1. Where were you born? What do you know about your own birth? (time, circumstance, etc...)
I was born Jan 8, 1971 in Flint, MI sometime in the early morning. I was a twin and 2 months premature. Carrie died six weeks later of SIDS. My grandmother recently told me she thought it was me at first, but I guess they matched up the foot prints and it wasn't me.
2. Do you have a baby picture you can put onto your weblog? If not, tell us what you looked like as a baby.
That would require digging deep into our storage room, something I'm not prepared to face.
I was just over 3 lbs when born. As a toddler, I had white blond curly hair. Sometime between the age 7 and 10 my eyes changed from blue/gray to green.
3. What kind of a baby or toddler were you according to the people who were around when you were young?
No idea. Somehow, my dad got custody of me (I'm sure it was unusual in the early 70s for the father to get custody). I think I was just over a year old then and I didn't meet my mom until I was 9 and I didn't live with my dad from age 6. When I was 10 I moved in with my mother. So, no idea really.
4. Know any cute baby-related quotes or anecdotes?
The people I lived with for awhile owned a restaurant in Cincinnati, Mecklenburg Gardens, closed for at least 15 years...oh wait. It reopened as Mecklenburgs in 1996. If you're interested, the history section says something about the 1974 to 1982 period when Scott (my legal guardian for 3 years, starting when I was seven and ending when I was ten) owned the restaurant. Anyways, my dad has always been friends with them and their baker told me that when I was 3 or 4 she was making chocolate batter of some sort and told me I could lick the bowl...a huge commercial mixing bowl, probably taller than me. I somehow managed to get the entire thing over my head and was licking the bowl from the inside. Still cracks me up.
I brewed for the first time since before Christmas yesterday. I made an ESB (Extra Special Bitter). Mmmm, one of my favorites. So many people asked me if I had any beer ready this last weekend, I think I kind of felt guilty for slacking off on the brewing. There was a time when I brewed every two weeks, like clockwork. I'm planning on brewing again on Sunday, but my sis's bridal shower/bachlorette party is Saturday and I'm sure we have an open house to go to on Sunday, so we'll see.
I start my new job next Monday. This means we can go back to the bank and start the ball rolling again on building our house again. We were all set to build last fall and just had to close on the mortgage when I started getting the feeling that my old company wouldn't be around much longer. So we called off the loan and three weeks later I was out of a job. But now we'll be able to do it!
I know! It's been four days since I've updated this. A long time for me. We had a nice holiday weekend. Saturday night we went to a friends house for a party. We stayed the night so I wouldn't have to be a designated driver. I brought my sock with me so I would have something to do when I got up earlier than everyone else...like I always do. We stayed for breakfast and I got nice compliments on the sock.
We hit a ton of garage sales. I got some knitting and crochet afghan books, a book by Tom Robbins, A Clockwork Orange, a french press and milk frother (I've wanted these forever, but never felt like spending the cash on them), a skein of very fine chocolate brown alpaca, 2 skeins of off white cotton/silk boucle (sp?) yarn and 2 skeins each of blue and white cotton acrylic boucle all for $7.25. Score!
One of our cats, Ivan, ran away last week. He was missing for four days and then just showed up one night. We got him when he showed up at our door step in November, so we thought he might have went back to his original home. But he came back! Yay! Today I'm taking him in to get fixed and get all his vaccinations. He's pissed at me because I have him locked in the bedroom because he can't have any food before the surgery.
I started reading the Lord of the Rings when school let out for the semester. I finished The Hobbit yesterday and started on Fellowship of the Ring before I went to bed. I just love these books and it's been at least 15 years since I read them last.
Yesterday DH worked on the craft room he's building in the pole barn and then made me the most awsome dinner. We had baby portabellas stuffed with garlic, cheese and bacon, grilled spicy citrus shrimp, and steak wrapped in bacon. OMG! I was so stuffed. DH is the best cook. Good thing too or else we'd be eating frozen dinners and Burger King all the time.
According to American Homebody summer has begun when the trillium have turned pink. I guess we have a while to go. It has been nice the last few days, though. And it hasn't snowed since Sunday.
Not much going on. A very quiet week. I'm making good progress on my sock and sweater.
I was doing a little math in my head and I think I must have gotten the Socka yarn for like $1 a skein. I spent about $20 and got 9 skeins of Socka, a set of size 2 bamboo DPNs for $6.50 and a pattern book. Assuming the pattern book was $3, that means the yarn had to be $1 each. Now that's an even better bargin! I wasn't paying much attention when I paid for my purchases I guess.
So, here is the sock I started with the yarn. The colors came out kind of funny in the picture, but it's off white and a blue that's kind of like slightly faded denim.
The Buffy season finale rocked. I won't say anything in case you haven't seen it yet.
Just got back from my LYS and found a bunch of Socka solid colored yarn in the bargin bin, so I got it for 1/2 off! Guess I'll finally start on a pair of socks.
I accepted the job I was offered last week, so I'll finally be working full time again.
X-Files season finale...I liked it. It was a nice recap of the last 9 years. I used to watch religously until the last few years when HBO's Sunday night line up caught my attention.
We had a busy weekend. Saturday we went to a martial arts tournament that a friend was competing in. I saw a girl I went to high school with, which was kind of weird. We chatted for a while, but she left early. We went out with friends afterwards and didn't get home until midnight.
Sunday DH and made the rounds to fix some computers for friends and planned to see either Star Wars or Spiderman afterwards depending on what time we got to the theater. Well, we were late for Spidermand, so we saw Star Wars. I didn't really enjoy it that much. I thought Anikan was a whiney, disrespectful little brat that needed to be turned over Obi Wan's knee. What on earth does Amidala see in him? I wish we had seen Spider Man instead.
I knit a few rows on my sweater, maybe getting 3 1/2" - 4" done. I went to my out-of-town YS (close to work, just a couple of minutes walk) today and picked up some size one DPNs and the new Interweave. Fun reading tonight!
Did you know a salt scrub can cut down on the amount of leg shaving you have to do? It exfoliates the dead layer of skin so you get a closer shave. You can spend a ton of money on a salt scrub, but they're dead easy to make. I've seen these at Bath and Body works for $15 and I think the Body Shop has a really expensive one as well.
I mix equal parts of cheap olive oil and kosher salt and put in a squeeze bottle with a large hole (bought at Wal-Mart for under a dollar in trial size & traveling bottle section). I have lots of essential oils on hand so it's easy for me to scent, but it's not neccessary to add scent to get the benifits. It just makes you smell nice. I'm currently using lavender.
You can get fancy and use more exotic oils or dead sea salt, but I think the cheap way works just as well. I've seen recipes that call for adding liquid soap, but I don't like those because the salt seems to disolve and it's not as scrubby or easy to spread around.
Edited to add: CAUTION: This will make your tub slippery. I wash mine right after using a salt scrub. Thanks for pointing that out Shetha.
Just so y'all don't think having a small farm is all roses...
This freezing weather is causing us no end of trouble. Chicks need to be kept at about 95 degrees for the first week and we're having a bitch of a time doing it. DH put all the chickens in together and rearranged the heat lamps and it still seems a little cool. We brought home a radiant heater and that didn't kick out enough to raise the temp in the barn, but it did drain some power from the lamps, so we unplugged it and DH built a tower around the chick out of hay bales in an attempt to provide some insulation. That seems to be keeping the heat in a little better. And chicks a very skittish. As soon as I reach in to grab their waterers or add some food they all cram into a corner, a phenomenon known as "piling". They can smother each other that way, so I'm always trying to stir them up so they get out of the corner. We check on them like 4 times a day to make sure they're doing OK.
But on the other hand, I love doing it. We've only had animals for about a year and we learn new stuff all the time. There is great satisfaction in knowing you raised a healthy animal in a humane way.
I can't believe it's snowing! Like real snow, not just a few flurries. Blech!
Obviously, it's not very spring like, but this time of year means morel mushrooms. We haven't found nearly as many this year as last, but every one is to be savored. These things are delicious.
On the knitting front, I think I've knit and ripped out the ribbing for the bottom front of the sweater like four times. I keep screwing up and noticing a mistake. I think I finally have it right.
I went and got the chicks today. Wow that's a lot of chickens. They're just too cute for the first week.
I've updated the farm page with more pics of chicks.
Whew, my back hurts. I just got mostly done with cleaning a bunch of old chicken feeders and waters. Our 200 chickens arive tomorrow. I don't know what we're thinking. Last year we had 25 chickens. Somehow, I just don't think it's gonna be the same.
And now I'm getting cleaned up to go see what the company I interviewed with last week has to offer.
Here's what I washed:
And a lovely picture of Sasha Kitty commandeering the linen closet.
Look! Krista likes Bells Beer. Bell's is why I started brewing in the first place. Man, that stuff is good.
I'm making lotion bars today. See how it's done here.
I've updated my knitting and soap pages as well.
I've got the back of my sweater done. Yay. I think it turned out pretty good, but I'm wondering if it may be a little to big. But I'm still completely proud of it because it actually looks like a shirt back. I was thinking at some point yesterday that Wow, I hadn't dropped a single stitch. Of course, just a couple of rows later I did and didn't notice until 2 rows later. But I figured out how to fix it with a crochet hook. Not hard at all! I don't know if I did it right, but I looped the stitch into the row above and ended up with the row above as the stitch and then did the same on the next row. Looks right anyways.
New feature on crafty girl! I put up a farm page
It wasn't really a craft show. This lady does potted plants and arrangements for weddings and such always has the open house type thing on Mother's Day weekend. There were crafts for the kids and they could get their picture taken with the llamas (llama are very cool!). A few other ladies were selling stuff besides me and my soap. I ended up grossing $137 and I swapped $20 worth of stuff for a rosemary plant and a hanging flower basket for my MIL. Not bad!
I'm almost done with the back of my sweater. The lady that hosted the event is the daughter of my LYS owner, so the LYS owner was there and looked at my sweater and said I was doing it right. I was worried about the one side, but the decrease on the end of the row is pretty much like an SSK except with an extra stitch decrease and I thought SSKs looked weird too.
Take the What High School
Stereotype Are You? quiz, by Angel.
Got a few more rows done on the sweater. The decreases look great on starting side, but kind of weird at the end of the row.
The interview went well. It was more like a family reunion than an interview, though. Well, maybe not a family reunion, but nice anyways. When I got home my power was out because of the ridiculous winds we're having up here in Michigan.
It took me a few tries, but I figured out how to do the armhole decreases on my sweater, so I got about 6 rows done last night.
When I went to that seam stitching class a couple of weeks ago, the owner said her daughter was having some sort of mother's day "family day" thing that has flowers, herbs and other stuff for sale and there would be "lambs, llamas, and goats" and "live spinning demonstrations". Well, she wanted me to bring my soap to sell. Best thing? No cost to me. After the disastrous show I did last month, a free show sounds great. Anything I make goes right to my pocket as opposed to some large fee just to be there. So DH and I are going to go set up. Hopefully, lots of kids will be there and buy stuff for their mothers. I'm also looking forward to the spinning demonstrations. Fun, fun, fun!
I bought Bust last night. Let's see...there was an article showing how to knit and make leg warmers, a review of the Joy of knitting, an add for Carolyn's site in the back! Too cool. The article said the instructions came from a new series of knitting books to be released next year for the combat booted crowd. I don't have combat boots, but I do have well worn Docs. Does that count?
I have an interview today. A company I worked for about four years ago called me out of the blue. I worked for their engineering department for almost five years. Their IT department called me, but then it turns out that the job may require me to split my time between engineering (doing CNC programming) and IT (doing database programming). I'd really rather do only the IT work, but, hey...I'm working part time as a contractor and not making very much doing it. I went to training for the CNC machine about seven years ago, so I could be a backup for the guy that did it full time, but he never really let me do anything. So I'm not really qualified for it, but I'm sure with a refresher and some patience, I could do it. The IT department wants me all to themselves, but they don't think they can get approval for that. We'll see what happens...
I was feeling really out of sorts yesterday. I'm a little worried about money right now and DH pointed out that I was probably nervous about the interview. He's probably right. I don't like that I'm not fully qualified, i.e. I don't know the CNC thing backwards and forwards and that's really not what I want to do. The people I talked to said they thought it would be 80% IT, 20% CNC, but still, it's not exactly what I want to do. On the other hand, I'm not having much fun at my current job. We've been doing testing and I've had to do a lot of documentation and it just bores me to tears. I get so distracted while doing it and just don't work very hard. I don't like not putting in my full effort, but JEEZE, testing and documentation is SOUL SUCKING.
Well, I guess that's enough whining and wow this is long. I guess I'm making up for all the short posts this week. Since I haven't knit since Sunday, I leave you with a picture of a center pull ball I wound up using a toilet paper roll this past weekend.
All finals are taken and papers turned in. I'm pretty sure I did good on every thing and I have about a month off before the summer semester starts (Accounting, blech!) This will feel like a vacation! Home every night. Think of the knitting I can do.
I haven't gotten any further on my sweater. I've been kind of nervous about starting the armhole decreases and have been putting it off. I may work on it a little tonight.
DH made it home safely from Las Vegas. He said the plane ride was bumpier than normal, but all was well. Lucky me he's not a big gambler and only spent $50 in the casinos.
Well, the paper is 90% done & I'm studied up for 2 finals. I didn't do much else this weekend other than that. DH is on his way back from Los Vegas and there's been thunderstorms this morning. Plus I heard on the news that there were tornados in Texas. It kind of worries me.
I'm up to the arm holes on the back of my sweater. Wish me luck
Got another 20 or so rows done on the sweater. Been surfing around the ring this morning and found 5 new blogs...well, I guess only 4 because I knew about Marney's from Carolyn.
Katy Knits
lyricanon knitting musings
The World According to Marney
Multi-Crafter
Knitting Notes
Someone Keeps Moving My Chair
More later...
Hmm, it seems like I haven't posted much this week. I've been pretty busy with work and wrapping up the semester. I did update my knitting page with progress on the sweater. The link for that project now goes to a new page instead of just the picture. And a farm page is in the works.
I've started working out again this week. Yay me. I've worked out 3 times and hopefully I'll have the ambition to do it again tomorrow. I started again because I sit so much in my job, car, school, whatever and my back starts to hurt after awhile. So now I have a really good reason to workout besides just weight control. Speaking of weight control, I've lost 18 lbs since November when I started a diet. WooHoo!
And I have no idea why I am a coffin. I wonder if the quiz just randomly chooses you a graphic no matter what you enter.
I caught the knitting segment on CBS this morning. I couldn't tell if I saw any knitting bloggers though. The only picture I've seen of Carolyn was when she was sick and had her head turned away from the camera. I want to go buy Bust magazine now. I think I saw it Borders a couple of weeks ago. The segment was a nice piece, but obviously not too in depth. I wish there was a regular knitting segment on one of the crafty shows on HGTV or DIY.
I knit about 10 rows on my sweater last night while watching the episode of Buffy I taped, the first new one in weeks. Damn that evil Spike & Anya. And stupid Xander. Yay Willow & Tara. I can't knit much while watching because...well...I just have to watch.
I entered the CBS Morning show in my calender for May 2nd so I would remember to watch the NYC Stitch 'N Bitch segment.
Carolyn is making me jealous because she's watching Frontier House and I completely missed it. I hope it runs again.
Another cool knitting blog...House Arrest / Crafty Bitch. I wish I had been able to come up with a cool blog name. Instead I chose one of the many nicknames my DH has for me.
DH left for Las Vegas with his pals today. Have fun hon. I couldn't/didn't want to go because...well...it's really a guy thing and I need the study time. DH asked what I would do while he was gone and I started going on about the paper and tests and studying. He looked at me right in the eyes and said "You really are a geek". Now, now. Don't take offense or think he was being mean. I'm rather proud of my geekyness and love it when people notice. Besides, he's a network admin. He's just as geeky as I am. DH's cousin told us a couple of weeks ago that every hour you spend watching the Discovery Channel decreases your chances of getting laid by like 1%. DH shot back that that only applies if only one of the parties was a geek. If both people were geeks, watching the Discovery channel would increase their chances of getting laid.
Monday night I couldn't get to sleep for some reason. I finally got out of bed and made myself some chamomile tea and knit for a while and finally began to get drowsey. I ended up over-sleeping Tuesday until around 7 AM. I had made a list in my head of what I had to do on Tuesday and it included not surfing the internet after 8 AM. So no posting for me.
On the bright side, I got everything else I promised myself I would do done. This included:
Workout
Make Lotion
Do the dishes
Read most of one book for a paper I have to write.
The semester is wrapping up and I have to write a paper and study for 2 finals. Lucky me one instructor said the final was optional and if you took it you could throw out your lowest test score. Scince none of my test scores were low enough for me to worry about, I'm not taking that one. Yay!