Why do we torture ourselves?

Chuck and I are both paying a heavy price for spending the weekend lounging. After Friday's escapade at the Summer Circle performance, we spent Saturday attending Festival of the Sun in Old Town. The event was okay and had one of my wine tasting pet peeves -- not all of the booths were listed in the brochure received at the entrance. Okay, so that sounds like a little flaw to nag over, and I usually overlook it if it's a single table; but we're talking about half of the tables were NOT on the list I received. That's an issue for me because I usually mark up these lists with notes on what I did/didn't like for the wines sampled. For my knit-ins, I usually buy 3 to 4 bottles of wine, and probably go through another 3 bottles during the rest of the month. I really do enjoy serving new and interesting wines, especially if I knew they could be purchased locally. Usually at these tastings, the tables are too crowded to afford anything but a quick glance between the bottle being sampled and the list -- just enough of a peek for me to remember the name and make it to a table to write notes. Sure, I could probably write down the vintner and variety also, but more likely I'd write it wrong as opposed to circling the wrong wine if it were already on the list for me.

To round out our lazy weekend, Sunday was spent at charity knitting, receiving help from Nancy on my weaving, and picking up Sylvain after a weekend visit with his dad; which brings me back to my original subject line -- we're heading out for a holiday camping trip tomorrow after work. It's after midnight; Chuck's in the kitchen making granola and packing up our food; and I just finished cleaning the house and am waiting for the last bit of laundry to finish so that it can be packed to take with us or put away. All of these chores could easily have been accomplished this weekend, if we had the proper motivation.


Enough of me complaining -- we're getting just what we deserve with this. Let's talk weaving! In early May, I had warped my rigid heddle loom with a 6-napkin project. I'm only a pretend weaver, so don't really know the yarn lingo for weaving. The warp is a thin, green, 1/29, double-stranded cotton and the weft is a thicker, green 1/24 cotton that can be best described as boucle, but that just doesn't sound right to me.




This napkin project ended up being held up because I've been super busy, but I also had tension problems early on and only weaved a few inches before knowing that something was truly wrong. So, like I mentioned in the Sunday run-down, Nancy was patient enough to show me where things went wrong and how to fix 'em. In the process, the few inches I had needed to be torn out, so even with starting the project over, I had about 9-inches of weaving accomplished by Sunday night.



The napkins are going to be just plain weave, which is where I'm hoping the boucle-wannabe yarn will help by adding just the right amount of texture to the fabric. Sorry the photo to the left is so washed out, but hopefully you'll be able to see what I mean. Now, if only I could have a few nights of uninterrupted weaving time, maybe a full set would be done before my August knit-in. My July knit-in is next week, so there's no hope of being done by then. When I mentioned the possibility of bringing the loom camping, Chuck groaned, rolled his eyes, and reminded me how stuffed to the gills the Jeep will already be. So, I have to settle for Lisa's shawl and my Flat Feet socks (formerly Chuck's Flat Feet socks).

UPDATE: I just realized that next week's knit-in will be at Jane's, so maybe I'll have time to weave up a stack of napkins afterall. Hmmmmm.....

Sweating my ASS off...

Since you're here reading this, you're probably hoping to escape the deluge of media coverage regarding the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. I'll spare you any more mention of these two events that have defined this week other than this: it's sad to hear of this on both accounts, but who is truly surprised? Farrah pretty much said her good-byes while she could. And as for MJ, it's only a matter of time before the unfortunate comparisons to Anna-Nicole (and those that placated each of them) begins.

Regardless, thank you for choosing to read this instead and I hope to keep you entertained...

So there are times when I'm really not a smart person. When I'm pissed off I can be down-right stubborn, which is how I feel right now. I'm sitting on the theater bleachers in the HOT sun, sweating my ass off with a glass of wine in one hand and a wool sweater I'm working in the other. Yes, wool. Chuck's sitting in a camp chair in the shade, talking loudly on the cell phone. I'm very annoyed because he's probably quite cool over there, but he's ruining the quiet that existed before he returned from fetching the chair from my trunk by describing his car repair escapade (in excruciating detail); he criticized my driving on the way here (the gall of him!); and he's blaming me for not making sure that the dinner he fixed for himself was in the picnic basket. [I made sure my sandwich and my wine was there -- anything else was extraneous in my book.]

Mark bailed out for the evening, and I hope that Parker and Becky both make it soon. The Summer Circle's performance of "Kid Purple" and the late show of "Clevinger's Trial" (a short from Catch 22) will begin soon. Chuck's trying to convince me to me to head out for the MSU Astronomy Club's open telescope night tonight. If you're not up for theater, definitely head out for the telescopes tonight -- it's quarter moon, so that won't be too vexing for getting a view of Saturn and whatnot. Plus, you get to keep my drunk ass company when I'm tired and ready to go, but Chuck's busy chit-chatting with his 'scope buddies.

TWILIGHT update: so I managed to pass my obsession on to one of my coworkers and to one of the knitters. My coworker has actually started listening to the soundtrack at the office (hee, hee) and my knitter friend will have my copies of the books in hand for a weekend trip (glad to be an pusher)
....

Well, the play's ready to start....stay cool for me while I'm sweating my ASS off...

Something really bad happened inside my purse

This morning I made an unpleasant discovery. Hidden within my purse, I keep a small packet of Beaner's chocolate covered espresso beans. The beans come in particularly useful when I'm in a meeting or presentation that is just dragging on and on. Well, at some point in the recent past, a few of these beans slipped out of their packaging and were free to jostle around in the bottom of my nice Coach bag.

If you're in Michigan (or anywhere else in the Mid-west, for that matter), then you're well familiar with how sweltering HOT it's been out. So, this morning while digging out a hair clip from my purse, I found a mass of melted beans holding together a glob containing my barette, one of my flash drives, a pen, and several bobby pins. Yuck! I hope the rest of my day is better than this....

When is it better to leave well enough alone?

Hello out there in the blogosphere. Please keep in mind the title question as it's one that both Chuck and I have learned over the course of the past few days. First, let's start with Chuck. As I mentioned in previous posts, this weekend was the Christening for his cousin's twins. Prior to leaving for Cleveland, Chuck decided to tinker with his car because the air conditioner was on the fritz. Sure, it worked, but it didn't get as cold as it used to. Being the handy guy that he is, Chuck read a couple of articles and looked-up a couple of YouTube repair videos, and seemed prepared to futz around in the engine trying to remedy this problem. While in Cleveland, his car started to act funny and the A/C quit working altogether. Needless to say, he returned just fine late last night; however, his car let out the most hideous squealing racket, followed by smoke pouring out of the engine. The A/C compressor siezed up causing a major belt to break. This is his week to do some work in northern Indiana and we were hoping to use his car for our up-coming camping trip, so getting it to the shop for repair fell upon my shoulders. On the plus side, my AAA membership is up to date, so the tow to the mechanic's was free. On the down side, the repair estimate came in at $1,300. [Yes, you read that right.] I'm almost convinced that whatever he did to his engine for "repair" didn't necessarily break it because it wasn't working correctly in the first place, but his actions probably helped accelorate it's decline.

Now, for my little lesson: I made the bone-headed decision to trust Chuck to attach our "congrats" card to the gift box with the cupcake hats inside, so I didn't bother to place a label onto the gift. Yes, that was very retarded of me. Chuck had reassured me that he'd sign my name to the card, since he hadn't bought it yet and that was his contribution. Unfortunately, he sat the box onto the gift table, then stuck the card into the card box. This usually wouldn't have been a problem had this been a normal-sized gathering, but let me back up and say that there was approximately 100 RSVPs to the Christening party; and (according to Chuck) the cops offered to help with parking and traffic control during the event. Apparently, the cops on duty were Croat, and their Christenings are even larger than the Hungarians', so they were very prepared to lend a hand. I'm hoping that Chuck's cousin will see the handknitted hats that were wrapped in pink giftwrap stamped with red hearts and know that it was from me. I really don't feel like calling over there out of fear of sounding expectant and tacky on the phone. If there's a "next time", I will insist on taping the stupid card to the gift myself.

Okay, enough about us -- it's been a while since I've had a crazy experience and boy do I have one that just made me smile. Saturday night, I attended the MSU Summer Circle performance. I made plans to meet up with Mark there; he arrived early to the "theater" and ran into Turfgrass Sue and her husband Scott. (Ok, so what if she no longer works at the Library, I'll always think of her as associated with Turfgrass). They opted to sit in the bleachers to have a straight-on view of the stage, which is where I caught up with them. I didn't care, just as long as I could see. We had plenty of time for chit-chat before the performance, and that's when I first noticed him. Perched on a bleacher seat three rows down and to the left was my Saturday night loon with wacked-out hair and beady eyes. You could tell that something was just a little off with the way that he kept nervously looking around him and fidgeted; and despite the sweltering 80^o weather, he was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He seemed to keep it together for the 2-hours or so of the play; but afterwards, there was a late performance of Beckett's "Rough for Theater I" and that's when it happened. Throughout the first half of the sketch, Mr. Saturday Night wasn't in his seat, so I thought he had decided to take off (as a lot of people did). During a particularly tense part of the performance, out he bounds from the pitch-dark bushes (presumably after being in the Aud) and walks towards his previous seat, where others have moved to so that they could have a better vantage point of the stage. Rather than sitting on the bleacher, he asks one of the guys sitting there in a not-too-quiet voice, "Hey, man, do you happen to know what time it is?" I'm not sure what it was -- maybe it was his delivery or the fact that he was completely oblivious to the performance on stage or it could have been just the sound of his voice, but the largest shit-eating grin spread across my face and I immediately glanced over to Mark, who looked at me like he was going to throttle me if I started to laugh. Ahhhh, sometimes I find that I'm more enteretained by the world around me than I have any right to be.

OK, enough of that. A couple of things before I go: first, in case you're here because you're truly interested in my knitting, let me warn you that I am currently test-knitting a couple of patterns for friends of mine and won't be highlighting these projects until they've published their works. I hope to have these projects done after the holiday and thing's'll get back to normal. Second, I know that this is a couple of days old but just in case you haven't seen this yet, I really enjoyed this Buffy vs. Edward video and hope you find it as entertaining as I did. If you're watching this while at work -- be forewarned that it's about 6 minutes long and you definitely need sound to truly enjoy this.

Movie night

I'm kicking myself because I didn't drag Chuck out of the house yesterday to watch the MSU Theater Dept.'s Summer Circle Theater performance. It was such a nice day, but I was pooped, and really felt like knitting. Today's performance will likely be rained out (it's not looking promising outside right now). And I'll miss the Saturday performance because Sylvain is returning from Scout camp tomorrow and I was hoping that we'd go to the East Lansing Jazz Fest to hear his bass instructor perform (as part of the Arlene McDaniels Trio).

Chuck's headed for Cleveland tonight for the twins Christening tomorrow. I had been making Debby Ware's cupcake beanies as a present for them and finished the knitting last weekend. During my lazy evening last night, I *tried* to make the pom-poms for the beanies, but failed miserably. The yarn kept tangling on me while I was trying to wrap it around my cardboard template (please don't ask me how -- but it kept ending up as a loose wad of yarn; maybe I was being all thumbs or something). Even though I hate making pom-poms, I hated even more the thought of giving away the beanies without them, so was driven out of bed at 5 this morning to finish the project once and for all. Even then, I couldn't get the sizing right and started snipping away at the pom-poms to get them down to an evenly-shaped round ball. The more I cut, the more nervous I got that I'd end up cutting it lop-sided or down to nothing. It reminded me of the one and only time that I ever cut my own hair. I was a freshman in high school and wanted bangs, but ended up with a spike of hair that was approximately a half-inch long. Though I give myself credit for single-handedly bringing back headbands into local fashion....

Tonight, I've made plans with Mark and Becky for a movie night. For some reason, Becky managed to escape the 80s and 90s without watching some of James Cameron's best films. Mark and I are taking care of this deficiency by having a marathon viewing of "Terminator", "Terminator 2", and "Aliens". I have plenty of knitting to do and, hopefully, the tense parts of these films won't be reflected in my stitches...