Wandering through E-Space

...or, as my friend Lee posted, 'Blizznarok'. LOL. Astronomer Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy posted this video that NASA and NOAA made with satellite images from January 31st to February 2nd: Wow! Anyone catch the front cover of the Plain Dealer yesterday? They had a satellite image from Tuesday, with a tiny 'you are here' arrow pointing to Cleveland. Pretty amazing. I was lucky-didn't loose power, and the ice wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been (although I think a combination of the ice and wind took out half a strand of my snowflake lights-I noticed last night that they were out. :() Still, if that's the worst that happened to me, it's nothing. We've got mountains of snow along the streets (thanks plow trucks), so the sidewalks are pretty impassable. It was amazing to see different posts from my friends all around the country-it was like we were all in the same area-it was just difficult to fathom that everyone was experience similar sit...

Well, looks like I was a little off with my mileage guesses. ;) Here's the new totals for January: Week of January 2nd: 12 miles Week of January 9th: 15 miles Week of January 16th: 3 miles Week of January 23rd: 8 miles January 31st: 1 mile Total miles for January 2011: 38 (not bad for a winter month!)

It's the last day of January! First, I'd like to say, "GO, PACK, GO!!!" The Packers are going to the SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay!!!! They are playing the Pittsburgh Steelers! Arthur and I are gonna get our co-hosted Superbowl party!!! But more on that later this week. ;) One of the New Years resolutions I forgot to mention was I'd like to keep track of how many miles I walk each week. Here's the count so far (I think): Week of January 2nd: not sure, but I think it's 0 (need to check bus pass) Week of January 9th: 12 miles Week of January 16th: 3 miles Week of January 24th: 7 miles (you get the general idea) The first two weeks of January I'm not sure of at this point-I need to find the bus pass I had at the beginning of the year (if I still have it-I use 5 rides so each of my rides will be marked) and I need to check the weather-we had a bit of a melt down, so the sidewalks were clear for a brief time (biggest problem with walking in winter: wa...

Just wanted to say congrats to new Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven! (Twins pitcher, 11 of his 22 seasons in baseball-including the 1987 World Series!) Cooperstown calls for Alomar, Blyleven Congrats to Alomar, too!! Both well deserving! :)

Happy New Year!!! So I meant to write more while on vacation, but alas, it didn’t turn out that way. ;) I ended up being really busy-I mean, seriously. Since I wasn’t going to Minnesota this year (waahh), I thought this would be a nice, boring, relaxing vacation. Well, it was nice, and relaxing (when I actually had the chace to sit down!) It certainly wasn’t boring! I had a plan-seriously I did-I even had what I was going to do before Christmas all mapped out-just ask my friend Sharon. ;) However, I should have known better. Somethings took a little longer than anticipated, other times I didn’t know how tired I actually was until I woke up from a long (but much needed) nap. LOL. Long phone conversations with family and friends far away. Then there were gatherings with friends here that I hadn’t originally planned (but was certainly not going to turn down!) It seemed I was always on the move. In fact, Monday was the first (and only!) day I didn’t go ANYWHERE. (ended up doing dishes, lau...

Well, so much for that blizzard that was supposed to hit us! Ok, the weather was kind of bad, and we did actually get to go home early yesterday (whoa!), but considering what they were originally predicting, this storm kinda just hiccuped and died. ;) Finally finished my decorating! Now when I watch tv, I can work on my knitting, rather than trying to decorate during commercials. ;) Thought I would send a little holiday cheer along. No matter how many times I see it, this video never gets old: Also, do you like Target's commercials for the season? Did you know that you can download all the music from the commercials? ...for FREE?!?! AWESOME! Check out http://www.target.com/christmas Enjoy!!!

As promised, here are a couple of pictures from Wednesday night: (click to enlarge) Check out our lights, all covered in snow!!! They are saying we are going to be hit with a blizzard Sunday, so there may be more snowy pictures in the future. ;)

Wow! I hope everyone in the area survived the surprise lake effect snow storm that came through yesterday afternoon! (I say surprise, because it was all supposed to have passed by late Tuesday afternoon)I was lucky-I got a ride home, and we somehow managed to squeeze into an opening, then hit a pocket of no vehicles on the road and we whizzed up Cedar Hill (well, not exactly 'whizzed up', after all, the roads were nasty!) I had a couple of friends who were stuck downtown for quite some time. It took poor Arthur 5 and a half hours to get home! He could've been to Columbus and back at that rate! I've got a couple of pictures I'll hope to post sometime soon... Tomorrow Sharon and I are going to the Botanical Gardens during our lunch break to check out the Gingerbread Houses-I'm so excited!! I'll definitely have to post some pictures of that. This weekend is the annual holiday baking party that Perseph and I try to have each year. I'm making rum balls...

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! I did! I went over to the Jarc's for Thanksgiving dinner and had a great time! (even though I was coming down with a cold-boo!) Perseph's brother Adam and his wife Keeya joined us as well. After we ate we watched a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and played Mario Party 8. LOL. Good times, good times. I forgot to mention Wednesday when I got home, my downstairs neighbor Rachel was adding lights to the outside of the house. I asked her if she needed any help, and also added a strand of old fashion lights and garland of my own! The front looks pretty good. :) Sunday I did my back porch-this year I did twinkling snowflakes, instead of blue icicles, and I also added a small tree with red and green lights. :) I didn't do any Black Friday shopping this year (although there were some pretty cool doorbusters). Since I wasn't feeling well, I just relaxed at home. Even though it made my Saturday more busy than I would have liked, I r...

Ah, yes! The day before Thanksgiving! Busy time for everyone-a lot of my coworkers took the day off, so it was very quiet at work. I took last year off, but this year decided to save it for around Christmas time. I will be making pumpkin pies in just a bit. I LOVE making pumpkin pies! Crust and all! ;) This year I’m heading over to the Jarcs’ for Thanksgiving dinner-which will be alot of fun! Dunno if I’ll be doing any Black Friday Christmas shopping, but I am hoping to head downtown for Winterfest on Saturday. Nothing like a good old fashion lighting to get you in the mood...old fashion with fireworks...and lasers. LOL. (hmmm...are there lasers this year...?) Well, most of the leaves have finally fallen off the trees. I’m kicking myself for not getting out and taking more pictures (well, more than I did) This year I missed going to Cain Park and the Lagoon. It’s really sad that I missed the Lagoon-considering it is right next door to where I work. All I needed was one ...

Just found this on Craftzine -a link to make your own (free!) 2011 Owl Calendar. I made one for myself. The images are just too cute! It was hard to pick only 12. I may have to make another one! The artwork is just fantastic. Oh! I can't do a post today without adding, 'Happy Birthday Doctor Who!!!!' Hard to believe it's been around for 47 years! For fun, if you missed it on my knitting blog: Tardis socks!

Well, even though I have tons of pictures (I take way too many!) I think I will wrap up my 2010 Halloween with this post. Thanksgiving is only 2 weeks away, after all!!! As I mentioned earlier, this year I spent Halloween at the Jarc's. Since I carved a pumpkin, and felt 2010 Jack deserved to have a candle light his insides, I brought along my freshly (actually, day old) carved pumpkin. He hung out on the front steps, and looked pretty cool! 2010 Jack As we were getting ready for the kids, we noticed that the setting sun had a very cool affect on the trees in the neighborhood. Isn't that cool? Look how the trees in the background seem to come alive with a warm autumn glow. Oooh, I love the fall!!!!!!!! We didn't have as many kids as we've had before-I did a count on Twitter, but by the end of the evening, we had lost count (the gap between kids was unusually long). We probably had less than 100 kids. This year, however, a good portion of the kids were in costume (e...

Hope everyone got out to vote today! I did-bright and early (because I knew I would be too tired at the end of the day) ;) For my second Halloween post, I want to share the costume I made-no real character (although from looking at some of the pictures, I could be the Mad Hatter or a character from A Clockwork Orange ...). I wanted to try making a Steampunk themed costume, because I've always loved Steampunk, plus the theme for Marcon next year is alternative history-it will work for that as well! :-) To start off, I needed boots-and as I've mentioned before, my calves are entirely too thick for fancy boots, but I came across a pattern for knitted spats (see my entry in Roknits for more details). Here's a picture of me actually wearing them: Next I wanted to work on a really cool hat. This is where it could get rather expensive, with goggles and clock pieces and all. After finding an inexpensive hat and pair of goggles at Halloween City , I decided I could make stenci...

Well, I meant to post this entry before Halloween, with updates after, but alas-my costume needed just a little more tweaking than I thought it would, and I ran out of time! I hope everyone had a fun, safe, and happy Halloween!! I know I did! Although I didn't give out candy at my place this year (like I did last year for the first time ever!), I still decorated, because, well, I love to decorate! Here's my pumpkin, resting on my back porch-it had no idea what it was to become late Friday night. ;) Here's a picture from part of my yard. I adore Peanuts-I think the Snoopy sign is the only decoration that I didn't buy on sale, because when I saw it, I had to have it before the store ran out! (which they did!) Not all of these decorations are mine-my downstairs neighbor also likes to decorate! :) I recently finished a knitting project! Check out my Steampunk Spats at RoKnits: Steampunk Spatterdashes They were a part of my Steampunk themed Halloween costume that I wore to...

Dear Twins: Okay Boys, this is it!!! Sure it's been a rough couple of weeks, but it's time to put that behind you and to start kicking some serious baseball butt! (remember 1987? You can do it!!!) You've got home field advantage for the ADLS in the brand-spankin' new Target Field-lets make some magic happen!! You know I love you and just want to thank you for the exciting ride this year (but I wouldn't mind extending that ride a little longer, say, until November? :)) xoxo, Romana. P.S. WIN TWINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Here are a couple of book reviews I did fairly recently on goodreads: We're Gonna Win, Twins! by Doug Grow My rating: 5 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this book-it was great to learn more about the history of my home team, and to relieve the childhood memories of our first World Series win. Doug Grow did a excellent job-while reading about the first World Series win in 1987, I actually got shivers down my spin and couldn't help but feel excited all over again. And I have to admit, re-reading about the death of Twins announcer Herb Carneal the day before Opening Day back in 2007 brought tears to my eyes. I actually found a copy of this book in the Cleveland Public Library, but I will definitely have to add this to my personal collection at home! View all my reviews The Cain Saga, Volume 1: Juliet by Kaori Yuki My rating: 3 of 5 stars I started reading Kaori Yuki's Godchild series first, and decided before I finished it off (I still need to read volume 8) I would give her pre...

Ah, the last day of September! Fall is here, and I'm very excited about Halloween! :) This weekend I think I will put up my yard decorations. I already have some regular fall decos out around the house, including new candles from Glade..mmm...I love the new scents! (too bad they are limited edition). ;) Decorating won't be the only thing I'm doing this weekend. Saturday I'll be participating in the NAMI Walk with Brigie. Check out our team page ! Brigie works for Recovery Resources here in the Cleveland area. I'm looking forward to the walk-I'll be sure to take pictures (although whether they make it to the blog is a different story! ;) ) Sunday is the Peruvian procession for Italian Band, which will be our last official gig of the year. I think this is the first time in a while that I've been able to make every gig! (usually I'm away during the 4th, so I miss the 4th of July parade. This year I took my vacation later, and made sure to schedule it...

It's time for St. Rocco's festival! Normally I would have a post about how excited I am for another Italian Band gig (and how excited I am for the zeppoli! I waited all summer!) but I've been busy setting up a blog for the Italian Band. :) We'll be at St. Rocco's Saturday evening, and Sunday afternoon for the procession, and Sunday evening again. Stop by to here us play and have some Zeppoli!! Oh! Here's a link to the post I created for the Italian band site: St. Rocco's Everyone have a fun and safe holiday weekend!!

Well, phooey-nothing in July. That makes it the second month when I didn't post anything at all. Not even a short note to let you know I still have every intention of blogging again. Hmmm...maybe I should consider mobile updates for brief messages. I have a Twitter account for something like that, but not everyone uses Twitter. The only thing is it will only update this blog and not my LiveJournal or MySpace blogs. Oh, well. Tonight is the first night of the Feast of the Assumption! We will be doing our standard around the neighborhood for the first couple of hours, with a sit down sometime after 8pm. Dunno if I'll have the chance to update during the Feast, but you never know-I might try. ;) If you are on Twitter, you can follow me there -as I'm sure I'll update it at least a couple of times this weekend. ;) From last year: Yeah, I know-not many pictures. That's ok-the Italian Band has a, wait for it... Facebook page !! It's set up so you can browse our...

Well, I thought for sure I would post more in the month of June, but it just didn't happen. I caught a bad cold at the beginning of the month, which caused a double ear infection (yuck!), and I'm still not 100%. Blah! It's weird still being here-usually by this time I'm in Minnesota visiting my family for the Fourth of July. I'm still going up there this summer-just later in July (after Mount Carmel!) Since I'm here, I'll be able to play in the parade at Shore Acres-I played there the first year I was in Italian Band, but ever since then I've always been in Minnesota. Wait, now that I think about it, I might have played there the first two years I was in Italian band...that still makes it 11 years since I've played that gig! ;) I've got quite the container garden on my back porch-I've had quite a few successes, a couple of disappointments, a surprise, and one puzzle: I have no idea what's wrong with my marigolds this year-half of the...