Just regular folks.

I know this picture looks like a palm tree, but if you look more closely, you can see the truck that is parked behind the frond… We got our sea shipment today, which means all our winter coats came today. Hooray! OK, even the movers were laughing at the winter coats, but I figure that we might be visiting Sweden from Singapore and I’d like to be prepared. But more importantly, I want to start taking piano lessons again and start rowing again on the rower that came today. Jeremy accidentally fried my CPU by plugging it in before he switched the switch on the switchable power supply. We heard a loud POP! and smoke came out of the computer. I think I’ll still be without a computer for at least another week while we get the trusty old AMD computer a kick in the rear end. Oh well.

I have the sweetest family – everybody wishing me a happy birthday from all over the world. Jeremy gave me the nicest birthday present ever – this nice digital camera that I’m using to share pictures with all the readers of this blog. Also, he came home early, which was also a really nice present because I’m a little bit homesick these days. Perhaps it’s because I realized that I haven’t celebrated my birthday in the same place 2 years running for many, many years now. We went out to eat and brought home a birthday cake, which is just a cylinder of mocha whipped cream.

Annie is so sweet and invited our family to join her friends in the evening for a little little lantern parade in our apartment complex. They even provided a lantern for us, complete with little burning candle inside and also sparklers. It is a little freaky seeing 3-5 year olds with sparklers and a million candles around, but it was a lot of fun. Vince was a little bit scared at first, but got excited about it towards the end. Also, these night time celebrations are hard for him because he is so exhausted. I think today he got up at 6:30 in the morning and didn’t take a nap and didn’t eat anything except sugar since about 4 pm.

Back to WA this weekend.

This is my friend Kate, whose husband works for AMD with Jeremy. They moved from Austin, TX to Singapore pretty much the same time we did. Kate is pregnant and the baby girl is due in December. She came by in the afternoon and we chatted and had a nice time together. Edda was able to take a nap during her visit and Vince showed off his Bright Horizons craft book. Vince was facinated by her blue skirt which had beautiful beads sewn into the fabric and he kept wanting to touch and rub them. After a while, I had to make him stop because it was getting a little bit redundant.

I’m up for no good reason. Installing Windows XP on my desktop. I should be sleeping or like doing work or working on my speech for this weekend. I had a good phone chat with Doris tonight. and I had a pretty good conversation with Vince. Looks like he’s a vanilla man. But choco crossaints are good for him too. I have one of those almost every morning at the moonbeans cafe across the street from the library. too bad it’s $2 a pop. I think Vince said he was going to ride with me on his new bike at some point too. Tho i could be mistaken about that.

I had lunch with your favorite librarian last week. she’s a pretty funny lady. I forgot to tell you about it over the phone. But basically we had an interesting talk. Apparently when I joined, I thought this one person was pretty useless. Apparently she thinks so too. I think we were both happy to agree on that. We ate at the Golf Course Cafe. by the Stanford golf course (duh). I had an Arnold Palmer which, if you didn’t know, was half ice tea, half lemonade. yum yum…

okay. bedtime.

It’s very simple. Ask yourself what do you want to say? Then condense it down into one sentence. Refine that sentence over and over again until it is perfect. Then read the sentence out loud.

(Note to other contributers to this blog: I’ve joined a knitting secret pal mail / exchange thing… Basically there are a whole bunch of knitters who anonomously send each other little things cards, yarn, stickers, etc over the course of three months, so this information is for her/him)

Hello secret pal –

I am a novice knitter, I have only 2 pairs of straight needles and one set of circular and about 10 skeins of yarn. My mother is a really good knitter and I want to be able to someday knit as well as she does – when I was young, she made all our winter sweaters that we wore all the time.

1. Are you a yarn snob (do you prefer higher quality and/or natural fibers)? Do you avoid Red Heart and Lion Brand? Or is it all the same to you?

About a year ago, I started knitting, I bought all my knitting supplies from Walmart and I started learning increases, decreases, ribbing, etc. Then I got discouraged after my toddler son got into the Red Heart yarn and tangled it all up and although I was doing well with my self-education, I threw it all away. Now, I’ve vowed to get at nice knitting needles and nice yarn to support my local yarn store and I have to say, the nice bamboo needles and nicer yarn just feel good.

2. Do you spin? Crochet?

No, but I’m especially interested in crochet.

3. Do you have any allergies? (smoke, pets, fibers, perfume, etc.)

Nope. Although I don’t like perfume or smoke.

4. How long have you been knitting?

On and off for about a year.

5. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?

Nope.

6. What’s your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.)

I love citrus.

7. Do you have a sweet tooth?

I do enjoy chocolate. Yum. I also do like hard candies and mint. Oh, I also like soft candies like Mentos and gummies. And I like salty things like nuts and DORITOS.

8. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do?

I like to cook for my family.

9. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)

I’m so out of the music scene if you’d like to introduce me to new music that would be lovely, I think my computer doesn’t have any speakers, so I could play an MP3, I just wouldn’t be able to hear it. Although I do have an iPod that my hubby got me for Xmas (although he uses it more than me.) I think we could figure it out. I love the old Liz Phair, Counting Crows, Joni Mitchell, Abba, Kristy McColl (sp?), Gilbert & Sullivan, the Sound of Music, Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Wiggles, Britney Spears, Norah Jones, Billy Joel, Jethro Tull (OK, not really Jethro Tull and Billy Joel seemed really cool in the late 80s, but seems so sappy now, huh?)

10. What’s your favorite color? Or–do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can’t stand?

Love all colors, except flourescent colors.

11. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?

You’ll see elsewhere on the blog – one husband Jeremy (37), one son Vincent (3), one daughter Edda (1), one dog Ruby (4), two goldfish Zilker and Zepher (1 month)

12. What are your life dreams? (really stretching it here, I know)

Um, to knit a fishermans sweater and live somewhere where I can actually wear it.

13. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with?

Wool.

14. What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?

None.

15. What is/are your current knitting obsession/s?

Ah, I really want to become a master knitter through the Knitting Guild of America.

16. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?

I like little things I can finish quickly without a lot of yarn, that way I can concentrate. A sweater or a full sized afgan seems so big.

17. What are you knitting right now?

Nothing, I’m looking around for a pattern for a nice felted bag.

18. What do you think about ponchos?

Like ’em.

19. Do you prefer straight or circular needles?

Either.

20. Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?

Yes, in that order.

21. Are you a sock knitter?

No, but I want to be.

22. How did you learn to knit?

Through the Learn to Knit program with the Knitting Guild of America.

23. How old is your oldest UFO?

I have none.

24. What is your favorite animated character or a favorite animal/bird?

I like the Tazmanian Devil and I like dogs and cats.

25. What is your favorite holiday?

Thanksgiving.

26. Is there anything that you collect?

I collect nothing. I love decluttering. (But my secret, secret obsessions are bags and notebooks.)

27. What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?

None.

28. Any books out there you are dying to get your hands on?

Hmmm. Not really.

29. Any patterns you have been coveting, but haven’t bought for one reason or another??

Nope.