Keeping With It

I posted a sidebar list so you can see I am keeping track of the exercise. I plan to branch out into other things, but the weather hasn't been conducive to that lately... and the stupid rain/snow mix we are supposed to get tonight and tomorrow isn't going to help matters.

Lenten Come Lately

Yes, yes, I know - I'm not Catholic, but I like keeping Lenten resolutions anyway. I like the idea of trying some thing on for 6 weeks and seeing how you like it. In the past I have given up chocolate (and discovered my love of vanilla lattes), given you a fact I learned a day - and this year I have decided to exercise each day for a minimum of 20 minutes.

Why 20 minutes?

Well, that is all I did yesterday when I was still wracking my brain for an idea... so 20 minutes it is. It's not a huge sacrifice, but I am challenging myself to do it. Some people subscribe to the idea that Sundays are free, but that is one of the days I will actually have *more* rather than less time to exercise.

So, here you go:

2/25: 20 minutes ice skating
2/26: 20 minutes treadmill, 20 minutes recumbant bike

Yay me!

My Child's First Forgery

The scary thing is that it isn't a half-bad representation of my signature.

WiP It Wednesday

Remember those Mandy socks I was so enamoured of?



Well, I've stalled on the second sock. Part of the reason is that I really prefer to knit socks on two circulars, so dpns all the way down seem very cumbersome to me. The other thing is that they are a tad too long for me. I have size 6.5 / 7 feet depending on the shoe and there is just too much wiggle room there. I'll finish the socks and give them to someone, but the urge to finish them right now just isn't there.

These socks, on the other hand...



I'm completely entranced with. My friends and I were planning our annual trip to MDSW, and I guiltily thought I had better knit something with the yarn I bought there *last year* before I went and spent a bunch of money this year. You know, fiscal responsibility and all that... Well, I bought this Puckerbrush Farms superwash merino sock yarn from some booth (I don't think it was called Puckerbrush Farms, but I could be wrong) at MDSW last year. It's knitting up to be a light socks (Ladies M, size 2 circulars, 56 stitches around) and moving very fast. I love the greens in the sock - they remind me of Kermit the Frog.

And lastly, two of my coworkers are pregnant right now - and due within a day of each other. Megan found out she was having a girl, so I started on this yellow baby blanket with flecks of pink and blue for her. It isn't much at the moment, but will be prettier as it grows:

Gah!

I hate it when I get so worked up and angry about something that I can't sleep!

I had a fit at the McDonald's manager yesterday. Not at her, per se, but rather in reaction to her twit of an employee who was working the drive-thru. This girl didn't seem to know when her speaker was off or on, and all sorts of off-colour comments were coming across the speaker. She apparently disagreed with how I was ordering Willow's cheeseburger (no onions and pickles, please) - at one point even muttering, "Why can't you just order a plain cheeseburger?!" Then when I went to pay for the Happy Meal, she was too busy between making suggestive comments to someone in the hallway and more derogatory comments about the person behind me's order to even look when she gave me my change. We get home, and Willow's cheeseburger has onions and pickles on it (she has a freaky dislike to pickles). I fume for a few minutes, scrape off the offending vegetables, pick up my receipt and called the manager.

First off, I don't think I was the first person who complained about the person given the manager's reaction. She did seem shocked when I told her the utter drivel coming out of this employee's mouth. And I don't give a flying fuck that I was only spending $3.90 on a Happy Meal - all I asked was to have no onions and pickles and I really don't think that was too much of a concession to ask for. And the asinine thing is that the drive-thru person doesn't even have to make the burger, so why would she even care if I asked for something different - all she had to do was punch some freakin' buttons.

Gah!

Two Finished Objects In One Week - I Can't Stand It!

The Particulars:

Yarn: Yarn Pirate Merino/Tencel in "Icicle." I bought the yarn from Nell a while back when she was destashing.

Needles: Two Size 1 - 16" circular needles

Pattern: Ann Budd's plain sock pattern - as much as people have fancy sock patterns and do fabulous things with them, I like letting the yarn rather than the stitchwork do the talking.

Size: Ladies' medium. 76 stitches around

A funny quirk about these socks? The pooling is reversed on the feet - one has the light side up, the other the light side down.

And Every Once In A While, I Finish Something

Now this is a project to feel guilty about. One of Willow's favourite people at her before-and-after care is a pre-K teacher named Shanetha. When we found out Shanetha was pregnant last year and was having a little boy, I started knitting her this baby sweater. Of course, I knit it for the 6-9 month size - Ezra was born in May so I knew he wasn't going to need a sweater any time soon. The sweater itself only took about 2 weeks to knit, but it took 10 months of dithering over putting in a zipper! I was worried that the sweater wouldn't even fit him anymore, so I brought it in last week so she could try it on him - and since it still fits, I was bound to put some kind of closure (pun intended!) on this sweater.

I meant to put the zipper in yesterday afternoon, but it turns out the zipper I had been sitting on for ten months was too long anyway - so I sewed on the buttons and crocheted some button loops on instead.

There is a lesson to be learned here.

Don't start things that need zippers when you really hate sewing in zippers.

What, Cristi?

What were you saying?

TGIF

Well, in all fairness it hasn't been all work and no play.

We went bowling with friends:



I love how we were playing with bumpers to make it easier on Willow and Ray and I still had trouble cracking 100 on the first game...

We had some snow - although it snowed on a weekday night so we didn't get to play in it and it and apparently there wasn't enough here to close the schools - unlike Philadelphia.



Willow looked so cute bundled up - but I am not kidding when I say I took 8 pictures to finally get one with her eyes open.



Well, kind of open, anyway...

Things are getting better.

If...

A few years back, my sister gave me a book called The Book of If, intended to be a journal-prompt. Well, I stopped keep a journal a while ago - but I figured I could still get some use out of the book here.

Five questions, chosen at random:

If you could program the perfect evening of television shows, which ones would you select and in what order?

This is hard - are we talking about current shows or favourite shows of all time? Let's go with current shows... Well, let's start out with something funny:

8:00 How I Met Your Mother
8:30 Good Eats
9:00 Chuck
10:00 Battlestar Gallactica / True Blood

Okay, I know I am cheating a little with that one, but BS only has a finite number of episodes left, and by the time it ends, True Blood will be back for season 2. So there. If we were doing favourite shows there would be a whole pile of Buffy and Angel in there.

If you had to name the one area of your life that you are the least self-disciplined in, what would it be?

I am an emotional eater. And not so much when I'm sad, but more of a I'm pissed off and I instead of gnashing my teeth I am just going to chomp on something salty and crunchy. I'm trying to get better at it - but there are definitely times when only tortilla chips will do. At least I try to mitigate the damage by buying Trader Joe's Flaxseed Tortilla chips instead of Doritos.

If you could enact one law that applied only to your own family, what would it be?

Everyone has to pick up the house for 20 minutes before they get their dinner. We have a constant battle with clutter and recently because of the time constraints of work, the clutter has been winning.

If you could relive any single family outing in your life, what would it be?

Twenty-two, almost twenty-three, years ago, a little shindig called Expo 86 came to Vancouver. My family had a pass that let you go 3 or 5 times (I can't remember exactly), but I remember one of the times we went my grandpa (my Mom's Dad) was there with us, and for some reason, that memory sticks with me. I remember all the different pavilions from the different countries, getting my 'passport' stamped in them, trying different foods. They also had some cool new roller coasters and I remember my Dad taking us on this water roller coaster and I was scared sh!tless!

If you could eliminate one hereditary characteristic from your family, what would it be?

The distinct lack of height. I have two sisters, and only one of us broke the 5 foot barrier (and just at that). Oddly enough, we have all married men over 6 feet tall, so I am assuming there is some kind of genetic imperative here to normalize the height of our children... Willow is already nearly shoulder-high on me and she is only six. Her pediatrician with her statistics she will be at least 5'6, most likely taller. Yay, Andrew's genes!

Okay, play along if you like. Let me know if you do so I can see your answers.