7-Quick Takes

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1. I woke up Monday all full of ambitious plans to work out everyday this week.  After the cardio and weight lifting portion of Karen Voight: Ultimate Step Circuit I had some time to do the ab work. This was hard but not overly challenging.  I came upstairs then to pray the Office and as I was sitting there I became more and more uncomfortable.  I thought it was the couch’s fault, but 16 minutes later when I was done and stood up to go, I knew it was more than that.  Luckily I think it was just a muscle strain and not anything related to disks and nerves.  Today, finally my back feels almost completely back to normal.  I simply rested, waited, and took Aleve.

2. Wednesday I had time to kill when Izzy was in her sewing class, so I did some time walking around Jo-ann’s Fabrics.  I fell in love with this sewing machine.  The lady who demonstrated it for me sewed effortlessly through five layers of denim, and then easily changed to a lighter material.  But the key feature for me was…automatic needle threading!!  I can remember as a little girl threading the needle for my grandma’s sewing machine, and although I have little girls of my own now, I can foresee the day when it would be great to have this auto-threading feature!  I mentioned all of this to Mr. Pete who pointed out that I have a very nice machine that we spent a lot of money on – back in 1978!  I think I might be getting this machine with my refund money!

3. And one of the reasons I can justify that is I want to make my own Roman Shades.  I have three big windows I want to cover and I have priced shades at about $300 – each!!  For less than half of that I can get my new sewing machine, and get three Roman shades too!

4. A long lost friend of mine was home rummaging through some memorabilia and pictures and came across this blast from the past – a picture of us together in our costume and makeup just before a performance. She contacted me through a mutual friend and asked my permission to post this, which I readily gave. (We are friends on Facebook! – I love Facebook for that reason – reconnecting and staying in touch with old friends)

Back in another time and another place, I used to be a ballet dancer.  I started dancing lessons when I was 4 years old (jazz and tap) , but at 16 I really wanted to do ballet.  Unfortunately I hadn’t been trained properly as a ballet dancer so I switched to a different professional studio and worked really, really hard.  My first year dancing at this studio we put on a production of The Nutcracker and I was a male party guest in the party scene and one of several mice fighting with the mouse king against the Nutcracker Prince. But by the time I left 8 years later, I had made it into the Corps de Ballet and was able to dance in the Waltz of the Flowers.  I am still kind of proud of that.  This is a picture of my friend and I in the costume for that.
 

5. The boys finally finished Moby Dick this week and so I treated them to the movie.

Noah said the “poor CG was distracting,”  but overall I think the movie was close to the book and we enjoyed watching it together.

6. Sam, Gabe, Izzy and Noah performed The Faure Requiem with the parish choir and regional orchestra last Sunday night.  I think the entire performance (minus some intonation issues with the strings) was very good and the choir did a great job learning this difficult work. You can hear a bit of it on my Youtube Channel. 

7. Rosie has been very interested in the stations of the cross we have prayed this Lent. So I found these wonderful Coloring pages that had the stations with them and I am having her make her own booklet that she will be able to follow next time we go to stations.