hello there!

Sunday, February 15, 2004

[FIRST OFF: Mega-warning - I have a ton of photos in this entry. Please be patient]

Heeeeey. Long time, no write.

Forgot what I looked like or who I was?

There are a few factors having to do with my absence. The first being a lack of computer. I'm not sure if you read the health & fitness blog, but a month ago I mentioned there that our computer went bye-bye (I'd link to the entry but I am currently permalink-retard. Seriously. I used to be able to link to specific entries but now I've either forgotten or Blogger changed some and I don't feel like looking into it right now. So trust me.) The computer thing started with the upgrading of my hard drive. A buddy of mine located and installed a 30 gig hard drive to replace my seriously inept 4 gig. He did it over Christmas break while we were in Nashville and I was very grateful. Very grateful, that is, until a few weeks later when James called me one Friday while I was still at work.

"Any idea why the computer is flashing a question-mark?" he asked.

Of course, I didn't. I'm was busy with my own computer issues at work. I suspected it was the hard drive. But, being the sweetheart that my husband is, he decided to try and fix it so that I wouldn't have to deal with it when I get home. He did this by trying to re-install our old hard drive. Only, he didn't unplug the computer first and, literally, fried the thing. So, there it was. A dead laptop. THAT'S a great way to start a weekend.

I'm going to fast-forward this story to save you the pain. After much anguish and then some mega-research into find a new machine, our buddy in Nashville actually got the laptop up and running. And while I'm happy that I don't have to fork over the dough for a new computer, I was a little disappointed that I won't have a new Powerbook on my desk anytime soon. Since our buddy is in Nashville, there has also been the issue of shipping. So, we've pretty much lived the past month computer-free if you don't count my work PC that I've occasionally lugged home. That's what I'm typing on now. And that is also why the images in this entry probably don't look so hot. How do you people do it without Photoshop?

The other reason for my absence is that I've been sick. SICK. Ugh. I am just now finally starting to feel better. I'm finally off drugs. And although I'm still coughing and have congestion, I'm not the bumbling zombie that I was all week. I know I'm a wimp. I suck at being sick. I don't get sick very often, so when I do, I become a huge whiner. I can't do anything around the house and I am completely worthless. I freely admit it. I'd suspected I've been fighting something for a while and last Friday, it finally got me. I literally spent all of Saturday, Sunday AND Monday either in bed or on the couch. I did go back to work starting on Tuesday, but that was it. I slept and worked. I didn't even workout. I barely ate. And I was miserable.

Like I said, I suck at being sick.

But now I am feeling better. I actually got to the gym yesterday. And I would have today if I hadn't of needed to go into the office. Which brings me to my final excuse for my not writing, my freelance gig.

Yes, I finally have a freelance gig. Not that I've been trying to land freelance gigs. But I honestly haven't done anything in years minus the occasional Web freebie. As luck would have it, though, when we closed on our new mortgage after refinancing, our mortgage guy asked me if I did logo design. They were looking to redesign their identity. And I JUMPED at the chance. Designing identity is fun, something this designer rarely gets to do. And the money? That's nice, too.

Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned computer problems, I didn't have a machine at home to do this on. So, I've been spending some weekend time at the office. Not something ideal, but like I said, I'm getting paid for it.

So, then. What else shall I catch you up on?

The Ice Palace. Like I mentioned in my last entry, I was absolutely obsessed with this thing. I monitored its creation daily because I passed it each morning on my drive into work. Each day, I'd see more and more ice blocks going up. And it all made me so giddy. Who knew that a bunch of ice could do that, but I thought this thing was seriously cool. Even cooler was the fact that they harvested the ice for the palace from the lake a few blocks from our house. In fact, a couple of weekends before the castle was open, James and I went down to Lake Phalen to check out the harvest and I was quite amazed at the whole operation. So much work went into a structure that only existed for a couple of weeks!

James and I snapped some pictures of our harvest excursion.

The girls and I in front of the harvesting area. It was actually a nice day. The temp was in the upper 20s. The next day it sank to way below zero. I felt so badly for all the volunteers who had to work in that extreme cold.

Here's a shot of both one of the "fields" that they were harvesting and two palates of ice that were ready to go. Each of these blocks weighed approx. 500 lbs apiece!!!

These guys are out on one of the fields that had already been harvested, hence the open water. They literally chainsawed blocks of ice then followed the cut blocks that were floating and pushed them through a canal.

Here are some of the guys pushing the ice blocks with their sticks.

A shot of the canal. Can you believe they did this with over 27,000 blocks of ice??

There was a conveyor belt at the end that lifted the ice out of the water.

Looking back at the images, I'm am still in awe of all the effort that went into the palace. The harvesting of the ice alone went on for a couple of weeks. And THEN there was the building of the palace. Quite amazing.

The palace opened the last weekend of January. And, as luck would have it, my brother, his wife and my sister were in town to enjoy it with us. It was quite cold that night. But we had fun, anyway. I have pictures of that, too!

Going to the palace at night was the best because of the lights.

This should give you an idea of the size of this sucker. That's us huddled on the left.

My brother and his wife looking adorable. Hopefully they weren't hating James and I too much for dragging them out in the cold on a Saturday night.

There was an ice skating rink out front of the palace. Unfortunately, James and I never got a chance to take advantage of it.

Don't we look like happy campers?

I swear, we WERE having fun. These smiles aren't forced. REALLY!

On our way back to the car, we got to look at the Winter Carnival ice sculptures. This was the winning entry.

Another ice sculpture.

As crazy as it sounds, the St. Paul Winter Carnival is really a great festival. From time to time, I do tend to trash Minnesota. But events like this really do make me appreciate living here.

At this point, I could also tell you about James' and my experience volunteering at the palace. Yes, we did that, too!! But I'll save you the tale. The summery is that we basically spent three hours outside in the freezing cold yelling at people. The things we do for our city, I tell you.

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Well, that's is almost it. I just have a two more photos left to share. They were on the camera and I figure now is as good a time as any to share.

Remember when I talked about knitting and finishing my vest?? My first (and only, so far, non-scarf knitting project). Well, here are pictures. I'm quite proud:

The front. Please don't mind the mega-pimple on my forehead. PMS sucks.

The back.

I have to say, this came out way better than I'd expected. I want to do a poncho next. But first, I owe James a scarf.

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Okay, folks. You can consider yourself officially caught up. I expect my computer to return tomorrow. So hopefully, my next update won't be so far away.

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