I've Been Gone For a Good Reason

Yeah, things have been a little crazy. I continue to be amazed at the sheer volume of cleaning that this house requires. I mostly blame Ursa and her inability to keep any of her hair attached to her body. Chris brushed her over the weekend, and it looked like an entire family of bunnies had been slaughtered and left as fluff balls in the backyard. My theory is that come spring, we are going to have lots of happy little birdies making nests all over our yard out of her fur- and probably pooping on our cars : )

The real reason I have been busy is that I am participating in the Ravelympics, which is a knitting contest that takes place during the time of the Olympics: you pick a challenging project, and agree to knit it in between the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics. There are no real prizes, only the glory of accomplishment.

You may be surprised that I am not coming right out here and telling you all what it is I am knitting, but it is a surprise. If you want to know, just email me and I'll tell you, unless your name is Chris in which case you have been told you can't know what I am knitting and that you need to stay out of my craft office and should not be emailing me because it takes valuable time away from what I am knitting.

In other exciting news, I got a very nice new bike today for $45 at the Salvation Army. It needs a new tire and handle wraps and could probably use a new seat that is more, um, butt shaped, but overall it was a great value and I am looking forward to getting my money out of it.

Speaking of money, we had our first home owner disaster yesterday. I woke up early, tinkled, flushed, and noticed the flush didn't sound quite right. I went to let the dogs out and fill their dishes, and when I went to fill their water dishes, there was very little water pressure. I looked out the kitchen window, and saw a river of water flowing down the driveway. I thought maybe Chris had left the hose on, and went to go shut it off.

Then I realized it wasn't just the hose, it was the irrigation system for the sprinklers, and it was leaking like crazy. I went in and woke up Chris and we came out to discover it was on both sides of the driveway, and our front lawn became a ginormous swamp. Chris, being the big strong not afraid of gross things kinda guy he is, reached his hand into some awful kind of ick and shut off the main line for the irrigation system.

Fortunately, this just shut off the water to the irrigation not to the whole house. We will have to wait a few days for the "irrigation specialist" to get out to the house to do his thing, I just hope the yard doesn't die in the meantime. Oh well, I guess if it did, we could always just cover the brown grass with Ursa hair, right?

I probably won't be back until after the Olympics - and remember if you want to know whats on the needles, just email (unless you are Chris!).