Lots going on, but not much time to post.
1. Running again, or trying to. I ran twice last week. Once with Chris on Wednesday. We did just under a mile (as in .9 miles). I have to say, my first time out, I couldn't run 11:26 minutes all at once. He did a great job, even though he asked me if I was secretly laughing at him. No really, he did awesome on a first run in a long time! The next day, I got out and did my 2 miles, but I've definitely lost some speed. I was running with the stroller too, which does tend to slow me down. Then, I didn't run again until yesterday. Did my 2 miles again, but it was noticeably harder and after about a mile, my mantra became "you can slow down, but you can't stop". I got a really good cool down since Jonah decided to tell me .1 miles from the house that he lost a shoe at some point along the way. So, I turned around and walked our route in reverse until we found it about .5 miles back. Will try to finish out the rest of the week with 2 miles everyday (which will get me 4 days for the week), then evaluate if I can finally move on to week two of the 6 week 5k program I've been trying to start since late January. I'll try to put up my weekly update covering the past two weeks on Sunday.
2. Sick again. This time it was just a cold, a nasty but thankfully short one (48 hours short). I literally came down with it in my sleep. Woke up with it on Monday morning and Tuesday morning, I felt like it was already breaking up. By Wednesday morning I felt like I was pretty much over it and was feeling kind of triumphant (maybe all this sickness after sickness has helped strengthen my immune system). But, then late Wednesday came the inevitable sinus infection that tends to follow these things for me. I think this has been almost worst than the cold. I'm still trying to shake it, but I'm "playing through the pain" so to speak. I'm going to try a saline nasal wash in a little bit and hope that helps.
3. Gardening - I spent the morning placing orders at Jung, Park and Johnny seed companies this morning. I've got a couple of azaleas and some peach canna bulbs coming, but everything else is seed. Lots and lots of seeds! Oh and a couple of seed starting flats because I'm doing a lot more this year and won't have room in the flats I've already got for everything (plus, you can't pass up two 72 cell starters for under $8, that's at Jung until March 15th for anyone here that might be interested). I'm trying to do all my annuals, veggies, and a couple of perennials this year from seed. I've even harvested seeds from some grocery peppers in an attempt to be a cheapskate (that's $2-$3 per variety I saved there which overall is $8-$12 of savings, not counting shipping charges and I was going to buy the peppers for cooking anyway). If all is right in the world, I should be able to more than fill our four gardens, and then some, with plants for about $120. I've got more gardening news, including the addition of a new Dendrobium orchid to my collection (finally got a lime green one!), but it'll have to wait for another time. Oh, and I got a catalog full of tropical plants that's going to really get me in trouble. I mean, they have vanilla orchids (as in the ones you actually get vanilla pods from), coffee trees, tea plants, all sorts of neat succulents, orchids, banana trees (both ornamental and edible fruiting), and tons of dwarf citrus for indoor gardens, including Kaffir lime (which we use the leaves of in our Thai curries and coconut soup). If anyone is interested, it's Logee's.
4. Getting deeper into the crazy world of marketing for online artisan jewelry sales. I got three newsletters from three separate people/organizations in the same week about the benefits of twitter. So, I spent a couple of days working on it and grew my followers from about 22 to 98 in less than 24 hours, just by going and adding a lot of people in my industry. Not everyone who followed was one I followed first, so I'm starting to understand how this networking works. By the way, this is my gaiasjewel twitter. I like keeping my personal one small and manageable. I still haven't sold anything, but I'm ok with that since I still feel like I'm in the "setting up shop" stage. I've got more about my jewelry work and marketing research on my jewelry blog (which I'm trying to figure out how to feed my updates there to my jewelry LJ). It's pretty overwhelming at times to attempt to keep up with two separate online personas and I've been trying to gather anything I can to help automate some of it. For example, I've been using Twhirl to be able to keep both Twitter accounts open and accessible on my desktop so I can try to keep up with them simultaneously.
5. I'm really, really, REALLY excited to get to help Brandy plan her wedding! I know it's more than a year and a half away, but it's lots of fun to research places and vendors in a different area than we had our wedding and with a totally different style in mind, as well. As I planned our wedding and nearly got rid of all my planning books (but decided to keep them), I came to the conclusion that this might be something I want to do for a living at some point in my life. Not right now, obviously, and not for very long, just maybe 5 years or so as a change of pace. See, this is why I just want a general business degree. There are so many businesses I want to try out over the course of my life and I don't want to pigeonhole myself by getting a more specialized degree. But the degree is going to have to wait a couple of years as well. Maybe I'll try to do the GG next year in the meantime, though. I can always deal diamonds and appraise jewelry on the side no matter what I'm doing. ;)
6. We're in the process of replacing the next section of our fence. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before (I know I wrote it out, but I don't know if that entry got posted or not), but a big, maybe 15+ foot section of our fence fell down a few weeks ago. The people who put up this fence used cedar logs for the crossbeams and posts and they've since rotted. This particular post had completely rotted off at the ground and now would no longer support the fence. Unfortunately, it fell backward onto our neighbor's cute little picket fence. Luckily no damage was done. The more we started looking at the back section of the fence, the more of these posts we noticed looked like they could do the same thing at any time. So, we're doing a huge section. I think we counted 18 panels and something like 10 posts to replace (some of the posts had already been replaced with pressure treated lumber before we moved in). Chris and I got out last weekend and tore down this section and pulled up the old posts we intended to replace. Several of them broke off at the ground where they were quite rotted and he had to dig them out. Amazingly, this is the second time we've gotten someone to come pick up the old lumber without us having to haul it to the dump. Seriously, if you post it on Craigslist for free, they will come! We got like 10 calls in 15 minutes or so of the ad being put up. I feel good because it's getting reused and not going to the dump, plus we didn't have to haul it anywhere. Chris got out yesterday and dug all the holes out in preparation to set the new posts, which we'll do tomorrow. Then, we'll make several trips to Home Depot to get the rest of the lumber (saving the $60-$70 delivery fee) and get the rest of the fence up. It somehow seems easier this time, maybe because we've done it before, maybe because we don't have gates to mess with this time, maybe because this section was more decomposed and easier to tear down, maybe because it's not late July and 100+ degrees outside, I don't know. The nail gun we got for the last section should make quick work of the rest of the project. Now, the last little section is going to look like total crap for the rest of the summer. Maybe we can get it done in the fall. We're talking like 4-5 sections across the back (where we're thinking about putting a gate to the common area behind the house) and maybe 8-9 sections along the side where there are fewer posts to replace and the possibility of just taking it all the way over to our neighbor's fence (with their permission, of course) and just not doing that side at all.
7. I've got some food porn to post, but don't have time right now. Let me just say that this stuffing is going to be making it into our regular repertoire. I could eat it as a meal with a salad and it makes a ton! On our New Year's resolution to try at least one new ingredient per month, so far we've got radicchio (I've had it in salad mixes but never used it as an ingredient), beets (golden ones at that), chayote, butternut squash and yucca for the year. Granted we didn't technically get one in February, but I think we've done enough to count it as still being a success. I think I want to try spaghetti squash next.
There's probably more, but I've spent enough, or even too much time on this right now, so I'm going to cut it here. Hope everyone is well!
2. Sick again. This time it was just a cold, a nasty but thankfully short one (48 hours short). I literally came down with it in my sleep. Woke up with it on Monday morning and Tuesday morning, I felt like it was already breaking up. By Wednesday morning I felt like I was pretty much over it and was feeling kind of triumphant (maybe all this sickness after sickness has helped strengthen my immune system). But, then late Wednesday came the inevitable sinus infection that tends to follow these things for me. I think this has been almost worst than the cold. I'm still trying to shake it, but I'm "playing through the pain" so to speak. I'm going to try a saline nasal wash in a little bit and hope that helps.
3. Gardening - I spent the morning placing orders at Jung, Park and Johnny seed companies this morning. I've got a couple of azaleas and some peach canna bulbs coming, but everything else is seed. Lots and lots of seeds! Oh and a couple of seed starting flats because I'm doing a lot more this year and won't have room in the flats I've already got for everything (plus, you can't pass up two 72 cell starters for under $8, that's at Jung until March 15th for anyone here that might be interested). I'm trying to do all my annuals, veggies, and a couple of perennials this year from seed. I've even harvested seeds from some grocery peppers in an attempt to be a cheapskate (that's $2-$3 per variety I saved there which overall is $8-$12 of savings, not counting shipping charges and I was going to buy the peppers for cooking anyway). If all is right in the world, I should be able to more than fill our four gardens, and then some, with plants for about $120. I've got more gardening news, including the addition of a new Dendrobium orchid to my collection (finally got a lime green one!), but it'll have to wait for another time. Oh, and I got a catalog full of tropical plants that's going to really get me in trouble. I mean, they have vanilla orchids (as in the ones you actually get vanilla pods from), coffee trees, tea plants, all sorts of neat succulents, orchids, banana trees (both ornamental and edible fruiting), and tons of dwarf citrus for indoor gardens, including Kaffir lime (which we use the leaves of in our Thai curries and coconut soup). If anyone is interested, it's Logee's.
4. Getting deeper into the crazy world of marketing for online artisan jewelry sales. I got three newsletters from three separate people/organizations in the same week about the benefits of twitter. So, I spent a couple of days working on it and grew my followers from about 22 to 98 in less than 24 hours, just by going and adding a lot of people in my industry. Not everyone who followed was one I followed first, so I'm starting to understand how this networking works. By the way, this is my gaiasjewel twitter. I like keeping my personal one small and manageable. I still haven't sold anything, but I'm ok with that since I still feel like I'm in the "setting up shop" stage. I've got more about my jewelry work and marketing research on my jewelry blog (which I'm trying to figure out how to feed my updates there to my jewelry LJ). It's pretty overwhelming at times to attempt to keep up with two separate online personas and I've been trying to gather anything I can to help automate some of it. For example, I've been using Twhirl to be able to keep both Twitter accounts open and accessible on my desktop so I can try to keep up with them simultaneously.
5. I'm really, really, REALLY excited to get to help Brandy plan her wedding! I know it's more than a year and a half away, but it's lots of fun to research places and vendors in a different area than we had our wedding and with a totally different style in mind, as well. As I planned our wedding and nearly got rid of all my planning books (but decided to keep them), I came to the conclusion that this might be something I want to do for a living at some point in my life. Not right now, obviously, and not for very long, just maybe 5 years or so as a change of pace. See, this is why I just want a general business degree. There are so many businesses I want to try out over the course of my life and I don't want to pigeonhole myself by getting a more specialized degree. But the degree is going to have to wait a couple of years as well. Maybe I'll try to do the GG next year in the meantime, though. I can always deal diamonds and appraise jewelry on the side no matter what I'm doing. ;)
6. We're in the process of replacing the next section of our fence. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before (I know I wrote it out, but I don't know if that entry got posted or not), but a big, maybe 15+ foot section of our fence fell down a few weeks ago. The people who put up this fence used cedar logs for the crossbeams and posts and they've since rotted. This particular post had completely rotted off at the ground and now would no longer support the fence. Unfortunately, it fell backward onto our neighbor's cute little picket fence. Luckily no damage was done. The more we started looking at the back section of the fence, the more of these posts we noticed looked like they could do the same thing at any time. So, we're doing a huge section. I think we counted 18 panels and something like 10 posts to replace (some of the posts had already been replaced with pressure treated lumber before we moved in). Chris and I got out last weekend and tore down this section and pulled up the old posts we intended to replace. Several of them broke off at the ground where they were quite rotted and he had to dig them out. Amazingly, this is the second time we've gotten someone to come pick up the old lumber without us having to haul it to the dump. Seriously, if you post it on Craigslist for free, they will come! We got like 10 calls in 15 minutes or so of the ad being put up. I feel good because it's getting reused and not going to the dump, plus we didn't have to haul it anywhere. Chris got out yesterday and dug all the holes out in preparation to set the new posts, which we'll do tomorrow. Then, we'll make several trips to Home Depot to get the rest of the lumber (saving the $60-$70 delivery fee) and get the rest of the fence up. It somehow seems easier this time, maybe because we've done it before, maybe because we don't have gates to mess with this time, maybe because this section was more decomposed and easier to tear down, maybe because it's not late July and 100+ degrees outside, I don't know. The nail gun we got for the last section should make quick work of the rest of the project. Now, the last little section is going to look like total crap for the rest of the summer. Maybe we can get it done in the fall. We're talking like 4-5 sections across the back (where we're thinking about putting a gate to the common area behind the house) and maybe 8-9 sections along the side where there are fewer posts to replace and the possibility of just taking it all the way over to our neighbor's fence (with their permission, of course) and just not doing that side at all.
7. I've got some food porn to post, but don't have time right now. Let me just say that this stuffing is going to be making it into our regular repertoire. I could eat it as a meal with a salad and it makes a ton! On our New Year's resolution to try at least one new ingredient per month, so far we've got radicchio (I've had it in salad mixes but never used it as an ingredient), beets (golden ones at that), chayote, butternut squash and yucca for the year. Granted we didn't technically get one in February, but I think we've done enough to count it as still being a success. I think I want to try spaghetti squash next.
There's probably more, but I've spent enough, or even too much time on this right now, so I'm going to cut it here. Hope everyone is well!