No, seriously...

...Why am I still awake at FIVE FREAKING THIRTY IN THE MORNING.  Can someone explain, pretty please?  I've been trying to sleep for almost two and a half hours without success.  Seriously, what up with that.  Lame.  Boo.

Fin.

TasteBook=Genius

I am so beyond thrilled to have found this thing called TasteBook.

[insert imaginary screen shot here because blogger fails at life]

It's such a great idea. It is an online, build-your-own, fully customizable cookbook. You can choose the cover, the title that you put on the book, all of the recipes inside...it's awesome. It's $34.95 for the spring-apart binder (so that you can add and remove recipes) and 100 printed recipes.

Seriously. (!!!)

Recipe sources include epicurious and several popular foodie blogs (like SimplyRecipes, where I found this). You can also make custom print outs that fit in the binder of your own recipes with your own pictures and order additional recipes after purchase. Or, if you create one as a gift, you can add, say, 30 recipes and give the other 70 to the giftee to choose for themselves.

I am truly impressed with this thing...and I have a feeling that this will become the standard wedding gift. Freaking awesome, this. Folks at epicurious, I bow down to you and your genius.

A Puckin' Great Weekend.

Yes, I had a Pucking Great Weekend, well-deserving of capitalization. My mom came down to visit for the weekend because my cousin was in town playing in a hockey tournament.

Three games of hockey in 36 hours.

It. Was. AWESOME.

I had forgotten just how much I love watching hockey. The sounds of the skates cutting the ice, seeing fully grown muscular men flying after each other, even the semi-funky smells of a building-sized refrigerator. Not to mention the throw-down-the-gloves fights. Oh, yes. Especially those. Turns out I'm quite the bloodthirsty fan. Heh.

But like any good knitter--especially one practically from Canada, as Michigan is more Canadian than most will admit--I did take some yarn and sticks with me. I started a toe-up, short-rowed, plain stockinette sock using some yarn I bought from ThankEwe on Etsy in Scuba Dive. Dood, I am completely in love with this stuff. Super soft, wicked colors. And the good news is that I have three more skeins from her in different colors. Yessss.

top: photo of Scuba Dive yarn from ThankEwe's etsy listing

middle and bottom: Scuba Dive at home after the games, in the recliner

I made it all the way to the heel in three games. My mom was making fun of me (nothing new, that) because at the end of the third game, which went into sudden death overtime, I was knitting faster and faster. And then they won the game--and hence the tournament--and all was good with the world. I was kind of disappointed for a while because my cousin is a senior and had been playing Indiana University in hockey for four years and I just found that out. Seriously, I could have gone to his games! B-ton is pretty much right next door. Lame. Non-lame, though, is that he's taking the family college plan and sticking around for a fifth year. Hoorah, now that I know he'll be in town I can go to the games! I'm ridiculously excited about that, I think. And he'll also be in town over the summer with the hockey camp that he works with. But for now, his team is heading to Florida to play for the National Championship or something, and they're hoping for a three-peat. Woo, go DU! Woo, hockey! Woo, sock!

Edited to fix an overabundance of verbs. My bad.

Chivalry is dead.

Today wasn't all that remarkable, as far as days go.  That is, until I tried to leave work.

I turn off the shop lights, shut down the computer, set the alarm, lock the door, ponder the fun I will have scraping a quarter inch of ice off my windshield, walk to my parallel-parked car...and just stare at it for a while.  

Well, crap.

The lovely and thoughtful motorist driving the car in front of mine felt the overwhelming need to park their car a mere SIX AND ONE HALF INCHES FROM MINE.  (Yes, I measured.)  This might not have been a problem had the lovely and thoughtful motorist driving the car behind mine not done the same.

I'll say it again.  Crap.

So I did the logical thing and sifted through my options.

1. Wait in the store for one or both of those fine people to show up and kindly move their vehicle that I might move mine.  Nope, too much like a doormat.  I'd never forgive myself.
2. Walk home.  Nope, doable but hell...it's cold.
3. Go check at every restaurant in a two block radius for the owner and politely request that they attend to their car.  Nope, not my job, and I most assuredly would not have been polite.  And it's cold, remember?
4. Use my little Saturn to, ehrm, "redesign" the cars' bumpers to the point that I have enough room to maneuver.  Nope, while this would be oh-so-satisfying...I doubt I'd have the balls to go through with it.  Plus, in all likelihood, I'd only end up redesigning my own wee plastic car.
5. Go back in the warm store, call the police, let them tow the car, and then go home.  Yep, this is what I went with.

So, an hour after I tried to get in my car and leave, a cop shows up.  Sirens blaring and lights flashing and everything.  So the cop went and did cop things, including #3 from above.  She managed to find the Schmuck that had the bad judgement to park his car illegally behind mine.  (Did I mention he was parked illegally?  Yep, he was.)  So they come back as I'm scraping my car, which was about as much fun as I figured it would be (read: no fun at all), and it turns out that Schmuck is a Horizon league referee in town to ref the Butler Basketball game, I assume.  And the following conversation unfolded as I scraped my car:

Schmuck:  "Hey, that your car?  Young lady, that your car?"

Me:  *unbelieving stare at the ridiculous amount of belligerence in his tone*

Schmuck:  "What's your problem?!  There's plenty of room.  A little effort next time, huh?  I'm parked legally.  I don't know what your problem is.  How much room do you need?"

Me:  "Well, enough that I can actually move the car without getting your silver paint all over my bumper.  Two feet of space would be great."  

(Did I mention he drives a silver Ford Escape?  Yep.  So anytime you see a silver Ford Escape in the midwest, feel free to key it for me.)

Schmuck:  "You got two feet.  There's a foot there *gestures to the front of my car* and a foot there.  *gestures to the rear*  That's two feet."

Me, after some more staring:  "Actually, it's only 6 1/2 inches.  I measured.  Pft.  Is that the kind of judgement you use when you ref games?  No wonder you're still stuck in the Horizon league."

Schmuck, now very red in the face:  "Fine, let's go.  Move your car."

Me, not so much staring anymore as coming up with creative new uses for the extendo-windshield scraperbrush in my pissed off little hands:  "Uhm, no.  I still have to close my shop and finish scraping my car."

Schmuck:  "Are you kidding?  You had an hour to do that."

Me, beyond caring, totally losing it, and gesturing wildly with the aforementioned scraper:  "Dude, you are the one who blocked me in, wasting an hour of my life.  Yaknowhat?  You're on my time, now.  Stop complaining."

Schmuck, not taking this well:  *manly groan of frustration and contempt followed by him getting into his car, slamming the door and moving it back about 8 inches, turning it off and getting out in a very pissed off fashion*

Copper, who until this point had just been watching and being police-like:  "Sir, you're now parked illegally.  Please move your vehicle."

I cannot even begin to express how much I laughed when the po-po made the guy move his car AGAIN...and to the parking lot not 150 feet away.  

So, I finished scraping my car, closed up shop (again), and finally got home over an hour after closing time.  

Where I promptly opened a bottle of shiraz and got my drink on.  Two-buck Chuck saves the day.

Fin.

Bestest Valentine's Day Evar!

Yes, I realize it is not yet February 14th...what's your point.  I heard about the Need a Little Knitting Romance Swap thing on the Lime&Violet message boards and thought to myself, "Hey why not?"  So today...I got my package from my secret swap partner.  And she is fabulous!!!!

You can check out the rest of the pictures I took on my flickr (because blogger is waaay too slow and I am waaay too impatient and I'm sure that's no surprise).

This was a great surprise at the end of a less-than-inspirational day and my gifting partner Jenna (does that makes sense?) is so far beyond amazing it's unreal.  So, serious thanks go to her for this awesome swap!

ETA:  I will shamelessly admit that I have tried out both of the lip balmies and the notepad is already on my fridge.  I will show some kind of restraint, though, and save the chocolate for Vday.  Hooray!

"Wait...What?!?" Moment of the Day, 29 Jan

From Yahoo! News , article entitled "First Antarctic marine census launched":

U.S., New Zealand, and Italian marine scientists began a two-month voyage to Antarctica's northern coast Tuesday as part of the first-ever census of Antarctic marine diversity, Prime Minister Helen Clark said.

Anyone else see a problem with this? Let's think...it's freaking Antarctica. Couldn't--nay, shouldn't--all coasts be considered northern? For that matter, would Antarctica even technically have more than one coast?

ETA--For the record, I didn't even finish reading the article because I was so bothered by the first paragraph (can one sentence be considered a paragraph?).  I do have some intention of skimming the rest of it at some point, someday.  Maybe.

holiday knitting

• Brigid socks from Goddess Knits.  4 pair.
• Cashmere Neckwarmer from Kim at Yarnabuse.com
• Fair Isle Gloves.  Pattern from Ann Budd's Handy Book O' Patterns and chart from Vogue Stitchionary Vol.3
• Dashing from Knitty
• Shash-busting iPod Cozy from Bonnie at Toward the Blue Peninsula.  2 small cozies.

Oy.  Okay.  Ready go.

(Oh and if you have any ideas for my grandparents...feel free to suggest.)