Thursday, August 31, 2006

Stitching Goals

For September:
Finish Dragoncow for Gill
Finish panel in TW Fantasy Triptych
Don't start on new panel of TW-FT
Work on Phoenix
Not buy any more eBay patterns...

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Lets see if I can make Blogger Choke Again...

Well, we've been swamped! We haven't had just a quiet weekend at home since June. Most recently, Becky came to visit, the next weekend I had to make a presentation to FDNY in Harlem, and then we were invited to friends' place down at the Jersey shore. This weekend we've got a friend coming in from the UK, and the weekend after that we'll be in Ottawa for Tom's wedding. In the meantime, my back has gotten significantly worse from when we were home, but I am in physiotherapy for it. Work has gone insane (ie my "6" samples for microscopy this week have blosssomed to 168. UGH!!

The following photos are all out of order in the random-Blogger-upload fashion, but I'll put what they are beneath each one.




Becky and I in Fort Tyron Park outside the Cloisters (a beautiful Medieval museum in the Bronx)




Lemon Lips! (AKA Jen playing pool)




Johnny as we were all out at Applebys while Becky was here.




Brian where he belongs.




There were a lot of beautiful flowers in the gardens at the Cloisters so I played with my macro setting on the new camera.




More flowers (I'd love to know what they are if anyone reading can identify them).




Inside a courtyard at the Cloisters.




Naughty Monkey!




Brian relax and happy. Nice to see that!




The nave (?) at the Cloisters.




We had gorgeous weather the day we went up to the Cloisters. Shhh... don't tell Becky's mom, but we even took the subway! :)




Brian, Becky and Heather!





A typical photo of Becky.




The entrance to the Cloisters




Absolutely gorgeous weather.




Brian managed this incredible photograph of the lightning during a storm recently.




The Killer Bunny shown at Spamalot during intermission. We went for our wedding anniversary and had a blast.




Brian and Madison from our trip home (and my dad hiding in the back).




When we get a storm, it REALLY rains!




Presenting the Firehouse Angel. This was an internet RoundRobin project of a design done to commemorate the events of 9/11. It was stitched by over 20 stitchers in (at least) 3 countries, each working on a section at a time. I worked on the purple of the skirt when I had her. Since I live so close, I got to be the one to go in and present her to the FDNY. It was done at a firehouse in Harlem (I took Brian to Harlem!) and we were given two incredible honours by the firefighters. Firstly, we were treated to lunch at the firehouse (which is something few outsiders are invited to do), and secondly, they put the firehouse on diversion while we were there. This means that another firehouse had to cover all their calls as well as their own. I couldn't believe they would do that for us. I was astounded by the honour of it.



Well... did it choke yet????

Monday, August 07, 2006

Stitching photo update

I'm not sure if I ever posted a finished Flosstitute photo:



This is the stocking for (shockingly) Brian:



And here's progress to date on TW's Fantasy Triptych:


The lose threads at the top are my gridding threads as they've been pulled up out of the way. I tried using DMC's new light effects thread (in flourescent green) to do the gridding as I figured it would stand out. It really doesn't, and it's been really irritating in terms of not staying in place. I'd really NOT recommend it!


And finally another photo from our trip home. I was playing around with my new camera's black and white function trying to get some good shots of the dino tracks at the museum in Connecticut.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Lots of little bits

Becky will be here in less than a week!

I stole this from Suz's blog... Which I absolutely love and recommend to anyone with a great sense of humour!
I am nerdier than 98% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

Well, that was no surprise!

Hi Heather (waving madly) I got the card, and thank you. I just saw a way to cheer up your day and went for it. Now you have me dying of curiosity!

Becky will be here in less than a week!

I haven't posted about our going ons lately, but I've been busy and hurt/sick. I'll try to get it all done sometime, but it's all kind of backlogged right now. It's also after midnight, and I can't sleep, so I thought I could at least attempt something constructive!

Jan&Mike: I've been meaning to get around to leaving a comment or three million. I love all the posts Jan! Keep them coming, especially all the photos. It was great to see Chris back and looking happy. He's had a hard go finding his peace, but it seems like he may be there at last. Congrats to Brian and Debbie! Give them hugs for us, please? Wohoo Lauren on the PT!

Becky will be here in less than a week!

Life here has been TOO HOT!!!!!!!!! We broke 105F (40C) here this week, in the shade, and before the humidex. Just plain wrong! With the humidex, it was getting close to 120F. Not okay by me! And my lab is still kept at 65F. So I still have to dress in a sweater for work. But they're trying to conserve energy, so they've turned up the thermostat in the cubicle area. Without warning us so we could dress appropriately (in layers). Ugh! And just who is it that doesn't believe in global warming any more? Brian's been helping out a friend with home renovation work on the parsonage lately, and got himself pretty heat-sick last night. He's much better now, but i was NOT IMPRESSED.

Did I mention Becky will be here in less than a week?

I hurt my knee pretty badly while we were home at the start of the month, so my WTR progress has slowed to a crawl. I start physio on Saturday, so keep your fingers crossed for me that it goes well! (And quickly! $20/visit can add up to ouch pretty quickly all on its own!) It'll be worth it though if it works. Especially since my Dr. is having them see if they can do anything for my neck problems at the same time.

The apartment complex put new decking up for our balcony, which was pretty neat. I like living in a place that is actually actively trying to improve living conditions instead of just trying to grub all the $$ they can from us! And for over $1300/month, they can certainly afford to! The only bad thing was that we had to get everything off the deck first (duh!) and I think my tomatoes may have suffered too much for it. We'll see if they survive, but I'm currently not hopeful. The peas were mostly done, and the flowers are all in separate pots so they were fine. Percy was pretty confused by it all! He's pretty peeved we won't let him out right now, but it's just been too hot.

Did I mention Becky gets here next Thursday? And her flight is landing at about 7:20am. Yep, AM. So I'll be on the train at 5:30 to go meet her, and she'll have to be at the airport for 5am. But it's all absolutely worth it! If her flight was coming in at a better time I'd go drive and pick her up, but if you think I'm heading into and half way across NYC on a weekday at peak rush hour, think again! Her flight home isn't until 7:30pm on Sunday so we'll be able to drive that one. And we both owe my friend Sharon for my new favourite place to book hotels, priceline.com. Becky's staying in the Ultra-Swanky Sheraton by us for $95 less/night than list price. Works for me! We'll probably be spending a lot of our down time at the hotel with her (she's too allergic to Percy to spend much time here) so don't expect to get a hold of us by phone that weekend. We're going to spend a day at Coney Island, and make a run to the stitching store in Jersey, but don't have any specific plans beyond that. We've been invited to a BBQ in Jersey too that sounds fun, so I'd like to try to fit that in.


Tomorrow (Saturday) will be the second anniversary of this blog. More importantly, it'll also be our 11th wedding anniversary. I have been so blessed to have had Brian in my life. He makes me smile no matter how bad the day and helps me always keep a positive outlook. No matter what goes wrong, he still loves and supports me. We've been through some major life-altering changes, and come out the stronger for them. I love you Brian! Earlier in July we also had the 10th anniversary of my brain surgery. Wohoo! There were deffinately times when I wondered if I'd make it through that, but I did, I'm still here, and my annual checkup went great. One more hungry vampire test left to go and I'll get to start just having simple bloodwork every two years from now on.


To celebrate, we went into the city last weekend to see Spamalot. We had an absolute blast! Dinner was rather a bust (the computers went down in between us getting our appetizers and our actual meals... which didn't arrive until 80 minutes after we'd sat down, and mine wasn't cooked right!) but the show made up for it. If a travelling production is coming your way (and you find Monty Python funny), run, don't walk, especially don't silly walk to get tickets. If you've never seen MP, go get your hands on the DVDs now. Stop reading. Go rent the DVD's. Check your library, they'll probably even be free!


I'm off to try and sleep now....
Wish me luck!