My latest Facebook Fast begins later this week. It’ll go until my birthday in mid-June. I think that’s my longest one yet! As such, I suspect you will see me posting here much more often during that timeframe.
First up, my daughter. CootieGirl turned 13 years old this past weekend, y’all. THIRTEEN. How is that possible? She asked me to wake her up at the time she was born, which all these years I thought was 3:21 a.m. But on Sunday morning (a few hours after waking her at 3:21 a.m. to wish her a happy birthday), I pulled out her birth certificate, only to see her birthtime listed as 2:58 a.m. Oh well. I was close. We had a low-key day – no parties or pals. She slept in, she had silver dollar pancakes for breakies, she opened her gifts, she played on the PS3 for an hour or so, we went to church, she and I went to the movies (The Huntsman – it was okay), and then the fam went out for BBQ for dinner.
CG and I were at a store last week and she picked up a cross-stitch pattern that she liked (she learned cross-stitch in school this year and enjoys it). She then challenged me to finish my blue TARDIS knitting project before she finishes her cross-stitch. And so the competition has begun. We’ve both been working on our projects a little bit each night. The picture on this post is the first night she started her project – you can see she’s already got one row almost done.
This weekend CootieBoy and I had our own adventure when we drove out to High Point, NC to attend a black belt ceremony for a few dozen students in our group of TKD schools. It was very cool to see what is involved in the testing for black belts, as well as higher ranked black belt testing. Many folks from our school were there not only testing, but cheering on the students. CB, who was already plenty inspired to reach black belt, now REALLY wants to reach black belt status in the next couple of years.
I’ve learned a couple new skills recently. In the picture of CootieGirl, you’ll see she’s leaning on a big blue pillow. That was a brand new body pillow I bought for her to replace a years-old, nasty pillow she had in her room. That thing was ancient and needed to be thrown away. Enter new body pillow. However, as we put on the blue cover, the zipper broke apart. Normally I’d let it go and just have it be an open pillow cover. But instead I hopped on YouTube and looked at a couple videos on how to fix separated zippers, and in about 20 minutes I had that sucker fixed! I felt so accomplished.
The other new skill is making patch cables. We recently had some electrical work done at the house to help our internet connection. We had so many things accessing our WiFi signal versus being hardwired, that almost nothing worked. We had an electrician come in and put in six Cat6 cable ports in our TV room, and two ports at the desk area in our kitchen. We bought bulk cable for that project, which threw our electrician for a loop since he is not a tech guy. Once his part of the project was done, I set about terminating the jacks at the walls (really easy to do). Then I had to terminate the cables in the office where they plugged into the modem/router. I got six out of 8 done properly on my first try. At that point, I needed to make the patch cables to run between the TV equipment and the wall ports. Using some more of my bulk Cat6 cable, I made 4 more cords (we already had two unused pre-made cables in our house). Now, CB’s laptop, our video game console, our DirectTV, our Roku and our TV receiver are all hardwired – the result of which should be a much more functional WiFi signal for phones and tablets. As with the zipper, I felt very accomplished that I was able to terminate the wall jacks and make the patch cables myself.
In other news, in order to prompt me to get back into walking, I signed up for a 5K race in late October. It’s one I’ve done twice before, and it’s easy because it’s mostly flat terrain. However, this past weekend my sister emailed me with an interesting proposition: she and her husband were hoping I would act as a traveling companion for his mom on a two-week expenses-paid touring trip to ISRAEL in late October! At first I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it because of the lack of vacation time at work, but this morning I came into work and crunched some numbers and calculated that I have just enough wiggle room to make it work. I signed the registration form she sent me and emailed it back to her this afternoon. So it looks like it is in the cards for me to go to Israel in 2016. Obviously, I won’t be doing the 5K now – although I like the idea of finding time to sneak in a 5K near the Sea of Galilee if I can. Pretty amazing opportunity, wouldn’t you say!?