buriedinfibre.com

Whoa.

I knew it had been a while since the last post but, well, oops.

I got a new tattoo last month. It’s inspired by one of my very favorite movies, Spinal Tap. After all, there is such a fine line between stupid and clever. Lately I feel like I am that very fine line.

Things are in a constant state of flux around here right now.

We ordered new furniture at the beginning of the month and it’s ready. How the hell is that possible?! I was waiting a couple of weeks before I listed the current stuff for sale so we wouldn’t be sitting on the floor for weeks on end and the bloody stuff is ready before I even list the old stuff!

I am impressed by their service but part of me wonders if I placed ads for the old furniture right away, if the new maybe wouldn’t have been ready until Christmas…

House next door is still in place and without power or siding or any semblance of yardwork.  No sign of the people who bought it for months now. Looks like I am going to have to call the city. Bleh.

The furnace man finally (it was almost two years) came and put the chimney sleeve in so we are set and legal now.

Plans are afoot to organize the stash room. I have enlisted aid of an unsuspecting and fairly OC friend. She has no idea what this will take, but I know that once she’s into it, she’ll see it through. Hell or highwater.

Looshkin is still evil. He spent most of my “relaxing” bath the other night whacking at my boobs every time they stuck out of the water.

He pretty much defines evil.

Sock count is up to 46 pairs. I’m right on track for finishing 50 as I had planned. Sadly, it hasn’t put even the slightest dent in the yarn stash. I have managed to knit a couple of sweaters, a scarf and some shawls too.

Dismal Octobers for Canucks seem to be the norm. Although this year seems worse than usual. Luongo has become a 5.3 million dollar sieve and may become the most expensive backup goalie in the league. Last night’s game seemed okay until he folded in the shootout.

There was much swearing.

I hate Chicago.

Fall brought a ton mushrooms this year.

That one is the size of a side plate and the ones below look like leaves at first glance.

Wish I knew if they were edible, there were enough for a feast.

Monkey goes sturgeon fishing this weekend and hopefully I’ll be sitting on the floor when he gets back. The new furniture arrives next friday.

The Bechdel test has come up for me a couple of times lately and has made me think about the stuff I read and watch. Initially it really pissed me off that so few of the things I really enjoy would pass this test.

For those who aren’t familiar, it’s basically this:

- are there two women with names

- do they talk to each other

- do they talk about something other than men

As I was describing this test and talking about it regarding movies with a couple of guys, I realized something.

The movies that pass that test? I likely don’t want to watch them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Thelma and Louise. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is also right up there. But those movies are full of violence and a healthy dose of crazy.

Eat Pray Love? You couldn’t pay me enough. Look for me in the line for The Expendables. I am literally counting the days until Machete opens. When I saw the trailer (the fake trailer) for it in the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature I wanted it to be real.

Jackass. I freaking love Jackass. Women would NEVER make that movie. And before you disagree with me, think about this: if your friend snuck up behind and shaved a patch of hair off your head, would you laugh? Probably not, but the guys on Jackass do. ‘Cause men are stupid, and fun, and mostly take things a little less seriously than women do.

This makes men more entertaining. At least for me it does.

The monkey and I went to a couple of olympic hockey games, one men’s, one women’s. As I watched a Canadian woman go to the penalty box, I asked the monkey what I’d missed, it looked like a nice clean hit to me. Apparently, I missed the fact that women’s hockey is no contact.

WTF?

Really?

Why?

They wear the same gear, it’s the same game, why the pansy assed rules? I watched the gold medal game, those chicks wanted to hit each other, why are we stopping them?

I don’t get it.

If we want the playing field to be level, we can’t complain when we get our heads shaved or take a clean hit.

And sometimes? We’re gonna have to throw the gloves down and have a fight. And I’m not talking about pillow fights in jammies either, I mean a good old hockey fight.

It’s not about titillation, it’s about taking ourselves less seriously and just having fun. When that happens, more stuff will pass the Bechdel test and I may even want to go see it.

In the meantime, who’s wants to come see RED with me? I hear Helen Mirren kicks some serious ass.

Yee frikkin haw!

In a better effort to negate some of the little every day piss offs around here, I’ve decided to see a positive along with every negative. Initially, this will be very simplistic.

Like this:

View of neighbouring houses that will not allow us to sell out house for what it’s worth right now?

bad

Costco dahlias?

pretty

Strangers peeing in our yard in broad daylight?

bad

Fushias?

pretty

White Rock water testing positive for e coli and Epcor only telling us through Global news?

bad

Pink cosmos?

pretty

Rogers charging us for roaming when we’re in our own house?

bad

Hardy hibiscus?

pretty

See? I bet we all feel better now.

And? The monkey’s annual Brokeback weekend fishing trip was a great success! He came home with 6 sockeye and a ling cod.

There’ll be some salmon going in the smoker tonight.

Life is pretty good.

Yeah I know, “quelle surpris”, but really, wtf?!

Last year was incredibly sucky for almost everyone I know. We weathered it okay, but people we loved were treated badly, lost jobs, got sick and just plain died. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a stretch like that, but it never seems to get easier to deal with.

We all hoped that this year would be better.

I think we all need to hope harder.

I’ve decided to call this the “transition year”.  Seems more promising than “the second year in a row that everything went to shit”.

And again, it’s mostly worse for the people around us, we’re dealing with changes, but we’re not sick or destitute, so it’s all good.

I can’t really get into what’s going on around here except for the monkey’s new job. He’s finally made the decision (weeks of agonizing and I managed not to kill him). He starts on Sept 7. This is great except for the fact that the new job is downtown. It doubles his commuting time and he’s going to use transit. Sounds like many kicks and giggles doesn’t it? Oh and he’s taking a pay cut. woohoo

He is very excited about the job though and that was definitely lacking lately with his current position. We’re hoping the better working conditions will make up for the other stuff.

The only other thing I can say is that I have a little over a year to get my flabby butt back in shape. Started the program in earnest this morning. I think the chick on the workout dvd is a cheery little sadist. I’d find her and kill her if I wasn’t trying so hard to breathe. Fifteen minutes of her perky little moves had me wanting to lie face down on the floor and cry. Of course there was no water left in body, so crying was completely out of the question.

Wish us luck please.

We’re gonna need it.

Here on the west coast, we spend a lot of time bitching about the rain. After the last few weeks of uninterrupted gorgeous weather I was really happy it rained last night. Okay, so I would have been happier if it had rained yesterday evening BEFORE I watered, but you can’t have it all.

We don’t water the grass, just the plants so it was turning into a bit of a dustbowl around here. Things like the complete morons new neighbours apparently doing the tear-down on the house next door themselves definitely does not help.

I am not kidding, check it out:

The plants have been loving the weather:

The passion vine came back this year and has a minimum of three flowers booming every day. It’s gorgeous and smells kinda like candy.

And the meyer lemon has actual lemons on it:

The bottom one is about the size of my thumb now. They take two years to mature and there’s a second bunch of flowers blooming now. Hopefully the bees will do the work this time as I had to pollinate the first lot myself with a q-tip.

The usual fibre crap that goes on around here was brutally interrupted last week for mechanical work. First car repair, then plumbing.

I love my car. A lot. But the mofo leaks and I want it to not leak. So the monkey helped me take the back end apart, replace some clips, weather seal some joins and lube up all the rubber seals.

It looked like this at the worst point:

No trim, no bumper, not so pretty.

I got it put back together the next day so that I could go buy plumbing fixtures. Our shower had finally given up. The monkey’s repair involved masking tape (seriously, don’t ask), mine involved replacing the stuff that no longer worked.

I won.

Then, after these two raging successes, WordPress crapped out, I couldn’t log into cpanel and Flickr decided to change their stuff so it was more of a pain in the ass.

I am not a techie.

Give me organics and I can make stuff, give me code and I’m totally screwed.

I’ve been screwed for a few weeks now. Sadly, the people in my live who can help me out with this stuff have been ass deep in their own problems and really give me too much credit for being able to learn on the fly.

They say, “just read the web hosting instructions, you’ll be fine”.

I say, “here’s some glue and wood and a book, build a guitar, you’ll be fine”.

Asshats. I love my friends.

Anyway, I’ve managed to figure it out. It works. I’m not sure how, but really? I. Don’t. Care.

It works!

Now I’m gonna go sew this together:

I totally get how this works.

Sock pair #32 for the year started off well. Yesterday it looked like this:

That’s Star’s Tour de France pattern.

Seriously people wtf with knitters and the bike racing? I understand that it’s not that exciting so there’s no bothersome changes in tension like the ones that occasionally happen to me during hockey season, but omg! Go outside! Watch grass grow! Same effect! And you get some valuable vitamin D. It’s good for you!

Anyway, it started out well as you can see. I was just about to start the toe, but something had been bugging me about it. I don’t usually do socks taller than 5″ to the heel, so this thing looked monstrous. Like some sort of giant pink kilt hose. I tried it on. It was okay. Just okay. Kind of binding, but I have giant cankles and even bigger calves, so I figured I could give it to one of my friends who had more gazelle-type legs.

It was also getting very long in the foot. This was a problem.

So today the sock is again a ball of slightly crinkly yarn. I’ll use a finer weight and bigger needles when I tackle this again and likely will leave out a couple of the leg repeats.

It’s not going to happen right away though, as I’ve got a sweater to finish, a sweater to start and my new wheels will be here this weekend!

I did some designing this week and there’s drawing and calculations for a sweater and a pair of socks. The sweater was a huge amount of math. Took hours and there’s still a bit  more to do.

In other news, the power to the house next door has been disconnected and the random visits from my old neighbour have stopped. Maybe there is a god.

We decided the deck furniture was looking a little sad so we got these:

Now I just have to make some tables to go with them. Love being able to lie in the sun without ants running all over me.

With June being so cold, I guess these guys were a little late this year:

That’s a long haired June beetle. He’s huge. About 2″ long and 3/4″ wide. They sound like small birds when they fly. Kinda cool, but they like to eat fruit tree roots, so I was happy when he decided to go elsewhere.

Gonna go get some vitamin D now, you should too. Who knows, this may be all the summer we get!

So I missed a post. My bad, but there’s not a helluva lot happening around here right now. The weather has finally improved and I’m not all pasty white, but other that that, it’s pretty much status quo.

The monkey is back from Sweden, we still haven’t gone through the kajillion pics he took. The Festival of the Farts is on across the street making leaving the house and getting back a pain in the ass as people tend to park across the end of the driveway.

Still haven’t sold my car.

Wheels should arrive with Holly this weekend.

Didn’t bother with Tour de Fleece. In fact I don’t think I ever have. Not a big fan of watching cycling. It’s like watching golf, or bowling or grass growing.

Still not sure about HS reunion. Part of me is curious and the other part of me won’t stop screaming.

Pondering moving to a larger house.

Trying to decide the best way to kill some of my neighbours.

Reading lots of trashy novels.

Listening to lots of metal, old and new.

Thinking ’bout dyeing my hair purple.

You know, the usual.

So I’m just gonna pretend it’s last Wednesday and I’ve managed to recover completely and update the blog in a timely manner. I’m totally not going to acknowledge that it’s taken me almost a week to feel even remotely myself again or that single malt was involved in the recovery.

The monkey left for Sweden the day after I got back and will be there for another week. The house is blissfully quiet and I may never leave it. I hear there are services that will deliver your groceries, sounds good!

But where was I? Oh yeah, Oregon. I have pictures!

My friends had a nest baby chipmunks in their car that they lovingly nursed for a few days before handing them over to the Audobon people. Baby chipmunks are painfully cute. Seriously. They are unbelievably cute.

Just look at this:

Sofa King cute!

We left for Eugene and Black Sheep Festival on Thursday and got the booth set up in very good time. Then it was off to the really good Thai place for lunch and back there again later for drinks *ahem* dinner. Yeah, we totally had dinner.

Here’s Tina showing me the way to Eugene:

She’s always so very helpful!

Black Sheep had lots of, well sheep. Like these Wensleydales.

And these Shetland lambs. Again, Sofa King cute.

I managed to make a few purchases. Some pygora, a couple of spindles, a basket and a couple of wheels.

Yes. More than one wheel. Shut up already. They’re really small.

The Hansen, complete with Woolee Winder and spare bobbins. Don’t wear it out Orion!

And the Wee Spin. I couldn’t resist this little wheel. It was insanely cheap and is very much like the pocket wheel.

Both wheels are living at Holly’s till mid July as getting them home on the train would have been mildly problematic.

There was a little stream behind our hotel in Eugene that was full of wildlife. Raccoons, mallards, Canada geese and their goslings (the damn things really are everywhere) and nutria. I had never seen a nutria up close but there were several of them on the grass along the streamside path just eating grass in the sunshine. They really do look like the offspring of a beaver and an otter.

Tina also found these:

Some sort of wild cucumber. Prickly pear?

All in all it was a great trip. I had a lot of fun and got to spend time with lovely friends.

Now if we could just have some summer weather!

So I’ve spent about an hour trying to get my pics to import and I can’t get it to work. So I’ll post all this stuff on Wednesday when I can get back on my Mac.

Stupid windows netbook.

Feh.