Crafting - My Star Trek Quiet Book

This Christmas I decided to get crafty with Bob's Christmas gift. I am a quasi crafty person, basically when I like something I decide to try it. So when I saw this I couldn't resist but to try to make it. I took some short cuts, got the help of friends, cursed a ton, but finished it. And here it is in all it's glory; My Star Trek Quiet Book

And this ladies and gentleman, was probably the last crafting project I'm going to do for a while. It took a lot out of me.

Yuppies

We've done a lot of adult things over the past couple of years, bought a house, embarked on crazy renovations, spent Saturday afternoons at the Home Depot and Lowe's, caned food, joined a farm share and the list goes on. We've adapted to our Ann Arbor lifestyle quite well; vegan diet, geothermal heating/cooling, not shaving often, again the farm share, composting, recycling, general crunchy granola earthy type stuff.

We've been talking about replacing the old Cavalac, Rosie, for a long time now and have spent hours on the web searching for the right car. If it were up to me, I'd get an old school station wagon with wood paneling. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of station wagon's, or as the young kids like to call them, sports wagons, or just wagons out there. Cars that call themselves station wagons, are actually SUV's. I've always wanted a Subaru Outback, but the new models are way too big (SUV) sluggish and I just wasn't really impressed. I had two major requirements for a new car, 1) all three dogs can fit in the trunk 2) all wheel drive 3) a manual transmission. I quickly gave up on the all wheel drive because all I got was large SUV's (even the midsize ones are too big for me). In the end we narrowed our choices to two, the Mazda 5 and the car we bought.  So we traded in this:

Communists Make Better Lovers

The front side

 

 

For this:

Ladies and gentleman, we bought a Prius V. A hybrid station wagon. As if all the Ann Arbor things I mentioned about us wasn't enough, we now have hybrid to add to the list.  We test drove it on a whim, not really expecting anything out of it. In fact, I doubted it would be big enough. But the Toyota people were really nice and let us test drive the car with three dogs. Yes, all three dogs jumped into the brand new Prius, and the good news? They fit!! All of them.  So why not?

It was hardest to give up the manual transmission, however, the car has been pretty awesome.

Our first real ride in the car was a road trip to Canada. We pulled onto the freeway, listening to NPR, with a soy cappuccino in the cup holder and I thought, "Yup. We are total Ann Arbor Yuppies now."

Good bye 2011

Cold weather

We're only in November and we've already had some snow. This is Scamp's opinion of the snow:

Yes ladies and gentleman, that is the U of M snuggie

A Splash of Orange

As many of you know, orange is my favorite color, which is why I decided to paint a room that color. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was really bright. So we decided to darken it up a shade, and with some curtains, I think it looks much better, don't you?

 

We've also added a new canvas photo over our bed, courtesy of my BFF over at Rearview Photography.

I'd say we're done with orange accents, but I think we're just beginning...

The Lawn Parts 3, 4, 5......and so on

It's been quiet on the blog front. You guys are aching for an update. What could possibly be going on at the Pitt? Well there's been a whole lot of nothing over the summer months. You may be sick about us posting about the lawn, and we're sick of writing about the lawn, but nevertheless, this is the news at the Pitt. We've been struggling with grass growth. We've had an unusually hot summer that makes growing grass nearly impossible and growing a weed field very dooable.

Apparently, September is the best time of year to grow grass so we are doing some patchwork. The pictures below are of us continuing to struggle with the lawn. September might be the best growing month, but it's still womp womp for us.

From a distance the lawn looks nice and green!

Up close, it's filled with a bunch of brown spots.

"Reluctantly crouched at the starting line..."

"...Engines pumping and thumping in time.
The green light flashes, the flags goes up,
Churning and burning, they yern for the cup."

I'm taking the hiatus from a home related posts to write about the triathlon I trained for and competed in today. I signed up a mini sprint triathlon in February, called the Tri Goddess Tri. A friend, who has completed Iron Man Competitions (yes plural), was key in encouraging me to sign up. This is a woman's only event where 50% of the woman were doing their first triathlons. So I paid the fee and started training. 

We drove out this morning at 5:15 am. I picked up my number, my chip, baby blue swim cap and stared amazed at the course.  From the beach to the transition area (where the bikes are) was about a 200 - 300 yard dash up hill on pavement. I picked my transition place and set up my bike, laid out my towel, shoes and number. I opted to wear tri pants, my sports bra and a tank top for the event. Some wore wet suits, but they weren't necessary. I went down to the water and waited for my wave to start. All I kept thinking is, buoys to the right and turtle to my left (my swim course) and of course, breathe.  

My wave started and we were off. There was so many arms hitting me, people swimming on their backs not going in a straight line, water getting splashed all up in my face. Needless to say, I wasn't as prepared for the swimming as I could have been. Really the best way to be prepared is to swim with a large crowd of people. With the arms flying left and right I kept my head mostly above water looking around to make sure I wasn't running into anyone. I came out of the water in 14 minutes (my best time for the swimming a quarter mile) and dashed (walked) to my transition area. I threw on my shoes, got on my bike and headed out to bike the 10.7 miles. This part was 'easy.' Biking takes me back to being a kid and riding around the neighborhood. However, when I was a kid I don't remember my ass hurting quite so much. Finally, after the biking came the dreaded run. It was only a mile and half run, but it felt like a lifetime. I also failed to prepare for a trail run (didn't read the directions carefully enough), so I tripped once, but I made it. I ran through the finish line, teared up a bit, hugged Adrienne and it was done. I had completed a triathlon in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Sure, it was a mini sprint, but, I finished and I didn't die. It was quite a rush to finish, and I feel like I accomplished something. I would definitely do this again next year and will recommend it for other first timers. 

Oh yeah - neither Bob nor I remembered to take the camera, so no pics until the official photo's come out.