What Are You Up To

We're watching Winged Migration and researching why birds fly in V formation. I've decided that crabs are mean, and that birds can be really smart, but really stupid all at the same time. We may or may not be going to a candle service at church later. Jean and Dan are going, but I don't think that Jeff wants to go. In his defense there are a lot of tamales to be made. He's got two fillings almost sorted out, but we still need to form the tamale and then steam them for a couple of hours (hopefully without filling the house with smoke his time.)

Merry Eve

I'm finally starting to wind down from my last week of f-ing hell at work. I'd go into detail, but it's inane and would just start my brain aching again. We'll just say, one of my co-workers threw a fit like a child of 48 and that I was not impressed.

So now it's Christmas Eve, and I've caught up on all my blog reading. Everyone is working on something, except me*. :) Jeff is cooking up some pork so that he can make his first batch of unsupervised tamales, Dan is putting together a shelving system, Jean's getting ready to wash the car, and I'm hanging out on the couch listening to Christmas music. I'm really enjoying the Christmas music. It used to kind of get on my nerves, but I think that not being out in stores that were blasting the music, and not listening to radio spared my brain from the onslaught. I was actually complaining the other day that I hadn't heard any Christmas music. Now I've heard it all morning, and it's been great.

We got in really later Saturday than I had planned. The car had to spend time in the shop, and between that and the stressing out from work that Jeff and I both did, it caused us to get behind. Heck, we still didn't have a present for Brandon until yesterday (but he got an awesome one, so that makes up for it.) I think we got to Jeff's parents house around 6:45pm. We saw tons of traffic headed southbound, but it was almost entirely smooth sailing going north.

All the kitties are hiding, except for Elfstar. She has finally stopped growling at Muttly when he enters the room, but she still won't tolerate him anywhere near her. It's actually pretty funny, because she doesn't have front claws. She hisses and growls and baps him repeatedly in the face, and he just kind of looks freaked out. He got pissed off once, but he's been behaving pretty well, so no big battles yet.

I'm not sure if we're going to try and go out into the wide world and get another gift for Jeff's dad, but I know Jeff needs to go online and get him  a new magazine subscription. Other than that all the gifts are wrapped, and everything is good. Chai chocolate and cayenne cashews... As soon as Jean pops open a bottle of wine my day will be made. (She declared that post-noon was wine time. That's something we both agree on.)

I hope that you're all warm and happy and with the people that you love. Give your favorite person a squeezy hug for me and wish them a Merry Christmas.

*I did help clean the kitchen this morning with the dishes from breakfast, and last nights dinner, so I haven't been a complete bum.

Quite Simple Really

If someone happens to get a spot of shit in your day, I have a remedy.

Step 1: Make cocoa (with at least some real dairy in it)
Step 2: Turn on the gas stove
Step 3: Roast marshmallows at the stove whilst sipping the cocoa

Unless you hate chocolate, marshmallows, or happiness, then it's bound to make you feel better.

It's Not a Hamster

A Joke Is What You Make of It

Children trying out a newly discovered thing called humor are kind of
surreal. I'm sitting here while Jeff finishes up some work at a
client's house and overheard this -

Child 1: Are you allowed to eat ice cream whenever you want?
Adult: No
Child 1: Then why do you live in ice cream?
--silence--
Child 2: We don't live in ice cream!?!
Child 1: It's a joke!
Adult: Ohhhhh...

The Good and The Bag Ugly

Good: Last night I finished Iza's prezzie, so that's another notch in the old FO belt. My best guess is that I am over halfway done with the Quant, and I'm still on my first half a ball of yarn. This means it is knitting quickly, and that I shall have plenty of yarn. El yay on both counts.

Dog: This morning I heard a strange crunching from under the table. When I looked down I found Muttly eating a stick. Since I don't think he should eat sticks in general, I took it away. That's when I realized that the stick was rather round, and had some cryptic writing on the side "Clover US 10". Further investigation revealed another piece which, while a bit chewed, was still recognizable as a knitting implement. Luckily for the dog that's not the needle I was using for my project, and I don't think I have any in the back of my mind that would require that paticular needle either. Still, I really wish he wouldn't eat anymore knitting needles.

Truckin Along

I always worry during the Christmas knitting season about the lost time between completing one project, and the time to start the next one. There's usually a bit of time taken up by trying to determine what to make next and for who. This year I had already planned out a couple of gifts, and that's minimized some of the strain. I'm also using a couple of yarns that I've knit with before, so I can actually start a project with a reasonable expectation of gauge. Still as I get nearer and nearer the end of a project I automatically start brainstorming as I work to try and think ahead of that gap.

Yesterday was one of those great moments when I didn't have an idea, but then I got one, and it was good. I had only a few minutes to take a break from cleaning my home and garage. I decided to take a peak at the latest patterns for the Winter Knitty. I stumbled upon the pattern for Quant, and although it's knit from some other sort of yarn I immediately thought of the leftover Noro Silk Garden that I have stashed away. I've only done just enough to know that the gauge will work, and that it's going to be awesome. I haven't knit enough to know for sure that I have enough yarn, but I think it'll be okay. See I have two half balls of the same colorway, and I figure that once I finish one half I'll know. If it seems too short then I'll do a few rows with a different Silk Garden colorway and then hop back in with the second ball, if it's enough then ... yay! I'm thinking maybe this will be for Tricia, but I'll need to work it a bit more to know for sure.

Meanwhile I'm almost done with Iza's present. I've got a few hours to go, less if I hustle maybe. I've started piling the completed knits in a chair (locked away from the chewing/shedding beasties) and I'm pleased with the frequency that I get to add new items. It's possible that I may actually get done everything that I'd hoped. Of course this would all be easier if I could just quit my job (at least until after New Year's Day) and stay home to knit, and work on wedding planning.

Speaking of wedding plans, we've made progress! We selected a baker yesterday, and we even have a preliminary idea on what the cake will be and look like. I'd tell you, but that would ruin the surprise for too many people. I promise that it will be tasty, and maybe even nice looking. We also picked up my wedding ring, which is all the right size now. I love my wedding ring, and I can't wait until I get to wear it all the time. I hope that we can find one that Jeff's likes for himself almost as much. He's not much of a jewelry person, so we might have to settle for one that he likes half as much as I like mine.

Whoops, back to work!

I Swear, I'm Getting Ready to Work

I can't remember where all I've heard of Jonathan Coulton before, but I know I have. I really liked this robot video that I spied on Neil Gaiman's blog, so I thought I would share it with you.

You can listen to pretty much any of his songs for free, and some of them are quite good, while others are certainly interesting, and yes there are even bad ones. I think my first experience with Jonathan Coulton was a You Tube video for the song Creepy Doll. Okay, I'm running out of time to get dressed and have a bit to eat, so I suppose it really is time to get away from the computer.

Hopefully the Last Move of the Year

We moved Tim and Julie into their new home Saturday morning. I made a few blood sacrifices, to keep everything going smoothly. That photo is the worst one. It still hurts like a bugger this morning. I have two small cuts on top of my hand on the same arm, and lovely cut/bruise combo is on the back of the arm. It's really hard to sleep comfortably when the front and back of your arm hurt. I found one angle to lay at that worked, but every time I rolled over I would wake up and have to get back to that position. Honestly, as long as nothing touches that bit of my arm it doesn't hurt, but the hand keeps stinging. I think it's because I've continued to abuse that hand, and cats and dogs alike seem to want to stomp on it.

Yesterday was crazy! We went to Tim's parents' just after 10 to get everything from there and move it to the new house. We finished around 3ish? I don't remember exactly, because of the sheer amount of fun we had with UHaul *coughfuckerscough*. It all worked out fine, but they tried to screw Julie out of another $40. Once that was done we grabbed the pizza and headed back to eat, drink, and be merry. Jeff and I ate pizza and drank beer with Tim, Julie, Bill, Brandon, Erin, Anna, and Sean. Eventually Jeff and I had to leave, because we had two more parties to go to, and honestly we needed to wash up first.

We went to Kathy's to have a knitters holiday party. I was unsure what to expect, but we had a good time. Everyone brought some sort of snack, and mostly there were strange foods I was unfamiliar with. A lot of it was vegetarian, which I thought was strange... I mean, I don't think it's strange to be a vegetarian, but I think this is the first party I've been to where even the eggnog was soy-nog. (I didn't try the soy-nog because it looked watery, and I prefer the thick viscous nog that leaves a hazy film clinging to the glass when you're done.) I ate a bit of some sort of fried pocket of vegetarianism, and some rice (brown I thinks) with some vegetarian red stuff that looked like marinara, but tasted different. I was afraid of the spinach ball (big green balls of spinach) but the peanut butter balls with coconut on the outside were good. The big difference between a knitter party and other parties, is that at some point we all pulled out some knitting and chatted and sipped while working away on various projects. I was able to verify that Hill Country Weavers has ordered some amount of the new Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn!!! (I'm way excited, sorry.) Of course they don't know when it will come in, and it will likely be in January. If you knit, or like yarn a lot, click on those two links and you'll probably know why I'm so excited.

We stayed at Kathy's until 10 ish, and then headed to Sean and Lacy's for their after-party. They had rented out a skating rink and had people over to play broomball. Evidently this was tons of fun, but I'm sure that it would have been too much work for us, after our already long day. Lacy had tamales, chips, queso, salsa, and of course more beer. We ate and chatted, and generally lazed about with the folks who were tuckered from their game. Just before we were going to leave Lacy got everyone together to play a game. She had wrapped gifts (of dubious character) in tons of paper and tape, and then we all sat around a table. You take turns rolling a pair of dice, and if you get doubles you get to start unwrapping the present (as fast as you can) and then when the next person gets doubles they take it away from you and continue the unwrapping (as fast as they can) because whoever gets all the paper off gets to keep the present. I got the first present of the night, and seeing as how it was chocolate I believe I won. It was definitely one of the top 3 gifts. There was also a monkey that you could shoot like a sling shot, and a hand crocheted hat that Lacy had made from a zillion different yarns. These were good gifts. The slinky was okay, but it was plastic, so not completely cool. The "bad" gifts included chapstick (okayish), dental floss (useful), and vaseline (...) I thought Lacy was going to pass out from laughter as everyone fought to get into the package that had the jar of vaseline in it.

I finally crawled into my bed around 1:30 in the morning, and even after a cup of coffee, I still feel like I could use a bit of a nap. It was an awesome day though. It was productive (moving and knitting) and it was loads of fun (even the moving bit). Although I really hope no one else needs help moving before the end of the year, cause I think I'm done with that shit. Today we go to taste cake at Matty's Cakes, and pick up my wedding band from Russell Korman. After that we get to clean the garage, because Kirk is having the hot water heater replaced tomorrow, and I don't want him to ruin/break/whatever all the various things we currently have stored out there. *whew* I've got another long day ahead, so I suppose I should get busy.