Slackity slack and clickity clack

I have not been very good at keeping up with writing the last few weeks. However, here follows a remedy!

February was fun. For Valentine's Day I made a nice meal for Jeremy and I - strip steaks with mushrooms and cheese. Earlier in the day we saw Avatar on IMAX and in 3-D. My first ever IMAX film, though I guess I saw some 3-D things at theme parks when I was younger. The movie was really good, but I think I could have done without the 3-D - I was frequently trying to take my glasses off and watch the movie that way because the 3-D kept bugging me - it wasn't over done by any means, I just couldn't seem to focus on it properly. Overall, the experience was fun, the movie was very good, but I don't think I need to see another 3-D movie for a good long while.

I knitted on some socks, spun some more yarn, worked on more job applications, filed taxes. Nothing very exciting, until the end of the month. The Crafty Ladies decided to take a spring break vacation, and so we had Craftaganza 2010 on the last weekend of February. We rented a house right off Lake Michigan, within walking distance to the beach. It was very cold and snowy while we were there, so we stayed warm with lots of good food and snacks (I made some chocolate truffles, chicken & dumplings, and homemade bread for my contribution of food), wine, knitting before a cozy fire, took a couple dips in the out door hot tub, and even took an excursion to the lake.

We hit the hot tub Friday night, then again on Saturday. It was quite chilly out for our first dip and the wind was blowing quite a bit. The hot tub was situated at the edge of the house, just beyond the slope of the roof. Every time the wind gusted some of the powdery snow blew off the roof and landed on our heads. We all had shimmery halos from all the snow droplets - it was really beautiful, and whenever we'd get a bit warm from the hot tub, we'd just pull up a bit from the water, get dusted with snow, and then drop back down into the water again. Saturday night there was not much wind, but the little there was blew high in the sky. While we were in the tub, we could see the clouds pass over the moon and it was really beautiful. LH and I were chatting and soaking for a bit after everyone else went inside. While we were visiting, MTB came out and took a really lovely picture of the moon that night:

 During the day on Saturday, we took a walk on around the neighborhood and down to see the lake. TW and IS and I climbed the snowy stairs down to the beach, and I even made a snow angel.

We left on Sunday with much better weather heading out than we had coming in. The weekend was a blast, and I had a lovely time. I'm pretty sure the other ladies all had lots of fun, too! It would be wonderful if we were able to make this a yearly tradition.

So now March has come upon us. It's hard to believe that it's already the third month of the year. J and I will be celebrating eight years together on St Patrick's Day. Definitely one of my favorite holidays. I will have to make some more corned beef & cabbage in honor of the occasion.

This week I took an orientation/training class for substitute teaching. I'm still hoping one of my applications will pan out soon, but it will be nice to get some more experience with students. Hopefully my papers will go through quickly and I'll be able to start subbing as early as next week, though it may take another week beyond that.

I'm looking forward to March. I've got several projects in mind; from finishing the socks for WW, to a calligraphy/illuminated drawing project for LH, even a few academic things I'd like to get underway. Should be a fun month.