Bitty Bits of Blather (Volume 17)

In case you are wondering, I decided to number these little strolls through my mind. That way I know how many of them there actually are. 

1. 
Thank goodness, the Christmas decorations are all put away. Actually they were all put away a week ago. We had company for dinner on Sunday and I didn't want them coming in and seeing that we were still Ho Ho Hoeing at our house. Doesn't it always seem like it takes twice as long to take those things down as it does to put up? And ALWAYS, after you have put everything away and the boxes are all stashed back on their shelves in the basement, you look up and see something that you missed. Last year that was the string of "peppermint candy" lights that I had over the sliding door in the back. It wasn't so much that I missed them when taking everything down (they are hard to miss as they go across the whole top of the door), it was just that I left them there...for 12 months. Sort of my ode to West Virginia. And you want to know something.......

Not a single person who came into the house for that entire 12 months said a thing about the fact that we had greenery and Christmas peppermint candy lights still up in the kitchen.

This year it is a nativity scene that I put up on top of a piece of furniture and missed when taking everything down. I may just leave it. We will see.

2.
Oh my gosh the RAIN! It rained for two days this week and I had to drive through standing water in places where I have never seen standing water before.

But I am not going to actually complain about the rain because it could have been snow. And that would have been A LOT of snow. I will take the rain any day.

3.
Saturday is the first wedding on 2017. It is January and I already have 6 weddings to coordinate between now and August. This one is good sized, if you count 8 bridesmaids, a maid of honor and two flower girls. Yowza. AND the groom will be in uniform. They are the cutest thing. But of course I actually say that about all of my couples, even the ones who don't speak English and wear a sparkly pink dress. I say it because it is true. I don't think I have ever seen a less than radiant bride, even the one that got stung by the bee 30 minutes before the ceremony.

Always make sure that if the bride is allergic to bees that the photographer doesn't take her out into the field on a warm August afternoon. And if they do, just make sure that you have Benadryl handy.

I'm just sayin'

It is all in a days work.

4.
I am cleaning out my iTunes library. There is music in there that I have never listened to and frankly have no idea where it came from.

Has someone been downloading random songs into my iTunes library whilst I have been asleep.

I just wanted to use the word whilst.

I mean, there are random songs from artists that I have never heard of and after listening to the songs....I am not going to listen to them again. If I didn't buy the music, and believe me I am sure that I didn't, then I don't feel any obligation to keep it in iTunes, clogging up my very carefully archived music. And I do mean carefully. HHBL just shakes his head. He is evidently not as anal obsessive careful with how his library is organized. I mean, doesn't everyone make sure that artists are correctly reflected - Last Name, First Name. 

Unless of course it is a band. I mean you wouldn't list ELP as Palmer, Emerson Lake would you? 

5.
My cousin sent me the best thing (well really her mom, Carol, sent it to me.) Linnea and I had lunch a while back and she mentioned that she had been listening to oral histories recorded by her grandparents. Her grandmother and grandfather, my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Kenneth, many years ago sat down in front of a tape recorder and recorded 94 "episodes" of their life. That is a bit over 94 HOURS of history. Margaret and Kenneth were as cool as cool could be. Margaret was my Grandmother Amsler's oldest sister. They graduated from Wheaton College. They were missionaries for 10 years in Siam (before it was Thailand), she was an author, he was at one time the US State department's go to man on Thailand (he had traveled the length and breadth of the country). The stories that they would tell. And their house in DC. Oh, it had the one thing that I have never had in any house that I have lived in and something that I have always wanted.

A second back staircase.

But I digress. Linnea mentioned to her mom Carol that I was interested in the recordings. Carol graciously sent me a jump drive with 12g of recordings on it. I have the "Landon Chronicles" all loaded into iTunes. Now to find 94 hours to listen to all of them.  

6.
So, I am experimenting with Bullet Journaling. Don't know what that is? I have been intrigued for quite some time with this and it actually fits well with how I like to do things as far as lists are concerned.

If you go onto YouTube or Pinterest you will be overwhelmed with all the artistic and fancy bullet journals. I have looked at just about all of those YouTube videos, believe me. I sat down and spent an entire day just immersing my self in the world of the bullet journal before I made the decision.

So far.....I am completely obsessed. I have given myself a year with this, it fits perfectly with my swing back to "analog" on my to do lists. A bullet journal really is just one giant to do list and brain dump all rolled into one.

I will give you a run down at the end of the year to let you know if I am going to be continuing with it.  

7.
I can tell you that my Bullet Journal is in no way an artistic thing of beauty. That is the thing that would be very discouraging about watching those YouTube videos and looking at all the different, and frankly outrageously gorgeous "spreads" that you will find on Pinterest. 

I am not that person and I had to tell myself, when I embarked on this journey, that it was OK not to have stylized hand writing and all the "stuff" and there is a lot of it.

Mine is simple and functional and I like it that way. 

Bitty Bits of Blather - The 2016 in Review Edition

I felt this overwhelming urge to do some bitty bits of blather. I have missed our time together going over the minutiae of my life in tiny bite sized pieces.

Let's do this more often shall we?

1.
I think I posted around 500+ times on Instagram this year. Not bad. 

Or really bad depending on how you look at it. Unlike the Kardashians, none of my photos came with pouty trout mouth and I was fully clothed the entire time. You can thank me later.

Here are some of my favorites

2.
I watched approximately 125+ movies/documentaries. It is an approximate number because, even though I am anally retentively obsessed fairly careful about keeping a list of the movies I have watched, I do occasionally forget. That list also includes several TV shows that I might have binge watched, including The Great British Baking show.

Can I just digress for a minute to say that without Mary Berry, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, the show is now dead to me. I will just have to live on re-watching the first 7 seasons. 

3.
I managed to read 71 books this year. That is a grand total of 22,635 pages. And I can tell you that because of the fabulous "AutoSum" feature in Excel.

Thank you Microsoft.

My favorite books of the year were:
On Living by Kerry Egan
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi
The Crime of the Century by Dennis Breo
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Junk by Alison Stewart
The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin
Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein
Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick    

4.
2016 was again The Year of the Wedding. I coordinated/attended/attended & coordinated 11 weddings. There was everything from the bride who wore a sparkly pink dress, had no attendants and could not speak English to the wedding with 10 bridesmaids. Yowza. Here are my favorite pictures from those days.

5.
There was some knitting that happened. That cannot be a surprise to you. I knit a total of 15 pairs of socks. The evidence is below, although this is not all 15 pairs.

This picture is short at least two pair of socks because those went to Mimi. She always appreciates them and knows how to take care of them. 

As in years past I have already taken out 12 skeins of yarn from THE STASH, put them through the ball winder, put them in brown paper lunch bags, stapled the tops shut and labeled them with the months of the year. The January 2017 Mystery sock is sitting with my sock knitting bag just waiting to be cast on tomorrow! Below are the yarns that will become socks in 2017. That is not to say that these are the ONLY skeins that will become socks. It is just that these are the planned skeins.

There was other knitting going on as well. Three baby blankets, several cowls, a number of hats, at least one lace project as well as ongoing work on the Never Ending Sock Yarn Blanket and a couple of other things.

Speaking of knitting, as we are, today I will also evaluate the current "WIPS" (works in progress for the non-knitters) sitting in my UFO (unfinished objects) pile and make the decision as to what projects will actually continue into the new year. I always swore that I would be a momonogamous knitter, only working on one project at a time.

I am obviously a big fat liar.

There are projects that you start with great intentions and enthusiasm and then you just lose interest.  It is better to just frog and put the yarn back in the stash for another day. I know that there is at least one knitted vest in there that is half finished and will never be finished because I don't like the yarn with the project.

Life is too short to knit something that doesn't bring you joy.
 
6. 
The rest of today will be used with cleaning out and cleaning up in preparation for 2017. I am cleaning out all of the articles I had stashed in Pocket because I don't use that any longer and I am trying very hard to just delete things that I don't use on a regular basis. I have found that the digital age just makes it easier for some of us with hoarding tendencies to hoard but not take up any space that anyone else can see.

Yarn stash is never to be counted as a hoard. No need to look over there.

I will be looking through ALL of the iPhone photos that I have taken over the course of 2016 an eliminating all that don't really need to be kept. That would currently be 1149 photos that I have to go through.

There is a bunch of stuff to scan. There is planning to be done.

So many things to do before the Ohio State - Clemson game comes on tonight and I start stuffing my face with shrimp and beer.  

7. 
OK all, lets go out there and have a happy and safe New Years Eve.

Personally, I will be sitting around, sans bra (but with pants on) watching football and eating junk food cuz, you know, I was SO smart to schedule my annual physical for a week after the new year.

See you in 2017.  

Bitty Bits of Blather

I really should do some kind of graphic for these....but where to find the time.

Did I digress already? Oops.

1.
This week I learned, definitiely, that I have high blood pressure.

Crap.

Oh, I knew this was coming, I just hoped that I was wrong. It has been sneaking up on me over time. Even 15+ years ago, when I would go to the eye doctor, my BP would be elevated a bit. I laughed it off because who really likes going to the eye doctor. Or any doctor for that matter. Then I finally got to the OB/GYN in December, and I gave them a reading that basically scared them a bit.

Then I had my colonoscopy....and I did it again. But it came down after they gave me the Fentanyl and so all was well.

And then I had my physical this week. I could feel my BP rising as I was driving there but I figured it was just a bit of "White Coat Fear". But I might have been wrong about that because WCF (which is a known effect by the way) would not have given off a BP that made the nurse look at me like she wanted to make sure that I still had the top of my head. Even sitting quietly in a room for 5 minutes with the BP cuff periodically taking a reading didn't bring the numbers down all that much.

So now I take BP medication and take my BP every morning. Yesterday morning and this morning it was down a bit so I guess the stuff is working. We will see.

2.
This week I also had to admit that my cholesterol is not what is should be. I saw the number on Wednesday night and thought that I had somehow misread it. And by that I mean that it is a number that is less that 300 but more than 200 and that is all that I am going to say about it at the moment. There will be some dietary changes made, not that we eat unhealthy because really we don't. But butter and I are going through a trial separation at the moment. We won't even talk about my relationship with bacon.

Breaking up is so hard to do. I am also sure I will blog on it more indepth after Dr. M tells me that I will also have to go on meds for the cholesterol.

Sigh.

3.
HHBL and I are off this weekend to spend two days just hanging with these people.

We are sometimes serious, I assure you, but these people are the reason why I would say that if you don't have a core group of friends who you are absolutely assured will laugh and cry with you, will tell you the truth when you are being a butthead and will love you no matter what....

Then you need to go out and find them right now and keep them in your life.

Maumee Bay State Park Lodge does not know what it is in for starting about 6:30p tonight.

4.
This is what that stupid FitBit makes me do.

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I realized that I was exactly 200 steps shy of 10K for the day. Most sane people would say, "Hey, I did pretty well today! Made almost 10K steps. I will pat myself on the back and get in bed."

But not me. Oh no, I have to actually walk around my house, in my pjs, hoping that my neighbors don't wonder why I am wandering in seemingly aimless circles, so that I can get that happy little buzz on my left wrist that tells me that I have made it to 10K steps.

That thing isn't the boss of me! Nope, not at all.

5.
I started knitting another baby blanket this week. Thank goodness I can do this now without really thinking about it because this is the fourth baby blanket THIS YEAR and I am getting a bit sick of them.

I know, I know. I said that I wasn't going to do anymore for a while but then I get the baby shower invitation for one of TMO's friends and, well, every baby needs a baby blanket that is knit with love. So there you are. And THEN TSiL's twin brother's wife had baby #2 last week and he will also need a blanket I am thinking. I so want to cast on a sweater. The swatch is done and I was spot on with the gauge (patting self on back) and the yarn is a lovely brown with copper highlights. But I have told myself very sternly that I cannot cast on until I have finished at least one of the baby blankets.

We all know what I am going to be knitting in the car on the way to Maumee.

6.
We had snow this week. Next week it is supposed to be in the 60's.

It has been a crazy weather year. We haven't had any huge snow storms. We haven't had any really cold weather for long periods. I am not complaining but it has just been a strange weather year. Let's hope that Spring doesn't bring us an April like we had several years ago where it rained every. single. day.

Not fun.


7.
Instagram. Because now, with the changes that Instagram has made, I can post to the THREE accounts that I am in charge of. Let's post ALL of the pictures from ALL of the things.

 

Bitty Bits of Blather - All Over the Place

Look what I am bringing you!! Bitty Bits of Blather, which I haven't done is a boat load of time.

Can you have a boat load of time? Hmmmm.

At any rate, I am currently sitting in a hotel room, wrapped up in the bedspread and trying not to think about what might be ON the bed spread and if they have even washed the bedspread. The room is alternately just right and freezing, depending on where you are sitting. I have my feet propped up on the coffee table which puts the toes right in line with the A/C blowing, so I am wrapped up. Just what you want when visiting Arizona....to be cold.

 

Blather that is way better than watching a political debate.

1.

Yes, we are traveling in Arizona at the moment. HHBL is speaking at a conference for the next day or so. I will actually be holed up in the hotel room today, cranking out work. I generally don't like to spend an entire day in a hotel room. It isn't a terrible hotel room but it isn't the Ritz either. Yes, I know what a Ritz Carelton hotel room is like cuz I have stayed in several. THAT is a story all by itself. Let me tell you that a RItz Carleton, especially up on the "Club Floor" is an experience like no other. Can you say, "Cookies all day long"? Can you say, "A room with TWO king sized beds and a balcony where, if you sleep with the doors open, you can hear the ocean waves clear as day". Can you say, "You can only get up to the floor if you have a special key for the elevator".

This hotel is not like that hotel.

But it will be fine for the next three nights.

2.

Current Music Obsession: The Tenors

Oh my goodness. Why did I not know. How could I have missed. I have to back up a minute. I think sometime back I told you that one of my goals is to have played all of the music that I have in iTunes at least once. To have a "1" in the Times Played column. I have A LOT of music and so this is a big undertaking. But, I also work in an open office environment which means that at least some point during the day I have my earphone in so that I can concentrate on work and not hear the phone calls and conversations. So when that happens I open up iTunes, switch to the "Songs" view and look for music that doesn't have a number of any kind in the "Plays" column. That is how I came last week to be listening through an album (did I just date myself?) called "The Canadian Tenors" by The Tenors. I THINK that this particular album is one that came from my dad, it sounds like something that he would have liked, but I cannot be sure. The one thing that I do know is that I didn't buy it. I didn't even make it through all the songs before I went and purchased two more albums worth.

Total musical obsession.

 

You can thank me later.

3.

A bit more on the FitBit. I both hate and love the thing. I hate the fact that it just hangs out on my wrist and waits for me to do something. I know it's there. It knows that I know. We have a stalemate at times. It is that silent yet nagging reminder that it is half way through my day and I only have 4000 steps to my name. It is that small knocking in the back of my brain that says, "Pssssst, you have been sitting at your desk for two hours. Get up off your big fat bahookie and take a walk."

I hate that whispering voice.

But I also love my FitBit for some of the same reasons. It reminds me that I have been sitting on my big fat bahookie for two hours (and sometimes more if I am really dialed in at work) and I need to get up and move. There is that happy little buzzing on my wrist when I hit 10,000 steps. I make my steps 5 days out of 7 and if I don't make it I don't sweat about it. 10,000 steps is a goal but not concrete daily thing.

And there is the fact that my resting heart rate has gone WAY down.

I guess we will stick together for awhile.

4.

Winter has finally arrived in the Frozen Northeast Ohio......and we managed to avoid it by flying out the morning of the falling snow.

It is a tough job but someone has to do it.

This also means that I will now obsessively check the weather for what things will be like on the day that we fly back. I try not to worry about this because, in the wise words of the Russian spy in Bridge of Spies, "Would it help?" No, it won't help.

But you know me, I have to have something to worry about.

5.

We have re-upped for the yearly Poultry CSA with Brunty Farms. They have gotten big enough that they can offer some different options as far as how many chickens and egg dozens you sign up for. 20 chickens is a bit too many for us, although we do love and eat a fair amount of chicken. So, I signed up for less chickens per month......

And I committed to half a pig. I KNOW! What the heck am I thinking. 

Oh I know what I was thinking. The thought of all that sausage and bacon and chops and roasts and other parts just overwhelmed me and I said yes before I could talk myself out of it. I can be fairly certain that we will not eat THAT much pork over the course of a year but we will see. There aren't too many things that are more yummy than pork on the grill in the summer.

I will keep you posted as to how it goes. We will get the pork in either Spring or Fall but I am not sure wish. I am so excited. 

6.

Knitting Update. I know that you are dying for that.

It will be a long time before I knit another Baby Blanket, unless of course, that a grandchild arrives. NOT that I am putting pressure mind you. I knit three of them (baby blankets not grandchildren) in the space of 8 weeks and I don't think I can do another one for a while. They are pretty much "no think"  knitting as I watch TV or read, it is just that it was miles and miles and miles of Stockinette or Garter stitch or some combination. Mile and miles and miles. But new babies or soon to be new babies do need blankets and so....I was a baby blanket knitting fool.

Traveling means that I am knitting socks. I have a tradition that when I am sitting on the plane I start a new pair of socks. Since I am doing my second annual Mystery Sock Yarn project I don't actually know what I am going to unwrap until I actually open the paper bag. Knit Picks Felici in the colorway Wizard. Squee!! Obviously I knew that was one of the skeins that I wound up in December but I just love Felici. The stripes are so happy. I will be putting in afterthought heels in black and toes in black. Thankfully I had some black yarn that was hanging around in my sock knitting box bag.

 

When I get back from AZ I have yarn wound up to start another sweater. I have great sweater urges these days. Who wouldn't want to wear a war wool sweater that you have knit yourself.

There are several UFOs (unfinished objects) that I need to work on but I look at them and go, "Meh" so I am thinking that they are still going to be sitting in the UFO bin for a while longer. I will get to them eventually.

And then there is the never ending sock yarn blanket that I would really like to finish some time this year.....or decade. Why do I take on these projects?

7.

Usually this last one is a bunch of Instagram photos. However, I am using my work computer so I don't have access to my personal Dropbox so you are out of luck. I will leave you with a picture that I took this morning of a fellow in the apartment across the way from our hotel, who was very happily taking his morning toke before going off to work.

Who would ever see him out on his own balcony indulging in his morning "pick me up" before going off to work.

Who indeed.

 

 Surprise!