Secret Santa

I wrapped part one of my Secret Santa gift. Brown paper packages tied up with string. A few of my favorite things. And the little cat and gift card are just something I made. I opened the SS gift that was for me, today. Burt's Bee's Hand Salve and Lip Balm. Winter Gardening basics.

I got to park my car in the garage when I came home from work this afternoon. It will take a bit of practice to get it just right, but it feels wonderful to have the car in the garage in case it rains and ices over or snows this winter. My car will be clean and dry. And sort of warm.

More books are waiting for me at the library. French Milk a graphic travel journal I read about on Roz's blog. And a romance thriller, Ice. I also have the "Girl Who Played With Fire" the second novel by Steig Larsson. This author delivered 3 manuscripts to his publisher and died of a heart attack before even finding out they would be published. How sad is that? The first book is "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". This book was difficult to get into, but once in, it was a wonderful read. I'm looking forward to a long afternoon of reading tomorrow. There will be a long wait for the final book. It needs to be translated into English, not an easy task.

While cleaning out the garage on Sunday and moving things around to make spaces for the generator, snow thrower, my car etc. I found the box of books I had purchased at the book sale this year or last year. A lovely vintage gardening book, a vintage atlas of maps with city maps from Portland, Maine; Moscow; Tokyo. They are lovely old fashioned maps and I can see them finding their way into paper collage (after photocopying) and the typesetting is crisp and vintage. There was also another old dictionary. I love using dictionary text in my collages. My favorite is a huge book--at least 6 or more inches thick, almost 80 years old.

None of the books I have brought into the house, so far, have the cheap pulpy pages that I like to paint and do wax resist on. I was hoping I had purchased at least one. The pages need to be soft enough to absorb the wet paint.

G and I had a lovely time at N's house on Sunday. BYO Pizza toppings. I drank quite a bit of wine, laughed, talked with new people etc. and got to meet her very talkative dog, Bear, see all her orchids and tour her newly constructed house. It was dark and rainy outside but warm and bright inside her new home. And her partner L has a lovely smile and bakes a very good pizza. And he's handsome. And handy. :-). N is reading this now and hooting!

I'm very tired tonight. That's all I have for you today.