Relocating

So I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. A dog’s age.

Part of the issue is that I’ve kind of “outgrown” the theme of this blog. Since it was my first venture into the world of blogging, it’s really no surprise that I got tired of the concept I’d locked myself into. Still, I like blogging, and I find it therapeutic in some strange way. So I am relocating to a new domain, a new theme, and a new concept.

Loose in the Burgh is intended to be our “family” blog. Essentially, a place where we can keep you up to date on what we’re up to, and eventually be the definitive resource for all things Baby Loose. I will probably be the major contributor, but you may even see posts from Bryan on occasion. I posted our first post yesterday, and plan to start to update the site regularly over the next few weeks.

So please update any bookmarks, and I’ll see you over there!

January Resolution Check In

I know, there’s still another day before the month ends, but I’m declaring it the end of Fiscal January 2011. Here’s how I’m doing so far on my resolutions:

1.  Blogging. I did blog more for the first few days, and then I fell back to my old 2010 habit of not blogging. February will be better.

2.  I am going to take more pictures. I did not take more pictures. I don’t know if February will be better, but I’m hopeful.

3.  Be more crafty. I finished the blanket that’s been plaguing me for about 3 years, so that’s pretty good. I also braved the hat pattern, and knitted a bunch of baby hats. Probably 3 or 4 are even wearable. I knitted a hat for myself that somehow turned out to be both too big (around) and too small (overall length). I learned how to knit in the round, and finished a small (not wearable) hat.

4.  Save more money. Savings are on track.

5.  Track my grocery spending and wasted purchases. Tracking your grocery spending has an added benefit in the fact that it makes you realize just how much money you can save if you just cook at home. I spent a ton of money this month at the Giant Eagle, but I’m happy to say that I only threw away two yogurts. $1.33 wasted. Not bad!

6.  Cook dinner at least 4 times a week, on average. I cooked 19 out of 28 days this Fiscal January. So in hockey terms, I’m a +3 going into February. Which is good, since I’m traveling for work this week.

7.  Adopt a baby. No news on this front.

Knitting in the Round, Steelers Win, Beef Stew

Knitting in the Round. Yes, it is in fact possible to teach an old dog new tricks. Especially if said tricks are really “old lady tricks” like knitting in the round. I am not really very good at it, but I finished my first seamless hat. Correction: my first FUNNY SHAPED seamless hat. Because it really only somewhat resembles an actual hat. Hat count as of last night = 9 hats. WOO!

Steelers Win. If you only watched the first half, you would never believe it. I do not know what Mike Tomlin said to those guys at half time, but I’ll tell you one thing – I’m glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of it. We came out like a house on fire. A new team.  It was a tale of two halves, as the announcers like to remind us constantly. Next up, THE JETS. As in “J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS.”

Beef Stew. I make a killer beef stew, by any measure. There’s no recipe. I just throw things into the pot. This time I added half a package of bacon, half of a Fezziwig Ale, and a parsnip. It was delicious.

Here We Go, Spaces, Oxford Commas

Here we go. Yes indeed, here we go. Every year, this guy outdoes the previous version. I might have said something about Mendenhall’s spin moves, but he is pretty clever I have to admit. Also “Suisham’s toe” makes me giggle.

Spaces. Boy oh boy. Caught this little bit of fascinating information over on Twitter today. For real? One space? Not two? What about after an exclamation point? Or a question mark? Still one? Or is it two? In any case, from here forward, I will be following the one-space rule on this blog, and in all communication. And not just because of this article. Also because my spacebar has been a little wonky of late.

Oxford Commas. While we’re on the subject of spacing, we might as well discuss the comma. Specifically, the Oxford comma. I work with a woman who has a bad habit of typing sentences like this:

“Can you contact Joe Smith please and assist him with coding this invoice for approval?”

Since she skips commas with reckless abandon, I’ve decided I will add commas where they are wholly unnecessary, just to conserve them. You know, for posterity’s sake.

P.S. I have had to delete a lot of spaces in this post. A LOT.

h/t @thigpensrevenge

Parsley, Hats, Snow

Parsley. Of all the herbs in my aero-garden, I am most excited about the parsley.  We use a lot of parsley in our house, and if I can save a few bucks (and some unknown pesticides) this year, I will be pumped.  The parsley, however, has not been looking so hot.  In fact, it’s been pretty much looking like Day 1 since, well, Day 1.  But today?  Today, Day 12, I awoke to find this:

Look at me! I'm parsley!

I’m trying to ignore the fact that one of the two leaves is brown.

Hats. I finally figured out how to finish a knitting project.  Make something small.  The smaller, the better.  If you can finish it in one night, you are 100% more likely to finish it.  So for the last 2 nights, I’ve been knitting baby hats.  And now I have 2 knit baby hats!

Snow. We’re getting 3-6 inches, or so they say.  Yay!

Herbs, Candy, The Pens

Herbs. I got a pretty fancy herb garden for Christmas this year.  I couldn’t plant anything in it until New Year’s Day, since we left for Colorado right after I got it.  Here’s what it looked like on day 1:

 

Herbs - Day 1

I thought about taking a picture of it every day to show the progress, but realized that you’d never be able to tell the difference anyway.  So Herbs – Day 2 through Herbs – Day 4 pretty much look like Herbs – Day 1.  And then today, I saw this!

 

Herbs - Day 5

A tiny little herb!  Yay!

Candy. I actually went to my office today, you know, since I haven’t been there in over a month.  I completely forgot about the awesome amount of stuff my suppliers send me every year.  Two of them made a donation in my name, which is nice.  I also scored a mouse pad, a wall calendar, a box of cookies, $60 worth of gift cards, and four giant boxes of candy.  Sweet!

The Pens. Tonight’s game has been full of hilarity.  Five goals in the first period.  The Lightning pulled their goalie in the first period, then put him back in to start the second.  One of the refs fell down and was totally out of it for like 30 seconds, and then there was the Stamkos penalty shot vs. Fleury.  He literally skated 8 feet, then lost the puck and fell down.  Apparently they forgot to tell him that ice is slippy.  Puck Daddy has a pretty nice summary up, including video of Geno’s goal 7 seconds into the game, and Stamkos falling down.

Goulash, Vonage, All Stars

Goulash. When I picked our meals for this week, I somehow ended up with two Paula Dean recipes.  Surprisingly, neither of them contained butter, and neither was deep fried.  Two days ago, we ate stuffed red peppers, and today we had goulash.  It was pretty tasty, even though I would call it “spaghetti with meat sauce and macaroni noodles” if goulash didn’t sound so much more interesting.

Vonage. I had to break down and get a land line since I’ve been working from home so much.  Vonage isn’t technically a land line, but it rings on a real phone, so it feels like a land line to me.  The best part (besides the free nationwide calling, including Canada and Puerto Rico) is the voicemail.  Not only does it save the voicemail (an obvious feature), but it also sends me an email with a .wav file of the message, and a transcript.  Most of the time, the transcripts are borderline unintelligible, but it’s still a nice touch.

All Stars. Say what you will about all star games.  They’re generally a total waste of time meant only to make money for the league, but they’re also a fun time for the fans.  I mean, come on!  I can’t tell you the last time I watched a baseball game on purpose, but I’ll tune into the Home Run Derby.  It’s good fun!  The NHL revealed the top vote getters this year are:  Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Marc-Andre Fleury, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith.  Notice anything?  Yeah, that’s right.  Four of the six are Penguins.  And one of them is a 90′s pop band.

Client Holidays, Sun Dried Tomatoes, Reading Time

Client Holidays.  They are few and far between, really.  Since today was a holiday for my client and not for me, I had a very very productive day.  Normally, I take a PTO day, but since it’s the first day of the year, it seemed silly to do it this time.  So instead I just got a pile of things done.  Yay!

Sun Dried Tomatoes. Let’s start with how I came about possessing said sun dried tomatoes.  I made the grave mistake of going to the grocery store on Friday (New Year’s Eve), ALONE.  I went in the morning, but holy geez it was a mess in there.  As you would expect, there was pretty much nothing on the shelves, because all of the 2.78 million other people there had already bought up everything good.  OK, so there I am, racking my brain on where they keep sun dried tomatoes, and I see another shopper doing the exact same thing.  I buy them about three times a year, so I had to look in all the odd places.  He had already looked in all of the odd places.  And he couldn’t find them either.  Finally, together, we found the spot where the sun dried tomatoes SHOULD be (if the 2.78 million people hadn’t already bought them up).  Shelf = empty.  Me = sad.  So we part ways, and I decide to try the condiments row.  You know, maybe over by the pickles and olives?  OH COME ON!  They are little fruit/vegetable things IN A JAR – that’s a perfectly reasonable place to look, right?  RIGHT?  I thought so.  Anyway, there weren’t any there.  Not even an empty spot on the shelf.  But lo and behold, along comes my friend from the other row – with sun dried tomatoes in hand!  He actually found them, then came looking for me!  How cool is that?  So tonight I am making a mediterranean pasta with them.  And it will be delicious.  I really should buy these things more often!

Reading Time. So, we’re nerds, but our new favorite evening activity is reading the Harry Potter books out loud to each other.  We’re on book 3.

The Winter Classic

I’m sure you can find several more expert opinions than mine on the subject of The Winter Classic, but here’s my two cents…

The Pros.

1.  It was very organized.  Everything seemed to happen right on schedule.  The music was planned perfectly, and the puck dropped exactly at 8.

2.  Free gifts.  Every seat had a fancy little padded seat cover that made the stadium a little more inviting.  And every purchase came in a large reusable bag.  It made my overpriced program seem like a better deal.

3.  Night games are awesome.  I know, hockey is a niche sport, and no network wants to give up prime time for it.  But the WC really was meant to be played under the lights.  It was absolutely beautiful.

4.  68,111 fans chanting GE-NO.  Seriously the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.  Too bad we only got to do it once.

5.  Pens and Caps fans agreeing on one thing:  FLY-ERS SUCK!

6.  The national anthem.  Even though it wasn’t Jeff Jimerson, it was pretty neat to see this:

7.  Number 11 makes his comeback.  So very glad to see Jordan Staal back on skates!

The Cons:

1.  It was very unorganized.  I don’t think I saw a single usher all night.  I mean, stadiums are pretty easy to understand, but it would be nice if the guy at the bottom of the section told you to go in the other side instead of letting you find out on your own.  Since nobody sitting in section HH (that’s 32 rows up, for those of you keeping score) wants to walk back down and then back up, we had quite a few people walking all the way across the aisle to get to their seats on the other side of the section.  A few ushers could have solved this.  Also, the complete disaster that is Heinz Field makes me appreciate the design of the CEC.  Seriously, you can’t even leave your seats at Heinz Field, because unless you are an Olympic sprinter, you aren’t going to make it back before the game starts up again.

2.  Parking was a nightmare.  Can’t really blame this on the WC folks, really, but it was still pretty frustrating that it took us over 30 minutes just to get out of the lot.

Anyway, we had a great time, despite the Pens’ loss.  It was a great experience, and I’m glad the weather cooperated just enough for them to play the game.

2011 – Here We Go, Yo

Well, it’s not New Year’s Day without Resolutions.  So here we go, yo.

1.  Blogging. I will blog more often.  I would commit to a number of posts per week or per month, but I think it’s best if I just say “more.”

2.  I am going to take more pictures. Turns out I did some pretty cool stuff last year, and went some pretty cool places.  This year, I will do a better job of documenting things.  You know, for posterity’s sake.

3.  Be more crafty. Not in the “she’s crafty” sort of way – but in the knitting, making things sort of way.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even make something for my devoted reader(s) one day.  For now, I’m going to commit to finishing the baby blanket I started in 2010.  And then maybe I’ll move on to some other projects.

4.  Save more money. 2010 was a costly year.  Home improvements aren’t cheap!  One thing I did do well in 2010 is that we paid cash for just about everything all year.  But my bank account is showing it!  This year, we don’t have as much stuff to do, so I will be able to save a lot better.

5.  Track my grocery spending and wasted purchases. Starting with yesterday’s shopping trip, I am going to track exactly how much we spend on food, and how much we throw away.

6.  Cook dinner at least 4 times a week, on average. I didn’t do such a good job of cooking in 2010, but 2011 is going to be different, I promise.

7.  Adopt a baby. That’s right, I’m committing to it.  I know I can’t control it in any way, shape, or form, but I am going to be a mom this year.  Get ready, because IT. IS. HAPPENING!