May 14, 2005

Past, Present, Future: My life in three acts

The past is on my mind today as I watch the news leading up to the 25th anniversary of the eruption of Mt.St.Helens. I'd gone to church with my friend Leslie's family and we could see the plume of ash as we drove home. We lived outside Battle Ground at the time and a short trek through the woods behind our home brought us to the edge of a neighboring field where we could watch the dark grey clouds billow over the mountain.

I remember wearing a mask over my nose and mouth to walk down to catch the school bus, the ash that built up on the cars and the concerns about what the ash might do to the engines. When the Toutle River highway opened up again, we drove down it and saw the twisted wreckage of bridges, buried cars and houses and wondered at the destructive force of nature.

Now when she belches smoke, I can see it from the 3rd floor of my office building in Gresham. I can see it rise over Prune Hill in Camas and reassure my colleagues who weren't here 25 years ago, that nope, that was nowhere near as big as 1980. And no, Mt.St.Helens isn't the one to worry about. If we take a look to the right, there's Mt. Hood a heckuva lot closer to us. It's only 26 miles from work to the foothills! Focus, people!

Anyhoo, in my present, I've finally completed the KnitPicks blanket.
KP Blanket3
I don't know what book the pattern came out of but their Crayon yarn is wonderful. While I got annoyed with my apparent inability to follow a pattern correctly the first 2 times, I was still enjoying the yarn by the end. I enjoyed the project enough to ask for the blanket back once they've finished taking pictures for their upcoming catalog. Nice people, good yarn. Can't wait for the next project in June.

And my knitting future? It's Dulaan, baby! (just had a flashback to Austin Powers and his attack on Basil's mother "that's not a woman, it's a man, baby!")

So far this week, I've completed 2 of Norma's pinwheel hats in Encore and Wool-Ease and I've got another headed to the needles. I've also got some bulky yarn I'll use for the pattern from the Harlot.

A brief break to FINALLY finish Mom's Berry Freeze vest today and then back to the charity knitting.

All the above is little stuff. Here's my past, present and future:
Rob

Happy Anniversary, honey. Here's to another 7 years.

May 05, 2005

Go Me!

I am my own cheerleader.

Well, not really. I'm more dance team or pep band than cheerleader. Although, I'll cop to watching cheer competitions on ESPN (oooh, they dropped her! THAT's gonna leave a mark)

Anyhoo, I weighed in yesterday and I'm down again. Yee haw! I'm now at 190 and have dropped 7.6 lbs over 3 weeks. Makes me feel better since I didn't feel like I'd done well staying on plan. But apparently 3rd time's a charm and it's starting to sink in.

If I keep going at this rate, I'll reach my 10% goal by, hmmm, today's the 5th, my goal is 19, add my age, subtract the number of times I've done WW and divide the pie to share and let's see, the 2nd week of June? That would beat my time goal of end of July to lose 20 lbs.

Not too shabby.