still alive

This damn song has been stuck in my head since Saturday. It's a newish song in Rock Band and we played the hell out of it while on vacation and ever since it is stuck. in. my. head. Not that I don't love it, but omg get out already. There's only so much room in my brain for these kinds of things.

I hope you all had a nice long weekend! I hate that vacations are never really long enough and the drive home always sucks, but otherwise it was a pleasant weekend for us and I'm only slightly sunburned (dear god I'm so white that I burn in one hour even with a shit ton of sunscreen on. bah.). I only did minimal knitting, but I finished the Lelah Top and worked hard on a pair of toe up socks. I was too busy enjoying the nothingness to actually take pictures, but I'll have some soon!

So while I wasn't knitting, I was reading. And I've come across a new obsession. Y'all already know that I'm a big old nerd. It should never be a surprise when I reveal the further depths of my nerdiness. And yet.

The first time I talked to someone reading a Harry Potter novel (the 3rd one, POA), I scoffed. In their face. About reading a children's book. Surely my literary tastes were greater and omg how old are you that you're reading a book for 12 year olds?!?! Ahem. She laughed at me and said "just wait." The next day she brought me her copy of Sorcerer's Stone and it was off to the races for me. Of course I had to apologize as I took it back to her the next week and went out and got books 2 and 3 for myself. Open mouth, insert foot, chew vigorously. Never again, I swore, would I take "young adult" literature for granted. Not that the first book was stellarly written, but I was certainly interested enough in the world to continue.

This weekend Carrie introduced me to Twilight. Again, my first thought was "but it's in the YA section...bleh." Wrong again. I ripped through that sucker on Saturday, then bought the second and third books the very next day. I'm started the third one last night and I'm halfway through today. You might say I'm a sucker for decent vampire fiction. Not shitty romance type fiction even though it IS a love story, but it has just enough of the gothic novel elements to keep me hooked. Damn it. I had sort of enjoyed having a life.

I could totally gush about the empathy I have for the main characters, but it's not pretty. I'll simply say that when I was 14 I totally would have been open to a sexy vampire stealing me away from my life and pledging his undying devotion FOREVER. I might have been a dark and melodramatic teenager. Shut up. (p.s. to the possible sexy vamps out there - i'm much older, less cute, and taken. forget about it.) Ahem.

OH! Back to my real life - the yarn from Louet for the second sock club shipment is shipping to me TOMORROW! Woo! I'm finishing up my wholesale orders this week and shipping those out this weekend so I can completely devote myself to the club without any procrastination guilt.

Also, thanks for all the podcast suggestions! I can't listen to "food" podcasts while I'm exercising because I'm weak and I'll just stop and go find something to eat, but I will listen while dyeing yarn (though the effect may be much the same).

Have a great week, y'all!

Keeping up with The List

My 101 Things in 1001 Days list is feeling a bit daunting to me lately. I've set myself a LOT of long term goals, which would be out there anyway, but seeing them mocking me on the sidebar is a little disconcerting.

I've made some progress though and I'm really enjoying the process. Here's a bit of a run down:

Things I'm enjoying making progress on:
Reading - I'm a bit of a book nerd anyway, so this is a lot of fun. I have about 20 books going right now so I'll be able to finish this goal with no problem. Also, I've decided that once I'm finished with the last Harry Potter book (I'm 9/10ths of the way thru #7 for the 3rd time), there will be NO MORE reading them until I have kids old enough to give a shit. After book 6 I cursed Jo and swore 'never again' and I mean it. This time.

Trying something new every month - I'm really enjoying this. Even if it just means I buy weird shaped fruit at the grocery store. If it's new to me it counts.

Trying new recipes - We have sooooooo many cookbooks that this one is easy. Right now I'm kind of hooked on The Sneaky Chef. Reading cookbooks should totally count, but I'm not claiming them.

Things scaring me:
Everything to do with money - paying off credit cards, all the stuff I want to do for our house - it's all freaking me out right now cause my money will only go so far these days.

Things I need to find substitutes for:
Visit England - Again with the money. If the dollar weren't tanking so hard this might still be a possibility, but until further notice we're on the lookout for somewhere affordable to visit for our 5th anniversary next May. I'm thinking maybe a cruise to Mexico and Jamaica. A European cruise would ROCK, but I doubt it's in the budget. (p.s. there is no budget, which is probably why i have difficulty with that pesky credit card debt)

Things I have to start over:
Exercise and mediation. Boo. Weight loss and inches goals. Double boo. Part of this problem is that being on the treadmill can be sooo boring. I would drive somewhere to run but that doesn't seem efficient and I'm bored with my neighborhood or I'd just go outside. I think I need new podcasts. I really enjoy Pottercast (stfu), Lime & Violet and sometimes Stash and Burn. I really don't want any more knitting podcasts, but I can't think of anything else I'd want to listen to. If you have suggestions I'd LOVE to hear them!

I'm enjoying a DVD I bought and my running, but I definitely have a hard time doing it every single day. Though I've decided to train for a 10k next month so I guess I have to make it priority. Does a 10k count as two 5ks? I think it should.

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This weekend is our knitting/beach trip so I marked it off The List. I have to buy a bikini today and then clean my house. I do not want to do either. Bah. I'll have fun pictures when we get back though!

constantly contrary

yarn, cops and berries...aka a competely random post

Holy life suckage, batman.

I don't mean that my life sucks, I mean it has completely sucked me in, covered me in yarn and has finally spit me out again. I feel a little fuzzy in the brain and noodley in the appendages.

(forgive me, i was feeling prolific when I started this post, then I went to lunch and my motivation decided to stay downtown and window shop)

The first shipment of the Punk Rock Sock Club is out! I hope you guys like it! I'm dyeing a couple of wholesale orders while waiting for the rest of my sock club yarn to be delivered and then I'll be working on some new colorways for the etsy store. This weekend I'll mark down everything in the etsy store by 20%. The yarn is terribly bored just sitting in a box in my dining room and is begging to be knit into something gorgeous.

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The cops are heavily patrolling my neighborhood for the next week or so. Nate's coworker who lives 5 doors down from us got BOTH their cars broken into on Monday night. Our dog woke us up at 3 a.m. that morning barking so loud and fierce I was sure he was going to jump through the window. I never did see whatever he saw, but I have a good idea that it might have been some hoodlums. Can I tell you how weird it is to have a cop car shining bright lights into my house at 1 a.m.? Yeah, I was still awake, but that doesn't make it less strange.

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Last weekend a few friends and I went to Washington Farms and picked strawberries. I managed to get quite a haul.



And then I made a cobbler, which tastes oddly like a sweetened strawberry jam sandwich.

But we ate it anyway. We also had strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream and fresh smoothies. I'll definitely be going back to the farm for more berries. In June and July they'll have blueberries and blackberries. Nom nom nom.

workin' for the weekend*

Sometimes I just go completely off the deep end about something and must act on my impulses immediately. I think most southern folks call it a 'wild hair'. I can't call it that. My brain does crazy things with that imagery.

My front yard drives me completely insane. Usually it's a mild form of insanity, a sort of 'oh bother, stupid yard' and then I let it go. Not Friday. A bit of backstory: when we bought this house in December of 2006, we were concerned about erosion, since the house sits on a built up hill of red clay, which can often get really dry and simply wash away if you're not paying attention. So we amended our contract to include a shored up bed in front of the living room windows and a retaining wall. They did it without too much of a struggle. But they filled it full of red clay and rocks. Big ones. Bigger than my head. Sigh.

(if you've never seen red clay, this is it. it's red. it's clay. and not to say that my head is tiny. the rocks you see here are the little ones. the big ones got thrown into the woods, where all good rocks go to die. or get bigger, whatever they do.)

Well the escapade on Friday all began when I took out the dog after work. I took note that my two forlorn tulips (in another flower bed) that never bloomed were dying. Great. Two of the ten that I planted got leaves, then died. Not a bloom in site. This pissed me off, so I went to prune the first dying one and um...out came the bulb. Oops. So I dug around a bit and realized there were three bulbs in the ground and that my lonely little tulip had multiplied. I went over and somewhat gently pulled up the other lonely tulip and it had multiplied too! Whee!

I dug them all up and repotted them so they could grow and mingle and be friends. You can only see the tops of four of them, but there are about 6 more that were just bulbs.

I dug around the rest of the bed and the other tulip bulbs had all disintegrated. Boo. I still got ten for ten, but not in a way I had intended. Still, now I have a right mess in that particular bed. I'll deal with it next weekend.

Then I decided that I was tired of that icky flower bed under the living room windows. So I put on icky gardening clothes (not very different from my icky workout clothes from the day before) and made Nate go to Lowe's with me to get real dirt, fertilizer, a hoe, and some bushes. (Cause a girl needs her ho and bushes. Ahem.)

So I grabbed my ipod and dug and sang at the top of my lungs until it got dark. I'm quite sure this confirmed my neighbor's thoughts about my wackiness. But I'm a wimp and I didn't get very far. Wet clay is very heavy.

Saturday morning we got up and did the rest. We had to dig out two feet by two feet of red freaking clay, mix it up with dirt and fertilizer then put it back in. The rest of the clay will get mixed with more dirt and fertilizer to fill up the bed the tulips came out of. I might replant them or just get something else.

We now have three tiny knockout rose bushes, all of which have brand new blooms today. I hear they grow fast and furious, so I hope they'll just cover that whole area quickly. I hate all the ugly black waterproofing stuff and the shoddy concrete work. Just eww.

Later this week I'll go buy some edging stones to give it a border and make it really pretty.


The only downfall is that after this mania my back is completely out of whack. It was already hurting on Friday and my mild scoliosis was twinging something awful. It's a weak spot, but not in any detrimental way.

On Sunday I enjoyed Lucy Neatby's class at my LYS with my mother-in-law and her sister. We learned a few new toe and heel tricks and giggled a lot. I might also have said 'shit' a few too many times in polite company. But Lucy was wonderful and fascinating. She totally makes me want pink and purple hair.

*i know that song is not about working ON the weekend, but now it's stuck in my head. enjoy.

Friday is a free peach cobbler

Monday, take note. This is how a day is supposed to behave. Gorgeous weather, good friends, free dessert.

Cheryl, Courtney and I had a delicious lunch today and half way through our meal the waiter brought over a FREE peach cobbler. Apparently someone else had ordered and then decided against it and he had overheard us talking about how yummy it would be. So he gave it to us. Sweet!

I may have done more than my fair share of cobbler gobbling.


And on a completely unrelated note...ow, my scoliosis.