You're melting snow angels all over town.

We had several snow days awhile ago and I got projects finished.


I finally stretched out and blocked the finished Argosy scarf from Knitty I made for a family friend in Paton's SWS. Pretty yarn, splits a lot, needs a crap ton of blocking. But very squishy and nice colors.


That thing underneath it is my Target stuff the college kids don't want sale ironing board. Cute, hunh?

I also decided that I hated the collar on Teva Durham's Lace Leaf Pullover, so I cut it out, picked up a bunch of stitches, and made a better collar. This is scratchy and warm Lamb's Pride Bulky, so I probably won't wear it quite as much as some other things, but I still really like it.

That wet spot is when I started to block, but gave up. My feeling on sweaters is that I beat them up so much, they kind of stretch out and block just from that. Or, I'm lazy.
Here's a close-up of the cute leaf device:


While I got things done, Johnny made a fort:

While You Were Out

Before I left for New Orleans, I parked Junior in the abandoned parking lot across the street from me. They re-tarred (heh) it while I was gone, and haven't come back to fill in the hole.
Thankfully, I didn't get towed or ticketed or anything. But who redoes a parking lot without posting notices?

Get out of my dreams.

I forgot I took these pictures of this sexy sexy vehicle.








Those bright red spots? Painted blood coming from those bullet hole decals, which I totally don't get the point of, by the way. Who wants their car to look bullet-ridden?

All my black mollies are dying off.

I am getting rid of Buddy.
Yeah, you heard me, I'm tired of feeling like a fuck-up, so I'm buying a car that doesn't need $400 repairs every damn time I turn around, or new tires, or go through gas like a certain Texan ex-governor thinks all us good Americans should, or have the brake failure light come on when I'm 70 miles from home in the dark, or...
I could go on and on.
My new car is a 2004 Alero. It's a 2door coupe, but with the biggest non-station wagon trunk I think I've ever seen. If mobsters had Aleros, there'd be less dead snitches out there. That's how big this thing is. It's also got a cd player (see, now that I've checked out all of the important things on the car, like reversing straight, good brakes, and generally not sucking, I can be girlie about stuff). This is good, because Jackie's got my cassette adapter for her iPod. This is bad because the tape player on my stereo is broken and I think I might have put my last $5 walkman in a "Hey! Free Stuff" box outside my building in Lexington last August. Anyone want a bunch of mediocre mixtapes? I will need to replace some stuff though, like all the Wilco albums I actually like I have on tape (A.M. and Being There, if you're keeping score or buying me a present), and I might actually finally have to break down and buy Different Class. And Staring at the Sea is the perfect driving tape. The cd doesn't even compare. And I'm not just saying that because it's the first tape I bought after I learned to drive, specifically for driving, and all of the fun misadventures Janice and I had in my family's Taurus wagon listening to the Cure summer after freshman year.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The big thing about this car is $$, especially when you factor in insurance (I've switched to Safe Auto, because, even though it's more expensive than Progressive, the Progressive agent was incompetent and their 6-payment plan requires automatic payments direct from your account. Screw that noise.) and those pesky student loan payments I'm going to need to start making soon. So I'm worrying about money right now. It should be fine, if a bit tight--but hey, it's not like I go out or anything, right? I just hate the worrying more than the actual scrimping. And I'm at yellow pill week, which is always a big emotional mess.
Shit! I need to buy pills in a couple months too. 'Cause, you know, there's so much danger I could get pregnant.

keeping your enemies closer, or just not letting them leave

I'm getting kind of bored of my glasses. Any thoughts on what my next frames should look like, aside from not all bent and crooked like these?
But that's not why you're here, I know. You're here to read all about my lovely Christmas. I haven't had a shittier Christmas (even that year I got an alarm clock, or when I had the flu or whatever that was). Well, let's face it--December hasn't exactly been going well, what with programs with zero attendants, Buddy issues, and general crap-town problems. Which is why I was looking forward to being able to leave and see my family for a few days. Which is why this snowstorm was an especially large "fuck you", particularly due to the following things.
Thursday was still a state of emergency around here. So how come the local Fox affiliate news, the local NPR station news (who did, however, mention that there were still places closed "in spite of the weather"), weather.com, the state police website, and the road safety hotlines all failed to mention this? I may take risks sometimes that smart people don't, but I do know better than to drive during a state of emergency, provided SOMEONE TELLS ME.
Also, someone wanna explain to me the point of plowing interstates when the snow is allowed to just sit on the entrance and exit ramps to said interstates? What's the point of having clear roads if no one can get to 'em? And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got stuck. Of course, it could be infinitely worse: I heard of a woman who was stuck in her car for over 23 hours, and at least one of the other cars stuck on my ramp had been there all day. But this isn't the sort of thing you want to think about when, instead of greeting your family at their door and attempting to get Brett to do his trick, you're fighting back tears and attempting to stay on the plowed part of the road, a task made a whole lot harder when no one has salted yet, because plowing to get rid of snow only winds up revealing the inch or so of ice underneath. Who plows and doesn't salt? Why am I paying municipal taxes again? Especially since, several days later, my street still has not been salted, and most of the cross streets I need to use haven't been touched.
Christmas Eve was spent making sure Johnny wasn't throwing up anymore, trying to figure out why he had been in the first place, giving up on keeping the boys out of the tree, watching the first season of The O.C. (more on that later), and desperately trying to pretend it wasn't Christmas Eve, which I kind of like even better than Christmas itself, what with tree-putting-up and no poorly disciplined small cousins.
On Christmas, the work friend fiance (these would be the same people who loaned me the car when Buddy had the water pump issues, and who pulled me out of the on-ramp. I think it's getting to the point where, if I call Becca, she just assumes emergency) picked me up and I spent Christmas dinner with them. This was as nice as spending Christmas with a group of people you've never met before when you were hoping for your family and hate crying in front of strangers can be. That's not a criticism, I swear.
Sunday I watched more TV-on--DVD and had a lovely conversation with Alison Farinacci's grandmother. Alison is this friend of mine from college. She was the second person I met at Pitt (does Janice count, since I technically met her the weekend before our advising session?); we were roommates for 3 semesters and neighbors for a summer; we worked together for awhile; in short, great friends. She came up to Philadelphia for New Year's when I was living there, and then she fell off the face of the earth. Her number has been disconnected. Her parents have a new number, that I don't have. However, the grandmother has my number now, and hopefully she'll call. I miss the girl. And as I'm learning more and more, particularly here in Holeville, silly is hard to find.
Barring a tsunami (yeesh, it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when over 21,000 people are dead from one natural disaster, but I've been perservering), New Year's will be spent in Louisville.

2 pints of pus from her lovely body.

This is all because I’ve been whining about boys lately, I’m sure.
So, I know what's wrong with my car now. Water pump. Want to know how I know?
As I'm driving into work, looking for a mechanic, Buddy begins to overheat. I finally, after about 10 minutes and what feels like a million years, find a place to pull over. And, yup, it's a real overheating, with boiling over and everything. As I'm putting in more fluid, wiping stuff off, and worrying about the giant puddle of coolant forming, a nice man pulls up.
--I'd like to interrupt here with an aside about sexism. Yes, it does suck that people assume that a young woman always needs help, particularly with car matters. But I can't help but be grateful for that same attitude when I do need help. I guess I just wish that I could know that men would stop and help anyone, you know?--
So anyway, nice man gives me a couple tips, including the water pump thing (and that's what's been clonking, too, so at least only one car problem at a time, right?) and tells me to go to a place which, luckily, is on my way into work, so I know exactly where it is and, if necessary (it wasn’t), I could walk.
They're very nice there. Buddy will be done tomorrow, as the part has to be overnighted. I think I'm looking at about $200, which is typical for the biennial (that's twice a year, right?) meltdown.
So my problem now is, How do I get home? Or, conversely, Where do I sleep? I think I'm just going to ask an in-town librarian if I can crash on her couch. This seems to be the simplest solution, and my supervisor didn't seem to have a problem with me showing up in the same clothes two days running. Of course, I’m probably going to lose a few hours and $$, but since whenever anything goes wrong with Buddy I panic and think, $2000!, it’s all part of the price, right?
Now I just have to make sure I crash with someone I can also bum black eyeliner off of.
In January, I’m so going to start looking for a new car. One that makes me feel like less of a fuck-up.

the Thanksgiving recap

Dear god, driving from to Pittsburgh sucks. Especially when you stop at the Volvo dealership first to get the code so your stereo will actually work and the computer tells the jerk employee that your car does not, in fact, have a stereo. Oh, I think, so that's why I've been using the lighter to power my cd player and some cheesy walkman speakers. It has nothing to do with all that battery drama: I simply have no stereo. Then I went to Wal-Mart for wine and a six-pack (I've become the family bootlegger since I'm the only one who lives in a state without Quaker-made liquor laws) and my cashier was useless, even by Wal-mart standards. Really, the only things keeping me entertained on this drive were pleading with the giant storm clouds to avoid where I was driving on 71, 70, or 79 (thank you thank you thank you) and the pretty song I made up about driving through the Wheeling Tunnel.
I like the way Wheeling, WV looks a lot. Of course, I've only driven there on my way home, and what I should probably really be saying is, I like the font they used over the Wheeling Tunnel. I tried listening to The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place audio book during the drive, but my speakers weren't loud enough/it was boring. I think I'm going back to elementary school Jessy's original Konigsburg rating: just not that interesting. But it's nice to see Molly Ringwald earning a paycheck, no?
So I get to my parents, finally, and I'm trying to park on their bigass, brick-paved hill and it's not going so well, as there's a full foot of smushy, slick, wet leaf mess next to the curb. My dad suddenly materializes, and you know, there's really nothing that irritates me more after an insane drive than someone watching me park. I guess I got spoiled by my street being filled with so many un-lived-in houses for so long, because I really resent having to back up and do a full parking thing.
Incidentally, this is also my biggest beef with the SUV that's shown up on my street here in , with the Big Momma sign in the front and the "It's only kinky the first time" bumper sticker: it's parked where I have to use reverse to park in my favorite spot.
But then I get up the steps and into good ol' 1106 and everything's great. The pumpkin tart smells amazing, my cousin's on the phone telling me about this wonderful vacuum cleaner she got (though, since it doesn't turn dust into gold or move around by itself or is completely silent, I'm failing to be awed, even with the this-is-how-my-friend-caught-his-cheatin'-wife story. And if I was on "Last Comic Standing", I'd be cracking something about how that's how she finally got her husband to do some housework, but I'm not. And if I was, I'd be too busy chatting up that Iranian Jew kid to tell any bad jokes, anyway.), my sister's starting in on the first of 3 tantrums she performed over the weekend (I named them Martha, Semantics, and Reverse Psychology, if you're interested) and no longer liking Heinekin, or however it's spelled, and kicking my ass at Scrabble, Brett's getting ready to do his trick (he hops into your hand, because he wants to be petted so badly!).
And the greatness continued all weekend. Yumminess on Thursday; creepy urban mall with random Joseph Beth, Hong Kong Rice Bowl I've been dreaming about for the past couple weeks, kitties dressed as food, dragging Lara into the comic book store and hanging out with wonderful family friends, including people I hadn't seen in a long long time on Friday; Ikea and Spongebob on Saturday; and then the drive home on Sunday, which wasn't quite as bad, even with the pulling out-leafmess problem, probably because I gave up on Ringwald and Konigsburg.
And yes, I bought a couch. Not either of my first two choices, but now that I've finally got its 863 pieces together (cracking a couple in the process, grr), a damn fine couch nonetheless. It's this one, but blue. And it fit in the car, with no swearing at all! Now I just need to figure out what happened to my triangular pillow.
Kitten arrival: T-minus 2 days, and counting.

your tongue your transfer your hand your answer

I've really been missing the public transportation as of late. This commuting-by-car thing is a huge pain in my ass. I like being able to space out while someone else has the responsibility of getting me to work. Mostly, this is coming from the stupid accident I almost got into the other day which, while legally would have been my fault, was actually very little my fault. The UL Expressway, see, does this thing that's like highway...highway...stoplight!, so there's usually quite a bit of sudden stops. Because I listened to my dad like a good girl (usually), I try to not follow to close, so there's less danger. But see, here's the problem with SUVs, trucks, and other vehicles too giant to see around. I'm driving a respectable distance behind some overly large "car", minding my own business, thinking about whose got the better fake British accent, Bob Pollard or Billie Joe Armstong, and about my favorite Philadelphia band, next thing I know, he's swerved into the turn lane (goddam Indiana no turnsignal usin' jerks) and I'm like a car length and a half from a completely stopped car, going about 30. Burnt rubber smells yucky. But at least I know that I could probably drive with a small child in the front seat, since my first impulse was to throw my arm over so all my shit wouldn't fall out of my bag. And a baby's got more junk in it than my deery lou bag, right?
That kind of thinking would be why I'm on the pill.
I went to Denny's Saturday night to meet some new people I forced myself on through Friendster. Pretty darn fun. It's always weird being introduced to a group like that, because it usually feels like people are at their most whatever their place is in the group when a new person shows up. Like if you're the attention-grabber, you're at your grabbiest. Only bad thing was I forgot how it's possible to get a kind-of-hangover from too much coffee and too little sleep.
I go see what the local high school media specialist has put together for his "reader's club" later this afternoon. He's such a ***wad--I feel like it's an uphill battle to get these kids to think that there's more to library services for them, and that that's what I'm around for, if I could just get them to come into the public library. I'm thinking spooky Halloween rings will help. Hey, what problem can't cheap plastic toys handle?
I finally put the zombie barbie teen read week display up. It looks pretty freaking cool, if I do say so myself.