A Desert Island

A funny thing, I’ve heard people talk about being stranded on a Desert Island (presumably, an Island that is a Desert), but then I’ve also heard people talk about being stranded on a Deserted Island (i.e. an Island on which there are no other humans).  Lately, I think I’d take the Desert Island, but sometimes, the Deserted one (that maybe wasn’t actually a Desert) would be nice, too.

Shimelle’s prompt from February 25 was about what you would want with you on that Desert (or deserted?) Island.  You can choose 8 recordings, one book and one luxury item.  You can assume that the entire works of Shakespeare, your religious text of choices, plus the appropriate way in which to play your 8 recordings would magically exist on this Fantasy Island. (Oh wait…that’s a different TV show, right?)

My first reaction is:  I’d rather things were reversed.  I could live with ONE recording, and would rather have more books.   Although, picking just one recording would be pretty hard, too, I think.

Off to find a picture for inspiration.

Google is so cool.  Look at this yummy island in Fiji that is for sale!  Only $4,000,000 for  the 50 acre island.   Visit http://www.privateislandsonline.com if you think you might be interested in purchasing it.  Or maybe you want to drool over the other islands that are for sale or for rent!

OK, so now that I’ve got this island in my mind’s eye, what would I hope to have with me?

1.  KT Tunstall, Eye to the Telescope

2. Josh Groban, Closer

3. John Denver, Country Roads Collection

4. Harry Chapin, The Gold Medal Collection

5. The Beatles, (a greatest hits kind of collection, don’t have a specific one to list)

6. Shrek Soundtrack

7.  Kenny Loggins, Return to Pooh Corner

8. Kenny Loggins, Leap of Faith

Book:  Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles in Love

Luxury Item:   This is actually the hardest part of all.  It probably says something about me that I’m taking so long to think of something.   You know, I think I’d be pretty happy with just a supply of paper and a writing utensil of some sort.

How about all of you?  What would you want with you on your Desert (or Deserted) Island?

Suzanne

p.s.  The boys had a full day of school today.  It snowed this morning, so we were a little concerned, but then it warmed up to 35!  Woohoo!  Maggie got spayed today, so the house was quite quiet and subdued.  I’m sure Katie was excited to have the house to herself, and was annoyed that I actually brought the little pest home.

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In which Suzanne writes really bad poetry

I wrote this yesterday, but never got around to posting it. The prompt was to write a cinquain about food, each of the 5 lines following a specified structure.

(As an aside, I’d never heard of a cinquain until last year, when the boys started writing them at school. Apparently there are a variety of different formats/kinds of cinquains, some rhyme, some don’t, some have a certain number of syllables per line, some don’t…the main theme seems to be that each has 5 lines).

Back to the bad poetry. The idea was to write about a special dish, or something that you always eat or…

Chicken Monterey.
Sweet. Juicy.
Pink. Black.
I order you every time we go to Bonanza.
Supper.

I actually went looking for a photograph to go with it, but couldn’t find one. I did, however, find the recipe. I was a little surprised to find out that what the recipe was, because it turns out I’ve made chicken this way, without realizing that it was exactly how they do it at Bonanza.

Chicken Monterey ala Bonanza

Boneless skinless chicken breasts
Western Salad dressing

Place the chicken breasts in a small bowl.  Pour Western dressing over the chicken breasts. Gently mix to make sure chicken is fully covered with  dressing. Cover and let sit over night in your refrigerator.

The next day, cook the chicken on your grill.
****(Note when done the chicken will have a light pink color through the meat…This is from the dressing) Make sure the chicken is fully cooked.
Just before you take it off the grill brush some unused dressing onto the top of the chicken with a pastry brush.

When I was growing up, we couldn’t buy Western salad dressing in Connecticut. Whenever we traveled to Iowa to visit my grandparents, we would always take home several big bottles of it with us. I think you can get it just about anywhere, now. It’s still my favorite salad dressing, though we don’t really have salad very often.  Will have to remedy that.

No wonder I love Bonanza’s Chicken Monterey so much.   I really do order it every time we go to Bonanza. When the boys were littler and we were in Waterloo going grocery shopping, we ate there a lot — almost once a week.  They were free until they were 3….which would explain why we went so much.  All you can eat buffet plus a really good meat/potato plus the boys were free?

We still go quite a bit, but not nearly as often.  I actually try to go get groceries on my own as much as possible, so we don’t have as many family trips to Waterloo as we used to.  Thank goodness.   Shopping is so much more pleasant when I am by myself.  I can dawdle as much or as little as *I* choose.  I can make 14 different stops in one trip because there is no one in the car with me to complain that we have to stop AGAIN.

Speaking of shopping, that’s what I did today.  Groceries and fabric.  I got some more options for my Blooming Nine Patch.  I’ve tried out so many combinations I’m going a little cross-eyed.  “Blooming” may turn into an epithet rather than simply an adjective when I refer to this thing.

Mary made a comment yesterday about how she couldn’t quite imagine all of those fabrics in one quilt — I had to laugh at that, because in some ways, that’s exactly my problem.  This quilt is not hard to physically piece: the fabric choice is the challenge.  This challenge is so far out of my box, I can’t even see the box anymore.  Most of the time when I make a quilt, I pick ONE busy print, and then everything else is blenders that coordinate.  This quilt does it’s thing with SEVEN busy prints.  (Well, the pattern calls for eight, but I’m making mine a bit smaller).  I still haven’t hit the right combination of prints yet, but I’m closer.  I hope.  I’m itching to sew.  I’m actually proud of myself for sticking with this challenge.  I’ve been tempted to wad up the whole mess and forget I even had this crazy idea.

I had to go get groceries today because we were down to one gallon of milk, and I wanted to get it before tomorrow.  We are looking at a weather forecast that says we have a 90% chance of snow tomorrow, with 2-5 inches of accumulation.  I keep getting offers from blogging friends who think I should come visit their warm sunny homes.  I’m tempted to take them up on it.  I should have gone today, so I could get out before the new snow hits.

And you thought I was going to get through a whole post wihtout taking about the weather, didn’t you?

TTFN-

Suzanne

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the return of write it down

Remember back at the beginning of the month, when I started doing daily journal exercises? Well, the prompts just stopped appearing after a week, and it turns out that the site had been hit by spammers.  And the site’s owner had been traveling and unable to get it all fixed.  The prompts have started appearing again (cool!), and I decided to do one of them this morning.    I’m totally going out of order now, but I hope to eventually go back and fill them all in. Shimelle has four new ones posted, and it seems like maybe she’s posting them two at a time.

The one I did today was to go take a picture out your window and then journal about the weather, and to write about being thankful.

Those of you that have been reading lately should know that this prompt was not nearly as hard as you might think, since all I’ve done lately is complain about the weather.

Because, look:  the sun is shining, and the snow is sparkling.  I wish I could capture the sparkles better.  I don’t know what to do differently.  Any photographers out there that have ideas?  The whole sparkle like diamonds thing is a cliche, but it works for me.  I love cliches and terrible puns and other stuff like that.

The funniest thing is that because the sun is shining and it’s a little bit warmer, the snow and ice that is on our roof is melting and shifting and  sldingin down off the roof.  Making terrific noise which is driving the dogs a little bit bonkers.

On a completely separate note:  I finally got some of this week’s mail this morning.  I haven’t even bothered to complain about that on the blog, you would have all qiut reading out of annoyance with the whining.  We have not gotten any mail at all this week.  My postmaster was not a happy camper when I stopped in there to pick it up.  It’s been a sub trying (and failing) to deliver mail on our rural route.  Yes, the road’s are bad and the route is 125 miles total, but I’m pretty sure she could have made it to my house at least ONCE this week.  Anyway, I’ve been chomping at the bit because my strawberry fabric was part of what has been riding around in her car during the day and sitting at the PO at night.    I finally have it, though, and I’m going to take a break from computer stuff and see if I can’t get some borders sewn on my cheerful strawberry quilt.

That will make me very happy.

Suzanne

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Write It Down — February 7th

I got stuck on this one last night.

The prompt was to make a list of the things you had done during the day and put the list in order three different ways: chronological, in order by the amount of time each task took, and finally in order of importance. I got bogged down on the chronological list and didn’t get any further. I think I was thinking about my day too hard. That and also feeling sorry for myself about how many times I had had to take the dogs out and deal with boys with no help from their father. The poor man came home from work at 4:30/5:00 and headed straight for the couch. He barely moved from that spot until 10:00 when I gathered up the dogs (they were sleeping on top of him), and after brushing his teeth he collapsed into bed. (Please understand that although I was feeling sorry for myself, I was NOT mad at him: he’s had a horrible week at work and not feeling good on top of it. Poor guy).

Back to my list-making: so many of the things on the list get repeated over and over throughout the day. Everything I worked on was done a little bit here, a little bit there. (And again, I’m not complaining: this is how I operate, and I’m fine with it…) It just made me a little mad that I couldn’t figure out how to finish this journaling exercise because I really wanted to try to finish every one of them — a commitment to myself to follow through on something that would help me in my scrapbooking journey as well as in my journey as a writer. I have now given myself permission not to worry about doing it just like Shimelle’s prompt said, and decided to just have fun documenting in words a normal day whilst playing with a new digital kit I just downloaded.  (Don’t you just love the word whilst?  I wish I could say it in normal conversation.  So much more interesting that just plain “while”)

Arranged in order of the number of
times she did something (approximately):

1. Put on Mark’s boots and heavy coat and my hat and gloves and take the dogs outside. This might not actually belong at the top of the list, but it sure feels like it goes there.
2. Read e-mail/blogs/forums
3. Food: dogs, boys, myself
4. Played with Maggie
5. Broke up fights between Maggie and Katie (and one between Joe and Will)
6. Visit several scrapbooking web sites and stores

Other stuff:
Phone call with Lynn
Layout of Will’s day on Wednesday
Quilt Hannah’s Quilt
Personal Hygiene (shower, teeth, etc…)

So that was my list for yesterday. Today’s list would look remarkably the same, actually. A few variations, no quilting, add in going to see National Treasure 2, change “will” to “joe” and it’s pretty close. LOL

I started this post earlier in the day and am just now getting back to finish it hours later. Another thing that is remarkably the same as yesterday is that poor Mark repeated the “come home and go straight to the couch” event from last night. Hopefully he can recover in time to enjoy the weekend.

Speaking of which, I’d better go to bed so that I can get up bright and early and enjoy my weekend, too. After this crazy week, I’m ready for a fresh start.

Suzanne

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Write It Down — February 6th

You will most likely notice a decided lack of quilting related posts (i.e. an emphasis on the Other Adventures part of my blog title…) in the current and near future.  This is not because I have given up quilting (far from it!!), but more because most of what I’m working on currently (quilting or otherwise) is based on the computer.  Writing, drawing, figuring out HTML and CSS and some other website related stuff, all of this will keep me tied to my computer for the next little while.  And of course, because I’m here, I’m taking my breaks by keeping up on my Photoshop class as well as doing some other digi-scrapping fun things.

With any luck I will actually sew tonight (when Mark gets home and I can turn Maggie duties over to him). I could probably go hang out in the sewing room, but we’ve got a pretty good set up in the office right now, and I don’t quite trust that my sewing room is de-puppy-ed enough to have Maggie in there for too long.

Shimelle’s prompt for today is to write a letter to someone that just tells a little bit of something about what happened today. Nothing profound, just everyday life kind of stuff.  I happened to have just written a note to my husband about the dogs, and decided to reuse some of what I had written.  I originally thought about addressing it “Dear Diary,” but then I decided it would be more fun to write to my 8 year old niece, Sofia.  Sofia was here to visit in December, her Dad is in the Army and they live overseas.  They have a Great Dane named Fabienne, and were quite taken with how small Katie was in comparison to their great big dog.

It was quite fun to write this note as if I were talking to her, and I would like to think that I will send her more notes in the future. First, I need to actually work on sending this to her, in addition to posting it here.

The paper is from Scrapgirls, Appassionata kit, the frames and ribbon curl are by Flergs.  Fonts are Ma Sexy and Century Gothic.

As I noted in my letter to Sofia, we are covered in snow.  The driveway is pretty much impassable at the moment.  Spring!  Where are you???

Suzanne

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Write It Down — February 5th

No page or picture for today’s journaling exercise: just the words.  Here’s the prompt that started this one.

Ode to My Computer

I love you not just because you keep me organized and help me answer questions of all kinds (what did we do without Google?).

I also love you because you help me find fascinating things to do and you keep me in touch with the outside world. (I’m a homebody, but I’d be very lonely without my friends in the box).

The reason I love you the most is that you helped lead me to (and keep me connected to) my best friend in the whole world.

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Write It Down — February 4th

I kind of knew what I was going to do for this yesterday, but didn’t have time to see it to completion (see gratuitous puppy cuteness in previous posts).

This was an interesting journaling prompt, but I’m not sure I’ll use it again.   I really liked Shimelle’s example, but mine feels a little contrived.  It may be that I just wasn’t in the right mood for this one right now.  I’ll put it in my reference file and let it percolate…

School is letting out early — we are expecting something on the order of 6-8 inches.  Again.  Ugh.
Spring!  I want spring right now!

TTFN-

Suzanne

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Write It Down — February 3rd — Prepositions!

Oh, phew.

Today’s prompt from Shimelle was a lot easier than yesterday’s…

She had a mini English lesson (refresher course) about prepositions, and the prompt was to write short sentence fragments that all began with a preposition.

My plan is to wind up with a stack of these very simple pages that are 5 by 7 and then I’m going to also print out her journaling prompts and stick them all together in a notebook as a reference for future scrapbooking ideas — her instructions plus my responses should equal an awesome reference!

I’m also probably going to redo this particular layout into something bigger and fancier, with this picture of my nephew Colin as part of a larger project I’m working (i.e. to go with the other pages I’ve been creating in my Photoshop class…).  That is a horrendous sentence.  Sorry.  I should rewrite, but hopefully you were able to catch my drift….
Grandma loved her photo album, unfortunately she was not feeling well and didn’t go out for lunch with us.  She also spent a large part of the time we were there in the depths of a nasty coughing fit, I hope she can see a doctor this week and get checked out.  She was quite miserable.

Dog update:  Katie didn’t hate the new dog (she pretty much ignored her in fact…) so Mark and the boys took that as a good sign.  The three of them decided that they would, in fact, like to bring her home (I think the boys are quite excited about her — Katie pretty much ignores them, too).  The volunteers at the shelter got the paperwork started, but then had to take our new family member off for a final checkup.  Unfortunately they discovered that her temp was up  and they couldn’t release her to Mark.  We can call back tomorrow to see how she is doing.  She’s ours, but they won’t let her go until her temp is normal.  I’m a little bit worried about the elevated temp, but she had been just playing and running so, hopefully it’s not a big deal.

The boys are off watching the Super Bowl (they’ve piled into my bed so they can watch it in High-Def).  I’m going to eat some popcorn and do some computer stuff and some sewing, too, probably.

Thanks to everyone that visits, whether you comment or not.  I’d love to hear from more of you, but I know from my own experience that time is short.

Have a great evening!

Suzanne

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More about the humane society plus Write it Down, February 2

In my previous post, I made a big deal out of feeling kind of weird after we left the Humane Society, and then I didn’t actually tell you what the conversation was about.  I wasn’t even sure I was going to share, but since Leah asked, I’ll go ahead and tell you.

There was a question on the form that asked where your pet will live and sleep — indoors or outdoors.

Well, our pets sleep indoors and primarily live indoors.  But what Mark added was something to the effect that if we are gone and it is NICE OUT the dogs get left outside in a kennel.

And what the adoption counselor said was “We place all of our dogs in homes that will keep them indoors.”

Well, first off:  why does your form even ask the question then?  There should have been a line at the top that says “we only place pets in homes that will keep them indoors.”

I tried to explain that all we meant was that if we are leaving our property and it is NICE OUT the dogs are left outside.  We don’t leave them out overnight or if it is cold or rainy or super windy.  She said something like “Well, it is our policy to place pets in indoor situations and this is something I’ll have to think about.  This dog is smaller and shouldn’t be left outside if it is cold.”

Hello?

I tried again: Well, we only leave them outside when it is NICE OUT, and on a day like today — our dog is INSIDE.

She didn’t exactly say we were approved, but did tell us that we could call in the morning to find out if the dog had been adopted by the other family.

It could be that we were reading more into it than there was, but we both kind of walked away with the same impression.

I don’t envy the humane society it’s job — I know that they are just trying to do the best job they can, and they have to protect their animals, but it just felt weird to us.  Quite frankly, we think we have a pretty good deal going for the pets that come to live with us, and if the humane society doesn’t agree, we’ll visit another shelter and try again.

On to something else:

Shimelle’s prompt for day 2 was really hard.  Yesterday’s seemed so easy, I’m still not sure I like how this one turned out.  I think I might be making it more difficult than it needs to be.  Or something.

Night all!

Suzanne

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Write It Down — February 1st

I’ve been waiting all day long for the first prompt to appear on Shimelle’s blog (she’s the instructor from my Christmas Journal Class). Every day in February she’s supposed to have a journaling prompt, and it finally appeared! My goal is to focus on the writing, but still do a digital page. The finished page is only 5 by 7, so I don’t have a lot of space, and I am not allowing myself to take a lot of time, either. This is less than 30 minutes of work:

Happy February!

Suzanne

page credits:
Background Paper and Title Alpha: Thao Cosgrove, Art Journal Collection
Journaling paper: Katie Pertiet
Fonts: Joyful Juliana, Century Gothic and Batik Regular

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