8.31.10 What cars? How many?

There was an Incident on Friday evening which was not a happy one for lots of reasons.

Yeah, well, I got a call earlyish yesterday from Miss Alabama. Her internet is out, they are coming tomorrow to fix it. She haz no phone book. Her stipend has not been paid yet. Could I please look up some body shops near her so she can take her car to the shop? I say “What?” Say What? Her old Nissan is sick, needs to go into the shop in the hood where they speak NASCAR and it might be a coupla days to fix the muffler/catalytic converter connection that some guys a a large chain store stuck together with duct tape on Sunday and said we can’t charge you, no you can’t tip us, just get it fixed.

And, oh by the way, the CV joints need replacing too which was, in fact, a known problem that had gone dormant until this past weekend. It/she were going 70 down the highway somewhere in the deep south when there was a boom and another sound and then the unmistakable sound of a nonmuffling muffler. But you know mom, the roads are terrible down here, I think I bottomed out. Anyway, nobody here cares if your car sounds like that. There is no car inspection. Say What? Should I call a cab?

Then. After providing back and forth downtown transport for the first of the auto challenged Coppas, Little Caroline of the Incident, who laughed at the Facebook message from my brother (she needed that after suffering the Incident on Friday past, his Incident being caused 30+ years ago by his looking in the rearview mirror to admire his own hair).

I…..

Gotta call from Mr. Lady. His car temperature sensor is screaming its Hot in Herre! (Go on, take a Nelly break.) The precious wants to go to the VW spa for a little R&R. Can you pick me up? Insert maniacal laughter here. Whilst there at the VWSpa and waiting for me, he steps it over the the Ford place next door on the MidloMotorMile and attempts to discover the fate of the first auto casualty which is being estimated/repaired there. Who knew Ford fixed Chevy but whatever. May be a total loss there? Not sure yet. We’ll let you know tomorrow.

I am the Lady with the car. Need a ride? But I might be late for Tuesday Night Knitting.

Good thing I bought yarn on Sunday. Tuesday Morning, who knew?

8.27.10 Lotus position required.

I have not gotten past the “Freshly Pressed” page on WordPress for the past couple of times that I have seated myself to do a post. So many interesting things to read out there that one thing leads to another to another to another in the spidery way of blog reading. I was even almost late for something I couldn’t be late to. But I did manage to finish dressing the loom for the throw. I am thoroughly sick, sick I say, of the colors of this warp. I need some purple or blue or white or pink in my next project. Anything but yellow green, rusty red and pine green. And here I thought green was my new favorite color. Nah. Going back to purple.

I did cast on for a new project. The Lotus Blossom Tank (ravelry link) from a long ago IK. Not for me but for Anne who now lives in Alabama who says it has cooled off there. It was only 95 yesterday and she says she had discovered the value of a tee shirt. What color is this lotus blossom? Hmmm? Green. Sap Green as a matter of fact. With little viscose color flecks. Do I see purple? No. Sadly no but it is a pretty color green.

Oh and another thing. I have not seen it yet but there is a new edition out of the Knitter’s Almanac by EZ. I have something in there. Go get a copy!! My friend Issy from TNK tells me mine is on page 70.

8.23.10 New Post!! You don’t have to read about my lightning scare again!

Yesterday Mr. Lady and I went on what I think I can only call a “date”. It was the day after our 28th wedding anniversary. I will not quibble. He did go grocery shopping and made a Baked Ziti (recipe from America’s Test Kitchen) on the actual day and then did some laundry too.

Anyway, yesterday we saw Inception. ***It was the best movie I have seen in a long time.*** If that was not mind bending enough we came forth from 3 hours in the dark theater into the light of a thunderstorm. What is it with wind and rain, thunder and sunlight all combined? Very surreal. Still not all. As we were driving away, in the VW Beetle with new front shoes, there was a rainbow. Not just any rainbow, no way, because we had just seen that crazy movie it had to be a special rainbow. In fact it was the brightest double rainbow I have ever seen. Did you know that the colors in double rainbows reverse themselves? Physics rears its complex head again. There were people in other cars but most were on cell phones and driving. We were not quite like this guy though. We went to Chipotle. It was not too much after all that weirdness. And it was not in our front yard this time. Then we went home and walked Suziedog who was most grateful.

I have been working on some knitting. Doing sort of a KAL with my sorority sisters of knitting, the TNKers: Tuesday Night Knitters, most of whom are knitting an honorary EZ piece. 100th bday you know. I started the BSJ a couple of times and just was not feeling it. So I took out a cone of LB 1878 from the local pharmacy (??) and began the Stonington Shawl (Ravelry link). Pretty easy, I decided to jazz up the center square with the eyelet. The yarn is some that I bought for weaving stash and is knitting very nicely. It is a soft 4 ply, fingering weight, probably from South America somewhere.

In an impromptu weaving burst, a new warp was wound onto the LeClerc and is deciding how to be threaded. I say that because I was just going to thread it for plain weave but decided to throw in some basketweave stripes. See, it is still deciding. The warp consists of some “sport weight” knitting yarns that have been hanging around me for a while. The solids were bought and started as a sweater from an Interweave Knits some (more than 10) years ago. The multi was bought at the yarn swap/sale a few months ago. We will see what comes of it.

All of my bruises are resolving. It has been about a month since the freakish incident. The only residual seems to be that my hand, where I didn’t even realize there was a bruise at first, continues to bother me. It will throw out a purple tinge every now and then and become sore from nothing in particular. That is the bone I think I cracked. Thanks to everyone for all of your good wishes! I really appreciate it.

And the Emperor is not so sure about me using his bedroom for weaving.

8.6.10 The Storm

Lightning. Such an intimidating fact of nature, especially if you are home alone with a trembling doggie. Last evening we had a whopper of a storm over here at my house complete with “tornadic activity” predicted in the area. Suziedog and I jumped 3 feet in the air with one loud, bright, crash. She snuck upstairs to hide and I thought the strike might have hit one of the neighbor’s houses so I went out on the front porch during the storm to check it out. Now who is smarter, me or the dog?

Well, I didn’t see anything on fire so I went back in. There were several more seriously loud and intimidating light and sound events that I shivered through but eventually the show ended and I even was able to take Suzie out to do her business. Then, this morning my landline phone was blinking with a message on the screen saying “line in use”. Hmm. Tried the old “unplug it” test that they always recommend to no avail. Got in touch with the phone service provider and after a very simple chat session she is sending a technician out tomorrow because the remote scans showed a “short”. That is cool. Then I get an email from my neighbor who wants to know if my phone is out and to call her if I get the email. (She knows all of my family has left me unattended for a week.) So I talk to neighbor Holley. She tells me about the trees. She tells me about the hole in my yard and about her 9 and 11 year old boys thinking that trees getting struck by lightning is so cool and did I see that it blew a hole in my yard and that maybe there is metal like money down there. So I go and take a look. Well yeah, the trees are tall and striped and there is a hole in the ground and maybe some wires sticking out. For Pete’s Sake. Boy am I lucky to have only lost some phone service. And Mr. Lady missed it because he is in Alabama.

Speaking of which, the family members in Alabama have completed the move-in. The storm of togetherness is getting the better of both of them but the move was generally successful and I really hope that her grad school program is as well. Anne, my first born very own intimidating fact of nature, is recently enrolled in grad school at the Univ. of Alabama (Roll Tide, Linda) in Engineering/Materials Science/Metallurgy. She wants to specialize in characterization of materials which involves the use of a transmitting electron microscope (TEM). She hopes to obtain the knowledge to be able to create molecular samples for viewing and interpretation, research, publish and present. Apparently all of this is a good thing to know since lots of people want to know how materials behave under different conditions and want the info for their commercial endeavors and that thing called space exploration. I hope I said all of that right. She likes ceramics and glass but this was as close as she could get to that AND get paid for doing it. That Girl is smarter than I could have been or will ever be. But I can knit and weave and she can’t or at least she doesn’t. That is good right? Still, she can dance really well and I can’t. She can also hula hoop.

At least I CAN manage to avoid getting struck by lightning apparently AND finish knitting a sweater. Just by sitting on my couch with my dog.