Puppy Post!

The little dog and I went next door to play with the cute puppy this evening.

First I'd like to say that I don't have any pictures of the cute puppy, because I didn't bring my camera. Or my phone. I'm old. I just don't get the whole photograph-everything-and-share-it-with-the-world mentality. (Yes, I realize that one could make a snide comment about making such a statement on a public blog.)

So instead of a picture of the cute puppy, here's a picture of my little dog instead. It's not a particularly recent picture because 1) see above, and 2) every time I try to take a picture of her, she acts like I'm about to beat her, so I have about twenty pictures of an abused-looking dog, and then this one:

Anyhow, here's what the cute puppy did while we were there:

• Tried really, really hard to get Ginger to play with him. Ginger mostly ignored him, although she did get into play mode twice for about two seconds.
• Played fetch with me using a lemon (because he didn't have any toys for me to throw and the lemon was on the ground).
• Dug in the dirt.
• Dug in the compost pile.
• Dug in the gravel pile.
• Climbed into the chicken's (full) water bucket.
• Tried to get me to play fetch using a big piece of something he pulled from the compost pile. I declined. I wasn't born yesterday, puppy.
• Ate feathers blowing around the yard from the molting chicken.
• Ate chunks of the big piece of something he pulled from the compost pile.
• Tried to get Ginger to play with him some more.

A fun time was had by all, except possibly Ginger who was sitting at the gate waiting to go home.

October Begins

It has come to my attention that I've been neglecting my blog. Or to be more accurate, somebody noticed that I've been neglecting the blog. (I already knew.)

As everyone knows, the only way to make up for neglect is go overboard and spend all of your time with the neglected person/object. So I'm going to make an effort to blog daily all through October. That will help me prepare for NaNoWriMo next month. Building the writing muscle and all that.

Also, the fall television offerings have been a complete loss so far, so I should have extra time.

The good news is that I should have all kinds of things to blog about this month because the master bathroom remodel is scheduled to start on Monday and then it will be four weeks of surprises and disasters as my house is torn apart and put back together.

For example, I found out yesterday during the scheduled-but-nobody-told-me-about-it pre-construction meeting that they will be laying down a strip of heavy paper from the front door, through the living room, down the hall, and into the master bedroom in order to protect the hardwood floor. That would be great except for this:

Yes, that's Scooter. He's adorable. He also has a fetish for peeing on paper and plastic. So in his view they're about to put down a twenty-foot litterbox for him to use.

October ought to be just awesome.

My Dragon Needs A Derm Consult, STAT

So I've been making some progress on my dragon. Frankly, any progress is good progress as far as I'm concerned. I still have to think about how to purl at the beginning of the row if I haven't knitted in a few days. And I do find myself going back and watching videos on how to do all the fancy stuff (defined as anything other than knitting and purling). In addition, I believe I've mentioned before how I am constitutionally incapable of following directions.

Anyhow, this is what the left wing is supposed to look like:
(Screw it. I can't figure out how to make anything but the first picture be the thumbnail when I use the link, and everyone keeps thinking the orange one is mine. Look at the bottom of the page for what it is supposed to look like...)

This is what the left wing actually looks like:

This is what it is supposed to look like:

(https://kimharrison.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/dragon-wing-bones-and-goodreads-contest/)

I still say it's a win even if mine does look like it has some weird disease. Also, I apparently suck at either knitting the I cord or threading a needle through the center of it (or, let's face it, I suck at both of those). Either way, my dragon appears to have some odd bone disease in addition to its skin condition.

But still... progress!

How Hard Can It Be?

On a whim I've decided to just jump right in the knitting pool and make this: https://kimharrison.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/elsa2.jpg. In case you don't want to click on a random link (I swear I'm not Rick-Rolling you!), it's a knitted blue dragon. It's very cute.

But Theresa, I hear you say, I didn't know you knew how to knit!

Well, yeah, I think I made a pot holder once. Or maybe half of a pot holder. About twenty years ago. In any case I think I can figure out how to do the basic stitches with the help of a few YouTube videos. And I know a whole bunch of people (three!) who knit very well. And really, how hard can it be?

That last sentence is meant as sarcasm. I know I'm not qualified to do this project. I'm not even qualified to finish the other half of the pot holder. But dammit, I'm going to do this. And because I expect it to be a complete disaster, I'm going to blog about it for as long as it takes until I finish my dragon-or-maybe-it-will-turn-into-a-pot-holder. My only goal is to finish something.

A large part of the problem will be me not following directions. For instance, I went to the store and got this stuff:

This was all based on this list: https://kimharrison.wordpress.com/2015/07/20/kim-harrisons-dragon-stuff-you-need/. However, of everything shown there, the yarn is the wrong kind, the needles are the wrong size, and the pipe cleaners are twice as big as they're supposed to be. I think the only thing that is correct is the bag of stitch markers, and apparently I could have just used safety pins if I'd had any. So I'm off to a great start. (I also got a nifty blue plastic container to hold it all for reasons named Scooter.)

Anyhow, feel free to start making fun of me now. I'll be busy trying to figure out how to cast on stitches (or whatever it's called) without hurting myself on the double ended needles. The funniest commenter over the course of this fiasco might get a unique Christmas present...

All the Systems In One Place

In my family there are a set of traditional Christmas cookies (which probably aren't normally associated with Christmas in other families) that my mom makes every year. And they're mostly awesome, but also a lot of work, so I only get them once a year.

I decided last week to try making the chocolate bars. Now I know these are a pain to make because they require grating a bar of German chocolate, and that's difficult because it tends to melt. My mom goes through a whole process that involves freezing the blender and it's still a pain. I can't be bothered to do that, so I just bought sweet cocoa powder. Because I'm lazy that way.

Anyhow, here's the original (*) recipe:

Cookies:

• 1 egg white
• 1 whole egg
• 1 cup superfine sugar
• 90 grams grated chocolate
• 1/2 lb grated almonds

Icing:

• 1 egg white
• 5 Tbsp powdered sugar

(*) Original = the way I got it from my mom. She has modified it over the years based on a recipe from her mother-in-law who, I think, translated the recipe from German.

Anyhow, the first thing to notice here is that things are in both English and metric units as well as weights and volumes. That's pretty impressive for a recipe that really only has five different ingredients.

So I made the cookies pretty quickly, not having to freeze my blender and all. It's supposed to make 8 dozen and I ended up with maybe 3 dozen, so I guess I'm supposed to make them smaller next time, but honestly, who has time for that?

Then I had to bake them. The front of the card says 240 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The back of the card has all of the different things my mom has tried over the years, from modifying the baking time and temperature, to alternating the racks during baking and level of violence ("2006  Break choc into small pieces with meat hammer or the like before adding to blender").

I'll just say right now that 300 degrees for 35 minutes burned them.

Did I eat them anyway? Of course I did.

Karma Bites

So my home phone stopped working last week, or at least I noticed that it wasn't working last week. After a couple days of ignoring the problem I finally went out to get a new phone because I wasn't sure if my phone had just fallen on the hardwood floor one too many times.

First I went to the hardware store (because that's where I go to get everything, including clothes), but they don't sell telephones for some strange reason. Then I headed toward Target and realized that there was a Best Buy in the same parking lot. They're still in business. Who knew? Since it was a little after 8pm, I decided there were probably fewer people in Best Buy than Target, so I went to Best Buy. In fact, aside from a few teens camped out in the entertainment section playing games, I was the only customer. I bought the cheapest phone I could find and then waited for the clerk to figure out how to ring up the sale. I gather it wasn't something that he'd done many times before. (Again, Best Buy is actually still in business!) Then of course I had to decline the additional warranty on my $15 phone. And then I had to show my receipt to a guy standing literally five feet away who had watched the whole transaction before I could go out the door. (Why, exactly, is Best Buy still in business?)

So then I came home and plugged the phone in and it still didn't work.

The next day, following the phone company website instructions, I waded through the weeds (with foxtails and I failed to clear out even though last year I had to take my dog in to have three foxtails removed from her ears) to find the exterior jack, crouched down and cleaned out a few of the spider webs, and tried both test jacks which of course didn't work.

I went back inside to set up an online appointment to have a technician sent out. While sitting down I found that while I was crouched in the weeds, a bunch of foxtails had attached themselves to the seat of my jeans and sitting on them made them poke into my butt.

The moral of this story is that procrastination will come back to bite you in the ass.

Literally.

I'm Totally a Princess of Power

So my parents are trying to get rid of everything in the house that they possibly can. One theory would be that they are just trying to declutter, but really I think they're just trying to make more space for a larger quilting setup. (My other theory involves them trying to remove all evidence of their children, but I'm pretty sure that's just the paranoia talking...)

Anyhow, among the precious treasures that they are trying to get rid of are these books which belonged to K-Poo. I think they're awesome.

I have to say that the women in this series might suffer from some anatomic... uh... wish fulfillment, but the men are just downright scary looking. They might even be prototypes for a Planet of the Apes revival.

And then there's the dialogue... "You are right, He-Man," Adora said. "Hordak is bad. The people are unhappy. How could I have been so wrong? I am as bad as Hordak."

(I didn't read the whole story, so I'm going to avoid a rant about how the woman apparently can't figure things out without a man to explain things to her... I really, really hope it isn't as bad as this page makes it sound.)

I know it's a kid's book, but that's the best dialogue they could come up with?

It turns out that there's a whole series of these things, and K-Poo had three of them.

Again, check out the male...

And again, the guy in the lower right corner...

And now for the fun extrapolation... Is K-Poo's inability to find the perfect man because she was exposed to these "humanoid" images as a child? Discuss.