A meme!

Taken from katbyte who gave me the letter 'G'.

Comment and I'll give you a letter; then you have to list 10 things you love/like that begin with that letter. After, post this in your journal, and give out some letters of your own.

1. gardens (Japanese and otherwise)
2. good books (okay, I won't keep using 'good' but I get it once, right? - also good music, good friends, you get the idea....)
3. green grapes
4. goulash
5. gel pens
6. gaming
7. giggles
8. grace
9. growing
10. guppies! (in-joke, actually; I have no particular knowledge of the actual fish)

Music meme

1. Load your music library.

2. Choose one song from your music library for each letter of your LJ username (see below).

3. Post your results.

K- "Karen By Night" - Jill Sobule
Y- "You're the Inspiration" - Chicago
R- "Rosemary" - Suzanne Vega (I wanted to use "The Riddle" by Five For Fighting but that seemed a stretch)
I- "In the House of Stone and Light" - Martin Page
E- "Ebony & Ivory" - Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney
L- "Landslide" - Fleetwood Mac
L- "Leader of the Band" - Dan Fogelberg
E- "Eyes of Mercy" - October Project

A weekend.

Besides posting memes and linking news on product recalls, I spent a fair bit of time at my parents' house this weekend. Scott came out with me and we got a bunch of stuff boxed up. I'm not even going to try to assess most of the books right now - just bring them over. Any I don't end up wanting, I can sell to Powell's then, after all. That's not an applicable strategy for a lot of the items but for the books it was silly to try to go through them out there and put them in a keep or no-keep pile.

Other things I found today:

• Yet more stuff on genealogy as a profession. Someone - I think Jon, but I'm not sure - said they were surprised Dad retired as early as he did. I wasn't - I knew there was a lot to do fixing up that house, and I knew that he wanted some time to enjoy what he'd done and earned (and I'm glad he got that), and I knew he was still into genealogy. I hadn't realized he'd been looking at it as a possible second career, though. And perhaps he wasn't; perhaps the books and such on that topic were there because they had other information he wanted. But it seems he may have been - I can see him enjoying that.
• Two boxes sent to him by Uncle Jim, full of photographs and/or negatives. I think the place that did the scanning may be seeing me again.... (I've found a couple more of mine that weren't in the original set to them too, come to that, around our place.)
• Two black-and-white images labelled as being Crater Lake, and done by Jon Howell (hi, Jon!).
• An old binder for "household projects" - it doesn't have the more recent projects in it, but it looks like this dates back to when the new barn was going in. The new barn is probably 25 years old or so, now. I'm not sure how far forward of it the projects go, but not far. But what made me smile and cry a little is that it has a front and back 'cover' of graph paper slipped in - with little cartoons about planning things out on it. In my very young handwriting and style. I don't remember doing that at all, but....
• The aerial photograph of the house at Ribbon Ridge, taken back when we still had the Maverick - so between 1980 and 1987 at a guess - probably earlier rather than later. It's lovely, and yes, this is the home I remember. It's matted, but not framed - I think I may get it framed and hang it, as I would like to have it up, as long as Scott is okay with it being about somewhere. It's pretty, and while I can't go back to that house - the house as it is in that photo hasn't existed in years, really - I can bring it to me, and that's comforting and sweet.

I forgot to mention, last weekend, I found a shirt I'd made. Probably intended for Dad since it was made from one of his old undershirts. It's all shredded and ripped and cut (sure hope I got one from the rag-bag, and permission!) and says something (I can check later) about "I visited Mt. St. Helens...May 1, 1980!" So depending on how soon after I made that, I was probably 5, maybe 6. It's not well-done, it's a cute idea but the rips and cuts were way overdone...but for that age, who's surprised? What astonishes and touches me is that Daddy had it in his dresser, after all these years. Tucked away back, yes, as things that you don't actually use tend to end up, but still in his dresser. I didn't even remember it existed. I still don't remember it - I know it now, but I don't remember doing it then.

I'm on call for work next week. I'm frustrated by that, because I can't be out at the house getting things done all next weekend (but Scott is going to go out), at least not easily. But I'm also grateful, because it's so hard to do this. I need to, not just for the legalities but for what I'm finding. It's sweet. And it hurts, sometimes, yes. Sometimes because it's sweet. It reminds me how much I've lost - how much we've all lost, who knew my parents.

Scott rocks. We now have a shelf unit up in the garage to hold some stuff, that should help a bit. I put the whole thing together (he probably would have, if I'd asked, but I enjoy that and I'm kinda pleased by how well I can get these particular ones together), and he attached it to the wall (Laura is not so fond of this process right now, not sure why, and power tools used even with my shoulders or so - due to our stepladder and my height, that's the best I can do - are not my idea of fun, though they probably ARE good exercise for my arm muscles, I suppose...). Also, he put up the coat hooks by the front door this weekend. And the key hooks sometime in the last couple weeks.

I fell today, but only in the mud. The one casualty (at most) was the knee of my jeans, and that's only if the mud stains (but mud does like to do that, I know). I hope it doesn't; I like the jeans; but if it does, oh well. They're well-worn, so if it doesn't come out and they're work-around-the-house-only jeans in the future, so be it. I did scrape my knee a tiny bit, but no skin broken (though I washed with betadine just in case - yeah, I know, but it reassures me). I may have bruised it, but if so, not bad. (Can't tell by looking, being as it's stained orange thanks to my over-caution. ;)

I haven't gotten more of the scanned pictures prepped and up, unfortunately. But I did take photos of my visit to the Japanese Gardens on Friday. It was lovely, very soothing and peaceful, and I think the pictures also captured at least some of that, though they couldn't get the cool breeze, the quiet of the place, the gentle chatter of the water, the bird calls soaring tree to tree. And the photos are up at Flickr, or rather some are. I am uploading a total of 38. They should end up at this spot unless, of course, the uploads take longer than to midnight. (Edit: they did take over the night, though only three went up on the 19th; those are at this spot, oryou can get to them at the time of this post by clicking on my photostream or clicking here to see the most recent uploads, regardless of date. (Obviously that won't be the best path once I upload more, but for now.)

I'm trying the new Vertigo layout for my browsing the LJ site. So far, I like it - quite a bit better than Horizon. I think the name is dorky, especially as I find it less disorienting than the horizontal layout, but I really don't care much about the name if it works! :)