Wednesday, May 17, 2006

rider strong

Do you remember this guy? For me and my friends from high school, it's unthinkable that we'd ever forget Shawn Hunter, semi-bad-boy and best friend of Cory Matthews on ABC's Boy Meets World. (Honestly, IMHO, he was the most realistic character... He didn't get everything handed to him in his lap like so many, and he wasn't totally crazy like certain other characters...)

So I had to laugh when I was watching the WB's new sitcom Pepper Dennis with my roommate. (This makes it sound like I watch tons of television. That's not true - BMW, yes, I did watch that faithfully for five years, but nowadays the only intended-for-people-over-the-age-of-13 t.v. exposure I get is what my roommates are watching when I'm in the living room knitting or eating ice cream before bed.) I have a really hard time with identifying actors and actresses, but I knew I knew this person portraying "Chick" (what an awful name...give the guy some mercy, eh?). I asked my roommate, but she had no idea. I decided, thus, that it must be Harry from a kids' PBS show I watch since obviously my roommate would never have seen that (I love kids' shows!! but rarely am home when they're on. When I can, though...). Kind of strange...going from PBS to the WB...quite a jump.

But, of course, I was wrong. When I finally got to watch the credits, I realized...Chick is Rider Strong!! Ohhhhhh! Personally, I feel kind of bad. Rider is so likeable...why does he have to play this poor picked-on guy? So not right. The switch from Shawn to Chick is just as drastic as the conjectural Harry-to-Chick swtich.

Well, I suppose that's the way show biz goes. Rider, if you happen to read this, which I highly doubt: I'm still a fan. And, by the way, I think you used to have a really cool website with poetry and stuff - what happened to it?

This all reminds me of a fun time in college where Amber (she's my oldest, bestest friend) and I saw an episode of The Wonder Years where we saw a kid who, again, we knew we knew. We bugged our eyes out staring at the end credits to figure out his name, but that still didn't help. So then we spent the evening searching for him online (this was before Google and many useful online movie/t.v. databases) until we cross-matched Chad Allen as the actor in both The Wonder Years and...good ol' Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman!

...Oh the amusement that a lack of memory causes...

Also amusing that, probably because I was thinking about writing this post before I went to bed, I had an incredibly strange dream last night in which Rider, who informed me his name was actually Dean and was about 6 inches taller and had a twin brother and looked nothing like the actual Rider Strong when I think about it, and I met while standing next to each other in line for something. While we waited, I had my ear inspected by a very scientifically-savvy Mr. Strong who apparently toted around a hand-held microscope specifically for examining people's earlobes. ????? Yikes! In this case, reality is better than dreams.

I thought about putting some pictures up, but I decided to be moral and not swipe them from some site and use them. Copyright laws, I respect you.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

the joy in knitting

Happiness abounds...

Last night while shopping for much-needed groceries I paused by the magazine rack and was astounded to find the summer edition of Interweave Knits, my favorite knitting magazine. I've had that issue's release date on my calendar for a month now, and it's listed as March 16. It even still says that on the website! But...much to my enjoyment, the magazine was there at least a day early, so I scooped it up and even paid full price. I then was able to peruse the many knitted-tee patterns while washing my mountain of laundry into the wee hours of the night.

...I gotta get some more yarn. Hee hee.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

the happy ending

Throughout my looooooooong day Thursday, I (and I'm totally serious here...) kept thinking to myself, "You can do it...just a few more hours...and then maybe when you get home your Sockapaloooza socks will be in the mail!" I was just trying to amuse myself, but...imagine my delight when I got home and found the following items in my mail pile (sorry for the totally cruddy pictures...it was past midnight, and I'd been up at 5a.m.):
money owed me by the university!an invitation to ren's wedding!MY SOCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, they arrived!! I ripped open the package, pulled off my boring white socks from my exhausted feet, and jumped into the papasan to put on my new socks!
feet, meet socks. socks, meet feet

Brynne, my S'ploooza pal, knit me good. Just look...
A beautiful cabley rib, and a heel with slipped stitches - the texture is way cool!Shaped toes so I know which sock is for which of my different-sized feet.I don't know what this heel is called, but I really like it.
A shaped calf...very thoughtful!! And look at how the pattern is maintained...excellent workmanship...!!

Brynne's the best. It's amazing to see how much work went into the socks. The colors are gorgeous and happy and spring-like and go with many clothes I have, including my new favorite pink fleece sweatshirt. And I was also presented with some sock yarn to make summer socks, too! Yay!!!

I am afraid I may love my new socks a little too much. I wore them to work on Friday...and then I wore them on Saturday...and on Sunday... Hey, they're nice, okay? And they deserve the upmost care...and love. What better way to love socks than to wear them?

Monday, May 08, 2006

more mischief at work - a chain reaction

Before I begin, let me assure you that this story has a happy ending.

I seem to have acquired a Thursday Curse. For the past month, every Thursday has been incessantly busy at work. I, of course, make my schedule, so I am really the only one to blame. There are other factors - when certain people are available to aid me, when reagents can be shipped to me, and at what times I can use various machines. But truly it's me, and for some reason I seem to have decided that since I don't have anything to do on Thursday evenings, that means I can stay at work for 16 hours and do ridiculous amounts of work. It is thus no surprise that it is on Thursdays (or in preparation for Thursdays) that bad things occur.

Last Thursday was one of those days... I shall present to you the amusements of my life in pictures:

It all started with this tube.

I put some stuff into the tube, and moments later it transformed into this. This was not supposed to happen. The pointy end inverted into the inside of the tube, and then the pointy part got so disfigured that it broke open, so the stuff I put into it came out.

The culprit - a centrifuge...

...because of this...

...and not this.
Since the stuff I had put into the tube was bacteria, I really needed to clean up everything upon which it had leaked through the pointy-end hole. Fortunately, when you put tubes into that centrifuge, they sit in a bucket, so that meant I just needed to clean the bucket. I washed it out, and then I reached to get a wipe to dry the bucket.I reached over this.And then this happened. That meant the water went everywhere. Amazingly, it did not get on me, just the floor. Also amazingly, the glass beaker that I knocked over did not break!


Not as traumatic as a near-fire, but it was fairly amusing and caused many more problems than I had anticipated. However, like I said, in the end there was a happy ending to my long and tiring day at the lab. But that will have to wait for tomorrow...

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

what's in the bag

Here's all the objects I crammed into the "bag" I sent to my sockpal. As mentioned before, Pittsburgh Knit and Bead is closing, so...I bought a few things from them to send along. Sockpal, I hope you enjoy!!!!
pictured clockwise, starting from the top: hand-dyed and ??handspun?? merino laceweight yarn made near pittsburgh; the socks made in pittsburgh and baltimore and columbus and colorado and probably some other places; a pen from pk&b; a stitch marker made at pk&b

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

the socks are in the mail

Today is the official Mail-Your-Socks-To-Your-Sockapaloooza-Pal Day. My pal lives across the ocean, so I actually sent the socks a couple days early so they should arrive around the same time that all the domestically-delivered socks do. I have a nice picture of the other stuff I sent along with the socks, but of course I left my camera with the pictures at home today, so...oops. Check back tomorrow!

The other wonderful thing about this being MYSTYSP Day is that...in a matter of days I should be getting socks!!! I hadn't given this much consideration, being way too involved in making sure I got the socks done and blocked and sent. I procrastinated on the blocking, and when I finally did it took forever for the socks to dry because I not-thinkingly left them to dry in our basement, which isn't the best place to try to dry things. After a couple days of waiting, I realized this and brought them upstairs and they finished drying in no time.

...Can't wait for the mail to come these next few days...!!!

Monday, May 01, 2006

the flowers in my garden

I don't exactly have a garden, but when I moved into my present house, my mom ensured that I get some bulbs and other plants planted. It's quite a meager garden, if I can even venture to call it that. Every year it's an adventure to see what will return. For example, the second spring I lived in the house, I waited eagerly to see if the iris would return - the previous spring our neighbors weed-wacked it when they were trying (very kindly) to help us limit the out-of-control weed problem in that particular flower bed and they didn't notice that I was actually attempting to culture something that wasn't a weed. It didn't.

But...in the same flower bed, I still get these tulips.
they're leaning because they don't get enough sun. tough in the city.
Right next to the tulips is a huge pricker plant. I suppose I should dig that out someday soon.

Along the edge of the flowerbed are these little violets, which are weeds, really, but are so cute.On the side of the house along the driveway are the remnants of the daffodils that have come and gone, having bloomed right after the crocus made a very brief appearance (the week I was in Colorado, of course).There is also another tulip...
one is the loneliest number...
...and some grape hyacinth.I grow lots of this ground cover (weed???) without trying very hard......but what I'm super great at doing is getting these guys to sprout: