What a wonderful (though hot) weekend. Friday night felt like another whole day. We went shopping for the last few items for the HSKS5 thang. I also got the yarn I need to make the Dream Swatch Head Wrap (down on the left) for the KAL (Knit A-Long) that the Hufflepuffs started. I have not been added to the list of participants, though, so I don’t know if they are still working on it or if I sent my email to the wrong person or what… Acorn Street Shop did not have any variegated bamboo yarn, so I got two colors of yarn and will switch EOR (every other row) or so. Oddly enough, the two colors I liked the most were basically Ravenclaw colors. I think it will be really pretty.
Also this weekend, we had a GREAT time at Allison’s going away party. Hung out at the park with le Poops for a while eating really greasy hot dogs (well, part of one until it made me sick) and talking with everyone. Le Poops were really happy, though too hot. Jim gave Nisa a watermelon rind and I had to struggle for a minute or so trying to pry her jaw open to get it from her so she wouldn’t release some fowl liquid all over the car. That morning we had given the dogs a bath and vacuumed the car. Too much dog hair. It was finally starting to get to me. Nisa has been shedding like crazy because the Addison’s was making all her hair fall out and we have to wait until her next hair cycle for it to stop. She she about a puppy’s worth of hair when we gave her a bath.
Also on Saturday morning, we went to Get Smart. Very funny. There were a couple scenes where we were all laughing so hard (the two of us the the 2 or so strangers that were there too) that no one could breathe. And I LOVE Dwayne Johnson. That is all I have to say about that. It is not particular to the movie, but I wanted to point it out for Abe again. Hehe.
Then on Sunday we went to the Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market with Abe’s mom and it turned out to be just that. They only sold veggies and the like. And since it was only 11 and already so hot out that I stopped at every vendor just to get out of the sun, we promptly went home. Well, we stopped at Michael’s so I could buy another tatting shuttle since I lost one somewhere in the apartment, but they no longer carry them. All I can say is “What kind of Bull Crap is that!” They had tatting thread and no shuttles. And no green tissue paper. Granted, neither did Fred Meyer’s. But then we went home and I melted on the couch, watched a disc of ER and finished the shrug from the pattern I got at Spin A Yarn in Edmonds on the LYS Tour. It looked weird open loose, so I closed it in front with a saftey pin and it looks really nice. Busty, but nice. I am glad I chose these colors and not some crazy bright pink colorway. Though I did get to see some of the new Noro sock yarn color ways at Acorn Street and there is a beautiful green, blue, and black one that I am dying for. I think there is a little purple too, so I bet it is gorgeous. Can’t wait to figure out what I would like to make with that.
And now I have started Bad Juju. It is a small knit voodoo doll. I am going to pin him to the side of my cubicle through the neck with a long T pin. I think it will be adorable. And maybe it will get QA to shut up. Hehe. Then I am going to make a shrunken head. Also for my cubicle. I think I will hang it like I did the snitch I made.
The bad news though. Isaac can’t make it the weekend of the 4th for Harry Potter weekend. So he is trying to get the next weekend off to come down instead. If he can, we will be going to a dyeing class at my oh so favorite yarn shop Acorn Street on Sunday. Or just buying the dyeing kits and dyeing it in my kitchen. I am sure Abe would love that. But the class is a bit pricey and I have to have $175 to buy a kit to make the Imogen sweater for the August Olympic Knitting Trials. This kit, but I have not decided on a color. Maybe the Hercules or Merlin or Origin colorway. I am thinking Hercules. I want something kind of colorful, but not bright. Or Victoria for something less colorful but will still show the stripies.
(Abe will have to get this to appear as a video in the post because I have no idea how. Keep telling me the link is bad. Let me try this:
Hmm. Looks like that might work.
So next weekend (for the 4th) Isaac was going to come over to watch all the Harry Potter movies, but he couldn’t get the time off of work, so we will do it one of the two weekends after that.
This weekend, we are going to my cousin Allison’s going away party. I taught her to knit and sent her some needles (with music notes on them) and now her boyfriend John would also like to learn to knit. They are taking a huge train ride in less than a week, so that should be a great time for them to practice knitting. I guess I don’t need to meet other knitters. I will just make other knitters.
So Angela’s a *huge* Harry Potter fan and she is involved in all sorts of Harry Potter themed knitting and crafting groups on line. One of them, does an internet scavenger hunt every once in a while and we hosted the snitch for the last one. It’s on this page. I spent a good 30 minutes making that page and finding cool videos about cake decorating. It was kinda fun.
I’m getting burned out on mmo’s I think. I haven’t played EQ2 since this past weekend. It just hasn’t interested me. When I think about playing, it feels like thinking about going to a second job that I pay for the privelege of working.
I started replaying Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines last night. I made a Brujah. I’m having a blast so far. My character is a melee machine. She just tears through enemies. In the past I played a Malkavian and I focused on ranged weapons and seduction. My brujah is focused on melee, sneaking and breaking-and-entering. The game is really engrossing. I meant to play for just an hour or so last night and ended up playing for over two hours before I even realized it.
Yesterday I discovered how awesome the myspace music pages are. I spent about an hour and a half browsing and listening to peoples music yesterday and I spent about an hour this mornign doing that. There is an amazing variety of music on there.
And here are a few funny cats to brighten your day.
I would be a little better husband than Abe! But right now, he does most of the cooking and cleaning, so go figure that I would be a bad 1930s wife. Plus I am really grouchy first thing in the morning.
This weeks jerk of the week award goes to an eq2 player I had dealings with on wednesday night. We started a group for a dungeon called Stormhold which is a 20s level area. It can be difficult to get a group together in that level range so I was very pleasantly surprised to have 5 people in our group within a few minutes of posting the first notice in 20-29 chat. This is when the drama started.
We have one spot open and the Tool wants us to invite his lvl 55 guardian buddy because “We don’t have a tank.” I explain that one of the people in our group is in fact a Brawler which IS a tank class. The Tool then says “Well we need a REAL tank.” The brawler says “I’m a tank. I can tank SH. I have good gear.” As far as the rest of the group is concerned it’s decided at this point but the Tool persists. “If you aren’t going to invite my friend to tank for us I’m going to leave.” He says. I’m thinking to myself this guys a fucking Tool! He doesn’t want a group he wants his friend to power level him. Some furious whispering happens between me and the people in the group that aren’t the Tool. “It’s pretty hard to get a whole group of level appropriate people together for a dungeon in the 20s. Leave if you want to but I’m happy with a bruiser for a tank.” I say in group chat.
The Tool drops from the group and immediately starts advertising for more people for his new SH group in 20-29 chat. We have a good chuckle about it and start to work our way in to the dungeon.
A few minutes later the Tool sends me a /tell asking me to join his group to heal! I tell him I’m happy with my group and he replies that “You can’t do SH without a plate tank.” I tell him I’d rather fail with a group that’s the right level than waltz through the place with a minor deity tanking for me. At this point he says to me “Fine enjoy dying you stupid bitch.”
I told my group about all this, reported the Tool for being a jerk and put him on ignore. About 20 minutes later we ran in to the Tool and his high level buddy struggling their way through the dungeon with no one to help them. I pointed at him and blew him a kiss
I made an interesting discovery this week. I HATE LCDs for gaming. Yes widescreen resolutions are nice. Yes text is incredibly clear and easy to read. But, if you are playing a FPS a CRT with a decent refresh rate is head and shoulders better than an LCD every day of the week. It’s hard to describe and basically can’t be caught in a movie or I would capture it and show you. Playing Quake 3 or UT 2004 on my CRT is like looking in to a 3d space vs watching a very fast slide show on the LCD.
I’ve rearranged my desk so my LCD is off to the side and my CRT is dead center in front of me. I can’t believe I ever bought in to the whole LCD thing and I’m fearing the day that my CRT dies because I might not be able to find a replacement.
Nisa is really doing well these days. She’s playful and happy in a way I just don’t remember her being in a really long time. Ernies lost about three pounds on his diet in the last few weeks too! I can’t wait for both of our dogs to be happy and healthy again.
Our vacuum cleaner broke a few months ago. We quickly figured out the problem. After taking the cover off the bottom, and pulling amazing amounts of hair off the roller thing (we basically had a new pet), we saw that the band had broken. Based on the evidence, I am guessing it got stuck on all the hair and wouldn’t turn but the mechanism kept turning so the band burned, weakened, and snapped. I saved the band so we could go get a new band that weekend. Skip ahead 4 months. My cousin is coming over for one last visit before she moves to Boston to go to Berkley. I don’t want her to regret coming over to our filthy apartment. We haven’t vacuumed in four months because we still haven’t taken the time to find a new band. It is spring and the dogs have been shedding like crazy. On top of that, it seems Nisa was losing her hair because she was so sick. So it was a hairy hairy mess. Finally, I convince Abe to drive us over to Sears to begin the hunt for a new band. I still have the old band (somehow safe in the same place on the bookshelf). With trepidation, we arrive at Sears. We are expecting to go to numerous stores and all over town. We are expecting to find a specialty shop that will have to order the part. We are expecting vacuum cleaner hell. We go in and pop by customer service to see if they have a clue. They don’t. But she is very helpful (with a wonderful Russian accent), and looks around for someone who would know. She comes back without finding anyone who knows anything. But she points us in the direction of the vacuums. We glumly head upstairs. First we can’t find any vacuums. We look around for a bit and start to wander in a direction (as if drawn there). We turn a corner and vacuums galore. A little farther back, and Lo! A wall almost as big as our bed of vacuum bands. This would not have boded well, but I had the band in my purse with the number still whole on its broken body. In less than two seconds Abe had already picked up the correct band. We checked the number no less than three times to make sure we weren’t just kidding ourselves. Then we had the clerk check. For less than $5 and under 5 minutes, we had fixed our vacuum. And we had put it of for 4 months. I got to put it on when we got home. It was a little difficult (had to stretch it really far), but it was fun and fit and works beautifully. I think it was broken for longer than that, because it got the floor even cleaner than it used to.
We bought a new car a couple of years ago. Actually, I got home from my first day at my current job (my first full-time permanent position on my “career path”) and got out of our Geo (now dead and donated) and told Abe we were buying a new car. We went to Kia just north of our place and he drove home in the new car (I drove the Geo because I didn’t want to be alone with the dealer trying to remember all the stuff he was going to say about the new car). Since then, it was been a wonderful car. Every time it is rainy or snowy or hot or I have to drive for over 30 minutes, I think to myself, “Boy, this is a great car. I just wish the CD player could play random.” I love random. Abe and my brother think I am a heathen, but I like random so I can’t start singing along before the next song has even started and then have to start over. Anyways, I have always been bummed about that one thing with this car. And then one day, when I was driving home, I looked at the buttons for the pre-set stations on the radio. Right above the 3 were the letters RDM. I have noticed it before but given it no thought because I had no idea what RDM could stand for. Radio Dial Mode. Really Dense Mud. Rockin’ Demolition Mayhem. Could be a dangerous button. Then I realized, random. RanDoM. Uh. Duh. I clicked it and Lo! The cd played song 4 and then 7 and then 2. I was in heaven. I have the perfect car (that uses gas - that is the only thing left I would change is hybrid or some other alternative thing).
A few weekends ago, I was amazed, but we spent an entire gloriously sunny weekend inside. This is easily explained in that I hate the sun. I don’t tan. I either burn or remain white as paper. (In fact, right now I have one heck of a sun burn on my neck and chest from my father’s day outing with Rijl’s family.) There is no real story except that we played many many hours of EQ2 and had an absolute blast. I think that is the weekend I made my Iksar Necro, Stierska, or the weekend I got Enile up to a level 10 crafter. I can’t remember. But it was sunny and horrible outside, so we stayed in, sweaty and happy. I so much prefer the rain.
I got a violin a while ago. I meant to learn the fiddle. I have not. Anyways, we moved the whole apartment around and the violin get stuck in a corner (in it’s case) for months and months until a few months ago when we rearranged again and it came out. I opened it to practice with Abe on our scales (him on the piano). The whole inside was covered in a fray of horsetail hair. It looked like it had been cut on one end, but it had been in the case and who would have been in my house to cut it anyways. So a few weeks later, I took it to Kennelley Keys, where I bought the thing originally, and they sent it out to be restrung if it would cost less than $50. It didn’t and it got sent back to Kennelley Keys. They called to say they had it and a few weeks (okay, maybe over a month later), I showed up at Kennelley Keys to hear the deal. Well, it turns out it had been eaten by dust mites. Stupid little buggers. It would cost $55 to get it restrung. And they didn’t know how to get rid of dust mites. Well, I just bought a new impervious artificial hair bow.So it is now hanging from my music stand waiting for resin. I found some resin, but it looks like Ernie had sucked on it because it was cracked and flaking. There are three pieces still big enough to use, so I am using that, but I did it for over an hour the first night and it still needs more resin to play. Blerg. It is starting to make a sound though. I might just need to go buy new resin. Maybe artificial resin will work better on artificial hair than real resin. We’ll see. Someday.
Yep it’s tuesday. Not a lot happening. I did a bunch of laundry today. And I washed the dishes.
Nisa is returning to her normal self as she starts to feel better. In fact I think she has been feeling crappy for a while because she seems like a different dog in a lot of ways. She’s making different facial expressions and her ears are pointing out at the top rather than straight up. She’s also only peeing like three or four times a day which is TOTALLY awesome. I was getting tired of running up and down the stairs 15 times a day.
Jeez, I probably need to start some kind of exercise now that I’m off the Nisa’s bladder plan.
I don’t have my grades yet but I’m sure that I did very well.
I’ve been playing eq2 lately and I really enjoy it for the most part but it seems like there are fewer people playing it now than I’ve ever seen. Most nights on my server there are only 10-20 people playing that are in the 20-30 level range. I haven’t been able to get a group together for anything at all since I came back two weeks ago. It’s pretty depressing.
I am also getting original EQ for free until august and I started playing that last night. It was amazing how many people were running around in tha game in the lowbie areas let alone how many were talking in chat. I saw more players in 30 minutes in EQ than I’ve seen in the last week in EQ2. That’s just sad.
I’m downloading the 14 day free trial of Dark Age of Camelot because I suspect that I’m just burned out on Norrath. Basically I just need a change of environment. I can’t afford to buy the game if I do like it though. Ah being poor blows.
I was going to say something about Blooms Day but I don’t really have anything. I’ve started to read Ulysses three or four times and I’ve never made it more than about half way through. I really like Joyce’s earlier writing, in Dubliners especially, but Ulysses and Finnegans Wake pretty much just leave me cold.
I much prefer Celine to Joyce. He writes about retards and whores. My kind of guy. Except for the whole Nazi collaboration thing.
I think Abe will be better able to write about Bloomsday than me, but I thought I would mention it. It is a day in Dublin, Ireland (June 16th) to celebrate the life of James Joyce and in particular Ulysses. The events of Ulysses (which takes place all in one day) are relived. Sounds like a grand time. Maybe someday we will be able to be in Dublin on the 16th of June.
Anyways, this was a great weekend. Saturday was World Wide Knit in Public Day, so we went out to Greenlake where the Seattle Knitter’s Guild was holding a gathering. It was fun. Abe and I went and passed out some business cards. Though I was an idiot and only brought a single pair of needles. Doh. We ate egg salad sandwiches and basked in the sun. I knit and listened to the knitters and Abe read. I am not sure what he was reading. It was a great day for it. The sun would come out for just long enough that I was getting too hot and then it would go behind a cloud where it would remain until I had to put my coat on. They are holding a men’s knitting fashion show in November, so I hope to join the guild and have Abe wear something I knit. And maybeIsaac can come down for it and wear something he knit for himself! He started a free-form scarf with some yarn I gave him already. Anyways, then we went home and played EQ2 for the rest of the night. I played my Kerra Monk, Enile Katsu. We played until 1:30 in the morning! Easily distracted from our goal of going to sleep. I got her her first 10 levels of crafting. She will be making cloth and leather armor.
Then on Sunday, I went out with my friend Rijl and her family. I have known her family forever (literally since I was born) so I didn’t feel like I was butting in and I don’t think they felt that way either. We met at the Fremont Market. Very cute! I got this great felted thing for my hair since I can’t dye my hair blue while I work at EDEN. The lady who makes them is really nice, though I didn’t get her name or a card becauseI am dumb. I should have brought my camera, but oh well. I am going to knit a little lace bun cover to put over my short pony tail with the felted thing around it to hold it on. I also talked to Margaret Theirry who is a dyer, knitter, weaver. She dyes beautiful colors. I told her about arachknits and Etsy, so she might be starting there, sometime. She also recommended I go the Urban Craft Fair this December. I think it is a really good idea, so I will try to go armed with plenty of Xmas needles and other needles. Stephanie, Rijl’s mom, got us to get our cards read. I told her about arachknits, so it was all about how I need to go witjthis and jump in with both feet and it will complete my soul. That it will take me on travels, though not necessarily just travels around the world (though it will probably do that). Then we went to the Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream, which was good, but their small is larger than any of us wanted, though all of us finished. From there, we walked up to the troll under the bridge, since we had Tiernan, Rijl’sson, with us. Tiernan was pretty cute running around it, getting scared when he got up too high.
Then we went to the Olympic Structures Park downtown, which though nice, didn’t have as much stuff was I was expecting. My favorite was the silver tree. Stephanie and Harley, Rijl’s dad, laughed that we didn’t know what a typewriter eraser looked like. At least we know what a typewriter is, though! (There is a structure that is a giant typewriter eraser.) From there, we walked all the way over to Pike Place to go to the Steelhead Diner and they closed at 3 and we got there at 3:04. Bummer. So we walked all the way back (I was wearing ballet flats, so this was getting pretty hard on my feet at this point) and went to The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. Not bad price and huge servings. I at maybe a quarter of my lasagna and Abe ate the rest. They put about a gallon of dressing on my salad and they don’t have ranch. He suggested some pesto garbage instead. (I hate pesto. I think it is the pine nuts.) Then they drove me home. It was a really fun day. But I only put light sun block (SPF 15) on my face and non anywhere else, so my chest and neck got burnt. And a little on the end of my nose. It is funny. It looks like I was standing with one side to the sun all day, but I realized on my drive to work today, with the sun beating on my one side through the window, that it is my passenger side. The side facing out when I drive didn’t get burnt hardly at all. The other side looks like a lobster! Haha. I was also wearing a necklace, so there is a little square where the pendant was that didn’t get burnt. I look ridiculous.
In other news, I am having Isaac over on the weekend of the 4th to watch the Harry Potter movies, so I think I am going to do some cool stuff like make pumpkin pasties and maybe have butter beer. Decorate with owls. Make us wands. Maybe make us some capes to wear. We will need some curtains for the windows so we can see the screen. I am going to make some muggle-proof invitations (not really, just write with milk so he can iron it and it will show up). I think it will be a grand old time.
Our dog Nisa has been sort of sickly for the past while. She’s had bouts of vomiting and has been drinking extreme amounts of water and has had problems with having accidents in the house. Over the weekend she seemed to be getting a lot worse. I was taking her out to pee every 45 minutes and she was drinking truly huge amounts of water. On Sunday night we noticed her shaking. On Monday morning she was shaking even worse.
So I called the vet and made an appointment for her. After x-rays, blood work and a urine culture the vet came to the conclusion that the blood test might indicate Addison’s Disease and so we gave him the go-ahead to do a test on her that would confirm his suspicions. So yesterday we got confirmation that she does have Addison’s and I took her for her first shot. For the rest of her life she needs one of these shots every 25 days.
She seems to be feeling better now but she’s mostly sleeping. She was wagging her tail this morning though. And she had enough energy to chase the birds too.
On a lighter note, June 10 was my half birthday and Angela made me an awesome card.
My piano final is tomorrow. Then I’m done with school until the fall. I’m going to miss my classes though.
No lolcats today. Instead here are some pictures of Nisa that I took a few days ago.
And this is whats she’s spent most of the day doing today.
