First to knit sweaters for two white teddy bears to give to my baby cousins Molly:

And Eamon:

(Eamon is not actually a teddy bear. I gave his bear to his parents after he’d gone to bed, so I didn’t get a photo of him WITH the bear…)

This was the perfect first project, because it didn’t require unknown sizing. I had the teddy bears in my possession so I could make sure the sweaters fit. Knitting sweaters for the babies themselves would not have been so easy.

For my next project I decided to try out my sizing abilities and make hats for Galen’s niece and nephew:

I took photos of the hats beforehand because I had no idea if they were the right size or if Mateo and Natalia would even like them. When I did give them to the kids, Mateo seemed pretty excited about his hat, but Natalia didn’t seem wild about the idea of someone forcing her to wear something on her head. I didn’t mind at all (nor did I blame her) – I was happy Mateo liked his and VERY pleased that both hats fit.

Anyway, last week when I was visiting them, Mateo wanted to play pirates. Which required his pirate hat:

“ARRRRGH!”

“Please stop taking pictures of me.”

Not only did it fit… it was useful!

I’ve got a few other projects in the works right now… I’ll probably post ‘em on here when they’re done.

I just planted these little clover seeds a couple weeks ago. They were looking awfully festive this morning.

“For each petal on the shamrock
This brings a wish your way-
Good health, good luck, and happiness
For today and every day.”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

I think there are three main reasons beer people (like myself) have a hard time drinking wine: quantity, thirst and bubbles.

1. Quantity

When I order a beer at a bar, I get a pint glass. A full one. For twice as much money, I could get a wine glass that’s about half full. When I take a drink of beer, I can take a big one, even two in a row, and it’s delicious. If I try to drink wine the same way (and, unfortunately, I have) it is not at all enjoyable. Which leads to my next point.

2. Thirst

Wine does not quench your thirst. Beer does. I realize beer dehydrates you, but it still quenches your thirst. I don’t like drinking water (which is a completely different rant), so if I’m going to order a drink, I’d like it to be one that actually does what a drink is supposed to do. If I order a glass of wine, I need an additional something to drink, which is even more expensive (but hopefully the second drink will come in a full glass).

3. Bubbles

Beer has bubbles and wine (with the exception of sparkling wine) does not.  Bubbles make everything better. Point: beer.

But recently I’ve been wishing I knew how to appreciate wine, so my friend Julia and I took a wine class yesterday. The class is called “Wine 101: Head First into Wine” and was taught at The Wine Cellar. We found out about it through Groupon and ended up getting a sweet deal.

There were about 16 people in the class, and at the beginning the instructor told us that he encouraged audience participation.  He had a basket full of wine corks.  Whenever someone in the class asked a legitimate, wine-related question, he would give them a cork.  At the end of the class, the person with the most corks got a $10 certificate for the wine shop.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but to Julia (my mild-mannered, incredibly sweet, gentle and somewhat shy friend) the gauntlet had been thrown.

While Julia asked lots of very good questions and collected her corks, I learned the following things, among others:

• what decanting wine does, and why you do it.  I also learned that only red wine is decanted.
• what tannens are.  And what to do (decant!) when a wine tastes too tannic.
• (thanks to one of Julia’s questions!) what “legs” are.  Also: our instructor told us that people who discuss the legs of wine are similar to people who use acronyms excessively – they just want to sound like they know what they’re talking about.  But in reality, the information is useless.
• if you open a bottle of wine and leave it open overnight, it’s like aging it 5 years.  If you leave it open another day, that’s like 10 years.  If you leave it open overnight a third time, it’s disgusting.
• wine was originally supposed to be consumed alongside food to enhance the taste.  However, Americans have begun drinking it like a cocktail, so much heavier, full-bodied wines have become popular.
• wine from a specific region tends to go very well with the food from that region.
• why 3-buck Chuck is so cheap.  Basically, if there was such thing as “Big Lots” in the wine industry, it’d be called Charles Shaw.
• many more interesting things that I can’t think of at the moment.

Also, I had wine I liked!  And it wasn’t too expensive, either!  He told us the prices of all the wines we tried and they were all relatively inexpensive.  At the end of the 90-minute class, Julia had 8 corks in front of her.  One of her questions was so good that a fellow student lobbied for her to get two corks for that question.  Needless to say, she won the competition and took home a great Tempranillo that we tasted for $2 out-of-pocket.  She graciously offered to share it with me.

So, wine may still not compare to beer in the areas of quantity, thirst and bubbles; but I have learned to enjoy it and learned enough about it that I won’t be totally embarrassed when Galen and I go wine tasting.  I kind of wish I could go back to France and tell my host parents that I’m not as much of an American idiot as they thought I was!

It’s kind of perfect timing, too… I could really use some extra juice in this here blog.

So, to get us going, here are some photos from my awesome Halloween weekend:

Galen the Lumberjack and Mego the Mechanic (yes, that patch does say “Mego”)

Evel Knievel and a Fat Nun

Zombie Doctor (what are pink scrubs for, anyway?)

Betty Draper from Mad Men

And…
The winners of the award for best costume (two years in a row):

Silver weather balloon

Silver weather balloon and Heene Residence Garage

Silver weather balloon… and Falcon Heene Hiding in the Garage!

It’s kinda like that.

My blog got hacked by some twerp who can’t spell and doesn’t seem to have any goals in his hacker life other than to annoy small-time bloggers like me by forcing us to take time out of our busy, meaningful lives to undo his sloppy work. Not that I’m bitter.

But I learned a lot about blogs and codes in the process, and somehow managed to salvage most everything about my old site. What do you think of the new design? I still need to find a good header, but I’m always interested in feedback.

So, the post I’ve been working on (read: thinking about writing) will be delayed for a few days, since I spent so much time figuring this stuff out instead of writing it. But, you know, it was an AFGO.

It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, although it’s quite clear that the content and depth of my posts suffered.  My dad and my brother, whose writing and speaking abilities I’ve always admired, have mentioned more than once how difficult it is to be a reporter or writer who is expected to churn out interesting articles on a regular basis.  I now understand completely.

Well, now I’ll go back to my usual sporadic posting style, but will hopefully feel prouder of the final products.  At this point I’m just glad I never resorted to just listing all of the things I’d eaten that day or something equally as ridiculous.

Happy December, everyone!  It’s been real.

Tomorrow, Alex, Talia, Amanda and Ben come into town, too. This is going to be the best weekend ever. It’s like all of the best parts of college without the tests or dorm food. If only I could skip class tomorrow without anyone noticing…