Am I alone in not being over the moon over spinach artichoke dip? I know it's been "in" for a while now (like a couple of years) but to me it's always seemed like a waste of good artichokes. It's not like I hate it, but it just doesn't do it for me. _

Ben and I have come up with a new game. I take his toy, and put it on my head, and then we see how long it takes him to figure out how to get it off of my head. It's really hilarious. He's very good at figuring out how far he can reach when he has his back paws on the couch and I am sitting near it. He has also learned to stand on my lap to get it. He has occasionally tried to climb up my arms, but that doesn't work out so well. As soon as Ben gets the toy, Sam tries to take it right away from him. (Sam will take a toy when I have it anywhere except balanced on my head.) _

I woke up at 6 because Sam wanted to go sleep in a different bed and was crying at the door (stupid dog). I tried to take him oustide to go pee first, but he ran up two flights of stairs while I was putting on my coat. I saw that it had started snowing while I was asleep, and then when I feel back to sleep I dreamt that I shovelled the whole driveway and as soon as I went inside all the snow melted. _

I was going to wear this to my brother's graduation last spring, but I only just ran elastic through the waistband today. Ben decided to crash the photoshoot, so this is me in my fabulous red skirt, and Ben, being all cute and Ben.

_

The reason I don't usually talk to sales people at places like the Body Shop is I go in intending to buy one thing (like, say, exfoliating lip balm), and if I talk to someone I wind up not only buying what I went in to get, but also a regular lip balm, and two things of eye shadow (because, god forbid I not own more gold and black eye shadow) and a membership card. _

To the creators of Lost: Stop killing your actresses. It's getting absurd. I have said this many times before about different characters, but if you kill Charlotte I will stop watching. (I did stop watching when Shannon was shot. I didn't start watching again until I found out that Ana Lucia also died.) _

This afternoon, I repainted my toe nails, which meant I had to have my feet out of my sheepskin slippers for about an hour. I'm still cold. Stupid cold house. _

A snippit of a text conversation I had with my cousin (who is at the Home State Ball):

Her: "Keep me up to date with info about POTUS."

Me: "He's in white tie, what statesman wear."

Her: "Thank, Jed."

Me: "Thank you Aaron, for prepping us for this president." _

This hat is my fight against the bitter cold of a New England winter. It turned out to not be as warm as I had hoped, but it does help some.

_

Amy asked very nicely, and so I knit her up a lace scarf like the first one I made for myself. Her's is probably better, since I had a better idea what I was doing (it certainly took less time). Like the peacocks, this was finished ages ago, just not blocked. I had a blocking party this weekend, and have been sleeping on the couch (it is a comfortable couch).

_

It took a long time, but I finally completed my peacock knitting. I finished the actually knitting part ages ago, but it took me forever to block it. I hate blocking things, even though I know as a knitter that they make everything look fabulous.



_

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but after packing up my stuff and finding bags and bags of yarn on moving to Boston, I have come up with resolutions for this year:

1) Destash. Get rid of the fuzzy yarn I will never use. Figure out something to do with the half balls from ends of projects.

2) Don't cast on any project until I have cast-off a similar project. I have a blanket on needles, two pairs of gloves, two sweaters, and numerous lace projects. That is, basically, what I knit, blankets, lace, sweaters, so unless I suddenly become inspired to, say, knit a dress (I am actually working on creating a knit dress in my head, with my absurd amounts of purple angora), I should be okay.

3) Try really hard not to buy new yarn. This is the really hard one. I like buying new yarn. _

I have realized that I judge people based on the books they are reading on the subway, and I wonder what other people think of what I am reading. I feel like I sneer internally everytime I see Eat Love Pray or that blue Ann Patchett book everyone is reading. I suppose I have always paid attention to what the people around me are reading--there was the guy at my bus stop who was reading the Oxford Press Ancient Greek version of The Phaedo (we actually wound up talking about it, because, hey, it was in Ancient Greek), and I wound up reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius because I saw someone reading it on the train and thought "it's really gutsy to name your book something like that. I wonder if it's any good?" _

I probably should have put some time between Telemakos and Gen. They may both be very good at what they do, but at least Telemakos isn't smug and boasting about it. _

There are things every girl seems to know how to do, and I don't know where/when/how they learned it (maybe it's because I never read teenage girl magazines, or on the rare occasions when I would read a friend's, I would read the embarassing stories rather than the tips), like how to apply make-up and know what colors look good on them (in terms of make-up), and how to use a blow dryer. My hair froze and then frizzed yesterday, due to me not even owning a blow dryer, and forgetting that, hey, Boston is cold in January, so I went out and bought one. I know there are things you can do with these things to make my curls look fabulous (my hair dress in Virginia did a great job with that), but I have no idea how he did it. I think it involved a diffuser attachment, which my dryer has, but I don't really know what to do. How do people learn these things? The internet seems to be of vague help, but it seems to assume a base knowledge. _

I tried to read The Book Thief, because my mom and Peg were raving about how wonderful it was, and Connor's roommate had just handed it back to me after having borrowed it from my mom. I read about half of it and gave up. I didn't find the story particularly compelling, and I had been interested in it because my mom had described it as "the best book since The History of Love, with a similar sort of writing style." And The History of Love had sort of bowled me over like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius had or Jonathan Safran Foer's novels. The surreal almost stream of conciousness writing in those books had felt like that was the only way they could be written, but the surreal quality in The Book Thief felt put on. I usually finish books, or at least mean to finish them when I put them down distracted (it did, after all, take me somewhere around ten years to finish The Once and Future King, and while I may be distracted from Busman's Honeymoon I do mean to finish it), but I don't really care enough about this book to pick it back up. _

I got my hair cut at an Aveda salon this afternoon. At the end of the haircut, after she blew my hair straight, she sprayed it, cause I had flyaway hairs going straightup. My hair smells like chai tea. I love Aveda products. _

I am such a spoiled fangirl. _

Things guaranteed to make you dizzy: champagne (okay, prosecco), midnight, freezing cold weather, and a hot tub. This is not nearly as...riske as it is sounds; I was in the hottub with my parents and we discussed things like whether or not we got a big enough moving truck (probably not) and how we will pack it, and whether Jamie and I really will go to the best ever yarn store tomorrow morning, and we had leftover bubbly from last night. But, oh, man, am I way more dizzy/lightheaded than I ought to be from not that much liquor. _

One of the nice things about packing up is finding things you've been looking for for a while. We are packing up my parents' house for our temporary move up to Boston, and my mom asked me to "please come help us supplement your cookbook collection -- we don't want to duplicate." I went downstairs, and then remembered that we don't actually have any cookbook overlap, but I find a book that has a short story in it that I've been wanting to reread. I screamed. My stepdad was like "L. Ron Hubbard?" And I said "Elizabeth has a story in it." And I miss Lleu.

(My apologies if this posts twice.) _