Getting the band back together

Yep, getting the band back together.  By which I mean I'm trying to organize my life (again) and write this blog (again) and keep a planner (again).  Etc., etc..

It has come to my attention that I want to Pay More Attention.  I'm somehow missing things that are going on, and both saddens and frustrates me.  I love reading other people's blogs, which are really mini-essays on their life, and often think about what I could write about.  But then I don't do it.  I'm not even talking writing for other people, but writing for me.  I used to journal as a child and teen, but then I stopped.  I started again in my twenties, but then stopped again.  Journaling was one of the reasons I wanted to start a blog.  I think I got wrapped up in what it means to be a Blogger.  Who is the audience?  What is my style?  What type of blog do I want--craft? Lifestyle?  Mommy?  Because I like all of those, and I like so much more.

So here is my experiment again.  Let's see if I can get it to fly this time.  My audience?  Me.  Because this is for me, as a way to show who I was at this particular point in time.  So no how-tos, no step-by-steps.  (Linking is fine, because I can't do anything without the internet.)  Probably a lot of lists.  I love lists.  I mean LOVE lists.

And some photos, which I have to get better about getting off the camera and onto the computer so I can use them here.  That was one of the things I wasn't good at the last time I worked on this blog.  Moving and editing photos.  So I am giving myself permission to use un-edited photos, at least for now.  That might change, and then again, it might not.  We'll see.

I just tried to find a photo to put here, one from my phone that shows that I can do it.  Apparently I can't.  My photos on my phone are associated with a different email than this one, so no photo this post.  Hopefully I can figure this out and have photo loaded soon.

Well, that's it for my first post in almost two years.  Just get 'er done, I say.  The first one is always the hardest.  Just a throw away post, like the first pancake.

Staying in

Oh, goodness.  There is a warning on my phone about the heat index.  Heat index near 110 degrees this afternoon.  Black flag conditions.  There will be no running outside for me today.  This is the hardest part of being a northerner temporarily transplanted to the south.  Summer up north means temperatures of around 80, and maybe a few days of 90s in August.  Summer up north is so short and fleeting that you were supposed to be outside as much as possible, soaking it in and taking advantage of it all.  The summer heat down here just flattens me.  Although I am much more acclimated than I was a few years ago (a few months ago, I was wearing long pants at 80 degrees), nothing-- and I mean nothing-- will ever get me used to a heat index of 110.  I don't think I'm the only one, though.  The streets are relatively quiet in our neighborhood today, despite the fact that kids are home from school.

So what am I doing to keep myself busy inside?  Aside from drinking buckets of iced tea (oh, Republic of Tea Blackberry Sage, you are delicious), I have finally started working on the Midsummer Morning sampler by Alicia Paulson.  I prepped the floss for this back in May, but only got around to starting it this past week.  It is lovely, but it is stitched on black linen.  The going is rather slow.  I don't think I'll be making anything else on black linen any time soon.

This looks grey, but it is really black.

I'm also working on two pair of socks, both of which were supposed to be gifts.  One pair, I think, is going to stay with me.  Not because I love it too much, but rather the opposite.  Although it will end up being fine, it certainly will not be gift-worthy.  The other pair will get to the recipient, rather later than I had hoped.  I'm losing my sock knitting mojo, though, and am really itching to start a bigger project.  But 110 degrees makes me feel like it will never be cool enough for wool, ever again.  Ever.  I guess I'll just work on some cotton pants for Camden.

Everything of Camden's has dogs on it, if at all possible.

Squam Part 1: Pictures

It was lovely.

On my nightstand

Woah.  I really thought I would be able to post more in the past month.  No school for me apparently meant not much computer for me.  I think I just needed a break from my laptop.  But I read a lot!  I actually, for the first time, worked my way completely through my nightstand from last month.  Well, at least the front stack.


What I read:
The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion)
Maine (J. Courtney Sullivan)
Heads in Beds (Jacob Tomsky)
Eighteen Acres (Nicolle Wallace)
Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)

And I'm currently reading Going Clear.  That's it.  That's the stack!  Yay for me!

This month, I'm hoping to finish Going Clear.  Right now I'm stalled on it.  I read another book about Scientology a couple of years ago, so I'm waiting for this one to hook me in with some new information.  The new stack has Still Missing by Chevy Stevens.  This one was sent to me by my mother.  I like a good mystery.  We will see, since this one has a blurb by Gillian Flynn, who wrote Gone Girl, which I did not like at all.  The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, Glock by Paul M. Barrett, and Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman. I've also moved Cloud Atlas from the back stack to the front stack.  Although I've been meaning to read this for years, the reason it gets moved up this month is because Ready Player One was amazing.

Ready Player One had been sitting on my nightstand for months, and I cannot believe people were not shaking me for not reading it sooner!  How can you be a movie geek raised in the 80s and not read this?  It was so unique and engrossing.  I stayed up way too late on several nights to finish it.  It has been a long time since a book has made me stay up reading past 2 am.  So, Cloud Atlas, there's a lot of pressure on you!  Are you as good as Ready Player One?  I've heard rumors...

Happy Star Wars Day!

I have finished what could possibly be the geekiest thing I have ever made.  Star Wars cross stitch!

I finished them last night.  Well, not quite finished.  I need to add some French knots in a few places, but other than that, they are finished.  A long time coming, too.  I started them two years ago.  To be fair, I didn't even work on them at all in this house until yesterday.  They had been "lost" when we moved and I just found them.  (This is a polite way of saying I'm still unpacking boxes nine months after moving.  Eh, what can you do?  We actually moved boxes from North Carolina to here that had never been unpacked from our last move.)

A closer look:

And the back (because I always like to see the back):

The patterns are from weelittlestitches on Etsy.  They have some really fun patterns.  I would love to do the Ferris Bueller or Breakfast Club patterns.  Now, off to watch a movie.  Episode V, perhaps?

May the Fourth be with you!

{this moment}

Joining Amanda in celebrating a single moment of the week, a moment to remember.

On my nightstand

Whoo hoo!  Finished with spring semester, 2014.  That was a hard slog.  Three classes, one of which was pathophysiology.  Ugh.

So what are my educational plans for the summer?  This:

Only recreational reading.  That's right, I'm not taking classes at all this summer!  Ohmygosh, I'm so very excited to not have to be on a deadline for the next four months.

Right now, I'm reading The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion on my Kindle.  Not great, but good.  On the stack are:  Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan (bought at a Barnes & Noble 3 for 2 table), Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky (insiders view of hotel service), Going Clear by Lawrence Wright (about Scientology), Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (this has been on my to-read list since it came out), and Eighteen Acres by Nicolle Wallace (given to me by my mother, and sounds kind of like the television program Scandal).

The books in the second stack have been hanging out quite a while.  There are a couple of feeding babies and toddlers, one one parenting, Cloud Atlas (which has been on the table for at least a year, and I refuse to watch the movie before reading the book, which means that I've been telling my DVR not to delete it for months now, too), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (re-reading this one, so not in a hurry to finish), and The Winter Palace (ordered in a fit of Russian interest during the Winter Olymics, about Catherine the Great).

I'm also planning some knitting, of course, but no pictures of yarn yet.  And I'm starting a sampler.  The floss is wound.

And, of course, hanging out with these two.

Please note the dog (Charlie) photo bombing the picture.  Snouts everywhere, I tell you.