Happy New Year!

Again, I apologize for the snarky last post, I just tend to have a low tolerance for common sense deficiencies. It's one of my biggest pet peeves, that and bad driving. The parking situation combined both! LOL! Anyway, I didn't want that to be my last post for 2009. So, Happy New Year to you and yours. I hope 2010 brings you good health and happiness. What am I doing for New Year's Eve you ask? Well, I'm finishing 2009 watching "How Do They Do It?" on the Science Channel with my husband, dog, knitting, and Dos Equis. I know party animals!

(BTW, I'm wearing my fabulous purple Malabrigo Clapotis and working on a knitted cover for my Kindle)(I'm making up the Kindle cover pattern as I go, I'll post it when I'm done)(So there, knitting content! LOL)

OMG!! Snow!! In Ohio!! Must be a sign of the apocalypse!

I so wish that I had a picture of the parking lot here at work. I just cannot understand how someone could look how people have parked, blocking others in and repeat it. I know, "ooh, scary snow on the parking lot, I can't see the lines!", but you park here every day, and the lines are still in the same places. Hmm, maybe some thought could be put into where you should park. Let me draw you a picture of the parking lot and how people have intelligently parked their vehicles:

Fear my mad Paint skillz! Anyway, so the straight lines are parking spaces, and the oblong, pill shaped objects are supposed to be cars. So, there are permanent light posts around which are parking spaces. You'd think that people might use them as a reference, even though you can't see the lines on the parking lot. Also, you'd think that after one, or maybe 2 rows of cars got blocked in, by 4 deep parking, that people would notice, "Hey, if I park here, I might get blocked in!" But no, that would require some thought, and seeing as today is the last day of work before a long weekend and nobody wants to be here, no sense was used in parking. Just a bunch of lemmings following the first person who didn't think. Sorry for the snark, I'm not really upset (by the way, my car was one of the bottom ones, that had to be moved so that others could get out), it was actually pretty funny. I just don't know why I'm consistently surprised by people's reactions to the snow, especially driving in it. We're in OHIO, it snows here multiple times each year, why does it seem that everyone has to freak out about it!?

Christmas and Other Happenings

First of all, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and spent it with people you love! I had a great Christmas and it was only mildly stressful! We got all the wrapping done on the 23rd. Except for pair #2 of the French Press Slippers (more on that in a minute). We celebrated with Jeff's mom and stepdad and his brother's family on Christmas Eve, had lunch and watched Up with the nieces. What a cute movie! Sadder and more serious than I expected, but I loved Doug the dog! I worked on the slippers during the movie and when I got home that evening and stayed up to sew them up. I popped them in the washer Christmas morning, and gifted them to my grandma later that day! Of course, they were still a little damp, but she loved them anyway. And no, I didn't get any pictures of them, cause I'm awesome... lol! Christmas Day was the busy one, we were out at my parents' by 10 for presents and Christmas lunch. Then to Jeff's dad and stepmom's by 1:15. Then on to my Grandma Norma's by 3:45 and on to my Grandma Patty's by 5. Finally got home about 8:30. Exhausting would be a good description of that day, but it is always fun, if a little crazy.
Also, Santa was pretty darn good to us this year. I got this strobe for my SeaLife DC800 for our trip, a Kindle, an electric kettle, and a MacBook(!!!). Totally shocked about the Macbook, Jeff had asked his mom for a laptop for Christmas, so we could keep in touch with everyone while we're gone. BTW, is Skype not the coolest thing ever!? Anyway, we were expecting like a $300 inexpensive laptop, that didn't do much of anything except get on WiFi, and she gets us a MacBook!! Don't get me wrong, that's what we would have eventually got ourselves, but we did NOT expect her to get us one. She did say that this was the last present we would be getting for birthdays, holidays and such for the next couple of years! LOL!
Unfortunately, Santa also brought me a cold, blah. But, I'll take it cause everyone was so generous to us with their gift giving this year, it seems only right I've got to take a little bit of bad with a LOT of good!
Other things going on:

• I have my first Scuba student! My best friend Dani, is well on her way to being a certified Open Water Diver. We got all of her pool skills done this week and she is studying the book. She'll take the test next time she's in town, and we'll do her open water dives when it gets warmer this summer. It was really a lot of fun, and I'm glad my first student was my best friend. Took a lot of the anxiety out of it!!
• We leave for Indonesia in 2 weeks! So the packing and stressing has begun for that. I'm just now starting to feel a little nervous for the trip, it's a LOOONNGG way away! But so excited, I can't believe we're getting to go to the other side of the world a second time! Sorry for all of the exclamation points, but I am crazy excited!

Think that's all for now

Look, This Post Has Pictures!

So, I haven't been knitting, at all. Or working out. Or eating right. Or diving. Sooo, there hasn't been much to blog about lately. I've been procrastinating on well, pretty much everything. Yeah, guess what I've been doing instead of knitting? Reading the freaking Twilight saga books! I just finished Eclipse last night and got 75 pages into Breaking Dawn today at lunch. Since I don't have to work tomorrow, I'll probably get it done this weekend. Oh well, as soon as I'm done reading I'll be able to actually get some Christmas stuff done! Although, we did get our tree and Christmas decorations up last Friday, that was fun. No good pictures unfortunately. I think I ended up deleting all of them because they were BAAAADD. I've been playing around with my Sealife camera's settings and it's just frustrating the snot out of me. The manual is not great for telling you how to change the settings. There are tons of options, and I've figured out how to take pretty decent pics underwater, but above water, I'm struggling with it. I just have to get more practice with it. We also have the Canon Rebel that I need to work with too, it has a lot more manual settings on it that I've got to play with and learn more about. But the auto settings take fantastic pictures as it is, so I haven't had to learn!

I finished my Bella's Mittens for my friend J. And I actually got a couple pictures before I gifted them! Sorry for the crappiness:

I used good old Lion Brand Wool Ease so they're washable for her. And I learned how to do Magic Loop, which I really enjoyed actually. I'll probably start adapting other DPN patterns to this. It was so much easier to keep everything together on one long needle instead of 3 or 4 short DPN's.

Also on the knitting front, I need to finish my French Press Slippers (aka the Cutest Slippers EVAR!) for my mom, just need to sew on the tabs and buttons, and make a pair for my grandma as well. I was going to make a pair for my mother-in-law, but seeing as she sent me a link to the pattern yesterday, exclaiming how cute they were, I'm going to guess that she's probably going to make them herself. So now I have to figure out what else she's getting for Christmas. Darn Yarn Harlot for promoting that pattern before Christmas! J/K! I probably should have seen that coming though, with how freaking cute they are and super easy and fast too!

And just for fun, a couple of pictures I've recently uploaded, all three of these were taken this past spring on my grandparents' property:

This is me! I just like this picture for the colors and my expression. One of the few pictures of myself that I like. I think I'm terribly un-photogenic.

This is Jeff, he and my dad and brother were out shooting clay pigeons and I like the composition of this shot.

I just really like the texture of this one. The creek was really high and moving, but crystal clear.

So, I guess that's all for today. Have a good weekend!

Twilight-Mania!!! Oh, and Other Stuff Too

Okay, so I resisted the cult for all this time, but I've officially been sucked in. Ha, that pun was completely unintentional, but I'm keeping it! My friend J has been harassing me to read the books for months and months, and I just kept saying, "No, I don't get this whole Twilight thing." And she would say, "Just read them and you'll get it!" So the trailer for "New Moon" starts in heavy rotation and my interest gets piqued. So I borrow the first 2 books. I fly through the first one in 3 days. Put off the second one until I know that I have time to finish it in a couple days, start in on Thursday night, finish it Sunday morning. Monday, I went over to her apartment to get the other 2 books and the Twilight movie. Watched it last night. Reluctantly, I have to admit, okay, I get it. Damnit. I get it. Man, I hate it when she's right.
Oh, and we're going to go see "New Moon" on Saturday-yay!

Now back to the regularly scheduled blog post, sorry for the silly Twilight interruption. :-)
Well, I'm still knitting Christmas gifts, and someday, I might actually take pictures! It's just hard when you've worked all day, it's dark when you get home, then you have to think about dinner and laundry and cleaning. By the time I'm done, it's usually 6:30-7 and I just want to plop down in the recliner, knit or read and talk to my husband. Then there's always stuff going on on the weekends. I'll get around to it one of these days. Probably.

Oh! I wanted to mention that we got our ipods fixed! This is a big deal because a.)we love our ipods and b.)one has been broken for over a year, and the other one for about 6 months. We are super excited to get them back in working order. I found a site online: Repair Guys that you can send them your ipod for a free diagnostic (you just pay the shipping to them), they tell you what's wrong with it and how much it will cost to fix it. If you agree to the repair, they fix it, send you a PayPal invoice, and send it back to you. It was so easy! It cost like 7 bucks to ship (that was with $200 insurance), and $140 for a new LCD screen, hard drive and battery for one and a battery for the other. And they did all of the labor, and shipped it back. I sent them out and got them back in less than 2 weeks! So I HIGHLY recommend their services if you need an ipod fixed. K, that's my consumer report for the week!

I Need Finishitis

So, I'm a good starter of projects, but not such a great finisher. This goes for almost everything, not just knitting. I don't know why I'm so bad at it. I've got dozens of craft projects that I have various bits done, but they just languish for extended periods of time, sometimes they never get done. I've been a terrible procrastinator, pretty much my entire life, and I've always gotten myself in trouble because of it. I've just never gotten any better. I just don't have a whole lot of motivation or drive, even if it is something I love. It's always both surprising and rewarding for me when I actually do finish something, like my scuba instructor certification. I just hope I follow through on teaching, I spent a lot of money on it!! I mean, that's of course not my only motivation, I have such a strong passion for diving, there's almost nothing else in the world that I love more than diving. And I know that I will be a good instructor because of that. It's just follow through that I seem to lack. I always have ideas, but rarely do I do anything with them, or I don't finish what I start. Somehow, I did manage to finish college, with a degree in fine art, but I don't use my degree. I mean, knitting counts towards using my artistic abilities, but, I don't paint, or draw anymore, and I get to museums and galleries increasingly rarely. It makes me sad sometimes. Before diving, art was my main passion. I still love it, but I've fallen into complacency and I'm inherently lazy, and lack in my follow through. I've got a good paying job, and my company provides good health insurance for both my husband and I, so, in this economic environment, it's hard to give that up. Especially since Jeff is self-employed and insurance is either impossible to get or prohibitively expensive. Hmm, such is life.
Anyway, sorry for such a morose entry. It started out teasingly that I have a ton of knitting WIPs, and went to a psychoanalysis on myself. Eh, it happens.

Cranky

• I hate when my pant legs get wet. Today is worse though, I have wool pants on, and now I smell like a wet sheep. Sweet.
• Why am I hungry again!? I ate a butt-load of protein for lunch, at 1:45, its only 3:15!!
• I don't deal with being hungry very well, I get cranky.
• Work is also ticking me off. Why can't people just respond to emails the first time? No, it apparently takes 3 to get anything accomplished.
• No, I didn't work out last night, and I folded like wet cardboard and got freaking Wendy's for dinner on the way home. I couldn't resist the call of the Bacon Deluxe, I'm weak.
• That's it, I'm going for chocolate.
• Mmmm, all better.
• I'm totally working out tonight though!
• Everything's better with bullet points, dontcha think?

Let's try this again...

So, I've been completely absent from blogging for quite a while, I've written dozens of posts in my head over the past several months, just never actually got online and posted. I'd like to try to post at least a couple times a week, and with at least some relevant content, either working out, knitting/crafting, dogs or diving must be discussed in each post. We'll have to see if I can do it! So, let's play catch up:

• Working out: I was running, and was building my strength and endurance. I was running 3-4 times a week for about 4 weeks, then I tore my quad. Couldn't run for 2 weeks, so I got lazy, and hadn't worked out until last night. Had a little bit of a headache, and it was raining, so I did one of the more strenuous yoga workouts, and I can definitely feel it in my muscles today, so that's a good thing! Plan to either run or do the Jillian Michaels DVD tonight depending on the weather.


• Knitting/crafting: We're now into the Christmas crafting season, so I have a butt-load of projects all going on at once, but no pics! I'm working on mittens for a friend, 3 (or more) pairs of felted slippers for family. Not to mention the couple of things that are languishing on the needles for myself. On the positive side, I've finished several projects; 2 Clapotis', one for me and one for my mother-in-law, my Monkey socks, well, I think that's it... Also on the crafting front, I want to make homemade scented bath salts for family and maybe sew a couple of bags too. We'll see how well I do! (FYI, all the knitted project info is on my Ravelry project page )


• Dogs: Well, we're now a one dog household. We said goodbye to the old man Dexter on October 30th, 2009. His quality of life was steadily declining, he was really starting to struggle to catch his breath, and we made the decision that it was time. We will always miss him, and it is certainly quieter around the house without him. Murphy has done well adapting, she's more spoiled than ever (thanks to the husband!) and we can now get a puppy fix at Jeff's mom and stepdad's house. They got a 13 week old chocolate labradoodle about 3 weeks ago, and she is super cute! She loves Murphy so much, but Murphy is not so sure about this crazy little thing that keeps stealing her toys! It's pretty funny to watch, especially since it wasn't so long ago that Murphy was that crazy little toy-stealer!


• And Diving!: I am officially a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor!! I took my Instructor Development Course in August and September, and passed my Instructor Exam October 18th. It was stressful, but an awesome accomplishment and I am just thrilled! Of course, there's not much teaching to be done in the winter, but I have several people lined up for spring when the water starts warming up, so I'm very excited! Also, we have booked a big trip coming up soon in January. We're going to Indonesia to dive! I'm pretty excited about that too if you can't tell!! We leave January 10, will be spending a day and a half in Singapore on the way there, and then onto Manado, North Sulawesi for 7 days of diving around Bunaken island. Then we head to the East side of the island to dive Lembeh Strait for 5 more days! It should be absolutely amazing! We'll be gone 17 days, which is crazy, but we are so excited! We are waist deep in the preparations, everything is booked but there's just so much to plan for. We went to the Travel Medicine Clinic at OSU to get vaccinations and prescriptions and info for going to the other side of the world, so we're getting there, but there's still so much to buy and pack.

Well that's a good catch up, be back soon!