Oh my god. Michael Chabon and Ayelet what's-her-name are developing a show for HBO about magicians fighting Nazis.

This could be the best tv show ever.

(Especially if it has Joe.) _

Things that have made me tetchy while watching Foyle's War include:

Andrew helping the RAF experiment with radar. Nope. Sorry, Andrew, they weren't calling it radar.

The rich American being flown home in 1940. I found this to be mildly implausible before reading Beryl Markham's fabulous West with the Night. I find it incredibly implausible that there were two successful flights from Europe to North American in 1936 and yet, it was common enough that not only did he have someone fly him home, he "had a flight to catch."

Mostly, though, I really enjoy it. _

I set my mom up with the free Amazon Prime for students thing this morning. Which meant I also had to set her up with an Amazon account. And then I had to show her how to use Amazon. It was surreal, who has never ordered from Amazon? I sat there trying to log into her Amazon account, and it just kept failing. I did this because she wants us to always pick our book club book at least a month in advance so she has time to buy it, since she lives in the middle of nowhere and gets to bookstores infrequently. _

The battery on my laptop has given up. It had had a battery life of about 15 minutes, which I grant is nearly nothing, but it didn't shut off if the power cord pulled loose. ((sigh)) Oh well. I can get a new battery on eBay.

(It may be time for a new computer, but I am not really making enough money to buy a new computer, even with my tax return money.) _

The red and silver sweater is really too large to shove in my purse and knit on the subway. It's coming with me to Vermont where I hope to make large chunks of progress on it.

However. I am grown used to having a knitting project in my purse (also, a book, but that is a long standing thing. The book currently living in my purse is West With the Night which I am loving, even if I am moving through it slowly because the subway is too full to read or knit. I have been playing solitaire rather obsessively on my iPod while listening to old episodes of Radio Lab and occasionally wanting to reach through the iPod and throttle one of the hosts and Malcolm Gladwell for being so smug) and this morning I went tearing through my room to find the other lace cardigan I've been working on. I stood there, at one point, calling it "Sofya, Sofya, where are you Sofya?" As though, somehow, the knitting project had turned into something that could, well, respond to my query.

I have no idea where it is. I ran out of the house without it. _

Sam clearly has a hierarchy of toys he prefers to play with. He prefers plush toys above all, but I generally don't give him plush toys because after about half an hour he guts them and gets cotton all over the house. I think of these, he generally likes toys that are shaped like monkeys, but that could be my own projections.

Next, he likes these toys that are by Hartz, they're rubber stretched over some foam creation, and they squeak. We used to have rainbow balls (they are about what they sound like) but they've all vanished. I also have bones, I used to have a red bone and a yellow bone and he had a clear preference for the red bone. (The red bone is now lost.) I have a whole series of animals like this, sort of ball shaped, and they bounce and squeek. I have a rhino, two elephants, a duck billed platypus, a cow, and a gorilla. His favorite is the rhino, then the elephants, then the cow. He will play with the platypus only if he really wants to play and there are no other toys around. Generally, he ignores the platypus (I like it. I think it's cute.)

Then he will play with Kongs. He prefers this one that's meant to keep his teeth clean, it's kind of jack shaped. Kongs aren't particularly exciting, they don't make noise, and they don't bounce particularly well. But sometimetimes they have treats stuffed inside, or peanut butter

And, of course, there are always toilet paper rolls. He gets very excited when he goes in the bathroom and he can see that the toilet paper roll is getting close to being finished. He sits in front of it and looks at it and looks at me and looks at it and looks at me very intently. Toilet paper rolls trump all, except possibly plush toys.

In Alexandria, I had the flex foam toys, and these plush animal ring toys with plastic hands and feet. The ring had started out with one that was shaped like a monkey, and Brianne and I would swear if you said "Sam, get the monkey" he would to run off and get one of those toys, and not one of the flex foam toys. (He couldn't tell monkey from duck from cow from bunny, but he is a dog with a very small brain.)

Anyway. I have now have blogged probably way too much about my dog's toy habits. _

Why did I give him back the stupid monkey? Why oh why?! _

What books do you have multiple versions of? I can see three different selections of the Iliad in Greek on my shelves, and Chapman's translation. Somewhere about I also have Fagles for sure, and I have at one point owned Lattimore's. (I may have given it away. Lattimore's Homer is crap.)

I only have one English Odyssey, but I do have selections from Books I-XII in Greek. I have at least two translations of The Aeniad, for some ungodly reason, and Books II and IV in Latin.

I used to collect pretty versions of Alice in Wonderland, but at this point I can only find one on my shelves, and the Annotated Alice. But my shelves are entirely unorganized, and I have two boxes of unpacked books. _

There is a hyacinth on my desk, a present from a coworker whose plants I watered while she was out of town, and I am suddenly stuck trying to remember if Hyacinthus was Apollo's boyfriend who he accidentally brained while playing discus, or if I have mixed up stories (the flowers I can think of that were people, Narcissus, who wasted away staring at himself while Echo wasted away watching him, Anenome, which was Adonis who was fought over by Persephone and...Artemis? and the sunflower, the girl who fell in love with Apollo and watched the sun every day while he ignored her. So. Probably I am right about hyacinth. I am trying to figure out if I'm right without Wikipedia.) So...help? Am I right about Hyacinthus? And also, who was Persephone fighting over Adonis with? Was it Artemis? Wasn't he gored by a boar? _

I got really excited for a minute when I thought Groupon was doing a glass blowing workshop, but it turns out it was for fusing. Or stained glass. Stained glass might be interesting to try, but I miss playing with white hot dripping glass. Blowing glass is awesome. Too bad it is an even more expensive hobby than pottery. Also, it is harder to find glass blowing studios. Maybe I should see if I could apprentice myself off at Simon Pearce or somethi _

Idiot dog. Wouldn't stop making noise with the toy. So, I gave him a biscuit and tried to hide the toy while he was distracted, but he found it, and sat in front of the shelf it was on and whined and barked until I said "fuck it" and sent us both to bed. There was half an hour left of my episode, too, so now I have to wait until tomorrow to find out if I was right that the suicide thing was a fake out so the boy's identity could be properly hidden before he was sent to France by the SOE. (I suppose the internet would know the answer.)

I did finish the second sleeve, though. So there's that at least. _

Sam has gotten ahold of this screaming monkey plush toy (it once wore a Woot tee shirt). He used to be terrified of them, and would run away. But he is obsessed with it today. It is best when I shoot it (it has rubber bands for arms so you can hook it on your fingers, pull back and let go) or throw it, but he will throw it around the room for himself. But, as I said, it is best if I throw it, so he has been sitting with it in the middle of the living room wimpering at me to throw it for him.

Meanwhile, I am trying to finish this sleeve, and watch Foyle's War which has recently recaptivated me. I watched a few episodes of it sometime in the fall, thought "oh, this is fun" and then sort of wandered away from it. Now I am at the beginning of the third season. _

The sleeve below is the knitting project I've been working on rather obsessively since mid-January. I am usually a fairly fickle knitter, when I finish a project it is usually by force of will.

The sweater is properly called Myrtle Cardigan, but I have been calling it Lleu. It is the third sweater in a cycle, but it will be the second one I finish because I am so incredibly anxious. I had this one properly figured out before I had the second one, and then I just saved up money for the gorgeous yarn with that is something like 2% silver, which is why it is shiny.

The body is complete, bottom up to the armpits, and so is the first sleeve. This one is close to finished, then I attach them all together and knit to the top. After which will come the dreaded picking up stitches to do the button band. I am still debating buttons, I'm not sure if I want buttons that look like hematite or that are solid black. I do know that I really really want to wear this sweater. _

_

Apparently, the way to get me to care about something like Best Short is to get me to watch them all. I was sitting there saying "just not the one with the killer children" since I figured ther was no way my favorite was actually going to win when there was also a film About Cancer and one About Africa.

Maybe cancer and Africa split votes to allow the black and white Flight of the Conchords like thing to win. Go "God of Love." I am now looking for you on iTunes. _

What Sam does when I change my sheets. Sleeps on ALL the blankets.
_

When I went to bed, it was warm enough that I opened the windows in my bedroom. (By normal standards, it wasn't that warm, but all the heat seems to wind up in my bedroom, and my preference is to sleep in an icy bedroom under lots of warm blankets.) When I woke up, it was snowing. This winter is unending. _

One of my nervous obsessive things is that I take off my earrings when I'm on the phone (unless I'm wearing ear threads). I didn't used to do this, but my stepmom had a story about how talking on the phone while wearing dangling earrings had pulled the earrings down and torn through her earlobe. And I am a bit fanatical about it now.

And I wear earrings everyday. I will occasionally be out walking and realize there is no weight in my ears and it will bother me for the rest of the day. (I should have emergency earrings in my purse! But I don't.) And I am a receptionist. _

I have ordered posters. And I have painting hanging supplies! Yay! My apartment will be decorated! The next time it is warm, I am going to buy an orchid! (I am worried about killing an orchid on the walk from Fresh Pond to Alewife.) _

I was never particularly drawn to mystery novels, but suddenly all I want to read is Dorothy Sayers. And I want to try Agatha Christie. And Rex Stout. _