blackmoondog

I'm actually enjoying going to the gym and walking on a mechanized road to nowhere. It is just so much more *convenient* than going on an actual walk in the Big Blue Room. And I don't need sunscreen or feel guilty about not taking my dog. Afterwards I can do strength training, sit in the jacuzzi or steam room (or was it a sauna?) or just head home. I'm working a lot harder on the treadmill than I normally do on a walk outside and I don't have to worry about picking a route that will end me back home before I collapse.

And at the end of the session, I feel *good*. That's the part that I always manage to forget about when I'm not exercising regularly. That all those things about feeling better physically, having a better mood, more energy, etc., they really *do* exist. *For me*. Not just for some person in a magazine, or some stick figure on the stairmaster. Hopefully, I can continue remembering this at least 3 times a week. :)

Now that I've seen the bohemoth that is the Kennedy Multiplex in SLO, I'll probably try to keep my gym bag packed and in the car when I go to work. It is probably less than a mile from my office and has nicer and more plentiful gear than the AG facility.

Tomorrow's big exercise of the day will likely be "chakra restorative yoga" at Sycamore Springs. I've got another 6-8 classes on the card I bought, so I need to work on using them up. I've missed the intro class for the past 2 weeks and will be missing it again this Saturday in order to hang out with my mom and likely next Saturday if we do make the trip to IKEA to buy a new guest bed. 11:00am-12:30pm on Saturday is a really horrible time for me. It means that I pretty much miss the farmer's market and I feel like I have to put my day on hold. I liked 9:00am-10:30am *much* better. If I'm lucky, they'll put it back when they redraw the schedule in June.

Luna got in a fight today. This post is mostly so I can remember the facts clearly if necessary.

We went to the nearby park with some friends and their dog so the dogs could collectively burn some energy. When we approached the park, we saw that there was a woman with her kids and her black lab off leash outside the fenced area on the playground. Mark inquired as to whether the dog was friendly with other dogs and the lady replied that she was when off leash. (At that point, I should have turned around and taken Luna home... hindsight 20/20 and all...) The dog met Kira and Rita with no real problem. I decided to take Luna through the path away from their dog since Luna can be testy with other females.

The other dog approached us as we were crossing the playground and they did the sniffing dance with little fanfare. I didn't want to let her linger so I hurried Luna into the park.

At some point the other dog ran up to the fence (on the outside -- we had latched the gate and all our dogs were inside) and Luna headed over to where she was. Next thing we know, they're fighting through the fence. We were able to keep Kira and Rita away by voice and Luna was pulled from the fence. I don't know if the other dog backed away at that point or not. Mark asked if the dog was ok and the lady said no and that her ear was bleeding. They left the park at that point.

Within a few minutes, a man came up with a pen and some paper asking who owned Luna ("the black dog") and wanting our name and phone number because his dog was "bleeding all over the kitchen". We should have asked him to reciprocate but didn't think of it until he'd already left. Both Mark and I apologized and then he launched into a tirade about being sick of his dog and family getting attacked by "mean dogs" in this neighborhood. Hold on just a minute, buddy...

Not only was this guy not there to witness the altercation between the dogs, his dog was no innocent victim. She was fully participating. Had Luna been "attacking" her, his dog would have easily been able to flee to safety merely by backing up about 12 inches because, as I mentioned before, our dogs were *inside a fenced area with the gate firmly latched*. The entire thing happened between the bars of the fence. It made me wonder whether or not his dog had initiated these prior "attacks". Well, I'm sorry that they've had bad experiences, but I'm unwilling to shoulder the blame for that being that I don't believe I had ever seen them before today. We made some of these points to him but he just remained irritated and then stormed back to his car and left.

The ramifications of this are that Luna will not be making any more trips to that park. I will continue to take Kira there but I'm unwilling to shoulder any more risk with Luna at this point. If I have to keep her away from the fence at all times while in the park, there is really no point to taking her there to play off leash.

*sigh*

I've finally gotten around to planting some edibles in the front yard.

Last week I planted Lumina white pumpkin seed and 3 of the 4 seeds have sprouted. The pic was taken 2 days ago and they're already well on their way to getting their first true leaves established as of today.

Today I planted August Beauty sunflower seed, 3 heirloom tomato plants that are well suited for cooler climates (Black Prince -- from Russia, with dark, smokey flavored fruits, Stupice -- small, red fruits (much like Early Girl), and Striped Roman -- Roma-style red fruits with yellow striping), and Better bell pepper.

I'm gonna try to find a source for a grape tomato plant to round out the selection. I read somewhere that Home Depot may sell a variety of grape tomato. I also want to get ahold of a zuchini seedling so I can grow my own this year to make copius quantities of zuchini bread. Mmmmm... zuchini bread. Ooooh... And Zuchini Lemon muffins. Those are soooo good.

I also have some nasturtium and basil seeds to plant. I think I'm gonna grow the basil in a container. Probably the nasturtiums too, so they don't take over the entire yard.

I'll keep y'all posted on the garden's progress in case I have more produce than we can use. I'd always rather give it away than see it rot.

Here are some pics of my recently completed and current knitting projects.

First we have the "Princess Snowball Cat Bed" from Stitch n' Bitch. Squeak approves. It is made from Red Heart acrylic yarn and Lion Brand Fun Fur.

Next, also from Stitch n' Bitch, is my take on "Under The Hoodie". Since I'm kinda sensitive to wool, I used Schachenmayr Nomotta Aurora (cotton/acrylic) for the main body and the accent stripes and Berroco Uxbridge Tweed for the wide stripe.

While I don't actually have any pics of them, I've also made 3 of the "Umbilical Cord Baby Hat".

As for current projects, I've started making the Lion Brand Microspun Ripple Shawl to go with my red & black Mandarin style dress, and well, any other dressy outfits that may need an extra layer.

I've also started working on my Gryffindor scarf. I'm roughly following the pattern at knit.atypically.net. I didn't really want the full width (9"), so I just cast on half as many stitches and went from there. I'll probably make it full length tho. I do really like working in the round, as my fingers work a lot harder making purl stitches than making knit stitches.

I'm also working on college sports throws for my sister-in-law and her new husband (Cal and Alabama, respectively) tho that is pretty slow going. I expect to start 2 more baby hats (for twins!) to have in time for a July baby shower as well. So many projects!!!!

Bleah.

Woke up in the middle of the night due to pesty dog again. Mark must have opened the door earlier because at 1:30am, Kira ran out to the backyard woofing (it was decidedly not a full on bark). When I heard her come back in, I got up and shut the screen. Then I had to find Luna and get her back to bed.

Around this time, my old cell phone started crying about low battery even tho I'd put it on the charger* (so I could pull any remaining numbers out of it today). Luna paced back and forth around the bed until I actually got up and went out to the living room to turn it off. As soon as we got back to the bedroom she went back to bed and didn't get up until the alarm went off at 6am.

Of course, by now I was very awake and laid in bed for an hour, got hungry and went out to the kitchen to eat the last 2 spoonfuls of B&J's and a glass of milk. Socrates, sensing that someone in the house had dairy products, came to the kitchen to beg. Then I kicked him on my way back to the bedroom because he was right under my feet and all the lights were off. At least I didn't fall over.

When I got back to bed, Mark was snoring like a buzzsaw and I was becoming increasingly agitated. I search fruitlessly for earplugs in my nightstand by touch and finally remembered that there should be some in my suitcase under the bed. I crawled down to the foot of the bed, pulled out the suitcase and felt around the pocket until I found the earplugs. Sweet Relief! I finally fell back asleep sometime after 3am and slept solidly until the alarm went off at 6:00.

There are some things that will not be new when/if we ever have a baby. 1) I already wake up when the dogs make noises in their crates or get up in the night (even though I try to ignore them and go back to sleep most of the time). 2) I rarely get to go to the bathroom alone. I've ususally got an entourage of 2 dogs and 1-2 cats. (I realize this could be prevented by closing the door, but Kira will actually scratch at the door or push it open if it isn't latched completely.)

* - It turns out that I put the darn phone on the charger but didn't actually check to see that the charger was plugged into the extension cord. Oy.

About a week ago, a 15" G4 PowerBook fell into my lap, like manna from heaven. This may be a death knell to me using an actual linux distro.

The PowerBook (G4 1.25 Ghz) is faster than my desktop (P3-800) and Mark's VAIO (P3-430). It also has lots of nifty built-ins like a dvd/cd burner, 802.11, bluetooth. Oh, and it has 1GB of RAM! My desktop can only hold 512MB! And the hard drive is 80GB (I thought the VAIO was nice because it had 30GB!). As you can probably tell, I'm not a bleeding edge hardware kind of gal...

Because I did get news of a manna storm approaching, I asked that if possible the hard drive be split in half with one partition for macOS 10.4 and the other unformatted so I could install gentoo linux. After using this puppy for a week, I'm leaning toward skipping the linux install and just formatting the rest of the drive to use for OS X. He who sent this mac to me will do a Joyous Dance of Triumph when he learns that I'll be using OS X rather than linux. :)

Other than the fumbling around learning a new OS, the only real problem I have is the ergonomics of using a 15" laptop. I'm pretty sure this would be the case with most machines of this form factor. The edge of the case hits my wrists in an uncomfy place for someone with RSI issues. Other than that, I really dig this mac. The backlit keyboard is spiffariffic. And I *love* the smallness of the battery charger (not to mention a laptop with a working battery! The VAIO was pretty much tethered to its clunky charger all the time).

I have to admit that I'm officially swept up in Apple infatuation at this point. The evil plan appears to have worked. :)

UPDATE: OS X and I have now made it through our first quarrel (mounting SMB shares is somewhat broken in 10.4), it turns out we were both at fault (I had configured WINS but was still trying to use the IP of the server) so we're gonna give it another go now. And I've found many support websites that will definitely help in the future. For now, the install of gentoo has been pushed off again (there are some nasty problem bits with it, most notably lack of airport extreme support).

Oy. After finally finishing off those other projects, my knitting queue has actually increased noticiably.

I'm about half finished with the HP Gryffindor scarf and probably about 20% of the way through my Ripple Shawl. I did finally get some of the yarn for the bro-in-law's Alabama throw.

New projects I've started include: infant pixie hats for a friend's baby shower (and she's having twins!!), a recycled silk shawl, and fuzzy headphone covers (with some leftover fun fur from the cat bed). I also was thinking about making something in purple Patons Allure for my mother-in-law (whose birthday is near the end of June).

Unfortunately, my wrists have been grumpy due to my new laptop so I haven't really been knitting quite as much.