Boo!

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Proud of Me

Let me just throw this out there: I've been hitting it out of the park lately at work.  Putting in a lot of time and effort, pointing out problems, suggesting solutions.  For the most part, it's been recognized and acknowledged.

That's not what I'm really posting about, though.  I'm proud of myself for *not* working right now.  Instead of caving to pressure and hints of guilt-trip attempts to make me forfeit my weekend to make up for time lost by others, I stood up for myself.  At the same time, I stood up for the fact that my happiness and my marriage are just as important and deserving of my energy as my workplace is.

I'm proud I'd me, and I'm having a great weekend.

SuperTomatoes!

I think the garden heard me talking about how I was on a cooking kick over the weekend. That's the best explanation I can come up with for the last, sputtering efforts of the tomato plants... and the fact that the fruit on the vines somehow managed to make it through last night's sub-freezing temperatures.



It gets better, though. These tomatoes weren't thriving in the confines of our raised beds and chickenwire fencing. Oh, no. They're from a very prolific plant that grew directly out of our compost bin.



They also look like plum tomatoes, which means they wouldn't have grown from a tomato seedling that got thinned from the garden and put in the compost, but from a seed of a plum tomato that we'd purchased from the grocery store. Crazy and impressive! SuperTomatoes! I feel like I should put little capes on each of them.

... Or I could figure out what to cook with green tomatoes. Any ideas?

Probably shouldn't take the same approach to running...

Guess what's a thousand times tougher than planning a wedding?  Incorporating a dog into your household when your workplace implodes (not really, but it feels that way) and you end up working tons more hours than you did when you didn't also have to schedule 4 miles of walking every day, no exceptions.

You could say I'm a little frazzled.  And grumpy.

I miss lots of stuff I don't have time for right now.  I've made up for lost time in one area, though: cooking. In the past 24 hours, I've made:

pizza with mushrooms and caramelized onions (yummy)

chicken, leek, and potato soup (good, but nothing to write home about)

Black beans and rice (always good, even, apparently, when you're out of onions)

stuffed shells (to stock the freezer of some new-parent friends)

string bean ricotta casserole (ditto)

And we've still got ingredients to use up for ham and swiss quiche and shrimp scampi later this week.  Well, more likely this weekend, to be realistic.  I don't expect to be home from work in time to make quiche any night this week.

(Note:  Yes, The Awesome Husband is more than capable of cooking.  Yes, he has dinner covered most evenings of late.  My point is that I enjoy cooking, and *I* want to have time to cook quiche.  Harumph.)

... and then we got a dog.

I had big plans to do another Iceland post, but it's just not gonna happen. And I think that's ok, because all it would've been, to be honest, can be summed up as follows: "You should go!  Oh, and we saw the building where Reagan and Gorbachev met to discuss nuclear disarmament in 1986."

See?  You're not missing much.

It makes so much more sense to show you the picture above and let you know how well Mr. Cecil is doing with us.  We were a little concerned when he arrived Friday night that we'd ended up with more puppy-esque energy than we bargained for, but he's mellowed out remarkably in two days. 

Of course, there's room for improvement.  For instance, tomorrow's lesson will be "don't raid the cat's food dish and proceed to throw up on the living room rug." 

Baby steps.

We interrupt this radio silence for a brief announcement.

I'm realizing that if I wait to do another post on Iceland, it'll be several days before any new content shows up here.  Not ideal. Certainly not ideal when I have a fun little announcement to share:

We're adopting a dog!  Later this week, a two year old beagle/hound/border collie mix named Cecil will be joining our household.

Hooray (and wish us luck)!

Iceland Intermission: Finished Sweaters

You wouldn't know it from my posts lately, but yes, I'm still knitting. Knitting up a storm, in fact, and I've got two finished sweaters to show for it. There's the sweater that I procrastiknit-ed when I didn't want to tackle the wedding planning task of the day (the purple one) and the sweater knit nearly entirely in- or travelling-to-and-from-Iceland (the green one).


Ok! First up, the honeymoon sweater:
Trina, designed by hilary Smith Callis over at The Yarniad. Ravelry page is over here.



And the "Ack! Don't make me think about how many chairs we'll need!" sweater:

Tailored Cardigan, designed by... some nameless person over at Garn Studio, I suppose. Ravelry page thisaway. This might actually be my favorite handknit item ever, even though it doesn't have the intended buttons because I... forgot to knit button holes. Yes, really.







Next up: Pamela Wynne's February Lady Sweater. After this, I really need to stop with the cardigans.