Fd an O!

Yes, Kelly's Medium Blue Branching Out is done, at least as far as the knitting goes. Tonight I will head into the darkest wilds of blocking. I don't believe the 45" scarf will block to the 59" the pattern says it will. It's too much. But it's not a horrible length as it is, so if I only get a couple of inches of new scarf out of the blocking adventure, it's OK by me.

OK, the O and the C actually really want me to undo that last knot in the scarf and rip it out and add another repeat or two (the pattern says I'll get 27 repeats out of the ball of yarn, but I'd bet my Mini Cooper I'd get at least two more), but the cooler voices in my head will prevail and I'll leave it the hell alone and let the blocking do its magic, no matter how much I don't believe in magic.

In any case, there will be pictures tomorrow -- before and after blocking.

I'm having a weird day. You know it's weird when I'm more or less rendered speechless. Or blogless. I'm having lunch with Laurie-without-a-Link and the Suburban Sedation Crew today, so maybe I'll have more to say tomorrow.

I'll at least have pictures. Knitting pictures too! And we all know knitting pictures make everything better!

[SUMMARY: No pictures, not even a thousand words to make up for it. I sure set a lot of store in the healing powers of knitting pictures.]

Meanwhile, I leave you with these little bits I've been saving up for a snarky, twisty day like today:

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One day, I saw a navy blue PT Cruiser one lane over and a few cars in front of me on my way home. In silver letters, oh, I'd say ten inches tall, it said, "Praise Jesus."

The first thought in my fuzzy little head? "Good Jesus! Good boy! And wearing your big-boy pants too!"

[SUMMARY: so. going. to. hell.]

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True story:

TROPICANA PURE 100% ORANGE JUICE
from concentrate with other natural flavors

Could someone explain what part of 100% "other natural flavors" fits in?

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What do you suppose I have against the number four?

I've spent two months tweaking a spreadsheet on which I had to make sure well names (oil wells, gas wells, just how I roll) were correct and in line with what the engineering department (petroleum engineers... don't get me started) thinks they should be and in line with what the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission thinks they should be... so I did a lot of cutting'n'pasting, since well names tend to look like this:

METAPHYSICAL RAINBOW RANCH FEDERAL #06-15 A**...

and come in clumps like this:

METAPHYSICAL RAINBOW RANCH FEDERAL #06-15 A**
METAPHYSICAL RAINBOW RANCH FEDERAL #06-15 B, C & D**

This is the stuff cutting'n'pasting was born for. Only I (somehow) cut'n'pasted one particular well randomly all over the spreadsheet

(Um, Marin? Hi, it's Sue? I'm looking at your spreadsheet? And where it should say Bob's Big House of Oil and Gas Fun 36-16** it says Kitty Cat 17-2**? And where it should say Metaphysical Rainbow Ranch Federal 14-8** it says Kitty Cat 17-2**? Um... and where it should say Uber Oil 22-11** it says, well, Kitty Cat 17-2**? If I'm wrong, just tell me...).

I am a bigger dork than I ever knew. I can't even figure out why the Kitty Cat 17-2** was my very favourite well and I thought it the alpha well over all other puny beta wells... I couldn't explain. I could do naught but to correct the error of my wells.

THEN... Sue brings a printout of my spreadsheet to me with about thirty wells highlighted. They all have the right names, wrong numbers. Except they're all SUPPOSED to be Something Something number-4 (like the Kitty Cat Federal 15-4** and Bob's Big House of Oil and Gas Fun 22-4**) only they're all Something Something number-5 (like the Kitty Cat Federal 15-5** and Bob's Big House of Oil and Gas Fun 22-5**).

Again, I have no explanation. I don't know what I had against the number four that fateful day. O, remedial Sesame Street, where is thy sting?

What I do know is that I just cut'n'pasted that whole parenthetic Kitty Cat/Big Bob thing to illustrate the difference between the numbers 4 and 5 (Huh. I occurs to me that, given some of my knitting adventures, I may not be real solid on the difference between the numbers 4 and 5) and it seemed to work fine. Was it just that one day? Just this one spreadsheet? Just the number 4 and the Kitty Cat Federal 17-2**?

I'm going with poltergeist.

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Boy-Best-Friend Steve and I were watching "Invincible," the Mark Wahlberg movie about Vince Papale. Papale benefited from a 1970s-era publicity stunt in which the Philadelphia Eagles opened try-outs to all comers. It's based on a true story, with Papale being the only schlump good enough to actually win a job under this system.

There is a scene in which Papale is leaving the tryout or his first practise or something and his crappy Camaro-esque car won't start (for the 15th time in the movie. Illustration! Vince is poor!) and Dick Vermeil (yes, that Dick Vermeil, though -- oddly -- he didn't cry once) walks up to the driver's side of the car to give him some good news and his (Papale's) arm moves in what (to some of us, born before the dawn of auto automation) is easily recognisable as the action of a man rolling down a window. Manually. I turned to Steve and said, "150,000 young people across the country have no idea what just happened."

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Happy Friday!

What?

Oh, for fuck's sake...

**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): I made up those well names. Can you tell?