A Little Catch Up

Hi everyone! I hope that everyone had a lovely weekend and Easter/Anzac Day. Thank you for all the kind comments on my last post. It's nice to have such a wonderful support system in blogland. I tried to send out quick replies to the comments if I could but wouldn't you know it, my phone and internet died! I didn't get to everyone I wanted to but please know I appreciate each and every comment.

As far as the phone and internet, well, that's just a pain. I wanted to switch to Vonage for phone service and keep "naked DSL" with AT&T but they just cut me off completely. Thanks AT&T! Good riddance to you too. I am waiting for Comcast to send me the install kit so in the meantime I am phoneless and only have internet because I am "borrowing" it. Shhhh....don't tell anyone!

And to add to the pile, my cable started acting up over the weekend. I can live without a phone and I can even live without internet (I have a Blackberry!) but I cannot live without cable. I've got shows to watch and things to see! Luckily, Comcast sent out a repair guy on Easter Sunday and the cable box seemed to work under the spell of his magic fingers.

So I hit the trifecta. I have all the luck.

But the exciting news of the weekend is that I bought my new car! I haven't got a picture of it though because my garage space if very dark and tight. I traded in my 15 year old burgandy Nissan Altima for a 2011 Honda CR-V in charcoal grey! It's very exciting and scary! Exciting to have a shiny new car...with keyless entry...and a working stereo...with leather seats...and a working sun visor...and a little spot to put my sunglasses. Ohhh...so exciting! Scary to be indebted to the bank for five years though! Yikes! So I see a lot of budgeting, road trips and stitching from stash in my future. That's ok though...I have shiny new car! I'll take a photo soon.

I've been stitching but somewhat halfheartedly. I wasn't really feeling my projects and I decided I needed some whimsy. So I pulled out my Tiny Garden Fob kit by Shepherd's Bush and stitched it up. It had a pretty good message for me...
I love this cute design!It just makes me smile. I still need to finish it up into a fob and hope to do that by the end of the weekend.

And then I pulled out Blue Snowman by Shepherd's Bush too. I love the whimsy and have been missing it. It's my usual stitching style. I obviously haven't gotten very far on it though. Hopefully it will grow some today. It will be my main focus for the evening.
White blob on blue fabric. I warned you I didn't get far!

I have been working on A Wish For You on my Anniversaries of the Heart. I love this block but it is draaaaging! The house is cute and I love the quirky two-tone brick but it took me forever to build it! Forever!
I still need to stitch the over 1 verse and I am dreading it! I am changing the verse a bit and omitting any personalization so I have to make sure that it will fit in the space allotted. I do NOT want to frog over 1. I haven't had the brain for math lately so I have been putting off this part. There's only 3 more days to April so I had better get moving and finish it already.

I am on "vacation" this week. I had to "use it or lose it" so I've been sleeping in til 1030am and catching up on much needed sleep, eating lunch at 3pm at the little eateries in the neighborhood and relishing in the fact that I can wear yoga pants in the middle of the day. It's already Wednesday! It's going by too fast! I should have asked for two weeks off! lol

I do have another finish and things to share but that will have to wait until the next post. Again, thanks for the comments and hanging in there with me through the whine and the hard times. *hugs*

Until next time...

*Meh*

I am feeling meh. You know that feeling. I'm just going through the motions and trying not to succumb to the feelings of being overwhelmed, sad, stressed out (!!!) and completely exhausted. I've had a long stretch of seemingly bad luck and after so much time, it gets hard to rally and even harder for me, the die-hard pessimist, to see any of the positives. And there are positives, don't get me wrong. It's just that the negatives are just so draining.

It's hard to be unsure how secure your position is at work. It's hard to see parents getting older and getting more confused and immobile. It's hard to be the youngest and go through it all alone. It's incredibly hard to have to rebuild a new circle of friends...especially when you are feeling meh and are more prone to being a hermit when things don't need to be taken care of. It's hard to shop for a car when you don't want to deal with salespeople. And it's especially hard to realize you don't really have anyone to put down as an emergency contact because everyone has left or become unreliable. It's hard to keep whining about the same things but seriously, nothing seems to get better. Perhaps I have some voodoo hex on me that I don't know about?

So, I'll be laying low for a while as I am tired of being a downer on my own blog. I'm stitching when I can but my motivation is slowing down. I think I need something bright and vibrant to stitch on to set me into a better mood.

Speaking of the blog, my little space is turning 6 soon. Can you believe that?! I'll rally to host a surprise a little later. Nothing huge...I have a car to save up for and all...but something cute and useful.

Until next time...

Coming to You...

Live behind my new laptop!

Woo!

I'm still getting used to it so if you see a bunch of typos, it's cuz this keyboard feels very different from my old one.

I should probably explain what happened to my old laptop. I usually keep it on the floor in front of my recliner. It's usually out of the way. Well, I had borrowed something from a friend and had company over one night and when I tried to step over my laptop (since the borrowed something and my friend was in my way), I stepped on my pantleg and couldn't step wide enough to clear the laptop and I ended up stepping on my laptop instead. That was not a good night. I was unbelievably upset! The screen had cracked and crystals were leaking all over the place. The laptop works but the monitor is pretty jacked up. So if you learn anything from me, don't store your laptop on the floor cuz you might step on it and jack everything up. What a mess! So now, I have a new laptop I have to learn. And no, it's not a Mac. I wish it was! But the $900 I saved by not buying a Mac will go into whatever new car I end up buying. Sometimes, you have to make sacrifices like that. In the end, I know whatever car I buy will last me longer than any laptop so it's best to invest the money there.

When I went to Best Buy Friday night, I wasn't sure what to expect. My old laptop is a Toshiba and I loved it. It would have lasted me at least another year if I hadn't stepped on it like a dumbwit. But all the new Toshibas have 10-keys now which is all fine and dandy is you're an accountant or have an Excel fetish. I had my criteria...no Dells and no Compaqs. I was deciding between an HP and a non 10-key Toshiba. And I bought the HP. Why? Because it's prettier. Navy with a interesting pattern and a cool built-in screensaver with more artistic applications. Yea...I'm a girl. I like quirky and I like interesting. I am hoping that picking HP won't be a mistake. I managed to convince a guy friend to help me set up the new laptop so it saved me from having a fit and my head exploding. Even with him knowing what he was doing, it took almost 3 hours. Left to my own devices, you all would have read about me in the paper. "After many hours, California woman , 35, had conniption fit and caused a melee in an attempt to get her new laptop setup. Casualities yet to be determined." I still have a bit of computer stuff to deal with though which will go into next weekend. I need to make sure all my files from my last two laptops are saved and recycle them plus I am thinking of switching internet providers. AT&T has gotten too expensive and I am thinking of switching my internet to Comcast and my phone service to Vonage. If anyone has any experience with either, I'd love to hear about it.

So the stitching! Here's my progress on Mary Wigham.
I've completed part 3 with that last motif going into a good part of Part 6. I complete 3 large motifs (gold, blue, ivory), 2 small ones (green, pink) and 2 sets of initials. I had a hard time with the gold motif and the blue one. The gold motif was frogged once. Half because the dyelot blended into the fabric too much and half because of counting errors. The blue motif was a pain. There are major symmetry errors in that one and I had to correct them. Plus, it called for blue and black and I changed it to blue and dark blue. I think it looks nicer that way. So far, it may be once of my favorite motifs despite the headaches it gave me. I am now a third of the way done. Woot! I hope the next section is easier than Part 3!

Here's how it looks so far.
Please excuse the wrinkles and the blurriness.

I also started A Wish for You from my AotH series. I think I will do something a little different with the personalization here. Still deciding. But in the meantime, I'm building the house.
I love the little shamrocks. Deep down, beneath all the latin fire, I identify Irish. Dark hair, pale skin, freckles and an affinity for bangers and guinness. Yep, I fit right in. So I am really enjoying this block. I think I will work on it for a couple more nights before I have to set it aside for some secret stitching.

And last but not least, my TUSAL update.
This time Giggles is modeling my TUSAL jar. It's slowly growing. Lots of orts from Mary and AotH.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Obviously most of mine was occupied by laptop buying, set up, visiting the ailing parents and doing lots of laundry. I did go try a new restaurant yesterday though. I read a lot of local food blogs and newsletters. A while back, a southern place opened up in Oakland that I was curious about but in the last couple of months, the same place opened a second location in the city. So Sunday, I trekked over to the nitty gritty Tenderloin to see what this place was all about and encountered a wait about 40 people deep. That isn't uncommon here. San Francisco is full of foodies waiting to try the latest great thing. So Claire and I took a walk and encountered Philz Coffee. Another place familiar to me through my foodie newsletters. What an interesting coffee shop. There is no "house" coffee here. Philz is about brewing individual fresh cups of coffee. There is a menu with about 30 different blends...medium, chocolatey, herbal, spicey, dark. In the end, I picked a turkish blend with cardamon. Cardamon in coffee?! I had to try it and it was good. Different...but good. Fueled with caffeine, we continued our walk and headed back and we were still faced with a wait. That's ok...time to people watch. We saw some very interesting people. I think I saw a guy dressed as a girl in a very short catholic uniform skirt. Shorter than I ever rolled mine up! This place certainly attracted a mishmosh of interesting people. It's what makes San Francisco what it is. When we finally got in, we had a wonderful meal at Brenda's. We split granny apple with caramel butter beignets and I had a hangtown fry (oyster, bacon and scallion scramble) with potato hash and toast. Claire had an andouille sausage omelet with grits and those may have been the best grits I've ever tasted in my life. Mind you, this isn't the place for a diet and you may need a nap after eating here! OMG, with only eating half, I got so tired and drowsy! That's ok though. The leftover beignet was breakfast and the leftover scramble and potatoes was dinner! I think I better go to the gym a couple of times this week to work some of this off!

Well, that's it for me. Time to lay a little more brick on my house. Hope you all had a nice weekend!

Until next time...

Goodbye March...

...and good riddance!

March has been a rather unkind month. It was bad enough that there were approximately 21 days of rain...this other stuff had to happen.

First, my cell phone blew up. Ok, it didn't blow up. It got unnervingly hot and then shut down and wouldn't turn back on again. I received a replacement and it's acting kind of funny. Not to mention that it keeps sending me the same old email as if it was new mail. I think I will have to brave Verizon and do a complete upgrade.

Second, I am still without a laptop. I haven't been able to bring myself to go shopping for one because I hate dealing with the purchase and set up of technological and electronic devices. They confound me. I can use them...I just can't set them up without a fair amount of swearing and hair pulling and a high desire to throw things about. This weekend though...I will prevail. I hope!

Third, I took my 15 year old car to the mechanic because I felt it had a recurring issue plus other things I thought were wrong but was too scared to really find out about. He was very nice. He came and picked up my car from work, did an oil change and checked things out and then flatly informed me he will not fix any of the things wrong with the car and it was time I got a new one. Seeing as my car is maybe worth $2,000; it's hard to justify dropping a grand on repairs. So...time to shop for a car for reals. It would be nice to have a car I feel safe in, that will allow me to take road trips, actually had a sun visor and a working stereo system. I'm excited about that. I am not excited about having a car payment though.

So...phone, laptop, car. Umm...that's a lot of money. I may just end up having to become a hermit and forgo any vacations for the year since I won't have money for much else.

Lastly, I spent all of Sunday in the ER with my mom. She took a bad fall and fractured her pelvis. No fun. Her mobility is pretty compromised and it just makes things that much more difficult and stressful.

So, I'm a bundle of nerves and stress and anxiety. The only bright spot in March was the trusting nature of a stitchy friend but I'll tell you all about that later.

Stitching has been progressing. Part 3 of Mary Wigham is complete. She was a pain in the knickers...seriously...what possessed me to do this?! I can only hope that Mary stops having tantrums as I get farther along. I've started the next block on my AotH. It's coming along. I just love the little shamrocks! Pictures will be forthcoming...can't really do all that from work.

I'm looking forward to spending time with one of my stitchy groups tomorrow. I'm hoping it will help alleviate some of my stress. And if I can get a laptop and do the 4 loads of laundry that are calling at me...the weekend will be a success.

Hello April...please be sweet.

Happy weekend everyone. I hope to be back soon with some pictures!

Until next time...