the long awaited chicken wing story

First of all, that bitch Rabbitch gave me her cold. All the way from British Columbia. Yup. She's just jealous because she conceded victory to me. And my dishcloths are prettier than hers. And my great-grandfather used to have sex with sheep. (Well, maybe she's not jealous about that last thing.)

The problem is that every single cold I get turns into bronchitis, which means mine will be bronchitis, oh, about...Monday. On my first day of work.

And you never get that second chance to make that first impression, do you?

So this morning my front yard is being literally overrun by robins. There are far more than can been seen in this highly blurry picture, although I have taken the liberty of circling the robins for you.Also this morning, my contractor has not yet shown up. So he just called me. The conversation went something like this:

"I'm down here at the mall, our store was broken into last night."

(I have no idea what mall, where, or what store he's talking about. I just met him yesterday, and he barely spoke to me, my only impression was that he's a Good Old Boy, typical Southern Redneck type, therefore I'm the Little Woman and won't know anything about the Manly Work he's doing about the house, he kept calling me "Ma'am" which is a Southern trait I will never get used to, being that I'm a Damn Yankee, since it's an insult in the North, he looked exactly like Santa Claus and he did a great job fixing the French doors.)

"I'd be happy to come out there tomorrow at your discretion."

I told him that would be fine, and asked if the thieves took a lot of stuff.

"Well, now they didn't take a lot, per se, since it's all stripper clothing, but it's worth a lot."

I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, since I've known enough strippers and have bought enough stripper clothes to know that he is right, but I figured that now wasn't the time nor place to tell him this; I mean, he was carrying on this conversation as if I was supposed to have known which stripper-clothing store he owned. Since I didn't, I couldn't just come out and ask him, right? Am I supposed to casually have my stripper friends hanging around the next time he comes over to see if they magically recognize him from "the store"? What if "the store" is one of "the stores" attached to one of the various clubs around town? Wouldn't my friends go in there dressed in full gear? Because when they're at my house they're dressed down, I promise you. It's not like they're hanging around in their dance clothes, full makeup, seven-inch platform light-up shoes, tear-off thongs, while the rest of us are lying around in jeans or sweatpants (or in my case, pajamas) and t-shirts.

Meanwhile The Man Who Lives in the House is sending me pages asking how the construction is going and when I respond with, "It's not," is not willing to call me from work to find out why not.

Feh.

So. The Man decided last week he wanted chicken wings for dinner. Keep in mind that in the six years we have been together, I have NEVER ONCE seen him eat a chicken wing. No, he wanted wings and he wanted them now. He kept saying, "You know, like when we were in college and we got those buckets of wings delivered." I then had to keep reminding him that he and I were never in college together, that we went to college in two completely different cities and states (he in a sizable seaside college and naval town on the Virginia coast and I in a small college town in upstate New York) and that where I went to college there were no places that delivered buckets of wings and when I went to graduate school I was too poor to get such things so I had no idea what he was talking about, but I thought that both Papa John's and Pizza Hut delivered chicken wings and could we just order from them?

Apparently not.

We had to get in the car and drive around and find a place that served wings, but we weren't going to eat there, we were going to bring the wings home. Oh, and both of us had to go.

So I suggested we go to Three Dollar Cafe in Dunwoody / Sandy Springs. It's about 2 miles from our house and they have good wings. Alternately, I suggested Taco Mac, which we would pass on the way to Three Dollar Cafe. Both are Atlanta franchises and are known for their chicken wings. In fact, we had eaten at a Taco Mac just a month ago, in another part of Roswell.

No, we couldn't go to Taco Mac. Yes, the burger there was great, but we couldn't get wings there out of protest over the fact that their name was Taco Mac and they didn't have enough Mexican food on the menu. Three Dollar was fine but instead of going there we turned in the other direction and tried to go to Buffalo's in Roswell / Norcross, about 4 miles from our house. Keep in mind, that to get there we had to pass another Taco Mac.

We drove to the Buffalo's which was closed. They clearly had moved locations. I suggested going back to Taco Mac, or named five other places nearby which we could try (sports bars, all of which surely had wings). No, he thought there was a Three Dollar Cafe six miles further AWAY from our house. I told him I thought that was a Jock's and Jill's (another Atlanta sports bar franchise). No, he was sure it was a Three Dollar. Ok, honey, sure.

We get there...it's a Jock's and Jill's. I suggest we go there for wings, since they have good wings.

Nope. He turns the car around.

We pass any number of restaurants which would serve wings (including Pizza Hut, KFC, and Papa John's), but none of them are named, as he wants them to be, "Wing King."

We pass Taco Mac.

We pass the second Taco Mac, near the Three Dollar Cafe. He starts to pull in. I tell him in no uncertain terms that no fucking way is he pulling into this Taco Mac when we're so close to the Three Dollar Cafe now.

We finally get to the Three Dollar Cafe, two miles from our house.

They have a big sign up.

"Free delivery within five miles!"

another unclothed day

Due to the arrival of the general contractors at 6:45 AM, this is my current state of (un)dress:Of course, I went out to an appointment, and then went shopping for clothing at Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom's in this state of dress.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to put on underwear of any sort.

Did I mention my footwear is the dead Muppets?So I bought a pair of black trousers, Jones New York, and a skirt, Eileen Fisher, both of which needed to be hemmed. Because I start my new job on Monday, I fly to DC on Sunday morning at the godawful hour of 7 AM. I have a baby shower on Saturday so I really need these by tomorrow. Because I just spent *cough* lots of money *cough* on clothes they were more than happy to do a rush alteration job for me for tomorrow. Until the little alterations man comes in (and I'm already uncomfortable because I'm convinced he can see all the way up the skirt to the fact that I'm going commando, and it's obvious I'm wearing no bra beneath my ancient and faded Siouxsie and the Banshees concert shirt and my gigantic breasts are bobbling about), and the man demands to see my shoes.

I'm not wearing any shoes, I'm wearing dead Muppets.

"But you must be wearing shoes! I cannot do alterations without proper shoes! Cannot determine proper height!" He gets very excited and goes and finds the saleswoman. This causes a ruckus. She and I try to talk him into hemming the pants with my bare feet. "But I don't know height of heel you wear with pants!" I try to explain that I wear all different heights of heels with my pants, so just hem the pants to any old height and I'll be happy as a clam. This upsets him even more and causes more of a ruckus. All of the salespeople are called over and three more people from alterations have to come up. He finally hems the pants in my bare feet, muttering and shaking his head the entire time.

The Stitch DC people finally came through with the final skein of Lobster Pot cashmere, along with the final skein of the blue:I love the color of the blue.

Now, let's turn our attention to my backyard.

Some stupid bird has decided to toss out all of the birdseed on the ground so the stupid squirrels can eat it now, thereby defeating the purpose of putting the birdseed in the bird feeder.Right next to it is evidence of my black thumb.Here is my dead rosemary shrub.I followed all instructions and it still shriveled up and died in fear of living near me. Here is a camelia which bloomed two days ago. It's already dying.Things that grow run away from me. This is why I am never having children. Beans is more than enough. It's amazing he's still alive.

gizoogle dis shiznit

I know we've gotten off track with The Mizzy Colossal Bitch from H-to-tha-izzell (and I have replaced Google with Gizoogle for all of my search engine needs) but I thought if anyone wondered I'd catch you up on my work situation.

'Tis officially no more. That is to say, I am "on vacation" this week, my final week of work.

Thursday I called HR and told them I was giving my notice. It was suggested I give my notice directly to Napoleon's boss, and that Napoleon would not be notified of this in any way. I was to wait until Friday afternoon as I was LITERALLY walking out the door, and hand him my badge, keys and timesheet and tell him I was leaving. I had enough vacation time with Monday being a Federal holiday to take vacation through the rest of my two week notice.

All went well and my employees kept everything on the downlow until Friday morning at about 11:30 AM, when Napoleon himself walked to my desk, which at that point was completely packed up, and I was finishing with some final instructions. It was obvious I was clearing out my desk. He came in and sat down. This was the first time I had seen him in two weeks.

"Gee, are you going somewhere?" (Let's state the obvious, here, people, what a brain trust!)

I looked at him directly, in the eyes, which made him incredibly uncomfortable, and while he was squirming I said, "Today is my last day here." I then my back on him and turned back to my computer.

He interrupted. "Hmm. Job abandonment? Aren't even giving your two week notice?" Nice and snide. Considering he and I fired someone last year for the same reason.

"No, I gave my two week notice already." (Note the complete lack of providing any information on my part which would make his life easier.)

"Well, Rebecca, as your supervisor (you can imagine the condescending tone here), I would expect to receive the two week notice myself."

"Well, (imagine this in a sickly sweet tone of voice) I would expect to give that two week notice to my supervisor only when he or she has earned a modicum of respect from me. In this case, I gave my notice to HR and to your supervisor directly." This insult went directly over his head. My employees also were very upset with me because they only heard the tone of voice and not the words so they thought I was being too nice to him.

He then insisted on a "project close-out meeting." One wonders why, since he did no work. I told him there was no reason for it and I wouldn't attend, and then I called HR and told them I wouldn't attend one, who called him and told him not to have a meeting with me, so he called me and cancelled the meeting but demanded a project close-out email, which I refused to write. He then came to my desk four more times that day and had impromptu meetings anyway. One of my employees "happened" to interrupt every single time with a question of great import. I always answered with nonsense ("Oh, with that you have to use the SQL statement update records set rec_dept = '/W/R/F/R/' where rec_boxno = 23514") and she would write it down faithfully even though her question would be something like "how do I write a document in Microsoft Word?" and it would be obvious to anyone but Napoleon.

Today was the first day back for everyone after the holiday yesterday and apparently he threatened all of the employees, telling them he was about to fire me anyway and I saved him the paperwork of doing so, and that he knew what I "had been up to" and that "this was going to stop."

?????????????????????????????????????????

Firing someone for filing a sexual harassment suit is illegal, actually. Even in a Right to Work state such as Georgia. (Gotta love those anti-Union states.)

Anyway, I deleted all of my emails and sent him nothing.

Payback's a biznitch.

you say cable needle, i say cable needle

The Most Colossal Bitch from Hell posted the following intriguing image of herself with a cable needle through her nose after my post yesterday threatening to jam a cable needle through her nose:Despite how incredibly hot she looks with the needle mustache, and how unbelievably turned on I am at this moment just looking at this picture, so much so that I am thinking of dragging my jammie-clad, dead Muppet-footed ass downtown to The Man Who Lives in the House's workplace and jumping his sick ass in the middle of his workplace, I feel the need to clarify this situation.

The cable needle I use, the cable needle in question which would be jammed through La Bitch's nose, looks like this:Therefore, I'm picturing something more like this:Still enchanting, no? I'm no less turned on, but the violence factor has upped exponentially.

That excites me even more.

Jen sent me my winnings from her blog contest...the yarn for the Boobie scarf from Knitty. A beautiful color!I am perverted enough to knit a scarf with boobs and nipples all over it, and I believe enough in breast cancer awareness to knit this scarf, although I am tired of knitting pink scarves at the moment, so I think I'll wait a couple of months to knit this one.

It's a brighter day in Atlanta today after yesterday's thunderstorms and hail.Beans is obsessed with a leaf outside the front door.He is a strange creature.

insane loonatic

So The Most Colossal Bitch from Hell has some demented delusions of grandeur that I am somehow jealous of her because she makes thirty dollars CANADIAN knitting dishcloths that only blind people can bear to look at because otherwise the dishcloths will make normally sighted people go blind. Actually, it would make my dishes go blind.

What does thirty dollars Canadian work out to American, like $1.87?

Feel my envy here, people. I'm positively green.

Then she shows a picture of her injured thumb. If you haven't read her post, go there now. Does that look injured to you? I see no injury. Again, this was just another excuse for her not to knit because she was too fucking lazy to knit a dishcloth, wah wah, whine whine whine. First she was sick, then she was injured, woe is me.

Then, I'm supposedly jealous because she spent all day in her jammies because she didn't have to go out all day.

Yesterday, I spent all day in my flannel jammies covered in stars, AND I went out and ran errands, wearing them, a doo-rag, and my fuzzy dead Muppet slippers. Real women don't care what they wear when going out. I went and ran errands wearing all of the above and nobody at any of the places I went to even blinked upon seeing me. Why? Because they see me wearing same often enough that this is not an unusual occurrence. Keep in mind I have guests in town for six days, and then my quartet then came over and rehearsed, and then more people came over and we watched movies and played video games, and we ran out and got take out (chicken wings, and I'm aware I still owe the chicken wings story), and we played more video games, and the jammies were still on.

I'll end this bitchslap on the note of the cabling. Little Miss Scaredycat is afraid to cable. I'm gonna fly my ass up to British Columbia and force a cable hook through her nose until she does a cabled dishcloth.

And on that note, here is progress on the cashmere scarf:I'm on the beginning of the fourth repeat and it needs eight repeats. Two weeks later and I'm still waiting for the next skein of yarn from Stitch DC. Here's a close up of the pattern:And here's a scarf I made out of some Pluckyfluff yarn and Jaeger Albany and leftover Noro Cash Iroha while playing Spiderman 2 in January:and a closeup:To finish, a picture of today's dreariness in Atlanta. It's cold again here. I want the weather to stop changing already.

the blogger and the bitch: a fairy tale

Once upon a time there was a disgusting trend of memes on blogs.

/meem/ n. An element of a culture or system of behaviour that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation.

Despite this trend not coming close to the best meme ever, it ran rampant among knitting blogs.

However, one lucky blogger did not get tagged with any meme whatsoever.

Until yesterday, when the most colossal bitch from hell tagged me with one just because I actually told the truth about her being too lazy to knit dishcloths while everyone else was coddling her whining ass.

Being a play-by-the-rules kinda gal...

And being that it's Rabbitch...

And being that it's knitting related...

And being that this was initially begun by kitten, I feel an affinity to this, so I will continue it.

Do you knit using the English or Continental Method?

English, although I learned Continental one day because I was bored, and then I learned it again because I wanted to see if it was actually faster to do fair isle that way. It wasn't, for me.

How long ago did you learn to knit?

24 years ago. I will be 31 in a few months. You do the math.

Who taught you how?

First, my father's second cousin Helen. Then I learned the finishing touches from two women, Lois and Norma, Lois was selling her yarn store to Norma. As far as I know, Norma still owns the yarn store (in Saratoga Springs, New York). Third, myself.

What was your first FO?

A blue vest for my Cabbage Patch Kid, out of Yarn Brunswick Germantown. I moved on to outfits and then Barbie doll outfits.

Favourite yarn?

What the fuck is with the Eurotrash/ Canadian spelling here? It's FAVORITE.

Currently it's Lobster Pot cashmere, because it feels wonderful to knit this really boring Aran scarf, even in obnoxious pink. But the stupid Stitch DC people haven't sent the last skein even after two weeks...so maybe it's making me mad. But I have some in a great shade of blue.

Favourite pattern you've knit so far?

I made a great Aran sweater for my stepfather, in Germantown. I rather liked it despite the numerous mistakes still in it. I like it much better than the came-out-perfectly sleeveless top I made for myself in Silk Garden and Cash Iroha last summer. I guess because it took me eight months to make?

Favourite Pattern Source?

Weird question. Internet? Books? Do they mean something specific like Magknits? Knitty? I like patterns that are classic, yet unique. They're oddly hard to find, so I find them whereever I can, which is everywhere.

Favourite Needles?

Inox circulars, although I usually use Addi Turbos because they're easier to find. I like the points on Inox better. In any case, I need circulars.

Nicest thing you've ever knit?

Well, I've done better on more recent projects, but I might not prefer them as much as earlier projects. Although this annoying Aran scarf will actually be beautiful when it's completed. I also liked a pink baby sweater with white bunny buttons and matching white bunny slippers for a newborn, and a purple cardigan with a variegated rainbow edging on the sleeves and collar and dinosaur buttons for a four-year old.

Most hated project?

The intarsia fish baby sweater currently in progress and a peach baby afghan made when I was ten years old.

Who are you going to pass this on to?

Hrm. Carrie? Lauren? Janice? Feel free to answer or not if you so desire. The only reason I did respond was that this was actually related to knitting.

The long story of the past two completely insane days to come this weekend.

news news news

First, thanks for the support for Birdie. She got an Award of Merit! Yay! You can see her (if you dare) in the video for 15" beagles. She's #6, being handled by Michael Scott.

Second, while I was out tonight, The Man Who Shall Soon Be Alone in the House took a phone call from the new boss. I passed the background check, so I guess they didn't search very thoroughly into my background. In any event, after a terrible day where I had a sniping email fight with Napoleon over my being allowed to take a few hours next week to go to the dentist, despite my having the time to take and there being full staff in the office, this came as a welcome relief.

The Man even spoke on the phone with the new boss (although he didn't actually give his name and since I refer to him as The Man Who Lives in the House to the new boss as well, the new boss asked me if he actually had a real name). This a rarity, as if anyone out there actually meets The Man in person, you will be shocked that I have deigned to marry the personality-less wonder of the world. Why? Because he is painfully shy and won't speak unless he has known you for six hours. So if you meet him for fifteen minutes one day, you have five hours and forty-five minutes to go.

Now, going back to a previous topic, I get to GIVE MY ACTUAL NOTICE TOMORROW. Since I am now in what can actually be called a Hostile Work Environment, I plan on giving it directly to HR and not to Napoleon, who has now not spoken to me for two straight weeks. I also plan on telling HR that since they leaked confidential information to him one month early, that I am not beholden to their "two week notice" policy as written in the Employee Manual (and as it is written it is a "request" and not a requirement, anyway).

Wish me luck.

Next time, pictures and the story of the wings.

good thoughts to nyc....

My girl Birdie is on with the 15" beagles this morning at 11:15 AM in the Hound ring at Madison Square Garden in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Last year my girl Jackie took Best of Opposite Sex in 13" beagles. Think good thoughts. Birdie is a beautiful girl and shows very well.

I've been working insane hours. The irony came when someone here actually asked me to call the new boss for a question and asked me if I knew him. "Uh, yeah, I know who he is," was my reply.

Napoleon has been ignoring me still, but has been fishing for information from my employees as to my "attitude." Since he's kept away from me I've gotten an amazing amount of work done.

And I am so ready for the cashmere scarf to be done. At least the cables are keeping me sane.

too much information time.

I just took this test and I scored 81% Bitch (this put me in the Denis Leary category). So far this is the highest I have seen on anyone else's blog. I tend to score high on all quizzes, I figured since I am pretty much known for being a massive bitch a la Eve Dallas this would be along the same lines. I expect at least one member of my quartet to score higher, though, so I'm not alone.

The Man Who Lives in the House sent me this fantastic web page a couple of weeks ago and I've been hypnotized by it. I showed it to the quartet and we figured out the song is some Romanian dance hit "Dradostea Din Tei" by O-Zone. I know, you could have figured it out for yourself by the lyrics, but what fun would that have been? So I had to buy it from the iTunes Music Store and then burn CDs for everyone with it repeated 22 times. Apparently, after the third CD was burned, my CD-RW drive in my trusty two year old iBook decided it had had enough Romanian and died. That's it, just...died. I mean, I was about to trade up for a Powerbook anyway, probably a 12" or 15" model, because The Man has a 17" model, or maybe just a newer iBook, but I would have happily sold my perfectly-working iBook on eBay or given it to a family member or something and now my computer thinks I have no CD drive whatsoever. It's as if it doesn't exist.

I blame Dracula.

In any case, I still have the song in my iTunes and I can blast it in the mornings from my computer wirelessly through some Hannukah present gadget The Man bought me on repeat play.

I spent 14 hours at work yesterday and Napoleon didn't contact me. Did I mention he found out I am filing against him? I spoke with HR. She confirmed he called her fishing for information as to whether I had called her and what I had called about. She played it cool but thought the leak came from my end. After a couple of days of thinking about it, I have an idea of where the leak came from and I think it's at corporate (but not from her).

So last week I had my legs, armpits, and my chin waxed. My legs are still smooth, my armpits are spottily hairy again, and my chin has a full beard. Why do I think 100 years ago I could have been the bearded lady in the circus?

Oh, and I won the contest Jen was running...yay me! It's the yarn to make this which I'm rather excited about. The Man will groan when he sees more yarn arriving at the house.

because I'm an ultra-geek...

and I'm an information professional (technically, not working as an archivist or a librarian at the moment, but as a records manager, which is not respected at all in the field, but I always choose the hard road), I found this article quite interesting, especially as it deals with blogging. I have never heard of a company requiring blogging as a job requirement but I can see it, I guess. As someone interested in electronic records management, I find preserving blogs interesting as well. We're going to lose our blogs, the way we've lost the early years of the Web and early video games and early personal computers. I shudder at it all while I acknowledge that nothing can be done and in all likelihood nothing should be done but I wish we could take a snapshot, now. I tell people I used to MUD and use Gopher and WAIS and people have no idea what I'm talking about. And I can't explain the obsession of sitting for hours at a dumb terminal just wandering about on the Internet which was not the World Wide Web.

The Maude tank and shrug...Ram Wools doesn't have all of the colors of Mission Falls cotton but I've asked them to send what they have. That way I can search for other vendors who may have the missing colors. Good idea? Thoughts?

I had to order another hank of the cashmere, as the three wasn't going to cut it. Another reason to hate the Vogue Knitting On the Go Scarves Two book. Incorrect yardage determination.

the ominous telephone call.

On Thursday afternoon, I had an email stating that my offer letter would be arriving on Friday. Yippee! Then on Thursday afternoon, I had a call from the new company asking me for details that they needed before they could possibly send my offer letter out. Does this seem like a good sign to you? Among those details? "Which campus of The University of Michigan did you attend, Dearborn or Flint?"

"Uh, neither. Ann Arbor."

"But I only have the option to verify your attendance online at Dearborn or Flint."

"Ann Arbor is the main campus. Dearborn and Flint are very small satellite commuter campuses."

"But then how do I do verification?"

I thought about telling her that since this was HER JOB that perhaps she should consider looking into an alternate career. I wisely kept my mouth shut and said that perhaps calling The University of Michigan would be the correct course, and no, I didn't have the phone number, but I was sure the area code would be 734.

As soon as I hung up, I had a phone call from Napoleon's boss in Virginia, who wanted to discuss the latest email I sent detailing Napoleon's wrongdoings. He of course wasn't as concerned about the sexual harassment as he was about Napoleon's bragging about not receiving a review from his boss and being unsupervised.

On Friday the head of HR called and asked me to file a formal complaint. I asked if they weren't just going to fire him. "No, this will just be a warning." I told her it would take me some time to draft it (say, maybe the month it'll take the new company to do my background check).

The offer letter came and I FedExed my ok for the background check. I came home to find a letter from a collections agency demanding payment for a bill I paid two months ago. The check cleared my bank account. Do you think I won't get the job now?

HELP! I can't stay managing this records management program forever! I'm starting to panic!

links!

Thank you for your feedback, everyone! I was easily swayed and because I am such a yarn whore, I went ahead and ordered the yarn kits from Ram Wools. For anyone interested, they are available on this page and are the Maude tank and Maude shrug. You have to buy the Mission Falls in Living Color book separately.

I have alwways found Ram Wools to be a good company to order from, and their customer service is excellent, if anyone wondered. And thanks for the tip that the Mission Falls cotton is no longer being made, it pushed my decision over the top.

I still can't find the camera, so still no pictures of the cashmere cable scarf.

Today, I'm going to toss some politics into the mix, which I rarely do, but I'll do so today because it involves my profession.

My very first archives professor in library school at The University of Michigan, Bob Warner, was the National Archivist under Presidents Carter and Reagan. He had been responsible for the separation of the National Archives from the General Services Administration and the supposed de-politicization of the position of National Archivist by establishing it as one which was a lifetime Presidential appointment, so that politics was not supposed to play a role in who the National Archivist was.

This, of course, was not true in the case of Don Wilson, who made some very poor archival decisions and quit at the end of George H.W. Bush's administration to run the Bush Presidential Library (which is part of the National Archives). Clinton then appointed John Carlin, the governor of Kansas, who had a B.S. in dairy farming and had been helpful in the Clinton campaign, to be National Archivist. Background in history or archives? No. But he hasn't been bad, despite it being a political appointment.

And then George W. Bush stepped in and tried to get rid of Carlin (despite Carlin's having received a LIFETIME APPOINTMENT) and make his own political appointment. And now I'm just depressed. Even my innocuous little profession can't be left alone.

The following appears in the January 26, 2005 Wichita Eagle (you can read it here) as well:

Carlin is still archivist; secrecy fight goes on

BY JON WIENER
History News Service

On Inauguration Day, the classified papers of former President George H.W. Bush became eligible for release -- as the law specifies, 12 years after he left office. Overseeing the release of those papers is the responsibility of the archivist of the United States, John Carlin, the former Democratic governor of Kansas appointed in 1995 by President Clinton. But President George W. Bush nominated a new archivist last May, historian Allen Weinstein. Weinstein is author of two books on Soviet espionage in the United States and former head of the Center for Democracy in Washington, D.C.

But the Weinstein nomination ran into trouble in the Senate after almost two dozen organizations of historians and archivists expressed concern. So Carlin remains archivist, in charge of release of the first wave of the first Bush's presidential papers. The new Senate will take up the Weinstein nomination again, probably in a month or two.

Congress tried to make the office nonpolitical by specifying in a 1984 law that the term of the archivist was indefinite. Under the law, archivists can serve as long as they want; if the president wants to replace one, the president must show cause. Bush did not do that when he moved to replace Carlin with Weinstein.

Weinstein personifies many of the problems of secrecy in Washington today: His record on access to documents is bad. He has refused to release to other scholars his interviews and his copies of Soviet espionage documents.

Secrecy is an issue now because, in 2001, President Bush issued a new executive order governing presidential records. Now the president has the right to veto the release of presidential papers ordered by the National Archives under the 12-year rule, even if they have passed the declassification review. Former presidents have also been given the right to veto release of documents, as do the family and heirs of former presidents. Weinstein told the Senate committee that, if confirmed, he would go to court to defend the Bush order on withholding presidential papers.

In the fight at the National Archives between democracy and secrecy, right now secrecy is winning.

So, in order to cheer myself (and everyone else) up, I shall end with this link for your viewing and listening pleasure.

turn off my internet now.

I haven't really bought yarn in awhile.

So it seems like I'm ripe to make one of those not really stash but let's plan a project that I won't really get to for oh say eight years but I'll buy the yarn ad the pattern now and stick it in one of my bins or chests or boxes and shove it in the guest bedroom or closet or library or somewhere else in my house where I'll forget about it.

I saw this just now and I'm oddly obsessed about it. I must make it. If I order the yarn now I won't make it right away.
So what do you think? Of course it's Mission Falls cotton. I've never knit with any Mission Falls. Yet another excuse to make it. It's simple. I have both a Jo Sharp and a Debbie Bliss fair isle sweater waiting for me. Yarn purchased. I have a Mountain Colors afghan kit waiting on me for a gift. I have two Charlottes. Any numbers of pairs of socks with some great sock patterns Janice has passed along to me. I have gloves galore to knit. I have a Phildar sweater to knit. I have a plum cardigan I have knit in 501 I need only to seam and sew on buttons. I knit the pieces up five years ago. I have an intarsia fish baby sweater. The list goes on and on and on.

Should I buy the yarn for this? I really want to. Do you think I should? Do you like it? Do you think I will?

[EDITED to add: I know Janice, I usually don't hotlink, for some reason the image wasn't showing up on Flickr even though I had uploaded it already. I was merely waiting for it to show up so I could change the source code. Thanks, though!]

pictures?

We don't need no sticking pictures.

The Man Who Lives in the House has forevermore hidden the camera. I have no idea where it is. 'Tis gone forever. I really want to take a picture of the cashmere pepto-pink Aran scarf so you can all admire me on my superior cabling skills and stroke my ego. I shall start a craze of cable scarves. After all, nobody, but nobody was knitting gloves or fingerless gloves until I started the sex gloves and now they're everywhere. I'll take full credit even if nobody reads my blog. Of course, my gloves have actual fingers in them. And I have three fingers left on the second glove to finish them off. That would be approximately an hour or less left of knitting. But I digress...

Actually, I'm afraid that although I have the amount of yarn called for in the pattern, I am going to fall far short. What to do? Anybody live in DC who wants to go by Stitch DC and see if there's another skein left? Since my job is stuck in limbo...

Anyway, go see Janice's post from yesterday and see what happened with her contest-winning yarn.

Colette gave me some books! She's giving some away on her book blog. Go see if you're interested. Thanks, Colette!

Speaking of books, there's a new book called Who Murdered Chaucer? out. I look at it and think of my father, and it makes me sad to think of the waste. I found out last year on February 14th that Dad was terminally ill, and he's been gone for 7 months now. The holidays were difficult, and I don't think anybody really understood. I know The Man didn't, I know Crazy Lady and Rambo were very non-sympathetic, I'm not close to my brother, The Man's family, especially Enabling Alcoholic, were quite horrible, and my quartet were doing their own thing. I don't think I've ever felt so alone while surrounded by people before.