It's still Friday in Guam

Okay, so here's the deal. I left work about two hours late last night, and I really, really wanted to get the new design up, because it's just been languishing in my brain and in parts here and there on the computer. So I worked on that last night until I realized that I was making completely stupid mistakes (the fact that it took me five different tries of more and more convoluted code before I realized that the problem was that I hadn't told the one file to look at the other one should tell you something). Then The Soup came on, and I tried to write through it, but if you've ever watched you know that's just impossible. And then it was bed time. So here we are.

Becky first (because I know that's all you really care about):
Becky has been having a monster "growth spurt." I use quotes because I haven't noticed any particular amount of growing, but she's been waking up in the middle of the night for the past 3 weeks (!) and eating 10-12 ounces. She does at least switch off whose shift she gets up during, so Kit and I, while exhausted, are making it through. She actually slept all the way through last night -- no binky replacement or anything -- so I'm feeling quite perky this morning (I'm less perky since I realized I'm out of creamer and my emergency stash has apparently gone bad, but I see a trip to Starbuck's in the very near future so it'll be fine).








Other things I've done in the past way-too-long-since-I-posetd:

- Went to see the Dropkick Murphys at House of Blues in Atlantic City on a Tuesday night. I broke a heel. Wonder husband Kit came to the rescue with his ear tape (it's a rugby thing -- they use electrical tape to hold their ears in place so they don't get all roughted up in the scrum). The show was pretty awesome and watching the kids down below in the mosh pit brought back some memories from my high school days. We were safely ensconced in the balcony, which was nice and had plushy seats. It's such a small auditorium that you don't lose anything (except the mosh pit experience) by sitting up there. I'd recommend it to a friend.

- Finished the stockings and submitted the pattern/charts/photos. Waiting for feedback. I'm pretty proud of them, and think I did a good job writing the pattern as far as clarity and errata goes. Pictures as soon as I can.

- Lost a Fetching. Replaced a Fetching. Still love the Fetching and wish more of my family lived colder places so I could make them for everyone. I used Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted Navy (Project Spectrum! Yay!) (I was so pleasantly surprised that I can work with this wool. It gives me a little bit of the rash, but not much and as long as I stop after a Fetching or two, it's fine. Weirdly, I can wear the Fetchings with no irritation at all.) and one skein has already made three mitts, and I'm pretty sure I can get two more out of it. Very impressive. See how pretty:

Or not. I was going to take pictures before we left the house (to head up to Boston), but the camera battery was dead, so I had to charge it up and then just didn't have time to be taking pictures. I did not pack the Fethcings to bring with me because, well, it didn't occur to me. I promise pictures when we get home.

- Got a manicure (as you will see when I post pictures of the Fetchings). I've been wanting to do this for awhile, but first I was pregnant and then I was waching bottles and pump parts every 5 minutes so it seemed silly. But now bottles are down to once or twice a day (the washing of them, not the feeding of the baby), and I have a little extra money, I thought I'd go ahead and splurge. I found a place right by work where it's cheap but not gross, so I'm very happy. And I feel pretty (oh, so pretty...).

- Designed, on paper, several more garments and decided to enter two more design contests. Both of these require you to write and make the design prior to submission, so that's fine. Because as you know from the post that was in my head (you can read those, right? I don't actually have to type them up and post them.) right after I finished knitting the stockings, I will never again design anything on spec. Robynn was great, but it was a huge PITA trying to find the right yarn and waiting for the right yarn to arrive and having to order more of the right yarn and so on. Never again. (For those of you keeping score, the last thing I said that about was knitting socks on size 1 DPNs, which I proceeded to not only do again immediately, but to do in a design I wrote. Clearly, when I say I'm not going to do something again, I really mean it.)

- Went to see the Yarn Harlot. That's tomorrow's post, because it deserves a post of its own.

- Replaced our crappy overpriced cable and regular old TV with FiOS and a 42" Bravia. We loves it. Kit -- if you read his blog, you can skip this, he already told this story -- anyway, after we finally got everything all set up (see below), I come home and Kit's watching the Rangers (hockey, not baseball) game, and I can tell he's a little disappointed. And honestly, I was a little disappointed, too. I mean, everything looks nice. And big. Really, really big. But not like it was in the store. Then Lost came on, and it was broadcast in HD. Our jaws just dropped. Holy wow. Unbelievable clarity and color. Just stunning. I highly recommend it.

Now, about the set up. We already had FiOS internet, so the installation didn't take that long and the guys were really nice -- no complaints. This happened when we still had the old (non-HD) TV. Then the Bravia came and...whups. It turns out that while TiVo does work with FiOS, the only TiVo boxes that can handle HD are the DirectTV boxes (which only work with Direct service and also are obsolete) and the new Series 3 boxes, which cost like $700. Plus you still have to pay $12.95/mo for the TiVo service. To get an HD DVR from Verizon is...free. A regular HD set top box is $9.99/mo. The HD DVR goes up to...$12.99. So I can save ten bucks a month PLUS not have to lay out another $700? We no longer have TiVo. And honestly? There are some things I like better about TiVo's interface (which is the complaint you see most often about non-TiVo DVRs), but there are actually a lot of things I like better about the FiOS DVR interface. So I'm pretty happy.


I think that's just about everything exciting that's happened to me lately (except some stuff that happened at the Yarn Harlot, but I'm saving all that for tomorrow's post). If you know I forgot something, holler out.

posted by Laura Y. @ 5:08 AM