Sunday afternoon coffee pot post

Normally I do not drink caffeine after noon since I became a certain age. There was a time when I drank coffee, really cheap bad coffee, all day and night. I think about my past with coffee sometimes as I walk to work at my local university. Just as I walked to classes from the opposite direction forty years ago, I bear a mug of coffee. The past trip would have included a stop at Friar’s Cellar for a refill, a pack of cigarettes, and a toasted bagel. Friar’s Cellar is long gone now, replaced by a coffee house that serves much better coffee and pastries, without the shelves of dusty wine bottles.

I noticed the sparkle in my bedroom windows and thought I’d share a photo. That is bubble wrap on the outside of the windows for insulation. These are really old windows and one of them is cracked. The bubble wrap is a great idea for upcycling – it provides insulation all year long and privacy while letting the light shine through. Our houses here are very close together, so the house next door is about ten feet away. At some point I’ll spend the money to get some of these Craftsman double hung windows repaired, and if I end up living here a lot longer get a better grade of glass.

Yesterday I enjoyed my day at home. I wove on Cathedral and did laundry off and on all day. I finished “The Cruelest Month” by Louise Penny. I had mixed feelings about this at first. Everybody seems to be crazy about Louise Penny but I guess I’m not a big fan of the cozy murder mystery genre. Agatha Christie never appealed to me either. I was put off about the disparaging descriptions of various disheveled or out-of-fashion or cheaply dressed characters, since they pretty much described me to a T. But once I got over that, I was caught up in the story and enjoyed it. I’ve read the first three of the Armand Gamache series and will probably find the fourth one somewhere. I have the fifth one on my shelf, and I like to read and watch series in order. These came from one of my local little free libraries, so they will go back. For now I’ve picked up “My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry” by Fredrik Backman, also picked up from a little free library.

This past week I didn’t shop for the Doc Martens, although I’m still considering them. I cleaned out about half of the clothes from my closet and chest of drawers and they are in the car ready to be donated or in the trash. Some are in a box to be repurposed as fiber art, but I don’t want to do much of that since part of the problem is that I have too much fabric. One of my favorite tunics from Gudrun Sjoden had holes in it so I cut it into strips to be woven into a rag rug at some point. I mended a couple of favorite pants. I still have a lot of cleaning out to do in this closet and a chest of drawers that contains all kinds of crazy stuff, mostly art related.

I finalized the final piece of the puzzle of the Portugal trip – the trip to Boston to catch the flight to Lisbon. As much as I wanted to be done with Southwest Airlines, I had points with them and there was no reason to let them have them, so we booked a one way late night flight with just points. Then the flight was changed to get there earlier, and in this case it was a very good thing. I’m glad we chose the cheapest flight. We’ll still get to the hotel in Boston late at night, but hopefully before midnight. Now we can only hope that the circumstances out of our control will be kind to our fate, but my anxiety has lessened since I got this taken care of.

Also, I brought home the rest of my supplies from the print studio at the Arts Center and put my membership on hold for now. That means that I need to clear them off my work table to make space for my upcoming online art classes. Jude has begun another phase of her teaching journey and Leighanna is teaching her Vintage Metal Deck class on Zoom in March. I took this class in person way back in 2010, but I had a migraine that day. Even so, I came away with some work that I loved and I’ve always wanted to take it again.

I need to do some house cleaning and clutter clearing today, but for the most part I’m going to weave and since the new season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has dropped, that is definitely on the agenda.