Year: 2003

I just had the most treat-filled evening! Jo and I got together to do some shopping and knitting. First we grabbed dinner at IHOP. I mean, IHOP is a treat in general, but tonight they had pumpkin pancakes. They were absolutely fantastic! Then we went yarn shopping (I was good, and only bought crochet cotten for part of some Christmas gifts and a cute little basket that was on sale to store some of my current yarn in.) After shopping, we headed out to Starbucks to sip some coffee and knit…and here’s the best part: gingerbread lattes are back!

Fueled by caffeine, I got some serious knitting done. One more Christmas gift is finished! That makes 2 done…out of…who knows? I don’t even have the slightest clue how many projects I have started at this point, or how many are left. I’m just going to keep knitting until I run out of yarn or time, whichever comes first. Then I’ll go buy gifts for whoever I haven’t finished something for.

We’ve upgraded all the macs in the house to Panther. So far, so good…and Exposé is extremely fun to play with! Other neat improvements are threaded mail and a ton of Finder changes; I’m sure I’ll discover more as I go.

One of these days, maybe after all the Christmas crafting is done, I’ll play around with the new developer tools. Yep, I’m a geek.

It was a close call, but the costumes are done…note to self: next year, do NOT wait until the weekend before to start costumes! I think I have enough candy (and I only snuck a couple of treats all week – you know, quality control!) The pumpkins are carved and ready to be lit. All we need now are some trick-or-treaters, who should be out in full force tonight since it’s unseasonably warm today!

I really didn’t do much decorating other than the pumpkins, though…I kind of feel like Halloween snuck up on me this year. Or maybe it’s just the general feeling I’m having lately where it seems like time has accelerated all out of proportion to the seemingly slow pace of most days, because I’m pretty sure that it was June just last week…

Am I the only one who, when faced with excessive and annoying advertising, will intentionally not buy, watch or do whatever it is the advertising suggests I buy, watch or do?

See, these television banner ads (I don’t know what they’re called…and can’t seem to find any information about them on the web) that have become incredibly common in a seemingly short amount of time are driving me crazy. You know the ones: they cover up 1/4 to 1/3 of the bottom of the screen, sometimes all the way across, in the middle of a show. They usually cover up the text at the bottom of the screen in “Whose Line is it Anyway”. I’d hate to see what it would do to closed captioning. To me, it’s as annoying as those @#$!% pop-up ads on the internet…which I no longer have to deal with thanks to Safari.

Maybe it’s just the shows I watch. But even when I randomly watch something on actual TV (as in, not TiVo’d) that’s not one of our “normal” shows, they’re still there. Last night I saw an ad not for another show on the same station – which is generally what they are – but for an actual product… Pretty soon, I expect that the shows will just have floating <blink> ads, centered over characters’ faces. Actually, why bother with the shows at all? Just run long, continuous blocks of blinking, scrolling banner ads in between the commercials.

But don’t expect me to buy, watch or do whatever it is they’re advertising. I’ll just unplug the cable box and watch old DVDs instead.

My house is a disaster. I think I have too much stuff…and I’m not talking yarn stash here, either. I decided to sign up for the FlyLady emails, figuring that any amount of direction is better than none when it comes to decluttering. I’ve only been getting the email for half a day, and it’s sort of funny and sort of annoying – we’ll see if I like it enough to stick with it. I’d really like to reduce the amount of stuff that’s crammed into every nook and cranny in the house, preferably before the holidays. (Just not the yarn!)

To that end, I spent an hour going through three drawers yesterday: my sock drawer, which yielded several pairs of socks that I can’t remember having worn for years; my long-sleeved shirt drawer, which contained turtlenecks I haven’t worn since moving into this house^*; and my…um….unmentionables…drawer, which actually just needed to be straightened up. Now I can put away the socks and shirts I actually wear, instead of keeping them in (folded) piles near my dresser. Yay!

Of course, I still have a laundry basket full of sweaters that won’t fit in my armoire due to the large volume of sweaters already in there. And I do wear most of them…deciding which ones I can part with is going to be a bigger challenge, and I’m saving that for another rainy day.

^*How do I know I haven’t worn those shirts since I moved in? Well, you know how people have different folding styles? Some of them were still folded the way my helpful unpackers did them when we moved in. :) Hopefully they’ll keep someone else warm this winter: they’re going in a box down to the salvation army bin this evening!

See why I love this guy? Yesterday was our tenth anniversary. I know what you’re thinking…”Wait, didn’t she just celebrate an anniversary in May? And wasn’t it her fourth?” Well, yes. But ten years ago yesterday we started dating. So Denis came home from work with ten roses: four white ones for the years were were dating, two red-tipped yellow ones for the years we were engaged, and four red ones for the years we’ve been married.

Then we got all dressed up and went out to dinner at the Spring House (and ate sinfully delicious desserts!), came home, took care of the dogs, and watched baseball and knitted until bedtime. (The last trip out with the dogs revealed…snow?!? Well, flurries, anyway.)

It’s fun being married to your best friend!