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October 10, 2007
pictures from a visit home
Yesterday was my first day back at school after a week spent at home to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, and I got right back into the hectic grind of grad school with a morning meeting, office hours and three back-to-back critiques, ten hours straight with little opportunity for rest or food. Today I tried to take it easy but there was still a good deal of running around to be done, and I'm too wiped out to do more than post a few photos. I should be sewing a dress, as I've got nothing to wear tomorrow, but instead I'm sitting on the couch watching episodes of Sopranos and knitting a sweater I won't need for months. I spent two hours lovingly washing my pretty new bento box, making delicious salads and marinating tofu, then put it all in the fridge and had popcorn, applesauce and beer for supper instead. Not all mixed together.
My visit home, in bullet points:
-Airtran Airways flight 146 Atlanta to Detroit, October 2 07
-being away from home during three consecutive school years makes you lose touch with a lot of what's in your garden. During my visit home in September I got to see my Japanese knotweed flower for the first time since before we moved to Windsor, since it took until I went away to grad school for it to get established enough to flower. This month's flowery surprise was the chocolate boneset, as I planted it without knowing what it was or what its blooms would look like. Turns out it's a mass of lovely white fluff.
-had a nice (albeit short) visit with Kelly at Milk Coffee Bar, a place I dearly miss when I'm not in Windsor. This is one of my daily wardrobe images for my thesis blog, the only photo I took. Kelly metablogged my awkward posing here.
-finally got some photos of the bolero that I sewed up last week, which had been sitting there fully knitted all through August (too hot!). It was far too warm at home to actually wear it. The pattern is from Peony Knits and is super easy and satisfying for those instant-gratification types.
-southwestern Ontario on Thanksgiving weekend may not be as spectacular as some of those gaudier, more tawdry fall displays other places offer, but it's still one of the loveliest and most comforting colour palettes there is. Don't try to deny it.
-my lifelong association with Exeter's white squirrels didn't at all stop me from yanking out the camera and snapping away like some crazy out-of-towner as soon as one presented itself to us.
-this is another photo from my thesis blog (I'll force y'all over there eventually, just watch), included here simply because it's taken at my grandma's house, along the walk where I've had my photo taken so many times before (but not for twenty-five years or so). And look at how I was dressed on Thanksgiving Sunday, and let me tell you I sweated in this getup. Last year it snowed, or so I'm told. I was sweating down in Georgia then.
-the Ausable River, covered in a blanket of algae so thick it resembles those horrible lawns that people try to get looking like Astroturf. My little cousin Riley said in a disgusted voice, "my mom says she used to swim in this river". Those trees across the way to the left there are where the rope swing used to be, where Riley's mom and I swam with high school boys, twenty-three or so years ago.
Riley threw a stick in and the carpet of green opened up to accept it, then closed up again with a burp and a shudder. Just like the quicksand used to do on Gilligan's Island.
-come Monday I was back in Lavender Lullaby again, heading south (Airtran Airways flight 288 Detroit to Atlanta).
Posted by jodi at October 10, 2007 08:52 PM | categories: jet set : sticks and string : true patriot love : windsor
Comments
Love the dress and the boots! Rawr!
Posted by: Sandy at October 12, 2007 06:10 PM
is that river all green with algae because of pollution or has it always been that way?
Posted by: Kylie at October 12, 2007 11:28 PM
It's been a dry year, as it has in a lot of places, and the water level is quite low. I've never seen it like this, and it certainly didn't look like this back when my cousin and I were swimming in it. I never would have gone in water like that, I was too afraid of getting near fish to jump in where I couldn't see them.
Posted by: jodi at October 13, 2007 09:03 AM
Oh that's so sad. A few years ago algae like that bred in a river used for drinking water near Sydney and people got really sick. Hope that doesn't happen to your river.
Posted by: kylie at October 13, 2007 10:23 PM
Ya'll? Did I hear you say "ya'll?" Somebody's been living in Georgia. Beautiful photos.
Posted by: Kikipotamus at October 14, 2007 01:47 PM
Cool squirrell. Never seen a white one! Thanksgiving this year was definitely weird.
Posted by: Carol at October 14, 2007 06:34 PM
Your thesis blog has become one of my morning coffee reads. I love to see the transformations.
Posted by: Mary at October 15, 2007 09:45 AM
reacting to the clouds from above them! What a view. Must remember to try that on my next flight.
Wow.
Green socks delightful.
So you know Kelly?
Kool.
Posted by: Lynn at October 20, 2007 09:20 PM