spaazlicious

I like taking a hot bath with a cold beer and room-temperature book.

I like dunking my head under the water and listening to the pop-pop-pop of the air escaping my ear canals. And listening to the strange amplification and distortion of sound underwater.
Like the downstairs neighbour's dog barking. Possibly at the sound only he can hear, me listening to him bark, me sloshing around, me hitting my head on the bottom of the tub because my muscle memory of these actions remembers the deeper tub of our Sacramento apartment. It had clawed feet.

I like rolling my head around on my neck and listening to the trapped water move inside my ears, like the air bubble in a contractor's level, as if everything else I am is water and the water is air.

I like bouncing on the balls of my feet with my head tipped to the side, alternating, to release the water, and the warm trickle of it.




Speaking of warm trickles, I like peeing on my feet in the shower. And practising my aim.

"number nine...number nine...number nine..."

Damn. That's going to be stuck in my head all night.

Anyway, I haven't had much will to blog, but I've had a lot I want to put down to remember later so here goes.

[BTW, I published that Kansas--GODDAMMIT AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO GETS REALLY F-CKING PISSED OFF AT THIS CUTESY-WUTESY "Greetings Bill." STUFF!?! All I wanted was a /g and you give me that!!--anyway, Kansas/Greyhound post just tonight. When I started it, it went on much longer with links and pics to some really horrible situations that greyhounds are facing all over the world and it made me so angry and sad that I deleted all the links and pics, but then it felt incomplete so I left it. But when I checked my post cache and saw that it was still in draft form, but with distance it could stand alone without all the horrible dreck of humanity's cruelty to fellow creatures, I thought I'd publish it. If anyone knows of an update, please give me a heads-up. And if you really want to ruin your day, go here or here].

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As with last year's film festival, I only made it to a very little bit of the films I wanted to see. The Cortos Mexicanos and Promedio Rojo. It was maybe the most enjoyable film I've seen since Shaun of the Dead. Not the same genre, obviously, but still quirky, funny, sad. Unfortunately, that website I linked to is a crap slow-loading buggy flash website, but trust me, the flick is good. The director is kind of like a Chilean Kevin Smith, but this first film is way more polished than "Clerks." Of course, Lopez had a fair bit more money with grants.
It blows my mind that this dude was born the year the Violent Femmes had two hits on the charts and Karen Carpenter died of anorexia nervosa, and that (if he were American) he's only seen ONE (1) Democratic U.S. president in his lifetime. Demmed uppity whippersnapper.


I'm really looking forward to getting the DVD, as there's a lot of people I know who'd enjoy this too.

What's it about? It's archetypal: Misfit boy falls in love with hot girl (who has misfit tendencies) who is seduced by hot phoney guy...but the fun of a story is always in the telling, and the way it is told. It is intercut with fantasy superhero sequences, the intro has inking, and there is a heavy sci-fi fandom influence throughout. And a sadistic school nurse.

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I fell in love with Anna Zilboorg's Socks for Sandals and Clogs at the Escondido fiber shindig and while I resisted its pull for a short time, I went into my relatively new LYS Lakeside Knits to get it. Clarese the owner didn't have it, but she ordered it and it came within a week. So now, I am wondering which socks I want to do...These two are re-sole-able (free-sole, Zilboorg calls them):





I like the shapes and patterns of Mizar and Shaula (the red and green socks, respectively) and the red & blue socks (Aldebaran) are stranded--extra cushy.





I have yarn to ply & dye hoppin' on the bobbins already.

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Another project I'm putting on the books for the future is a recreation of a favourite sweater in softer yarn. I bought a cabled wool sweater (the tag says Andros Handknits by Thomas Brennan, Glenties Co. Donegal MADE IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND) from the Berkeley-EastBay Humane Society rummage sale for a few bucks way back when...BTW, that link takes you to a page which links you to iGive, a way to shop on-line and have a percentage of the money you spend on-line go to a favourite charity. I just signed up and will be trying it out, but have no guarantees as to ease of use or whatever. Anyway, the sweater just had a hole in the armpit, easily fixed, so about two years after buying it I've fixed it and am wearing it and really digging it.

I call this pose the Clueless Doofus and Self-Timing Camera with Dying Batteries...is that pose/title taken yet in the blogworld?



The deal is, I have ten skeins of Noro Cash Iroha I got on sale, and I think I want this almost exact sweater in a softer wool blend. In a darker yarn that probably won't show the cables as well. And with slightly longer sleeves. But, essentially, I will try to recreate this sweater exactly. It's still in idea phase though, barely into planning. I'm still figuring out the basics of its construction, let alone doing the cable pattern math to figure out how to adapt it for the Noro.

And I still need to do what I started this blog for. Ha! That link is to my first archived month, and the ten skeins I mention are the ones I still haven't used but plan to use for this cabled sweater thing. Talk about a circle of spaaz.

What the hell is a greyhound if it isn't a dog? I'm getting really sick of this changing the language to suit your legal needs bullsh!t here. Like the attempt to re-define torture, this is just more ass-covering of an abusive system. All because these greyhound racing asshats don't want to cut down on their profits by having to euthanise the dogs humanely or conform to any standard of decency or humanity in their treatment of the animals.

And because, apparently, they found some politicians who are as greedy as they are stupid.

Pachydiplax longipennis.



Heh, heh, heh.

I'm very puerile, I know, which is one reason I might take down the pic of my pimple.

I just want to squeeeeeeeze it.

So gross, pus all over the blogosphere. That'd be a hell of a pop-up, eh?

mine is my face.
my emotion just pops right out
this doesn't look that big, but all day it felt like I was growing a fetal armbud from just above my eyebrow.
which hurts, in case you've never done it yourself



And thank you guys for your generous offers of fiber to replace that which was damaged by canine hooliganism, but it is all pretty much salvagable. I was just being a big melodramatic baby because I wanted to be able to spin the nicely prepared fibers from their nicely unshredded bags and not have to worry about random bits of VM.

VM is the nice, spinner's lingo way of saying "random crap."
Which may include literal crap, usually from the field, but this time maybe from our deck.

But I really do appreciate the sympathy and the offers. You guys are great.

I am also mindful of being in a de-stashing phase...there was just a slight misunderstanding in the universe, that's all. And now if I have a hard time spinning the yak or cotton, I can just blame it on the crappy canine "pre-drafting" they did.

See also: "jinxing oneself."

The local knitting meetup was tonight, and at one point I found myself burbling about Paras newstand on 30th. "They have everything," I said. Yeah, then I walked over and didn't find anything.

So I shouldn't have laughingly said anything about my dogs and their adventures with wool. Because it meant I came home to this:






Okay.

It's no longer funny when I've picked up almost every beautifully prepared and aligned fiber I had piece by shreddy-little-piece from the floor.

All my beautiful Pima cotton, the yak, the soft and fine 80s merino wool, the merino & possum blend my Mom brought me from New Zealand for a sweater for Nick (all that brown stuff on the deck...where the dogs pee and poop. They're not supposed to there, but obviously, they don't care about what they're supposed to do).

I came closer to striking them than I ever have, and that fact made me more upset than anything.

After all, it's only fiber. And it must be my fault for not making sure the door to the stash room was firmly and securely fastened against toothy invaders.

But now I get to monitor bowel movements, liquid and solid intake, because not only could they have done substantial damage to my fiber stash, but they may have swallowed enough in shredding and playing to cause an obstruction. Meaning costly surgery. Yay.

[whiny aside:]They have so many toys, there was a bag of food in the room with the wool, they obviously destroyed a package and then returned for more...what the hell?!?[/whiny aside]

Nick blames it on Jasper.
He makes an easy scapegoat since he's the foster kid, plus his farts will clear a room, peel paint, burn nosehairs, whatever hyperbole you care to use when describing noxious anally-emanated gaseous excretions.

Anyway. I'm self-medicating with a bottle of Red Trolley Ale and the new Tori Amos album.

And memories and expectations of a better day. A dog beach day.



Anticipation.

Bliss is happy healthy dogs.



I love Coronado Dog Beach. I still miss Redwood park in Oakland and some of the great doggie playpals Tahoe had at Partner Park in Sacramento, but this is the best place in San Diego (that we've found) to let the dogs be dorks off-leash together.

In fiber notes:
The Nandia cashmere/silk, the GGH Monsun, the Classic Elite Zoom, the Manos Flame, the sz 11 Brrittanys, and the sz 6 Crystal Palace circs from the de-stashing post have had dibs called on them, and I'll modify the listing to reflect that when they are out of my possession and truly gone. There's still lots more yarn to be rid of though, if'n ya wanna help a girl out.

If you're planning to come to the Wednesday meetup at the Claire de Lune this week and you have skeins you might want to put into knittable center-pull balls, bring them along because I'll be bringing my ball-winder and swift for a bit of BIPping (Ball-winding In Public).

To knit on I'll be bringing the same sock I was working on at the Whistlestop. I'm beginning to think I'm a knitting poseur. Or is that poseur knitter? I forget my junior high syntax for these things.

Early in the morn we picked up my dogniece and dog sister and headed to dog beach with a full car:



We walked to Coronado Dog Beach's fenced corner and everyone froliced off-leash.



And I realised I have the cutest freakin' niece ever. EVER.



I wrenched myself away from those eyes and picked up Heidi d'Absinthe to head to the Weaving Thing in Escondido. I behaved myself and paid no more than seven bucks for any one thing (a needle-nosed bottle of Schact spinning wheel oil, 2oz. of gray yak, 2 4oz. packages of that awesome New World Textiles Pima cotton in Lupine colourway) and resisted the song of this book.

We wandered off in a quest for a gallery of guild-created items (unsuccessful) and a French bakery & chocolatier (successful), where despite the gastropodian pace of the food service, we enjoyed ourselves looking at the pastries


and smugly discussing our intellectual superiority over this creature:




A little later we wandered back to the car and through a great kids park and stopped to look at the painted tiles of the wall, where several community schools of all levels had contributed painted tiles. This was my favourite:



The phrase "Give Your Love" and the shapes and hues of the sheep lips give me hope that I am not as sexually deviant as I feared, for I am not as kinky as an elementary schoolkid named "Linsey Bradshaw."

Holy $h!t, I just googled her and realise that she is now thoroughly capable of kicking my ass. That's so awesome!

I dropped Heidi off and headed home to nap with Nick. We awoke, showered, copulated, and he went to work while I went off to see Mexican short films.

It was an excellent day by any standard.

BTW, regarding the shorts: I think "Pato de Gallo" "Genesis 3:19" and "Jai" were my favourites. "Espiritu Deportiva" was good for some laughs. "Respete Las Señales" was utter crap except for the new factoid that in Mexico, after 10.30pm, women driving alone are allowed to go through red lights as long as they do it with caution. ~sigh~aaaah,~sigh~ Chivalry lives in a land of machismo.

I've actually got a lot of stuff to say, a lot of stuff I want to put down here. But I've spent enough damn time on the computer putting this de-stashing post on Craigslist. Take a look if you think you can help me out in getting rid of 78.5 balls of yarn and nine sets of needles.

I've got big plans for this weekend and week ahead. Today, cleaning the house, dog beach, and a turnout shift at work tonight. Woo-hoo!
Tomorrow, the fiber shindig in Escondido--just to browse, just to browse, maybe to buy a little fiber--and maybe a beer and some billiards or knitting at the Whistlestop and a viewing of Cortos Mexicanos at the SDLFF even though it'll get me home pretty late. It's the only chance I'll get to see it.

Next week though, here's my Festival hitlist, in case anyone wants to meet up for it:

Wednesday, the 16th, 2000 hrs: Love For Rent

Thursday, the 17th, 1700 hrs: Cachimba

Saturday, the 19th, 1930 hrs: O Homem Que Copavia

Sunday, the 2oth, 1930 hrs: Promedio Rojo

Yes, while many will be going to immerse themselves in the incredible dramatic artistry, life-changing documentaries, I will be going to laugh my ass off. I hope.

# posted by Wendy @ 3/12/2005 01:02:00 PM

I said my next post would be 1)less whorish and 2)in Spanish. But I was editing a de-stashing ad and accidently hit the big orange PUBLISH button instead of the save as draft button, and blogger is (surprise) being difficult in getting this back off the public view. If you can't see what I'm talking about, then it has resolved. If you see the de-stashing post, well, dammit. It's not finished. And it's taking me forever.

Good news though, the San Diego Latino Film Festival started today, hooray!

by today's technology. I can listen to good music and view incredible photos from halfway around the world (thanks so much to the Superhero Journal for the photo links) anytime.

Because I'm all about jumping on the bandwagon, I've been listening to some podcasts lately, and while I'll admit that my experience is really limited, I think I prefer the weblog medium. Pictures make the difference to me, although the laughter of mr. shark attack and lady starfish is a bit infectious. Being able to hear the tonal intentions of the author(s) makes it interesting, but can also really highlight the ego of it all. If the NYTimes thought the MommyBloggers were self-absorbed...Well, I guess that's the difference between an article written for the "Technology" section v. "Fashion & Style."

I admit, I've been tempted to record a podcast from work: "And that constant, rhythmic barking is Eclipse. Don't bother to try and stop him through scolding or soothing, he just can't help himself during dog transfers from slab to crate. The lower pitched syncopated woofing is Strome. He hates Eclipse and wants him to know it. The higher pitched animalistic crying, panting and whining? That's Button. He likes to lick the corners of his crate so his saliva soaks into the wood floor and drips down onto the linoleum. At the end of the day we collect the several ounces of it and sell it to L'oreal as anti-aging serum. The other twenty-seven dogs in this 250square foot trailer are fast asleep, because that's what greyhounds are all about."

Speaking of technology & bandwagons, through audible.com I've found that Tim Curry rocks the Lemony Snicket train. On the page it's kind of repetitive, but Curry's voice brings the patterns pleasure. I really don't know why I keep reading these anyway. I think it's kind of like Pringles chips. I don't really enjoy them (okay, but yes, I do) but they're so charmingly packaged that even though I feel a little sick for it, I devour them.

And I joined the Adagio Tea linking bandwagon, though I hid it in my incredibly messy sidebar. Not as messy as my house though, I tell ya.



I promise myself (and anybody out there) that the next thing I post will be 1) less whorish 2) also in Spanish.

BTW, I'm deleting the polls and posting the results next week. I was hoping for a runaway write-in candidate or something for the Tom Waits thing, but I guess it just ain't gonna happen.