SockTart

Somehow I picked up a little bug.  Sore throat, bit of a cough, etc.  Hit me last night at T’s Whiskey Night.   Robin has gone to the Sev to get me a Slurpee and some ice-cream for my throat, so hopefully I’ll be back up to snuff soonish.  It’s either that or OD on the Bennelyn (sp?) and/or Buckleys (shudder).

Potential Kara raid today!  Hopefully we’ll have more in the way of what we need in regards to character classes so that we can do more than just one boss.  Squee!

Knitting with the Dreaded Regia Cotton again.  This is something like the fourth time I’ve tried to use this particular ball of yarn.  Here’s hoping that it’s the last time, hey?  2 Jaywalkers at once, magic looped, toe-up with heel flap.  I’m almost convinced that this yarn is cursed.  At least it’s something to do while Robin plays around with Mass Effect.  The boys at work were right…game is addictive.  I’m enjoying watching the story unfold as I knit away.

The weekend went by fast, but felt somewhat long.  Robin got maybe an hour’s sleep on Friday before we headed out to get haircuts, then tried to nap when we got home (didn’t work).  Had to call a friend for a lift to the Hyatt Regency for the company Xmas party because my company decided to hold “Cocktail Hour” and the “X-mas presentation” at rush hour.  What’s up with THAT?  We couldn’t get a cab.  Thank goodness for Jamie!

Dinner was nice, and spent a little time mingling.  Wound up going home early, as Robin looked like he was about to pass out. Staying awake for about 36 hours (more or less) will do that to a guy.

Yesterday morning, it was up & at ‘em early (remember, I said we had an early night), and a trip to one of The Malls for X-mas shopping.  There is only one family member without a X-mas present at this time.  We rock.  Over the next month, all we need to do is get this one family member taken care of & shop for each other.  If we see things that remind us of our friends?  Bonus.

It was a long day, though.  We were at the mall from about 10am til 4:30 PM.  Robin had to get me a new pair of Airwalks just so that I didn’t kill my feet and/or back.  I definitely do NOT recommend marathon X-mas shopping to the weak.

Tyler caught up with us by the end of our shopping spree & we headed out for a nice dinner at Tony Roma’s.  Not exactly the world’s most orgasmic food, but seemed OK to me.  Even if the waitress did insist on sticking the three folks without a kid right between two tables with multiple crying babies.  If the Food Services Industry was being paid off by Planned Parenthood on the sly, this would make some sort of wacky sense.

Went home, put up the feet, stuck an episode of Dexter on the tube & watched that while knitting on my shawl.  Still only on clue #2, even though the last clue was unveiled yesterday.  D’oh!  Early to bed, and early to rise, and here we are today.

All in all, a nice weekend, if busy.  Hopefully next weekend will be more relaxed

Have been eating clean for the past few days.  Weight has fluctuated down 5 pounds.  Happy camper?  Oh yeah.  Hoping that I hit my 10 pounds down for the month fairly soon.  We’ll see if it goes down farther by End of Month.  There’s still half a month to go!

Cast on the Secret of the Stole shawl last night.  Yay for knowing how to knit two things at once on the same set of needles with one skein/ball of yarn!  I rock :)   I will attempt not to pat my own back for far too long, as I know that the last laceweight project I attempted wound up taking flight across the living room.  I hate charts.  I sincerely thank whoever is responsible that they are providing written instructions on this KAL.

Dinner tonight?  Chicken Caesar Salad.

I spent a good part of my morning sniffing toner.  All very innocently, of course.  Had to file away 7 months worth of paperwork.  Feeling a little woozy and headachey.  Time for a bath, methinks.   Otherwise, have been feeling really good lately!  Headachiness is only from toner, and not from migraine triggers hidden in bready/sugary products.  Yay!

Would like to get the Elfines done this weekend.  I have some Koigu and some Lime & Violet  and some C*eye*ber Fiber that are calling my name (I’m a-gonna haveta make some very very hard decisions as to which I want to work with next, lemmetellyou.  Really).

After looking over the GI Diet meal plan….good lord, that’s a LOT of cooking! I started making a shopping list & had half a page written before I realized…we can’t afford all these special foods!

We’re going to incorporate *some* of the lower GI elements into our dinners for my Other Half, though. He only has about 40 lbs to lose, and I’d rather he not rocket down the way he did 3 years ago when we last “dieted” together. He’ll be getting some grains and extra dairy in order to slow his progress just slightly. Otherwise…I’m staying on Atkins & trying to keep it tasty. We’ll see how the next couple of weeks go.

We’ve gotten addicted to Katamari Damacy in the past couple of weeks.  It’s one heck of a video game….weird language pattern for the main character(s), and the fact you have to “roll up the world” in a ball is really funny.

Yes, I’m a nerd.  Sorta.  I found a crochet pattern that I’m going to have to buy.  It’s the little Prince from Katamari Damacy.   Of course, to actually MAKE it, I’m going to have to learn how to crochet, but that’s not the point.  The point is that I could make little Prince dolls.

It’s amazing the things we see on the net.

Got a few rounds done on the Monkey sock yesterday, and a few rows on the Persephone scarf.  Thinking of  writing out the Persephone pattern so that I can take it to work, but I’m not going to stress on it.  Still waiting for my order from Lime & Violet to get here.  I had picked up two skeins of yarn when Miss V updated the store.  I’m hoping that there’s just a little delay from customs, and that it’s  not a matter of the postman misdirecting our mail, or a neighbour deciding that they suddenly need wool.  I find the misdirection by the postman a more likely event, mainly because the guy’s a lazy arse.  We get mail for other folks all the time.  Yeesh.

In other news, have been eating mostly properly for the past few days, and it’s making a difference.  I’d been gaining and losing the same 5 pounds for the past two months, and it’s been driving me nuts.  I guess it could be worse… I could have ballooned back up to my highest weight.  At any rate, I’m on the way back down, and I hope to break the barrier that’s sorta sprung up at that 10 pound mark.  That is…I seem to hit a glass wall at every 10 pound mark.  It keeps me within a certain 10 pound range for a while, then allows me down to the next 10 pound range.  Maybe it’s just the way my body adjusts; I don’t rightly know.  I just know that the past 2 months have been pretty frustrating.

Of course, eating all that ice-cream to counteract the insane heat wave earlier this month didn’t help (grin).

We’re trying to strike a balance in our eating habits.  Cutting a lot of the junk carbs has really helped.  I have to admit that the goal of getting rid of the next 30 pounds is exciting.  That will put me at the weight I was when I first got to Calgary.  Another 10 pounds beyond that, and I’ll be the weight I maintained in college (of course, by “maintained” I mean “kept off by eating Smarties, fried rice, and orange-pineapple juice & walking everywhere because the trolleys moved slower than my own 2 feet!”).

Very exciting stuff.  Now time to get ready to go to work (pout)…don’t wanna!!!

I tell you…the nice part of waking up at 5am for a 7am shift?  You get to come home at 3:30pm.  The drawback?  You have to wake up at 5am.  ***THUD*** (sigh)

Right now I’m on a dishcloth knitting kick.  Why?  Because they’re small enough that I can whip one off in about an hour or two.  We’ve been knee-deep in the Rec Room Renovation this week, so I’ve been only  been able to do a couple of repeats of the pattern on the leg of my Monkeys during lunch hours at work.

We’ll have to post pictures of the “After” once we’ve got everything done here.  I didn’t take any photos of the “Before”, because frankly…the basement was too disgusting for words.  To me, at least.  We had two full-sized sofas down here, plus a washer/spin dryer, my domed steamer trunk, big L-shaped desk that the both of us used for our gaming space…a bookshelf full of console gaming stuff…you name it, it was crammed in here.  Right now, we have one loveseat in here, a lazyboy, two computer workstations, and the TV stuff.  The L-shaped desk is still here, waiting to be torn down.  I can probably do that on my own, but I’m a little scared to…it’s basically holding itself together through its own weight.

I kid you not.

So while I’m taking time off from cleaning, I sit down and knit a dishcloth.  Not necessarily for washing dishes, really, but for slurpie-cup coasters.  Cotton makes a great coaster for a slurpee cup.  When moisture condensates on the outside & starts to melt…the cotton just soaks it all up.  Whee!

So yeah.  Not only fun to knit, but also useful down here in the place where I’m knitting.

I keep forgetting that furniture is three-dimensional.  In the context that you can do more than just use it as intended.

Robin and I are currently working through a mutual frustration with our furniture, our storage, and our decorating style.  Right now it’s a mixture of hand-me-downs, junk, and assorted odds & ends that we’ve either picked up on the fly as needed, or brought into the house on our own.

We’re working on getting rid of the junk & clutter, but it’s taking some time.  In the meantime, I’m looking at different options for how to decorate with storage possibilities.

Everyone loves IKEA, right?  Well…IKEA is good for certain things.  Cheap, modernistic furniture?  Yeah.  Might not be at a cheap price, per se, but definitely not as expensive as many high-end shops.

At any rate…There are folks who don’t necessarily use IKEA as “intended”.  Okay, okay, yeah, walking through IKEA shows you that IKEA doesn’t even use their furniture as intended…but painting it, using it as a balcony hardwood floor, or turning it on its side & attaching legs?  Oh yeah.  Bookshelves are now sideboards, and a TV shelf plus a platform turns into a Captain’s Bed.

Head on over to IKEA Hacker or IKEAFANS and boggle

Obligatory knitting content: Hedera are cast off & grafted.  Whee, pretty!  Now there’s a pair of Monkeys on the go, in a vibrant pink Tofutsies sock yarn.  Yeee!  Cute! How many more exclamation points can I use??!!!!111 

Given the choice between pretty flowers, and having to dodge bees to get into my house…I guess the answer is that the flowers have to go.

Spring of 2006, I stupidly planted some Hollyhocks in the side garden near the only door to the house.  In my defense, I didn’t realize that they grow to such a prodigious height, or that they bloom quite so…uh…much.  You see, they didn’t grow a lot last year, so I was totally unprepared for them to shoot for the sky this year.

And with them came the bees.  After they were planted last year, we realized that there’s a small hive under our porch cap.  We haven’t figured out how to get rid of them yet (will need Dad’s help with this, as it’s a job he’s done before in the old Arnprior house). But yeah.  It was bad enough when the plants were growing up around the mailbox (I have an ongoing feud with the mailman, lazy arse bugger), but they bent in front of the door during a windstorm recently.

So…yeah.  Once it got cool and dark out, I got our edging trimmers, and did a trim back of the hollyhocks right next to the door.  I feel sad, because they were damned beautiful flowers…but I’m more than a little terrified of bees.  And as I just stated, given a choice between bees and flowers, I’ll get rid of one to minimize risk of the other.

RIP Hollyhocks.  Next year, we’ll keep you in the back yard.  Should be a lot safer in the back garden than in the side.

Piss me off.

I booked two days off work this week.  I was going to do such various things as sit around and knit, or get some cleaning done.  Instead, I wind up fighting off The Summer Cold from Hell.  Came home from work on Tuesday after fighting a sore throat all day, and now?  Sinus headache.  Spent part of today in the bath, trying to relax my neck muscles and being generally “amphibious”.
The Dayquil seems to have kicked in, though. This is a good thing.

Speaking of knitting, Hedera is coming along fine.  I tried working with it on Size 2 circs, but they look rather…uh…loose.  I’ve since started the “second” sock with the ribbing on size 2, and the body on size 1.  I’ve turned the heel on that sock and am working on the gusset.  If it fits, then Sock 1 will be frogged back, and done the same way.

If I didn’t mention it, Robin’s socks are done.  He’s happy about that.

Pictures soon

3 hours sleep.

Damn you, JK Rowling.  And paranoia.  And freakin’ heat wave.

I just want to make it through til at least 6pm tonight.  That way, I should be safe and cozy at home.  I don’t care if I sack out on the couch.  Or whatever.  Yeesh.

Feel like someone hit me with a ton of bricks.