home again, home again, jiggety jig

I ended up having way less internet access on this trip than I had initially expected I would - so, sorry I never posted an itinerary, stalkers, but we were moving around so much on this trip, you wouldn't have been able to keep up with us, anyway.

I've gotta crash now - oh, the foul specter of work in the morning! - but I can't wait to post my recap of this trip. It was pretty faboo, if rather exhausting. I'm going to be posting from my old computer for the next couple days, tho', as I managed to leave the power supply for my laptop at my mom's house. Typical. But! Since the old computer is re-networked now, that means I should be able to post pictures!! That will be my first project for tomorrow afternoon, right after I do a little unpacking.

'Til then...

it's bound to be almost profound to me
to be sound asleep beneath my roof, between my sheets...

- 2 Skinnee J's, "Inside My Room"

adventures in hot water

Alright, I should be asleep right now, but I just had to report the relative success of my first attempt at felting! I was trying to wait until we had less laundry that had to be done before I tied up the washing machine with felting my buttonhole bag, but I'd come to realize we'd never have that much laundry clean (at least, not before we leave to faire les vacances on Friday). And the felting only ties up the washer, not the dryer - the dryer is where the backup comes in our washing cycle. Our dryer is a piece of shit, especially when the lint hose needs to be cleaned out, as it does now. Oy, our washer and dryer - we bought them for $85 from the previous tenants of our apartment who just didn't want to bother moving them when they left (we will probably try to cut the next tenants the same deal when we move out.) They're better than having to schlep everything to the laundromat all the time - but only barely. The washer is basically fine, but the dryer regularly takes three 90-minute drying cycles or more to actually dry a load of clothes. Every so often, I end up at the laundromat anyway, if we've accumulated more loads that we need done right away than our crap dryer can handle.

So anyway, I went ahead and threw the bag in the washer, tied inside a pillowcase, with two old towels and two heavy plastic hairbrushes for agitation (thanks for that tip, ErLeCa!). Regular wash cycle, hot wash, cold rinse. After the first go-through, I didn't think it was felted enough, so I threw the whole lot in again. When I peeked into the washer after the second wash, I saw the bag had slipped out of the pillowcase, so it definitely got more felted, but it also had more weird pilling and fluff-balls attached to it. And - I dunno if this is just due to our washer, or something in our dank, damp creepy basement where the washer/dryer is located, or if it's just the usual wet-wool smell on steroids, but the bag has this weird kind of reek to it. Anyone out there have any suggestions for perhaps getting that smell out if it's still so prominent once the bag is dry?

It's sitting on a chair now, stuffed full of rolled-up towels. Like I said, I think it came out pretty well, considering it was my first time felting, and I was only giving it a fraction of my attention tonight. It's a little creased and lumpy in spots, but I tried to smooth those out as best I could, and I can steam problem bits to smooth them more once the bag's all dry, right? The bottom is not quite as solid as I was expecting it would be, so if I actually use the bag for transporting anything, I think I will line it with something first.

I did take pictures, but of course, I still haven't installed my camera on this computer yet, and my old computer has been de-networked, I think, so... I promise I will make uploading pictures a real priority. I'm taking my laptop on our trip, so with any luck, I will have time to get that all figured out before we get home. I will post my itinerary soon, should any of you want to stalk me while I am away.

Now playing: "My Adidas" ~ Run-D.M.C

hot and bothered.

There are so many flies in my apartment these days I feel like I'm in a tropical third-world country. Where the heck are they all coming from?? They're annoying the crap out of me - but I know it could be worse. At least they're not something with stingers.

The other reason I feel like I am in an equatorial setting is that it's quarter after midnight right now, and it's still 90 degrees in here. I so wish I were kidding about that. It's awful. We broke down a couple weeks ago and bought a small window box air conditioner for the bedroom (ironically, the room that least needed the a.c. - the window fan in there did a pretty decent job, but now that the a.c. unit is screwed into the window frame, it gets too hot in there during the day when we have the unit set to fan-only). So at the very least, I will be able to shower before I go to bed, then sleep sweat-free.

I have a lot of things I still want to post, and tweaks I still want to make here, but for the past few days, I haven't had any time, and I've just been so brain-dead. My sleep schedule naturally settles somewhere around up-at-11, sleep-at-3; but for the past few days, I've had to be up at like, 6:30 or 7 a.m. for training for my new job, and it's just been brutal. Sunday night/Monday morning I didn't end up going to bed until almost 4 a.m., and then I couldn't fall alseep, so I only got about an hour's worth of sleep. Last night I went to bed at 1, but I had to get up at 6:30. I'm about to go pass out right now, after I shower, so maybe I'll make it by 12:45 tonight. I still need to get up around 6:45 or 7, tho'. Oh, did I mention? The actual shift I will be working is 2nd shift - from like, 4 p.m. to midnight. Ugh. So I've almost nodded off more than once during my training sessions. They probably think I'm the biggest idiot. Heh.

Oh, and the other thing I forgot to mention: not only did I discover on Monday morning that my old alarm clock had decided to stop working, but the DH discovered that the coffee grinder had decided to stop working, too. (Why yes, I was late for my first day of my new job - so uncharacteristic of me, no?) We went out and bought a new clock and grinder that night, but I've already figured out how to cheat the snooze on the clock (so I was a petite bit late for my second day, too), and I hadn't figured out the coffee grinder by this past morning, so I had to go in there with no caffeine in me whatsoever. So really, it wasn't exactly a surprise I was nodding off by 11 a.m.

Oh, lordy, the sweaty stickiness is getting to me - must. go. shower. And then... sweet, blissful keeling over and passing out before the steady stream of blessedly cool air emanating from the 'box. With the crappy electrical wiring in this house, the thing will probably blow up or short out or something before the summer is over (or, at the very least, the electricity bills will send us to the poor house). But until then... oh, the sweat-free nights!

the promised quickie, frivolous post

Okey, I finally put a picture in my profile. Yeah, it's a comic-book version of me. I made it at this neat site, then edited it a bit with Graphic Converter. It actually does look the tiniest bit like me - or rather, it did, when I stil had long hair and thick-frame glasses.

I suppose I should take this opportunity to note that I am not particularly pro-gun or anything. I am also not, however, particularly anti-gun. I've never fired one, but I bet I will someday. I would like to learn more about firearms, for the same reason I'd like to learn to fly a plane, and I'd like to skydive, and I want to go to Antarctica. I just want the experience, even if it's not something I continue to do on a regular basis. I want the knowledge.

Also: icky! What the heck is this world coming to??

Now playing: "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" ~ Rufus Wainwright

I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink

I've been debating whether or not to post anything about the whole London bombing incident. On the one hand, what on earth could I possibly add to the discourse? On the other hand, well, this is my blog and I get to blather about whatever the hell I want, so...

The only reason I've got anything other than condolences to add is that it's London. The DH and I spent a semester there as undergrads (Fall '98) - it's where we started "dating," in fact - and we went back there for spring break our senior year, so I do feel some attachment to the city. For a while, I was a Londoner. Put it this way: I know the tube better than I know the NYC subway system. While we were there, the DH and I spent a lot of time just riding around on the trains. We were broke students, and our tube passes allowed us virtually unlimited rides for way cheap. We rode all the way out to the ends of a couple of the lines, way out in suburban London, where no tourists ever have reason to go. We rode on every single tube line at least once, even the weirdo Waterloo & City Line, which only goes between Waterloo and Bank stations. We went to the London Transport Museum a ton of times. We were tube geeks (much like the straphangers of the NYC subway system).

So when I heard about the attacks, I didn't have to go online to see which trains had been hit. I knew that it's the Piccadilly Line that runs between King's Cross and Russell Square. And I could glance up at the framed poster of the tube map that's on our living room wall to see that Edgeware Road and Liverpool Street are both on the infernal Circle Line (which I particularly disliked because you always had to wait for-freaking-ever for a train). And where the bus exploded? Our hotel on that spring break trip was about one block away from that site. (And from the pictures, I can tell you that it was a newer bus that was destroyed. It's the tiniest shred of comfort to me that at least the bastards didn't get one of the trusty old Routemasters.) I know the Russell Square tube station is the closest one to that place, and I know you have to take a rather small elevator down to the platform there instead of the usual escalator, because the Piccadilly Line runs so deep underground (and besides, the station is too tiny to accomodate an escalator, even if they wanted to put one in). I know how absolutely jam-packed the Piccadilly Line trains are at rush hour - and, in a way, I bet that actually helped keep the casualty count relatively low, as the people closest to the blast would have shielded those a little farther away from much of the impact. I have to keep stopping myself from imagining how terrifying it must have been to be crammed into one of those cars, being plunged into darkness, and then being trapped while the car filled with smoke. There's a memorial plaque in King's Cross commemorating a terrible tube fire from, like, 1986 or so, in which a number of people died. Allegedly they've made the tube much more fire-proof since then, but really, there's only so much they can do, y'know? I know that's what would've been crossing my mind, if I'd been on that train.

So what do all these details add up to? I don't know. I keep reading all the stories online, as if knowing all about when and how it happened will somehow make the "why" fall into place. It's just never going to make sense.

Here's the stuff I've been reading:

• The BBC coverage


• The Guardian's Special Report section, and its terrorism threat article archive


• CNN's special site


• and I've been listening to the NPR coverage almost non-stop, but I listen to NPR almost non-stop anyway, so that's nothing unusual for me.

The one bit of good news I did get out of this is that my friend Sam, who lives in London, is alright. I hadn't been in touch with him in years, but I dug through the deepest depths of my address book and found a few e-mail addresses for him and tried them all. He's still in London, but he was already at work by the time things started happening, so he's fine. It's good to be back in touch with him again. I still haven't heard anything from my relatives in England, but none of them live in London, so I'm not so worried there.

Well, once again, I hadn't meant to post so much, but I guess I just had to get all that out. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I promise a quickie, frivolous post is coming soon.

some good points, some bad points

I am a bit put out that I didn't get around to posting something yesterday to celebrate Canada Day. I've been very lax in commemorating that holiday of late, and I want to change that. We did, at least, go out and have donuts last night to mark the occasion (if you're wondering how that relates to Canada - I once read that Canadians consume more donuts per capita than do the citizens of any other nation on earth). There's no Tim Horton's in our town, tho', so we had to settle for Krispy Kreme (which, oh really, twist my arm).

Uhm, okay, the main points of this post: I got some good news this week, and I got some kind of bad news. The good news: I got the job I applied for! Yay! It's not going to be as many hours as I was hoping, but they said I'd have plenty of opportunity to pick up more if I want them. So yay, income! Yay, resume-building! Yay, not letting my brain atrophy completely over the summer!

The bad news, I just got today. My mom called this afternoon and told me my grandmother had a heart attack and is in the hospital. When Mom first called, they weren't sure yet how serious this was going to be - I mean, of course it's a big deal, because Nana is 90, and a heart attack at that age is no picnic. But it could be a more easily treatable sort of thing, or it could be the kind of thing that might necessitate surgery, and, as Mom put it, they probably couldn't find anyone who'd be willing to operate on someone Nana's age. Mom called back tonight, after they got the results from the coronary catheterization (I think that was the procedure - hey, I'm not in medical school yet, okay, cut me some slack), and said the blockage was only in one artery, so they cleared that and put in a stent (again, I think that's what it's called). And now Nana feels much better and is doing okay. *whew*

It's somewhat hard for me to adjust to this idea of Nana being as frail as her age might suggest, of her not being indestructible. Up 'til very recently, she's been so active and healthy - people never realize she's 90 when they meet her, because she has the mobility of someone much younger. She could run rings around me, even through my teens and early twenties. She's like a hummingbird - she never stops moving (until she settles down in the evenings to watch TV - then she falls asleep on the couch - but really, if you're watching Larry King, who wouldn't fall asleep on the couch?). I'm a little afraid that if she ever does stop moving, if she can't be as active and independent as she's used to being, that'll be it for her. I'm afraid the descent will be swift. But I really just can't imagine Nana giving in like that. She's too much of a fighter. I can't imagine her doing anything but clinging tenaciously to life - and not just life, but life at its fullest possible. In case you haven't gathered by now, my grandmother is a pretty remarkable woman (well, all my grandparents were pretty remarkable, but Nana is the only one I've got left now). And I guess I realized today that, no matter how much she may frustrate me and annoy the crap out of me sometimes, I am not ready to say goodbye to her just yet.