Tuesday, December 28, 2004

    Belated welcome to the family

 
Meredith has a new cat, has had since early December. Her name is Sophie. I've met her and she's very friendly and very sweet. Here are a few photos of her.


Sophie



Sophie



Sophie
Originally uploaded by knitgrl.


Welcome to the family, Sophie. George & Chloe send paws of love.
posted by erica Tuesday, December 28, 2004 []

  Thursday, December 23, 2004

    Finishing up for the holiday

 
I'm posting this on both blogs because I didn't have time to write for both today. Okay, so the knitting blog has a few photos of knitted garments that aren't posted here.

I finally finished all of my holiday cards, which include the 10 extras I had to made because I had let 10 people off of the growing card list. It took me about two hours tonight to cut all of the paper and stamp 10 cards, not a big deal.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any colder, it gets colder. Tomorrow is supposed to be the worst. Well, you live in Chicago, you should be used to the cold, well, I am not used to it being this cold this time of year. According to the guy on the news, this is the coldest Christmas we've had since 1983. So see, it's usually not 12 degrees at the end of the December. Noooo, it usually waits until late January or February to get that cold! It was funny today, but not in a ha ha sort of way, I was outside running errands and it didn't feel as cold as yesterday and it was colder outside today. The wind chill was colder but I must be getting used to the cold because I was able to walk about 50 feet without mittens on my hands and a scarf around my mouth.

Tomorrow will be a good day to stay inside most of the day. We will be finally hanging the lights in our apartment. We've had our little tree up for almost three weeks.

(a bit like Charlie Brown's tree after they've decorated it) (And yes, those are Barbie ornaments in the tree and on the table.) But we haven't gotten around to putting the lights around the sliding glass doors. We're having Christmas dinner at our house so I would like the place to look a bit more festive. It's my first Christmas away from my family (we did Thanksgiving with my family this year) and it's going to be different. It's all part of getting married, although I am missing a bit of the Christmas feeling that I have when I am at my parents' house at this time of year. My mom always has the house so beautifully decorated.

We are attending Christmas services at the Unitarian Church tomorrow night. Growing up our church never had Christmas services, unless Christmas was on a Sunday. And the Unitarian Church celebrates a lot of things in a very unique way, which I love, so it will be a special Christmas for Bryan and I, our first Christmas as a married couple. Just a bit of an aside, the first time we attended the Unitarian Church was Mother's Day and they had a flower ceremony that was so lovely. Then this past Sunday were Solstice celebrations, it was really cool. I feel like such a spiritual person now, considering that I felt very unspiritual for years.

Tonight was an evening of writing the holiday card letter and me knitting about 10 rows on the baby hat. I have another 3 cm's before I start decreasing for the top of the hat. I could barely finish the 10th row because my hands were getting so stiff. I think it's partly the cold and my addressing envelopes, cutting paper and rubber stamping all afternoon.

Happy holidays to all! Stay warm. And let's hope for a very peaceful new year! I will write more soon. If I don't write before December 25, for those that celebrate Christmas, have a Merry Christmas. I have to write later something interesting that I read in the Simple Abundance book that I'm reading. It's about some of our Christmas traditions.
posted by erica Thursday, December 23, 2004 []

  Wednesday, December 22, 2004

    Brrrr...

 
That's all I can say, IT'S COLD!! It's pretty disgusting when the high is in the single digits and the wind chill is below 0 Fahrenheit (-17C). I know it's colder in other places but it had been such a mild fall that I don't think we were ready for this. It usually doesn't get this cold until late January or February. If this is a taste of what this winter will be like, I want to go somewhere a bit warmer for the winter. No, not Florida, I still want snow - that's what winter is supposed to be. I would be happy with a winter in the mid-30s (1 C) with some snow. And I don't want a dusting of snow, I want a foot of snow, if it's going to snow, it should be a good deep snow. Of course, this would happen and no one would have to leave their house for a day and all of the driveways and streets would magically be plowed, except for those people who love to get the snowblower out and do it themselves. :)

It's been a slow week. I think everyone is ready for the long weekend! Not much else to say right now. Maybe I'll post more later.
posted by erica Wednesday, December 22, 2004 []

  Monday, December 13, 2004

    Windy coldness

 
It's a cold, cloudy, grey day with strong winds. I think it's criminal to be required to go outside. When it's colder than 25 outside, everything should just shut down and people should stay home and be together. Whether they need to all curl up on the couch and enjoy a good movie or read a good book, maybe we would have fewer wars and problems in the world. Okay, so maybe it wouldn't solve all of the world's problems but maybe we all need to be required to be home together more. I don't mean with all of the extended family around, I mean just the immediate family that lives in the house. Can you imagine some of the family issues that would be worked out if people sat down at the dinner table together every night and turned off the tv for several hours? Think of some of the behavioral issues in school if kids would sit down and talk to their parents. I saw an interesting statistic - kids who sit down to dinner with their family each night do better in school and are more self-confident. Very interesting! There was even an article in the Wall Street Journal about it in November.

Even if you have a family of two, like I do, you can still eat dinner at the table and talk to each other. I know it's quite a concept, but I feel more connected to Bryan, my husband, after each meal. We talk about a lot of stuff that I know we would not talk about if the tv was on. Today at lunch, we ate by candlelight. :) There is something very calming about eating by candlelight, it doesn't have to be a romantic dinner, you can light the candles whenever you like. Try it sometime!

Here's another interesting website, it even mentions how overscheduled kids are now. This doesn't surprise me "Studying increased by almost 50% from 1981-1997." We're so focused on getting kids' test scores up that we've increased homework, as if that will make a big difference. And another interesting fact: "at home was the single strongest predictor of better achievement scores and fewer behavioral problems. Meal time was far more powerful than time spent in school, studying, church, playing sports, and art activities. Results were statistically controlled for age and gender of child, race and ethnicity, education and age of the head of the family, family structure and employment, income, and family size.1"


posted by erica Monday, December 13, 2004 []

    While ago...

 
It's been a while since I last wrote on this blog.

I've had a hard time keeping up both this and my knitting blog. I know I've mentioned before that I may combine the two, but everytime I think that I'll go ahead and combine them. I change my mind, but I think this time it might actually truly happen. On second thought, I just checked my stats and have realized that nearly every reader is not coming from my knitting blog, so I must keep this up to blog going.

Getting to the true meaning of this blog, here's what I've been up to.

On the library school front, the application is IN THE MAIL!!! Yesterday, Bryan and I worked on getting my essays completed! I have all of my transcripts, three letters of recommendation (one of them, I have a copy of and it's very good), resume, personal statement, librarian interview essay and Part B of the application, which is basically the organizations I've been affliated with, professional organizations I've been a member of and any honors, I included the Master Knitting Level 1. The essays were really great after Bryan and I sat down and worked on them. There wasn't a lot of work to do on either of them, which was a relief to me because I wasn't completely thrilled with either of them. Once we worked on some of the wording, each of the essays became really great. It's amazing how just rewording something can make a dull sentence into a great sentence. :)

So now all I can do is wait as far as the application goes. I am very optimistic about it! Bryan spoke with one of the deans a few weeks ago and mentioned that his wife (me) was also applying for the library program. He made note of my name, which could only mean good things for me. Bryan has already been accepted, he was accepted for the online program starting this past summer, but with the wedding it was just too much. So he's deferred his enrollment to this coming fall. He was going to start in the summer, but breaking our lease was going to cost us a lot more than we could afford. He decided to push it back to fall, when we can afford to move and not break our lease.

The application process is completed, now the process of applying for scholarships and assistanceships starts. Bryan has been working on this for a few weeks and he said it's easier than getting the application together because it's mostly submitting the same materials. I'll keep you up to date on the status of everything.

I've been teaching one night a week since Thanksgiving at Vernon Hills High School. Buffalo Grove's class ended the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It's been nice to have Tuesdays now to work on what I need to get done. I've been working on a blanket, a baby sweater and Christmas gifts. I decided after Thanksgiving that I had too many unfinished knitting projects, so I've been working on getting as many of those done as I can. Several projects were very close to being finished and didn't take me long to finish. Obviously, some of the projects will take a bit longer as they are quite a ways from being done. At least, now I can concentrate on the long-term projects until I find something else to distract me. :)
posted by erica Monday, December 13, 2004 []

  Wednesday, December 01, 2004

    Better today

 
Today has been a much better day. I got a lot of knitting done last night, which helped boost my spirits. Meditating at lunch also helped.

It snowed last night, which was lovely to look at but oh not so lovely to scrape off the car this morning. There was a layer of ice under the snow making scraping a bit more difficult. So now that it's winter, I just want to stay in all the time and nest. I know it's part of the season. If only the season meant more sunshine.

Bryan is working this weekend and I'm hoping to get my library school essays completed. I was hoping that a little irritation at work last week would have inspired me to finish the essays but oh no, I was dreaming too much. I started the personal essay about a week and a half ago and it's nearly finished. It needs to be tweaked, as any first draft should be, but I think the personal essay started out much better than the interview essay did. The interview essay is about my interview with a library director. That essay needs a lot of work. I may just start it over. I know that no matter what I won't be completely happy with what I write. This is a big deal and I don't feel like I can completely express to them what a great librarian I think I will be. I've noticed that a lot of knitters with blogs are also librarians, I find that very interesting.

I've started reading Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach again. After attending a workshop at the Unitarian church called "Having More and Doing Less," I feel like I'm actually at a point in my life where this book will be very beneficial to me. I originally started reading it in 1998 and tried again several years later, but usually within a few weeks, I'm no longer reading it. So I thought maybe starting late in the year will help me (wishful thinking). I found a wonderful saying in the book that I wrote in calligraphy and posted in my cubicle at work to remind me that everything will be fine. It's a sort of prayer that I am saying to myself at work and as I fall asleep at night. Okay, so I've only been saying it for three days, but it seems to calm me.

"All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well." ~ Dame Julian of Norwich

I thought it was just lovely and it would remind me that life will work out, even through the tough times. If anything has changed for me in the last year it's that I've realized that I do have a spiritual side that needs to be nurtured. Going to Unitarian services always seems to give me a bit of refreshment when I'm feeling very unspiritual.

So I must go. Have a good day and if the sun isn't shining, just remember there is always tomorrow. :)
posted by erica Wednesday, December 01, 2004 []