Friday Mishmash

We have been lucky for the most part with the downturn in the economy, but this year, things are hitting us a bit...Jeff's take-home pay is less, thanks to tax breaks ending, our gas bill had a huge rate increase, gasoline prices have skyrocketed, and we just got our auto insurance renewal, with yet another rate increase, which was crazy considering we have had zero claims or tickets.  I'm doing the best I can to stay even (forget getting ahead), so I got to have fun this week and get new quotes for auto insurance.  Oh, so much fun - but in the end it was worth it, as I was able to get it lowered by nearly $300/six months.  Staying even...it's the new austerity?

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In more exciting developments, I won a prize (and the best one, I'm convinced) from Lori's Healthy Heart Weekend - some of her freshly roasted coffee!  It smells so good...and tastes great, too!  Before I opened the package, I wanted to take a picture of it.  Lately, Paco has been going insane whenever I pick up my camera - he becomes obnoxious about getting in the shot.  So fine, I made him pose with the coffee:

"You want me in pikture, right Mom?"

"Dis my serious pose...I stare into distance and tink about coffey"

 

"Dis my sexy pose"

What can I say, the dog is crazy.  Further evidence:  I went to go knit and Kip was on the footstool, so I sat on the chair carefully, not disturbing him.  Paco normally sits on the footstool when I knit, but since that wasn't available (and honestly, I don't know why he didn't just bully Kip off of it like he usually does), he sat on my lap.

 Soooooo super comfortable.  NOT.

Then he got fresh with me...

Paco has some fast moves!

Kip was pretty much over all of it:

Can you all PLEASE just go away???

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Speaking of knitting, I finished a project but can't show it to you yet.  And I'm still working on another one - it's a hat.  I know it doesn't look like a hat just yet, but trust me, it's a hat:

I like having an easy, mindless project on hand...knit 3, purl 2 times infinity (well, 8 inches), before anything changes.

I also started working on my mystery knit along project yesterday - even though my friend Cary once again got me back on track, I still ended up off on my stitch count.  So I started over.  From the very beginning.  At this point, I'm not sure if I'm showing great determination or incredible stupidity in keeping at this.  I'll let you know.

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Have a great weekend - if you're up bright and early central time on Sunday, think "forward momentum" thoughts for me as Jeff and I run the Armadillo Dash half marathon!