A Low Key Birthday

Yesterday was the day of my birth. Even though I'm pushing 40, I still like my birthday quite a bit.

I was a little bummed because we canceled our plans for this weekend but I still have the cold that never seems to end so it's probably good we aren't going out of town.

Instead we did some things around town. First we went out to dinner at one of our favorite Chinese places and had yummy, yummy sushi. After that, we headed into Asheville to go to the Hop.

Emily and I used to go to the Hop all the time when she was a baby for a meeting with other moms. I hadn't been there in years but it was still the same. We had some ice cream and Emily played in the kid's section

until it was time for the Multiverse's Game Night.

The Multiverse is the local geek group. Because of Todd working 2nd shift and me being on Emily duty, I hadn't been to any of the meetups yet. But we decided to give it a try last night.

They had videos set up as well as board games. It was themed to the 80's so it was a lot of old school games. Emily and I played an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game with a little boy and his dad - it was a ton of fun!

Once we got home, I got Emily to bed. I sat down and watched some of Iron Man 3, but I was beat so I went to bed early.

It was low-key but fun. I got a lovely present from a Bpal friend of mine that had BPAL, a travel mug, notebook and other things. I also got a card and Saving Mr. Banks from Emily and Todd.

Here I come, year 37! Here's hoping it will be awesome!

Disadvantages of Working From Home

Last year I wrote a post about the perks of working from home. Being able to work from home in my pj's had a lot of advantages but there are some things that can suck about it.

Because I work from home, have a small child and have a husband that works 2nd shift I don't get out of the house much. Most of the time it doesn't bother me too much but I do get a little stir crazy sometimes. I'll go to the store just to get out of the house.

I try very hard to keep my work separate from my home life. I have room that I use as an office and I generally only go in there for work. But sometimes I go in there just to check to see if I have a call rating or to check my email. Working from home makes it hard to completely disconnect from work.

While this one applies mostly just to my job, I think it probably happens with other work at home jobs. I work six days a week and it gets very tiring sometimes. I only work 6 1/2 hours a day so it's still about 40 hours. But since my only day off is Sunday and because I go to church, I don't really ever get much of a day off.

This disadvantages are generally pretty minor and right now the advantages do outweigh the disadvantages. I do hope to go back to working in an office again someday when Emily is a little older.

Ash Wednesday

Emily's cross from last year

Today is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. I'm Lutheran so we observe Lent and Ash Wednesday.

My church here is the first church I went to that did the ashes on the forehead. My other churches would have a service but that was it. It was a little strange the first year I went but it's a great symbol. I have pictures of Emily with ashes on her forehead from every year she's been alive.

I like Ash Wednesday service. It's a somber reminder that we came from dust and to dust we will return. Lent's a somber season so it's a great beginning.

I remember one year in college, Ash Wednesday fell on my best friend's 21st birthday. We went to the service but then we went out drinking a little. It was a rather surreal day!

For this year, I'll be going to church early for choir practice and then will be going to the service where I'll be singing with the choir. Emily will be with me, of course, so there will be another picture of her tonight with ashes on her forehead.

Camp Fire Girls

Emily wearing my Camp Fire vest

A few days ago a high school friend posted that her mom had passed away. I was a little startled and sad to see that I knew her mom. She had been my leader when I was in Camp Fire Girls and it brought back a lot of memories.

I joined Camp Fire Girls in elementary school. I had briefly been a Girl Scout but my parents switched me to Camp Fire for some reason. I really loved everything about Camp Fire. I learned all kinds of crafty things, made friends and got to go on camping trips.

Every summer, I'd go to day camp for a week and have an overnight stay at the end of the week. We'd cook out over fires and make crafts. I remember one year I made a really ugly clown doll that I named Fred. I still have him - he's in Emily's room in her sea of stuffed animals.

Like Girl Scouts sell cookies, we sold chocolate bars. I'm not a great salesperson even back then so I was never a top seller. But one year I really wanted to go to the special weekend camp out for the top sellers. My mom drove me all around town to sell in different neighborhoods. I still remember one of the streets was Elm Street. I got to my goal and got to go on the special camping trip - it was a lot of fun.

I loved Camp Fire so much that I stuck with it until my freshman year of high school. The only reason I stopped was because I wanted to do the school plays which had rehearsals that conflicted with the Camp Fire meetings.

I have a lot of fond memories and I'm a little sad that North Carolina has no Camp Fire councils so Emily will never be a Camp Fire girl herself.

Chronic Pain and Working Out

I've always been overweight. A combination of genes, not really liking sports and liking reading / watching TV all contributed to that. I would walk with my parents when I was younger and living at home, but I wasn't too keen on it.

Most of my college years I was forced to exercise because I didn't have a car and had to walk everywhere. I was in pretty good shape then but then I got a car and backslide a little. After I graduated from college, I didn't really exercise at all. I was dealing with my mom's death and working my first full time job.

A year after I graduated my chronic pain started and I became acutely aware of my health. I didn't try to exercise that first year because I was trying to get a hold of the pain. But I did start trying to work out after that in order to try and be healthy in general.

I tried a lot of things. Dance Dance Revolution was one of my favorites, but it is really an intense workout so I could only do it once in a while. Mostly I'd just try to walk when I could.

After Emily was born, I got a jogging stroller and would try to run with Emily but it was hard. When I went back to school, I took yoga every semester I could but I wasn't really losing any weight because of that.

I had heard about the Couch to 5K program when I started trying to jog, but I found it extremely hard to try and time when I was suppose to walk and when I was suppose to run. I got a smart phone and found an help that helped a lot. We also got a treadmill which allowed me to run indoors.

But my chronic pain still makes it hard to exercise. I ran on and off last year and I did lose 20 pounds of the course of the year. I've kept it off but without exercise, I've mostly hit a wall. I tried to start running at the first of the year, but the flu and Todd ending up in the hospital ended that quickly.

Yesterday I managed to get back on the treadmill but I had to start back at Day 1, Week 1 of Couch to 5K. I hope that I will finish the program and keep back up with it, but it's slow going. I woke up today with another migraine (in part because I also woke up with a cold) so it's going to be a rest day.

Even with my chronic pain, I am on a quest to get healthier. Hopefully I will actually be able to finish Couch to 5K this year!

Costume Plans of 2014

I love cosplaying but I'm not that great with sewing. But I manage to put together some interesting costumes to wear to the various conventions that I go throughout the year. I have plans to make two, possibly three costumes this year.

The first costume that I'm working on is for a horror convention that we'll be going to next month. I have a hard time figuring out horror related costumes to wear. I have my American McGee Alice costume from last year, but I'm also going to make a Disney's Haunted Mansion Tightrope Girl costume.

I love the Haunted Mansion so I'm not sure why I didn't think to do this costume before. But I'm working on it now. I have the corset and the skirt and I'll be adding on the details. Hopefully I'll be able to finish that in the next couple of weeks.

Then I'll be working on the Kaylee Layer Cake Dress 2.0. I hand sewed 1.0 a few years but I didn't do a great job and it's now falling apart. I've been meaning to remake for awhile now, but with the Browncoat Ball coming to Greenville, SC in October

it's moved up in the queue. I'm hoping to figure out how to use my mom's sewing machine so I can use that instead of hand sewing it. Hopefully that will be finished in time for Dragon Con.

If I finish the Layer Cake Dress, I might start my Ducky MoMo costume. It will actually be me cosplaying as Candance cosplaying as Ducky MoMo. It's going to be complicated but Todd has said he'll help me design it. He's the engineer so I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out.

For now, that's what I'm working on. I'll post pictures on Twitter and Facebook as I put the costumes together!

My Ghost Adventures - Help Me!

Last year, I wrote a post about how I always thought my basement was haunted. I never had any concrete evidence to prove that though.

When I went to college, I had a great interest in ghosts even though they freaked me out. When October rolled around, I saw that they were offering free ghost tours of the campus the night before Halloween. One of my roommates and I decided to go.

It was the first year for the ghost tours and the people running it hadn't expected such a large turnout. We waiting in the cold for hours but finally it was our turn. Our tour guide had a flashlight but we were pretty much in the dark.

We walked around the oldest part of campus learning about all the ghost stories. One story was about a girl in one of the dorms that would see the words "Help Me" in the bathroom mirror after a shower. We ended up in the courtyard of Barnard Hall which was not being used at that point in time. We heard about the most famous ghost of CMU which was Carolyn.

Carolyn was a girl who had gone to Central in the 50's. She had gone to a dance with her friends but had gone back to her room complaining of a headache. Her roommate found her dead in the morning. It is said that she roamed the halls of Barnard ever since.

It was the eeriest part of the evening and I had a hard time getting to sleep the next day. I didn't have any early classes in the morning so I had the dorm to myself. I locked the door and took a shower. When I came out, the words "Help Me" where on the mirror.

Needless to say, I was extremely freaked out. I never mentioned it to my roommates, because I didn't get along with the majority of them and knew they could have been playing a joke on me. I took cold showers for the next month of so.

When I was brave enough to take a warm shower, it appeared again. And would every time I took a warm shower in that dorm room. It was extremely freaky but still not a solid case for a ghost.

Next time, my experiences with the Cinema Ghost!