the everyday adventures of sabrina

Christening the new iMac
It’s not a computer of mine until it has its own copy of Moskau lurking in my Documents folder, waiting for an opportunity to cheer me up. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-hey!

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

I love this video. I’m not ashamed.

FEDEX TRUCK!!!

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

The nice FedEx man came! With a pressie for me!

so my poor baby laptop, which i love to little tiny pieces, is getting old and crotchety. it’s had some problems. it lost a fan, so it gets really warm. its dvd drive started flaking about two years ago, and a couple of months ago it finally died. its hard disk is both slow (4200 rpms) and tiny (60 GB). it gets hot, and it’s only got a gig of ram, and i can only run a couple of fat applications simultaneously — if i have both firefox and safari open (as i often do), i can just forget about running quicktime player without the fan kicking on. nonetheless, i’ve had this laptop for ages, it’s an original 17″ powerbook G4 and i literally ordered it the day it was announced at MacWorld, and it’s been such a good computer, which is why i’m tremendously sad to announce that it’s dying.

a fan i could replace, a hard disk i could upgrade, and a dvd-rom i could fix (none of those cheaply, which is why i’ve been putting them off for ages, but technically fixable)… but now it’s got a hosed up USB port that appears to have fried a USB hub, and that’s on the logic board, and *that* basically is the computer. so that leaves, like, the keyboard, power adapter, and display working well.

i love my poor little baby laptop. she’s been so good to me. :( i’m so sad!

nonetheless, i am a pragmatist. i understand that a dying laptop is not much good for using for doing computery things, and that is why i just — sigh — dropped $1800 on a new iMac at the Apple Store. i think i saved a whole $50 with my student discount. hooray.

• iMac 17-inch, Intel Core 2 Duo
  • SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
  • 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM – 2×1GB
  • 250GB Serial ATA drive
  • 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
  • Ships by: Apr 30 – May 2
  • Delivers by: May 1 – May 3
• Canon PIXMA MP460 Photo All-in-One Printer
  • Ships by: Apr 27 – Apr 30
  • Delivers by: Apr 30 – May 1

(the only reason there’s a printer on there is because it was $110 with a $100 rebate, and my old printer driver — which works only grudgingly under panther — does not work at all with tiger so far as i can tell. at least the new one is smaller. probably quieter, too.)

i guess i’ll freecycle the old printer. my ancient G4 quicksilver, Nigel, i might as well just freecycle, if anyone’ll even take it. it takes up so much room and i never use it anyways — no point; shiny’s much faster than it, and it’s crashy. at least this is an excuse to clean some stuff out of the office, i guess.

i’m just so sad poor shiny is dying. i know i shouldn’t anthropomorphize my computers, but i do anyways. all my computers i work with most frequently have personalities, so i pat them and tell them to cheer up when they’re grumpy. i used to always go into the machine room at U of C and pat plaisance and tell her things like “we have some nice new memory for you, sweetie.” (plaisance was my little baby Sun Fire 6800. i think i was the only one who liked her…she was kind of whiny and crashy. it wasn’t her fault, though; she was a Rev 1.) i also pat my cars and call them good girls. honestly… it’s not so much anthropomorphization as it is sort of canispomorphization: i talk to inanimate objects like they’re pet dogs. anyways. point is, i’m sad my favorite little laptop is dying. i expect that by the time the boxes show up at my door i will be excited, but for now, i’m mostly just mourning.

i am handling the finances like so: i signed up for the promotional credit, the Juniper Apple Visa with iTunes Rewards. hey, i just spent $1800 on a new mac; the least they can do is give me a damn $25 iTunes gift card. :P at least this way it doesn’t interfere with my plans for repaying the other cards, and i get three months to whittle it down before there’s a finance charge. so. it ain’t great, but insofar as spending $1800 unexpectedly goes, this is probably not the worst way i could have handled it. (probably not the best either, but at least i did put some thought into it…) it was exactly the “good enough” solution for this (and any other solution would have gotten me mired in worry and anxiety, and that’s no good). and, best of all: this will give me a new Visa card so i won’t have to give Chase any more money (since my current/only Visa is through them), because they are bastards and we hateses them, preciouss. hah, take that, JP Morgan Chase Bank NA! i vote with my credit line…and also my dying computers, apparently.

that said… just, i better not have any unexpected $1000+ purchases for a long while, man. :)

muy rain and wind and generally unpleasant weather == no baseball for niqui tonight after all.

i can has burgerlet however: hooray! cheezburger for everybody!

only two more weeks of class. i just have to keep repeating that to myself: only two more weeks of class. it’s not that i dislike class; i really like it (although my first class after the mustang burned was kind of painful to get through, and not just because i caught my thumb while adjusting the telescoping arm of a four-point overhead rack, and pinched the %^&*^%$%^ out of it). it’s just that a four hour class (plus commute time, plus homework time) twice a week takes a lot out of you. it would be easier if i drove, but i just can’t justify paying $40 extra a week to drive to work/school/home two days for sixteen weeks or whatever. also, think of all the sock knitting time i would miss out on if i drove…

speaking of fiber arts: this past weekend was the 9th Annual Ohio-Kentuckiana Soapers Gathering, and since i don’t live in Ohio, Kentucky, or Indiana, naturally i attend every year. (har.) we had a little unofficial fiber arts table, which was fun: Molly socked (in tiny bits of time snatched from being this year’s gathering chair!), Kim socked in between running around the gathering to round up people to buy raffle tickets for the Laura’s Rose Garden shawl she designed and knitted and then donated, and Mari worked on embroidery — while i worked on crocheting a swatch to practice. a rather sad swatch, since i didn’t know i was accidentally decreasing at the start of each row and at some point i realized i had not achieved a rectangle but instead a trapezoid of fabric. oops.

shockingly, i actually won Laura’s Rose Garden in the raffle! i was so surprised. i put in several tickets, but literally everyone there (around 100 of us), except one person, put in at least one. unbeknownst to Kim, however, there was a whole big conspiracy going on to ensure that whoever won the shawl, it would make its way back to her: people brought extra things to trade, people were going around spreading the word that they would be willing to barter, etc. i very stealthily (if i do say so myself) snuck it into her luggage while loading up the car, and she found it sunday morning. so that was fun. i did win another item, though, one of Marie’s stained glass items, a beautiful rose colored plate — i loved it to pieces at first sight, so i was thrilled i got to take it home! it’s beautiful, i’m going to try and take a picture of it this weekend for the blog because really, it’s just gorgeous. and she made it! i can’t even imagine.

i donated several skeins of my handspun… like an idiot, i didn’t take any pictures of them first!! one of them i was especially proud of, too — it was an attempt at a lighter weight yarn, which i spun from a variegated dyed roving, and then navajo plied to preserve the color variation. oh well. sigh. i know who won them… maybe i can ask her to take a picture for me. :-)

anyways, i did get a little better at crochet, and now i have a respectable start to rippling, and i even ordered some yarn from JoAnn’s Fabrics — Caron Simply Soft, since i wanted a washable, inexpensive yarn — so that’s fun. i just need to figure out how to hold the yarn in my hand so i can go quickly (without picking the yarn up and throwing it), i’ve got the hook motion down. i just need practice. oh well, that’s what swatching is for.

and in knitting news, i have another nearly complete transit sock — out of blue and grey striped Step yarn, which is very nice yarn indeed — which needs to be tried on and have a toe knitted, and then to have a mate knitted, so maybe i’ll have another pair of socks in a few weeks. i may give this pair away, not sure. and, in much more exciting news, i am going to start on the Nelly Shawl pattern that my SP9 sent me! i started out on it a while ago — actually, the night i got the box of goodies! — because i was so excited about it and the yarn. i still haven’t posted about that box because i wanted to post a picture of the shawl-in-progress with the yarn from the goodie box and on my shiny new needles from the goodie box. this plan was thwarted when, after i cast on and knit six rows in garter stitch, i decided i had better practice the lace part first with some scrap yarn — so i cast on some sock yarn on some other needles and proceeded to knit the lace pattern multiple times, not one single repeat of which came out right! i kept coming up with extra stitches at the end of the row. i thought i was misreading the pattern, or maybe losing track of where i was and skipping to a different row, so i got out graph paper and wrote the pattern down for myself in rows of alternating ink colors, so i could remember “i’m on the red row” and it would be easier to see… and still, extra stitches. i counted stitches obsessively, and i could not figure it out! it was making me crazy! i promised myself i could start on the “real” shawl with the “real” yarn as soon as i could do one repeat without mistakes… but i just couldn’t! and that’s about when it dawned on me that maybe it wasn’t me that was messed up, but the pattern. it turns out that the pattern has you casting on 58 stitches but, if you look at the graph, there are only 56 stitches indicated. it looks to me (and it seems like Kim agrees) that they forgot two purl stitches on the right-hand side of the pattern, symmetric with the two purl stitches on the left-hand side. so, i think now that that is figured out, this weekend i will probably get out my trusty graph paper and write the pattern in colors again (i liked that idea a lot, actually), and add in those two purls, and see if then i can’t finally get a repeat to come out right.

tomorrow: baseball game at 19:11, vs. the Ligers. the weather looks promising — if you prefer wintertime to spring: “Cloudy with a 40 percent chance of rain showers. Lows around 40°F.” i might take my crochet swatch/future cat blanket. :P i hope the hot cocoa guys will be out again… i mean, cold beer at the ballpark is just not very appealing when you’re already wet and shivering.

ennyhoo. this weekend i will try to catch up on backlogged craft blogging and so on, just as soon as i can catch a few hours at home.

what the hell is this??

Students of Turner County High School started what they hope will become a new tradition: Black and white students attended the prom together for the first time on Saturday.

… “I’ve asked, ‘Why can’t you come?’ and they’re like, ‘My mommy and daddy — they don’t agree with being with the colored people,’ which I think is crazy,” she said.

did i fall asleep in a time machine and land back in 1885? “COLORED PEOPLE”???? christ!

my masterful plan to eat less crap and save money by bringing my lunch to work has been thwarted by someone stealing it out of the freezer and leaving nothing behind but an empty box in the trash. it was one of my favorite entrees, too!

sad. :(

• much email to read! so much mail, not even gonna try until like tomorrow.
• return trip: 4 h 50 m from brunswick, ohio, to the stony island exit ramp off of the skyway. oh yeah.
• only 680 miles in toto; avg speed 67 mph; car got poor mileage both ways. :( 29 mpg there, 27 (!!) mpg back. still unhappy about the mileage situation, though i think the extreme shittiness on the way home was because we had some really harsh cross winds and i was fighting it the whole drive. (also i kinda leadfooted maybe a wee little bit.)
• made it to the modest mouse show after all!! i emailed the ticket shipper and whined a lot, and she had duplicate tickets printed and held at will call for me. yay! also, yay! realizing i forgot my wallet before i got to the show. boo realizing it after i’d already pulled into the parking deck, gotten the valet parking stub, and walked away. (yay not getting busted for speeding without a driver’s license while racing back home to get wallet and return to show.) show was insane with the awesome. not to mention THE TENTH ROW CENTER seats (which i did not realize — since i did not have the tickets in hand, and had gotten no notification of what the location was beforehand). also, the auditorium theatre remains one of my very favorite venues.
• learned to crochet. can now start my ripple! ripple afghans for EVERYBODY!
• also, carded wool for the first time. now want a drum carder. at $500 a pop, this: not going to happen any time soon. alas.
• won spectacular things at gathering. one got adopted out to its rightful mom; the other is MINE MINE MINE and i will photograph it soonishly so all may see how completely freaking gorgeous it is, and be envious of its MINEness.
• am probably going to make soap this week. if anyone needs any soap, let me know. i have, you know, like 500000 bars of it. TAKE SOME NICE SOAP. IT IS HAPPY SOAP. as always: will send box of soap to a good home, just send me your address!

okay, time for falling down, going boom now. am exhausted!

Celebrate!

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

It’s a tickertape parade at the BP!

Birdwatching

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

Sparky, Itty Bitty, and Rambo start their days.

lately i have not had such a great time of it, what with the $1200 in car repairs, the dream car that burned to the ground, being completely out of free time due to spending weekends working, the concert tickets that never arrived, the post office continuing to lose my parcels (and amazon continuing to send me parcels via USPS Priority Mail even when told to use Amazon Prime 2-day UPS shipping, and then writing worthless responses to email enquiries), and chase screwing up my checking accounts leading to money worries, and class eating up my weeknights, and not sleeping enough because i can’t sleep when stressed, and being out of my mind with anxiousness over everything that is going on (and going wrong). and of course i picked this week to quit smoking again because i wasn’t twitchy enough as it was. so… let me just say…

i am getting in my car tomorrow and i am driving to cleveland and by god nobody better get in my way because i will drive *over* them if that is what it takes to get a *vacation* around this madhouse.

i still have not posted about my final parcel from my SP9 because i wanted to knit some of the project i started with its contents so i could post a picture of that — and i have only had time to get 7 rows in! 6 of which are garter stitch!

and it’s 11 PM and i am still not ready to pack the car up and go tomorrow morning! MY BRAIN IS MELTING.

It would have been really nice if you would have shipped my tickets to this Sunday’s upcoming show at the Auditorium Theatre sooner than today. You see, I’m going out of town for the weekend tomorrow, and was anticipating coming back into town, driving straight to the theatre, and going to see the show. But now what’s going to happen is that the nice FedEx man is going to stop by on Friday, ring my bell, find me not at home, and then he’s going to go away, taking my tickets with him. And then I’ll get home Sunday, when FedEx is closed. I’ll have to go drive over there to pick up the package with my worthless tickets in it some weekday next week, like some sort of deliberate taunt. At least last time I failed to see Modest Mouse it was my fault. I ordered my tickets a month ago though. I’m pretty much off the hook for this one.

Really, don’t you think that shipping the tickets two-day air with two business days between shipping and the concert is cutting things a little close? I mean, I know we’re all indie rock and all but some of us do actually stop giving ourselves bad haircuts long enough to leave our houses from time to time. And even those who are too emo to contemplate the big scary world out there sometimes have nice FedEx men who accidentally lose packages. Maybe a little more time would have been not such a bad idea.

I’m just sayin.

disappointedly,
–s.

i have ten thousand things to accomplish in the next 24 hours.

they are NOT HELPED by my inkjet printer suddenly deciding it has to be fed cardstock one page at a time. or my lack of a hole punch and having to run to staples. or having not yet done my homework for class. or or or or or.

i think my head is going to explode.

AIEE.

if my head explodes, someone go feed my cats, ok?

i think i’m in love with the guys at nortown.

they took care of my baby car, fixed her all up bright and shiny, and then when i came to pick her up the mechanic who worked on her took me over and showed me what had happened to my rotors, knew exactly why it was (“do you let the car sit for long periods of time?”) and explained how it had happened (not driving leads to rust building up on the rotors’ edges, reducing surface area for the brake pad to make contact, thus resulting in noise and vibration). and he was totally cool about it, didn’t baby me or whatever, he was just really rational and nice. then he comisserated over the price of my battery (i picked a high end battery, an Optima deep-cycle gel pack, for a few reasons, such as “i tend to let my car sit for long periods of time”), and then casually mentioned that since i was due for an oil change soon anyways he just took care of that for me, for no charge.

which. i mean, i was going to take the car to class next week and do the oil change myself, but, how awesome is having service thrown in for free? i mean, okay, once it’s up on the lift and you’re poking around the underbody it’s not a real stretch to pull the plug out and let it drain, but still, it’s extra effort and materials, and it’s an industry not known for throwing in lots of freebies. i thought it was very sweet.

i’m going to go back to the car talk web site, where i found them, and write up a review on their complete awesomeness. seriously, i can just punt my old dealer mechanic off a cliff now, ‘cos Sal took good care of my baby for me. and she rides so much nicer now with clean brakes! i was never particularly bothered by the vibration of the brakes before the service, but now that it’s fixed, it’s just smooth and really a noticeable improvement. i’m extremely happy with my official new mechanic.

i declare the week over. today is a new week, because i used the old week up (and now i’m going to throw it away).

let’s just recap everything that has happened since sunday:
1. $(very close friend) announced that she is moving to the west coast. in like two weeks. i don’t even know when i’ll find time in my schedule to buy her a drink of congratulations for the awesome new job, much less say goodbye.
2. as it turns out, contrary to popular belief, being a manager involves work, and angst, and woe, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. MUCH time down the drain figuring things out. sadly, existing workload including non-work classes and work not totally eliminated as a result of increased work load. feel like poster child for “thinking is hard.”
3. spent many hours working on a new budget, as it had been a while since the old one was reviewed and revised. this resulted in “wow, i just don’t have *any* money, do i. maybe i’ll take a vacation *next* year…”
4. and then as if to underscore the point, checking account balance (on still main original chase account) drops to actually less than $100 for the first time in a long time. wow, i’d forgotten how exciting it is to live life on the edge!
5. …especially when you get suddenly zinged with $1200 in car repairs.
6. …and you can’t even do anything fun (with the car) this weekend because you have to work a lot.
7. …and then your dream car you have wanted since you were three years old, which you are currently spending a lot of time and making yourself sleep-deprived in order to take classes to learn how to repair, burns to flame-broiled hunks of steel due to being hit by lightning, thanks to this crappy weather lately.

so you can see why i declare the week over. i am through with that week! that week is DONE! i am wadding it up and throwing it in the trash where it can get coffee grounds in its eye. it’s petty revenge, but satisfying.

but all is not doom and gloom. there are some decent things to keep in mind.

1. just think of all the money i won’t have to spend on parts and tools for the car!! (i hate that particular bright side. FYI.)
2. after spending tons of time working through something and starting to read up on management theory, have come up with a game plan for something that’s been plaguing me for literally four to five weeks (and before that it had been merely bothering me). so apparently research works after all. who knew? (SHUT UP, RESEARCH PROFESSIONALS.)
3. had a good laugh after i realized that — on the bright side of my dad’s garage burning flat — some personal documents i’d left in the garage for them to throw in with a fire next time they burned brush are now all burned up just like i wanted. oh, fate, you are a whimsical mistress, aren’t you?

4. i totally got my taxes done last weekend. procrastination, you are not the boss of me! i win!
5. some jackass ran into me wednesday night when i was catching the red line home after class — the train had pulled into the station and he and i had been waiting to board in the section of the platform where the second-to-front car pulled in, and then he abruptly decided he didn’t want to be on that car and ran for the next car down, running into me in the process and causing me to drop about a dozen stitches on my current sock-in-progress off the needle by yanking on my yarn as he passed, some of which immediately ran as many as four or five rows down, leaving me with a really big mess to clean up. i got it all under control before the train made it to fullerton, and even got a couple more rows done before i got home, which means i am a badass transit sock knitter for whom no dropped stitch holds fear, even grey yarn on #1 needles in a dim el car. (Indecisive Man is still an idiot, though.)