Rainy Days and Mondays

Love this color, originally uploaded by kyredbutterfly.

I took this picture probably a month ago. Back when I still owned a camera separate from my iphone. Sigh. I hope whoever found it enjoys it thoroughly. But other than the fact that the flowers have raindrops caressing the petals, it has nothing to do with anything. I just thought it was pretty. Oh, and it's. still. raining. here. Daily. But also horribly hot and humid. Talk about the worst combination of summer.

Anyway, despite the heat, I found myself making French Onion Soup on Saturday evening. I had four Vidalia Onions that needed to be used. I had beef stock. Like always, it was a match made in heaven. I had to get a little creative with the cheesy toast, however. All I had was a dense oatmeal wheat bread sliced for sandwiches. But I wasn't deterred. I broiled it with provolone cheese on top, and it served as a successful substitute to the typical French bread.

I just finished having a second helping of my soup, along with a salad featuring veggies from my community supported agriculture half of a half share for dinner. At work. With no end in sight. These would be the Mondays when working for the state legislature doesn't seem nearly as great of a career choice. I think I'll be here for several more hours while the legislators debate. I just love special sessions.

At least the soup was good. And the air conditioning is working.

Green Week 4 - Green with a bit of "Red"

I hate having my picture taken. This is why I have no picture of me uploaded that I can use as my "thumbnail" when I comment on flickr or otherwise. But green week has led to me sneaking into a shot. This great mirror (greener than it appears here) was given to me several years ago by my friend Judy. Right now it's hiding behind the door to my office. And back in that little corner I don't often think to look into it, or even see it. Maybe when I move to my condo I'll find a nicer place to put it and hang another mirror back there that I don't love as much as I do this one. Oh, and the red hair is the inspiration for the red part of kyredbutterfly. Happy green week!

A green kick, with lime

A green kick, with lime, originally uploaded by kyredbutterfly.

The salad I had at lunch was delicious and exactly what I needed. But I didn't want to get too crazy and be healthy all day long! Haha. So when the legislature allowed us to get home at a decent hour on Tuesday, Lisa and I met at our neighborhood Mexican restaurant and I broke my 6 month ban on margaritas. It totally hit the spot!

Green Week 2 - Ripening

Well, I'm shamelessly copying Sarah, sort of. Her avocados were homegrown and shipped to her. Mine come from...somewhere much more tropical than Kentucky in March. And mine are definitely not ripe yet.

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I stopped by the store on the way home and knew I had to pick these up, along with all the ingredients for a great salad. I've been craving salad, which I don't believe is a sentence I've ever thought, much less admitted. I'm not a huge salad fan. Don't get me wrong, I like my veggies. I don't usually prefer them raw, but I eat them that way a lot, just not all mixed together in salad form. But all day yesterday, that's all I wanted. I thought I'd get one for lunch, but that was a no-go. I wasn't able to grab lunch until 2 p.m., and by then I was afraid of what might be left on the cafeteria salad bar. So I knew I had to remedy that last evening, and after buying lots of green goodies, I came home and cleaned, chopped, and packaged up a ton of good things to take with me to work today.

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Good thing, too, as I'll probably be eating three meals there, at least until Friday (and maybe even then). It's the time of the long days, every day, as the legislative session reaches its fevered pitch.

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Maybe the avocados will be ripe by the weekend. Something to look forward to! In the meantime, here's the flickr link for Green Week. But also check out the blog entries, listed here.

Yellow Monday

***For some unknown reason blogger won't let me upload my photos tonight. Please see the links below, or click on my Flickr link to the right, to see my first four entries into Yellow Week. I'm going to try to keep working on this, but until then...***

Erin is hosting a color week. I jumped in at the last moment, knowing that it would be a challenge for me on several levels. It would require me to post daily, and it would require me to put my photos out there amongst other much more accomplished photographers with much nicer cameras than my little point-and-click Sony Cybershot.

Don't get me wrong, I love my camera and it's more than enough for me, personally. But when I look at other blogs with pictures taken with cameras that create immensely better photographs, and are taken by people who know something about taking a good picture, well, it's a little intimidating. But mostly, I knew that I am sick, sick, sick of winter and ready to embrace spring. The warm weather from last week was just a flirtation. So I knew I needed to go looking for spring, and Erin's color week was just the thing to help me find a few moments of spring in my days.

I took these shots in and around the state capitol, since I knew I wouldn't be getting home tonight until after dark. I at least wanted my yellow to look cheerful. I was surprised that I found so much yellow lurking around me!

These Hallowed Halls

Most mornings I get to work at 7:30, when the state capitol building is still dark and quiet. I enjoy the grand silence as I walk up the marble steps between the first and third floors, and the view. Looking down the length of the building where governors govern, legislators legislate, and justices judge fills me with awe. Working for 138 legislators/politicians can be a cynical business at times, but in the core of my being I still stand in reverent awe over the form of government our forefathers created and that has been refined over generations and centuries.

But today is a historical day, no matter how you voted on November 4, 2008 (or if you voted at all). Our country's history is scattered with moments that turned on racial issues, for the worse and for the better. And while many people supported Barack Obama's presidency because he was an African-American, and many people did not for the very same reason, many more supported him or didn't for reasons that had nothing to do with the color of his skin or the fact that his father was froom Africa and his mother from Kansas. Today is another turning point. It makes me proud to participate in representative democracy. It makes me proud to be an American and know that the people did have a choice, and the choice means another barrier has crumbled.

Happy inauguration day, everyone. I'll be watching from the attic of the capitol in the state where Abraham Lincoln was born. The Great Emancipator would be proud of his country, and so am I.

Goodbye to Time

Okay, so that may be an exaggeration. But this is the first year since law school that I feel like I've had a Christmas break. Being a single person without children and a very small, flexible family, I'm always the one who happily works during the weeks of Christmas and New Years while others take time off. But this year I've been away from work for a week and a half, and most of the days have been rather unstructured (Read: A few days have been spent in PJs, knitting away and watching football and movies). It's gotten so bad that my roommate and I have been confirming with one another what day of the week it is.

Added to the sense of being out of the normalcy of daily life was the short trip I took with my mom to Daytona Beach. She had to go for a high school boy's basketball tournament for which she was keeping the score books. I "had" to go because it meant a few days staring at the ocean, walking on the beach, enjoying fresh seafood, and generally loving life. It was all of that and more. Our seventh floor hotel room had two walls of windows overlooking the beach, and a long balcony to sit out and enjoy the ocean air. The weather was beautiful, and there was always a nice breeze. The water was pretty darn cold, but I didn't do more than dip my toes. We drove on the beach, explored back roads and ritzy developments, and took in a movie (Doubt: very good acting, mesmerizing story, but you leave with as many questions as you have throughout.). It was the perfect tonic to the gray and cold winter weather of home.

But tomorrow the alarm will go off while it's still dark as night outside and I'll be forced to wear work clothes, put on makeup, and do my hair. I'll be getting to work around the time the sun rises, and I'll leave when the sun is setting. With the legislature coming back to the capitol this week for the beginning of the legislative session, it will be busy. Time to jump back into the regular tempo of life with both feet. As I sat in church this morning, after having taken communion and waiting while others were served, I have to admit my brain started racing on all the things I need to do this evening to prepare for the week to come, and all of the errands that must be done. Sigh. It had to come to an end at some point, and the day has almost arrived.

But first, one more moment of time away. This afternoon, the University of Kentucky plays the University of Louisville in men's basketball. In this basketball-crazed state, this is *the* game of the year. Time to go root, root, root for my team!

Fall Forward

Um. Hi. Sorry for the almost two-month absence. I didn't mean to be gone this long. I really didn't start out being gone at all. But here we all are, on the cusp of fall - which I am ready to wholeheartedly embrace, not being a summer person - and I guess I'll just chalk it up to a nice summer vacation!

So, what I did on my summer blogcation -

• Went to New Orleans for a work conference. Drank a hurricane (among other things). Ate a few beignets. Grooved in the French Quarter. Didn't gamble at Harrahs, across the street from my hotel. Ate wonderful, yummy Creole and Cajun food. Sweated and sweated and sweated some more. There's a reason Mardi Gras and the Jazz Fest aren't held during the summer. It's hot, folks!
• Went to Sacramento for a 9 day training seminar. Met fabulous folks who work in legislatures across the country and learned tons of good stuff about leadership and management. Practical stuff. Went to San Fran for one day and did a short boat ride around the bay, bought cheap purses of questionable origin, and ate good sourdough bread. Yum!
• Almost finished an Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket for a friend who had her little girl last month. I'm one row, a bind off, sew-up, and attaching buttons away from finishing my first sweater. And I've been at this point since July 20. Oops. Apparently the blog wasn't the only thing I let slip.
• Am working on a big knitting project that must remain a secret because it is for someone who actually reads this blog regularly. It's going to take awhile, but I'm enjoying it so far.
• Celebrated with Mom that her two big projects for the year are finally, finally finished - her dental work and her new hardwood floors. Helped her paint her living room, dining room, and hallway before the new floors went in. Now she's talking about painting the sunroom and her bedroom! She's on a roll!

Okay, enough for now. Pictures to follow on my flickr page about all of the goodies listed here. Thanks for patiently waiting for me to come back to the fold!

Long Time, No Words

Did you all (all 6 or 7 of you who actually read this, that is) think I'd dropped off the face of the earth? Well, sometimes working for the state legislature during the last days of their annual session feels that way. Really, it's been a combination of the job and the frustration over a decision I made about a month ago that I haven't been able to implement.

The legislature's now left town (for now), meaning I can leave the office on time again and have more time for outside pursuits, like this blog baby. However, I'd vowed that I was going to be better about adding pictures to my blogs, getting my pictures over onto Flickr, and trying to link my Flickr pics to the blog. Kat and I tried last year when she came to visit and had a frustrating time ending in (obvious) defeat. But blogs without any pictures can be boring, so that was a goal I'd set for myself. Then my home internet service decided to go bye-bye, just in time for me to not have the time to get it fixed.

That left me faced with the dilemma...do I blog without pictures (and when, because of work obligations, there wasn't much to share) or do I wait until I got the pictures downloaded to Flickr and figure out how to make the link work properly? You can tell which one I chose! At this point I'm thinking of bringing the camera into work so I can just load the pictures to Flickr and be done with it. (Sshhh...don't tell!)

Also, the new look for the blog...The blog hit the one year mark this month, and I was itching to make some changes. And, I love, love, love green, and spring's the time for a new look. I'm also secretly hoping it's easier to create the Flickr link in this template than the other one I was using. Kat seemed to think that was the problem. I guess we'll see.

Contrarian

During session I frequently relish a very quiet weekend. Particularly now that I'm the lead staff person for my committee. My phone never stops ringing. Being an introvert, when a Friday during session comes I'm generally craving a couple days of doing my own thing, in my own time, without a lot of interaction with my friends and family. Love them dearly, but I need my space!

Last weekend was full of activity, and I'd come down with a cold that meant I really, really, really just wanted to sleep and knit and read and watch TV. I managed to make it to my events on Saturday, but I had to cancel church and a luncheon and a church meeting on Sunday. I felt cruddy and just wanted my time.

This weekend there's nothing on the agenda, but now that I have the freedom to have my space, I'm really feeling a bit at loose ends and craving some activity and connection with people. Go figure. When I have to be social I don't want to be, when I don't have any need to be, I'm seeking it out. Mind you, I still turned down an invitation to go to an Irish restaurant (that doesn't take reservations) with my friend Nancy, her husband Jason, and their almost 3 year old son Grant, tonight. You see, it's Lent, and Louisville is a very Catholic city. People will be packed into this restaurant waiting for seats in order to eat the compulsory fish and chips (Catholics eat fish on Fridays during Lent, for those who don't get my meaning). I may want contact with people, but not that much contact. It'll be a madhouse.

I've got lots of little errands to run and to-do's around the house to accomplish, and I do have church and lunch afterwards to look forward to on Sunday. But I may have to take my knitting and make my way to my LYS for some social knitting before the weekend is over.

I'm such a wild child, I know.

p.s. One of my to-do's is to take pictures of my knitting and download my pictures...so hopefully I'll have a few entertaining posts over the next week or so. Cross your fingers!

Brrrrr...

I know, I know...it's been awhile since I've blogged. I think I agree with my friend Chrissie, when you get out of the habit it's hard to jump in again. She recently wrote: "Funny thing about blogging is that once you fall out of the habit, it's hard to pick it up again. So I guess I'm going to have to get back up on the horse and dust off the keyboard." Of course, she wrote this back on January 8th and has blogged a lot since then. So I'm shamed.

It's been a fast-paced but good new year. The day after Christmas, one of my staff members informed me he was taking a new job...4 days after the legislative session began. Yikes! That put me in a bit of a tizzy, but so far we've managed okay. I'm just now starting the interview process for his replacement. It's hard to fit the time in when you're drafting bills and scheduling meetings and answering phone calls from legislators all day long. But today is the 13th day of our 60 day session, and it would be nice to get a replacement before the 60th day, even if that person doesn't know how to draft a bill.

Otherwise I've been very selfish with my personal time. When the weekend gets here, I just don't want to commit to much because it takes so much to gear up for another week of craziness and long hours at work. I am getting into another knitting craze, though. I bought lots of yarn last week when Michaels was having a sale, and tonight I'm starting a very short class on how to knit cables. I'm excited, because other than plain garter stitching and knitting hats in the round, I don't know how to do anything else yet. And I still can't read most patterns because there's always something in there that I have no idea how to do. This class may be the only one I can fit in before the session ends in April, so I expect I'll be knitting lots and lots of cables between now and then!

We were all beginning to wonder whether or not winter was every really going to come. As recently as New Year's Eve we were having weather more appropriate for late October or early April. But finally Old Man Winter has arrived (as it has in much of the country). We're not used to temperatures in the single digits (and that's without wind chill factored in). All I can say is thank goodness for knitted hats and scarves. Now if I could just learn how to do gloves and mittens!

I know my good friend Kat is going to ask where are all my pictures of the few things I've managed to complete so far, so let me just say that I'm not that organized yet! I'll try to get a few pictures of what I still have in my possession, but a couple things had to be given as gifts before I snapped any photos. Oops! I promise to do better...which is an easier promise to make now that I've finally invested in my own digital camera. Now I just have to download everything to Flickr.

Folderol

folderol \FAHL-duh-rahl\ noun
1 : a useless ornament or accessory : trifle *2 : nonsense
Example sentence: Cherie dismissed the tabloid article as useless folderol.

Did you know? Hogwash. Claptrap. Hooey. Drivel. Malarkey. English is rife with words that mean "nonsense," and "folderol" is one of the many. Though not the most common of the words for nonsense, it's been around since 1820 and is still heard today. "Folderol" comes from "fol-de-rol" (or "fal-de-ral"), which used to be a nonsense refrain in songs, much like "tra-la-la." The oldest recorded instance of someone "singing folderol" occurs in Irish dramatist George Farquhar’s 1701 play Sir Harry Wildair, in which a character sings, "Fal, al, deral!"

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Every day I get a "Word of the Day" email from Merriam-Webster. Today's is listed above. Most days I read it, even when I know the word's meaning, just to read about the etymology of words. I mean, I did take Latin for 3 years, and this is one of the few times that I'm likely to use that learning directly!

Today's word really hit home, however. It's getting close to Christmas (I'm no longer panicking, as I've made a significant dent in purchasing presents in the past few days), and there's certainly a lot of of ornamentation and accessorizing going on these days.

More importantly, there's a lot of nonsense around me recently. Mostly this is work-related. Our long legislative session starts on Jan. 8 and we're in full bill drafting mode right now. Sometimes being a bill drafter is a thankless job. There are a lot of bills that we draft that never see the light of day because the legislator decides he or she doesn't want to file it and make it public. That happens a lot. Then there are those bills that the sponsor is very enthusiastic about but you know for political or practical reasons that the bill won't ever be heard in committee. For those raised on Schoolhouse Rock ditties, and you know who you are, you know that getting out of committee is the first step on a Bill's journey to becoming a Law. So you get this assignment to draft some complicated piece of legislation and you know that this bill will never make that journey.

But just in case we get too cocky about knowing what's going to happen, each session it seems that some piece of legislation that you never in a million years thought was going to go anywhere, much less become a law, actually moves through the process and gets enacted. So despite the sometimes thanklessness of the job, you also always do your best job you know how, no matter what the odds seem on that document ever seeing the light of day, much less ending up codified in the statutes. (And trust me, even some of those are hogwash, malarkey, or folderol!

So tra-la-la and fol-de-rol and Merry Christmas to all!

What Do You Mean There's Only 15 Days Left?!?!

Surely it can't be December 10th. I'm still wondering what happened to October, much less November! I can't already have missed 1/3 of December. It's just not possible.

Life has been just way too busy recently. I vaguely remember it being mid-November I I was telling myself to just get through December 1st. By that time Mom and I would have travelled to Arizona over the Thanksgiving weekend, I would have attended my conference at the Arizona Biltmore (and finished my small speaking role), and hosted a slew of my friends at my house for an after-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving meal, turkey and all.

All of that happened. Mom and I had a great time traipsing around Arizona (Phoenix to Jerome to Sedona to Flagstaff, back to Sedona and Phoenix, to Tucson and Tombstone, and again back to Phoenix to drop Mom at the airport). Jerome is a great little town literally sticking off the side of a mountain. Sedona is beautiful and ritzy. The drive between Sedona and Flagstaff is breathtaking. Flagstaff brought back good memories of when we were there 22 years ago or so. Tombstone is stuck in its O.K. Corral past and proud of it. Tucson is the perfect size city, I think...while very Southwestern, it also reminded me of Louisville - very user-friendly. And that's despite all of the downtown interstate exits being closed for construction. Phoenix is just big, and bigger. But after dropping Mom off I did go and enjoy Taliesin West, which was the perfect preview for staying at the Biltmore, since Frank Lloyd Wright was a consultant on the project and his influence is evident throughout the facility. The conference went really well, too.

Less than 24 hours after my plane landed, the turkey was ready (there's a very funny story about the bird, but I'm not going to humiliate myself to all of the web, even if only about 4 people ever read this), and Lisa and I welcomed people in for a formal dinner. Thankfully it was a potluck, because we got to eat a lot of very good food and have a lot of laughs. The house hasn't quite recovered yet, but it was well worth it. What started out as me whining about wanting a real Thanksgiving meal (all the way back in July) turned out to be a great night of fun and food. Thanks to all who came and made the evening so much fun.

So things were supposed to slow down once the party was over. Except that I forgot that I had to organize an out-of-town meeting for my legislative committee members. So before I had a chance to do all of my laundry, I was repacking my bag on Tuesday to go to Fort Campbell U.S. Army Base on Wednesday and Thursday. My staff and I didn't roll into Frankfort until 9 p.m. Thursday night...UGH! It was a long trip for being less than 36 hours long. And I promptly came down with the crud in time to spend most of the weekend trying to recuperate from it all.

And now it's December 10th. I'm going to try to not stress (too much). I'm thinking Christmas cards are just not going to happen this year. Lisa's already decided not to put up a tree this year, so at least I'm not the only one going "Oh well, maybe next year." Tomorrow is the gubernatorial inauguration here, so I get the day off from work (having all those parking spaces is more valuable than having us try to work while festivities surround the capitol building). I'm going shopping and hope that I manage to take care of several people's gifts. I've got to, because with session starting on Jan. 8th, I'm finding it hard to find another good time to take off work and get more shopping done.

For all of you who are feeling a little stressed out there, my sympathies. Who knew there were only 15 days left until Christmas. I certainly didn't! Good luck!