This is the kind of reporting I would like to see on the news more often: Olbermann’s Special Comment regarding the Clinton Interview- 9/25/06. For now, I guess I will have to sigh and keep my fingers crossed for the next few years.

I really miss having a president that is as articulate as Bill Clinton.

I really wish the current administration would step up and accept the blame they deserve.

… This ends my political commentary for this month.

St. James Park, London - June, 2006

I am in avoidance mode. I really, really, really do not want to do this presentation this afternoon. I am enjoying staring at this photo as it is my desktop wallpaper right now - it is so much better if you view it large. I still need to work some on my Photoshop skills, as I can see tweaks I want to make in this picture. Maybe this weekend. Right now, I really should practice my speech that I will be giving in 5 hours.

Mike is home (well, right now he is driving home from the airport), and he is going to get Audacity set up for me so I can finally record the next episode of PointySticks this weekend too. Yeah! I haven’t had time to do the software install and get everything set up, so I’m glad he will be helping me out.

Ok, ok, I’ll go practice my speech. Blah.

Street Vendor Oranges, London 2006

This has been the week of constantly changing plans. Last Friday, Mike spent 12 hours on the phone on his day off. He kept updating me on his sudden travel plans. Monday, he flew off to Pittsburgh. He was supposed to be coming home Tuesday night at 8pm. Tuesday at about 5pm he called to tell me that he wouldn’t be home until Friday morning instead, missing out on spending my birthday with me. (I was ok with that and told him that weeks ago when this trip first came up.) So that was the first change.

Last week we thought he might be going to Israel and London next week. Then they decided not to go to Israel, so it would be just London. He said he would be going over for 2-3 days, I suggested that once they paid to fly him over it made sense to go for longer, so he was going to go for the whole week as of yesterday afternoon. As of this morning, he isn’t going at all. Of course, I’m not going to count on that, because these plans just keep on changing.

I didn’t make plans for lunch for yesterday because I thought Mike would be home. Tuesday night, Katy Blogless called to offer to take me to lunch, so I said yes. Yesterday morning we invited my Mom and Ann (who couldn’t join us). Then Katy realized that her stomach was trying to kill her, so she wasn’t able to join us either. As a recent victim of the GERD, I have great sympathy for anyone with stomach pains, so I understood. I had a nice lunch with my Mom and stopped at Twisted Yarns afterwards to pet the fiber. Dinner with my parents and Jason at Lupe Tortilla’s (yummmmm) capped off the day. No changes there, so at least something isn’t going to change on me this week!

I was asked to present my speech on X-Ray Crystallography at a conference tomorrow. At first I didn’t accept because my partner for the project has gone on to another school so I wasn’t sure about doing it alone. Then they asked me again, and Mike encouraged me to do it with a “good for the applications” speech. I reluctantly signed up. I have found the slides for the presentation, but I have practiced it exactly ONE time. The event is tomorrow. I would like to add another change to this week’s list by not going, but I don’t think that is an option this late in the game. Ugh.

By the way, in case anyone was wondering, it is an absolute *JOY* to be able to edit photos in PhotoShop on a computer that can handle running it. Zoooooom. You might be seeing a lot more photos soon! Maybe I’ll finally get through the Ozark photos at last!

The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning was, “What do you mean, I am 37?” It seems like only yesterday I was 23. But I’m not one of those people that freaks out about birthdays. I welcomed my 30s - I just can’t believe I am getting so close to my 40s!

So my profound wisdom that I want to share with everyone on my birthday is this: You are OK. Embrace yourself. Don’t try to be someone else - be true to yourself. Life is too short to surround yourself with things - and people - that do not make you happy. Find joy in the little moments. But most of all? You are OK.

(We are studying all sorts of different theories in my psych class right now, and the whole “I’m OK, You’re OK” thing of Transactional Analysis came up yesterday - and really? There is a lot of good things to that theory.)

I will have to go look back at old birthday posts later on, but I can tell you that my life definitely took a positive turn at the point when I realized that I had lost “myself” in the shuffle and I started to find myself again, working on accepting myself just as I am. I still have to think about it from time to time, but I know in the end if I listen to myself and am true to myself, I will make the right decisions. Because I am OK.

I have a lot of old floppy disks at home, and I’m sure if I checked with Mike he probably has even more. I seriously feel the need to make a Floppy Disk Bag now. How cool is that? (via Boing Boing.)

This is what happens when you gather together a big group of Flickr members together all at once. Before you know it, you have a table FULL of cameras. They met up at Franklin Coffee Shop in downtown Houston, but thanks to a mattress catching fire on I-10, Elaine & I were late. Of course, we took a photo of the fire (below) - after we quickly got off of the freeway and on to the feeder road to avoid the traffic on I-10! When we got to meetup, the coffee shop had closed, so we moved down Main Street to Tropioca. After closing down Tropioca, we wandered back to our cars, took photos (shocking!) and then Elaine & I went to Frank’s Pizza for pepperoni rolls. Mmmmm!

Tara? Glenda? I was totally thinking of you when I saw this! Soccer Mom, throwin’ down the gang signs at the ghetto gas station! Fo shizzle and all that, bitches!

By the way, the Rennaisance Fair starts in ONE WEEK and I am totally psyched. Seriously. Does that make me white and nerdy?

A post with actual knitting content *and* sweater photos (pre-frogging) and there are no comments? I’m shocked.

The new laptop is here and I looooove it. Now I’m setting everything up. What are your “must have” applications? Do you use FireFox? Are there any extensions I need to be sure check out? I already have “Session Saver” so it remembers what tabs I had open when I close it. Considering my addiction to tabs, this is a good thing.

I set up FeedReader, and I’m still adding feeds to it to make the blog surfing easier. Want me to read your blog? Leave a comment so I can add you! *grin*

(Obviously, I’m adding all the ones I read obsessively and leave comments on all the time. You know who you are. I’m a comment leavin’ fanatic!)

Since today is “Finish it Friday!” I thought I should maybe finish posting a photo or two from July! Meeting Caro this summer was the final push I needed before I went and pierced my nose. When we met back up in July for the visit of the Yarn Harlot, I had to snap a photo of us together. This was outside of the church while we were in that Post-Harlot euphoria state!

Have you SEEN the bags and card wallets and other goodies that Caro makes? They are fabulous - be sure to check out her Etsy shop!

Thanks to Elemmaciltur, I just learned that Oktoberfest actually started last Sunday in Munich. So that means I can start my Socktoberfest socks today! (Lolly already said we could start whenever we want, but this just adds fuel to the fire to make me start them.) I am really drawn to the fall colors lately - it must be my need for cooler weather. We did actually have a “cold front” come through this week, and the other day it was only 84 at 2pm. Fall is coming!

Since today is Finish it Friday, I’m going to see if there are any socks that I have already knit that need finishing work done on them. You never know where I might have been lazy and not woven in an end! I’m also going to work on getting my sleeve back to the length it was - I frogged over half of it last night. I can’t handle pooling, so I am redoing it and alternating my balls (*snort*) to prevent it. The garter stitch needed to be tighter too, so it is all for the best.

Earlier this week, after much debate, discussion, research, and everything else, the decision was made to move me off of the Compaq Armada E500 laptop that was Mike’s old machine from the year 2000. (In the year 2000… in the year 2000!) While the laptop has served me well since the demise of the last two laptops I owned, it can barely handle running Photoshop, which I need to edit photos so I can send them off to print so that I can get back onto the timeline for Fresh Photography.

I mean … this thing is an antique in computer terms. Can you even buy a machine with the Compaq name on it? I think they are all branded HP now.

So it was off to Dell to buy a new Latitude. Just in time for school and work. I owned a Latitude for over 4 years, and it wasn’t until the keyboard decided to freak out back in 2005 that I stopped using it full time. It seems that the “m” key is necessary when you want to type .com in - or for any other number of words, really. So when it died, I used the “Itty Bitty” laptop full time. It was teeny-tiny with a compressed keyboard, and it is actually smaller than a single subject spiral notebook. That worked until it decided it would just spontaneously shut off every 15 minutes or so. Then it was on to this Compaq. I was moving backwards in time - a 2001 model, a 2003 model, and then a 2000 model!

I didn’t expect the new Dell until next week. Nice, because it was estimated to ship on my birthday next Wednesday, so not only was I getting a new computer, but I was getting one for a gift to myself. Sweet!

But guess what?!? Guess what?!? It is coming NOW! I got the shipping e-mail with the tracking number and everything, and it is scheduled for delivery TOMORROW! So I will have it for the weekend! How cool is THAT?!? I am *so* excited! A nice, shiny new laptop. With cool things like “Intel Core 2 Duo T7200, 2.00GHz, 667Mhz 4M L2 Cache” and a 512 MB NVIDIA video card. I still don’t know what half of that means, but I know that the 2.00 GHz of RAM and the video card will help run Windows Vista when it comes out someday. Oh, just thinking of how fast the computer will be makes me so happy! I can’t wait!

Finally, I will be able to open Photoshop without it taking so long I could go and cook dinner while it launched. That makes me so giddy!

I missed it last year, so I made sure I signed up this year and I’m trying to help spread the word - Socktoberfest is coming! Socktoberfest is coming! Join 800+ other knitters and celebrate Socktoberfest by knitting socks. No swaps involved, no deadline, just knitting fun, fun, fun! (I am all about the fun.) Have questions? Want details? Go read more at Lolly’s.

The topic of blogger and podcaster rights came up again today thanks to things currently going on in the blogosphere. While I was thinking about it, I decided to go and poke around the EFF website. If you have a blog, of any nature, I really recommend reading this site. There is so much great information out there - and while you might think it doesn’t apply to you, it probably does.

Heck, it doesn’t even apply to just bloggers. The EFF stepped in to help when needed for online embroidery fans - and if embroidery fans need them, knitters might need them too! You can read the whole story here.

The only time I have run into a legal issue with a (outside of an employer not liking the fact that I blogged) was when we received what was basically a “cease and desist” letter regarding what a hosting client had posted on his site. He went to a restaurant, and his experience sucked. He blogged about it (something we all do at one time or another), and in his post he named the restaurant and said that it, well, sucked. Google picked it up, and soon people were googling “restaurant sucks” and finding his blog post. It became a forum of sorts for disgruntled former and current employees of the sucky restaurant. The restaurant’s lawyers sent the letter, citing copyright infringement issues (he had a photo that showed a display case and part of an employee’s uniform shirt which had the logo on it) among other things. He didn’t fight them on it, because he really only wanted to share that he didn’t like the place - so he just pulled the post. But when you stop to think about it, they really had no right to complain and threaten him. It can happen though. Even if you don’t care about it and you pull the post, there is still something startling about getting that letter from the lawyer to begin with.

I know there are many bloggers out there that want to remain anonymous, and that is ok - but I recommend that you read the EFF’s Guide on Blogging Anonymously and really think about it. Once you put it out there, it is out of your control, freely released for the rest of the Internet to see. Be wise about what you choose to put out there. The Legal Guide for Bloggers and the Podcasting Legal Guide are also another good thing to consider.

Speaking of which, I totally missed my 6 year blogging anniversary earlier this month! Can you believe it? The BlahBlahBlog.com (the original name of this site, and I still own the URL) is 6 years old. Wow. How time flies! I still remember how back in 2000 I would tell someone I had a blog and they would look at me like I was speaking gibberish. Now you hear about blogs all the time. The changes are amazing.

The update on the tests: Organic Chem was ok until I got to the naming portion. I knew that would be my downfall going into it, and I was right. I need to figure out how the whole chaining carbons works and how I count the chain. Ok, I know how it works - but sometimes it is a branch and some times it isn’t. So I need to know when it is 2,4-dimethylbutane and when it is 2,4-dimethyloctane. Or something like that. (I’m just making those up as I go along.) The Trig test rocked, as it flowed a lot like the review she gave us last week. I did make a mountain out of a molehill on one problem, and for the life of me could not work it out. It went something like sin(7a+3 degrees)=cos(a-4 degrees) and I was rambling around in the wrong direction. I started working it out when I was thinking about the fact that sin(60)=cos(90-60) and it should have lead me to sin+cos=90 for the problem above. (Again, I’m making up the numbers, so I don’t even know if that works out.) Unfortunately, I didn’t make it all the way through to that. Doh! Just dropping the sin and cos and adding 7a+3+a-4=90 would have allowed me to solve for a. Oops. Oh well, that was the only one that stumped me, so hopefully I will have an A on the test. As for the chem test, I just kept reminding myself that he drops the lowest grade.

My garter stitch photo from Monday was the beginning of the body portion of the sweater I am knitting, which is the Cottage Creations Babies and Bears for Grown-Ups sweater. The problem is that the pattern only gives gauge for the stockingette stitch portion of the sleeve. It doesn’t give a gauge for the garter stitch portion. Next problem is that I didn’t knit to gauge on the sleeve - it was supposed to be 4 stitches per inch, and I knit it at 4.5 stitches per inch. I liked the fabric better. The sleeve is big as it is, and if I had knit it to gauge it would have been *huge*. It is an oversized sweater pattern, and I picked it for the roomy sleeves, but I don’t need them to be that roomy. You can tell it was designed by someone in Iowa, who probably needs a few more layers than I wear down here in Texas.

The main body of the sweater is like a big mitered square, so the length of the body is sideways garter stitch. I was afraid it would stretch too much, since I am using (and loving!) the Brooks Farm 4-Play yarn, which is a 50/50 merino wool/silk blend.

I’m going to be frogging part of the sleeve back because I had a few inches of pooling, right where the sleeve reached the right length for the repeats to line up too much. It is at the elbow and probably not a big deal to anyone but me, but the sweater moves fast as it is knit in the round, and I find the pooling irritating. Why bother finishing something that bugs you? So frogging is the way to go, and then it will be the way that I want it after I alternate the balls of yarn. When I get back to the garter stitch portion of the body, I’ll just stick to the size 7 needles.

The perk of the sweater’s construction is that you knit one half, then you knit the other half, and then you graft them together. When I get to the “end” of the first half, I put all of the live stitches onto waste yarn so I can try it on then and make sure it fits. If I need to increase the size some, I can just put it back on the needles and knit a few more rows. In other words, this is probably the best pattern for me to get over my sweater phobias!

On a side note, I owe a lot of people e-mails right now. However, Mike is out of town, I have a zillion things to do, I didn’t get enough sleep this week with the test stress, and - most importantly! - I have some tasks I need to take care of for the photography business. Now. Right away. Elaine is waiting on me, and I hate to leave her waiting. So in addition to reading my Organic Chem book tonight and cleaning the kitchen, I’ll be reading and reviewing things for Fresh Photography. I honestly (really! seriously!) can’t tell you how happy that makes me. It just feels good to have the first tests over and done with - now I know what to expect for the next ones. So if you are waiting for e-mail from me (Julia, I owe you about 10 by now!), I promise - SOON. But not tonight.

Too loose?

Originally uploaded by bpc.