How to spend a leisurely Sunday

1. Enforce "no plans" rule with significant other on Friday night.
2. Whine a little about the fact that you haven't had a "real" weekend in months (mostly due to your own planning and friend/family committments on your side; ignore this --- whine anyway)
3. Wander off on Saturday to "poke at yard sales" and get a manicure.
4. Walk into a trap of yard sale (for charity. for American Cancer Society: ahem. Anyone remember Dad? And Dad's cancer? In remission? hello heartstrings... feel the tug).
5. Buy a gorgeous rocker (needs some love. Okay a LOT of love) and side table
6. Bring it home to put in bedroom.
side note: in September, when I am "moved" to the bedroom on Sundays so that the living room can become "mantown" for football, I need a place to knit. We can all agree that sitting on your bed is not a comfy knitting place. And it gets your pillows hot. I hate hot pillows.
7. Persuade significant other to help you move some furniture around on Sunday.
8. Get up Sunday a.m.: go to gym. Run at the gym.
9. Come home: complain and make coffee.
10. Ask SO for advice on moving room around.
11. decide it's way too much effort and may not work.
12. move one piece of furniture and smoosh some more together.
13. Clean.entire.bedroom and closet and under bed and vacuum ( thank you PC) and dust and oh.my.god....

your bedroom is clean, orderly and you have 3 bags of clothes for donation. And I haven't even gone through my drawers.

Give some love to Mariuca (blog in sidebar and regular commenter here)-- my best girlfriend who is currently IN LABOR with her first baby, hereby named mini-C, 5 1/2 weeks early. Yup. Breath is held. Nothing I do in my lab today, including if I cured cancer, would be equivalent to what she is doing RIGHT NOW.

Please, God, keep Mari and the baby safe. Let Al be strong in all ways possible.

(add your well wishes and I will send them along to Mari this week.)

EDITED TO ADD:
IT'S A GIRL!!!! Healthy 6lbs both Mom and Baby are doing GREAT!!

I hate it when he does this....

I hate it when PC's right. And he is. And I am admitting it. And I hate it.

We have an agreement. He likes the gym. He likes the lifting of weights and running on the treadmill (okay, he doesn't like that part, but he does it). Me? I'd rather play tennis. But, in order to play tennis, I need to be stronger. In order to be stronger (oh and stamina too!), I need to work out. To work out, I need to go to the gym. I don't love the gym. I go. I work out. I count each and every stupid minute.

For a few months, I was up at 4:30a.m. and off to the gym (arriving by 5:05am) for 30-60 minutes about 5-6 times a week. I was seeing results, I was increasing my activity. Then we went to the wedding in NYC. I was so exhausted (emotionally, financially, physically) from that trip, that I haven't been to the gym. That was 3 weeks ago.

This week, PC woke me up at 4;30 and said "go.to.the.gym" He was not fooling around. He was serious. He wants me to be happier and have more energy. He wants me to lose weight (me too!). And he wants me healthier.

* side note: am working out, eating better, but not watching my WW points... am trying to eat only 3 meals a day and work in 3 dairies and 0 pt veggies. i am also losing bread, rice, potatoes and non-fruit sugar on Monday. hello headaches, but I need to bust through my sugar addiction.

Well, damn it if yesterday and today, I went to the gym and I feel great. I know that my "funks" are a sign of mild depression (associated with PCOS along with difficulty losing weight, ease of gaining weight, facial hair, hair loss and hormones on heroine). But, really--- it only took 2 days of returning to the gym and I feel great.

And last night, I got my hair cut and colored. It's darker and redder (love it) and it's very short and sassy (love it). PC always loved my longer hair until he realized that I wore it up 99% of the time. I look better with shorter hair and feel better with shorter hair. But, with all new haircuts, I tried to do it myself this morning and used too much of the "goo" for my hair and well... I need to work on this a bit I think. (PC is responsible for the hair too... when I complained that I needed a new style, he said "ask the stylist" and I did... I have never seen a woman so excited to help me with something new. She said people usually sit in the chair and say "I want a change, but no bangs, keep the length and the color")

* for those in the Boston area: I went to Newton Hair Company on Watertown Street, in the Nonantum Section of Newton. Reasonable: wash, cut, color, blow out, style and eyebrows: $100.

Practice makes perfect, right?

Big problem with top of the mitten, so no photo until I hear back from the designer. I think it's me. I think I forgot how to read directions.

Thing the second, I want to say something about bicycles and cars. I like my car. In fact, I love my car. It's reliable and (somewhat) new and I get decent gas mileage. I like bikes. I think riding a bike to work is a genius idea. I think bike lanes are a good thing. But, I have begun to believe that I don't like bike riders.

Before the flaming begins, bear with me, and hear me out, okay? I drive through some very "hot" biking neighborhoods on my way to work. I pass about 50-70 people on bikes each day, to and from work. That's a large sample number to work with considering I have working on this street for 3 years. I have seen some pretty strange behavior on bikes such as : riding on a highway, stopping for no reason in the middle of the road, not stopping for stop lights, etc.

Okay, so why don't I like bike riders? When I was small, I learned to ride a bike in a very bike-friendly town. There were rules. You ride with traffic, not against. You obey traffic laws. Like stopping at red lights, moving through green ones, signalling right and left, etc. You pay attention to what's around you. I wait patiently behind lines of bikes if I can't get around them.

I also know that I am a good driver (ask anyone, I do tailgate, but I do obey traffic and speed laws with scary attention) and there are bad drivers out there. So, I imagine that good cyclists and bad cyclists are out there. Here's a bad one:

This morning, a cyclist,wearing an iPod, wove through traffic to a stop light. He was between the drivers' side of my car and the passenger side of another car. I was in the right lane. With my blinker on. Indicating my intent to turn right. The light changed (no turn on red sign present) and I proceeded to turn right. So did the bike. Without warning. Darted right in front of my car as I was accelerating. I almost hit him. I slammed on my brakes and yanked the wheel to the right, hitting my horn to alert him I was close. I was terrified of hitting this man. He pulled over. He indicated that I should too. I did, thinking "oh. my. god. I hit a person" and was then treated to a 5 minute "you-stupid-f*&^%#-C&^# SUV driving gas whore! YOU need to watch out for US on the road... that's YOUR job. NOT MINE. SHARE the road you B#$%^!!" tirade. Fortunately for me, there was an officer nearby working a detail. He came over and calmed the cyclist down.

And gave him a $500 ticket for failing to signal, taking a right turn from a left lane and wearing an iPod while operating a bicycle. When I left he was arguing with the cop that "he couldn't get a ticket, he wasn't in a car." I heard the officer say "the rules of the road are the rules of the road."

Ah. Karma.

PC made me a commercial

I love that I might cause drowsiness and potential paralysis. Or is that just my cooking?

Mitten Mania

I think knitting mittens is addictive. Really, the options for mittens are pretty much unlimited. Cables. Colorwork. Fancy texture stitches. And you can show them off. Unlike socks, where you must remove your shoes to show off the whole thing, you can easily pass your mittens around a group of impressed friends/family/coworkers. Living in Boston makes mittens a must-have. Last year, I made a pair of orange and white mittens from Cascade 220. I love these mittens. Also, I learned something very important. I don't like "wimpy" mittens. I mean mittens in fingering weight. I have found that some nice worsted wool and my trusty US2 dpns make a very warm, durable mitten. Heck, I wore my orange/white ones daily throughout the winter and they never even felted! So, when looking at the Ravelry boards... there was a cry for mitten test knitters--- I answered the call. A sadly blogless Sophia asked me to test knit, Maude, a pattern to be available in the fall, I think.


A few mods to Maude. The first, it called for fingering weight. I cast on with Cascade 220. Right now, I am searching for typos, confusing directions and any errors.


A few comments.
1. great pattern.
2. easy to memorize. I have been knitting from memory since the first repeat.
3. easy to swap around colors. I have chosen tone on tone blues, but image this in stark white and red. Or a charcoal gray and bright green.

Mittens will be filling my Christmas knitting basket this year.

Tell me: what's your favorite mitten pattern?

Operation Kill Mickey

Yup, had every intention of taking some photos of knitting this morning (not exciting knitting... nope, just an angora scarf and some golf club covers--- Fathers' Day, y'know), but we have had a "houseguest" for 2 days.

Our houseguest is unwanted and probably terrified by now. A large orange cat has stalked it and played with it, but has not quite completed "enhanced interrogation" as of 7am.

I hate mice.
I killed hundreds of mice at my first job.
I snapped their little necks humanely and for the sake of science.
Those were germ-free, clean, scientifically bred white mice with pink noses.
Our houseguest did not grow up in a sterile environment.

So, "el gato pequeno" (wee kitty; our nickname for Pumpkin, the wonder cat) is a good hunter. And she LOVES to hunt. Loves it. She was panting and stopping for water breaks. She meowed at us to help her look.for.the.mouse! At one point last night, PC was trying to coax her to bring the still-alive prisoner back to him (so he could get rid of it) b/c she seemed to be bringing it to me. A gift. A token of love and affection.

On top of all of this : it's hot. I mean real hot. Mean hot. Tap a hydrant hot. We have AC and we use it... but it's not even July yet and I hate the heat.

Photos tonight come hell or high water. Knitting photos. I'm not taking a photo of the mouse. I might take a photo of the hunter though. ;)

Another meme

Yeah, I am calling this one in....

(stolen from Sandy)

10 things that have changed since you were in High School:

1. We had a smoking section. Yup. There was a section of the outside that had cigarette cans and if you were caught smoking in a non-smoking section, you had to spend your lunch picking up the butts on campus. All of them.

2. 90210 was on the tv. And it was a big deal. Now Tori Spelling has babies and a reality show.

3. The student parking lot looked like a student parking lot. I rode by a local high school the other day and the student parking had 3 Mercedes and 4 Land Rovers. I remember my first car arrived on a flat bed truck without an engine. My dad made me pay for every part he used to fix it. I loved that car. I loved every car I had... and I appreciate a car now.

4. Sweet 16 parties were in your parents' house. If you were lucky (or in my town, you were sharing a party with a cousin-- we all had cousins our own age, or even in the same grade!), you had it at the VFW. Nobody's parents rented the Taj Mahal. No one had a famous singer (if the football team showed up, you would appropriately swoon). And most of us had to share our "new" ( i.e. Mom's) car with our parents and one or more siblings.

5. School dances were held.... at school. In the cafeteria, with streamers and off-market Kool Aid. A local dj played popular music and we danced all night long. Or until 10:30 pm, when the moms would be outside picking everyone up.

6. Cell Phones, TIVO and DVDs were not invented.

7. Call Waiting and Call forwarding was new.

8. Kids were busy: cheerleading, clubs, working PT.... and doing my honors classwork. My mom never made excuses for us... it was my fault if I was a) late for work, b) didn't do an assignment or c) let my grades slip. I was told I was to be responsible and my parents sided with my teachers. Every.time. (Note: this made the transition to college very easy... I already knew how to be responsible)

9. Having a beer in the woods on a Friday night was a big deal. Not too many kids were having orgies or doing serious drugs (some were, but it was not the majority). Kids were having sex, but no one was bragging about it.

10. We said the pledge of allegiance, we had moments of silence for special events, we faced the flag at sporting events.