Let Me Tell You The Kind Of Day I Had

I got to work and was in the breakroom getting my diet Dr Pepper out of the machine. One of my coworkers walked in. She was wearing scrubs. A lot of people wear scrubs to work, claiming that they are cooler. Anyway, this co-worker's scrubs had a bright cartoon character on them and I was trying to figure out who this cartoon character was. About the time she got close enough for me to see who the cartoon character was, my coworker greeted me.

"Good morning, Elmo," I replied.

It was all downhill from there.

Superbowl Sunday

First, the bad news. The rhino-thing I thought I had turned out not to be a rhino-thing after all, but a full fledged case of bronchitis, complete with fever. Fortunately, the fever never broke 100, and it seems to be clearing on its own. I spent most of Sunday parked in front of the TV, watching the 5 hours worth of pre-game show, followed by 4 hours worth of game. Nine hours of football, and I'm still bummed that the season is over.

The Superbowl is always a bit of a let down for me. Not because of the game itself, but because once it's over, it's all over until next season. Superbowl Sunday ranks second only to Christmas in our household.

Rylea is giving Cody puppy dog eyes--literally.

"Please, Uncle Cody, can I have a piece of steak? Pleeeeeze?"

Here are our Superbowl Sundaes. Cody got a little football on his.

But because the little footballs are made with eggs, I only got rainbow sprinkles on mine:

I finished the first roundabout sock,

and worked quite a bit on my clapotis. I don't have pictures of that, though. It looks pretty much the same as last time I posted a picture, just a little longer.

Only 180 days, more or less, until pre-season starts.

The 1972 Dolphins

Can pop the cork on their champagne now. The Giants pulled off the upset of the century by defeating the New England Patriots in Superbowl XLII.



It was an exciting game, going right down to the wire, with the Giants pulling off a last minute miracle touchdown.



The brightest spot of the day for this Cowboys fan was that Howie Long's Ultimate Tough Guy Award for 2007 went to Jason Witten.

Coolest Thing EVER!!!!

Just watch, and pay attention toward the end. It blew my mind.



P.S. I was going to save this one for one of those days when I had blogger's block, but it was way too cool not to share.

h/t: Theresa

SuperBowl

Stashalong Update

First off, here are the projects I finished in January:

One Row Scarf. This one used 300 yards of worsted weight yarn. The yarn is Trendsetter Tonalita. I really liked this yarn, though the end product is a bit scratchy. I'm going to soak it in some conditioner to see if that helps.

Branching Out Lace Scarf Approximately 200 yards of fingering weight. I actually used a ball of sock yarn for this. The ball was 400 yards, and I used about half of it.

Tidal Wave Socks. One ball of Tofutsies sock yarn. I love this yarn. It feels so silky and smooth. It must be the soy silk in it.


Cody's hat. A basic hat pattern that used about 100 yards of worsted weight yarn--or just under half a skein of Red Heart Super Saver. There is enough to maybe make a really narrow or a really short scarf to go with it. This was actually made from my free day purchase for these two months. I bought it and knit it before the month was up. Pretty cool, huh?

Total usage for January: 400 yards of worsted weight yarn, and two balls of sock yarn.

For the purposes of Stashalong, I'm going to count the yardage/skeins used toward the two month period in the month that I finished that particular project in. For example, if I start a blanket in February and finish it in March, and it takes 1000 yards of yarn, the total yardage will count toward the March/April time period. I'm not going to try to think, "Let's see, I did approximately 1/3 of the blanket in February, so that'll be about 300 yards in February and 700 in March..." No. That is too complicated.

Some people are setting their goals to knit up specific amounts of yarn or numbers of projects per month. Like, "I'm going to knit up 15 skeins of yarn in February." Or, "I'm going to complete these 7 projects in February." That is fine if that's what works for them, but it isn't for me. I knit for relaxation and enjoyment. Putting a deadline or a quota on my knitting would make it too stressful. I just knit what is there. My stipulation is that I must buy less yarn than I've used up during those two months.

It seems to be working so far. Now if only my mother doesn't clean out her closet again!

Groundhog Day

Judging from the sky today, it seems we will have 6 more weeks of winter.



I am at that worst point in my rhino-thing. I don't feel quite bad enough to justify staying in bed all day, but I don't feel quite good enough to get about and do much of anything. So I just keep reminding myself that in our ancestors' day, knitting wasn't a hobby, it was a job. If those women didn't knit, their families wouldn't have socks, or scarves, or sweaters. Cody wants some socks. I'd better get back to work.

Congratulations To Me

I am the proud owner of my very own rhino-thing.

If you don't watch the show, that means I have a cold. I went to bed at 8:15 last night, and Cody said, "Boy, you really don't feel good!" Since I was in bed at 8:15, that also means I wasn't at karate. I wasn't, however, too sick to knit. I got one more pattern repeat done on the Clapotis yesterday, and today have worked on the socks. I've gotten past the heel turn and am ready to pick up the gusset stitches. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

Which Military Aircraft Are You?

What military aircraft are you? F/A-22 Raptor You are an F/A-22. You are technologically inclined, and though you've never been tested in combat, your very name is feared. You like noise, but prefer not to pollute any more than you have to. And you can move with the best.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

h/t: Buck

Textless Thursday

I was going to make this a Wordless Wednesday post, but then I realized that it was Thursday. Thus Textless Thursday was born.

Wednesday

Amazingly enough, I still only have two projects on the needles. Clapotis is coming along nicely, and the yarn is starting to pool a bit.

Some people don't like it when variegated yarn pools, but I do, especially this color. The pooling reminds me of a forest floor in Autumn. For a while, I wasn't feeling the love with this project. I didn't dislike it enough to frog it, but it just wasn't moving me. Then a wondrous thing happened. I switched it from straight needles to a long circular. It was a miracle! It suddenly became fun to knit! Now I'm cruising away at it. Normally, I do prefer straight needles, but for large, heavy projects like this, circulars are definitely better.

Not a lot of progress has been made on the socks because I've spent most of my time working on Clapotis. Still I did get a few rounds done on it.


Bits of miscellany:

I got a call from Cody's English teacher this afternoon. She gave her students a prep test for the standardized test they will have to take in May. Out of all her students, Cody is the only one who made a 100. She told me that she was so proud of him that she just had to call me and let me know.

The Dallas Cowboys now have an all time NFL record of 13 players going to the Pro Bowl. Greg Ellis was named as a Pro Bowl player, replacing Chicago's Lance Briggs.

I dreamed I was in Basic Training, and this lady was my company commander.

And lastly, like I needed another way to waste time on the computer!

Holing Up

We are under a strong wind advisory. Gusts are up to 50 MPH. I don't feel confident driving in such strong winds, so we area skipping karate tonight. Safety comes first, always.

Black Belt Class

I finally made it back to Black Belt class. Cody and I took turns being sick last week, and thus missed the whole week of karate. It was good to be back in class. I am so out of shape that even going through half of the kata at half speed was a good workout for me. We did seisan, wansu, chinto, kusanku, and sunsu which worked out really well because I'd done all the others at home this morning. Even sanchin, which I hate. Hate that kata. With a passion. A pink and purple passion. Hate it.

Did I mention that I hate sanchin kata?

Well I'd done seisan and sunsu at home as well, but it never hurts to do them more than once. After class, I stayed and did all of my weapons kata. Those would be tokumine no kun, and urashi bo, and agena no sai, and kusanku sai. I thought I would go in early and get some extra work in, but there are so many kids running around at that time, that there is no place to work.

After going through kata, we worked with the little brown belt boy on his kata, then did a sparring type drill. I had a really hard time with this drill. It is a way of gaining distance without moving our upper bodies. I'll really have to work on that one. I just can't seem to keep my upper body still.

I also found out that sensei will not be recommending me for promotion at the shiai in March. That means I will have to wait a whole nother year to be considered for my ni-dan. I think I could have been ready. Well, if sensei spent as much time working with me as he does with other students, I definitely would have been ready. But even working on my own, I think I could have been ready.

He wants me and the other female shodan to work together and inspire each other. That is really hard for me because I don't even like her. I don't know. She moved here last summer and started attending our dojo, and the first thing she does is walk in and try to change everything. For example, we sometimes do what we call "no-focus kata." We have called it that for at least 5 years, but she comes in and insists that it should be called "free flowing kata." Then a couple of weeks ago, she was telling sensei how he needed to be teaching kata to new students. Now, that is just downright disrespectful. And of course, everything was better in her old dojo. It's always "we did it this way," or "we did it that way," or "master so-and-so this," and "Master so-and-so that."

She is so loud, and so domineering, and so overbearing, and such a know it all that I just can't make myself like her no matter how hard I try.

To find out that I've got to wait another year for my ni-dan for her to be ready sure doesn't help any.

Football Wrapups

With football season winding down, I'm posting some of my final thoughts of the season. Skip these posts if you aren't interested in football. That's all they are about.

Regular blog content will resume tomorrow.

A New BCS

The slobber from Matt Flynn's kiss wasn't even dry on the crystal trophy when the president of the University of Georgia began hollering for a revamping of the BCS championship system. He felt that the Georgia, not LSU, had deserved to be playing in the National Championship game. He proposed that the championship should be determined by having a mini playoff season in college football, much like the final four that they do in basketball. Now, I'm not going to get into whether this is a good idea or a bad idea, but the timing of the president's complaint makes him sound less like a man wanting to improve the way of doing things, and more like a child whining "No fair!"

Would the University of Georgia have benefited from a playoff scenario? Let's think about it for a moment.

The first question is, how would they decide who made the playoffs? They could choose strictly by won/loss records. But would this be any more fair than what they have now? The key here is that all conferences are not created equal. Let's take the University of Hawaii for example. Now, going 12-0 is no small feat, and I don't want to diminish that in any way. It is an accomplishment to be proud of. But Hawaii plays in what is considered to be a relatively weak conference. They did well, but in the Sugar Bowl were completely dominated by a team from the powerhouse SEC--a team that, mind you, didn't even qualify to play for their conference championship. Georgia didn't play and lose the conference championship. They didn't even qualify for the game.

Now we must look at whether this method would have benefited Georgia. The answer is no. There were enough teams that finished as good or better than Georgia in the won/loss column that to choose the 8 teams for the playoffs, they would have had to look at conference records. Georgia finished third in conference play behind Tennessee and LSU.

OK, another way they could choose is to simply pick the all conference champions to play in these mini-playoffs. This still wouldn't have benefited Georgia, because they didn't win the conference championship. They didn't even qualify to play in the championship game.

The SEC is divided into two divisions--East and West. The winner of each division plays each other for the conference championship. So there is your mini-playoff right there. LSU won the SEC West outright, by having the best record. Georgia and Tennessee tied won/loss records in the Eastern Division, but the title went to Tennessee because they had beaten Georgia earlier in the year. LSU then beat Tennessee in the conference championship game. Not only did they win, but they won with their starting quarterback sitting on the bench. They won with their backup quarterback. Think Patriots winning the Superbowl with whoever Tom Brady's backup is.

So, by either of these scenarios, Georgia still wouldn't have played in the National Championship. So they put a thrashing on the University of Hawaii. Does that mean they are the best team in the country? Not necessarily.

After the loss, a tearful Colt Brennan said, "We've never played a team of this caliber before." So that game cannot be considered a test of Georgia's true ability. Just because the 1-15 Miami Dolphins could put the hurting on my local high school team, doesn't mean they deserve to play in the Superbowl.

Now, I'm not saying the current system is perfect. It isn't. And I don't want to get into whether a playoff system would be better. I'm just saying, it still wouldn't have benefited Georgia. At least, not this year.