sarahmichelef

 ... don't know for sure what I'm going to do with this yet.

I happened to go into JoAnn's today and found that for this weekend only (today through Sunday) they have pretty much all Simplicity patterns on sale 5 for $5.  Yeah, buy five, pay about $7 less than you would for a single pattern.  I got 2677 for TRex's birthday dress, 3859 just 'cause, 2550 because I love the cross-bodice short sleeve version (any of my PR junkie friends have any idea what design this is based on?), 4273 because it's a CUTE suit (and yes, I'm crazy enough to think that I could make a suit), and 9900 because there ain't a thing wrong with a nightshirt & pajama pants.

Also: cranberry slightly sparkly tulle for her ruffle skirt, the pair of pinking shears I've been meaning to buy for years. and the notions for S's birthday dress.

Didy ou miss me? Did you even notice that I was mostly offline for two weeks?

Yeah, didn't think so.

The last weed in July TRex and I were in Maine with my maternal family as well as samueljl , relentlesstoil , and MC. Having them there was awesome, because then instead of just me and the kid we had our own little mini-commune. 3:2 is an awesome parent-to-four-year-old ratio. We didn't get to pull the "Big Love" joke on any meddling old ladies, though.
( pictures )

We were home for 36 hours or so and then drove for approximately ten gajillion hours down to the Midatlantic so Grandma could pick up TRex and the two of us could stay in DE with Josh & Jacy and help out with three-week-old Cora. Which was also fun, and we got more sleep than I had expected. Oh, and I got an awesome dress for the wedding we're going to over Labor day weekend!
( cutecutecute )

M gets so persnickety in my eternal search for the perfect bag, which he doesn't realize is situational.  HOWEVER!  I have found something that is pretty darn close, for most day to day stuff.  It is the EMS Brighton shoulder bag. I got one (in black) at the outlets in New Hampshire (I blame relentlesstoil  and sammybaby  for encouraging me) and I'm loving it so far.  Lots of nooks and crannies, a lined electronics pocket, a zip-away water bottle pocket and on and on and on.  Easily goes over the shoulder or cross-body.  Big enough for books and stuff but not so big as to be cumbersome.

We saw Half Blood Prince last night. It was really good. Really, really good. I still think Prisoner of Azkaban was better, but this was up there. Excellent performances from Jim Broadbent (Slughorn), Daniel Radcliffe (do I need to tell you who he plays?), Tom Felton (Draco), and Alan Rickman (Snape). Oh, and Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix), too, of course. Going through the movie you know they have edited it, but you don't feel like things are horribly missing. I had some issues with some of the changes they made, though, which I will detail below the cut for those who don't want to be spoiled for them. Also plot spoilers, but I figure everybody reading this has read the book already.

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None of this took away from my overall enjoyment of the movie, though.

Has anyone had any success getting their cell provider to block specific numbers from sending text messages?  M gets frequent txtspam, always from the same 5-digit number.   He has activated all possible blocking options and Verizon (shockingly) told him that they cannot block 5-digit numbers.  Their solution was for him to text the people back and request that they stop spamming him.

Yeah, like that's gonna work. He did it so that when the spammers strike again he can go to Verizon and say, "Really, that plan worked a treat, great idea boys. Now fix it."

Mostly for baronessmartha, from sprirtwolf and childsplay7 and me with love.
( simon's cat )

I have a lot of stuff to do in the next 4 weeks.

I have insomnia.

Insomnia -> doing some of that stuff.

Knowing people all over the globe means there is often someone you know posting something on the interwebs for you to read.

But now I'm going back to bed. 

It's been about 5 months since I started using the Autofocus Task/Time management system - I'm pretty sure I posted a link to it back in February.  I'm still totally loving it.  I've gone through a couple of permutations of how I keep my list - work and personal all mixed up, on facing pages, one on each end of the book.  Now I'm back to the barest-bones implementation of the system - everything all mixed up in one book.  I don't even keep track of dates except the date I started and closed pages, and I could probably ditch those too.

I won't say that I'm a million times more productive than I used to be using this system, or that I stick to it faithfully all the time.  It works at its best when you have a lot of unscheduled time and can make your own decisions about what to do when - in other words, pretty much my entire life.  There were definitely times in the last month when I was operating on near-crisis mode (summer school will do that to you) that I hardly used it at all.

Two common "criticisms" are that it doesn't handle projects very well, or items with urgent deadlines.  In fact, it handles projects perfectly well and very flexibly.  On the pictured pages, there are multiple entries for "LJ/FB paper".  I need to work on that paper, and I have a list of related tasks either in my head or written down elsewhere.  (In my case, stuff like that goes into Journler.)  Urgent items... well, it depends on your definition of "urgent".  I put things on the list as soon as I know they need to be done (unless it's something with a way-far-out deadline like the paper I want to write for next year's ASA conference, whose deadline will be somewhere around 1/5/10) and have not had a thing slip through the cracks.  Items with longer-range deadlines, or things that are time dependent go in a calendar with popup reminders; those reminders are not to do the item right then and there but rather to put them in my AF list so they can enter my consciousness.

The notebook, in case anyone is wondering, is a Picadilly medium notebook.  Do not love - I've been using it since Feb.; it's already held together by duck tape on the outside and packing tape on the inside and it's only 1/3 full.  Shell out the $$ for a real Moleskine if you're going to drag a notebook everywhere with you.

I've had a recipe for "Southwestern Shrimp Stir-Fry" knocking around in my binder for ages. Finally decided to make it a couple of weeks ago. This is another one that the whole family loved & that is quite scalable. Also: extra quick (not counting time peeling & marinating shrimp: 15 minutes).

The recipe as written calls for 1.5 lbs shrimp, which fed us for 1 dinner with a generous helping of leftovers for me to take for lunch the next day.
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We had it with couscous and it was quite tasty. You could change up what veggies go in the stir fry for variety.