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.

So the “big day” has come and gone and other than knowing how old I really am, I don’t feel any different.  Not that I expected to, but you know, it is nice anyway to feel the same.  Someone asked me at my bash what my goals were for this austere year for me and my reply was to seriously consider purchasing a home.  Not a bad goal.  Here are some other goals:

1. Finish my first pair of socks.  They are about 2 inches from being done, so this shouldn’t be difficult.
2. Finish my first pair of mittens.  I’m stuck on the thumb, so once my brain gets past that problem, these should be easy enough to finish as well.
3. Do some writing.  I should probably have a more specific goal than that – like say, write the first half of a novel, but I don’t want to overwhelm myself.
4. Knit a shawl for my sister.
5. Knit a sweater for my niece Olivia.
6. Finish the baby blanker for my niece Gabby.

All this while – working full time, finishing up a class, leading a bible study and putting time and energy into purchasing a home (and moving).  Still do-able in a year’s time, dontcha think?

Some resolutions:

RESOLVED: to spend at least 10 minutes every day writing.
RESOLVED: to call my grandmother at least once a week.
RESOLVED: to call my sister at least once a week.
RESOLVED: to improve in my correspondence – primarily sending “thank you” notes and notes of encouragement.
RESOLVED: to make a trip to California at least every 2 years (to visit my Aunt).
RESOLVED: to tell the people that are important to me how much I appreciate them.