They're Here!

My Options! They've arrived!



*glee*

Where do my weekends go? I've been trying to post every Thursday or Friday (my weekend. Weekend = 2 consecutive days off), but I keep looking at my blog late on Saturday night and realizing that I've missed my deadline again.

So anyway, I've been trying to think of something to write this week. I don't really have any knitting pictures to show you, since all I'm working on at the moment is a slightly longer version of the scarf I already posted last week. I was thinking about doing some sort of anti-holiday post, trying to explain why I dislike this time of year, but that seems unkind -- like I want the rest of you to be miserable, too. (My sister and I have decided that I'm naturally green, like Oscar and the Grinch. I've just got some really good pink-skin make-up or something.) Besides, OneSweetTart just posted one that's really good, much more comprehensive than mine would have been, and which includes personal experiences of friends/co-workers of hers who are also non-Christians. So for non-Christmas stuff, I direct you there.

However, I think I will post about my new shoes. I love my new shoes.
Last year, I looked at the Mammoth Crocs, but I thought that the fleece lining would be too hot. Well, I admit that I do sometimes take them off when I'm at work, but I do that with all my shoes, so I'm not sure it counts. But they're nice and toasty when I'm wading through snow, and my feet don't get wet (unless I don't kick the snow off of them before getting into the car and turning the heater on). They've got better traction than regular Crocs, and the slightly higher heel cup really helps with stability, too. Basically, YAY! and Why Didn't I Buy Them Last Year???

I hope everyone is having a good solstice -- it's very sunny here, which is appropriate and ironic at the same time. And Merry Christmas to those of you who will be joyfully celebrating later this week. (Keep your chin up! and *hugs* to others who will be "celebrating," but not so joyfully.)

Knitting Update (Again)

Okay, I'm late posting this week. And technically I missed posting last week. However, I did post 7 times the week before that, so let's just call it even, okay? :)

I now have a finished Traveling Scarf! Remember all those pictures of 4-inch sections of scarf that I've been showing you? Well, my Group 26 scarf has come home, and I even got my final section added to it.
I've been knitting other stuff, too. More pics? Thought you'd never ask.

Other Group 26 scarves:


Group 23 Scarves:


Group 6 scarves:


Swap Projects:



And a Christmas project. It's going to be a 70-inch long scarf. What do you mean, "It won't be done in time"??? Don't you remember my NaNo? lol

DONE!

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50,554 words total, going by MS Word, which is what I've been using for my previous counts. The official NaNo validator puts it at 50,725. Either way, I won. And I wrote over 50,000 words in a week. (Remember, as of 3 p.m. last Monday, I only had 519 words.) Yeah Baby!

Nano Update Again

13,049 words since midnight. And there's still about 16 hours left to the day, including a really boring (if past is prologue) 5-hour shift at work! Woohoo, there's hope again!

**Nearly Midnight Edit: 42,839 words total, so only about 350 added since 8 a.m. That leaves only 7,161 words to write tomorrow before midnight. Yay! I'm going to win after all. :D

NaNo Update, Friday

"Cirque du Soleil" is in the default spellcheck dictionary in Word. Weird.

Yes, one of my characters is going to see one of their shows. I think I'm a bit jealous.

Total Word Count: 29,424
Word Count for Today: 4,329
Daily Goal: 8,302
Short by: 3,973

New Daily Goals: 10,288
Number of Days Left: 2

Possibility that I've left it too late and won't finish after all: Increasing

Turkey Day

How does that horoscope guy know me so well? I don't think we've ever met.

"It's not that you are the Thanksgiving Scrooge; it's just that you value integrity over hope. You may downplay your high ideals now because you want everyone to have his or her own vision. You aren't willing to gloss over the truth just to put the proper spin on a piece of history. Maintain your clear-headed approach, no matter what anyone else says." [horoscope by Rick Levine, via iGoogle. emphasis mine.]

(I'm now over halfway in my wordcount race, ending the day with a grand total of 25,095 words.)

Wednesday's NaNo Update, a little delayed

Rough day yesterday -- work was yucky, and there was some other crap. And there's this cloud of Meh that's just hanging over my head lately. However, I did get some words down, and I've been working away this morning. I'm currently at 22,660 words total, so I've only got 2807 to go to meet my modified daily goal. Of course, that daily goal is now 8178 words, so any surplus that I can build up today will be very helpful. I'm hopeful that the turkey celebration won't take too long, so I can get back to doing things I want to do and hanging out with people I want to be with. Which is kind of nobody at the moment, but try not to take it personally. ;-) I'm just a little character-focused right now. (And if anyone shows up at O'Hare suddenly, I'm sure I'll suddenly be in an appropriately festive mood.)

This blog entry was brought to you by 167 words that don't count.

NaNo Update #2

Total words: 14,492
Words I needed to write today to get me to 50K by the 30th: 7309
Words I wrote today: 8348
Daily word goal, as of now: 7102 (over 200 words/day down from yesterday!)

And for a bit of a reality check...
Where I should be, if I'd been writing all along, like we're kind of supposed to: 38,341



Late update again: I'm now at 15,371, and it's about 5 minutes to midnight, so I think that's really and truly my total for the night. I'll do the rest of the math tomorrow. :)

NaNoWriMo Update

After sitting at 519 for most of the month (since 11/3), my wordcount gathered itself and took a great leap today to 5422 words. That's a big jump, but still short of where it should be for me to win this year. As of this morning, I needed about 7200 words per day. Unfortunately, I think I'm done for the night, so I'm over 1700 short, meaning that my daily goal for the rest of the month is now 7430. Never say die though. I. Will. Win. This.



Late edit: Oh yeah, I'm gonna win this. I started to just fill in a couple of blanks in the story -- like the name of a restaurant and stuff. Things I'd written at work, where Google is blocked. (Yes, they really block Google. Yes, they are stupid.) 4335 words later...

And it's not even 3 a.m. yet! Woohoo!

Spoiled Again!

It's happened again -- I got my package from Colleen (cgamroth on Ravelry) for the SOAB Round 3 swap! Check out my haul!



Everything, including the Butterfingers (disappearing as I type), Twix (which are being hoarded for late-night NaNoing), and two recipes – one for Sausage Fondue and one for Christmas Mix (a Chex mix kind of thing, but better).

The yarny stuff: 2 skeins of Noro Kureyon in gorgeous colors, a sturdy needle gauge (to replace the flimsy and now bent one I’ve been using), lovely stitch markers in a padded tin, and a lavender sachet that takes me right back to the Lavender Festival in Sequim, WA. It’s so powerful that I could smell the lavender before I opened the box, much less the plastic bag it was in. Lovely! (Also, excellent stalking, since it was quite a while ago that I mentioned liking lavender.)

The other stuff: 4 “B” notepads, one with a tiny pen included; 2 magnetic bookmarks, 1 postcard of Mt. Ranier, and the outside of the padded tin containing the stitch markers.

A close-up of the stitch markers. The observant among you will notice that I have lost a stitch marker between the first and last pictures. (Colleen was so smart to give me a lidded tin for them!) When switching the layouts between pictures, I managed to spill the stitch markers and one is now behind my computer desk. I’ll get it back just as soon as I can, I promise.

I just love swaps!

Demanding Fast Food

Disclaimer: I am not married. I don't have kids. Yes, to all outward appearances I seem to have very few responsibilities and/or demands on my time. However, (1) don't forget about inward appearances, and (2) this is my blog; I'll whinge if I want to.

Am I the only one... Actually, scratch that beginning because I probably am the only one. (Why doesn't Blogger have strikethrough text?) Anyway. Why does my fast food have to make demands on me? I mean, I'm getting fast food in the first place because I don't have the energy or the will or the something to make my own food. But the sauce packets at Taco Bell, they don't care. "Help! I don't know where I am, it's dark, and I can hear laughing" (or something like that). "Can I drive?" "Will you marry me?"

Honestly, I haven't been getting those last two questions lately. A few months ago, I started telling those sauce packets (yes, out loud. When have I ever pretended to be sane?) that I would let them drive or marry them for $5000 -- in advance and in cash. None of them ever took me up on the offer. And they (as a group) have obviously decided to go ask someone who might not have so many conditions to their agreements. Or possibly my agreement scared them, like the dickhead men in Unrepeatable.

The ones that really drive me up the wall though are the ones who ask, "Will you scratch my back?" Because I feel compelled to do so. (See above re: pretensions to sanity.) It's a small thing that they're asking. It's something I can do. Therefore, I feel obligated to do it. Even on days when the thought of one more request/demand, no matter how trivial, literally makes me cry. So I cry while scratching the back of the sauce packet, and then I have to worry about getting snot in my tacos.

Maybe I should just stick to McDonald's.

Obama

Ohhh, thanks be to all the gods and goddesses that ever were, are, or may be. I know he won't be perfect, but he's so much better than what we've got.

Knitting Message

Okay, this is completely self-serving, but I'm having trouble getting a couple of pictures to another knitter on Ravelry, so here they are. Hope you can see them now Christine!


^ the closest to the real color, although it's a tiny bit dark.

^ second closest, a bit light.

More Musings, with Eddie Izzard Thrown In

I know I've talked about Eddie Izzard here before. Brace yourselves; here's some more. I was writing this up for something else, and some of it is stuff I'd like to say here, too. Even with the repetitive Eddie explanations.

I have discovered Eddie Izzard. And he's wonderful -- funny, intelligent, so confident, HOT -- just amazing. I've seen his 6 one-man shows (via YouTube and Netflix) many multiple times each, and there's still always something that will make me laugh. Watching his comedy can calm me down when I'm going out of my mind with mom-related stress, even when she's still around. I've never before found anything that could do that -- escaping from the building she was in was always an integral part of the solution.

He's a great actor, too. I'm working my way through all of his movies. Some of the earlier ones, where he had a small part and the "star" was someone like Ben Stiller or Matt LeBlanc have been borderline painful, but not because of his bits. Because of Ben Stiller and Matt LeBlanc. Particularly Matt. However, I am nothing if not dedicated -- I just added The Bee Movie to my Netflix queue. That's right, I'm even willing to sit through Jerry Seinfeld to hear Eddie.

The problem comes in that I'm enjoying his comedy, and some of his movies, and starting to daydream a bit about meeting him someday. Well, okay, the daydreaming is fairly well-established at this point. Details. But it's giving me a bit of hope. False hope, but still that hopeful feeling. And hope ... it's not a good thing. I'd finally stopped beating my head against the walls of my life, finally started to accept things for the way they are, and now I'm feeling hopeful again? This is not good.

There's a quote from a book, and I can't remember it exactly. I can't even pin down what series its from. Something about a president (perhaps Calvin Coolidge?) declining an offer of strawberries once, when he was living in a boarding house, because they would spoil his taste for prunes. I very much fear that Eddie is strawberries. But I've already tasted them (the strawberries!), and it's too late.

Okay, that metaphor gets a bit sideways, but hopefully you know what I mean.

More Knitting

I missed one week and I'm late for another. What does this mean for you? More knitting photos!

More sections of traveling scarves:


Wristers -- not something I'd really wanted, but my mom brought me the yarn and pattern as a souvineer from an overnight trip she took. And they knitted up very quickly.

Hats:


Scarf for the Red Scarf Project:


I'll try to actually write something this week.

Knitting Update

I was puzzling over what to write this week and realized that I haven't shown any knitting for a while. I do have 2 hats and 2 pairs of socks in process, and I finished my scarf for the Red Scarf Project last night, but I haven't done a photo shoot for any of those yet. So, without further ado:


A charity hat, a desert themed washcloth, and Ravelympics stuff




Swap items (kitty toys -- octopi & goldfish -- and a beer cozy. I didn't have any bottles, so my stapler is modeling it.)


Traveling scarf sections: