Winter/Christmas

Dear god it is here again....winter. All my Facebook friends are probably well sick of my hate of snow by now. I must have some form of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Snow is pretty and all, but I enjoy it much more in pictures than in reality. So lets see...I don't really have any desire to live in Florida, southern California wouldn't be too bad though I'm not sure about earthquakes and wild fires but am sure about beaches and sun, Hawaii would be a dream but I would feel so isolated it would be hard to always want to come back and visit. Where I REALLY want to live is in New York City. Sure there is still cold and snow but I wouldn't need a car so I wouldn't have to drive in the snow. What New York City has going for it is cultural diversity and just all the offerings and activities of a big city. I had always considered myself a half city/half country girl. After living in Cedarburg for four years I realize I am probably 80 to 90% city and 10 to 20% country. The country part of me likes to drive country roads and go camping. Outside of that I really really want to be in the city. I am just not really able to justify the funds to move back to downtown Milwaukee or for that matter New York City. I think I should make a definite goal to visit New York since I have never been there to see what I think of it in person and the reality of living there. Not just be a tourist.

Christmas doesn't depress me so much (whereas winter really depresses me). The most exciting thing this winter will be my parents new greyhound dog, though he may not be there before Christmas (we can always hope). I am not a dog person by any means, but since my parents started researching greyhounds and I have learned more about them, they sound like really great dogs!!! Here is the link to their new dog.

I hope that by no later than this Friday or Saturday to get all my Christmas stuff out. Hopefully sooner. I'm not doing so good at being productive this weekend. I better get with it. :-)

The holidays

Well turkey day was interesting this year. It had been a couple of years since I cooked the turkey so I looked up cooking times to refresh my memory. I found a web site that said to cook at 325 degrees for 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 hours. WRONG!!! About 2 hours after that the turkey was ready. Rather than wait 2 more hours to eat we all decided we like turkey for leftovers better anyways and ate everything else. So a kind of turkeyless thanksgiving. I thought it was fun. I like all the other stuff (especially stuffing) better anyways. Then we watched A Christmas Story. My sister had to work during the day and nieces at night. So after my twin nieces went to work my sister came over and had dinner. By then the turkey was done so she did have some. She got most of the turkey leftovers and I got most of the stuffing leftovers. I thought it was a very good day. I don't have a picture of the turkey because of the issues we had. Here are a couple of other pictures:





Some more pictures of a morning commute. Try not to get too bored with my obsession. ;-)




This weekend will be going for a walk with my mom and then making my holiday CDs. Hopefully I will have them in the mail some time this week.

The night sky 11-16-09

I just want to post a couple of pictures I took tonight of the really cool sky.
See all the pictures here:
http://s147.photobucket.com/albums/r310/myklia/blog%20pics/night%20sky%2011-16-09/



You can barely see the star in the upper left hand corner:



Keep in mind that the only camera I have right now is my cell phone camera. I try to do what I can.

Weekend Novemer 14 and 15 2009

I had a pretty good weekend. I started off Saturday with a great haircut and then I went to a friend's house. We knew each other in high school and every so often in the last 5 years or so(?)we have run into each other, but never too much more than "hi, how are you" because I think it was usually crowded situations. They didn't lend themselves to really sitting and talking. I found her on Facebook and we have reconnected. I went to her house to pick up one carder and hung out for a while with her and her two children and had breakfast and great conversation. It was really wonderful.

After that I had ummm...girl business, but then after that I went to Zine Fest in the Riverwest neighborhood. Zines are like little homemade magazines. A lot of creativity and range of subjects. Really fantastic!!! I then went to Whole Foods and did some shopping there (I am not often in that part of town, so it is a treat for me). After that I went to Trader Joe's because they were selling pre-brined fresh turkeys. I picked one up for Thanksgiving. Should be good.

Yesterday I went to a bio poetics class about how science can influence poetry. It was really fun and we even had a biology student who also likes poetry attend the class so she had a different perspective to offer. I found out I am a syllable counting geek. I have always liked haiku's, but now have fallen in love with Fibonacci poems. There was much else discussed too.

Onto a couple of pictures. My haircut:

Zines I got at Zine Fest:


A Fabonacci is supposed to start with a zero, so a sigh will serve as my zero. Here is my poem:

*sigh*

I

One

Alone

Wanting you

You not wanting me

But I want to make you happy

You don't know me but I want you to give me a chance

You don't know that I am peace, calm, happiness, laughter, creative, hard working, and love

You are sunshine in a smile, beautiful eyes gleaming, great energy to light the world, a loving soul, warm as a summer day, I want you

************************************************************

Ok, I better go, still much to do before I leave work this morning.

Fantastic Friday Morning Commute

I worked 2 hours late last night because I knew I was going to have over 300 bills today, which is a lot and it required that much prep time to make today go smoothly. When I woke up I knew I was well prepared for the day so I woke up and went to work stress free and felt fantastic. I first stopped at my favorite bagel shop to get my favorite bagel sandwich which I always get to go. When I was driving to work there was such a beautiful sunrise and great music coming on in my shuffle.

Anyone who knows me knows I love taking pictures of my commute which is mostly country roads. I was stopped when I took these pictures. Some are a little blurry, but that is because my cell phone camera likes to do that, not because I was speeding by. Sometimes I like that effect even though I wasn't trying for it. Onto the pictures:

On Wasaukee Rd just south of Mequon Rd:


Wasaukee Rd and Donges Bay Rd:


Wasaukee Rd and Brown Deer Rd:


Park Place Rd just off of Bradley Rd:


At my parking spot at work:


And finally, my favorite bagel sandwich:


Now some of the music I was listening to:
The The "Uncertain Smile"


So it seems like I can only get "One Minute" by The Album Leaf as background music to something else and why not the surfer guy. I LOVE watching surfers and I love the sun sand and beach and track is a great background to this clip.


Of course my girl Bek-Jean Stewart, here as lead singer of Eva Trout, these days she is skinny sporting blond hair and is drummer for a band called The Leisure Suit which contains band members of Eva Trout. They all seem to be a close bunch. I really just love Bek-Jean Stewart. All her music, Eva Trout and her solo music, has so much heart. There are the pop songs, but there is some very deep stuff as well. Anyways, LOVE this song:


This song didn't come up in my shuffle, but should have. It was hard to find a decent version with an embed code, but this isn't too bad, performed live by Aimee Mann. "Coming Up Close" by Til Tuesday:


One other picture taken over a week ago that I like:


Hopefully more pictures by Sunday night, I have a great busy weekend ahead.

Fiber Fest!!!

My friend Nicole has my number alright!!! Such amazing gorgeous yarn!!!! Nice and sparkly. Also some soap to try out as I am looking for good soaps to shower with (though the UNSCENTED Dove is working good, but the SCENTED Dove made me near sick). I would eventually like all vegan handmade unscented soap (unless it is a nice natural lavender scent). Anyways, onto fiber goodness to make yarn with. Yay!!!

The group shot:


Individual shots:





Whenever I get around to spinning them I'll post pictures. Will be a while yet.

I never mentioned that I have also entered the realm of dying roving:


I will be spinning up some of this one this week:


Yay!!!

A fantastic walk

Well the plan was to stay at home and do nothing but knit all day, but then I noticed it was getting over 60 degrees and it was sunny out. I HAD to go for a walk. First I opened almost every window in my apartment. mmmm....Fresh air. I went to Garrison's Glen in Ozaukee County on Pioneer Road about 1/2 mile west of Hwy 43. It is pretty much a prairie with some trees around the edge and a few trees on the inside. It looks deceptively small, but it isn't huge either. Really cool meandering trails, almost like a maze. I highly recommend going, it is quite pleasant. All the pictures are here.

Onto the pictures:





I think this milkweed would make great yarn. I should look up to see if it has been done. (yay, someone has done it.)

An Amazing Commute

I really had the most amazing commute tonight!!! A fiery sunset, country roads, and fantastic music!!!! Oh wow!!! So I couldn't really get a picture of the fiery sky because I was driving and a car was riding my tail, so I couldn't slow down or stop a second to get a picture. Anyways, I have a couple pictures I took when I went to the grocery store. After the pictures is a video of the song I was listening to on my way home. It is "Moon Dream" by Desolation Wilderness. The video shows them performing it live, but I listened to the studio version which is a little better. It really was a great soundtrack to the drive.





Video:


Enjoy!!!

Breast Cancer Awareness hat

First off, I'm not really proud of this hat, but the idea was there. I really just used the wrong chart for something the size of a hat. The idea was that I would wear this hat on "wear Pink to work day" for breast cancer awareness. I HATE the color pink, so this was my contribution, but the hat turned out a little too large. When we had our bake sale to raise money for breast cancer I contributed this hat. Someone donated $5 to get it, so I am happy for that. Next year I plan on doing more knitting and NO baking. I will need to create my own hat friendly chart for the ribbon. Not sure yet if I'll do all hats, all dishcloths, or a mix. Right now I am thinking a mix. Anyways, here is the hat (not the best picture).

What is going on

I think I need to rethink my idea of a blog post. Instead of writing a book on everything since I last wrote, just simply write a few things every couple of days or so and offer a couple of pictures (I love pictures).

Today is busiest day of month at work today, so it means I will be working late today. This month I will attempt NaNoWriMo (that would be National Novel Writing Month). Really, I am most comfortable writing poetry and non fiction, so this is a real challenge for me. I'm going to try it. I won't lose too much sleep if I don't succeed, but my plan is still to succeed. I am already way behind because I was trying to do research for things I don't know much about, but a friend suggested putting in "place markers" and then go back in December and do the research for the details. The idea this month is to get as much written down as possible.

Work has been insane, but we won't talk about that. I feel like there is tons more to speak of, but I am drawing a blank this morning. Oh well, later.

Some pictures:
If you listen to NPR you may have heard This American Life hosted by Ira Glass. I got to see him speak and then I met him in person afterwords. What an amazing man.


As I was driving home from work one day:


As I was driving to work one day:


On my last camping trip at Harrington Beach State Park, I am amazed I got this picture, I love it:


Have a good day all.

Plastic, food, and other projects

The plastic thing is a bust for me for now. Sounds like my aunt is doing fantastic. Not really something to do on the spur of the moment for me. This will be an eventual gradual goal to reduce the amount of plastic. I was at Whole Foods on Friday and they even had a ton of plastic packaging including cheese. What a bummer. So how can you get cheese not in plastic? I think some are wrapped in foil if I remember correctly. I may have to explore that. I still did make some changes listed in my last post.

As many of you know I have gone vegetarian, though I am changing that to pescatarian (where the only meat you eat is fish and seafood). I am still for the most part not missing meat, though burgers do smell good. This is part a health decision, but it also more environmentally friendly to stop eating meat, though some would debate that, but it is where I stand. My other issue with meat is not knowing how it was raised. If I absolutely knew the animals were raised in humane conditions it wouldn't be such a problem, but still, I have other reasons for going meat free. I still haven't bought organic cage free eggs. It is so much more expensive, but I do believe this is a change I need to make.

Another food goal is cutting out high fructose corn syrup. I think this will do more for my health than cutting out meat. There is soooo much stuff with the junk in it, even some spaghetti sauces. Thankfully my tomatoes are finally starting to turn color so hopefully soon I'll have enough to make my own spaghetti sauce, sugar free. What is with people putting sugar in spaghetti sauce? It tastes fanstastic without it.

Speaking of tomatoes, look at my beauties:


mmmmmmmmmmmmmm......................

When I was in door county, Gretchen at Whitefish Bay Farm taught me how to spin better on my drop spindle. Here is the result (sorry the picture is really bad, but when I am done with the project I'll get better pictures):

Believe me, it is sooo much better than what I was doing. Even my mom noticed how incredibly much better it is. There is still room for improvement. The yellow/red one is done spinning and I am working on the blue/orange one. Gretchen also told me how to ply using a drop spindle, so I will eventually ply those two different colorways together. I think it will turn out really cool.

I still haven't edited all my July pictures from our family get togethers and camping trip. Who knows, maybe some time before 2010 I'll get to it.

Day one of reducing plastic

So there are things I can do for this week and things I am not yet able to do. It is no longer a week without plastic, but a week of reducing plastic. I'm afraid so far I like my bread in plastic. I would like to know what the other alternatives are to storing bread and how did people store bread before plastic? So far my food transportation is best in plastic, mostly because I won't have money until Friday to buy a more earth friendly alternative. I do want to stop using my glad containers though. I no longer microwave in my plastic containers. I can bring a ceramic plate to work to eat on for this week, but eventually I would like my permanent container to be something safe to transport, microwave, and eat in.

Changes I made:
Drinking out of a ceramic cup
Eating on real plates
Using real silverware
Using my soap saver to scrub and clean my body with
Using my shampoo soap bar
I changed to using only bar soap in general some time ago, I no longer buy liquid soap.

Last night I tried the shampoo soap bar for the first time. It seemed to lather up fine. My hair felt different afterwords than it does with my shampoo. Now that my hair is dry, I think my hair looks soooo much better. Too bad no one will really tell because it is too hot and I need to put my hair back in a pony tail. I definitely recommend it. After this week I still want to use up what I have left of my shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in plastic, why let them go to waste. Once those are used up then I am done with that. That makes me really happy. Last night I made a tomato tart, plastic free (oops, come to think of it though the cheese was in plastic, but what can I do?). Very yummy. Now how does one find cheese plastic free? Possibly at the Whole Foods cheese counter I could probably get my cheese without plastic. Whole Foods also has bulk bins for things like rice, flour, beans, etc and they have brown paper bags to put them in. Now I just realized the pie crust for the tart also was in plastic. I can make my own crust in the future though, I have done it before.

Some more links (found in the comment section of the Readymade article):
Bank/Earth/Self
Fake Plastic Fish

The Readymade Blog of one week without plastic:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 5

Ok, so I couldn't immediately find the link for day one, but now Readymade is doing an experiment of a week without processed food, another noble goal I would like to do, though I think winter would be a challenge. Anyways, All the posts for a week without processed foods (first) and a week without plastic (further down the page) are all on one page, so maybe just go here:

Readymade, a week without feature

Now I should say, that even though I am not doing as much this week because of money, lack of solutions right now, etc, I eventually plan on doing more. Like I have said before, it will be a process of attrition. When I need to replace plastic items, I will look for non plastic solutions.

Plastic continued

First of all, look at the planet green channel for ideas about being more environmentally green:
Planet Green

Today they had a show on that showed the result of plastic pollution (though I only caught part of it, but it was powerful) called Hawaii: Message in the Waves. It is a VERY sobering show that should be watched by everyone in the world.

With all this I realize that my week without plastic will simply be trying to reasonably reduce plastic as much as possible. As I need to replace the plastic I have, then I'll replace it with non plastic things. You know my hair brush is plastic? Are there non plastic ones out there? Man, to think 100 years ago there was no plastic. How do we go back???

Anyways some more links:

Etsy search for soap savers
No Impact Man
Home made cleaning products
Plastic Free Blog

I have yet to read the plastic free blog, just found it just now, but from a brief glimpse it looks like getting rid of plastic by attrition which is what I would like to do, but I wonder how people really really reduce it. I have yet to read and learn more about it. As I find links, I will share them.

Living without plastic

My Aunt Sue and I are going to try going plastic free for a week inspired by ReadyMade. I think this is mostly doable, but have realized that this will be impossible for me at the moment, but I'll get to that later. I am not worried about things like computers and tvs and refrigerators and other appliances that are a part of our everyday life. I think about all the things I am going to cover here.

Water

So this is a couple of examples of how I keep my water:


Yes, it is all plastic. The way to go plastic free with water is to drink from the tap and in the city of Milwaukee, the tap water tastes just fine and if I lived there I would drink it. I live in Cedarburg and the tap water tastes horrible. If I didn't rent, I could get a water filtration system. There are some that can be added onto the faucet, but I can't use them on my faucets. What I do is get the refillable gallons of water at the grocery store. You fill the same water gallon jugs every week at the water dispenser. Most grocery stores have these. I then fill my two gallon water holder in my fridge with the spicket dispenser. My water bottle I'm sure is BPA free one, but for this week I will drink out of my ceramic mugs. My method of getting water, though it involves plastic, is not changing for the week.

Food packaging

I had to think about the food I am going to eat. So much food comes in plastic. The bread I eat, the mayo in the fridge, just everything!!!!




You can see honey and spices too. I do have some spices in glass containers. The place to buy those is in downtown Milwaukee, I'm not there much. As I finish using my spices in the plastic containers, I will convert to the glass container ones. I don't know what to do about milk. They used to be available in cardboard containers, but I don't think so anymore. There is an expensive brand that comes in glass and I think that is hormone free. I will consider it for future milk purchaces. I am not wasting the milk currently in my fridge because it is in plastic. I think you can find honey in glass jars. For bread, I need to explore making my own, but for now I will take the bread I have and transfer it to a brown paper lunch bag. Oh what else? There is sooo much. *sigh* I'm still using my honey that is in plastic. When I need to buy more, then I'll get glass.

Now for the produce. Mostly you can avoid buying things in the plastic bags. Buy it where you can pick and choose how many and what you want. Don't put them in the little plastic bags. There are solutions at Craftster and Etsy. Buy the produce loose. After it is rung up at the register, then put them in your own reusable produce bags.

Food Storage, transportation, untensils:

Here are some of my food containers:


About 99% plastic. This week's solution is to have sandwiches and wrap in parchment paper and carry lunch bags. Currently I am in a personal swap with someone to get reusable lunch bags, but I won't have them this week. Those lunch bags can be thrown in my compost if I can't reuse them. I have heard there are glass containers available now, but I haven't seen them, but I haven't been to places where I can find them. There are also tiffin containers (though the metal ones cannot be microwaved and others are supposed to be microwavable plastic, but I still wonder how safe it is. For my flour and sugar etc I can get ceramic containers like at Crate and Barrel.

Bath and Laundry

I recently made my own laundry detergent using this recipe (scroll down) and it works. There are many other cleaning recipes on this site. For shampooing you can use a shampoo shower bar (I have one, not used it yet because I was using up what I have, but for my week I will try it out). Instead of using body wash and plastic scrubber I use this:

It is a crochet bag with soap inside. I haven't checked, but you might be able to find the crochet bag on Etsy (search for soap saver). I made this one myself. If you are in my family, this may be in your future. Brushing teeth, hmmm.... I am still using my plastic toothbrush with toothpaste still in plastic (yes, you can brush teeth with baking soda, but ick).

I really need to go now. There may be a part two of this and may blog during the week how it is going. There is more I want to blog about and I'll do that tomorrow. Tonight I'll be on WMSE from 6-9pm central time. Tune in if you read this in time. This is why I need to get going, need to do my hair and find a decent shirt to wear. Please please please leave comments and questions, I am sure I have only scratched the surface.

Where have I been??

I have been super busy. Still trying to finish up a craft swap. There was my Dad's retirement party which was also a bit of a family reunion. I really really want to work on editing my pictures and posting the best ones before I leave for camping on Saturday. Once I come back from camping I will have tons more pictures. I wish I could have a vacation before and after my vacation, or perhaps I could win the lottery I never enter. ;-) I hope to have another update before Saturday, but no guarantees.

Pictures and the name myklia

So I took a bunch of pictures and then edited them to be internet friendly. One day later I decide to upload them to my Photobucket so I can blog about them. A lot of frog pictures and pictures of the new campground at Harrington Beach State Park. Now it seems the edited pictures have disappeared so I have to redo it. You have no idea how much I hate that process. *sigh* I hope to get them up some time this week.

In the meantime I thought I would give you the story behind the name "myklia". I have always loved unique names and have always wanted to create one. Time and time again I would find whatever name I created already existed. Then I created (or so I thought I did) the name myklia. At the time (somewhere around 1994 to 1996, don't remember exactly) I did not find that the name existed. I thought I finally stumbled onto something. This name has been true and loyal to me for years.

One time though an internet friend in Toronto said that they saw my name on a license plate. This is not someone who would lie to me or play a joke on me and I thought that maybe they got the name from me using it on the web.

Fast forward several years later and I now see on the internet someone that goes by "Myklia G". From what very very little I can learn about her, I suspect it is her real name and she has probably had before I "created" it. I think it could be fun to talk to her and learn how she got the name. Myklia G, if you are out there reading this, feel free to leave a comment. I would love to hear from you. Sorry if I accidentally stepped on your name.

There is another name I have gone by and that is "Anika". When I started to DJ at WMSE in Milwaukee I went by the DJ name "Jeanette Rose", my real first and middle name. I didn't want to use my last name because there can be some creepy male (and occasionally female) listeners. I was on early Sunday morning.

There was this druggie who called the DJs before me and me all the time. He would always talk about what drugs he was on and what he had been up to in the week which could involve arrest or rehab. One time he was saying where he lived and it was only a couple of blocks from the station. I was a little freaked out. I thought that this guy is so drugged out that if I change my DJ name he won't realize it is the same DJ, but think a new DJ came on the air. Didn't work though. Fortunately he never tried to find me or meet me. When I was looking for a new name I looked at baby name books (I own them even though I'll likely never have a child because I love to look at all the names, weird, I know) and I came across "Anika" according to this book it was African meaning "beauty beyond reproach" and I felt it described the music I was playing at the time (a lot of ethereal gothic music and Cocteau Twins).

Maybe at some point I'll feel motivated to work on the pictures again. My niece Kimmie was with us and I was going to have a picture taken of my mom, myself, and Kimmie all together, but I forgot. Oh well, maybe next time. I enjoyed having her with us.

A different walk, craft room, yarn

My mom and I went for a run/walk this morning. It was very small. No more than 20 to 30 runners and my mom and I the only two walkers. It was nice (and far too hot). I forgot to take pictures, but it really wasn't picture worthy anyways.

Here is one picture of my craft room. A little music section. I'm thinking I should let the cord from the headphones hang down and then you can see the headphones better. Let me know what you think. I got the album purse from LouraPalmr (craftster.org) in a swap. That is a vinyl album silkscreened with stars and a headphone image. I have never used it because it is too nice to use. The picture does not do it justice. It is artwork to me. I hope LouraPalmr doesn't mind. Below that is a WMSE calendar (WMSE is the radio station I used to DJ at). How cool.



I went to Grafton Yarn Store yesterday to look for sock yarn. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I didn't leave empty handed:


All wound up in center pull ball. Night picture and day picture:



Tomorrow, mom, niece and myself will be hiking and checking out a new campground at a state park. Hopefully I'll get some pictures. Gah, then it is back to work on Monday. I think I need another week or two off. :-P