Starting the New Year off on the Left foot

My new shoes
Originally uploaded by Cyndiva.

...because only left-handed people are in their right minds. Heh.

At any rate, I know it is not yet the new year, but this is the first week of the new year, so it counts. I was a good girl and went to yoga this morning - my first yoga class since being officially diagnosed as having herniated a disc. Two and a half months later, I think I am back to about 75% and I was able to do most of the poses in a gentle Hatha class today.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's Eve - tomorrow I'll post a bit on my resolutions for 2007.

And the 'Horns win!

Paseo Del Rio cruise, 2006
Originally uploaded by Cyndiva.

Well, the game was more of a nailbiter than I'd predicted, but my Texas Longhorns did pull out a victory. :D

The picture here is of the Rivercenter mall in San Antonio, taken Christmas morning. On a usual day there are an insane number of people down on the Riverwalk, and I imagine that number is only going to increase tonight.

Edited to add: Oh yeah, I actually got about 2 feet of scarf knit during the game - 35 stitches in 5x5 rib in worsted weight on size 10.5 needles. Did I mention the game wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped? Well, not during the first half, anyway.

Just one more day of 2006

Yes, tomorrow is the last day of this year. What does that mean? Time runs too dang fast.

As little as I've been posting over the last few days, I have been at least getting some things accomplished. I spent a week at my mother's house, visiting with a bunch of family who came in for Christmas. In that time, I managed to finish off the rest of the dishcloth angels I was gifting and put another couple inches on a shell I am knitting for myself. Yes, actual knitting for myself. If I were out of the lace patterned section I'd be working on it this afternoon while watching Texas smear Iowa in the Alamo Bowl. Since I'm not, I think I'll pick up a scarf I told a friend I'd look for the yarn for -- he offered to pay and I told him to wait until he decided whether he liked the finished product. If he doesn't like it, it will go into the stash to be sold. At any rate, a simple scarf will be good football knitting.

Now, off to get a little housework done before I settle down in front of a television to watch FOOTBALL! :D

Well, for cripes' sake

You know, it doesn't make a dang bit of difference whether you use canola oil or vegetable oil in a recipe. Quite frankly, I prefer the former since the latter is mainly soybean oil these days. Apparently, however, it is enough to make a federal case out of. Sigh.

Happy Christmas Eve Morning!

Well, my family hasn't managed yet to drive me totally insane... :D We're shortly off to church and then who knows the madness that will ensue for the rest of the day, but at least I know that there won't be multi-family scheduling issues. Mostly.

Merry Christmas, y'all. :D

Happy dancing 'til my buns fall off

Woo and HOOOOOOOOOOOO -- I got a photo in Explore!! *and the dancing ensues* Hee...

Okay, I still don't quite get Flickr's Interestingness quotient, but I finally got a photo in there so I'm happy. :D

What makes a photo popular?

Dome of Central Christian
Originally uploaded by Cyndiva.

I love this shot - I took it at last year's Christmas Concert series. This is the same church in which we sang this year. Suddenly this pic has shot to the top of my Interestingness stack in Flickr, making me wonder what it is about some photos that attracts random traffic and what it is about others that gets them missed completely? Aside from composition/technical merit, I mean - I know there are some pics that I've taken that just aren't that good, but there are lots of stunners in my collection and this one suddenly shot to a minor bit of fame. Ah well. :D

Off to get a massage - y'all hold down the fort.

Odd dreams and more

I don't think I slept well last night -- not that I didn't sleep through the night (mostly) for a change, but I think I was very tense through the last dream I had. Not bad tense, just...intense. It was an ordered scavenger hunt (each item held the next clue) held by people I went to school with, and Sammi was my partner. We were only slightly ahead of the other teams by item four and that item required we knit a sweater -- at which point I figured we were home free because Sammi worked that up in no time flat. We somehow got to item 15 but missed item 10, and going back for it allowed other teams to catch up so that on the next to last item, someone was just ahead of us racing for the golf course and I ran to beat them there and win the race. As I said, it was a bit of an odd dream, and I feel almost as though I had been running around for a few hours.

In the "more" section, today is my last physical therapy appointment. It is possible that my PT will recommend additional visits but I doubt it after we talked yesterday - it sounds like she is pleased with my progress and ready to let me graduate. Personally, I'd be just as happy with a few more visits because she has to readjust my SI joint every time, but I guess it's time to find a better chiro for that. In January, back to yoga!

Things we learned today

- One's tolerance for alcohol is severely compromised by Pennsylvania Dutch eggnog. (Okay, I already knew this one, but I've been away from copious amounts of booze for a while.)

- It is possible to unlock a broken deadbolt in five minutes without freaking out and without knowing how. Granted, now I have grease all over my hands, but at least I'm not locked in my apartment (yes, it broke after I locked the door behind me). Unfortunately, I still have a broken deadbolt and I know that the maintenance guys won't fix it very fast - perhaps I'll pick up a new lock at the hardware store tomorrow and install it myself.

One down, two to go

...and a wedding. :D

Last night was the first of three concerts in our Christmas series --- we'll be performing again tonight at 8 and tomorrow at 3 at Central Christian Church, if you're in the area and interested.

Here's a picture of the locale from last year's performance:


The wedding I am singing at is this afternoon - it makes for fun timing getting back and forth across town, but I'm very happy for the couple. :)

A spanking, a spanking!

Well, actually - it's a meme. :D Made you look!

Instructions -- Copy the first sentence that you posted in each month of 2006 (seen all over blogland, but snagged from Delia).

January 2006
"Legend has it that whatever you do on the first day of the year will be what you do the most of all year long."

February 2006
"How did another month go by so fast?"

March 2006
"Wow, how did Ash Wednesday get here so fast?"

April 2006
"I watch very little television these days, so imagine my surprise when catching a five minute glimpse of The King of Queens to see Peter Tork as the wedding MC."

May 2006
"Just a shout out to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my older sis."

June 2006
"While I wait for a plumber (long story *sigh*) I've been thinking about the practice of yoga, and its possible disagreements with Christianity."

July 2006
"In just a few we'll be on the road again, off to Bath."

August 2006
"Look at me: it's still early in the evening and I've already done the dishes and the laundry, gotten some errands run, done a little extra housework, and made dinner."

September 2006
"Blinking memory card failed and lost part of my 26 Things pics."

October 2006
"Now I just need to figure out where the boys are."

November 2006
"Just posting an update - sorry I haven't posted in a couple days and thanks to those of you who dropped a line or comment checking up on me."

December 2006
"Well, I managed to post almost a post a day in November - not that I was really participating in NaBloPoMo, or that anyone was really counting, I think."


So, the beginning of the year was characterized by my being amazed at the speed of time, in the middle of the year I got to go to Great Britain for a couple weeks, and the rest of the year has been mostly...well, a bit boring. :D

Llama, llama, duck - redux

Llamas in the Rose Parade?

Building and Byes

Boy, I am a bit bummed.

Actually, the day was mostly a good one - a bit long at work as usual but I had time to get home and get a nap, and build some furniture. The piece to the left is what I built - and before you berate me about my back, all I really had to do was put on the foot rail - the rest of it was already done. IKEA rocks.

The bummed part comes in after rehearsal - Barry (our director) let us know that he accepted a full-time music director position at a church in Kentucky. He will finish out the season with TCC, which means I have two more opportunities to sing with him, not counting the mid-winter symposium that I am sitting out. While I am very happy that Barry got this wonderful opportunity, it's hard to see a good director move on. Best wishes to you, Barry, and vaya con Dios! We'll definitely miss you and Lori and Katie Rose.

My hands can't stop

Ever felt like this guy?



Actually, I haven't been doing as much knitting as I should be, but I've gotten a lot of crochet projects done lately - seven or eight hats, most of which got shipped off yesterday to a friend for a friend of hers who is going through chemo, and about fifteen (so far) dishcloth angels. Truly, I did not intend to amass so many but I need at least eight for my own gifts and people keep asking to buy the ones I already have. I've got two more weeks to finish the last of the ones I am including in gifts.

The only other craft-y gift I am working on is Christmas fuzzies for the people in my office - I try to find a small simple thing I can make one of for everyone each year. Some years are more successful than others. :D This year, I found the fuzzies, and resolved to make them this weekend -- of course, of all the craft supplies I have on hand, apparently I have no craft glue at the moment, which means yet one more trip out shopping, but at least only to the craft store this time.

Now, off to catch up with some FFXII playing before I meet some friends to go to a Christmas pageant. Cheers, all!

Just loving it...

As much as it still kills me that I have to do it, I sent my laundry out again today. I do have to just ring praises on the Coinless Laundry, though - they do a very good job, very quickly, and the price is reasonable as well. On the other hand, less time for me to wait for the machines to get done - I only have to do one load of smalls every once in a while.

...and now, I get to watch Victor Borge (one of my father's all time favorites) on PBS while updating my blog and doing some housework instead of running downstairs to get the laundry several different times.

And for now, have a zebra. :D

Can't believe I forgot to mention...

...the good news! I had an appt with my neuro yesterday (after waiting an hour and a half) and he thinks I am doing well enough to not need another follow-up unless I have a really bad flare-up. No surgery, no steroid shots unless I need them, nothing! Well, I am still doing a few more sessions of PT -- I think my back is somewhere around 70% now, enough that I still have bad moments (see Tuesday...), but I haven't had a just miserable day in a while. Come January, I am really going to try to get back into yoga (provided the PT agrees I'm ready), and after next week I'm not doing any more choral work until March so I can concentrate on getting the rest of the way back to normal.

I really like my physical therapist, but she works me something fierce. After a session today, my legs are just a bit wobbly. I thought I'd be okay to run down to SoCo for some quick First Thursday shopping, but I lasted maybe 45 minutes before hopping back into the car to drive home. It gets a little painful if I try to stand too long and right now I'm a little extra achy due to the cold snap, I think. Oh well, not like it is terrible to stay at home with my fuzzy slippers on when it's cold and windy outside. :D

2:24 AM

How unfair is it that despite having been sore enough to take not only the heavy-duty naprocen but a Soma as well, I am wide awake? I haven't had to resort to taking a muscle relaxer in weeks now, and wasn't so bad off as to need vicodin. Thankfully. Physical therapy is best scheduled for an afternoon when you don't have other plans afterward.

Gads it sucks being resistant to medications - at least for the most part the soreness is gone, even the pinched nerve behaving for the moment. I just bawled my way through the entire Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood -- the book, not the movie. Oh, the book is so much better than the movie could ever aspire to being, not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy the movie (and have since added it to my massive DVD collection).

Still, I have to get up in three and a half hours and somehow make it through a work day. I really need to get to sleep. Oy.

She does exist!

Well, I managed to post almost a post a day in November - not that I was really participating in NaBloPoMo, or that anyone was really counting, I think. :D However, I've really been slacking off in December. It's already the 4th, and nada.

I promise I have been crocheting, although not much knitting has been done. Lately it's mostly work on chemo caps (mostly my own pattern) and dishcloth angels (based on this pattern). I might get a picture of the hats before they get sent off - and for the doubters, only one is kind of big and I might not include that one in the shipment. The only problem with floofy yarns is that they...well...floof too much and the gauge is slightly bigger than you intended. The nice thing about the hats is they are loose enough for a tender head and loose enough to stretch well when hair grows back, but not so loose they fall off or look silly. Generally, anyway - if the person has a very tiny head I apologize in advance. Hm, now that I think on it, I might make a couple extra smaller ones, although I know some of the other ladies are making a few that are more form-fitting, and the ones I've seen so far are very nice indeed. We'll see how much crafting time I come up with before Saturday, which is when I'm mailing off a box. If they don't suit the recipient, she is welcome to redistribute them to others she knows in need of them - I'd rather send too many than not enough. :)