I should've made these for Halloween.

http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall05/PATTpumpkins.html

Finished Bag!

So last may I bought some scrumtious red yarn that I figured I would make into a bag - but I discovered that it was totally angry with knitting needles. I had two skeins of it (Yarn Bee : Suede, in Cherry?), so I figured why not crochet it instead. I started working on it - and inadvertently got a picture of it when I was taking pictures of my amazing crossed off thesis and 8 other papers checklist - see! crochet!



I finished the actual BAG knitting over the summer - went quite quickly really. The handle, however, was only 7 stitches wide. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-turn, lather, rinse, repeat. ad nauseum. so that took awhile. Then when I got that done, I went and bought some really yummy chocolate colored suede and made the lining (sandwiched the crochet, machine sew, turn inside out - so it's really a double lining of the suede for strength. This was a good idea on the bag, and a royal PITA to turn on the handle. hence the roundness of the handle). Sewed on some buttons and a pocket inside, and presto! new bag!

Link Updatage

Updated links to Celera (got rid of the busted one), and added one to Keiyla. Who is now my knitting motivator.

::looks sheepishly at the 18'' of wool lace knit throw wound in a basket on the floor::

all I can say is that I'm glad I can't look with guilt upon all my other projects in progress. Wedding + Last Semester == TOTAL INSANITY and no time to knit

Which means, of course, that I knit during wipe-recoveries in BWL.

rainy mondays

Sometimes the rain makes you just want to stay in bed. Now granted, this morning I wanted to stay in bed, but I have discovered something. Rain, when hitting my airconditioner (the window box type, right above my bed) sounds rather more like marbles hitting a metal box. Meaning that as of 7am, I was awake.

But since I dont have class today, I got to snooze until about 8:30, and get up and get stuff done. Cleaning, a bit of organizing, worked on the SCA website, paid bills, practiced, and it's now 11:00 and I can settle in to read and do homework until my lesson later. I'm not sure what it is about a cool, rainy fall morning, but I'm always more productive on those days. The forecast seems to suggest we have another hour or two of rain, and I will be sad to see it go. especially since it's supposed to be 90 degrees again tomorrow.

Also, being that it is Mid-October, I have busted out the Halloween socks. I have always loved Halloween, and I love to wear crazy socks, so it's the perfect occasion. (wearing silly socks is a way to make myself smile even when I have to be dressed and presentable looking for class. things get boring/bad, and I can look down at my bright orange socks with pumpkins on them, or little purple bats, and smile to myself) I have 5 pair, so almost a whole week's worth! Socks!

I also finally made my fall wreath, except that I can't put it up on my outside door, because I'm afraid someone will make off with it. So it's currently hanging on my bedroom door over my calendar. Same with carving a pumpkin. Not that I live in an unsafe place, but things like pumpkins (especially) are too easy for crazy half-drunk morons to pick up and bust all over the street.

all the children of the world

http://www.nychildren.org/

A photographer who has decided to take a picture of a child from every country on Earth, but all of whom live in New York. The pictures are really something else - a huge range of emotion and ages from 34 days (youngest so far) to 12 yrs.

Writing, Blogging, E-chron...ing?

One of my good friends from World Of Warcraft just recently got himself a job teaching English in China. So the Finney packed up his hunter gear, substituted it for books, and isn't entering azeroth so much anymore. However, before he left, he started an E-chron (linked over on the right -----> ). Blog, he says, sounds too much like what you feel like when you're seasick and barfing - or something about to that extent. So the E-chronicles of Finney were born

Now, don't get me wrong, I totally agree that the word sounds uncomfortably like the onomatopoeic version of losing one's lunch. But it's just been "blogging" for too long to really get the word out of my head. Because when Finney started his E-chron, I re-opened my blogger site (after much comment spam on the privately hosted site), and there, in the corner it says "Member since December 2001". This is actually deceiving. I've been a member of Blogger since December 9, 2000 - but I changed my username. So coming up this December, I will have kept an online journal for 6 years (with more or less consistency).

It's seen many permutations, from a standard blogger layout, to my earliest dabblings in HTML, to a full hand coded site, to a move onto my own domain (www.amar-prestar.org), and then to LiveJournal, and then back to blogger, in another standard blogger layout - mostly because I"m too lazy to learn the new blogger tags. I still cross post between blogger and LJ though, since I know people in both places.

What's funny is to go back and look at the old posts - from when I was a Junior in highschool. Posts about classes and tests (not much changing there, I am still a student, after all), quotes and bits of poetry, stuff about Lord of the Rings (not much changed there either), and my random musings on stuff. More ranting though. I go back and read them and sometimes I think "wow - I really was pretty on top of things for a 16 year old". and other times I want to bonk my 16 year old self with a nerf bat and tell me to get over it.

The first real journal hiatus I took was during/after an abusive relationship. The second, when I just dwindled down because of being too busy and not really having seen or talked to any of the people in months. On and off through college I've written bits and pieces. Mostly just daily life. Occasionally something that I've seen or heard. Rarely my "thoughts" on something. I used to track my journal hits too (ooo! I had 25 people look at this page today!), but funny, I don't want to anymore. When I started playing Warcraft, even though I thought I would write more since I was writing stories and RP, I stopped writing almost completely.

And then I ran into the Defenders of Valor - a guild that doesn't exist in that form anymore, but whose members are still a writing group of that name, with forums and storylines and characters. I found that, through them, I wanted to write again - but not just about whether or not my dorkwad professor took a point off of this or that because he wont give perfect scores (which admittedly, I still do), but about things I see and things I've done and things I think. And things that the characters that I've worked with for the last year and a half have seen and done and thought. And they're probably not good stories - definitely not worthy of being published, but the more I write them... the more ideas I have. The more I look at the world from the standpoint of seeing what in it I can write down, the more things I see as being noteworthy (pun intended). The change didn't happen overnight - it took several months of talking to and reading and being inspired, and it's still occurring, but I really am thinking of myself more as a writer than I ever have before.

And someday, the 30 year old me will come back and look at the things that 22 year old me is posting, and probably have the same reaction. "Lauren, you know, sometimes you really get it. And sometimes I just want to whack you with a book and tell you to get on with it!"

A bit about John Knox

Ok - so I know he was a protestant reformer, and was all theological and stuff. But some of his writing makes me giggle. I'm reading excerpts from "The First Blast ofthe Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women" (a political, not a theological text). It's basically a giant treatice on why Queen Elizabeth is bad. Her response to this was to announce that he would be killed on sight if she ever caught wind of him in England.

Anyway - the basic synopsis of what I just read is pretty much as follows: (yes I realize there is a lot more to this, but he really does come across this way)

Intro:
1) I hate Elizabeth
2) All women rulers are bad
3) Because they're bad, they'll get overrun by bad foreign people.
4) it's our duty to tell you this because we have the light of true religion, and we're like the prophets of the bible.

Why Women Rulers are Bad:
1) Women are blind, foolish, frenzied, and mentally ill
2) We know this because God is a man, not a woman.
3) Even Aristotle says women are stupid.
4) When women rule, rulers are vain, prideful and ambitions, greedy, and immodest.
5) All nations under evil foreign rule are that way because of women rulers.

Objections To My Arugment, and Why They're Stupid:
1) there are women prophets and rulers in the Bible.
~Just because there were good women doesn't make it OK
~God can make examples, but it takes all of his power and wisdom. Since we can't do that, women rulers are bad.
~Since I hate Elizabeth, and she's bad, those good women rulers are only good because they existed a long time ago. Elizabeth is bad.

Conclusion:
1) Elizabeth is going to hell, because she's bad
2) She's going to hell soon, because she's bad and I hate her.
3) Soon all her men will hate her too, and take God's judgement in their own hands, and kill her.
4) Since her reign, er... I mean the reign of all women rulers... is built without foundation, it is bad.
5) I hate Elizabeth. Women Rulers are Bad.

Karl's response to this:
"His wife must've refused to make him a sandwich"

First Impressions...

Everyone always says that first impressions are important. Also that they can be deceiving. I'm not sure where to weigh in on this debate. In any case, this will make sense in light of an experience I had yesterday while driving back to Waco.

::warning - discussion of bathrooms ahead::

Though I drive from Waco to Houston on Fridays, and Houston to Waco on Mondays, and the trips are the same length (approx 210 miles)... I only have to pee on the way BACK to Waco (usually). This most often results in a stop in Hearne, TX - a small town (two stoplights! wow!) on Highway 6 that has a few gas stations and fast-food joints actually ON the "highway", which slows down to 35 miles an hour to go through town. (on the way out of waco, I usually stop and get a small chocolate milkshake at Sonic). So anyway, I have my pick of places with a potty.

The Chevron station is... er... well... no. Usually that means the Exxon station, which also has a Subway - mmm lunch. It's not great, but usually it's at least mostly clean. But yesterday I didn't want Subway. So I figured why not stop at the McDonalds. They have a bathroom. They have burgers and fries. So I stop in. And my first impression is glorious. The restaurant is clean, the bathroom is clean (dry floor, no paper mess, smells like "cleaner"). I'm thinking that I may have myself a new rest stop!

So I'm sitting there, doin' my thing... and discover that there is no TP. And no spare rolls. In either stall. eewy! fortunately - I have tissues! My good impression is going downhill, and fast.

I order me a cheeseburger, small fries, and a coke. And decide that coke is too sugary and ask for iced tea instead. Girl at the counter says "sure!" and changes it in the computer. I get my meal, which is HOT! and smells tasty, get back in the car, and head out. Hot french fries are a wonderful thing. So I'm thinking hey - maybe it was just an off day for the cleaning lady. I take a sip of my tea... and nearly sputter it all over the car. It's... awful.

I sit there, pondering the new nastiness that I have just put in my mouth for a few moments before I figure out what happened and why it tastes so disgusting. And then I realize... it tastes vaguely like coke.

Whoever made my drink started filling it with coke, got probably 1/2 a cup of coke in the cup, saw the order change, AND PUT THE TEA INTO THE CUP WITH THE COKE IN IT! blegh blegh blegh.

Remember that first impression? Yeah, downhill like a six year old on a toboggan on 2 feet of snow. I won't be going back.