A Map

Wow. Try wrapping your brain around this one:
It shows the population of China's provinces compared with countries' populations. For the whole story look here.

I wonder what India looks like now/will look like when it surpasses China in population ...

Farewell

Possibly my favorite scene ever done by Paul Newman ... although I really, really like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - the whole thing ... and The Sting.

And The Award Goes To ...

Debate or No? Bail Out or No?

What to do, what to do ...?



Seriously, Letterman is petty and infantile. But if the McCain people think it was not a night for comedy, why didn't they say so at the beginning?

What, exactly is going on with the McCain campaign - total meltdown because of some bad numbers?

Which scenario is worse in the long run, to bail out or not to bail out?

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Home, Not Alone

So I was home with a sick Boy-child today; P usually does sick child duty, since he works at home, but he had a mid-day commitment, so I stayed home to monitor the situation. (I think teenagers, at times, need as much supervision as toddlers). Anyway, he was in bed, wouldn't eat and was generally looking poorly until about 6:30 tonight. Hopefully he'll be off and running tomorrow.

I did various things while he slept. I took pictures of my favorite clematis:

This particular flower was a mistake - I never meant to purchase white. I like the colorful stuff for maximum butterfly attraction. Now it's my favorite because it has fragrant, delicate flowers and it blooms late in the season - the final sigh of summer. I love it when summer is over, the weather cools and we have sunny days like today. The weather today was perfect.
I received a package today from my good friend Rosemary, who has abandoned Minnesota for Colorado (much to her dismay as well as mine). The book looks very promising; I may have to put aside my current novel and take a look at it tonight. Did you know, RCK, that the Guardian, where the articles were first published, is a bastion of liberalism ? ;-)
I'm hoping that the book really is funny, and that it doesn't make me cry. Last Sunday's visit to Mom was pretty depressing. I guess I look at the Alzheimer's thing as a new window into hell.

To while away the time in between checking on The Boy and making phone calls to shore up my mother's dismal financial situation, I seriously got going on the cardigan that I promised myself I would make this year: Yes, I know I'm not going to look like her when it's done, but isn't it a great sweater? It's the one Harlot made and then wore on her book tour last winter/spring.

And it is NOT a sock.

I am diversifying.

I managed to get three pages of instructions, including two charts that had to be blown up about 1,000%, to this single page of guidance:

Funny how easy it is to memorize a pattern and make sense of reading the stitches when you have a good sized block of time on your hands to parse it all out. I managed to make it to the end of the 26th row, which is the longest pattern repeat of the various panels . Here's the back so far:

The upper picture is pretty true to color, the lower picture shows the stitch definition a bit better:
Hopefully I will be back to the salt mines tomorrow.

I guess.