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The instructions in the sock book I'm using were so frustrating that I wanted to fling the entire mess across the room. Luckily, you can find anything on YouTube, and I found a fairly straightforward demo of the Turkish cast-on there.
- Mood:
creative
So far we have about 2 feet of the stuff here in Eldersburg, Maryland, and it is supposed to keep snowing until 8 p.m. Michael has shoveled the walk and the driveway twice and will have to do it again in the morning. I don't think these photos really need captioning.
- Location:The Great White North East
- Mood:
good - Music:Livin' in a Winter Wonderland
- Location:The past,the present, and the future, all at the same time
- Mood:
sad - Music:A requiem
Everyone I know should expect to receive a gift of socks at some point in 2010.
- Location:My local yarn shop
- Mood: creative
- Music:Replay
No trees came down, no damage was done (to our neighborhood, at least), and the power stayed on. Yay, Baltimore Gas and Electric!
Griffin enjoyed it all, of course, but he enjoys life in general more than most of us.
Michael thought that my Mini Cooper looked amusing all buried in snow. He won't find it so amusing when he has to dig it out so that I can get to work on Monday.
- Location:Indoors
- Mood:
lazy - Music:Just the sound of the fish tank
Last Sunday was our annual Cookie Day, when my friend Barbara, her daughter Kym, and our mutual friend Jan get together to bake way too many cookies for the holidays. This year we limited ourselves to two recipes each -- rugelach, cherry kisses, toffee crunch, ginger cherry chocolate, lemon squares, chocolate malt, macaroons, and a coconut chocolate chewy bar that Jan never did give us the name of. 
- Location:The kitchen, again!
- Mood:
satisfied - Music:Christmas carols
First, for our gang's Shovunda party two weeks ago, it was our turn as hosts, and I served something I've been dying to try for years -- a turducken. It was interesting and tasty, but not nearly as exciting or different as I'd expected. I wouldn't bother with it again, but I'm glad to have had the experience.
- Location:The kitchen
- Mood: indifferent
- Music:Turke in the Straw
I can't remember the last time it's rained on Halloween, but it sure did tonight. Not a downpour, but a steady light rain that didn't discourage all the trick or treaters, but enough of them to make it a rather boring evening, and to have left us with a lot of candy. Unfortunately (for me), Michael chose the candy this year, and there's not a bit of chocolate in the lot. Nothing I like at all, just Skittles, Starburst (yes, Jonathan, Starburst), and something called Willy Wonka's Nerd Rope. All full size, of course, and very popular with the kids, just not with me.
The food coloring that I used for the blood-shot eyes effect diffused a bit with time. I'll have to try a different way of making the blood next year.
- Location:Transylvania
- Mood: artistic
- Music:The Retro Cocktail Hour Halloween special
Anyone who reads this who is within driving distance of Baltimore should hasten to Center Stage and see their current production of The Importance of Being Earnest by Mr. Oscar Wilde, a man of great genius and wit. Luke Robertson as Algy is wonderful, Laurence O'Dwyer as Lady Bracknell is fabulous (but when is he not?), and the whole production was fantastic. Of course, the material with which they worked is beyond compare, and the company did it justice.
"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."
- Location:Half-Moon Street, W.
- Mood: impressed
- Music:"Come Into the Garden, Maud"
- Mood: thankful
- Music:Zydeco
Because he's such a big fellow, they didn't have an Elizabethan collar that fit, so they duct-taped two collars together, which did the trick, but means I couldn't remove the collar to put him in the back seat of the Mini. Yesterday, loading him into the car on the trip to the vet, he went in the back seat, up into the front seat, and started to climb out the window before I ran around to the other side and pushed him back in. Today an assistant helped me guide his head and the collar into the back seat, where it was a very tight fit.
On the ride home, he attempted to squeeze his head in between the front seats and I was afraid that he'd choke himself. Somehow he managed to get the entire collar on the driver's side, and so he and I shared the collar for a short time before he retreated into the back seat, and panted and drooled the whole way home and for the next hour as well. And he stood up most of the way as well, completely blotting out any view through the rear view mirrow.
He manages to maneuver the collar over the food and water bowls, and he can get down the stairs to go out into the yard, but he can't pick his head up enough to clear the stairs on the way back up, so I have to take him up around the hill on the side yard and in through the front door. And to add to his misery, the poor boy is constipated, but wants to go out hourly to give it another try.
- Location:Up and down the stairs
- Mood: anxious
A great new novel, <I>Johannes Cabal the Necromancer</i> by Jonathan L. Howard, is now available in your local UK bookstores and on Amazon.uk (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Johannes-Cabal-N
"Johannes Cabal has never pretended to be a hero of any kind.
There is, after all, little heroic about robbing graves, stealing occult volumes, and being on nodding terms with demons. His purpose, however, is noble. His researches are all directed to raising the dead. Not as monstrosities but as people, just as they were when they lived: physically, mentally, and spiritually. For such a prize, some sacrifices are necessary. One such sacrifice was his own soul, but he now sees that was a mistake – it’s not just that he needs it for his research to have validity, but now he realises he needs it to be himself. Unfortunately, his soul now rests within the festering bureaucracy of Hell. Satan may be cruel and capricious but, most dangerously, he is bored. It is Cabal’s unhappy lot to provide him with amusement.
In short, a wager: in return for his own soul, Cabal must gather one hundred others. Placed in control of a diabolical carnival – created to tempt to contentiousness, to blasphemy, argumentation and murder, but one may also win coconuts – and armed only with his intelligence, a very large handgun, and a total absence of whimsy, Cabal has one year.
One year to beat the Devil at his own game. And isn’t that perhaps just a little heroic?"
Those of us in the US will have to wait until July 7. Place your orders now!
- Mood: jubilant
- Location:Hiding upstairs
- Mood:
irritated
- Mood:
nervous
- Location:The pits of Hell
- Mood:
hot - Music:Weezer, Red Album
As usual, we DVRd "House" on Fox last night and started watching it about a half an hour after it began. It was about 15 minutes from the end, when it suddenly switched to "Gossip Girl," on the CW, a completely different station! The DVR menu read that "House" had recorded for an hour, so there's no possibility that, say, I went insane and programmed it for 45 minutes of "House" and 15 minutes of "Gossip Girl" (as if).
So now we don't know what happened, and it was building up to a pretty important scene between Cameron and Chase. Damn it! And damn Comcast and their cheesy DVR too. That thing is often unreliable, but nothing like this has happened before.
- Mood:
confused
I don't believe that I will be returning to the Bonefish Grill after last night. First, the noise level was deafening. I could barely hear the people sitting next to me, although I had no problem hearing the cackling of the group of women at an adjacent table. Yes, they were just having a good time, and they were entitled to it, but it grated on my nerves nonetheless. Then when you thought it couldn't get any louder, they cranked up the Musak. Then I ordered an expensive fancy martini, and spilled half of it on the table and myself because I set it down the edge of the table extension that was at a 45 degree angle. Partly my fault, but the table should have been straight. Then the kitchen got backed up (and we got there at 5 p.m., people!) and it was 30 minutes between our appetizers and our entrees. Thank heavens 20-month-old Liam was having a good time and not in a fussy mood. The manager did come out and apologize (we hadn't complained, but our waiter asked her to) and offered to comp us salads or soups, but we didn't want them, we wanted to fill up on our entrees, not salads. But they didn't comp the glass of wine I ordered while waiting, oh no. Then when my filet arrived, it has some sort of chili-based rub on it, which I disliked but could put up with. THEN, part way through the steak, I found A Hair. I was too tired to complain, I just cut off that piece and put it aside. I am still kicking myself that I let that pass.
Because there is no way to punish the kitchen without punishing the server, we did not stiff our attentive (and overly familiar -- he called all the women at the table, old enough to be his grandmother, mother, and much older sister, "sweetie) waiter.
To add insult to injury, when I made some Jiffy Pop as a snack later, the foil tore open and a third of the popcorn burned, a third of the kernels never popped at all, and the kernels that did pop tasted scorched. Sigh. Not a good night for food.
- Mood:
hungry
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1
It makes me glad that I don't crochet, because if this was a book of knitting patterns, I'd probably have to buy it.
- Mood:
weird - Music:Lowen and Navarro
