21st Century Post

Well, I finally did it. I went out after work today, and I came home with a cell phone. I'm feeling a little stunned, a little like I got a "free" pass to the candy store, and rather a lot intimidated by all this technology stuff. I asked for the simplest, least-decked-out phone I could get - and this thing will still do just about everything but make my student loans magically disappear. (I don't think anything will ever do that...sigh! There - daily dose of self-pity done with. Thanks for listening.)

I wanted to post a picture taken with the phone, but I haven't quite figured out how to get it from my phone into the ether of the innernets and then onto the blog. But I guess one thing at a time is OK too!

Anyway, here I am, with my new technology in hand. It's blue. Are you surprised?

Also, the title of the post is significant for more reasons than mere surrender to high-tech inevitability: Mr.Q plays bass, see, and one of his kajillion musical projects, his main one, is a band that's just about a 3rd CD. They're about to start doing some touring, and we needed a better way to stay in touch while he's on the road. Instead of me just sitting by the phone hoping he'll call before I go to bed. That's no fun at all! Anyway, if you like rock'n'roll, and follow the link, you'll be able to listen to the first single - 21st Century Ghost. You'll get to read more of me gushing over the next few weeks, as they're getting some good reviews, and I'm tremendously proud of him!

I have yet to post about their show on the weekend...I have some great sock shots! Reclaiming knitting for rock & roll. Or vice versa, I'm not sure yet. But I am hungry; dinner was delayed due to cell-phone absorption! So off to eat some of Jel's coconut soup.

I WIN!

Mr.Q had to drive across town this morning on an errand to a music store. He asked if I'd go along for company, and bribed me with a detour past my preferred LYS on the way home. Now, I'd have gone anyway, but I was hardly going to say no to a voluntary stop at the yarn store! (Besides, I wanted another look at the nylon project bags they stock - lovely idea, but at $25, a little out of my price range for a simple drawstring bag that I could make myself for under $5...) We left a bit later than intended, since he had to be at his destination by noon. But traffic wasn't too bad; no worries!

Until he missed his turnoff. I really, really try (and usually fail miserably) not to be a backseat driver, but I had to ask "Where are you going? This street doesn't go all the way across town."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, puzzled.

"Aren't we going to the music store in Kitsilano?"

Doh! "Right! Oops - I was just automatically heading to the yarn store!" he said, as he immediately corrected course.

Hah! Well-trained or what?!

Also, afterward he took me for an Aztec hot chocolate at our neighbourhood chocolate shop. Yummmmers! I think I'll keep him.

O, Frabjous Day!

Dear Hannah B. Nana:

Happy Birthday to our favourite oldest niece! A bright, funny, sweet, talented girl, and a most excellent Tickle Camel-in-training!

With lots of love,

Auntie Q & Uncle Tickle Camel

What do you do with a drunken knitter?

Friday evening there was a pub night/going away party for one of the students at school. I try to go when I can; generally the pub nights are a lot of fun, and sometimes the marketing staff buy the beer, so what the heck! But this time I had to refuse, having long had other plans. I must have had a dozen people ask me at the end of the week if I were going. "Sorry, I can't. I've got a knitting meet-up."

Oh, I do love the blank stares I get at that kind of thing. (No, no I don't play it up at all. Not ever. Why do you ask?)

Anyway, I couldn't go to the pub night, as someone in my knitting group was hosting a wine-and-cheese party. How very sophisticated! I felt like such a grown up, choosing a wine to bring (a very nice Okanagan Chardonnay), discussing with Jelaina various cheeses and which knitting project was least likely to need frogging after all the wine....you know, all the important stuff.

We arrived in good time, were handed fishbowls glasses of wine, and discovered it was actually a wine-cheese-cupcake-pate-caviar-veggies-homemade truffle-bruschetta-etc. kind of party. The table (or, part of it - there was more!) looked like this:



It took very little time for the sticks-n-string to come out, and some very good conversation on all manner of topics was had by all. The knitters (a few of them!) looked like this:




By the end of the evening, the table of food looked untouched, despite the fact that everybody had been nibbling pretty much non-stop all evening. There was that much food. (The wine, however, was gone, all gone....) We had to rush out rather suddenly, as we realized we were about to miss the last bus...how did the time go that quickly? It felt like 10:00 p.m., not 1:00 a.m.! As it was, Mr.Q had to come rescue us part-way, as we'd missed the last connecting bus back to our neighbourhood.

(Yes, it was very sweet of him. And after all these years of his late-night rock'n'roll escapades - which not infrequently end up in my PJ-clad self going to pick him up - I'd say it was a role-reversal that was looong overdue! Not that he minded. Given the fact that I'm usually in bed before 10:00, we were both amused by the situation.)

Windy the Pooh & the Blustery Day

Holy moley, but it's blowing outside! Enough that I've checked to make sure the flashlight is where it's supposed to be, if/when the power goes out. (I just hope it waits till I'm finished baking!) Just north of our house - and I mean just north, by a few hundred feet - is Burrard Inlet - a narrow, fairly sheltered arm of the ocean. On windy days, it's often choppy and white-capped, but nothing too extreme.

Today, there were full-on breakers on the water, and with the wind blowing against the tide, it looked more like a section of whitewater on a river. Crazy! The weighted cat door, at ground level, behind a shrub, behind a hedge, behind the garage, is flapping around like mad. I'd go play outside in it, but I'm afraid of being blown away. Or brained by flying debris. So, maybe I'll just stay in for some warm cookies and milk.

In other news, I have officially stepped onto the path toward my life goal of becoming a Crazy Old Cat Lady. (For the family members saying just now "Goal? Becoming??!" may I point out that I am not yet old?!) Rabbitch has been kind enough to assist, by dyeing me some sock yarn to match one of the cats. Specifically, Singe's belly. This lovely, furry, lazy belly:

It's a wonderfully close match, but when I tried to take a photo, the yarn showed really blue. Since my goal is not to become the Crazy Smurf Cat Lady, I'll have to wait till I can figure out a better shot of the yarn. But trust me, it's fab. It will become a pair of b-day socks for Mr.Q, who is Singe's particular human. (I'm ruining no surprises by saying as much here, coz I couldn't wait to show him. He's very excited - really, he's a knitter's Perfect Husband: "Socks? You want to make me more socks? To match my cat? Yay!" Also, I used my Jedi Mind Powers to wipe the conversation from his brain, so he will forget about them anyway.)

Aargh! I have got to quit blogging while I'm baking! Cookies! Be right back...

Whew! Crisis averted. (I know you were all holding your breath with the suspense!)

Meanwhile, I had a funny kind of day today. I found myself being exceptionally chipper in front of my classes today. So much that I'm pretty sure they thought I was on something. Or was about to grow an extra head. Then again, those perplexed stares may simply have been because I was talking at the speed of light. That sonic boom thing, where you watch my lips move, and a few seconds later, you hear my voice....Ah well! It's good listening practice for the "real" world.

But really - it was over the top. I don't know why. It was a good day, but any more and I would have given myself cavities. Fortunately, I didn't. So now I can go give myself cavities by having some of those tasty warm cookies. Yum!

If you don't kick your legs, you're in big trouble!

Jel and I had this crazy idea that it might be fun to go to an aquafit class at our neighbourhood pool on Tuesday night. The idea sounded great, right up till it was time to think about actually leaving the house. We did a fine job of talking each other into postponing it until tonight.

When we talked this afternoon, I think both of us were hoping that we'd have a repeat of the postponement. But neither of us wanted to be the one to pull the plug, so Jel picked me up as planned. It was raining. Hard. Miserable weather. Who wants to get more wet when it's like this? We could take that $5 and get a pint of Strongbow at our neighbourhood pub instead. Besides, we were both grumpy.

Well, Jel suggested, maybe we could just find the pool this evening. We were running a few minutes late, and might not get there in time anyway. Then at least we'd be closer than we got on Tuesday - baby steps! - and we could savour that pint of cider with a clear conscience.

Great plan! We found our way to the pool via the twisty side streets, and parked. Should we go in? Well, we could just go and sit in the hot tub. Then we'd actually have gotten into the water, and really started warming ourselves up to the idea.

(Can you tell we were totally stoked to be where we were? Yep, me neither.) We were debating the issue (Rock-paper-scissors to decide? But who'd represent the hot tub, and who the exercise?) right up to the ticket window.

Somehow, we found ourselves inside the dressing rooms...when we came out, the hot tub was pretty full. We'd just get into the pool for a few minutes and see how we felt.

Well. Then the instructor came out, and there was no turning back. He was hilarious. An odd-yet-effective combination of drill sergeant, and one of Scott Thompson's more flamboyant characters from The Kids in the Hall. He had us hooting like monkeys at one point. I don't think we stopped laughing for the first half hour.

(That was the point where I started getting water up my nose, and we all know how much fun chlorine in the sinus cavity is! Also, I was getting very tired. He gave us a really tough work-out.)

The hot tub afterward was very, very sweet. And now I am a raisin.

You may be right.....

I may be crazy:

Nothing like a little morning S.E.X. on the weekend!

What do you do when your local yarn store has a big post-boxing-day sale, and there are all kinds of discounts flying around?

Ooops!

It was insane in there! Fortunately, knitters are a generally patient and pretty friendly bunch. Also, it was fun to see all the knitted items on display - like an impromptu fashion show, without the eating disorders. I walked out with a rather sweet little bag of treasures, feeling quite smug for having "saved" $45. (Never mind that I "saved" it spending money I wouldn't have otherwise. Shhh!)

(I'm a bad little blogger, though. I should have taken photos of the human tetris action going on in the yarn store, and I didn't. I'm really going to have to do better than that!)

We got home, and I realized we're out of Ziploc bags. They keep getting used for food, durn it all! What am I supposed to do with my yarn now? I was trying to figure out how to put it away so I could still look at it and fondle it, when I had this brief (very brief, thankfully!) moment of clarity. Kind of like an out-of-body experience, I was observing my life from outside myself. And I realized:

I have a lot of yarn!

I'm actually starting to build a stash worthy of the name. Though I still have a way to go before I can consider it a finished effort. I talked Mr.Q into giving me a foot rub later on (we also went to a Shopping Mall so I could find some new pants for work. I tell you, some people might think they've got the corner on extreme sports, what with their bungee jumps and skydiving and BASE jumping and toad licking...but they pale in comparison to the horrors and the obstacle course that are the suburban mall on a Saturday!)

Anyway, by the time we got home, my feet hurt. A lot. So Mr.Q kindly consented to my request for a foot rub. As I was melting lounging on the couch, I pulled my new yarn out of the bag, one skein at a time, to touch it and love it and welcome it to the family. By the time my feet were finished, I was buried under a pile of yarn.

Mmmm! Bliss!

(The real question is...do I "save" some more money tomorrow?)

Kitty P0rn

When I went into the bedroom & turned on the light earlier this evening, I surprised Bagheera. He was rolling around on his back, sniffing one of my slipper socks. He froze when the light came on, staring at me wide-eyed, with a guilty look of "Shit! Busted with the new issue of SexKittens!" on his furry mug.

The funny part of it was that right away (well,right after laughing at him; he really has none of the diginity or grace usually associated with cats. If Egyptian cats were royalty, Bagheera is the court klutz) Anyway, after I laughed, I immediately thought: Damn! I should have taken a picture of the look on his face, so I could blog it!

Which is no surprise, considering that I'm 75% addicted to blogging:

75%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

(Let's not mention just how well I did on that "Booze Test" though, shall we? Mkaythanxbye)