the everyday adventures of sabrina

not even listening to friends point out ways that it was wrong all day yesterday prepared me for exactly how bad this is. i think it’s pretty safe to say that the new Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame Definitive 200 Albums of All Time — “A list of 200 ranked albums that should be in every music lover’s collection” — is possibly the worst compiled list of music in history.

seriously. i was with you for numbers 2 and 3 (c’mon, i like Sgt Pepper’s too but it’s not the best rock album of all time just because you like “A Little Help from My Friends”) and willing to extend grudging support through number 10 (though personally i don’t think Nevermind is nirvana’s best work, but whatevs), but … the soundtrack to Titanic is more important than David Bowie??? two Eminem albums more noteworthy than any PE? admit it, you guys just called a lunch meeting and threw names out and then some intern rearranged them to sound good.

quicken automatically downloads all my statement information from my various accounts each morning.

this morning i noticed it was reporting a transaction on my second, forced-to-get bank one checking account. “hm,” i thought, “that’s strange, since i certainly haven’t done anything.”

turns out? they just deducted $22.95 of my $25 balance to buy me some checks. not that i authorized it or anything. they just kinda went and did it.

NOW IT’S WAR.

(as usual, click through to Flickr to read the comments.)

important things learned today:

• loopy yarns has a student discount. and I AM A STUDENT NOW. rawk.
• i can cast on, with even tension, 34 stitches in twisted german cast-on while walking in the tunnel transferring from the red line to blue line at jackson; and
• man, they are not joking when they say addi turbos are slippery.

since my missing evil sock is still missing and it still has my needles hostage, i threw caution to the winds and bought two 20″ #1 addi turbos at the shop. (you muggles snort sarcastically and think “yeah, knitting, sooo-ooo-oo daring,” but you’ve never paid $12 for one knitting needle, have you? oh, shut up.) i wanted to see if they were all they are cracked up to be, and also, gosh they’re just really shiny, aren’t they? *blink* *blink* i have to say, they are very nice. those slinky, calm cables are sweet. but the little bastards are slick. i’m glad i didn’t drop any stitches while knitting on the el, but it required paying a fair amount of attention to make sure i didn’t. bus-knitting should be easier than el-knitting, i think, since at least it’ll be less bumpy.

also, a (evidently fellow) knitter struck up a conversation, asking me what shop i’d gotten my yarn at, and asking if i knew of any shops in her area, around southport and belmont. apparently i wore my LYS Genius hat to work today. i told her i’d gotten the yarns at Loopy Yarns (which of course i did) and squeed a little bit about all their lovely new summer yarns, and mentioned Nina and Arcadia Knitting, but try though i did i couldn’t recall anything in that area, though i know there are some. alas. oh well, maybe she’ll go to Loopy and hang out. by the way, i am apparently a “regular” now; i was recognized and “did you get a haircut”-ted. teehee.

oh, and i signed up for spinning class. not that i am not capable of spinning (and i’m even okay at it), but i think if i go take a class from someone who knows what they are doing, i can get better at plying and drafting. i think i will take something away from the class, anyways, and it was only $20. i hope they still have some of that 80/20 merino/silk roving when i go there for class; that stuff is so nice. anyways.

yay! yarn! yay!

I want to knit on a pair of socks. But I still haven’t found the evil sock (that I put in the punishment basket), and I don’t think I have any new sock yarns, and I don’t remember offhand which needles that sock was on but probably my wee #1s and … dangit.

Maybe I’ll hit up the LYS on my way home from work today. Yarn addicts don’t fool around when they need the junk.

etienne charry’s “je tue le temps”: a requested [crappy] translation:

continue reading…

Scott Merkin:

“We’re going to stay with Mr. Danks,” said Guillen with a smile, revealing the news during his postgame press conference. “It was a long conversation. I think the way he throws the ball in Spring Training, he earned that spot. We all like the way he went about his business and was pretty tough.”

dear john danks:

i am a white sox fan, and that means i feel no obligation to remain supportive even in the face of a failure to be good at your job. therefore: you’d better not suck. you wouldn’t like the things i like to shout at players who annoy me. especially ones who are only here because someone traded away one of my favorite players.

people who were mean to BA all last season because they were pissed rowand got traded? got nothing on me.

suspiciously,
–sabrina

so i have had my checking account for a long time. it used to be at wingspan bank, which was one of the all-electronic banks back 8 years ago or whatever, which was nice because i pretty much never have to go to an actual bank to do anything. i could transact whatever i needed to via ATM, they had nice rates, and (what caused me to switch to them) they weren’t complete bastards like bank one (who had acquired first chicago and made everything far more sucktastic). imagine my disgust when a couple of years later wingspan bank was acquired, naturally enough, by bank one.

then: imagine my corresponding glee a few years ago when bank one was purchased by chase. finally! i thought; finally bank one can be on the receiving end of some acquisition pain and suffering. it’s really only just sad that my analysis of the situation was limited to joyful, joyful schadenfreude about nameless, faceless hordes of evil bank one employees suffering under the merciless rule of jp morgan chase, and did not include any insight about the corresponding suffering of customers: i.e., me. however, my will had been broken; i didn’t see any point in jumping ship again as certainly whatever institution i chose would be bought out and subsequently made hateful. deregulation, centralisation, consolidation, hoo-frickin’-ray. i didn’t see a point in trying to get a better deal: sure, the customer service was crap, the fees were crap, but i had quicken all set up and stuff… .

and then my new debit card was lost in the mail.

continue reading…

Happy new chucksday to me!

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

Blue!

you know that thing where my mail service really sucks? i mean, seriously, just honestly stinks?

my debit card expires at the end of march and i haven’t received a new one yet.

today i decided to call chase to see if they could get me a new card to my local branch — the one right next to the division blue line stop — for me to pick up, thus bypassing the black hole 60622.

very long story short: if it was an illinois account, i could do this, but my account is not an illinois account — apparently because it’s gone through a couple of acquisitions, totally nothing to do with, you know, me and my always-having-lived-in-illinois-ness — and there is no way to make it an illinois account. that’s right. there’s no way to say “this person actually lives in illinois — you know, like how the billing address has ALWAYS BEEN IN ILLINOIS?” it turns out that the solution is actually to open a new checking account. so this will be fun. i was going to file my taxes this weekend but i always do direct withdrawal or deposit, so now i guess i’ll mostly do them and just hold off on the money bit for a couple weeks. actually, i’m grateful i hadn’t already filed since now my checking account’s going to be all upheaval-tastic. this is going to be great fun: i get to change my mortgage auto-withdrawal, my netflix, all kinds of stuff. this will be great. hey, they are sending me free checks!

i swear to you, if i get home today and there is a debit card in my mailbox, i can not be held responsible for my actions.

ETA (1920): no debit card upon my arrival home. um, hooray? also: as promised, the new checking account was created right alongside my old one by the time i got home from work. too bad it’s the wrong kind of checking account and i’m going to have to call to fix that!

thank goodness my new philosophy of life is: fuck it!

Le pouce un peu relevé,
Index et majeur collés,
Et les autres bien repliés.

Je tire sur tout ce qui bouge,
Esprits fantômes aux yeux rouges,
Courants dair et grains de poussières

Je tue je tue le temps en ta en t’attendant,
L’impact arrivera plus tard
Subsonique comme toi un peu en retard

Elle s’en va un beau matin
Plus jamais elle ne revient
J’ai lu ça dans un quotidien

Si jamais tu ne reviens pas
C’est sur tu me manqueras
Mais moi je ne te louperais pas

Je tue je tue le temps en ta en t’attendant,
L’impact arrivera plus tard
Subsonique comme toi un peu en retard
Un peu en retard

Je suis seul dans ma cabane
A compter les caravanes
Et les voitures qui tombent en pannes

Grâce à la pyrogravure
Je compose sur les murs
Des poèmes rien que pour toi

Je tue je tue le temps en ta en t’attendant,
L’impact arrivera plus tard
Subsonique comme toi

Pendant ce temps
Je tue je tue le temps en ta en t’attendant,
L’impact arrivera plus tard
Subsonique comme toi un peu en retard

Je tue je tue le temps en ta en t’attendant,
L’impact arrivera plus tard
Subsonique comme toi un peu en retard
Un peu en retard.

prochain : “par ici la monnaie” !

guess what i am messing around with at work today? NO, NOT PHOTOSHOP!

(inspired by I Can Has Cheezburger?, among others, and IM with b. BTW, if you have no idea WTF a lolcat is, see here. You non-lolcat-knowing loser.)

well, this weekend i went down to peoria to visit some folks and run some essential errands, like hit up co-op (i picked up some used vinyl — Breakfast in America by Supertramp and a couple of Fleetwood Mac records — bite me, i like Fleetwood Mac — and new RJD2 which came with a little sticker advertising a free download of MP3s as well (several of them had that sticker; nice idea, we’ll see how it works; it’d be nice not to have to buy things in two formats since i haven’t bothered to rip anything off of my vinyl since Breakfast at Tiffany’s like five years ago — bite me, i also like Audrey Hepburn singing “Moon River”) as well as a copy of sufjan stevens’ Illinois more or less just ’cause, and a shiny new copy of pixies’ Surfer Rosa. and, i see looking through the pile now, i somehow ended up with a used copy of drivin’ n’ cryin’s (who?) Whisper Tames the Lion (“Features ‘Powerhouse’ and ‘The Friend Song’!”), which i must have picked up by mistake after i put my selected records down in the bin to look through some others. oh well, it was only three bucks. i can always sell it back. i also picked up a few used CDs and, on an almost entirely inexplicable whim, a new copy of a Revolting Cocks CD (Linger Fickin’ Good). they had a buy-three-get-one thing going on and i had only picked out three used CDs because i didn’t notice it, so i went back and picked one out at random; ended up with Human League. we shall see how this little record shop adventure works out for me, i suppose. man, i still wish i had gotten to work for co-op in high school. i really like that store. the campustown co-op sucks ass relative to east peoria.).

but i had also mentioned to my dad that i was looking for a used kitchen table i could pick up for cheap, and so saturday he and my stepmom made it their mission to find me a table. newspaper classifieds and everything. we ended up driving out to morton and buying a table and two chairs from a couple who were selling all their stuff and moving to indianapolis. score! so i am now the proud owner of a white formica 48″ round table with 18″ leaf, and two white vinyl and wood chairs. it’s pretty swanky. i’m happy.

Cold dove

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

Birdie!

dude. david lynch signature coffee. does it come with frankly confusing symbolism included, delivered by a one-armed man?

so nobody spoke up and said “hey, sabrina, I would love to go see Bloc Party with you!” this makes me sad. but not so sad that i put aside capitalism and turn into a sad hippie or something. one time i had managed to come up with tickets for a tori amos show at the auditorium theatre — tori amos having the distinction of the single artist i have seen more times than any other (i have seen her at least six or seven times, i kinda lost count). anyways, when i couldn’t get tickets myself i turned to teh intarwebs and found someone on chi.forsale with a pair, and bought them. and then i couldn’t find anyone else to go with me, because everyone mocked me for liking tori amos. (i still don’t care what you say. she’s wacky and fun to go see in concert because she is crazy.) i ended up eating the cost of the second ticket, which was something like $115. not fun — especially since i was extremely broke at the time. i remain sad about it to this day, and that was like 3 years ago. so, in an effort to not eat the cost of my second bloc party ticket — only about $35 or $37 or so (stupid %^&@*#^#!@&^#$ ticketmaster “convenience” fees; bastards) — i just listed it for sale on the ebay tickets scalper site, StubHub, where i scored my Scissor Sisters and Arcade Fire tickets.

wish me luck! i would be sad if i had to eat the cost of the second ticket. even more sad than just not having a friend to come along with me and talk about the show with afterwards. YOU WANKERS.

p.s. The Scissor Sisters show? i’d have blogged about it earlier but i am still reeling from the sheer amount of AWESOME. Ana Matronic is my hero!

I AM TEH R0X0R! I R0X0R Y0UR C4RZ 50X0RZ!!!!!!!!!1!!1!11!!!!!!!11!