So sore

It was a lovely weekend in Boston this past weekend, with lots of sun (though a bit too much wind too, if I'm honest). We tried to be outdoors as much as possible. Saturday was less fun as we spent several ours spreading mulch around our plant beds. Not great on my back, which has been bugging me for no apparent reason for the last couple of weeks, but the yard looks nice.

Sunday I played in a coed reverse C-level Yankee tournament. I ended up setting on the men's net, which was interesting seeing as I haven't played the role of setter in years. I did better than I expected of myself (which isn't saying I suppose much considering how low my expectations were!), but not great. But between playing the new position and all that crawling around spreading mulch, my body is pretty sore today. I also have a mystery bruise on the back of my thigh that's that gross dark purple color--no idea how I got it.

I know I'm out of shape but I haven't been this sore in a while. Hoping to get lots of physical activity in while we're vacationing in Greece (we leave in less than a week!)--so, so, so excited for our trip!

Happy Birthday, Willy!

Well, technically it's still 35 minutes until his birthday, but we had the 2nd annual birthday BBQ for him today. Two years in a row now he's had absolutely gorgeous weather for this party, and that's certainly not something you can count on this time of year in New England.

It was a great day, with a string of friends coming and going all day. We started at noon and said goodbye to the last set of guests around 10pm. Good times.

Happy Birthday, honey!

Latest crochet project

I haven't really had time to craft lately, but my friend's recent baby shower gave me an excuse to jump back in with both feet. On Tuesday I decided to start a baby blanket to give her at her surprise baby shower...on Saturday. It might have been OK except that, once again, I made it bigger than I really intended. This meant I got foiled on two fronts; first, it took longer to make it of course, and second I ended up having to buy more yarn to finish the project instead of just using up what I had in my stash like I intended. The green stripes are narrower than the others because I had less of that yarn so I was trying to stretch it out--ended up having to buy two more skeins of the stuff anyway. Oh well, at least it still ended up coming out pretty cute, IMHO.

So did I finish in time? Wellllll...sort of. I ended up finishing it in the car while she opened her other presents. Hahaha!

W has become a hunter...

...of mice.

In his car.

EEEWWWWWWW!!!

Apparently one or more mice has made a home in his engine block. He actually saw it scurry away the other day when he opened up the hood. Then a couple of days later he just saw lots of little mouse poops all over. So then he went out and bought a bunch of traps. Like, the old fashioned, snap and kill 'em kind. Yuck, yuck, yuck!!!

Thinking about building an ark

I've been slacking on the blogging, sorry! New job, small family emergency, and dealing with flood waters will wreak havoc with one's online time.

A couple of weeks ago we got four non-stop days of rain. Non-stop. According to this article about the wet March experienced all over New England, Boston in particular had 14" of rain this month alone, breaking the previous record of 10". This all happened in just two storms. If it had been snow, we would have had over six feet. Our basement, which had never had water in it in the 6+ years the house has been here, developed maybe a 1/4" pool or so. I never actually saw it myself because Willy took care of wet vac'ing it while I was at work. Poor guy, dragging 5 gallons of water at a time up the stairs.

We had to get rid of a bunch of wet boxes, but otherwise we had it easy. Lots of people had several inches of flooding, including one of my co-workers who had a finished basement with desktop computers sitting on the floor, all sitting in 3" of water.

The rain stopped for a few days, then started all over again yesterday. The images on the news are crazy. Parts of the Charles River, which I've never seen be anything but smooth and flat, are raging (there's no other word for it), and in Fall River (one of our towns) it looks like an earthquake hit one of the streets because all the water caused it to collapse, and raw sewage is running into some people's houses :(

And the craziest part? It's supposed to finally stop raining sometime tomorrow, and on Thursday it will be in the 70s and over the weekend they just upped the forecast to 80s! Oh, and two Saturdays ago we had a 70+ degree day, followed the next Saturday by snow.

Love New England.

Gotta love the Asian genes

A bunch of volleyballers last night told me that (1) they were surprised I was old enough to be married and (2) they would have guessed I was in my teens or early 20s (22 was the exact number referenced). I mean, really?! I really don't look that young anymore!

Gung Hei Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year! Technically it started yesterday, but we've been running around doing family stuff for the holiday, as usual. Once again we waited until the last minute to prep, too, so Willy and I are both a little exhausted.

We got back late Wednesday night from a trip to Arizona to visit Willy's mom. Then on Thursday I had an interview that I spent most of the day prepping for. Friday I had to go into work and do a different phone interview, and then realized I had a LOT to do by Saturday night. See, the Chinese are very superstitious and the house is supposed to be spotless for a clean start to the new year, only you aren't allowed to do any real cleaning once the new year starts, which was Sunday. So, long story short, after leaving work on Friday I had to go to the bank to get lai see money; buy oranges, clementines, and snacks; and start doing as full a scrub of the house as possible. After dusting, sweeping, cleaning the bathrooms, vaccuuming, and scrubbing the floors on hands & knees, we went to bed at 4am Saturday morning. Poor Willy, dealing with my Chinese guilt and customs :P

Saturday night we had an awesome end-of-the-year meal with a bunch of family. Lobster, conch, abalone with shitake mushrooms/sea cucumbers/napa cabbage, pheasant, chicken, stuffed fish, yu choy, a Chinese-style celery "burrito", two kinds of soup...I think I'm forgettng some stuff, but can I just say YUM?! Do you see why this is one of my favorite holidays ever? :)

Yesterday we ran around doing the traditional home visits. First stop was back to my parents' house for a vegetarian lunch, followed by the handing out of lai see (red envelopes with money). Then the entire family descended on my grandpa's room at the nursing home; it's a good thing he doesn't currently have a roommate, would have been tough to fit 16 people in just half that room. Finally, my immediate family came over to our house. We ended the day with 4 hours of volleyball :P

Today we're headed to my parents' place again, for a New Year's opening meal (yes, it's all about the food, as usual). The celebration continues into next weekend when we do the family visit at my aunt & uncle's house--and have more yummy Chinese New Year food, haha!

If you wanna see your Chinese horoscopes for the year, this link seems good. My horoscope seems pretty positive overall, especially in the area of work, so I have high hopes!

My First Knitting Project

I promise this blog isn't going to turn into a kindergarten "My First..." series :)

That said, here's my first knitting project. Yeah, I'm a crappy photographer but try to ignore that for a second. This was a good first project because it let me try a bunch of different types of patterns, which is probably why they named it the Sampler Scarf. I did have to frog (i.e. rip apart--rip it, rip it, get it? :)) a few times because I'm still learning, but learning how to frog knitting was actually a lesson in itself. Like everything else with knitting, it's harder to do than in crochet. I can see now why my friend Sabrina says crocheting produces faster results. So if crochet is easier and faster, why am I pursuing knitting? Because it's fun to learn something new and knitting also produces a cleaner and different look than crochet. Plus I just want to be able to say I know how to do it :)

Belated Christmas dinner photos

Nothing like doing a Christmas-related post a month late. Just thought I'd recap this past year's crazy meal:

APPETIZERS & DRINKS: baked brie w/apples and caramelized onions, wensleydale cheese, Maine pumpkin bread, honey corn bread muffins, pasta salad, rice krispy treats, sparkling apple cider, sangria

VEGGIES: Willy's stir-fried cabbage special, green & yellow beans w/mushrooms, corn niblets, Caesar salad

SIDES: homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn chowder

ENTREES: roast, turkey, ham, phyllo-wrapped salmon, Vietnamese cold noodles

DESSERTS: apple pie a la mode, ricotta cheese pie w/chocolate sauce, mini cheesecakes, mini brownies, chocolate pots

I know I'm forgetting some stuff, but you get the jist :)

My First Knitting Swatch

LOL, I finally got around to learning how to knit and this is what I created after watching a few minutes of a video I borrowed from the library. Aww, my first stockinette stitch :P

Two observations about knitting:

(1) It's super confusing that a stitch itself is called a knit stitch or a purl stitch (and as far as I can tell those are really the only two "stitches" in knitting and every pattern is based on these two basics--kinda fascinating in itself to this newbie), but the product of creating these stitches in succession is also called a "stitch," i.e. garter stitch is repeating knit or purl stitches over and over again across multiple rows and stockinette stitch is what results when you alternate rows of knit stitches with rows of purl stitches. What the heck?

(2) Knitting is more complicated to learn than crochet, IMHO. It's harder to fix mistakes, more manipulation of the yarn is required, and it's not as fast as crocheting. All that said, I'm enjoying adding it to my crafting arsenal because the final products often have a more orderly look to them than crochet and it's just cool to learn something new.