Usually, I am the giver of knitted things, not the reciever. Our very own Spc Nobody Special decided to change all that.  I came home from shopping yesterday to find a priority mail box addressed to me sitting on the kitchen counter.  When I opened it, I found a hand knitted cabled scarf in a gorgeous colorway and a note from SpcNBS. I can't begin to tell you how touched I am that someone would think enough of me to spend time knitting a scarf for me!  I know how good it fee...

On Monday, a boy named Ben Ownby went missing about 60 miles from here.  He got off the school bus and was last seen running towards his home. He never made it there.  A white pickup truck was seen in the area, and police stated that they wanted to find that pickup and it's owner.  People were out searching for Ben, but the searches were in vain. We all thought Ben was dead and would never be seen again. This evening, Ben Ownby was found alive and well.  Police ...

We recieved a letter the other day telling us that we are within 90 days of being moved to another house.  I called the housing office for clarification, and was told that we may not get a brand new house after all, that we may end up in the existing homes on the other side of the base.  I asked if we could be moved into an existing home earlier - mum is going to be here in April and I would prefer to be settled into our new home by then - and the answer was 'yes, of course!'.  Th...

I finished knitting JustJohn's baby beanies today.  I had a couple already made but I decided that I didn't like them, so I made three new ones in the space of 12 hours.  They are tiny.  Incredibly small.  I had some good sized apples in the fruit basket on the kitchen table, and I tried a beanie on a Golden Delicious for size - and it fit.  I wish I had the battery power to take a photo, but the kids have (as usual) run down the batteries in the camera and have used...

My mum rang this afternoon to let me know that she was booking her flights to come visit us tomorrow morning.  She's leaving Heathrow on April 18th (or 25th, depending on how booked the flights are) and will fly into Chicago, where she'll have a 4 hour layover before she gets a connecting flight to St Louis.  She'll be with us for three weeks, and I wish I could begin to tell you just how excited I am that she's booking her flights and will be with us for that long.  It's goin...

I bought a journal with some of the money I got for Christmas.  A red one, hand bound in Italian leather.  It's beautiful.  So is the fountain pen I bought to write in it with.  I figured that a journal like that shouldn't be written in with a plain old Bic ballpoint; it deserved something much better than that.  So, I went and bought an old-fashioned fountain pen and I just love the way it feels in my hand and the way my writing looks when I use it. I'm trying to wri...

Dear Joe,   I've been wanting to say this for a while, but have never seemed to find a good time, what with holidays and executions and what not.  However, things being what they are I feel that I HAVE to say this or else I will simply go mad. I feel like you and I are drifting apart, and that scares me.  We used to be so close....you'd be the first thing I thought of when I awoke in the morning and we'd enjoy each other over coffee.  I'd think of you alot and would ...

It's a Sony kind of Christmas chez Dharma.  We were up at 5am; Dave and I woke the kids up because we couldn't stand the suspense anymore. Each of the kids got a PSP - and I got one too - and they got a new PS2 to share.  We've had the PSP's since the end of September and have been dying to give them to the kids ever since.  Davey and Jake were saying that they'd be up at 3am to open presents, but I put the kibosh on that and gave them a 4am start time.  They sl...

James Brown, the flamboyant 'Godfather Of Soul' passed away in an Atlanta hospital early this morning.  He was 73. He was admitted with pneumonia late last night, but as yet the exact cause of his death has not been determined.  I suspect that the coroner's ruling will be that it WAS the pneumonia that killed him; it's a major cause of death for elderly (yes, he WAS considered elderly).  Once pneumonia has set in they tend to go downhill pretty quickly, and I'm guessing that wa...

I have the sometimes dubious pleasure of living on a military installation that's often a stopping point for wounded personnel coming back from Iraq.  I saw one of those personnel at the BX this afternoon.  It wasn't the donated plaid lounge pants, a 'Go Army' T shirt and a zipper-front hoodie that made him stand out as a returning warrior, it was the obvious burns to his chin, mouth and lower half of his face - and the hospital tags on his arms. He was standing by the entrance ...

When I was a little girl growing up in England, my family and I were avid watches of Dr Who.  The first actor I can recall watching in the Role was John Pertwee, who was the 3rd incarnation of the timelord.  My favorite was Tom Baker - I liked his scarf and his general joi de vivre - but that's neither here nor there. I can very clearly recall being afraid enough of the Daleks to lose control of my bladder and wet my pants.  They were so.....ruthless.  They were ...

I was going to title this 'When eyebrows go bad' but decided that as it's content isn't limited to eyebrows I'd better call it something else. I am going to start with eyebrows, though.  There are 2 ladies on this base who have probably the worst eyebrows I have ever seen.  They're not natural brows, in fact, that's the entire problem: they're so UN-natural looking that they're scary.  One pair belong to a black chick who appears to have shaved off her natural brows - or has ha...

My hair grew!  See: I wish!  The long ponytail isn't mine, it's a phony pony that I bought from the beauty supply store.  I have enough of my own hair to tie back into a wee little single ponytail, but it just wasn't quite the look I wanted to go to last night's squadron Christmas party with.  So, I got the phony pony, clipped it right about my wee little ponytail, and off we went!  Nobody could tell that it wasn't my own hair; a few people even said how na...