May 30, 2006

It ... has been a week. And there has been a lot of doing in it.

Steph and I went out to dinner on Wednesday, and actually ended up at a bar, despite the fact that I had to work that evening.

Oh. Gee. Steph is looking photogenic. Again. What. A. Surprise.

Man's next greatest bar invention: alcohol dispensing machines.

Important for absorbing alcohol and curbing carb cravings: Nuts!

Then I went to work and did a good job being productive until I screwed up and accidentally sent an email list that had already gone out. Oops. That's not good; I felt crappy the rest of the evening/morning, and went home feeling like a nimrod.

I fell asleep feeling like a nimrod, and had to wake up a few hours later to go down to SJ to take care of mother. Except I got a phone call when I was 10 minutes away, saying that Nicole and Jackie were both going to be staying home for the day, so I wasn't technically needed. Since I was up anyway, and practically there, I stuck around and we ended up spending the afternoon without killing each other. Lunner at the Left Bank (mediocre French food, but an American who's never had the real thing wouldn't know the difference), shopping at Anthropologie (I got two of these on sale), mooching around Borders until it was time to pick up my brother. I think we actually enjoyed ourselves, and Mom was happy, since it's very rare that she gets to spend time with all her daughters at once.

So from nimrod to good daughter. I guess that works.

Friday I took Mom to the yarn store — she's been wanting to knit for a couple weeks now — and picked up this.

Lots of hoochie little things for me to make and wear. I got it for $2, since I had a full stamp card worth $20 at the Knitting Arts store. I think it was worth it.

In the afternoon my favorite ex showed up with his roommate, gave me the keys to his car:

... and we drove down to Santa Cruz to help with the local blues festival, which is run in large part by his family. The irony: I never met any of Nick's family while we were dating; had to do it eight years after we broke up at last year's Blues Festival.

They give hugs a lot. But I think that's okay. I can see now where Nick gets it.

We also had a tip-earning, dog-chasing duck to keep us company:

You can ask if you like. You might not get a comprehensible answer, though.

My body still kind of hurts from two 10+ hour days on my feet. It really reminds me the benefits of having a desk job. Like the fact that I get a chair. Woot.

No real insights today; if I'd had any, I forgot them while I was sleeping.

May 25, 2006

Written this morning, while waiting for the last half hour of my work shift to be over:

There is always a silence in the first kiss you share with a person — it is not the explosions or the fireworks they promised in pre-teen novels or on TV. Instead of the world bursting forth to celebrate, it recedes to the background, bowing out in deference to the moment.

My loneliness, I think, stems from the loss of the silence.

Damn. I should start writing more often. Duh. It's the semi-crush I'm carrying at the moment that drives me to writing again.

May 17, 2006

What better way to block a pair of socks when you don't have time to go through the whole Wash-em-let-em-dry-on-sock-blockers shebang? Also, when you don't even have sock blockers? (What kind of sock knitter do I think I am?! BLASPHEMY!)

Wear 'em on your own feet to conform them into blocked-ness. Sort of.

Finished today, just in time to gift tonight at work:

Wanda's socks, the "Om Socks" from the Knitting Pattern a Day calendar:

with a view of the keen colorwork on the heel flap:

And Chip's socks, the "Heelless Sleeping Socks" from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks:

Can I be proud now? Thank you. *glee*

May 16, 2006

I have my reasons for why I should hate LiveJournal. Why I should never, ever want to read someone else's public diary, or ever again have them read mine.

I call those reasons my Mistakes. With a capital "M". Mistakes I regret now as much as I regretted them a year ago, two years ago. Yesterday.

Reading blogs and LJ entries are often powerful reminders of Where I Went Wrong (which, incidentally, is Where I Started Going Right ... at least, I hope it is, but I still wish I hadn't Gone Wrong, you know?).

Why do I still read them, then?

Some people's journals that I've read (and no, it's none of my friends ... just friends of friends; I'm nosy) are so whiny and self-involved, they remind me how much better of a person I am than they are. (I don't really read these people often, just the entries I see as I'm scrolling through someone else's friends page.) How much I've grown beyond the whining and complaining about the "unfair" trivialities that life throws at me. (Okay, I still whine and complain about them, but I like to think I've stopped obsessing over them. Except when I haven't had any sleep. Then I hold back nothing.)

Some people are so confident, happy, funny -- they're what I want to be, what I strive to be. I read their journals for a hint of how I can be like them. How I can be completely fulfilled in my life, a friend to everyone and yet not spread so thin that I can't be a friend to myself.

And then, there are the journals of those whose experiences make me sit up and say, "Hot merde. I have felt the exact same way. That has happened to me. I am not the only one who has felt like this, who will ever feel like this. Who has ever done this, or who has ever thought this. I am not a freak, I am not an unworthy person. I am ... normal. And I mean that in a good way. Because a lot of times, the reasons I read the journals of those who fit in this category is because I felt at first that they belonged in the second category. They are the people I looked to for inspiration in my life. And they are just like me."

Which is, in a way, part of the reason why I've continued the practice of a public diary. Because I want to be one of these categories to someone out there (call it a misplaced desire to be on stage, perhaps ... maybe I should have gone into the theatre, except that I can't sing for rot). Look up to me, relate to me, or ridicule me in your mind or in your journal or to my face. Actually, please, do it to my face. How else am I supposed to learn and grow?

And that's a second reason why I do this. To track my own growth. I hope that's what you use your LiveJournal/blog for, too.

May 13, 2006

Sometimes I see misspellings that bother me so much, I just have to vent.

Today's lesson:

• It's "eke out" (a living), not "eak out".
• "Sweat" is the wet stuff that happens when you exercise; "sweet" is like candy.
• You call out "Hear, hear!", not "Here, here!" when you agree.
• You "ensure" that something does or does not happen; you "insure" a car through AAA or Geiko.
• When you make a word plural, you do not need to add an apostrophe. Please. "Hug's" means "belonging to a hug," not "more than one hug".

That's really all for now. It was just bothering me.

Another thing? Saying "oh, noes!" is really, really fucking annoying. Don't do it. You sound like a retarded 8-year-old valley girl. It is NOT CUTE. No. NO.

May 10, 2006

My mind and stomach are full, yet somehow I still feel empty.

Such is life, I suppose.

How do I attract weirdos like this? I ask you, really. Please. A Christian band? Me?! It is to laugh. Though I swear, 75 percent of the groups on MySpace asking me to add them are rap groups; perhaps I should be happy that I'm attracting a different element somehow.

This last weekend. My pretty dress was ... pretty. See?

The glare hides the fact that I'm otherwise unphotogenic. See here:

Actually, that's just a really horrid picture of the both of us. Nick looked so much better. Mmm ... sexy.

Wanna know a secret? People in "special interest" fraternities are just as superficial and fake as people in "normal" fraternities. Go figure. I hardly like any of the friends that My Favorite Ex has met through this fraternity; none of them have impressed me as people who are worth knowing or caring about. Maybe I am biased by the Greek thing. (I mean, I spent half my college career living surrounded by sororities ... *shudder*) But I don't think so.

I should be sleeping. Or, rather, I should be driving home from a good swim at the gym, to work off the 5 pounds I gained back over the weekend (men seem to always drive me to go off my diet ... but it was tasty!).

Instead, I am sitting on my ass, still fully-dressed, so give this oh-so-worth-it update on my life to you. Feel honored.

And back on the subject of pesky bands on MySpace, now this is more what I want looking for me. Sweet!

May 1, 2006

Spring! Spring is here! And I am spending it inside munching on pork rinds and knitting a sock instead of outside watering my plants.

Or sunbathing. Or doing the spring cleaning that I promised I'd do today, for that matter.

But I am digesting my breakfast now. So I have an excuse. Mmm ... buffalo burgers.

It is amazing what diet and exercise can do. Especially the right kind of diet. Atkins seems to work for me, never fail. I've lost almost 10 pounds in two weeks, according to my scale (which is, admittedly, somewhat inaccurate; I figure if it gives the same general reading two days in a row, then that's an accurate read, so really I've only officially lost 7 pounds, but that's still pretty good, all things considered). I feel better, my pants are again fitting or loose instead of fitting or tight, and I'm not missing the chocolate or the potatoes or the rice or the bread much at all.

But I will still cheat for Indian food. I did it twice already. *not quite chagrin*

It could just be that I'm eating less, period, and not just in the way of carbs — I'm certainly not stuffing my face full of crap all night at work like I was off-diet. But this seems to be the diet that gets rid of the cravings for that all-night-snackage. I have a King-Size bag of Peanut M&Ms sitting on my desk waiting for this weight goal, and I'm actually considering holding off on eating them until tomorrow.

Small victory for the Sarah.

Crazy Aunt Purl commands me with her Hor-O-Scopes to take a minivacation this month. Where's a good place to go for the weekend? Hmm ... Sacramento doesn't count, seeing as I go there at least once a month already.