October 31

Happy Halloween. Here is my costume:

Oops, did I say costume? I meant my new shoes! I picked them up at Ann Taylor Loft this morning after mulling them over yesterday. Get this, originally $79.99... on sale for $17.99!!! Yes, they are suede! Man I love a good sale.

Well today is my last day of "daily" posts. I did pretty well. I can't believe it is November tomorrow already and daylight savings is this Sunday. Time is moving so fast.

My first midterm was easy as pie. So easy I am a little annoyed because I studied so much and then professor didn't even include material from the last 3 chapters. I guess I am in good shape for the final. My other class has its midterm coming up and it will definitely be hard so I am starting with the studying early.

I leave you with some other random photos from the month that never got posted!
This is a pooping pumpkin that Greg's mom sent us for Halloween. You push down on his head and a little candy pellet shoots out his butt and lands in the little sack you see between his legs. Gross I know but it is a big inside joke with her. We have a collection of pooping creatures!
I took a secret photo of this woman on the subway platform to show my friend Suzan because this girl looks just like Suzan circa 2007. Same coat, hat, pants, shoes, and snazzy handbag. Too funny to pass up even if it was a little stalker like.

October 29

Up late studying for my midterm tomorrow. Did a little shopping on the way home from work and picked up some nice sweaters at Ann Taylor Loft because they are having a sale and I have Ahem... grown out of my old sweaters. The weather has definitely turned and I will probably be pulling my heavy coat out of the closet this week in response. Work is really cold so sweaters are a must.

I had felt a cold coming on yesterday but today I am feeling better so hopefully all my crazy remedies kept it from taking hold. OK, back to work!

October 28

What a miserable day! It was pouring down rain this morning. I stayed home as long as I could hoping it would stop. When I finally ventured out I took my giant umbrella, so big I have no business carrying it on New York City streets, and made my way to the train. You can't really tell from the photos just how much it was raining but trust me, it was a downpour. Here are my legs soaked up to the knees! And here I am all windblown and damp wondering why I bothered doing my hair in the morning but thinking about my space heater at work and the change of shoes in my bag. Warm dry legs on the way!

October 22-27

Oh boy! A week has gone by. Well, living alone was harder than I thought last week. So much so that instead of moving the car on Friday I just took the ticket. Terrible I know. I have a big group project due on Tuesday and it is really hard and my group, well, working in a group is tough. Needless to say I spent all night Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday working on that. It is still not done and even though I still need to study for my midterm this week I can't.

One shiny happy spot in my life right now is that my sweet husband came back to NYC late Saturday night! I am so so happy to have him home. Sunday we enjoyed laying in bed all morning just catching up on all the stuff that happened while we were apart. Then my dear hubby made me lunch so I could keep working on my project. Anyway, no photos to share and life is still hectic but it is nice to have my partner back to help me through and as a bonus having him home means my father-in-law is doing well back in Seattle.

October 20 & 21

I was doing so well at the beginning of the month and now it seems like I am missing days left and right. Yesterday absolutely nothing interesting happened so I felt like I had nothing to say. Then today I remembered the purpose of this project was to document the everyday so today you get to share my morning with me. Once I came downstairs dressed and ready for work I made my current favorite breakfast:
Soy yogurt, fresh fruit (banana and strawberry this week) and some whole grain cereal on top (Kamut flakes right now). Yummy. Since my days are so crazy I enjoyed thumbing through a magazine while I ate. Real Simple. Then I rearranged some new fake gourds I found at IKEA last Friday. They really help fill out my fall decor and I don't have to check them constantly for rot! Then it was out the door to catch my train. I was having a particularly good hair day this morning and was wearing a new warm sweater I picked up during lunch recently. Good hair and new clothes always put me in a good mood, but I hope my neighbors didn't see me snapping photos of myself outside the front door!

October 19

Spent the day frustrated by my economics homework. At one point throwing up my arms and running out the library to try and find an Economics 101 book that I could use for more example problems. Yeah, forgot it was Sunday so the library was closed. Argh! It was my week to usher at church so I gave up studying at 4pm. My friend Krystle filled in for Greg and we grabbed a bite after service to chat and catch up a little. It was a welcomed diversion! Great food and a nice walk through the upper east side before and after the meal. So nice to get a little air and visit with a friend!

I forgot to take any photos unfortunately but you already saw my studying stuff from yesterday and Krystle and I were too busy gabbing to grab the camera!

October 18

Nice quiet Saturday at home. I had to pick up the car from the mechanic this morning after it's annual inspection. Then I cleaned up my mess from yesterday and got all the cardboard wrapped up and ready to go out into recycling.
Man there is a lot of packaging involved in build your own furniture! My second load of laundry is finishing up now in the machine. It always feels good to be caught up and it will feel extra good putting all those clean clothes away into our new dressers.Best of all Greg and I no longer have to share drawers so his socks have their own drawer and mine do too. I have also done lots of studying today. It has been nice to sit on the couch with a warm sweater on and enjoy the crisp fall day while I work (and I roasted some garlic to use this week so the whole house smells like warm buttery garlic! Yum!). At this point I am up to date on my accounting class after a confusing lecture last Thursday. I feel like I got a hold of it again. Now I am getting ready to work on my economics stuff. This course is much harder for me and we have a lot of work due this week so I really need to focus on it the rest of the weekend. I will work for a while tonight and then I think I will watch The Sex and the City movie tonight. It came in the mail from Netflix and I have a sneaking suspicion Greg won't mind missing it. All those fabulous clothes and shoes.... well it is really his loss. Hope you are all having a great weekend.

**Update on Greg's dad. He is doing very well and may be able to go home late next week after he has a defibrillator implanted in his heart to make sure this does not happen again. They are back to saying it wasn't a heart attack and tests show he won't need open heart surgery which is a really good thing.

October 17

As I mentioned yesterday I wanted to use my day off to catch up on some things around the house. First though was a trip to the grocery store which required a trip to the gas station to fill up the tank and add some air to an almost flat tire. Not sure how that happened but luckily my Dad trained me well and it was no problem to inflate. In addition to the grocery store I decided to tackle another issue in the house. The dresser. Here was our dresser situation. Looks fine, but actually the middle drawer had completely come off track and the drawer wouldn't open or close. The track and wall had actually been bent and damaged so fixing it was not going to work. This happened the week before Greg left and he was frustrated by it each day but neither of us had the time to do anything about it. Well my grocery store is right by the new IKEA in Brooklyn (yes, I go to Brooklyn to buy food but it is a really nice grocery store!) so I thought I would take care of this issue and surprise Greg with a working dresser when he gets home. I have also disliked the tall unit next to the dresser for a while now too. It is a bunch of shelves that hold our shirts and pants in big stacks. We had talked about phasing them both out recently and had even looked at IKEA a few weeks ago but couldn't find anything that LOOKED like it would work. Well I decided to be more scientific about it. I measured the units and calculated the cubic footage of storage space that we had. Then I went to IKEA and looked for dresser options and combinations that met or exceeded that calculation. I settled on Malm. I brought home 3 huge boxes and proceeded to put the dressers together. It took me about 4 hours to do it all by myself. I assembled the drawers downstairs and the bodies upstairs since I couldn't carry the boxes up there myself. Then I emptied everything out onto the bed, moved the old units out and the new units in and re-organized everything. Here they are and I love them. They ended up having about 4 feet of extra space and they sort of match our other bedroom furniture.

Two funny stories:
1. I looked at these on the showroom floor for quite a while and even had the info sheet on them as I was shopping but it wasn't until I got home and read the instructions that I discovered the smaller unit has a vanity/mirror top! Surprise! And a good one at that. I already filled it with long necklaces that were clogging up my jewelry box.

2. I had wanted this to be a surprise for Greg but BECU apparently thought these transactions were suspect because they called Greg to verify a bunch of charges on our card (this has been happening a lot lately and is kind of annoying actually). So they mentioned a charge today from IKEA and Greg said, "yeah I'm sure it's true" since he knew I had been to the grocery store but I hadn't mentioned IKEA. So he called and I had to confess. Thanks a lot BECU!

One not so funny story, I scraped up one of my fingers pretty bad unloading one the boxes from my car and it looks gross and hurts. I blame my mom and her "can do" attitude for instilling a sense of capability in me to do anything I set my mind to. Unfortunately lifting heavy boxes is not one of those things!

October 15/16

Wow, my first missed day yesterday. Things were a little hectic around here so I guess it was understandable. Greg's dad is doing well and improving every hour. He may be moved out of the ICU today which is great though physical therapy will be necessary before he can head home. Being in the hospital has brought up a lot of other issues related to his and his wife's lifestyle (like smoking) that are going to require big changes. Greg's mom is a little overwhelmed but taking it well. It helps that Greg flew out yesterday at 4am to be with them and help support them during this time.

So I am trucking along here at home as best I can. My schedule is a little on the crazy side so not having Greg around is a bit tough. We were supposed to go to DC for the weekend to spend some time together but that trip obviously got canceled (and there goes my planned blogging topics) but I am still taking tomorrow off to do some things around the house that need to be done (like buying some food!) and to get caught up on my studies. It is amazing how fast you can fall behind.

October 14

Sad news today. Greg's dad collapsed at the pool after his twice weekly swim. After several hours of no information we finally heard tonight that it was Ventricular Fibrillation. They are not sure yet what triggered it as there is no evidence of stroke or major heart attack. He is in the ICU tonight and Greg is flying out first thing in the morning. Please pray for wisdom for the doctors, comfort for the family and a full recovery. Moments like this make being 3000 miles away almost unbearable.

October 13

Oops, I almost forgot to post today. I got so engrossed in studying data that makes absolutely no sense to me that I lost track of the time. I was just about to leave work and head home when I remembered the photos still on my camera. I bring you the crowning jewel of my craft club experience, coordinated push pins!

I made these for my cubicle at work and I love love love them. They make me so happy. They put my old plastic push pins to shame and it was a pleasure pulling the old ones all out and tossing them. These lovelies will now hold up all future papers I may have. Then because I am completely insane I whipped this up this morning before work.
A matching lumbar pillow! Yes, I had to leave the house with wet hair and no make-up but I finished it quickly this morning using recycled and upcycled materials. The fabric is of course remnants from the roman shade in the office (and the same material in the push pins) and the pillow is stuffed with down and feathers from a recently retired bed pillow that was a little too flat for Greg's use. I actually ran the down bedroom pillow through my machine to seal some of the down to one side, cut it off then slipped it into my pillow form. Unfortunately I couldn't seal off the other side of the pillow and the down started to whaft out and got all over me! Now I have a bag filled with a cut open pillow and tufts of down that I have to deal with. Very messy, but what do you expect when you decide on a whim to make a pillow before work! Anyway, I love it too. It would be perfect with a couple coordinated fabric covered buttons to tuft it a little but I don't want any hard items on it since it is supposed to be for lumbar support. OK, time for bed, I had better be getting home.

October 12

Quiet day at home. A little housekeeping, lots of cooking, and more articles read. I have just one to go! Woohoo! Greg was busy in the kitchen making Butternut Squash Risotto (Hey Karen! I always think of you now when we make this!), lots of roasted veggies for lunch and some home made roasted tomato and red pepper pasta sauce for dinner. Man roasted veggies are so awesome. It is amazing how roasting veggies makes them taste like candy and boy do I love candy. Anyway, the only other thing I managed to do today besides order more supplies online to make covered buttons was to decorate the house with my fall decor items. Greg was nice enough to snap some photos for me while I was reading articles.




With the smell of roasting veggies and the decor it really felt like fall in the house. To bad it was 70+ degrees out today!

October 11

I am settled in at home taking a break from reading articles for class and thought I would post about today's adventure up to Columbia University where my friend Alice lives to attend Craft Club. Connie and Sandy were kind enough to teach of how to make covered buttons. The kit included parts to turn our covered buttons into magnets, push pins, and magnets. So cute! So easy to make. Put a fabric circle over the mold. Drop a metal form into the mold. Push the excess fabric into the form and use the other part of the mold to push the backing on. Presto! Add a magnet, hair tie, or pin back. Love these and can't wait to make more! Thanks to Alice for hosting, thanks to Sandy and Connie for walking us through the lessons and Happy Birthday to Connie!

October 10

Wow, what a long week. Work was really tough and draining. I am so glad it is Friday. I am studying tonight since I spent last night enjoying Thursday night TV in person (love that The Office is back!). Part of the reason I had to be home last night was because it was our CSA night and someone had to pick up the veggies. Greg agreed to go to church for a meeting and I picked up the produce. Here they are all washed and dried and ready for the fridge.
We are enjoying fall veggies a great deal. Though heavy to lug home we much prefer squashes and pumpkins and leeks.

October 9

It is always a treat to get pictures of my little nephew Ewan and today my mom sent these gems. It is crazy how fast they grow and how their little faces change so much. He is a totally different baby!

October 8

Today has been lots better than yesterday. The interpersonal drama is working its way out slowly which is good and I got a lot of accounting stuff done today which is always refreshing (to feel caught up). I am getting ready to leave for study group and am at a loss for what to post today. Here are some photos of my study buddies. You can see we have a good time studying, sometimes too good a time!This is me and Marcela in the library. Marcela is a Biology Masters student. She and I are sort of the study group core. We get the most out of it and take it seriously.My pal Suzan. She is a medical animation masters student. She is actually dropping out of study group starting tonight because she gets too distracted working in a group. We will miss her.And this is Jonathan. He is a computer science masters student and our newest group member. We are still giving him a chance to prove himself. He can be a bit goofy. This is the only photo I could find where he wasn't doing something vulgar!