Wednesday, November 26, 2008

i got stripes stripes around my shoulders i got chains chains around my feet

Okay, I know I've only finished one. But I feel like I've finished two.
Yarn: Artsygal Striping 3 Ply Merino. One skank of two, both totaling approximately 470 yards, so this sock took about 235 yards. Toe up, gusset, short row heel, calf shaping, ribbed, blah blah blah.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

put it away you can't take it away 'cause i won't give it away

How to get new bookcases:

1. Do nothing for over a year. Leave everything either still packed, or, when it comes time to unpack things, dump the box on the floor as necessary. Claim that it's not possible to clean because you have no furniture, and therefore nowhere to put anything.

2. When your manager offers you four bookcases from her flooded out basement in July, accept them eagerly, because you have no furniture, and you really, really need furniture, so you have somewhere to put things.

3. When it rains really hard three weeks after the offer and you still haven't gotten around to schlepping over to your manager's house to get the bookcases, and your manager tells you that one of the bookcases is now broken due to the torrential downpour, tell her that it's a sign that you were only meant to have three bookcases.

4. Plan to get the bookcases that weekend.

5. Discover that every available large vehicle in a 250 miles radius is booked that weekend.

6. When your manager tells you that her daughter has taken one of the remaining bookcases, tell her that's fine, and that it's a sign that you were only meant to have two bookcases.

7. Three weeks later, be too unable to get it together enough to get the damn bookcases.

8. Determine (six weeks later) that you ABSOLUTELY WILL get the bookcases when your manager is in Ireland.

9. Go over to your manager's house to look at the bookcases before your manager is in Ireland.

10. Walk the yard with your manager's husband to discover the big hole where he sprained his ankle to ensure that you will not sprain your ankle while you get the bookcases while he and your manager are in Ireland.

11. Realize on Thursday afternoon that your manager and her husband are due back from Ireland tomorrow and that you still haven't gotten the damn bookcases.

12. Tell #11 to a coworker and friend who is convinced the bookcases will fit (one at a time) in the trunk of her sedan and that you will move the bookcases (one at a time) tonight, Thursday, after work, despite the fact that you are (I am) wearing a sexy little tweed minidress with tights and 2" heels and she is wearing silk slacks and a silk shirt and a blazer with 2" heels.

13. Leave work really late with said coworker and get stuck in horrendous Virginia traffic after work, so as to not arrive to the manager's house until about 8 PM. Do not change clothes. Do not remove work ID badges. Do not dress warmly in the 30 degree weather. Do not take time to use the restroom. Do call and leave message on manager's home machine on the way, just in case, stating that bookcases are being taken. Do remember to grab an industrial sized flashlight from work. Sneak around the side of the house, which has been empty for two weeks, with your industrial sized flashlight. Watch the neighbors turn on their lights and come outside to watch you. Remove tarps from bookcases. Measure. Go back to car. Measure inside of trunk. Go back to side of house with flashlight. Measure again. Remove shelves from bookcases. Carry shelves to car. Open trunk and lower car seat. Leave trunk open. Carry bookcase around side of house to trunk of car. Wrestle bookcase into car. Realize bookcase will not fit into car trunk by 1/2". Realize that five neighbors are watching by this time. Giggle madly. Try not to giggle loudly enough so that gawking neighbors can hear. Wrench bookcase out of car trunk, where by this time it is wedged in. Carry it back around the side of the house. Put tarp back over it. Drop brick on head in process. Guffaw out loud. Run to car. Realize left industrial sized flashlight stolen from work at the scene of the crime. Get out of car and run back to collect evidence. Run back and get in car, taking only shelves. Laugh like loons on the way out of the subdivision, calling manager's voicemail back and leaving a message sounding something like: "Uh, hi, uh, hahahahah (shhhhh stop laughing) so uh we weren't heheh (shhh) we are really good records managers? hahahahahaa but really bad thieves? because your neighbors were watching us trying to take the bookcases and were almost ready to (stop laughing you're going to make me laugh again!) call the police on us and uh, we failed at stealing the bookcases although we did take the shelves, there was an incident with um, space planning, which, uh, i guess hahahaaha means we're actually really bad records managers now that i think about it but uh so we'll be back on saturday after we've revised our space planning a bit, okay so ktxbai hahahah." (Realize police car passing you is probably the one one of the neighbors called on you.)

14. Stop at nearest restaurant. Order and drink three dirty martinis and a filet mignon.

15. Go home. Bring four wooden planks upstairs.

You now have shelves, of a sort.

Monday, November 03, 2008

i'd pay any price just to get you i'd work all my life and i will to win you i'd stand naked stoned and stabbed

Fuck.



My car is broken. $5,000 not covered under warranty broken. Well, maybe it's covered if I blow the car guy. The kind of guy who's all creepy and icky and like the Whole Foods fish counter guy and the DHL guy who comes into the UPS Store when I'm trying to flirt with the guy who works there and the Giant deli counter guy and...you know the type. Just...leave me the fuck alone no you can't have my number go away I won't be your girlfriend I won't be your baby momma I know you already have a girlfriend kind of guy.

So I woke up at too fucking ass crack early o'clock in the morning on Saturday after a really weird fucking week so I could live in-person absentee ballot vote which required me to take public transportation so I figured, get there at 8:30 AM, wait in some sort of respectable line, take public transportation back, get a manicure, have the rest of my day.

I go to Metro's website, get their directions, including walking directions from where the bus drops me off. I get on the bus, tell the bus driver I'm getting off at Anderson and Chain Bridge. He says okay, he'll let me off there. The bus is, I note, good at pre-announcing the stops.

Until Anderson and Chain Bridge, which it announces...as it passes Chain Bridge. And the guy doesn't stop. So I pull the chain and the thing says "Stop Requested" and the guy is ZOOMING along and I walk to the front and I say, "Oh, I guess I missed the Andersona nd Chain bridge stop" and thed guy says "yeah, it was back there" - no "oh, sorry I forgot" or anything, I have no idea where I am. Whatever.

The guy zooms around the corner onto Dolley Madison, and other people are pulling the chain, and the guy...RACES past the next stop. DOUCHE. So I go, "HEY!" and he says "What?" and I was like, "We had requested the stop!" and the guy SCREECHES to a stop, in the middle of a divided highway, almost causing an accident. And we all get off and I consult my handy-dandy directions which say "walk NE on Dolley Madison for .76 mi" and lo and behold, Dolley Madison is a divided highway mother fuckers, Metro is trying to kill me, cars racing past me, almost no shoulder, almost got hit, but I finally made it, stood in line, voted, left, missed the buss back, caught a bus in the other direction, and the dude was like the aforementioned creepy dude who refused to let me off until I agreed to go out with him, I told him my name was Debbie (Vitriola? ring any bells?) and ran out of there, and what the fuck? How am I a magnet for these losers?

And why should voting be so hard?

Also, I knit a hat. Things people call a toque. I think that word's stupid, sorry.
It's not for me. It's black. I think you can see that, probably. Cascade 220. Softer than normal Cascade 220. Maybe the black is softer? Anyway. It's a pattern that's kinda cobbled together and modified from someone else's pattern and so on and so forth. Here's a not great picture of the top, it's hard to take pictures of black yarn, to see the spirally goodness.
Yeah. Just a plain black hat.