Another tale of vacation envy and knitting failure

Hi everyone,

Yep, I'm still here. Been working and knitting like a dog and (quite frankly) haven't touched the home computer's keyboard in the better part of a month. Guiltily, I'll admit that I've had the makings for a couple of blog posts sitting in draft form on my phone, but haven't gained the gumption to post them because I knew I didn't have the time (or energy) to link in the photos and websites that I thought would make entertaining reading. If you've stuck with me for this long -- Thank you!

Anyways, I'll rant about the book club's latest book and my current knitting failure. For June (we're skipping a meeting for May), we're reading "The Leisure Seeker" by Michael Zadoorian. It's a pretty good book so far, but it's making me depressed already in reading it. I can't help but compare the adventure road trip that the two main characters are on to the road trip that Chuck and I are hoping to take this coming July in New Mexico and hope that we have as good a time as those described as part of the narrator's memories with her husband. I'm hoping that I won't be sorely disappointed if we don't have a vacation as memory filled as those she describes. I hope I'm not setting myself up to completely fail on a vacation by expecting everything to be perfect, wonderful, and great. I expect to blog from New Mexico, so stay tuned for that...but, really, the question we should all be asking is why am I'm comparing my real, yet-to-be-had vacation to that of a fictional senior couple?!?


So, I completely suck at knitting. Sure, disagree with me if you dare, but case in point: I've been working on a cotton summer sweater for the past few weeks. I made it thru the front, back, and one sleeve before noticing that the trim on the two pieces of the sweater body were not the same. Really....what the hell is going on here?!?


Frankly, I was getting pretty bored with the 15 cm or so of plain old stockinette knitting and couldn't wait for that part to be done. And I was bored with it with the first piece....It just so happened that I was ready to work on the second piece a couple of weekends ago, when there happened to be a Doctor Who marathon on the BBC America channel. My house happened to be clean already, so I felt pretty justified in planting my butt permanently on the couch to work on my knitting and get caught up on David Tennant's last season as the Doctor....Well, I was so caught up in watching the show, that I totally put on a stockinette border onto the bottom of the second body piece of the sweater. I spent this past weekend knitting a new border, grafting that piece on, and tearing off the old piece. It wasn't pretty while I was working on it, but now that it's done and over with, a regular person would be none to wiser (though I'm positive that my knitting friends would immediately be able to tell).

I'm happy to say all of the pieces of this sweater are ready for the blocking board and I'll be able to get to that either Thursday or Friday....So, now I'm left with working on my Guild exchange project (which is looking pretty fantastic -- so I'm waiting for the big disappointing piece to come along and put the brakes on the whole project) as well as a pair of socks that are depressing to work on since they're pretty boring. I'll post pictures of both soon enough.

Sorry for such a crappy, disconnected, rambling update. I'm a bit tipsy from a "meet and greet" I did earlier this evening with some visiting colleagues and I'm ready to plop down with my projects, watch "Justified", then head to bed. [Seriously, folks, if you haven't seen this show yet, you're really missing out. I think that Raylan is joining the ranks of Joe Dubois and Mick St. John as my TV hunny buns. (Yes, feel bad for Chuck who gets to sit right next to me and play the role of "chopped liver" while I swoon. And, yes, Jim is officially off the list ever since the ludicrous Sam/Jim storyline was introduced....sorry.)]

The long lost post: "You look like beefcake....You sound like beefcake, so why do you put me to sleep?!?"

I'm talking about you, Sam Worthington! A draft of this post has been sitting on my blog for the past few weeks, but I just haven't had the muster to sit down and finish writing it until today; and even now, it's a little bit of forced writing as I'm hanging out at Beaner's waiting to meet with someone to go over planning for Sylvain's Troop's summer camp outing. So, have some unexpected down time at the moment....

I hate to say it, but there's just something about you that is my personal Lunesta....Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had been very happy to share my thoughts on Avatar, despite having fallen asleep twice (twice!) while sitting in a packed 3-D showing. [Yes, snoring included....or so I'm told]. I seemed to lose consciousness each time during scenes in which you were delivering long pieces of dialog (or so I'm told).

Being willing to write that business off to just shitty writing, I was one of the few folks actually eager to see you in Clash of the Titans. I can confidently say that I walked into the theater fully awake to the 2-D (not packed) show with Sylvain; but somewhere towards the middle of the movie, Sylvain realized that he was losing me and delivered a sharp elbow into my arm. I was truly glad to have my knitting with me that evening because out of my purse it came and it kept me awake until the end of the movie. Sure, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes could've helped in keeping me invested in watching, but I was having a hard time getting past a couple of things: the bright light and haloed shimmer around Liam's Zeus reminded me of soap opera-esque soft focus scenes, so I was a little disappointed that Hera wasn't around to do any bitchy Telemundo-like hair pulling and eye-clawing over Zeus' baby-daddy ways; also, I really wished I hadn't read any reviews going into it because all I could do was nod in agreement to all of the critics who wondered if anyone told Ralph that he wasn't on the Harry Potter set anymore, so he didn't need to channel his Voldemort persona so closely to play Hades.

Anyways, I digress.....Returning home, I started to wonder why I was having a hard time staying awake during those two films in particular. I've seen plenty of movies and even started going to attend the live MET performances being streamed at the theater and those are at least 3 hours long at their shortest. (And in a different language to boot.) The only conclusion I can come to is that you're the common link. I honestly can't remember if I fell asleep to Terminator Salvation also; that was a year ago, after all. I'll need to consult my movie companions for that; though, I doubt that they would've been able to hear any snoring over all of the explosions to have noticed. Hmmmm....Maybe Christian Bale trumped any effect you had on me.

Better luck next time! I still have high hopes for you and haven't written off watching your films like some other actors.

Oh, and for a current action movie that kept me interested the whole time, see Kick Ass.