December

I know, it's still a little early to talk about December BUT - we have lots going on!!! My son turns 21 on December 1st!! Woo hoooo - that means I am officially DONE being a parent, right? No? A few more years? Well, ok.......................sheesh. :)

My mom turns 65 on December 4th! So, she is very excited to have Medicare start helping her with some bills!

On December 20th Wayne and I are embarking on a trip to Tampa for a few days. The trip has sort of morphed from our original plans, for the better! My son and his girlfriend have decided to join us so I am REALLY excited about this (even though my son will no longer be our official designated driver by that point). AND we decided to take the first two days of our trip to go hang out at Universal Studios in Orlando. I have been to the one in California, but I haven't been to the one in Orlando - so - what do we have to see while we are there???

I have heard that the new Harry Potter exhibit is pretty cool so I guess we will be in line early Tuesday morning for that one! What else is a must see?

On another note - did you see that Prince William and Kate Middleton have announced their wedding date? April 29th!! That's mine and Wayne's anniversary! Excellent choice! :) I told Wayne we have to move to England now because April 29th has been deemed a national holiday!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

So, what's everyone doing for Thanksgiving? We had our family Thanksgiving dinner last Sunday. We went to my aunt's house and I didn't take a single picture! We had a great time though. Today, we are working with Feed Fannin to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the elderly, homeless, poor, lonely, whoever wants to come, in our community. We have a huge dinner planned at the high school cafeteria! This is the first year that Feed Fannin has done this so I'm sure we will have lots to learn from this experience!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!!!! Don't forget to take a few minutes to give thanks for all of the wonderful things that you have in your life and spread a little love around to others who might need it!

Here's a couple of pictures of Nessie lounging on Slim for your holiday enjoyment!

Debacle!

Did anyone hear about the huge debacle on 575 near Canton last Thursday afternoon? The highway was completely shut down for more than an hour! We arrived right after the accident happened and JUST as the emergency workers shut down the highway. The bad news is that we were sitting on 575 for more than an hour and the good news is that we were right up front so we at least had something interesting to watch. Another plus was that when they finally did open the highway, we were the first ones through. I imagine that it took the people that were like 15 miles back HOURS to get through all of that traffic. Luckily (and amazingly) no one was hurt.

There were actually several more pluses - If we had left the house like 10 minutes earlier, we could have been the ones involved in the accident. If we had left the house 10 minutes later we would have been stuck much further back wondering what was going on. Also, Wayne and I were together. Even though we were driving separately, I was right behind him so we ended up stuck there together. That would have kinda sucked if one of us had sailed on through only to keep calling the other to see if they were through yet! We did have Nessie and Petey in the car but they were pretty patient all things considered.

When we first stopped I turned off the car and walked up to the accident scene, told them I was a nurse practitioner and offered assistance. Since the EMTs were standing around doing absolutely nothing, I was fairly certain that my assistance was not needed. So, Wayne and I just hung out on the highway and wandered around talking to people. At least the weather was nice!

Another plus was that, like a good blogger, I had my camera! Here's a few shots from the excitement.

This is what it looked like in front of us.




This is what it looked like behind us.



Here are Petey and Nessie patiently awaiting getting home.



Here is Wayne enjoying the sights on 575.

Spay story

Nessie got spayed on Friday, which reminds me of a funny story. When I worked in veterinary medicine, we used to have this AWESOME cat that came in regularly for boarding named Tinke Zaglin. Everyone loved Tinke! One day, Tinke came in for boarding and a nice receptionist checked them in and wrote up everything they wanted done before they came back to pick up Tinke. The receptionist wrote "Spay before leaving".

Everything was fine until it came time to spay Tinke. Tinke was on the OR table and the DVM opened up the incision. For the life of her she could NOT find the uterus so they determined that Tinke must have already been spayed. Well, the one thing they forgot to check was the sex of Tinke before they started. Oh yes...................Tinke was a BOY! So, even without all of my medical training, I'm pretty sure I would have known that they were not likely to find a uterus in there.

So, of course, we had to call the owner and let her know that actually, Tinke was a boy and that he did not need to be spayed and that actually he was even already neutered! Great news! Well, the owner didn't really think that was great news.......................she KNEW that Tinke was a boy and she KNEW that he had already been neutered!

The doc then began asking questions about why she had wanted Tinke spayed before leaving then? Well, actually what the very nice Mrs. Zaglin wanted was for Tinke to be SPRAYED for fleas before leaving. Yeah............ooooops.......................

Luckily, Mrs. Zaglin was the very understanding type and Tinke got to continue coming back to be boarded with us - which was great because we all loved him. From then on, he became known as Tinke "Spray not Spay" Zaglin. There was no charge for the surgery.

Speaking of getting spayed - Nessie IS a girl and she DID get spayed! Poor little peanut gave the clinic a run for their money too. I told them that they would be best served to sedate her before trying to hit a vein on her for anesthesia. That little wild thing does NOT like to be restrained. They willingly complied and they gave her a pre-med, injected her with sedation and then had to repeat the sedation injection again in order to get her intubated. She's a tough little cookie I tell ya! About an hour after surgery she was back to hissing at the staff and making them generally not want to deal with her. I can't say I blame them. She's kind of a pill!

Here she is sacked out on the couch after her big day.



The other cats were generally avoiding her by all piling up on the other couch with Wayne. Quite frankly, I think they were glad to be rid of her for the day and be able to avoid her frequent attacks!

Dragons and Witches - oh my!

We have been getting great response for our 2011 Club Dragon Witch!! Thank you to everyone who has already signed up! I am really excited about the club next year and I am excited that we are not doing all sock patterns! I think that just makes it more fun because not only is the yarn a surprise but the pattern is a surprise too!

Also, we have gotten some really great designers again this year so I am excited about that too! Go check out the website because we have updated it with our latest conquests (er, I mean designers) that have agreed to join us for the club!

We have a few new yarn colors that should be at Only Ewe and Cotton Too next week so if you are a shopper there, be sure and check them out!

Progress

I have been plugging away that the Christmas sweater! I have the back, front and one sleeve done and I have started on the second sleeve. My favorite knitting direction of all time that always makes me laugh is "Sleeves (make two)". Well, I am willing to be that you would figure that one out BUT it's always good to be prepared! After the second sleeve it's just seaming and putting on the collar! I know that sounds easy but we all know how long it takes to seam a sweater! UGH.......







Man, the colors are sucking on my camera lately! I need to have my husband check the settings.....

Monday Cuteness

I know, you have all been missing pictures of sweet little Nessie, right? Well, she isn't so little anymore and she definitely isn't sweet unless she is REALLY tired. I'm tellin' ya, this girl is a terrorist!!! She is into EVERYTHING and I swear she never runs out of energy. She is the craziest kitten I have ever seen and she can do some pretty amazing acrobatics. We'll have to see if we can get those filmed somehow.

She loves her big brother and Atlanta Apartment companion, Petey! Oh, and my lovely laptop cord!



Here she is next to Petey's bear.

Here she is balancing on Wayne's boot (did I tell you guys the doc put him in a boot for his Achilles tendon injury???)



That little bugger is getting spayed on Friday. I'm hoping that will slow her down for a day at least.

I keep meaning to get some pictures of the apartment and I keep forgetting! Maybe next time we are down there I can remember.

Things are really gearing up around here for the holidays! We have a Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's house in Rome (GA) on Sunday that we are looking forward to. Then on Thanksgiving day we'll be working here serving and great, free dinner for our community at the High School! It should be a good time!

For Christmas, we are off to Florida for a week since that is the only time that I have a break from all 3 universities that I am involved with - so we are definitely looking forward to that!! I have only spent one Christmas away from home and that was a LONG time ago and it was pretty much a terrible trip that I can entertain you all with someday. So, this will be kind of weird but we'll have a good time. I think my son and his girlfriend are going to go with us so that will make it extra fun! BTW - my son turns 21 in like 2 weeks!!!!! Where does the time go.........?

SHEEP!

I bet you thought we bought some sheep, eh? Uhhhhhhhh............................no. I think we have enough furred and feathered friends around here.

Of course, no visit to SAFF would be complete without SHEEP, right?? Jen, Regan, Grace and I took a walk out to visit the sheep. I learned a lot about the different breeds of sheep! We saw lots of Shetland.



Look at the cute little faces on these guys! They were so cute and sweet!



These are some Tunis Sheep. Regan bought a Tunis fleece. I love their faces, aren't they cute!



I can't remember what these guys are - Cormo maybe???


My Christmas sweater is coming right along. I am about 1/2 done with the first sleeve so not TOO much further. It might actually get done before Christmas - woo hoo! I REALLY want to make a Central Park Hoodie (this has been on my list for forever) so I am going to think about dyeing up some yarn for that. I'm sure that won't get started before Christmas though!

Club Dragon Witch

This is just a quick post to let everyone know that the Club Dragon Witch sign-ups are now LIVE!! You can go www.clubdragonwitch.com for all of the details.

We decided to expand a little this year and open it up to more than just socks! We will be doing different kinds of one skein projects this year so that we aren't limited to just socks. We are all swimming in sock yarn anyway, right?

I have gotten a lot of inquiries about the club for next year. Last year it filled up pretty fast. The sign-ups will be open until December 15th or until we are full. We did open up 25 more spots this year so I hope there will be plenty of room for everyone who wants to join. The first shipment will go out in February 2011. Knit Witch will NOT be doing any separate clubs this year.

Kate and I hope to see many of you there!!

Finally!

There are new bowls on the website! I know, that was a long time coming. Luckily, we had some to put up there. Wayne is working on more but it will be a few weeks. The latest update is to get you all started for the holiday season! Also, there is new yarn at Only Ewe and Cotton Too that we dropped off yesterday.

We are off to the orthopedist this morning. Wayne's Achilles tendon is still bothering him so we are going to go get it checked out this morning. We'll see what they say. This is not a good thing for Mr. Active. He does NOT like being injured and it tends to make him a bit grumpy. I can't really say that I blame him though - I would probably be the same way.

BTW - did you know that Morticia Addams was a knitter?? There was an Addams Family marathon on last night and I caught a few minutes of one of the episodes. That just so happened to be the few minutes that she was knitting! Now, if that does not make knitting cool then I just don't know what does.

Happy November everyone! What did you dress as for Halloween yesterday??