Odds and Ends

Hey Teach! got buttons after all. The nice shawl stick I got at Bobbin's Nest is gorgeous, but is meant for use on a shawl, angled sideways. The sweater needed up and down closure. Up and down with a pointy stick in the middle of my girls seemed too dangerous and didn't close it correctly. So, off to 3 Beads and a Button where I found 4 different buttons that seemed to match. Picked up all 4 then held a beauty contest. The ones that looked like shiny Lifesavers won, by unanimous vote (Champer, Knitterliness, Kadootje, and KW). It's a really comfy sweater, too.

The top I was putting an edging on? The one that made me look like a hippo in a tutu? Tossed. As I was putting a different edging along the bottom, I realzied that the reason I had monkeyed with it at all was because it was too short. Anything I added to the bottom was going to flare, ipso tutu. Out.

Earache still there but nowhere near as sore as on Friday or over the weekend. Drugs prescribed Friday weren't having any effect by Monday, so I camped out at the doctor's office until the PA could see me. After much peeking in my ear and consulting with El Doctoro, a new antibiotic was prescribed, along with some drops. Monday afternoon we drove to San Simeon. Word to the wise: if you have an earache, don't do what we did. Head west on Highway 46 from Highway 101 to Highway 1, going over some rolling hills. Not a very high altitude, but enough to be excrutiating. By the time we got to Highway 1, I was in tears from the pain, not very good company for greeting my sister-in-law.

Luckily, the meds started kicking in, and on the drive home (we took Highway 1 north), I could tell we were going up and down, but it didn't hurt like it did on Monday.

Clean house today, knittters here tonight, to the doctor's again in the morning, this time for another blood work-up to see how my diabetes meds are working.

Exciting life I lead, huh?

Good News, Bad News

Good news: "Hey, Teach!" is done! Pix to follow. (4/20/09: ETA pictures!) It fits, it's comfy and squishy.

Bad news: The color variation between left and right fronts is fairly obvious. Also, the seams on the right side were thicker than on the left, because I was carrying two strands up the side (alternating skeins to lessen pooling of hand-painted yarn).

Lessons: Use solid color for next one, avoiding both problems.

Good news: I picked up a project I put aside last summer. My aunt had given me a top that was nice, but (a) it was reverse stockinette and I preferred the stockinette side, (b) it had short sleeves that were too short, and (c) the top itself was too short (I prefer longer tops). So I turned it inside out, ripped off the sleeves and made it into a tank top, then picked out some Muench yarn in my stash and proceeded to use it as trim around the neck, the new armholes, and the bottom.

Bad news: The trim actually looks nice around the neck and arm holes. The bottom, though... Um... well... let's just say I looked like a movie star when I tried it on. And by 'movie star,' I mean the hippos in Fantasia. You know, the ones who try to be delicate by putting on a tutu? The bottom curled up just like a tutu and I looked like one of those hippos. Bad. Very bad. I'm going to pull out the rows at the bottom and might just put a single row of trim. Nothing that curls or frills. No. Bad.

Good news: Paid our 2008 and 1Q2009 taxes on time.

Bad news: Too much money out of our pockets all at once! It hurts so much less when your employer takes it out throughout the year.

More bad news: Our 2006 taxes are being audited by the IRS, and for some reason, all our documentation isn't in the file, including something as basic as the mortgage company's statement of interest we paid on the condo. I'm the girl who saves everything, everything! Where the hell is that interest statement?

Good news: The beautiful weather is here, and so are - yum - strawberries!

Bad news: For some reason, so are the mosquitoes. There were 8 of them attached to our front screen door, and 6 on the back. Plus, when I did a little walkabout today, they swarmed up out in the back 40, as well as on the side of the house. WTF? We don't have any stagnant water around here. Hell, we're only watering 3 days a week, there should hardly be any water around!

Good news: Going to the Goldman Prize award ceremony tomorrow.

Bad news: Have a lot of RP work to do before we leave at 2:00. Better get to bed now; nitey nite.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

"Simply Knitting" is a British knitting publication. We pay $10.50 for it at JoAnn's (unless they have a 10% sale on magazines) (unless they aren't having a 10% sale and we use our 40% coupon) (unless they aren't having a 10% sale and we forget our 40% coupon) (0h wait, that's what I said first) (why all the parentheses?). 

Anyway, thinking that it might be cheaper to subscribe, I looked it up online. Yikes. It's 65 British pounds a year. At the current exchange rate, that's over $95! Wait... that's just over $7 an issue. Somehow, $95 seems outrageous, but $7 an issue sounds like a deal. Hm... May have to rethink my initial decision not to get it.

I cooked on Monday night this week. I cooked on Tuesday night. I cooked Thursday. We ate leftovers tonight. (Wednesday was knit-night at Panera's.) I haven't cooked that much in one week in a long time. I think I'm going to explode.

Yesterday (Thursday) was a fun day for those of us in South County. Some yahoo apparently cut four - count 'em, FOUR - fiber optic lines in San Jose (and later, at least on in San Carlos), plunging Morgan Hill, San Martin, Gilroy, Hollister and much of San Benito county, and parts of Santa Cruz county into inter-darkness. And the phone was out, along with most cell service, too. Nothing to connect our computers to; with the phone, you could get dial tone, but either got a fast-busy on connection or the tweedle of death "all circuits are busy" message. Cell text messages were sporadic and often took multiple sends to get through, calls didn't start coming through until well after 2:00 PM. They got the 911 line up fairly quickly, but as of midnight last night, still no interwebnetness. 

Really pissed me off because I had gotten up at 6:30 AM to attend a 7:00 AM conference call... that I couldn't attend. I am not a morning person. I don't like getting up that early, but if I'm gettin' up, there better be a damn good reason. Not having phone or internet service wasn't what I wanted to find at 6:30. Luckily, when we got up this morning, everything was back up, with lots of green lights and lots of bars on our equipment. Ahhhh....

Have lost interest in my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel. I actually finished the story a couple of weeks ago, and now need to tie up the loose ends and give it a once-over. Would rather knit.

Except swatches. Tuesday is supposed to be swatch night for my Master Knitter program. Not this week. I'm on a roll with my Hey Teach! sweater (finished fronts and back, and seamed up one side last night), and want to get it finished. I'll do the second seam tonight and work on the sleeves over the weekend. The pattern is written for set-in sleeves, but I had such fun with picked up sleeves on Red Spice that I'm going to try that method first. Just gotta remember to turn the pattern upside down as I work it from the shoulder down.

Garage sale in the development on April 25. 8:00 to 2:00. Come by, keep me company, buy stuff, or bring your own stuff to sell with me. We have a great location for garage sales - we're on the main drag through the complex and get lots of cars stopping by.

OPH 49er pancakes. Yum.

Home Sweet Home

Running on fumes now, but home safely, albeit late. Two hours of sitting on the plane in Tampa because Texas had bad thunderstorms - we couldn't get clearance to take off. While we were waiting, we tried to book ourselves on any alternate flights home (we assumed we'd miss our connection), but found out that there's only one other IAH to SJC flight, it's at 3:30 PM, and it was booked. As were all flights to SFO, OAK, and all the Lost Angels flights.

So, we resigned ourselves to staying over in Houston. When we finally left Tampa, the flight to Houston was uneventful. Landed, checked the departure info - lo and behold, our connection was also delayed! So we tore ass down the concourse and got onto the plane with 15 minutes to spare.

After a stop to get gas and pick up dinner (fast-food Chinese, so that might also be considered gas, I guess), we were home at 5:00 PM. Not bad, considering we thought we'd be sleeping in Houston tonight.

And now, I'm about to crash. We got up early, and according to my insides, it's 1:00 AM and I'm tired. Nitey nite.

"I'm melting...."

Humidity. I grew up with it. When I landed in California in October of 1981, I stepped off the plane and after about 42.5 nanoseconds, I got used to the low humidity of the Bay Area. I don't remember the humidity being too bad when I traveled back to New York to visit the family. But when they retired to Florida and I visited them here... whoo boy, Florida is a whole 'nother kettle of mullet.

Right now, it's humid here (I don't know the number), but luckily it's not too hot. The trip hasn't been as bad as some others I've made. Still, when you step out of the shower and dry off, you never get completely dry. I feel like I'm walking around with a little film of schvitz all over me. And what's with the eyebrows and leg hair? My mother swore that the Florida weather made her hair grow faster. I'm inclined to agree.

Aunt is looking good. She turns 73 (I think) this year. No word yet on the lung biopsy, but she's already started the quitting-smoking routine in anticipation of the worst. She hasn't had a bad reaction to the chemo for her MM and, yes, she still has all her hair. She's been sore since the biopsy on Friday, but the doctor said that's primarily due to the MM - anything they do to or near her bones will make her hurt.

Dad also looks good. Lost a little more hearing, but his stories are holding steady (I know because I've heard all of them before - multiple times!). He woke up this morning with a muscle cramp in his right arm that caused him to not be able to bowl today, but some Aleve is making it better. He'll go to the doctor tomorrow if he's still not right (or visit his friend Vic, the retired chiropractor... aka "the miracle worker"). My brother and SIL will be down to visit at the end of April.

Disney was great, as usual. We stayed in one of their 'value resorts' and it was fine. A basic room, but done with a cute theme and decor. We were at the All-Star Sports Resort, one of three 'All-Star" resorts (the other two were All-Star Movies and All-Star Music). Our room was in the "Touchdown!" section, so the wallpaper was full of football players (what else?) and the central area was a football field. The "Home Run" section had gigundo baseball bats and the pool was shaped like a baseball diamond, with Goofy shooting baseballs out of a canon (actually, it was water). Disney knows how to take a theme and run with it.

The parks (we visited the Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Epcot) were full of people, but definitely not as crowded as most other times I've gone. Wait times hovered around 10-25 minutes, with a few clocking in at over 60 minutes. We decided to pass on most of those, but took a FastPass for the Jungle Cruise. We saw most of what we wanted to see in the three parks in about 15 hours. We may go back later in the year - we still have 3 days left on our 5-day Parkhopper ticket!

Lastly - the sweater... it's done and it fits! Auntie wants me to crop her head off the picture before I post it, but for those of you in Ravelry, the full photo is there. Here she is... although, she looks much better than the edited version below!

Heading home soon, another early morning tomorrow and an hour-long drive to the airport.