It's some sort of acacia. My botanist friend brought two saplings, one failed to thrive and was thrown out or died or whut, this one gets trimmed every now and then or it might devour us.
It's not remembered who installed the plush snake. We're contemplating getting an apple.
My computer got too packed with movies, pictures and general clutter. I decluttered (there's various smart software that gets you rid of lots of something that you never miss later on) but still, the thingy was slow and such. I got an external harddisk. Tried it, had it on my table for that day when I'll move my files there and then it disappeared. I looked to all possible places and many impossible ones but it was just gone. I decided that the possibility of me placing the box with said harddisk on the paper bin and my mom taking the trash out was the reason of missing gadget. I got another harddisk, moved my movies there, whined about that small but perceptible dent in my budget - I could have bought some yarn, spinning fibre, perfume, shoes, things... and went on with my life. Today, I put a bag of roving on the piano and when I took it to put it to place, harddisk was under it. The cat is away so I blame the gnomes.
Also, my monitor is borked. Very borked. I consulted that special sort of borkedness with the internets, which say that the graphic card is dying, that it requires servicing and that it sucks. Sigh.
Prompted by the success of celery pie I baked on Pi day, and that bag of vegetables mysteriously appearing on the countertop yesterday morning, I decided that it's time to start cooking. That my mother's endless line of stews is sorta boring.
The mystery bag (as it was explained later, it contained stuff dad found in the company fridge and nobody claimed it) contained some two kilos of carrots and I thought about making carrot meringues. These require parmesan so I dropped to the cheese shop...
...and my subconscious proved to be ahead of matters again. Yesterday's dream was about a mushrooming trip and yours truly digging for truffles and finding none.
So, I was standing in the queue at the cheese deli with sleeve over my nose because by Gods, it stank there. I'm known for not being able to withstand some smells, I need my blue cheese enclosed within a sandwich to be able to eat it and the smell of garlic is a good method how to get rid of me for half a day - or how to make me throw up. And there it was, on the counter, making a face at me (as far as jars can make faces). Truffle honey. With real truffle floating in it.
I got my chunk of parmesan, some ooh, shiny goat cheese and said truffle honey. The rest of my shift, I'll be busy finding out what's that good for. Or maybe I should do some real work and use a spoon.
I was randomly clicking on YouTube recommendations and came across this.
I only listen to youtube, this music theme is not particularly exciting or new or surprising but when I heard that clapping, I had a look. And gasped. Because those guys rock. This type of dance looks like random stomping and waving legs around but my knees started to hurt when I was watching that. The steps are damn good workout for the thighs, too, and one needs to be damn good to make it look so relaxed and easy.
Yesterday, I was listening to the cultural gossip on the radio. Jose Cura is singing the lead in Pagliacci, I decided that it might be worth seeing and after the shift, I started the internetz. I had to give in my long-term ideal of getting the cheapest ticket (eight years of being a student does weird things to one's reasoning. I've become cheap. Very cheap) because there was only one. One. The last one. The theatre's website says not to lose hope, that many of the bookings have to be confirmed yet and that there actually might be some tickets available in April but I wouldn't bet on it. There are many opera freaks in this country. Well, I got that ticket. It wasn't the cheapest one so bye bye, my food and entertainment budget for March. I bragged about the ticket to parents. Dad made a blank face, mom said How will you get to some damn Podunk across the whole country?, to which I replied that most likely by train and bus, why. The obvious question was And why, by all gods and saints, you need to see some goddamn opera at all, and why you bother to spend three days by travelling there and back. Hey, mom, it's in August, in a nice area, I'll take a few days off, do some sightseeing and botanizing. Aaaand, I like teh culture and I'm not ashamed of it. Both parents threw a look of deep lack of understanding, shrugged and continued watching football.
In order to get back on the bandwagon with social life, I went to a lecture on Baroque sculptors. Was fun, should do it more often.
I started making a white sweater some rather long time ago. This effort was stalled several times due to lack of yarn, whatever. And meantime, I decided that I needed a chunkier white sweater. Also, meantime I happened to miscalculate or guesstimate very badly and produced several sweaters that turned out to be too small so I cast on generously.
And then everything went wrong. I counted with those usual 14-ish skeins. At the stage pictured, the total was 18 skeins and there're sleeves to go. Obviously, most of the yarn lives in the other stash I'll be visiting only next Wednesday. And spring hit so I'll have a darn beautiful sweater for next winter.
The pic is taken in my mother's bedroom, if the purple picture-thingy were mine, it would take five minutes to take it to the trash.
Some time ago, my heart desired highlighter green yarn. I looked around, didn't find any and then I wandered to my LYS and there it was, a single orphan skein of Malabrigo Worsted in Apple green. M. had only one skein in stock and didn't plan on placing an order from Malabrigo because teh economy sucks; I grabbed that one, poked it around and then found a matching yarn. Somehow, it's becoming customary that I'm ordering yarn for work in progress and it irks me, I'm telling you. Well, more apple green yarn is on its way from overseas. And I'm already pondering whether 4 skeins in total would be enough, because paired with the other yarn, it's meagre 1500 metres and that may not be enough for a thigh-long tunic. Because, knitting from actual stash is so mainstream.
Yesterday, I had one of those very realistic dreams. One of those in technicolour, including noises, smells and cortisol dripping from my hair. I travelled to my friend Kristina to somewhere in Northern Japan. Said friend lives in Paris... just sayin'. Well, I had a paper with an exact itinerary so that I wouldn't have to interact with the natives. I ended up in Podunk where I was aiming but my cellphone finally fell apart and I couldn't text Kristina to come and pick me up. I sat on a railing pondering what to do, with a huge dilapidated football stadium towering behind me, and apparently I picked a spot where local youngsters liked to hang around. Well, there was no help but to interact, one nice girl lend me her celly so that I could call Kristina who brought me to her place. She needed to work the next day so she sent me to the wilderness of the downtown to buy a new celly. From all that stranger-induced stress, I fainted and smashed my head on the edge of the curb, resulting in some neat stitching at the back of my head. What is my subconscious telling me, damn fucking hell? I've long ago noticed that I'm a sociophobic chickenshit who tends to freak out in places that speak unknown languages. I know that my cellphone is old. I've noticed the news. Why can't I dream of something more entertaining? Or shall I finally go into screenwriting and make this into a Lychesque flick?
Speaking of Japan, we a bunch of Ravellers are organizing a charity auction (me being a really small part of that we). And maybe I should start buying more Noro yarns to help the economy to recover. Or I should finally kick my lazy ass to learn Japanese as I had already planned. (If nothing else, I could have escaped the Oooooh, panic in the news. Yeah, native idjits already plundered pharmacies of potassium iodide, because there's the radioactive end of the world coming. Apparently I have a good reason to hate people, at least sometimes.]
I still have no social life.
My workplace was moved to an office next door. Too much light there, the other inhabitant loves blazing lights, my dark den was much comfier. At least I put up a demotivational poster with a Land Rover covered by shrubbery and drowning in dirty water, with a caption New career in the army. My Procrustean chair and sometimes rather boring work feels much better when I look at said poster because my feet are nice and dry.
Well, sort of. The weather is seemingly beautiful, sunny and such, but it's cold as hell. So, there's a good chance that I finish my cool chunky soft white sweater in time to wear it.
I cleaned the closet, apparently, spring struck in this department, too. It was quite a bit of adventure. I wouldn't guess I might have 20 pairs of jeans, of which 17 are too small for me, I found my old evening dress, size 38 - yes, people of the world, I did wear size 38. And smaller. I threw out a dress I started making in my most anorexic times. I was 19 or 20, wanted to go to a party, started sewing this lovely yellow linen piece... bearing on mind that for sure I'm going to lose those five centimetres around the waist in those three months. I didn't go to the party after all and I never finished the dress, which was some 80cm in the hips. Apparently, carpet beetles like linen so the little barstuds gnawed some holes in it and I tossed it in the trash. Good riddance.
But... but.... My high school graduation dress. Well, I think so, I don't remember what I wore but I got it around that time. Size 38. Maybe I should give in and toss it but I can't, somehow.
Maybe I should hit the gym, after all, the Intelligent Magazine (TM) already announced that it's time to get into shape for the bikini season. Did I say that I've thrown out a few old swimsuits? I didn't wink, I don't like swimming anyway so I don't build emotional ties to swimsuits.
