First scarf ot the year done & actor deja vu

This past weekend was one of those where you suddenly realize it's Sunday and you have absolutely no concept of where the weekend even went. It all started on Friday when Chuck and I went cross-country skiing after work at Burchfield Park. The County Parks Department lights up the trails with smoke pots, so we decided to give skiing there a try. It was pretty fun and I hope that we can find the time to do it again. Afterwards, we had a quick dinner with Sylvain, then dropped him and a friend off for a laser tag lock-in with their Order of the Arrow Lodge.

From there, Chuck and I met up with a former coworker (also named Chuck) at the theater to see "Daybreakers" -- which takes place in 2019, 10 years after vampires had taken over the world and normal humans are being farmed like cattle for their blood, but are quickly dying off. The movie was okay, though all three of us were openly laughing during parts that I think were meant to be serious. Needless to say, we didn't get home until late and I needed to be up by 5 am to pick up the boys, so I didn't stay up for long while Chuck fell asleep to the TV.

Saturday morning's pick-up was thankfully uneventful, and I decided to skip my morning fitness class because I was still fairly tired. I could only take in a couple more hours of rest because we needed to head out to Howard City for a roller skating birthday party for my niece Calista. It was a fun party and my niece is getting better at skating. We were all pretty bushed and hungry after the party, so the three of us decided to stop at Rosie's Diner in Rockford on the way home, which Chuck had heard about from the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives". The food was okay (standard issue diner fare) and it put Sylvain and I right to sleep during the drive home.

Once home, I was re-energized, so decided to head to the gym for a little while to work off the olive burger I had eaten. Afterwards, Chuck and I headed over to Mark's to watch a movie called "Dark City" with him and Becky. I can't say that I'd necessarily recommend this film to many people. It is a hard to describe late-90s science fiction movie about a man who can't remember who he is, yet is being framed and hunted by aliens who are manipulating the minds of the people around him. Later, Chuck and I had an intense discussion as to whether Kiefer Sutherland has ever made a good film. Watch this one and you'll think not.

So anyhow, after watching the movie, we stuck around for SNL, then headed home. I don't know if it was being out in the brittle air or what, but by the time we got home, I was completely wide awake, so I started working on the scarf I had been weaving while Chuck watched some TV. Since I was working in the dining room, I set up my Blackberry to stream podcasts that I had subscribed to thru Viigo and weaved away.

I ran into a few problems with the Plymouth Tweed that was the warp. The edges kept fraying with each pass of the heddle & shuttle, so extra attention needed to be paid to make sure that the fraying didn’t actually snap. There were three close calls, which required me to gently work the frayed ends together and try to spit splice them so that they held just long enough to be woven in. I really don’t know if this is the proper way to do this, but that’s what came to mind to do at the time.

I finally ran out of steam around 4:30 am and decided to finish up the following morning, thinking that I'd sleep in. Well, by my standards, I did sleep in, and was wide awake by 9:30, so I picked up the loom and finished off the scarf. The fabric feels a bit bullet-proof, but as soon as I find some time, I'll wash it in some Soak and hope that it softens up a bit.

Sunday afternoon, Chuck, Sylvain, and I met up with Mark and Becky to see "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus." The movie was pretty amazing in the visual effects and Gilliam revived a lot of the scenery within the Imaginarium from the Monty Python animations he is known for. I was struck with a little bit of deja vu while watching this movie because as Dr. Parnassus' daughter, Lily Cole was one of the main characters and Jude Law was one of the Imaginarium versions of another main character, Tony; I happened to have seen them both together in a movie called "Rage" earlier last week. These two movies couldn't have been more different; of the two, I highly recommend "Dr. Parnassus"; I was a little confused and bored by "Rage".

Not that "Dr. Parnassus" was chockful of excitement. I was able to make quite a bit of headway on a Dale of Norway 2010 Vancouver hat, so much so that I was able to finish it on Monday. This hat was made out of Jo Sharp that I happened to have hanging out in my stash. Sylvain loves the hat and doesn't wait for me to tell him twice to put it on while heading out the door. So, this is one pattern that's teen-approved.