Well hello there! I know, I know, it's been 9 months and all that, and where the heck have I been? Well, I'd be happy to update you! So grab a cup of coffee and read on for the condensed version of what I've been doing these days (besides being a terrible blogger...)

I got a job being a professional nerd:

So you might remember that I completed my MS in Electrical Engineering last December. Well after that milestone, I embarked on a quest to obtain every engineer's dream: gainful employment. Up to that point I had been working in a graduate internship program, and it was my goal to transition to a full-time job at the same company. Ordinarily this would have been a cinch, given my 2 year history as an intern, but due to the darn economy, the company suddenly was being much more stingy with job positions. To cut a very long and stressful story short, I did find a job in a different department, and I started full-time in February. 

Since then it's been a whirlwind, as I've been working to get up to speed on a number of projects, and adapt to a less nocturnal schedule. The good news is that I absolutely love the job, and am amazed I get to go to work and do such cool stuff everyday. Add in the fact that my department has a ton of work to do, and some of the other things I've been up to (more below), and that means at the end of the day, I have very little energy left with which to impart my characteristic wit to all you wonderful people. 

I decided to put Yarn Nerd on hiatus:

As I mentioned above, with the job and everything else, I just haven't had the time or energy to put into the yarn dyeing enterprise. When I started Yarn Nerd, it was a great way to procrastinate on my grad school homework, and I really loved having the creative outlet. However, with things being so hectic these days, I realized that yarn dyeing was quickly becoming something I had to do, instead of something I wanted to do. I may be back at it someday, but for now I'm content to dye a bit of yarn here and there for myself, and use all my creative energy designing amazing circuits at work.

Also, a big thanks to everyone who bought my yarn over the past few years, I really appreciate it. I had a blast coming up with fun colors and staying up until the wee hours of the morning making a mess. It was really great to have such an awesome community of people who supported me in that endeavor!

I planted a farm sized garden:

This summer I started working on fixing up the backyard, and the first thing on my wishlist was to plant an awesome vegetable garden. I have a raised area in the back of the yard that was perfect for gardening, provided I could keep Dallas' digging paws away from my peas. So my Dad (who is a wonderful guy) helped me built a picket fence for vegetable protection.

Then I added some borders (shoddily constructed from 2x4's), a few mulch paths and a drip system, and got to planting before it was too late in the season. Fast forward a month or two, and I ended up with a jungle in the backyard. I'm really not even sure I know my secret to getting such big plants. All I did was slap an automatic timer in there and fertilize once. I'm not complaining too much...(ok, well maybe I'm a bit sick of zucchini by now.) Just to give you an idea of scale, here is the harvest gathered over the past few days.

That's pretty ridiculous right? And it's been this way for weeks! There's been so many veggies, I've had to acquire yet another hobby to deal with the glut. Given that I absolutely love vinegary things, it was quite an easy decision to start doing some home pickling. I'm quite pleased with the results so far.

So far I've done bread and butter zucchini, pickled bell peppers, pickled sliced cucumbers (the ones on the right, which are a very strange variety of cucumber that I found at the plant nursery...we'll see how they taste) and pickled jalapeno and banana peppers. I've also made some hot pepper jam, and peach jam (from farmer's market peaches), which I'm both very excited about. 

I also just bought a nice big freezer to counteract the garden's attempted death blows, so I'll have tasty vegetables to use well into next century. So as you can see, this has been another major time sink in my life these past few months :)

I went ballooning:

My Dad has some friends who run a ballooning company, and they took a few of my family members up one morning a few weeks ago. It was so cool to see Albuquerque from an aerial view, and being in a balloon is definitely an awesome experience. It's so smooth, it really just feels like you're riding a slow elevator around the sky. Plus, getting to go up in a balloon without all the Balloon Fiesta crowds is always a good thing. 

I booked a trip to Rhinebeck:

Yup, I'm going to be at the NY Sheep and Wool Festival here in a few weeks, and I'm so excited! I've always wanted to go, but being on student pay and not having vacation time made things a bit tricky. Now that I'm working for the man, I can finally take a trip out to NY and see this festival in person. My Mom is tagging along with me too, so it should be a lot of fun. And in the grand tradition of the wool festival, I've starting chugging away on a last minute sweater to wear over the weekend.

I'm going to be shamelessly copying Jared's Big Blue sweater, since I've been infatuated with the design for quite some time. It wasn't my intention to do it in a similar shade of blue, but this one just spoke to me off the shelf, and I knew it was meant to be. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? 

Phew, I've been busy!

So dear readers (if there are any of you left), that's a quick recap of the past 9 months, or at least the highlights. Thanks for bearing with the long absence, and hopefully it won't be so long until the next post! What have you been up to, anything exciting?