Where's the Hamburglar?

Grimacey
Originally uploaded by mikewade

Yes, I'm Grimace(Y), but what else is new? Does anyone get that McDonald's reference? Hmmm. Yeah, I bet you all too young to even know what that is. Gawd, I feel old, in spite of having the mouth hardware of a 13 year old.

The first post of 2008. Yes, yes, I know that I've been horrible about blogging. If intention and incompleted posts count, I'd have you all caught up with my life, but every time I start up writing, I get bored and have to trash it. At first, I wanted to do a New Year's Resolution list, but I never do them, so it would be a list of things I haven't accomplished. And will all the competition for my time, I didn't want to make myself feel guilty for yet another unfulfilled personal obligation.

I'm going to reflect a bit on 2007 and why 2008 is going to be so much sweeter.

January of 2007 started off with a trip to the emergency room with Anto. I thought he had had another stroke (albeit much, much milder) and I was worried that if I didn't act quick, we'd be very sorry. The reason we went was due to some pretty severe cognitive processing difficulty. It just wasn't like him to be forgetful and confused all the time.

We eventually discovered that it was a combination of meds he was taking for spasticity and high blood pressure, but man, I really thought that it was the beginning of alzheimer's or dementia. It was pretty friggin' scary and I started to lose my shit. Fortunately, we started up some decent physical therapy in Vallejo with the folks at Kaiser and began the long road to recovery.

I attended Stitches West for the first time last year and it was AWESOME. It was also bank breaking and too much to digest in one weekend. I've since learned that it's best to go to Stitches with a certain amount of cash and once you've spent it, you stop. At least that should work in theory. We shall see as Stitches West 2008 is coming up at the end of this month. In addition, I'm not taking any classes this year. I had thought of taking sock classes from Cat Bordhi and Lucy Neatby, but my hesitation (and worrying about finances) meant that the classes were full up before I had a chance to enroll. Oh well, it was meant to be. Plus, I can feel a bit better about putting my current knowledge, DVDs and books to work.

Last year also saw the reunion of two former acquaintances who didn't previously knit but now do so obsessively. The maniac I'm speaking of is none other than Stephen/Hiznknits and I'm so happy that this boy is in my life. He's funny, he's smart, he's irreverent and he's a kick ass knitter. He also has the cutest dog and a cuter partner. What more could I ask for in a knitting buddy? Well, I was about to find out....

During my SURPRISE 40TH Birthday party, I was given an awesome felting jellyfish project. It was created by Kate, Tammy, Elaine and Stephen and they are now my knitting posse. I'm so lucky to have these wonderful knitting obsessed friends in my universe. They make me laugh, make me think and, most importantly make me knit.

It was the infusion of coolness and originality to my knitting world, that inspired my upcoming foray into the world of podcasting. There, I said it. I can't take it back. Stephen and I have done a couple of interviews with some pretty cool people and we've been working with our Executive Producer, Anto, to get it ready for public consumption. More on that in the near future.

All right, that's me for now, I'll be a bit more regular in 2008. That's a promise to Victor, Karen and Stephen.