Boo hoo, vacation is over.

Wait, was it not apparent I was on 'vacation' last week? Well I was......sort of. I still worked an awful lot but we managed to get out and do a few things outdoors too before the weather gets totally frigid.

He worked on painting the window sills for a couple days, another day we headed down to the RI coast to walk the Cliff Walk in Newport with my mother. I haven't been on the Walk in quite a few years so that was a treat.

It's a walkway on the edge of the cliff that runs parallel to the backyards of all those spiffy, old skool, multi-gazillion dollar mansions from days gone by. (We didn't go back through on the street though where you can see the mansions from the front because if you've seen them once, there ain't much else to see. /shrug) I just like the walking by the ocean part. Oh, and these signs that are posted everywhere:

 OH NOES! DON'T JUMP CARTOON MAN! 

The whole thing is 3.5 miles long (though you have to COME BACK so it's really 7 miles if you start at the beginning) and we did maybe 2 miles. (Which was kind of needed because OMG WHOA vacation eating!)

My 'new' threads came the other day so I sat on the deck for a couple hours and got that organized and put to rights and reorganized my WIP's, etc.

(There might have been some new-new stashing too. *ahem*)

So today is back to the normal schedule, normal eating plan (*cough*) and mentally preparing for fall because, wow, is it chilly already! :(

I'm insanely excited for the new tv season starting this week but my love is mostly limited to two shows: my beloved Fringe and.......

Downton Abbey.

OH YEAH PEOPLES. Can I get a wut-wut for the start of the second season?

How much did I enjoy this series last year? Enough to download the UK version (longer/uncut) and obsess over every last detail. I might have entire scenes memorized. Maybe. *cough*

Well the UK version started yesterday* and I might have already downloaded the episode. And peeked at it. Maybe. Just a LITTLE. (Who is this new maid sassing my Anna???) The hubby wants me to wait to watch it with him but.........I don't know if I can do that. I would have to wait until WEDNESDAY in that case to watch it and I don't know if I can resist the voice in my head going "watch me.........watch the precioussssss............watch me......." until then. *twitch*  

And yes, I got him hooked on it too. Mr. I only watch Pawn Stars/Top Gear/NASCAR and Ice Road Truckers when left to his own devices. Hooked. On a period drama. THAT IS THE POWER OF MAGGIE SMITH aka Cousin Violet. :)

I heard they won a bunch of Emmys last night too, including best miniseries/tv movie so yayyy!

(I couldn't get past the opening of the Emmys to watch the rest of the show. Wow. Painful. As in painfully unfunny.)

*If you're download-averse, the PBS version starts in January. I love you PBS but I can't wait that long. And I don't like that you cut it down to 'fit' some predetermined notion you have of how long an episode 'should' be vs. how long IT ACTUALLY WAS. Pfffttttt!

Best. Weekend. EVAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

 Firstly, I won Sonda's LHN chart giveaway. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet! 

Seriously excited over this!! I've never won a blog giveaway so excuse me while I do a happy dance. *dance* (Which isn't to say that I don't like HOSTING giveaways, because I honestly do get a kick out of that too.) Thanks so much Sonda! YOU ROCK. :)

Secondly, who is Edward James Olmos' new bestie? OH THAT WOULD BE ME, THX.

He added me to his Twitter feed *AND* sent me a private message that ended with SO SAY WE ALL. *sqeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

Frakity frak frakking frak, the Old Man added me back. Do I care if he possibly does that with all BSG-tweet friendly fans? NOPE. When ADMIRAL FRAKKING ADAMA gives you a direct SO SAY WE ALL, you die and go immediately to sci-fi fan girl heaven. The details are IRRELEVANT, ok? 

Now excuse while I go enjoy my BSG contact high and my chart win for awhile. :)

I should have some new beads up tomorrow.

Or maybe on Monday. *snort* But definitely one of those days because I have a bunch done up and they are just sitting here waiting to be 'released' into the wild. :) I need to get back to regular postings of things. Or at least try, right?

I started/finished up my first shawl this week. I didn't plan for this yarn (Noro Sock) to be a shawl but I bought it online and was pretty hateful towards it when it came in. It's way, way, waaaaaay too scratchy for socks. There is just no way anyone would want this anywhere near their feet. Ever. It's horrible as sock yarn. HORRIBLE. But, as always with Noro, the colors blends are just beautiful. So I did a little digging on Ravelry for other projects people had used it for and came up with this simple Feather and Fan shawl:

It's kind of on the 'mini' side as far as shawls go but that's fine because I don't know that my wardrobe of non-stop jeans/t-shirts really screams "NEEDS A SHAWL". I'm more of a scarf person. So I'm thinking of this more as an 'ample' scarf. A scarf with a little junk in the trunk, if you will. Course it's still horrible feeling so I'm not sure I even want it near my neck either..............but that's neither here nor there, I guess. lol Thank god I'm a process knitter so I don't get TOO hung up on finished results that aren't 'perfect'. You can't expect something too big out of one skein of sock yarn, you know? I was lucky in that I timed my repeats *jussssssssst* right because this how much yarn I had left over:

Pretty nifty, yes?

LOST was too spoiler-y too even mention anything about it so I'll just say I felt like this at the end of this week's episode and leave it at that:

Have a great weekend, y'all!! :)

This year's unexpected Xmas gift:

 My small town cable company finally crawled (scratching and kicking) into the 21st century and upgraded it's service last week. I now have those 'rare' channels like E! and CNN Headline News like the rest of y'all have probably been getting for 10+ years. Wooooooo!?? (I know *I* had these channels when we lived in RI pre-2004.) I'm not sure I want to WATCH anything on the E! channel** etc., mind you, but it always frosted my butt that we had such a dismal selection of channels even though we fork over a small fortune to them every month. (Raise your hand if your cable bill is the highest monthly utility bill you have. OOOOooo! MEeeeee! Meeee!!! MINE IS MINE IS!!)

**Exception being the National Geographic channel. I do think we will enjoy that one. You used to be able to get their specials on PBS but then they started their own channel and they disappeared from PBS. I've missed them. :(