Random Ramblings

Today we went to callicrates' maternal grandmother's place for a family gathering. Steve, the uncle Andy was so concerned about earlier this year, seems to be doing as well as can be hoped. He's in the middle of his three-week off-period on chemo and appears to tire easily, but is still smiling early and often. All of us got a wonderful picture of him with his daughters, Beth and Katy. I'm guessing wife Delma was taking the picture, hence her absence.

I had asked her earlier this year, when the news was still grim, about making her a mother's ring. She's a nurse, though, and doesn't even wear her wedding ring. I made her a necklace instead and set it with stones for Steve, Beth, and Katy. She likes it, and I also talked to Emily's two sisters. I will most likely be using the same necklace setting for them, since they both like Delma's a lot and both want stones for Grandmother, Granddad, and their respective husbands. The setting only takes three stones, which generally limits who can get it where children are involved.

Jane's husband, Bill, put me on track to George MacDonald (the one who wrote at the turn of the last century, not the more current one whose genre is mystery or children's, I think), whom CS Lewis considered a mentor of sorts. Bill is also into Narnia big time, and in the course of the day we managed to get enough interest that most of Emily's brothers and sisters as well as Tom and Emily will be going along with Andy and me to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe tomorrow.

We got snail-mail earlier in the year that Andy's cousin Rachel is going to Poland over her college's January break as part of a college-sponsored exchange program. I had wanted to burn her a copy of the Koledy, but I could not find it anywhere in the house. On a hunch I asked Tom if I'd left the disc at their place two years ago, and I had. It's nice listening to them again, and since Rachel's family stayed home this year, we'll send her a copy in the next day or two.

For Christmas Tom and Emily made me into an (i)Pod person. Erin, Andy's sister, gave us a gorgeous oil lamp with a delicate tree cutout whose shadow it casts on the wall. She also gave us some notecards into which she'd sewn pieces of cloth in quilt patterns. I'm more likely to frame and hang them than I am to send them to anyone. And that way I can keep the sheet of Jim Henson stamps she included. Andy gave me season I of The Muppet Show and a pair of (pretty shiny poing!) dichroic glass earrings made by a guy in Albuquerque and sold in the gallery which Andy uses to frame his tessellations.

We'll hopefully be seeing turnberryknkn as well as erish and her spouse when we go to Michigan on Tuesday, which just makes things better.