Saturday, December 3, 2005

Poor Artists Sale Day




Marilyn and I went up to Calumet today for the Poor Artists' Sale and then went over to Vertin's Gallery.

The Poor Artists' Sale is as much quick social event as craft buy. I buy mittens, turn around, and there's Freddi. I buy some funky little cups with bicycles and a bathtub on them for Laurie and Walter, and Sherrie is grabbing a quick hug. Karen is behind the registration table. Over by the cookies, with Kim, Susannah describes her first years working as a lawyer (she was frugal). Andrea's sensual clothes get mixed up in my head with talking with Edith. Viki and Barb stock me up on candles, soaps, and Polish hot sauce. It's a sign of how weird the past year has been that there were a few too many people I hadn't seen since the last sale.

I think it's about time to head down to Ontonagon to go skiing with Sherrie and hear about her upcoming trip to Macchu Picchu and the Galapagos.

Friday, December 2, 2005

and outside, at 2pm


work

A day to be at home with saddening Italian postwar neorealist company in the background while I type (but I am glad [with the cost of heating] that the laptop runs hot).

Thursday, December 1, 2005

here we are...



minus Sari (who took the picture), Casey and Roxane and Christy (who left just a few minutes before), Diane (who is sick), and Laurence (who is driving downstate with Betsy).

living with snow




A few inches of snow haphazard the parking lots because no one can see the lines. People use whatever markers they can (like the cart corrals up at Econo or the wheelchair-van signs) to figure out where the lines are supposed to start and how far in to pull a car, but by the time 4 or 5 more cars have used those initial cars as markers, the cars snake around and sometimes people can't back out because the lanes become too narrow and one time up at the movie theater at the mall cars were three deep instead of two and the people with cars in the middle were stuck.

Maybe because we are still in the beginnings of winter, people were driving more slowly today and were patient with each other up at Econo while they waited for others who were trying to push their carts to their cars through the snow or who were trying to back their cars out into the narrowed lanes. I learned that 3pm Thursday is a good time for food shopping: there were few people and no one I knew in the store, unlike last Saturday when we ran into friends in the juice aisle, the beer aisle, by the chocolate, next to the bananas, and while digging into the soy milk case.

I was buying food for tonight's class, which met at our house and was warm. On Tuesday, Roxane had driven down to Rhinelander through the fog, snow, and deer to pick up Heather who couldn't fly in any closer, and she told about getting stopped in Eagle River by a policeman who asked her why she was there and then complimented her on being articulate. Steven and Jill are refinishing the floors in their new house with the help of Nate. Casey has new penguin slippers. Alexa makes dangerous rum balls. Karen has finished the written part of comps. Sunny continued as Sunny. At the end, everyone pile up at the door to put on their boots, coats, gloves and hats and we laughed at how bundled up we all were, with hats that are warm and occasionally stylish and boots that are warm and not.

and outside the other side of the house



The chair is a recliner and the view goes across the Portage to Houghton.

it's snowing