Forward Motion

The Day After

Think badly of me if you will, but I got in bed last night and sighed "Thank God that's over."

Don't get me wrong, we had a great Christmas that was bursting with love. Hhaving my mom and step dad here makes me so happy.  I got wonderful gifts.  My husband totally surprised me with a very fancy new camera.  What made that gift even more special was that he was specifically looking for one that would be for taking photos of yarn and projects.  It has a view screen that moves to another position so you can see what you're shooting better and a remote control.  It's very awesome and it's going to take me a while to figure it out.

My mom loved her socks and they seem to fit.  DH was wearing his slippers last night.  The kids were happy with all of their presents and we only have one duplicate Lego toy that needs returning.  Alex is wearing his Motley Crue Theater of Pain shirt this morning.  Grace has involved us in several rounds of Mystery Date.  Oddly, the present that made DH cry - and there's one every year - was the shirt and coffee mug from Lincoln Welding.  I guess he really misses his welding.

But wow.  The last several weeks have left me exhausted.  All the planning and ordering and buying and wrapping and running around.  I took a 2 hour nap on yesterday and really could have slept all day.  I tried to sleep in this morning, but the hard working maintenance team showed up bright and early to fix a hole in the wall.  I had to scramble out of my PJs and pretend like I hadn't just hauled my carcass out of bed.

Oh, here's our Christmas card photo, taken with the Franklin Mountains that we see each day in the background.  I love these mountains.  At least there was no plague of ladybugs like last year.

One of the best things about my mom being here is that she plays games with me.  We love games and Grace or Alex can usually be convinced to join in.  We played favorites from last year like Carcassonne, TransAmerica, 10 Days in the USA, and Mille Bourne.  Both Mom and I bought some new games this year and all of them have been fun:  Hit or Miss, Carcassonne Castle, 10 Days in Europe, and Settlers of Catan.  Settlers of Catan nearly made our heads explode trying to figure it out, but once you learn the rules and general idea, it's the most fun.

There are still boxes and gifts littering the house and today is my step-dad's birthday, but at least we are free of the great anticipation of The Day.  I hope that all of you who celebrate had a great Christmas, too.  And will you join me in thankfulness that it only comes once a year?

6 inch ribbon curls!

Are you ready?  There's only an hour more till Christmas at my house.  Grace nearly drove herself mad with anticipation today.  We had our big turkey meal today so's that I don't have to cook tomorrow.  My mom and her husband are here and it's so good to see them!  This year - since last Christmas - has been the longest we've gone without visiting them ever.

A box arrived from my dad this week and written on the outside was "Better than cookies.  Open right away."  Inside, covered in styrofoam packing peanuts, wrapped in foam rubber and tape, was a container of his homemade, secret recipe BBQ sauce.  This is the sauce that I grew up eating, the only BBQ sauce that tastes right to me.  I'm so, so happy to have it again so we can eat ribs.  Although, it would help if my dad would quit with all the top secrets hi-jinks that require him to mail sauce from FL to TX and just give me the recipe.

There seem to be an awful lot of presents for 6 people.

 

You can't even see the full extent of the gift spread.  That tall green one in the back is for Alex and my neighbor keeps teasing him it's a vacuum cleaner.  (It's not.  It's an extra guitar for Guitar Hero and the new World Tour game.)  I hope my kids like receiving books as much as I like to buy them.  I kind of think they do.  They read every evening before bed and get frustrated if there's "nothing good to read."  I may have gone a little nuts in Barnes & Noble.

It occurred to me last week that this time of year is perfect for buying things like shoes and yarn and keeping them under the radar.  We've got so many boxes arriving and I have this short time frame that I can get away with saying, "I'm not telling you what's in this box!"  I decided I have been a good girl this year and the 8th Sookie Stackhouse novel and some Sanguine Griffon Bugga yarn arrived at my house.

Each year my kids buy a new ornament and the plan is that someday when they are out on their own and have their own Christmas trees (sob!!) they'll have all these ornaments to start with.  Alex would like to show you this year's ornament that he picked:

 

Imagine his delight to discover on eBay a mint condition Iron Maiden ornament, dated his birth year, 1996.

A very, very happy and peaceful holiday to everyone.

He's an angry elf.

DH's Ribby Slipper Socks are done, completing my holiday knitting.  I don't think he noticed me knitting on them, especially since after they began to look like slippers, I kept them hidden away.  I'm very pleased with them and pleased with myself for remembering to take photos before I wrapped them up.

Pattern:  Ribby Slipper Socks from Interweave Knits, Holiday 2008

Yarn:  Dream in Color Fatty/Softy/? held doubled for the foot, single for the cuff.

Ravelry link with modifications listed here.

The Ribby Slipper Socks are meant as an upgrade from these slippers:

Made for him by some nice Minnesotans while he was in Iraq, he came home with 2 other equally colorful pairs and now has only this orange pair that are looking rather sad.  Thank you, anonymous Minnesotan knitter, who made so many pairs of these slippers for guys who were a long way from home doing a very hard job.

Dream in Color certainly knows how to make some nice yarn.  It's gorgeous to look at, wonderful to work with, and fabulous to wear.  When I put the slippers on for the photos, it felt like my feet were wrapped in warm marshmallows.  Soft and squooshy.

Sadly, the yarn is no longer called Fatty.  As detailed in their Ravelry group, there was a copyright/legal issue with the name and they are working on coming up with something new.  Personally, I like Moxie, even though it's not as much fun to say as Fatty.

Now I've got to get more presents wrapped, tidy up the house for my mom's arrival, and quote random lines from Elf.

answers phone "Buddy the Elf!  What's your favorite color?"

Here, look at the pretty yarn because I've got nothing much else to say right now.

Twas the week before Christmas and all I can do is obsessively track my packages and hope that they arrive on time.  I'm most concerned about my dad's gifts that I have to still send to Florida.  I'm thinking I'm going to be paying through the nose for speedy shipping. 

Monday was spent cutting out and baking Christmas cookies.  I made a lot.  I don't know how many.  Lots and lots.  We did gingerbread ones for the first time this year and I like them even better than the sugar cookies.  Don't go thinking I made them from scratch.  No, these are tubs of dough I bought at SuperTarget.  Cutting them out and decorating them is the fun part, not the making them.  Tuesday we decorated and decorated and decorated until the kids were tired of it and I just started slapping frosting on a cookie and dumping some sort of decoration on it.

Today was our last day of school, although we've only been doing math this week.  My mom arrives Monday and I need to get the house picked up and organized.  And well, I'm just ready for Christmas break to start.  I've got almost all the gifts shopping done, I only need a few more stocking stuffers and another gift or two for the kids.  I should be able to finish knitting DH's slippers by tomorrow.  I'm very happy with them and I can't wait to show you them.

Even though I had a zillion things on my to-do list, I spent a while today taking photos of all my yarn that hadn't been put up on Ravelry yet.  The weather was perfect, not too super sunny, but not overcast like it turned later.  It's not all new yarn, some of it has been in the stash for a while, but just hadn't been photographed.  For lack of anything else to blog about, I'll show you some pictures.

I did order this last week:

Yarntini in the colorway with all the numbers.  I guess it's from the Lost show, which I never watch.  I really love that grey/green combination.

From a trade:

Wollmeise Maria's Deepest Purple in the dark intensity.  I feel so lucky to have gotten this skein!  I don't really care for the medium and light intensities of this colorway, they look too Red Hat Club for me.  But the dark intensity makes for a darker purple and red and it's is just gorgeous.

I'm afraid I'm getting a little hooked on this yarn line:

Vesper striping sock yarn.  The color is Afterglo.  I've found out she updates her site every Wednesday and it seems like each week there's a colorway I must try.  In the last month or so, I've collected quite a few skeins of stripyness and Grace wants socks out of all of them.

This was one of my birthday gifts in October from DH:

Handmaiden Casbah, colorway Victoria.  I love these colors so much I kind of want to put the skein on my head and wear it like a hat.

Here's the Wollmeise laceweight that I scored in October:

Color is Blue Suzanne and I'm not really happy with this photo.  The red in that is not really red, it's more fuschia/purply.  I have no idea what I'll make out of it as there's a lot of color going on there.  Most patterns are going to disappear with all the color, but I'm not quite ready to knit lace at the moment, so I can look for the right pattern.

This came from The Loopy Ewe a while ago:

 

Spindle City Yarns in Twilight Zone and A Day at the Beach.  I love to pet this yarn.  It is soooo soft.  No, that's not right.  It's soooooooooo soft.

DH came home today and said, "Don't expect our assignment on the 19th."  And I waited for him to smile really big and say "Because I've got it right now!" or something like that.  But no.  He said they were told today that even though a large fancy promise was made to over 600 people and their families that we would have assignments before Christmas break, that isn't going to happen.  To which I shouted "LIARS!!!"  Stinkin' liars.

Oh, well.  No need to break out the tranqs yet.  It's not like this was unexpected.  I'm more surprised that they actually bothered to promise such a thing.  I am trying to believe that this means we are MORE likely to get our first choice because the Army now has more time to think about making me happy.  Yes, that's it.  Hush.  It's Christmas time.  I'll be realistic next month.

Crazy all wrapped up with a bow!

The latest news in the wind, and it is really windy here, is that we won't find out our assignments till January or February.  You can imagine how well I am dealing with this.  That would be NOT WELL AT ALL.  There has been retail therapy in the form of some black boots on sale and several skeins of sock yarn.

There is a towering stack of boxes, most of them from Amazon, that are overtaking my closet.  We are getting 2-3 boxes daily.  It's clear that my family has embraced online shopping.  However, they aren't paying for gift wrapping (understandable), so I have to open the boxes and wrap the gifts.  I've got a LOT of wrapping to do.  They address packages with my gifts in them to DH, so that I won't open them.

The Japanese Diamond socks are being reknit now.  I know they looked like they fit my feet, but the row gauge was really a problem.  The instep was so much shorter in length than the sole and once I went a little further on the cuff, I couldn't get them on my foot.  I'm, for once, quite happy I am redoing this.  I went to a smaller size needle for the sole and I don't know that it is making a huge difference.  But at least now I can knit the sock longer before starting the heel to make up for the row gauge difference.

Lisa and I ran screaming from our homes got away for a little while on Thursday and took a trip to The Knitting Basket, our closest LYS.  Yarnwise, there's not that much of interest there for me right now, but they did have a beautiful cardigan on display.  This photo is from the website, and trust me, I wouldn't have even considered the pattern just from this image:

But the one in the store was much nicer looking.  Also, I would wear the thing properly and not half falling off of my body.  I wouldn't knit those ribbed sleeves so tightly either. The photo on the pattern I bought looks better too, but I'm not going to try and take a photo of the pattern tonight.  This Ravelry link shows some much better examples. 

In thanks for freeing Lisa for an afternoon of yarn, Diet Coke, and ice cream, she tagged me with this meme.  I'm pretty sure I did this one a while ago, but there are enough weird/random things about me to do it again.

You know the deal - share 7 facts about yourself and tag 7 more people.

1.  There are some movies, if I come across them playing on TV, I will always stop and watch at least a little part of them.  Dirty Dancing, Juno, Music & Lyrics, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Bourne Identity, Steel Magnolias, That Thing You Do, Good Morning Vietnam, and Lethal Weapon are but a few.

2.  I am having a lot of trouble with El Paso's cold temperatures and brilliant sunshine.  It means that you step outside wearing a sweater and within 3 minutes of being in your vehicle, you have the air conditioning cranked and are peeling off layers.  Then you arrive at your destination, get out of the vehicle, and freeze.

3.  I hate the sound of whistling.  But my husband can't really sing, so he whistles.  A lot.  And I try not to hate it, because he whistles when he's happy.  And wouldn't that be sweet of me to respond to his happy mood by screeching "AGGHHH..would you stop whistling!"

4.  I like wrapping presents.  I can securely wrap a squarish size package with 3 pieces of tape, even though I use extra tape thanks to my "I'm so excited about Christmas I can't keep my hands off the packages even though you already told me 6 times to leave them alone" children.

5.  I am not good at gifts.  Receiving them is the main problem, but giving them isn't my thing either.  Wrapping them is all I like.

6.  There is a certain knitting blog that I read that I don't like.  (Not yours, of course).  I only read it because it's so popular that I at least scan through it so I'll know what people are talking about later on.

7.  I am not tagging anyone else for this.  If you need blog fodder, then please go ahead.  Knock yourself out and leave me a link in the comments.

 

Reality

Holy crap.  My last blog post appeared on Bloglines and I scanned through as I always do, checking for typos and overly crazy ramblings.  And then I saw with new eyes the Japanese Diamonds sock.  That thing is a MESS!  The sole is, like, 4 times the size of the instep!  The colors and the pattern are still gorgeous to me, but that sock is getting ripped back to the toe and reknit tonight.  Was everyone just trying to be nice?

Check out my diamonds

Although some people would disagree, it's really cold here today.  Seriously, look -

 

Our mountains are wearing a light dusting of snow!  They looked so pretty for the 6 seconds that I was willing to endure standing outside to look at them.

In contrast to month after month after month of pleasant, sunshiney days, the rain and gloom is wonderfully welcome.  I'm usually not a big fan of rainy, grey weather and consider myself solar powered.  Without regular sunshine, I slow down and eventually become a barely discernable lump underneath a pile of blankets.  Even though I prefer sunny days, El Paso kind of overdoes it sometimes.  We've had maybe 2 rainy days since...I don't even know...September?

My cranky mood has lifted greatly and I appreciate the comments of support.  After writing that last post, I kind of felt like I drunk dialed the internet, like that overdramatic friend that every one has.  Once realizing that, for real, they aren't giving us our assignment till the 19th, I quit thinking about it every minute.  Now it's just maybe every hour.  If we don't get the news by the 19th however, I make no promises.  Ready the tranquilizer gun.

Hey, remember how I knit sometimes?  Yeah, I've been doing that a lot for the last few days.  That whole issue with which 3 colors do I want to use with the Japanese slip stitch pattern was solved with a small order from Sonny & Shear.  (I would have ordered from The Loopy Ewe, but for one skein, the shipping is cheaper from S&S.)

In my stash I already had 3 skeins of Shibui Knits sock yarn, 2 in honey and 1 in sky.  I had bought the 2 skeins of Honey from The Loopy Ewe way back when, but saw some finished projects with semi-solid pooling that I didn't really like.  Like this one - http://www.theloopyewe.com/photos/833/.  No disrespect to such a pretty sock, but I didn't like the way the shades flashed.  So I ordered the skein of Sky, thinking a 2 color project would look better.

When I wasn't satisifed with the Dream in Color or the Wollmeise trios, I remembered the Shibui.  I ordered one more skein in Peony and as soon as it quickly arrived, I cast on.  Here's how far I've gotten:

 

I pretty much love the color combo, even though the Sky is a big neon showoff and kind of takes over the other colors.  As you can see, for the instep I just went with plain knitting in whatever color I was using, resulting in the stripes.  Having learned a thing or two the hard way, I went up a needle size after doing the toe to counteract the non-stretchiness of the pattern. 

I still need to learn a few more things, apparently, because I think I should have only gone up a needle size on the instep stitches and not the sole.  Because the sole is plain stockinette, my gauge is oh so floppier.  This is the instep:

 

This is the sole:

 

As I was knitting the foot, I was tempted several times to stop and fix this.  Either use a smaller needle size or put a simple pattern on the sole.  But I didn't.  I figured for my foot, bigger is better and loose can only be good.  Now that I'm doing the patterning around the cuff, I'm not so optimistic.  There is less length in the instep stitches, so they are snug around the top of my ankle.  Only by knitting further will I be able to see if this gamble will end in frogging.  As long as they are wearable, I don't mind if they are imperfect.  I love the diamonds and the Shibui yarn is so soft and cushy.  I won't LIKE frogging them if they don't fit, but it will be worth it to have a wearable, gorgeous finished pair of socks.

Cranky vs. Crazy, it's a tie.

I wrote this post out and then almost deleted it, then thought about it and almost deleted it.  All I can tell you is that I have been trapped in front of a laptop and a scanner for the last 3 days while we transition to "paperless invoicing".  Which means all these retired linemen that work for the company send me their fuel receipts that for a month have been in their glove box or cup holder or wherever.  I get slips of paper that look like what you'd find in the Walmart parking lot after a day of heavy traffic.  I used to check them and staple them to the invoice.  Now I get to check them, attempt to flatten them out, clean them up, and scan them into some sort of readable image.  Usually the receipt thing takes me about an hour.  This week, 6 hours.

I am so buying some great shoes with my next paycheck.  All that to say that I am rather lacking in perspective at the moment and might possibly be verging on depressive obsession.  I think I'll be okay, but I'll totally understand if you want to just check back with me later and not read this.

I've had a cranky day.  I don't know what's going on with me.  It's the temperature in this house, I think.  Too hot.  I don't know what they constructed these homes from, but they hold heat something crazy.  I should probably track these moods on a calendar and see if there's some hormonal pattern or something with the moon phases.  Or maybe I've just been reading too many werewolf/vampire/zombie books lately. 

No, not the Twilight series, because the library has approximately 6 kajillion other people who have requested the book and we will probably have moved away by the time my turn comes up and I'm not buying a copy.  Besides, the information I've gathered about the series seems to indicated it's heavy in teenage-angsty drama and I have no desire to read about that. Having my prom date find me on Facebook has brought up enough memories of teenage drama.

No, I like Queen Betsy and Sookie (the books are better than the HBO True Blood series that came from the books) and even Confessions of a Werewolf Supermodel turned out to be a fun read.  But that might explain why I'm trying to blame my mood on the undead.

Okay - wait a minute.  Ignore all the crap I just wrote.  I know exactly why I am out of sorts.  It's because every sentence, every thought ends with:  "but that depends on where we move next."  I am consumed with our next assignment.  It's driving me crazy.  I'm definitely driving my husband crazy.

I can't explain it.  I love Ft. Bliss, but I know we're moving next summer.  Sure, we move all the time in the military, but it usually is not this scheduled.  After a few years, we get a notice telling us to report to Ft. Whatever or we call the Pentagon and beg to leave Ft. Whatever.  This is the first time that we know we have to be gone from here by Juneish.

We've had detailed conversations about what would happen if we got sent to Korea.  We've discussed having to buy DH a smaller car if we were sent to the DC area. 

I'm not even that worked out about where we'll go as along as it's not a few certain bases.  There are plenty of places that I would be happy to go.

Dang, I typed that out and realized that's a total lie.  I really want to go to our first choice base.  I would be so thrilled if we got this.  But so many other people have requested this base and our 2nd & 3rd choices are far less popular and thus more likely.  I bounce between getting my hopes up and trying to reconcile myself for the disappointment.  I'm just nuts with it.

We are supposed to find out sometime in the next 2 weeks.  They have said they'll let us know before the holiday break.  Of course, they won't tell us too soon before the break because they don't want to have hear from anyone who is unhappy about the assignment.  Here's your orders, now go away, we're on break!

DH is maddenly unconcerned.  He told me, "Don't even think about.  Just relax."  Oh sure, he didn't think much of that same advice when I gave it to him when he was waiting for the promotion list to be released.  The more I try NOT to think about it, the more I think about it.  I kind of want to go beat on the Pentagon's door and scream "JUST TELL ME WHERE!!!"

Yes, I know this post has no knitting, no homeschooling, no anything but ranting content.  Sorry 'bout that.

Only 44 out of 100, I need to get out more.

I really think we need to petition that the Monday after a 4 day weekend be a half day.  It's a shock to have to function for an entire Monday after all that lazing around.  What?  You say I could actually do something over the long weekend instead of lazing around?  I don't understand that concept.

Not only is it Monday after a long weekend, it's the beginning of the month and for me that means work. Our biggest client expects an estimate of all unbilled charges by noon on the 1st day of the month.  Since I am 2 hours behind the east coast since we have moved to Texas, I now have to have these figures in by 10 a.m. my time.  I got up an hour early this morning to crunch numbers and double check expense reports and I still hit "send" with only minutes to spare. 

This is one of those memes that is probably more interesting to fill out than it is to read.  I've tried to add in some old photos as proof along with my comments here and there.

Seen at kmkat and her needles and somewhere else (I forget where, sorry).

 

Things I've Done (In Bold)

1. Started my own blog (this is kind of a gimme)
2. Slept under the stars (not of my own volition, the Army tends to require it)

3. Played in a band (trombone in high school marching band.  Oh wait, do they mean like a non-geek band?)
4. Visited Hawaii.  (Oddly, I have no desire to do this.)

5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity (What exactly is more than I can afford?  Everything?)
7. Been to Disneyland/world (I lost an hour tonight looking for a decent photo of me from one of our many trips to Disneyworld.  Lots of cute kid photos, but the only ones of me I found were ones where I look sweaty and pissed off.  Yay Mickey.)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo (a mercifully short one)
11. Bungee jumped (I'd rather EAT the praying mantis)
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea. (this seems like a bad idea, not an adventure)
14. Taught myself an art from scratch (is sarcasm an art?  I think that was genetic anyway)

15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train (It wasn't good sleep.  That was a long train ride from Venice to Mannheim.)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice (gondolas are for suckers.  I've ridden in water taxis there, though.  Photo is of the view from the deck of the water taxi.)

29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset (more of them than I wished, thanks again to the army)
31. Hit a home run (I was going to make a joke here about getting to 2nd base, but never mind)
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors (well, how ancient are we talking here?  My great grans were from the Florida Keys and I have been there.)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language (Don't you always more or less teach yourself something like that?  I can still order 25 liters of unleaded gas in Italian)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (momentarily, at least)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person (I drove past it.  That counts as seeing it.)
39. Gone rock climbing (almost didn't come back from it.  Easy climb, my foot)
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant (but I've bought some strange meals)
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight (walked, stumbled and slept on beaches by moonlight.  Ahhh, the stupidity of youth.)

46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted (do chariacatures count?)
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain (I did a lot of kissing there in the early '90s, I'm sure some of it was in the rain.)
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies (eaten, yes.  Sold, no.)
62. Gone whale watching (somehow I don't think they are referring to tourist season on Clearwater Beach.)
63. Got flowers for no reason (I'm not a flowers kind of girl)

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp (I decided to skip the visit to the ovens and instead wandered over to the memorials area and met these refugees from the Bosnian conflict who were living in tents.  Dachau, 1993)

67. Bounced a check (my checkbook practically had springs my first year on my own.)
68. Flown in a helicopter (the first few minutes is cool, after that it's just loud)
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy (Smiley, my stuffed mouse, modeling the baby blanket I madea few years ago)

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial (I have a photo of this, but it's boring except for the bird on Abe's head)
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades (Driven through them many times, but I don't think that counts as a tour)

75. Been fired from a job (several of them!)
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone (stress fractures probably don't count, but I've got a doozy of one in my femur.)

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person (I have informed DH that we WILL be doing this in spring, I don't care if we drive the 10 hours over there, take a glance, and turn around and drive home.)
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem (Me, with Jerusalem in the background, 1992)

84. Had my picture in the newspaper (I used to write a newspaper column and had my little headshot in there every other week.)
85.  Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House (like, inside?  Then no.  But outside, yes.)
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (there I was...with the Poptart in my sights...)

88. Had chickenpox (don't remind me.  Chickenpox at age 28 was horrible.)
89. Saved someone’s life (well, indirectly.  All those unexploded items that I cleaned up over the years surely saved a life or two.)
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (Schwarzenegger, Tiny Tim, Wolf Blitzer)

92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby (I have way too many photos to pick just one as proof)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone (how old is this meme?)
99. Been stung by a bee

100. Rode an elephant