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.

Procrastinate? Me?

How am I supposed to fulfill my destiny as the laziest person on the planet when nobody else in my writing group has submitted anything for this week's meeting?

Because of this, I was forced to finish the short story I've been working on ahead of schedule, and that was after a day of mowing the lawn and trimming weeds. (Note of honesty: I only mowed the back lawn because my nearly seventy year old neighbor mowed my front lawn as thanks for borrowing my mower, although I did say that he didn't need to do that...)

But all of this means that I haven't sent the cards that I was supposed to send over the weekend. Okay, actually I was supposed to send some of them before the weekend.

So if, say, you had a birthday or anniversary this week (or even possibly yesterday), your card might possibly be a little late. Hypothetically.

But enjoy the holiday anyhow!

Containers of Ripley

Look, it's a pot full of Ripley

And a box full of Ripley

And that's all you get because I'm a boring person.

Well, at least I got one thing done

It's April, which means it's time for Camp NaNoWriMo, and so far I've been slacking. The weather has been nice, work has been really busy, and I just haven't been feeling motivated. But someone has finally been kidnapped (fictionally, of course), so maybe things will start going faster.

Here is the view from the outdoor writing area:


And the other direction:


The only drawback is bugs. How can the world support so many insects? It's crazy.

Anyhow, knowing that I'll be tired and writing until all hours of the night all week, I did my taxes today. That's three days early! They've only been kicked back to me once so far. And if anyone ever complains that my error messages are hard to understand, this was in the email I got from the IRS the first time through:

Here's the reason for the rejection:


Issue      : Business Rule X0000-005 - The XML data has failed schema validation. cvc-enumeration-valid.  Value '0' is not facet-valid with respect to enumeration '[F4029, F4361, EXEMPT-NOTARY, EXEMPT COMMUNITY INCOME]'. It must be a value from the enumeration.

The following information may help you determine the form at issue:
Field/Xpath: /efile:Return[1]/efile:

ReturnData[1]/efile:IRS1040[1]/efile:SelfEmploymentTaxAmt[1]



If you are unable to fix the issue, you will have to print the return and file by mail.

Luckily I write software for a living and thus could extract the important information -- I needed to check the field on the form that had something to do with self-employment. (There was a field, I put a zero in it, and apparently it was supposed to be blank. Totally not obvious.)

Anyhow, I have finished my taxes, and that's the important thing.