Domestic Geek

I went to New Mexico early last month. I wanted to go to the Taos Wool Festival and figured I might as well swing over and see my old college pal while I was in the state, as well. Good thing I had Angie to visit because the wool festival and Taos kind of sucked. I'm glad I didn't waste the money to actually stay overnight in Taos.

I had originally intended to go down Saturday and get a room with friends, but an online friend of Marcus' and mine from Texas came to Colorado to visit, so I pushed it a day to drive down Sunday instead.

I actually managed to get on the road by 5:30 am. It was a beautiful drive down - the fall colors were spectacular. I was having a lovely day until I got to Taos. The part of town where the festival was held is kind of a dump. I wandered through the exhibitor booths for about an hour and didn't find a danged thing I wanted to buy. I found the couple of yarn shops that I had found online and didn't find anything cool, either. I figured certainly I'd find something at the quilt store, but struck out there as well. Discouraged, I tracked down a shot glass for my collection and got the hell out of town. I didn't even bother getting any lunch. I just relied on the snacks I had packed and got back on the road.

The roads between Taos and Farmington are a nice drive, though. The canyon was especially pretty. There were some gorgeous purple colored rocks in the canyon walls. I got into Farmington about 2 hours earlier than I expected, but I had an awesome visit with Angie, her husband Doug and their daughter Haley (and their two dogs, Shamus and Mac). I love visiting there. I feel so comfortable. Ang took me to see the Aztec ruins. I was going to go back the next day and sketch them, but it rained all day. I ended up going to a lovely quilt shop instead.

The only sucky thing is I picked up a bug down there. I started feeling sick the last night I was there and steadily deteriorated on the way home. The cough and crap in my chest has been lingering ever since. As I was reading though some posts from a year ago, I was sick this same exact time last year. This is becoming a tradition I hope to not repeat next year.

Man, I hope people can read this. I know the blog has been absent for a bit. The company that provided my free DNS services was bought up by another company and I neglected to figure out how to direct people here. Since I can see it at home (hosted on a server here), I totally forgot about the outside world. Of course, not having written a word in forever, I didn't feel motivated to do anything about it.

I realized it is now November 1st and I want to try to complete NaBloPoMo. I failed miserably last year. I Googled to find the home page and found it is now part of BlogHer:

So, here I go. Maybe if I can get back into the habit of writing here, I'll take the time to fix the template and learn the new things in this Expression Engine install. I am so out of practice with all things web and it makes me incredibly sad.

I've been having a hard time sleeping lately. I know a good portion of that is my mind swirling with everything that needs to get done if this move actually happens. The major reason is that I'm still hating my job and need to find something else to do with my life. I'm also thinking it may be due to my increased intake of sugar and caffeine (to stay awake) lately. Danged vicious cycle, I tell you, since the sugar and caffeine also keep me from sleeping.

I've been self-medicating the anger and irritation with chocolate, candy and sunflower seeds (cracking seeds is therapeutic when deep down you want to crack open stupid heads). I've been adding chocolate milk powder and sugar to my morning coffee. I've been drinking a cold Via (again with chocolate milk powder to make it drinkable) when I get home from mid-day shopping on the weekends. I've had way too many chai frappucinos to count in the last couple of months. The almost solid week of traveling last week with bottled, sweetened teas to drink was not good for my system, either.

I've decided I really should cut out caffeine completely, but I turn into a raging beyatch when I try to go cold turkey, so baby steps will have to do. This week I'm starting by cutting out the morning coffee and just sticking with cold, unsweetened iced tea. I'll gradually start drinking more plain water instead of the tea. I'm hoping to wean myself off my caffeine by the end of the month and see where I'm at then. I know I haven't been drinking enough fluids (especially plain water) lately. I've been getting headaches and retaining fluid like crazy.

Well, we'll see how it goes.

I hope that's what South Dakota residents call themselves. I searched online and didn't find anything similar to the disagreement as to what those in Colorado are called (I myself prefer Coloradoan, but I digress).

The week prior to Memorial Day, Marcus and I made another quick trip up to Hill City, South Dakota. While the previous trips have all been about sight-seeing and biking, we had another agenda. Marcus wrote in great detail about it on his blog.

A quick summary: we may soon move our house to Hill City.

Why now? Well, the park owners are threatening to raise lot rent again (under the guise of high water usage). If such an increase goes into effect, the lot rent will be more than the house payment. Also, with the construction going on around here with the Fitzsimons complex, traffic is going to increase substantially. Access to our street was cut off by something they're doing over there, so the park owners converted the empty lot next to us into a street. Also, Aurora has made it no secret that they want to do away with mobile home parks. It's probably only a matter of time before we'd be forced out anyway. Finally, it's even getting harder to put an older manufactured home anywhere, even Hill City. If we don't do this now, we may never get it onto a permanent foundation.

Anyway, we'll know by the end of the month if we can do this. Sadly, we'll have to treat it as a vacation home at first. While I can probably find something up there to replace my pitiful salary, it won't be so easy for Marcus. First things first, though.

So, here's a little sneak peek of our (hopefully) new home:



Keeping fingers, eyes and toes crossed for the next three weeks...

As Marcus and I were heading to work yesterday morning, I exited I-25 at University and as we pulled up to the light, we heard something out of the ordinary. I rolled down to get a better listen I'll be darned if the driver of the Lexus in front of us wasn't listening to classical music at full volume. It was delightful and a welcome change to the rap/hip hop crap you usually hear from other vehicles these days. What sucks is, I am so out of the music loop that I knew I had played the piece on several occasions, but couldn't place it from the old memory files. I had planned to look it up at work, but by the time I got there, the usual stupid drama was in full effect and I never got to it. By the time I had time to look it up, the tune had escaped by head.

Later last night, as I was surfing Facebook, I found myself humming it and quickly started looking up pieces on iTunes and found it: Dvorák: Symphony No. 9 - "From the New World" - a piece I had definitely played many times over my earlier music days.

As I was taking that stroll down memory lane and finding other works I had performed, I got terribly sad. I wish I hadn't given up that part of my life so easily. I've really got to find a musical outlet. I miss it so much.

My whole life I've believed (brain-washed, more like it) that the products made by corporations had to be better (better than what, I didn't know). Ever since a friend of mine opened my eyes to the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and having read the corporate lies/justifications as to why they use them, the wool started coming off my eyes. With the relatively recent introduction of genetically modified foods into our systems via the lovely folks at Monsanto, I'm trying to give big corporations as few of my hard-earned dollars as possible.

A few years ago, I figured out that commercial cough syrups did nothing more than keep you sick longer. I found a home-made cough remedy that really works for me. More recently, I found that a simple mixture of apple cider vinegar, baking soda, water and sugar did wonders for heartburn (stuff that Tums or Rolaids couldn't quickly relieve). I quit buying commercial cleaners for the toilet and the shower. Turns out white vinegar & baking soda works wonders there, too. I've still been buying Formula 409, though, and realized I really believed it was the only thing that would cut through the grease on my stove. Well, guess what? I used the vinegar/baking soda solution on it today and it worked so well, my stove actually squeaked it was so clean.

A few weeks ago, I made the yummiest fajitas for dinner. Not only were the ingredients all-natural and organic where possible, I even made the seasoning from scratch. No more need to buy those super-expensive seasoning packets that have a lot of unnecessary crap/sodium in them.

So, do any of you reading this have any tips for commercial product replacements that work really well? I'd love to hear them!

I tend to have 50 bazillion open tabs in my browser (totally drives Marcus crazy). Since it's usually stuff I find interesting or important, I leave them open until my poor computer can't handle it anymore. It's time to dump some, so here's the list of open tabs I need to close and move on:

• Free "Learn to speak Pirate" course - in case you need to brush up for Talk Like a Pirate Day on Sept. 19th
• Top 10 Things to do in Colorado before you die
• Nourish - What's the Story of your Food
• Lewas Designs - Vinyl Wall art & stickers
• Holstee Manifesto
• DIY Stinky Feet Foot Soak
• StarTrek.com Store
• Free Vector Maps
• Link 1 & Link 2 Two sites listing Hallmark Star Trek Ornaments so I can figure out which ones I'm missing
• Worm Compost Bins

Craft-related:

• Sizeable list of tutorials: bags ?K pouches & purses
• what sellers should bring to a craft fair
• Cross-Stitch Finishing Techniques
• Crochet Higby Skeleton Doll
• Cross-Stitching an Apple Logo
• Knitting Bag Tutorial
• PictureCraftwork - Online Cross-stitch Charter
• Drawstring Bag Tutorial
• Tutorial : Creating a Basic Fabric Repeating Pattern for Spoonflower
• Silk Screening Supplies: RIP software
• Ackfeld Wire - sells really cool wire hangers for quilts, etc.
• Embroidered Clock
• MacStitch - Finally - a Mac Cross-stitching program (also does knitting charts)

Recipes/Cooking/Baking:

• Martha Stewart Meatballs
• Pioneer Woman Cheesy Beer Bread
• Chicken Fajitas - used homemade spice mix (no packets)
• Pi cookie cutter - need to get this to make cookies next March 14th
• Bake at 350 - Amazing Cookies!

Marcus bought me a Kindle for Christmas this year. I absolutely love it and it has brought back the passion for reading that I once had (when I was young, my nose was always in a book). I've read more books in the first part of this year than I have in the last 5 years combined. It's sad how I've let reading slip, but I totally see how it happened. Being laid off and relatively poor for a while meant cutting books out of the budget, then my recent desire to downsize my life and my clutter left me not wanting physical books around. My obsessive game-playing on Facebook squandered valuable reading time. Then there was my new obsession with knitting. I know that there is the public library, but I really have a moral opposition to them (except for reference material). Authors make their livelihood by selling books and I feel really guilty borrowing novels from living authors there.

Right now, I'm reading a book by Wendy McClure called The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. I'm not going to go into why, as those thoughts are better kept to myself. It has rekindled my desire to know more about Laura Ingalls Wilder, though. I've visited the Little House site in Independence, Kansas and the Wilder Home in Mansfield, Missouri. I've got plans to go to some of the other sites.

I think I've always been fascinated by Laura Ingalls because she represents a simpler way of life. I'm well aware that "the old days" was not an ideal existence, yet I yearn to get out of the big city. Marcus and I have dreams of one day living on land in South Dakota. I want to raise my own chickens and grow my own food. When I was younger, I loved sewing on my mother's antique Singer because that's how it used to be done (don't get me wrong - I love my computerized sewing and embroidery machines now), but I always felt connected to the past in some small way when I used it. Weird, I know. Sometimes I wish that old machine was close by so I could run it, but it resides with my sister out in California. If Marcus and I ever do get settled someplace permanent, I'd love to find one of those old machines.

*sigh* Well, I'd better wrap this up because it's almost time to head off to work.