STRESS!

• I called Mom this morning to find out that she’s in the process of buying their tickets to Sydney. She, Joe, and my little brother Joey get here on Good Friday. That’s a week from this Friday! We have to clean the whole house, do the laundry, get groceries, work out where everybody’s sleeping, plan activities, ACK! (But I’m excited. This is the first time anyone from my immediate family’s visited me Down Under.)
• Dr. Amy Jones has developed a bald patch under her right arm. I’m a little freaked out about it. She could have ringworm; she could just be stressed; she could just be stupid and overgrooming. Or maybe Nurgul put a curse on her. At any rate, she’s got an appointment at the V-E-T for Sunday.
• I’ve had a crappy couple of weeks now, diet-wise. I do all right through the week but lately I’ve been falling apart on the weekends. Plus the weather has just started to feel like Fall, and with the end of Daylight Savings I’m finding it (as expected) reeeeally difficult to exercise after work. I don’t expect to have a loss tonight.

And yet I’m strangely optimistic about everything. I think it’s because it’s so sunny outside. Is there anything prettier than a bright Fall morning?

The Final Countdown. I’m almost disappointed I’m missing Indiana’s historic Daylight-Savings switch. I wonder if the old people are freaking out? I can just imagine them lining up at the IGA right now for jugs of water and batteries. (I worked at a podunk grocery store for four years. Every time anything remotely problematic was predicted, old people would turn up to stockpile like it was World War III.) Ooh, I hope Moire posts some sort of recap!

Behold the Abominable Baby! Step back lest it bite off your face!

People knit some crazy shit for their babies, yo. I was just looking at patterns to make for the Impending Carbo (my sister’s sprog-to-be) when that image jumped out at me. Now you can have nightmares too!

How much do you know about Apple? I am very disappointed that I only got 7 out of 10 correct.

Happy anniversary to the cute boy from my office who I’d been crushing on for weeks and who kissed me on the dance floor at the dodgiest club in London… and who six years later kisses me when I wake up in the morning and I’m cross and my hair’s all crazy and I have kitten-breath. I never thought I’d find someone who’d accept all my faults, play along with all my hare-brained schemes, and inspire me so much to become a better person. Thank you, Snookums.

Nice little article about Ramona Quimby. I wrote my Notre Dame admissions essay on why Ramona was my hero. Every time the Snook nags me about squeezing the toothpaste in the middle, I imagine squirting the whole tube out into the sink.

I was just finishing off the back shoulders of Rogue tonight when I came to the short-rows. Now I’ve done short-rows before on socks, so I started “wrapping and turning” without hesitation. Then I came to a row instructing me to knit across all stitches, “picking up and hiding wraps.” Huh? That’s puzzling. I’ve never seen the expression “hiding wraps” before. I’ve had patterns tell me to pick them up and knit them together with the wrapped stitch, but I wasn’t sure if that’s what the designer was indicating here. So I went searching. Thank goodness that Google indexes PDFs! This page from Interweave’s Knitting Glossary explains it well. In fact, I also learned that my “wrapping and turning” was completely wrong! I’ve been taking the wool to the opposite side, slipping, putting the wool back, and then slipping the stitch back – but I should’ve been slipping, taking the wool to the opposite side, slipping, and then wrapping. I wonder what sort of a difference this is going to make to my short-row heeled socks in the future. Anyway, the back is officially done. I still think this thing looks small. I’ve stretched it around myself and it’s going to be a snug fit! As if I needed more weightloss inspiration.

An Interview with John C. McGinley. You may know him as one of the Bobs from Office Space, or as the one-and-only original sarcastic bastard doctor Perry Cox on Scrubs. (There, I said it. Suck it, House!)

Snookums would like me to link to this video of a London busker performing Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” with a puppet army of Ken and Barbie dolls. No, I don’t know where he finds this stuff.

Greek Festival, Darling Harbour
I can’t believe I finally scooped Helen! On Sunday the Snook and I walked down to Darling Harbour to check out the big Greek Festival. It was beautiful and sunny and hot and crowded. We had some food and watched some dancers. I had a great time! (The Snook was less entranced: “I’m not emo; I just hate people.” We saw that graffito once and it’s become a catchphrase.) I even took my camera…My first stop was sweet-corn-on-a-stick. I’m not sure how Greek that is, but it was SO. GOOD. I had it with margarine and salt and pepper.

Next we stood and watched a troupe of dancers perform the song everybody was waiting for: “Zorba the Greek.”

Time for more food! We joined the extremely disorganized queue and waited… and waited…

We’d decided against the loukoumades, which were like deep-fried balls of dough dipped in honey. They looked amazing but definitely not in my daily Points allotment. (Incidentally, I’m amused that Helen took almost this exact same picture.)

I had the vegetarian “souvlaki,” which was basically a pita with chargrilled vegetables, garlic, and tzatziki. They’d made them up ahead of time so it was cold, which was my only complaint. Otherwise… delish.

Snookums went for the full meat option. Mmm, looks good.

It’s fun being a wannabe food-blogger… 🙂