So I’m back from my holiday travels (photos now posted, btw). It’s good to be back at my desk with a mug of tea. Santa was good to us. The toys are assembled, batteries installed. I’ve got a stack of new sci-fi and fantasy to read and watch. (The Collector’s Edition of Serenity is sitting right here next to my desk. Party at Shannon’s house, anyone?) I got more Christmas cookies and more ballet gear. Boy, do those ever go together... And I’m pretty set for a year’s worth of knitting adventures.
The Christmas season is a parade of delicious meals punctuated with cookies. By yesterday afternoon I was feeling like a stuffed goose and there were no ballet shoes in my immediate future. The search for exercise in some form took me to the beach.
Every now and then, I hear a random line pop out of someone’s mouth and I think “I’m totally blogging that.” I’ve got a backlog of them now. I’m sharing.
Overheard in the dressing room at the dance studio:
“I’d hug you, but I’m naked.”
Overheard at the bar in a sushi restaurant:
“I don’t eat eggplant. It tastes nasty, the texture is weird, and I don’t eat anything that’s purple.”
Family at the dinner table on Christmas Eve:
“Please pass the wrench.”
Here we are on Christmas Eve, and I’m pretty much ready. This week has been a parade of do-to lists, on which I have even written down tasks I had already completed just so I could put a check mark next to it.
To Do:
The house is respectably clean. The laundry is done. The kitchen isn’t spotless, but it’s spottable.
Check, check, and check.
The gifts are bagged and tagged. The tinsel, the wrappings, the trimmings, the trappings and all that. Done.
Check.
My apologies for back-blogging; you know how I abhor the practice. My computer spent a week in the shop and I spent a week grieving for its absence and "blogging" on scraps of pressed wood pulp with sharpened bits of lead embedded in wood. Somehow I survived and now I have brand new optical drive to show for it. Shiny.
Let’s play “What if?” It’s a good thing to do. You know, so you know you’re prepared for whatever life hurls at you. Car trouble or power outages or zombie attacks... You know, the basics.
Alright, now it’s time to play our game. What do you do if you’re putting away the dishes and the phone rings?
I spent a morning this week in a client’s cold warehouse computer closet digging through old computer gear and determining what was junk, what was salvage, and what was more or less functional. Forgive me if I find this all kinds of fun.
Those few days of November lingering after Thanksgiving are an odd period, aren’t they? Still firmly entrenched in the “The Holidays” but not quite holly and jolly just yet. I’m never quite sure what do to with myself. I don’t go in for the holiday shopping Black Friday bit. I’m not much of a shopper to begin with. I like browsing small shops with few people in them, sure. But I’ve always had an allergy to department stores, and malls make me feel like I need to go home and bathe.
In the wake of the closure of so many beloved book stores I’ve been casting around lost and lonely in search of a source for books. In the midst of this, I’ve discovered a strange and wondrous place. It’s called a library, it’s full of books, and they let you read them for free. What a brave new world. And check this out, there are two whole shelves in this magical building full of knitting patterns. And it’s full of people who help you find books, and audio books, and movies.
Now that the election is done and over with, I think it's time to talk about some really important issues... like yarn.
So I accidentally cast on for a hat the other day. How does one accidentally cast on for a hat? you might ask. I assure you it can happen. I was trying to help my sister with a confusing bit in a pattern. The directions weren't making sense to my eyes, so I decided to grab a ball of yarn and give my fingers a go at it. It made more sense to them. A lot of sense to them. In fact, they declared it fun. Before I knew it I had accidentally knit a hat.
