Monkey Off My Back

Finally!  I am so happy I got this monkey off my back.  I'm speaking, of course, of the Demeter Fade hat I've been working on for the last few weeks. 

I finished the thing...well, except for weaving all of those ends in, I mean.  I still have to do that.  Overall, I'm ok with how it turned out, but if I had it to do all over again, I don't think I'd do it the same way.  I didn't like knitting it with two strands, even though it made the color changes less obvious.  It still looks a little stripey to me, but I guess that can't really be avoided unless the yarn is specifically dyed to fade seamlessly.  

I bought the set to make a hat for my sister in law, but now I'm not even sure I want to send it to her.  I'm sure she'll like it, but I've sent her so many hats over the years that she may have hat overload by now.

The next monkey on my back will be to get my Christmas cards ready and mailed.  I want to send them, but I'm just not feeling it this year.  I'm going to greatly reduce the number of cards I send out for one thing.  Now, I don't expect to get a card back from every single person I send one to, but last year, I sent 40 cards and received three.  That was it.  It's discouraging.  

I know part of the problem is that stamps have gotten so high these days, which is why some of you will get American Flag stamps on your Christmas cards.  I bought two rolls back when they were still .55.  They're up to .78 now, and I can understand why people don't want to pay that much.  Unfortunately, USPS is a monopoly, and they can charge whatever they want because there is no competition and no other option.  

In other news, I'm sure you'll all be pleased to know my little candles turned on just when they were supposed to.  I'd gone outside yesterday evening and turned them on right around 5:00, then I walked out and took a picture of the outside lights. 

I was going to go take another photo once it got a bit darker, but it started raining and didn't stop until sometime after I'd gone to bed.   According to Raindrop, we got .6 of an inch.  Still doesn't completely relieve the drought conditions, but at this point, every little bit helps. 

Part of the reason is that we haven't had any hurricanes or tropical storms in the Gulf this year.  Not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S, which is highly unusual.  A lot of the storm chasers say that this is the reason why our Fall tornado season is expected to be especially sporty, because we haven't had any tropical systems to churn the heat out of the water.  So yay...Today is the last official day of hurricane season, by the way.  

Back to what I was saying...it was raining last night after it got dark, so I went out and took a photo tonight. 

My new neighbors and my been here longer than me neighbors both have their houses all decorated, too.  Even my across the street neighbors who don't usually decorate have bows up on their porch posts.  The neighborhood is looking really pretty. 

You know what else is looking pretty?  My biggest Christmas cactus.  

I don't know exactly what I'm doing with this one that is so right, but I'm not going to mess with success.   I need to prune some of the longer branches, but that's all I'm going to do to it. 

Well, Thanksgiving week is over, and I have to go back to work tomorrow.  I'm plumb sick about it.  Ole Miss fans are plumb sick because Lane Kiffin is now the new head coach at LSU.  I need to go to X and see what the former players are saying about that.  They had some pretty harsh words about the culture Brian Kelly had developed -- saying it's a culture of softness instead of competitiveness.  We'll have to see if Kiffin can re-build both the culture and the team. 

And finally, your meme of the day:

 Yeah, go ahead and judge.  Most of you are going to do it anyway. 

And I'm OK with that, because if it weren't for people judging me, I'd have never realized how obnoxious and unlikeable I used to be.  Hopefully, I'm a much better person now.  

But I still don't like the new kick off rules in the NFL.