General

...I just haven't had much to say.

I'm knitting on a variety of projects:

• a shawl I got fed up with a long while back and have finally returned to working on. It's going better this time.
• a pair of socks for Randy in Black Trillium's Heavy Merino Sock -- yum! I'm done with the first sock and working (top-down) on the leg of the second sock.
• I've finally cast-on something for me and by the time it's done, I probably won't need it: a shrug in Lion Brand Homespun. The great room can be quite chilly at times and I'd rather layer.
• a multiple-ditty bag project I'm dreaming up (inventing?) as I go. This one is using leftover sock yarns. So much for that sock yarn blanket I had planned...
• a little something for Valentine's Day. It's done, I just need to get some accessories.grin

I'm still working on my gaming character sheets. At this point, I'm trying to work on two sets at the same time. One is the v3.5e set and the other is a Pathfinder set. Not a whole lot has changed, but the parts that have affect the layouts of a couple of pages. I suspect Wizards might give me a little trouble in Pathfinder. I'm also struggling with creating class-specific pages for classes like Psionics -- classes I've never played. So, I'm talking to my three gaming groups and trying to get feedback on the data that's most critical.

I'd like to work up some spell sheets -- have the entire text of a single spell on the sheet, so the character's prepped spells are readily available. But some spells take so little room that they'd be a wasted of sheet space.

Randy has suggested a sorted list of monsters/creatures by various types. It's easy on the Wizards of the Coast site to do that sort of thing, if you've got their v3.5e Monster's page bookmarked. But what if you want only aquatic creatures? Or only desert creatures? I mean, a wandering monster check can't really give you Dire Sharks (do they exist in d20 SRD?) if you're in the middle of a desert, right? It looks like I'll have to build a database to do it right. Hmm...how do I do that again?

Meanwhile, I'm trying to pick up some JavaScript and PHP to add a Pathfinder template to the RPGProfiler we're using. It's times like this I miss having an office of my own -- less going on around me, less activities to catch my attention and drag me out of my very deep learning curve.

I came across a window cling designed by Jen Delyth of Keltic Designs last week. It's the perfect basis for a circular shawl, so I bought the cling. When I got home, I hunted down a website for her work and promptly sent her a message. Sure, I'd like to do all the work of designing this and turning it into a shawl, but when it's done, I'd really like to be able to sell the finished work. I received her response the other day:

Hmm... Should I still work on a shawl design for this? I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not a professional, so it'll probably take me a year, at least! I've still not completed the design on the shawl for my mom that I promised her. Sigh. Maybe I should finish Mom's shawl first and then work on this new idea?

But, speaking of my own designs, have you seen the little guy down on the right side of the blog lately? As of this writing, there's 39 projects of him and he's in 147 queues. Squee!

Lately, I've been feeling the need to get into something more mentally challenging. I think there's some things in my projects listed above which could fit the bill...I just need to clean my desk and get to it.

Sorry about the whole "missing blog" thing there... we had a little snafu on our end. It's funny how the ISP expects us to pay the bill to keep this site running. :) No big, huge deal (as I keep telling Randy!). (Note to self, so he'll quit beating himself up: don't forget to run a back-up of the blog and make a cron job to do it automagically.)

I am only just now getting email running again. Somehow, something went kerblooey with Postfix and I ended up having to upgrade it to fix it. But, it is running now and any personal messages should resend without any hiccups. If you did email me at this domain name and don't hear a response in the next 24 hours or so, query me with a fresh email and see if I ever received the original. :)

Life is going on, despite Elijah's so sudden demise. It's times like this when I realize how lucky I am, to have such wonderful people in my life. They're there for me when I need them---something I'm really getting used to! To my amazing friends and family: y'all are spoiling me!

Have I mentioned our housemate on here yet? I know I've been woefully absent... there's just not a whole heck of a lot that is really interesting enough to write, let alone expect anyone else will want to read... but this is something I should have mentioned. Let me re-cap.

Back in late March, a friend connected us with Rowan because we all have a lot in common and the "let's get together one day" became urgent when his roommates of the time ditched him with no warning. We've been struggling to make ends meet and he needed a place... this sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

The first get-together was great and there was an instant friendship. Fast-forward past moving day and the settling in and here we are today, unable to believe there was ever a time we didn't know each other. Rowan is like the older brother I never had (and always wanted!).

We're working on a garden out in the great room. Since he's also better with a camera than I am, maybe I'll get him to snap some digitals of this "Room of Greenery", so I can upload them to flickr and share them with y'all. We're growing the standard houseplants like pothos, spider plant and ivy, but we're also growing cuccumbers, carrots, red and yellow peppers (from seeds we saved from store-bought peppers we had for dinner!), broccoli, "salad greens" (why didn't we just go straight to spinach?), lavendula angustifolia... Rowan has branched out and is thus far successful with his attempts to start a sweet potato, a citrus tree (well, okay, it's just a seedling so far), popcorn, fenugreek, mustard seed... I know I'm forgetting something. Oh! We have a store-bought parsley and a store-bought mint plant we're keeping alive. We're not so sure about the store-bought basil. So far we've managed to kill one basil (with help from the ferrets), and we're working on the second one. Oh, we also have sage and kalanchoe degremontia. We have so much kalanchoe degremontia, we'll probably be asking people to take it off our hands. I wonder if it's edible at all?

In other news, I've made a personal commitment to participate in NaNoWriMo for the third time---and the first time since the car accident. That'll be some serious writing for me. I don't have the faintest idea of a story to start from. Rowan and I were talking about books and he said he has yet to see a strong gay-male portrayal in science-fiction. Since I can't think of one right off the top of my head (and since I lean towards female protagonists frequently), I figured that was Challenge Number One I'd take on for this NaNo novel.

That means I've got 2.5 months to get anything I want to do done, so that the entire month of November is focused on that 50,000 word limit. I've done the math in the past and I've got two different "daily minumums" to focus on. If I want the weekends off (and I do, since I'm tabletop gaming 2 Saturdays a month and LARPing 2 days a month), I need to get 2381 words per day in. If I count my weekend-days as "available writing time", that number comes down to 1667 words per day. So, if you thought blog entries had been scarce before... Hopefully, I'll just limit myself to short and sweet entries.

If there's anyone out there who still reads this blog, I've got a question for you. If you could choose, would you prefer to read a portion of a short story and then decide whether it was worth paying for the rest or would you rather read the whole thing and have the option of a "tip jar"? I've gone around and around on this and haven't progressed on doing anything about it because one choice (the "tip jar" option) lets my writing loose in the world and could close doors down the road. So, I'm eager to hear from the 3 or 4 people who read here what you'd prefer. While you're sounding off, I'm looking for a good price for the pay-for-the-rest option (which will actually be for the whole story 'cause that's what you'll get when you buy: the whole thing formatted nicely by yours truly).

Oh and a Josephine McKenzie style greeting goes out to any Camarilla members who might be new readers. My email signature on Gmail has this blog on it, so, "Hey all!" Drop a comment and let me know you stopped by.

Hey, it's seven o'clock in the morning. Do you think I should finally go to bed? yawn Yeah, me too.

Yesterday, the pool was *finally* serviced... I was so shocked, I walked outside to see the clean pool.... and managed to slip and break a toe. *sigh*

There's really nothing that can be done for a broken toe (which I learned back in 1980-something, when I broke my big toe and the emergency room X-rayed it, sprayed it with some kind of numbing stuff and taped it to another toe to keep it straight. Thank you, $300 please!). So, I've been taping it to another toe to keep it kinda straght, but it still hurts. Ugh. Leave it to me to break the weird things.

My broken toe....

...let me shows you it.

We're still waiting on the freaking lawn guys to come and get the lawn under control---it was bad when we signed the lease. And then we turned the water on and it became a jungle. One of the neighbors commented that the only reason the owners didn't lose the orange trees is because of the heavy rains the area has had this winter.

I've mentioned our old house. I've mentioned that it's vacant. Now, let me mention the MLS # for said beautiful house: 2885387. It's down to $241,500...but needs at least $10k worth of work, depending on how picky the new owners are about lights and appliances. We originally installed almost $5k worth of lights. I forget what we spent on the range and dishwasher (we kept the fridge).

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in buying it again. We wired that house from one end to the other with ethernet. You can sit in the master garden tub and have a computer jacked into the internet. You can be working in the garage and check something online without having to go into the house. I think we even put network jacks in the pantry! Plus, we (well, Randy mostly) installed beautiful laminate floors everywhere there wasn't linoleum or stone tiles. Yeah, I miss that house. I just don't know if it's big enough for us, with our massive IKEA desks now. How funny is that?

Randy's enjoying the "walk to the bus stop, ride the bus to work" convenience of where we live now. And I do like that it means he's leaving me with the car most days. Perhaps I could get a part-time job, doing something fun/interesting (and pay off my credit card!).

We're ticked at American Express now. We contacted them, to let them know we'd be moving---and that charges would start showing up in new places. We charged the move, we traveled across the country (hotels ain't cheap!) and once we signed the lease, we bought a washer and dryer. They security flagged it and it took 20+ minutes to get that resolved. Fine. I'm glad they watch that stuff. But the following week, Randy was at the store to get cat food and litter---a whopping $21, mind you---and the card came back declined. What??? So, he gets home and they've cut him off. Now, this isn't a card with a set limit on it. You spend it, you pay it once a month. Turns out, they're "concerned" about the amount of money he's spent on the card in recent weeks.

Uh, duh? We told you guys this was coming. So, he makes a payment to them to make them happy---no payment is yet required on the account, mind you. But, now he's a little iffy about using it. Then, the night we had to euthanize Maya, they put a security hold on the card. *sigh* "Unusual charges", they said. Uh, yeah. The day holding a pet while the vet administers heart-stopping drugs is "usual", just kill me. Okay? Randy read them the riot act and they finally approved the transaction. But he hasn't calmed down about this yet. He's removed his American Express card from his wallet and we're rather tight while we wait for the paychecks to start flowing in again.

He's so fed up with them, he decided (with my agreement) to cash in all his points for Barnes and Noble gift cards. As soon as he's paid the account off, he's closing it. I'm debating doing the same with my card. My newest LYS doesn't take American Express and that's the card I put my allowance on right now. So. I'm debating getting a new card, rolling my AmEx amount into it and closing my AmEx account as well. I wonder how many points I have? More Barnes and Noble shopping, perhaps?

When I spoke to an American Express representative about this whole thing, she said they've been busy, "With the downturn in the economy". Ah, so pissing off the customers who've been behaving is how you handle that? Bad move, American Express. I'm sure your mega-company won't miss the paltry amount of money we bring in, but you do this to enough people and you'll find that people *will* leave home without it!

I'm still working on this stole design. I don't know how the designers out there do it... I'm stumped. Randy's working on a program that will take an XPM and convert it to row-by-row instructions. But, I have to have some concept of how to scale the image first. One image I was playing with started at 615x600 pixels. If I do a stitch/pixel, that's a lot of stitches. But at laceweight, is that a lot of stole? I have no clue. Really, I don't.

I'm down to a size 1US (?) needle (one of my sock needles) and I'm not sure I'm going to get enough definition still. Maybe I should go up to fingering weight? Will that be too heavy? *sigh* This makes my head hurt. And I really want to see this come together. I can do this!

So, to that end, I should step away from the computer and do more actual knit-testing, eh?

I'm here....just not for long. I've been home since Tuesday evening and completely wiped out. I love my Mom, I love visiting her, but this big girl (and her big guy) spent four nights on a double bed. I don't think I slept well a couple of those nights. Then Wednesday I was up early and busy all day, exhausted to the point of wanting to sleep if I sat for more than a minute. I crashed around 00:30 hours (which would be Thursday AM) and I didn't crawl out of bed until almost 17:30 hours Thursday! I ached all over and that meant a migraine from the tension in my back.

So, here it is Friday and we're headed back to Mom's tonight---only I'm driving our car and Randy is driving a car for work (long story). My tummy's rumbly and I'm not sure if it's stress or something I ate. Fun.

Hopefully, I'll have a more interesting update come the New Year. Thanks for sticking with me, you faithful readers, even for the boring stuff.

I'm here. I'm alive. I've just been.....knittingeatinggamingeatingstayingupallnighteatingraveling. Whew. Yeah. It's been like that!

I'm down to the two sleeves of the Retrograde Pulloever for Nick...and my knitting queue keeps getting longer! I've found a half-dozen things I'd love to knit-and-gift for Christmas.

And I've bought so much roving already----I must be insane! I'll see if I can get Nick to spend a few minutes with the digital camera and take some pictures of my roving goodness *before* I mangle it beyond recognition spin it into yarn.

Oh, and today I joined the Pay It Forward exchange on Lucia's blog. I get a little something sent to me and, in return, I promise:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

So, whether you're a long-time reader (what? I have long-time readers??), a new reader and/or a first time commenter, join in the fun!

And if you're into knitting / crocheting / weaving / spinning -- basically anything textile-oriented and you haven't signed up for Ravelry yet----What's wrong with you? *grin* Seriously, I love this site! It could easily become an addiction!

This says it all best:

An excellent solution to the *&%$ gecko