Coming and going

It's been a week for packages, one way or another. I'm about to leave to post my Loopy Swap package. I'm a day past the deadline, but in this case, it's actually because there was something I wanted to add that I needed to get this morning (well, to be totally fair, that I needed Rick to get; he's doing it now). I'll share once it's been received, but I'm hoping my swap partner thinks it was worth the extra day! Here's a picture of everything but those last things all packed up.
I'm rather pleased with the way all the coppery tones came together.

And, of course, I received my amazing Loopy Swap package. This is only the second swap I've ever done, but I seem to be very lucky in my partners. Here's everything unwrapped (each item was individually and lovingly wrapped up with a little label, but of course I ripped into all of them so fast that there were no pictures to be had).
Yes, that would be three, count 'em, three, beautifully handknit items all for me! I've only ever had one other thing knit for me (that's a story worth telling sometime; it was before I was a knitter, and I realize now how much I didn't adequately appreciate everything that went into it). The bag, which is felted, is long enough for a straight needle project, while being shallow and wide enough to find everything inside. And the lighter blue item is a gorgeous lace shawl, wide enough to cover my shoulders, and short enough not to get in the way. I can tell it's going to be my all-time favorite sitting and reading and grading shawl. And then right there on top, a pair of socks. Someone knit me socks!

The socks and the shawl are gorgeous; Jessica clearly knows her lace. Check them out.
(I'm so glad I waited for better light to take these pictures, by the way; these really deserve to be shown off.) And of course, the barbecue sauce is sitting on my counter, waiting to be used. I'm thinking I should plan a meal around barbecued pork something-or-other tomorrow night. What do you think?

I also received a surprise package from Anne, with some yarn that I'm dying to play with. But I'm promising myself I'll be disciplined and finish what I'm working on first. Sometimes I hate being a grown up. These two in particular are calling to me.
I'm starting to poke around Barbara Walker's books to see if I can find the perfect motif to use on that one on the right. It needs to be a lightweight shawl for the fall, doesn't it? For me. And look how fun these are.
The ones on the right may have to be something for my mother. The colors are right up her alley. And the yarn on the left is begging to be socks for Younger Daughter. I don't know why, they just are. (There's something about that child that screams future goth, or punk, or whatever the equivalent will be when she's in high school. I have known this since she was born. I'm scared.)

And so my plans get ahead of my needles. Such is life, no?

Anne commented that it seems odd to think of February as spring, and it's true. I'm about to go on a limb and publicly post an observation that is based on living in California my whole life. Rick (the wanna-be meteorologist of the family) laughs at me and tells me this is all in my head. But honestly, I've lived in the San Joaquin valley, LA, San Diego, and the Bay Area, and this has happened more than not in all of those places (all the rest of you out here, tell me if you think I'm right). So, here I go. As many winters as not, February does a very odd thing. For a week or two, everything warms up. And I mean, really warms up. I remember in Sacramento, it would go from 30-degree weather, tule fog every night, to 75 degrees or so. And everyone packs up their winter coats, and gets excited for spring, and thinks that they can believe winter has ended. And just as soon as we've decided that winter is really and truly ended, bam! We're back to cold and sleet. I tell you, it's February's little way of making us pay for assuming that as Californians, it's our right to have good weather.

All right, Rick is back, and I need to get to the post office before it closes. More tomorrow about my adventures with a spinning wheel.

Dear Alaska

I'd like to thank you so much for the lovely and unexpected present you sent our way today. It is, of course, entirely my fault that I was unprepared. After all, what sensible person would assume that a sunny, eighty-degree day on Monday was any indication that there would not be a forty-degree hailstorm on Wednesday? Clearly, my bad. And really, even if I'd known, who's to say I would not have nevertheless chosen to wear a cotton sweater and birkenstocks to walk through vertical rain across a parking lot an inch deep in water to get to my car? It's not like I stockpile woollen goods for cold days or anything. I also hope that you know that you shouldn't worry at all about the mudslides. If we hadn't had those pesky little fires in the fall, the hillsides wouldn't have been denuded; it was just bad planning on our part.

Of course, I do realize that I will be rethinking any sarcasm that you might be sensing in this note come July, when we are living off the tail-ends of the snowpack that we get from storms like this. No snow-pack, no summer water, and as we enter our third year of drought, I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. But maybe next time you could call ahead? After all, while it's merely inconvenient for me not to expect an ice storm and snow at 3,000 feet after a weekend which resembled summer, it's got to be really embarrassing for those nice folks at the National Weather Service who were predicting sixty degrees and sun.

Oops.

Love,
Jocelyn

Meanwhile, two lovely packages arrived yesterday, one of them from my Loopy Swap pal! I have no photos, so I'm going to wait to extol the virtues of the lovely knitting included therein (one item of which was the only sensible thing I wore to work today, and thank goodness for that!) until I can share them with you in all their glory. But you can come out of hiding now, Jessica, and take your bows, because you outdid yourself with this package!

A pair!

This is the post that almost didn't happen. There was no time during the day to take a break and post, and when I got home after taking Older Daughter to chess club and Younger Daughter to Irish dance, there was dinner to make, and homework to be done, and valentines to be made (the girls are required to bring only homemade valentines to class, and must bring one for each person). By the time I sat down to turn on my computer, I discovered that the internet wasn't working. I rebooted, checked the modem, and generally did what I know how to do, and then gave up until Rick could get home. He rebooted the computer and the modem, and finally gave up and called Cox. An hour later, we'd figured out that it was the wireless modem, and, after more rebooting and reconfiguring, managed to convince my computer to allow me to plug in to the modem. This means that I am now crouched over my computer, hardwired in to various electronic items the precise function of which I am unsure.

I then logged on to blogger, told it that I wanted to start a new post, and it froze and gave me an error message. I was starting to think that this post was not meant to be, but I seem to have caught a break, so here I go.

Look! A whole pair of socks!
I hereby confess that I not only wore them to work today, I also planned an entire outfit around them. (Someone in my knitting group said to me: "Your new socks match your outfit!", to which I responded, "No, my outfit matches my new socks." Does this mean I'm weird?)

I'm very happy with these, and am hoping that the yarn fares better than the other pair I knitted for myself some time ago which, for no readily discernible reason, fulled. Rick's pair hasn't, so I don't know why mine did, but suffice it to say that they now reside in Younger Daughter's drawer. While I like the look of the star toe on these, I've come to the conclusion that star-shaped toes don't work on my feet as well as a wider toe, as I have extremely wide feet (there are those who would say that they resemble the feet of a duck, to which I just respond that I don't fall over easily). But this is exactly why I joined the sock club: to have a chance to try pattern elements that I might not otherwise knit, so that I have a good sense of the possibilities out there.

To recap, these are the first installment of the Rockin' Sock Club, in a pattern called Serendipity, designed by Adrienne; the pattern goes perfectly with the colorway, which is called Dragon Dance. I knitted them on my size one Celtic Swan dpns.

Because I'd finished these last night while watching the first half of the Westminster dog show (I had to stay up 'til the end to see the herding dogs, which are some of my very favorite dog breeds in the world)(at least, my favorite dog breeds besides mutt, as I was careful to explain to Kia Ora, who watched with me), I was able to work on Gust today during knitting group, and while waiting for Younger Daughter to finish dancing. I'm more than a third of the way done.
I'm dying to see this blocked out; the pattern is so perfectly geometric, and such a nice counterpoint to the flowing colors and texture of the yarn. I can tell this is going to be one of those things that I take everywhere, because it's the right weight and goes with so much of what I wear.

On the non-knitting front, things at work are still insane, which I'm finding stressful. There's nothing worse than having no time in the office, and every time I have a second, finding forty new email messages waiting for me (I should say here that it's only the work emails that get me down; finding one in there from one of you out there in the real world is like finding a bit of gold among the dross). And of course the chaos means that, just as I feared, while I finished my knitting for the Loopy Swap ages ago, the mailing dates are between the tenth and the fifteenth, which falls this week, mid-insanity. I knew, just knew, that not being able to mail it right away immediately diminished the chances that I'd actually get to mail the package on time. And here I am, in the target week, with not a single space of time to get the box packed. I've got it scheduled into Thursday afternoon, and I can only hope that something doesn't come up during that time.

On a bright note, though, we had what I can only call a perfect early spring meal on Sunday (it is after Imbolc, and therefore counts as early spring in my book). Rick grilled lamb chops, as well as fresh baby brussels sprouts from the farmer's market tossed in walnut oil, with toasted chopped walnuts on top (thanks to Juno's blog for the idea). I steamed fresh English peas (my very favorite treat from the spring farmer's market), tossed with a bit of butter and salt and pepper, and then made polenta to go with. Perfect. The only thing that could have made it any better would have been if I'd had time to let the polenta set so it could be grilled, too. I do so love me a springtime farmer's market.

Thank you all so much for the encouragement and support around my public panic attack about Older Daughter's move to a new school. It really does help to hear unequivocal support, or at least a strong statement that while choices may change, caring about my parenting is a solid step in the right direction. We're all going to the open house at the new school tomorrow night, and Older Daughter is excited, which is all I can ask.

Singles

I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to respond to comments lately; what little time I've had to spare for the online knitting world I've spent keeping up with everyone else's blogs instead of writing email. (This may also have something to do with the fact that every time I open my email inbox, there are upwards of 40 new messages waiting for me, most marked urgent in some way.)

I made it through this week by the skin of my teeth. The homestretch involved a three-hour meeting on Friday afternoon, followed by a mad dash to the girls' school to bring them the shirts they needed for their Carnival performance last night. The carnival turned out to be quite fun, and, to my complete shock (I so rarely win anything), we won something in the raffle. It's a $100 gift certificate to one of those cooking places where you go and assemble meals that can be put in your freezer. I've been marginally curious about them, but given how much I love to cook, and how much I love my kitchen, it's not something I would pay for myself. I don't mind giving it a try, though, under these circumstances.

On another topic completely, I realize that in my angst-ridden state, I may have been misleading about the whole Older Daughter/new school thing. She's not going off to school yet (thank goodness; I'm most definitely not ready for that!), but she is leaving the very small Montessori school where she's been for kindergarten and all of grade school so far, and going to middle school. When I was a young pup, middle school started in seventh grade, but the times, they are a changin', and middle school around here starts in sixth and goes through eighth. Older Daughter is already young for her grade, and she looks particularly young when seen in juxtaposition to eighth graders. The difference in the number of students is also intimidating; she's going from a very small school to one with about 100 students per grade.

We're looking at a local charter school (part of the public school system in California) which goes from 6-12 grade, which will be nice in that once she settles in, she can be at one place until she graduates. The funny thing is how fraught this choice is. I know that I'm sounding fixated on the past here, but it seems to me that people didn't fret about grade school through high school choices so much when I was in school; college was the big one that everyone worked towards. But now, everyone I know is worrying about whether they're choosing the right place for their child, and whether they'll be appropriately challenged, and not exposed to the wrong kinds of information/people/bad influences. So some part of me feels like I should be panicking, too, and another part of me feels like Older Daughter is going to be fine wherever she is. Speaking for myself, I went through the full gamut of possibilities when I was in school: a small private, religious grade school, all-girls high school for two years, then a large public high school, small private college, huge public graduate school. And in each of those places, there were kids who worked hard, and kids who partied, teachers who expected a lot of their students and got it, and teachers who clearly didn't care and let us slide through. It's true that the private schools had a higher percentage of the former kind of teachers, but the break-down wasn't one-to-one by any means. See what I mean? I keep talking myself into knots over this, even though I know what we're going to do.

I think part of it has to do with the way other people talk about these choices, and feel free to say less-than-supportive things about choices different from their own. Oddly, in a serendipitous coincidence, the Yarn Harlot has been posting lately about people who feel free to say things that seem less than productive in a conversation; that is, things that aren't unproductive simply because they're mean or rude, but because they genuinely do not move the conversation forward in any way. I thought a lot about what she said, because I have definitely been the target of my share of such comments (I'm sure we all have), and over the years, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of them, at least, are things that people say because they're trying to justify their own decisions to themselves. Speaking only for myself, I know that there's something reassuring about having someone whose opinion I value make the same kind of decision I'm making; it feels like a form of validation. On the flip side, though, that can mean that when that same person makes a very different decision than I have or would make, it can feel like a challenge. Even when I know darned well that it's got nothing to do with me. (That, by the way, is a mantra that hit me a few years ago that I think has made me a much less defensive person: "It's not about me", because so often, it just isn't.)

I saw this a lot when the girls were very young and we were living in the Bay Area, which is the home of my heart, and also the home of a lot of very opinionated people who don't mind sharing their opinions. Folks regularly felt compelled to share their ideas of the ways in which I was parenting right or wrong. I remember one time in particular when I was at the park on a weekday morning with a moms group, and a man walked up to us and said, "Now this is how it should be. Moms who stay home with their kids, breastfeeding, instead of putting them into daycare. This is how people should parent. It's really bad for babies to do it otherwise." He then went on about Penelope Leach, etc etc. The funny thing was that I was working part time (just happened to have that morning off), and was not able (for medical reasons not worth going into right now) to breastfeed. At the time, it was devastating. Now, I'm pretty sure that I can safely say, "It's not about me."

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that when some of my friends ask very pointed questions about where Older Daughter will be going to school, or when they say that I may make this choice now, but in a year or two I'll be running from this school screaming, I think that I can probably safely say, "It's not about me." (To be fair, when I overjustify our decision, as I'm doing here, that is all about me; must work on that.) She's going to be fine, and we're going to be fine.

OK, angst over. As I mentioned the other day, I have been knitting through all of this (stressful meetings are good for that at least). Much earlier, I finished the first of the Rockin' Sock Club socks, and started the second. I can't for the life of me find light good enough to show you how rich this colorway is, and how beautifully it knitted up, but here's a try.
The shortrow heel turned out very well; I haven't always liked them, but this one had no holes, and looks very neat.
The star toe (of which I don't have a picture) looks very pretty, and I'm glad that I did it, but of course we all know that for me there's always the disappointment of not being able to use kitchener stitch to finish off a sock. I promptly cast on for the second one, and then a shiny object distracted me, in the form of the SoSquare socks that Anne's designing right now. Of course, she had to tell me that she was working on them, and that they'd be perfect for Rick, and that the pattern might just need a test-knitter, and I was off. (I've taken to calling her Naughty Anne, to distinguish her from Cyber-Twin Anne, because she's so good at appearing with just the pattern I'm dying to knit, at just the moment that I want to knit it.) So I finished the first one last night, and it turned out beautifully, if I do say so myself.

OK, obnoxiously enough, Blogger won't let me access photos any more. What is that about? And after I checked with Anne to see if I could show you pictures, and all. Grrr... Well, if you go to her site (linked above), you can see her beautiful So Square Socks, which are a very fun and quick knit, and which fit like a dream. And I will come back and edit this to include pictures when Blogger gets a clue.

Added later:
And here's the pattern closer up:
That's Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn. I'll post the details later.

Buried

Posting is apparently going to be a bit sporadic this week, as I have been completely buried since arriving at work at 8:00 Monday morning. I was either teaching or in a meeting straight through until 7:00 that night, and then in meetings all day on Tuesday (in the interests of full disclosure, I will point out that one of the hour-long "meetings" on Tuesday was my knitting group, but I know you won't hold it against me). The same thing happened today. I've just finished at 5:15, and need to run home. Insanity.

I think some of it is these horrific budget cuts, and the sense of panic and impending doom that they have caused. Some of it is internal departmental workings, which are rather chaotic right now. And some of it is the fact that I am on a large number of one-off committees (read: no regular meeting times), which adds a certain element of unpredictability to my schedule.

In spite of this, I have managed to get knitting done. I am done with the first Rockin' Sock Club sock, and am almost to the heel on the second. I have also cast on for a pair of socks for Rick, and, thanks to a painful and interminable Senate meeting today, am cruising down the leg (more about that in a day or two; the pattern is good fun). And I continue to manage a repeat on Gust here and there. I'm also still reading little bits and pieces of Julia Child's autobiography, which is having the probably less-than-desirable effect of making me want to run away to France.

More when I can; I took Older Daughter to tour the school she'll probably go to next year, and am feeling rather angst-ridden about the whole thing, so I'm sure you all will have to bear with me as I process that (sorry!). Meanwhile, I'll be back just as soon as I can.

Surprises

Thank you all so very much for the wonderful birthday wishes! I really appreciate everyone taking the time to pop by and leave me a message.

It's time to pass it on; today is Anne's birthday, so if you get a chance, head on over to her blog and wish her a happy day. There are pictures of two of her newest projects, as well, to tempt you and get you in trouble (at least, that's what always happens to me -- thanks, Anne!).

Yesterday was a perfect day. It wasn't quite what I'd expected, but exactly what I needed. We decided not to make the drive into the mountains; between a long week full of sitting and meetings and email, I wasn't sure I was up for four hours of driving to get there and back. So Rick devised a Plan. He said we were going somewhere in the morning, and wouldn't tell me where. I gamely agreed (much relieved when he did not suggest I wear biking shorts; at least I knew I wasn't going to be dragged up an impossible hill in the name of potential views). Prior to the trip, I was served breakfast in bed by Rick and the girls, which has to be one of my very favorite treats, especially when it involves bacon and a perfect soft-boiled egg (runny yolk, but no snotty whites). We then loaded into the station wagon and off we went. Of course, I had to try to figure out where we were going. The fact that we were in the station wagon was intriguing; we usually save that for trips that require it, and take the smaller car instead. We wouldn't have needed the wagon for a spinning wheel, and we were headed south, away from anywhere I know to get a wheel, so it wasn't that. We didn't pull off at the REI exit, which argued against sporting equipment, and Rick hadn't told me to wear hiking shoes, so it didn't seem that we were heading on an outdoor excursion. I was stumped.

I was even more stumped when we got off the freeway in Encinitas and began driving around a neighborhood. My stumpedness lasted until we pulled up in front of someone's house, and sitting there in the front yard was...(I so wish I had a picture here for you, but it hasn't stopped raining all morning and I'm not going to go stand in the rain with a camera to get a picture)(is the suspense killing you yet?)...a sea kayak. A beautiful, bright yellow sea kayak. Complete with paddles and a seat.

I can't tell you how excited I was. I have been wanting a sea kayak for ages. I have enjoyed playing on my sister-in-law's mother's kayak immensely when we are in Michigan, and have so wanted to try one in the bays and lagoons here. I've also heard that, given calm water and a good launching site, going out into the ocean can be amazing. And Rick found me one on Craig's list and took me to buy it. Wow. It's a very nice one, too, a single-seater, but long enough that I could put Younger Daughter behind my seat if she wanted to come out on still water with me. Talk about a perfect gift, and totally unexpected, which made it even more fun.

It is, alas, far too cold right now to head out into the ocean, especially as I have no wet suit. So the only downside to receiving this gift is that I'll have to wait a while to play with it. But we went and bought a life jacket and scoped out various launching sites at Agua Hedionde and Oceanside Harbor, just so that we'll be ready at a moment's notice should we get some warm weather. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

I thought it was all done at that point -- what could be better than breakfast in bed and a sea kayak? -- but no. We went home for a relaxing afternoon. I read, I took a small nap, I knitted. We went for a walk all together around the neighborhood. Then we got gussied up, and headed out to my very favorite fancy-schmancy restaurant for dinner. The girls behaved beautifully, even though, true to the owner's French origins, meals there are totally unrushed. The four of us talked, and watched the other patrons covertly (people watching is a favorite pastime of mine; aren't humans interesting?), and savored our food, and generally had a spectacular time. I didn't even have to pull out the emergency pens and paper I'd brought (I may put the girls in situations with potential for difficult behavior, but I refuse to set them up for failure; we'd made early reservations, they'd had naps and a walk, and I had backup entertainment available). And, although I'd been sure that the sea kayak (!!) would be my only present, Older Daughter gave me a gift certificate to the Loopy Ewe, and Younger Daughter gave me the mailing receipt for a set of KnitPicks Harmony interchangeable needles (which, paired with my sister-in-law's gift of Harmony sock needles, means that I'm pretty much set for life). Between all your good wishes, and all of Rick's plans, I ended they day feeling thoroughly spoiled and loved and taken care of.

I've told Rick that he's earned himself another few years of marriage.

Today looks to be a good follow-on. It's been raining non-stop since the middle of the night. I've turned the heel and am halfway down the foot of the Serendipity socks from the Rockin' Sock Club, and am pleased as punch with the way the short-row heel turned out. I'm glad to have one that I like to add to my repertoire, especially as Rick prefers the look of short-row heels. It looks like there will be plenty of time to work on Gust this afternoon, while playing the Settlers of Catan with the girls and making soup. I am not thinking about work at all. Tomorrow will be soon enough for that. For those of you who are watching the Superbowl, have fun!

Aaahhh...

In case it wasn't clear (writing makes some thing so difficult), that was a sigh of relief. The good kind of sigh of relief, I should further clarify. There are many reasons to sigh with relief on this Friday.

On the knitting front, I am sighing with relief because I'm done with must-finish-this-ASAP knitting. My Loopy Swap knitting is done, and waiting until it can be sent (not until at least the tenth!). Of course, you know I'll sit here patiently waiting, and then the day will arrive and I won't be able to make it to the post office, or I'll forget, or something will happen, and I'll be late, just because I was early. Such is life.

I came home on Wednesday to find Rick waiting for me. As soon as I walked in the door, he asked, in a tone both plaintive and hopeful, "Did you have a lot of meetings today?" To which I responded, "??" He added, "Because my hands got very cold while the girls were swimming today." Apparently in our world, meeting time = knitting time. So I stayed up and finished the paris-roubaix mitts, to great acclaim and appreciation.
He likes them, and I'm glad, as he's not usually into small knitted froofies (which is how he sees things like this). To recap, these are Anne's Paris-Roubaix mitts, and I knitted them in Plymouth Baby Alpaca DK, using size 5 needles. They knitted up very quickly, and I love how this yarn feels; they're even loose enough on his hands that they'll trap heat very nicely, without being in the way (that's why they're a little shorter than I made my zigzag mitts).

I'm also sighing in relief because the end of deadline knitting means a true end to project monogamy. You all know I cast on for the first little nothings scarf, but that is on a back burner (note that by back burner, I mean not that it's in hibernation, just that I'll knit on it every few days instead of every day). Why is that lovely little bit of a thing on the back burner, you ask? Because I've cast on for the second little nothings scarf! (oops) I told Anne I'd love to test the pattern on that one (look how nice I make myself sound there; really, I pretty much pounded down her e-door demanding to be let at it). I knitted two repeats to check out the charted and written versions, and folks, I've got to tell you (I know you're going to be surprised here), it's a lovely pattern. (BTW, have you all seen her Bleeding Hearts stole in the new IK? I'm slavering to get my hands on my copy, and am considering knitting it in laceweight Malabrigo -- maybe a bright robin's egg blue for spring? What do you think?) She just put it up (you can go to her post to see the pictures), so it's available. Mine is not so impressive:
You've really got to go to her post to see what it's supposed to look like. I'll wait, you go right ahead. Are you back? Did you see how it looks like sailboats with their sails bellied out in the wind? I'm charmed.

I'm also sighing with relief because I both got and cast on for the first Rockin' Sock Club installment. Yay! I'm going to post a picture here, as bad as the light is, because I'm so happy to be knitting socks again I can't stand it. This means that this is a spoiler. If you haven't received your package yet, or you have some kind of superhuman self-discipline and haven't opened it yet, this picture is not for you. Turn around, go back to Anne's site to look at the pretty scarf some more, do something, but do not scroll down. All right, I warned you. Here's the yarn:
And here's the sock (the colors in the yarn photo are more true to life):
It was so nice to just do some plain old sock knitting last night. It's the ultimate comfort knitting for me. I decided to join the sock club, in spite of wondering how I'd feel if I didn't like a) the colors, or b) the patterns, for a couple of reasons. First, I figured it would make me expand my color palette, at least in theory, and I know that if I really hate something, there are always people I know who will like it -- the girls, at the very least (they are nothing if not catholic in their open-mindedness towards colors). Second, I thought that it might encourage me to try out some different ways of knitting socks (I have a tendency to cheat and change patterns to my favorite heels and toes). And here with this first sock, I got both. While I might not have chosen these reds, in person, they are gorgeous, and I know that I'll actually wear these socks. And the pattern itself has both a short-row heel (top down -- I never do short row heels without heel flaps on top-down socks), and a star toe. Just enough change to keep me on my toes, without being so much that the socks are no longer comfort knitting. Aaaahhhhh....

All right, I'm going to stop here and not write today about our lovely evening at Cirque du Soleil's Corteo last night, or about the work chaos that has resulted from the governator cutting $380 million from the CSU budget. I probably won't be posting tomorrow, as it is my birthday, but I'll be back on Sunday while all of you are watching the Superbowl (just for Anne, I will say, Go Pats!) to tell you all about it.