Blackstage Stitches

For Good

2011-06-11T23:42:00.000-07:00

I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led to those who help us most to grow
If we let them and we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you...

Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

It well may be that we will never meet again
In this lifetime so let me say before we part
So much of me is made from what I learned from you
You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend...

Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird in a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
Because I knew you
I have been changed for good

Like a comet pulled from orbit / Like a ship blown from its mooring

As it passes a sun / By a wind off the sea

Like a stream that meets a boulder / Like a seed dropped by a skybird
Halfway through the wood / In a distant wood

Who can say if I've been
Changed for the better?
I do believe I have been
Changed for the better

And because I knew you...

Because I knew you...

Because I knew you...
I have been changed for good...

-"For Good" from Wicked

On Being Selfish

2011-06-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

I really love to travel. I do. I've been all over the world. But I kind of have a newfound appreciation for it this year. At the risk of potentially sounding a bit whiny or ungrateful or burdened (and I'm not any of those things), in the past, I've always traveled for other people. I'd fly to Illinois to see my family. I went to France to see a roommate. I went to Australia to see a then-boyfriend. I'd drive to LA to see friends. Not that I don't want to see those people - I LOVE seeing my family and friends! But traveling solo with no one waiting for you on either end has really really huge perks.

Earlier this season, the first time I went up to San Jose for a Hawks/Sharks game, it was really kind of cool to realize "Wow, it's really late, I don't want to drive three hours now and I don't have to work tomorrow. I can stay here for the night and it will affect exactly no one!" It was even better when I was down in LA for other games over the past few months; I stayed at the Queen Mary, went on the ghost tours, because I wanted to. I stayed at the JW Marriott downtown & got treated like a princess. I didn't have to convince anyone to go with me or spend their money on something I wanted to do. I had the money; I had the time; I had the desire. I could just go.

I'm doing the same thing again this summer. In a couple weeks, I'm going to Vegas for three days. By myself. For no reason other than there are two shows I want to see (Penn & Teller's show at the Rio - I really hope they do the Magic Bullet! - and the annual NHL Awards Show at the Palms, because I've never seen a live awards show for anything and I love the NHL, although it will not be a nice feeling if I have to see Vancouver players with the Cup =P). Then next month, I'm going to Chicago. Not to see family (although I do have a few days planned with them - like I said, I do actually enjoy their company occasionally), but to do something I want to do, like go to the Blackhawks Convention and a Cubs game.

I'm 30 years old and I want a weekend in the city without restrictions. There are things that just are more fun with a group, but then you always have to plan things and work out schedules and transportation and be dependent on whoever you're seeing, at least to a certain extent. But what happens when you don't have a group handy? Your friends either aren't interested in what you want to do or don't have the money handy or have to work or something? Do you put your plans aside and wait for the perfect combination to occur? I, personally, say no. Life is way too short to wait for convenience. Just go. So I'm going.

And I can't wait!

Never Forget

2011-05-30T01:28:00.000-07:00

I am an American Airman.
I am a warrior.
I have answered my nation's call.

I am an American Airman.
My mission is to fly, fight, and win.
I am faithful to a proud heritage,
A tradition of honor,
And a legacy of valor.

I am an American Airman.
Guardian of freedom and justice.
My nation's sword and shield,
Its sentry and avenger.
I defend my country with my life.

I am an American Airman.
Wingman.
Leader.
Warrior.
I will never leave an Airman behind.
I will never falter,
AND I WILL NOT FAIL!

This Week in Life...

2011-05-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

-Tried jiu jitsu for the first time this past week. I'm ambivalent about it right now, although I can't participate in the sparring yet due to my ankle. The class is huge, though, and is made up of a lot of my guys from FIGHT. It's also always interesting to see Sir as a student.

-Took and passed my CDCs this week. Basically, this means I went up a level at work. It's not nearly as big of a deal as it sounds, although it is important. It's good that they aren't hanging over my head anymore.

-Was a DV escort and runner for the DO's promotion ceremony this weekend, and then was invited to a more intimate party after drill with his family, the 216th brass, and the people who helped out with the ceremony. It was fun, and a good reminder that I am lucky enough to be working with some really good people. Even if I did take some ribbing from some of them about my hockey fandom. Also got some encouraging tidbits on the job I applied for, so that was nice.

-Really not thrilled with the start of the Western Conference Finals. I don't like the Sharks, but I seriously loathe the Canucks. However, all hockey hatred aside, the NHL lost a fan favorite this week with the sudden death of NY Ranger/former Minnesota Wild player Derek Boogaard. Thoughts go to his family and friends. RIP Boogeyman.

-Had a lot of fun for my birthday this year. Probably the best birthday I've had in a long time. Still had to work, of course, but we had a cake on my actual birthday and also got to talk to my mom, got a beautiful present from my parents, and stayed up late talking to my brother, so that made it a good day all around. We went out to lunch at our favorite tri-tip spot on Friday, because meetings and schedules didn't work out until then, and a guy that I think might be flirting with me a little got "dragged" to it, as well, so that was fun.

-Worked all weekend, gonna work all week. I need to go dress-shopping for Vegas at some point next weekend...hmm....

My Next Thirty Years

2011-05-10T22:26:00.000-07:00

I think I'll take a moment to celebrate my age,
The ending of an era, and the turning of a page.
Now it's time to focus in on where I go from here.
Lord, have mercy on my next thirty years!

In my next thirty years, I'm gonna have some fun,
Try to forget about all the crazy things I've done.
Maybe now I've conquered all my adolescent fears
And I'll do it better in my next thirty years!

My next thirty years, I'm gonna settle all the scores,
Cry a little less, and laugh a little more.
Find a world of happiness without the hate and fears,
Figure out just what I'm doing here in my next thirty years.

In my next thirty years, I'm gonna watch my weight,
Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late.
Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers -
Hey maybe I'll remember my next thirty years!

My next thirty years will be the best years of my life!
I'll raise a little family and hang out with my wife.
Spend precious moments with the ones that I hold dear,
Make up for lost time here in my next thirty years!

-My Next Thirty Years, Tim McGraw

Um, wow!

2011-05-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

How did it get to be May already?? Yikes! I keep thinking "I'll post something when I actually have something done/going on" and then I never seem to have time!

For the knitterly types, I did finish the test knit, nicknamed The Beast due to its size and color, but properly called a Hip To Be Square Cape, and loved the result....pre-felting. It was a cape, a lovely warm drapey soft cape with a cute little collar. Then the washer ate it. Stupid cheap laundry-room washers! I'd been afraid of that result, so I'd tried to hand-felt it in the bathtub first, but it was way too big to do that.
Pre-felting:
Post-felting:
All that lovely soft Malabrigo! So stiff and short now! My heart cries! But the color is pretty...sigh. Anyway, since I'm in no danger of jinxing anything now (yes, I'm being a sore loser, but no one will ever be able to convince me that the Canucks were the better team in ANY sense in that series), I've also started a Blackhawks-themed Short-Row Striped Pullover, which I think will rock. I'm using black for the sleeves, hem and collar, and then the stripe pattern is predominantly black, red and white, with green and yellow highlights. I have one sleeve done so far - I almost always do the sleeves first on sweaters - and hoping to start the second one today! I've also started an Adamas Shawl in the Claudia's Handpainted Silk I got a couple years ago. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, and have now remembered why I rarely do lace projects (they aren't hard, but are not good knitting for watching hockey, to say the least). It is starting off rather well, though. No good pics yet. During the first round, I also started a super simple *yo, k2tog* scarf out of the leftover Mal, which is turning out quite charming and I can imagine will be insanely warm.

In work news, things are going really well. I've kind of settled into the job, but of course, once I did, another job opened up at the 216th that I was STRONGLY encouraged to apply for. I hemmed and hawed about it until pretty much the last minute, but I did apply for it. Better pay, more in line with the actual mission of the 216th, and I might be good at it. We'll see. Other than that, love the job, love the people I work with (the girls all ganged up for dinner and a show this week, which was fun), and if it didn't start so early in the day, it would be almost perfect. One decision that I have never regretted. Ran into a bunch of old friends at the theater, and they all mentioned that I look happier, steadier, and more confident than I ever did before. I definitely feel it!

Also helping that - finally being back in martial arts! I don't think I mentioned that I tore my ankle up (again, same ankle) in March. I was running a trail on one of the COD commander's "death marches" (his usually around 5-mile, often very hilly, insanely-early-on-Thursday-morning, not-required-but-highly-encouraged runs) and just rolled it. It didn't seem that bad at the time, but when it was still "not right" after the weekend, I got it looked at. Doc said it was a combination of new mild sprain plus the severe sprain from last summer never actually healing properly (wonder how that happened), and he forbade pretty much any exercise that involves legs at all until the beginning of April, when I could see a physical therapist. She took a look a it and decided that it seemed like the tendons and ligaments had healed properly, but the muscles hadn't. So I've been in physical therapy for about six weeks now, mostly working with one of the assistants on strength, balance, and flexibility, and STILL haven't been completely cleared to run. I can do up to 15 minutes (on a good day), mixing running and walking, and no more than 1.5 miles on flat surfaces.

I DID, however, get cleared to go back to class, as long as I don't jump or spin on it. The not jumping is easy - I've never been much of a jumper - but the spinning is harder to remember, particularly in forms and sparring. It's SO good to be back in classes, though! I might make second degree yet! I've been to tkd and kickboxing so far, and am hoping to make it to FIGHT on Tuesday this week if the ankle holds up. It's been pretty good, although I am definitely out of shape and have lots of soreness, although I wasn't thinking at one point Wednesday and threw a spin hook kick during sparring, which wasn't appreciated.

I don't get to see Sir very much - Mrs. S teaches on M/W now, and he teaches on T/Th, which are PT days - but I ran into him the other day and he really wants me to check out the new jiu jitsu class on Thursday nights. Definitely not going to participate in anything new until the ankle is completely okay, but I promised I would come watch a few classes. I would like to be able to do both PT and classes on the same day, and I think I am not far off, although it helps that I can't DO a lot of the PT right now, since it mostly involves running. I do SERIOUSLY need to work on pushups, though. They just hurt - my ankle, my elbows, ugh! And I need to get back into running if I'm going to do this half in September! We'll see. I'll just keep working as best as the docs & the body will let me and hope I don't re-injure anything!

Hmm, what else? Going to Vegas in June as a birthday present to myself. I'm leaning toward totally indulging and getting a package that includes a ticket to the NHL Awards. (In which case, working out more is going to be a very good thing, cuz I'm vain enough to want to look amazing in Vegas just in case ;-) ) Also going to the Blackhawks Convention in Chicago in July and going to hang out with family & catch another Cubs game with my brother & cousins during that trip. Yay!

Think that's about it. It's Mother's Day, so I should probably get my sunburnt self (reading out in the sun yesterday - I swear I was only out there for maybe half an hour!) off the computer and call Mom...

Song Bomb & Other Dreams

2011-02-20T22:25:00.000-08:00

I could have danced all night!
I could have danced all night!
And still have begged for more!
I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things
I've never done before!
I didn't know what made it so exciting,
When all at once my heart took flight!
I only know when he began to dance with me
I could have danced danced danced all night!
-"I Could Have Danced All Night ", My Fair Lady

Thanks to Jinny for getting the song totally stuck in my head. And then my brother saying he had been watching it earlier too.

Been having a LOT of dreams lately. Not sure if it's the weather or just being on an almost-regular sleep schedule (they say sleeping better makes you dream more) or just being in a really good mood recently or what. I dreamed that Skille would get traded two days before it happened. Dreamed of a thunderstorm, then one hit this weekend. Last couple dreams have been about training for the run with some stuffed/cartoony animals (not as creepy as it sounds, was kind of funny), talking to Jonathan Toews before a press conference or game (he gave me a hug, kept his arm around me, asked me about work and told me he was mixing a new song for the pregame videos - because the players do that /sarcasm - and that everything would be alright), being a contestant on SyFy's "Face/Off" makeup competition and being totally overwhelmed because I knew nothing about makeup and am not creative (those three dreams were all in one night!) and then last night's was trying to convince/protect my tech school roommate from getting involved with a really bad crowd and then having to leave her to protect myself when she did anyway. Very busy subconscious, I guess! Nothing bad or scary, mostly encouraging or self-aware, actually, so that's cool, but always interesting.

I've started the test knit for the Ravelry designer. It's going to be a felted cape, actually! I'm super-excited, but this thing is going to be huge pre-felting. And okay, Malabrigo totally lives up to the hype. This yarn is INsanely soft and so pretty! I love it! It borders on being almost TOO soft, though - this stuff will almost felt if you just LOOK at it too roughly. Which is great for spit-splicing, I love not having many ends to weave in! The pattern itself is a touch fiddly - there are a couple different techniques - but not difficult. It will take some time, though, just because of its size. I also finished the dishcloth blankie for our newest little guy AND got to cuddle him in it when he visited us at work the other day! He's so cute!

Now taking advantage of a three day weekend to get caught up on some housework and some homework. Really struggling with this class, even though it's actually a bit more interesting than the others. Well, I shouldn't say that. I should say the assignment structures are more interesting, the material itself is still quite boring. But instead of one or two massive papers and exams, we have LOTS of small(ish) assignments each week. When you already start out three weeks behind b/c of transferred classes and textbook mishaps, it's really very frustrating trying to get caught up and then stay caught up. And with online classes, it's SO easy to procrastinate! Hate that. Hate that I let myself do that! Definitely going to be working on that.

I'm also training a Canadian captain at work right now, and Kings 5K run is in less than two weeks! And then I start the training program for the Disneyland Half! Oye! Busy!

Ranting

2011-02-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

-Why yes, I would LOVE to help organize the food for a wingman day this Friday. Because, you know, I have NOTHING else to do this week, what with being the only certified military member in my shop on days and four, no, five sensors in various phases of testing right now. So yes, you put that list on my desk and see how quickly I get to it. Mrph.

-If you're in the Western Conference and are not the Blackhawks, I will not be cheering for you unless your win will somehow help us. Eastern Conference winners preferred right now. (Related: Versteeg to Flyers - possibly awkward first practice but maybe he'll find our missing puck.)

-Counting while knitting is useful. Maybe I should try it some time.

-You're the creative genius. You come up with the idea and I make it happen. That's how we work. Don't make me attempt to be creative. It's not a good situation. (But thank you for calling.)

Nap time!

2011-02-07T22:34:00.000-08:00

-Pouting, only this time I can't put the blame on the refs. This one was completely us. We're jinxed. We've been playing hard (except the powerplay, which looks like we've never seen a puck in our lives), and defense & penalty kill has actually far exceeded my expectations. Offense is just not connecting and it makes me sad.

-The dishcloth blanket is never-ending. I swear. I've knit and knit and knit on it and it never stops.

-I can't believe I'm even considering doing the Disneyland Half Marathon in September. I'm so not worried about the 5K next month, but 13 miles??

-I'm training a new person in our shop at work, and my NCO has been on baby alert all weekend. So life is all sorts of fun there right now. Just when I think I know what is going on, I get to feel like a dumb new airman all over again!

-I hate drill weekends right now. 12 days in a row of being up at 0530 sucks. The guys usually try to give me either Friday or Monday off, but w/ their schedules, it didn't work out this weekend. I got this afternoon off, but that doesn't help the sleeping in factor. Sigh.

American Airmen v. Canadian Officers ;-)

2011-02-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

I love my shop. Actual conversation as I was leaving on Friday (the American NCO & Canadian MWO had been jabbing at each other all day):

Me: Alright, I'll see you guys on Monday!
MWO: Wait, you left early yesterday and you think you can leave again today??
Me: I left 20 minutes early yesterday! Captain kicked me out cuz we were bored!
MWO: Oh, so now you're quantifying it?? You think it matters how early you leave? Slacker!
NCO: In all fairness, she does have to be here all weekend.
MWO: She gets paid for it.
Me: Actually, I don't.
NCO & MWO: ????
Me: The orders I'm on don't pay me any extra for drill weekends.
NCO: That's dumb.
MWO: Meh. Cry me a river.
NCO: I'll cry you a lake!
Me: They don't need more lakes in Canada.
MWO: Don't YOU start! I like you!
Me: Hey, I like Canadians. You play good sports.
Canadian Captain 1: What? Golf?
MWO: Hockey. She might actually know something about it.
Me: In fact, I'm on my way home to watch a game now.
Canadian Captain 2 (who just walked in): Who's playing tonight?
MWO: Blackhawks.
(Collective Canadian snort)
Captain: Yeah, you'd better leave!

In other news, I've been asked to test knit a new pattern for the lady who designed my Swirls hat (the black & red one from the January Hat Trick). She said she would cover the yarn and asked me to pick a color. I didn't know that was going to result in a BAG OF GORGEOUS PURPLE MALABRIGO arriving at my door a few days later! I've never gotten to work with Mal before, and it's enormously soft just in the skein, so I hope it lives up to the hype. The cat seems to love it, anyway; no matter where I put it, he ends up on top of it somehow. The designer is finishing up the pattern now and I should get it next week. I think it's going to be a wrap of some kind from the way she talked. Very excited!

Just finished PTL training. I figure this is going to force me to get better at pushups, since I'll be in a position to have to practice what I preach now. I did, however, get several tips on practice programs and form (apparently I am unbalanced - no comment - I don't pushup evenly with both arms. I still favor my right arm almost three years after injuring it. Never realized it.)

Spring Training starts in three weeks! Yay! (I am focusing on that positive hope right now instead of the seething anger I still feel after my Blackhawks were just absolutely robbed by the referees last night. Clearly, it hasn't settled down much. They are handling it with much more class than I am.)

Learned Stuff

2011-02-01T21:27:00.000-08:00

-There are days that when someone asks me what I'm doing at work, it is all I can do to answer with a straight face because the task at hand seriously sounds like something a character out of Star Trek would be doing.

-I have the baby blanket for the little guy who is coming in May done. The one who is coming this week? Not so much.

-I seriously dislike yoga as a PT exercise. At least on wet, uneven grass. But I still hate pushups more.

-NHL All-Star Weekend was ridiculously fun to watch. But I'm glad real hockey is back now.

-Homework is better when there is an actual, definite answer to the question beyond "what do you think?" I think those kind of assignments are stupid. TEACH someone what sort of things they should be thinking ABOUT in the context first. I used to say it emphatically about stage management, and now I'm expanding it to all management - you can't learn it out of a book. You've got to get out and get your hands dirty and actually learn how to solve the problems as they come to have any idea of what s really going on.

-I'm very glad I live in California right now. I had to debate if it was cool enough to wear my PT sweatshirt today. It was.

-Food Network is strangely addictive.

-I've run a little over 25 miles so far this year, averaging a little over 3.5 miles per run. I still hate running, but at least my time will get better! I'm kind of looking forward to the 5K in March now. (But will be looking forward more to the hockey game afterwards.)

HUGE Long Catch-Up Post

2011-01-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

Alright all, life has been absolutely insane lately. This is going to be a huge post spanning a couple months and several topics, including hockey! So let's get going!

Work
As of around the beginning of December, I am completely, officially Combat Mission Ready (CMR) certified in my position on base. This basically means that I can be trusted to work on my own, which is awesome because there are only four people in my shop (me, two active duty, and one civilian) and me being able to handle the everyday stuff frees up the other guys to do more of the supervisory/bureaucratic and more in-depth analysis projects. (For the curious, the overall gist of my job is to manage all the sensors in the Space Surveillance Network (SSN) and not only make sure that they're playing nice with each other, but that the data they get is good. In a fun-fact nutshell, I run the network that tracks Santa on Christmas Eve.) It's been working pretty well for us so far. I will stay full-time with them through March, and then I'll start splitting my time between the JSpOC and the 216th. For the most part, I like my job a little more every day, although of course there are days that I want to run away screaming or my brain feels like scrambled eggs by the end. Orbital mechanics and computer programming just really shouldn't reside in the same brain, I'm convinced.

Tomorrow marks two years since I enlisted. There have been three decisions in my life that I knew were absolutely, positively right the second the option was presented to me: going to Purdue for college, moving to California, and joining the Guard. Those clicks don't happen often, but I'm glad they did when they did.

Working Out
Unfortunately, I haven't been in the dojo all that much lately, although I do try to make it in at least once a week. Mostly, I have been running. I don't particularly enjoy running, but it is the biggest part of our PT test and the easiest workout to get in, since all I have to do is change shoes and I can run pretty much anywhere. I prefer running the 1.5-mile trail on base, but the new colonel in charge of my division has mandated a 5 mile run every Thursday morning, so been working on upping the distance. I'm not quite up to that distance yet, but I can do a 5K fairly comfortably, if very slowly. I am hoping to do the LA Kings 5K in March now.

Unfortunately, the worst part of my personal PT test that I did in December was pushups. I passed that segment, but not nearly as well as I would have liked. So I would prefer to work on those and build up arm strength, which is more dojo-type work. And kickboxing and tkd are always good, but I really miss FIGHT. Tuesdays and Thursdays are squadron PT days, though, which makes it difficult to get in on those days. We'll see.

Knitting
Got a couple projects going right now. One of the girls in the squadron is a big Sharks fan and expecting, and I found a really cute baby jacket pattern and some Sharks-inspired yarn for her. I'm also working on a baby blanket for one of the guys I work with whose wife is expecting. But my main focus the past week or so has been our annual Puck This January Hat Trick K/CAL. I already have two goals finished:

Rebecca, from Knitty. Yarn is Berroco Vintage I got in the Start of Season Swap and super squishy. Chunky yarn + big needles = quick knit. It's not nearly as complicated as it looks, either, although I personally think it would easier to follow if it was in a color-coded chart instead of written out. And:

Chicago, based on this hat sold on Etsy. The lady who knit & sold it there graciously shared the star chart with one of the Blackhawks fans in Puck This, and allowed her to share it with the rest of the group. It's jut a plain old striped hat, and then the stars are duplicate-stitched on afterwards. I'd never done dup stitch before, so that was new, but it turned out to be rather like cross-stitching, and after a few tension mishaps, I got the hang of it pretty well. Unfortunately, the pattern was written for chunky yarn and I used worsted, so I have a very cute child-sized hat. I'm thinking about sending it off to a kids' charity in Chicago. But I do kind of like it, too. I might have to make another one in my size.

My third is on the needles right now, and is kind of a test-knit for the designer since it's fairly new and there haven't been many done yet.
It's called the Swirled Striped Hat (pattern available via Ravelry download), and I like it so far. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it's got a lot of potential. As with my A New Angle afghan, I've been giving feedback to and getting feedback from the designer, which remains one of the coolest parts of Ravelry. And, why yes, those last two do just happen to be Blackhawks-inspired, since it is a hockey group's K/CAL. And speaking of the Blackhawks...

Hockey
I know I wanted to keep the hockey talk to the other blog, but to me, these ended up being more personal than sporty. Not only did I get to enjoy a game at the UC this year AND do my personal Thanksgiving Blackhawks marathon, but I ended up being a Blackhawks California season ticket holder! I was able to make it to ALL SIX games that the 'Hawks play in California during the regular season! And have pretty darn good seats (and places to stay) at all of them.

In order, some of the pics w/ stories (photo albums from games behind the links):

Blackhawks @ Sharks 24 Nov
Kopy had been playing with the little guy in the white hoodie while waiting for his turn during the warmup drills, making faces at him through the glass and whatnot. Finally, he was at the front of the line, and we all thought he was turning to start his drill (the moment in the photo), but then he suddenly turned back and checked the glass right in front of the kid. I thought the kid was going to die of glee, he was SO excited! It was super cute!

Blackhawks @ Ducks 26 Nov
Obviously not my pic, but a screenshot that one of my friends sent me - I got high-fives from the Blackhawks when they came on and off the ice for the third period!! That is my hand that Toews is hitting! (And, I would like to point out, the game was tied 1-1 through the second. I gave high fives to Sharp, Kane, Hossa, and a few others, and suddenly they get THREE goals in the third to win. Coincidence? ;-) )

Blackhawks @ Kings 27 Nov
This one takes some multiple pics. For this game, I was sitting by the penalty box, rather than the bench. I still saw my two favorite players up close & personal, unfortunately. It started off with Sharp coming to sit by me early in the game:

Then late in the third (seriously late, like less than 5 minutes left of a very close game), Toews decides to come sit by me. Single Trouble:

And anything that Tazer does, Kaner has to do too, so Double Trouble:

And THEN, just because all the cool kids had done it, I guess, Bolly decides to make it a party in the sin bin. Triple Trouble:

Yes, that was all the same back-to-back overlapping penalties! And they still managed to win! But man, was that scary!

Those three were my Thanksgiving marathon games. Then they went back to Chicago for a couple weeks, but missed me so much that they came back out for a quick visit in December.

Blackhawks @ Sharks 11 Dec
This game was a crazy good defensive goalie duel with the 'Hawks surprise rookie from last year:

against the 'Hawks surprise rookie from this year:
Both goalies were the top stars for the game, but unfortunately, Crow came up on the short end in OT, but my record at the Tank is getting better! The first time I was there, they got 0 points; this time, they got 1! Slowly but sure we are making progress. It amuses me to no end that the fans at the Shark Tank boo Brian Campbell every time he touches the puck there, but I gotta say, out of the three pro rinks here in Cali, that one wins for sheer fun. The fans love the game, they love their team, and they just have fun. Too bad it's the one that is the farthest away. (I did also have a lady sitting behind me in a Sharks jersey lean forward at one point and conspiratorially whisper “I just wanted you to know that I really like Keith. And Seabrook. And Sharp. And…well, maybe I should stop now.”)

Blackhawks @ Ducks 2 Jan
Again, they went back home for a couple weeks, but then came back out to ring in the New Year California-style. Only this time, they brought their moms with them.
Toews was out that game due to injury, and I didn't get to give the guys their high fives this time due to some rather...inconvenient people who refused to move two inches so I could lean over the rail, and the guys lost. Well, okay, the Ducks didn't beat them in that game; the Ducks' goalie, Jonas Hiller, did. Awesome goalie, btw. Only reason they won, because they sure didn't play that well. Too bad.

Blackhawks @ Kings 3 Jan
The next day was a bit exciting, at least for me. I was staying at a hotel near the Staples Center for the weekend, and went to get some coffee that morning from the Starbucks that's just across the way (if you've ever been to the LA LIVE area, you know where I'm talking about). I glance out the window, and Eddie Olczyk (one of the Blackhawks' TV announcers) is walking by. I wave like an idiot before remembering that he doesn't have a clue who I am and is wondering why this apparently crazy person is waving at him through a Starbucks window. So I get my coffee and head back over to the hotel, where I get blocked behind a trio of guys trying to go around a corner to the escalator (I was going to go up to the business center to print out something, I forget what now). Of course I said "Excuse me!" when I bumped into one of them and look up apologetically, and realize I am looking at Jack Skille. (I think I may have said "Hi" and smiled like a ditz but I don't really remember. I do remember him saying "Hi" back, so I suppose I must have. The cameras, btw, do NOT do him justice - he's CUTE!) I get ahead of the trio on the escalator and look back to do a "no really, that didn't just happen" reality check, and he is with Patrick Sharp and Jonathan Toews!! My two favorite players (and Skille does not trail very far behind them on that list either) were RIGHT BEHIND ME!! I know I DID smile and say "Hi! Good luck tonight!" at that point, and I think there was a murmured "Thanks" but honestly, I'm just proud of myself for making it off the escalator without tripping over anything. I was so in shock. They went their way and I went mine (sadly, not the same way), but I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch downstairs in the lobby, so I kind of lurked and ended up seeing several of the Hawks plus EdzO again, although I didn't talk to any of them. One of the waiters knew I was waiting for someone, and at one point asked "Oh hey, is that your friend?" The guy he was indicating was Corey Crawford. (Who is very very skinny w/o all those big goalie pads, btw.) Sigh, I wish!

And, again, physical contact with the guys brings about good luck for them. Toews returned to the lineup that night and ended up scoring the GWG. Sharpie also scored (twice, if I recall correctly) during that one, and the Hawks finished their season sweep of the Kings.

Stan Lee did the ceremonial puck drop:

Tazer played peekaboo with me:
(I was actually trying to get a shot of Hossa, who is forever blurry in my pictures. I didn't realize Toews was right behind him, but I will take it!)

And, the best jersey autograph EVER:
(and I was having a big "I miss Burish! Bring Bur Back!" weekend - we need a pest again - so that was doubly awesome!)

So I got to do all that stuff, PLUS go to Illinois & see the family for a few days at Christmas, where of course we all ate wayyyy too much very good food, drove each other crazy, and spoiled each other rotten. At least, I got spoiled, anyway:
That is a Stanley Cup Champions DVD autographed by Patrick Sharp AND a team picture from the 2009 Blackhawks/Red Wings Winter Classic game at Wrigley Field, autographed by the entire team! Best. Little. Brother. EVER! My mom refused to let me sleep with the picture, but prying it out of everyone else's hands to get it home to Cali was a bit of a challenge. (That picture is also now the subject of every threat my brother feels the need to coerce me with. Distance from family is still a good thing!)

So yeah, I've been a little busy lately! Hope to settle down a little bit and get some rest now!

Marathon Games 1 & 2

2010-11-26T23:56:00.001-08:00

I'm going to put most of the actual hockey game stuff over on the other blog, but I have been having a BLAST this week!

-I am apparently a very familiar-looking person. Five different people at two hockey rinks almost 400 miles apart have either stopped me in the concourse or approached me at my seat to tell me that I look very familiar. Weird.

-If you sit near the home team's bench, you don't get to see your team on the bench as much, but you get to see them shoot at the goal closest to you twice. If you sit near the visitors' bench, you will get to see your guys on the bench a lot more but it will be harder to see them on the ice. Presuming, of course, that they spend more time on offense than defense, which is generally a good thing to do in a hockey game. I cannot decide which I like more and may continue flip-flopping. (I think my seat for tomorrow is on the visitors' side, but not sure.) However, sitting on the visitors' entrance aisle iz teh ossim. (Honda Center, Sect 209, Row E, around seat 10-ish. That is going to be my seat there now forever!) I got high-5s from my guys!!!

-Staying on board the Queen Mary while in SoCal and it's really nice for the price! Very thin walls, though. I did one of their ghost tours this evening, which was very interesting. There was one room that they were asking questions and the K2 meters were going off and a few people said they saw something (including a self-proclaimed psychic)* - I felt/saw/experienced absolutely nothing other than visually seeing the meters light up. We move on to the old first class pool and supposedly there's a lady in the changing rooms who "guards a vortex" there. They set up the equipment and were asking questions again and asked if she would let us go into the changing rooms. The "answer" came back as a clear "No!" The guide told the group that they could go into the changing rooms if they wanted but he wasn't going to; he'd had his own experiences in there and didn't care to repeat them again. Of course, the rest of the group all wanted to go in, but I kept getting a nagging feeling about it and didn't. It wasn't like I was afraid something bad would happen or something but it was just more of a "Man, if you believe what you just got 'told', and she told you to go away, go away already!" protective kind of feeling that I just couldn't shake. Rather like walking by a door guarded by armed security guards. You're really curious as to what is behind the door but it's clear that it's not an issue that really needs to get pressed. Weird. So I stayed out and talked to the guide for a little bit. It turns out that I am not the only one who has had issues with going down to the isolation wards. (Claustrophobia, however, didn't bother me tonight.) All in all, though, nothing happened that I would say beyond a reasonable doubt was paranormal, and if any ghostie wants to come into my room at night and wants to mess with my stuff, that's fine, as long as I don't get woken up and I don't lose any of it.

-I have a new favorite pair of earrings. Big dangly cheap silver and turquiose circles. Love them! Yet another set of earrings that I can't wear for 90% of my life, between work and martial arts, but they're so fun!

-Thanksgiving was much more fun than I had anticipated. I was invited to a guy I work with's house to spend the afternoon/evening with his family. There turned out to be six adults - two couples, two singles (I got kind of a "wow, what a coincidence that you guys have SO much in common!" vibe, but oh well) - and three kids. It was very fun. The kids were all old enough that they could run around outside or play upstairs, and the grownups played a cross between Pictionary and Telephone (I can't think of the name right now, Scribbleysomething, maybe?) and Apples to Apples which is a very fun game! You get to see how a lot of people's minds work, which is interesting. Anyway, I had kind of figured it would be eating around three, some polite conversation, and home by six or seven. I didn't get home until after eleven. Which sucked for trying to get laundry done and packed for today, but was too much fun to really complain about.

-I think I might hit up the Aquarium of the Pacific tomorrow, since the game isn't until the evening. One more day/night in SoCal, then going back up Sunday and have to go in to work for a couple hours to get caught up on the daily tasks that haven't gotten done because everyone's been on Thanksgiving break. Random day off later this week too, so my orders can change over from MPA (being loaned out to the 614 AOC full time) to AGR (being actually employed by the 216 OSS full time). My schedule's going to be so out of whack!

*ETA (because I'm not falling asleep now) Some of the experiences included flashlights turning on and off, several people feeling ill (I felt ill, too, but that was because I'd had two alcoholic drinks that day and not enough food to soak it up!), a couple of odd noises, and supposedly an apparition in the green room. There's this room that is supposed to be "Henry's" room - a guy who died in a boiler room accident and is supposed to be, well, grumpy about it to say the least - and they had everyone go in and turn off the lights and then they set up a flashlight, a K2 meter, and a DVR on a table. Another lady in the group had a second K2 meter a couple feet away. They started asking questions and got a few hits on both the meters and the flashlight. People around me seemed tense and a couple mentioned feeling dizzy or ill. They asked if whoever was there wanted us to leave and it went dark. Someone joked "Aww, Henry likes us!" and the meter flashed all the way across. Then this girl in the group gasped and said "You guys are going to think I'm crazy, but I swear I just saw a little girl over by the table!" No little girls had been mentioned on the tour at all at that point, but the guide said that there is supposedly a little girl running about the place and that she usually stayed one floor above, but people had seen her all over the ship. After that, the group claimed that "the energy in the room got lighter", they felt better, and the psychic said that the little girl had made the "bad energy" that was in there before leave. Also, in the changing room above (the one I didn't want to go into), one couple on the tour supposedly got touched by a dark mass who wanted them to leave.

I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the people I shared the tour with, but I have serious reservations about the claims that they made. I have no doubts that they experienced what they said they experienced, but think about it from a psychological standpoint. You have about twenty people in a group because they want to learn about ghosts. You're taking them through locations that are famous for being haunted. Now, no effort was made to scare us, it wasn't like going through a haunted house at Halloween or anything, but you tell the group about a supposedly malevolent spirit and then stick them in a small dark room. Not to mention there is a slight pressure difference because you're actually about fifty feet underwater at that point. (I really didn't need to know that, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.) Energy is going to be weird and tense inside that room just from the combination of psychological factors you just had them experience! Then this little girl appears (that I can't explain, unless the tourist was a plant) and suddenly everyone is relieved because it's not a big bad scary spirit, it's a little girl and who is scared of a little girl? and the "energy in the room" lightens. I'm not sure I would call that paranormal, just normal environment messing with your mind, maybe deliberately, maybe not.

I really thought the tour was interesting and a neat experience - you do get to see parts of the ship that are not open to the general public - but I felt pretty detached from it. An observer rather than a participant. Except for the "these rude people are invading my space after I asked them to go away" feeling in the changing area (and a creepy vibe from one of the - living - cleaning crew guys we saw - you know how there are some people you see and you just don't like? yeah, that was him), it was pretty uneventful for me. I am not psychic, I have no desire to be psychic and I also am not willing to be deliberately scared for entertainment. Evidently I am not "in touch" with the spirit world and am "closed off", or ghosts really are like most living people and tend to leave me alone ;-)

Let the Marathon Begin!

2010-11-23T19:42:00.000-08:00

First off, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is awesome to see live! I've always liked the drive and pulse to their sound, and, while there were some parts of their show that I wasn't insanely wild about, I did like the lazer and the use of the LEDs and pyrotechnics. I am insanely jealous that I worked in technical theater professionally and educationally for twelve years and never once got to give or take a cue for a flamethrower, though. (Admittedly, the wrecking ball from Dames At Sea was pretty fun, but still, it's no flamethrower.) The two things that I didn't really care for were the LED screens - I found them distractingly pixillated and not particularly graphically flattering for the pictures/images they displayed - and the choreography was just horrible. I will be the first to admit that I am not a dancer, nor have ever been one, but I'm pretty sure our swing choir in junior high had more complex and interesting choreography. Luckily, choreography is not a huge important element to the show, so you could just ignore it fairly well. I did, however, realize how "military" my life has become, though, when I just kept thinking how pretty the guys' hair was. I do love long hair on guys, as long as they keep it clean. Mmm! Don't see too much of that anymore, sigh.

But anyway, that was very fun and I got meet up with a fellow Puck This!er and her hubby up at the Los Gatos Brewing Co., which is very yummy and I would totally recommend. (We never did get around to drinking any of the beer there, since we were talking too much hockey and knitting, but I can recommend the BBQ burger and the coffeecake!) We also hit up Yarn Dogs (sans hubby) which is a totally cute little LYS up in Los Gatos and I may have to make a return trip or five up there. (Pics of the yarn shop raid do exist, but alas, they are not mine and I have not asked permission yet to use them, so you will either have to take my word for it or wait.)

Monday was work and class, which was taught by Mrs. S, who got stuck with me as a partner for tkd and we would get giggling during drills - at least in my case because I am very not used to working with her because she rarely works with the tkd class and is about a foot shorter than me and the drill involved many crescent kicks, I have no idea what she was giggling about - and generally caused trouble. Not as much as Ma'am and I can cause, mostly because there were kids around and she was teaching, but still fun.

Today was the Thanksgiving dinner/celebration at work, which was fun but a little weird, since Tuesday is also PT day. It maybe wouldn't be bad if we did PT in the morning, but I'm really curious as to how many people actually showed up for the "4.5-5 mile run" scheduled for the afternoon cuz I know my flight didn't. Granted, there are four people in my flight. One is a civilian, one is on leave this week while he & family move onto base, and the other guy and I looked at each other, said "no way" and somehow got extremely busy working with things that had to be done Right Now around PT time. (Note: this is absolutely NOT typical behaviour for my flight - we typically drop every hour on the hour for some form of PT or other and all of us do outside workouts as well - but that's just poor planning after a Thanksgiving lunch.) I also got to spend the last half hour of the day talking hockey with our Canadian boys, which is always fun although it does kind of make me feel like a bit of a ditz sometimes. One is a Leafs fan, one is a Canadiens fan. It makes life interesting, for sure! (And it is kind of nice to hear Jonathan Toews come up in conversation that I have not started, even if it was in the "eh, she's a Jonathan Toews baby" context - I refuse to be offended.)

Tomorrow is a couple hours of work and then heading back up north to the Shark Tank again for the hockey game and the start of my personal Blackhawks marathon! Yay!

More Things I Learned This Week

2010-11-13T11:40:00.001-08:00

-McDonalds' Quarter Pounders w/ Cheese are WAYYY salty! I don't usually get fast food burgers unless it's from In-N-Out, and I really dislike cheeseburgers in general anyway, but I was starving and they screwed up my order and I thought "eh, I'm hungry enough to deal with it." I wasn't. Yuck.

-You would think that if the cat can't be bothered to clean the house or do laundry while I'm out, he could, at the very least, have a hockey game already turned on when I get home.

-Wrist wraps are not optional equipment for kickboxing. In fact, they're more important than the actual gloves. I can deal with bruised knuckles, but aching wrists suck. Related: I have a re-found appreciation for repetition training. It was kind of cool to still be able to just react and not think while getting tossed around during FIGHT. And trust me, Sir did NOT go easy! Obviously, he wasn't as tough on me as he was with the guys - he's really good about challenging us at our own levels - but he was definitely not going to let me just go through the moves like the new girls. I appreciate that. (He does go easier on groundwork with us, though.) It was also cool that there was an MMA fight that night on tv that I happened to catch just as the fighter was doing that exact ground move and used it to win. I don't really go out of my way to watch fights, but I do enjoy those "OH!" moments.

-Bedroom furniture is a pain to find. I need a new dresser and I want a headboard. Can't find either that I like. Sigh.

Veterans Day

2010-11-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

Oh, say! Can you see, from the dawn's early light,
What, so proudly, we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars - through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched - were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our Flag was still there.
Oh, say! Does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O'er the land of the Free and the home of the Brave?
-Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. - US Armed Forces Oath of Enlistment

Thank you to all those who have raised their right hands and sworn that Oath. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you.

Things I've Learned Lately

2010-11-09T19:51:00.001-08:00

-Vegetables should never ever be boiled. They should be sauteed or grilled or baked or stir-fried. Then I'll actually eat them. Willingly. Like, to the point that I'll even make them myself.

-If rocket launches ever become boring or not-cool, someone please shoot me and end my life quick.

-If you make a pair of toe-up socks in your team's colorway, and those socks turn out to be lucky, DON'T try to make another pair. Particularly don't try to make another pair in the reverse order (cuff-down). It will a.)mess with the team and b.)mess with the knitting juju, too. I don't know how many times I've had to rip back every project I've started, including the sock, until I finally took the hint and just frogged the thing last night. Since then, I've been able to correct the other projects' mistakes AND Coach Q says the guys will all be back in the lineup by the weekend AND had their "best practice of the season" today. Never mess with the power of knitting!

-Pattern ideas will completely elude you when you really want to work with a new yarn (two skeins of Berroco Vintage Chunky from a Puck This/Ravelry swap) that is soft and squishy and pretty colors (blue and green). The gifter suggested Rebecca from Knitty, which is very cute, but I don't really wear hats all that much. I'm thinking a bag of some sort. Might have to make it up as I go. Hmm.

-Not going to martial arts is nothing more than cheating myself. And not just out of money. It wasn't like I was avoiding it or anything, but I was really trying to focus on running and PT. Last week, I randomly saw or otherwise talked to three different people from the dojahng, and had two different dreams where Sir would get on my case for not being in class. So last night I went back for the first time in a while. I love being there. I love the people. I love the workouts. I love the fact that I can get tackled there. I love the inside jokes. I love the fact that things came back to me pretty quickly. I love the fact that I worked out hard enough for my muscles to feel it today. Didn't go today b/c of squadron PT, and there's a standing deal for hockey game nights, but can't wait until Thursday when I can go back!

-One of my friends is totally serious about wanting me to play hockey with them on weekends. I am sorely tempted but pretty sure I would completely embarrass myself. (Because if I'm not honest here, where else would I be?)

-Thanksgiving week is going to be very busy this year. Sunday: TSO concert in SJ. Wednesday: Hawks/Sharks in SJ. Thursday: T-day w/ friends and coworkers. Friday: Hawks/Ducks in Anaheim and possibly hangout time with LA friends. Saturday: Kings/Ducks in LA. Sunday: sleeping to get ready for work on Monday. I do even have to work a couple days in there, too!

Spoiled

2010-10-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

My mom keeps telling everyone that we got spoiled this weekend. I must say, I have to agree with her. No unexpected visits this time - I'm pretty sure I mentioned (once or twice or a million times) that we had planned out a Blackhawks game in Chicago this weekend. Mom picked me up at O'Hare Thursday afternoon, we got to spend the drive back chatting and then we spent the rest of the evening with the guys and my favorite Chinese food.

Friday was spent on a run, some time with the little bro & extended family, then off to a football game at the local high school with my best friend from that time, her hubby (a teacher) and their adorable little girl. After halftime, we packed G (who was really really upset that she was so sleepy and bound and determined to run until she dropped) up in the carseat with her daddy, and then B and I went to one of the local watering holes. Ran into another old friend there (after a bit of confusion b/w me and B on his identity), and unfortunately a drama king decided to join us at our table and cut our night a bit shorter than we wanted as we had to pull a "Hey B, how come K isn't here yet? Wasn't she coming? We should call her now!" to get away from him. We ended up going back to her house and chatting with her hubby for a while before crashing for the night.

Saturday, though...we packed Mom, Dad, & Bro into the car and headed back up to Chicago. That's when the spoiling really started. We got to the United Center before the gates opened, so we wandered around and happened to find the lot the players park in. Most of them were already there, I guess, but we watched Pat Foley and Marian Hossa park and go in - my brother is now madly in love with the Bentley that Hoss showed up in - and we watched one of the employees start moving cars around. We saw him move a big SUV to right in front of the Mustang Pat Foley had shown up in, and just as my dad joked “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was Eddie O’s car they just used to block in Pat Foley?” Eddie O himself came out to put his bag in that very car! We about died laughing. Mom also wondered how many car-moving pranks got pulled, and it turns out at least one - Kaner’s car apparently got regularly moved on him during his rookie year, according to the game program! =)

Mom about had a heart attack when she saw our seats - I refused to tell them where we were sitting beforehand. She teasingly complained about it to the guy at the gate, who snickered and told her she better be happy with such horrible seats. We walked almost straight from the gate down into the rink, where the usher, of course, does his job and says “oh yeah, just keep going down the stairs, you’re the second row up from the ice on the other side of the aisle from the bench” and after we picked Mom’s jaw up off the floor and made it down, I don’t think she stopped saying “Oh my gosh!” until the first intermission. My brother got hooked during warmups; he’s been tolerant of our hockey adoration but I think this is the first time he actually got it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him grin so much!

2500 mile plane ticket: $250
4 Blackhawks tix @ the UC: $X
Sharing a hockey game with your family for the first time: PRICELESS!

More pics of the game up on my Facebook & Flickr accounts (same pics, just different places). Unfortunately they lost, but hey, they've played 10 times in 16 days, with only a max of one day off between games and they looked fairly exhausted. I hope they're taking advantage of their couple days off now and getting some rest! But both of my favorite players scored goals, we got to hear "Chelsea Dagger" and the National Anthem UC-style, and we were thisclose to our guys!

(Why yes, that trio of hockey awesomeness is Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, and Captain Serious - Jonathan Toews - sitting there all in a row. Right Next To Us!)

Sunday, we got some breakfast, then headed to the airport. Got a bit of knitting done on the flights - I'm finishing up a Puck This! swap package - drove home from LA, and crashed pretty hard after getting chewed out by a thoroughly ticked off cat.

It was very cool to see my first home game with my family. I can't wait until next month when the Hawks come out to Cali!!

One Year Ago...

2010-10-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

...today was one of the longest days of my life. I didn't wake up in my comfortable, queen-sized bed with soft sheets and a warm comforter and the cat snoring next to me; I woke up on a hard mattress with cheap sheets and a wool blanket and fifty other girls waking up around me. My alarm clock didn't go off, waking me up with my favorite songs; "reveille" took its first step in becoming one of my most hated songs ever. My exercise wasn't spending two hours in the dojahng with some friends each evening; we were out on the track doing pushups, situps, and running with the rest of the squadron before the sun even thought about rising. Breakfast wasn't a leisurely cup of coffee and a muffin while chatting with friends online; there was no speaking at any meal as we ate whatever we could wolf down as quickly as we could and prayed we didn't get screamed at by the TIs stalking between the tables. Getting ready for the day didn't include a warm shower and picking out a professional yet still flirty outfit; it was a quick rinse and the only thing in the "closet" was, while comfortable, quite possibly the most unflattering thing I've ever worn. We didn't learn about orbital mechanics or aerospace design in classes; we learned how to challenge and kill enemies, look for IEDs and apply first aid to those wounded in combat. We didn't relax in front of the tv at the end of the day; evenings were spent scrubbing and folding and praying you would have time to write a letter home. Mail didn't come in a digital inbox; it was a card or a letter you could hold in your hand and cherish and look at to help get you through the next day. Phone calls with home didn't make you roll your eyes and wonder what Mom wanted now; they were your lifeline to the outside world and became the most important twenty minutes of the whole week.

One year ago, I needed a drivers' license to get to work instead of a military ID, two badges and several PINs.
One year ago, the phrase "being a wingman" would have only meant something at a bar instead of in daily life.
One year ago, people in uniform would have been set apart, instead of brothers in arms.
One year ago, a memorial service would have included a black dress instead of a salute.
One year ago, I was a trainee instead of an Airman.

What a difference a year makes.

Some things you just can't look forward to

2010-10-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

From the East out to the Western shore
Where many men and many more will fall
But no angel flies with me tonight
Till freedom reigns on all
And curse the name for which we slaved our days
Till every man shall his kingdom come
But sure as night turns day
Ends the passion play
Oh my god what have they done
With madman's rage, well they dug our graves
But the dead rise again you fools

Walk away me boys, walk away me boys
And by morning we'll be free
Wipe that golden tear from your mother dear
And raise what's left of the flag for me

-Flogging Molly, What's Left Of The Flag

Bragging A Bit

2010-10-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

It's been more of those "lots of things going on but not really a lot to talk about" kind of days. Busy training at work still, and I'm liking the job more as I get into it. I like the variety of things we do, although I hope I get a little more confidence soon, because it's really scary to think "oh man, what did I do this time? Is this sensor having problems because of me?? Did I take down the entire network??" (Note: it's very very unlikely that anything I do will irrevocably screw anything up, but you know me; I'm usually that one-in-a-million case!) We also do a lot of statistical analysis, which I always enjoy for the sole purpose that it lets me make pretty graphs in Excel. (Learn and love Microsoft Excel - it's one of the best tools you can use in the office. Pop the right numbers into cells, make a bar graph with some of them, a line graph with others - approximately five minutes of work, counting font-tweaking time - and a captain will walk by and say "wow, that looks good! Nice work! How long have you been working on this? You should go home!" Trufax!)

I have been able to achieve two of my financial goals so far this year. I have one credit card completely paid off now AND paid for, in cash, the best tickets I could afford to two Blackhawks games - one here in LA against the Kings in November and ONE AT THE UNITED CENTER IN CHICAGO in two weeks!! (Why no, I'm not excited. Wherever would you get that impression??) Actually, four tickets to the Chicago game - my family is going with me! The plane ticket was also paid for in cash. And I should be able to make it to at least one more game this season! I'm very pleased with myself right now.

I'm also proud of myself on the exercise front. I haven't been to the dojahng in several weeks, unfortunately. Honestly, by the time I get home from work, the very last thing I want, or even have time, to do is go out again. So instead, I've been stopping by the gym on the way home from work. Tuesdays and Thursdays are either weights or off-days, and Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays are running days. I use the trail, the track, or the treadmill depending on the weather conditions and the workout, and Saturdays I run in Santa Maria. I have a program set up through Adidas' MiCoach system, which I really like. The workouts are fairly short, usually 16-25 minutes, so it's really easy to do the "Ugh, I so do not feel like running today! But it's only another 20 minutes of my life and then I can go home and sleep!" thing. I have it set where I do three days of interval training, including one day of sprints, and one day of a steady run. The only thing I don't like about it is that the GPS doesn't work so good with the iPhone, which really screws up your distance and pacing results. I'm thinking about getting a different compatible GPS tracker to see if that helps. I think I've been actually averaging around 2 miles per workout, though, and honestly, having it set up in advance makes it so much easier to stay motivated. I've been really consistent with it so far, and, while I still don't like running, I do think I am getting closer to being back to where I was at before.

I think that's about it for now. I just finished a conversation with a friend in Seattle, and all the games I care about today are much later this afternoon/evening, so it's probably a good time to run some errands and hit the library to finish up term paper research. Thank goodness it's a three-day weekend - the paper is due Monday night! ;-)

How is it almost October already??

2010-09-29T19:50:00.000-07:00

So busy and yet so not busy!

I've finished my final formal training class at work and am now in OJT. The crew job I got ultimately put into isn't what I expected at all, but I don't dislike it. That might just be because I know it's relatively temporary - I got a full-time position with my squadron that starts late October, so my time will be probably 80% doing squadron work and 20% crew work. It's also kind of interesting, because instead of doing a lot of orbital analysis and actual tracking of things, I do more statistical data and sensor analysis to make sure that the people who do do the orbital analyses are gettng the best data they can get. So I have to be able to understand not just the orbital data that they use and why/how they use it, but also the capabilities of all of the sensors we use to get that data AND a decent amount of the programming code that is used to process it. So space geek stuff, computer geek stuff, and management geek stuff.

In knitting, I have another pair of socks on the needles (Leyburns in my beloved Mountain Colors Bearfoot), and the OpArt baby blanket has been resurrected. My friend Sarah (a die-hard Sharks fan, along with her SO) informed us this week that she is expecting a little one, so I have ripped it back a bit and re-started it with some teal and possibly a thin strip of dark yellow in addition to the black and white. I think it looks pretty awesome so far, and there is a good feeling about the blanket again. I'm really happy about it!

Oh, and not only did I score a rockin ticket for the November Kings/Blackhawks game down in LA, but I have been able to save up enough for a quick weekend trip to Chicago next month and tickets to a Blackhawks game at the United Center with my family!!!! I'm so stoked to be able to a.) experience a home game in Chicago and b.) get to go to a hockey game with my family! Now I just have to decide which jersey to wear! (Sharp's has the best record so far, but it also has the most experience.) I've been coerced into thinking that the Kings might be my team when they aren't playing the Blackhawks - I went down for a practice the weekend before last and really enjoyed it. You don't realize how LOUD hockey is, even without a crowd cheering during a game. Ice skating is loud, the stick hitting the puck is loud, the puck hitting the boards is loud, the players hitting the boards (or ice, or other players) is loud. It's crazy, and I love it!

Speaking of loving things and good times, there were two launches on base last week, last weekend I got to hang out with John and the girls at their new place in Burbank, and tomorrow Chrissy and I are hitting up the farmers' market in SLO! I've been busy in the evenings and it's been hard to make it to classes at the dojahng. It's much more convenient to work out on base - either running the trails, the tracks, the streets, or the treadmill or using the weight equipment at the gym - and it's free. Breaking in new running shoes, too, because the time off from running this summer has killed my run time and I'm vain enough to want to not be the worst PTer in the squadron.

Taking tonight off to watch Ghost Hunters, knit a bit, and pick up the place so Chrissy doesn't have a heart attack when she comes over tomorrow. I have a rental car right now (finally getting those awful scratches fixed up on my baby! She has almost 80k miles already! ) and have come to the conclusion that I will never own a Honda Civic. Pretty blue color, but uncomfortable car! =P

Drive-By Posting

2010-09-07T22:35:00.000-07:00

I actually do have things to share, like pics that made my friend Cy and I feel like we were all high-class hoitytoity when he came to visit last weekend, and three (three!) current knitting projects (none of which I have any idea what I'm going to do with), but I haven't been feeling well all weekend and so I'm just going to post pics instead.

A baby blanket I started for a dear friend who has since miscarried =( I can't bear to frog it, so I keep working on it in spurts, but I have no idea what to do with it now. I thought about maybe giving it to Sir and Mrs S when their new little one is born sometime this month, but that seems kind of crass and bad juju-ish to me. On the fence about it, but it is fabulous "I don't feel good and just want to curl up in bed with a book or a movie" mindless weekend knitting. Pattern = OpArt Yarn = Caron Simply Soft in Black and White.

You've seen this before, but this is a much better pic of my A New Angle. I've decided not to put borders on it, because I like the edges as they are. One of the joys of Ravelry is that the designer actually saw it and wondered what I had done differently that "the holes look so deep you could fall into them!" The only thing we could come up with was the color scheme. No matter, I love it!
Pattern: A New Angle Yarn: Loops & Threads Impeccable in Amethyst, Lavender, and True Grey.

The spoils of my playoff pool: Blackhawks colored yarn from Draygone Yarns! (Our very own Puck This raveler! Who did a lovely job on lovely yarn, even if she is a Canucks fan ;-) ) Just basic socks, new mindless knitting during class breaks/study time project. Stripes always make socks go faster, I think! Again, I don't really wear socks all that much (although I have been lately), so we'll see if I keep them or give them away.

Final current knitting project is pic-less for the moment, because I can't get the lighting right. And, to be fair, there isn't much of it right now, anyway. I'm finally putting my skein of yummy Claudia Handpainted Silk laceweight to good use as an Adamas Shawl. I got about ten rows into it, didn't like the fabric, and frogged it. I started it again tonight on smaller needles and I'm liking that a lot better - already through the first chart! Again, though, I have no idea what I'm going to do with it - I don't wear shawls myself (and if I did, I don't have anything that would go with this, sadly), and I don't know anyone who does. I'm such a process knitter. I'll keep working on it and decide what to do with it when it's done!

On a non-knitting note, my friend Cy came out to visit the weekend before Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately, work did not cooperate like it had promised it would, but we still managed to get some Central Coast tourism in.
While there are lots of really good vineyards around here, I will once again recommend Tolosa Winery up by SLO. They do have daily tastings, but on Saturdays and Sundays they also offer wine & cheese pairings. It's a bit pricier than a regular tasting ($20/person), but you get to hang out back in their Heritage Room (which has a fantastic view), get to taste really yummy wines and (surprisingly yummy, because I'm not generally a cheese person) different cheeses with them, and in general get treated like you're the most important person who has ever crossed their threshold for an hour or so. (Hint: Do NOT do this on an empty stomach, or you might have to sit for a bit longer than an hour or so if driving - they pour with a bit of a heavier hand for these!)

We also hit up Pismo Beach and the pier there, as well as splurging for pizza and beer at Klondikes Saturday after I (finally) got off work. After Pismo, we came back to the apartment, watched a bit of football, and then headed down to LAX so Cy could get his flight back to Kentucky. I was actually granted the next day off work, so I still got in a bit of a weekend, albeit not much. Started a new class last Tuesday, and have been busy with that, my current ERAU class, and my CDCs (um, how to explain? AFSC-specific lessons the AF thinks you need to learn - on your own time, of course - before they will promote you to a new skill level) ever since.

The ankle is still giving me fits on occasion, and I spent this past weekend borderline nauseous and headachy, which didn't help things at all. I did run a bit yesterday, though, and hope to get out again tomorrow - I'm limited to three workouts per week right now, so that plus squadron PT on Thursday should do it for the week. I would rather go to class, but I am very very much out of running shape, and, sadly, squadron PT tests take precedence over black belt tests. I might still go to tkd tomorrow night if the running workout is short and doesn't irritate anything. We'll see.

Maybe Katie

2010-09-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite songs. Not just because it's my name and one of my favorite silly bands, but it's so darn catchy!

-"Maybe Katie", Barenaked Ladies

Busy Bee

2010-08-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that the more stressed I get, the more I want to knit. I'm thinking that's a very direct correlation, and needs to translate into being allowed to carry a project with me at all times at work right now, like I did in Colorado. Of course, the difference between here and Colorado is that here, for now at least, I am actually doing stuff and it's hard to type and knit at the same time while looking appropriately military-esque.

The short version is that my squadron got tasked from On High and I got assigned as a team leader for one portion of it due to what was supposed to be a "you'll use it someday but not soon" course I did back in January. This was supposed to involve me showing a couple NCOs and airmen how to fill in some basic templates using information that was already available. It has evolved into me somehow getting designated as the enlisted focal point for the entire project today. Mostly because the brass need a centralized system where they can review things, and trying to track changes being made by approximately twenty airmen working on twenty different things on three different systems in two buildings is like herding cats. (Luckily, I have stage managed choreography rehearsals. It's about the same thing, really. And people laugh when I say my background is in theater! Muha!)

I think we've been doing a good job, too - we haven't gotten reamed out for lousy work or (more likely) had any of the officers have to sit us down and baby-step us through anything and I've only had to pull "dumb new airman" about one topic (which turned out to be not so dumb, since two officers didn't know either) - but it seems like everything that happened today added more items to my to-do list and very very few actually got crossed off. Very frustrating, particularly for coming in on a weekend, but it does give me a better idea of how to work through the coming week.

It's really intimidating to be in a meeting with the officers, though. Not because any of them are mean, scary people - in fact, they've all been extremely supportive and generous with advice and thanks - but just because of the experience difference there. Just the four that were there today have at least 50 years of experience between them, and here I am literally waiting for the *initial training* course we're building (which is a whole OTHER can o' worms). And the scariest one? Not the lt, not my flight cc, not even the DO. First Drill major. I've never been scared of him in the past (he also happened to be the second person from the squadron to see me the day I got back from Basic), and I rarely ever even see him, but for some reason he was totally intimidating today. Ugh.

Anyway, I get rather tired of staring at computer screens all day, so I will probably not be very consistent with posting. And I'm still grumpy because my ankle has been hurting all week. But for those who have suffered through all this rambling today:

Finished (well, blocking) Moon Dance Scarf. It's prettier than in the picture.

Teh Moniez

2010-08-07T14:14:00.001-07:00

I hatez dem.

Seriously, nothing is more depressing than finances when you're trying to make ends meet. On the flip side of that, though, it's pretty cool when you lay everything out and come up with a plan and go "hey, I can DO this!" It won't be magic - it will definitely take some time - but figuring out that I will eventually be able to save close to $800 a month?!

That's a lot of yarn and hockey games!

Speaking of yarn, I have not gotten around to putting a border on the afghan yet, but I have almost finished the Moon Dance Scarf. I have about one and a half edgings left to go. Knitted-on edgings are both really cool and really irritating. It's neat to watch it kind of seam up like a zipper without having to actually sew anything, but I have been having the worst time keeping track of what stitches get p2tog/bo. I'm thinking sitting in the sunshine now will help.

Speaking of hockey games, I've moved a lot of my sporty-type posts over to a new blog called 1/2 Mental so as not to bore all the folks who really have no interest in my frequently nonsensical ramblings.

Off to run some rather important but tedious errands - finally changing the oil in my car, going to Target for a new clothes hamper (mine has mysteriously disappeared in the two months I was gone), and maybe even finally getting some lunch!

Blackhawks Convention Thoughts

2010-07-31T22:58:00.000-07:00

-My respect for (and crush on) Jonathan Toews just keeps growing. During the Olympic panel this morning, he gave a shoutout to the overseas troops, saying that he thought it was pretty cool that the Olympic hockey tournament could help give "the real heroes " a break from what they were doing over there and help make them feel a little closer to home.

-I'm wondering which is stronger from the players' perspective - the Hawks/Wings rivalry or the Hawks/Canucks rivalry. There were several shots at Ryan Kesler in particular and the Canucks in general during the above-mentioned panel. The general consensus was "we can't wait to beat them (up) again!" It seems like with the Wings, it's the traditional rivalry, and the Canucks, it's personal still.

-Real friendship between teammates is a cool thing to see and we don't see it enough in today's media.

-Sharpie (who, btw, is no longer Chicago's sexiest bachelor - he got married last weekend) will be "rigorously" interviewing his teammates in an attempt to find an acceptable new roommate who will help him continue the proud traditions of beating Seabrook at Wrestlemania and pranking Captain Serious on road trips. Possibly a new BHTV reality show?? I would ask where I could apply for this job, but I'm still sighing over the fact that he said his wedding, not his day with the Cup, was the highlight of his summer. Awww!

-I know I said this after the Olympics, but I'll say it again - the Hawks are some pretty classy guys. We need more guys like that around here. I don't have the money or time to keep going to Chicago! (Although I am working on it!)

Quotes of the Day
Fan: Soupy, are you going to be looking for some revenge on Ovechkin for your injury?
Campbell: Yup! See, what I do is hold this big huge silver trophy over my head and wear this Stanley Cup ring....maybe I'll cut a hole in my glove for that game so he can see it real clear.

Sharp: My dog Shooter ate breakfast and dinner out of it (the Cup, on his day with it). Then Tazer drank out of it the next day...be sure to tell Toews that when you see him.

(BHTV's Convention live stream schedule is here. BHTV clips of the opening ceremony are here. The panel interviews that were streamed live today have not been added to the replay clips, sadly.)

Who Are You Not To Be?

2010-07-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be?
- Marianne Williamson

I first heard that quote back when we were doing tablework for Godspell. It's kind of stuck with me ever since, in the back of my head, and lately it's been really prominent. I have no idea why, but it's been on my mind lately.

Several friends of mine, from various walks of life and in vastly different areas of the world, can often turn into chronic complainers. Life is never good enough. A relationship is in trouble, a job is lost, there's nothing interesting anymore. Most of my friends are people I would usually consider reasonably intelligent. They can see these things they don't like about their lives. They can describe them to you in depth. And I am sympathetic. Except for the fact that they don't do anything about it.

I do understand that we don't live in a world where we always get what we want, and we sure don't always get instant gratification. (Trust me. I understand this. If it were true, I'd be sitting in a fancy schmancy room at the Chicago Hilton being wined and dined by Blackhawks elite this weekend. And I'm pretty sure sitting in my sweats in my small-town California apartment typing a blog post with a slice of pizza and a glass of Jack & Coke is not the same thing.) Life is not fair. The economy sucks. Medical stuff happens. Money is tight. Jobs are scarce. I know. I live in this world, too. But you also aren't going to get anything if you just sit around and say "I wish" all the time. No one is forcing you to just sit there. No one has forced you down and scheduled your life to be miserable/boring/whatever. You have to play the hand you are dealt, no question. But you have three choices - hold, fold, or draw. And you can keep drawing cards until you get a hand you like. It's an unlimited deck. Maybe you'll never win the mega-multimillion jackpot, but you'll keep getting a better and better chance at it.

Live the life you want to live. Be the person you want to remember. Make decisions. Make mistakes. If you fail, at least you tried. Dreams don't come true without action. Things won't always go the way you want them to (I clearly need to save up in order to hit the Convention next year), and there will be consequences, good and bad, for your actions. But I'm pretty sure life is for living, not just wishing.

Who are you not to be?

It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live. - Albus Dumbledore/J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Random Wednesday

2010-07-21T22:20:00.000-07:00

-40 inches worth of stitches do not fit on a 16" circular needle, particularly when you have to use said needle to pick up those stitches in the first place. So although all of the afghan squares are knit and seamed and it looks fabulous (and wow, is this warm!), I can't properly finish it until I get home.

-I leave Colorado on Friday morning. I'm hoping to be able to get home Saturday night, but if that becomes unreasonable or unsafe, I'll get home on Sunday at the very very latest. Can't wait! I might even try to make it to knitting on Monday!

-The Moon Dance Stole (Scarf) is a great pattern. Clear charts, easy to read knitting, fast to see progress.

-My ankle hurt a lot again tonight. I'm really over this whole "doesn't even twinge for several days and then BAM!" I want to go to classes next week, darn it!

-Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman promised that Patrick Sharp is "safe" from trade rumours this summer. Figured he would be, since they've been really using him in the media lately, but it's nice to know that I will be able to continue wearing both my jerseys next season without having a broken heart. Now about this goalie situation...

-On that note, my personal financial short-term goal is to save up money for tickets to both the Hawks/Kings game and the Hawks/Ducks game the weekend after Thanksgiving (assuming work schedule is clear, of course) and make an LA weekend out of them.

-California-bound on Friday! Gotta make sure to stop by the bank for cash and the pet store for portable litter boxes tomorrow.

-The cat has dug an end of the dark purple yarn from the bag and is chewing on it like it's a piece of spaghetti on a plate. All four paws are on the ground and it's just hanging out of his mouth. Quite amusing!

-Things I will miss about Colorado Springs: dry heat, thunderstorms, and easy access to a major city with professional sports teams.

-Things that I can't wait to get home to: a real kitchen oven, a decent stable internet connection, my big screen tv (to watch my new Blackhawks Stanley Cup Champions dvd on), cable tv with more than four channels, my friends, my squadron, and my dojahng. Even if classes are going to kick my butt for a while now because I'm so out of shape.

-Cubs manager Lou Pinella is retiring at the end of this season. Ryne Sandberg (probably my first professional athlete crush - I don't remember if it was him or Mark Grace) is "definitely interested" in taking over his spot and has done quite respectably as the manager for the Iowa Cubs. Lots of speculation going on as to whether this is a good idea or not, given Ryno's lack of major league coaching experience. I do understand that viewpoint. I really do. However, I say, a.) you can't get better marketing than that scenario right there and b.) how's he going to do any worse? Pinella is a good manager with an exemplary career. So was Dusty Baker, for that matter. If these guys who are tried and true can't turn the Lovable Losers around, doesn't it make you think that maybe someone who can grow up (as it were) with such a team might be able to do something different with it? Good thing they don't let me make decisions like that.

-I'm going home on Friday.

-I think I'm a more "social" person here in Colorado. Not that I necessarily hang out with more people or spend more time hanging out with people, but I have gone out a LOT more than I would/could in Santa Maria. Movies, baseball games, museums, zoos, just going out to dinner...heck, the idea of actually going out to a sports bar to watch a hockey game would not have even crossed my mind if I hadn't been stranded in a hotel where I couldn't get the channel. I've never had a problem going places by myself, but I am going to miss having the ability to keep doing that. Santa Maria just doesn't have that much to do.

-Unfortunately, it takes contract-dispute drama (the NHL/Gary Bettman v. New Jersey Devils/Ilya Kovalchuk contract) to get ESPN to remember that hockey is a sport. It got a whole one minute four seconds of coverage today on that station! That's almost more than it gets there during the playoffs!

-Bedtime for now, since painkillers for the ankle are kicking in and I do actually have class tomorrow and need to finish packing up. Did I mention I'm leaving Colorado on Friday??

NHL Cupcakes

2010-07-15T20:44:00.000-07:00

(aka More Hockey Humour)

Inspired by this post over at Puck Daddy, the online hockey community has spent the day coming up with NHL-inspired cupcakes. Here are some of my favorites (some created by me, some by Puck This Ravelers, and some from Twitter). A lot of these will only make sense if you follow (or are forced to follow by an eclectic Ravelry group) several hockey teams and players in order to know the back stories.

The New York Rangers cupcake - sold only in high end boutique bakeries, looks yummy on paper, but tastes, eh - only ok on ice. It coulda been a contender……

The Adam Burish - mouthy, but nothing overly offensive, unlike The Sean Avery. Has been partially rebuilt.

The Sean Avery - offensive, and comes in very expensive designer wrappers, and is beat up often due to the offensiveness.

The Devils cupcake: Unobtrusive but classic flavour, expires on April 15th.

The Duncan Keith - Angel Food cake , red frosting with black (or brown) sprinkles… and 7 gummy teeth.

The Jaroslav Halak – sampled and perfected in Montreal, then shipped out to St. Louis for mass consumption.

The Brooks Laich: looks too good to eat therefore you just sit and gawk at it. (I would change that to Patrick Sharp, personally)

The Red Wings - red velvet cake with white frosting, red sprinkles and a gummy octopus on top. A classic recipe that you either love or hate. If in the presence of a Blackhawks cupcake, both cupcakes will spontaneously explode.

The Jonathan Toews: plain vanilla with golden frosting. (General consensus adds a silver cup to the top of this one)

The Sidney Crosby: doesn’t matter if you like it or not, it will get crammed down your throat.

The Patrick Kane: only costs 20 cents and will knock out a cab driver.

The Antti Niemi: decent first impression, strong Finnish.

The Atlanta Thrashers: the '10/'11 cupcake tastes very similar to the Blackhawks’ '09/'10 cupcake. Possibly made with some of the same ingredients.

The Ilya Kovalchuk: Coming soon to a bakery near you! Or you… or maybe you over there..

The Philadelphia Flyers: devil’s food cake , orange icing with white sprinkles. Somewhat dirty, but goes the distance only to get a single nut slid in at the end.

The Chicago Blackhawks: one really superb made, not enough money to make another

Knitting Stereotypes

2010-07-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

Occasionally knitting boggles my mind. Not the act of it, that tends to soothe the mind, actually, and there's something pretty cool about looping a piece of string around two sticks and ending up with something beautiful. It's more the stereotypes of it. Not the stereotypes that non-knitters associate with knitters - I'm quite used to it being implied that only old ladies or pregnant women knit, which is pretty dumb when I am clearly neither an old lady nor pregnant - but the stereotypes that knitters have created in and of themselves. Think about it. Here are a few that I can come up with off the top of my head:

Lace is hard. The second project I ever did was a lacy baby blanket. And trust me, it was lace. Lace is....lace. Lace is only as difficult as you make it out to be. It is knitting, purling, increasing, and decreasing. Period. I, never having been told that lace is supposed to be hard and that it was only for "experienced" knitters, had absolutely no problem following the pattern. There were times that I couldn't count right to save my life, but that has happened in pretty much every project I've ever done. We've started a "Lace 'Em Up!" support thread over in the Puck This! group on Ravelry, and it amazes me how many of the members have spoken up and said they are afraid to try lace. These people are some truly excellent intelligent knitters (well, there ARE a few Red Wings fans). It boggles my mind. Granted, lace does take a bit more attention (which is why I don't do a lot of it), and there are certain tricks that will make a project go more smoothly (stitch markers and lifelines come to mind, but, again, those can be used in pretty much any project, not exclusively lace ones), but when I am getting teased and consulted as a "lace oracle" by other knitters, it tells me that lace is not hard. It's just different.

Colorwork (of any kind) is hard. Let's see...I've done stripes, patches, squares, entrelac, intarsia, and fair isle projects. I've yet to see the "hard," but again, knitters seem to be terrified of trying them. Yes, entrelac does look really strange at first, and you really have to put your faith in the pattern starting off, and keeping an even tension is important for fair isle, but guess what? Your tension isn't going to get better if you never try it.

Sweaters (and other sized garments) are hard. Frankly, to me, a hat is harder than a sweater. I've gotten sweaters to fit great - I have never gotten a hat to fit quite right. A basic top-down raglan sweater in the round is just about the most mindless knitting project I can think of. You don't even have to keep turning the work like you do with a garter stitch scarf. The only thing you have to know is your gauge and row count.

Socks are hard. The Yarn Harlot, the ultimate sock knitter, can wax much more poetically about socks than I can. The reason I don't knit socks very much even though I LOVE sock yarn is because, well, I don't wear socks very much. I've done singles, two-at-a-time, toe-up and cuff-down. I've done plain socks, lacy socks, and patterned socks. I've used dpns, 2 circs, and magic loop. And I've only been knitting for a couple years. Now, turning a heel is something that is rather mind-boggling at first, but it isn't difficult to DO, just difficult to figure out why it works. However, if children were expected to be able to knit socks 100 years ago, I'm sure that today's educated adults can manage them quite easily.

Anyone can knit, but only women of a certain age (shall we say) actually know what they're talking about, the rest just knit because it's a fad and only use cheap yarn and/or fun fur. This one drives me particularly batty and is one of the main reasons that I really have to work up the effort to go to an LYS. I hate getting watched in a store as though I am a fascinating new species of humanoid. Particularly when I can ask intelligent questions about yarns and patterns and needles and actually seem to want to spend money on quality items instead of crap. And the only time I ever buy muppet pelt (aka fun fur) is when I'm making a hedgehog for someone. (Omg, felting! You can felt, too?!) Apparently even other knitters seem to think that one magically becomes an expert knitter at the age of 50 (I'm guessing) and until then, any one else is a prodigy or just blindly following a trend.

From the perspective of a 29-year-old single woman (okay, so I do have a cat) who learned to knit at the age of 22 backstage during a production of Hamlet (true story), ideas like this, which are passed and learned from knitter to knitter, drive me a little crazy. I don't consider myself a good knitter, or an experienced knitter. I don't think I'm particularly gifted over any other knitters I know - usually quite the opposite. But I guess the upside to being mostly self-taught is that what you don't know really can't hurt you. And ignorance is bliss.

Mini-Rants

2010-07-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

-I'm very very sick of hearing about Twilight (books and movies) and whose "team" people are on. They're FICTIONAL CHARACTERS, people! I've read the books (I refuse to see any more of the movies after I got suckered into seeing the first one - it was better than the book by the sheer fact that it condensed 300 pages of teen angst into thirty seconds on screen), and I can add that they aren't even GOOD characters! Edward is obsessive, controlling, and over-protective, while Bella is whiny, helpless, self-disparaging, and also obsessive. I spent the whole series waiting for at least one of them to grow up and they never did. Jacob...well, Jacob was okay, I guess, except for the fact that he liked Bella. Am I the only one who sees the sheer ridiculousness of this?? I mean, I've read lots of actually good books and never felt the need to declare my love for any of the characters. (I do, of course, like the Harry Potter series, and actually enjoyed the Percy Jackson series, too, so it's not just an anti-young adult thing.)

-For all the complaining people do about the Cubs (and yes, a lot of it is well-deserved and there need to be some changes made because this group of players really should make a better team than what we've seen so far), we're still only in third place in the division, and it's only halfway through the season. I.E., we may be terrible, but we aren't the worst team in the League and I'm tired of hearing that we are.

-Blackhawks, I love you dearly and, for the most part, have handled the off-season roster changes pretty well, I think. (Keep your eye on Burish, he would love to come back to Chicago, but it will be fun to watch him go after Kane and Sharp in the meantime!) I know we still have a core that any other team would kill to have and the guys in the system are looking promising. But Stan Bowman, if you seriously let Hjalmarsson go to the Sharks, unless you can give me a damn good reason, we will have words. I'm really getting tired of watching my boys leave Chicago, although I do appreciate the additional hockey games I will now be interested in next season. I might even have a whole Eastern team now. Should the Atlanta Thrashers change their name to Blackhawks Lite? =P

-People in Colorado need to freakin learn how to drive. An entrance ramp is designed so that cars coming onto the road have time to match the speed of the traffic they are joining, not so that they can come to a complete stop and then peel out. And if you see a car on an entrance ramp, common courtesy is to move over in order to let said car get on your road without having to drastically change its speed. Seriously, even LA drivers have figured this out! It's pretty bad when I have done more cursing on a small-town (relatively) Colorado highway in six weeks than in 7+ years dealing with the LA freeway system. (Not counting Friday morning, when I almost got ran off the road by a captain in my class. He apologized, though. After another captain made him confess.)

A Slightly Busy Weekend

2010-07-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted much lately. There was a reason - certain people read this regularly and I had certain information that could not be shared and didn't trust myself to not say something that would give it away.

I might have mentioned that I planned to spend the Fourth by "going to a game with the guys." I just never said which game with which guys. Despite many understandable assumptions, I actually started off the weekend of the Fourth here:
Or, more specifically, here:
And these guys just happened to show up:
Okay, so my brother and I plotted this out several weeks ago. I knew I would have a four-day weekend over the Fourth but wasn't sure if I really wanted to go to Illinois or wait until my two weeks after this class and didn't want to get too many people's hopes up. Then my brother and I got talking and he had most of the weekend off too and the Cubs had a home series that weekend. And this year is my parents' 30th anniversary, and neither of us had had any idea what to do for them. So we decided to surprise them. We spread the word that I was not going to be able to travel over the weekend (military acronyms make a lot of things sound really official). He got tickets to the game on Friday afternoon and convinced my parents to take the day off for it (not particularly difficult, you might have figured out that we kinda like sports - 75 more days until hockey preseason, btw), and I got tickets for a plane and flew into Chicago late Thursday night/early Friday morning. Spent the night at the Hyatt Rosemont near the airport, and after a couple hours of sleep and a shower, grabbed a cab and headed to Wrigleyville. The initial plan, which we weren't sure would work, was to meet up for lunch at The Cubby Bear - I would get there early and then my brother and parents would come in for lunch and I'd be there with a table. But between a later-than-planned start and traffic, they weren't able to get to Chicago in time for a pre-game lunch. So instead, I crossed the street to the ballpark and made myself comfortable in my seat to watch the Reds' batting practice:
Excellent tix, btw, K! My parents were definitely surprised to see me sitting in what they thought was my mom's seat. The Cubs apparently were, too - so surprised that they forgot to play the seventh inning and lost horribly. I spent the rest of the weekend with my family in my hometown, and then went back up to Chicago on Monday to fly back to Denver. After spending the day here:
The Museum of Science & Industry! I got to see my Fairy Castle, plus a real space exhibit (they have the actual Apollo 8 and Aurora 7 capsules and a big old moon rock, not just some little sliver of one, sorry Denver!), a cool IMAX movie about the new 787 Dreamliner, and a bunch of other neat stuff. (Yes, I think we've established the fact that I'm a geek.)

It was a really good weekend. Made me remember how much I love Chicago. I really need to spend more time there. Too bad it snows and is generally miserable there in the winter. Not to mention the fact that I'd have no work there. Anyway, back to the weekend, the only real downsides were the Cubbies losing badly TWICE (although I do feel the need to point out that despite the fact that we're 10.5 games out of first, there are also three other teams BELOW US) and the fact that I did not get asked to run away with any cute professional hockey OR baseball players while there. Need to work on that. One of my online friend's responses to this was "What?? I assume the reason I have not been asked these things is because I moved to Chicago with my SO, but I would have figured someone eligible and awesome like yourself would have made it work. I’ll have to complain to Mayor Daley," which I thought was a brilliant idea. He needs to be made aware that the players in his city are NOT fulfilling my personal fantasies ;-) This was right before she chewed me out for being in Chicago and not meeting up with her and several others - next time I'm in Chicago, I now have to take out a full-page ad in the Trib announcing my presence and schedule. My social calendar is apparently much busier than I thought.

I did get some knitting in, though! In fact, I have two projects going now. The New Angle afghan has grown:
There's another four squares ready to be seamed together, too. Just ten more squares and the borders! The guys have been teasing me and saying that it has to get done before this class ends, because it has to be in our class photo. We have two weeks left, so I'm thinking that's probably not gonna happen, but I might try.

I also finally gave in to my recent craving to do some lace again:
This is the start of Melanie Gibbons' Moon Dance Stole (Ravelry link). Well, in this case, Moon Dance Scarf, since I know a.) my own attention span and b.) my pocketbook. (I didn't bring any laceweight or smaller needles with me from Cali, so I had to buy both.) The yarn is Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine, and is a darker, richer teal than in the photo. I am really enjoying this pattern so far and it's going relatively quickly. (It will look a lot lacier and less dense after blocking.) I've been working on this in the evenings and the afghan during class breaks. No timeline on this one, yay!

Class is going better. We've gotten to the point where we know each other well enough to razz each other (they have a LOT of fun with my ankle brace and that whole situation) and we laugh a lot. It helps that we know we'll be working together after this class, and we have a common enemy in one of the instructors. The enemy of my enemy, after all. (I actually have no problems with said instructor as a person, but she dropped too heavy of a hammer on too light of a situation and succeeded in putting all of our backs up. Since we don't have too much interaction with her, we've seen no reason to forgive her for it yet.)

Only two more weeks left and then I get to go back home! Yay! I can't wait to get back to classes, although I'm sure they'll kick my butt. My ankle is definitely still not up to it - it had been feeling better, and I'm technically off profile now, but the past couple days it's been hurting almost as much as it did when I initially sprained it, so I'm most likely going to try to get another appointment for Monday to get it looked at again. I think by the time I get back to California it should be okay, though. And I have orders at least through 1 October according to my flight commander - one more class and then probably a couple months of OJT - so getting paid regularly is always nice.

So I think that catches everyone up for the most part. I'm still plotting the adventures for this weekend. I'm pretty sure I'm going to hit up at Rockies/Padres game either tomorrow night or Sunday afternoon. The Padres are in first and the Rockies in a potentially close second, so that should be an interesting series. There are also a couple movies that I want to see, but I haven't decided which one yet. (On a TV sidenote, I did attempt to watch CSI again and it, again, failed miserably. But I am looking forward to TNT's new series Rizzoli & Isles series that starts Monday. Two of my favorite actresses star in it.) Before I leave the area, I want to go to the Cave of the Winds and go white-water rafting, but that's going to depend a lot on the ankle, so we'll see.

The countdown begins!

Broken Bones, Unbroken Plans

2010-06-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

Like I said earlier, I realized a bit late that I didn't share my adventures from last weekend. And since this weekend isn't going so great so far (more about that later), I figure it might be best to live in the memories for a bit.

Last weekend was, well, cold and wet. Even by Colorado standards. It was about 45 degrees and rained all weekend. Did that stop me from doing anything? Of course not! The Rockies were playing at home. Well, sorta. Playing that is. This is what it looked like when I got there Friday night:
I love these seats, btw. $12 - the same cost as a movie - and you can see everything! Unfortunately, there is a drawback to them. When there is lightning in the area, you get kicked out of them. Even if it isn't raining or storming yet. But, that was probably a good thing, because this is what it looked like ten minutes later:
when the temperature dropped insanely, the wind picked up, and the skies decided to open up and pour buckets of water down onto the field. That delayed the start of the game for about an hour and a half, but it did actually start. It never actually stopped raining, but it did lessen up to where they could play, I guess. Of course, they wouldn't let us go back to our seats in the nosebleeds, but they wouldn't let us sit in any of the lower seats, either, so I watched most of the game standing on the concourse between home and first. It wasn't too bad of a game, either. I saw three homers, a couple doubles, several base hits, and a triple. I guess the pitchers had a hard time handling the wet balls or something, cuz it was pretty much a batter's dream night.

I might have accidentally talked to an Avalanche player that night, too, but I don't know for certain. (I'm not particularly familiar with that team, although I should probably learn!) During the rain delay, when everyone and their brother was packed into the concourse, there were a group of casually-well-dressed guys near me. One looked kinda sorta familiar, but I couldn't place him. I knew he wasn't a Hawk or a Cub or any of the movie stars I might actually care to meet, and since I have no reason to know anyone in Denver, I was trying to do the "don't stare but discreetly try to figure out who he is" thing. Then they started talking about hockey and the Cup finals, which got my attention even more. But they were actually talking like they knew players, not like fans, and one of them jokingly mentioned that he "texted Hammer after the Parade to tell him that he looked like a kid on tv". In my Blackhawks-wired brain and in the context of a hockey conversation on that particular Friday, that immediately went to "Is he talking about OUR Hammer (defenseman Niklas Hjalmmerson, who, while extremely good looking, does actually look like he's 10 sometimes) and the Cup Parade??" So they definitely got my attention, but then the officials decided to announce that the game would start in ten minutes. I guess they heard the announcement but couldn't understand it (it was pretty garbled and the only reason I understood it was because I could see the JumboTron flashing the same thing) and one of them did a general "what did they just say?" to the area and I answered. He grinned at me and then he and his buddies started meandering (I assume) back to their seats. When I got home, I looked up the Avs' roster, and the guy who grinned at me sure looked a lot like Ryan O'Reilly but I can't say for sure. I'm kind of kicking myself for not being less discreet and actually finding out, but oh well. I'm going to try to hit up another game this weekend - maybe they'll be back!

Saturday was fun, too - the Circus was in town!
And they had trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, clowns, dancers, gymnasts, trampoline jumpers, tigers, and dancing elephants! It was a really fun show, although I would have gotten different seats if I'd known where I was sitting ahead of time. I was pretty much backstage, which on the one hand was kind of cool, because I was near one of the stage managers/board ops' stations, but on the other hand I got watching the crew sometimes instead of the show. Definitely worth seeing, though. Then Saturday night, myself, the girls (the two civilians in my class), and one of the guys went to Phantom Canyon Brewing Company for dinner and drinks. Very very yummy and lots of laughs!

~~For the life of me, I cannot remember what I did on Sunday (and I only had one beer Saturday night!), other than apparently nothing picture-worthy.~~ Sunday, I went to the movies and saw The A-Team and The Karate Kid. Both were pretty good, although I don't remember ever watching The A-Team on tv, so I don't have anything to compare it to. I thought they were both entertaining summer movies, though. Oh, and I am looking for either a giant US or world map that I can stick pins into marking places I've been, or a blog equivalent, because I think it would be interesting.

The rest of the week was kind of boring, so I decided to spice things up by breaking my ankle on Wednesday and not getting it looked at until Friday. Okay, so they aren't sure it's broken and are going with "severely sprained" since it'd be the same treatment either way (splint, elevation, lots of ice, and painkillers - I thought if it was broken it'd be puffy and nasty looking and I'd be unable to put weight on it at all, but the doctor said that wasn't always the case) and this takes out the time of taking an x-ray and they were pretty swamped. And I wasn't even doing anything cool or fun. I literally tripped over my own two feet in my hotel room, which prompted the doctor to tell me to come up with a better story. I had decided that I was going to tell people I hurt it while using my Jedi powers to battle evil ninja pirates who were dumping more oil into the Gulf, but then my brother pointed out that ninja and pirates are mortal enemies and would never work together, so I've had to change it to getting caught in a battle between robot ninjas and zombie pirates. I have not had confirmation that this is plausible, but it sounds good, no? (ETA: My brother has apparently given up on my ability to tell a decent story. Literally, that's what he said when I asked him about the second scenario - "I give up!" Sigh. I think it still sounds better than "tripping over my own two feet"!)

Anyway, I'm supposed to take it easy and stay off of it except for work for the next two weeks and then maybe I can start walking and doing a light jog if it feels okay. I decided not to tell them that I'd done a weight workout on Thursday. (My ankle hurt, the rest of me didn't!) It's been 24 hours and I'm already going stir-crazy. It's just too nice to be indoors. I might go up to the ball game tonight - I can sit during a baseball game....

Update to Say There Will Be An Update

2010-06-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about what adventures I wanted to do this weekend and realized I never posted last weekend's! It was a doozy, too, with soggy baseball games, possible meeting of hockey players (I can't confirm, but pretty sure), the circus coming to town, going out with classmates, and a pair of movies! Pics and a real post to come this afternoon, after I get out of class and my doctor's appointment.

ONE GOAL!!

2010-06-10T21:16:00.001-07:00

Man, I don't even know where to start! I'm still so hyped up from last night, it's crazy! Oh yeah, in case you didn't know and somehow missed the loud screaming that came from the Chicago area last night...

THE CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS WON THE STANLEY CUP!!!!! Ahem. Not that I was excited about it or anything. Rumours that I may have called my parents and my brother screaming my fool head off are entirely unfounded, of course. And they would not have been screaming back at me, either, naturally. We could NEVER be so undignified in public! (Because, you know, hockey is all about dignity! ;-) ) Man, on the one hand, I would SO love to be in Chicago right now, on the other, I can't imagine how crazy tomorrow's parade is going to be!

(Random scenario today. We tend to watch ESPN at lunch, which is starting its World Cup coverage, and also catching up on baseball scores and football news - did you know the Pac 10 is soon going to be the Pac 16?! - and the guys have figured out that I can speak fairly intelligently, if not always in-depth, about most sports. One of them asked me today where I got my sports-fan-ness from. "My mom." "Really? Most girls say from their dads." "My dad likes sports, but the die-hard fandom comes from my mom." "Where'd she get it from? Her dad?" "My grandma." I thought it was amusing, anyway. Speaking of, my mom is doing a fund-raiser overnight marathon tomorrow!)

This is only intensifying (or maybe it was the creation of) my Chicago craving lately. First the Hawks, then baseball, and then the museums! I have a couple weeks off after this class gets over with - maybe I'll try to fly to Illinois for a couple days! I haven't really gotten to spend much time in the city itself for, well, probably since the last time we went to a Boston Pops Christmas concert up there. (Bird Dancing Guy! Sorry, inside joke!) And I haven't been to the museums for a couple years before that! I've been telling myself that I need to actually take a vacation for a while, and I think I've narrowed down my choices - either Chicago or Hawai'i. Chicago's more of a "day or two" type trip, while Hawai'i would be like a week thing. Luckily, I have friends in both places to stay with. Hmm....

Before I went absolutely completely hockey crazy this week (Game 5 was on Sunday night and Game 6 was on Wednesday), I did get one more weekend adventure in!

They have POLAR BEARS!!

Of course, most of the animals are smarter than humans and stayed indoors and slept through the 100-degree sunshine (I did NOT get sunburnt for once, yay spray-on sunscreen!), so most of my pics aren't that great. The ones who were cool enough to brave the heat were ones like these guys:

(first time using the video camera on the phone and trying to upload a video here so not sure how well this will work!) They were pretty fun to watch, and I got to see a feeding and training session with them, so that was pretty cool.

Not sure what I'll do this weekend - it's getting to the "ugh, it's the end of the pay period and pay day is still a few days away!" time, so maybe I'll just stay in town and go to the Olympic Training Center or something like that. The Rockies are playing at home again, too, and I know some of the guys were talking about going to a game this weekend. We'll see.

Now to bed (PT in the morning, probably kickball) and, knowing my luck, dreams of animals playing hockey! (Btw, I came in seventh place out of, well, a bunch, in the Puck This! Playoff Predictions Pool! I can't wait to pick my prize and find out who picked mine! And I HAVE been knitting, I promise! I'm almost done with the third row of my New Angle afghan! And I found a darling little LYS over by the Olympic Center!)

A Day In History

2010-06-05T21:54:00.000-07:00

I spent Saturday surrounded by skeletons, mummies, and plasticized human remains. No, I am not in the planning stages of some weird B-flick style Halloween show. I was here:
Now, this place doesn't hold a candle to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry (I'm suddenly struck by a strong desire to see the Fairy Castle) or even the St. Louis Science Center. It has some interesting stuff, but it isn't very big at all. I got there around 1:30p and was able to see all of the major exhibits, plus two shows, before the majority of them closed at 5:00p. It being Colorado and all, there was a big emphasis on these guys:
And they're always pretty cool. There was the obligatory ancient Egypt exhibit complete with a couple of mummies, and a health thing where you could do all these different things and then at the end it would give you a printout of your current health (the sunscreen v. UV light thing was kinda cool). The shows I saw were decent. One was an IMAX movie called "Arabia" which was a history of Arabic people during their Golden Ages and turned out to be much more interesting than I had anticipated. The other was "Cosmic Journey" in the planetarium (like you guys seriously would expect me to pass up a planetarium) which, to be honest, was good but would have been better if I had been dumber. In fact, their whole space exhibit was kind of like that. It had some neat stuff - my favorite thing was their Big Dipper constellation, which was spaced out across the ceiling not only width-wise but depth-wise, which made it look VERY different from different angles! - but it was a lot of little kids' science class stuff and very little actual space relics or history. (I might have gotten extra nerd points for being able to tell what type of rocket they were showing a launch video for, though. I got some crazy looks when a kid who was watching asked what it was and the parent said "Oh, it's a space shuttle launch" and I just couldn't let that slide. "Actually, it's a Boeing Delta II rocket launching one of the Mars rovers." I did cheat a little on the payload, it was *gasp* on the sign!) They did have a small sliver of one moon rock, though. Eh.

I ended the day with (what I assume) is their current pride and joy, and rightfully so. I didn't know it when I decided to go up this morning, but one of the BodyWorlds exhibits is currently in Denver. I'd heard a lot about it, most of it controversial, so I decided to check it out even though I really wasn't sure how I would react to it. In a nutshell, for those who don't know about it, this German guy has figured out how to preserve bodies so that the skin and outer layer of tissues are gone, and the muscles, vessels, nerves, organs and bones are all visible. It's controversial in some lines of thought because, in these cases, the bodies are human. (Personally, I think that if these people donated their bodies for this, and they did, then I have no problem with it. It is not disgusting or gory or creepy or disrespectful in any sense of the word at all.) Some of the bodies are posed doing regular human things (walking, lifting, playing hockey - seriously!) so that you can see how things work together to give us motion. Others are dissected, sometimes cross-sectioned, into one of the best anatomy lessons I have ever had in my life. This is tempered with a focus on love and happiness and peace and how those things actually physiologically affect us and make us work better. (Did you know that optimists actually do live longer than pessimists? I didn't.) It is most definitely NOT an art exhibit, although it does show off the power and resilience of the human body like I have never seen, and I can't honestly say I enjoyed it or even liked it, but I can say that I learned from it and it definitely made me think. I might not go out of my way to see it again, but I would recommend it to someone who hasn't seen it before. So all in all, it was a good day. To the zoo tomorrow!!

Because What's More American Than Baseball?

2010-05-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

I still don't like Colorado all that much, but I do have to give Denver its props. It's just over an hour away, so I can sleep in, wake up, go to places like this:

and see things like this:

and still be home around 6:30p!

Coors Field is really nice, too. Very pretty, and the fans were a lot of fun. They do "God Bless America" and "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" for the seventh inning stretch (I don't know if that's an everyday thing or just Memorial Day, though). Lots of recognizing military between half-innings (I got a free ticket thanks to being military!) and they do know how to do a baseball game. I was in the first row of the upper deck, on the first base side, so I could see pretty much everything that was happening on the field. I could even tell (usually) when pitches were strikes or balls. (I was a bit worried that I would fall over the railing - it's only about knee high - and so decided to play it safe and not try to go for any foul balls that came my way. Only one did and it was too high for me anyway.) I sat in front of a dad who was there with his son and daughter, who were clearly not a huge baseball family but were having a good time anyway. Definitely the kids' first time at a major league game, and I think it might have been the dad's, too. They were very fun to listen to, although I did get caught smirking when the kids mentioned “I think hockey rinks get louder than this. Have you heard about how loud Chicago gets when they score a goal?!” I mean, really, how could you not be proud of overhearing THAT? Even schoolkids in Denver know about the Madhouse on Madison! (There were also more than a few Avalanche hats in the crowd.)

Anyway, definitely going to head back to Coors Field again while I'm here. They lost to the Dodgers, who I probably should have been cheering for since they'd technically be my "home" team now, but I've never liked the Dodgers and the Rockies' uniforms are much nicer (purple, white, and black!). I can cheer for Colorado as long as they aren't playing the Cubs!

Back to BW's tomorrow night for Game 2! Go Blackhawks!!

Stanley Cup Warm-Ups

2010-05-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

Killing time before going out to catch the game somewhere alcoholic (and actually getting a chance to watch my Cubs play for once! Remember, I'm the girl who always swore she'd marry a Cub someday. Now I'm conflicted because I kinda want to marry a Blackhawk, too! Can I have both?). Anyway, because “every day is a great day for hockey” (Mario Lemeiux), here’s some classic hockey humor:

By the age of 18, the average American has witnessed 200,000 acts of violence on television, most of them occurring during Game 1 of the NHL playoff series. ~Steve Rushin

A puck is a hard rubber disc that hockey players strike when they can’t hit one another. ~Jimmy Cannon

How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo? ~Jacques Plante

Hockey players wear numbers because you can’t always identify the body with dental records. ~Author Unknown (my current favorite!)

All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity. ~Gordie Howe

And, of course:

I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out. ~Rodney Dangerfield

A few other gems I've found: Intent To Blow gives the Blackhawks Pronger-zombie killing tips and View From My Seats tells you who your teams are cheering for and why. (Pretty funny if you know hockey teams and a little history, a little bit of language.)

GO CUBS!!

GO BLACKHAWKS!!!!

Memorial Day

2010-05-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a toast to the host
Of those who loved the vastness of the sky,
To a friend we send a message of his brother men who fly.
We drink to those who gave their all of old,
Then down we roar to score the rainbow's pot of gold.
A toast to the host of men we boast, the U.S. Air Force!
-The Air Force Song, third verse

The Airman's Creed
I am an American Airman.
I am a warrior.
I have answered my nation's call.

I am an American Airman.
My mission is to fly, fight and win.
I am faithful to a proud heritage,
A tradition of honor,
And a legacy of valor.

I am an American Airman.
Guardian of freedom and justice.
My nation's sword and shield.
Its sentry and avenger.
I defend my country with my life.

I am an American Airman.
Wingman.
Leader.
Warrior.
I will never leave an Airman behind.
I will never falter,
AND I WILL NOT FAIL!

Settling In

2010-05-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

So Teddie still isn't particularly fond of the fact that he can hear *gasp* Other People outside in the hallway on occasion, and there is that (I assume) very scary cleaning lady (who probably uses a *double gasp* vaccuum cleaner!) who comes in once a day to tidy things up. I have personally never met her, but as she cleans the room and leaves friendly notes afterwards and nothing's been stolen, I'm assuming she's probably okay. Doesn't change the fact that he hides under the bed for at least an hour after I get "home" every day. Silly kitty.

Class is okay. They aren't as fun as my last class - we had a lot of, ah, outgoing personalities in that class, though luckily without the major drama types - but we do have over two months to figure things out, I guess. The topics so far have been review, although we started a new block today that is new information, at least to me. I might drown soon in alphabet soup, though. And some of the stuff we can only study/do onsite, so that makes it more of a challenge. I'm the lowest rank, but it hasn't been too bad. There's a mix of ranks and experience, so I figure as long as I'm respectful and do my best in the class, things will be okay. (The instructors let me knit in class during breaks and "study times"! I might get my afghan done after all!) PT also (so far) hasn't been as bad as I had feared. We did self PT at the gym yesterday, and I was able to do a 5K run on the treadmill pretty comfortably. (Blackhawks TV episodes 1 & 2 may have also helped - one of the guys in class asked me today what I had been giggling at while I was running yesterday! They're still funny, even though I've seen them several times! Note, though - a 5K requires just under two episodes, but if you run the distance, do a cool down, and then stretch, you should be able to finish the second one.)

I still haven't warmed up much to Colorado, though, nor it to me. It's very flat, very Midwest-ish three-quarters of the view and then there's a big old mountain (Pike's Peak, I guess) to the west. It's pretty, I guess, but not as cool to me as driving down the 101. Weird. I'm going to try to make better friends with it this weekend, though. We do get a three day weekend like most of the country, and Denver is only a little over an hour away. I'm thinking about spending Sunday or Monday up there, maybe hitting Denver Zoo (they have a polar bear!) and a Rockies/Dodgers game (kinda hometown team, I guess). I'm also going to try to hit up a sports bar for the games on Saturday and Monday. I know they'll be on NBC, which I do get here in the room, but it would be kind of nice to share the Finals with other hockey fans, even if they are strangers.

Starting to rain here (I guess Denver got a heck of a storm today), and I need some sleep, so I'm gonna crash. Have a good Thursday!

Colorado Girl

2010-05-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Is not as fun as being a California Girl. It IS pretty here, don't get me wrong, and it's warmer here, surprisingly, but it's really weird to not have an ocean to balance out the mountains. And I've had a headache since I started getting into the mountains in Utah last night, no matter how much water I drink. At least the people I've run into today have been much more pleasant and helpful than yesterday, so I don't have quite as bad of a taste in my mouth as I did last night. I even had two guys comment on my Blackhawks t-shirt today - one guy asked if they were really my team or if I just liked it because it sparkled (it has crystals embedded in it) and then proceeded to remind me that the Avalanche play less than an hour away in Denver (which, sadly, does me no good this time of year, seeing as my BLACKHAWKS are now the only Western team still playing!) and the other guy wanted to know how the game went today, which I, of course, was more than happy to tell him.

The room I'm staying in is pretty nice - it has a decent sized living/sleeping space, king-sized bed, kitchenette (with a toaster, which reminds me that I want to get some toaster strudels and Eggos tomorrow), dishes, and a decent internet connection. Most of my favorite TV channels, too, except Versus, so it's probably a good thing that the next games I want to watch are the Finals (YEAH HAWKS!!!) and are supposed to be only on NBC. We'll see. I'm also not looking forward to doing PT up here in the mountain, but I am telling myself that it will help me out enormously when I get back to California. I also noticed an MMA/Fitness center on the main drag here, so I might have to check that out. Teddie has not given his approval to the room, but I notice that he has used his litter box and eaten some food, so that's a good sign.

Class starts tomorrow, and it's a Monday, so blues day. Still gotta get the directions to the base and make sure my regular blues are presentable. Wish me luck!

One down...

2010-05-16T15:58:00.000-07:00

...Two more to go. I’m done with the dorms, thank goodness! It ended up being not as hellish as it started out – once you can start going off-base you start feeling less confined. It really would not have been so bad at all if the phase program had been taken away completely. Like I think I said earlier, I understand why the phase program exists, and probably everyone thinks they deserve to live outside the rules, but the lessons that the phases are supposed to teach have already been learned by people who have already lived on their own for a while. Oh well. In the end, I was able to have as much alone time as I wanted, but I could also have people around whenever I wanted. And the people I ended up having to live with are good people. I ended up as “big sis”, “Blackhawk”, and, of course, “Trouble.” So I really can’t complain too much, but I am glad it’s over and I can live at home, at least for a week. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you guys – I AM getting sent to Colorado, now. Two and a half months. Yay. But at least I can take the cat with me this time! And I am going to be living in a hotel and not on base.

I have been able to be home frequently, but I haven’t been online much. Mostly because I met a really awesome guy who is cute, smart, talented, ambitious, caring, funny, into family and computers and sports and theater, and not only has heard of, but likes and can quote “McLintock.” We were on opposite schedules, I was on days and he was on swings, so we were usually limited to lunch and dinner during the week and then hung out on weekends. We made the weekends count, though. We went to two shows at PCPA (his idea! And go see “Curtains” this summer – it is VERY funny and well worth it!), saw two movies, played and volunteered at the Santa Barbara County Fair, volunteered at the Special Olympics, went to the Brewery, cooked two dinners at my apartment, and laughed and talked a lot. So we stayed pretty busy despite having limited time together. Of course, I’m leaving for Colorado this coming weekend and he’s getting shipped to Louisiana the week after that to his permanent duty station. How come all the good guys have to leave? ;-)

Speaking of the Special Olympics, if you ever get a chance to help out with one of their events, do it. It can be hard, but it is worth it. I had thought that we would be helping out with setting up and events and booths and stuff, but no. We each got paired up with one of the athletes and spent the day with them, making sure they got to their events on time and cheering them on. My athlete had Down’s Syndrome, and was bilingual! Trying to talk was quite the challenge sometimes! It turned out to be a lot of fun and a very rewarding experience!

Anyway, I haven't been feeling very good today and I have to go back to work (ish) tomorrow, so now that the Blackhawks have won (Go Hawks!!) I think I'm going to take a nap!

A Day In The Life

2010-04-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

Drat, the Blackhawks decided to follow the trend and get upset on the first game of the playoff series. C'mon guys! You're so much better than that! Sunday, baby! I am hoping to get some knitting time in tomorrow (I can't knit during Blackhawks games - I get too worked up to even sit still most of the time - but I'm not as emotionally invested in any of the games tomorrow and have to rest up for a midnight CQ shift anyway, so that should be good knitting time. Assuming I can remember what to do with sticks and string...)

I wish I had had a better idea of what to expect when I was getting ready for my tech school. Granted, the Vandenberg schoolhouse is generally much much more easygoing than some of the bigger training bases (Sheppard and Keesler come to mind - we are MUCH smaller), so this is pretty base-specific but would still be good info for those going into space or missiles. So maybe if there's someone out there like me who got their tech school and then tried to find information on what it will be like, this might help.

A typical day here looks like this:

0400-0450
People who want first breakfast start waking up and getting ready for the day. If you want a hot non-processed breakfast and are in class, you go to first breakfast. Only Phase I detail airmen have the option of going to second breakfast, because the rest of us are in class.

0515-0530
People who don't go to first breakfast start waking up and getting ready for the day. People who do go to first breakfast load up into the van and head out.

0545
Everyone starts heading downstairs/back from the dining hall

0600
Morning formation in the dayroom. The ropes take accountability, the morning MTL makes any necessary announcements.

0615-0630
People in classes start forming up and marching over to the schoolhouse, which is about a quarter mile (if that) from the dorm in an almost straight line. No big deal.

0630-1100(ish)
Morning classes. March back to the dorm when your instructors release you. (Ours has never kept us past 1045 but missiles often stay until 1115)

1120-1130
Bus picks us up at the dorms to take us to the dining hall for lunch. Phase I must go to lunch, the other two phases don't have to (we have mini-fridges and can keep food in our rooms - lots of people do breakfast this way so they can sleep in later). Often used as naptime for those who don't have to go to the dining hall.

1215
Bus picks us up at the dining hall and brings us back to the dorms.

1230
Classes form back up and march back over to the schoolhouse.

1245-1430(ish)
Afternoon classes. March back to the dorm when released. The MTLs will usually make us stay down in the dayroom and "study".

1500
MTLs release us to go to our rooms to get ready for PT (M/T/Th) or Airmen's Time (W) or Final Formation (F). Usually more naptime for those who are good with the 20-minute power naps.

1545
We start forming up for PT/AT/FF

1600-1700
PT/AT/FF (AT and FF very rarely go past 1530, PT will usually go the entire hour). For us, Mondays are usually circuit/strength days, Tuesdays are runs (3-5 miles) and Thursdays (depending on the MTL's mood) are "fun" days - ultimate football/frisbee, soccer, dodgeball, etc.

After that, we're released for the day and the MTLs escape (or turn into vampires or whatever it is they do when they aren't at the dorm - btw, MTLs are military training leaders and are basically the sergeants in charge of dorm life. They do our room inspections, open ranks, PT, any drill stuff we do, and take care of discipline problems in the "house". They aren't academic teachers. "Ropes" are students who have been designated as leaders within the dorm - different colors have different levels of authority/responsibility). You can get dinner at the dining hall (if you're a Phase I you have to, the other phases can eat elsewhere if they want, but hey, free food, right?), shower, change into civvies, study, clean/do laundry, run errands (on and off base), go to the bowling alley or ministry center, use your personal electronic devices (if you can get a decent connection, which is hard - go to the bowling alley if you're Phase II or above and can't get off-base =P ) During the week, we all have to be back in our rooms by 2200. The weekends are much more lax - you pretty much make your own schedule, as long as you're following your phase rules, make your bed checks Friday and Saturday nights (2200 for Phase I, 2400 for Phase II and yes, they will wake you up to make sure you're in your room), and are accounted for at the GI Party at 2000 on Sunday. Our GI parties aren't bad - just a few end of weekend announcements and a couple rooms get assigned to do stuff like vaccuum the carpet in the hallways or clean the CQ latrines that barely anyone uses. No big deal.

I don't know anything about the missile classes, but the space instructors that I've met so far have all been great. Knowledgeable, and very very approachable. My class spends about 90% of the time laughing and we would hang out all the time if we were allowed to. The other classes tell me theirs are similar. And the academic instructors can also help with situations going on in the dorms, too, and can be counted on to talk to the MTLs if they feel there is a problem that is affecting an NPSer in the classroom. I've personally seen my instructor do that a few times, and if he can't deal with it, he'll get someone up the food chain who can, which is heartening to see. I very much prefer being in class to being in the dorms, because I actually get treated like I have a head on my shoulders there. Dorm life definitely delves down to the lowest common denominator very quickly, and I am very much NOT 18 years old. And having a car and driving privileges will automatically make you everyone's new best friend, which can be both fun and irritating.

But anyway, if anyone is looking on the 'Net for information about tech school at VAFB, I hope you find this and it helps!

Easing Up (A Little)

2010-04-10T13:50:00.000-07:00

Survived two weeks so far. Phasing up on Monday, which means I can leave the dorm in civilian clothes, drive, personalize my room, and LEAVE BASE in my blues (but I can change if I go to the dojahng, as long as I wear the blues leaving and coming back). I still have to be back and in my room by 2200 during the week and 0000 on the weekends, but I can actually go see Sir and Ma'am and Mrs. S (all of whom have been texting me telling me to get my ass back to class) and my knitting and TEDDIE! And I can watch the playoffs on a REAL tv without having to fight for it. And get a real internet connection.

Life isn't completely terrible, though. I have a couple of nicknames here now, which I'm told is a good sign. The ones I've heard have been Blackhawks (by the resident Wings fans, due to wearing my jersey for Sunday games) and Trouble, which is, of course, highly original and I've never heard before =P Class has been pretty cool. It's a good group of people, and we have a lot of fun. (We went bowling on Friday afternoon. Seriously.) I only missed one question on our first block test (I had a brainfart and couldn't remember if "I" in the phonetic alphabet was India or Indigo and of course guessed wrong), and I think I did pretty decently on the PT eval, too. My run time wasn't as good as I wanted it, but it was definitely passable AND we were running directly into the wind AND we ran the outside of the track when it turns out that the 1.5 miles is actually measured from the INSIDE of the track, so we actually ran farther anyway. So I'm not going to get too worked up about it. And we're in our orbital mechanics block right now, which is kind of my love. (Yes, I'm a space geek, I think that's been established.) There's also a launch coming up soon, so that should be cool.

Four more weeks until total freedom. Yay!

2010-04-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

So class actually started today and it will definitely make life more bearable. There are about ten of us, one of them is one of my flightmates from the 216th (prior service), one is a dormmate, and the rest are all prior service. I'm not the lowest or the highest rank, the instructor is pretty cool (if a bit scatterbrained, but it's fun) and the material doesn't seem too bad so far. Nothing new, anyway.

And we played ultimate frisbee for PT today (apparently Mondays are circuit, Tuesdays are distance runs, and Thursdays are "fun" as long as we keep up our PT scores). Got an eval on Monday, though. We'll see how that goes. Should be fine - I'm not worried about passing, just about bragging rights, quite honestly.

Now just gotta make it through the next about nine days and I'll at least be able to drive and leave base in the evenings (even if I do have to come back at night to sleep). Finding myself slipping back into the BMT mentality of living meal to meal and taking it one day at a time. I hate it, but, like Basic, it's not hell. It's just not pleasant either and if I could do it any other way, I would.

Dorm Life

2010-03-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

Is actually worse than it was the first time around. I hate it already - too much drama, not enough hockey (it doesn't help that the hockey I do get is in time to watch them LOSE. AGAIN.).

I'm the oldest here by approximately a decade. Okay, not quite, but the next youngest person is three years younger than me. This, plus the fact that there aren't really very many of us but we're all in different stages ranging from people who have been here for months to people who came in today (like me), makes it irritating. And the fact that I got pulled aside today to hear that I'm a "unique case" that the MTLs will be keeping an eye on. Not only am I one of, if not the, highest ranking student right now by virtue of being an A1C AND having graduated Basic four months before most of these guys, but I also have had four months "off" ("OFF?!" Do they know ANYTHING about my unit??), and I'm local. So apparently this makes me very interesting to the MTLs. On the one hand, this could work in my favor. On the other, it could work very much against me. And I'm new, which makes me very interesting to the other students, particularly the girls (I'm the only female who came in this week). A bunch of 18-19 year olds who think they feel superior is really irritating. I don't mind listening and getting tips and learning the ropes, but it's pretty annoying. My roommate doesn't seem too bad so far, though. And I guess I am very lucky because I actually get to start class really soon, which means I can get the hell out of here soon. The dorms are actually pretty nice, don't get me wrong. It's the people in them that drive me nuts. I cannot get through these phases fast enough!

I didn't like living with other girls (except maybe Marcy, we got along pretty well) in college, I didn't like it at Basic, and I REALLY HATE it right now when I have a perfectly good (solo) apartment with a GOOD internet connection AND tv AND a kitty less than 20 miles away. Blargh. (Oh yeah, did i mention the 5 mile run we did for PT today? That would count as one of the better parts of the day, even though my feet hurt like crazy. Yeah, it's been THAT good.)

Now I get to go make my room inspection ready and hopefully go to bed early. Don't want to deal with this day any more.

Take Me Out To The Ball Hockey Game!

2010-03-19T20:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Chicago Blackhawks,

Thank you for entertaining me with an insanely fun game the other night in Los Angeles. We must do it again sometime soon! I think it was a mutually beneficial arrangement and needs to continue - I get to have fun at the games and in return, I would graciously accept the duties of being your good-luck charm/cheerleader/plainclothes coach. We can try it out for a few games to see how it works, but I have full confidence in our respective abilities. I'm sure it would be a very minor expense for you guys, and have great return for everybody. Please let me know what you think of this offer.

Sincerely,
kt

Seriously, though...That. Was. Awesome! You know things are going to go well when the very first song to start off your drive is "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis.
Which is not only a very fun, energetic song, but is also the 'Hawks goal song. So a very good omen. Of course, I get on the road late, as always, and hit traffic as early as Santa Barbara. And, of course, I got somewhat lost in Downtown LA, but then I thought maybe these guys might know the way and decided to follow them. Good call, as it turned out, so thanks, anonymous Kings fans!

So despite leaving four and a half hours before the 7:30p game, I only got here (okay, so that's actually the Nokia Center, which is across from the Staples Center, but it was a cool shot, okay?) a few minutes after 7:00p and then had to wait for Jen to get there and of course there was confusion trying to find each other, so we barely got to our seats in time for the National Anthem (they had a female Air Force lieutenant colonel there to represent the military that night, woo!), and I didn't get to see warmups at all, which I hear are the best time for pictures. I shall have to be more expedient next time.

But anyway, our seats. Um, how shall I put this? They ROCKED! We were four rows up from the ice, right behind the Kings' penalty box (Jen's pic, all she had to do was lean forward a little during one of the many times Ivanans was in there during the game. This time he had company!) and just oh so slightly kitty-corner from the Blackhawks' bench I'd SWEAR Jonathan Toews looked right at me and smiled at one point, but I'm sure it was my imagination. Sharpie, however, did come over at the end of the first intermission and decided to use the area right in front of us for stretching. The man is, to hazard a guess, approximately a billion times hotter in real life, but that might be a conservative under-estimate. And he has the most amazingly impish smile, but unfortunately, they move too bloody fast on the ice to get good pics of their faces! The only times I could catch any of them standing still, they had their backs to me. Still, it's not every day that there is an Olympic gold medalist less than ten feet away from you! (Even if his usual partner in crime, Seabrook, was out for the game because of that ugly hit he took Wednesday night. Glad to see an 8-game suspension come out of that! Seabs apparently skated in practice today, though, which is heartening, to say the least!)

Laddieboy finally decided to be gracious and pose for me, though, which I thought was very sweet of himOh, and we were absolutely surrounded by Blackhawks fans, too which made it even more fun! Picture deliberately blurry because I couldn't get it to focus without the flash, but with the flash, I lost the colors, and I thought the colors were more important for this one! (In addition to the goal song omen, the very first jersey I see near the Staples Center? A bright red Blackhawks one, of course! Another good omen! I was driving and didn't get a pic of him, though!)

Kings' fans are odd birds, though. I mean, they were friendly enough, no nastiness or anything, but they seemed pretty quiet. Maybe all games are really like this and just seem louder on tv. I dunno. The lack of a play by play also made it seem really quiet, but it was totally made up for by the fact that we were seeing it live in front of us. The other thing that really surprised me was the total lack of response when the opposing team (us) scored. I mean, I wasn't expecting them to play Chelsea Dagger, of course, but there was absolutely NOTHING. Not a goal siren, not an announcement, not even a flashing red light. I mean, I get making a big deal out of a home team's goal, but is it normal to have absolutely no recognition for the away team?? I thought that was weird. The first goal was down at the farther end from us, and the only reason we knew it had happened was because we saw the guys start piling on Brouwer and thumping him on the back. It took forever to change the scoreboard, too, so a lot of us were doing the "did we really score??" looks at each other before they finally lined up for the puck drop at center ice. The other two goals we scored were down at the nearer end to us, and we saw them quite clearly. Chicago fans have never been accused of being quiet! Oh, and I'd always thought it was kind of silly for there to be so many shots of players on the bench watching the JumboTron during games, but now I get it. Sometimes it was a little hard to see what was going on at the farther ends away from you, and it was easier to keep an eye on things via the screen. And yes, Kane really does do that with his mouthguard. Constantly, even on the ice. He's gonna get his teeth knocked out one of these days, and that would be bad =(

It was Jen's first hockey game ever, and my first pro hockey game (I have vague memories of being at a Rivermen's game in Peoria when I was little), so we had fun doing the whole starstruck thing a lot. A better pic of me: A better pic of Jen:There were two guys maybe a couple years younger than me (Jen is a couple years older) next to me, and two little boys with their dads, who were obviously pals, in front of us. All in Blackhawks jerseys, of course. They were SO much fun to watch watching the game! And, of course, we all had to work together to teach them the proper (kid-friendly) cheers, since the Kings fans weren't doing them right. (It's "Lets Go Hawks!", hel-LO!) Jen is not really an avid hockey fan, she usually only watches it during the Olympics, but she was pretty fun to hang out with. We had fun teaching her the game, and, of course, we all really liked the fight!

I do have to give the Kings goalie, Quick, props. They had something like 35 shots on goal and he stopped all but three. And got his helmet knocked off by one! (That's my boy, Sharpie!) But, all good things must come to an end, and after 60 minutes of playing, the powers that be decided three goals was enough for one game and picking on the Kings even more would be unsportsmanlike, so everyone packed up and went home, and I finally got a decent shot of the Captain and Alternate Captain together (if only they were turned around!)
I really can't explain how much fun it was to be there. If I lived anywhere near Chicago, I'd spring for season tickets, or at least one of those six- or ten-packs. (I assume they have those in Chicago. The teams here have them, anyway.) Don't get me wrong, there are advantages to watching it on tv - hearing the plays explained, actually seeing the whole rink (which is not as big irl as it looks on tv!), being in your own home - but man, is it cool to feel the thuds as the players hit the boards and hear the crack of the puck as it gets passed from stick to stick! You really appreciate the speed of the game and the skill it takes a lot more when you're up close!

And today wasn't too bad either! (I mean, aside from the fact that both the Sharks and the Red Wings lost, which is always cause for a good day.) I spent the night in downtown LA at the Ritz Milner, which is just down the street from the Staples Center. (Not the Ritz Carlton big fancy oolala hotel, which is also near the Center, but the Ritz Milner, which is much smaller and cheaper, but still clean and safe, which is all I really care about in a hotel room when it comes right down to it.) While I could only live in one if I absolutely had to, I do like the space efficiency and bustle of big cities' downtown areas. Having a grocery store as the first floor of a building, or a restaurant on a middle floor, instead of in their own individual buildings, is a source of amusement for me. And just a few blocks away you get into the hispanic markets, which are just colorful and loud and crowded and vibrant.

So I played tourist for a bit, and then headed over to my old stomping grounds and had lunch with John and Eduardo, which was a blast as always. We didn't realize until I was halfway home (John and I often talk on the phone when I'm driving out of LA, usually because I get stuck in traffic) that today exactly is our fifth anniversary. We've been ~~harassing each other~~ officially doing shows together for five years now. I say I deserve a medal, or at least a pin. He says I don't get anything until ten years. We'll see who wins that battle ;-) Anyway, there may be a small, private show in Santa Barbara at the end of May, so cross your fingers that I'll be around for it!

And I think I've officially had more drinks than hours of sleep now, so I'm going to crash and start my weekend tomorrow. And dream of hot Blackhawks and Stanley Cups and magic =)

Beware the Ides of March

2010-03-15T21:50:00.001-07:00

(Keep in mind this is also after a weekend where my Blackhawks had not one but TWO games IN THE BAG and then lost, AND one of my favorite players got injured so badly he'll be out for the rest of the season AND I found out that I'm not supposed to "aggravate" my ankle for pretty much until I go to tech school, unless I want to be killed by certain people who worked hard to get me into said tech school, which means no martial arts, so I wasn't really on a good streak anyway.)

6:30a: Instead of being woken up by my favorite songs, as usual, I wake up to a very faint beeping noise. My phone apparently hadn't gotten fully plugged into the clock and wasn't triggered by the alarm. The clock compensates by making a pathetic buzzing. Not a fun wake-up call.

7:30a: Feeling pretty good for being ready not just on time, but early, despite the alarm clock and having to wear blues today. Step outside to decide if I want my jacket or not, and the door promptly blows shut behind me, locking me out. Luckily, the maintenance guy lives across from me.

7:40a: Leave for work, feeling lucky that I did not hit the sides of the garage door while backing out (I have a fear of that, our garages are narrow!) on a day when luck is clearly not on my side. But now I'm ready, I have my stuff, I'm on the road to work on time despite Fate so far.

8:00a: Stop at the last stoplight before the road turns into the highway and decide to take a sip of my iced coffee to celebrate still being on time. Just as I think "hey, that's not the lid they usually put on these cups," said lid and said cup decide to separate in my hands, and iced coffee literally explodes all over my car. It's all over my uniform, on my face. It's dripping from my hair, and the steering wheel, and the dashboard, and has completely FLOODED the center console, which of course houses my phone, phone jack/radio, and Bluetooth headset when I'm driving. I manage to pull over after the light changes, rescue the phone from its coffee bath, manage to send a text to my captain, and the thing promptly dies.

8:10a: Manage to get turned around to head home to change, swearing vehemently over the apparently dead phone, the stained uniform, and the cold iced coffee puddle I'm now sitting in. Am stopped at an intersection, my light turns green, I start into the intersection, and manage to slam on the brakes in time to avoid getting t-boned by some friggin idiot who decided the red light didn't apply to him. Now I'm cold, wet, stained, phoneless, pissed AND shaken. And I haven't even made it to work yet!

8:30a: Finally make it home and get the car cleaned out enough to at least be not completely gross. Park sideways between the garages so I can easily get to the Dumpster with the sopping wet paper towels. Dry the electronics off as best as I can, and turn them off. (Phone does decide to work properly upon rebooting, which I am extremely thankful for.) Decide to leave my car parked where it is while I run upstairs to change into any clean blues I have available. I have my long sleeve shirt (which requires the tie tab, which must be straight) and my skirt (which I don't mind wearing usually but requires hose rather than socks). Am halfway through changing when the doorbell rings. Decide to ignore the doorbell, as I'm still in the process of buttoning up my shirt, and hear the complex manager start yelling and banging on the door asking if I was okay. Realize I'm going to have to deal with her unless I want the entire building's attention and jerk the rest of my uniform on. Apparently she saw my car parked at the odd angle and immediately assumed something must be terribly wrong. Assure her things are (relatively speaking) fine and head out the door again, remembering to grab an old towel to sit on in the car.

8:50a: Get another coffee from McD's, adamantly telling the lady that they'd better put the right lid on it this time. It was a different lady, so she probably thinks I'm insane.

9:30a: Finally make it to work, and realize after I've checked in with the captain that my belt is not even close to being straight with the rest of my uniform. Get my orders for tech school. Try to find out what I'm supposed to bring and where/who I'm supposed to report to when. No one knows, and there's no information online. Training NCO promises to look into it.

10:30a: Go to the shared printer to get a course outline I'm working on and notice the guy who's taking over the student flight has printed out some information for them about Basic. Some of it is no longer current. Feel the need to let him know this and end up spending the next hour and a half arguing with him about how BMT actually is versus how he thinks it should be.

12:00n: Look down at my legs during the above conversation and realize there's not just a run, but a large hole in my nylons. Right on the back of the knee, very visible. Make a run to the BX to get new hose.They don't have the size and color I really want, so I have to settle for a darker color.

1:00p: Back to work and have absolutely no concentration on the job at hand. Decide to continue research, thinking Training NCO will come get me when she's ready to go talk to the people she wanted to go talk to with me. Resurface four hours later, having not found anything I was originally looking for but lots of fascinating things that had absolutely relevance whatsoever. Consider the day absolutely wasted at work, and feel guilty that I actually got paid for it.

4:30p: Get halfway home before remembering that I'd wanted to stop at the commissary for groceries so I wouldn't have to stop in town in uniform. Decide I have stuff for spaghetti at home and continue on.

5:00p: Get home. No spaghetti noodles. There are lasagna noodles, though. Get the bright idea to put them in one of my disposable mini bread pans layered with some of my sauce and throw it in to the oven even though I don't have any cheese for a real lasagna. Feel pleased with my brilliant idea and get out a bottle of cheap white zinfindel. Press the corkscrew against the cork, which immediately pops DOWN into the bottle, splashing wine everywhere. Come very close to throwing things around the room in frustration.

5:15p: Open box of lasagna noodles to start layering the whateverI'mmaking while the oven preheats. Pull one out, and am greeting by several little black faces looking at me. There are BUGS in my unopened box of lasagna noodles. (Granted, I have no idea how long I've had the box, it was in the very back of the pantry.) EW. No pasta tonight. Settle for frozen pizza again. I do love pizza, but I'd just had it the night before.

7:00p: Tune in the hockey channels and realize Detroit is getting beat. Watch that game for a few minutes before realizing that with the way my luck has been going, if I keep watching and cheering for the Flames, literal flames will probably start raining down on the rink, mass hysteria will break out, and Detroit will end up winning. (Sure enough, they did, too. Without the carnage and mass hysteria, though. Unless you count being a Red Wings fan as a hysteria.) Instead, hook up the laptop to the tv (which was actually successful for some reason) and continue getting caught up on Season Two of Castle, which I am very behind on. Have brief text convo with my brother, who I am trying to convince to come out to visit. Am unsuccessful again.

10:00p: Come online to check scores and email and start this post. Curse seems to be fading - one of my magic crew is able to go with me to the game on Thursday. The Sharks apparently lost to the Ducks (who saw THAT coming?!) last night, which cuts their playoff lead over us to only two points. That's the best news I've had all day. And the way my day has gone, I'm going to take it and end on a good note. Tomorrow can't be worse, right??

Puckbunny-ness

2010-03-04T18:27:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited! I got tickets to the Blackhawks/Kings game down in LA March 18th!! And not just any tickets, but pretty good ones! (Center ice, row 4, glass seating!) And I found a Patrick Sharp third jersey for a steal on eBay, so I'll even have something appropriate to wear! Now, just to find someone to go with me! ;-) My goal, of course, is to run away with Sharpie after the game, but seeing as that isn't likely to happen (and I'd have to go through the whole 'dealing with foreign nationals' routine, since he's Canadian - a definite downside to having my job), I'll just have to try to take lots of pictures. I think the magic crew is gonna try to get together that weekend while I'm in town, too, so that should be enough consolation for only getting to make smoochie faces through the glass.
We were awesomely represented at the Olympics, though, and that game was friggin' amazing! And our boys have handled it all with a lot of class - a lot of respect for everyone they played, and even better, a lot of love for "coming back home and winning things together now!" What more can you ask for in a sports team??

ETA: I have had Saving Abel's "New Tattoo" stuck in my head for two days now. It's driving me nuts!

I've got a brand/new tattoo
The colors in it remind me of you
I've got a brand/new tattoo
The colors in it remind me of you
Blue is for the bruise that you left on my heart
Red is for the color we're about to paint this town -
Oooo, I got a new tattoo!

Closing Ceremonies

2010-02-28T22:01:00.000-08:00

In my own personal Olympic tradition, I did not finish either of my events on time. I can live, however.

That hockey game will go down in history. Wow. Go Blackhawks. That's all I can really say. No one deserved to lose that game. Team USA, you did us proud. Team Canada, see you again in four years ;-)

Thank you Vancouver and all of Canada for a beautiful, exciting, thrilling, and outstanding two weeks. Tears were shed, smiles were shared, history was made. In other words - it was quintessential Olympics.

"I declare the Games of the 21st Olympiad closed and, in accordance with tradition, I call upon the youth of the world to assemble four years from now at Sochi to celebrate with us there the Games of the 22nd Olympiad".

Southpaw?

2010-02-26T07:36:00.000-08:00

I think I mentioned that I'm terrible at the new boxing/MMA-style sparring that we're doing in FIGHT now. Despite the fact that I use a right hand stance for pretty much everything (drills, kickboxing class, etc), when it comes to that kind of sparring, I would spend the two minutes feeling awkward, clumsy, frustrated, and, well, getting beat (which, if you know me, just gets me MORE frustrated). I'd work with my partners and try to do more drills during the matches, and really did try to incorporate stuff that Sir was trying to teach me, but I just haven't been able to get things to start clicking for me. Last night we did knife sparring before MMA sparring, and it occurred to me that I knife fight left-handed (for a couple of reasons, but needless to say that it's gotten to be my strong side), so during MMA sparring, I switched to a southpaw stance, figuring that I couldn't do any worse than I had been previously. It wasn't magic. I'm not some great fighter now, but I did feel MUCH more comfortable in that stance and suddenly things started clicking for me. I even got in a hit on Mr R! When I talked to Sir about it after class, he just shrugged and said it was probably because in tkd sparring, we like to put our fastest side (my right) forward a lot so we can throw really fast jabs and round kicks and then will switch stances to get the power side (also my right) behind to add momentum to them. We don't switch stances so much in MMA sparring, though, so it comes down to either developing the speed and balance as a righty or the power as a lefty. He said I looked a LOT more confident, though, and to keep playing around to figure out what works best for me. My left foot has always been my balancer, so I think keeping it back in the southpaw stance allows me to have more range of motion, while having the right foot in front lets me snap out stronger kicks faster. Unfortunately, because of spending four years training as a righty, I have a wicked right cross and left hook that don't work in a lefty stance, hence why I'd have to build up the power on the left side. I dunno. We'll see. All I know is that, for once, the sparring was FUN, even if I still took a lot of hits.

On that note, gotta run off to work. Go USA!! We want the gold medal game!!

Raining Again

2010-02-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

-Olympic knitting is going about as well as US Olympic hockey. Going strong but a lot can still mess it up. Keeping fingers crossed.

-Work is very interesting. It changes a lot. I'm doing a lot of different things right now that actually make me feel like I'm Doing Something Useful, which is awesome, particularly considering the fact that I'm technically not really trained to do any jobs, according to the AF. So that's kind of a victory in and of itself. I'm glad my almost-full-week of being in at 0700 is over, though.

-Class is going better, although I've been on base late the past couple nights and haven't made it to everything I wanted to. Chrissy is going to come to kickboxing with me tomorrow, though, so that should be fun!

Think that's about it!

Recharging my solar batteries

2010-02-08T20:48:00.000-08:00

Last post was 21 January?! Geez! Where have I been?? I'm not sure I even know! But now that the rain seems to have abated for a while, my 70-degree sunshine has returned, it's time to bask in three-day weekend gloriousness. (I'd started writing this a few days ago, but had to deal with pics, hence the backdating.)

Mostly, I've been on base. I spent a week doing instructor cert class, then promptly got put on orders for another week (that whole 'one weekend a month, two weeks a year' thing...this would be my two weeks), and 'well, since you've been working on suchandsuch, can you do thisandthat, too?' and got put on orders for, well, pretty much until I go to tech school. And tech school dates are up in the air again. Officially, I'm going in late April just to the school on base for a couple weeks, but The Powers That Be would like me to go, like, yesterday, and then summer in Colorado on the government's dime. Unfortunately, even TPTB can't just wave a magic wand and make it happen, as much as they would like to, but they're doing pretty much everything short of that. So we'll see if that can happen. In the meantime, they're keeping me busy with helping build paperwork for some of the classes my unit teaches, and I get to sit in on a tryout class next week. It's kind of cool, although it makes drill weekends a bit weird, because I'm fine with going in and talking to the officers and they to me, and I know where things are and how to take care of a lot of things that my 'official' (traditional) sergeants/supervisors don't get just because they aren't there all the time and I end up showing them stuff. Weird. Oh well.

And, because this is a knitting blog, I can proudly say that I've completed the January Hat Trick:
for which I nabbed Bragging Rights (for completing at least one Hat Trick, there were some people who did two or three complete ones! Wow!) and the Selke Award for Best Defensive Forward for both striped hats (no idea, but it's all in fun)! Congrats to all of the Puck This HatTrickers!

And, in the spirit of combining knitting with Winter Games, I am again participating in both the Ravelympics and the Knitting Olympics. I'm doing a couple of hedgehogs for the Squint Squad and a baby blanket for Puck This (one of my former PCPA co-workers is due this summer). Y'all know what the hedgehogs look like - they'll go to some friends of mine when completed - and the blanket is turning into something like this:
It's just garter stitch strips, and I have a strip and a half done already, which is pretty good considering how many times I've frogged and restarted it. I had played with the idea of doing the whole thing with intarsia squares, but strips travel better and I kept changing my mind on the layout of the squares. I'm pretty settled on this one, though. I haven't quite decided on a border, other than it will be pink (they're expecting a girl). It may end up just being a garter stitch border, but I'm toying with the idea of making it a bit lacy or frilly. My first idea was a Boo Berries Wave Scarf, which I still love, but the self-striping jacquard colorway that I found....well, frankly, I hate it. I couldn't get it to the proper gauge to make the stripes come out pretty, and that particular colorway turned into a bunch of thin stripes that would be a royal pain to match up. I think one of the two-color colorways in that series would work much better (such as was used by the designer), but this batch is going back to the store!

Hmm, what else? I've redone my apartment and at least Teddie and Chrissy heartily approve. The two rooms I'm most proud of are the bedroom closet and the living room.
Closet before:
Underused and messy, right? So (and also in compensation for my dresser, which is on its last legs), I decided to actually use it as, well, clothes storage. Closet after:
My pride and joy, though, is my "new" living room. This is the room before:
Cluttered, unorganized, uninviting, and, well, unfriendly. Not a place friends could come over and crash and watch movies/tv. Heck, not even a place *I* could crash and watch tv - I generally watched television at my desk on my computer. Gets the job done, but loses a lot. So, one weekend, a tax return, a massive trip to Best Buy, and a fantastically helpful and knowledgable employee (who knew?!) later, I now have this:
and I LOVE it! It's awesome that I can be making dinner, sitting on the computer, or on the couch and still have a great, sharp, clear picture. I went down in tv size so I could get a Blu-Ray player, and I gotta say, Star Trek in Blu-Ray HD is freakin' amazing! I also can't get over watching the Olympics in HD. I know it sounds like a commercial, but that opening sequence/flyover of British Columbia to start NBC's broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies was literally breathtaking. (And hockey games are pretty cool to watch, too, although I think I scare the neighbors with the cheering. Oh well!)

I'm still in the process of finding a workout routine that builds up my running, keeps me able to do the 1.5 mile speed run, and keeps me training for martial arts. I talked to Sir for quite a while Wednesday night after tkd, and he told me that I'd be midterming (possibly for the last time as a first degree, depending on how I do) in April. Learning the form is fine (the new forms are actually REALLY fun) and I'm about halfway through it already, but I'm really out of shape for sparring, and I really don't have the time or energy to add those classes into my current schedule. He suggested taking out one kickboxing class, and focusing on hitting at least two tkd classes, one sparring class, and Thursday night FIGHT (we've added kickboxing-style sparring to FIGHT, which is cool, but rather different to get used to!) class every week. I think this week I'm going to try doing kickboxing and tkd on Monday (today), running and FIGHT on Tuesday, tkd and sparring on Wednesday, running and FIGHT on Thursday, tkd on Friday, and a long run on Saturday. I have to find a good time/place to run, too. Running in the morning forces two showers a day, which my skin doesn't like at all, even if the morning one is a really quick rinse-off (I had problems with that at Basic - it dries my skin out like crazy), pretty much eliminates running on base if I want to eat breakfast (and I do now), but makes it dark and creepy to run at home. I rather prefer running after work, when it's light out, but if I want to run on base, I either have to give up my music (headphones are banned for road running on base) or run on a treadmill at the gym, so running at home is preferable then, but then I have to find some time to eat dinner before the evening's classes. I'm thinking that this week I'll try eating as soon as I get home from work (which is what I usually do, around 5:00p), go running around 6:30p, and then go straight to FIGHT at 7:30p. I'm a little nervous about having the endurance to run at least two miles and then go straight into a FIGHT class, but we'll see.

Anyway, I am still alive, still kickin (often literally), and enjoying life. And I will try to update more frequently, at least for Olympic updates!

Amateurs

2010-01-21T17:43:00.000-08:00

I made you a wildly entertaining, multimedia, Pulitzer-prize-winning blog post somewhere, full of cool things like January Hat Trick Goals and warping boards and attempting to warp a table loom for the first time (Karen, that book ROCKS! Thank you for the recommendation!!) and how I'm so not cool for forgetting about knitting group this past week and can't go next week because of class on base and how I have yarn to get rid of and how I almost have my apartment redone the way I want it and how I'm saving up for a big screen TV because I want something nice to watch the Olympics on (okay, other reasons, too, but priorities!) and how I'm sick of the rain and the power outages (seriously, I've lost power at least once EVERY DAY THIS WEEK. It's getting really old!)...

...but I eated it.

*All I have instead is this - California, you do the sunshine thing really well, and are even pretty decent at earthquakes, wildfires, fog, wind, mudslides and floods. However, three claps of thunder and a handful of lightning bolts do not a thunderstorm make. I understand that practice makes perfect, but you've been practicing off and on all week and it hasn't gotten any better. Go back to doing what you're good at, please, and leave the real thunderstorms to the professionals. Thank you.

Catching Up

2010-01-10T20:56:00.001-08:00

So I finally get a chance to share again! First off, I have to brag. My mom did her first half-marathon yesterday! Congrats!!

As far as MY trip, I totally lucked out in the fibery/crafty department over the holidays. None of these were actually Christmas gifts*, but they followed me back West anyway.
This quilt was made by my great-grandmother many years ago. My grandma gave it to me last week, and she remembers the dresses the fabric scraps for the quilt came from. It's nice to have something of Great-Grandma's here in California, of all places, with me. It's also an extremely well-made and warm quilt! Yay me!

*Okay, so this one actually was a Christmas present...nineteen years ago.
When I was about nine or ten, my grandparents did a lot of rag rug weaving. They have several floor looms, but I was usually too small for those, so my grandfather built this 4-harness table loom for me (the apron has my name and the Christmas year on it). Between a lack of space at my parents' house and insane shipping costs to California, it's stayed at my grandparents' house, occasionally used, all these years. I'm really excited to have it back and to be playing with my new toy all over again!
I've been playing around with the cotton warp that was already on there and some plain old Red Heart yarn. I'm a bit nervous about warping the thing by myself, so I've just been figuring out different harness patterns. For some reason, though, I can't seem to do a twill pattern. The treadles won't move in that pattern, and I'm not sure why. I will have to keep working on that. I'm going to try to head down to Solvang when Village Spinning and Weaving reopens and see if they have any classes or suggestions or something.

I also came home with a bit more projects and a bit less yarn (okay, not counting the bag of yarn my grandma gave me from a friend of hers' stash):
A New Angle afghan is starting to look pretty cool, if I do say so myself. And I do! You can really start to see the optical illusion of the pattern, which has been fun. It's turned into great hockey-watching knitting, because it's just garter stitch and I don't have to look at my hands. Ironically, my actual project for my hockey KAL (the Puck This! Ravelry group's "January Hat Trick") is not good hockey-watching knitting. It was originally supposed to be a Fake Isle Hat, but my colorwork tension isn't good enough to make it look nice, so I decided to go with just a plain checkerboard pattern to practice.
I'm still trying to decide what I want to do for the Ravelympics, though. I haven't settled on anything, and part of the problem is that (as of today) I don't know exactly what my schedule is going to be. I have a guaranteed tech school seat for the one I have to do here at Vandenberg for the end of April, which will go into early June, and then straight into seasoning and full-time orders if I want them (and I do). However, I was talking to the DO today at drill, and he wants me to do the school here ASAP ("you should be doing this, like, tomorrow, Trummel!") so that I can go to a 10-week secondary school in Colorado Springs. There are only, like, three more classes for that particular school left, so this summer is really my only chance to get this training if I want it. It isn't necessary to do my job, but it makes me that much more knowledgeable (and marketable to contractors) and more valuable to the unit. So I am now going to be on a "okay, you're guaranteed to be here in April, but be ready to drop everything at any time before then, too" situation again. If I don't go before April, I'll knock out the instructors courses I need for the whole "my unit actually teaches active duty people" part of the mission, as well as get trained to be a PT leader and probably either go on temporary orders to help create curriculum for the courses we teach the active duty or there's also the possibility of going back to my old job as Recruiter's admin assistant again. He's offered it to me, but there are some details that still have to be worked out. I'm also starting ERAU classes up again next weekend (ASCI 602 this term), so that will give me something to do, too.

On top of all of that, the DO has decided that the entire unit needs to be able to at least walk a 10K by April, and we did a 5K today (I didn't time myself, but should have). It was definitely do-able, and I didn't break any records or anything, but the idea of doing double that is a bit intimidating. We're supposed to add a mile each drill until we do the 10K consistently. I think I'm going to start running on T/Th/Sa mornings, since those are the days that I usually only have one martial arts class in the evenings. Sir's been more than thrilled to have me back in classes to beat up, and I actually think the workouts in all the classes have gotten stepped up, so that's been fun. I'll probably start working on my form again this week, which is going to be harder than just stepping into the PT, though!

Alright, I think that catches about everyone up on the important things. The cross-country drive back wasn't too bad, although I was clearly not the only one who noticed the lack of warm weather:
I have never seen him do that before, but when we were on the road in rooms where he couldn't get under the bed to hide and it was below about 40 degrees in the mornings (outside, not inside, I'd never let a room get that cold if I had any choice in the matter!), he would bat my face until I lifted my arm to swat him away, then scurry down the opening in the sheets and curl up to sleep under the covers. I can't decide if he's smart or just spoiled. (He did surprisingly well on both the driving portions of the trip and staying at my parents, though. He eventually would come out even if there were other people around, but he startled easily. We were both very happy to get home!)

Going to TRY to make it to knitting up at Woodstone tomorrow. We'll see!

Breathing Room

2009-12-28T08:04:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone had an excellent Christmas and is getting some quality time in to start the New Year off right!

I did make it to my parents house safely Wednesday night, after getting horribly delayed in New Mexico on Monday. (Something about a propane truck and a car getting friendly on the interstate, which then shut down said interstate for the next TEN HOURS and diverted ALL of that traffic onto little mountain roads that should never have that much traffic on it. But I digress.) Teddie was actually pretty good about the whole traveling thing. He's decided he prefers the back seat to the front, though, and he likes hotel rooms with king sized beds ("Aw, Mom! This is perfect! Where are you gonna sleep, though??"). He's been spending a lot of time under the bed here, though. It's not the extra three cats and the large Labrador that seem to bother him, it's the people. He's never been what anyone would call a sociable cat in the first place, so having a minimum of two extra people around almost constantly seems to drive him a little batty. However, we do know that he comes out at night, when no one is home, and, apparently, when I'm the only one home, as he's currently laying on my arms, which is making typing this uncomfortable.

My car, however, is in a state of shock. It's never even HEARD of this cold white wet stuff that falls from the sky and is pretty much buried out in the drive way. All you can see is the California license plate. Poor car! I'm going to dust it off in a bit and see how it handles on the roads (which aren't too bad as long as you aren't stupid), so I can go into the local YMCA and finally get a decent workout in. I'm pretty sure all I've done for the past week has been eat either holiday goodies or fast food on the road while driving, so I definitely need the workout!

I brought my New Angle afghan out with me to work on (I ended up NOT having to make slippers, yay!), and there's a pretty decent LYS in a town just south of here that I'm planning on hitting up. (She is generally my source for the Mountain Colors Twizzle, so I like her.) I also, for the first time, have the opportunity to actually bring my own loom back to California. Yes, a weaving loom. Some of us started weaving many many moons ago (like, maybe twenty years or so? When I was younger and long before the recent craze for it started anyway). My grandparents had big looms and wove rag rugs and things with them, and my grandfather built a tabletop loom for me one year for Christmas. Unfortunately, we never had enough room in my parents' house to store/use it, and I certainly didn't have the money to ship it to California when I moved out there, so it's stayed in my grandparents' basement all these years. But this year, I have my trusty car with me, with a lot of room in the back, so it will finally get to come home where it belongs. Now I want to go searching for inspiration for that craft, too!

Great American Road Trip

2009-12-20T07:10:00.001-08:00

So the big plan was to get on the road by 0730 this morning. Unfortunately, Teddie is not packed (he claims he doesn't have a thing to wear, and doesn't believe me when I tell him he will - for once - NOT be overdressed in his long fur coat. Males!), my laptop cable has gone missing along with (as far as I can tell) a whole laundry load of dark clothes (including my FIGHT gear and some favorite pjs, that I haven't seen since I got back), and my garage door is broken. The laptop is irritating me the worst right now - I still need to get caught up on Fringe and White Collar and I'd love to re-watch Leverage, too. Mrph.

Going to try to make it to Albuqurque/Kirtland AFB today. We'll see.

Knitting!

2009-12-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

Because this IS a knitting blog (in theory, anyway), I thought I might pass on the fact that I did finally finish the Diagonal Lace Scarf last night. It's made of my absolute favorite yarn (Mountain Colors Twizzle), and pics will be up in the near future (maybe). It wasn't really made with any particular purpose in mind, but now I'm thinking I'll ship it off to a friend in Alaska. She makes me little craftsy things when the mood strikes, and somehow, I can see her with this. So once the ends get woven in (and a pic taken), this wooly silky purply goodness will probably be headed far far north. (While I can't say that I would NEVER go to Alaska, because I do hear it's beautiful, I can say it's not on my top ten vacation spot ideas. Unlike, oh, the warm Carribbean. There IS a reason I live in California, y'know. I do enjoy my 70-degrees-and-sunny December days.)

Off to make yet another pair of felted slippers. Because SOMEONE lost hers. Ahem. (Actually, I think I have to make another pair of those for my brother, too. Or did I do that last year? It kind of all blurs together.) I wonder if I have any more leather soles...

On a positive note, I think my Christmas shopping is done. (I have to see if I can find one more thing, and if I can, then I'm going to return one of the things I already bought, but if not, well, that person is stuck.) It's kind of nice to not have to ship things and pray they'll get there in time this year! (I'm packing the gifts and the cat and maybe a couple warm changes of clothes and driving out to the Midwest this year for the holidays. Various friends throughout the country are already putting dibs on my drive back West, from Louisville to Seattle. That drive should be interesting, at any rate!)

A1C Trummel

2009-12-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

I don't even know how to start this post. Obviously, I'm back from Basic Training. I graduated (as an honor grad, as my mother will happily tell you) on 11 December and got home to Santa Maria Monday morning. I'm kind of still in a fog, though. I'm jet-lagged, trying to get back onto West Coast time, and trying to get caught up with everyone and everything I've missed and get back into the swing of "real" life, but also trying to work in the discipline that got drilled into me over the past two months and still being so darn TIRED that nothing is really working right. I did go to classes at the dojahng Monday night, and they felt good. I am about half-decided on just writing the rest of this week off, though. I'm leaving this weekend to drive out to Illinois for the holidays, and I'm thinking that taking one week completely off of life in between won't kill me. But then I think I'm not being disciplined and feel guilty again. We'll see. (I'm also having a crazy urge to knit another Rogue, how weird is that?) I did get to spend the weekend with my parents and my brother, who all flew down to San Antonio and braved the absolutely freezing weather most of the time to watch all the ceremonies and hoopla and take pictures. (Y'all will have to wait until I get the pics from them, sorry.)

Like I said, I'm not really even sure what I want to say here. It's not like you can explain Basic Military Training to someone who hasn't done it. It's such a unique experience. People tend to either go "omg, that's horrible, why would anyone ever put themselves through that?!" or they think they understand and that it's no big deal and anyone can do it. Less than 7% of Americans ages 18-30 actually qualify for any military service. Less than 2% actually ever do it. Of those 2%, there are only 47 other people in the nation who went through the same things I did with the same people I did, and all 48 of us have our own unique viewpoints on it. How do you explain the sheer exhaustion and confusion of Zero Week, the smugness of getting your nametapes sewn onto your uniforms during Fourth Week after overcoming the obstacle course and the gas chamber, the constant awareness and weight of BEAST (Sixth Week), the studying and tutoring to help one of our girls who barely spoke English with the final written test in Seventh Week (and the tears when the whole flight cheered and mobbed her when she passed it), the sheer pride at hearing your TI call you his airmen after Retreat in Eighth Week? It really can't be explained, just experienced.

There are three things you always are at Basic. You're always hungry, you're always tired, and you're always in trouble. Basic Training is both really hard and really easy at the same time. My instructor team was very tough on us, but also very fair. Although it's part of their job to stress us to the max, they also never set us up for failure. Things were always explained, and usually you even got one chance to fix a mistake. (Heaven help you if you weren't paying attention or didn't fix it the first time, though!) As long as you maintained your military bearing, treated them with the respect and etiquette they taught you, and weren't being stupid, the TIs were mostly easy to deal with. If you just listened and did what you were told, the actual training part of BMT is easy. The hard part of BMT is living with your flight for two months. 50 females together in one room NEVER SHUT UP while they're awake (some of them don't shut up when they're asleep, either!). Someone ALWAYS has an opinion that absolutely must be shared, which usually led to arguments, which turned into screaming and cursing matches. That, for me, at least, was the hardest part of BMT - far more difficult to deal with than TIs, PT, BEAST, lack of sleep and medical mishaps combined. (Note that "lack of food" didn't make that list. After Zero Week, where it felt like you had a total of thirty seconds to eat for the whole week, you get to actually taste your food and realize that while it's not 5-star surf-n-turf, it's a heck of a lot better than regular cafeteria food, there's usually quite a variety, and portion sizes are relatively large. We burn a LOT of calories while in Basic, so you're still always hungry, but I can't think of any time where I didn't have enough to eat.)

I wrote letters to my parents explaining things as they happened, and I'm hoping they saved them, because posting them here would explain things a lot better than I could now. The hardest week for me personally was Fifth Week, not because of anything we did that week as a flight, but because that's when I was really dealing with a seriously major infection in my hand, so I was tired and sick and a little scared and really fed up with the girls arguing and that was the one time that I really thought "I can't do this anymore. I have to give up, I have to go home. I just can't do this." Of course, that passes. Life passes too quickly, and they keep you too busy, to really get bogged down in those kinds of thoughts. You just don't have time for self-pity there. It's both the longest and shortest two months of your life. There are lots of tears, but also lots of laughs. There is bitter disappointment and shining pride. I'd never do it again unless my life or a wingman's depended on it. But it's worth it.

This was one of the songs that they played every Sunday before chapel. It's John Michael Montgomery's "Letters From Home" and pretty much guaranteed to make you cry if there's ever been anyone you cared about in the military (not even males are immune). The first couple weeks, you cry because it makes you homesick, the rest of the time, you cry because you know how true it is. (It doesn't sound quite right without an Air Force "hooah!" after every time he says "letters from home", though!)

John Michael Montgomery - Letters From Home

~Sh@wn~ | MySpace Video

"My dearest son it's almost June
I hope this letter catches up with you, and finds you well.
It's been dry but they're calling for rain,
and everything's the same old same in Johnsonville.
Your stubborn old daddy ain't said too much
but I'm sure you know he sends his love."
And she goes on, in a letter from home.

I hold it up and show my buddies
like we ain't scared and our boots ain't muddy,
and they all laugh like there's something funny 'bout the way I talk
when I say "Mama sends her best y'all."
I fold it up and put it in my shirt,
pick up my gun and get back to work,
and it keeps me drivin' on,
waitin' on letters from home.

My dearest love it's almost dawn.
I been lying here all night long
wonderin' where you might be.
I saw your mama and I showed her the ring.
Man on the television said some things, so I couldn't sleep,
but I'll be alright, I'm just missin' you,
and this is me kissing you.
X's and O's, in a letter from home.

I hold it up and show my buddies
like we ain't scared and our boots ain't muddy,
and they all laugh cause she calls me "honey"
but they take it hard, cause I don't read the good parts.
I fold it up and put it in my shirt,
pick up my gun and get back to work,
and it keeps me drivin' on,
waitin on letters from home.

Dear son, I know I ain't written
and sitting here tonight alone in the kitchen it occurs to me
I might not have said it so I'll say it now.
Son, you make me proud.

I hold it up and show my buddies
like we ain't scared and our boots ain't muddy
but no one laughs, cause there ain't nothing funny when a soldier cries,
and I just wipe my eyes.
I fold it up and put it in my shirt,
pick up my gun and get back to work,
and it keeps me drivin' on,
waitin on letters from home.

Thank you

Crossing Into the Blue

2009-10-13T00:36:00.000-07:00

See you in nine weeks!

Prayers, thoughts, and letters are all greatly appreciated. Talk to my mom if you'd like my address while I'm gone.

Thanks for all the support and encouragement! I will miss you all until I get back!!

Good News/Bad News

2009-10-07T17:21:00.001-07:00

Good News:
My orders are supposed to be in by noon tomorrow and I am definitely, 100% going to Basic next week. ("You're bought and paid for, kiddo. Have fun!") I got lots of "helpful" advice over the weekend and even continuing into the week of how to best survive Basic. Frankly, I just want to get it over with. Anticipation is the worst, it's always better to just do it. Dive into the deep end and go!

Bad News:
I am sick. But I don't know what I have, other than a lot of coughing and a fever that comes and goes. I do have a slight headache, but that could also be due to either caffeine withdrawal or the fact that I just started my period, too, so I can't count that as a symptom. No upset stomach or achiness or fatigue (other than general results of Long Weekend Going Straight Into A Longer Week Syndrome and a PT test). Apparently most of the full-timers at the unit are sick - Recruiter went home early yesterday and when I stopped in to check on my orders today (I didn't actually go to work today, because of the fever, but I had a few things that had to be taken care of), the girls said both of them and the Chief were all sick, too. Yay. I don't FEEL sick most of the time, just when I'm coughing, but I also don't feel well either. All I gotta say is that it had better Go Away Fast! (My brother has already threatened me within an inch of my life if I don't graduate on time, something about vacation days burned. As much as I enjoy irritating my baby brother, I'm on his side about this one!)

Good News:
I passed the DO's test on space and JSpOC basics this weekend without studying. (Okay, I should have studied the JSpOC stuff more, because I should have gotten the highest score and didn't, much to the delight of the intel flight captain.)

Bad News:
I was one of only three people out of 18 who passed it. The student flight did an 8-hour crash course on Saturday (mostly just to see what we could handle). I lucked out in that I'd had most of it before, thanks to ERAU, but even my brain was about to explode by the end of the day and we didn't even get through all the material. Then the test was on Sunday morning. (I took it after everyone else, because I also had a PT test that morning. It's always a great morning when you get to walk into the DO's office and get "How was the test?" "I passed, Sir." "Good, pass this one.") We were kind of being guinea pigs, though, and some of the guys who just came back from tech school took it and didn't pass either. So we don't feel too bad about it. I think it was frustrating for some of them, though.

Good News:
I passed my PT test with scores good enough to not only get into, but graduate from Basic already. This is good because it means my scores will only get better during the 9 weeks I'm gone. (I missed getting a certificate by 1.25 points, sigh!) Also, my elbow didn't hurt. I mean, it wasn't thrilled, but frankly, my arms could be stronger, and it wasn't nearly the pain I used to have in it. More along the lines of "hey, wait, I'm working and I don't like work. Please stop? Well, okay, if you insist" instead of the "OMG STOP NOW OR I'LL MAKE YOU REGRET IT FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS!" that it would have been even six months ago. Maybe Basic will be survivable (and the delay in going was a good thing).

Bad News:
I still have to drop two minutes off my 1.5 mile run and learn how to do a pullup (not part of the standard PT, but used at Basic) if I want to even have a chance at being an Honor Graduate (they get an extra day pass into town with family and an extra ribbon). That seems like a lot. The extra pushups and situps I'll need I'm sure will come from the daily PT, but that's a lot of time to take off a run. Hm. Also bad is that my coughing started after doing the run outdoors. We weren't allowed to run outside on base (the air quality from the fire last week still sucked), so we drove out to a high school in Santa Maria. Frankly, I'm wondering if that's why I'm still coughing.

Good News:
I was able to take care of a few things that need to be dealt with before I leave today, despite trying to avoid the public as much as possible.

Bad News:
There is still a LOT to be done (not really, but it seems like it) before I leave, the least of which is cleaning the apartment. Sigh!

Now food and a hockey game if I can find one.

Wow!!!!!

2009-10-01T16:57:00.001-07:00

Completely stolen from Amie, but definitely worth the watch!!

California is burning again...

2009-09-30T20:02:00.001-07:00

Only this time, it's right near where I work:

This was taken from my building near the Lompoc Gate exit when it was still "small" (only 150 acres, I believe, at the time). I guess it started around 11:30a. We had INSANELY strong winds today, and apparently either a power line got downed or a transformer exploded (I've heard both, not sure which is true) right near the middle school which happens to be right across from the Main Gate (the area around has been under road construction ALREADY for a month now) and the highway that connects the base to Santa Maria. Most parts of the base lost power around the same time that it started (because, of course, that was the day that I was going to stay on base and eat, so NATURALLY the power is out everywhere there is food for me or gas for the car). My building lost power around 1:00p (only four of us had gotten back from lunch at that point) and the DO and Chief came back and sent us home around 1:30p. The problem, of course, being that THE HIGHWAY TO SANTA MARIA IS CLOSED so I end up either having to drive all the way to Buellton on the nice safe highway and then take the 101 up or take the Harris Grade road which is closer and more direct, but has NASTY hairpin curves. As in the "you misjudge this by the slightest speck and suddenly have an enormously good chance of going flying off a cliff" type curves. And everybody and their brother from base or base housing or trying to get to their kids is on both roads. So needless to say, it was slow going.

The news media says it's 50% contained already, so I'm hoping I can at least get in to work tomorrow morning. I just really hope my building doesn't burn - we JUST finished painting it over the weekend!

Almost Adopted Again

2009-09-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

While doing laundry last night, I was met quite deliberately at the bottom of the stairs by a small light grey feline. We (unfortunately) have several stray cats around the neighborhood, so I didn't really think anything of it and expected it to run as soon as it realized I was present. Instead, it followed me all the way to the laundry room AND back, rubbing against my legs and purring and demanding to be petted. Clearly not a usual stray. When we got up to the landing by my door, I could see that she (had some calico to her, so 99% sure about the sex) was older than "kitten" but not quite full-grown. I'd guess less than 9 months old, but that could depend on how long she'd been out on the street. I sat and petted her for a bit, and then (of course, because I'm a sucker) got a small bowl of cat food and one of the ratty old towels that pass for kitty blankets around here and set them outside for her. She tried to follow me directly into the apartment (which was NOT met kindly, judging by Teddie's sudden transformation into a three-foot round, hissing, spitting, growling furball - who knew he had it in him?!) but I was able to get her back outside again. (Teddie spent the rest of the night guarding the front door.)

I was in a hurry this morning and didn't think about the dish or blanket outside until I got two voicemails from my landlady, whom I had asked to drop off some paperwork. (I don't get phone reception in my work building, they just show up as voicemail.) The first was "Hey, I dropped off your paperwork like you asked. I noticed you have food and a blanket outside your door, did you lose your cat? Let us know - we don't really want food out to encourage all the strays around here, but we'd be happy to help you find your kitty."

The second was "I just called you five seconds ago, but wanted to let you know your kitty came home. I saw her earlier today and didn't realize she was yours, but she was sitting outside your door and crying, so I went ahead and let her in."

Um. Problem. Oh dear.

Luckily, it was already about 3:30p and Recruiter and I were just getting to the "we might just sit around and twiddle our thumbs because it's 3:30p on a Monday" point, so I raced home with visions of everything from carpets covered in fur and cat urine to (optimistically) a pair of cuddled up kitties to (pragmatically) two fight-injured felines and an expensive trip to the vet. I walk in the door and immediately start calling Teddie. I can hear him grumbling under the bed from the living room. I then notice a light grey blob on the couch. She was curled up, comfy as you please, right on top of my couch. She woke up when I came over to her, stretched as if she owned the place, and then came straight over to me like "Oh good! You're finally home! You may pet me now!" She's clearly fine, so I continued on my quest to find MY cat. He has evaporated into a pair of glowing green eyes in the farthest corner he can get to under the bed and is still grumbling and hissing any time she gets anywhere near, and of course, she's doing the "Oo, what are we looking at?!" routine.

I finally got her corralled into the old cat carrier and drag Teddie out from under the bed and check him over. He seems to be fine, although I think his pride is a bit wounded from getting caught hiding from a girl. He streaks back into another of his hideyholes the second I let him go, so now what to do with her? She's clearly used to being fussed over, and living indoors, ergo she probably has an owner. I am in NO position to form any kind of attachment, seeing as I leave two weeks from tomorrow and am having trouble finding someone to take care of the cat I already have. I don't have the space or time right now to properly introduce two cats to each other, not to mention the fact that I have no idea what the true health of the female actually is, so I didn't really want her around Teddie. (Even if she only had fleas, that would drive me nuts!)

I ended up taking her to the SB County Animal Shelter over on Foster Road. I hated to do it, but I needed to make sure she was both taken care of and healthy without paying vet bills, and I was really really hoping her owner had microchipped her and could be found and contacted. She is a sweet, sweet kitty, very beautiful (very light grey with flecks of orange throughout her coat and white mittens), and clearly intelligent enough to sniff out a sucker for cats. I'm going to put up fliers in the laundry room and mail areas of both apartment complexes and hope that her owner sees them. I explained my situation to the personnel at the shelter, and if she is unclaimed by the time I get back from Basic, I said I would be willing to adopt her.

We'll see.

Stripes

2009-09-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to take advantage of what should be my last free weekend before I leave. (I have drill next weekend and my ASCI 601 final the next weekend and I should be leaving the Tuesday after that. I'm also helping with the women's self-defense seminar at the dojahng in a few hours today, too.) There's so much to get done on top of all my regular weekend chores. Setting up finances for while I'm gone is going to be my primary goal. The nice thing is that I don't have to pack anything up, just make sure things are neat and clean and paid for. Still not completely sure what I'm going to do with Teddie - one of my PCPA friends had said she would take him, but this is their off-week between the end of the summer season and the start of the fall, so she's been out of town. I'm going to try to talk to her this coming week. I would really really prefer someone stay at the apartment with him rather than having him go through the stress of moving back and forth, but it is what it is, I guess.

To answer what a lot of people have asked me - Yes. Of course I'm a little scared. It's Basic Training, not summer camp. I'm a loner and I'm going to be forced to live with 50 other girls and no privacy for two months straight. I get frustrated when I don't know everything going into a class (yeah yeah), and now I'll have people yelling at me on top of that. I'm going to be older than probably 97% of my training flight. I want to reflect well on all the training I've had so far, both the informal military training I've gotten just from working with the units on base and the physical training and mental discipline I've gotten from martial arts. I definitely want the 216th to know I was worth it and will be worth it.

However, on the flip side of that, I also know that thousands of people before me have survived BMT just fine. I'm in pretty good shape and I already know what it feels like to be pushed past my limits. I have an extremely flexible comfort zone, it's not my first time living away from friends and family (in fact, some aspects of that should be easier, like no cooking!), I'm smart, and despite realizing that everyone's experiences there are different, I have a pretty good idea of what to expect. And, frankly, having met a lot of people who have been through BMT...well, if they can do it, I know I can, too. I'm not looking forward to it, by any means. I know it will be hard, maybe the hardest two months of my life, but eyes on the prize.

I want to earn the rank I've been claiming since January. I want to earn my stripes.

Whirlwind

2009-09-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

Really quickly, because I'm getting ready to head to FIGHT but I wanted to update y'all.

As of about 12:15p today, I am officially in the 216 Operational Support Squadron (still as an A1C, and still with several people scratching their heads about it, but we have a plan, it's all good). Before the ink was even dry (and I'm not sure that it all is quite now, there's a lot of signing and sending), they had me scheduled for Basic.

I leave three weeks from today.

My apartment's good (although if someone needs a place for the time I'm gone, I'm totally willing to negotiate), I'm getting a housing allowance that will more than cover my rent while I'm gone, but...anyone want to cuddle a kitty for me for two months?

Almost there

2009-09-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

1. Arm still hurts. It got jacked up again in class on Tuesday (the untrained are ALWAYS the most dangerous), hurt bad enough that I didn't go to class at all on Wednesday, and I only did kickboxing tonight. Blargh. (If Sir had been there tonight, I would have stayed, because it would have meant more grappling - which might have finally clicked for me - and less disarming and stretching of the arm, but he's gone for a few days and while normally I would not have any problems at all with Mr. R, the arm really couldn't have handled more PT tonight.)

2. Going hiking with some people from the 148th up near SLO tomorrow night. Should be interesting.

3. Have to talk to the commander tomorrow. New rumours say that all officer slots are filled with fully qualified people, but he'll still let me come to the 216th as enlisted (they are more than willing to get me trained ASAP and don't have a million schools dragging them down). Gotta find out what's going on with that. I wonder if they have any traditional officer slots available, if everyone is moving to full-time. I'd still be in training, and therefore gainfully employed in view of lots of civilian contractors for several months. Either way, I can't really lose. I can't really say that the 216th is a step up, because it's not better, it just has a different mission, and neither unit is better than the other, but I'm really much more interested in the JSpOC than the MILSTARs. And I'm going to (respectfully, for rank and because I like the guy) make it clear that I AM going to be an officer, if not now, then eventually, so I hope he likes seeing my name come across his desk.

4. Fringe and Bones are both awesome.

5. Knitting is starting to become fun again. About the only thing I've really been working on with any degree of progress has been the Twizzle scarf, and it's about 85% done. I just picked the afghan back up the other day, though. And found a pattern that I was trying to make up last year. I'm really glad other people are smarter than me.

6. Shower and bed time. One more day of getting up early (15 days in a row, I'd like to point out), and then the weekend. Recruiter is off tomorrow, so I think I'll [s]see how much trouble I can get into[/s] finish up a project for the Lt and maybe not work nine hours again like I did today (starting the project for the Lt). Anyone know Excel REALLY REALLY well?

Quick Explanation

2009-09-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of reasons why cell phones are annoying, mostly dealing with when other people are using them or people complaining about how "tied" to them we are. Valid points, of course. But I gotta say, being able to spend three hours watching the game with your parents from 2500 miles away without it adding a cent more to my regular phone bill - that's pretty cool. (I am still disappointed about both Ohio State and Purdue losing VERY close games to Pac-10 teams, though.)

So, the possible new job. (Keep in mind, this is just past the "this is what everyone would LIKE to see happen" stage and nowhere near "this is actually happening" stage. We're more in the "okay, we all agree this is what we want, now how can we make it happen?" stage right now.) I told y'all that I applied for a full-time job with the 216 that happens to include a commission. Well, I got pulled aside on Wednesday by the DO (the director of operations, the unit's second in command) to get told that he'd been looking, and Human Resources would not forward my resume/application to them because they did not feel that I met the qualifications. Fair enough, and pretty much what I was expecting to hear anyway. However, he asked me to check in with him later in the week to "brainstorm some options" because he wasn't sure that the enlisted job I've been planning on going into was really what would be best for me or either of the units.

I didn't get a chance to talk to him on Thursday, but I got a call from Recruiter after work giving me a heads up that the DO REALLY wanted to talk to me again. Sure enough, Friday morning, I had an email from him asking me to drop by his office. What it pretty much boils down to is that no, I am not qualified for the position I had applied for, they can't make me fit into that position, and it would be bad form to steal an enlisted member from one unit to do the same job at another unit at the same base. BUT, they like me, they really feel like I SHOULD be an officer, they know me and have seen me working and learning, and they feel it wouldn't be stealing an enlisted so much as offering someone an advancement opportunity if I could come to the 216 as an officer.

To fix this, they're trying to create a different full-time officer slot for me at the 216th. They've all but talked the commander into it; we're just waiting for his blessing on however they rework the positions, which should be this week. Major (of the field trip post) strongly hinted yesterday that I had better get my application package for commission ready ASAP because "you never know when a slot will open up and you'd really want to be ready if the commander just happens to find one." Recruiter and I started gathering everything up this weekend and are going to finish getting things together this week. I'm a little concerned with my AFOQT scores and would really like to re-take it, but I have to get some more feedback on that first.

So for right now, as far as anyone is officially concerned, I am still enlisted in the 148th and still slotted for Basic in February. And, if this doesn't work out, that won't change, so it's not like I'm losing anything. The 148th had their family picnic day today at drill, and we had a lot of fun. They're good people, with a good mission. But I can't really turn down an opportunity to try for a commission, or a really cool job that puts me directly in lines of view of LOTS of contractors.

What We Do

2009-09-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

That is seriously what the 216 OSS/614 AOC (our active duty sister unit) actually does. In fact, if the cards fall the way everyone is hoping, that will actually BE part of MY job! Of course, it's rarely that dramatic or holographic. I seriously doubt the JSpOC has background theme music, too. Of course, knowing some of the guys who work on the floor, well, let's just say it wouldn't surprise me. Details on the possible new job if/when it becomes official.

Btw, I actually think these "It isn't science fiction, it's what we do every day" commercials are kinda cool. I've only seen this one and the one with the Reaper (and, just FYI, the Guard flies those, too, out of Nellis), but they'd make me go "Wow, that's cool! Where do I sign up for that?!"

Her Package Arrived!

2009-09-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

My pal Mesanges over on Ravelry got her swap package today, so I feel comfortable in revealing some of my handiwork over the past couple weeks. Actually, it isn't much and didn't take very long, but I still like them. (Her pics on the thread are much better than mine, too!)

The poor girl's a Canadiens fan, so she got herself a new project bag:

that was filled with all sorts of small hockey/squirrel/swedish fish-related items (I'd never heard of Swedish Fish candy before this swap and now I see it everywhere!). Now you know why the teaser pic was from the top down into the bag - the stripe would have given it away! Btw, trying to find a Canadiens patch (which is what I really wanted to include) in this area of the world is a PAIN in the you know what (even sports memorabilia store owners looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head when I asked about hockey stuff, much less Habs). I knew my intarsia skills weren't good enough to try charting out the logo, and it would take too long to cross-stitch, so I was wracking my brain trying to think of what else I could do. I was wandering aimlessly in Michaels, trying to get some kind if inspiration, and landed in an aisle with those small plastic canvases of different shapes that kids use for needlepoint. Two packs of those and some stash yarn resulted in these:

Simple, fun, useable. (They're the sleeve stripes of the three teams she listed as her favorites. And a puck.) And now that I've remembered how to do needlepoint, I'm thinking I need some in old gold and black. And black, red, and white. And red, white, and blue. Hey, I could do a set for all of my teams. Hmm...

Anyway, I really had a lot of fun with this swap and I can't wait until the next one! (Although now I have to think of something NEW!)

Weekend Update

2009-09-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

I got my package finished for my hockey swap buddy! Well, I'm actually still waiting on one piece, but I whipped up some things to make up for it yesterday so I could get it over to the post office today anyway. (The final piece will get mailed along once it finally arrives!) Here's a sneak peek:

I also got MY package from my buddy (the lovely MadameX on Ravelry) Wednesday. I think it's pretty obvious how friggin' amazing it is:

Two skeins of a yummy purple mohair/wool blend called Kokopelli, a box of chocolate caramels (I don't ask questions, I just enjoy!), a Chinese jade trinket (for luck), a bunch of handmade Blackhawks-colored stitch markers, a really pretty green notepad, some Villainess body cream and soap (which smells amazing!) and this:

A 121-year-old ghost story from Boston, complete with illustrations! The story is copied out of the May 9, 1888 New York Times and those are all hand-drawn (and mounted) pictures! How cool is that?! I got thoroughly spoiled and have really enjoyed doing the spoiling, as well! (More pics of what I am sending - because I'm pretty proud of the handmade items - will be up after I confirm that spoilee has received it. I don't want to ruin the whole surprise!)

Got a four-day weekend going because of the holiday. I was going to go down to LA, but after the way I reacted to the fire smoke up here, I don't really want to subject myself to that again. So I'm just putzing around the house watching college football instead (Minnesota's getting creamed by Syracuse and sadly, the Ohio State/Navy game is more interesting. I can't get the Purdue game, of course), maybe hanging out with some friends later tonight. I did invite that guy to lunch, but our schedules don't mesh for it (South Base is a bit of a drive from Main Base). We're meeting up after work on Friday instead.

Classes this week were kind of hard - we did a full class of aikido on Wednesday night instead of tkd, which made my elbow seriously cranky with all the joint locks, and then grappling in FIGHT on Thursday. I hate grappling. I understand the importance of it, I really do (being on the ground in a fight is the WORST place to be), but I am seriously not built to work on the ground, other bodies literally on top of me make me uncomfortable (I have a rather large personal space bubble, even though Sir almost always pairs up Ma'am and I for groundwork so we don't have to work with the guys) and it makes me feel like an awkward turtle. Which, of course, is why I need to work on it, but doesn't make me enjoy it any more. At least we got to knife spar both Tuesday AND Thursday this week, though!

Alright, gotta run to the grocery store, get a litter tray for the kitty, and mail off my swap package. Have a good and safe weekend!

Quick Questions (mostly rhetorical)

2009-09-01T23:11:00.000-07:00

1.) Why is it that if people know you have a black belt, they automatically either think you're invincible/tough (and/or want you to "prove it") or at the very least should not be afraid of anything? I'm not bullet-proof or uninjurable, for heaven's sake.

2.) There's a guy in FIGHT I kind of like. I have his number, and we both work on base. I don't know if he's single or not, though. Invite him to lunch anyway? (Just as friends, of course - he works for a company that does launches and I'd be interested in just picking his brain even if he wasn't cute. Sadly, I've known him for a couple years now, so I can't play the complete idiot.)

3.) Why can't the postal service go faster? I'm still waiting on the last piece for my swap package that is supposed to go out by the end of the week.

4.) Why can't everyone just do their jobs the way they're supposed to? It would have saved us a trip down to Channel Islands on Monday if people would just do their friggin' paperwork and send it to the right people. I mean, I do realize it's the military and therefore any situation involving paperwork is going to get fubar'd quickly, but when even the military is complaining about it, ya gots youself a problem.

5.) Why can't Sept go a bit faster? Bones, NCIS, and Fringe all premiere in less than three weeks now!

6.) Why can't all midterms (and classes, for that matter) be as cool as the one I had this weekend? For that matter, why can't all jobs involve units that take "morale days" to go do their sworn duty to protect the golf courses on base, giving me a paid afternoon off?

and finally

7.) Why can't the cat friggin' earn his keep and at least pick up his own fur off the floor and furniture??

"Are you scared of the dark?
Are you afraid they'll break your heart?
Are you afraid you'll lose yourself?
Are you afraid of your own health?
Are you scared to lose?
Are you afraid to choose?
Are you afraid you'll win?
Are you scared of your own sin?
Are you scared to forgive?
Are you afraid to live?
Are you afraid to die?
Do you think you told a lie?

To live when you think you're dying?
To laugh when you feel like crying?
To stand when you think you're gonna fall?
It's just fear after all.
It's only fear after all.

Are you afraid you'll be alone?
Are you scared to pick up the phone?
Are you scared of the past?
Do you think that you might crash?
Do you think you're in too deep?
Are you afraid to sleep?
Are you scared there's no stability?
Are you afraid of your own fragility?

To live when you think you're dying?
To laugh when you feel like crying?
To stand when you think you're gonna fall?
It's just fear after all.
It's only fear after all.

To mend when you think you're breaking?
The strength when you know you're shaking?
To pray when your back's against the wall?
It's only fear after all
Are you scared of the end?
Are you scared to begin?
Are you scared of the start?
Do you think they'll break your heart?
Do you think they'll break your heart?

To live when you think you're dying?
To laugh when you feel like crying?
To stand when you think you're gonna fall?
It's just fear after all.
It's only fear after all.

It's only fear
The only fear is fear itself
The only fear is fear itself
The only fear is fear itself
It's only fear..."
-"Fear", Pauley Perrette/Stop Making Friends, NCIS Official Soundtrack

Back to 100%

2009-08-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

Woke up Monday morning and actually felt GOOD. I could breathe just fine without sniffling, I could sing along with the radio on the way to work, I wasn't worn out halfway through one class. It's soooo nice to be back to normal.

We started a new schedule at the dojahng this week. Two classes on Monday, one Tuesday, two Wednesday, two Thursday, one Friday now. The only problem I have with it is that it combines the adults and younger teens (12-15 year olds) again on Wednesdays and Fridays. Tonight was our first combined class and it was so crowded. It felt like there was barely room to move, and I'm not particularly excited about standing in lines to do drills instead of just hitting partners with pads. That might have been just a today thing, though. I understand the instructors wanting to get done a little earlier at night and making sure class sizes are decent, but it was soooo nice to not have to worry about kids in the class. They're just so breakable.

Got almost my whole package put together for my swap buddy. Just waiting on one more thing to get here and then I can send it off. Still working on the Twizzle scarf (almost done) and the afghan (almost have the second strip done). Haven't had a whole lot of motivation to knit lately, though.

Oh, and there seem to be a good chance that my temporary civ job at the 216th might turn into a semi-permanent one, at least until I go to whatever training I end up going to. Not sure yet, but at least Recruiter's back and I don't have to pretend to know anything anymore. Apparently I didn't let too many things go wrong while he was gone, though, which is nice to know. I also finally got all my finances organized (yay for paychecks that come on a regular basis!), I think, which is a huge relief.

Anyway, out for the night. Class this weekend, yay! (Although not looking forward to being on base at 9:00a or earlier for two weeks straight, but oh well.)

Thrown into the deep end, but still breathing

2009-08-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

Which is still kind of hard, but easier than even a few days ago (although I'm constantly starving and thirsty, which sucks). I only did four classes this week, and didn't make it to haganah at all, which is really sad. (Although, in all fairness, I will point out that I got partnered up with Sir for kickboxing on Thursday AND did the outside run in the smoke, which didn't help.) I did, however, end up floor conducting the belt test on Friday. I wasn't supposed to - I had told Sir earlier in the week that I'd help out with the test because I knew one of my classmates was testing for his third degree and they would need board holders and adult sparring partners - but the kid who was supposed to floor conduct had something come up at the last minute. I found out I was doing it when Sir introduced me to the testers. Nothing like surprises. I'd assisted Mr. R with it before, but never done it on my own. Sir told me afterwards that I'd done a good job, and he didn't think until halfway through that I had never done it before and he hadn't had to teach me like the kids who usually do it. All in all, it was fun, though.

Work was okay this week. Recruiter was gone almost all week, so I got a crash course in how to deal with (or, more commonly, find) a bunch of different kinds of files. I also found out that the 148th won't let me go to the November tech school (and therefore Basic next month) because of the followup tech school we have to go to. The February Basic date means that I will have to get separated (honorably) and then re-enlist because it will be more than a year since my date of enlistment. I can't get any of my benefits (enlistment bonus or GI Bill for school) until I've completed the initial training, and if I have to re-enlist, there is a chance that the bonus won't be available again.So I'm kind of ticked at them right now. Yay for more paperwork and more time wasted. And, my application for the commission got kicked back because I'm not ALREADY an officer (gotta love website applications), so I'm going to talk to the recruiter and maybe some of the officers at the 216th this week and find out what some options are. There might not be any - like I said, I know they're really wanting someone they don't really have to spend much time training - but it would be good to know that I've done everything I can to get it. Between that and the 148th right now....well, if the squeaky wheel gets the grease, I'm gonna be squeaking pretty loudly. What are they going to do? Kick me out? Oh wait, they're going to have to do that ANYWAY!

In knitting news, I'm in a hockey/knitting swap with some other members of the Puck This! group on Ravelry. My swappee is a Canadiens fan, which of course, is almost impossible to find stuff for around here. It's been challenging to hunt for stuff and come up with ideas. I think I have about half the package done now. I'm waiting/trying to find a few more things, and then I'll get it sent out.

New ERAU class next weekend with the general again. Can't wait!

Fringe Widget

2009-08-21T19:46:00.001-07:00

Weekend update

2009-08-15T09:15:00.001-07:00

I am REALLY over these fires. The smoke is creating havoc with my allergies and the whole breathing thing - you know, sort of important - is honestly quite painful right now. My nose is stopped up, so I have to breathe through my mouth, but I've been coughing so much that my throat hurts and so air down my throat isn't fun either. I would kill for a full night of easy-breathing sleep right now! Halls cough drops are a livesaver right now, but unfortunately, not smart to sleep with.

I finished most of the presentations I was working on last week. I don't know if they're any good or not - the only other person who has seen them that I know of is the recruiter, although I've asked a few others who know about the project to look them over if they get the time. I'm pretty pleased with two of them, on the fence about a third, and not really sure what else I can do with the fourth. I also got stuck doing a fifth one now, which the recruiter had told me not to worry about because he thinks it would be too difficult for me, but a couple other people have asked me to start and given me some ideas. It's not that it's difficult, it's just another of those "I'm not really sure what information they're looking for" situations, so I'm just going through all of the questions I had on that topic and trying to answer them. We'll see, I guess. It's not like they can kick me out for bad work - they technically aren't even my unit!

On that note, I'm also getting a LOT of "face time" with the unit command. Granted, it's a relatively small group, and with so few full-timers, it's hard to not see them, but it seems like any time the recruiter has any reason to talk to anyone, he drags me along. The DO (director of operations, the major who would be considered second in command, I guess. He's the one who actually took my Oath of Enlistment, so I knew he knew me by face but didn't realize he actually remembered my name) asked why I wasn't working up at the 148th yet. I explained what was going on with the temp job and training, and he wanted to know if I wanted to stay with the 216th after the temp job was over. I said I'd love to, but knew that the 216th doesn't take non-prior service 1C6s, so it sounded like I was stuck with the 148th for the time being. I did mention that I'd applied for the officer slot, even though I felt I was only barely qualified, but he said that working with the unit for a couple months would help that out a lot. (I'm idly wondering if that's also one of the reasons that I'm getting stuck doing all these briefings - the 216th IS a ultimately a training unit, after all) Now he's been telling people that "she's with the 148th, but we're going to steal her."

I'm REALLY trying not to get my hopes up for the commission - I KNOW the odds of getting it are not good, since they would really like to get someone they don't have to train so much - but it would be awfully nice. They're also still working on trying to get the ANG Space 100 class going for November, and it sounds like it might actually be a real possibility, which would send me to Basic really soon and therefore pretty much cut the odds of getting the commission for at least a year or two. Either way, it will be nice to get at least SOME training in so people would quit asking me why I'm not in uniform =P

On the other hand, for a "it'll just be answering phones and filing some papers" job, it's been kind of a steep learning curve. Nothing major, and it's not like I've been super busy or stressed, but it IS a little frustrating because the recruiter is gone a LOT and I don't really feel like I know enough to be able to really deal with things when he isn't there yet. Mostly, it's the fact that I don't know where to find a lot of the information that people are calling and asking for yet, or who to direct them to, so I take a lot of messages and cross my fingers that he'll be in soon enough not to frustrate them. I'm afraid to go too far because I'm NOT the recruiter and I don't have any authority (or clearance or contacts) to ask for certain things, but I don't like leaving people hanging either. He'll be gone most of next week, though, so I'm going to have to figure something out.

Anyway, in real life, I really like the new stuff in kickboxing and have learned that I am scared of tackles. It's the idea of falling, I think. And I landed wrong on my knee the other night - didn't hurt the knee itself, but landed right on the nerve and my whole leg sang for the next hour or so, and it's all sorts of bruised now. Helping out with testing next weekend, but just holding boards, I think.

Oh, and go see Music Man in Solvang!! I saw it last night and it is SO MUCH FUN!! Definitely worth the drive. They close next weekend, though, so hurry!!

Off to run errands. Have a good weekend!

Fast note

2009-08-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

Getting up at 7:00a, working from 8:30a-4:30p (with a lot of flexibility, I'm really done when the recruiter gets bored for the day, which varies a lot), driving back to Santa Maria, changing clothes, and doing two martial arts classes that are at least 45m long each (we're the last class of the night, so our end time gets a little, um, flexible sometimes) will really wear you out. I am more exhausted, and oddly, hungrier at the weirdest times. I'm eating breakfast, then am starving by lunch, which is usually around 11:00a, but sometimes not until 1:00p, usually have a small snack like a baggie of trail mix or a granola bar around 2:30p or 3:00p, am starving again by 5:00p, so I grab a small meal (pb&j, string cheese, fruit cup, usually), then hit class. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I'll also grab something small in between classes, but either way, I'm very rarely actually hungry when I get home afterwards. Not like I used to be. I'm thinking about maybe even eating a real dinner around 5ish on Tuesdays/Thursdays, but not sure how well that will sit in my stomach with class starting at 6:30p. I'll try it and see.

On top of the new work schedule, there's a new kickboxing workout with a lot of MMA-style floor work, we sparred in tkd last night, worked tackles in FIGHT and did pretty close to 100 lunges in various angles, and worked kicks tonight in tkd. It's so odd to say it, but it's 11:00p and I'm tired (and walking tomorrow should be interesting)!

Anything But Ordinary

2009-08-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

If you look, you will see
That this world is a beautiful accident
Turbulent, succulent, opulent, permanent, no way
I wanna taste it
Don't wanna waste it away
...
Is it enough to love?
Is it enough to breathe?
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed.
Is it enough to die?
Somebody save my life!
I'd rather be anything but ordinary, please!
-Avril Lavigne, "Anything But Ordinary"

One of my friends: So...you're a magic ninja who works with top-secret space stuff?! You know that makes you sound like a Bond girl or something out of a bad action script, right?

The end of the week was nice. You forget how nice it is to occasionally share actual real meals with people. Yesterday, I had lunch with MSgt. P who was working days down on main base while she took some class or other for her master stripe (she doesn't read this, but belated congrats anyway!). Then today was the major I met at my first drill's birthday, and Chief invited me along to lunch with them. It ended up being about seven of us total at this burger place in Lompoc, and it was fun to get to know some of the girls a little better. Another girl and I rode with Chief and Major on the way back and we got talking about how Major used to work the range (launches) and VAFB was intended to be an alternate launch site for the shuttle and he ended up taking us on an impromtu tour of some interesting places on the base. For instance, a canyon road where the rock sides actually got cut down and all of the road signs are seriously short so the shuttles' wings could fit as it was transported to SLC (space launch complex, pronounced "slick") 6 on South Base and another place on North Base where a Titan II missile had exploded in its silo back in the 60's (the damage is still pretty impressive!). I thought it was pretty cool, anyway (one of my friends just told me it sounds like it was a "nice nerd moment". It was!). I even got to prove I knew at least something about space when he was explaining something about the dynamic pressure affecting the rockets and I could speak almost intelligently about q-limits and knew what max-q was. Major was really encouraging about the fact that I'd applied for the officer slot, which made me feel slightly less stupid for even considering it much less doing it. Chief just groaned and muttered something about how the commander at the 148th was going to have his head on pike. I didn't quite catch all of it ;-)

The recruiter was actually out all day yesterday and most of the day today, so I got stuck with starting to create some briefings for the student flight (does it bother anyone else that I am IN the student flight??). I have absolutely NO idea what kind of information they want on some of them or even what format they want, though, so I'm just doing "information shells", making them look readable and at least somewhat interesting to look at, and letting the higher-ups fill in the blanks. Apparently there are advantages to having to do presentations constantly in ERAU classes - creating BS presentations is a breeze, assuming you can find the info, of course =P (Recruiter threatened to have me give the briefings, too, but I'm 99% sure he was joking. He'd better be, anyway...)

Went to kickboxing but skipped FIGHT last night. I was just too bloody tired and my arm started bugging me again. I did get to see F before I left, though, and got a hug from him. He hasn't been in class for a while. This weekend is going to be about cleaning, though. I cleaned the bathroom and most of the kitchen this evening, so I'm proud of myself. I also hit the halfway mark with the final strawberry recipe today:
the strawberry vodka. The (really quite scary looking - apparently vodka leeches color) berry/vodka mixture got squished within an inch of its life, resulting in this (much tastier looking) liquid which then got mixed with about a cup of a thin sugar syrup. The whole thing fit quite nicely into the original (clean!) vodka bottle - although I don't have a narrow-spout funnel. I have a turkey baster, though, and it worked, albeit more slowly. (WHY I have a turkey baster is beyond me, as I've never prepared or cooked any whole fowl in my life, and I'm always looking for a funnel. Weird.) Anyway, it has three more weeks of sitting there looking pretty and then it's "done." I don't know if it will get stronger or weaker with the sitting, but I'm hoping weaker, because right now one shot could knock out an elephant, and just the fumes would probably at least get one pulled over for a DUI.

Tomorrow is vacuuming and laundry, even though my dresser has decided it no longer wants to hold its drawers, so I'm not quite sure what to do about that or what to do with the laundry once it's clean. Hrm. After that, I'm planning on a Leverage mini-marathon and either some cross-stitch or (I hope!) some knitting!!

Honest Hours

2009-08-05T22:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry, no pics or anything fun this week. I've been slowly readjusting to working days again. Getting up hasn't really been too bad, but going to sleep at a reasonable hour has been. I'm just hardwired to be sleepy around 2:00a, which doesn't work out so well when you have to get up at 7:00a. (Okay, so I usually don't get out of bed until 7:15a or 7:20a, because I take my showers at night after class. That way all I have to do in the morning is wash the face, brush the teeth, put on makeup, get dressed, and eat breakfast. The hair mostly sort of complies.) The work itself has been interesting. I'm learning far more about enlistment and retention paperwork than I ever really wanted to know, frankly, but it's always cool to be able to help out and feel useful again.

It's also been nice to get to work more with the full-timers down at the 216th. They're going to TRY to get a special Space 100 class (my first tech school) set up that is entirely ANG members (both 216th and 148th). IF they can get it set up for November, like they really want to, the 216th is going put as much pressure as they can on the 148th to ship us two non-priors to Basic around the end of this month. On top of THAT, being in the know with the recruiter means that I found out that there was an officer slot that opened up in the 216th and I was encouraged (and did) apply for it. I don't have any real hope of getting it (although the recruiter really wants me to, and a couple of the officers have already asked if I can stay at the 216th), but I know the two officers that, should I get that far, I would interview with, which is nice.

And I really thought this was amusing. Recruiter is out of the office tomorrow and so we made up a to-do list of things that I could handle while he was gone. One of the big things? Creating briefings for the student flight for drill weekends. I'm creating the presentations that I'm going to be sitting through!

Not a lot of knitting this week - just haven't been home or awake long enough! On base for nine hours, either come home and change or go straight to the dojahng, double classes, light dinner, and then trying to relax enough to crash (which I should be doing now). I now understand weekends a little more, ha!

Ink and Field Trip!!

2009-07-31T18:15:00.000-07:00

To get it out of the way and quell any raging curiosity, despite a bit of nerves but lots of support and great advice from friends like Gil, Inky, Crystal, and the Tattooed Knitters' Group on Ravelry, I did actually go through with the tattoo this afternoon (much to the surprise of a couple friends).
I absolutely LOVE it! We (the artist, Chrissy at Copper Coffin, and I) decided on all black because of the fine lines rather than trying to work color in and potentially ruining it. I really love the simplicity of it - her initial design was really gorgeous (you can see the remains of the stencil of it a little in the pic - I was THAT close to getting that one!), but a lot more complicated and curvy and in the end, I just couldn't do it. We had to go back to the drawing board for about an hour before we settled on this one (based on an image we found online) but once we hit on it, I was totally ready. And, before anyone asks, I won't say it was the most pleasant experience of my life, but it didn't really hurt, either. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being a "what was that?" and 10 being a "omg, please kill me now!", it was about a 2.5. It got slightly higher than that only once or twice, but never for more than a second or two, but Gil's suggestion of "ceremony" helped. I'm super happy with it and can't wait to show it off! Several of my friends have teased me that tattoos are addictive, but it took a year of pondering and almost another full year to be absolutely sure of what I wanted, so while I'll never say never, I'm not forseeing another tattoo in near future. I love this one, it's exactly what I wanted, and another image is going to have to stay in my head for at least that long again to make me want it.

In my quest to amuse myself when not on base, and also because I've been researching some of the local history (the local library has some really good books), I took myself on a low-cost ($5) field trip on Tuesday. Inspired by some pretty pictures of the place from a book on local ghost stories (one of the main reasons I'm looking into local history), I decided to head south and see Mission Santa Barbara up close and personal:
Mass is still held there certain days of the week, and you can tour the cemetery with its super old grave markers in both English and Spanish (which, of course, is something I had never really thought about before), but most of it is now a museum and really interesting. I learned, for example, that the girl that the story "Island of the Blue Dolphins" (which I sort of vaguely remember reading in early grade school, but am more familiar with it because it was one of our Outreach shows last year) was real and was taken from San Nicolas island to the mission to be cared for after she was "rescued". (Considering she died from an illness seven weeks after her rescue, and she had survived something like seventeen years on the island by herself, not sure if it actually did her any good, unfortunately.)

The gardens were small, but I saw this plaque and thought Mom would like it:

"He even said that the brother gardener ought to reserve a place in a corner for a beautiful small garden where he put all kinds of aromatic herbs & flowering plants so that they, in their season, might invite all men who looked at them to praise God. For every creature says & proclaims "God has created me for you, O man!" - St. Francis of Assisi

And despite the ghost stories, I found it a very peaceful place to spend a lovely sunny afternoon. I took tons of pictures, but one in particular has something interesting. This is a picture of the original central altar of the mission. It has been restored, but it is kept off to the side of the main chapel (which is quite lovely, btw) in a small alcove for preservation reasons. It is the only thing in the room and takes up about 85% of the space. There is no glass around it - visitors are kept back by a simple velvet rope across the doorway. Flash photography is not allowed. I took three pictures of the altar from the same angle, but only one had this white splotch on the right side.

Not being any kind of photography expert (if it's more complicated than point and click, it's not mine), it's got to be some lighting thing, I'm sure. But I did think it was interesting that it didn't happen in any of the others.

No real knitting news. I'm working on the third square of the second strip, and Baby S saw me working on the Twizzle scarf with TKD Grandma between classes on Monday and decided that he "want to knit!" He climbed up next to me and I'd wrap the yarn around the needle and let him pull the new stitch off the old needle. It was pretty cute - he was in one of those rare cuddly but still happy moods that are so sweet to be around. My knuckles were hurting a little this week, though, so I put down the knitting and picked up the Noah's Ark cross-stitch for a few days. I almost have the current page of the chart finished!! Only, um, seven more pages to go...yes, it's HUGE, for a cross-stitch project!

Picked up a couple new pairs of slacks that actually fit and have all the paperwork ready to start working on base on Monday. We're going to get my computer access taken care of during drill this weekend (hopefully, anyway), and the guys at the unit seem pretty happy to hear that I'll be there more frequently. It sounds like I'll be splitting time between the building the 216th is in and 11777 (Eleven Triple Seven), which is the main operations building on base. It will be nice to have a real schedule, a real (if temporary, but they're working on that) job, and be around some new people!

Honesty is the best policy...

2009-07-26T17:09:00.001-07:00

I am quite aware of the fact that certain family members read this blog and also have an online presence (or can persuade some of my rl friends into talking) and will eventually find this out anyway. In the interest of total honesty (and in the safety of being free, American, over 21, and 2200 miles away), I will be the first to say this.

I am getting a tattoo.

I have been wanting one for several years now, but could never think of any particular image that I felt really suited me. Then, ever since this day back in October, one image has stayed with me. A phoenix. Rising from the ashes. A fresh start. A reminder that getting burned isn't the end, and that something beautiful and strong can come from it. Maybe it's a little grandiose, but it's really how I feel. I'm really truly rebuilding my life and I want that reminder for me now and in the future.

I decided that I would set aside only up to $5 a week for it, figuring that it would take about 8 months to save up enough for what I'd heard was a reasonable charge for one, and if I still wanted the tattoo enough to not have spent the money at that point, it wasn't just a fleeting whim. It took a little longer than I had wanted, but that gave me more time to think and be certain.

I'd also been spending the intervening months researching images to find one I liked, or liked enough to be able to work from. I'm actually not a huge fan of birds as a rule, so I knew pretty early on that it would be more of a stylized symbol (which I am a huge fan of) than an actual picture. Something a little "earthy" but still graceful. And something small and easily covered when necessary, but that could also be shown off appropriately (without dropping any clothing, for example). I've often admired Mrs. S's tattoos (she has some really pretty ones), so I asked her for a suggestion of where to go and who to talk to. She recommended the people at Copper Coffin, which, as it turns out, is just down the street.

I checked the place out today (not that I don't trust Mrs. S, but you know). It's extremely clean and bright and surrounded by other clean, bright businesses. The people who work there were very friendly, listened to what I wanted, and were very helpful. One of the ladies is going to do some drawings for me, and I'm really excited to go back on Thursday to see what she's come up with.

So, basically, this post is just to let everyone who might care know that I'm not trying to hide anything, and this is something that I've thought about carefully and for quite a while now. I'm actually really excited about it, and will post a pic of it when I can!

Change of Plans

2009-07-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

Basic got pushed back (right now) to February 22. It seems the higher-ups at Channel Island won't approve the split training option and are saying that I have to do Basic, Space 100 and MILSTAR all consecutively. Since the ONLY Space 100 class is in April, that kind of defines when I go to Basic. And since the MSgt who has been dealing with all my paperwork is on leave until next week, and the TSgt who has been trying to handle things in her absence is really being very helpful but doesn't have quite the pull she does, who knows what's really going on. Right now, Channel Island is saying that as soon as this paperwork is submitted, the February date is all but set in stone. I'll believe that when I see it.

I'm discouraged, but looking on the bright side of things. Sir cackled madly when I told him he'd be stuck with me until February, which has me a bit worried. (Okay, he sympathized with my frustration and claims I'll be "15 steps above everyone else" once I finally get there. Class was a little goofy tonight - just me, Sir, and two of the guys. We even did a little bit of grappling - although that definitely seems to be more of a guy thing. I was partnered with Sir, though, and he had to keep an eye on the guys, so that could be it, too.) I can finish out at least one more full semester at Embry-Riddle and get that much closer to my degree. I don't have to worry about what leaving, coming back, leaving, and coming back again will do to the TeddieCat. Starting Monday, I have a job that will last me at least through September. Life could most definitely be a lot worse.

On the other hand, I do have to go shopping for at least a couple pairs of slacks and some tops for work. Yay =P

ETA: So, the new job won't start until Aug. 3 now because the paperwork didn't get to the East Coast guy (no idea why it has to go there, but it does, apparently) until today. Grr!

Just Pile It On!

2009-07-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

Me: So, should I keep working on the Songham form or focus on learning the new form? What should I focus on?

Sir: Well, the one is muscle memory. You already know it. Keep working on that one.

Me: But we're going to be working on the new one in class?

Sir: Yup. You know what? The midterms will depend on how much of it I know, so I'll let you know. Work on both of them.

Me: *mental facepalm* Cool!

Sigh. I'd been hoping to be able to test for my second degree before I left for Basic. I have one more midterm before my rank test. Not only have I been working on a new weapon form, but I have a new open-hand form to learn now, too! Doesn't look like I'll be midterming or testing again any time soon. Although, in all fairness, I think I have 95% of the form already. We've gone through about 3/4 of it in class already, and I know the next sequence is just the reverse and repeat of one of the earlier ones. There's just one sequence at the very end that Mr. R showed me tonight while I was waiting to talk to Sir after class that I hadn't seen at all. It includes what I would call a "ground windmill", which looked really hard, but then he showed me how to do it and it was super easy. That's the kind of stuff I like about these forms, though. They're pretty easy to pick up and they feel very natural. And, like I said, they look pretty cool. I'm totally willing and excited to learn (and possibly midterm/test) with either or both of the open-hand forms, so I'm making sure that I write the new one down as I learn it, in case I don't get to test before I leave. I want to be able to remember it!

It never rains, but it pours...

2009-07-21T22:45:00.000-07:00

14 October 2009. The date I ship out for Basic. Yay! I don't have the actual orders themselves yet, so this isn't a firm, set-in-stone date, but that's what they're putting me in for. It's good to at least have that much! I can't get into a tech school until April, though, but I think that will work out for the best. I'll go to Basic, come back for about four months (I should be able to go home for Christmas even!), then go to Vandenberg from April until probably September or October. The time frames work out so that they cover major busy seasons for PCPA, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to sublet my apartment out to a guest artist or two. But I have dates for Basic! Yay!!!

AND, on top of that, I got a job on base!! My recruiter's admin assistant is on orders for August and September, and he asked me to fill in for her! Yay! A regular 8:30-4:30, M-F job that pays almost well enough to live on!! I am SOO excited!! Well, okay, maybe "excited" isn't the right word. "Relieved" and "eager" are probably both better.

Knitting-wise, I have the first strip of the afghan completely done and seamed and am working on the second square of the next one. I gotta say, this is one of the instances where sites like Ravelry shine. It's REALLY cool to be working on this with the actual designer a post away to discuss things like the color combinations and get her input on techniques. And she's in the UK! Anyway, it's pretty cool. I'm still working on the scarf, too, and still love it. I'll finish a square for the afghan, block it, and while it's drying I'll work on the scarf. It's a system that works.

Sir's started teaching the current black belts the Ki Nung recommended black belt form (he said he doesn't quite have all of the actual black belt form yet, but he wants us to start getting a feel for the new style). It's really kind of fun - axe kicks and circle blocks and leg sweeps - and really does have a nice flow to it. I like it a lot, but there's a double round kick (the same kick that is in my regular form) that for some reason is REALLY hurting my hip and I've lost the ability to do a round kick higher than someone's knee with my right leg this week. Really irritating. Going to work on it tomorrow. I'm also going to make sure that I work on my Songham forms tomorrow. We've been working on the Ki Nung forms so much that I haven't gone through my regular form in class for a couple weeks now. I worked on my ssahng jeol bahng form a few times between tkd and FIGHT tonight, but I ended up spending most of that time helping Ma'am and Mr. M with the new form.

Anyway, I'm celebrating with an ice cream sundae. It's been a good day!

One Small Step...

2009-07-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

July 20, 1969.

"You can't tell me the sky is the limit. There are footprints on the moon!" - Anonymous

Strawberries

2009-07-16T17:14:00.001-07:00

Okay, I like strawberries, which is good considering the region I live in. However, one of my friends heard that I occasionally make strawberry jam and decided to bring me some berries, which was really sweet of her. TWO FLATS of strawberries! So now, since Sunday, I have been desperately finding ways to use up strawberries before they go bad (other than the obvious smoothies, milkshakes, and straight-up sugared options). So far, I've come up with these (links will take you to recipes or approximations thereof):
Strawberries & Cream bread. I'm not a big fan of fruity breads as a general rule, but MAN, is this stuff good!! Strawberries and walnuts, yummy!! I made two loaves and took one to the theater to feed the animals (they're in tech for Music Man atm, so I figured people could use the sustenance), cut one in half to bring into the dojahng tonight and kept the falling-apart-bits for myself, because, well, I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of all of it. (The trick to this one is make sure you have FRESH berries - frozen ones will make it soggy.)
The refrigerator's stash so far - two Strawberry Cheesecake Trifles (which are also quite yummy and also got sent to the theater), a pitcher of strawberry lemonade (I guessed and just used my standard lemonade concoction plus a cup of strawberries mostly crushed. I haven't tried it yet.), a Strawberry Strawberry Pie sans Cool Whip (I was going to send this to the theater, but it looks too good to give up. Sorry! I'm going to add the Cool Whip as I eat it, because I don't want to waste it), and a gallon-sized bag of whole berries that are going to Mrs. S tonight, because she was silly and said that she'd take some.
The pantry's strawberry stash - a dozen jars of jam (a couple will go to said friend) and the start of a strawberry liquour (which seems to end up being a sweet strawberry vodka, but it takes about six weeks, so we'll see). And the sad part? All of those recipes only used up ONE FLAT! I still have these to freeze and use later:
Three full quart bags, half a dozen "snack" bags, and the gallon bag that's going to the dojahng today. I had to clean out my freezer to make room, which was probably a good thing, but still. I'm really really sick of strawberries right now. They don't even sound good anymore. Where's the chocolate??

And, in knitting news, I have almost an entire strip done on the afghan:
It actually photographs a lot better than it looks irl, I think. You see more of the optical illusion in the pictures anyway. I think having the next strip, with the dark purple framing the squares from underneath, will help it more. I do like, it though. There's one more square to go in this strip (now that I'm done with strawberries, maybe I'll finally get a chance to knit again!) and then four more strips after this one, all with the grey squares growing slightly in size. I think this will be pretty cool when it's done.

Also, here's the start of the new Twizzle scarf:
It's a Diagonal Lace Scarf (Mountain Colors' pattern), super super simple lace, and shows off the yarn REALLY well. Unfortunately, the camera doesn't - the yarn is actually much much more royal purple than shows in the picture. I love love love this color! I haven't worked on the scarf since the flight back to Cali (again, stupid strawberries), but I'm looking forward to putting a little love into it this weekend.

I finally got a chance to ask Sir about my midterm the other night. He told me that my open-hand form was easily a "full grade up" this time compared to last time. He said that I looked much more confident with it and he was really pleased with it. I said that I'd been nervous because it had felt super-exceedingly slow (I finished my form dead last out of my group, and I was grouped with two second degrees whose forms are slightly longer), but he said that it timed out right where it should have. So now I have to work on keeping that up and not getting nervous and speeding up. I've also learned my entire ssahng jeol bahng form (Mr. R taught me the first half before I left for Illinois and I taught myself most of the second half - it's the same moves just left-handed - before coming back to tkd class on Monday) and Sir's had me working on that almost exclusively so far this week. It's a...different...weapon to get used to. You definitely have to be smooth with it, and, well, that's hard for me to say the least. He's given me a couple drills to work on besides the techniques in the form, though, and it's easy to work on at home (as long as you keep it in your hands and it doesn't go flying...ahem...). It also gets a LOT of outside attention from people walking by the school, which is unnerving but I'm trying to make myself get used to it for when I midterm. I still kind of like the bahng mahng ee form better, but I have a while before I have to decide which one I want to use to test.

Also, things haven't seemed quite so "they're all picking on me!" lately (although I did get Mrs. S on my case last night with both distance from the bags and then not holding the medicine ball correctly during floor work) but then, like I said, I've also been pretty exclusively working with a new weapon which deems lots of mistakes rather necessary. It's been really nice having just adults in the regular tkd class - we actually have ROOM now!! Sir, Mrs. S and Mr. R also went to a huge convention last week and brought back what sounds like a lot of cool ideas (Mrs. S said something about a Cardio Fight program, which she said was kickboxing, jujitsu and something else, that she's looking into for the kickboxing class and we've had some new drills in the other classes). Sir told us last night that there's a very strong possibility that we're going to be gradually shifting away from the Songham style to a style called Ki Nung (I think, I can't get the website to come up right now), because he feels their form techniques flow better into sparring and self-defense, but he's still doing some research on it. He showed us the white/orange/yellow belt form last night, and I gotta say, it looks a lot cooler and more fun than the Songham one. (Because the coolness factor clearly decides everything in martial arts! ;-) ) Anyway, that should be interesting in the coming weeks.

Speaking of class, gotta jet to make kickboxing!

Catching up

2009-07-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

Oy! I am alive, I promise. I've been busy, but not a lot to actually talk about. In knitting news, I have about 5.5 squares of the afghan done. The original design is a 5x5 pattern, but that's only about 40"x40". My favorite cuddle-up blanket is approximately 40"x60", so I'm thinking about a 5x7 layout. The seaming isn't insane if you do it as soon as a square is finished, and I can tell that I've actually gotten better at seaming, particularly since the first time I did a modular afghan. (Although, honestly, I think the difference in yarns helps - smoother yarns are SO much easier to seam with.) I also picked up another skein of the delectable Mountain Colors Twizzle at a LYS near my parents' house earlier this week and started another scarf. Not that I really need yet another scarf - I count six handmade and three store-bought scarves plus my Lady Eleanor hanging in my closet right now - but I swear this yarn actually glows. I love working with it!

I spent the Fourth with my parents. It was great spending time with everyone back in Illinois, despite my dad having an almost-very-scary-but-at-least-I-come-by-my-stubbornness-honestly accident (he's okay), and even the weather cooperated for once. I got to spend time with my family and even got to meet Miss Gretchen Danielle, the recipient of the latest baby blanket, when she was just over a week old! (She didn't seem too impressed with the blanket, but it's hard work being a week old! You forget how tiny they are at that age, though.) I did indeed get to sit with Friend and Mrs. Friend on the way back to Vegas and it was fun to catch up with him face to face.

I came back in time to pull another graveyard shift with Sgt. P up at the 148th and meet my new NCOIC, who seems to be very helpful. Everyone up there, actually, has been really great. The 216th is also continuing to help me out, too. I walked in yesterday after class (more on that in a minute) and a SMSgt. randomly had me start one of the programs I need for my computer access. About the only thing I haven't been able to get is a date for Basic yet. EVERYONE seems to be asking me about it at this point. It seems to be held up by two things right now - lack of slots until October (they can start applying for those slots in August, though, so hopefully I will know something next drill), and the fact that my SMOD physical (which I need to get into tech school and took back in March) still hasn't gotten processed from Channel Islands and the MSgt at the 148th won't send me to Basic until she can guarantee that I can get into Tech School. However, by the time I actually GET to Basic, I should have my security clearance, my access badge, computer access, and enough time in rank that I can get promoted to Senior Airman after graduation, which my NCOIC is looking forward to =P

Like I said, I had class this weekend. Nothing like having a general tell you that he expects you personally to get 100% on his midterm. No pressure. I ended up with a 98% on the midterm and a 99% on the final. The presentation this term seemed a little easier - maybe I am actually getting a little more comfortable with them. Mine was on the SR-71 Blackbird, so I think the subject matter helped. The general's teaching again next term, which is cool.

At any rate, I've had a rather long week, with only two martial arts classes in twelve days to take off the edge (although both Ma'am and Mel helped me out with my new weapon form between classes Thursday and I think I might have the whole thing at least in theory now), so I'm going to take myself off to bed. Big plans for tomorrow include seaming the next square, doing laundry, cleaning the apartment, exploiting some potential job links, kickboxing, tkd (with my new weapon), and making a bunch of strawberry jam. Damn fruit stand sales...

Traveling

2009-07-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

Two airports down, two to go! I love flying into Las Vegas at night - it's so fun! (Sadly, my pic of the view of the Strip from the runway was too blurry to show anyone. And the beam on the Luxor wasn't lit. Sad panda!) Unfortunately, McCarran airport is the one place in Vegas that actually sleeps at night. There are a couple guys my age or maybe my brother's who brought blankets with them, and a family behind me snoring loudly. Knowing myself rather well, I'm not going to deal with the terrible maybe two hours of sleep I'd actually get if I tried. I'll push through and either fall asleep on the plane (not very likely, unless it's as empty as the previous two flights have been) or just be up for 30+ hours and maybe go to bed at an almost-reasonable Midwest time. Of course, this is assuming that the flight into Atlanta isn't late (we all know how MY luck runs with those kinds of things) and I actually make the connection to Bloomington. The good news is that I didn't have to check any bags (even with my new ssahng jeol bahng in one, shhh!), so if the luggage doesn't make it this time, it's my own fault. Also, my ~~Atlantean~~ friend who lives in Atlanta (as he prefers to have it formatted) assures me that the Atlanta airport is very easy to get around in. I'm fully counting on the mathematical certainty that the distance from your landing gate to your connecting gate is inversely proportional to the amount of time you have to cover that distance, so I'm planning for about a mile and a half sprint. On the other hand, good knitting time is happening - I've finished the third square and am working on the second part of the fourth. And it's been interesting looking at planes and thinking about what we talked about in ASCI 603 last month. (Most commuter jets seem to be dihedral with high aspect ratios, in case anyone was wondering.) United is still my favorite airline, btw. The planes are always clean, shiny, the people treat me decently, there are still complimentary drinks and movies, and my absolute favorite thing - being able to listen to the flight deck communications. Yes, I'm a nerd, but I love it =)

Affirmation

2009-06-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument
I believe we place our happiness in other people's hands
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do
I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem
I believe I'm loved when I'm completely by myself alone

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold
I believe the struggle for financial freedom isn't fair
I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe forgiveness is the key to your own happiness
I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed
I believe that God does not endorse TV evangelists
I believe in love surviving death into eternity

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye
-"Affirmation", Savage Garden (video is meh. Older song, but still good.)

Not only did I pick up a new weapon for the absolute first time ever tonight, but I learned the entire first half of the form for it! It helped that I had Mr. R pretty much dedicated to me for the entire class - most people forgot the new schedule started today, so instead of an adult tkd class, we had me and two black belt kids (TKD Grandson and another kid whose name escapes me atm). We spent a couple minutes warming up, then Sir handed Mr. R a pair of ssahng jeol bahngs, told him to teach me the form, and went and worked some wrestling/jujitsu-styley stuff with the boys for the rest of the class. It's an...interesting weapon. Not my favorite, but I do have to admit it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be and I only hit myself a few times. I dropped it a lot, though, particularly on one move that I'm going to have to practice a lot, but both Sir and Mr. R told me I did pretty well with it. *I* think I did pretty good, considering it was the first time I'd ever even touched one and I didn't injure myself or anyone else with it! Now I just have to practice a LOT with it (surprisingly, it actually doesn't take much room, and you can do drills with it just walking out to your car and back without thinking too hard or looking too silly), and I'm trying to decide if I can get it on the plane with me tomorrow night so I can practice while I'm in Illinois....hmm...I'm trying to avoid checked luggage, given the fees and my track record lately, but it'd be worth it...

Knitting Pics!

2009-06-28T00:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, in whatever order Blogger decides to put them in, we have...

...the start of the Ten-Stitch Afghan:

...approximately 30% of the Miter Square Bag:

which will hopefully eventually look something like this (only knitted instead of crocheted):

...the first square of A New Angle afghan:

which, again, will hopefully end up in the general idea of this (designer's pic from Ravelry):

...and my finished baby:

Bear in mind that both pics are taken with the scarf folded in half. I'm telling ya, the thing is LONG!

Oh, and I did survive the midterm. Not sure if I did any better this time (it felt worse, but I didn't forget anything that I know about), but at least it's over. And I got to play with Baby S during the subsequent open house, which was nice, since he'd been acting a little scared of me recently, and we're not sure why. Oh well, I guess one can't be too scary when one is dueling with balloon-swords with goofy hats made from more balloons!

Epic Hilarity - What Are The Chances??

2009-06-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

I have a friend in Atlanta that I obviously don't get to see much, although we have a standing joke about coming over for dinner and bar crawls. He and his wife are traveling to Vegas next month, and we were looking at the possibility of meeting up there, but I wasn't going to be able to afford a whole weekend trip to Vegas thing. And then this conversation came along today (screennames deleted to protect the not-so-innocent and slightly edited for length):

Me: so I'm apparently flying through both Vegas AND Atlanta in order to get to Nowheresville, Illinois
Me: please tell me how that makes sense in the slightest
Friend: How long you gonna be in Atlanta for?
Me: hopefully about an hour
Friend: aww, not nearly long enough.
Friend: I've made trips down to the airport to catch a lunch with somebody flying through before.
...
Me: I'll be overnight in Vegas on the 1st/2nd, but only there for an hour or so on the 8th, flying back
Friend: ...
Friend: the eighth is when we're flying in.
Friend: what time?
Me: are you flying Airline?
Friend: yes.
Me: if we're on the same flight, that'd be freaky
Friend: I'm going to laugh my balls off if we're... yeah.
Friend: That'd be epic hilarity.
Friend: Airline ABCD, leaving at X:YZpm and arriving at H:IJ local.
Me: uhh...let's see, oh my god
Me: are you serious??
Friend: yes.
Friend: rofl
Me: hahahahahahaha
Me: yeah, Airline ABCD, X:YZp-H:IJp
Friend: That's hilarious.
Me: that's so weird
Friend: What're the chances?
Friend: You have a seat assignment yet?
Friend: We're...
Friend: Row Number A and Row Number B
Me: hmm...no, I don't think I have one yet
Me: let me check
Friend: (Row Number C)
Me: that would be weird
Me: ah, mine just says seat assignments upon check-in
...
Friend: Damn that's funny.
Me: it really is
Me: so I guess I will see you in Atlanta. And Vegas. And we still can't go on a bar crawl!
...
Friend: so when you're laying over in Atlanta, you should call me and tell me where you're sitting.

I mean, honestly, what are the chances that two friends (well, three counting his wife, although I don't know her other than she's his wife) on opposite sides of the country, booking their flights at vastly different times (they've had this trip planned for several months now, I only finally decided last night), and not even TRYING to coordinated anything ended up on the same four-hour cross-country flight?? That's just weird!!

Update - Teddie actually does seem to like his new carrier better. He still cries, but it's more of a "I'm crying because I think I'm supposed to be crying more than any real discomfort and really, I don't know what I'm crying about so maybe I'll stop for good lengths of time until I remember that I'm supposed to be crying again" sort of thing. If I was driving out to the Midwest, I'd totally take him, but I'm sure he wouldn't be comfortable on a plane with drastic pressure changes and lots of people uncomfortably close (not to mention my wallet not being comfortable with the extra $200 it would cost to fly with him), so he'll be staying home and guarding the apartment again. I'm a little bummed about it, but it's probably for the best.

Martial arts stuff behind the cut, since this is long already.
Midterming tomorrow. I've run through both my forms at least twice every day, and instructor class on Wednesday was focused specifically on our ranking forms. "Not nit-picking, but ways to make it better" - keeping my focus upwards, shifting my blocks slightly to the outside to make them be useful rather than perfect straight lines, not dropping my hands to chamber for circle low blocks, turning my knee out just a little more in rear and back stances, picking up the tempo slightly on some of my tension moves (moves that are deliberately slow in order to make them harder and show them off - I have six hand techniques and two kicks in my regular form and I think six blocks in my weapons form that are tension moves). So many little things to think about that I haven't really had time to practice and get into my body. Not to mention the whole "take your time and don't rush through it" thing. I will count myself successful if I can at least do that much. Sir asked us to come in a little early, because the floor will be a little different than the mats we're used to, so I'm going to try to get there around 11:00a.

On the plus-confidence side, though, I was finally able to break a brown board with my spin hook kick Wednesday night. I can power through a blue board really easily using the foot position we use for that kick in the forms (pointing the foot so that the ball "slaps" the target), but that doesn't really work when you move to a harder board. I've been focusing on using the "board break/doing damage" foot position for the kick - hitting the target with the heel instead of the ball; the force is more focused at a specific point where the heel contacts the board instead of getting distributed all over the board with the wider ball of the foot - and think I might have finally gotten it. It took a few tries to get through my hand technique (an upset hammerfist) on a blue board, but that was completely my own fault for not thinking and doing it correctly the first two times. I'm pretty confident on both my breaks now, which is nice!

Oh, and I got told last night by Gil that he feels sorry for anyone who tries to fight me with knives. "He's either gonna get his throat slit or his face slashed off, girl, you don't mess around!" I've lately been trying to focus more on getting "killing" hits in during knife sparring rather than the slashing at the arms that some of the others do. It seems to me like I would want a knife fight over as quickly as possible, not put them in a blood rage. I can live with a scar on my arm, can't really live long enough to get a scar on my neck or a few other places. I'd still be dead five hundred times a night, but I only have to survive a real fight once. I hope. Actually, I'd rather not ever find out, but you know what I mean. A couple of the guys got goofy throwing kicks around, and Sir told them that if they wanted to throw kicks in a knife fight, he'd take away the practice knives and give us real blades. He figures after a few toes hit the mats, we'll learn. Good to remember.

We've had several new guys in FIGHT the past few weeks. No new girls, though. Several new girls, and guys, in kickboxing, though! A new guy in adult tkd, and the kids' white/orange/yellow belt class about exploded through the glass last night, there were so many. It's good to see!

Btw, I'm seriously wondering if someone at the dojahng reads this blog. It's occasionally eerie how I say "I feel like I need to work on X or I really like Y or I'm just getting frustrated with Z" and usually within the next couple classes, there will be a drill or workout or something focusing on whatever it was. Or, in the case of the previous post, the next day getting "it's not nit-picking, it's making you better" fairly randomly after going through one of my forms. I don't actually think someone is - I think it's more a matter of I'm focusing on one thing and so I pay more attention to it, like how astrologers make daily horoscopes work - and it's cool if they are, I just find it mildly amusing. Oh, and if someone does read it and knows where my other sparring foot pad went, can you bring it tomorrow? I'd really appreciate it! =)

For now, it's 65 degrees with 65% humidity (it's actually more humid than the Midwest right now, but much, much cooler!) and lots of sunshine, so TeddieCat and I are going out on the balcony to take pics of knitting and read while the uniform goes through the laundry. And I got a new afghan pattern (sorry, non-Ravelers, that's all I can find right now) that I'm dying to get started on! Finally, an afghan for ME! (Yeah, yeah, I know, I have two other projects on the needles right now, too. They'll get done...someday...)

The Good, The Bad, and The Actually Really Pretty

2009-06-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

The Good and The Actually Really Pretty:
In knitting news (I do knit, you know, even if I don't talk about it much), I FINALLY got to finish the Card Trick Illusion Scarf!!! The final skein came Thursday and I finished the scarf on Friday. (Yes, I actually was that close when I ran out of the red.) I washed and blocked it Monday, and it was a beautiful thing, spread out on my balcony railing to dry after its celebratory dunking in Eucalan. And, I promptly forgot about it being out there for the rest of the day. I rescued it after I got home from class last night when I saw it laying on the grass under my balcony - luckily, it hadn't blown into the pool! And, of course, this means that I didn't get any pics, so that will have to happen tomorrow. The thing is LONG, though - I think pretty close to eight feet! Still working on the bag (Ten Minute Rule is in effect for this project - I love the project, hate the yarn!) and the ten-stitch blanket. It goes surprisingly fast, and it's kind of nice to use up some of these random little balls of wool I have left. Right now I have a color scheme going, but once these run out, who knows? It's amazing how far one little scrap ball can go when it's only a ten stitch strip, though.

Also good, I've actually been able to wear my gloves in kickboxing class so far this week, although my hands hurt again afterwards. We've started running again in class and I can keep pace with Mrs. S pretty well (I still hate running, though). We also got the new hanging bags last Tuesday. That night's FIGHT class was the official first use of them. (They definitely need to get broken in. Sir says it'll probably take a good year.) For 100lb. bags, they're actually pretty easy to get up and down quickly. Sir and Mr. R hang them during our run in kickboxing, and then Mr. R and I usually take them down after class. Sometimes we use them in FIGHT, too, although we didn't tonight. They do a number on the feet for round kicks, though, although I've noticed recently that my round kicks are getting fairly high now. We still do a drill with partners on pads and Gil (who is taller than me) holds them up by his shoulders for my kicks. And they've still got some power behind them. So maybe I've improved a little in the flexibility range over the past two and a half years (has it really been that long already??). Oh, and starting next week, they're putting a third adult tkd class back into the schedule. Looks like it's back to nine classes a week (two each on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and three on Wednesdays). They're also splitting up the teen/adult class into 12-15 year olds' class and 16+ class, which I think will be REALLY nice, and they're adding a Spanish-speaking class on Friday nights that J will be helping out with. I've been asked twice to help other first degrees learn their forms and really enjoy that. I think right now I'm more comfortable working with more advanced students (in all my classes) that already know at least the basics, because I don't have to worry about messing them up so much. I'm afraid if I work with a brand new student (kid or adult in any class), I'll say something wrong or do something wrong or not catch something soon enough and really mess them up. Don't know why, but I am, so I'm really happy to help other students closer to my level for now.

Also good:

Spending time with the girls in Solvang over the weekend. We went wine-tasting (rhubarb wine was surprisingly good!) and then caught the show. The sound is much better in Solvang. It always is. It also pays to have friends - we got bumped from having crazy seats along the wall to some of the held seats closer to the center. I could hear Chrissy calling the show (we were almost right under the booth, and it's really much easier to call the show with the window open rather than trying to rely on the spotty monitor system there), but the girls said they couldn't and told me it was just because I actually recognized and was used to what I was hearing. Whatever. It was still fun and good to see everyone again. I keep hearing really good things about Spelling Bee and am gonna try to catch it sometime this weekend, I hope.

Also good:
This is a cat who thinks he's being sneaky and cool and aloof about his new cat carrier. Don't let him fool you - he's totally snoring his head off in there. We've been going for rides in the car lately, since I'm pondering making a road trip home for a family reunion, but he cries and cries. The old crate I had for him was really small - he didn't have room to sit up or stand and was just kind of squished inside it. He could barely turn around in it. I would have cried inside it, too! So we got a bigger one (that has a special place for food and water inside!), and apparently this is much more acceptable, at least at home. We'll go out again tomorrow to see how he does in the car. He usually settles down slightly after about twenty minutes, so we'll see. The road trip itself may or may not happen - by my estimates it would be cheaper to fly (barely), and, honestly, a heck of a lot cheaper to stay home, but we'll see.

The Bad:
I did not get the job at Kohls. I also did not get a job I don't even remember applying for on base, as I was kindly informed by an email today. (Military spouses get preference for on-base jobs, which is a clear indication that I need to find a guy in uniform!) Again, really tired of the "we really need you, but not YOU" thing. Sigh.

I'm pretty sure this is just me and is completely non-intentional, but man, have I been getting nit-picked in classes lately. Now, I'm not saying I'm anywhere near perfect, very very far from, but am I really that bad?? Suddenly, in the past two weeks, my hook punches aren't right, my elbows aren't tucked in, my arms aren't straight enough, my kicks are too close or aren't fast enough, haganah drills aren't done quite right every single time, etc., in ALL my classes. Apparently, I can't do anything correctly right now. AND, just to top everything off and make me feel REALLY stupid, we were doing forms "testing style" in tkd last night and I was trying SO hard to not rush through it and complete each individual move (like I was asked to do after the last midterm) that I totally blanked on what move came next. I couldn't remember what move I had just did, where I was at in the form, or anything. I just knew I wasn't in the right stance and my arms weren't in the right place and I had no idea why. Sir had to prompt me to get me back on track. In front of everyone. SO embarrassing! I tried to keep going calmly through the rest of my form, but I think I started rushing it again. So now I can't even prove that I've listened to my head instructor and worked on anything he wanted me to. I'm such a good example =P I talked to Ma'am about it tonight (she wasn't there last night), and she assured me that everyone's done that at some point and at least it wasn't actually DURING a test, which is true. I ran through it again tonight after FIGHT and am planning on running through both my regular form and my weapons form a couple times both tomorrow and Thursday and maybe even seeing if I can score some free mat time on Friday afternoon. I CAN do this, I know I can. I just have to prove it to myself and everyone else =P I just wish I didn't feel like the only one constantly having to go "Yes Sir/Ma'am!" after getting some criticism or another, however gently or nicely delivered. I'm now kind of nervous about instructor class tomorrow night =/

However, at least my day didn't end like this:

Quotes

2009-06-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends leave footprints in your heart. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. Anger is only one letter short of danger. If someone betrays you once, it is his fault; if he betrays you twice, it is your fault. Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. He who loses money, loses much; he who loses a friend, loses much more; he who loses faith, loses all. Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. Friends, you and me ... you brought another friend ... and then there were three ... we started our group ... our circle of friends ... and like that circle ... there is no beginning or end ... yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why they call it a present. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Unknown

A hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child. - Author Unknown

“Go confidently in the directions of your dreams; live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will become simpler.” - Henry David Thoreau

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded! - Emerson

TKD surprises

2009-06-15T23:44:00.001-07:00

I got my new dobok tonight! It's soooo much more comfortable than my old one!! Like, I can actually move in it!! And, I have to admit, the white uniform shows off a black belt much better than the blue one did. (Yes, I can be vain. I know it.) I also found out why it took so long to get back:
The logo on the back. It's embroidered on. And, it's not the "banner" logo that most of the new uniforms get silkscreened on the back - it's the logo the instructors have on the backs of their jackets. It's not an instructor jacket yet (instructors' jackets are black), but I'm translating this as maybe one little step closer. (No one has said anything, so for all I know they're embroidering logos on the backs of all the new uniforms now - although I kinda doubt it - but it makes me inordinately happy.)

I also found out that I'm midterming again not this weekend but next. It rather surprised me, since I just midtermed last cycle, and I haven't done anything new so far during this one. I had to confirm it with Sir, who told me to just do the forms I already know and be sure I do them better than I did last time. Helpful. It kind of makes me wonder how badly I did last time. (Not that I really think I did badly, and I have tried to work on a lot of the stuff they mentioned to me afterwards and am resolute that I will NOT randomly forget a whole chunk of my weapons form this time around.) I actually wonder if there are some ulterior motives behind it - it will be the first test in the new space (we're actually going to be testing downstairs and in one of the open areas of the mall so families can watch instead of in the shark tank), it will be very public, and I think they want to show off as big a variety of students as possible. Plus, Jer will be testing for his black belt, so there will need to be ranking, non-judging adults there for him to spar. It works out. I was planning to be there anyway, I just figured I'd be watching or helping.

Sir also confessed that first degrees don't actually HAVE to learn two weapons forms. In fact, most students only learn one. Technically, I could stick with the bahng mahng ee form every time I midtermed and even when I eventually test for rank. However, he's not going to let ME do that. He wants to me to learn the ssahng jeol bahng form because he wants me to know it and get experience with that weapon (and, since he's made it clear that I'll have to midterm with it at least once, apparently demonstrate that knowledge, as well). Which makes sense - if I want to be an instructor, I can't very well help out other students with forms I didn't learn, I suppose. I'll still be allowed to choose which weapon I want to test with when it comes time to test for rank, as promised. It sounds like I'll probably start learning the ssahng jeol bahng form after this coming testing.

My knuckles STILL hurt when I wear my kickboxing gloves. It's really rather irritating - I can make a fist and punch just fine - no pain at all - when bare-fisted. But put the gloves on, even with the wraps, and I can't do it. Sir, Mel, and Gil think it might be a tendon issue from the "overhead" punches we've been doing in kickboxing (well, okay, Mel and Gil think that, Sir is concerned that it might be caused by my tendency to stick my elbows out, but it amounts to the same thing and I've been working REALLY hard to keep everything tucked in and not "be a swimmer". I thought I was pretty much over that by now =( ). Sir told me tonight in kickboxing to give it a rest and let my hands heal. Which is frustrating, because, like I said, they DON'T HURT unless I'm wearing the gloves. But hitting the hand targets we use in kickboxing over and over with a bare hand is not particularly good for them, either. Sigh. (Of course, this is also the same night where Sir told me to be better, so not sure how I can give my hands a rest and train to do better. I'll work on it!)

Quick temp assignment in the morning (finishing up the chemical inventory I started today at local high school chemistry labs) and then an interview for (I think) a part-time cashier job a Kohls. Whatever pays, at this point. FIGHT in the evening!