the everyday adventures of sabrina

as kim demands: i need to show off the loot from my SP!

yesterday, as i wandered home from the bus, eyeing the slightly ominous clouds overhead (and mindful of the morning’s forecast calling for rain, which prompted me to take my umbrella to work), i paused to check my mailbox, whereupon i spotted:

(Side note: what is up with the post office correcting the zip code on the return address?? I mean, it didn’t get returned… How strange!)

so it was actually very good that i had taken my umbrella to work, you see, because if i hadn’t taken it, it would have rained, all over my fantastic goodies from my SP!

inside, i opened it up to find a whole bunch of cool stuff:

first off is the Fiber Trends Spring Blossoms Shawl pattern, which is a really lovely pattern and looks like it should be a relaxing pattern to knit up.

on top of the pattern (so you can actually see them on my white table…) are two braids of really incredibly soft white roving. i’m not sure what the fiber is, but it’s very soft! there might have been a little snuggling. i’m just saying.

then there’s a skein of Twinkle Toes handpainted sock yarn in the ‘Ocean’ colorway, from Joslyn’s Fiber Farm in wisconsin. it’s a superwash wool/mohair/nylon blend, so it’s soft and just the tiniest bit fuzzy. check out the colors:

i really like the colors on that! i’m not sure what pattern to knit up with it, but i did pick up two sock patterns that the Midwest Fiber Fair back a few weeks ago that i haven’t had a chance to play with, yet, so … who knows? (also, let me just say that today i finally figured out why i haven’t been able to take halfway decent photos of dark-colored yarns — which was a real issue for me while trying to upload my stash to Ravelry. i have apparently had the white balance set to something-other-than-neutral since, well, i don’t actually know how long, but it’s possible that it was since my last big road trip. which was in 2005. sooo….. never mind my being a dumbass, let’s all celebrate the fact that i was able to take photos of this yarn (at long last) where it looked dark blue like it is, and not bright sky blue, which it emphatically is not.)

and last, treats for my sweet tooth: licorice gumdrops and dark chocolate! i’ve never seen Crows before, but they rock. it’s like a whole box of black jellybeans, just for me! this chocolate bar is actually kind of cool, too; rather than giving you one big bar of chocolate, inside the packaging are five smaller individual bars, each of which is just exactly the right amount of chocolate — not too much and not too little. yum!

so there you have it! the first official post o’squee. thanks to my awesome SP for such a thoughtful gift, and i can’t wait to get started with these goodies!

about the only thing keeping me going these past few days is pop music. not, like, sensible pop music, like pet shop boys. mindless cotton-candy pop music. britney spears’ greatest hits. i even listened to a bunch of billie piper and if that’s not straight out of a 12-year old girl’s diary i don’t know what is. i actually, in the end, was forced to come to the conclusion that i do not actually have enough cotton-candy pop music in my collection. this comes of, i think, being sadly much older than 12. (OTOH, i’m old enough to drink beer, so maybe it’s an OK tradeoff after all.)

now, if you’ll excuse me, i have to go dance around my kitchen and sing “Toxic” while putting away the groceries.

you ever have one of those weeks where you think to yourself “wow, i really need to start getting up earlier so i have time to deal with all these household crises that keep cropping up?”

because i am totally having one right now.

i’ve been so completely bored of food lately. it’s weird. i like food, i like eating… i love delicious, well-prepared sushi; i adore macaroni and cheese from the baked bubbling goodness in a casserole dish lightly browned on top to Kraft Dinner; say nothing and just hand over the falafel, and no one has to get hurt. an english muffin with a little butter on top is a delicious start to the morning. but lately, it’s just all sort of …meh. i don’t want to bother with cooking, and lunch is just the most tremendously uninteresting thing i usually don’t remember to eat until it’s 1:30 or 2PM when i realize i’m about to fall over from hunger.

i’m not really sure what happened here, but i am going to blame eating at work. i used to be very, very boring, and i’d just eat whatever looked good on campus — typically either (a) chicken salad on a croissant with potato salad from the 1155 cafeteria, or (b) a samosa and a thai noodle dish from the Div School, either optionally with a bottle of La Croix (cherry is my favorite, though lime is also acceptable). it was very repetitive but, you know, all mockery of the Trough aside, i really liked their chicken salad…

but then i changed jobs and although in all respects i love this job much more, the lunch thing is sort of a plague. we have a great number of restaurants around the Board of Trade. i can have just about any sort of food i want (except indian or pakistani, which kind of annoys me — i can get a curry and samosas from Burrito Buggy (!), of all places, but it’s … curry from Burrito Buggy, you know what i’m saying? it’s not exactly the house specialty. some days i would trade my left arm for some butter chicken from Rajun Cajun.). there are two sushi places within walking distance (one average but close, one actually pretty good but farther away), several middle eastern places, a really fucking good barbecue place, several delis, a place that does excellent panini, a Corner Bakery, a couple of mall-food-court-quality chinese places, a korean place, several grills, a handful of hotdog joints, a really good roasted chicken place and a really awful for you but oh so tempting chicken fingers joint, a baked potato place, the CBOT cafeteria in the basement, and there is even a McDonald’s for those desperate for homogeneity. i can hoof it to my favorite takeaway sandwich shop in printer’s row, SRO, for one of their outstanding bbq chicken sandwiches, or i could even hit up Harold’s if i feel like going for a walk (and suffering the consequences of Harold’s).

but i’m so booooooooooooooooored of all of them!

i decided some time ago that since i was so bored of all of the lunch choices i was having serious trouble deciding where to get lunch daily (which i was), i would just bring lunch — if i was going to eat boring, i might as well pay $5 less a day. so that’s worked out okay. most of the time i remember to get my lunch out of the freezer and bring it, and it’s alright. it’s not interesting, but i wasn’t really shooting for interesting… i was shooting for a less-expensive status quo (and i got it).

i think i have, however, just hit rock bottom on the bored of food scale. i just officially gave up: for the third time in my life, i am going to go do Nutrisystem. the first time was in 2000; i lost 35 pounds before i got bored and went off the plan. the second time was in 2004; i lost 20 pounds but was too broke to continue with the program (it’s not inexpensive, though it’s probably middle-range for most weight loss programs.). i managed to keep most of it off both times, except after i changed jobs and went from eating chicken salad for lunch to eating Mickey’s chicken fingers for lunch, which meant that this past year i have gone up a jeans size or two and am really sort of cranky about it although admittedly there is no one but me to blame. however, my main goal here is not necessarily weight loss. i haven’t decided yet whether or not i am going to even bother with regular weigh-ins. honestly, they sort of piss me off. all that relentless harping on some bullshit number, you can’t get away from it. people on weight-loss boards are always posting things like — a typical signature on a web bulletin board includes something like this:

200/190/175

which corresponds to “starting weight / current weight / goal weight.” and let’s not even start with the pithy supportive aphorisms. “people always compliment me on my WILLpower, but i want to focus on my WANTpower – i want to be thin!” screw that. and jesus may love me at whatever size i am, but i think lane bryant loves me more because they make lots of money selling me jeans over and over again every time i gain or lose ten pounds. (i could go on about how the weight-loss community traditions bug the hell out of me, but it’d be terribly boring and not a small amount bitter, so i won’t. anyways.)

but i was thinking for the past few weeks about whether or not i should try nutrisystem again. i do believe that it’s a good plan for weight loss; it has worked for me in the past. and i have my happy elliptical machine at home now and quite like it, so exercise isn’t a problem. and hey! i’m already completely bored of all things gustatory, so it wouldn’t even matter if i found ns foods boring, because i already find most foods boring. (given: i am still a sucker for a dragon roll. and i wouldn’t turn down a well-prepared chunk of Kobe beef.) it does mean changing my budget some, because it’s $300/mo (which was my whole food budget) just for the ns food, to which i have to add fresh produce and dairy, but my budget is already kind of screwed up because of tiger getting sick (my previous pet care budget was $75/mo, but now it’s more like $250-300/mo — insulin and blood sugar testing are expensive, and there’s no kitty Medicare). and honestly, i would really just like much less stressing out about getting home and being too bored (or tired, during the school year) to cook anything and then being frustrated because there’s no food. it’s sort of the full-blown corollary to the lunch-boredom solution: if the solution to lunch boredom is to give up and just buy frozen entrees, the solution to total meal boredom is to give up and buy a pre-planned food program. honestly, if i lose weight, that’s sort of a bonus. who knows. maybe if i do ns for several months i’ll lose a couple sizes and remember how to enjoy food again.

i placed my ns order today, so i expect to get it maybe friday or the following tuesday (labor day! huzzah!). so, i guess we’ll see how this little experiment works out for me.

another day, another semi-panicked late night trip to the emergency vet.

thankfully: false alarm. i had thought that tiger was acting lethargic and less-than-ideally responsive (i.e., not looking up when i whistled or called his name), and i couldn’t get him to eat at all for 4 hours after he got his insulin (next time: FOOD FIRST, i don’t care if it is slow acting insulin), and i couldn’t draw enough blood to test his blood sugar (even after trying repeatedly, and wasting several test strips on insufficient amounts of blood), so i dropper-fed him some karo syrup (kitty delicacy, don’t you know) and then when that didn’t change his behavior any i kind of freaked out and called the emergency vet, who disbelievingly repeated back to me that i gave him insulin before food (it’s been two days that i’ve been doing this! cut me some slack, i don’t know the ropes yet!), then they said i had better rush him straight in in case he was in a diabetic crisis, so into the carrier he went and off we drove.

one thing about kitty diabetes: you get to the emergency vet’s office and say “hi, i called, i have a diabetic kitty?” and they don’t screw around; into an exam room you are swept, and into the exam room zooms the vet tech. whereupon your cat drools on the tech in a vaguely discontented “i hate the kitty carrier” way, but otherwise acts pretty normal (while you quietly freak out in the corner because omg they said “diabetic crisis” and i’m a bad kitty mommy!).

but the little rugrat was just faking me out; his blood sugar was 365 mg/dL. which, don’t get me wrong, that’s not really good — but it’s actually much improved from where he was when he was taking the glipizide (high 400s, at /best/.). and it’s nowhere near hypoglycemic. so, all things considered, he’s doing all right. he even passed the ketones test that we did on him, so all is well there as well.

but man, i could do with a week or so of no kitty drama. this constant fear for my cat’s health is getting a little exhausting.

with all the problems that using the CTA entails (trains that never come, never-ending slow zones, endless waiting making me late for work, trains on fire, and i’m not even going to start with the busses), this is a brief summation of why i don’t habitually drive to work:

0825: Ready to leave. Schedule after work involves coming straight home, babysitting cat while feeding him and then injecting him with insulin, then carrying spinning wheel and accessories to car to go to Loopy for Spinning Class, Mark II, to be there by 1830. Decision:

1. Blue Line: Walk to subway (10 minutes). Wait for train (5-15 minutes, if very lucky). Ride train (20-25 minutes). Walk to work (10 minutes). Best case: 45 minutes; worst case: 60+ minutes. Also, no knitting as the train will be packed.
2. Pink Line: Walk to North/Ashland (10 minutes). Wait for #9 or X9 (5-10 minutes). Ride bus (X9 – 8 minutes; 9 – 12 minutes). Wait for train (2-10 minutes). Ride train (10 minutes). Walk to work (2 minutes). Best case: 37 minutes; worst case: 55 minutes; typical: 45 minutes. Can knit the whole time.
3. Red Line: Walk to North/Ashland (10 minutes). Wait for #72 (5-10 minutes). Ride bus (10-12 minutes). Wait for train (2-7 minutes). Walk to work (15 minutes). Best case: 40 minutes; worst case: 53 minutes. Can knit on Red Line and while waiting, probably not on #72.
4. Drive: 10 minutes to get downtown; ??? to get across downtown to Clark/Van Buren. Probably make it in less than 30 minutes, though. Have to pay $20 to park, plus no knitting, but driving would make it easier to come home fast, to feed/medicate cat, then go to Loopy, without having a mad transit dash home.

Winner: after-work convenience wins out; driving it is. Okay.

0832: Put car in gear. Drive to end of block, turn south on Ashland.
0835: Turn southeast on Milwaukee. Bicyclists are everywhere; drive with caution. Don’t make it out of second gear until Augusta, at 0840.
0843: Decision: go south on Des Plaines, or continue east on Milwaukee and try to sneak in the back way? Des Plaines sucks, the lights are all timed so you hit every light when it’s just turned red; let’s try the new way.
0845: Oh goodie, the new way crosses Metra tracks. Here’s an inbound train … now an outbound train … there’s another inbound train a little ways off but they lift the gates anyways: punch it!
0848: Head east on Washington. Realize that there’s no way I’m going to make it to the parking deck before 9 (when the parking rates go up from $14 to $20). Sulk. Get cut off by dickhead cab while trying to leave space to let in a Jeep who didn’t realize his lane was ending. Morons in charge of motor vehicles are simply everywhere.
0852: Turn south on Clark. There’s a brief, tiny, oh so slim possibility that I might make it to the parking deck five blocks south by 9, if the lights favor me. Engage in more aggressive driving than usual, with lane changes to take advantage of gaps. At one point, downshift from third into second to punch it in order to make a light. And yet, I always stop before the crosswalk, because I’m awesome like that.
0857: Stopped at the light at Van Buren, with half a block to go until my parking deck. Come on, come on!
0859: Pull in to parking deck. Hope their clock is not ahead of mine…

Hooray!

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

Another morning, another sock on kiyoshi’s head.

so, you remember a while ago i wrote:

• i probably have a complaint on my credit rating now (oh goodie!) for the account they sent to collections after they failed to realize that i had cancelled it;

?

i was totally right!

i had my bank (love $newbank; love love) run my credit report, to get the “real” credit report and scores, as opposed to the shitty, useless free annual reports you get from annualcreditreport.com (which i fetched and reviewed in june of this year, and didn’t find anything interesting on). and guess what i found!

so, this is great:
in july of 2005, i attempted to upgrade my phone. for about ten minutes, until i discovered that the person in the store had lied to me and the phone did not, in fact, have bluetooth, so i returned to the store, returned the phone, cancelled that contract, and then reverted to my old phone.

in june of 2006, “Cingular is now the new AT&T!” summarily cut off my mobile service after “discovering” the delinquent account-that-never-was, resulting in weeks of drama trying to get this straightened out.

in august of 2007, i discovered that the delinquent account-that-never-was is all up in my credit report, dropping my score, such that should i want to refinance my mortgage, they give me only shitty increased interest rates.

i wonder if, by september of 2008, this nightmare will be over?

Dear god what is on my head???

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

She put a sock on my head again. I don’t understand humans.

the white sox are in the basement. we are being beaten in the standings by THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS.

i think i’m too embarrassed to leave the house.

it’s a good thing that i really like the baudelaire pattern because it’s starting to look like i’m never going to be done knitting it.

so, first: i cast on my first sock. and i knit partway up the instep, discovered a problem, and had to frog back about half. then i got going again, but knit it way too long before starting the heel, so i had to frog back a couple of inches. then i got the heel turned and up the leg and did the ribbing and cast off, but the sock seemed loose, so i didn’t weave in the ends — keeping my options open as to whether or not i wanted to rip it and reknit it.

my second sock, which i’m now up to the gusset on, is turning out much better. however, it is serving to highlight the deficiencies of the first:

no points for guessing which toe was the first. … so i think i’m going to finish up this second sock, and then rip back out the first and knit it again. sigh. at this rate, by the time i get the pair done, i’ll actually have knitted about four socks. oh well, better to knit endlessly than to call it “good enough” and have a pair of socks i never wear because one of them is baggy and won’t stay up.

dragged sock #2 with me to Wrigley Field yesterday, to watch the Cubs play the Cards — it has already been to Sox Park twice, and the first sock four times. of course, we had bleacher seats, and — this was new on me — bleacher seats are all GA. and that means first come first served — and since it was versus the Cards, lots of people came early. we couldn’t find seats, and wound up just standing around on the concourse for a couple of hours before the start time and during the rain delay. and then the game started, and we found spots on the stairs along a railing… and the security guys shooed us away because someone might want to use the railing, so we couldn’t stand there. once we were back on the concourse, we couldn’t see anything at all, so we wound up leaving the park and going to a neighboring bar to watch the game on tv. somewhat disappointing. i was looking forward to a ballgame. oh well, at least the tickets were free.

i spent some time earlier today spinning some yarn up on my drop spindle, my homework from the spinning class i’m taking at Loopy Yarns. (i’d actually signed up for the class in March or so, but it got pushed back and so here we are…) i kinda hurt my hand a little bit doing that, since it’s harder on my wrist than using the wheel, but before i called it quits i got some silk spun up and some grey shetland wool. i was thinking i might try plying them together and see how it looks. although i spun just such a small amount of either that no matter how it turns out, it’ll still be the world’s tiniest ball of yarn once i’m done. oh well! we’ll have the second part of our class on thursday, so we’ll see how that goes. i do like spinning, i just wish i had more time to devote to it. as it is, it takes me forever to get anything at all completed, so … eh.

nothing else of note going on. which, i’ll note, hasn’t stopped me from blogging about it. so, um, there’s the news, from sabrinaville. come back soon!

Bodhisattva, would you take me by the hand?
Bodhisattva, would you take me by the hand?
Can you show me the shine of your Japan?
The sparkle of your china?
Can you show me?
Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva,
I’m gonna sell my house in town.
Bodhisattva, I’m gonna sell my house in town.
And I’ll be there to shine in your Japan,
To sparkle in your China.
Yes, I’ll be there, Bodhisattva.

The shoes are fantastic too

Originally uploaded by sldownard.

Vintage pink purse: thirty cents. Polkadot dress: forty bucks. Dressing girly in front of your coworkers: priceless.

nothing like a call to the vet to inquire about a possible symptom your cat is exhibiting, resulting in a “you need to bring him in RIGHT NOW” and a zip home followed by mad cat snatching and a zip back downtown to the vet, where the cat is pronounced in good health (for a 16 year old diabetic cat who’s really a little cranky about all this getting stuffed in the kitty carrier and hauled off to the vet, lately), to really get your adrenaline going.

followed by when i got home, i pulled in to park in front of my house and my car got stuck, like a snowdrift, in the gravel pit the water department left us in place of asphalt lately. *facepalm*

next week, on As The Catbox Turns: insulin injections! (assuming his blood sugar doesn’t miraculously come down, uh, 350 mg/dL in the next few days.)

a poacher is niqui!