties are not required.

Strangely, I have just these past couple of weeks begun an approach to dressing for work which I term “suits lite”. What this consists of is deciding on one common garment or theme (usually a garment plus a colour scheme, and usually a skirt or pair of trousers) that I will wear throughout the week, and then checking before the week starts that I have enough clean and ironed garments to keep me going for the week. It may mean wearing the same pair of trousers all week, but it may also mean less time spent frantically running around in the morning.

So last week’s theme was “grey trousers and white shirt” and it gave me two opportunities to wear my new colourful vest thing on top of the white shirt, and this week’s theme is “black with a splash of colour”: either black skirt and top with bright tights, or black top and trousers with a colourful scarf…

I do seem to remember everyone saying when business suits for women were so big (maybe in the 80s – shoulder pads and all that!) that one of the advantages was not having to decide what to wear in the morning…

If you’ve been looking at my 1978 diary (see left), I have a question:

Do you think I should keep the comments on each day’s entry at the top, or move them to the bottom? I reckon I should keep some explanation for those who don’t understand my personal shorthand… or weren’t around in 1978…

(In case you were wondering, I’m sure you weren’t, my hospital appointment went OK, some blood tests to be done followed by what seems to be two operations in one, including a third if they find anything that needs doing “while they’re in there”(!), on the 6th of March – the earliest I can fit it in my diary since I need a week off work – imagine – the NHS is waiting for me to be free!)

inspired by the Generous site, is to ring people more, rather than email (or ignore) them.

Last night The Spouse™ was late back so I took the opportunity to ring a few people. One was out, but rang me back; one was out, and has a generic answering machine message (though I think I remember it from last time I rang) so I’m not 100% certain I got the right one, and one was in, and we had a nice chat, but she sounded predictably tired, having a 3-month-old baby boy.

One, however, who lives in France, was not there – and the person who answered the phone told me he was in England “visiting some Protestants”. My French is not brilliant but it’s not that bad so I am fairly sure that was what he said… and I don’t think his first language was French as he spoke slowly! To clarify, this friend lives in a mainly-Catholic-but-ecumenical community in France, but is English, so it’s not too surprising that he should be in England – or that the person at the community there should specify the denomination of who he’s visiting!

But I bet it’s his parents…. and he’s just skiving…

but last night I put together the guest book section of our wedding album. We got people to write, draw and stick things on paper and I was just putting them in a loose-leaf album. But we’re also deciding which photos will go in the photo part. Only 18 months after the wedding itself… It’s fun, though, reliving it…

Currently reading: According to Queeney – I’ve read it before, but we’re doing it for book group at church next month. I think they have chosen a “childhood” theme for the year, having done The Poisonwood Bible already. If anyone has any suggestions…

Also reading: a book of sermons on Psalms, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Shockingly I also went to the chapel at work for about 20 minutes at lunchtime today – I’m becoming all holy. And whoever had taken my “prayer box” items away had put them back – but there was no lighter for the candle.

The Spouse™ and I were discussing the other day our memories of Christmas. I was told that there was no Father Christmas, or at least it was all heavily hinted (“Father Christmas needs you to go to bed now because I, er he, is tired and wants to go to sleep early”). He was not disillusioned until he was quite old, and had even told friends at school that “no, it’s true, he really came and left presents!”.

My parents also told me God didn’t exist, and I’m actually quite grateful they didn’t try what, for them, were fairy tales. But I’m sure there were lots of really sad children in my class whose psyches I messed up forever. These days the Daily Mail would have sponsored a law suit against my parents…

The dinner last night was lovely, and it was indeed good to get away even though it’s only just after Christmas. But the bed! It was the highest bed I have ever seen – a four-poster (with curtains but no actual posts) and it was so high when I sat on it, my feet must have been a foot off the floor (OK, I’m short, I know, but it made it hard to get in bed!). The bath was also huge, and getting out of the shower risked life and limb; the shower itself was also weird, very Heath Robinson, made of pipes in a kind of cage over the shower. But it was gorgeous, with a lovely view in the morning as well.

Today I nervously went and sat in a café with my knitting, thinking “well, if I sit here on my own for 3 hours, I’ll get some knitting done”. But I didn’t – two other nice ladies from the Swap Shop email list came along, and one knitted, and one made a rag rug, and we talked about all sorts of things, including where else to advertise the group. So we’ll be meeting again next month, I expect!