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Effective immediately, all people deemed “not helpful” will be evicted from further conversation. If your comments make me say something that ends in, “What the h*ll?” that’s probably you.
Truth be told, about 90% of the response from others when I’ve told them that we’ve sold our house and are now house shopping has been incredibly positive. Not only are people excited that anyone’s house sold (because in this day and age, ever single home sale is exciting), but they’re excited for us and this new adventure. But some people feel the need to take a crap right in the middle of the parade route.
And that is seriously not helpful. It makes me frustrated and stressed, which makes me want to consume an ever-increasingly-large quantity of chocolate.
I have totally appreciated all the offers to help pack, move, watch pets, throw housewarming parties, etc (you know who you are). Not that I’ve told all that many people other than co-workers ( doesn’t even know yet, because I haven’t had time to call him, and won’t until Thursday after class). We’re kinda holding our breath until after the results of the inspection, which is taking place this very moment.
Last night was a mess of cleaning, fixing, laundry, and a bit of sewing, all with Angel (season 4) playing in the background. Tonight is house shopping, with a side of studying for a test throw in. Maybe tonight I can get to sleep before midnight. That’d be a treat.
Yes, I’m quite sure there are better ways to spend my time than drawing up diagrams for quilts that I won’t be able to even think about starting until sometime in June. Whatever. I got the idea in my head and went with it. Mostly because I could, and because there is a small pad of graph paper at my desk.
I present to you, the Disappearing Nine Patch. It’s how I made  ‘s potholders. You make a basic nine patch (first image), and then you cut it (gasp!), and rearrange the pieces until it looks pretty (second and third pictures). If you’re actually curious about this, you should look on the internet, or Flickr, because it’s all been done before. At any rate, I figured out that if I did certain squares in white, and certain other squares in a solid, then I could leave other squares to remain whole and showcase those prints. That was a very sloppy way of putting it.
 Disappearing Nine Patch Designs I’ve only a little bit of the crazy today, which is better than I expected. Oh, had I promised baby pictures?
 Well, far be it from me to keep you from the cuteness that is an 11-day-old baby...
 or a 2-year-old who has discovered how to make funny faces (he'll hate me for these photos later).
Some things I’ve bookmarked recently:
via Google Reader (Shared Items)
Why, you ask? Well, the most-stated sentence between  and myself in the last 12 hours has been, “Honey, we sold our house.”
It was 48 hours of annoyance for our Realtor (slightly fewer hours for us), but when all was said and done, it was… done.
And now begins a madcap dash of packing and looking for a new house, because we’re out on May 1. And we haven’t gone house-hunting since July.
Between the packing and house hunting, there will be homework and class and work, there’s not much time for anything else. Oh, except for Easter dinner, which we’re hosting. You’re laughing now, aren’t you?
In reality, there’s plenty of time for everything to get done (with the exception of our getting a mortgage and buying a new house in time – that’s what family is for, right, to put you up when you’re homeless?). I’ve been having moments of panic, and am trying to keep them under control. I think they’re scaring .
Thankfully, the commitments I have to deal with before the closing are mostly wrapped up or on schedule. There’s Doll Quilt Swap 6, which I only need to quilt and then sew on the binding. (There’s another swap that just started today, and I might have trouble with the deadline for that, but I’ve already talked to my partner about it and let them know what’s up.) I’m caught up on homework, with just readings, three papers, and two tests for the rest of the semester (which ends April 30th). Arrangements for the pets have been made, which has been my biggest concern. I’m totally not concerned about packing. Like, not in the slightest. After the inspection tomorrow, we’ll get a second storage unit and start filling it up. I’ve gotten quite good at packing. (Just need to make sure to keep enough stuff free so we can live out of suitcases for as long as necessary. Oh, and labeling the boxes well, so that when we do move them in, we have a clue.)
See? Tons of thoughts racing through my head. Can’t help it. This might be more stressful to me than planning a wedding (though maybe only because of the much-shorter timeline). Of course, I wasn’t nervous about the wedding at all, so maybe that’s not a good barometer….
At any rate, I’ve rambled on long enough for you to be fully convinced I’m crazy, so I’ll stop. I hope you had a great weekend! I have baby pictures to share later today.
 Monday Mosaic 3.30.2009
I know, I know. I go 4 weeks without posting a Monday Mosaic, and then when I finally do, it’s all over the place. No theme for this one, unless you want to count “things I think are pretty,” which doesn’t include the second to last one there, which I find hilarious. If you’re not familiar with the reference, you should totally go watch Anchorman right now. Seriously. I think I have most of it memorized. Because it’s that good.
Click on the photo to go to Flickr, where you’ll see links to all the original pictures and due credit given to the original photographers.
- Road trip :: Spring Break
- Pool hall :: Beer
- Extraordinary :: Gentlemen
- Jackson :: Hugh
- Heartfelt :: Appeal
- Wet :: Noodle
- Strangle :: —
- .com :: Buzz
- Touched :: by an Angel (just for you, )
- Insipid :: little man
(Can it be a summary at slightly past noon? I have been awake for nearly 7 hours….)
I spent the first hour and a half of the work day removing two labels from the fronts of filing cabinets. Yes, 2. If it makes you feel better about your tax dollars, I was multi-tasking as I allowed the Goo Gone to soak in, repeatedly, to the very stuck-on labels. But, now all last vestiges of that task I used to do but have been relieved of are gone from my cube. A co-worker suggested using a credit card to scrape (I had been using my fingernails, which was not fun, but didn’t want to mar the paint with a letter opener, the only scraping-type device I had), which made the second one a whole lot better. I had originally planned to remove/replace a whole bunch more in the office (it’s clean-up day), but have since thought better of it.
I have a headache. Again. Don’t know why. I am hydrated, I ate my lunch (early!), I had breakfast…. I am unamused.
One of the cookbooks we bought recently (which I think I blogged about, but my headache is preventing me from caring enough to look it up) has resulted in my bringing a lunch to work that’s more than yogurt and an apple. Wednesday and today I had a pasta salad, which was so easy and yet quite delicious, and aided by the fact that I have a large bowl here at work to eat from.
Yesterday, I brought a sandwich, and I was quite anxious about that. You see, I strongly dislike “lunchbox” sandwiches. Really, most sandwiches. If it’s on a hoagie roll, toasted, melted, or something else strange has been done to it, I’m totally cool with it. But a straight sandwich? Ick. (This makes quite sad, because he loves sandwiches in almost every form.) Nevertheless, I attempted a sandwich yesterday. It was a lot of work to create a sandwich (and situation) that I’d eat at work, but the recipe came from the cookbook. I put the bread in a sealed container (buttered, or, rather, margarine-d). Then I made up the filling, which was frozen, cooked shrimp and mayonnaise, basically, and put that in a separate container. I cut some cucumber slices and put those on top of the shrimp mix, because I didn’t think they’d interfere with each other. And lastly I put some lettuce in yet another bag. I know, I know, I’m slightly crazy. But really, assembly helped me get on board with this while at work (because while I was kind of excited about the sandwich the night before, I never feel that way when lunchtime actually rolls around). Plus, all the separate containers meant my bread was in no way soggy (because, again, ick). All in all, actually quite delicious. I had a hard time wrapping my head around eating a sandwich, and there was quite a mental block, but in the end it was good. Plus, the bread that I had (Brownberry Whole Wheat, which was on sale this week) was delicious. Fabulous. Wonderful. Can’t say enough good things about the taste of this bread. ( disagrees, and thinks the taste is too strong, but maybe that’s because he actually likes the taste of what’s in his sandwich, and the taste of mayonnaise, and I’m kinda iffy on both of those things.)
I was going to bring in cupcakes to work today, for clean-up day ( had suggested in an email that “some of our baking co-workers might bring stuff in,” so I took that as a hint from her that I should make cookies), but forgot until 10:30 last night. A whole bunch of people are out today because of a conference, so I don’t feel too bad. I’ll make them Sunday and bring them in. I’m a little bummed, because I really had a hankering for yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Doesn’t that sound yum?
I promise to do a wrap-up of my spring goals early next week. I was kinda counting on “spring” lasting through the end of March (hey, it’s still snowing here, so I think that’s fair), so I didn’t really think about it until now.
The morning should have been spent writing my third paper (still waiting for that important project to appear on my desk), but instead I spent it reading some new blogs I found (half a dozen this week, after a several-month drought of no new inspiring blogs), and discovering the joy of a setting in Google Reader that let’s me go through my feed without going to the reader. What I mean to say is that I get to view each entry that comes through the reader on its original website, which is fabulous. The only thing I didn’t like about switching to a feed reader (versus just looking up all the sites I want to read daily) was that I lost the ability to tell the difference between certain authors/sites, because they all look the same. Now, that’s all changed. If you use Google Reader and aren’t familiar with this option (because I hadn’t heard about it until today), it’s under Settings, and it’s just a little “Next” bookmarklet that you add to your toolbar. It is beyond awesome. It’s making me quite happy.
What else is making me happy? The two people ( and a classmate) who, just today, joined my little band on Robin Hood, which is a very addicting game on Facebook. (It’s kinda like Mafia Wars, but it’s not blocked at work.) This got me over the threshhold needed to do certain quests (minimum 3), and now I’m just rocking it. Mind you, I’m currently at level 15, and the quests for that level require me to have more like 8 or 13 members, but whatever. You should join my band too. It requires absolutely no work on your part, except to click the little link in my status update. Then you can promptly ignore the application forever-after. Seriously.
Good enough for now? I think so. I’m off to find Advil….
My Friday gift to you: no memes today.
Oh, and for those who care about this sort of thing, while Diet Barq’s has 0 mg of caffeine, regular Barq’s has 23 mg. Which really sucks. And is probably why I was up until 11:30 finishing The Eyre Affair, which I plan on reviewing in Facebook later. You know, because that’s all I do now. Well, that and homework.
That is all.
It’s been hard to be thankful lately – I’ve mostly been stressed with schoolwork. But, let’s set that all aside for a moment.
Today, I’m thankful for…
… new babies to snuggle ( ‘s due right now, and I’m sure there’ll be a new little one shortly).
… clean drinking water.
… the large quantity of chocolate bought for me Tuesday night as I was stressing over computer programs and papers.
… two papers written so far this week!
… digital cameras, so I can be surrounded by photos.
… the delicious wheat bread (Brownberry) I had today in my sandwich. Yum! (Now I’m craving a BLT, because those are awesome on whole wheat toast.)
… not having much to do tomorrow at work for the designated “Cleaning Day,” because my cube and files (paper and electronic) are all in order.
… that last night’s showing was a third showing. Now they just need to put their money where there mouth is, so to speak.
… web comics and LOLcats and, when all else fails, CuteOverload.
… frozen, cooked, peeled shrimp.
… it’s officially Spring!
… the color pink. Also, the colors turquoise, orange, and yellow, because they make me happy.
… the fact that my eyesight has not deteriorated according to my most recent check-up. Vision is good.
… no skin allergy breakouts in over a month!
… an extra week granted to work on the Craftster Needlwork Challenge.
… lots of daylight hours.
… jeans and free pizza tomorrow.
… cash in my wallet.
… my iPod.
… lulls at work that allow me to get some homework done.
… Flickr, Google Reader, TasteSpotting, and other websites that make the internet both worthwhile and interesting.
… every day, the countdown to hammock time gets closer.
And you?
Let’s not talk about the ridiculous quantity of chocolate I’ve consumed lately, or how my pants don’t fit the way I want them to, or about AIDS / Africa / foreign policy, or work. Let’s talk about… anything else, instead. Seriously. Yes, I’m procrastinating. I don’t do it often (where homework is concerned, at least). I’m somewhere on page 5 of that paper, which is significant progress, but my brain needs a break. I’d be doing actual work, but the person who was coming in to give me some big project (that needs to be to someone important tomorrow afternoon)… hasn’t arrived yet or communicated with me, though yesterday afternoon it seemed Very Important that I be in the office today. Hrm. So, instead, I work on the paper. I look productive. It means I probably won’t be skipping out of class early tonight (I have no other absences, so I figured that half a class was completely acceptable if I was going home to do more homework), or calling in to miss work tomorrow or Friday. I did have a weird dream this morning about being late for work, cleaning the house for a showing (we have one tonight), and this paper. Gee, stress much?
But. But. When I finish this paper, things will be better. We are hoping to go visit the new baby this weekend, which should be good.  is doing so much better with this new one (as with the labor, which was much easier this time around), which has me feeling much better as well. I hadn’t really realized how affected I was by her (very traumatic) first birthing experience. [OK, it's not like there was a car accident or murderous zombies trying to eat her kids, but there was a lot of pain and a very long time in labor and words like "suction" and "tearing" and other things you just don't want to associate with something that should be as beautiful as birth. Not that I think birthing is beautiful. The act of becoming a parent should be, though, and I totally admire those who do it. Because I'm so not ready to be that selfless. Or subject myself to giving birth. Clearly I have rambly thoughts on this issue.]
So, I will finish the paper sometime (hopefully today). And I will work on (finish?) the other two that are due in the next two weeks. And I will not, will.not, allow myself to cry when the stupid word processing program doesn’t behave like it should. (However, if you find yourself in this situation, mention to husband that you would like some chocolate. Mine brought me back a bag-full. Which was awesome. Man, I’m going to be fat.)
Here’s the clincher, the ultimate motivation. I did the breakdown for over email today. There are (checking sidebar to be sure) 35 days until the end of the semester (that’s all days, including weekends and holidays). Then, after that, there’s approximately 4 months (something like 117 days) of laying in my hammock, sewing, reading, vacationing, or whatever else I want to do, before school starts up again. I can do 35 more days. Really, I can. Maybe I’ll go play my personal theme song, or something by Pink. That should do it, right? If nothing else, snuggling a new baby this weekend should work. (There’s a very cute video on Facebook of him sneezing! Seriously, it doesn’t get much cuter than that.)
Because Metro State transferred in all of my classes from my undergrad degree, I technically count as a “graduate student” (even though I’m in a post-baccalaureate program, not a graduate program), which means I get to register first. Awe.some.
So, the last class of my non-education classes is finally being offered (haven’t seen it on the course schedule at all in the last two years) this fall. And I’m registered. Because registration opened Monday. In case you were wondering, it’s an Ethnic Studies course on Contemporary Native Americans.
Also, I just looked it up and the deadline to apply to the program (which I need to do because there aren’t any other classes I can take until I do) is August 1st (for the fall semester). I can totally do that. I need 15 more volunteer hours, 2 letters of recommendation, to meet with an academic advisor (I have major complaints about this, but I’ll spare you), and $20.
And after that, it’s just 36 credits spread out over 12 classes, which includes student teaching. The light at the end of the tunnel might not be visible yet, but… there is an end, that I’m sure of. This is the point in the semester when I most need to be reminded of this.
And, FYI, my GPA is still 4.0. The only class I’m worried about is my online one, because we have an 8-10 page paper due this week that makes up the majority of our grade, and mine isn’t written yet. It’s due Friday. I’m having motivation issues.
Now that I know my partner has received her quilt, I can show it to you (it’s now living all the way in Alaska!). For this second round of the MQIAB, we sent our partners a charm pack (a set of 5″ squares) and were instructed that we had to use each print somewhere. In a quilt that’s a maximum of 25″ square, that’s pretty hard. I love what I came up with, though. My math totally wasn’t right (I’ve since learned how to calculate the no-waste triangle squares correctly – thanks, Craftster), but it wasn’t important. So, now I present to you, Pinwheels!
 The front
 The back  Shown here with a thread bobbin for scale (the whole thing is somewhere around 15" square, though I didn't measure it at the end).
Lovely, no? I’m totally in love with it, and my partner is quite happy too. Soon I’ll get to share pictures of what she made for me, but she’s still at work on it. No rush – it will be perfect and loved when it gets here.
My mind just hasn’t been on blogging lately. When I’m not thinking of ways to play with fabric, I’m writing papers, or reading research for said papers. The 8-10 page paper on AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa, foreign relations, and responsibility is due Friday. And I’m not done. Haven’t actually started writing. I think my research is mostly done. The paper that is due Wednesday night, however, is done, thankfully. That one was on the ideas of agency and power in relation to Native American history. There are two more in the coming two weeks, one on a diagram of globalization or something, and one on a political issue of my choice (I chose the Minnesota Human Rights Act, but am re-thinking since information has been hard to find). I think those two are between 3-5 pages each, but I could be wrong.
So tonight I need to put my nose to the proverbial grindstone and crank out 8-10 pages on AIDS. Cheery, no? I can’t seem to find my mojo for this paper, which is unfortunate, since it is imminently due, and a large percentage of my grade in that class (the online one, which I am not enjoying, not learning from, and am trying very hard not to complain about the professor but not doing too good a job). What does my sidebar say? How many days until hammock time? Not soon enough.
In other news, everyone in the internet world is starting to celebrate Spring (oh, those lucky people who live in Zone 5 or higher), and I am getting jealous. First of all, Minnesota is Zone 4*, which means no planting until after the danger of frost has past (translation: Memorial Day, or the very end of May). Secondly, we still don’t own a backyard, or any piece of grass in which to plant things. I would love to be planting seeds indoors right now with the hopes of moving them outside at some point, but 1) I don’t have the space indoors for such a messy and sun-reliant project, and 2) I have no guarantee that there will be in-ground gardening early enough in the season for it to be worth it (because it is such a short season). So every time I see someone posting about seeds, sprouting, flowers, etc, I get grumpy. It’s not good, I tell you.
People keep coming to look at the house. Some have been interested, but no one interested enough.
OK, enough whining. Back to work for a bit before going to the eye doctor. I’m hoping I’m not blind. Can’t be disappointed with expectations like that, right? (I mean, I’m pretty sure I’d know if I was blind. Typing on the blog would be, um, difficult at best. Certainly not impossible, because I’m familiar with all the assitive technology out there, and I’m a darn good typer, but still, difficult.)
*Herein lies the problem with having grown up in Zone 5 (aka the Chicago suburbs), where Spring starts much earlier and planting season is just around the corner. It lasts longer too. If I was only familiar with Zone 5, I don’t think I’d feel as cheated by nature. Moral of the story: only move South, towards more temperate climates.
- Studio :: Recording
- Meetup :: Roundup
- Ostrich :: Head in the sand
- Jokes :: Crude
- Estranged :: family member
- Random :: Integer Generator
- Slap :: in the face
- Hotel room :: Dateline
- Inscribe :: Initials
- Polar :: Opposites / Bear (both came to me simultaneously)
It’s the “stranded on a desert island” question! You can only take one thing from each category. What is it and why are you taking it?
- A food that can be planted and regrown. Squash. It’s the best vegetable I could think of that would be filling (my list was cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, celery…. you can see how that would go).
- A person you haven’t seen in a long time.
 . I’m pretty sure she’d have lots of stories to keep me entertained, and we always manage to pick right back up where we left off, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.
- A book you (were) read as a child. The Velveteen Rabbit.
- A celebrity. If I can pick a dead one, then Jimmy Stewart. But I’m assuming they’d have to be alive, so I pick David Boreanaz.
- The entire episode run of a television show (it’s a very nice desert island). Battlestar Galactica (the new one), because I’ve only watched half of two seasons, so I think there’d be a lot of new content to be entertained by.
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thankful
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