I was thinking about my budget over the weekend and congratulating myself on how I will be able to achieve the “Baby Step #1″ to Financial Freedom (both Crown Financial Ministries and Dave Ramsey speak about this) which is to put $1,000 into savings for emergencies.  On Wednesday, I’ll be able to do this having only worked on this “budget stuff for Dad” for the last 6 weeks.  (This “budget stuff for Dad is the prerequisite for them giving me money for a downpayment on a house, and I have to prove to my Dad that I can afford this, which is good.  I’m happy about this because it means that my faulty brain is not the sole “eyes” looking into my budgeting, since my budgeting sense is -0- to nil at best.)  So I was thinking “Wow, I think I can really do this!  This is SO awesome!” that my next thought was “I should celebrate by buying something!”.  See that?  See what happened?  I’ve been fairly frugal this month (more than usual) and I was going to celebrate by SPENDING MONEY!  Ugh!  So now I’ve got to decide how to celebrate this tremendous feat by NOT spending money, and then I can TRULY celebrate.  Any suggestions?

On the knitting front, I’ve started a new project but I can’t divulge any particulars.  I was able to spend a considerable amount of time this weekend knitting and have made awesome progress, so hopefully I’ll have something to show for it soon.  I’m knitting something non-traditional as a wedding present for my friend Julie, who may or may not read the blog, so I’ll keep it under wraps.

I’m doing 2 weddings in July (running sound, not officiating), so I should have a little extra cash to add to my SAVINGS account.  I just hope that it makes it there instead of somewhere it shouldn’t go.

House hunting has been slow this week.  I’m hoping to be able to get into the house in Zion and maybe one or two more and then I can think about making an offer.  I have 17 boxes packed (mostly books) and 9 of them are currently in storage.  My knee is sore and my back is sore, but otherwise I’m feeling good.  Hey, maybe the wedding money could go towards hiring movers to help move stuff into storage.  That’s an interesting thought.

Well, until next time.  Toodles

Today is my parent’s 44th wedding anniversary.  HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!  Mom, Dad, I hope you have a great day together!  Please remember to be on your best, considerate behavior with each other and also know that Kristin and I don’t need to know the details! 

LOVE YOU!

(and, Yes, Dad, I knew this before I called you!)

I have to say that the process of looking for a house to buy is about as difficult as finding someone to marry, although I may be a bit more successful with the house.  For one thing, they both advertise on the web and not always truthfully.  Now I’m not saying that the MLS is lying, per se, but that not all information is reported.  I looked at a house yesterday that was so charming and cute, it was one of those old houses that just simply have character.  The outside looked charming as well, but the inside was crap (please excuse the profanity).  It would make a great “fixer upper”, if that was what I am in the market for, but alas I am not, and so the house was scratched off the list (dad).

One of the other houses Carol and I looked at yesterday had so much mold in the basement that I’m afraid Carol should probably go to the hospital and have her lungs pumped out before the mold takes hold of her chest.  That one was also taken off the list (dad).  The other three that we looked at were “doable”.  The first one is in a neighborhood south of where I currently live and is in a charming, well kept neighborhood.  The house is of perfect size for me but would need some work.  First off, all of the closet doors had this hideous yellow wall paper with flowers on the inside.  But more importantly the kitchen is in need of some expansion.  It is only slightly bigger than my current kitchen, but with about 1/5 the counter space (no kidding on that one) and the fridge takes up half the floor space and is sitting in front of one of the windows, blocking the view of the back yard.  Otherwise, very charming.  Hardwood floors, decent sized yard, plus a 1.5 car garage.

The second house had my favorite floor plan and was the largest of the three.  Three good sized bedrooms (a .5 bath off the master) and a perfect sized living room with huge sliding glass doors off the back to the deck.  The kitchen had a “breakfast nook” and the “dining area” was shared with the living room, but it was a great setup.  This house had more work to do overall than the first.

The third house was the smallest of the three that I liked but was in the best “move-in” condition.  Only 1 concern with this one: the ginormity of the backyard.  Seriously, it would take me about 2 days to walk the property.  The good side to the ginormity is that if I ever decided to plant a “real” garden, I would have more than enough space to do so. (Stop laughing, a girl can have dreams, can’t she?)

There is one more property that I want to look at in Zion.  It was the most charming of the four but we couldn’t get the lock combination to work, so we couldn’t see the inside.  Front and side yards were very charming, though, and the backyard would be great with minimal effort.  We’ll see about this one.

So the status is that there are some possibilities, but not quite ready to make an offer yet.  I’ll post pictures soon (I forgot the USB cable today).

As most of you know, I went “house shopping” for the first time on Friday.  I am attempting to be extremely frugal with what I can afford because there are other things in my life that are still important to me which also cost money.  Plus, I don’t want to get myself into something that will be detrimental to my financial situation (i.e. bankruptcy) in the future.  With that said, I still believe (for the time being) that there is a house for me in my price range.  Naive, perhaps.  But here is one thing that I learned on Friday: don’t expect a $500,000 house for $75,000.  I’m having to adjust my perception of what $80,000 will buy.  Big time.

With that said, there was ONE house that I looked at that was a possibility (it looks as though it is no longer on the market), except that it would require me moving very far away, like Alaska.  (The house isn’t really in Alaska, but it sure felt that way as we were driving to it.)  It was a very cute little 2-story house (no basement).  So now I’m changing direction and actually thinking about looking for something in Waukegan (provided there is something available in a decent neighborhood).

The other thing that I’ve discovered about the searching process, is that the depression from not finding anything actually leads to other behavior that is not good.  Some well intentioned friends gave me a gift certificate to a yarn store for my birthday and on Saturday I went and purchased some lovely yarn to make a throw.  It really is nice yarn, in a great colorway, and will be fun to knit with.  I also justified this purchase with these two thoughts: 1) I had a gift certificate and 2) this adds to my stash so that when I actually do buy a house and have no yarn budget for the next 5 years, this will give me something to do.  There.  It is done, I am happy, end of story.  (And you can’t make me feel bad about it either, ’cause it was a birthday gift, and I can’t control what people give/don’t give on birthdays.)

Whew.  Now I feel better.  Went for a 1 mile walk today, the sun was out, the wind was nil, the temperature was perfect and I’m in a happy mood regardless of whether or not I found a house. 

It is amazing what happens when school is out and time is in abundance.  My brain also goes on vacation and I forget things like the fact that I have a blog with a readership that must be fed information.  (I’ll take a moment to mention that my readership is, oh, about 4, so no real pressure here.)

Vacation
I took the train down to Monroe, LA (via Jackson MS) to visit my grandmother over Memorial Day weekend.  It was a good visit, even if it was too short.  Meme lives in a nursing home just down the street from my Uncle, but she is still really lonely.  If I inherited any “fiber arts genes” it would be from her, since she is a master crocheter.  She is going to make me a “table cloth”, aka a glorified doilie, but one that will look lovely in my new home.

House Hunting
Yes, to confirm rumors, I am in the process of looking to purchase a home this summer.  I don’t know where this process will take me, or if it will even happen, but I’m putting forth a concerted effort.  What I’m looking forward to the most is hosting a house warming party.

Contest Winner
YES!  I actually WON a book a few weeks ago.  Logos, the bible software that I use had a contest where they wanted their blog readers to post a trackback to their site and they would pick winners at random.  What did I win, you may be asking?  A signed copy of the book Heavenby Randy Alcorn.  It is a light theological work about the reality of heaven.  Cool.

On the Needles/Hook
I had to frog most of the baby blanket I was making.  It was looking like some kind of weird trapezoid, and since it was a log cabin blanket, which means that I would be building upon this shape, the whole thing was shot.  So I’m in the process of making little squares and will piece them together to make a patchwork instead.

I am also searching for a knitted doilie pattern to make and will start that as soon as I find one that is a) easy and b) easy.

TTFN

I had a fun weekend.  I spent the weekend at M&L’s house, two really good friends who live clear across the Chicagoland area from me.  They have a 6-year old little boy, whom I call Bug, and who happens to be my Godson.  He is a really cute little guy.  We played video games for about 4 hours on Saturday afternoon.  For those of you who know me, I can be a littlevery competitive when it comes to games of any sort.  The hilarious thing is that I tried, I mean I really tried to lose.  But it seems that Bug isn’t all that good with video games yet.  We played Super Mario Cart, Bowling, Golf, darts, cow racing, and some others that require some advanced eye-hand coordination that he just doesn’t have yet.  Here’s the kicker: he actually beat me at one of the games!  It was a shooting game and his strategy (if you could call it that) was to blast the *(&^ out of everything and aparently that strategy worked for him.  So for that, I say: GOOD JOB, BUG!

Because of the games and festivities, I didn’t get much knitting done.  I should rectify that tonight.

School for this semester is finally over.  The tally for this semester was: 9 individual papers, 1 group paper, 1 group video project, 2 exams, 6 books, and one 7-hour individual final project.  I believe that I’ll end up with 2 A-.  Not bad while working full time, leading a women’s bible study and working with the 8th graders.  Can I just die now?

So I cast on for a blanket on Wednesday night (after my final).  Someone here in my office gave me 4 skeins of 3/4 pound of yarn (acrylic) a few years ago.  It is a green/black/white variegation.  I have no pattern for the blanket, I’m kind of making it up as I go.  I thought I would do them in panels (maybe 5 long strips).  The first one is going to be done in complete seed stitch.  I think I’ll do the next 2 panels in some sort of cable pattern (perhaps even one that I make up????) and the outside two in something like a fan stitch (which I’ve never done knitting before).  I’ll probably then add a border to the whole thing to finish it off, if I have enough yarn.  I’ll be traveling next weekend to Louisiana via Jackson, MS (thanks to Amtrak) and will probably take this project along.  If I take the socks I’ll finish in just a few hours, so this new blanket should keep me occupied for a long while.

In celebration of the double A-, I went out yesterday and purchased this little beauty:

It is big enough to hold all my normal purse stuff plus by little Dell mini laptop and it’s power cord.  Nice, eh?  It is things like this that motivate me to even attempt a double A in one semester.

I’m sitting in the Graduate Admissions office at another university (don’t worry, this university and Lake Forest College do NOT compete with each other, so there is no real conflict of interest).  I’m trying to troubleshoot an error in a batch process file that runs daily - importing data from one database to another.  As it is running I have to “tick” each process as it completes so that I’ll know what part of the 36 processes is failing.  But some of the processes take at least 8 minutes each to run.  That’s 8 minutes of staring at a screen watching stuff fly by that is nonsense.  Ugh.  The ONLY consolation in all of this is that my tuition will be reduced (albeit slightly).  But the reduction is better than nothing.

In the meantime, I thought I would tell you a story about my grandmother.  Meme had a stroke about 15 years ago that left her with the inability to quickly recall what things are called.  Example - she knows what a fork is, how to use it and where it is stored, but she might not remember what it is called - at least not quickly.  This, as you can guess, has led to some very interesting conversations because sometimes she’ll substitute a word that has no relation to the one she is trying to say.

One evening my Mom, Dad, Meme and I were sitting at the table for dinner.  I used to have a cat named Fergus, a black, male, tom cat that was really smart.  As we were finishing up dinner Meme said, “I think I’m going to go outside and *rape* the cat.”  (Now, for the record, she actually said “rake”, but my mom and I heard “rape”.) 

The three of us (Mom, Dad and I) sort of pause and look at each other a little strangely.  So I said, “Um, Meme, I don’t think he’ll like that very much.” 

To which she said, “Oh, he loves to be raked.”  (We were relieved at this point that she clarified “rake” instead of “rape”, but “raking the cat” still didn’t seem like a good idea to me.)  The three of us still had a slightly quizzical and dumbfounded look on our face, but Meme was unaware of any discrepancy in what she had just said. 

Still not convinced that we were understanding her properly, one of us said something like, “so, when was the last time you raked the cat?” to which Meme said, “oh, I do it all the time.” 

About a minute later she opened the back door, Fergus followed her out, she picked up his hairbrush and proceeded to brush him.  She was right about one thing: Fergus loved to be brushed!

My process is about to finish, so I gotta run.  Toodles!

(hmm…two posts in one day…I hope this isn’t a trend!)  My niece had 2 surgical procedures done on her last Friday.  Firstly, the removed her tonsils and adenoids.  The doctor that did this surgery said that her tonsils were the largest he had ever removed!  So I guess it is good they removed them.  But they also did reconstructive surgery on her ears because she was born without that little fold in the ear that allows them to snuggle up to your head - which would mean that her ears would poke straight out, and that wouldn’t be good.

My sister said that she was doing so well on Sunday, being such a big girl, that they took her to Toys-R-Us and let her pick out anything she wanted.  Here’s what she got:  a lovely, blue, Princess gown.

Now, don’t those head bandages remind you of this fashion design of long ago?

I don’t know…maybe this fashion statement will make a come back?

My former roommate, Julie, got married on Saturday!  Yippee!  It was a lovely, mid-morning wedding and I don’t think she could have asked for a better day.  It was warm and didn’t start to rain until early afternoon making it a perfect day for pictures.  Congratulations, Julie and Jason!

I also got to meet my new cousin, Sydney, on Saturday.  I spent a lovely afternoon with Lloyd and Arlana, both their mothers, and the family of Lloyd’s best friend.  Baby Sydney is very adorable.  She has Arlana’s eyes, she is tiny and has very long toes and fingers.  Lloyd is going to have a little “looker” on his hands, I just hope he is prepared!  Here is a picture from their Flickr photos:

Baby syd

There she is…cute, eh?

Finally, here is the obligatory post for Logos today…(can you tell I want to win?)

Bible Study Magazine and Eternal Perspective Ministries are giving away 40 signed copies of Randy Alcorn’s book, Heaven. Not only that, but they’re also giving away five subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine and a copy of their Bible Study Library software! Enter to win on the Bible Study Magazine Randy Alcorn page, then take a look at all the cool tools they have to take your Bible study to the next level!