Dancy Pants!


Dude! Leyre made me these pants. I heart them. She used my old duvet cover to make them. I found these two pictures online and checked out her blog post and then mentioned it in an email to Leyre, who just happened to have the book the pattern was from…and I just happened to have my old duvet cover that I had saved because I loved the patterns and figured I should be able to use it for something.

I wish I could wear them to work.

10 on Tuesday

1. It’s cold out today, and while the 8ish inches of snow we got recently usually would make me not cranky about that, it’s not working today. I think because I haven’t slept well recently and dealt with lots of annoying stupidity at work yesterday and I haven’t fully recovered yet.

2. Why, when a New England city gets 8ish inches of snow that they’ve been expecting for 2 days, does the city freak out and break? Don’t we do this every year? Don’t we know that the plows should be out all night to keep up? I just don’t get it. This is not new to Boston, this is not rare for Boston, it should not stop the city from functioning.

3. On the bright side, it’s so cold that I’m wearing the yummy cowl I made over vacation, and contemplating making a second one. Why do I need two? I don’t, but it as fun and relatively quick to make and I’d like to try it in a lighter weight yarn so it will be more drapey.

4. I use a travel mug every day for my Starbucks ritual. It is a 12 oz travel mug, a “tall”. Yet it never feels like I’m getting the same 12 ozs as when I get my chai in the paper cups (on weekends when I don’t have my travel mug with me). And it never lasts as long. Can someone explain this to me?

5. Last weekend I volunteered at a meeting for the 3 Day to share my “veteran wisdom” – HA! It was fun, and it got me really excited for this year’s walk. Which is July 24th-26th, for anyone that would like to join me, or just come cheer me on. And if you’d like to donate, you can just steer yourself right over here, to the donation page I haven’t made pretty just yet.

6. You know what’s nice? When Champ wakes me up so early that I get to spray the pee-stopping stuff on the carpet before she gets around to peeing on the carpet. I’m pretty sure that the proud feeling I get when I hear/see her peeing in the litter box every morning is akin to when a parent watches a potty-training child use the toilet. Seriously. I should clarify that the nice part is that she doesn’t pee on the carpet, not that she wakes me up early. She’s actually turning into quite a brat with the waking me up early lately.

7. A friend from high school scanned and posted to Facebook a number of old photos she had come across, and it inspired me to dig up my own. That fun adventure led to finding some that I hadn’t even been thinking about, including photos from the summer that Leyre and I spent on Nantucket. Which then led to me searching for a coworker from that summer online, and finding her on Facebook (of course). Which then led to her pointing me in the direction of another of our coworkers from that summer on Facebook. Which then led to happy (online) reunions, and the inspiration to scan and post those photos to Facebook this coming weekend. I have a feeling this may be a cycle that only runs out when there is no photo left unscanned.

8. Have I ever mentioned how much I like Stash Organic Merry Mint tea? If it was the only kind of tea I ever drank for the rest of my life, I would be okay with that.

9. I just started reading Twilight. I wanted to know what the fuss was about. Also, it’s written by a Mormon, and I like Mormons. It’s a light, quick read and I’ve made it through 226 pages in less than a day. Anything to keep me entertained while I walk on the treadmill!

10. Shockingly, I’m having trouble coming up with a 10 this week. But how about this: since I was walking at the gym after work, that meant dinner fell to Pete tonight. I came home and he was making waffles, and they were delicious. Sometimes brinner is all you need to make your cranky mood go away.

Warm


It was almost warm today – high 40s – so out came a dress. Which was a bit much, but I’m ready for spring!

10 on Tuesday


1. Someone has a cold. Can you guess who? When you blow through (literally) 2 boxes of tissues in 4 days, it doesn’t matter if they’ve got lotion on/in them – your nose still turns bright red and everyone that looks at you says “got a cold?” I’m feeling much better today – day 6 of ass kicking cold…the box of tissues I bought this morning may actually last more than two days!

2. Not only is my ass getting kicked by a cold, it is also getting frozen by the cold. Is it spring yet?

3. I’ve been a bad blogger lately, I know. I haven’t picked up my camera much since vacation. In fact, I’ve picked it up twice since then. I’m not really sure why, just not feeling particularly inspired. I’m going to make an effort to change that starting now. I also still haven’t gotten through editing my photos from vacation, so I’m going to set aside some time to do that this weekend. I do have a few more that I’ll post here, and I’ll link to them when I do so you don’t have to keep looking back. Because I like to do what I can to make your life easier, friend.

4. Last weekend was fun – lots of relaxing with Pete and watching Survivor Man and Deadliest Catch. I spent some time at the gym, including catching up on the latest Real Housewives episode and a relaxing (although challenging when you can’t breath through your nose!) yoga class Sunday morning. Lunch Sunday with an old friend at a fantastic new-to-me brunch place, and dinner/Oscars Sunday night with our old roommate.

5. I’m happy to report that I have tested and confirmed that drinking hard cider does not trigger my migraines. Vodka is the other tested and confirmed safe drink. I have some gin that I need to test a few more times before I’m confident it’s safe as well. FYI – it was my boss who encouraged me to just give up the wine and test out other drinks to see if they would be okay. Perhaps he thinks I need to relax?

6. About once a week, the cats decide that getting up when my alarm goes off isn’t early enough for them, and this week it was this morning. Champ was pacing the ledge behind our headboard meowing before my alarm even went off this morning, and after I snoozed a few times (sorry Pete) she jumped right up into his face. I got up, corralled the animals downstairs and fed them both. Usually this settles them down, Champ stays downstairs and plays and Barley goes back to sleep at Pete’s feet. This morning Barley went upstairs…and got frisky. Champ heard him and went upstairs, and a game of chase ensued. Back and forth across the ledge behind the behind the bed, the ledge along the side of the loft, and probably around and under the bed. You know why it ended? Because one of them knocked Pete’s bed side lamp off the ledge. Just another example of why those two are LUCKY THEY’RE CUTE.

7. Remember those two classes I took last semester? I knew in October I had gotten an A- in my first class, and for a few weeks after my second class finished I kept checking for my grade online. It hadn’t posted by the time I left for Christmas vacation, and I promptly forgot to look for it. Until last week, when I went to get my grades to submit for tuition reimbursement and found I’d gotten an A- in that class as well, woohoo!

8. Speaking of school, I had put off officially applying because the program I was interested in was no longer listed on the website. This past week, I got an email from one of my professors saying that the program is still in place even though it wasn’t online and encouraging me to apply. Guess I need to get cracking on a “statement of professional goals”.

9. I bought 5 boxes of Girl Scout cookies on Friday after work (3 Tagalongs and 2 Samoas, if you’re wondering) and managed to only eat 2 of them (um, that’s boxes not cookies) over the weekend, with help from Pete, Jamie, and Ryan for the record. And then…then…I polished off an entire box of Tagalongs yesterday with very little help from Pete. It’s a minor miracle that I haven’t polished off the open box of Samoas today. But the day isn’t over yet…

10. I was at the gym four days last week, and it’s shocking to me how noticeable of a difference it makes. My neck and shoulders are so screwed up despite the monthly body work, but working out this past week has made such an enjoyable difference that I’m not really sure why I ever stopped going to the gym on a regular basis. Now I just need to buy more gym clothes so I can go more often without having to do laundry more often! ;)

finger knittin’ good


I found a “how to” for a finger knit scarf (via whip up) a while back and have been wanting to try it since. I’m still trying to get used to the idea that I can actually make shit, so every time there’s something new I want to make, I test it out with this crappy yarn I bought ages ago for $2/skein. In fact, I unraveled a test of a scarf pattern in order to start the finger knitting. That was in part because I knew I’d never finish the test scarf, and part because I wasn’t sure how much yarn I would need…in the end, I didn’t need much.

Anyway, my point is that tonight, while watching more of How I Met Your Mother (Season 2, we started from the beginning a few weeks ago), I finally gave the finger knitting a shot. And this is the result. Is it really a scarf? Or is it a garland? In this picture it’s wrapped around my neck eleven and a half times. Yeah. I kind of love it. It’s also rather warm. And I love me some warm.

Check the photo out large on black!