In an attempt to pack only clean clothes, I am doing a laundry marathon like I haven't done in a while. I tend to wear all the same clothes, which make up about one load of laundry, because I am too lazy to do more. I'm pretty sure that neither Brianne nor Katherine sorts their clothes before washing them, whereas I sort light and dark regulars and light and dark delicates. (I didn't used to sort light and dark delicates, but then I wound up with a bunch of white pajamas that said to wash on cold delicate cycles, and so I wound up with a large enough load, rather than just one or two bras to wear under white shirts.) I suspect they think I am nuts, while I think they are a little carzy about not sorting, myself. Brianne, of course, only owns dark clothes, so fine, but...Am I alone? Do most of you just dump all your clothes together in one machine? _

This afternoon, at some point, I stood up, after being all tangled in yarn and knitting, and everything fell on the floor. As I tripped, I managed to jab a knitting needle into the arch of my foot. Now, it is worth mentioning that one of the key features that I look for in knitting needles is that they are sharp; I used to have a hole in my fingertip from my needles, but now I have a callous, and these were rather small (certainly not the smallest ever, but also certainly not those giant plastic knitting needles you sometimes see that look rather like children's fat crayons). I bled rather a lot, and since I have a hole in the arch of my foot, it stretches whenever I walk, and it hurts. _

Last night, while drifting off to sleep, I had visions of Aang trying on our skirts. This is what you get when you sell people skirts all day and then race home to finish Avatar. (And then run off to watch Batman, but I was working pretty hard on keeping Batman out of my drifting off thoughts, because then I would have never slept.)

Also, air conditioning is awesome. Especially when it stays on all night, rather than blowing fuses every twenty minutes. _

My new hat.
_

Anyone who hasn't already, should totall go check out Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Because it is hilarious. _

I can read some amazingly bad books, generally the really bad books that I read are hot pink (or at any rate really ought to be hot pink) and inane chick-lit. I have read all the way through two books by Marian Keyes, and she is really and truly dreadful. But I cannot for the life of me read Twilight. It's poorly written, and the main character is extraordinarily dull. Her narration is so smug and snobby, but I can't for the life of me figure out why she is so much better than everyone around her. Her boredom with her life reminds me of the girl in Labyrinth, but at least we weren't treated to the Jennifer Connelly's (I can't for the life of me remember the name of the character, and I don't really care enough to look it up on imdb) character. I give up. It's bad. I'm going to go back to Possession, which is well written and interesting, and the main characters have personalities, and The Looking Glass Wars, which I picked up to amuse myself at Barnes and Nobles today (I locked myself out of the house when I was going to go knitting and had no money for bus fare or my bus pass or my keys, so I went off to find Brianne, who was driving home, so I hung out for half an hour). It seems good and interesting, and I adore the Alice books generally.

 

Anyway, Twilight sucks. I totally don't understand why people love it so much. _

I slipped getting off of the bus today, and wound up banging up my knee. I think it is getting a bruise. I feel stupid. And it hurts. _

My computer is back, it was only really missing for most of Thursday and Friday, since I was away for the weekend and then I slept really late this morning, which is nice. I think they also cleaned it while they had it. And it no longer flickers. Hurrah for having my computer back. _

Skirts go my face.
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Tree shadow on tent.
_

Today I sent my laptop off to Apple for them to repair the flickering monitor. Now I miss my computer. _

Sam is quite afraid of Zeb's dog, Bailey, who is so much larger than Sam, Sam is about the size of her head. He snaps and barks at her, and she is young enough that she doesn't really realize how much bigger she is than he is. Bailey spent the night on Saturday at my parents' house, and Sam spent a lot of time hiding. Then on Sunday when we went home, Katherine's family was visiting with their daucshaund. Fortunately, these two dogs get along quite well. They have sniffed each other and fallen asleep. _

So, I went on a chocolate cooking adventure over the past few days, and I made my absurdly intense peanut butter cup brownies last night, and then today I made chocolate ice cream. Brianne and I both forgot my ice cream cookbooks, and so I searched Epicurious and used the first recipe I came upon. It came out more like frozen dark chocolate pudding than chocolate ice cream, but man was it good.

There are other things I cooked today, I'm sure. I also figured out how to make Thai style cole slaw (the trick seems to be lime juice, rice vinegar, sesame oil and peanuts).

At my parents' lake, everyone around the lake lights flares. It sounds kind of silly, but when the whole lake is all surrounded by the red lights of traffic flares, it actually looks very pretty. Generally, we haven't been much with the whole participating in community activities around the lake, but I like that everyone does it together. The rain cleared as it was time to light the flares, and then our neighbors put on their crazy firework display. They put up tons of fireworks, and huge ones, perfectly round ones that look like they are as big as the lake. It's awesome to see a great firework show from your backyard, rather than going out and trying to find parking and a good place to watch the professionals put them on. And this is a seriously good show, even if there are trees in the way. Better by far, say, than the show they put on when I lived in Hatteras. (Not as good as the show we saw in France when we were there during Bastille day).

The dogs hate fireworks. They hid in the house and shake. We also had two mothers of less than one month old babies, who stayed in the house with the dogs and the babies. The babies, I understand, were less spooked than the dogs. _

We went out and got a Wii Fit today, and I had a lot of fun playing with the skiing games and the hulu hoops. Apparently, my balance sucks, and it asked if I fall down when walking (which I do). Anyway, I think Nintendo has a great thing for themselves going, where they don't make enough of things that everyone wants, and then they charge a bunch of money and they make you want to go out and get new things like Mario Kart or Wii Fit or Guitar Hero or whatever.  _

I promised Julia I would try to blog pictures of my latest knitting project, and I am so incredibly happy with this project, I just want to show it off to everyone.

This is a picture of the whole project, at this point. The details are harder to see from up here, but there it is



The details:





And the arty shot of across the lace:



The yarn was named Pallas Athena, and I couldn't resist the name. _

Brianne and I went to see Get Smart tonight. We had a bit of a freak out at the movie theater, because I had looked up when it was playing, it said there was a 10 o'clock show, so we went to go see that one, but the marquee at the theater said the last one was at 9:10. Brianne was convinced that I had looked it up wrong, and we tried to call MoviePhone (which may not actually exist, and if it does, I certainly don't know the number) before I remembered that I had Fandango programmed into my phone. Fandango assured us that there was a 10 o'clock show (which certainly beat Brianne's idea that involved getting to Tyson's in twenty minutes) and we went and asked, and they were like "oh, yes, there's a show at 10." Anyway, once the movie started, we laughed and laughed. I was a bit concerned that it would be disappointing, because all the reviews of it I had read/heard were comparing it to The Love Guru, which I understand is truly dreadful. But, no, we were incredibly amused. And Masi Oka is, as Brianne put it "freakin' adorable". He always is, I often want to pinch Hiro's cheeks and tell him he is adorable, and he didn't disappoint tonight. _

Also, V unq tbggra vg vagb zl urnq gung Evpuneq Qnjxvaf jnf ernyyl bayl ba frg orpnhfr uvf jvsr jnf ba, naq abj V nz fnq naq fhyxl gung Ebznan jnfa'g gurer rvgure. _

For the sake of Cassie/Martin/Moss and Julia who are probably further behind in Dr. Who than Katherine and I now are, I am have used rot13. Ohg V yvxr Qnivq Graanag. Engure n ybg. V jvyy or irel irel fhyxl vs ur vf gehyl tbar. V nz pbzvat hc jvgu gurbevrf vaibyivat gur unaq va n wne. _

Oh, yes, the unproductive trip to the Sony store. Somewhere on our vactation, I lost the cord that attaches my digital camera to my computer. I figured it's a Sony camera, Sony will sell the cord. Wrong. Apparently they are consistantly sold out of that particular cord. I sulked at the guy who told me that, and asked when they would come back in, and as I was leaving, all downtrodden, the woman behind the information desk sort of whispered that I should try the Best Buy across the street. Best Buy may not sell the cords (apparently they don't) but they do sell card readers, so I got one of those. _

I had a rather unproductive afternoon at the Apple Store (and then the Sony Store). I went to the Apple Store to see if they would replace my battery (No. Batteries are only covered for the first year of your Apple Care plan) and while I was there my monitor started flickering, and the guy at the Genius Bar was like "Um...It's not really supposed to do that, you know." Says I, "Well, it does." (I took it in for that once, but it wouldn't flicker at the Genius Bar, so they didn't really believe me, and sent me home.) "Well," says he, "your Apple Care does cover that, but we'll have to send it away. Do you have all your data backed up?" "Er...no. I have some backed up, and I have an external harddrive that could eat everything on here a couple of times over, but it's at home." "Well, you should definately back it up. The turn around on getting your computer back to you would be about five business days." So, I'm going to take my computer back to them on Monday on my way out of town for the week, as there are computer galore at my parents house, so I will sulk less about being computerless. Also, I can continue to look up festivals and other places where we could sell skirts, as there will be computers. _