Crawling ever onwards

And that title works on many levels, let me tell you.

Firstly, knitting.

'Member that sweater from last week? That I said was actually not that far from being done? 'Member? I tried that sweater on. That sweater was never, ever going to close over my boobs. I even momentarily considered knitting the button band extra wide, in the way that knitters consider these ridiculous notions in order to try to avoid frogging things. I considered it for about half a second.

I have frogged that sweater.

And cast on in the next size up. *Sigh.* Such is a knitter's lot in life. Often an uphill battle. But at least our uniforms come with hand-knit socks.

In happier news, Mom was here this weekend, and I asked about buttons, and she immediately dug out four big containers of buttons, and we manically sorted through a slew of pearl buttons, and I found buttons that I think I like enough to use. I found others that I like even better, but one set is, I think, too small, and the other set doesn't have enough. But still, progress has been made on the button front.

I also cast on for one of these babies right here. Mine will look awfully similar to the one on her blog, except I think Mom stole all my beads after I moved out, plus, sewing on teensy bugle beads sounds exhausting right now. So mine might be sans sprinkles. At least for the time being. We'll see how I feel once it's all knit up. It's not so far along right now, because I only cast on, and it's been a long couple of days.

Because I have a job (temporarily. I'm told that's what happens when you work for a temp agency). Which normally would not be so bad, but the job that was supposedly in north Fort Worth, is actually so far north of Fort Worth that it's no longer in Tarrant county. So the commute sucks pretty badly. But it's only two weeks, and otherwise, it's been good. So I'm trying not to complain. Plus, there's a 70% chance of snow tonight, so I might not even have to go tomorrow. Which would be nice, except for that whole getting paid thing. Which is the other reason I'm not complaining about the job. I like that part. I'd hate to miss a whole day of it. So, all pros and cons taken into consideration,

In other areas of making myself crawl towards something resembling progress, my brain has been bubbling again, and I've been taking those bubblings more and more seriously. There are exciting things beginning to take shape. And they'll do so even more once I start getting a paycheck or two. Yay for start-up capital. That's a hint, right there. But things are still pretty loose right now, so I'm not giving any more away. I'll just say that I'm feeling more and more excited about these things I'm working on.

Ok, I'm going to go knit now.

A minor (for me) explosion of booklove

There has been so much reading in the last two weeks! In addition to the driving, and the sending out résumés and whatnot. Like I said, unemployment tends to have that effect on things. It also leads to more of me playing those hour-long game trials you can download. I must have played fifty of them last summer while I was killing time before moving to San Diego. And today it started again. I do better with structure in my life. I'm honestly kind of looking forward to finding a job.

But the reading. I finished Unweaving the Rainbow! Finally. It is very good, I can say that. I think it just takes me longer because I'm not used to reading things written the way scientific writing is done. There were parts when I would start comparing it in my mind to how I wrote research papers in high school and college. (Nerd confession: I secretly loved writing research papers. I had a really good system worked out, thanks in large part to my high school junior year English teacher, whom we sometimes referred to as the Burrismonster. It was a term of endearment, I swear. She's one of the much better English teachers I've had over the years. Thanks again, Mrs. Burris, and excellent English teachers everywhere!) There were other parts of Unweaving..., though, where I was racing along because it was all so interesting, and written in a way that was almost thrilling. I'm looking forward to reading a lot more of Dawkins' writing.

I had said that the next book I read would be Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. And then I said it would be The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. But it was neither. We stopped in at my favorite Half Price Books in Dallas (as well as my second favorite Half Price Books in Arlington) and I bought some books. And a Rasputina CD (Ohmygod, why did I not start listening to Rasputina sooner?!). One of the books I got was David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day. I've listened to "This American Life" for ages, so I was already a fan of his work. I even recognized some of the essays in the book that he's read. It's a fantastic book. He's so marvelously strange and funny. I can't imagine anyone that couldn't find something to like in all his writings. He's another one that I want to read more of, and soon.

But I finished the Sedaris in about two days. So now I actually am reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and it's wonderful. I bought this book, I think, last summer (if not even earlier), and now that I'm finally reading it, I've been kicking myself for putting it off so long. I'm racing through it and gobbling up every word. My copy is over 1000 pages long, and I'm already two hundred pages in, after only two days, and I expect to read some more tonight. The story is so engaging, and the language is enchanting and thrilling. I'm getting completely sucked into this book. It's fantastic. I can't wait to read more.

I suppose there is one other booklove-related bit of news, but it's still something I'm mulling over. It's still pretty much just in the planning stages at this point, and I'm not entirely certain I'll go through with it yet (although I'm leaning towards a joyful and resounding YES!). So I'll hold off on announcing that, and see how the brainstorming goes this week.

Jetting off, if I ever pack

So I'm taking the day off the boring job tomorrow and flying back home for the weekend. Despite the fact that it's already almost nine and I leave in just over twelve hours, I haven't started packing. Not really, anyway. Instead I'm sitting on the couch watching "Firefly" and messing about on the internet. But I did plug in my cell phone and digital camera. And I downloaded the digital equivalent of a metric ton of podcasts. (The newest episode of Lime and Violet came out just in time! Squeee!)

So even though it doesn't look like it, I'm super excited to be going. My best friend is picking me up at the airport, and we're going straight from there to two of my favorite places in the world. Places they don't have out here. Places I have missed desperately.

I'm also planning to do something I think is a little exciting for this blog. Sort of a treat for all four of my readers (Hi Mama). So if you want, you can look for that sometime early next week.

Oh, and I bought more yarn. My very first Malabrigo!