April 21, 2023

Friday Night Photos #112

Good grief, it's Friday already? I don't realize just how few pictures I've taken throughout the week until I start my post on Friday nights. I have a few more than last week, but I haven't really been doing things that are worth taking pictures of, other than baseball. And I don't want to post a ton of baseball pictures, because even those look the same after a while.

I still enjoy writing these posts, though--sometimes I'll take a picture of something completely random and forget all about it until Friday night when I look through my camera roll. Anyway, here are this week's photos...

When Noah and I went to the thrift stores earlier this week, we were browsing through the books and Noah pointed out this vegan junk food cookbook. He suggested that we start trying recipes from this book once a week or so, and I thought that was a fun idea. If we find any good ones, I may post about them here.



Just one baseball photo. The games on Saturday actually had quite a bit going on. First, the second batter of the game swung hard at a pitch and actually dislocated his knee. He fell to the ground and the coaches were trying to locate a medic--which they never have at the games. So they called an ambulance while the poor kid was lying on the ground with his leg twisted at the knee. It took about an hour before the ambulance took him and they could restart the game.

At one point during the double header, I actually got hit in the head with a foul softball from the field behind us! It came down directly on top of my head and bounced right into my camera bag. Yes, it hurt--for days.

Finally, in this picture below, there was a very close play at home plate (Eli is catcher). I like this picture because the kid from the other team threw his hands out to indicate that his teammate was safe--and at the same time, you can see the umpire is calling him out. Well, the kid who was tagged out got so mad that he started spouting off at the mouth very loudly and the umpire actually threw him out of the game! And not too long after that, he threw a parent out for yelling not-so-nice things. He wasn't messing around--I liked that!



Just another picture of Duck cuddling with me in the morning... :)  I probably have at least 20,000 of these in my camera roll.




Jerry asked me if I wanted to play a game one afternoon, so I said sure. When I looked through our games, I don't know why I suggested Guess Who?--neither of us had played that since we were kids--but it was simple and we didn't have to get out a ton of pieces.

For anyone who played Guess Who? as a kid, you know there were certain people you didn't want to end up with because they were minorities in the game (I don't just mean their skin color, but people with hats, facial hair, glasses, etc.). If you ended up being a minority, it was much easier for people to guess who you were.

Jerry and I each chose a person for our character (we don't have the cards that you're supposed to draw to get a random person). I figured Jerry would assume I would want to pick the most inconspicuous person (i.e. a blond white male--this game needs an update!). So, I chose Sarah (you can see my pointer in the top right)--the only Black woman and she was wearing glasses. It wasn't the greatest strategy...


Well, it worked out exactly how it used to when I was a kid. He asked if I was white, and I said no. So he knocked down all but five people. I wanted my question to be a bit different, so I asked if his eyes were pointing toward the left. I was able to eliminate about a third or so of the people. Then Jerry had to copy my great question (haha)--he asked if I was looking straight ahead. Sarah is the only Black woman staring straight ahead, so after just two questions, he knew who I was! I told him he had to wait until his next turn to guess (I don't know if that's an official rule, but it sounded fair.)

I tried to think like Jerry. I assumed he would play with the completely opposite mine--NOT being a minority. So I eliminated all of the people with hats, glasses, facial hair, etc. I started looking at what I had left and eliminating whatever stood out. One was a girl, so I eliminated her. One of the men had black hair, so I eliminated him. I was left with Jake and William, both blond men. Meanwhile, Jerry was watching me with a smug smirk on his face. I wanted to beat him by thinking this through!

At that point, I had to just look at the two and guess which one I thought Jerry would likely pick. I decided on Jake--so I asked him, "Are you Jake?" He was dumbfounded. I was right! In August, we'll have been married 20 years, so I guess we know each other well ;) 


When I was lying in bed, Chick was on the shelf above me and scared me half to death when I looked up. He had his face looking through the hole on the shelf (for the cats to climb through). It looked kind of cool with his shadow on the ceiling!



I started Duolingo (Spanish) again about a week ago. I had done it before but not for long. A friend of mine was on a 500-day streak, and it inspired me to start completely over from the very first lesson, and it's been kind of fun flying through the lessons with all of the stuff I already know (from high school Spanish).

Anyway, it's no secret that I love Wordle, and I learned there is a Spanish Wordle puzzle every day, so I've been doing that along with English. I'm terrible at it! Most of the time, I just make up words that sound Spanish and try them out. I've been terrible about sticking with my New Year's goal of learning a new vocabulary word each week (I just forget to do it) so I thought Duolingo would be a nice alternative.



I was SO FRUSTRATED yesterday. I had been wanting to try an alteration of a pair of jeans and finally decided to work on it yesterday morning. I pushed my sewing machine too hard to get through several layers of denim and I messed up the machine. I spent a couple of hours working on it and finally gave up because I couldn't figure it out.

Today, I decided to try again--Jerry was ready to buy a new one on Amazon and I didn't want him to do that--and I watched some YouTube videos. None of them had the same problem mine did, but it helped me to take apart the machine a bit and try to solve the problem myself. It was actually kind of cool to see how the parts move from underneath the machine. Somehow, I fixed it! 



And then I (very carefully) finished what I was doing with my jeans. I like mid-rise or even high-rise jeans because I have no butt to hold jeans up when they sit around my hips. But I loved this pair of Express jeans--I've actually held onto them (wearing them on and off when they fit me, ha!) since probably 2010. They don't have any stretch to them, which is what I love about them--I don't like wearing jeans that have stretch because they just seem to get bigger throughout the day and I'm always tugging at them.

I always save jeans that I don't want anymore--for parts, basically. I reuse whatever I can from them to alter other jeans. So I grabbed a pair of jeans that had been mid-rise (the waist was smaller than the Express ones), and I used the waistband of them. I sewed it just inside the Express pair, making the jeans taller (to a mid-rise height). I don't *love* the way it looks, but I never wear shirts that are short enough to show my waistband anyway. They are super comfy and they stay up over my hip bones now!



I recently learned something that was completely mind-blowing to me. I've been sewing since I was a kid, and I *never knew* there was a reason for the little ball on the end of a seam ripper. I just assumed it was there so you don't poke your fingers. When watching a YouTube video, I learned that you can rip seams in jeans SO FAST when you have the pointed side on the top of the fabric and the ball side underneath. (I cannot remember the video or I would link it--but I'm sure if I had ever bothered to google it, I would have learned this ages ago.)

The ball keeps the end from poking into the fabric, so you just slide the seam ripper straight up like you're zipping up a jacket. It literally took me all of 15 seconds to take apart this whole seam up the leg of a pair of jeans without ripping the fabric.


Well, I'm off to Eli's baseball game--have a great weekend! xo

2 comments:

  1. Love your clever jeans hack. They look great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Happy weekend!! I'm off to Ohioana Book Festival and have few thoughts except how fun these posts are. And that photo of Chick! Ha. Sure hope to meet you one day.

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