Rochelle's Blog ::: Subtitles Included

I’m loving my new system of doing one Project 365 post a week. It’s really freed me up and makes me love my blog so much more! Hope you guys like it too.

Nov 01 2009: Lazy Sunday

Today was great. I watched lots of football, made delicious calzones, and started working on my NaNoWriMo. I also enjoyed the nice weather. Only in Colorado could there be a huge snowy blizzard and then lovely sunny weather soon afterwards. The cats have been loving the extra sunshine of course. Here’s Penny, stretching out in the sunshine:

Nov 02 2009: Pure Evil

So Halloween was two days ago, and once again, no trick-or-treaters came by. So I’m stuck with a bowl full of my absolute favorite candy. How good–or should I say how bad? It calls to me every time I walk by. I’ve been doing ok with only sticking to two pieces a day, but I’m afraid I’ll just give in one day and make myself sick on it. Definitely time to put it away or take it to the office to give away.

Nov 03 3009: Mystery Writer

NaNoWriMo is going pretty slow and since this is my first time writing a mystery story, it’s kind of hard for me. I’ve been watching lots of mysteries on TV and reading a lot. I love my plot so much, it’s just kind of hard to execute so far.

Nov 04 2009: Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the 2008 election. I’m still excited and happy. Those feelings last year are still so much a part of me. I will never forget it. And even though I still feel upset and somehow the minority in my belief system when you see these rowdy loons, I remind myself of what happened last year and how a strong majority of this country came together to vote for change.

Nov 05 2009: Jinx?

I have a long and complicated history with the Denver Broncos. For the past few years, it’s been impossible for me to be a Broncos fan because I hated Jay Cutler and Mike Shanahan so much. Then a great thing happened. Shanahan was fired and Jay Cutler became a whiney bitch that got the trade he was hoping for. Good riddance a-hole. No one thought the Broncos could go anywhere and that’s how I liked it! I love an underdog. All expectations were out the window and so I embraced the Broncos once again. I saved up some money to get a new Broncos sweatshirt, and when it finally arrived, I wore it for the first time on Sunday. Well it was the first game they lost of the season. So now I’m wondering, is it a jinx? I doubt I have that much control over the universe, so I think I’ll keep wearing it anyway.

Nov 06 2009: Behind

Today I called in sick today, feeling rather lousy. I thought though that I’d get some work done on my NaNoWriMo novel, but even that seemed too hard. So I pretty much sat around and didn’t get too many words in. I did however find the most stressful desktop background. It’s a calendar that shows where my word count should be at each day. Let’s just say I’m already thousands of words behind

Nov 07 2009: Happy Acorn

Today I felt worlds better. I still didn’t do much though, but I had to get out of the house. So I got dressed and went over to Panera to work on my NaNoWriMo novel. That was a great time and I did get some words in and did some important research. But what I missed was my cute happy acorn that sits on my desk back at home. I don’t know why, but this little thing just makes me happy, which somehow inspires me to write. I mean, seriously, how could you not smile when you see it’s happy face?

Monday I called in sick for work for a couple of reasons. First, I barely slept at all. Since I was stuck down in the big chair so that I could house the rest of my family, I just couldn’t cut it. Plus we didn’t get in until late and we had been so cold. I was feeling like crap. I also had my family in town, which wasn’t expected and I didn’t really have time to get the day off. So it was a sick day. So for most of the day we just laid around the house and tried to recover from the night before.

In the afternoon though we put all those layers back on and went back to the park for game 4 of the NLDS. This time we were on the first baseline and got to sit in the sunlight for an hour or so, which was nice. It still turned cold, but it wasn’t anything like the night before.

This game was a total heartbreaker. The Rockies had it in the bag and were down to just one strike to end the game when the Phillies made a comeback and won the game. And that was the end of what we call “Rocktober,” and the end of spending so much quality time with my dad and brother and sister-in-law.

There's always next year.

Remember the snowy day (see below). Well the snow may have melted off but the cold wasn’t leaving anytime soon. Regardless, I put on layer after layer and met up with my dad, brother, and sister-in-law at the Merchandise Mart to drive down to the Rockies game. The game was set to start at 8:07 p.m. Crazy Cold! So here’s the deal. I could go on and on about how cold it was. So I’m just going to get that out of the way now. COLD. I’ve never been colder in my life and I’ve spent a lot of time outside on cold nights in my life. COLD. Every pitch was like painfully long. My feet ached, my nose ran. You name it. Freaking cold!

Okay, that’s enough about the cold.

So we watched the game and had a good time. Unfortunately the Rockies lost and we were bummed out, but the experience is one I will never forget. My family came home with me and we got home at one in the morning.

Me and my daddy. As cold as can be!

I am so so so happy that football is back. I love nothing more than fall and football=fall. This year, I’ve decided to start liking the Broncos again. Basically, it goes like this. When I was with Brian, I hated the Broncos. Mostly because he showed me how easy it was to hate them. And truthfully, I had grown to hate Shanahan and I really hated Cutler from day one. The fans were annoying and the city’s overall attitude about how the Broncos were somehow entitled to win every single game made me really annoyed. So this year, everything breaks down, they get a new coach, they get rid of Cutler and they are terrible. It’s like starting from scratch. Everyone has the lowest expectations and I think it’s grounded the city. So I’m back to like the Broncos, and it’s fun! And now for the fourth or fifth year in a row I’m participating in a pick pool for each NFL game. Something I’ve been successful at in the past. So Sundays are football days. And on this particular Sunday, I watched football while I planned my trip. Later that night, I watched the Emmys. NPH was awesome!

The Broncos beat the Browns!

Yesterday at work, I had a solid block of meetings from 9 – 2. Thankfully, at the final meeting (12-2), they served us lunch. I’m not that into sandwiches, but for whatever reason, the roast beef sandwich they provided from Paradise Bakery was like the best thing I had ever had. So it gave me the sandwich bug, and I’m making my own this weekend. Which is perfect for college football and for making plans for my trip. The Buffs actually won today, which was great by the way!

Roast beef and cheddar on sourdough

I had an incredibly long day at work that was full of meetings and lots of work. I have a ton of stuff to do before I leave and so I’m beginning to get stressed out. One of my tasks is to help my co-worker grade exams for the position he’s hiring. There are at least 50 candidates (maybe more) and each exam is three pages long. Well I started to grade them and realized I hadn’t read the grade sheet properly and was grading the candidates wrong. So I have to start over. Ugh!

After work I watched the Buffs get completely humiliated, but the Rockies won in a great 9th inning comeback.

Lots of homework for the weekend.

I went with a handful of co-workers to the Rockies/Cubs  game. We sat out in center-left, but the view was great and the game was awesome. The Rockies played very well, and the poor Cubbies, only picked it up in the 9th inning. We got to see Troy Tulowitzki hit the cycle, which was very cool. I had a great time and took some pretty cool pictures too.

From L-R: Mike, Kevin, Ryan, Greg, David, and Caitlin.

Here are the rest of my pictures from the night:

As I wait for my Dad to arrive, I’m watching football with the cats. I have a new energy that has arrived with the fall. My house is clean. I’m motivated to do everything I’ve been putting off all summer. I’m happy!

The Colorado Buffaloes (0-0, 0-0 Big 12) open their 119th season of intercollegiate football this Sunday, August 31, against the in-state rival Colorado State Rams (0-0, 0-0 Mountain West) in the Qwest Rocky Mountain Showdown at Invesco Field at Mile High … Kickoff is set for 5:40 p.m. MDT, with Fox Sports Net to televise the game nationally;

2008 CU Football: Qwest Rocky Mountain Showdown – CUBuffs.com—Official Athletics Web site of the University of Colorado.

As some of my friends and colleagues are there to watch the game. I sit here in my big chair with my comforter, pillow, and large diet coke. I hate being sick.

Go BUFFS!

UPDATE at 7 p.m.

Weird. There were back-to-back kick off returns for touchdowns just now. First the Buffs and then the Rams. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. What if the Buffs return the favor again? That would be so strange. It’s a pretty good game. Darn, no dice.

Sadly my beloved Colorado Rockies did not win the World Series, or even a game in the World Series. It was a miserable few days that reminded me of 1991 and 1992 when I used to follow the Braves (before the Rockies existed) and I almost pulled my hair out watching my team lose in the World Series in back to back years. This time around every pitch was intense and I think I was gritting my teeth for about 17 hours in the past week. I’m glad it is over, and I am so excited for next season!

My only wish is that everyone else forgets about the Rockies. The amount of bandwagon jumpers has disgusted me. I had so much fun at the beginning of last season when they were just mine.

So my hurt boob (“righty”) is still sort of hurt. I’ve seen some doctors and I have to go back tomorrow. I’m sick of the bandages and I can’t wait to be back to normal. It is getting better each day, and yesterday I was able to move boxes and clean the apartment.

In other news, I recently made a very fantastic purchase. Sometimes I’m a sucker for infomercials. I hate watching them, but when I do catch them I tend to believe that the product they are peddling does everything they say it does. So when I kept seeing the Maxglide hair straightener on TV, I was intrigued.

A promise of hair straightening fast and effectively, with the added benefit of not having to blow dry my hair straight in the first place, made me incredibly curious.

So I posted a question on Yahoo Answers to see if real people thought it worked. I got so many responses back about how awesome it is, that I was set on getting one. This is a pricey piece of hair equipment, running at $80 or so. I waited a couple of months, acquired a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon for 20% off, and finally made the big purchase.

The results are truly amazing. I’ve used it twice now and my hair looks awesome. Instead of taking an hour to straighten my hair, using this tool only takes me about 20 minutes. The best part is that it works on my already wavy hair. I could not be happier. I will try to take some before and after pictures some time this week to demonstrate the coolness.

Tonight is my first class for Intarsia Knitting. When knitting intarsia, blocks of color are worked with separate balls of yarn to produce only one layer to whatever it is you’re making. In the class we’re going to make a hat with five different colors of yarn. We even had homework to do to get ready.

I’ll post more about the progress of my hat in this very blog when it starts to come along.