Joshua and Bevin

So the new WordPress interface… impressive!

I’ve been working on my website design lately, so naturally I started thinking more and more about the blog I’ve been neglectful to maintain, and what that will look like after the transition.

The good news is that I can probably create the whole of my website through WordPress (this is one powerful bugger), but the bad news is that I will have to create the whole of the website through WordPress. Ugh. This of course means that I need to figure out how my mockup is going to work out in WordPress and decide whether any of my elements are even feasible.

Yay for having a techie programmer partner!

Besides all that, the interface for WordPress in general looks so much nicer with a lot less clutter, so I think I’ll be more apt to update this thing. I’m working on a coordinating Twitter theme, so I can just link to my feed right from my site, and it will all match and look mostly seemless.

Lots of random things have happened, lots of random things to talk about, so here we go with a few of them.

Josh and I received a beautiful sewing machine from his mom, and a just as beautiful french oven from my mom for Christmas. Pretty exciting stuff, although finances so far prevent us from doing too much with either.

Okay so this afternoon is an ADD afternoon. I’m ending this, but I’ll wander back here soon for another phase of blogging.

This is a test post from my iPhone while Josh fixes the bit that he broke on my website. Ha.

Been awhile.  Working on various things.  Knitting is a little lackluster lately, due to major things that need re-doing.

It’s hard to talk about all the things going on because I haven’t kept the blog updated.  A lot of it will seem out of the blue.I’m thinking of making this blog private and just for me.  I find that I don’t write in it because of how I feel those words will be taken, or how much or little I’d like others to know.  Odd that I care more about that these days.

In any case, I want to update the blog (maybe I should start calling it a journal?), I just that more often than not the things I want to talk about are personal.

I think I might move the majority of the content on this blog to a more private location and attempt to maintain this blog in the current location as a “cool stuff I find that you might be interested in or thoughts I’m having about the world around me” type of thing.

We’ll see.  In the meantime keep an eye on my Twitter feed, since I’ve been using that a helluva lot more lately. 

I got a call late last night from my mother.  Apparently the woman who sold us the window blinds didn’t bother to call me after calling her to set up a date for installation.  So my mom did, and didn’t tell me about it.  Well, until last night anyway.

So they’re set to come some time between 2:30-3:30pm today, which pisses me off as an arrival time because at this late notice it’s harder for Josh to leave work early.  Plus it means that a lot of the furniture moving needed to happen last night at like 11:30pm because I can’t lift it without Josh.

And now of course it’s today and I have a lot of cleaning and moving to do to get the place organized so that they have room to move around.  We didn’t even get to moving the bed last night (we’re not sure where to move it), and I’m just supposed to hope that they come late enough that Josh is already home, or I’m supposed to call him when they get here and stall that window installation.In other news, I baked some real goodies last night.  I started this cinnamon bun bread recipe, which is essentially a cinnamon roll in 8×8 pan form.  I had all the baking done about half an hour after Josh got home, but you actually have to let the thing rest for 30mins before making/applying the frosting so I ended up putting that off until we were actually going to eat it.

See, I had this grand scheme that I’d have that done to snack on after Josh got home and then I’d start on dinner.  While it was resting I started on dinner and promptly had to forget about it until afterwards because making dinner was so hectic.  We had spinach/cheese lasagna.  Mmm!

That kind of got complicated quick.  I had to pre-cook the noodles, make a bechamel sauce, chop up all kinds of things and use the food processor to mix another sauce, blanch and chop the spinach… lots of things to do!  It was totally fun though, and in the end it was very delicious.  Totally worth the effort, and I think I’ll definitely make it again.  I’m always a fan of food that I can make that tastes like you went out to eat to get it.

Granted, we had dinner a -tad- later than we would have preferred (7:30pm) but otherwise the evening was peachy.  I ended up making that glaze/frosting for the cinnamon pan of doom and we had that for dessert.  This morning Josh and I had another piece since anything with cinnamon is automatically okay as a breakfast food.

Today I make: more iced tea.  I drank most of it yesterday. 

Yeah, I know that it’s been awhile.  I just don’t like posting here when I could hear comments back from friends/family asking me why I didn’t talk to them about it.  I guess that’s why you wander off and don’t post for an extended period.

So, I’m here!  Hard to believe maybe but it’s true.  I’ve been using Twitter more and more often, and it should be simple to find me there, aside from the updates directly here on the blog.

I feel like anything I’d say at this point would be more of a catching-up for anyone reading the blog, but I’m not in the mood.

I’ve got a few people that are being particularly annoying lately, and some of them are plainly being idiots.  Bah!

Wow I’m really not feeling this blogging thing.  I can’t talk about what I’d like to anyway.  I’m going to go catch up on phone calls for the morning.  

I’m at Boyd’s this afternoon. That’s why I have internet. That’s why it has been so hard this week… but if I’m willing to spend the money on coffee I suppose I might as well go get my free internet while I’m at it.The above never got posted – or finished. Here we go:

NRE (New Relationship Energy) is odd. We all get it of course… it’s just, what do you do when your partner is experiencing it with someone else? (Just to clarify, this is all old news at this point; I just haven’t talked about it here yet.)Sure, often there isn’t much you can do about how you feel towards someone, but on some level I think there are things that you can do.

I guess it’s just hard because when you’re raised to think one person + one person = happiness; that kind of thing is hard to break out of. Really hard. It does help to know that jealousy is built into everyone, and isn’t something to feel shameful of. Just something you have to recognize and deal with. How do you break out of that feeling? How do you become okay with your lover having that NRE with someone else? Being intimate with someone else?

It’s a hard world to break into, that’s for sure. It requires an incredible amount of trust, and on some level many people don’t realize that they don’t already have that much trust in a person. Even if you’ve accepted the idea and are comfortable with it to the point that you could practice it in real life, that certainly doesn’t mean that you and your partner should choose to practice it. Many couples identify as being polyamorous yet they do not (at least currently) have multiple partners, which is just as okay.Some say that in order for this lifestyle to work you flat-out have to identify as polyamorous. You have to be polyamorous, you can’t just be polyamorous.

Lots of things to think about.

Portland: Day 4

Today has been slow. Stuff is finally starting to get unpacked, and one might actually confuse the floor with a space to walk. A lot of knitting has been done, and my penchant to sleep in has all but been eradicated by the large window in the bedroom.

Yesterday was spent cleaning up a bit and actually putting things away in the kitchen after I’d used them.  Hooray for cabinet and counter space! The kitchen feels so large to me after what we had in Bellevue.

On another note, my parents ordered a couch from IKEA for the condo. They really like the couch, and the idea that they’d get to use the couch when they visited, so all of that combined with the idea that they would use it when they finally moved in led to its purchase.  I quite like it, although the color is a little odd.  But when picking colors for a leather couch there are only so many that I would really like anyway, none of which were available in this model.  If they had a dark brown I would have pushed for it.

So the couch has been purchased, and sometime in the next 10 days I should be receiving a call to schedule the delivery.

That day we also purchased a dresser for the bedroom because we just have that many clothes. Heh.  It looks quite nice though.

The first day that Josh and I were here by ourselves was on Sunday, and boy was that nice. Sure the place is a mess, but being able to just hang out for a day by ourselves in our hew home was much more enjoyable than I expected.

Oh!  I’ve managed to de-clutter a lot of my wardrobe (although Josh would say that “a lot” was an exaggeration). Yesterday we delivered a large box and grocery bag full of our stuff to the local thrift store. It feels nice to unload a bunch of stuff that we really didn’t need, especially because I’m trying really hard not to be as much of a packrat as my dad is.

I still haven’t started looking for a job despite the fact that I feel it will be necessary to find one quickly. We have more debt than I’d like on the credit card, including all of the moving costs, new furniture, Ashley’s “loan”, and a major car fix about a month ago. Add to that the $1,000/month rent we’ll be paying and it gets to be pretty clear what I need to be focusing on. It’d just be nice to get settled first.

This whole job-finding thing makes me nervous. What if there aren’t any yarn shops looking for someone? That would make my choices difficult.

The Ravelry forums aren’t making me feel any better either. Everybody and their cousin has a very strong opinion about every single yarn shop they’ve been to, and even if they don’t deserve it the employees and shops are getting bashed left and right. Makes a person want to say “screw you” and not apply at all. I mean, who wants to be a part of such a negative community? Everybody knows that Best Buy is evil but everybody goes anyway, they just make sure to have that expectation in mind. It gets annoying after awhile.

And since it’s my blog I’m not going to add the whole “I’m sure not everyone is like this and just so you know I’m just ranting so don’t take it seriously” bit to these entries, because that gets old after awhile and you all should be smart enough to see when it applies.  So there.

On a different note, does anyone have any observations as to the differences between Portland coffee and Seattle coffee? Twice now when I’ve had my normal vanilla latte it’s been overwhelmingly sweet.  I might actually have to switch to a regular latte.  Oof.

It has been an issue lately for me to get motivated to write in this damn blog.  I think it’s because I can’t reconcile what I want to do with it.  I want it to be a place to find cool things and information, but I also want it to be a place where people can come and get updates about my life.  I don’t like the idea of directing people to only part of my blog so I’ve just kind of hung out in this limbo and not posting because I don’t feel that the posts have anything useful to say.

Regardless, here I am again.  I’m at Tully’s having a chai latte to kill some time this afternoon.  If you guessed that I was at their New Main location you’d be wrong; I’m actually at the one at the mall.  Yes, I am crazy.

Frankly I had a lot of trouble deciding what to eat for lunch today (yeah, I know, so tragic), so I eventually wandered off towards the mall and settled on a gyro.  Yum.  In the end this whole mall idea probably wasn’t a good one, solely because there are so many people here!  Oof.

In recent knitting news I finished another project today.  The past couple of days I’ve been knitting a scarf pattern that is of Deborah’s design… it’s pretty spiffy.  She talked me into getting that Road To China yarn by The Fibre Co. and oh man is it soft.  I’m pretty sad that I’m already done knitting it but in the end I was just too anxious to have it done.  I was pretty happy with the result, although Deb is a much tighter knitter than I am, so following the pattern she was bound to get a tad more length than I.  No surprise that I’m wearing the scarf now.  🙂  I’ll have it on my Ravelry page soon.

Josh was sweet enough to leave me with his baby, the Nikon D70s this week so that I can bring it to Tuesday’s knit night and help Becky B. take pictures of her stash for her own Ravelry page.  I have so much more luck with that camera than I do with my own point-and-shoot.  Josh says that I can create almost as good results with my point-and-shoot, but I’m not convinced.  I might not know all the words for all of the things I’m doing, but I kind of know my way around things.  It was fun today at least, because I was able to figure out pretty easily how to get the external wireless flash going without much trouble.

So what else is new, other than my move?  I did see the condo this weekend.  I rode down with Josh and his parents took their truck full of our stuff down as well, and we all loaded it in.  It was kind of a fun little operation… we’d unload a bunch of stuff from the truck in stages and move it to the lobby, then into the elevator, then out of the elevator, then down to the condo.  It didn’t take us more than a couple of hours at most.

The condo might be a little small, but the kitchen is a really nice size and the deck is pretty nice.  Also, there are outlets and cable hookups everywhere!  Woo!  Josh called Quest last week and our internet service should be transferring over this coming Wednesday, so by the time I’m there the internet will be up and running.

Sleeping in the studio here is a little odd considering it’s mostly empty.  Then there’s the fact that I don’t officially have a bed, and there’s no internet or other media to watch.  I stopped storing movies and TV shows on my laptop once we got the external hard drives, so I’m kind of strapped for entertainment.  Other than knitting of course!  But I am limited to the music that is currently on my iPhone, which is a little weird/annoying.

Portland should be a lot of fun in the end I think.  It’ll be good for both of us to move.  It’s just a little sad because I was just meeting new friends, and old friends are just starting to come and visit when we up and move out of state.  My friends and I are going to have to do our sweater-of-the-month club stuff remotely now.  Oh well.

I’m going to stop by Express again today because I got a cute shirt there the other day and I think I might pick up another one.  Umm… that’s it for now.  I think I’m going to head home.

If you’ve talked to me at all lately you’re probably aware that I have a less-than-healthy love for sushi.  This is mostly a new thing for me and will probably be another thing that I grow tired of by the end of the year.  But like all of my obsessions, I rarely notice.

Lisa and I met up this evening and went out for sushi; now a common occurrence for us.  I’m not sure what did it but suddenly she’s really into the stuff!  I have to say that our sushi was pretty good but I found it a little expensive.  Sure, I know I’m cheap, but really $7.50 for a 6 piece Cali roll is just outrageous.  That and charging us $4 each for miso soup.  Heh.  It is the first visit to I Love Sushi for either of us though, so it was fun to go to a place that is highly regarded in the Bellevue area.

I ended up buying her dinner because I missed her birthday in Feb. and I feel a little bad about that.  Especially since I haven’t come up with anything hand knitted.  Oops.  I gave her a hat for christmas (just like everyone else) and it would have been silly to give her a second one.

In other news I can’t say there is much going on.  Sure, there is a lot going on but it’s all big stuff that I feel a little odd mentioning at this point.  Besides, the blog post would be too long.

Oh!  And to be even more ADD about it, Josh bought me yarn!  It was incredibly sweet of him.  Sure it’s a yarn that we sell at the shop, but when you’re looking at a 70% discount on a discontinued color one really can’t complain.  In the end he bought me two bags of one color, and one in another color so that he may knit me a tank top.  Fun!

As if that yarn purchase isn’t enough I spent a boatload (comparatively) at the Hilltop Yarn shop in Seattle when they had their 50% off sale.  Of course every single thing (other than the book) was Malabrigo yarn.  One day I will beat this addiction.

I’ve been more motivated to update my Ravelry page, so stay tuned for more pictures and a better representation of what  I’m up to in the knitting world.

This blog post was meant to be more meaningful but I’m just not feeling it right now.  I’ll update tomorrow or so with some pictures.