One More State Fair picture & wristlet photos

I did not want to post this picture until I talked to Anitra. For me, I don't post pictures of other people, identifiable ones anyway, without hearing from them.

 Here's one of the scarves that I made, both on & off the pocket knitter.

 

And here's the wristlets (see Friday's post), starting, begun and on my hand (I wanted to do this cool, left, center, right thing, but just couldn't figure out how).

They are a little small for me but they'll be perfect for my assistant. Or my niece. Both might get a pair.


More exciting health news. I found the sudafed that I had left from the last cold that I had. Turns out it's 'non-drowsy formula A', that 'A' for 'Awake.' As in, I got 4 hours of sleep & feel completely rested. Since I'm an 8 hour a night type person, you can see why that's a little weird. Although, to be fair, I might not have woken up at 2:30 am if it hadn't been for the migraine.

Early Gifts & Odd Compliment

The drive to see Mom wasn't too bad. It was in the dark, but that's not unexpected. I was a trifle delayed as I stopped to pick up some cold medicine. Turns out I didn't need the stuff that you have to show id to get (thank you very much, meth heads -grrrrr) but I still waited until I got to Mom's house before I took it.

She was glad to get the ironing board cover but the polka cd made her chortle with glee. We listened to it as we packed stuff on Saturday. Mom is working to cut down on her stuff. As she put it, "I'm over 70 years old, when am I going to wear all this?" We sorted clothes & packed them to be given to charity. Polka music did make it easier.

We also hit a really nice yard sale on Saturday. I bought a new rug for the guest bathroom; long enough to go from toilet to sink. That's important because linoleum is cold in the winter. I also got a hooked rung. I'm not sure where I'm going to put it but it was only $5 & I know how much effort goes into that. I watched Sharon Richmond during the State Fair.

I have not started the wristlets, yet. It turns out that I don't have that size loom. I'll pick it up tonight. I need to run a couple errands after work anyway.

I did a lot of sleeping this weekend. I blame the cold & the cold medicine. It started raining again last night. That made the drive home...entertaining. At least it was a frog killer; just kind of damp & chilly.

The odd compliment? Mom & I had breakfast at this diner. They have good food and for a good price. Their pecan waffles are actually waffles with pecans cooked inside, not scattered on top. Anyway, as Mom & I were enjoying our waffles yesterday, a customer came up and asked me who had braided my hair. Unsure of what she expected, I told her that I did (I frequently braid my hair, it's just easier). She called this information back to her friends but I ignored the conversation after that. As I walked by them later, on my way out the door, one of the gents said what a nice braid I had, not a hair out of place, so nice that they were convinced that someone must have braided it for me. Um, okay?

I've been complimented on my hair before. It's long & it's a lovely color (I inherited it, so I don't take credit for that). This is the first time though that I've gotten a compliment on my hair braiding technique.

It's Friday? Finally!

It's been a long week. The symptoms of my cold changed; not unusual for me. My sinuses started draining. I took a day off to rest, again, hoping to kick the cold. Didn't work. Now I have the sniffles and a sore throat. Can I just say 'oh. yay.'

Gaelic: I lost my flash cards earlier this week. I was up to about 50. I have now started over. On the bright side, with what I learned from the 1st start, they'll be better organized this time. Plus, it will help the memorization.

Gaming: Ran an LFR (Living Forgotten Realms adventure at Sci Fi Genre last night. I hope that it went well. I did not manage to bloody anyone at all in the final fight. Of course, they did have 3 leaders (healing out the whazoo). I did manage to bloody the paladin a couple times in the 1st fight. I also managed to run the adventure in 4 hours, so I got home at a semi-regular hour last night, despite the late start. The adventure has a really great roleplay scene and I had to skim it. That's a pity. I gave them a taste, at least.

I think I'm going to try this \/ Wish me luck
 

Tonight I'm driving to Mom's. I'll be spending the weekend with her, taking her presents with me. The only worry I have is about giving her my cold. But I haven't seen her since September, when we went to the family reunion. I canceled my last weekend with her, when my cough started. That's right. That means that my cough started the first full week of October. It has varied from two deep coughs about 5 pm, to coughing so much that sucking on cough drops rubbed my mouth sore.

Looking Forward to Supper

Does that sound odd? My stepmom has an appointment this afternoon, here in town. She and Dad plan to stick around afterwords to have supper with me. Not dinner. Dinner is eaten at midday, at least by locals. We don't know where we'll be eating yet, Dad made some joke about me cooking.

Friday, I'll be driving down to spend the weekend with my mom. It's going to be a family filled week. I'll take Mom's Christmas presents and give them to her early. Don't tell her, but I found a plain, white ironing board pad. You think that's a mundane present? Believe me, she'll be glad to have it. Have you ever ironed something white on a printed ironing board cover? It always looks like you've gotten a stain on the garment. I also found a polka music cd. I'm not sure if she'll like that as much, but I hope so. She enjoys fast-paced dancing music, of almost any stripe.

I buffed my nails this past weekend. They're all pretty and smooth, except for the length of course. Naturally one has chipped and one tore down to the quick; not into the quick, at least.

It's gotten dark enough on the way home that I'm using my lights again. The one on my bag is still working fine, but the other one is almost dead. I need a new battery in it. At the moment, it kind of, sort of lights up.

I'm gotten through most of the exercises in Chapter 4 of Teach Yourself Gaelic, but I only have my flash cards up to Chapter 1. The main purpose of the flash cards is to fix the vocabulary and rules in my mind. So far, I have not really read through them. I've used more than half the pack of cards already. I am definitely going to have to buy more.

Gaming: Thursday night I'll be running an LFR game at Sci Fi Genre. I guess I should read the module soon. I have played it once, that helps. I'm not exactly stressing about it.

TV: We're almost caught up on Sanctuary, only 1 more episode. The Big Bang Theory last night was hilarious. We're down to only 39% memory of the DVR. We had a problem last week in which it was randomly eating memory. It was up to 95% for no discernible reason. We reset it and it dropped to the 60's.

Books: I'm still having trouble settling to a book. Normally, I'm a book a day person. Recently, I manage half a book, maybe, and then I put it down. This includes books by some of my favorite authors. Except for a couple manga, I only finished one book last week. That's just sad.

1st Spam Comment & Mythic Frustration

I'm been making blog entries for..awhile. And this weekend I got my 1st spam comment. Huh. It's a milestone, of sorts.

Television: This weekend, Chris and I watched the History's channel special "Search for the real Wolfman." It was broadcast before Halloween but it took us awhile to watch. They had a retired police detective & a cryptozoologist examining the case of The Beast of Gévaudan(wikipedia article includes information from show). I was disappointed and frustrated by it. Partly, I blame editing. There was a lot of repetition. How many times do you need to repeat '102 villagers, mostly women and children were killed'? I really don't think that you need to say that more than once every 15 minutes.

The cryptozoologist would say something that made sense, like 'extinction may not be what we thought' or words to that effect (see coelacanth as example of 'extinct' animal). Not two minutes later, although probably taped days apart, he'd say 'it looks like the attack could have been by this animal; but it's extinct.'

The were 2 incidences in the show though that really, really frustrated me. They tested the silver bullet, to see just how deadly one is; as Jean Chastel is credited with finally killing the beast with a silver bullet; the attacks stopped after he killed it. EXCEPT! They tested a silver rifle bullet, not a silver musket ball. That is a tremendous difference that makes their test nigh onto useless.

The other was the way that they stated their conclusion. If they had said 'we are satisfied that we have found the most likely scenario', I'd accept that. I may not agree with it, but I accept it. But they did not. They stated categorically that they had found the solution and frankly, I do not think that is realistic, especially with the History Channel showing a disclaimer in fine print below them. They have a hypothesis which seems to fit all the evidence, but they did not find categorical proof. At this late date, categorical proof would be hard to find indeed. Even the bones of the creature that Chastel took to the French court may not be enough.

Celestial bodies: I would love to catch the Leonid meteor shower, but I'm just not awake at that hour. And definitely not awake & far enough away from light pollution at that hour.

Do you like gargoyles? Then you should see this page of examples, both classic and modern. I did not realize that some of the gargoyles that I had seen so often were from the Notre Dame in Paris.

Music: FYE is having a CD sale right now. I don't remember why we went by the mall yesterday, but when we spotted that we stopped in to look. I bought a few. *ahem* Although one of them is a Christmas present.

Convention Preparation

I'm only working a half-day tomorrow, so that we can drive to Mace. It's only about an hour away so we'll have time to get there before the 1st round of games. I'll be playing Witch Hunter all weekend; specifically my French scholar Solange-Marie, aka almost useless in a fight. Nice thing about Witch Hunter, despite her nigh-onto-total lack of combat effectiveness, she's a very useful character. That's because she's very good at what she does, and what she does is know stuff; like what the group is hunting & how to kill it; usually.

I've created a 2nd character, a tier 1 character. That's another word for a beginning character, in this case. Solange-Marie is tier 2 as I have played her that much, although not recently.

My tier 1 character is an Irish guard who, unlike most Witch Hunters, was raised to be one. Chris, Rosemary & Diana are playing relatives. Their characters became aware of 'the Invisible World' on the same night and Rosemary's character hasn't forgiven mine for not telling her about it. Rosemary's Emmaline is bitter because her husband was killed by the unnatural that night.

Other Stuff
The lawn guys blew all the leaves off the grass and sidewalks. Great. Except. They left the leaves in the lot; to the extent that I was reluctant to park my car, with its hot engine, on the leaves. They were that high. And they were obscuring the parking space.

Other than packing, I have no idea what I'm going to do tonight. Knit on the scarf that I'm making (Operation Gratitude)? Fix the cross that I was tatting (I started to close a ring too early, now I have to open it)? Watch a movie on the new DVD player? Watch something that we taped? Play computer games? I won't know until I get home.

Nightmares, ugh
I almost had one last night. I don't remember anything about it, thankfully, and I managed to wake up before it got really frightening. Unfortunately, as I have learned from past experience, I had to stay awake for a few minutes or when I went back to sleep, I would drop right back into the nightmare, as if I had never interrupted it. And it's a lot harder to wake up the 2nd time. As you can imagine, I'm feeling tired this morning.

Movies, tv, etc
We finally put in the new DVD player. We've had it for a couple months, ever since the last one died. Well, not exactly died. But I did not enjoy my 75 minute movie lasting 10 minutes, as the player skipped from one scene to the next. Chris also finally used the Netflix certificate his dad gave him for his birthday. We watched the 1st DVD last night. It goes into the mail this morning. It's not that it's bad, it's just that we see no need to watch it again.

Chris wanted (& so did I) to see some Anime but neither one of us knows many titles so he picked one at random. He looked at the adult section because he doesn't like the shows aimed at the younger kids, like Pokemon or Toturo's Neighbor. He chose one called Mouse. It had its amusing moments. And while there was some nudity & suggestive scenes, it's no worse than some rated R movies. Just with animation, some gravity defying is possible.

I'm going to check the Netflix listings to see if there's any anime that I recognize & want to see. I'll probably have IMDB open at the same time, just so that I can check on titles.

Gaming
I didn't go to gaming last Thursday. I still have that stupid cough & I'm trying to avoid infecting anyone. Plus, I just wanted to rest. I also took Thursday as a sick day from work; since I got home Wednesday & went straight to bed. I only woke up long enough to eat supper and went back to bed.

Since I and another player were both sick, Rosemary canceled her game on Sunday. She & Chris went to play LFR and I stayed home & rested. Some more.

However, this weekend is Mace. Considering the way that this cough is lingering, it's probably best that I'm not running anything. I had an Ironclaw plot in mind, but Greg, the game organizer, got a lot of Witch Hunter mods. I'll be playing that all weekend, instead. I might have still run at least one Ironclaw game but the Witch Hunter games are linked, not all of them but there's 2 trilogies & a special.

Books:
I gathered up a couple small boxes of books, and one bag, and took them to the used book store. As usual, I got store credit. Alas, they took far fewer books than I'd hoped. It was enough that the credit paid for half the books that I bought and since I gave them the remainder of the books for their free shelf, I even brought home fewer books than I took.

I picked up a number of Charlaine Harris's books, a couple books about photography, one about art and a couple more books, cheap, that I already own. When I re-read those, I'll release them into the wild.

Gaelic
I'm working on my Scottish again. Now I know a couple people on twitter who speak Gaelic and they can help me, on pronunciation (they spell it out phonetically), vocabulary & word usage. As I get better that will help me speak idiomatically, instead of textbook.

Tatting
And just cause: here's the baby booties that I made 5 years ago & entered in the State Fair (children's clothes) with the ribbon that I won.