Something Tracy and I were watching the other day reminded me of the movie of Howl's Moving Castle. Now, I enjoyed the book immensely. I tried to be annoyed at the movie for not being like the book, but I really gave up on that rather quickly and went on to enjoy a movie that bore a slight resemblance to a book I once read. I watched with subtitles, not dubbed, cause I always watch with subtitles, not the dub, because, well...But that dub, in particular, I bore grief with. First, I think Calcifer should be far less Billy Crystal than he appeared to be in any bits that I saw that were in English, and second I got absolutely furious with them for casting a freaking Welshman as Howl and then making him speak in an American accent. Howl is Welsh. They may have cut that entire bit out of the movie, but it would've been a nice nod to those people who had read the book to let Christian Bale talk like himself. _

Possibly unrealistic, but a damn cool idea. _

I seem to have forgotten to close a tag. Moss, can you fix it, or show me how? _

I finished The Once and Future King. _

I thought I had written an entire nice little entry about the blue lace below, but apparently it went into the Flicker caption, not the blog post. Ah well. To recap:

This is my latest project. In my head it equals Avatar because we have been watching it so compulsively lately, and unlike the anime we usually watch, it is in ENGLISH, and so I can knit lace and watch cartoons at the same time. Never mind any movies I have watched in between, or Torchwood, or that I cast it on so that I had something to do with my hands while watching the Super Tuesday results come in.

The white lines will come out. They are counting repeats of patterns, and if I have to tear out, it will stop at the white lines.

The yarn is this luscious lamb's wool. It's actually this rather spectacular shade of nearly peacock blue, but it is nearly impossible to take pictures of something like that, especially at night. It is so deliciously soft, and the color is so spectacular, I am madly in love with this project. _

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I guess I could thread yarn through my boot's lace holes while I wait for new shoelaces. It's not as though I have no yarn. _

The Tori's lack of voting saga continues...

I have enough trouble getting up in the morning to get dressed before going to work, let alone trying to do something like going to vote before work. I figured I'd just go after work; Tracy, Katherine and I were going to meet at home and drive in, cause it is very cold. Well, what I thought was rain turned out to be, in fact, sleet, and Virginia goes into a panic when there is ice. Tracy and Katherine both found themselves at the Pentagon being turned away from the bus terminals because 395 was not moving and "it'll probably be easier if you go back to Braddock Road and get the bus going in the other direction from there". I, meanwhile, couldn't leave my side of Washington St. The buses were all stuck...somewhere, the bus depot guy had no idea where they were or when they would be there, and there were, apparently, no taxis anywhere in Alexandria. I thought briefly of walking to the metro station and trying to figure it out from there, but I kept slipping, because I was wearing my Chucks instead of something sensible like my Docs (I destroyed my shoelaces and have yet to buy new ones). I wound up freezing, sort of wandering around in a circle, when finally I came to peace with not voting in the primaries. Tracy and I talked, and she and Katherine walked to the house, going to the polling place anyway, and got their car and came to pick me up from the Starbucks where I had eventually wound up in because I figured it was the best place to sit and wait. _

When I got my voting registration card, I put it "someplace safe". I was vaguely convinced that it was in the same place as my W-2, but when I went looking for it last night, it wasn't there. I went into a minor freak out, because I can never remember where my "someplace safe" spot was, and tore apart the bookshelves. Eventually, I decided I was too tired to actually find anything (except my W-2, which was exactly where I thought it was), and I decided to go to bed and call the Alexandria Voting Board today, and possibly start looking again tonight after work. Fortunately, the nice man who answered the phone assured me that I don't actually have to have my voter's card. So, phew. I will look again tonight, and then go with my passport, and something that looks official with my address on it (my driver's lisence is still for PA). _

Sadness. I love my shoes.
_

On Saturday, I showed Katherine how to dye yarn with Kool-Aid in the microwave. I took this light grey alpaca lace weight yarn (one of the perks about lace is that the yarn is so thin a skein comes with so much that you can "splurge" on alpaca or silk or lambswool or cashmere and still not break your wallet nearly as badly as you would if you were making a sweater with something that doesn't totally itch) and dyed it with Tropical Punch Kool-Aid (which smells unbelievably foul, by the way, I don't know why people drink the stuff). It came out this spectacular shade of red that is at once rich and bright. I went through this panicky stage while most of the dye was still in the water (with Kool-Aid, you know that your yarn is done when the water turns back to clear/milky white) where I thought I had come up with the same brown-ish color I always seem to get when I try to dye things red. But it worked, and it is lovely, and it has a end goal in mind. _

I fell madly in love with a ball of this sort of peacocky-blue lace yarn made of lambswool. I thought I knew exactly what I was going to do with it, and then I tested. I don't swatch lace, really, but if a pattern looks like it's going to be complex, I'll go through one set of the repeat before deciding whether or not it is worth it. It looked bad. It's a pretty lace pattern, but I think it was designed for mohair. The yarn is lovely exquisite and soft, but it is not fuzzy at all, and the lace just looked...off. I think I know what I'm going to do with it instead, but ah well. _

Our basement flooded. There is water coming up between the linoleum tiles. The last time we had a major rainstorm the landlord thought he fixed it. Clearly not. _

I was walking by the drugstore this evening, and there was this giant display of Zyrtec, which is apparently now available over the counter. I went in just to peer at it, and make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. I nearly bought some, and then I remembered that I still have a three month supply from my mail in prescription company. _

I was here, yesterday, from 8:30 to 7:30. I ate a yogurt, and french fries and a frosty. And I didn't stop working the entire time. I am too tired to make it through today with a wet foot. _

I destroyed the shoelaces in my boots, and haven't replaced them, and so I've been wearing my sneakers everywhere (I change into dress shoes at work). Today, I succeeded in completely soaking my left foot on my way to the bus stop. I don't even know what I stepped in, or why only the one side got all the ambient rain moisture. My foot is cold. And damp. _

With a huge sigh of relief, I have realized that I do have MP3s of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Siamese Dream, either/both of which I tend to rather desperately want to listen to after particularly horrible days at work. They are now on, and I am happy. And I have called off my search of my copy of Greg Brown's live CD and purchased it off iTunes, which has caused the same sort of "happy found music" feeling, but of an entirely different kind than you get from Billy Corgan. _

I think you should be able to actually vote against someone, rather than just for one of their opponents. Maybe you should get one vote in favor and one vote against. _

I was talking to either Brianne or Katherine about the whole don't use hot water directly from the tap for drinking/cooking thing the other day, and they thought it sounded like a silly myth. But, ha ha, it turns out I was right! _

What the State of the Union (as shown on NBC) was captions giving the names of the random people they were showing the reactions of. And possibly also why that person's reaction was supposed to be interesting. Except for the people who were apparently asleep. They cracked me up. _