Meandering through the Week

Happy Valentine's Day. I found the sweetest card waiting at my desk when I got up this morning. Don had been gone for an hour to take the car to Perth so the automatic window mechanism motor can be replaced. On Renault since the car had so few miles on it, which was very nice because the warranty had just expired. The man from our dealership phoned the company to ask that they comp the part and they did. Quite a nice gift, that.

I have been meandering through the week so far. Not as much energy as in the past and not sure why. Could it be I've just been on the go a bit more than I'd like to be? I don't know. We certainly enjoyed our two outings this past weekend as well as having David Sutcliffe here for dinner on Sunday. I walked to and from Ann's for our So and Sews' meeting on Monday afternoon. Monday evening's choir rehearsal wasn't quite as gruelling a work-out as we'd had the week before, but it was a good one.

Yesterday, though, I never went into the studio once. I think all of this inertia is related to the fact that I'm stuck on my project(s). In fact, I think having two on the go at the moment just makes it worse as I'm not crazy about either of them--the direction I'm going in isn't right. Things haven't gelled. Perhaps this afternoon I can get myself sorted. I must say this is what often happens to me if I try to create something to someone else's specifications. The piece I'm trying to make is to enter in this year's Loch Lomond Quilt Show. I wanted to enter two of their contests; one is to make a quilt based on the traditional log-cabin block, the other is to make a quilt depicting the islands that surround Scotland. The latter one I can do no problem, so I have tried to tackle the harder one first and after two starts, it's not working. Perhaps I'm just not meant to do this one. Or perhaps I should do the one that comes naturally to me and then work on the other one in the momentum that comes from the first. Och, we'll see.

I did finish the book I was reading for book group yesterday afternoon. It was Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, an excellent story and very well told for a first novel. And I did take a very long brisk walk yesterday afternoon. We had something to deliver to Eleanor Cunningham who lives at the edge of the village as the road leads across the moors (the way we go if we're going to the motorway to visit Dunblane, Stirling, Edinburgh, or Glasgow). I went more or less straight there but took the longer way home through the woods. The path through the woods comes out at the top of Strowan Road so it's then just a straight shot home, only I took a slight detour to visit Comrie's standing stone. Apparently there had been a circle but there are only 3 left now and only one of those is still standing. (The angle of the first photo shows part of the Comrie Cemetery in the background; the second, shows the woods.) Comrie and surrounds have quite a number of Roman ruins (forts and a road) as well as ~4,000 year-old ancient stone formations dotted here and there all over the countryside, especially in farm fields. I love visiting this set of stones and trying to imagine what it looked like when they were all there and standing tall. These aren't very tall so I doubt there ever was an imposing structure in this spot. Still, it's nice to be able to touch the village's ancient past.

Don played golf on both Monday and Tuesday. He only played 9 holes yesterday as he was "on duty" at the St. Fillans Music Circle to help serve soup and rolls and to help with the set-up and clean-up. The programme featured three talented youngsters from Dollar Academy (from the town of Dollar). Don said the violinist, in particular, was superb and the other students were quite talented as well.

Tonight we have a Strathearn Music Concert in Crieff so it'll be a fast meal for us tonight. We've been enjoying our reduced-fat and no-carb or sugar meals but I have hit a plateau, which is what usually happens to me on a diet and which is why I wanted to return to phase I for another 2 weeks. Unfortunately, there has been no change for a week and I'm afraid that's dampening my enthusiasm a bit. I'm not giving up, though.