Carrie's Journal

I'm going crazy here and posting two days in a row. BUT I'm on the computer tonight and wanted to say Happy Valentine's day, and I'm not in the mood to get on the computer most nights lately since that's where I spend my days.. glued to the screen and ArcMap, excel, command lines, and powerpoint. That, and tomorrow night is Project Runway night... and I'm a little addicted, I probably won't be on the computer.

So...
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! I had intentions in getting these in the mail, but it just didn't happen. I drew the design and printed them with my gocco and embossed them (which involved putting them in the oven!) to get the opaque effect.

Until vacation!  Yea!  I'm taking Friday off, and M-W next week, then Mon and my birthday off.  I'm working a little next week to stock up days off for future vacations.  I'm ready for a break.  Feeling a little burned out on computer work/data processing.. although I'm learning to program in python and run automated scripts to do a lot of the repetitive data processing steps, but it will be a while before I'm very proficient at it.  J at work is really good at it though and is teaching me.

We're having a partyopen house on Saturday, so I'm going to spend most of time on Friday cooking- I haven't made any cookies yet this year.  Not sure what our turnout will be as a lot of people will be out of town, and the weather isn't supposed to be great so some people might not to drive but we will see I guess. We'll at least have A's family, and they can walk over if they want.  I actually got all my packages and cards out last week (due to the gift of 2 snow days!) and finished up the last bit of christmas shopping tonight (I was totally stumped on A's dad and brother, so they're getting smartwool socks.  kinda boring, but they make great socks, so at least it's a functional gift and something they wouldn't spend money on themselves).  With all the errands done (besides food and drink shopping and prep!) I'm feeling pretty relaxed and exctied for the next week.  I've even wrapped everything and stashed it all under our tree, which looks great in our living room.  The open house has been a good motivator to work on the house and get the basement looking better too.  There were piles of boxes I hadn't touched since we moved in that are now at least cleaned up or stashed in a closet.  A's getting cross-country skiis for christmas (which aren't under the tree yet as he'd immediately guess what they were).  I just hope we get more snow this winter so he can use them.  We got 6 inches last weekend and I skiied right out our door down the street to the trail and skiied the route I usually run.  We live in a great location for skiing whenever we get snow and A's always a little bummed to see me head out to ski when it snows, so it should be fun to go together.

I wish you all could come to our party saturday... have a good weekend!

We've had some excitement- first, snow last week and then cold weather and rain and several ice storms.  My office is closed if the schools are out, so A and I have had the last two days off.  We're not 100 sure that there will be school tomorrow, but I HAVE to go into the office and put the finishing touches on our annual report.  It's been a nice 4-day weekend though, I have to admit.  I've not done a whole lot outside of the house other than a couple of trips to the gym, but I've been busy with Christmas Cards and present-making.  That, and Saturday (it just rained, it hadn't frozen yet) A.G. and I went to St Louis to play.  We had Thai food for lunch and went to the Rock and Roll Craft Show, Independent Holiday Art Fair, and of course Trader Joe's and REI.  If we'd only had longer we would have hit the Body Worlds exhibit, and probably the malls and CostCo.... but there just wasn't enough time in the day.  The Rock and Roll Craft Show was fun- I'd read about it on cnn.com.  THere was a lot of cool stuff there, but a lot of it fit into the "I could make that!" category, and the line to see the jewelry was looong.  I did pick up a few Christmass presents though.

I finally figured out how to post multiple images well, so here goes... hopefully this will work.  Here's what I've been up to the past few months/ some house pics:

hmm.. lately it seems I post when I'm in the field.  I'm totally due for a photo-heavy post soon too, I've finished a ton of projects for the house lately.  Mabye tomorrow night if I am feeling ambitious.  Tonight I feel a little drained from the cold and the wind and relaxed from the huge margarita I had with dinner.  I'm in the field in Marshall, Missouri.  Not so far from home, but far enough that it is not worth it to drive back and forth each day time-wise.  I was worried it was going to be damn cold this morning, but it wasn't TOO bad, but still colder than I'd like.  Last time we surveyed this reach (Mid-August) it was 107 degrees.  Today the water was 5 degrees C and the air was thirties to forties depending on the time of day.  Anyway the work went well, and we have either 1 or 2 days left.  I'm checking out in  the morning just in case we're done early, but it will probably take 2 more days.

We had a good break, we went to Kansas City on Thursday to meet up with my family and grandparents.  We went to the new addition to the Nelson Art Gallery in KC on Friday (great- it's their contemporary wing and was fantastic!) and did a bit of shopping and a lot of sitting, talking, and eating.  Saturday night we made it home just in time to catch the BIG game (big for this sports-obcessed town at least).  It was the night of the rivalry game for MU-KU, but it also turned out it was a game for #1 in the country (I'm totally not into sports, especially football, but you see my parents went to KU and A went to MU and we live in Columbia so this is a big deal).  Anyway the game was funny- A was so into it and yelled and screamed when MU did well and Izzy was sitting in my lap and kept leaping up and leaving the room afraid every time A got excited. (loud)  MU won, which made A really happy.  Sunday we pretty much just relaxed around the house and got some much-needed exercise.  My sports excitement of the fall is that Carleton won an Ultimate frisbee tournament here a few weekends ago.  There were 40 teams in town for the tournament, including several of the top from last year, so it was fun to see them win it all.  It even made the TV news.  I was a geek and went and watched them play a game against Colorado.

It's been an eventful week. Last Tuesday a huge oak tree limb fell off a tree in our backyard in a storm and hit the house. It felt like an earthquake hit us. It was crazy. It hit and bounced off the house and fell on our lilac bush and some houseplants on our patio. A neighbor wants the wood so he's going to cut it up next week and haul it off... we don't own a chainsaw (yet) and bought wood for the winter last week, so we're glad he wants to take care of it, it's a huge limb- as long as the house!

A's been super-busy, he had 4 tennis matches last week, two were away. They had district this weekend and his #1 player won and is going to the state tournament this weekend. The team as a whole finished the season on a really positive note finishing second in the district ahead of several teams that beat them this season.

I spent the weekend painting. I actually had never painted a room before- since I'd been a renter for so long. I painted over the wallpaper that had been painted over and had bled through and was this weird faint jungle print that loooked like a stencil. Now it is off-white because we can't quite decide on colors yet for the living room. Big improvement. I also tackled the purple bathroom. It was a nightmare- it took three coats of paint to turn purple to yellow. It's much brighter and actually matches the floor tile color instead of being this odd dark purple. My sewing/craft/office room is still purple, but will eventually be a light blue. I've decided I don't really like painting, it's kind of a messy pain in the ass. So I'll get around to that last room eventually.

We've also made some progress/decisions on our living room. We've ordered a dark chocolate brown sectional couch, and I'm trying to decide what color to accent it (pillows, a chair cushion, and an ottoman I want to make out of foam and fabric). Either kind of a bright green color, blue, or orange. I kind of want to go orange and use this line of fabrics for the stuff I want to make- I love the print with the off-white background, dark birds and branches and orange berries and the orange wood fabric- and I like that it's all not too girly (unlike a lot of the other fabrics I like and might want to use but A might not like so much).  Either way I'm ordering some of it!  The green option would include this I think, or at least the top green pods fabric, if I can find it anywhere for sale anymore, it seems to be sold out most of the places I've looked for it online.  I already made a bunch of green and brown cushions last year for our wicker furniture that could work with that print too, so it would take less sewing.  Anything is cheaper than the fabric at the furniture store that I really wanted for throw pillows.  It turned out to be either $150 a pillow (for a throw pilliow!) or quite a steal by the yard at $80 a yard.  I could buy almost 10 yards of the Aviary fabrics for the price of one yard of the one (it was gorgeous- a textured brown and orange brocade with leaves and stems) at the furniture store.  If I went orange I could also make a couple of pillows with the leftover wedding orange silk fabric.  I have a ton of it and it's weaving up really quickly and look great, but they don't use much fabric.  It's fun though, to slowly kind of think about what we want our rooms to eventually look like.  I think it will be a while before we even think about the basement other than moving the old couch down there when the new ones come in. 

I'm ready for the long weekend.  It's been a long week at work.  Today I had to take Izzy to the vet at lunch for shots.  She was a total brat and bolted with I got the carrier out.  I had to move the bed, the couch, the futon (on three different levels of the house- she's fast on the stairs!) and then finally chase her into  my closet and close the door to catch her to get her in the carrier (which was also an ordeal- I got pretty scratched up).  She hasn't forgiven me yet and is still acting skittish. 
I had weaving class tonight and A had an away tennis match.  It works out pretty well this fall, he has away tennis matches almost every Thursday.  I'm finishing up a bag I started this spring that I hadn't worked on since before the wedding.  After it is done, hopefully next week, I'm going to start placemats made from the table runners from the wedding (I'm going to cut them into strips- not sure how I'm going to weave them yet though, stripes or color blocks).   
We had a lof of fun at the quarry dance last weekend, met a few people, and it was nice to walk to go out.  I don't think I've done that since Utah.  I drank a bit too much, but not enough to feel too bad in the morning, just enough to postpone my run for a few hours (I'm training for a 10 k in October).  This Saturday night they're projecting movies on the quarry wall and Monday there is a picnic and neighborhood meeting.   I think Monday morning I'm going to do my own little "quarry triathlon" and swim across the quarry a couple of times, jump on my bike and bike to McBaine  on the trail (16 miles) and then run a couple of miles on the trail. 

So I woke up early with a list in my head of the things I needed to do and I'm not doing them (e-mail photographer, brunch venue, change one of our reservations in Italy, figure out how many vegetables I need to order from a farmer's market vendor to pick up tomorrow...).  I'm going in to the office to work a half-day today so I have plenty of time.  We went out to the venue site yesterday and it looks beautiful.  Much prettier than in March.  The weather forecast looks hot, but not rainy, and evenings will be cooler.  Andy and I are getting a little overwhelmed but it's all going to work out and get done.  See most of you soon!

Days to go. We can't really believe it.  A and I are in a litle bit of shock, but we're down to 10 days.  Now we can check the 10-day forecasted weather (not that it's all that accurate this far off anyway, or that we can control or change it!) but it all the sudden feels like we're in this strange wedding-world time warp.  I've had to put some of the tasks I've been slacking on into overdrive and I've been running errands in doubles and triples... yesterday I left work early for a haircut, dental appointment and consult with A's mom about what tables to put their side of the guests at.   Today it was a dress fitting and coffee purchase downtown, and then a loong meeting with our venue dude, Barry, chat with the harpist, emergency run to Michaels to get more ribbon for a fun little alteration that I had done on the dress (you'll see soon!), picking up lightbulbs for the lanterns.  Somewhere in there I'm managing to work as much as I can.  I've been going in early and am glad I have all the overtime from working in the field this spring to use up. Today I barely made it to a lecture by a guy from the lab in AZ that works on Grand Canyon.  It turns out he presented a lot of data, some of which I helped collect in 2000 when I was at USU! Small world... I even was able to ask intellegent questions and it was really cool to see such a huge longish-term dataset put together.  Other than that, I feel like things are getting done.  The long meeting with the venue dude was really productive and solved a lot of questions/unknowns I've been dealing with.  Tomorrow I have to pester the bus people and DJ.  We STILL haven't picked a 1st song either... but we have 10 days, right?  We're starting to get really excited about seeing everyone, and A was a super sweetie and gave me an early wedding present (our wedding present to each other is the house) but today he gave me a gift certificate for a massage at this awesome spa I've always wanted to go to but haven't wanted to pay for. I can't wait- I'm going next Wed or Thurs.

Yep, Friday night in Sioux Shitty for work.  Very exciting.  We had a late late night out (til 8:30 pm..) and had 2 beers in the bar next door to where we ate dinner.  I probably shouldn't because I've been sick.  I started to feel bad Sunday and had to come do fieldwork anyway (or go next week instead and I have too much wedding stuff to do that week to be gone).  Sooo here I am.  It turns out there's an urgent care place next door to the hotel so I was actually able to go to the doctor here and get some meds the other day.  It might be strep throat so they gave me meds.  (I've had a really sore throat the whole time).  The funny thing is the single room they gave me at a very generic days inn is the jacuzzi tub room with a king sized bed and a lot of room- for the work computers and my yoga mat.  So that's not so bad, although we're still next door to a Culver's (really good frozen custard) and I've been trying my best to avoid the yummy frozen calories next door.  I keep thinking about gelato in italy after the wedding.  Oh and our hotel was robbed at gunpoint at 1 am the day we arrived.  Scary.  We're going home on Sunday and I am home until we leave for Italy- we're at the 2 week countdown til the wedding!