Rare Visit

I don't think I mentioned meeting some of the other people involved in the KNITATHON for St Vincent's NICU and the Little Missionary school in the East Village. It was nice meeting people. We met in the Little Missionaries school which gave us an opportunity to tour it and hear some of it's history. Very nice place and we all got a kick out of the children's sinks at just the right height for them to use. Everyone was very nice and we even met the organizer's two children who were a blast. The plan is to have another gathering in December where we can turn on our completed items for the NICU and funds collected for the Little Missionaries school. I have completed 7 hats so far and hope to get up to ten by the time I have to hand them in.

Thanksgiving was this past Thursday and I made a smoked ham (free for spending the required amount over a month or so at my neighborhood supermarket) in the Rival electric roasting oven I had bought at Target a few weeks ago. It came out nice and juicy but since I had both glazed it with brown sugar AND pineapple juice earlier, there was burnt hardened sugar in the bottom of the pan. What a challenge to get out! I did finally get the pan back to almost the same condition as it started in. Whew!

We had it for two dinners and the rest had to be eaten for lunch or whatever. Mom will not eat it more than twice so that left it up to me and Mom's health aide. The aide did help by eating some for lunch on Friday but that was hardly a dent. It was a 9 1/2 pound ham. At this point I have a little left but I don't think I can face anymore of it. I can imagine what it was doing to my cholesterol!

I have been having some adventures since I last updated this blog. I winterized the air conditioner in the living room just before a big windy storm hit. It turns out that the storm managed to rip the external cover off the unit sometime since it is gone. So I need to get another cover and install it tightly before the next period of rain and drop of temperatures. I also had "key/lock" adventures with the storage room in my complex where I have a storage unit. The key I had no longer turned in the door and I had to get security to let me in the night I was retrieving the now lost ac cover. Then in the morning I tried to get a key from the management that worked and since I had to try three keys I got my exercise. At least the door was on the same block. The last key was definitely the correct one for the door but it did not work for me and a work order was created for maint to work on the lock. In the meantime there is always getting security to let me in until it is resolved. *sigh*
The other adventure was lending my Sony camcorder to the office to tape the power off and power on procedures of all of the servers and the mainframe when the electricians had to add and correct some of the service. Since it is a Digital 8 Format tape I needed to copy it to VHS so we could play it at the office in the conference room. I would have liked to copy it right there but there were no available component jacks on that VCR and I did not want to risk messing up the connections. So I had it copying in my bedroom at home while I did a laundry. After the laundry was started I realized I had left some of what I had wanted to wash in the apartment. Nevermind, my cat threw up on my bed a day later so I had to do another batch of laundry anyway.

One of my co-workers who also joined the knitting/crochet group at our company had wanted to catch a movie over this weekend that no one she knew was interested in so she asked if I would be interested. The Fountain which just opened on Friday and looked beautiful. Has two wonderful leads who I have enjoyed watching in the past so I was game. We went on Saturday to the Astoria Kaufman studios on the other side of Queens from where I am. She picked me up and drove there. We got a bit confused with parking and settled on using a meter spot. Nice movie theater, very big, well maintained. The movie was beautiful but confusing as it jumped back and forth between different segments and timelines. http://thefountainmovie.warnerbros.com/
The music was very nice and I believed was performed by the Kronos group.
Since I have not seen a movie in a theater in ages it was a nice and rare visit.