MzSerena’s Garden

Ugh.. I have the sneezes tonight. Suck I really hope that it’s just the sneezes and nothing worse. I want to thank you all for the birthday wishes. I had a good birthday for once. I’ve had a busy week so far, with my doctor visit Monday then meeting up with my sister for a few before going out to dinner.

I’ll write something more prolific when I don’t feel like an elephant is standing on my nose.

http://mzserena.qassia.com/

I’ve turned into a monster. Seriously. Every time I sit down with nothing to do, I start crocheting. Yesterday and Today, I was playing with some really pretty cotton thread-like stuff that came from Peaches & Creme. I didn’t like it to make blankets, it didn’t work up as nicely as what I usually use. It was heavy and I didn’t care for the feel of it. So, I went and found a dishcloth pattern that I really liked. It’s called Over The Rainbow. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, just from looking at it, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. It worked up quickly and I really like the results of it.

Mom didn’t care for the openness of the dishcloth, so she recommended that I find a different pattern if I was going to make more. I can see the point, since you want a surface to work with and the holes are defeating the purpose, so back to the site I went and found a really pretty heart dishcloth. It worked up easy, but I ended up miscounting the stitches, so it’s uneven. I think I know how it happened, since I was watching a movie and chatting while I was working on it.

You can always tell who the NASCAR fans on the road are. You either see their vehicle painted in the color scheme of their favorite driver or they have a car spoiler that looks like the rear spoiler on a stock car.

Think I’m kidding? I’m not kidding. I’ve seen it first hand, more than once. Living near a NASCAR track, you see a lot of odd things when it’s time for the local race. Even when it’s not race fever in the area, you’ll still see it. Someone has a van that has Dale Earnhardt’s #3 painted on it.

It’s funny to see what fanatics will do to celebrate their favorites, no matter the sport of choice.

So one of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately is the fact that it was 8 years ago that I spent 3 days on a bus going from New York to Las Vegas to meet Rob. It was 8 years ago on January 21 that I got my first glimps of a hotel in Vegas.

I spent 3 days traveling through different states, through part of the North and some of the South even. Eating meals whatever looked edible from crappy bus terminals. I think the worse one was Amarillo, Texas. Middle of the night, packed full of people. Dirty, nasty and just creepy.

Some days, I wouldn’t mind making that trip again. But I made the cross country trip four different times (twice each way) in a year and a half. The first time coming back to New York, we came through Colorado and I had a RAGING double ear infection. Yeah.. It’s been eight long years. Years that I wouldn’t trade in.

So, yesterday when Rob and I were out, I saw the new sign for the local nursing facility and just shook my head. They recently changed hands, so a new name was inevitable. The problem is, they gave the entire facility the name Elderwood. Now, I could see if it was a senior living community, but this is a full fledged nursing facility.

The majority of patients are lifers that need care all the time. Elderwood would be a fitting name for the assisted living facility that is part of the campus, but overall? I think they need to rethink it. Everyone thinks I’m odd for not liking it. Maybe I am. Maybe I just preferred Tioga Nursing Facility. Kind of hard to teach an old dog new tricks and I told my husband that. It’ll always be Tioga to me.

Hell, it was Tioga General Hospital when I was growing up, then Tioga Nursing Facility. Now it’s Elderwood? How are you going to break a 32 year old habit?

One of the things that I’ve thought about when I think of my dream home is having a theater room. Seriously. How cool would it be to have some really cool home theater furniture? Cushy theater seating, the sound system, lights and the big screen to watch movies on. Imagine watching your favorite movie in your own home theater.

Watching television programs in a theater room. Seriously, can you imagine that? Watch American Idol with surround sound. It’d be like being there live. Or Harry Potter. It’d be really damn sweet to have a theater room. Don’t you think?

I wrote a while back about why I don’t like working for other people. One of the reasons is the last corporation I worked for was notorious for hiring on a bunch of new hires then pulling some stupid corporate performance management crap and firing them right at the end of their ninety day period. They always made up some stupid excuse, such as bad performance reviews, to do it. Something you can’t fight against, then your file gets sealed. I think that the worse of it, though, was that they were working me 12 hour days, 4 days a week, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. A lot of times, I would work 5 12′s, and the day I was fired, I was on day 6. Two days before I hit the ninety mark. I knew they were doing evaluations that morning, since I had seen the girls on either side of me go into “The Office” and come out upset.

When I was called in, I figured what was going to happen. I had already gotten my stuff together so that I could just toss it in my bag, but yeah. I went into “The Office” and was told, by the floor manager who was never around during the 90 days, that my error rate was too high during the period I was monitored. Oddly enough, it was the day I got all the screwed up batches. Conspiracy? Sure. Corporate crap? Definitely.

Okay, I feel better than I did this morning. We went out for a while. It was payday and we had a couple things to do. We were going to go into the city, but decided it would be stupid since the only place I wanted to go was the craft store. So we wasted the day around town. Went and had a nice lunch, then I hit up Wal-Mart to pick up my prescription. Big mistake was that I went in there looking for something in particular.

Usually I do not buy clothing at Wal-Mart. Hell, I don’t buy a whole lot there any more. Go figure, they didn’t have what I was looking for, BUT I did find the absolutely adorable pink tink shirt that’s in the picture. AND they had the Rent DVD too! SO I got both of them for my birthday. *gigglebounce* After that, I hit up the craft section. BIG mistake there. I came out of there with pink yarn, white yarn and a frikkin sweet red, white and blue yarn. I have what I need for the princess blanket now. So I can start on that any time.

Monday, I go to the doctor. Joy of joys there. I’ll likely get yelled at, but life will go on. I’m okay with her yelling at me. I’ve had a rough couple months, I have them. She can deal. After that, I have to boogie up to Vestal and meet my sister. Then Rob and I are going to celebrate my birthday, a day late. Whee. I may try to get together with Eve while I’m up there, since I’ve been trying to find time to do that when I’ve been up there. I’ll have to wait and see what my checking account looks like tomorrow.

When we got home today, I had an absolutely beautiful birthday card waiting from me from Jessica and a beautiful Imbolc card from Kelly. Thank you both. Kelly, the butterflies are so gorgeous on it. Thank you so much. I’m definitely in a much better head space than I have been. Getting out for a while definitely helped. I got to remember to stop hiding out and get out more. Once it warms up, it’ll be easier. I *HATE* going out in the cold. I get so cold, then overheated in my coat and wish for death. So yeah.

I think I’ve babbled enough, it’s time to do something of value.

A year has passed, but it seems like just yesterday.
It’s weighed heavily on my heart this week
It’s shown through in my mood
I think of him every day.
I miss him at the oddest times.
It’s hard to believe it’s been a year already.
*sigh*

So, I have to go to the doctor on Monday. I’m not exactly looking forward to it since she’s going to bitch about my weight. I need to be doing more, be more proactive in the fight to lose. I know the speeches already. I also think that i may need to go on blood pressure medication after having watched my blood pressure for the last two weeks. Although, I think that I might have had my arm in the wrong position. It was down today, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings, then Monday.

The one thing that I hate about going to the doctor is when I have to have blood drawn. The woman that does the draws uses the latex exam gloves and they make my arms itch like hell for the rest of the day. It’s not an allergy, just an annoyance. So yay, my arm will itch for a day. Probably Tuesday.

So, I sat here the other day and was drinking coffee. Usually I use one of the black mugs that were a gift from my sister. The thing is, my husband bought shoes through Shoes For Crews recently and the day he got them, he came home with a mug that I stole immediately. Why? It’s one of those imprinted promotional products that companies give out to get their name out. In this case, it’s got Shoes For Crews on one side and Hell’s Kitchen on the other side. Yes, it has the logo for one of my favorite shows. Thusly, I stole it.

Do you blame me? Gordon Ramsay rocks. He’s the Simon Cowell of the kitchen.

One of the things that I’ve thought about doing lately is changing the way our property is landscaped. Rob goes out at between 3 and 4 am to go to work and it’s dark out. I’ve thought about getting solar lights that stay on all night so that he’s not wandering around in the dark when he’s cleaning the car off.

We live in the middle of nowhere, you never know what is lurking in the field. At any given time, you can run across a bear, a wolf, a coyote or just a skunk. With a large open field and a lot of wooded area, anything is possible. So when he goes out, it’s dark and he can’t usually see if there’s anything out there.

Perhaps it’s time to find some energy efficient exterior lighting before he gets sprayed by a skunk, or worse.

Sometimes, I get to thinking about moving. Especially the days when it’s REALLY cold. I think about moving back to Vegas sometimes. I miss living in a city, especially when I want to go to a store and buy yarn or when I want to have more than one choice of stores to get yarn at. Locally I have the choice of Wal-Mart or K-Mart. In Vegas, there was Michaels and A.C. Moore and other stores.

I miss the fountain shows at the Bellagio. I miss standing on the sidewalk, listening to the music, watching the fountains dance back and forth. I miss the different free activities, including the water show at Excalibur. I miss having things that I can do when the mood strikes and being able to grocery shop at midnight. I miss being able to go out in the middle of the night and not be considered odd. I just miss living in the city.

Then I remember how expensive it was. I remember how hard we struggled to get by. I remember why we moved back and most importantly, I remember how far we’ve come together since we left.

It’s funny, having lived in this area all of my life, that I never knew what Ingersoll Rand did. I knew that they did something in the realm of metal works or the likes. I did not know, however, that there is such a thing as Ingersoll Rand air tools.

It surprises me sometimes, just how many large, well known businesses are in this area. It takes me by surprise when I hear or see something like Ingersoll Rand that’s not local. It also makes me wonder, how did such a small area business get to be so well known.

Why is it that we have this many large factories or corporations in the area and still be so small and unknown? I mean, really, I don’t understand it. Oh well, I wouldn’t trade it for all the mo…well maybe I would…

One thing that I’ve noticed in watching shows like The Biggest Loser and talking to some of my friends who have lost a lot of weight is that they are addicted to working out. It makes me wonder, however, if this “addiction” will last for them when something new comes along for them to focus on or if there is some sort of miracle burn that they get when they work out that makes them want to keep going.

I have been thinking of a gym membership for myself and Rob, but they’re so pricey and with the way his work schedule is, it’d be difficult for us to make enough use of it. As far as I know, none of the gyms around here will do a per visit plan, which sucks. I’d like to be able to do more and not rely on just the medication to help me lose weight. I want to be proactive instead of reactive.

Speaking of the medication, I suspect that when I go the 28th, I’ll be put on a new one. My blood pressure runs higher than normal and I’m going to be discussing that with her, among other things.

Since they were requested. The picture to the left is one of the 48 centers that I have been making. I’d take a picture of the whole pile, but they’re scary! But yeah. Those are the centers that I’ve been making. I still need to get the other shade of green for the next row of it. Then it’s back to white for the final row. THEN it’s time to weave the loops together and sew them together. After that, it’s time to trim and finish it. I can’t wait to see the finished product, which means I need to go yarn shopping soon. Won’t be tomorrow, thanks to the weather, maybe one day next week will be nice enough. *bounce*

Today, I moved on to step two on a couple of them and put the green on a couple of the centers, just so I could take pictures. They look pretty cool, but they’re going to be a pain in the ass to do to an extent, just like the centers were. I love the way they work up and how pretty it will be when they’re woven together, but do a little, tie off, move to the next. It gets really monotonous and annoying, especially having 48 of them to do. Once I get more than a couple done and get a rhythm going, it’ll probably go quickly. I got to the point where I was just firing out the centers like the world was ending. LOL

I also decided to play with some of the beautiful blue wool/mohair yarn that I have as well. Just for something a little bit different to work on since I don’t have the right stuff for the princess blanket yet. I found this pattern on freepatterns.com and thought it would be cool to try to work it up. It called for 2ply yarn and a K hook, but what I have is 4ply and I’m working with an H hook. It comes out to the same gauge, so it’s all good. I like the way it’s working up. It looks really neat and is working up quickly. I just hope that overall it doesn’t take a ton of yarn to finish. I’ll likely mix in a few white rows to break up the blue monotony, which will make it a lot easier on the wool. I’ve got a lot of rows left to go and I’m almost through one skein already.

Anyway, that’s today’s yarn babble. Are you sick of it yet?

One of the things I hate about having a small kitchen and living in a mobile home is not being able to have the appliances that I would like to have. I hate doing dishwashers, so ideally, my kitchen would need to be equipped with a dishwasher. I know that I can get my husband to do the dishes so that I don’t have to, but it would be so much easier and more convenient to just toss them in a dishwasher and get on with life.

I know there is a new thing called a counter top dishwasher that looks like, and is the size of, a microwave, but do they work as well? They’re definitely not as big. They only hold 3-4 place settings, so it wouldn’t be easy to do pots and pans in one. It would work well for your every day dishes, but that still means standing over a sink to wash the grimy pans. Ick.

I still think that when the time comes, I’ll have my ideal kitchen, complete with dishwasher, double doored refrigerator, and double oven stove. Maybe I’ll become a famous writer some day. A girl can dream, right?

48 / 48 centers are completed. The rest of the afghan is going to be done in two shades of green. I have a paddy green and I want to do it with an emerald green as well.

I still haven’t decided on when yarn shopping will happen. It’s a bit of an annoyance, since it means going to the city. I should likely wait until after my birthday but I don’t want to. I do intend to go to Walmart first and see what they have and pick up more white to go with the princess blanket.

Anyway. Enough yarn babble for the day. I should work on the second part of the Lapghan squares. All 48 of them. Ugh.

Carl Karcher turned hot dog stand into Carl’s Jr. chain

Carl N. Karcher, who parlayed a $325 investment in a hot dog cart into one of the largest hamburger chains in the western U.S., died Friday. He was 90.

The founder of the Carl’s Jr. fast-food chain suffered from Parkinson’s disease and was being treated for pneumonia when he died in Fullerton, Calif., said Beth Mansfield, a spokeswoman for CKE Restaurants Inc.

Mr. Karcher, a deeply religious father of 12, was famous in the fast-food industry for his rags-to-riches story – a tale tainted in later years by an insider trading scandal and feuds with his board of directors.

Mr. Karcher was working as a bread-truck driver in Los Angeles when he decided to borrow $311 on the 1941 Plymouth Super Deluxe he owned with his bride, Margaret, added the rest in cash and bought a pushcart hot dog stand.

One cart soon became four, and by the end of World War II, Mr. Karcher had opened his first restaurant, Carl’s Drive-In barbecue, in Anaheim.

He opened the first Carl’s Jr. – named “Jr.” to distinguish it from his full-service eatery – in 1956.

Mr. Karcher’s initial success began to falter in the 1980s when he took the company public. Carl’s Jr. locations in Texas and Arizona failed, ending his dream of becoming a national chain.

Today, Carl’s Jr. has more than 1,000 locations across the West.

Mr. Karcher is survived by 11 children, 51 grandchildren and 39 great-grandchildren.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Brad Renfro, the troubled young actor whose film career began at age 12 with “The Client,” has died. He was 25.

His body was found in his Los Angeles home early Tuesday, his lawyer Richard Kaplan said.

Renfro served 10 days in jail in May 2006 after pleading no contest to driving while intoxicated and pleading guilty to attempted possession of heroin.

American Idol starts tonight. I don’t know if I’m excited for it or not. I’m all kinds of meh about television lately. I watch a lot of reality television, I always have. Amazing Race, Biggest Loser, American Idol.. People are all pissed off over the writers strike and saying boycott Reality TV. I say, the writers shot themselves in the foot by striking. Yes, they deserve more money, their demands aren’t outrageous. I understand why they went on strike. BUT by striking, they aren’t getting anything, they’ve also screwed a lot of people who can’t sit around and wait and wonder when they’ll work again.

All this is doing, really, is causing people to either watch more reality television or watch more movies. It’s not really hurting the studio’s all that much, especially since most of them have scripts ahead. No late night talk? Big deal. It’s not a gigantic loss. No new season of 24? Oh well, it’ll come back eventually. That’s the problem, all the shows will be back and the viewers will come back too. Either that or the studios will tell em to F-Off. There’s enough reality shows to sustain them until the strike ends.

It’s all a big pain in the ass. In the mean time, I will continue to enjoy my reality television, just like I did before.

I have finished 30/48 of the Lapghan centers. The rest will be finished today sometime if it kills me. This means that I need to figure out the other colors I want to use for it. I haven’t decided if I want to do multiple colors using yarn I have left over from other stuff or if I want to buy yarn specifically for it. I don’t really have enough shades to do it with what I have, since it’s lighter, then darker of the same color. I have 2 shades of green that I could use. A forest green and a paddy green. I was also considering lavender and purple as well, which means I have to yarn shop for those. I have 18 more centers before I really need to make the decision on that. *laugh*

I finally decided on the pattern for the princess blanket. It’ll be done with two shades of pink and white. The center and trim will be white with the shades of pink in between. I did a sample square with the pink in the center and white for the trim and really didn’t care for the way it worked out. It was too much of the light pink. But it’s also the wrong shade and weight, so it might look different when I get the right ones. That’ll teach me to send Rob to pick up yarn for me without a specific color name! *grumble*

I’ll likely go yarn shopping Friday after Rob gets paid. I haven’t decided yet. I really don’t have any major bills to pay this week, auto-debits are deducted too, so.. Hmm.. maybe.

This blog post is based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com.

Everyone knows that you have to keep your education up to date these days. If you don’t, you won’t get anywhere in the world. But, what are you supposed to do while you’re pursuing your education? Unless you have an endless supply of money, you can only spend so long in school before getting a job. Even if you’re still in school, you may need to get a job.

But if you want to go on for more than an Associate’s degree and you can’t afford it, there are options for Online Masters Degree Programs at Capella University. Being fully accredited by The Higher Learning Commission, Capella University is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA).

Capella University has recently announced that Dr. Christopher Lucies, core member of their faculty, has been named president-elect of the Texas Mental Health Counselors Association. Dr. Lucies will serve a three-year term for them. One year he will serve as president-elect, the following year, he will serve as president, and he will serve his final year as a consultant to the TMHCA board.

This is quite a feat for a fully online university, even more reason to choose Capella University for your Masters Degree.

Today is going to be spent blogging, relaxing, watching football (yeah.. football) and maybe crocheting. So far, I’ve gotten dinner in the marinade and salad is made. I’m making honey dijon chicken and potato salad. It smells fantastic. It’s not really a true marinade, it’s just a bottle of Wegmans honey dijon salad dressing. I always use toss salad dressing for marinades, they seem to have a better flavor, especially the thicker dressings.

I’ve weeded through some of my lj icons and uploaded some new ones, deleted some old ones and redone the keywords on them. I need to get more new ones. I’ve not been making cuz I suck. I don’t like my own icons much. I also need to put up a couple offerings in blinkie_store & juicy_grapes, but I have no idea what blinkies to offer. I could offer my rose again or one of the new ones I made the other day. I’m kinda meh, though, because the boxes on the one look like something another maker has and I really do not feel like getting accused of stealing when I sat and hand animated them pixel by pixel. I’m bored with my old boxes and have no idea what to make that either hasn’t been done or doesn’t look like I’m stealing. In case you’re curious, the boxes on the blinkie at the bottom of the post are the ones I am talking about.

Right now, I’m watching the Colts game. I want to see them win today. I also want to see the Giants win (sorry trillsie) too. I was hoping the Patriots would lose last night, but that wasn’t meant to be, I guess. I couldn’t help but laugh at the game yesterday afternoon. They weren’t playing football, that was more like snowball. It was amusing to watch.

I still haven’t found the pattern I was looking for and I still haven’t decided on the pink princess afghan pattern either. I have some ideas that I like, and I’m leaning towards doing the one pictured to the left, with variations of pink instead of blue. I like the way it looks, the pattern makes you look at it to figure out just how it was made. It looks complicated and difficult, but the reality is that it’s simple. It’s just a matter of keeping track of your yarns on each square. The hardest part is going to be the color changing, but the directions give a few good tips for keeping it from being too much of a pain.

Yeah, I’m babbling about crocheting and yarn again. I seem to be doing that a lot lately. I’ve found that I spend more time away from the computer lately. This isn’t such a bad thing, really. It keeps me from wanting to strangle people. Crocheting keeps my hands busy and I can watch TV or listen to an audio book while I do it too. But anyway, this is enough babble out of me. I’m off to figure out what I want to do with the rest of the day. I should try to write some fiction of some sort, since I haven’t since NaNoWriMo.

I have a few more blog posts to write later today, but those are not livejournal posts, those are for the crafting blog I’m working on. Most of the stuff there is already here, but some of it will be new. Anyway, I’m going to go curl up on the couch, watch football and crochet square centers for the lapghan.

Have a happy Sunday, folks.

This, my friends, is the completed blanket. I finished it just after midnight last night. This is the first afghan that I’ve made and first large project that I’ve finished. I’m psyched about that. I usually get frustrated and bored, then toss stuff aside. So I’m really proud of myself for getting this done. I just need to get it packed up and mailed off to the mother-to-be. That means I need to get her address. *whistles*

This is the first hat that I made. I had a bunch of leftover burgundy yarn from an afghan my mother made for me, so I figured I would work up a hat for Rob with it. I made him model for me tonight so that I could post pictures. No, he didn’t want to. Oh well. He didn’t get much of a choice. I told him to put it on so I could take pictures, can you tell he wasn’t enthused?

My next project is going to be my first afghan for donation. I’ve started the centers of the squares the other night, but I put it aside in hopes of finishing the baby blanket first. Tonight, however, I’ve spent the night trying to find a pattern that we KNOW we have somewhere around here. It’s for the afghan that my mother made for me a couple years ago. We can’t find the book and the pattern is not online as far as I can tell. Hell, the one that I’m working on (pictured left) isn’t even available online. That picture was from an ebay auction of the pattern (linked on the image). Someone clipped the pattern from an old (1985) Annie’s Pattern Club book. I have the actual complete book. It’s been well loved. (aka beaten up and abused) My mother has made several of them and they look really cool when they’re all done and sewn together. She’s done so many color variations that it’s not even funny. I will be getting to work on the centers tomorrow or so, tho. I have 45 more to make. Then I can figure out what other colors I’m going to use.

I also have a pink afghan to work on too for a princess and one for a nephew too. Egad, I’m turning into a crochet whore! <<.<< I need a better crochet icon.