Celebrations

A very dear friend of mine got married last weekend to a fantabulous fella who's perfect for her. He's smart, funny, and I know he'll take care of her. Oh, and he's extremely tall. My friend and I have been friends for nearly fourteen years now and of course she's brought other guys around. But there was something about this guy that made me think, "He's the one." The first time we met him, my husband actually turned to me and said, "Tell her he's a keeper." I was blessed enough to be a part of her bridal party and this picture was taken during her rehearsal dinner. Tell me the truth, isn't she the most gorgeous bride ever (she's the one making the face)? I had other pictures of the wedding but I felt that this picture really captured who she is. :)

The husband and I are at that age where attending weddings are a large part of our lives. We had three in June and one more in July. We'll have at least two more in the fall. Anyway, since we've been going to so many weddings in the past two years, I've noticed something interesting. The way the wedding turns out is really reflective of the couple's personalities. A lot of times it's just really reflective of the bride, but sometimes it's both. Anyway, so my friend who just got married last week is a fun loving kind of girl who likes to laugh and her laugh is quite distinctive and well known. Anyway, her wedding ceremony turned out to be filled with laughter and was just well, the wedding ceremony was just her. Another wedding we went to was nice but it was disorganized and well, apparently this was also reflective of the bride. Another friend of mine had a wedding that was simple and elegant, and that's probably how I would describe her as well.

Geez, after weddings come first baby parties. Getting old.

I Can Quit!

The day that I've been waiting for for three years has finally come. I can quit. My employer paid for my Master's Degree with the stipulation that I work for them for three years. I have fulfilled my obligation. This year was the roughest for me so far. Crazy parents, crazy colleagues, crazy caseload, and I seriously contemplated finding employment elsewhere at the end of the school year. However, I also realized this year that I also have wonderful parents, wonderful colleagues, and, hmm, well, still crazy caseload. Like the rest of life, with the lows also came the highs and the good far outweighed the bad. Alright, the pay raises that we've been getting also helped with the decision. Anyway, I'm not leaving anytime soon, but it's nice knowing that I now have options.

Megan's wedding was this weekend and so I got to spend some time with some of my friends from grad school. Grad school was the toughest two years of my life and I often refer to that time as my dark period. And it was, it most definitely was. However, a lot of good came out of it (okay, well, other than the whole Master's Degree, career thing). I met and became friends with a bunch of fantastic people that I probably would never have met otherwise. During those years, these people were my family. We all had our own families and friends outside of school, but we all spent a good deal of time with each other. At the time, we were the only ones who understood each other. Everyone else around us tried, but we were really the only ones who understood that 3 year olds could be terrifying and that comps was not just another test. Now that grad school is over, we have all returned to our outside friends and family and we don't get to see each other very often. We're all so different but still, after all this time has past, I still have so much fun when I see them. Whether it's sharing hilarious stories from work or playing pass the baby, I'm always entertained when I see them. Huh, never thought I'd find something positive about my dark period.

Happy Birthday, M*Bark!

M*Bark turned 1 on Saturday! Well, we think she's 1. There was a wee bit of discrepancy regarding her actual birthdate. When we got her, we were told that her birthday was in May. But when we looked at her paperwork from the vet, it said it was in June. We figured that they must of gotten that date from the paperwork from the previous vet, so it looks like her birthday's in June.Here's M*Bark checking out her presents. The carrot is from the MIL and it makes a fun noise when shaken. We got her the football cookie, but broke in half b/c it was a little big for her. She chomped it right down and we'll give her the other half tonight.

Graduating

It's the end of the year and my kids are leaving. Some of them are just leaving for the summer, while other ones are leaving for the next chapter of their lives.

Yesterday was preschool graduation. All of the kids who graduated made such huge gains since they entered our program. I laugh when I read their old initial evaluation reports and think back to where they were when they entered our program. Some of them were horribly unintelligible. Others of them had extremely poor receptive language. And others of them weren't talking at all. And looking at them now, you wouldn't even think they were the same kids. Many of our kids graduating have caught up to their chronological age peers and can start elementary school just like any other child. They don't need us anymore. They are intelligible, they can understand what you're saying, and boy, can some of them talk. I love it when a parent grumbles to me that their child talks too much because that means that I've done my job.

My fifth graders also graduated today. Their graduation was harder for me than yesterday's graduation. At least I'll be able to see my preschoolers walking around on campus next year and I'll be working with some of them. But my fifth graders are leaving elementary school and although I'm sad that they're leaving me, I understand that they're heading to bigger and better things. These are the kids that I started with, the kids that I have spent my days with for the past three years. There were days when I wanted to strangle them and there were days when I wanted to hug them. These were my kids and it was hard to say goodbye.

I tell people that it is my job to work myself out of a job. All of my kids either graduate from our school and move on or they improve so much that they no longer need me. And while my job is rewarding and I love it when my kids don't need me any longer, it's still hard to say goodbye.

M*Bark, The Yarn, and Doggy School

Last weekend as I was working on the yarn room, I heard a clacking sound coming from the living room. Realizing that this sound probably meant that M*Bark was up to something, I went to investigate and found this:
She had discovered my knitting on the coffee table and had decided that it was interesting. The clacking sound that I heard was the sound of my knitting needles being moved around. Thankfully she left my project on the table. So I walked into the living room and found my project lying on the table, my ball of yarn clear across the room, and yarn connecting the two throughout the room. It was an inexpensive ball of cotton so I was more amused than annoyed. I think she has a thing for yarn/hand knits b/c I've also found my ipod (in its knitted case) on the stairs and she keeps plucking my knitted hat from my school bag.

Respecting the yarn isn't one of the lessons that they directly teach, but M*Bark's been going to Doggy School on the weekends. She's doing well and likes going. She's already made some friends. It's weird, though, b/c I think my 10th grade student council advisor is in the class. One of these days I'm going to go talk to her and find out for sure. Here's Lance working on the "stay" command:
Here's M*Bark at "recess" checking out the contents of my bag. That's probably how she looks when shes plucking hand knits out of my school bag.
Doggy School is tiring and M*Bark's pretty wiped out at the end of class. Mmm...comfy pillow...

Changes

Changes, changes, changes. Lots has happened since my last post. In March, Lance and I celebrated both our eight year anniversary and our two year wedding anniversary. It's hard to believe that so much time has past and every day I feel blessed that we found each other. Anyway, we combined our anniversaries into one and spent the day at the zoo and ate a delicious lunch at the Oceanarium. It was bloody hot at the zoo, but it was nice spending time at the site of our first date.

After my last post, the Big Pack really took off. We packed and packed and packed. I can't believe we accumulated so much stuff over the past two years. This move was a lot harder than my first move. The first time individual people moved in, this time a married couple moved out, along with all the stuff that a home has. Bed, couch, desks, kitchen stuff, kitchen stuff, kitchen stuff. Thank goodness we had so many people helping us -- we have amazing family and friends. It also helped a lot that my parents were able to store some of our stuff for a bit so we were able to move a lot out during the week. [Note: If you move and have people who can help you move, renting a U-Haul is a fantastic deal. Their website even has tips to make your move easier. No, I don't work for them.]

When we moved, we were also able to bring our dog home from my mother-in-law's house. In retrospect, perhaps it wasn't the wisest idea to bring her home on the same day of our big move. She was able to transition rather well from owner to owner, but we discovered that she had some separation anxiety in the beginning of her move. We found this out during our first weekend when one of our neighbors kindly left a note on our door about our dog's barking. Ironic, isn't it? I, who have been notoriously intolerant of my neighbors, suddenly found myself as the annoying neighbor next door. Thankfully, it all worked out in the end. Her barking led us to take her around the neighborhood to apologize and we got to meet our neighbors. Most of them were understanding and the neighbor who left the note was actually the friendliest. We desensitized her and taught her that us leaving the house was not a big deal and now all is good. We decided to wait to get a cat and although I'm a little disappointed, I realize that getting a cat right now is not a good idea. And besides, with a dog as cute as her, how can I really be sad? :) Anyway, meet M*Bark. Don't worry, that's not her real name.

It's been crazy busy with our new house and our new dog and we're pretty much walking around in a constant state of exhaustion. There's a lot of work to put into our new home, some of which we didn't anticipate. It's funny how some of the stuff that didn't bother me at all when we bought the house bug me now. I loved our townhouse and the newness of it and it's hard going from brand new to not brand new, but I love the fact that the home we're creating is the home that we're going to be in, well, pretty much forever. The townhouse is where we started our life together and this house is where we'll start a family and grow old together. [Note: No, we're not starting that family right now.] With the circumstances surrounding our purchase of our house, we've been saying that this house was meant for us. As an additional sign, check out the light that's in the yard. Dragonflies!

Test

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3. Testing.

Huh, I guess I can blog at work. I'm afraid, too, though. One because Big Brother's always watching (my friend "accidentally" chatted while in school and got an email busting her for it). And two because I don't want Big Brother to figure out that blogger exists and block it. I have some interesting blogs that I read at lunch and I'd be sad if they were blocked. Okay, the second reason is really why I'm scared to blog at work. Not so much the getting in trouble part.

Better go, they're watching...

Spring Break 2007 - Week 1

It's spring break. So what have I been doing?

1) Work. Bloody work. Our database was supposed to switch over to another system during the break so most of us busted ass to get everything in before the switch. Because let's face it. We all knew that the new system was gonna suck for at least the first six months of operation. Anyway, so for the first few days of break I worked and what happened? The people who were stupid enough to decide to switch us over during the busiest time of the year exercised some common sense (amazing...) and decided that the system wasn't ready and postponed it indefinitely. So I worked my ass off for nothing. Well, maybe not nothing. At least it won't be so crazy when I go back after the break...though I do get paid to do work after the break and not during the break, but whatever. Trying to find the positive here.

2) Packing. We're preparing for our big move in a couple of weeks and we need to have most of our stuff out next week. We haven't done much yet, but I'm sure Week 2 will be more productive.

3) House Stuff. Termite inspection, house insurance, paint colors (still working on it), and procurement of some new comfy chairs.

4) Cat-sitting. I spent a good portion of this week cat-sitting/house watching/plant watering at my parents' house. I had a great deal of fun playing with my parents' cat. Her name is Callie and she's about a year old so she is quite entertaining. I can't wait to get a cat when we move in to our new house. I'm also looking forward to bringing home our dog from the mother-in-law's house. Hopefully they'll get along and be great friends.

Messy, Messy

It's been a stressful couple of months. It's not completely over yet, but at least I can stop cleaning my house every other day. And I can stop worrying (hopefully!) that I'm gonna have to run home in the middle of the day to pick up dirty laundry. I've never had a house so clean before. The counters and kitchen sink were cleaned and scrubbed more times in the last couple of months than they have been in the last two years. We even removed the hamper from our house and have been stuffing dirty laundry into laundry/grocery bags and shoving them in our cars until I did the laundry. We're not slobs, but we're also not compulsively clean either. Anyway, we're really enjoying having a hamper again and, judging from the current state of my house, we're also enjoying not having to be super clean. I think we're taking it to the extreme, though, because my house is quite messy right now. I was using this tissue as a book mark. I finished the book a week ago and the tissue ended up falling to the floor. So I dropped the tissue last week and I just took a picture of it now....so therefore this tissue has been on my floor for a week. Yep, I've been looking at this tissue for a week. It's in the area between my bed and the window and since I also sleep on that side of the bed, I don't think my husband has seen it yet. I'm guessing that he hasn't b/c he probably would have picked it up by now. I kinda want to leave it there. It's like this tissue represents my frustration with cleaning every other bloody day and it's rebelling for me. I also want to see how long it will stay there before Lance picks it up. Yes, I'll leave it there, I don't want to pick it up.

I'm gonna go pick it up.

Touching a Neuron

Like many Americans tonight, Lance and I watched American Idol. When I was single, I watched Seasons 3 & 4, but not fanatically and I really didn't care if I missed an episode. Now American Idol is DVRed. Watching it as a married couple is a lot more fun for me. I don't know why. Maybe because Lance is a captive audience for whatever comments come out of my mouth as we watch it. Or maybe because we "draft" contestants at the beginning and bet a cookie on the outcome.

Watching tonight's episode, I started thinking about the first time I watched American Idol which then led to thinking about the first time I saw one of the Season Finales. My "boss" often uses the phrase "touching a neuron." And although I'm not really using it in the same context as she does, I think the phrase still applies to what I was feeling tonight. As I heard the familiar theme song tonight, it was like "bing!" and my mind immediately went to Cheree and my memory of her insisting that we take a study break to watch the show. And then I heard the theme song again and it was like "bing!" and my mind wandered back to the first time that I ever saw a season finale for the show. We had just arrived at one of the Vegas hotels on our post-grad school trip and Cheree had insisted that we watch the finale in our hotel room before we went to get dinner. Isn't life interesting? All of our experiences either touch a neuron and connect us to our memories or they are neurons waiting to be touched in the future.

On a side note, I really rooting for Lakisha and Melinda.

Resurrection

[Side note: I changed the look of my blog, but now my archive list is screwy. The year for the blogs is wrong. It says that I wrote it a year and a month before I actually did. So...2005=2006, 2006=2007, January=February, February=March. Don't know what's going on, hopefully it'll be fixed soon.]

After months of silence, I'm back. Not sure where I went to, but back I am. Oddly enough, I'm resurrecting my blog because I am currently unable to comfortably talk. I've been sick for more than a week and although I'm feeling better, my asthma's acting up. So now I can't talk without coughing. Ha, ha, a speech pathologist that can't talk. Anyhow, I'm taking 1/2 day since I do need to go in this afternoon.

A lot has happened since my last blog. A lot of frustration and anger, but a lot of good as well. The good has far outweighed the bad. There were times where I wanted to rip my hair out, but through it all I knew it would all work out in the end. I'm a fairly cynical person, but I do believe that things do have a way of working themselves out and that things happen for a reason. Life continues to reaffirm this belief.

Anywho, the last time I posted, I promised pictures from Seattle. Seattle was a long time ago but here's a couple of pictures anyway.

There's No Place Like Home

What a crazy couple of weeks. I enjoy traveling and all, but it's good to be home and it's nice knowing that I'll be staying put for a few months. Mid-August took me to Kathleen's wedding and to Seattle for a week. I was home for a week and then was off to Kyle's wedding and to Maui. Fall break is in a few weeks and I have big plans for it. Thankfully, none of my break plans involve an airplane.

Pictures? I'll get to it. I have a lot of pictures from Seattle and not too much from Maui. The weddings were quite different, but they were both totally worth the trip. Mijares...uh...Balagtas' ceremony was the longest that I've been to and Kyle's was by far the shortest. Picture/trip posting will have to wait as I sense that I am in a kind of rambling kind of mood. I'll save it for when my brain returns from wherever it happens to be right now.

Need to shower, check on Lance, and knit before bed. Over and out.

Procrastination

[Note: This picture has absolutely nothing to do with tonight's blog, although I'm sure I could center my rambling's on the pair of socks that I completed last spring. They were the first pair of what I hope will be many more to come. See, I told you I could write about my sock and I could go on, but I'll spare you. Anyway, the sock's making an appearance because I felt like having a picture to accompany the blog. However, I didn't have an appropriate picture and decided to take the opportunity to show off my sock. Sorry, back to the blog.]

So when I first switched to blogging on Blogger after a few years with Xanga (and a few good months of regular blogging), I noticed that I was having a difficult time blogging regularly. My blogging was sporadic, at best. At the time, I speculated that my inconsistent blogging was due to one of two reasons:
1) I had begun to associate the computer with being at work and therefore did not want to turn on the computer at home, or
2) I had really been using blogging as a way to avoid studying during grad school and now that I had graduated, I didn't have anything to avoid so I therefore didn't blog.
Well, tonight I discovered the answer to that question. My sporadic blogging was due to Reason Number 2. When I was consistent with blogging, I was really just avoiding the unpleasantness of studying. I was procrastinating. And since after grad school I didn't have anything to put off, I didn't blog.

So how did I come to this conclusion? Because as I write this, I'm supposed to be writing a letter of recommendation. My evening was filled with laundry, cooking, and packing, and I'm bloody tired and would love to go to bed, especially since tomorrow's gonna be a doozy. So am I being responsible and writing the letter? No. I'm having a difficult time with it, to be honest. It's not like I don't want to recommend the person that I'm writing the letter for. It's just that I'm a little stuck right now. And what was the first thing I thought of (other than "Dear god, I'd love to go to bed.")? I thought, "I know! I'll blog!" So tonight's blog is brought to you by our dear friend and enemy, Procrastination.

Y'know, my sophomore year in high school my english teacher kept harping about the honors kids being procrasinators...what a pain...crap, it's almost midnight...

Not Phallic

Yes, the ginormous jar of pickles has returned to my house. All hail Costco! I love these pickles, they're so large and juicy and yummy. And this huge jar is actually cheaper than some of the smaller jars. Granted, some of those smaller jars are worth the price. For instance, Vlasic has some deliciously spicy pickles. However, there are also a bunch out there that my pickle critical taste buds find inferior to the yumminess of this large jar from Farman's. This jar has actually been sitting on my shelf for quite awhile. I told myself that I was not allowed to enjoy these pickles until I finished the two jars of not so scrumptious Safeway pickles that I bought when my husband suggested that my big pickle jar took up too much space in the fridge. I didn't want to buy the Safeway pickles, but for some reason I just couldn't find any other pickles when I was at Safeway that day. Anyway, so it took me awhile to finish those Safeway pickles, because they just weren't yummy enough to eat as a snack so I actually had to pair them up with a pickle friendly meal (i.e. a sandwich). It also didn't help that I was secretly purchasing the Big Papa whenever Safeway had them in stock. But yes, I finally finished the Safeway pickles and now my Farman's Home Style Kosher Dills are hanging out in my fridge until one by one they are plucked out of the jar and onto my plate. In fact, I think I'll have one right now...

And yes, I did find that the return of the big pickle jar to my fridge was exciting and important enough to blog. :)

The Last Day

I have sad news to report. Very sad news. Today is my last day of summer vacation. The kids don't come back until Friday, but I return tomorrow. Where did my vacation go? It went by so quickly. I didn't do nearly as many things as I wanted to do. In fact, what did I do? Oh yeah...I worked. Yes, I worked during my vacation. Does anyone else see how wrong that statement is? It's like being back in high school and having evil AP teachers assigning huge massive projects to do over the break. One year, my class walked into our AP history classroom to see "Vacation Homework" written on the board with several time consuming junk for us to do. We tried to point out to our teacher the oxymoron behind "Vacation Homework." She laughed long and hard. Anyway, I digress. I worked this summer and worked and worked and worked. Why did I work? Long story short -- I'm a damn fool. I covered for three (well, four if you count me) speech pathologists and for some reason every single family in my school's district decided to refer their kids over the summer.

Nah, I guess my summer wasn't so bad, well other than I didn't really have any days off. I did have most afternoons off to play with Lance. And there were some fun things this summer. Joseph got married and now he has someone to keep him in line. Oh, the picture is from the wedding. The pictures that I tried to take of Joe and Rahel during the reception and stuff didn't come out. Anyway, so that was one fun thing this summer. Oh, and Girls' Night was fun. We just made yummy pizzas and talked but it was quality girl time with none of those troublesome boys around.

Anyway, now the summer's almost over. I'm spending my last day off with Lance. We're going to the movies, Wal-Mart, and the library. And then it's back to school tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to going back, but I am excited to see what the new year will bring. We have a lot of new teachers and I'll, of course, have new students. Oh and Matt will be a part of my complex this year so that should be fun. I also noticed that work was more fun last year than my first year so hopefully it'll be even more fun this year. I think it's because I more or less know what I'm doing, I'm comfortable with the people that I work with, and I've finally discovered the secret to therapy. Although it is important that the kids have fun and that they learn during therapy sessions, it's just as important that I have fun, too. So I feel like playing Go Fish, then we're playing Go Fish.

Here we go again...

The Library

I love the library. The people who invented the public library system are genuises. A system that allows people of all socioeconomic classes access to books, music, movies, and even the internet for free? Brilliant.

While I was waiting for a librarian to find my CDs and books earlier this week, I entertained myself by watching a mother and her two young children. She was inquiring about getting a library card for her son and the librarian who was helping her explained that her son couldn't get a card until he was able to write his full name on the card. He was able to write his first name but couldn't yet write his last name so he didn't get a card that day, but watching them brought back memories of my first library card.

My parents introduced me to the library at a young age. I spent many days in the cool, air conditioned building with my parents, looking for books to take home. I really wanted my own library card so I learned to write my name for the sole purpose of getting my library card. My dad taught me and I practiced and practiced. As soon as I was able to write my name in the little box on the card, I went to the library and happily received my own green card to borrow books on. I was still really young, so all of the letters on the card were really shaky and not at all straight. And while I was able to write the letters of my name, many of them were formed incorrectly -- the "a" was formed with a circle and a line that weren't quite connected and the "n" didn't have the initial line, just the curvy part. I even put a hyphen between my first and last names. The red library card came out when I was a teenager. As I signed my name in grown up cursive, I was really sad. Luckily the librarian let me keep my old, green card and I still have it in my room at my mom's house.

Woo hoo!

Look what came in the mail today! Woo hoo! I was hoping that it'd come when Lance was gone because I knew I'd need a pick me up to get me through the week. I just ordered it on Friday and it's already here. Yea!

The Power of the Ring

Over the years, I think I've been fairly tolerant and open to Lance's interests. I've played basketball with him, went hiking and geocaching with him, and have embraced his video games. And while I've been open and willing to participate in his interests, the one thing that I haven't taken a liking to is ESPN Radio. I'll watch sports with him and I'll be interested enough in it to ask questions, but I just have not understood the fascination with ESPN Radio. Why in the world would you want to listen to bunch of men (there really aren't that many women on this station, I've noticed) pratter on endlessly about sports? Why in the world would you want to analyze a player's performance and then argue about it for hours on end? When Lance turns it on, I usually protest. Since he's generally the one driving, I generally lose the battle and am forced to listen to babble. I try my best to tune it out, but sometimes it seeps in and I feel like I'm being tortured. It is perhaps the one thing that we have an ongoing "discussion" about.

Now a few months ago, Lance left a copy of his ESPN Magazine on the couch. We were about to go out and I was sitting on the couch waiting for him. Bored, I picked up his magazine and started flipping through it. I came across an article promoting Michael Greenburg's book. Now for those of you fortunate enough to not know this, Michael Greenburg is the co-host of the popular morning ESPN radio show, Mike and Mike in the Morning. Remembering that Lance used to listen to this show years ago when he was up studying at midnight (it airs from the East Coast), I decided to read the article. I am ashamed to admit that I was entertained by the article. A few days later, Lance and I were browsing in Borders and he decided to go look for the book. Thrilled that Lance wanted to read a book, I bought it. We came home and over the next few days I was amused at the sight of my husband reading, laughing, and (I kid you not) tabbing funny portions of the book. I was also a little jealous. That stupid article was really funny and I really wanted to read the book. I eventually got my chance at the book and am sad to report that I really enjoyed it.

It was also around this time that Lance discovered that podcasts for Mike and Mike in the morning were being posted on the ESPN website right before he left for work in the morning. He got really excited and began downloading the podcasts to listen on the drive to and from work. One day he came home, excited to share a portion of the broadcast that he thought I'd enjoy. I listened to it and couldn't stop myself from laughing. Was it possible that I actually enjoyed a program on ESPN Radio? It was a fluke.

Now that it's summer, Lance has been staying up later and listening to the first part of Mike and Mike in the morning. Some nights I'm up with him (I'd be up with him more if I wasn't working ESY but that's a blog to save for later), so I listen to it with him. And gosh darn it, I enjoy it. A lot of times I don't know what they're talking about so I have to ask Lance but darnnit, I like listening to it.

For the last few months, I've suspected that my wedding ring has magical powers and is brainwashing me into believing that sports are fantastic. Now don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed casually watching sports in the past. However, my interest has generally been limited to UH sports and to whatever Lance was making me watch at the time. But this morning I actually contemplated downloading Mike and Mike in the Morning to listen to at work. Somebody help me, the Ring is brainwashing me. Over the past year and a half it has convinced me that not all Jack in the Box food is disgusting and that some video games are worthy of being obsessed over. And I've been alright with that. But now it has gone too far. It is conspiring with Lance to trick me into thinking that ESPN Radio is something to be listened to instead of something to be turned off. The only way to combat its powers is to summon all of my k*spiciness. Where are my knitting needles?

My First Sweater

Okay, so it has no sleeves. Alright, it's not a sweater. It's a tank top. But I'm calling it a sweater b/c anything that's knit is a sweater in my head and calling it a sweater makes me feel accomplished. Anyway, the purple tank top is finally done! Hurray! I've been working on this sweater off and on for a little under a year. It would've been done sooner, but other projects kept calling out to me. In between starting the sweater and finishing it, I think I finished three hats, three scarves, and a pair of socks. Is that it? Oh, and

I'm also deep in the middle of Lance's blanket and I was (I just finished yesterday) at the tail end of a fourth scarf. I think that's it...

Anyway, after finishing the sweater, I immediately put it on and danced around the house. The bloody hot house in the bloody hot sweater. I thought I was smart for choosing to knit a tank top b/c I figured that it'd be cool since it's a tank top and it has no sleeves. I failed to account for the thick yarn. Good grief. Wearing a sweater in Hawaii in the summer when it's humid b/c it's gonna rain is a bad, bad idea. Dancing around in it is an even stupidier idea. Anyway, I'm telling you this to account for the (ahem) horrendous picture of me. Also, my photographer was not focusing on taking the picture b/c he was too busy thinking that he married a crazy person. Oh and he was busy thinking about how he was gonna imitate my happy knitting dance when we went to Popo's the next night. He got rave reviews from the relatives. I sometimes suspect that he's just using me as material for a future stand up comedy act.

Finally

Okay, okay, I'm sorry. That was a long time of blog neglect. I finally posted the second day of our DC/Penn trip. I kept doing it in parts so I actually started the blog a long time ago. I posted the pictures on April 1, which is why the date for that blog is April 1. Whoops. :)

I'm sad to report that our desktop has fizzed out. We lost everything, including all of our pictures that we hadn't had the chance to print out which were, sadly, most of them. Anyway, that's it for the trip posting, I guess, until Lance takes our computer to someone to see if we can retrieve our pictures. That's his summer homework.