Dinnertime

The other night Michael and I went to Applebee's for dinner. There was an older man sitting at the booth next to us eating dinner alone. At one point the waitress came by his table and I think he asked her for the check. At which point she informed him that his bill had already been paid. He said "What?!" and looked around in disbelief. She repeated that someone had already taken care of his check. "Who?" he asked, and looked around the restaurant as though hoping he would just be able to tell who had performed this deed. After asking a couple more times, the waitress gestured to a couple sitting at a table across from them. He thanked them warmly and they had a short conversation. It was really uplifting to me to witness this random act of kindness. I often get discouraged about the state of humanity. Rarely do we hear about good things, bad acts rule the news. Witnessing such things restores my faith that there is good in the world.

Don't Blink, You'll Miss It.

That's how I feel about March. I blinked, and a whole month was gone. I mean, I remember all the major stuff that happened: my students played in Solo & Ensemble, I wrote a paper and finished out the Winter Quarter, I played four concerts in three days, I was sick for two weeks, had Spring Break, Michael had his birthday, and I started the Spring Quarter (on Monday). But it all went by so fast....I don't know what happened. Maybe it's due to the fact that it's April 1 and it's still snowing. I'm not a fan of snow in the spring. Snow in the winter is fine. But it's spring now and has been for a couple weeks. Enough already!

I addition to all of the aforementioned activities I also managed to finish the socks I started in December. Part of the reason they took so long was that I had to rip out half the first one and when I realized that fact it sat in time out for a few weeks before I picked it back up to finish it (again). The second sock didn't take nearly as long, as I did not make the same mistake twice. Here is a picture of one of the socks. It's hard to take a good picture of both feet at once.
Also, Mom got some tinker toys so we could build ourselves a swift. She gave them to me last Thursday along with a couple of hanks of sock yarn. For the uninitiated, some yarn comes in balls or skeins, which a conveniently wound for you. Some yarn comes in hanks, which is yarn that is just looped together and not yet wound into a ball. The swift holds the yarn for you so you can wind it into a ball. Winding yarn without a swift is possible, but can be very unpleasant (trust me...I know). Here is the tinker toy swift, complete with a hank of yarn on it that I wound into a nice ball.
I now have three projects on the needles. The sweater for Katrina (I have the back and the left front finished. I'm now on the right front.), the first of a pair of black socks for me (it's nearing completion), and the first of another pair of socks for me made from the yarn pictured above. I'm doing my own thing with these socks. I'll share more another time. Hopefully April won't go by in such a whirlwind.