Stupid complicated Zen Cart. Why do you hate me and my trying to make gift wrapping work? _

Oh, good, that worked. I am so relieved. It was scarier than when my stepdad uses my computer and goes "but it was really annoying when I tried to go to websites, cause the places you go popped up and so I cleaned your cache and history" _

So, I'm sitting here, happily reading an email, and Firefox crashed. I'm fairly used to Firefox crashing at this point; I'm using Firefox 3.0 and it crashes about once a day. Well, this was a particularly weird crash and it managed to lose my bookmarks and my browsing history and my cookies.

And, suddenly, I realized "wait, did I accidentally move a folder?" and I looked in my Knitting Pattern folder and there was my Library folder. I hope that fixes everything. _

Normally, when I write up descriptions of our skirts for the website, I do it directly in Word. Yesterday, however, Jamie and I made the decision that we would watch Bones on hulu before it went away (no more first season of Bones! Oh no!) while I wrote descsriptions and she put the online. So she used her laptop to actually put stuff online, and I sat there with paper and a pen and wrote up descriptions, all tiny and illegible (I can read it. I don't know why no one else can read my writing. But yesterday I was writing fast enough that I can understand that someone who isn't me might not be able to read it.) I wrote the descriptions of around 20 skirts on the backs of two pieces of scrap paper. I was using a nice(ish) pen (I am a pen snob) but I was writing small and fast and my pen kept fritzing out on me (plenty of ink, I don't know what was up with it. It was a new gel pen.) And today I typed them up. Blah. _

I have trouble taking PETA seriously when they do things like try to suggest that Ben and Jerry's switch from cow to human milk. I could take them seriously if they were advocating a switch to milk from free range grass fed cows, or soy, but, I mean, come on... _

I have always connected PBS and NPR as though they are under the same sort of blanket. I don't know if it's because they were both commercial free, or because I lived around Philadelphia when I was at the right age to know that both their PBS and NPR stations are WHYY. (Harrisburg's are also both the same, they are WITF.) Does anyone know if they actually are related to each other? _

Oh my god! Pirates! _

They cancelled the Ren Faire today due to rain, although it looks like today will be pretty much nothing like yesterday's rain. We drove through Plymouth yesterday and there was so much water on the street that it was over the sidewalk. I kind of wish I were in DC and could go to Book Fest, although I'm not sure I really would feel like standing around for Neil Gaiman to sign a book for me again. _

Oh! Martin's back! Hi Martin! _

I can understand McCain's thinking in that they should stop campaigning and be senators to focus on the economic crisis if that means not running around in battleground states giving speaches about why you should vote for them. However, calling off the debate on Friday night? C'mon, man, are you really going to be in Senate meetings on a Friday night? My guess is no, they're not, and then I don't understand why they don't just hold the debate in DC. _

We are living by one of those beaches that you get in New England where it is mostly very large rocks and very little sand. It involves a lot of jumping from rock to rock, or else there are smaller rocks for you to stand on along the way. Sam is spectacular with the rocks. He goes faster than the other dogs, and is generally bolder about what rocks he's willing to jump onto. One day, I saw him trying to jump onto a rock; there were two rocks next to each other, and he sort of landed in between, not all the way up either, and so he used his head/neck to hold himself up to climb the rock correctly. It was quite frankly amazing. His sister goes into the water at every opportunity; her tail starts wagging as soon as her feet are no longer touching bottom, and it's almost impossible to get her out of the water. Fortunately for us, she only goes in the water if there is a person standing at the water's edge, and she tends to get out if we call her. We have taken to calling her an otter and calling Sam a sea goat. _

Excuse the double post. My computer/internet connection seems to have submitted twice. _

I signed up for Amazon Prime on a whim (or to get The Empty Kingdom faster) in the spring. Today, we decided in a fit of everyone being sick of ironing that what we really need for the skirts was an commercial grade clothes steamer. We tried calling around to find a store that had one, and eventually determined that Amazon, where I had gone mostly to read user reviews, would be perfect, and that we could wait until tomorrow to order it, using Amazon Prime. And so now we have two on the way (our visitor decided she needed one too) which are supposed to arrive tomorrow. The craziness of the world.

Generally we tell people that they don't need to iron their skirts, which is pretty much true. The wrinkles tend to fall right out. However, we decided that before photographing them for the web, we should iron out the wrinkles. And also sometimes the skirts that travel between festivals get truly ridiculously wrinkled. And so we were ironing. _

I signed up for Amazon Prime on a whim (or to get The Empty Kingdom faster) in the spring. Today, we decided in a fit of everyone being sick of ironing that what we really need for the skirts was an commercial grade clothes steamer. We tried calling around to find a store that had one, and eventually determined that Amazon, where I had gone mostly to read user reviews, would be perfect, and that we could wait until tomorrow to order it, using Amazon Prime. And so now we have two on the way (our visitor decided she needed one too) which are supposed to arrive tomorrow. The craziness of the world.

Generally we tell people that they don't need to iron their skirts, which is pretty much true. The wrinkles tend to fall right out. However, we decided that before photographing them for the web, we should iron out the wrinkles. And also sometimes the skirts that travel between festivals get truly ridiculously wrinkled. And so we were ironing. _

I have been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle lately. I don't think I've ever thought about food quite the same way. I don't think I could stand eating only local foods. I love tea for breakfast, and bread, and cucumbers and other fruits and vegetables whenever I want them. But, it's interesting, and there are tasty sounding recipes. _

Today I got in the mail a check from Comcast for some reason I don't quite realize and a gift certificate from Aveda because I am in their rewards program and it was just my birthday. Sometimes the mail is awesome. _

Also, the new hazelnut Kahlua is delicious. _

Six boxes of our skirts were delivered to my stepbrother's house in Vermont, so today my mom and I took a meandering trip up to pick them up. We had to drop my uncle off at the airport in Manchester, New Hampshire for a 9:30 flight, and let me tell you, driving from a little less than an hour south of Boston to about an hour north of Boston just so that you'll be hitting rush hour means you leave really early, and you still sit there and stare at the city for quite a while. But he did make his plane, and so we went out and had spectular ice cream for breakfast. (There is a place called Puritan ice cream in Manchester; we went once or twice when she lived there, but that was long after we had laughed to ourselves that at Puritan ice cream they made unsweetened ice cream out of skim milk.) I had ginger that had actual chunks of ginger in it, and she had pumpkin. They make the kind of ice cream that reminds you that Americans can make ice cream too. Then we walked around this pond across the street (we had the dogs with us). We spent a fortune at the liquor store buying two cases of wine and rather a lot of harder things as well; I got fancy organic vodka (which was on sale) for trying to make limoncello. We wandered into a yarn shop in Concord, because I had found it online using her SmartPhone. We wound up getting nothing (I debated making a bag they had on display, but it involved this "paper ribbon" yarn that struck me as kind of scary looking to work with) and kept on the road to Vermont. By the time we were around Quechee (which is a name that amuses me to no end) we were getting hungry after our spectacular ice cream breakfast, so we decided to stop at the Simon Pearce restaurant. We got to sit on their balcony, in the corner closest to the spectacular waterfall which I think powers the restaurant. Their plates and glasses (and apparently flatware) are all made on site, and they were beautiful (also for sale). The food was spectacular; every bite we ate was amazing. We had carrot ginger soup and a spinach artichoke salad, and then we both had the special ravioli, which was one of the tastiest things I'd ever eaten. After we ate, we wandered around the shop, and looked at lovely plates and bowls and glasses. Then mom went out to play with the dogs, and I went to watch the glass blowing demo. (I wanted to watch the pottery demo, but they guy seemed to be on his break, and I cared less). I saw all the things Peg and Jyles are doing to their house, with building a shed for their furnace (crazy furnace) and their gardens and their new chicks (they have had them for like three days). My mom went to take a nap, and Peg took me to her friend's new yarn store, where I found a alpaca fingering weight yarn, and a nice thicker (DK maybe) llama/silk blend. And then off we went, back to Mass. _

Happy birthday Neil. _

My bloglet tracker isn't working. _