It's the last snippet of the year...2007 is about to go in the memory books. A fresh new year lies ahead, and just like last, it holds both promise and dangers. We will have new joys, perhaps new sadnesses and lingering bits of old ones, and no doubt there will be surprises. I am privileged as a Christian to walk into the New Year with the surety that I have a God who will never leave me or forsake me. In 2008 I want to do a better job of conveying that truth to those around me, both with my words and with a more visible trust in the goodness of the Father...

Some other things I'd like to do this year:

A sewing project. Don't know just what yet, but I have missed sewing and don't want to lose those skills or the joy of creating something from fabric. Whether it's clothes or dolls or home decorating projects, I will try to resume a lifelong hobby.

Frame some old cross-stitch pieces. I can't really cross-stitch any more--my eyes won't let me. Oh, I could put on strong glasses and do it anyway, but it would be so stressful that it wouldn't bring me the relaxation and enjoyment that it used to. I still have, though, between 15 and 20 pieces that I did as long as 20 years ago that have never been framed. I'd like to do a few for use here, and then have the rest framed so the girls will have plenty to divide when I'm gone.

Finish the quilt I started before Bethany (now in college) was born. The quilt top is one that was pieced by John's grandmother during and right after WWII and I have it almost quilted...it just needs the border finished. I want to leave that to my family in a completed condition.

Redo all the shelving in our pantry. The shoddy job done by the builder here has left much of the shelving pulling out of the wall and I live in fear that I'll get up one morning and have a whole diner's worth of food on the floor. The master bedroom closet re-do from two years ago was so successful with Elfa shelving and drawers that we will probably go with that system in the pantry, too. One of the wonderful things about Elfa is that it only require holes up near the ceiling. Everything hangs from a master track. Plus, in January ALL Elfa stuff is 30% off and that makes a substantial difference! We may do it in three stages, but it all needs to be done.

This week I finished the audio version of Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before. Earlier in the year I had started on the hard copy version and got bogged down...it's very, very hard to read and I hoped that listening would be easier. But it's also very long, so I did something I NEVER do: bought the abridged version. Good thing. I just barely got through that. It does have some redeeming qualities--allusions to interesting parts of seventeenth century history, a weaving in of the fascinating story of the discovery of longitude, and some clever illumination of European philosophy along the way. But the tale itself is painfully tedious, and by the end, irritatingly ridiculous. I will put it down on my finished books list, but only by the skin of its teeth.

Next up on the iPod was G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, a novel nearly as improbable but so delightfully told (and narrated) and with so many twists and turns that it is immensely more pleasing to me than the previous suitcase of a book. I probably won't finish it until later in the week, so it will be first on my "Finished in 2008 list." (Sometime in the next few days I'll rate all the books from this year so if you're looking for something I highly recommend, check back.)

And speaking of iPods: here's a story that has boggled my mind. I have bought very few songs to put on my iPod...99% of my music came from CD's that I had purchased and transferred to the iPod via my laptop. Now the RIAA, already pushing the envelope to make more and more of us criminals, wants to make it a crime (or contends that it already is, actually) to transfer YOUR OWN LEGALLY PURCHASED CD's to your computer. Hopefully soon, voices of reason will prevail and stop the music industry terrorism that has already exacted huge sums of money from people who crossed lines that shouldn't even BE lines. And if the RIAA would like to make me a test case, a granny who listens to worship music and James Taylor on her hot pink nano, COME GET ME. MAKE MY DAY. Sorry, but the whole intellectual property thing has just gone way too far. If you write a song that you don't ever want on my iPod, put it under your bed. Whew. I feel better.

I wonder if the interest groups (some of whom I tend to agree with on some issues) who decry the exploitation of cheap overseas labor will be as quick or as loud in denouncing this:
World Outsources Pregnancies to India

Well, that's it for the Snippets for 2007. I need to finish cleaning out my closet!

Labels: Books, Homemaking, Music, News, Sundays, Theater of the Absurd