The Last Messy Place

Well, I've done it. I've gotten rid of ALL superfluous papers in the house. All that's left to organize is my writing desk. And that'll be fun.
I feel like such a weight has been lifted off me. I hate paper clutter with a vengeance. We get so much junk mail. It seems that I'm on everybody's mailing list for catalogs and religious fundraising. I'm thinking about not opening the letters and marking RETURN TO SENDER on the outside of the envelopes. Would that take care of the problem, do you think?
Now I can start on some of my big projects, but first I had to get through the slog of paper. I've spent the last two weeks making schedules and planning Darcie's schoolwork. I'm almost finished with that, and then I can begin painting the kitchen.
Every ten years I repaint the kitchen. When we built the house the kitchen walls were white with green trim. After ten years, I painted the trim blue. Another ten years have gone by, and I've decided to paint the walls yellow and the trim white. I painted one wall and have been living with it for about two months. I don't like it. I don't know what I'm going to do now. I'm thinking about going back to white walls and paint the trim white, too; or maybe light blue.
My kitchen is a combination 1920's-1940's kitchen. I think I need to go to the library and look at books with vintage kitchens. I need inspiration. When I see it, I'll know it.

Round one

Summer has now officially commenced, with the first hot ride of the season coming about two days into it. Saturday was as hot as promised, and may have been a few degrees warmer than the predicted 33, but as long as there are mountains out there to climb, I'll be in the thick of the action. At least I was able to spend some time at an altitude that was a couple of degrees cooler than the coast on the 165km epic. I wouldn't have achieved that by staying at home.

It was an interesting feeling at the start of this ride, the anticipation of the day ahead was replaced by relief. All week my body has been craving the endorphins that it became accustomed to on tour, and the initial 16km to clear suburbia was more or less what I needed. The real ride started after Canungra -- around 36km in, for the long, gradual climb to O'Reillys Plateau. I decided to just pace myself on this climb, particularly the opening 15km@3.5%. The mountain views at the summit were somewhat hindered by the haze that came from bushfires, dust storms and all the other things that happened while I was hogging the rain on the other side of the country, but the higher parts through the rainforest were still stunning.


The wind was doing some pretty insane things on the switchback descent of that mountain. It might have worried me on another day, but today I had another mountain to throw at it, and so it was that I returned to Canungra and started the long grind up the western side of Beechmont. This climb can be brutal on a hot day, climbing on the opposite side of the range to where the wind normally blows. Today, however, it was doubtful if the northerly wind would have cooled me off anyway, so with the liberal use of the granny ring I reached the summit reasonably comfortably.

Two magpies appeared to try to take my head off as soon as I reached the summit, meaning there was no time for a victory salute. There was, however, the unmistakable sense that the wind was now from the north west, meaning a tail wind once I started the descent from Lower Beechmont. So it was, that after stocking up on fluids and ice cream at the Lower Beechmont store, I was able to zoom home around 30 minutes faster than I had been expecting. I guess I'm still underestimating myself a bit. Another memorable ride in the mountains, even if the heat did affect me a little at the finish. One of the often forgotten benefits of going away on a bike tour is that it refreshes one's appetite for local rides after the event. I plan on making the most of that in coming weeks.

Dining Room Love

You can probably tell that I LOVE our house! For a few years after building it, I would pull into the driveway, stop, sigh, and say, "It's so cute!" Much eyerolling from four children would begin.
I know you don't get tired of looking at my house, so here's some photos of just the dining room.
I love how that wax cascades over the side of the candlestick. Lavender from my good friend Charlotte.


Pewter in the early morning sun.
A corner of a long mirror hanging above the double windows at the end of the room. Got it at a yard sale for $30.
Sunlight reflecting off my new Spode Italian dishes. They were a gift to my husband for 35 years of service to his company. Wasn't it sweet of him to let me pick the gift?
Curtain rod from Pottery Barn. I love the weight of the wooden finial. I also love the bullseye corner block and the fluted window trim.
Next time I'm showing you my new granddaughters. They may be as cute as my dining room! You judge.

Taking advantage of a wavy day

Mariners and coastal dwellers consider nor'easters trouble. Paddlers on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan consider them a gift.

The forecast for today was NE winds 15 to 25 miles per hour and waves 4 to 6 feet building to 5 to 7. That's the kind of geeky weather detail that lights up the message boards and clogs up bandwith on Chicago paddlers' iPhones.

So yeah, we went down to the doggie beach/water trail launch site at Montrose. The waves were big, frequent and chaotic. But the water was still warm and friendly, so in addition to playing in the waves, we took the opportunity to practice swimming our boats in to shore.

We knew (or believed) a few things going into this: That boats travel more slowly upside-down than right-side-up, that you always stay upwave of your boat, that it's best to hold the end toggle and avoid putting a finger inside the loop, that anything loose would soon be gone, that breaking waves would cause the boat to lurch.

Some observations:

- Even though Alec was prepared for the boat to lurch in larger breaking waves, one wave managed to tug it out of his grip. It tumbled upright and waited for him and he was able to catch up with it.

- Sharon found it best to swim off to the side behind the boat so that she wasn't hit in the face or thrown on top of it by a breaking wave.

- Alec found that holding the paddle was easier if he kept it below the surface of the water.

Both of us were surprised by our lack of desire to come out of our boats in breaking waves. It seemed to go against everything we've worked on--the ability to stay in our boats and in control, particularly in challenging conditions.

But that's exactly why we did it, so that if it happens in the future unintentionally, we'll have some experience to fall back on.

Woof!

Burns Night

25 January, Burns Night. Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland's poet Robert Burns, and we're just about to sit down to our family Burns Supper. The neeps (yellow turnip) have been mashed, the tatties (potatoes) are nearly ready, and the haggis is (shock! horror!) about to have its 5 minutes in the microwave. Even more heretical, we're having vegetarian haggis. The children are probably haggised-out. Haggis will have been on the school lunch menu this week, and my son went to the school Burns Supper for senior pupils, resplendent in the young Scottish male's 'kilt casual' look: kilt with untucked and open necked striped or floral shirt.
But I'm not showing you any of this. Instead, an example of the reach of Robert Burns into every area of Scottish life - the Robert Burns milk carton. The thatched cottage is his cottage in Alloway. The plough represents his harsh early life as the son of a tenant farmer. Enough history - I'm off for my haggis.

Black & White Photography-Getting That Grainy Look

I've learned through trial and error, lots of error, how to get that grainy look I love in black and white images.
The three top ones were taken with my digital camera. They were all greatly underexposed (too dark). When I lightened them in IPhoto you could see all the colored pixels, which doesn't look good in a color photo. Unless you're trying to do something funky, which I very well may try at a later date!
But after changing them to black and white, the pixels now give a grainy look. I'm very happy to have stumbled on this, since I love, love, love a grainy b&w photo.
The bottom three were taken with true black and white film. And now that I'm comparing the two, the bottom ones are grainier. Is that a word? Should it be 'more grainy'? I still have one roll of b&w film left which I'll soon shoot. It's just too bad that the processing will be over $20.
And now that I've gotten used to instant feedback on a digital camera, it'll be hard as the dickens to take photos and not know if the exposure is correct. For me, that used to be the fascination of a film camera. You know, it's like being pregnant and not finding out the sex of the baby until after it's born. But now I want to know immediately! And I'm talking about photos, not babies.
*What is the dickens, and not Charles? That's just one of our 'southernisms'. But who knows what it means? We also say, "He's mean as the dickens." That doesn't make much sense either.

Stills

When you return to a place you know well after an absence, things that were once mundane strike you as exotic. As with these copper whisky stills in my home village. Until I moved away from home to go to university, it was just part of the landscape for me to come round a corner and come face to face with...creatures like this. Now, on a visit to see my dad this weekend, I found myself whipping out my camera. These are the top halves of stills, and these

are the bottom halves. All sitting out in the falling snow in the coppersmith's yard, waiting to be transported to their distillery. Every distillery has a different shape of still - it's one of the factors that gives each whisky its unique taste. My home village has a very well known firm of coppersmiths, who produce handmade stills not just for whisky, but also rum, gin, tequila and bourbon.