Ouch!
On Friday, I had two doctor appts and they went pretty well. One was with my PCP, Dr. Skinner, who always provides a really fun appt. Unfortunately, I had to get 3 shots and a blood draw and I was not a happy camper. Lucky me, I'm one out of a hundred to get a response to the Tdap vaccine that includes pain, swelling and redness affecting the ability to do normal activity. I've been taking Ibuprofen round the clock and icing my poor arm and it's helping a little but it's still hurting a ton and I can't type for very long without exasperating it... The good news though, is that I'm all vaccinated for our trip for Chile and Laurie isn't getting any vaccines so it looks like we'll not be needing a trip down to the health dept travel clinic! We also managed to procure a travel oxygen concentrator for me! YAY! We bought it off of craigslist and it works and was a great deal! No more blue nights traveling (at least with electricity) and no more lugging the beast around! Whoohoo! Well, I'm off to find some more ice...
Off my spindle
I think that I've decided not to use spinning tidbits as I already have knitting tidbits so I think it'll be off my spindle until I think of something better. I've been practicing a ton and I'm actually making progress. Today will be a week since my lesson and I'm spinning really nice even stuff now (if I do say so myself). I was comparing my first singles to what is on my spindle now and it's drastically different. Laurie was really sweet to help me along with figuring out the drafting triangle and basically how to draft at all because I had thoroughly not grasped any of that in my lesson. It was torture for her to have me spinning all weekend and yesterday (she took the day off work) as she is working on her finals that are due today. I'm hoping some time soon we'll be buying a wheel for her and we can both spin together! Here's the new pic of my spinning triumph!
And now introducing, Off my spindle!
I have wonderful, exciting news... I'm now officially a spinner! Yay! Last night, our neighbor, Eileen (the one who took Laurie and me to the desert botanical gardens) was kind enough to drive me out to Tempe Yarn and Fiber so I could take a spinning class. I'm not really interested in spinning on a wheel, so I'm spinning on a drop spindle. The spinning wheel wasn't invented until the 1500s and before then everyone used a drop spindle. It may take awhile to amass a very large amount of yarn but I really like the idea of being connected to the past spinning on my drop spindle. For my first lesson I did very well (according to my teacher and Laurie did give it approval and since she's the master spinner in our house that is good :) ) It's harder than it looks but I think I'm getting the hang of it and with practice I'm sure one day I'll be good at it! It will be really cool one day to design projects with my own yarn! I'm hoping in June to take a luxury fiber spinning class so I can spin alpaca and silk and cashmere and all that good stuff! 
My drop spindle.
My drop spindle with what I've spun so far and all my pretty roving.
Knitting tidbits
I've been busy knitting lately - I finally finished the Twisted Flower socks that were a birthday gift for Debbie's friend Cherri. I even got to meet Cherri when I handed over the second sock. She was really sweet and it seems like they were a big hit! With that project over, I've dived back into another pair of Cookie a socks, the pattern is called Stricken. I'm making them with Panda Wool in the colorway rosewater. The yarn is 46% bamboo, 43%wool and 11% nylon. I love the color and the variegation isn't interfering with the pattern. This pair of socks will be going to my lovely, wonderful PCP. I'll have to hide them at my next visit on Friday, though. I don't want her to get any sneak peeks! Following are the pics of the beginnings of those socks. And I'm going to go straight into my next big news in a new post, now...
Happy Easter
I hope that everyone had a very happy Easter! I very much enjoyed the holy week liturgies that Laurie and I attended, the triduum is a really beautiful and rich liturgical season. And I didn't die of asthma reaction to the incense this year! (Last year I had to leave 2 of the gatherings for fresh air and a breathing treatment - incense was literally billowing out of the open church doors!) Easter vigil is such a wonderful Easter celebration - it is so cool to watch the people being baptized and receiving full entrance into our faith, I look forward to it every year. Easter day was really nice as well, we had brunch with my mom and Laurie made homemade whipped cream (which is always a treat!) and painted Easter eggs. We still haven't had our egg fights yet though. For dinner, we were invited to Debbie and Paul's family gathering and it was beautiful weather out so we ate outside. I wish we could have stayed longer but I was exhausted, I had only gotten about a half hour of rest the whole day and so I went home and slept! It was a very nice day and very full of chocolate which makes even ordinary days nice!
Real estate rollercoaster - an end in sight!
Last night, Laurie signed the paperwork that puts us into a contract on a house! Yay! We are expecting a 60 day escrow so we won't be closing until June 15th so the end is a little bit further off that we had initially thought. It's a lovely house and if you want to see the pics and a layout of the floor plan, Laurie and I have posted all of those things on Zentner Doings. (You can use that link or use the link under my favorite places on the left.) We're really excited - it doesn't feel real! Happily, we will have a guest bedroom so all of you can come visit!
I couldn't resist posting one picture!
Peer pressure
Well, I've caved into peer pressure - I now have a Facebook account so all of you can talk to me. The tipping point was that our church's young adult group is finally picking back up again (YAY!) but the info media for our group is practically all Facebook related and since Laurie and I want to be involved with it, we're now all hooked up. I'm sure you can search for us or you might be getting a friend invite from me in the future... My profile is set to friends only... :)
Catching up...
Well, it seems that I have been away from blogging for a little bit. I've been on and off sick for the last 2 weeks and writing kind of slipped to the back of my mind - mostly I was preoccupied sleeping and trying to feel better :). Now that I'm feeling better, I'm going to play catch up!
The house buying thing is still up in the air. We've looked at a number of places and put offers on 2 at this point (one of them today) and the first is dealing with a very uncooperative bank that thinks the property is worth more than it is and won't back down from a pretty large price tag. The place that we are offering on today (Laurie just left to go buy paper to print the contract to fax it to our agent!) is a nice single family home a little far away from where we are now but it's really nice and needs fairly minimal work. It's a great floor plan for wheelchair accessibility. It's a short sale so it sounds like we might be waiting to hear for a little bit. The plan would be for me to use dial a ride to get to and from yoga. But it is close to a Walgreens!
Anyways, knitting is going well, too. I have one sock done for Debbie and the other nearly to the heel flap. Being sick put me behind a little because I was way to tired to knit. I did, however, get new sock yarn that is wonderful. Receiving it was part of a bribe that Laurie used to get me to go back to the Mayo clinic for a follow up appt which was really useless. It's a lovely blend of 80% Merino wool 10% cashmere and 10% nylon. The colorway is Lavender Fields. It's amazing and I can't wait to knit with it!
Twisted flower socks
Lavender Fields
On the endocrine front, we had a follow up with Mayo which was pointless. He told us nothing we didn't already know an I felt again that I knew way more about MEN 1 than he did and he wouldn't actually listen to a thing we said. So we had are new endocrine appt with the doc at county and it was a little better. She was nice and listened, agreed that genetic testing was something we needed to pursue and wants to actually look at my symptom progression and listen to what I have to say. I only hope that when she gets the records from Mayo that she doesn't totally turn off and think whatever Mayo says is the word of God. Mayo didn't believe the MRI that showed the pituitary tumor, but I guess we can always redo the MRI and see what the new one says. Now, we get to scramble around and decide what vaccinations to pursue as far as our trip to Chile goes and other than that all's been rather calm on the health front - although I do have a bunch of specialty appts coming up - life's never boring.
The only thing that I haven't talked much about is Rachel and Andy's wedding in Nebraska. It was absolutely lovely and I had a wonderful weekend with all of the assorted family members. I had hoped to have pictures from the wedding or something but I think I'll detail how much fun it was later...
Well, I think I'm caught up!
