Good Day Sunshine

This week our soda stream machine arrived! Yay! No more lugging bottles and cans into the house, and no more guilt about the fact that our complex does not recycle and we're throwing all that stuff away!  No more wheedling Shawn to go the gas station to get some soda late at night :)

This first picture to the left is the machine and a carbonating bottle full of water.   The picture to the right is the bottle screwed into the machine.

 To the left, you see the bottle of water being carbonated when you press the button.  To the right, is the bottle of soda after the syrup is added, which is just poured carefully into the bottle later.  I tried their version of diet fresca in this picture, but we also got the syrups to do the soda stream versions of diet coke, coke zero (we wanted to see which we liked better), diet rootbeer, and diet cranraspberry.  Each bottle of syrup flavors the equivalent of 33 cans of soda. We also got a sampler pack of flavors to try.  Each one does one liter of soda (one carbonating bottle). 

Prior to purchasing the machine, I figure out how much soda we drink at home (I didn't even count what I drink at work), and then figured out how much that cost, and how much it would cost to make an equivalent amount with the soda stream.  After I've paid for the machine, which we'll do in the first seven months, I'll save $200 a year.  And this doesn't count the $2.50 a day I spend at the office, which I now don't, because I bring a bottle or two to work in the morning.  So, all in all, very happy so far.

It was another crazed week, but I managed to finish Secret Project V. I can't even remember what I did on Monday, how sad is that?  On Tuesday, I picked up the dry cleaning and caved into a craving for Taipei Tokyo.  When I got home the soda machine was here, and I played with that for a while :) 

I also made an appearance at the ManchVegas knitting group on Wednesday, and got to have dinner with Sarah T, Maureen M, Gina H, and Kerry M.  Only bummer was there wasn't much milk free on the 99 menu.  Apparently they rub their baked potatoes with butter before they bake them. Cute.  What a way to also add a lot of calories people aren't expecting, besides the whole allergy thing.  Do they get a commission or something for how the number of pounds people pack on or something?

On Thursday, I met Kristin and Lisa at Jillian's for a Jetboil dinner. It was fun to see them and Kristen brought a friend who knit, so we got to kibitz a bit about knitting.  I didn't get home until about 8pm and then I did laundry and tried to do the Wii Fit, but the board ran out of batteries...too bad! (I've been really working on trying to do the Wii Fit since my energy is now back from the whole milk thing).

Speaking of the milk thing, I did have an interesting incident at work yesterday. Mindy made cupcakes for Kate's birthday.  She very kindly brought in the cake mix label so I could read it, but forgot about the frosting.  So I scraped all the frosting off.  I did a really good job too, there couldn't have been more than an eighth of a teaspoon left on that cupcake.  But apparently that was enough because my face broke out into bright red blotchy patches, my hands turned bright red like a sunburn and my feet swelled up in about an hour after eating the cupcake.  I felt thirsty and tired the rest of the day, but I don't know if the feeling tired was just because of a really long week.  The reaction faded back out within 4 hours, but it was weird to think that that's all it took. Guess I really do have to be milk free, damn it! I was kind of hoping after a couple of months that I'd be able to sneak some things back in, but I guess not.

Last night I played cribbage with Linda D and Mary Kate R at Linda's house.  Her cat cracks me up.  It is so fluffy, it looks almost round. Reminds me of a puffer fish. I seriously had not played cribbage in a long time.  I had meant to print out rules at some point, but it just didn't happen, so Linda and I trying to remember the rules was amusing.

When I got in last night, Shawn had picked up my Penzey's order, so I sorted out my stuff from Sarah A's and Tracy B's and this morning I was able to make oatmeal seed bread in the bread machine.  I love, love Penzey's.  So much cheaper than the grocery store!

It's a gorgeous day here, thinking about asking Shawn to go for a ride on the bikes, before he heads off to his family's men thing at Jillian's for Father's Day. (Which as a matter of principal, I find highly annoying.  Hey, women like to drink beer and play pool too!)

Anyway, that's where we are this week.  I need to knit a ton this weekend, so that I can get Secret Project II finished before Chris and Kristie's new arrival shows up. I also need to write, so that I'm ready for writing group next week. 

Stay tuned for further updates.

Random Happenings this week and Lora's Dance Party

This week in the weird world of Denise, we join our broadcast, already in progress...let me see, what happened this week? Well, we discovered that the reason I've been sneezing and my eyes itch and my nose runs before bed every night for the last couple of weeks, is that I generally turn the air conditioner on every night just before I go to bed. When I finally made this huge mental leap, I took the air conditioner cover off in the bedroom and discovered that it was covered in black mold. (That's how crazy damp it has been in NH with all the rain this summer.) Great!! The air conditioners also had to be 15 to 20 years old. What I really can't believe is that my health, or rather my asthma has improved so much from my old life, that I was able to breath this stuff for a couple of weeks without having an attack. I did have my Ionic breeze on, but still!! So after several calls to the complex, we have brank new air conditioner units, with remotes, and digital controls and energy saver mode. I'm so excited I could jump up and down, I bet our electric bill goes down $20 bucks a month in the summer.

Lora has returned and we took Zeke, the siamese fighting fish/betta back to her. Shawn really seemed to get attached to this fish. He now says we are Zeke-less. I have no idea what is up with that, and when I ask, he answers that Zeke was just a friendly little fish, not like my angelfish. Whatever.

I cleaned like a demon on Tuesday, because Vera had said that she might stop by on her way out of NH (she visited a friend up at the lake), and my house was not fit for other humans to see it. However, as a result, she decided the stop would be too much for the kids, and that it was better to take a straight shot home. It's that Murphy's law thing. Had I not cleaned, she would have been able to stop by. I should not have cleaned (or is that me justifying future clutter?).

Wednesday I went to guild at the Elegant Ewe for the monthly guild meeting. It was nice to see everyone. I was so tired at the end of the meeting I was convinced I was going to go right home and go to sleep, but I ended up not being able to sleep and reading books until quarter of three in the morning. I hate when that happens!

To celebrate Lora's return from Kentucky, I went to guild at Yarn and Fiber in Derry, and visited with all the Manchvegans, and then some of us went to the Derryfield afterward to dance. I had not been out to dance in I don't even know how freaking long. It might have even been first or second year of college. I mean, I go out, I just don't usually go out to dance. It was hilarious. I took some pictures with my camera phone (which sucks), of Miss Lora going wild. She was so funny, but we all had a really good time. If you have not figured this out, the ketchup bottle is her microphone. We did have a really good time, but geez, was I sore today! Dancing takes a lot out of you :)

Since I have not been dancing since I was no longer single (other than weddings and stuff, which Shawn went to as well), what I thought was the most fun, was not caring what I looked like and not constantly scoping the floor. Not that I was hugely on the prowl to pick up when I was single and still went out dancing, but it was so relaxing to just have fun with your friends and not care at all about anyone else there.

Today it was all chores all the time. We took the brat to get her wings and nails trimmed, I did six loads of laundry, and I finally emailed some people back, which I'd been lax about responding. I also entered my new Penzey's spices into the inventory, and then finally did the last set of revisions on the Mya's Jacket pattern. One of my test knitters, Jackie took some pictures of the sweater she knit from the pattern with her daughter wearing it. I love them so much, I'm going to use them for the published pattern. I'm hoping I can get the pattern on Ravelry by the end of the weekend.

Tomorrow we are going to see Chris and Kristie and their munchkin, who I have not seen in forever. He's just over a year now which I can't believe.

Anyway, maybe I'll have some good pictures tomorrow. This concludes our broadcast.

Latest Status Report

I haven't posted since Saturday night. Sunday was productive. I was able to work on the pattern for Mya's Jacket (working title, hoping to come up with something better later), for about 3 hours and had a passable draft, before I went to guild. For the the non-knitter readers among you, I organize the Concord Knitting Meetup group, and a fairly regular core group of us meet at Borders in Concord every Sunday. I was at least able to cast on and do a couple rows. Further progress just didn't happen though. I ended up entwined in the dishes and other things, like paying the bills. Then I couldn't sleep, so I read two novels instead of actually doing anything productive. (I am a crazy speed reader, through no real merit of my own...it's genetic...). Shawn's new work schedule is kind of throwing my sleep schedule off a bit. I'm not used to him going to bed before I do.

Monday not much happened, at least for the purposes of this blog. Shawn and I got our estate planning executed finally, and I ended up falling asleep ridiculously early, for me at least. All I accomplished was to clean out the baby angelfish tank. (This has to be done every day...sigh...why did I think trying to raise some would be interesting again??)

Today has not been much better. I managed to clean the baby angelfish tank. We're down to about 7 left from the original 100 or so. However, the parents spawned again, so there's now two hundred eggs in the community tank. I did the laundry, did some minor housekeeping work for my old office, and then I went through the Penzey's catalog because a friend is putting an order in. Then I did manage to knit for an hour on Mya's Jacket. I've already discovered a discrepancy (not an error per se, but a vague description in the pattern draft).

I've not yet managed to write at all. But honestly, my computer desk needs some serious help. I've not room to write. There's so much crap on the desk, that I don't feel like I have room for my notes and papers. I feel claustrophobic even just trying to type up knitting patterns from my notes, let alone try to write fiction. I think there's a room reorganization in our office's future, which will send Kiwi over the deep end. Her cage is in the office and she doesn't handle change gracefully. I am trying to decide if the reorg will be productive, or is a procrastination technique...feel free to comment.