A Boxful of Books

Yesterday, the family cookbooks arrived from the publisher - just in time for our family reunion this coming weekend! Mom and I spent MONTHS typing and editing the recipes from my late grandmother's recipe box. The end result is lovely and well worth the effort.

The shipment came in 3 boxes, each weighing about 35 pounds. As I was carrying each individual box up the three flights of stairs to my apartment and struggling under the weight of them, I realized that this was approximately how much weight I have lost this year (33 pounds as of last week). What a shock!

Postscript: Thanks to my home teacher for carrying up the third and final box for me!

Steampunk-ish

I'm hosting a "steampunk" themed ATC swap on Paper Traders. This is one of the cards I made that didn't make the cut for my swap... so I'm going to put it in for the monthly winner-take-all lottery. The fan blades on this card rotate - kinda fun!

June Birdsong

These are the pages I made for Barbara's tip-in journal on Paper Traders. She wanted a monthly art quote and I had June so I tried to make a page that fit the season. It's simple but, in my opinion, very pretty and right along the lines of what she had asked for. The color in the scans is a bit off, though. I also made a sign in tag for her, shown below:

Plugged In

One of my truly awesome friends gave me an i-Pod Touch! I am so excited because I am a really big music person but the expense of an MP3 player just wasn't in my budget. Last night, about 10pm, I downloaded i-Tunes and, as a part of the install, it began to convert all of my WMA files to MP3 format... I let it run overnight and, this morning - about 8 hours later - it is still running and only slightly more than half way done! Needless to say, I had a LOT of music saved on my computer - and that is probably not even half of what I own as transferring from CDs has been a time-consuming effort. Boy, it will be worth it when I'm done, though. SO EXCITED!!!

One Day Down... Four More to Go!

Okay, so I really shouldn't be allowed to blog when I am half awake and feeling crabby =) I'll admit that this Monday wasn't really too bad, despite the headache that never quite went away. I'm home, in my jammies, watching sitcoms, and brainstorming on some art projects... it's all good!

Is it Monday already?

Getting up on any morning is always a challenge for me - I am a night person, not a morning person by any means. Mondays are especially challenging but today I am really dragging. I woke up with a terrible headache and my face is all puffy for some reason, especially around the eyes. I had to force myself to go to bed last night even though I wasn't really tired; it took forever for me to finally fall asleep, and then I tossed and turned most of the night.

I'm so tired of being tired all the time but there is no way I can go to sleep as early as I should to get the number of hours my body needs and still be able to wake up in time for work each day. Sigh! I guess I should have a job where I could work a swing shift... but then there'd never be time left in my day for anything other than work and sleep - what kind of life is that?

Okay... enough complaining, I'm crawling back in bed to steal another 10 minutes of rest and then I will have to get in the shower and get this day underway - ugh!

The Singles Conference

This weekend, I attended a church-sponsored Singles Conference up in the Denver area. When I first heard about the event, I wrote out a check for my pre-registration and mailed it in before I could talk myself out of going. I rarely attend the singles activities here because, well, I never meet anyone that I connect with... I'm not just talking about men, but women too. I feel so disconnected from the others - there aren't many people close to me in age and no one that I have found anything in common with (besides being single, of course). The really ironic thing about all this is that, in San Diego, I was the Stake Single Adult Representative for five years and was responsible for organizing the entire program, meetings, activities, newsletter, etc. As such, I understand the challenges with getting the support and attendance necessary to make everything a success.

So, anyway, I drove the hour-long trip up on Friday night to attend the temple with some other singles. Then, afterward, we met up with some other singles for board games and refreshments. On Saturday morning, I had to get up extra early to get ready in time to drive back up to Denver for the day. We had a short opening meeting (for which I was asked to give the invocation - opening prayer - on the spur of the moment), followed by several really good workshops, lunch, and then off to the temple again - this time to do service work on the grounds. Some of us did mulching, weeding, and planting; others, myself included, repainted some of the iron fencing around the perimeter of the grounds. I wasn't dressed for painting and, despite all cautions, managed to get it on both of my blouses AND the only pair of jeans I own that still fit decently. So, if anyone has a good idea for getting paint out of clothing, please let me know! After working at the temple, we were supposed to play lawn games but the rain had other ideas so we moved everything inside for more board games, followed by dinner, and a dance.

All in all, it was a fun yet busy weekend. I had an enjoyable time and met some nice people (but not my eternal companion). Apparently, I didn't drink enough water during the day and, especially after working outdoors, found myself quite tired and dehydrated this morning. I'm feeling better this evening but am not thrilled that the weekend is almost over and I have to go back to work in the morning. There's just never enough time, is there?