• I had to make an emergency visit to my doctor this morning. I’m ok, still alive, after all. She prescribed me some meds and I should be fine.
• I was at work today for a total of one (1!) hour. I was at the doctor from 9-10, had to get the prescription filled from 10-11, went to work from 11-12, then we had this work shindig that took place at one of the Navy bases that lasted from 12:30-3:00. We all decided not to go back to work, as we only would have been there for about one hour by the time we got back till the end of the workday. If only every day could be like that! Man…
• I cast on ANOTHER project. And not Secret of the Stole, though Clue #2 will be released tomorrow and I have yet to cast on Clue #1. No, I cast on the Raindrop Lace Socks from Fiber Trends. I need more socks for work, so I’m knitting these in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in the Chocolate colorway. Simple but pretty dark brown. I love vibrant, variegated colorways but I can’t really rock the purple Monkey socks at work.
• I overspent big time these past two weeks. Not on yarn (still going strong on the diet!) but mostly books and food and Starbucks and a new work purse and oh who knows what else. Thankfully, Monday is payday and I didn’t use my credit cards, but still. I need to focus on budgeting…and I’m so bad at it…*sigh* I really should put up a countdown for my credit card diet, which I’ve been on unofficially for about a month or so.
• Ghost Hunters Season 3, Part 1 is mine! (speaking of spending, right?) I thought I would have to order it from Amazon but surprisingly, a local store has it. woohoo!
• I haven’t heard back about the possible second job at the library. I’m supposed to get a call whether they offer me the job or not, but I think they’re probably still doing background checks. They called my current supervisor for a reference and he gave me a pretty good one. Just waiting to hear back…
• Tomorrow is finally Friday, thank goodness. This weekend I’m hoping to cast on Secret of the Stole and at least get Clue #1 completed. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen! Procrastination seems to hide in my knitting bag and pop its head out when I would otherwise actually finish a current WIP. It tempts me with new projects and gives me cast on syndrome. Whatever will I do?

• Just watched Miss Potter, courtesy of Netflix. LOVED it. Beatrix’s parents remind me scarily of my own. And my boyfriend Ewan McGregor is in it, woohoo! I’ve added it to my “buy later” list in Amazon’s shopping cart.
• I’ve been knitting but not taking photos of my knitting because I am LAZY. So there.
• I read Crazy Aunt Purl’s new book in two days flat because it is that good. Go get yourself a copy and read it! It’s fantastic. EDIT: Episode 56 of Cast On has an interview with Laurie!
• Blue Moon Fiber Arts thinks it’s hilarious that I’m abstaining from buying yarn indefinitely, as evidenced by all the NEW COLORWAYS that they’ve uploaded. le sigh.
• I do not appreciate that USAA continues to charge me $6.77 monthly for insurance on my personal loan statement, despite the fact that I called them AND sent them a letter requesting that they cancel the insurance. darnit.
• This whole trying to eat healthy thing? SO difficult. I want a Big Mac, like right now. Can somebody help me?

• I have too many email addresses:
  1. Old Yahoo address from wayyyyy back (I think I’ve had it since 1997) but I still check it occasionally to dump the spam folder (which usually has between 500-800 at a time!) and make sure that there’s no “real” mail in there. There rarely is.
  2. My main Gmail address, which is where all the magic happens. haha.
  3. Another Gmail address, which used to be exclusively for my now-defunct yarn shop, but also serves as a catch-all for MySpace emails (so that people I don’t want to find me don’t find me, even though my profile is private anyway and even though I hardly ever log on to MS anymore).
  4. Yet another Gmail address, which is technically for mub.net-related things, but which I don’t post because I do not like the spammers, I do not like them Sam I am. But I’m thinking I might need to add it to my About page here anyway, because the address is kind of pointless if I don’t use it, right?
  5. And yes! Another Gmail address, which I just registered so that I have something more professional-looking to list on my resume from now on. (It’s my full name.)
• I have cast on syndrome. I have officially lost count of all my WIPs and does it really matter? The other day on Ravelry I saw someone had around two dozen or more WIPs so that made me feel much better. Last night I was itching to start something new (this always happens late at night!), so I dug around in the thing I call my “pattern book,” which is really a HUGE binder (I think it’s 2″ or 2 1/2″), where I keep all my printed and purchased patterns–things I’ve made and “intend” to make someday. (You know what that means, it’s just a random mish-mash of “woo pretty!” stuff, right?) I pulled out the Cabled Gauntlets pattern from Alchemy Yarns (you have to scroll way down the page to see it), which is the only thing I’ve ever purchased from Purl Soho. I remember seeing a small ad in a previous issue of Interweave Knits and I almost started drooling. Then I realized that it was a pattern for purchase, and…I couldn’t help it. I think with shipping, the pattern ended up costing me something like $13, which made no sense because the pattern itself was only $6, but I really wanted the pattern! And miraculously didn’t buy yarn with that order, which is a feat since this was probably a year or so ago when I bought the pattern…anyway…am I rambling enough? yeah. So I cast these on last night using Knit Picks Wool of the Andes (which I bought also around a year ago, specifically for this project).
• I think if my ideas are going to marinate in my head for a year at a time before I actually create anything, I’m in a LOT of trouble.
• And I’ll need to live to be 1,099 years old to produce anything worthwhile.
• And I’ll never be allowed to buy yarn again because my stash STILL will not die. argg! “Kill the stash” sounds kind of scary but I’m sort of getting to the point where I’m almost sick of seeing it. Because it’s just a reminder of my careless spending and it sort of shows how depressed I’ve been. That’s what I do when I’m depressed: eat junk food (hence the high cholesterol), shop (hence the evil stash that won’t die AND the credit card bills that are the bane of my existence), or knit (but lately it’s just casting on stuff and working on them till I get bored, lather rinse repeat).
• And man, is it Friday afternoon yet, or WHAT? This week is just crawling by for me. How about for you?
• Tomorrow I get to be “bad” and go out to eat with my co-workers. It’s our monthly birthday lunch for everyone whose birthday is in September. We’re going to a Mongolian BBQ restaurant and the food is sooooo good.
• I’ve been doing ok with my new daily menus, but I’m definitely starting to get sick of oatmeal. Even the fun cinnamon kind and the apple kind and the brown sugar kind. Just saying.
• The weather has turned a bit chilly this week and I LOVE it. Bring on the winter. I always used to hate winter because I never liked being cold and the sun seems to hide behind the clouds all the time, but since last winter (the winter of my discontent?) I welcome it. Embrace it, even. I think there’s definitely something metaphorical going on there, with the whole dormant/dead coming back to life later thing. You know?
• My brain is just going a mile a minute for some reason, so I think I need to give it a rest.

ok, I could have SWORN that I looked at the clock a few minutes ago and it said “11:04 AM.” But I just looked at it again, and it only says “10:51 AM.” Have I entered…The Twilight Zone??

That reminds me of this miniseries I watched once, an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Langoliers. This group of people were confused because a bunch of other people around them simultaneously disappeared…and the movie was so creepy and weird, until one dude pipes up and (with a totally straight face) says, “Maybe we went through a TIME RIP.” A what? yeah, the movie wasn’t so scary after that. Anybody else ever see it?

No photos to post yet, but I guess I could write something:

- I, like millions, was sucked into the void that was the MTV VMAs last night. Yes, I wanted to see Britney’s train wreck performance and she delivered! The train wreck, that is. Not so much a performance. ok, here’s the thing: not to bash on her as a person because she’s clearly had some personal shite going on in her life in recent months, which I totally understand. But just as a “singer” and performer? Last night’s show was *terrible.* We all knew she would lip synch, but as I was watching, I kept thinking that she didn’t even look into it, like she wasn’t having fun at all. Honestly, she looked like she was sedated or something. She barely danced and toward the end she actually stopped lip synching entirely. eh? It seemed rather pitiful and sad. I think she should retire and focus on raising her kids…but hey…just my lousy opinion.

+ Work will hopefully be less stressful this week than it was last week. Our company is having a big annual meeting all week long so a bunch of people (including my boss) are out of the office. It would be nice to have a little downtime.

+ I think I want to revive another crafty endeavor, cross stitch! For some reason, every time I’m at Barnes & Noble, my eyes wander over to the Celtic pattern books and I looooove the prettiness of it all. And look at all this Scottish wonderfulness! I haven’t cross stitched in a long time–knitting sort of staged a coup of every other creative outlet I once had, including writing–but I think I might pop on over today and find a pattern book, then head to the craft store and get some cloth and thread. Maybe. We’ll see if my old (lol) eyes can handle the teeny-tiny little Aida fabric holes anymore!

- I’m still feeling sort of ambivalent about knitting socks, even though I’m currently working on a sock. My second purple Monkey is nearing completion (I’m on the gusset) but I think once it’s done I’m going to make a sweater. Probably. I want it to be fall or winter…it’s still kind of hot here most days!

- I had to get some blood work done on Saturday morning and my arm is a bit bruised up right now. They took two vials (not much at all) for a cholesterol screening, recommended by my doctor since I have immediate family with high cholesterol. I’m supposed to get the results back this week, I think. I had to fast eating for 12 hours before the test, so I did the easy thing and stopped eating around 10 PM Friday night and then went to the lab Saturday morning around 11 AM. I was soooo hungry when all was said and done, so I had some happy little shrimp at Red Lobster for lunch after that. I figure if my doctor’s potentially going to tell me that my eating habits need to change, I need to live it up right now before I found out about it, lol. I know that makes no sense in reality but it does in the slow cooker of my mind so indulge me.

+ Those of you who use Netflix–did they recently lower the price of your plan? I got an email saying that my plan was going from $9.99/month to $8.99/month. That was pretty cool! I have the 1-out-at-a-time, unlimited per month…I *think* that’s what it is.

ok, I’m off to kill some time on Ravelry…Monday needs to go by more quickly than this…!

I’m 95% sure that a mosquito has been in my room for the past 3 days, attempting to live in some kind of symbiosis with me. I don’t know what that thing has been eating (besides my blood), but when I try to swat it, it disappears. Then when I pick up my knitting again and get several stitches in, it flutters past my head and it’s driving me CRAZY. I have no less than 4 bites on my right leg and foot (guess it didn’t find the left side tasty). And I know I shouldn’t scratch, but it itches sooooo much! Must put on some Cortizone now.

Filipino prisoners perform “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. ok, A) disclaimer: I’m Filipino, so it’s with all love when I say, those crazy Filipinos! hehe B) yeah, there’s a lot of them in prison, but dancing is a lot better than stabbing each other in the courtyard, right?