Yarn-A-Go-Go

Woot!

I put the zipper in, but I'm at work, so all I've got for you is this:

From the new Vogue Knitting, Flame Cardie:

Better pics and specs on Monday(ish). I *LOVE* this sweater.

Happy weekend! Mwah!

O.K.C.

I am knitting. Did you know that? You probably didn't. It sometimes strikes me that I'm not a knitblogger, but a blogger who knits. I just don't very much like blogging the little knitted pieces.

Right now I'm making socks (new Knit Picks superwash merino in Hydrangea, SO soft) for a friend's birthday, a homespun hat for Ryan's Scam, and I just finished last night a wee little baby sweater for a preggers friend at work. I did that five-hour sweater, and while I found its instructions a little odd, I ignored the funny bits and it turned out so ooey-gooey sweet. Of course, I didn't take a picture of it. But I did make it out of this lovely angora pink stuff, I think it was old Classic Elite Lush from the stash pile, and I also just finished the new Vogue flame cardie in the same yarn, so at least you'll see the color. Yeah. Soon. When I get around to attaching a zipper (no buttons for me, thanks). Whenever that is. I have a brand new TV and I haven't watched a single program yet. This weekend also promises to be busy as heck, but that's fun stuff.

Hey! The Whoreshoes are playing Smiley's Saloon in Bolinas on Saturday night. If you've ever been to Bolinas, you know this is the perfect venue for 'em. It's a run-down honkey-tonk where the bar stools grab your ass and the pianer leans a little more at closing time. You should go. I'll be the groupie with the lighter.

Spoiled

Night out with Amy:

A wonderfully grinning Amy (I love this shot) and her best friend Christie:

Me'n'La, just being goofy:

Okay, so we were nothin' BUT goofy:

Thank goodness we weren't driving that night. Day-um, we had some fun.

And while we're on photo-sharing, lemme show you somethin' else. The other night my TV blew up. Ka-snap kachewey ka-POW! There was a white flare on the screen and then little dying panicked flickers that signaled great television distress.

I didn't panic. This was, after all, a second-hand TV. And in my bedroom, behind the cat toys and a chair was another old second-hand TV that had been destined for the thrift store, but hadn't yet made it. I asked Lala if she wouldn't mind hooking up that one and disposing of the old one, since she had mad Contender needs last night. She said sure.

I got home at 5 this morning to find this:

A brand damn-spanking new TV. You ever seen something like that? I've never had anything like it! It's clear! The sound is great! You can actually read WORDS on it! And it matches the white and silver of the chairs, and is generally about a mill-yun times better than the old one.

I am spoiled. Really, really rottenly spoilt. Of course, I've got the TiVo and all the channels, so I'm just glad she'll be over here even MORE often. Oh, yeah.

Meantime, I've got yet another 14 hour shift at work and no time to watch or spin. Someday....

Stuff

I am a remiss blogger. I don't usually post on weekends, and not usually on Mondays, either. But Tuesdays I usually hit the blog at least a little earlier. I've almost lost the whole day already. And I had things to tell you, but they've dropped out of my mind.

I was going to tell you how much fun we had with Amy and her girl Sandra and Christie and Jason and others whose names have also slipped away. I have photos to prove that we may have had a leetle too much to drink. Okay, *I* might have had a leetle too much, since I started thinking it was a good idea to snap photos down Lala's shirt. (No! I will NOT post those, thank you very much.) I only just found said camera this morning, as a matter of fact, so I have no photos to show. But trust that we had a ball, even though I was in charge of hooking up the lesbian dance club, and instead we ended up at a reggae night. Er....

Amy leaves this week for a massive trip, which'll be chronicled at How To Get Lost. Should be good reading, yo.

Also, I was going to tell about what I have seen on my way to work recently on High Street. They include:

• A man with a shopping cart with nothing in it but an empty forty and a teddy bear.
• A naked lady.
• Her peeing boyfriend.
• A taco truck on a trailer.
• A kid on a bike that had a big ole spinner for handlebar (that was COOL).

And then last night, I saw the neatest thing while I was driving to Lala's, although I fully know I shouldn't have thought it was neat. But it was. I was getting on Highway 13, and I was behind two hot little cars on the onramp. They irritated the heck out of me by slowing down almost to a stop on the ramp. I figured it was some kind of road rage deal, and wanted to steer clear, literally. When we got on the freeway, they both stayed in the slow lane, never speeding up past forty miles per hour. I considered shooting past them, but I was too a'sceered. I'm a timid driver as it is. So I hung back and followed them some more. There were no other cars around.

We came around a curve, and the back car pulled forward and then flush with the other car, both of them still driving super-slowly, now neck and neck. I thought I'd see the flare of a pistol shot any moment, but instead, they both took off at such a high rate speed that I felt like my car was suddenly going backwards.

It was RAD. They were gone in an instant. That must have been fun. Totally unsafe, yep. No one should do it. Nope. But it was still awesome.

Unexpected

This is crazy. When I woke up fifteen minutes ago, I thought about going running. It looked like a nice day. Instead, I made coffee and toast with honey and sat down to look at email.

Suddenly, it's POURING outside. The sky just broke. I looked up from the computer to see Adah sitting at the window. She swiveled her head around to look at me, and I've never seen a more expressive, wide-eyed WTF look on a cat, ever. I went out the sliding glass door in the bedroom that overlooks the freeway and watched the cars slow in confusion. That smell! It's totally a spring rain smell, very different from the winter kind. Winter rain smells cold and bittersweet. Spring rain smells electric and unexpected.

I've left the front and back doors open with the screens on, and that cool wet pavement smell is blowing through the tiny space. I love it.

Not much time off today, just enough to bathe and maybe fifteen minutes for spinning. But know what? I've been writing lately, and it's amazing how much better I handle a busy schedule when I'm doing what I love, what I want to do.

ET

I absolutely love having a camera in my cell phone. I don't carry a purse unless I know I'm going to have knitting time, in which case my little black bag can hold a pair of in-progress socks, but I usually just have a wallet in my back pocket, keys in my front right, and my cell phone in the front left. And I have a camera! Right there, when I need it.

Sure, it's not great quality, but it'll do when you need to document George. Remember George? Sweet old George that I loved looking at through my old window, George who's now outside Lala's window (handy, that), George who is apparently and very suddenly signaling the Mother Ship.

        Mom! Here I am!

I mean, really. What the HELL is going on with this plant? It happened overnight, I swear.

For scale:

Asparagus gone wild. Anyone know what it's doing? Will it flower? Will it stretch out and grab the BART train off its tracks? Any ideas?

So the cell phone camera thingie is good for that. But we still have the inside camera for catching the important fiber photos.

Look! I Navajo-plied! Sylvia had shown me how, but I hadn't really GOT it. I did it once and screwed up. This last time (the brown alpaca (from Ann in MN) on the left), I messed about with the wheel and got the hang of it, figured out the motion and how to pedal. Oh, the satisfaction of getting something physically like that. The middle stuff is also an alpaca single from Ann, and the stuff on the right is good ole Blue Faced Leicester, which is turning into my main love.

Have I mentioned I aDORE spinning? Hmmm?

Texas House Endorses Ban On Gay Foster PArents

Texas sucks.* Or at least, their House does. 135 to SIX!  Unbelievable.

You know who hurt children? Bad people hurt children. Mean people hurt children.  Sexual orientation has nothing to do with it. A fucked-up person hurts a child, and the vast majority of child molesters are straight white men. Perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to foster children.

Ooooh. The anger. There are no words.

* To my Dear Readers from Texas (Lisa! Susan! for example), this obviously doesn't mean you. I love y'all. And the music is good out there. But you can take your House and shove their ignorant, bigoted selves right out a very high, very pink, very feathery boa'd window. That's what I think.

A Walk

I just slept for ten and a half hours. 

That does not happen. Not that I try not to, but I just can't usually manage to sleep more than between five and seven hours (if I'm lucky) during my work week. If my eyes pop open in the early afternoon, and if one teeny-eeny little wiggly thought about writing or fiber or bills or god forbid ice cream sneaks into my brain, I'm up. No help for it. But today I gave myself permission, nothing to think or worry about, no place I had to be, no errands that were absolutely necessary, so I slept and slept. I did dream about ice cream, though, that's the truth.

I'm just gonna show some pictures today. How's that? I'm still quite sleepy and lazy, and hang on, my toes are cold. I need my slippers (Ann, you know the ones). Okay. I'm back. And dude, I found my extra emergency box of Girl Scout Tagalongs, so I'm all good.

Going back to that whole plane thing, here's the driver, Lala's dad:

He runs marathons, you know. Bunches of 'em. At least a dozen, I think. He said when I ran mine, "That's so NEAT!" I think he's neat. He and La's mom were in town for the weekend, on business, so we got to eat lots of nice things, and I showed off by getting a big jerkfaced jerk ticketed for parking in a handicapped spot when there were lots of other open spaces around. And Big Jerk tried to cut RUDELY in front of me in line. And he elbowed his way in front of a guy with a cane who had parked in a normal spot. I tell you, it's nice to know the cops every once in a while. La's family thought I was hero. It was neat.)

Also neat (it's fun to say, I like how it pulls the corners of my mouth back) is standing next to the plane, imagining that I'm off for a quick jaunt to New York for lunch with the Drafty Ladies, or that I'm jetting to Venice for the weekend before starting my whirlwind imaginary book tour. (Damn, note to self, Stephanie's bookbookbook is IN at Diesel Bookstore, must pick it up -- how proud are we of her, really?)

I must say, I have few brain cells left after that sleep. I've been puttering around on the computer, dashing between this blog entry and email and phone calls, and it's taken me an hour to even get this down. Sigh. But it's a lovely sunny afternoon, and the traffic is rushing well outside, and I love the way the light is falling across the floor. Wait, I'll show you.

I love the instant gratification that is a camera-cell-phone sitting next to me on the couch.

What else did I do this weekend? Well, I worked a hell of a lot, but hopefully the working-on-the-weekend thing is played out for a little while. But I did have all of Monday off, and Lala and I took the dogs for a long, long ramble around the Albany Bulb. Have you ever been there? It's this reclaimed spit of land out past the racetrack, hanging off into the Bay, and Monday was a gorgeous sunny day for it.

We sat on the beach and watched a golden dog run-run-run-run-run-run and run some more, chasing balls into the water that his baseball-capped owner tossed out for him. We drank our coffee and ate our morning buns (at the respectable four o'clock time, of course, the only time for a morning bun). We walked around the side of the Bulb, surrounded by water, viewing not only San Francisco and the Bay Bridge, but the Golden Gate and Marin, all the way around to Richmond. We are so LUCKY to live here. Day-um.

We headed around to the far side, picking our way over wet rocks to the dry land on the other edge, where we saw a huge hawk lumber from the ground into the air, a snake dangling from its beak. It hovered there, EATING in the air (I don't know why that surprised me, but it did), and we watched until it got bashful and took refuge in a tree. Then we watched a smaller hawk take its place in the air, hanging on to wind currents so that it didn't move at all, just stayed up as if by magic, as if hung by a string. (Lala carried wee Miss Idaho at this point. You don't want to play around with hawks and chi-hooa-hooas. Even the trained ones can let you down.)

On the other side of the Bulb is art, the pirate-installed kind, the driftwood kind that used to line the Emeryville mudflats when I was a kid (the hippy 'rents even took us out once to build one, one of my favorite memories).

That second is one of a series that I wish I could attribute, painted on warping plywood, set up in the sun and wind and salt, with a lovely who-cares-about-the-elements attitude.

Okay. That's enough for now, I think. I'm chilly from not moving, and I want a bath and another cup of coffee. Then I'll have time to spin a bit before work (only a 12 tonight). I wish you a lovely walk and a little sun and a great big hot cup of strong coffee (or tea, for Cari).

MaryB is Nice

Okay, we didn't fly away. We WERE on a private jet, flown by Lala's really super cool dad (who also wears super cool sunglasses, like she does), but we were on the tarmac, and the door was open. But it was fun.

I still have no time to blog. Have to be in for a 14 hour shift for my Monday (had one full day off this week -- it was nice) in about two hours, so I'm hurrying. I must go for a run or I might never run again.

But I'll let MaryB in Richmond (not to be confused with MaryB in Seattle -- for a while I thought she had two houses, far apart) blog for me today.

With her permission:

Hey, girl!

I wasn't actually expecting to talk to a police dispatcher during police dispatcher appreciation week, but then nobody *ever* expects to talk to a police dispatcher. A NON-EMERGENCY call.

My David was heading off to the Prom, wearing the most gorgeous tux on earth and driving Richard's 1949 Mercury....and smiling such that bugs got in his teeth.  I'm following him to the date's house, for the traditional picture-taking session, then they will go off to dinner and I will come home.

Except that the 1949 Mercury decided it wasn't all that excited about the Prom after all, and cut off.  On the busiest road in the area.  And, did I mention the tux? But the good news was that I was behind him.  I handed him *my* keys, said "Go.  I'll figure it out," and sent him on his way.  Not quite as smiley, but then...stuff happens.

I found me a ride home, and at the suggestion of the friend who drove me I called the non-emergency number to report the car and to beg them not to tow it.  (You don't just hook up and tow a 1949 Mercury...that would just be wrong.) 

The guy I was talking to was really nice, and assured me that nobody would ticket or tow it tonight.  And then I said "And I hear that this is National Police Dispatcher Appreciation Week, and for all you do let me just say 'Thank you!'"  He loved it!  I told him I have a friend who's a dispatcher and she had asked all her friends to remember to say something, if the opportunity arose.  Then he said "Well, I'm sorry that the opportunity arose, but it was nice of you to remember!"

So David is off to the prom in a Ford Focus wagon (with a stick shift, though, so it's not all bad).

Hard to know which is more gorgeous:  the handsome 17 year old in the tux, or the handsome 56 year old in the seafoam green paintjob!

I couldn't wait to get home and let you know of my NPDAW festivity! {{{}}} Mary

Thanks, MaryB!

And quickly, here's what my WONDERFUL family got me for our week of appreciation:

MWAH!

So busy! So busy! If I owe you an email, please forgive me. Meanwhile, we're on the private jet: