Author: Susan

For those not living in the Seattle area (who would find this a statement of the obvious), it snowed last night! It had flurried a bit all day, and then finally started accumulating just before four. The roads were already clogged with everyone who left work at three to beat the storm, and the weather reports were daunting (and mostly wrong), calling for plenty more snow, a brief warm spell, and then freezing temperatures starting around eight. Everyone who wasn’t already sitting in their car decided to beat the ice, and joined the traffic mess. People are so disfunctional about the weather/traffic vortex here.

Kevin was very impressed with the traction control on his mustang, but still couldn’t get up the short hill that exits his parking lot, so I went to pick him up a few miles away in Redmond. The drive took an hour and three minutes. There was about two inches of snow on the ground (almost enough to cover the grass), but people were very intimidated by it, and the typical gridlock was complicated by a lot of poor decision-making. I had NPR on, the snow was so pretty on the trees and blackberry brambles, and it was fascinating to watch people, so blood pressure stayed low and I got there to pick him up faster than I expected.

I had my camera with me, so here’s the pretty snow on the trees by Marymoor park. That area is extremely well lit, so I didn’t use a flash. The pink tinge is from all of the brakelights in front of me.

And then here’s the tree outside our front door once we got home:

Today, the snow has been melting, but everyone’s working from home to be “on the safe side.”

Wow, now I just have a foot’s worth of continuing in pattern, and I’ll be done sock #1! This has been going way faster than I remembered. Likely a combination of using magic loop instead of dpns, and knitting for my size seven foot instead of Kevin’s men’s large…

I can actually see the progress each time I put it down — how cool!

Given how precarious the tank seemed after the storm, leaving it for a week to visit my parents in Florida made me very nervous. It must, however, have been in better shape than it seemed, because we came back to find the fish happy and hungry, the corals growing, and several new surprises in the sand.

Kevin took this picture of the Pom Pom Xenia a few days before its demise.

It was about four inches wide, pulsing constantly, and had recently started climbing. We were both so sad when it didn’t make it through the storm, and tried to save it by removing the parts of it that were clearly dead. After two days, it became clear that none of it was going to make it, so we pulled it out.

Apparently though, the xenia had been dropping its hands — xenias will do this when they’re stressed, and the hands will blow away until they find a better place to settle and grow. We’ve never seen this — ours have always propagated by growing and dividing. Nonetheless, when we came back we were delighted to find little hands in the sand, pulsing away. They’re teeny (a quarter of an inch or less), so we may have missed some, but we counted at least seven. Some of them are in great shape, like this one:

(You can see two of his “fingers” touching together — he alternates full hand pulses with pulses that only use one or two of the fronds.)
Others are regrowing fingers that were damaged. This guys is pulsing and has a nice strong stem, but only has one full length finger.

(Note the gorgeous orange zoos with their blue and brown centers! Plus you can see one open green mushroom under the rock to the left, and one mostly-closed green mushroom on top. The shiny green globes are bubble algae — a mild nuisance, but pretty in small amounts.) For a similar shot partially blocked by a curious clownfish, click

I’m cheering all of them on.

PS. An aside, when I told my mom about these, she wrote, “It makes me think of all of Charlotte’s babies hatching to keep Wilbur company at the end of Charlotte’s Web.” What a great analogy. 🙂

As much as I keep considering all of the things that look to make 2007 great (we’re getting married, love our families, great friends, great job, nice place to live, so many things on the list to knit…), I keep coming back to how much I liked 2006.

I finally made decisions about a career path, applied to grad school, got a wonderful job instead, competed in the Olympics, bought kayaks, learned to plumb things, went to Brown dinners, got engaged, was sucked into fantasy football, knit a lot, read a lot, learned a lot, tracked real estate obsessively, and generally had a happy year. Given all of that, my cup is rather full.

So, this year, these are my hopes:

• See the world, especially the world nearby. More weekend trips to interesting places!
• Become a habitual gym-goer.
• Subject of course to the winds of fate: buy a house that we can paint, tile, and plant things around.
• And, since the shoe thing worked out so nicely, learn to buy stylish pants, to match my shoes.

🙂 Happy new year!

The major downfall of living on the West Coast is that we end up flying back to the East Coast about four times a year for assorted vacations and holidays. Neither of us is exactly an enthusiastic traveler, especially given the exertions of the TSA. It’s such a pity that the red eye flight is the short one (when you actually wouldn’t mind having longer to sleep), and that the way back home is the long one. So, here’s a “we love planes” smile, as we boarded flight #2, and clocked hour 8 of ultimately 16.

The only consolation in spending a full day traveling is that it was completely devoted knitting time. Taking off, I only had about an inch and a half of progress on the sock, despite having put in a good seven days of what felt like consistent work. (I had a much better picture than this, but you could read the chart perfectly. It seemed like sort of a copyright violation, so I nixed it in favour of the overexposed version.) As an aside, look how much leg room there was! A new, four-seats-per-row plane, and we were in the exit row. Thanks, Jet Blue!! Excellent for early-trip morale.

Six hours later, we boarded flight #2, and I had this much to show:

And by the time we landed, I had made it 8 rows past four inches, and now the pattern is only on the front half of the sock, and the back is all stockinette — so speedy and nice!

At this rate, I may actually finish this pair in January — a stunning accomplishment.

Both Kevin and Mom ended up taking nearly identical photos, so I had to post one. The days ended up going by very quickly, especially since the first three were Christmas and two days of dress shopping. On day four, I found the spot on the deck that got direct sunlight in the morning, and knitted while waiting for the clouds to pass. Not much of a tan, but pretty and warm.

Comet did a good job keeping me company and warding off the geckos.

It took a while to get this project going on the right footing (no pun intended). Want a closer look?

It’s the New England pattern from Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road. Yes, a sock. When I finished my first pair a year ago, it didn’t look likely that I’d ever decide to knit another. But, I bought the book, and then the red sock yarn, and the prettiness of both has been wearing me down. I have slight reservations about my gauge, and I’ve had a few mental lapses with skipping the work-even row in the lace that have forced me to rip almost as much as I’ve knit, but in spite of that, I’m enthusiastic.

Our friend Larry (former Seattle-ite and now missed by the fish) was back home for the holidays, and pushed back his flight, so we got to see him down in Florida!! Another MIT friend, Jon, came too, so with my brother and sister along we had quite the group for a night out at the (aptly) Boston-themed pub down the street.

And a shot of the three guys — Happy Birthday, Larry!

Two pretty sunset shots from my parents’ back deck in Florida, one with all the tropical foliage:

And the other with truer sky color, and the pool… so appealing. 🙂

Our golden retriever was very excited about his present under the tree (the pink bag next to his nose, full of rawhide).

Once the rawhide was consumed, he moved on to playing with his new rope —

The rest of us were a little more measured in our enthusiasm, but it was a happy Christmas and so fun to be with my family again.

This is mostly a pictures post… just to show the storm pre- and aftermath.

I tend to take tank photos a few times a week. I was so happy to realize that I took some on Thursday right before the power outage, even if they didn’t come out so well.

One of the most shocking transformations was the death of all of the horrible red algae. It covered the lower third of the tank, prestorm. Here you can see the gramma’s rock (not the best picture, but it does have the tang in it):

Whereas afterwards, there are only a few clumps on the ricordia rock and the gramma’s rock left. When we turned the lights back on, it had mostly changed from a maroon color to screaming orange. Then over the next day or so, it all turned from orange to clear and disappeared. Good riddance — lets hope it stays gone.

The tank actually looks shockingly similar, pre- (below) and post- (above) storm. The major difference at a distance is that the xenias are gone, as are the gramma, tang and shrimp. You can see the pom pom xenia on the far left of the tank — it looks like a large pink ball. The other (original) xenias are the blurry fuzz all along the ridge line.

The rest of the corals did pretty well. Here you can see our yellow plate coral (a montipora) with attendant hermit crab, and the pink branching montipora. Both look great. In the back to the left, you can see the top of the leather. One of our jets died and he looked miserable without the extra flow, so I raised him up in the tank closer to the light and with good current, and he perked up.

And then the same corals, but taken from the front of the tank. You can also see a part of our pink plate corals, as well as a limb of the monti that I accidentally snapped off a few months ago, that’s still happily growing in its new spot on the lower rock. Also, some of our orange zoos:

Our torch coral (and embedded barnacles) made it through without too many problems, which was a relief. It definitely didn’t like the cold, and pulled in all of it’s waving arms completely, but once the heat and lights came on, it was one of the first corals to look normal. They’re supposed to be particularly able to take down a tank if they die, so I was glad that this guy was more-or-less unphased by the ordeal.

The bottom third, or so, of the acro bleached. Very sad because it’s really taken off in the last month or so. I’m hopeful that once it gets over the shock, it will grow back. The brown parts are the “mouths” which feed off of organisms in the water, and it’s also very dependent on light, current, and good water quality.

Since the power outage, there’s been a dark algae growing on the dying parts of the acro. The teeny hermit crabs (who seemed to survive! Yay!) are so obsessed with it. There tend to be one or two in the acro branches at all times, munching away. In the picture to the right, you can see one, in its white shell, trucking towards the bounty. The zoanthids that it climbed up are deeply (and momentarily) unhappy. Instead of the open faces with fringe, they close up into pale purple tubes until the annoyance has passed.
And finally the ricordia rock. When the lights first came back on, both ricordias were stringy and losing their grip on the rock. They came back to 90% very quickly, but still aren’t quite as puffy as they were before the storm. We’ve been playing with flow, since I suspect that more would help them, and waiting and seeing. The sunflower and orange zoos on the rock were just fine. This is one of the two places in the tank that still has red algae. Not pretty. And you can see the top of Clack, hanging out in his cave behind this rock.