Dec 26/06

Happy Holidays to everyone as they digest the food extravaganza of the past few days and groan at the thought of how much weight they have gained!

We had a nice, quiet holiday at my Mom's. Well, as quiet as it can be with a 3.5 year old who was wired for sound. My brother employed all kinds of techniques to keep the screaming mimi under control and less over-stimulated. My favourite gift was the blender which will be used to crush ice for strawberry daiquiris! My old blender was used by my mother to puree baby food for me so it was less than impressive at its ice crushing!

I made a surprise find in my cross stitch stash last night. I knew that I had a bag of 14 count Aida that I dislike because the fabric is very stiff and difficult to work with even after it has been washed. While moving things around in an attempt to find something else, I found about a metre of 14 count white Aida that is not stiff and awful. The fabric would not be my first choice because I almost never use 14 count or Aida anymore, but the possibilities are endless! Actually, my goal is to make Christmas ornaments as gifts for 2007 since I will be a poor student (!!) and the talk in other blogs about starting ornies now instead of waiting until close to Christmas has inspired me to think about digging out my Christmas patterns so I can really make a dent in my stash since I do not have to buy stitching fabric now. Plus, the 50 project challenge looms over me to complete before I get mired down in my Masters program in a year or so!

This photo amuses me so I thought that I would post it while my cat is not looking!

Dec 20/06

Whoo! I took a deep breath and told my boss about my school plans. I really dreaded telling him because I did not want him to feel disappointed in me for leaving the pharmacy in the relatively near future. What a relief to hear him say that he was really happy for me that I was excited about this undertaking and he thought that I would be excellent at International Development type stuff. He is open to my changing and scaling back my work schedule as needed to accommodate my school schedule, if necessary. I had wanted to wait until after Christmas to talk with him about it because he did not need that headache, but I had a list of things to run by him this afternoon so I added that onto the list. He appreciated me telling him now so that he would have time to digest the news!

Tomorrow night is the El Salvador work crew Christmas party! It will be great to hang out with the old bucket mates again! I am meeting with the executive of my Rotary club on Jan 8/07 to chit chat about sponsorship of more houses in ES and how to finance the project. Sometimes, I feel like I am caught in a vortex of activity when I look at all of the projects I am into and other times, I realize that I would not be happy if I was not volunteering for several things at the same time!

Tonight, I am finishing off 6 Christmas cards so I may be back later to post the pictures of my stitching!

Updated to add:

Projects 11-16/50.

Dec 13/06

This week has been a whirlwind. I spoke to my Rotary Club on Monday about my trip to El Salvador and now there are some plans underway for my next trip to El Salvador in 2007 as 4 Rotarians stepped forward after the meeting to ask that I take them with me on my next trip. My mom came to hear my talk which was great because she is always a great supporter of my travels even though sometimes I really have to convince her that is a great idea for me to backpack around New Zealand on my own or to go to El Salvador to build houses. Mom has had quite a week, too, as my sister graduated from her course last week and one of my brothers is now sporting his iron engineering ring. Go team!

In between emailing everyone that I can think of to set in motion a team of Rotarians for El Salvador and sponsorships for some houses there, I am also stitching like mad because I have realized that I am 2 Christmas cards short for gift giving. My eyes are about to fall out of my head since I am splitting my spare time between stitching and writing up Christmas cards which will be arriving a little late this year or early in 2007! Somehow I doubt that Canada Post will be able to get a Christmas card from here to North Queensland in 7 business days, but if it does occur, I will be buying a lotto ticket!

Well, words are starting to fail me at this late hour so off to bed I go.

Dec 8/06

I was reading through another stitcher's blog and I realized that I should declare my one exemption for the 50 Project Challenge. I have decided to stitch Christmas stockings for my immediate family to replace the ratty ones we are still using. My exemption is any Christmas stocking pattern that I think will be loved and cherished by my family members. (Just thought that I would declare that before I paid for the 2 I have won on eBay!).

Dec. 3/06

This one is a bit of a cheat because it has been stitched for ages, but I just had it framed so that my Curl for Cancer team (Feb 3/07) can sell tickets on it to raise money. Not the greatest photo, but in my defence, this is the first time that I have tried to take a digital photo of my cross stitch pieces! The piece is a Paula Vaughn. It was stitched so long ago that I have forgotten the name of it and I am too cold and lazy to go dig out my patterns!

That takes my count to 10/50.

Dec.2 /06

Images like this one remind me that I have made the right decision. I have been in contact with UNBSJ and SMU about doing a Masters program in International Development Studies, specializing in Central America. Can you picture a Dal and a SMU diploma side-by-side?! The head of the IDS program in Saint John specializes in El Salvador and one of the most popular Spanish teachers at UNBSJ is from.....wait for it.....El Salvador. Does anyone else see a trend?

Anyhow, 2 years ago, I would not have imagined that I would ever be in El Salvador in the first place so who knows where I will be in 2 years from now, but it will not be behind a pharmacy counter unless I need some change to pay the rent. Life has led me in some unexpected directions and I suspect that there will be many more twists in the path.

My mom had a good laugh at supper tonight as she tried to picture her granola, oldest daughter and gun-toting army dude son out to change the world in their own ways. If she did not see us come out of her body at birth, she would find it hard to believe that we truly are blood siblings!