Off The Wall

I find myself listening to Michael Jackson's Off The Wall album.

FUN stuff! I'm just singing along to every song.

I remember when this album came out. Album. (I guess I'm dating myself now!)

Sigh. Those were the days.

Listen to a clip here on Windows Media Player.

Chorus
So tonight gotta leave that nine to five upon the shelf
And just enjoy yourself
Groove, let the madness in the music get to you
Life aint so bad at all
If you live it off the wall
Life aint so bad at all (live life off the wall)
Live your life off the wall (live it off the wall)

2nd verse
You can shout out all you want to
cause there aint no sin in folks all getting loud
If you take the chance and do it
Then there aint no one whos gonna put you down
cause were the party people night and day
Livin crazy thats the only way

Love this email signature

I saw this in someone's email signature and LOVED it!

"I'm not 40 something. I'm 39.95 plus shipping and handling."

Too funny!

Easy triangle shawl

I knitted this shawl for my sister, and I think she really loves it. (She seemed to enjoy modeling it, at least!) When I gave it to her, I hadn’t woven in the ends because I hadn’t decided whether to add fringe (and I figured the ends could be part of the fringe).



This is my first shawl ever. It’s an easy triangle shawl--a prayer shawl--knitted with Homespun yarn (which I think was the biggest challenge). The Homespun feels wonderful against the skin, so the shawl is so soft and cozy.



My sister thinks she wants fringe, but I’m told Homespun yarn frays terribly and looks horrible as fringe, so I’m trying a couple of different ideas to see if they’ll work. If not, the shawl will go fringeless.



Thanks for looking.

The Sound of Silence

Do you hear that?

It's so...quiet.

The kids are back in school. My teenage stepson is taking the dogs (I just accidentally typed "kids" LOL) to the vet.

Why does it feel so different here today? The kids were in camp for a month this summer. Was the house quiet then?

Maybe it's because I can institute some routine in the household. Try to keep everyone to a schedule. We struggle in this area, but the start of a new school year brings renewed hope that we'll do better this time.

Time to get some work done. Peace out.

Interval training

I was reading an article in O (The Oprah Magazine) called "Sprinting to Weight Loss". According to the article, research shows that if you exercise by alternating intervals of high-intensity movement (like, as fast as you can go) and intervals of medium to medium-high intensity, you will lose more weight than if you stay at the medium to medium-high range for your entire workout.

Furthermore, if you do the interval training, you will lose more while shortening your workout to about half the time of a regular workout (say 20 minutes rather than 40 minutes).

"...Intensity, not duration, is really the missing piece in our fitness puzzle."

I want to try this on my elliptical, but I'm not sure of the best way to time my intervals. Should I dig out my old stop watch? I wish I had music that had a voice-over telling me "Get ready to walk your fastest for 10 seconds in 4, 3, 2, 1, GO!" I wasted spent half of my afternoon searching iTunes and the Net for interval training music. Well, I have to figure out something, because I don't want need another excuse to NOT exercise.

I can totally relate...

After a couple of years of taking 2-4 kids to the grocery store with me, I told my husband, "I'm not grocery shopping with the kids anymore. It's just not fair." And 95% of the time, I've stuck to that.

So I cracked up laughing when I read this ladies ebay post:

Hilarious ebay listing

I'm probably the last to have seen it, but thought I'd share the laughs, anyway!

Little Miss Sunshine

I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. I decided to watch someting On Demand and Little Miss Sunshine expires on the 19th.

After about 5 or 10 minutes, I didn't think I'd be able to watch the movie, but I perservered, and I'm glad I did. I laughed, cried, moaned, you name it.

That was definitely a good middle-of-the-night movie. I'm guessing it would be good at other times, too.

Back from the beach!!!

Last week, we went to Virginia Beach for some much-needed (and much-deserved) rest. Besides the record high temps (the highs were above 100 a couple of days with a heat index of 115), we had a wonderful time.

I was able to complete a knitting project and enjoy the most recent CK magazine, so I even fed my craft/hobby jones!

I worked while on vacation, checking and responding to emails and finishing a couple of projects. Right now, as I sit at my home office, it's taking everything I have NOT to flip through the mound of faxes sitting on the printer. The thought of them waiting there for me is actually giving me palpitations.

I'm going to leave this room and go back to my bedroom and knit and catch up on the shows I recorded last week. Work can wait till tomorrow. :)

Cool paper site

The Peace of Paper displays a collection of origami and other paper arts. Like this cool box:



I wonder if I can figure out how to cut that with my CraftRobo. The pattern can be found in this post: Link.

This explains it!

Obesity may be contagious.

Free movie Wednesdays

Free movies through August 15th at participating theaters. Check here for a theater near you. http://www.amctheatres.com/smc/

Finished the final HP book

I finished the final Harry Potter book about an hour ago. 750+ pages of pottermania in one weekend. I started reading around 1:30 yesterday, fell asleep about an hour later for a 3 hour nap, then read most of the rest of the weekend.

I stretched the previous HP book over a week or more so I could enjoy it, but I worried that too many people would discuss the book online or post spoilers, so I wanted to go ahead and read it and experience the story for myself.

The HP books are very easy to read but not too childish. I prefer the earlier, shorter volumes, but I really like Rowling's writing style.

I borrowed a few of the Wizard of Oz books so I would better understand the backdrop for Wicked, but I can't really get into them. They are simple reads, but maybe a little too simple for me to really enjoy.

Maybe I'll read them to the kids if they'll let me LOL.

Anyway, back to housework, that has been sorely neglected this weekend.

Happy Friday the 13th!

Stay safe today!

triskaidekaphobia: fear of the number 13.


Try to use that word in a sentence today. :)

101 degrees!

At 4 PM, when I went to pick up the kids from camp, my car said it was 101 degrees out! Mostly, it read 99, but it climbed to 101 for a few seconds. :)

I was shocked to learn that they spent part of the afternoon outside. I'm going to ask the camp organizers about that tomorrow.

Envirosax = Eco shopping

These are pretty cool. I'm thinking of investing in them. I buy so many groceries that I'd probably need a few sets, though. (Click on the photo to buy.)

One bite or two?

We had a very busy day yesterday. In the evening we stopped for sushi. I don't eat raw meat, but I love cucumber rolls and avocado rolls (and sometimes, California rolls).

So, I realize yesterday, as the rice and filling from my sushi was falling all over the place, that maybe I wasn't supposed to try to bite the sushi in half to eat it. I asked my husband and 19 yr old stepson, and they said they both eat their sushi in one bite.

But they're men, and well, they have big mouths. Hee hee. I tried eating a sushi roll in one bite, and my mouth felt REALLY full! Maybe I could get used to it. It beats having half of the sushi fall ungracefully from my hands when I try to bite it.

So what thinks you? One bite or two?

Rat-a-too-ee

I took the kids to see Ratatouille tonight. It was a really cute movie. My husband and 19 yr-old surprised us and showed up at the theater to see the movie with us (imagine our surprise when they entered the darkened theater...). :)

The movie was long (110 min.).
-My 8 yr old thought it was long, but she had no interest in leaving early.
-My 6 yr old was squirming in his seat about 70 min. into the movie.
-My husband was shaking his leg impatiently (not sure how else to describe it) about that time, too.
-I actually pulled out my iPod to watch an episode of House, but I couldn't concentrate on it. LOL

So, it was a really cute movie. I just wish they could have made it shorter (or we should have waited for it to come out on DVD).

Overall, it gets at least 3 big thumbs up.

Wicked

I'm reading a book called "Wicked". I saw it in a 2nd hand book store that I stumbled upon at the local shopping center. I read the first couple of pages then went to the library to borrow the book.

I haven't gotten into it very much, yet, but I think I'll like it. I felt I needed a book to read that wasn't craft or hobby-related.

I'm so sometime-y

Sometimes I'm on top of the blogging thing. Sometimes I'm so lax. Sorry.

I actually have two blogs that I'm neglecting (three, if you include the myspace blog that I setup so I could 'friend' someone, but I've never even posted to it).

When I don't have a lot going on, I feel like I have nothing to blog about. When I have a ton of things going on, I'm too busy to blog or there's too many things to blog about, so I just don't blog about any of them. LOL

I'm pretty good at reading others' blogs. Sometimes. I subscribe to SO many blogs on bloglines now, I can't read them all. I will read a few at a time, a few with just a few new blog entries, or have a marathon session when I have a big chunk of time free.

My favorite blogs will always be the ones on the SBA Blog Ring, though. ;)

I'll try to do better.

Signed,
Sometime-y Wendy

Happy Juneteenth!

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.