July 2017

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16 171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Custom Text

Most Popular Tags

Last week's horoscope is/was pretty appropriate:You seem to be suffering, although in an interesting way, from a metaphysical version of jet lag. Maybe it's because you've been stretching your boundaries with such experimental vigor. Or maybe it's because you've been engaging in a form of time-travel, exploring the past and future in your dreams and fantasies. In any case, you can take comfort in the knowledge that the warps and tweaks you're dealing with are the results of your brave choices. Congratulations as well for having churned up the most useful riddles you've had to ponder since you jumped out of your skin last year.Well, I wouldn't say I've been stretching my boundaries vigorously. I just give them a little shake every once in a while.

Although, I hope my dreams aren't about the future since I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that I was wandering around shooting random people. When the police finally caught me and wanted me to explain myself I had no explanation. That was the most upsetting part of the dream, really. They just wouldn't leave me alone about it.

So many thoughts boiling around in my head. I can't quite do anything with them. Most of them aren't worth putting on my journal. Crazy questions about my life, where it's going, how I feel about it, what my priorities are, and stuff like that.

Hm.

I did finish putting my dresser together on Saturday. I had to take it mostly apart all over again, which was a chore. After I finished, we went over to CKR's and I made baked mac and cheese and we watched The Others. Such a good movie.

I am so sore from putting that dresser together. That's all I can think of that did it. My poor hamstrings.

Sunday, Chrysoula and Kevin and I went out to dim sum at a local place. It was very crowded. I'm not sure if that's normal or if it was because of the New Year. Or maybe it was a little of both!

Today, I haven't done much. A trip to the doctor's office with Chrysoula, a trip to the grocery store, some time studying, some time napping, and some time working. My life is a whirlwind, let me tell you.

My chem midterm on Friday went well, I'm pretty sure (heh, I had a dream I got a 99 which is impossible since it's a 50 point test), and now I need to study more for my bio midterm. Whee!
Heh. I'm amused by my Valentines week horoscope at Free Will Astrology.Happy Valentine Daze, Gemini! I hope you'll be very specific about what you want from intimacy and collaboration in the coming months. To get you in the mood, I've written a personal ad for you to use. Or create your own, borrowing from the spirit of mine. Here you go. Slapstick thinker with refined sensibilities seeks a saint-like sinner with insanely cool style for a long-distance joyride towards the outskirts of Nirvana. Established meditation practice and a good bedside manner are desirable. Would it be too much to ask that you might also have a high level of emotional intelligence without boring me to death with your maturity? Is it possible that you'll be an entertaining talker who also knows how to listen with your wild heart turned up all the way? Let's keep reinventing ourselves forever.Not that I'm planning to put a personal ad anywhere right now. I just don't have time to contemplate a relationship.

I don't even have time to read books for fun right now (yes, I make an exception for LJ and other blogs). My library thing account (on the side menu) has a list of books I bought myself or was gifted for Christmas and... I haven't read any of them. None! Stupid time.

In non-school news, I've decided to stay here at [livejournal.com profile] kirbyk's for the time being. We seem to be getting along as housemates and with Chrysoula's announcement meaning I'll be spending quite a bit of time in Renton anyway, it just seemed better to stay living nearby even if it means commuting to school. I'm trying to figure out how to reorganize my room to make it a better living space (mostly, I need somewhere to sit that isn't my bed and I'd really like to fit my rower up here since having it in the cold garage isn't working for me, although the big problem is that it is at a weird angle so I'd end up with crazy pain at the end of my workout and we might be able to move it elsewhere in the garage so that might not be a problem when we rearrange things but... still cold). The cats seem to be slowly turning a corner in their relationship. I have actually managed to have all three of them on my bed with no one growling or chasing. They were all just hanging out. And Troian has started having his nightly freakouts again and he's rediscovered my lap so I think he's becoming more relaxed.

In school news, things are going well but my brain decided to stop this weekend and I'm having a hard time restarting it. I'm exhausted and I can't decide if this is from allergies or illness. Carrying two heavy boxes (with help!) up to my room on Sunday did not help. I crashed after that and crashed pretty hard. I've got a chem midterm on Friday and my bio midterm next Thursday and an appointment with my adviser a week from tomorrow and registration starts on the 1st of March. Whee!

Now I have to finish up school work and boggle at bloglines which apparently just reset all my blogs so I've got 12,450 unreads but only about 20 of those are real. I need to decide how much I care about figuring out which ones of those are real. Stupid bloglines.

Oh, and if anyone is contemplating buying books/comics anytime soon may I put in a plug for the awesome Minneapolis bookstore DreamHaven Books? They were broken into over the weekend and the burglars apparently didn't get enough money so they damaged stuff. Fuckers.

I should have them send me my stuff. I haven't even had time to read the last batch of stuff they sent me. Not even the comics!
My kitty is adorable. He sometimes gets into these ecstatic rolling sessions. He just rolls from one side to the other over and over and over again. He just rolled himself off the bed...

I went to see Children of Men last weekend and really liked it.

I just got back from seeing Pan's Labyrinth and it was totally awesome. Not quite what I was expecting but just totally awesome. I will own this movie when it comes out.

It's fun watching movies in Spanish. I know so many words! Not enough to be able to ignore the subtitles but still it's cool.

The snow from Wednesday is still on the ground. It's just not getting warm enough to make it go away. The snow we got on Saturday stuck to the ice left from Wednesday. And it's supposed to snow tomorrow. Whee!

Whew, my bio lab prof finally got back to us about how we'll make up for the canceled lab. He'll go over it at the beginning of Tuesday's lab and we can turn it in on Thursday. Need to work on my pre-lab worksheets for Tuesday. I have some reading to finish and then some stuff to run through the CD that came with my book.

I think everyone will enjoy this. It's completely work safe. Unless models made using gummi bears is against the rules and how could anyone make gummi bears against the rules?
I totally spoke too soon. I went to class, missing my morning coffee because the campus coffee shop was closed, and my prof said that classes were canceled after 2 pm and campus would be closed at 3 pm. Whee! So I got my two science lectures, but not my bio lab and my other class.

On the one hand, nice to have a snow day - wish it had started earlier, but it was good to not get more behind in the science lectures (I'm not sure we're actually behind in bio (we definitely are in chem but not too much) but all my science classes seem to end up behind by the end of the first lecture because they never just assume all/most of the first day will be spent completely on the syllabus and other class info, it always is but they rarely plan for it).

On the other hand, it's irritating to miss lab. My bio prof said he would ask the afternoon lab prof to post something to the class blackboard and let us know what we will need to do to make up missing lab. And I really wanted to see what this survey class I'm taking would be like. It's only 2 credits but so far bio and chem look like a lot of work and I wanted to see how much work this one would be. I had planned on that but am feeling a little crazy about the expectations....

I suppose I could just set the extra class as P/NC if I feel the need (it just means that it won't effect my GPA).

So far my chem and bio profs seem cool. And they already know my name (I sit up front!). I'm a little freaked about them right now, just anticipating how much work they'll be, but I'm trying to get to my happy place with regards to them.

Oooh, my evening class prof sent out email with the syllabus and an assignment for next week. Cool. It's a class on Human Relations in Business. It sounded like it could be interesting.

After class I went to Sears and picked up a scarf/hat/glove set for cheap, picked up some knitting needles at JoAnns, and then some coffee for me and cocoa for [livejournal.com profile] kirbyk at Starbucks. Now I am home and relaxing. I got my new pedometer today and spent some time setting it up. It seems to work well.

Now I am contemplating the absolute mountain of reading I have to do. Whee!
It snowed last night! Luckily, I also got my new jacket in from L L Bean (and the new shoes and rolling backpack I ordered with it). The new jacket is warm, may actually be stylish, and seems to be less heavy/bulky than my leather jacket. It may help that it actually fits instead of being a little big. This was, however, a bad time to lose one of my gloves. They aren't the greatest gloves but one of them is gone. I am parked next to a Sears so I will stop by and check out their gloves.

I was supposed to go to CKRs last night for movies but when I went out to my car and saw someone almost fail to get up the little hill in our complex I decided that I wasn't going anywhere. I spent the evening tromping around the complex taking pictures, talking to neighbors and just generally having fun in the snow. Yay! Snow!

School canceled classes yesterday at 3:45 (I left at around 1:30) but decided things were ok on campus this morning so we're having classes today. Getting out of my complex was a little nervewracking but I made sure to get as much of the snow off of it as possible (I saw some people who barely made an effort and still had about 3 inches of snow covering their back windshield except for this one square inch where they just kind of grabbed a handful of snow off, wtf?; I didn't get a chance to see if they cleaned off all of their front windshield).

The specific area around school is ... ok. There's still some ice on the ground in patches which made the drive from the highway a little more slidey-exciting than I like my drives to be but it wasn't too bad. I'm not terribly looking forward to going home though. The sun is out and melting stuff but it's not supposed to get much above freezing here and I have to be on campus until 8 pm tonight (stupid night class). I expect more slidey conditions for the drive home. It does look as if it won't be snowing today/tonight though, so maybe it won't be too bad.

Oh, hey, time for class!
Happy New Year every one!

I got home from my trip to visit my family last week. We managed to make it through the holidays with no disasters this year (there've been crazy health things the last three years which I'm glad to skip this year).

I did drop my laptop and totally crack the screen but that's why I bought a warranty that covers accidental damage for three years. Hah! And I got to send it in while I was at home so it was delivered back to me on the 2nd. I got a little sick at the end of my vacation but I seem to be better now. Stomach issues are just not fun, especially while flying and being sensitive to smells while stuck in an airport and on a plane...ugh. It was all I could do not to retch while my rowmates were eating the dinner the airline gave them. I refused mine and breathed through my mouth for a while.

It was a fun vacation. It's always nice to see my family, even though they drive me bonkers. My nieces and nephews almost outnumber my generation. My sister-in-law discovered that she is having another boy. They are thinking the name will be Isiah (or some spelling of it). I'm pulling for Isiah James since I think they sound nice together. We'll see though. They switched to Samantha for my niece (from Alyssa) a week or so before she was born.

I got my grades while I was gone: 4.0. Woohoo! Yay! We'll see if I can keep it going. Next quarter is probably not going to be easy with the two lab classes and all. And I found out last week that my multicultural issues class was canceled because only 10 people enrolled for it. Only one of the other sections doesn't conflict with my classes and it starts at 10:30 am which means making sure I leave the house by 9 am two days a week (I'd still get to keep my Mondays off schedule though). There are online sections but I'm not sure about those... I need to think about it some. I am kind of leaning toward the online class now. Aha! They are all full! So I'm taking an evening human relations requirement class instead.

Now my schedule is a little extra weird since my 4-6 T/TH class was the one canceled and I'm replacing it with a 6-8 pm TH class. At least I get to keep my Mondays off schedule.

I found my list of required classes from my registration appointment before I left and discovered that it does actually say I have to take the Computer Information Systems class. As I don't feel like I need to be taught how to manage/create computer filing systems or how to use Power Point, Excel, and Word I really need to make an effort to find my adviser (who is the manager of the program I want to join) and get her to let me out of this class. I really don't want to take it. It will be extensively boring.

Hmph. Oh, hey, my adviser sent me email 11 days after I sent her the original query (and called her and left a message) and I'd already given up hearing from her. Well, we'll see how the new email goes, she says she'll be checking her email to hear from me.

Aha! My adviser emailed me back and I don't have to take the CIS class. Woohoo! Worried for nothing. At least it fits in with my Jan 4 horoscope.

I haven't started work. My remote access is the current holdup. I hope I'll be able to start working soon.

I didn't make the rowing holiday challenge at all. I joined the January challenge and did a workout last week when I was finally feeling over my stomach issues but it was really hard. I got a 13 week program from the C2 UK site but it looks like it may be too much for me right now. I was in lots of pain after that workout (hips and knees, man, it's hard to row when they hurt) and for the last couple of days I've been having a lot of upper torso soreness for some reason.

I'm going back to the website to get a slightly more realistic set of workouts. These are all around 1.5 hours but I think I'd be better off sticking with stuff between .5 and 1 hour.

Interesting. If I tell the module I want to lose 15 kg, it gives me shorter workouts for 20 weeks but if I say I want to lose 10 kg it gives me longer ones for 13 weeks. Well, I'll change to the 20 week one this week.

I've also got a 12 week start-jogging thing that I'm contemplating since it would be good to do some cross training and I hear that jogging and rowing go well together. Rowing is not a weight bearing exercise but jogging/walking would be. And hey, I can be a slow jogger. I'm a slow rower so I've had practice! I'll give it a shot and see how it goes. No harm in trying and getting into the habit of taking a walk, at least, every day would be good and this is what it starts out as...

I looked around Craigslist for apartments but, bleah.

Ok. I should go do stuff.
High Tension was pretty good. I wish I hadn't seen the spoiler giving away the twist but I still enjoyed it.

We went bowling at Acme Bowl after Kirby got off work. It was pretty fun! I'm not a terribly good bowler and alcohol doesn't exactly improve my game. But I still had fun. The music was mostly cool and the place really seemed to wind down once it went to 21 and over. I'm almost thinking that the next time we go, we should go a little later or just eat dinner without worrying about getting a lane soon.

My legs do hurt and I expect that my arm will be sore in the morning.

We totally made friends with our waiter. You know, I seem to have good taste in friends in that we always make friends with the wait staff and have fun with them.

We dropped Chrysoula and Kevin at home and then went home. It didn't look good. No lights at our intersection. I went to my car (covered in ice) and brought my flashlights in. Yay! Flashlights. [livejournal.com profile] kirbyk turned on the gas fireplace so we could be warm. We wandered around the house a little bit.

And then... the lights came on! Almost exactly 24 hours after they went off. Woohoo! Power!

I hope it lasts!
Let's see... About a half hour after I posted last night, the power went out. For about 20 seconds or so. Just long enough for everything to go dark and me to look around and go 'buh' but not long enough that any clocks in my room needed to be reset when the power came back on. Although the Tivo did need to reboot itself. Annoying.

Then, at 1:15 am, the power went out again. Being a naturally curious sort, I set the timer on my watch to count this one.

About 2 hours later, I finally went to bed with the power still off. Luckily I had a small flashlight in my room that I used to do stuff while the power was out and I played on my laptop for a little while but there's not much on it without the help of the internets. I was so sure it would come back on any second that I didn't see any need to just go to sleep. But finally I did.

I woke up this morning at 8 am. Completely randomly, but probably from being chilled (or from Keira and Kimba deciding that my legs are great places to stand and observe the world; I need to train them to knead my hamstrings, that would be so cool). I put on a sweater and put a third blanket on the bed.... And couldn't sleep.

I'm done with school and had no real plans for today except to sleep in (and go bowling, and they do have power so we could still do that later) and now not only is the power out so I can't catch up on the TV I've been ignoring for finals but I can't sleep. So annoying.

So I brought up the comics I have also been ignoring in favor of my finals and sorted those out and started reading them. And fell asleep around 9:30 am. I woke up around 2:40 pm, received packages from the UPS guy who woke me up, and called CKR to see if they had power. They do!

The whole time I was asleep I kept having dreams that the power was back on and I'd wake up just enough to open my eyes and see that the power was not, in fact, back on (I had unplugged/turned off stuff when I saw the power wasn't immediately going to come back on last night and then realized that without them I wouldn't know if the power came back on so I left my alarm clock plugged in so it could blink midnight at me).

CKR were going to go to Costco, my place is between them and Costco, but it took them so long to get to my place that they just came and got me and now I'm at their house.

This has been a crazy fall. Here's hoping for a less disaster-prone winter. Yes, King County is officially a disaster area. Something like millions of people are without power and they say it will take a few days to a week to get it back up.

Oh, noes! Snow is on the forcast for this weekend. Oodles and oodles of fun, I'm telling you.

Now Kevin and I are going to watch High Tension (the french version, not the recut American release).
I'm sitting in my room, watching TV, catching up on my online stuff, contemplating my next craft project, and listening to the wind howl outside. We are getting quite the storm tonight. It's a good night to be at home and not have to get up early so I can just enjoy the night.

I need to get some of that spicy cocoa for myself. My tin, which didn't have much left anyway, is in a box in the garage.

They're warning of power outages caused by downed trees and the lights flicker a bit. We hung out at CKRs tonight and there was a section of our drive (where most of the traffic lights were) where the power was out, but we still had power at home (and no flashing clocks). It's occured to me... This is a gated community. Can we leave (or get in) if the power goes out?

I'm sure we can. I just think it would be kind of funny if we couldn't.

I'm not quite curious enough to wish the power would go out so I could go see... Although my best flashlight is in my car which would be on the way to the gates...
Woohoo!

I went to the bookstore this morning to see if they had Othello so I could look things up (I'm reading a printout which lacks footnotes and wanted to check something so I could finish my translation for class). They lacked copies of Othello (but the library reference section had one, so I got what I needed). Since I was there I checked my class schedule for next semester (they have a computer dedicated to this purpose in the bookstore, it's rarely being used) and discovered that I got into the bio class I was waitlisted for. Woohoo!

I was only #2 on the waitlist when I registered and then #1 a couple of weeks ago when I checked again. Yay!

This makes my schedule nice.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday - No class! Yay!
Tuesday - 11:30 to 6 pm (3 classes and bio lab)
Wednesday - 11:30 to 2:20 (1 class and chem lab)
Thursday - 11:30 to 6 pm (3 classes and bio lab)
Friday - 11:30 to 12:20 (1 class)

As soon as I was done hanging around in the bookstore (books for next semester begin to appear next Monday), I headed to the library and dropped the evening bio class so they wouldn't try to charge me for it.

Woot!

And I believe my 4-6 Multicultural Issues class is a hybrid online class, so I really don't know what will happen with that one.

On the non-school front, I had a nice weekend. Mongolian BBQ (finally found a place that is actually pretty good) on Friday; gaming on Saturday (Ptolus; being 1st level sucks; many sucky dice rolls; being a lion-woman is kind of cool); got to the toe decreases on my sock (woohoo! no more single socks but what to do next...); watched Kevin play Rule of Rose, a very odd Japanese PS2 game which I'm trying really hard not to spoil myself on but had to download the script for anyway because I'm just so curious; and ... That's it. I mean, I watched TV and slept and yelled at the cats for waking me up.

The snow is almost all gone, which is kind of sad, but I am oh so happy that the ice is gone.

Hey, time to print out my Othello thing and go to class!
Tags:
um....

I reached 1 million meters finally on my rowing logbook. I stopped back in July with 4.5km to go, partially because I wasn't sure how it got handled and didn't want to go over the mark and have them send my prizes to the wrong address. I downloaded the certificate. It's all purty.

I did not finish the Halloween challenge. It's hard to go from 0/wk to 31km/wk all of a sudden so I ended up stopping with only 5k done. Ok, I could have finished if I hadn't skipped rowing on Thursday and Monday but I was exhausted and as much as I love those certificates we get I love sleeping and not getting sick even more (I have this vague congested feeling which could be a virus, allergies, or weather related, but sleep is always a good remedy; my current guess is weather, but low-grade illness is second).

I created a new ticker on my profile to illustrate the path to 2 Million Meters(!). Only 22.7 of 1000 km done so far. Man.

School is going pretty well. Tiring; my sleep is all out of whack. The time change was not as much of a relief as usual. It's odd because last week was a light week, no english class because we were all having personal conferences with the prof about our essays (he had some suggestions but overall had quite a bit of praise for my writing, yay!), and yet still I was just so tired. I need to make more effort on being focused because that will improve my ability to get things done so I can go to bed on time. Yup. I'm gonna work on that as soon as I have the time and energy....

I got grade reports for algebra and anatomy this week (it's the middle of the 5th week of a 10 week quarter). I'm getting an A in both so far (I have the highest score in anatomy as near as I can tell, in fact). I'm pretty sure English is also an A since I haven't done any of the things that would pull my grade down and the short essays have checkmarks. We get our long essay back next week (revised version was due Monday), which I'm looking forward to. It's nice to get feedback on the random stuff I write.

I haven't been doing much. No knitting, barely keeping up on my tv watching, and no non-school book reading (still quite a bit of web reading, though; where are my priorities). I think I might get my sock out in a bit though. I don't have a lot of homework this weekend (a short essay, read 2-3 chapters for anatomy, and a few hours of math homework) and I want to catch up on my tv and try to finish that sock. It's the last of the socks. I have to finish it.

I also have to think about what I'm doing next quarter. Man. My class time choices kind of suck. Since I don't know when I'll be moving closer to school (I'm waiting for some stuff to happen before I work on that), I don't want to sign up for anything earlier than 11:30 am and I don't particularly feel like taking a night course that meets most nights of the week (a couple of nights, I don't think I'd mind). It's hard to decide what to do. I'm also not sure I want to take two lab courses at once. I haven't taken one yet so I have no idea what to expect from it... And I really don't want to take the computer information systems class that's required. Seriously, I do not need to learn how to use Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. I could teach the class! I should find my list of stuff to take.

I should find my hats/scarves too. And possibly a new jacket. It's been chilly here and my fleece jacket is not quite up to the task of keeping me warm but my leather jacket feels like it would be overkill. I hate buying jackets though. They always fit so oddly. We'll see what happens I guess.

[livejournal.com profile] isildur and I have been getting together to watch horror movies every week. It's been fun. Last week, we watched Takashi Miike's installment in the Master of Horror series. Showtime wouldn't air it and once we'd seen it, we could see why. Also, he's got this thing about needles... We watched Hard Candy the same night which was really good and a little creepy. We've watched a couple of other Masters of Horror episodes and Saw, which I was nicely surprised by. I was expecting a movie more like Hostel and got something a little closer to Se7en. We watched The Producers last weekend, which was really cute, and The Prestige which I loved. I almost wish I'd never read the book, because then it might have been better.

I didn't really do anything for Halloween. Since I wasn't going out anywhere except Algebra class and everything is packed up, I decided that I wasn't up to making the effort on a fun costume. I did realize, after going to class, that I could have dressed up in one of my generic Ren Fest costumes. Not much effort and I actually know where those are... I think I do anyway and I could have worn my cloak to class! I definitely know where that is. I did go over to CKR's house and we watched The Exorcist III. We were going to watch The Shining but being at the mercy of a video store means you can't always get what you want. There were definitely some fun moments in there.

I'd kind of planned to do something on Wednesday but ended up passing out shortly after I got home. I work up briefly, had some popcorn, and went back to bed. It's almost like my pattern in HS. On Fridays I would come home, fall asleep, get up and eat something, and then go back to sleep until someone woke me up the next day. I don't think it will be my normal Wednesday routine since that's usually when Kevin and I watch movies. Last week, it happened on Thursday and since that's a one-class day, it meant I had the whole day to nap.

[livejournal.com profile] chrysoula and I hang out on Fridays after class, so there's no napping on Fridays either! Weekends are fair game though. So much time to nap. And then do homework. And then nap. It's a crazy cycle.

The cats seem to be getting along better. Kira and Kimba come hang out in my room quite a bit when Kirby's not around/awake and I am (they come sleep with me in the mornings, which I find funny). There's not as much growling and even a slight bit of playing. They are all kind of wacky about the whole thing but there's definite progress being made.

I think that's it! I should try to post a little more often since otherwise I end up with long rambly posts. If I post more often then I'll have short rambly posts!
A friend asked so I've posted a couple/three pictures of my clapotis at my crafty stuff gallery. It's knit on the bias so it's shaped a little weird right now (I just turned the corner). I'm using a wool/mohair yarn (Duet) from Brooks Farm. AS you can see from the pictures, I have finally gotten to start on the dropping stitches portion of the pattern.

I reordered the gallery so that recent pictures are in front since Kodak Gallery does not let me link directly. They said that it's one of the things they're considering. I paid for one year so if it's not ready then I may not renew my premier gallery subscription. It's dumb to only allow slideshows. Dumb!

My mom called yesterday. My uncle's cancer has not spread so he'll be starting radiation soon.

Oh, and I finished paying off my student loans last week. I am completely out of debt. Totally. It's so odd. I'm taking a personal finance class online and we had to do a statement of assets and liabilities and... I have no liabilities. I pay off my credit cards every month. It's so weird. And I'm thinking of going back to school and putting myself back in debt (if only to my mom and stepfather)... Sheesh.

Friday was UFO Night at Commuknity. Fun, fun. I got to show off my clapotis a little. [livejournal.com profile] tersa and I had dinner at Baba Neo, which was ok. The black rice pudding we got for dessert was not at all what I was expecting after getting it at Coconut Grove at the Great Mall. I have to go back there and get that dessert again. I have to! Maybe next time I take myself out for dinner and movie. ;)

I think I did some stuff around the house Saturday afternoon. Knitting probably. In the evening I picked up some food from Sue's and took it to [livejournal.com profile] glaciation and [livejournal.com profile] eilonwey's house to feed them. I also got a chance to meet their baby and hang out for a few hours. Yay! Baby! I have a good chest for baby-sleeping, apparently. Babies just fall asleep as soon as I lay them down on my chest.

On Sunday I went to the farmers market with [livejournal.com profile] tersa and then we went to Whole Foods. So far, it's the only place I can find the melatonin pills I take. Hm. I'd forgotten about their good cheeses. I bought some to make mac and cheese some time soon. Hm. Cheese, Gromit! And then I, uh, fell asleep for a good portion of the afternoon, so no social knit for me. I had such a horrible sinus-allergy-migraine when I woke up. It was awful. And having to cook dinner while it was peaking was so not fun. I ran out of my allergy meds and kept forgetting to ask my doc to send in a scrip to the mail-order place, but I finally did that on Monday. Now I wait, impatiently, for it to come in.

It's crazy. The immediate effect of not taking my meds was sneezing. A lot of sneezing for a couple of days. Now it's turned into sinus pressure. I didn't mind the sneezing so much but the sinus pressure is horrid. I don't know why I had to suddenly become allergic to the world. I liked not being allergic to the world! I want to go back to that! (I only developed allergies a few years ago.)

So far this week at work looks like it will be less stressful than last week. We'll see how it ends up!
Tags:
Huh. I can't remember what I've been doing these last couple of weeks....

During the week I really don't do much. Stay at home and craft and watch TV/Movies and read. But on weekends I do stuff! Sometimes it is even stuff that requires leaving the house!

Hm.

I actually think I spent the evening of May 5th trying to finish a library book that was due on the 6th. I couldn't renew it easily because it was an interlibrary loan and it was going to be $1/day fines. I stayed up most of the night (ok, all night) finishing it. Good book. I need to get back into my book list. I stopped at the end of last year because I accidently copied over the list I'd been keeping with an older version and I couldn't recreate the list. It made me very sad. This year I've been keeping a list on paper since I've also been writing down craft project starts/finishes. I should put it back online but keep the paper backup going.

On the 6th, I cleaned out my storage space. This is not a huge deal or anything but I've been meaning to do it for years and just never got around to it. I have a pile of stuff to decide on, sent a whole bunch of stuff to the trash/recycling bins, and have some more stuff headed to goodwill. In the evening, I went to dinner and to see Silent Hill again with [livejournal.com profile] tersa, [livejournal.com profile] aeflsciene and [livejournal.com profile] ebonlock. I really like that movie.

On the 13th, I decided to take myself out for dinner and a movie. I'm a pretty good date for myself. :) I went to see An American Haunting. It was entertaining but I think it's a rental.

After the farmers market run on Sunday, I called my mom at home to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. We talked for quite a bit and I got all caught up on the family gossip. I have a cousin getting married tomorrow. And next week we find out if my uncle's cancer has spread (I think they only recently found out about the cancer, mom told me on Sunday). I'm thinking that maybe there should be no more weddings in my family in 2006. Funerals and illnesses punctuated by weddings! We've got two more weddings in the fall, so far, so I guess we'll see what else develops. I'm hoping we get good news next week (mom and grandma's visit depends on the cancer prognosis). Later, I called grandma's house and talked to other people in the family. That was fun. Marisa, my sister-in-law, and I spent some time talking about relationships and dating. Heh. My cousin Douglas talked about how cool his and Carmen's new baby is. I need to work on something for the other babies...

I put my Pasha together and... I wasn't satisfied with him. Now that he's been sitting around my living room for a while, he doesn't look quite so bad to me though my inability to set things evenly means he is a little deformed. I think I might be happier if his body was a little denser, so I might try to make him using smaller needles next time and add more stuffing! I might try to make Nautie next. Decisions, decisions.

Right now, I'm working on a sock and on clapotis. I started the clapotis on Sunday during the Social Knit time. It is going pretty quickly but I've got an awful lot of yarn to put into it (16oz, 1000yds). I'm going to make it wider and longer than the pattern calls for. I prefer shawls to scarves. It's sad though. I need to do more increase sections so I can't go to the straight section and start dropping stitches. Man, I really want to drop those stitches.

Oh, and I finished the cross-stitch for Joseph. I posted the pictures up at my kodakgallery.com site. The difference between the non-backstitched and backstitched versions of it is amazing (the last four pictures in the crafty stuff gallery). It makes up for the incredible pain involved in backstitching (especially that gold thread, damn you gold thread!). I want to take it to be framed but I can't until someone tells me what the outside dimensions of the frame I used for Samantha's cross-stitch is. The version I did for Joseph is not the same size because of the fabric I was using but I want the frame dimensions to be the same. Is that silly? I think they'd look nicer hanging next to each other if the frames were the same size even though the pattern and the mats and stuff won't be. I dunno. Maybe I'm being silly. I don't think I'm being silly but maybe I am being silly.

So far this week has been stressful and unhappy making (mostly work stuff and it's really not interesting). Here's hoping next week is better. I haven't been getting a lot of exercise done due to this but I got a nice 5k in yesterday. That was good. I now have less than 50k to go to get my first million meters. Yay! My deadline is my birthday (June 1) so I've got 12 days. I can do that. I just have to not procrastinate on it. I did that in December and ended up doing 90k in 10 days and it was not good. I think the seasonal allergy exhaustion is starting to go away but I don't want to jinx myself by saying it's gone. :)

Gosh. My birthday is in less than 2 weeks. I should think of something to do for it... Huh.
Tags:
Oooh, shiny!

I've been distracted by other things for a while so I haven't been posting. Ah, well.

Let's see...

On the 20th of April, I flew to Seattle for, well, a movie. I wanted to see Silent Hill with Kevin and Chrysoula and Ray. It was a perfect plan! They'd get back from their vacation on Wednesday, I'd fly up on Thursday, we'd see the movie on Friday, and I'd go home on Saturday so I could be home to watch my dance troupe at People's Choice on Sunday. It was perfect! But, life must always complicate things. Thursday morning, Kevin had to fly to Austin for some Flying Labs stuff. Argh! We'd been hoping he would be back early on Friday and we could still see a late show but no such luck. It wouldn't have been so frustrating if any of us had known about it more than a week in advance (I bought my tickets well in advance!).

We did go see the movie on Saturday and we had a fine time on Friday night too. I've actually been to a Mongolian BBQ place that doesn't suck! I know. I was astonished. It's actually pretty good. I think Kahn's in Minneapolis still has the lead for a couple of different reasons, one of which is nostalgia, but this one was nice too.

And the movie... I know it's been getting bad reviews. It seems to be a love it or hate it movie. I, personally, loved it and can't wait to see it again. In fact, I'm seeing it again tomorrow!

On the 23rd, I watched my belly dance troupe win First Place at the People's Choice awards. Yay! Jewels of Opar!

I skipped the party for our teacher afterward because I was feeling headachy and out of sorts.

The week was... It was a week long. There you go.

On Friday, the 28th, I took [livejournal.com profile] tersa out to dinner for her birthday (yay! birthday!) and then we went to CommuKnity for UFO night. That was fun. It was especially fun because I was working on the top third of my cross stitch, having finished the bottom two thirds, and it goes so quickly at that point. In fact, I think I finished the major stitching parts of it on Sunday, but that's getting ahead of myself!

I considered going to a movie on Saturday but eventually decided that all the theaters that were showing Hard Candy were too much of a pain to get to. I wanted something easy! And, well, I procrastinated most of the day on doing my 60 minute rowing piece so it was hard to try to get that done and go to a movie. And I really wanted to get the rowing piece done because the season was going to end on Sunday and I wanted to get 9 of the 10 ranking pieces done and there was no way I was doing a whole freaking marathon (60 minutes was pushing it). I got it done though! So sore after.

Let's see... Sunday the 30th! I went to the farmers market with [livejournal.com profile] tersa and then ... I napped. I really needed that nap. I felt so crappy and headachy and horrible. I ended up skipping a dance class and [livejournal.com profile] tersa's birthday festivities because of it. I finished up the stitching on my cross-stitch. None of the backstitching is done yet, but the other stuff is.

On Tuesday, [livejournal.com profile] eilonwey had her and [livejournal.com profile] glaciation's baby (ooh, now I can finish their cross-stitch). :) I was the first of our friends to know since I work with [livejournal.com profile] glaciation and he stopped by my office to tell me he was starting his paternity leave right now. Heh. Although I do feel all whiny because now I have no [livejournal.com profile] glaciation in the office to talk to about work stuff. *whine*

The rest of this week has been pretty boring. Work, exercise, tv, reading. I've been working on putting all my CDs on my computer. Yikes.

As far as exercise goes, it's been really hard to continue the exercise thing. Now that allergy season has started in force, I'm completely exhausted and lack motivation to do anything, including get out of bed. It doesn't seem that the allergy pills help with that. It's at least nice that they don't make me even more tired or make me groggy. Coming up with training plans on my own while also being exhausted is hard. It's a good thing I know that the long-ish steady pieces with a low-ish heart rate is what I should be doing to improve my base, because it's mostly what I'm up for these days. I've been breaking it up a little doing some of the smaller ranking pieces (you need to do something to keep things interesting).

There are 10 ranking pieces for the web sites I use. They are: 500m, 1km, 2km, 5km, 6km, 10km, Half-Marathon (21,097 meters), Marathon (42,195 meters), 30 minutes, and 60 minutes. Over the course of the season, you're encouraged to try to get personal bests in these pieces and log them for ranking at the logbook site and for scoring at the nonathlon site. I was nowhere near to getting a bronze medal t-shirt for the nonathlon but I wanted to get as many of the pieces done as I could. Since the new season started, I've been trying to do some of the pieces to try to get an idea of where I am. This has mostly consisted of me picking a split to try for and just seeing if I can do it and how hard it is. I don't expect to get top scores compared to anyone else but it is nice to be able to do these once every few months and see if I've gotten better than the last time I did it.

Oh, and if you haven't seen my profile lately, I'm now at less than 70 km to go to my 1 Million Meters. Woohoo!

Oh, and I have a gallery of pictures up. Go look at it! Make comments! I took the password off.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/silkblade_gallery
Heh. One week between open updates!

Last Wednesday was Passover dinner with [livejournal.com profile] eilonwey, [livejournal.com profile] glaciation, [livejournal.com profile] wildpaletz and [livejournal.com profile] senatorhatty. It was fun and there was lots of good food.

I don’t think I really did much on Thursday. I can’t remember.

On Friday, I watched all three of the netflix DVDs I saved for the weekend. This included the movie Black Christmas (which is being remade as we speak). It was pretty fun, actually. I was kind of afraid that it would be too dated (the clothes certainly were) and maybe a little boring but I was nicely surprised. There were some things that I’m really wondering how they’re going to work them out with the remake (anonymous harassment calls being a big plot point). And, well, there’s one thing they might change that I don’t want them to change! But I’m not sure I should tell you. Hmm…

I mostly slept on Saturday. I didn’t really intend to spend all day sleeping but there you go. I was kind of sad about it when I got the mail and realized my rowing DVDs had come in. That was pretty cool! Alas, I didn’t have time to check them out much since I was going out that night but I listened to them as I was getting ready. They look interesting. The maitre’d at Vaso Azzuro claims to remember me from my birthday, oh so many years ago. And hey, it’s getting to be that time of year again. I should consider what I want to do this year.

Sunday was Easter! I didn’t have any plans this year. [livejournal.com profile] tersa canceled our morning farmer’s market run as there probably wouldn’t be a farmer’s market so I slept in again (ah, how hedonistic). Eventually, I got up and called my mom’s house. I talked to a few family members (they were doing Easter at my mom’s house this year since she has a hugefenced-in yard now). I also talked, very briefly, to my niece Samantha. My Uncle Harry put her on the phone and I could hear him coaching her in the background: "Say Hi to your Aunt Michelle" "Hi Aunt Michelle" "Say I Love You Aunt Michelle" "I love you!". It was very very cute. Perhaps you had to hear it. She has the cutest little voice.

I also talked to Becky for a while on Sunday, which was nice. We hadn’t talked much since I visited in March and it’s always nice to get a chance to just sit and chat. I spent some of the in-between times working on organizing my comics. Man. I have so many comics and I really don’t collect that many comics! They just…pile up like mad. I hope they aren’t breeding. I don’t think I want to know what kind of spawn could possibly arise from my comic book collection. …. No. I’m just not going to think about it.

I stayed home sick on Monday. I just wasn’t feeling well. It really didn’t help that the night before I was woken up every couple of hours by the cat puking in a new area of the carpet. Poor baby. Poor me! I was a little worried but he seems to be ok and there have been no repeats of pukey-cat. I filed my taxes. I ended up owing very little money to both the state and the feds. Woohoo! I slept. I finished the white bits on Joseph’s baby announcement and started on the color on the bottom of the pattern. I rewatched the last three episodes of Lost. So very exciting, yes?

I went to work on Tuesday, which was…um….work. After work I did stuff around the house. Laundry, exercise…

A couple of weeks ago, I got a workout log book (in fact, it’s called The Ultimate Workout Log, I got it at Amazon). I finished the first week of logs on Sunday. I’m not sure how much more motivation this will give me but it’s a little less haphazard than my other log books. I mean, the only thing I’ve really been good about logging is my rowing workouts (I like seeing those meters add up!) but it would be good to keep a record of my strength training and other stuff, if I ever do other stuff.

Anyway, in this book you have to set weekly goals (you also set 6 month goals (the length of the log book)). I didn’t meet my goals for last week, sad me, but I came pretty close and was probably not realistic about it in the first place. So this week I set different goals. Except… See, instead of saying 'row 3 times this week’ (last week’s goal), I wrote down ‘row for 30 minutes’ figuring that would be a better goal since with the whole chest thing I haven’t been able to do very long rows but I thought setting an amount of time rather than a number of times would be good (I can’t remember why now but I still think it’s a good idea, I just need to be more ambitious, I guess). And then last night I decided to do the rowing workout DVD… which is 40 minutes long. So I met my goal for the week yesterday! Hmph. I’m not going to let this mean ‘no rowing for the rest of the week’ but it’s a little crazy to meet your weekly goal all at once.

Now, last night I rowed for a little longer than the length of the video but 40 minutes is the longest row I’ve done in a while. And… I just don’t know. My PT said no rowing after the time I rowed that caused me some crazy pain but that didn’t happen last night. Maybe I managed to not do whatever it was that caused that crazy pain or maybe the pain is ‘gone’ or something, I dunno. The training DVD I did is big on technique. I can’t actually see what I’m doing but I’m pretty sure I’m getting the body mechanics he’s showing on the DVD. It would be good to have a mirror though. I tried moving one of the mirror closet doors into the living room but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I’m thinking if I do the DVD a few times without the mirrors, then maybe I can grab the audio into an MP3 or something and listen to it in the bedroom where I have the mirrored closet doors. This way I have the memory of watching it to guide me. I dunno.

The other interesting thing is that the DVD shows the erg on slides. These are to better simulate on-water rowing for people who erg to train for that. I do wonder if there’s some things that would work differently if I had slides but they cost money (I can’t remember how much but I’m pretty sure it’s a bit) and they take up a lot of room. And they probably don’t go well with moving the erg around a lot, which I do because I just don’t have the room for it to stay out somewhere. Oh, how I wish I had a two-bedroom apartment.

The rowing season is almost over (April 30th) and I have two pieces I haven’t done for the nonathlon or the season rankings: the 60 minute piece and the marathon. I don’t think I’m up for a marathon. At best it would take me about 4.5 hours, but I’m betting I’d need to add about 30-60 minutes on there to account for how long it is. I could probably do a 60 minute row though. I doubt I’d touch my personal best but it would still be cool to get one down for the season.

And then a whole new season! Woohoo!

Oh, and last night I rowed just enough that I’m now just barely above the 900km mark. I have done 100km in a month (heck I did most of the 100km Holiday Challenge in ten days in December) so I should definitely be able to finish my FIRST million meters and get a nice start on my second million by my birthday. I went ahead and changed the ticker on my userinfo page already.

I also just have to mention that I've now dreamt twice about going to see Silent Hill and in both dreams I can't remember the movie. I know I saw it but I can't remember anything about it in the dream. There's always something distracting me. In the first dream it was trying to find my friends in the huge crowd of people at the movie and waiting for the bad thing to happen (something about watching a horror movie in an old church just made my dream self absolutely certain there was some ritual or something going on to bring about the end of the world or something). In the most recent dream, it was that the person next to me kept touching me and crowding me and was just overall kind of a crazy guy. Yeah, he was cute but still. I am crazy amused that I seem to be having anxiety dreams about a movie. Only two more days to go!
Tags:
The ads for Silent Hill just make me want this movie even more! I hope it's as good as it looks like it will be.

I remembered that my mom told me that my cousin's girlfriend had their baby. 2 weeks ago tomorrow (Thursday).

Monday I did....random stuff at home, I think. I worked out. Reading the rowing forum I got some suggestions of things to try to keep my form correct. They suggest rowing "shoes out" or strapless most of the time (on the rower there's a place to strap your feet in, you need to put your feet there but you don't need to strap yourself in) and with a lower SPM (strokes per minute (this isn't too hard, my normal/natural spm is around 26 and I was going for 20 on Monday)). This forces you to pay more attention to your form because otherwise you can't control your movements as well and your feet fall off the foot rests or you fall off the seat (which is quite painful, I've accidently sat down on the monorail directly when the seat moved out of the way and ow). The lower spm allows you to pay more attention because each stroke takes a little longer. You can work on setting it up correctly and work on making sure your legs are doing most of the work. Which, honestly, is probably where I'm failing. I let my upper body do a lot of the work because my legs are short. I don't get much of a leg drive out of them. I'm trying to work on that too but mostly I'm figuring paying attention to other things will help that one work itself out.

Anyway, I tried it out and it worked quite well. I've also started keeping track of some different things with my rowing. It's interesting, everyone has a different idea of which things you should actually use to judge your performance. I've always used the split but some people suggest using the watts or the SPI (stroke performance index (watts/stroke)). So I've started keeping track of those in my logbook.

If you're curious about my 1 Million Meter Challenge numbers, I'm trying to keep track of my meters on a ticker that I put in my LJ profile. :) I think I'll change it when I hit that 900km mark to a 1-100 km ticker.

Yesterday was quite the day. I had a doctor appt with the physical medicine person I see at PAMF. I had made the appt when my PT ran out and my chest was quite painful and I was feeling like it was never going to work. But the big pain had mostly gone away and I was left with just occasional twinges. So when I went in yesterday, I kind of felt silly for keeping the appt because I didn't hurt yesterday. But I was in pain on Monday, so go figure. We talked and I asked for some more trigger point injections.

She marked 4 places on my upper-mid back and did the injections. Ouchie. The needles don't hurt at all. It's the stuff they put in the muscles (it burns, it burns!). She says I can get these done once a month if I need to. I really hope I don't need to. The last time I got these in my shoulders, they managed to stop the muscle pain completely so I could fix what was wrong and I didn't need more injections. Here's hoping this works out like that. Some pains are just horrible cycles.

So far it seems ok. Things are still a little sore but not too bad.

I used my new dutch oven for the first time last night! It was so cool to make my beef stew without having to worry about space issues (my biggest pot is 3Q, but the new dutch oven is 5Q). Yay!

I made haroset and some vinaigrette for Passover dinner tonight.

When I was done with my cooking and getting ready to just sit on the couch and ignore the huge mess I left in the kitchen, I decided to make myself some tea. And spilled boiling hot water on my left hand. Ow ow ow ow ow! I am amazed at how much that hurt. I spent the next couple of hours holding an ice pack or a bag of ice to my hand. I cut some aloe, which also helped (especially if you keep it in the fridge, so nice and cool) and smeared that all over and even experimented with attaching it to my hand with a bandage. Alas, this did not work so well. I even tried to just ignore it but wow, it hurt. I managed to fall asleep with my hand under a bag of ice, which luckily did not come open all over the bed while I was asleep.

It's not too bad this morning but the whole area is still a little tender to the touch and there are a couple of red spots and possibly a blister or two. Who knew pouring hot water on yourself would hurt so much? I'm glad it was just my hand.
Tags:
March was a month of traveling for me. Two trips! I went to Seattle for a few days for work. And then I went to Minneapolis to visit friends and go to the Boiled in Lead St Paddy's day concert.

Unfortunately, the concert wasn't the best I've been to. Membership in the band has changed around again and they mostly played instrumentals all night. Not really my idea of a celtic rock concert, no. It made me sad. I wonder what next year's concert will be like since it will be on a Saturday and their 25th anniversary concert...

I did get to enjoy visiting my friends, though. :) And I discovered that I do like vodka martinis if they're made from extra-good vodka. Hmmm... vodka.

Since I got back there hasn't been much to talk about. I've been trying to incorporate rowing into my workouts, but it's been hard. I ordered some training DVDs. I'm looking forward to those coming in. I've also been reading a lot on the forum trying to get some tips to help me get back into the rhythm of it. I think getting my sleep schedule back into shape will help out with that.

My weekend was not terribly exciting. Friday night I hung out with [livejournal.com profile] tersa and we watched Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It was really funny and very cute.

Saturday, I didn't leave the house. Heck, I didn't even change out of my pajamas! I spent the day trying to put my comics back into order. Man, I've got 6-7 years of comics that haven't been filed or entered into my little logbook. And, since I can, I'm trying to transfer my handwritten logbook into an Excel spreadsheet while I file them away. It's not hard, really, but it's time consuming. I got a few boxes worth of stuff put away, but I've got so much more left! It's a good thing I don't really collect that many comics. I'm also trying to put them into alphabetical order.

I talked to a friend of mine from Minneapolis while I filed. I also talked to my mom, who warned me that she and grandma may be coming to visit next month. Eep! I do think it's funny that my deciding to move always gets them to come visit me.

On Sunday, I went to the Farmer's Market with [livejournal.com profile] tersa. And then I went home for a nap as I suddenly felt enormously tired. After a while I got up and tried to do things around the house, eventually going so far as to reorganize my craft stuff. Now I have one bin for knitting and one bin for cross stitch and sewing related things. Whee!

All in all, not a bad weekend. Except for the fact that it ended. Damn.
Tags:

(no subject)

Feb. 26th, 2006 08:08 pm
silkblade: (Default)
Plumber showed up around 7:30. I have a working toilet now. Yay!
Tags:
I finished my Olympic sock! Yay! Well in time for a gold medal in the Knitting Olympics. I probably could have picked a greater challenge but this one worked out pretty well. This puts me officially in the middle of two pairs of socks. So, I've decided to take a break from socks for a while and work on one of my two cross-stitches instead. Yay! I got the linen I ordered so I'm going to try it out.

I am stuck at home this afternoon waiting for a plumber. My toilet got stopped up last night. I have this horrible feeling it started earlier than that but I didn't notice because it drained enough. But last night I tried to clean the litter box (flushable litter) and ... no flushing! This is not so good. Really not so good. This morning it had drained a little so (dumb me) tried again but still no actual flushing. I tried using the plunger and an unbent wire hanger to get it to work but no luck. I called my rental manager line and the phone service called the on-call manager. Who called me and asked me if I tried to plunge it. I think she could tell from my tone when I said 'yes' that I was a little annoyed to be asked but I guess not everyone tries to fix problems themselves before calling for help.

And I just got another call because they're having problems getting the main plumber for my complex out here and again I'm being asked by my actual rental manager if I tried plunging it. Hmph.

She called me back again and said there's someone who will be coming (probably around 4 pm, but possibly earlier). But since they aren't the preferred vendors for the complex they may not be able to do anything if it's a problem in the main line (though I would think my neighbors would be having problems too if that were the case). And hey, she said she would try to get me reimbursed for this too. I'm not going to insist on it because this kind of stuff does happen and it really seems like the HOA was the slow factor here because they took a couple of hours to call the managers back about who their preferred plumbers are and then those guys are completely unavailable today.... but hey, this is inconvenient.
Tags:
Update? What? Where?

Huh. I can't remember what I've been up to...

I got the test results back. There were a couple of slightly-out-there results but since I'm feeling better my doctor doesn't think we need to look at them any more. I am feeling better. Now I just have occasional spells instead of daily ones. The dizzy spells freaked me out enough that I haven't done much in the way of exercise and now I am feeling lazy and I don't wanna! I really need to get back into the habit though. And stop giving myself permission to sleep in just because the doctor told me to get lots of rest...

On the 18th, I went to Stitches West with [livejournal.com profile] tersa & [livejournal.com profile] esmerel & [livejournal.com profile] caredhel, which was cool. Gigantic Yarn Store is all I've really got to say on the subject. I totally (barely) managed to stay in my $100 budget by only buying things I could come up with a project for (I did get them to help me come up with a project for this yarn I really really wanted, I've got 1000 yards waiting for me to have time to use it...). So far I've resisted their attempts to get me to knit lace and to learn to spin. So far.... I can't wait to get back to knitting/crafting anything I want (I've got two cross-stitches I want to work on, though one of them I have to wait on since the linen I order for it is on back order (but the other linen I just randomly got was in stock!)). I'm working on my Olympic Sock (er, 5 days to go and slightly more than halfway done). It's been slow going because my chest muscle pains have been ... irritating.

At the airport between flights back to CA in January I noticed that I was having some intense muscle cramps/spasms in the left side of my chest. It seemed to be partially caused by my backpack. Since then they've gotten better but have never been quite as far away as I'd like. My guess is that this is my new physical stress reaction. Mostly knitting does not make them worse, but sometimes... I've been trying to be as good about them as I possibly can by taking breaks and stretching and stuff.

I had a physical therapy appt on Monday in an attempt to get these under control. The appt went well. The PT said it looked like my back/neck muscles are the problem and I have exercises to do to strengthen them. I did have a problem doing them Tuesday night by myself though. I got a sudden muscle spasm in my chest and had to go sit down for a while with the little bit of ice I could get from the freezer (there's lots in there now! (actually, I should turn off the ice maker tonight)). I think I must have just done something particularly wrong for that one because when I did them later it was fine. And when I did them last night (and again this morning) I didn't have any horrible pain. I do ache a little but not in a bad way (as near as I can tell). It's a little weird that some of the ache is in/around my ribs in front rather than in back but things seem to be going ok.

Angie's birthday party on Saturday was quite fun. I had quite a few drinks and some good food and enjoyed all the good company. I kind of wished I'd dressed up a little since I do that so rarely but I was so tired after Stitches that if I had gone home I probably would have fallen asleep (as it was I hung out with [livejournal.com profile] tersa between the two and got to try that wonderful hot cocoa she's been raving about and didn't fall asleep at all). I continue to be amazed that jeagermeister and Red Bull is actually a good drink. Just amazing.

Angie [handed] me a wonderful Valentine's Day present [from her and Ellie]. A mix CD. So far, my favorite new song on it is "Skullcrusher Mountain". In fact, I think I'll listen to it right now!
Tags: