You all know that I'm fucking nuts, so this will come as no surprise.
On Monday, I was at work, bored, staring down an afternoon with little to do. I did what anyone with a serious mental illness would do: I faked a headache and left work to go work on the house!
I put in a good five hours, feeling pleased that I was getting closer to being ready for my drywall contractor to work next week. The next morning, it occurred to me that I already had an excuse in place, so I called in sick. Good thing I did.
At about 9:30, my drywall contractor called to say that his schedule had changed. He could either start on Wednesday or he wouldn't be able to get to it until the new year.
My people, you know what I did. I said, "Start on Wednesday," and then I threw my ass in gear to get ready for him. I knew I had at least two more days of work to do, so I figured on at least 16 hours. It ended up taking a little longer than that. It was my first and hopefully my last home remodeling all-nighter. Because it's one thing to pull an all-nighter, sitting around eating pizza and studying. It's another thing to spend all night standing on a ladder, scraping, peeling, sanding, and priming.
At about 8 pm, I broke for dinner and went down the block to the nearest fast food place. In the shape I was in, I would normally have gone through the drive-thru, but the bathroom in my basement is sooooo cold. I was willing to face a little public humilation in order to put my ass on a toilet seat that was not glacial.
I took my pee break and went back out to order some dinner. People stepped away from me in line. At the counter, the cashier recoiled. Now I knew I was dirty, but until that moment I hadn't realized just how dirty. I had a cloud of dust and debris around me--the pulverized particulate of fifty years of bad wallpaper choices. And probably not a little in the way of lead paint chips. The cashier didn't even bother to ask if I wanted my food to go; she just bagged it up and handed it to me from arm's length. Only then did I notice the little semi-circle of dust and detritus that I'd left at the counter where I'd been standing.
But wait, there's more. At midnight, about 15 hours into my ordeal, I was dying. I could see I had at least 3 more hours of work and maybe 5 hours. I went out to the local quickie mart for coffee and another pee break in non-artic conditions. An elderly man stood by the counter chatting with the college age cashier. Clearly the old man had reached that point in life where he no longer really needed sleep, so he'd taken to hanging around pestering cashiers at all-night quickie marts.
When I approached with my coffee, the old man smiled at me and said, "Why don't you let me get that for you?"
I was already in a slightly stunned state, but I managed to say, "No, that's okay. I got it."
He persisted, but I already had my money out on the counter.
Having failed to buy me a coffee, the old man said, "Do you have some place warm to stay tonight?"
Yes, that's right, my people. I was so bedraggled looking that I was mistaken for a homeless person. I schlepped my crusty, dusty self back to my 2 bedroom gulag, and went on with the work. At 4:30, I put the last strokes of primer on all the cut wallpaper seams, and dragged myself home to shower and sleep for a few hours.
For the record, I do not recommend this, but I do now have sheetrock on my walls.
plus pumpkin lasagne.
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As some may know, I design t-shirts on occasion, and sell them through the print-on-demand service MySoti (formerly known as Bountee). I don't churn out designs by the dozen and I only have five up for sale at the moment, but the ones I do have up seem to be gaining popularity recently.
I've posted about Squid Rocket before (which, to date, has the most sales), but over the last month I've thrown two new designs up, although they somehow managed to keep in the theme of unlikely beasties. Weird, huh?
"Yeti" features... well, a yeti (sasquatch, abominable snowman, bigfoot, wendigo, etc), who is ice fishing. The concept for this design I can't take all the credit for. I was in the mood to doodle but at a loss for what, so I asked a friend and she replied, "Draw a yeti ice fishing." So, I did, and ended up liking the sketch enough to finish it and slap it on a shirt.
"Innsmouth" is a tribute to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. It features my personal interpretation of a Deep One, as described in The Shadow over Innsmouth, but with an anime-esque twist. The text is a spoof on those touristy shirts you can find in almost any iconic town or city, this time promoting the seaside port town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts (entirely fictional and also featured in the aforementioned Lovecraft story). It's kind of a nice little joke for any Lovecraft fan, but you can still wear it out in public without people thinking it's especially bizarre or in bad taste.
When I first opened up a shop at MySoti, I didn't really think I should expect much out of it. I figured I might get a sale or two a year and when I finally decided to buy a shirt of my own design for myself or friends and family, the option would be there. Sure, there are fancier sites with cheaper shirts, like Threadless, but that's a situation where your design being printed for sale is determined by popular vote, so there's always a chance it won't ever happen. I know this from experience when I submitted Squid Rocket to Threadless and barely got 2.0/5 as a final score. Not enough to get printed. So, in a way, this is more convenient and a better option simply because I don't have to rely on popular opinion to ever get my designs on a shirt.
Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.
Finally finished some knitting that I have been working on for a while. I was suffering from a little "second mitten syndrome" where I was really motivated to knit the first one, but the second one was delayed by another project due to the DREAD of knowing how much work was required to complete it. BEHOLD, the completed Swedish fish mittens:
I love the fish. They are super cute. I like the detailing of the eyes and that each row of fish swim in a different direction. If you're a knitter with A LOT of patience and you're pretty good with stranded/colorwork/intarsia knitting, then you can find the pattern here (but it costs $$). That's a Ravelry link so if you're not part of Ravelry you won't be able to pull it up.
Knitterly details:
I changed a few things in the pattern. Right up front, I didn't use the same yarn as she did. I used some different colorways of Claudia Hand Painted Sock yarn. At first I didn't like the variegated look, but now I really like it because it looks like little scales or that the fish are reflecting different kinds of light as they swim (go, go gadget imagination!). For the main color (off white) I used this new line of yarns from Blue Sky Alpaca called "Spud and Chloe." Not gonna lie, people. This yarn kind of blows. I'm not sure if it's because I was using size 1 needles and that's the lower limit of the yarn (it's recommended for size 1-3) or what, but it pulled apart like CRAZY and was really irritating if I ever had to rip back any mistakes. Anyway, just a note for the future. The Claudia Hand Painted, on the other hand was DREAMY to work with. Such a nice yarn. But I guess you get what you pay for seeing as the Spud and Chloe was much cheaper than the Claudia Hand Painted. The CHP was super expensive, but I bought enough for at least 2 pairs of mittens.
The pattern recommended DPNs, but I kind of despise DPNs so I used the magic loop technique and just bought a long size 1. SIZE 1. OMG. It was crazy. The pattern knits quickly because it's fun, but oh man, 80 stitches per round gets to be a pain in the wrist. Also, the color changes? Just imagine when you finish and you have to WEAVE IN all the ends. It literally took me an hour to weave in all the ends of the first mitten. Much faster with the second because I knew what I was doing, but that was crazypants. Thank you Hulu queue and awesome time-difference friends on the phone for getting me through that.
I also changed the ribbing at the bottom because 1x1 ribbing wasn't going to do it for me, so I did 2x2 ribbing with no increases, just flat out 80 stitches. I think it came out fine, it's not a huge noticable difference. The 2x2 is still stretchy enough that it will hug your wrist and help keep the cold out. However, the fact that it is sock yarn means that these are pretty light mittens and are probably better for fall and the warmer of winter days.
The thumbs came out weird. I'm not sure why. I think they just need to be wider at the bottom to make the thumbs more comfortable. But I like when the fish line up EXACTLY on the thumb and the mitten.
Some details are on my ravelry.
So that's done. There will be more knitting posts coming up, once I can finish up more present knitting. Fish!
Yes, I know. I know. I'm a terrible blogger. Absolutely the worst, and I don't really have much of an excuse for the complete radio silence, other than I was kinda burnt out and busy and couldn't arse myself to blog about anything, really.
This is the newest teaser video for Guild Wars 2, sequel to the popular MMORPG by ArenaNet. For a good while, there was no new information coming out about this game, and many of us who were looking forward to a continuation of the story of Tyria were fearing the worst -- that it had gone the way of such anticipated games as Duke Nukem Forever and Starcraft Ghosts... vaporware, never to be made. While these videos alone don't definitively prove that GW2 will ever actually be released, it's still a sign that SOMETHING is going on at the offices of ArenaNet, so I'm hoping the momentum will keep up, despite all the delays and lulls in updates about content and features.
From what I'm seeing, this game is going to be fantastic. I've always loved the aesthetics of Guild Wars, which were much higher quality than competing games, such as WoW, without having to resort to an absurdly cartoony style, and GW2 seems to be going down the same design road as Dragon Age: Origins, getting darker and grittier as new material comes out. Dark fantasy is the best fantasy, in my opinion.
Another thing I really liked in this video is how they're taking the Sylvari race. In Eye of the North, they debuted, but you saw very little of them and knew even less about them. From the original designs you first got a glimpse of, they were very childlike, spritely creatures... and I wasn't terribly enthused about that. However, it seems ANet has decided to mature them a bit and make them less like scantily clad little girls wearing foliage for clothing and made them less overtly human.
I'd be lying if I said this video didn't get me all hyped up over GW2 all over again.
Originally published at stale coffee. You can comment here or there.
I've just gutted my entire house, right down to the studs, and am slowly rebuilding it. After months of nothing but demolition, I'm finally starting to reverse the process. My bathroom contractor is working today to get ready for my tile guy. The insulation guy worked yesterday, so the house is nice and cozy now. (Right, except that I have to put the windows back in.) On Tuesday, the sheetrock guy comes to start putting my ceilings and walls back.
Just as soon as I wrap up my work in the attic: 2 more ceiling joists to sister, one more ceiling fan mount to install, plus 3 more fixture mounts for other lights. I'd planned to sister all the 5 ceiling joists that need it this weekend, but Tuesday I created a little emergency. While trying to rip out a piece of planking in the wall that had bowed and split--thereby preventing the sheetrock from being flush--I discovered that two of my ceiling joists were actually resting on that plank, instead of on the exterior load-bearing wall. The reason? when the foundation failed in the 40s that wall bowed out about three inches, and the joists slipped off it.
Which is how I broke my nose. With all that weight on the plank, it was under a lot of pressure, so when I finally managed to pry it off the studs, it came loose at high speed and whacked me in the face. I blacked out for about a second, before that little quiet voice in the back of my head kicked in. You know, the little voice that whispers, "Maybe you shouldn't take that short cut," and "Get up and check the door." My little voice said, "Don't fall off the ladder."
I didn't. I managed to get myself down the ladder, my head ringing, and my dust mask filling up with blood. As I was just starting to wonder how badly I'd fucked myself up, I heard this soft groaning sound and looked up. Above me, the ceiling was sagging about three inches. Not terrible, but likely to become so.
This was at about 8 pm, and who was I going to call for help? Sure, 911 would take care of my face, but they wouldn't do anything about my ceiling joists. So I went out to my truck, grabbed the jack, and a couple of 2 x 4's on my way back through the garage. I slapped one 2 x 4 up to the ceiling with a pair of screws (thank you, trusty cordless drill), wedged the other one up under it, balanced on top of the jack, and cranked the ceiling back up to the proper height. Contrary to my expectations, it worked perfectly. After all, that little jack was designed to lift one quarter of my truck, so it was strong enough to lift one tenth of my ceiling.
Then I could worry about my nose. Luckily I still have a kitchen sink, so I went it and pulled the dust mask off. Blood, lots of it. I washed off a bunch of it, but I didn't have a mirror, so I couldn't really see what the damage was. I had half a bag of ice in the freezer, so I grabbed that, stuck it on my face and drove to my temporary digs.
I kept the ice on it for about five hours, and that seems to have done the trick. I have a bump, a bruise, and my eyes are a little black, but my nose is straight. I'm pretty sure it's broken, because I can feel it wiggle when I laugh, and my eyebrows actually hurt.
Episode 2 was me calling into work sick the next morning. Only I didn't stay home. I couldn't. I went to the house and crawled up in the attic to sister in the three joists that just couldn't wait for this weekend. Then I had to repair and replace the plank I'd originally been intending to fix when it bitch slapped me. I won the rematch.
First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!
The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.
A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.
Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.
On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.
And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!
~ daisy
As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.
The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.
When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.
It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.
Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.
As always, thanks for your patience.
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I made my ultimate apple pie:
Oh man. Not only did the lattice come out AWESOME, but it was super delicious. Better than the crap pie I made a little while ago. (Never again, Courtland apples! You tricked me into thinking you would make a good pie, but you do not.) I made this with a delicious CHEDDAR CHEESE crust. Mmmm. Salty and sweet and sour, soft and flaky and crunchy. I love fall.
Here is a hilarious photo session outtake:
In other news, I really really really want a kitchenaid. Specifically the Williams Sonoma 90th anniversary red one with the glass bowl. No pressure.
I made this pie as a thank you to a friend of mine who let me borrow his kitchen aid. I was super productive with it. I made a big batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, froze some (cookie at any time!) and baked some. And I made an apple pie and TWO tomato pies. All of that baking was in TWO days. The other days the kitchenaid sat on the table, practically humming with potential to help create delicious foods.
One day, kitchenaid, when I have a real job, you will be mine.
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