Things that Annoy Me Today

Driving to work this morning, I was behind someone who had this license plate. Now, I really don't mind if someone wants everyone driving behind them to know that they are pro-life. What does bother me, though, is that there's no pro-choice license plate option. Whatever happened to equal time?

And another thing. Someone has apparently posted a link to my floating/sinking knitting needle entry--on a Megadeth forum. At least, I've been getting a bunch of visits to that entry from that forum. What bothers me is that, when I went to go look at the posting, I didn't have access because I wasn't a member of the forum. I signed up, activated my account, and discovered that I still didn't have access. Because a moderator needs to approve me first, which they haven't done yet, 24 hours later. I need my Megadeth fix, people! Get with the approving!

Stupid people really annoy me. Someone thought it would be a good idea to hang an effigy of Barack Obama from a tree on campus. That person was stupid. Their actions were viscerally offensive to a lot of people (which seems countereffective, if your goal is to have McCain elected President), and is being investigated as a threat against a presidential candidate--not good. And while I am offended by the effigy (to a lesser degree than Lee Todd, possibly because I didn't see it and I'm not dealing with all the behind-the-scenes bullshit) and I do disagree with that person's mode of political communication (mostly because it involved what amounts to an act of vandalism), I think that the ensuing furor was a bit over the top. As an employee of the university, I received 5 e-mails yesterday about it. Two from the university president, one from my staff senator, one from my department's business manager, and one from the provost. There was a forum last night to discuss the incident and talk about race relations on campus. I don't think this is so much about race relations on campus as it is about race in politics, and politics in general. Oh, well. I'd just like them to stop e-mailing me about it.

And the final thing that's got my dander up this morning is the people who interrogate the employees at Second Work. Nearly every person who came to my register last night had the same question: "When are you all closing for good?" Answer: Not sure. Probably after the holidays. Many had a follow-up question: "When are the discounts going to get better?" Answer: No clue. And a few sensitive souls asked me this one: "What's going to be in this space after you're gone?" Seriously? I DON'T KNOW. It was depressing. I finally started answering question Number 1 with, "Actually, I'm not sure when I'll be losing my job. Probably some time after the holidays." Which is probably a bit more touchy than necessary, but when you've been answering that same question for several hours, you start to feel a bit raw.

Sigh. And I guess it does annoy me a little that pretty much all of my projects right now are Secret Holiday Knitting, so there's not really any good content up here. Bleh. Soon I'll try to post some knitting content. Have a happy Thursday.

Halloween Fun!

I went to a Halloween party on Sunday.

I was Rosie the Riveter. I even had a sock project in my lunchbox--Rosie the Riveter was definitely a knitter. "Our boys need sox!"

There were a number of political costumes. From left to right, we have Joe Six-Pack, the Bridge to Nowhere, Sarah Palin, a McCain/Palin yard sign, Sarah Palin, and "A Russian who's voting for Sarah Palin because She's Her Neighbor."

Awards were given--the 2008 Weenies. ('Cause it's Halloween--get it?)


Jackson the Pumpkin was fascinated by his "Most Adorable" award.

And Sarah Palin told me that I should take home the Hockey Mom award ("Everyone's a winner!"), so I did.

We also carved pumpkins.

Click to embiggen and see the designs. The front row is exclusively Obama-related; someone brought a bunch of Obama patterns, because apparently there's a chance to win an iPod.

Here's mine:


I picked that pattern because it was more subtle than the others.

A good time was had by all.

In cat news, I got home from work today to find that someone had knocked down the flowers I had on the kitchen table, and there was water everywhere. At first I wasn't sure who to be secretly mad at (there's no good yelling at them now, after the fact), when I spotted the smoking gun in my water glass.

Only one resident of this house has soft, fluffy white hair. Grrr.

Christmas

Game night was a lot of fun yesterday. (I missed the party because I suddenly realized that I didn't have a hostess gift! I had to shop. I was sorry to miss the party, but glad I remembered my manners in time!) Anyway, we played a word game called Quiddler that was a lot of fun. I was a little worried that I would embarrass myself by sucking pretty hardcore--I was mentally exhausted from working the conference--but I think I acquitted myself pretty well. I came in 3rd or 4th out of 6, I don't remember which. For the gift-givers among you, this game would be a pretty good one. Also this. Or this, this, or this. Just FYI.

I was determined to keep the Christmas knitting to a bare minimum this year--just two projects, one of them half completed as of now and the other one about a third done.

Then I discovered a fun new pattern, that I think is equally appropriate for men and women. My Christmas prep may have just gotten a whole lot more complicated! Luckily, it's pretty small. Oh, well. The best laid plans, etc. It's just so hard to resist showering your loved ones with handknits!

Tired Caturday

Just got home from work trip. Very freaking tired. Want to go to party in an hour, then go have game night with Anne and her parents. May fall asleep on top of game board.

Here are cats.
Pippin and his fuzzy belly!


Eve and her fuzzy butt!

George and her fuzzy kitty face!

That's about all I've got for right now, folks. Have a good Saturday.

Post-Caturday

First, for those of you missing the kitties, I present Pictures of Cats On Top of Stuff.




And why is Caturday late? Because I went camping!

See? Sugar was the second ingredient! It had to be camping. (When I was a kid, my brother and I had to make sure that sugar wasn't one of the first three ingredients in any cereal we wanted to buy--except when we went camping. Then it was open season on cereal.)

Here is Master Fire Builder Anne, building a fire, and in the background, you can see her two-person hammock. The one that appears to have a one-person rope, as it proved when we tried to both read in the hammock and the rope decided to let go of itself and send us plunging to the ground. Don't worry, we were both fine--just a little sore!

I taught Anne to play cribbage. If you click, you'll see that her green pegs are beating my red ones. She won best of three yesterday.

I showed off my domestic skills by cooking us pancakes and bacon over an open fire yesterday morning.

And then I showed off my rustic skills by making big wood into smaller wood. Yeah, I know, it's cheating to use a saw--but that was birch! Birch is really hard!

We spent the day yesterday just relaxing--playing cards, knitting, reading. So nice. And this morning we even managed to get in another game of cribbage before I had to take off and go to Crazy Second Work. It was a good weekend.

Caturday Eve--Now with 100% Fewer Cats!

My life has been completely nuts for the last few days.

For one thing, I will shortly be losing my second job. Second Work is going under. The plan is for the store to remain open until after the holidays, but I'm gone at Thanksgiving. There's no way I'm working retail on going-out-of-business super-clearance Black Friday. The measly severance I would get for sticking it out is not worth it, in a big way.

Things are a-brewing at First Work, too--not the least of which is the fact that I'm going out of town next Wednesday and not coming back until Sunday. I'm out all day on Tuesday, too, to take care of some migraine-related stuff. Yes, two doctor appointments will take the whole day. Trust me. These clinics are not quick. That leaves Monday to prepare for my trip, and I don't have time to do everything I really need to do before I leave town. Grrr. Week after next is going to suck.

And after work today I am going camping! I had planned to upload cat pictures and do a fancy scheduled post for tomorrow, but I very intelligently left my camera cable at home, so I won't have time to do that. So, I'm very sorry, but Caturday will come late this weekend. I promise to put it up on Sunday. Speaking of Sunday, I'm still not sure if I'm going to be working on Sunday or not. (Second Work is presently unconcerned with the schedule, given the whole "liquidation" thing.) So I need to stop there on my way out of town, and hope that I won't have to cut my camping trip short. Camping is going to be awesome. Food cooked over an open fire, nice autumn weather, books, and plenty of knitting. I'm taking a ridiculous number of (small) projects, in case I get bored with one. I will have several knitting options. Hooray!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Mom, I'll call you when I get a chance on Sunday.

Caturday!

Once again, it's time for pictures of cats!

Here's Eve, lounging by the bookshelves. Doesn't she look cozy?

And here are George and Pippin.

They were being all cuddly until I grabbed the camera. Pippin had been grooming himself, then George jumped up and Pippin started grooming her. It was completely adorable, and of course it stopped the instant the camera pointed at them. Oh, well. They're still cute.

I had a good time at the signing last night, even though I forgot my camera. It was pretty low-key. Ann and Kay seemed like people I'd like to hang out with. They brought the hair. And they brought most of the projects from the new book for us to fondle. The projects were beautiful, and seeing them in person was very cool. It helped me decide which ones I want to make, and which I'll probably pass on. And I picked up a Christmas present while I was at the bookstore. Yay!

Today has been lovely. I woke up late, did some cleaning and a little rearranging in the kitchen, then ran some errands. I picked up several things for a secret AntiCraft project I'm designing, did a little stash diving, and wound up with a nice pile.

Muahaha! I'm having a blast with this. Now, if I could only find my craft glue... I know it's here somewhere! And I've made excellent progress on Phase One.

What could it be? All shall be revealed in the fullness of time.

Blue Period

I'm making some progress on my current projects, which is really nice; for a long time it seemed like my knitting and crocheting were pretty stagnant. But I knit through almost an entire ball of yarn at Stitch 'n' Bitch on Tuesday. Now my second sleeve looks like this:

Well, it looks like that at 7 am when I can't be bothered to spread it out all pretty.

And my handkerchief looks like this:

Projects: very blue at the moment. I do like the edging I'm using on the handkerchief. I found the pattern through Crochet Pattern Central; there were some links on the Edgings page that went to the Lion Brand site, and this was one of theirs. Interestingly, the edgings were buried in the FAQs, and searching for them by name didn't work. But I'm glad someone found them--I didn't want to do something all curvy and girly on this handkerchief, since the pre-embroidered corner embellishment is so angular and art-deco. The pyramid pattern isn't perfect, but it's more fitting than shells, I think.

Tomorrow is the Mason-Dixon event at JosephBeth--yay! I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully, I'll even be able to get there. My car is currently in the shop, getting a talking-to for its deplorable behavior yesterday. It kept trying to overheat. Seriously, I'm not a terrible driver, and I keep my fluid levels where they belong--what is it with my cars and overheating? I asked the mechanic if he could try to make it something easy and cheap to fix, and he said, "Oh, I'm really sorry--cheap and easy was yesterday." Heh. I like a sense of humor in my mechanics. Yes, so I am hopeful that my car will be fixed today or tomorrow, and if not, that I'll be able to cadge a ride with a fellow SnBer. I'm just grateful that I don't have to go to Second Work today or tomorrow--that would be much more difficult to arrange, ride-wise.

Caturday: FTW Edition

I woke up this morning to find that big ball of adorable next to me. She's actually under that pillow, which was serving as an oversized stuffed animal last night. Too cute!

There's George, on her new favorite perch: the top of my closet. She loves it up there. She likes getting up there and attacking the hangers through the fabric when I'm getting my clothes for the day out.

For a cat as appealing and popular as Pippin is, he's awfully hard to take interesting candid photos of. For this one, I lured him up onto the bed and had to take half a dozen shots to get a decent closeup.

I've been knitting away slowly. My sweater remains unfinished, but I'm making decent progress on a secret project. I've got a sock going. And I'm working on another hanky edging. I'm getting kind of tired of not finishing things, so Finishing is going to be a major objective in the next few weeks.

But here's the big excitement for the day. (This is the part where "for the win" becomes relevant.) I was at second work today, just standing there with no diversions. There was another cashier working, too. She was doing homework. Full-on studying, with a giant textbook and a big stack of index cards that she was making into flashcards. Then Assistant Store Manager walked up--the one who told me several months ago that I wasn't allowed to knit at the register. He talked to Cashier for a while, then walked away. He happened to be in the breakroom when I was collecting my things to leave. I casually said, "So, am I allowed to knit at the register again?" He was silent for a minute, not looking at me, then he said, "Was she doing homework?" "Yep," I answered. "I didn't notice," he said. "Oh, I just figured it was okay; you stood there and talked to her for a while, so..." In the end, it was agreed that I could knit as long as I kept an eye on the door. And if anyone's register extra-cirriculars become a problem, they all stop. But hey--knitting! Yay!