And thus and so...

So, week one of the diet is complete.  I lost five pounds which I am happy with for a first week result.  Below is a picture of the meal I actually get to chew each day:

That's eight ounces of protein (chicken in this case) and 2 cups of vegetables.  I also get two cups of vegetables for lunch along with whatever packet I've snagged before I left the house in the morning.  I'm having to look up more ways to cook vegetables or think of new ones to try because I don't want to get bored over the potential months I will be doing this.  I just don't want to buy a new vegetable, hate it, and then have to eat it because, you know, I spent money on the thing :P.

Also had to do all the medical stuff I couldn't do at my first appointment because there was someone else with me and HIPPA frowns on trading medical details like bubblegum cards :).  The last thing I had to do that day was...get measured (gasp!  oh, the horror!).  I still am proportional (47-42-49) but would like those measurements to go down just a wee bit.  Ah well, if this gets my pancreas to (a) stop giving me the middle finger and (b) start giving up insulin instead of hoarding it like it's preparing for a bomb shelter for World War Z, that will be worth it.  Plus, the need to no longer stab myself in the stomach every day with needles would be pretty awesome, too.

I am knitting, knitting, knitting.  I finished the first cable hat and sent it to my favorite girl-child-who-is-not-one-of-my-granddaughters, Beanie:

She was very happy with it per Mom.  What is on her shoulders is the shirt I also sent her:  Bambi (she's allllll into Disney right now).

I also started work on this dress (model picture):

I am about a third of the way through the back skirt portion of the dress and feeling rather ambitious since this is the first piece of clothing I am making so I'm learning about decreasing stitches for clothes as well as how to sew together the pieces (when I get there).

The linen stitch scarf got put to the side for the moment because I wanted to get the hat finished (check), get started on the dress (check) since I have hopes of finishing it in time for Christmas, and I am pretty close to getting this scarf done:

I've got about eight more sets of the thin stripes to complete and then around 100 more rows of solid block knitting using the gray color first and then the white (or I may use one of the blues again, who knows?).  BTW, please excuse the crappy picture - it was taken on my desk at work.

Still kind of writing off and on.  It's a relaxing thing like knitting.  I've been working on an SGA/Chuck crossover for a while and I have various scenes written but I think I need to start trying to stitch them together and really nail down my timeline between the shows.  There is some difference and if I go one way, I need to use the Legacy series SGA books as canon and the last one won't be out until November.  Not a problem one way since (a) I write at a glacial pace these days and (b) this will probably never see the light of day to an archive or anything like that.  But I can see another way I want to go and I'm not sure I can get the timelines to mesh as well as I would like.  Oh well, at least I'm writing!  Now if that SGA/X-Files plot bunny would leave me alone...(I'm skeered of Chris Carter's ever fraying grasp on his own series canon.  That's a migraine waiting to happen!).

BTW, if anyone has a good idea for a topic I can write about for Public Finance Administration, sing out!  I have my Public Policy topic but Finance eludes me.

Favorite wrong word usage of the day: Once bitten, twice shy

I was reading a story where the Marines in said story were described as "handbitten".  Um, no.  The Marines would be "hardbitten".  Otherwise, you have someone going around biting the hands of the USMC's finest and that's just...weird.

I mean, really.  Raise your right hand, take your oath, and then stick your hand out in front of you.  Don't mind the little guy coming around.  He never breaks the skin...

I haz(d) a plan!

I write on occasion. Nothing much and now mostly just stories for friends using characters from old gaming sessions or jumping off from crackfic we wrote years ago. A scene or a snippet of conversation will pop in my head and I'll play around with it for *mumble*years*mumble* until I have something I think is worth sharing, and then I'll send it to that person for their birthday or whatever. Because I write at the pace of a glacier melting during the ice age, I try never to promise anything by a particular date. Bad writing karma.

Well...



I had this story I was working on for a dear friend. Known her for years, gamed with her, wrote with her through thick and thin. We haven't written together for a long time but we still haz friendship :). Anyway, I'm actually going along very well on a story I'd been thinking about for a long time - a kind of "what if we really were bastards and did kill Kenny?" kind of thing. *rubs hands together*

I start working on it and I'm about 25 pages in when my brain suddenly decides to hijack the proceedings with one wee little thought: "Hey, self. Did you ever wonder how Person X got from Point A to Point B?"

Me: "Well, yes. But I'm over here with Person Y right now."
Brain: "OK. That's fine. You stay over there but I'm going to go jaunt over this way now."

Where does that leave me? 3,845 words (and growing) about a whole 'nother character on a completely unrelated topic!

My friend. She sucks. And it's all her fault.

But I love her anyway.