Another long weekend bites the dust

JS and I went bm dress shopping yesterday morning. We were going so that JS could check out colors and designers, not to buy a dress. JS is going to order everyone's together so that the dye lot's the same - and she's not even a stitcher, I am so impressed with her. Plus she's from Jersey, the land of no-sales-tax-on-clothing, so her mom will place the final order over there.

Bridesmaid dresses, or at least all the ones we've been looking at, are sleeveless about 98% of the time. At Orthodox weddings, which this is, people dress more modestly - sleeveless and low necklines (or low cut backs) are not done. Usually what ends up happening is the bride picks a fabric (and might even give it to the BMs) and the bms have a dress made in any style they like. It's more expensive than off-the-rack (about $200-$300) but they really don't make any bm dresses that are ready-to-wear modestly.

JS is very considerate and so she's trying to find a designer that has jackets or something so that we can buy off the rack. It's hard though, there isn't a large selection of jackets and a) they're often not completely represented on the designer's website and b) it's hard to tell how they will look when paired with a dress. So basically, JS and I went to check out the jacket situation for the designer she likes, Alfred Angelo, and some others.

We met up at Penn Station and walked over to RK Bridal on 39th St. They had probably 20 different designers, but we started with Alfred Angelo. Jill pulled the 2 jackets that she liked (the 3rd was very professional looking) and then we tried on like 30 dresses. We have different body types so JS tried on also so that we could see how different styles looked with the jackets. I had lots of fun trying on dresses, but in the end we were there for 3 hours trying on and a half hour poring through books, so it got a little tiring by the end.

We went out for pizza afterwards to catch up, and we were near enough to Times Square to catch some of the preparations for that night's party. We both went home afterwards, no block party for us.

My dad says we have a family tradition of going out for dinner together at 5pm on the 31st, so that's what we did. Over the course of dinner we started discussing cars, since the lease on my mom's car is up in the summer. My mom makes the final decision but we all drive the car, so my brothers always push something they'd want to drive and I advocate more eco-friendly models. Long story short, my middle brother and I have a deal that if I bicycle to work for 3 months to *prove my commitment to saving energy* or something, he'll switch his vote to an eco-friendly vehicle (that I approve of). It's 5.4 miles to work and the route is very hilly so I don't know if that's going to happen, but I'm going to try it out tomorrow.

I am allowed to take public transportation but must take the bike more often than the transport. So I'll probably bike to PW but take the public transport on days I work in NYC.

Today I biked to Michael's as a test run, since it's about 1/2way through my commute. Round trip (including shopping) was 90 minutes, so if you take out the 45 minutes I spent at Michael's I'll need about an hour to get to work. There are some very steep hills in both directions and the plan is to walk the bike most of the way up at first. I don't like sweating, and the point of this is ecological not exercisical. If after tomorrow's trial I decide to go for the whole 3 months, then I'll make plans to build stamina to tackle the hills.

This is a good segue into my Goals for 2008. Resolutions if you will.
1. Keep blogging every month. Try for multiple posts per week or once weekly at worst
2. Continue tracking all project starts, finishes and progress on my blog so I can keep finally count my yearly finishes. I know I have a bunch of finishes in 2007, but no idea how many, I have the worst memory ever :-(
3. Organize my stitching rotation system. Currently I have none.
4. Make a biscornu
5. An ecological resolution, something along the lines of starting to use Freecycle and riding my bicycle more frequently. We need a Velib in NYC!

I'm not feeling inspired about the resolutions so I'll come back to them later.

Last night I went to a small gathering at DP's house. It was Chavi's last night in NY so I wanted to see her, and that's where she was going. We watched Employee of the Month and since Chavi was crocheting a kipah (and the lights were gonna be on anyways), I brought along SB Wish. I'm hoping to finish it on 1/1 but we'll see.

This morning I woke up super early - 8:00 - to go to the Lazy Daisy sale. 30% off charts before 11am, so I got a bunch of stuff. There were a couple of JBW Country charts, some LHN and CCN, and I even found 2 awesome Mirabilia fairies, in case I should ever finish Ivy.

Next I went to pick up some books from a Freecycler that lives near my LNS. I signed up for my local Freecycle group because I have some books to get rid of myself, and now here I am with a net gain! Oh well, I'm going to read and then freecycle them back again so it will (hopefully) be a wash. And now that I've benefited from the system I have more internal nudging to participate myself :-D

This afternoon I met up with JF's recent ex for lunch. It was really good to see him and it wasn't awkward at all, they're both too nice to put their friends in the middle. I worked on Wish for a bit, then went to Michael's. Dinner was sushi with the family, then Coldstone for dessert. Now it's time to stitch a bit and go to sleep. I have a big ride in the morning.

Good night!

Mondays

I've got some good news, and some bad news. First the bad news, so that I get it out of my system and can dwell on the good stuff.

I recently reconnected with an "old" friend from when I lived in London, who is now living in Paris. Since I work with Paris, speak French, and am basically obsessed with all things french (despite disapproving of their social policies), it wasn't hard for her to convince me to visit. I'm trying to plan a trip over Thanksgiving but I hit a slight snag with $1400 dollar airfare... so I need to do some serious searching to find something more affordable. I need to start planning these things further in advance next time!

Okay! On the good stuff:
My new blogging friend Beatrice mentioned me on her blog, and linked over here. Plus she posted an update on this enormous dragon piece she's stitching... since I couldn't possibly stitch something so large myself, it's very fun to see how others are progressing on them. It's very inspiring. Thanks Beatrice!

My not-as-new friend JS is getting married in June, and she IMed me this morning to tell me about her upcoming engagement party. We started chatting about her shower (I've already got the perfect project picked out as a gift), and asked me to be a bridesmaid! I really like JS & her fiance, and it's my first time as a bridesmaid, so I'm totally psyched. I really can't post more about this yet, but you'll hear updates in future posts. Also, any advice on bridesmaiding would be much appreciated! JS is usually the one I ask about wedding etiquette.

Moving away from the good news/bad news thing...
A couple of years ago my mom used her best friend's son's upcoming marriage as an excuse to get in shape, gave herself 8 months to do it and accomplished her goals for fitness and weight in about 4 months. I'm thinking of using JS's wedding (and the fact that I'm in it) as the same kind of push towards dieting and getting more in shape. My mom hit the gym for like 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week, and I definitely wouldn't be able to do that! I figured out that I have 34 weeks, so if I set up a plan with more-reasonable weekly goals, it's totally doable. I'll have to get back to you all on what exactly those goals will be, but they involve yoga once a week, more bicycling, and less chocolate :(

This getting-in-better-shape plan is NOT shaping up the be one of the fun adventures. Moving away from such depressing thoughts as less chocolate!

I've given up on finding a nice, non-cliche'd Jewish-themed wedding sampler pattern for my cousin who got married a couple of weeks ago. So I think I'm designing my own. Going for the non-cliche thing, I'm going to use a line from the last and most *famous* of the 7 blessings from the Sheva Brachot (for a decent translation of the actual blessings try here) . It's going to be in Hebrew since that's clearly what they'd prefer (and we all speak/read Hebrew well), and then I'll stitch their names and the English & Hebrew dates of the wedding on it somewhere.

I'm still trying to come up with some good graphics to go along with the text. It's really hard since a lot of the *traditional* wedding iconography is innappropriate (crosses, churches, church bells) or doesn't apply. What is up with doves? And she's allergic to wheat, so there was no wedding cake. What am I supposed to do, stitch a broken plate, broken glass, and bottle of wine? I might just go with flowers. Or a chupah. I could do their chupah! It was really tastefully decorated with just the right amount of flowers, and we took more than enough photos (from the front row) for me to put something together. And then it's have flowers. Hmmm

Blog-therapy seems to be working for me today, so I'll leave you with this for now. Here's hoping we all accomplish some of our goals today!

Blechy Day

Today has been a very blechy day, mostly for three reasons. First, I got about 2.5 hours of sleep last night so I'm waaaay overtired, plus I don't feel so good (unrelated to the fatigue). Despite not sleeping much I got very little stitching done last night - curses to you Spider Solitaire! Second, my commute was, shall we say, less than ideal. When I finally dragged my butt to the train this morning I couldn't find any seat except in the middle of one of the 6-person seating arrangements on the LIRR - I was much too tired to stand for the whole ride. And since I'd definitely forget anythings I left in the overhead compartments, I sat with my knapsack and everything on my lap. Worst of all, it seemed like everyone on the train, including the people to my left and right, had colds or sniffles... so I hope I didn't catch anything!

The trifecta occured when I got to work and saw an email from my coworker... I'll spare you the details of the silly argument I had with my coworker, but I feel badly about it and it really tainted my whole day.

On to happier musings: things that will make my afternoon/evening wonderful, or just less blechy:

1) I am going to stop at a new shopping find, The City Quilter, on my way home to pick up some fabric so that I can *try* to finish some of my stitched pieces. I brought some of my individually-stitched BC monthly snappers to match fabric for *practice* finishing on.

2) I found the form to apply for an LIRR bike permit! So tonight on my way through Penn Station I'm gonna apply, and then maybe Thursday I can take the train to PW and then bike a mostly downhill route to work that also uses much less-trafficy. Getting home will suck though.

3) My evening bike ride

4) Sky!

5) Stitching and crocheting, of course.

And on that more-positive note, I'd better get going.

Kim