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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter! Blessings Galore ...

The weekend started on Friday by having lunch with Heidi for her birthday. How in the hell she's supposed to be 29 still has me completely stumped. Didn't I just turn 29 a couple of years ago? Anyway, we had a wonderful visit even though Morgan was sick with a double ear infection. She was still a sweetie and pretty dang pleasant considering how crappy she must've felt. Lauren and Tiffany had been trying to get her to tell Heidi "Happy Birthday" and she was so proud of herself saying "Bir-day!!" It was SO CUTE!! The only thing is that she's associating her Easter baskets with "Bir-day!!" I guess she'll have it figured out soon enough.

Saturday morning we left early to drop Peanut off with Dad before heading to Charlottesville to meet Cari and Matt for lunch. We ended up at a favorite Italian restaurant. Cari and I both got pasta with their famous "Pink Sauce," Matt ordered a Stromboli and Bob a personal pan pizza. Everything was wonderful and we certainly walked away satisfied. After browsing some of the shops it was time to hit the brewery - Starrhill Brewery, about 13 miles away in Crozet. It wasn't a "Cari" thing to do but we knew Matt would really enjoy it - and he did. I don't think they've seen the last of him. We enjoyed sampling six of their creations on tap - well we enjoyed most of them. One, Double Platinum, was perfectly horrid! It's extra hoppy and literally turns your mouth inside out! Nasty Asty!! None of us could even finish the sample. After filling two of Rick's Growlers with Cryptical and Love it was time to move on.

Before we left though, I wanted Cari to open some of the goodies I took her. A couple of months ago she ran across a fabulous deal on a complete set of all seven NCIS seasons on ebay. Unable to resist, I bought them. She's a hopeless NCIS junkie. She was thrilled when she saw I brought them to her. Our neighbor, who is NCIS, managed to finagle a personalized autograph of Michael Weatherly for her. I hadn't said a peep to her about any of this and was dying to see her surprise when she took it out of the bag (along with MY personalized autograph of Mark Harmon!!). Surprise is putting it mildly. She was amazed!! And softy that he is our neighbor said her joy over it made HIS day!

On the way to Harrisonburg Bob and I stopped at the hotel to check in and freshen up. Salad Creations, one of the local places was where we found ourselves for dinner. To my knowledge, we don't have anything like that here. They have quite a few salads on the menu, but you can also create your own. It was very reasonable and everything is fresh - it tasted wonderful!

The movie "Source Code" was next on our agenda. It was certainly different! Bob stayed awake through it - that's saying something! We went back to Cari's apartment to enjoy a cup of tea before going back to our hotel room. By the time I had my face washed and pjs on it was nearly 11:30. Bob was soon snoring and I didn't get much reading done.

This morning Cari wanted to fix us some of her wonderful banana pancakes for breakfast. She was right - they were delicious!! After visiting some more over an awesome breakfast it was time to leave for home.

Delivering the Growlers was the last thing on our agenda for today. We had no intention of assisting to "kill" them - but that's just what we did. So, all in all it was a perfect weekend - time spent with younguns, family, friends, good food and last but not least, good beer = good times. Like I said ... Blessings Galore ...

Happy Easter!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Spring!!

Well I guess spring is officially here. While most people are loving this weather, me not so much. The pollen is killing me. The yellow/green dust from all the pines covers everything. I'm a prisoner in my own home. By the time the pollen is mostly gone it'll be so hot I'll still be miserable. Between allergies and menopause I've really become more of a winter person. Fall has always been my favorite time of year anyway - now even more so.

Anyway, I'll do a week in review. I can only review the latest week because I can't remember enough to review the whole month and a half I've missed. Last week wasn't my best week. Oh it started off good - it just went in the toilet pretty quickly - and I mean that literally. I finally got a new iPhone on March 17. That piece of crap LG Voyager was really on its last leg. I was loving my new phone!! There's a few quirks that I'm not thrilled with but mostly I was in love with it. Monday I met Heidi and Morgan at Mom and Dad's so we could all go to lunch together. It was lovely! The weather was good (for most people, that means sweating while doing nothing for me), lunch (at Panera) was delicious and we had four generations together! That doesn't happen every day. When we got back to the house I just slipped my phone into my back pocket and grabbed my keys - left my purse in the car. Long story short, I went to the bathroom before leaving to come home and guess what? I forgot my phone was in my back pocket. When I went to pull my pants down that baby flipped right out and went swimming!! You have never seen anyone dive so fast into a toilet in your life! It was only in there a second - thank goodness it was clean water! (All of a sudden I really didn't even have to go anymore!) My heart sunk about as fast as my phone. Not pretty.

I dried it off and it appeared to be okay. I took a breath. I thought maybe I retrieved it fast enough. I didn't say a peep to anyone about what happened. Still hoping against hope it wasn't damaged I took it out to snap a picture of Morgan ... um, not good. The view was all cloudy. First major sign it didn't escape unharmed. I left not long after that and was constantly checking the phone to see if the camera was any better. I plugged it into the radio and it even played my tunes fine. I still had hope ... for a while. Until I picked it up and it was hot to the touch. Not a good sign. I didn't know if it would dry itself out or just continue to get worse. In the end, I decided to go by Best Buy and ask what they recommended. Thankfully, we purchased the Black Tie program and it was exchanged without a problem. I had to go back to my piece of crap phone for a few days but on Thursday morning I got the call saying my phone was in and I could come pick it up. That was a happy day.

Knitting
I am making my first wearable garment - well I guess that isn't actually true because I started a Kimono last spring. But a Kimono is a cardigan and it doesn't have to fit particularly well to be acceptable. I started a Miley-tee a couple of weeks ago. The yarn I'm using is Cascades Ultra Pima and it's a beautiful rich teal color. I love the sheen of this yarn. It's 100% cotton so it's not exactly forgiving to work with but I think it will be worth it. Anyway, Friday morning at S&B I was so excited to get to the point of putting the sleeves on a holder and just working in the round on the body. The sleeves and body of the top added up to nearly 400 stitches per round - it takes a while to complete a round. I had never been ecstatic with the way the "v" had come together when joined but figured there was some little finishing technique that would "improve" it. Well I broke one of the sacred rules when I started this top - I didn't read the pattern all the way through before casting on. As written, the "v" is fairly deep. Since I didn't want to have to wear something under the top, I decided to join it earlier than the pattern stated. Well, the instructions for joining were further down on the directions and I didn't "catch" it until about 3" past where I joined. I was sick. I knew ultimately I had to frog (rip out) all the way back to the join and do it again. Three inches may not sound like much but when you're looking at nearly 400 stitches per round ... well, let's just say it's a lot. Saturday morning I sucked it up and ripped it back. Challenging though it was I managed to get all the stitches back on a needle and have been playing catch up. I'm still not back to where was on Friday but I'll get there.

I also had to rip out some socks I was working on - quite a few times. Not a very productive week for knitting. But ... there's always the next week!! I finally got the Kimono I started last spring seamed on Monday. Karen came over to help me figure it out and between us we did. So yaaahh!! It isn't perfect but nothing I make is so that's ok. This was a learning experience and I didn't spend big bucks on the yarn for this project so if it ends up being a knock around the house sweater, that works for me. I still have to do 7" worth of garter stitch all around the front (lapel) so it's not done - but a whole lot closer than before!! It will be my auto-pilot project - except when it's too hot, which would be today. It's supposed to be almost 90 degrees today. I'm hibernating.

TTFN,
QB