It's Furious Balancing

Someone's Coming. Act Like a Cat.

2007-12-31T13:35:00.001-05:00

I Has Moved

2007-06-10T13:33:00.001-05:00

As of today, I've relocated from Blogger to a new site with my own domain name --> itsfuriousbalancing.com. All future posts will now be on the new site. Update your bookmarks, if I can flatter myself with the idea that anyone has bookmarked me.

I've imported my old posts from Blogger, and it still looks pretty rough-drafty over at the new site (to me, anyway). It's evolving, but come visit.

Kitten Playtime

2007-06-10T00:00:00.001-05:00

Dear God, I must squeal in Japanese now.

Kawaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

This serves no purpose whatsoever except to be egregiously cute. Sometimes egregious cuteness is all I'm up for on some days. Enjoy your the rest of your weekend, cats and kittens.

I Has a Vision

2007-06-08T18:29:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about, and taking steps to accomplish, moving this blog onto my own domain name and using WordPress as my publishing platform.

I'm going to blame Allan for this one. He's the gentleman who commented yesterday on my madeleine post. We've since exchanged brief emails and I've spent some more time reading his (very well-written, erudite) blog.

I covet his footnote plug-in functionality.

No, seriously.

I must have footnotes that allow the reader to click on the footnote number, automatically go to the bottom of the page to read said footnote, then click on the "back" button to return to their place in the text.

Go over to his blog and play around with this. I realize I'm a blogging neophyte, but I hadn't seen this before. Considering my methods (or lack thereof) of writing, this could have some serious consequences for It's Furious Balancing. Lots of footnotes and other madcap blogging hijinks will ensue, I'm certain.

As to when this move to WordPress will actually occur, that's up in the air. It depends on my learning curve.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Photo courtesy of Meme Cats

Dude, Where's the Lime Blossom Tisane?

2007-06-07T17:31:00.000-05:00

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. - Vladimir Nabokov

It started with a post today on Feministe -- a blog I read fairly frequently (if not everyday). It was Mikey's post on madeleines. Starbucks' madeleines in cello-wrap, or shrink-wrap, or whatever one calls it, complete with pictures and a link to a very interesting Slate article on Proust's Belle Epoque madeleines and one man's attempt to reverse-engineer the recipe based upon hints in the famous madeleine-tea-Aunt Leonie's lime blossom tisane-Combray passage in the first volume of In Search of Lost Time (1).

This lead to some comments about the awfulness of Starbucks' pastries, and the awfulness of their coffee, and their mega-chain evilness (but still how it was oddly comforting to find this mega-chain when out of one's element). Even though I could have put in some digs about how I believe Starbucks is the Wal-Mart of coffee houses (2), my first thought was that I should go home and bake some madeleines. My second thought was I should then blog about it. One of the commentors mentioned that she had seen the madeleine-tea-memory reference many, many times, but only knew of one instance where madeleine was a recurring blog tag to mean "memories" (3). I strongly feel that madeleines require greater blog presence -- of any sort.

I actually own a madeleine pan. I bought it for myself after I first began reading Proust. I've made them only once before, but tonight I'll give it another go.

I'll take pictures, don't fret.

*******
(1) It is NOT translated to Remembrance of Things Past. That title was foisted on Proust's work when it was translated into English. That's actually a phrase that appears in Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 30.

(2) Sorry, but I live in Ann Arbor and frequent an independent coffee house where the owner knows me by sight and name as well as that I want a skim Abianno latte (no foam) every blessed workday morning, the only variation being whether said latte is a "double" or a "triple." None of this "venti" or "grande" B.S. If I ever utter the words "White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino," shoot me, because it won't be me but some pod-spawned alien.

(3) Upon a cursory review of the tagged posts, it looks to me like it means "digressions" or "opening up very large cans of worms," but that's only a cursory review. My reading list has just gotten longer. /sigh

Antigravity Cat-Toast Device

2007-06-02T12:16:00.001-05:00

This amuses me no end. I want to interject the phrase "cat-toast equilibrium point" or "cat-butter paradox" in my daily conversations. This has probably been out around the Internet for ages and ages, but I just found it. So there.

A more detailed write-up on can be found here.

Found Things

2007-06-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

Today is one of those lovely Saturdays when I have absolutely nothing I have to do. My time is all mine. I can knit, sleep, read, surf the Innernets, and generally spoil myself rotten. Oh, there's a few loads of laundry that need doing, and a little bit of tidying up around the house, but nothing compelling or necessary by any means. Well, making sure I have clean underwear for next week might fall into the "necessary" category, but the upshot of all of this is that I have loads of Free, Unstructured Time.

That is a glorious thing.

First up, My So Called Scarf. I love these colors. They're a bit darker than they appear in this photo. I thought diffuse morning sunlight would show them better, but I was wrong. Ah, well. If this is the worse thing to happen to me today, I am lucky indeed.

Second, a few things Found on the Internet that I just haven't gotten around to posting:

[If you click on Anti-Gravity Cat's picture, you can get him to spin around]

Hey, it makes perfect sense to me (but now I'm craving toast, with lots and lots of Calder Dairy butter). (1)

In the "What the Heck, You Never Know" Department: Kelly at Yoga Coffee Outlook is giving away a Zune MP3 Player. All you need to do to qualify is write that previous sentence in a blog post, and put a comment on her blog, etc. Details here.

I've never even read, or wanted to read, any of the Harry Potter books, but I still am sorted into the correct house (the wise, clever, learned, enigmatic ones, I am told):

be sorted @ nimbo.net

But wait! Here's more silly cat stuff:

Oh, I've got tons of these saved on my hard drive:

Cat pics (except anti-gravity cat, whose origin is unknown) courtesy of Meme Cats.

*******
(1) Sweet Jesus, they have Calder Dairy Ice Cream and home delivery in Washtenaw County. ::faint:: If you haven't had Calder dairy stuff, and you live in Southeastern Michigan, you must try it. Calder Dairy is, without a doubt, home of the Best Dairy Products in the Known Universe. Hey, I'm a grain- and milk-fed Midwestern girl -- I know my dairy products.

My God, What About the Knitting?! (1)

2007-06-01T20:39:00.000-05:00

When I left you last, I think the state of my blogged knitting was as follows:

1) Blue proto-sock OTN ("On The Needles," for my non-knitting-blog-reading readers).

2) Noro sweater pieces awaiting assembly but being ignored because I have to do a shoulder seam next before I proceed with the arm seams and the side seams. I hate shoulder seams (and the fact that it's always overheated in the cats' room where I do my blocking and seam sewing, and that it's summer, and that I hate heat, and summer, and occasionally wish I lived in the far northern section of British Columbia, or, hell, even southern British Columbia. Vancouver, say).

There are other vague, knitting-like activities -- like a hot pink charity scarf OTN that I'm working on from time to time to keep my hands busy, and to use up the rest of the hot pink yarn not used in the Kitty Pi -- and a serious desire to make My So Called Scarf out of Malabrigo yarn.

I've shown you the Malabrigo before; this stuff is woolen opium. I'm still sitting on that black-purple "Paris Nights" colorway, but I wanted a quick knitting fix for my Malabrigo addiction. So, I order two skeins of the worsted in Jewel Blue from my eBay drug, er, yarn, dealer.

The problem was, when the yarn arrived, I was not completely enamored of its color. The eBay photo showed a more intense medium blue than the actual shade of blue - which is more white-to-ice-blue. I don't fault anyone with that; getting an accurate color from an online photo is difficult (and this particular yarn was kettle-dyed in a limited lot of ten, which lends itself to all sorts of color variations, etc.).

I kept the yarn and started working on the scarf, believing that I would Learn to Love the Yarn.

I do love the yarn. I love how it feels but, Dear Readers, I could not learn to love this color. It's wimpy. It's washed out. It's limp. It's.... It's... PASTEL for chrissakes.

I don't do pastels. I don't do fluff, flounces, lace, lettuce hems, ruffles or any other of that girly stuff. (2)

Part of being Unable to Love the Yarn was due to the pattern. I really like the stitch pattern. It's unique and shows off variegated yarn extremely well. There is even a whole flickr group with pictures of this scarf pattern.

Alas, as with many goals, there is a struggle. This particular stitch pattern is challenging to me because it causes me to hold my needles in such a way as to cause a more-than-usually painful bout of repetitive strain injury.

Nonetheless, I carry on because I love the pattern and I Will Make this Scarf Even if it Kills Me, which it just may, at that; and if I'm going to die from knitting-induced RSI, I want it to be from a yarn that makes me weak in the knees.

After all of this preamble, I offer you Malabrigo Chunky, three-ply superfine Merino wool, Colorway 242, Intenso.

Further bulletins as events warrant. I need to be alone with my yarn now.

********
(1) [Alright - I've got footnotes appearing in the title now, for Pete's sake] Alluding, somewhat, to "Dear God, What About the Men?" from Twisty's blog, which I believe in turn alludes to "Dear God, What About the Children?", an all-too-frequent, ridiculous sound-bite, um, thing that I see in the media. I think. I love word games and references to obscure tidbits of information I find floating around out there. You know, out THERE. [Insert dismissive hand gesture here] That alleged "Real World" place. But I digress.

(2) Ok, my bathroom is pink, with white-rose shaped shower-curtain hooks, but that all started as a joke when my second husband left me and I Needed a Change.

Finally, Irises

2007-05-28T12:14:00.001-05:00

I hate flowers. I paint them because they're cheaper than models, and they don't move.
-- Georgia O'Keefe

Some Women Buy Shoes (Redux)

2007-05-27T08:39:00.000-05:00

I spent this morning cataloging my books -- the fiction anyway -- which is quite a daunting task considering the size of my fiction collection. I'm about 25% done: 2 out of 8 bookcases. After the fiction is entered in the database, then I need to tackle the books upstairs, the fantasy books in the study, and (whenever I get another bookcase or more shelf space [ha!]), the human sexuality and erotica currently hiding in boxes.

I don't know if this level of smug satisfaction I'm feeling is from the size of my library, my twisted enjoyment with data entry, my joy in the written word, a smattering of nostalgia as I handle each individual book (1) , or a combination of all of those plus some other factors I haven't quite verbalized yet. When I look at my books, or stand near the shelves, I feel grounded and secure. My books are my refuge. All I know is that my affection and need is difficult to explain to people who aren't bibliophiles.

There have been a few instances in the past several days when I've overheard conversations, or been in conversations, with People Who Don't Understand Books. One person used the word "purging" to talk about ridding their house of the excess books, like one would drown a litter of puppies or call an exterminator about carpenter ants.

I would sooner cut off my right arm.

I am certainly capable of throwing out a book, or putting it in a box for a future garage sale, but those are definite exceptions. They are either damaged (and I have another copy), or from a part of my life that no longer exists (2) . But throw out my LITERATURE!? Are you people crazy?!!

* * * * * * * *
(1) Especially the books from the college years. "Oh, Faulkner! I loved The Sound and the Fury from my first lit class with Dr. Griffin! And look at this, my Norton of James' The Turn of the Screw! and Wuthering Heights! Oh, I need to re-read all of these..."

(2) I've got a bunch of touchy-feely New Age books boxed up for a Future Garage Sale. I feel that they're no longer very relevant to me, so out they go.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2007-05-26T18:33:00.000-05:00

A picture of a sleeping cat! I'm hoping that my long weekend will look something like this. Sleeping, going out to movies, eating, gaming. All play with very few chores. Well, there are always chores to be done -- cat box cleaning, laundry, dishwashing, grocery shopping -- but I'm hoping for more Fun than Chores, more Sleeping than Not Sleeping, etc.

I feel a Knitting Mood coming on. I've started the Proto-Sock (1), and it's coming along nicely. I'm just about ready to try the heel turn in another inch or two. I might be less optimistic about sock knitting come tomorrow, but I think it's do-able. At least for now.

* * * * * * * * * * *
(1) In order to learn sock knitting, I decided that it would be best to practice on larger needles and thicker yarn than any sock pattern ever called for. I'm making one very oversized sock, essentially. Once I master or, at the very least, figure out what I'm doing, I'll attempt to make a Real Sock.

Something Approaching Agony

2007-05-25T18:02:00.000-05:00

I say to myself, "I don't know how I can even begin to describe the pain I'm dealing with right now." The mind goes blank. I have a few images -- a clenched fist, a bowstring drawn back to its limit -- that's how my body feels. Something approaching agony. My jawline aches from being tightly held all day. I say those small prayers -- God, oh, God ohGodohGodohGod -- until the words are meaningless.

I'm not looking for pity. I'm not looking for anyone to take care of me, pet me, cater to me. I'm just looking for a distraction.

/breathe

Books, baths, cats, my computer, knitting -- these all help -- but I still have those stretches where I only have the awareness of wanting to scream. I find myself panting, like an animal, trying to make it through waves of suffering.

/breathe

I'll be alright. I'm always "alright." One horribly annoying thing that came to my mind once (when I was going through the worst depression of my life), was that I never have the luxury of breaking. Gah. I'm far too solid and stubborn for that. "Breaking," crying, carrying on, grieving, whathaveyou. I carry too much strength for something that easy (damn that personal pride).

Well, enough Internal Dialogue. Here's a photo of my inchoate irises.

I imagine them -- and my peonies -- making a sound like a kernel of popcorn exploding in hot oil. What would be the onomatopoetic word for that?

Landscapes Real and Imagined

2007-05-20T11:48:00.000-05:00

I've told a few of you I would be posting screenshots from Lord of the Rings Online, and here they are! Yes, I'm copping out today with many pics and little text, but we has lots to do, precious, lots to do, yessss. [Click to view larger sizes, you silly hobbitses]

Laiane in Thorin's Gate

Waterfall and Sunrise Near Duillond

Coming in to Thorin's Gate

Another View of Erud Luin

But lest you believe it's all elvish singing under the springtime sky here at Chez Crabgrass, I did come home with artemisia, a Beauty of Livermore oriental poppy, two South Seas daylilies, a "Twilight" echinacea, four varieties of hot peppers (banana, red chili, jalapeno, and Thai dragon), and a small catnip plant (the catnip near the birdbath didn't come up this year;I put down some seeds, but they were pretty ancient and I'm not confident they'll come up). All of these need to get in the ground in the next day or so. There's also a 40-pound bag of peat sitting out there with my name on it. I did have one impulse purchase at the nursery -- a hanging basket of strawflowers. All I had to do on that was peel off the price sticker.

And here's a hopefully improved picture of Boris the Spiderwort:

Saturday Morning Garden Blogging

2007-05-19T09:28:00.000-05:00

I think these are forget-me-nots. I'm not really sure, but they're blue, and small, and currently camping the birdbath (the The-Husband-Made birdbath inscribed with "Bathe Filthy Birdies"). The neighbors immediately behind us have a small field of these, so they more than likely migrated from there.

The spiderwort in the kitchen garden bloomed for the first time this season. I wish I could get a better photo. It's not that violet, and has more of a blue color. I'm not talented enough with Paint Shop Pro to make it look right.

The iris(es) are going crazy, and I should have pictures up soon, when he's in full flower. I counted 3 separate stalks with about 5-7 imminent blooms (total). Considering he hasn't bloomed once since I planted him 2 or 3 years ago, it's about time, I say. The sweet woodruff next to the iris has died off for a reason known only to itself, and I'm not certain if I want to put in more irises -- since I'll be dividing the Monster Iris when it's done blooming -- or look for another groundcover. I'm going to the nurseries up on Wagner Road sometime this weekend, and I'm sure something will inspire me.

My attitude towards gardening is pretty haphazard. I know there are some plants I will never consider (hostas, forsythia), but most of what I randomly select is Because It Looked Good at the Time. I'll wander around the nurseries and see what grabs me.

A Not-so-Brief and Somewhat Sordid History of Laiane Wolfsong, Ranger of the Storm Lord (Part One)

2007-05-17T09:40:00.000-05:00

[Note to my readers -- There's a lot of "gamer" jargon here, and I can't define all of it without going off on some very long, digressive tangents. I try not be purposely obscure -- It really is a whole 'nuther reality with its own language.]

Yesterday, I received my copy of The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I got to thinking -- this will be Laiane's fourth MMORPG incarnation, and her sixth gaming incarnation. EverQuest; TES III: Morrowind; EverQuest II; TES IV: Oblivion; Vanguard: Saga of Heroes; and now, Lord of the Rings. I've been Laiane, or she has been me, for 6 or 7 years. I think a history is in order.

My online gaming obsession started shortly after I met The Husband. We were still living in our respective apartments in Ann Arbor when he bought me a copy of EverQuest (and a copy for himself shortly thereafter). I went through a variety of characters. For a while, I thought I had found the "perfect" class for my play style -- the Necromancer -- and I harried the world of Norrath as the Dark Elven Aamaterasu Solreaver, who summoned the undead to do her evil bidding.

Then I went to see a movie.

[Insert foreshadowing-type music here]

It was the first of The Lord of the Rings movies directed by Peter Jackson. When the initial scene of the Last Battle of Elves and Men was on the screen, I started crying (I tell you, I cry at anything sometimes). Someone had finally gotten it right. Someone -- someone who obviously loved Middle Earth -- took the time to do the movie properly, the Way It Should Be Done. (1)

In any event, when I saw the character of Legolas Greenleaf, Archer of the Woodland Realm, I thought -- in addition to "that's a hunka burnin' Elf luv" -- I want a character who can do THAT. "THAT" being defined as uber l33t archery skillz.

There are those who love the tank classes, the knights in shining armor defending their party from the foe. There are those who love the role of the healers, the clerics/druids/shamans who are always welcome and needed in groups. (2) Other players are drawn to the fire-power of a wizard, the versatality of the bard, or the subtleness of an enchanter.

Photo courtesy of Meme Cats

Then there are those of us who want to kill stuff quickly, from a distance, and have it drop dead before it has a chance to get in one good whack of its own. Add some tracking, foraging, stealth movement, and serious close-combat DPS (3), and you've got yourself a Ranger.

When I created Laiane (4) , that long, long time ago, I didn't know I would love the Ranger class so much. She was just another character slot that I was experimenting with; but Laiane reached 55th level in EverQuest before I retired her, far surpassing Aamaterasu (who was abandoned somewhere in the mid-30's and, as far as I know, is still camped at the gnome pirate outpost on Velious, hunting snow cougars).

I was a Ranger when Rangers weren't cool. Rangers were the "paper tanks." We died a lot. There were a multitude of Ranger jokes about the ease with which we Took The Big Dirt Nap ("A Ranger walks into a bar... LOADING. PLEASE WAIT"). The people who played the class didn't play to become powerful characters, for the most part, but because we had an affinity for the Predator-Hunter archetype.

I'm disappointed that I can't find a screenshot of my EverQuest 1 Laiane. All I had were some forum signature blocks The Husband helped put together for me.

[Oh, yes, I remember the day when I really, truly made GrandMaster Fletcher (250), and got my trophy. /sigh]

I stopped with EverQuest 1 shortly after the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion. It was at that point when I realized that I couldn't progress much further in the game without devoting an extraordinary amount of time acquiring AA's (5) -- and when I realized you couldn't get a group without 100+ AA's to your name, and that if I wanted to progress I would HAVE TO group.

I have many opinions about enforced grouping, and none of them are good. For anyone who cares to make the utterly specious argument about "Why play a MMORPG if you don't care to group?" argument, I'll tell you right now that you're a moron. There are many players who love to interact in a large, dynamic, persistent online world with hundreds (if not thousands) of others, and not necessarily group, and we tend to be much smarter than the likes of you.

[To be continued at some point in the future. One game down, five to go!]

********************
(1) Those of us of a certain age shudder to remember the animated Lord of The Rings film that came out in the late 1970's. Ralph Bakshi? It was like a combination nightmare of all the bad fantasy ever written and H. R. Pufnstuf.

(2) I'm having an EQ2 /guildchat flashback, from Crystalmind, "I'm a Libra with no one to heal!"

(3) DPS = Damage Per Second. Numerical shorthand for "How quickly you can kill the pixalated orc before it kills you."

(4) "Laiane" -- rhymes with "rain" -- is a variation of the name "Lain" from, of course, Serial Experiments: Lain. I find it amusing that the anime Lain exists in "The Wired," another name for the global (computer) communication network, aka "the Internet." There's a lot more philosophical, nature-of-reality, separation-or-lack-thereof between the Wired and Reality weirdness in the anime. Go read the Wiki article.

(5) Achievement points, I can't for the life of me recall exactly what AA stands for anymore, but it was an alternative leveling system IN ADDITION to regular leveling. You could put EXP into levels or AA's, and buy special abilities with your AA's. When I left EQ1, I had six, count 'em, SIX, AA's. In order to get to the magical 100+ level of AA's, I would have had to do EXP grinding groups every night for 6+ hours for a month or more. No. Thank. You.

Considering the Vocabulary of Pain

2007-05-11T21:07:00.000-05:00

I have been living with chronic pain for many years. I sit and try to calculate how many years it's been -- 17? 18? Less than half my life, but not by much. I've been searching for that H.L. Mencken quote for some time now. I can't recall it exactly, but it's along the lines of "pain doesn't ennoble a person; for the majority of men, pain makes one petty and mean." It was one of those quotes I should have written down at the time but never got around to and now I can't find it for the life of me. Bloody hell.

So I go looking, and I find all sorts of interesting quotes concerning pain, some of which I'm certain are written by people whose experience with physical pain is limited to a hangnail, splinter, or stubbed toe.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and ... if I think of human beings I’ve known and of my own life, such as it is, I can’t recall any case of pain which didn’t, on the whole, enrich life. --Malcolm Muggeridge

Should I even stoop to comment on the utter vacuity of this statement? Yeah, Malcolm, your own life -- such as it is. I take it you didn't get out much. I've been popping Vicodin like Tic-Tacs in order to enrich my life. Care if I slap you into the middle of next week?

Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame. --Antonia S. Byatt

Rigid dignity? I take it Antonia never spent an evening biting into a pillow, trying not to scream, drenched in sweat and crying from exhaustion. "Dignity" is hardly the word I would have used to describe my suffering frame at that point. I do have to agree with "pain hardens," though. I am definitely much harder -- intolerant, cynical, bitter, judgmental. "Harder" does not necessarily equal "better."

Herein lies the problem of attempting to communicate or define the nature of a subjective experience. My experience of pain is unique to myself, as your experience is to you, as these writers' experiences are to them.

Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can. --Victor Hugo

I reserve the right to mock these writers, despite that. Anyone who has been dealing with pain for years has a duty to mock them, as far as I'm concerned. Enriched life. Dignity. Meh.

Blogging for Introverts

2007-05-07T18:32:00.000-05:00

In this evening's web surfing, I came across this post on I am Joe's Blog (written by Joe Kissell) and was intrigued by the following:

[E]xtroverts get more energy from being around other people, whereas introverts get more energy from being alone, and find that being around others tends to drain their energy. This is very different from the colloquial sense of “introvert” as someone who’s shy, timid, withdrawn, or even misanthropic....

A few people have expressed confusion at the notion of an introvert running a blog, as though by definition we should be very private people who want to avoid attention of any kind....[T]he great thing about the Web is that it lets us share information about ourselves with lots of people in a way that doesn’t drain our energy, since we’re not interacting with everyone at once, or in person [emphasis added].

Ding, ding, ding! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! That's it exactly.

When I started this blog back in December 2006, I did it with the idea that it would be an easy way for me to keep up with my family and friends scattered across the U.S. "Easy" in the sense that writing a general purpose post about What's Going On With Laiane takes less energy than emails and phone calls (and that the blog is a more creative and visual way to express What's Going On With Laiane than emails and phone calls).

It's not that my family and friends are a group of life-sucking vampires. Well, maybe a few. [JUST KIDDING, FOLKS! /wave] I treasure my alone time. It's all about the energy expended. Sometimes it takes a lot of energy for me to be "on." (1) The Husband knows that there are times after we get home from work that I need "my space" to regroup and gather myself.

In that vein, I found this in an archived Atlantic Monthly article:

Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge....This isn't antisocial. It isn't a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: "I'm okay, you're okay—in small doses."(2)

I'm surprised by the notion that "introverts don't do blogs." I see a blog as an excellent way for an introvert to communicate with the outside world, probably because we can gather our thoughts and "talk" without interruption. Here I am, telling you What's Going On With Laiane in a way that best suits my personality and mode of expressing myself.

* * * * *
(1) See this post of May 1, 2007. Oh, and for the record, tonight's dinner was half a container of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food.

(2) I love this article. Please, if you know me personally, go read it if/when you have a moment or two.

42 Things About Me

2007-05-05T09:44:00.001-05:00

In honor of my 42nd birthday, I thought I would make one of those long, rambling blog posts to help anyone out there who might be reading know more about me. I'm complex, truly.

1. Every New Year for the past three years, I've resolved to floss my teeth more frequently. Sometimes that's the only resolution I make. I still don't floss enough.

2. The last time I watched television was 9/11. The last time I sat down to actually, on-purpose watch a TV show was 1994. The Husband and I have a TV; we use it to watch DVD's.

3. I like to read blogs written by people radically different from myself. My current favorites at the moment (besides Crazy Aunt Purl) are The Panopticon (gay male Buddhist Chicagoan knitter with a penchant for books) and a little pregnant (which the writer describes as "madcap misadventures in infertility, pregnancy and parenthood"). Her post on her imagined conversations with her fertility monitor is beyond hysterical.

4. I can't remember my real hair color. I've been a faux redhead for 10+ years.

5. I won't eat salmon.

6. My high school's fight song was sung to the tune of "On Wisconsin."

7. I have two tattoos. I got the first one for my 30th birthday, and the second for my 40th. I plan on getting another for my 50th (or maybe my 45th if I can't wait that long).

8. If I never have to hear another word about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, I could die happy.

9. My favorite paintings are Monet's studies of the Rouen Cathedral.

10. Whenever I travel on an airplane, I bring Lovecraft's The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath to read.

11. When I have a choice of desserts, I almost always choose the one with the most chocolate.

12. It's my considered opinion that people who pronounce forte as "for-TAY" (instead of the correct French pronunciation - "fort") are sub-literate cretins. There are so many of them I've developed an unfortunate facial tic from biting my tongue.

13. I'm named after my mother -- in Real Life, that is. "Laiane" has been my online pseudonym for many years.

14. I always dressed up as a black cat for Halloween, except the last year I went trick-or-treating (1975?). Then I was a ghost in a bedsheet with a scary plastic mask.

15. Even though I read a tremendous amount, I don't retain much -- of the fiction anyway. I suppose that's why I keep and re-read many of my books.

16. Favorite (non-Lovecraft) fantasy book? Tigana.

17. I rarely suffer from that female malady of Pleasing Others Before I Please Myself.

18. In terms of "fashion," I can't stand pastel colors or ruffles. I didn't like them when I was 22 and I certainly don't like them at 42.

19. Lilacs and violets are my favorite spring flowers, and I love chrysanthemums in the autumn (especially the yellow ones).

20. Even though I'm bookish and introverted, I enjoyed my visit to Las Vegas (when The Husband and I were married). It was very surreal. Vegas, not getting married. (1)

21. I've never sent a text message to anyone.

22. I haven't read the operating manual for my digital camera yet. I figure that if I take 10-12 pictures of something, one of them has to turn out okay.

23. I don't care for how Borges ended The House of Asterion with that coda about Theseus and Ariadne. The story can easily stand alone on its own.

24. I use whatever is handy for bookmarks. Unused tissues or napkins. Post-it notes. Pieces of yarn. I'm even known to dog-ear books.

25. I'm one of the few people I know who is able to get out of bed without hitting the snooze button. When I'm up, I'm up.

26. Even though I say that I'm not a morning person, that's when I'm my most productive. I tend to hit the wall in the afternoon.

27. I try not to use obscenities or curse words very often. I save them for when I really, truly mean it.

28. I don't worry about drinking the suggested 64 ounces of water a day since one of my medications gives me dry mouth. I'm almost always sipping on plain water or sparkling water (unsweetened) .

29. I wish I knew more about physics. I admire Stephen Hawking and wish I could understand his books more thoroughly.

30. It's impossible for me to leave a book store empty handed.

31. I'm very picky about the pens I use. I like fine-tipped ones with sharp points. Liquid ink, not paste ink.

32. I'm a sucker for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.

33. I HATE THE MALL. I can buy just about everything I need online -- except groceries.

34. Even though I'm no longer a vegetarian, I still eat tofu sometimes (especially stir-fried).

35. I say that the Internet is "my oxygen." It's my primary source of entertainment, news, and information. I've been online since 1994 -- back in the days of LISTSERV's, kermits, and gophers.

36. My computer's name is "Squeaker."

37. I prefer watching college sports to professional sports, not that I watch sports much at all.

38. I find that I usually have to read something before I'm able to fall asleep.

39. I would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven (special bonus points for those of you who catch the literary reference; and, yes, I've read it).

40. If I had a choice between going back to Paris (for the third time) or going to another grand European city, I would still choose Paris.

41. I have visited the grave sites of Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka.

42. I have never EVER had the least desire to have a baby or adopt a child. If I feel the need to be maternal towards something, I have my cats.

-----------------
(1) Las Vegas at night photo under Creative Commons license (Flickr photographer mandj98) and may be distributed, copied, and shared with attribution.

2007-05-04T10:14:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's my Emma. I'm enjoying a slow day at home in pre-celebration of my birthday tomorrow. The only reason I'm piqued is because I'm having a Bad Pain Day. Perhaps a hot bubblebath is in order.

Moving the Memes

2007-05-03T17:49:00.000-05:00

You Are 65% Misanthropic

Here's the truth: Most people suck. You are just lucky enough to know it.

You're not ready to go live alone in a cave - but you're getting there.

How Misanthropic Are You?

I'm just tidying up the sidebar this evening (and playing around with a new template), and this was one of the memes I wanted to save. The self-test doesn't truly measure misanthropy -- more like "meanness" or "irritability" -- but I'm saving it anyhow since I've always called myself a misanthrope.

Along those lines, I like to think that I have a much higher tolerance for being alone than a vast majority of other people. I like to be surrounded by quiet and space -- it's a buffer zone, of sorts. You know all those books/movies/whatever that have people wandering around some post-apocalyptic landscape, going crazy because there aren't any other people around (I Am Legend (1); The Stand; etc.)? If I had food, shelter, and books, I could hold out fairly well, I think. Well, longer than others.

Being alone doesn't scare me -- "being alone" meaning being solitary by choice, not "being alone" walking down a dark street by myself. There's a difference. Solitude in and of itself does not scare me. There are so many people who are uncomfortable being by themselves; they have to have a television or stereo blaring just to take the edge of the "aloneness." Meh. Sounds pretty limited to me, as if they're scared of being inside their own head. If you can't tolerate yourself, if you can't entertain or amuse yourself, then you're obviously not very bright.

****
(1) Wowza. I just discovered on Wikipedia that they're doing the (third) film version of I Am Legend, and Will Smith is going to be Neville! I thought that was a surprising casting choice for Neville, but once I thought about it, I think Will Smith will be very, very cool in that role. They're setting it in Manhattan, though, instead of Southern California. /shrug

~

Depression (and All That Jazz)

2007-05-01T14:30:00.000-05:00

There's a recurring scene in All That Jazz (one of my favorite movies) where Joe Gideon wakes up every morning, takes his amphetamines, brushes his teeth, and says to his reflection in the mirror, "It's showtime, folks!"

I think I need to start doing that -- the "it's showtime" part, anyway.

Not too long ago, I tried to explain to The Husband how, when I'm depressed, whether in the depths or in the shallow end of the pool, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to get up, go to work, and be "on." I mean "on" in the sense of gathering myself up and performing, whether I'm answering the phone, interacting with my clients, what have you. It's a conscious effort. Before I pick up the ringing telephone, before I open the door to the reception area, I can feel myself (in my head anyway), preparing to go on stage.

Yes, it's showtime, folks!

I've been in a low-grade dysthymic funk for some time now. It was enough to have me roaming the 'Net this past Sunday afternoon looking for psychological assessment self-tests on depression, if only to reassure myself that I'm not yet in The Pit(tm).

Now, I know full well I'm not in The Pit. I'm not even remotely near The Pit. I've been there -- not a happy-funtime place -- and I know it when I see it. Most of the time, anyway. Right now, I'm dealing with insomnia, lack of enthusiasm, and a burning desire to consume pints of Ben & Jerry's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (Mint Chocolate Cookie, perhaps; or Phish Food; maybe both.) No suicidal ideation. No feelings of worthlessness. Just a pervasive grayness. Blah-ness. "Gosh I need a day off to sleep and mainline chocolate" - ness.

So, anyway. Sunday afternoon. Internet roaming. Depression self-tests.

I can't remember exactly where I found this question, but the last of the three potential responses had me laughing out loud.

Q: Do you have a specific plan for killing yourself?

(a) Yes
(b) No
(c) I'm working on it

Now, while my true and factual answer is (b), I will admit to daydreaming about the reaction one could get from one's shrink if one answered (c) (I admit to a number of smart-alecky comments that go through my head but never come out of my mouth).

I am wicked, truly.
~

Your Silence Will Not Protect You

2007-04-30T16:42:00.000-05:00

I don't know if you've seen this little black button on other blogs today. If you click on it, it will take you to a site that tells you that we're supposed to not post on our blogs today in order to (a) support the 30+ people who died at Virginia Tech two weeks ago and/or (b) support, and I quote, "all the victims of our world."

Yeah, there's nothing quite like equating silence with victimhood to give me the warm fuzzies, let me tell you.

So, for all the battered, raped, sexually-trafficked and genitally-mutilated women in the world, let's be silent.

For all the children who go to bed hungry, let's be silent.

For all prisoners of conscience, let's be silent.

For all refugees displaced by armed conflict, let's be silent.

For all victims of torture, let's be silent.

For all the people in the United States who have to decide between paying for health care vs. paying for food, rent, or utilities, let's be silent.

For all of our dead, maimed and traumatized soldiers in Iraq, let's be silent.

For all the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, let's be silent.

For all the Iraqi and Afghani civilians murdered by our "collateral damage," let's be silent.

For all the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgendered people who must live in silence or face ostracism (or worse), let's be silent.

Silent my lily-white ass. Since I titled this post with a quote from Audre Lorde, I'll end it with one from her as well.

"Silence has never brought us anything of worth."

~

Gregor Will Never be a Supermodel

2007-04-28T11:58:00.000-05:00

Gregor (Mr. Squeakypants, the Mama's Boy) will never be a supermodel. It's not that he isn't amazingly handsome (he is), and he certainly has plenty of prima donna qualities; it's just that he's simply not, um, stationary. I'll get the camera ready to take his picture, and he'll decide he wants to come over and see me for cuddling.

Out of the dozen Gregor pictures taken this morning, these are the only "usable" ones, and some would argue that two-thirds of these aren't usable at all -- except to make a point. Thomas, on the other hand, is extremely photogenic.

Don't Wake Me With So Much

2007-04-26T17:04:00.000-05:00

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I`m awake, you know?
-- Ernest Hemingway

This was one of those Quotes of the Day that appear on the blog's sidebar. I'm not a huge Ernest Hemingway fan(1), but this one was worth keeping. It's not that I necessarily perceive my life as "falling apart," but that sleep is, what? Valued. Desired. Elusive.

I'm an insomniac. Well, part of it is insomnia and part of it is that I just prefer being awake in the small, liminal hours of the early morning. 3:00 a.m. 4:00 a.m. (2) I find it exquisitely restful to be awake at those hours. Nothing is moving. I can hear the highway in the distance. The birds haven't started their songs, and the air smells so different -- cleaner, rarefied.

Then there are the nights when I don't have the luxury of those hours. Nights prior to a working day, when I have to force myself into a noisy, diurnal schedule like everyone else. Bland days. Days I can't count as my own. The nights preceding those days are a struggle. Not all the time, not every night, but all too often I'll lay in bed and I'll still be awake at 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m., and it most definitely NOT exquisite nor restful and I begin to resent the waking world and how much time it takes away from me.

That's where the insomnia part comes in (you were wondering if I would every wander back to that topic, weren't you?).

One of my ways of helping myself fall asleep is to imagine myself elsewhere -- an Elsewhere where my time is my own to spend. My current Elsewhere is a bedroom in a cool, stone tower on a mountainside. It's wintertime. I imagine myself hearing the wind outside and the crackle and pop of a fireplace, and I tell myself that there are no clients or phones or schedules or lists of things to do tomorrow.

Then I sleep.

******
(1) I count Proust and Borges as my favorite authors. Compared to Proust's Byzantine prose and Borges' labyrinths, Hemingway is much too terse.

(2) Not getting up in the early morning, but staying awake to get there; they're completely different psychological states.

Yet Another Meme or "I'm 12 on the Inside. Really."

2007-04-25T23:23:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm very, very psyched that they're making The Golden Compass into a movie, but I have to say that I'm disappointed by the hairstyle they've given Lyra. Curls?! Shirley Temple-esque CURLS? Good gravy, people, Lyra isn't a foo-foo girly-girl.

That won't stop me from going to the film, though.

~

It's Springtime

2007-04-24T19:18:00.000-05:00

[I was going to segue into "Springtime for Hitler," which has been playing in my head for a few days, but I thought that not everyone would get the reference to The Producers, and that that wouldn't be kosher. Er, not cool, even.]

Yes, I am just tickled that Laurie took the time to post a comment on my nondescript wallflower of a blog. I had to go back and do a little judicious editing of the "Things I Learned from Crazy Aunt Purl" List, too, by the way. That list was longer than I imagined.

What I would like to write is that Laurie has influenced so many of her readers -- but I'm having one helluva Pain Day and can't quite find the words. Bear with me. This goes way beyond fried chicken recipes.

Many women wrote that her writing about her divorce -- and the pain/fear/loneliness that went with it -- helped them get through their own divorces and break-ups. Just being able to feel "I'm not alone in experiencing this" helped them cope. I just about cried when I read this one:

I crashed, I burned, and I spent so many many days and nights wishing I'd never been born. I read your blog.. your entries about how you felt.. and I want you to know that you helped. As much as someone that I couldn't talk to, didn't know, and had no opportunity to vent to.. you helped. Every day. You made me smile when sometimes nothing else did.... This [the book publication news] has made my day. Keep on keeping on. Some days that was all I kept saying over and over. It will get better, I used to tell myself (although I secretly suspected I lied even to myself). Its still hard. I still think about him too much during a day. I get up, I move through, I take care of my kids and the house and my seventeenmillion jobs, and then I do it all again. You've been an inspiration. I've preordered the book, and I can't wait to read it. Thank you again.

Amen.

Love the Yarn, Pet the Yarn, Fondle the Yarn...

2007-04-23T20:35:00.000-05:00

Six skeins of Malabrigo kettle-dyed merino wool arrived today (the color is "Paris Nights"). It's my understanding that this stuff is about as addictive as, say, heroin. This is definitely being put aside until my l33t knitterly skillz are much more l33t-er.

In other sort-of-knitting-related news, Crazy Aunt Purl has finally gotten around to publishing her book. The responses and comments on her blog today are simply overwhelming, in the best sense of the word. One commenter wrote this:

All I could think when I read this was "wow, Laurie got published" and wanted to tell someone my "friend" got published. Then realized I'd have to explain that no, I don't really know you and no, you have no idea who I am, but hey - My friend got published!!

That's about how I feel, too. I've been reading Laurie's blog for about six months now. She's the one that turned me on to Dyson vacuum cleaners, Magic Erasers, and Noro Big Kuryeon(1). She is the one that motivated me to start my own blog. Laurie is like a friend, in a way, because she writes about so many topics that resonate with me -- books, relationships, cats, being looked at as an "eccentric," u.s.w. I am so ridiculously happy for her.

*****************
(1) [EDIT - I forgot about the budget worksheet, her demonstration of how to put those 1-pixel borders on the photographs, the fried chicken recipe I have to try, directing me to the Kitty Pi pattern, and about a dozen other things, I'm sure]

~

The Best Laid Schemes of Mice and (Wo)Men

2007-04-20T22:55:00.000-05:00

I thought it was "best laid plans," but a search on a quotations site says it's "schemes."(1) Who am I to argue? In any event, this blog post is about knitted cat toys -- not Robert Burns' quotes.

Since I have a LOT of that Noro Big Kureyon 20 from My First Sweater remaining, I was thinking it would be an excellent color for a catnip mouse. I recalled seeing a catnip mouse pattern on the Wendy Knits web site, as well as in her book that I bought for myself after the Lenten Book Fast. (2) There were two patterns: one for a plain ol' garter stitch mouse, and one that had a cable in it. The Excruciatingly Easy Garter Stitch Catnip Mouse vs. The Sophisticated Cabled Catnip Mouse for the Debonair Cat-about-Town. Her words -- not mine.

I knew the garter stitch one would bore me to absolute tears, and I thought the more complicated one was worth a try because I could play around with knitting cables and not worry too much about how they looked. This would be for my cats, after all. If catnip is involved, they tend to be uncritical.

My first attempt was not pretty. The picture is in black and white because it shows the stitch pattern -- or utter lack of a stitch pattern -- better than in color. I remember reading that it was supposed to be a cable surrounded by two panels of seed stitch. Um, that ain't it. You can see some stockinette stitch in the upper right hand corner, and Lord only knows what's going on with that cable. It's been broken in two. [Yeah, yeah, I know it's a bad picture. Trust me. It doesn't show any more detail in the color versions.]

I went back to the web site to look at some of the photos other knitters had posted, and I found this one:

That is not seed stitch. That is so not seed stitch I could just spit. Looks like stockinette to me. Stockinette. Boring. Easy. No thought involved. If someone would have posted that it's two panels of stockinette (instead of two panels of seed stitch), I would have saved some time and aggravation -- not that I get very aggravated with the knitting. Much. I know I'm a beginner and that I learn from making mistakes, etc., etc. /sigh

I'm thinking that I should save my first attempt at making cables for posterity. Years from now I will look back at it and laugh. I hope. I had better be laughing.

************
(1)

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

(The best laid schemes of Mice and Men
oft go awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!)"

--Robert Burns

For some reason, I'm remembering that the first two lines of this poem appeared in one of our grade school reading books, but it was the version with the Scottish vernacular. I can't recall anything about the story, but I think a mouse was quoting. Or a cat. 'Tis a puzzlement.

(2) I give up buying books for Lent every year. I've been doing that for a while, so it's become less of a deprivation over time. This year I gave up books and yarn.

~

Anniversaries, of a Sort

2007-04-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

My first thought was "Wait, it's a few days too soon. It's not the 20th yet." April 20th. Waco. Oklahoma City. Columbine. (1)

We're hearing some, on the news, that this was a premeditated act, which kinda/sorta reinforces that idea. Someone had an axe to grind and an itchy trigger finger.

Then, there's what we're hearing about how the first shooting (in the dorm) was a "domestic" dispute. I was thinking that the University was to blame for minimizing what they saw as a "typical" boy-shooting-girl-who-rejected-him event; thinking the incident contained, they didn't see the second shooting coming. I have to confess that when I heard the words "domestic dispute," I leapt to a similar conclusion: "Man, oh man. Here it is again. A woman has the audacity to say 'no' to Mr. Magic Penis, so he blows her away." (2)

What sort of sad commentary on our society is THAT, I ask you, when we become numb to this scenario, when we see it as stereotypical? The Husband said that I may be putting too much of a feminist spin on this. I'll allow that possibility, but part of me wants to articulate how women have to learn a different set of rules – from how to stay safe when we're out alone after dark, how to stop an attacker, and rape spam, to how to dress and behave so as not to attract unwanted (male) attention. It's the never-ending background music. Men are the predators – women, the prey.

/pound head

Too many grey areas, too little answers. What the hell do I know writing about this?

* * * * * * * * * *
(1) This isn't entirely true. Technically, the Waco raid and Oklahoma City bombing were on April 19th, Columbine High School on April 20th; and my first thought was to try not to spit the bottled water I was drinking all over my keyboard (I called up the Yahoo! news headlines right when I returned from lunch).

(2) I hear that the gunman is of "Asian descent," so I leap to additional conclusions about his degree of testosterone poisoning, need for male dominance, etc. I'm just as susceptible to stereotyping as anyone.

I am a Good (Feminine, Singular) Citizen -- It's Tax Time!

2007-04-16T20:49:00.000-05:00

I know how to say that in Russian (the "good citizen" part, that is), but, alas, cannot remember the Cyrillic alphabet. You're just going to have to trust me on that one.(1)

I've just checked the numbers on the return with He Who Wishes to Claim Cats as Dependents, and have e-filed the whole mess on to the Infernal Revenue Service. I take great pride in doing our taxes, but I do whine about it to a certain extent. I want my pats on the head, I suppose. Thank God for Turbo Tax.

Photo courtesy of Meme Cats

* * * * * * * * * * * *
(1) I've taken classes in French, German, Russian, and Japanese, with varying and widely disparate degrees of success. Learning to write the Cyrillic alphabet was a hoot. It took us a few weeks to get to the point where we could "sight read" Cyrillic (class met once a week in the evenings; that's why it took a while).

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday (Redux)

2007-04-15T08:29:00.000-05:00

You know the Bible 95%!

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

I thought a Bible quiz on Sunday was apropos.

I'm an uninspired blogger this week -- still recovering from whatever-it-was that hamstrung me on my vacation, and sinus infection/allergies. I hate spring.

Digressions, Leaps and Tangents; How My Mind Works (if One Would Call it “Working”); and More Footnotes. Forth Eorlingas!

2007-04-08T13:04:00.000-05:00

So, reading Crazy Aunt Purl's post about books, and children's books, and thinking about how many of us who commented had strong emotional bonds to our books (whether in our childhood or now), sorta/kinda led me to this very long and strange digression.

My childhood book was Johnny Go Round. Gramma Fran would read it to my twin brother and me several times a day. I think we liked it because (1) it had a cat in it, and (2) there was a brother/sister pair that looked like they were twins, too. I never know what happened to our original copy. Mom mentioned several years ago that she couldn't locate it, even though she thought she had saved it somewhere. So, Johnny Go Round vanished.

A few years back, I was talking to one of my co-workers about childhood books, and mentioned Johnny. She had asked if I had ever searched for it online. I had, but my searches weren't fruitful. A few minutes after I returned to my desk, she had sent me an email with a link to a used book seller in Pennsylvania, saying “Is this it?” It was. I called the bookseller immediately and had it sent to me at the office. When I opened up the package and saw that oh-so-familiar cover, I just wept.

And now on to the digressions. Going back to read further comments on her blog post, I discovered a few Lovecraft related ones, and sent an email to one of the commenters about the H.P. Lovecraft Fan Club and the walking tour of Providence they do on his birthday, which ends in a reading at his grave site (click here, too). I have wanted to do this for years (and I didn't even know there was such a club or an event). I must go. I see myself in the Providence graveyard, reading The Cats of Ulthar and getting choked up.(1)

Thinking of Lovecraft led to thinking of Lord Dunsany, and thinking that I needed to find that quote about throwing things of value out of a burning house. Reading the last paragraph of the quote led to thinking I should type up the entire thing; so here it is:

Preface to the Last Book of Wonder

Ebrington Barracks
August 16, 1916

I do not know where I may be when this preface is read. As I write it in August 1916, I am at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, recovering from a slight wound. But it does not greatly matter where I am; my dreams are here amongst the following pages; and writing in a day when life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the dearer, the only things that survive.

Just now the civilization of Europe seems almost to have ceased, and nothing seems to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this is only for a while and dreams will come back again and bloom as of old, all the more radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the flowers will bloom again where the trenches are and the primroses shelter in shell-holes for many seasons, when weeping Liberty has come home to Flanders.(3)

To some of you in America this may seem an unnecessary and wasteful quarrel, as other people's quarrels often are; but it comes to this that though we are all killed there will be songs again, but if we were to submit and so survive there could be neither songs nor dreams, nor any joyous free things any more.

And do not regret the lives that are wasted among us, or the work that the dead would have done, for war is no accident that man's care could have averted, but it is as natural, though not as regular, as the tides; as well regret the things that the tide has washed away, which destroys and cleanses and crumbles, and sparest the minutest shells.

And now I will write nothing further about our war, but offer you these books of dreams from Europe as one throws things of value, if only to oneself, at the last moment out of a burning house.

Which leads to a digression on the “necessity” of war which Dunsany seems to imply.

This current war in the Middle East is far from necessary. American soldiers are dying for no good reason whatsoever. George Bush is a lying sack of excrement and a murderer. But I can't follow this digression, since it makes me far too angry. Far too angry.

* * * * *

(1) Why this emotional outpouring? It happens to me all too often; I cry at the drop of a hat it seems. A recent case in point – watching the Lord of the Rings movies. I cry when the beacons of Gondor are lit. I cry when the Rohirrim arrive at Minas Tirith (2)(4). There is something that resonates with me – a courage I can not even hope to achieve myself, though I wish it.

(2) Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now, ride to Gondor!

Yeah, I've got The Return of the King at my desk as I type this. Forth Eorlingas!

(3) When I looked up the entire text of the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” I was sorely disappointed by the last stanza. When I first heard the first stanza recited, in some movie, as an anti-war sentiment, it was moving; but if you read the entire poem, it's a rationalization for further bloodshed.

(4) Even my footnotes have footnotes. Woot!

Just Another Meme; or, Gotta Love that "Agreeableness" Score

2007-04-07T13:10:00.000-05:00

My Personality


Neuroticism	66
Extraversion	10
Openness To Experience	43
Agreeableness	2
Conscientiousness	31

You are introverted, reserved, and quiet with a preference for solitude and solitary activities. Your socializing tends to be restricted to a few close friends. Stressful and frustrating situations can often be upsetting to you, but you are sometimes able to get over these feelings and cope with these situations. A desire for tradition does not prevent you from trying new things. Your thinking is neither simple nor complex. To others you appear to be a well-educated person but not an intellectual. People see you as tough, critical, and uncompromising and you have less concern with others' needs than with your own. You like to live for the moment and do what feels good now.

Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report

Click here to take the most insightful personality test.

More Quotes, and Knitting, and Knitting Quotes

2007-04-06T21:27:00.000-05:00

I've been in a "knitting mood" recently. I'm certain the return to freezing temperatures and snow flurries has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this "knitting mood." Nah. Note to the Powers That Be: Huh-LO. It's APRIL down here and it's really about time this foolish snowing business ended for the year.

So, knitting. I'm working on a funnel neck sweater(from this book) in Noro Big Kureyon Color 20 (discontinued). I have one sleeve and one back/front panel finished, and am feverishly working on Sleeve Number Two. As much as I love the colorway (cream, taupe, sienna, brown, grey, black), I'm already thinking about doing another sweater in a solid color (matching yarn colors when I have to start a new skein is, frankly, a bitch).

And so, whilst perusing my knitting books looking for a sweater pattern, I stumble across all the quotes that just tickled me from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Without Tears.

Emergency knobs for double-pointed needles may be made from tightly wound rubber bands, or from those rubber needle guards which are never to be found when wanted. Dorothy Case links her needle guards with wool; then they can both get lost together.

***

A #6 aluminum needle has been known to furnish an excellent emergency shearpin for an outboard motor. It once saved us seven miles of paddling. Then I had to spend hours re-pointing the needle on rocks, having nobly, but foolishly, offered the business end instead of the knob end for sacrifice.

***

Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.

***

There is no right way to knit; there is no wrong way to knit. The way to knit is the way that suits you, and the way that suits the wool and the pattern and the shape that you are currently working on. Show me any "mistake" and I will show you that it is only a misplaced pattern or an inappropriate technique. There are patterns that include dropped stitches and twisted stitches. There are projects which should be as tight as you can possibly knit; there are others where you have to relax to the point of lethargy in order to make them loose enough. I've not yet found a pattern which includes a split stitch; this is the only real mistake I know.

Elizabeth Zimmerman died before I knew that she once was one of the doyennes of the knitting world. A shame it took me so long to discover her; I truly like her style.

Sicker Than a Dog, and Another Cat Picture

2007-03-31T07:31:00.000-05:00

There should be some Rule of the Universe that allows do-over days when you're sick on your vacation. Those body aches on Tuesday weren't from schlepping my books around, but were the onset of a terrible cold. I've been feeling like crap since Wednesday afternoon (and it's now Saturday morning). Someone somewhere owes me those three days back.

But, ever the optimist, I have today and tomorrow to get healthy and get rested and return to the office on Monday with a Smile on my Face and a Song in my Heart. I have the expansion to Oblivion (Shivering Isles), a 7th level Ranger on Florendyl (the Vanguard RP-preferred server) that needs some tradeskilling and diplomacy attention, and it's time for me to convince the Telvanni to name me Hortator in Morrowind. Lots to do that doesn't involve moving around, much, unless you count coughing up a lung as moving around.

As to the cat picture, that's my Gregor KafkaCat, post-sink. I haven't been the the bathroom by myself in ten years.

Ann Arbor Backyard Flora and Fauna

2007-03-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

A much more laid back day today. I must confess I'm still achy from moving books all over the house yesterday. It's time for more gratuitous cat pictures, and gratuitous pictures with captions. Just because I can.

Lovely weather. Too bad it has to turn into summer. If God had meant us to live in hot weather, He wouldn't have invented air conditioning.

Taking the Big Dirt Nap, and Penguins

2007-03-26T10:03:00.000-05:00

When you find yourself looking at your books on death and dying, and:

decide that it's time to divide them into three categories (general, forensics [anthropological and psychological], and those relating to prisons and the death penalty);

realize that forensics should be divided further between physical forensics and psychological forensics -- e.g. rates of decomposition vs. profiling unsubs -- and should you shelf them that way?

realize that "general" includes everything from societal attitudes towards dying to end-of-life care to early 19th century resurrectionists;

and further realize that you should include Lynch's book Bodies at Motion and at Rest: Essays;

and that you knew who Lynch is;

and that you didn't have enough room on one shelf for all the death books;

and that the graphic/comic The Big Book of Death was one selected to be shelved flat on top of the others, together with The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers;

It gives one pause. I paused for five full minutes staring blankly at the bookshelf.

I've decided that there's no way I can deal with all my non-fiction in one day.

I've decided that curling up with The Worst Journey in the World or Scott's Last Expedition -- The Journals and a pint of Ben & Jerry's sounds mighty good right now.

I've decided I should post that quote from Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the one that ends his book:

And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man you will do nothing: If you are fearful, you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery. Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say, "What is the use?" For we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: That is worth a great deal. If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.

Gratuitous Cat Pictures

2007-03-24T06:46:00.000-05:00

Another Emma picture.

I'm testing out adding a 1-pixel border to my photographs so they stand out better on the web page. Not terribly exciting stuff, but I think it works fairly well. [Yes, I know Emma is fat. Yes, I know her health can suffer because of it. I'm trying to do my best by her and help her lose weight, but it's a slow, slow process.]

Thomas is very busy this Saturday, as you can see. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING can be done in this household without appropriate Cat Supervision. Thomas decided that since this was a larger photo, it needed a 3-pixel border. All of a sudden this cat is a graphic designer...

Three Threes

2007-03-23T18:13:00.000-05:00

Three Things I Do Well

1. Fill out forms. Federal income tax forms. Probate Court forms. Questionnaires of all types. I'm currently filling out forms to open education savings accounts for one of the firm's clients. Now, while I balk at doing this sort of menial labor for coddled rich people, I do find a certain enjoyment in telling them that every box and line must be completed, and there's no getting away with this "using a business address or P.O. Box as their residence address" nonsense. My own special brand of passive-aggressiveness – just another service I provide.

2. Word games. Scrabble, crossword puzzles, that sort of stuff. I have no skills whatsoever in the visual or performing arts, but I know and love my words. It's a very strange place I inhabit, and I'll have to write more about it one of these days. For the moment, I'll leave the description of my internal landscape alone.

3. Procrastinate. At this I excel.

Three Things at Which I Absolutely Suck

1. Sports, especially team sports. I was always one of those kids picked last for the team in gym class.

2. Math. The math part of my brain reached it's limit my junior year in high school in Algebra 2 with Mr. Bomeli. I got an "A" the first semester, and a "C" the second (with a "D" on the final exam). My little head just couldn't hold any more than that and just gave up, I suppose.

3. Keeping up with High Maintenance Hair. I keep my hair short for a reason. All those clips, combs, braids, up-do's, ribbons, mousses, gels, and sprays simply don't work for me. My only styling product is water. I think that any woman who spends more than 10 minutes on her hair in the morning (including drying time) is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. That time could be used on many other productive activities. Sleeping, for example.

Three Things I'm Trying to do Better.

1. Develop a "poker face." My role model for this is Bud Cort in Harold and Maude. I'm setting the bar pretty high. I want to develop the perfectly affectless look. I do pretty well at not laughing at the absurdities I hear almost daily at work. There was quite the pot-kettle-black thing going on at lunch the other day, but no details here. Who knows who reads my blog? (/wave at Queen Frostine).

2. Stick to a budget. I decided that it was high time I brought down my credit card debt. I'm not going to say exactly what that amount IS, but let's just say I'm above the average amount reported in the news stories cropping up these days about Americans' problems with credit. I've got an above average FICO score too -- 800+. [I've always had to be above average. /sigh ] In any event, I copied the budget spreadsheet from Crazy Aunt Pearl's website, and plugged in my own amounts and categories. I like to think that I'm the only person in the world (well, the only person in my immediate neighborhood) who has a budget with line items for "comic books," "yarn," and "Sweetwaters' coffee cards." The simple fact that I have a budget is already limiting my spending. It's like keeping a food diary when you're dieting. If you have to write down every bite you put in your mouth, you don't eat as much. If I have to record every spontaneous purchase, I don't spend as much. I spent many years without credit cards and bought everything with cash, including a trip to Paris. If I stick to my budget, I can get rid of all my credit card debt in two and a half years.

3. Design mods for Morrowind. Like I said somewhere up above, I have no "artistic" type skills, so I'm not doing new meshes and textures; I'm not designing armor or creatures or weapons. I can, however, write dialog and journal entries and quests and similar things. The strange top-down dialog trees make sense to me (most limited entries first down to the most generic). I can't remember which modder in the online community -- one I respected highly for her excellent visual mods (armor, housing, texture replacers) -- wrote that dialog intimidated her. I was stunned. It seems so easy to me, but I know I can improve. I want to finish the "Cats of Ulthar" while I'm on vacation next week. I have one more quest to go. I finally found a texture for Carter's silver key.

Emma's Fifteen Minutes of Fame

2007-03-19T17:40:00.000-05:00

Sometime on Sunday afternoon, Queen Emma decided that Kitty Pi 2 was somehow acceptable to Her Royal Self. I think her foray into Kitty Pi-ness lasted all of 15 minutes, but I have photographs! Proof!

I've claimed all along that I have three cats...

A Photo Essay: All Your Kitty Pi Are Belong to Us

2007-03-14T18:31:00.000-05:00

I apologize for the quality, or lack thereof, of my photograpy. I apologize for the mess that is my study. I never pretended to be Martha Stewart, and only dull women keep immaculate houses.

But, pictures are worth a thousand words:

The "Before" Pictures

The "During" Pictures

The "After" Pictures

Just More Morrowind Screenshots; Nothing to See Here, Ma'am

2007-03-14T00:48:00.000-05:00

Oh, to hell with the idea of blogging any post with any type of SUBSTANCE to it, cats and kittens, let's just post some pretty pics of Vvardenfell, m'kay?

This first one is of me on the Bitter Coast near the Sixth House Base Illinubi, fairly early on in the Main Quest. I'm still wearing the Dark Brotherhood cuirass lifted from one of the assassins sent after me from Mournhold (Tribunal). Mods in the screenie include Vibrant Morrowind, the Domina mesh for the female cuirass, Westly's Wood Elf head pack, Rin's hair, and I can't remember who's armor for the female falconer leather pants. Some people complain that the Dark Brotherhood armor is game unbalancing since it's so "uber" for a lower level character, or you get far too much gold for it if you sell it. Bull. Do you know how expensive enchanting, training, spells, weapon repair, etc., etc., is in Vvardenfell? Through the roof. The armor early on helps pay the bills, I will tell you that.

The Bitter Coast is one of my favorite areas in the game. Soggy, swampy, rainy, but downright gorgeous in its own melancholy way. The Ascadian Isles would be a close second, which includes Vivec, the City I Love to Hate.

It's huge. You have to run everywhere. When you're at a level in the single digits, this is a true PITA since you barely have enough endurance to run more than 30 seconds at a stretch without plowing through all your fatigue points.

On the upside -- It's huge. There are a ton of quests. It's the home of the Morag Tong, one of my all-time favorite guilds, and Uncle Crassius Curio, the House Hlaalu pervert with a love of underwriting terrible stage productions (Dance of the Three Legged Guar is supposed to be a big hit, though.). I doubt any of the other Great Houses have someone as..."colorful"...as Uncle Crassius. Yes, the Telvanni have Mistress Therana, but she's just an insane, old Dunmer who lives in a giant fungus tower. Blech, don't get me started on the Telvanni. Nutters, slave owners, finger-wrigglers. Once I'm Nerevarine, I think I just may need to remove, or at least decimate, a certain rival House. The only good Telvanni sorceror is a dead Telvanni sorceror.

Why so much time on Morrowind? Real Life is dull. It's allergy season. Work is uninspiring. I have far too much spring cleaning to do. I can't seem to get motivated to get back on a healthier eating or exercise program (Pilates once a week and Cadbury Creme Eggs are about where I'm at right now). Pain. Insomnia. In Real Life, I'm a probate and estate planning legal secretary. At night, I'm Laiane Wolfsong, ranger, opportunist, and somewhat-lovable rogue. I never have a bad hair day, a zit, or intestinal... um...distress. Who wouldn't rather be in Vvardenfell?

AWOL once again, this time in Vvardenfell

2007-03-11T06:34:00.000-05:00

I've been burying myself in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind once again. You know that despite all these years of my owning it, I have never once finished the main quest in either the initial game, Tribunal, or Bloodmoon? I seem to recall at one point that I had a level 40-something character, too, and I hadn't even started looking for Dagoth Ur (the main quest bad guy who needed his comeuppance).

I treasure this game. There is so much depth to it, and it's so open ended. Contrast this with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the latter game is sorely, sorely lacking. I've looked over a few posts on the forums for the upcoming expansion to Oblivion, and if you wade through enough of the X-box-overdosed, 13-year-old, fanboi comments, there might be a few reasons for me to get the expansion. Well, (1) it's set in the realm of the mad Daedric prince, Sheogorath, which should make for a lot of giggles, and (2) I can see if the devs have listened to any of us "old guard" Morrowind players who were so disappointed by the depth, or lack thereof, of Oblivion. Hope springs eternal, and all that.

Lovecraft's Adventurous Expectancy

2007-03-02T20:24:00.001-05:00

For some reason or another, this has been on my mind, and I had to dig out my copy of The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft just for this footnote:

Adventurous Expectancy: A central element in Lovecraft's aesthetic of the imagination, and a concept to which he attached particular significance.

"What has haunted my dreams for nearly forty years is a strange sense of adventurous expectancy connected with landscape and architecture and sky-effects.... I wish I could get the idea on paper -- the sense of marvel and liberation hiding in obscure dimensions and problematically reachable at rare instants through vistas of ancient streets, across leagues of strange hill country, or up endless flights of marble steps culminating in tiers of balustraded terraces. Odd stuff -- and needing a greater poet than I for effective aesthetic utilisation" (Selected Letters, III, 100).

I know this feeling, the sensation that "there is something more" behind the veil of reality I work with on a daily basis. Mine isn't so much from "vistas of ancient streets," but through the way light will slant through the trees, or the way the night air in the summertime smells so cleaner right before dawn. This needs a greater poet than I.

It's Important That a Girl Expand Her Horizons

2007-02-24T10:25:00.000-05:00

Laiane has made it over to Qalia; just a few more pretty pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Sunset over the Qalian planes. These remind me a little bit of Kenya (but the trees aren't quite right; we need thorn trees or baobobs).

Qalian Moonset:

And, just because my jaw dropped again in the face of my uber-deadlyishness:

3,093 points with a single arrow. Good Gravy.

EDIT: Well, apparently, cats and kittens, we have a lot more to come with this Rangering experience. I had a 4,870 crit later that same evening.

Ash Wednesday (a Day Late and a Dollar Short)

2007-02-22T23:21:00.001-05:00

I go to mass once a year, on Ash Wednesday.

You see, I have this theory. I have a lot of theories. Since Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the season of atonement, the chance that God will smite me – the biggest sinner in existence – as I walk into church to ask for forgiveness, is very slim. "Hi, God, I've been a bad girl and I'm here to work on the salvation of my immortal soul." Ka-WHAM [or whatever sound effect works for heavenly smiting]. Bad press for the Church, let me tell you.

In terms of religion, I identify myself as a Pagan-Buddhist-Catholic, or a Buddhist-Catholic-Pagan, or a Catholic-Buddhist-Pagan, depending on the time of year and my inclination. I'm not even a "good" Catholic. I don’t go to mass every Sunday and I don't think I've been in a state of grace since 1987. Technically, I shouldn't be taking communion at all; but I remember Father John, the priest who taught my catechism class, telling us that the priest doesn't ask for your Catholic ID card when you go up front for the Eucharist. I guess we're on the Honor System to some extent.

But this was all yesterday. I've been freakishly busy at the office and just in general, and I feel like I've been run over by a truck, not even having time to post my Ash Wednesday theory until the day after Ash Wednesday:

The Collector

2007-02-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

[The "Ten for Tuesday" blog meme list, and I can't get this bloody thing to format properly. Trust me; it's driving me nuts.]

I think what a person surrounds herself with can be quite telling about her personality. I realize that I'm reaching on some of this to make them fit into the definition of a "collection." Deal with it. My blog, my rules.

1. Comic books. This started around 1995 (or 1996), when I walked into Vault of Midnight and met one Curtis Sullivan (and his wife Liz, and friend Steve). I've since fallen off in my reading to an embarrassing extent, but I'm quite proud of my messy, in-desperate-need-of-sorting collection. The highlights include Neil Gaiman's Sandman (the FIRST printings, thankyouverymuch) and original artwork from Transmetropolitan (on loan to The Vault).

2. "Real" books. See recent blog post below.

3. Maneki nekos. Japanese "lucky cats." Most of my collection is from eBay, but one of the attorneys visited Japan a while ago and brought me back an authentic neko. I have about 40 of them in various sizes and colors.

[Items 4 and 5 are side effects from working in the "death care industry."]

4. Grim reapers. I suppose this is a memento mori thing. I have a pewter figurine, a small wind-up walking toy, a rubber stamp, and a fully poseable plush (with plush scythe) at my desk at work.

5. Funeral home paraphernalia. Nothing too sick, although I know I have a mouth former somewhere in one of my boxes in the basement (this keeps the mouth of the corpse from collapsing/receding). No trocars or embalming equipment, but I do have a metal box (circa 1940's) for the decedent's personal effects (A.P. Acquavella Funeral Home, Brooklyn, New York); several ballpoint pens (in need of refills) from mortuaries and embalming services in Springfield, Missouri; a metal coffin-shaped key chain from the Batesville Casket Company; and a coffee mug from the United Casket Company ("Dedicated to Quality and Service").

6. Stuffed animals (tigers and cats). I'm 12 years old on the inside. Really.

7. Yarn a/k/a The Yarn Stash. Knitters are strange creatures. They collect vast amounts of yarn that has no immediate discernable purpose. "Ooooo, that's pretty. Let's buy a few skeins and knit up….something." I read somewhere that Tracy Ullman has a room of her home dedicated to holding The Stash. My own stash is quite small in comparison. Along with that beautiful cotton chenille from City Knits (see blog post of January 7th), I have:

* 6 skeins of Noro Big Kureyon, brown-cream-gray-orange colorway (A20), bulky

* 2 skeins of fluffy Peruvian cotton, sport/DK (for washcloths) orange and yellow, and ½ skein hot pink

* 4 or 5 skeins of assorted eyelash yarns shades of turquoise and blue

* 2 skeins of Paton's Chunky Shetland, bulky (like the gray basketweave scarf)

* 1 skein Lion Brand chenille, bulky, dark blue

* 2 skeins Peruvian wool, worsted, hot pink (Kitty Pi Version 1)

* 2 skeins Australian Corriedale wool, super bulky, peacock (Kitty Pi Version 2)

* 1 skein Mango Moon viscose, red-orange-yellow-magenta colorway and matching textured twist, rayon

* 1 cone, approx 400 yards, of undefined origin, navy worsted wool

* 1 cone, yardage unknown, light blue/grayish cotton chenille, sport/DK or lighter

8. Husbands. This doesn't quite count as a collection; it's more of a series. Let's just say third time's a charm and I'm happy with the current one.

9. Knowing how to order beer in a foreign language. German, Czech, and Swahili. One never knows.

10. Ranger characters. It's actually the same Ranger character, just different games. Laiane Wolfsong was born in the first Everquest. Then there was Morrowind, EverQuest 2, Oblivion, and now Vanguard. I don't like characters that can't sneak, hide, and cause obscene amounts of damage from a distance. "Security" features (in the Elder Scrolls series), tracking, and animal companions are definite pluses. There are downsides, though. I remember in the original EQ all that time in Jaggedpine Forest doing the root and shoot (with the snakes) and the snare and scare (with the griffons/griffawns). Most of my high 40's to lower 50's were a long, agonizing line of griffon butts.

Pain We Obey

2007-02-19T18:01:00.000-05:00

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey. -Marcel Proust

I've been dealing with chronic pain from endometriosis for 15+ years. A little more than that, maybe. I can't say that my pain is my constant companion. It comes and goes. Today is one of those "comes" days. I carry tension in my jaw, clench my hands so tightly my fingernails leave dents in my palms. No great insights today, folks; just thought I would share my favorite Proust quote. Even in agony I can be pretentious. It's a gift.

Cat Supervision (and Snoozing)

2007-02-18T16:02:00.000-05:00

Nothing can be done in this household without cat supervision. Knitting, gaming, reading -- you name it. The Cat must be present. I think it's in his contract or something. All this supervision is stressful and must be remedied by frequent naps. Peasant, bring me my catnip and kitty treats!

Some Women Buy Shoes

2007-02-15T18:17:00.000-05:00

I was surfing the innernets, as I am prone to do, looking for memes to jazz up my blog. I say that I have the World's Most Boring Blog; it is in definite need of "jazzin' up." Since I don't have a tremendous amount of material in my own life, I look elsewhere for inspiration and motivation -- whatever it takes to get me typing about something.

I found a few book-related memes. Being an avid reader, I thought that might be one way to go, but I didn't find any topics that quite "fit."

One of the memes I looked at said to list the books in your TBR (To Be Read) Pile. I don't HAVE a TBR Pile. I have a TBR Bookcase. Now, admittedly, it's a small two-shelf'er and one of the shelves has my fitness/nutrition non-fiction on it, but most of it is Stuff I Haven't Gotten to Yet. There's also a small TBR Pile making it's home on the sectional sofa in the living room, and a smaller one on my nightstand [The nightstand books are ones I'm currently reading; they tend to fall by the wayside every now and then and sit there for a while, so they're more of a To Be Finished Pile.] There are also assorted piles on the bedroom floor that are in some liminal states of Being Read, Should Be Read, Reference, and Why Haven't You Shelved This Yet?

My name is Laiane Wolfsong, and I am a Biblioholic. (All together now, "Hello, Laiane!")

There is no such thing as too many books -- just not enough bookcases.

I decided - for the heck of it - to post some pictures of The Laiane Wolfsong Not-Yet-Memorial Library, and a few selected items.

To your left, Ladies and Gentlemen, are the eight stacking bookcases comprising The Fiction Collection. It appears that Ms. Wolfsong has a penchant for the classics. Austen, Tolstoy, Proust, Marquez, Trollope, and Shakespeare are well represented, with a smattering of Melville, Borges, Dostoyevsky, Dumas, Dante, and Hugo thrown in for good measure. There's also a great deal of space given to one of her favorite writers, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (The Dream Cycle collection and the first volume of The Annotated Lovecraft are absent in that photo; she attests they are "somewhere" in the residence).

Here are two small gems for your consideration.

The first, "Most Expensive Used Book" -- H.P. Lovecraft's Something About Cats (First edition, 1949, Arkham House, August Derleth, editor). $130, not counting shipping and handling, brought this beauty into The Collection. Worth. Every. Penny.

The second, "Best Beloved Book, Judging By Its Cover" -- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (79th printing, 1976).

Here I have to lapse back into the first person narrative. I got Anne's diary when I was perhaps 11 or 12 years old. I have read it dozens upon dozens of times. The pages are yellow with age, and many of them are falling out. Of course, I bought The Definitive Edition (new translation, originally edited out bits added back in) when that came out in 1995, but I would never toss out the first book. Sacrilege! No other book in The Collection comes near the well-worn-ness of this book. Okay, maybe my paperback version Richard Adams' Watership Down, but it's not THAT close.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I have, in my study, two shelves of children's books and fantasy, and well as The Non-Fiction Collection: Human Sexuality, Eastern Religion, Western Religion, Women's Studies, Art/Photography, History of World War II, Marilyn Monroe, Women's Health, Adventure, Death and Dying, Travel, Cats, Humor, u.s.w. There is also an entire closet of my comic books and graphic novels.

I really need to catalogue all of these. The task is just too daunting. I can't even begin to estimate the sheer number of books in this house.

I have a deep connection with my books. They have sustained me during all the circles of hell through which I have had to travel. Homesickness. Divorce. Pain (physical and emotional). When I look at my shelves, I see more than paper and bindings and words. My books give me a sense of solidity that nothing else can. The written word is my lifeline.

I Need to be Nerfed; and "A Single Serving of Kitty Pi"

2007-02-11T14:30:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's a critical hit for a little over 1,700 damage. A yep. I have about 1,050 hit points myself at 15th level, and this was just one WHACK at a mob.

One thousand, seven hundred in damage. Holy frijoles.

The Kitty Pi (the quite small kitty pi) as modeled by Thomas:

PIPP's - Pi In Progress Pics!

2007-02-10T19:07:00.000-05:00

I'm still a very bad photographer/Paint Shop Pro user. I swear on a stack of Bibles that the pink yarn in the top stripe is the exact, identical color (and dye lot) as the pink yarn on the bottom, but can I take a picture that somehow demonstrates this? No, I cannot. I have other gifts, but they do not translate into the realm of photography and/or digital editing. I know how to use semi-colons. I know the difference between i.e. and e.g. I know when you say something is a person's forte it's pronounced "fort," not "for-TAY."

Nonetheless, I suck at photography. I'm not losing any sleep over it.

The top photo is the Kitty Pi before it went into the Magic Felting Wash. I'm glad I took the time to take it out of the pillowcases and check it halfway, because it had SHRUNK like you would not believe. A lot of wet yarn wrangling later, and I got it over the cat cabana I was using for it's blocking form.

(Thomas investigamatin' the pi in process)

TGIF or "Gin and Kitty Pis"

2007-02-09T18:12:00.000-05:00

That would be a plural of kitty pi in the title, not a shortened version of kitty piss. Pi's just didn't look right at all (not that pis looks quite right, but it is perhaps what one would call the "best choice." Or not).

Anyhoo, it's Friday, Friday, Friday at Chez Cat Barf (to borrow from Crazy Aunt Purl, one of my favorite bloggers), and I am bound and determined to finish knittin' on the kitty pi and felt the blasted thing. I feel like I've been looking at it for months, even though I know it's only been a few weeks. This is some odd attempt to discipline myself in my knitting. One Project At a Time. No New Projects Until Ongoing Project is Completed (Even if Ongoing Project is Making Me Blind). A yep. Knitting Discipline Builds Character (although I am certain I know more than a few people who will attest that I'm already a character).

And what is a kitty pi, one may ask?

It's a cat bed. An oversized, knitted cat bed that you concoct out of 100% wool yarn and then toss blithely in the washing machine with lots of hot water to intentionally turn the wool into a bunch of shrunken, matted wool fiber. Ever put a wool sweater in the wash? What size (and density) was it when all was said and done? That's the general idea. Knit oversized object, put in zippered/knotted pillowcase, and run it through a hot wash/cold rinse cycle to shrink and thicken said knitted object. [I must point out here that the sealed pillow case is very important to this process or else you could clog your washing machine pump thingie with wool, which would be a Bad Thing Indeed.]

I found the kitty pi online, and knew in my heart that it would be an ideal knitting project for me because:

(a) The cats really don't care how much I mess up on my increase and decrease rows, not to mention the utter mess of starting it out on the Double Pointed Needles of Death; and

(b) The felting/blocking process will cover a multitude of sins. I hope.

So, the photo is the kitty pi in its inchoate state. I just did the first decrease row, and figure I've got about an hour or two of knitting left, perhaps 20 more rows. I did this first kitty pi on needles smaller than the pattern calls for, which is Another Bad Thing, because I may have added on too many -- or too few -- additional rows to approximate... oh, whatever. This is a kitty pi on size 8 needles with worsted wool instead of size 11 needles with bulky wool, perhaps too much of a deviation from what I Should Have Done.

Regardless. This is a kitty pi made with Love of Felines in mind, so I will plow ahead and post pictures of my foray into Knitted Cat Items. It may be a resounding success (and then the cats will turn their noses up at it) or it may be a dismal failure (and they will love it anyway).

We shall see.

My, I'm Feeling Feisty Today

2007-02-08T17:35:00.001-05:00

Never let it be said that I am not opinionated. I have plenty of opinions. My cup overflows with opinions, and, since this blog is my own little solipsistic corner of the universe, I figure I might as well let 'er rip.

[N.B. To those easily offended: I'm not saying that these must be your opinions, too, merely that they are mine. A careful, clever reader will note many tongue-in-cheek comments. If you want your opinions, you are more than welcome to get on your soapbox and post them on your own blog. I won't mind.]

Opinion No. 1 - Valentine's Day doesn't "count."

Receiving a gift from a man on Valentine's Day is nice, admittedly, but since it's a Holy Day of Romantic Obligation and he MUST provide his inamorata with a token of his affection (or else be met with severe disapproval), the gift given is one of placation -- not one of sincere depth of feeling. Note the large number of gentlemen in the local chocolate shop at 5:05 p.m. on Valentine's Day evening. They are not motivated by "love," cats and kittens; they're merely trying to save their bacon by not coming home empty-handed. You want to score points with me, bring me chocolate for no (apparent) reason whatsoever. One well-placed gift of a king-sized package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups "just because I was thinking of you, darling" is a major point-scoring coup.

Sub-opinion: Women who judge the depth of their partner's affections by the quality or quantity of what they receive as a Valentine's Day token are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Sub-opinion: Red roses are ubiquitous, boring, and take almost no effort to procure. Gosh, you got me red roses for Valentine's Day? Me and eleventy billion other women got red roses today. How…thoughtful. That took you what? Five minutes on the phone? How about yellow roses? How about, get this, ORANGE roses (well, I think florists use the term "apricot") in the middle of OCTOBER "just because"? Ok, so that takes perhaps six minutes of effort of the phone, but has a far greater amount of "oomph."(1)

[Note to The Husband, who I know reads this blog - Don't take any of this personally. You're one of the most romantic guys I know.]

Opinion No. 2 - Cats are superior to dogs.(2)

I have nothing against dogs. I like animals in general and I like dogs just as much as I like wombats, lemurs, platypuses (platypi?)(3), and just about anything else that travels on four legs. However, in the eternal cats vs. dogs argument, feline trumps canine every single time.

Reason One: Dogs have no mind of their own. Dogs, as pack animals, must define themselves in relation to other dogs, or their owner, and/or the owner's family. A dog by itself is at a loss. Cats, on the other hand, are complete entities unto themselves.

Reason Two (closely related to Reason One): The argument of "dogs are smarter than cats because we can teach dogs tricks" is utterly specious. Let's put this into other words and see how much water this argument is capable of holding: Dogs are smarter than cats because dogs want to please humans and dogs bend their will to suit us (instead of suiting themselves, as felines do). Dogs are smarter than cats because dogs are boot-licking, obsequious, toad-eating synchophants. A dog is a brown-nosing suck-up so, ergo, the dog is smarter. Yeah, right.

Reason Three: Dogs don't purr.

Opinion No. 3 - Continental-style knitting (holding the working yarn in the left hand) is superior to English-style knitting (holding the working yarn in the right hand).

I didn't really have an opinion on this until I read in Elizabeth Zimmerman's book, Knitting Without Tears, that she was discouraged from continental, left-handed knitting by her governess because it was German and therefore inferior. As a person of German extraction, I take umbrage.

The following may make no sense if you're not a knitter, but the difference between the two styles is remarkable.

The right-handed, English method of knitting is inefficient and takes too many steps:

(a) Insert right needle into stitch on left needle.

(b) Grasp both right and left needles with the tips of the fingers of left hand.

(c) Remove right hand from right needle and pick up working yarn with right hand.

(d) Wrap working yarn on right needle from back to front.

(e) Drop working yarn from right hand and return right hand to right needle.

(f) Knit the stitch created on the left hand needle and slip it onto right hand needle.

Compare this to the left-handed, continental, German method of knitting:

(a) Insert right needle into stitch on left needle.

(b) Keeping both hands on respective needles, wrap yarn held in left hand around right needle by flicking left finger to manipulate yarn.

(c) Knit the stitch created on the left hand needle and slip it onto right hand needle.

Q.E.D. Left-handed German yarn-holding is far more efficient. Lord only knows where the English got the idea that right-handed knitting was superior. Perhaps they haven't gotten over "the sun never sets on the British Empire" thing.

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(1) I'm not sitting here making "quote marks" in the air with my hands. Really.

(2) For more in this vein, I refer the gentle reader to H.P. Lovecraft's essay, Something About Cats.

(3) I discovered in one of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books (I can't recall which) that male platypuses can sting you. Dr. Maturin, overcome with the exuberance of the natural philosopher, is brought low by a male platypus he picks up without permission. MSN Encarta says: "Adult males have a hollow, horny spur on the inner side of the hind leg, from which a toxic fluid is ejected and which may be used as a weapon of defense." Life Lesson: Don't pick up adult male platypuses. I think I would be hard pressed to distinguish the gender of a platypus, but that's a topic for another blog post.

"What I Did on my [Winter] Vacation" or AWOL in Kojan

2007-02-05T17:29:00.000-05:00

I will be the first to admit that I have been sucked into the universe of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. This is my third MMORPG experience, and this is by far the most complex, interwoven game I've seen, and I've yet to delve into the lore of Telon (the world in which this game is set). The gameplay itself is still extremely rough in spots and some significant elements are missing (Rangers' tracking ability, for example); but still, it's just stinking gorgeous.

I know that one of my screen shots is very dark, but click to enlarge. The first two are from the area I was hunting last night - Maji's Hold - which is between the half elf and the wood elf starting cities. Tigers! Bamboo! Weird oriental-inspired music! More orcs than you can shake a stick at! The last one is just outside Wailing Winds Asylum (the inmates are loose - go whack a dozen of them for a quest reward!), also between those two cities. There's a phenomenal amount of area between the two, and these are just the lower level areas (Levels 1-12).

Laiane Wolfsong is almost to 13th level. The level progression has slowed down quite a bit from when I started, which is good, in my opinion. The level cap is 50, but I'm in no big hurry to get there. Well, that's not entirely true.

This place is NEW and HUGE and part of me wants to run out right away and discover places and learn to craft and do diplomacy and uncover all the quests and and and and, and part of me says, "Stop and smell the roses, Laiane."

Look! A Finished Object!

2007-02-01T11:44:00.000-05:00

I actually finished this scarf a week or so ago, but just got around to taking pictures of it today. I'm quite fond of it. It's far from perfect (I note that one can see the hole from an accidental yarn over even in the small picture), but it's mine.

I saw on a TV documentary, years and years ago, a Native American tribe that was known for their woven fabric. Rugs, perhaps? When they made a new rug, they would intentionally make a mistake in the design because they believed that only The Supreme Being/That Guy Upstairs could make something that was "perfect." I like to keep that in mind when I'm knitting.

As always, click on the photos for close-ups.

Molly Ivins

2007-01-31T20:16:00.000-05:00

I just heard that Molly Ivins passed away (62, breast cancer). I know y'all know Molly, the woman who concocted Dubya's nickname "The Shrub." I'm sure she and Ann Richards are having a good talk right about now.

I found this in a tribute to Molly. I think this is how I want to remember her:

For a woman who made a profession of offering her opinion to others, Molly was remarkably humble. She was known for hosting unforgettable parties at her Austin home, which would feature rollicking political discussions, and impromptu poetry recitals and satirical songs. At one such event, I noticed her dining table was littered with various awards and distinguished speaker plaques, put to use as trivets for steaming plates of tamales, chili and fajita meat. When I called this to her attention, Molly matter-of-factly replied, "Well, what else am I going to do with 'em?"

From Anthony Zurcher's "Molly Ivins Tribute"

Feet of Clay

2007-01-30T22:20:00.000-05:00

This is a recent photo of the president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz.

Now, I know nothing about the World Bank. Before I saw this picture, I couldn't have told you anything about the World Bank. I couldn't have told you anything about Paul Wolfowitz. I'm not the sort that reads The Economist for kicks.(1)

I am terribly amused by this photograph, but I'm not sure I can articulate exactly why I'm amused. It's something along the lines of feet of clay. Here is this Very Important World Bank President (who can probably afford hand-made Egyptian cotton shirts and silk ties and could go out and buy 1,000 pairs of expensive socks as easily as kiss my hand) with holey socks.

All sorts of interesting ideas come to mind:

* The man clearly has more things on his mind than making sure he's wearing presentable, photo-op socks every day.

* Did Mr. Wolfowitz's mother nag him about wearing clean underwear just in case he was in a car accident?

* I wonder if his wife is appalled by this picture and is complaining right this second of how she can no longer hold her head high at the weekly bridge game since her Very Important Husband has been Seen In Public with holey socks.

* My walking around the office today wearing my grey slacks with a large grease spot on the left knee (which I didn't notice until lunch time) is, comparatively, pretty small potatoes.

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(1) Now that I've actually looked at their web site it looks more informative than I thought, and I ought to put The Economist on my list of online media sources to attempt to read on a semi-regular basis -- as if I didn't have enough reading to keep up on to be a Reasonably Informed Citizen. Oh, bloody hell. I hate when I do this to myself...

CBIP - Cat Bed in Progress [finally]

2007-01-29T00:07:00.000-05:00

He Who Bakes Spice Cake Chocolate Rum Balls and I went to Jim and Terri's this afternoon, and I finally, finally, FINALLY got the cat bed started. I took advantage of Terri's good nature and maternal patience and talked her into getting the first three or four rounds on the Double Pointed Needles of Death(tm). I was able to take it from there and made quite a lot of progress today. I am now, of course, blind and arthritic from all that knitting, but progress has been made. Amen.

Found Objects; or Ditzing Around the Internets on a Lazy Sunday

2007-01-28T11:42:00.001-05:00

critical mass (n.)
1. The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction at a constant level.

2. The amount of matter needed to generate sufficient gravitational force to halt the current expansion of the universe.

3. An amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur: "The sudden national uproar over drugs and drug abuse has reached politically critical mass in Washington"

Flo vs. The Piano

Sweet Jesus and All That is Holy....

2007-01-27T00:49:00.000-05:00

I cannot even begin to describe the beauty of this game. I'm just going to post some screenies now and let you folks be the judge of whether I'm completely off my rocker wanting to spend time in this world (as opposed to the "Real World").

Click on the screen shots to enlarge.

I Blame the Cat

2007-01-25T18:46:00.000-05:00

Alright, so I've been AWOL awhile; not that I was actually very far from my computer, but I've been a tad... distracted. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes open beta. Nope. Not a thing. I blame the cat. I can clearly demonstrate in Photographic Exhibit A that Thomas is hogging the mouse and is preventing me from customizing my half-elven version of Laiane Wolfsong, Ranger Grrrl extraordinaire.

Actually, Laiane is going to wind up as a Wood Elf in Vanguard. The half elves, once again, got a glossing over as far as any unique lore/culture/society/history/whatever is concerned, and they had some bizarro Asian-themed thing going on in the newbie zone. When you can take this stone from my hand, Grasshopper. Yeah, right. I'm putting my money on the Wood Elves for this one, even if it does mean wearing twigs in my hair. I'll post screenies in a few days.

The Husband spent most of last night upgrading my comp, and it is absolutely screaming fast now. Vanguard goes live tomorrow. Rock and Roll, Cats and Kittens, I'm going MMORPG-ing, again.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2007-01-15T17:53:00.000-05:00

I still don't think it counts as "accumulation" because you can still see the grass (near the bushes -- click on the photo to enlarge). The photo doesn't do it justice; all the trees in the city are encased in ice with a light dusting of snow. The roads themselves weren't bad this morning, but there were a lot of limbs down in the roadways.

Sorry for another boring post. I warned you all early on in this blog that my life was rather dull. The wild, rockin' plans for this evening? Some knitting, some reading, some eating, and some work on the Morrowind mod. I wish I had a better quest for the cat "Carter." It's just another ho-hum FedEx quest, but what else is there? An NPC asks you to do something. You go do it. You come back to the NPC and get a reward. I am making Carter's quest contingent on completing the other three cats' quests, so that should be some challenging dialog filters.

I find it interesting that there are so many modders out there who concentrate on meshes and textures, but who are uncomfortable with dialog. For any non-modders out there, a mesh is the shape or form of an object and the texture is the visual stuff that wraps around it. A modder can make one mesh of a bottle, but have ten different textures to make it look like a blue bottle, or a red one, or a green one, u.s.w. Many modders make a lot of "pretty stuff" like shiny armor and sexy dresses and cool weapons and furniture and animals, but they don't put them in the world, or the mods are simple shops where you can buy the shiny armor and sexy dresses and cool weapons, u.s.w.

Then there are the people like me who couldn't do any three-dimensional rendering to save my life, but I can write dialog with complicated contingencies like no one's business.

So, tonight I flesh out some of H.P's dialog, beef up Joshi's lost book of poetry, and try to figure out where to put that blasted NPC. I'm thinkin' Pelagiad, or one of the Imperial forts (perhaps Buckmoth, since it's right by Ald-ruhn). Hmmm.....

Winter in Michigan, Yeah Right

2007-01-14T13:33:00.000-05:00

Well, technically, it IS winter because it's January, and cold, and horribly dark in the late afternoon, but I can't recall having a single snowfall where we actually had accumulation. Not an inch. People are talking about El Nino and global warming and such; there were several 40-degree days last week! I dislike it because I enjoy seeing the crystal patterns in the snowflakes when they fall on my winter coat. That, and it just smells so much cleaner after a snowfall. Small things, admittedly. This winter has really been a long, chilly prelude to spring.

We did get ice today (click on the photo to enlarge).

It's just not the same.

Busy, Busy, Busy

2007-01-13T10:54:00.000-05:00

Between my hobbies and my job, I haven't had much to post about lately. I'm still knitting furiously, have picked up my Morrowind mod for a lot of dialogue work, and am in the middle of three or four books (not sure...). I'm having a lot of problems today with my chronic pain issues, so I'm about to abandon the computer and sit on the couch for a couple hours (with cats, knitting, books, club soda, and other accoutrements.) The Husband is cooking King Ranch Chicken Casserole; if you're lucky, I might post the recipe.

But now, it's time for a gratuitous cat picture! Oh, come on now, you knew it was coming. He's almost smiling in this picture.

WWLWD?

2007-01-09T18:03:00.000-05:00

I've never been reticent about my depression; it's something I'm hardwired for -- being depressed, that is, not being not reticent. If you're a Smart, Well-Read, Somewhat Observant Person in this day and age, how can you NOT be depressed? But I digress. This isn't about explaining or defending myself. I'm prone to the demon of depression. It's a given in my world.

I felt it sneaking up on me this afternoon. It never comes all in a rush, but incrementally, slowly. Sometimes I can see it, and sometimes I can't. I had a bad case of the "I Don't Wanna's"(1) at work today, that feeling of not being able to identify anything that could help you feel better. Chocolate? No. Caffeine? No. Knitting? Cats? Bath? No, no, and no. For some unfathomable reason, this thought came to me -- "What Would Laiane Wolfsong Do?" -- and I had to smile.

Laiane has been my gaming alter ego for years now. EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Morrowind, and Oblivion, and Vanguard (when it comes out). A smart-alecky, stealthy half elven ranger who's absolutely deadly with a bow. Some people play fighters, some play mages, but I am always drawn to those that hide in the shadows and use their wits and guile (and an uber bow, d00d) as weapons.

So what would Laiane do? She would one-shot(2) that demon and have it drop in its tracks is what Laiane would do.

Laiane needs to come out and play. I'm thinking a good, long Morrowind session is in order tonight.

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(1) The "I Don't Wanna's." That particular mood when you don't want to do anything at the office, i.e., I don't wanna do that filing, I don't wanna call that difficult client, I don't wanna assemble a corporate record book, u.s.w. Severe lack of motivation.

(2) One-shot. In gaming parlance, to kill an enemy/monster from a distance with a ranged weapon using one arrow/cross bow bolt/throwing knife, u.s.w., as opposed to the "root and shoot" or the "snare and scare" approaches to mob hunting.

Comforts on a Monday

2007-01-08T19:08:00.000-05:00

A long day. A long week. It's time to get back in the habit of five-day work weeks. So, after a long, cold, wintery day of clients, I get a hot bath with eucalyptus oil (I feel a cold coming on) and The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft. I know I have another copy lurking around the house somewhere; I just couldn't find it when I needed to reread "At the Mountain of Madness," so I bought another copy. Sue me.

Anyhow, hot baths, Lovecraft, and a lovely quiet evening ahead of me, and I stumble across this:

There is a party game at which we are asked, "If David Letterman had a vanity license plate, what would it say?" "If Betty Boop were real, what would she eat?" "If H.P. Lovecraft were a comic book, which would it be?" The last is the only one I can answer, but I do know that. H.P. Lovecraft would be The Sandman. "Comic book" is, of course, a poor description of The Sandman, and "graphic novel" isn't much closer; which fits perfectly, because none of the labels pinned on Lovecraft -- I mean the labels meant to pigeonhole his magnificent stories -- describe him very well. He was certainly not a pulp writer, merely one whose works appeared in a pulp magazine. Nor was he a horror writer, though there are horrors to be found in his stories now and then, especially if one does not look for them. Rather he was a tall and lonely man with many friends, whose soul dwelt in a haunted place beyond the world, a man who walked by night and always walked alone: a lord of dreams. A song of Lovecraft's time says that dreams come true in Blue Hawaii, but those are daydreams and too often they don't. C.S. Lewis has a bit in which people visit a region where dreams (real dreams like Lovecraft's and ours) actually do come true; and those people return white and shaken. They were lucky, I think -- very lucky to return at all through the gates of horn and ivory, the gates that are opened, sometimes, by the silver key.

What do you think, Mr. Carter?

-- Gene Wolfe

Anyone who knows me and my "comic book" reading habits will understand why I smile at this.

It's 1:30 a.m. Why am I Taking Pictures of YARN?

2007-01-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

Well, it's utterly indescribably delicious yarn, is probably the reason behind that question. He Who Occasionally Lapses Into Bad British Accents and I went to the Fisher Theater in Detroit to see Spamalot. We got there early enough that we wandered around the Fisher Building for a bit before we went in to the theater, and I stumbled into City Knits (a very high-rent yarn store).

I saw the sign for the store, and I was drawn like a lamp to a flame (me and several other women with their husbands/significant others who were there to see the show). They (and this includes Yours Truly) would walk into the store; their jaw would drop and the face would light up with Possibilities. Yarn! Lovely Yarn! My God(dess), What Can I Make Out of All This YARN?! They looked like they discovered that Santa Claus was real, that fairies do dance in the moonlight, and that they had won Publishers' Clearinghouse and Ed McMahon was in their driveway. This would be the knitters. The gentlemen who accompanied them would sigh, shake their heads despondently, and look at the floor.

If you're a knitter, I double dog dare you to click on that photo of the yarn and not squeal. I just about squealed, and I DON'T SQUEAL. Much.

I'm thinking the Mistake Rib Scarf from WendyKnits. That's the same web site that has the pattern for the infamous Kitty Pi (the cat bed I will eventually get around to making once I learn how to deal with knitting on two circular needles). Plans, plans, plans.

I Just Love Quoting People

2007-01-05T23:39:00.000-05:00

I don't think I'm entertaining enough on my own, so I like to use other peoples' words -- a lot. I found the following in the latest issue of The Sun Magazine (January 2007):

Why do you only hear bad news about LSD? It's always the same story about some idiot who thought he could fly, so he jumped out a fifty-story window. Why don't we ever hear this news story? "Today a young man took LSD and realized that ego is an illusion and that we are all part of the universe experiencing itself subjectively; that death is just another journey; and love is the only reality. And now, here's sports." -- Bill Hicks

I have absolutely fallen in love with The Sun, and will probably keep a subscription for as long as I live, or as long as it lives (I certainly hope it outlives me). Their "Readers Write" feature has an upcoming topic -- "Airports" -- that I want to write about, mainly my recurring dream/nightmare of trying to catch a plane and never making it, or getting caught up in absurd delays. I don't know of anyone else who has recurring airport dreams.

Oh, and as long as I'm here, rambling aimlessly, let's have a gratuitous cat picture. Sorry it's so blurry. A Certain Someone was sitting on my dominant hand. He really isn't that fat; he's just sort of in Amoeba-Cat mode where he splooches out all over whatever horizontal surface upon which he, um, splooches. Note that HE is the one with the expression of long-suffering tolerance. "(Sigh) When will the Stupid Human Girl pay attention to my Glorious Cat-ness? Hey, I'm being CUTE here, Human!"

I (heart) Archie McPhee

2007-01-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

I've shown you the 17-inch rubber vulture (Edgar), but I now have over 2 feet of disturbingly realistic foam rubber rodent! His name (currently -- it might change in the future) is Charles Dexter Rat (from HPL's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). He's atop the computer case at the moment.

We got a whole bunch of Archie McPhee toys today, and the rat was just one of the goodies. Another was the Oscar Wilde Action Figure (chipmunk sold separately -- at Target):

Lots of excellent Wilde quotes on the back of the package:

I'm not young enough to know everything.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

I do believe that Oscar needs to come out of the package and be photographed in various action shots with my Sigmund Freud action figure, and perhaps the glow-in-the-dark, squeaky octopus.

And some people fritter their lives away watching television.

Well, Duh... and Another Cat Picture

2007-01-03T21:22:00.000-05:00

You Belong in Paris

You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris.

You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe.

What European City Do You Belong In?

I need to get back to Europe. About every four to five years I begin to get underwhelmed with this so-called American culture.(1) Mini-malls, 238 channels of cable television, Starbucks (the Walmart of Coffee Houses), Fox News, u.s.w. The Husband and I are planning a trip to the British Isles this fall (we got our passport pictures taken today), but I could seriously handle another jaunt in the City of Lights. /sigh.

In any event, the main purpose of this blog entry was not to have me sigh over baguettes and Le Tour Eiffel, but to post a Cat Picture. A Cat Picture of a DIFFERENT CAT. So, I present in all his glory, Mr. Gregor KafkaCat:

Gregor's Nicknames:
1. Mr. G
2. Mr. Squeakypants
3. Daichi Neko (big number one cat)
4. Boogercookie (This is relatively new, and has a rather lengthy explanation behind it that I'm not even going to begin to attempt)
5. Mama's Boy

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(1) I feel another Gandhi quote coming on:

Interviewer to M. Gandhi: What's your opinion of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Knit 2, Purl 4

2007-01-02T21:44:00.000-05:00

I've been teaching myself how to knit for about two years now, and I'm finally at the point where I'm completing projects. Projects that I actually wear in public, or use. Don't laugh; I have pictures. You can click on the pictures to get a better look, if you're so inclined.

Exhibit A: The Pink Washcloth.

No, I don't wear this in public, but I do USE it. Not use in public, but use in general. It's made with this lovely fluffy Peruvian cotton yarn I got from www.knitpicks.com. It's delightfully soft. I used about 1/2 a skein for this cloth, and I have two full skeins left of yellow and orange sitting in the Yarn Stash(tm) for future use. A very easy pattern (which is good, since I can only knit up the really easy stuff).

*Cast on 4 stitches
*Knit 4
*Knit 2, Yarn over, Knit across the row until you have 44 stitches (or however many stitches looks like half a square to you).
*Knit 1, Knit 2 Together, Yarn Over, Knit 2 Together, Knit across the row until you only have four stitches remaining
*Bind off

Exhibit B: The Blue Cowl Thing.

This was done with one skein of plain black wool and one skein of some funky faux mohair/eyelash yarn (all synthetic but it feels good; I hate itchy) The black wool is from knitpicks (again) and the faux mohair from www.joann.com. (1) This was all done in knit stitch, and when the scarf looked long enough, I flipped it into a mobius strip and sewed the ends together. I think I got the idea for this from another craft supply web site; I can't recall. I've gotten several compliments on this one. Not that it's particularly creative or well made, but that it's simply cool yarn. Cool yarn covers a multitude of sins, and flubbed stitches.

Exhibit C: The Gray Basketweave Scarf (a Work in Progress)

This is a doozy (do click on the pic of this one to see the stitch pattern better; it's gorgeous). This is going to take about 3 skeins of Patons Shetland Chunky (charcoal). No fancy eyelash yarn to hide the botched stitches on this beauty. Just me and my knits and purls. There were several beginning knitting books/blogs that suggested doing a simple basketweave scarf as follows:

Rows 1-10: Knit 5, Purl 5, Knit 5, Purl 5
Rows 11-20: Purl 5, Knit 5, Purl 5, Knit 5

I didn't care for how that turned out. The scarf didn't lie "square," and the edges curled. So, I found a little more elaborate pattern (from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation, the pattern called "Mom's Sophisticated Scarf" by Nicholas Caratzas). It's still essentially a basic basketweave pattern. Nothing fancy.

Cast on 38 stitches

Rows 1-6 in seed stitch
Rows 1, 3, 5 - *Knit 1, Purl 1; rep from * to end
Rows 2, 4, 6 - *Purl 1, Knit 1; rep from * to end

Begin Basketweave pattern

Rows 1, 3, 6, 8 - Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit 1, *Knit 2, Purl 4; rep from * to last 5 stitches, Knit 3, Purl 1, Knit 1

Rows 2, 4, 7, 9 - Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit 1, *Purl 2, Knit 4; rep from * to last 5 stitches, Purl 2, Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit 1

Row 5 - Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit 1, Purl to last 3 stitches, Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit 1

Row 10 - Knit 1, Purl 1, Knit to last 2 stitches, Purl 1, Knit 1

Work in basketweave pattern to desired length.

Do last 6 rows in seed stitch.

Bind off.

I not completely enamored of the Patons Shetland Chunky -- it's 75% acrylic/25% wool. I'm turning into a yarn snob and acrylic just seems so tacky; but still, I need to improve my skills and I can always donate this prototype/practice scarf to a homeless shelter and then do another one in a beautiful 100% merino wool or alpaca/silk/cashmere blend.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
(1) I have no problem buying yarn online. I buy everything but groceries online. I found the Husband online. Yes, I can't see it/feel it in person (the yarn, you perverts, not the Husband), but I figure I can always send it back from whence it came if it's utterly horrendous. Again, the YARN, not the Husband.

My Resolution is 1280 x 960, Thank You; and Thinking About Dead Dictators

2006-12-31T23:30:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year.

First things first.

Well, it's been a while now since the Iraqis hanged Saddam Hussein. One day? Two? In any event, I've been avoiding the coverage of it, and the photos on Yahoo's Most Popular, u.s.w.(1), but it's hard NOT to see something about it on the Internet news.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Hussein was evil and guilty of atrocious war crimes, but the idea of celebrating the execution of a man nauseates me. In my mind, given Saddam's megalomania, it would have been a far worse punishment to keep him alive for the rest of his natural life, in an environment that kept him from the public eye -- in an environment guaranteed to keep him out of sight and as obscure and voiceless as possible -- than it would be to kill him outright.

But people don't think about these things. Most people have the moral development of your average three-year-old playing in the sandbox -- "Well, Timmy hit me so I get to hit him back. That's only fair."

I'm tempted to quote Gandhi, but I'm sure I'm mis-quote. It's something along the lines of "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

So, for all of you people of arrested moral development celebrating the killing of a man, let it be known that I'm of the firm opinion that you not only do you have an IQ that hovers around the same digits as room temperature (Fahrenheit or Celsius, your choice), you're about as emotionally and intellectually advanced as your average slime mold. I've known plates deeper than you.

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(1) u.s.w. Und so weiter. It's et cetera in German. I get tired of typing etc. all the time.

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To hell with the real world. Let's have a cute cat picture. Love you, Tom.

The Day After Christmas Blog Post -- Happy Birthday, Jesus; Rubber Vultures; and Getting It On with Dom Perignon

2006-12-26T12:10:00.000-05:00

Yes, that is a rubber vulture. He's poised atop my hpdeskjet to the left of my desk. I'm quite fond of him; his name is "Edgar." This was one of the (many) Christmas presents I received from He Who Swings Cats By Their Tails, and I think it's my favorite. I mean, I love the complete boxed set of Patrick O'Brien Aubrey-Maturin novels, and both H.P. Lovecraft reference books, but those are pretty tame compared to a 17-inch rubber vulture.

This ranks right up there with my (liquid latex) corpse head from a few Christmases back (visible in the "messy desk" pic on December 23rd). He had that one shipped to his office.

He Who: Look what I got my wife for Christmas (displays corpse head).
Innocent co-worker: ...
He Who: She's gonna LOVE this!
Innocent co-worker: (flees break room)

All in all, we had a pretty good, quiet Christmas. I'm not supposed to blog about the Christmas turkey. Let's just say that We've Made More Expensive Mistakes and that Cooking a Turkey is a Learning Process. Most of it was edible. The green bean casserole and mashed potato gratin were very good, and we have leftovers. I might make the turkey tetrazinni today. Or not. I'm feelin' mighty lazy and it's my last day of a four-day weekend. Doing laundry and sewing a button back on the winter coat might be the extent of my "work" for the day. All else is play.

We took a bottle of Dom Perignon over to Jim and Terri's for Christmas Eve to share with them and Christopher and Shannon. The brochure packed with the bottle was interesting. I would love to scan it in, in order to show the photos, but I'll just titillate you with the text for now:

Dom Perignon matured in the champagne cellars of Epernay for seven years to express its mysterious magnetism: intense, sophisticated sensuality, and a seamless, creamy flow, for the first sensation to the last, that seems to go on forever...

On the palate, the sensation is one of diving into a wave: a satiny textures curls and unfurls on the palate, embracing and caressing it. An instant of weightlessness, matter vanishes, the finish vibrates, the taste buds are aroused by a controlled ardour. The persistance is remarkable with just the slightest undertone of tartness (citrus zest and buds).

I don't know about you, but I feel like I need to smoke a cigarette after that.

I Do This Because I ~CAN~

2006-12-25T09:14:00.000-05:00

Once again, gratuitous cat pictures. I do have two other cats in this house. Really. Thomas is just the most photogenic.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I'm certain I'll add more to this entry later on. Right now I'm waiting for He Who Fixes Computers to wake up (and I'm on my 3rd cup of coffee with Bailey's Mint Chocolate Irish Cream liqueur).

The green bean casserole and the mashed potato gratin are pre-assembled and in the 'fridge. The Husband needs to make the cornbread stuffing and get the turkey (the real turkey, not the furry, orange one in the box) in the oven.

One Day, I Will Learn How to Use PaintShop Pro, or Perhaps Speak Urdu. Which is More Likely?

2006-12-24T14:22:00.000-05:00

Okies. He Who Does His Own Laundry (thank you) and I went to do our pre-Christmas feast grocery shopping(1), and I found the most glorious hot pink roses. I love hot pink. If you're going to have anything pink, I believe it should be aggressively PINK. None of those wimpy pastels! But I digress.

So, I take a photo of my aggressively pink roses, and, of course, it's not perfect. It's far too bright, in fact. Now, any normal blogging-type person would just open the pic in PaintShop Pro and doll it up a bit to make it look like it WASN'T nuclear winter outside. I do not, and never have, fallen into any category that has "normal" as a descriptive adjective in it. I'm more the "incompetent" blogging type person, or the "fumbling" blogging-type person, or the "run it up the flag pole and see how it fits" blogging-type person. Most definitely the latter.

Yes, I know where the "Colors > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast" button is, but it seems to have a mind of its own. So I present my overexposed, nuclear-winter, hot pink roses. I think they're lovely.

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Follow up. The Husband filled me in on the Brightness/Contrast button. Small improvements have been made. The peasants rejoice.

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(1) We forgot the green beans but remembered the York Peppermint Patties (for another attempt at those mint brownies -- the first batch went in the garbage).

If a Messy Desk is a Sign of Genius, I'm up for the Nobel Prize this Year

2006-12-23T13:08:00.000-05:00

It's not that it's exactly "messy." "Cluttered," "overwhelmed," and "burdened," but not messy. Not really. I can find things. I'm comfortable. The printer is within reach. I'm damn happy I have a flat screen monitor.

This is where I spend my evening and weekend hours. I live in this one particular spot more than anyplace else (work and sleeping don't count -- it's not like I have a choice about working or sleeping). I blog, mod, play solitaire, surf, game, and shop here. My little corner of the universe. Mine. Mine. Mine(1)

It's the first day of a four-day weekend for me. The list of things to do include:

1. Make mint brownies (currently in the oven). [EDIT: They didn't turn out. The brownie part is okay, but the Paul Newman brand mint patties didn't melt right and seem to have solidified. Next time, I buy the completely fake candy drowning in hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup and edible petroleum products. It's sort of like Velveeta cheese -- not "real" but the "real" stuff doesn't melt properly.]

2. Wrap Christmas presents for Terri and her family (The Husband and I are going over there tomorrow to swill champagne and make merry).

3. Work on the Cats of Ulthar. Dr. King said he and his son would love to beta test it, so I would like to get it wrapped up by sometime in January.

4. Make the Christmas dinner menu and prepare a shopping list. So far it's roast turkey, mashed potato gratin, corn bread stuffing and green bean casserole. I should also plan on leftovers (turkey tetrazinni, turkey and brie toasted sammiches, etc.) Yes, I'm going back On Plan in January. Shut up and pass the gravy.

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(1) At this particular moment, this little corner of the universe is covered with soda water bottlecaps, lemon and sage hand cream with no cap on it whatsoever, recipes for green bean casserole, a crumpled envelope with book suggestions from one of the attorney's wives, and hand-written notes for my Morrowind mod with cryptic references to "gravedust, bonemeal, ectoplasm" and the dreaded "plural possessive."

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And just in case anyone was wondering about all the cat references in this blog:

You Are: 0% Dog, 100% Cat

You are are almost exactly like a cat.

You're intelligent, independent, and set on getting your way.

And there's no way you're going to fetch a paper for anyone!

Are You More Cat or Dog?

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Extra Added Goodness for Your Reading Enjoyment:

It's Furious Balancing is taken from the lyrics of R.E.M's song "Daysleeper." The song appeals to me since I'm an insomniac/night owl with a serious Internet habit.

I cried the other night
I can't even say why
Fluorescent flat caffeine lights
It's furious balancing.

I'm the screen, the blinding light
I'm the screen, I work at night.

I see today with a newsprint fray
My night is colored headache grey
Don't wake me with so much.

More pictures. I need the practice.

2006-12-21T22:23:00.000-05:00

This is the amazing, totally rockin' Christmas tree ornament that my friend got for me at Bronner's. She told me that her husband was teasing her about buying ornaments for her co-workers, and that they were "dorky." I don't think "dorky" was the exact word he used, but that's the general idea.

Needless to say, He Who Takes Out the Garbage (i.e., The Husband) and I love this ornament. It looks a quite a lot like The Orange One. In fact, it's even more orange than The Orange One, if you can believe it. Thomas, however, doesn't have a Santa hat. He does have a mouse hat, though.

I should be careful that these photos don't find there way into the hands of PETA or the ASPCA. I'm sure I would be found guilty of cat torturing.

Working hard on "The Cats of Ulthar." I almost have finished Joshi's quest (just need to put the script on the book of poetry and update a journal entry or two).

Pictures! We Got Pictures!

2006-12-19T21:21:00.000-05:00

Here we are, ladies and gents, the Official 2006 Christmahanukwanzakah Tree and the semi-official Call of Cthulhu tree topper! Wootness. Considering that The Husband and I didn't have a tree last year, and didn't even get around to exchanging gifts last year (2005 was a big year for Seasonal Affective Disorder in our house), this is pretty exciting for me. We have a tree. We have presents. We have...CTHULHU! He's just darlin', isn't he?

Speaking of big, green, and Lovecraftian, I'm spending gobs of time working on my Morrowind WIP - The Cats of Ulthar. I think tonight's agenda, besides wolfing down candy bars and 0-calorie club soda, is creating Joshi's unique book for his quest (Edit: I used the text of the Lovecraft poem from an earlier post here), and trying to come up with an NPC for Carter's Silver Key quest. Yes, I'm rambling on without explaining that Joshi and Carter are cats in my mod. I need to flesh out H.P's dialogue, too. Lots to do, lots to do.

And, for what it's worth, here's a gratuitous cat picture!

Jury Duty; or Real Life Sucks Sometimes

2006-12-14T00:19:00.000-05:00

I've been off a few days because I was called up for jury duty Monday morning, and was actually seated on a criminal trial that day. I really don't want to write much about the trial -- it wasn't easy to sit through. It was criminal sexual assault by a homosexual man against two college kids. I say "kids" even though one of them was a 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate in philosophy; the other was a 19-year-old frat boy. The jury convicted the defendant on both counts, one as fourth degree (no penetration) and one as third degree (penetration -- oral-penile) criminal sexual conduct.

I felt like I was going to throw up most of Tuesday during the deliberations. There were so many holes in the testimony, and so many unreliable witnesses, that I was positive that I couldn't convict this man. It's amazing how easy it is to change your mind during deliberations. Yes, he's guilty of third degree; no, it can only be fourth degree; no, we can't convict him at all based on this evidence. Yikes. You always tell yourself that you will act in a certain way when confronted with challenges in life. "Oh, I could never be swayed and convict a man if I thought there was the slightest chance he was innocent." Yeah, right.

We had a good group of jurors, including two younger college students, one of whom I would categorize as a frat/party boy type. I don't think it was easy for any of us in that room to reach that verdict.

What helped the most was that the judge came in and talked with us after the verdict was read. He was able to tell us some things we weren't permitted to know during the trial, primarily that this defendant had two more counts of criminal sexual conduct pending against him that would be going to trial in March. He had similar charges against him dismissed in a bench trial in 2005. The reason the prosecutor was combining this trial with the two victims was to help him "establish a pattern of behavior" that he could demonstrate in the March trials.

I'm glad I was able to be a juror. I learned a great deal.

I never want to sit on another jury for a criminal case for the rest of my life.

Christmas Trees; or What Kind of Nutter Puts Footnotes in her Blog Entries?

2006-12-10T22:54:00.000-05:00

The Husband(1) and I went to Flatsnoot's World Headquarters (out on Washtenaw Avenue) and picked up our pagan/German/secular evergreen. I don't sweat the details about who did what to whom when in all that history; I just like real Christmas trees. If you ever hear of me having one of those aluminum monstrosities that rotates and changes colors, check for pods in my basement.

In any event, I did not know (until now) that the State Song of Michigan (and Iowa, Maryland, and New Jersey), uses the melody from O Tannenbaum. I now feel compelled to look up the actual lyrics to the State Song of Michigan (2), but I digress.

We'll get the lights and the ornaments on it tomorrow, and I'll get my little digital camera on Tuesday so I can actually start taking and posting my own pictures! (gasp!) Until then, make do with this little pic of a white fir (Abies concolor), the kind we bought today.

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(1) In order to protect his privacy, no real names are going to be used. If I have to break down and give him a proper name, I'll let him choose. Maybe something sexy like Antonio or Jacques...

(2) Just a small sample; there are four stanzas of this stuff:

A song to thee, fair State of mine,
Michigan, my Michigan;
But greater song than this is thine,
Michigan, my Michigan;
The whisper of the forest tree,
The thunder of the inland sea;
Unite in one grand symphony
Of Michigan, my Michigan

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

2006-12-10T10:44:00.000-05:00

I have a very non-drama-filled life. In fact, it could accurately be described as "boring." Now, while I do suffer from insomnia, chronic pain, and depression, I really don't have any crises going on and I'm able to handle what life throws at me with considerable aplomb (What an awesome word -- "aplomb." I'm going to type it a few more times because it's such a cool word. Aplomb, aplomb, aplomb). Big worries in my life right now include Christmas cards, visible skin tags, cats that have started peeing on the basement floor, and more projects involving yarn than I can possibly complete in a reasonable period of time (and yet, I still buy more yarn; what's up with that?).

I simply don't have the energy to live my life as if it was a made-for-TV movie (and if I did, I would ask that I be played by Susan Sarandon or Nicole Kidman, thank you, even though Nicole is much taller -- and Susan a tad bit older -- than I am in Real Life).

Today involves the following: Buying a Christmas tree; cleaning the living room in the preparation of the arrival of said Christmas tree; finding my Christmas decorations in the basement; and eating The Husband's meatloaf. Yesterday was knitting, the Moscow Cats Theater, and coney dogs (with mustard).

I love my life. No crises.

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Typing stuff for the sake of typing stuff (I tend to do this a lot):

On Reading Lord Dunsany's Book of Wonder
by H.P. Lovecraft

The hours of night unheeded fly,
And in the grate the embers fade;
Vast shadows one by one pass by
In silent daemon calvacade.

But still the magic volume holds
The raptur'd eye in realms apart,
And fulgent sorcery enfolds
The willing mind and eager heart.

The lonely room no more is there --
For to the sight in pomp appear
Temples and cities pois'd in air
And blazing glories -- sphere on sphere.

I prefer life in Vvardenfell

2006-12-09T23:49:00.000-05:00

Well, the first pic isn't Vvardenfell. It's the sewers underneath the Imperial City in Cyrodiil, but it's still in The Elder Scrolls universe. TES IV: Oblivion was fun while it lasted. I went through it -- and I certainly didn't get through all the content -- in about 6 months. Boredom then set in. Fiercely. I began to think more and more of TES III: Morrowind, so I returned to Vvardenfell.

The second pic is me in Balmora, the "starting city" in Morrowind. Laiane has undergone many metamorphoses over time (EverQuest, Morrowind, EverQuest 2, Oblivion, back to Morrowind, and, hopefully in the future, Vanguard). When I returned to Vvardenfell, I decided a change of hair color was in order. I'm a redhead in Real Life(tm); I can be a brunette elsewhere.

I returned to Morrowind after spending six months in Oblivion. Now, I must say I did enjoy Oblivion, but it was an exceptionally shallow game in terms of roleplaying content. Yes, it was pretty and had nice graphics and all that, but it was soulless.

I had awesome hair, though.

Hello, Blog

2006-12-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

Well, here I am. Blogging. I tried getting a shorter blog address, like laiane.blogspot.com or furiousbalancing.blogspot.com, but apparently the Powers That Be in the universe dictated that some other people would have taken those names and then NEVER POST. Hrmmmpf to that, is all I can say.

I don't particularly care if no one else in the Known Universe reads this blog, or writes comments, or is even aware of its existence. This one is for me. A place where I get to showcase my amazing punctuation skills. Something like that.