Thursday, March 31

Crimson gauntlets

I promised Sam Love that I'd let her have a copy of the pattern for the gauntlets, so here goes. Click on the image to see the gauntlets in their full glory. [Hopefully this click-y open-y link will work properly.] Let me know if you have problems with the pattern or anything. I'm going to go make another pair for PRIDE. Cheap rainbow acrylic this time.

Sunday, March 27

Esther Sunday

It's Esther.* Went to church. Don't feel God-y [not terribly gaudy, either], but feel good. Wearing pink, which isn't really in my character, generally.

Neil's got an excerpt from his book up on his website. I'm excited, although it sounds a little bit like C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew** [part of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe series], which made me marginally sad. But only marginall. The rest of it's all good. Just like I expected.

I've also ordered Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell from Amazon, thanks to mom's credit card. She also ordered a couple of things ... church-y stuff. Speaking of church, I'm fairly certain that my parents are trying to take over the church. Not the Church, mind you, just the one they belong to. My mom usually plays the piano, but she can't now. So she directed the choir this morning. My dad sang in the choir. He was also a deacon [for communion and stuff]. And my mom filled in for the worship leader. It's a little scary, but I think this whole getting involved in church thing's been good for them. My parents are happier than they have seemed in a long time, and that's the way I like them. So I'll appease them by going to church once in a while ... at least while I'm home.

Also speaking of church, I think I've been to too many Lutheran services. I almost tried to say "thanks be to God" twice today.

Once again, I was going to jabber on about something else, but it's since passed out of my head. Must've been the skirt-wearing, leg-shaving girl that's seemed to take my place today.

Dustro requested that I have my links open in a new window, so I suppose I shall appease. Right after I change my shirt, since I spilled Dr Pepper on it. Blast.

* Due to a misspelling, Easter shall henceforth be known as Esther. Or at least until I forget about it.
** Aslan's singing the world of Narnia into existence bit.

Saturday, March 26

Good Friday

... was surprisingly good. The fam and I went to WDM and caught a movie, Constantine, then had tasty chicken lettuce wraps and banana spring rolls and such at P.F. Chang's. After that, I got to do my research for an anthropology paper on gender ... in a toy store*. Then I went to a craft store, where I didn't buy anything, Dustro, and then to the spice store next door to hunt down my dad. And then we were home.

The flick wasn't too bad, I thought. It got a little God-y [as opposed to gaudy] toward the end, and that was a little annoying, but all-in-all, I enjoyed it. I don't know the comics, though, so I don't know how much they did by the books and how much they exaggerated or made up. The whole family saw it, though, and afterward my mom commented sarcastically, "Great movie for Easter ..." I, of course, just laughed at her [not in a harsh way].

I may have had something else to say, but I have forgotten it between waking up and getting here to start my paper. Speaking of which, I ought to get cracking.


* Side note: I was going to link to the toy store, which is Toys R Us, but for some reason they've ganged up with Amazon.com, and I'm lazy. Not that I have anything against Amazon ...

Thursday, March 24

Yarn ho

I'm having a grand old time right now, talking to Mr BoJangles and describing my lucious new yarn purchases. I haven't even told him about the new needles yet!

The first skein of yarn I got was the 100% bamboo yarn from South West Trading Company, which I purchased at String of Purls [the yarn, not the whole company]. The shade I purchased was, of course, tequila. It's in the last row, if you follow the link. It's surprisingly soft; you'd think [or at least I thought] that yarn made out of bamboo would be a little more scratchy or something like that, but it's defnitely not. Mr BoJangles has already put in a request for a bit of this yarn, so I'll see what I can do.

The other two skeins I purchased at Personal Threads, the less-than-friendly place. One is Fable, by Artful Yarns. The color is called "Hansel and Gretel", which is a kind of heather-y grey [last row again, in the link]. It's 85% pima cotton at 15% silk. Yum.

And last, but certainly not least, is Manos del Uruguay, which is 100% wool. I've been aching to try it, but it's rather difficult to find, at least in Decorah. The color I got is Briar, which was the prettiest out of the small selection that PT had. This one's the last one in the first row.

I took pictures of my new purchases, but Yahoo's being a bitch and not letting me upload. But at least I found a new site to browse ...

All that yarn gushing being done, I should be off to bed. Or couch, as it happens. Maybe I'll start up a new pair of gauntlets tomorrow now that I've finished the ones for my mom. In a lovely crimson color.

Tuesday, March 22

Knitter gone wild

I have officiall spent too much money on knitting. I found a couple of stores in Omaha today [my family and I took a very small trip to chill]: Personal Threads Boutique and String of Purls. The former I didn't like too much because the customer service wasn't so fabulous, but the latter was pretty fun. I ended up spending more than $30 at both stores ... much to my chagrin, I've spent a lot of moneys. And I bought three magazines at Borders: the second issue of K.1 [of which I am such a fan], Bust [which had Amy Sedaris on the cover], and Diva [which had a picture of the Divine Ms T on the cover]. I'm a little bit o' knit ho.

Mom's hand is good, apart from gross bruising. I made her a gauntlet thing [from the last issue of K.1, actually] so she doesn't have to show it to the world. Only now she's going to look lopsided until I make the other.

Speaking of bruises, I got a nice one myself earlier today when I was getting into the driver's seat in the van. My dad put the steering wheel in the absolute lowest position [and I don't know how he managed to get out of the car with it like that], and I rammed my right leg full force into it. Gross indeed.

And speaking of margaritas [I know I wasn't], I had a really good one at Red Robin. Have you ever had the mango margarita, Dustro? I think you'd like it.

I may be helping with some hair dyeing soon.

Ciao.

Thursday, March 17

Third time's a charm

I just have to say that, although tracking linguistic trees of dead languages can be difficult, Overheard in New York makes it a lot better. I was going to say something, but I've forgotten now. We're going ou-uuuuuuuuuuut tonight, so I'm gonna check out of this hotel pretty soon and into the Bistro.

So I'm going to stop before I start making things up.


Check ya later.~

Three things

Okay, I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, posting all up in here a mere three hours after the most recent post, but I gots some things to say. I'm about to get all riled up and make not so much sense, but bear with me.

First of all, that's my "blue steel" look, a la Zoolander.

Secondly, my mom's doing well after her operation on her hand yesterday to try to fix her carpal tunnel problems. She's chillin' at home with the dog and being all one-handed. When I go home, I will get to be her other hand.

Third, I learned that the state of affairs in Bolivia is no good. Okay, wait. I'll explain a little, because that's probably obvious, or will be shortly.

We watched a video in my cultural anthro class today, Coca and the Congressman [the congressman is Evo Morales]. It was heartbreaking. There are all of these families growing coca plants, some of which are later used to make cocaine and some of which are used by cocaleros [growers of coca] and the indigenous people of Bolivia. The problem is that the U.S. sees the cocaleros as the bad guys in the "war on drugs" in the U.S., so they're trying to stop the problem at the source. Fair enough, until you learn that the Bolivian government is getting money from the U.S. to make coca growing illegal and that Bolivia will only get the money. Meanwhile, the cocaleros and their families are trying to make a living selling the coca, because it provides much more money than, say, bananas. And the reason they can make so much more in selling the coca is because people from the U.S. buy it to make cocaine and feed their drug addictions.

It's a vicious cycle, at any rate, and I don't think I explained it very well. The moral of the story is a message to the U.S.: Butt out.

It's stunning how oblivious one can be to the state of affairs in the world. They don't teach you these sorts of things in social studies, that the growth of agricultural society (into a capitalist economy) has caused more population growth and stratification and inequality. I mean, seriously. It made me want to go to Bolivia and try to help people, but of course I wouldn't know where to begin, nor what I was doing in the first place.

Why can't we go back to hunting and gathering? Things worked so much better that way ...

Out with a whimper

... not a bang strike.

Today was to be our last day of bowling, so E and I went over to the alley. We found everyone gathered outside locked doors. After a while, our instructor called The Bowling Guy's house, but all he got was an answering machine. He seems to have gotten lost. So, after waiting in the cold for about 15 minutes, we handed in our 'finals' and headed back. E claimed she was going to shower and then write her paper, but I climbed back into bed for a shameless nap.

Thus ends the first seven weeks of classes.
Thanks be to god.

Tuesday, March 15

Morning news

"[T]he denial of marriage to same-sex couples appears impermissibly arbitrary," says Judge Richard A. Kramer of San Francisco County Superior Court.

But this will not be the end of it, as later on in the article ...

Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, [which represents Campaign for California Families, a group in Sacramento that has opposed San Francisco's bid to legalize same-sex marriages, denounced the ruling as "ludicrous."

"Marriage should not be undermined by the stroke of a pen from a single judge," Mr. Staver said in a statement. "This ruling, which flies in the face of common sense and millennia of human history, will pour gasoline on the fire ignited by the pro-marriage movement."


[from California Judge Voids Ban on Gay Marriage in today's NY Times.]

I also learned about a site with shared passwords to free sites. Fabulous! [Along with all sorts of other subversive-ness.]

Monday, March 14

More blah blah

So I was messing around on imdb.com [looking up Johnny Depp in the new Wonka movie, about which this website reminded me], and I discovered something interesting. Not only will there be a Pirates 2, which is filming now, but there is also a Pirates 3, which is in pre-production. Funny.

Also, you may have noticed that I've been adding lots of new links to the sidebar. We'll see how that goes.

I've got two fallopian tubes to go for a finished purple womb. And a long-ish list of other people who want them. Who knew knitted female organs could be so popular?

L is for Showtime

I'm totally obsessed with this show. I was out of it for a while, but now I'm back and we're lettin' the L times roll. It's become a Sunday night ritual for Kathryn and I to dash out of our Chips meeting a few minutes early and head over to Baker in time for the show. What can I say? It's fabulous.

There is, however, a dark cloud looming above our viewing of the show. Spring Break. It's definitely starting after this week, and I definitely don't have Showtime at home.

Oh well. How much drama can they pour into a show that I couldn't make up all by my own self anyway?


I gotta go. Security's kicking me out of the building.

Saturday, March 12

I've caught the bug

I think I have the knitting flu. I read some articles in the latest Interweave mag about re-using and recycling different materials [like shopping bags and old sweaters], and now I've hunted down a tutorial on unraveling a thrift-store sweater and I'm about to try it out. I bought five sweaters from the Depot a couple of hours ago, and I'm itching give it a go. Also, I found a fun knitter's geek code from Knitty. I'll be displaying mine in the sidebar in about a minute.

Oh, I also found a stash of needles at Twice as Nice that I bought for about $6. That's way cheap and way fabulous.

Save me, Jebus, I'm outta control!

Quickie

Just a quick post before I head off to bed ...

I got to see my voice professor's recital tonight, and he was wonderful. For a tenor, that is. [I find tenors rather difficult to listen to, and even more so when they happen to be singing in that loathesome French language. But his last French piece wasn't actually that bad. The rhyming scheme of the poetry was rather clever.] There was, however, a pinch of Greek in one of his last pieces, "Maid of Athens," a poem written by Lord Byron. The Greek goes something like this: Ζοη μου σασ αγαπω ... My life, I love you!

And then four episodes from season five of Sex ... good times.

Friday, March 11

Spee-dee delivery

The red womb has been successfully delivered to Shoe Diva as promised, and she's much happier. Sure, she's not all glammed up or anything, but that's okay. It's midnight, after all.

I think that I've got a few more wombs to make, and a small presentation tomorrow in linguistics about the sentence "I remembered the German class of my mother's brother" in Greek. After that, I've got some Plutarch to read in Greek [imagine that], and then some good ol' fashioned weekend. Of course, the weekend will be filled with such things as recitals and The Vagina Monologues. And, of course, getting to see Beth again for the third time in a little more than a week. How lucky can I get?

Pretty damn.

Thursday, March 10

Thirsty

I just took my anthro. test, and I don't know how I feel about it. I think that toward the end, I just wanted to be done, so I slopped up some answers that didn't make a whole lot of sense. But I think I explained myself in a fairly concise manner on the rest of the test. I just don't know.

On to other things.

Miss Shoe Diva has been having some rough times with the parents and had a not-so-good day, so I told her that I'd write them a note to tell remind them that she's fabulous and that it's her turn to decide what to do. And also, she will be getting a womb. Shoe Diva, do you like red? I'm sure it might strike you as a little 'menstrual' at first, but it's a very pretty [and very soft] yarn. Or perhaps you'd fancy some blue womb-age [the 'o' in this word is NOT pronounced like the 'o' in 'wombat', just in case you were curious].

Tuesday, March 8

Choose-dee

I just thought you'd like to know that you can see the trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I mentioned a couple of days ago.

I'm in the middle of my Chips work tonight. Two pages in five hours yesterday, and no pages in five hours thus far. We're really close on two pages, though, and somewhat close on three more. We're slooooooowly getting there.

I've also started knitting a womb in softer-but-still-acrylic Caron's Simply Soft in Autumn Red. It's much nicer on my fingers, and I know a couple of people that are really excited about getting wombs.

I must go. Work beckons.

Monday, March 7

Wombs a-go-go

So I've been busy knitting up some wombs. That's right, I said, "Wombs." Uteri (or uteruses). I decided that the Vagina Warriors (through The Vagina Monologues) this year deserved more than flowers and a card, so they'll also be getting knitted wombs. They're bubble gum pink. And I've got quite the list of people who want them. I'm going to have to find some softer yarn to work with, because this cheap acrylic just isn't cuttin' in any more.



Other than that, I got nothin' else.

Thursday, March 3

Dorks.

Dustro and I made the trek to Elkader to see Beth doing her teacher-y thing. She did such a good job. And she was wearing her Messiah dress. Hot.

Dustro and I decided that the people of Elkader are rather dorky. I think he'll do a better job of explaining it, since my train of thought has completely derailed.

I'm listening to Heart. I don't have Greek tomorrow. Beth and Sarah are coming up to visit. And that woman's husband was super, wasn't he, Dustro?

Wednesday, March 2

Update

As if I didn't cry enough yesterday ...

I just got back from seeing Hotel Rwanda with a couple of friends, and frankly, it was spectacular. I know that the whole audience was crying. I heard lots of sniffles. I can't even describe the movie. It was so well done, so phenomenal, so heartbreaking, so real. I felt like I didn't know a damned thing about what happened in '94 in Rwanda, and I don't see how something so massive could be glazed over. One million people dead in three months. Murdered. What is this world?

And the Situation has not resolved itself, even though I talked to the queen of Student Life today. I think I may pay Counseling a visit next, because I don't know if I can handle my living situation any more.

But on to lighter things, such as Thursday. It's my brother Matt's 16th birthday. Also, Dustro and I will be taking a field trip to Elkader to see Beth directing her heart out [figuratively, of course] at a band concert. I'm so excited to see her teaching skills put to use!

I also saw a preview for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is coming out in May. I'm beyond excited about that.

So if tomorrow happens to involve tears, I will have cried every day in March thus far. Huzzah.