it needs to quit. snowing. already. srsly. i am beginning to understand the reason for cabin fever, and i am leaving my house on a regular basis. also, i am ready for the nanny-state to make it mandatory that everyone clear their sidewalks, because i am tired of slipping and almost-falling, especially while carrying groceries home from jewel.

filed my taxes yesterday. 12 feb may actually be the earliest that i’ve ever done so. i’m feeling pretty rock star about it, actually. plus, since i have like 9 months left until 15 april, if i remember i’ve forgotten something, i still have plenty of time to file an amended return. though, i don’t think i did. turbo tax rules! yaay turbotax! (booo federal government not allowing everyone to e-file for free. seriously, why is the government making taxpayers pay twice to file their taxes — once for the IRS bureaucracy to operate, and twice to a tax preparer to handle e-filing, since we can’t just go directly to them, like we can to the Illinois Department of Revenue? this sucks. i will vote for the presidential candidate who opens up the IRS income tax API so we can all file for free.) now i want my refund. c’moooonnnn, IRS! i filed TWELVE WHOLE HOURS AGO! get the lead out!

have gotten comparatively little knitting done lately, but: THE ANTI-BAUDELAIRES ARE DONE! YAAAAAY! picture to follow. DONE DONE DONE! remember, i started knitting the baudelaires in *may* of last year. MAY. and i finished the ribbing on the second anti-baudelaire last night. i still have to weave in the ends, but i am counting them as DONE. because i want to.

my donna-sweater-in-the-round-with-seed-stitch-instead-of-ribbing is proceeding well enough. (can you really still say you’re using a particular pattern if you pretty much change everything about it? oh well.) i got trapped in an interminable post office line a couple weeks ago when i was getting to that measure-every-five-minutes stage of ‘jesus, am i done with seed stitch yet??’ and wound up knitting about 8.5 cm of it instead of the 7.5 i was shooting for, but i didn’t care enough to rip it out. so now i’m onto the ‘ten thousand miles of stockinette’ stage. good news: stockinette is fast. knitpicks options needles are fast. stockinette + knitpicks options = turbo knitting. so i hope some day to have the body of this sweater done — that would be pretty awesome. perhaps it’ll even take me less than a year to do.

in other news, work v. busy. pitchers and catchers report at the end of this week (YAY). i reduced my gas bill by ten bucks this month due to conservative thermostat use, despite it being much colder than the previous month. and i just realized i have to put the laundry together for the laundry fairies to pick up, before i can leave for work. byeeee!