Philly

On Thursday, I was going to go down to Philly to meet my friend Min's Mom from Missouri.  I was supposed to meet her last fall, but I had to work and couldn't get out of it.  I figured I'd kill 2 birds with one stone, since for some inexplicable reason, Angie didn't bring her weapons with her in August, and practice started already.  Then she added sweatpants and t-shirts to her list. Then she added a bunch of VHS tapes to her list (well you get the picture - point being I had a full trunk!)  Then she asked if I could have dinner with her.  So I asked my friend if it would be a huge problem to add Angie to dinner.  THEN out of the blue Curt announced he rearranged his schedule to come with me.  I was a bit concerned at this point, because my friend has been under the weather and I didn't want to innundate her with known crazy people.

So when we got to Philly, since I never really discussed times before heading down, I bought Curt breakfast at a place we attempted to find during one of Angie's visits during a monsoon. I went with Min in August after we moved Angie into her dorm, turns out we were only a couple blocks mis-placed.   When we were done, Min and her Mom were still in NJ, visiting a friend and shopping, so to kill time we looked on our phones to see what  was around.  What we settled on was The Foodery.  Part of it was a sandwich shoppe, part was a beer store.  ( I would say liquor, but I only saw Beers and Malt drinks) They had a ton of different beers, a lot of imports and a lot of micro breweries.  What was even better was that everything was sold as singles.  And if you filled a six pack holder with singles they were 10% off.  I though I exhibited remarkable self control by only getting 2 sixes:



When we finally met up with Min and her Mom ( and I just now realized I forgot to get a picture :( ) 
I brought a giant mouse for Fe (he really loves his mice - and actually when we were there he was playing with the one renamed Triscuit)  I think he thought it was a NYC sewer rat, because he seemed leary of it.  I brought Min a pint of jalapeno jam and a half pint of habenero pepper jam.  I brought her Mom a pint of Jalapeno Jam because I wasn't sure how into heat she was, and you know, it's bad form to light your friend's Mom on fire.  She brought me three gifties!!

To understand the first giftie, you need to realize that for some inexplicable reason, Min's Mom is a Joey Logano fan.  She thinks he's cute.  I think the cute identification part of the brain must be the first to go.  Anyway, I had noticed a trend of after Joey crashes a car, we run out of toilet paper at work.  Most people think it's because out store mgr is too cheap to sign off on the expense POs.  I think it's cause we keep having to buy new parts/cars when Joey wrecks them.  So I told Min her Mom owes me some toilet paper.  Now you can see giftie 1:



She also made me two Tony pillow cases!



It wasn't until I took the pictures that I noticed the JL in the corner.  Funny, very funny!

We hung out.  Min's Mom discovered what it's like having a story told by someone with ADD.  Late in the afternoon, we left to go get Angie's stuff in her room and arranged to meet Min and her Mom at the restaurant.  We emptied the trunk, and went up to Angie's room.  It was relatively neat.  I was impressed until her roommate confessed to spending most of the morning cleaning up.  Oh well.  Angie's really happy, having settled in to dorm life.  Her hallway is the "social" hallway, everyone has their room & suite doors open when they're in.  They bring their dinner up to the hall and sit in the hall on weekends eating and having fun. They created a hallway long Twister field and had most of the floor and part of another floor in a huge 70+ person game of Twister.  Her building is split between athletes and honor students (interesting) so she easily finds people to go to the games with her.  She learned that ping-pong is a blood sport. 

Angie said she needed more Temple wear, as she only had one pair of sweats and 2 t-shirts.  So we went down to the Barnes and Noble across the street, but she couldn't find what she wanted.  So we went to the bookstpre in the Student Union.  I ended up buying her a t-shirt, a long sleeve thermal shirt and a stuffed zebra wearing a Temple shirt. (She currently is into zebra stripes.  Has a zebra snuggie.  Ordered 2 pairs of zebra knee high soccer socks to fence in, has a bunch of zebra unmentionables)  Does anyone want to guess when she decides she needs a hoodie?  My guess is Halloween.  Her brain thinks since she is south of here, she doesn't need cold weather gear.  College kids, just want to smack them.

We met Min and her Mom a few minutes after we were supposed to, because the parking garage we went to has the SLOWEST valets ever.  We went to the Italian Bistro.  The food was pretty good, and the beginning of the meal was great ( Angie really liked Min's Mom - she was originally expecting a more grandma-ish person) but then a party was seated right next to us.  30-40 people I think.  The manager was "surprised" that many people made so much noise. WHo'd have thunk that?  Jeesh.

After dropping Angie off at her dorm, we went to Trader Joe's.  Min has a friend (vying for Minister of Medicine wth Med-student) (longer story than I have room for here)  who works there.  We had a vague notion of going in with Angie's sabres, until I paid the armorer $200 before bringing her equipment down.  So we had cocktail sabres.  it would have been funny too, except Curt and Min's Mom are spoilsports.  And afterwords I realized I forgot to ask about the swiss cheese!  Ugh!  Well, next time I suppose. 

Back to Work tomorrow:(

I have to go back to work tomorrow.  LE SIGH.  Of  course if I had to go back on Tuesday, I'd just be sighing tomorrow.  Life got back to normal this weekend so the transition isn't as abrupt.  Curt bowled and Angie went to her friend's birthday party yesterday.  This afternoon the Giants lost ( sorry about the snickering Curt) and Angie had a fencing clinic.  I'm not quite sure if the clinic really teaches her anything, but any extra practice is good right?  Although she almost took off 2 different kids non-weapon hand when it drifted in front of their torso.  You'd think they'd learn not to do that with her. While she was fencing we went down the road a bit to JOSE TEJAS - a really great restaurant with  a bit of schizophrenia. It's menu is pretty much split between mexican and cajun food.  I went Mexican with a Margarita and seafood enchiladas.  Curt went Cajun with a Hurricane and chicken/sausage etouffee. We did get Angie corn and black bean empanadas with black beans and rice to go.

The 49er's won!  WOOT!  Next year baby, next year...  I'm currently watching the Cowboys/Eagles game underneath the Tony Stewart snuggie my father in law got me for Christmas.  I really hate Dallas, but I categorically root against any given Philly team.  So whenever Dallas plays the Eagles I end up in this real dilemna of who to root for.  I have a lot of trouble NOT rooting while watching a game.  I have decided that my absolute hatred for all Philly teams trumps my hatred of the Cowboys.  So I am rooting against Philly.

It was really cold (19 degrees not counting wind chill) when we got home and snowing pretty hard.  It'll be really, really cold when I head off to work at 330am. Rough weather to go back to work.  But I'm hoping it won't be too horrible, after all I should get a carpet truck to unload ;P  Angie has a home meet against a school they haven't fenced before - they redid the conferences this year  so wishing her luck ( she has skill - she says - but luck never hurt any athlete)

Angie's 1st meet!

With all the Christmas going on this week, I neglected to tell you about Angie's first fencing meet.  Both the girl's and the boys lost, but against a team that practices all year around.  Angie gained a lot of respect and fans from the parents on both sides.  She had been frustrated in past year's by captains unwilling to make substitutions once the team won or lost.  Since there are 27 bouts in a meet, 14 wins.  She had always felt that once either team hit 14, the starters should be subbed out so other fencers can get some experience.  Some schools have teams that are comprised of fencers that pretty much all take outside lessons and compete in outside tournaments.  Her school that is only about 30%, so the experience is especially important.  Other captains have kept themselves in, or been swayed by fencers who were 0-2 and wanted a shot at one win.  Angie subbed out herself and the C-strip fencer for 2 freshmen, for both their first night with electric.  One of them won, the other lost 4-5  - but started her bout losing 0-4.  So they both are showing serious potential.  

Angie went 2-0 winning both her  bouts.  Her second bout she won 5-0 in a total of 8 seconds.  Here is a picture of her after her first point in one second.

Fencing Awards Banquet

The fencing awards banquet was held at the Hilton on Monday night. Angie got a varsity pin ( apparently you can only get the actual letter once. makes sense she already has a jacket) She was also announced as sabre squad captain for next year.



This years sabre captain and Angie



Angie's best friend (coach's daughter also a sabre fencer) , Alejandra and Angie ( have I ever mentioned saber fencers are all nuts?)



Angie and her 2 coaches. ( yes, she decided her hair was getting too big- she took a fast shower after track practice and didn't have time to dry or put produce in- so she put it up)



Angie and I

Totally Stolen from Grace - Meme, Ten on Tuesday and Stuff

Totally Stolen from Grace - Meme, Ten on Tuesday and Stuff

lovincomfortsknits tagged me for this meme.

Here’s how it works:
Find your 5th photo file folder, then the 5th photo in that file folder.
Then pass the meme to 5 people.


OK- my husband still hasn't gotten the stuff off the hard drive of my laptop yet- and I don't have iphoto on this one yet. So This is the fifth picture off my desktop.

I don't know who to tag - so if you read this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged!!

Ten On Tuesday: 10 Favorite Ethnic Foods

1, Cavetelli & Broccoli - Italy
2. tequilla - Mexico
3. Sesame Shrimp China
4. stuffed grape leaves - Greece
5. Swedish Meatballs & Ligonberry pancakes- Sweden
6. Schnitzel & Spaetzle-Germany
7. Paella Spain
8. Blue Mountain Coffee- Jamaica
9. Sushi Japan
10.Pad Thai - Thailand


Ok- I sooo could not be a high school teacher. These kids are scary!! Mind you the fencing team has the highest average GPA of all the athletic teams at her school. Today was equipment turn in except for the boys foil team which made it to squad states. I showed up with 2 other parents to help. OMG - Before they turned in their equip - all the non-assigned equip had to be gone through and sorted ( last year was kind of unorganized because the one coach was new and the experienced coach was very ill and couldn't make it) Things like someone sort the gloves into righty and lefty and pull out any with holes or are gross and ready to walk away on their own. So after the are sorted I go to count them - apparantly some kids do not know which hand is right and left. Other very simple tasks - like make sure all the zippers work ( how do we do that?) were apparently mind boggling. After this their stuff had to be added to said piles. One kid comes up to me with a saber lame (A jacket that has metallic threads from the waist up for electronic scoring) I ask him righty lefty or back zip? He doesn't know. I ask him if he's righty or lefty. Righty. ok we can rule out lefty. Then I ask him if it zips in the front or the back?? HE DOESN'T KNOW!! I ask him if he's worn it before. He says yes. I just took it and looked. It was back zipped by the way. You would think he would remember having to get it zipped back there!!! Now everything is supposed to be WASHED before turned in. There was some really gnarly things from last years turn in - we used a sword to transfer it to the garbage bag. shudder!!


On the knitting front - I still have to take pics of the 2 cat beds, I have one breeze sock about 25% done. I haven't knit anything since Saturday though. I am trying to take my knitting mags prior to 2007, and cutting out the patterns or articles I think I may use someday and recycling the rest. As of now - SIMPLY KNITTING - the British knitting mag, seems to have the most patterns I want to save. I have bnders set up by category that I'm putting them in. So that is why no knitting for the last 3 days!

RANDOMNESS

Ok, so here's some randomness for today. I finished my off-season afghan for the Victory Junction Gang Camp. I had decided last week that I didn't like how the squares were blending and the checkered flag squares were puckering. If I ever make checkers again it will be using bobbins, with each square being bigger. But as it would take way to long to reknit the squares, I decided to go with a black and white granny square which was kind of checkerish. Then since I didn't want just the 4 corners to be crocheted I made 3 other granny squares in colors from other squares. So here is the afghan as it was mailed yesterday. I was going to do a crocheted border, but the width came out to the max width the camp accepts so I left it plain.



By the time I seamed everything up it was already 5:15 ( over 5 hours after the post office closes) and it had to be sent yesterday for the points to count so I ran up to Fedex/Kinkos. First off, I always was under the impression they were open really late. Well, we walk in and the guy says we close in 3 minutes you can come back tomorrow if you want. No I don't want, why would I want to do that?? So I'm filling out the form as fast as I want and the guy is going 2 minutes until we close, we're open from 12-6 tomorrow. So just as he is about to say 1 minute I hand him the package and the form. I SWEAR if I didn't need to send it out yesterday so bad, I'd've walked out. I really think I'm going to fire off an angry e-mail to fed-ex. My daughter realized later that Staples and maybe Office Deot do UPS shipping and we could've gone there. Oh well. So since Fatburgers is a few doors down we got that for dinner. Yes an exciting Valentine's Day dinner. Burgers with my daughter while Curt was bowling. Sigh.

I was in a Valentines caffeine swap in Ravelry and while my package arrived yesterday, they left a tag on the door so she didn't actually get it. So I can't post the package I sent. Here is the one I received.



5 pot size packs of coffee, cappucino, cookies, chocolate, a mug, bear, pencils, a book and yarn!! No idea what I'm doing with the yarn. Angie already "appropriated" the pencils and she's eyeing those m&m's!!

In her last 3 fencing meets Angie has gone undefeated!! Granted 2 were "easy" schools she should have won against, but still awesome job. Right now the girls fencing team has a much better record than the boys team. I think it is because the girl's captains sub more. Since there are 27 bouts in a meet as soon as one side hits 14 they won. At that point the girls generally pull most if not all of the starters and sub in underclassmen. So to look at their record it looks like most of their wins are close meets and their loses blowouts,but last year over 1/2 the team members onboth sides graduated. The girls at least had some depth , the only boy's captain that had subbed regularly was saber so that is the most successful boys squad currently. On the girls squad, the sabers have had a winning record in all but 1 meet this year. Angie is B strip saber. Here's a picture of the starting saber squad. (If they look a bit nuts, they are. I think all saber fencers have that crazed look in their eye and they aren't quite normal)



Well, I'm off to the store. Need food for the week and provisions for the daytona 500 this afternoon. GO TONY!!!

Fencing saber squad

Angie's fencing team won their meet on Wednesday, they lost yesterday- but lost well against one of the best teams in the state. Here's a picture that my friend Lesley posted to the starledger's web version of the girl's saber squad, with a few of the boy sabers.

Angie went 2-0 and 1-1 respectively.

Back to work

So, its back to work for me today. sigh. I worked so many hours on the 23rd so everything would be done for me to go on vacation. I know Dennis tries, but I know what it's like when he just covers flooring. I'm dreading hardware also. This is going to sound like the pod people got me. but while I was kind of bummed my carpet delivery 2 mondays ago got pushed to Wednesday, I'm glad I shouldn't have any outstanding po's so I won't get a carpet truck until Friday. C's usually off Friday so I won't see him until the following Monday. Sorta sad, but I won't have time to play anyway. I told the gals from the knitting group that Mon and Tues wouldn't work for me because I know I won't get out before 3:30 at earliest. Wednesday will be sketchy too. But since they won't allow overtime in January, I'll be out early on Thur.

Remember my tirade on Resolutions yesterday. Well the first plan I need to figure out to implement (not a resolution) will be how to deal with hardware and flooring without hating life and being pissed off all the time. I don't know how to achieve this, and my usual stress relief of unloading trailers isn't going to work because of the sheer time constraints. ( No I'm not giving up my carpet truck, even on days C doesn't drive. That trailer's mine!) So positive attitude. Starting out with a positive attitude. ( don't know if it will last past 4:01 but I'm starting with one)

Angie goes back to school today ( although wth practice and 2 tournaments she's been in a lot anyway). She has 3 meets this week, but thankfully they are all home meets.

Ria

General Updates

Sorry, there haven't been any interesting updates this week. I really feel like some kind of soul-vampire has been sucking the life out of me. Monday, I ended up leaving work late, but I made it to grace's before 3. Our little knitting group met up at her house instead of mara's this week for a Christmas get together. Grace wanted to have someone see her Christmas decorations. OMG! When I tell you Santa's house is not so decorated. Of course, me the dummy, wrote down the wrong apartment number at 3am, so I'm wandering around the complex looking. And I was on the opposite side from where the buildings are labeled! Finally I found it, and seriously - look on the right side and click on loving comfort knits, she posted pictures, Her place looked amazing! And I absolutely love her tree! Sandy gave me a tin of homemade really yummy cookies and mini muffins. Grace had party favors a skein of red angora/wool yarn, a green candle and a thread crocheted snowflake! I ended up staying a bit longer than the other 2, to finish my coffee and chatted some more. Grace's husband Tom had come home early, and the three of us had a great conversation. Grace had always told me that Tom and I would get along great if we ever got together. (blame carpet fumes). Thank you Grace!

The rest of my week went downhill. Tuesday was horrible , over 300 price changes. Left work late - again. Got home knit for a while, fell asleep on the couch. Curt came home sounding terrible, i told him he was getting a sinus infection on Sunday - did he listen - NNNOOOOOO!!!! Wednesday, I was moping around as I worked, the only plus being that about 120 of the price changes were key blanks going on clearance. So at least I could find them. But bending down in the little booth killed my knees. And could someone explain why bother marking down key blanks?? it's not an impulse thing, if you're getting a key cut you need a specific blank - you can't get a cheaper blank if it is wrong!! I went back to receiving before lunch and Dan tried cheering me up because it was carpet delivery day. Even the thought of a carpet delivery did nothing for me!! ( now you really know how down in the dumps I was)

After lnch I went back to recv, because we got an extra roll of vinyl that needed to be put in the rack. I heard the air brakes as I was putting on the boom. Then when i was grabbing the vinyl I heard the trailer bump and the air brake hiss again. When I didn't go skipping out the door, Dan figured it wasn't the carpet truck so came around to look outside. He let C in and said it is your truck cheer up already. I told him that even C with the 2 rolls and rugs wasn't cutting it. ( turns out I had 7 rolls) Ok, anyone who knows me knows that between 7 rolls and C I was in a significantly better mood by the time i left. (late again) Curt finally went to the dr and YES boys and grls he had a sinus infection...... told ya so! And was moping around, I did about half the laundry and went to sleep.

Yesterday, I only worked for 5 hours and went home. I was going to do a bunch of stuff.... nope, fell asleep until it was time to go get my nails done. made dinner, had to drive angie to her fencing lesson, and it was 930 when we got home, I went to sleep. getting the gist, sleep. I only do that when i'm depressed, I really can't even get into Christmas!!

Some picture updates

On thanksgiving my daughter found out my mom had a shopping bag full of smaller plastic bags that had all kind of loose coinage from around the globe, mostly from the 60's and 70's. my grandfather traveled all over the world as a chemical engineer for American Cyanamid and while he changed back bills at the airport he threw loose coins in bags that my greatgrandfather kept and gave to my mom. So my daughter went threw and picked out a bunch that were "cool looking" and she is going to try to solder them to a metal cuff bracelet as a souvenir from her great-grandfather.



Sarah aka horse dog. My mom's akita. Has the sweetest disposition you could ever ask for - kinda retarded though.





Angie ( both pic's on the left) at the NJ div of the US Fencing Association's under 20 qualifiers for the junior olympics. She did horrible. Her worst tournament ever. She was actually crying when she left. She knew what she was doing wrong, just couldn't fix it. I am terrible when it comes to crying. First off there shouldn't be crying in sports!! Second I try kinda lamely to stop the crying. When that doesn't work I really have to stop myself from yelling at the crying. Seriously - I am not the person to turn to when you need comforting. I don't take comforting well either - I just want to be left alone , or storm around ( or unload trucks hee hee) So I have no idea how to stop the crying, bad mom yes I am. So i told her, she hasn't been fencing since the spring and she blew off 3 lesson/open fencing sessions. She was competing against some of the best kids in NJ. Most of whom fence year round. Seriously what did she expect?? Well starting yesterday she has fencing practice at school Mon to Fri for 2 1/2 hours and she has lessons/open fencing tues and thurs night until meets start and then it's tuesday or thursday as the meet schedule dictates. She was on a mission at practice yesterday. She was soaked when she came home last night, so I guess it motivated her anyway.