Morning coffee

For the last 15 years of my working life, I've had a coffee when I get to the office. I like this routine. Having that coffee on my desk is just a nice little treat during my first couple of hours of working. But I've also always had such a hard time waking up. (I might have posted about this a few years ago, but I even did a sleep study which supposedly found that I have idipathic hypersomia which from what I can tell just means sleep disorder of unknown causes...and unknown cures.) So I recently decided to start setting my coffee timer to make coffee to help me get up. But I don't want to give up my desk coffee...so now I have two coffees every morning. I'm sure this will be totally fine, right??

Also, I now watch the previous night's Daily Show (or Last Week with John Oliver on Mondays) with my home coffee. I really do like this new routine. It's nice to relax in the mornings before having to run off to work. 

What I really need to do is start exercising. But that's much harder than drinking coffee and watching TV...

Sometimes I use my milk frother and make a faux latte!

Long time, no see!

As is common, I've dropped off posting and I have every intention of getting back into it. I might possibly use this therapeutically as I've been having bouts of... I don't want to say depression because I know that's a more clinical thing... lets just say stress and sadness. We'll see how in depth I get on here. In the meantime, here's some more crochet pics! I've been making a lot of stuff. And I recently started knitting too! I'm a 36-year-old old lady. :)

Super cool bookmark that is too big to use so it's now just decoration.

I made a chair cushion!!!

The under carraige

For this chair I got at an antique shop that was closing! (The location is still empty a couple years later and I'm pissed about that.)

Made this bag for my mom for Mother's Day last year. 

Totoro for my BFF!

Made this little Baymax for my buddy Scott Adsit who actually voices him in Big Hero 6!! (Which is an awesome movie. See it if you haven't.)

I had a little bird cage from Michael's so I made this guy to go inside!

The pattern called for pipe cleaners that I didn't have so I made these feet on my own!

Here he is in his little cage! 

That's all for now, folks! I should have been in bed an hour ago. Night!

My last post so long ago talked about my crochet classes. Well, nearly a year later and I'm happy to report I did not give up! I'm much better at crochet than keeping up with this blog! :P

Here are the first two things I made! A simple hat and this awesome ripple scarf! The weird thing about crocheting this scarf was that it is done lengthwise, so I had to start with a chain of like 250 or something. There are ways to do a scarf the other way, but not to get the ripples, I don't think. Anyway, that was a big change from when I knitted scarves years ago. (My knitting never got that great, I might take some knitting classes soon too. I think I like crocheting better but it doesn't hurt to have multiple skills!)

I was particularly proud of this hat. It looks so professional! It was a lot easier than I thought! The yarn I used was super soft, but it fuzzes up pretty easy. I eventually want to make another one with a better yarn. (I think this was Red Heart Soft or whatever.)

 

Here are a couple ear warmers I made for when I've got my hair up in a ponytail. The pink one I made from a tutorial on youtube and the other one I think from a pattern on line. The flower I added was from a different pattern. I made it before I knew what I was going to do with it. It's a little big for the headband, but I like it anyway.

 

I have quite a few friends with children so I have a lot of kids I can make stuff for. This is a hat/leg warmer set I made for my friends' daughter's first birthday. The leg warmers were a request because apparently the carrier thing you have on your body makes their pants ride up so there's always a little bit of leg that's exposed. Or something. I added the snowflakes so they'd look like they actually went together. 

All babies look adorable with little ears on their hats!

This one I'm super proud of. My friends' 4-year-old daughter is a huge frozen fan (aren't they all?) so I made this super cute Elsa-inspired hat I saw in another friend's Instagram post. Wasn't hard to track down the pattern online but I did have to adjust it. I had my friend measure her daughter's head so I could make sure it fit. (PS She absolutely loved it and I couldn't have been happier.)

I wish I had hair as awesome as Elsa!

And lastly (for this post), here's my first foray into amigurumi! I initially started these classes because I wanted to learn how to crochet dolls so I could make a Doctor doll. I have now made around 5 or 6 amigurumi but I have yet to start on the Doctor. I keep making things for other people, or just smaller things that are quick. Amigurumi are super cute but not super fun to make. The tiny stitches make my hands hurt. But the results are pretty great. Here's my first:

 

 

 

I bought a Sanrio pattern book. Duh.

How cute is he?! The hat didn't come out as great as I'd like but overall, he's awesome. The very next thing I made was at least Doctor-related. Here's my Adipose! (He's in front of a giant Adipose doll I got for Christmas.)

"The fat just walks away!"

So those are the beginnings of my crochet "career"! I will post more. Hopefully soon. I don't know why it's so hard to keep up with this. I think it's because of all the tweets/tumbles/facebooks/Instagrams, etc. Anyway, if you have any interest in crochet, you can check out Craftsy.com. They have a bunch of lessons at a reasonable price. (If you're in NYC though, I highly recommend Lion Brand Yarn Studio for live classes.) There's also free lessons on youtube all over the place. Later!

Talking About Stuff and Things

So I finally, FINALLY, decided to take a crochet class. I am very happy I did. I found the class on Course Horse (pretty cool place to find classes, check it out!) and the class is through Lion Brand Studio. Conveniently located near Union Square! They also sell yarn there, it's a super cute store. I signed up for Crochet 1, it's a two-day class, two hours each. I still have one class left and I already signed up for Crochet 2. The instructor was super friendly and there were only five people in the class so you get plenty of one-on-one if you need it. I'm pretty psyched to keep learning, probably evidenced by the fact that all I've done this weekend besides watch The West Wing, is practice crocheting while watching. :P

My first ever bit of crochet!

 I'm looking forward to working my way up to crocheting dolls, because surprisingly there are no Doctor dolls available for purchase and I need a little Doctor doll to squeeze while I'm crying as the Doctor says "I don't wanna go." (Because y'all KNOW I'm going to watch that again and again.)

Speaking of TV, after I plowed through all of the modern Doctor Who episodes for the second time in less than a year, I am finally finishing up The West Wing. I blazed through the first four seasons, but due to current TV, Doctor Who and people telling me seasons 5-7 just aren't as good, I had put the brakes on watching it. I finally started watching the rest last week. I spent the entirety of the day yesterday watching season six and I have to say, I still love the show. I honestly don't think I would've noticed that Sorkin left if I wasn't told. Maybe I'm just not a discerning enough viewer, but I still thoroughly enjoy the show. Not the least of which is CJ Cregg.

CJ Cregg is my hero.

Holy crap, is that woman amazing. I've been a huge fan of hers since day one, but she actually kicks even more ass in the later seasons. This woman is like the number one female role model I've come across on TV. haha I mean I haven't really studied it, so maybe I'm wrong but man I love her. She's funny, she's smart and she's so damn powerful. Gah. I can't get enough. I'm going to be sad when I'm done. Though I think Newsroom will be starting soon, so at least I'll have that. And I still have yet to watch Sports Night. Oh yeah, I'm one of those people that LOVES Sorkin. :) After I watched the first season of Newsroom, I realized I was one of those people and so I needed to watch The West Wing. [I'm one of the few that loved Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (I even own the DVDs).]

Ned and Jory. They lead a simple life.

I also started playing with this gif app I found called Camoji, so you might be seeing some more gifs on here... (I still really need to learn how to make them out of pre-existing images or videos.)

So I think I have some West Wing to watch... although... I DO need to go for a run... but like, it's so HOT out this weekend... Dammit. I'm already making excuses. At least I haven't been eating a lot this weekend... although I did drink almost a whole bottle of wine... Sigh.

Never Mind the Buzzcocks

I'm lazing about my apartment this afternoon just watching Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I SHOULD go out for a run...and I might still do, but I've got a birthday party in a couple hours so I need to do it soon...

I bought this back in 2001, I've still never read/listened to it...

Over the winter I got into watching NMtB on YouTube (oh thank you, people that find happiness from uploading old episodes of a show I have no other way of seeing). NMtB is a bit special to me because way back in 2001 I lived in London for about three months for a study abroad program, and it remains one of the best times of my life. I often wish I'd stayed on longer, but who knows how that would've affected the rest of my life... Anyway, in that time there were two shows that I found and loved to watched. One was The Dave Gorman Collection (which maybe I'll post about another time) and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Looking at the series dates, I believe I watched season 8. I totally developed a crush on Sean Hughes and ended up buying a couple of his novels. Once I found it, I didn't miss one for the rest of my time there, but of course I couldn't watch it anymore once I'd gotten home (I don't think torrenting TV shows was that big a thing yet...if even a thing at all...so that wasn't an option).

This is where I lived!! I take a walk by it whenever I visit London.

[Sort of related, I actually ended up getting to see We Know Where You Live, Live! hosted by Eddie Izzard on the last day of my time in London (I'd accidentally booked my flight home a day too late but being a HUGE Eddie Izzard fan, I was very happy once I'd see an ad for this show). Phil Jupitus, who is a team captain on NMtB performed that night and did the most hilarious impression of Eddie Izzard.]

Anyway, I'd mostly forgotten about this show until a few months back when I had some friends over to watch Doctor Who (yes, it's taken over my life), I wanted to show them some Who-related videos on YouTube and one of my friends saw a video in the "related" section that had Richard Ayode on it that he wanted to put on. It was an episode of NMtB that he was guest-hosting. And it was bloody hilarious. (Another side note, it's what got me to finally watch The IT Crowd which I ended up loving.) After they left, I decided to watch some more NMtB as I saw there were tons of episodes up on YouTube. Being me, I needed to start from the beginning. I blew through the first 5 seasons in the following week or so, but then fell off. I think because I'd started during rerun season and new TV had come back on.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

So this afternoon, my Netflix was not connecting for some reason so I just put on YouTube on my TV and decided to watch some more. I think I'll finish season 6 today.

After all of that, maybe I should explain the show! It's basically a music quiz show, but points aren't always awarded fairly and no one actually wins anything. The first 17 seasons are hosted by this guy Mark Lamarr, who I think is a comedian but I don't know anything of him outside of this. There are two team captains, Phil Jupitus and Sean Hughes, also comedians. These three also have an amazing amount of music knowledge. Each episode has four guests, two for each team, sometimes comedians but mostly musical performers. Some guests include Suggs, Boy George, Billie Piper (omg she was around 17 at the time and ADORABLE and long before her stint on Doctor Who), Lemmy, Billy Bragg, Adam Ant and a ton of other mostly-British people I've never heard of, but many of whom are quite funny. (Eventually, Simon Amstell becomes the host followed by a bunch of guest hosts, also Sean Hughes leaves around season 10, replaced by Bill Bailey, who've eventually replaced by Noel Fielding, also from The IT Crowd.)

There are a bunch of different categories, like the one where they have to perform (without lyrics) the intros to famous songs or the one where the host says a lyric and the team needs to say the next line. There's another round where they show an old video focusing on a particular performer, then they bring out five people and you have to guess which one is the one from the video. (Ugh that description is so poorly written, I hope that makes sense.) Oh and the one where you have to figure out the lyrics to a particularly hard-to-understand song. That one is great and always makes me think of my mom who always talked about how she had no idea what the lyrics were to some of her favorite songs, particularly with The Rolling Stones.

The show is apparently incredibly popular over there and has made it to 27 seasons! So far there hasn't been any new episodes in 2014, but supposedly there's a new regular host in line for the next series. I would really like it if this show lasted forever. I've got quite a way to go to catch up though, so I'm not worried of running out just yet...

So that was all a long way to tell you, hey, I like this show called Never Mind the Buzzcocks. If you're a big music buff, or just an anglophile, you might like it. Check it out. :P

Weddings and Pull-ups!

So last post I mentioned that I got depressed trying on dresses for a wedding. BUT I didn't mention that I'd found an AWESOME dress for that wedding that fit pretty nicely! Thanks H&M! Granted I had to get a fairly large size...largest I've ever had to get...BUT I will comfort myself in the knowledge that sizes are weird there and I even had to go smaller on a different dress I tried on.

Anyway, I ended up buying a couple dresses in a similar style because they fit me well. Though I do hope to be losing a bit of weight eventually. Guess I'll just have to wear these dresses soon. :)

So here's the dress!

Totally sucking it in.

 Twas a very comfortable dress as well. This was the last wedding of the year for me (phew). I have seriously been to a minimum of one wedding a year for the last 10 years, with many years have 2-3 (I had three this year). Insane. But I do LOVE weddings (for the most part), so I don't mind. I mostly just mind how much money I have to spend, since as a woman, I have to double-dip with the bridal showers too. Being single, this shit adds up.

Standard wedding selfie. But with beer.

So today I did another 2 miles run/walk this morning. Yay! I did have Chinese food for dinner last night, which isn't the healthiest, but I didn't follow up with cookies or some other snack. Just another couple glasses of water. I've been doing really well drinking a lot of water the last couple weeks. Pretty much like two liters a day. Which makes me get up more often to pee, so more walking! haha

More like the alcohol.

I also am trying to do this pull-up thing program thing which started with 5 sets (though I could only do 4) of negative chin-ups (cuz I can't even do ONE real one yet). After the first time I did it, my arms were INSANELY sore for days! It hurt just to get dressed! So I waited like five days (instead of two like the guy on YouTube said), but then when I tried to do my second day, I felt a pain in my shoulder that hurt like a real pain, not like an exercise soreness, so I'm waiting a couple more days. But I've always wanted to be able to do a pull-up (or even a chin-up) so I really want to try to stick to this.

Trying

So recently I had to try on some dresses for a wedding and in the process became incredibly depressed about it. I swear dressing room lighting is the absolute worst in the world for feeling good about yourself.

I'm definitely the heaviest I've ever been in my life. (And to think, I thought I was fat back in college when I was 30 lbs. lighter. So dumb.) I know it's partially age, the older you get, the harder it is to lose weight. Plus you (or at least I) get tired more easily. But it's mostly the fact that I'm so god damned lazy! Too lazy to cook healthy meals, too lazy to burn off calories. Oh and I LOVE TV. I know everyone does but man, do I. One of my BFFs always jokes that I watch EVERYTHING (this is untrue of course but an indication of how much TV I watch). Even I don't understand where I find the time.

But anyway, that was a depressing week in dressing rooms but it's motivated me more than I've been in ages. A year or so ago I ran three days a week for at least five months, but I think more. Once that winter hit, though, I basically stopped. Now I run like once every few months. But no more!! (I hope.) Today I ran/walked for the third time since last Monday.

One reason to run. This view!

And I'm trying hard to cut back on the food intake. It's hard to say "no" to yourself. And when you're in a city full of delicious food all around... And when the main form of socialization consists of dinners and boozing... And when you've got one hell of a sweet tooth... More excuses. But I'm trying.

So I heard blogging helps. You tell people what you're up to and don't want to be embarrassed when you don't do what you say. So we'll see. But considering I'm too lazy to blog about FUN stuff, I don't know. But I'll try.


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Location:21st Ave,New York,United States