I've always had a fondness for flannel, but I truly forgot about how much I love it unless I crawled into bed last night with new, newly washed flannel sheets and was WARM. Seriously I have been going to bed cold the last little while, even with cotton sheets covered by two comforters, two knitted blankets and a fleecy blanket on top.
And so yesterday when I finally got around to washing my new Christmas flannel sheets [luckily for me, my mother did not indulge in buying me full-out Christmas themed sheets; the only thing Christmas-y on them are some red snowflakes surrounded by that lovely Bohemian Russian/Bavarian ethnic theme [the closest example I can think of is right here]. I am now seriously back in love with flannel. It was so hard [well, harder than normal] this morning to get out of bed. Soooooo cozy.
My next experiment with comfort will be to don all flannel clothing and then hop into bed. Although I have a feeling that rather than end in superb comfort, it will just end in non-stop static shockings. And you know what, they really, really hurt.
Also while finding the flannel example on IKEA's website, I came across this lovely, lovely bed set, which I know Kyleman would never let me put on our bed but I can only hope:
I am also unimpressed with the measurements I got when measuring my foot compared to Kyleman's. There is only 1 inch difference but our feet are ridiculously different in size. This makes me slightly worried about making him socks.
I am also also unimpressed with my instruction reading skills after misreading instructions and realizing the mistake weeks afterwards and having to redo all the work I'd done.
I am also also also unimpressed with my concentration skills.
I am impressed wiiiiiiiiith......chocolate. But then again, who isn't? [Scratch that: lactose-intolerant people for one. We'll ignore them this time.]
I used to nap a lot more. Especially while I was at school; there was a phase once where every day seemed to consist of a nap. Now I barely nap at all and I kind of miss it.
What's worse: wasting time asleep or wasting time watching t.v./surfing the net?
It doesn't help that it's about -20 excluding wind chill out which only makes me want to curl up in a blanket. My dog seemed to have other opinions though when I finished taking out the recycling. She's apparently a Yeti, who doesn't mind have snow piled on top of her head, so long as I let her chew my mitten.
I've come to the grand conclusion that when you need something to watch later at night, a movie will trump the option of watching a tv show, even if the tv show happens to be your most favouritest [yes, I realized favouritest is not a word] show. Here is my logic:
A movie is long enough already that when it ends, you know it's silly to watch more than once and just one more time won't hurt. A good movie that you've already seen multiple times is excellent because if you turn it off halfway through due to exhaustion, you aren't disappointed/anxious/angry because you're missing what happens next. You already know!
A tv show, especially a favourite one can make you think you're safe and just one more episode won't hurt because it's only 20 minutes long [give or take]. Not to mention tv shows usually leave off at critical/exciting/sentimental time where you NEED to know what happens next. And then you realize it's 1 am and you work at 8 am. The only exclusion to this rule I can think of is I, Claudius because it's an hour and a bit per episode; but even then I find myself reasoning that only one more or even just half an episode would be ok. No, Tor, no it is not ok at all.
Therefore, tonight, The Princess and the Frog trumps How I Met Your Mother. Especially since although I love the animation in it, I love the soundtrack more and enjoy it for background music while knitting.
In this world, there are two kinds of crazy-pants: the good kind where the person is generally good-natured, slightly eccentric and quirky in a lovable way and the bad kind where the person is pretty much insane.
I, unfortunately, can say I have both types in my family; but then again, I'm sure most people can [mine are crazier though].
On a less crazy and more awesome note though, I conquered cables in knitting and made these:
Awesome, right? 2/5 people I've shown have called them "emo gloves" [you can't tell in this picture, but they ARE missing the finger tips] but really what emo would wear pumpkin orange knitted gloves? As I told one of the mockers, "they are with cables in them, not with fishnets." So hah. Needless to say I am utterly in love with them and the yarn that made them.
I feel like after becoming a somewhat better blogger in the last little while, in the last couple days I've been slipping again. I mean, there were many moments I acknowledged that I should write a lil'somethin' somethin' but then my short attention span kicks in, or someone walks into the room [another trigger for my short attention span] or I just plain went to bed because I was exhausted and was thus too exhausted to get back up and start again.
But to be honest my weekend was pretty hectic.
Between Mistress Mabel failing her safety test [she's an old girl, you know] and spending copious amounts of time running from one job to another [it doesn't help that since Mabel is out of commission I have to rely on rides to and from the Museum....which is in a different city.....a good 25 minutes away, or 45 during blizzards] and dealing with purse snatchers at the Village [I kid you not. Please don't ask me how my shift Monday went] I have been a very busy girl.
I did, however, get these stoic people done plus their background [woo!].
Pretty sure they are the largest people I've ever painted. Or maybe just the tallest now that I'm remembering about this chick
....wow, that right there was just a small example of my lack of concentration skills. My mother always told me when I was a baby/toddler I always had to be doing 3 things at once; I guess it just continued into my adulthood.
All I can say now is thank goodness it's pay week! And now I go to debate over embroidery patterns, knit, possibly play some Sims, email the Museum, make some lunch and watch t.v.
Today is Viking template day. After a visit to the dollar store, I've come home with a lifetime supply of bristol board [ok, I might be exaggerating. Only 8 sheets] so my lovely Vikings can start to come to life. Hoo-rah.
This gives me full right to watch How to Train Your Dragon. After this episode of I, Claudius. [I love I, Claudius. Especially since I figured out the woman who plays Livilla also played Columbia in Rocky Horror. {ALSO, if you haven't seen them before, young Patrick Stewart also plays Sejanus and Uncle Geoffrey from Bridget Jones is Herod Agrippa!!}] I love it when I make connections like that!]
Also I've fallen in love with Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick [ooh, that sounds dirty]. It's so cushy and warm that I can't decide what exactly to make of it. I'm torn between leg-warmers or a shrug and keep casting on and ripping out because I truly can't decide. Ah, the life of a knitter.
Ok, so now it's actually 1/12/11....but I'm ignoring the fact it's after midnight right now. Like I seem to do every night.
At work today I beat my record of selling our coupon calendars. A grand old 8 sold today compared to my old record of 7.
[I'm a really lame salesperson and calendars are boring to talk about].
In exciting news, I'm going to be painting some close to 8 foot high Vikings soon for job number 2 so while I'm attacking and experimenting with acrylic paint, I can pretend I'm pillaging a village instead.
[Actually I'm pretty sure I'd also make a lame Viking too. My dad likes to tell me we have a Cossack ancestor but I highly doubt those genes were passed down to me. Same with the salesperson genes.]
The main point is this: the last few days I've been going over in my head the best way to paint with acrylic on a see-through surface, where essentially what I'm painting has to be seen more clearly from the side I can't see rather than the one I can. Which gives me multiple possibilities:
[Skip this part if you aren't an art nerd]
1. Paint two layers, a pretty one for the outside and a duplicate on the inside so it will be a double-sided Viking
2. Paint in tiny sections so I can get the layered effect I want without rick of the acrylics drying too quickly and me ending up with blocks of colours on the outside with no real detail.
3. An artist's worst nightmare [ok, this one is probably a bit of a stretch. I'm sure my previous painting instructor would scold me for linking acrylic paint to a nightmare].
Anyways, I'm excited and therefore so should you. If only I could get to bed at a decent hour.
Please don't judge my entire artistic being on this one sketch.
This Friday has not been what I planned. It started pretty normally, aside from a sore wrist from shoveling snow the night before [at least it was a gorgeous night] but then slowly started going downhill to hell. But, without going into any particular details, I will say it was particularly unsurprising and now I am left with no license plates on my car but at least [technically] full ownership on it.
And now I'm calming myself down with wine and making spaghetti sauce, alongside the lovely music of Sophie Madeleine.
Surprisingly I haven't knitted in the last couple days and now I am craving to work on some knitted socks to complete up either my own little anklets I'm making from this dreamy yarn or Kyleman's [which will hopefully go faster this time!] so I think I shall knit before my mother gets home and true pre-dinner party mayhem starts.
Monday I barely remember, I think, because of how exhausted I was from my first shift at V.V. in a week.
Tuesday I was on-call at V.V. but if I didn't have to go in, I'd go instead to my second job, the Museum, for a meeting Only I didn't get called into V.V. but then Chas from the Museum called and told me the meeting was cancelled because everybody else had called in sick [they have a very small staff]. So I was left to clean my room.
Wednesday was the hormonal, cramps the size of China and a headache the size of Britain, gotta shuffle through the day at V.V. with a manager's meeting thrown in [and nothing ever goes right when the managers go in for their meeting. Nothing] kind of day. It was horrible. And to top it all off, Blogger didn't want me posting in that kind of state of mind so it wouldn't work for me last night. And my period key is becoming sticky enough that usually I have to press it either really hard or twice to actually get any punctuation mark at all.
Thursday, today, is hopefully going to be better. It's another one of those "if I'm not working one job, I'm working the other" type days and as of right now no one has called in sick. Except gmail.com seems to just not want to let me see my inbox in anything other than basic HTML. Change that HT to a plain ole' F and you've got this week's motto thus far.
Also to go a head into the future a little bit, Friday, I was supposed to head up to Yorkdale mall with one of my favourite ladies of all time to check out Victoria's Secret and other lovely shops. But now I've been guilted and pleaded into helping my mother with her dinner party pickle [not an actual pickle, even though my mother is fond of pickle trays] since she works during the day, I don't, I cook better [that's probably a lie. However, I am awesome at cooking things that come in large pots] and she now has almost twice the amount of guests she was originally expecting.
One of my favourite mottos is "Life's a bitch, so bite back." well if Life keeps throwing me these little tribulations by Sunday, she won't be getting just a bite. She'll be getting a kick.
It makes sense that at 5 to midnight I would get the incredible urge to draw cartoons and scan them in [using the new printer I got for Christmas, takes up half my desk, and that I confusedly set up this afternoon on a cleaning break {seriously, it took me a couple tries before I figured out the paper tray is hidden and NOT the slot at the top that has a "paper in here!" picture}] except I know this is a bad idea which involves procrastination on sleep when I have an ACTUAL work shift tomorrow and not a [lame] on-call shift.
Also I'm beginning to wonder why I don't have more Marina and the Diamonds on my ipod. I mean, I have this song [my favourite] and this one too but why, oh WHY, haven't I just put aaaaaaaaaaaaall of them on? Like, for example, this song:
[p.s. good job, Blogger, on adding a youtube option to your videos! Bravo!]
As most of you may or may not know, I have two tattoos that look like this
and this
and now after seeing a co-worker's newest tattoo I am craving another one. Not that I wasn't before [having a total of 3 tattoos seems like a good number to me] but now I am going through one of my "desperately need to get new ink" phases. This phases always make Kyleman laugh.
So I've been looking around the internet [instead of cleaning my room as proposed: I figured since neither of my works ended up wanting me today, it was a divine sign telling me to clean] for inspiration.
Which happened to be the Beatles.
[I LOVE the Beatles.]
And now I am listening to their entire discography while pretending to start cleaning my room, trying to come up with some divine inspiration of my own that I hopefully won't regret later on in life.
So even though I was ready to party in the new year last night [par-tay dress, red lipstick and high heeled up] by the middle of the evening I once again realized why I don't really drink [I'm serious; alcohol and I have a horrible friendship/mild allergy to each other] and started my quest to become sober again.
Which really wasn't that hard since I had had only one drink by this point in time.
Thus instead of getting a cab home and leaving Kyleman's standard car at the party house, we all decided it'd be good practice for me to drive us all home. Much to my relief the drunkies kept their calm for nervous me, and were very much impressed when I got us home safely and only stalling the car once.
And that was the marvelous start to my new years!
Voila!
