Month: April 2008 (Page 2 of 3)

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Brian playing tennis, originally uploaded by Ben Mason.

Ben organized a Game Day for Saturday to celebrate his 10,000 gamer score on xbox. Costumes were encouraged, but we took them off for most of the day so we could play outdoors. We had tennis, frisbee with the dogs, and a rousing game of kickball! I’m sore in all kinds of places 🙂 In the late afternoon we ate and played indoor games. I barbecued burgers and brats, and served carrot sticks, chips, and angelfood cake with strawberries. More pictures from the day are on Ben’s site.

What a cool idea! People post pictures of themselves imitating old pictures of themselves. I hate to repost something that boingboing linked to, but this is really fun to look at.

Kind of makes me wish I had cable.

I love to watch the snow.
I love knitting turtles.
I love peanut butter.
I love ranunculus.

I ordered a vinyl decal from this site for my BB today. Choutte, non? I had to restrain myself from getting ipod and laptop decals too. I also got a clear acrylic case for my phone. I dropped it the other day and the back panel came off. No harm done, but it made me realize that I need some protection.

I ate at Jack in the Box for the second time. Once again I got an upset stomach. It was tasty during the moment. Isn’t that true for a lot of life?

This afternoon we unearthed the tennis rackets from my trunk and played a few games at Morse Park with Brian. My skills are severely lacking. Frequently I outright miss the ball, whiffing my racket 10 inches above or below while it whizzes by. Traditionally I’ve blamed this on my missing depth perception (I have good vision in just one eye, so without glasses I rely on that one. This renders the world in 2D). But I shouldn’t be THAT bad. Today I came up with a new reason – I never played ball sports growing up. No softball, baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, golf, or anything. A little volleyball during one semester of gym in middle school, and a little four-square in elementary school at recess. Do you think that missing out on those sports left me with terrible hand-eye coordination? It was very pleasant playing, even if I only won 1 game.

We tried a new restaurant in the hip Highlands neighborhood (where the party in front of you are wearing leather and cashmere and has a Louis Vuitton diaper bag for their toddler). Big Hoss BBQ totally hit the spot for Ben, Brian, and myself. Warm, spicy pork and beef with delicious baked beans, potatoes, and rolls. We will definitely be returning the next time we want barbeque. We even bought a bottle of their “balanced but aggressive” sauce to slather on our home grilled dinners this week.

I finished my sweater vest a while ago but haven’t taken a picture yet. Did I already mention this? I can’t remember. I’m pleased with how it turned out. It’s not perfect, there are definitely changes I would make if I were doing this again. But it taught me some skills for determining fit and construction of larger garments. I’m excited to try another big project. Alas, the weather is turning warm. I’m knitting washcloths right now, and I have a couple sewing projects. Knitting with wool will have to wait for the fall.

I don’t want to sound negative all the time, but often I forget to post when things are going well. Remember that long list of things that were broken I wrote in January?

• upstairs toilet – My repair job is holding, although the flush is a bit weak.
• Ben’s watchband – Fixed
• my engagement ring prongs – Will fix when we get the economic stimulus rebate.
• my macbook keyboard – Spontaneously fixed. It hasn’t acted up since January.
• sewing machine – Fixed. Sounds like a dream.
• Ben’s uvula – Shrunk back to normal within a couple days.
• my ipod – Never fixed, but now I have a Nano!!
• Jem’s eyes – She occasionally has eye boogers, but the redness and itchy irritation has been gone for weeks.

Also I took Molly to the vet today. She was examined and is perfectly healthy, except for a pulse of 240(!) because she was so scared. She got her vaccines for rabies and distemper so we don’t have to go back for three years.

Last night I figured out how to sync my blackberry with my mac. Like all the forums say, pocketmac (the free software for linking them) is pretty terrible. It stalled repeatedly. After noodling around for a good hour I figured out that if I sync each application one by one it will work. Good enough for me! Next I need to find a good ringtone or acquire my old Mario tone again. Then maybe transfer some photos and look for free third party apps.

I’m 3/3 for exercising in the morning this week! I registered for the Adult Ballet class at the Arvada Center again and attended last night. I’m not sure I’ll be able to attend all 12 weeks, what with school starting in May. But Ben pointed out that I did dance last spring when I was working AND taking classes in Microbiology and Anatomy. So I can probably find time. Just to be sure, I’m going to try to go twice/week this month so if I miss some in May and June they will already be made-up. If I don’t miss and run out of classes I can pay the drop-in rate.

I made a delicious fritatta for dinner last night. It has beer brats (casing removed), red peppers, and onions. I love eating it with cold ketchup. Tonight I’m going to try making home made mayonnaise to accompany artichokes. I’m also going to make a lovely marinara with red wine and basil and meatballs. Mmmm.

Created by OnePlusYou

So sad 🙁 Obviously I need to watch more sci-fi action thrillers from the 80s and 90s.

My cat did NOT want to leave. She was so so happy to be in a huge house all to herself. I don’t think I’ve every seen her so content. So when I drove home she was extra annoying. She meowed constantly, used the litterbox 4 times before we got to Parachute, barfed her breakfast down between the seats, and wandered into the back window, panting in terror at the 360-degree view of cars and wide open spaces. She completely freaked out and was too scared to come down. After ten minutes of coaxing I pulled off the road and she got down.

But I’m pleased to report that all the cuddling she exhibited at the house in the country is lingering still. She actually jumped in my lap while I was transcribing today – and she just wanted scratching! No food requests! I let her purr away until my legs fell asleep.

Whenever I leave my parents house they pack up some groceries from their pantry. It’s a good deal: I get some nifty food items and they get to clean out their overflowing cabinets. This time my dad packed up three bags and a cooler while I was packing my suitcase. What a strange array Ben and I found when I unpacked them four hours later. Let me give you an idea of the vastness and variety included in these bags:

• canned lychees
• lingonberry bread mix
• tuna in foil packets
• roasted pepper bruschetta spread
• Power Rangers kinder eggs
• water chestnuts
• two dozen eggs
• Swedish sour jelly stars
• fresh herbs from Mom’s garden
• roasted cashews
• japanese rice cracker snack mix
• dehydrated mushrooms
• dried mango strips
• coconut milk
• tabouli and gumbo boxed mixes
• creamed honey
• 3 pounds of short pasta
• a bottle of sauvignon
• fritos
• 4 boxes of pocky
• marinara sauce
• cat food treats
• marinated artichokes
• various canned beans
• and the strangest of all – rye bread mix in a milk-carton like jug.

I love it. It was pretty hilarious sorting through all of it 🙂 So now I have a well stocked and diverse pantry. Ben was especially happy to see the tuna, since I don’t eat any seafood whatsoever. (Really. Nothing from the sea. Period.)

I get two questions asked almost every day since Febuary (which is quite an accomplishment since I don’t get out much).

1) When does school start? (May 5th May 5th May 5th)
2) What do you do all day?

What DO I do all day? Well, for starters, it’s very hard to wake up when you have no schedule. I set my alarm for 7:30 and fully intend to obey it when I go to sleep each night. But then I sleep until 8, that becomes 8:30, that becomes 9. On good days I get up then and on bad days I stretch it to 10.

I try to do my Denise Austin aerobics video for 30 minutes each morning, but my hit rate is about 50%. I have some cheerios and read a magazine or book. I shower and dress. By then it could be anywhere from 10:00 to 11:30, so my day is almost half over!

I do medical transcription for a couple hours, taking a break for lunch and to walk the dog. I work slowly, usually chatting with friends and checking my rss feeds between letters.

By 2 things are pretty slow. I may tackle a to-do item, like today I cleaned out my basement storage room. Tomorrow I might deep clean my carpet. Then I’ll usually watch TV or a movie while working on a craft project. Around 4:30 I start thinking about making dinner and we eat around 6 pm.

At night I hang out near Ben, usually reading or crafting. I might play games with friends or go out on shopping errands (like tonight we got groceries). We go to bed between 10:30 and 11:30.

Wow. That’s pretty boring. I don’t know why I bothered writing all of that out. I guess because when people ask me I say “oh, I’m working from home and I do this and that.” But that answer doesn’t make sense to me because I know I only work for a couple hours. So maybe I needed to see for myself how I pass each day. Somehow something usually comes up that I can spend time on, whether for school or my parents’ work or household chores. On the days when nothing comes up I get a bit depressed. It’s hard to enjoy free time when there’s a lot of it. People say to enjoy it because I’ll be so busy once school starts that I’ll miss it. But you always want what you can’t have.

Four weeks left.

After working on art projects at my parents’ office, we ran some errands. I settled on a Blackberry Curve for the requisite nursing software. It seemed like a better value for the money, compared to Palm PDAs. T-Mobile says I can use the browser in preexisting WiFi spots without paying for their monthly internet. I think I correctly hooked up to the home internet and checked my gmail. I’m still a little unsure how to block it from switching to the paid internet, that would cost 1.99 per minute. Yuck! I need to decide whether to hook it to my desktop pc, or download intermediary software to hook it to this mac. Hmmm. Then I can explore all the functions it offers.

Then a jaunt into target led to sundries like eyeglass cleaning kits, infomercial wall hanging products, girl scout cookie ice cream, and a ipod nano. 😀 Yea! I know, I’m totally spoiled. Thank you thank you thank you Mom and Dad. After it finished syncing all my music, I’m going to swipe some Spanish lesson’s from Dad’s ipod using Senuti and add it to mine.

But the funnest was yet to come! We went back into the office and Dad taught me how to put in an IV, use a vacutainer, and put in a butterfly line. It was great, he’s so encouraging and consoling. I wasn’t nervous at all about sticking him. It definitely boosted my confidence for doing it in school.

And we did all of that AFTER dinner 🙂