Locomotivation

Which means nothing.†

I just kinda liked the word and thought it would look cool popping up over there on the right with the other blogtitles.‡

Here's what I have for you today:

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Like that's news.

[SUMMARY: And the grapes would be sour anyway.]

It's probably largely due to my complete lack of clarity. Two things everybody should know:

1. Secret Pal sent me enough roll-on patchouli to glaze the streets of Denver and keep the hippies happy... and keep me in a state of half-lidded sexual limbo for weeks. Thank you, Secret Pal! I'll be getting more batteries on my lunch hour!


2. The next Vampirates sweater will not be for Tallest, Hairiest Nephew's brother... it will be for Brother. Capital B. As in my brother. As in 6'2" and I wish he'd stop working out so I wasn't contemplating a township of black stockinette.§ That's why I need your support for the idea I can finish it in four months.¶

See? If I just took the marbles out of my mouth, y'all would know what I was talking about.

[SUMMARY: You get what you pay for.]

I'm sure my blogvalue will drop like a Pinto's transmission when the blogiverse gets word that Hans isn't here today.#
*************
Indonesian Patchouli - Yakshi (oil - from Secret Pal)

Marin says: Proving that, like roses,†† different patchoulis have different scents. I'm loving the idea of discovering new concepts out of old ideas.

This version educates me in notes I'd only vaguely noticed and never really put a name to before: licorice, bitter chocolate, benzene.

Usually, patchouli has an black soil base with an overlay of twigs and leaves and tiny, white flowers. This has nothing botanical that I can suss out. It's deeper, rounder and blackter than usual,‡‡ and the scent clings tightly to my wrist... I can't smell it when I'm typing, but the scent doesn't fade even after hours of wear, which makes it kind of personal.

Yakshi says: Indonesian Patchouli finds its strength from the islands of Indonesia. Imagine the heavy, distinct scent wrapping you in a fragrance reminiscent of an exotic Balinese dancer. Fabulous fingers of fragrance evoking a strong, irresistible scent.

Hans says: *cricketcricketcricket*


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Unless you read it as "lack-o-motivation," in which case you'd be on the right track. Heh. Track... trains... locomotive... sorry.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Because it is better to look good than to write good, darling.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Not that there's anybody I'd rather knit acreage in stockinette for.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Particularly given that I haven't been able to get two teeny-tiny little Arrrgyle socks done in nearly two years.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Funny Hans story: He just called to ask me to look up a couple of wells for him, as he wasn't finding the information he was hoping for at the county courthouse in beautiful downtown Lusk. Turns out the boss sent him to the wrong county. Now Hans has to drag his sweet ass (his words) to even beautifuller Douglas, Wyoming, where the wells actually live.

If I get to Reno next week and find I was supposed to be in Honolulu...

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Speaking of roses, I am currently reading The Emeperor of Scent by Chandler Burr, and there is a footnote in the book (yay, footnotes!) that every variety of rose has a distinct scent all its own.

Ketchup with the Fried and a Small Side of Pig-Lick

I have spent almost as much time in the last two weeks apologising for my bad communication skills† as I have actually getting anything across.

Blame Billings.

The people in the Billings office with whom I've had to coordinate on the current sale have driven me to a level of brain activity most often reserved for dog trainers and pre-school teachers.

They ignore half of what I say, all of what I ask and react to the balance as if English is not their first language.‡

On the flip side, when they ask or tell me anything, I have to ask a dozen questions to figure out what it is they actually want.

So I talk to people like they're two. And everything anyone says to me, I question and prod and refuse to take at face value.

I hate what they've done to me. I used to be a reasonable, smart girl -- albeit given to occasional gusts of breeziness -- and now I'm a paranoid fuckwit.

I'd like to take this public opportunity to apologise to those who have been on the receiving end of my complete lack of logic and warn you it's not quite over.

[SUMMARY: That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.]

We're just getting started on the November sale.

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

On a happier note, there is a brief reprieve between the October sale and the November sale in which we're all pretending there is neither a November sale, nor a constant stream of corrections and questions on the October sale.

And I'm going to Reno.

Monday.

For work.

Hans... poor Hans has to go to Lusk, Wyoming, tomorrow.§ But I get to go to Reno.

Now, my goal in life is to be dispensable. Dispensable people don't have to forego vacations because they can't be spared. Dispensable people don't have to attend client meetings. Dispensable people have disposable time.

On the other had, indispensable people get to go to Reno instead of Lusk. For 24 hours. And not really work.

I'm staying at a spa.

[SUMMARY: It's good to be king.]

Y'all are going to miss me so much.

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

Tallest, Hairiest Nephew's birthday was Friday. I did, indeed, complete the Vampirates sweater in time.

This is the high fashion shot¶:




This is the edgier shot, in which THN displays both his mother's wig# and the skull itself beautifully.




Little brothers always have to drag tag along.




See? It was a good Friday.

Now Brother wants his own Vampirate sweater.

[SUMMARY: I'm a sweater factory.]

It's four months 'til Christmas. I can do that, right?
*************

Sampaquita - Ormonde Jayne (edp)

Marin says: It's a floral I can't put my finger on. It blooms into something with a bitter edge, like grapefruit, but not -- maybe a bitter orange -- just the tiniest hint, leading me to chase it around my wrist like my own shadow.

It definitely rolls out and I get an immediate whiff of bark or moss, but it's fleeting and light. There's a vague fruit somewhere under there, but I can't figure out what it may be -- a sweet, chewy fruit like date or fig, not a bright apricot or citrus.

Ormonde Jayne†† says: (National Flower of the Philippines) Literally translated as "I Promise You."

Sampaquita flower is a symbol of purity and fragility, coupled with fidelity and resolve. The scent opens with an unmistakable summer bouquet,$ bursting forth with sun-kissed lychee set on a canvas of bergamot,$ grass oil and magnolia flowers in full seductive bloom. The marriage of these elements, together with a dusky floral heart of sampaquita absolute, freesia and muguet, combine to form a fusillade of fabulous intensity. An inspired quartet of base notes, musk, vetiver, moss$ and ambrette seed, unify and harmonise this sensational summer scent.

- Top: Lychee, grass oil, bergamot and magnolia
- Heart: Sampaquita absolute, freesia, muguet, rose and water lilies
- Base: Musk, vetiver, moss and ambrette seed

Hans says: Now that you told me, it's definitelly Filipinoish. Gotta wait for the roll-out.

Yeah, it smells like the perfume section of the Thai market; it's definitely something familiar.

"It's very different now," I said.

Yeah, it is different. Muskier. Is that a word?

"If you can use 'Filipinoish,' I'm pretty sure you can use 'muskier.' Muskier may even be in the dictionary."


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): That's not bad like Michael Jackson bad, that's just plain awful. If I'd meant it the Michael Jackson way, I'd have spelled it "skillz."

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): If only I had a special treat to train them with. And a cattle prod.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): A town so unremarkable it doesn't even have its own website.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): I'm gearing up for the impending season of Top Model. Gotta get the lingo down. Meanwhile, I'd like you to marvel a little how nicely the sweater fits despite the fact that nephew is built like a phone pole and I didn't have actual measurements. Thank you.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): I don't know why eBeth has two wigs lying around the house. I didn't ask.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): If you are the type who is interested (*cougheBethcough* *coughSylviacough* *coughRosiecough*), Ormonde Jayne offers a sampler of all ten Ormonde Jayne scents for about $60, shipped postage free from England. They're lovely... and such nice packaging!

$FOOTNOTE (on the money!): Ha! Got one!

Old Friends

I'm in a sentimental place today.

I'm not sure that's even the best word, since there are negative connotations to "sentimental" I've never had any truck with.†

But last night, watching the slideshow presentation on 100 years of St. Mary Land & Exploration, I was taken by surprise at the depth of feeling I have for this industry.

While I know when I tell people I'm in the oil & gas business, I frequently fall to someplace between tapeworm and lawyer‡ on the acceptability scale, I will hold out to the end that not every company runs an oil tanker onto a reef in Prince William Sound and not every oil company cheats its employees and the world in general out of stock benefits.

Not every oil company rapes the earth and bilks little old ladies out of their rightful royalties.

In fact, most don't.

And there are companies like St. Mary that are so conscious, so smart and so close to their family-owned roots§ that I take pride in my long association with them.

Part of what I love about my career¶ is most of what I love about this industry: history. No matter what your overall temperature on drilling and mining, you can't deny the enormous impact they've had on our history. The interstate highway system, fast food and California can all be argued to be inextricably linked to landman activity.%

I like being a part of history. I like that I helped put in the largest pipeline system in Wyoming. I like that my dad did landwork on the Alaska pipeline. I like that St. Mary had Russian drilling permit number 001 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

We're all a part of history, of course, but there are days I feel exactly *where* my place in history might be.

[SUMMARY: Why say in ten words what you can say in ten hundred words?]

Anyway, I'm kinda sentimental today.

So when I was puttering through my blogreading and found Yvette's Excellent Kissing Adventure, I thought to myself, "Self, everybody should take a moment and inventory the truly amazing kisses in their lives.

Seriously.

Go do it.

You might be surprised at the number and/or quality of kisses you remember. You may be astonished at the details you can dredge up surrounding that one perfect liplock.

However it hits you, you can't help having a happy, dopey little moment.

It's good blogfodder, too, if you're inclined to share. Now, I'm not meme-ing you# or tasking you,†† I'm just sayin'... in a totally Blogging Without Obligation‡‡ frame of mind, it could make a cool post, and one that might make you grin in that goofy way you do.§§

[SUMMARY: I love blogs for sentimental reasons...]

I also got an email from one¶¶ of my oldest friends## today. It goes like this:

I knew only you would appreciate this. I generally like the format on Jack 105FM, play anything and everything. However, this week they have had 2 of the worst segues ever.

1. Ironman by Black Sabbath to Summer of 69 Bryan Adams - actually stopped me cold

2. Cherry Pie by Warant to Vacation by the GoGos - from Hair Metal to what ever the hell the GoGo's were.

Do you think they off shored their programming and somebody in India is picking song that they they think go together?

Apu - "Cherry Pie is something you eat on Vacation, so this is wonderful telephonic conversion"

The sentimental connection?

As I was reading the two examples, my immediate thought was, "They've outsourced our radio to India."

Some people, I don't know why I even consider them friends. Others? There's no way we wouldn't be friends.

[SUMMARY: It's a day of absolutes.]

That's my rose-coloured sentimental journey.

I may have to beat a small child to balance my chi after all that.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): I'm not a sap. Am *not*!

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): You will note I'm not saying which is more acceptable, tapeworm or lawyer, just that I may fall between.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Philosophically. Literally, St. Mary went public in 1966 or so.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Not job. Career.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): Of course, hairy palms and going blind might also be linked to landman activity, but that's not our focus of study.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Stacey.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): All grammar issues aside, if you do blog it, would you please let me know?

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Thus:



§§FOOTNOTE (twisting like the perfect kiss): Oh, I may not *know* you know you, but I know you have a goofy grin you trot out for special occasions.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (March of the penguins. April of the penguins, maybe -- oh, yes it is. It's snowing outside again. 80 yesterday, snow today.): Actually, two. Marky B wrote me from London to say absolutely nothing noteworthy has happened since the last time we corresponded, though he will be in Florida soon and I should drop by if I get a chance.

##FOOTNOTE (pounded like the heavy hand of a bad joke): Well, not old, per se, but I have been bestest friends with him since high school. For a kid who attended five elementary schools, it's pretty awe-inspiring to have a friend for 26 years.

Wilds of Wyoming

Life and werk... so educational.

F'risntance: We† were working on an acquisition from a company that wants to focus on their own unique brand of oil exploration, which consists of drilling an 18' diameter hole 3000' down,‡ then dynamiting their way into various up-hole locations in a sort of stellate, hub-to-rim pattern, fracturing their way into local oil reservoirs.§

As someone who used to hang around guys, beer and fireworks, I'm pretty sure this is the result a drunken night amongst the engineers and a surplus of TNT.

Somebody at the seller's company drew a picture on their dry erase board:




Huh. Phallic.

[SUMMARY: Oilfield wishes and explosives-fueled dreams.]

The seller's office was very nice -- they call it the IT building.¶ It has cool, I'm sure custom-made oil derricks in their grand, sweeping staircase.




It was also entertaining, but that may just have been me.#

F'rinstance, I had a chance to closely examine a box of staples.




Maximum penetration? That's what she said.††

But the guarantee put the icing on the stapler cake:




Oh, how I want to test that guarantee.

[SUMMARY: Entertainment is in the eye of the beholder.]

There is a REALLY good restaurant in Sheridan‡‡ called Oliver's Bar and Grill. I had mole quail stuffed with hominy Tuesday night.

And tortilla soup and the most architectural of salads§§ Wednesday night. And pheasant ravioli and a chocolate tower Thursday.¶¶

Macchu Picchu salad and Chocolate Tower



And they didn't even sneer at my photographic dorkitude.

[SUMMARY: Oliver knows which side his bread is buttered on.]

Speaking of bread... Oliver's has a wine/cheese/bread shop attached to it, so Brother and I bought four loaves of Dakota bread to take home. Carry-on bread. A lady in the seat across from us on the tiny plane couldn't put her purse in the tiny overhead compartment for fear of squishing our bread. Her purse was buckled into its own seat and our bread rode unmolested.

Sheridan, like so many Wyoming towns, has an abundance of random acts of public art. Thus:




Brother rotated and revolved this, and it's a fully-interactive planet.##

Sheridan also has its fair share of Wyoming mud trucks...




...kitschy mom-n-pop motels...




...and a really spectacular yarn shop.






Wait, wait... you have to see how clever their logo:




See? It looks just like the window on the shop.

I wandered around for quite some time and found a book I'd never seen before, so I got it, along with some lovely silk to possibly execute one of the designs in the book, only this is very thick-n-thin yarn and it looked wonky as hell all laced up, so I frogged it and will be making something different with the silky stuff.






Before I leave for the day,††† I have to share an observation on Sheridan and its independent renaissance personnel:

They're there. In spades.

When I blew up the IT system at the Holiday Inn, the guy they brought in as their top-tier expert was talking to the office manager who'd tried to help me.

"Are you off after this?" she asked.

"I have to go fix a washing machine," he replied.

For some reason, I thought it was a joke, like, "Ha ha, the dolts here will probably be wasting my mad geek skillz fixing a bloody washing machine," only he was perfectly serious. Apparently, there was a valve malfunction.%

And Wednesday night at Oliver's, we overheard a guy talking to people at the table next to him. He taught dental hygienist courses part of the week and criminal justice classes the rest of the week.

Brother said, "Have you been listening to this?"

"Oh, yeah."

"How does that happen?"

"I don't know, but let's hope he never gets confused as to which one he's teaching. The cavity search portion of the class could be hell."

Brother pointed out I'd never, ever be able to toss that line off again. How many times are you going to run into a dental hygienist/criminologist in one person?

Once.

In Sheridan, Wyoming.

Where they drink this:




[SUMMARY: Sheep AND yarn shop. Still a knitblog!]


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And by "we," I mean "Brother and me."

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Don't ask. I asked. "How do they keep the dinosaur bones from falling on them?" I asked. Nobody knows.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Also? Don't ask what happens when you're in the bottom of the hole and the frac channel (a term I just made up, but might actually exist) starts siphoning oil into the hole around your feet. Nobody knows that either.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Not for the reasons you may think. It stands for "Ivory Tower."

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Projecting? Your dear ol' AntiM? Say it ain't so!

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): She also said, "Excuthe me, but I think you have my thtapler" about 2011 times, because the Office Space stapler bit *never* gets old.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Father informs me there are several movie stars doing the back-to-the-earth thing around Sheridan, so it's not as Wyoming as it could be.

§§FOOTNOTE (twirly!): Brother termed it the Macchu Picchu salad.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (one foot in front of the other...): For those of you scoring at home, yes, we tried no other restaurants during our stay. At least not for dinner.

##FOOTNOTE (double pounder with quarters): The little satellite you see there used to be on the right side of Saturn until Brother got 'hold of it.

†††FOOTNOTE (don't cross me again!): Seriously, dudes. I can hear crickets in the office today.

%FOOTNOTE (percentaged): ETA: in the washing machine. Possibly the computer system too.

Big Skies

Through the magic of the Innernets, you barely even noticed I left for Wyoming yesterday morning.†

And here I type, in the suburbs of Sheridan, on a computer with no space bar.‡

I gotta motor if I'm going to meet the guys for breakfast, but let's indulge in a little nostalgia for the homefront, shall we?

How long has it been since you saw my crane?§




I took an unusual route out of downtown the other day,¶ and snapped this on the fly out of the car window:

Crane farm!



OK, gotta go get the most out of my Priority Rewards with my free breakfast.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): I flew. Which seems ridiculous. I mean, it's northern Wyoming, practically Montana, but still... neighbour.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): It technically has a space bar, but you have to hit it just right or it just ignores. Let's spin this: I'm learning a new computer skill.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Look how blue the sky!

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): A little detour to the yarn store "on the way home," don't ya know.

Giggity

I put more than 1200 miles on the Cutest Little Car in the Whole Wide World last week. In fact, she turned over to 10,000 miles on the Douglas Highway, halfway to Gillete, Wyoming. Well, halfway as far as the Douglas Highway portion of the trip. Not so much halfway from home. Anyway, we celebrated by visiting a pumpjack and chasing rabbits.

The pumpjack. The rabbits are long gone.

Note the level of filth on Cutest Little Car. I wish you could see the back -- you can't even see where the window is or what the license plate says. She wants to be a Jeep when she grows up.

(I know, I know. I'll get stuck like a mosquito in amber if I produce any more sap. I'll stop.)

So I worked in Gillette, where I probably should have taken more pictures because Gillette has a lot to offer, photo-op-wise. There's an enormous amount of outdoor art in Gillette. In fact, in the "downtown" portion of Gillette, there is a sculpture of some sort on every single street corner. We're talking upwards of 20 street corners, plus some random non-streetcorner art. Most are cowboys or eagles or what you might expect from a relatively small western mining/ranching city, but there's a handful of abstract modern sculpture and -- for reasons unknown -- a panda mommy cradling a panda baby while eating a bamboo frond that dribbles out of her mouth almost to the ground. I love that sculpture. There's something weird about the proportions or something, so it looks odd. Besides, it's so out of place. It's right in front of a Savings & Loan.

There's also a liquor store with one of those adjustable signs that said, "Adult Day Care." Now, that could just be funny, but in smallish cities like Gillette, buildings are often shared by odd bedfellows (as in there could potentially actually be an adult day care centre sharing the building with the liquor store... probably not IN the actual liquor store, but guess where I'd want to go when I need adult day care if it is). I really, really wanted a picture of that to post here, but I forgot about it until I was halfway to Basin (see below). It should tell you something about my level of commitment (read: insanity) that I seriously contemplated going back to Gillette just for that image.

Oh! And The Goings. The Goings may be a sort of nightclub in the Chop House restaurant (I've never been. I'm making up my own stories about what goes on in the backrooms and barrooms of Gillette). On the side of the building is this enormous, spooky, black-n-white painting of a train COMING RIGHT AT YOU. It's onimous (or even ominous) and very gothy (which has to do with vampires and moping and Bauhaus and stuff, as opposed to "gothic" which is a lovely type of novel or architecture), though I'm guessing that's not what the artist or proprietors were going for.

So you can just imagine all those pictures I *didn't* take. Um... and add antelope to that little photo album in your head. Wyoming is lousy with antelope. There may be more antelope than ants in Wyoming, but I managed to get not a single antelope picture.

(Going through my head right now: "...where the beer and the canteloupe play...la la la")

[SUMMARY: a thousand words hopefully paint a picture, since I didn't get actual photos of stuff I'm willing to describe at great length.]

After Gillette, I headed to Basin, county seat of Big Horn County.

Three things I truly love about my work:

1. It's very project-oriented and I do lots of different things for lots of different clients, which is really good for everybody involved because I have a short attention span and tend to get petulant and recalcitrant if hemmed in by too many daily-weekly-monthly-quarterly tasks.
2. I get to deal with families and people all over the west. Sometimes I just run their mineral title through county records (I frequently run records from US Patent -- some time in the late 1800s -- to present) and I get to make up stories about what happened through the years. There are places where I can see women having illegitimate children on the prairie (certainly a no-no in 1896), men having illegitimate children and their wives and legitimate children probably not finding out until the will is read, sex changes (more than you may think in rural Wyoming, Utah and Colorado), large families, small families, single families that have owned the same lands and ranches for more than a hundred years... it's fascinating.
3. I get to drive right into beauty like this:

Heading to the Big Horn Mountains

How could you not love that? Of course, there can be weather issues. For instance, just west of Ranchester (really), this is where I came from:

Cloudy, but dry

And this is where I'm going (in the north loop of the Big Horn Mountains).

That's snow in them thar hills

I had a spiffy photo of the blizzard I braved (right off the dash of the car, only about 100 feet of visibility), but it somehow didn't make it off the camera or something, so you'll have to imagine that along with all of Gillette.

I got to Basin about 4:30, just early enough to get a taste of what I was up against, but not long enough to do actual work.

Basin County Courthouse

I asked a nice lady in the courthouse if she could recommend a place to stay. The fact that she said, "In BASIN?" with such naked shock did not bode well for the tourist prospects of one Basin, Wyoming. She sent me back to Greybull (you can check a Wyoming map if it's really important to you to see exactly where I've been) and recommended I stay at the Greybull Motel, definitely the nicest place in town. "If you can't get into the Greybull... um... I guess the Antlers is your next best bet."

On the drive betwixt Basin and Greybull (all eight miles of it), I had misgivings. What if the Greybull Motel was some fancy place that was $120 a night and I'd somehow given the impression I was accustomed to (or in the market for) a Waldorf-Astoria experience right there in northern Wyoming? I needn't have worried.

This is the beadspread in Room 104 of the Greybull Motel... Cowboys AND Indians!

These are the two chairs in Room 104 of the Greybull Motel

This is the ducky valance in Room 104 of the Greybull Motel

This is the ACTUAL ROPE glued to the ceiling (over the festive and thematic wallpaper border) in the bathroom of Room 104 of the Greybull Motel

I loved the Greybull Motel. It was $44 a night, spotless to the point of antiseptic and the proprietor was as nice as nice could be. And kitsch like this deserves a little blogphoto space. If you're ever in Greybull (how many times in your life do you think you'll hear/see a sentence that begins "If you're ever in Greybull..."?) I definitely recommend the Greybull Motel.

Side note: I wandered to one of the (near as I can tell) two restaurants in Greybull that are not Subway and ordered a salad. When the little waitress girl with all the eyeliner brought my "salad," I almost, was *this far* (fingers nearly touching) from saying, "I didn't order a hamburger." See, the "salad" consisted of several large iceberg lettuce leaves (the sort normally associated with hamburger garnish), several rings of onion (the sort normally associated with hamburger garnish), two slices of tomato (the sort normally... you get it by now) and four dill chips. The small tub of dressing on the side was the only concession to the concept of salad. Sometimes it's hard to get good food in small towns. Next time, I'll try the Subway.

[SUMMARY: The Greybull Motel would make Martha Stewart stroke out, but it's the kitschy coolest best. Don't eat at Ernesto's in Greybull.]

Actual work was accomplished on Friday. Slow work. I had to make 168 pages of copies off microfiche, which is usually a fairly quick and easy task, but Big Horn County has the world's strangest microfiche printing system. I don't know if you've ever printed off microfiche before, but you usually line up your doc in the MF reader, press the giant orange (or green) button and voila! Seconds later, a copy!

With this one, you have to line it up, shut a cover (like a copy machine, but on the screen. Never seen anything like it), press "enter" on the computer to which it is hooked up, wait 45 seconds for the computer to process, wait 30 seconds for the scan to go down -- mysteriously, behind closed doors -- on the scanner, wait 30 seconds for it to get to the (slow) printer, wait 15 seconds for the paper to make its way all the way from the paper tray to the output tray.

The lifecycle of the Big Horn microfiche printer, ladies and gentlemen.

After about ten pages of this, I went to the car and got my knitting (it should be noted, for illustration, that my car was roughly one block -- part of which includes the stairs you see in the photo of the courthouse -- from the microfiche machine, and I hit "enter" just before I went to the car and it was just finishing printing when I returned. I did not run). I knitted TEN ROWS (For those of you scoring at home, that's five times the rows knitted during four hours of "America's Next Top Model, the Marathon" over the previous weekend) on the Stupid Blanket.

Big Horn workspace, plus MF reader and the Stupid Blanket at work

As you can see, I had a fascinating few days. Y'all are fascinated. Y'all are contemplating a career in landmanning. Y'all only wish you could work with MF machines all day (and believe me, MF takes on its darker meaning pretty quick when you waste... um, SPEND... four-plus hours printing documents on a slow-ass machine).

At least I got some knitting done.

[SUMMARY: Despite the fact that I worked with a slow MF machine all frickin' day Friday, land work is FASCINATING. Everybody wants to be a landman 'cause you get so much knitting time.]

Tomorrow: our heroine reveals the THREE new scarves she's already knitting, along with the TWO scarves she's going to knit and ONE pair of socks for which she just bought yarn. (Three! THREE BEAUTIFUL UFOs! And three! THREE BEAUTIFUL USO's!** MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! lightning... bats...**)

**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): USO = UnStarted Object, in case that's not already common knitting parlance.

**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): That's The Count from Sesame Street, in case you couldn't get it through the narrative sound effects.

**FOOTNOTE (unasterisked): Male Lady alert! Upon return from the wilds of Wyoming, I had a message from Kelly from Thursday night saying, "Wyoming girl! Where are you? When are you coming home? The Boy** was doing laundry next door to Re-Favourite Bar** and Male Lady** sent her son in and then she called my cell phone and said he'd never cared for me and..." (then my VM cut her off and I had to wait HOURS until Saturday afternoon before I could find out what happened)

For the record? Call from PNhead at 6:42 Thursday evening, about the time Male Lady sent her son into Re-Favourite Bar after Kelly and The Boy. I'm telling you, it's enough to make me want a taser for my purse.

**FOOTNOTE WITHIN A FOOTNOTE (asterisked): Kelly uses their actual names.

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

On a not even tangential note, Duke should NOT get a six seed in The Tournament. I am a long-time Duke fan when it comes to March Madness (read: not so much the lacrosse team), but even I know better. In fact, I may go so far to say Duke should have been benched in favour of bubble-y little Drexel, who probably deserves the slot more.

Please don't tell Coach K I said so.

No, Seriously -- Cows

And, for my beloved pal in Secret Pal 10 (new best friend! who will send PRESENTS!), here are the answers to the questionairre. Trust me, I like getting mail that doesn't come with a price tag (i.e. -- bills, catalogs, invitations to baby showers) so much, you can't go wrong.

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?

I love natural fibers, of course, but I don't turn my nose up entirely at synthetics -- just those that squeak when you rub them or give you rug burn just fondling them in the store. I don't like yarns that split a lot and I've had bad luck with cotton -- hard on the hands.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?

DPNs in a case, circulars all over the place, Denise needles in their Denise cases. I still have some straight needles, but they are best used for back scratching these days.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?

Mom taught me when I was 10, but it's not like I've been knitting non-stop since. Oh, heck, I never know what the categories mean. I knit socks. I've knitted lace and cables. I'm going to guess "intermediate."

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?

Nope.

5. What's your favorite scent?

Lime or Patchouli or Violet or Clove (I hate vanilla, however)

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?

Dark chocolate generally does it for me. 'Specially if it's mixed with something salty like pretzels or nuts or salt caramel.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?

I don't spin (yet). I don't really do a lot these days other than knitting, craft-wise. Anything else would eat into my knitting time. Which, frankly, already eats into my reading time and my drinking time.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)

I don't like most jazz, most country, most blues or most R&B. Oh, and most new age. I really like hard rock, 80s stuff, goth, folk, about half the rap out there and serious bimbo music (see: Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" and anything by the Pussycat Dolls. I know, I know, but the girl likes what the girl likes).

I also like a lot of "alternative," but that's kinda like saying I like contemporary music. What the hell does it mean? I like Death Cab for Cutie, Franz Ferdinand, Fallout Boy, Modest Mouse, Margot and the Nuclear So and So's... I don't know if that helps narrow anything down.

AND (almost missed the key element) I'm fully equipped for whatever musical format anyone wants to send me. Probably in multiple places in various combinations and levels of portability... I'm kind of a gadget/electronics freak.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?

Favourites: Purple, Pink, Red, Chocolate Brown... I don't generally like pastels (darks and brights work best for me), yellow generally makes me look green, ditto orange that isn't pretty rusty/reddish or very yellowy greens. If I don't look good in the colour, I don't tend to like it very much out in the real world either.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?

I live alone with a cat and I'm so glad to be putting that out there like that. Woo-hoo! 40-year-old single girl with a cat! Who knits! Stock up on condoms!

I also do have a family (brother, sis-in-law, two nephews and father all live in this neighbourhood and much of my extended family lives in the general metro area), but not here in my house. I don't know what good that does you, but it's nice to think about all that wonderful, fuzzy family nearby. Makes me feel better after the single/cat revelation.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?

No ponchos, never ever yucch. OK, I've seen some cute ones, but I have too many memories of being six and poncho'd every time I wore a dress. It was like the early 70s Texas version of wearing white gloves or something. I don't wear hats much, but mostly because I don't have any. Ditto mittens. And (fancy that) ditto scarves.

I don't knit for myself, people. The cobbler doesn't have the pretty shoes and the therapist is totally bonkers, ya know?

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?

Socks and scarves.

13. What are you knitting right now?

Socks and scarves and a baby blanket... going to start that sweater any day now. The mailman will bring my yarn ANY DAY...

(if you were here, you'd hear me singing "Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman," even though I only know five words)

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?

Oh, yes, please! (see: don't knit for myself) And I'd be so easy -- I don't have hats or scarves or mittens and I have a black AND a brown jacket, so I could match anything and I don't have any fibre allergies at all and I'd be totally grateful! Of course, yarn in its natural state or chocolate (see: mail that I don't have to eventually pay for) would be fabulous. I don't want to give the impression I'd be disappointed if something not a handmade something showed up in my mailbox. I'm just happy to be here and happy you're my new best friend!

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?

CIRCULAR. Not plastic.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?

Both.

17. How old is your oldest UFO?

About a year -- it's getting ripped out soon so I can use the lovely, lovely yarn (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino in a staid and elegant cream) for something else. Other than that, everything's pretty new (like less than two months old). I been seriously F'n my O's.

18. What is your favorite holiday?

Halloween. I so wanted to say "Arbor Day," but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be that much of a smartass. You're only trying to be nice.

19. Is there anything that you collect?

Psychos and vodka. Sorry. Back to that "being nice" thing: dragonflies, hedgehogs, orchids, people and books.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?

Knit 'n' Style is the only magazine to which I have a subscription. I know there are books I don't have, but I can't remember what they are offhand. If I come up with something, I'll happily post it. Watch this space (what a shameless way to get someone besides Marcia and my brother to read my blog. Secret Pal, it's you and me all the way! Best Friends Forever!)

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?

Sweaters. I just wanna learn how to knit sweaters. As broad as liking alternative music, no?

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?

Oh, yes. I don't know about measurements. I'm a size 9 shoe.

23. When is your birthday?

June 27

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My adventures in Wyoming... coming soon to a blogspace near you.

**FOOTNOTE (unasterisked): I don't know how to spell questionairre... quesstionaire... questionnaire... LIST.

Why Wyoming?

Because it's there. And last time I checked, there was oil and gas and pipelines and all kinds of Marin work there too.

I found out yesterday that I'm going to Wyoming tomorrow. The work should be pleasant and easy, but it's a lot of driving, which is OK, 'cause this is how I roll (literally):

A Mini Cooper in Autumn, a lovely sight to see.
Taken outside Ouray, Colorado October 1, 2006.

I can't tell you how excited I am to have a chance to show that off, finally. If I had to go too many more days, I was going to have to declare National Cutest Little Car Day and make y'all look at slide shows of my baby. And that would be over the top.

*happysigh* So cute, so fast, such fun. If your ol' AntiM were a car, she'd be a MiniCooper: cute and short with a low centre of gravity... but all James Bond inside (what with the fully digital stereo that carries XM and the iPod connect and the GPS thingy and all).

I should point out that the car neither knits, nor will it be your new best friend, but you can only push an analogy so far.

[SUMMARY: AntiM may be a little too involved with her car. To paraphrase: you can love your car, just don't love your car. Us. Them. Us. Them.]

I'm not sure what this does to me, blogwise (wasn't that one of the Hobbits from the Lord of the Rings movies? Sam Blogwise? I'm a hobbit! I'm your new best friend!) since I no longer have a portable computer.

See, a few years ago, I was carrying a full coffee mug at the tips of my fingers by its rim (handles are for pussies) and I dropped it right on my laptop. If you've never short-circuited a computer via cream and sugar, it's an experience you really should... well, you should see if you can get someone else to do it -- maybe that geek in your IT department or some variety of accountant -- so you can watch, 'cause it truly sucks to see such an expensive and useful piece of equipment go up in smoke when it's yours, but it's borderline spectacular to experience all that smoke on someone else's equipment. And sparks. And that ozoney electrical smell most often associated with lightning storms. I know my co-workers have never forgotten it.

Now, if Gillette, Wyoming (town motto: "We don't make the razors here!") has an internet cafe (how do you do accent marks on this thing?) of some sort, it's your lucky day! If not, I'll be back in a few days and I might even have pictures. Probably of cows. Or wide open spaces. 'Cause what Wyoming has to offer? That's it, that's the list. (I'm exaggerating, but it's funnier that way.)

[SUMMARY: Besides a tendency to make watches run backward, I am hard on electronics, thus unable to maintain a laptop in good working order for impromptu Wyoming trips such as the one on which I am about to embark. I think I'm funny! I may also be a Hobbit, and your new best friend!]

You knitters know that gassing up the car (cutest little car in the whole wide world!) and having clean underwear is not the hard part of travelling. The hard part of travelling is figuring out which and how many knitting projects you need to keep you happy and occupied on the road. Of course, travelling by road means I don't have to explain my needles to the TSA goons or worry about baggage limits, so I may just take all the knitting. A gym bag of clean underwear and sixteen boxes of books, magazines, stash, needles, hooks, markers...

I'll definitely have to take the Stupid Blanket.

I wonder if I can knit at 80 mph on I-25...? Those of y'all in this neck of the woods may want to stay off the road between 4:00 and 8:00 in the morning tomorrow.

[SUMMARY: Same knitting problem, different day.]

**FOOTNOTE (unasterisked, but wildly pissed): hey! Hey! HEYHEYHEY! Where's my comment from Marcia? I had a comment from Marcia! I swear to all that is purple and chocolate and knittable and MiniCooper, I HAD A COMMENT FROM MARCIA! I only have... had... two comments! That's fully 50% of my comments gone! And this was the comment that said I'm CUTE! I don't get that all that much unless it's from me! Aaaarrrgggghhh! Bring me the head of Willie the Bloggerboy!

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Ahem. OK. May have gone off half-cocked (ya think?). February is a different month. All on its own. On a different page. Hello, February. Oh, look, there's Marcia. I'm better now. Total dork, but a better total dork. Carry on.