The mention of the high cost of US insurance premiums blew my mind. A family pays $13K a year?? I did a quick back-of-the-enveloped calculation and worked out that the Snook and I pay less than $5K a year for health insurance. (That includes the portion of our taxes that go to the state-sponsored insurance, plus the extra private insurance cover we have on top of that.)
Month: August 2009
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Shipshe Flea Market
“Flea market a stimulus unto itself.” A nice article on the Shipshewana Flea Market, and how it continues to thrive in spite of the recession. I took the Snook there once. Jenny used to work there on summer vacations.
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Baby Cardigan and Tasman Summer Tunic
Baby Cardigan and Tasman Summer Tunic
I finally finished off a couple lingering kids’ projects that I was working on. The first is a cardigan for my friend Venks’s new baby. The boy is named Vivaan and he was born about two weeks ago. The wool is Wired for Fibre’s “Elizabeth” sock wool in colour Serenity. The pattern is free and is knitted sideways (cuff-to-cuff). I got some adorable teddy bear buttons from the button shop in the Rocks last Saturday to finish it. I can’t wait to see it on Vivaan!
Next is the Tasman Summer Tunic for my niece Indie. The pattern is by Just Jussi and is available as a free Ravelry download. I knitted the smallest size and used three balls of Morris Paddington (80% bamboo, 20% merino) in colour #611 “Dover”. I left off the beads at the hem, but other than that I didn’t change anything. The ribbon at the front is very cute, and I found a pretty star button to use as the closure at the back. I hope it fits her! -
Shared today on Twitter
Holy crap. How is it 1:00 already?
If you used the St. George ATM on York Street, there was a skimmer attached. @TimBags, 600+ other people were affected. Watch your account!
@randomknits You’re stirring the pot over on Rav today, you stinker! The mods are having a pow-wow…
@DDsD Not quite. We have one. Snook never looks it. I just end up nagging him when we’re supposed to do shit.
Got emailed by a journalist wanting me to comment on graffiti knitting. HA! This is going to be good.
@stufromoz Not sure. It was my friend @TimBags who got skimmed, and he’s where I heard about it…
Rain and storm, oh my! Cats are hiding.
@Bex_the_Femme I’ll send you my reply. You’ll like it.
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RunningBlog
Huh. It’s been pretty much all running, all the time around here lately. Sorry about that! It’s just that I had two races in a row, so I haven’t had time/willpower for much else. Getting back to normal now. Six weeks til the half-marathon!
This week: 24.9km (15.5mi)
Last week: 17.8km (11mi) -
Shared today on Twitter
Knitters: Which hypothetical name for a LYS do you like best? Newtown Stitchery / The Newtown Nook / The Granny Square / Champion on King
@redambition Ahhh, but imagine the merchandising opportunities! T-shirts that say: “I heart COK…” HAHAHAHA! 🙂
Just completed a 4.65 km run with @runkeeper, check it out http://bit.ly/PrT52 #RunKeeper
@witty_knitter I don’t know if it would be 100% knitting just yet…
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Shared today on Twitter
Just completed a 14.15 km run with @runkeeper, check it out http://bit.ly/1kUwYs #RunKeeper
Can’t find Snook. No cell signal. Wandering and sweaty! #city2surf
Found Snook. Trying to find other MBA teammates. Sitting behind Accenture tent at south end… #city2surf
@Opheli8 So far only Paul J. I saw Venks at 5km mark but no sign since. And Sven is MIA.
Me and Paul J after the race.Paul kicked my butt! We never did find Venks or Sven. #city2surf http://twitpic.com/d8kl7
@coach_chris First half great, second half not so great. (Stitch, cramping.) Still finished in about 110. Home now and showered. 🙂
@venks79 Well done! Your pace was much more consistent than mine.
@devvyleys Outdoor running is so hard. Have to build up slowly. Try the Couch to 5K when you’re ready. I’m sure you can do it!
Crap. I took about 10 photos during the #city2surf, but crappy 3G coverage meant only 2 got uploaded to @runkeeper. Any way to resubmit?
@bennymarsh Did you remember to turn off wifi? I only get bad gps when I forget. My #city2surf distance was spot on.
Now the reward: Full. Body. Massage.
We are like 5 minutes into Transformers: The Movie (the animated one), and I’m completely lost. How does a giant robot turn into a tiny gun?
@sharre For latchhook? Very, very difficult. M&S used to carry it, but supplier stopped making it. No idea where to get it these days.
Insecticons? There is obviously a whole mythology here that I’m missing out on.
“There’s a girl Autobot? What does she turn into? If it’s, like, a goddamn hair brush, I’M GONNA VOMIT.”
@shanea I just want to know why the girl Transformer sucks so bad. She hasn’t transformed yet!
@randomknits Wow! Ten points to @gilmae for originality and plating. But how did it taste?
@shanea It was time for Snook’s WoW raiding session, so I took advantage and switched off Transformers. (Nerdiest. Sentence. Ever.)
WICKET! Man, I might actually get to see the Poms lose before bedtime. (This is MUCH better than Transformers already.)
Any of you have Microsoft Works? Trying to open a .wps document…
@gilmae Tried it. OO wanted me to choose from 100+ non-alphabetised filter formats, none of which matched. But NeoOffice opened it 1st try!
Thanks, everybody. I got it open. OO didn’t like it, but NeoOffice opened it just fine…
@Opheli8 I don’t do sewing, really. Hm. Wonder if I could knit one.
My Race Report for the 2009 City 2 Surf is up, complete with lots of pics from the course: http://bit.ly/j75V1
Just read the phrase “And you’re only getting older” in email from @carbolicious. THANKS, SIS. Great way to start my Monday…
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Shared today on Facebook
Ran the 14km City 2 Surf for the fourth time. Finished in about 110 minutes, which wasn’t a personal best but was pretty good considering this wasn’t my goal race. This was just training for my half-marathon in six weeks time…
My Race Report from the 2009 City 2 Surf… with lots of bad photos from the actual course!
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City2Surf2009
Today was the day of my fourth running of the 14km City2Surf… and my first without the Snook! He said that our run last year “nearly killed him,” and he hadn’t done any training this year. So I was on my own. (Technically there were three guys from my company running, including my buddy Paul here that I met up with afterwards.) I headed over to the Blue start on College Street this morning at 9am, knowing that it would take ages to get started. The crowd was a record 75,000 runners, and the weather was gorgeous and sunny. I told myself over and over that this was just a training run, that I wasn’t going for any specific time. I set RunKeeper to intervals of 5:00 running and 1:00 walking. Our group finally crossed the starting line at 9:28am. We were off!
My enforced walk-breaks worked well for the first half, and I tried to take a photo during most of them. (Unfortunately they didn’t all sync to the map, but you can see them above. Optus’s network failed bigtime.) My pace for the first half was fantastic, even with the walking. Oddly enough, I actually ran into my teammate Venks around the 5km mark! I can’t believe out of 75,000 people, I ran into one of the few I knew. Venks was taking a break himself, so I left him behind when RunKeeper told me to speed up again. Soon we were at the hill… and that’s when it started sucking. I got a stitch/cramp in my side that just would not budge. I took an extra walk break, taking exaggerated breaths to try to stretch it out. I ended up walking most of the hill, and my pace just wasn’t the same after that. No matter, I told myself. It was just a training run! I tried to enjoy it. At 11.5km I stopped for a second to send the Snook an SMS telling him I was getting close. I ended up crossing the finish line (hunched over, fighting the stitch) at 111 minutes, which is about 5 minutes slower than we did last year. It’s okay. It was good just to be out there with everybody else.
I was thinking about why I love this event. I think it’s because it reminds me that you can’t judge a person’s athletic ability by their shape, and you’re really only out there competing against yourself. I was passed by people that I wouldn’t think could run 2km, much less 14km. And because of how many people there are and how staggered the starts are, there’s no point in comparing yourself to anybody else on the road. We’re all running our own races. It’s the great equalizer.
Anyway, the end of the race was madness. I couldn’t find the meeting point where my teammates were supposed to congregate, and I nearly couldn’t find the Snook. (Optus and Vodafone SUCKED.) Eventually we met up with Paul, who’d already had a shower and change of clothes! Then the three of us joined a queue for the buses and made our way back to the city. I had a long hot shower and a hot lunch before heading over to Broadway for a much-needed full body massage. Ahhh, *bliss*.
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More Guild Success
More Guild Success
We had another highly successful and FUN Inner City Guild meeting yesterday. Three more people signed up, which officially puts us at 51 financial members. That’s crazy! We have to be getting close to the biggest group. We’ve decided to make our “Learn to Knit” workshops a regular monthly occurrence, and I’m thrilled that RoseRed has put up her hand as Workshop Coordinator. Things are going really well…
