Random Bits

My ear hurts a lot so tomorrow it's off to meet not-my-doctor for the first time. The doctor who is my chosen primary care physician isn't in until Thursday, but apparently when one calls up with an earache, one is moved to the front of the queue.

On the other hand, this is just one of those "the East Coast is different than I expected it to be" moments. I'm pretty sure I could have gotten an appointment to see my own chose doctor this very week. This week! That's unheard of anywhere else I've lived, unless you were at death's door or some other patient kicked the bucket and freed up a slot.

I kept imagining how much more crowded it must be here in the East, since all the textbooks say folks had to move West to get land and stuff. But there's large tracts of land (hehehe) all over the freaking place, wide open farmlands and fields with horses wandering about on the hillside.

Yesterday afternoon I went over to Kate and Becca's house for a stitch n' bitch session and it was very nice. Emily's butter tart recipe proved to be authentic tasting, so I guess I'm doing it right after all. :) I knit a little bit of my True Love sock, messed up a stitch and decided to put it aside for the moment. Went back to knitting my Brooke's Column of Leaves scarf, which would totally have been finished by now if I hadn't decided to do three columns instead of one.

And then when I wandered home, I decided to start something completely different as I want to bring it to Candyce next weekend. It's almost completely done now, although it's not as good looking as I had hoped. Still, it feels very lovely as I used sock yarn held double to give it the proper weight. I'll take pictures of it when it's done, but won't post them till after my trip.

I hope my ear heals up by then.

Everything Hurts =\

Friday, twas cramps. Little stupid female cramps that really, really make me wish the plumbing would just dry up already. Haven't I already suffered enough for my ovaries in this lifetime?!

Since all I felt up to doing was sitting in the bark-o-lounger with Mittens as a heating pad, I knit and watched Inspector Lewis (I do like having on-demand Masterpiece Mysteries). By nightfall, however, I realized my True Love sock projct is going to be as painful as finding actual true love.

It's just not that into me. =\ The heel just wouldn't sit right. I frogged. I tinked. I tried out several variations on heels. None of them looked right and going by faith with the written instructions was a disaster.

Evidently, even having a map of True Love is not enough to let it find its way.

Ripped it all back late last night and thus have nothing to show for two days of knitting it. Blech. I will take it with me to Kate's house this afternoon for a Stitch 'n Bitch, together with a batch of Emily's butter tarts.

Even butter tarts hate me this weekend.

Topping this all off is a horrible ear ache in my left ear. The kind that makes swallowing painful, hearing muzzy and when coupled with my female complaints will at least get me into the bitching mood appropriate for this afternoon's fete.

Finishing Up

While in Austin, I finished off my Rib Fantastic socks, but I don't like how the toes turned out. They're both awfully shallow and I'm afraid they'll rub through. Hence, I'll be undoing the bind off and re-knitting the toes this weekend.

Meanwhile, however, I started up another pair of socks. This time, the pattern is Tidal Wave. That said, I think I have already messed it up, quite possibly at the point in time where the girl in the seat beside me on the plane began heaving into her airsick bag. =\ Could have been a lot worse (her illness, not the sock)...fortunately, she wasn't as sick as she could have been. Still...yucko!

Speaking of yucko, did I mention that I was sequestered for the better part of a day in Steve's hotel room? We added timing and style to our presentation and observed this happy note on the desk. Invasion of the crickets follows me to Austin! Aiee!

Added some Austin photos to my Flickr page. I'm not sure what the motivation is for me to take photos. Sometimes it's because I see something beautiful and want to remember it. Other times, like this morning, I see something unusual and try to capture it. I wish I had a better camera, but oh, well. I can only do so much :)

Over in Austin!

Our panel is done! Yay! We didn't kill each other beforehand or afterwards, so that's good. I like working with Steve (most of the time) and today we worked together well. Some times, things work out.

Kramer noticed that there's already an article about our session up at GameSpot. Whoa. The dude must have left our panel and immediately posted it. Guess we were very inspirational. :)

On the way home tonight, Sushi and I stopped for...sushi! At a mobile stand! It was really good stuff.

Tomorrow, I relax and attend a couple of oher sessions. Then on Thursday I head home. The days went by very quickly. I've had a good time and great eats!

Little Women - A (Scathing) Review

A classic tale, a movie filled with stars...what's not to like?

Quite a lot, actually. I haven't seen this version of Little Women since it came out in theaters, but it's been a free on demand movie so I watched it again. Now remember why I didn't like it.

First, you have Winona Ryder as Jo. Winona is beautiful; Jo wasn't. When you have someone so lovely in this role, you really need to have other beautiful actresses to pull off Meg and Amy. Since this film was apparently by the Winona Ryder Fan Club, she is the best looking of the sisters by far. While Trini Alvarado is pretty, she isn't pretty enough to be Meg when you have Winona as Jo.

That makes every time Jo says something about how she's the least pretty of the sisters come off completely false. When Amy cries out about Jo's hair being Jo's one beauty...are you kidding me? Winona-Jo is gorgeous with or without hair!

Kirsten Dunst does a credible job as young Amy, but Samantha Mathis is a disaster as the older Amy. I don't think this was her first acting gig, but it certainly seemed that way. She was stilted and not very charming. Charm is Amy's best virtue, but you'd never know it to watch Samantha in the role. Her only virtue is that she bears a sibling-like resemblence to Claire Danes, who was the healthiest Beth I've ever seen. That's not a bad thing, in and of itself, and Claire was good at being shy and retiring. But still.

Let me pause for a moment to mention how disgusting it is to observe over the edge of this laptop that Melody is snarfing down a spider she has slain. =\ Anyway...

And then, there is Christian Bale. Ladies of the jury, I ask you: Even if you thought you'd be miserable married to him because he was your best friend, wouldn't you want to wake up to that man? I certainly would! And seeing that he and Winona-Jo are the most beautiful people in the movie, and given how many other aspects of it were changed from the book, they should have continued the blasphemy by having Jo marry Laurie.

Finally, there's all the kissing. I suppose they wanted to jazz things up a bit by having romantic interludes that meant business. Hence, you observe Meg swapping spit with John Brooke (another miserable miscasting...I mean, really...Eric Stoltz?!) in the doorway of her parents' home. And Winona-Jo getting busy with Mr. Bhaer backstage at the opera. WTF?! Jo wouldn't do such a thing!

By the time the end credits were rolling, I was seething with irritation. This is one of my favorite books. I still cry when reading about Beth's passing. While it would be too much to ask for movie makers to film everything exactly as it happens in a book, this version of Little Women misses so many marks.

There are nice things about it. The costumes are lovely and the settings are great. Winona is a very good Jo, other than the fact that she overshadows everyone else in the film besides Susan Sarandon (who is a kick-ass Marmee). It's a visually appealing film. But it's not true in some fundamental ways to the book, and that's a real shame. I'm sure that since the movie came out in 1994, there are little girls who think this is what the book is really like.

What you should do is balance a viewing of this film with the George Cukor version starring Katherine Hepburn. It's not precisely true to the book either, but it gets a lot of the elements right that the 1994 movie completely disregarded. And Ms. Hepburn is completely believable as a gangly girl who doesn't think she's good-looking. Clearly, she is, but it's a challenging beauty that's the perfect fit for a character like Jo.

Labor Day Weekend

I'm spending the weekend knitting, shifting boxes and curled up with Mittens tucked beside me. Not necessarily all at the same time, mind you.

Since it's a long weekend, I had considered going for a long, long drive in the country. You might think that, having just driven over a week to get here, I wouldn't be interested in spending any more time in Jane Grey than is absolutely necessary. But she's so comfy, so pretty and this area is growing on me the more of it I see. Some days I drive home by going ten miles out of my way, just so I can come home via the "airplane bridge" that crosses the end of the loch and passes some lovely little homes perched directly beside the road.

Both of you who read the blog know by now that Dan and I decided that long distance relationship is not for us. It's been very difficult for me in particular since I'm so far from everyone and I am (no surprise) still in love with him. Still, we were friends before and we'll get back to being friends now that it's after. It's just not after enough for my little heart.


Meanwhile, though, I've completed my Blackrose lace socks and immediately cast on the next project, shown above. I'm using a beautifully soft Dream in Color yarn called "Stardust." It is washable wool with a thin silvery thread shot through it such that it has a gentle sparkle. I love it. I thought knitting with the Panda Superwash was lovely, but this new yarn is lush and sooooo soft.

Boxhenge still takes up a good part of my life. I shift boxes from one room to the next. Part of why I'm not being so efficient at this is that I've peered into the exterior storage room that came with my apartment to see how much I could put away there. On the back wall were two very large, very scary-looking bugs. I think they are from the cricket family, but they were certainly very frightening to me. I do not want to go out there later and find that one of these dudes has gotten into my Christmas decor or something. Hence, I'm not using that outdoor closet and am running out of places to hide flattened cardboard boxes.

Maybe I can turn them into cat furniture.