August 2009 Archives

"We know smoking tobacco is not good for kids, but a lot of other things aren't good. Drinking's not good. Some would say milk's not good." - The unintentionally hilarious Bob Dole

The not-smoking thing has so far been reasonably successful. Thursday night I had quite a few (drinking + socialising with co-workers = 7 cigarettes), although considering my proven tendency to chain-smoke while drinking and the fact that all these cigarettes were had over the course of six hours instead of 90 minutes, it wasn't so bad. I also had one on Saturday night, after making a very nice dinner for Boyfriend and I (pork chops, breaded fried eggplant, and fettucine!). Dinner was great, and we were both feeling quite satisfied, and I blurted out "Y'know, a cigarette would be killer right now." Boyfriend has failed utterly at the quitting and had a pack on him, so I had one. It was, as predicted, killer.

It got me thinking though: what if, instead of following my pattern in every other quitting attempt and starting again in times of great stress, I save the occasional cigarette for the times when they enhance an already pleasant situation? Instead of dashing out in a moment of blind tech-support induced fury and buying a pack of cigarettes in order to keep from losing it at a user (which I have never done, by the way, although it's very tempting at times), I treat cigarettes as I would any other too-unhealthy-or-expensive-to-have-every-day delicacy, like cheesecake or Godiva chocolates. Boyfriend thinks this smacks of Stage 3 reasoning, which I feel is a little strong, but he might be right. I'll keep ruminating on it though. If I manage to break the habit, but keep the treat, that would be nice.
 

The 'About the Author' page on this blog describes me as politically inert, which is accurate - to a point. I tend not to follow Canadian politics (I also tend not to follow U.S. politics, but the body politic of the great Republic to the south thrashes about so loudly that one must struggle to avoid it; Canadian politics generally quietly fade into the background when not being looked at directly), about which fact I often feel guilty. It's not that I don't have political opinions. I am so opinionated it squelches out of every rhetorical orifice when some topics come up. But every time I feel I am insufficiently informed about the country's official business and set myself to finding out what's going on, the process quickly degenerates into feelings of depression, anger, frustration, and a tendency to shout things like "You idiots couldn't legislate your way out of a paper bag!" at the newspaper.

The other problem is that, despite my deep cynicism about politicians*, assorted forms of government**, available positions on the various political spectra***, and humanity in general****, I am essentially an idealistic optimist, who hates the idea of situational ethics even as I find myself forced to use them when arguing with the Angry Engineer (we disagree politically on almost every point, but he's an extremely logical and intelligent debater who forces me to think very hard before I start spouting off), who believes whole-heartedly in the democratic process even though I'm utterly convinced that most of the people I interact with should not be trusted to tie their shoes, never mind vote on national policy, and who really feels that most people will honestly just try to be the best, most competent people they can be, even though in my professional life over the last decade I've been repeatedly hit in the face with evidence to the contrary.

Watching the three-ring circus that is politics in any democratic country is dispiriting. The appeals to emotion, the playing on social fears, the irrelevant personal attacks, and all of it to distract from the fact that both sides are just as unlikely to give a damn about the issues once elected. The way that Parliament and Congress seem to pass or reject bills on the basis of whether or not it will irritate or injure the other parties rather than because they've actually considered the benefits of such an action to the people they represent. The tendency to bury things in increasingly tangled webs of committees rather than just doing something.

As someone who tends towards the practical, I believe that politicians should be getting on with the running of the country rather than all the campaigning that they actually do. But at the same time, I recognise that the only reason they can get away with it is that we let them, and we encourage it. We're not interested in hearing boring action outlines that might take years to show results, we want the exciting song-and-dance, and woe to the politician who can't be a Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire on the campaign trail. That's ultimately the worst aspect of trying to follow politics, watching the whole process be degraded and subverted and knowing that's what my country wants.

Being wrong hurts, and it's obvious that I am, in many ways, wrong about human nature, at least in the majority of people. The cynic knows things are corrupt and broken, and works within that system.  The naïf believes that the system works as intended, and fails because it doesn't. I've become the one in the middle, who watches it break down and steps back to avoid becoming entangled, which in its own way contributes to the problem.

I'm not even thinking of any incident or issue in particular (vide first paragraph, 'does not follow politics'), but I've been reading the archives at Positive Liberty, and feeling so shallow, because in addition to not being enough of a student of history or philosophy to follow Kuznicki's essays except in the most superficial way, I haven't even followed politics enough to know what he's analysing. His arguments are a pleasure to read even when his subject matter isn't; they're logical, and he's not afraid of passing some imaginary word count when brevity might detract from clarity.

Hiding my head in the figurative sand like an ostrich isn't a productive use of my intellect, so what do I do now?

* "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." - Douglas Adams
** "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." - Winston Churchill
*** I am, according to various extremely scientific and nuanced tests found through 45 seconds of googling, somewhere between Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, a Liberal Democrat, a Liberal, most compatible with the (American) Green Party, a Social Liberal, and a failed Canadian (a pass was 70%, I got 50%).
**** "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." - Winston Churchill again.

Holy crap, I'm tired.

Was out last night for a work event, and then the Angry Engineer and I carried on to our backup local watering hole for a few rounds (few = ~5). We ran into some Navy and RCR guys out on their own pub crawl, and the Angry Engineer, who is ex-military, was having a grand old time reminiscing and commiserating about bastard MPs. I got into a cab at roughly 1h00 and he was still going strong. I got home, set the coffee maker's auto-start for painfully early, threw my horribly uncomfortable slide heels into the darkest corner of my closet, and became one with the bed. Mmmm, bed.  

I'm honestly amazed that I managed to do the whole coffee maker thing, and then actually perform my nightly ablutions as required. I can be a bit flaky with things that need to be done every day. I mean, I'm not a total slob with regards to personal hygiene, but although I brush my teeth every morning, I may not brush them at night. I hardly ever floss. I rarely wear makeup, so washing it off at night isn't an ingrained habit. I complain about dry skin, but can never be bothered to actually moisturise regularly. And so on. While on my new regime of actually getting shit done, I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could incorporate these little changes into my routine as well? It might not be earth shattering, but better skin and healthier gums might make me a little bit happier as a person. "But," she asked herself, "how will you make sure you actually do those things?" I've heard in the past that it takes three weeks to form a habit, so how do I get through those three weeks?

If you walk into my bathroom today, you'll see a large sticky note attached to the mirror. It has two columns on it, A.M. and P.M. Each column has all the things I should be doing in the bathroom at that time of day, in the order they should be done. It's sad, I know, that I need to actually make a list that says things like "Shower. Moisturise. Brush teeth. Mouthwash. Lip balm.", but my efforts to just make myself remember things don't work out so well.

I have a bigger list too, involving all the things that need to be done around the apartment day-to-day. Cleaning the litter boxes and sweeping are on there every day, of course (when the ex-husband and I lived together, occasionally weeks would go by between box cleanings. It was revolting). Mopping is every other day, cleaning the bathroom is once a week. I really wonder sometimes what crucial development stage I missed out on that didn't let me pick up these basic household maintenance skills until age 27.

Although I've wandered somewhat from my premise statement, the basic idea was that even though I was tired and my feet were killing me and I'd had quite a bit to drink, I still managed to floss and wash off my makeup before going to bed last night.

Little victories, right?

Felicity is not finished. I woke up on Friday with an epiphany regarding that bloody hat: I'd accidentally skipped the last round of increases and now need to rip back eight rows. Which I should have done right away, but didn't, and we'll talk about why in a bit.

One of the reasons the ex-husband and I did not work out is because we brought out the worst in each other's personal habits. I have a tendency towards slobbiness, he has the strange male blindness to dirt. We both have hoarding issues ("NO, we cannot throw out the five fishing rods, I might go fishing again one day."), and our three bedroom, three story townhouse - which should have been more than big enough for a family of four or five - felt cramped and unhappy. I struggled to clean up, but aside from the occasional emergency (my family coming to visit, the landlord coming by), I was doing it on my own. Ex-husband would do things as instructed, but would never of his own accord actually clean anything, including a dish. I, being one of those people who has difficulty concentrating in a cluttered space, would start try to clean and organise, but in a very stressed and distracted way. Tears were common. It got to the point where I was coming up with excuses not to come home at night, because I hated the way I felt when I was in our house.

So, fast-forward several months. When I moved into my own apartment (on my own for the first time ever!), I threw out a lot of stuff. Probably an entire box truck's worth. It was incredibly hard and I cried a lot while it was being done. It didn't appear to make much of a dent, since the apartment is still kind of cluttered, but I'm working on it.  I made the decision last week to put some of my books into storage (I will never be able to bring myself to get rid of books, but storage I can handle), and trade my huge recliner couch for a smaller model. It's a start, and I feel good about it.

Even better is the list I made. It's got entries for the next four or five weekends: things to do. It culminates in my apartment getting painted. I'm pretty much on schedule with it right now, and it's already made an improvement. This week's tasks were to measure all the furniture to decide how to rearrange it for cosy spacing, removing the garbage that was stored on the balcony for convenience (old air conditioner, broken picture frame, plus the balcony's evil green astro-turf carpet), clean out the bottom of the china cabinet (still stuffed full of miscellanea from moving), and clean out this big white cabinet (also stuffed full of miscellanea from moving) which I'm probably going to have to get rid of because I've got no place to hang it.  Items one, two, and three are done (two by the good offices of Boyfriend, who cleared the whole balcony in less than 15 minutes, including pulling up the evil carpet and sweeping it all off), and in cleaning out the china cabinet I was able to pack away all my cds and various computer peripherals and extraneous electronics. Freed up a lot of bookshelf and table area. I also decluttered the crap out of my desk. Next week when I rearrange the living room I'll also need to re-organise all my computer cables, but at least the surfaces are clear.

I'm also into day two of not smoking, and I recognise the twitchy, irritableness that's making me touchier than usual (I'm generally pretty irritable to begin with), so Felicity will wait until that fades. I was originally going to leave her until I'd finished my to-do list, but job-things delayed that, and now I don't want to be trying to do something so delicate when anything even whiffing of going wrong will make me freak out. I'll cast on for the scarf I wanted to do to match instead. It's knit on straights instead of in the round, so will be much less frustrating (she said, blithely. Murphy looked on in deep amusement.).

The other things keeping me from blogging this week are a bunch of work-related things, a series of nagging infections (the kind of fun infections that can, in a woman's life, spring up for no reason whatsoever. I used to think male genitalia were less well-designed than female. I now think both of them are bad jokes), and a visit from a dear friend who was in town to find an apartment this weekend. Yet another Montreal ex-pat to keep me sane. He'll be driving up with all his stuff in two weeks, and I'm very much looking forward to having him around again.

Felicity is knitting up extremely quickly -- or it would be if I hadn't misread the pattern and put one round of stockinette in between the increases instead of two. Luckily I'd only knit two rounds worth of increases so tinking wass not all that painful. I've now got through the increases and second stretch of stockinette, and finished the first round of decreases. The hat might be done tomorrow night, which would be awesome.

A new air conditioner entered my apartment last night, thoughtfully installed by boyfriend, so I am actually looking forward to getting home after work tomorrow. Aside from that, not much of interest happened today; I spent most of it watching the GTA storm warnings and dealing with a nagging infection. Hurrah for norfloxacin.

Hello, morning coffee!

After the disgusting humidity of yesterday (which is still going on today), I announced that I was staying at Boyfriend's condo last night. His condo is heavily air-conditioned, which is a vast relief in this weather, and lacks cats, which is a vast relief when I'm trying to knit something involving some very plush yarn and multiple twitching sticks.

We sat down on the couch to watch Coraline, and I spent most of the movie with one of the skeins of Malabrigo stretched over my knees to make a ball. The ball is very nice, but my shoulder was aching by the time I finished. Since all of the yarn I bought yesterday is in skeins, I may have to invest in a ball-winder or change my name to She of the freaky Popeye shoulder.

First ball wound is cast on for Wanett Clyde's Felicity hat. I tend to be a tight knitter, and have a giant head (24" circumference - I've never met a baseball cap that actually fit), so I added ten stitches and went up to size 7 and 9 dpns, instead of 5 and 7. I have it spread out on three dpns right now, but realised this morning that 80 is in fact divisible by 4. Who knew? When the time comes in the pattern to switch to the bigger needles I'll shuffle the stitches around and work in the fourth needle. I considered going ahead and doing it now, but decided it would be too much hassle only to have to do it again when the size change happens. Once I've reclaimed my 7s (hopefully this afternoon), I'll be able to cast on for Boyfriend's scarf. Although none of the scarf yarn has been balled yet, so I may have to coddle him into to helping me with that when he gets home from work.

Random fact of the day*: Although the FedEx corporate logo is purple and grey**, the logos on the trucks and so on has the 'Ex' in a different colour, indicating which division it belongs to (Ground, Express, Freight, Office, etc.). Nifty.

I have some ruminations on Kensington Market that need to be written out, but I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about it, so I'll let them roll around in my head a little longer. Maybe this evening.

*I actually learned this a while ago, but was reminded of it when I took my coffee out on the balcony. There was a FedEx truck across the street.
**I know it used to be purple and orange. The orange 'Ex' is the Express division now.

One of the things that I hate about living in eastern Canada is the horrifyingly humid summers. According to MeteoMedia, it's currently 29 degrees in Toronto, with a humidex of 38 degrees (that's 84 and 100 F, respectively, for any Americans in the audience). The strong breeze coming off the Lake is mitigating the problems somewhat, but I'm still melting here. Adding to the problem is my air conditioner, a venerable Goldstar R-5000A. It was acquired second-hand, so I have no idea exactly how old it is. A quick look at Goldstar's website indicates that they haven't updated since 2007, and at that point had already stopped making anything less powerful than a 5050 BTU model, so I'm guessing at least 5 years old.

After 3 years and two moves with me and who-knows-how-many before it entered my possession, my air conditioner has finally given up the ghost. It still sort of cools, but even on the highest settings doesn't make a dent in this heat. It also makes alarming clunking sounds and spits ice every so often, even when I leave it on the fan-only setting. I'm more concerned about the cats than myself, since I can go sit in the shower for a while if things get too ridiculous, but those lovely furry coats they're wearing are sadly not removable*.

I did finally manage to make it to Lettuce Knit this morning. That place is tiny, but I believe I have fallen in love with it. I left with sock-length dpns for that sock that's been making me nuts, and some US#9 straights and DPNs to go with the three skeins of Malabrigo worsted merino in the Little Lovely variegated colourway. That's my hat and scarf this winter, kids. I may see if I can pick up some leather gloves to match once the winter clothes start hitting shops. Also, 3 skeins each of Berroco Lustra in Aioli and Brulée for Boyfriend's Fibonacci scarf. The two colours look incredibly yummy sitting against each other and the yarn is smooth and shiny. It's another merino. In fact, now that I think about it, all the yarn I have stashed right now is merino. I guess I've found my favourite fibre.

I wonder what GTA by-laws say about raising a sheep on one's balcony?

* Although that's mostly a good thing. Hairless cats creep me out and look non-cuddly.

Today was not a good day at work, but it's over now, and that's a good thing. It was busy (not in a good way), hot (not in a good way), and frustrating (I don't there's even a good way possible for that). But now I'm blogging from the bar in the basement of my office building, and my favorite bartender is plying me with awful potato chips and what he refers to as 'Friday drinks'. He knows my weird work schedule, so is aware it's okay to get me liquored up on Monday nights.

It is ungodly hot and humid in Toronto today (and yesterday, and the day before, and tomorrow . . . ). I think my plan for the rest of the week involves an early morning-ish visit to buy some more yarn or smaller needles, finding someplace that will sell me moderate amounts of gin and has air conditioning, and camping out there.

I was browsing css Zen Garden in hopes of inspiration this morning. I'm floored by the beautiful designs of some of these pages. I'm also realising that I'm going to think very hard about what I want the site to look like before I start mucking around. And whether or not I want it integrated into the rest of the domain or not. And what I'm doing with the rest of the domain. I will keep playing around with MT, but I'm holding off on any wild changes for now.

Aside from that, a combination of gaming, birthday parties, excessively humid weather and not enough sleep have either made me intolerable, or made everyone else unusually touchy. I'm still not sure which. I suspect the latter, but am open to debate on the topic. So tonight I'm at home alone with the cats, pushing myself to do laundry and other chores. I have zero motivation to do so, but I know once it's done I'll feel much better about the world in general. This post is being banged out between taking out the garbage and putting the wash in the laundry room, and starting the never-ending circuit of sweeping. I hope tomorrow is better than today.

The area of Toronto I live in, known as Parkdale, is a relatively low-income community with a high proportion of first-generation immigrant families. It's still kind of nice, saved from being too sketchy by being nestled between Liberty Village (the new King-West, young urban hip yadda yadda) and Roncesvalles village (a quiet middle-class area with a lot of artisanal delis and free-trade coffee shops). Someone in the area apparently doesn't share my neutral/positive view, however.

The corner at which I catch the streetcar in the morning is also home to a long-term rooming house (there are a lot of them on this stretch of King street). As I approached this morning, the front door of this building banged open and someone stormed out carrying a bicycle, obviously in mid-rant. This is the part I caught:

"So many fucking immigrants that don't belong in this country, and that cocksucker across the street [a police officer sitting in his cruiser] won't do anything about it, so I'm gonna have to take care of it myself, old fashioned style!"

And with that he hopped on his bike and wobbled down the street. I turned around to watch him go, not entirely believing what I had heard, and realised there was a group of Chinese women walking behind me that had been treated to this display of goodwill and brotherly love.

It's not the first time I've seen behaviour like this. Last year there was a memorable incident at the Chinese Lantern Festival starring a man who was furious that the rides at Ontario Place were closed after dark for the festival, and announced at the top of his lungs that it was the fault of 'the fucking chinks'. There's also the less obvious and more casual racism that pervades my industry; the last telecom company I worked for was rife with mutterings about the Asian Indians we often hired.

Every time I hear this kind of thing, it makes me ashamed to be white (and I am very white. Any whiter, I'd be paper). It makes me want to hide out in a tanning salon until I'm dark enough to pass for anything except the majority. It makes me want to start wearing a sign that says "I'm very sorry. I'm not with them."

It frightens me, because I can't understand it. There are a lot of philosophies that I don't agree with, that I actively argue against, that make me so angry I see red and start figuratively foaming at the mouth (pro-lifers, for example, but I digress), but there is at least a train of logic that can be followed. It may be faulty logic, it may be based on erroneous premises, but there is a process that I can look at, and understand how A-B-C resulted in conclusion D. The casual, dismissive, and occasionally incredibly angry racism I see has no such coherence to it. It's emotional. It's arbitrary. It's excessive. It appears to have no basis in reality whatsoever and it scares the shit out of me.

My father's parents were both immigrants to the United States. Shortly before the first World War, my great-grandfather came over from Italy with his wife and daughter. They settled down in Rochester and started having more children, but my grandmother was not born in Canada, or even in North America. My grandfather came over from Ireland as a young man. I don't know if they experienced that kind of pointless hatred, or if that's reserved for people who aren't white*.

I don't even know where I'm going with this. Some people are so angry at the world and their lives that they spew this vitriol out at innocents in public, and every time I see it, I'm too stunned to act or speak until it's too late. I feel like this makes me an accessory to madness.

*aside: my half-Irish father somehow got all the swarthy Italian genes that my grandmother did not appear to have. If he grew out his beard and put on a turban, he could pass for Arabic. I find this hilarious.

Oh, NeedyCat. If ever I have a Hallowe'en costume that requires a purring orange chest-hair prop, I know you'll be there for me. Because that's what you're doing, right now. You'd think I hadn't been home in weeks.

I did not manage to make it to the yarn store after work, due to an emergency Dungeons and Dragons game. This has been a bad week for LYS excursions, what with the D&D, sick boyfriends, and the thunderstorm that viciously soaked me on my way to Linda's Craftique on Tuesday. I mean, I like rain and all, but walking in and drip-drying all over the product is not the best way to make a good first impression on a retailer.

On the upside, it was slow at work this afternoon, so I finally managed to get a handle on the aggravation that is MT4 modular templates. A bit, anyways. This weekend will be devoted to my latest attempt in an ongoing series to master CSS, so I can actually create my own style. And then maybe I'll do something productive with the rest of this domain.

Pre-D&D today, the whole group of us walked to Subway's for snacks, and as we were cleaning up our detritus and preparing to leave, a guy waiting in line asked me something that I swear sounded like "Are you guys neighbours?" I looked at him blankly for a minute, and then replied "No?" After everyone looked at me like I'd gone crazy, Megan kindly explained to me that this gentleman had actually asked if we were gamers. It was then announced that I had failed my Listen check, which I guess answered his question for him. Sorry, random Subway's guy! I'm not nuts, just sporadically hard of hearing.

I did not get to go to the Knit Cafe last night with Megan. Boyfriend had some kind of medication/seafood/heat-induced reaction, with the accompanying gastrointestinal pyrotechnics, so I had to cancel on Megan, making us both sad. And now today is Friday, and it's a pain in the butt to work around our respective work hours and LYS closing times. I did manage to finish the swatch yesterday, so it wasn't a total wash.

One of the oddities of my existence is that Fridays are not all that great. In fact, they kind of suck. You see, Friday is the first day of my workweek, so when all of you are out enjoying the prospect of skiving off half an hour early to go get lit on cocktails at the local watering hole, I'm looking forward to getting my shit together so Saturday and Sunday (the two days when I am the only person in the office and the only one on-call) are not a complete quagmire of problems. I only work four days a week, but I make up for that fifth day by being on-call from 7 pm Friday night to 8 am Monday morning. For some reason, although our customers somehow manage to survive weeknights with on-call-worthy incidents only every six weeks or so, weekends usually result in at least two calls/unwarranted emails/annoying alerts from our monitoring systems per weekend. And they always happen between 1 and 3 am.

As you can imagine, I am a real hoot the morning after.

So, it's Friday, and now that I'm relatively sure the weekend is not going to blow up in my face, I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do keep myself occupied during my shift. The second oddity of my occupation is that when things are not in crisis mode, my shift consists of roughly one hour of of actual work, and 7 hours of trying not to be bored out of my skull.  When the weather is nice (i.e.: not incredibly humid and hot), I work from home and watch movies or play video games between ticket updates. When it's not, I jack up my pathetic window a/c unit for the cats, and then come into the office, which is blissfully cool, quiet (a vast change from during the week), and doesn't present my cats with an opportunity to adhere to my sweaty legs.

It had occurred to me that coming into the office on weekend would be a great time to get the knitting in gear (I discovered on Thursday that Riley's favorite toy is a wiggly piece of string. My favorite toy is a different wiggly piece of string. You see the conflict here.) but I have nothing to knit this weekend!

I tried casting on for a sock last night, but discovered that my 8" long dpns are way too unwieldly for something that small. I need either shorter dpns, or a circular of moderate length. I've never really been comfortable with circs, but this might not be a bad time to try and get comfortable. It's possible that I could make it to Lettuce Knit before it closes tonight if I dash, or maybe leave work half an hour early. Everyone else does it! I can ask, right?

Option two involves using the weekend to learn Moveable Type templates properly, which I need to do in order to make a lot of things happen on this page, but which sounds much less appealing than knitting. Go figure.

I finished the Panopticon archives yesterday, and went to catch up on Wendy's posts at Knit and Tonic. The post about the creation of the Ripple cap describes very accurately my love/hate relationship with knitwear . . . Not to mention my love/hate relationship with hats. I've been a fan of Wendy's blog for a few years, partly because I am a big gin and tonic drinker, partly because of her wonderful writing, and mostly because of the beautiful photos she takes of her knitted objets* being used/worn. Also, her stash photos. I love pictures of yarn.

*Yeah, I know I'm a prententious twat for using French for it, but a) I am from Quebec, and b) they're just too good to be called 'stuff'.

Apparently 2009 is the UN's International Year of Natural Fibres. Huh.

Every so often, my cats decide to remind me exactly why they were up for adoption in the first place. Like this morning. I vaguely remember hearing Slim throw up as I drifted off to sleep last night, and made a mental note to check the floor before I started stumbling around the apartment in the morning. This morning, I swung my feet out of bed, placed them on the floor, and -- SPLUT. Looking on the bright side, it was less than six inches away from my sandals, and yet somehow missed them. It's possible this is Slim's way of telling me he's somewhat irate that I haven't yet done anything about the mats on his lower back (He never used to mat. At all. Then one day about two weeks ago I turned around and the 6-inch patch near his tail was so irrevocably matted I'm going to need to get him shaved to fix it.), so a vet visit may be in his future.

Riley's version of this behaviour is to remain in physical contact with me at all times. He even sleeps on my head.

I've been reading knitting blogs again. One of my peculiarities when reading a blog is that I need to go back and read it from the beginning. I enjoy watching the process of 'blogger-then' evolving into 'blogger-now'. So I've been boning up on the adventures of Franklin and his (fictional) roomate Dolores over at the Panopticon. I'm almost through 2006 in the archives, which means the population of his apartment has been supplemented with a narcissistic spinning wheel and about sixty balls of talking sock yarn. I am wildly entertained.

Now, there is sweeping and swatching to be done. And this afternoon Megan and I are going to the Knit Cafe, she wants a sweater, and I want an excuse to buy more yarn. Too bad I only get paid tomorrow.

After not writing for so long, it gets hard to know where to start, so this may end up a little disjointed by the time I'm done.

I'm knitting again. Boyfriend and I have decided that it's time for both of us to quit smoking (Well, I decided it was time for me to quit smoking, and he shocked me by offering to quit as well). Long experience has taught me that my smoking habit is not chemical, it's tactile. Smoking is what I do when I don't have anything to occupy my hands. I once quite for three days without really noticing because I pulled my playstation out of storage and spent a long weekend playing Final Fantasy X without buying cigarettes first.  So, Monday, August the 24th, I'm going to quit smoking. And so will the boyfriend. And I'd better have something to keep my hands busy for that first three days with no smokes and no work, so -- knitting! And blogging. Fingers that are typing or tying yarn into knots can't hold cigarettes.

Blogging will also exercise the brain. Sometimes I feel like I've been asleep for the last five years. I haven't written anything in at least that long; these days I spend a lot of time looking at blank pages/screens, then giving up and going to have a snack (which is another problem, that not smoking will probably not help, but anyways). I miss the time in my life when everything suggested poetry to me.

For now, the cats are whining and I have a weeks' worth of cleaning to do after getting back from my vacation in Montreal, so I'll get to it.

But I'm back.