June 19th, 2007 by Rebecca
I saw “Knocked Up” on the weekend, and boy was it funny! Crude in lots of places, but still the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. Besides that, not much else is new. My nephew is still cute as a button, and keeping his mom and dad up all night. I found out yesterday that Bing isn’t 8 years old as I (for some reason) thought he was – he’s almost 14. He’s no longer affectionately called “big guy” when I come home at night and he starts meowing at me – he’s “my grumpy-assed old man” now!
However, the title is about the progress on the socks, so here’s some:
The sockapalooza sock looks like this.
(It looks distorted because it’s on my hand. It doesn’t fit on my foot.) Turns out that this yarn is perfect for this pattern, and I hope my recipient likes it just as much as I do. Right now, I’m turning the heel on the first sock, and when I’m done that, I go up a needle size to do the leg part. Which means I can start the second foot right away. Woo!
The other sock (it doesn’t have a cool name yet).
This one has gone on the backburner until I’m finished the sockapalooza socks, or until I get bored of the other. The pattern is one of my own devising, which is a good thing because I can’t find the basic pattern I used to start it. Gulp.
There are two other projects I need to start, but they’re both top secret things. Sorry.
June 15th, 2007 by Rebecca
I’m trying to think of a compelling reason not to sit here and watch television until it’s time for bed. So far, the reasons for doing just that are pretty damn good:
1. I have to work tomorrow, so I should take the night off.
2. No matter how much I clean, everything is going to be covered in cat hair tomorrow anyways.
3. I just made lemonade, and what greater pleasure in life is there than cold lemonade?
4. It’s too hot to do much else.
The DVDs of “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” I ordered for work came in the other day, and I took home a Horatio Hornblower film tonight. Just more reasons to chill out and do nothing strenuous.
June 15th, 2007 by Rebecca
I’ve been tagged by multiple people, all of whom I forgot, to do the 8 things meme. It’s taken me this long to even come up with one or two interesting things, let alone 8, that aren’t boring beyond all reason or contain TMI.
1. I can’t listen to anything by the band Tool without getting seriously squicked out. Back in high school, someone in one of my classes was doing a presentation on violence in lyrics/videos, and made us watch the video for Tool’s “Prison Sex.” Given the subject of the song (sexual abuse), I was so disturbed by video that I got up and walked out of class. To this day, I can’t listen to that song or anything else by them without turning it off.
2. I have no desire to travel outside of Canada. I don’t even have a passport, and I don’t feel the need to get one. Maybe it’s just my anti-social nature, but there’s not really anything out there that I want to see badly enough to make me want to travel.
3. The children’s song “On Top of Spaghetti” (sung to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey”) made me cry. For the love of all that’s good and holy, I couldn’t tell you why. But it did.
4. Equally odd was the fact that I found the song “Little Rabbit Foo Foo” too violent.
5. I used to be pro-life, then I was pro-choice. Now I’m somewhere in between.
6. I cannot stand to have my feet touched. It makes me tense and nervous, so getting a pedicure or a foot massage is right out of the question.
7. It doesn’t matter if my house is a sty, as long as the dishes are done and the kitchen is relatively tidy, I can live with everything else.
8. Honestly, I can’t think of anything else.
I’m not going to tag anyone else. Do it if you’d like, and let me know.
June 3rd, 2007 by Rebecca
I haven’t been all that good a blogger lately. I blame it on the fact I now have a real backyard all to myself! With real gardens! And I can plant things in it! And it needs to be weeded! A lot, in fact! But! Plants and flowers! Wow! [1] Most evenings, I come home after work, acknowledge the existence of the cat, get changed into my grubby gardening clothes, and spend an hour or so out there. When I come inside, I eat, and then collapse on the nearest flat surface until it’s time to haul myself upstairs and collapse onto the flat surface that is my bed. Long story wrapped up – the blog has fallen to the wayside for the moment, along with other leisure activities like “housekeeping” [2] and “laundry” [3]. Also, I haven’t had a whole weekend to myself in weeks, and it’s going to be weeks until I do [4].
Reading this over again, I thought it sounds like I might be creatively and mentally drained by now; oddly, the opposite is true. I have three or four simultaneous knitting projects on the needles at the moment, including two pair of socks [6], a scarf and two baby projects. Then there’s the whole garden thing – already I’m making notes on what’s working and what isn’t for next year [7]. I also did some home decorating-type things – I set up what I like to call my “outer sanctum” in my porch for those (eventual) Saturday mornings to sit and drink coffee and read, or evenings to drink gin and tonics and read.
Finally, May was the month where I almost as many books in five weeks as I had all year so far.
~ Jeffery Moore, The Memory Artist (8)
A heartbreaking book about synthanesia and Alzheimer’s. It’s told from different perspectives, as if reading a journal compiled by the doctor who is studying the mother (Alzheimer’s) and the son (synthanesia); the doctor is a pompous ass, and the five protagonists as his lab rats, who succeed anyways.
~ Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (7)
At the first surprise plot twist, I had the strongest feeling of deja vu – I’d either read this book before, or I’d read a similar one in the past few years, before I started keeping track of what I read (this is year three). Very Victorian, very gothic, and pretty good.
~ Alexander McCall Smith, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (8)
Okay, okay – I finally succumbed to the pressure of just about everyone, and was pleased to find I actually liked this one. Plain, simple, few distractions.
~ Tanya Huff, Smoke and Mirrors (7.5) and Smoke and Ashes (7.5)
A few years ago at a convention where I got to meet her and sign a book of hers I’d just bought [8]. She’s a lovely person, funny as hell, and I would read the phone book if she wrote it. These two are a continuation of the Henry Fitzroy/Blood series (so far there are three in this series.)
~ Stephanie Meyers, Twilight (7)
For a while, I was on a vampire tear. I thought the protagonist was naive and kind of dense, and the whole thing was repetitive [9]; still, I was disappointed when I finished this book.
~ Sam Enthoven, The Black Tattoo (3)
If you read this book, you won’t need ever read any classic British sci-fi/fantasy books because this one does a great job of borrowing bits and pieces from all of them.
~ Tanya Huff, Long Hot Summoning (6)
The last in the Keeper Chronicles, and the one that drags on at the end.
~ Fiona Patton, The Golden Sword (6)
Didn’t care much for the protagonist, but it was one of those fantasy books you don’t need to have read the three previous books in the series to know what’s going on.
~ Anthony Bidulka, Amuse Bouche (6.5)
Given that the title hints at a possible foodie angle, I was disappointed that it wasn’t about crime in the kitchen world. It was a fairly solid book once I got past that, a bit predictable, yet well-paced.
[1] And, with that, I officially use up my quota of exclamation marks for the month.
[2] Lordy, you should see the cat hair everywhere… on the other hand, maybe not…
[3] My flimsy excuse for this is I like to hang it on the clothes line instead of using the drier, so there has to be enough daylight left for me to do it.
[4] A single day here and there, but nothing so decadent as two! whole! days! [5]
[5] Aaaand now I start on next month’s quota of exclamation marks.
[6] Normally, I’m lucky if I can focus on one at a time.
[7] i.e. working: snapdragons as a border, the begonias; not working: planting the impatience too early, the bleeding hearts in their current spot – move them to the front next spring because now they’re almost completely hidden by The Hosta That Ate My Garden and The Iris That’s Helping It.
[8] It was also the same convention where I got to stand in line for four hours to get Neil Gaiman to autograph a couple of books for me. It was the best four hours ever, and I still swoon when I hear him do readings.
[9] “I love you!” “I love you too, but you should be scared of me! Grrr!” “I know! But I still love you!” “I love you too, but…” etc.