Labor Day Weekend

My labor weekend was lazy and busy at the same time. How? you asked. Well, I guess I felt like I was lazy and didn't do anything, but when in fact, we did a lot.

David and I went to the mall Friday after work. We haven't gone for so long and a lot had changed. I actually picked up this book while I was there. Yup! I want to at least learn what's in my garden and how I can plant some of my favorite flowers.

Saturday morning I went to Primerica training and when I got home, David and I drove to Mom's to have a BBQ, and met up with our friend Tanya. I of course, forgot my camera and didn't take any pictures while we were there! We got home around 10pm and I stayed up and finished reading "The Sisterhood of Dropped Stitches" (I got the book via PaperBackSwap, see sidebar). It was a very easy read and it was only slightly knitting related, and there were no patterns of any kind in the book, but it reminds me the Stitch n Bitch group I go to. I remember the first Wednesday meeting - I was a newbe at knitting and I didn't understand anything people were talking about! Slowly, people clued me in on the yarn, the pattern, the names, the techniques... I think without my "sisters", I wouldn't have grown so fond of knitting, and be able plunged into any pattern I want, and of course, have my large yarn stash. I can feel free to express what was in my thoughts when I go there and I can always count on a good laugh. Recently, one of the ladies that attend had some personal trouble, so we moved the meeting to her house. Even though I wasn't as close to her as the others were (we have a big group), I can feel that she appreciated us being there, and that it was good that we were there. Although I can't ease her pain, but I know I will be there when she needs me.

Sunday was a late start at 10am. David and I went to the Mark Twain Library book sale first. I went last year on a Saturday, and this year, I went to the half price day. On the way there, we stopped at a nursery that had mums for "5 for $12.95". I picked up these:

Aren't they beautiful? They are not full bloom yet and from my handy dandy new book, it says that I shouldn't plant them now until the Spring, so now they are just sitting in the front lawn waiting for the good weather to be gone and be moved inside.

We headed to the sale after the brief stop and we must spent over 3 hours there. Here is the haul:

All that for grand total of... you ready?... $22.25!!!!!!! You can't beat the price! Among the books, I came home with these:

Needless to say, we left happy. A lot of the books are replacing my paperbacks and the paperback will be listed on the swap for other books that I want and didn't find at the book sale.

After the book sale, we stopped at Costco and Trader Joe's to get some much needed shopping done, and got home with a car full of flowers, books, and food.

And while we were doing all these driving, I had finished Petrol -

Pattern - Petrol by Carol Sulcoski on Knitty.com
Yarn Called For - 5 Skeins Manos del Uruguay in #27 and 1 Skein Manos del Uruguay in #64
Yarn Used - 6 Balls Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK in #26011
Needles - Denise size 7 and 8
Gauge - 4.5 sts per inch
Knit - August 18, 2007 to September 02, 2007
Modifications - added 2x2 ribs for two inches at the waist, use only single color

This was a very quick knit - instead of the purling rib, it has garter rib. It was different enough to keep me awake but not too complicated so I can knit it during a movie. This is one of the vests I am making for my dad. So now, one down, one more to go. The next one will probably be in a regular plain vest since the yarn is heather and dark and wouldn't show too much of stitch definition.

After we got home, we sat around and be bums for a few hours, until the heat has gone down a little, and we went to our old house and cleaned out the garage, so we can put one of rare car that David is collecting into the garage. So now, we actually have ONE car in one of our garages!!! Well, the race car is also in the garage too. I think I'm just too happy to actually cleaned out the garage from our move - we ONLY moved about 6 months ago... yeah...

When we got home, we grabbed some quick dinner, and I was going through my blog subscription via Google reader (I love that thing! I don't have to sign up separate account at bloglines or anything! And it integrates into my google homepage, which I can read the posts via google homepage) and saw Brooklyntweed's post about his Hemlock Ring Blanket and that there is a KAL started for it. Okay, yes, I joined it. Go ahead, say I am crazy, nuts, or whatever have you. But to my defense, I already had the yarn in mind and printed out the pattern when he first post about it! I would have started the KAL if I didn't already host the Autumn Rose!

Monday morning I got up early (well, 8am IS early when I don't have to go to work!) and went to meet up with the Team Lead of CLCC (Collegiate Leadership Coaching Committee) for SWE business. I am part of the team and we had to get the budget set up and figure out what we are doing for the fiscal year. It was a lot of fun meeting up with her, especially we haven't seen each other for 6 months.

When I got home, I decided that I should continue to be a bum for the rest of the weekend - lots of people relaxed and did nothing during 3 day weekends! So that's what I did - I watched CSI marathon on SPIKE and knitted MS3 - yes, I am finally going back to it. But with the whole afternoon and evening, besides the one and a half hours of making pizza, I only knitted 36 rows!!!! Well, I think I spent about half an hour just trying to figure what went wrong - missing stitches! Luckily I figured it out after only tinking back one full row (missed a YO and also dropped a stitch - good thing I use merino so it didn't ladder down). So I am almost finished with chart E - maybe by Wednesday I will have chart E completed.

So now, it is time for this bum to go to bed - even though work has tomorrow off (floating holiday), I decided to work tomorrow so I can take another day off when we go up to 1000 Islands in a few weeks.

What did YOU do for your holiday weekend?

HOT-tlanta

So this is a long overdue post that I should have done couple of weeks ago, but camera cable disappeared and I wanted to make sure the pictures get into the post. So I went to Best Buy and bought a cord the other day, and here I am...

I went to Atlanta for the Primerica Convention. There were approximately 60,000 people flue into Atlanta for this. They had warn the whole city that we were coming, including the MARTA (their subway system), the hotels, etc. My friend Lynn and I went down together, and we stayed at the Hilton along with three other people:

Unfortunately the first event was canceled so we had some free time on our hands and we decided to go visit my friend Kelly and her fabulous restaurant - Pacific Kitchen. They treated us like queens! When we first sat down, they brought out a fresh fesca they made with mango, guava, passion fruit and some bubblies to cleanse our pallet, and some fresh bread with WHOLE HEAD of roasted garlic!!! YUM! Then she treated us with some cheese platter that's paired with different type of fruit chutneys that were all fresh made in the kitchen, using the freshest ingredients that came that day. I ordered Sea Bass that flue directly from Hawaii that morning on dry ice, with roasted sweet yellow beats, sweet potatoes, and spinach. Everyone ordered a different dish and everybody said their dinner was excellent. Oh, did I mention we had White Sangria? Oh yeah... For dessert, we ordered EVERYTHING on the menu and Kelly sent out five flavors of sorbet, made in house, as complimentary. My favorite was the coconut lemongrass. When the desserts came out, we played musical plate - everyone take one bite and move on to the next dessert! All the desserts were good, but I have to pick a favorite, it would be the Strawberry Brown Butter Almond Torte. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of all of these...

The next morning, I didn't have any general sessions, but I had to go to the convention center to pick up my ticket for one of the paid sessions (they missed it in my packet). After that, Kelly came to pick me up at the hotel and went to Flying Biscuit for breakfast. This time, I remember to take a picture of all the good food:

My breakfast: 2 eggs over hard, 2 chicken sausage patties, grits, oatmeal pancake with fresh peach compote, and of course, biscuits with cranberry butter


Kelly's breakfast: 2 eggs over-easy, 2 chicken sausage patties, 2 turkey bacon strips, French toast with raspberry sauce, potatoes and biscuit with cranberry butter

We also ordered "Love Cake" which is this beans concoction... The hostess couldn't stop talking about it so we had to try it!

We said our goodbyes after the yummy breakfast and she dropped me off at the convention center for my first general session. It was a very good and useful session, and I got to meet several people who makes lots of $$ doing what I do, which validates my belief that I can do it. The opening night ceremony was also unbelievable - we filled the entire Georgia Dome!!! There were a lot of speakers, including Governor of Georgia, the CEO of Primerica, and a few million dollar earners. There were also a lot of recognitions as well.

Left to Right - Miriam, Diane, Lynn and Myself Front - Brian and Jen

Saturday morning was more recognition and general speakers. A lot of us had to sneak out so we can go to our next session - Women in Primerica. There were over 20,000 people in that single workshop! I got to listen to a lot of women who had done very well in Primerica, their stories, how they did it, why they did it. That workshop along was well worth my trip down to Atlanta.

Saturday night was the closing ceremony - again, the Dome was filled, everyone was cheering and more recognition was done. At the end of the ceremony, there were fireworks inside the Dome! It was quite a sight!

I learned a lot during the 4 days I was down in Atlanta, and the whole convention blew my mind. Meeting all the people who are making a ton of money validated my belief - it is real, and I can do it and make it be, and be somebody! I mean, which company in the world that you know pays 59 people OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR as their salary? They even had a record breaking this year with a couple making 5 million dollars this past 12 months!!!! Yeah... I believe I can be one of them someday. I know I will.

Securities 63, I kicked your butt!

I am finally finished all my required testing for my securities tonight and I passed! :) I felt such a relief and am very happy that there will be no more studying for me! HA!

Because of the studying, I haven't really make a lot of progress on my cabled pullover sweater, but I plan on making lots this week!

Can you believe it's almost February??

I Passed! :)

I passed my Series 6 exam! WOOHOO!!! It was a close call but I did it anyway :) Now I just have to pass the second portion of it... the law.

On the other news, I've been knitting away my Cabled Pullover. Only if it can go faster!!! I can't wait to wear it! It was sooooooooooo COLD yesterday! Today is actually not too bad but still... I wore my cawl neck sweater for the first time this year on Monday because I was in a "meat locker", aka conference room. Only if I knew it was going to be literally freezing out on Wednesday, I would have saved it for then.

I met Polly yesterday at SnB - she was very interesting and very knowledgable. I was suppose to send her some information, but I am currently having a senior moment and can't remember what I was suppose to send her... Oh well. Hopefully I will see her next week and can ask her again.

Oh! And today, I received catalogs from Jim Hjelm Occasions. Although I already found the dress I really like for the bridesmaids, I think I should still keep my options open.

Well, CSI is on... I'm off!

I AM ALIVE!!!

YES!!! My laptop had been out of commission for quite awhile with a broken hinge and was in Atlanta for repaire. I finally got it back today!!!

Couple immediate things I want to show off -

My cousin gave me this for my birthday/Christmas! It is SO AWESOME!!!! It even has my blog name on it!!!!!

And right now, it is happliy containing this:

And eventually it will look like this:

Cabled Pullover by Elizabeth Zimmerman from Luxe by Classic Elite Yarn

I also got a new camera, a Canon PowerShot SD630 from Costco, same price to the bottom line online store!!!

I also received this from my friend Joanna:

All 30 balls of it!!! I'm not sure what needle size the swatch was from, but I'll find out! I will be using it to make the Moon Dance Stole. I think it will be perfect for my wedding since our favorite song is Moon Dance from Van Morrison.

Trip to Michigan was a lot of fun! We babysat our nephew Colin. He is 3 and full of energy.

David is in New Hampshire skiing. It's been pretty cold all of the sudden!!! Hopefully it doesn't last too long :)

I will be taking my series 6 exam on Tuesday! Wish me luck!

What have I been up to?

Happy Sunday! Where have I've been, you asked? Well, lets see...

Monday morning, I received a call from certain someone for something special for Tuesday. Monday night, I went to Walgreens at 10:30pm to look for some make up since I threw out all my old make up not too long ago. Also I got this in the mail:

My bridal gown swatch!!!

Tuesday afternoon, I went to the place for that something special. More on that later.

Wednesday night, I went to Stitch n Bitch and started a Neiman Marcus Scarf. And I am almost done with it!!! All I need now is a ribbon yarn to weave through it.

Neiman Marcus Scarf in process

Thursday night, David and I took some Germans to dinner at the cookhouse. We of course stuffed ourselves silly, being the Cookhouse is so good... hush puppies... fried cream corn pops... slow smoked ribs... yummmmm...

Friday night, David and I went to see the Casino Royale. It has some of the same characters from the original one but the story line seems to be different. We now have to go rent the original one so we can watch it and compare the difference. The movie itself was very good - even though the Bond was blonde.

Saturday and Sunday (today) was exhausting because I was at the security exam crash course. It's a lot of info in two days. But it is over. Now I just have to really study.

Now I'm just gonna go sit on the couch and pay attention to David and the dogs...

Where did the time go?

I can't believe it's already June! Where did the time go? I guess time flies when you are having fun! I've been pretty busy building my business, although it's not as fast as I wished, but it's slowly getting there. I passed my Life Insurance test so now I'm waiting for my license to come in. I am currently licensed to do business only in Mortgages, but baby steps, right?

My parents came to visit over the Memorial Day weekend, well, they were here for the week. We took them to Maine and Boston since they never visited there before - it was so much fun! We did the tourist stuff such as the Freedom Trail, Boston Duck Tour, etc. My parents really enjoyed the city, although we only scratch the surface of Boston! They are leaving for Taiwan tomorrow, but I'll be seeing them again for Thanksgiving :)

My sweater is coming along - only one sleeve left to be knitted and then I would be done - for a little while. My mom really like the sweater so I'm going to make her one as well. I will definitely be posting the day I'm done with the sweater.

The weekend before my parents came, David and I took a trip to Atlanta. We went to the Georgia Aquarium - world's largest aquarium, Coke Museum, Fernbank Science Museum, and my friend's restaurant - Pacific Kitchen. The food is excellent and the atmosphere is great. If you are ever in Atlanta, you'll have to visit there for sure!

I suppose those are my trips for now... untill 4th of July :)

May is here!

Wow! I can't believe it's already May! Next thing you know, it would be the summer! I love spring because of all the beautiful flowers! I discovered a new tulip in the front yard, but it is mixed in with the lily! Very hard to see! I will have to figure out a way to get it outta there and replant it for next year. David and I planted Pansies in the back yard couple of weeks ago, they are still staying strong, even after all the rain we got. We also have a little planter box by the dining room window. It has Rosemary, Oregano, Thyme, Parsley, Basil and Cilantro in it. Hopefully this year, I won't kill them :P. I always joke to people that I don't have a green thumb, I have a black thumb! So far, everything is still alive though :) We also got a rose plant - the roses will be blue! I can't wait for that one to bloom!

The down side of spring is allergies! My eyes are so itchy and my nose are just constantly running and sneezing! I heard about eating local honey and it will help w/ the allergies. I'll have to look that up and figure out where to get some!

My new business is going well. So far, I have been on the field 6 times, and I have to say, I was nervous! But I'm doing okay. I feel really great everytime I go to someone's house because they always said to me later - wow, I learned a lot! Doesn't matter if they do business with me, what they said alone, is worth it.

Well, have a good day!

I'm Back!

WOW! I didn't realize that I haven't been posting for such a long time! A few things had happened this past month:

1. I started my own business - Financial Services. I am still in training, but so far I really enjoy it. I like the feeling of helping other people out and make them understand that financial planning is something that they can do and afford, unlike the traditional image of financial planning - you better have some bucks! I am here to help the middle market, and I will gurantee that you will be happy with the results, as long as you follow the plan I provided.

2. I finished the scarf that I was making for my first customer. He really likes it, which makes it all worth it. Hopefully he'll remember me when he wants another one!

3. David and I discovered a new place near our house to eat! The name of it is The Cookhouse. It has very awesome ribs and apparently they have home made ice cream as well, but I was too full to try that. It is located in Brandford, CT and it is worth your wait - but to eliminate the wait, it's best to make a reservation before hand.

4. David and I are in the process of adopting another Great Pyrenese - Josey. She is coming the first weekend of May, and hopefully, she will be as playful as Mick and they can be buddies together.

5. I just joined a new knitting club - KnitLit. It is a knitting and book club all in one! I haven't have a chance to figure out how I will be able to attend since it will be on the weekends and I am pretty busy on weekends! But it sounds so much fun! I will keep you updated on this!

I think that's it for now! Time to get back to the JOB.