Free Ice Cream

Just to let people know if you didn't know already, tomorrow, Tuesday April 29th is Free Cone Day at Ben and Jerry's. Click here to get to their homepage where you can find out if there is a participating shop near you. We have two shops nearby which I'm not really sure is a good thing, but I know we will be heading downtown tomorrow to get our free cones. Yummy!

*****9 rows left on Moth*****

H - it's not just for ice cream

One of my favorite places to visit when I go back to New Jersey is a small old fashioned ice cream parlour called Holsten's.

I mainly like it for the ice cream but it's a good place to go for lunch also. (You can click here for lots of pictures of great ice cream and of the restaurant itself.) The burgers, sandwiches and french fries are all good but of course it is the ice cream that you go back for. Holsten's has been there forever and holds fond memories for me since Mom and I used to go frequently. One joke in our family is that when Mom was in Weight Watchers, she used to go to the meeting to get weighed and when the meeting was over would come down to Holsten's for dessert and coffee. Many bets in our family have ended with the loser treating the winner to ice cream at Holsten's. My Dad's favorite here is usually an ice cream soda while I remember enjoying wet walnut sundaes with coffee chip ice cream (still one of my favorites).

If you are a fan of The Sopranos, you will be familiar with this place since the final episode was filmed here. You can now buy commemorative merchandise and the booth that the characters sat in has a plaque next to it.

Of course, I have introduced my daughter to this place and now my sister and her family, my Dad and my daughter and I enjoy having lunch here. If you are in the area, I can definitely recommend it! Enjoy!

Random Thoughts

***Moth Progress - 12 rows to go ***

I'm going to have a row countdown here showing my progress towards the end of my Moth shawl. I am so close. I currently have 12 rows to go to the end but unfortunately have only been averaging a row a day since we returned home after school vacation.


I was able to finish my Monkey socks in STR Dragon Dance and I even wore them yesterday. Very comfortable!

The remainder of this post was written last week when several things were really getting to me. Obviously, I hadn't posted it and was thinking of deleting it but changed my mind. So, here is my random list with a few updates.

1. My Ms. Orangepants sweater is on hold because I am waiting for my Addi Lace needles. I totally believe that one should support their LYS but I ordered the needles over 5 weeks ago and the store has still not actually placed the order. When I went in 2 weeks ago week to ask about them, I was told that they have been putting the order off and when the woman looked at the list, she seemed quite surprised that there were so many people waiting for their needles. Silently to myself, I wondered how many of those people may have already gotten their needles from somewhere else. I've considered it, but have held off since I do have plenty of other things to work on. When I first asked about the needles I was told that they are placing orders all the time - guess that wasn't really true. I realize that the store has a difficult time competing with the quickness of placing an order over the Internet, but I would hope that there would be some understanding that the customer might not wait too long for something they can get easily somewhere else.


2. What is it with people that always want more from you? I'm not talking about telemarketers and such but about the people you deal with in everyday life - they could be people you work with or even family. It has been happening more and more to me lately - when I give the time I can to someone and instead of saying thank you, they ask for more. I don't know if I am getting less patient or what but it is really starting to get to me. Unfortunately, I end up taking my frustrations out on people that don't deserve it instead of the people that do! Who knows, maybe people think I'm selfish too. I'm sure those people don't think they are and I can't go into more details since I am not quite sure who may read this. Don't worry, it's not you :)!


3. I took my daughter and one of her friends to see Nim's Island last weekend. It was a fun movie and I am now quite attracted to the idea of living on a deserted island (see #2 above).

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I am leaving you with a picture of one of the things we saw when we visited the Museum of Science last week.

What has 4 legs, a long tongue and a long neck?

Can you guess?

A giraffe! The last time we went to our local zoo, we saw that there had been some babies born. Aren't they cute!

Staying close to mom.

Enjoying a snack.

See you later!

Fearless? You Decide.

I'm way behind in my ABC posts but will try to catch up. When I uploaded the Fearless Knitter button on my sidebar, I thought about what it means to be fearless. Yeah, I know I haven't put a zipper into a sweater yet, but when it comes to knitting, there are not too many patterns that I'd be afraid to try. Although if you look carefully at my shawl, I did put lifelines in.

I could have been fearless and just continued on but no, I put the lifelines in mainly because I am really afraid that if I make a major mistake, I will not be able to recover especially with this Kidsilk Haze. Hmmm... maybe I'm not so fearless.

But then I went on to think about other aspects of my life. As I've gotten older, I have come across situations where I've been confronted with an opportunity to try something and it was very likely that the opportunity would not arise again. Do you take the plunge and try or do you take the chance of saying "I wish I had"? To me, I think those may well be some of the saddest words you can say - to have had an opportunity, not taken it and then regret it. All of the following pictures are from a trip I took to New Zealand with my Mom and Dad in 1996. NZ is really one of the most beautiful countries - did you know that the sheep outnumber the people?! How can that not be a great place! Anyway, one of the places we visited was Queenstown where there are many outdoor activities in which to participate. When we pulled up to the Kawarau Bridge, my heart was beating quickly but here was one of those opportunities and I knew I had to try.

Here I am standing on the edge of a platform on the bridge. I have put my life into the hands of the nice man behind me as he attached a padded belt around my ankles which was then attached to a giant bungy cord. They adjust the bounciness according to your weight and this is definitely one situation where you don't want to lie! Thank goodness the employees are willing to jump with you because I knew there was no way I would willingly dive off of the platform on my own. You can't jump feet first because the cord is attached around your ankles and you end up hanging upside down.

There we are hanging upside down - that little raft comes and gets you at the end. I can't really say I enjoyed this - it went by way too fast and I had my eyes closed for part of it. You bounce around a lot like you are on a huge rubber band. Now the other thing I got to try was much more enjoyable and you could actually enjoy the scenery. I went flying on a tandem parapente which is a two person parasail. The hardest part was hiking up the mountain because once you are all hooked up, you have to run off the edge of a cliff to catch the air. Here we go.

Now this was a cool ride!

One of Life's Equations

Work

+

Travel for Work

+

Getting Sick After the Travel

+

A Sick Child

=

Not a lot of Time or Energy For Anything Else

Consequently, I have not been blogging or reading email and I apologize to anyone who may have emailed me in the past 2 weeks. The crafting has been a bit slow too. We have also been dealing with my daughter's desire to test her independence and her/our limits. It has not helped that she has a few friends that seem to have almost no rules or structure imposed on them and consequently I get the question of why do we have rules when they don't. I explain that we think the rules are important and some of them are for her safety - things like: she is not allowed over a friend's house unless there is an adult present or if she is at one friend's house and they decide to go somewhere else, she has to tell me. Pretty basic things, but difficult when as one other neighbor said to me a few nights ago - "those kids are wild". Don't get me wrong, they are good kids but just don't seem to have the same structure that we try to maintain. This particular problem will actually solve itself in June but I'd love to hear any advice from other parents.

There has been a little knitting and sewing since I remembered that my daughter's substitute teacher's last day is this Friday and she is due with her first baby in May. I knit up a hat from the book Itty Bitty Hats

and made a matching burp cloth for one of the bibs I had shown a while back.

I think this will be a nice gift.