The year two-thousand-and-nine was a tough one. I went back to school and had to deal with late nights of homework and learning new (sometimes scary) things. We bought a house and found out more than we ever wanted to know about mortgages, loans, and working on something that's entirely ours (and the bank's). We dropped down to one income, since I've only worked a few shifts here and there since July, due to the massive amount of school stuff I've been doing.
But here we are, at the end of another year. I also met some great people who are interested in English and young people and teaching, like me. I had some great experiences with "my" kids at the middle school where I've been student teaching. I love our home, and I love that we finally have our first dog together.
It's been hard, it's been tiring, but I'm happy.
Since Matt has a cold and our company can't make it due to yucky weather over the passes, we're going to take it easy today and tonight. Have a fun and blessed 2010!
And go read this post, since this sums things up more nicely than I can at the moment.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Little Letters
(Borrowed from Jen, who borrowed it from someone else....)
Dear People Who Make Paint,
Could one of you invent paint that only takes one coat for full and complete coverage? That would be really swell, thanks.
Dear Ibuprophen,
Feel free to kick in any time now.
Dear Winter Break,
I would be much obliged if you would slow down a bit. I've had about four days of doing nothing, and would like maybe four more, but with home projects and playing catch-up, my prospects are not looking good. So if you could throw a few more days in there, I'd really appreciate it.
Dear Christmas Dinner,
Thank you for turning out so well! I was quite pleased with the outcome, as were my guests.
Dear Sune-puppy,
Thank you for being my comic relief. I am enjoying spending days at home with you, and I think you are enjoying the lap provided when I watch movies.
Dear Husband,
Thank you for all your love and support the past two semesters (and always), and especially the last few weeks through all this holiday and house issues hoopla. I heart you.
Dear Mister Heater,
Don't ever break and flood the upstairs bedroom again, or else.
Dear People Who Make Paint,
Could one of you invent paint that only takes one coat for full and complete coverage? That would be really swell, thanks.
Dear Ibuprophen,
Feel free to kick in any time now.
Dear Winter Break,
I would be much obliged if you would slow down a bit. I've had about four days of doing nothing, and would like maybe four more, but with home projects and playing catch-up, my prospects are not looking good. So if you could throw a few more days in there, I'd really appreciate it.
Dear Christmas Dinner,
Thank you for turning out so well! I was quite pleased with the outcome, as were my guests.
Dear Sune-puppy,
Thank you for being my comic relief. I am enjoying spending days at home with you, and I think you are enjoying the lap provided when I watch movies.
Dear Husband,
Thank you for all your love and support the past two semesters (and always), and especially the last few weeks through all this holiday and house issues hoopla. I heart you.
Don't ever break and flood the upstairs bedroom again, or else.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
SNOW DAY
I don't think I've ever had a snow day in my life! I may have called in to work a time or two because of bad weather, but never had an official snow day! No finals today, (after I made two pots of coffee to bring to our "Breakfast and a Final"), no middle school! Just get to stay home and leisurely work on my last couple assignments, put our kitchen back in order now our fabulous new countertops are installed, and get the Christmas tree and decorations set up! :D
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
December 1st
This song has been making me happy since I rediscovered it on one of the Christmas albums on my ipod.
Happy December, and Merry Christmas!
Happy December, and Merry Christmas!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
TA-DA!
Well,
I did it again. For the 5th year in a row, I wrote 50,000 words in the month of November.
And this year... this year...
I did it in 29 days!!! I don't think I've ever finished a day early. Indeed, I think the earliest I've finished is about 8 hours before the 11:59pm deadline on the 30th, and sometimes I cut it even coser than that. Also, considering I only actually wrote about 12 or 14 days out of the whole month, 50,001 words in that amount of time is pretty impressive, if I do say so myself!
The word count validator on the website, used to prove you really did write that much, is always a little off from the word counter I use in MS Word, but I was surprised by how MUCH it was off this year! Word said I had 50,117 words when I stopped this evening; the website told me I had 49,999!!! So I went back and added freakin' TWO MORE WORDS, for a total of 50,001 (or 50,119) words. Woohoo!
I don't really like my story, and I don't intend on doing anything with it after this month is over. I don't even know if I'll add anything to it tomorrow, since it's technically still November. Rather than the feeling of "Yes! This is great, I want to actually finish the story!" like I've had the last couple of years, I'm feeling more like, "Ughhh, thank goodness this is over!" Oh well.
To celebrate, here is an excerpt, a sort of fairy tale within a fairy tale:
Sleepy's father had gone into the village to buy such things as sugar, a bolt of fabric for his wife to sew into a new dress for herself and new shirts for him and their boy, and some eggs, since chickens did not last long among the beasts in the forest where they lived. He brought smoked and dried bear meat to sell, along with the skin and teeth. Laden with his new purchases, he headed back through the village, along the way passing nearby the castle which lay in the center of the town. There was a high wall all around it, but as he had taken a less-traveled road in order to avoid much of the market day foot traffic, he found himself privy to a view inside the wall through a tall, iron gate. The gate provided a view of a beautiful lush garden filled with every fruit tree one could imagine, and more types of flower than the woodsman could name. In the center of the garden was a beautiful apple tree, laden heavily with the reddest, juiciest-looking apples he had ever seen in his life. His mouth watered just looking at them.
His wife baked the finest apple pies in all the land, which was part of the reason he had married her. (Some of the other reasons were her apple-red and apple-round cheeks, so full when she smiled, and the way her long, dark hair waved its way down her back like the waterfall he had seen once in his travels as a young man; and some of the other reasons were not fit to repeat in earshot of company, though he would whisper about them into his wife's ear now and then, and her apple cheeks would grow even fuller and redder as she giggled.) However, the scrawny little apples they could gather near to their cottage on the edge of the forest did not do her baking justice. These apples in the garden, the man felt sure, would make the finest apple pie out of all the fine apple pies his wife had ever made.
Driven by greed and hunger, Sleepy's father put down his pack and squeezed himself through the iron bars of the gate. (He was very slim from eating little and working long and hard in the forest, felling trees which he dragged into town every few weeks to sell.) He filled all his pockets with the lovely red, fleshy apples, then caught up the tails of his shirt in front and filled that as well. On his way back to the gate, however, he was stopped in his tracks by a beautiful young woman. Her eyes were as pale and cold as the ice on the peaks of the mountains far to the north, and her skin paler still. Her white-gold hair streamed out behind her like a cape, and on her head sat a thin, silver circlet.
"Why have you taken the apples from my uncle's garden?" she asked haughtily.
The woodsman stammered and stuttered, too dumbfounded with shock, and by her beauty, to answer properly.
"Come here," said the young woman, and the woodsman found himself stumbling toward her as though she had flicked a fishing hook into his flesh and was pulling on the line. "Give me the apples," she commanded, but the man was frozen by her gaze. She took an apple from the basket made by his shirt, and brought it up to stare intently at it. Her pale, thin lips moved as she whispered, in words the woodsman could not understand. They were musical and deadly and intoxicating all at once. Then she kissed the apple and placed it back with the others.
"You and your family shall pay for your greed and theft," she murmured, and when the woodsman blinked, she was gone.
He returned to his cottage at the edge of the woods, hardly knowing what he did or seeing anything in front of him. In a daze, he emptied his clothing of apples, unable or unwilling to answer his wife's questions about where they came from. He dandled his young son on his knee as his wife baked the apples into a pie. Her greed, too, was raised by the sight of such perfect apples, and she could hardly wait to taste the pie.
Mouths watering, the couple stayed up late into the night, waiting for the pie to bake. The aroma, sweet and spicy and tangy, filled the cottage til they could hardly stand it. At last, the woodsman's wife pulled the pie from the oven. Its crust was sugar-sprinkled and the most perfect light brown color. Steam rose from the vents, driving them mad with hunger. The little boy had fallen asleep long before, but they woke him to taste the pie, which they both felt sure would be the best thing any human had ever tasted.
The woman put three steaming slices on three plates, and everyone was seated around their small, wooden table. Without a word, the woodsman and his wife devoured their slices, then each had another, and a third, til the whole pie was gone. The child, however, was so sleepy that he only took a bite or two before falling fast asleep with his cheek on the table.
As the woodsman and his wife sat rubbing their full bellies and licking their lips, something strange began to happen. Thick brown fur, long as a handsbreadth, sprouted all over their bodies. They began to grow in size until the chairs on which they sat collapsed beneath them in piles like matchsticks. In horror, they watched each other as their faces elongated, their ears migrated to the tops of their heads, and their teeth grew long and sharp. Their fingernails sprouted into thick, black claws, as did the nails on their toes. Their skin rippled and shuddered as their bones and their insides changed and grew. They were covered in a thick layer of fat. They were full-grown grizzly bears.
At the same moment, their eyes fell upon something in a basket by the stove. One last, shining red apple. In their haste and greed, they destroyed the cottage, knocking over the table and the bed, smashing the remaining chair to tinder, tearing down the thatched roof. They fought each other to the death for that one, beautiful apple. Finally, bleeding and broken, they both fell to the floor and died.
Their son, too, had turned into a bear, but since he had only a taste of the cursed apples, he had not been filled with rage and bloodlust, but cowered, whimpering, in the corner. As the cottage burned down around him, he cried out in a little bear voice and ran off into the woods.
Another side effect of eating only a bite of the pie was that during the day, he returned to his normal human form. Miraculously, he stumbled upon a cave of bears during his second night in the wild, and miraculously, the mother bear accepted him into her family, consisting of the father bear and two little babies about Sleepy's size. He grew up with them, eating berries, fish, and whatever else the bears found for him, even nursing at the mother bear's teat when he was still very small. He learned to climb trees with his bear brother and sister, how to catch river trout, how to ignore the stings of a thousand bees when in pursuit of the sweetness inside their hive. He did all these things as a bear and as a human boy.
The wizard said the bears must have seen him as two different beings, a human that went away during the night, and a bear that went away during the day. One day when he was about seven or eight human years old, the wizard found him wandering the woods and took him in to heal the cuts and stings he had sustained. When he woke in the night to find a huge bear slumbering in front of his fire, he investigated, following Sleepy to the place he very faintly remembered as coming from. The story of his parents, he divined from talking to the inhabitants of the town nearby and by a couple of spells. (He did not expound upon how, and I did not ask.) Sleepy had lived with the wizard and his fairies ever since, and they all did their best to educate Sleepy on how to be a proper young man, though not very much of it stuck in his fuzzy bear-brain.
*
Not the best thing I've ever written, but I wrote it fast, and it gave me almost 1,500 more words. Though a good half of the story could probably be trashed, I did have some fun writing it, and I like saying that I've won NaNoWriMo five years in a row! :)
I did it again. For the 5th year in a row, I wrote 50,000 words in the month of November.
And this year... this year...
I did it in 29 days!!! I don't think I've ever finished a day early. Indeed, I think the earliest I've finished is about 8 hours before the 11:59pm deadline on the 30th, and sometimes I cut it even coser than that. Also, considering I only actually wrote about 12 or 14 days out of the whole month, 50,001 words in that amount of time is pretty impressive, if I do say so myself!
The word count validator on the website, used to prove you really did write that much, is always a little off from the word counter I use in MS Word, but I was surprised by how MUCH it was off this year! Word said I had 50,117 words when I stopped this evening; the website told me I had 49,999!!! So I went back and added freakin' TWO MORE WORDS, for a total of 50,001 (or 50,119) words. Woohoo!
I don't really like my story, and I don't intend on doing anything with it after this month is over. I don't even know if I'll add anything to it tomorrow, since it's technically still November. Rather than the feeling of "Yes! This is great, I want to actually finish the story!" like I've had the last couple of years, I'm feeling more like, "Ughhh, thank goodness this is over!" Oh well.
To celebrate, here is an excerpt, a sort of fairy tale within a fairy tale:
*
When Sleepy was very small, barely able to walk, his father, a woodsman, crossed through the garden of a very powerful witch, and took something from it. (This was the second time in just a few days in which I had heard about a woodsman being married, but I did not remark upon it at the time.)
When Sleepy was very small, barely able to walk, his father, a woodsman, crossed through the garden of a very powerful witch, and took something from it. (This was the second time in just a few days in which I had heard about a woodsman being married, but I did not remark upon it at the time.)
Sleepy's father had gone into the village to buy such things as sugar, a bolt of fabric for his wife to sew into a new dress for herself and new shirts for him and their boy, and some eggs, since chickens did not last long among the beasts in the forest where they lived. He brought smoked and dried bear meat to sell, along with the skin and teeth. Laden with his new purchases, he headed back through the village, along the way passing nearby the castle which lay in the center of the town. There was a high wall all around it, but as he had taken a less-traveled road in order to avoid much of the market day foot traffic, he found himself privy to a view inside the wall through a tall, iron gate. The gate provided a view of a beautiful lush garden filled with every fruit tree one could imagine, and more types of flower than the woodsman could name. In the center of the garden was a beautiful apple tree, laden heavily with the reddest, juiciest-looking apples he had ever seen in his life. His mouth watered just looking at them.
His wife baked the finest apple pies in all the land, which was part of the reason he had married her. (Some of the other reasons were her apple-red and apple-round cheeks, so full when she smiled, and the way her long, dark hair waved its way down her back like the waterfall he had seen once in his travels as a young man; and some of the other reasons were not fit to repeat in earshot of company, though he would whisper about them into his wife's ear now and then, and her apple cheeks would grow even fuller and redder as she giggled.) However, the scrawny little apples they could gather near to their cottage on the edge of the forest did not do her baking justice. These apples in the garden, the man felt sure, would make the finest apple pie out of all the fine apple pies his wife had ever made.
Driven by greed and hunger, Sleepy's father put down his pack and squeezed himself through the iron bars of the gate. (He was very slim from eating little and working long and hard in the forest, felling trees which he dragged into town every few weeks to sell.) He filled all his pockets with the lovely red, fleshy apples, then caught up the tails of his shirt in front and filled that as well. On his way back to the gate, however, he was stopped in his tracks by a beautiful young woman. Her eyes were as pale and cold as the ice on the peaks of the mountains far to the north, and her skin paler still. Her white-gold hair streamed out behind her like a cape, and on her head sat a thin, silver circlet.
"Why have you taken the apples from my uncle's garden?" she asked haughtily.
The woodsman stammered and stuttered, too dumbfounded with shock, and by her beauty, to answer properly.
"Come here," said the young woman, and the woodsman found himself stumbling toward her as though she had flicked a fishing hook into his flesh and was pulling on the line. "Give me the apples," she commanded, but the man was frozen by her gaze. She took an apple from the basket made by his shirt, and brought it up to stare intently at it. Her pale, thin lips moved as she whispered, in words the woodsman could not understand. They were musical and deadly and intoxicating all at once. Then she kissed the apple and placed it back with the others.
"You and your family shall pay for your greed and theft," she murmured, and when the woodsman blinked, she was gone.
He returned to his cottage at the edge of the woods, hardly knowing what he did or seeing anything in front of him. In a daze, he emptied his clothing of apples, unable or unwilling to answer his wife's questions about where they came from. He dandled his young son on his knee as his wife baked the apples into a pie. Her greed, too, was raised by the sight of such perfect apples, and she could hardly wait to taste the pie.
Mouths watering, the couple stayed up late into the night, waiting for the pie to bake. The aroma, sweet and spicy and tangy, filled the cottage til they could hardly stand it. At last, the woodsman's wife pulled the pie from the oven. Its crust was sugar-sprinkled and the most perfect light brown color. Steam rose from the vents, driving them mad with hunger. The little boy had fallen asleep long before, but they woke him to taste the pie, which they both felt sure would be the best thing any human had ever tasted.
The woman put three steaming slices on three plates, and everyone was seated around their small, wooden table. Without a word, the woodsman and his wife devoured their slices, then each had another, and a third, til the whole pie was gone. The child, however, was so sleepy that he only took a bite or two before falling fast asleep with his cheek on the table.
As the woodsman and his wife sat rubbing their full bellies and licking their lips, something strange began to happen. Thick brown fur, long as a handsbreadth, sprouted all over their bodies. They began to grow in size until the chairs on which they sat collapsed beneath them in piles like matchsticks. In horror, they watched each other as their faces elongated, their ears migrated to the tops of their heads, and their teeth grew long and sharp. Their fingernails sprouted into thick, black claws, as did the nails on their toes. Their skin rippled and shuddered as their bones and their insides changed and grew. They were covered in a thick layer of fat. They were full-grown grizzly bears.
At the same moment, their eyes fell upon something in a basket by the stove. One last, shining red apple. In their haste and greed, they destroyed the cottage, knocking over the table and the bed, smashing the remaining chair to tinder, tearing down the thatched roof. They fought each other to the death for that one, beautiful apple. Finally, bleeding and broken, they both fell to the floor and died.
Their son, too, had turned into a bear, but since he had only a taste of the cursed apples, he had not been filled with rage and bloodlust, but cowered, whimpering, in the corner. As the cottage burned down around him, he cried out in a little bear voice and ran off into the woods.
Another side effect of eating only a bite of the pie was that during the day, he returned to his normal human form. Miraculously, he stumbled upon a cave of bears during his second night in the wild, and miraculously, the mother bear accepted him into her family, consisting of the father bear and two little babies about Sleepy's size. He grew up with them, eating berries, fish, and whatever else the bears found for him, even nursing at the mother bear's teat when he was still very small. He learned to climb trees with his bear brother and sister, how to catch river trout, how to ignore the stings of a thousand bees when in pursuit of the sweetness inside their hive. He did all these things as a bear and as a human boy.
The wizard said the bears must have seen him as two different beings, a human that went away during the night, and a bear that went away during the day. One day when he was about seven or eight human years old, the wizard found him wandering the woods and took him in to heal the cuts and stings he had sustained. When he woke in the night to find a huge bear slumbering in front of his fire, he investigated, following Sleepy to the place he very faintly remembered as coming from. The story of his parents, he divined from talking to the inhabitants of the town nearby and by a couple of spells. (He did not expound upon how, and I did not ask.) Sleepy had lived with the wizard and his fairies ever since, and they all did their best to educate Sleepy on how to be a proper young man, though not very much of it stuck in his fuzzy bear-brain.
*
Not the best thing I've ever written, but I wrote it fast, and it gave me almost 1,500 more words. Though a good half of the story could probably be trashed, I did have some fun writing it, and I like saying that I've won NaNoWriMo five years in a row! :)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Hello again
Today is my Friday, sort of. I'm only in school two days this week (both schools) because of Thanksgiving break. It won't be too much of a break, but oh well. Wednesday I intend on catching up and (hopefully) even getting ahead in my NaNoWriMo novel. I'm at just over 36,000 words right now, and by the end of today I should be at 40,000, so I'm somewhat behind. (I did write a little over 6,000 words on Sunday, though, which was awesome!) Most of the story is trash and I don't think I'll do anything with it, but for the last week, it's at least been fun to write. I'm making new characters and my MC is seeing new places, and I always love writing description.
I've also been knitting a lot (not at the middle school, but in my college classes), and I currently have 6.3 pairs of wristwarmers knit up (but not sewn--bleh, don't like that part much). I'd like to sell them at the vintage store/art gallery downtown, but if they sit there for a long time and don't sell, maybe I'll open up my old Etsy store and see how they do there. They're all diferrent sizes, colors, and patterns, and by "patterns" I mean stitch patterns. I didn't actually use patterns for any of them, just invented them off the top of my head depending on what kind/color and how much yarn I had. Most of it is leftover little balls after I finished knitting socks, though some of it is from various other projects. All of them are at least partially wool, for warmth and because the shop doesn't seem like a place that caters to people who would like cheap acrylic.
Totally rambling now. After today, I have to be on (the college) campus four more days, and two of them are for finals. AUGHHHHHHHHHH! In a way, I'm really glad, but I'm also kind of freaking terrified. There's still a lot to do between now and then, but I'll get it done! As for the middle school, I have 15 more days, though of course not much will get done the last couple days before Christmas break. I have my last observation on the 9th, and I'm using the lesson plan I wrote for another class, so whew! One less thing to worry about.
Matt and I will be back in our hometown for Thanksgiving with my family, then we both work all weekend. Black Friday I'm working just over 9 hours, while Matt works 12. ICK. (But yay for him, he gets commission!) Then Saturday for both of us, and likely Sunday, too. Freakin retail. I'm glad we have jobs, but we will both be soooo glad when we don't have to go through this ridiculosity every holiday seaason.
So let's see, writing, school, knitting.... That about sums up my life these past few weeks! No promises, but I would like to post here more over my breaks. We'll see how that goes. (Need to work on a new header, too.)
I've also been knitting a lot (not at the middle school, but in my college classes), and I currently have 6.3 pairs of wristwarmers knit up (but not sewn--bleh, don't like that part much). I'd like to sell them at the vintage store/art gallery downtown, but if they sit there for a long time and don't sell, maybe I'll open up my old Etsy store and see how they do there. They're all diferrent sizes, colors, and patterns, and by "patterns" I mean stitch patterns. I didn't actually use patterns for any of them, just invented them off the top of my head depending on what kind/color and how much yarn I had. Most of it is leftover little balls after I finished knitting socks, though some of it is from various other projects. All of them are at least partially wool, for warmth and because the shop doesn't seem like a place that caters to people who would like cheap acrylic.
Totally rambling now. After today, I have to be on (the college) campus four more days, and two of them are for finals. AUGHHHHHHHHHH! In a way, I'm really glad, but I'm also kind of freaking terrified. There's still a lot to do between now and then, but I'll get it done! As for the middle school, I have 15 more days, though of course not much will get done the last couple days before Christmas break. I have my last observation on the 9th, and I'm using the lesson plan I wrote for another class, so whew! One less thing to worry about.
Matt and I will be back in our hometown for Thanksgiving with my family, then we both work all weekend. Black Friday I'm working just over 9 hours, while Matt works 12. ICK. (But yay for him, he gets commission!) Then Saturday for both of us, and likely Sunday, too. Freakin retail. I'm glad we have jobs, but we will both be soooo glad when we don't have to go through this ridiculosity every holiday seaason.
So let's see, writing, school, knitting.... That about sums up my life these past few weeks! No promises, but I would like to post here more over my breaks. We'll see how that goes. (Need to work on a new header, too.)
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Buh-guh-uhhhh...
Goodness, it's been almost a whole month since I last posted, and that wasn't even a real post! (No, I was not able to recover those six pages, but I got over and and wrote them again. *Sigh*) I'm so busy all the time, and when I'm not busy, I'm either playing catch-up on all the stuff I've missed while I was busy (grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry) or chilling out so I can function the rest of the time. Those of you who know me "in real life" see me occasionally on Facebook; those of you that don't... well, you're probably not even reading this blog anymore because of lack of updates!
Since it's late at night and I can't phrase anything in an interesting way, I give you a little update, in the form of a list.
1. School (college classes) is going all right. I'm not able to keep up with all the reading, but the papers and projects are going just fine, and I like being in class because of the discussions we have. Very interesting (nerdy, English-y, teacher-y) stuff.
2. Other school (middle school) is also going well. Parent-teacher conferences were Wednesday night and all day Thursday, but I'll save my ruminations on that for the reflection journal I have to keep for one of my education classes. If the entry is any good, and would make any sense to someone not in my classroom, I might post it here.
3. Halloween is in a week! My second-favorite holiday ever. I sort of invited myself to go trick-or-treating with a friend and her kids (two of them, 4 and 7) because no one I knew, to my knoweldge, was doing anything fun on Halloween to which I was invited. Anything in town either costs to much, is overrun with old people (like the charity masked ball) or involves heavy drinking at one of the "clubs." No thank you. So I will be Snow White and traipse around with (I think) a princess, a bottle of glue, and a guy with a sword. Yay!
4. NaNoWriMo is also coming up! Yes, I'm going to attempt it despite all my crazy business. I may not reach 50,000 words (for the first time in five years! *wince*), but I do still want to write something during the month of November, and try to make at least some of the write-ins. What is my novel about? Look at my Halloween costume! Yes, another retelling. (Two years ago I did a modern-day Pride and Prejudice, which turned out... eh. All right. Still unfinished, so apparently not good enough to continue after November.) I'm not sure where I'm going with it, but at least I have sort of a plot and a handful of characters.
5. Yes, we've lived in this house for 3 months, and I still cannot see the top of my sewing table. There's always so much to do (especially when it comes to cleaning) and so little time to do it! Luckily, I don't have to sew anything for my costume. I just miss it! I'd love to make even a pair of PJ pants, or hem a curtain, or something! Until the day when I can get to it, though, I'll content myself as best I can with knitting (much more portable, doesn't take up nearly as much space) and other random crafting. (I'm fashioniong a poison apple for Halloween, and I bought stuff to make a Fall wreath for the front door, too.)
6. Sune is wonderful and adorable, of course. She had a bath tonight and is all fluffy and pretty. If she wasn't a mutt, she would be a lovely show dog, I think. She just... makes me happy. I want to snuggle her all the time. (Geeze, if I'm this bad about my freaking dog, how bad will I be when I have a real kid of my own?)
7. This coming week is Red Ribbon Week (sort of like Spirit Week is for high schoolers, but with a "Say no to drugs!" theme) at the middle school. Each day has a themed dress-up day, and I'll try to take pictures of my outfits during the week. It's like a whole week of Halloween for me, so you know I'm thrilled!
8. (Hey, this is Thing 8! Could this count as an 8 Things Friday, just a day late?) I miss blogging. I do little mini-blogs (micro-super-mini!) on Facebook, but it's just not the same. Maybe I could start doing some Wordless Wednesdays like some of my blogging friends, and a Linktastic Thursday/Sunday/Whateverday. That's minimal-ish writing effort on my part, but still some form of blogging and communication with all three people still reading this thing. We'll see, I guess!
Since it's late at night and I can't phrase anything in an interesting way, I give you a little update, in the form of a list.
1. School (college classes) is going all right. I'm not able to keep up with all the reading, but the papers and projects are going just fine, and I like being in class because of the discussions we have. Very interesting (nerdy, English-y, teacher-y) stuff.
2. Other school (middle school) is also going well. Parent-teacher conferences were Wednesday night and all day Thursday, but I'll save my ruminations on that for the reflection journal I have to keep for one of my education classes. If the entry is any good, and would make any sense to someone not in my classroom, I might post it here.
3. Halloween is in a week! My second-favorite holiday ever. I sort of invited myself to go trick-or-treating with a friend and her kids (two of them, 4 and 7) because no one I knew, to my knoweldge, was doing anything fun on Halloween to which I was invited. Anything in town either costs to much, is overrun with old people (like the charity masked ball) or involves heavy drinking at one of the "clubs." No thank you. So I will be Snow White and traipse around with (I think) a princess, a bottle of glue, and a guy with a sword. Yay!
4. NaNoWriMo is also coming up! Yes, I'm going to attempt it despite all my crazy business. I may not reach 50,000 words (for the first time in five years! *wince*), but I do still want to write something during the month of November, and try to make at least some of the write-ins. What is my novel about? Look at my Halloween costume! Yes, another retelling. (Two years ago I did a modern-day Pride and Prejudice, which turned out... eh. All right. Still unfinished, so apparently not good enough to continue after November.) I'm not sure where I'm going with it, but at least I have sort of a plot and a handful of characters.
5. Yes, we've lived in this house for 3 months, and I still cannot see the top of my sewing table. There's always so much to do (especially when it comes to cleaning) and so little time to do it! Luckily, I don't have to sew anything for my costume. I just miss it! I'd love to make even a pair of PJ pants, or hem a curtain, or something! Until the day when I can get to it, though, I'll content myself as best I can with knitting (much more portable, doesn't take up nearly as much space) and other random crafting. (I'm fashioniong a poison apple for Halloween, and I bought stuff to make a Fall wreath for the front door, too.)
6. Sune is wonderful and adorable, of course. She had a bath tonight and is all fluffy and pretty. If she wasn't a mutt, she would be a lovely show dog, I think. She just... makes me happy. I want to snuggle her all the time. (Geeze, if I'm this bad about my freaking dog, how bad will I be when I have a real kid of my own?)
7. This coming week is Red Ribbon Week (sort of like Spirit Week is for high schoolers, but with a "Say no to drugs!" theme) at the middle school. Each day has a themed dress-up day, and I'll try to take pictures of my outfits during the week. It's like a whole week of Halloween for me, so you know I'm thrilled!
8. (Hey, this is Thing 8! Could this count as an 8 Things Friday, just a day late?) I miss blogging. I do little mini-blogs (micro-super-mini!) on Facebook, but it's just not the same. Maybe I could start doing some Wordless Wednesdays like some of my blogging friends, and a Linktastic Thursday/Sunday/Whateverday. That's minimal-ish writing effort on my part, but still some form of blogging and communication with all three people still reading this thing. We'll see, I guess!
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Please, please help - Computer problem
Please leave a comment or email me if you know how to do this, or could talk to someone who does. I emailed myself something from school, then opened it today and wrote 6 more pages. However, instead of clicking "Save" when I did "Download File" file from my Yahoo mailbox, I just hit "Open." I typed and typed, and hit CNTRL-S occasionally. It looked like it was saving (the little mouse thingy went round and round). Then I closed it and restarted my computer. Obviously it is nowhere to be found because I'm an IDIOT. WHERE IS IT? Is there any hope of finding it? Restore? Temp files? Anything??? Or shall I do an afternoon's work all over again? Please help! I'm going to go to the corner and cry now.
Friday, October 02, 2009
8 Decades Friday
Yes, you read it right. Not 8 THINGS Friday, 8 DECADES Friday.
Last Sunday, we celebrated my Grammie Joan's 80th birthday.
She was a school teacher (elementary) for thirty-some years, I think, and seems to have taught at least a full half the population of the tiny town where she's lived for fifty-something years. Many people that came were taught by her, as were their children.
Dean of Women at Quincy College in Illinois. Mother. Teacher. Rancher's wife. Grandmother. Catholic. Friend. She was and is many things, and is well loved in the community and by all her family.
Happy 80th birthday, Grammie!
Last Sunday, we celebrated my Grammie Joan's 80th birthday.
She was a school teacher (elementary) for thirty-some years, I think, and seems to have taught at least a full half the population of the tiny town where she's lived for fifty-something years. Many people that came were taught by her, as were their children.
Dean of Women at Quincy College in Illinois. Mother. Teacher. Rancher's wife. Grandmother. Catholic. Friend. She was and is many things, and is well loved in the community and by all her family.
Happy 80th birthday, Grammie!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Happy Friday!
Yes, I'm alive. See you in June when I can have a life again! :P
For now, here's a very confused puppy:
I hope your weekend is less stressful than his.
For now, here's a very confused puppy:
I hope your weekend is less stressful than his.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Why I want to be a teacher
This got a little derailed, and it's a little scattered, but this is the first creative thing I've written for months, really, and since I'm very short on time and pretty short on blog post topics, here is the first journal entry for one of my education classes.
Why do you want to become a teacher? What’s your story?
I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. There were brief periods where I wanted to be an optometrist, an orthodontist, or a botanist, but never very seriously. Since I started playing school with my dolls and stuffies, I knew I wanted to teach.
Did I always want to teach middle school? Heck no! My first two years here at M___ State were spent as a secondary education major, emphasis in English with the intent to teach high school. However, I then decided to get my BA in English Writing instead, then go on to graduate school for my masters (or maybe doctorate) and teach college writing classes. I thought that was the place to be; the students want to be there (they’re paying for it, after all, or at least mom and dad are!) , and once I had some seniority and got “dibs” on the upper-division classes, I would be teaching my kind of people: English freaks. The kind of people who get really excited about word origins and semicolons, and who have conniptions when a sign in a store is misspelled or improperly punctuated.
However, I didn’t go to graduate school the year after I graduated from M___, nor did I go the next year. (Long stories.) Totally bummed and not wanting to work in retail the rest of my life, I started looking at *PBL programs on the Eastern Slope, since M___ no longer had one for secondary, just elementary. However, with the current economy and difficulty in finding jobs, my husband, Matt, and I were a little scared to move to Fort Collins/Boulder/Denver/wherever with nothing to move to but college and more student loan debt.
Serendipitously, a man from the PBL program came through my checkout line at work one day last winter and we got to talking about teaching, teaching programs, and PBLs. I found out he worked in the PBL program at M___, and said, “Well geeze, I wish you guys had it for secondary. I have to move all the way to Denver next fall!”
“We do,” he replied. “We’ll be starting it back up this coming year.”
That changed everything! Matt and I could stay here at the jobs we knew and tolerated; he could work while I did this “intensive” program (and is it ever!) and in one calendar year, I would be a certified teacher!
When I got my placement for my pre-internship and internship, I made a face like I’d just tasted rotten lemons. Seventh grade? Twelve-year olds five days a week for nine months? Really? I wanted high school students! Since I wouldn’t be teaching at the college level, they were the next best thing, I thought. More mature, and developed enough that they didn’t need to be babysat like the junior high kids.
The more I thought about it and talked about it, though, the more I chatted with the principal at W___ Middle School and my mentor teacher, K__ D____, and the more I started reading the novels 7th-graders read and thinking about the sorts of things they do, the more excited I got! I couldn’t wait for my online summer classes to be over, as interesting as they were, in order to get to the good stuff. I can’t explain it; it’s like this desire to be with middle school kids suddenly welled up in my heart and flowed throughout my whole life.
The kids are awesome. They’re hilarious and gross, and the boys have that just-becoming-teenagers-and-not-used-to-sweating-so-they-don’t-shower-much boy smell, and the girls are all about lip gloss and Twilight books, but I love them all. Standing at the doors every morning, watching them rush past me yelling, jostling, and giggling, watching them slam their lockers and then open them right back up to get the pencil they forgot… I just want to hug them all! They’re these little miniature people (though some are bigger than me!) who are learning who they are, who they want to be, what they want to do. My husband refers to them as “larval humans,” and while he doesn’t mean it in a nice way, I think that’s a fairly accurate description. Not to get all gooey-sentimental, but they’re still inside their comfy being-a-kid shell. They’re mushy and awkward and messy, growing into someday butterflies. And I love that I’m a part of their lives right now, that I get to watch them metamorphose into beautiful, brilliant, unique creatures.
God bless the elementary teachers. They do more babysitting even than I do (which is still a lot!), and they have kids in the “caterpillar” stage—worming their way through letters, sounds, words, through addition and subtraction, through lining up for recess and tying their shoes. I’d be fine doing daycare for the littles, but trying to do that and teach them stuff? No thank you. And I’m sure they feel the same way about middle school teachers—they wouldn’t want to touch those kids with a ten foot pole. (Sometimes, neither do I, so I can’t blame them.) But this is where I’m supposed to be. I can feel it. And hopefully, this is where I’ll be next year when it’s time to get a real teaching job, and the year after that, and the year after that.
*PBL: Post-Baccalaureate Licensure; basically you have your Bachelor's in something, then add the education credits on to become licensed to teach in that content area.
Why do you want to become a teacher? What’s your story?
I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. There were brief periods where I wanted to be an optometrist, an orthodontist, or a botanist, but never very seriously. Since I started playing school with my dolls and stuffies, I knew I wanted to teach.
Did I always want to teach middle school? Heck no! My first two years here at M___ State were spent as a secondary education major, emphasis in English with the intent to teach high school. However, I then decided to get my BA in English Writing instead, then go on to graduate school for my masters (or maybe doctorate) and teach college writing classes. I thought that was the place to be; the students want to be there (they’re paying for it, after all, or at least mom and dad are!) , and once I had some seniority and got “dibs” on the upper-division classes, I would be teaching my kind of people: English freaks. The kind of people who get really excited about word origins and semicolons, and who have conniptions when a sign in a store is misspelled or improperly punctuated.
However, I didn’t go to graduate school the year after I graduated from M___, nor did I go the next year. (Long stories.) Totally bummed and not wanting to work in retail the rest of my life, I started looking at *PBL programs on the Eastern Slope, since M___ no longer had one for secondary, just elementary. However, with the current economy and difficulty in finding jobs, my husband, Matt, and I were a little scared to move to Fort Collins/Boulder/Denver/wherever with nothing to move to but college and more student loan debt.
Serendipitously, a man from the PBL program came through my checkout line at work one day last winter and we got to talking about teaching, teaching programs, and PBLs. I found out he worked in the PBL program at M___, and said, “Well geeze, I wish you guys had it for secondary. I have to move all the way to Denver next fall!”
“We do,” he replied. “We’ll be starting it back up this coming year.”
That changed everything! Matt and I could stay here at the jobs we knew and tolerated; he could work while I did this “intensive” program (and is it ever!) and in one calendar year, I would be a certified teacher!
When I got my placement for my pre-internship and internship, I made a face like I’d just tasted rotten lemons. Seventh grade? Twelve-year olds five days a week for nine months? Really? I wanted high school students! Since I wouldn’t be teaching at the college level, they were the next best thing, I thought. More mature, and developed enough that they didn’t need to be babysat like the junior high kids.
The more I thought about it and talked about it, though, the more I chatted with the principal at W___ Middle School and my mentor teacher, K__ D____, and the more I started reading the novels 7th-graders read and thinking about the sorts of things they do, the more excited I got! I couldn’t wait for my online summer classes to be over, as interesting as they were, in order to get to the good stuff. I can’t explain it; it’s like this desire to be with middle school kids suddenly welled up in my heart and flowed throughout my whole life.
The kids are awesome. They’re hilarious and gross, and the boys have that just-becoming-teenagers-and-not-used-to-sweating-so-they-don’t-shower-much boy smell, and the girls are all about lip gloss and Twilight books, but I love them all. Standing at the doors every morning, watching them rush past me yelling, jostling, and giggling, watching them slam their lockers and then open them right back up to get the pencil they forgot… I just want to hug them all! They’re these little miniature people (though some are bigger than me!) who are learning who they are, who they want to be, what they want to do. My husband refers to them as “larval humans,” and while he doesn’t mean it in a nice way, I think that’s a fairly accurate description. Not to get all gooey-sentimental, but they’re still inside their comfy being-a-kid shell. They’re mushy and awkward and messy, growing into someday butterflies. And I love that I’m a part of their lives right now, that I get to watch them metamorphose into beautiful, brilliant, unique creatures.
God bless the elementary teachers. They do more babysitting even than I do (which is still a lot!), and they have kids in the “caterpillar” stage—worming their way through letters, sounds, words, through addition and subtraction, through lining up for recess and tying their shoes. I’d be fine doing daycare for the littles, but trying to do that and teach them stuff? No thank you. And I’m sure they feel the same way about middle school teachers—they wouldn’t want to touch those kids with a ten foot pole. (Sometimes, neither do I, so I can’t blame them.) But this is where I’m supposed to be. I can feel it. And hopefully, this is where I’ll be next year when it’s time to get a real teaching job, and the year after that, and the year after that.
*PBL: Post-Baccalaureate Licensure; basically you have your Bachelor's in something, then add the education credits on to become licensed to teach in that content area.
Friday, August 21, 2009
8 Things Friday
1. It's been a little while since I've done one of these! Over a month, actually; not since July 17th. I'm hoping to get back into it now that I'm more on a schedule.
2. Didja see the new banner? I think it's very fitting to where I am in my life right now. (Actually if I was being more accurate, it would also have a picture of the college, the middle school, and a huge stack of books and homework, but I thought three pictures was enough.)
3. I'm finally learning where all the light switches in this house are, and which lights they turn on. For the living room, the stairway, and the loft, there are two each, which is helpful, but was also a little confusing. And so far I haven't turned on the garbage disposal when I meant to get the kitchen light, so that's good.
4. This has been a long, long week, but at the same time, it's flown by! I've done SO MUCH, and I'm SO TIRED in the evenings even with going to bed early (since I wake up at freakin 5:20am). I'm going to enjoy my college classes, and all but one are Tuesday-Thursday, which I like. There are only two classes a week, but longer ones so it seems I get more out of them; also, more days in between (on the weekends) to do homework! I have a 1-hour class on Wednesdays only because it's the content part (English) of my "Methodology Practicum" class. There's also "Integrating Literacy in the Classroom," and "Teaching Speech and Drama" (which is taught by one of the drama profs, and is therefore wacky and different from a "normal" class).
5. Kitsune had her first bath (from me) the other night.
It was a very sad, sad thing.
She shivered and was generally a total Pomhuahua. (Pomeranian+Chihuahua=Pomhuahua.)
However, after the bath when she was all fluffy and slightly damp, she went CRAZY! She ran laps around the coffee table, panting, and she chased the heck out of her tail! I laughed so hard and so long my stomach was sore!
6. This is all out of order, but as I said (and will be saying for the next year), I'm tired. Here is my "first day of student teaching" outfit:
The curious doggie was not part of the look, though I think it really adds a little extra something.
7. 7th-graders are INSANE. I swear. They're crazy and funny and gross and silly and immature, and their little brains do not quite work the way adults' do. Something that seems so simple (fill out this worksheet about where stuff is in your geography book) is really NOT. It takes 45 minutes and still only a few kids out of 25 get it all the way done because of all the "I don't know"s and the screwing around. I knew this already, but I didn't really know it. Now I do.
8. I'm not whining, I'm really not. I wasn't actually that frustrated at them today, it was just... a learning experience. They can't help it; they're twelve years old! It's not like they go to school every day thinking, "I'm going to be really difficult, and not follow instructions, and not listen to anything in order to annoy the crud out of my teachers." They're just... twelve years old. They're still trying to turn into real people and they don't think about things like getting their pencils from their lockers, or staying in their seat for a whole hour, or putting their names on their papers.
But they're amazing kids. Just reading through some of the "All About Me" papers (just what it sounds like, but for the teachers only, and it's also used as a writing assessment to see where everyone is at) was so cool. Friends are very important to the girls; food is very important to the boys. Pets are important to everyone. It was interesting to read their descriptions of their families; how they said their parents were divorced, how they told about their siblings. I'm looking forward to reading them all, if I can.
SLEEPY NOW. *Zonk*
2. Didja see the new banner? I think it's very fitting to where I am in my life right now. (Actually if I was being more accurate, it would also have a picture of the college, the middle school, and a huge stack of books and homework, but I thought three pictures was enough.)
3. I'm finally learning where all the light switches in this house are, and which lights they turn on. For the living room, the stairway, and the loft, there are two each, which is helpful, but was also a little confusing. And so far I haven't turned on the garbage disposal when I meant to get the kitchen light, so that's good.
4. This has been a long, long week, but at the same time, it's flown by! I've done SO MUCH, and I'm SO TIRED in the evenings even with going to bed early (since I wake up at freakin 5:20am). I'm going to enjoy my college classes, and all but one are Tuesday-Thursday, which I like. There are only two classes a week, but longer ones so it seems I get more out of them; also, more days in between (on the weekends) to do homework! I have a 1-hour class on Wednesdays only because it's the content part (English) of my "Methodology Practicum" class. There's also "Integrating Literacy in the Classroom," and "Teaching Speech and Drama" (which is taught by one of the drama profs, and is therefore wacky and different from a "normal" class).
5. Kitsune had her first bath (from me) the other night.
It was a very sad, sad thing.
She shivered and was generally a total Pomhuahua. (Pomeranian+Chihuahua=Pomhuahua.)
However, after the bath when she was all fluffy and slightly damp, she went CRAZY! She ran laps around the coffee table, panting, and she chased the heck out of her tail! I laughed so hard and so long my stomach was sore!
6. This is all out of order, but as I said (and will be saying for the next year), I'm tired. Here is my "first day of student teaching" outfit:
The curious doggie was not part of the look, though I think it really adds a little extra something.
7. 7th-graders are INSANE. I swear. They're crazy and funny and gross and silly and immature, and their little brains do not quite work the way adults' do. Something that seems so simple (fill out this worksheet about where stuff is in your geography book) is really NOT. It takes 45 minutes and still only a few kids out of 25 get it all the way done because of all the "I don't know"s and the screwing around. I knew this already, but I didn't really know it. Now I do.
8. I'm not whining, I'm really not. I wasn't actually that frustrated at them today, it was just... a learning experience. They can't help it; they're twelve years old! It's not like they go to school every day thinking, "I'm going to be really difficult, and not follow instructions, and not listen to anything in order to annoy the crud out of my teachers." They're just... twelve years old. They're still trying to turn into real people and they don't think about things like getting their pencils from their lockers, or staying in their seat for a whole hour, or putting their names on their papers.
But they're amazing kids. Just reading through some of the "All About Me" papers (just what it sounds like, but for the teachers only, and it's also used as a writing assessment to see where everyone is at) was so cool. Friends are very important to the girls; food is very important to the boys. Pets are important to everyone. It was interesting to read their descriptions of their families; how they said their parents were divorced, how they told about their siblings. I'm looking forward to reading them all, if I can.
SLEEPY NOW. *Zonk*
Monday, August 17, 2009
San Diego 2009 - Part 2
We left off on Tuesday evening at Croce's Jazz Bar, and now resume our tale Wednesday morning.
Pretty flowers outside yet another thrift store.
After that, we went to Hillcrest, off of University Avenue (oddly enough, it's near the college) for another "famous" thrift store (or at least it got good reviews online). We parked just outside "Wear it Again, Sam," a vintage clothing store. (That's not the one we were looking for, but it was a fortuitous parking place, since we got to check it out!) I stepped inside and I swear, it was like I Love Lucy all around, from the men's shirts to the purses and hats to the bathing suits to the dresses. Sooooo much prettiness and cuteness! Unfortunately everything was overpriced, even the things that were in bad condition, i.e. had rips or runs or broken zippers. *Sigh* But very fun to look.
We had lunch at Pizza Fusion, and everything there is eco-friendly, biodegradable, free-range, and organic. Our waitress was covered in tattoos and was kind of a friendly, dippy hippie sort of person. Here is the bathroom sink:
(I took a picture of the nifty bathroom sinks at Quarter Kitchen, too, but they turned out bad so I didn't post them. I'm weird, I know.) I'm pretty sure it was made from bamboo, and at the bottom of the mirror, it says "This person is helping to change the world." Awww.
We hit Buffalo Exchange after that, and if we weren't so tired and footsore at that point, we could've spent a lot longer inside. I tried on a ton of stuff but everything either didn't fit, or was ugly on me. All except a cute black pencil skirt, yay! I'd been wanting one for teaching this fall.
If you've met my mom, this will come as little surprise to you: we went and got her nose pierced that afternoon. :D We punched "tattoo" into the GPS to find a place and drove just a little ways, went in and met a hairy, tattoo'd dude, and were told to come back in half an hour. After having a coffee and pastry at a cute French place, we returned to Swell Tattoo Co.
:D Didn't hurt, didn't bleed, she didn't even tear up.
After that, we went home, exhausted.
Thursday was our last day in San Diego. We hit Ikea in the morning, wheeeeeee! I love love love that store! I'd never been in one before, but everything in it was just like our house is decorated. I wanted to buy all of it! And so cheap, too! Eventually, when (if) we have money, we might be ordering some smaller things from the website.
Brittany, this is for you and your Ikea food pictures! We split a chicken wrap and an order of French fries. I had apple juice and Mom had some sort of sparkling peach stuff. Yum!
After lunch, we drove to the Natural History Museum for the Body Worlds exhibit. It was very cool and I'm very glad we went! It was like walking through a giant science lesson, but in a good way. I went back and forth between, "Oh my gosh, these are real people. Ew. Dang." and "Wow, this is so awsome! Look at that heart cross section/those blood vessels/that embryo/those muscles!" If you have a chance to go, I recommend it.
Lovely avenue between the science building and the museum proper. Don't know what was down it, but it was sure a photo opportunity!
Thursday after work, Lori drove us an hour and a half-ish back to Jenna's apartment. We watched What Happens in Vegas, which was better than I'd thought it would be: hilarious and cute. Lori then drove home since she had work the next morning, and Mom and I slept on the hideaway in the spare room, and the couch in the living room, respectively.
The whole trip, Mom and I had been dying for El Pollo Loco. (Oh my gosh, that website just made me so hungry for it! It's soooo good!) It had been years since either of us had had it, since there aren't any in Colorado. So on the way to the airport (Jen came back on her lunch break to take us), we drove through and got combo meals. Deciding it would be too messy to eat them in the car, and thinking it was only a half hour, anyway, we waited til we got to the airport. After checking our bag and getting our tickets, we started toward... well, a freaking huge line. And at the end of that line was the security checkpoint, past which you cannot take food. So yes, we scarfed down as much as we could, since we had to get in that line and we couldn't be late for our flight.
(Good grief, I really needed to cut my bangs that whole time we were there, they looked like crud!) (And I like Mr. "I'm not paying attention to the silly tourists taking pictures of their chicken" behind me.) Here I am with our carry-on junk on a cart, eating grilled chicken, tortillas, beans, and rice, as fast as possible without getting sick.
And then, finally, we were on the plane home. After the stress of the huge airport, both of us just read and dozed a little. However, I had to take one more picture.
I think our carry-on bags are so indicative of our personalities. Heather's is handmade, vintage-looking, pink, and comfy. Donna's is patent-leather, zebra striped, and accented with lipstick-red and silver chains.
Good trip.
Pretty flowers outside yet another thrift store.
After that, we went to Hillcrest, off of University Avenue (oddly enough, it's near the college) for another "famous" thrift store (or at least it got good reviews online). We parked just outside "Wear it Again, Sam," a vintage clothing store. (That's not the one we were looking for, but it was a fortuitous parking place, since we got to check it out!) I stepped inside and I swear, it was like I Love Lucy all around, from the men's shirts to the purses and hats to the bathing suits to the dresses. Sooooo much prettiness and cuteness! Unfortunately everything was overpriced, even the things that were in bad condition, i.e. had rips or runs or broken zippers. *Sigh* But very fun to look.
We had lunch at Pizza Fusion, and everything there is eco-friendly, biodegradable, free-range, and organic. Our waitress was covered in tattoos and was kind of a friendly, dippy hippie sort of person. Here is the bathroom sink:
(I took a picture of the nifty bathroom sinks at Quarter Kitchen, too, but they turned out bad so I didn't post them. I'm weird, I know.) I'm pretty sure it was made from bamboo, and at the bottom of the mirror, it says "This person is helping to change the world." Awww.
We hit Buffalo Exchange after that, and if we weren't so tired and footsore at that point, we could've spent a lot longer inside. I tried on a ton of stuff but everything either didn't fit, or was ugly on me. All except a cute black pencil skirt, yay! I'd been wanting one for teaching this fall.
If you've met my mom, this will come as little surprise to you: we went and got her nose pierced that afternoon. :D We punched "tattoo" into the GPS to find a place and drove just a little ways, went in and met a hairy, tattoo'd dude, and were told to come back in half an hour. After having a coffee and pastry at a cute French place, we returned to Swell Tattoo Co.
:D Didn't hurt, didn't bleed, she didn't even tear up.
After that, we went home, exhausted.
Thursday was our last day in San Diego. We hit Ikea in the morning, wheeeeeee! I love love love that store! I'd never been in one before, but everything in it was just like our house is decorated. I wanted to buy all of it! And so cheap, too! Eventually, when (if) we have money, we might be ordering some smaller things from the website.
Brittany, this is for you and your Ikea food pictures! We split a chicken wrap and an order of French fries. I had apple juice and Mom had some sort of sparkling peach stuff. Yum!
After lunch, we drove to the Natural History Museum for the Body Worlds exhibit. It was very cool and I'm very glad we went! It was like walking through a giant science lesson, but in a good way. I went back and forth between, "Oh my gosh, these are real people. Ew. Dang." and "Wow, this is so awsome! Look at that heart cross section/those blood vessels/that embryo/those muscles!" If you have a chance to go, I recommend it.
Lovely avenue between the science building and the museum proper. Don't know what was down it, but it was sure a photo opportunity!
Thursday after work, Lori drove us an hour and a half-ish back to Jenna's apartment. We watched What Happens in Vegas, which was better than I'd thought it would be: hilarious and cute. Lori then drove home since she had work the next morning, and Mom and I slept on the hideaway in the spare room, and the couch in the living room, respectively.
The whole trip, Mom and I had been dying for El Pollo Loco. (Oh my gosh, that website just made me so hungry for it! It's soooo good!) It had been years since either of us had had it, since there aren't any in Colorado. So on the way to the airport (Jen came back on her lunch break to take us), we drove through and got combo meals. Deciding it would be too messy to eat them in the car, and thinking it was only a half hour, anyway, we waited til we got to the airport. After checking our bag and getting our tickets, we started toward... well, a freaking huge line. And at the end of that line was the security checkpoint, past which you cannot take food. So yes, we scarfed down as much as we could, since we had to get in that line and we couldn't be late for our flight.
(Good grief, I really needed to cut my bangs that whole time we were there, they looked like crud!) (And I like Mr. "I'm not paying attention to the silly tourists taking pictures of their chicken" behind me.) Here I am with our carry-on junk on a cart, eating grilled chicken, tortillas, beans, and rice, as fast as possible without getting sick.
And then, finally, we were on the plane home. After the stress of the huge airport, both of us just read and dozed a little. However, I had to take one more picture.
I think our carry-on bags are so indicative of our personalities. Heather's is handmade, vintage-looking, pink, and comfy. Donna's is patent-leather, zebra striped, and accented with lipstick-red and silver chains.
Good trip.
Friday, August 14, 2009
San Diego 2009 - Part 1
The trip immortalized forever in a wholllle lot of pictures! Oddly enough, a lot of them are of food, but I'll only show you a couple of those. (We did a lot of eating. It was great.) I took about 80 pictures and whittled them down to 21.
Mom and I left here about 9:30 on Friday night and the two-hour flight got into LAX about 10:45--California time. (The trip home was "three hours" long because of the time change.) My cousin, Jennifer, picked us up at the airport since she lives about half an hour away, then we drove straight down to my Aunt Lori's house in San Diego, about another hour and a half. We arrived at Lori's about 1am and promptly crashed into our respective beds. Mom and I had their toy hauler/trailer in the driveway to ourselves, which was super nice.
Here is the view from their huge picture window in the living room. Across the bay you can see the Sea World fireworks go off about 10 every night.
This is how we spent the first half of Saturday. It was amazing. Once we were finally dressed, we went to CostCo, since we'd made great plans of wonderful things to cook and eat that week. After dropping all that off at the house, Mom and I took Lori's car to the beach for a couple hours while Lori and Jen (who can go to the beach whenever they want since they live there) hit another grocery store for a couple more things. We came back and had a yummy dinner: a salad of greens with grilled chicken, fresh raspberries, carmelized walnuts, and raspberry vinagrette. Uncle Jeff was on a boat fishing with friends, and my other cousin, Curtis, was at his cousin's house, so we could have a super-girly dinner.
Sunday we had a "tea party" breakfast with orange-chocolate-chip scones, two kinds of tea, and yogurt-fruit-granola "parfaits" in martini glasses, then the four of us went to the swap meet. Sooooooo much shopping, and all for super cheap! I got a top and a dress for $12, the parasol for $2, a bunch of earrings for $5, a purse and matching wallet (the same exact set I'd been pining for from Icing, but I paid $8 for the set instead of $30!), lots of hair stuff, new sunglasses... I don't know what all else. Jenna also got a big rug for her new apartment for just $40, and Mom got two pair of shoes, a hat... Yeah, there was major shopping.
Snack time! (Jenna and Lori)
That night we had a nice dinner with the whole family, as well as Curtis' really sweet girlfriend, Sarah. We watched Holes, which I hadn't seen in forever. It's still wonderful! :) (Please read the book first if you haven't seen the movie! They're both great, but of course the book is better.) Then Curtis played a new song he'd learned on his 12-string. He has a minor guitar addiction, and by "minor" I mean he has about 6 all over his room.
Jenna got up early Monday morning to head back to Orange County and work, booo. Mom drove Lori to work so we'd have the use of her car all day (and she caught a ride back with Jeff). Then we hit the thrift stores--hard! One called "The Buff" was supposed to be awesome, but was mostly full of cheap-o Halloween costumes and castoff 90's clothes, though I did find some dark turquoise, velvet, high-heeled shoes with rhinestone buckles on them! Up the street was "Thrift Trader," where everything in the store--t-shirts, skirts, movies, CDs, jackets, everything--was either $5.99 or 4 items for $20. We made out good there!
I got this top, as well as a bunch of cute WWF t-shirts and a black cropped jacket that will be good for teaching. Mom got a bunch of CDs.
We then made our second Starbucks stop of the day for a little pick-me-up before heading to AmVets, a huuuuge thrift store the size of a warehouse. (All the proceeds went to support veterans, yay.)
Mom did not get the overalls, I just wanted a picture of her in a thrift store, too. She did get a tablecloth, and I got a couple of dresses and a pair of brown patent-leather peep-toe heels. I've been needing good brown shoes!
Exhausted, we returned to Lori and Jeff's and put our feet up!
The next day we went to the Gaslamp District, which is full of historic buildings such as:
Pretty, huh? Also, gas lamps! Although of course they're electric now. We spent pretty much that whole day in the Horton Plaza Mall, again, shopping til we dropped. (Why I kept wearing high heels, I do not know. Oh right, cuz they're cute. Beauty is pain.) We finally rested our feet at Quarter Kitchen, the restaurant of the Ivy, a fancy-ish hotel. There I met, in person, Jen from Somewhere Knitting! We've been internet friends for around three years now, I think! She lived about two hours south of San Diego, and since she would be moving back east a couple of weeks after and we would likely never get the chance to meet again, we decided to have dinner that night!
It was really great to talk to her face-to-face, and I'm so glad my mom could meet her, too! (They'd been Facebook friends for a while; somehow they remind me of the other.) Jen, thanks again so much for driving all that way to see us!
This is the most amazing braised beef I've ever had, it just fell apart in your mouth! Tiny carrots, tiny potatoes. The restaurant was so fancy that the portions were leeetle, but we got two appetizer-entree-dessert orders and shared between the three of us; it was just right.
Like I said, Mom has fond memories of Jim Croce and his music from her high school days, so we went to his restaurant and jazz bar to check it out and buy a souvenier. (He died in a plane crash years ago, so it's not really his restaurant, but anyway.) It wasn't quite what we were expecting; there was a very loud band in one corner (good, though!) and the "gift shop" was a locked glass case in the back by the restrooms which contained a few box sets, some DVDs, and some t-shirts. Oh well. Mom got the 30th anniversary box set of two CDs and a DVD of live stuff, and took a picture with the bouncer! Then we took the trolley back to the depot (we'd taken the bus into the District, so we got both experiences--the trolley was a lot faster--in order to not mess with and pay for parking downtown) and drove a couple of miles home!
This is a very long post with a lot lot of pictures, so I'll wrap it up for now. Part 2 coming soon! (Hopefully tomorrow.)
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Mom and I left here about 9:30 on Friday night and the two-hour flight got into LAX about 10:45--California time. (The trip home was "three hours" long because of the time change.) My cousin, Jennifer, picked us up at the airport since she lives about half an hour away, then we drove straight down to my Aunt Lori's house in San Diego, about another hour and a half. We arrived at Lori's about 1am and promptly crashed into our respective beds. Mom and I had their toy hauler/trailer in the driveway to ourselves, which was super nice.
Here is the view from their huge picture window in the living room. Across the bay you can see the Sea World fireworks go off about 10 every night.
This is how we spent the first half of Saturday. It was amazing. Once we were finally dressed, we went to CostCo, since we'd made great plans of wonderful things to cook and eat that week. After dropping all that off at the house, Mom and I took Lori's car to the beach for a couple hours while Lori and Jen (who can go to the beach whenever they want since they live there) hit another grocery store for a couple more things. We came back and had a yummy dinner: a salad of greens with grilled chicken, fresh raspberries, carmelized walnuts, and raspberry vinagrette. Uncle Jeff was on a boat fishing with friends, and my other cousin, Curtis, was at his cousin's house, so we could have a super-girly dinner.
Sunday we had a "tea party" breakfast with orange-chocolate-chip scones, two kinds of tea, and yogurt-fruit-granola "parfaits" in martini glasses, then the four of us went to the swap meet. Sooooooo much shopping, and all for super cheap! I got a top and a dress for $12, the parasol for $2, a bunch of earrings for $5, a purse and matching wallet (the same exact set I'd been pining for from Icing, but I paid $8 for the set instead of $30!), lots of hair stuff, new sunglasses... I don't know what all else. Jenna also got a big rug for her new apartment for just $40, and Mom got two pair of shoes, a hat... Yeah, there was major shopping.
Snack time! (Jenna and Lori)
That night we had a nice dinner with the whole family, as well as Curtis' really sweet girlfriend, Sarah. We watched Holes, which I hadn't seen in forever. It's still wonderful! :) (Please read the book first if you haven't seen the movie! They're both great, but of course the book is better.) Then Curtis played a new song he'd learned on his 12-string. He has a minor guitar addiction, and by "minor" I mean he has about 6 all over his room.
Jenna got up early Monday morning to head back to Orange County and work, booo. Mom drove Lori to work so we'd have the use of her car all day (and she caught a ride back with Jeff). Then we hit the thrift stores--hard! One called "The Buff" was supposed to be awesome, but was mostly full of cheap-o Halloween costumes and castoff 90's clothes, though I did find some dark turquoise, velvet, high-heeled shoes with rhinestone buckles on them! Up the street was "Thrift Trader," where everything in the store--t-shirts, skirts, movies, CDs, jackets, everything--was either $5.99 or 4 items for $20. We made out good there!
I got this top, as well as a bunch of cute WWF t-shirts and a black cropped jacket that will be good for teaching. Mom got a bunch of CDs.
We then made our second Starbucks stop of the day for a little pick-me-up before heading to AmVets, a huuuuge thrift store the size of a warehouse. (All the proceeds went to support veterans, yay.)
Mom did not get the overalls, I just wanted a picture of her in a thrift store, too. She did get a tablecloth, and I got a couple of dresses and a pair of brown patent-leather peep-toe heels. I've been needing good brown shoes!
Exhausted, we returned to Lori and Jeff's and put our feet up!
The next day we went to the Gaslamp District, which is full of historic buildings such as:
Pretty, huh? Also, gas lamps! Although of course they're electric now. We spent pretty much that whole day in the Horton Plaza Mall, again, shopping til we dropped. (Why I kept wearing high heels, I do not know. Oh right, cuz they're cute. Beauty is pain.) We finally rested our feet at Quarter Kitchen, the restaurant of the Ivy, a fancy-ish hotel. There I met, in person, Jen from Somewhere Knitting! We've been internet friends for around three years now, I think! She lived about two hours south of San Diego, and since she would be moving back east a couple of weeks after and we would likely never get the chance to meet again, we decided to have dinner that night!
It was really great to talk to her face-to-face, and I'm so glad my mom could meet her, too! (They'd been Facebook friends for a while; somehow they remind me of the other.) Jen, thanks again so much for driving all that way to see us!
This is the most amazing braised beef I've ever had, it just fell apart in your mouth! Tiny carrots, tiny potatoes. The restaurant was so fancy that the portions were leeetle, but we got two appetizer-entree-dessert orders and shared between the three of us; it was just right.
Like I said, Mom has fond memories of Jim Croce and his music from her high school days, so we went to his restaurant and jazz bar to check it out and buy a souvenier. (He died in a plane crash years ago, so it's not really his restaurant, but anyway.) It wasn't quite what we were expecting; there was a very loud band in one corner (good, though!) and the "gift shop" was a locked glass case in the back by the restrooms which contained a few box sets, some DVDs, and some t-shirts. Oh well. Mom got the 30th anniversary box set of two CDs and a DVD of live stuff, and took a picture with the bouncer! Then we took the trolley back to the depot (we'd taken the bus into the District, so we got both experiences--the trolley was a lot faster--in order to not mess with and pay for parking downtown) and drove a couple of miles home!
This is a very long post with a lot lot of pictures, so I'll wrap it up for now. Part 2 coming soon! (Hopefully tomorrow.)
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Meet Kitsune
Hi!
Hi hi! I'm Kitsune but Mommy and Daddy call me Sune, it sounds like Sooooni. They say "Sooni Sooni Sooni!" to try and get me to come to them, but I don't pay very much attention to them sometimes. But sometimes I do, and then they get really happy and pet me and say "Good dog" and "Good girl" a lot, and I like that, especially when they scratch my back. You know what else is really good? When Mommy scratches the back of my neck under my collar and gets underneath all my long hair, that's reeeeeally good, yeah. I almost fall asleep sometimes when she does that.
This was me the first day at my home. Mommy and Daddy took me from my other Mommy. She was a nice old lady in a little house, and I had FOUR other little dogs to play with! Wow, it was really fun! Other Mommy loved me and petted me, and she fed me canned food with real chicken in it, and it was soooo yummy. So yummy! Mommy now and Daddy, they only feed me dry chunks of food and I don't like it that much, but I guess if I get hungry enough I'll eat it. Mommy gets mad at Daddy sometimes for feeding me too much of the canned food. She says it's a treat--oh, I know that word!--and it's expensive, whatever that means. I think I should get canned food all the time, but I guess I'm not going to.
Anyway, Other Mommy took me away from some people who weren't very nice. I was in a cage a lot of the time, and there were other big dogs that made me nervous, and no one took me out and played with me, or brushed my pretty hair, or fed me very much. They made me shy and scared, and I don't really like to be picked up or left by myself, but I'm getting lots better every day! Mommy and Daddy love me sooo much and they cuddle me and tell me how pretty I am!
I like to lay with my legs stuck out behind me, and it makes Mommy laugh but it's comfy! But I don't lay down for very long. There are sounds, and I have to see what the sounds are, and sometimes there are food sounds and I reeeeally want to see what THOSE sounds are! And then I lay down again. Sometimes I think I smell something, but then I don't. I snuffle all around the whollllle house, but I hardly ever find anything good. That's okay. I lay down some more, until I get up again.
I have a little toy, it's soft and Mommy calls it a giraffe, whatever that is, and it squeaks when she squeezes it, but I don't make it squeak. I like to pounce on it, pounce pounce pounce! When Mommy hops it around on the carpet. And I fetch the giraffe too, but I'm only sort of good at that. Mommy says we'll work on it. She also says we'll work on "sit" and "stay" and "lay down," but I'm not so sure about that.
Oh I forgot to say, my name means "fox" in Japanese! I guess Mommy and Daddy really like Japanese stuff. They say I look like a little fox when I'm snuffling around in the tall weeds in the backyard. It's fun! There are lots of smells out there. There is a big dog on the other side of the fence, but I haven't met it yet, and it never barks at me, which is good, because I would bark at it! Bark and bark! But I don't.
I forgot to say I'm a mix! One of my doggy parents was a Pomeranian and the other was a Chihuahua, I don't remember which is which. Oh well. I am soooo pretty! And also I am two years old, so I am not a tiny baby puppy anymore, no, I am very big and grown up! But sometimes it's fun to still act like a puppy. That's okay too.
When new people come into my home, I bark at them too! And I shiver and sit on Mommy or Daddy's lap, and they pet me and tell me to be nice. And after a while I sniff the new people and they try and pet me and I run away, but a while after that I walk across their laps on the sofa or come and lick their fingers, and it's okay. Sometimes they give me TREATS! That's really good.
Well, I'm gonna go cuddle with Daddy for a while. I sit on Daddy's lap and watch the big boxes he looks at, they have neat pictures and the pictures move and that's fun! Mommy watches boxes with pictures, too, and it's fun to sit on her lap and watch the pictures! And lots of times she takes out a very little box and it makes clicking noises while she looks at it, and it looks at me. It's weird. She says I move too fast. Oh well.
Okay byyyyyyeeeeeee! It was nice to meet you!
Oh hi! Hi! It's me again. Mommy says she is posting a video, and she hopes it works, and it "takes a while to load." Okay, sure Mommy. Here is a video of me being cute, which is what I do all the time! Also, there is sound. Also, it's not a very good video. Mommy needs more practice.
Hi hi! I'm Kitsune but Mommy and Daddy call me Sune, it sounds like Sooooni. They say "Sooni Sooni Sooni!" to try and get me to come to them, but I don't pay very much attention to them sometimes. But sometimes I do, and then they get really happy and pet me and say "Good dog" and "Good girl" a lot, and I like that, especially when they scratch my back. You know what else is really good? When Mommy scratches the back of my neck under my collar and gets underneath all my long hair, that's reeeeeally good, yeah. I almost fall asleep sometimes when she does that.
This was me the first day at my home. Mommy and Daddy took me from my other Mommy. She was a nice old lady in a little house, and I had FOUR other little dogs to play with! Wow, it was really fun! Other Mommy loved me and petted me, and she fed me canned food with real chicken in it, and it was soooo yummy. So yummy! Mommy now and Daddy, they only feed me dry chunks of food and I don't like it that much, but I guess if I get hungry enough I'll eat it. Mommy gets mad at Daddy sometimes for feeding me too much of the canned food. She says it's a treat--oh, I know that word!--and it's expensive, whatever that means. I think I should get canned food all the time, but I guess I'm not going to.
Anyway, Other Mommy took me away from some people who weren't very nice. I was in a cage a lot of the time, and there were other big dogs that made me nervous, and no one took me out and played with me, or brushed my pretty hair, or fed me very much. They made me shy and scared, and I don't really like to be picked up or left by myself, but I'm getting lots better every day! Mommy and Daddy love me sooo much and they cuddle me and tell me how pretty I am!
I like to lay with my legs stuck out behind me, and it makes Mommy laugh but it's comfy! But I don't lay down for very long. There are sounds, and I have to see what the sounds are, and sometimes there are food sounds and I reeeeally want to see what THOSE sounds are! And then I lay down again. Sometimes I think I smell something, but then I don't. I snuffle all around the whollllle house, but I hardly ever find anything good. That's okay. I lay down some more, until I get up again.
I have a little toy, it's soft and Mommy calls it a giraffe, whatever that is, and it squeaks when she squeezes it, but I don't make it squeak. I like to pounce on it, pounce pounce pounce! When Mommy hops it around on the carpet. And I fetch the giraffe too, but I'm only sort of good at that. Mommy says we'll work on it. She also says we'll work on "sit" and "stay" and "lay down," but I'm not so sure about that.
Oh I forgot to say, my name means "fox" in Japanese! I guess Mommy and Daddy really like Japanese stuff. They say I look like a little fox when I'm snuffling around in the tall weeds in the backyard. It's fun! There are lots of smells out there. There is a big dog on the other side of the fence, but I haven't met it yet, and it never barks at me, which is good, because I would bark at it! Bark and bark! But I don't.
I forgot to say I'm a mix! One of my doggy parents was a Pomeranian and the other was a Chihuahua, I don't remember which is which. Oh well. I am soooo pretty! And also I am two years old, so I am not a tiny baby puppy anymore, no, I am very big and grown up! But sometimes it's fun to still act like a puppy. That's okay too.
When new people come into my home, I bark at them too! And I shiver and sit on Mommy or Daddy's lap, and they pet me and tell me to be nice. And after a while I sniff the new people and they try and pet me and I run away, but a while after that I walk across their laps on the sofa or come and lick their fingers, and it's okay. Sometimes they give me TREATS! That's really good.
Well, I'm gonna go cuddle with Daddy for a while. I sit on Daddy's lap and watch the big boxes he looks at, they have neat pictures and the pictures move and that's fun! Mommy watches boxes with pictures, too, and it's fun to sit on her lap and watch the pictures! And lots of times she takes out a very little box and it makes clicking noises while she looks at it, and it looks at me. It's weird. She says I move too fast. Oh well.
Okay byyyyyyeeeeeee! It was nice to meet you!
Oh hi! Hi! It's me again. Mommy says she is posting a video, and she hopes it works, and it "takes a while to load." Okay, sure Mommy. Here is a video of me being cute, which is what I do all the time! Also, there is sound. Also, it's not a very good video. Mommy needs more practice.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Hiiiiiiiii!
I'm back! I'm here! Home, my very own home! It's full of boxes and bags of STUFF (man, we have a lot of stuff) but it is ours.
San Diego was great! I'll make a post soonish with lots of pictures and tell you all about it. I got a ton of stuff from the swap meet and various thrift stores, and great memories with my mom.
We are all moved in, totally and completely. The carpets in the old apartment have been cleaned, and we turned in our keys. Hopefully we'll get our deposit back soon. :)
There is a scratch on the inside of this mug that looks just like a smiley face. =) Like that.
My head is full of so many things right now (one of them being caffienated iced tea) that I'm a little ADD.
Off to visit family for the weekend; it's my grandma's birthday, and my mom's two sisters are coming out as well. Monday is new teacher orientation, as is Tuesday, then Wednesday starts the teacher work days. By the 19th, I will be with students in "my" classroom! AAAAAAAAAAAACK!
I mean YAAAAAAAAY! Yes, that's what I meant.
San Diego was great! I'll make a post soonish with lots of pictures and tell you all about it. I got a ton of stuff from the swap meet and various thrift stores, and great memories with my mom.
We are all moved in, totally and completely. The carpets in the old apartment have been cleaned, and we turned in our keys. Hopefully we'll get our deposit back soon. :)
There is a scratch on the inside of this mug that looks just like a smiley face. =) Like that.
My head is full of so many things right now (one of them being caffienated iced tea) that I'm a little ADD.
Off to visit family for the weekend; it's my grandma's birthday, and my mom's two sisters are coming out as well. Monday is new teacher orientation, as is Tuesday, then Wednesday starts the teacher work days. By the 19th, I will be with students in "my" classroom! AAAAAAAAAAAACK!
I mean YAAAAAAAAY! Yes, that's what I meant.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
8 Things Friday
1. We picked out and bought the paint for the new kitchen, as well as all the other supplies! :) Go here, click on "Warm Reds," and type "Tomato Red" into the search on the right side. It looks horrid on my monitor, sort of pinkish and dull, but it's much nicer than that, really. I'm trying to think of something in real life to compare it to... Maybe a bit more orange than geraniums, and a little darker.
As a reminder, here's the kitchen:
Keep in mind the new countertops will be medium-grey with speckles. The two walls you can see, as well as the third wall facing the living room, will be painted. Did I say the new theme for the kitchen is "sushi"? :D I think it will be so cute! I want to make a rag rug from old t-shirts that looks like a sushi roll (green on the outside for seaweed, white inside for rice, and pink in the center for salmon or whatever). Any links to sushi-themed fabric, knick-knacks, pictures, or kitchen doo-dads, if you happen to come across them, would be appreciated!
2. Now for plans for the sewing room! I might clip a few aprons onto a pretend clothesline on the wall, or hang them on pegs, but the rest I want to pin onto curtains and replace the lame sliding closet doors with those curtains! They'll look like they're almost made out of aprons, but I can still take the aprons off at any point and not damage any if I just use safety pins. I might also sew/pin doilies and hankies in the blank spots between aprons and make it really patchwork-y, we'll see.
I got a couple of nice wooden hangers on which to display my pretty vintage dresses. I hate that my Gunne Sax, my 60s homecoming dresses, and a few other neat ones, are just hung in the back of my closet and are worn either never or very rarely. Why not treat them as art? I'll put a couple hooks or pegs on the wall and rotate the dresses on hangers depending on what I want to see.
If I could find some decent-looking wig heads, I might put some of the vintage hats on them; HOWEVER, 1) having heads in my sewing room, especially at night and when it's dark, might freak me out out of the corner of my eye and 2) I'm not sure I'll have enough free horizontal surfaces (like bookcases or shelves) on which to put them. So the hats might go on the wall, too.
After this, if I have any wall space left (one wall is mostly sliding glass door, the other is mostly closet, and there's the door into the room in another wall), I might do something like this with a few of my favorite/most meaningful fabrics. Cute, huh? I got about 8 wooden embroidery hoops of various sizes at the Goodwill the other day for really cheap, too.
Oh, and I want a vanity in the sewing room. With just my sewing table and desk, there should be room. It would be so nice to have all my jewelry, makeup, and hair stuff in a place where I can sit down and get ready in the morning, with a nice little table, stool, and mirror. I described my ideal vanity to Mom--white, sort of curvy, with rounded edges and maybe moulding?--and she said it was "French Provincial." Lovely!
3. Good grief, are we only on three? All right, here's another picture:
Yes, it is a picture of a dirty, rather linty floor. But do you know what floor it is? It is the floor of the current craft closet! YES, IT HAS A FLOOR! I have discovered it! The overflow pile of laundry is GONE (it all fits in the hampers, now, and holy cow do we have a lot of clothes!) so you can SEE the FLOOR! If I'm ever not running around doing stuff for the new house/moving, or doing school, I could actually get in there and sort through stuff and pack stuff! CRAZY!
4. More pictures! The other day for lunch, I turned this
into this
Appetizing, no? :P It was quite delicious. The addition of a banana helped to disguise the spinach taste completely, and the strawberries and pineapple plus OJ, made it very yummy! I will give you a tip, though: don't have this much fruit in one day, two days in a row. I'm just sayin.
5. SEVEN DAYS TIL SAN DIEGO!!!
6. Speaking of which, does anyone who knows San Diego have any fabulous places we simply must visit while we're there? (July 24th-31st) So far we have: one day of thrift stores, one day of the Gaslamp District, maybe one day at the swap meet. We'd like to visit the beach at least a couple of mornings/afternoons (not all day) and just lay around and read and be bums. :) Also want to hit the Jim Croce restaurant/shop because my mom has fond memories of his music from her youth, and we might go Coronado Island Hotel. We're not that interested in Sea World (been there, done that), nor do we want to drive far at all since we'll be borrowing my aunt's car while she's at work.
7. Goodwill is made of awesome! I needed new jeans that fit and weren't holey, and a hoodie that met very specific requirements (none of which my other 537 jackets had), and ended up getting not only classy wide-leg jeans and a lime-green hoodie, but the embroidery hoops mentioned above, white sandals (strappy, high-heeled) that I like a lot better than my current white sandals, two comfy knit dresses about knee-length, and a really 80s-looking cotton floral dress that I think is cute but might be a little tacky/lame in 2009. Don't care, I wore it anyway. Oh, and also our Christmas cards for this year because they were cheap, and a hot pink sheet to make into a dress/skirt/whatever. I need to quit buying sheets for fabric until I use up a few that I have! All that for just about $34!
8. If you could recommend one book on pregnancy/childbirth, what would it be and why? I want to get a few in the near-ish future to start looking ahead and considering all my options.
As a reminder, here's the kitchen:
Keep in mind the new countertops will be medium-grey with speckles. The two walls you can see, as well as the third wall facing the living room, will be painted. Did I say the new theme for the kitchen is "sushi"? :D I think it will be so cute! I want to make a rag rug from old t-shirts that looks like a sushi roll (green on the outside for seaweed, white inside for rice, and pink in the center for salmon or whatever). Any links to sushi-themed fabric, knick-knacks, pictures, or kitchen doo-dads, if you happen to come across them, would be appreciated!
2. Now for plans for the sewing room! I might clip a few aprons onto a pretend clothesline on the wall, or hang them on pegs, but the rest I want to pin onto curtains and replace the lame sliding closet doors with those curtains! They'll look like they're almost made out of aprons, but I can still take the aprons off at any point and not damage any if I just use safety pins. I might also sew/pin doilies and hankies in the blank spots between aprons and make it really patchwork-y, we'll see.
I got a couple of nice wooden hangers on which to display my pretty vintage dresses. I hate that my Gunne Sax, my 60s homecoming dresses, and a few other neat ones, are just hung in the back of my closet and are worn either never or very rarely. Why not treat them as art? I'll put a couple hooks or pegs on the wall and rotate the dresses on hangers depending on what I want to see.
If I could find some decent-looking wig heads, I might put some of the vintage hats on them; HOWEVER, 1) having heads in my sewing room, especially at night and when it's dark, might freak me out out of the corner of my eye and 2) I'm not sure I'll have enough free horizontal surfaces (like bookcases or shelves) on which to put them. So the hats might go on the wall, too.
After this, if I have any wall space left (one wall is mostly sliding glass door, the other is mostly closet, and there's the door into the room in another wall), I might do something like this with a few of my favorite/most meaningful fabrics. Cute, huh? I got about 8 wooden embroidery hoops of various sizes at the Goodwill the other day for really cheap, too.
Oh, and I want a vanity in the sewing room. With just my sewing table and desk, there should be room. It would be so nice to have all my jewelry, makeup, and hair stuff in a place where I can sit down and get ready in the morning, with a nice little table, stool, and mirror. I described my ideal vanity to Mom--white, sort of curvy, with rounded edges and maybe moulding?--and she said it was "French Provincial." Lovely!
3. Good grief, are we only on three? All right, here's another picture:
Yes, it is a picture of a dirty, rather linty floor. But do you know what floor it is? It is the floor of the current craft closet! YES, IT HAS A FLOOR! I have discovered it! The overflow pile of laundry is GONE (it all fits in the hampers, now, and holy cow do we have a lot of clothes!) so you can SEE the FLOOR! If I'm ever not running around doing stuff for the new house/moving, or doing school, I could actually get in there and sort through stuff and pack stuff! CRAZY!
4. More pictures! The other day for lunch, I turned this
into this
Appetizing, no? :P It was quite delicious. The addition of a banana helped to disguise the spinach taste completely, and the strawberries and pineapple plus OJ, made it very yummy! I will give you a tip, though: don't have this much fruit in one day, two days in a row. I'm just sayin.
5. SEVEN DAYS TIL SAN DIEGO!!!
6. Speaking of which, does anyone who knows San Diego have any fabulous places we simply must visit while we're there? (July 24th-31st) So far we have: one day of thrift stores, one day of the Gaslamp District, maybe one day at the swap meet. We'd like to visit the beach at least a couple of mornings/afternoons (not all day) and just lay around and read and be bums. :) Also want to hit the Jim Croce restaurant/shop because my mom has fond memories of his music from her youth, and we might go Coronado Island Hotel. We're not that interested in Sea World (been there, done that), nor do we want to drive far at all since we'll be borrowing my aunt's car while she's at work.
7. Goodwill is made of awesome! I needed new jeans that fit and weren't holey, and a hoodie that met very specific requirements (none of which my other 537 jackets had), and ended up getting not only classy wide-leg jeans and a lime-green hoodie, but the embroidery hoops mentioned above, white sandals (strappy, high-heeled) that I like a lot better than my current white sandals, two comfy knit dresses about knee-length, and a really 80s-looking cotton floral dress that I think is cute but might be a little tacky/lame in 2009. Don't care, I wore it anyway. Oh, and also our Christmas cards for this year because they were cheap, and a hot pink sheet to make into a dress/skirt/whatever. I need to quit buying sheets for fabric until I use up a few that I have! All that for just about $34!
8. If you could recommend one book on pregnancy/childbirth, what would it be and why? I want to get a few in the near-ish future to start looking ahead and considering all my options.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
This is not for the faint of heart
Beware the pictures below! They are of a fruit-and-greens smoothie, but the color and texture is somewhat... well, it looks like someone already ate it, let's just say that.
Are you prepared?
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Mmmm, looks delicious, right? I sort of used this recipe, but not. Before I tell you how I made it, though, let's go in for a close-up.
Brown, with colored flecks in it. Fabulous.
So I filled my blender about 2/3 full of baby spinach, just fluffed in there, not squished down. Then I added maybe 1/2 a cup of orange juice, and 6 or so strawberries, leaves cut out and then cut in halves or fourths. The strawberries were past the point of being yummy on their own, but they tasted just fine all blended up with everything else. To that I added 12 chunks of canned pinapple chunks and a tablespoon or so of the juice. It took a little shaking of the blender to get all the spinach leaves down in there, but I managed to blend everything up nicely. And there was a super-healthy lunch! (I think. I know canned fruit has more sugar than regular fruit, right? But at least it's still fruit.) I wish I had a banana to throw in and thicken it up a bit, but it was fine like this. I just had to put it in a coffee mug so I wouldn't have to look at it through a clear glass!
Cheers!
Are you prepared?
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Mmmm, looks delicious, right? I sort of used this recipe, but not. Before I tell you how I made it, though, let's go in for a close-up.
Brown, with colored flecks in it. Fabulous.
So I filled my blender about 2/3 full of baby spinach, just fluffed in there, not squished down. Then I added maybe 1/2 a cup of orange juice, and 6 or so strawberries, leaves cut out and then cut in halves or fourths. The strawberries were past the point of being yummy on their own, but they tasted just fine all blended up with everything else. To that I added 12 chunks of canned pinapple chunks and a tablespoon or so of the juice. It took a little shaking of the blender to get all the spinach leaves down in there, but I managed to blend everything up nicely. And there was a super-healthy lunch! (I think. I know canned fruit has more sugar than regular fruit, right? But at least it's still fruit.) I wish I had a banana to throw in and thicken it up a bit, but it was fine like this. I just had to put it in a coffee mug so I wouldn't have to look at it through a clear glass!
Cheers!
Friday, July 10, 2009
8 Things Friday
1. It's late and I'm not in the mood for blog-writing, nor does my brain work. Let's see if I can get 8. (Look, here's 1 already!)
2. Good gracious, I have a lot of clothes! I went through and culled another whole garbage bag full today, which will be taken to Goodwill. There are also a few house things (decorations mostly) that can go, and probably some shoes, bags, and maybe even some crafty stuff, if I can ever get into that closet.
3. Here is the plan for the near near future, when I'm not doing school: 1) clear all the clothes off the top of the chest in the bedroom 2) get the laundry off the craft closet floor (and hopefully washed and dried and put away) 3) get into the craft closet and start putting fabric into the chest 4) get into the rest of the crafty stuff and start putting it in bins and tossing what I don't need anymore. (Ha, like I need any of it. But you know.)
4. All the books are packed, as well as most of Matt's computer and video games, his shot glass collection (we're not boozers, they're just good, cheap, portable souveniers from places we visit), and most of the decorative "doo-dads" in the living room. Once I grab some more newspaper, we can pack the wine glasses and good dishes.
5. Blah blah blah, packing, blah, moving, blah blah new house.
6. My brain is not working lately. I can't think of the words for things several times a day, which is frustrating. My typing gets worse, then better again. At least the crick in my neck finally went away. Oh, and also I'm scatterbrained and say random things.
7. I like ice cream! And summer! And lookit the neat bookshelf thingy in my sidebar!!
8. Ow. Time to sit on the couch and read som Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
2. Good gracious, I have a lot of clothes! I went through and culled another whole garbage bag full today, which will be taken to Goodwill. There are also a few house things (decorations mostly) that can go, and probably some shoes, bags, and maybe even some crafty stuff, if I can ever get into that closet.
3. Here is the plan for the near near future, when I'm not doing school: 1) clear all the clothes off the top of the chest in the bedroom 2) get the laundry off the craft closet floor (and hopefully washed and dried and put away) 3) get into the craft closet and start putting fabric into the chest 4) get into the rest of the crafty stuff and start putting it in bins and tossing what I don't need anymore. (Ha, like I need any of it. But you know.)
4. All the books are packed, as well as most of Matt's computer and video games, his shot glass collection (we're not boozers, they're just good, cheap, portable souveniers from places we visit), and most of the decorative "doo-dads" in the living room. Once I grab some more newspaper, we can pack the wine glasses and good dishes.
5. Blah blah blah, packing, blah, moving, blah blah new house.
6. My brain is not working lately. I can't think of the words for things several times a day, which is frustrating. My typing gets worse, then better again. At least the crick in my neck finally went away. Oh, and also I'm scatterbrained and say random things.
7. I like ice cream! And summer! And lookit the neat bookshelf thingy in my sidebar!!
8. Ow. Time to sit on the couch and read som Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
8 Things Friday
1. I was going to say that this (8 Things Friday) seems to be one of the constants in my life lately, but that's not quite true. There are plenty of other constants, like school, work, laundry, school, grocery shopping, and school. Maybe a better word would be "habit" or "routine." I was posting a bit more often a little while back, but then life kept happening (and kept happening) so I'm back to once a week. Well, once a week is better than nothing. I don't know that I have enough stuff to post about more than once a week!
2. Since life keeps happening, I haven't been cooking much at all. Since we can't live off McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Panchero's, but I don't have time in the evenings to make a "real" dinner, we're reduced to packaged stuff. It's not much healthier than fast food (and believe me, my face is protesting in the form of zits, yuck), but it is cheaper. Still, I spent about $20 more on a week's groceries than I usually do. Packaged is cheaper than fast food, but more expensive than actually making it myself. *Sigh* Moving blows. When I'm not at work or doing school, I've been doing stuff for the new house. We need quotes on a new swamp cooler and kitchen countertops (the sellers aren't replacing either before we move in, but giving us a monetary stipend--or whatever it's called--off the price of the house to replace them ourselves), there's a lot of paperwork to do and read over, a lot of calls to make... I gotta delegate some of this to Matt. I want input on the counters, but he can get whatever the heck a/c he wants! I'm not fussed about how he handles the torn back door screen, either.
3. I guess this should be another number now. New house! Matt's dad did the inspection, and all was well (but for the things mentioned above, which we got sorted). We just paid a butt-load of money to have it appraised (seriously, why is it so much for a dude with a clipboard to walk around the house and write stuff down??), but since we paid first and last month's rent when we moved into this place, we only have a little bit of rent this month. (It's gone up since we moved in two and a half years ago, which is why we're paying some rent.) However, we will have to buy spackle and spackle stuff to patch the holes where we wall-mounted the TV, and we'll have to get the carpets shampooed by a professional. This all costs money! The good thing is I FINALLY got my Summer alottment (i.e. student loans--apparently we're "too rich" to qualify for government grants anymore) so that will help, too.
4. Pictures, you say?
The front; we're in the middle of a line of townhomes, in a sort of U-shaped area of townhomes. There's a little "park" area off to the left of this picture, between two of the buildings.
Front door opens onto the living room, and up the stairs. New Pergo floors! (They need a little patching up, but oh well.)
Dining area. Don't think we're going to keep our huge table and chair set; might get a little two-seater bar-type set, or something, eventually.
Look at the new stainless steel appliances! The built-in microwave! The glass-top stove of awesomeness!
Loft area upstairs where Matt's computer and stuff will go. The rooms are bathroom, bedroom, bedroom.
Out of my sewing room downstairs is the little backyard. Privacy fence, yay. Also waaaaay overgrown grass in some spots, and dead grass in others. We won't replant/fix/get flowers until next summer, since it will be August by the time we're settled in, and who the heck knows what the weather could be like at that point?
5. Other than house-buying, nothing exciting has been going on. My calves are finally about done being sore from last weekend. We moved our friends DOWN two flights of stairs, and UP one flight into the new place. OW OW OW. And, let's see... yup, very little news. Counting the days til the San Diego trip! So glad I have something to look forward to at the end of this month!
6. Did I say I was knitting a pink shawl? I am. It's 84 stitches wide, alternating stripes of seed stitch and garter (and the stripes are 12 stitches wide) so it's rather slow-going. There are also a BILLION little mistakes that are bugging the crap out of me, but I'm trying to let it go. When it's finished and on, with pretty fringe hanging from the short ends, no one will notice. But gosh dang it! I've thought about putting stitch markers between the stripes so I don't start doing the next pattern too soon or too late, but I don't think I have 6 of them! Usually I just use a little loop of knotted yarn, but I'd probably just knit those into the shawl on accident, so I'd need plastic ones. Just little circles. Hmm, maybe should make a trip to Michael's or something. I'm a skein and about a 6th into it, and I'm thinking it will take about 6 skeins total. I have a ways to go. If I remember, I'll put pics of the shawl up soonish.
7. I wrote most of this last night and then forgot to post it, so I'm going to rush through these last two in order to get it up while it's still Friday. I'll have to do some editing, I'm sure.
8. Can anyone think of a good way to display about 16 aprons, 8 or so vintage hats, and about 21 pair of vintage gloves? They're all going in my new sewing room! (For the aprons, I thought putting them on a "clothesline" on the wall would be cute, but I'm not sure about the hats and gloves. Gloves could go in a basket or box, and hats could hang on the wall, but that's not terribly interesting.)
The gloves and hats. The three pair of gloves separated on the left are the ones I'm not keeping. The rest, I need a place for.
2. Since life keeps happening, I haven't been cooking much at all. Since we can't live off McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Panchero's, but I don't have time in the evenings to make a "real" dinner, we're reduced to packaged stuff. It's not much healthier than fast food (and believe me, my face is protesting in the form of zits, yuck), but it is cheaper. Still, I spent about $20 more on a week's groceries than I usually do. Packaged is cheaper than fast food, but more expensive than actually making it myself. *Sigh* Moving blows. When I'm not at work or doing school, I've been doing stuff for the new house. We need quotes on a new swamp cooler and kitchen countertops (the sellers aren't replacing either before we move in, but giving us a monetary stipend--or whatever it's called--off the price of the house to replace them ourselves), there's a lot of paperwork to do and read over, a lot of calls to make... I gotta delegate some of this to Matt. I want input on the counters, but he can get whatever the heck a/c he wants! I'm not fussed about how he handles the torn back door screen, either.
3. I guess this should be another number now. New house! Matt's dad did the inspection, and all was well (but for the things mentioned above, which we got sorted). We just paid a butt-load of money to have it appraised (seriously, why is it so much for a dude with a clipboard to walk around the house and write stuff down??), but since we paid first and last month's rent when we moved into this place, we only have a little bit of rent this month. (It's gone up since we moved in two and a half years ago, which is why we're paying some rent.) However, we will have to buy spackle and spackle stuff to patch the holes where we wall-mounted the TV, and we'll have to get the carpets shampooed by a professional. This all costs money! The good thing is I FINALLY got my Summer alottment (i.e. student loans--apparently we're "too rich" to qualify for government grants anymore) so that will help, too.
4. Pictures, you say?
The front; we're in the middle of a line of townhomes, in a sort of U-shaped area of townhomes. There's a little "park" area off to the left of this picture, between two of the buildings.
Front door opens onto the living room, and up the stairs. New Pergo floors! (They need a little patching up, but oh well.)
Dining area. Don't think we're going to keep our huge table and chair set; might get a little two-seater bar-type set, or something, eventually.
Look at the new stainless steel appliances! The built-in microwave! The glass-top stove of awesomeness!
Loft area upstairs where Matt's computer and stuff will go. The rooms are bathroom, bedroom, bedroom.
Out of my sewing room downstairs is the little backyard. Privacy fence, yay. Also waaaaay overgrown grass in some spots, and dead grass in others. We won't replant/fix/get flowers until next summer, since it will be August by the time we're settled in, and who the heck knows what the weather could be like at that point?
5. Other than house-buying, nothing exciting has been going on. My calves are finally about done being sore from last weekend. We moved our friends DOWN two flights of stairs, and UP one flight into the new place. OW OW OW. And, let's see... yup, very little news. Counting the days til the San Diego trip! So glad I have something to look forward to at the end of this month!
6. Did I say I was knitting a pink shawl? I am. It's 84 stitches wide, alternating stripes of seed stitch and garter (and the stripes are 12 stitches wide) so it's rather slow-going. There are also a BILLION little mistakes that are bugging the crap out of me, but I'm trying to let it go. When it's finished and on, with pretty fringe hanging from the short ends, no one will notice. But gosh dang it! I've thought about putting stitch markers between the stripes so I don't start doing the next pattern too soon or too late, but I don't think I have 6 of them! Usually I just use a little loop of knotted yarn, but I'd probably just knit those into the shawl on accident, so I'd need plastic ones. Just little circles. Hmm, maybe should make a trip to Michael's or something. I'm a skein and about a 6th into it, and I'm thinking it will take about 6 skeins total. I have a ways to go. If I remember, I'll put pics of the shawl up soonish.
7. I wrote most of this last night and then forgot to post it, so I'm going to rush through these last two in order to get it up while it's still Friday. I'll have to do some editing, I'm sure.
8. Can anyone think of a good way to display about 16 aprons, 8 or so vintage hats, and about 21 pair of vintage gloves? They're all going in my new sewing room! (For the aprons, I thought putting them on a "clothesline" on the wall would be cute, but I'm not sure about the hats and gloves. Gloves could go in a basket or box, and hats could hang on the wall, but that's not terribly interesting.)
The gloves and hats. The three pair of gloves separated on the left are the ones I'm not keeping. The rest, I need a place for.
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