This is the final result. I made a sock with two feet. This was a gift for a friend. You should buy his book about socks.

knittingdrhal

The freesia are starting to bloom in my garden.

Tonight, I went to my hospice shift. Tonight, I was reminded how much suffering is optional. Yes, Bad Things happen but worrying about it instead of just dealing with the situation will only make things worse.

I found this page while looking for MP3s done by Telly Savalas. He shoulda stuck to Kojak. The other links are pretty strange.

This is another sock to go with the two footed sock I made previously.

This is the Urban Iditarod. We didn't run this year. The event has turned into a real race with running. I didd the Urban Iditarod back when it was a leisurely costumed bar crawl.

Stuff is blooming in my neighborhood. I guess it is that time of year.

This is a doorway to a garden in Bernal Heights.

I've wanted a wisteria plant for years. Now I have one and it appears to be on the way to blooming.

This is another unusual sock. This was supposed to have two feet like the last sock but I ran out of yarn.

I bought 18 boxes of Kleenex today. This was for a friend. Really.

It's allergy season.

The wisteria really is blooming.

Today, I planted the first of my tomato plants. I have some started from seed. They have broken ground although starting from seed hasn't worked too well for me in the past. I'd rather rely on the starter plants. Today, I put the first six in the ground with more to come next week.

Tonight, I go to my hospice shift. I'm about to be done with hospice. It's been three years. I'm burned out and maybe not as helpful as I used to be. I think it is time for me to find another volunteer opportunity where the people I work with don't die on a regular basis. I am missing many of the people I've been priviliged to come to know through hospice.

San Francisco is supposed to be a land of fog and cool weather. Today, it was positively hot.

I did some repair work on the garden irrigation system. This might actually have been an excuse to sit under the sprinklers. While most of the 'repairs' were limited to uprighting sprinklers that had fallen over during the winter, I did find one split in the pipe. I'm going to have to replace the broken section.

We took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and took a night walk around the neighborhood. I wanted to check out the ancient wisteria near a park near my house. Granted, it was dark outside but I don't think that wisteria is blooming as much as my new plant. Then again, my plant is probably hybrided (is that a word?) to produce maximum flowers. This other plant is old.

We also heard a lot of sirens. From looking at the morning's news, it seems the sirens were for a 2 alarm fire on the other side of Bernal Hill.

My garden is liking the sun.

We skipped the Brides of March event today. I've still never done it. One of these years, I will go to the event. First, I need to get a wedding dress. Finding an inexpensive wedding dress is not a trivial task. If the marriage works, brides carefully package and store the wedding dress. If the marriage doesn't work, I think they burn the dress. Either way, wedding dresses don't tend to show up at Goodwill.

I've been making more socks. These are bed socks, not socks to wear with shoes.

We found this building on a walk in San Francisco. The wires are for the MUNI electric buses.

Today is pie day, 3/14. I didn't realize this until too late in the day. Otherwise, I would have made a pie.

The shadow doesn't help this picture. The shadow is from the shelf overhead. These are salmon suits, hanging in the garage, awaiting the next running of the salmon which will probably be the Bay to Breakers race in May. However, salmon go upstream to spawn. We do the race in reverse as Breakers to Bay. Last year, there were about 20 salmon. The numbers keep growing.

I found this graffiti on the sidewalk while walking to my knitting group. I would expect to find graffiti like this around a university like MIT, not in a transitional neighborhood in San Francisco. Then again, I'm not convinced this is actual graffiti. I think it might be a mark for the Hash House Harriers, a drinking club with a running problem.

I went to my knitting group tonight, although I'm starting to wonder why. I much enjoy knitting. Going to a weekly group meeting is starting to feel like an obligation. It's turning into work. I think it might be time to give up the weekly group.

This is a feral cat that hangs out at hospice, where I volunteer on Thursday nights. The cat isn't entirely feral. It comes out to the patio and visits with people. It will sit at the door and looks inside, although it will never step inside. If anyone makes a move to the door, the cat will run.

Taking this picture convinced me that the camera phone might be useful for taking notes but it isn't a real camera. The technology is coming but it isn't here yet.

I can tell Spring is almost here. My garden is doing good things.

Generally speaking, I don't agree with anthromorphizing animals, I still found this site compelling enough to try this with the cat who lives with me, She was not amused.

I'd never had a birthday party before. I got one today. People seemed to have a good time and so did I. Most of the day was spent outside. The weather forecast gave about a 50% chance of rain. I was relieved to see blue skies on Sunday morning. Then the tornado hit. Well, the tornado hit just south of San Francisco. However, there was a period of very heavy rain in San Francisco. Several people had been seduced by the warm, spring-like weather into leaving their coats in the car. Those people got soaked.

The rain is officially here. My garden is once again very wet. I think this is a good thing. I'd put in a few tomatoes last week. They seem to be liking the rain.

Kitty is sleeping off her traumatic experience with the fruit hat.

I like being inside when it is cold and wet outside.. I'm knitting penguins.

Today I am officially 'old.'

I got another email today from someone asking me to knit for them. She said she wanted a simple pair of legwarmers. I told her the pair on my web site probably took 80 hours to make. Would she be willing to pay even $10/hour for that? I suggested that she learn to knit them herself.

This happens periodically. A few months ago, someone I know asked me to knit her a hat. She wanted a cheap hat, not a hand made one. The ones she likes are too expensive for her at $40/each. When I tried to explain the amount of time she was asking for, she whined that her birthday was coming. I will never knit anything for this person.

I enjoy knitting. I do it because I like it. I will not knit for money...unless I can magically find somone willing to pay a living hourly wage for the output.

This is the cat looking at something in the garden.

I went to my hospice shift. I'm winding down my volunteer time. It's been three years. I'll stick until the new training class starts at the end of April. I need to be doing some sort of volunteer something but hospice just isn't it right now. I'm not sure what the right thing is. Right now, I just need a break.

I made pasta from scratch today. I borrowed a pasta attachment for my KitchenAid mixer and threw some flour in the bowl and started. I'm pretty good at various kinds of bread so I figured the recommended recipe could use some tinkering. I tried whole wheat flour with a lot of oil. That version fell apart. This wasn't going to work. I backtracked and started over with the recipe in the book. I made macaroni for a sundried tomato-olive-chicken salad.

This pasta recipe worked...but this is too much work to be worth the effort. I'll stick with store bought pasta. I'm glad I tried it but now I know to not do that again.

Columbine are blooming. That's the wisteria in the background. It's still in a pot. After it's done blooming, we will plant it in the ground.

We got up at 4:30am this morning to watch the sunrise from the top of Mt. Davidson, the highest point in San Francisco.

We went to see the cross lit up at Mt. Davidson. This used to be government property until a lawsuit forced the sale of the top of the hill, including the cross. I'd never seen the cross illuminated before. It was kinda eerie walking up the path with this glowing thing above us.

We arrived about 5:15am. We only wanted to see the sunrise, not the full Easter sunrise service which didn't start until 6:30am. As we parked, we met a woman who wanted to go see the cross but she didn't know how to get to the top of the hill. The path isn't lit. The way isn't clear during the daylight, let alone in the dark before dawn. We told her to follow us 'cause we knew the way. She wanted to stay for the full Easter service. We got her to the top of the hill and then went on our way.

This is a yarn sculpture in the Mission. There is a mysterious stranger who has a habit of adorning bicycle carcasses with yarn. This is one of the results.

We took a walk around Nob Hill. This picture is from the cable car museum. This was supposed to be a history walk. However, everything on the hill burned in the 1906 fire. The walk included pre-1906 photographs and discussion about what used to be on a particular site before the current apartment building was built. Doing a history walk in San Francisco can be difficult because so much of the City has been destroyed and rebuilt over time. The walk ends up being a lot of looking at apartment buildings and trying to visualize the mansion that used to be there - before the fire.

We tried to take our junk mail to the beach and burn it. Mother Nature had other ideas. While it wasn't raining, the beach was very windy. We wouldn't have been able to get a fire started, let alone maintain it long enough to burn the junk mail. Maybe I should invest in a high quality shredder.

Terry Shaivo died today. Tonight, I went to my hospice volunteer shift. Somehow, this seemed appropriate to me. The coincidence also got me thinking some more about what it means when someone dies. What is the moment of death? Did Terry Shaivo die 15 years ago when her heart stopped and most of her brain died? Or did she die when her breathing stopped? Or did she die at some other time?

I believe there isn't a moment of death. I think it is more of a process. Well, I've never seen anyone die a violent death. Maybe dying in a car wreck or falling out a window or getting shot will result in an instant death. The deaths I've seen at hospice take more time. Dying is a process, not an instant event.

When did Terry Shaivo die? I don't know that anyone can really answer that question.