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

Been knitting a Santa hat the last couple of days. Chunky yarn and an easy pattern (1×1 ribbing for the brim, and all knit stitch for the body), so it’s been knitting up quickly. Unfortunately the pattern underestimated how much yarn I’d need, so I’ll have to run down to Dupont to get another skein of the red for the body so I can finish it. Might get three more (2 red, 1 off-white) and then I’d have the option to knit a second one if I got the bug.

We got our photos done for the Xmas cards this morning. Then home for a brief rest and off to see Wicked, Part 1. It was really, really good. They went back to the book to flesh out some more of the stories, and it felt like a movie, and not like a stage show that was badly adapted to moving pictures (like so many movie musicals do).

Restarted my Netflix dvd mailings this week. Having finally watched Milk, which sat on my entertainment center for several months, I’m watching Titus this evening, one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest plays. Saw this adaptation many years ago, and I think it still holds up well. Revenge, rape, honor, murder, revenge. One of my favorite plays, and one not often performed because of the graphic violence.

Seeing the boy later this evening after dinner plans of his. He’s been asking for things to do for me, so I’m going to set him loose on a couple of things in my apartment, starting this weekend. It’s finally time to renovate a thing or two here, and I can certainly use the help, both in choosing things, and installing the same.

Okay, thank you Netflix for partnering with everyone under the sun. Here I was thinking I’d need to buy another computer or HD TiVo or some sort of device to play the “watch instantly” movies (while still being able to chat on the laptop, mind you), and while playing with the Xbox this morning I discovered I could watch them via a free download on that device. It’s nice to not have to spend more money for entertainment, and also good since the Xbox is the only thing plugged into the TV with HDMI at this point, so the picture quality is pretty good, even for downloaded content.

The week was an odd one, with the swings in weather and going out to be social and work oddities. Now that we’re past the initial stages of stimulus work, it’s getting down to crunch times for many offices – implementation and distribution of funds. Which means a lot of serious work, as well as the occasional eyebrow-raising inquiry (seriously, you think that a contract to maintain and develop a web site for aid recipients to report their progress doesn’t fall squarely within the definition of “management and oversight” of your program? please).

Finally running time machine this morning with my backup drive. A bit late, I know, but will be good to have it done at last. Cold wash got done, dinner plans with Richard and his new beau this evening. Need to get to the grocery store soon (tonight? tomorrow? not completely out of food but it’s getting there). Date planned for Monday. At some point I should get in a long bike ride this weekend. Need to finish up a sock I’m working on so I can get started on its mate. All these little necessities of life which catch up if you don’t keep up with them.

Now comes the difficult part – trying to get things fixed in the conference on the stimulus bill. Ugh.

Seem to have irritated my foot, not in the plantar fasciitis sense, but a sprain on the top of it. Yay for overdoing it. Guess the swim last night was a tad too much.

Because it was so irritated, tonight was a night off from things, watching a couple of bad movies (“The Seeker,” and “The Apple”), with some more progress made on my co-worker K’s hat:

It’s about halfway done now, with most of the repetitive cabling done – 1.25 repeats left of the main repeat, then I start the decreases to the top. Might get it done this weekend so I can get it off to her.

Well, despite my irritation over the non-work the cult co-op maintenance folks did on my unit today, I actually had a pretty good evening. Ordered in Thai with a friend, did laundry, and we watched Stardust, which I’d picked up this past weekend. I’d seen it in the movie theater with BC, but I’m glad I picked up a copy as it’s a very fun and cute little film. Not my usual “bad movie” type of thing, but I do like a little sappiness and silliness on occasion.

Get to see Richard tomorrow for dinner and a good look at the living room and some possibilities I’m considering. I value his opinion, and I think it’ll be useful to have someone like him look at what I’m considering before I go nuts.

Just checked the TSP web site and it’s showing that the loan I took out to get rid of my remaining credit card debt is now paid off in full. Sweet! One less payment each month, even if it was an automatic deduction. More money in the pocket is a good thing, even if it’s just going to go to more student loan reduction. Bit by bit it disappears.

Hopefully I’m going to get out of town for Labor Day. Leave is approved, waiting to hear on accommodations, then I’ll purchase the tickets tomorrow evening if all goes well.

Just as I was wondering how my other friends who knit find time to do it, I discovered the secret to getting myself to sit down and do it: have a really busy, stressful day at work.

Came home from work, sort of ate. Loaded up the Resident Evil movies on the TiVo, and proceeded to add several inches to the scarf, I’m guessing at little over a third of what’s on it now was added over the past couple of hours tonight. And it was quite soothing, with the movies, the rain and hail, and the repetitive nature of this particular project (31 stitches, RS: k1, *k1b, p1, repeat and k1 at end; WS: *k1, p1, repeat). Precisely what I needed to get law, and work, off the brain.

Going to be interesting soon – I’m almost done with the first skein, so I’m going to have to switch off shortly. Shouldn’t be difficult, but it’s another new step to take. Not tonight, too tired for that, but soon.

• Went dancing last night. First time in years (literally). Had a friend ask BC if he had known I could dance. His response: “Oh course; I’ve slept with him.”
• Saw Rambo this past week. The highlight: a trailer for Midnight Meat Train. The trailer was all serious, looked good, Wes Craven, etc., then they announced the title in this deep, serious voice. I about spit out the water I was drinking. So going to see it when it’s out.
• Brunch sometime around 3 this afternoon, after recovering from last night. Dragged Brian out for it, and was good to see him.
• Busy, busy at work. Not sure that there’s an end in sight for any of it, but I’ll just keep slogging through it.
• Did a sample swatch of stockinette stitch (finally taught myself to purl yesterday), and learned how to bind off the swatches. I need to go get a needle so I can weave in the ends. That and drag BC to Stitch to pick out some thread for a scarf. Which will be a good excuse to pick up more needles, too, since the pattern calls for a circular needle (I know, it’s not strictly necessary, but hey, why not?).
• And with that, it’s crash time

Back to the training grind this morning. Short run before work, and a short swim this evening. Felt good to get back in the pool, but I definitely need to work on drills again – my form started to fade too quickly as the swim went on. I did do some limited drills among the laps, but I need to look back at my materials to refresh my memory on them.

Oh, and training 2x a day = getting home to my body screaming “FOOD!” It’s a good thing I went to the farmers’ market on Sunday.

Work was … work. Thought a particular crisis was going to come to a head, but no calls, so I assume we’re still in a holding pattern there. I’m feeling somewhat unmotivated, but I suspect that’s the decaffeination talking.

Bike ride planned for the morning, and I hear I’m going to see the new Rambo movie tomorrow evening with BC. Promises to be a real stinker, which should be nicely amusing.

Well, that was a pleasant way to spend a weekend. Most of it was, thankfully, spent with BC. Quiet night in on Friday. He went home for a good chunk of Saturday, then came back that evening for an outing.

We headed out with friends for drinks, dinner and Cloverfield Saturday evening. The camera work did not make me sick, though I suspect it was a one-time watch for me (big screen – good; small screen – meh; at least that was my impression of it). I do also have to echo another bloggers comment that “I wanted to see more monster, and less people.” The relationship drama stuff could have been cut down in order to see more of the actual attack, and I suspect any military folks watching (as was the premise at the beginning) would have edited out all that extraneous stuff in favor of “more monster.”

We were very nearly late to dinner because, well, in the spirit of MAL (which we did not attend) I attacked him in some of my Nasty Pig gear when he came in the door about an hour before we had to head out. That was quite fun.

Sunday was langorous. We finally bestirred ourselves from some gaming in the morning after sleeping in (Mass Effect on the Xbox for me, Bioshock on his laptop for him), got a nice big late lunch at Thai Tanic, then picked up stuff at Whole Paycheck for a mushroom & sun-dried tomato risotto that evening. Yum!! Fantastic recipe out of Vegan with a Vengeance, though I modified it slightly (more rice, mainly). We were glad to spend most of the day indoors, since the temps never really made it out of the 20s. Poor BC forgot to bring gloves, so when we hauled the groceries back to the car (two bags total) I handed him one of mine for his bag. He laughed, but still took it gratefully as we wandered back, one gloved hand with groceries out, one hand firmly ensconced in a pocket.

Unfortunately he had to work today, but we have date plans tomorrow – another nice night in with movie and some soup (a curried split pea soup, to be precise). For most of the day I was a bum. Did hop on the bicycle trainer to spin out a few miles for a little over an hour, but mostly played more Mass Effect. Beat the game late this evening playing on “casual” mode, so I’ll have to play it through later on a more difficult level. For now it’s back to one or more of the games on the Wii, I suspect, so I can finish those and perhaps lend them to BC.

Back to the salt mines tomorrow, though even with all the other stuff I was doing this weekend I think I came up with a solution to a sticky wicket one of our programs has gotten into by mis-reading some of my office’s advice. Clarification (to the program; not here) shall be forthcoming tomorrow.

Went to see Enchanted with BC on Monday. I most decidedly did not cry at the end; I had something in my eye. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, so there.

Dinner tonight with RNJTM to talk Ironman and life in general. Should be fun, as always.

Seeing BC Friday & Saturday & hopefully Sunday as well. It’s to be a full weekend – Grubbycrawl tomorrow, two events on Saturday, plus the start of the USAT club challenge (meaning I have to get off my butt and go swim and run). Looking forward to all of it, and looking forward to doing all of it with BC. We’ve had some integration of stuff with friends, but are still working on the mutual introductions. He gets to meet more of mine this weekend, which’ll be good.