The office flirtation (aka dancing with the devil)

(Perhaps that should be dancing with the dog. Dirty dog.) You know what? It would be a bad idea but I know nothing will every come of it. I'd probably piddle myself if it did. Still, it's a highly entertaining - if unproductive - way to spend my time, it makes me happy and it kills my appetite like nothing else in this world.

Cryptic? It's supposed to be.

Ah, January

How joyous. Yesterday the boys were digging in the dirt, riding their bikes, and today - well, it's garbage day so of course it's super windy, and the temp has dropped to -8 or something stupid like that. No wonder I'm sick. Woke up last night gagging on goo and couldn't get out of bed this morning. I'm going to spend the day doing nothing.

Nice, eh? I'm just glad it's not my car.




KnitNight at the Purple Purl last night and it was packed - I swear it gets busier and busier every time. The illustrious Amy Singer of http://www.knitty.com/ was there, and I got to show her my finished 4x hat - my version of Swell. It was swell.

Mary showed up which was nice - haven't seen her in ages - and we devised a plan to make the silly shawl somewhat more acceptable. I though it would make a great skirt on her skinny frame, but she thought the crotch holes were a bit risque. Perhaps she had a point.







I'm going to learn to type at work. I'm so tired of fixing typos and sometimes I get freaked out at the words I type - totally unrelated to what I am thinking.

My ADD is alive and well - witness the next new projects: pants for Irene's baby new baby girl (or boy) Barb! Don't look - I'm not knitting this, I'm knitting papa's socks. Really.

Cranky... and off topic

Reformatted this so it's not so narrow and cramped but I don't know if I can be bothered to redo the previous posts.

Lists are great. Today's list will be people/entities that I hate.

1. The Toronto District School Board http://www.tdsb.ca/
They have the balls nerve and cheek to send out a pretty little sheet saying how wonderful it is that we have "high-quality child care centres, located in our schools, for you child's safety and your convenience". HA. Are they from Mars? Have they tried to get their child into one of these centres? Short of a large fistful of cash and a large stoke of luck, it ain't gonna happen. If you get you child in in preschool, maybe, but get on the list when you're pregnant or your screwed. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

2. My insurance company (it's irrelevant who, I'm sure they're all the same)
They send me a lovely letter saying I am woefully under insured and I should have my rebuild costs up from $184K to $299K. Is that not a rather large jump? It's a tiny house. I guess that would essentially double my insurance premiums. And what's with the "additional structure" on my policy? The kids plastic playhouse? It better not STILL be the cottage or I will blow a gasket.

3. Metro Toronto Tax Consultants http://www.metropropertytax.ca/
I used them to file my appeal in the spring of 2006. They get half of the possible tax savings if they do the PITA of going though the appeal process, fair enough. I get a letter yesterday (I had pretty much given up hope of ever hearing from them as they abolished the MPAC assessment process in 2006) saying the house had been reassessed ant my property value lowered by about 6%. Great.

Then I read a bit further. First of all, they want me to cough up half of the tax savings for 2006 AND 2007 when it says on the application form SPECIFICALLY isn't half of one years savings only. Second of all, they didn't even appeal, they just let the request for reconsideration go through, it was reconsidered and they dropped it.

I could have done the request for reconsideration - that just involved filling out a form and sending it in - I did it one year. But I wanted, for the money they're getting, for them to actually DO something - maybe some of the things they professed to do:" manage the entire appeal process for you, including all hearings, documentation, negotiations, exchanges and requests for information, property inspections, negotiations and settlements." HA.

4. Roofers. Well, all tradespeople in general but today it's roofers
I am not prepared to go there. My doctor has advised me that recurrent episodes of shockingly high blood pressure could be dangerous. She may have a point.

Will anyone call me back? Will someone concede I have a valid point? Will I get justice, clarification, satisfaction? Stay tuned.

Oh, and that stupid brown 4x hat? I have now reknit the crown several times - it really is the 4x hat. Though I love the blue wave - I want that wave on everything. Perhaps blue knit wave undies?

MaRS

I went to a meeting at MaRS http://www.marsdd.com/About-MaRS.html yesterday and what a cool place. Labs, meeting rooms, who knows what else all in a very swanky, euro-feel package. No snackies, though. What kind of meeting doesn't give you breakfast? Just coffee and M&M's. Lame-o.

Plus, the commute was 30 min door to door on the subway. I gotta get me a job downtown.

Distractions

It sucks that there are so many things I have to do rather than knit. I was up until midnight last night as I unpicked Jack's hat, started to reknit it and was interrupted by a visitor. By the time she left I had to scramble to finish it. Nothing like sending your kidd off in an unfinished hat...




Tonight I HAVE to fold laundry. I have knit a few rows of Jo's sweater while the kids were in the bath












started the 4X cast-on hat
























balled the blue Malabrigo for the wave on the hat





and have come to the unmistakeable conclusion that I must fold the laundry (yes the laundry in the pic) not only because I have to stroll naked through the house in search of clothes every morning but because if I don't there will be no more room in my living room. There are 4 baskets waiting and they're not getting any less wrinkled.

How many is too much?

Jelly beans, that is. I ate close to a pound of them last night. Yum yum. Amazing that I didn't throw up - not so amazing that my pants don't fit anymore. Jellybeans are the perfect knitting food - not sticky, no crumbs, don't melt onto your hands, quick to pick up a handful and jam then in your mouth.... mental note: do NOT buy any more jelly beans.

Knit Jo's sweater yesterday as I decided the deadline on that (Feb 28) was approaching much faster than the deadline for the socks (end of April). Don't I have just an amazing grasp of the properties of time? I get smarter all the time, I swear. Anyway, the purling continental thing doesn't seem to look as nice as it did before. I think my tension is loosening up too much. And while I CAN cable without a needle and it may work beautifully in a 4-or 6-stitch cable, with a 12-stitch cable it's doable but way more time -consuming that with the needle (read: a living nightmare). Now I just need to find where I put it after I decided I'd never need cable needles again.

Oh yeah, I did knit the socks until I came to the above-mentioned stunning conclusion. I have switched to straights for the flat part though as it seems to work better for me. The only 2.5mm straichts were some gold ones from god only knows where which had obviously been used for some sort of mechanicaljimmy-ing as they have some sreious kinks in them. I did my best to straighten then out and it doesn't seem to bother me at all. Go figure. The points are unsullied, which is the most important part.

Speaking of which, why can I not throw out needles that are trashed? I mean really trashed. Actually missing the tips, or having strange gum-like stuff on them. Or concentric deep groves on the tip (I can only imagine how that happened). They're functionally useless. Throw them out!

Got an email from Tits re her birthday, which was nice. Good to see she actually reads her messages.

Cast on the next relief hat 4 times yesterday chez Dr. P. There's a quality use of time. You'd think I'd have mastered casting on by now and it wouldn't require a mention, but 4 times? For a hat? I think that qualifies as moron material.

Pics later...

Enough is enough.

OK, so I didn't quite make it to 3", or throught a whole 'nother night of ribbing. Still, it's way more ribbing than I normally do.


Emily's hat..

Relief

I am going to kill myself. As I was approaching what I thought was the end of the 2.5 inches of minute ribbing, I checked the pattern: 4 inches. Not 2.5. FOUR. Bleah.

But apparantly the esteemed recipient of the wonder socks will not care about the length of the ribbing. Will I? Right now I just want to abandon the ribbing at 2.5" but I may regret it. Hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa! Unlikely. Maybe I'll do one more evening of ribbing and call it quits.

Emily's hat is done. Unfortunately, I left Grace's at my brother's so the handover will be delayed.

That's Grace's in the pic.

I bought some awesome cobalt Malabrigo to match the brown for Jo's hat to justify whiling a significant chunk of my Saturday away at the PP. Money well spent. I got to meet baby Fenner and her lovely parents - I love babies.

Jo's sweater actually coming on amazingly well, considering the level of loathing I have for it.

o

Tada!

A new year, and new leaf. Having decided that Lavalife is too slimy and time-wasting for words, I have decided to enter the narcissistic, naval gazing world of the PUBLIC blog. So no more rants about useless, troglodyte knuckle-dragging men. So sorry!

This will be all about knitting (and maybe a few other little tidbits I may throw in for fun).