Recap of the recap

I decided a couple of weeks ago that when I start work early, take a short lunch, and leave the office at 4 instead of 5, I am a much more productive person. Since Jeremy has to be at his office at 7:15, and since I generally ride the same bus as him, this works out pretty well. It does mean that we don't take the same bus home any more, but I think this actually works better for us. Anyway, we still have one bus ride together. :)

Of course, shortened lunches mean not a lot of posting from me, since lunch is my prime posting time. So here's an update on things I was talking about a couple of weeks ago.

I got my skates, and have been skating 3 times since--twice at scrimmages, and once at an open skate. I am improving. I fell 3 times at my first scrimmage, but haven't fallen since then. I'm starting to learn how to stop. I'm starting to be able to notice penalties as I'm focusing on not running into the other refs. Still need to work on speed, stopping, and seeing more penalties. But it's coming along nicely.

I decided not to apply to vend at SteamCon this year. With roller derby added into my schedule, studio time is not likely to be frequent. I'm currently debating purging my sewing stuff, putting my machines in storage, and cramming my other stuff into the front hall closet, so as to get rid of the studio. But that's not decided quite yet.

Spent another week in Kansas City for work. Not much to report from this trip, other than that I was introduced to another great restaurant there. And it's a vegetarian restaurant, at that! :)

Finished up a couple of short stories and got those submitted. One has been accepted, the other is still pending. I suspect it won't get picked up, but we shall see! :) Got another idea in the works, but I have until the end of October to make it happen. So it's plausible. :)

We've got a busy month ahead of us. This weekend, we're going to hit the zoo early Saturday, and then we're taking the ferry up to Victoria on Sunday. It's just a day trip, but it will be my first time out of the United States! Pretty exciting! :)

Oof...

Jeremy occasionally says that he thinks his cats beat him with mallets while he sleeps. I think he may not be too far off, and they seem to be turning their attention in my direction as well.

I somehow missed posting for most of last week. I'm not entirely sure why, aside from the couple of days when I was only barely in the office, if at all. And then Jeremy's cold caught up with me, and knocked me out of commission on and off from Friday to yesterday. *sigh*

Cooking experiments last week were curtailed because of my cold (and not feeling like cooking while I had it). I did try to make a Thai beef salad, but discovered that a) the beef should have been marinated in the sauce, and b) we would like it better if it had been beef and rice, maybe with a salad on the side. I've also been threatening a panang-style curry, but that still hasn't happened. Instead, I cooked up the green beans with some small pieces of bacon, which made them delicious, but produced far more than I was interested in eating. I left them out for folks to nibble on while they gamed, and came home to a barely touched bowl... I think the bacon may have made them a little slimy after they cooled off, and who wants slimy green beans?

I have a great photo of the Thai beef salad, but it's on the Frankenstein computer. On Sunday, Andrew cobbled together a computer out of parts from mine and Jeremy's desktops. We have two hard drives and my motherboard, with my external hard drive and keyboard, and Jeremy's mega big monitor and wireless mouse. All in all, it's a lovely machine, and will be even better when Andrew can bring us his device to get the data off of Jeremy's second hard drive, which wouldn't fit into my tower because of the way the fan was mounted.

I spent the majority of my Sunday at the studio, photographing a bunch of stuff that has been sitting in bins awaiting photos for ages. I mistakenly thought that I had already measured everything and had that saved on the external hard drive, but discovered when I got home that I was wrong. Project for next weekend: measuring. :) I am happy to say, though, that the natural light that my studio gets is exceptionally indirect, and spectacular for photography. Much better than it would have been in the studio with a view... a view of someone's backyard... :)

Time to get things done

So the moves on Saturday went relatively smoothly. Despite Marcus swearing up, down, and sideways that it wouldn't be a move that he was involved in until something was broken, all of my stuff seems to have arrived at its new homes without incident. I did notice that he had to skip the final load so he could catch a bus home, so maybe I have that to thank for the antique vanity arriving in one piece. :)

Regardless, we managed to get the apartment mostly settled on Sunday, and I have really very little additional packing to do at my apartment... I'm just short on boxes! So the project for one night this week is going to be unpacking at my studio, to rescue the boxes I used and reuse them at my apartment. Ah, it's a neverending cycle!

The good news, though, is that I LOVE my studio. I had a temporary moment of panic when I realized that the sink was larger than I thought, and the desk wasn't going to fit where I wanted it. But the desk did fit in another small spot, so Jeremy can write in relative peace while I try to figure out how I'm going to unpack everything. He hadn't seen the studio until Saturday, and he also thinks it'll work just fine once we've gotten everything settled in there.

My major happiness for the weekend, though, was finally getting the living room at his apartment rearranged, and then having 5 people in there at once. It's a bit more crowded (we added 2 pieces of my furniture to the living room, while only removing one piece of his furniture), but I think everyone was happy to have a coffee table to roll dice on and set their drinks on. :) And we managed to have four of us playing Rock Band while Jeremy worked on his laptop, so there's even room for two guitars and a drum set. :)

Still can't wait for the rest of the apartment to be arranged, my apartment to be empty, and everything extra tucked neatly away into storage. Still a few more weeks till we reach that point, though! :)

Summer in Seattle

Oof. It's been way too hot lately in Seattle, which is really difficult to deal with. Jeremy's apartment does not have cool little hiding spots like mine did, and I just think it's been hotter all around. I've been jumping in the shower quickly before bed so that I can actually get to sleep at night, and once the sun starts coming up, I'm ready to get out of bed and back into the shower to cool off again. Truly ridiculous, if you ask me!

I'm trying to think cool thoughts at the moment, though, because I'm really hoping for cooler weather by the weekend. We did Jeremy's storage unit move this past weekend (which was more fun than it had any right to be) and we're doing the one big moving push with our friends this Saturday. After that's done, all that will be left is to move smaller stuff in the car, and hire movers to put my big furniture into storage. We've been recruiting friends with the lure of food, and it looks like we might have enough people to actually move my stuff. The one fear has been that the teenaged girls and I probably can't handle carrying my entertainment center, so we're hoping at least a couple of the guys will be able to make it to help Jeremy with that. It is seriously heavy.

We're doing the studio move on Saturday as well, though most of that stuff is fairly lightweight. My vintage table-mounted sewing machine is the true beast, and really, it's mostly just unwieldly and awkward to carry. I'm so excited to be getting my stuff moved into my studio, and have already been scheduling the rest of the moving tasks around a few nights that I plan to spend at the studio, getting stuff made. Very exciting!

There might be pictures of the studio once I'm all moved in, and maybe some pictures from the apartment, once the dust there has settled. Really, though, there won't be much to see in the apartment, as it'll just be a rearranging of the living room and adding furniture to the bedroom. Trust me, you won't be missing much. :)

Oh wow...

Somehow I hadn't realized that I haven't posted here since JUNE! Remember what I said about being busy in July? :)

We spent the Fourth of July weekend in Portland, hanging out with friends who live there, and of course visiting Powells. The following week was taken up with a whole lot of me practicing with Throwing Goat, and then singing at their show. There's going to be YouTube footage of that, but I don't have it yet.

The week after the show was spent in Kansas City for work, which meant a trip to my sister's to see her, her husband, and her kids. I've been back since late Friday night, and keeping plenty busy with gaming and other geeky stuff, alongside moving hijinks.

That's right, I'm moving. Not far, mind you. I'm just moving about 5 miles away from my current apartment, to share Jeremy's apartment with him. Of course, this entails lots of cleaning, packing, and unpacking. We're basically figuring out how to get two apartments worth of stuff into one apartment, a storage unit, and a studio. The studio is for me, for all of my craft stuff, though I told Jeremy I will put a desk in there so he can write while I curse at my sewing machine a lot.

But my hope is that with a studio, I will actually be able to get more sewing done, and really get things on track with Counting Stars. I've had that shop for almost a year now, and sales have been almost non-existent. So I'm going to be working on posting more regularly, and improving my photos--another thing that the studio should be good for, since I will have the space to set up a photo box finally! :)