Violated... (language)

It's been a heck of a long week, and it's only Wednesday. I got home Sunday night, having eaten a small (snack sized) bag of Terra Chips on the plane... which proceeded to make me so sick I couldn't drive home until several hours after landing. I have no idea what's in these things that my body just doesn't like, but I'm never EVER going to eat them again!

Monday, I started a new class. I'm very excited about this, and I'm hoping that I don't get flamed by people who don't agree with my decision. I have joined an Insights into Judaism class at Temple Israel in Ottawa :) This is the first requirement before they will consider a person for conversion to Judaism, and the class is fascinating (that, and they're teaching me Hebrew! WIN!) But it's another night away from home, and another drain on my time (and my time with the kids, although we're working something out there).

Tuesday kind of sucked, and then was kind of awesome, and then really sucked. The gist of the evening was that Rob's house got broken into. AGAIN. He had finally replaced Ray's tv and Xbox, and when they logged into the Xbox Live account, they noticed that the account had changed somewhat, so the jerks who stole the old Xbox had been using Ray's account. Nice. Apparently logging onto the new one gave the jerks the tipoff that a new one had been purchased, so they busted in while Rob was at work yesterday and stole the new one. Assholes.

They also stole Rob's dad's Air Force dogtags, which have absolutely NO monetary value whatsoever. They did it just to be douchebags. Because really. Who the hell steals something that can ONLY have sentimental value to someone, when they clearly can't sell it or profit from it in any way? And of course, I'm stuck 850 miles away, wanting to just wrap my arms around both of them and make it okay, and I can't do anything. They feel violated, and I feel impotent. To the wankers who have been getting their kicks repeatedly bashing my boyfriend's door in and stealing his (and his son's) stuff?

You'd better hope I never find you.

What the heck has Lynne been up to???

UPDATE: Sharon, the creator of Three Irish Girls yarn (one of my favorites) is having to move her studios due to safety concerns and a rising crime rate in her current location. She has a FundRazr page set up for donations here. Please help her out if you can! 

Well, I know I keep saying I'll update the blog more often, but I really just don't have time LOL I usually end up doing it during whatever lunch break I remind myself to take at work, but when it's busy, or when I take a walk at lunch, I don't have time. Hopefully Rob and the three or so friends who read my blog will forgive me ;) (If it makes y'all feel better, I realized this morning that the last time I watered the plant in my office was the last time I updated my blog!)

I'm kidding... mine's a philodendron, so it still looks great... the ground wasn't even dry!

The last twelve days were spent in a frenzy of preparing for my trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving (the US version, since mine was more than a month ago) to visit Rob :) Also in trying to get an assignment done - the bulk of which - again - was done the afternoon the assignment was due *sigh* I don't know why I procrastinate like that. It doesn't make me happy, and I keep telling myself I need to work on it before it's due, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. Sadly, chocolate therapy doesn't work for that sort of problem.

I finally finished Rob's kitchen curtain before heading out, but sadly didn't block it. I had blocking mats at his house and even brought my t-pins, but I didn't block it while I was there either. Why not? Well... it's become a tradition, because Rob so enjoys my cooking, that when I visit for more than a day or two, I fill the freezer. This means doing a ridiculous amount of groceries (he just about has a heart attack each time) and leaving the kitchen an absolute disaster, which I did. This weekend's efforts included two dozen banana muffins, one and a half dozen cranberry muffins, a batch of "Aunt Evelyn's Rock Cookies" which are apparently such a family tradition that Rob's cousin Suzanne in Florida was like "Yay! Rocks!". Then we moved on to the savory dishes and came away with a batch of chili, a batch of spaghetti sauce, a batch of seafood rosé sauce and a lasagna. Rob's freezer is full of plastic containers of all these yummy things, which will hopefully tide him over until the next time I come over.

No exaggeration, this is what his freezer looked like when I arrived... no this one isn' t actually his.

We were a bit harried because Rob didn't have time to do groceries before I headed down, and I arrived late Wednesday evening - and all the stores were closed on Thursday (except Walmart, and I won't even go into how angry it makes me that they make their employees work on Thanksgiving!). So I didn't even get started with the cooking until Friday. Thursday, since we weren't having Thanksgiving at his mom's, and there was NO food in the house, we wandered around trying to find a place to eat. We finally settled for McDonald's (which neither of us particularly likes). Ah well, we did get to see Skyfall on Saturday, which was awesome! He'd seen it before with his son, and he has a tendency to blurt, so I told him that if he said one word to me about the movie before or during, I'd make him go see Twilight with me LOL Sue and I totally saw Breaking Dawn 2 last weekend and I loved it. So there. (Yes, I realize that my intelligence just took several hits in many people's eyes...)

I had managed to finish one orange sock (plain vanilla pattern) and was nearly done one Falling Leaves sock before I headed out, so I had two brand new socks to work on. I cast on the second orange sock at the airport while waiting for my first flight on Wednesday, and it's now at the heel gusset pickups. I finished the first Falling Leaves sock while watching Quantum of Solace (the first two Daniel Craig bond films hadn't really stuck well with me, so I had to rewatch before going to see the new one) and cast on the second one and finished the cuff before coming home. I hadn't brought the pattern with me - too fiddly on an airplane - so that's all I was able to do.

Rob insisted on dragging me to Windy Knitty (I win!) on Friday. I hadn't planned on going since neither Sue nor Kari wanted me to pick up any yarn for them, and I've recently acquired what could ALMOST be considered way too much yarn (ahem. I said ALMOST). But off we went, and it was quite an adventurous drive, since Rob couldn't quite remember how to get to Clark Street (he found it). What's so special about Windy Knitty? Well.... aside from the fact that it's one of two LYS near Rob's house (I'm sure there are others), it's also my source for Three Irish Girls sock yarn (which is awesome and wonderful and squishy!) So three skeins of that, and one skein of Sweet Georgia came home with me. It's not all STAYING home with me, but meh. Squishy :D

I need to finish some older projects... either Tempting or the crochet blanket. We've been doing a 12 in 2012 KAL on the Ottawa Area Ravellers' board (Ravelry) where we're supposed to knit 12 projects entirely from yarns that have been in our stash for more than 6 months before the year is out, and I'm only up to #9.

Good things: I have two nearly-completed pairs of socks for ME! There are only two Tuesday classes left before the final exam (YAY - I am so ready for this class to be OVER!). I am starting a new non-university class on Monday evenings which I'm very nervous and excited about!

So all that insanity is pretty much what I've been up to in the last couple of weeks. (Actually, that mostly just covers the last few days, but the rest of it has been boring). Cheers!

Trial and error... and error... and error...

Someday I'll start getting this right. The sticker thing wasn't working for me, and lately I've just gotten frustrated and angry whenever anybody asks me how it's going with the weight loss thing. It isn't. I've been sabotaging myself left and right and it's just not happening. I haven't gained anything significant, but I'm fluctuating in the same three-pound range all the time with no progress. Argh.

I've joined Fitocracy in the interests of some friendly shaming and competition. A group of Ravelry girls have a Fitocracy group and they're really great about motivation, so we're giving that a try. So if you're a member of Fitocracy, look me up (I'm "tollbaby"). Poor Rob's trying to be encouraging, but for some reason, it just makes me want to curl up into a ball and eat all the things. I think I just get overwhelmed by his enthusiasm :) (that, and the PMS... that's probably the likeliest culprit. I do tend to get irrationally irritable).

The food part, though? I'm a master at the food part (as long as keep a tight rein on myself). Tonight for dinner, I made a stir-fry of purple kale, broccoli florets, chayote (first time eating) and chicken for Skye, shrimp for Zack and I (poor girl can't eat shrimp!). Heated all that up with a bit of olive oil and a bit of sesame oil, and then when it was done, tossed in a couple of Tbsp of President's Choice Memories of someone or other's Peanut Sauce (the lower fat version). SO GOOD. I would have taken a picture, but we gobbled it all. (And now I must try kale chips because they're awesome when they get stuck to the side of the pan and get all crispy and stuff!)

I love trying new vegetables, and I'd been seeing the chayote at the grocery store for ages, but I had no idea how to cook it, and was apparently too lazy to look it up online. Last week, there was this lady doing her groceries who looked SUPER EXCITED at the price of the chayote, and she bought like six of them, so I asked her how to cook them :) Apparently you just chop them up however, remove the seed in the middle, and either eat them raw in salads (I'd grate them for that) or stir-fry them like any other veggie. Raw, they have this sort of appley-turnipy taste with the crispness of an asian pear that I just can't wait to try in a salad (and we had to keep ourselves from just munching the poor thing before the pan heated up). Cooked, they kind of pick up the texture of lightly steamed broccoli stem or mostly-cooked carrot and the flavor is out of this world. It's hard to describe, but trust me, you will NOT regret trying this! I think next time I'll grab some shiitake mushrooms and do a chayote/mushroom stir fry with onions and snow peas... maybe a bit of teriyaki sauce.

I had school last night and got to class to discover that I had left my knitting at home. GASP. (If my hands aren't occupied in class, I get fidgety, which disrupts everyone else, so my profs don't mind the knitting). Fortunately, I had some (SCRATCHY) fingering weight yarn in my bag and a set of 2.5mm DPNs... so I cast on a sock. I'm most of the way through the heel flap already, but it's so scratchy and horrible to knit with that it's going to have to wait until at least one of the Falling Leaves socks is finished before it gets worked on again. I'll confess that no knitting was done today (Dominique is clutching his heart in shock right about now).

And now I have to find the motivation to go out for a walk *sigh*

Rob took this on my birthday last month.

Not much to say...

I have a large assignment due at school next Tuesday, I've been running around a lot, I haven't been getting enough sleep, and the sock had to be frogged. That last one alone should be enough to excuse me, because I was one inch away from the toe decreases when Kari made me try it on and we realized that the sock was BLOUSING, but if I'm honest, I just haven't had much to say. Obama won, and I was ecstatic about that, but now it just seems like old news, and I'm boring MYSELF.

Sock the 2nd is coming along nicely. Finished the heel flap last night.

A relaxing weekend!

Friday was a bit hectic. I generally drop the kids off at their dad's and then head to knit night, but since Jeff had to work late on Friday, I had the kids until much later in the evening. I still made it out to knit night and then had some awesome Guinness French Onion Soup at the Royal Oak (I'm not kidding... I can still recall exactly what it tasted like and it was OMGGOOD).

Saturday morning, I headed over to Kari's house so we could do some groceries for her podcast taping later that evening. Okay, we didn't need groceries for the podcast, but I was going to be making dinner for Sue and her husband, their kids and Kari and I. Matzo Ball Soup (I don't really have a recipe, but if you follow the one at Martha Stewart Living, you'll come pretty close to what I make). YUMMMM. I happened upon a great sale at my grocery store - whole chickens were only $5 each! So I just had to buy the matzo ball makings and a few veggies for the soup. We also picked up some President's Choice thick-slice peppered bacon and a southwest salad kit and nommed bacon for lunch. Mmmmm bacon :D (and we came to the conclusion that peppered bacon would likely make amazing pralined bacon, which is Kari's specialty). Trucked on over to Sue's where I proceeded to chop and boil and such while the girls prepped for their podcast. Once the soup was done, I removed the chicken pieces and, discarding the skin and bones, made the most awesome little fry-up of boiled chicken, mini potatoes and salsa. Add the challah buns I had found at the store to the meal and we were all a bit stuffed :)

While the girls were recording the podcast (twice) and throughout the evening, I made quite a bit of progress on my new addiction: Kari's pattern, Falling Leaves Socks (ravelry link). I'm part-way through the gusset decreases at this point, and I'm loving this pattern so much, I don't think I'll have any trouble at all with second sock syndrome! I know I haven't talked much about knitting lately, but I was in a bit of a rut and now things seem to be moving again. Yesterday, I was actually sitting on the edge of my bed barefoot, knitting away on the sock, feeling the cold draft against my feet and thinking to myself, "Knit faster, woman! COLD FEET! Need handknit socks!!!" Rob's kitchen curtain is just a few garter stitch rows from being fully done, at which point hopefully either Kari or Sue will help me block it (I'd recommend actually forcing me to do the pinning this time, or I'll never learn LOL). The Tempting top has been on hold, but once the curtain is done, I'll finish that up too. I have to confess that I'm really having fun knitting socks now that I've gotten the hang of it, and I am so thankful I took the Yarn Harlot's Grok the Sock class back in August!

Sunday was kind of a lazy day... I made the executive decision to stay home rather than going to my parents' for dinner, and the kids and I had a fantastic hike up the mountain at Luskville Falls. Going up is always a lot easier for me than coming down, and I'm just very thankful for the modern inventions that are Voltaren and Tylenol Arthritis. The stairs at home were challenging this morning, and I've been moaning a bit every time I have to go downstairs to the kitchen at the office, but we got a really good workout doing the hike, and I can't wait until we can go back next summer! Thank goodness for the end of Daylight Savings Time though... both kids were in bed by 7pm, and I was asleep by 8:30!

Not my picture! I found it on Flickr.

It's kind of ugly outside... I've gotten used to having my blinds open at the office since there's no sun to blind me, but I'm getting tired of the grey landscape. I know I'd better get used to it, since that's what fall and winter are all about up here, but don't tell me I can't yearn for spring just a little. I'll have to console myself by spending time knitting socks and checking out all the fantastic winter produce! I'll be nattering on about Christmas cookies before you know it!

Now is the time to panic?

FWP, I know, especially given all the mayhem that Sandy caused yesterday for friends all along the east coast. But I have a midterm tonight, and I meant to study some more today, and I managed to misplace my textbook! ARGH. I'm pretty sure it's in the back of my car though, so I'll be able to study in the time between dropping the kids off at their dad's and the exam starting.

The panorama outside my window has been pretty impressive today... Have you ever seen a time-lapse film of clouds moving across the sky over several hours or days? It's been like a constant stream of that all day. Gorgeous, but very distracting :)

I'm at a point on the Tempting sweater where I'm not comfortable moving on without supervision, if not outright assistance, so I've been working on Rob's kitchen curtain (remember the kitchen curtain? I'm still working on the kitchen curtain). I finally finished the patterned part, so now I'm just doing the garter-stitch border at the top, which has to be long enough to fold over and seam, because he wants the curtain rod to be covered (I was tempted to just thread it through eyelets, but it's his curtain, right? He's the one who's going to have to look at it every day). Which means miles of garter stitch. :) Which means finding new movies to watch to distract my brain while I knit endless miles of garter stitch!

The Fiber Festival of New England is this coming weekend and there was a brief moment when I thought, "Hey, Massachusetts isn't all that far away, I bet I could convince the girls to drive down." That was just before common sense smacked me across the face and said, "Hey stupid, you're still high off Rhinebeck fumes if you think any of you wants another road trip this soon, or that you can afford more yarn!" That common sense bitch is on my list now, let me tell you. As IF there can ever be enough yarn! I mean, the kids' bedrooms aren't even filled yet!

Yes, I admit that I have far too much yarn. I admit that I desperately need to go on a yarn diet, or else my family will no longer have space to sleep, bathe or eat. I admit it, I'm a yarn hoarder.

It's simply incentive to knit all the things! (a bit more quickly, perhaps).

Shamelessly stolen from someone who stole it from Allie at Hyperbole and a Half (linked in sidebar).

*ahem* Midterm first!

Rhinebeck insanity!!! :D

So on Friday afternoon, the four of us (Kari, Sue, Sarah and I) left for Rhinebeck, NY to attend the New York Sheep and Wool Festival (aka "Rhinebeck" in knitting circles). It was AWESOME!!!! For everyone else's take on Rhinebeck, visit Two Tangled Skeins, Sue and Kari's podcast!

We stopped for dinner in Herkimer, NY at a sweet little 50s style diner called Crazy Otto's Empire Diner. If you're ever driving through upstate New York and have the opportunity to stop in, you will not regret it! The food was fantastic, the prices were reasonable, and so much memorabilia!! Sue was thrilled because there was a Marilyn poster on the ceiling just behind our table. License plates, movie posters, old tole signs.... just amazing! And the staff were super-friendly too. I plan on taking Rob and the kids there, maybe in the spring, because he'll love it!

There may have possibly been an incident regarding someone's forgotten luggage and a midnight trip to Walmart, but other than that, the first night was relatively uneventful :D Saturday morning dawned bright and early, and we fed ourselves and headed for the fair. SO MANY CARS. The fun started immediately inside the gates, as we ran into Ysolda Teague, freaked out, and took Sue and Kari's picture with her! I may have developed a slight addiction to sock yarn, because that's pretty much all I bought on Saturday. I got a calendar from Sheep Incognito, which I had signed by the lovely artist, Conni Tögel.

Then we wandered a bit and I got a skein of Gale's Art sock yarn in the Mars colourway which is going to be my Falling Leaves socks for the KAL in November, three skeins of Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Socks That Rock at The Fold's booth (the owner is hilarious and a really nice guy!) in "The Winter Blues", "Jasper" and "Ochroid" colourways. I also grabbed a sock pattern by the very talented Adrienne Zu at The Fold - It was called "Lynn"... I had to. And last, but certainly not least - because this stuff is amazing and you have to experience holding it to believe how freaking awesome it is - I stopped by Bittersweet Woolery to talk to the lovely Miss Tina for a while, and I ended up finding a skein of her Guilty Pleasures yarn in the "Ash On My Tongue" colourway that is so soft, so pretty, so MINE. I loved it so much, I went back the next day for more, but I'll talk about that in a second.

Saturday evening, we ended up eating at a Friendly's in Saugerties. Food was good, cheap and plentiful, and other than being seated near a family with FAR too many children for the amount of supervision the adults were providing, it was pretty good. Then we got a 12-pack of vodka coolers and things got silly. And that's all I'm gonna say about that :D (For the record, I don't drink at all. Sue remained almost entirely sober and Kari didn't.)

Sunday morning, we headed back over to Rhinebeck, I bought some lovely sheep milk cheese (so incredibly good!), bought more Guilty Pleasures from Miss Tina at Bittersweet, and picked up four skeins of a cotton blend that sadly has no tags or even the name of the store anywhere. *sigh* I honestly can't remember, since it's the second last thing we did before leaving. Kari wanted to visit a booth where some lovely older Welsh ladies were selling amazing laceweight and shawls, and who did we bump into but the Yarn Harlot herself! Of course, we accosted her, somewhat unconvincingly told her we REALLY weren't stalking her, and got her autograph for a friend at home. She laughed and told us that we were Canadian, therefore mostly harmless, so we couldn't really be stalkers ;)

Shortly thereafter, we all piled ourselves and our plethora of purchases back into Sue's jeep and headed for home. All in all, it was a fantastic weekend and I can't wait for the next roadtrip! Let it be noted that Sir Pugglesworth was so excited to see Kari when we got home that he ran around Sue's house in a mindless craze for a full ten minutes before calming down enough for Kari to clip his leash on!

And rest :)