6 Random Things

Thank goodness I got tagged for a meme! I've had so many things to write about lately that I've been paralyzed to do so.

Sam tagged me with the '6 Random Things About Me' Meme.

Here are the rules:

* Link to the person who tagged you.
* Post the rules on your blog.
* Write six random things about yourself.
* Tag six people at the end of your post.
* Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
* Let the tagger know your entry is up.

1. I'm terrified of driving on the highway. I'm going to be one of those women who by age 50, I just won't drive at all anymore - I won't leave the house unless Dave drives me somewhere!

2. Next month will be ten years ago that my husband and I met.

3. I'm pretty adept at ASL (American Sign Language). Like most languages, I'm better at "speaking" it then "reading" it.

4. I finally made my own jam. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd previously suspected.

5. I design a lot of knitting patterns. The problem is, my designs usually far outreach my actual abilities (as in, I know what I want them to look like, I just don't know how to make them look how I'm picturing them) and most of them are half-finished but thrown into the Closet of No Return.

6. I'll be in California (specifically Fresno but flying in and out of San Francisco) next month. Anyone want to take me yarn crawling?

Trying to un-paralyze my writing, Ruth!

P.S. I tag

Rachel
Kelly
Uberstrickenfrau
Tammy
YarnHog

Be Gentle

The Perilous Reading thing had a contest last year to write something within the genre of the Perilous Reading requirements (thriller, horror, gothic, mystery, etc.). The catch was you couldn't repeat a single word and the length of the piece had to be exactly 100 words long. (The title doesn't count for word count or repeated words) The entries for that contest are here. People are so creative!

It's a very difficult writing exercise! I highly recommend it to everyone who likes to write. I once had an English teacher who would instruct us to come up with a story/essay/whatever but to never use the verb "to be" (are, am, is, etc.). Try it - it's maddening!

I was thinking about that contest and what I'd come up with. As with much of my creative writing, things come to me in my sleep. 2 of my best pieces (which I may someday be brave enough to share) came to me as dreams. I've always had very vivid, detailed dreams that I usually remember in full detail.

This contest had me wracking my little peanut brain and I didn't think I could do it. A couple of days ago, as I was waking, the first three lines came to me. I went back to sleep, thinking I should write them down first but I didn't. Then later in the day, they came back to me. So I started writing. As with most writing (at least mine), I started in one direction but the piece took on a life of it's own and ended up somewhere else.

Anyway, here's what I came up with. If I don't have 100 words (too many or not enough) or if you see that I've repeated a word, please let me know! I'm trusting y'all to be my proofreaders. And as the post title says, be gentle with any criticisms - see what you come up with before you tear me up - haha!

CHRISTINE

Dark wings taking flight
Into seamless air of night
Escaping our chaos, this perilous plight
Casting away mortality, shaking off fright
Touching, kissing, then you bite
Passionate adoration, stealing sight
Soulless arias soar like feathered black kites
Up beyond clouds past dizzying heights

We. Are. Done.

Find your own salvation, I'm no white knight
Stand on solid ground, prepare the fight
Knowing here within me resides enough might.
What's ahead? Glowing light.
How distant? Far, but not quite
Rediscover original persona, feels a bit tight
Growing from inside, soon it will fit. All is right.

I thrive.

My future awaits....

Planning more creative writing, Ruth!

ETA: Edited per me7of11's and YarnHog's excellent suggestion/observation. Thanks!

Perilous Reading - 1

I finished the first book in my Perilous Reading read-a-long thingy.

It was Speaking In Tongues by Jeffrey Deaver. Dave and I are huge Deaver fans. He wrote The Bone Collector which is the first of his that either of us read. My favorite from him is The Devil's Teardrop. It involves a document authenticator in the quest for who-dunnit. A Devil's Teardrop is when someone writes an i and the dot looks like a teardrop.

Deaver makes forensic science fascinating! He's gotta be doing so much research on most of his books, it's unreal. I love a book that can thrill you to death, scare the crap out of you and educate you at the same time. Plus his books almost always have this neck-snappin' twist at the end. Can't beat that!

The first time I tried reading Speaking, I was using it as my workout book. I would pick a book I really wanted to read and would only allow myself to read it while working out. This book was the third or fourth of my workout books and it just wasn't doin' it for me. I couldn't get into it. The characters were all whiners who pointed the blame at others. I put the book down.

That's something I never do. No matter how bad a book is, I have to finish it. I hate not knowing the end of a story. This book wasn't necessarily bad, I just couldn't get into it. When I picked it up this time for this read-a-long, it still had the bookmark in it from my last attempt - on page 136. I started from the beginning again (I'd put it down about 2 years ago) and apparently, I should have kept at it for a few more pages. Soon after page 136, the book takes off! It was Deaver's usual very good stuff!

I read short stories between books, to clear my brain from the last one. I finished, I was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. It's pretty funny. The cover touted her as a female David Sedaris. I don't know about that, but she was funny!

I'm continuing my quest to read/listen to everything by James Patterson. Man, is he good! I was listening to Kiss the Girls while making my keychains. I was reading Speaking at the same time and they were getting a little mixed up in my head as they both involved kidnapped females and crazed killers.

I wonder who came first. I'm pretty sure Patterson is the first I ever read that uses the style of really short chapters (averaging around 300 pages, his books usually have over 100 chapters per book). He also has that maddening technique where one character is in dire peril and the chapter ends and the next chapter goes to some other character and, well, whatever, Patterson makes you wait to see what happens to the threatened character.

Deaver, Dan Brown (of The Da Vinci Code fame), and countless others use that same style. It's breakneck speed and it sucks you in. D and I stay up so much later then we intend to because of these books. The short chapters are what do you in. You just keep telling yourself, 'It's only a few more pages, I gotta know what happens' and then suddenly it's past midnight.

Started my second book last night. I'm on page 20 and it's already creepy! Yay!

Loving the fake scary, Ruth!

Perilous

I'm joining this book... along.. thing. Found here. (Actually, I found it through Kelly's blog.)

I'm going to read 4 books btw Sep. 1 and Oct. 31.

I'm going to read:

Speaking in Tongues by Jeffrey Deaver
Greeley's Cove by John Gideon
The Shadow Man by Cody McFayden and
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

The first book may be considered a bit of a cheat. I started reading this book a couple of years ago and just couldn't get into it. When we lived in Tucson, I had a gym membership. To make the gym more appealing, I'd select a book that I really wanted to read and I'd only be able to read it while I worked out. This was a book that I chose and it just wasn't working for me so I picked something else and never finished this one. I hate not finishing a book. No matter how bad it may be, I have to know how it ends. This book wasn't bad, necessarily, I just couldn't get into it while working out.

The second is a book someone gave me over 10 years ago. A friend gave it to me while I was stationed in Germany. He assured me it was the scariest book he'd ever read (and he only read scary stuff). I think I should start reading it. 13 years is long enough to put it off. Not that I had any conscious reason for putting it off, just that other books seemed to appeal more.

The Shadow Man is actually on my list of books for this year. I'll be skipping the book I had scheduled for September but will squeeze it in after I read these four.

The Devil in the White City is another that I bought several years ago. I actually bought it as soon as it came out in paperback. Just never got around to reading it. Now's the time!

I'm not the fastest reader but hope to be able to finish.

I love a good Peril, Ruth!

A Fair Idea

I've been going through my old posts to see what I've put in as drafts but didn't actually throw out there. Here's one from a year and a half ago....

"I've been trying to work all morning but T keeps interrupting me every 5 seconds to show me the wonders of his new Vsmile game (scooby doo). He's at a new level on the game and Davis keeps asking questions. Finally T tells D2, "Davie, you're distracting me." Then he turns to me and asks, "Mom, do you know what 'distracting' means?"

I told him, "I have a fair idea what it means." He asked me for a definition. At 5, sarcasm still escapes him some."

It's funny because now, at 7, he totally gets sarcasm. And uses it quite well!

Sarcasm runs in the family, Ruth!

Good Food, Bad Food

I've been eating some really good food lately. As in, good for you. Tasty, too!

I've gone on a cookbook binge at the library. I've been checking out lots of low-fat cookbooks and so far it's been really good stuff! I've been writing the favorites into a notebook. There was a creamed chicken that was excellent - even our little guys loved it.

Also, I've been coming up with some stuff on my own. I got a huge thing of fresh spinach from Costco and almost made it all the way through before it went bad. I'm the only one in this house that'll eat spinach. The two favorite things I've made with that spinach:

Salad - with mandarin orange slices, dried cranberries, warm leftover rotisserie chicken and my favorite dressing (Newman's Own Sesame Ginger)

Concoction - saute some minced garlic (I get the jarred kind - lasts longer then the fresh in this house), add 2 or 3 BIG handfuls of spinach (it cooks down to nothing); meanwhile, make some Minute Rice brown rice (the 4 serving amount); once the rice is done, add a drained/rinsed can of beans (my current favorite - kidney beans, but it's also good with navy or cannelini), then mix in the garlic/spinach; Add a couple of spoonfuls of 505 Chile Verde sauce and warm through. This is a recipe that serves as my lunch for about a week. It's soooooo good!

The not-so-good stuff I've been eating still hasn't been all that bad. Every year for my birthday, my inlaws give me a pretty big check (Dave gets one for his birthday, too). I know - it's like we're little kids or something but we love it! We're usually pretty good with these checks and pay bills with them or buy something we've had our eye on for awhile.

With my check, I also usually indulge in a bit of yarn and some foodstuffs that I love but my family maybe doesn't. This year I bought some tasty spreads. I have this thing about jam. I LOVE jam. Can't get enough. When I was single and I'd be home alone watching a movie, I wouldn't pop corn, I'd sit there with Saltines, a jar of jam and a spreading knife. mmmmmjammmmm.

I bought some Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter (which actually wasn't nearly as good as it sounded), some really good cherry jam and some Nutella.

You know how I just expounded on the virtues of jam? Nutella is even better. It's a chocolate hazelnut spread that makes me drool just thinking about it. I first had Nutella in high school when we hosted a German kid for a week one summer. He brought some of this deliciousness for a gift and I've been hooked ever since. Used to be, you couldn't get this stuff in the states. When I was stationed in Germany, I always had some on hand. And when I came back stateside, I brought back a case of it. You can usually find it in any grocery store nowadays. It's near the peanut butters.

One of new my favorite things is to make toast (another favorite food) and smear it with a thin layer of Nutella and then a thick layer of cherry jam. Holy Dog - it's so good.

I was futzing around on Etsy and found some really good jam makers. sigh. Gonna have to try to restrain myself but it won't be easy.

And now I bring you some really bad foods. This site, CakeWrecks, is a blog where people send her pic's of really bad cakes. And she only allows professionally done cakes. People are so strange! Click the links, you'll see....

Off to buy more jam, Ruth!

More Weekend Fun

I've been having the best weekends lately!

Saturday before last, Donna and I went to work on the World Record Sock at A Knitted Peace in Littleton. That shop is one of my favorites - great staff, great selection, lovely store.

Here's Donna, seated at the sock...


Here's me working on it....


And the both of us...


And a couple of little kids that came later to work on it with there moms....

There was a little tag below where I was working on the sock and it said, "[child's name] - 6 years old worked here - be careful!" I wonder if she'll be the youngest. I wonder who will be the oldest?

I didn't get a good shot of Sam working on it but she has a bunch of pic's of it as well.

That's not even the full length of the cuff, people! And that table is probably about a 6 footer. It's a traveling sock in the truest sense - it's being shipped all over the world and when it's finished, it'll be about 14' from cuff to heel. I'd love to see how they turn that heel! It'll be at Knitted Peace until the end of August. If you go and work on it, you get to put your name in the book those names will eventually end up in the Guiness Book of World Records! I tried to make it all the way around the sock but only made it halfway. Sucker's big!

Then, August 2, a bunch of us went to Stitch and Pitch to watch a Rockies game.

String was there with a table full of free yarn. Sale bin stuff, but who's gonna turn down free yarn? And then, when you got to your seat, there was another free ball of something in your cup holder from Knit Knack (also sale bin stuff but still free!). Candace, one of our group, got the bright idea to go to the empty seats behind us and get more yarn. Pretty soon we were all doing it - it was like an Easter egg hunt!

Towards the end of the game, the leftover stuff from Knit Knack was being passed around in bags and you could pick what you wanted. Then at the last inning, they came with what was left in those bags and started chucking it into the crowds!

After the game, our group of 12 went to an Indian restaurant for a great meal. Then the light rail home and bed. I got home around 1am!

This guy was holding a big blue ball of yarn for his wife. Obviously really happy about it, while he watched the game. Sweet guy!

Then last weekend, D and I took the kids to Breckenridge! We got a 2 night stay at a nice hotel for $50 because we agreed to go see a timeshare. Totally almost bought a timeshare! But we didn't. Maybe later. Maybe not. Who knows? We have a lot of big news around here that I'm kind of keeping to myself until it's all worked out one way or the other (I'm not pregnant, if that's what you're thinking). So things are kind of up in the air financially right now.

But our Breckenridge weekend was stellar!

There was rain and lots of it. Sometimes, slushy rain. And it snowed up at the top of the mountain. We couldn't have been happier! After ten years of soul sucking heat and not much else, in Tucson, we love all this different, crazy weather. All weekend long, it'd rain for a couple of hours, then the sun would peak out for a couple of hours. It was lovely!

We drove up to Keystone and the boys spent quite a long time throwing rocks and sticks in the river.

Then the boys played in the play area, which strangely, had a jail and stocks...

When I asked Trevor why he was in jail, he said he stole a purse. He's weird.

On Sunday, we went to Frisco (which has a nice little yarn shop - I think it's called What's Needlin' U). The boys played on the statues...

and they were having there Founder's Day shenanigans with a free ice cream social. They have all these tiny cabins in the town park that you can walk through. They are original buildings from the frontier days that had all been moved to the park as a sort of museum. Very cool!

On our way home, I took a bunch of pic's of the bark beetle damage. Apparently, there's this beetle that kills trees. See the brown trees? Dead.

Lots of trees....

Whole mountains of dead trees. See that mountain on the left? See that little green triangle in the middle? That's all that's left of live trees on that whole mountain. All the reddish brown coloring - dead trees.

One of the bigger problems the beetles are causing besides mass murder of trees is the fire factor. Look at all the brown on that mountain. It's just one spark, one lightning strike away from total devastation.

A newspaper we saw in Breck. told about a man who is using beetle-dead trees exclusively in his log cabin building business. Great idea! But I doubt he'll be able to keep up. There's no way anyone could keep up. If they went in and just started cutting all the dead trees out, the beetles would just jump to fresh ones without even being seen.

Years ago, I read that the cure for syphilis - part of what's in the shot they give people - is primarily made up of herring sperm. Fish sperm. How did anyone come up with that being the cure for syphilis??

My connection to bark beetle's is this. I wonder what's out there that no one's thought of that would take care of them but not hurt other things. I hear cayenne pepper poured on an ant hill will take care of the whole colony. Wonder if that would work on bark beetles. But then you have the problem of also killing all the ants in the area and they aren't hurting anything. See what I mean?

Some yay-hoo called into a radio station, once, when they were discussing the beetle problem and suggested they bring in a certain bird that only eats bark beetles. Won't work. A) what bird only eats one bug? B)What happens to the environment when you bring in a natural enemy of one thing and when that one thing is gone, you're stuck with all these birds that don't really belong there either?

Wishing I could save trees, Ruth!