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These include picking a book from one's shelf that one thinks is a book of Victorian children's stories, wondering how it got into such poor repair, and flipping it open to discover that one apparently owns a volume of Cornelius Nepos from 1830 and has been taking no steps to preserve it.Current Mood:  gah! |
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Some months ago, I acquired a book of Viking-inspired knitting patterns. I showed it to Thrud, who immediately asked me to make for her a Loki scarf of complicated detail. For some reason, probably because I am far too easy to talk into taking on craft projects, I agreed, so I've been slowly working on teaching myself to knit again, which I have to do every once in a while (I first learned to knit at age 8 and thus must unlearn bad habits repeatedly). By this I mean that I reviewed the much better method of casting on than the one I know by heart, refreshed in my mind which is the knit stitch and which the purl, and jumped headlong into what turned out to be the pattern in the book with the most fiddly bits different from all the other patterns.
Because I did something dumb but temporary to my ankle this evening, I spent most of said evening sitting in a chair, during which I finished this test swatch:
During the process of knitting the above, I mostly re-overcame my twisted-stitch difficulties, but it's clear that I'm having some trouble with maintaining even tension on the cable switchovers, which I haven't done much in the past. Also, though the paired decreases were no sweat, the funky paired increases that were supposed to be done just as listed in the book's back except for being totally different in execution in this pattern got the better of me.
More practice to come before I try my hand at designing that scarf. Oooh, shiny challenge.Current Mood:  sleepy |
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First off, deviantArt listings of the more involved crafts I made for Becks' baby shower:
Favor booklets
Favor booklet internal pages
Stork!
Then, the rest of the entry:
The baby shower, long though I've waited to post about it, went wonderfully. I was extremely nervous at the start of it, considering that it was both the first baby shower I'd ever attended and the first party of that scale I'd ever hosted! However, I needn't have been.
Becks had meant to pick me up early in the morning to get everything to the hall and set up, but she stopped to get gas a few blocks away from where I live, accidentally locking her keys in her car at the gas station. Her husband had to drive up and unlock it for her, which meant that we had less time to decorate than we'd wanted. But we hurried and did our best, and though that meant that we didn't have balloons to kick around, everything else was ready in time.
It was a very low-key party; I did much of the set-up, her aunt and sister catered, her cousins helped put everything up or on tables at the party proper. Because we were all in it together, having put in similar amounts of effort, everyone appreciated each other and helped out with everything. Becks had a fun time and got a lot of the stuff she needed for her daughter-to-be, and the guests seemed to enjoy participating in that. I really enjoyed hosting the party once I got out of the controlled panic in which I started it, too.
Enough that I want to research local event planners and find out what I'd need to do to get into that industry once I'm in a little better health, really. Which is not something I ever thought I would say, but it unmistakeably fits now that I've said it.Current Mood: nervous |
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I intend to post, eventually, about such cool things as the baby shower, the Star Trek movie, visiting the Congery, recent arts and crafts, and maybe even how to make an Indian-themed stir fry out of stuff that happens to be in the fridge and ingenuity.
I did the last thing on that list just a little while ago, btw. Yum.
I may also post about efforts to declutter; there could be another list of free stuff if I take pictures of the stuff I want to send off to good homes.
I don't have the attention span to do any of this right now, however, so this is just a drive-by "still alive" post.Current Mood: tired |
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I came down to the D.C. area last Wednesday afternoon to stay with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) seishonagon and thespooniest, I and the former of whom needed to practice music before the convention. We did get a significant amount of rehearsing in, preparing enough music up to a high enough standard that we felt we could perform confidently in open filk (the inability to coordinate lengthy amounts of practice between two people, one in the Philly area and one in the D.C. area, who haven’t sung together regularly in years, forced us to cancel an expected concert).
( Balticon Friday )
( Balticon Saturday )
( Balticon Sunday and Monday )
Yesterday morning I left from seishonagon and thespooniest’s, returning to the Philadelphia area in fair time. I slept a little on the bus, but somehow stayed awake the rest of the day, perhaps on account of having so much to unpack and clean up and, in general, do now that I’ve returned. It was an excellent con, two excellent visits, and a superlative week; I look forward to listening to the CDs I bought over and over, looking up the websites of people whose CDs (and T-shirt, unrelatedly) I couldn’t purchase at the time due to an online banking snafu (grumblegrumble), and eventually seeing and hearing everyone, friends and fellow filkers alike, again.Current Mood: accomplished |
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I need to make posts about....
1. The baby shower (two weekends ago)
2. Balticon (this past weekend)
Tell me what's been going on in your lives over the last few days?Current Mood:  sore but happy |
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I've been in a cooking mood lately, something I'd worried I'd never get back after the last time it went away, so I bought ingredients for about six dishes plus random things when I went grocery shopping on Friday evening.
Sunday I spent about 6 hours in the kitchen, producing spiced lamb with rice, ginger chutney, and mango chili yogurt sauce. The lamb required 4 different heat settings in two different appliances, but the melt-in-your-mouthness that resulted is well worth it. I have huge quantities of everything despite having eaten three meals of it and feeding one to my housemate T. I also have to finish preparing a mango chutney that required its mango chunks to soak in salted water for 24 hours.
Today, however, I haven't gotten to that yet because I had my grandparents over for lunch. Grandparents require more traditional fare, so I put together garlic-infused hamburgers with purchased white rolls, red onion, tomato, and an array of condiments. I heated up some steak fries from a package in the oven to complement the meal. And, yes, I have huge quantities of the burgers, for I'd bought 4 pounds of meat in order to have a 4th package for the grocery's "Favorite 4 for $20" promotion, which does rather make dinner items cheaper but tends to result in large amounts of extra in the freezer.
I also have a lamb leg bone in the freezer. Not sure what to do with that yet.
Anyone want to come over and have a hamburger? Or 10?Current Mood: accomplished |
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Helpful label explaining that the sender of a package I ordered from Japan switched the locations of the "To:" and "From:" sections on the label (they were still actually labeled "To:" and "From:", though). I just had to share because, well, this package's destiny was foreordained, apparently.Current Mood:  amused |
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Health, physical
Wrist getting better. My own experimentation indicates that I don't feel sick after every dairy consumption, so not lactose intolerant. Have mostly switched to home-brewed iced tea from diet Coke, but noticing that times when I've been sickest lately have been concurrent with diet Coke consumption. Sleep seems to happen between either 1 and 4 AM or 3 AM and 12 PM these days, last night the former.
Health, mental
Have come to realization that I am bound by same laws of physics as everyone else. Not sure what to do about this, but it seems important, so trying to keep it in mind. Also working on sleep issues; bad things will not happen as soon as I fall asleep, nor does the need for sleep indicate a loss of control over myself and surroundings. Have started keeping mental health work on paper in a binder so progress is tangible.
Paperwork, important
Avoidance: I has it. Must stop that.
Scheduling, important
Avoidance: I has it. MUST stop that.
Financial stuff
...yeah. See above, re: MUST STOP THAT.
Projects, sewing
Black satin wrap top finished. Jacket for gaudior started now that I have interfacing; all fabric pieces cut. Valances for D must happen this weekend, and so might favors for Becks' baby shower.
Projects, decluttering
Several things out by postal mail. Need to do more eBay. Need to try to get data off hard drive; afterward can offer rest of old computer on FreeCycle.
Reading
Still in love with Song of Ice and Fire series. Bits of it between other things.
Watching
First MS Gundam movie two days ago, on phone with seishonagon. As she said regarding plot density, "I feel like I've just watched a brick."
Studying
Have picked up Ancient Greek again, making slow progress. Starting to feel like doing more math, which is good considering need for review.
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I had one of those moments last night. You know, in which the Hand of our Mighty Lord the All-Powerful Duh strikes one squarely on the forehead.
I have always felt groggy after consuming any sort of dairy product. Lately I have often had digestive upset. These things seemed unrelated. So last night, when I had a cheese sandwich and a milkshake for dinner, I was expecting... well, I wasn't expecting anything, because I was idiotically not paying attention to what I was doing. But if I had been paying attention, I would have expected to be groggy that evening.
Instead, I felt like Death: Now Served Warm! with fatigue, digestive ickiness, and nausea. That was when the Hand blessed me with its guidance. THWACK! I looked up symptoms of lactose intolerance. Check, check, check. Uh, huh. Yep. Yeeeeeeah.
So I'll just keep track of my dairy consumption and aftereffects for a little while, then, yes? Yes.Current Mood:  embarrassed |
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No, it's not actually that bad, but I do seem to have done something to my left wrist yesterday, perhaps in the process of pinning and sewing two valances for D. Because craft-related wrist injuries are fairly common for me, I have wrist braces and am wearing them today. I'm also taking acetaminophen in case there's swelling somewhere.
In other news, Photoshop Elements 7 arrived in the mail this afternoon. I've since installed it and fixed up my badge art submission for ConCertino, so that's now in the hands of the concom.
I've decided to reinstall the small hard drive that came originally with Yamino-kun and see if I can get any of my old data off the dead hard drive by hooking it up in tandem with that one.
I'll probably be participating in a flea market on June 13. I currently have 3 boxes by the desk in my room, labeled "Flea Market," "eBay," and "Give." I'll make a post soon explaining the contents of the "Give" box and taking first-come, first-serve requests.Current Mood: tired |
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Good: My old scanner and new laptop play very nicely together!
Bad: My Photoshop Elements upgrade hasn't arrived in the mail yet.
Ugly: GIMP is of the devil*.
*You mean I can't make a background into a transparency? At all? Even by copying it and pasting it into a second image file THAT ALREADY HAS A BACKGROUND? And I can't get just black lines without a background? Even by selecting all the colors and clearing them? Even by selecting all the white bits and erasing them and WHY DOES THE ERASER NOT ERASE THE COLOR RED AGH DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE.Current Mood:  AUGH |
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I've spent much of the day cleaning the oven's various sections and components is all.
Well, carry on.
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Becks' baby shower preparations are getting there. We have a deposit on a hall. We have food. We have games. We'll soon have prizes, I hope. I finished the invitations tonight and will mail them tomorrow. I have a list of what still needs to be done, and it's getting shorter.
Yamino-kun, my old desktop on which until recently I did all my photoediting, lost his entire hard drive a few days ago. I ran some scans on it; every sector I checked was bad. Yamino-kun is at least 5 years old at this point, though, and failing in other ways, so I don't think I'll replace it. I've ordered an upgrade to Photoshop Elements that should work on Bright-kancho (my laptop), and hopefully my scanner will play nice with Bright as well. Since I'm trying to submit finished artwork for possible use on the badges at ConCertino, if my scanner doesn't work with Bright's operating system, I'll get around the mismatch temporarily by having Staples scan my line art onto a flash drive.
I've discovered a difficulty in my plans to study hard this summer; I don't have a designated study space. This spring I was trying to do all my homework on a lap desk, which often sent books and papers sliding everywhere. Hence, I'm trying to massively reorganize my room, zoning all my activities for convenience. The trick is, I have too much stuff, so I've been putting a lot of things on eBay in preparation for moving the rest of my stuff about.
So much to do... But I really feel energized right now. |
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Do any of you have selling journals or post to selling/trading communities? I'm interested in using a journal on LJ as a way of reducing my clutter and avoiding eBay fees, but the only communities I've stumbled upon for such purposes are Japanese-item themed, and not everything I want to clear away is Japanese in origin.
Please PM me if you'd be willing to answer some of my questions! ^_^Current Mood: cheerful |
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Dear self:
First:
Call township about missed recycling AGAIN
Check availability of desired summer course, register if still possible
Clean the kitchen
Clean the living room
Vacuum my room
Shred partially used tax forms
Clean the half-bath
Clean the bathroom
Finish my laundry
Call potential baby shower venues
Affirm plans for tomorrow
Then:
Fun fun fun whee whatever! for the rest of the evening
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Updates to my deviantArt page:
Char and the Latin Comparative
Lady Une Pin-Up
I suspect that if I say "real update soon" again, you won't believe me.
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Okay, I have to admit, "Because my back and arms are covered with hives and itching madly, as they were not when I went to bed" is a new, interesting, and different reason for me to be awake at 4 am. It does, in fact, beat out the usual reason of "Because" on the general principle of being a valid reason.
On the other hand, HYAAAARGH.
Real update soon, really really really.Current Mood: amused |
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