I spent a most enjoyable week up in Bar Harbor, ME, with my family, and from the sound of things we had slightly better weather up there than was had at home (meaning we had two days where it was partially cloudy, rather than rainy). This was the first time I had been to Bar Harbor in seven years, so it was interesting to see how much I remembered and what things had changed.

We stayed at Blackwoods Campground, which is located within the boundaries of Acadia National Park (which is apparently the only national park in the Northeast United States). It took us at least seven hours to make the trip--a stop in Freeport, ME, to visit the L.L. Bean store probably didn't help our speed at all--so despite our best intentions we did end up setting up camp as it was getting dark. It also started drizzling somewhere along the line, but after we had the tents and tarps up.

Because Blackwoods is inside a national park you can't just pick up sticks and branches off the ground to use as firewood, and you definitely cannot chop anything off the surrounding trees. Instead you need to purchase, pack, or otherwise provide tinder, kindling, and fuel from a non-park source. There are many obliging sources of wood bundles all along the roads of Mount Desert Island, but with all the rain we've been having in the area for the past weeks finding dry fuel was a challenging task. The three bundles we purchased that Saturday evening were damp at best, and the combination of rain, general humidity, and lack of appropriate storage meant we were unsuccessful in our firemaking attempts until Monday evening (not even a scout’s "holy water" could convince a fire to start before then, and I felt the only reason the fire danger in the area was listed as Low was due to the lack of a "Good luck with that" category).

There was a break in the rain on Tuesday (30 June), so we took the opportunity that day to go biking on the carriage roads/trails all throughout the park. My dad and brothers went up Cadillac mountain (apparently the tallest Atlantic coastal mountain north of Brazil), but my mom, sister, and I are not in any shape to accomplish that. So while they were going up the mountain we did some driving around and sightseeing. We managed to do about fifteen miles as a family, which is pretty darn good in my book. On the wildlife front during the biking we saw (between all of us) red squirrels, snakes, a turtle, a loon, and a female wild turkey. Oh, and butterflies. I had one land on my back when I was stopped along the lakefront.

Wednesday was another nice weather day, and I went with my mom and sister to do some shopping (yarn shops, yay!) while my dad and brothers rented road bikes and biked the Park Loop, then attempted Cadillac again. It is apparently more difficult with road bikes than it is with mountain bikes due to gear ratios. We all had fun at our various activities, and we met up for dinner at a café that evening.

We had clouds but no rain on Thursday, which allowed us to eat on the tea lawn when we went to Jordan Pond. It was quite misty, however, and we couldn’t see the lake or the Bubbles (two domed mountains) at all. It was also rather chilly, and there was a roaring fire going on the gift shop hearth, with shoppers clustered around it to warm up. Sweaters, jackets, fleeces, and cardigans were the order of the day.

Prior to visiting Jordan Pond we went to Sand Beach (the only real sand beach on the whole of MDI) and Thunder Hole (a granite trough in the cliff face where the sea water rushes in, making a thundering noise). After our visit to Jordan Pond we drove up Cadillac and engaged in some “sightless” seeing, as the top of the mountain was completely wreathed in clouds and mist, so nothing was visible.

That evening we had foil dinners, for I insisted they be made. These were most excellent, since I know how to best prepare the various elements (potatos must be cut very small and/or very thinly in order to properly cook). Brad requested/suggested we include fresh garlic and kielbasa, and I was very glad he did. Both added excellent flavor to the dinners.

I quite like the climate of MDI as a whole. It is apparently quite similar to Scotland, and being up there left me wanting to curl up with either a Hamish McBeth novel or an episode (or two or three) of the television series. Unfortunately, neither thing has come to pass as yet; we are still working on unpacking and getting back into normal life patterns. Still, the apparent weather similarities between the two places has bumped a visit to Scotland quite a bit higher on my List of Places Anki Wants to Visit. Anywhere where I need to be sure to have at least one mid to heavy weight sweater handy during summer gets a pass in my book.

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Things I've done in which I am well pleased: Got all my laundry taken care of. Spent a wonderful week with my family in a relatively low-tech setting (no computer). Went grocery shopping and took care of my messes.

Things that make me happy: biking the carriage roads, reading good books, camping with my family, coming home from camping while still having fun, watching the fireworks, stuffed full omelettes, balsam pine sachets and pillows, my own bed

I have been in something of a holding pattern since my last post, meaning that not a whole lot has been done with regards to unpacking, organizing, and/or moving things from my parents' house to my apartment. I am more or less on top of both my laundry and my grocery shopping, but there are still some kinks I need to work out of the system. Schedule balance continues to be an issue for me, however it should even out somewhat once I get my computer at my apartment and an internet connection established there.

My Institute attendance for this month has been somewhat spotty. I am fairly certain I went the first Tuesday this month, but the second Tuesday I went with my father to the local bike shop to purchase a mountain bike for myself instead. Our family is going on vacation to Bar Harbor, ME, this Saturday, and I was the only one without a bicycle. While I am certain they have bicycle rental options for vacationers in Bar Harbor, I knew I wanted something more permanent than a rental. Something I would be able to use outside of a vacation setting. I also knew waiting until I was in Bar Harbor before getting on a bike would be a recipe for disaster, or at the very least discomfort and a not-so-fun vacation.

In knitting news, on the eighth of June I went to Eats, Knits, and Leaves with my mother and sister. This group meets every month at the (semi) local independent bookstore, and I always enjoy going because I get the chance to knit, see what other people are working on, socialize in general, and browse a well-stocked bookstore. The twelfth of June was Friday Night Knitting, and the thirteenth was Worldwide Knit in Public Day. I picked up enough of SWTC’s Terra (cotton/bamboo blend) to make a simple shirt, four skeins of Mirasol Nuna for another project, and one lovely skein of Blue Heron’s Rayon Metallic in a watery grey color that I have yet to pick a project for. I also picked up the pattern for the shirt I am planning to make and the pattern for a circular(ish) lace shawl that is made using sock yarn (which I still need to purchase). I finished two UFOs last month and made decent progress on several more. Working on my UFOs made me realize I really do need to branch out into areas that are not scarves. Nearly every project I worked on was a scarf of some sort, and there is only so much variation you get from those.

My last reading list update here was back on 12 March 2009, and since that point in time I have more than doubled the number of things I have read (or at least started). ( Read more... )

The bulk of the text of this was written at least a week ago. I leave for Bar Harbor tomorrow (technically later today) and won't be back until around July 4th. Computer access is likely to be non-existent, but I will have my telephone.

At this point in time, I am fairly certain all the books that were not in the attic at my parents’ house are now on the bookshelves in my apartment. There are probably some books still lurking in the boxes filled mostly with papers and other items I need to dedicate a couple hours to going through, but for the most part my books are on the shelves in some fashion. Organization is another thing entirely, but it’s also less crucial than the initial push to get boxes empty and out of my room. At present I am trying not to think too much about the fact that many of these boxes will be coming back to my apartment, filled with things I did not pack up in the first push. That way lies madness, and I really am liking the whole avoidance of crazy as a general rule.

One of the items I did not pack up in the first push was my computer. It is still sitting in my parents’ basement where it has been for the past four years, and when I want to use it I drive over there to do so. This may also seem rather mad to people, but really there was no point in making certain I had my computer at the apartment the very day I moved over. For one thing, I do not yet own a desk, so I would have no place to put the computer in order to use it. And, more importantly, there is no internet connection in the apartment yet, so even if I had my computer in the apartment I would need to go elsewhere in order to do most things. Since my computer is not a laptop I am rather limited in the mobility department--people give you funny looks if you tote around a desktop computer in a little cart wherever you go, and the wheels get stuck on things.

So for the time being, whenever I want to use the computer I have to drive over to my parents’ house. This can make for some interesting scheduling issues. It certainly tends to put me in bed later than I would really like, and it requires a little more planning than I otherwise would do. Still, on the positive side of things I am less distracted by my computer when it isn’t sitting there, and I tend to be more productive. Having my computer at my parents’ house also ensures that I am over there on a regular basis to see my family. You know, in case FHE, dinners a couple nights a week, and doing my laundry didn’t do the job properly (which, I am fairly certain, at least my sister feels is the case).

This past Saturday I made my first official menu plan and grocery list. Well, my first since graduating from BYU and moving back to NH, that is. I did not want to do any sort of substantial grocery shopping without both things in place because that way also lies madness, and a blown food budget. Even with the menu plan and grocery list I still forgot just how expensive the initial "stock up" shopping trip invariably ends up being. The last time I really had to worry about that particular aspect of things was something to the tune of seven years ago. It was also in Utah, and food prices are lower there than they are here.

The other thing I forgot was just how much time a grocery shopping trip can take up, particularly one of the "let’s stock up" variety. I figured that an hour would be more than enough time to get everything done. I mean, I had a list, right? And I was planning on going to the store I was most familiar with, which would cut down dramatically on time spent since I would know where everything was. All that planning and figuring on my part must have tripped an alarm in Murphy’s lair, letting him know I needed to be taken down a peg or two for my assumptions.

It took me three hours to get through that shopping trip from the time I left the house with my list to the time I got back with all the groceries and had everything put away. There were a number of things I neglected to put on my list (staples, for the most part), and I actually forgot to grab two of the things on my list--milk and orange juice--which meant I needed to go back into the store after I’d brought my first cart of purchases out to my car. Still, I did finish the trip, and now I have real food in my apartment, including at least a basic spice cabinet. This is by no means complete, but the initial outlay has been performed, at least. I have all the spices I know I’ll be using regularly, three selections of vinegars, and basic baking supplies.

On the entertainment side of things, I’ve seen Star Trek (and got my sister hooked, apparently), done a lot of knitting (finished one UFO and have made good progress on two others), finished listening to The Lord of the Rings (52+ hours of audiobook goodness), and read what many people might consider a ridiculous number of books (most of them were fast reads). I’ll post more about all of these things later, however.

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Things I've done in which I am well pleased: Grocery shopping and menu planning! Shopping for other things I needed, like laundry baskets and trashcans. Finished one knitting UFO and made good progress on others.

Things which make me happy: Getting things from the library, figuring out a schedule and routine, spending time with my family, watching really spiffy movies

I have made it a goal to unpack at least one box every evening after I get home. As most of the boxes are the smallish type from U-Haul, this is a very manageable endeavour; each box requires between fifteen and twenty minutes of time to sort out at the longest. Additionally, most of these boxes are filled with books which are more or less in the shelf order I was using before things were packed away, so most of my work consists of deciding which shelf or shelves the books will go on in my new system.

Last night I emptied five boxes, though one of the boxes did not remain empty--I am using it to hold items (books, mainly) I do not think I will keep in my collection. Still, even that box is mostly empty, and my shelves are looking much more homey. It is still a bit difficult to determine how much free space I will have on the shelves; I am following the same practices I always have for book storage, which may not be the most attractive, but they certainly are practical. Hardcover books may yet prove to be troublesome, but that depends entirely upon what my ratio of hardcovers (and trade paperbacks) to mass market paperbacks winds up being. It also depends on how I place the books upon the shelves. At present, however, I feel as though I have an almost ridiculous amount of space available (provided I do not think about all the books still in the attic at the house, of course).

The past ten days or so have definitely been...interesting. I had a wonderful time at Celebration of Needlework with my mom. We went to a lecture on sampler alphabets through history which was very enlightening in multiple aspects. I was unaware, for example, that the letter J was the last letter added to our modern alphabet, and that while we functionally had a 26-letter alphabet from the mid-1600s onward, scholars viewed it has having only 24 letters (with two variant forms) until the middle of the 19th century. I also learned the "rules" regarding the use of the long s, such as they are (Not that I expect to ever need to use those rules, since that character fell out of general use sometime around 1820).

We learned that the earliest book of needlework patterns ever printed/published came out in 1523, and as one of the handouts for the class we got a small sampler with letters from that time period. It was very interesting to see just how much printing and publication affected the styles of sampler alphabets. The lecture left me wondering whether or not needlework samplers exist for cultures which don't use the Roman alphabet to form their words. The closest we got to this was a sampler which had both English and Hebrew on it.

Beyond the one lecture neither of us attended any classes. This was a change from what we've done in past years, but both of us agreed that we should focus more on what we had already than taking classes which would generate more projects (especially since we still have lots of class projects from previous years that are not yet finished). Instead we spent time in the Stitchers' Lounge, and we wandered around the shop booths on Saturday. I ended up spending a little more money than I had intended to, but not much.

I'll have to look over what I purchased again, but my present recollection (not having anything in front of me) is that my tastes have become decidedly more flora-based, and I'm developing a penchant for working on projects which will be useful as well as decorative. This last may be an influence of knitting--one of the draws of knitting for me is the creation of items which will be used for something, not just admired as they hang on the wall. In both my needlework and knitting I continue to be drawn to fine and specialty fibers. I love working with them, and the quality of the finished product--regardless of what that product may be--is increased as the quality of the materials rises.

Since that weekend, however, I have not exactly had much time to stitch or knit. Work keeps me busy, and I tend to read on my lunch break (it is easier to manage food and a book than food and any form of needlework). Plus, I've been doing the whole "chicken with its head cut off" thing due to the moving situation. I really don't handle stress all that well, and moving is one of those naturally high-stress situations at the best of times.

On Monday or Tuesday I came home from work and went rummaging about in the attic for my linens and my dishes. I found most of them, but there is at least one bin which is still in limbo up there. Still, most of them is a good ratio, particularly since I do have enough to get by on (at least one complete set of towels, at least one complete set of sheets, etc).

Wednesday my father and I went to Ikea after work to pick up the furniture I was in need of. This was my first time being in the Stoughton, MA, store; they seemed to have more "display homes" than the New Haven store, and the order of things on the display floor seemed a little different as well. I really want to spend more time there when I'm not feeling quite so rushed and on a mission. There are a lot of really good ideas to be had there, but you really can't take them in all at once.

After we got the furniture we brought it back to my apartment, but we didn't start putting it together. By that time it was 11:00 at night and we were both very tired. We also knew that putting together furniture really isn't something you can do in a half an hour, or even an hour.
Thursday I was supposed to do more packing, but I watched several episodes of Eyeshield 21 instead. Not my wisest move, that is certain. I did do a little packing, but hardly enough to really qualify.

Friday was Friday Night Knitting, and I really needed that time to relax. Of course, that evening I did get just a little frustrated after FNK when my "best laid plans" did not come to realization--I wanted to get all my furniture put together that evening so things would be totally ready for me to move in, only it got late. I threw a little bit of a tantrum, a fact I am not exactly pleased to admit. It was not my finest hour, and stress and frustration really aren't an excuse.

It all worked out in the end, however. I got a fairly good night's sleep, and we did the moving on Saturday as planned. Three of the elders from my ward came over to help (a bit of a miscommunication happened there too, but it worked out nicely), and my family helped a lot as well. My dad spent several hours putting together my furniture while I was packing things into boxes and driving the boxes back and forth.

We finished for the day at 12:30 that night. Yeah...it was late. I am still tired from moving things around and getting everything organized. I am still living out of boxes, and my computer has not yet been moved over to the apartment. I also have not gone shopping (or planned menus) so I really don't have any food in the apartment.

But I have a bed to sleep in, I have boxes in neat piles in my room, I have some books on my shelves, and I am settling in. Things are going to work out.

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Things I've done in which I am well pleased: got functionally moved into my apartment, even if I am working out of boxes still. Managed to give a ten-minute talk at church, despite not having a whole lot of time to prepare. Got up on time for work this morning.

Things that make me happy: being able to relax some, getting things straightened out in my new apartment, learning, spending time with family

The weather this past week has been more in keeping with June or July rather than April. This had me...less than pleased, for I am not exactly fond of hot weather. I start to wilt when temperatures get above the mid 80s. Still, the humidity has been low, and the weather has been more April-like for the past day or so. I hope this trend continues.

On the 17th I drove down to CT to visit kogarashi and leachonlj for the weekend. We had loads of fun, and I took a lot of pictures of pretty trees and amusing squirrels when we went to the park to look at the cherry blossoms that Saturday. We also got to play Once Upon a Time, which is a storytelling game I picked up back when I was at BYU, and several rounds of Ligretto and a couple games of Tsuro. I really enjoy being able to play games like that.

While I was down there I also got the chance to go to Ikea again to look at the bed I've been considering. I've discovered that while I may be something of a genius when it comes to fitting more (small) things into a space than should really go there, I'm no great shakes at accurately manipulating larger items without confirmed visuals. So yeah, I could get the dimensions of the bed off the internet, and I could even compare those dimensions to the dimensions of furniture in our house, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable with it. Now that I've seen the bed I have a much firmer grasp on things, and I can make them fit together in my mind.

Of course, the trip to Ikea is also part of the overall crazy. I am in the process of moving, something I have not done for just over four years. The last time I moved, I didn't have to worry about furniture, since I was going from one BYU-approved (furnished) apartment to another equally approved and furnished apartment. Yeah, I had a small bookcase, and I had a lamp or two. Those hardly count as actual furniture, however. So the whole furniture thing is stressful. I know what I need, and I know what I have access to. The logistics of purchasing and moving and assembling are not as clear.

Moving day is set for the 9th of May. This past Sunday I went over and got my keys, and I measured the bedroom. I'm fairly certain it is larger than the room I'm sharing with my sister currently. It certainly isn't smaller, so I should be okay. Since Sunday I have taken over two smallish loads of stuff, including three pieces of furniture (two of which are in the bedroom). However....

Very little of my stuff is packed. I still need to unearth my kitchen and linens from the attic, and I need to make sure they are clean and usable. My closet is still a portal to chaos and despair, even if I have made some headway in cleaning it. I have no idea when I'm going to be able to purchase furniture like my bed before moving day--it has to be sometime during the week. And I need someone to help me, since I have no way of moving a 225 lb piece of furniture on my lonesome.

This weekend is busy because of Celebration of Needlework on Saturday and break the fast on Sunday. Oh, and I have my first Relief Society Presidency meeting on Saturday evening. At my house. We're doing dinner. Still not sure what we're going to eat, which could be problematic.

I guess there's a fair deal of truth in the adage that things come in threes. For me it's been a new job (two months now), a new living place (very soon), and a new calling with quite a bit more responsibility.

I can't say as I'm great shakes at juggling either. I drop things.

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Things I've done in which I am well pleased: Made good headway in organizing my paper clutter. Started moving things over to the new apartment.

Things that make me happy: cooler weather, Celebration of Needlework, knowing where I can likely buy bookcases, knitting, reading, Eyeshield 21

So. It's been...over a month. I'm settling in nicely at my new job, and they are keeping me quite comfortably busy. I've been learning lots of new things as well as brushing up on older and half-remembered skills. Most recently I've been figuring out CSS, and I've determined that IE is a non-standards-compliant pain in my backside. Of course, I probably would have re(realized) this a whole lot sooner had I been keeping up with design work instead of...redirecting my focus.

I have been put in charge of my company's intranet site, which is currently lacking in real content, under-utilized by our employees (I don't know that anyone really uses it currently), and poorly designed. Internal style sheets on every page, obviously WYSIWYG-based code, and rather broken in Firefox. It isn't clean, and I rather doubt it is standards-compliant. I'll have to check the version I haven't been messing around with tomorrow.

Because of this assignment, I have also been relearning VIM, which I find to be an excellent tool for editing HTML. Syntax highlighting, very little need to switch between keyboard and mouse, and lots of functionality. All excellent points in my way of thinking. So very much improved upon my days of using Windows Notepad to edit my HTML (which weren't all that long ago, to be honest). While I know there are lots of tools out there like Dreamweaver and the like, I've always found it difficult to use them. With WYSIWYG editors the code isn't always clean, and if something goes squirrely or pear-shaped it can be harder to fix because I wasn't working with the straight code from the outset.

I will say this, though...after spending several hours using VIM almost exclusively it can be something of a challenge to remember that ESC doesn't throw me into a non-insert mode where I can use H, J, K, and L to scroll quickly through a document, and that I really can't use those keys to scroll through a webpage.

In other news, I'm still reading a lot (no surprise there), and I'm currently working my way through City of Glass by Cassandra Clare. This is the third book in Clare's The Mortal Instruments series, and I'm still not sure how I would classify the series. I like it and enjoy it, which typically means I find myself needing to buy it, but I don't really have that urge in this case. I've been borrowing the series from the library, and while I wouldn't mind reading it again (and I probably will read it again at some point), I am perfectly happy keeping it at a borrowing level.

That's probably just as well, since there are tons of books (probably literally as well as metaphorically) which I do end up buying, even if only to just have them "on hand" should the mood strike me.

I also bought myself a wire jig. I'd been eying the nice metal ones for a while, but always had trouble justifying the expense to myself. Until, that is, I was at Joann's Fabrics picking up some weaver's cloth (for punchneedle embroidery) and I noticed that all jewelry-making tools were 30% off. This included the wire jig, and brought it down to what I considered a perfectly reasonable price for a good tool, so I bought it. I'm still getting the hang of things, but I've made one thing that turned out the way it was supposed to! I want to get myself some nice copper and brass wire to make components with.

This weekend I'm going down to CT to visit kogarashi and leachonlj. Because of where I work I get Patriot's Day off (third Monday in April, also the date of the Boston Marathon), so I'm taking advantage of the long weekend. Should be loads of fun!

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Things I've done in which I am well pleased: Started teaching myself CSS for real, instead of just reading about it. Went on a walk earlier this week during my lunch hour. Made arrangements to move into an apartment.

Things that make me happy: good books, SPRING!!, knitting, learning new things, brushing up on half-remembered skills

Sometimes you just need to get rid of old cookies so websites will actually load. I (re)discovered this fact last night when I tried to go to the SFBC website in Firefox, and I got an error. The site was working earlier that day when I logged in while on my lunch break at work, so I wasn't sure what had changed. For a while there I thought it might be a problem with Firefox, but it just seemed silly that a major website would be totally incompatible with a big browser like Firefox, especially since it had worked not that long ago.

The error message I got mentioned that disallowing cookies might cause the site to not load, but I didn't pay much attention to that at first. I don't actively block cookies from any of the sites I visit, and I don't regularly clean out the cookies folder. Normally this is not an issue; cookies stay in the folder until they expire, then they disappear.

However, due to a major site rebuild by SFBC, the cookies in my folder were stale and inaccurate. I wasn't disallowing cookies, but the ones I had were giving Firefox indigestion. After I threw them out everything loaded just fine, and I was able to poke around the shiny new SFBC site.

Whereupon I discovered that part of their major overhaul was culling all the old, discontinued titles from their database. This isn't something I really consider a problem, since it helps to make things run more smoothly, and it allows for a more accurate accounting of club offerings. However, I had no real record of all the titles I'd saved on my wishlist, and there was one book in particular that I really wanted to look up. SFBC was no longer carrying it, and I couldn't remember the title, or the author's name. I knew it was a coming-of-age story, and it was science fiction, not fantasy. I also knew I would recognize the title/author combination when I saw it.

That really isn't a whole lot to work with. Luckily, I did have old fliers from the club, including a copy of last year's Universe, so I was able to find the book (Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin; my library doesn't have it, nor is it regularly stocked by any of the local bookstores) once I figured out where I'd stashed the fliers.

On the subject of books, I've started/read 46 things so far this year. ( Reading List below the cut )

This evening was my sister's monthly book group at the Toadstool Bookshop, and I was her driver (thought I wouldn't be able to earlier this week, but my training was pushed back a week). Got to listen in, and I found more books. I wrote down more titles than I purchased though, which is good. And she got an ARC for The Magic Thief: Lost, which I will definitely need to borrow from her once she's finished with it

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Things I've done in which I am well pleased: Posted two days in a row. Got to work nice and on time. Didn't buy as many books as I could have.

Things that make me happy: knitting, new books, old books, reading in general, spending time with my sister

I decided more or less on the spur of the moment this evening that it was time and past for me to overhaul the look of this journal. I'd been using more or less the same layout since I started posting back in 2003, and it was looking rather tired to me. So I spent the last two or three hours doing said overhaul. Similar color scheme, but different layout format. This change also included formatting a pair of LibraryThing widgets to stick in my sidebar (honestly, that's probably what took the bulk of the time).

It's been a little over a week since I started my new job, and I've been learning a lot. Today I had training on the company's electronic documents management system, specifically for the administration end of things. I'm not the only person in the admin group, but it isn't a particularly large group.

I've also been working with MSProject 2007, and Office 2007. Project is a completely new experience for me, but I'm finding it to be a very interesting tool to work with. I'm looking forward to the actual training I'll be getting in a few weeks. Right now I'm working with a Step by Step book released by Microsoft and the occasional, cautious forays into existing project plans we have at work. While I am learning this way, focused training with a more experienced instructor will really help.

I was not expecting any sort of learning curve on the rest of the Office suite. I've been using programs like Word and Excel for years, and I'm not exactly unfamiliar with Outlook either (however much I may dislike the program). However, Office 2007 is...different. There are definitely things I like about it, but it is going to take some getting used to. They've moved things all around with the new ribbon system, and I frequently find myself hunting for options and menu items I used to know right where to find.

On the weather front we had gorgeous, spring-like weather on Saturday and Sunday, which was followed by six to eight inches of snow on Monday. Welcome to March in New England. *sigh* As beautiful as snow can be, I am really getting tired of it and I wish that we could have actual spring, even if it does mean loads of mud and the return of biting bugs. Thankfully, we've had warmer weather (read: above freezing) for the past two days--and rain--so the snow from Monday has been melting off fairly quickly. At least it has in the non-shaded areas. Around this time of year you can really tell which areas stay in shade most of the day, since they remain covered in snow far longer than anywhere else.

Saturday was also my first double knitting class. Double knitting is like a magic trick, even more than regular knitting. Using just an ordinary pair of knitting needles you knit a double-sided (knit on both sides) fabric in one piece. Seaming and grafting not necessary. I shall have to take pictures of my swatch, which is currently all I have completed.

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Things I have done in which I am well pleased: Gone to Institute two weeks in a row. Returned my library books on time. Kept my room looking nice and neat for over a week.

Things that make me happy: learning new things, listening to Lord of the Rings, knitting, reading, Girl Scout cookies

Tuesdays are going to be long, and I am just going to have to get used to this fact and adjust my schedule accordingly. I'm not sure how long this adjustment is going to take, but I've adjusted to plenty of other things in my life with regards to scheduling, so it shouldn't be that hard. This might take a bit more adjusting than usual, however, since I start training next week (on Tuesdays and Thursdays) which will change things up for me schedule-wise.

Institute this evening was awesome. We talked (among other things) about praising God more often in both prayer and discussion. Brother Chapman pointed out that far too often we tend to avoid forthright praise of God and His goodness in our meetings, and that really isn't how it should be. The scriptures are full of examples of men and women who actively praise God when they speak and preach and prophesy.

I know it's something I need to pay more attention to in my own speech. For I do love my Heavenly Father, and while I know I acknowledge His hand in my life in my prayers, I rarely do so in my public speech and discourse. His great power and goodness allow me to accomplish so much in life.

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Things I've done in which I am well pleased: Didn't get lost on my way from work to Institute. Went to Institute.

Things that make me happy: studying the scriptures, being with my family, learning new things