I got all those things done yesterday, and a couple of others. Filing the income tax on-line is pretty stressful. I sent the ballot off with an expensive kind of air mail (but still costing less than Monmouth County NJ spent on me) which means that I can track it. I told the dr about my continuing visual probs; she thought they might be the aftermath of last week’s event, and that they will fade like a bruise.

That’s plausible enough to cheer me up until I get to the hospital tomorrow, but I will certainly press hard there. That is an alarming story about your friend, Tamar, all the more memorable because it is a detached retina that I am afraid of, without knowing much about it. I know that swift action is necessary, and can save sight. I was told when I had my cataract operations three years ago that the shape of my eye socket makes me somewhat more than ordinarily prone.

I read somewhere once the advice to doctors, “Listen to the patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.”

Politics

The radio this morning says that Obama’s team is worried about his taking two days off to see his grandmother. I don’t think they need to worry one bit. He’ll get the media coverage that his campaigning would have achieved, probably more, if you want to be cynical, and he is showing himself to be a human being with commendably sound priorities.

Donna, you’re young. I can remember another VP besides Johnson who got inaugurated suddenly and proved a good president, namely Harry Truman. I saw this clip yesterday and thought it rather funny in an appalling sort of way. Reflecting on it, I thought I must have misunderstood – that was surely Tina Fey. I went back and looked again. It was Sarah Palin.

But this is supposed to be about knitting.

I sent for the yarn for Ketki’s sweater yesterday. I hope this is going to work. It cost a lot. There was a wonderfully silly article in the Financial Times last Saturday about people saving money in these hard times by knitting and growing vegetables. The only way knitting can save an appreciable amount of money is if you find a gem in a charity shop and unravel it and re-use the yarn. And vegetable-growing demands an awful lot of hard work to break even.

I made some progress with Alexander’s second sock in the dr’s waiting room yesterday, and hope to make more at the eye hospital tomorrow. An eye appointment is especially useful because you get not only the preliminary waiting time, but an extra 20 minutes when they send you out again to wait for the drops to work.

I have embarked on row 34 of the 9th repeat of the Princess centre.

And revisited the new Knitter’s. Perhaps there’s not much of interest after all, even Perri Klass is beginning to lose me, but I liked Rick’s “one-yarn intarsia” idea, and the Violets and Roses jacket. I looked again at Rowan Colorscape yesterday in John Lewis, however, after dispatching my ballot, and again thought that there was something not-quite-as-wonderful-as-it-should be about the colours.