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By kilax, June 4, 2015 10:06 am

• Beyond Kelly being my training partner (read: close friend/unofficial therapist), she’s also my wreath supplier! She helped spruce up our front door last spring (top left), this winter (top center) and currently (bottom left). She also made a wreath for my paternal grandma (top right) and maternal grandma (bottom right). She is talented!!! It impresses me when people have a vision of how they want something to turn out, and make it all come together from separate elements, like with these wreaths (and like Steven and his welded art projects!). You can check out other wreath styles on her Etsy and Facebook pages.

• National Running Day seems to always be on a Wednesday, which is typically the most difficult day of the week for me to workout at all, due to my commuting schedule. So no run for me. But! I did do something kind of running related – went to a free skin cancer screening. I don’t wear sunscreen when I run, and wanted a dermatologist to look over my skin. He said everything looks okay, and that I should get checked again in one to two years. He also gave me a recommendation for a sunscreen that might let my pores breath when I run (that’s why I don’t wear it).
• This year, my dad, brother-in-law and I ordered the RAGBRAI jerseys in advance and they arrived this week! Here’s my snis modeling mine (she ordered them all, hence it being at her house). I love the design! And my sister said one of her husband’s sisters is joining us on the Thursday ride – we need to get her a jersey, too! This is one event where it’s not lame to wear the shirt while you’re doing it!

• My Nike Dri-FIT shirts came! Yay! Now I have several colors to choose from!

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 72

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By kilax, June 3, 2015 6:25 am

Here’s what I wake up looking like when I stay out past my bedtime:

Ha ha. Yeah…

What were we up doing*? Seeing Mad Max: Fury Road. Holy cow, what a FUN movie! I haven’t seen a movie that creative (that I enjoyed, anyway) in a long time.

When I saw the trailers for Mad Max, I had no interest in it. I know nothing about the original series. And all the trailers showed was a bunch of driving in the desert** and lots of fighting. It looked a bit boring. I love action movies but get frustrated with the ones where the action is so fast you can’t follow what’s happening***, and your eyes glaze over (see: last few Transformers films). I wasn’t planning on seeing this movie. Ever. But then it got crazy good ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and everyone I talked to who saw it made me want to go. So. Yeah. Five dollar Tuesday movie night it was!

And the movie was mostly driving in the desert, and fighting, but it wasn’t boring at all. My eyes didn’t glaze over. It was extremely visually interesting, and I liked how the story was told with very little dialogue. The acting was great and you found yourself invested in the characters right away, even though you knew nothing about them. I’m happy I saw this in the theater – it wouldn’t have had the same effect on me at home.

I know, I told you basically nothing about the plot. I don’t want to give it away. And that’s not what this post about. Ha.

I was surprised when I read about the film to hear it being called a Western. Or at least, to have Western themes. I’ve read that about Star Wars, too. Here’s the thing though – if you had me make a list of film genres I don’t like, Westerns would be on the top of that list, with gore and horror. I think it’s odd that this movie, and Star Wars both appeal to me so much, and are compared to Westerns. Maybe I don’t fully understand what a Western is. Or maybe I just like the modern versions better!

*Mind you, the movie was over just before 10:00. Ha!
**Ha, I originally wrote “dessert” and remembered a trick that a math teacher (not english, ha!) told us for remembering the difference – “there are two ‘Ss’ in dessert – just like you always want seconds of it!”
***I read that the director slowed down some scenes on purpose, so you could follow the action, and sped some up on purpose, where he didn’t want you to follow as much.

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By kilax, June 2, 2015 6:20 am

(Un?)Fortunately, it’s not this exciting ^

A few weeks ago I was having a hard time typing on my computer after lunch break. I felt like my pinky finger was frozen and took a long time to “thaw.” I just figured it was a bit too chilly in our house, and didn’t pay any attention to it.

Until it kept happening again, and again. So, bizarre, right?

Ha ha. Yeah, I finally figured it out. Knitting is making some of my fingers go numb (and since I knit during lunch break, I sometimes feel it in the afternoon). It’s only happening in the left hand though, which seems odd – the right hand is the one with yarn wrapped all over it.

It was particularly bad Saturday night – my ring finger tip went numb and felt tingly all day Sunday, and still felt weird Monday! I wonder if my wedding rings are messing with the circulation to my finger tip, but why does it sometimes bug my pinky, too?

The two fingers that tend to go numb aren’t even doing anything! Maybe that is why they start to lose feeling?

I’ve been noticing it more when I use smaller (size 5) needles – they’re more flexible and I think I press against them harder.

A quick google search shows lots of different ways people become sore from knitting, and ways to prevent it. Who knew there was so much “risk” in knitting? Ha ha. I am going to pay more attention to it and try to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. I don’t sit down and knit for hours on end (I’d fall asleep before that could happen), so I am a bit surprised! Anyway…

What is making my fingers go numb? More washcloths! My mom bought yarn for me to make her some, and I will see her this weekend and want to have a few done:

The one on the bottom right is me getting rid of extra yarn. Ha ha-  it’s my little fraken-cloth. Also, isn’t it interesting what that yarn is doing with the waffle pattern compared to this one?

My snister sent me this link for a waffle pattern washcloth so I tried to do a few of those. As you can tell, the orange one was the first one – ha ha – I have to be really careful to hold the yarn at a consistent tightness with those. It’s a fun pattern though, and it’s easy to remember and really quick to make. Just gives you a numb finger… which always beats impalement.

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By kilax, June 1, 2015 6:52 am

I was ecstatic when I saw Super Mario Bros. was on TV a week ago. It’s been sitting at the bottom of my Netflix queue for years, never seeming worth a disk. But I remember really liking the movie as a kid, and I wanted to see how it held up as an adult.

Eh…. It held up okay! Ha ha!

What really stuck out to me though, was a scene where Princess Daisy declines a plate of meat. She says, “I am a vegetarian, I don’t eat anything with a face.”*

It stuck out to me because I remember really thinking about that line, when I first heard it, as a kid. The movie came out in 1993, when I was nine. I wonder if it’s one of the first times I started thinking about vegetarianism (while I always loved animals, I wasn’t one of those kids refusing to eat meat when I was little – at least that I know).

Then this weekend, Raptorfest was on AMC – showings of all three Jurassic Park movies in a row!** I actually didn’t watch the first one, but thinking about it, I remembered that Lex Murphy’s character is a vegetarian. She says “I happen to be a vegetarian!” and her brother teases her about which dinosaurs are vegetarians. (And there is a scene of her eating jello, which is NOT vegetarian, but we all know that’s just because jello jiggles when dinos are near.)

This movie also came out in 1993 – and those “vegetarian” comments also stuck with me. The point of including them was probably to make fun of vegetarians, but they made me curious.

I didn’t become vegetarian until I was sixteen. When people ask me why, I sometimes jokingly say it’s because I worked at McDonald’s, but that’s not really true. It was something I’d thought about doing before, because of my love for animals, and I’d been spending more time around a vegetarian then, and felt encouraged to give it a try.

Mostly unrelated photo of me as a shift manager at McDonald’s in 2001… ha ha. Didn’t want to “borrow” a movie image off the internet, so you get this lovely photo.

And watching these movies reminded me that seeing characters I perceived as strong females, who were vegetarian, encouraged me to think about it. I’m surprised I had forgotten about this! I wonder what other early influences would be jolted if I watched other movies from my youth. Luckily, nothing came to me when we watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the 1990 version) I or II earlier this year, ha ha.

Can you remember any specific movie influences from your youth? What are they?

*Then you see the Goomba very sweetly get her a plate of steamed vegetables, only to be torched in the hallway by some bad guys, while holding the vegetables! Luckily they put out the fire.
**The first one ended and I said to Steven – “I wish they’d show all three!” Then the second one started and I checked the TV guide and “OMG IT’S LIKE A DREAM COME TRUE! Mario Bros. last week and now this?!???” <— now you see why I have so much time to knit while I sit on the couch watching high quality movies from my youth.