Notice anything different about me?

Nope, I didn’t get a haircut.

No, this isn’t a new shirt. Although it does look pretty awesome on me, doesn’t it?

No, the thing I changed is the blog theme. It’s white, see? And it used to be brown. I’ve been wanting to change it for a while, but WordPress removed the brown theme I had from the options so if I changed it and didn’t like the new theme, I couldn’t just change it back. But today, I decided that it had to go.

I have tomorrow off (yay!) and I can’t believe how happy that makes me feel. I don’t dislike my job, I just like going places on weekdays. The crowds are smaller. In fact I’m taking a week off from work at the end of the month as one of my two weeks of vacation I get every year, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going to hang around Savannah, run some errands, and enjoy being around less people.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. The “leave a comment” link is now at the top of the post. I don’t really like it up there, but I don’t have much say in where it will go. So it will have to stay that way until I can find another theme that I like that includes it at the bottom of the post.

My mother sent me the link to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmi_qFsiHBM

I would love to embed that video on this page so that you can watch it from the comfort of my blog, but WordPress – for some reason – still does not allow YouTube videos to be embedded. Boo.

It’s a video about some dogs who do some pretty cool tricks. After watching this, I realize how lame Lilly is. I’m kidding, of course. But not really. Anyway, enjoy the video!

I’m considering deleting this blog, unless you can talk me out of it. Or I will at least stop blogging as often. Lately it seems I will force myself to write something because I feel obligated to do so. It might just be a slump that will pass, or it might not. We’ll see.

Recent happenings, in bullet points:

• Jody was in his first car accident ever this past Sunday. Actually, it was the first that he has had to report. In past accidents he has been able to make arrangements without having the cops or insurance companies called. But this time he hit a rental car, in a parking lot. And, even though the other guy could have easily stopped to avoid the accident, he didn’t and technically it is Jody’s fault. And yes, we’re OK, again it was in a parking lot – we were backing out of a parking space and the other guy was pulling into the parking lot, so everyone was going really slow.
• I had to have two ultrasounds today! The non-pregnant kind, of course. One on my abdomen, and the other was…ahem, internal. And nothing was found, thankfully. But it was kind of weird because the technician was someone that I went to high school with. We weren’t really friends but I knew who she was, and I assume vice versa, and it’s just odd to have someone you kind of know poking around inside of you. Fun fact: Apparently my gall bladder is hard to find.
• In a psychology class in college I was taught that dreams consists of random thoughts that have gone through your mind recently. Your brain, in an attempt to put the thoughts together in a way that makes sense, will create a story out of all of the pieces, and we call this a dream.
  Well, yesterday I placed an order for Pampered Chef (cooking products), I spoke with my mom about the cabin in Tennessee, talked to someone about the Maps feature on my iPhone, and I watched a news story about Iran on TV. So…in my dream, I was at a cooking demonstration, apparently being performed by the Iranian government. I realized this when I was trying to find directions on my phone from the cooking demo to the cabin, and some guy next to me was giving me this serious “If you are caught not paying attention they will kill you” look. So I put my phone down and started paying attention.

I’ve been knitting a sleeveless top for myself for quite a while, and I finally finished it this morning!

Don’t pay attention to the strings hanging off of it, I still haven’t weaved in the ends.

I was so thrilled to finally finish it! Until I tried it on…. and it’s too big. It’s baggy on me, it looks like I’m wearing a blue potato sack.

You see, knitters are suppose to do this thing called “checking the gauge” which is a way to determine if the pattern needs to be adjusted so that the item will fit properly. Yeah…I don’t do that. And as a result, I spend weeks on a sweater that does not fit! But will I learn from this mistake? No, probably not.

Oh, well. It was fun to knit, at least. Maybe one day I will be able to wear it.

Per your request, here’s a picture of my brother, sans the long wavy hair.

There is a guy down the street from me that I sarcastically refer to as my favorite neighbor. At this point, the partying and loud noises are a weekly occurrence at his house. In fact, we were pretty sure that he went out of town last weekend for the 4th, but we decided to stay at Jody’s apartment that night just in case he decided to come back. He is known to get drunk and light fireworks on any random night, so I was sure that if he was home, I was not going to get any sleep. Better safe than sorry.

Well, Saturday night – beginning at about 8 or so – he started lighting fireworks. I walked down there at about 1am and asked him to stop, and I know my neighbor across the street asked him to stop, and possibly other neighbors as well. Cops were called by me and according to the woman at the police station, they have received several calls about him that night. Cops came, he stopped for a little while, but shot another one at about 3am (just one really loud firecracker, just enough to wake us up and piss us off!). Even after the fireworks ended I couldn’t sleep because he was riding up and down the road on a four wheeler and I was concerned about him trying to seek revenge for calling the cops by smashing my mailbox or doing something to the cars in my driveway – my neighbor across the street has had his mailbox vandalized before. So Saturday night I slept for about 2 hours, at most.  I had to induce a nap by taking NyQuil Sunday afternoon, after all of my errands for the day were completed.

He is so annoying. But what can we do besides call the cops!? We can’t kick him out of the neighborhood. I used to cut him some slack since he would usually quiet down by 11pm, but now I don’t care – if he makes a peep after 11pm (time the noise ordinance starts), the cops will be called.

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On a different note, my brother – the biker, with long flowing hair – has cut his hair off! I’m sorry I don’t have a decent picture of it yet. I didn’t think to take one last night. He really liked his hair long so I was surprised that he cut it, but he has been trying to find a job and felt that the hair may have been hurting his chances. So he had someone cut it off, and he is donating it to Locks of Love.

A recap of our trip to the auction and to Athens this past weekend:

I had to get up early Saturday morning, and by early I mean 1:30 am. I am a morning person and I love being up when the sun is still down, but 1:30 is way too early to be getting out of bed. That’s not “morning” – that’s late night. But, I dragged myself out of bed and managed to make it through a shower without falling asleep, and we were on the road by 3.

The auction itself was torture. Hot, boring, crowded, and I couldn’t even put my feet on the ground unless I wanted them to be devoured by ants. I had to prop them up on the legs of the chair in front of me, which was not very comfortable. Jody bought two items within the first couple of hours, but there was one more item his father wanted so we had to wait a few more hours for that item. It finally came up, and Jody was outbid. So, that was the end for us, we claimed our two items and got out of there as fast as we could. I have no idea what time the auction actually ended, there was more than 1000 items there and it was only about halfway through when we left. But Jody’s father was very pleased when we showed him the things that we bought, so it was worth it. He was happy, and he paid for our trip so it was a good trade-off.

Once we left the auction we drove over to Athens, where we showered at our hotel before heading out. I was somewhat surprised by Athens – it’s a college town, our hotel was right next to the UGA campus – so I was expecting… I don’t know, more college student-appropriate stores. Cheap stuff, basically. But instead downtown Athens is filled with expensive boutiques, not unlike Savannah. There were a few shops that I would expect to see in a college town, like record stores and coffee shops. Oh, and we went into a tobacco shop that had a hookah bar. Maybe it’s because I’m 25 I wasn’t surprised to see it, I know what they are, but Old Man Jody thought it was very strange, and was convinced it was for smoking pot.

And speaking of old…..Jody and I found a Five Guys restaurant. Heather had raved about how she loved their burgers so we decided to try it. First thing – OMG THE MUSIC WAS SO LOUD!!! We could barely hear each other. We asked them to turn it down and I’m sure they are still laughing at us for that. They didn’t turn it down – they pulled the “If it’s too loud, you’re too old” saying on us – well, we’re too old. It was much too hot to eat outside so we tried to find a table as far away from a speaker as we could and we suffered through it.

Oh, and the portion size was outrageous. I ordered a small burger, Jody ordered a regular one, and we thought we could share a large order of fries. Ha! Large? Oh, no…. I would not call what they gave us “large”. Enormous? Mammoth? Let me put it this way, we both shared the fries with our meal, I brought the leftovers with me to work today for lunch and I still have some left over. All I ate for lunch was fries and I am full, AND have some to spare! That’s a lot of fries.

How is it Thursday already!? Where did the week go?
I don’t have a lot of time so this will be short:

Road Trip

I will be heading to Athens this weekend! I wish it were the one in Greece, but it’s not – I’m going to Athens, GA. Jody and I are going to an auction near Athens for his father who can’t go because he will be flying. Since it is so close to Athens, a city that I have never been to, I’ve convinced Jody to stay one night so that I can say I’ve been to Athens – really, that’s my main reason for wanting to go. I’m sure I’m one of only a handful of Georgia natives that has never been to the home of the Bulldogs. So now I have to get up at 3am on Saturday to drive up there, sit in the sun for hours while Jody bids on some stuff for his dad, then we head to Athens for the afternoon and come back home Sunday.

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False Alarm

You will all be happy to know that my smoke detectors work very well. They will still go off even if there is no power source! Amazing! I know this because I was rudely awakened at 2am yesterday by the really annoying ‘Your battery is low and I’m going to make the loudest most obnoxious beeping sound every few seconds until you do something’ indicator. This noise was so loud, I assumed it was the smoke detector that is right outside my bedroom door – the one that is 14 feet up on the wall. I can’t reach that, so I just closed the door, turned on my iPod, and unsuccessfully tried to go back to sleep.

When I finally got out of bed at 5-something and tried to get it to shut up, I found out it’s not the one above my door, it’s the one in the hall outside my office, which can easily be reached if I stand on a chair. So I suffered through the noise for 3 hours when I could have turned it off – great! So I took out the battery….still beeping. Damn. So I took it off the wall and spent about 10 minutes trying to unplug it. Finally got it unplugged. Still beeping! So I angrily threw it into a closet under some stuff and went about my business. I think it finally died sometime yesterday.

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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Christmas is in exactly 6 months. Yes, I just mentioned Christmas. Last year, I waited too late and didn’t do a few things that I wanted to do, like make some Christmas cards. Well, I’m not letting that happen this year. I’m already trying to plan my cards and have a few ideas in mind.

I also need to start knitting for a Fall Festival that I may be attending in October as a vendor! This would be my first time doing anything like this, so I’m already nervous about it. A great part about selling online is I can’t hear anyone’s comments – good or bad – about my items. And I will be heartbroken if I leave at the end of the day with everything I brought with me. I’m trying to advance my knitting skills by branching out and using circular needles, and next I want to attempt double-pointed needles again. Some of you may remember the disaster known as Sheldon the Turtle…. he never came to be because he required double-pointed needles, and those things are hard to use! But I will learn how to use them…I will….

Heather will be leaving next week on a trip to Pigeon Forge, TN. And I am by no means an expert on Pigeon Forge, but I have vacationed there at least once a year for the past 6 years, so I’m going to offer my advice and opinions to her, and to anyone else who happens to Google “Smoky Mountain Guide” and ends up here on my blog.

So, away we go:

• 441 is the main highway that runs through Pigeon Forge. By about 3pm, this road will be packed. Not might be crowded, not slightly busy – traffic WILL BE bumper to bumper. tobumpertobumpertobumpertobumper. For miles. After about a half hour of being stuck in this traffic (possibly less time in summer heat), you will begin looking around for cops because you are thinking about jumping the curb and driving on the sidewalk, and don’t want to get caught. Look for alternate routes, you can get just about anywhere with minimal time on 441 if you take the right roads.
• There are coupon books at most hotels, restaurants, gas stations, welcome centers, etc. We grab some every time we’re up there. There are coupons available for many of the popular attractions as well as restaurants and stores. We go to one restaurant for breakfast a lot – Flap Jacks – and we use a coupon every time. Plus they print an additional coupon on the bottom of the receipt.
• There is one Wal-Mart in the area, on 441. If you absolutely have to go to Wal-Mart, and would like to actually park in the parking lot, the best time to go is ….eh, about 3am. It will be completely packed if the sun is up.
• If you’re going to visit Gatlinburg, prepare for the fact that you will need to walk everywhere.

Places that I recommend:

• The Apple Barn (off of 441) This places has several restaurants and cute shops, and you’ll never believe this but they all have an apple theme.
• Wonderworks (on 441) You can’t miss it, it’s an upside-down building. It’s kind of a kid’s place, but Jody and I enjoyed it. It’s filled with interactive games and illusions and things like that.
• The Christmas Place (on 441) This is the greatest place on Earth. The first time I went it was snowing! It was perfect! This is several Christmas-themed stores all together in a cute little Christmasy “village”. And I don’t know where you’re staying, but I will be completely jealous if I find out you’re staying at the Inn at Christmas Place.
• Ripley’s Believe It or Not (Gatlinburg) I don’t know if Aeralyn is too young for this type of place, but Jody and I enjoyed it when we went. It has several interactive exhibits.
• Ripley’s Aquarium (Gatlinburg) It’s not very different from other aquariums, but it is part of the Ripley’s franchise so it has a few fun and unique exhibits. When we went, it was extremely crowded and surprisingly hot inside (in the middle of winter).
• Guinness World Record Museum (Gatlinburg) I don’t really recommend going IN this museum unless you really like this type of thing, but they have a huge harp outside that Aeralyn might enjoy, unless it’s not working – it wasn’t working the last time we went. But it doesn’t have strings, instead it uses lasers and you just run your hand in the air where the strings should be and it plays. Kind of fun if you’re just walking by, and it’s free.
• Pancake Pantry (Gatlinburg) The food here is pretty good but I mostly enjoy the look of the restaurant. And if you’re up early enough you can park on the street right in front of the building until 9am.

And there are tons of other places to visit that I either can’t think of right now or haven’t been to. But up there you can basically turn around and walk ten steps and run into another attraction, there’s an endless supply of things to do, places to go.

Have fun, Heather!

This is a “window seat” that Jody made for Lilly in my bedroom. It’s a side table covered with a towel, with a pillow I made on top. She loves it

So, I never wore that sweater to the needlework group last Saturday. I tried, I really did. I had it on, walked out the door to get in the car but remembered that I needed to give Lilly some Benadryl before we left. And when we went back inside, I caught a glimpse of the sweater in a mirror and decided to take it off. I know I’m waaay too picky about this, I honestly do realize that. It’s not like I’m some glamour queen that always looks perfectly put together every day. I’m sure you are all shocked by that revelation. But the length of the sweater bothers me. But I will try again this Saturday. I want to actually wear something that I’ve knit. And the ladies in the group would absolutely love it, I’m sure. I’m working on a sweater for CJ’s son (yes – I said it, SON! Not daughter-with-a-tail) and they always Ooooh and Aaaah over my progress.

And speaking of the needlework group, we meet at a coffee shop, and can I just confess my love for coffee shops? I love coffee shops! They’re way over priced, but they’re so cool. I want one.

My goal is to one day own a store that sells yarn and crafty stuff, and maybe a few items made by local folks (there are some really cool sellers on Etsy from Savannah), and also in the store would be a coffee shop/lounge area. Perfect for knitting groups! And if they run out of yarn for the project they’re working on, they can just walk over to the yarn area and buy some more!