Too Busy!

I've been updating on FB and updating via emails and totally forgetting to come here and post something. So, hi. I've been busy. How are you?

November is over and once again, I participated in NaNo (National Novel Writing Month). Once again, I'm pleased to say, I won! I hit my 50,000 words on November 29. That turned out to be a Good Thing, because I was so busy working on November 30, I didn't have time to go back and write some more of the story, which I had planned to do.

(For those who don't know about NaNo, it takes place over the month of November, and it's to jump-start people into writing their novels. You know, the Book You've Always Wanted To Write. November is the no-excuses month - just sit down and write. 1,667 words a day will get you to 50,000 words by the end of the month. [Technically, that will get you 50,010 words. Consider those extra 10 your emergency buffer.] In reality, 50,000 words would be more of a novella, but writing 50,000 words by November 30 will probably be closer to a novel than what you might write on your own in a non-NaNo month.)

So this year, I actually sort of liked my story, but it wasn't finished by the time the end of the month rolled around. I know I keep thinking about putting the stories on CreateSpace or Lulu.com so they could be shared, but ... They're really raw first awful drafts. There may be kernels of non-mediocre writing or glimpses of a point/plot, but they're no where near semi-fully formed. I'll keep thinking about sharing them.

In November everything takes a back-burner to just about everything, including knitting, so I have relatively few completed projects to share. A couple of cowls, some socks-in-progress, little work done on the three (four?) shawls I have on needles. My brain doesn't seem able to process anything vaguely complicated, so I'm sticking with a 3x1 ribbed sock and some pedicure socks most of the time. And I'll have to decide what knitting to take on the Mediterranean trip - that's always a dicey proposition. I'm good with U.S. travel, but the rules are different for other countries, so I need a project that will work with my vacation brain AND be expendable should a security agent feel the need to rip out my needles.

I did manage to make what turned out to be a teeny tiny baby blanket yesterday. Sock yarn, even on the smallest plate, makes a very loose fabric, and yet it still curls like a sonofagun, so I'm adding a border in hopes it will un-curl a bit. I may try to block it, but it's superwash sock yarn. Blocking, not work so much. I still managed to drop a fair number of stitches and had to re-hook them (one dropped around 15 rows down), but on the other hand, I'm getting a better feel for how to get the machine to cooperate and not get stuck too often. I doubt I'll ever get to use it for its original intention (to knit the boring parts of a large clothing item), but I may get to use it for other things. Washcloth, anyone?

Picking up the love of my life tomorrow after being gone 9 days. This house gets HUGE when he's not in it. I rattle a lot. Plus, I had to take out my own garbage and clean my own kitchen. Sweetie, if I ever start to take you for granted for any reason (but especially for the clean-up work you do around here), just remind me, okay?

Okay, time to watch "Two and a Half Men." Hopefully I'll update here once or twice before we leave.

Pismo time

Pismo time is special to us. It's the place where we always seem to talk about 'meaty' issues in the relationship - what "we" means, getting married, buying the house. Even when times were stretched a bit financially, we could not do away with our Pismo weekend.

This trip (last weekend) was as wonderful as always (except, maybe for the cold that I have that isn't moving). Thursday's weather was gorgeous, Friday was nice, Saturday and Sunday were normal Pismo - fog, drizzle, splotchy clouds. Doesn't matter. Our biggest decision is always "Do we eat at McLintocks on Thursday night and the Cracked Crab on Friday? Or vice versa?"

We stay at a motel that, from the street, looks like it's stuck in the 50s or 60s - The Kon Tiki Inn. It's on the corner of Price and Dolliver, within walking distance to both the pier and the restaurants along Price, and all the rooms have balconies and face the ocean. It's funky looking from the outside, but the rooms are simple, clean, and have La-Z-Boy love seats. Free wi-fi, too.

There is always a festival the weekend we go (the last weekend in October or the first weekend in November). Some years it's the Pismo Clam Festival, some years it's the Pismo Jazz Festival. This year, it was a high school marching band competition, so there were all sorts of snappy uniforms and feathery hats around town.

There's also a sports apparel store on Pomeroy (the road that leads to the pier) where we scored our SF Giants World Series paraphernalia and my brother's Christmas present (it's a Yankee-themed appliance).

Some shots to whet your appetites...

The view from the top of the stairs heading down to the beach.

Awww... isn't that cute?

The view from our balcony Sunday morning. The little dots are surfers.

The view from the top of the stairs leading down to the beach. 125 or so steps.

From the beach at low tide, looking to the northeast.

That long?

A month-and-a-half? Holy cow. Guess we've been busy. We both did Vegas in September, then KW went off to Ottawa, then we both went to DRJ in San Diego. Stayed home for 2 weeks (saw a baseball game, got the cars serviced, and had a lovely spa day with MM), then geared up for Stitches West 2011 registration, theatre, and a lovely day with my knitting buds. Back to travel, KW set off for Washington, D.C.; I followed a day later and stayed the week. Home for a day, then KW was off to Memphis (I decided to stay home for that one). When he got back, he was here for a day and then we left for our Caribbean cruise, returning yesterday.

Deeeeeeeep breath.... No, wait; no time to breathe, we're off to Pismo Beach later this week! After THAT, though, we're here until the December Mediterranean cruise. No, wait! KW has to go to Ottawa again the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend!

See? It's been like that since June...

For now, I think I'm done with all the laundry from the cruise (which was my big goal for the day) and will spend tomorrow catching up on all of RP's work that I couldn't do while floating on a big boat in the middle of the Virgin Islands. (Pictures to follow once I've uploaded them.)

Suffice to say for now that all is well, and life is good.

Such Fibery Goodies!

A few months ago, I bought into Chrissy Gardiner's "CSK" - "Community Supported Knitting." Like a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), she set it up to be a way to support indie dyers while at the same time funding her new sock book to be published next year. For $55, you get a pattern a month (one of the patterns that will eventually be in the book - there will be more than 12), an opportunity to buy yarn from each monthly featured dyer (often with some sort of discount), and once it's published, an autographed copy of the book.

One of the incentives to buy in was the carrot of a goodie bag if you signed up before July 1. Which I did, and the goodie bag came today. Oh my word! Here's what came in the mail today (and what's in the picture):
- A beautiful hand-made stitch marker from Plover Designs.
- An "Indie Socks/CSK Member" post-it pad.
- A button from Pico Accuardi Dyeworks.
- A mini-skein of the Verve sock base in "Spunky," from the Unique Sheep (October's featured dyer).
- A Mountain Colors notepad.
- Writing implements: A pencil from knittedwit.com; a pen from the Unique Sheep; a pen from Twisted (yarn shop in Portland. OR).
- A gorgeous knitting needle holder from Lantern Moon.
- A ruler/needle sizer from Twisted.
- A pattern for a "Toe-up Mini Dessert Sock" from Crafts Meow, with a "taster spoon" sample of the Ice Cream Sundae yarn base in "Popsicle Toes" colorway.
- A Knitcellaneous keychain sock blocker with some beautiful yarn from Lavendersheep.
- A box of note cards from Schaefer Yarns with images of hand-painted fibers on each.
- A Chrissy Gardiner pattern, Midnight Lace Scarf.
Aaaaaand....
- A big ole' canvas CSK satchel!

Wow! Score! And all the yarns are lovely, simply lovely!

What Do You Get When You...

...put together the following numbers?

• My birth month
• My birth day
• My birth year
• Our anniversary month
• Our anniversary day
• DH's birth month
• DH's birth day
• DH's birth year
• My mom's birth year
• My dad's birth year (or was it my brother's?)

You get $4800, that's what you get! At least that's what you get at Treasure Island in Vegas when you play a $5 "Pick 10" card at Keno and manage to pick 8 of the 10 numbers you selected.

On Thursday, we flew in to Vegas (10:00 AM flight on Southwest, smooth flight, on time, no screaming people or children, arrived on time), got a cab to Treasure Island, and were in our room by 1:00 PM (lovely room, Strip view, looking south towards MGM and Mandalay Bay). Having only grabbed coffee and a muffin at the airport, we needed food, so headed to TI's 24-hour restaurant as the path of least resistance. While sitting and talking about what we wanted to do while in town, I took out a Keno sheet and crayon, and KW and I started picking numbers. We put in two sheets, one a "Pick 10," and one a "Sweet 16."

When the game was over, I read the numbers to KW, who could see the board behind me. "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "No." "Yes." "Yes." "No." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." I reached for the little Keno brochure that shows the payouts and almost choked. I could have sworn it said that when you pick 8 on a "Pick 10" card, you got $4800, and told KW. He looked at me funny, in a "Are you sure you know how to read?" kind of way, when the Keno runner came to the table with a little print-out sheet. "You won!" she said, and showed me the sheet. Sure enough, it said "$4800" on it.

Well, anyone who knows anything about Keno knows that it has the worst odds of all the casino games. There's a 25% house advantage - compared to Blackjack with something like a 1.2% house advantage. No one wins at Keno! Apparently the number of winners from the Coffee Shop are so few and far between, the runner didn't know the proper procedure for us to get our money! First she said her supervisor would have to come to the restaurant with a TI manager, then she said we would have to go to the Keno area. So we went over to the Keno desk, met the supervisor and the TI manager, who dutifully filled out the IRS paperwork (yep, anything over $1199 gets you a Form W-2G, "Certain Gambling Winnings" form) and then started counting out 48 one hundred dollar bills.

Let me tell you, that's a lot of bills! And pretty damn exciting to use them to pay for everything on the trip... wheeee!

The rest of the trip was wonderful, too, especially dinner at Mesa Grill (Bobby Flay's restaurant at Caesar's Palace), where I was greeted by the Birthday Bear! The Bear does get around!

Late flight home today, and KW is off again tomorrow on a business trip. He gets back on Friday, then we're both off to San Diego next weekend to attend a business conference. Busy, busy, busy!

Alright, Who's the Wise Guy...

...who "borrowed" all my store club cards? DSW... BevMo... Office Depot... They were (at one time) all together. Now they are... well, perhaps they're all together, but they're nowhere to be found (by me, anyway). And the car title from the lender, the one that says they release the lien on the car? Who's got that?

I swear, little gremlins have been coming in to the house and taking things away. Probably having a better time there than with us, but that's besides the point. I need them and they're not here! C'mon, guys; give 'em back! Please?

At least I'm not walking around asking where my glasses are (they're perched right on my nose, where they belong, thankyouverymuch). But some days I feel like that question is right around the corner.

::sigh:: Being discombobulated is not a good way to start this week!

Beadazzler

No nefarious goings-on with the Beadazzler - no plans to rhinestone up my car or the lampshades. My purse sprung a leak - the joins where the leather meets the zipper have come undone. I thought a Beadazzler would work as a way to hold them together. Unfortunately, I returned it today because the prongs on the studs that they sell for it were too short to go through both the zipper and the leather.

So there goes my stud crafting future!

Expedition

I don't really do a lot of shopping anymore. I tend to make a list of stuff I need, then go on a focused trip, get it, and come home. For some reason, though, every so often I need a real shopping day, where I wander, see what's out there, and get stuff. Yup; it's that time.

It started rather innocently - with a list of what I needed: bras. Girls, you know what I mean - find one you like and fits well, and stick with it (at least until the manufacturer discontinues it, but that's a rant for another day). I took my list ("bras"), got my cheat-sheet of style numbers ("Bali 6520"), and headed out to the Bali/Playtex outlet at the outlet stores in Gilroy.

I asked the saleslady if they carried that style and she went to her big, thick book of codes. (Seriously? There isn't an online inventory system you could check? Whatever...) It was taking a while to look it up (seriously? it's not online?), so I finally asked her if it would help if I showed her what it looked like. She nodded, so I flashed the bra I was wearing at her - at which point she immediately said "yes" and took me right to them, where I grabbed 6 (quick, before they're discontinued!).

And here's where the desire to shop started. It was my birthday month, so they give you 20% off your purchase. Plus they were having a buy 2, get one for $1 sale. By the time she was done ringing me up, I had gotten 6 bras for $61. Not bad for bras that retail at $24 each.

So if I could get $144 worth of bras for $61, what other bargains could be had?

Well, next door is a Wilson Leather store. I had recently bought a wallet at Target, and though I liked the basic design, it was a little awkward to use. At Wilson's, I found a similar design, but one that worked better. As I was checking out (special sale day, everything in the store was an additional 20% off) I noticed the sign that said "10% military discount." Um, I got one of them... $38 wallet for $12. Nice. Keep going, Meg!

Next stop, the Van Heusen store. I was on a roll... Everything in the store is normally heavily discounted and, lucky for me, I really like the quality of their clothes and the way they fit. Turns out they were having a double sale yesterday, so they were practically paying me to take home 5 new tops. Plus, because it was my birthday month, I got an additional 20% on top of that. On the way out, I decided to look at the men's side of the store and found 2 shirts for KW. Deal!

All this in about 30 minutes.

I had intended to go to Bed Bath & Beyond yesterday (really!), but after my fun at those three stores, I was late for knit night, so I decided to go shopping again today - that fun kind of shopping. The kind where I don't have a list. Oh boy, did I have fun! Here was my take (this is both yesterday and today):

Bali: 6 bras.

Wilson's: Wallet.

Van Heusen: 5 tops for me, 2 shirts for KW.

Izod: 1 top (thanks to a $5 certificate from Van Heusen, I paid $.99 for the top!).

Coach: 1 purse (a $328 purse on sale for $99 PLUS a 20%-off coupon they gave me at the door... come on, people - it's a Coach purse for $80!!! Oh, and a 1 key chain.)

Bed Bath & Beyond (yes, I finally made it!): 2 sets of bathroom towels, new curtains for the downstairs bathroom, sink mats, mini-funnels.
Ross: 3 pair of jeans, 1 vest. (I really needed some jeans that went all the way to the floor.)
Michael's: File basket and Beadazzler (don't ask).

I came home today with bags and bags of stuff. Shopping at the outlets and getting birthday discounts, I saved about $400 over what I could have paid at a 'normal' store. Shoot, I saved almost $250 on that Coach purse alone!

Damn, that was fun, but I'm really glad I don't do it that often. Now it's time to go through towels and curtains and donate 2 sets, then go through my closet and donate 6 tops, 3 pair of pants, a vest, a purse, and a wallet (yep - new in, old out, except the bras... that's kind of creepy).

Happy Labor Day to you, too!

Second Test

We were hopeful until today. Let's see...

Awww... isn't s/he cute? (And the picture upload still works, too!)

Photo test

New machine, testing whether or not I can upload pictures... What do you see below?

(If you said "Bruce!" you get a gold star!)

Evil Cupertino vs Evil Redmond

Thanks to everyone who suggested that we should be getting a Mac instead of an(other) Windows-based PC (ChickenKnittle, Kadootje, Roberta, Mark, RP - the list goes on...). Believe me, we've thought about it, especially these past few weeks.

Unfortunately, there is no built-in Mac "Geek Squad" in this household. We've both been PC users since 'way back (KW goes back to before I knew what computers were, I've been working with them since at least 1981). Switching to a Mac now is only going to frustrate us more in the long run, especially since the 4 other computers in the house are Windows-based and we have no plans to convert over the household. At least with a PC, KW knows where to go for help and we can make our way through the maze of solutions.

Having said that, though... if the third Win7 PC doesn't do what I need it to do with a minimum of fuss and "accommodations" to Redmond's bizarre thought process, I admit I have been thinking about Macs and their double-barreled promises of simplicity and stability. Unfortunately, my built-in Geek Squad (aka KW) says if I take that route, I'm on my own. Should it come to that decision, it will be a hard one to make. I'm beginning to like Kadootje's suggestion of stone and papyrus...

In other news, the stupendously wonderful plays in TheatreWorks' New Work Festival are all rolling around in my head. They all made me cry - not surprising since all of them touched on death in some way. Most of them with physical death, but one ("Variations on a Theme") with the loss of love. They've all brought back the summer of 2009, which I spent in Florida, tending to my aunt. She'd been in my thoughts a lot even before we saw the plays; the constant themes have pulled those thoughts up further to the surface. I miss her greatly and still wonder if I couldn't have done more; if I had stayed longer, would she still be with us? I know the rational answer is "no," but the question still lurks in one of the folds of my brain.

The plays also brought up my continual fear of losing my One True Love. When he doesn't check in after driving to a client, when he can't hear me call his name in the house, when he leaves his phone in the restroom and so doesn't know I'm trying to text him and get no response... My over-active imagination thinks he's gone - crashed, fallen, stricken - and I have a little mini-panic over losing him. He usually checks in a few moments after I've tried to talk myself down off the ceiling, and it's often with a "of course I'm fine, why wouldn't I be fine?" tone in his voice or in his text (for as much as you can tell tone from a text, that is). It's hard to be very Buddha-like about the impermanence of all things when you have this kind of love. I try, but I don't succeed, at least when it comes to him.

Enough soul-searching. The plays are great. Go see as many as you can.

Trials and Tribulations

Good golly, miss Molly, it really shouldn't be this hard. Every time I try to do something new with the new beastie, there's yet another problem. The latest PITA is that for some reason, some file klonking went on and the PC thought that the boot drive was on my external (data only) drive. Not gonna find it there.

So KW manages to resucutate the thing back to a recovery point last week (the data's okay, though.... I think... I suppose I should go check). He did that fine, then I tried to access my email on AOL. It's just a browser, www.aol.com. I can see my email in the in-box but when I click on a note, I get the spinning hamster wheel. Forever. Great. He managed to fix that by opening the email in the existing window, but why won't it work the other way now? I like having a separate window open with the email in it; what the hell heppened that it won't do it now?

On the plus side, I installed Adobe Acrobat 9.0 and it hasn't exploded itself or the machine yet.

On to better things... The Tomato socks are almost done; I started the cuff ribbing yesterday and will go until I've had enough. The Tulip socks are coming along slowly (primarily because I haven't been knitting them... don't suppose that has anything to do with their slow progress, do you?). Haven't really touched any lace in a couple of months. Good god, has it really been that long? I hope I remember.

Went to see some shows in the TheatreWorks New Works Festival this weekend. They were all terrific. "Variations on a Theme," "How to Write a New Book for the Bible," "Great Wall," and "Fly by Night." I cried. (Yes, I'm a mushball.) Next weekend we go see the last one, "Red Clay." If you have any spare time whatsoever, go see one. Or two, or three. Fantastic.

Now, let's see if I can attache pictures this time...

Sock Summit Memories

Ah yes... it was a year ago that the first Sock Summit was held, Sock Summit 2009. A sock knitter's Woodstock, without the brown acid. (Well, there may have been some brown acid, but it was probably acid dyes for someone's homespun.)

Next one in slightly less than a year, July 28-31. Unfortunately, most airlines won't let you book flights that far in advance. I have 5 trips between now and the end of the year, and still find myself like women in the old Mervyn's ads... "Open, open, open..."

SS09 was so awesome, so huge, so ... indescribable. To be among your sock-knitting peeps, to understand why everyone was looking at your feet, to learn from people you revered, to hear a panel discussion with people you thought were dead, to be part of breaking a Guiness world record... No words, just a big pack of happy when I think back upon it.

(Great, another thing to add to the stupid computer problem list - I can't add photos to blogspot, either on the 64-bit version or the non-64-bit version. This is going to turn into a very blah looking blog soon if I can't get pictures uploaded!)

The Price of Modernity

Ugh. So after the new Dell PC fiasco of early July (Windows 7 incompatibility issues), we decided to see how long the old PC would last before replacing it. As luck would have it, that was exactly 4 days. Not that it completely crapped out, mind you, but the noises started again (whirrrrrrring very loudly when you turn it on or restart it) and everything on the machine was S-L-O-W and my C: drive had run out of space.

So, we got a new machine. It, too, has Windows 7, and after our experience with the Dell (3 days of trying to get it to work with ... well, just about everything ... including about an hour with the Geek Squad - to no avail), we thought we were prepared for the big changeover. This one's an HP Pavilion, and we've had good luck with HPs before.

Yeah, that was *before.* As in "before Windows 7." Good golly, I'm very glad DH is heading off to Ottawa tomorrow; I swear, one more 'issue' with this freakin' thing and I'm going to kill someone. I'd rather it not be him, so I"m glad he'll be out of town.

Here's what we've had to replace (or will have to):

• Laser printer (no driver upgrade available for the old one)
• Inkjet printer (ditto)
• Adobe Acrobat Professional (no driver upgrade available for 7.0)
• My beloved PDA (double ditto)
• Speakers (no power source on new machine)
• My old AOL email account (because I thought I couldn't send emails from new machine)

I'm planning to replace my old (2005!) PDA with an iPod Touch, but now I'm reading all sorts of forum posts on how it's not compatible with Win7, only Vista and XP. Great.

I'm sure there's more; when I tried to launch Pandora a few hours ago, nothing happened. As it turns out, there is now a 'regular' MSIE 8.0 and a 64-bit MSIE 8.0. Some things work on one but not the other (like sending AOL webmail), or vice versa, and some things work on both. Luckily, I haven't found anything that doesn't work on either.

Except gmail. Now I can't load gmail up on either browser. Oh, and here on blogger? I can't cut and paste. In 'regular' browser mode. Maybe I can on the other one. What a PITA. And I can hear my wireless mouse through my new speakers. *sigh*

Yeah, we're keeping the old PC alive on the other desk. I have a feeling I'll be using it a lot in the next few days. Weeks?

If you see me in the near future, steer clear and try not to piss me off. It's a very short leap from where I am now to manslaughter.

95 Days!

Yep; 95 days to our next cruise (Carnival Dream, to Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten).

But we're also incredibly incorrigible... I got an email from CruCon.com for their "Christmas in July" sale. We had just been talking about wanting to get away for the December holidays, when - poof! - this email popped into my inbox, like it was meant to be.

The email had a list of all the cruises that would be sailing over Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Christmas AND New Year's. Perfect way to sort it, but there were so many to choose from! So we took a look, and started highlighting those that seemed interesting.

To cut the list of potential options down (ah, the tyranny of choice!), we only looked at those ships sailing over Christmas (but also got us back home before New Year's). There were still too many choices, so we started crossing things off:

• No cruises to the Pacific coast of Mexico. It's really too chilly (we learned this on last year's 3-day cruise the week before Christmas).
• No Carnival cruises - not because of any problems we've had with them, but because we've been on them fairly often and wanted to give some other line a chance.
• Nothing longer than 14 days.
• Nothing shorter than 7 days.
• No sailing that actually embarked or debarked on 12/25.
• Finally, we tried to avoid those that went to places we'd already been (although when push comes to shove, we'd have gone back to Cozumel or Key West or just about any other Western or Eastern Caribbean port!).

Of the cruises that were left, two caught our eye, but one really caught our fancy. One was leaving from Miami on Norwegian Caribbean's Dawn. It was a 9-night Caribbean trip, leaving from Miami and stopping in at Samana, Tortola, Antigua, Barbados, and St. Kitts. This one was on the list because it was on NCL (a new cruise line for both of us) and all the Caribbean ports were those we haven't yet visited... definitely a possibility. The other cruise was leaving from Barcelona (Spain) on Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas. This one was 12 nights, stopping in Palermo (Italy), Piraeus and Rhodes (Greece), Alexandria (Egypt), and Valetta (on Malta).

Can you guess which one we booked? Oh yeah, we need to brush up on our Espanol, people - we're spending Christmas in Barcelona! Well, to be precise, we'll be boarding the ship in Barcelona on DH's birthday... for Christmas, we'll actually be docked at Alexandria - maybe that will be the day we'll be able to take a tour to the pyramids!

Yes, we're bad. But in such a fabulous way! So - 95 days to cruise #1 and 151 days to cruise #2! (Anyone want to come along, I definitely recommend checking out CruCon... I normally book through cruise.com, but CruCon had the bigger sale going on. Hurry!)

Cruise Fever

101 days until the October cruise (Carnival's Dream) but I have cruisin' fever and keep looking out for another one to put on the calendar. I'm incorrigible...

Gave Up

Yep. Very tempting to take a baseball bat to the machine, but it was only partially Dell's fault (for getting into bed so cozily with Microsoft). (And thanks, but no; not going to switch to a Mac. Too expensive and too many other issues for me.)

So, after KW and I spent easily 2 full days trying to make it work, and then the Geek Squad spent over 2 hours with it, we decided to return the new PC. The good news was that after all the angst and PITA-ness, Best Buy took it back with nary a blink. "Why are you returning it?" "Windows7 is not compatible with anything else in our office." "Okay, here's your return receipt." Done.

After returning it on a Thursday, on Friday, we found ourselves at Fry's. (Yes, we are "those people" - those who actually enjoy browsing through Fry's.) KW has been wanting a lighter smaller laptop to replace his 10+ pound brick that he's had for umpteen years. The more he travels, the heavier the damn thing gets, so we stumbled upon a great deal on a Lenovo ThinkPad x100e. It's actually a cross between a netbook and a notebook - it's pretty small, and weighs barely 3 pounds.

Yes, it came loaded with Windows7, but he doesn't have to hook it up to any of our home equipment, and his phone can sync to Outlook through Windows Mobile Device Center (my antique PDA - from 2005, fer Pete's sake! - can only sync using ActiveSync, which Windows, in it infinite wisdom, has discontinued using. Not just 'not supported,' but after Vista, it completely doesn't work). He's been playing with it, and his biggest issue is that it doesn't have a disc drive. On the other hand, he doesn't use one for much of anything these days. If he needs one, he can pick an external drive up for about $50.

On the knitting front, I found a post on making a 'rag hem' for the knitting machine. The machine comes with this plastic contraption with two slots running the length (to hold the weight bars), and lots of holes (to slide over the needles) and a fold in the middle (to bend over the ravel cord when it's loaded). It's a scary looking thing, and I wondered what it's life expectancy was, seeing as how it's made to be folded all the time. Well, on Ravelry, someone talked about a 'rag hem,' and when I investigated, I found a tutorial on how to make something that works the same way, but is much easier to handle.

Basically, you start to knit a flat piece, then pull up your cast-on stitches and knit them with your current stitches. In hand-knitting terms, you'd be making a folded or pocket hem. You then knit a bunch more rows and bind off. You use it by sliding your new knitted hem over the needles (you use the bind-off end), adding the weight bars into the pocket hem, knitting one row with the ravel cord, then start knitting with your main yarn. You can knit your rag hem as short or as wide as you need, but even if you knit it fairly wide, you can still use it on narrower pieces - just hang it over a smaller number of needles. Genius.

I am going to try using the new hem to make a log cabin style afghan or baby blanket. I have a feeling I'll run into trouble when I try to turn the knitting to add a new block, but I need to try it to see if/how I can make it work. Process knitting, that's my bag...

In the hand-knitting world, I finished the socks made from some Mini Mochi left over from making fingerless mitts. They're short socks, even for me, and I had to use some other yarn for the last half-inch plus picot bind-off. They're nice and soft and squishy on my feets, though. I also couldn't resist, and cast on for a new pair of socks; these made from Brooklyn Handspun in the "Blam" colorway.

Oh boy...

Got a new PC on Thursday. Please keep all baseball bats and sledgehammers away from me while I get it up and running and TRY to get the file structure set up the way I want it to be, not the way Microsoft THINKS I want it to be...

Oh, and 110 days until the next cruise!!

Compare/Contrast

Thought I'd post a couple of side-by-side before-and-after shots of the landscaping...

Adventures in Landscaping, DONE!

Beautiful! Just like the other adults have! I especially like the way it smells now, with the bark all fresh and redwoody smelling. So here's what we got:

5 Japanese yew. These are along the far right fence and will eventually grow up to be great big strong windbreaks.

3 white birch. These are in the far right corner. Their role is to sway and bow gently in the breeze (wind) and look pretty.

5 non-tropical hibiscus. Four of them are in front of the white birch, one is behind those four, among the white birch.

13 oleander, the tall ones, a mix of pink and white. Four of these went towards the left, in front of the air conditioning units. We wanted something to protect them from the wind and give them some shade, and we also wanted to hide them onnacounta they're big and ugly. The remaining 9 are all in front of the Japanese yew, and will fill in below the leaf line.

7 cubic yards of bark (of which we had enough left over to fill in some holes we had in the front yard).

Purty!

Adventures in Landscaping, During

Some in-process shots of the work that was done. We had a total of 24 plants put into the ground . That means that these poor guys had to dig 24 holes into our awful, rocky, hard, rocky, clay, rocky, awful dirt... Eight 15 gallon-sized holes, and 5 gallon-sized holes for the rest. Plus trenching for the drip system and all the prep for the concrete. I felt sorry for the guy doing the bulk of the digging; I gave him a couple of bottles of water throughout the time he was here.

Adventures in Landscaping, Before

Yes, DH and I have decided to grow up. Well, at least as far as our home's landscaping is concerned. See, the month before we moved, in, DH lost his job (a high-risk mortgage company went under; great timing, huh?). We had enough to go for a while, but didn't want to deal with things we considered discretionary. Backyard landscaping fell into that category.

A few months after being in the house, and having been exposed to a very extreme Morgan Hill summer (incredible winds, temperatures over 100 degrees for two weeks in a row), when he got his next job, the first thing we did was put in some sod for most of the back yard. With such incredible winds, the house had continually full of dust and dirt. Yuck. We had hoped that the sod, in addition to looking nice, would cut down on the dirt factor.

Well, that worked; the amount of dust and dirt swirling around the house was cut 'way down. But we never felt comfortable enough financially to start to do anything 'fancy' with the rest of the landscaping. Oh, we put in those grapevines (8 went in, 6 are still alive; probably won't fruit this year), a blood orange tree (still doing okay), a Meyer lemon tree (ditto), and some jasmine bushes, but those were random acts of greenery, not a 'vision' of what we wanted the yard to look like.

Until now. We decided we had a few drachmas we could spend on the back yard and had gotten a good recommendation from a neighbor (hi, Suzy!). For comparison, we also invited another company to come and give us a quote, but not only was their quote higher, it was apparent that the owner didn't have quite the artistic vision that Le has. She listened to our woes ("oh, the wind!" "oh, the dirt!" "oh, how ugly!") and came up with a design that was simple, but elegant - and incredibly inexpensive, given the amount of work involved.

We opted to have her only do one side of the yard first, sort of a trial run (and to keep the costs down even more), so here are some of the sad before shots of the northeast side of our yard.

Day 10, Monday: Oxnard to home

We had our traditional IHOP breakfast then went and spent a few more minutes with Kelly's parents before setting out for home around 11:30 or so.

For the entire trip, from the three days we spent in New Port Richey visiting with dad and wrapping up loose ends from my aunt's stuff, to the drive over a week later from Las Vegas to Oxnard, the weather was superb. We got maybe 5 drops dripped on us in Mississippi or Louisiana, it was a little overcast when we left Vicksburg, and the Grand Canyon was a little hazy.

Driving north on 101 from Oxnard - it rained pretty much the entire drive.

Luckily, we know the road, we know where to stop, and it wasn't a driving rain, so it didn't present any real problems.

One thing we did learn on this leg, though - the Camp Roberts rest stop has reopened! For any of you who regularly take this north-south route, you may probably be rejoicing as much as I am. They did a total upgrade, knocking down the old structures and putting up a pretty glitzy new one. I was impressed. (Impressed enough, apparently, to take a picture!)

Wrapping up, it was a fantastic trip. The car handled beautifully, our GPS unit was 95% reliable (okay, so that time in Fort Worth when she had us in an endless loop wasn't the most fun, but we eventually figured it out...), the weather was great, the stops were perfect... We're already talking about our next road trip. (Next year, honey; let my butt stop buzzing for a while!)

Day 9, Sunday: Las Vegas, NV, to Oxnard, CA, or "An Inch to Barstow"

When we met Greg and Kerry for breakfast at the Cafe Vettro at Aria, we found out that Kerry had been having such good luck at the slot machines the night before, she didn't get into their room until 3:00 AM! I, on the other hand, was so wiped out that I slept right up to the time we were to meet them and dragged myself to the restaurant without even showering! She's obviously much younger than I am!

Anyway, we had a lovely breakfast, and after our good-byes, we left the hotel and pulled out onto Las Vegas Blvd at 12:00 noon. There are no gas stations on the Strip between City Center and the Flamingo Ave entrance to I-15, so we just got on and headed southwest, figuring we'd get gas at one of the next exits. Yeah, well us and about 15 gazillion of our closest friends who were also heading out of Vegas and towards Los Angeles! Holy cow, the traffic was rough! And when we pulled off at a lonely looking exit, it turned out to be not-so-lonely - the line for gas was about 3-deep at each pump. Oh well. We needed the fuel and knew it was a long time between stops on that desert run.

Oh yeah. The desert. Texas, big. California desert, big and empty. Once you clear Primm, which is pretty much the last exit in Nevada (and home to Buffalo Bill's, with its great big roller coaster!), there's a whole lotta nuthin' for a long time. The mantra for this part of the drive was "How long before we get to Barstow." The standard answer, that didn't seem to change for a long time, was that we were "about an inch to Barstow." Ugh. The big whoop-de-do for this part of the trip was the stop just over the border for the California agricultural inspection. "Do you have any fruits or vegetables in your vehicle?" "No." "Any live plants?" "No." "Thanks; move along." Wheee...

We finally hit Barstow, and since I knew Kelly was going to do the driving through L.A., I decided to keep going until we got closer to the crappy L.A. traffic. Unfortunately, we hit a dead stop in Victorville, and used the diversion to stop for a late lunch at IHOP. After consulting the map, we opted to get off the interstate and cut over to I-5 on CA 18, bypassing a lot of the traffic, although enough other people had the same idea, and the road was still pretty busy. We eventually made our way to the 101 (yeah, Los Angelenians refer to their freeways as "the," as in "the 405," "the 101," and "the 110." weird) and up to Onxard, where Kelly's parents live.

Since it was getting pretty late, we went right to their house, spent about 45 minutes chitting and chatting, then on to the Grandstay Suites, which was a new hotel we decided to try (we liked it; we'll go back on future trips). Our IHOP lunch was still with us, so dinner was a small snack on pretzels and protein bars.

Tomorrow, the end... Day 10, Oxnard to home.

Day 8, Saturday - In Vegas

I know it's not everyone's cuppa tea, but damn, I like Las Vegas. We were staying at Aria at City Center, and the hotel is brand spankin' new; just opened in December 2009. It's pretty luxe, and the bed is like sleeping on a well-supported marshmallow. Dreamy comfortable.

We weren't overly hungry, so our plan was to walk to the Venetian to have breakfast at the Grand Luxe Cafe there (which is owned by the Cheesecake Factory, and which is one of our favorites for breakfast). Best laid plans and all that; when we started north on the Strip, we decided we were hungrier than we thought and didn't want to wait until we got to the Venetian before we ate. So we remembered that the Bellagio Cafe, their 24-hour restaurant, was also pretty damn good, and went there instead.

The Bellagio Cafe is right next to the Conservatory, the garden area with a display that changes at least once every season. This display was all about hot-air balloons and bugs. The balloons hung above in lots of different colors, and the bugs were at ground level and a zillion times their real size. I really enjoy the artistry the gardeners use for these displays. Lots of colors and all the plants make the whole place seem fresh.

After breakfast, we took a slow walk back to our hotel where Kelly needed to get some real work done.

When we walked in to the room, I noticed that the message light was on the phone. Expecting one of those pro forma messages from the manager a la "we hope your room is to your liking" kinds of messages, I was surprised to hear the agent say that there was a message from the "amenity department." When I was connected, I learned that they had wanted to deliver "an amenity," but since we weren't in the room when they came by earlier, they would deliver it within the hour. Kelly hunkered down at the computer and I knit for a while while we waited. No, we really weren't waiting for "the amenity," we were waiting to hear from our friends Greg and Kerry, who were going to be joining us for the evening.

So here's the story with G & K... they're nuts, like us. A few years ago, the male spouses surprised the female spouses by showing up at Crimson restaurant in Los Gatos for Valentine's Day. The guys out-did themselves, with flowers and chocolates waiting for us - but we were the only table of four at the place... it was Valentine's Day! We, on the other hand, thought it was grand fun, and thus began our mini-tradition of celebrating romantic occasions together.

Kelly and I had gone to Vegas for our anniversary last year and we wanted to keep that tradition going. But with the big cross-country adventure, we wouldn't have time (or probably $$) to take another trip so soon after this one. So the solution was to stay 2 nights in Vegas and call it an early anniversary celebration. Well, who do we call to share romantic occasions with? Why, Greg and Kerry, of course! And who agreed to join us? Greg and Kerry! (I said they were nuts!)

Kerry had been down in L.A., seeing her daughter off on a plane Friday night. She stayed over in L.A. that night, then drove to Las Vegas Saturday morning in time to pick up Greg at the airport. We finally connected (after many hilarious and ill-timed text messages - sorry, Kerry!) around 4:00 and started celebrating. Let the drinking begin!

We eventually made our way to Caesar's Palace, stopping along the way at the View Bar at Aria and the Seahorse Bar in Caesar's, before getting to Mesa Grill for our 7:45 reservations. Mesa is one of Bobby Flay's restaurants, and it's one of Kelly's and my favorites. I've been a fan since they opened, and on Saturday, we brought Greg and Kerry into the fan fold, too. Simply fabulous.

We gambled a bit there, then took our time walking back to our hotel, stopping in to Paris, Planet Hollywood, and MGM, finally getting back to Aria around midnight. We arranged to meet for breakfast the next morning, and as Greg, Kelly, and I headed to our rooms, Kerry decided she wanted to do a "little more" gambling. When we got back into our room, we snacked on "the amenity," which turned out to be chocolate covered strawberries and macaroons. When I made the reservation, I told the agent that we would be celebrating our anniversary, and I think she set this up. They were yummy!

Next up: day 9, leaving Vegas and heading for Oxnard.

Day 7, Fri, May 14 - Flagstaff, AZ, to Vegas, baby!

Having overloaded on the majesty of a natural wonder, the Grand Canyon, it was time to head to a man-made wonder, Las Vegas. But first, the man-made wonder that made the man-made wonder of Vegas possible - Hoover Dam.

The travel from Arizona to Vegas took us along I-40 to Kingman, where we cut up and over on highway 93. The landscape got a little craggier looking, and as we got closer and closer to Hoover Dam, there was more and more construction on the roadway, with many parts funneling down to one lane in both directions. (The first shot is for Debbie.)

Hoover Dam is really neat. The first time I went (1994), I hadn't realized that you could actually drive over the actual dam. It's a pretty spectacular sight. On I-40, before you get on to highway 93, there are signs every few feet (it seems) that say "no commercial trucks," "no trailers," basically only cars are allowed across the dam, and all vehicles are subject to inspection. After 9/11, Homeland Security determined that the dam could be a significant target for terrorists, and so there is now a vehicle checkpoint before you're allowed to cross it.

The last funneling point wasn't for construction purposes, it was the inspection station, so we made our way through the checkpoint and over the crest of the hill, switch-backing our way down to one of the upper parking lots that overlook Lake Mead and the four intake towers. Pretty damn impressive even from this distance. We walked down through the lower parking areas and onto the dam itself. Looking out to the north at the intake towers and Lake Mead, we could see the huge canyon and mountains, with lots of boats and ski-doos. Very pretty, but really... the big show is on the other side of the road.

We walked along that way, crossing over into Nevada, and to the monuments to the workers who gave their lives to make this piece of magnificence. We took the escalator down to the lower level of the Visitor Center where we signed up for a power plant tour. (After 9/11, they stopped giving interior tours of the dam for a while; they recently started doing them again, after installing metal detectors and scanning machines like they have at airports.)

We watched the movie about the making of the dam, then followed our guide into the bowels of the beast. He first took us to one of the diversion tubes they had to build to divert the river while they were making the dam - a 2-year process, necessary before they could even start work on the dam itself. He then took us to one of the observation stations where we could see 7 of the turbines, spinning away, making a bajillion kilo-gigo-megawatts of power for California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and parts of Mexico. We made our way back up to the observation platform on the top of the Visitor Center, and here's where you really get a feel for the magnitude of the structure. Holy cow (I said that a lot here, too.)

The bridge in the photos is the new by-pass road, being built so that they can stop traffic from driving over the dam. This will eliminate the need for the inspection stations (unless you're actually going to visit the dam itself) that clog up traffic so much. The bridge and bypass is scheduled to open in November of this year; a pretty amazing feat in itself.

After gawking at the dam for about 2 hours, we hiked back up to the car and joined the conga line to continue on to Las Vegas, the man-made wonder made possible by the Hoover Dam.

We made our way around McCarren Airport and entered Las Vegas Blvd ("The Strip") at its far south end. Normally, we'd just bypass the Strip to avoid traffic, but we wanted to get a picture of the famous Vegas sign. We toodled up the Strip, on the lookout for our hotel's entrance, which we had heard was poorly marked, and was pleasantly surprised to see it clearly identified. We pulled in, had the valet deal with the car, and made our way in to Aria at City Center.

City Center is MGM's newest endeavor on the Strip. It takes up the entire space between Bellagio and Monte Carlo, on what used to be the Holiday Inn Boardwalk property and a skanky strip mall with a dirt patch out back that used to be used for helicopter tours. Now, it is home to 4 hotels (3 of which are open), some residential units, and grossly upscale shopping (think Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, etc.). It's shiny and glitzy and glassy, with design elements that are Frank Gehry-esque - random angles and curves, elements that look like they won't work together but do. It's so big that, like the Grand Canyon, it was difficult to get a good shot of the whole thing.

Our room was electronically programmed so that when you walked in, the curtains opened, the lights came on, and the TV turned on to a user controller panel. Because we got a special rate, we overlooked the back of the hotel, which aimed us towards the western mountains and Vdara, one of the other City Center hotels. We could also see the City Center tram, which goes from Monte Carlo at the south end, to Bellagio on the north.

We played with the room controls for a bit (not very intuitive, even for us comfortable-with-technology types), then made our way down to scope out the casino. Very pretty, very modern feeling... and packed! The place was mobbed! Did someone say there was a recession? Not here, not this weekend! As we took the tram to Bellagio then walked to Caesar's Palace, we kept saying, "look at all the people!" When we were there around this time last year, there were enough tourists, but it was definitely not to capacity. This time, crowds, crowds, everywhere.

We walked to Caesar's, then over to the Venetian, then back to our own hotel, where we had dinner at the 24-hour restaurant, Cafe Vettro. Quite yum. We rested a bit, then wandered back outside again, this time taking in the nighttime neon and gathering all my player's club cards (which I had left in the car which was now safely valeted). I shot my gambling wad for the day and we headed back to the hotel - with the glorious thought in our heads that we would be staying here for TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW! This felt like an unbelievable luxury after "hotel hopping" for the previous week!

Tomorrow, more Vegas!