Come On In and see the NEWS!!!!!!

I made that yummy creme de menthe cake from the Chinaberry cookbook again. It's gone already.



But you can still have a virtual bite.



Then I made these from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion



They're basically just oats, brown sugar, corn syrup, butter and vanilla, with chocolate chips, cocoa butter (my substitution for shortening) and walnuts on top. They didn't get a great reception, but they're disappearing anyway. They seem better on the second day.

For our Ancient History class, Fishy made a scale model of the Ark. (Noah's, not "of-the-covenant.") He was going to make it out of Play-Doh, but changed to this paper print-out model when that proved too awkward. Whether you are into arky stuff or not, I find it fascinating that there are hundreds of cultures around the world that each have their own world-wide flood legend.


It's really hard to glue something made of paper that's so long and thin. ^_^

Sluggie compared 3 flood legends from different cultures (China, Egypt and Greece), Mollusc drew a scale model of the ark, and Prawnie made a lapbook about Paleolithic People.










I have a new project in the works: a Wheel of the Year quilted wallhanging. I have yet to decide whether it will be circular or octagonal. I want to be able to turn it throughout the year so that the current season's wedge faces right-way-up.

So far I have these fabrics for Mabon, and Imbolc or Ostara:



And finally, the BIG NEWS! Meet MY NEW BABY Xavier! He is soooooooooo lovely. He sews like buttah. I'm in love. :) The adoption fee was only $75. His mother had to give him up because he had too many siblings. He's currently slightly disabled because he has no feet, but I plan to remedy that tomorrow if possible. Welcome, Xavier!!



My other machine (a Singer from Sam's) has served me well for at least 11 years with no servicing at all. My big girls will inherit it, but it needs reconditioning, because right now when I use it, it goes DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK instead of hmmmmmmmmm. They have yet to name it, but I suspect it will be something like Boromir or Aragorn or Legolas. ^_^

A Fungus Among Us

Whose woods these are, I think I know



because they're right behind my house.



When in the woods, every Boy must have a Stick.



The object of today's search:



And another example:



We also happened upon the scene of a grisly murder:



It looked as if some ghoulish thing had been decorating for Christmas.



If you care to peek, you'll see a beak (or at least half of one.)



All around the site, Nature went on as if nothing had happened.



Though the apartment dwellers were wise enough to stay indoors.



We decided to leave that world,



and venture into Eldemoss



a magical place of bridges and sacred pools





and corndogs growing wild.



But all too soon it was time to cross the dead marshes



and leave that world for our own.





I'll leave you with a picture of another fun guy (on my thigh.) His name is Bruce.

Dream On

I looked up some of my dream stuff at the library today. Turns out that strangling a stranger means money is coming your way (that would be lovely!), but you may have to be ready to defend your good name. Generally, killing someone in your dreams was accepted by all the books to mean something positive -- either you have overcome an obstacle or fear, or you are getting rid of something negative in your life, though I suppose it could also mean you're just a bit psycho.

Maybe it's all about my washer. It's stopped filling with water for the wash cycle. This is a major pain, because I have to do it with a bucket. Through the little soap dispenser slot. (It's a front loader.) Maybe I could try doing it through the door before I put the clothes in. Either way, it's awkward. Thankfully, it still turns, and still appears to fill with water for the rinse cycle. Although last night I guess it stopped partway through a cycle, cuz that's how I found it this morning. Wah. It would be nice if it was still under warranty.

I have a hunch it's about the TKD tournament on Saturday, though. I hate tournaments. I don't know whether or not I'm competing, because I don't know whether or not there will be anyone else in my division. It's a State Tournament, so there's no cross-gender sparring (a first for me -- I've always had to spar guys.) Same goes for MuNKi. All the kids are competing, though.

I did my grocery game early this week. I think that may be a first for me. Usually I end up not getting it done until Sunday, but I found time to squeeze it in today. This trip's results:

Value of groceries purchased: $98.07
............................. I spent: $44.68
...................for a savings of: $53.39

Catch-22

Emmett decided to save me about $50 today by being ornery when the vet tried to get an X-ray. Due to his lack of cooperation, they were unable to get an X-ray without sedation, and since the purpose of the X-ray was to determine whether or not he could handle sedation, it was a perfect Catch-22. The vet ended up giving him a steroid shot and we're to monitor his wheeziness. If it improves, they will proceed accordingly. So while it's embarrassing that he was mean to the vet, I'm secretly happy to have saved the $. He's been wheezy all his life. I'm 99.9% sure it's asthma. The only other alternative is that he has an infectious disease. I find it hard to believe that he could have had an infectious disease his entire life without suffering worse effects or getting over it.

Cookies! Nom nom nom. These are peanut butter cookies with peanut butter chips and chocolate chips.



My stylish hogu strap covers. I wish I'd had some Hello Kitty knit. They seemed to help last night.




I bought this a Borders a couple of trips ago and we've been using it for TKD nights. Yum! At $6.88 (or somthing like that) it was a very sound investment.

No Pictures!

I took some today, but as I'm worn out and in bed, I'm not posting them 'til tomorrow. Instead, you get this random smattering of stuff.

Emmett has to get a chest x-ray tomorrow because he needs to have his teeth cleaned and he has (most likely) asthma, so the vet has to figure out how to safely knock him out. In the meantime, Enya is in the early stages of kidney disease, so she needs prescription food. Sigh.

Perhaps because of these things, I dreamt that MuNKi got a new, super-high-paying job (that he actually liked) and we were moving to Boston. Additionally, I had to strangle to death a woman who was trying to kill us all. (I think.) It didn't work very well. I could tell, because she was talking to me while I was trying to strangle her. I was pretty squeamish about the whole thing, so that may be why I did such a poor job. It would be nice to be able to say that she had a very telling name, such as "Housework" or "Vet Bills" but she didn't. I'm just a weird person with weird dreams, I guess.

And now, Ear Candy.


This song should be the anthem for the current (or perhaps any) Presidential Race. I ignore the vid and just listen.




And this one is just fun in a totally geeky way. I'm not generally a rap fan, but this partly musical and partly bad rap with some fun lyrics.

My Name is Candace

and I am a Journalaholic. It's very hard for me to pass up yummy journals. ESPECIALLY when they're on sale.


I particularly love the red triangular sticker on this one.


And the brown pages inside. I got 3 of these and Prawn claimed one:
(By Kaira Baggins. Concerning Hobbits.
When I was dead, then some other hobbits would get my house, but I adopted another hobbit. His name was Frodo Baggins, and then Frodo would get my house (switches to pencil) and the other hobbits would not get my house.)



Mollusc chose this velvety embossed one:


Additionally, Prawn wanted this very colourful book (also bearing my favourite sticker) :



It's handy to have something big enough to trace your body on in case the mood strikes. ^_^



The brown one was on sale (with more yummy brown pages) and the black one wasn't, but it was cheap



AND it has paper like THIS inside:




So, yeah, I have a problem.


In other news, I found some leaves outside!



And some daffodils. Real ones!


But Emmett says it's still too cold.



I know how he feels.

A Rash of Pictures

I got BG addicted to this liquid crack a couple of weeks ago. I shouldn't have told her where to buy it, because then I could have extorted large sums of $ from her for it.



It snowed again last night.




I figured as long as I was out there barefoot in the snow, I might as well get a picture of the bench. I'm hoping to be sitting there, sweating, in 3 mos or so.





Does my pussy make my ass look fat? Wait. Don't answer that.


At any rate, he's extrememly pleased with himself.




No, sadly, they aren't hickies. I traced this mystery rash to my hogu tonight. I don't think I've blogged my sparring gear. Maybe someday. It used to make me feel like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man when I put it on.



Now I have to come up with some sort of wrappy thing for the shoulder straps. Or go with the neck gaitor that MuNKi suggested. I think I'll try the wrappy thing.

Random Thoughts

I'll leave you with these weird snippets while I go about my day, and hopefully you'll add some of your own. :)

It makes you smile and rich.

It's souper than the rest!

the Dulce de La Leche League

Overheard

"You're a extra, extra, extra, extra poop head!"

"If we send it to Yi-yi (through email) will we still have it?"

"Please take your nest out of my room."

"I have a mining level of 32."

and

"He looks like someone from Pride and Prejudice."

"Like Mr. Darcy?"

"Only without the claws."

(that one was Prawn, re Hugh Jackman on the cover of XMen 2)

And just now, a conversation between Grumpy Newspaper Man and a mom and her kids. Grumpy Newspaper Man is an enigma. He's always at the library, always sitting in the wing chairs by the fireplace, always reading the newspaper. Apart from this, his only other known activity is giving candy to young children.

Grumpy Newspaper Man kind of freaks me out a little. The first brush I had with him, he had given candy to Sluggie without my knowledge or consent when she was about 7 or 8. Loathe to be rude to an older person (TKD tenet #6 "respect your elders"), she had taken it (ironically thus breaking another TKD instruction) and come promptly to me whereupon we discreetly disposed of it.

Since then, our interactions with Grumpy Newspaper Man have consisted of him giving us dagger eyes when we are talking near him, him making disgusted noises and pointedly flapping his newspaper when we are talking near him, and him "yelling at" my 2 older girls and one of the librarians when they were talking near him. Oh, yes, and being subjected to him talking loudly (way louder than we ever do) to his cohort, "Grumpy Newspaper Man's Cohort." They are apparently both retired teachers (you can't help but learn a lot about them when they are yelling to each other across the wing chair section), so maybe after all those years of struggling to be heard, they just hate the sound of anyone's voices but their own.

Just now, Grumpy Newspaper Man approached a child and gave him candy. I think he asked the mother first, because I heard her say "thank you for asking." But it was purely extortion, because then he made the child smile at him. No, really. And then he gave a sucker to the kid's sister and made her smile, too.

It kind of makes me flash back to when I was 5-ish in Hong Kong and some fat white dude came to the top steps of our yard as I was going out to play. He made me tell him my name and give him a hug, even though my little 5 year old arms didn't come near to reaching around his ample gut. Even though I didn't know him from Adam. I was too afraid of being rude to him to decline.

Something about Grumpy Newspaper Man just doesn't sit right with me.

Geekery

I'm so pleased to be raising mini geeks! ^_^


Helm's Deep




Aragorn, Legolas and half of Gimli (so he'll be short enough) man the wall.



Theoden hides inside where it's safe



Gandalf has brought the Riders of Rohan over Mount Spiderman just in time to save everyone from. . .



. . . one dead orc!



In other news, MuNKi made yummy bread



and stew



And I made "Lembas cookies."


One mouthful is enough to give a grown man a sugar buzz for an entire day. ^_^

Lizard Gizzard

I've got tickets to go see Eddie Izzard. Huzzah!