I shouldn't have to write this letter

Dear street guy,

No matter how not-drunk you are, no matter if you have kids my age, no matter how nice and sane and reasonable you seem to be, and no matter how much you like my haircut, running your hand through my hair without asking me is not acceptable. Ever.

Ew. I cannot take enough showers.

Most sincerely,
Me.

Fairy-tale endings

I love watching movies about gifted kids who start out with crummy parents and find their fairy-tale parents. Matilda. August Rush. They used to make me happy.

Now they just make me cry.

Close your eyes and think of England.

That's been my motto this week. The thing about taking a long trip is that you have to do things you've been putting off. Hard things. Boring things. Long things.

Stinky things.

But none of it is as bad as getting screwed over at the gas station these days. There comes a point when you have to say, To hell with the budget, I'm just going to have to fill up. And so you close your eyes and think of England.

Except, of course, gas prices- or rather, petrol prices- are even worse over there. If you've been paying attention on Ravelry, there's been a good amount of international petrol price wanking going on, with people on both sides of the pond and both sides of the border at each other's throats. Not pretty.

Besides, we should all be at the oil companies' throats instead, right?

Still, I'm not convinced that that lovely little isle ruled by the Queen has it as bad as they think. Their intercity busses may be inexpensive and infrequent, but at least they exist. And if you can walk to the grocery store, you're still doing better than I am. Plus, they've got free health care! That's, like, a quarter of my monthly budget that they don't have to pay for at all!

How did this turn into a gas rant? I love the British. They make great TV. And radio. And accents. But it's too late now to turn this post into anything else, as I have to go do more things with my eyes closed and my thoughts trained on England. I guess I'll just have to send this one out with apologies to the offended Brits. I love you guys.

Oh, and Mr. Tennant? The offer's still on the table.

David Tennant, will you marry me?

And talk to me in your sweet accent?

I don't have anything useful to say; I just had to see if it would work twice.

David Allen, will you marry me?

I am not, by nature, an organized person. I am a creative person. I make connections between things in all directions, not always in obvious ways. This means that while I like to categorize and organize and have structure, I am pretty bad at coming up with structure on my own, because I get overwhelmed by all the different ways it could be done.

Enter the eternally sexy David Allen. And by "sexy", I mean... balding middle-aged consultant in a suit. But any man- or woman, for that matter- who could come up with an organizational system that actually makes sense to me automatically earns the appellation "eternally sexy". It's a rule. Look it up.



I went out and splurged on this last night. It's moderately famous among geeky sorts, and I'd heard of it before but never really understood the concept. Turns out, it's this perfectly brilliant system for getting stuff out of your head, so you don't have to worry about it constantly.

I stayed up way late last night reading it, and by the time I was done with the second part, I was determined to set this system up for myself. So today was Implementation Day. I followed the rules, I worked through the flowchart, I got in touch with my inner office supply fetishist, and at the end of the day:



I have folders.



I have a calendar.



I have a workspace where I can do actual work. (My desk doesn't count, because the computer takes up the entire desktop).

And best of all, I got things done today. Lots of things. I made phone calls and sent emails and faxed in forms and put batteries in things and went to the library and changed the paraments and emptied (emptied!!!) both my email inboxes and even had time to do some knitting. Freakin' amazing.

I am a superhero of productivity.

I knew I had to get this into place before I leave for North Dakota, because the one thing that would have made college a million times better for me is the one thing I could never figure out: study skills. Up until college, school was so easy for me that I didn't have to schedule study time or plan to work on assignments before the night before. I never learned the sort of organizational and time-management tricks that were a matter of survival for most people before they got to university. It made my life miserable, but I could never figure out a better way.

Hooray for the people who can figure out better ways!

I predict this semester suddenly becomes a thousand times easier than any semester before.

Planning ahead

It's a skill I have in very limited quantities. Today I was subbing as a "media specialist", meaning "library front desk drone". I packed only my usual purse knitting, thinking that surely there would be books to check in and reshelve or something else library-ish to do, and an hour's worth of knitting was certainly more than enough to get me through the day.

WRONG.

By the end of my planning period, roughly halfway through the day, I was ready to graft the toe of the second Simple Seven sock. I always feel a little guilty when I knit while I'm working, but honestly, I checked out no more than ten books in the course of seven hours. There wasn't anything more work-relevant to do. The other front desk drone was reading a magazine (Vanity Fair, I think), so my time-killer was more productive than hers, or so I imagine. I got a wearable garment out of mine, at least.

The Simple Seven socks look like this:

Side view:

I'm not terribly impressed with them. The short row heel and toe left giant holes at the sides and don't even fit that well. I like the garter stitch effect, but I think I may be going back to the good ol' heel flap and wedge toe, which have never yet let me down.

I was a little disappointed in the TOFUtsies yarn, too. It tended to be a bit splitty, so I had to keep my eyes on my work at all times. Right now, I'm feeling the eye strain pretty bad. I can't wait for my new glasses to come in; I'm hoping they'll help with the headaches and eyestrain. Better lighting in the living room would probably do wonders as well.

These socks raise my WIPped into Shape total at 2 out of 8. I've got to get moving a bit faster on some of the other projects.

Dear Joe the Stalker,

Hi. It's me, the woman from Big Name Copy Store. Remember, the one you tried to walk home from work that one night, the one you kept staring at while she was working, the one whose manager told you, in essence, to perform physically impossible acts on yourself? The one who was enjoying her time at the library when you turned up?

I'm not screwing around any more. The police have your name and description, and buddy, they're on my side. And they are bigger and stronger than you.

Creep.

In closing, please go stick your bits in a clamp.

Absolutely no love under any circumstances, you perv,

Me

Doctor's orders

Compare, please, these two lists:

Doctor's List of Items to Avoid

• Citrus
  
• Raw vegetables
  
• Greasy or fatty foods
  
• Caffeine

Only Foods I Felt Like Eating This Week

• Oranges
  
• Baby carrots
  
• Peanut butter sandwiches
  
• Tea

The more I think about her list, the more my brain hurts. What, exactly, am I supposed to eat? Bananas and chicken broth? (Just the thought of chicken broth makes me want to urp. Yuck.)

So naturally, I picked up a pizza tonight. I feel better already.

Meet George.

This is George. He is my very first ball of handspun yarn. I am immensely proud of him.

I hope that he will now leave me alone so that I can actually get some knitting done.

Progress, regress, and progress in the wrong direction

The past few days have seemed to move very, very slowly, but at the same time it's incredible to me that the week is almost over.

I made some progress on WIPped into Shape Month. The first thing I did was finish the Boring Socks:

...which turned out to be a little short. I'm hoping they'll grow a little when they hit the water, but the last item I knit with this yarn (my HP house sweater) didn't grow at all. When it comes to knitting, I live in a near-permanent state of denial. Despite the sizing issues, this counts as my first finished object for the month.

I continued this trend by putting sleeves on the A-squared cardi. It was a big hit at the SnB last night; everyone got a chance to fondle the soft, soft alpaca and angora. I finished the second sleeve, but just barely: it was knitter vs. yarn in a race to the finish before I ran totally out. I have just enough of the main color left over to seam the underarms. Today I added the button bands, including my first ever buttonhole, which I'm not all that impressed with. There must be a neater way to make a buttonhole than cast off, cast on. At any rate, all that's left is to weave in the multitude of ends and add a button, so this cardi is very close to being finished.

I might have accomplished more on my WIP month goals except for a minor distraction that turned into a major time-suck: spinning. Now, I want to make clear at the outset that this was not my fault. I could have continued knitting happily all month were it not for Alice the Enabler, her drop spindle, and her English angora. (My idea of paradise now consists of rolling around naked in a pile of English angora. ...What?)

After Alice pushed her crack- er, spinning, on me last night, I remembered how much fun spinning was. And I remembered my drop spindle, and I remembered that big bag of lamb's wool in the seaweed-y colors, and three hours later:

A whole lot of single. My spinning is actually pretty consistent now, not thick and slubby like it was when I started. At some point, I'm going to have to figure out how to ply all this single, though, which is when I'll find out just how uneven my tension is. Ah, well. I'm learning a lot as I go.

And finally, some actual, practical, non-fiber progress. I had my first real interview with a Wycliffe rep yesterday! I'm starting the application process and taking my first real steps toward membership. It was exciting to sit down and look at plans and timelines and feel like my life was actually going somewhere.

The only real setback this week is, once again, this blasted cough I caught. It's back, it's mean, it's ugly, and this time it's actually starting to be painful. Warning to everyone: I'm back on the narcotics for the time being, drugged to the gills, falling asleep at completely inappropriate times, and with no filters between brain and mouth. Should be exciting.