Game Stop: Forgotten Circle of Hell

I recently made my first trip to Game Stop, a used buy/sell/trade video game store. We've amassed quite a pile of Wii games, many of which we don't actually like. So we picked out 3 and headed to Game Stop.

Holy crap. This place is awful. First, it is full of the worst kids on earth. Second, those kids are with the worst parents on earth. I witnessed one child so enraged by the fact that the game his mother was buying him didn't include classic Pac-Man, spit flew from his mouth. And all of the parents were screaming at their children, at all times, from all areas of the store. Just awful.

We traded in our 3 games for a used copy of Twilight Princess, one of the Legend of Zelda titles. Only to get it home and find that it doesn't work. Hmpf. Now we have to go back to Game Stop to return it. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to convince Patrick to go without me...but I'll try.

Sign Me Up!

I saw this over a Boing Boing Gadgets today and had a good time looking at the posts. This person (people?) work at some big social networking or fan site, and get emails from kids begging and lying to be let into the site despite their age. The good ones get put on COPPA KIDS:

And this kid tried to steal my perfect username:

Garden Planning

It's time to start planning the garden! And that means that Spring is coming, which is exactly the kind of news I need to hear right about now.


Here is a sketch of our plans. We have 3 large raised garden beds and 5 small ones. We built them out of non-pressure-treated boards (don't want any chemicals leaking into the soil) over the past 3 summers. They've served us well, but will probably rot out soon. That will be a good chance to redesign the space, as their dimensions and placement could be better.


So, here's the list: cherry tomaotes, plum tomatoes, some kind of larger tomatoes (beefsteak?), spinach, lettuce, snap peas, english peas, strawberries, zucchini, carrots, eggplants, collard greens and various herbs. Oh, and weeds, of course. Can't avoid those.

Sense and Sensibility--Stop Haunting Me!

Sense and Sensibility. OK, for real, I can't stop watching this movie. Every time I come across it on PBS, I stop to watch it.

Which is strange, because as far as I know, I can't stand Jane Austen. About 12 years ago, I took a long trip. One of my friends gave me two books for the trip: One Hundred Years of Solitude and Pride and Prejudice. I ended up reading OHYS about 8 times (love it). The Austen book I pulled out whenever I had trouble sleeping on trains--after 6 pages I was sure to be asleep.

But this movie! The acting is excellent, the costumes, sets, people, beautiful, and the romance and scandal!!! The honorable Edward. The rogue Willoughby. Top notch.

So, you should try to catch it when it is on. It's in two parts, so it might take some planning to see the whole thing, in order.

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxXffditEgA

James Harrison Super Bowl 2009 100-Yard Interception and Touchdown...INCREDIBLE

This poor guy was not built to run that far. But yay!

We watched the game at our regular Steelers bar and had a great time. I'd say there were about 100 fans there, lots of noise, lots of cheering. Though that last quarter was tough to watch.

HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!

Gummi Bears Theme (Orginal)

When I was a kid, Gummi Bears was on at an ungodly hour of Saturday morning. Like, 6am. Even back then I wasn't going to get up that early. But! I lurved this theme song. So much so, I would drag myself out of bed to hear it and then go back to bed. At some point I smartened up, got out my tape deck, held it up to the TV speaker and recorded the song so I could hear it whenever I wanted. And it is still a great song.

A Dream Come True

If you've spent any time over at my friend CCR's blog, you've probably noticed two things: 1) her cats are always cuddled together, entwined like pretzels, and 2) in the comments sections I'm constantly griping that my cats don't do that. Harold and Pan were longtime friends, so that somewhat explains it. But the new Herself and old Harold? They hardly know each other!

My stupid cats have been together for about 10 years now, and while they share a food dish and tolerate each other's use of the litter box, they're not exactly holding paws and singing "Islands in the Stream." They'll wrestle-play sometimes, and George will lick Belmont's head upon approach, but really, not much more.

Until today! Look what I woke up to:

Love it! I feel like I raised them right, you know?

We Have a Dream article

Here's a write-up of the show by our local paper.

Obama O's

Well, I am soooooo happy to say that I finished my quilting project. Happy doesn't really do it. Towards the end, I couldn't stand it. Mostly because I had a nearly-impossible deadline (my own fault, of course). Some pics.



Above is the concept/progress sketch. 9 rows, 5 columns, a simple nine-patch in red and blue, with solid cream fields in between. The deadline I mentioned before was a Martin Luther King themed show to which I wanted to submit the quilt. I titled it, "Thoughts on Election Day, 2008". In the cream fields, I used my quilting stitches to make letters and numbers to write out "08.28.63 I HAVE A DREAM TODAY MLK 11.04.08" Then, in the nine-patch squares, I used my quilting stitches to make what I call Obama O's (you saw them everywhere on Obama campaign materials).



Here is Patrick's commemorating shot of me finishing the last stitches on the binding. Those two shoeboxes in the background are where I keep all of my sewing supplies. Not a very good solution, but that's what I'm working with for now.







Here's a shot that gives you an idea of what the quilted letters look like. You can see a big Y in the foreground. If you click on the pic, it should come up bigger and be easier to see.







Another shot of the quilting stitches. This time, the Obama O's are visible on the nine-patch squares. Again, click on it for a bigger shot.




And here's a close-up of an Obama O. Stupid blogger has decided to rotate the picture, and I don't know how to convince it otherwise. Hmpf.

The show was created to compliment a piece created my Malden Access Television titled "We Have a Dream", in which 150 Maldonians (that's what we're called!) recite lines from MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. About 15 artists submitted works to the gallery. You can check them out at the Gallery at Elm Street now through Feb. 22nd. Here are the hours:

Sundays, noon-2pm

Tuesdays and Fridays, 10am-1pm

Saturday, 10am-2pm

By appointment

Zombie Time

As many of you know, my greatest fear is zombies. I think it's because there's just no stopping them. If all of the corpses in the world rose up to eat us, we'd be screwed. It's not like they die of hunger if you hole up for a few years. Still there, scraping at the windows.



I just spent a good amount of time going through all of the comics at A Softer World (hey, I'm unemployed). A couple of running themes: bad mothers, stalking, and zombies. Worth checking out.

Wine It Up

Yesterday we went to a good friend's 30th birthday party. Her husband arranged the whole thing: a wine tasting at a vinyard on the South Shore and then lunch. The vinyard, Westport Rivers Winery, produces only white and sparkling wines--not usually my favorite. But I have to say, I really enjoyed the tasting, and we even bought a bottle of bubbly to bring home. (the 2001 Imperial Sec).

We also stopped at Joann's Fabric to buy some twill for my quilting rack. Yes, it is time to rack it, which has me really nervous. I'll post some pictures once I get it wound on there.

Stupid Blogger keeps moving my pictures all around. It looks fine and neat in the post preview, put when I publish the post they're all scattered. Any advice out there? Do I need to learn how to edit the html?

2009

The Year in Photography, 2008

So I just spent the good part of an hour looking at a collection of images from 2008. Some of them are truly amazing. This one is of Mount Everest.

The link is from photojojo, which is a really interesting photography site/blog. I track it on Google Reader. They have great pointers and tricks, even for point-and-shoot cameras.

New (Old) Project

Well, now that all of that Christmas knitting is finished, I have nothing to do. Em, actually, I'm sure Patrick would argue that I have plenty to do. So let's say, I don't have any knitting projects to keep me occupied in the evenings.

So I've pulled this old quilting project out of the cabinet. I haven't touched this since 2001, mostly because the color scheme is slightly patriotic (What? I like red, blue and cream!), and I haven't been feeling very patriotic for awhile now.

But this January there's an art show around the theme of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and I'm thinking that this might be just the reason I need to finish the project. I have a couple of ideas for changing it up, so we'll see how it goes.

Patrick is the photographer above. Though he isn't as comfortable with the manual setting on the camera as I am, he understands the fundamentals of photography and does a good job of framing.

Parade of FOs

Hello All! I hope your holidays are going well--fun, relaxing, etc. Patrick and I spent Christmas day at four locations. One of my gifts from Patrick was Pocky, which is like chocolate-dipped breadsticks. Yummy, really!


As I mentioned before, I've been doing tons of knitting, but haven't been able to post about it because the projects were for Christmas gifts. Well, here they are!

Two hats for two little boys. They are based on the Wool Noggins pattern. For the brown one, I just added an I-cord topper.

Here's a dark picture of the mystery I-cord project. It's a centipede scarf!

A caliorimetry for The Cuz made with sport-weight alpaca held double and an old button from a box of buttons I got from my grandmother.

A set for my sister-in-law. Bulky-weight baby alpaca. The scarf is a Jute Rope, and I made up the hat to match the stitch pattern.

Here's a mother/daughter set for my other sister-in-law and neice. The yarn is Brooks Farm Four Play. The scarf is the Four Play pattern, the hat is Button Tab, and the small hat is a modified Wool noggin with the decreases altered to come to an elf-like peak, with an I-cord topper.

Here's a set for Lil Sis--my first cables! The pattern for the set is Natty. Made with bulky-weight baby alpaca. She has decided that it is itchy, but I'm hoping she'll wear it anyway...

Enjoy the rest of the holidays!

Catching Up

Hello!

The job hunt continues, though I'm not expecting much right now around the holidays. I'm still sending out resumes, and I'm meeting with some placement agencies next week. But really, I'm expecting the next month to be one of sitting and waiting. And I'm OK with that.

With all of my free time, I've been doing lots of Christmas knitting. But I can't show it to you. Well, here's a piece of one of the projects--I'm pretty sure this little boy doesn't follow my blog...

32 2-inch I-cords will be the death of me.

Here's something I made for myself recently. My first Clapotis:

George is interested, but banned from sitting on it. this thing turned out huge. Of course, I didn't check my guage. I can wear it only on cold cold days, as it is like wearing a lap quilt around my neck. That said, I really like it, and I have enough of the yarn left to make a hat and maybe mittens. I chose my winter coat to go with this scarf (instead of the other way around, like most normal people), so I'd better get some use out of it!

Not that I'm looking forward to winter weather. My garden is looking brown. We managed to harvest swiss chard and kale into late October, but there's nothing happening now. Patrick spent a couple of evenings drawing diagrams of the front and side yards, itemizing all of the plantings. Because, you know, he's an engineer. If I can find them, I'll post them.

We had our annual Holiday Tea last weekend. We try to do this every year--open up the house for an afternoon and invite people to drop in, have a warm drink and chat. I love seeing everyone. We have the party preparations down pat at this point: I make one or two pots of soup, Patrick goes to the bakery the morning of, and we spread out all of our teas on the counter next to the electric kettle. Easy! Here's my solution to 12 idential black mugs, so people don't get them mixed up:

Ha Ha Ha Ha

I saw this video over on Ectomo--I love when he shows all of the power buttons. What a grump.

Winter Gardening

I just came in from the cold--and it really is cold (about 35 degrees)! Patrick has been pushing me to "do something" with all of my newly free time, specifically mow the lawn. Sound crazy? Well, mulching up all of the leaves is easier than raking them, so it's not a bad move. I also cut back most of the perennials on the driveway side of the house. I'm already imagining what it will look like when they come back in the Spring.

Tonight is a new Malden Arts event. We're calling it a Salon, in the sense that it is a gathering to discuss the arts in Malden: what's going on, ideas for the future, meeting others to collaborate with. I'm not sure what kind of turn out we'll get, but a reporter from the Malden Observer is going to show up to cover the evening.

Lots of Free Time

So, I got laid off. Yup. On Election Day, to be exact. This is a real bummer, for a number of reasons. Here are some:

• Patrick and I had some real financial plans in place that will now be thrown off-track.
• I really liked my job, my co-workers and my commute.
• My position had me helping more and more with the business development side of things, but I didn't get enough experience to apply for a biz dev position.
• But I really don't want to go into another Admin position.
• Finding a job is a pain, and especially now with the economy.
• My suit doesn't fit anymore!!! Gah, shopping ahead. And not even the fun kind.

Anyhoo, I sent out a few resumes last week, and will follow up with them this week. I've already done all of the paperwork for the Unemployment Insurance (which is only half of your salary--did you know that?).

Now I just need to stay motivated; this means not sleeping until 2pm, not reading web comics until the wee hours of the morning, maybe catching up on the things that my job prevented me from getting to, maybe spending some time with long-neglected friends (Hi out there! You'll hear from me soon!), etc.

And let me just say that one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging lately is because I signed on to Facebook. It's just like blogging, but less pressure since it's only a line or two at a time. I've tried to find an app or something that would post my Facebook updates as blog entries here, but I can't find one. Do any of you know of such a thing?