Catching Up

Lots going on, people. It has been a month since my last post. Ugh.

First some updates on stuff I’ve mentioned in the past few posts:

After many weeks wearing the Cone of Shame, we finally took it off Chilly. He had been wearing it because EVERY TIME he wasn’t wearing it, he would chew on himself. We got meds for him, which helped clean up the infection he got, but then we had to try some other things. We finally swapped out his food for another kind, and that seems to have helped. He has now been cone-free for about a week, with no more incidences.

CootieBoy continues to love Tae Kwon Do, and actually has his first belt test this week. He has to break a board and some other things, and then he’ll be a yellow belt. He is VERY excited. Have I noticed a change in his behavior at home? Slightly. Not a huge change (he’s very hot tempered), but he flies off the handle much less. But I don’t know if that’s just because he’s growing up, or because of his mind, body and eye focus that he learns at TKD.

My walking is going well. In January I walked a total of just over 50 miles, and in February I have already done 36 miles. Last week I took the week off and am ramping back up this week so I can end February with more miles walked than in January.

My knitting hobby is going well. I took my first knitting project to California last week and got most of the skein of yarn done, and then finished it once we got back home. It’s a very short but wide scarf, and I plan to connect the two ends to make an infinity scarf. It’ll be more like a cowl, but it’s super soft, so I think it’ll be nice. I may even wear it (CootieGirl has claimed it). I’ve now started on my next knitting project – a solid blue (TARDIS blue) that has a box motif in it, similar to the TARDIS windows. It’s a much chunkier yarn than I used for my first project, and not as soft, but I have four skeins of yarn, so it should be much, much longer than my original project. Once that is done, I’ll be working on a Fourth Doctor scarf – I bought the yarn and pattern while in California.

So let’s talk about California, shall we? The big trip finally arrived – going to Cali with the kids for the annual Doctor Who convention. We had SUCH a good time. Really wonderful. Even just that one year difference in the kids’ ages made it so much better. This time around we stayed in the hotel where the convention was, so they didn’t need to stay with me the entire time. And since CG has a phone now, we could separate but still be in contact with each other. As a result, I was able to enjoy the convention even more than last year. I went to many, many more panels, and just had a blast walking around swapping ribbons with other convention attendees (we took some of our own this year since last year was our first year and we had no idea about this phenomenon). Last year the kids each got around 30 ribbons or so – this year they both got well over 125 each thanks to doing trades with their own ribbons.

I got a picture with Sir John Hurt, who was delightful during his panel. CG took a picture with her favorite villain, Missy (Michelle Gomez), while CB took his picture with Osgood (Ingrid Oliver).

But perhaps my favorite part of the entire weekend was finding our photobomber from last year. Last year, CB and I took a selfie and didn’t notice the gentleman behind us photobombing. We ended up loading that picture onto the digital frame we have in the kitchen, and so for the past year we’ve been seeing his picture just about every day. At this point, we feel like we know him. So imagine our thrill at seeing him walking around at this year’s convention (which had approximately 4,000 people in attendance). We came up with the idea to have him photobomb us again, and within 24 hours we had found him, and took a new picture. I quickly explained that he was officially our new tradition, which amused him tremendously. I don’t know if we are going again in 2017 – it’s not a cheap trip – but if not, we’ll definitely go in 2018, and get his picture again.

Not much else is going on, really. Our weeks continue to be full, with Tuesdays being our only true "day off" with no activities scheduled. I like that.