Summertime goals

Since my springtime goal list was fairly shot due to that unexpected OhMyGodWeBoughtAHouse event, I'm calling it a wash. Here's my goals for the rest of this month...

1) Buy some summer clothes for work.

I'm late on this, I know, but everything else made me forget about my wardrobe. And now I'm stumped looking at my closet (which is fairly full) because everything I own is either for autumn and winter, or way too casual for work. I can wear jeans, which helps. But I need some nice summer blouses and maybe a flippy skirt or two.

2) Unpack the rest of my office

It's almost done, but I have a lot of random little stuff to sort and store away.

3) Clean out cabinets and put down fresh contact paper.

I rushed to put all of the fragile stuff away so it didn't get bumped, but I need to actually organize it now.

4) Write notecards to friends and family regarding move

Some of my family probably doesn't know we're engaged. How fucked up is that? I have some cards to write..

5) Finish unpacking boxes in living room

self explanatory.

6) Triple-check all credit cards, bank accounts, subscriptions, etc. to make sure address is correct

And that I'm up to date on payments on everything.

7) Gardening...

Plant lilies in front of house. Transplant little yellow flowers growing on our hell strip to somewhere else in the yard. Help Erich with some basic yard maintenance.

8) Clean out email

Swap reports on yahoogroups, partner lists for ThemeFBs, reply to personal emails.

9) Finish Blogger template

10) Buy new T-pass on June 29th

It's very odd to have one again. We'll ignore the fact that I've used them for a third of my life. Seeing a Zone 8 on it (as opposed to an S or a C for the city passes) is freaky.

11) Take photos of stitching and reformat stitching web pages

Implement new template. Re-arrange historical photos for each project.

I think that's enough....

Broken thoughts on a Saturday...

I finished Half-Blood Prince yesterday afternoon. Around 4 hours, which makes sense since OOtP took me a bit less than six. I enjoyed it. Still digesting it, since there are the plot turns like all of the other books that need to be thought about. I'll probably start putting some comments behind a spoiler filter on LiveJournal tomorrow (and can email discussions for anyone who isn't on LJ but wants my views...)

But without giving anything away-- I really did enjoy it, and so far, I like how the story is progressing.

(I can say safely, at least!)

+ + + + + + +

I did a bit of work last night on the revamp of my journal. Blogger's tags are a bit confusing to me, and my knowledge of CSS is at a "if I cut and paste this, it seems to work..." level, so it's going slowly. By no means is it finished, but here's my working copy at the moment. I have a lot of .div tags to add in there, as I improve the text colors and such.

Hopefully by next Friday, it'll be ready to go live.

+ + + + + + +

We have a D&D game starting around noon today. Erich's running his campaign. So while I'm not busy in combat, I have plenty of backstitching to do on The Castle. Once I get the backstitching rotation done (probably today... since the game will go for at least 10 hours), I'll start my new stitching rotation...

1) Egyptian Sampler (TW)
2) Cats on a Staircase (Bucilla OOP)
3) New start- Astrology Sampler (Witches Stitches)
4) The Castle
5) Smoky Mountain Cats (Pegasus)
6) Home is Where the Cat Is (Leisure Arts)
7) New Start- Elemental Dragons (Dragon Dreams)
*) Backstitching: The Castle (floating slot for whenever our next game is)

#6 should go quickly... I expect to get it nearly done in one rotation round. IT's very small. Once that's complete, I'll most likely start on the wedding sampler for Ivanna & Joe.

Oh... and I received my fabric-of-the-month from Silkweaver yesterday. My pieces were two of the new colors they're releasing in August: Poltergeist (a grey swirl, with just a hint of purple to my eyes...) and Coral Reef (which is, as it sounds, coral pink). I'm on the "random fabric" plan, so this month, I received 32 ct. fabrics... the Coral Reef is Lugana, and the Poltergeist is Belfast Linen.

Not sure what I'll use the Coral Reef for yet. Poltergeist I have a plan for-- that fits the season, of course.

+ + + + + + +

Thank Goddess for the inventor of portable air conditioners. I wouldn't be sleeping otherwise. It's rather muggy up here on the 2nd floor.


Off to game...

Stitchers Blog Questions...

A few weeks back, I joined a yahoo group designed specifically for cross-stitch related blog questions, called SBQ. Since I was busy with "the moves", I wasn't participating... but now I can finally get to them. :) Questions are posted roughly every Wednesday.

Since there are many in the archives, I'll probably work backward through a couple of them every week. This week's question, "What do you do when you have some sort of obligation stitching to do, but don't want to do it?" doesn't apply to me, as I've never done any obligation stitching to date... so here are a few others from the archives...

7/6/05- Do you think that you stitch neater on Evenweave than you do on Aida cloth? If so, why?

My quarter stitches are definitely neater (for obvious reasons to anyone who's reading this that knows what Aida and Evenweave *are*), but otherwise I don't think my stitches are that much neater on Evenweave. If I have one strong fault with my stitching, it's that I'm not as adept at keeping my thread tension even, so my stitches often are uneven, no matter what I'm stitching on. Hopefully that will change with time and increased experience.

6/29/05 When starting a new project, do you start in the middle? If you do, once you've worked down to the bottom, do you turn your chart and fabric around so that you are stitching the top section downwards again or do you just stitch upwards from the middle?

I always start in the middle. I don't work to the bottom, though-- I honestly kind of go all directions from the middle when I work. I try to find identifyable forms to set stitching goals, and work that way.

As for turning my chart and fabric-- as odd as it sounds, I always work with my hoop upside down when I stitch (the chart stays upright), but turn it back upright when I am backstitching. It's really, really odd. But the artists and designers in my department at work have suggested that I do it because I'm focusing on the individual details of the stitches when I'm actually stitching crosses, rather than the finished image as a whole. When I'm backstitching, I'm finishing the image.

It's really screwed up, but if I turn my hoop upright, a lot of times I get completely messed up as I read charts. Clearly, my brain needs some rewiring.

6/22/05 Are there any types of designs that you won't stitch?

Unless it were for an obligation piece for a friend, I won't stitch Christian or Bible-related pieces. I'm not Christian, so I have no purpose for them.

The ONLY exception to this rule would be a stitching of the Footprints poem, which is Christian in origin, but has a bit more universal appeal. I find the poem inspirational. I expect to eventually have some form of this in my rotation, most likely as a gift to my mom (who really loves the poem).

Website changes are a'happening...

Looky what I did in the last hour... :)

Eventually, I plan on having everything on my site switch over to the graphics... Stitching page, fanfic, faith ramblings, and yes, my journal. I'm not exactly looking forward to coding Blogger script into this layout, but hey... it works.

I'm too poor to go out and do anything else right now-- might as well work on the web pages.

Now if Globat wouldn't be completely fucked up when I save pages, I could actually do this faster. I guess I'll work out the pages in Notepad...

*sigh*

Needing a game plan

I'm really, really sick of my Keds sport shoes (they're those weird half clog/half tennis shoe things). They're really comfy... don't get me wrong. But in my brilliance of packing, they were the only shoes I kept out of boxes. And so I've been wearing the SAME pair of shoes everyday, for every purpose, for about three weeks straight now. This is complicated by the fact that I improperly labeled my shoe box, so right now, I honestly have no clue what still-taped box contains my shoes. I know the pile is in a larger box (I AM a girl, after all... regardless of my personal inability to be fashionable... I still have too many shoes).

But yeah-- I'm getting sick of wearing the same pair for everything. If they don't show up by payday on Friday, I think I'll hit Marshalls across the street from work immediately after my half-day of work, and buy a new pair of shoes.

Just 'cause.


***

Last night was the first attempt at our monthly Worlds Largest Dungeon excursion. It's in Abington, closer to where we used to live, and runs from around 7 p.m. to 11 or 11:30 (depending on interruptions during the game-- we have a stopwatched 4 hours of gaming time). The game went well. Lots of battling. Some plot development about our environment (if that makes sense). Pretty good treasure haul. We seem have been working through an area of the dungeon that better holds interest. Section A was very empty, and a lot of "oh, look... another empty room." Not so with the area we're in now.

Getting up this morning was a bit rough, but it was due as much to a lack of sleep the night before as it was the lessened hours last night. Erich and I stayed up a bit too early on Sunday night, so we were tired yesterday morning, too. I have a bit of a headache, but I'll manage. We're still partially adjusting to the new commute anyway, so everything compounds a bit.

Tonight WILL be an early bed night. I plan on being under the covers by 11. Preferrably 10:30.

But before I go to bed, I have a few things I want to do... like actually set up my desktop computer in my office (finally!). Erich helped me move the bookshelves and desks into place on Sunday so I can start unloading boxes. I seriously can't wait to have my office together. Hopefully I can have the majority of that accomplished by the end of the weekend.

Tonight, I focus only on the computer. Because I'm already tired and won't want to do much else... but I'm in desperate need of an escape into Sims 2 for a while.

And as a note to myself, for this week...

1) Last post-party cleanup in kitchen
2) Finish backlog of laundry, put away
3) Pay all bills
4) Double-check bill and subscription addresses, update where needed
5) Respond to emails (where needed)


Busy, busy, busy...