Yayyyyyy!

My digital camera came yesterday! I almost kissed the ups guy. How often in your life do you get a box that contains (1) one digital camera and (1) one portable bubble machine? Almost never, that's how often. All I have to do now is find $40 for having the usb port put in my 'puter so I can actually upload the thousands (15) pictures I've taken today and the $100 or so so I can host them on this blog, and I'll be the most annoying person on the internet! Yayyyyyyy! So any millionaires out there (or thousandaires, I'm not a snob) go ahead and e-mail me about where you should send the money...I'm waiting...

icky...

we had a little snafu here Sunday--the computer got totally ass-invaded by some adware/spyware shit that shut us down until today. We may have gotten it all out; the little fucker keeps re-building itself, and our $79 "upgrade" of McAfee Security Center "doesn't recognize this file" all damn day, but it seems to be under control now. In other news, the weather has been in the 70's for weeks now, and today it's in the 50's and the boy cat has gone totally berserk. Both cats have been working into the summer reality of basking in the sun and lazily staring at things, now he's seized the cool weather and is doing that whole autumn "killing frenzy of death" thing where anything that exists on this plane (and some that don't) is being systematically treated to a full-service slaying. He's about a year and a half old now. The girl (11 last week) is lying cynically in a window, yawning in the meanest possible way.

a child learns what she lives

A little background for this story; I've had a lot of 'platonic' male roomates. I relate to guys really well. I lived in a big party house with four guys and a couple of their assorted friends for over a year. I learned how to blow a grass harp, light a lighter in my pocket without setting myself on fire, juggle, spit, crack my neck, belch and fart unapologetically in mixed company, and watch porn in a group while drinking beer as nonchantly as if it were old episodes of Sesame Street, along with other specialized 'guy tricks.' But my guy friends gradually moved away or got engaged or went to jail or started dating strippers, and we grew apart. For about 3 years I've had predominantly female friends and I thought I was re-socialized.
So, a friend of mine called me a while back and said, "You dissapeared this weekend, what did you do?" and I told her I'd just chilled on the couch all weekend watching movies my mom had sent me. So she asks, "What kind of movies?" and I say, "Chick flicks, mostly. You know. Resevoir Dogs, Grosse Pointe Blank, Fight Club, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels...like that." And she goes, "I don't know what's weirder; that your mom sent you a box with those movies in it, or that you think those are 'chick flicks.'"

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeeeeee!

So, here is a list of what I got for my birthday, in no particular order:

• Lots of companionship and everyone bought beers for me.
• Extra hugs and lots of compliments and good wishes.
• Jessica got me a cool vintage shirt and hosted me around town incessantly.
• Kathey took me out for steak and gave me a really cute card and let me flirt with her boyfriend.
• Mary bought me the kind of sunglasses there is absolutely no excuse for and hottie shoes.
• Mom and Dad gave me a DVD player and chocolate macaroons.
• Andrea listened to me burble incessantly and drunkenly when she really just wanted to go get laid.
• Rosemary got me a turtle cheesecake and some cupcakes.
• My cat Odista gave me a horribly mauled but still squirming bloody mouse on my pillow.
• Emily gave me metastasized colon cancer.
• My brother helped me buy a digital camera and a portable bubble machine.
• Rob laughed at my jokes and acted like I was neat.
• Kellie and Tex hosted a great dinner and let me play with their dogs and bring anyone I wanted.
• And everyone was so nice to me and showed me so much love and tolerance and I know I'm forgetting a lot, but I really enjoyed my week in Austin, and my birthday went wonderfully, thank you so much, everyone.

Friday Five Answers

There's a fun little blog called Friday Five that posits five questions every Friday for people to answer either on the site comments or in their own blogs...so here's my go at the March 5th questions, since that's the latest ones they have posted...oh, yeah, and that's probably because they won a 2004 Bloggie and have been busy!

What was...

1. ...your first grade teacher's name?
Miss Benson? Miss Barton? I can't remember. How weird is that? The last teacher whose name I can remember is...my High School Senior English teacher, Mrs. Eddings. I think that was her name...

2. ...your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?
Transformers. They really are more than meets the eye!

3. ...the name of your very first best friend?
Lisa. She was my friend in Carlsbad, NM when I was 3-5 years old. We used to make mudpies a lot and once had an argument about whether you had to pretend to wash the dishes after pretending to have tea. (She said no, I said yes, almost knocked the playhouse over in the ensuing scuffle. I won.) Later I had another "friend" named Lisa, but the less said about that manipulative user the better.

4. ...your favorite breakfast cereal?
Cream of Wheat with butter, milk and brown sugar.

5. ...your favorite thing to do after school?
Buy a pickle and a coke and walk to my mom's store.

Slowly Recovering....

from a week of debauchery in Austin. Drank too much, smoked too much, did too much, slept too little, you know the drill. So now I'm drained, I'm broke, I'm away from my friends and there's nothing left. Same old, same old. Meanwhile, everyone's doing okay-ish, here's a list of things about Austin:

1. Got to see Ozzmodiar twice. Sweet. They rock. There couldn't be five nicer people, nor five who make a more seamless and cosmic sound when together. And they're also all hot. Whoo. And Andrea was there at the party show and Mary was there at the Cafe Mundi show, after which Jess and I got to hang out with long-time-no-see Matt from Quacks and his friend John. Good times.
2. I had a great time eating steak and lobster with an incredible salad and plenty of beers and banter at Tex and Kellie's house, along with Jessica, Kathey and Rob.
3. Got to see Alisa and Joel and Andrea at the Echoset show.
4. Got to see Andrea and Emily briefly at work.
5. Spent a whole day with Mary.
6. Mom spent forever telling me each time I checked in how very much she loved and missed me and wanted to see me, etc...and it took her almost an hour after I got in to start acting like an asshole. Don't tell me my own mom isn't an asshole, I know when she's being an asshole because she acts just like I do when I'm being an asshole. Where do you think I got it?
7. Spent plenty of time with Kathey and Rob, and Jess, which always makes me happy. Go in Amazonia and look at Rob. Mmmmmmmmm.
8. It always does my heart good to see my town and spend time bringing down all my friends with my woes and troubles.
9. I got to sleep outside once, and I meant to and everything!
10. I didn't even do anything I regret (that much).

p.s. my haircut went great

and I'm feeling much more positive about my birthday. Good buddies will do that to you. Plus, a super nice haircut. I have bangs! For the first time in my life. I walked in, a hungover mess, bumbled around the mall until my haircut was ready to go, then submitted to the best possible hair-wash/head massage of my life. And I'm including outright sexual acts, here. Suddenly, no more hangover, just an incredibly cute guy rubbing my head and discussing my cowlicks with his instructor. Who then rubbed my head. And then I got bangs! YEAH!

Fucking SXSW fucking RAWKS!

I just saw Echoset for the first time at Flamingo Cantina. Words fail me. No, wait, words never fail me. If you want to see a solid, fucking SOLID rock quartet with screaming guitars, pumping bass, and a totally tight band that really, really means it (with authentic Rock-God faces and leaping and squrming all around for the entire show), please go see them. I mean it. These kids love the rock and roll, and they want to share their dirty, naughty love with you. Oh, and all four of them are super stone-fucking-foxes. Something for everyone. You need Echoset in your life. That is all.

Happy thoughts, happy, happy...

So, I thought long and hard about it and decided not to delete any posts outright, even though they may have been inspired by momentary mood swings, since even though I don't feel that way now, I will again, probably. So, even though I don't really stand behind my last few posts right now, and I'm sure if anyone reads them I'll be embarassed, I'm leaving them up because if I'm going to sanitise this experience I may as well delete the whole thing. So that's that.
Now, I'm going to Austin Tuesday to get a free fabulous haircut from Richie at Toni&Guy, which I am soo excited about. I don't really need a haircut, since he just did my hair two weeks ago, but I like the idea of a free one. Hopefully my friends will be glad to see me, and will buy me a beer or two, and I won't get too drunk, and the whole experience will leave me happy and at peace. Although I know from experience I usually cry for about two days when I get back from an Austin visit, and the horrifying 27th birthday is likely to make it worse. No matter, I'm going to have a great time. Plus, it's SXSW and that's always a lot of crazy fun. So, I'll be gone from posting for about a week, and hopefully at the end I'll be back and putting up mad fun stories and not in prison, or sold to a white slaver. In the meantime, I'll be adding to the links part of the blog to keep all my (0) readers occupied in case I'm gone a long time.

What a pansy whiner.

I'm such an punk faggot emo puler sometimes. Jeez. How that all came about was I got up early today for a little daytrip that didn't happen with my mom's friend Rosemary, and when I get up early, one of three things happens:

• I go back to bed (35% probable).
• I'm grumpy and pointedly nasty all day (43% probable).
• I'm impossibly and annoyingly cheerful and disjointed all day (22% probable).

Today was the cheerful option, and my mom and I were having a nice conversation while she got ready to go to work at the library. We were talking about nothing much, I showed her some funny stuff online, we were talking about what to do later in the day. Then she thought she heard one of the cats yowling to get out of somewhere, and started looking for it. I didn't hear anything, and she found both of the cats placidly sleeping, so no biggie. But she kept looking for what it was. "What could it be?" she asked me a few times. I had already told her I hadn't heard it, so about the 4th time she asked me I said, "I CAN'T HEAR IT," as though she were slow, and she said, (exact quote) "God, go back to bed. You wake up as such a bitch all the time. Why do you have to be so bitchy?" Which is, you should know, something she says to me on a weekly basis if not more often. Usually, there is some basis for it, as I am normally pretty grouchy lately. But I do not say things like this to her (about her, yeah, to her, no) and it always strikes me as such emotional terrorism that I cry, which I hate to do. It's just so unfair of her, such out-and-out nuclear warfare. Am I crazy? I know this whole situation isn't easy for her either, and I don't come out and say in so many words, "Hey, I'm fighting suicidal depression here, cut me some slack," and she can't read my mind, but sheesh. So that's what happened this morning. Lucklily, my friend Jess, when I was crying about this at her house two weeks ago, threatened to kill her next time she did it, so that's all sorted out then.

My birthday is coming!

I'm getting excited about it, although I don't know why. I always encourage people not to get me anything, maybe buy me a beer if they feel the urge to gift me. It's not that I'm altruistic, it's just that deep in my heart I know no one is going to get me anything, so I'd rather it be because I earnestly asked them not to than because they don't care. Except for family members, who will get me several things I don't know what are and would never use. This all started a few years ago when, in the months leading up to my birthday, I told everyone, approximately 798 times, that I really wished I could afford a manicure. Just a little old manicure, not like big fake nails, just the $8-$12 dollar version at a little nail shop, maybe. I said it until I myself was sick of hearing it. Just to let everyone know, here's a cheap little present you could get me, just less than $10 bucks, stick the gift certificate in a card and draw a heart on it. No big deal. So you know what I got. Mostly just empty cards, but also a delightful selection of cheap crap I didn't want and couldn't use. Of course, if you're reading this, I obviously knew you would and don't mean you. You know who you are. All I need from you is your inexpressibly precious love and friendship, and yet you always give me the perfect thing. The right word at the right moment, something you knew I needed, a silly something to brighten my day. Or cash. And, probably you've heard this all before, last year. God, I hate my birthday. And the best part is, I'm turning 27 and I'm an unemployed penniless alcoholic who lives with her parents. Yay. My cat is more useful than I am. Happy birthday. Jeez, and to think the whole point of this post was just a cheerful little note that if anyone did want to get me anything this year (penniless friends and family are hereby disqualified from the giftgiving: see above about precious love and friendship), I'm trying to get up the $50 to $100 to post morose pictures here to go with my dismal entries, so if everyone who (still) loves me (after reading this) gives me $2 I'll have enough (to take a city bus).

Here's a fun toy!

Go to this site and type in something fun. No reason. Just do it.

Bored, busted, belligerent...

I've done almost nothing of any consequense for the last two days. Really, here's the list of what I've done:

1. Read 6 books.
2. Put my bathing suit on three times, but never made it out of the house to bathe or sun-bathe.
3. Drove mom to therapy and was snippy with her.
4. Made dinner once (rather well).
5. Listened to Songs for Dustmites 7 times.
6. Started my monthlies whilst hungover and was generally snippy and groan-y.
7. Planned a slacker trip to Austin for next week.
8. Got invited to a two-year-old's birthday party.
9. Watched mom fertilise the yard.
10. Knitted exactly 12 rows of a slipper.
11. Played with the cats and fed them catnip until fur flew.
12. Slept approximately 18 hours.
13. Spent almost an hour, total, thinking about getting a job.
14. Spent almost 12 hours, total, thinking about getting drunk.

So you can see how well my stated goal of getting some goals and achieving them is going. Whoooo-eee. You don't get success like this by going out and doing things, kids, this is regular old, blood, sweat and tears, hardcore, old school slacking. They don't teach this stuff in school anymore. Woo.

New frustrating pastime

Since I'm tired of learning both html and ASL because I've gotten to the hard parts, it must be time to become obsessed with an internet game! The latest is Bauns from Orisinal over there in the links. Sooooooooo time eating. You must try it....
In other news, took a nice bike ride today, despite the weak cries of my puny, atrophied muscles. I'm trying very hard to get enough physical activity (no, sleep does not count!) into each day that I don't end up unable to lift a book, y'know? So yesterday I took a long bike ride, then rode the stationary bike for an episode of Mad About You, then did some assorted floor flailing until my whole body got together to write a memo. It said, "Stop that right now and drink a beer. Or we'll kill you. We can do it, you know it: do what we say." Of course, I foolishly continued to grunt and roll pitiably around until my body's enforcers helped me understand what a nice calf I have, and how sorry they would be to see anything happen to it. After I finished rubbing my leg and squealing, I went to the fridge and did what they said.
What was I saying, oh, yeah, so that's why I'm feeling, today, the light and pleasurable burn that results when you excersize a little bitty bit after electively spending six months almost exclusively in bed, allowing every muscle fiber in your body to waste away to nothing while indulging a nascent alcoholism and reading trashy novels.

Update!

I missed a few days along in there, then when I went to post about them I got sidetracked on my paean to the hope of summer. So, this weekend just past I spent a whole wonderful day at a nearby lake. Rode my bike several lesiurely miles, ate horrible hot dogs hand-charred over a fire I started (my favorite--arson, that is), the constant drone and thump of a Boy Scout Jamboree going on across the lake...by dark there was a haze of campfire smoke literally covering the park from the ground to the top of the trees...all I could think about was the movie One Crazy Summer, and I knew I absolutely mustn't do anything requiring first aid...
So, I had a great time, got to watch a white and a blue egret fishing, drank a lot of beer outdoors in the sun on a beautiful day, and basically wish you could have been there, especially if you're under a few feet of snow.

Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of...early pre-spring

So, I'm so impatient for summer that I have been wearing nothing but sandals, shorts and sarong tops for two weeks, and this is Texas, but it's still early March and I'm freezing most of the time. I'm just soooooooooo tired of wearing winter clothes, and yes, I know how spoiled I am, and I know a lot of the nation is still under feet of snow and the sun is out for the last three days and I'm sitting here in beach clothes "freezing to death" in 59 degree weather in the sun. I know that.
Two things: there's a reason I live in Texas, and the privelige of wearing a sweater in May is not it. Also, I currently live in mid-coastal Texas, near Houston, where the mean annual daily humidity is something like 798% or near. Lemme 'splain that fur y'all. Y'all know "dry heat" is good and "wet heat" is bad, so you should be able to intuit that "dry cold" is intolerable and "wet cold" is the lowest circle of hell. Oh, yeah, and it rains almost every day in the winter. We get these nice, sunny, cool days around here and everybody goes around in sweaters and sandals, reminding each other, "This is nice. This is about perfect. I wish it could stay like this. You know (everyone joins in in a sing-song chorus) August is coming, in August we're gonna be wishing for days like this!" Every time I hear it I grit my teeth and renew my vow to become a pirate and terrorise the equatorial seas. I hate cold, and I can't wait for August. I pray every year for a repeat of the Austin summer when it was over 104 degrees every single day for over 35 days. I am so completely stealing a boat and turning to a life of piracy.

Fixed Links

I re-troubleshot the previous post and found my two errors! I'm stoked.

More Progress

I'm now about 1/3 of the way up the thumb gusset increase for the mitt and after several false starts where I had to frog out a few rounds, I think I've gotten the reverse correct. I'm knitting way above my technical ability on this one, which is usually fine if I go exactly by the pattern, but this is a 5 page pattern for the left mitten, then at the end it says, "reverse pattern for right mitten." Which is harder than you think. I've been looking at the completed left mitten in the mirror, and that seems to help figure out how my dislexic self is supposed to spontaneously generate an exact opposite mitten.
On another note, I always try to check any link in my posts or sidebar, and I noticed this morning that the link for the mitt in my previous post doesn't work, and when I tried to troubleshoot, I found that not only is the code (as far as I can tell) okay, when you click on the link it doesn't even go to the right place, so I'm doing something really wrong. Hopefully the link in this one works, or it's in the archive on Knitty, link in sidebar (I checked and that one does work).

10 things about me

1. I love my bike an unreasonable amount.
2. My favorite friend in the world is named Kathey, and we get along exactly twice as well as we shouldn't.
3. I want to be a pirate when I grow up. Not like a downloading music pirate, like a pillaging and burning argggh argggh pirate.
4. I absolutely love to read.
5. I'm currently obsessed with Steve Burns in a harmless and non-threatening way.
6. I really like oranges
7. I have no idea why my friends love me, and that makes me love them more
8. I always think I'm exactly as gorgeous as I always have, but how much I think I deserve to think it changes from day to day.
9. I like to draw, and sometimes I'm good at it.
10. My car needs a brake job.

Progress Report

I've only finished a meager half of the ribbing for the second Broad Street mitt, which is kind of dissapointing. But, Persistence will pay off, I'm sure. The next thing I'm casting on is the Official Kitty 62 hat, for me this time. Which of course means that I will knit it exactly to the pattern, not alter it on the fly, and not think I know better than the pattern writer, who is more experienced and brilliant than I am. And who, after all, alrealdy has a workable hat in this pattern, unlike some people I could mention. Even though her head is probably not as massive as theirs.
The only alteration I am going to make is to use black Lion Brand Fun Fur in it. I was thinking of doing it like the devil hat, but I am not so sure now. I'll have to swatch and see.

Dinner's Ready!

I made dinner tonite, a small roast with onions and potatoes, side of broccoli and rolls. This is kind of exciting because I never cook, although I know how, partially because when I was a kid I was expected to take over making dinner from about age 12. Nobody ever really took the time to teach me what to do or how to do it, so I just putter along and ruin about every 4th endeavor. No, really. Not slightly burned cookies or too many onions in the soup. An hour worth of cooking and a dinner's worth of food, inedible and nicely plated for the garbage. But anyway, since I've been home with my folks I've started cooking again, as my mom is often confined to bed and my dad is like me and would rather eat out or have microwaved something, but mom can't stand the idea of not having some semblance of a June Cleaver experience. Really. She'll spend several hours, most days, fretting about what we're going to eat, just as though it matters. "Oh, I didn't thaw anything, we'll have to go to the store." "Mom, nobody cares. Reheat something. Or don't, we're grownups, we probably will find the will to eat standing up from the fridge before we starve to death." "Well, I just like things to be NICE."
Sorry. This was just supposed to be about the nice little roast I cooked and almost didn't ruin.

Blogging seems to be addictive

So here I am, drunkish and mawkish and who-knows-what else, wishing my shout-out (jeez, am I showing my age?) to my friends had gone heeded, but as it hasn't, my sweet, sweet blog will absorb my garrulousness. So, I've been thinking again. As though that hadn't been proved so, so wrong in the past.
Mostly I've been thinking about knitting, as I've just finished Kitty62's Adults Only Devil Hat after having made some ill-advised novice alter-on-the-fly alterations. The only part that turned out awesome is that I joined some Bernat Boa in Pheonix on after the seed stich border and knitted the stockinette portion all in it, so the band, earflaps, ties and horns are regular red worsted weight, and the main part of the hat is flame-colored fur. I always think my head is smaller than it is. Anyway, as I was making this particular hat to give away, I only have to downsize the head I was thinking of it for...although now I'll have to find a recipient before beginning some matching mitts, (...and since I live in Texas, and it is March, I'll have to think about who it will fit above Oklahoma, or next winter...my life is tedious, yet so engaging to me.)
Anyway, as soon as I have pictures, I'll arrange to post them (involves upgrading the blog, harder than you would think, considering blogspot arguably must make a little money off it) and of the Broad Street Mittens, from Knitty I'm knitting. So far have one done, (in Lion Brand Magic Stripes in Sea Blue, now must figure reversing it to knit other....until now, I thought knitting above my skill was helping build skills, now I wonder if it's helping or hurting...

10 Things about Me

1. I'm not as happy as I seem most of the time.
2. I'm not as sad as I seem sometimes, either.
3. I have just a few friends, but I cherish them desperately.
4. I have horrible communication skills.
5. I own and refer regularly to actual print copies of The Elements of Style and a rather large Dictionary and smaller Thesarus. Yes, my computer will do those things for me, I just like to do it myself.
6. My best friend in the world is named Jessica, and I love her exactly twice as much as the most that I've ever hated her.
7. I love beer. It isn't a requited love, but it is a real love.
8. People don't like me as much as I think they do.
9. Charm isn't everything. Somebody has to clean up the puke.
10. I like telling my blog things about me, and there will be more of these lists.

A Semi-Grand Journey Begins!

Aha!, first post. I suppose if I thought anyone but me would read this, I'd try to make a good impression, but my grandstanding is largely lost on me. So, blogging is for the blogger, seize the blog, you have nothing to blog but blog itself: here I go. The purpose and mission of this...thing is to give me a sort of record and reference for the next little bit of my life. I'm slowly changing directions in my aspirations (or lack thereof) and plan (see previous parenthesis) for the next up-to-sixty-years.
More to the point, I'm going from having little or no aspirations above earning enough money to subsist on diner food and beer, and not leaving my house very much.
To this end, I've lost my job (in May 2003), moved back in with my folks, taken a long vacation from being a grownup and a shorter vacation in my mom's truck over most of the southwest, and learned to knit. Here will be where I update myself to my progress toward my goals (as soon as I get some) and possibly begin to feel a little connected to this big thing they call the "internet."