Wednesday, March 31, 2004
 I've got yet another knitting project in the works! This one is the "Janetta Dexter Sampler Sweater" from the back of Jacqueline Fee's The Sweater Workshop. The wool is a really soft chunky cotton/acrylic that my Mom sent me for my birthday. It's knitting up really fast and I'm enjoying the fairisle practice. So far I've done the zig-zag pattern and now I'm working on the houndstooth. It's gonna be big, bulky, and fun...
Addendum: Apparently this crime spree might be more fiction than reality. Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Monday, March 29, 2004
Sunday, March 28, 2004
"Crazee Ball" self-propelling battery-powered cat toy: $20 Special padded duffel-bag type cat carrier: $70 Two taxi rides for two humans and a cat: $19 Vaccination and worming: $69 The guilt caused by Dr. Amy Jones's first trip to the vet... priceless. Saturday, March 27, 2004
Friday, March 26, 2004
 
 Pretty neat, huh? Make your own. In case you can't read German, the text near the input box says that you can insert the "degree symbol" to get it to draw a heart. (Link courtesy of SixDifferentWays.)
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
 I've made a little progress on Cheesylove, as you can see here. I finished the ruffle (casting on 1,008 stitches!) and I've just started the body decreases. Apologies for the bad picture; thick black wool is hard to photograph with a crappy camera. I'm using a 60cm-long 5mm wooden circular needle. (I'd have preferred an 80cm but it was all they had, and I like the wood.) I'm going to have to stop here, though, as I think I'm the only one that's actually begun. My sister is understandably distracted by this whole "getting-married" business. I've got some other knitting projects to distract me though, like the Stitch and Bitch I'm hosting this Saturday. Fun!And on a related note, my career as a knitting instructor has begun in earnest. Today I gave a lunch hour lesson to two of my co-workers. One of them "got it" immediately, but the other had difficulty with the hand coordination. It's good to get practice in dealing with different kinds of students!
I need a Change. I've got a couple different options I'm considering. The big issue is, of course, money. I get paid more to do this unsatisfying job than I would to do anything else. Is job fulfillment worth taking a pay cut? I think I'm reaching the point where I say "yes". I'll keep you posted.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
On a totally unrelated note, her e-mail also contained this announcement. "ATTENTION: It has been determined that the strange, filmy, silvery trails occasionally noted on the carpet in Amy's apartment can, indeed, be attributed to SLUGS of some sort." She's kinda freaking out a little about that. Monday, March 22, 2004
Sunday, March 21, 2004
1. If you owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve? I'd probably run something like a steakhouse, where you'd get lots of really good homestyle food. I'm thinking burgers, sandwiches, mac-and-cheese, big slabs of meat, the whole works. Basically the kind of stuff I like to eat. The Snook would concoct appropriate homebrews to go with everything. 2. If you owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell? My own crafty things, of course! Plus wool and paints and buttons and glue and everything you need to make beautiful fun things. Oh, except for that scrapbooking crap. I hate that. 3. If you wrote a book, what genre would it be? Probably a "humorous" memoir. Actually I'd just cheat and bind together a load of posts from this site. I'm lazy and my writerly aspirations pretty much died in grade school. 4. If you ran a school, what would you teach? Knitting! Incidentally, I'm meeting with the Tapestry Craft folks later this week to discuss teaching a class for them this winter. Beyond that, I'd probably want to teach something in the English/Drama/Speech area. Those were always my favorites in school. Or some kind of "Pop Culture Appreciation" course. That would be fun. 5. If you recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it? Mid-90's riot grrrl alterna-pop a la Belly, Juliana Hatfield, or the Breeders. I'm just waiting for the grunge revival! Saturday, March 20, 2004
Friday, March 19, 2004
Thursday, March 18, 2004
 Oscar MonkeysI've finally managed to finish this year's prize monkeys for the Oscar Contest. Pretty cute, huh? That's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place from left to right there. Please be patient, winners. I promise I'll have them in the mail this weekend! Wednesday, March 17, 2004
 "New fashion of this Spring! It's gonna hit big! She's kind of froggy..."Oh. My. God. (No, that's no my cat.) I love the Japanese. Check out this page of costumes for cats. The descriptions are as funny as the pictures. What kind of person dresses their cat up as "Anne of Green Gables"? I do like the "gentleman's" shirt and tie though. It's "the least that handsome boy needs." And don't forget to give you cat a "hub" afterwards! Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Monday, March 15, 2004
 Why yes, those are Wonder Woman Underoos. I was a cool three-year-old. Sunday, March 14, 2004
Amy's officially been with us for a week now so we're tentatively giving her the run of the house. (She's been spending nights and workdays in our big guest bathroom.) Last night we left the door open so she could sleep wherever she wanted. She spent some time curled up beside me on the bed but in the morning she got antsy and started clawing the blankets, so I locked her out. She didn't like that. She hasn't gotten into any trouble though, and she hasn't pulled any bookcases down on herself. We may try leaving her out tomorrow during the day. Oh, and did I mention the scratches? Because I'm covered in them. I made the mistake of pulling on shorts yesterday morning and I regretted it the first time she tried to jump in my lap. Not good. Everyone in the gym's going to think I'm a battered housewife or something. We headed to the pet store this morning for some nail clippers and a brush, so hopefully we'll do some much needed grooming today. The Snook also has plans to make her another scratching post, hopefully an ultra-mega tall one that she can really stretch out on. We were going to buy one but they're expensive! It'll be cheaper to nail a piece of wood to a board and then buy a premade cover to slip over it.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Addendum: The Snook informs me that corndogs are available here! They call them "Dagwood Dogs". (No idea why.) He says you can only get them from greasy takeout joints though, so I still might try and make my own.
Friday, March 12, 2004
HA! That's from Lance's Guide to Man Grooming, Part One: Facing Facts. Now I just have to print this out and slip it under the Snook's pillow...
I spent a good portion of the afternoon today in the office of Dr. Karl Baumgart, an allergy specialist. He was great. Not only did he finally identify the stuff that's making me feel crappy, but he also managed to explain a lot of random secondary symptoms I didn't realize were related. After talking to me for a while, he brought out the skin prickers. Basically there were these four plastic things, each of which had six metal spikes on them (like cleats). He dipped them all in my suspected allergans and then stuck them into my forearms. Within minutes I started swelling up and itching intensely. It turns out that I'm severely allergic to dust mites, with minor allergies to three different kinds of Australian grass. He also told me that I have a touch of "allergic conjunctivitis", which I was relieved to learn does not mean I have pink eye. (It means I have itchy, watery eyes and dark circles.) I don't have a food allergy as such, but certain things (like the preservatives in wine) will irritate my sinuses and bring on a reaction. I have to use allergy pills and spray for four months, boil all my bedding, and get hypoallergenic mattress and pillow covers. Then I have to go back for a checkup. If I haven't improved, I have to get a "scan" of my sinuses to see if I need surgery. Then we'd begin "desensitization" treatment, which (as I understand it) involves them injecting me with the stuff I'm allergic to. Yeah, I want to try to avoid that. But at least I know what I'm up against now! Dust mites are my arch enemy.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
I was reminded of that game tonight while the Snook and I were watching our new favorite show: Crime Team. It's a reality program from England that features two celebrity sleuths trying to solve an actual historical London murder in only three days. They can only use means that were available to the police at the time. (It's currently airing in Australia Thursday nights at 9:30 on the ABC.) Tonight's episode had a radio personality and an investigative journalist trying to uncover the mystery of several dead babies that turned up in the Thames in the 1890's. It was fascinating, not just the crime solving aspect but also the hidden history of London that I never knew. (Shepherd's Bush was a thriving center for "baby farming"?) It's also interesting to see the tenuous leads that police back then were forced to follow (without recourse to DNA testing, modern forensics, etc). Tonight's killer was convicted and hung on the basis of the way she tied her shoe. I really recommend the show if you can find it.
* For the record, I don't think comparisons with the Taliban are that far off. Sure, Bush and his cronies haven't suggested that we stone adulterous women to death, but are their policies towards the lower classes and minorities really that much more compassionate? Both groups want to enforce their own insane religious beliefs on everybody else and unfortunately have no hesitation about using government to do it.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Christopher Paolini didn't. He's a weird home-schooled teenager "genius" who's written this year's pseudo-Harry Potter book of choice (according to the publishing industry, anyway). It's called Eragon. It's been getting a fair bit of hype so I picked up a copy last weekend. I regretted it as soon as I got home. There's a gushing quote from Anne McCaffrey on the back! (I've never been able to get through a single Dragonriders of Pern book so her recommendation doesn't exactly carry a lot of weight with me.) It only got worse once I cracked it open. The first problem is the kid's writing style. You can read some for yourself here. He actually says: "In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf." *snort* In practice, as far as I can tell this involves using lots of adjectives. Mountains are "forbiddingly solemn", forests are "thickly treacherous", and the danger is always "intensely palpable". Once you get past the affected style, the story itself isn't that bad... as long as you don't mind rolling your eyes at the obvious influences. It's like he put the Pern books, a complete set of Lord of the Rings, a dog-eared copy of Beowulf, and the shooting script of Star Wars into a blender and this is what popped out. He even prefaces the book with a map that might as well be Middle Earth. The story is full of elves, monsters, dwarves, men, dragons, men who ride dragons, etc. There's no humour and no originality, other than in the combining of all these things. I keep waiting for hobbits to show up. Am I being too harsh? I'm only halfway through, so maybe it gets better towards the end. Right now I'm just plugging along out of curiosity and duty. I dunno, maybe I'm just jealous that nobody ever offered to publish my derivative crap. At any rate, I can't exactly recommend this one to the Potter fans yet. Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Kevin discovered a rumor that Nicole Kidman might be playing the White Witch in Disney's upcoming adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I actually think she'd be really good for that part. She's got that whole beautiful-yet-terrible, pale-yet-flashy elfin ice queen thing going on anyway. I wonder if she'd sign on to play Jadis ("Empress of Charn") if they get around to making The Magician's Nephew... Incidentally, when I first read the books I thought that turkish delight must be the best candy ever. Thus when I arrived in London in '98, I headed straight for the local grocery store and bought some. It was awful! It was like a chocolate bar with a center of PINK JELLIED ASS. I still shudder at the thought.
  She's been sitting on my lap tonight learning about the Internet. We're bonding. The gutter-minded among you will be amused to note that the Snook, upon receiving these pictures from me, proceeded to forward them to his work buddies with the subject line: "Pictures of my girlfriend's pussy." Actually even I thought that was pretty funny.
Monday, March 8, 2004
1. What was your first grade teacher's name? Mrs. Weir. As in WeirD. She was this really scary mean old lady. I remember that one little boy had to transfer into our class from the other first grade class, and she made him stand up at the front of the room and admit that the reason he got transferred was because the other teacher couldn't teach him to read. She also tied the class bully to his chair once with a jump rope because he wouldn't stay seated. Another time she took him out in the hall to paddle him and she called all the other teachers to come out and watch. She was scary. The only good thing about her was that her ancient husband was a Shriner so the whole first grade got to go to the Shrine Circus for free. 2. What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon? I loved Saturday morning cartoons. Mom would set out my bowl of cereal the night before and leave me a cup of milk and a baby orange juice in the fridge. (Remember those orange juices? In the little plastic containers with the foil lids? I miss those.) I'd get up at 6 a.m. and sit there for, like, five hours. My favorites were the Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes show, the Smurfs, and Garfield and Friends. I also think I've seen every episode created of Muppet Babies. I wasn't a fan of those weird grown-up shows like Kid Video and Dungeons & Dragons. They were just a little too surreal for me. 3. What was the name of your very first best friend? Hmm. I haven't had a lot of "best friends," but I think my first one was Annie Fleck. We'd sit up all night playing with her huge Barbie collection (she even had Jem and the Holograms!) and then we'd play Nintendo Track & Field (on the cool running mat) and listen to Tiffany and prank call boys in our class. Her Mom was a manager at Dairy Queen so she was always bringing home prototype snacks, like cherry-flavored Dilly Bars. We'd swim in the lake and ice skate on it in wintertime and host awesome slumber parties. She was fun. I haven't talked to her in years. We drifted apart after I changed schools in junior high. 4. What was your favorite breakfast cereal? Whichever sugar-laden nutrient-free novelty one Mom wouldn't buy us. Once I got a little older and my tastes settled down, I'd choose Golden Grahams every time. 5. What was your favorite thing to do after school? Since our parents didn't get off work til later, we all ended up at a local babysitter's every afternoon. Luckily there was a playground in the field behind her place, so if it was warm we'd play out there. In the winter it was mostly TV. (That's where my "Days of Our Lives" addiction started, to tell you the truth.)
I'm tired. I feel like Dooce. Okay, that's not true. If there's a scale of maternal misery, she's at, like, 100 and I'm at 7. But my level of sympathy for her is going way up. I spent the whole night lying awake listening to Amy meow pitifully in the bathroom. I knew she'd go to sleep eventually but it just broke my heart to hear her. Then I started envisioning all the things that could happen in there. "Snookums, our toilet seat isn't very heavy. She could push it up with her head and fall in and drown! Oh, and I left the bottle of hand soap on the sink. She could accidentally push it and then lick the soap and get poisoned!" He'd just grunt, turn over, and start snoring again. Eventually she quieted down and I feel into an uneasy sleep. This morning we gingerly opened the bathroom door to see her peeking out at us from her new cat bed. And lo and behold, she'd done a poo and a wee in her litterbox! Good girl, Amy! I'm going to get her a scratching post tonight. So far she's tried scratching her little claws on the couch, the bathroom rug, my jeans, and the dining room chairs. Only the first two are acceptable. Now the only decision is whether my cat-mommy guilt will allow me to purchase the cheap one-tier post or whether I'll shell out $100 for the ultra mega three-tier-and-a-tunnel playground. We'll see. I swear this isn't going to become a total CatBlog. It's just the novelty of the thing. You may have to sit through a few more pictures though... :) Sunday, March 7, 2004
 And just like that, we're a family. The cat's name was originally going to be Dr. Alowicious Jones, but that's really more of a boy's name and she's a girl. So then we came up with the idea of naming her after my sister, for the pure comedy of saying, "Amy shat all over the floor!" and "Amy's coughing up a hairball." Think of it as a compliment, Sis. :) Saturday, March 6, 2004
Friday, March 5, 2004
Okay, these Texas sayings from MetaFilter cracked me up. They're hilarious. I was trying to think of any regional Indiana expressions but we don't seem to have much colorful slang. Thursday, March 4, 2004
(That's "Finished Object" for you non-knitters.) After doing two pairs of simple basic socks, I was ready to expand my skills. So I cracked open my copy of Socks Soar on Two Circulars* and picked out the "Columbine Peaks" pattern. The leg of the sock has a lacy pattern that forms little v-shaped mountain peaks that continue down onto the foot. It wasn't too hard, though you do have to count and sometimes I have difficulty with that. (Handy tip: Knitting and wine don't go together so well.) Now they're finally done. Unfortunately the Sockenwool I had was rainbow-colored so the pattern doesn't show up so well, but I still like them. They give me the craziest urge to buy some Birkenstocks and walk around like a German tourist. (Note: That second image is a big scan and shows the stitch pattern nicely.)   * Although I like the technique used, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book for beginners. I've found several frustrating errors in the patterns. You can see a list of some corrections here.
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
Astronauts on space walks have to wear adult diapers. Okay, I take it back.
I just read this absolutely fascinating article on the development of the birth control pill and its ramifications for women's health. It completely debunks the idea that having a period every month is in any way "natural". You all should read it. Seriously. Even you men. (Well, I guess the gay ones are excepted, but you still might find it interesting.) It starts off talking about Dr. John Rock, the Catholic doctor credited with inventing the Pill, and his belief that the Church would approve it as a "natural" method of contraception. After all, human females already have a safe time each month where they can't conceive, and all the Pill does is provide more of the body's own hormones to extend that time frame. The Church already approved the rhythm method and Dr. Rock saw the Pill as merely a regulator and helper for that. As we all know, the Pope didn't quite agree. [more...] Tuesday, March 2, 2004
Since it is a legal requirement that only one licence can be used for driving in Australia, before your NSW licence will be issued, you must present your overseas licence to be made invalid in Australia. The overseas licence will be returned to you after holepunching plastic or laminated licences or endorsing paper licences. The holepunch or endorsement will be done at a blank area of the licence so that no licence details will be removed.WHAT? What if I want to use my license when I travel back to the US? Does anybody know if holepunching your US license invalidates it?
Monday, March 1, 2004
Somebody on Glitter linked to this clay project for kids. *snort*
Shocking, isn't it? But good on Peter Jackson and the LOTR crew for cleaning up. We ended up with a 13-way tie for first place consisting of: Adanma Onyedike, Carol LuBien, Carrie Murphy, Christen, Colin Bunnell, Denise, Emily, julie, Mark Schoppe, Mary Jo Brown, Mike, Pat, and Tim Reid. The tiebreaker, you'll remember, consisted of guessing how many dead people would feature in the annual obituary tribute reel. The total was 30, which means that with a guess of 31, the winner is... *drum roll* Christen! I don't actually know him/her, but a sock monkey will soon be heading off to his new owner. In second and third places were two people that guessed the same number (25), thus the double-tie was broken on the basis of who entered earlier. Therefore in second place is Mark Schoppe, and in third place is Carol LuBien. (Carrie Murphy missed out on third by a mere hour!) And lastly, with the wooden spoon, is poor ramanan, who got zero correct. Better luck next year!
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archives
You can search through the archives by post keyword using the form on the left, or you can browse by month using the links at the bottom.
"Moblog" refers to posts and images posted directly from my mobile phone.
"PW Blog" refers to posts recovered from my very first weblog, which dealt with news related to my college dorm. |
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