I Forgot the Best One

From the weekend, Sunday morning Kevin burst into our room declaring "No snow! No snow! It's spring!" to which I turned to look out the window only to see the trees covered with the white stuff.

If I Tweeted

A weekend round-up tweet style:

10:35p
Taking home Fern's BF. Why can't his parents drive more often?

11:30p
Finished two GS vests before bed, glad to get them off the stack.

7:00a
Why am I up so early on a Saturday? Oh yeah, Special Olympics State Games for basketball.

11:30a
Will these opening ceremonies ever end?

12:30p
First game finally started, down @ half 18-10 against a Howard Co. team.

Sad loss for our player development team: 34-28 final.

Second game, a win against Anne Arundel Co. 20-10 for the Bronze medal.

6:30p
@BJ's with Dan; bought two grape vine plants; need to figure out a place to plant them.

9:30a
Kevin wore his medal to church.

11:00a
@Noodles & Co for Kevin's favorite lunch. Trying to oust the current mayor on Foursquare.

12:30p
Off to our guild's quilt show, working the admissions desk 1-2; white glove 2-3;

Don't think my quilt got the best display location but it wasn't a winner anyway. Still sad.

4:30p
Back home in time to see the last minutes of VCU's win over Kansas. Go Rams!

6:30p
Finished another GS vest, 4 to go.

7:45p
Picking up Three Brothers for supper, then home to watch Amazing Race.

8:30p
Wish I hadn't lost my VCU class ring, maybe I need a new VCU shirt for my collection

11:30p
Really wish I were sleeping.

A Few Vacation Pics - The Netherlands

A working windmill near Zuiderzee

A view of many bridges over a canal (forgot which one) in Amsterdam

Another canal bridge

Tulips at the flower market in Amsterdam

Sew Fabulous Quilt Shop Blog: March 2011 Giveaway

I entered a giveaway (and thusly promised to post about it here.)

Sew Fabulous Quilt Shop Blog: March 2011 Giveaway....And An Apology!: "Happy March! I apologize for this post being so late. If you read my last blog post, A Very Unfortunate Rotary Cutter Accident, you'll und..."

 

Dinner at Blue Pepper, Amsterdam

This is thee courses of our five-course dinner at Blue Pepper restaurant. I forgot to take pictures of the other two before they were gone.
First course was duck, fish pâté, and crab with mango.

Second course was seafood soup served with lemon.

The third course was lamb satay and chicken satay.
The fourth course was the main entree, the Rijsttafel. The first picture is of the condiments, the second one is the selection of curried meats and seafood.

The last course was dessert with fermented rice pudding with coconut ice cream, pear cooked in blue curaçao, and mango salad.

iPad Cover!

30 Hours

The suitcase is still empty. I have not packed any clothes. sheesh. I have been packing my carry-on bag, got my camera and tour books together, extra memory cards and knitting needles (just in case I stumble past a yarn shop).

I guess I didn't want to pack too soon, but now I'm leaving tomorrow for a week with my mom in Netherlands & France and I haven't even considered wardrobe options. Except for which coat to take, I have thought of that. And the jury is still out on that, too. I'm afraid of being cold and damp one day and too hot the next.

I've been talking to Mom most everyday this week, swapping information, quizzing each other on desired destinations. We'll have a full day in Amsterdam of free time and a half-day in Paris. The D'Orsey is in renovations; a lot of good stuff at the Louvre is out on tour (I'll have to see Mona at another time); Versailles is too vast to see in a single afternoon; our front runners are currently Musee des Arts Decoratifs and Musee Marmottan (good Monet collection).

I think I need to do laundry tonight. Right after I stop at the Apple store.

 

Try and Try Again- A New Month's Resolution

On January first I decided on a resolution, to lose five pounds. I amended it to a "new month's" resolution, to lose five pounds by the end of the month. The very next day I was up a pound and a half. Not a good start. Now I had to lose 6.5 lbs to reach the goal.

At the end of January I'd lost 4 lbs. I set the goal again for February. I wasn't very clear if it was for a new five pounds, or just to get to the original goal. Vague was good. The ultimate goal is ten lbs from the high point, but I wanted to break it down in monthly chunks.

A week into the new month I'd lost another pound and it was staying lost. A week later, the weight pretty stable-neither up nor down, I saw an orthopedist who said I had tendinitis in my right bicep and prescribed an anti-inflammatory to be taken on a full stomach. You know what that meant, I'd forget to take the pills with dinner so I'd have to have a hearty snack at bedtime which lead to regaining all the weight I'd lost.

Now, here it is, the first of March, I'm ready to try again. I'm off the anti-inflammatory, my shoulder is feeling better, I have no excuse. I weighed in this morning at a lower weight than I'd had for a couple weeks, but still above the goal.

So, here it is, my goal, down in writing. I will lose the rest of the original five pounds by the end of March. (This will be harder than you think, I'll be Europe for a week this month.) I will keep it off in April and start working on the next five in May.

It really bugs me when other women say I look fine, that I don't need to lose weight. I always thank them, but I know, my pants know I do. I need to learn where the breaking point is on the food intake now that I'm, uh, not a kid anymore. I need to retrain my brain about not needing snacks. I'll never be a size 4 again, but it sure would be nice not to ever become a size 14. Hence, the goal, to break it down, a couple pounds at a time, no crazy crash diets, get it off, keep it off.



 

Latest Quilt Project

This is what I worked on at quilt retreat this weekend:

This is a project for my dear high school friend in Florida. She has floor-to-ceiling closets in her bedroom with a 25" space between them. She commissioned me to make something eye-catching to hang there. I'm going to add a couple borders to this, maybe even my "trademark" interlocked knot design I used on the quilt I made for Mom shown below.

This technique was developed by Lisa Walton of Dyed and Gone to Heaven, an inspiring quilter/beader from Oz. I'd love to meet her one day.
 

One Block Wonder

This is the quilt I finished for my mom last year, the one she plans to redecorate her bedroom around. It won Viewer's choice in the large-pieced category and a Vendor's choice ribbon at our guild's show back in March. It'll hang as an invitational quilt this year.

Take Two or Three

Ok, that didn't last long.

Pre-planning, that is, for our trip to Europe next month when Mom and I go to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris. I figured out We'll have the most free time in Amsterdam, the first day we are there, the day we'll probably be most tired and jet-lagged. We land at 07:30 and have unscheduled time until the welcome reception/orientation that night. Our hotel is just a couple blocks from the Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum, so we'll have plenty of options.

The rest of the days are scheduled with tours and sight-seeing trips except for an afternoon in Paris when we can take an optional tour of Versailles. I'm torn between that and checking out Mona at the Louvre. Or going up the Eiffel tower (our hotel is two blocks away!).

I won't be able to fine-tune plans until we get our travel documents with a more refined itinerary. Which means I'm back to having that empty lost feeling I wrote about a couple days ago.

OH! but wait....
I'm going to our quilt retreat this weekend. I really really need to start a packing list for that. I'm sure I'll forget to take a project that needs attending too. I have so many started and neglected projects, sheesh. I tend to overpack and be too optimistic about how much I will get finished. Then I start something new and end up having even more projects than I started with.

I'm also running a game on Saturday so I cannot forget to take all I need for that, including prizes.

And I promised to bring a soup for Friday night dinner.

I'm not teaching fabric dyeing this year, Lisa is, so I don't need to pack anything for that. I must not get sucked into that. Must. Not. Dye. Fabric.

I really could use another brick-colored fabric, however, for a current project I really need to finish. It's a quilt to be included in a book a fellow quilter is putting together, and the perfect color would add so much....

ARGH! Must. Not. Dye. More. Fabric.

Well, that worked well, I haven't thought about missing my favorite literary characters for that past several paragraphs now. D'oh!

 

Obsession Replacement

I found something to fill the hole left by finishing the Harry Potter books: trip planning. Mom and I are going to Europe for a couple days next month, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris. We'll be on an organized tour but will have some time to ourselves for sightseeing and most of our meals will be on our own as well.

I had some 40% off coupons for Borders so I bought small city guides for Amsterdam and Brussels/Bruges over the weekend and want to buy a book on Paris today. I like to find the hotels and the itinerary stops on the maps, then I can get spatially oriented. I also like to do searches in advance for specialty shops I might like to visit if I have time, like quilt and yarn shops. Oh, and don't forget shopping for Belgian chocolate. I'll pass on the Belgian lace though.

I try not to go overboard with the extras, though, free time will be shorter in reality. The trip is advertised as a 7-day trip, but when it comes down to it, it's really only five days of actual touring and the other two days are travel days. I'm not upset, all tour companies and cruise lines do this, make a trip sound fuller than it is. I just can't go overboard on a list of little side trips.

Next week: I'll start on a packing list.

 

HP

If you thought I meant HP, the computer company, just move along now.

I'm rereading the Harry Potter books, much to the chagrin of my husband, "They are kids books, you know" ... "Haven't you read them each a dozen times already?"

Well, no. In the beginning I read them to Fern at bedtime, it was our thing. I'd put on my best UK accent and read a chapter or two a night, it was a cozy time. When a new book would come out, we would read it together, then I couldn't stand the slow pace anymore and plowed ahead on my own after her lights went out, only to reread those sections again the next night.

Fern was too old for a snuggly reading bedtime reading routine when Goblet came out, so I ended up reading it only once, same with the subsequent volumes. Then there were the movies. When the book is fresh in your mind, you pick out all the things they left out of the film, and rightfully so, there is just too much detail to cram into a reasonably lengthed production. But as the years go by, the visual memories created by each movie replace the memories created by reading the story in the first place.

So now, I've been reading all seven books again, back-to-back-to-back (forsaking other leisure activites, quilting) and have really grown attached to Potter and his friends. I'm also amazed, reliving the whole story, about the amount of details and clues JK Rowling left for us along the way. [I could also point out inconsistencies over these seven years, (the thestrals, for example) but I'm not going to.] If you've read the series yourself, you know the importance of the horcruxes in the final book, yet she mentions two of them in passing several books before the last one. The major hinging point of the final showdown at the end of book seven is given in book six, the clue to how Harry can face He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named with a shred of hope.

Yes, to Dan's other point, they are not deep pieces of literature, they are not kept in the adult section of the bookstore, but I enjoy them just the same. I've tried to figure out exactly why I love these stories so much. And I can't, exactly. Yes, there's the feeling of parental hope that the children grow up smart, strong, and loved, and yes, they are fun tales of good versus evil. I guess maybe, it's like getting sucked into Lost for all those years, living vicariously through others.

Currently, as I write this, I'm about a hundred pages from the end of the last book and I expect to finish it tonight, the last big battle between Harry and Vol-, you know who. I better have some tissues with me, I hate the death scenes.

And now, I've got about a hundred pages in which to prepare myself for the end. I'll need to get back to my quilting to keep my mind off the loss of these fictitious people friends....Until the movie in July, anyway.

 

Giveaway… Happy Day for All

Giveaway… Happy Day for All

 

Pass the Popcorn, Please

Over the last couple weeks I've actually been using my Netflix account (instead of keeping the discs for 4 months at a time) and have watched four foreign films in a row. Three were the "Dragon Tattoo" trilogy. (Truth be told, the third in the trilogy isn't out on DVD yet, but we watched it on pay-per-view.) I hear Hollywood is making an American version of these movies, but I bet they won't be as good. Watching a movie that takes place in Sweden is much more authentic when it's shot in Swedish.

Watching sub-titled films is also interesting because you've got to watch. You can't just wander up to the kitchen to fix a snack keeping an ear on the movie, all you hear is Swedish dialog, and unless you've interned in Stockholm, you've got to hit pause to get that snack. You still have to have the sound up when you're reading the subtitles so you can hear the intonation and emotion in the voices.

The forth movie was "Bread and Tulips," an Italian film made in 2000 about a woman who gets inadvertently left at a rest stop while on a vacation bus tour. She decides to go to Venice before meeting back up with her family at home, but she misses the train home and the rest of the story unfolds. Italian men yell a lot. I never read the subtitles with as much force as I heard from the voices. Americans wouldn't do it justice.

I can't remember how this film got added to my Netflix queue, I'm sure it's been there for years and finally just bubbled to the top. I think a French spy spoof is next. That should be fun. More subtitles!

What have you watched lately?

 

Snack Time

So, this morning I awaken to loud, pleasant chirping. The chirping sounds really close to my window, like the source was in my bedroom. I glance at my window and see a brown bird, a wren maybe, between the glass and the opened screen snacking on the dead stink bugs that were laying on the sill. The bird flew off before I could snap a photo and I looked back later and the entire collection was gone.


 

An Odd Collection

I'm tired of stink bugs. Do you have them? Ever since Christmas I've been escorting out or flushing down about four of the little buggers a day. I can't figure out how they're getting in. the windows have been closed for months now. Maybe they got in back in the summer when I had a window fan in our bedroom and have been waiting stealthily until now to come out now to drive me crazy. I escort them out my window. I've amassed quite a collection of frozen stink bugs on the window sill now.

Oh Dear. They could be in hibernation, only to come back to life in the spring bug us once again.

They scare Fern, which I find funny. It's just an ugly bug, herbivore at that, no bite, no sting. They don't even smell very much. But they are annoying.



 

Finally....

Wow, it's been so long since I've posted. The busy season here at work is almost over. I'm a front-end survey design programmer for web-based surveys and I have three mail-outs this month. That means, I deliver three different systems, each with a different client, over the next couple weeks.

I keep wanting to add to this post with a summary of Anne's Household activities, but I can't even string together more than a half a thought at any given moment. I'll post this now with hopes to come back soon to post more.


 

Another Clothes-Line Basket, this time in blue

Dyed Clothes-Line Basket