Today was one of the worst days at work I can ever remember so I thought it would be a good day to recall my first martini.

Quite a number of years ago, in a job a few jobs ago, I had a terrible terrible day at work. Terrible. I also had a dreadful headache to go with it all.

Circumstances and some encouragement from a co-worker conspired to put me into the office, nay – inner sanctum, of all-powerfulness. The place where, it turned out, my co-workers went to get away from it all and hang with the bigwigs and to enjoy themselves.

Who knew?

I walked in with this less-senior guy and the office owner looked up and said – have a bit? to my co-worker and then looked at me.  What have you?, I asked.  Martini?

I’d never had one but I figured, what the heck! So out of a finely chilled container, drawn from a bottom desk drawer came a shaker, a beverage container and soon I had an icy beverage in my hand. I sipped. Heaven. I had no experience with gin then, but I appreciated the herbal overtones.  And in a moment my headache had disappeared.  In another moment or two the day didn’t seem so terrible.

While I still consider a martini to be serious stuff, the good news is that I find them to be just as therapeutic as that first sip.  And so tonight – my headache has eased and my caring about anything work-related as well. Plus – olives – good for you and your heart and a nice salty snack to boot, eh?

An inch and a half of rain was in my rain gauge this morning. The sound of heavy rain at night is so relaxing isn’t it? Well, once you get past the urge to run around and close up windows.

In the garden, under the tangle of tomato plants (and is there any smell quite like the tomato plant itself? I think they count on that smell to sell those tomatoes with a bit of vine attached!), under all those leaves – the first red of the first ripening tomato. My late start in planting may reduce what I get from the garden but I’m looking forward to that tomato!

Last night I got all the light areas quilted on my current quilt. Not at all like my normal quilting is all I can say – but I’m sticking with it at this point.

Warm, dense and threatening more rain at the moment. Time to make the pizza and bread. Do some wash. Act like a grown up person. Do the dishes.

Update

Ah loyal reader (or two… or up to 30 or 50 or so a day… yes I know you’re out there even if you will not leave a comment…). Sorry. As I was saying, loyal reader(s), perhaps you were waiting for an update. Maybe not.

I savored the zucchini. Grilled with a bit of onion. Delish in a most summery way.

What else? The plant that masquerades as something else (pot, for instance) is in lovely bloom – cleome! Lovely. And don’t you know that as I stand and admire the un-munched parts of my veggie garden, I see more and more tenacious perennials! Things like lambs ears. Rose. Mallow. Doesn’t it give you a great feeling that plants endeavor on, even when all around them is weedy and neglected? It should.

After messing around and trying things out and buying a second-choice batting, I listened to myself and a few well-versed friends and found a wool batt. I then sliced off a bit of that batt and messed around with it. Perfect. Loved the results. Went back and practiced a bit more on my line drawing mockup. Still good.

what wasn’t good was that the new Juki still doesn’t have an insert for my sewing table. So everything felt bad. Wrong angle, wrong height, blah blah blah. Finally I said – let me try the mighty bernina. Perfect. So easy, so smooth. I sat back and thought – what’s important here – quilt with the new machine or do it right? I went to bed.

Tonight I came home, had dinner. Came up and cleaned and oiled. A little more testing and then on to the hyperventilation-causing event. It’s ok. Very committing because it involves a lot of going over little areas. There’s no un-doing this. First little section is done. On to the next.