nevermind ...

wore my newly finished Sahara out last night to dinner and to see Transformers (oh my gosh, it was great. I would recommend it to most anyone.) and after wearing it for a couple hours, decided that I'm going to pull out the lace inset and re-do it. I didn't pick up the stitches evenly around the edges and one side is more bunched up than the other side. Probably no one would notice, but it bugged me enough to want to rip and start over, which I never do. so, I guess I'm not quite done yet ...

preoccupied with food

spent some more lunch-time knit-time working on mom's shawl and trying to distract myself from the delicious turkey, cheddar, pickle, spinach and mustard on wheat in the fridge until 2pm - three hours before running, which as I discovered in high school track is the perfect amount of time to span between turkey sandwich and running. but my stomach was hungry and kept reminding me of the great new book I bought last night when Wes and I stopped at B&N before date night - a whole book of risotto! I am very anxious to try some of the new recipes, but until then, click on this little picture to get my current favorite risotto recipe. It is adapted from Giada DeLaurentiis' Dirty Risotto from her book Giada's Family Dinners, but I made a couple of alterations to Giada's recipe - I call mine "Contradictory" because I put real meat (Italian bacon - pancetta) and fake meat (Morningstar Farms breakfast links) in it. Also, I have made this lots of times with different price ranges of white wine (from two buck chuck and up ...), but the best by far is Hangtime Chardonnay. It comes from San Luis Obispo and we've gotten it at restaurants here in Ventura, but also bought it at some of the bigger liquor stores. It is a delicious addition to the risotto flavor and also tastes great to drink with the finished dish!
p.s. all this food talk - i definitely didn't make it until 2pm. I came in from lunch 20 minutes early and stopped by the fridge on my way back to my desk.
p.p.s. who picked that movie last night? umm, I think I did. but I don't recommend it.

shawl overload

worked my butt off on the shawl last week ... Wednesday after work while I waited for Wes to meet me for Date Night (no sense in going all the way home first), Thursday and Friday lunches, then all Friday night while we watched the Angels at the Dodgers ... but glad I got a lot done then, because the rest of the weekend was busy! Saturday night we headed down to the Staples Center to see Keith Urban rock the house. I think every time I see him (this was my fourth!) it gets better ... break for history lesson: in Keith's video for "Days Go By," the concert at the end of the video was at the Ventura County Fair three summers ago (2004) and that was the first time I saw Keith Urban live. The other two times were last December (2005), Wes and I went on a Tuesday night at the Gibson Amphitheater, then Lissa, Courtney and I flew to Vegas that weekend to catch him at Mandalay Bay. End of history lesson.
No more knitting on Sunday, we went out to Casitas with Matt and Casey for some frisbee golf, then passed out from the heat. Last night I cooked fish for dinner (Parmesan crusted with Citrus/Spinach salad on the side, soooo delicious) and I didn't want the fish smell to rub off on the yarn. I need to get one of those magic smell erasers from Crate & Barrel, I think.
Don't know how much night-time knitting I'll get done this week. We're having a little party on Saturday night and we need to do some work around the apartment before I let people inside. I'm thinking of making another run to BB's on Saturday after running with Tia, so that means I need to get all the housework done during the week. But I'm heading out for lunch-time knitting now and I'll have plenty of time for knitting while Wes is on ridealongs next weekend ...

happy candy-hearts day!

it's a good thing Valentine's Day finally came, Wes and I have already eaten through eight mini-boxes and a bag of candy hearts in the past few weeks and I don't think my waistline can take it anymore! I don't know what it is about those hearts, I just can't get enough. Even when my head is pounding from sugar and my tongue is stained an unrecognizable shade of magenta, I keep eating them! I like the green, orange and yellow ones the best. yum yum. and for the record, I only like the Necco brand hearts and no, I do not eat Necco Wafers during the other 11 months of the year to take the edge off.
no knitting last night, I was busy making a cake decorated with candy hearts! (what is my problem?!?) I wanted to crush up the candy hearts and sprinkle the bits in between the two layers of cake, but someone (who shall remain nameless, but I know now that I should have found a hiding spot for my last box of mini-hearts that was not up high ...) ate the box I was using all my willpower not to eat myself. anyway, it's Valentine's day ... check out Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's blog today, she has a great perspective on love, it is very refreshing as I come down from my sugar high!
p.s. Wes and I were featured in a Valentine's Day section on the CLU website too ... so cute it makes me want to barf a little bit. Tonight for we are going to see The Departed at the cheap theater. very anti-Valentine's. I love it.

"Invincible" Sweater

so I got out to see Lois on Tuesday and she helped get me back on track for the sweater. I didn't have too much time to knit that night since Tia and I had speed drills planned, then had to cook dinner and do other housewife-y stuff at home but I got in a couple of rows while we were watching baseball. Yesterday I didn't knit at all because it was date night! Wes and I went to see Invincible. I was mostly just going because Wes wanted to see it and there wasn't a whole lot of other choices at the cheap theater, but I really really liked it. I pay a lot more attention now to how women support their men in situations such as what was presented in the movie and I thought both female leads were really strong and fun, too. The head coach's wife seemed to be where a lot of his strength came from and the main female character, played by Elizabeth Banks, was pretty sassy and knew her sports trivia! Anyway, the story and even the football were entertaining too. Definitely better than what we sat through on Friday. So, have to run after work tonight, but then should have time to knit some more since the Dodgers will be on! Maybe they can actually score this time if they send two guys home on a outfield double. dang!