5 years today!

It's my 5-year blogger anniversary today. 

And I think it's about time for an update.

I really like this image -- it goes nicely with the Louisa May Alcott quotation; it's a self-portrait (I like the silhouette); and it's one of my favourite and inspiring places to be. With that said, I think it's time for a change.

I've been considering trying come up with a "brand" for a little while now. I would love to have "InspiredByHope" cards for geocaching, as I've noticed some geocachers do. And thought perhaps I could come up with something here....If only I had Photoshop at home!

Hiatus

Well, life has been busy and the blog has been put on the back-burner for a bit. I keep thinking of things to post, but never really get around to it. And that's just fine; I refuse to feel guilty for my absences. Afterall, blogging is not an obligation.


So, here I am, on my vacation, sitting in a diner, eating pie and sipping ice water, overlooking the river and considering what to write first. It's slightly ironic that I'm using my vacation time to try and catch-up with blogging, considering I'm without internet access at the cottage.

It's been fun finding free WiFi in the area. Last night's spot, on a picnic table overlooking Digby Gut was by far the best yet.

Long overdue

Where did March go? My goodness, this year is going fast! I can't believe it's been well over a month since I posted. Sorry folks, I'll try to do better in April.

In a nutshell, here's what I've been up to...

At the beginning of March, a bunch of us celebrated a friend's birthday by going on a hike at Polly's Cove. It's a beautiful spot, with fantastic views of the Atlantic, of Peggy's Cove, and of the rugged, rocky coastline. It also happened to be a perfect day! It was the first sunny and warm (10 C) day all winter, and even the cool ocean breezes were warmed by the sun. We hiked for about 2.5 hours, but made many stops along the way to sit or lay on the rocks, listening to the crashing waves and soaking up a little Vitamin D. Be forewarned: This is going to be one of my favourite spots to take visitors from now on!

You should be able to click on these images to see larger images.

Then, during March Break, I had a visitor! A teacher friend from Toronto came to visit, and guess what we did? Yup. We hiked Polly's Cove (See!...I warned you!). We also ate lobster, shopped at 4 Frenchy's (Sackville, Dartmouth, Coldbrook and Berwick), and drove to the Look Off at Blomidon.

This picture was created using Canon PhotoStitch. I'm thoroughly impressed!
Um. I mean I took this photo painstakingly without the aid of any software at all.
Yeah, that's it.

Also during March Break, my "Little" and I got together. Actually, we get together every week, but this particular week we had a couple special things planned - dinner at Boston Pizza + a movie on one evening, and then a decadent breakfast of homemade crepes with all the fixings including fruit, chocolate sauce and whipped cream on Saturday morning!
We also (finally!) mailed Flat Stanley to his first destination - Winnipeg! From there he'll be going on vacation with a friend of mine to Morocco! Hopefully he stays safe. I'm considering starting a blog to follow his adventures...but should probably clear this with my Little's mom first.

March is also birthday month in my family. Aunt S., a couple cousins, my step-father (G.), and my nephew all have birthdays in March. I didn't get to all of them, but I was there for the two-for-one birthday celebration for G. and the nephew! Usually I ask permission before I post photos, but I'm on a tight schedule today and don't have time. Will have to ask post-posting. In the meantime, enjoy this photo of the birthday boys!

Also, this month I tried a couple new recipes. Remember my obsession with kale? Well! I tried another recipe, Oven-Roasted Kale, and it was even better than the first! Even my 8 y/o Little would agree. So basically what I've determined is that garlic + a little oil + kale (cooked in almost any form) = delicious! I wish I had pictures, but the kale doesn't last long enough for photos!

And the second recipe is my new favourite. I was able to replicate one of my favourite Thai dishes - Thai Eggplant Basil. I found the Thai Basil at Tian Phat Asian Grocery as well as the Japanese eggplant (though these can be bought at any grocery store most times of the year), and the rest of the ingredients I already had. Here is the recipe I used Thai Fried Eggplant with Basil. It's super easy, though one thing I discovered....it's best to have all the ingredients ready before starting. I ended up over-cooking it a bit in the end because I was busy chopping peppers. Oh! And I made a substitution - rather than the serrano chilis, I used a tbsp of Thai chili sauce instead, and the heat was just perfect (for me, anyway!).

Okay that's all from me, I have to go get on with my day. Will be more faithful posting in April, I promise!

An anniversary of sorts...

Today is the 2nd Anniversary for my blog. Two years! It's hard to believe! I hope to continue on and blog a bit more regularly in the weeks/months to come. I've had a few things up my sleeve these last few weeks that I'm really excited about and will divulge details in the near future.

I'm also back to knitting though I seem to have taken an unintentional hiatus in August. I shall post photos of the finished Chevron, the latest Baby Sweater and the unfinished Elephant sometime this week or weekend. I'm now working on my first pair of honeycomb mittens. The cuffs seem to be going well, but I'm a little fearful about screwing up the pattern. I've not had much success with dpns (though I haven't really tried very hard either!). Aunt S.: You can count on a call if I get stuck!

That's my little update for now. I will post something more interesting later.

(B)logging a complaint

About Halifax.InfoMonkey.net, and here's why:

Edward of InfoMonkey, commented on my last blog entry to let me know that he posted my blog entry on his website. Now, I can't really stop this. My blog is publicly available, it's not password protected and until now, I've not really made any attempt to indicate that the contents of my blog are my own (more on this later).

What really got my knickers in a knot, was that, according to his website, the blog entry was "submitted by Inspired By Hope" (that's me!). See for your self - look at the right of the screenshot. See it?! I'd like to make it known that I did NOT submit that entry. In fact what he did was basically lift the entry straight from my blog right into his website, without any form of permission, just a notice that this is what he did. The guy contacted me before (here) when he was trying to get InfoMonkey started - and I must admit, I didn't respond because I'm not interested in publicizing my blog. He also indicated that in order to submit a blog entry to his website you have to be logged into InfoMonkey. I haven't logged in, nor will I.

But here again, I can't really stop the sharing of my blog unless I password protect it (which at this point I'm not interested in doing). And nor do I really want to discourage the sharing - afterall, I follow several blogs with great interest, and hope this same is true with mine. But this is a relatively anonymous online journal-type of a blog. I'm not really interested increasing my site stats, or by getting more traffic. I post when I want about what I want and if anyone is interested - good! So feel free to link to my blog or share it or get RSS feeds, all that I ask is that you don't misrepresent me!

I have to give Edward credit though - I did ask for my blog entry to be removed and it was, almost immediately. Thanks Ed!

So in response, I've been checking out the Creative Commons. You can license your work through the CC to indicate what exactly people can do (or can't do) with your blog. Check out my front page to see the license I chose, and if you have a blog, consider getting your own.

Welcome to the World!

So it's been ages since I've posted, and because I'm sans laptop at home, I've decided to break my #1 blogging rule. I'm blogging from work (granted on my lunch break, but still...).

But I have a very good reason to break the rule - afterall, one does not become an Aunt everyday, y'know!

(Permission to post granted by the new Mom)

As you can see, my nephew made his grand entrance into this world. He arrived on March 26th, and weighs about 9lbs 12 oz. He's absolutely adorable!

I should also report that I was able to complete the baby sweater in plenty of time before his birth! It took me just under a month of not-so-steady knitting to get it done. It turned out to be a easier-than-it-looks pattern and came together quickly. Here is the finished product:

Finished and ready to be wrapped:

Wrapped! Martha Stewart would be proud. I wrapped the gift in a light blue receiving blanket, tied with a white ribbon. Very baby-boy-appropriate!
That's all for now. As I said, I'm sans laptop for a little while until the darned thing is fixed. You won't see many posts from me in the meantime, but keep checking back, because I WILL RETURN!

Giving up!

For better or for worse, my not-so-faithful Toshiba laptop has finally actually given up. Many of my long-suffering friends put up with my whining for a good year over my tempermental laptop which would frequently overheat and shut off without warning. It was a pain, and a frustration, but I endured because I really couldn't do without the convenience of internet, my computer files, etc. at home.

And then, miraculously, my computer problems were solved over the summer! Little did I know that the reason my laptop was overheating was because it was dusty. Apparently, Toshiba expects it's customers to buy cans of compressed air and dust their laptops regularly. Though this may seem obvious to some, I had an IBM Thinkpad for 5 years without once having to dust it. So, needing to perform regular maintenance on a MUCH newer generation of laptops just seemed ludicrious to me. Of course, what also seems ludicrious is the design flaw which should've been a red flag when I was purchasing the laptop in the first place -- the fan of the laptop is on the bottom....so if you actually have your laptop in your lap, the fan is blocked and the computer overheats. Makes sense right?? Stupid Toshiba!

Anyway, just recently my laptop has been exhibiting a different problem. It's been tempermental about accepting the power adapter. This means if I move my laptop slightly the power source will shift from the adapter to the battery (which has a 10 minute lifespan), and no matter how many times I try to replug the adapter, the computer won't recognize that it's plugged in. Fortunately, if I hold my nose just right, and twist the adapter just-so, the power will be connected and I have a functioning laptop until this happens again.

Needless to say, this can't last. I've got to send in my laptop for repair. So, while the computer is working, I've been transferring files to my external harddrive, trying to figure out way to backup my emails and other data (because there's always the possibility of losing information when they're working on the computer), and generally trying to clean up my personal information so I'm not putting myself in a vulnerable spot.

This latest issue with my laptop has probably occurred at the best time - during Lent. I had toyed with the idea of giving up the internet altogether, but to be honest, I use it for such handy things - checking the highway conditions, recipes, knitting help, more recipes, store hours, flyers, etc. - that it just didn't seem practical to give up the interenet entirely. Which is why I focussed on the big time-waster like facebook (and Ravelry). But, I think the timing of my laptop's temporary demise is challenging me to take it one-step further. Live without the convenience of the internet for awhile.

So be it.

I'm giving myself the weekend to clean up everything and transfer what I need/don't want others to access etc. And will take the laptop in for repair on Monday. Thankfully, it's still under the extended warranty I purchased with the laptop so I don't have to worry about the cost; and I'm pretty sure the problem isn't so significant that I'm looking at a huge time-delay. Futureshop assures me that it should take about 10-14 business days to ship it to Toronto, fix it, and ship it back.

In the meantime, there won't be much blogging in the days to come, unless I break my policy of no-blogging from work. We'll see. If I have something significant to share, I may.

Another weekend, another storm

Halifax got it's first snow of the season yesterday. It started around 2pm with flurries, and by 6 pm the snow was coming down fairly heavy and blowing. We even had a short thunder & lightning show. I'm not sure exactly how much snow fell, but it was enough to cover my car and make the parking lot slushy.

It was a perfect night to stay in and knit. And so I did. I've been working on knitting squares for a baby blanket for someone in my family. The idea being that I would knit a bunch of squares, stitch them together and crochet the edges for a finished look. If I don't have enough yarn with the 6 balls of blue and pink Bernat denim, I'll pick up a ball of white and knit one large square for the centre which I could also embroider if there was time. All this without a pattern (because I hate following instructions). I've since realised the folly of my ways. This blanket is far more time-consuming and labour-intensive than it needed to be. I could've just knit a baby blanket on circular needles in a stockinette stitch and been done with it by now. Ah well. Live and learn. I'm about halfway done my squares so there's no point in turning back now.

It's also worthy to mention that this is post #100. Who would've thought I'd be so dedicated to keep this blog going for longer than a year.

Comments

I've been told that people are having trouble leaving comments. I'm not entirely sure why. According to my settings anyone should be able to leave a comment whether your a registered user of blogspot, or an anonymous reader. Anyway, I reset my comment settings so hopefully it's working again. Send me an email if it isn't.

Back in business

Due to computer problems, I've been out of commission as a blogger for a little while. My laptop seems to be up and running again (I'll be putting through a true test by attempting to burn something and watch a dvd at the same time later tonight).

It's good to be back though, and I hope to be posting more in the next couple days about my latest acquisition.

Alarmed

...Twice in one night...

So the good thing about having wireless in my ground floor apt. is that when fire alarms go off in my building, I'm able to take my laptop, pick up a signal, and blog outside in the damp cold morning air while we wait for the "okay" from the firemen.

The alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, waking me and Millie out of the dead of sleep. Naturally Millie dodges for the deepest darkest corner under the bed, so it's a struggle to reach her, and naturally I'm incredibly grumpy, particularly since this is the second time this has happenend in the last 12 hours and it's for no reason at all except that the connections in the panel are damp (so my landlady says).
I've been in this building for nearly 5 years now, and this is the first time I've ever heard the firealarm go off. I'm a little glad to know that it does actually work because, I'll admit, I did have my doubts. It's also good to know that the fire engines show up fairly quickly - though I suppose they ought to with the station being so close on Yorkville! 9 firemen arrived at our building, though only 6 actually left the trucks to check things out.
I have to tell you, too, the firealarm is piercing! Poor little Millie's ears. I mean it's nice having an alarm that will get me up immediately out of the dead of sleep (very little could!), but does have to be SO loud. Betty informed me it was 80 decibels, but I think it was louder - 80 decibels is normal city traffic sounds, this was much louder than that - so loud my ears hurt, and are still ringing half an hour later. And right by my front door is the loudest. I really should have ear protection! And who knows what kind of damage it's doing to Millie's ears. Certainly it must hurt.

Oh yeah, and the other thing about waking up to an alarm...being evacuated in your pajamas. The idea is to get out as fast as possible, I know. And by the time I get Millie from out of the deep recesses under my bed, I've already wasted a lot of time. The fact is, if this had been a real fire, and the building was actually burning, I might have been left with only the clothes I was wearing - and those would've been my lobster pajamas.

Okay, so we've got the "all clear" - now what do I do, it's 6am and my alarm clock has now gone off. Do I try to grab a few more moments of sleep? Or do I take a shower and get ready for the day? Oh the dilemmas!

Let's hope the alarm doesn't go off again during the day....

My very first post

I decided to join the masses and keep my own blog.

I find it fascinating when I read entries my blogging friends have written...even the mundane posts. I'll be the first to admit my life isn't terribly eventful; I don't seek out adventure, and I'm not eloquent, but I still think have a few things to share.

Deciding on an address and title was tricky, but I quite like "Inspired by Hope and Surprised by Joy". Inspired by Hope comes from 1 Thessalonians 1:3, and Surprised by Joy is the title of a book by C.S. Lewis (a favourite author of mine).