Inevitable Sailor on Uncharted Waters

2012: The Year of More

2011-12-31T17:44:00.000-05:00

Ride More
I moved Badger on Christmas eve to a place in DeKalb county. Now that he’s closer and at a place where there are people on premises almost continuously, I need to ride him at least once a week if not more often.

Knit More, Spin More
I’d like to make more knitted items this year. Maybe a sweater, definitely some fingerless gloves. I’d like to actually spin some stuff, although I’m not sure when that will happen.

Run More
I’d like to run more this year. I think that I will start running my trip to the satellite facility I visit daily. It’s a tad over a mile away from my regular facility, so round trip that’s 2 miles every day. That’s pretty good, or at least I think so. I probably won’t run on rainy days, but that might change.

More Friends
I’d like to be better friends with some folks who are passing friends now, but I want that to change. I’d also like to make some new friends, maybe go to a knitting group if I can find one that I like. Outside of that I’m not sure how people make new friends...

Save More
I want to try to save more money this year. I am really enjoying my job and despite being relatively new there, I really could see myself having a career there. So buying a house in the area and settling down seems like a possibility, so beefing up the savings would be a prudent move.

Progress Report!

2011-12-07T18:23:00.001-05:00

Well I’ve made it to hump day at the new job. All down hill from here right?

I like it quite a bit. I enjoy working with my new boss and my new coworkers seem fairly nice. They don’t talk to me much, but I don’t go out of my way to talk to them either. I’m actually painfully shy in most situations. I’m going to be responsible for quite a bit, but I’m totally capable of it. I do need to get a note book or something, just a little one for ideas I have about my responsibilities as I get them, so they aren’t lost in the jumble of the work day.

I’m not liking the early morning hours, but I find that if I go to sleep early enough it isn’t too difficult to go to bed. It helps that there’s no TV to watch in the bedrooms at my parent’s house. I’m also using semi public transportation to get to work, which is new for me, but working out pretty well.

I haven’t been knitting or running, I’m pretty beat when I get home. Eventually I think I’ll be in the swing of things and not be quite so tired by the time I get home.

New job jitters.

2011-12-04T21:20:00.001-05:00

Running report:
Ran (un-taped) half a mile out of 3.11. I started out walking with my dad and then picked up the pace once he headed home with the Zombie Dog.
Knees felt bad after 2.5 miles. Iced them and took an anti-inflammatory. They feel okay now, but not good. I should have taped my patellas, but the skin on the sides of my knees is so angry and itchy, I didn’t want to chance it.

Considering buying myself a Garmin watch for X-mas, since they are on sale at amazon. Heart rate training and all that jazz.

I start the new job tomorrow. I’m a little scared, not excited, just nervous and uneasy. Everyone assures me it will be great, but after the whole Texas debacle I’m gun shy about new jobs, I guess. I already packed my lunch, and I will pick out my clothes before I go to bed.

Mom and I tried to figure out where I’m supposed to park for the new job’s alternative transportation thing, but we were stumped by it. We have some idea of where I’m supposed to be, but aren’t sure.

I got my nails done at a new salon near my parents’ place today. The lady seemed nice, but I forgot to ask what her name was. Whoops. I was a little annoyed that they didn’t have space to put tip on the credit card receipt, but mom had come with me and had a $5 I could give her. She did a good job, so I’ll probably go back. Especially since they are open until 8pm on weekdays.

Knee talk

2011-12-01T20:47:00.000-05:00

Running report:
So yesterday at physical therapy, Jimbo showed me how to tape my knees. I tried on a knee brace but good lord! It seemed huge and bulky and the idea of running in it was ridiculous.
http://patellakneebrace.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Patella-cause-pain-146x300.gif
I may eventually go for knee braces, but that sucker costs $140, and I’d need two of them!

I taped my own knees today and I don’t think I’m very good at it. I ran 2.93 in 47 minutes and my knees didn’t outright hurt during the running, although I did get some discomfort near the end. Not so much I could not run. I’m icing my knees now and took my anti-inflammatory as a precaution.

So tomorrow is my last day at work. I’m sad and a little nervous. But I really do think the new job will be good. I’m not going to the holiday party, mostly because I don’t want to have a fuss and it’s at a dining hall on campus. No thanks. If there was a way I could sneak out with out anybody knowing I was leaving, I would.

Serendipity

2011-11-29T19:03:00.001-05:00

It is freezing cold. Freezing! My idea of freezing is probably not what more northerly folks would think of as freezing. I mean it isn’t even below freezing. I do need to bust out my warmer clothing.

So after angsting over what to do with Badger, I took a look at Craigslist and came across a listing that claims to be within 25 minutes of Emory’s campus. I emailed back and forth with the owner and it looks promising. It’s nothing fancy, in fact it’s kind of run down looking in the pictures... but then so is where Badger is now and we love it. Neither of us care about looks. Is there good grass, is the owner responsible and pleasant, is there shade/shelter in the rare case he wants it? There’s a lighted arena, and a pasture, which is really all we need.
My only real concern is that it is much smaller than any barn he’s lived at. The first barn really didn’t have any other boarders, the occasional horses staying a few weeks to recuperate from a stint at the University Vet School, but the majority of the horses were the owner’s horses and they all lived indoors. Badger was alone in a fairly large paddock, and eventually he started destroying it in boredom, or an attempt to get to the horses in the adjoining pasture that belonged to the neighbors.
At Eaglerise he has a bunch of company and I worry he will miss that. But I do think as long as he isn’t a singleton, he’ll be okay.

Pity Party

2011-11-28T13:53:00.001-05:00

I almost made it through November blogging everyday. Just not quite.

Today has been a gray day. The weather is crappy and gray and my mood is crappy and gray.

Today I’m stuck in a pity party. I feel like the universe is pulling the rug out from under me, but only enough to make me wobble. (I know I’m extremely lucky, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to a bit of pouting about it. I would like to quit feeling so depressed though. I talked to my doctor about mood stabilizers this morning and they’ll be waiting for me at the Kroger this evening.)

Here’re my pity party guests:

We moved to nicer, new place. It’s closer to work, it’s more structurally sound. Great. I get an office of sorts at work, I even order business cards for my current job. I’m nice and settled... then I get offered new job that I can't pass up. That’s in a city an hour’s drive away.

I am excited about being close to trails in the new neighborhood. I actually start enjoying running. I learn my knees aren’t that great. Haven’t been able to run or do stairs with out pain the next day in weeks.

Horse boarding farm 15 minutes from the new place (for $50 less a month) has no slots open when we move into the new place, this week (the last week I’m in Athens full time) a slot opens. I haven’t been riding, partially because of inertia and the crap weather and partially because it’s now a 30 minute drive to get there.

But this opens a whole new issue:
Do I
A) leave him where he is now
B) move him there so he's closer on the weekends,
C) move him closer to Atlanta
or
D) sell him.

I can’t move him at the drop of a hat, he doesn’t have a current coggins test. So I’ve asked to go see the closer barn, just to see how hard it is to get there, if the people there seem nice, the horses well cared for etc.
If I were going to sell him, I’d sell him to the barn manager where he is now. She would love him and take care of him in the way I would want him cared for.
So perhaps I should leave him where he is for now. I just don’t know.

2011-11-25T16:50:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving was crap. No offense to the friends we spent time with, but they aren’t our family. Also by the end of the night they were all annoying. (That might be just me though)

I went over to our friends around 12, after buying fatback at the Buy 4 Less for the lima beans. Once I got there I set up the slow cooker for the limas and helped the girls with their cooking adventures. We watched ABC Family most of the day after the Macy's parade. Both of the chocolate factory movies and then Monsters Inc and Wall-e. I helped the girls make potatoes and macaroni and cheese, and they bought a smoked turkey, which was actually really good.

Everything turned out good food wise, the day just wasn't quite what I wanted.

Today I bought christmas presents on Etsy (Yay supporting small business crafters!), bought Black friday sale stuff online and also at target and then got really testy with Husband. I'm a little unstable emotionally, probably because of the job change coming up. I go in to the doctor on Monday to talk about mood stabilizers, since Hubs suggested it might be time to go back on them. I'm pretty mercurial on the best of days, but I am on a hair trigger these days. The smallest things can set me off into a sulk or a rage or a crying fit, and since I interact most openly with Hubs he bears the brunt of my instability. This instability may also be part of why I didn't enjoy Thanksgiving, although I do feel I'd have been sad about it even if I were on brain drugs to level me out.

whoops, small break

2011-11-23T17:30:00.001-05:00

Ugh, fell off the blog post wagon. Whoops. I’m not entirely consistent at anything. Sadly.

PT was rough today. My knees aren’t hurting, but they don’t feel good either. It doesn’t help that I haven’t been doing my exercises like I’m supposed to. I need an accountability buddy for PT, I guess. You’d think that’d be my husband, but he’s crap for accountability. The session ran really long, since they did ultrasound therapy on my left knee, did heat and tens on both and then all the regular exercises.

We got out of work early so it was hard to drag myself to PT today. I was a little sad, since my supervisor is going to be on vacation next week, today was the last day I will see her at work, and she didn’t really say goodbye. But I did leave once already, so it’s not like she hasn’t been through this before, I guess.

I won't be posting on thanksgiving. It's a holiday!

Maple Dijon Chicken and angry knees

2011-11-21T22:07:00.001-05:00

Still on the second repeat of Melpomene, but only 15 rows til I reach the third. I will likely get there tonight.

We had a tasty non-ruined dinner tonight. (I’ve been having difficulties in the kitchen, of late. Burning things) I made a dish from Stephanie O’Dea’s Crockpot cookbook. Hubs and I picked a few out to do this week and this first was Maple Dijon Chicken. It turned out very nicely, despite the fact that I found out as I put it together that we don’t have any Dijon mustard in the house, which is extremely odd. I used deli brown instead. It worked out just fine. I added too much chicken broth to the dish, so it was a little soupy, but still delish. It would have been really good over rice but we didn't feel like waiting for rice to be done.

I had PT today too, and it was a bad one. Not because I worked really hard, because I didn’t work at all. I didn’t even do any exercises because my knees were in crap shape today. Just heat and electrotherapy and stretches. What frustrates me about that is that I didn’t even do that much over the weekend. I didn’t even work out! I did however climb the two flights of stairs to our friends’ apartment a few times and perhaps that is what has them so cranky today, but if that’s the case I’m really disappointed in my stupid knees.

The Immortals

2011-11-20T23:07:00.034-05:00

We saw the Immortals today. It was good and not so good in a number of ways. I will watch it again when it comes out on DVD/streaming.

Good: The costuming was distinctive, imaginative and interesting.
Not so good: Many of the costuming choices were distracting. Like the beetle helmet. Or any of the helmets that weren't soldier helmets, honestly.

Good: There were a lot of interesting landscapes.
Not so good: They were desolate and I have no idea what the hell the characters actually ate other than goats.

Good: The action scenes were thrilling.
Not so good: The action scenes were stupidly gory and there were rather unneeded and unrealistic torture scenes. (I spend most of them annoyed with the poor understanding of human anatomy and physiological realities displayed.)

Good: The hot men, in very little clothing. Only two hot women in the majority of the movie.
Not so good: Mickey Rourke in very little clothing.

Good: The realistic swords.
Not so good: The gut breast plates, the bedazzled bow, and the glitter cape. What the fuck movie dudes?

There are more, but I don't feel like they fit nicely into my good not so good scheme here.

Lip gloss party

2011-11-19T20:18:00.001-05:00

I’m on to the second repeat of 5 repeats of chart B for Melpomene. She’s kinda pretty so far. Just stumpy, but more knitting will fix that. I can’t wait to see her finished. Too bad I have to put in all the work to finish her. I did realize that I will have a commute to the new University. I don’t want to have to pay almost $700 per year to park, and there are a couple alternative transportation options. The one I’m pretty certain I’ll go for is the park and ride option, so I’ll have a bus trip back and forth to knit on.
I will admit that I’ve always been somewhat jealous when I read about Wendy Knits commute knitting. Silly, but there it is. Now I get the chance to do my own!

Today Husbeast and I went and looked at what we might want to pick up on Black Friday. No TV’s or electronics for us, it’s all clothing for Hubs. He needs some new wardrobe items and a number of the local big stores are opening at midnight next Friday. I figure if I know exactly what we are planning on getting we can grab it and spend slightly less time waiting in Black Friday Soviet Bread lines. We also pointed out little things we’d like for Christmas and talked about bigger things.
We had a lot of fun in the Bath and Body Works. They’re doing their usual 6 for $24 on their wallflowers scents and they have the largest selection of scents you can smell before you buy them. With me being done during the week, I expect things may not always smell their freshest in the place. So I bought a new wallflower unit for our bedroom and let Hubs pick out 5 scents to round out the 6 items. We now have a bunch of wintery scents. My favorite part of the visit was the lip gloss tree, which had scented, flavored lip glosses. Each of us ended up having a favorite. Hubs’ and mine
And when I say Hubs had a favorite I mean he wore that one. Anyone who has seen my husband recently knows that he’s doing No Shave November and is quite manly looking right now. The slightly sparkly sheer lipgloss was interesting on him, but y’know what? If awesome smelling lip gloss is what it takes to keep him moisturizing his lips this winter, I’ll take it. He’s getting some in his stocking this year! I’m waiting for them to go on sale though. They are buy 2 get 1, but lord knows I don’t really need more lip gloss. I only sort of wear the ones I have. Although having hair too short to catch in my lip gloss makes it eminently more wearable.

Holiday Hell

2011-11-18T22:11:00.000-05:00

We’ll be staying in town for Thanksgiving this year, rather than having it with my family like we usually do. We also won’t be doing Sunday dinner after with Husbeast’s family. It’s going to be strange.

This holiday season this year was always going to be hard. Husbeast’s mom died in June this year, so everything on his side is different. His dad is going to be travelling and his Grandmother isn’t cooking.
I didn’t expect my family to be difficult too. I’m pretty bummed about not being with my parents on Thanksgiving but it isn’t like I’m not going to be living with them in the near future. I’m angry that my family is being so shitty, not my parents, but other relations are being incredibly insensitive and douchey. I have to call tomorrow and tell them we aren’t coming. Not looking forward to that at all.
Scott is working any way and my family tends to do a midafternoon meal. I almost want to just do a Thanksgiving alone with Husband, no friends just the two of us, but that seems a little lonely. Some of the folks in my knitting community are doing some stuff the day after, but I don’t know if I’m going to go. I feel like perhaps I should, to be more sociable and solidify quasi-friendships into actual friendships. I suppose we will see.

I need to work on Melpomene, I haven’t picked her up in a day or so. I’m enjoying working on her, just being lazy. This is one of the first side so side small shawls I’ve worked on and it’s pretty interesting, with sections of tiny two stitch cables interspersed through the pattern.

Feelings

2011-11-17T22:06:00.001-05:00

Well I guess good news travels fast, the training coordinator asked me whether I’d gotten an offer from the new university today. We chatted about it for a little while. Despite the fact that part of me resents her for being the person hired instead of me for the job she’s in now, I really do like her most of the time. I am a little sad I won’t be able to work with her, since she had been planning on incorporating me in the next year, in some training stuff. She expressed happiness for me on getting the job and we talked about what could be improved at the university I’m leaving.

I’ve been a little nervous about the new job, and also a little curious about the dress code, so I emailed my new supervisor to ask about it. I’ve been thinking about doing color streaks, or something with my hair and have been considering a septum piercing for a while, so I wanted to ask. (It’s doubtful I will get a septum piercing while I’m living at my parents house during the week, they’ll disapprove of the hair but not fly off the handle the way they would at a facial piercing. I still chuckle at my Dad’s reaction to the cartilage piercing in my left ear)
New supe emailed back and said they are as laid back as my old job, and at the end of the email she wrote:

Can't wait 'til you get here!! :)

For some reason I feel way better now.

I’m still feeling spectacularly unattractive, and apparently my illogical response to that is to eat unhealthily. Because that’s obviously how to fix that. UGH. I really need to work on making healthy eating choices like smaller portions and more vegetables, less cheese(sob). I need to be more active, but that has to go hand in hand with better eating. Better eating is just so much less fun. I think it might be easier to do that, in some ways, when I am with my parents. I won’t have a car during the day, so I will have to bring my lunch or walk to a restaurant. I don’t know that there are that many restaurants nearby, I suppose there must be. It’s a university, but many restaurants will probably not be in walking distance. But having to pack a lunch will let me be way better behaved.

lack of results.

2011-11-16T18:42:00.002-05:00

Geocached again today. No find. The GPS on the phone was super spotty and it was starting to get dark. The trails were really wet because it’s rainy today.
I saw a bunch of deer today, two before I got to the trail and then three on the trail. I’m going to miss the deer when I leave for Atlanta.

I feel as though I need to be more active, mostly because I’m feeling bloated and heavy. Particularly unattractive qualities. I had to scale back on the running because of my knees, and at the end of my walk today which only had like three sprints my right knee was not happy.
That’s kind of disappointing, since I’ve been in physical therapy for a few weeks and had been feeling better. Although I have been bad about doing the prescribed exercises... whoops. Maybe that’s why my knee hurts, although I’m assuming it’s partially because of the slick footing on the trails today.

Impact

2011-11-15T22:08:00.001-05:00

I got the official orientation email from the new university today.
So I wrote and sent my letter of resignation today too. The second I’ve written for this job. Part of me wonders how soon it’ll be before I’m back here again, but that part is just scared. I have all the tools to do well in this new job and I know I will have the support that I didn’t have in Texas. It’s still a tough thing though. I know that the new university is really looking forward to having me as a team member and I am really looking forward to learning new husbandry and care techniques with new species.

I made chicken mull today. I kinda messed it up, as I have every other soup or stew lately. I loose focus and end up burning the food. The last thing was beef and barley stew and it was just flat out bad. This time it was salvageable and actually turned out pretty tasty. Definitely one to try again, preferably with out setting off the smoke alarm.

In knitting news:
While I was in Kentucky, Romi released the second pattern in her Seven Small Shawls Year 2 collection. I had spent days looking at patterns trying to decide what I would knit. I knew I wanted something with less lace than the rest of my collection of knitted shawls. I finally settled on Annis, a free pattern that I thought was pretty and had interesting new things to try. I’d gotten past the nupps, the new and obnoxious new technique, and was to the shaping section of the shawl when I took a look at Melpomene.
It was love at first sight. I ripped out Annis and cast on Melpomene.

Holiday Hell

2011-11-14T21:36:00.001-05:00

I went Geocaching today after work. I found two caches, but looked for and didn’t find three others. I’m not sure that two of them are even still there, one of them had been found earlier in the day, but I just could not find it. It didn’t help that I was looking as the sun was going down, although one of my finds was a night cache, and it was awesome.
I found three travel bugs in it and I’m going to send them to my three Kentucky Slumber party friends. They seem excited about it, so I’m happy to have caching friends to send travel bugs to. I don’t travel too often.

We are trying to figure out what we are doing for the holidays and I’m so frustrated because my husband refused to talk about it, until going to a dinner with friends of ours who talked about their holiday plans while I was in Kentucky. And so now, a week before thanksgiving he wants to figure out what we are doing. He hasn’t asked any of his family members what they might be doing for Christmas.

I’m getting tired of feeling like the only adult in the relationship lately. I can’t figure out how to get him to be more proactive. Although I have devised a plan I will be testing out in trying to get him going. I just want him to graduate. It seems as though he doesn’t want to, but I know it’s just that he allows emotions and inertia to hold him back.

Home again

2011-11-14T01:13:00.000-05:00

We had lunch at a lovely restaurant in downtown Louisville and went Geocaching on our last day in Kentucky.
We tramped through a graveyard and a parking lot and did find one cache. We didn’t find the graveyard one, but had fun looking.
The drive home was relatively uneventful. Kentucky builds roads over hills, Tennessee builds them around the hills and Georgia is full of dark creepy back roads. I had to stop at a Tennessee gas station, on top of a mountain in the dark, where a creepy old man chatted me up and made me feel creeped out.
I didn’t even get home til 1 am because Tennessee friend and I couldn't’t make ourselves leave!

Goth dancing

2011-11-12T14:14:00.000-05:00

We went goth dancing one of the nights we were in Kentucky. The dancing was at a total dive bar, and the dancing was not of the best quality, but we had a good time.
I wore my Bettie Page Shop outfit, and my friends all liked it. I kind of wish I'd had somewhere nicer to wear it to though.
Texas friend and I were shocked to find out the bars close at 4 here, rather than 2, like our respective home states/towns. we did not stay that long though. We headed out to the steak and shake, and were in bed before 4.

Kentucky

2011-11-11T17:13:00.000-05:00

So I am visiting knitting friends in Kentucky. Only one of them lives here, the other two are from Tennessee and Texas.
We are having a blast here in Louisville. We visited vintage shops and I got a great belt buckle. It is a 1986 NRA belt buckle. It's pretty fantastic.
We got tokidoki unicorns, and tried on so many hats. I feel a little bad I didn't get a hat, since there were a few nice ones, but none I really loved. We saw a lot of sequin encrusted dresses and vintage fur pieces.
We met up with another Louisville native for lunch and then we went back to UltraPop for more unicorns. I bought a kaiju toy for a friend of mine and my husband. It looks just like the way he draws them, so I had to get it.

Trip!

2011-11-10T22:12:00.000-05:00

I drove to Kentucky today. I picked up a friend in Tennessee. The drive was pretty good, though there were some strange spots. The gps could not figure out where my friend lived, so I had to google it on the iPhone.
Then we drove through the backwoods of Kentucky. We went over a hill that dropped off, and we thought we might die.
Then once we got to Louisville we met up with our host and another local and had delicious indian food. Since I am sick I was almost pleased about the Indian food, because I knew I'd be able to taste it.
Then on our return to the apartment complex we were greeted by the sewer raccoon. Kinda creepy.
Then we waited for our Texas friend to land at the airport. There was no sewer raccoon to herald her arrival, sadly.

Staying active

2011-11-08T20:25:00.000-05:00

I’ve been trying to remind myself to be more active. I’m in a bit of a slump. It’s getting dark earlier so trail running is less and less of an option on week days, since I’m NOT a morning person. I have been trying to be better about picking up my hoop and getting some hoop action in.

I’ve let my hooping to the left go bad, I have a hard time keeping the hoop up and feeling natural while hooping to the the left. So there’s that to work on. That tidbit only exacerbates the utter crap attempts at waist to overhead lifts, which I am fairly good at hooping to the right. I think I probably still make stupid faces, but I’m much better at it than I was.

The last few days, I’ve been able to get it back down once or twice with out totally dropping it. This is some significant progress.

I’ve been trying to perfect the elevator trick. That’s not going well.

I think I will need classes if I ever want to get leg hooping down... I’m absolutely terrible at it. I can keep the hoop on my chest for about 10 seconds, but only if I flail about like a turkey trying to lift off the ground on Thanksgiving morning.

I’m going to have to figure out where I want to go running in Atlanta. There’s a park local to my parents that I used to tool around in as a kid after school, chill with my best friend from back then and walk dogs in. But there are also parks closer to my new job. Apparently a fairly nice one right near the campus. So that’s also an option. On the weekends I think runs at Stone Mountain might be fun.

The new university has like three separate facilities for university affiliated people to work out at... all of them seem like they cost more than the one option at my current job.

New shores!

2011-11-07T12:37:00.001-05:00

The new job does have some perks
I get to live in Atlanta
I get to meet new people
I get to spend time with my family
Professional growth

I’m actually excited about moving to Atlanta, despite my previously listed reservations. Atlanta has more things to do, has lots of places I already know I enjoy and new places to discover. I grew up in the Atlanta area, and the new job is about 20 minutes with out traffic from my parents house. I get to hunt for a new place to live and imagine all the possibilities, which is fun.
I get to be closer to a lot of the events I love, like the AKG meetings, the Decatur Book Festival and Decatur’s fourth of July.
I’ll also be closer to Stone Mountain and a number of other parks, so trail running is still an option. Maybe not as convenient as right now, but still on the table. I also think that it’ll be easier to take hobby classes, hooping, sewing etc.

I’m actually pretty excited about meeting a whole new cadre of coworkers. The last job was pretty crappy, minus a few bright spots, but as I said in my scaredy post, I have already met a number of these guys. I already consider one of them a friend, not a close one mind you, a professional friend. The group seems to work well together, although I haven’t met the front line staff, just the supervisor team and the manager.
I will also meet more Atlanta knitters. I’ve already joined a few of the Atlanta rav groups, but haven’t really trawled through them. I know of a couple ATL ravlers that are in my regular rav group.

Despite my reservations about having to live with my parents during the week, I am happy to be able to spend more time with them. I’ll get to watch old movies with my Dad and hang out and knit with my Mom.

I also think this job will help me grow as a professional. I think that the new diversity of species and coworkers and the new atmosphere will be challenging with out being a complete horror.

Royal Alpaca Challenge 2011

2011-11-06T22:17:00.000-05:00

Husband and I went to the Royal Alpaca Challenge today. I’ve been meaning to go for years, but have never gotten around to it. Next year might be more worth it, since it’ll only be a half hour away instead of an hour away. We enjoyed it, but there wasn’t too much to it. There were a bunch of alpacas obviously, but they held halter shows, an agility course (what?), and hosted two shopping areas, one by the show arena with livestock things, soap and various sundries along with another one that was more about fiber, and fiber products.
We got to pet a few and watch little kids lead animals about as large as they were. Husband and I decided if we have a chance to have alpacas while we have kids, we are going to force them to show the alpacas.

This guy was my favorite:

I think I like the hucaya better though. They are the fluffy looking ones. Despite the fact that my favorite animal at SAFF was a suri llama.

This one was really interesting and liked Scott.

This one was named Mr. Tiberius

This poor guy was being tortured! He had to watch all the lovely ladies who placed in the shows walk by to have their pictures taken, and he paced the whole time we watched him. Calling the whole time.

I got two and a half puffs done on the drive, too. You knitters will probably know what I'm talking about.

Stormy seas...

2011-11-05T17:29:00.000-04:00

I’m getting a little nervous about taking the job at the new university.
It means we will have to move to Atlanta.
It means I will have to leave the comfort of my old job
It means new people to have to learn to work with
It means living with my parents
It means giving up some of the freedoms and privileges I enjoyed in my old job

Atlanta is larger and somewhat more intimidating than Athens, but I did grow up here, so its not as scary as it could be. I worry that we won’t be able to afford a house in Atlanta. Atlanta costs more to live in, and I will miss the neighborhood we’ve moved into here in Athens. But Atlanta also has more variety when it comes to neighborhoods and places to live and more parks and cultural events and less football.
Hubs will need to transfer, although he did tell me that his original manager is now in charge of the store near my parents, so that could work out in our favor. Atlanta would probably have more job opportunities in a field he’d rather work in, also a plus.
We will also have to move house... again. I’m not willing to buy a house until Hubs is in a job he thinks he can stay with and likes, so we will need to find an apartment/rental and move house once again. I can’t even begin to describe how unhappy I am with this prospect. I might not be as horrified by it come August.

I am supremely comfortable at the job in Athens. I know it, I’ve had it for years and it’s easy. None of that helps me grow as a person or a professional though. My job isn’t challenging, aside from occasionally being supremely frustrating. This new job is in a new environment, but similar to the old one in that it is an academic facility and hopefully won’t come with the same difficulties the Texas Job had.

Learning a new set of coworkers is somewhat daunting. It was horrifying at the Texas Job, but I already know some of the people at the Atlanta job. They are members of our local professional organization and I’ve been able to work with some of them a little through that. It won’t be horrible, but I’m psyching myself out about it a little.

I’m also a little worked up about having to live with my parents during the week. I know it’s temporary, in multiple ways, but it’s still moving back in with my parents. I love them dearly, but I still don’t relish the thought of living with them 5 nights out of the week. Don’t mistake me, they’re great parents, but at 28... they cramp your style a little bit. The other side of this, is leaving my husband in Athens 5 nights out of the week. I'm not looking forward to another separation and the hardships that come with it, even if it's very different this time.

The Athens job tried to make up for crappy pay by extending really great educational opportunities. I got to attend an obscene amount of local and national meetings and really learn to love my field. There will still be the opportunity to be active locally, but the national level may be beyond my reach at this new job. I will have to investigate. I’m hoping they will have the same policy as my old job put in place about three years ago, if you are a participant you will be sent.

Tomorrow I’ll write about what excites me about this new job.

New projects!

2011-11-04T23:47:00.001-04:00

I started Knitty's annis yesterday. I used a new cast on shared by a raveler this week. It's stretchy and I like it. It's a bit of a pain because there is some significant twisting.

Mom may give me the stuff to make the Lakedale shawl from one of the malabrigo books, so there's that too.

I found yarn I didn't know I had while going through knitting bags. It is in a color that confuses me, it must have been a gift, because I wouldn't have picked it. Weird.

Strange shores ahead:
I'm taking a job with another university in the next few weeks. It looks like I'll be doing the same thing that I'm doing now at my current job, only in a new place, with more variation in species and requirements.
I'm a little nervous about it, since my last try at a career climb job ended so very poorly, but I do know a number of the people there already. They have always seemed nice. So it will probably go better than before.
Taking the job will require me to live with my parents during the week, until our lease in Athens is up, we find a spot in Atlanta and Husband can transfer.
I will also have to figure out what to do about Badger. Lots to think about.

Indecision may or may not be my problem

2011-11-03T18:11:00.001-04:00

So I’m trying to figure out what I want to knit next and it’s not going so well. I keep picking things I don’t have patterns for and for heaven’s sake, I have a ton of patterns already!
So why do I want to knit Spectra, Chadwick, Pogona, Thendara,and Leaves of Grass
I don’t even have the yarn for a number of them... but I still want to knit one of those and not one of the many patterns I already have at my fingertips.

I have works in progress I could knit, heaven knows my half circle sweater could use some sleeves and an extension on the front panels... but no. I don’t want to knit that. I want to ball up some of my shawlette/sock yarn and knit a shoulder shawl or a scarf. But a non-lacy, or less lacy one than the ones I have been doing. But interesting.

NaBloPoMo 2011

2011-11-02T16:59:00.000-04:00

I'm a day late and dollar short, but it's a blog, you'll get over it.
This is an amalgamation of the stuff I threw on G+ yesterday.

I have never really gotten too thrilled by Jared Flood's patterns... until now. I may have horn for this pattern...
Ravelry: Leaves of Grass pattern by Jared Flood

I really do love this pattern. I am enthralled by it. I just don't know what I would knit it out of.

There are few things that seem less forced and awkward than me leaving a message. Pinnacle of awkwardness, right there.

I left my sister a happy birthday message, and I feel as though it was the most awkward thing. I may have said happy birthday 4 separate times. I rarely call my younger sister, and never call my youngest sister... so usually the phone calls are awkward too.

SAFF 2011

2011-10-24T20:34:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend at the 2011 Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. I had a great time. I took four classes and shopped my butt off!
Mom and I took a Make and Take Silk Scarf class, where we dyed silk scarves on site, ironed them dry and wore them out of class. We enjoyed it so much that we got a dying kit to split and scarves to dye. We didn’t get to try out many techniques, but really enjoyed what we did. The class could have been done better, but it was still a great time.
I also took two spinning classes and a fiber preparation class. I loved my spinning classes and learned a lot about my wheel and how to make yarn. My absolute favorite might have been the fiber prep class, despite the fact that it was at the very end of the weekend, and once I got out all the vendors were packing up. So I couldn’t buy any of the tools I might have wanted, or any unprocessed fiber!
My favorite part of the weekend was spending time with the SaddleUp Plantation llamas. Saturday I got to lead and handle a 6 month old named Aurelius. It was a lot of fun. I still think that the alpacas are cuter, but the llamas are much more personable. I had to run back on Sunday and ask one of the SUP folks to take a picture of him with me.

I also fawned over the bunnies.
One of these days one that looks just like this will be mine.

I brought home a bunch of fiber for spinning and will be trying to remember to treadle diligently daily just like my spinning teachers suggested.

Knees, fire and fibers!

2011-10-18T17:24:00.000-04:00

Blog silence... I’m so good at it.

Although not much has been going on. We love the new digs, although we still aren’t completely unpacked.
I’ve been doing some more trail running, now that the weather has cooled down. Which has led to my most recent news, knee problems.
Chondromalacia patella with slight subluxation. In lay terms, my knee cap doesn’t stay in it’s groove like it’s supposed to, and that hurts. It annoys me because I like running trails, and want to keep doing so. So I am now visiting the Physical Therapist. He’s very nice and did a great job explaining what’s going on with my knees. I’m a little nervous, since next time he’s going to make me run and video tape it. Yick.

The other exciting thing I’ve done recently is fire hoop! Scary fun.

I’m trying to finish up my Maia shawl before SAFF, which is looking unlikely. I’m doing it in a yarn I picked up at Stitches South, one from Blue Moon Fiber Arts that was specifically dyed for Sock Summit, but sold poorly. I managed to accidentally modify the pattern in a way I like. I’ve been twisting my knit stitches when I knit backwards across the piece, giving the non lace sections a thermal weave look. I think it also pulls the piece lengthwise, so I did an extra repeat of the body chart and ended up having to rip that all out, since I don’t think I have enough yarn to finish out the shawlette with the extra body repeat. I kind of wish I’d chosen different beads, maybe all gold or copper that are part of the bead mix I’m using, rather than all of them. I am matching as closely as possible the color of the yarn to the color of the bead placed.

I’m taking four classes at SAFF. A silk scarf class, a Mechanics of the Spinning Wheel class, a Plying(turning strands of yarn into a whole yarn) class and a fiber prep class. I’m pretty excited. I missed SAFF last year.

I’ll try to remember to blog about it!

New place!

2011-08-13T20:44:00.000-04:00

We are in a new place!

Hubs and I moved from our old ancient apartment to a duplex community. I love that we don't hear upstairs neighbors and we don't even hear the next door neighbors. Wylie likes his new back yard, and I like that he doesn't have to deal with stairs anymore. It's better for his back as he gets on in years.

We are still in the process of unpacking. I'm sure we will be for the next few months... we have accumulated a lot of stuff. The second bedroom is mostly full of boxes. Hubs has managed to set up his computer in there though. One has to have priorities!

There's much less cabinet space in the new kitchen, same for the counter space. But there's a huge utility closet where we have the water heater indoors, have our chest freezer, a shelving unit and our washer and dryer. Our chest freezer used to live in the extra bedroom, so it's nice to have it in the utility room. I'm not sure what we are going to do with the mountain of tupperware we own.

I want to put up curtains, but I'm not willing to make holes in the wall. So I have to try to find curtain rods that are light enough not to pull 3M hooks off the wall. Which is what happened to the first set I tried to put up. I used rods I got from my grandmother, which are apparently too heavy when her drapes are added.

The new neighborhood is good for running. I've gotten 2 personal best 5K times. Mostly due to the fact that I run the ~.5 downhill bit, which pumps up my speed a little bit.

Farmer's market

2011-05-28T14:20:00.004-04:00

Today, I went to the Athens farmer's market for the first time. I've been meaning to go for years (years, that's kind of ridiculous), but have never gotten around to it. I'm not an early riser and while it's open until noon, I've always heard it's pretty picked over past about 10:30.
It's small collection of cute white tents, fresh vegetables and handmade products.
I got some pretty good stuff this go and hope to go back again at the end of June and get a roasting chicken, along with some veggies to do a farmer's market themed meal. I did a roast in San Antonio of a chicken and potatoes and onions, and then my green veggie was out of the freezer. That was really delicious and want to recreate that, only with fresh green veggies this time.
This trip I picked up aged raw milk cheese , fresh hand made spinach pasta, beer lip balm (to entice my beer loving husband), hand made dog and horse treats, honey butter, blue, pink, white and red new potatoes, broccoli , a baguette and a head of fancy lettuce. On my way out I picked up an empanada . (Most of the items in this paragraph are clickable and will go to the seller's page on the Athens Farmers Market site.)
The fancy lettuce has already been devoured in enormous salads I brought to Kroger to eat with Husband on his break. I'm really excited about the potatoes, I really want to see what the blue ones look like on the inside.

I'm going to try to get to the Tuesday one too to get eggs. If you don't get to the Saturday market at 8 you won't get any. They're a hot commodity, and I knew that before going. I haven't heard whether the Tuesday market even has eggs or which farms attend.

Running

2011-05-03T23:25:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the radio silence. I'm terrible.

I'm walking/running on the regular. I got a few PRs(personal record) this week. My fastest mile, and 5k time. I ran a 10'08" mile today and a 33 minute 5K. I did 5 miles in 1:04:55 on Monday.

My goal is to run a 5mile in under an hour. It's going to get harder to do as it heats up. I've been running at the IM trails this week. I love trail running. I'm sure my times would be a lot slower if I were running on the road. Less hills to run down!

I got in 34 miles last month. 34! My goal was 20, and I popped 30! So this month's goal is 30. I've got 8 in already and it's only the 3rd! I may need to adjust that goal up.

Not too much knitting getting done. I spend too much time talking to friends on the internet!

Hurry up and wait

2011-04-05T17:05:00.001-04:00

I'm still waiting to hear back from my interview the other week. They are supposed to be making a decision soon, so every time the phone rings I'm a little nervous.

I'm on the last chart of elektra and really need to finish her up so I will have free needles for asterope. Another shawlette in the Seven Small Shawls collection. I plan on picking up the yarn for asterope at Stitches South.

I found a geocache near my apartment yesterday. It's kinda fun but I think I like letterboxing a little better. You get a log of neat stamps as you LB. Geocaching doesn't really do stamps. There's a logbook in the cache that you sign, and apparently a "take a penny, leave a penny" kind of system, where instead of pennies there are little trinkets. There were no good trinkets in the cache I found. Religious material, a Barbie brush and a bottle opener. No thanks. I also didn't have anything good to leave anyway. There are a ton of caches in Athens, and I imagine there are even more in Atlanta. I have yet to look to see how many are in Stone Mountain, where I hope to exercise with my friend A. Finding these things can be a work out I bet.

I have a phone app for it that I like pretty well. Geocaching.com has an app too but it's $10. No. Basic membership giving you the ability to look up caches is free, but if you want to do more, like vote favorites or other interesting features you have to shell out cash. I can't remember how much, but it was more than I was willing to pay for something I'm just starting out with. I'd love it if my husband was remotely interested in hunting caches with me, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

Texas smells nice

2011-03-29T17:02:00.003-04:00

I had to come back to San Antonio to close out the apartment out here. It's been some what surprisingly harder than I had realized it would be. Not the cleaning and donating, but the being here.
After about three weeks of almost constant companionship with my beloved best friend, being alone again is more difficult than it was when I was first out here.
I can't stand how quiet it is. And when I think about it, I always had something on one of the TVs out here. Even while reading or trying to sleep. I don't remember this ever being a problem last time I was living alone, but I wasn't 1000 miles from every one I hold dear (with the exception of our friends in Austin (who I really regret not spending more time with while I was here, but they reminded me too much of my missing half)). The silence is even more unnerving when there is no furniture at all in the space you are inhabiting.
As a way to break the silence, I've been listening to the book "Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Poses." I've liked it quite a bit. Once I am employed again I really want to go to a regular yoga class. I have also been listening to a radio app on my phone. I am my parents' child, as I've only listened to the national stream of NPR. Not only because it is comfortingly familiar, but because I feel like I am learning things when I listen to NPR.
I have also spent a lot of time outside the apartment. Much of it at the bookstore, a familiar place no matter what state I happen to be in.
The other way I've been passing the time is walking, jogging a bit today. Texas smells like spring, or at least the area around my apartment that I've been walking in. I wish Athens smelled as good. It is slightly more beautiful, though, with it's larger amount of flowering trees in bloom. Which makes me wonder why Athens doesn't smell as lovely as Texas. I did 5Ks both yesterday and today. I may regret that tomorrow as I am forced to laze around the airport for hours. But there will be Internet! And I will post this, which I am writing as a way of postponing packing the last suitcase, or at least pulling it together a little more than strewn about the pretty much empty bedroom.

I should probably get to that.

New but not

2011-03-24T12:05:00.001-04:00

Hi blog.

Athens is nice. Everything is blooming and spring feeling. The pine pollen arrived about two days ago. Everything has a light dusting of yellow.

I interviewed for a job and I think it went well. Weird but well. I am still in the running for a position in Atlanta, but they haven't started interviews yet.

The apartment is a disaster area except for the living room. We fixed it up so we could have AshB over. It was a very nice night. We should get together more often, although I think all of us (maybe not husband) would agree we should have activity based dates. Both of us want to lose weight and be more fit.

Husband and I need to work on getting the kitchen cleared and set up so we can eat at home and more healthily. We can do laundry though, and that's something I've done a bit of over the past few days.

We visited Badger the other day. Hubs and I gave him a good curry, since he's trying to shed out his wooly winter coat. I'm not sure if he'll shed out bald this year or not. Sometimes he sheds out the winter growth before growing in a summer coat and looks pitiful for two or three weeks. He's a bit thin. I'm going to wait until the wormer I gave him kicks in before working with him on more than manners. I do need to get back to riding. It's a little ridiculous to have a perfectly good horse and not work with him.

Progress

2011-02-25T04:10:00.000-05:00

Unemployment is still going. My two job options are kinda fighting with each other. Which is stressing me a little.

Knittting is going pretty well. I've gotten the fronts and back for the in progress sweater seamed together. Unsurprisingly enough, the fronts aren't wide enough for my chest, despite being done in the largest size. Part of that is that I'm not hitting gauge… oooops. This is what we get for not swatching.

I tried it on after binding off, which admittedly was a bad idea. Whoops. So I'm going to have to pick up stitches and extend the borders on the fronts. Probably stick in some really long short rows to keep from bulking up the neck line/back. I was pleased that the back fits well, though. I was so sure it would be small.

I think I'm going to do the sleeves before I extend the fronts.

I had moving companies come out and do estimates for moving back. Wylie hated it. I also managed to leave embarrassing things out and didn't realize it until after the last appointment. While I know that they've seen all sorts of things, that doesn't mean I want them to see mine! Oh well. I've pretty much picked one, but we have to pick a storage space, because my wonderful giant bed won't fit in the old apartment. We have to find a new apartment, obviously.

I've almost managed to smooth out a hooping trick. A lift from the waist to a halo. I'm solid on waist and hip hooping, turning in the hoop is kinda there, and I can even haltingly walk while hooping.

Knitting! And moving.

2011-02-17T01:58:00.001-05:00

I finally finished up the first front section of my spoke sweater (as finished as it gets till the sweater is put together). Thrilling! Started the second. It's going to be a little tricky, since I'm modifying it, but we'll see how it goes.

I have a paper cut on my left pointer finger, which is making my knitting a bit of a pain, literally.

I made appointments with moving companies to come out do visual estimates. I learned from Ravelry today that I need to request binding estimates. I'm getting a quote on moving with and with out the services packing up my stuff for me. I'm probably not going to have them do it, but a girl can dream. My friend over at QuarterLifePurpose, who has completed a fair number of moves, shared that they've used big rubbermaid bins for their moves. I might invest in a few to help control some of the crafting clutter. Also for my more fragile stuff.

The funny thing about it is I was in wal-mart yesterday and there was an entire aisle of clear rubbermaid bins. But there weren't any prices listed. I'll have to go back tomorrow. I need to get a for real container for my rodeo tomato at home depot anyway.

Valentine's day musings

2011-02-14T22:17:00.000-05:00

I'm taking my old job back. If everything works out.

I'm a little happy and a little sad. I really love San Antonio, and am sorry that

there really aren't any opportunities out here that will allow me to stay.

But going home means that I'll be back with my family and my friends, and my husband. Being apart from him has been both easier and harder than I expected it to be. I've always done well alone, I enjoy solitary time. But it has worn on me in the last few months.

Today has been the hardest, this is the first valentine's day I haven't seen him in at least 10 years. I don't think either of us had thought about it much, I didn't realize until too late that it was fast approaching and didn't even send him a card. I stopped by the fancier grocery store in San Antionio today, since they had advertised a chocolate festival. Not much of one, they just put chocolate sauces on some of their prepared dishes… not very impressive. They did have lovely flower arrangements and select your own rose stems. Today was the first day since he visited that I wanted to cry, and I had a very hard time not crying in the middle of Central Market.

My phone has been acting up today, so I'm not sure if he tried to call me today or not, he didn't leave me a message if so. I know he's working until 10:30, so it will be a while before I can talk to him.

I realized today that the year we are 30(which is closer than I'd like), we will celebrate 15 years together. I wonder where we will be then. This year will be 12 years. It feels like no time at all.

Back to taking my Georgia job back:

I'm thrilled to be close to my old friends again, I hope to spend more time visiting them and spending time with them. I'll also be pleased to spend more time with my horse. I've missed him too and hope to spend more time riding him than I did before I came to Texas.

I'm not so thrilled to be leaving my nice Texas apartment to go back to the old ratty apartment I left my husband in, perhaps we will move in August. I'm hiring a moving company to move all my stuff back to Georgia, and will have to get a storage space, since I bought new furniture that may be difficult to squeeze into the old apartment.

Let's Rodeo San Antonio!

2011-02-08T00:24:00.002-05:00

My husband visited San Antonio this past weekend and we headed to the San Antonio Rodeo.

A texas longhorn

junior showmanship

Scott's favorite type of piercing.

Goatee! Those of you who know my husband, know why this was funny to him.

There were tiny cattle exhibitors.

And little tiny cattle.

This little guy was so well behaved, just calm and cool and collected. No crying or stamping like other cows.

This guy had a really neat face. and was very nice about posing for me. :)

There were lots of babies.

There were teeny little ponies

and teeny little chicks

Awwww look how cute!

These were Scott's favorites. He loves pigs.

There were some really interesting things in the texas experience building, the Texas Junior master gardeners had some neat exhibits.

Gutter garden

Shoe organizer planter(really neat idea!)

I bought a 3 dollar tycoon tomato plant, from the Gardening volunteers of south texas, got samples of milk and quesadilla, and got to see a bunch of bugs and snakes.

After the Texas experience, we headed to the fair grounds. Hubs bought us a funnel cake.

Mmmmmm

Want a close up?

After our funnel cake we strolled over to more of the marketplaces before going into the AT&T center for the Rodeo and concert.

These guys rode from multiple areas of Texas all the way to the Rodeo.

The lovely palomino patrol:

The rodeo events were great. I have to give the catch crew props. They did an excellent job bailing bronc riders.

The calf wrestling was a bit of a miss, except for the winner. He got the steer down in about 5 seconds. Two wrestlers missed the calves entirely. Whoops.

I was tickled by the guys who got shove duty. They would get in there and shove the calves out for wrestling and roping.

Scott's favorite event was mutton busting. It's a pretty hilarious "sport." The kids are between 4 and 7 and have to stay on for 6 seconds to be scored. The only little girl in the group won.

This man was spectacular.

Nothing on the horses, and he was in regular boots.

I'm still figuring out the new camera, but I did get some good shots of the action. I need to work on getting better ones though.

This is my favorite shot

I didn't pack my extra battery, so I didn't get anything of the bull riding, but if you're on my Facebook, you can see the rest of the 200+ pics I took in my album there.

We had a great time.

The sea of unemployment.

2011-01-28T04:59:00.000-05:00

Unemployment is going acceptably so far. I have walked over 20 miles since leaving the land of employment. I picked up a library card. I dealt with insurance.

I was in a hit and run earlier in the month. My very first accident. I turned into someone trying to pass me on the right. They slowed and then kept driving. My front fender is loose and my right head light is shot to hell. Because it was a hit and run my deductible is only $250 and insurance completely covers the cost of a rental car while my CR-V is getting fixed. I'm pleased about that. The car goes to the surgeon on Monday.

I'm enjoying my library card. My mom is/was a librarian and I spent a lot of time in the Fort Monmouth base library as a kid. I like libraries, they feel like home. I live right around the corner from the Cody Library. Libraries have gotten very fancy lately, self check out, DVDs and music CDs available and even graphic novels. I was shocked to find out the limit is 50 books! I have two crafting books, two cook books and a couple spanish language learning books.

I'm trying to learn spanish. I have been for a while, before I left Georgia, actually. I had to give it up while at the Hell-job. I've been using two sites, Livemocha and Smart.fm to work on it. I like both very much and both are free. Livemocha allows you to interact with other language learners, native speakers of the language you want to learn who are learning your language. You rate and assist other users submissions both written and recorded in your own native language to earn courses.

Smart.fm is different, but still fun. There isn't really interaction with other learners, but it's got some different features. More repetition, but no constructive work on pronunciation, like on Livemocha. Some of the modules have dictation work to help develop your ear for the language.

Sé un poco de Español.

My spot

2011-01-21T01:11:00.001-05:00

My spot, originally uploaded by Amylynnknits.

From left to right: Laptop, bag of yarn, ps3 controller, favorite blanket, favorite little dog, bag of more yarn, knitting project(chalice baby blanket) dinner plate and Diet Coke. My life's blood, really.

Fitness

2011-01-20T21:27:00.001-05:00

I've been using my unemployment to work on my fitness.

I lost two dress sizes while I was at START, mostly from not eating anything but dinner and never much of one. I expect I will probably gain much of that back, what with being bored and all. I tend to eat when bored. So I need to make sure I keep active.

So I've been walking with my terrible little dog. He goes in a stroller and I get moving. I really love using the Nike+ with my nano. It records my pace, milage and timing, and then later I get to see a graph of my performance. I can set goals and see my history on nikerunning.com
My current goals are
• Run 20 times by 2/16
• Finish 211 mi by 1/18/12
• Burn 4000 calories by 2/16
The interface lets me know how I'm doing on my goals, how far ahead(or behind!) I am and in the case of number of runs by a certain date when the next one is do if I choose to set run dates ahead of time. Right now I'm ahead on all goals. Yay

While I use the nike+, it talks at me, lets me know how far or how long I've gone. There are a couple different workouts:
basic - just turn it on and go
time- 20, 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes
distance- there are a number of different set distances you can choose for your workout 3K, 5K 10K, 2, 5, 10 miles, half and full marathon
Calories- 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800 calories.
I've never done the calories or time workouts, but I have done the 2 and 5 mile workouts. This week in fact. I also regularly do the basic. I did the basic today while I walked to the Walgreens so I'd know how far I went and how long it took me.
I don't have the special shoes, I just tuck the sensor between the top of my foot and the tongue of the shoe. Eventually I might splurge for some of the shoe with the special spot for the sensor, but for now things are working fine. I might make a velcro pocket for the sensor that fits over the shoelaces, so I can stop putting the sensor right on my foot, but it really isn't as uncomfortable as it seems.

I'm also tracking my activity on the LSG google spreadsheet. (LSG is a ravelry group I'm a part of) They do a communal spreadsheet every month where you pledge a number of workouts and/or milage and then record it. You can also track your weight, but my wii fit refuses to turn on and I don't own another scale. I'm really not that concerned about the weight though. I just like feeling fit and fitting in my clothes.

I bought the FILA version of shape up shoes a while back. I didn't think they'd really do anything, but I live in hill country right now and walking hills in rocker shoes will work your butt. It's feeling very worked lately, despite the fact that I didn't wear them for my five mile walk the other day.

I should probably do a little yoga to help my back and my flexibility, but I haven't incorporated that yet.

Newest baby

2011-01-19T21:27:00.001-05:00

Hi blog.

I have a new baby. A used Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. It's pretty fun. I haven't taken too many pictures with it but I'm in love with the few I have taken. I'm going to try to take the camera down the street tomorrow to a museum or park or something that has a lot of large art installations out on it's lawn. I wanted to take them today, but my walk was in the evening today so not so much.

My favorite picture so far is this one:

I need to get a macro lens with a shorter focusing distance once I am re-employed. I want to engage in some macro cartography. I do love close ups of cat faces and feet.

I've also been doing a 365 project. It's on flicker, I started it with Photobooth and I'm thinking I may keep up with that. I'm not liking the flow, with mostly PB pictures and then few interspersed regular photos. I've added a Flickr gadget so you can see the latest photos I've tossed up. Click it to got see my 365 Project. It has it's own set.
I might start blogging the 365 pics. Flicker makes that pretty easy.

Tap, Tap. Is this thing on?

2011-01-19T01:09:00.001-05:00

Inspired by my good friend, I've decided to end the radio silence.

Things haven't been going so well, lately. I never posted about the Texas job which has been the source of the trouble.

I applied at UTSA, didn't get that job, which I wrote about, but the Director passed my name along to another employer. They hired me, and I moved to Texas. Left my husband and family in Georgia and came out to San Antonio. Lovely new apartment and nice new city.
But after about 2 weeks, I realized that I really didn't like the job I'd accepted. The environment was difficult for me, and the place was much smaller than I expected. It's difficult to direct a small number of people who know all the ins and outs of a new industry that you don't, nor were there any manuals or written materials with which to learn them. I was also quite intimidated by my boss and the manager there. Which made things difficult.
Around Thanksgiving my family came to visit, and my new boss told me the day before the holidays that things weren't really going as well as he'd like, and if things didn't improve, it would be best if I sought other employment. I learned a little later that I'd been hired for my "management skills," which I do not have. I have a degree in HR, yes, but in training and development. Things really didn't improve, I couldn't find a comfort zone there at all. Everything was always awkward and uncomfortable and difficult. So they gave me till the end of my probation period, and then I'd be cut free.
So now I write to you, after being "terminated." I am one of the thousands of unemployed Americans. I'm actually really relieved. I was utterly miserable there. And it showed. The UTSA Director who is ultimately responsible for my being in Texas was the attending vet for the place that had hired me, and dropped by regularly and when I told him that I'd been asked to find new employment and that I was relieved about it, he said he'd picked up on how unhappy I was. He and his staff have been so very nice and helpful towards me. They may be pulling together a part-time job that they would offer me. There are a few jobs in the area I'm in, but they're pretty low down on the totem pole.
There's a job at Emory that I've applied for and I'm crossing my fingers for. Wish me luck.

I'm doing well, despite being unemployed. I'll try to post more often. I have a good recipe to share and some fun stuff.

Silhouette Machine Giveaway

2010-11-22T21:28:00.000-05:00

Silhouette Machine Giveaway

If it comes in a can...

2010-09-09T19:36:00.002-04:00

We're interested.

My can opener brings all the pets to the yard. In this case... for tomato sauce. What on earth, can't you guys smell better than we do?

Dragon*Con Post!

2010-09-08T22:17:00.001-04:00

This year's Dragon*Con was a toss up between awesome and horrible.

Awesome:
- seeing old friends
- meeting new friends
- seeing spectacular costumes
- fun panels
- dressing up
- dealer's room fun
- True Blood cast members

Horrible:
- waiting in line for 2.5 hours for con badges, despite having preregistered
- missing all the panels I wanted to see on Friday because of it
- finishing my husband's last minute costume
- getting trapped in a completely packed elevator
- huuuuuge crowds
- extremely rude or cranky volunteers, handlers and jerks

Overall I had a good time. I'm alone in the room now, so I decided to work on a blog post. It's about 1:30 Monday morning and we've been going since Friday.
We came in Thursday night, we were pretty late due to working feverishly on Hub's last minute Thor Costume. I really wish that we had made it in earlier, because we could have tried to pick up our badges then. We caught up with the couple that we roomed with, Trying Lobster and Sushi. TL is an old friend of my husband's from grade school. We enjoy getting to spend con with them. We did a little hooping that night too. Drivebyknitting has some great tricks… I want to learn them so bad.
Friday we didn't manage to drag our selves out of bed to rush into line (which wouldn't have helped), so we hung out in the room and then got some lunch. We then waited in a line that wrapped around the registration hotel. At multiple times. pre-reg guests were informed that there was no wait in the onsite reg line. I'm sorely disappointed in the way Dragon*con handles this. We did make some friends in line though and learned about making Napalm. I missed both the True Blood panel and the costuming panel I wanted to attend.
i took a turn through the Dealer's room, and bought a fun new corset that is getting shipped to me. I thought about getting custom vampire fangs, but the idea of some random guy putting his hands in my mouth in the middle of the dealer's room…not so much. I enjoyed seeing all the fun stuff in the upper rooms. There's a new women's sci-fi/fantasy shirt company in a little excited about, Her Universe. I waited until I was with hubs to look at the lower room. It tends to be more crowded and I feel better with him near in crowded spaces. I like it better though, it has some of the smaller, more unique shops. My favorites this year were Bast's garden with the stuffed dragons, and Uber Kio, who had these really awesome wings and fascinators.
Saturday, we went to the Venture Brothers signing and the creators began what has snowballed into something my husband will be thrilled with for years. He realized he didn't have anything for them to sign and I suggested that he get his Thor hammer(which he made himself) signed, since I had insisted we carry it around with us. Doc Hammer and Jackson Public were thrilled to sign the hammer. Then I tagged along to a Firefly panel, and it was pretty hilarious. A bunch of the LSG Ravelry girls showed up to that one and we had a good time. Later that night after eating dinner with some of the LSGers, I wore the costume I put together for this year. I was burlesque Poison Ivy. I almost chickened out after seeing Ivy costumes I liked a little better than mine, but after seeing the pictures from yesterday night, I like mine more than some of the costumes I thought I liked better. Hubs wore the Thor costume I helped him get together. We partied for a while with Sushi's friends and the LSG girls showed up. Drivebyknitting was done UP, and we had a hilarious time with her. When we headed back to the Marriott she and I got a lot of requests for pictures together and a few odd ones. She got way more requests for pictures alone though. I'm not at all surprised.
I finally got to go to a True Blood panel today and I was thrilled by it. The actors were fun and the fan questions were good, and interesting. After that We collected more signatures on the Hammer and took a stroll around the art show. Amazing stuff in there! I then went to go see the True Blood cast members that had come in the Walk of Fame. Hubs and I got a picture with Kristen Bauer VonStraten(Pam) and my Con has been made. She is so nice. Nelsan Ellis(Lafayette) wasn't there, but Sam Trammell(Sam) was. He was even more good looking in person, and quite nice. I got a signed photo. Apparently Saturday and Sunday the cast members were all together and had done photos with fans. I had no idea and was really annoyed to learn about it too late. Honestly I napped away this evening. Other than watching the D*C masquerade on TV, I've not really done much. We ran into three of the LSGers on the way to grab some food for Hubs when he dragged himself out of the gaming pit. Then I hopped into my jammies and turned the Masquerade back on.
Add:
Monday I went to a costuming panel and learned about working with spandex. Fun stuff. We all took one last turn through the dealers rooms. I picked up a fun feathered hair dangle. We had a nice dinner with Trying Lobster and Sushi. Then we headed home. I can't wait until next year!

Sailor in Absentia

2010-08-31T16:32:00.002-04:00

I've been a little absent lately, huh?

I honestly don't know what I've been doing. I interviewed in Texas, but I already told you that. That did not turn out the way I wanted. I really fell in love with San Antonio and... they loved me, just not enough to hire me over someone older, with a little more experience. I was really upset Friday, but I've perked up quite a bit. The director from the interview passed my info on to another employer in SA, who wants to talk to me. We'll see where that goes.

I still haven't finished the Dancing Cranes stole, despite the fact that there are only a few rows left. I really need to get on that. There is one obstacle though: Dragon*Con.

D*C starts Friday, and Hubs and I are going for the whole weekend. We'll be staying with our friends in one of the host hotels and having a great time. I've even got a costume for this year. Hubs may have one, if he can coax me into doing some needle work for him. I'm pretty perturbed that two weeks before the con, he decides he needs a costume that probably requires a month of work to look really good. (Plus a decent seamstress, I may or may not fall under that category.)
I made the mistake of trying to print out the pocket program... there are 128 pages in it. I think they need to consider renaming it. There are a few things I'm already excited about seeing. I know I want to pick up a few costuming items this year. A bunch of people from one of my Rav groups are meeting up and that'll be a blast I'm sure. The few I saw last year I had a great time with.

I joined a quilting swap/bee on Ravelry, organized by a friend of mine. I'm pretty excited about it. Every month you are paired up with someone and you send them fabric for a block of your quilt and they send the makings for one of their blocks. At the end of the year, all your blocks are made, and you made 12 blocks. I'm going to try to be more awesome and get pictures to post up here as I make blocks. I'll talk more about it in another post. Maybe.

SILHOUETTE MACHINE GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

2010-08-24T11:47:00.000-04:00

SILHOUETTE MACHINE GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

This looks really neat. I know that a few of my (few) readers are crafty... so go enter!

Ruminations on Texas, post-trip.

2010-08-20T16:58:00.003-04:00

I love San Antonio. The folks I met were great, the campus was nice and the city and the surrounding area are lovely.

I could make a home in San Antonio. Happily, I think. But I will have to try very hard not to get too involved in castles in the sky, though. If I don't get the job, I'll be struck with falling debris.

I roved around the downtown area yesterday afternoon. Rode the local public transportation, explored the Riverwalk, took a picture of the Alamo. It's odd exploring places with out my Husband. I spent a good deal of time wanting to turn to him and point out something, or talk to him about the people passing by, but of course, I'm alone.

I'd like to vacation in San Antonio at some point, if this job doesn't coalesce for me. There's a lot to see and do.

I went through a cute little mercado of off Commerce yesterday that I wish that I'd been able to get back to today, but I was worried I wouldn't be able to get back to the hotel in time for my ride to the airport.

Either way I hope to see San Antonio again.

Ruminations on Texas Pre-trip

2010-08-18T12:54:00.002-04:00

I'm headed to San Antonio today for a job interview tomorrow. The job seems like an interesting one, I would get the opportunity to learn new skills and use the ones I already have.

The idea of moving 17 hours away by car from my family is a daunting one. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an exciting one. I didn't really leave home for college, going an hour's drive from your parents' house doesn't count as leaving home. My brother took it to the extreme, not only did he head to the opposite coast, he left the country too! As far as I know he's never been troubled by it. I cried the entire car trip, and when everyone left.

I think that I'm ready to leave home now. So many others I know have. I'm in a minority amongst my friends, who have, for the most part, fledged and made new nests for themselves in new states. Some came back, some have not. Most have not. It seems a little strange that it took me this long to be ready. I'm much closer to 30 than 20 these days, and it seems from popular media and generalities that one should fledge in their early to mid twenties. Oh well. There's nothing to do for it, really.

Poem.

2010-08-16T20:49:00.001-04:00

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today
Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms
Like fairy gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art
Let thy loveliness fade as it will
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known
To which time will but make thee more dear.
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets
But as truly loves on to the close
As the sunflower turns to her God when he sets
The same look which she turned when he rose.

--Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

Brief Update

2010-07-27T14:46:00.002-04:00

So I'm still not done with the Dancing Cranes shawl. Not that I've been working really hard at it... But I'm almost half way through the final repeat of the pattern.
I had a gift project started... but I decided it was ugly and ripped it back. Now I'm not sure what it should be and don't think I'll finish what ever I think it should be in time to give it to the intended recipient. Sigh.

The job hunt is demoralizing. I'm getting to be an expert at being the second or third choice. I'm not in any real hurry to find something, since I have a job and Hubs isn't done with school yet, but it's still disappointing to be passed over.

News flashes

2010-07-16T19:07:00.002-04:00

Gym news:

My hamstrings are sore. Very sore. I hit the gym pretty hard this week, but didn't go today or yesterday... because my hamstrings were tight and sore. Not entirely sure why.

Crafting news:

The dancing cranes shawl is coming along. I have about 6 or 8 more rows left in the second repeat and then only one more before castoff. And of course now I have the new project itch. Which is ridiculous because I have a shawl on the needles already!
I've been getting some knitting time in at what I am... "affectionately" calling Nerd Night. Husband goes to play Magic the Gathering card game with his friends and I go, although I don't play. So instead I knit. It's been working out pretty well.

I need to get back to the sewing machine. I've written up a sewing pattern for a project bag that I want to try to make, and I've also got a dress that I made two or three weekends ago that I need to alter and hem so it'll be more wearable. I also have a number of other projects that I could be sewing up.

Job news:
I interviewed with a place in San Antonio, haven't heard back from them, but they are having an inspection so we'll see. I got a note today from another company that they'd like to interview me. I guess when it rains...

Gym time 7/12

2010-07-12T15:19:00.001-04:00

Gym time:
15 minutes elliptical ~1.5 miles
-olympic bar squats s1-bar only, s2/3 bar+5’s
-lat pulldown 55 lbs 3 sets
-kickback machine 55 lbs 2 sets
-thigh ab?ductor 150lbs 3 sets
-overhead shoulder press 20 lbs 2 sets
Stretch.

Gym Time

2010-07-09T13:39:00.002-04:00

I've been hitting the gym more than usual this week. And alone. Which is a little out of the ordinary for me. But I've been a little out of the ordinary lately.

The crappy job market and the uncertainty of it all is starting to get to me. Don't misunderstand me, I am grateful that I am gainfully employed with benefits, that I have a roof over my head and never go hungry. But that doesn't change the fact that I am under-employed and want to do more with my life than what I'm doing now. We fall into the illusion that once we graduate things will fall into place... and it just doesn't work that way. Sadly. I could work a little harder at trying to find a job, but Husband won't graduate til Spring, and we both have jobs right now, so there's no real urgency. So why is it making me so anxious!? Who knows.

So... I've been getting irrationally upset at my husband, reading(and audiobooking) voraciously and going to the gym. I really like the iPod compatible machines at the gym that allow me to do the nike running site stuff. I had set a goal of 10 runs by 7/10 and I have three runs left to complete... but that is unlikely to happen since today is the 9th, and thus husband's birthday tomorrow we will be blinding onlookers at Whitewater with our vampire skintones. I could have gone today while Hubs is in class, but I'm blogging while waiting to see if a friend wants me to help her unnecessarily shave her dog. (I totally should have gone to the gym) Yesterday I joined the 201 miles in 2010 challenge on the nike running site. I ought to get the little nike+ dohickey so I can count the miles I walk too... That would certainly help up the milage, since right now I'm at 39 miles total on the elliptical/bikes. I have to log about 7 miles a week to make my goal by friday the 31st of December. Which is doable, since my average 30 minute "run" is about 2 miles.

And now for the knitting. On the needles: A new shawlette that I'm planning to gift to a friend of ours, it's got the same name as her partner so i thought it would be funny to knit it and give it to her. I'm knitting it up in an undyed white color and then plan on dying it once it's knitted. This may fail horribly. We'll have to wait and see. I'm knitting it on my new signature needles, which are really nice. Signature Circs. I have the stiletto points and they are heavenly. The other project is the dancing cranes stole which is slowly coming along. At 300 stiches across, it takes a while to get a row in. I'm a third of the way through the second pattern repeat of three total. The lacey lamb is nice to work with, although it tends to slip off the addi turbos needles I'm using. There's an ugly spot on one of the ends where I lost like 4 or 5 stitches, and had to try to invent what should have been there... oh well. No one will notice, and I'm not ripping back that much lace work. Call me lazy.

Happy Fourth!

2010-07-04T14:25:00.001-04:00

I hope every one has a great Fourth of July!

I'm wearing red, white and blue theme face makeup today. I can't photograph it worth crap, but it looks good.

Old skinmarket cream shadow as a base, white shadow over the entire lid, Sweet Libertine shade Madness on the lashline and crease. Royal blue liquid eyeliner. Lash Stiletto mascara. A random brozer over the high points of the face.

Revlon Spiced Brandy on the lips.

It's cute.

I've been reading the Painted Ladies blog. I love it. Despite the fact that I'm usually too lazy to do any make up.

Jealousy

2010-06-14T15:40:00.002-04:00

Sometimes it seems weird to me that I've been with the man who is now my husband for 11 years, and we still haven't really gotten off the ground... while other couples who've "put in less time" have started families.

Jealousy, I haz it.

I'm semi-actively job hunting. One job that I think looks really promising. Promising enough to solicit recommendation letters. It's in San Antonio, which would be nice in that it's somewhat close to Husband's best friend.

I've been applying to a number of jobs, but not heard back from any of them. I realize that's how the job market is these days, but it still seems like you're tossing parts of yourself into a void. A little depressing. Maybe a lot depressing.

I went to a job fair last week. My first serious one. I figured, I got the job I have now through heading to a job fair, so it couldn't hurt. I went mostly to talk to Clarke County School System, but they were a no-show. The GPSC was there, they do teacher certification here in GA, but they were so swamped that I never got a chance to talk to them. I did talk to the following:

The CIA

The Veteran's Benefits Administration (who pretty much sent me on my way as quick as they could)

Sherwin Williams (she accosted me...)

The Department of Transportation, Inspector General's office (applied for a federal career internship with them)

The Secret Service

Chick-fil-a

The Navy

Ren Fest!

2010-06-11T21:49:00.002-04:00

I wrote this on monday… and am only now posting it… blogfail.

Hubs and I went to the Ren Fest this past weekend. We had a great time.
I have an outfit that I bought back in high school, so I dressed for the occasion. Hubs doesn't have an outfit, so he didn't get to dress up. He also turned up his nose at every men's outfit we saw… so I don't hold out hope for him getting a ren costume anytime soon.

I left my stuff, except for my camera at home, mostly so I couldn't buy anything since we have some big bills coming up for the cars (insurance, registration). I love shopping at the ren fest, whereas Hubs could care less about the shopping, he wants to see all the shows.

We watched jousting, a birds of prey show, a trapeze demo, a comedy acrobatics/juggling act and the new horse show. We also visited the petting zoo section. Busy day!

We did my very favorite experience, visiting with the geese! I love those geese, they're so soft and cuddly. Although I did get nipped on accident this year.

We did do a little window shopping. We looked in the pirate ship at all the weaponry, and the leather stall. I went into the shop with the walking sticks and metal wall art, which I normally adore, because they have copper trees and leaves and other assorted things. This year they had wall ornaments of the things that I associate with my Gramma and I couldn't stay long in the shop. I didn't look too closely at any of the costuming or jewelry shops… sadly.

HUNBABA Mei Tai Baby Carrier Guest Giveawayy

2010-06-10T23:31:00.000-04:00

Neat giveaway on Grosgrain today. I'd love to win this one and gift it to my friend Pam, expecting a son in the fall.

HUNBABA Mei Tai Baby Carrier Guest Giveaway

Dressing up the new tech

2010-05-30T15:32:00.002-04:00

I replaced my mac book this week and feel somewhat guilty about it. I guess it's because I had a laptop that worked, but it will be quite useful for hub's class work. I haven't even opened the iPod touch that came with it... I have a nano...do I really need an iPod touch too? (The answer is no, but I got it anyway.) The campus bookstore also gave me a printer. That item we could actually use!

I like the new MBP, and sat and thought about the things I want to do differently with my new techbaby. I knew I wanted a hardshell case to protect his precious aluminum finish, but also a wrist rest cover for the same reason. The techtoddler's finish has been worn away in the time I've used it, so I ordered one of these in Brilliant Blue. Perhaps I should have gone with green.

Today Mom and I went looking for a hardbody case to protect my new baby from scratches. If only I had known how hard that would be! I ended up having to order one from apple.com. To get free shipping I ordered a shell for the iPod touch that came along with the MBP. Both of the covers are transparent... so I'm thinking maybe I need skins to jazz up the new tech. I like this one and the blue version... Perhaps I'll get the blue for the computer and green for the iPod.

ugh...

2010-05-24T19:31:00.001-04:00

I called in sick today. Yesterday evening I had another busted ovarian cyst. Intensely unpleasant.
I was hoping that this wouldn't be a regular thing. The first two years with the Mirena didn't have any of this nonsense. And we can't really conclusively say it's because of the Mirena, it's possible that this would have started anyway.

I joined up on Sparkpeople yesterday, since I'm trying to be more aware and active.

Pilates and Ponies

2010-05-18T21:44:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon was a bit of an adventure.

I took my first Pilates class. It was good. The instructor is an older woman, who isn't really the person I pictured when I imagined a Pilates instructor. She did a good deal of the instruction with her eyes closed, which was interesting. The things we did were fun (if you find exercise fun) and I'll be going to her Thursday class too. The only thing I'm a little dissapointed about is the room it's in. The new Mind and Body studio should be awesome considering how long it took, but it has some significant flaws. The mirrors don't go to the floor, so you can't check your position from the floor, the actual floor is epoxy, not body mats like in the matial arts room where the classes used to be held, and there's two doors that open to the outside of the building in the room. One of them is a regular heavy steel door with a window. The other is a roll top door, like a loading dock door. So you can hear a good deal of the traffic on River Road. Not very conducive to a space that you're supposed to meditate in. But other than those points it's nice, has fancy cabinets for the mats and props, has a water fountain in the room, and reed curtains over the main windows.
I signed up for the mind and body pass at the Ramsey Center, so I can go to any and all of the yoga/pilates classes over the summer. I'm kind of excited about that. We'll have to see how well I do to determine whether I'll get a pass for the Fall.

After Pilates I went out to the barn. I should have changed clothes at the Ramsey, but I hadn't thought that far ahead. Luckily for me no one was around to catch me. Because no one was there, I didn't ride. I decided to roach Badger's dreadlocked mane yesterday. I have been planning to do it for two weeks, I just hadn't done it. So now he has the equine equivalent of a buzz cut with bangs. After his haircut I took him out to the arena to do ground work. I had done ground work with him in the arena last time I was out, so I didn't think anything of it.

Apparently he did. He jumped through the arena fence. He pulled down the plastic panel, but I don't think he's the first to go through the fence there, since it came down so easily, and the lower panel was already down. I rigged it back up and I caught him again and brought him back. As I went to go get the longe whip, he went under the fence. Jerk!
I wasn't going to let him get away with not working, so I moved the pony out of the round pen and worked him in the round pen for a little while. Then set him back in the pasture. As I walked back to the pasture the horses all welcomed each other. I had to snap a picture of how they arranged themselves.

Badger and the young horses at the barn have a funny relationship. They love him for some reason.

Graduation.

2010-05-10T17:09:00.002-04:00

It's pretty much official (despite the fact that one of my grades still isn't posted), I am a college graduate twice over.

Saturday May 8th, along with the rest of the folks who saw fit to show up, I graduated with my M.Ed. It was pretty entertaining. Academic regalia makes it look like a convening of a wizard's council, and President Adams does do this weird thing where he confers the degrees, and it's pretty much like he magically bestows upon you your degree. Then you get to walk, they read your name out and everything. Way better than undergrad (which I did not attend).

The worst part about graduation is that now I'm all anxious about job hunting. I haven't really seen all that much I'm interested in, and what I have applied for I haven't heard back from. I need to chill out.
The other worst part, is that despite the fact that as graduation drew nearer, everyone would ask if I were going to pursue a Ph.D and I staunchly said "Oh Hell No." ... I may be having second thoughts. So far I think my plan is that if I don't get hired away from UGA by when I would need to apply for a Ph.D program and I'm still interested, I'll apply. I don't know what program I'd be looking for, but I'm sure that my Master's advisor could point me in the right direction.

Welcome to the world, little girl!

2010-05-08T20:10:00.004-04:00

I had the most amazing experience Friday. I got to see a brand new life come into the world.
It was way faster than most births I think. She only had to push maybe twice and Melanie Ilyssa was out in the world.
Mom was induced early that morning and the labor went well, only about 6 hours of prep labor and less than 10 minutes of pushing.
Originally I wasn't even going to be there, but the parents were grateful for the mediation I did during the birth of their first that they invited me to hang out with them until it was time to push. Mom decided the night before that she'd let me stay, but no one told me, so when I couldn't get out of the room I was a little worried. I tried really hard not to look, but seriously... it's like an attention sucking vortex. When they propped her up to prepare her to push (she'd gotten an epidural), the head was already showing. One good push and her head was out, and then the rest of her slipped out.

Precious isn't she:

Her older sister was confused and then very displeased to see someone new in Mom's arms. She was much happier when Dad held Mellie.

Wylie goes to the vet... again.

2010-05-03T12:10:00.001-04:00

Those of you on FaceBook already know that my little dog is having some problems. Last Wednesday, after a few days of Wylie not acting quite right we decided he really needed to go to the vet.
He was subdued, wouldn’t run, didn’t want to walk and would cry when we lifted him, eating and drinking and otherwise normal, just obviously in pain and not himself.

Once we got to the vet, they examined him and determined that this time it really was his back. Last time we rushed him to the vet, for the cat pellet incident, we were really worried it was his back. This time, even though in hindsight it was pretty obvious, we really didn’t think it was a back problem. I waited impatiently for the techs to finish taking blood and trimming his nails. They brought him back and we got Dr. Dodd that day. I was happy because I like her very much, she did her exam on a towel on the floor so he could be more comfortable and slide less. He’s never all that good at the vets, but he bit poor Dr. Dodd when she reached the spot he’s having trouble with during the exam.

So he’s been diagnosed with throacolumbar Intervertebral Disc Disease, meaning that he has an injury at the disc between the vertebra where the last vertebra of his rib cage meets the first vertebra of his spine. Dr. Dodd did some acupuncture, which was entertaining until Wylie attempted to bite her again. Sigh. He is now on an intensive drug regimen that involves a painkiller and a muscle relaxant twice a day and strict crate rest for the next 4-6 weeks. Because there was no loss of function, they are holding out on steroids. This crate rest regimen is going to be hard on all of us, since none of us are used to crating him at any time, and now he is supposed to be crated at all times, unless he’s on a potty break. But this is incredibly important for helping him to heal and keep function in his back half.

The first two hours after his diagnosis I cried a few times, he only just turned 6. Literally, his birthday is April 30th. IVDD usually crops up between 4 and 8 years of age… but I just thought he’d have longer before we had to worry about this. I also couldn’t help but go over all the things we should have done differently or better, that could have prevented this. I know it doesn’t really help, but what can you do. I felt so bad for my poor little dog, since we usually pick him up by the “armpits” which causes his back to flex at the spot that’s injured now, and leaves the rest of his weight to hang from that spot.

Please think good thoughts for my bratty little dog over the next few weeks.

Update!

2010-05-03T12:09:00.001-04:00

I have been buuuusy.

I celebrated Ashley’s birthday.
I went to Stitches South.
I passed my portfolio defense.
I took a trip out to the California coastline with my Mom to scatter my Gramma’s ashes.

I managed to be the very first person to show up to Ashley’s birthday dinner, which was hilarious, since I am late to pretty much everything. I think we all had a great time, and we actually took some good pictures.

Stitches South was a blast. I took two classes, one was better than the other, but both were useful. Lily Chin’s class was hilarious, because she is hilarious. And now I know how to fit sweaters for “the boobies.” She used that phrase early and often thorugh out the class.
The vendor section was amazing, and I got some fun goodies along with my graduation present. One of these: Fantasia
I can’t find a pic of the finish I got. It’s the opposite of the finish in all the pictures of the wheel, so the dark part, is light and the rest is walnut finish. I picked up yarn for two specific projects and two lovely lace weight yarns.
I also wore my modified Haruni in Lotus Yarns Aura “Hedy”. People stopped me to ask about it. Suffice it to say I was proud. I posted the mods I made to my Rav Project page and my project has 17 favorites at last count and 5 helpful votes!
Link to Project Page

I passed my portfolio defense, and it wasn’t that terrible. I was a little nervous, but it was like a scarier version of a job interview. So on May 8th, at 10 am I’ll be graduating. Any one who wants to watch can show up at Stegman Coliseum. I’ll be one of the folks in a cap and gown, with a light blue hood (which isn’t actually a hood, it’s more like a neck sash).

I am writing this from a hotel on the beach in Monterey County California (and on the flight back home). Mom and I came out here Thursday, and I’m headed back Sunday. Mom is going to stay til Wednesday and visit with friends. I’ve done a lot of driving on California 1, which traces along the coast. The views have been spectacular. We’ve gone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row, Pacific Grove, Big Sur, and Half Moon Bay. Our hotel has been nice, not super fancy, but right on the beach. What more can you ask for?

It’s been a really great trip overall. The California coastline is gorgeous and we did a lot of driving up and down CA 1, which snakes along the coast and offers some really great views. We had dinner at the Fisherman’s Wharf our first night, and got to see my favorite pacific costal denizens. Sea lions. Big basking sea lions, hanging out on a platform that must have been built for them.
Originally we were going to do the service at sea our first day there, but the ocean conditions weren’t good. So mom and I headed to a spot my grandparents took me to regularly on my visits, the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Mom and I enjoyed the seahorse exhibit and watched otters and a sea lion or two out in the ocean through the free viewers on the decks of the aquarium. Those of you on FaceBook have probably already seen the picture my Mom insisted on getting after seeing other moms snap pictures of their kids in that spot.
We walked the cannery row, had lunch at The Fish Hopper, which was excellent, picked up chocolate for my dad at Ghiardelli, but didn’t get anything for ourselves strangely enough, and then picked up a Monterey sweatshirt and a pashmina. I didn’t really think about what the temperatures would be like when I was packing. I was a little distracted, but I’ll talk about that in a separate blog post. It was pretty chilly the entire time we were visiting, but not too cold. I also picked up a sea lion charm on Cannery Row, to remember the trip by.
After Cannery Row we headed down CA 1 to Big Sur. We stopped at Big Sur Bakery, but apparently that’s more of a morning stop, because they had slim pickings. We really enjoyed the scenery on the drive, I thought about whether my poor husband would have enjoyed the drive or not. He seriously dislikes heights and is iffy driving the North Georgia mountains, so being about to drive straight off CA 1 into the ocean would probably have freaked him out. We picked up a little dinner at the grocery store, some sourdough bread, butter, a salad, havarti cheese and bay shrimp. It was a pretty good dinner! I took a long walk on the beach, and managed to get in 11,000 steps recorded on the iPod nano pedometer that day. I was pretty proud of that, sine I’ve been slacking on the gym, like whoa!
The beach walk was cooold, but my new sweatshirt and pashmina served me well. I used the pashmina as a headscarf to keep my hair from tangling and whipping my eyes. I entertained myself by styling the pashmina in different ways, but settled on a style that I thought actually looked pretty good.

The next day we went out on the boat to scatter my grandmother’s ashes. The wind wasn’t as bad as it had been earlier in the trip so the ocean was calmer, and neither my mom nor I worried about seasickness… but apparently we should have. Both of us eventually got really queasy and rough feeling. The trip out of the harbor had lots of wildlife to watch, tons of birds, a collection of otters and some sunning sea lions. Then once we were out on the water the swells were pretty big, and at first it was fun. The strange thing for both mom and I was that the sea-sickness showed up once we were out of the big swells and into the calmer open ocean.
The actual scattering was … anticlimactic. We didn’t say anything, but my gramma wouldn’t have wanted us to. I didn’t feel sad during the scattering, but instead would feel it creep in, in other spots of the trip. Like when we went to Lover’s Point Park in Monterey, a place my grandparents brought me to and one I remember relatively well, or when my mom and I stopped at a strawberry farm’s shop. I think I will be saddest when my birthday rolls around. I’ve never had a birthday with out her before.
After we got off the boat and sat in the car to recover, we headed the opposite way on CA 1 and went out to the town of Half Moon Bay. During both drives I was surprised by the amount of people on bicycles. We didn’t head to the beach or even the actual Half Moon Bay, I thought it would upset my Mom, since it’s where they scattered my Grandfather’s ashes a few years back. I thought the day had been hard enough for both of us, so we had lunch there, and stopped in both the yarn shop and the feed store. Nothing like yarn and chicks, right? On the drive back to Monterey, we stopped at a Strawberry farm stand and got jam, and desserts. I don’t touch jam, but the desserts were good.
Once we got back to Monterey we shipped the empty urn and the jam back home, and then went to Lover’s Point Park. We walked around the park and I climbed a few rocks. As a kid, I once got in big trouble with my Grandfather at Lover’s Point Park. I was always, always climbing on the rocks out there, looking for tidepools and just enjoying myself. One day I climbed out of sight and he couldn’t find me, when I finally got back to the beach he was furious. I could not figure out why, since I hadn’t been lost. Looking back on it now, I can totally sympathize with him and I wouldn’t have handled it half as well as he did. There are signs in the park saying that currents can be unpredictable and life threatening, and if you can’t find your grandchild… that’s incredibly worrisome.
While mom and I were at Lover’s Point Park we got a fun treat of being able to see a sea lion play and relax in the surf, pretty close to where we were perched on the rocks. Later on what might have been the same sea lion was really close to the LPP beach, but I don’t think anyone on the beach actually noticed.
We ate dinner at a little tiny Mexican restaurant near the hotel, and it was delish. I had crab enchiladas and they were really good. We took a walk on the beach to get our 10,000 steps since we were pretty close. There were hundreds of birds just coasting in the wind above the surf, we couldn’t really tell why though. More birds than I’ve ever seen in one place on the shore… it was a little unnerving. But a fun end to our trip.

I have decided I have very little love for the San Francisco Airport. It has no good vendors for food to bring on the plane like Atlanta does, and doesn’t have many food options at all otherwise. While I’d love to live in Monterey county or one of the surrounding counties, it’s highly unlikely at least I can console myself with the knowledge that their airport sucks. There are a surprising amount of farms, right up on the coast. There was a 20 acre farm for sale on the drive up to Half Moon Bay, if I win the lottery in the next few weeks… I’m there.

One step closer

2010-04-12T15:11:00.001-04:00

Today, I sent in my portfolio draft for my advisor to review.
I have my oral exams, a paper and a class project left.

2010-03-28T18:53:00.002-04:00

Knitting
I still haven't finished the modified haruni. I'm pretty close, eight rows left til the crochet cast off. I think it'll look good. No idea what I'll knit next. Maybe soakers.

School
I need to rework my key learning papers, I didn't pay close enough attention to what they were supposed to be and didn't link them back to my classes, activities and stuff well enough. Also I have some form I have to resubmit, since despite the fact that the two classes are interchangeable, and it's four letters, I have to resubmit an entire change of whatever form and I think in the exact same way as before... ugh.
I also need to pull together my applied project. ick. My oral exam is the 26th. After that, if it goes well, I will be ready to graduate.

Pets
Badger's proud flesh is back... I hadn't been going out to the barn and of course it's back. The vet is going to have to come back out and remove it again, but Gina is having the vet out in the next week or two anyway for their annual vax and coggins blood tests. I'll be going out daily to scrub the site and apply caustic powder.
I had to pop by the Tractor Supply to pick up more bandaging and wonder dust, and I adore that store. They had live chicks and ducklings in the store, and they are soooo cute. One day I'll get some poultry of my own. I'd love to have some laying chickens for fresh eggs and a few just to be pretty.

Spring has begun

2010-03-19T14:45:00.001-04:00

I honestly thing Spring is my favorite season. I love the end of March and the month of April. Everything starts to come to life and blossom. The campus is looking decidedly lovely, lately and the flora has only just begun to wake up.

I've been pretty busy of late. My grandmother passed away on the 28th of February. I'm still in that surreal phase, where it doesn't really seem like she's gone. Logically, I know she is, but emotionally it hasn't hit me yet. Despite the fact that I have inherited a great deal of her furniture, and some of her jewelry. I suspect it will hit at some big milestone that I would have wanted her to witness, or maybe my birthday when I don't get a card with her familiar handwriting in it and some money, "to get yourself something."

I participated in an Emory Science and Safety course on trainer preparation, the week of the 1st. I aced the written exam. (I am about to graduate with a master's in Adult Ed. I'd better have) I also did pretty well on the practical sections. Points off for technology hiccups :(
It was hard, but a good distraction from the loss.

I have two lovely shawlettes and a third on the needles, that I haven't worked on in a week... whoops.

I also went to OSU and interviewed for a position there. I haven't heard a word from them since. Not even a reply to my thank you note. Not promising, I guess. But I think the interview went well anyway and I enjoyed it immensely actually. Ohio isn't terribly pretty, but it's nice enough.

And that's what I've been up to lately. The weather today is spectacular so I think I'll drag a lawn chair out into the side yard and read my newest kindle book, out in the delightful weather.

I will try to post pictures of the finished shawls, maybe tomorrow, they are sitting in my camera just waiting to be put up.

Ravelymics event complete!

2010-02-25T14:48:00.002-05:00

I finished Haruni yesterday. I'm pretty proud of my self for finishing it before the olympics ended, I really didn't think I would do it. I liked the pattern quite a bit, and may even knit it again, although possibly altering the center. Mostly I did it to use up stash yarn that I've had for aaaages. I'm not really that fond of the colors, so I may give it to an HROD instructor after I graduate. LOL.

I plan to block both Haruni and Ishbel while I'm staying with my parents for the Train the Trainer course. I'm getting a little nervous about the course, it's been a long time since I was a student of the program and I'm totally scared of the practical stuff. What kind of practical can a trainer really have... I suppose I'll find out. I'll be bringing the next shawlette I'm working on with me too.

I'm on a shawlette kick apparently.
I'm knitting on Travelling Woman, done up in Lotus Yarns Aura, in the Hedy colorway. Hedy is the color of new spring leaves, and Aura has little strands of actual silver shot through it, so it's quite pretty. The name of the colorway reminded me of my Daddy. He has a distinct love of old movies, and Hedy Lamar has been in a few that we have watched together. TW has a stockinette center panel, which I like, although it's a tad boring to actually knit. I'm slowly but surely plugging along to get to the lace edging.

Outside of knitting life isn't as peachy. Some areas seem to be resolving but others are still in limbo. I may or may not discuss them later, but for now they just bring me down, so I'm not going to write about them.

Ponies and yarn

2010-02-18T22:06:00.003-05:00

Badger is doing well, his leg is still pretty gross looking but everyone says it's looking really good.
We did some longe line work today and I was shocked at how well behaved he was. Not so good with his ground maneuvers, but still over all a good day.

I'n working on two knitting projects right now, a ravelympics project, Haruni and another one, Travelling Woman. Both are triangular shawlettes, one less complicated than the other. I really like Haruni, I've memorized the lace repeat and so it's going well. Travelling woman is straight stikinette til a certain pint where it has a scalloped stockinette lace pattern.

I just finished an Ishbel, last week in a beautiful peachy pink dyed by a friend (I'm using her yarn for the TW too). I'm donating it to my friend Lindsay for fundraising for the Susan G Komen foundation's 3 day walk. She has to raise enough to participate and I'm hoping that if she raffles this off, she'll be able to get closer to her fundraising goal. It still needs to be blocked, and then I'll post pictures of it. I'm going to try to block it Saturday.

Snow!

2010-02-15T12:07:00.006-05:00

Since I live in the south, even though a good deal of my family lives in the north, I'm not stranger to it and have seen it and interacted with it many times before, snow is a big deal.
It snowed pretty much everywhere Friday. Some reports say it is the first time in recorded US history that every state has reported snow on the ground.
I got some fun pictures and hung out with my recuperating horse.

Snow falling, and I have a warm horse to cuddle.

The funny thing about snow and horses, their coats usually insulate them so well that snow takes a while to melt on their backs. Badger only looks wet because I had him in the barn to scrub out his wound and rebandage it.

I have pictures of the wound... but I'm not going to share them.

His bandage is duct/duck taped on because 1) he started trying to remove it in his stall 2) he is now out at pasture and enjoys hanging out in thickets that would catch any elasticon bandaging that had come unstuck.

I think this is one of my favorite pictures of him, ever. He just looks so handsome.

and of course... I can't resist close up pictures of horse eyes. I don't know what it is, I just love them.

I am one of those people my poor grocery store employed husband hates. The folks that go to the grocery store during inclement weather. Honestly, I didn't really see the snow as inclement weather. It snows like this all the time in other places and people don't quit their lives for the day. But in the south people loose their heads and race to the grocery store to buy bread and milk(along with other groceries). I've never quite figured out the milk thing... if there were really going to be a disaster, wouldn't you want bottled water?
Any way, I snapped some pictures on the way home when I could stop the car with out inhibiting drivers behind me.

Wylie is mostly ambivalent about snow.

Poor Bager

2010-02-05T14:45:00.001-05:00

So badger had to have minor surgery this week.

At some point last month he cut his leg. No big deal, really. When I went to pay board for February and managed to find him in the woods I realized there was something odd about his leg. When I got him out of the woods and rinsed off, I realized he had developed proud flesh.

Proud flesh is a condition that horses occasionally get where the healing goes haywire and the new tissue grows outwards from the original wound. Suffice it to say, it's really gross.

Dr. S had to come out and slice it off, which was interesting and really bloody. Badger is a bit of a cheap drunk. I was tickled watching him sway down the barn aisle headed back to his stall in his pretty pink bandage.

He's not too peeved about being cooped up in the barn, since he's realized that he doesn't have to watch out at feeding time, his food is his and there's hay a plenty. At some point next week, we will have to start scrubbing the wound site to prevent more proud flesh from cropping up. I'm not looking forward to it one bit.

Interviews

2010-01-22T15:19:00.001-05:00

I interviewed for a job today. Not sure exactly how it went.

I have another interview on Monday. I'm really hoping I get offered one of them, just so I can start my career.

We'll see.

In other news, I have found the best and most delicious way to cook brussels sprouts ever.

Tasty Kitchen Recipe

Seriously. I wasn't even sure I would eat brussels sprouts, and I love them prepared this way! We had then with oven fried chicken yesterday. Yum.

Homecooked Deliciousness.

2010-01-14T12:18:00.006-05:00

Braised Beef Cannelloni

I cooked up this recipe myself and it is delicious. And easy.

If you like having your slowcooker do most of the cooking, like beef and like italian food, it's for you. It's based off of a dish that is no longer on the menu at Maggiano's that was a family favorite.

Try it out. It's delish!

Darkside cowl

2010-01-09T18:46:00.005-05:00

(I still hate how blogger is doing pictures)

I've finished up the Darkside Cowl, knit up with the yarn my brother gave me for christmas.

I love this thing. Not only is the yarn delicious cashmere, it's a really lovely colorway. It has knit up so lovely looking.

It's a pretty simple pattern to memorize and work through, and I knit up the entire ball, so the cowl is slightly longer than my forearm, and probably double the length it's meant to be.

But I like that, because I can wear it doubled over on my neck and be extra warm. It is stretchy enough to wear as a hat, if you tuck in the extra length at the top. I was expecting to be able to wear it doubled over as a head band, but it's too thick to do that and my hair looks awful if I do.

I really love that the cowl matches my new purse. LOL.

Butter!

2009-12-31T23:27:00.002-05:00

I don't like the way blogger is doing pictures lately. :(

But in other more exciting news... I made BUTTER. Real butter. In my house, by hand. I'm still boggling about it.

I got a little book about making cheese, butter and yogurt for christmas and had some (I only used 1 Tbs) left over heavy whipping cream from cookies a while back, that was just waiting around to spoil, and decided to try butter, since I noticed last week you used heavy whipping cream for it. I wasn't sure if the ultra pasturized stuff would work, but it does.

So here are all the items I used:

Heavy whipping cream

A quart sized mason jar, any larger air tight vessel will work

A spoon

A tupperware for the butter

The measuring cup has the poured off butter-milk in it.

I didn't get pictures of this part but be glad, I am a hot mess right now, not having had to leave the house but to drop off and pick up my husband at work.

Pour the heavy whipping cream in to the jar.

Put the top on the jar.

Shake it till you have butter.

Seriously, that's all you do! It took me less than 10 minutes. If you have kids... make them assist. My biceps are a little sore from all the shaking, but I have butter!

Once you have butter solids in your jar, pour off the liquid. It's pretty much milk. You can keep it for cooking, or discard it. I kept it. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it yet.

Once the liquid is drained off spoon the solids into your tupperware and squish the milk out of the butter. This is the most time intensive part of butter making. I think you could do this with butter cloth, but I don't have any. And the spoon pressing is easy enough.

Add salt if you want salted butter, and you're done!

Happy new year.

2009-12-31T21:26:00.001-05:00

To all my friends and readers:

May the coming year bring out the best in you and bring the best to you!

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-29T17:31:00.002-05:00

The holidays were pretty good in our neck of the woods. We had a lovely Christmas eve dinner with husband's family. I enjoy getting to see my cousin-in-law's babies. They are hilarious, and occasionally terribly behaved. But quite sweet. Ethan(2yo) doesn't know whether or not he wants to like me, because I don't let him get away with dangerous misbehavior, that his Pop does. Eli(1yo) is sweet and silly, but sometimes has an attitude. They got a haul and kept deciding their brother's toy looked better.
We had chili for dinner and except for my sister in law leaving her cell phone on the dinner table and texting on it every 10 minutes, dinner was lovely. There was a very good blueberry crumble for dessert.
I laughed pretty hard when one of the older cousins kept asking SIL if she was "sexting." SIL would get really flustered and deny it, and put the phone down for a little while. I should probably cut her some slack since it's her first boyfriend, but she's 20 years old and I expect better manners at a family function.
(I have decided that our children will not be able to use cell phones at family functions, or at the table)

I got a fun new make up bag set, a nice sweater in a color that I wouldn't have bought for myself, and a bottle of wine.

We did Christmas morning at Husband's Nana's house. Husband surprised me with Wii Fit Plus. I also got Up on DVD, Trauma Center, Second Opinion for the Wii, a set of makeup brushes and a cookie press. I also got myself a few books, including The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and some Sweet Libertine eyeshadows.
Hubs got food, games and a surprise set of splatter screens from me.
We headed to Atlanta to celebrate with my parents who gave us Christmas money. My brother gave me some lovely cashmere yarn. The best part of Christmas with my parents was how much my brother and Mom liked their presents. I set up a collage frame of photos from the Alaska trip for my Momma and knit up fliptop gloves for my brother.

I haven't managed to leave Atlanta yet, it's just so pleasant being at home with my family. Poor hubs left on the 25th, since he had to work.

I made spritz cookies with the cookie press last night. I'll throw a picture post on the blog soon.

The longest journeys

2009-12-21T19:05:00.004-05:00

are made up of small steps.

I thought of my fourth Key Learning topic for my portfolio! Hooray.

The four topics are:

Discovering HROD (which will talk about the definitions and descriptions of HROD)
The difficulty of change and in turn the management of organizational change
The spectrum of adult learning styles
Walking the line between conventional training and online and technology enhanced training.

I'm actually sort of excited to write about them. I've written some sort of paper or done course work for each topic, so I need to revisit those papers this week.

I also need to call Drs Ruona and Hill about my PR.

Hooray for knitting

2009-12-21T11:50:00.003-05:00

So I finally got to give my sister in law the sweater I knit up for her. I was pretty worried it wouldn't fit, since it was tight on me, but it fit her fine and she said that she loved it.
It was exciting seeing someone walk around in a garment I made for them.

Ravelry link

I need to knit me one, but with out the owls on the yoke. The sweater knit up pretty quickly, in yarn that wasn't expensive, so I honestly could make myself one.

I also finished the knitting for the second knitted christmas present I'm giving this year. I need to go pick out buttons for it and weave in the ends. It is another cross your fingers and hope it fits project, since this gift giver didn't know about the present either.
I have enough yarn to knit up a larger size and send these off to another eager recipient, who would cherish the knit gift and definitely fit.

I'm thinking of taking up the commitment to write 15 minutes everyday. Since I have so much writing to do. And no the blog writing doesn't count, but perhaps once my portfolio and applied project are completed I could switch over to 15 minutes for the blog.
A fellow UGALLA member sent that out that idea from a writers list serv and it really is a good idea. It would help me stay on task and maybe get finished faster. Perhaps I should start today.

On track

2009-12-18T11:25:00.001-05:00

I met with my graduate advisor this morning. So far I am on track for graduation, but I have a lot to get done this semester. I may be off track pretty quick.
I'm a little worried... but mostly confident that I can manage.
I will be in WFED 7110, Strategic HROD this semester. My last class, and one of the most challenging in our program.
I have my applied project, which is going to be a blended evaluation of my internship product. The applied project has three deliverables, the literature review, the evaluation plan and the evaluation report. Dr. Sandmann wants it to be done by March 1, along with the third big thing for this semester: My portfolio and exit interview.
So much to do in only 2 months.
I have to write 5 three to five page papers on key learnings gleaned during my program of study, one of them about my internship. I also need to write an autobiographical statement (they suggest a revisit of the personal statement you used in applying to the program), and a explication of my personal beliefs about Human Resource and Organizational Development.

Dr. Sandmann suggests I get started when ever I feel most comfortable... I wish I had started last year.

Luckily I already have a plan for the key learning papers. Over the break I'm going to read over the papers I've written in my classes and the papers I enjoyed writing will be the key learnings I'll write about.
I already have some ideas on what to write about, discovering and defining HROD and managing change, learnings from my two favorite classes... I have two more to dig up and write about though.
Wish me luck.

For this week I need to write up my applied project contract and fill out my program of study and application for graduation. oh... and a timeline for my Applied Project.

whew!

I <3 iGoogle

2009-12-16T14:53:00.001-05:00

So I heart iGoogle.

All the widgets and such that allow me to multitask to all my beloved social network sites from one single portal, they make me happy.

I finally went through the trouble of moving the blog ownership over to my gmail account, so that I can blog from iGoogle.
I also facebook, twitter, check google reader, gmail, my ill-kept to do list, and the weather, and occasionally play sudoku or do the NYT crossword. All on one page. I love it.

Another thing I love: The Motorola Droid.
I got one this weekend and am already in love with it. The only thing it doesn't have going for it is that it staunchly refuses to connect to my ugamail. But... I can go on the web on the phone to check that if it's that important (which it isn't).
It has the crazy app market, just like an iPhone. There's all sorts of ridiculous programs you can add to the phone. I've added a task manger that is crazy complicated, it has goals, actions and a task to do list that all inter connect and are supposed to help me stay organized. We'll just see about that one. I also added sudoku, but I'm thinking of removing it, because I don't need to waste phone battery playing sudoku, although more because it makes Scott want to take my phone to play sudoku. (I don't share well. and I don't plan on working on that with my brand new phone. Sorry Hubs.)
There are barcode reading apps that price check for you, or in one case... find the nutritional value of food items for you. My head is still spinning on that one.
I love the touch screen but I have a hard time with some of the button placement. I accidentally press things that I don't mean to and interrupt myself with searches. Whoops.

Google is going to take over the world. And I don't know that I will mind. They're pretty awesome.

Turkey.

2009-12-06T19:02:00.002-05:00

I roasted my first Turkey yesterday. I'm not sure why people make it out to be so hard to do. It really isn't at all. I should have taken pictures but... I didn't. Sorry!

Turkeys were on super sale at the Kroger, and we didn't get any leftovers, since we had to fly home, so I picked one up and decided I'd do a turkey for us.

I thawed the thing for three days and followed Alton Brown's recipe for roasting a turkey. I didn't brine it, but followed the rest of the recipe. Stuffing the bird with chunks of apple and onion, half a stick of cinnamon, two sprigs of rosemary and some tyme leaves. I made way more stuffing than the bird needed, so I put the rest of it around the sides of the bird in the roasting pan. I oiled it up and hefted it into the oven. It roasted for about 3 hours and looked awesome once it was done. It was juicy and tender and yum. I didn't make regular dressing, since I (don't hate me) don't like dressing/stuffing/what ever name it goes by in other necks of the woods.

I also made scratch smashed potatoes for us. Smashed potatoes is whole potatoes boiled and then smashed up with the skin on. Delish.

So if you've been intimidated by roasting turkey... don't be. It's not hard. A little gross if you don't like having to pull out the giblets.

I'm off to eat leftovers. :)

Thanksgiving update

2009-12-06T18:41:00.002-05:00

Wow, it's been a while huh?

Well husbeast and I headed to the New Jersey shore to visit with my father's side of the family.

This is the rental house we stayed in for the week. The same one we stayed in last year.

Husbeast, me, my sister and my father went to a Jimmy Buffett concert at Madison Square Garden in NYC. It was great. I grew up listening to Jimmy and had never been to one of his concerts before. We had a blast, got crazy light up cups... which I left in NJ :( and got to see all sorts of entertaining foolishness from the folks around us.

Thanksgiving dinner was fun, we had my Aunt and her family, my great uncle and his wife and young son, and the Loftus family over and everyone had a great time.

(I'm not sure why I'm giving Hubs "the look")

The last day we took family pictures.

We had a good time and I came home with a very belated wedding present. My great grandmother's tea set. It looks like this:

Which sadly is missing it's teapot, creamer and sugar bowl, but I did find replacements online. I asked for them for christmas... but if I don't get them I'll probably use christmas money to finish the set.
I'm so thrilled to have her tea set, it means a lot to me, despite the fact that I don't even drink tea. It's so nice to have somethign that was hers. Once we're in a real house and have more income than we do now, I'll get a china hutch to display it in.

Brown sugar shortbread

2009-11-18T23:31:00.006-05:00

So I made some very delicious brown sugar shortbread from the Cook's Illustrated Holiday Baking Issue.

I decided to share my baking adventure with you so you can try the deliciousness yourself.

You'll need a springform pan, two sticks of butter, one cup of light brown sugar, two cups of flour, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1/4th teaspoon of ground cinnamon, pictured below.

You'll also need baking spray or a pat of butter to grease the pan, a cookie sheet, a small knife and your oven cranked to 325 degrees.

CI recommends an electric mixer for this recipe, and shortbread does tend to turn out better with a mixer. I'm going to give the mixer reccs.
Cream the butter at a medium speed for a minute and half, the butter should be fluffy and light yellow.

Add light brown sugar to the butter and mix on medium speed for a minute.

This is what it'll look like after the minute is up.

Add the salt to your flour. I didn't mix it in, and the shortbread turned out fine.

Add the flour and salt to the brown sugar-butter mixture and mix on low. Mix it only until the flour is just incorporated.

Almost there

It's ready. The dough is just holding together, and is no longer sticking to the bowl.

Grease the springform pan. You could have done this earlier...

I love this spatula paddle attachment, I highly recommend it. If you really wanted to, you could scrape all the dough off the paddle... or you could do what I do: reserve this dough for eating while the main event is baking.

Pour your dough into your prepared springform pan. It's less like pouring and more like dumping the dough into the pan.

Ah... beautiful. I love how little is left in the bowl.

It'll look a little funny in the pan. But you'll fix that in the next step.

Press down the shortbread dough. I do it with my hand, but CI wants you to do it with the bottom of a ramekin and then a spoon for the very edges. You can press it down how ever you like.

Remember the sugar and cinnamon? Mix those together and sprinkle them evenly over the dough.

Look how lovely. I did a terrible job of even sprinkling, so I had to run my hand over the dough a few times to even it out...

Slice up your dough before baking. Trust me. Unless you want to eat the whole round yourself, or serve it in large uneven chunks.

Put the springform pan on a cookie sheet to help it bake correctly. Don't ask me why it works. I don't know.

Bake the dough for 55 minutes to an hour. (Note: do not leave your oven on pre-heat like I did.) It should be golden brown and slightly soft in the center.
Remove the sides of the pan, and let the shortbread cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Once the ten minutes are up, slide the shortbread to a cutting board or don't if you aren't all that worried about the bottom of your springform pan, I didn't. Cut the shortbread along the lines you made before baking it.

Ah delicious! (A little over brown... due to my forgetting to change the oven setting to bake.)

And lastly in the photo craziness:
My new earrings:
I love them.

Denver

2009-11-14T21:25:00.002-05:00

I've been pretty busy lately!

I just got back from Denver, Colorado. I was out there for the AALAS National Meeting, and it went well. As usual I didn't get to too many talks. Only one that I actually paid attention to. It was pretty good, not as good as I wanted it to be, but still good. It was on training with non-native speakers. I don't have much experience with non-native speakers as actual employees, as we don't have any, but we do have a lot of research staff that we have to interact with that are non-native speakers. So there were some useful points.

I volunteered for AREA again this year. AREA stands for Animal Research Education and Awareness. It's a program where local middle or high school classrooms come to the national meeting and they get to learn about our field. Volunteers lead groups through the exhibit hall so that they can stop at participating vendor booths to get the answers to questions on an exam they are given, or get giveaways, or see demos. I volunteered at the spur of the moment last year, since they needed folks and volunteered again this year, since I liked it last year and think it's an important cause. I liked my group of kids this year, they were very polite and interested. One girl held back and didn't really like it, but she and I talked at the end and I gave her a few things to think about. It's an eye opening experience for the kids, who probably have never thought much about it, or if they have have misconceptions about animal research. I enjoy watching them learn new things about my field and see that it isn't terrible and horrifying.

We went to some fun parties and had some good dinners. We went to the Buckhorn Exchange one night and we got to try Rocky Mountain Oysters. They were actually pretty good. They were just like chewy fried bits. We also had antelope sausage, bison sausage, duck breast, fried alligator tail, and elk and bison in red wine gravy. All of it was delicious. We also went to BD's Mongolian Grill, which was awesome custom stir fry.

Denver itself was fairly nice, the weather was very pleasant. The hotel had an outdoor hot tub that we spent quite a bit of our downtime in. The elevators in the hotel had these big screens in the back wall that played these odd scenes, and it wasn't until the third day that we realized they had audio too. One scene was a black and white video of a truck stop in the rain and it had audio of people in the cafe talking. It was very disturbing, even after we realized where the voices were coming from.
We also went to the zoo at the end of the week and the Denver Zoo has the creepiest, ugliest and most nightmare inducing collection of animals I've seen. Aye-ayes... are creepy in person. They had a ton of ugly birds. The striped hyenas however were horrifying, like they were plotting to eat your soul. They were faster than they looked like they should be, and the big one just stood on the edge of the exhibit and stared at us.

As you may have seen in my twitter feed, I posted myself on the career board. I wasn't going to, but then I decided it couldn't hurt. I didn't get contacted(well... I didn't check on the last day), but there was a listing for a training coordinator position at Ohio State. I talked to Husbeast and he agreed that I might as well contact them. So I did. I talked to the contact that was attending the meeting and got more info from their HR contact on Friday. I've sent my CV, so we'll see what happens.

UGA is hiring for their training coordinator position too. I finished my cover letter for that while I was in Denver and will be finishing up that application this week.

SAFF 09

2009-10-26T12:15:00.002-04:00

My mom and I headed up to North Carolina this past weekend to attend our second Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival.
We had a great time. We left Friday morning, drove about 3 hours to Fletcher (which is near Asheville), and arrived at the WNC Ag Center around 2 pm. The drive was gorgeous most of the way, despite the crazy fog and mist that we went trough during some parts of the drive. The mountains are all dressed up in red and gold, this time of year so the driving in NC and North Georgia is a real treat.
We also stopped at a funny little roadside fruit market and bought apples and a little tiny loaf of pumpkin spice bread.

It was raining when we got there so we headed into the big arena first, and looked at all the vendors on the upper level. I have to look at everything before I’ll buy anything, just in case. I’m not sure why I’m like that but there’s no changing it. Mom doesn’t follow that rule.
I snagged a sample piece of goat’s milk fudge (delish!) as we walked the upper level and ogled all the yarn and fiber vendors. Mom bought a piece of pottery to serve as a coaster for her desk at work and some really pretty autumn colored yarn from The Sanguine Gryphon. I picked up two skeins of Blue Faced Leicester yarn from Babs in a pretty green color to see if I like working with it. It’s destined to be a soaker for my friend Ashley. I also got a really pretty skein of sky blue merino to make a skirted diaper cover for my little friend Waylon (not her real name). After we made our purchases, we headed out to the sheep and goat barn to see the animals.

^^I love the Jacob sheep, they are usually white with brown spots and the males have four horns, two that go up and two that curl. It’s really neat.

^^There were sheep with dreadlocks.

^^Angora goats produce mohair. And big horns... But I didn't get any pictures that seemed bloggable. They're on FB for those of you who are connected to me on FB.

^^Llamas. Eh. I'm not that excited about llamas.

After we visited the sheep and goats and llamas, we headed to my favorite spot at SAFF. The alpaca barn!

They're like big teddy bears. I love them so much. I even got video.

You can hear them humming. It's such a cute noise. One day I will own a herd of these. I swear.

After the swooning, we went to the upper sales barn and took a look around at the vendors up there. There weren't that many that I was thrilled with but I did pick up some milk fiber to spin with. Milk fiber is shiny and lustrous and soft and made... from milk!

^ So there's all of the stuff I got on Friday.

Saturday we took a class on continuous strand weaving. Some pics of rectangle CSW here, we did triangle weaving on a two foot loom.

Here's my finished triangle neck scarf with fringe. I'm probably giving this to Woober... But I haven't decided yet.
It was a lot of fun and mom and I brought home a tiny tri-loom, a 3 foot tri-loom and a 20" rectangle loom. I have the rectangle loom and have to teach myself/watch the DVD on how to use it. Mom kept the other ones.

After that I had to visit with the animals again. Before visiting the fluffies, I got a tiny lace weight drop spindle from Kokovoko, and I also bought peanut butter goat's milk fudge, which was all they had left!

I loved on the bunnies. It was very hard not to bring one home with me. They are very cute and think of all the fiber! Sadly (and wisely) my beloved husband said that I was not allowed to bring home anything live.

This made the entire weekend for me, honestly. Getting to pet an alpaca was the best part of the whole weekend. They are so unbelievably soft and warm.

After that we headed out to take a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was so pretty, despite the overcast weather.

We headed back to the hotel after that.

Sunday we went back to SAFF very briefly to pick up the little tri-loom and for me to get some chocolate goat's milk fudge for Husbeast (Which I didn't even get into until he had some. See how much I love him?). I ended up getting one more thing, a big braid of BFL roving to spin with in the colorway called "Stained Glass," which is actually really descriptive. (I'll upload the haul pics soon... I think.) After that we had to head home.

Hope you liked all the pictures! And how quickly I managed to post! I've impressed even myself.

Tasty Kitchen

2009-10-20T23:13:00.002-04:00

So a post or two ago, I talked about the Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake I made. It was delicious, and next time I will take pictures.

But until then, head on over to Tasty Kitchen for the (my!) recipe.

Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake

I like Tasty Kitchen. Probably because I love The Pioneer Woman, but also because it's a recipe site that is similar to my other social networking sites, unlike most other recipe sites. You can have an avatar, you have a wall (the wire, technically), load both your own recipes and even favorites that have been published somewhere else (although those won't publish, they just stay in your recipe box). I think I like it best because there are a lot of food bloggers who've put their recipes up on TK. So I don't have to go hunt down that blog and the specific post, I can just search it on TK.

Secret Sweater Progress

2009-10-19T22:52:00.003-04:00

I am so thrilled with the progress on the secret present sweater. It knit up really quickly, a lot more quickly than I thought it would. I skipped a few steps and added a few in modifying this from a pullover into a cardigan, and I love the motifs in the yoke of this sweater.
All I have left is some weaving in and closing up the inevitable holes underneath where the arms join to the body.

After trying on the knit up sweater, I learned a little for when I make the sweater for myself:
A: The size large is not going to fit me. The pullover version is supposed to have negative ease (For you muggles, that's a garment that's finished size is an inch or two smaller than your actual measurements). I decided that a large was probably sufficient for the recipient, who isn't as endowed nor as generally padded as I am. The finished cardigan does not come together easily on me, and I desperately hope it will fit the recipient, who I assume is still somewhat smaller than me. I haven't seen her in ages though so I'm not entirely sure. This may end poorly. :( It doesn't have buttons yet, so I can't really see how much it would gap on me. But because I haven't chosen or placed buttons, I also haven't blocked it, so it may not be quite as large as it will end up being after blocking.
B: I need to put in one to two more increases in the sleeves to account for my not so small upper arms. Again... I have to hope that the recipient does not have the same problem. There is a bit of stretch and give in the sweater so it's not really uncomfortable, but still not desirable in a garment meant for comfort. It's not really tight, but there's a bit of adjustment and fiddling to get the sleeve al the way up my arm. If I were to keep this sweater, I'd have to wear it with tank tops or my Old Navy tissue long sleeves.
C: I would like more yoke in my own sweater.
D: I have to make one of these for myself, minus the yoke motifs... although I may put in just one for fun.

At the end of the week, Mom and I are headed to the Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival. Get ready for alpaca pictures. :)

A slice of fall

2009-10-15T11:12:00.003-04:00

I've been pretty productive lately. I have a sweater on the needles, and I made a delicious dessert.

I'm not going to give too many details about the sweater, since it's going to a relative. I don't think she reads the blog, but it's on my facebook, so it's possible that she does.
I am knitting this sweater selfishly. By selfish, I mean that I didn't say one day "oh, I'd like to knit relative a sweater, I think I'll do that," I saw the sweater pattern and read the notes about it and thought that I'd like to knit it. I bet relative would like it a lot. Maybe I will make it for her. And now I am. But I'm mostly making it for me, to enjoy the knitting and the pride in a finished product. The fact that the recipient will probably love it is a large part but not the original impetus for the sweater.
Husbeast and I were talking about it the other day and I came to the conclusion that I have to give it to her for her birthday. If I give it to her for Christmas, it may make a statement I don't want to make, especially since I'm not willing to knit her garments "on the regular," I'm just knitting this one because it looked like a fun knit and she'd wear it. Her birthday is the 4th of December so not too far off from Christmas, although I should be done with the sweater long before then.
I've liked knitting the sweater so much, I'd like to do one for me once this one is off the needles.

I've been neglecting my other projects that are in progress. Because that's just the way I work. I'm fickle like that I guess.

The dessert was a heavenly pumpkin cheesecake. I don't really like pumpkin pie, but it always seemed like something I should like. So this month for my monthly work meeting, I decided to do a pumpkin cheesecake. Just to see what it would be like. And now I have a new holiday dessert. The PCC got rave reviews from everyone who ate some, and my work buddy Trey, who looks forward to the third Thursday of every month, said it was the second best thing I've ever made. (The best thing I've ever made was last year's truffles.) The PCC was ridiculously simple, as opposed to the caramel chocolate cheesecake I so dearly love, with it's twice rendered caramel... but so very very delicious.

Korean culture night

2009-10-12T21:31:00.000-04:00

So as part of my Evaluation class we headed to Atlanta to visit a usability lab. After the usability lab visit we had dinner as a class. 5 of the folks in our group are Korean nationals, so we went to a Korean restaurant. Incedentally it was right up the street from my in-laws house.
The food was pretty good, and I was adventurous. I ate little teeny tiny tentacles. This is very out of character for me, as usually if I can tell where it came from I'm not going to eat it. The teeny tiny tentacles tasted okay, but I wasn't too fond of the texture. I'm sure I made my "I don't really like this" face. Scott has pointed out I have a face and chewing thing I do when I don't like a food.
The dish I ate, was rice, ground beef, noodles, carrot, rabe, nori and other assorted things. All the ingredients were in this huge stone bowl that was screamingly hot. It was pretty good, I would probably not have chosen it if I were on my own. It was the rec of the Korean folks in the group.

After the Korean food we headed to the Super H Mart. Oh, be still my heart! The Super H Mart is crazy amazing. The produce section was unbelievable. Huge selection, huge good looking fruit, I just wanted to bite into it right there in the store. They had a huge jar, like bag of sugar sized jar, of peeled raw garlic cloves. Crazy, but the Koreans use that much in their cooking.
The H Mart has all sorts of asian products that you just never see anywhere else. I think all of us americans went and bought asian cookies/candies. They had a whole wall of rice cookers, and housewares. A video section and a hilarious add for some thing with Staminex added. We guessed what that might be for.
I really wish we'd had more time in there and will definitely try to get back there with Husbeast.

Also I blogged this from my blackberry while sitting in the back of my proffessors van on the drive back to Athens. A good use of my travel time I think.

Howl-O-Weenie 2009

2009-10-08T19:04:00.003-04:00

Husbeast and I headed to Cabbagetown Park on October 3 to enjoy a day of dachshunds. We packed up Wylie and his stroller and eventually found parking. There didn’t seem to be quite as many vendors this year, but we still had a good time.

There were lots of cute costumes:

(there’s a dachshund in a blonde wig in that little dome.

I got this years shirt, and a little orange bandana collar for Woober with an embroidered dox on it that says Happy Halloween. I should have gotten a picture of it… but oh well. You can kind of see it in the first picture.

I also got a cute long sleeved shirt that’s brown and has a pink silhouette of a doxie:

Ahimsa house was there this year. Ahimsa House is a nonprofit shelter for animal victims of domestic violence. They work to help victims of domestic violence get out with their pets. Many people remain in violent relationships because their pets are used as leverage, and the majority of DV shelters will not accept animals. I donated a little and added myself to the mailing list. I really feel strongly about their mission and hope to volunteer with them sometime.

On a lighter note: The winner of the costume contest was awesome. Look at this… they totally deserved to win!

Lunar changes.

2009-09-27T22:35:00.003-04:00

We are now a three cat household. And so are my parents. I finally took Deimos to my parents house, for my Mom's birthday (which is this wednesday). Both of the brothers seem to be taking it well, and my mom's cats took it a lot better than I expected them to. Lulu, my Gramma's dog, did not. She goes straight after him biting and barking. She got a nasty cut/hematoma right below her eye from cornering him. Drated dog.
He seems to like my parents pretty well and spent a good deal of time with my dad, who we are hoping he will bond with since my mom has two cats that look to her already. Also the cat that died last year was "his" cat, so he needs one to keep him company. It might be a little tough on him, since he's used to hanging out with his brother or Husbeast most of the day, but I think he will adjust.

Phobos doesn't seem to miss him too much... not a very good brother. But he is insisting on touching me while I'm sitting on the couch, so maybe he does miss Deimos a little.

My poor 5th gen iPod finally died. The audio cut out of it last week. It lasted me years... so I was sad. After telling my mom about it she brought down her new nano, the most recent release. It's pretty spectacular, built in pedometer, video camera, voice over to tell you what your listening to, all sorts of stuff. I was sold, and was going to save up for one, but she decided to gift me one. Thanks mom! So now I have a fancy green iPod nano. The color is spectacular, I love it. I also got a speaker set for it, since my mom had two.

I'm other news my friend Lisa and I have been going to the gym. We went all five days last week and did weight machines and cardio MWF and just cardio T, Th. The Ramsey just got redone so there are lots of new weight machines, one that we really love that does hips and thighs and does them spectacularly. They've also put in a new strength and conditioning room that we tried out on Friday. It has all the old type weight machines, but the cardio... whew! They have seated ellipticals, which are awesome (although the arms are crazy close to your face and frighten me a little) and the rest of the cardio machines have cable tv available on their screens. Woo hoo! Lisa and I are excited about that, it'll make cardio days a little more fun, something to watch other than the pool.
I've also been doing a bellydance class, and I'm enjoying it. It's a little hard for me, I don't pick up the moves easily and get frustrated when it seems like everyone else is getting it, but I'm already seeing some benefits. I haven't lost a lot of weight, but in front of my parents giant master bathroom mirror, which you can't avoid, my belly definitely looks a little different. Less prominent. Which is a :)

Vampires and yarn

2009-09-19T23:53:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the radio silence. There hasn’t been too much to blog about, lately.
Just working and living recently.

Husbeast and I got the first season of True Blood on DVD from Netflix. The accents are hilarious, and Scott described it as “vampire boobies,” he’s not too far off. There’s a lot more flesh than I expected, but it is an HBO series so I probably should have expected it.

I’ve been playing Wii EA Active regularly, but I still need to be better about heading to the gym.

I’ve gotten a little knitting done. Emphasis on little. I finished the first Outside-in sock and started the second last night. I’ve been working a little on the AKG mystery scarf, but I’m still on the first big chart. I’ve got about 15 rows til I move to the second, and luckily my mom sent me the charts for the rest of the hints, since I forgot to save them to my computer.

I’m considering knitting a sweater for a friend/relation, but there are problems inherent in knitting sweaters for other people. Especially if you want them to be a surprise. You have to get their size, sneakily and hope that the size you knit up fits them, and that they like sweaters, and more specifically the one you make them. And sweaters take a lot of knitting.
I’ve knit two sweaters for myself… that I don’t wear. Ooops. Luckily I would really never know if the recipient wore this sweater or not as we don’t live near each other at all.

I don’t know. I need to find yarn I can afford to buy a sweaters worth of and can actually work with.

Enter more knitting related items:
Everyone is pregnant: One of the supervisors at work is pregnant with her second baby. It’s going to be a boy, Kody. I need to knit up a baby sweater for him. I knit one for her first, so I feel as though I need to knit one for this one.
C just had her first baby, who I lovingly refer to as Waylon (I knit a lovely striped sweater for and then knit up booties and a hat while hanging out in the waiting room during her arrival), in May. She is pregnant again.
This will happen when you don’t follow the directions that come with your birth control and don’t know much about fertility. Depending on when you start your BC you may need back up protection for a while and one should assume that they aren’t fertile because they haven’t gotten their period back yet… a period is the END of a fertility cycle. It usually signifies you were fertile about two weeks ago.

I will definitely knit something for this new Kesler baby. The UGA library has a very, very vintage baby knitting and crochet book that I photocopied patterns from. The book was published in the early 40s. Awesome. Some of the items in it were nothing short of hilarious. But most of them were really great. I need to write down the gauges of the projects I like and see if I can find appropriate yarns during Shop Hop this year.
Howl-O-Weenie is coming up Oct. 3… You may not hear from me again until then, but I hope not.

Dragon*Con

2009-09-08T20:19:00.003-04:00

So Husband and I spent the last four days at Dragon*con in Atlanta. We had a pretty good time.
I was surprised by the crowds, although I shouldn’t have been. It’s the got the largest attendance of any convention in the US. Those who know me pretty well may know I am very uncomfortable in crowded spaces, like panic stricken uncomfortable in some situations.
So when I showed up at the Peachtree Center on Friday it was somewhat horrifying for me. The food court you have to go through to get to the Marriott was packed with people, wall to wall. There were no lines, just one giant crowd of people. Ugh. The Marriott is suuuuper tall and crazy. Our friends, who were in from Austin, were staying on the 35th floor. Whew… really high.
We went to a few costume contests, went to few panels, wandered the dealer’s rooms and just generally had a good time.
The best part for me was seeing all the costumes that people had come up with. Do a flickr search for dragon*con 2009 and you’ll see what people came up with.

There are over 30 tracks, or subjects, that have panels and seminars. They range from film to music, writing to costuming, and include star wars, startrek and battle star galactica. And it all goes on simultaneously. Next year I’ll be better prepared for the insanity, although it’s not likely that I will go anywhere without Husband on Friday or Saturday, because of the crowds. I stayed with him the entire con this time round.

I’d like to dress up next year, not sure as what or who though. You don’t have to dress up as anything specific, but it’s fun to try. I wanted to get a belly dance coin belt, but I was a weenis and didn’t feel like we could stop long enough to look at them and pick one out. The ones I saw a quick glance while we were running through with our friends were velvet and I wanted a veil and couldn’t’ figure out a color I liked… so oh well.

Thursday before Dragon*con, I went to the Atlanta Knitting Guild meeting to hear from an alpaca farmer and small fiber mill owner. The mill is in blue ridge, and does custom runs of fiber. I enjoyed his talk and there's some talk about a fall retreat up there. I picked up some alpaca bamboo roving that's spectacular. Their equipment makes some really awesome pretty much predrafted roving, so there's no work involved.

RIP RR

2009-08-28T15:13:00.002-04:00

I was very sad to hear today that Reading Rainbow is set to be cancelled. Apparently the question for children's programing is no longer "how do we get children to want to read" but "how do we teach them to read at all."

I weep for the literacy of today's children.

The show is the same age I am, and was a big part of my childhood. I'm sad that it won't be on air when my children are growing up to help instill a love of reading. But you better believe I will be getting the DVDs from the library or netflix.

I'll miss Levar Burton telling me, "But you don't have to take my word for it..."

breaking news!

2009-08-24T21:08:00.004-04:00

I know I probably ought to blog about the rest of the Alaska trip, but honestly the rest of it is mostly glaciers and humpback whales. The humpbacks were awesome and we saw quite a bit of interesting behavior while we were on the boat. Juneau is lovely and I'd like to live there in the summer. Not so sure about winter, but I'd like to try it out some day.

I'd rather blog about current events. Like my terrible little dog.

Some of you may know that I have a longhaired miniature dachshund, Wylie. He's my baby. Other women have children... I have Wylie.

Well Wylie got himself into quite a bit of trouble last week. As I walked in the door last Thursday, I was all set to get my things together for knit night, but I noticed that Wylie wasn't at the door to greet me as usual. I asked Husbeast where the dog was, and he didn't know. We found him in the hall looking miserable. I called him to go out and go potty and he didn't move. So I sat on the living room floor and he crawled over to me. When I picked him up, he screamed. I was very upset and worried about that. We poked a little at him and his belly was tight and he cried loudly every time we touched anywhere near his belly.

We rushed him to the vet, where they did a neuro exam to rule out referred pain from a back injury and then an xray. The xray revealed what the problem was...

Our little dog had an entire stomach load of in-absorbent pellets from the breeze cat litter system. Luckily they were all still in his stomach so he was given hydrogen peroxide, which didn't work very well, and then apomorphine in the eye to induce some pretty violent vomiting. We were ridiculously thankful when he puked up all but a few pellets that had gotten past his pyloric sphincter into his gut. Over 30 pellets... poor rotten dog. They couldn't' have been pleasant to hack up. He obviously felt puny and pitiful, crying when we picked him up and moving as little as possible. He was clingy and sad for the next few days but he is feeling much, much better now.

We were very lucky it wasn't any worse than it was, and we are so happy he is feeling better. I've never been more worried in my life!

Fjords and ice... LOTS of ice

2009-08-18T21:49:00.002-04:00

Day 2 - At Sea, Tracy Arm Fjord and Endicott.

We spent the day weaving through fjords and ice fields. It was gorgeous. The color of the water was out of this world, this odd aqua color. The landscape was so different from what I've seen before, some of the spots we were in were quite narrow, so we were pretty close to the mountain sides. There were snowmelt waterfalls tucked away waiting to be spotted, glacial chunks serenely floating past the boat and eventually we got to see glaciers.
It's hard to get a sense of size when you're viewing the glaciers, but they are enormous. I still don't think I have any real idea how large the Sawyer glacier is, because we actually saw both sides of the glacier that day, although we didn't know it then. We found out later that we were the first ship of the season to see both sides, the ice field had been locked up all season long. So we were very lucky.
And now for photo madness:

Alaska looks good on him. :)

These kayakers made out at one point... it was odd.

And the other side, people had finally started going inside by then.

I touched glacier ice. I didn't actually want to, I was perturbed that they had to carve it into something.

I even knit a little! Isn't that water amazing?