My Created Life

Hello, Gentle Reader!  Hope my hectic schedule of late hasn’t given you abandonment issues!  I’ve been thinking “Oh, I need to update my blog!” but it never seems to happen.

Things here are going well.  The Physics/Astronomy course is making my head spin, but it’s March break so my poor brain is getting a little breather.  There is more daylight now, which means I’m more awake, and once I get past the little blip called Daylight Saving Time (which always messes me up for about a week), I should be back to normal.  (Or as “normal” as I get!)

In other news, Hubby and I have a new baby!  Marvin Galileo McLean arrived on Tuesday, March 2, at 11:11 AM AST.  Weighing more than 100 pounds, he was delivered by UPS and All-Star Telescopes, and Hubby and I are SO psyched to take him out and see what we can see.   Hopefully the weather will cooperate, as this city is known for its fog!

Well, I have a lot on my agenda today, so I’d best get going.  Tomorrow is a milestone for me, so there are many preparations on my to-do list!

Talk soon!

Well, the bug is back.

I’m not an outdoors girl when it comes to winter, and in the month of January, I only found a whopping total of two caches.  Part of the problem is that my GPS (or, more accurately, the GPS that belongs to my husband but he never really sees it) has been acting a little wonky.  But Hubby figured out the problem and now it’s good to go.

So yesterday morning Hubby said he wanted to go somewhere to take some pictures and take Piper for a run, so I suggested Duck Cove (a location which also featured a number of caches I hadn’t yet found).

After popping my head in at a local geocaching event (and signing the logbook, of course), we headed to Duck Cove.  I logged an earthcache, found a cache that I didn’t know had been archived because it had gone missing), walked by a cache site because I didn’t have its coordinates with me and didn’t realize it was there, and missed finding another one.  I had a blast!  Even Hubby could hear the joy in my voice when he called my cell phone to see where I was.  “I’m halfway down a cliff!” I exclaimed.  “Where are you?”

After I got home from our adventures (both at Duck Cove and the grocery store), I called my brother-in-law, Calmen, to tell him what fun I’d had.  Well, as we chatted, our cell phones simultaneously went off!  A new cache had just been published! And so within minutes we were both in his truck and heading off to be First to Find!  (And we were!  Score!)

Oh, geocaching.  How I love thee.  There are times that I don’t cache as much, but when the bug bites, it holds on!

… It’s a blog post, at long last! 

I’m sitting in the study lounge at the university, earphones filling my brain with awesome 80s music (like, totally!), and I finally have a chance to let you know what I’ve been up to.

Work is going well, and I’ve begun to get lots of hours, which it starting to help my financial situation.  When you’re used to making a certain amount of money and then all of a sudden you aren’t — for months at a time — well, let’s just say that I’m feeling relieved these days that things seem to be heading back to normal.

My astronomy class is going well.  That’s not to say that it’s easy, because it isn’t.  There’s math galore, but the reason I took this course was because I wanted to begin to understand the hows and whys of space, and that’s what this course is giving me.  Unfortunately I’m learning more and more that it’s numbers and equations that make the world go ’round!  But I can’t complain — I’m enjoying it (once I get the hang of what I’m doing).

A little more than a week ago, Jessica Doyle wrote a blog piece called “Draw Anything But Flowers.” She said that she tends to “go floral” when she’s drawing.  Well, since I have a tendency to do the same thing, I thought I’d issue myself the same challenge — to draw anything BUT flowers.  So as a way to wind down the last few nights, I’ve been doodling — Zentangle-style — in a little sketchbook.  And not drawing flowers was hard!  But I’m pretty pleased with the overall effect.  Not sure what I’m going to do with it once I scan it (this is just a photo from my camera), but I have a feeling some mandalas are in my future.

Anyway — time to head home.  There’s a hockey game tonight and I have a lot to do between now and class tomorrow morning.

Have a good one!

First of all, I’m okay.  You don’t need to worry.  I’ve just got a lot of stuff going on (some good, some not so good, but nothing life-threatening) and it’s taking up a lot of time.  Add in the fact that it’s the dead of winter and that my nap quota has increased dramatically, and you get the picture.

I hope to post something “real” in the next day or two.  In the meantime, be well!  I hope your little corner of the world is  a bright, happy place!

Forty-five days ’til Spring!

Remember that papier mache box I gessoed a while back?

Well, it sat on my desk for the longest time while I decided what to do with it.  Finally I decided it would be the home of my Toonie Project.

A little explanation is necessary for the non-Canadian readers:  First of all, the Canadian one-dollar coin features a picture of a native bird called a loon.  Over time, the coin was given the nickname of “loonie.”  Well, when the two-dollar coin came out, there was much speculation on what sort of name it would be given (it features a polar bear, in case you’re curious).  Eventually it became known as a “toonie”, which is short for “two loonies.”  (Yeah, I know — it sounds like we’re all “loonie” up here.)

Anyway, around the dawn of 2010 I decided that I wanted to make a rule for myself this year.  I would not spend my toonies.  Instead, I would put them in a sealed container that I could not just randomly dip into, and then when I thought I’d amassed a nice little amount, I would take the toonies and go buy rughooking supplies with them.

So I was sitting at my desk looking at the little papier mache box with its rough white surface just begging to be decorated and all at once I knew its destiny.  I asked Hubby to cut a coin slot in the lid (because he had a sharp knife handy and I didn’t), and then I covered it in purple Lumiere paint.  (I love the unexpected coppery sheen when the light hits it just right.)  I was pleased with how it was coming along, but after I’d glued it shut, I decided it needed a little something more.  So I put some aqua Lumiere on a dictionary page and then took a folk heart paper punch and made some cute little shapes.  A few coats of Diamond Glaze, and TA DA!  A Toonie Project Box!

Yikes!  I’m at the university and it’s nearly time to pack up and go to class.  Catch you later!

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I solved the Mars problem the night before last.  Triumphant, I walked into class yesterday to show my professor the bottom line.  “It certainly looks like the right answer,” he said with a grin.

And it did — until he started going through the problem on the board.  His solution looked nothing like mine and, to further compound my distress, I couldn’t follow a thing he was doing.

In my years of teaching, I’ve come across a number of students who have difficulty in processing language, particularly in reading.  Well, I’ve long suspected I have a similar “wiring issue” in my brain that makes manipulation of numbers difficult for me.  It’s like things in my brain start going in circles and I can’t grab ahold of any of it.  It turns into a swirling mess in my mind and I simply can’t think.  Everything shuts off.

So I left class yesterday confused and worried.  My end numbers were off, but only by a little bit, which could be a rounding error somewhere along the way.  But why did my solution look nothing like the professor’s?  And why couldn’t I follow what he did?

Well, I just paid my professor a visit and we went through my solution, and I realized, watching the expression on his face as he looked at what I’d done, that we were speaking two different languages.  He speaks the language of symbols (which I couldn’t follow yesterday), and I use words (which bogged him down in his search for symbols).

So my Mars problem solution was right, in the end, and after talking with my professor today, yesterday’s class (and its symbols) are more clear.

My agenda for the weekend involves many things, but not physics problems!  I think maybe I’ll give that part of my brain a chance to rest!  Instead, I’ll  curl up with a good book.  A few weeks ago, I picked up Buzz Aldrin’s memoirs, Magnificent Desolation.  While waiting for the astronomy professor, I began reading it, and, as of page 5, I’m already hooked.  In every interview I’ve seen, Buzz has always struck me as humble and grateful, and someone I would genuinely like in real life, so I’m really looking forward to learning more about him.

From where I’m sitting, in a gallery/hallway at the university’s science building, the sky looks very full, as if it’s about to do something.  Perhaps I should go home before it starts.  No point in getting wet if I don’t have to, right?

… and back-dating this post, but no.  My post-every-day streak has been broken.

Blame Mars.

After class yesterday (and learning that some of my classmates had solved the puzzle), I hunkered down with my books and spent hours trying to figure it out.  I finally came home feeling utterly defeated, for which the only cure is playing God (The Sims 2) for several hours.

Part of this is me being stubborn.  But part of it is also fear.  Inside of me, a little voice is speaking up, saying, “You’ve never been able to do math.  What if you’ve bitten off more than you can chew?”  And so I’m desperate to drown her out.

The worst part is, the moment I’m told how to do it, it’s going to be one of those forehead-slapping “DUH!” moments.  I can feel it in my bones.  And then I’m really going to feel dumb.

How appropriate that I’m doing battle with a planet named after the god of war.

And three to a new episode of Grey’s Anatomy!

After working all weekend, today was kind of a reflective day.  I started some laundry (which is still in progress), took a nap, did some schoolwork, did some financial stuff, listened to Michael Bublé and made an ATC.

In other news, I put a few new rughooking items in my Zazzle shop.

The next six weeks are the hardest for me.  That’s why that countdown in my sidebar is so important.  As long as that number keeps going down, I know I’m getting closer to the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) lifting.  That’s the bright side (pardon the pun) of this — I can literally circle a date on the calendar and say, “That’s when I’ll be better.”

But for now I have to remember to open the blinds, sit in front of the window, and not spend all of my free time sleeping.  Lack of sunlight makes me sleep, which in turn blocks me from getting more sunlight.  If I don’t stop and think of what I’m doing, then I spiral downward until I hibernate like a bear!

(And Hubby says I snore like one, too! )

It still needs to be pressed, blocked and have the edges/back done, but I finished hooking the mug rug this afternoon, right before heading out to work.

The plaids around the outside edge and inside the heart are recycled wool shirts and the golden colour and the darker blue are hand-dyed wool (by someone other than me).  I had originally planned to hook the outer plaid all the way in to the yellow, but it was really thready and driving me bonkers.  It’s a shame, because I really liked the way it looked hooked up, but I’ll save the rest of it for something else.

I have a few things in mind regarding my next large hooking project, but first I want to try a little experiment using a punch needle.  I haven’t tried doing very much punch-needle work, but I’d like to get better at it so I can make some miniature rugs.

The reason I’m so excited about the astronomy course is not simply because I’ve been interested in space my entire life, but because I want to understand it — or at least as much as I can without doing a Ph D in astrophysics.

I like to think, and I like to analyze, and I like to put the pieces together.  (Except when it comes to solving geocache puzzles.  That’s an entirely different kettle of fish!  )

On Thursday, Astro-Prof started us on a little puzzle involving Mars and Earth, and figuring out how to mathematically prove something.  Well, I’m sure half the class has just gone to Google and figured it out by now, but I’m not going there.  I want to figure it out on my own — and I’ve been thinking about it on the average of every 90 minutes since class ended on Thursday.  I’m so close — I know I am — but there’s just one little part that hasn’t clicked yet.

Toddling off to ponder a bit more …