This and That and Life Goes On

I just realized that I spelled Thursday wrong on my last post. I am surprised no one pointed this out to me, but I am sorry, I normally try to catch typos and spelling errors before I post, not a week later. Very embarrassing.

Get ready with the cheese, I am going to whine some more, are you sick of it yet? I am so tired of not being able to prepare a decent meal, our suite has a kitchenette, but it is soooo small it is very hard to cook an entire meal (especially since all five animals like to hover at my feet when I am cooking anything, even Jell-O.) They offer a snack meal in the evening (during the week) that we normally eat, salad and a stew or something, but on the weekends, we either have to eat out or microwave something. I will be so glad to be able to cook a full meal when we get into our house. I am used to cooking big Sunday dinners and having my family and friends around me, but I cannot do that here. Last Sunday we went for a ride and found the greatest hot dog stand, it’s called Coney Island and it looks like a giant hot dog. The funniest thing about it is that it is in the middle of nowhere, up in the mountains. The hot dogs were great, and so where the onion rings and shakes. We even got a hot dog for Di, which made her ecstatic (picture the happy dog dance). Here is a picture of it.


The big orange person in the middle is me :-) I had to wait for quite awhile to get our hotdogs, but they were worth the wait.

Guess what, I finally started some Knitting (yes, it does deserve to be capitalized) thanks to Grace pointing out how close Christmas is. I made a scarf and started a hat for my son-in-law; I also started a sweater for me. It’s called “Hey Teach” from Knitty, and I love it, I am doing mine in apple green, last night I did my swatches and decided to go up a needle size, but I think it is going to be great. I might make a tank to go under it, I think that would work well. Does anybody have any opinions on it?

Dogs on Thrusday (and a Couple of Contests)

Since this is Dogs on Thursday, I have to share the good news, my Di visited a new vet a couple of weeks ago and she is doing much better. It seems that though it is normal for her to slow down at her great age, the arthritis in her knees was making her hurt more than the hips or heart issues that she has. The vet has given her a new pill that takes the constant ache away and she now wants to play and walk; in fact she doesn’t whine any more when I make her get off the bed to go outside, she jumps. This is great, she plays with Lola more, she walks farther (even though the altitude is bugging her) and she even chased a bunny rabbit the other night (the good thing is she is still not fast enough to catch them). Yeah Di!

I found a few contests that I want to share with you-

http://thelumpysweater.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/my-goodness-100-posts-and-a-giveaway-yarn-squee/#comment-836
100 Posts

http://gimpykatk.blogspot.com/
Aunt Kathys Place

http://debsgoinggreen.blogspot.com/2008/07/win-my-knitting-crocheting-bag.html

http://janevdoviak.blogspot.com/
400 post

http://crazycatladymel.blogspot.com/2008/06/interim-house-contest-time.html
Interim House

They are all interesting and fun, please check them out, and as always please let them know I sent you :-)

Whiskers on Wednesday

This is Jack and Jill, the brother and sister I adopted about 5 years ago from the vets office. Someone had dropped them off on the doorstep of the office, so they took them in and cleaned them up and found someone (me) who likes cats to adopt them. The do not look anything alike to me but they are fun and cuddly and lovable. Jill (the almost solid gray) likes to play with stuffed animals when the dogs leave them; she cuddles them and rubs up against them. Jack is a lover, and he likes to lay on me for pets and loves, even though he weighs almost 20 lbs, he does not realize it and loves to walk on my side, poking his toes into the few places where there are bones on my body. When Jack wants attention and everyone is busy, he will lay spread eagled on the floor, waiting for one of us to notice him.

Meoowww

Dishcloth Swap

I got my dishcloth swap from my secret pal (who is Katie from PA) and it is great! It includes a dishrag pattern that I have not seen before, called Mosaic, I could not get the detail in the cloth in my pix, but it is very pretty.
My package included 4 skeins of cotton, in a variety of colors, plastic margarita glasses:-), plastic ice cubes, drink umbrellas and on and on... She truly spoiled me. Thank you Katie!

Whiskers on Wednesdays

This is my baby, Onyx (of course all of my pets are my babies) however she is somewhat special. She has a great attitude; she loves White cheddar crackers and chicken noodle soup and has been known to eat salad. She rules the roost until she sees Di (the Dalmatian), and then she is the mad dasher. Onyx likes to play stealth kitty, hiding under goose down comforters, sheets or under the skirts on the sofa.

My daughter told me she wanted another cat and I told her no, we had enough animals and the vet bills are enormous when everyone needs shots and Di has to see the cardiologist. Well, when the kitty was 6 weeks old she walked in the door with her and it was love at first sight (she knows I cannot resist a baby or an animal when they need love). Poor Onyx was crying and fussing, I picked her up and started cuddling her and she went to sleep in my arms, and that was all she wrote :-)


She is very mischievous, but when she wants cuddles, watch out. Onyx will cry as if the world is ending until I sit down and cuddle her. She has been known to wake me up in the night if she wants attention or food. Moreover, once she gets what she wants she cuddles up and goes to sleep. She has stayed all black (when we originally got her I thought she would develop white patches) and she is amazing to watch.

When she was smaller, she would sit on my shoulder while I would knit, if she decided I had knit long enough, she would start playing catch with the needles until I stopped. This was a great reason to buy a set of Options from Knitpicks, no ends for her to catch:-)

As you can tell my Onyx is my kitty, but I think I love all my pets and only wish I could rescue some kitties here in Colorado.

Sightseeing

We have been doing some sight seeing on the weekends now that we have decided on our house and the escrow process is moving, sloooowly. The woman whose townhouse we are buying (move in ready, wahoooo!) has not found a house yet so we agreed to an extended escrow.

Everything is so different here than where we lived in Georgia, we are in the foothills, so it just takes minutes to get to the mountains to see such wonderful sights. The deer below still had the velvet on his antlers and he was so calm, he is way too used to people, but I guess that is a fact of life as people spread out farther into the country.


I like the weather here, much better than Atlanta, it has been hot, but I don’t feel as though a wet blanket has been wrapped around me the minute I step outside. In fact, that is another improvement, I can go outside :-) I don’t appear to have any allergies and neither does my family. We all enjoy taking the dogs for their walks in the evening because it cools off so nicely.

Here are some more pictures of our recent tours around the area-



And here is the front door of my new home, I cannot wait to move. I know it sounds great to let someone else do the cleaning, but this is a very small two-bedroom suite, with 3 large people and 5 animals so. . . Now, I must go knit before I forget how. This move has done horrible things to my knitting, every time I sit down to knit, something or someone decides I need to do something else (another drawback to a hotel, no privacy)But at least I can run the A/C full blast and not have to worry about the bill :-)

A Photo MEME

I first saw this MEME on Monniblog (I love her blog), and though she gave the directions, I was an idjit and just could not figure out how to do it. DUHHH So then, I read the directions on two other blogs and I was finally able to do it. But to be honest, the one that gave me the most help was Marie at http://smariek.blogspot.com/; I probably would not have been able to do it without her help. I am pathetic sometimes :-) Anyway, here are the directions-

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image for each question.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you go to?
What is your favorite colour?
Who is your celebrity crush?
Favorite drink?
Dream vacation?
Favorite dessert?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
One word to describe you.
Your nickname.

And then you should end up with a wonderful mosaic.

My creation
Originally uploaded by the lazy knitter

1. ADVENTURESS 256, 2. Pat's bento goes to work everyday., 3. Spring Bells, 4. Sunset Wine3　　ice cream float:), 5. Jude Law, 6. Fantastic Blue, 7. made in holland (what we're famous for), 8. Sweet Cherry Pie, 9. Gold!!!, 10. A Dog's Best Friend, 11. Spencezilla, 12. Spring cleaning!

My answers were-
Georgi
Mexican Food
Bell
Red
Jude Law
water
Sailing
Cherry Pie
Rich
My pets
Fluffy
George

Another Contest, 1000 Posts, and . . .

Monica is having a contest because she just posted her 1000 post. Can you imagine? She is giving away quite a few prizes and there are many ways to win. Go to http://www.monniblog.com/2008/07/05/post-1000-contest and tell her I sent you please.

I have had to change a couple of my settings; I got my first spam on the blog. How weird is that? Now people who leave a comment have to complete the word verification thingy majig. Why would people waste their time setting up spam for blogs, all it is just irritating and I doubt they get any business this way. Thanks to Marie who explained how to fix it. I truly appreciate it!

We did not end up buying the house with the pool, we had an inspector go through the house and he found several safety issues that the owners were not willing to correct (even though we were willing to meet them halfway). Oh well, I wasn't sure I wanted to take care of a pool anyway. Nevertheless, we are now house hunting again. It seems as though people put their house on the market just to see what they can get, not because they are seriously trying to sell their homes. I spent the entire holiday weekend negotiating on another house and you would not believe what people want (or don’t want) when they sell their homes. Oh well, as my mom used to tell me, the world would get pretty boring if we all thought alike.

I Am Sad

I am so very sad. This morning on my way to meet the realtor, I saw a cute little Chihuahua run over in the middle of a very busy highway. I screamed at the top of my lungs and cried so hard I had a headache. A women and a man got out and bundled the poor thing up in a denim jacket, but he died in her arms. Moreover, it was so needless, the poor little thing was out in traffic, scared and did not know what way to go to get away form all the traffic. Cars were stopped trying to let him get off the road, but one guy was in a hurry, just plowed on through, and ran right over the dog. The driver didn’t even slow down, and after running over the dog he kept right on going. I couldn’t believe someone could be so heartless and uncaring. My heart is broken that a human being could be so cruel, run down a small dog and not stop to see if he could help it; this is just unbelievable to me. I don’t know how I can resolve this in my heart. Goodnight. . .

Dishcloth Posting

Here's this week's topic: Go check out one other person's blog who's answered some of the weekly topics.. find someone you have something in common with, who posted a really cool cloth pattern, or who 'calls' to you for some other reason, and post about them on your blog sharing why!

I think the person “who calls to me” is JoAnn P. as I love the way she thinks about keeping cool (sitting on the beach) though I haven’t figured out how you drink a “frozen” hot chocolate. Does it become a chocolate ice cream type think or like a frozen candy bar? And we both appreciate Cape Cod MA. That is one of my favorite places and has been since the first time I saw it 20 years ago. She also has some great pictures on her blog that are fun to see.

BTW, I have been working on the dishcloth for my swap partner. I really like the way it is turning out, it is one I got from the Cloth of the Week yahoo group. I hope she will like it. Now I get to go shopping for the goodies so I can put it in the mail on Monday AM. I will post a pix tomorrow.