the everyday adventures of sabrina

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCM(O) d+(-) s+ a- C++ UBLS*++++$ P++(--) L++$ E-(---) W+++ N++ o+++
K++ w-- O M++ V- PS++ PE Y++ PGP+ t+ B? X+++ R tv+ b++++ DI++++ D G++
e* h+ r y?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

um.

so far at the new job, i am averaging one set of free tickets to some event per month. first, i got vip tickets to go see george benson at northerly island pavillion — all previous and future rants about smooth jazz aside, it was (a) a gorgeous night to go watch a show on the lakefront, and (b) it was a really fun time. then, i got to go watch the cubs win on a spectacularly gorgeous friday afternoon. today, though. today i scored some bulls tickets. only. they’re, uh. they’re. they’re really good tickets. courtside. on the south side, right by the end of the court. like, um…if i have problems seeing any of the action it’ll be because the players are in my way. and it’s versus the knicks. um. they’re. um. they’re really good tickets, dude. i might be just a little tiny smidgenly bit still surprised someone offered them to me. oh, yeah, and, um, — we’re hiring.

guess what was waiting for me when i got home from work last night?

that’s right! the awesome people who shipped my new spinning wheel out from just-across-the-state-line, wisconsin, shipped it ups ground, which took only one day to arrive, and … instead of having a little yellow UPS delivery attempt notice stuck on the front gate, apparently one of my neighbors was home to accept the delivery! it was not even standing outside on the front stoop, it was carried up to the second floor landing, just waiting to be carried one final flight of stairs. (near as i can figure, this was a two-neighbor effort: the first floor neighbor works from home, so he probably accepted the delivery, but he doesn’t have access to our stairwell, so the second-floor neighbor probably carried it inside.) and! and it gets better! the wheel “required assembly,” which i was a little bit nervous about (having never worked on a wheel before, beyond playing with one briefly at Kim’s a year or two ago, the prospect of assembling my own was daunting). but as it turns out, the wheel manufacturers are so clever as to do all the hard work for me so that all i have to do is put the base on the floor, insert the upright into the base and screw it in (one screw), then plonk the top part on top of the upright, and screw it in (one screw). it took me about ten minutes, and only that long because i put it together without screwing it in place and then couldn’t figure out why the drive band kept slipping off the bobbin (turns out that alignment matters). then i happily pulled up an episode of “Star Trek” which had magically appeared on the DVR — “I, Mudd,” and can i just take this opportunity to say once more how much i adore WWME? because i do! — and tried it out. i can happily say that any incompetence reflected in the yarn (and oh boy is there a lot of it) points a beacon of blame straight at me, not the wheel. the wheel is very smooth and quiet and it’s sort of entertaining to watch the air fanned by the wheel blade blow back the fur on my cat as he stares suspiciously at it. i kept breaking the yarn because i can’t quite seem to get the twist right — i’d alternate between too much twist and the yarn would wrap back on itself, versus not enough twist and the yarn would pull apart and i’d have to re-thread it and go again. but i did get probably, um, … a yard or two successfully spun, in between breakage-rethreading incidents, so i feel confident that with a little more effort, using the wheel will be as painless as using the drop spindle. (can i just say again how excited i am that i didn’t have to wait until this weekend to get my new wheel? OH EM GEE. excitementpalooza! man, am i just the world’s biggest nerd.)

so, i, uh, i did a bunch of work yesterday on the finances, and i, uh, wrote a really fucking big check to discover card, and, um, i discovered that that check is going to save me some money over the next year, and, um, i decided to spoil myself by spending slightly less than the now-realized 21% savings on that cash over the next 13 months on, um, don’t mock me, a spinning wheel.

(finances: yes, i was sitting on cash. i have been sitting on some cash for months, though it is nice that apparently i just got my direct-deposit of my 2005 tax refund — don’t ask. it’s because after living paycheck to paycheck for so very long, including the first part of this year where i was literally charging my groceries in order to save up for my move, i got very, very paranoid about spending cash. anyways, new job == sitting on cash. i knew it was bad but i couldn’t seem to bring myself to spend it, until sunday i went “let’s figure out exactly how bad of an idea this is” and figured out how much cash i could afford to fling at creditors without losing the entirety of my little comfortably above-zero checking account balance. there was excel, of course, because as everyone knows i adore excel and it does my bidding without argument because it knows i love it, and i will get up in the face of any linux weenie who defames its fabulousness with “one word: FORMULAS.” anyways. turns out if i flung $X at discover now (basically 5x the monthly payment they were going to get for november anyways), i get paid off two months early, next year, *and* i pay like $350 less in aggregate interest. (GOD, I LOVE EXCEL.) so. this is really the best of all possible worlds, wherein i lose the guilt of sitting on cash, gain happiness at realizing of how much cash i am depriving discover card, and gain further happiness at getting a cool new spinning wheel. also i get to make excel do cool things to entertain me, which i enjoy. that said…) i really really wanted a spinning wheel — i mean, i like my drop spindle and all, but it does actually wear on you to use it. i spun something like 100 yards (guessing) of shetland top into singles yesterday, and by the time i was done:

• my feet hurt, from standing, because i’m too big of a dumbass to wear comfy shoes or at least cushy socks;
• my right arm was slightly tired from constantly hanging out in front of me or over my head;
• my right shoulder was a little stiff from my arm hanging out over my head,
• and dude, my thumbs were killing me from drafting.

also, i was just a little bored of standing up, and felt bad for probably driving my downstairs neighbor nuts because every so often i would let the yarn untwist and the spindle would plonk down onto my hardwood floor. so. yeah. i wanted a spinning wheel. a spinning wheel will still involve thumb pain from drafting, and possibly a tired leg, but i figure if i use my left leg, which is totally buff from using the clutch (i joke, except for how i don’t; and don’t worry, you’d have to drive stick regularly to get that) then i should be good. at least i’ll get to sit down.

also, i’ll be able to ply my singles, which i haven’t yet figured out how to do with the drop spindle, since i lack bobbins. i pretty much spin up very decorative little skeins which then sit in a basket and look nice, with the drop spindle. (see, only now does the purpose of a lazy kate become apparent!) and also, see, this post is a perfect example of one of the reasons i have been contemplating switching blog software. don’t get me wrong, i love blosxom — it’s been just this side of “completely painless” for the over two years i’ve been using it — but, dammit, this post should go in at least three (maybe four, now) categories, and yet i’m limited to the filesystem hierarchy model of categorization, so here it is as hobbies. insofar as “knitting,” “spinning,” “finances,” and “blogware” are hobbies, i suppose it works, but, dammit, i want real keywords. so i’m eyeballing new software choices. so long as i’m moving to a new web host, which i totally, totally am — the idiots at the current webhost still have not bothered to respond to my last email (which was “um, you broke my chroot, please give me my shell back in the chroot so i can run my vi shell macros and, you know, like, ‘!!date’ and stuff, and oh by the way would you be so good as to ACKNOWLEDGE THIS EMAIL since you always totally blow off all my unix support requests?”) of several weeks ago, which is really just like playing poker and getting dealt a card at random which says “Dear Sabrina, Boy, is your webhost ass; You really should pick a new one. Love, Fate.” (is that a fifth keyword? anyways.) so. thinking of WordPress. it seems overkill, but i am also lazy and tired of shopping for the perfect blog software which, if it’s not blosxom (which it clearly yet sadly isn’t), appears not to exist. so i may just go with WordPress. anyone who cares to express any opinions to me on this matter, i’d welcome your input. but let’s get back to what’s really important here: as a unix system administrator and IT support professional who cooks well and makes things from scratch, makes her own soap from scratch, can sew (but doesn’t really like to), knits things, and spins her own yarn — i am well-suited to working in the computer department of any pioneer settlement. i’m just saying, you know, when Stephen King’s The Stand comes true in real life, you won’t be mocking my lunatic hobbies then, ol’ Stinky-Hasn’t-Got-Any-Soap, will you?

as mentioned to no one on this blog, apparently, after a quick browse over previous posts (though i thought i had) … my first real honest-to-god sock … was a mutant sock that would fit no one, save perhaps Bigfoot. not me, not Kim’s fourteen year-old son with the shoe size of “this kid’s going to be competition for Brandon McCarthy someday,” presumably not any actual human of my acquaintance. and since there have not been any Bigfoot sightings in the Chicago area recently, it is with great sadness that i announce the frogging of my sock.

this sock started out from the humblest of beginnings — superwash wool from the $1 bin at Loopy Yarns, and with low expectations for future success, as it was the first time i was trying to make a sock on two circs (also bought on closeout, at a different LYS, that was going out of sale). the yarn mostly had “dude, dollar yarn” and “pretty blue” going for it, and it was actually a little heavier than most sock yarns. this was probably a major contributor to its eventual demise. if only i had put it on a low-carb diet! the sock was well-travelled. it went with me on multiple expeditions, notably but not limited to the mechanic’s and toComiskey Park to watch the Sox painfully lose a late-season game from the Bullpen Sports Bar patio. its trip to Comiskey no doubt contributed to the number of gauge variances, as my tension grew tighter and looser over the course of the entire heel flap. the instructions were also not helpful, as they confused me into continuing the 2×2 ribbing across the entire foot, which you just know would have been uncomfortable to walk on. after journeying to Ohio Linux Fest 2006 and being assiduously knitted on in the AFS panel, among others, the sock grew to the point where i figured “that looks footlike,” and then it travelled on with me to northeastern ohio, where a senior medical opinion was sought and then delivered the diagnosis of incurable gargantuanism. the sock lingered on, never giving up hope, as it sat loyally on the table to the side of my living room chair, and while i continued to deny that it was a lost cause. other knitting projects were jostled and fell to the floor (it’s a crowded table, since evidently i’m too lazy to stretch the extra ten inches to the actual knitting basket) while the mutant sock sat in a position of relative honor, in the center, far from cats moving things aside to better sit on the arm of the chair or from being tossed ignominously to the ground after i walked incautiously past the table. but lest you think the end was all denial and grouchiness, the sock had one final fling — as i’ve worked my (second, current) sock up to the toe, but i was unwilling to have it have my first toe in case i screwed it up — a decision made after i knit the first five rows of the toe and decided i was screwing it up — i picked it up this morning and knit a toe onto it while watching a couple of episodes of “The West Wing”. (and lo, a third or maybe sixth tension was knit into the sock, as the toe was nice and dense, unlike pretty much the entire rest of the sock. oh well.) now i am feeling up to knitting a toe on my actually-fits-me sock, and have great hope for eventually actually owning a pair of hand-knit socks. however, to all things there is a season, turn turn turn, la la now i have the byrds stuck in my head — great — and so today the sock was reincarnated into stash yarn. i’d like to observe a moment of silence for my poor doomed sock.

alas, poor sock. i knew you well. at least now you’ll get a chance to be a real sock someday!

Hostess Nic says:
“To participate, post a random fact about yourself… It can be anything–something no one would know unless you said it.”

random fact time it is, then! i think these are my favorite candies ever. (i mean, i like chocolate, but it’s not a candy candy, it’s chocolate. and i’m otherwise just not much of a candy person, absent a liking for Muscat Gummies from chinatown or the candy section of any decent japanese grocery.) De la Rosa “Dulce de Cacahuate/Peanut Confection,” a quarter each or packaged four for a dollar at any mexican grocery store in the city: i don’t think they’re anything more complicated than pulverized peanuts and sugar pressed into a little crumbly cake, but they’re soooo yummy. every time i stop at the supermercado to pick something up i have to grab a 4-pack. some people buy beer every time they hit the grocery store. i buy little peanut candy thingies. nothing against it, y’all know i love the cerveza too, but, … peanut candy thingies!

as mentioned, i signed up to Knit a Square for Grandmother Purl. having acquired yarn, courtesy of Kim and her amazing stash, i have since found myself completely unable to conceive of a pattern for an afghan square.

i have gone through my books and magazines and, short of actually buying 100 Afghan Squares to Knit: Patterns and Instructions for Mixing and Matching Afghan Squares for Blankets and Throws — which seems a bit overkill — i am coming up blank. aghghghg. and the deadline looms ever nearer every day. the ball of yarn is glaring at me (from its position on the chairside table with four rows knitted of the last pattern, which, contrary to advertisement, looks pretty much like stockinette, and thus was rejected once seen in action… maybe i’m doing something wrong but i swear all it said was k2, k2tbl, rep ad nauseum…). i’m getting desperate. i’m going to end up sending a boring stockinette square, i just know it. argh!

email alert from the local yarn store, 24 minutes ago:

Good news . . . bad news . . .

so far, so good…

We are so sad to say Fleece Artist was unable to provide us yarn in time for our trunk show despite our regular check up calls. We hope to be able to reschedule it for early November.

alas. oh well! (who’s Fleece Artist?)

We just got in a huge order of Cascade 220 to use with the felted Noni bags we now have patterns for. So we are putting Cascade 220 on sale for 20% off

uh-oh.

starting today, Friday, October 20th through Sunday, October 29th.

UH-OH.

You may want to do some felted bags (or squirrels or hedgehogs) for Christmas presents . . .

or i might just want to buy lots and lots of yarn because DUDE, I LOVE CASCADE 220 AND I REALLY REALLY LOVE SALE CASCADE 220….

We need to make room for a new line of yarn (Brown Sheep)

uh-oh, again.

we’ll start carrying in a couple of weeks. So we’ve decided to discontinue some of our slower sellers and put them ON SALE!

dammit! stop! i’m on a budget, here! you’re killing me!

Because we’ll be carrying a large selection of Brown Sheep, almost all the companies we carry will be represented in this big sale, including Lorna’s Laces and Karabella.

you people are EVIL CONSPIRATORS TO TORMENT ME WITH YARN. don’t deny it. i know you are. i know there are sock yarns in the sale stash. sock yarns for me to buy even though i have yet to finish an actual sock!

i am doomed. i wish i brought my sock with me to work today so i could go to the LYS after work and hang out. alas.

dude. i ride the blue line to work every day. you really would think that i wouldn’t have to hear that the washington street red line subway stop is evidently closing for two years, starting next week from the CTA Tattler, but apparently i do.

(i also fail to really see why it’s only the red line washington stop that’s closing, and not the blue line washington stop as well, if what the work they’re doing is to connect the two lines’ rails — but what do i know, perhaps the CTA has magic railroad fairies to help them out.)

don’t say i never gave you nothin. :)

nice one, maggs.

(now wouldja please get a haircut? for me?) now, next on the agenda: new york, you know i don’t actually care about your team one way or the other. but i do care about the cardinals: i want them not to be in the world series. so i need y’all to pull it together and win a couple more games. …and then lose to the tigers, natch.

am currently nearly all packed up and ready to take the el straight to lovely, scenic, and convenient (HA HA OF COURSE I LIE) o’hare international airport, where some nice people from american airlines are going to let me ride on their shiny airplane all the way to dulles international airport. from which i will then depart, go visit some friends for a couple of days, and then eventually return back home.

in other news, i really like saying “dulles.” dulles, dulles, dulles. dulles! isn’t it a fun word? dul-les! dul-less! what a great word. what a great lot of sleep i’ve been missing out on lately if i’m this entertained by the name of an airport. i’m going to be offline the whole time i’m gone. i’m more than a little frightened by the prospect of how much email will await me upon my return. also, please, chicago, IT’S OCTOBER TWELFTH. STOP SNOWING, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE. turn off the wintertime! this is not cool! i was late for work this morning because i couldn’t remember where i put my hats and gloves when i moved into this new apartment! okay, y’all. now i am just sitting here wasting time online writing a nonsense-filled blog post in order to avoid finishing packing. i must finish packing. i have a 6:25AM flight. i must finish packing. NOW, SABRINA!

yesterday: come home. want to watch a little tv, knit a little on a sock, not too ambitious. finally decide to take a picture of the sock and post it to flickr; cat does something cute and hey, now i get a cat photo and a sock photo! go to laptop, load up photo off camera, … and think to myself, “hey, why is the ‘DSL Sync’ light on my router blinking off and on like that?”

DENIED! both my DSL and voice were out, so i used the mobile to call in a trouble ticket to ATT. (who, it must be noted, has just had their request to buy out BellSouth approved by the DoJ — who have apparently never actually had to deal with a telephone company in their own lives, and therefore have no clue about how this will “benefit” consumers — so we move ever closer to not ever having broken Bell up at all in the first place. i love this game!) Ameritech SBC ATT called me around 10 this morning, saying they moved me to a new pair in the alley. when it rained, apparently my phone wires got wet. i am thus ever reassured about the quality of wiring in my neighborhood. at least the tech, who phoned me from the site, did make sure to check and make sure he could sync up my DSL before calling it a day, so hopefully i shall be able to catknitblog as soon as i get home. speaking of catknitblogging: for those who may have cared, my moblogging is now pretty much all on my flickr page; chiefly this is because i chose terribly, horribly, awfully when i switched web hosts, and i cannot cope with trying to get moblogging work on their system (because there are not enough hours in my life to deal with them any more than i have to — i still have an outstanding ticket from may, which really should have taken someone about 60 seconds to respond to with “No. Sorry.”), therefore i am copping out and emailing directly to flickr. so if you want to see random photos of nonsense, hie thee hence. and speaking of catblogging. er, knitblogging: i got my SP9 assignment!! am very excited. my spoilee is obviously very talented and has posted a bunch of cool creations to her blog, the address of which naturally i am not going to share with you and so i shall just taunt you by relating tales of her awesomeness. i’m very excited to start gifting! and, dude, i was just over at Loopy Yarns the other day ogling the pretty, pretty yarnses. and now i can go back again! hooray! (aside: niqui in a yarn store: “oooooooooo, lookit the sock yarn… i shall buy some of this even though i have yet to ever finish a sock… perhaps THIS will be the yarn for the sock that i shall finish!” actually, i did buy some new DPNs — as i remarked the other day, Kim has some awesome short (4.5″? 5″?) wooden DPNs that i thought looked perfect for socking, much easier than 8″ ones, and so when i found them at Loopy Yarns i picked up a set in each of sizes 2 and 1. (i’d post the brand name, except i can’t recall it at the moment. and, hey, they were only $5! you can’t beat that with a stick.) so i’m currently socking — man, i love using “sock” as a verb — on the 2s, and it’s going okay. i have slight ladder issues at one join (not the other three, for some reason; it is a mystery!) but otherwise it looks pretty okay. i’m going to take the sock-in-progress with me this weekend when i travel to baltimore to visit with some folks, and i’m just going to hope that nobody in airport security gives me any grief over my toothpick-sized knitting needles. i guess i’d rather replace the $5 wooden DPNs than two $6 inox needles if they get taken away from me, so … where was i? i do still like the circs. i’m noticeably slower on the DPNs, which makes me a little sad. i don’t know why i can’t seem to get up to any speed on DPNs. it’s not really all that much harder. maybe it’s just that i’m only going 15 stitches at a shot rather than 30. still, i’ve only got a few inches of this top-down sock done and if i was using circs i bet i’d have probably double. oh well. the wooden DPNs are still very nice to work with. i suppose i shouldn’t complain much about the speed until i can actually, you know, complete a sock. which i’m totally going to do, Real Soon Now. even my bartender, the other day when i was knitting over at The Butcher’s Dog, was encouraging me. (actually, she was really interested in my sock. she kept asking me questions. she said she could knit but had never seen anyone using multiple double-pointeds, so she couldn’t figure out what i was doing. and since i was starting out from the cast on, having come more or less straight from the LYS, i couldn’t really show her very easily, at least at first. hey, at least i was entertainment for the bar staff, y’know.) i’m going to finish a sock one of these days, yes, yes, i am. also, wow: this parenthetical “aside” is now longer than the entire rest of the blog post. hooray for stream of consciousness!) oh: everyone at work loves the fingerless typing gloves. not least of all, me! they’re fuzzy and cosy and my hands are so warm and they are the BEST $5 CLEARANCE YARN PROJECT EVER.

CNN:

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, in a dispatch carried by The Associated Press, quoted an unidentified North Korean official as saying, “We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes.” “That depends on how the U.S. will act,” the official said.

yeaaaaah. “unfortunate incident.” — you know, i’m not normally that bloodthirsty of a girl, but i’m getting really tired of north korea threatening to drop nukes on people because… well, so far as i can tell all of their angst is because kim jong-il is nuts, and likes to be cranky and threaten to drop nukes on people.

i mean, dude. you even pissed off china this time. if that’s not a call to “knock it off, dumbass,” i don’t know what is.