Comment Oddness

Okay, while I thought I had had this fixed, now (using Safari), when I click on the comments link, it opens up a page with the code for the page and not the comments fields.

Sigh.

Going to try opening a comment with IE 7 and see whether that works.

Y'all know where to email me to offer suggestions. Not to work, please, use one of my fifty personal email addresses.

Thanks!

Zombies 4 Life

Wow, what a miserable week this past one has been. Quite a number of folks at the office, including me and Dan, were stricken by a really virulent flu-type infection. Everyone's symptoms ran along similar paths, although some folks had throbbing headaches while some of us had fevers.

Five days after it first hit me, I'm still weak and lethargic. Feeding the dog and watering my plants this morning was exhausting. Blech. I hate this.

Spent some time working on my sweater, Sunshine. The Knit-Along ends in a couple of weeks and I have just finished the body and begun one of the sleeves. Fortunately, I set aside two skeins of my Karaoke Mermaid Mix whose color stripes begin exactly at the point I need for each sleeve. Yay!

If I weren't so tired from the flu (or whatever this was), I'd have gotten it done by now. Oh, well. It's going along faster than I had anticipated, being my first sweater and all.

Fortunately, it has an inset of lace down the sleeves so that I don't need to count row by tedious row to match both of my sleeves. Instead, I'll be keeping count of the pattern, which is rows of 10. Still counting, but much less difficult for the math-challenged such as myself!

We're having Chinese food delivered tonight. Neither of us is up to cooking or going to pick something up.

Except maybe brains. We zombies love them.

Still Tired =/

After a week of crunching, I definitely wanted a weekend. However, though we only had to work an 8 hour day, we still had to get through the company "holiday party."

When it was originally scheduled back in December, streets were still blanketed in snow so it was moved till the end of January. That was before they knew we'd be working an end-of-cycle crunch, though. Made for an exceptionally long week.

Still, it was a more fun than I had anticipated. I envisioned tables full of exhausted coworkers with their faces planted, snoring, into plates of canapes. Fortunately, they rose to the challenge!

The highlight for me, next to my little cherub Phil joining us, was that the murder mystery solution chosen as the winner was mine. When Chuck and Lorien were left for last as the accused, I was like, "Oh! I picked them, too!" Then as the announcer continued to read, I realized it was my story. Hahaha!
As Dan put it, how nice that one of our team's writers won. :)

Saturday I spent cleaning up and thinking about cleaning up. Today, however, all I've done is laundry. In fact, I should go fold clothes.

Waking Up Early

I've grown used to game company hours: in late, stay late. Rinse, repeat.

It's now 7:10AM and I am getting ready for work...and that seems awfully early to me. And yet, five years ago I'd have already been at work with the law firm, opening up the office and setting the first (of many!) pots o'coffee to brew. They allowed me to come in early and leave early so that I could carpool home with Rob.

And eleven years ago, when I was still at Regence Blue Shield, I was at my desk by 6:30AM (aieeee!) so that I could leave at 2:30PM and pick up the little cherubs at 3PM from school.

I didn't think I'd like getting in to work so late. 9:45AM - 6:45PM? Who the hell works those kinds of lazy hours?!

ME! =)

I grew to enjoy getting up and pittering around the apartment before heading to work. I could schedule all my doctor's or vet's appointments for 8AM and still be at work on time. Yippee!

Now, however, I prefer to stay abed through the first hour of the alarm, getting up only when absolutely necessary to get to the office. The bed is cozy, often filled with various combinations of pets, and NPR is so soothing (most of the time, anyway).

We're working ten hour days through Thursday, so I have gotten up way early. My pain killers for my shoulder are wearing off and I'm dragging a bit. After my blog update, it's off to the showers and then through the snow to work.

For yes, it hath snowed again, although not so much as in December. Here in Redmond, tis a light dusting of less than an inch. The cold has allowed it to stay on and freeze a bit. Today's forecast is for another inch or two.

Brrrr!

Day Off

Suddenly, I had to take the day off because the preceeding 24 hours were ass.

[This is an example of starting the story 3/4ths of the way in to bring the reader directly to the crisis, getting them to ask What? Huh? and then explaining it once they've become sucked into your narrative. Or something.]

It probably wasn't the entire 24 hours; parts of the day were just fine. But Dan and I had had to get up very early to get to the doctor's for his foot (he has acute tendonitis; we are not sure how Scooter did it). I haven't been sleeping well as my left shoulder is completely whacked out. Some of my work thingers were not flowing. An abstract I'd submitted for a conference was rejected (although they graciously asked me to submit another topic and gave me extra time in which to do so).

What did me in is Old Paint.

Old Paint's left headlamp has been a nightmare for years. Sometimes it's on, sometimes it's off. For a while, a simple smack on the hood would restore it, but those days are long past. I've electrical taped it up, but apparently that's failing now too. Indeed, I will often fix the lamp and by the time I leap into the car, I can watch as it slowly fades out.

And then, the right side lamp went out. At night. Dan and I drove home with the brights on because there is no guarantee that the left lamp would remain lit for more than a couple of minutes.

The very next day (yesterday) I decided to go to the auto parts store to buy a new lamp and maybe something that would help me keep the left lamp going. On the way, I stopped at Tuesday Morning for their post-Christmas goodies sale and found a couple of things that I wanted. It was at the register that I discovered my wallet was not in my purse.

It was the straw that broke my strength of mind. I went back to the office, disheartened and sad, determined to take a day off. And when I used the online form, it broke.

Sigh.

At least today turned out relatively well. Went back and got my Tuesday Morning stuff. Got the headlamp and some gasket thinger to use on the other lamp. Knit more sweater. Played some Puzzle Quest. Now awaiting pizza delivery dude.

Hmmm....

Apparently the comments are slightly weird, occasionally, although they work sometimes. I have no idea how to fix them. This is one of them thar pre-made templates so when I look at the code, all I see is #@$!%%!!!

And that's what I say while looking at it, too.

Maybe I'll just switch to a different template and see if that works. Too tired to do so tonight.

Sunshine (the sweater) is at a dividing point, where I put the sleeve bits onto bits of waste yarn while I finish off the body bits. Later on, I come back to do the sleeve bits.

Dan tried on the sock I finished tonight, hereinafter referred to as The Sock That Was Too Small. It fit along the foot, but the heel and the leg portions were short. So I did what any good knitter does; I frogged it.

Cast on for them again but will begin actual knitting on them tomorrow. Maybe.

Mean Girls

I've never seen the movie before but it's on TV now and it's pretty funny. =)

It's Not Contagious!

Poor Dan. I swear he didn't get it from me, but he's been limping and has a doctor's appointment tomorrow for his foot. =/

New Look

I'm trying out a new look for Ye Olde Blogge. What do you think?

Sunshine

...on my shoulders...in this photo:

Sunshine...on my shoulders...looks so lovely!

((sorry, John Denver, I couldn't help it...but I'm not the one who named this pattern anyway))

I'm using a soy/wool blend with beautiful teal-purple colors. It's called Mermaid Mix, although after looking at the photos I thought, "It looks more like Oil Slick." But it's very soft and gorgeous.

The only problem is that Sunshine is a long-sleeved cardigan and that means I will be fretting about matching colors on both sleeves with the body. That won't be very easy. So I'm keeping open the possibility that I may need to buy something solid to form a large "stripe" on the sleeve.

Also right now: knitting a hat for myself, about 80% done on my second Lady Eleanor and bought grey wool to make Dan's a pair of socks. Plus the skulls baby blanket for Jack, who turned one last month.

We'll see how it goes. Oddly, the stuff I knit for myself seems to be taking forever. I guess it's the lack of urgency as I don't need to finish them for Christmas or something. Maybe I need to set a personal goal to finish things!

Knitting Along

I've really enjoyed knitting; I think that's not much of a surprise to anyone who's been reading this here blog! But I've never really tackled anything particularly difficult.

When I think about all the projects I've been doing, they sort of grow one into the next in terms of techniques. The first baby blanket I knit, for Amy and Isaac, was pretty simply constructed on a diagonal with lacy yarn overs. I learned how to do increases and later realized all the yarn overs in that blanket are done incorrectly! I'd just learned how to knit Continental and was still shaky on the differences between that and the English method.

Now I know better :)

Once my friends stopped having babies, I began branching out into scarves with different yarn types. Poor Candyce received one of the experiments: a super bulky purple keyhole scarf that, though I used huge needles and made "skinnier" than normal, is still dense enough to choke a llama (and I'll re-knit if for you, Can, if you unearth it!).

Each project helped me see how stitches ought to sit; how increases and decreases matched up; how to pick up stitches; how to cast on in different ways. I've been on Ravelry for a year now and it opened up a whole new world of projects and possibilities!

My "stash" of yarn is now more wool and natural fibers than the boxes of acrylics that I had gotten from Suz, via Broos. I've knit with alpaca, silk, wool, soy and now have a hank of yarn made of banana fiber. Bananas! I've learned how to wind hanks of yarn into neat center-pull balls.

I've further learned that it takes viewing both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to wind 1,400 yards of laceweight yarn into a ball by hand. =)

My foray into fingerless gloves taught me about kntting small things in the round, which naturally led to the year-end sock project. My new socks are nice and warm; I've worn them several times now. Can't wait to make more, to try out more techniques.

And so, I am participating in a Knit-Along (abbreviated as KAL, because knitters are funny that way) that takes obscure-but-cool projects and knits them at the same time. It provides a support group of folks who are doing the same project while not confining one to knitting at the same time and place as everyone else.

I chose to knit Sunshine, a cute pullover. Hopefully all the techniques I've learned thus far will help me make it fit for a two-armed human to wear!

New Year Stuffs!

2008 was a pretty cool year for me. :) One of the nicest things was falling in love with Dan :) Also having cherubs gradumuate from high school and junior college...it's so awesome to see them growing smarter and stuff. Muahahahaha!

Last year was filled with learning new things with knitting. Definitely a year of lots of fun projects! And to end the year by learning how to knit socks...well, that was something I didn't really foresee at the beginning of the year.

I have yarn coming next week which includes several skeins of yarn with which I shall make more socks. Yay!

Currently feeling slothly. It's snowing (again!). Chris and Sonya are still asleep. Probably exhausted after leading the cops a merry chase through Bellevue...I shall need to tease them about it later, although it was somewhat alarming to wake up and notice that there were flashing red and blue lights reflecting on the ceiling of my bedroom.

Apparently, Old Paint caught the cop's eye as it was down one headlight (stupid Old Paint) and bereft of current tabs (which are on the list of things for me to pick up...they should be at the licensing place). Dan was up when the kids came in and found that they'd been stopped for the headlight and tabs earlier and then the same cop caught them again just outside our cul de sac and thought he was getting another victim instead of the same ones.

I made a fearful mistake in my second pair of gothic fingerless gloves to wear to Lorien's wedding tomorrow and had to rip back to the thumb. I wanted to add a ruffle and it turned out nicely on the right hand, but I started the ruffle too far over on the left hand. Set it aside to update my blog as it was pretty annoying to find out that sort of error after binding off and I don't want to knit in frustration.

Happy New Year, all y'all!

The End of Snowy Days

As it warms up, the snow is melting away. This photo is from Christmas Eve, when it was still freezing cold and snowing. I had gone out to shovel our deck, afraid that the weight of the snow and ice upon it might be too stressful. And it was! For me. I stopped shoveling after a half hour and only managed to clear a small strip around our grill.

Today it's mostly melted into a sad shadow of its former glory. I haven't taken photos of it yet. Mostly, I've been hanging out with Chris and Dan. Phil's gone back to his dad's so he could get to his work (although there's a good chance he'll come back up tomorrow).

And late tomorrow night, Chris' girlfriend Sonya will arrive. They'll be chillin' with us, literally. We found that the guest room where Chris has been sleeping has practically no insulation whatsoever. Merely hanging a blanket over the window increased the temperature remarkably. Today we bought some plastic sheeting stuff to cover the window. Instead of a room that's about 40 degrees, Chris and Sonya will have a balmy 50 degree room.

Yay?

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Dan and I are settling in for the night, watching It's a Wonderful Life on CBC. It's cold out. We have a fire in the fireplace, tree is lit (thanks to some electrical tape on the bits of wire that Chotto ate), our roast beast dinner was consumed.

We are all cozy for the night.

Happy holidays, y'all!

Snow Day...

Dan and I braved the elements yesterday to go to the store. It was a bit slushy and icy and by the time we got back home I was very, very glad to be home again!

And then it snowed more over night. Photos of lovely snowy scenes are up on my Flickr page.

Power apparently went out at the office. Kevin texted us designers earlier this morning to tell us the office was closed. Dan's planning to head in later on anyway to get some stuff taken care of.

Chris already has a two hour layover in San Francisco, so that he's not scheduled to arrive until 7:20PM tonight instead of late this afternoon. I hope his flights are okay. =(

Redmond Snow Report

Well. So. It's been a wintry week of snow.

Dan and I went to a farewell get together for Ray and Raney, who are moving to the East Coast. Ray got a job with Bethesda which is good for them but sad for us. The party was a friend of theirs in Bothell and there were some hills that were sort of scary for me.

I love how pretty snow looks but icy streets are something else. I worried myself into a near-migraine as we drove back home. Not that I worry about Dan's driving; he's from Ohio, where snow is a known quantity. I worried about other drivers taking on much more than they can really handle.

It's snowing now again. Our entire yard is a huge mound of snow. The winds last night swept together drifts against the glass door of our deck. It covered the front walk that I'd swept yesterday morning. I can't tell how much has actually fallen any more as it's blown around, melted underneath into ice and blown around again.

I really hope Chris's flight tomorrow won't be too horribly affected by the weather. Bonnie's already canceled her trip so we won't get to see her after all. =( On the bright side (kind of), at least Chris isn't going to miss work during the week if he needs to wait for another flight. We scheduled his flights to avoid as many work nights for him as possible. With so much snow and ice on the ground, though, I am a-feared of lending him Old Paint to toodle around with up here, especially given the hills around his dad's place.

My latest knitting project is a hat for Dan from a lovely mossy wool. It should be done by this afternoon and then I'll go back to finishing up my second Lady Eleanor, which I'd put aside to work on Xmas gifts and stuff for other people.

Evil has a New Name

For even though we have two visitors (Chotto on the left, Niea on the right), it is Chotto who's tearing it up.

Damage (that I know of) so far:

--Mynocks chewed through the power cables...our led Christmas tree lights are out. Not only did Chotto chew through them, he ate part of the wires. While they were on.

--Knocked over my huge fern and its plant stand. Onto the heater. A forced air heater, but heat nonetheless.

--Destroyed an as-yet-unhung cascade of mylar snowflakes.

We will be locking them back into their room at night.

Grrr! Crash! Bang! Aiee!

That's what it sounded like at, oh, I dunno, 6AM in our house.

Apparently Chotto was exploring the highest reaches of our laundry room, which includes wire shelving upon which we store things. Scared up there, no doubt, but Basement Cat who caught him in a room with only one exit.

After the scrambling settled, Dan got out to see what had happened and found Scooter's folding cat carrier on the floor. Chotto must've surfed it down off the wire shelves.

It's going to be a looooong day.

It could have been worse. They could've been climbing our tree, with all its breakable ornaments. Let us hope they cannot read blogs and now have a new idea in their little heads.

Supposed to snow again here during the day, but I must take Old Paint out to the emissions testing place (smog testing to y'all in California) as my tabs are up for renewal. I could have, had I been an efficient woman, done this earlier. But that's not my way. So instead, I need to head up a hill on a snowy day in my rear-wheel drive vehicle and hope for the best.

A Leisurely Weekend

Despite the snow (only a little over an inch), Dan and I went for a short walk around the neighborhood. That's the first walk I've taken since the 3-Day. It probably took us longer to bundle up than the amount of time we were outside!

Started playing Mass Effect this morning. Dan dug it out and has been playing for the past couple of days again, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's essentially KotOR without the Star Wars overlay. You have your ancient aliens rediscovered, a dude who's gone off and disappeared and now he's your guyses enemy, love interests and dark/light side choices in dialog.

So far, I don't really like the opening chest mini-game as the penalty is too harsh for failure. Watching Dan driving around in combat is pretty intense, too, as the vehicle is somewhat cumbersome and reacts in peculiar ways. It can't just back up, for example; it executes a three-point turn. Not good when the enemy is firing on your ass!

All the cats know about all the other cats at last, as Niea came downstairs and introduced herself to Melody this morning. Other than a broken snowman (we think it was Chotto trying to leap into a shelf), nothing terrible has happened. And it was pretty funny when Mittens was growling at Scooter and Niea came up to help him :) The three of them were at a total impasse for quite some time!

It supposed to be cold this whole week. I like cold, but not freezing. Hence, a fire again! And mulled cider! And soon, another go at Mass Effect. Bwahahahaha!

At last!

It's finally snowing.

Yay!

Dan made us mulled cider and we have a fire in our wood stove, which warms the downstairs living area quite nicely.

Upstairs, we have visitors. Jose's cats, Niea and Chotto are staying with us while Jose is in SoCal for the holidays. After keeping them separated, we opened up the back bedroom door this morning and they are wandering around pretty cautiously. I'd be cautious, too, if my welcoming committee (aka Scooter, the Basement Cat) was snarling at me.

Butch snoozes on the Bark-o-lounger. Mittens is curled up on my leather pillows before the fire. Scooter lies between me and Dan on the sofa. Melody is on our bed. And the two other cats are doing who-knows-what upstairs tonight.

Snowy Day

We don't have one =(

Yet! =)

Little tiny bits of fluff are floating down around our house, but nothing like the snowstorm that had been predicted yesterday and then recanted by 4PM. Still, it's so cool to see the little white sprinklings.

More are falling. Maybe it'll stick.

Yay!

This morning I was in panic, having found out late last night (as in, after game night) that Heidi's baby blanket wasn't where I thought it was. As I scurried around this morning getting ready, Dan continued the hunt and finally located about five minutes before I had to leave.

Yay! Best boyfriend ever!

Unfortunately, Heidi didn't get to join our party after all, so baby blanket came back to my place. I hope I don't lose it again.

I had a lovely day, shopping the craft fair followed by late lunch at Bamboo Garden. If only my stupid cell phone hadn't died, leaving me wondering whether Heidi tried to call us later or what. Stupid cell phone =(

And I also got to meet one of my favorite bloggers, Jessie aka Cakespy! And she was wearing an owl-covered apron (which I didn't even realize at first, having been smitten into fangirl babbling), so Pui-di took a picture of us together.

Yay!

Cool and Not Cool

Cool: Urban Craft Uprising, to which Candyce, Lorien and myself will be carpooling from the Eastside to meet up with Pui-di and maybe later the best attorney chick I know, Heidi.

Not Cool: Last year I knit a baby blanket for Heidi while I was in Kiev. It's been folded tidily into a little box ever since. A box which I thought was carefully placed in our bedroom so that I could give it to her as soon as opportunity presented. Here it is, a year after Lil Peep's birth and I still have the blankie...but not in the box wherein I thought it had been peacefully residing.

I have no idea where it is =(

Dear gods above, do not let me have knit a little blankie for someone and then have given it to Goodwill by mistake. On purpose is one thing, but by mistake sucks.

I've been tearing up the house this morning looking for it. Found some of the cherubs' Christmas ornaments back to when they were babies. No blankie for Lil Peep.

So lame. =(

Dear Old Paint

As the paint disappears from Old Paint, I've often joked that it would be nice if someone would smack Old Paint hard enough to allow me to take it in and get it re-painted, but not so hard that anyone would get hurt.

And so, last week, as I rounded the corner from the grocery store laden with Thanksgiving goods, a blonde woman in an SUV turned into the front left fender of my car, then drove blythely away.

Fortunately, the cars behind us also making that turn graciously allowed me to speed up, change lanes and follow her, signaling all the while for her to get her ass over to the side of the road.

When she finally pulled over, she said all wide-eyed, "But I didn't even hit you!"

I was afraid she wouldn't exchange her info with me, so I hopped out of Old Paint and took photos of her car with my cell phone.

"What are you doing? What are you taking pictures of?" she asked nervously. She looked at the pushed in fender on my car with a swathe of white across it and rubbed her paint off my car with her fingertips. "I don't see any damage," she said.

It wasn't quite the painting hit I had been joking about as I don't think the hood was affected at all, but it's fairly obvious that the fender is bent where it meets the front bumper.

All the while, she kept protesting that she hadn't hit me, even though she had drifted into my lane on a turn.

Finally got her info and told her I'd take my car in to get an estimate. She asked me to please not turn it in to her insurance. She even tried to insinuate that Old Paint, a low rider by design, had somehow lifted up and scratched her Cadillac SVU along its fender, where we both saw a long black scratch and dent. If Old Paint could fly, maybe!

In any case, I'll need to make an appointment to have the fender checked. The episode left me pretty anxious and shaky, even though it wasn't extremely damaging. I hate car incidents. Old Paint may not be much of a looker, but he's my car and ain't no one gonna diss my ride!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The coffee pot is burbling away (Dan set it up last night so I could wake up to a pot of liquid love...so to speak)...there are pink-tinged clouds across the pale blue sky...Mittens is wandering the living room, checking things out. Everyone else is asleep (except maybe for Ed, who I suspect is already awake and exercising).

It is the calm before the storm!

Yesterday, poor Candyce was exhausted and couldn't come by, but that did not stop me from cooking! We have some lovely offerings for our feast: Mrs. Stamberg's cranberry relish; two punkin pies; raspberry mazurkas; a platter heaped with chocolate gingerbread. We ate the corners of the gingerbread last night after dinner and it was all we could do to not dive in to the rest of the platter. I also made some zucchini fritters, which in my lexicon is zucchini marinated in caesar dressing, then coated in panko and baked till done.

The brining turkey is in its very own cooler on the back patio (where it is something like 37 degrees...I don't know exactly but it's freakin cold out). Soon I shall go back to the kitchen to begin the workings of a vegetarian-friendly bread and butter dressing and maple-glazed sweet potatoes.

From my house, I can see lights on in other houses and know that therein may be other priestesses of carbs, gloating over their stuff and prepping for their day. It's a satisfying feeling to know that there are lots of other folks doing the same things in their own ways. Like tradition.

The room smells slightly of gingerbread and wood smoke (we sat in front of the fireplace and burned real wood logs in it last night). It's quiet.

I hope y'all have a lovely Thanksgiving day with lots of carbs and happy memories to store away!

Day of Baking

Nothing fills my heart with such gladness as does baking. I love fluttering around the kitchen, setting out bowls and butter, spices and sugars. The glorious, rich scent of baked goods is orgasmic in the extreme.

And I love eating baked goods. Bakeries are a weakness of mine.

I don't do as much baking as I used to, although in the past couple of years I've been doing more of it. It's a process I enjoy.

Dan's dad suggested he stop by a bakery to pick stuff up to save me time. I cackled gleefully. Save me time? No...provide more baked goods, that's what! Hahaha! Dan convinced him that I would be perfectly happy puttering, so they are not going to a bakery after all.

Candyce is going to stop by today, in her guise as assistant to the high priestess of carbs.

I love baking!

Yes, Honey!

The game went rather well, with Ohio State beating Michigan rather handily. They brought in their former starting quarterback (a senior) and he threw a touchdown pass. How nice!

In the afternoon, Dan's dad (Ed) mentioned a hankering for a chocolate cake. Dutifully, I consulted my cookbooks and decided that the only cake which would not require me to make a trip to the store was Nigella Lawson's Honey-bee Cake.

Oh, my goodness. My sweet, sticky, chocolately goodness. Ed helped me by licking out the batter bowl and wondering why I'd bothered putting the rest of it into the oven. He also helped clean up the spatula much later when I glazed the cake. And later still, when we removed the glaze-covered strips of parchment paper from beneath the cake, he set those aside and cleaned them up as well.

And then he had two generous slices of cake with a large glass of milk.

I'd say it turned out rather well. I will make another one for game night at Candyce's sometime as it's really incredibly decadent. Mmm, decadence!

Ohio State v. Michigan

This is the true test of Love.

I will be watching the "greatest rivalry in college football" (according to the commentators) with Dan and his dad.

Aiee!

Page 56

This game is going around Facebook and it reminds me of how Barb and I used to read random sentences to each other from different books when we were kids. So easily amused, we were :) Copying in the rules as posted by Karen Clark:

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

The book closest to me happens to be Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac, which is a lovely chatty discussion of knitting projects to be done throughout the year.

My sentence is: You may also increase every second or every fourth round.

I love the fact that all the other responses in Karen's thread (since she's from BioWare) seem to be books on games, writing or game strategy guides :D

It's Really Over =(

Congrats to the EQII team for launching another cool expansion today! Yay!

It's the first one I had absolutely nothing to do with. Zip! Nada!

Feels really weird to me. Sometimes I still feel as though it's "my" game, but I know that everything is different there. The team is different, the way the game's put together has changed and they're doing stuff now that I'm not familiar with. Bittersweet, it is.

Swept the floor and mopped tonight in preparation for Dan's dad's arrival. Didn't clean up as much as I thought I would, though. Possibly I'm just lazy. Or maybe it's that I don't think anyone cares about this crap as much as I do.

In Today's News...

Dan's dad will be here for a couple of weeks starting on Wednesday. We've been picking up stuff and generally trying to pretend we're, you know, like, grown-ups who can take care of a house.

I am not sure we are that successful, but we try!

Today's adventure was finding a way to get our Rock Band guitars off the floor. They'd been in little baskets by the TV which was fine, other than they detracted from Ninja Dude's coolness by cluttering up his background.

After consulting on the internets and traipsing through the hardware store, we finally ended up at a music shop where we bought real guitar hanger-upper-thingers. Our two Rock Band guitars are now Art in the hallway. And Ninja Dude stands out again!

I like playing the drums in Rock Band 2 as it's a heckuva lot easier for me to follow along. The guitar stuff always throws me off and I'm not comfortable singing songs that I don't know. Somehow, sitting behind the little drum set is okay. I think there are maybe 3 songs total that I've ever heard of before. Since I don't know the rest of them, I just focus on those little colored lines and the beat.

Still playing on easy mode, but that's challenging enough for me. :)

I can haz...

...an illness =(

Comment Oddness

Okay, while I thought I had had this fixed, now (using Safari), when I click on the comments link, it opens up a page with the code for the page and not the comments fields.

Sigh.

Going to try opening a comment with IE 7 and see whether that works.

Y'all know where to email me to offer suggestions. Not to work, please, use one of my fifty personal email addresses.

Thanks!

Zombies 4 Life

Wow, what a miserable week this past one has been. Quite a number of folks at the office, including me and Dan, were stricken by a really virulent flu-type infection. Everyone's symptoms ran along similar paths, although some folks had throbbing headaches while some of us had fevers.

Five days after it first hit me, I'm still weak and lethargic. Feeding the dog and watering my plants this morning was exhausting. Blech. I hate this.

Spent some time working on my sweater, Sunshine. The Knit-Along ends in a couple of weeks and I have just finished the body and begun one of the sleeves. Fortunately, I set aside two skeins of my Karaoke Mermaid Mix whose color stripes begin exactly at the point I need for each sleeve. Yay!

If I weren't so tired from the flu (or whatever this was), I'd have gotten it done by now. Oh, well. It's going along faster than I had anticipated, being my first sweater and all.

Fortunately, it has an inset of lace down the sleeves so that I don't need to count row by tedious row to match both of my sleeves. Instead, I'll be keeping count of the pattern, which is rows of 10. Still counting, but much less difficult for the math-challenged such as myself!

We're having Chinese food delivered tonight. Neither of us is up to cooking or going to pick something up.

Except maybe brains. We zombies love them.

Still Tired =/

After a week of crunching, I definitely wanted a weekend. However, though we only had to work an 8 hour day, we still had to get through the company "holiday party."

When it was originally scheduled back in December, streets were still blanketed in snow so it was moved till the end of January. That was before they knew we'd be working an end-of-cycle crunch, though. Made for an exceptionally long week.

Still, it was a more fun than I had anticipated. I envisioned tables full of exhausted coworkers with their faces planted, snoring, into plates of canapes. Fortunately, they rose to the challenge!

The highlight for me, next to my little cherub Phil joining us, was that the murder mystery solution chosen as the winner was mine. When Chuck and Lorien were left for last as the accused, I was like, "Oh! I picked them, too!" Then as the announcer continued to read, I realized it was my story. Hahaha!
As Dan put it, how nice that one of our team's writers won. :)

Saturday I spent cleaning up and thinking about cleaning up. Today, however, all I've done is laundry. In fact, I should go fold clothes.

Waking Up Early

I've grown used to game company hours: in late, stay late. Rinse, repeat.

It's now 7:10AM and I am getting ready for work...and that seems awfully early to me. And yet, five years ago I'd have already been at work with the law firm, opening up the office and setting the first (of many!) pots o'coffee to brew. They allowed me to come in early and leave early so that I could carpool home with Rob.

And eleven years ago, when I was still at Regence Blue Shield, I was at my desk by 6:30AM (aieeee!) so that I could leave at 2:30PM and pick up the little cherubs at 3PM from school.

I didn't think I'd like getting in to work so late. 9:45AM - 6:45PM? Who the hell works those kinds of lazy hours?!

ME! =)

I grew to enjoy getting up and pittering around the apartment before heading to work. I could schedule all my doctor's or vet's appointments for 8AM and still be at work on time. Yippee!

Now, however, I prefer to stay abed through the first hour of the alarm, getting up only when absolutely necessary to get to the office. The bed is cozy, often filled with various combinations of pets, and NPR is so soothing (most of the time, anyway).

We're working ten hour days through Thursday, so I have gotten up way early. My pain killers for my shoulder are wearing off and I'm dragging a bit. After my blog update, it's off to the showers and then through the snow to work.

For yes, it hath snowed again, although not so much as in December. Here in Redmond, tis a light dusting of less than an inch. The cold has allowed it to stay on and freeze a bit. Today's forecast is for another inch or two.

Brrrr!

Day Off

Suddenly, I had to take the day off because the preceeding 24 hours were ass.

[This is an example of starting the story 3/4ths of the way in to bring the reader directly to the crisis, getting them to ask What? Huh? and then explaining it once they've become sucked into your narrative. Or something.]

It probably wasn't the entire 24 hours; parts of the day were just fine. But Dan and I had had to get up very early to get to the doctor's for his foot (he has acute tendonitis; we are not sure how Scooter did it). I haven't been sleeping well as my left shoulder is completely whacked out. Some of my work thingers were not flowing. An abstract I'd submitted for a conference was rejected (although they graciously asked me to submit another topic and gave me extra time in which to do so).

What did me in is Old Paint.

Old Paint's left headlamp has been a nightmare for years. Sometimes it's on, sometimes it's off. For a while, a simple smack on the hood would restore it, but those days are long past. I've electrical taped it up, but apparently that's failing now too. Indeed, I will often fix the lamp and by the time I leap into the car, I can watch as it slowly fades out.

And then, the right side lamp went out. At night. Dan and I drove home with the brights on because there is no guarantee that the left lamp would remain lit for more than a couple of minutes.

The very next day (yesterday) I decided to go to the auto parts store to buy a new lamp and maybe something that would help me keep the left lamp going. On the way, I stopped at Tuesday Morning for their post-Christmas goodies sale and found a couple of things that I wanted. It was at the register that I discovered my wallet was not in my purse.

It was the straw that broke my strength of mind. I went back to the office, disheartened and sad, determined to take a day off. And when I used the online form, it broke.

Sigh.

At least today turned out relatively well. Went back and got my Tuesday Morning stuff. Got the headlamp and some gasket thinger to use on the other lamp. Knit more sweater. Played some Puzzle Quest. Now awaiting pizza delivery dude.

Hmmm....

Apparently the comments are slightly weird, occasionally, although they work sometimes. I have no idea how to fix them. This is one of them thar pre-made templates so when I look at the code, all I see is #@$!%%!!!

And that's what I say while looking at it, too.

Maybe I'll just switch to a different template and see if that works. Too tired to do so tonight.

Sunshine (the sweater) is at a dividing point, where I put the sleeve bits onto bits of waste yarn while I finish off the body bits. Later on, I come back to do the sleeve bits.

Dan tried on the sock I finished tonight, hereinafter referred to as The Sock That Was Too Small. It fit along the foot, but the heel and the leg portions were short. So I did what any good knitter does; I frogged it.

Cast on for them again but will begin actual knitting on them tomorrow. Maybe.

Mean Girls

I've never seen the movie before but it's on TV now and it's pretty funny. =)

It's Not Contagious!

Poor Dan. I swear he didn't get it from me, but he's been limping and has a doctor's appointment tomorrow for his foot. =/

New Look

I'm trying out a new look for Ye Olde Blogge. What do you think?

Sunshine

...on my shoulders...in this photo:

Sunshine...on my shoulders...looks so lovely!

((sorry, John Denver, I couldn't help it...but I'm not the one who named this pattern anyway))

I'm using a soy/wool blend with beautiful teal-purple colors. It's called Mermaid Mix, although after looking at the photos I thought, "It looks more like Oil Slick." But it's very soft and gorgeous.

The only problem is that Sunshine is a long-sleeved cardigan and that means I will be fretting about matching colors on both sleeves with the body. That won't be very easy. So I'm keeping open the possibility that I may need to buy something solid to form a large "stripe" on the sleeve.

Also right now: knitting a hat for myself, about 80% done on my second Lady Eleanor and bought grey wool to make Dan's a pair of socks. Plus the skulls baby blanket for Jack, who turned one last month.

We'll see how it goes. Oddly, the stuff I knit for myself seems to be taking forever. I guess it's the lack of urgency as I don't need to finish them for Christmas or something. Maybe I need to set a personal goal to finish things!

Knitting Along

I've really enjoyed knitting; I think that's not much of a surprise to anyone who's been reading this here blog! But I've never really tackled anything particularly difficult.

When I think about all the projects I've been doing, they sort of grow one into the next in terms of techniques. The first baby blanket I knit, for Amy and Isaac, was pretty simply constructed on a diagonal with lacy yarn overs. I learned how to do increases and later realized all the yarn overs in that blanket are done incorrectly! I'd just learned how to knit Continental and was still shaky on the differences between that and the English method.

Now I know better :)

Once my friends stopped having babies, I began branching out into scarves with different yarn types. Poor Candyce received one of the experiments: a super bulky purple keyhole scarf that, though I used huge needles and made "skinnier" than normal, is still dense enough to choke a llama (and I'll re-knit if for you, Can, if you unearth it!).

Each project helped me see how stitches ought to sit; how increases and decreases matched up; how to pick up stitches; how to cast on in different ways. I've been on Ravelry for a year now and it opened up a whole new world of projects and possibilities!

My "stash" of yarn is now more wool and natural fibers than the boxes of acrylics that I had gotten from Suz, via Broos. I've knit with alpaca, silk, wool, soy and now have a hank of yarn made of banana fiber. Bananas! I've learned how to wind hanks of yarn into neat center-pull balls.

I've further learned that it takes viewing both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to wind 1,400 yards of laceweight yarn into a ball by hand. =)

My foray into fingerless gloves taught me about kntting small things in the round, which naturally led to the year-end sock project. My new socks are nice and warm; I've worn them several times now. Can't wait to make more, to try out more techniques.

And so, I am participating in a Knit-Along (abbreviated as KAL, because knitters are funny that way) that takes obscure-but-cool projects and knits them at the same time. It provides a support group of folks who are doing the same project while not confining one to knitting at the same time and place as everyone else.

I chose to knit Sunshine, a cute pullover. Hopefully all the techniques I've learned thus far will help me make it fit for a two-armed human to wear!

New Year Stuffs!

2008 was a pretty cool year for me. :) One of the nicest things was falling in love with Dan :) Also having cherubs gradumuate from high school and junior college...it's so awesome to see them growing smarter and stuff. Muahahahaha!

Last year was filled with learning new things with knitting. Definitely a year of lots of fun projects! And to end the year by learning how to knit socks...well, that was something I didn't really foresee at the beginning of the year.

I have yarn coming next week which includes several skeins of yarn with which I shall make more socks. Yay!

Currently feeling slothly. It's snowing (again!). Chris and Sonya are still asleep. Probably exhausted after leading the cops a merry chase through Bellevue...I shall need to tease them about it later, although it was somewhat alarming to wake up and notice that there were flashing red and blue lights reflecting on the ceiling of my bedroom.

Apparently, Old Paint caught the cop's eye as it was down one headlight (stupid Old Paint) and bereft of current tabs (which are on the list of things for me to pick up...they should be at the licensing place). Dan was up when the kids came in and found that they'd been stopped for the headlight and tabs earlier and then the same cop caught them again just outside our cul de sac and thought he was getting another victim instead of the same ones.

I made a fearful mistake in my second pair of gothic fingerless gloves to wear to Lorien's wedding tomorrow and had to rip back to the thumb. I wanted to add a ruffle and it turned out nicely on the right hand, but I started the ruffle too far over on the left hand. Set it aside to update my blog as it was pretty annoying to find out that sort of error after binding off and I don't want to knit in frustration.

Happy New Year, all y'all!

The End of Snowy Days

As it warms up, the snow is melting away. This photo is from Christmas Eve, when it was still freezing cold and snowing. I had gone out to shovel our deck, afraid that the weight of the snow and ice upon it might be too stressful. And it was! For me. I stopped shoveling after a half hour and only managed to clear a small strip around our grill.

Today it's mostly melted into a sad shadow of its former glory. I haven't taken photos of it yet. Mostly, I've been hanging out with Chris and Dan. Phil's gone back to his dad's so he could get to his work (although there's a good chance he'll come back up tomorrow).

And late tomorrow night, Chris' girlfriend Sonya will arrive. They'll be chillin' with us, literally. We found that the guest room where Chris has been sleeping has practically no insulation whatsoever. Merely hanging a blanket over the window increased the temperature remarkably. Today we bought some plastic sheeting stuff to cover the window. Instead of a room that's about 40 degrees, Chris and Sonya will have a balmy 50 degree room.

Yay?

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Dan and I are settling in for the night, watching It's a Wonderful Life on CBC. It's cold out. We have a fire in the fireplace, tree is lit (thanks to some electrical tape on the bits of wire that Chotto ate), our roast beast dinner was consumed.

We are all cozy for the night.

Happy holidays, y'all!

Snow Day...

Dan and I braved the elements yesterday to go to the store. It was a bit slushy and icy and by the time we got back home I was very, very glad to be home again!

And then it snowed more over night. Photos of lovely snowy scenes are up on my Flickr page.

Power apparently went out at the office. Kevin texted us designers earlier this morning to tell us the office was closed. Dan's planning to head in later on anyway to get some stuff taken care of.

Chris already has a two hour layover in San Francisco, so that he's not scheduled to arrive until 7:20PM tonight instead of late this afternoon. I hope his flights are okay. =(

Redmond Snow Report

Well. So. It's been a wintry week of snow.

Dan and I went to a farewell get together for Ray and Raney, who are moving to the East Coast. Ray got a job with Bethesda which is good for them but sad for us. The party was a friend of theirs in Bothell and there were some hills that were sort of scary for me.

I love how pretty snow looks but icy streets are something else. I worried myself into a near-migraine as we drove back home. Not that I worry about Dan's driving; he's from Ohio, where snow is a known quantity. I worried about other drivers taking on much more than they can really handle.

It's snowing now again. Our entire yard is a huge mound of snow. The winds last night swept together drifts against the glass door of our deck. It covered the front walk that I'd swept yesterday morning. I can't tell how much has actually fallen any more as it's blown around, melted underneath into ice and blown around again.

I really hope Chris's flight tomorrow won't be too horribly affected by the weather. Bonnie's already canceled her trip so we won't get to see her after all. =( On the bright side (kind of), at least Chris isn't going to miss work during the week if he needs to wait for another flight. We scheduled his flights to avoid as many work nights for him as possible. With so much snow and ice on the ground, though, I am a-feared of lending him Old Paint to toodle around with up here, especially given the hills around his dad's place.

My latest knitting project is a hat for Dan from a lovely mossy wool. It should be done by this afternoon and then I'll go back to finishing up my second Lady Eleanor, which I'd put aside to work on Xmas gifts and stuff for other people.

Evil has a New Name

For even though we have two visitors (Chotto on the left, Niea on the right), it is Chotto who's tearing it up.

Damage (that I know of) so far:

--Mynocks chewed through the power cables...our led Christmas tree lights are out. Not only did Chotto chew through them, he ate part of the wires. While they were on.

--Knocked over my huge fern and its plant stand. Onto the heater. A forced air heater, but heat nonetheless.

--Destroyed an as-yet-unhung cascade of mylar snowflakes.

We will be locking them back into their room at night.

Grrr! Crash! Bang! Aiee!

That's what it sounded like at, oh, I dunno, 6AM in our house.

Apparently Chotto was exploring the highest reaches of our laundry room, which includes wire shelving upon which we store things. Scared up there, no doubt, but Basement Cat who caught him in a room with only one exit.

After the scrambling settled, Dan got out to see what had happened and found Scooter's folding cat carrier on the floor. Chotto must've surfed it down off the wire shelves.

It's going to be a looooong day.

It could have been worse. They could've been climbing our tree, with all its breakable ornaments. Let us hope they cannot read blogs and now have a new idea in their little heads.

Supposed to snow again here during the day, but I must take Old Paint out to the emissions testing place (smog testing to y'all in California) as my tabs are up for renewal. I could have, had I been an efficient woman, done this earlier. But that's not my way. So instead, I need to head up a hill on a snowy day in my rear-wheel drive vehicle and hope for the best.

A Leisurely Weekend

Despite the snow (only a little over an inch), Dan and I went for a short walk around the neighborhood. That's the first walk I've taken since the 3-Day. It probably took us longer to bundle up than the amount of time we were outside!

Started playing Mass Effect this morning. Dan dug it out and has been playing for the past couple of days again, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's essentially KotOR without the Star Wars overlay. You have your ancient aliens rediscovered, a dude who's gone off and disappeared and now he's your guyses enemy, love interests and dark/light side choices in dialog.

So far, I don't really like the opening chest mini-game as the penalty is too harsh for failure. Watching Dan driving around in combat is pretty intense, too, as the vehicle is somewhat cumbersome and reacts in peculiar ways. It can't just back up, for example; it executes a three-point turn. Not good when the enemy is firing on your ass!

All the cats know about all the other cats at last, as Niea came downstairs and introduced herself to Melody this morning. Other than a broken snowman (we think it was Chotto trying to leap into a shelf), nothing terrible has happened. And it was pretty funny when Mittens was growling at Scooter and Niea came up to help him :) The three of them were at a total impasse for quite some time!

It supposed to be cold this whole week. I like cold, but not freezing. Hence, a fire again! And mulled cider! And soon, another go at Mass Effect. Bwahahahaha!

At last!

It's finally snowing.

Yay!

Dan made us mulled cider and we have a fire in our wood stove, which warms the downstairs living area quite nicely.

Upstairs, we have visitors. Jose's cats, Niea and Chotto are staying with us while Jose is in SoCal for the holidays. After keeping them separated, we opened up the back bedroom door this morning and they are wandering around pretty cautiously. I'd be cautious, too, if my welcoming committee (aka Scooter, the Basement Cat) was snarling at me.

Butch snoozes on the Bark-o-lounger. Mittens is curled up on my leather pillows before the fire. Scooter lies between me and Dan on the sofa. Melody is on our bed. And the two other cats are doing who-knows-what upstairs tonight.

Snowy Day

We don't have one =(

Yet! =)

Little tiny bits of fluff are floating down around our house, but nothing like the snowstorm that had been predicted yesterday and then recanted by 4PM. Still, it's so cool to see the little white sprinklings.

More are falling. Maybe it'll stick.

Yay!

This morning I was in panic, having found out late last night (as in, after game night) that Heidi's baby blanket wasn't where I thought it was. As I scurried around this morning getting ready, Dan continued the hunt and finally located about five minutes before I had to leave.

Yay! Best boyfriend ever!

Unfortunately, Heidi didn't get to join our party after all, so baby blanket came back to my place. I hope I don't lose it again.

I had a lovely day, shopping the craft fair followed by late lunch at Bamboo Garden. If only my stupid cell phone hadn't died, leaving me wondering whether Heidi tried to call us later or what. Stupid cell phone =(

And I also got to meet one of my favorite bloggers, Jessie aka Cakespy! And she was wearing an owl-covered apron (which I didn't even realize at first, having been smitten into fangirl babbling), so Pui-di took a picture of us together.

Yay!

Cool and Not Cool

Cool: Urban Craft Uprising, to which Candyce, Lorien and myself will be carpooling from the Eastside to meet up with Pui-di and maybe later the best attorney chick I know, Heidi.

Not Cool: Last year I knit a baby blanket for Heidi while I was in Kiev. It's been folded tidily into a little box ever since. A box which I thought was carefully placed in our bedroom so that I could give it to her as soon as opportunity presented. Here it is, a year after Lil Peep's birth and I still have the blankie...but not in the box wherein I thought it had been peacefully residing.

I have no idea where it is =(

Dear gods above, do not let me have knit a little blankie for someone and then have given it to Goodwill by mistake. On purpose is one thing, but by mistake sucks.

I've been tearing up the house this morning looking for it. Found some of the cherubs' Christmas ornaments back to when they were babies. No blankie for Lil Peep.

So lame. =(

Dear Old Paint

As the paint disappears from Old Paint, I've often joked that it would be nice if someone would smack Old Paint hard enough to allow me to take it in and get it re-painted, but not so hard that anyone would get hurt.

And so, last week, as I rounded the corner from the grocery store laden with Thanksgiving goods, a blonde woman in an SUV turned into the front left fender of my car, then drove blythely away.

Fortunately, the cars behind us also making that turn graciously allowed me to speed up, change lanes and follow her, signaling all the while for her to get her ass over to the side of the road.

When she finally pulled over, she said all wide-eyed, "But I didn't even hit you!"

I was afraid she wouldn't exchange her info with me, so I hopped out of Old Paint and took photos of her car with my cell phone.

"What are you doing? What are you taking pictures of?" she asked nervously. She looked at the pushed in fender on my car with a swathe of white across it and rubbed her paint off my car with her fingertips. "I don't see any damage," she said.

It wasn't quite the painting hit I had been joking about as I don't think the hood was affected at all, but it's fairly obvious that the fender is bent where it meets the front bumper.

All the while, she kept protesting that she hadn't hit me, even though she had drifted into my lane on a turn.

Finally got her info and told her I'd take my car in to get an estimate. She asked me to please not turn it in to her insurance. She even tried to insinuate that Old Paint, a low rider by design, had somehow lifted up and scratched her Cadillac SVU along its fender, where we both saw a long black scratch and dent. If Old Paint could fly, maybe!

In any case, I'll need to make an appointment to have the fender checked. The episode left me pretty anxious and shaky, even though it wasn't extremely damaging. I hate car incidents. Old Paint may not be much of a looker, but he's my car and ain't no one gonna diss my ride!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The coffee pot is burbling away (Dan set it up last night so I could wake up to a pot of liquid love...so to speak)...there are pink-tinged clouds across the pale blue sky...Mittens is wandering the living room, checking things out. Everyone else is asleep (except maybe for Ed, who I suspect is already awake and exercising).

It is the calm before the storm!

Yesterday, poor Candyce was exhausted and couldn't come by, but that did not stop me from cooking! We have some lovely offerings for our feast: Mrs. Stamberg's cranberry relish; two punkin pies; raspberry mazurkas; a platter heaped with chocolate gingerbread. We ate the corners of the gingerbread last night after dinner and it was all we could do to not dive in to the rest of the platter. I also made some zucchini fritters, which in my lexicon is zucchini marinated in caesar dressing, then coated in panko and baked till done.

The brining turkey is in its very own cooler on the back patio (where it is something like 37 degrees...I don't know exactly but it's freakin cold out). Soon I shall go back to the kitchen to begin the workings of a vegetarian-friendly bread and butter dressing and maple-glazed sweet potatoes.

From my house, I can see lights on in other houses and know that therein may be other priestesses of carbs, gloating over their stuff and prepping for their day. It's a satisfying feeling to know that there are lots of other folks doing the same things in their own ways. Like tradition.

The room smells slightly of gingerbread and wood smoke (we sat in front of the fireplace and burned real wood logs in it last night). It's quiet.

I hope y'all have a lovely Thanksgiving day with lots of carbs and happy memories to store away!

Day of Baking

Nothing fills my heart with such gladness as does baking. I love fluttering around the kitchen, setting out bowls and butter, spices and sugars. The glorious, rich scent of baked goods is orgasmic in the extreme.

And I love eating baked goods. Bakeries are a weakness of mine.

I don't do as much baking as I used to, although in the past couple of years I've been doing more of it. It's a process I enjoy.

Dan's dad suggested he stop by a bakery to pick stuff up to save me time. I cackled gleefully. Save me time? No...provide more baked goods, that's what! Hahaha! Dan convinced him that I would be perfectly happy puttering, so they are not going to a bakery after all.

Candyce is going to stop by today, in her guise as assistant to the high priestess of carbs.

I love baking!

Yes, Honey!

The game went rather well, with Ohio State beating Michigan rather handily. They brought in their former starting quarterback (a senior) and he threw a touchdown pass. How nice!

In the afternoon, Dan's dad (Ed) mentioned a hankering for a chocolate cake. Dutifully, I consulted my cookbooks and decided that the only cake which would not require me to make a trip to the store was Nigella Lawson's Honey-bee Cake.

Oh, my goodness. My sweet, sticky, chocolately goodness. Ed helped me by licking out the batter bowl and wondering why I'd bothered putting the rest of it into the oven. He also helped clean up the spatula much later when I glazed the cake. And later still, when we removed the glaze-covered strips of parchment paper from beneath the cake, he set those aside and cleaned them up as well.

And then he had two generous slices of cake with a large glass of milk.

I'd say it turned out rather well. I will make another one for game night at Candyce's sometime as it's really incredibly decadent. Mmm, decadence!

Ohio State v. Michigan

This is the true test of Love.

I will be watching the "greatest rivalry in college football" (according to the commentators) with Dan and his dad.

Aiee!

Page 56

This game is going around Facebook and it reminds me of how Barb and I used to read random sentences to each other from different books when we were kids. So easily amused, we were :) Copying in the rules as posted by Karen Clark:

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

The book closest to me happens to be Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac, which is a lovely chatty discussion of knitting projects to be done throughout the year.

My sentence is: You may also increase every second or every fourth round.

I love the fact that all the other responses in Karen's thread (since she's from BioWare) seem to be books on games, writing or game strategy guides :D

It's Really Over =(

Congrats to the EQII team for launching another cool expansion today! Yay!

It's the first one I had absolutely nothing to do with. Zip! Nada!

Feels really weird to me. Sometimes I still feel as though it's "my" game, but I know that everything is different there. The team is different, the way the game's put together has changed and they're doing stuff now that I'm not familiar with. Bittersweet, it is.

Swept the floor and mopped tonight in preparation for Dan's dad's arrival. Didn't clean up as much as I thought I would, though. Possibly I'm just lazy. Or maybe it's that I don't think anyone cares about this crap as much as I do.

In Today's News...

Dan's dad will be here for a couple of weeks starting on Wednesday. We've been picking up stuff and generally trying to pretend we're, you know, like, grown-ups who can take care of a house.

I am not sure we are that successful, but we try!

Today's adventure was finding a way to get our Rock Band guitars off the floor. They'd been in little baskets by the TV which was fine, other than they detracted from Ninja Dude's coolness by cluttering up his background.

After consulting on the internets and traipsing through the hardware store, we finally ended up at a music shop where we bought real guitar hanger-upper-thingers. Our two Rock Band guitars are now Art in the hallway. And Ninja Dude stands out again!

I like playing the drums in Rock Band 2 as it's a heckuva lot easier for me to follow along. The guitar stuff always throws me off and I'm not comfortable singing songs that I don't know. Somehow, sitting behind the little drum set is okay. I think there are maybe 3 songs total that I've ever heard of before. Since I don't know the rest of them, I just focus on those little colored lines and the beat.

Still playing on easy mode, but that's challenging enough for me. :)

I can haz...

...an illness =(