alphabetically

the newest addition

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:43:00 GMT

Meet Titus

(here's another photo, and my current favorite)

He's four years old, a boxer mix, and a rescue dog from Lost Dog Rescue. He is the sweetest, calmest boy in the world. This morning, he and mr_mking got up and went for a walk and when they got back, Titus climbed back into bed with me and went back to sleep. A napper after my own heart!

So far he's shown no interest in chewing things or tug of war games or fetching anything, but he likes to jump around and wrestle a little bit, he loves going for walks, and he loves smelling things and making sure every other dog knows where he's been.

Oh, and his full name is Praetorian Titus Canis after the emperor's most loyal guards and a little bit after Titus Pullo (who we met in the series Rome). Thanks to fizzbang for some inspiration with the name.

I expect a million more pictures will probably be posted. He just does the cutest things, and that underbite makes him look scrappy and a little grizzled.

long time no talk

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:37:41 GMT

So I have this awesome Kitchenaid Stand Mixer (in cranberry, if you were wondering). I want to bake things and learn to use it.

We made ice cream a couple of weeks ago from a kit, which was really awesome.

I know it does all this awesome stuff, but I don't know where to start. (Mason, I am looking at you for advice here, babe.)

Thoughts?

I ride my bike

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:04:52 GMT

I got a new bike last weekend, a touring bicycle, a pretty olive green Cannondale named Olive Oyl. She's got a rack on the back for the cheapie panniers I already have and for the fancy ones I want to get.

The plan is for bike camping, so I am going to try to find waterproof, ginormous panniers that I can use to carry clothes and food and camping gear. Maybe May, possibly June. I want to go with mr_mking and drspooky and a couple of his friends, and we have to work out a route and schedules and plans and I don't even have a tent!

So I decided that in part of planning for that, I'm going to go on some longer rides more often. Weekends are fine; we went on a 12 mile ride last Saturday after I picked up my new bike. But the best way that I can find is to ride more often, during the week. How can I do that? I can commute!

Turns out there's a trail (the Capital Crescent trail) that goes from Georgetown to Bethesda, just a few blocks from my office. My office is cool with me bringing my bike inside and parking it in the empty cubicle next door. And it is relatively easy for me to get to Georgetown from my house.

I did this once before, on Inauguration Day (because I was not at all going to ride the Metro that day), and it was cold and miserable on my single speed. On my new bike, with gears, with my stuff in panniers instead of strapped to my back? Man, it was like butter. My bike is so smooth and so sweet and I love it. I got to work and even though I was 20 minutes late I was feeling good and feeling happy. I rode home from work and stopped in Dupont Circle to have some beers with some friends and then rode home from there.

I mean, it doesn't seem like a huge step, but I've been, well, not afraid really, but hesitant to ride my bike from DC out to my house because I was afraid of traffic or whatever, and tonight, I just did it.

25.4 miles total today. I'm tired, and I spent almost 3 hours of my day in the process of riding my bike, but I'm happy and I feel good and I'm exercising, and my goal is to do this AT LEAST once a week until I can do it faster door-to-door than the Metro takes (which is 1 hour). That means I'd have to be averaging at least 12mph. It's a good goal, but it may be a while.

Right now, though, I'm going to go stretch some more and sleep really well. Very soon.

Snow day!

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:10:21 GMT

I'm at home in my pajamas because there's no way I can get to work. My husband (!) is next to me on the couch in his pajamas working from home.

This is a good day.

(Photo by Mason Kincaid)

That was also a good day. A whirlwind, wonderful, happy, full of awesome. Full story to come someday, maybe, if I get around to it.

proud homeowner

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:59:10 GMT

We made an offer on Saturday. They made a counter-offer today. I think we are about to accept it.

Our very own house! I think my brain hurts. I'm so excited and so nervous. We're about to start hemorrhaging money now, or so I hear.

oh hai

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:56:11 GMT

I can has new hairs?

(PS: Jameel took a good one, too)

Hilarity ensues

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:47:37 GMT

Item one.

Item two.

Hysterical laughter ensues. Man, I love the internet. And I love the Comics Curmudgeon.

Doing my part to spread the word

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:31:58 GMT

NYE 2007.
Pittsburgh.
Come.

on Moonlight

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 05:41:16 GMT

All you had to say was Jason Dohring.

But add a blonde (who is a reporter this time, not a cop) who looks vaguely like Elizabeth Röhm, the vampire private detective lead who isn't nearly as attractive as he was the first time I saw this show, AND Shannyn Sossamon, well, slap my ass and call it shitty writing!

No, but let's talk seriously. It isn't fair to compare, because Josef Konstantin isn't nearly as charming as the semi-psychotic multi-millionaire son of a movie star. Shannyn Sossamon is no Charisma Carpenter.

It's a pretty bad show, but I love me some Dohring. So I'll probably watch it for free for a while (yay, streaming from CBS's website) and snicker at the bad plot lines and the sadness when Jason tries to be sincerely intense and not just teenage-wankery-intense.

Ridiculous, but I'm there.

I'm the internet version of one of the Olsen twins

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:37:33 GMT

Beth is right, I am an Olsen twin. I've been writing online about my life in one form or another since I was 15 years old. That is more than a decade ago.

I never got fired, but I did get yelled at by my boss. It never got me a job, but the statistic of my having a website for almost a decade looked good on a couple of resumes. I did get a lot of friends, including a community that I still interact with daily.

I should post there again, I think. Maybe I will.

actual events

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:34:01 GMT

In class this morning, a young woman asked what our weekly quiz this week would be covering. It seems she'd looked at the website and saw that we should be reading Chapter 7 for this week, and so she studied that. The quiz is on what we did LAST week, which was Chapter 6.

At this point, when you are told this, any reasonable person would just shut up, right? No. She whines that she studied the wrong chapter. I'm not kidding. She whines because she read TOO FAR AHEAD.

Fucking college students, man. Was I ever this bad? I hope not.

maybe tonight

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:13:03 GMT

There's this song I heard a few years ago by the Old 97's called "Question".

"Someday somebody's gonna ask you
A question that you should say 'yes' to
Once in your life, maybe tonight.
I've got a question for you."

I know him well enough to know when he's saying "Maybe" because he refuses to lie to me and when he says "Yes" after a pause that means "This is only a technically truthful answer."

I know him well enough to have figured out his plan.

I know him well enough to have had this conversation already, a hundred times, when we both knew what we wanted but there is a process, you see, a way he wants to do it.

But I didn't know myself well enough to realize that talking about it is one thing and doing it is quite another. I found a little box nestled in my bag and a little note next to it, and my heart jumped out of my chest and went for a run around the block.

We're getting hitched. No, we don't know when. We will start making decisions after an appropriate period of basking.

(He picked it out himself.)

look.

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:38:24 GMT

I love me some Aaron Sorkin. Okay? Let's get that out of the way.

But.

He keeps reusing lines. Over and over again. I accepted it for a few episodes. I accepted it during "The West Wing" because, well, I love me some Aaron Sorkin.

But really? This far into a series?

"Fire me, or shut the hell up!"

I still love him.

Neener

Wed, 09 May 2007 14:17:37 GMT

I saw John Scalzi read last night and YOU DIDN'T.

Also, he signed my book.

Also, I wish I lived in the city. It was wonderful to eat outside in Dupont last night.

on speech

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:13:52 GMT

When something happens, like when a millionaire radio show host denegrates a group of hard-working young women who are in the top of their game, figuratively in the classroom and more literally in the gym, and is summarily fired from his high-paying prominent position in entertainment, some people start crying about "free speech".

"What about free speech?" they ask. "What about defending the right of someone to say something, even if you disagree with them?"

There is a difference between what they see as free speech and what free speech is. Free speech means "free from government-enforced consequences". It means you can stand up and say "The government here is shit" and you won't spend the rest of your life in jail for it.

What these people want free speech to mean is speech free from consequences. This comes up over and over again. Someone says something inflammatory, on a blog, or in their column in a newspaper, or wherever, and when there is outcry and people are outraged, here come these free-from-consequences folks demanding that we respect the beliefs and statements that are so heinous.

I don't have to respect you or your beliefs. If I choose to, that is my choice, but it is not my obligation. The best part about free speech is that I get to have it, too, that I get to respond and let you know that you're wrong, that you're an idiot, that you're racist and sexist and classist and you are blind to all of it.

Someone powerful and rich picked on a group of people who have done nothing but work very hard to get to where they are, and now he's facing ramifications that he may actually understand -- his big fat paycheck is being taken away.

A-fucking-men.

art

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:33:28 GMT

Ode to the characters in "The Office"

I really hope NBC sees this as being AWESOME and doesn't try to get all lawyer-y.

Ha.

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:18:49 GMT

Oh, Amy.

(The above links to a YouTube video of Amy Winehouse and Charlotte Church covering "Beat It". Amy looks to be drunk as fuck and not even trying to hide it.)

This really makes me want to see Amy Winehouse live. A lot.

oh, like you do

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:55:49 GMT

Hey, look what I'm starting to make. My very first sweater. And hell yeah it's for me.

I like that it's still small enough that I can carry it around with me, but I think that it will quickly outgrow that.

I also finished the socks for mr_mking's birthday. Which is tomorrow. He's getting a new tens place, which is pretty rad.

New music alert. If you think we like similar things, check out Amy Winehouse (I think I'm the last person who has discovered she is great. "Rehab" is a really good song, and I found a remix), and Illinois ("Screendoor" and "Alone Again" are my two favorites right now).

the straw

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 20:49:49 GMT

I figured out (with help) how to rip DVDs to my iPod Video for watching on the Metro when I am bored. I started watching "Dead Like Me" but after a few episodes kind of petered off on the ripping.

Then I realized that there was the first season of "24" at my house. So I've been ripping it at work (excellent use of otherwise-unused processor space) and dumping it onto my iPod.

And I like it, I think. The writing is cheesey at times, and there are many many leaps of logic that one must simply accept as part of the universe.

But I'm now in episode 7, where Jack has a transmitter on his head and the kidnapper is instructing him what to do in his office. Which is a government office. An office for a man who is not allowed to tell his wife what he does much of the time.

And I'm supposed to believe that he (a) can make and receive cell phone calls; (b) did not have the earpiece detected when entering; and (c) is being watched by a camera that the kidnapper managed to get into his office?

A camera?

I accept a lot of this. I accept that they could figure out that Jack and Teri hadn't met Janet's dad. I accept that Jenny Schecter was able to survive the airplane explosion, and that the plastic surgery was good enough. I accepted the bullshit druggie kidnapper college boys.

But this? Man. I know it's going to get weirder, and I know that Jack's mad t0rturin6 skillz are about to become clear to me, but come ON. Writers? If *I* can figure out that this isn't possible, you're in trouble. I wonder who the consultant was...

knitting update, works in progress, and the shame of stash

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:53:43 GMT

These are things I am currently working on:

Dragon Scarf in the darkest color. Yes, I bought the kit. The yarn is really nice and very soft, and now that I have the pattern I can make it again in whatever I would like.

The pattern isn't terribly difficult but it is repetitive. It's still small, so it lives in my Megin-bag (the bag I carry every day, courtesy of Megin that one time) in a plastic ziplock bag, just waiting to be worked on when I feel like it.

Clapotis in Koigu KPPM. I didn't feel like slipping all those markers, so I just looked to remember the sets of knit, knit, knit; ktbl, knit, ktbl. I think I screwed that up somewhere, and I didn't feel like going back when I realized it, so it is in a plastic bag (for visibility!) hanging on the wall in my bedroom.

I will probably just say "screw it" on the twisted stitches and continue forward as I am supposed to. Here's hoping blocking makes it look nicer than it does now.

A variation on Eunny's endpaper mitts. This is one I made up myself, based in part on the idea of that pattern. These are going to be topless mittens for theadana with a pocket on the back to hold her Metro card.

The mittens don't actually match, per the recipient's request, so I used two different kinds of sock yarn as the contrasting color. The varigated sock yarn works really well with the black background color. I just hope I didn't use too much of the first kind that I can't get a sock out of what's left. (For the second one, I'm using scraps leftover from my sister's purple leaves socks.)

Right now I'm working on what is going to end up being approximately five feet of i-cord. On size 00 needles. It will take in the neighborhood of five hours total, given my pace set last night while watching tv. Luckily I'm going on a road trip this weekend, so I'll have lots of time. The varigation of the Koigu looks really nice on these wee stitches in the round.

My dragon socks in Lorna's Laces sock yarn. I bought this yarn because it was superwash and the purple and green looked really good together in the skein. Unfortunately, they look kind of stupid on the sock. The way it changes from one to the other is not graceful or good or pretty.

Lorna's Laces is dead to me unless I can find a pattern that doesn't make them look stupid. Like mittens.

A random pair of purple/pink socks. I think the yarn on this is Koigu. I am such a sucker for their pretty pretty colors, even though they aren't superwash. Stupid handwash socks. These were going to be for theadana, but now I'm not sure what to do with them. I might frog them and wait until I have a better idea for what to do with them.

Also, there is the actual pair of bright pink on pale pink Endpaper mitts I started before I realized that they are actually too small and I am silly and should have used larger needles. They're so pretty, though. Mmm, pink on pink.

Things that are in my head to make:

Some warm hand covering for mr_mking. He's requested grey on black houndstooth, so I'm going to have to take some measurements and start swatching the houndstooth soon. This is going to be a tiny-needle-very-fiddly project, but the results will, I think, be super duper awesome.

Mitten-y bits for drspooky. He already got hand covering from me, so he's further down on the list.

Mittens for me. The ones I have now are just knit normally and cute, but not terribly warm. Maybe I should work on these sooner rather than later...

A sweater for me. I have a couple of ideas, and found a few patterns that are things I'm interested in. Like this sweater wrap jacket.

I think that's it. I was talking about how much yarn I own, and how I'm not particularly ashamed of how much it is. I want to get glass-front bookshelves for my yarn when I have an apartment of my own (or more my own) so that I can display the pretty stuff that I've purchased.

Then I tried to find something and went through bag after bag of yarn and got a little bashful about how much yarn there is.

I have enough Koigu for at least two more pairs of socks, including three skeins of a very pretty purple for kneesocks for yours truly. I have enough of the self-patterning (fake-Isle) sock yarn for three or four pairs. I have enough of the Tiny Toes for at least two more pairs.

And that's just sock yarn. I found a very pretty skein of some lovely black wool (I think) that I don't remember buying and that has no wrapper on it. I might make myself a hat, because I have no idea what I bought it for.</ljcut>

and you shall party.

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:20:43 GMT

Come forth and sin.

it's my party...

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 02:54:51 GMT

... and there'll be no crying.

My house, this Saturday. 8ish until we feel like not doing it anymore. If you don't know my address, comment with a way I can contact you (email or IM or something) and I'll drop you a line.

I'll be 25 two weeks from today, and also, we just moved into a new house. So there is much to celebrate.

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 22:26:23 GMT

You should be listening to Cansei de Ser Sexy if you are not already. I really like "This Month Day 10" and "Let's Make Love and Listen Death From Above".

This has been a public service announcement.

on food.

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 17:05:40 GMT

I'm pondering vegetarianism. Things I worry about missing more than I can bear:

- unagi (eel)
- the rest of sushi
- lamb curry (but matar paneer is tasty, too, and vegetarian)

Indian food has a lot of options. So does Burmese food, as I found out last night. I know some of it is just a matter of finding new things to cook with. Quorn, I'm looking at you.

Is it pointless to do it halfway? What is a matter of degrees and what is just insanity? I mean, at this point, eating egg salad for lunch (on white toast, yummy) seems bad, too, with the eggs.

Could I live a life without cheese?

Would I WANT to?

ha HA

Fri, 19 May 2006 16:20:59 GMT

Fuck you, suburbs! I will defeat you! I WILL DEFEAT YOUUUUUUU!

I got a bike from craigslist that is oh so tasty. It's a pretty red Schwinn and it has gears (ten of them!) and a freewheel (coasting!) and places to put a rack and it's steel and heavy and I love it to pieces.

It's National Bike To Work Day, and I biked to work. I found a route that puts me on a busy road for only about a half mile, and it's slightly down hill so I can gear up and fly. I am so happy.

I haven't yet figured out how I'm going to get HOME, as I'll have to cross three lanes of traffic to turn left to go the way I came. I'll... have to figure something out.