crochet holidays

So between my birthday last week (I turned "too many" years old) and early Christmas gifts, it's been a very crochet holiday season. I'm pretty psyched with all the yarn and yarn gift certificates and similar crochet-erific gifts. And teas. I love yarn and teas, and apparently everyone who knows me knows it too, which is great. Oh, I also got two Oxfam Unwrapped gifts, irrigating a farmer's land and providing seeds to farmers. Pretty great! Anyways, back to the crochet.

I think the best crochet gift ever is the one that my friend Jaime gave me last week. It's a crochet hook with an LED light at the end, so I can crochet in the DARK! Why would I want to crochet in the dark? The main reason is road trips. We tend to drive long distances at night, and it kills me that I can't do anything useful in the car when it's dark. But now I can continue crocheting! Because I'm a crocheting maniac.

Pretty great stuff!

crochet: clutch

So I crochetted this clutch purse for a friend of mine, and then I asked Angela to help me with sewing on the zipper since i'm clueless with a sewing machine. Little did I know that this would require making a whole inner lining, and that the whole process would take something like 10 hours to figure out. Poor Angela! But she was a trooper, and I think the lining makes this so much better. But I will probably never make another clutch since they need a zipper and zippers are difficult. Alas.

crochet: rockhopper penguin

I just finished this for my cousin for Christmas, because he likes penguins. I'm not sure he turned out just like I expected, but I hope he likes it.

I think I'm going to try to write a pattern for the baby penguin. We'll see how that turns out.

lol of the day

Chris says I am a total loser, but today's Dinosaur Comic made me laugh a lot. So much that I had to share.

more crochet

So I finally uploaded some photos of some of my other crochet projects... one of them I did a couple months ago, is this elephant that I made without a pattern... I still don't really know how I did it, and I'm not sure I could replicate it.

I also crochetted and felted this purse for my sis-in-law Nicole for Christmas... we just exchanged gifts this past weekend, so now I can show you.

She picked out the colors and gave me an idea of what she wanted, because I'm kind of determined not to make things like purses for people unless I know what they want... I don't want to spend 50 hours making something that someone is going to throw in their closet and never look at again, ya know?

I also made a purse for my other sis-in-law Emily for her birthday, but I don't k now where the pictures are. I forgot to upload them to flickr I guess. Alas, later.

Oh yeah, if you're wondering, I still haven't finished my sweater. I kind of got tired of making the sleeves, so I'm taking some time off from it while I try to get a few Christmas gifts made. It won't be a very handmade Christmas though, I just don't have a lot of time. ::sigh:: But hopefully I'll get that sweater finished this winter while I can still enjoy it.

Christmas Ideas

If you're overwhelmed by the thought of asking for more "stuff" for Christmas (or people gifting you stuff even though you didn't ask for it), try asking for something a little different this year... like a sheep, or a crocodile, or an irrigation system. Not for you, of course, but for people for whom a gift like this could change lives. Oxfam Unwrapped has a ton of new gift ideas since the last time I talked about them, so you should check it out and see if there's anything in there that strikes your fancy.

I know that personally I'm afraid to give these gifts to most of the people I need to get gifts for, because I'm afraid of offending them by not giving them something tangible that can clutter up their homes. Maybe I'm totally misguided, but I keep hearing everyone's unenthusiastic "uh.. thanks... this is... just... great," when I think of giving these gifts. So if you would like something like this, make sure to tell people so that they know this is a gift you would enjoy. I'm all for it, in case you were wondering. :-)

laying low

Not a whole lot going on here; nothing to report. I have been really lazy during my long weekend. Really lazy. As in watching hours of YouTube videos and playing games on my PDA lazy. I planned on going out shopping on Friday, but then I went through all the Black Friday ads and realized that there were no better sales than normal sales. If there were some good sales on hard drives, maybe a cheap PC laptop to replace the one that is falling apart, maybe some good sales on jeans, I'd be out there fighting the crowds with the rest of the good Americans doing their patriotic duty to spend money the day after Thanksgiving. But when the "sales" are things like $30 jeans and buy one pair of shoes get one pair half off, or $600 laptops, it just wasn't worth it. That's the kind of sales these places have most of the time. So why would I fight the crowds on the busiest shopping day? No thankyou.

So to make up for barely leaving the house Friday, I planned to go run some errands on Saturday. But then Chris got some awful food poisoning from our Tin Drum Asia Cafe take-out, and woke me up in the middle of the night with it. So we had a rough night, and he spent most of Saturday recovering from that. I just thank God that I didn't get food poisoning, too. The last time we were both out of commission with food poisoning, and that was about the worst two days of my life. We were so helpless we had to call a friend to bring us gatorade and soup, and then we didn't know how either one of us would manage to open the door when she arrived, because we were afraid if we moved an inch we'd be sick again. Awful.

Anyways, I left the house long enough to get us some groceries and cleaning supplies, and that's about it. (I did go to Michael's to get some yarn that was still on sale for the rest of Saturday, but that was a lame sale too, so I only bought what I needed. Disappointing sales). Anyways. I've been lazy.

Chris works tomorrow so we won't go to church until the evening service, and now that I've spent 3 days being lazy I don't know if I'll be able to snap out of it and make myself leave the house when I have no plans and most the people I know are still out of town for the weekend. Maybe I'll just work on my sweater. I've finally got the body completed and I sewed snaps on it today... now it's just down to the sleeves, and I'll have made my first sweater. If I'm really diligent this week I might even finish it in the month of November, which was my goal for NaKniSweMo. Huzzah!

Chris says it's bedtime, so off I go.

chased down

So if you haven't read Chris's account of our drive up to see my grandma last week, you need to start by reading that now. Then come back here, because I'm not going to repeat it, just add to it.

You back? Okay. So being pulled over by the police 3 times in 4 hours is Nones The Cool. I was freaking out by the end. I knew we weren't speeding, but here were these cops insisting that we were speeding, and treating my husband like a criminal, patting him down and making him sit with him in the cruiser while they make sure he's not a wanted felon, all because they say we were driving 64 in a 55. (And let me take this time to say, for all you haters out there who have already decided that we must have been at fault if the police pulled us over, that Chris's cruise control was set to 60. Going 5mph over isn't illegal. And my boss, who is awesome, let us borrow his TomTom last night to check our speed, and it turns out our spedometer is off by 2mph, so we were probably really going 62mph. NOT 64 like these cops insisted. That's a big difference too, because you know a cop isn't going to pull someone over for 7 miles over, it's not even worth it.)

It was really ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that the Indiana police were looking for something in particular... either specifically looking for a car that met our description (which is what it felt like) or maybe they were specifically targeting a certain group who tends to drive cars that look like ours? I don't know. I'm also pretty sure the last guys who pulled us over and said we were going 64 knew they were lying but wanted a reason to pull us over. When I said to Officer #2 (while Chris was in the cruiser) "Our spedometer must be off, because I know he was only going 60," the guy just said "Or he was lying, and didn't want to admit he was going 64," like there was no way they were wrong, AND there was no way our spedometer was wrong. We MUST be lying, because Chris is bald with a long ghoti. It was also weird when they got the confirmation over the radio that Chris's ID came up with nothing, the way the cop assured me "Well, there's not a warrant out for his arrest, so you're fine." He told me like this was NEWS, that I would be happy to hear. I just stared at him like "Well no kidding. I knew that before you did." And THEN that's when they wanted to search our car. After all this other crap, they are still so determined to find something because apparently we fit some bullshit profile, so we MUST be carrying drugs. But, thank goodness for my sanity, after questioning us extensively they decided not to tear apart our car to look for the non-existent drugs.

After all this nonsense, the only thing I can say is that, okay fine, they're doing their job and if they were looking for a car like ours (which is the only reasonable explanation), then sure, pull us over every hour, but when you realize we're not the people you're looking for, just freaking LET US GO and don't search for reasons to give us expensive tickets or waste our time searching our car. Really. I would be much less pissed off if these guys were just honest about what they were doing. I can't afford a ton of meaningless tickets because some other jerk did something with a green acura integra or something. It's just unreal.

That's all I have to say about this ridiculousless.

Savannah Film Festival ... 2007

Chris and I are spending a couple days back in the SAV for the Savannah Film Festival. We're not showing a film here this year, but it's such a fun festival that when we were able to score some passes, we decided we had to go. (Our friend at Short End Magazine has Chris taking photos for her, so he has a media pass. And my boss's boyfriend works for SCAD now, so he managed to get a pass for me, cuz he's awesome). And Angela has an apartment here for a couple more days, so we're crashing on her floor just a block from The Bean. We've got some other friends in town for the festival, one of whom is a producer for Honeydripper, which is showing Monday (and its director, John Sayles is being honored with a lifetime achievement award). So it should all be good times, for the couple of days that we're here. Chris will spend the days photographing and watching films, and I'll spend the days working on my computer at the Bean. Then in the evenings we'll enjoy the films and the after parties. Fun Fun!

So anyways, the funny things for my weekend are how my brain has apparently predicted too many of the events of the weekend before they happened. This isn't something that usually happens to me, so I'm wondering if something is "up" for the weekend that I should keep my eyes out for. For instance, last year I told Chris that I expected Michael Douglass to be at SFF, which he was not, of course. But he WAS here this year, and was honored last night. So I was just a year off in my prediction. That's pretty random in itself, but I also had a dream a couple weeks ago where I was in Savannah right before Angela was supposed to move out (did I mention she's moving out in the middle of the week? When I had this dream not only did we not know when she was leaving, but I also had no intention of coming down for the festival). Anyways, we were staying at her house, and it was pretty empty because it was falling apart and people were moving things out, and some guy took the door handle off the door and we were pretty ticked off about it because that meant that anyone could get into the house. Some guy was also dismantling the roof and it was about to rain. I was telling Angela that she NEEDED to leave, her apartment was being taken apart, it was obviously time to go, but she was putting it off and saying she needed to stay a few more days. I thought it was all a big metaphor for the fact that Angela is afraid to leave what she knows even if what she knows is falling apart. And while sure, I'm sure a lot of it was a metaphor, but here I am, and her apartment is basically empty except for the carload of stuff she's taking with her, and this morning a woman at Home Depot ruined her only key into her apartment while trying to make a dupe, so she had to call a locksmith who had to take the handle off the door in order to make her a new key. Pretty strange! Angela told me that if a tree falls through her roof she's going to totally blame me (in my dream there was also part of a tree int he apartment, so I am guessing that's why they were dismantling the roof). Crazy stuff. So I'm trying to stay on guard in case anything else happens that seems eerily familiar.

But for now I'm gonna try and be productive and hope my computer doesn't overheat (it's been doing that a lot lately. It's about time for a visit to the apple store for a tune-up).

life ...

I keep meaning to take the time to post about a bunch of stuff... I've forgotten most of what I actually planned to post about... I've got some photos of some crochet stuff I've made, and my parents came to visit recently, and... oh, who knows what else. But I've been really busy with lots and lots of work and so I've felt guilty even thinking about taking 20 minutes to post a blog so I just haven't been. But now I'm at a coffee shop in Savannah and I already spent two hours chatting with old friends when I was supposed to be working, so what's another 20 minutes? That's what I figure.

Anyways, Atlanta is good, work is good, but I'm too busy. I don't get to rest enough, and when I do rest because I'm exhausted I feel guilty because I have work to do. It's because i have a full time job and a part-time job and so those come first, but then I also have freelance work. So after all of those I don't have the time to work out and crochet and hang out with friends like normal people. Or if I do any of those things I, again, feel guilty. I keep thinking I'll get things under control and stop feeling so overworked but... yeah, that hasn't happened yet, so I don't know why I think it would start. Anyways.

I have actual stories but I'm going to post that in another blog post so it looks like i've actually been devoting time to this stuff.

walk to work

When I get off at the downtown MARTA station, I have a short walk through an above-ground covered walkway to get to my building. It's actually a pretty need walk... all these photos were taken from basically the same spot on the walkway, just turning in different directions.

fun crochet projects

These are the things I made this week. An iPod cozy (cuz my old case broke), and an amigurami bird. I made them both up from scratch... no patterns, so I'm pretty proud of them.

My bird needs a name, so I'm open to suggestions.

My iPod cozy isn't the prettiest thing ever, but it works.

I've got a few more photos of them up on my flickr site, some different angles of my bird and the back of my iPod cozy. Fun times.

Bomb Art, or Stupidest MIT Student Ever?

Wow, this article is pretty bizarre: Woman at Logan claims fake bomb is art, police say. I have to assume that this girl expected to be arrested, wearing a fake bomb into an airport. But the fact of the matter is that she very well could have been shot and killed if she slipped up at all and any of the officers were afraid she was about to detonate her "bomb" ... they have no way of knowing if it's fake or not when it's strapped to her body. (I mean, they thought LED signs were bombs a few months ago).

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's silly when people get scared of Mario Blocks or LED signs and think that they're bombs, but because people are afraid of that anything out of the ordinary is a bomb, I also think it's really stupid to actually PRETEND to have a bomb. Especially in an airport. Even if you think you're being a risky conceptual artist (and this is coming from the girl who was indoctrinated for 4 years in an art program that is ALL ABOUT risky conceptual art). And that's my 2 cents on the matter.

soap

So I did some freelance work for a woman I used to work with in Vidalia, for her soap company. She makes it all from home, so I exchanged work for soap. Today the box of soap came! I'm pretty excited to have yummy soap for a while. My eczema on my hands totally cleared up when I started using only organic soap, so I'm happy to be stocked up for a while.

If anyone else wants some yummy soap, you can order it from her website. I think she's also got some at Wild Fibre in Savannah.

plants!

Okay, so I've been wanting to post some photos, and I finally took some the other day, so here are my new plants (and my old plants too)...

my new herbs...



My new Salvia plant. It has blue flowers that are supposed to attract hummingbirds, supposedly.


My indoor plants that make me smile.




Shannon gave me a tiny offshoot of this plant, and it's grown to this crazy thing in the past year. I also broke off 3 pieces and started those as new plants. I've never done that successfully with any other plants, but this is the most hearty plant ever. I have no idea what it's called, though.




This is one of the offshoots. I just planted this one and gave it to Noralil.

for Angela...

... and Nicole... and Sam... and Emily.

Did Steve tell you that, perchance? Steve.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Because it's my duty to tell you about important, oft-forgotten holidays, I must pass on what Jaime reminded me - today is
International Talk Like a Pirate Day! While it's debatable whether this is more or less exciting than Pi Day, where you get to eat pie and sound nerdy reciting the numbers in pi, on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, you get to say "Arrrrrrgh!" and, my favorite, "Aaaarh, I've seen it before!" ... and of course, it's the only day of the year you can get away with telling that awful joke... "Have you seen the new pirate movie? It's rated Aaaaaaarrrrrrh!" It's also a good excuse to wear an eye patch and drink rum. Or sing the songs on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney. (Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!)

So now you know.

success!

I don't really know the difference between yesterday and today (other than walking around the block to the Capitol building twice), but my pedometer tells me I walked 12,000 steps today. So that's exciting. Although really... I have no idea what the real difference is. Whatever. Hooray!

Hillary pointed me to mapmyrun.com where it tells me that my walk to the Marta station is only .92 miles. Now I'm playing around with setting up a profile there. Fun fun.

discouraging

So I'm getting pretty determined to get in shape, because I've been feeling pretty cruddy and I think that's partly to blame. "They" tell you that you need to walk 10,000 steps a day to stay in shape, and "they" usually also say that it isn't hard if you just walk around a little more than usual... take the stairs instead of the elevator, etc. Since the weather isn't so oppressively hot and muggy anymore, I decided to start by walking to and from the MARTA station... (which Google tells me is 1.1 miles one way) this is on top of the quarter mile one way I already walk from MARTA to my office building, AND taking the stairs everywhere... but that's not all! After dinner I walked a quarter mile up to our apartment's gym, ran 2 miles on the elliptical machine (I love elliptical machines), and walked the quarter mile back. By my math this is 5 miles of walking not counting random everyday walking that people who are inactive do. And what do I have to show for it? I'm a couple freakin' hundred steps short of that "easy" 10,000 steps, according to my trusty pedometer. My trusty pedometer also tells me that I only walked 4.6 miles, but by my math and according to my Google maps, that should be more like 5.2 miles. But that just means my pedometer isn't calibrated properly to the length of my steps.

Anyways, all this rambling is to say that I feel like I did a good deal of integrating exercise into my daily routine as well as "going the extra mile (or two)" at the gym, and it's frustrating that all of that doesn't reach that 10,000 step suggested daily exercise. Blah. I guess I need to ignore the stupid pedometer and come up with different goals. Or something.

Recent Projects

Wow, I really haven't been posting much lately. Chris has been doing a great job of keeping y'all updated on our movie watching, but I've just been living life and not sharing it, I guess. Anyways, work is fine but I'm still adjusting to a normal 9-5 job... my body seems to get worn out REALLY easily, and I feel like I just can't keep up recently. I've been trying to get enough sleep and eat well, but it's just really helping. So in an attempt to see if my diet can really affect how I feel, I'm trying something new. I have been reading up on how to make kombucha tea online, and I found a guy on craigslist who sent me a mother culture to get started, and I'm trying to make my own kombucha, which I'm excited to see how it turns out.

I also got my plants in the house and they are making me happy, but I still really want more herbs. The other thing I've been doing to maintain my sanity is some crochet work. I've finished Emily's Christmas present, and I'm almost done with Nicole's, too. But since they're Christmas presents, I'm going to have to wait a WHILE before I can post photos. I'm trying to figure out what my next project should be... do I want to make myself another purse, or do I want to be REALLY ambitious and try to crochet a sweater from a pattern I got online? I'm scared of the sweater idea, but it WILL be getting cold in a few months and I know if I was successful, I'd be pretty thrilled. November is the second annual "National Knit a Sweater Month" (NaKniSweMo) so I was thinking maybe that would inspire me to crochet a sweater in the month of November. Hmmm....

Anyways, this weekend I have a ton of work to do, and I don't know what else to share. Oh yeah, we have a ton of PEZ dispensers in our house now. And I love my apartment. And one of these days we'll find our digital camera and I'll take pictures of all this, but right now it's lost, and I don't know how to operate Chris's fancy camera. Alas.

Sadness: Bear Grylls is a big phony

So a while back I was talking about some of the gross things that Bear Grylls does on Man vs Wild. And then Chris watched it and decided that Bear was his hero. But then he sent me an article online about how he's really a big phony, and why they tell us he does isn't actually what he does. Like he doesn't sleep in tents all night, he films with a big crew and then goes and stays in fancy hotels and stuff. And that really sucks. So he is no longer cool at all. I figure they must have known that at some point we would figure out that he was a big faker, so I don't understand how they think it's worth it to try... cuz now everyone will just hate him. Anyways, here's a sad video about what a big faker he is. Just had to set the record straight.

Blog to Email

You will notice a new option to your left where you can input your email address, and have new posts send to your email inbox. This is because Emily asked for it, not because I really think you all want to be notified immediately every time I feel like posting something. Although if you DO want to be notified immediately every time I have something to say, putting your email address in the box and hitting Subscribe would be the thing to do.

It's important to know that you have to subscribe to my posts & Chris's posts separately. So if you wanna know what we BOTH think, you have to put your email address in here AND on Chris's blog page.

Oh yeah, I'll eventually post photos of our awesome new apartment... but we need to get it just a little cleaner first. I'm sure Chris will eventually get some awesome pictures of it with his new camera.

It's Moving Day!

It's finally here! Today, Chris & I move into our new apartment, with the help of a bunch of awesome friends who will be braving the 100 degree heat with us to help us get all of our stuff in our apartment. (We will be bribing them with food and beer, but come on, is that really enticing enough to move things in 100 degree heat? We've just been blessed with awesome friends).

Radio Lab

Have I told you yet how addicted I am to Radio Lab podcasts? I might just love it more than This American Life, for starters. This show is FANTASTIC. But they're limited run, so there's only 15 of them so far over three years, and, um, I've already listed to half of them. So before long I'll be going through withdrawal. I learn so many great and interested things. Tonight I made Chris listen to one on music, which he actually admitted to liking (Chris doesn't do talk radio) and then I proceeded to talk his ear off about the other two or so of them that I listened to today. Every episode I learn something fascinating that I have to tell Chris all about. He humors me. I think it's just great. Good times. Go listen. You will be happy you did.

In other news, we move into our apartment on SATURDAY! I cannot tell you how excited I am. Being in Atlanta Proper will make all things better and easier and waste much less gas. And it will be nice to have all my clothes again. And my bed. Oh, two months without my bed has taken such a toll on my body... I ache in ways I haven't ached since... since before we bought our fantastic bed. Blech.

Other things I can rave about Atlanta... West Egg cafe's black bean cakes, R. Thomas's quinoa bowls, and the pastor at Trinity Vineyard. Complaints - it's super muggy hot (but come on, I'm from Florida, it's not like it's WORSE but it still sucks a lot), and a smog alert level of Unhealthy today in metro ATL. Boo for toxic air.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah, Radio Lab rocks. Listen to any episode and then tell me how right I was. Go ahead, I'm waiting.

drive-by Christians

I wish more Christians would realize that handing out tracts is not ministering to anyone's heart or actually converting people. Where exactly in the bible does Jesus command us to make disciples by handing people little pamphlets that break down God's love into tiny impersonal bullet points?

This blog post comes from this comic which, along with her blog post below, is what I would assume to be a pretty fair assessment of how a lot of people feel when they get one of these... if they actually read it, that is. The thing that really bugs me is that this is obviously someone this girl WORKS with who has decided the best way to minister to her is by sneaking pamphlets on her desk. I mean... really?

atlanta update

So Atlanta life is going well. We're still not settled yet, of course. Won't be til mid-August. So I still don't think it's sunk in that we LIVE here. It feels like an extended vacation in some ways. Weird. But obviously it's not a vacation because you don't go to work every day on vacation. But even that has been fun, so no complaints. So here's the extended update of what we've been up to:

Work: I've got a "real" job for the State of Georgia, doing web design and development. Our main portal is georgia.gov, but we do lots of stuff. I work in downtown ATL, right by the capitol building. In a sea of cubicles. Right now I drive 30 minutes to a MARTA rail station, then ride MARTA for about 30 minutes, then walk for another 10 minutes to get to work. When we move, I'll walk 20 minutes to MARTA instead of driving. I'm strangely happy with any length of commute as long as it's not in a car though. So it's all good. And the governor is a big fan of teleworking (working from home) to cut down on commutes, so I get to be productive in my own home once a week or so, which is even better. I'm also still teaching online for Southeastern Tech, and I've got a few freelance projects happening, so I'm keeping busy.

Play:: so I think we actually have more friends in Atlanta than we did in Savannah, which is weird. Or at least we know more people who actually make time to hang out here. Some are friends from Gainesville (we've been psyched to get to hang out with Brooke a lot, and we finally caught up with Melody yesterday, and one of these days I'll get to hang out with my friend Beth who was in art school with me), and then we've also got some friends that we made at the Atlanta Film Festival that we've gotten to hang out with as well. They are also awesome. And on top of just normal hanging out type stuff, there's all sorts of fun random things that happen in Atlanta, such as special Harry Potter screenings (yes, I saw it before you), a Soap Box Derby, and The Decemberists playing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (this Friday night). I think we might heart Atlanta.

And it should only get better after Sam & Nicole get back, and we move to our apartment, and it no longer takes 45 minutes to get to Atlanta. I'm really super excited about our apartment. And settling in. And then it won't be long before everyone starts coming to visit us... Emily has already claimed the first weekend of September, and my parents will probably come up before that. And lots of other people keep promising to come see us too. So I think one of our first orders of business will be to get our guest room in order. I love having guests! I figure we'll finally make it to the aquarium sometime when people come to visit.

Okay, that's the update. I think that's everything. Now I gotta get working on some of those work things I mentioned.

more crochet

So I've gotten a couple more little crochet animals made, and I think I'm getting better at it... but I'm still not thrilled about em yet. But I'm getting there. My second project was this bunny. He doesn't have a name yet, so I'm taking suggestions. I've also made something else I can't post photos of yet cuz I'm giving them away and I don't want to ruin the surprise. So this is all you get for now. I have a whole bunch more patterns now, and I think it won't be TOO much longer before I'm ready to try things on my own instead of going off a pattern. We'll see.

Name my bunny!

Give the Gift of Sheep... or Cows... or...

I'm very excited about Oxfam America Unwrapped, where you can buy gifts of sustainability for third world villages. It's pretty freaking awesome, and right now I'm trying to figure out which one(s) to ask for for Christmas. I can't just get these gifts for others because I risk pissing them off that I got someone else something cool for THEIR gift, so I just hafta ask for myself. Some options are to get someone a Sheep for $45, or maybe Support an indigenous craftwoman for $90. Other gifts include buying a crocodile, a cow, or a camel, or irrigating a farmer's land, supporting a fair trade co-op... even building a coffee mill. Prices range from under $20 to over $5,000. Pretty freaking awesome. Interested? Start shopping now!

hardware

Yesterday I got a new piercing. It's something I wanted for about 5 years, but I was waiting for a good reason to do it... it needed to be a celebration of something big. And with everything the Lord has been doing in our lives lately... sending us to Atlanta, providing me with a great job (I start Monday!), and then giving us a fantastic apartment (move in August 11), I thought this would be a good time. And it helps that Atlanta has this really great piercing place that is really obsessive about the quality of their hardware, and proper piercing care so that it heals well. It's called Piercing Experience, and although their website is butt-ugly, that just means they're too busy being concerned with their piercing rules to worry about anything else. Although my ear still smarts a bit today, I'm pretty hopeful that the healing time on this cartilage piercing will be significantly shorter than on the last ones I got 5 years ago (which, by the way, took more than a year to heal). Anyways. I like it, and I especially like that it's pretty understated... I don't think it's too noticeable, especially since my hair half covers it up.

experimental Amigurumi

I found a free pattern online for an amigurumi Panda bear (scroll down for it), so I decided to give it a shot. I made it while at the PEZ Convention this weekend, so I didn't really have access to stuffing, so I used toilet paper... I don't know if that's to blame for how dumb he looks, or if I should blame his eyes (I also didn't go out and buy eyes to go on him, so I just made them out of yarn) or if I am just bad at this... nonetheless, I'm not too pleased with him. Chris named him Milton. I was gonna give him to Emily since she loves purple, but Milton is too ugly to give away.

Now I'm working on a rabbit to see if I have any better luck on my second try, with different (more forgiving) yarn. And eyes. Gotta get real eyes.

Team Skeene

I keep forgetting to point you all to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's new blog, Team Skeene. I know what you're all thinking. "But Kendra, you and Chris have been married for four years, and Sam and Nicole have only been married for a month. How is it that THEY get to call themselves Team Skeene?" Well, the simple answer is because they DO call themselves Team Skeene, and... we don't. So there. We have decided, however, that whenever the FOUR of us are together (which will be often since we will be living close now!) we are called Team Skeene Supreme. That's right, Chris and I are the Supreme part.

Photos

A couple months ago we went down to Orlando/Lakeland for a Mother's Day / Chris's Birthday / Cornerstone Florida weekend. Chris was borrowing a rockin' digital camera from a friend (for shooting the festival) and so the evening of his birthday party, he ran around taking pictures with it. A lot of them were really good (considering he was taking "snapshots") ... I love this photo of Emily (Chris's sister) and her dog Duncan... and I always hate the pictures he takes of me, but I actually like this one. So here ya go!

Waste of money?

So a couple of weeks ago, I paid to get a Spot Test, which was to test for food allergies. I know some of my food allergies, but I still get a rash sometimes when I've been good at avoiding the things I'm allergic to, so I was hoping to figure out what else I may have overlooked. I finally got the test back today, and was pretty disappointed with the results. According to this spot test, I'm not allergic to ANY foods, not even sulfites. Here's the thing. I KNOW I'm allergic to sulfites... how do I know this? Well, whenever I eat something with sulfites in it, my faces breaks out in a horrible itchy rash. When I avoid sulfites, no horrible itchy rash. So either they messed up my blood sample, or their test is bogus? I dunno... but I'm pretty disappointed.

sweet sleep

chris and i rewarded ourselves for our last few days of excessive busy-ness by sleeping for 12 hours. ahhh, i feel so refreshed! (although, admittedly, I would feel more refreshed if i wasn't allergic to peachtree city. my sinuses are killing me!)

farewell savannah!

we're outta savannah and into HOTlanta! the move went GREAT, we have very great friends. Angela was especially amazing, she basically single-handedly cleaned our entire apartment, and helped me out with packing and stuff, for two and a half days. I don't think we would've gotten it done without her.

So now we're at Sam & Nicole's place just south of Atlanta, our stuff is in a POD for the month, and starting Monday, Chris and I start figuring out what our lives are going to look like in the ATL.

We're tired.

packing, and... break from packing

So we've been hard at work packing up the apartment... we have a lot of stuff, so it's taking a LOT of time. I'm pretty exhausted. So I took a break from it the other night to do something equally important - customize my computer's desktop image and icons. Since I got a new hard drive, I had to re-customize. This is extremely important for my mental stability. So here's what I decided on this time:

I'm especially happy about my new hard drive icon. Hooray for R2!
I found all these at Pixel Girl Presents, in case you wanna check 'em out.

missing: 9 months of emails

Note: this blog post contains some whining and some computer-talk. If you don't care about that, please jump to the important part below.

First I want to start by saying that I DO back up my computer. Not nightly, not weekly, but about every 2 or 3 weeks I force myself to run a backup, which requires digging my backup drive out of the fireproof box, plugging it in, and letting it run overnight. I have software that checks for new and updated files, and copies those over to the portable hard drive. So when my hard drive went kaput, I was unhappy, but not panicked because I knew that I was only missing about 10 days of info, not my entire lifetime of info (plus I was hopeful that the repair company would be able to salvage some of my files). Well, I finally got my computer back yesterday, with a fresh new hard drive, and they told me they were NOT able to save anything from the old one. This sucks, but again, I have a backup. No problem.

So yesterday I started the task of plugging in the backup drive, and copying files back over to the new drive. Pretty much everything is intact, minus those 10 days of work that will take me a little while to figure out what's missing and what I lost. UNTIL I got to the part where I was trying to open my email. I used to have all my saved emails on webmail, but a couple months ago I finally ditched my crappy web host in favor of a better web host, and when I did that, I had to copy ALL my saved email to my computer. It took a long time. I had to re-organize everything in Entourage (Outlook for the Mac), and from then just started using Entourage exclusively for email (whereas I used to go back and forth between webmail and Entourage). Long story short, I ran into two problems. The first problem is that Entourage decided that it couldn't open its own database of emails from the backup. Why? I don't know, but apparently when Microsoft wrote this software, they didn't bother with making the email database robust enough to be easily backed up. But when I finally got Entourage to open a backup version of my email, it turns out that my backup software hadn't been updating up this particular file! It's been doing great with EVERYTHING ELSE, but my EMAIL database hasn't been backed up since September of 2006!!!!

For those of you who are already bored with this blog post, let me get to the point: If you have emailed me with anything of importance since September of last year, I don't have it. That means email addresses, business info, ANYTHING emailed to ANY account with ANY importance is no longer in my possession. If you are waiting for me to reply to an email, or handle something important, or anything, you will need to send it again, because it's gone. Even if you haven't sent me anything important, you may just want to shoot me an email to say hi so that I have your email address again, just in case. I don't want to post my email address online because I get enough spam as it is, but I'll write it out for ya... kendra ... at ... idreaminblue ... dot ... com.

Now I've got to finish updating my computer, and then figure out a new piece of software for backing up my data so this doesn't happen again. I also might switch to Mail instead of Entourage since Entourage keeps screwing me up. This is going to take a while. It sure doesn't help that we're MOVING in less than a WEEK and I don't really have time to take care of my computer.

thanks for the understanding.

Mizero

Mizero is the Kirwandan word for "Hope." The Mizero Foundation is a non-profit organization who is bringing hope to orphans from the Rwandan's genocide. They are organizing a tour for a group of orphans to perform traditional Rwandan music and dancing at churches around the United States this fall. They will be raising money to build a cultural arts center for the orphans in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Lord has been moving and growing this organization within the short time since its inception just a couple months ago, and He has been bringing some great people together to make this happen. But we still need a lot of help in a lot of different areas of the ministry. If this is something that the Lord is prompting you to look into, please visit their website at www.mizerochildren.org to learn more, and if you feel you may have resources (time, money, contacts, knowledge, or things we haven't even thought of) that the Lord could use in growing this foundation, please fill out the form on the Partner With Us page.

sleepless night

Well... I don't know the best way to "tell" this story. It probably won't be eloquent. I'm rather sleep-deprived. Last night, just as I was finally dozing off to sleep, around 12:30am, I hear what I thought was a gunshot outside our bedroom window. It freaked me out, but Chris wasn't sure it was actually a gunshot, plus we can't see out our bedroom windows anyways, so we just tried to go back to sleep. Then just as I was falling BACK to sleep, we heard a bunch of gunshots all at once (I think I counted ten) right outside. This time we were sure of what we heard, so Chris called the police, and was told that a call had already been made and police were on their way. The strange thing was that we didn't hear anyone talking outside (back behind our apartment is a seedy bar, and we usually hear people out there until all hours of the night, so you'd think if someone was shot outside, people would be making some noise). Chris said "probably someone shot into the air." Within a couple of minutes, there were cop cars EVERYWHERE, and the whole block by our apartment was blocked off. Chris managed to get enough of a glimpse out the window to see cops running around everywhere, see someone put into an ambulance, and then see a police officer inspecting the ground about 15 feet from our bedroom window. Of course at this time we really couldn't sleep, and we were half expecting a police officer to ring the doorbell to see if we knew anything.

After a while of trying to look out windows to see what was happening, we realized we really need to try and get some sleep. Chris had to be up at 5:30am to open the coffee shop, and I had a 90 minute drive and a 12 hour work day ahead of me the next morning. So, of course, it took us a long time to finally fall back to sleep, and I was just barely falling asleep AGAIN when we heard knocking, at 2:30am. We're used to people ringing the doorbell if they need to get us, because the door to our apartment is inside of another locked door, and if anyone knocks on that door, we can't hear it. So Chris opens our door to investigate the noise, and is surprised to see a cop standing there, asking if we heard anything. Chris told him what we knew (gunshot at 12:30, lotsa shots at 12:50, the end). And the officer left. So needless to say, we didn't exactly get any sleep.

This morning I did a google news search for the incident and found this article, which tells me that a man was murdered outside our apartment. Just a little scary. Needless to say, we're REALLY happy to be leaving ghetto downtown Savannah in under three weeks.

Computer in a Coma, and a Life Update

Yesterday my computer decided to quit working. I think the hard-drive died. It came as quite a shock. For those of you that don't know, basically everything I do requires that machine. I am a freelance designer, which requires the computer. I manage a business for our PEZ documentary, where all the records are kept on that machine. And I am a graphic design & web design teacher, and when I'm not at the school I need to check emails from students and grade assignments for the online class I teach. So I'm going through a bit of withdrawal today.

We still have Chris's computer to check emails and do a LITTLE bit of necessary work, but, well, Chris's computer sucks. It doesn't have all my software on it. And while I actually have a work laptop that I could, in theory, work on, that one started acting funny a week ago and I need to take it in to work to have the tech guys look at it, because right now I can only boot it up in safe mode. So I'm kind of being forced to do less on the computer and more in the real world for a while. It's probably a blessing in disguise, but right now I'm expecting to start displaying symptoms of withdrawal... like the shakes, or nausea.

What this DOES mean is that I have no excuse NOT to start packing up our home while I'm computer-less. Why would I start packing up my home, you ask? Well... we've officially decided to move to Atlanta. In three weeks. It's a really long story with lots of pieces to it, but the short version is that Chris and I really feel this is where the Lord is leading us, and so we have made the decision to step out in faith and follow, trusting that the Lord will put together the pieces in His timing. The middle of June is when my classes end for the quarter, so at that time we're going to move up the the Atlanta area and start looking for apartments, finalize jobs, etc. Chris's brother and our new sister-in-law have offered to let us stay in their apartment for a month while they're out of town, so we're taking them up on it. It's going to be a crazy ride, but we're looking forward to it all. We're just really ready to get out of Savannah, and we feel that now is the time. As things become more finalized, I'll post updates. For now I don't want to start talking about things we haven't confirmed. But that's what we know.

What, no GoLive? What a surprise...

A year or so ago, my husband and one of my best friends were both taking a web design class at SCAD. They were being forced to use Adobe GoLive in this class, although it is TERRIBLE web design software (and this is coming from an Adobe girl). I complained about it and mentioned they should be learning Dreamweaver. They said "Well, Adobe bought out Macromedia, so our teacher said that Dreamweaver will be discontinued, so we have to learn GoLive." I insisted that this was ridiculous, Dreamweaver is the industry standard, and there's no WAY Adobe would trash it. They insisted that their teacher is WAY smart (he has a degree from HARVARD, after all) and WAY cool, and of course since I'm not a Harvard grad, nor do I take pictures of deer antlers covered in icing, I must not know what I'm talking about. In their defense, the Kendra-bashing did not actually happen, but in my mind it may as well have, since they were so enamored with their teacher and his GoLive-loving ways. And don't even get me STARTED on how his OWN website is all images and in no way optimized for search engines to even FIND HIM. Some web teacher.

Well, ladies and gents, you know what's coming. The new Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium comes packaged with none other than Dreamweaver, NOT GoLive. GoLive has, in fact, been discontinued from the Creative Suite. Although this victory matters to no one but myself, I still take great pride in knowing What's Up. I am The Nerdiest.

ego

Sure, I graduated nearly 10 years ago, but it's still kinda cool that my high school (Fort Myers High School) was just ranked in the top 100 in the COUNTRY.

And what's with all the talk of Florida schools being among the worst? I was always surprised because I got a pretty stellar high school education, in Florida. But I guess as a state it's not so hot, but there are some good ones. 22 of the top 100 schools are in Florida, actually. (12 in Texas, 13 in N.Y, only 7 in California, 11 in Va, and after that is seems like no state has more than a handful).

new sister-in-law!

My brother-in-law Sam got married to an awesome girl named Nicole this past weekend, and Chris and I were blessed to be a part of it. It was a crazy-busy weekend, but worth every minute of it. Lots of time with family, making new friends, and celebrating. Good times were had by all.

Favorite Sesame Street Moments

I don't know how I got sidetracked watching old Sesame Street clips this morning, but here are my favorite clips in Sesame Street history.

This time-waster was brought to you by the letter K.

Don't Mess With Our Chocolate!

If there's one thing that really gets me mad, it's when corporations lobby the FDA to drop regulations on food products. I think the worst is when companies want the FDA to loosen standards on organics, but on a more universal topic that people other than me might care about, chocolate companies are trying to get the FDA to cut back their regulations on what's labeled chocolate. CHOCOLATE! They want the FDA to allow them to use vegetable fats instead of cocoa butter, and milk substitutes instead of milk, and still label it "chocolate" ... making the chocolate less tasty and less, well, chocolatey. I don't care of companies want to make fake chocolate to save money, but I don't want them to be able to call it chocolate. It just bugs me that the FDA really is in the business of serving businesses, at the expense of the consumers. Not that this is something new... just something we need to be increasingly aware of when it's becoming more clear that what we eat affects our health, and not just in the "eating fat makes you fat" kind of way.

back, but not for long

We got back from Atlanta late Sunday night. Had all day Monday to catch up on some stuff at home. Off to work Tues/Wed, and the cycle continues again. I finally pulled out my PDA and counted how many days I've actually been home in the past few months.
Here's the tally:

• March: 17 days outta 31


• April: 12 days outta 30


• May: (tentative) 12 days outta 31 (but that might decrease).

Luckily we have an awesome friend to check out mail and hang out in our house when we're gone, water our plants & keep our internet company. But MAN, that air mattress doesn't suit my neck so well.

Anyways, I'm still waiting for the rest of the pieces to be put together to figure out what we're doing with ourselves after June... When I know something I will share.

rock, rock

The Lord is still rocking our world, and we're still in Atlanta for the festival. Brooke and her hospitality has been a huge blessing. Friends calling out of the blue because the Lord put us on their hearts has been a strange an amazing product of the week, as well. I'll post more when there's actually something to post, instead of just lots of confused feelings and nervous tummies. Please pray.

The ATL, and please pray

Chris and I are in the ATL for about a week for the Atlanta Film Festival. We're staying with the always super Brooke Taylor, and going to see films and meet people. It's been good so far, and there are many days left.

In other news, Chris and I would appreciate your prayers as we try to see where the Lord is leading us right now. Much confusion has been ensuing as of late, and long story short, we're pretty confused and uncertain about a LOT of things. So we would appreciate your prayers for discernment and direction.

Why I shouldn't let Chris go out of town without me

So there's a trend that's been developing in my life, that goes "When Chris goes out of town, bad things happen to Kendra." The first time was when we were just dating, and Chris went to Alaska for 6 weeks. Otherwise known as The Hardest 6 Weeks Of My Life, some of the things that happened included a really bad stomach flu, the water pump in my car breaking, and my hot water heater in my apartment exploding (huge spark that woke me up, smell of burning rubber, water spraying all over the place... yeah, I'd call that exploding).

I was afraid to let him go far after all that, but I kind of had to get over it last year when Chris went up north on PEZ business for a week. The trend continued, though, because that's when a wheel was stolen off my car.

Finally, Chris went out of town for this past week. The first day I was home alone without him, I got a mild bout of food poisoning that put me out of commission for the day. I was hoping that was it for my "Bad Things Happen When Chris Is Gone," but on Saturday a flaky girl ran into the back of my car. Not a bad accident, but the back bumper is scratched up.

So now I'm thinking for sure I shouldn't let Chris take off without me again. Things are just easier to deal with when he's here (and less bad things happen).

um... ew.

I'm up way too late and watching Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel because that's all that's on (the guy will parachute into random places and then has to survive for a week, and get back to civilization or something... I don't usually pay really close attention to it)... and the guy is in the middle of the Moab desert and it's really hot, so he has this cloth wrapped around his head to cool him down, but it's not doing much good, because apparently it's really hot, and in fact it's so REALLY FRIGGIN HOT that he just took the cloth off his head, PEED ON IT, then wrapped it back around his face (covering all but his eyes, really). All I can think is that I can't imagine being SO MISERABLY HOT that it seems like a good idea to pee on a cloth and put it around my face to cool myself down some. (I mean, fresh pee isn't exactly chilly, either). Gross. Really, I'm just kind of praying that I never have a time in my life where it seems like a practical, useful idea to pee on a cloth and stick it on my head.

Hmm, now he just ate a raw bird eggs, then decided to cook the other one on a rock (he just broke it on the rock and it cooked, because remember, it's REALLY FRIGGIN HOT).

Okay, for all the gross and worst stuff all at once you can check out this page of videos, where the "Keeping Cool" video features that gem of a moment that sparked this blog.

My hubby isn't here to ramble all this to, and it's too late at night to call Angela, so you, dear Internet, are the only person I have to tell. I'm so glad we can talk like this, Internet. I'm so glad you listen to my randomness in the middle of the night. I hope we always stay friends.

Portland rocks!

What I didn't mention before is that Chris and I are beating around moving to Portland. The other options we were thinking about doing with the next couple years of our life all fell through, so now we figure we can go anywhere we find jobs, and we've been really interested in the PDX. Especially after visiting and getting a sense of the area, it seems like a reasonable possibility, provided we can find jobs there. So... there will be lots of prayer in the next couple months, and nothing is for certain, but that's what we're thinking.

So... some things we really loved about Portland... for one thing, people are nice. Friendly, helpful, polite, whatever... they were NICE. People working in stores, at restaurants, wherever. I found myself really surprised by that, and then I realized that I'm used to employees treating me like a nuisance they have to deal with so they can get back to doing nothing. I'm used to people mumbling at me so that I don't even understand what they're asking, or talking to their coworkers instead of helping me (except for the woman at World Market who is always super-excited about the sales, or the owner of Zunzi's who treats every customer like a rockstar). But I didn't experience that in Portland, which was pretty amazing.

Another great thing about Portlanders - they YEILD TO PEDESTRIANS! No kidding... if you're standing at a crosswalk, cards STOP for you. Rarely do they speed past, or slow down and wave at you to run across before they get there, they come to a complete stop. We even had cars stop for us at places that didn't even have a crosswalk. More than once a car would just stop, and we'd be confused about why they were stopping until they motioned to us to cross the street. We were SO CONFUSED. It was like being in a different COUNTRY or something. Pretty fantastic.

And of course there's all the yummy organic and vegetarian food options... all the organic local beers... all the flowers and happy plants, all the yarn stores and crazy hippie stores... so much FUN! And best of all, I didn't have pollen allergies while I was there, despite all the blooming stuff... but the second I got back to Savannah my eyes started watering.

AND along with being very bike-friendly and bus-friendly, Portland has cool things like car shares... which I think is just the greatest idea ever. Chris and I REALLY want to stop being so dependent on our vehicle for everything. For one thing, I would get a lot more exercise if I could bike or walk where I needed to go more often.

Granted, we didn't experience much of rainy Portland. It sprinkled a couple days we were there, but in general it was mild weather and clear skies, great for going to Japanese Gardens and the Columbia River Gorge. I'm not sure how I'd handle 3 months of rain and gray skies, but... at least it doesn't get super cold very often.

Well, this was more rambling than I expected, so I'll stop for now. Off to be productive again.

hosting switcheroo

In case the site disappears or changes briefly at any time, it's cuz I'm finally switching web hosts, trying to escape the hell that has been my current hosting situation. But HOPEFULLY everything will go smoothly.

Update: The transfer went as well as I could have possibly hoped for - yippee! Now I'm working on transfering some other sites, but I've got my site, Chris's, and this one all transferred painlessly, with minimal email downtime. Yippee!

high fives!

Today's Dinosaur Comic makes me think of one of my favorite peoples. You gotta hover over the image to get the alt text for the best part.

back from Portland!

Well, we're back in one piece, and gotta get back into normal life. I may write more rambling about fun in Portland later, but tonight I spent too much time uploading photos to my flickr account, so you can start there. I'm organizing things by tag, so you can see all things portland, or can break it up into more manageable bite-sized pieces, like the Columbia River Gorge, the Japanese Garden, or just general downtown stuff. We also took pictures of some we found around town, like some random public art, like toy horses tied to the side of the street, and the fuzzy poofs on some trees and powerline posts. There's some notable food items. Oh yeah, and flowers.

On an unrelated note, I've got a couple more crochet photos up of some newer projects. For the one or two of you who care.

It seems like some of my photos on flickr are losing their tags or disappearing, and I don't know how.

portland is awesome

so I thought I would be able to post some photos from some awesome places we went today, but we didn't bring the right cord for the camera. So... that will be a while. But I can link some things up and talk about how cool they are.

did I mention I love Portland? Lots of fun shops, places to eat and indy record stores and thrift shops and gardens and pretty trees (magnolias and dogwoods and red buds blooming all over!) And there's a Whole Foods market right in downtown... just lots of yumminess everywhere. I got a tasty organic microbrew at a pizza place (where the server was very excited about the prospect of fresh herbs on our pizza). Much coolness. It's beautiful here. Okay! On to the links!

Today we at at Hot Pot City, where you pick a soup broth flavor, and they bring it to you in a pot with a cooker under it, and then you get whatever meets and veggies and spices and noodles you want at the bar and dump 'em all in and watch it cook up. Pretty cool!

Then we went to the Japanese Garden, which is the most authentic outside of Japan. It was absolutely beautiful, and we took a whole bunch of photos, (which I guess I'll put on flickr when we get home).

Then we went to some shops, including a couple of cool yarn shops. I found some great stuff in Lint... I got a bunch of wool yarn... some to make a felted bag for me (since my first attempt turned out great), some to make Angela a felted bag with, and some that was on sale that I just had to get cuz it's awesome (usually $17 a skein, marked half off, so I got all 3), and I'll figure out what to make later. Let's just say I spent way too many $$ at Lint. But Chris told me I could get it as my anniversary present, so hooray (he got some used CDs at some indy record stores).

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Powell's Books is pretty darn awesome and huge.

We dunno what else we'll do with our next couple of days. We have two days where we only have film festival events in the evening, and then Sat/Sun will be all day, all night film festival stuff. So we have two daytimes to fill with random fun. I guess we've got to figure out what else we want to do. We do know that we want to go to Imago Dei Community Church on Sunday morning. I listen to their podcasts every week, and I really like the pastor. It's a pretty huge church, but I think it is worth checking out.

So that's what we know so far. And now I'm gonna go rest before we head out for some dinner.

not yet

sorry Limani, I haven't gotten around to posting photos of my favorite city yet. but it's pretty awesome. And today - NO RAIN! Off we go!

St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

Saturday was, of course, St. Patrick's Day. And Savannah has a pretty huge parade in the morning, then an even larger drunken party at night. We went to the former. The weather was nice, and the parade was hard to navigate through, but we walked through pretty much the whole parade route. Chris took lots of photos, so I put a few up on my flickr page. Check 'em out.

More Pi

First of all, I am saddened that Google doesn't have a cheesy logo modification for Pi Day (you know, like they do for New Year's and Chinese New Year and stuff)... But Dinosaur Comics made up for it by talking about Pi Day today... and finally, I'm quite pleased to say that I've converted Angela to the greatness of the day. Speaking of Angela, she's one of my favorite people ever, so you should read her new blog. It will undoubtably be fun for all!

Pi Day

Man, I wish I had this shirt for Pi Day. Not that I'm allowed to wear t-shirts when I'm teaching, but, maybe I'd be able to get away with it for a special occassion. Not that it matters since I don't have this shirt.

And speaking of Pi Day, thinkgeek.com tells me that 3.14 is also Albert Einsteins birthday. How cool is that?

Ribbit?

I really think these new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles look more like frogs that like turtles. And why is the movie called "TMNT" instead of the full name anyways? Is this like the rumor that Kentucky Fried Chicken are so genetically modified that they can no longer be classified as chicken, so they changed the name to KFC? Perhaps these turtles have been so mutated by CG that they can no longer be called "turtles" and must just be referred to as TMNT only.

my favorite month of the year? perhaps!

I think this may be my favorite month of every year. March is a great month anyways... in the south it's when everything is blooming and green and the temperature is nice ... and on top of that, THIS week is just filled with random fake holidays - some of my favorite fake holidays at that! Let us start with Wednesday, 3.14, which is Pi Day... the day you eat pie and act like a dork by wishing people a happy Pi Day and no one knows what you're talking about. This is immediately followed by 3.15, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC (you know, "Beware the Ides of March!") ... finally, we have 3.17, Saint Patrick's Day, the day you're suppose to wear green and talk about the "Luck o' the Irish" and eat shamrock cookies. This is especially a fun day in Savannah, because they have a huge St. Patrick's Day parade, everything closes down, and everyone hangs out outside and drinks too much and wears silly green attire. The fountains have all be "greened" with food coloring, there will be much bagpipes and celtic music everywhere... I love Irish stuff, I don't know why. But for some reason I've always loved St. Patricks Day. It's just so random. This year it falls on a Saturday, so there will be more hooplah than usual, because people will come in from all over for the celebration. I'm glad I already live downtown and don't have to fight traffic to go to anything. Chris and I will probably just walk around and check things out. Some people will camp out in the squares to get prime spots for the parade.

And this, dear friends, is why I love mid-march. The End.

Epilogue: did I mention I love the end of March because it's Chris and My anniversary? This year we'll be in PORTLAND, OREGON for our anniversary, which is really stellar. Last year we went to NYC. Much enjoyment, indeed!

organic crochet

I ordered a couple small skeins of organic cotton yarn from etsy.com (which I started browsing after .tif said about a million times "have you checked out etsy? really, you need to check out etsy" so i did) ... I got the yarn in the mail today, and tonight I have myself some new hand warmers! I'm especially excited about these since my skin is so sensitive to everything; these shouldn't irritate my skin at all. huzzah!

the only thing that makes me sad is that the skeins were pretty small (they were only $3 each, after all) so I'm not sure if I have enough left to make anything else. There *might* be enough left for a hat, but I probably won't know until I'm almost done with it. The great thing about this yarn is that it's easy to take apart, so if i get to the end of the yarn and realize it's not enough, I can just take it apart and come up with something else to do with it, only time will be lost.

website issues

this website was down for a couple days... some problem with our hosting company... which if you've noticed, is always having problems lately, and doing a very poor job of communicating this to their customers. I'm looking to switch, and I'm so certain that when i do, everything will be better. But that will take time, so... let's just hope they don't screw things up terribly in the meantime to where i don't get important emails or something.

Spring Forward ... again

So although I'm sure no one learns they have to spring forward from ME, I've done this a few times now so I think it's my duty to remind everyone. Daylight Savings Time is this weekend... and apparently it's early, not that I ever know when it is, but people are reminding each other left and right this year because it's early. That also means computers might be confused, so make sure you've run your computer updates so they can reflect the new time.

Awesome timekiller

This is a pretty fun website... look at user drawings of scenes from movies, and guess the movie. But make sure you follow the directions from the little [?] icons or you probably won't do it right. The Burgg

bands and babies

This wound up to be a pretty crazy weekend. Chris and I went down to Jax to see mewithoutYou... otherwise known as the only band I'll go to because I am getting so sick of shows... then we went further down to Gainesville to stay with the Geary's so I could watch their kids while they went to see mewithoutYou the next night. Lucky for inexperienced me, the kids were in bed before Luisa and Adam left for the show, and I just had to sit around in the house. But that was just the beginning of our weekend, because that night, after the show and after everyone was home and in bed, Adam knocked on the door (3:30 am?) and told us that he was taking Luisa to the hospital... she'd been having contractions all night, but they weren't sure if she was going into labor or not, and finally decided they'd better go in at least and find out (she was, and they got her ready for her third C-section). Luckily, we were there to stay with the kids. The next morning Adam came back to get some sleep, and I got up to get the kids up and dressed and fed, and then when I started to crash after a couple hours (I had a cold, after all, and only had 4 hours sleep tops myself) I woke Chris up and made him trade off with me so I could get a little more rest.

Then later on in the afternoon we all made the trek down to the hospital to see baby Ayden*. He's a tiny cutie. Cyris was pretty excited about his new baby brother, and Izabel was about as excited as an 18 month old can get. Adam talked us into staying one more night, because Luisa and Ayden were staying in the hospital until Tuesday morning, so we left this morning. Anyways, we thought it was cool that God planned it all out for us to be at the house when this all happened, and we got to be the first ones to see the new baby. (And probably the first one to put photos up... I hope Luisa doesn't get mad at me!)

And for all you silly people who are wondering, no, it didn't make me want my own kids. At all. If anything, the whole experience made me feel completely inadequate to take care of kids all the time... I just don't have the energy for it.

*I double-checked on how they spell the names yesterday, so I swear I'm not mispelling them)

crochet mania!

I figured out how to crochet hats recently, so I've been a little insane about crocheting in my free time (in cars, watching TV, when my hands are tired of being on the computer and need to do something different)... I have made 5 hats and 2 pairs of fingerless gloves in the past... oh... 3 weeks. The funny thing is that it's no longer cold enough to need to wear a hat. But now whenever it gets cold again, I have a white hat, a black hat, a dark blue hat, a light blue hat, and a tan & maroon hat. I also have fingerless gloves to go with the dark blue and the tan & maroon. Fingerless gloves are my newest obsession. I will probably actually wear those more than I'll wear hats. (Hats look pretty silly on me, so it's actually been my goal to try and figure out hats that don't look so silly when I need to keep my head and ears warm). Anyways, I took some photos to show some friends, so I figured I'd link to them here as well. But I don't have pictures of the black hat or the white hat... I actually can't find them right now... but they exist, I swear.

Hooray for crochet!

Website / Email problems

As of last night, our web host is having some major issues and we've been unable to get in touch with him, so right now pezheadsthemovie.com website and email is down, as is idreaminblue.com website and email. This is more than a little stressful as I'm waiting for important emails from film festivals, schools, etc. In the meantime, you can find me and chris and pezheads via MySpace... myspace.com/pezmovie, myspace.com/kskeene, and myspace.com/iamtheskeener.

new ride

Well, as you may know from reading Chris's blog, our old Saturn wagon was totalled a couple weeks ago. Everybody was fine, but the car, alas, was sent to Auto Heaven. We were given a small amount of cash with which to get another car, and had a very short window with which to procure said new ride. It was a stressful time car shopping, especially given our budget (which we supplemented with some savings, but still, it wasn't much) ... since we aren't sure where we'll be a year from now, we didn't want to be making payments on something, so we were determined to buy something we could afford outright. Anyways, long story short, our most awesome friend Adam spent a lot of time helping us look for cars, then even went out of his way to meet up with us in Jax last monday to do some serious car shopping. After looking at quite a few lemons, we finally found her... she wasn't what we had in mind, but I think she's just right now that we've had her for a week, so we're pretty happy with our purchase. It's a '99 Acura Integra, dark green, 2-door with leather seats. Very clean, very well maintained, and she drives well, too. Once we got the seats all adjusted it's pretty comfy, and we did a couple little upgrades... added keyless entry and a security system yesterday so we feel safer having it parked out in the ghetto, and since I had a tire stolen once on the old car, when I saw that this car had wheel locks sitting in the trunk just waiting to be used to replace some existing lugnuts, we were quick to swap those out. I just read that this exact vehicle was the most stolen car for 2005, and Savannah's pretty big on the car-jacking so I guess it's probably money well spent.

At first I thought I wouldn't be too thrilled with a sporty car... I mean, this one even has tinted windows, a moon roof, and a spoiler... but now that I've gotten used to driving it, I love it. Not to mention I'm thrilled with the little features of the keyless entry... like the doors automatically lock when you start the car, and unlock when you turn it off, and the cute little "beep" noise it makes when I lock it... very much fun. Not to mention this is the first car I've ever owned that wasn't a tan station wagon with a broken indicator light and a broken lighter port (I've had two different vehicles, different makes, that fit those exact descriptions). It feels like a new era for the Skeenes.

I keep meaning to snap a photo of our new ride, but I keep forgetting, so uh... don't hold your breath.

Zombies

In case you were wondering, this arguement does NOT make me lose my irrational fear of zombies.

::drooling::

It's everything I've ever wanted, and more...

Apple has announced it's iPhone, available in June of this year. But it's not just a phone... it's like a video iPod meshed with a PDA, meshed with a Mac... cuz it uses Mac OS X... and the whole thing is a touch-screen that's supposed to use super-great technology that doesn't require a stylus. OOOoohhh, aaaaahhh....

But the pricetag on all that is pretty steep... they're talking $499 for a 4GB, and $599 for an 8 GB one. And it's only with Cingular. So my wishlist for mid-year is to have enough expendable cash to afford a $600 phone slash Personal Life Assistant AND be able to afford to switch to Cingular... it costs a lot to drop my current cell provider, not to mention I think we currently have the cheapest plan on earth, and it would be at least another $20 or $30 a month for us to switch, PLUS if I got a fancy phone CHRIS would think HE needed a fancy phone, so I'm basically lusting after something that would cost us about $1500 in the long run. The big question is, even if we had $1500 to throw around (if only) are two Personal Life Assistants really worth it?

But i must say, this is definitely topping the techno-lust charts. Especially since I've really been wanting a great PDA/phone lately, knowing full well I'm not gonna get one. It was a lot easier to want one when all the available phones weren't very great.::sigh::

My rambling is over, you may now return to your regularly scheduled life.