Medusa!

Medusa stopped by the office today to do a little training development.

Oh wait, that was me!

Yes, I crocheted myself a Medusa hat. No pattern. The snakes have wire in them to make them poseable. The eyes are black beads and the tongues are red leaf-shaped beads. I used two different colorways of the new Debbie Mumm yarn from JoAnn's. While it worked fine for this project, I wouldn't recommend it at all. It's a wrapped yarn, and the base yarn is black, which doesn't work for these colors. Also, it has a tendency to bunch while you're working with it, which is a complete pain. And it doesn't feel all that nice worked up; in the skein, it's fine, but not when you're working with it or in the finished product. But, like I said, it worked just fine for this.

Amazingly enough, most people in my office got who I was right off (though several people called me "Medea" until I reminded them Medea was the one who killed her children). At the end of the day, I gave it to a coworker who had really admired it. She was thrilled and planned to scare children with it this evening.

Happy Halloween!

Another trip to the zoo

(I'm just going to stop apologizing for not blogging so much. We're just busy. I know you are, too, so you understand. :)

Now that we have our zoo membership, we don't feel bad for just quickly stopping by, seeing a few animals, and leaving when it starts to get busy.

We always stop at the petting zoo. I like goats, as you may remember. This time, the sheep were being more interesting. Out of the blue, one just head-butted a goat, then stood there and glared at another sheep for a minute before it went and laid down. Weird sheep.

Since it was early and cold, all the wolves were out, both the timber wolves and the Mexican wolves. This male Mexican wolf was listening to the keepers behind the scenes. Look like a Siberian husky, doesn't it?

We always stop at the penguins, too. We haven't seen them swimming for a while, but I don't think they like to get in the water first thing in the morning. The one on the right looked like it was going to go in, but it never did. And the one behind it didn't push it in as it waddled past. I was so very disappointed.

We also saw a peacock and his two peahens. I haven't seen or heard them at the zoo in a very long time. I wasn't even sure they had them anymore. But they were preening in the sun outside of the manatee house, being quiet and picturesque. They weren't very afraid of me and let me get pretty close to take pictures.

Last of the fall flowers

I cut the last of the fall flowers today. The dahlias (the yellow ones in the photo) finally have bloomed. Good thing it's been a hot fall.

The red ones are pumpkin peppers, an ornamental pepper. Jeff spotted them in a bouquet at Trader Joe's last year, and then we found seeds. They're red rather than orange, but still pretty.

I made a big dinner tonight, first in a long time. Roasted chicken for Jeff on the grill (which was easy - whole chickens were on sale), grilled potatoes, sauteed greens, salad, and portabello mushrooms with cheese for me. Cinnamon chocolate cake for dessert. Yum. We even ate it at the gateleg dining room table. With Pure Evil Chardonnay. A nice meal.

Another week, another post

It's been another one of those weeks where I've been very busy, but I couldn't possibly tell you what I was doing all that time.

Oh well. Today, at least, in addition to these apple cranberry walnut bran muffins, I've made inari, marinated tofu to make roasted tofu later tonight, packaged up last night's chipotle mac & cheese in individual frozen servings for future lunches, dropped off donations to the animal shelter, sold some books and DVDs to Half Price Books, got some new trousers and a pair of shoes, picked up dog food, and I'm still working on the laundry. And I still have to figure out what to make for dinner.

Oh, and I also signed up for a beginning knitting class at the Yarn Shop, and a couple classes at Wholly Craft. But those aren't until November.

Yeah, the whole week has pretty much been like that.

Two bean sweet potato chili

I threw this together this morning and let it cook all day in the slow cooker. It was really good - perfect for the first real fall day we've had - so I wanted to write it down before I forgot what I put in it.

Ingredients
1.5 cups cooked black beans
1.5 cups cooked cannelli beans
1 medium sweet potato, cut into 1/2 cubes
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 14.5 oz. cans diced tomatoes
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
3 Tbsp. chili powder

Directions
Combine all ingredients in slow cooker and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Serve with grated cheddar and/or sour cream.

Yum!

Best of intentions

I really did intend to post more often after my last post. But, well, life again.

Work really has been keeping my busy. I'm involved with two really big projects right now, both with pretty tight schedules, so that's keeping me busy during the day with little time for slacking off. In my "free" time, I'm doing a lot of stuff to make life go smoother, like cooking ahead and doing laundry.

Too keep things from getting boring, Kaylee decided it was a good time to get a C diff. infection, and Cordy is helping out by developing allergies. Both are doing much better once we figured out what was going on. :)

Jeff is fine. Also busy with work. But he's making progress on building a tiki bar for the spare room upstairs. He's even sensibly building it in sections so he can get it up the stairs.

The garden is starting to crap out, even though the temperature has been near ninety degrees several times in the last week, including today. This has been the hottest October since the 1960s, according to the news.

While trying to relax in the evenings, we've been watching TV (of the new shows, we like Chuck & Reaper; Moonlight's super-dumb). I've been crocheting. Also reading a little bit - I recommend The Devil You Know by Mike Carey.

We have grand plans for this fall, though how many of them will actually happen, I don't know. We're getting quotes on siding for the house, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen until spring at the earliest. We've found a mead recipe to try; it's just waiting for the weather to cool down and the pets to be healthy (we need to be able to exclude them from the kitchen - and the back door). The bathroom also needs a paint job to go with the new shower curtain and towels (blue instead of yellow).

Ach. Lots of stuff. Sorry for the radio silence. I'm trying to be better about it!