I Was Almost Kilt

Is this not the biggest, ugliest spider that you ever did see? Sure, it comes across as super-huge because I zoomed in and cropped it so you could see its beady eyes and gigantor fangs, but it was almost this big in real life! Don't worry though, because I kilt it before it kilt me. Survival of the fittest, baby, or at least the one with opposable thumbs, a flyswatter and a chair.....

I first noticed this bad boy (let's call him BBS for "Big Bad Spider") scampering across the living room carpeting. Charlie Boxer also noticed him and was immediately intrigued, so much so that he attempted to intercept BBS in his travels. BBS, apparently not as interested in Charlie Boxer as Charlie Boxer was in him, hurried under the entertainment center in an attempt to wait us out. Charlie Boxer and I feigned indifference and a few minutes later BBS re-emerged, this time climbing up the living room wall. Before I could arm myself with my trusty yellow plastic instrument o' death he climbed to the juncture of the wall and the ceiling, where he appeared to silently taunt me to "Bring it on."

Never one to back down from an arachnid, I put Charlie Boxer on guard duty while I obtained the necessary elevation equipment (which in this case was the computer chair from the next room). I carefully climbed upon the chair, then, stepping onto the entertainment center for additional leverage, I struck.

I cannot claim a direct blow to BBS, but I either stunned him or scared him sufficiently that he fell to the floor. As BBS limped around behind the entertainment center I tracked his movements and, when the opportunity presented itself, I dealt the lethal blow. Victorious, I scooped BBS onto the flyswatter and gave him a proper burial at sea.

Mad props go out to my assistant, Charlie Boxer, for his steely-eyed courage in the face of this challenge. Good boy Charlie!

30 Days of Me - Day 9

*Sigh* I've decided that I'm just going to have to clean up the prompts before I can even respond to them from now on. Ergo, "something youre proud of in the past few days" will become "Post something that you accomplished last week that made you proud." I'm not no grammarmatarian, but really? Okay, I'm over it. It shan't be mentioned again.

I'm proud of the fact that I've been in an accomplishing sort of mood at home. Remember the messy craft room/office from Day 4? It is almost completely transformed and you can even see most of the floor. I also crossed off everything but one task on my "To Do" list for yesterday (before noon) and even cleaned out and purged the upstairs storage area, a goal that I posted on Day 8 to be done sometime in the month of September! I had six or seven bags to drop off at the GW Boutique, a big stack of garbage and even collected some craft supplies and magazines to drop off for my sister-in-law. I was on it.

It seems as though I run through cycles in doing housework - in a given week I can either kick butt getting stuff done or do almost nothing - and there does not seem to be rhyme nor reason to which it is. I'm lucky in that Shad is very good about keeping up with the house as well and the kids, if reminded, will usually pitch in.

***I'm having a hard time deciding if the "30 Days of Me" posts should be separate from my general posts or if I should just put everything for the day into the same post. For now, just so you know, I think I'm going to keep the "30 Days" separate. Maybe you don't care about reading my answers to these poorly-worded prompts (I know, I know, I said I wouldn't mention it again.....) and just want to read my day-to-day ramblings or, conversely, maybe you don't care about my general drivel but have the burning desire to see "pictures of a place I been to". Either way, separate posts. Sallright? Sallright.)

Almost Caught Up!

In one of yesterday's posts I said that I would come back and write about Friday, which for some strange reason was "Appreciate Susan" day, not to brag or to puff myself up (like I need to be any more puffier!) but so I can re-read this post on the much more frequent "Bury Susan Under Piles of Crap" days.

It started fairly early in my day when my boss came in and laid something on my desk. I thought it was just a memo and didn't look at it right away, but when I did I found that it was a letter to my boss from one of the people from another agency that I work with quite a bit. The letter writer told my boss that he thought I was a credit to our company and that I was always helpful and attentive. For those of you that know what I do for a living, you can probably guess that I get a lot more complaints than compliments (it's kind of the nature of the work). For those of you who don't know what I do for a living, well, I get a lot more complaints than compliments. Now we're all on the same page. :)

I had also been sending messages back and forth with one of my high school friends about a situation that he is dealing with that is loosely related to what I do. While I couldn't help him, I was able to point him in the direction of some people that I am confident can see him through. At the end of our "conversation" he sent "Thanks Susie ('cuz that's what I went by in high school) you're the best." Actually, it might have been "your" rather than "you're" but I'm sure that we all know what he was getting at. And I know that rather than making "thank you" a throw-away statement as people so often do, he really meant it. It was nice.

Later Friday afternoon I got an out-of-the-blue from a new employee at one of the agencies that my office works with. He called just to introduce himself and as we chit-chatted he told me that he's good friends with someone at yet another agency we work with and that his friend had suggested that the caller make the introductory call. The caller's friend also said that I was the person to talk to in our agency if the caller needed anything. I really appreciated that the caller's friend thought enough of me to say that I was "the one to call" at our agency.

I will say that I earned the last segment in "Appreciate Susan" day, but it was still a good way to cap off my day. I had done some work for a company Friday afternoon and knew that there was a chance that I would have to do some additional work as the day went on. It was also the first high school football game of the season and, because Mal is a rah-rah * <) * (pom, megaphone, pom), we were looking forward to the game. The game was, wouldn't you know it, an away game at a town about an hour away. Just as I half-way expected, I got a call with about 7 minutes left in the first quarter that the company needed some additional work done. They tried to call one of my co-workers, who was unavailable, and my boss, who didn't answer, so it was kinda down to me. (Not that I was a last resort or anything but I had warned them that I would be out of town when we met that afternoon.) It was something that couldn't be done over the phone and had to be done in consultation with someone else, too, so after the game Shad and I headed back to town and he dropped me off at work at about 10:00 p.m. By the time I met with the first guy and we met with the second guy together, it was almost midnight on what had been a really long day (remember that Shad and I had made that errant trip to Chicago the night before so I was functioning on about four hours of sleep). Before we parted company, though, the first guy said, "Thanks Suz, you're the coolest." I mean, he's right because I had spend a good portion of my afternoon and late evening on this project, but it was still very nice to hear. It was even better when I found out that our extra work had doubled that day's returns for the company!

I hope that I'm pretty good about acknowledging my appreciation for the people in my life, both personally and professionally. You never know when a sincere "thank you" or a good word passed along will make someone's day, so I'm going to try to be better about taking a minute to express my gratitude to others. As there is no time like the present to begin, I would like to say "thank you" for taking a minute out of your day to read about mine (complete with all the parentheses, ellipses and commas you can handle!). You're the coolest!

30 Days of Me - Day 8

I must start by saying that I do not like this mini-trend that I've been on lately of getting up entirely too early. Of course, it only seems to happen on the weekends and it seems to be getting earlier and earlier. One might assume because I have noticed that this is going on I would alter my bedtime accordingly to ensure that I still get enough sleep. Oh hahahahahaha. Anyone ever tell you what "assume" stands for? Yeah, because I'm apparently not that smart so instead I stayed up until a little after 2:00 a.m. this morning doing housework only to wake up at 7:10. Anyway....

Today's prompt is "short term goals for this month and why." Before I get started on this I must say that I'm enjoying doing this little project, but I really wish whoever started it would have phrased the prompts just a little better.

Now that that's out of my system, here are my short-term goals this month (and let's say that these are for September since we're so close now):

1. Finish the patchwork purse that I'm working on
2. Use more craft supplies than I buy :)
3. Walk at least twice per week
4. Clean out and purge the upstairs storage room
5. Hang curtains in upstairs hallway
6. Start my Biker Chic(k) Blog so that y'all don't have to listen to me go on and on about our motorcycle adventures if you don't want to ;)

I think that I'll stop there. Sure, why not. Sounds like a plan. (Technically, I guess it only sounds like a plan if you read "Sounds like a plan" or if you read the entire list out loud; otherwise, it probably read more like a plan. It does make me giggle, however, to think of you reading the list aloud - and for some reason in a very serious British accent - and saying "Why Susan, that does sound like a plan indeed." I'm pretty sure your pets/spouse/kids/dust bunnies would look at you weird......)

***Holy crap - I just did spell check and there were no misspellings found! That never happens! I even spelled "misspellings" right! I feel a good day coming on! And apparently a day that will be filled with exclamations!***

As Promised....Scrapbook Pages!

I've been scrapbooking for about....well, I guess for the last ten years or so. Some years I am definitely more prolific than others, and I'm so far behind that there is almost no hope that I'll be able to remember what event and what time frame the pictures are from, much less getting them scrapbooked. Still, I try, and there have been a few times that I've been pretty pleased with the results. Here are some of my favs -


These two are from this year's prom. Although Malorie was only a Sophomore, her boyfriend was a Senior and asked her to go. We found an adorable dress with sparkly Converse shoes that absolutely fit Malorie's personality to a "T" and, although there were two other girls with the same shoes, no one rocked them like Mal. The prom couple was super good about letting me and my VBF take pictures before promenade, so there is no shortage of really good shots. I think the top page does a pretty good job of catching the whole Prom 2010 experience, while "the" dress layout focuses in on Malorie's attire and the whole dress shopping experience.

Again, what I like most about this page is the sheer number of photos that I was able to fit on it to document Shad and my first trip to the City Museum in St. Louis. Since most of the pictures are of things, not people, I wasn't as worried about making sure that they were my usual 4x6 prints. I'm pretty happy with the hand-drawn borders for each picture, too.

While I generally like this layout of Andrew at the skate park, in hindsight I wish I wouldn't have added the hand-drawn elements. Oh well.

I love this page about how my sweetie tried to hang with the kids on the halfpipe.

This collage-style page details a trip that our family took to Nashville to hang out with Shad's friend Eric. I used both photographs and memorabilia on the black page along with free-form journaling in silver pen.

This is my most favorite page that I've done, ever. For once it seemed like everything came together for me - a great picture of Malorie that was taken during a spur-of-the-moment photo shoot, great color and an inspired title taken from Jason Mraz's song "Not So Usual."

I'll keep at it and try to come up with more pages to share!

So I Was Thinking....

I haven't really sent a lot of people the link to my blog. After my Day 7 post I was thinking that it might be nice to send the link to my mom so I was going through my old posts to make sure that there wasn't anything X-rated or wholly inappropriate. I think I kept it pretty clean but I did notice some misspellings and awkward turns of phrase that were just a little irritating, so I went back and edited my old posts. I don't know why it makes me feel weird that I did that or why I had the compulsive need to tell you about it, but it did and so now you know. Perhaps now you have incentive to go back and read the whole blog over again in an effort to spot the changes. No? Well I have no idea then.

I am going to send the link to mom. Hi mom! Love ya!

Catching Up

Three or so days ago I said that I was going to get some of my favorite scrapbook pages posted. I haven't done it. I will do it, but I haven't yet. Maybe this weekend. Maybe next week. Soon, my pretties, I promise.

You know those days where no matter how fast you hurry you just get farther and farther behind? That was my Thursday. I had something at work that was supposed to start at 10:30 a.m. that I knew would take roughly a half hour, theoretically freeing me up by 11:00. This was, of course, important because I "needed" to be able to leave work by 11:00 to do lunch with a colleague and then get to another obligation in a town about an hour away that started at 1:30 p.m. When I returned from that little jaunt, Shad and I "needed" to leave by about 4:30 p.m. so that we could travel for three hours to a concert that started at 10:00 p.m. While I realize that this isn't the very tight, every minute planned schedule that some people operate on a day to day basis, this was pretty packed for me. And it all went wrong.

My 10:30 didn't start until 11:00 so it didn't finish until 11:30. My colleague was waiting for me in my office (rather impatiently, I might add!) and off we went, only to turn around about five miles outside of town because we needed to trade vehicles. By the time that we get into the town where the 1:30 appointment is it's 12:20 or so and what was supposed to be a nice leisurely lunch with even more colleagues has turned into grabbing food from Popeye's and wolfing it down. We arrived promptly for the 1:30, which of course didn't get started until more like 2:15 and then, instead of taking the 15-20 minutes that I assumed it would take, went more like 45 minutes. A quick trip back had me home at 4:00, but we didn't actually leave town until 5:00 or so, which meant that our planned romantic dinner at the concert venue turned into the drive-thru at Arbys and a turkey sandwich that I ate as I drove. The concert? That's definitely another "Shad and Susan" story for the ages!

The concert was at the House of Blues in Chicago. We were very excited to see one of the newer artists on Jack Johnson's label, Zee Avi, in the smaller venue of the HOB called the "back porch." I was hoping for a jazz club-like atmosphere where we could sit at a table, maybe have a drink, and chill out while we enjoyed Zee's music.

As you have already gleaned from past posts, I'm a country mouse. I consider myself to be a very good driver and I really enjoy driving, but not necessarily in downtown Chicago and most definitely not when I'm not sure of where I'm going. We finally find the HOB and locate parking which, because I was getting frustrated and just wanted to be out of the stupid car, we ended up doing at the HOB. Valet parking. $16 minimum for one hour or less, more for longer. Not to expose my backwoodsishness, but I don't know that I've ever valet parked before, ever. As we're dropping off the car, the attendant asked what we're there for and when we say "a show" he looked a bit, well, befuddled. I justified this to myself by saying that the performed was fairly new and probably a bit unknown, thus off the radar.

As we entered the HOB the souvenir area was right inside of the door. It was about 9:10 p.m. or so and the doors didn't open until 9:30 so we had some time to kill. Plus, we had coupons for $10 shirts, so what better way to waste time than to pick up some mementos of what was sure to be an awesome night, right? I saw, but did not buy, this fantastic magnet. The sentiment is spot on for how I feel most days.

As Shad asked about an ATM, I took a closer look at the concert schedule but could not find Zee's name. The placard outside of the back porch had a name on it, but it was not Zee's name. The closest working ATM was a few steps outside of the HOB, so as we left to go to the ATM I asked Shad if I could take a look at the tickets. I looked, then asked him to look. At the date. He did and said "Yeah, it's the 26th." I'm sure you can see where this is going - our tickets were for the 26th all right. Of September.

I of course thought that this was hilarious! It kinda capped off my day in which nothing had gone as planned, but it was truly a "no harm, no foul" situation. After all, I got to spend time with my favorite boy, I got a cool HOB t-shirt, and now I have something else to look forward to doing with him! Pretty much win, win, win as far as I was concerned, and I immediately recognized that this (mis)adventure would become a part of our history. Shad didn't take it so well at first, there was a little self-blame, etc., but I think the ride home with great music and the "OMG I'm so tired that I'm loopy and saying off-the-wall stuff" conversation that we shared at about 2:00 a.m. made it a little better. At least he can tell the story and smile now!

So as not to have a three page long post, I shall end there and pick up again later with Friday, which turned out to be "Appreciate Susan" day. What a wonderful surprise!

Until then, my friends, keep your powder dry. Mostly because wet powder gets all clumpy, I guess...

*** Not that you probably care, but I always spell-check my posts. Strangely enough, "backwoodsishness" is not in Blogger's dictionary. "Colleague" and "souvenir" both are, thankfully. ;) ***

30 Days of Me - Day 7

Okay, total dilemma....

I had planned to do the "30 Days of Me" in 30 actual calendar days; however, due to a couple of late nights and poor planning on my part, I am now two calendar days behind. Do I post 3 days worth of material to catch up with the calendar or modify this project to be "30 Days of Me On Whichever 30 Days I Feel Like Posting"? I'm thinking about going with this one with the explicit understanding that I'll try to make it as close to 30 calendar days as is now possible - there's no use dragging this 30 days into a year long thing, right?

Today's prompt is "a picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you." My immediate response was to pull a picture of my adorable husband and plaster his mug all over this post - after all, we've been married almost ten years now and I simply adore him. He's undoubtedly my biggest fan and is supportive, indulgent and affectionate and, as I've said before, he's a hottie! He is, quite literally, the love of my life. *Can anyone tell that I'm feeling really schmoopy towards him today? Of course, he's asleep right now and it's pretty early, so there's no telling how I'll be feeling about him in a couple of hours.... ;)

As I gave the matter a little more thought, though, I considered the people who have given me wisdom, guidance and life lessons that I turn to again and again and who shaped the core values that I draw upon every day. Without further ado, I give you.....

My parents, circa 1980. I'm the adorable little blonde sprite and my sister Jen is the mischievous-looking brunette. Yep, this is me at seven!

My parents are awesome. There is literally not a situation in which I can look back and think "Wow. I wish they would have done _______ different." The lessons that they taught me (and the ones they let me learn on my own!) have provided the base for who I am today and who I'll be tomorrow.

When people tell me that I'm "just like" my mom or my dad, it always makes me feel good. There are definitely some ways that I'd like to be more like my parents - I'd love to have more of my dad's work ethic and technical knowledge and I'll never be the cook/homemaker that my mom is or, I suspect, be able to match her selflessness or compassion - but I guess those are things I can continue to work on. All in all, I'd have to say that I'm not "just like" either one of my parents, but a pretty decent blend of both. And I like it!

30 Days of Me - Day 6

So I don't know if she counts as a "superhero" or not, but for "Day 6 - your favorite superhero and why" I choose Alice from the Resident Evil movies. She has all of the qualities of a regulation superhero - genetically altered and programed by a big corporation as an experiment, now rebelling against said big corporation, generally kicking a** and taking names. Throw in the end-of-civilization zombie story lines and the franchise has it all. Just like spiderman but with zombies, right?

Now for the "why". I think that I like Alice as a superhero because she is depicted as a very self-sufficient, competent savioress of the world. This, of course, contrasts markedly from the usual gun-toting-bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold-avenging-the-loss-of-his-only-love movies.

As you can probably guess, I'm super-psyched for the new Resident Evil movie coming out next month. We might even go see it in 3-D!

Milestone Tuesday!

Okay, so you never have to read about me preparing to take my motorcycle road test again...I took it, I passed, I pretty much rock! I was a lot more nervous than I thought I was going to be but I got through it okay. Now I'm ready to hit the road on my own (legally) and I'm super-psyched about roaring up to work on my "hog". **Don't worry, I totally understand that I'm nowhere near that cool - I look like a woman approaching middle-age riding a motorcycle - but darn it I'm a happy middle-aged woman on a motorcycle!**

I love watermelon, I really do, but I'm not a fan of cutting it up. I know that I can buy it pre-cut, but as lazy as I am in not wanting to prepare it I'm even cheaper in that I won't pay 100% more for someone else to do it.

I do not like hand-washing dishes. Our water is very hard and leaves spots on our dishes, so even though we have a dishwasher it really doesn't work too well. I did about 70% of the dishes last night, but of course we had supper and dirtied more dishes, pans, etc. Even cutting up that darn watermelon dirtied more dishes!

My plan for tomorrow is to download (upload?) pictures of some of my favorite scrapbook pages. I'm not generally satisfied with my pages because I have a very hard time breaking free from my linear, very controlled style, but I've done some pages that I like a lot and I'll share them tomorrow.

Ah, the dishes await. Good night all!

30 Days of Me - Day 5

Day 5- a picture of somewhere you've been to

Well, on Christmas Day 2008 Shad and I "been to" our first trip out of the country together to Canada for a few days at Niagara Falls. Since it was right after Christmas there were not so many tourists and the weather turned out to be surprisingly nice. During our first trip down to the falls (our hotel was about three blocks away) there was a lot of snow and ice on the ground, especially as we got closer to the Falls.

Three days later, I took a picture of the same marker, now completely free of snow and ice. The temperatures got up to the high 50's, low 60's and it was actually nice enough to walk around without a coat (at least for those of us acclimated to the Midwestern winters!)

Possibly one of the best parts of the trip was the unique dining experience that we shared at a Chinese restaurant. Shad spotted the flyer for this place at our hotel and decided that we should give it a try. Of course, we had no concept of how far away from the hotel it was so we called a cab and, with our senses of adventure front and center, off we went to this fabulous mecca of Chinese goodness. Right. Like $10 later we got to the place and find that it's among the sketchiest buffets ever. Like, so sketchy that when the floors got a little wet the employees threw down copious amounts of corn starch to make it "safer." It was pretty atrocious, but us being us we found plenty to laugh about. Shad even found these delectable (?) cookies for desert.

30 Days of Me - Day 4

Fantastic. Now I get to share "a habit that you (I) wish you (I) didn’t have."

I have a couple to pick from, like the way that I'll put off doing housework until the last possible moment because it's just going to get dirty again in like four seconds anyway or the way that I make horrible food choices with the justification that "I'll do better tomorrow." I think that the one that I'll go with for these purposes is my compulsive acquisition of craft supplies.


I have way too many craft supplies by almost anyone's standards. It seems like if I get involved in a new craft, say making jewelry, I go out and buy all of the stuff I might possibly need to make 1000 bracelets. If there is an upside to my habit, I will say that I am relatively good at shopping for items either on sale or at flea markets/thrift stores. Of course, that doesn't reduce the amount of physical space that this stuff takes up. My craft room/office is now full to the brim. I'm even at the point that I feel like I can't tell the kids to clean up their rooms because my room (which is on the same floor as their bedrooms) is so messy!

I'm working on slowly but surely getting things organized, but you know how it goes - you have to make a mess to clean a mess. I'm at least getting better about putting things back where they belong when I'm done, so my table is at least 50% usable at most times.

So now that it's out in the open maybe I'll do a better job of staying on top of it, right? One can hope.....

Hasta la vista!

Sunday Roundup

A week or two ago I declared on facebook that I was going to re-introduce myself to crocheting. My third grade teacher taught all of her students to crochet and I remember really enjoying it and quite frankly being pretty good at it as well. Almost thirty years later I decided to try my hand at it again and I've posted the results (so far) for your review. Not too bad if I say so myself. My one lament is that the green yarn that I'm using is a different brand than the other colors and seems to be a little less dense, causing a very slight size variation in those squares. Live and learn I guess.....

Shad and I went on a lovely motorcycle ride today. We went to a town that we don't often visit and wandered through three of their antique/junk shops on the town square. My favorite find was five round quilted placemats for $7. It's actually a pretty good idea for us to go wandering on the bikes rather than taking one of the vehicles - it's easier to walk away from "must have" items because they won't fit in the saddlebags.

The one down side of the trip occurred when I experienced my first killin'. There we were, traveling at highway speed down a two-lane road. I was in the lead, Shad was behind me, and it was then that I saw my future victim, hoppity, hoppity, hoppiting from the other lane into ours in great, leaping hoppities. As soon as I saw the little guy (although really he was not so little so far as frogs go) something told me that our paths would soon cross. Sure enough, just as I went by he made a fantastic, flying leap right into my front tire. *SQUISH* It was horrible. Shad said that he watched as the frog went under my front tire and then was kicked out from my back tire where he landed in classicly comedic roadkill pose. I, of course, was cool about the whole thing. (Okay, that's a big dirty lie. As soon as I hit the frog I immediately started doing that hand-flap "Ew Ew Ew" motion, while actually saying "Ew Ew Ew" just like a little kid). I sincerely hope that is the last thing I hit, ever.

Shad and Malorie just went to pick up the pizza, so I'm going to call it an early (blog) night. See ya tomorrow!

30 Days of Me - Day 3

Today is "post a picture of you (me) and your (my) friends" day. I happen to love this picture of my VBF (Very Best Friend) and I that was taken in about 1990. Geeze, 20 years ago! Anyway, look at that youth, that vim, that vigor! We were hotties for sure! My VBF has retained her hotiliciousness, if I do say so myself and in as non-erotic way as possible, while I have become twice the woman I was back then. Okay, maybe not quite twice, but there's definitely much more to me now. I'm working on it, though.....

This is a picture of me with my best boy friend. Granted, we are not looking our very very best because it's from the zombie crawl that we did last year, but I still like the picture. It's a zombie kind of love. This boy is the most fun I've ever had......I picked good!

30 days of Me - Day 2

Today's prompt is "The meaning behind your blog name".

I must say that my blog name is pretty self-explanatory. I didn't come up with something mysterious or use some carefully crafted anagram, I just thought about my life and where I am right now and *kablooey* my blog's name was born.

I do like my little place here in the country. We moved from the middle of a bustling metropolis of approximately 15,000 people to our 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom Craftsman house on five acres in June of last year. We can see our neighbor's houses but not see our neighbors, if you know what I'm saying, and since we're only a mile and a half outside of a small town we are close to, but still away from, society. You've probably already guessed from reading some of my past posts that I'm not necessarily a "people" person.....

Short post tonight but I'm hoping to get to bed early and sleep late. Hope in one hand and poop in the other and see which one fills up first, right?!?!? (Who in the heck came up with that saying? It's gross, and the answer seems pretty apparent. I'm just going to sign off now.)

Night all!

Friday Randoms and Mystery Link

I am sooooooo tired. I made the (huge!) mistake of drinking a couple of iced coffee drinks last night at about 10:00 p.m. and was up until about 2:15 this morning. I then woke up at 6:15 and couldn't get back to sleep - of course - so I did what any sane, logical person would do and put on a pot of coffee. Coffee this morning, more coffee with lunch and I was still dragging by about 2:30 p.m. Where was my 5-Hour energy drink when I needed it? I've seen the commercials - one shot would have banished the "2:30 feeling" and given me energy to get through the rest of my day.



I am soooooo digging this granny square blanket that I found in this blog from April 2007. Unfortunately when I clicked on the link to try to find the original source of the picture, the blog could not be found. I can only imagine the other stunning projects that are now forever hidden from me. At least I found this one! I really hope that one day I'll be able to be this free with color and completely disregard my deeply-ingrained need for order. Baby steps away from the blues, greens and grays that I usually stick to and towards the bright random color chaos....








I am sooooooo excited that we finally got to go to The Bale Out when we went to the City Museum in St. Louis this week. You can imagine my elation when we got to the third floor of the City Museum and saw that the stairway was open and people were ascending to shop, (or at least you will be able to once I tell you just what The Bale Out is). Apparently The Bale Out obtains actual bales of clothing from who-knows-where, pulls out the pieces, puts them on racks at generally ridiculously low prices, and waits for people to discover the awesomeness. I walked out with six corduroy skirts/pants (each about 1 1/2 yards of recoverable fabric as well as the zippers, snaps, buttons, etc.) for six dollars. Was I psyched? Yes, yes I was.



I am sooooooo hoping that you will trust me enough to click on this link to see what I picked to share with you today. Go ahead, do it! Would I steer you wrong?





Okay, I'm gonna do what I gotta do (sleep!) and you go do what you gotta do. Later!

30 Days of Me - Day 1

So here we are on Day 1 of the 30 Days of Me blog challenge. Or experiment. Or endeavor. Or project. Whatever, because I'm sure you know what I'm referring to and I don't think we should get hung up on the name of whatever it is I'm doing here. It is what it is, right?

Okay, so the prompt for Day 1 is to post a recent picture of yourself (myself) and 15 interesting facts about yourself (myself). Off we go.


I hate taking my picture or having my picture taken, so it was actually a bit of a challenge to find a recent picture of me. I took this one one night after Shad and I got back from an all-day motorycle ride. As you might guess from the particular shade of red that I have attained, I forgot sunscreen. Burn*ouch*burn.

15 interesting facts about me - in no particular order

1. I was bitten by a zebra in Virginia.
2. The first concert I went to was Bon Jovi. Skid Row opened for them.
3. If I'm at home and not expecting company, I might not be wearing pants.
4. I don't eat seafood, but I like sushi (veggies only please!)
5. I knew that I wanted to marry Shad three weeks after we met.
6. I do not like being called "Sue".
7. I have an atrocious memory.
8. I spell-check my blogs before I post them. I also check the spelling on my facebook posts so as not to seem like an idiot.
9. All of my pets are male and have "people" names.
10. I spent a semester abroad in Switzerland.
11. I'd rather drive than fly for vacations.
12. I have to have the TV on (usually to cartoons) to fall asleep.
13. I can spend up to two hours in the bathtub with a good book.
14. I'd rather work 2nd or 3rd shift but can't because of my profession.
15. I'm a huge fan of zombie/end of the world movies.

1 down, 29 to go!

Ooooh - I'm doing it! 30 Days of Me

I saw this blog challenge on Pamplemousse's blog here and she saw it on another blog whose author saw it here and so now in the fine tradition of jumping on the bandwagon, I shall also participate.

Here's a list of the days/challenges if you want to play along:

Day 1- recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
Day 2- the meaning behind you blog name
Day 3- a picture of you and your friends
Day 4- a habit that you wish you didn’t have
Day 5- a picture of somewhere youve been to
Day 6- favorite super hero and why
Day 7- a picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
Day 8- short term goals for this month and why
Day 9- something youre proud of in the past few days
Day 10- songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, bored, hyped, mad
Day 11- another picture of you and your friends
Day 12- how you found out about blogger and why you have one
Day 13- a letter to someone who has hurt you recently
Day 14- a picture of you and your family
Day 15- put you ipod on shuffle: first 10 songs that play
Day 16- another picture of yourself
Day 17- someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
Day 18- plans/dreams/goals you have
Day 19- nicknames you have and why you have them
Day 20- someone you see yourself marrying or being with in the future
Day 21- a picture of something that makes you happy
Day 22- what makes you different from everyone else
Day 23- something you crave for a lot
Day 24- a letter to your parents
Day 25- what I would find in your bag
Day 26- what do you think about your friends
Day 27- why are you doing this 30 day challenge
Day 28- a picture of you from last year and now, how have you changed since then?
Day 29- in this past month, what have you learned
Day 30- your favorite song

In order to avoid doing three posts in one day, I shall begin Day 1 tomorrow. It's always nice to start on a Friday, isn't it?

*I must tell y'all that I am MUCH too proud of myself for finally figuring out how to do a link in my blog. I've got some fixin' to do in some of my older posts, so if you read something that references something and you were like "What the heck is she talking about?" you may want to go back and check for a link. Whoo-hooooo! Accomplishment!*

Bummer

So it was my sincere intent to accomplish Goal #3 this afternoon and obtain my motorcycle license, but the fates seemed to have a different plan in store for me. Despite my frantic rushing around after work, I arrived at the DMV five (5) minutes too late to take the test. It may have been for the best, I guess, since I went out to the course just to get an idea of how my motorcycle will handle and it seems that the weaving-in-and-out-of-cones portion of the test may be a little difficult on my bike. Fortunately my parents have loaned me the use of the "Angry Hornet" - a 250 cc Honda that's almost as old as I am but is much smaller and easier to manuver than my Shadow. Why the "Angry Hornet" you ask? Mostly because if you attempt to take the motorcycle over 50 mph or so it sounds like a swarm of angry stingy things are right on your tail. *Reeeen*Reeeeen* says the Angry Hornet....

I notice that I'm having a hard time coming up with different ways to say "my motorcycle." If I keep typing "my motorcycle" it's just too boring and repetative. If I say "my bike" it could possibly be confused with my bicycle and, although I don't ride my bicycle as much as my motorcycle, I have the ever-present good intention to use my bicycle more as well. I'm thinking the motorcycle needs a good nickname.

Any ideas? I really feel like it's a "she" (even though it may be slightly homo-erotic for me to be riding around town on a "she" - I'm secure enough to get past that). For some reason "Nelda" popped into my head but I just can't settle on it since it makes me think of an old, sick lady that I had frequent contact with a while back. If that Nelda is dead, would it be okay to call the bike "Nelda"? There's obviously no danger of confusion at this point.... :)

About three or four months back I found some work by an artist that really caught my attention. It's simple, straight-forward and rather child-like in its approach, but I'm not necessarily an art snob so I won't pretend to not like it. Fortunately, I saved pictures of some of this guy's work; unfortunately I didn't save a link or his name. I've done some google searches with "May" and variations of "outsider art" and "outsider painting" but it's not coming up. Anyone have any ideas?

That's it for now. Keep on keepin' on!

Welcome back!

Okay, so it's probably a little weird to welcome myself back to my poor little neglected blog, but I do so anyway. Gotta get up and back, back on track.....



So Elsie started this project on her blog and it seems like a fine idea to me. The idea is to pick four goals that will be completed before the end of the year - big goals, small goals, easy goals, involved goals, whatever goals you may choose. Best part of all? You are encouraged to reward yourself for reaching each of your stated goals. It's really a pretty free-form idea and Lord knows that I don't like to operate with a lot of constraints. I've thought about it for a couple of days now and I think that I'm ready to commit to my four.

ONE - Blog more regularly. Our home computer is finally back and I can no longer use the excuse that I can't add pictures the way that I want to. I'm thinking that at least a couple of posts a week is definitely do-able, and it shall be done.

TWO - Crochet a granny-square blanket. I just got back into crocheting after a twenty-something year hiatus and have really enjoyed it so far. Thank goodness for youtube and the pause button! Shad kept laughing at me because I was trying to get the grandmother-type lady doing the tutorial to slow down and she just wasn't listening. It's not my fault that it takes me twice as long to do three double crochets as it takes her to do it - come on lady, give me a break! Anyway I've already finished three or four squares, so probably only fifty or seventy left to do. Please notice that I didn't say how big the blanket would be!!!!

THREE - Get my motorcycle license. I've had my permit for a little over a month now and I'm getting really comfortable on my motorcycle so I think it's about time. Right now I have to have an "experienced" rider with me at all times and I'm not supposed to ride after dark, which means no riding to work for me. This will probably be my "easiest" goal to achieve - it's a one-time (hopefully) four skill test that should take about ten minutes.

FOUR - Try new recipes. On one hand I don't like this goal too much because it's a little too "Suzy Homemaker" for me, but on the other hand our finances dictate that we do more meals at home and my cooking repertoire is not large. I have cookbooks and access to the internet, so one would assume that it would not be difficult to locate some new, relatively easy recipes to try out. Since "try new recipes" is a little vague, let's flesh that out to "Try at least one new recipe per week" and let's put a two-month time frame on it. That makes goal number four "Try at least one new recipe per week for the next two months."

So now I've got the goals and I need to come up with the rewards. The reward for passing my motorcycle test is obvious - more bike time! I suspect the spirit of this challenge would dictate that I pick something more specific, so I'll work on that.

Okay, to bed with me! See ya soon, baboon!