Valentine's Day Approaches

 We don't ordinarily do much for Valentines day. I'll get dw some flowers, a card and a small selection of good chocolate (which I get a share of), and occasionally we'll go out for dinner. And that's about it. But this year, the Christmas Tree skeleton was still in place, so dw took advantage of it and did a Valentines Day decorative installation. -- A first for this house (as best as I can recall) and there's a good chance it'll be the last -- for the present though, it's a festive bit of color in the living room.

   When the piece returns to the studio it will have been setting in the house for over two months -- it has worked out very nicely -- I've been looking at daily for all that time and I've figured out what I don't like about it and how I can fix it. When I get it finished, I'll post a photo of it.

  

Last week dw had another of her regular classes/tests for a particular job certification (she's a CCRN)* 

She spent the week studying, fretting about studying, worrying about failure, worrying about being embarrassed with failure and etc. I pointed out that this test seemed similar to all of the previous tests and that so far disaster had not struck and wasn't likely to this time.  "But it might. It could." she said -- mostly joking. I'm glad I don't have to do that, either the studying or the tests.

Lately I've had a mild case of the punies so I've done little and accomplished less.

Books: Tangled Webs (James B Stewart) A book about perjury (Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, Barry Bonds and Bernard Madoff) There were no great surprises -- all four lied repeatedly and under oath. Although R. Armitage, and K Rove were the ones who actually outed a covert C.I.A. agent (in fact treason, although too difficult to prove and prosecute "I didn't know she was a secret agent.") Libby was the only convicted because he was the only who repeatedly lied -- Probably to protect V.P. Cheney -- As I said, no real surprises. -- And Memoirs (Kinsley Amis) it's as much a "Famous people I have known" book as it is a book about Amis himself. He's sometimes a bit smug for my taste and I don't always agree with his literary criticisms but in all it's consistently entertaining and (of course) well written.   DA

   *dw tells me she's not actually a CCRN -- which is a specific designation -- "You can write out: 'She's a Critical Care RN', or just put in: 'She's a Hot Nurse!' "  -- works for me. DA

P.S. When I put a photo in the blog, the program starts doing odd things to the spacing and margins. If I ever figure out how to fix it, the weird sentence and paragraph breaks should improve. DA