Everything is Unfinished

It was an unseasonably warm weekend. Mid-50’s here in mid-Ohio at the end of January? And from the looks of the forecast, it’s supposed to stay around there through at least Thursday. I will gladly enjoy it while it’s here, but I know better than to trust this little oasis of springtime. It happens every year around this time, then it’ll go back to being cold and blustery and snowing.

We did try to enjoy our winter reprieve yesterday, and decided to have a picnic. Just as I got in my car, the raindrops started to fall. So instead of a nice lunch at the park, we ate at home in front of the TV. I spent several hours watching Tivoed episodes of Good Eats on the Food Network. I became thoroughly addicted to this show about 5 minutes into the first episode I saw. The host, Alton Brown, has an extremely dry and goofy sense of humor which is what initially made me keep watching. But the really cool thing about the show is that, in addition to making several dishes during the show, you get a lot of the food science behind the recipes. Why should you or shouldn’t you use salt in a recipe, why it’s better to use fresh-squeezed lime juice in a drink, what makes sugar turn into caramel instead of crystalizing in the pan. I don’t cook a whole lot (something I’m trying to remedy), and when I do it tends to be heat’n'eat or boxed meals. But I’m really looking forward to trying some of his recipes, including pot stickers, stuffed pork chops, and homemade gyros.

After not watching Alias until season 4, I’m now all caught up. I watched the DVDs of the first 4 seasons, then had all 9 episodes so far this year on Tivo and last Saturday I finally got through them all. I’ve liked it, for the most part. The show does require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, but that’s ok. And now that I’ve finally seen everything, the next new episodes don’t start until March! I would assume that’s because Jennifer Garner just had her baby not too long ago, so I can’t really begrudge her some maternity leave. To help tide us over, I’ve come up with this list:

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED FROM ALIAS

• If you love someone, they will probably betray you. If they do, you will be the one to kill them.

• If the person you love doesn’t betray you, they will be killed by someone you know.
• If you think someone is dead, they may not be. Even if you killed them yourself, and took their vitals confirming that they were indeed dead, and even if you saw their lifeless body lowered into the ground, they may not be dead.
• If you want to have any friends, you may as well just accept that fact that they’ll be the people you work with.
• Extremely dangerous weapons are sold every day on various underground markets.
• Be careful who you talk to. Anyone could be a double agent. Or a clone.
• Black Ops divisions of the CIA are recognized and acknowledged by Langley. If you work for what you think is a Black Ops division, and your boss tells you Langley will deny any knowledge of you, he is running a terrorist organization.
• It’s perfectly ok to tap your co-workers’ phones if you suspect them of something.
• It’s very easy to get out of a maximum security US holding facility. Just tell them you have information. If that doesn’t work, do favors for a shadowy underground terrorist network and they’ll get you out.
• Your brain can be patterned and saved, and your memories can then be written into someone else’s brain. Just like a computer.
• CIA agents must all be very good looking. At least, the women must be. You couldn’t send a plain, ordinary-looking woman undercover as a stripper/prostitute/model/charming billionaire.
• Whatever you think you know, it could be wrong. The more you insist what you know is right, the more likely it is to be wrong.
• And last but certainly not least, Julian Sark is hot whether he has a British or an American accent. Yowza.

Johnny left this morning for Seattle to go to the Seahawks playoff game this Sunday. I miss him when he’s gone, but it will be nice to not talk about football every waking minute for the next 5 days.

So let’s talk football.

Apparently, being surrounded by football 6 months a year for the past 6 years has given me opinions about the sport. Before meeting Johnny, I didn’t even know Seattle had a team, I always rooted for the Bills in the Superbowl (even if they weren’t in it), and the only football I even mildly followed was Ohio State. I didn’t have a favorite team, only teams to root against (Browns and Steelers, in that order). Nowadays I can name head coaches, I could probably name the starting quarterback for 75% of the teams, I know the pros and cons of a shotgun formation, and I understand the importance of taking a knee (even though I HATE it). I still root against the Browns religiously, but I like some of the Steelers’ players enough that I give them a break every now and then. I watched enough games this year to have doubts in the Bears - they were not as good as their record. I made sure to gloat about their so-called “#1 Defense” after their loss to Carolina with Steve Smith slicing through the line like a hot knife through butter.

The biggest opinion I think I’ve formed from my casual football watching is that I don’t like wuss football. Like I mentioned before, I don’t like taking a knee. I don’t like it when teams don’t go for it on 4th and 2. In fact, I think you shouldn’t be able to punt if you have 4th and 3 or less. I also think that the XFL had the right idea with no fair catching. Yes, I understand why fair catches are legal, but they still seem awfully wussy to me. You’re playing FOOTBALL here, not namby-pamby-doily-ball. Which brings me to quarterbacks, the wussiest of the lot. One of the reasons I’ve been watching more football is for quarterbacks like Mike Vick and Ben Roethlisberger, who throw and run pretty equally, and do it with gusto. None of this sliding just over the first down line crap. Again, I understand why they do it, but I still prefer a quarterback with an “Oh I’ll just do it myself” attitude.

I think one of the biggest boons to my expanding knowledge is PTI. I love the format of the show, but even more than that I love the hosts. I think it’s because they remind me of Johnny and Gary. Whatever it is, it works for me and since it’s on just as I get home I catch it a lot. However, when Johnny’s gone I do really enjoy NOT watching ESPN for the entire time :)

I’m kind of proud of myself. Yesterday I planned my whole evening out, since Johnny’s out of town: after work, go to the grocery store, grab some dinner on the way home, do some laundry, and watch the last few episodes of Alias season 4 while continuing to organize my scrapping lair. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but I know myself well, and although I had the best of intentions I figured I’d come home, sit on the couch and fall asleep. Instead, I actually accomplished everything! I even watched the first episode of season 5. Hooray for doing tiny chores!

Something I’ve realized (again) as I’m organizing my scrapping supplies is that I have enough stuff to last me 10 years. I am DEFINITELY going on shopping time out for a while. It’s amazing to think that when I started scrapping 7 years ago, I had one little container that everything fit into, and now I need half of a room to store it all. And the stupidest thing is that the only albums I’ve ever finished have been for other people, so all I have to show for my efforts is a jumble of random pages. No wait, I did complete my Disney album from 2003, so I guess I’ve got 1 completed album. I really need to work on that.

Bored at work + Crafty frame of mind + Craftster.org = waaaay too many projects I want to do!

Check these out!

• Lite Brite Lamp

• Cool Hanging Name Letters
• Nintendo Cross-Stitch (previously posted by Kerry, and my first foray into the Craftster forums)

And not that I want to make this, because my cats wouldn’t use it, but here’s the cutest little kitty you’ve ever seen in a fun fur bed.

I read Wil Wheaton’s blog daily (link over to the left there) and in doing so, I’ve come to realize that he would be a really cool neighbor to have. He made a post last week that further reinforces my thoughts, singing the praises of Donnie Darko and recommending another movie, Primer. While I can’t take credit for seeing either of these movies on my own (Johnny of course introduced me them), they were both very good. Go put it in your Netflix queue and read about Wil’s cool nerdiness.

This is not a good way to start off the new year. My sleeping schedule is all out of whack, so here it is 3am and I’m wide awake. I did lay in bed for 2 hours with my mind just spinning before deciding to get up, hoping that I’d drift off but to no avail. Looks like another cranky day at work tomorrow!

Even though the webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Delete is usually no more than a watered-down Penny Arcade rip-off, I was pleased to see that in today’s strip, one of the main characters is wearing a Blue Sun t-shirt. Shiny.

As 2005 came to an end, I came to the sad realization that I didn’t do nearly enough scrapping. In fact, I haven’t even gotten pictures printed since March! But then I remembered why: the Disney album. You may remember that last March, Johnny’s parents took us to Orlando for week. When we got back, I began making a scrapbook for them, as thanks for the great time. I finished in in September just before Johnny went out there for a visit, so he delivered it. And now, a mere 4 months later I’m posting it for all to see! Here are some of my favorite pages:

The last page is notable because my mom helped me with it. She’s only done about 10 pages of her own, and I’ve helped her with most of them but I love the pinwheel-type photo layout she came up with. If you’d like to see the whole album, here’s a link:
Disney 2005 Album
I used an 8×8 top-loading album from Creative Imaginations. All the pictures were printed wallet-sized. The album is 55 pages long, and I have twice as many pictures that I didn’t use, so when I do my album I think I’ll use the wallets in a 12×12 album! If the journaling looks a little last-minute, that’s because it was. I wasn’t going to do any, but then I went back and put some in for each day, but by that time I was sick of the album and didn’t take the time to cut journaling blocks or anything.

So after working on that album for almost 6 months, I did do some other pages. Then I started on my Christmas cards in November and they took me almost a month and a half. I don’t know why, but I just wasn’t very inspired by them this year! They did turn out nicely, but I really dragged my feet on them.

Then, yesterday and today I made a cute little birthday calendar. It’s a perpetual one, so you can use it year after year. I started with a kit from Get Croppin’ and added some paper and embellishments that I had. It turned out so neat that I think I’ll keep it!

I’m hoping this means that I’ll go on a scrapping kick here in the new year! I certainly need to, because in about 3 1/2 months, I’m going to be very occupied with scrappable events, but no scrapping time! I do have some cool new baby scrapbooking embellishments though, thanks to Johnny:

I had to take 2 pictures and stitch them together, and they didn’t quite match up. But you get the idea.