Fun fact part deux:

Every time I see a spider in my shower, which is fairly often, I immediately name it Steve. I don't remember deciding this. I just see them, and go, "Morning, Steve. Do me a favor and stay up in your corner, ok? Enjoy the steam, and try not to fall down into my shampoo or anything. Thanks, buddy."

It reminds me of in the Betsy-Tacy books, how Betsy's family always named their horses Old Mag. I think this is my justification for not stopping myself from that particular bit of innocuous insanity.

A bookish weekend

I feel like it has to be a very good sign when you walk up to the register with a book, and the guy behind the counter says, "No! I wanted to read that! Now I'll have to order it again!"

To which I replied, "Tough! I'm buying it!"

Yesterday I went up to Taos for the wool festival. I managed to restrain myself to just one skein of very pretty sock yarn. But I also bought a book at Moby Dickens, the little indie bookshop there. I've bought a book there almost every time I've gone to Taos, because I like supporting indie bookshops. Also I like new books.

This one was one of five new books I got this week. I got The Casual Vacancy and John Hodgman's boxed set (both from Amazon. I like supporting indie bookshops, but I also like free shipping, and that I can buy books and odd-sized knitting needles at the same time). And the one from Moby Dickens is called My Mother She Killed Me and my Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. Which I couldn't resist buying, because it's exactly the sort of things I keep writing. Plus, it includes about a dozen authors I adore.

So I look forward to hopefully reading those sometime in the near future, after I finish the big, fat book I'm already reading, and the other ones in my pile to read as well.

The pile has gotten very large lately. I'm reading just as fast as I can. With breaks for knitting and Doctor Who.

Oh, and movies. I'm going to go see The Perks of Being a Wallflower later, based on yet another book I re-read recently. It's been a good couple of weeks for books, is what I'm saying.

Fun fact:

Whenever I'm walking down a long, empty hallway, I almost always get an urge to do a cartwheel.

My office is at the end of a longish hallway, and most of the offices are empty, since a bunch of people got moved to a different building, and the rest are in meetings all the time.

I can't tell you how many days I've had to consciously suppress the urge to do a cartwheel at work.

So far I've only done it once.

Excuses and whatnot

Ok, I know once again I haven't blogged in a long time. But in my defense, I've been thinking about blogging a lot. That counts, right? Don't you all feel better knowing that?

I'm actually only partly joking. I have been thinking about it a lot, because for awhile there, I was on the hunt for a big, bloggable project I could do. I really like things like the Julie/Julia project, or any of the hundreds of similar blogs, that pick one thing they're passionate about and dive in. And lately I'm in love with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (It's brilliant, please go watch all of it right now). I like the idea of focusing closely on one piece of literature and either analyzing or interpreting it, especially in a way that's as fun as this.

But every project I think of has either been done, or I'm not passionate enough about it to feel like I could do it justice. Also, I'm barely techno-literate, and I don't feel like learning enough about it to figure out things like photoshop and vlogging. I'm good with just babbling here.

Also, it occurs to me that all the things I truly love to do are very slow, quiet activities that would most likely be boring to either watch or read about. Knitting. Reading. Writing. These are things I do while sitting by myself, and while I'm happy to give the occasional update, there's not a ton else I want to say about them to you all. I do those mostly for me, and I'm very happy with that so far.

So I think I shall just carry on as I have been. I mean, hopefully with more actual blogging than has gone on of late, but still. I'll still keep an eye out for a project that grabs me, because I like having projects, but for now it'll just be the usual ridiculous stuff. Luckily, there's no shortage of it all. Not only that, but there are things on the horizon that feel like things will be picking up for me a bit. Most likely I'll have some slightly more exciting things to report in the next year or two (Yes, I am starting to make plans that will last a couple of years!). More on those later. So I'll be here. As always.

Back with a... something

There is a pigeon that lives on my upstairs' neighbors' deck. It mostly perches directly above the skylight above my kitchen. This pigeon seems to spend all of its waking hours either:

A- pooping directly on the skylight above my kitchen

or

B- making noises that are just quiet and rhythmic enough to sound like people having sex in another room.

Thanks, pigeon. You're the best.

(I know it's been months since I posted. I kept thinking about what I should say about this, or what kind of post I should write to get myself back into it. Then I decided I was overthinking it, so you get this instead.

Did you miss me?)