Watch Out! It's Almost the New Year Already!

I last blogged after the first major snow storm of the year.  We had another a day or so later and ended up with 14 inches total for Christmas.

Christmas Day itself was beautiful, sunny, cold (but not too.) I had to take care of the Obi-girl (my friend Shelley's cat) because Shelley and her family went skiing.

It's a bit depressing knowing someone who was born about the same time I moved in here is skiing already (Shelley's daughter.) *sigh* I had hoped to convince myself to learn before then, but I just never got around to it.  I'm thinking this year, though.

Christmas wasn't a big deal around here. I didn't really decorate much, just put a wreath on the door and hung up the cards we got, so there's really not much to take down.

I guess it was lucky I didn't bother to decorate because on the 18th, we had maintenance come in and fix our pipes. They were leaking down the wall and pooling under the carpet by the kitchen.  (Eww...since it was "grey water.") They'd leaked before, but no one seemed to believe me when I said that it was the pipes in the wall, but that's what it turned out to be.  

They're now fixed...sort of.

You know all that snow?  Well, maintenance has not come back to put the drywall back, so we have had this lovely hole in the  wall for 2 weeks, and now I doubt it'll be addressed until after the 5th, since there's MORE snow predicted for tomorrow (and I doubt any work is going to be done on Friday.)

I was thinking of putting a picture frame around it just because the duct tape is getting to me.

Tidings, Glad, Seasonal and Otherwise

Well, we had snow last night. I appreciate snow much more now because it's not ice. I had gone to the Chelmsford Quilt Guild's holiday party last night and heard all sorts of stories about the Chelmsfordians still without power due to the ice storm last Thursday night. (Luckily, we didn't lose power here, but the shopping center less than a mile away did.)

Still, when I woke up this morning, I was surprised (and happy I had left extra time so I could clean off the car and still get to the doctor's office on time.) I love snow, but not when it's between myself and a gazillion errands I have to run.

After the doctor's I had to go to Walmart for a prescription. We have dubbed Walmart, especially between Thanksgiving and New Years, "the eighth circle of Hell." (Although I don't mean that as a negative reflection on the staff of Walmart!) I swear people pull into that parking lot and just turn their brains off or something.

Anyway, it took about a half hour to get the prescription, and when I got back, I had to clear off my car again, although this time it was ice. I don't like ice, I'm thinking of staying inside until the Spring Thaw.

In other news: Peggy has definitely decided to get the WalkAide, so we're looking into fund raising to help her out.  The first bit of fundraising will take place in our etsy shop. The purchase price of pieces marked "PWWAF" will go entirely to Peggy's WalkAide.

We're also looking into holding a jewelry party in the Spring closer to Boston as a benefit for Peggy's WalkAide. I'll post the details as soon as I know where and when.

Until then, the only way to purchase Piece by Piece pieces is through our etsy site. I'm still revamping the main site, but shooting the photos is taking longer than I thought.

One down note. My friend, Jesse Knight, writer, raconteur, Sabatini scholar, and all-around nice guy...whom I never got to meet in person, died on Dec 6.  It was unexpected. I met Jesse when I was searching for inspiration to work on a historical fiction book that I had started a while before.

Before long, I discovered Jesse was a SERIOUS expert on Rafael Sabatini and was looking for a place to gather information he had posted at various places on the web. Thus the Rafael Sabatini web site was born. It was the online "presence" of the discussion group he had founded.

Eventually, about a dozen people on the discussion group founded the Rafael Sabatini Society. Jesse was the first President.  He was just stepping down so he could give more attention to his (many, many) other projects when he was taken away from us.  I hope that his wife, Dollie, can get his last big Sabatini project published: the definitive Sabatini Bibliography.  If she does, or if the RSS helps to self-publish the book, I'll, no doubt, post here and on the web site.

I have no pictures of Jesse, so here's a picture of Sabatini!