Check out the virtual fortune cookie I just opened:
 | My Fortune Cookie told me: Your wounds are strangely shaped. Get a cookie from Miss Fortune |
That's the way I feel about the holidays this year. I just can't quite get there - getting presents bought, finishing knitted presents, wrapping said presents, no holiday baking, excessive tiredness when I do get away from the house. My mood today was rather battered after having to go out last minute shopping again. Then coming home to a corrupted Playstation 2 memory card. Of course, it had to wipe out our Guitar Hero 2 data. :P I'm having a bah humbug kind of day.
Whew! I'm back, in the knitting chair again anyway. Still mighty sore though post-surgery. I'm single-handedly trying to bring back the baggy pants look of the late 90s since I can't even contemplate wearing something with a waist band around my actual waist. What I hadn't counted on was my bout with Vicoden and only being able to fight pain with Advil. :-/ (For the record, the half life of Vioden post ingestion is 12 hours and I was sick as a dog for exactly 12 hours.) Nor the fact that I would be a Slitheen for days afterwards either. Lovely.
Yesterday, I did feel well enough to pick up the needles to make actual progress on Christmas knitting. I finished the first of a pair of socks.
Hello, this is lk's husband. She got through the surgery just fine and is home resting and recoving. Tomorrow I'll be setting up my laptop for her bedside so she can post and such if she feels well enough.
Just wanted to let you all know she's home doing great.
Tomorrow's the big day. I go in for gallbladder surgery tomorrow morning. Needless to say, I'm a big bundle of nerves tonight. Wish me luck :-/
Dial-up readers beware, very picture heavy post!
I enjoy acronyms, almost as much as I enjoyed a surprise secret pal package on my doorstep this afternoon. :) Thank you so very, very much to my Winter Cheer Secret Pal, KnitChick07! :) 
As usual, I miscalculated my vacation for 2006 and found an additional 4 hours. I took this afternoon off and headed up to my hometown.
If this blog was a house plant, it would be dead and shriveled. Mea culpa, dear readers!
I've been deeply entrenched in holiday knitting. Here's my current project. By this time, it should look rather familiar. It's my third Koigu Clapotis.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Yeah, it's been Thanksgiving for 15 whole minutes now. I've got quite a lot to be thankful for. Loving family, awesome friends, great dog (even though he does pee on said friends' coats--sorry Phollower!), decent health, and lots of great times. Oh, and I'm thankful for beating Guitar Hero 2 on medium tonight. I thought I was hot stuff playing the requested "Freebird" at the end of the show at Stonehenge. Then, I saw this video. Damn...
**Warning: Very Picture Heavy Post!**
First off to answer Lorr's question as to how I got the Austermann socks to match up so well, I have to say "I dunno". I did absolutely no work to see if they would match up. These are down to the row count the same though :)
I've been going a bit loopy buying sock yarn these past few weeks. With buying Socks that Rock for my downstream SP, frantically lurking Sunshine Yarn, and visiting my LYS, I should be set for quite awhile on sock yarn. Not that it will keep me from buying more.
What a weekend! Good thing I have this week off for vacation time :)
Saturday, I drove my mom and sister to Washington, Pennsylvania to meet up with my grandparents. They're taking vacation this week to spend time with our family in Pennsylvania. Wonderful time for my mom's car to decide to die completely, and alternate transportation like flying or taking a bus were very prohibitively expensive. I knew I did the right thing though when I saw my sister's reaction to finally seeing our grandparents after 3 years. The drive back Saturday night wasn't too bad considering I was by my lonesome self in the SUV. I had Harry Potter audio books on my iPod to keep me company. 
Wow, what a day! I've been running around like a crazy woman most of today. Feels nice to be able to sit a spell. I was able to get about 90% of Christmas shopping for Hubs finished. I even got a good deal, woo!!!
Knitting action has been limited this week to the Austermann socks I showed in the previous post. I have one finished and have the cuff knitted on the second.
I had something weird happen today while I was waiting in my car for an oil change. Valvoline was really packed, so I had about a 20 minute wait in my car for an open bay. No biggie, I had my sock in progress with me, so I sat in my parked car and knitted. A little bit later, a lady comes up to my window. She said that she noticed that I was knitting and asked if I could teach her how to knit. I'm not one to horde knowledge, so I got her business card and will contact her about showing her the ropes.
Speaking of teaching folks how to knit, Wednesday's foray into teaching knitting was a smashing success. Within a few minutes of learning how to cast on and do the knit stitch, all four ladies were garter stitching away. I had a blast :) So did Bandit, even though he was attempting to run everyone off with horrendous gas!
This afternoon I was greeted by a package on my front stoop. Thinking it was some of the sock yarn I've been ordering. (Gotta stock up before surgery in December, you know!) Upon picking it up, no way it was a couple of skeins of sock yarn. It was an SP package from the Winter Cheer exchange!
Evidence that I actually still do knit. First a finished hat.
I had to make a new word to convey my thoughts of Trans-Siberian Orchestra's concert Wednesday night. It was frantabulous! Excellent music delivery, extensive lighting and laser effects, and fireballs. Tell me, how can a concert go wrong when fireballs are included? I could watch a K Fed concert if it included synchronized fireballs going in the background. Maybe I’m part insect, I’m just drawn to bright flashy lights…I digress.
Upon arrival, we were met with big warning signs that strobe lights will be used. That would have been really useful information to have known when I ordered tickets since my mom gets massive migraines from strobe lighting. Mom spent a decent chunk of the concert covering her eyes to not get sick when the strobes were in use. Luckily, it wasn’t too often, and she had no ill effects.
For ordering four consecutive seats a week before the show, I couldn’t have asked for better ones. Kris was really happy that we had an aisle seat, so he didn't have to keep his legs folded for three hours. :) I was actually pretty glad I wasn’t able to get floor tickets as, you know, it’s a floor and not staggered in height so short folk like me couldn’t see squat. We were seated in the lower level a few sections in front of a massive stack of amps. One of these days I’ll learn to take earplugs to rock concerts so I can actually hear after them.
Guitar Hero 2 was released today, and I picked up our copy after casting my vote this evening. Kris and I spent the evening running through career mode on easy mode to open up new songs and such. We finally have two guitar controllers for the game so we can play co-op or versus. (I totally beat him on "Heart-Shaped Box".) I'm rather shocked that my fingers are working well enough to type now. Best part of the game, the Trogdor song from Strongbad Emails is included as a song that can be bought with in game cash earned from gigs. Can't wait to get access to the Trogdor song!!
**Side note, the title is a reference to Strongbad's Guitar email if you're not familiar with SB emails**
As alluded to in my second to last post, Kris and I went to speak to the surgeon on Thursday. I'll be sans gallbladder as of December 12th - joy. Nothing like recouperating from surgery right before the holidays. :-/ I had Kris go in with me to keep me honest and go through with scheduling the procedure because I'm basically scared to death of surgery. Feh. Thanks for all your words of support to this scardey-cat :)
With the possibility of being laid up for up to a week or more, I went Friday morning to stock up on sock yarn at my LYS. 'Cause, you know, I might need more sock yarn... Pics will be forth coming later on this week as we've had crummy overcast weekend weather which doesn't help my poor photo skillz. :) I got Koigu, Wildfoote, and Fleece Artist sock yarns, so I have to be able to do these colors justice.
I finished my second Christmas gift knitting project this afternoon. A pair of socks!
Out of character for us, Hubs and I have been taking in more concerts than usual lately. Yeah, that means we'll be going to at least two this year. For me to justify laying out money for concert tickets, I have to be damn sure I'll like the way a band sounds live before I order tickets. I'm picky about live music; performing for a few years through high school and college with some fab musical groups have spoiled my ears. Live music just isn't enjoyable to me if I hear warbly out of tune notes.
On a surprising move from my snobbish concert goer ways, Hubs and I went to see Joseph Arthur with Zoe and BP last month. Before going to the smokey bar to see him perform live, I'd only listened to the first few seconds off a CD. "Cool, it's acoustic. I'm in." was my only precursive reaction.
What I hadn't counted on was a fab, rockin' three hours! My favorite song of the night performance-wise was "Slide Away". Holy crap, does he have vocal range! Oh, and a theremin. :) We were TP-ed by a leaf blower towards the end of "Electrical Storm". I really enjoyed the off-the-cuff antics and improvisation, particularly around a story of the varicose veins on a fake leg they had on stage. The highlight of the evening was during the finale of "Honey and the Moon". Joseph came out into the small crowd at Birdy's and went right up to BP and had her sing along with the chorus into his mike. Thus sealing the deal that I had to buy a copy of that concert's live album. I still get a big grin on my face when I hear that song on my iPod. Fun times, good friends, and wonderful music! :) Yeah, I listened to the Joseph Arthur playlist for the majority of the drive to PA the next week.
Next Wednesday, we'll be catching Trans-Siberian Orchestra at Conseco Fieldhouse. As I got my mom and sister hooked on TSO last year, they'll be coming, too. Nothing quite like Christmas music in early November. :) They tour with a 14 musicians, 14 vocalists, and 2 narrators. I've heard that they're fab live, so I'm really excited about this show. I wanted to get tickets to last year's concert, but cashola was no-go-a. Look for a write-up maybe late next week, or hell, almost a month from now if I'm as up on my blogging as I was for the Joseph Arthur concert :)
Crap. I go tomorrow morning to speak with a surgeon about my gallbladder. I went to my primary doctor today for a sinus infection and asked for his opinion regarding my pesky gallstones. He recommended that it needs to come out. *sigh*
Can't wait to see what type of reaction I get when I tell the surgeon that I'm terrified of being put under. Too many Discovery Health Channel specials of "the paralitic drug worked, but I was still awake and congnizant" to leave me with warm fuzzies. :(
My write-up of our trip to Pennsylvania!
