Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

After a marathon evening of knitting, I’m done with K’s hat:

If I had to do bits of row 77 over again, I was going to scream. Actually, I did scream. Not too loud, didn’t want to scare the neighbors, but OMG I hate, hate, hate purl-2-together-through-the-back-loop now. I mean, nice effect, but given how tight a knitter I am, I kept having the damned stitches slip off the right needle while trying to get the thing through the back loop. Now that it’s done, I’m glad I picked the pattern – it was challenging, but not impossible.

For once being a tight knitter paid off – I finished it in one skein, no additional yarn needed. So glad it’s done now; hope she likes it, and gets back to work soon to tell me about it.

As far as habits and coping mechanisms, knitting seems to be a healthier alternative to drinking. So far.

Long, long, long day. We have agreement on the stimulus bill, but no text yet to see what’s changed and what they still left there and fucked up. And there was some truly fucked up stuff in there, like mandated competition for grants, all grants, even the ones which are just supposed to be spread among the states evenly by some sort of formula (because it’s smart to have, say, Delaware competing against New Jersey for grant money). Not brilliant, but typical of rushed legislation with good intentions.

Got several more rows done on the hat, the decreases and slips in the rounds have started. It’d look better if my stitches in the cables were more even, but I’m still pleased with how it’s coming out, and I think K will like it. There’s a bit of an increased urgency now, as she started chemo on Monday, and radiation this week as well (1 day of chemo, 5 of radiation each week – yowch). So I want to get it done and off to her this weekend so she’ll have it if she needs it. Plus I need to know if I’ll need any more of the yarn, since my one supply is waaaaay out in Vienna. It’s supposed to knit up from one skein, but that can vary, and I’ve heard other folks say they’ve needed a smidge more than a skein to finish these.

So, yeah, instead of going out to drink, or staying home to drink, I popped in more bad movies and got a bunch of knitting done. And now it’s crash time so I can hopefully get what I need to get done tomorrow done and get out of there to my PT appointment.

Got a random text from a friend this afternoon asking if I could do him a favor. He wasn’t feeling well, and needed to go to urgent care after work (both to get looked at, and to get a doctor’s excuse so he could stay home – yay stupid HR policies). Said yes, of course, skipping my swim workout and heading down to the wilds of Alexandria. Left home around 6, just got back in now (post-11pm).

I’m a wee bit tired.

Got him checked out, he’s got some non-specific bug that tested out as bacterial, so we got him some antibiotics, some dinner (at almost 10 – we were both pretty darned hungry by then), then I got him home, walking him up and making sure he got a fever reducer in him before I left.

On the upside, since I figured any “after hours” visit to a doctor (read: urgent care center) would involve a waiting room of some sort, I came prepared and managed to knit about 3 more inches onto the leg of a sock I’m working on (bringing the total on it to 5 inches [out of 8 planned], more than doubling the length while I waited). Yes, we were there that long. But at least I managed to be semi-productive while we/I waited.

Very glad I could help, but tomorrow is going to draaaaaaaaaaaag.

I left a party early rather than overdrink tonight. I knew the hosts (I had thought I only knew one, but it turns out I had met the other, also at a body electric event, a few years earlier), and a few guests, but not many of them. It was starting to get crowded in the house and I could tell if I stayed much longer I was going to end up drinking too much, so rather than do that I gave the excuse of an early morning to the hosts and absented myself from the gathering. Not perhaps the most socially adept thing I’ve ever done, but it was the right thing for me tonight.

Despite my declarations that I would be holed up inside my apartment until Wednesday morning, I did wander out into DC today to grab lunch with Chris up in Columbia Heights. Our first choice of restaurant was packed to the gills with a line out the door (at 1 pm, mind you), and the second choice had a 45 minute wait. We took the 2nd choice and zipped over to Best Buy to waste some time (setting a phone timer so we would know when to wander back). Got in relatively quickly after we returned, and had a perfectly nice lunch (not-quite-screaming-but-just-occasionally-fussy-baby notwithstanding).

The city is just abuzz. I haven’t seen it this packed in ages, and everyone is just full of this energy surrounding the inauguration, it’s wild. The Metro was busy, but not insane. Lots of “Is this our stop? This is our stop! Quick, get off the train!” type conversations going on, but for the most part folks were getting tickets and getting through the stalls pretty quickly and not being obnoxious about getting in and out of the cars and generally not being in the way. I am, however, glad I’ll not be going anywhere near Metro tomorrow. As busy as it was today, with 8 car trains and all of them relatively busy, tomorrow will promise to be a madhouse.

I’m glad I went out today, it was neat to see all these folks who are so excited to be here.

Had Chris over today to help me cull my clothing collection. 20-odd T-shirts went out, as well as polos, button downs, and others. Much space was made in the drawers and in the closet. All in all, four paper grocery bags got filled with neatly folded clothes. Also found some items I shall offer to my brother for his daughters (blankets our grandmother made, etc.) so perhaps they’ll get use rather than taking up space in my closet which could be better used.

As an enticement to come play fashion critic, I offered lunch. The menu, from The Voluptuous Vegan, was pomme frites, a roasted garlic and herbes de provence aiolï, citrus and cucumber salad, and a provençal stew with couscous. Was tasty, though the pomme frites could have been better (they kept sticking to the paper, making it difficult to turn them when needed).

Finally cleaned up all the dishes (thank heavens I was cleaning as I went along or I’d never have had room for it all), and inventoried and bagged the culled clothing. Relaxing now with a glass of the pinot grigio I opened for use in the stew, and enjoying not having any more dishes to clean. It did push home the need to replace the blinkin’ dishwasher, though – doing that many by hand was trying, and not good for my hands (yay eczema).

Dear Parental Units,

I’m taking a real, honest-to-heavens vacation in 2009, leave done been requested & approved, so I’m set. I will be gone & out of touch from 19 June 2009 to 5 July 2009. I think, outside of going to Ironman Canada with JT in 1999, that this is the first actual non-me-doing-a-race-or-other-family-related vacation that I’ve taken ever. So, just letting y’all know that I’ll be out of touch for those 2+ weeks for planning purposes.

Moose

Got the boys on their way just now. A quick, but fun visit with them.

When they were on their way here yesterday I asked Kelrick which cuisine he’d like, and got back an enthusiastic “Indian!” in response. Dragged them up to Adams Morgan and one of my favorite restaurants, Jyoti, where we all managed to quickly inhale a good appetizer sampler and the three dishes we ordered. Kel couldn’t stop raving about how much he loved the food – seems it’s difficult a) to find good Indian food in Houston and b) to get suthunuhs to go eat it when you can find it. So that was a lot of fun.

Next we wandered through Dupont and past the 17th St strip to Halo where we were confronted with the frou-frou drink menu from heck, compounded by the bar tender from heck (there was a modicum of attitude there, which his cheekbones, while impressive, did not warrant). Kenny and I ended up getting the blueberry lemonade, which was something of a production (they crush the lemon and blueberries in the glass in front of you), but which was very tasty and sweet. Kel had a blueberry vodka and 7. Thankfully for all involved there was couch space, which we grabbed, and as the alcohol took hold we slowly started commenting to each other on the crowd (I so love being gay just for that little bit of gay cattiness among friends). Brian and Fredo showed up after a bit, with a couple friends, and a little more talking was done, but the three of us were starting to feel a bit worn out by that point, so we got our 2-4-1 special refills and once those were done relinquished the couch to the other boys and caught a cab back to my place.

The plan this morning was for a 5:30 wake up, but a car alarm at quarter to 5 killed that, and when they heard me wander up to the bathroom shortly thereafter they went ahead and started breaking down the spare bed. Got ’em set in the moving van, and they’re off. I’m debating going back to bed, but it’s so warm outside that the apartment is a bit uncomfortable for sleep (and the downstairs neighbor must have been smoking cigarettes – had to light a candle in the bedroom this morning to try and kill the odor; yuck, but at least it wasn’t pot). Cooling the place down first with some cracked windows, then we’ll see about more sleep.

Yay, the arc lamp came in (from my order at the beginning of the month). Boo, the connector for the shade (on the arc) was completely crushed in transit. The base and shade (differently boxed) were fine, thankfully. Will have to drag it back tomorrow to the store and hope they either have a replacement in the back or that they can order a replacement piece quickly. I’d drag it back tonight but I’m waiting for Kelrick & Kenny to arrive now – they texted a bit ago and weren’t too far away.

Went out last night to JR’s, had fun seeing folks, chatting and what not. In a change of pace I had bourbon for the first time in forever (I’ve been sticking to wine & beer of late), and wasn’t too painful today from it. Met a couple boys as well, got some numbers. We’ll see how that works.

And there comes Kelrick, so I need to zip.

I find it amusing that I’ve avoided holiday music all year (since I don’t really shop in malls or big retails stores), but couldn’t escape it tonight while eating at a local Chinese restaurant.

A last minute surge in knitting yesterday paid off – all the projects I needed done by the holiday are now done. Hopefully my secretary at work will enjoy the fingerless gloves I made for her. (You can see them here and here) Sadly, my next big project will be a shedir cap for a co-worker of mine who has an advanced case of uterine cancer (stage 3c). We’re not sure when she’ll start the chemo, but it won’t be long. Picked up yarn for it on Saturday, a couple of colors (she only specified “anything but pink”).

Health update: The foot is still improving slowly, but is definitely better than it has been. Still not up for running, but not nearly as painful as it had been. The PA is completely healed again, no pain whatsoever. Huzzah – no more 2 am rude awakenings.

Date from heck on Wednesday of this past week. One of those “why do I bother with this whole thing?” kind of dates. Yuck. Leering at me over dinner? Oy.

My family neglected to give me my brother’s new address, so their present (a nice check) will be late. Oh well. My parents, on the other hand, are a bit more tech-savvy, so their wish lists were updated with the addy for the RV park where they are in Florida.

Started the planning process for next year’s newbie program for the tri club. Good group of volunteers, and I think this is going to go well.

Nice night with friends planned for tomorrow, and a quiet two days after that. Hosting Kelrick and his bf Kenny at some point in there on their way up to NYC. Will be good to see Kelrick, and meet Kenny.

Work approved the two weeks off in late June/early July, so I’m set to go to Comrades this next year. Dean has thoughtfully offered his services as host in the periods around when I’m supposed to be at the retreat, so I will be spending time on either side of it in the Bay area, with lots of time to catch up with folks there.