Long "thyme", no post!

Has it really been almost a month? I should say "thyme" flies when you are having fun! OK, maybe not all fun, but "thyme" has flown!

September is my favorite month of the year, but it is also usually our busiest. Besides all the back to school stuff, getting into our new schedule, we have DH's birthday, our county fair, and my birthday! And to make life a little more complicated, I fell on my bad knee and spent a good part of the Saturday Tropical Storm Hanna hit our area (also DH's birthday) at the ER getting it xRayed. Thankfully there was no visible damage, but darn it still hurts! I'm giving it one more week and then if it's not better I'm going to visit my orthopedic again!

We had our county fair a couple weekends ago, and with our heavy involvement in 4H we end up being at the fairgrounds through most of it. This year we bought a hog at the 4H livestock auction - no, not to hang out in the yard with the chickens, but to be dinner and breakfast for the coming year! We anxiously await the call from the butcher shop saying out bacon and chops and ham steaks are ready to pick up! I hope no one is offended, but we always take a picture of what we buy from the 4Hers so we remember where our food comes from and all the work that went into providing us our food! When DH asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said a day to sew! And that's what I got! Granted, I was sewing a lab coat for DH, but it was the process that was important. And I used my Babylock Ellure machine that I bought last year and just have not tried to sew with it much. Now "Ellie" and I are good friends! I'm pleased with the lab coat and DH said a couple of his students want one too! Next lab coat I make for him I will alter the shoulder width as this one drooped off the shoulder too much. And yes, it is very red, but red and black are the school's colors. My day of sewing included a quick trip to JoAnn's, and the TV tuned to football, baseball, and NASCAR racing all day long. DH put a roast on the grill for dinner too!
I also made a fleece blanket from some stash fleece, pjs for DS from stash, and culled out some scraps and UFOs. I'm trying to get into the sewing room, if just for a few minutes, every day. I'm working my way through a pile of stash, layer by layer!

This month was also the end of the baseball season for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs. They missed first place by one game - pretty impressive for their first year! Now I will turn my baseball attention to the majors and the playoffs. Not sure who I'll be rooting for yet!

Spur of the Moment Family Fun x3

I am a confirmed "planner". In the various assessments I've taken in leadership courses, I'm WAY on the side of planning. However, I managed to marry someone who is the exact opposite, who approaches many things with a "make it up as you go" attitude. How we have managed to stay married for almost 25 years (Aug 21!) just goes to show you that opposites attract! I guess we compliment each other, and over the years I have (mostly) learned not to get too upset when my "plans" get changed, or to go into a weekend without having every minute planned! So, Friday when we dropped the car off for some work and saw coupons for FREE admission to the Carson And Barnes circus down at the fairgrounds, I said, sure!

So, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and go to the fairgrounds about 30 min before the show. There we realized that the coupons had very teeny tiny print above "FREE" that said "buy one get one" LOL! Oh well, we were there and what else did we have to do on a nice May Friday evening? It ended up being an entertaining evening even though it cost a couple of bucks. You are much closer than being at one of the big venues for Ringling Brothers, and the acts were good.

Saturday a dear childhood friend, with whom I've stayed friends with and our kids are friends, called to invite us to a Sunday cookout. My Sunday plans were to sew and watch both Indy 500 and Coca Cola 600, but I don't get to see this friend often enough and it was her birthday! So, cookout it was! the kids had lots of fun, and we even got DH up to try out the bowling on their Wii!

Today we have tickets for the baseball game, which I thought was at 6:30! I'd have the whole day to catch up on some laundry and maybe a little sewing. Guess again! The game is at 2! Remind me to take the sunscreen!

Oh well, there's always next weekend for sewing, right? I mean, that fabric isn't going anywhere!

A Night to Remember!

Friday night the stadium that here was just a concrete bowl of mud was the jewel of Southern Maryland! Regency Furniture Stadium opened and the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs were welcomed into their new home. It was a party that lasted from 4:30 pm until well after 11 pm! over 7000 people packed a stadium that only has 4100 seats - no wonder there was a traffic and parking issue! You couldn't walk 20 feet without running into someone you knew. As is typical in minor league ballparks, it is a great family place, with a nice playground and soon-to-come bumper boats! the game was pretty good too - amazing pitching on both teams, lots of good defensive plays, and two home runs by the Blue Crabs. They won, 3 to 2, and then the fireworks began!
I will post some of our pictures later, but meanwhile, there are some on the Blue Crabs home page.

Great Baseball Night!

Last night was the very first game for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, and although it was an away game we were able to listen to some of it on the webcast from the Somerset Patriot's website! And they won, 3-1!

At the same time, the Washington Nationals were winning against Chicago, thanks to a walk-off homer for Wil Nieves, his very first major league home run!

Go Home Teams!

Crustacean Nation

I may have hinted in earlier posts that I am a big baseball fan. No secret there! So when it was announced that a new minor league team was coming to southern Maryland I was pretty excited. Then to find out the stadium would be very close to our house, well, that was too cool! So, when the opportunity to purchase season tickets came, I jumped!

The Southern Maryland Blue Crabs are their name, and the slogan they are using is "Join the Crustacean Nation". And join we have! We were #49 to select our seats for the 2008 season! I can't wait!

So, Thanksgiving morning we all walked (well, DS rode his bike) down to the stadium's construction site to check on its progress. They closed the road for construction so we'd not seen it since they started clearing the area. Here's what it looks like from the outside (DS wearing a KS fleece pullover from last year's sewing):

And the inside - you can see the home team dugout!

I hope it's a mild winter so they have it done by opening day, May 2!

Meanwhile, there's another stadium under construction "in the area" - for the Washington Nationals. Sometimes my bus goes past it on the way home so I've been following the progress. Now there's an easier way - Stadium Cam! If you click time lapse you see the whole project from start to present. Or, you can click on a date on the calendar on the right to see each day. They started putting down the sod in the beginning of November, so that was fun to see each day's progress. I like to click from day to day to see what has changed!

Only 3 months until spring training!

Progress

I just ordered the border DS picked out, Orange flames, and this morning DH put up the new ceiling light fixture from IKEA. It's not as bright as the fan with the bare bulb light that used to be in there, but DS will get used to it. Baby steps baby steps.

Go Nats! I'm so excited that my Nationals are playing the role of spoiler in the MLB National League East, and are making the Phillies-Mets race to the pennant interesting!

It's not the heat...

...it's the humidity. All too true around here the last two days. It was almost feeling fall-like earlier this week, but summer is back with a vengence! And with the summer heat and humidity comes summer storms. They've been very hit or miss, mostly miss around here, so the corn across the street from us was looking pretty pathetic and I'd noticed one of our oak trees was starting to lose its leaves. Today's storms were a direct hit - two hours of storm to be precise! Heavy heavy rain that left huge puddles in our yard and put a trickle of water in the previously dry streambed. Lots of thunder and lightning and a few blinks in our electricity. It's all clear now, so hopefully we're done for today.

So, what better to do on a humid, stormy day than stay in and work on decluttering the soon-to-be master bedroom! I've found the floor, and there is still brown carpet on it, but not for long! I'm going to have to get a few more bins to pack my scrapbooking stuff in. The clear bins with the hinged lids I got at BJs yesterday worked well. I have two boxes of stuff either for a thrift shop or maybe we'll have a yard sale.

I was hoping to watch the induction of Cal Ripkin Jr into the Baseball Hall of Fame while I decluttered, but our cable system doesn't carry ESPN Classic. Or at least I couldn't find it. :-( I remember Cal's rookie year, in Memorial Stadium. In fact I recently found a picture of him, well, a series of pictures that I took the last game of the 1982 season, Earl Weaver's last game as the Baltimore Orioles' manager. See, I grew up in Baltimore and my dad split a season ticket plan with a friend, so I grew up watching the O's from 5 rows behind the third base dugout. Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Rick Dempsey, etc, were my childhood heroes. OK, so they are still my heroes! Cal started playing while I was in college, and then I married and moved away, so while I remained an Orioles fan, I wasn't able to follow daily as I did growing up.

So, instead of that, I listened to several episodes of the Material Mama podcast, still trying to catch up on all the podcasts I've subscribed to! It was like having a friend in the room with me!

I'll try to get some pictures of the bedroom progress. The before pictures are too scary, so I might have to start with halfway!

Let's Go Nats!

It was a glorious day for baseball at good old RFK Stadium! The crowd was an interesting mix of Orioles shirts and caps and Nationals shirts and caps. In fact, some families and other groups had both teams' gear! I was wearing red and blue and a Nat's "Curly W" hat and E was wearing his Jr. Orioles Dugout Club hat from 2 seasons ago. I wasn't sure who to cheer for - why not cheer for both teams?

In the tradition of all (?) blogging sock knitters, I took a travelling sock picture. Opal Brasil #2 was "born" on the Metro on the way to the game, and here is 4 rows old!

The game was very exciting! Excellent pitching, good hitting and base running, and some super fielding by both sides. In the end the Nats prevailed and won it in the 8th inning, 4-3.

Who was I rooting for? The Nats! It was very strange to see Orioles uniforms on the field and not be cheering them on. After all, I grew up just outside of Baltimore and my Dad had a season ticket plan at Memorial Stadium so I got to see about 15 Orioles games a year, sitting 5 rows behind the Orioles dugout! Earl Weaver, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, etc, all were my childhood heroes. But, this is a different O's team, and the Nats are my home team. I'll still cheer for the O's in the American League, and wonder what it would be like to have the O's and Nats in the World Series!