Snow in Kyoto

Eep!

I just fired off an email to the scheduling departments of both the offices in our company that I deal with.

I started out sympathizing with their own difficult jobs.

Then I asked them why every job that I take has to be so far away from where I live.

I backed this up with facts on how far away each job is.

Then I told them I'd like to work closer to home.

And I backed it up with facts about what towns I actually live near.

Then I ended with a feeble bit of a joke.

And the whole thing was shorter than my post about it.

It was friendly and non-confrontational.  But it still feels incredibly direct and er, risky to my passive aggressive little soul.

Boy, I hope I don't get fired.

I guess.

Resolutions

So last year at this time, I started making resolutions.  Boy, there were a lot!  So many of them, I can't even remember what they were!  And I refuse to go look, because I'll only get depressed.  Because did I stick to any of them?  No.  Well, except the one about buying the new computer.  But we all knew that was a ringer; didn't we?

This year, I will have only two resolutions:

• I will buy a treadmill within the first three months of 2006, and I will use it at least four days a week for at least 30 minutes a day, and really do my best to use it every day for at least an hour a day.
• I will firmly and resolutely face my problems, one by one, and deal with them.  Because ignoring them and hoping that they go away doesn't seem to be working.

And that is that.

Next time

I'll just turn around and go right back to bed.

It started when I got up at 6:00 a.m. to get ready for work.  I heard my cat munching noisily on something, and, rather unwisely, I turned on the living room lights to see what it was.

At first, I thought it was one of their toy mice they're so fond of.  But what was that red color?  Oh, please tell me that isn't...

It was, of course.

So I send Tomo outside, and eventually manage to lure Bertie away.  I form a cushion of every paper towel in the house, and drop it over the mouse.  Then I put three plastics bags one inside the other, and scoop up the mouse and the paper towels part and parcel.  Then I put it in the garbage, tie the garbage shut, and put it inside another garbage bag.  Then I take the whole thing outside, and proceed to clean my carpet.

I'm running pretty late by the time I leave, so I didn't have time to mess with my iPod.  When it's cold, the tape player adapter won't stay in.  I was half an hour into my drive before I got it working. 

About that time, my engine makes a funny noise, and my car stops accelerating.  In fact, it's decelerating.  So I pull over to the shoulder and have a little think.  I tried to start it again, and it started, so I went on my merry way.

I stopped in town and got my breakfast before I started looking for my job.

At one point, my Map Quest map said "turn on local road."  This is never a good sign.

I turned on every local road I could find, but none of them seemed to be the right one.

By this point, I'm really late.  So I get out my cell phone to see if I can get a number to call for directions.  (They'd assigned the job after business hours, so I couldn't call the night before, and it was for a 9:00 a.m. job, so there wouldn't be anyone else there until I was already supposed to be there.)  But the battery on my cell phone was dead, and I've never bothered to buy a car charger, because I hate my phone and don't want to buy it presents.

So I find a pay phone.  Great.  I was right.  I really didn't remember how to use one.  I dialed the operator and told them I needed directory assistance, and how could I pay for it? 

I tried to charge it to my home phone, but since I wasn't home, there was no one there to accept the charges. 

I tried to use my debit card, but they don't take Visa. 

I tried to bill it to my parents, but they thought it was a telemarketer and didn't answer. 

Finally, I discovered that I do actually own a calling card, and even better, had tucked it into my wallet.

Unfortunately, directory assistance couldn't help me.

By this time, the homeless guy up the street was starting to look at me with pity.

So I called my office.  And stayed on hold for a really long time while they called the scheduling attorney's office.  They got his cell phone number, and got some very complicated directions for me, and I finally did manage to get there about half an hour late.

There, to a room full of attorneys.

Fortunately, they were all very nice about it.

Even the one I hit in the head with my pen cap.

Ever since I found the gourmet food store that isn't a health food store at all, I've been eying a very expensive green tea they have, called matcha, which is the tea used for tea ceremony in Japan.  But I've always thought it was really too expensive.  And when I think something is too expensive, you know it's expensive.

Today, I bought it for myself.

And yes, it really did make me feel better.

Diet by default?

I appear to have entered a new and interesting phase in my food-eating career.  Which is to say, my stomach can no longer handle a deluge of rich, greasy foods with an iron will.  No.  These days, if I overdo it a bit, my stomach shuts down for a couple days.  My digestive activities slow to a crawl.  It isn't pleasant.

Now, this is a disorder I can really get behind.

Around about the time I discovered that too much salty food made me swell up like a grape and my joints ache, I found it was much more possible to resist the lure of kettle corn, Doritos and their ilk.

If I learn to find grease and fat equally resistible, why, what will be left but healthy food?

I've always said I don't so much need a nutritionist as a mafia-type with a set of brass knuckles to oversee my diets.

This may be the next best thing.

Who needs stomach stapling when you've got a techy tummy?

Argh.

So I finished the first half of my dad's scarf last night.  I wrapped it around my neck to test for length.

Ooh, scratchy!

I can't give this to my dad!

Even though it is apparently His Fault that I got hit by a fucking tree, and now when I scratch the back of my head, my eyeballs hurt.  It seems my mom has been Telling Him to Do Something about that tree for ages.

So, yeah.

Possibly, I shoud be knitting poison ivy into this scarf of something.  But I'm not one to bear a grudge.

And also, there's the fact that I haven't really been enjoying knitting with alpaca.  It's a bit limp and dead and yes, scratchy for my tastes.

So I'm going to see if I can get him some Noro Cash Iroha in royal blue from the lys to make this pattern.  I've been trying it out in white, and it looks fantastic!  And sooooo much nicer to work with.

The worst thing

about being hit by a tree is that everyone starts asking you questions right away.

• Are you okay?  No.
• Are you bleeding?  Yes.
• Did you get hit?  Duh.

Meanwhile, you're lying there still trying to figure out that ground + tree + fuckingbigheadache = got hit by a tree.

So did everyone catch that?

I got hit by a fucking tree!

See that bit of white in the picture?  Right there.  Under the fucking tree.  That is a shampoo bottle I was trying to pick up when the tree fell on me.

Any why was there a shampoo bottle in the yard?

I'm so glad you asked.

Because my dog found a deer skin some hunter had left around and some neighborhood dogs had dragged into my parents' yard.

Believe me when I tell you that an immediate and thorough bath was in order.

And when I tell you that in the end, I was more wet than he was, please do not suspect me of hyperbole.

Yeah.  It hasn't been a fantastic day.

And my mom keeps calling every 20 minutes for some patently silly reason, just to make sure I'm okay.  Which is nice, because I'm not entirely sure I'm okay myself.

You know what I want?

I want a treadmill.  I think I even want it more than I want a spinning wheel.  More than I want a new car or a new house.

I need something to kick my life into gear.

The treadmill is the only form of exercise I can actually stick to.

When I'm exercising, I sleep better, I eat better, I have more energy, I have more fun, I have more life.

The trouble is, since I gave up credit cards, there's no such thing as impulse buying.  At least nothing costing that much.  Little things?  Oh, yes.  Little things that make it impossible to ever save up enough money for a treadmill?  For sure.

You know what I want more than a treadmill?

Willpower.

Good morning, Sunshine!

I've separated my socks so I only have to knit right-handed.  My hand is still a little stiff and sore, but I've knit a few rounds anyway.

I needed it, man!

And it's not like I'm shooting up!

Although there may have been a little snorting.  I'm just saying.

But I woke up this morning feeling completely unable to cope.  Entirely unable to get out of bed.  The weight of this cruel, cruel world was just too much for me.

I managed to drag myself out of bed.  I made myself some coffee and sat down with my sock.

In the course of a few short rows, my outlook has changed considerably.

I can't change the world, but I can change my circumstances.  One sock at a time.

Tee-hee.

Please forgive the pun.  It was just too apropos to ignore.

Profiterole

In the last two hours, I have heard the word "profiterole" mentioned twice, from two completely separate sources.

Somehow, I have managed to gimp through 30 years of life without knowing what a profiterole is, aside from a vague sense that it is somehow food related.

Two times in two hours!

Clearly, it is time to learn about profiterole.

Beginning with how to pronounce it.

Profiterole:  A small, round cream puff.  Pruh-FIT-uh-roll.

Oh, please, please, let my hand feel good enough to knit tomorrow.  Aside from filling my time with meaningless research, I've developed a twitch.  In both eyes.

I am an addict.

I am Anna Karenina!

At least I was, for a while this weekend.  I actually figured out her trick of knitting two socks on one set of dpn's, so that when you're finished, you pull one sock out from inside the other.

It's basically simplified fair-isle.  I cast on two different socks on two different sets of dpn's, and worked a couple set-up rows.  Probably there's a way to do everything on one set, using backwards loop or classic cast-on or something, but I prefer long-tail for socks, and also this seemed quicker.  Then I put one sock inside another and used an empty needle to slip one stitch from one sock, then one from the other sock, across the first pair of needles.  Then I used one of those empty needles to do the same on the next two needles, around the socks.

Once you're set up, you hold your inside yarn in your left hand and knit continental, and your outside yarn in your right hand and knit English, alternating one stitch at a time.  You take your left-hand stitch regularly, but after each right-hand stitch, you bring your yarn around as though for a purl stitch, take your left-hand stitch, and then bring it back down to knit position before taking the right-hand stitch.  This keeps the top yarn out of the way of the bottom yarn.  So there are essentially two extra movements.  When you're purling, you take your right-hand stitches regularly, and bring your left-hand yarn to the knit-position after every stitch, and bring it back up before the next stitch.

The only way I can work out doing the decreases for the ankle gusset is to drop the four stitches and pick them up again so that the two stitches for the inside sock are together and the two stitches for the outside sock are together, then work your decrease as usual.

It's fun, although it would be very easy to take a stitch with the wrong yarn and bind your socks together.  I checked frequently, by turning the socks inside out, or by sticking my hands between the two up to the needles, to make sure I hadn't, and also knit socks of different colors, one plain black, one with various easter-egg-y colors, so that it would be fairly obvious if I took a mis-stitch.  I still managed it once, but I found out before it got heart-breaking, and tinked back a couple rows.

There's another advantage to knitting two different colors.  My eyes are terrible anyway, and counting rows and reading the stitches is almost impossible with plain black yarn.  So I knit with my bright yarn on the outside and I could always tell where I was.

But here's the bad news.  I really hate continental knitting.  To me, it's like trying to wrestle Hydra with the fingers of your non-dominant hand.  You have to maintain tension, keep the loops moving along the needle, and don't even get me started about the sleight-of-hand required for a purl stitch, all with those five wee fingers.  But I was having so much fun knitting this way all weekend that I completely over-did it.  I woke up this morning, and there was raging pain in my left ring finger every time I tried to straighten it.

It's a very good thing I'm working at home today, instead of out taking a job.  Bunged-up fingers are a bad thing for a court reporter, and I don't think my agency would be amused if I called in sick with a knitting-related injury!  So I'm declaring a knitting fast today.  I'll stay at home and work on the computer, and ignore the siren call of my lovely yarns, and hope my hand heals quickly!

Addendum:  It is surprising, when you consider that my hand is quite painful and temporarily crippled, how difficult it is not to pick up my knitting!  I find myself reading knitting books and blogs to enjoy vicarious knitting, finally dealing with things to be frogged, just so I can handle yarn!  Oh, and working, too.  Yeah.  That, too.  Uh-huh.