Wednesday, January 31, 2007

cross

You have reached The Inconsistent Mixer. She is unavailable to come to the blog today due to an inability to behave like a grownup. All of her reactions to the world around her resemble a those of an ill-behaved toddler, and therefor, her blogging privileges have been revoked, along with knitting with wool. Until this grumpy mood passes, the Inconsistent Mixer is only allowed to knit fun fur hats for teens with cancer, to remind her that there are many people in the world way worse off than she is.

When her behavior is better, Ms. Mixer will be bringing you posts about her SP9 reveal package, Playing Dress-Up with Public Art and a re-publish of an article she wrote for the Windy City Knitting Guild newsletter.

Until then, please leave a message at the sound of the tone. Press 1 for more options.


Beep!

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Go read this

Ms. blackbird has posted something bizarre, yet entertaining, and you must go read it:
say la vee: another Schott
That is all.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Just an update

Archer Farms Salt & Pepper potato chips are good, even though they leave your mouth with that pepper-y feeling. Maybe they should be called Pepper & Salt chips. Try adding Canfield's Seltzer Water for extra mouth zing!

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I love my blue basketweave sweater from Eddie Bauer, and I would link to it or show you a picture, except that it appears to be gone from both the main website and the outlet website. Last week, they were down to only having them in cream size medium, which is not my size, otherwise I would have bought a second one. There is just one problem, it seems to shed and pill an awful lot. I hope that I am imagining it, but it seems that the underarms may even be developing holes at the seam, from fiber loss. I wore it over a white shirt today and discovered that I can't take it off because I am now wearing a white and blue fuzz shirt. I think that when it dies, I might have to use this sweater as a template for knitting myself a new, sturdier one. This sweater is 60% cotton, 20% wool, 10% nylon and 10% angora rabbit, so that is a majority of the component fibers as short-stapled, prone to pill and shed, fibers. I don't think its a very wise decision. But I bet that if I put my mind and needles to it, I can make an even better sweater (this one is just the right fit and proportion for my slouchy preferences) with something in a sturdy wool. I'm not certain that I have the patience to knit an entire sweater in what appears to be 14 sts/inch basketweave, but I will probably be able to figure something out. First, of course, I should finish some other projects. Like my fun fur hats and mom's hat and my fair isle sampler sweater.

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I am 11 pages from the end of Jeanette Winterson's Lighthousekeeping and I'm considering not finishing. I have no idea what the point of the book is, who the narrator is (or maybe there is more than one?) or why I should care. I mean, I think that the main narrator and voice of the story is the orphan girl Silver, but I'm not sure. Also, the pages are not laid out like regular pages. There is a lot of white space for a novel. This book might be over my head.

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Sarah Louise sent me a book of Psalms on Friday and it showed up today! How's that for speedy postal service. We must have a site visit going on at the 60640 post office or something. Its a fairly modern translation and I look forward to giving it a try. Also, a book of the Bible in book format is much less daunting than the freaking gigantic things I checked out of the library.

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Continental fixed my flights for the birthday trip to Denmark. So we won't be flying from Chicago to Newark, NJ by heading southwest, or Newark to Copenhagen via Antarctica and Finland. It was very prompt of them and even Lacey looked into it for me, as it was clearly a ridiculous (and possibly funny) database error.

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I had to wait at the Field Museum today in the main hall while my boss and other assorted co-workers had a meeting in the depths of the offices. (they left for the meeting while I was still measuring a room... leaving a note that they would be back to get me... and there is no way to find where they were without a guide.) While I waited, I had a lovely conversation with an old lady who worked as a guide-type person for the Sue dinosaur. We talked about interesting things on the internet, and I told her that digital cameras were really easy, even though they were much less so five years ago, so she should make the switch. We also talked about how Frango mints have changed and expanded their range in recent years. Of course, she also told me all about Sue, and explained the weird sticking out bone underneath the tail.

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Speaking of work, there is a creature living in the ceiling and maybe the wall of my office in the blockhouse. We have rats, and two cats that are living in the building, both species of which are feral and decidedly un-pet-like. Over the weekend, one type of animal or the other fell through the acoustical tile (it shifted, the animal fell) in the women's bathroom in the blockhouse. I am terrified that the creature (which will probably turn out to be an angry 15# rat) is going to fall through the ceiling in the middle of the day, when I am sitting right there, probably on the phone, and it will be followed by an army of creepy crawlies.

Ick.

I hope that Scot figures out how to get it out tomorrow. The main trouble is that above the acoustical tile, the floor of the second level (storage) is 1/4" plate steel. So whatever is in there is pretty much stuck at this point, and we can't get to it. Ewwww.

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We are finally having seasonable weather here. I should learn not to leave fizzy, canned beverages in my car trunk, in Chicago, during seasonable January weather. At least the ice doesn't get everything wet.

The Bears helmets for the Art Institute lions look really great in the shop. I hope that they look even better on the lion-backers.

Thanks for reading down this far. Sorry that there are no links or pictures, but I'm just not up for it today.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Found on Flickr!


breakfast beret
Originally uploaded by yi.
Someone has knit a breakfast beret, which, while it isn't what I would want to eat for breakfast, sure makes a neat hat.

Schedule Change Notification

I got this email about half an hour ago from Continental Airlines. I sure hope that its a database error and not an actual flight plan.
Flight Changes
Guess I'll have to pack some snacks!

The Six Weird Things meme

Everyone is doing it, so here I am, jumping on the bandwagon way late in the game.

6 Weird Quirky Things About Me:
  1. I really like plain seltzer water. Not club soda or tonic water or flavored seltzer. Just the plain stuff. I also really like Coke. But there are no calories and no weird "diet" taste in plain seltzer.
  2. I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Sleeping is not a problem for me, though sometimes I sleep too much.
  3. I won't eat mushrooms, onions or olives. At all. Under any circumstances. You don't need to not cook with them, though I would prefer it, I'll just eat around them if its integral to the dish. The only exception to this is a risotto that a boyfriend made where the onion was the exact same size, shape and texture as the rice, so I couldn't even discern the difference. I ate that dish up happily, even though I saw him put in the onion.
  4. My pajamas rarely match. The only day that they are guaranteed to match is Christmas Eve/Day because my mom always gets my sister and I new pjs to open on Xmas Eve.
  5. I have TiVo but no cable or satellite tv.
  6. I read anything and everything that I can see.
I'm not tagging anyone, but you are free to consider yourself as-such if it makes you feel better.

Dad's Christmas Dog Walking Hat


Inner Hem Detail
Originally uploaded by tdgirl.
In November, I asked my dad what he wanted for Christmas, and he said that he wanted a warm hat for walking the dog, because Earl (his fur hat of the classic Russian variety) was not doing very well, and was definitely showing his age. *

During our Skype conversation, I grilled him about his hat preferences, to establish that wool was ok, patterns were ok but only if they were masculine, he wanted the brim to fold up and that a hemmed, folding brim would be even better, blue, red and black were acceptable colors, stripes were not preferred, but if I need to, I could use them, he wanted a pompom.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, we went to the yarn store in Excelsior to find yarn that was the right colors for him, soft enough, in a weight that I wanted to use, and all of those other intangible qualities of yarn. I learned that he doesn't like the handpainted yarn. And with the Malabrigo that I kept offering, he said, "That seems too soft to be a hat." and "That is very pretty yarn, but I wouldn't want to wear it on my head." The blue and white yarns are Cascade 220 (blue is a Heathers color) while the red is Berrocco Ultra Alpaca. I chose the red as the brim color because it was the softest. Also, I didn't want to take any chances with combining different yarns in the main body of stranding.

I actually started knitting this hat the week before Christmas, and it was washed and blocking on the morning of December 24th. the most difficult part was all that stockinette to knit the brim in both directions and the most fun was knitting the message into the hem. There are some caught floats showing through in the blue background of the snowflake, but I don't know how to prevent those. If I knit that chart again, I would use a Norwegian lice pattern instead of trying to put in the sorta-snowflakes. Look how even my stranding was for the X pattern!

*Apparently, long ago, there was a product marketed as "Earl the Dead Cat" or somesuch thing. My mom, at the store, when my dad bought this hat, said that it looked like he had a dead animal on his head, and the conversation led to the furry product from the 70s. And until this year, I thought that it was Irrel the Dead Cat, as a play on the word Squirrel.

Forest of studwalls


Forest of studwalls
Originally uploaded by tdgirl.
This image is my current desktop wallpaper at work. Taken of real scenery in process of being built. There was no further cropping after I uploaded the picture from the camera.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Halved!

I tend to compulsively save email addresses in my GMail contact list. It has clearly gotten out of control, so I just went through and deleted all of the addresses that fit any of the following criteria:
  • Anonymous Craigslist address from answering an ad
  • Old CMU address for someone that I know hasn't been affiliated with the school for quite some time
  • Entries with nothing that clues me in to why I would know this person or ever need the address again
With just those three criteria, I deleted 288 entries with 289 remaining. Some of the remaining entries are questionable, but I didn't want to accidentally delete something that I would need again in the future.

Resumes

I've been with my current employer for almost 2 years now, and this is my first real job out of college. The last time I did a resume was when I was finishing school, with the intention of finding the job that I have now. The most current resume that I have is dated October 2004, but it was written to be current as of January 2005. Somehow, I think that I will fall behind in my resume skills, as well as how it fits in to have real, working experience on your C.V., if I don't update soon.

I am looking for *your* resume, primarily for arrangement and language and which sections you put in, to figure out what works best for *my* resume. I don't really care what your industry is, or how old the resume actually is, I just want lots of bits of inspiration. I accept almost all formats, and I'm pretty sure all of the ones that a person sends a resume in, and there is an email link in my blogger profile, or leave a comment here.

Has anyone ever applied for a job online? They frequently have boxes that you are supposed to fill in, (like sections in a resume) and I suspect that there is a trick to them. If you know what it is, let me know. How are you supposed to format it? Do you just use list-format words, or full sentences? I can't apply to work at Google if I don't know the trick to the form.

In two years of working in a real office, as the smallest fish in a big lake, I have learned things about my work habits and preferences that are not necessarily positive, but will have a bearing on whether I would be any good at a job, or if I would like it. The one that is safest to mention on the internet is that I am a lousy negotiator. It could be the best job in the world otherwise, but as soon as they put "strong negotiation skills needed" into the description, I'm out of there like a fat girl in dodgeball. I can stand firm in my position, and I can see your side of things, but I don't really have an inclination to negotiate. I do poorly shopping in third-world markets. How do you deal with that both in the search and the interview?

This may return to the drafts pile in a couple of days, depending on my confidence. I am mostly motivated by the fact that the most recent item on my old resume (a relative asked me to send it to them) is The Duchess of Malfi, which was my Senior TD crew assignment at CMU. Just a bit out of date. But it did have a neat staircase, a super-butch cantilevered platform, and a clever pneumatic fire curtain avoidance trick rig. Still, not exactly the most recent project that I've worked on.

Found on Flickr!

I want all this yarn. I want to knit with it, and weave flowers with it, and show it off and keep it in my stash. Mine mine mine! but not at all.

For Sarah Louise


Gold medal rose
Originally uploaded by JojoDee.
She deserves a gold medal and flowers, and here it is all in one.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

How have I never heard of this guy?

Beth posted here, a link to Keith Olbermann's response to the President's most recent speech about Iraq and the "new strategy". Go check it out here. I'll try to find a YouTube version to embed, but I want to get this out of the draft pile.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

The Muggles have heard!

Freakonomics Blog » Bank Cracks Down on Wily Yarn Merchant
This story is actually true.

some other links from within the land of yarn:
Freakin' Muggles
Blue Moon Fiber Arts
Buy a Sock Club membership... if you got a code in time! (if you want to share it with me, I have a code that I'm not planning on using due to my thinking that $210 is a lot of money to spend on yarn and patterns that will further prove my inability to get sock gauge )

Up for a swap?


sock yarn (1)
Originally uploaded by tdgirl.
These sock yarns are from Lorna's Laces, and I am posting the photo here to show someone that I am trying to swap for 22 balls of Wool of the Andes. I also have some CTH yarn that is on my Flickr! photostream as well.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

quick and lame

But in my continued google fangirlness, I have registered a domain for the sole purpose of setting up a website using Google apps for your domain.

I am planning a knitting roundup post in the very near future (probably this weekend), and in the mean time, a short ellipses:

beer after knitting guild is a very good idea... we "go live" with the new rental software tomorrow... Mrs. TANBI has a new, full-time gig, yay for her!... its finally seasonal weather here in Chicago... The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is top notch, well, at least as much as I've read (350 of 487 pages)... I think that I should get the starter in my car replaced... how does one become a software developer??? I think that with all of my strong opinions about user interface and human-computer interaction, I need to learn how to fix the problems myself... which is why, in the end, I don't like being a manager very much... Rose Brand East is moving to NJ, no phone or email on Friday... definitely need to go grocery shopping tomorrow... Natalie leaves for Denmark on Saturday

Friday, January 12, 2007

BlogThis!

The BlogThis! extension is Firefox doesn't function when using the new Blogger beta. Has anyone found a replacement dealiebob for quick blog posts? Or do you just switch back to IE or write the post from scratch? I am actually finding that the new IE7 is pretty nice to use, but maybe I need to change something in my Firefox. I hear that there is a new version that I'm sure I haven't switched to.

Also, did anyone else have a total MS Outlook meltdown yesterday morning (Thursday)? And then did you go and download and install what seemed like 10 MS Updates and then it all worked again? Or was it just at my company? You know what was the best part about it? I had my computer fixed before the IT guy could even figure out what was happening. He is a useless, salary-drawing lump as far as I can tell.

A 2007 Horoscope

I just followed a link in a post of Sarah Louise's to Paula's blog, who has a sidebar link to Crazy Aunt Purl, who I have only read occasionally, but now have added to my Google Reader feeds, and this, here, is something that I wanted to share:

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ARIES (March 21- April 19)

No one has ever accused an Aries of being too Pisces, too unable to take a stand or have an opinion or make up a big ol' Aries mind. No one ever confuses Aries with Cancer, always dreaming of the future or the past and never fully present. Aries can make decisions quickly, right now! In the moment! But Aries has a bit of an impulse-control issue, too, so in 2007 your To-Don't is clear: Don't live entirely based on your impulses. Use your big Aries brain and your equally big heart to balance out your decisions. Acting on impulse may be fine at the grocery store or the shoe store, but it gets harder to justify "I just wanted to!" with family and friends and work. Your To-Do for 2007 is a good one, though: Do spend more time indulging your snooty, refined, prissy self. Aries make excellent foodies, and great wine lovers, and fabulous art critics. Aries folks can enjoy the finer parts of life like nobody's business. Make it your business!
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The bit above is about me. Go here to get your own horoscope To Dos and To Don'ts for 2007.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

This one is for my mother

It is National De-Lurking Week. That means that its time to comment. Just drop in, say hello, let me know you are out there.

And go read the Yarn Harlot's post today about how a bank is not taking money because it doesn't believe that the Rockin' Socks Club is real. Its unbelievable.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

The Onion does it again

I can't decide how I feel about this article. While it is right on the money about who is bearing the brunt of the war in Iraq, and there is nothing so easy to make fun of as upper-middle and upper-class young adults, I can't decide if its actually funny, or just sad in its truth (or lack thereof).

Go read it and then come back here and let me know what your take on it is.

So Bush is talking on the teevee tomorrow night...

And given my track record of never managing to watch the entirety of a 43 television broadcast, and the fact that I can't listen for more than about 5 minutes without having to walk away in anger/frustration/flabbergastion (yes, I know that isn't a word), a sign I saw today seemed like the perfect solution.

The Lutheran church down the street is having a Prayers for Peace service tomorrow night at 7pm. That won't make me angry, and will probably be good for my heart, mind and soul. The speech is not going to be about bringing peace, but about how we can dig in our heels for a war that was unjust and poorly planned from the get-go. Hopefully, the prayer service will be about bringing peace and reconciliation to all of the people in the world. If anyone in the Chicagoland area would like to join me, its the big church just west of Ashland on Foster.

Something to remember, folks:

Its all one God. The same God. Whatever your preferred version of worship and belief is, there is one unified God that listens to all prayers equally. Even if your faith has multiple gods, those gods are each individual aspects of the one God. So please, can we stop fighting about this? That is my plea to everyone. Pass it on. No more fighting about other things under the pretense of fighting over different versions of God. Fight over pollution or poverty or inequality or the color of the sky. But don't even think about bringing religion into it.

Monday, January 8, 2007

things that I have been unable to find in the last week...

Still Missing:
-One (1) package of powdered/flake mashed potatos... I think that I last saw them in a bag near my books or the knitting stuff... or maybe in my bedroom... or did I eat them?
-Both of my Down the Line CDs... might be buried on my desk, but definitely not in any of my CD books, my disc drive, the car stereo or Joanne's boom box.
-one (1) ball of Lorna's Laces Angel yarn... I'm quite certain that I had two ready to go, but could only find one. I need to find it as my cousin needs a pair of baby booties before June.
-the receipt for the Adopt-A-Family wrapping paper that I bought with money from work

Currently Found:
-the Kristen hat kit
-my many-pack of Walker's Shortbread
-the pizza cutter
-the last book in a 12 book series
-my sneakers

Sunday, January 7, 2007

just so you know...

Two things:
1. I originally posted this in my other blog, and totally didn't notice. That should tell you something about the second point.

2. If you are hungry in the late evening, and have the munchies, the following is a silly snack to choose:
There really should be something that is less than 50% water in the snack.






So I added 3 Simple Shortbread cookies.

Long live mid-20s nutrition.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Fly fishing = no response

And this explains so much...