Friday, October 31, 2008

So Good, So Great, So Long Ago

Chipper reminded me last night of The Best Spring Break Ever last spring. Its hard to believe it was only seven or eight months ago. Lets reminisce for a bit:

Disney movies; BODY BODY!; the jacuzzi; Japanese steak house; Titanic; thrift stores; spaghetti dinner committees; sand dunes; seashells; 3:10 To Yuma; afternoon pancakes; kites; surfing; night swims; puzzles; frisbee; amazing stars. So good.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

"You See What I Have to Live With?" (as Lauren always says)

So its October, right? Halloween, pumpkins, pies, all that harvest-ish stuff. Apparently Janoodle did not get the memo. I came downstairs this evening and she was dressed as follows: Yes, that is a giant candy cane in her hand and yes, she is threatening Lauren with it.

You see the type of dangerous crazy person we live with? She mistakes Halloween for Christmas and laundry baskets for chairs. Next thing you know she'll be wearing her knee socks on her head and trying to eat her camo shorts.

How Not to Write a Literature Review

1. Get up at 11am everyday, even weekdays. In fact have no schedule whatsoever. That really helps.

2. Once you actually get out of bed, leisurely have coffee, read a newspaper, check your email, watch the Ellen show, reminisce about old friends. Basically waste time doing nothing productive.

3. At about noon, just as you are about to start writing, realize you have not had lunch yet. Make something elaborate, in fact turn on the TV again. Maybe Racheal Ray is on and can show you something to make.

4. When lunch is over, 3 hours later, remember you need to go to a store that closes at 5pm. Well, need is a relative term. It is more like you want to go since they might have something you need. Reasons you can’t go tomorrow? Well, for one thing, you are going to be working hard tomorrow.

5. When you get back from the store, realize you haven’t had dinner. All those fresh ingredients Rachael Ray told you to buy are going to go bad. So make a couple of recipes, and watch TV while you eat, and after.

6. Boy, cooking sure make you tired. Relax a little and mess around on the internet. You deserve it. Whoops, stay away from research sites now.

7. Upload all those pics from last weekend. Tag and comment on all of them. Except of course the ones of your cousin and her new boyfriend who hasn’t facebooked you yet.

8. Sit and mope about your bum getting a little flabby. Decide to do something about your flabby bum right then and take a run. As you pass by the piles of research articles, remind yourself you have to take time for yourself.

9. Running with a flabby bum makes you really sweaty and sore. So take a nice warm bath, you deserve it after such a long day.

10. Well, its pretty late to start on research now, you wouldn’t get anything done before bed anyway. So put on your jammies and curl up with a book. Wow, what a day, how do you ever fit it all in? The problem is you just don’t have time for writing a literature reveiw, there’s just so much to do.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Sweatpants; Fall Colors; Brothers; Football; What more could you ask for? (well , maybe not football)

Sweatpants:
This past weekend started when I bought the Best Pair of Sweatpants Ever at a local thrift store. They were so good that Natanya and I decided to let ourselves go and dress like bums for the rest of the weekend. Or at least I did; I wore them for 4 days straight. It was phenomenal.

Here is a picture of when we actually decided to leave the house. I am not putting a picture of me up because the Best Pair of Sweatpants Ever are not attractive. Shocking right?



Brothers; Football:
I finally went to visit Matthew at Liberty U. The fall colors on the way there and back were beautiful.

The weather was horrible at first but it ended up becoming very, very sunny. Liberty also ended up creaming the other team, whoever they were.



We then met up with some of Matt's roommates and then we all squinted and banged our thundersticks together.

It turns out that thundersticks are very, very important at football games. They save you from looking like you don't know what is going on since you just bang your thundersticks when everybody else does. Its like lemmings off a cliff; college football style.

Smells like snow...and Obama

Since Obama decided to come to JMU, Lauren, Jeanne and I decided to brave the cold and go hear him speak. It turns out that a lot of other people had the same idea, a lot turning out to be over 25,000 people. We found out that people started lining up the night before and some of our neighbors got in line at 9 in the morning!

We ended up lining up in a field behind UREC since we were trying to avoid the line that stretched all the way to the Arboretum. We got there at 2 and Jeanne joined us at 3 and by the time we left we were so cold none of us could feel our fingers.


It turns out we were lucky we were in the field since before Obama went into the Convocation center he stopped and talked to the crowd! Everyone started running towards the corner where he was speaking which made it pretty exciting.

He basically just said "hey I'm Obama" (Jeanne's paraphrase) and told us to make sure to vote.

We thought the helicopter in the field across from our house was Obama's; but it ended up being Warner's.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Lattice Cardigan

I used the pattern for the Aran Knit Jacket (31) from Better Homes and Gardens Knit It! 2002 issue. I modified it slightly since the instructions for the sleeves were wrong for the x-tra small size. They turned out to be about 3 feet long when I knitted them according to the instructions! I also used a K4, P1 rib for the stitch for the sleeves instead of the body pattern since it ended up looking cleaner and less bulky. Next time I will most likely use a different button hole technique as well and try to knit the bottom portion as one piece on circular needles to reduce all the seaming. All in all a very nice comfy warm sweater.