Dress Dying and a Much Needed Break from Steno:

Okay. I sort of took a break from everything, actually, this past week. Sometimes you need that. I really felt like shite because of it, though. Now, I've done what I always do, which is create a lot more for myself to get done in a much shorter time span.

Some of you may know that I'm working on getting fit. I started 3 weeks ago in an attempt to test my discipline before purchasing the T25 and Shakeology program from an acquaintance. It's $200 up front plus another $120 a month for the shakes. If you're interested, I'm following Amanda MySonAndI on YouTube. She has videos from the start of her T25/Shakeology and through the following, I believe, 6 weeks. She's super honest and detailed. I'm waiting to hear, in her next video, a complete review of Shakeology.

3 weeks ago I was doing great. I continued to do great. I tracked my food on the LoseIt app, exercised daily (this included 40 minutes of boot camp and 40 minutes of yoga a day), was studying my CaseCat software editing quick cuts, and spent some time speed building as well. That lasted about 2 weeks.

Last week, I hit a major wall. I just didn't want to do anything but spend time having fun. It started when I had the weekend off from work. I'd gotten it off to attend the CCRA (Colorado Court Reporter's Association) convention in Breckenridge. Well, I wasn't able to because our finances just wouldn't allow it. And since I had already gotten the weekend off, I figured I may as well spend some quality time with the family. We didn't do anything of value all weekend. Well, I say we, I mean the girls and I. Kyle spent the weekend working on 3 different guitars that needed finishing. Honestly, I spent the weekend pouting about not doing anything.

Maybe I was disappointed about not getting to go to Breck, maybe I was depressed because of the sudden spike in dopamine for the previous 2 weeks, which was followed by a sudden drop by not exercising. Maybe I was gluten-crashing because I ate like complete shite all weekend. In any case, I was not motivated to do anything.

Then, I started to pull myself out by the only way I know to be 100% effective: Crafting!

I needed a dress for a masquerade ball wedding of a friend of ours. I started scoping eBay, Etsy, and then remembered I have no money. So I started checking out various blogs on modding clothes. I do love to do my own clothes modding. And found this gem!

A Skirt A Day

And this one too!

HotsyTotsy

I eventually found a blog where a woman had dyed her wedding dress in order to get more wear out of it. You can read it too, here:

Young House Love

This lead me to believe I could attempt this on a hideous lilac coloured bridesmaid's dress I've had hanging in my closet for 2+ years now. Lilac + ink black hair + olive skin = YUCK. I looked on the Rit Dye website to see colours in the same colour family, and found a beautiful dark plum. You mix one box Navy and one box Wine and you're supposed to come off with this great colour. Unfortunately, for me, it didn't work that way.

 

 

This is the dress while it was drying in our basement. Like the totally mod heat hose in the ceiling?

So I soaked and stirred the dress in the dye bath, 2 boxes of each colour, in the washing machine. I may not have had it in long enough, or it may not have been quite hot enough.

You can see the original colour of the dress on the stupid belt I took off before dying. It is darker, but not dark enough.

The dress only came out about one shade darker than its original colour. Disappointing. Here's another picture of it. I apologize, the lighting in our house sucks.

I was happy with the overall saturation of the dye, and it worked beautifully on the "Dry Clean Only" dress, despite the box's warnings.

I'm going to attempt to add Black and Wine, boil water into a large bucket, and try it that way. If this doesn't work, it may still be wearable with the right embellishments. Otherwise, I've another idea that requires a lot more sewing.

So now I've got this project going. I'm back on to watching what I'm eating and getting my exercise in. My house is a bit of a dusty disaster. I've loads of laundry to catch up on. I'm going to steno my arse off in the evenings. I have a legal transcription job to test for and apply for this week. I have another dress I'm modding for our trip to New Mexico this weekend. I have to pack for said trip and clean out the car because we're driving.

Loads to do! Which means...

No Dr. Who!

It's sort of okay. I'm really mourning the loss of David Tennant and even though I've heard nothing but rave reviews about Matt Smith, I don't care for him. I was literally crying, no sobbing, when David Tennant passed on the show. Stupid show.

Oh, I'm totally buying the David Tennant shirt from this amazing artist if it ever gets put back up on TeeFury!

Megan Lara: Art

Stay tuned for more adventures in clothes modding as well as steno!

It's The End of The Quarter As We Know It

It's Friday the 13th and the bad moon is rising on the closing of a day that has gone poorly in the realm of my steno life.

Today, I woke up extremely early, well, if you can call 7 a.m. early. I hustled my partially malnourished children, they only had bowls of dry Cheerios for breakfast, out the door to pick up food at Dive. Dive is a pretty cool thing my church does where they pick up food twice a week from Whole Foods, which would otherwise be tossed, but is perfectly edible, and donate it to families who need it and to the local food bank. I don't go to church, really, but I do go to Dive, most weeks.

Anyway. As many of you know, unless you live in a cave, in which case you're probably not reading this. Denver is in the middle of quite the monsoon. Flooding has affected many areas in Colorado and people are losing property and lives. Mostly property. We are lucky to be in a high spot and have just experienced a lot, a plethora, of rain.

So the girls and I found ourselves quite soaked as we returned from Dive in the morning. It has been the sort of waterlogged days where you would expect your fingers to be pruney and your hair, if you have my hair, very frizzy and poofy.

I was incredibly proud of myself having avoided driving into a Starbucks for a high-calorie, high-cost, yummy coffee drink to contribute to my ability to feel energized rather than sleepy and lazy and waterlogged.

When we arrived home I made a proper breakfast for my girls. Proper being, I shoved some toaster waffles into the toaster and tried to minimize the amount of syrup that went on top to a reasonable amount for a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old.

I then worked out my usual 40 minutes, 20 minutes of boot camp and 20 minutes of yoga. Ha. I say my usual as though it really were. It's my usual routine for 5 solid days now. Can I really claim it as my "usual"? Meh, you decide.

Afterward, I sat through 2 hours of homeschooling with my 5-year-old daughter. This is fun, don't get me wrong. Sometimes, we are equally bored. Especially when the maths unit is counting up to 5. Seriously? This kid can count to 100! I digress. Well, I am good at digressing.

After all of that, I went to plug in my Wave and get some good practice in so that I can pass this single 160 wpm test before the quarter ends on Sunday night. Much to my chagrin, it did not power on. I did all of the troubleshooting steps required in such a situation. I unplugged and plugged it back in. I hit the reset button, a few times. I removed and replaced the battery. I tested to see if it was the plug, the charger, the battery on the machine. I cursed at it. I wanted to hit it and then remembered I'm still paying for it.

Then, I called them. Stenograph.

I spoke with a tech person who advised me to do everything I had previously done before calling, again. However, he did leave out the cursing bit.

Nothing. No response. The Wave is in a technological coma. I am mourning a bit.

I will have to send it in to Stenograph and see if their magicians can revive it. Meanwhile, what the hell am I going to do about the rest of my required practice? What about my tests? The quarter ends Sunday night! What the f-----

Light bulb! I have a Manual Reporter Shorthand Machine.

The gleam of its avocado shell caught my eye as it sat on top of the table in the living room. Its slightly marred keys almost glistened, wanting to be stroked. I placed it upon my tripod and I could swear it purred in delight, or was that a groan of old age?

This thing is OLD. It has paper. The same stack of paper it originally came with from the Goodwill where my husband found it resting on a lower shelf priced at a whopping $25. 

I purchased this dinosaur to steampunk it. I have had fantasies about how amazing this will look in my office one day, the office of an international reporting bombshell! I've had notions of doing a sexy stenographer photo shoot with it. I've let my girls practice their steno skills on it. I've written on it once. Only once since I have owned it. That experience was to BBC News and left my hands exhausted. Never, did I think I would actually need it to practice.

So there I was feeling perturbed, down, and negative. I decided, if I can't take my tests at least I won't lose speed. I spent an hour practicing QA at 180 wpm. That got me out of the funk I was in enough to realize that I can come up with a creative solution to this mess.

I e-mailed my teacher to see if it were possible for me to take the test, with my dinosaur, type it out in Word, copy and paste the transcript into TeV (Test Evaluator), it's the brother to PeV (Performance Evaluator). Then, because campus is having an extra day to make up for some day they missed, I could come by and drop off my paper notes if I passed any test, as proof that it was written on my manual machine.

No response.

Well, I figured that if my tests may not count, it's still good to take them and transcribe them just to make sure I can pass. Then, I know I've got it nailed the first week of next quarter. And next quarter will be my last at this school.

I also had the problem that the ink was getting low in the old machine. I Googled like crazy trying to find a way to replace the ink without having to order ink from a reporting supplies site. Shipping on an $8 bottle of ink was like, $11, WHAT? Nothing. The ribbon spool looks like a regular typewriter ribbon. So I posted in the Facebook forums asking what I should do.

I actually ended up doing the opposite of what I was advised. As I don't need this machine to do more than function long enough to practice on until my Wave returns, I didn't feel like I needed to wait and order a special bottle of ink. I went to the office store and bought a bottle of refill ink for self-inking stamps. And you know what? It works beautifully. Now, if only I have enough steno paper to get through the next few days....

It's 10:30 on Friday night. Still no response from my teacher. I'm guessing I'm SOL for my tests. Yet one of the myriad of reasons that I am so excited to be withdrawing from school after this quarter. At least I know I can count on myself to take care of myself, and respond to my own e-mails. Huh? Don't worry about it. Just know, that with a little creativity and ingenuity you can turn any situation right-side up.

Onwards and upwards, by any means necessary, even if that mean taking out a dinosaur of a machine and fatiguing your ink stained fingers all for that ultimate goal: Steno Rock Star!