My new hardware!

This is from today's x-rays, and the neurosurgeon likes what he sees. He also (with some effort, ouch!) took off the steristrips, so I can see the incision now. Not as long as it seemed from the mass of steristrips, so overall, no complaints! Another two weeks in the soft collar while PT rebuilds my neck muscles, then we'll evaluate when I go back to work. So longer off work than originally planned. Thanks heavens I have GREAT short term disability insurance!

WTF? And garden update

First, the WTF? So... there I was driving to work yesterday morning, minding my own business, but running a little bit late. Traffic ahead of me came to a stop, and so did I. Unfortunately the guy behind me? Not so much! That'll teach me... I was rear-ended on the Long Island Expressway. I'll be okay (loads of soft tissue damage and accompanying soreness, but nothing major), but the sheriff thinks my car is likely to be a total write off. Poor car :( OTOH, cars can be replaced, and I'm a lot harder to do that with!

So, that kind of put a bit of a dent in my plans for today. I had planned to get the garden fully planted. But Brian came to my rescue and helped with most of it, and there are lots of photos below! Hopefully there will be some good eats here this year!

I recently bought an eye-fi card for my camera, and hope it will make posting photos a lot easier. For now I've started a picasa account (username heather.eberhardt) to which I can auto-upload photos. If I've done things right, the title of this post should take you there!

Post Training "Rest"

So Brian has decided he's going to run a half marathon, and do it as a fundraiser for the Alzheimer's Foundation as a fundraiser in honour of his grandpa. He'll be running it in January with friends at Walt Disney World. In the meantime, he has some training to do. This is him just now on the couch after his first 8 mile training run. EIGHT miles. Phew! But the part that made me grin the most was the random shirt he grabbed without looking to put on. It's one of the ones I've made for our Disney trips.

Brian and Patches

Yesterday evening we arrived at our friends' house just as Laura was coming in from a trail ride. I'm still too gimpy, but she talked Brian into having a quick ride on Patches. And he had so much fun that he's over there again this afternoon riding. Yay!

This sign outside a local church says it all...

We have already had twice the normal total snowfall for a full winter. It's not yet quite the end of January. There are two months still to come this winter. We got more today, with more coming tomorrow. The banks at the edge of the driveway are taller than I am. And February is usually the snowiest month here...

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey Mom! And you too Becca!

I can honestly say I've had enough snow. That's our second storm with over 20 inches. In just over two weeks... The snow bank at the end of the driveway is taller than Brian. I took the photo on my way out to work this morning, so it's had two days of melt time as well... And work did NOT call a snow day. Delayed opening though, so I can't complain all that badly. And just in time for these, which I finished making last night. :)

Birthday Report

For my birthday this year we had long planned to take the day off work and go into the city to see the King Tut exhibit. The delivery for the new bed (go Black Friday specials, wohoo!) was scheduled for the next day, however, and I couldn't really justify two days off that week since we were pretty busy. But the next weekend, we took the Sunday and went in. Our friend Randi came and joined us, and we had a really nice day.


There were no cameras allowed in the exhibit itself, unsurprisingly. This is the big mural out front.



Afterwards we went to linner/lupper at Bubba Gump's, one of our favourite restaurants. We hit the absolute sweet spot between lunch and dinner crowds. It was quiet, calm, and the service was excellent as usual.



Given all the walking, Brian was in a fair bit of pain by then. So Randi got treated to her own personal Adventures of Vicoden Man! :P



The next two photos are of each end of Times' Square. I'm sorry Bonnie, no matter how much you'd like to live vicariously through me, I WILL NOT go there for New Years. Nope, nut-uh, not happening. These are the closest you can get! :) Sometimes I still have to pinch myself and remember how amazing our life is when we can just "pop in to" places like this for an afternoon.







And a final reminder of why Becky is my best friend...



Okay, so I'll admit it, I'm cheating. I wrote all three of these on Boxing Day and just set them to post in sequence. :) I had the time while Brian was watching Jonas Hex, which I had seen earlier in the day.

Trip Home

Since I had the card reader out, I figured I should grab some other photos to post. These are from our trip home in October. They're just of my family, I had a fresh card in the camera from David and Brenda's wedding. And it ATE the photos. That'll teach me to try to be good and make sure I had lots of space. I was SOOOOOO mad. But Brian's mom sent us one of the ones of the full family (including us) with our Christmas present and it turned out wonderfully. I'll have to scan it at some point and post it.

Le Chateau Des Eberhardt est pret pour les reservations!

I finally have the downstairs bedroom set up as a guest room. I love the concept of having my own craft room/library, but the truth is, I rarely used it as such. I'd grab what supplies I need and bring them out to the living room to actually *do* whatever craft I was feeling like. And given the "delightfulness" of my crappy sleep habits, we were strongly considering putting a bed downstairs for me.

But book early, we're already filling up. No, seriously, April is already completely booked up for us!










And what's with all the bright white out that window you may be asking yourself? It's slightly late, but I'm getting a white Christmas after all. Better late than never! They're currently forecasting 15-20 inches (38-50cm) of snow by the time it ends tomorrow! Good thing I got myself that present two posts down, isn't it? And I liked mom's comment about it being a necessity and made Brian buy me another Christmas gift. Good thinking mom! Below are the photos from the snow in the last post, and I'll post photos of this snow from tomorrow. Ish.

Brian's Newest Fashion Accessory

Is it wrong of me to laugh at him as he tries to tie his shoes? It was sporkworthy stupidity that caused it. And who knew? Brian-the-lefty apparently punches with his right.

My most adorable hour spend hand sewing EVER.

So it's been a while...

School ate my life, and I haven't really been doing much worth writing about. I have, however, been taking photos, and to that end, I've finally gotten around to starting to setup photo galleries. If you're interested, they can be found here, or by clicking on the title of this post. I hope eventually to get them captioned as needed, at the very least, but figure something is better than nothing!

Stitching Update

Courtesy of writing my exam this morning, I earned some stitching time tonight. This is Jen and Joe's Te Amo after another 5 hours work. I love how quickly this is stitching up!

Just for mom!

I'm taking some time out from studying this afternoon to watch the CAN-US hockey final, and wanted to post to show mom what Brian's wearing in honour of it! I figure I've gotten 14 lectures summarized so far, I've earned a little stitching time!

My First American Snowman!

I took a break from studying to have a little fun on my snow day.

I am stunned...

This is the view out our back patio door. We've had more snow than I was expecting, but it's still not that much. Remember those chair tops from prior snow photos? You can pretty much still see all of the chairs themselves.
So why am I shocked?

FOREST IS CLOSED FOR THE DAY.

For the first time in company history, we get a snow day! Wohoo!!!

Now... to study...
Which seems somehow wrong for the thing I'm most looking forward to doing on my first snow day in 17ish years...

Stitching Update

So, last weekend, for the first time all term, I got totally caught up on my course for school. The university had some "technical difficulties" which meant those of us taking it on line had to wait a week before our first lectures were posted. And there's homework due 3x/week for this course, so I've been playing catch up for weeks. But... since I did get totally caught up by Sunday, Monday was stitching time!
I can't show one of the things I finished for a couple of weeks yet until I know it's been received and opened, but I can show you what I got done on my project for me: Teresa Wentzler's The Unicorn:



That's after 10 hours of stitching time, and it still doesn't look like much, but this is what it should look like when it's done! (With the usual provisos that the photos on the website never look close to as good as they do in person, of course!) I've seen it done, once, and it was just as stunning as I'd always imagined.

Some quick photos

I've spent a fair bit of time the last two weeks getting the downstairs bedroom setup as a study/library/craft room. And now, at last, I have a dedicated stitching space, complete with a new stitching chair! :) I have to get another footstool, and given how long I've been looking for one I like, I think I may end up making them myself. But I'll wait until it's warm enough to use the garage to do that!

I decided to let myself do some stitching for myself, mixed in with all the obligation stitching. I've joined a TW stitchalong and decided to start The Unicorn. Below is a photo of it after 5 hours of work. It's a few of the flagstones of the path, and it doesn't look like much, but I'm pleased with the progress.



Next up is Jen and Joe's wedding gift. Given that they're approaching their third wedding anniversary, I need to get cracking. In my defense though, I only got my hands on the pattern last fall. It's Arelate Studios' Te Amo, and Jen had planned on stitching it herself for their wedding. I'm starting in on it once I hit post. It's a quick, fun stitch, and doesn't need nearly the level of light and comfort of the TW. I expect it'll grow much quicker than The Unicorn! :)



And finally, a photo of our stockings from Christmas morning. We don't tend to do a lot of gifts for each other anymore, but I always look forward to seeing what Brian's come up with for my stocking. Mine's the bear one on the left (hanging on my dresser so it's there when I wake up in the morning), and Brians' are the two on the right. I stitched the farthest right one for him a few years ago and still love how it turned out.

Photos!

Was it wrong of us to laugh at poor Percy trying to see out the patio doors or at least figure out what was going on?



Out the same patio doors. The brown bits to the bottom right are the tops of our chairs, folded up and leaning against the table for the winter



Brian wanted to make sure I knew which spot I parked my car in 'cause he wasn't sure he'd be able to tell from a quick look out the front window.




This window is the opposite side of the house to the patio door. And the drifts come up all the way to the sill!



And last, but not least, don't you like my fabulous wrapping job on this present yesterday?

The bounty of my BBQ floweth over

Tonight I called Brian as I was ready to leave work to request he BBQ something for dinner. I wasn't feeling picky, so long as there was a source of protein, I'd be happy. This is the fabulous dinner he BBQ'd for me. :) Yum!




Steak, shrimp, corn on the cob and mushrooms. Dessert (?) was a full bowl of sugar snap peas from my garden.