My week: repairs, reading, more snow, food, books...

No sewing today, but some repairing!  In December I broke my dining room lamp.  I accidentally hit one of the "arms" of the lamp, and it "popped out."  I thought I could "pop" it back into place but it had actually broken off.    I tried a lot of things, crazy glue included, but nothing worked.  Today I got back in the repair saddle and tried again.  So far, so good.  I've run the washing machine upstairs (which shakes this light fixture) and it held up; the next text will be the dishwasher tmw night (it also shakes the light fixture).



I used hot glue to keep the arm in position, though hot glue is not enough to keep it from falling over.  I used silver wire I had in stash from my flower days, wrapped it around all of the arms, so the other arms + wire + hot glue are keeping the arm from popping out. 


I don't think it looks too bad.  In the picture above you can see the glue and the wire; but in reality if you're at the table looking at the lamp you just see the wire, and it really doesn't seem so noticable.

I have to go to Home Depot tmw to buy a new toilet handle and lever tmw.  I took apart the old one today; it broke this week.  I totally understand what I need to do.  I'm feeling very confident I can fix it all by myself, which feels very empowering!

We are still getting snow!  It is so unusual for NJ to have so much snow, especially after last year's snowy winter.   There was snow into ice  Monday night into Tuesday morning.  I should have taken a picture of my car; it had snow and then was "enrobed" in ice.  Here I took a picture of a chunk on its side; it's half snow and half ice.  The yellow thing in my hand is my ice scraper.


Can you see the outline of the ice coating the trees??

Then Wednesday it was in the 40's and the snow started to melt, but there's so much snow, it didn't disappear.
Then it snowed again on Friday morning, 2 or so more inches on top of what remained.  I like the sunlight glistening on the snow.

I drove to work late both days even though the university was operating at normal hours--it just felt safer that way, though there's always a scary moment somewhere along the way on a drive through the snow.
  
I finished "Are You My Guru:  How Medicine, Meditation, and Madonna Saved My Life" by Wendy Shanker.  If you have a chronic illness, or chronic pain, you MUST read this book.  Highly recommend.



My friend at work saw the "Are you my guru" book on my desk (it was so good, I was carrying it with me, reading it on my lunch hour, at the doctor's office, etc).  She told me about "The Guru In You" by Cameron Alborzian; she saw him on Ellen.  I've only flipped through it so far, but if you want a former male supermodel to show you how to do some basic yoga moves, you're in luck; it's part of the book:


The Pain Free book Beth recommended last week was checked out of the library when I went on Thurs, but I'll put it on hold.

My orchids are in full bloom now!  Great job, orchids!


I used leftover ingredients (and of course all of that leftover rice) to make dinner on Tuesday night.  It looks a lot like Saturday's dinner, right??  But it's different; I put mozzarella cheese chunks in it, and didn't use soy sauce.  See, I even used a different pan (round, not square!)


I never got to do the navy blue sailor shirt photo shoot; maybe tmw.  Cooking, reading, doing my homework is cutting into my sewing time but it's worth it.  My back is feeling a lot better (this week is its two year anniversary), but I pulled an ab muscle so that's on my radar.

By the way, I'm going to PR weekend Chicago (though I still need to request the time off from work)--hope to see you there!