Lucy is mad

Apparently Lucy is mad. Lucy is my little girl cat who really has no problem letting me know how she is feeling.
Today she was mad so she came over while I was doing Tae Bo and pooped on this little door mat. She chose a spot just out of the way of all the Tae Bo kicking and stuff but still close enough to be right in front of me. She then hung out by her "present" for me until I noticed what she had done.
I think she is mad cause I have been working a lot and not sitting at home watching Top Model with her.
She also left one of her mouse toys in my shoes. This is a common practice when I am really busy. She finds the shoes I seem to be wearing a lot and leaves a toy mouse in them so that when I try to put on my shoes they are too small.

The other night I was taking a picture of my stargazer lily and the cats wanted to get in on all the action too so here is Snoop with the flower.


The Sweetest Snoop 

my apartment

There is so much to love about my apartment that I am just kind of hoping that my higher power kicks in so that I can stay here longer.
There is so much to love about this place. There are 13 windows and I love every one of them for their different views.
There are these 30's style arches and super high ceilings and these awesome wood beams on the ceiling in the dining room.
There is a dining room. Unlike in other apartments where you can't really tell where the dining room ends and the living room begins.
There is also a rockin little sunroom where I read and write and chill.
My kitchen also rocks. There are more cabinets than I have ever had in my life and they go up really high. I can be slightly decadant and not even use all of them. And there is this great energy in the kitchen that makes me want to cook. I have totally realized that just cause I'm single doesn't mean I have to eat TV dinners every night. That cooking for myself is a fun creative way to take care of myself.
My friend Barb said that when things change it means that you have passed a test and whatever. I have learned from this apartment that I am a total city mouse. I thought I was a suburb mouse but now that I live in the city I can't imagine moving back to one of those apartments in the suburbs that are all the same and have 4 windows in the whole place.
Also I love sidewalks and parks and biking in the city. I love my neighborhood coffee shop with its free range coffee and I have even been trying to go to church sometimes.
I also have friends in the neighborhood and I really like being close to them.
So I know that everything will work out and the process of selling will take time so I am going to enjoy every second of it.

bad news

OK so the best thing that happened to me in the past year was getting hooked up with this totally awesome apartment. My landlord rocks mostly because he has different values than the typical American values of making more money than one could ever spend in their lives. Anyway I found out today that he wants to sell the building. This sucks cause I have no desire to move. I hate moving, the only way that I wanted to move out of this place was if I was moving to a house. I don't think I can afford that just yet.
Also the low rent has been a really awesome way for me to pay off some debt and keep working in theater. I used to work every free day/evening whatever and thanks to this awesome place I have actually managed to have some days off when I am not working at two differnt theaters.
I feel like it is my fault for having a leaky roof. Like the leaky roof was the straw that broke the camel's back and now everything is going to suck.
I think the worst thing is knowing that my life is somehow going to change (moving, higher rent, whatever) but not being able to plan for it. I really like to plan for things and I like to be in control. I am not in control because this isn't really my decision. So that is how it is going to be.

Cat Bed

This isn't about a project I am currently working on or one I have just finished but it is one I look forward to seeing get used. This spring I knit up the kitty bed from the book Stitch n Bitch. The day I brought the kitty bed home was also the day that I got my dining room chairs so Snoop and Lucy were more interested in that than the cat bed.
The bed sat mostly unused for the summer. I mean really if you were a fur person would you want to sit around in fun fur/wool-ease kitty bed in the middle of summer, probably not. The weather was wacky this summer with some nights falling into the 40's and let me tell you the kitty bed was much appreciated on those chilly days and nights.
The first time I saw Snoop actually use the kitty bed I was so excited I took a picture.
I am enjoying all the warm weather that September seems to have brought us but I am also looking forward to seeing my Snoop curled up in the kitty bed in the little spot underneath the little round table.
Lucy's cat bed will require more thought since she is a hardcore mouser and she treats the balls of fun fur as giant mice. She is brutal and I have to take extra care with balls of fun fur so she doesn't "kill" them. I am not sure that a cat bed that looks like a giant mouse to her would be the thing.
So check out Snoop.

Snoop's bed 

Alternate Exit

Today at work we had to sit through an hour long training on Fire Evacuation. This is important because we work in what the fire department calls an "Assembly Venue". This includes restaurants, theaters, sports stadiums, libraries, movie theaters. Basically places where people assemble.
One of the things that happens is that all these people come in through a main entrance but in an emergency it may not be possible for everyone to leave through one entrance quickly. That is why it is important for all employees to be aware of alternate exits.
At the end of the training my friend and I got up and exited out one of the "alternate exits". Everyone else got up went out the "main entrance". Barb and I got back to work a whole two minutes faster than everyone else. In a real crisis we would totally rock and would have to lead people to safety.

The last official weekend of summer

I had the most awesome weekend. It was one of those weekends that makes you wish is was the beginning of summer with three months of warm days ahead. Those weekends at the end of summer where you feel as though you are stealing time because you have been given such awesome weather and such beautiful experiences.
I went up north with my friend Peter this weekend. We built campfires, made S'mores, rode bikes, breathed fresh air, saw all the stars you never see in the city and spent most of Saturday on the lake.
Thanks to Peter's awesome fish finder and some rockin' minnows that gave their lives for the cause, my skills with the fishing pole and Peter's quick reflexes with the net we were able to have a little fish fry on Saturday night. And I even got to take some leftovers home for my kitties.
Check out dinner in the pic below.

Catch of the day 

It's raining in my apartment

Two days ago I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and when I stepped out of bed I stepped in a puddle. I thought that was weird but was more interested in getting back to sleep before my alarm went off. When my alarm went off 45 minutes later I turned on the lights and realized that my ceiling was leaking.
Since I live on the top floor this means that the roof is probably leaking. I have no idea how the fixing of this is going. When I came home today I did not have a new ceiling so I will have to update this progress later.
On Knitting
Tomorrow is pay day and I am fighting the urge to head to the knitting store. I realized that I messed up on this blanket I was knitting and I need something to do while the blanket sits in its knitting bag and thinks about what it has done. I can't bring myself to frog the blanket cause I'm afraid I won't want to work on it again. Plus I saw stuff that I want to make more.

Sunday baking

I have been raving on about these half-moon cookies from the bakery in my mom's home town forever. I was able to get the recipie off the internet and decided that today would be the day to make them so I could share them at work tomorrow.
They have some flaws because I made them in my kitchen and not a bakery with awesome cooling racks. Also I figured out the process myself from the recipie as opposed to having it passed down to me from a seasoned bakery pro. But they look like they would be good and they have buttercream frosting on them. I'm pretty sure that I could put buttercream frosting on cardboard and people at work would not complain.
Check out their picture on the previous post.

Half moon cookies 

Just starting out on my socks. 

knitting socks

My current knitting project is socks. So far this has been a slow going process. Mostly because I have frogged them three times since I started.
Although I have been knitting for less than a year I have become somewhat results oriented. I think I just really like the feeling of satisfaction that I get from actually finishing something. This doesn't happen with my at home sewing projects- mostly because I finish enough costumes at work that it isn't really that big a thrill for me to come home and turn out a pair of pj bottoms in an evening. Knitting a cute little fun fur scarf on a Saturday gives me that.
Even though I know my sisters love getting their cute flannel PJ bottoms for Christmas knitting has also opened up a whole new realm for me as far as Christmas presents go. I'm excited because this year I can give something different than the PJ bottoms that have become so mundane to me.
As I'm knitting these socks though I am getting the feeling that I will be at this for a while. I try to keep my unfinished projects to a minimum so I am not sure what this means for the Christmas present cache.

back to work

OK so summer is over and I am back to work.
My friend Beth and I are currently working out before work everyday. We have been using the Tae Bo videos. This has provided some entertaining moments during work because sometimes when you talk about an exercise that you have done it requires you to act it out.
There are also the people who act as Billy Blank's areobics class on the tapes. The people in these videos serve as mine and Beth's virtual areobics class as well. We talk about the people we don't like, we talk about the people who are cool, and we talk about the people who do the exercises wrong.
I have been to classes at the gym but I never felt like I could talk about the people in class- mostly cause class was at 6 and at that time I'm really not up to noticing what people are doing wrong and who is cool and who isn't. I also have a tremendous respect for anyone who gets up that early to start their day doing hard core yoga. And I am bad at yoga because I'm short waisted so my body seems out of proportion to be doing some of the exercises and that keeps me from judging others. But my Tae Bo video buddies have made me miss the interaction of a real class it has become my ambition to become a little bit of a gym rat.

state fair- again

I returned to the state fair this weekend. I am actually doing everything in my power to not go one last time before it closes. Returning was actually a good thing since I missed the Fine Arts building on my first trip. This is an unexcusable oversight and is mostly due to the fact that I was consuming a food or beverage at the time we stopped at the fine arts building on the first day and they don't allow food or beverage in the fine arts building. By the time I was finished my fellow group members had seen the fine arts building. When I see the fine arts building I am amazed by the art people can make. The watercolors always impress me because of the amount of control some of the artists seem to have. I do not have nearly as much control over my watercolors as these people seem to have.
But I realize that I don't have to be a master at the fine arts because a couple buildings away from the fine arts are the creative activities. This is a category I have decided that I should begin entering. They have collecting, quilting, baking, needlepoint, latchhook, cross stitch, and my most recent skill- knitting. This gives me hope that if I never really become great at watercolor it won't matter because I will always have knitting.