We're Back!!!

Blame it on a rainy day, or blame it on Eric working on the weekend, or blame it on Chris' awesome campaigning to reinstate my blog .... regardless of the reason, the blog is once again alive!

And to kick off the new season with a successful start, I have decided to pay homage to one of my favorite blog's (www.newdressaday.com) by blatantly copying its premise and format.

For those of you who are not familiar with New Dress A Day, every day Marisa takes an old piece of clothing and remakes it into something fabulous. So here we go.... it all starts with Eric's favorite sweater.

This is me in Eric's sweater.



If it wasn't immediately apparent, you can tell it was one of his favorites by the giant holes he has worn into the elbows.

My inspiration for today .... Veronica Mars. We have recently latched on to this show and are making our way through season 2 at a fairly rapid clip. Eric is drawn to the petite blond and I am oddly drawn to her sweater vests! So now, to transform me into Veronica. Petite check. Blond check. All that's left is the green sweater vest.



My first step was to take off the arms and about 6 inches in width from the side ... out comes the seam ripper.



Side note: Doesn't the pin cushion in the corner make it look like I know what I'm doing!

Next out, my trusty sewing machine. I have had this machine since 2002. My main goal in selecting a sewing machine was to have something simple with a decent number of features, but that was easy to store and carry around as I move from city to city. The Singer Featherweight II fit the bill perfectly!



I then used my old grade 7 home-ec skills to sew up the seams, taking care to add a zigzag stitch on the outside of the main line to reinforce the seams.



With the sides sewn up, my next step was to add the trimming to the arm holes. Here's where I ran in to my first dilemma. My plan was to take the cuffs off from the sleeves and resow them to the arm holes as trimming. It was at this point that I realized the radius of my wrist is very different than the radius of my arm-pit. And while I am thankful that I do not have chunky wrists, this was a problem. The solution ... well with little fabric available, I decided to cut the cuffs in half to give me twice the amount of fabric to work with.



I then painstakingly pin the cuffs to the edge of the arm hole to make sure that I have enough fabric to go around. Luckily this did the trick!



I then had to hand sew the cuffs on to the arm holes because unfortunately the only thread colour I have is brown and I needed to hide the stitching. I pushed my sewing machine aside and pulled out the needle.

After sewing on both cuffs, here are the result: a cute sweater vest just like Veronica`s - it even has a little embroidered moniker on it just like hers. I wanted to do a v-neck as well, but I realized after the arm hole fiasco that I would not have enough ribbing to redo the neckline so I decided to leave it alone.



Of course the fun part for me was waiting to see what Eric`s reaction would be. I predicted two outcomes: 1. He would realize immediately I had cut up his favorite sweater 2. He would look at it and think "that looks familiar it must not be a new outfit" and not really realize that it was his. While the latter was the funnier outcome, he actually did notice right away that I had redone his sweater. Frankly, I think he is a little jealous that it is now mine!


Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, and thanks for all the continued readership support!

Saturday Night Fever

Alas, our household is taking this theme a bit too literally this weekend. No, dear readers ... unfortunately we are not decked out in snazzy polyester pantsuits, nor are we showcasing our awesome dance moves under a glittering disco ball. Alas, we are at home on a Saturday night with a fever.

Okay so that is perhaps a twisting the truth a bit for the sake of poetry. Eric is getting over the flu which previous invoked a fever, and I am working on getting over an extremely annoying cold. But nonetheless, we are sick, bored, and housebound on a Saturday night.

Luckily, I have several loads of laundry to keep me busy ..... :-P

Natalie Portman actually pregnant not just fat ....

My husband just burst into my room ala Kramer style saying "Natalie Portman actually pregnant, not just fat...." and then swung right back out again.



This of course is even more entertaining when I think back to the time that he and his roommate stole a giant cut out of Natalie Portman in one of her Star Wars get-ups and put it in their family room to admire for a good year or so. Let's just say my husband's taste in decorating has since improved. (Not that I don't think that Natalie Portman is attractive, I just don't want a life sized cut-out in my family room!)

BTW - that rule of thumb also applies to giant checks, they are also a no-go for family room decorating. Seriously it took years for me to convince Eric to take that thing down.

Things that are awesome ...

So our brother in-law's brother bought us "The Book of Awesome". It's basically a book that just lists things that the author likes that the general public would also generally agree with, thus quickly falling prey to the book. Things like:
- Sleeping with one leg under the covers and one leg out
- Multitasking while brushing your teeth
- Reading the nutritional label but eating it anyways
- etc....

Now my first thought is that these aren't so much "things" that are awesome but rather choices that we make that please us greatly... but that's beside the point. Anyway, my husband has been excited all week because he read the one that said: the tabs on the saran wrap box. Yes, apparently there are little known tabs on the ends of the saran wrap box that if you push in will hold the saran wrap tube in place so that it doesn't fall out when you pull to get out more wrap. Genius. Well kinda genius, the tube doesn't roll quite as nicely as you would hope, but it does stay put. Who knew?!

Anyway, at this point the marketer within would like to do a special shout-out to the people at Saran who have clearly done a fantastic job at branding, such that I refer to all plastic wrap as saran wrap. (although some could argue that this is truly to the detriment of the brand because I now view all wrap products as the same, essentially making Saran wrap a me-too product .... but I digress)

Anyway, happy wrapping ....

101 Postcards!

"80 Postcards for Adolph" has been a huge success. My parents were amazed by the response, and completely delighted throughout the year by the influx of postcards! You blew the target by a solid 26% - with a grand total of 101 postcards!!!! Thanks to all that participated, you have truly helped to make this year an extra special birthday for my dad!

To top off the celebrations we are living it up at the Bellagio in Vegas! Tonight we are headed off to see Cher - and tomorrow either David Copperfield or a Cirque show (still to be decided). Can't wait!

After the celebrations we will send out a summary of the postcards (e.g. farthest traveled, most postcards, etc.), so stay tuned!

Happy Birthday Adolph!

Why do all my vacations involve rain pants?

Well I'm super excited because today is the first day of my vacation!!! I feel like it has been a long time coming - I can't wait!

And what do geophysists and consultants do for vacation you ask .... well, nothing says summer vacation like going to see where techtonic plates divide! Yes, we are headed to Thingvellir, Iceland.




A few reasons for going to Iceland aside from the extreme excitement of seeing the techtonic plates move at 10cm / year:
- Eric's lab went last year, but he missed out because of a wedding and our move to Boston
- It's only a 5 hour flight from Boston, and I was booking our trip right after flying 6 hours to San Francisco for work for the day! So this seemed like an attractive flight option.
- It's pretty cheap to fly to compared to the rest of Europe or South America (which were our other likely options)
- I want to try walking on glaciers in crampons

And so now we have started packing for the trip. We're planning on camping for most of the trip so the packing is a little more intense than usual. And this is when I started to ask myself .... why do all my vacations involve rain pants!?!??!



Rain pants aside, I'm still super excited - so stay tuned for some sexy rain pant photos from me and Eric scaling glaciers!

And you thought we couldn't get nerdier.....

As Eric's PhD qualifier gets closer and closer, I've started to notice that our "nerd"-dom has been increasing. Here are a couple of instances that I think you might find very amusing (and/or incredibly nerdy)



1. Eric and I were mulling over the fact that we are complementary opposites on something (although I can't remember exactly what we were talking about) - a ying-and-yang some might say. But instead of going to this classic adage, Eric said, "I'm like Cosine and you're like Sine; square us and add us together, and we make one!"

2. Eric was on the couch practicing deriving first principles of various geophysics equations, while I was busy making myself a drink. I asked him if he was interested in a drink, and he said no. I responded with "Good thing, I don't want you drinking and deriving!" Badda bing!