It's Here...

Summer has officially begun!

You could see that immediately upon walking into the pool today. It was crowded...very crowded...I spent a wonderful day laying in the sun and swimming with all of my awesome friends. It was actually a good-bye party for one of my dear pals who is moving back to Spain this summer, but it was still a really wonderful time and everyone who went really enjoyed it. We started around midday and it was really freaking hot, but that was ok, because the pool itself is a chilly 68 degrees Fahrenheit, so once you've gotten in, your body is more than happy to be in the sun for a while.
At one point, we walked down to get food. We decided on traditional summer food, burgers, fries, milkshakes, etc. Yet again, the summer's presence was denoted by the large crowd at this traditional summer hot spot (hahhaha!). On our way back though, look what I saw!!!



A real life knitting graffiti artist at work! In the spirit of total nerdiness, I took this picture holding up my current project, which I was of course toting around with me the whole time. It was tons of fun. Thanks to Reed for taking this picture for me.

You want to know the true sign that it was summer? See that piece of knitting up there? I didn't knit a stitch of it today.

Thing to be grateful for today: FUN!

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, and certainly of his comedies.It is beautifully done and filled with incredible juxtapositions. The storyline is all at once very easy to follow and riddled with gems of profundity. Tonight, I went and saw my second production of this show. It was definitely the better of the two (enraged Waldorks, fear not, I did not see this year's Middle School production, so I'm not comparing it to anything).
I took very little issue with the show. It stuck, for the most part, to the original text, relying on costuming and small line changes to bring the show into a 1950's setting. The major difference was, not surprisingly, the show's transformation into a rock opera. The songs were short and few, which was a blessing as few of them really did much to add to the show I'm afraid. All of the actors though were quite good.
Puck stole the show. He was funny, clever, wild, and sexy all at once, everything a good Puck should be. I'm not sure who this guy is (I'll find out), but he really gave new and powerful life to one of my absolute favorite Shakespearean characters. His delivery of the final lines of the show was beautifully done and I'm so grateful to have seen him perform.

Thing to be grateful for today: See above.

Quickie

Hey,
So I've been running around all day (cleaning house, making food, going to the bank, etc.), and am at my house for a brief, relaxing few minutes before heading out again, so I figured I ought to drop a line now. Love you guys!

Thing to be grateful for today: Endings that are only beginnings in suits.

Homework

After staying up past midnight nearly every night this week, I'm done. School is over. I will not be returning until the middle of August, and I couldn't be happier.
Don't get me wrong. I love school. I love to learn, and I love my friends and my teachers (most of them), but eleventh grade has been very hard. In fact, if I'm being totally honest, it pretty much kicked the shit out of me. I'm glad that it's over, but I'm also entirely grateful to have had the experience, because I've noticed that the hardest parts of my life also happen to be the times that I learn the most.
Wow. I just got distracted for an hour going through the Savage Love archives...
You know what, if you don't know what Savage Love is, go google it. NOW!

Thing to be grateful for today: NO HOMEWORK!!!

One Day More

...is a great song...
Anyway, I've got one last night with WAY too much homework (yay for procrastination and early onset senioritis!). Tomorrow, blogging resumes with better posts.

Thing to be grateful for today: Endings.

Pretty colors...

So, I wanted to thank you all for being so patient with the scant posts lately. It's been a pretty intense week, so thanks for not expecting much. Today, I thought I'd distract you with my latest project.



LOOK AT THE PRETTY COLORS!!!

Thing to be grateful for today: My teachers that let me knit in class.

SO CLOSE!!!!!!

Hey everybody! I'm alive, and am continuing to persevere towards my final goal (SUMMER!!!)

Thing to be grateful for today: Essays that interest me.

Seriously

Don't expect much in the way of anything but a daily, "I'm alive, but only because coffee exists," message this week. I'm completely swamped.
I love you all.

Thing to be grateful for today: The nice people who've helped me get home this year when I was at school without a ride.

EDIT!!!!

SO, you might have noticed that yesterday's post sucked ass. There's a reason for that. I wrote it at eleven o'clock at night and didn't bother to edit it. I know that sometimes I don't write anything worth reading on here, but school is out for the summer starting on Friday, and I'm hoping that after that, I will be writing much more profound things (as opposed to TRYING to write about profound things and failing miserably). Of course, after about a week of that, I'll be heading off to Germany where I will hopefully be posting every few days. I will have some internet access there, but it will be very limited.
Anyway, I really appreciate those of you who read every day and am ALWAYS ready to hear criticism. If you think a post is absolute, total crap, please tell me. I'm trying to use this blog as a tool to become a better writer, and last night I did not post anything close to my potential. That was so far away from what I like to think of as my potential that it was on another planet.
I wish I had more time to write on the blog tonight, but I have to write four lab write-ups for my botany class and a first draft of my 2000 word paper on Japanese involvement in World War II. Here's to next week, when I will no longer be in this living hell called eleventh grade.

Thing to be grateful for today: The finish line that I can almost see.

Fate

Today, fate intervened in my life. It was a quite lovely.
For a week or so, my mom have been planning on going to our bank and starting up a debit account under my name so I won't have to carry around shit-tons of money while I'm in Germany. My mom and I went ahead and did it this morning. We went to our bank, which is about five minutes away from our house, and had just sat down with a woman who was going to help us create my account when we found out that we needed my social security number to do so and had to go back to the house to get it.
When we came back, the woman who had been helping us before was busy, so we were handed off to another woman. This woman told us that this was not her regular branch and that she was just there for the day. We began setting up the account, and in doing so had to of course explain that I would be using my card in Germany next month. It turns out that this woman was half-German and she and I ended up talking for a good half hour about the country and its people and history. It was amazing.
She told me about visiting the country, not only as a child, but later on as an adult, and about her relatives who lived there. She hadn't been there for a visit for years. We both attempted to speak German to one another, though neither of us were particularly successful. By the end of it, we both felt very good. She and I hugged. It was very emotional and beautiful.
To think that, had I decided to get my account set up another day, or had she been at her normal branch, or had my mom and I brought my social security number with us to begin with, I never would have met this woman who filled me with confidence about my trip. She told me that our talk had reminded her of how much she missed her family in Germany and had inspired her to try and go as soon as possible, so I like to think that it was really good for the both of us.
That was one of those moments where I plainly see God at work.

Thing to be grateful for today: Little acts of fate.

Amelie

I just finished watching the film Amelie for the second time. It's a truly beautiful film. The life lessons it presents are many but never pushed too hard so as to become unbearable or monotonous. As I see it, the film's major thesis is basically this: "Life is yours for the taking. Don't miss your chance."However, there are many other key themes that run through the film. "Life's a game" is one. I quite like that one. Amelie, someone who always had to play on her own as a child, secretly plays with the lives of other people as an adult. She never ceases to see the fun in inconspicuously helping others, doling out judgment, and bringing interest into otherwise dismal lives.
Amelie is a movie that is, simply put, about life. It isn't about a particularly extraordinary life, just your average one. It is about human nature and the differencecs between living and being an organism. I highly suggest that you watch it (now!).

Thing to be grateful for today: Haircuts

Busy!

Don't bother me. I'm sweeping.
*Sweep sweep sweep*

Thing to be grateful for today: The writers of Lost sort of redeemed themselves this week.

Inspiration Fail

Do you ever have one of those days when you can't think of anything to write about? Yeah...today is one of those days. I'll give it a try for you guys though.
The past twenty-four hours have been a culmination of the stress of the past five months (junior year of high school sucks) flying out of my body with a speed only comparable to that of a five year old when left alone in a room with your favorite book and a box of crayons (the horror!).
What I'm trying to say is, yesterday I was reduced to a screaming mess. It was not my proudest moment. Essentially what happened was, I felt wronged by one of my teachers, and the poor man felt the brute, emotional force of a seventeen year old boy going through a very emotional period of his life. He had no idea what he'd unleashed.
The next day I felt terrible for yelling at him and went to apologize, while still sticking to my firm belief that I as 100% correct in my opinion that he had acted unfairly. That chat did not go as well as I'd liked, but after reflecting about it the rest of the day and having one of the adults in my life that I have the most respect for pointed out just how genuinely kind of a person this man normally is, I went back and made sure that he knew that I really care about him and that he had just picked a terrible time to piss me off.
Lesson of the day: Sometimes, you don't even know how pissed off you are until you take it all out on someone who really doesn't deserve it.
Solution of the day: Know thyself (better than that)

Thing to be grateful for today: That I am a human and that that makes me capable of looking at my mistakes and learning from them.

Always All

First of all, I'd like to extend my greatest thanks to Lauren (yes, that Lauren).
Second of all, I'd like to apologize to everyone who doesn't get the "yes, that Lauren" joke. You're truly a worse person because of it.
Third of all, I'd like to tell you all that I finished the socks today.
Fourth of all, I'd like to show you a picture of said socks, but I can't, because now my computer and my camera are refusing to be friends. Technology is stupid.
Fifth of all, I'd like to go to sleep.

Thing to be grateful for today: Hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Hi, it's Lauren again (yes, that Lauren). Gardiner called me this evening and asked me to guest blog to let you all know that he's fine but has no internet connection. Apparently, he's been stealing the neighbor's wifi for the last year and half and that means he has no recourse when the signal goes down.

Here's hoping that his neighbor reboots the system or pays his DSL bill or whatever the problem may be so that Gardiner can go back to his thieving ways and resume entertaining us each evening.

Now comment!

Clarity

The past few days have brought clarity to multiple areas of my life. It seems that a lot of things are seeing their dust settle.

My play is finally out of the "rampant creativity" stage and into the "let's take all of these ideas, sift through them, and see what works" stage, also known as the refinement stage. That's REALLY exciting because it means that I get to start working on the meat of the thing, and not just the fantasy.

I also have a near-complete pair of socks!



I'm really happy with these, and I think that my next pair will be cabled again.

All right, well that's about it tonight.

Thing to be grateful for today: Opportunities to do something that seems very small for me but is very important for someone else, and the feeling that that gives me.

LOOK!!!

I would like you all to know that I feel very smart right now? See that in the upper left corner? That's the knitting olympics medal that I tried to add to the blog months ago, and failed! Today, I decided to face the odds (and the internet powers that be) and try it again, and I succeeded! This makes me feel very special, because now anyone coming to the blog sees THAT! Yes, I know how superbly nerdy it is to be an olypmic knitter, and no, I couldn't be happier to be a nerd.
That button means that I WON!!! I WON DAMMIT!
Also, I washed the socks for the first time last week. Hold your gasps of horror, I'd only worn them twice, BECAUSE I wasn't sure if they could be machine-washed or not. I found out that they could, popped them in the washer and dryer, and out came what appeared to be smaller socks. I was horrified and awful visions of having to actually give my mother a piece of knitting (she'll get the joke) ran through my head!! Then, I stuck one on and realized that the wash had not shrunk it, but instead compacted it. Now, the socks are a nice, snug fit, which is really quite a lot better than loosy-goosy socks that, while they look cool, kinda droop. The sock no longer have ANY droop, and I thoroughly approve of machine-washed hand-knit socks. They are probably my new favorite thing ever.
That's about it for today.

Thing to be grateful for today: How easy it was to get the second sock of the Alex Through the Looking Glass set back onto it's needles (long story. I'll have a whole blog for it later).

Sing It Out

Well, for fear that Lauren will put a bullet in my face, I'm going to write about Glee today. Glee pretty much rocks. It is honestly one of my absolute favorite shows on television right now. I appreciate how much of a stereotype I am fulfilling by liking this show so much, and I'm ok with that. The show, at its center, has a beautiful message and empowering.
The message of Glee has been the same since day one; everybody is an outcast on some level. At first glance, that's a really depressing message, but its deeper than the surface level. If everyone is an outcast, then no one is, and that means that everyone has at least ONE thing in common other than being human. We can all say that, at some point or another, we've felt rejected and "too different". We're all a bit quirky and have things that many people do not like about us, and that's actually very beautiful. Because we are all like that, we can all relate to the message of Glee and to one another.
I know that this is a bit weird, but one reason I like Glee is that I am the kind of person who desperately wishes it was socially acceptable to burst out into song to express how you feel. Those of you who know me very well at all know that I'm a very expressive person, but that doesn't mean I always feel comfortable being so expressive and clear with my emotions. I think that part of that is because I am uncomfortable feeling real, burning anger. Social norms require that we, to a certain extent, bridle in our feelings. Song though, song lets you be just who you are, no questions. One of my best outlets for anger is singing. When you're so pissed you feel like you might burst it can be really amazing to turn on a wild, loud song and sing until you're mouth is dry and your lungs are empty. Glee lets me pretend for forty-five minutes that it's ok to open my mouth and sing out my feelings.
Glee is actually a very magical show. The writing can be lackluster, but it's normally pretty good, and all of the characters are great. The actors and actresses on Glee are all very talented and know just how to express what it is to be living in adolescence. When I watch Glee, I often feel that the characters are like overblown versions of the people I know and love. It inspires me and let's me feel like I'm not the only one who sings when life is too much.

I know that I've been writing about Glee this whole time, but I need just one moment for another show that I love, Heroes. Today, it was announced that, after four seasons, Heroes has been canceled. Let's all please take a moment of silence for one of my absolute favorite shows. Heroes plays into an essential part of who I am, my fascination with superpowers. I've loved the idea of having a superhuman ability since I was very small, and still am. I think about it all the time. Sometimes, I'll be in a totally every day situation and wonder what it would be like if I had some ability or another.

Thing to be grateful for today: Theater

Foolish!

I'm sorry. I have a confession to make. Tonight, I sat up much too late on facebook, and did not think of anything particularly good to write about...Please don't hate me for too long.

Thing to be grateful for today: MY LOVELY AND UNDERSTANDING READERS!!!

(Also this quote: "Gay marriage will lead to bestiality. Just like giving women the right to vote led to hamster's having the right to vote.")

Blurgh...

I really don't feel like writing anything very exciting tonight, and its late...so I think I'll bitch about my socks really fast and then say goodnight.
Basically, I have two socks that are kicking my ass right now. I brought two different socks, from two different pairs around with me today so that I could be assure knitting all day. That didn't work out so well. Around four o'clock, I found myself with one sock that I had taken off of the needles to pull halfway out. Of course, I had been stupid and left the needles in my car, so I couldn't even put the sock back on the dang things. "Never fear," I thought to myself. You have your second sock to work on. Unfortunately, that sock required very specific cabling that I needed a cable needle for. Guess what? No cable needle. I deconstructed a pen and used its inner-most piece to cable...and then looked back and saw a mistake half a row back. Normally, half a row back is not such a big deal, but when it is in sock yarn, with a cable every few stitches, and the cables are sprouting of stitches that you magically created the row before, and so if they drop, you can't pick them up, because they cease to exist, it can be a LITTLE BIT STRESSFUL!!!!

They say that knitting calms a person down. I don't know who "they" are, but they're a bunch of goddamn liars!

(Disclaimer: I love knitting except for days like this when the sight of my pointy, too-effeminate (I hate that they're pink) double-pointed needles (I also hate that they're double-pointed...don't ask) sticking out of my bag is a horrible reminder of my failures.)

Thing to be grateful for today: That knitting is not my job and my family does not rely on me to churn out knitted objects to survive.

Like a Speeding Train Full of Bricks, Really

Do you ever have one of those moments where you hear about something and something it just hits your head like a ton of bricks and you think, "That's for me. I'm supposed to do that."? I had that happen this afternoon. I was talking with a friend who just happened to mention the "Camino de Santiago de Campostela", a set of paths that spider their way across all of Europe. Campostela is a city on the northwestern coast of Spain known as the burial place of St. James. For hundreds of years, people have made the journey from their doorstep to Campostela as a pilgrimage.
Pilgimages, as I understand them, are religious journeys whereby an individual discovers themselves and God or pays some kind of penance by walking. I identify with all but the latter goal. For me, the idea of walking from France and into and across Spain as a mostly solitary quest for self and God is incredibly appealing. There are monasteries and inns all along the way that are very used to pilgrims and show excellent hospitality to them.
The route I am most seriously considering--though, of course, this is all still seriously in the speculation and wishing stage because I haven't spoken to many people at all about it, including my parents and I wouldn't just fly across the Atlantic and walk around Europe without some SERIOUS planning--ahem--the route I am most seriously considering is "el camino primitivo", which is a very traditional path, but not the most common one today. El camino primitivo is about 200 miles through Spain with little in the way of flat terrain as I understand it. I've been reading up on the paths and the benefits of el camino primitivo is that the people along it are supposed to be incredibly friendly and helpful and that the path is not as horribly crowded as the most popular path, "el camino Frances."
If I were to take the pilgrimage, I would do it next summer (not in a month, but in thirteen), which would mean I would be just getting out of high school and will have already been to Europe once and had that experience. I will have also had over a year to plan the trip and make sure that I'm totally prepared; if I seriously start considering and planning this I'm going to have to start walking EVERYWHERE to get my legs ready.
Well, anyway, I thought I'd share my fanciful dream with you tonight. If it doesn't work out next summer, maybe I'll do it while I'm in college or later. I'd absolutely love to do it, because I think a trip like that could be good for me in a crazy amount of ways, but I won't be completely heartbroken if I don't get to do it next year, because I have an entire life ahead of me to do with what I will.

Thing to be grateful for today: Discovery.

Poetic Double Whamee!

I want to go to bed, but I don't want to just give you guys ONE poem, so instead I'll give you two. One is REALLY old. We're talking old enough that the paper has yellowed around the edges. The other is from a few months ago. The prior was written during a writing workshop, the latter during an algebra two test.

"An Expression of Adolescent Rage"

For some reason (unknown)
I can't think,
can't speak,
can't write.
Can't know.
Can't EXPRESS!
My feelings so raging, writhe
like a million manatees
SCREAMING
for my ATTENTION!
(What winged demons do catch it?)
For HOW I THINK
(too far)
With these beasts under my hair?
How can I know myself
from them? how can I be?
(And YOU!)
You who says
(You think you know what you speak)
I write for you(?!)
And you alone.
(The mirror's friend can know what you mean.)
How simplistic you are!
(And childish)
And YOU too, who knows NOT!
(But why should they?)
How I Think I Feel.
(But how should I know
with manatees raging
'neath my skull.)
How dare?
How dare you not know
What I THINK I FEEL?
(What I cannot know
(for clouds))
I write!
I write for you
(and you too)
I write not exclusively
for you(you too).
I write for many!
things.
Bees! and Bears! and tress,
I write. for me. for you.
(you too)
I write for bees-
and bears-
(trees)
I-
write for me.


"Dirge for My Mathematical Honor"

Trapped.
The slow downfall of rain dulls my-
heavying senses,
And I can't calculate--
the answer.
("In life, you will encounter lots of problems with more than one answer and you might have some rounding error.")


Thing to be grateful for today: Breaking out of form.

Mother's Day

I made a delicious brunch for my mother this morning:



Yeah, that's right. I make drop biscuits instead of using a cookie cutter. Wanna make somethin' of it?



You can't tell, but there was garlic and red bell pepper under all that green. See the little bit of it peaking out in the bottom corner? Those vegetables went into some great eggs Florentine, if I do say so myself.



It was all very good.



This is what my mother did today.

Thing to be grateful for today: All of the wonderful mothers in my life, my own in particular.

Cleaning House

I spent all day cleaning this room, and here are the results.



I have to say, I'm impressed with myself. Go and compare that to the picture I posted this morning. It turns out that I do in fact have a desk and not a barge of floating garbage on one side of my room. I didn't get around to vacuuming, because by the time it was ready for that, the rest of the house was asleep. I'll have to do that tomorrow morning for sure, because the floor is disgusting (I hate carpet, I very much want to pull mine up and make it stained concrete or wood).



I don't think my desk has ever looked this good. Ever. I quite like the way I arranged everything (I fiddled and experimented with that a lot). I wish the picture weren't so crappy, but not enough to go back and take another one (don't judge, it's almost one o'clock in the morning).



The knitting area always looks a little trashed, but that's because there is only so much organizing you can do with a bunch of plastic bags filled with yarn mixed up with smaller plastic bags that have half-finished projects in them. I at least have the shelves in the background organized, and in my defense the contents of the bags ARE organized.

Cleaning out my room was very therapeutic for me. Not only did I reorganize the things that are in there, but I also removed the things that I did not need or want. I dove into the depths of my room, reaching into its darkest corners, and examined its contents fully. I now know pretty much exactly what is in my room, and have a reason for everything being there.
The process of going through all of my things like that physically also had me sifting through myself and finding the things I did and did not need. It amazed me how simple things like finding a sugar-free mint on my floor could bring up so much emotion for me. Cleaning off my desk I discovered old scraps of paper with poems I'd forgotten about scrawled across. I found 41 old letters from the most difficult period of my childhood in a box in my closet. I sat down on the floor and took the time to read each and every one. They're back in my closet now.

Thing to be grateful for today: Mints.

Never Again

Remember what my room looked like back in January? The mess came back, and this time it brought friends. Update to come this evening. If this room isn't spotless by the end of the day, you are all allowed to scorn me.



Shameful.

Flight

I run. I love to run. Running is, at best, the closest I could ever come to natural flight, and at worst, a great way for me to feel good about myself. The feeling of gravel beneath your feet as you push off of the ground in an attempt to leave it forever is truly divine. The experience of hitting what you think is your limit and pushing through it until you feel as though you could run forever can be more freeing a feeling than any other.
Not all surfaces are created equal. I hate running on concrete. I can't stand it. I can never go as far as I want to and the next day my knees creak like nobody's business! Personally, I like gravel. It's softer than concrete, but doesn't give enough to take away your natural spring. That's why I run on our local Hike and Bike trail. The full loop is about three and half miles, which is a great amount for me to be running right now. The heat makes it harder, but its so beautiful outside that I don't really notice.
Sometimes, when I'm at the beginning of a run, or otherwise not so exhausted during one that I can focus on the conversations around me, I hear very funny things indeed. I pass all kinds of people on the trail from all walks of life. It's fascinating,
When I was younger, my mother and I would go out to the trail all the time. There were times where we went almost every day. At that time I walked, and it was beautiful, but it wasn't beautiful like running is. Walking allowed me to really absorb everything fully and see what was around me. Running is internal beauty blending in with external beauty like a watercolor that's bleeding. There's a point in your run where you become so worn out that you have to pretend your body is a part of the landscape, and it is moving because that is all it can do, and so you keep going, feeling that you are at one with your surroundings. The freedom of running can open you up to the cosmos if you let it. Will you let it in?

Thing to be grateful for today: Freedom.

Amber Alert!

Hi guys, I'm dedicating this post solely to trying to spread the word that a girl who goes to the program I work with, Citizen Schools, was abducted this morning from in front of Bedicheck Middle School. Her name is Karen Anastacio. Here's the amber alert link: http://www.helpfindmychild.net/karen-anastacio
PLEASE be on the lookout and do all you can to try and help this girl get home safely. Spread the word!
Here is a picture of the suspected kidnapper! http://images.news8austin.com/media/2010/5/6/images/02rojas.jpg
Thing to be grateful for today: The programs that help us to find missing children.

Busy Busy Busy

I've been rather busy today, but I also have a confession to make. I watched Glee during the time I could have been spending writing a blog post (for the record, this weeks episode of Glee was actually rather good. It made me burst into raucous laughter more than once). That means, I'm posting a poem, which I hope is acceptable.

The End All, Lose All

A young man, stumbling,

(Blind.

Broken.

Heartless)

Towards the end all,

Lose all.

The shade of suburbia

Lies

Shattered at his feet.

Burning oil drums line the pavement.

(So many lost boys

Holding candles of hellfire,

The wax dripping

Down their burnt digits.)

The light catches his eyes,

And you’ve seen them before:

When bombs are dropped

On innocent souls in the night;

When sweaty burgers are shoved

Down gullets into swollen bellies;

In the faces of chemotherapy skeletons

Lying prone on hospital beds;

In your own face

(Creeping closer).

He falls to the dusty concrete,

Shallow cheek pressed to the ground.

Next to him is a fallen barrel,

Its oil spread into a sticky pool.

He lifts himself up on quaking arms,

Stares deep at his own reflection in the pool,

And with a self-satisfied grin,

Collapses,

Not to breathe again.

Thing to be grateful for today: Good communication.

Random Knitting Rant

Hey. May is for finishing...starting tomorrow. Today, I really wanted to work on the blanket.

'

I have no regrets.
It's 28.5". That's not bad at all. Of course, if I want to stick my plan and have it totally blocked and unpinned so I can sleep under it on the first night of 2011, but not finish knitting in November and then put off blocking it for a month, rather than actually knitting it throughout and to the end of 2010, I'll have to start pacing myself. Maybe one row a day? I REALLY want to still be knitting this thing on Christmas. In FACT maybe I'll make that the official cast off date. Sounds like a plan. Here we are then: Official cast off date for the blanket is December 25th, 2010.

Anyway, tomorrow I hope to have a finished project to show you. Today though, not so much. I've got a couple of neat things running around my head, and I'm trying to give them a firm, WAIT, because I need projects to work on for Germany. The plan right now is to knit one sock on the journey there and one on the journey back, but we'll see how that goes. I'll want to bring the blanket, though I'll probably just put the second piece on hold and start the third one IN Germany so I can carry it around more easily...a third project for the trip is almost certain. Non-knitters, don't judge.

Thing to be grateful for today: The people who I know will listen and the people who I know will tell me I'm wrong.

May Is for Finishing

May is for finishing. I have several projects going right now (knitting and otherwise) that I told myself I'd finish this month. You've seen the knitting projects, so I'll leave those be, but otherwise, there are three things I'd like to finish this month.
My veil painting.
My journal (Well, technically I'd like to be done with this on the last day of school, that way I could, on the first day of summer, start writing in the new fancy journal that I bought in Amherst ).
My Rosetta Stone Program in German (well, technically, I'd like to finish most of it this month and then work intensively on it the first week of summer, just before I go to Germany).

Speaking of the German trip, I thought I ought to start talking about my plans because, as you might have guessed, I won't be able to blog while I'm there, or at least not every day. Therefore, I have to figure out something to do. I have a few ideas. I'm fairly certain that I'll need a guest blogger, though I might distribute the chore between a few people if Lauren doesn't feel up to writing a little something every day. I'm also planning on writing a little something (poetry, journal entries, etc.) every day, and then posting it all in one uber-post when I get back. How does that sound to you guys? Maybe my mother would like to put up a few posts while I'm gone?

Thing to be grateful for today: Making it through.

I'd like to begin with a thank you to Lauren for temporarily saving the blog when I was off of the computer. Yay, Lauren!
The next order of business is to announce the winner of last week's philosophic question response drawing. Will, you get a hat. Come talk to me and we'll decide what you want, though I'm pretty sure I already know.
Yesterday was prom at my school.



I wore the socks I made to add some subtle flair to my otherwise colorless attire.



Here's my lovely date, Megan. She was a total charmer. Totally awesome.



It was an amazing night and I have so many people to thank for that.

Thing to be grateful for today: Friends past, present, and future.

GROUNDED! (Sort of)

This is Lauren (yes, that Lauren) substitute blogging on behalf of Gardiner who has been technology-grounded for a few days by Karen for spending way too much time communing with the internet. Interestingly, Karen assigned herself the same restrictions. I've never tried giving myself a grounding though I have given myself a time-out.

Anyway, Gardiner gave me the user name and password to the blog so that you all wouldn't see the blog go dark and think something dreadful had befallen him. He just wanted me to tell you all what has happened so you wouldn't worry, but actually I could say anything I want, couldn't I? And he wouldn't see it for days since he can't use the computer. Bwahaha (rubs hands in an evil-plotting way).

OK, I'm terrible at thinking up mischief since I'm basically a really nice person. Anyone have any ideas?