A Tale of Two Boots

I stand accused of being cutting edge.

Yeah, it's even funnier if you knew me in high school, like my accuser did.

See, Jeffe† said she was getting some of those slouchy boots, like we wore back in the 80s, when we also hacked our t-shirts up Flashdance-style and thought the bi-level haircut‡ was the height of edgy, futuristic sophistication.

We were teenagers. Our taste was questionable.

Yet here we are again,§ shoulder pads, pegged jeans, neon colours... but the elf boot¶ is classic.

I had a pair of black suede elf boots. And when I say "had," I mean until six years ago when I decided to hand them off to ARC# in the cleaning-for-moving frenzy when I bought my house. I'd had the heels rebuilt†† and recapped,‡‡ but the suede fuzz on the toes and heels was worn to a shine, so I decided my 24-year-old boots had their day.

On into the future, I was doing a little wardrobe work last fall, when the personal shopper at Nordstrom suggested a pair of Steve Madden boots.

Boots EXACTLY like my elf boots, only cured leather instead of suede.




And, y'know, with the Steve Madden label inside.




The rest of the story is that when Jeffe said she was getting a pair of 80s boots, I told her I got a pair last year, at which point, she declared me cutting edge.§§

We all know different - I'm a dork with a streak of nostalgia who's never quite gotten over having to give up her elf boots.

Let's just call it trading up.¶¶


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Of still-Jeffe fame.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Now known as The Coach.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): And by, "we," I don't mean you and me, or even Jeffe and me, I mean "society in general."

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): If you were into Dio or Dungeons & Dragons in the 80s, it was definitely an elf boot. I'm not confessing, just sayin'. You don't have pictures, you can't prove anything.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): I did not, however, hand off my 31-year-old Nike All-Courts with the baby blue swoosh. They're in terrific shape for their age, and I love when the skate punks stop me in the mall and say, "Rad shoes, dude. Where did you get them?" And I say, "1980."

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Once.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Twice.

§§FOOTNOTE (two slouches): And challenged me to a blog-off, in which she was going to use my "Like high school, only Steve Madden" line first. I lost the race in spectacular fashion, but maintained my stubborn insistence on ignoring people trying to get me to blog. Small victories are better than none.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (two boots): 'Cause it sounds much classier than "old people nostalgia hoarding."

Puzzling

My friends at Nintendo sent me something new.†




Let's take a moment to step back from the simple glory of games showing up on my front porch; the creativity of the packaging and quality of work amazes me.

Look at this box:




Hand painted.

I envision a little Brand About Town sweatshop where an assembly line of sharply-dressed marketing genii% carefully hand paint and hand build these packages.

Plus, this cool tag‡:




I was just thinking to myself, "Self,§ what are you going to do with that tag?" Then I realised I never removed it from the box, so I have no idea how long the chain is. There's some chance I'll recognise its intended use if I actually look at the thing.

I'm a dork.




You may remember the story of how I skipped the video game revolution.

Well, I like Professor Layton. I like Professor Layton because he doesn't make me feel stupid, clumsy and inept.¶ No, Professor Layton makes me feel *smart*. I whiz through the Laytonverse, solving puzzles, searching for coins and I don't lose.

I get stuck sometimes, but the aliens don't land on my head because the time's run out.

And that's why I like Professor Layton.#


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): They've sent me a few new things over the last couple or *mumblefourmumble* months, but I haven't told you here. If you really loved me, you'd follow me on The Twitter. I talk a lot on The Twitter.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): I've met the Nintendo team from Brand About Town. They are all bright and remarkably well dressed.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): I suspect BAT commissioned these, but I'm still envisioning marketing elves at a workbench with tiny hammers.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): My little voice always calls me Isabelle.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): I have no explanation for my fascination with Guitar Hero, which makes me feel stupid, clumsy and inept every time I play it.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): And that's what I did on my summer vacation.

Mommy, Where Do Monsters Come From?

If you're very lucky, Monsters come from Jennifer by way of Nathan.

When the Monster Revolution comes, Jennifer and Nathan will be in the clear.

The rest of us should start tending our Monsters toward this end.

NOTE: If I were half-brained these days, I would've remembered to give Jennifer a shout out for being the creative force behind Cotton Monster and my new best friend. Better late than never?

Lost the Camera Cable

That was August.

Found the cable in December, but lost the camera.

Found the camera this week, then realised the cable I found was for an old cell phone.

Bought a new cable today.

Wondering if hundreds of pictures of the Liberace Museum are too passé to post.

I Can't Believe I Forgot to Hit Publish

I found this on December 3:

TOTALLY FUNNY KNITTING COMIC

I shared it on Twitter. I also emailed it to Brother, Father and Kelley.†

I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO HIT PUBLISH.‡

See... told you I'd be around.§


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Who are less likely to appreciate it as fully as you do.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Old... feeble...

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Vintage, but around. Late, but around. Behind the times, but around.

Islands in the Stream of Consciousness

It could be one of *those* blogposts.†

A few things‡ have happened since last I (really) posted.

*ahem*

I could get seriously philosophical here, because, as I was lining up my excuse ducks,§ I realised how telling they really are.

My first excuse duck?¶

Werk.#

I suspect I genuinely have more work than I used to, now that I'm a Paid Hack for the Corporate Machine, but I can say for a fact that my time is parcelled out very differently. I have vacation time. And sick time. And hours.

Practically, it's not that much different from when I was contract. Philosophically, I feel a much greater sense of obligation.

Plus, the stress is enormously greater, what with expense reporting and million-dollar deadlines and million-dollar deadlines and Hans and United Way campaigns and the impending Oompa Loompa Revolution and stuff.

Duck!††

Blogui.‡‡

Steve. §§

And Nathan.¶¶

Wii.##

I lost my camera.†††

But I now have a lot of stories.

So I'll be around.‡‡‡


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): One may wonder that there's a blogpost at all. One may have strongly hinted on Twitter about one's suspiciously absent blogposts. You know who you are.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): One. Two. 2010.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): You know, so you can shoot them down.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): It's a good, all-purpose duck, which is a real phrase about real ducks in duck shows and one of Steve's best-loved terms. More on Steve later. But in case you wanted to know, some ducks are raised for down, some for meat and a good, all-purpose duck has qualities that make it good for both. You're welcome.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Which differs from "work" in the face you make when you say it.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): That's the second duck, but who's counting.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Occasional bouts of techui, under which I shamefully ignored Twitter and occasionally email for abnormally wide swaths of time.

§§FOOTNOTE (time swirls when you're having fun): Because we've been doing lots of fun stuff, and fun stuff takes *time*.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (is that a Wii controler? EEK!): Who bribed me to Vegas with martinis and sushi, then moved to New Zealand, leaving me bereft. I was totally reft before that.

##FOOTNOTE (bomp bomp): Wii is totally kicking my ass. Not in the way you're thinking. I'm totally intimidated by it and, even though My Friends at Nintendo have sent me games and a disco light and a cool game involving yarn and felt, I still play more on the nephews' Wii than on my own. Because my Wii scares me.

†††FOOTNOTE (very, very cross): Seriously. All my Vegas photos - including the Liberace Museum, which is now closed - plus the Christmas Eve Ugly Sweater Party and an assortment of other worthy subjects. I think the car ate it. The car ate Kate's CDs; we tore the car apart looking for them, but the car just spit them out two years later when I was looking for the cell phone I'm convinced it ate.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (stitched together like Frankenstein's monster): I'd do more now, only I received what I see as barely-veiled threats should I not post something soon.

Is This Thing On?

Can you hear me in the back?

Word of the Day

Hey, look! It's my middle name!†


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Those footnotes aren't just for decoration, baby.‡

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Plus, Marin Anacoluthia Untiedt has such a nice ring to it.

My Life in Munitions Engineering

Christmas my freshman year in college, my father gave me a book called "Discover What You're Best At."† It consisted of a number of sections, each with an SAT/IQ-style test to evaluate the test-taker's proficiency at a career skill like logic, clerical, business acumen.

When I got back to my dorm room in January, I dutifully waited for my roommate to go out catting about‡ so I could have the two hours' required uninterrupted peace to get through the tests. I tested. Carefully, I tallied my scores.

I was off the charts in all categories%... except one.

You know those spatial relations tests? The ones where they show you a bunch of cubes stacked together in a configuration, then ask you to choose which one is the same, but from a different angle? That one, not so much.

Checking my scores against the career possibilities listed in the back of the book, it said I could be anything I set my pointy little head to§ except a mechanical engineer or munitions expert.

It said nothing about modular knitting. Maybe it should have.

As I may have mentioned, I'm knitting two Tamarix Quilt baby blankets¶ for my two favourite# cousins.

Now, you†† can knit the thing in 100 individual squares and sew them all together. Or you can knit it together as you go along and *not* sew 100 individual squares together.

I hear you.

Heather, the designer, is very graciously shepherding@ a KAL on Ravelry. Damned good thing for some of us who are destined never to field strip an AK-47.

There's a tutorial in the magazine, part of the pattern practically, that shows how to knit the whole thing together as you‡‡ go. Problem is, my spatial retardation doesn't allow me to go there without a fight.

First, she gives instructions on how to join a square on the left or on the right. It took me ten minutes to figure out whether it was the new knitting or the old square on the left... but I got that one on my own.

Then I cast on the requisite 39 stitches for a new square, picking them up along the edge of the existing square. Only I didn't think far enough ahead to realise that 39 stitches is two sides of a square, so I should only have picked up 19 or 20 stitches, then cast on the rest. I was halfway through the new square before I realised something was horribly wrong.

THEN, since I was knitting from left to right, it never occurred to me to think right AND left. I assumed if *I* was going from left to right, the only way anything could be done was to join the old knitting on the left end of the new knitting.




NOW I've finished the first row of squares. I told Heather I was planning on knitting ten strips of squares and sewing them together, and she pointed out§§ that I¶¶ could knit the whole thing together as I went along.

*blink blink blink*

I am paralysed. How should I proceed? Should I 1) dive in and try to knit, sometimes joining on two sides, 2) stick with my original ten-strips-and-sew plan, or 3) try building a bridge in my living room for mechanical aptitude practice?^





†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Possibly as a reaction to me telling him I was a theatre major.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): I believe it was 2.2 seconds, a statistic to make Porsche jealous. My first roommate was... social.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): Which, by the way, did nothing to help me discover what I was *best* at.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): "Free to Be... You and Me" is earworming me like a mother right now - those Target commercials don't help

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): From the latest Interweave Knits.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): ...and most fertile.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): And by "you," I mean "I."

@FOOTNOTE (atted): Ha! Sheep joke!

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): I

§§FOOTNOTE (I am incapable of straight thinking): Very optimistically, given my proven inability to turn right when the situation called for it.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (beat the drum slowly): And by "I," I mean "Heather or some other munitions expert."

^FOOTNOTE (careted): Or - and I just thought of this one - I could knit in a spiral, forcing me to knit the last square together with FOUR other squares. To gain saint points, of course.

An Account of the Recent Past

How 'bout a big, ol' wide-tongued full lick of the pig?

In which we briefly explore† Dr. Doom Turns 6,% Lake McConaughy,‡ the Colorado Renaissance Festival§ and Lakeside Amusement Park.¶

Dr. Doom's 6th birthday was animal-themed and included a visit from the Jungle Lady and her many reptiles, amphibians and bugs.

There was a snake cake.




A rubber gift snake for the birthday boy...




...which maybe should have been presented at the end of the show for minimal distraction.

Anyway, there was snake discussion.




And snake jewelry, both in the form of a Scarlet Kingsnake bracelet...




...and a python necklace.




I don't know about you, but I would never want to subject a snake to a passel of six-year-olds. Six is a... squirrely age. Though it was worth the price of admission for this exchange:

"My brother found a snake when he was camping and he caught it and he brought it home and now he has, like, six snakes."

"My brother is in jail."

The turtle races were pretty good too.




[SUMMARY: And a good time was had by all... except maybe the snakes.]

The annual trip to The Lake included a record 757,000 kids this year...




...but that didn't stop me from crossing "skinny dipping" off my bucket list.

As has become tradition,†† Shanny and I stayed up late one night at the campfire chatting, stargazing and exploring the funky, soulful world of Shanny's massive music collection.

Just after the moon dipped below the southeastern horizon, Shanny said, "I don't want to freak you out or anything, but it's a beautiful night, the weather's perfect, the moon's gone down and there's nobody around. You want to try skinny dipping?"

There we were, neck-deep in water, looking at the rural sky coated in a crust of stars. The water was cool, but not chill. Nothing nibbled at protruberances. The small-town tide lapped at our every nerve ending. We chatted, then wrapped up and got warm by the fire.

The next morning, Connie greeted me with, "I understand you got naked with my husband last night." And she giggled.

I love my friends.

Other than that, there was the usual water, sky, recreation...




Well, the Wave Runner was new this year.

But there was the usual floatilla of shiny plastic inflatables.




And the campfire.




In scientific news, The Lake was up 27 feet from where it was last year when we were there - at 96% capacity.‡‡




There wasn't a lot of beach to go around and we teamed up with a group of campers to hold our grove...






...which was under surveillance from the myriad campers who didn't come in on Thursday and maybe never found a spot to pitch their tents.§§

But, like the steadfast dragonflies,@ we held our space for the weekend.




Until it was time to say goodbye for another year.




[SUMMARY: A good time was had by all.]

Steve isn't skydiving this summer, so he has a mess of time to do other things. Under the auspices of "I haven't been to the Renaissance Festival in twenty years or more," we decided to go to the Renaissance Festival.¶¶

My how things have changed. Like Times Square, Disney has had its influence. Y'all know I've got nothing against pirates, but a good quarter of the faire now seems to be devoted to Captain Jack Sparrow.

There are no wenches, those dingy, corseted broads who kissed men with overpainted lips of crimson, neon pink and orange for a dollar. All in all, the thing where absolutely everybody is trying some gimmick to get a buck is gone.

On the bright side, there were greyhounds and ducks and the cutest little piggle## you ever did see. And a spiffy carillon.




On the other hand, a museum of medieval torture devices that was simply awful. And not for the torture.

Plus? A woman in full costume was brandished a frickin' Twilight umbrella and talking on her cell phone when the rain started. That's so not 15th century.




We decided we don't need a Renaissance Festival fix for another 20 years.

[SUMMARY: Disney should stick with movies.]

Steve and I also visited Lakeside Amusement Park.

Back in the day, Steve an I both worked at the historic Elitch Gardens,††† which was only blocks from Lakeside. From the top of the Twister at Elitch's, you could see the Vegas lights of the entry tower at Lakeside.

Now, Elitch's was classier. It maybe had better rides. And it was neater, more prone to fresh paint and never a lightbulb out of place. But Lakeside had seedy charm. There was a Fun House and far fewer families went after dark. It was a brilliant hub of overdressed late-teen and twenty-something single life.

Back in the day.

Now the Fun House is gone, possibly a victim of insurance regulations.‡‡‡ Every third ride was deconstructed or closed for repair.




Though the park was supposed to open at 6:00, there wasn't the slightest movement to test the rides, set up the ticket booths, start the hot dogs a-grillin'... it was an employee ghost town until nearly 6:30. At that time, four rides were running.

As the night went on, more rides opened - the ones that weren't under repair or chopped for parts - probably to save on payroll.§§§






The Wildcat coaster was fun and the Zoom was great fun.¶¶¶

But we left at 9:30, having ridden everything but the Merry-Go-Round, and agreed that we could go another 20 years without going to Lakeside.

[SUMMARY: We are crossing things OFF the list, Steve and I.]

That's how I spent my summer vacation.

Coming soon... current events. Like tomatoes. And knitting.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Through words, pictures and footnotes, and mostly as an exercise in cleaning off my camera.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): In April.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Nudity! Alcohol! Adult situations!

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): The only place besides Steve's living room where anyone has understood my rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock shirt.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Seedier than field full of wheat, sadder than a lost puppy.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Except that year we didn't.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Up from 54% the previous year.

§§FOOTNOTE (a twisty, windy road): Heh. Twelve.

@FOOTNOTE (atted): Of which there may been more of even than children.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (two left feet): As a tiny, geeky confession, I worked at the Renaissance Festival in the summer of 1986. It's what you do if you're a theatre major with a Dungeons & Dragons past.

##FOOTNOTE (tic tac): So cute he made me baby talk. And I usually only do that ironically. Hey! Ironic Babytalk would be a great name for a band.

†††FOOTNOTE (my cross to bear): NOT to be confused with the travesty that is Six Flags Elitch Gardens, and current home (right across the street from the theatre) of your dear ol' AntiM - I live where (I say) the floral clock used to be. Steve says it was the administration building. Until we have pictures, I'm sticking with "floral clock."

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (old fashioned wooden coaster tracks): Steve thinks maybe an ADA thing, though he kept saying "ADD," which I thought was funny.

§§§FOOTNOTE (a shocking turn of events): Steve thinks maybe more because the employees straggle in, hungover, whenever they straggle in.

¶¶¶FOOTNOTE (upright brigade): Which is a skyshot like the one on top of the Stratosphere in Vegas, with a slow lift followed by a free-fall. I couldn't help point out (because I'm twelve) that it looked like a giant, colour-changing penis against the dusky sky, to which Steve added the image of a cock ring carrying people up and down it. Quite ruined the ride for Steve.

Excuse #3

The "Why I Have Neglected My Blog" series:

I am tired of footnotes. Partly because they're exhausting and time-consuming and sometimes I don't feel clever enough to do them, and partly because a couple of people have said mean things about them and now I'm self-conscious about the footnotes.

So I think the footnotes may have to go.

I'm considering a system of italics and clear speaking.

Excuse #2

The "Why I Have Neglected My Blog" series:

I hate to play the executive card, but I did just take a job not that long ago. And, while I'd swear I wasn't doing half as much as I was before The Big Move (trust me, for me, it was HUGE), I seem to be roughly one bazillion times as busy.

Stupid paperwerk.

Excuse #1

The "Why I Have Neglected My Blog" series:

I lost my camera cable. Instead of leaving it plugged into the USB port where I always know where it is, I coiled it up neatly and put it in my drawer and promptly forgot about it.

I am shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you - that it didn't suddenly spring out of the drawer the second I decided to buy a new one.

But I didn't buy a new one because, eh, I wasn't really blogging that much anyway.

Vicious circle.

Duke Wins, BOB is King

OK, so in this scenario, the king would have to die of a mysterious stomach ailment and the crown prince would have an "unfortunate accident" so I could be king, but still... I'm aghast. I've never done nearly this well in March Madness.

In other news...




...I flat out won the Coral Room pool. That's cash in my pocket and bragging rights for... if I have my way, the rest of my bar-going life.

So this is what it feels like to be a princess.

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For

At least it's the moment I've been dying to share with you.†

[SUMMARY: Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.]

I shan't drag you through the litany of "stuck in the camera" and "busy at work" and all that. You know the song, I'll let you sing it on your own.

Suffice to say I finished Dr. Doom's Christmas sweater around the end of January,‡ then through the vagaries of joint custody, finally got it to him mid-February.

I took the basic top-down raglan sweater,§ I've been using for everything Nephew, added a textured alligator belly through the miracle of intarsia-in-the-round, then winged it on the sleeves.¶

%





It was the winging it part that really mucked up the works.

There I'd be in my chair at work, madly correcting, explaining, marketing, e-schmoozing and otherwise getting the job done, when suddenly, sleeve panic would hit me and I'd start doing the alligator thing with my elbows,# using paper clips to mark the place where alligator lips should be and re-figuring where alligator mouth should go...

[SUMMARY: Every person does multi-tasking in his own way.]

Is it any wonder I was so absent for so long? I had a lot going on.

In the end, I think it worked out pretty well.




But the true test is how it works for Dr. Doom.

[SUMMARY: Proof, meet pudding.]

First, getting naked in Chipotle.††




Then test-driving the beast.






Why, arm, what big teeth you have!




Let's see, important knitting stuff:

First, this is the proudest knitting moment of my knitterly life. It's the closest I've come to designing something, and it's something unique and cool and interesting and wowing and I'm just so tickled.

The sweater was originally inspired by this genius shirt from the Discovery Channel Store. I quickly realised that a white and pale grey shirt was no match for a five-year-old supervillain, so I decided to go with the classic gator.

Other than the pupils of the eyes, which are Dark Horse Fantasy, the whole thing is knit in Cascade 220 Superwash.

I made nose-holes‡‡ of I-cord loops.

The eyes took as long as the rest of the sweater put together. I had alligator eyes all over my living room for weeks. When one gets a solid vision of what one wants, it's hard for one to accept anything different.§§

One thing I believe the pattern misses, and that I missed too, is that when you put the sleeve stitches on holders to knit the body, you cast on an inch under the arm.

Which - and this is very important - adds two inches to the body of the sweater.

[SUMMARY: Math even I can do.]

On the one hand, I was delighted to get gauge. On the other, getting gauge meant I was the full two inches bigger than I wanted.

I had planned to sew up the sides, take out a couple of inches, but figured I'd better try it on the good Doctor first.¶¶ Yes, it's just a bit too big.

The neck is also big, being unfinished. I knit a nice 3-2 rib collar about 37 times and it always seemed too small.## So I left it unfinished for maximum headroom. Yes, it's just a bit too big.

I told Brother I wanted to take it home and finish it properly and he assured me Doom will be wearing a t-shirt under it most of the time, so aesthetically it's OK.

[SUMMARY: Aesthetics are what you're looking for in a sweater for a five-year-old.]

I don't know if he doesn't want to put me out or if he's afraid they'll never see it if I get my grubby hands on it again.

Hey! We've had a fair amount of knitting around here lately. You'd almost think this was still a knitblog.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And, y'know, it's all about me. And my lamp.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): And I would've finished it *much* faster if Dr. Doom hadn't given me a VERY COMPELLING game for my Nintendo DS for Christmas. *ahem*

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): And I'm not sure why I keep using this one, except that it's familiar. The sizing is all wrong, vis-a-vis boys S-M-L. I always ask Brother to measure a shirt that fits, then try to match the inches from there.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Wing... sleeves... heheheheheh... I'm funny.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): With the new office, I no longer have a clean white wall behind a hanger to photograph my sweaters. Whatever shall I do now?

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Sound effect: "RAWR!"

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Note the find cow hat on Brother's head, a Valentine's present from his favourite Seester. He brings me Icelandic sludge and lopi, I bring him cow hats.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): nostrils-nose holes ... to-may-to, to-mah-to.

§§FOOTNOTE (twisted definition time): Read: lesser.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (you can beat it into my head): I may not be a math genius, but I do have my moments of clarity.

##FOOTNOTE (square head, round hole, pound pound): Which I determined by trying to fit it over my own head, under the suspicion that heads grow less than anything else in a person's life, therefore kid heads must be nearly as large adult heads.

Attached

It's not quite like that, really.

You know those times you† send out a lengthy and hard-won work email, with careful wording that shows off your vast and varied vocabulary while maintaining readability, that hints at greatness and touches on the good of the company and all hinges on the concept that you attached the illustrative document... and you have to resend everything with some version of "Oops!" when someone@ says, "I don't see the attachment."

This reminds me of that.

[SUMMARY: Drawing on common experience to make myself feel less dorklike.]

Yesterday's post about knitting angst may have lost some of its oomph when you clicked the link to find yourself in a sterile grey house with sterile grey people staring out of different doorways while their sterile grey dog blends into their sterile grey carpet.‡

See, the Unhappy Hipsters blog isn't set up so someone with the technical acumen of a WWII vet§ can figure out how to link to an individual post. Only I didn't realise that until this morning.

[SUMMARY: I'm not as quick as I used to be.]

So, at the risk of infringing on copyrights,¶ I'm simply reenacting# the blogpost here so you can see what I really meant.




Trapped by the tawny palette, he struggled through yet another brown knit scarf.

(Photo: Randi Berez; Dwell, September 2005)


You're welcome.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And by "you," I mean "I." You probably stopped doing that ages ago.

@FOOTNOTE (atted): For me, it's almost always the boss or the know-it-all from the 6th floor.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): I'd never noticed how morose Dwell Magazine is.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): That'd be me.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Something a saint should never, ever do.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Like some historical event. It's not stealing or infringing, it's reenacting.

I Love My Broncos

And my Broncos love me right back.

State of the Onion

My office is roughly 2/3 of a block from the bathroom.

If you'll direct your attention the clever graphic below, I have drawn a rough diagram of my daily habitat.




The green star is me. The purple star outside the box is the bathroom. The red star is the coffee maker, the blue star the printer where my documents mostly show up and the orange dinosaur-looking thing is Hans.†

[SUMMARY: With that, you know way more about my daily life than you want to.]

The series of events:

A vague notion that I have to pee. A vague notion that coffee would be good. The certainty that this print job is going to take several minutes, seeing as it's 180 pages long.

In a fit of efficient brilliance,‡ I hit print, figuring I'd drop my coffee cup in the kitchen, cruise to the bathroom, pick up coffee and collect my printed document on the return trip.

In reality, I hit print, went to the copy machine, couldn't figure out what I was doing there, realised I didn't have my coffee cup and went back to my office for that.

[SUMMARY: It dont't get any better than this.]

I started out again, this time skipping the copy room and heading for the kitchen, where I dispensed coffee to cup, whitened it up and headed back to my office. When I hit the copy machine, I remembered I had to pee.§

I set the coffee down on the copy counter and went to the bathroom. On the way back, I was intently reminding myself not to forget my stuff at the printer and bypassed the coffee completely.

[SUMMARY: Still not getting better.]

I got back to my desk, started to sit down and bounced like a rubber ball as I remembered my coffee. I went back for the coffee, and circled the copy room for a moment trying to remember what it was I was not supposed to forget in the copy room.¶ There weren't any papers lying around to give me a clue, so I went back to my office.

When I turned back to my computer, there was an email I needed to answer. About ten minutes later, Hans walked into my office with a handful of papers.

"These look like yours," he said.

"Oh, yeah. I printed stuff! Thank you!"

I set the stuff on the desk and continued with my email.

[SUMMARY: Multi-tasking may not be for everybody.]

About five minutes later, I turned without looking and bumped the coffee, spilling it over the freshly printed stuff. I sopped up the brown puddle with the paper towels I keep in my desk just for these moments,# sighed and took a sip of coffee. Which was cold.

Thus the sometimes-vicious cycle of life in the wilds of the office†† begins again. More prints, more coffee and someday I will spill again.

*************

Wazamba - Parfume d'Empire

Marin says: "What are you sniffing these days?" asked Nathan.%

"Not much, really. I'm experiencing perfume ennui," I replied.

"I hate it when that happens," he commiserated.

The next day, Wazamba landed on my desk.

Out of courtesy‡‡ to my generous friend, I pounced, ravaging it like a starving beast ravages a plump gazelle.§§

Mmmmm... fresh-cut pine backed by a dollop of sweet-but-not-too, round, smoky, resiny incense. It mellows noticably but subtly to a gentler pine, not as citrusy-sharp, with the incense bubbling up just a little, but broadening rather than overcoming.

The smoke becomes more pronounced, but this is one of the best smokes I've sniffed -- not too campfire, not too acrid, just smooth and dry and a bit sweet, like the smell of an old church after mass.

Somewhere in here, I was thinking of applewood smoke on a BBQ. Turns out, the perfumer actually lists apple in the notes.

Now, we can chat about all the notes and bits, but there's something complete about this fragrance that wants the forest to be noted ahead of the trees. The word I keep coming back to is "enveloping." I find it cosy and comforting, and just a bit sexy, because smoke and incense usually have a little vavoom in their makeup. The sillage is poofy rather than trailing, more resembling a fog or a cloud than the stream of a peacock's tail carrying behind it.

The fragrance is incredibly long lasting. If I didn't shower, who knows how long it would have stayed? Eighteen hours after a light application, my wrists smelled like baking¶¶ and incense.

It is to be noted that Aaron (the filing clerk) walked into my office and went all dreamy and forgot what he was going to say. "Wow. It smells *really* good in here." Shanny liked it and confirmed that it goes nicely with R&B, Robert Cray-style.

So I've shaken my perfume ennui in favour of Wazamba monomania.##

It's a step in the right direction.

Parfum d'Empire says†††: An aromatic pine$ grove created around incense,$ sacred to all great civilizations. Incense, myrrh, sandalwood, cypress and apple$ fashion the enigmatic formula of this captivaing perfume. A voyage within...

Hans says: A spice. Like a cinnamon. It smells like the colour brown. Rich mahogany. Yeah, I get a spicy scent.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Hans doesn't merit a star because, once again, Hans is leaving on a deadline. We had a deadline yesterday, we have another October 9 and now we have one October 30, the day Hans is leaving for Madison.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Short lived.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): You'd think this wouldn't be a memory item, wouldn't you?

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): My obsessive nature doesn't only apply to hobbies and things people tell me I can't have; it spreads and permeates every little corner of my being. In this case, erroneously. That copy room haunted me all day.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Yes, I keep paper towels in my desk. For good reason.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): I watched a little Discovery Channel this weekend.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): In one of our rare moments lately -- werk is really eating into my pleasant social time.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Y'know... gentle, courteous attention much like what a six-year-old gives a big, beribboned package on Christmas morning.

§§FOOTNOTE (dervish): Huh. Maybe I watched more Discovery Channel than I thought.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (knock knock): I was really surprised to find it didn't have any vanilla in the notes.

##FOOTNOTE (pound the sistrum!): Wazamba Monomania would be a good name for a band. Particularly, as Grain de Musc so kindly provided, since a Wazamba is a sort of African sistrum.

†††FOOTNOTE (holy holy holy cats): Via the packaging. Their website is all in French and I couldn't figure out which button to hit to get to the next on the list of perfumes and I don't know French for "search" and I was looking at the parade of bottles at the bottom of the page going all Nancy Drew with the "it's a golden colour" and again with the "the label is dark brown" and I never saw a Wazamba bottle float by, which is a shame because I thought it would be funny to post the French, doubly funny if I posted the shipping particulars instead of the perfume PR.

Did I mention "obsessive"?

Lookie!

I'm all featured and stuff.† Garden Planters-dot-com likes my tomatoes almost as much as I do.

Though I'm pretty sure it was the cucumber-as-John-Holmes reference that drew them in.‡

[SUMMARY: Gardeners are a saucy bunch.]

Meanwhile, a kitcen appliance tragedy§ has stalled my cupcake quest: the dough hook of my Kitchen Aid mixer is somehow jammed on the thing.¶ It won't push up, so I can't get the little knobby thing to travel the little groovy thing to take the dough hook off.

I was in full panic mode last night.

Having accepted a lost day of baking,# I'm a little more zen today.

[SUMMARY: All things are relative. Zen doubly so.††]

Do they have mixer repairmen?‡‡


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Apparently, I'm influential.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): The Google tracks of the wily gardener... it's all part of the circle of life.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): I was distraught, in any case. Most of the world remained largely untouched by this turn of events. I believe Guy suggested, to my frantic Facebook post, "bigger hammer."

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): The spring moves fine, I soaked the thing in hot water and ammonia, there's nothing visible wrong with it. It just won't budge.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): And more than once contemplated whether cupcakes can be made either with a dough hook or in the fancy new food processor.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Apologies to Douglas Adams.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): And do they look like Gustavo Dudamel?

Do Your Civic Duty

VOTE!

Oh, not for any of those windbags, liars or foot-in-mouth experts on capitol hill. I'm baking an oodle† of cupcakes some time in the next week and I'm interested in the general public's‡ temperature on the final flavour slot.

1st cupcake recipe - Buttermilk cake with Spiced Vanilla frosting§
2nd cupcake recipe - Red Wine Chocolate cake with Mascarpone frosting
3rd cupcake recipe - Um... I'm leaning toward one of the following:

• Cardamom & Orange cake with Lemongrass frosting


• Cranberry cake with Dulce de Leche Pecan frosting


• Carrot Cake cake with classic Cream Cheese frosting


• Hummingbird¶ cake with Marmalade frosting

Cast your vote off to the right% there, leave a comment... you may just influence what I bake, and isn't that what you've always dreamed of?#


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): The proper term for a group of cupcakes. Y'know... like a pride of lions, a pod of whales, an unkindness of ravens... an oodle of cupcakes.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): And you guys too!

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Like this:




As an aside to the footnote (supply lines are getting thinner and harder to maintain), when I searched my blog for "cake," it told me there were no posts that matched the query "cake." My blog is a lying whore.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): For those of you who aren't Southern, the cupcake book says hummingbird cake is a "classic recipe from the American South," and its ingredients include cinnamon, mashed bananas, orange zest, shredded carrot, crushed pineaple and flaked coconut.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): NOT a political statement.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): When you wish upon a blog, makes no difference who you snog... lalala... hum if you don't know the words.

As another aside (I can hear you rolling your eyes), I wanted to add musical notes to that, but the latest version of Word no longer has musical notes. I don't know what I'm going to do when I want to sing to you now.