Welcome 2014

We closed out 2013 with a party at Becky's and Mary's.  They had lots of fabulous food and amazing Bloody Marys, complete with a variety of food sticks, including seafood, meat and vegan.

More fixin's than you can imagine.

It was only a couple of days after Christmas when Chad received his duck call storage box from Rusty.

Rusty estimated this box took over 50 hours to complete.

Lots of sanding and polishing went into the finish.

We were invited to a New Year's Eve party, so it seemed appropriate to get dressed up.

LBD and sparkly purse and earrings.

Tall shoes and seamed hose.

Chris and Rob, our wonderful hosts.

Valerie, Mauro, and Preston

Rusty, Di and Preston

Good eats on a beautiful table!

Sunrise continues to be my favorite time of day.

This particular morning started with cloud-cover, so the sun was up a little further before I could capture it.

Lincoln has over 30 art galleries of various types.  On the first Friday of each month, they all host an open house between 5 and 9pm.  This month Rusty and I toured the Burkholder Project...

 and also the Noyes Gallery...

The First Lutheran Church also hosts a Jazz Friday once a month during the lunch hour.  Rusty played this venue several times before retiring from the bass.  This time we heard some of his buddies; they call themselves Group Sax.

Paul, Marl. Ed and Scott.

They opened with a Louisiana stroll,  aka the first line.  We also heard jazz pieces from greats like Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, and Charles Mingus.  They ended the performance with some oldies from the Big Band Era, which greatly pleased the aged audience.

I'm always looking for a little challenge in life, or for some new opportunity to explore.  I was hoping that this might be the year I would get Rusty to carry through with his promise to take dance lessons with me.  I tease him and tell him the only reason he's getting a new knee is to get out of dance lessons.  He adamantly denies it.  :)   Since we have at least two months with no travel plans, I decided to take a jewelry class.  We will be working with silver, brass and copper.  So far I've learned to use a giant cutter, pound and shape things on an anvil, light a blow torch (very scary for me!), solder silver, and polish silver.

The first night I made a twisted bracelet from both wide and thin bands of silver.

Rusty has been working fervently on our dining table.  He uses a spokeshave, a block plane, and a fore plane to chamfer all four edges of the underside of the table.

The first of four chamfered edges is now ready for sanding. 

 The legs and apron form the support structure for the table top.  After weeks of straightening the apron boards and then carefully using hand tools to cut a tenon to match with each mortise (2 for each leg, making a total of 8 mortise/tenon matches), the gluing and assembling is ready to begin.

The former table and chairs have been cleared from the dining area.  A tarp has been laid down in preparation for the assembly of the table.

In the lower part of the picture you can see the end apron has been glued into two legs.

I know Rusty will breathe easier once all of the pieces are glued together and the end result is a table base that is level and true.  I'm starting to get very excited about having a beautiful, new table!

As I am want to do at the beginning of any new year, there has been much cleaning, tossing, sorting, etc.  This resulted in a big trip to the Goodwill store, and another trip to empty the recycling bins.  It always amazes me how much recycling we do in such a short time.

At 5:00 p.m. the recycling bins were empty.  By early evening, all these items were tossed into the recently-emptied bins!

In addition to the recycling, I took a large bowl of kitchen scraps out to the compost pile and dumped almost 1 1/2 cups of used coffee grounds on my fallow garden.

Perhaps most of you, like me, have misplaced an item from time to time.  This morning it was my car keys, not something I normally lose.  I was headed to my six a.m. breakfast group and my keys were not in their usual location.  Not wanting to be late for breakfast, I took an extra key and was on my way.  My mind continued to fixate on the missing keys.  Upon returning home I searched every place I could think of.  I completely emptied my purse, twice.  I went though all of my coat pockets.  I knew I had driven myself home from the gym yesterday, so the keys had to be in the house.  But where?  Rusty searched the shop.  I searched my computer desk, the laundry area, the bathroom... no keys.  Friday mornings we have yoga class, so I changed into my yoga clothes and put on my boots.  (When the weather is nasty and messy, the gym requests us to change footwear at the door so that they can keep things cleaner.)  I picked up the tennis shoes I intended to wear inside the gym.  They made a funny noise.  Eureka!  My keys.  Apparently when I was returning from the gym the previous day I was wearing my boots and carrying my shoes and keys; so much easier to compact things and slip the keys into the shoes.  I laughed at myself.

My mantra for 2014:  You can't change what happens to you, but you can change your attitude about what happens.