February 11, 2010  

    We celebrated Christmas at both Sarah's and at Matt's.  Lynn tells the story.  Here's a page of pictures.  My gifts to Lynn were two construction projects: a cupboard door in the kitchen to hold her spices and a light at the peak of the barn to illuminate a wreath.   Lynn gave me a beautiful paisley quilt that is one foot square; it'll be a wall hanging.  She designed an oriental rug using paisley fabric, knowing I love oriental rugs.  It has 3/4" pieces and 1/4" strip borders!
    Lynn is also working a quilt for Addy. It's pink with hearts (Addy's design!).  The hearts are stuffed (trapunto), and Addy helped with the stuffing.
    Ozzy turned one year old on January 9th, and his birthday party was on the 23rd. He had lots of toys already so Matt and Crystal specified "no gifts."  But Lynn made a "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner for him.  (It will also serve for River's birthdays.)  Ozzy ended up with more cake on his face, hands, and the table than in his stomach.
    I did an a cappella SATB arrangement of Jobim's latin number Desafinado, which means "slightly out of tune."  (The title refers to the way a love affair is going, not to how the song is sung.)  I also arranged Amherst Is My Home, which will be performed later this year for Amherst's 250th anniversary.  The lyrics tells about the town's history and it's landmarks.
    We haven't gotten much snow this year.  One storm dumped a foot of snow, and another added only four to five inches.  So I've had the snow blower out only twice.  Several times we've gotten a couple inches, lining the boughs with fresh snow.  Here's a page of snow pictures.  Notice all the juncos feeding on the ground; we've had an unusually large number of them this winter.
    We found animal dropping in the garage and were guessing as to what kind of animal it was.  A couple hours later we saw a porcupine waddle out of the barn, across the lawn, and up a tree (mystery solved).
    My latest home project was installing lights on each side of the bathroom mirror.  Now Lynn will have good light to do her makeup.
   We took care of Sarah's dogs for a weekend while she and family went to Steve's 95-year-old grandmother's birthday in Pennsylvania.  Timber and Ratchet are well trained and easy to care for.  I got some exercise taking them for short walks a couple times a day. 
   As Lynn explained in her description of Christmas, she and I are into jigsaw puzzles and have been doing about one a week.  We like the oil paintings the best, but one of them was so difficult that it wasn't any fun.  The piece shapes were very similar, and their patterns were not very distinguishing either.  Here's a page of the puzzles we've completed so far (as well as the one we gave up on).
    Last year I helped a friend, Don Alusic, by doing the voice-over for a documentary he was producing—The Peace Treaty of Portsmouth— A Spiritual Perspective.  The DVD is available now, and you can visit Don's Website to view the trailer and to order the DVD.

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