Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Double D in the mail!......

A short while ago I took some open time one morning to sit at a coffee shop and write a letter. Yeah, a real letter! It was WAY long overdue to a dear friend from childhood. Why is it that I think about my long-distance friends exponentially more than I am able to either write or email?

I was blessed for taking this time yesterday afternoon, when in my mailbox was a letter from another friend, one from my full time working days at Blue Cross in Minnesota: Donna! Gosh I think about her all the time, particularly at this time of year. Her son is not much older than Eric, and I've known her since before he was born. What a treasure to hear from her! Donna, thank you so much...I'll be in email contact, girl!

In other news.....

The deed has been done. Eric got his license! He's in front of the DPS building here:




Joe took him over there, and surprisingly it wasn't a nightmare of a wait. Because we did the driversed.com program, Eric took the final test online, passing, and we were responsible for the driving portion ourselves. At the DPS, all he had to do was show up with the school enrollment verification and the necessary papers. He's been driving to school, and will start picking up Grace and Alex when I need him too. We do have some restrictions right now on how far he can drive, and some others, that we feel are appropriate. He's even being cool about my telling him to 'drive safely' all the time...it's a mom thing, isn't it?

Because Eric shares a birthday with Elvis, we headed to Chuy's that night for dinner. Chuy's is a local chain of terrific TexMex food that is also a very fun place. They have a shrine to Elvis in their entryways. Every year on Elvis's birthday they have a party, with impersonators, dinner specials and giveaways. And free Twinkies after dinner! Of course we told the server that it was Eric's birthday so they got a group together to sing to him, and brought free ice cream. In our family, the birthday person gets to pick where we go for dinner on their birthday, and since the kids were little I added the restriction that it had to be a sit-down-and-get-waited-on place: no fast food. Otherwise we'd be at McDonald's, and we did enough of that when they were little!

I finished a scarf for myself in baby alpaca that is a wonderful ivory color, just in time for the cold weather here. I combined a ribbing of K2P2 with a cable pattern as an accent, and it's wonderfully soft. And I discovered that I really like knitting cables! A scarf for Grace (the Irish Hiking scarf) is halfway done on the needles. My design for my Ipod cover is complete, and I am making a gauge swatch (ew, I hate those).

Speaking of knitting, one of the blogs I follow, and have done a few of her patterns (Odessa hat and Jaywalker socks, and using her Ipod cover chart), is Grumperina. She also has a great tutorial on knitting cables without a cable needle. Brilliant. She just got married! Congrats, Mrs. Grumperina! Her blog is here: http://www.grumperina.com/knitblog/ , but you'll have to scroll down to the January 16 and earlier entry...her blog doesn't have links to each entry. The photography was gorgeous.

Report cards came out for the first semester and we are thrilled...Eric did well in all classes, including his Pre-AP Math and Chemistry, Grace is doing well in her first year of middle school classes/homework, and Alex got straight A's!

Pretty much everyone has seen the Tom Cruise video that was on YouTube until the powers that be had it pulled. Another favorite blogger of mine, Cathy Zielske, has been making some hilarious videos recently, similar to a mockumentary interview, a la Christopher Guest in my mind. So check out her version of 'The Scrapbooking Induction Video They Tried to Suppress":



She's such a riot!

Although life is still busy, I am feeling like I have a handle on the things I do and how to get them all done without going loopy-goobers. And that's a good thing. So far we have all managed to avoid the flu season, and that's a good thing too!

Off to do chores before heading to Archiver's....later!












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