Absolutely nothing much to note. Really so few things of interest are going on these days it would just bore you to read about it.

We had an unbelievable storm during Tuesday's stitch n bitch. Driving back up Greigos from Rio Grande Blvd the street was so flooded we weren't sure the car was going to make it at some points. Good thing we have a tall baby suv type car. Later we saw there were watermarks up to the bottoms of the doors though. Skeery.

I went to get my glasses fixed at the optomotrist who reminded me that I haven't been there since March 2004 so it's time to get my eyeballs checked again. And we're almost finished paying off the criminal dentist.

In knitting I'm about to finish the sixth scarf for the Think Pink charity. They're all fuzzy and acrylic because I'd used up my wool pink yarn for the warming grace squares. I think that's all I'm going to do. I'm impatient to start new socks.

For lack of anything else to write about I'm going to make up some lists.

How I feel right now:
lazy
tired
sleepy
ambitious
nauseated
hungry
hopeful

Movies I've watched the last few weeks: (bad ones and all)
Bewitched
Stage Beauty
Monster-in-Law
Invincible (2001 Werner Herzog not the 2006 one about football)
The Carpetbaggers
Deuce Bigelow European Gigolow
de-Lovely
Notting Hill
Kiss Them For Me
Walk the Line
Heaven's Gate (director's cut)
The Skeleton Key

Books I've read the last few weeks:
Blue Shoes and Happiness
The Moviegoer
The Tiger in the Well
The Shadow in the North
The Ruby in the Smoke

Things I'm going to go do when I finish this post:
eat
watch something on the Tivo
take my medicine
sleep (wish me luck)

Cody may or may not get one or more of the following things for my birthday on Sunday:
Needles
The new KnitPicks needle sets with all the additional options looks good. They're backordered for a few weeks though.
I've been lusting after these handmade wooden needles for months. Aren't they pretty?
Or maybe a set of needles with lights inside?
If these stretchy circular needles came in sizes other than 2 I'd want them too.

Bags
I've been eyeing this lemonade bag at Discount Yarn Sale for about a year.
But I love the new designs on the Lexie Barnes bowler bags
Or maybe I should get a Jordana Paige bag, like this cute black and pink tweed
I like this imitation Jordana bag too.
Although I'd be really happy with a cute matching set of an Acadia Backpack or Empire bag in black sushi material with a matching Denise needle set cover from Boogie!
Or maybe this cute sushi purse?

The Usual Etsy Suspects
The Morrigan Necklace
Assorted cute handmade hedgehog stuff

Fibery goodness
Maybe something from my favorite handspun fiber shops?
Hello
Material
Luxe

We ran a lot of errands yesterday. Did a little retail therapy visit at Village Wools which was nice. I probably wouldn't have asked Cody to take me there but Jamie was working and I thought it would be good to get out for a little while. I'd brought Zola there last fall so they were really sad to hear about her. One of the women who works there, Franzi, had just picked out a pattern and some yarn to make a felted hedgehog so when she heard about Zola she took me right in the back and let me buy them instead, even though one of the yarns was the last in the store. It made me tear up. Again. Just every once in a while I get sad about it. Wasn't that just incredibly sweet though? I also found some really pretty iro and some funky optik and picked up two #1 circulars since the fuzzyfoot is going pretty well and neither of my circular kits go that small.

Then we got some boba tea and went to Page One Too to look for some books for Cody. I found a few things: a mindcandy Barbara Michaels, the new John Irving, and Reading Lolita in Tehran. I also ran into Kay, a very nice lady from the dropped stitch knitter's guild, whom I'd just seen at the giant knitathon at Tuesday's Stitch n Bitch. I hadn't seen her in months so it's been nice to run into her twice in one week.

She was the first person I watched spin with a spinning wheel. Unfortunately it was an incredibly cool Journey wheel (wheel in the sky keeps on tur-nin' - sorry can't resist hearing bad Journey songs in my head now) so all wheels pale in comparison to its coolness. Except my lendrum of course. Love my lendrum. Secretly want a journey wheel. (don't stop be-lievin'! Damn that Steve Perry's voice.) I'm hoping that Kay, Beverly, and I can get together and spin on our wheels sometime when Beverly's gets here. (Oh Sherri! Hold on Hold on!)

Then we went to the grocery store and bought food for the next two weeks. Then got subway sandwiches on the way home. So after having the dog run around and give us lots of kisses because she never thought she'd see us again and bringing in all the grocery bags while keeping the cats from getting into the garage I was putting the refrigerated stuff away. And the phone rang with the "long distance" ring meaning it was probably my parents or my sister. Cody was closer to the phone so he answered it.

It went sort of like this:

My Dad: Is this (Cody's and my last name which sounds a lot like DaVinci's but isnt)?

Cody in a friendly voice: Yeeees

Dad: I'd like a large house salad with light dressing and a large Mona Lisa pizza.

Cody thinking my dad is kidding: A large house salad and a large Mona Lisa pizza? Sure we'll get that for you.

My Dad: Ok we'll be by in forty-five minutes to pick it up.

Cody slightly panicking thinking they've come to Albuquerque as a surprise (which wouldn't be the first time) but also confused because he knew they were supposed to be in Atlanta this weekend: Uh, forty-five minutes? Ok, we'll have that ready for you.

Then he hands the phone to me. I'd heard the conversation and didn't have a clue what that was all about but I saw my parents' number on the caller id so I took the phone. And Dad had hung up. Now if this had been Cody's Dad we would've thought he was kidding around and would call back in a minute. He's kind of silly. My Dad is not silly, at least not silly like that. So I called them back.

I asked my mom if Dad had meant to order a pizza from us. Mom was confused. It seems that the phone in Dad's office is kind of weird (it's given me trouble when I've used it too) so it had redialed our house from when they'd called on Friday while Dad was dialing DaVinci's in Birmingham. The best part is that Dad is a retired executive from, what else? The phone company. So he really thought he was ordering a pizza. And probably wondered about the employee being so cheeky. This is an interesting new way to get me to call my parents.

It was very very funny.

Great NYT article discussing her early days in Paris and how Graham Greene outed her. Agism, sexism, media hype, and the everliving double standard.

In case you're wondering, I'm fine, my knitting is fine, as are all the pets, the husband, the bank accounts, and most of our sanity. I've been fighting a cold, working on gift knitting, and not wanting to sit in the office much.

Well I finally found the time to sit and read the whole damned book. And the character I thought might be the one whose death we were all warned about did indeed die. And I still teared up because I'm a big SAP who takes very very long baths.

I've been listening to Spinal Tap a lot lately. These guys are geniuses. On our way to the in-laws dinner (at an Italian restaurant called Zios that is probably a chain but is still pretty tasty so you can stfu ye chain snobbies out there) we decided to "gird our loins" by listening to "Workin on a Sex Farm". Put me in a great mood and politics only really came up once! Yay!

To mourn the loss of any more Dead Like Me episodes I got season one and two on dvd. I can live with that.

Our Tivo broke sometime in June and I finally got around to calling tech support last week. Turns out our modem got fried. The only damned thing in the office without a surge protector. So we get to shell out 50 bucks and get a replacement shipped from Direct TV. But it's better than 250 at Best Buy. Now I just have to get around to calling them back to order the actual replacement because I said I had to talk with Mr. Man first.

The Life Aquatic was ok. Not Rushmore and certainly not The Royal Tennenbaums (still haven't seen Bottle Rocket) but, as always, Wes Anderson movies grow on me over time and get me obsessed with whatever music is on the soundtrack. In my defense, who wouldn't love Portuguese David Bowie covers, or Nico, or The Faces? But do I think Owen Wilson's absence in writing the script in Aquatic shows.

Oh yeah, and
BIG BOTTOMS, BIG BOTTOMS
Talk about Mud Flaps MY GIRL'S GOT EM!

No, not fictional books with bad plots and stupid jokes about boobs. I mean actual fiction for younguns.

I ran across a great website dedicated to Louise Fitzhugh, author and illustrator of one of my favorite books as a child, Harriet the Spy. Which of course made me think of other books I loved when I was young. Here are a few. I wish there were such great tribute sites for all these authors.

Higgelty Piggelty Pop or there must be something more to life - One of the lesser-known books by Maurice Sendak (more famous for Where the Wild Things Are) Jenny the terrier is spoiled and bored so she takes off to find something more fun to do. One of my favorite adventures is when she gets a job as a nurse for an angry little baby who shouts "No eat! No grow! SHOUT!"

No Flying in the House - Another book with a little white terrier - except this one is really little, like three inches tall. And the little girl she takes care of, who happens to be the exiled child of a fairy princess and her mortal husband. The bad guy is a cat which is typical but it's an adorable little angry cat. That can turn into a gold wind-up toy!

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler - a girl and her brother run away to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She then tries to prove that a beautiful angel sculpture was made by Michelangelo.

The Trumpet of the Swan - by E.B. White (who also wrote Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little). A swan that can't talk learns to play the trumpet THEN to write!

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi - by Rudyard Kipling. About a rescued mongoose living in a garden in India. Lyrical language.

The Story about Ping - a young duck gets left behind on the Yangtze River and meets all kinds of new friends.

Certainly not all of my favorites but a few you might not have heard about before.

We are sick, sick people.

Word got out that I haven't read any Harry Potter books so I was promptly given a set for Christmas by Cody's parents. Which is kind of ironic since they live in a town where there had been publicized Potter-story-magic-is-of-the-devil protesting. But they're not that fundamentalist. (coughyetcough)

I was happy to get them I'd been meaning to read them because I like the movies just hadn't gotten around to buying the books. They're excellent sick reading. Goes quickly, doesn't take a lot of thought to follow the plot, easy to drop on your chest for a nap and pull out from under the blankets to read later.

I'm completely surprised to admit it but they're worthy of all that hype. My surprise would be because I'm a big snob that has almost no confidence in the ability for the general public who dictates pop culture success to show good taste. Sorry. But you all watch way too many reality tv shows for me to not think that.

Don't get your reality tv-lovin knickers in a big, defensive knot just yet though because sometimes I show even worse taste.

Last night while making Frito pies with Cody (recipe below) I was telling him about how nonplussed I'd been by actually enjoying the books which made me enjoy the movies even more. Then we started talking about all the popularity, promotional tie-ins, candy sales, etc. A few minutes later we were making up rip-off names for bad porn movie titles. Like Lord of the G-String, Beverly Hills 9021-Ho, Dude, where's my Dildo? You know, the classics.

These were our favorites:

Harry Potter has big Sorcerer's Stones
Harry Potter and Marilyn Chambers' Secrets
Hairy Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Asskaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Desire
Horny Harry follows the Orders of his Penis
Harry Potter and the Uncut Prince

Yes. Hello! We're twelve years old. But I couldn't resist posting it anyway. And if I'm going to get such creepy search engine referrals I might as well run with it.

Cody's really concerned that he's going to come off as a big perv in this post so I'd like to note I'm fairly sure I started it. Wouldn't say I'm a big perv but I would admit that I usually have few illusions about the lower orders in the minds of men.

If you're wondering what a Frito pie is...

Basically a cup or so of Fritos corn chips smothered with (Texas) chili (as opposed to New Mexican chile sauces), topped with shredded cheese or cheese dip, then sometimes with shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes and/or onions, salsa, sour cream, or whatever else you can come up with. Some eat them in bowls, others on plates, there's a very vocal contingent who refuse to eat them out of anything other than a sliced-open bag of Fritos.

Not the healthiest food in the world but sometimes ya just gotta eat stuff that's bad for you and damn the consequences.

We usually make it with leftovers of my homemade chili (which I've been making with ground turkey lately) and plain old embarrassing rotel cheese dip, an addiction to which I've been battling for the last twenty years.

New Mexicans take their Frito pies very seriously and many claim it was invented at the Woolworth's in Santa Fe. The legend has held strongly enough where there's even allegedly a rider in the lease contract requiring that anyone who rents the former Woolworth storefront on the Santa Fe Plaza must sell a specific recipe of Frito pies no matter what else the store is selling. Not sure if this rumor is still around or not. Yes, Santa Fe is weird. And full of hippy-crites, resentful locals, glad-handing ranch-owning state politicians, and really annoying tourists. But you've gotta love a town that has priorities like that in proper order.

The New Yawk Times has decreed these books to be the top 100 of 2004. And I don't think I've read one of them. Boy do I suck.

to read the NYT article:
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And speaking of New York publications did you read the David Sedaris essay in last week's New Yorker? Yes, true love really is lancing a boil on your love's butt.

'Aha!' laughed the hedgehog, 'I've had such fun
Tonight, while out on my usual run
I came across an inquisitive cat,
I believe she thought me a glorified rat!
A curious creature, no doubt, she found me,
She stopped and looked, and then walked round me,
"How strange," she murmured, "What can it be?
And fancy, it isn't afraid of me!"
I set that silly young cat a poser,
Was I a meal? - or -(coming closer),
Something to play with, something to maul,
So I curled up my prickles and curled in a ball! -
You should have heard that young puss howl!
I laughed and went on with my evening prowl.'

by E. M. Roberts

How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers

Hedgehog by Paul Muldoon

The snail moves like a
Hovercraft, held up by a
Rubber cushion of itself,
Sharing its secret

With the hedgehog. The hedgehog
Shares its secret with no one.
We say, Hedgehog, come out
Of yourself and we will love you.

We mean no harm. We want
Only to listen to what
You have to say. We want
Your answers to our questions.

The hedgehog gives nothing
Away, keeping itself to itself.
We wonder what a hedgehog
Has to hide, why it so distrusts.

We forget the god
Under this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again
Will a god trust in the world.

WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language / the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonality

snagged from ack3

We're heading down to Cody's parents house in a few minutes but I just woke up from the coolest weirdest dream.

It was very Elia Kazan / Tennessee Williams but I don't remember a previous plot like this so I'm really inclined to write it out. Basically there was this pretty little naive hick girl who had a whirlwind romance with a charming sweet hick guy. They're totally in love only in that way that naive youths in their late teens - early twenties can be. So they get married and are just disgustingly ignorant and cute and happy right? I say they're hicks and all that but I don't mean they're big racist rednecks or anything - just...country but in that slow nice kind of way - not aggressive. Then he invites his young bride to meet his parents for dinner at their house. Turns out his family is just creepy as shit. They like live in a shack and there are all kinds of brothers. There's a much older sister but she's severely mentally challenged. The father is stick-thin and doesn't speak very much, isn't very understandable when he does. The mother is huge and overbearing and has creepy dynamics with her children. Crazy Oedipal shit going on with those sons. She owns a general store and cooks a strange amalgam of cajun country food with random Japanese influences. There's a really scary dog with a dachsund head and a terrier body. The son is totally in love with his little bride but his mom clearly disapproves. The bride is just spooked as all hell by the whole scene and was in the process of talking him into going home when I woke up.

Weird huh

Larry McMurtry reviews Clinton's book for the NY Times
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Benefit of Cody working nights: bringing home breakfast burritos. Oddly enough the best one I've had here is down the mesa at the Giant where they make them fresh to order. Bacon, cheese, hashbrowns, scrambled egg, and christmas chile. Yum.

Yay a new Dave Sedaris Book is coming out! We listen to his books on tape in the car together all the time. There's a great recent interview about it.