Random blog post

I'm awake when I want to be asleep. Must learn to control rage.

This is not what I am angry about, but I thought I'd ask: does anyone think those Prius commercials, the ones where people take the place of nature, are kind of disturbing? They remind me of that old Star Trek episode where Kirk is trapped on a model of the Enterprise with a woman who wants to catch germs from him so she can infect her planet and let some people die. At some point you get a glimpse out the window and the people, dressed in tight bodysuits, are packed in cheek by jowl with this kind of soulless misery on their faces. That's what I think of when I see the Prius commercials: not harmony between man, machine and nature, or whatever it is they're spouting, but nature so completely overrun by people that there is no nature left.

Not exactly the message a commercial for a hybrid car is supposed to be giving me, I suspect.

I'm not so sure about this parenting thing

So, after a long silence, I’m back. I have been feeling much better, although I am now getting to the point where I feel huge, so the period of comfort was fleeting.

I have come through my company’s busy season in one piece. We do overnight high school graduation parties, so June is crazy busy. Last year I worked the parties themselves; this year, because I didn’t think I could be on my feet all night, instead I stayed in the office overnight and manned the phones—a sort of nerve center of operations for nights when we had multiple parties going on. I worked 11 overnight shifts in a row, and boy, was my sleep schedule messed up!

Prior to the graduation season, it loomed like a huge monolith on the horizon and I could not see past it. Now that I am on the other side, I am thinking about September, when the baby is due. As I start to have trouble getting out of bed each morning (both literally—who knew sitting up was such a chore?—and figuratively—I could sleep all day if I didn’t have to get to work) the baby is making his presence known at every moment.

Oh yes, “his.” It’s a boy. I was surprised, I think because I was assuming the baby was a girl because I’m a girl. Duh.

Anyway, with the graduation season just past, I’ve been thinking about kids and what makes a successful parent. These parties are celebrations of an achievement, yes, but I don’t know that graduating from high school is the landmark it once was. Are these kids really adults now, and are their parents’ jobs really finished? Somehow, I doubt it.

We ask a few of the kids at each party to fill out evaluation forms to let us know what they thought of the party. Reading through them, I’ve been rather appalled at how few high school graduates can spell well, and how few can form complete and coherent sentences. Our boss’s 17-year-old daughter has been working in our office the past few weeks, and when she was asked to file a series of documents alphabetically in boxes, she asked for 24 separate boxes, one for each letter in the alphabet (yes, 24. Don’t ask). She had to have it explained to her several times that when you alphabetize things, each letter doesn’t need to have its own box; you can start with A and keep going though B and C until you run out of room in the first box, then start a new box. And it is not the first time I’ve heard of a teenager being unaware that one continues alphabetizing beyond the first letter of a word. That is, Aaron comes before Abel, and it’s not enough to just throw all the A’s in one spot willy-nilly.

All of this had me very down. I came home and said to my sweetie that I expected our son to be able to write whole sentences without spelling errors, and that he had better know how to alphabetize by the time he hits junior high, much less by the time he’s graduating from high school. I fretted, “What if our kid is stupid and I don’t like him because of that?” It’s one of my faults that I have a very low tolerance for stupidity, and though I’ve worked on it, I don’t know how I’d react if my kid were stupid.

My sweetie looked at me like I was nuts (he often does) and suggested that perhaps, at least on the subject of spelling and alphabetizing, we as parents might have a little bit of influence in the matter. Which I would take comfort in, except that I seriously doubt that any of these kids’ parents set out to make sure their kids didn’t know there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

So, what happened? I mean, I don’t know how much my parents taught me about these things. I know they emphasized the importance of school, and that I should get good grades. But other than trying to teach me the multiplication tables a grade early at home, I don’t recall them really actively helping me with school work or teaching me anything in particular. I definitely learned to alphabetize at school—I can remember it. I assume my boss’s daughter did, too: why didn’t she retain it?

On the other hand, my parents, who both learned English in their teens, never say “lay down” when they mean “lie down,” never say “he and I” (or, worse, “him and I”) when it should be “him and me,” write in complete sentences with good spelling and never confuse “it’s” and “its.” So maybe there’s something to leading by example.

Friends tell me that my sweetie and I will be good parents. But I don’t think anyone plans to be a bad parent, so I want to know: how can you tell? I don’t think my parents were great parents, but they weren’t bad parents. I think they muddled through. I think a lot of parents muddle through. They do the best they can. And school stuff is relatively easy to measure; if I wanted to be obsessive, I could play my son music in the womb, teach him sign language at age one, grill him with flash cards at age three, enroll him in five hundred programs by age six that will teach him three languages, how to do geometry proofs and the basic principles of chemistry by age ten. I am fairly sure that with a little effort I could sit at his high school graduation confident that he knows how to alphabetize.

But: will he know how to think? Will he know how to be compassionate? Will he know how to work hard? Will he know the world doesn't owe him anything?

Hah. Let me fret for now about what I will do if he's stupid. We'll worry next week about what I will do if he's lazy, narcissistic, mean, or downright evil.

In hiding

OK, so, I have been in hiding. I haven't felt much like blogging, or emailing anyone, or talking on the phone, or being a generally socially bearable person. It's hard to go to work. I suspect I am a little depressed.

Why, you might ask?

I'm pregnant.

With that intro, it might be a surprise to hear that this was planned, and I really wanted it. Heck, I still want it--we always knew we wanted kids, and I'm grateful, given how old I am, that it was relatively easy to get pregnant. And so far, things seem to be progressing well.

What I wasn't prepared for was the feeling lousy. For about six to eight weeks there, I felt lousy 24 hours a day, every single day. For the last two or three weeks (I just finished my 16th week), I've been feeling better, but it's precarious: if I eat the wrong thing, or, worse, fail to eat something, I'm back to feeling terrible.

Of course I've heard women complain about feeling lousy during pregnancy. I thought I was prepared for that. But what I wasn't prepared for was the mental and emotional strain of feeling lousy. I don't enjoy being sick--I'm very impatient with it--and feeling lousy every minute of every day for weeks on end tried my patience pretty much to the breaking point. I'm amazed by how little I care to do anything: I don't want to cook or eat (eating doesn't make me nauseated, I just don't feel like eating), I'm not interested in blogging or knitting or working. I just want to sleep all the time, because when I'm sleeping, I don't feel lousy. I am a total wimp.

On top of it, I feel guilty: after all, I'm not barfing fifty times a day, like some women I hear about. I'm not in pain. I just...don't feel 100%. Big, fat, hairy deal. I'm disgusted and embarrassed by how much this has bothered me. I have friends who are struggling with cancer and parents dying, and I'm whining about a little intestinal trouble. I have a sweet, wonderful husband who has made so many accommodations for me and has barely complained that I hardly ever cook any more, I never clean, and I just lie about and don't want to do anything. In fact, a couple weeks ago he actually thanked me for just being quiet and low-energy, and not turning into a demanding unreasonable bitch from hell, which friends of his have said pregnant women generally do. I felt awful that I get points for not being nasty, when actually I think I've been pretty pathetic and letting him/making him do all the work of our marriage.

I commented to people at work that I feel cranky all the time, and they claim that they haven't noticed. In fact, compared to the *last* pregnant woman they had here, I am apparently keeping up my efficiency quite well, even though I feel like I'm working in a fog and taking bathroom breaks every five minutes.

So, maybe the patheticness has been all in my head. I'm not sure how to get out of it, but it's not especially fun. Hopefully if the weather starts to improve I will feel better: last week there were actually some sunny, warmish days, and I was amazed at how much better I felt.

I am in hiding, or maybe it's hibernation. But hopefully I'll be coming out soon.

Playing Catchup

Sooo, I've been very lax updating the blog.  Lots has been going on!

For one thing, we bought a new car:

Well, new to us, anyway.  It's actually a 2000 Mazda MPV, with 110,000 miles on it.  Hey: it was cheap.  It also smells very, very strongly of some sort of nasty aggressive air "freshener".  It smells terrible, but fortunately it's the car my sweetie is driving, and it doesn't bother him as much as it bothers me.  That hasn't stopped him from naming it Stinky, however :-)

Some knitting catchup:

The finished Amused.  I've already worn it several times.  The Cash Iroha doesn't seem like it will wear terribly well, but I still think it's beautiful, and the color just sings.

I made a few mods, the most bizarre of which was making the left sleeve about half and inch longer than the right.  I carry my left shoulder higher, and that made the sleeve look shorter.  The weirdest thing about it is that I don't really notice it in other clothes; maybe it was because I was making this one--I got picky!

Tuesday was out first anniversary--we made it!  We spent the weekend in Vancouver; pics to come.

Serious knitting

So, here are some boring knitting details.  Non-knitters can skip to the end of the entry :-).

I'm almost done with Amused--just one sleeve to go!  I still love the pattern, although I discovered a problem with the collar as written in the pattern, and it caused me considerable agita for a while there.  I fixed it, though, and am rather proud of myself: this is my first real cable project, so having to fix a problem with the cable pattern was not easy, in particular because this is a two-sided cable (ie, it needs to look good from both sides of the fabric).  It involved a fair bit of frogging, which didn't make the yarn very happy, but it was worth it.

I still love the yarn, which is really lovely deep purple (the pics are not really accurate).  I am looking forward to being able to wear this one--when I try it on (the advantage of a top-down construction), it looks really nice.  I'm pretty happy about this, too, because to be honest, I don't wear a lot of my handknits, because I usually make something where I love the pattern, but the finished project is a little too wild or uncomfortable or sleeveless for me to wear often.  I think this one is a winner, though.

Knitting content over now; feel free to turn up the volume :-).

So, I haven't mentioned it on the blog, but my sweetie has landed a new job.  He managed this feat just two weeks after he received his notice at WaMu, before Christmas.  It was a huge load off our minds, let me tell you!  We were especially amused by my parents' reaction: you see, I've only known my sweetie for three years, and my dad only met him after we got engaged (my mom had met him a few months prior, when she came to NY for a visit), so they don't know him well.  My parents *like* him, but I think they were not sure of the content of his character, as they say, and so when they heard he had been laid off from WaMu, after he had had me quit my job, uproot my life, and move all the way across the country for him, they were worried.  The lousy economy did not help--it would be tough for anyone to find a job right now.

Not that they said any of this to us, mind you: they're not *that* tactless!  But in their joyful reaction to the news he has found a new job, it became apparent.  By finding a job so fast, in the middle of the holiday season, before the end of his notice at WaMu, even, so that he did not have a single day unemployed, he has proven himself to be a Worthy Provider for their daughter.  They were extremely impressed.  He is clearly the Best Son-in-Law ever.  My dad emailed, "Now M----- can stay home and have babies."

Knitting

It's snowing again.  We've already got two inches.  Bleah.  Time for some knitting pics:

This is the Cobblestone pullover I started knitting for my sweetie last year.  I had to stop because of my shoulder injury, but picked it up again in time for this Christmas.  Actually, looking back at that post, I am very proud to say that I completed all three of those projects :-).

Right now I am working on Amused:

I am knitting this out of some Noro Cash Iroha I've had lying about for a couple of years, waiting for the perfect project.  I am loving it, frankly.  The gauge is not what's called for in the pattern, so I am making a larger size, and I've made some modifications, but I'm staying pretty true to the pattern.  I love the yarn, and so far I love the pattern.  It's my second top-down sweater (well, third, if you count a WIP I haven't finished), and I do like the top-down construction.  No seaming!  I hate seaming.  It also used a crochet provisional cast-on, which was so easy it may become my favorite provisional cast-on.  We'll see what I think once I unravel the crochet chain and pick up the stitches.

The cable border on the placket is really appealing to me, which is kind of interesting: I haven't much liked doing cables in the past.  But this is a pretty easy cable, and it's so pretty in the Cash Iroha I'm totally charmed.  Cash Iroha is probably not the best yarn for doing cables--the thick-and-thin quality of the yarn is kind of at odds with even, regular cables.  But since it's not an all-over cable, and the yarn has such a pretty glow from the silk content, I'm not caring.  Can't wait to get this done so I can wear it!

Last hurrah

It's supposed to warm up this week.  Of course, you couldn't tell when we woke up: it was snowing again.  And it's supposed to snow again tonight.  But in the middle of the afternoon, it crept up over freezing, and it's supposed to each day this week.  So, before the snow is gone forever, I decided to take advantage of it:

What's this giant pile of snow in my front yard?

Yes, I built an igloo.

When I was a kid growing up in Illinois, I always wanted to build an igloo, but I never did.  Maybe the snow was never right.  Maybe I got tired.  Maybe I just didn't have enough understanding of how to build things.  I don't remember why, but I never managed it.  Then a few days ago we drove by another block in our neighborhood, and one of the houses has a huge igloo, at least eight feet tall.  You could stand up in it.  I got jealous.

So, with the weather over freezing and the snow nice and wet, I put my mind to it.  My sweetie dug snow, and I built.  The neighbor's kids "helped" by throwing snowballs at both of us during construction :-).

It's pretty big inside.  You can't stand up in it, but there's lots of room for sprawling.

When we dug into the snow in the front yard, I'd have to say it was at least twelve inches deep.  Amazing.  I built the igloo from the sides up; it probably would have been easier to make a giant pile of snow and dig into it, since we certainly had enough snow, but I didn't want to take the easy way.  It'll probably be all melted tomorrow, and my back is pretty sore after all that digging and packing, but hey: one of my life's ambitions is fulfilled!

Real football

Well, we did it:

I pulled out my long down coat, my sweetie put on long johns, and we went.

It snowed the entire game.  I loved it!  In my opinion, real football is played in the snow.  Football played in air conditioned domed stadiums in hot states is pansy football.  If we were only going to see one game this season (and we are), I am glad it was a real game.

Alas, the Jets lost.  Oh well, you can't have everything.  We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly nonetheless, and were glad we braved the elements and this stubbornly plow-free city to go.

OK, this is ridiculous

OK, I love snow, but this is kind of ridiculous.

It snowed again on Thursday morning, and then again last night.  And each time, it snowed a lot.  Thursday morning I attempted to go to work, in the pouring snow.  My sweetie came with me, because we were nervous about the driving.  And rightfully so: when we turned the corner to go down the hill, we sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid out of control to the bottom.  Very slowly, but still: I was scared.  It didn't help that there was a kid sledding on the hill.  In the street.  When we got to bottom, I turned to my sweetie, and said, "I'm not going to work."  We returned home and had a two-hour snowball fight with the neighborhood kids (and their parents).  (Embarrassingly, my throwing arm and all down my right side were really sore on Friday and Saturday.  Sheesh.)

Then last night, this:

Can you tell we had a huge snowball fight in our backyard on Thursday?  The snow was all torn up.  There were snow angels.  Really, there were.

See the arrow pointing out the walkway in front of house?  This walkway was totally cleared yesterday morning.  We are responsible homeowners!  We shoveled the walk!  Sigh.

For Christmas, I got my sweetie tickets to the Jets game.  People around here keep calling it the Seahawks game, but what do they know?  Anyway, the game is today.  I don't know how we're going to get there.  Seattle is totally unprepared for snow.  They never plowed after Thursday, so all this new snow is on top of packed three-day-old ice.  People are trapped in their homes.  As someone who grew up with snow and snow plows that start going even before the snow has started accumulating, I am finding this a little maddening.  My sweetie saw the city official in charge of streets clearing on the news, and they asked him how he planned to deal with this.  His answer was essentially, "Hopefully it will get warmer."

We're thinking if we go to the game we will start early.  Maybe we will walk.

More suburbia

It's very, very cold in Seattle right now.  Below freezing, which is unusual.  And last night it snowed quite a bit, also unusual:

I was very excited to see the snow.  I love snow, and I didn't get enough of it in NYC (I think the city was just too hot for snow).  Last night it started snowing early in the evening,  light snow that was collecting on grass but not on pavement.  But around 10:30 or 11:00 it started snowing heavily, so that it started collecting on the streets and sidewalks.  I insisted on going for a walk in the snow.

As we walked down the block, I scooped some snow off a nearby parked car and discovered it was the perfect packing consistency.  I started rolling the ball along the street.  My sweetie said, "Why don't you do it on the grass?  The snow is deeper."  So I did.  We left a 12-inch diameter ball on the lawn of one of our neighbors and went on our way.

By the time we came back, about 45 minutes later (we stopped for a drink in a neighborhood bar which was surprisingly crowded), the ball was still there, the snow was still falling, and I decided I'd better make a snowman while the making was still good.  I picked the ball up, took it to our house, and made some additions:

I love it :-).  The next morning it was still there.  We went out to sweep the snow off our car and started talking with various neighbors who were out playing with their kids (the kids were excited: snow is rare).  My sweetie and I got into quite a snowball fight with a couple of the kids.  At least three people asked us how we had made the snowman, because by the time the sun came out this morning, the snow was too cold and icy to pack well.  Thus proving that when the snow is perfect, you must seize your opportunity.  I was out there at midnight, and I have my snowman to show for it :-).

We finally got our lights up, too.  We visited several stores before finding lights: the Lowe's in particular looked like light-eating locusts had descended and devoured every last bulb.  It was creepy.  But if you look closely, you can see what we did manage to buy at the nearby drugstore, standing by the porch.  My sweetie calls him "Snowy."

One advantage of suburbia

OK, I realize that I do not technically live in the suburbs: I am in Seattle.  I don't have a gigantic scary huge grocery store to shop in, I just have a big store.  But seriously, after years in Manhattan, this is plenty suburbian for me!

I noticed this past fall that the changing color of leaves were really stirking me.  I'd turn a corner (in my car) and see a whole avenue of orange or red, and it would lift my spirits.  It made me realize that I didn't get a whole lotta nature in Manhattan, and while I wouldn't say I really missed it (after all, I never sought it out), it's kind of nice to have.

One thing  I did miss in Manhattan was sky.  I like sky.  When the Hale-Bopp comet swung by earth, I had to go out on a boat on the East River to see it.  I visited the Orkneys once, and was completely enchanted by the sky.  When I got home, people were like, "Um, why did you take so many pictures of the sky??"   When I went rafting in Idaho some years ago I was amazed at the night sky.  I don't know much about the sky, but it's sure pretty.

So today, as I left the house at 7:40 am to go to my Saturday morning Pilates class (so worth it, seriously), I was struck by the gorgeous sky.  Normally I don't look up.  It's often overcast here.  It had been dark when I had gotten up.  But this was not ignorable.  I whipped out my camera and took pictures....of the sky.

East:

West:

Same sky.  Cool, hunh?

I'm not sure what to think

So, not unexpectedly, my sweetie was laid off this week.  Most of his coworkers were also laid off.  WaMu is truly no more.

It's got me thinking about a lot of things.  I recently got into a brief discussion in comments on someone else's blog about choices, the economy, and how to fix this whole mess.  Twenty years after I first got on an online message board and learned the meaning of the word "flame," and you'd think I would know better :-).  Anyway, this person told me that we make our choices and have to live by them, and her husband had survived 25 years at his company and countless rounds of layoffs, so "he must be doing something right."  Implying that if my husband got laid off, it would probably be because he was lazy.  She did use the word "lazy". The smug complacency in this statement left me breathless (though no longer speechless) with rage.  I heard on the news that 80% of WaMu's Seattle workforce lost their jobs on Monday.  I suppose you could say that it's no wonder a company with a workforce consisting of 80% lazy people failed.  

I wish I could be as sure that making the right choices is always guaranteed, or even that making the right choices, assuming you can manage it every time, guarantees health, happiness, success, etc.  I wish I could believe that nothing is left to chance.  That there are no flukes, that you cannot be affected by anything that you are not personally responsible for.  I mean, of course, that I wish nothing had ever happened to me to make me think otherwise.

There are a lot of reasons to be down--how about the WalMart employee who was trampled to death on Black Friday by shoppers who continued to shop even when  they knew someone had been killed?  The self-centeredness depresses me.  That's why I think even though the election supposedly changed things, nothing will change, because everyone thinks they're better than everyone else.  Everyone thinks the other guy should suck it up.  We'll be pointing fingers at everyone who is lazier or stupider or more morally bankrupt than we until we're a snivelling footnote in history.

All of this has me thinking, too, about love and marriage, because what makes everything OK is that we're in this together.  I know that sounds smooshy and cliche but...it's kind of true.  However worried I am, being with my sweetie makes me smile.  I can't say we haven't had a few stressed moments during this mess, and or that we won't have more, but I think we are both very happy to have each other.  Though I sometimes miss NYC and my comfortable single life without any real worries, I don't really wish to be back there.  I like it in Seattle.  I love our house.  I like my job, though now more than ever I wish it paid more.  And I love my sweetie.  Life, for all its scariness right now, is better than it was.  So I guess, on balance, we ended up making some good choices after all.  Ask me what I think in a couple months if my sweetie has not found a new job :-).

And, because I am the way I am, this got me thinking about divorce.  You always hear about marriages falling apart during periods of crisis--the loss of a child, or a job, or the aftermath of crime.  How do people get from here to there?  Do they make a choice to give up?  Does the lure of comfortable single life, where there are no decisions to live with but your own, become too strong?  Is it a fluke?  Does it always mean that the choice to get married was a bad one?   Maybe our crisis isn't bad enough yet, or hasn't lasted long enough.  Maybe divorced people were just lazy.

Sigh.  I think I'll go curl up with my sweetie now.  At least until we start blaming each other for everything that's wrong in our lives.

Third time's the charm

This will be the fourth winter I have known my sweetie.  We met in November of 2005--it seems like I've known him forever, but it's really been a short time.  When Christmas came, we had been dating about seven weeks, so I didn't know what to give him.  I knit him a hat.  I had only just started knitting, and the hat was the first thing I ever just made up.  Alas, because I didn't know him well, I did not yet know he is a pinhead: the hat was wayyyy too big for him.  When he wears it, he looks like the kid from Fat Albert, whose pink hat comes down over his face and all you can see are his eyes and mouth.  

The second winter, I knit him the fabulous Mets/Rangers hat.  I still love this hat, but again, it was too big.  Not too big around, at least, but too deep: my sweetie could easily pull it down over his eyes.  Even my doormen made fun of him when he wore it.

Last winter, I didn't knit him anything because I had a sore shoulder and was trying not to knit.

This winter, my sweetie requested another hat.  God knows why, since I clearly don't have the knack for fitting his head!  But I took a deep breath, knit it in the round, and made him try it on periodically while I made it.  Things are easier when you're not trying to keep it a surprise :-).

I made it out of Noro Kureyon; I have a few balls lying around from a moment of madness.  I was inspired by the Noro scarves the Yarn Harlot has been knitting: you alternate balls every two rows in order to get a graduated striping effect.  Since I didn't want to use two halves of two balls, I simply alternated ends of my single ball, which made for some more subtle striping in the middle, especially as this particular colorway is not as wildly varying as many Noro balls.  I think it looks very masculine, no?

Happily, my sweetie loves it.  And I have to admit, I do like the Noro colors.  Kureyon is not the softest of yarns, but my sweetie is not sensitive that way.  And it knits up into a nice dense fabric, so it is pretty good in the wind.  I guess the third time's the charm.  I'm sure it helped that this time, I wasn't overly ambitious: it's a pretty basic hat :-).

One ball Noro Kureyon, knit on size 7 needles.  About 4 stitches per inch.

A refresher lesson in gauge

I have been knitting like a fiend lately.  Partly because it's cold.  Partly because I am stressed (WaMu: they suck).  Partly because Christmas is coming and knitting presents from stash doesn't cost any money.  Although I have only knitted two things as Christmas presents, so I guess the last reason is more an excuse than a reason. 

Anyway, here's a pic of the Hemlock Ring Blanket, which was a really fun and very quick (just two weeks) knit:

I knitted this out of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool, which I really like.  It's surprisingly soft, and comes in 465-yard skeins for $9 at Jo-Anns (which means if you're more patient than I you can wait for a sale or a coupon and get it for less).  Knitting this blanket took only a little over one skein, which probably should have been my warning, since I knit two pattern repeats more than brooklyntweed calls for and yet used less yarn. Oh well.

Yes, I was a bad girl, I didn't check my gauge.  Two years of knitting experience, and I still have a love/hate relationship with gauge.  I figured since this wasn't a garment, gauge was not critical.  (For what it's worth, by the way, Lion Fisherman's Wool is really 5 stitches per inch, not 4 as it claims on the band :-)  Alas, I forgot, as always, about row gauge, so my blanket is much smaller than I wanted.  I wanted something over 4 feet in diameter, and I had to really push it in the blocking to get it to be even 40 inches.

If you look closely, you'll see through the holes that the fabric isn't even touching the blocking board: this baby is stretched taut.

I still think the blanket is pretty.  

But alas, it's not a baby blanket.  I actually knitted this for a coworker who is battling cancer.  Before, she was famous in the office for always being hot.  Now, she is always cold: not a good sign.  Unfortunately I think this blanket will be of very little use to her, since it will cover her lap and not much else.  I'm bummed.  I will probably still give it to her, but I really wanted it to be more useful.  I should have checked my gauge.  Feh.

Fuzzy cellphone pic

Today my sweetie and I raked leaves.  It has been a very long time since either of us have done this--I, at least, have not done it since high school, possibly even earlier.  We only have two trees in our backyard that drop leaves, but boy, that was plenty!

Seattle collects "yard waste" as well as trash and recycling.  They are supposedly quite draconian about the yard waste: you are even supposed to put your vegetal kitchen scraps into yard waste, and if they catch you putting it in the garbage, they say they will not take away your trash.  Yard waste cannot be put in regular old black plastic leaf bags, because those are not compostable.  Therefore, all the hardware stores sell giant brown paper bags for yard waste.  We filled up seven, and I got an idea for my Halloween costume next year.

That's right: paper bag puppet.

$25 richer

Happy Halloween!!

At my office today we had a costume contest.  Everyone came in costume and voted on the best costumes.  I won second place--$25!

I have to say, I am very proud of this costume, which I made myself out of felt, stuffing and styrofoam balls for the eyes.  I think it looks pretty convincing, even though it's only a head and a collar.

We had a lot of trick-or-treaters at the house today; it was the first time I had passed out candy to kids since I lived in my parents' house.  Of course, I did it wearing my Kermit head.  We had a lot of candy, but became concerned we were running out, so my sweetie went out and bought more.  Now we have lots of extra candy :-).  It was great to see all of the kids in their costumes, though, especially the kids on our block, whom we know.  They're so cute!  

Behold the Batter Blaster

We had friends visiting this weekend.  They are grad school friends, and it was fun to see them, and their small daughter.  When we were in grad school, N was particularly a cooking friend.  She and I would frequently bake or cook something just for the fun of it, then invite our friends over to eat it.  My favorite instance of this was the day we made three desserts because we couldn't decide which one to make; fortunately, a starving grad student social circle means a) everyone is generally home when you call and b) they're never going to turn down free food.

So it seemed totally natural that we go grocery shopping while they were here.  And, in the store, we discovered this:

It's the Batter Blaster.  Your eyes do not deceive you: that is a spray can, of the sort you usually find containing whipped cream.  The instructions on top admonish you to "Shake Well."  But this, dear friends, is not a simple can o' whipped cream.  No, it's spray-on pancake batter!  You shoot it directly from the can onto the griddle, "No mess, no clean up!"  The bowl of batter in this picture is our control: we of course decided to do a head-to-head comparison between the Batter Blaster and regular old made-from-scratch, propellant-free pancake batter.

Here is my friend N making pancakes with the Batter Blaster.  The batter comes out looking exactly like canned whipped cream does, with little ridges in it.  However, unlike whipped cream, the batter quickly spreads on the pan until the ridges disappear.  

In the end, we found that the homemade batter pancakes were both tastier (because they were less sweet) and fluffier than the Batter Blaster pancakes.  The latter was a surprise to us: we remain puzzled as to what the batter gains by being pressurized in a spray can, if it does not gain fluffiness.  If anything, the Batter Blaster pancakes were a bit rubbery, and a smidge squishy, like marshmallows.  But hey, don't worry: the Batter Blaster is organic.

Finally, a really nice picture of my friend and her daughter on the ferris wheel in the Seattle Center.  We do not appear to have harmed the small child with our experiments.

Notes from suburbia

I've been incommunicado for a few weeks because it took us forever to get Internet access at the house.  It involved three different Comcast guys (and three different days with my sweetie at home for no reason--OK, at least the last day there was a reason).  The last guy arrived on a Sunday and was the only competent guy we saw.  Clearly he works on Sundays dealing with the customers who have been driven to the breaking point during the week.  Anyway, here are some notes from the intervening weeks.

Here we are in front of the new house, wearing our WaMu "Whoohoo!" shirts.  At the time we took this picture, it was already a little sarcastic.  At this point it's just sad.  If you're wondering, my sweetie still has a job, and we still have the house.  We shall see how long this lasts.  Marriage has been a very interesting journey so far.

My second baby surprise jacket.  I love the little fish buttons!  The second time around, this pattern still has not lost its charm.  It's fun to knit, and it's so cute!

Our brand new living room chair, which I love.  I love the cool almost mod pattern!  I love the cool pastel-yet-bright colors!  I got this chair by spending two hours in the store with my sweetie, after which he said, "OK, whatever fabric you want.  As long as we can leave."

And, finally, our new couch!!  I love this couch, and it has a great story behind it, too, which I will share in another post.

That's enough catchup for now!

Brief political comment

I have no intention of using this blog for political commentary. I don't care to get into arguments with random strangers, and honestly I'm pretty conflicted about this election. I don't know what to think, and I can't get passionate about arguing for either candidate.

However, I do have to say, that last night on the culminating night of the Republican convention, they showed a "tribute" video about 9/11. They showed footage of the WTC and the Pentagon burning, of the WTC falling. They made references to "bodies falling" and said "We will carry memories of your beautiful faces and those loving voices now gone forever" while showing footage of distraught survivors and their frantic "missing" signs with pictures of their loved ones. They implied that only they can prevent this from happening again.

As someone who lived in NYC at the time, I don't think I can even begin to express how offensive I found this. Actually, "offensive" is not even a strong enough word. "Filthy" comes to mind. "Revolting." This is political exploitation of the most morally bankrupt and disgustingly cynical sort.

Yes, I "remember where [I was] that day" and no one is going to tell me what I should have learned from it, nor are they going to win me over by showing footage of thousands of people dying for their own political ends. How dare they? How dare they??? In the days after 9/11 the local news channel just turned on the camera and showed family after family with their signs and pictures, begging the camera for anyone who had seen their relatives to come forward and tell them anything. It was agony. How dare they speak of "your beautiful faces" in generic terms and exploit other people's suffering to scare the country for political reasons? How dare they reduce this to yet another opportunity for jingoistic flag waving and saber rattling?

The next day, I am still enraged. But I guess they figure no one in NYC is voting for them anyway. So, what the heck? Exploit away for the benefit of those who weren't there.

All-Clad forever

I have several All-Clad Stainless pots and pans, judiciously acquired over the years. I say "judiciously" because they are expensive pans, and I am cheap. But one of the things I am willing to spend money on is good cookware, and All-Clad is the best.

I bought my first two pans about ten years ago, when I was a poor 20-something with two roommates in a crummy walk-up apartment in New York. I bought a 1.5-quart saucepan and a 3-quart saute pan. I researched cookware for quite a while before settling on All-Clad. I dithered and dithered and dithered, and finally bit the bullet with help from a birthday gift from my brother. Hey, a pan which costs close to $200 was a huge purchase at a time when my daily take-home pay was $70. Those pans meant a lot to me.

I've used those pans heavily for the last ten years. I love them. The little saucepan got a lot of use when I was single, and once I started cooking for more than just me, the saute pan began to see heavy use. Nowadays, I use it nearly every day. I've added other All-Clad pans to my arsenal, but these pans, especially the saute pan, are my workhorses.

But, as we were preparing to move into the new house, I realized that somehow, over the years, the bottom of the saute pan had warped a bit, so that it was no longer flat. I hadn't cared when I was cooking on gas, and even on our apartment's electric coil stove it wasn't a problem. But in our new house, we have a ceramic smooth-top stove (bought from the Sears outlet--bleargh!), and when I was researching these stoves, I read comments from a lot of people complaining that you have to have perfectly flat pans to use them.

I became concerned. I began to worry that I would have to abandon my beloved pan. And, now that I have a started my career over again, a $200 pan is once again a huge purchase. I didn't want to have to buy a new pan.

So, I went on the All-Clad website, and sent them a message, asking if there was any way I could fix it. I thought they might direct me to a dealer or someone who could, I don't know, bang it out for me. Who knows? Instead, I got back an email which said, essentially, "All-Clad pans are guaranteed for life. Send the pan to us for evaluation for repair or replacement. Here's your return number."

To say this was more than I expected would be an understatement. I was a little worried about surrendering my favorite pan. But, a month ago, I dutifully packed up the pan, sent it off to All-Clad, and waited. I cooked without it for a month (very tough, let me tell you!). Then, this week, when I came home, there was a box waiting for me.

I'm not kidding: they sent me a brand-new pan.

I love All-Clad, and the little pauper who bought that pan ten years ago with more money than she really should have been spending on a pan? She feels like crying.