Part 1

Ok. So I got absolutely no sleep last night. None. Nada. It was bizarre, and as I enter my 37th straight hour of wakefulness, I've decided to breakdown the next few posts into three sections so I don't have to think so hard and be clever. Section 1 are random facts about me (which will eventually be compiled into tidy little lists like here and here). Section 2 will be knitterly happenings and acquisitions of note. Section 3 will be the best thing that happened to me that day....or, more accurately, the best thing to have happened to me while my camera was within reach.

Bear with me, just until my circadian rhythm regains its equilibrium. It's delicate and startles easily.

Things About Me (1-25)
1. I worked at the Texas Renaissance Festival since I was a teeny-tiny thing. I started as a mascot for the belly dancers and worked my way up to a contracted gig where I would do full-body slides in front of strangers to “practice my groveling should the King appear.”

me at age 3 workin' hard for the money

2. I played the French Horn from the 6th to the 12th grade. I was first chair of my section every year from the 8th grade on. I still remember all the fingerings and would like to play it again.

3. I had the dorkiest letter jacket in high school EVER. Seriously. I had letters for marching band, the literary criticism team, National Honor Society, creative math and science team, academic decathalon, and my nickname was Clogar (which is, of course, a math term).

4. I have admitted that I am painfully addicted to reality TV. What you do not know is that I relapsed. I watched reality TV avidly in high school, but stopped during college, and promptly got addicted again once I moved to Ann Arbor and got cable. I can still name almost all of the contestants from the first season of Survivor.

5. I am a terrible cook. Strangely, I am really good at spicing food.

6. I am absolutely fearless when it comes to strange foods, but I have weird issues with drinking milk and eating eggs. It grosses me out, even though it didn’t when I was a kid.

7. I weigh my two cats almost everyday by picking them up, weighing myself, dropping them, weighing myself again and subtracting the two. I find it endlessly amusing.

8. I have horrendous sinus issues. My nose is constantly stuffy and for the last five years, I have tended to pop Benedryl like candy. This makes me virtually immune to its sedative side effects.

9. I can comfortably give a piggy back ride to Jon, who weighs roughly 90 pounds more than me. You have to see it to believe it.

10. I was very skinny before I hit puberty and had a most unfortunate mushroom-ish haircut. I was often confused for a little Mexican boy.

11. I love my hands and feet. They are long and thin and graceful, like my father’s.

12. My sister and I have very similar voices, and people sometimes have problems telling us apart on the phone. The trick is to remember that she curses more.

13. I can’t lose my Texas accent. It’s especially evident with the words hill, fire, and oil. I thought the ‘h’ in words like human or Houston was silent until I went to college.

14. I do almost all of my work on the coffee table sitting on the floor. I stack my papers underneath the coffee table and I’ve spread a sleeping bag out in the space between the coffee table and the couch. Jon and I call this “The Nest.”

15. I am not that attached to my books, but I am attached to my DVDs. I hoard them, protect them, and I’m very picky about the cases, whereas I tend to haphazardly break the spines of books and give them away for no reason.

16. I hate backpacks and purses and carry only messenger type bags.

17. I hated wearing socks until I started knitting them.

18. During college, I gained about 25 pounds, but I didn’t change clothing sizes. My friends speculate that I must have swallowed a piece of dark matter at some point.

19. I have my nose pierced but not my ears.

20. I have dyed my hair pink, red, purple, blue, and green.


21. I am an amateur haircuttress, and I seem to have a weird knack for it. I have a regular clientèle of five people now.

22. I once ate an entire lemon tart (that served 4 people) by myself and gave myself a blinding sugar migraine.

23. People think Dani and I are sisters when we’re together. When we were housemates in Oberlin, people thought we were the same person because we shared clothes.


24. When something wakes me up in the middle of the night, my immediate response is to punch Jon until he wakes up and deals with the problem. Then I steal the covers and go back to sleep.

25. My mother taught me to leave a bit of food on my plate at meals for the “Manners Fairy” when I was growing up. Jon is from the clean plate club and finds this odd, but now depends on me having leftovers so he can finish my food for me. It’s symbiotic.

Knitterly Happenings and Acquisitions
So.....because I've been a mite silly the last couple of hours (you know, thanks to the lack of sleep) I made Jon drive me to the yarn store. I'd promised my sister, who's had a bit of a rough week, that I'd send her a knitting package this week. I'm giving her my Red Herring socks (I inadvertantly made them a bit too wide for my feet, but just perfect for hers), a couple of skeins of yarn, and a set of new needles. So the visit to the store was totally appropriate...but buying 19 skeins of tweed yarn was not.

The purple is Balance cotton/merino in amethyst which I hope to turn into a tweedy vest. The gray, which was 50% off (!!) is..........this yarn. Ah, Harris Tweed, we meet again.

Best Moment of the Day

Warm brownie fresh from the oven with a scoop of coffee ice cream on top. So tasty.