I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without blogging! I’ve hardly been knitting either. That’s why you get to see a picture from my garden. This is one of my favorite daylilies. I don’t know the variety. I love the way that the yellow centers just glow from inside the maroonish petals. The blossoms last for only a day or two, but the plant has so many that it’s in bloom for most of the summer.

Instead of knitting I have been spending my time buried in the mundane world of work, which has taken nearly all of my time for the last month. 24 x 7 until we’re done. Should be just another couple of weeks. It’s taken so much of my time that #1 Son had been home from the tour for three days before I saw him as anything other than a mysterious lump in his bed. (The first morning I did make him wake up long enough to give me a hug. But I’m not sure he was really conscious, having come home in the wee hours of the morning, and I leaving not too long after. I talked to him on the phone, but it’s not the same.)

#1 Son was not too happy when he came home because he computer wouldn’t boot. You remember his computer? That lovely box cobbled together out of hand-me-down parts that I barely kept running long enough to get my own back together after the great WinXP auto-upgrade debacle? That wonderful, stable computing machine that worked great as long as nobody turned it off?

I turned it off.

I had good intentions. Just wanted to save a couple of $$ on the old electric bill, y’know. #1 Son was off on tour and not using it.

He came home and wanted to use it and it wouldn’t boot. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and all the tricks that his mom knows, couldn’t get #1 Son’s computer to boot successfully all the way and stay there again. I had to face the possibility that #1 Son’s computer had reached the end of it’s useful lifespan. And, while he could use mine for checking email, etc., there were some things he could do only on his own computer because he has different software loaded than I do. After working all weekend, I managed to wrangle yesterday and today off. I spent Monday assembling a new computer for #1 Son as a slightly-early birthday present. Well… not entirely new. I reused a bunch of stuff. But a new power supply, motherboard, CPU, video card, RAM and disk drives. Everything else was reused, but that’s still a new computer in my book.

So I put stuff together Monday morning. I took a short break to have lunch with M. But I was so tired and coming-down-with-cold feeling that I could barely eat, let alone carry on a conversation. I had planned to go knit at Tangle for awhile, but decided that sleeping on the Tangle sofa might not be that attractive to store shoppers. So I went home and set the old drives to cloning over to the new drives and took a nap. The rest of the day went: check progress, nap, check progress, nap, start next drive clone, nap, check progress, nap, start reinstalling WinXP, nap… you get the idea. By 10:00 PM the new computer was booting as smooth as silk and everything installed worked, and I was ready for bed. And that should be the last of the computer woes for awhile, knock on wood, because I’m not planning on any more computer builds until Vista is at least to SR1.

I feel better today. I even knit a little. Only a little though. This picture shows my entire knitting output over the last week. That’s it. About 4″ on a pair of sock toes. That’s Sock Candy in Lapis. I’m enjoying knitting with this yarn (when I get to). It’s nice and stretchy for a cotton, but not as stretchy as Fixation. These socks will be nice to wear. If I ever get them finished. I did’n’t make too much of an effort to start them at the same place in the color repeat, and so they are very fraternal. But I like them.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday. One of my neighbors is barbecuing something wonderful that’s heavy on the garlic. It smells sooooo good! I love July 4th, but it’s tough on my fur kids. Last night all three cats tried to sit on my lap at the same time. Since all three are fairly good-sized cats, and since I already take up a goodly portion of the chair, we all just didn’t fit. But I ended up with Moo Cow on one side and Captain Kidd on the other. Phoebe had to be content with cuddling as close to the chair as she could get. I reached down and petted her frequently. Just now Moo jumped up and planted her butt smack-dab on the keyboard. I finally convinced her that it made it very hard for me to type. I love the 4th. But I’ll be glad for their sakes when it’s over.

Oh… and in case anyone was wondering… I delivered the red Fixation socks to their designated recipient. They fit perfectly, she loves them, and they actually went with the outfit she was wearing that day. It’s funny how often that happens. I give someone a hand-knit gift and whatever they’re wearing that day just happens to be a perfect match. Coincidence? Or do I have some sort of odd fashion ESP. Yeah… It’s probably coincidence. 😉