Merry Christmas

I'm having a hard time as usual with all the aches and pains from the cold but there is also that additional pain from missing my mom at Christmas.  My mom died Feb 16, 2008 and I still miss her every single day.  It is just always more difficult when my birthday comes around and I know she would have called me.  My birthday was on thanksgiving this year.  Then just a little bit later is her birthday on December 8th and of course Christmas Day is hard too.  Well, all I can do is think of her and make some new wonderful memories with my family that are here.

Here is some nice Christmas music from the first, third, and sixth seasons of Bones to get the spirit of Christmas flowing strong.

Season 5, Episode 10

Temperature Scarf and the end of Bones Season 3

I just finished watching the last couple episodes of Bones Season 3.  Somehow, I think I missed watching those two episodes before.  I vaguely remember something happening and I couldn't watch the show where Booth got shot by the crazy stalker lady.  I remember telling my husband not to tell me anything because I was going to watch it later and then somehow I forgot about it.  There were some good older songs used in that episode (Episode 14) but sang by different people as bad karaoke. The surprising thing was the guy that sang Far Away (Nickleback) was Ace Young from American Idol Season 5.  He was pretty good and I liked him singing that song much better than the songs he sang on American Idol.  Also, the black man singing show tunes was Brandon Rogers from American Idol season 6.  He is the one that got too into the groove and missed some lyrics.  I really love his voice. Here he is on Ellen Degeneres right after being eliminated.  He starts singing at 2:36

From Episode 15 - Bad Luck by Social Distortion

 

I certainly don't need any Bad Luck.  I haven't been feeling so hot but hopefully catching up on some rest will help.  I've been working on my temperature scarf and just finished the month of October.  I got the idea from a blog post I read a few years ago.  I was going to link to it but it is gone now. Anyway, the idea is you figure out the range of possible temperatures for your area and divide it between colors of yarn you choose.  You choose how many and the colors can be whatever you want. Each day you check the temperature and work one row in the color for that temperature.  Son #1 helped me pick out the colors.  There are 12 different colors including black which will just be used to divide each month. We arranged the balls of yarn in a line to make a rainbow that would go from coldest temperatures to warmest and then he made a chart for me.



I was going to start with Jan 1st and do the whole year but my OCD tendencies kicked in and some things were bugging me. First of all that would be starting in the middle of the winter and the second thing was that temperature can fluctuate a lot during the day and night and varies between sources too. Do I use the temperature from noon or night or use the days high, low or mien temp? Anyway, to keep this on the shorter side I decided to use the Almanac website which will allow you to put in your zip code and look at past temperatures for your area.  Since this is a project I started with my son I asked him about the other questions.  We decided to start Aug 1st, 2014 because that is pretty much considered to be the beginning of fall for this area.  We decided to use the low temps during the cold months (Aug - March) and then switch to the high temps for the warmer months (April - July) to show the extremes in temperatures we get here.  We are calling it "Alaskan Extremes"


I am just doing 22 stitches of single crochet using a size G hook (4mm). I started with two rows of black and I'll be adding two rows of black between each month.  After I'm finished I'll add an edge in black all the way around.  My son helped me figure out that my scarf should end up being about 7 feet long.  It is a good idea to think about that before you get started.  I was originally going to crochet two rows for each day and adding 4 rows of black between each month and it would have been way too long.  Dr. Who would have been envious.

Below you can see a bad picture of the whole thing to this point.  We will definitely choose better colors next time.  We were limited to the colors the store had in stock at the time so it was hard to pick good colors to go together.  We definitely have too much green for this part of the scarf.  It looks like a military scarf.  Oh well, ya live and learn.

Fishy Business and Bones

I finally started feeling better yesterday and then I promptly overdid it.  Since the shoes with the arch support seemed to keep my feet from hurting I decided to get some exercise on my stationary bike.  I did 15 minutes while I read.  15 minutes is a lot for me.  I also did a load of laundry, mopped the bathroom floor and cleaned a little in the bathtub.  Then I told my husband we should go on a little date tomorrow and go eat somewhere.  I should never do that because every time I do I can never get out of bed the next day.  I hurt all night and couldn't sleep for a long, long time.  After I finally fell asleep I was out all day.

I woke up to an asthma attack around 7 pm.  That was fun.  <-- sarcasm  I can only assume it was set off by the bleach I used.  I really need to quit using that stuff.  

My husband was super sweet and made dinner.  He made potato soup in the crock pot and has Rhodes (frozen) bread rising.  If he didn't make something one of my boys would have.  Son #2 likes to cook things like pizza and spaghetti.  Son #1 often makes stir fry/fried rice or chicken fettuccine. I'm very blessed.  

I've been sitting here staring at my 55 gallon fish tank for a few minutes and trying to count my fish. Not long ago I bought about 16 or so new fish, including 6 male guppies. The prettiest one with the royal blue body and aqua tail was dead by morning but that was the only guppy I've removed.  Now there are only 2 swimming around but no floaters or sinkers.  I think Sid, the Bala shark, is getting hungry or something.  They said they should be fine in with him but since I'm not finding any dead guppies....  or parts of guppies...  hmmm  I need to turn the castle over but I hate to freak out Waldo the upside-down catfish and Raymond the super-skittish plecostomus.  I checked the water and things look good there.  I don't think I'll be buying any more guppies.  They were not intended to be feeder fish.  

The reason I ended up with a Bala shark is because I went into Petco (only place in town to get fish now besides Walmart) and they had some small ones.  My tank was almost empty since the ones I had were very old.  I asked about the Bala sharks (which were only about an inch long) and told them the size of my tank etc.  Well, she sold me 6 of them but didn't think it was important to tell me they could each get 10"!  My tank is not big enough for that but next morning a few were dead and I went back in to talk to them.  Turns out their tank had ich and a bunch at the store had died too.  I started to notice some white spots on a few of them and I treated the tank.  I ended up with only this one surviving out of the 6 and Sid still acts a little weird at times like it affected his widdle-bitty fish brain.  Sometimes he looks like he is chasing his tail going in tight circles.  He could be a circus fish! They told me to wait a certain amount of time (weeks) to let things normalize in the tank before getting more but insisted that I get at least 4 more so he can school.  When I finally went back in there there was a different girl and she looked at me like I was crazy.  She said they are like tinfoil barbs and get the same size (10 - 12").   So now I just have the one and he seems to doing okay. Since the other girl was obviously clueless I don't know if the weird spinning in circles thing is normal for that type of fish or not.  I *think* he seems to get agitated and swim around fast while kind of flipping side to side when he is hungry.  That is a guess but usually I put food in there and then he seems to settle down.  He eats a lot and seems to like blood worms the most.  I really like him so I'll keep him as long as I can.  If he starts eating or picking on my larger fishes I'll have to take him back for adopting out.  I'd be sad though.

Anyway, here are a few songs from Bones Season 3.

From Episode 5 - Young Men Dead by Black Angels 

I like the 70's psychedelic feel this group has.  If you like it and have some time you can keep listening.  This is a playlist with a TON of their music.

From Episode 7 - Bandstand in the Sky by Pete Yorn

 

It turns out that this song was written after the death of Jeff Buckley who drowned.  Very sad.

From Episode 8 - Sail Away by Madrugada

I just want to sail away

From it all

Freedom is impossible

This I know

From Episode 10 - a very fitting video called Bones by the Killers

My favorite part is at 3:10 - 3:12

From Episode 13- Fountain by Sara Lov

I hate to say it but I really find this song annoying.

 

Sleeping Beauty

I slept all day long after sleeping all night long.  I feel so cold and tired.  I'm going to take some vitamins and see if that helps.  I really hope I will feel better tomorrow.

This song is from Bones Season 3 Episode 5.   I like the song but I really don't like the guys voice.  I would love to hear it sung by someone else.  Sorry Adam Merrin.

Happy Post Halloween

I'm so glad that Halloween is finally over.  I used to enjoy handing out candy to the cute little monsters that come to my house but since I've been feeling bad most of the time I have come to dread it.  We mostly get the really young kiddos here, especially since I never put up really scary things, and by 9 pm everyone is usually heading home.  I had a migraine today and ended up staying in bed all day.  I didn't even look to see if I recognized any cute little kids.  We usually get a few that come to say hi to me.  Son #2 stayed out in the living room and tried to get to the door before anyone knocked or rang the doorbell because our beagle Blue goes ballistic and barks like mad.  She is old and barks at the slightest sound now and it really scares the little kiddos so Son #1 keeps her shut up in his room until after 9 pm.

Speaking of Blue the crazy mad beagle monster, I think it is pretty ironic that I'm just randomly started Bones from the beginning again and just happened to get to episode 5 of Season 3 on Halloween Night, and it is a Halloween episode.  This song was on that episode and I actually recognize it.  I think it was on a Halloween CD I bought for the boys when they were young and still cute.

Anyway, after a while I decided to get my butt up and make something for everyone to eat but I couldn't stand to walk on my feet.  I decided to try what the doctor suggested sort of...  she isn't very clear really and makes me feel like a kindergartner again back in school getting snarked at by the teachers who didn't want to bother paying attention.  This doctor is very snarky and I don't like her much.  I have to go in at regular intervals to get my meds refilled and I tell her how I've been doing (which is always bad) and she just blows it off as nothing.  She looks in all the holes in my head and listens to me breathe and writes down that I am stable or improving.  Anyway, I've been complaining about this pain in my feet for a long time.  She always just told me to walk more even though I told her it hurt to much to walk. Finally, the last time I saw her she said to get some tennis shoes with arch support.  My husband was there that time and told her I rarely go outside so I never really wear shoes. She had no reply so that was it. Well today I decided to pull out a pair of tennis shoes I used to wear and clean them up to wear inside only.  I put gel insoles with arch supports in them (which I robbed from my boots) and I've been wearing them for a few hours.  I made another quiche and it seems they do help.  I was able to make the whole thing and clean up without having to ask for help.  I am pretty excited that this is helping because I'm really tired of being stuck sitting down. Being able to be on my feet more will also allow me to get more exercise.  I'll start on that tomorrow.  For now, my dog is very happy to see me so I need to go spend some time with her.

Here is a song from Episode 1 of Bones Season 3

I like this song.  Now that I have these shoes that help my feet I want to get up and do things. I may not be able to "see the world" but being able to do anything makes me feel better.