Okay, I’d just like to say that No Knit Sherlock! is quite possibly the best knitting blog title I’ve ever seen.

Well, that was fun. We didn’t get much trip preparation done, but thanks to the Snook my birthday weekend was one to remember. It started Saturday morning with a trip to Bills in Surry Hills for breakfast. We met up with Fiona (and her Mystery Visitor) for scrambled eggs and coffee in the sunshine. Afterwards I headed to Glebe for my first appointment with my new stylist, Desiree at Partners Hair Workshop. She was fantastic! I’m used to salon visits taking forever, but Desiree had me out the door in under ninety minutes. (And that’s including foils, cut, and blow dry!) Back at home, the Snook was preparing for my birthday barbecue… right before the heavens burst. So the festivities were all indoor. But no matter; we had Wii! Many, many games of tennis, fishing, cow racing, and boxing ensued. We also had a veritable cadre of bloggers amongst the guests, including Amy, Kenya, Bex, Helen, Andrew, and Major. We had salads, chicken, fish, SO. MUCH. CHEESE., chips, bread and truffle butter, and really just everything lovely. The Snook made a rich low-carb chocolate cake and Andrew countered with some decidedly high-carb (but sooo worth it!) fancy cupcakes. As you might imagine, the Snook and I spent most of Sunday just in recovery mode. We had lunch in Chinatown with his mother and sister, but otherwise I spent the day working on my cardy. The other puffy sleeve is now finished! I’ve moved on to the embroidery, as you can see here. I’ve got til Saturday to put it all together and finish it off. I think I’m actually gonna make it!

Men stare at crotches. Okay, that makes me giggle.

Hierarchy of Programmers. Hey, I’m higher than I thought I’d be! (Not that I’m the greatest at PHP or anything, but I don’t suck.)

Did somebody say… PUFFY SLEEVE?

 

It appears that my meticulous calculations have worked! The first puffy sleeve is finished and it’s just about as perfect as I could’ve hoped for. I need to give both pieces a good ironing before I sew it in, but I’m 95% sure this pattern is a keeper. You can see how it looks on my arm here. Now I just need to knit another one and finish the thing off! Easy peasy.

And that second photo? That’s the amazing dinner the Snook cooked me tonight. (Vegetarians LOOK AWAY NOW.) It was a low-carb carnivore’s feast. Starting from the bottom, there’s a bed of mashed cauliflower surrounding a Scotch fillet steak wrapped in bacon, with fried duck’s liver on top. And what’s that funny white golf-ball-thingy? Oh, it’s truffle butter. (Seriously, I could eat a bowl of that stuff.) The sauce is a reduction of sherry and homemade veal stock, and there’s a side of green beans amandine. We washed it down with a few glasses of an excellent Australian red.

You know, so far my 30’s really don’t suck!

Dr Amy Jones is not amused.

W00t! Finally got my Secret Pal match. It’s going to be so hard for me to hide my identity! I can’t keep secrets. And if whoever has me is visiting, hello! My questionnaire is here.

Beware the Ides of March!
Yours truly is now a Woman of a Certain Age.

I was reminiscing this morning about where I was ten years ago. I was a sophomore in college and we’d all gone to Boston with Eileen for Spring Break. It was a great week. About a dozen of us all met up to see Rent for the first time. I wanted to get a tattoo to mark my 20th, and as they were illegal in Massachusetts at the time (is that still the case?), we had to go to Connecticut. It was a big secret, because Eileen had gotten one a few months before and her Mom didn’t know about it, so we had to keep mine very hush-hush. I remember distinctly hanging over the back of a chair while the guy slowly inked the Korean characters on my lower back. Liz was filming the whole thing with her video camera (whatever happened to that tape?) and munching a Big Mac while circling around us. Later we went to Boston College to party with some of Reen’s friends, and I got ridiculously drunk playing Asshole. I was horrendously sick afterwards… and of course we then had to take the train back to Indiana, and I was sick for the entire 24-hour trip. Good times.

Am I really so far removed from that girl? I don’t tend to imbibe to that excess anymore. I care less about fitting in with the crowd. I feel more confident in speaking up for myself. I don’t have swooning crushes on girly-boys who wouldn’t give me the time of day (except for Daniel Radcliffe). I feel pretty comfortable with my body. I still say “random” and “whatever” a lot. So maybe I’ve grown up a little.

And now, drumroll please, Snookums has promised me a very special birthday present. Some of you have been waiting for this day for years. And here it is…

John will be so proud. Last night after work I ventured into Kings Comics and bought my first real, actual comic book. (The others I’ve been reading have all been trade paperbacks bought from bookstores.) And what did I get? I got the first two issues of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. I also asked about the upcoming Buffy Season 8 books and was told it should be here tomorrow! Nice b-day pressie. So this is what I don’t quite get, comic book fans: How do you know when new books come out? Do you just have to wait and watch on the comics sites?