Lots and lots to celebrate

I've been very, very aware of the fast that I haven't posted in a week. I'm bummed that I let a whole week go by without putting anything up. But I did. Sorry, guys. I've said before that I feel like I do a lot better with structure, and I've had very little of that lately. But there is good news on that front.

I got a job! And I'm thrilled about it. There's a million things about it that are just what I was hoping for in a job, and I couldn't be happier. So starting Monday, assuming things go as planned, there will be structure again! And not the temp company kind where there's structure one week, and then for three days another week, and then nothing for a few weeks. This is reliable structure, just like I like it. I can't wait to get started.

So that's the best news, and it was already a good week. Yesterday was the Boy-Creature's birthday!


We got fondue for his birthday dinner, and I baked him a strawberry cake with strawberry icing. The kitchen smelled amazing, and I didn't even bake it here, since the oven is still on the fritz. Just the cake itself smelled delicious. And yes, there are only ten candles on that cake, but he turned twenty four, not ten. It's just that by the time I got the first eight on, he decided that was enough and wanted me to light them already. I made him let me put two more on so they'd be in the shape of a star. Please also ignore the fact that there are two mismatched candles right in front, along with ignoring all the junk on the counter. He really wanted some of that cake, so there wasn't a ton of time for a photo shoot. Not long after that picture was taken, the cake looked more like this.


It's a really tasty cake. There's even less of it now, and we only cut into it at lunchtime today. We wanted to cut it last night, but we forgot how freaking long a fondue dinner takes, and we didn't get home until ten thirty, and we were both stuffed. Upon coming home, I fell into an immediate food coma and had more super crazy weird dreams. So we had strawberry birthday cake for lunch today. I wish I could say that wasn't all we had for lunch, but alas, it was. Yet another reason I'm looking forward to going back to work. I eat better when I'm planning out lunches to take to the office.

Unseasonable snow + books = booklove

It's March. I have no words.


Luckily, I have books, as I don't plan on going outside anytime soon.

It's been an eventful week, book-wise. Especially what with the boring temp job I had. I both started and finished this book called The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor. It was a retelling of the Alice in Wonderland books that was really interesting. It went really fast, though I kind of expected that as it was a young adult book. I haven't read any of those lately, so it made for a nice change to get through a book that fast. I liked the book, though. It did some very interesting things with the story, and I very much liked the characters. The book series has a website, if you're interested.

I also started reading Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings. I know it's shocking, but I've never read them. And since I had to entertain myself all week long while stuck at a desk, I wanted something engaging that would last me until Friday, in between bouts of knitting. So I'm maybe two thirds of the way through now. I believe when I left off, they were at the Council of Elrond. I have to admit, though, it's going a little slower than I expected, or at least the first half did. There was an awful lot of describing every bit of land surrounding the hobbits, and specifically what direction they were walking, and how the road curved. I'm hoping that things will start picking up now. Still enjoying it, though.

I also got to make a trip to the big Half Price Books in Dallas yesterday. I got a They Might Be Giants CD, and a couple of other little fun things, but the book I was really excited to find was Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman. I actually managed to find a hardcover edition for only eight bucks! Score! I win.

Also? I'd just like to point out that the high for tomorrow is seventy one degrees. This place is nuts.

Knitting as fast as my sleepy fingers will go

May I just say what an exciting week it's been, knitting-wise.

And may I also say, I just read that sentence to myself, and realized how insane we knitters must sound to the muggles.

Whatever.

I finished the knitting part of my sweater!


Don't be fooled: those buttons only look like they've been sewn on. I haven't touched it since I bound off the last stitch. I will. Because I really like this sweater, and I really want to wear it. But I haven't got the energy for weaving in ends right now.

And yet, there is lace.


I've started my first lace shawl. I realize, again, that it doesn't look like much yet, but it's coming along nicely, and I'm excited for it to be finished. Which I suspect won't take long. I started that on Monday, and did most of that work in a few hours each day after. This temp job I'm working right now is another one of those that's paying me to sit by the phone, and it's spring break, so it's been incredibly slow. Slower than the day when we had record-breaking snowfall, according to the guy in the cubicle next to me.

So the lace is coming along surprisingly quickly. Incidentally, I'm also two hundred pages into the book I started yesterday morning. I halfway expect to have it finished by the time I do the booklove post this weekend. It's been an interesting week. At least the lace is keeping me awake. Daylight savings sucks.

The hidden joys of temping

While you wouldn't necessarily think a roller coaster of a week would be a good thing for reading, it actually turned out that way. That job I was suddenly called to on Wednesday turned out to be a sit-by-the-phone job, so I not only did the crosswords and sudoku from the newspaper in the breakroom on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but I also got a lot of reading done. Including the comics from said newspaper, and a few restaurant reviews.

For example, I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass this week. All of it. They're pretty quick, even when you are being interrupted every paragraph or so to answer the phone. I'd wanted to re-read them before I saw the movie, which I accomplished. We saw it on Saturday. I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm glad I finished the book first, and I'm still glad I saw the movie.

I also read a lot more of Reading Like a Writer. I realized, reading it, that I haven't done much reading on fiction theory since I got out of school. It feels good to be reading it again. I borrowed the copy machine at the office and xeroxed the suggested reading list out of the back (marvelously titled "Books to be read immediately"), and added a few more to it as well. So there will most likely be much to report in the coming months.

Right before I graduated from college, I'd asked my favorite teacher to make me a reading list, which he said he'd be happy to do. I remember telling him that it was my plan for continuing my education, once I left. Unfortunately, in the rush that was our graduation ceremony, I forgot to get it from him, and he had to leave early to take the guest speaker to the airport. I emailed him once or twice afterward, but never did get that list. So I'm sort of hoping that whatever suggested readings I can cobble together from books like Reading Like a Writer will stand in for the things he might have come up with.

Since the work week ended, though, I haven't read any more of it. I've mostly been reading Sherlock Holmes this weekend, which is getting very close to the end. Less than a hundred pages to go. I also started yet another book I got from the library (total count of books I've now borrowed: four, and four DVDs, which will go back tomorrow and be replaced by four more DVDs). It's a retelling of Alice in Wonderland (are you sensing a theme in my life of late? That's not even all of it, either) called The Looking Glass Wars. So far it's very good, if a little violent. The Boy-Creature was kind enough to point out that it has "war" right in the title. I stopped talking and went back to reading at that point. Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting farther into it. Maybe the next office job I have lined up for this week will let me get some reading done as well.

I like inverted roller coasters best, FYI

Holy cow, what a week. And what a day. This week is seriously turning into a roller coaster. Monday and Tuesday crawled by so slowly I couldn't believe it, like that part at the beginning when you're going up the first big hill, which always feels so much longer than it actually is. Then this morning I get a call literally minutes after my alarm went off asking if I could make it to an office as soon as possible. And then all sorts of other things happened today, and they're not all definite yet, I think, so I don't wanna jinx it. So more details on that later.

But this means that no knitting happened today. And actually, not a whole lot of knitting has happened the rest of the week. What little I did do was good, though. I tried a new technique to fix the neck of my sweater, which is so close to being done I can taste it! All I have left to actually knit is the buttonhole band. Then I'll just have to weave in all the ends and sew on buttons and it's officially a sweater! I'm so excited!

Too bad I won't have much time for knitting for the rest of this week. Holy pancakes, Batman.

Rainy weekend reading

I'm completely choosing to blame the Boy-Creature for the late hour of today's post. I had no intention of watching the Oscars tonight, but he came in and turned them on, and that was it for the night. Suddenly it's closing in on eleven. Oh well.

Never mind that I spent most of the day doing not much at all. It rained all day, and I acted like it. It was a very lazy day. Not a bad day, just lazy. At least we finally went to the grocery. We'd put it off all week, and we were to the point that there was nothing real left to eat. I scrambled the last of the eggs today, and that was it. So at least we got that done.

Yesterday was a similar day. For some reason, I woke up in a bad mood for no particular reason, so I spent the day as if it rained all day. I made a pot of tea, and got some cookies and Nutella and crawled into bed with Sherlock Holmes and read and read and read. So I'm that much closer to finishing the first volume. I was thinking of reading something else before I moved on to the second, but I've been enjoying it so much, it'll probably come down to whatever I feel like after I finish that last page. So we'll see what mood I'm in that day.

Reporting from the depths of stockinette hell

I am still being a monogamous knitter! It's astounding. I can't remember the last time I had only one project on the needles for this long. Thank god I'm nearing the end of this one project.

My sweater is nearly done! I finished one sleeve a couple of days ago, and the second sleeve just has a couple of inches to go. And I already have the buttons picked out (I think. I'm mostly sure), so it'll just need a button band, and all the ends woven in, and then it's a sweater! I'm so close!

And my next project will be a fancy lace shawl, because after all this stockinette stitch, I'm just about ready to kill myself with the boredom.

Too much ennui for clever titles

Yes, I do realize I let another weekend go by without doing a booklove post. I seem to be in another reading slump. I am still reading (all the same things- Sherlock Holmes and the library books I got), but not so enthusiastically.

I think it's because I'm not working regularly. I'm still temping, and getting by ok, but I do better with some semblance of a regular, reliable structure in my life. Hopefully I'll get back to one soon.