I don’t know why I punish myself by visiting the Anthropologie website and browsing their clothing. I know it’s too expensive for a Squirrel-ette like me, but I continue to visit and download photos for my “inspiration” folder. My whole thought process is that eventually I’ll want to try my hand at sewing clothing. So far I’ve made pajama bottoms. One leg is longer than the other. I’m excellent. I’m sure these aren’t far off:

And even homegoods:

I have been an avid Apple fan since, well, birth! I grew up using Macs, playing reader rabbit on it, discovering AOL on it, I even had a black and white screened mac in my room during my middle school years for writing up homework. If I recall correctly, it didn’t do much, although Skerwin did write me a game to play on it. I got a Powerbook G4 for college, then an iMac G5, and last year I upgraded that iMac to my current Macbook Pro. My Macbook Pro was the first computer that was paid for 100% by me, and it was exciting! Of course, technology has continued on while my little notebook has remained the same. The curse of technology.

Which gets me to my point. Apple offers the mac mini, the laptop series (lower end and pro end), the iMacs and then the Mac Pros. As a gaming geek, I want the ability to purchase new video cards as they become available, and install them with no fuss. Of Apple’s line, only the Mac Pro is capable of doing this. However, the mac pro also uses server CPU’s instead of desktop CPU’s, which makes them horrendously overpowered for simple gaming people like me, and ostensibly more expensive than I could warrant spending on something that would be used for minimal photoshopping, some web design, geeky gaming and using iPhoto.

Do you hear me Apple? I want an in-between! Something in between the iMac and the Mac Pro! A non-server CPU that will lower the cost, throw the i5 or i7 you offer for your iMacs in there! Allow me to swap out the graphics card when my geeky gaming demands a better one. I won’t outgrow a quad-core anytime soon, but I don’t want to be limited to specifications YOU deem perfect! I don’t want a small 21.5″ screen, but a 27″ screen is way too big! Stop telling me what I need in a computer! Buying a … PC….. has crossed my mind, and I feel so dirty. Please don’t hurt me like this, Apple. Please.

I made roast beef, not much more to say than that. I think pictures will do the best! Recipe/Instructions from The Crepes of Wrath

Coated with the herbs, beginning the pan browning.

After browning, about to go into the oven.

After cooking! Checking the temps...

Mmmmm.... profit.

When I moved from FL to WA, all I had with me basically was my books, DVD’s, clothing and little things I couldn’t live without. 99.9% of the stuff I bought to furnish my apartment was purchased at Ikea. Now, I love Ikea. And it’s a GREAT starting point for when you don’t have ANYTHING, but over time, I’ve definitely replaced some of the stuff I purchased there. Most importantly, my pans and cutlery. I purchased everything from random trips to Marshalls over the last two and whatever years. I slowly replaced all of my pans with Calphalon and I love them! When my parents visited and remarked how terrible my cutting knives were, I bought some Calphalon knives, and a lovely WÜSTHOF knife sharpener to keep them in tip-top shape. But I just couldn’t find a replacement for this Ikea pan:

Hideous, isn’t it? I’ve been searching for a replacement for a long time, but being a picky matchy-matchy freak, I wanted the replacement to match the others that I had bought, so they would fit in, and nobody would notice or even care. Yesterday evening, I stumbled upon this, and my life was completed.

Hello, beautiful. Where have you been all my life? I broke it in by making myself a lovely sandwich for dinner last night. Then I threw my old pan in the trash and promptly took the bag out to the dumpster. RELIEF!!!!!!! PS: look how gorgeous the tree outside my window is.

It’s not easy! I’ve completely constructed the front of my quilt, and the back, and am now attempting to freehand quilt the three pieces (cotton batting in the middle) together. I always smirked when I read that people thought it was hard to maneuver a piece of fabric through a sewing machine without feeder dogs. “Amateurs,” I thought. Yeaaaaaah. Anyway:

What I wake up to in the morning.

What I saw on the way to JoAnns today because I ran out of Tailor’s Chalk and was in desperate need.

An INSANELY cool mirror I saw in JoAnns that I’ll have to DIY at some point in the future when I have a place that I can hang things on the wall…..

A tree outside my apartment. PROOF I didn’t make up Spring coming in February.

I have horrible eyes. I’m talking -14.25 eyes. Yeah. Pretty bad. Generally I wear contacts, but lately my astigmatism has gotten so bad that I don’t always feel comfortable driving when it’s dark out on roads without lighting. At my latest eye doctor appointment, I expressed my frustration and he wrote me a prescription for a pair of glasses to wear over my contacts for night driving, and to fix me to 20/20! I skipped across the hallway to the glasses center, prescription in hand, and pretty quickly ran right out. $150!? $200? $300!??!

I’m pretty frugal. I love Marshalls, and Etsy and Ebay and the clearance section at Target. I’m not ashamed of that. Having a nest egg in your early 20’s is a GOOD thing, and I’m proud of it. So, I decided to research getting glasses online. Frames all come from China for the most part, anyway, right?! I was a bit nervous, until I found 39 Dollar Glasses. Having a teeny face, I was stoked they had a bona fide kids section. All the other sites I had looked at let you sort by size, but I still had to weed out all the teeny ones. The other great thing about 39 Dollar Glasses is that they have PRINTABLE versions that are actual size, so you can print it out and, if you’re me, tape it to your nose and take a picture. That was pretty amusing. Anyway, I ordered a pair online, cost me about $48 w/ glare reduction coating. I paid $5 for priority USPS mail since I really wanted to try them on and was excited. They arrived today and they look great. They came with a little case, a screwdriver and a nice cleaning cloth. Moral of the story? 39 Dollar Glasses has my seal of approval. I might even phone them some day and see if they’ll go up to -14.25, just for me.

Note: 39 Dollar Glasses didn’t pay me to do this. I’m not getting free glasses or cleaning cloths for life for it. In fact, they probably don’t even know I exist.

As creepy and off chance that this is, Megan Riley of Austin, Texas (you witnessed the plane crash in February 2010 in Austin), if you’re googling yourself and my site pops up, you should drop me an e-mail. I’m 99.9% convinced that we’re related, however distantly. Perhaps our ancestors came from the same peat bogs of Ireland. We have Rileys on my paternal side! If you drop me a line, I’m pretty sure I can convince you in one picture ;]

So, a relatively uninteresting topic, but interesting to me right now: weather. The weather in WA is renowned for being overcast and rainy during the winter, and pretty darn cold. Last winter was BRUTAL, and in fact I told myself if it was like that again I was packing up the cats and hightailing it somewhere warmer. I enjoy chilly and low-humidity, I do not enjoy being snowed in for two weeks. So this year, in preparation, I bought snow tires. 4 Blizzak tires, to be precise. I got a great deal on them (thanks in part to the incompetence of the place that I bought them) and I was positive should snow come in force like last year, I would be PREPARED.

And because I was prepared it snowed a total of 4 hours this winter. Not only that, we have things blooming. In February. I’m talking crocuses and cherry blossoms. BLOOMING. And it’s SUNNY, and has been for the past few days. They say the doom and gloom is coming back tomorrow with frost in tow, and so I shall weep for the loss of my cherry blossoms which probably won’t survive a long freeze.

And in other news, the quilt is taking form quite rapidly. The most arduous thing is the cutting out of fabric. I am not a fan. Second most arduous is laying out huge lengths of fabric on the ground to measure and then owning two cats. Yeah.