It is shameful how long I've gone without a proper entry. Sorry about that.

Since the last time I posted something meaningful, I turned twenty-nine. And if you'll pretend I'm wallowing in angst about the Last Year of My Twenties, I'll pretend like I'm wallowing in the Last Year of My Twenties and we'll both ignore the fact that Flickr has completely taken over my life.

But life continues to go on. We're still having the same debate between selling the house and waiting out the recession here; switching jobs, switching cities, switching countries. We're still playing with cars and cameras and making salsa and baking cupcakes. I'm making a batch of chocolate peanut butter cupcakes right now; I'm just letting the batter rest for a minute.

I apologize for wandering off; there was something shiny on the other side of the internet. So please, tell me how you've been, and what you've been up to. I'd like to know.

Labels: meta

I had a nap. Now I'm contemplating another nap. These lazy Sundays are just packed.

For the sake of my sanity, let's pretend that Flickr is my blog this week.

Or I could talk about my haircut. For hours.

Labels: meta, snappy-snappy

So. I got a haircut, and for the first time ever, I had a stylist who understood the fivehead and who suggested a solution for masking the bulging real estate above my eyebrows.



Before. Long hunks of hair that just hung there. A slope of cranial space that Hillary wouldn't have dared attempted.



Now? I should smile more. But just look at that demure forehead! Why, it's only verging on a fivehead.

Labels: meta

My thoughts continue go out to everyone whose lives were shattered by the events yesterday.

I say continue, because my mind hasn't let go of what has happened. The post-horror insomnia has set in. After a decade working in this business, you'd think I'd be calloused -- hell, you'd think I'd remember to knock back a sleeping pill -- but no. After spending a shift in front of the wire, reading every dispatch from Blacksburg, it was impossible to shut off my brain. I went to bed late and spent a twitchy night trying to fight my way to sleep. Didn't happen. I gave up at 5:30 and spent time checking out the mindless internet. It's not eight hours of prime napping, but it'll do.

Don't cha just love deja vu?

I'm not talking about a poorly executed Matrix-y black-cat-repeition scene, but that feeling of I swear, I had this dream six months ago which crops up from time to time.

When that feeling of "repeat!" hits me, I try to view it as the universe telling me my life's sticking to its preordained track, or my inner Calvinist reminding me it's all a lost cause anyway and hello fast train to hell! (Why yes, I do have Puritan ancestors; how could you tell?)

And yes, sometimes I like to indulge in a little magical thinking -- maybe those vivid-but-boring dreams do hold the key to what comes next, if only I could remember -- but most of the time I'll shake it off and go about my business.

But today that old feeling of "I have so done this before" washed over me and I just wanted to scream. To go back to that magical thinking for a moment, if this is the path the universe has laid out for me, I'd like to speak to someone in charge, seriously. I'd like a little guidence, or at least a map and a dart, or reassurance that this is as good as it gets, and darlin', it's pretty damn good.

Or a martini. I'd take a martini.

I mean, honestly.

Labels: meta, whining

Have I talked about my busted-ass keyboard? No?

Well.

About a month after I purchased the iBook, my J-key popped off. Just the feature every girl hopes for in spanking new technology -- a busted-ass keyboard.

It freaked me out in the beginning -- having that piece of plastic slip out of place and fling itself towards sweet, sweet freedom was disconcerting to say the least -- but I've learned to tolerate it over the months. And now? It doesn't bother me so much. I'll be tapping away and that J-key will make another break for it, I'll catch it and beat it into submission again. It's annoying, but fixable.

Startles the hell out of fellow Satellite patrons on occasion. Boink will go the key, causing the guy on my right to gasp and say, "Your! Your keyboard! It broke!" And I'll show him how I fix it and then he asks if I've taken it to the Apple Store for consultation.

Well, no. Not yet. That would require stepping foot in the Albuquerque Uptown project and I haven't worked up the stomach for that. It takes a lot of courage to face Appletopia and Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn.

Anyway. That damn J-key. In working on the project that will not be named, it has come to light just how often I use the word "just." And I'm skittish, see, because if I hit that J-key in just (there's that word again) the right manner, it could disrupt the narrative flow, damn up the stream of consciousness and otherwise impede progress.

Damn keyboard.

Labels: meta

Congratulations Patrick -- I mean, Dr. Cooper -- on snaring that Ph.D.

Labels: smarty

That really shouldn't make me laugh, but it does.

Labels: meta, snappy-snappy

A red light camera violation never did turn up, so I imagine I'm off the hook.

Which means there's a stack of six violations sitting in my mailbox.

But still.

Labels: albuquerque, driving, meta

The last laptop -- a technological dinosaur without a built-in WiFi card -- was kick-ass awesome for this part of the project, and by that I mean the part of the project where I need to stop checking my e-mail, Flickr, my e-mail, Flickr, the blogroll, Flickr, and e-mail (and Flickr) repeatedly and just type.

The new hotness laptop? I could turn off Airport, but why would I want to? I'd be cut off from Flickr. And e-mail!

(I mean, just right there, Gmail dinged up a fresh e-mail. If Airport wasn't engaged, I wouldn't have known.)

Procrastination, especially on such a tight deadline, is fun!

Labels: crossing the line, meta

My brain is melting.

M
E
L
T
I
N
G.

I have to wear a hat to keep it from leaking out of my ears, to keep it from exploding my cranium. I have to keep it drenched in caffeine and Advil so it won't revolt. In turn, it's doing what I want it to do.

I'm working. There's a very large deadline slumbering in the immediate future.

Labels: head, meta

In the evenings, when we settle down for long stretches of mindless television, we both tend to have some sort of crafting project. Adam, who honed his skills on painting models as a child, refurbishes Transformers.

I knit.

Adam's turn around is a lot faster than mine: he can knock out an updated Transformer in the time it takes to watch two Mythbusters episodes and a Boston Legal. My projects are a little more long-term. There's a lot of picking up and putting down, but I've mastered a couple of projects that move in a hurry and satisfy my need for instant gratification. Like, I made a hat, which snowballed into a hat for my little Babo, which turned into a hat for a friend's regular-sized Babo. And I also made my stupid simple afghan on the mongo needles, which took four skeins of yarn and two weeks of TV time to complete. Stupid. Simple.

But I have finished all those projects and I'm looking to do something new, which was when my friend Scout suggested Yarnplay by Lisa Shobhana Mason as a great project book.

It is great. The photography by itself is drool worthy, and the colors are very mod awesome.

But now I'm tempted by one sweater, the "Edie" sweater, an asymmetrical cardigan, and I have sworn up and down that I'd never attempt a sweater because I'm not that great a knitter.

I think I'm going to attempt that sweater. It will be the long-long-term project, while I have smaller projects going on other needles and Adam thinks I'm absolutely insane, but yeah. I think I'm going to attempt a sweater. My mother swears it's a worthwhile endeavor, and she still wears the first sweater she knitted some thirty years later, but she says she ripped it out so many times and put so many tears into it that she feels duty bound to wear that sweater to the grave.

This had better be one hell of a sweater, that's all I'm saying.

Sarah's Stupid Simple Afghan



Measures about 60" x 60" when finished.

Using Lion's Brand Homespun acrylic in whatever color (4 skeins)
Cast on 8 stitches onto a US 17 (12 3/4 mm) needles
Knit across
For two skeins, knit four, yarn over, knit to end.
For remaining two skeins, knit three, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, knit to end.
When down to 8 stitches, bind off.

Stupid. Simple.

(Taken from a dish cloth pattern given to my mother by one of her numerous aunts-and-or-cousins in North Carolina in 1986.)

Labels: knitting, meta