Kids Say...

My friend related this conversation he had with his 4 year old daughter, who wanted a new puppy.

If we're going to get a tiny little dog, we have to get rid of the big dog first.

Ok.

Do you know how we get rid of the big dog?

Yes.

How do we get rid of the big dog?

You shoot it.

And you don't really want daddy to shoot that dog, do you?

No. I want to do it.

He's going to have his hands full with that one, I can tell.

Now, before anyone gets all upset, he did not shoot the dog, nor did he let the little girl do it. And though he is not known for his love for dogs, neither is he the kind who goes around randomly shooting them. I think she got that from watching Bambi. Not too long ago, this same friend related the story of how he got in trouble with his wife when the little girl watched that movie. She asked what happened to Bambi's mother, and my friend responded that the hunters shot her. HIs wife didn't exactly appreciate that, but the daughter must have remembered.

For some visual interest, more hay. Just a few more of these pictures, if you can stand them.

This Has Been

one of those "Calgon, take me away!" days. Not a bad day, per se, but just very hectic. I won't bore you with the gory details, but let me just say, I asked if I could be paid by the mile, instead of by the hour.

Ok, let me gripe first and get it out of the way...If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've heard this gripe before. If you continue reading my blog into the future, you will most likely hear it again. Either way, I won't hold it against you if you decide to skip this part. I'll let you know when you can start reading again.

Mr. T came to karate Tuesday night for his once-every-six-months class attendance. I don't really have a problem with him missing so much class. He has pretty legitimate reasons. He is chronically ill for one thing. He has a condition that can't be cured, but can be controlled. It has taken quite a toll on him, physically. He is also attending college--including a once a week class in New Orleans. That's like a 4-5 hour drive away. This semester, he is taking 24 hours. That's insane in itself. Finally, he is a full-time pastor. When one says full time pastor, that's exactly what one means. Full time. Twenty four hours a day. 365 days a year. Being a pastor is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Everyone makes so many demands of a pastor, but so few give anything back...but I digress.

So, Mr. T makes his semi-annual class visit. That's not so much the problem. When he gets there, sensei is not there. He had been doing a demonstration at one of the schools and hadn't gotten back yet. Mr. T takes over the class. I suppose that is his right, since he is ranking shodan. Well, let me say that he got his shodan before I got mine, but if you count actual dojo participation, I've got way more time in than he does. But he takes over the class, bows us in, and introduces himself to the students who've joined since his last visit--some of whom have yellow belts. He introduces himself as Sensei T and says he's been training with sensei since the beginning of time. Excuse me? Sensei T? How in the world can you be a sensei if you hardly ever set foot in the dojo? And how can you call yourself training with sensei if you never actually train with sensei? Yeah, he may have started training 3 years before I did, but if you had to log actual hours in the dojo, I'd have many more hours than he does. I train 3 hours a week in class, plus whatever I do outside of class. He spends about 3 hours a year in class, and that time is usually spend acting like he's co-owner of the dojo. I could go on, but I'll spare you.

Ok, I'm done griping now. You can start reading again.

Tuesday night, Mr. T led the basics. When he's there, it's more like ka-robics than karate. It's hard even for us higher ranks to keep up with this two counts per second pace. But we have 7 white belts in class now. Some of them got totally lost. I told them not to worry about the count, just get your technique right. We have one white belt, Carlissa, who is very good. I missed two weeks of classes due to being sick (and tired) and she learns nearly the entire first kata.

Anyway, after Mr. T led the basics, sensei spent a few minutes talking about basic techniques, since we have so many new students. We had a short break, then did seisan kata--or as much as they knew for the white belts. We finished off the class with some two-man kicking drills.

After class, I went through all my kata fairly slowly, concentrating on form and stances. Even going through them slowly is a good workout. I want to get one of those heart rate/blood pressure monitors that you can wear on your wrist and see what my heart rate gets up to after just one kata. (I probably should get one anyway since high blood pressure runs in my family.) Today at work, I manually counted my heart rate and got 72. It wasn't even that low when I was running 5 miles a day.

After tonight's class, Josh and I stayed and went over Urashi Bo kata. I had learned about half of this kata before my black belt test, but when sensei announced that I would be testing, it kind of fell by the wayside while I was preparing for that. Sensei had started teaching it to Josh and Barrett this afternoon, so I asked Josh to review it with me. Once I got going on it, I remembered it pretty well. I told sensei I was going to practice it over the weekend so we could work on it some more Monday. He said that we were going to be doing Urashi in black belt class.

As I sit here tonight typing this, what is left of Hurricaine Humberto is passing over, bringing much needed rain to this area. I'm afraid it's too late to save what is left of the cotton, though.

Excitement

Contractors were brought in to work on the air conditioning. Or play with it, as some people say since it never seems to actually get fixed. The contractor in the man-lift dropped a bit of PVC pipe from the ceiling, which hit a fire extinguisher, knocking it to the floor. The extinguisher then discharged creating a thick white cloud of --uh, stuff--billowing through the plant. Then came the screaming and running, the fire alarms, the frantic calls to maintenance, and Jake running in with another fire extinguisher. Someone said Autobrazer 7 was on fire. Someone else said it was the expander on fire, and the rest of us didn't know what the heck was going on. Eventually, the cloud dissipated and people began to figure out what had happened, Johnny made the "go back to work" signal, and the contractor who had started it all stopped laughing. Eventually...


Cody was letting the dogs out for their late night potty break. We usually let them out the back door, but today he let them out the front door. Rylea saw herself in the reflection of the storm door, and barked at herself. Cody said to make sure I blogged about that.

Golly what a day.

Where were you when the world stopped turning?

Where Was I?

Where was I when the towers fell? I was at work. It was a day not unlike any other day. Johnny was running Line 3 at the time, and Michael Shade was our production superintendent. I worked in tubing under the late Virgil Mann. I would like to say that everybody loved Virgil, but that simply wouldn't be true. Virgil was fair. He treated everyone who worked under him the same. Those who had been receiving special treatment under our previous supervisor accused Virgil of playing favorites. He wasn't. He was simply making sure that everyone in the department got to enjoy the privileges that heretofore had been reserved for a special few. Those special few hated him for it.

That year, 2001, Virgil decided that instead of moving one or two people out of the department for the slow season, everyone would do a two week long rotation of being moved around. September 11th just happened to fall into my two week rotation, which is why I was working on Line 3 that morning.

I was at the end of the line, combing out fins on a coil when my buddy Duane came running up to me all excited and exclaimed, "We're under attack!"

"By who?" I asked, but he said that nobody knew yet. Duane told me that they had bombed Washington D.C, but it was pretty early, and nobody really knew what was going on yet. Soon, he came back and said that the Capitol and possibly the White House had been bombed, which we now know wasn't true. It wasn't even lunchtime yet but the Bush blaming had already begun.

"He's letting them all into the country," one person said. Even Johnny got blamed. "You voted for him," another person accused.

In our fast paced, instant gratification society, people don't seem to grasp the fact that results today have their origins in actions that could have taken place months and even years ago. The wheels of 9/11 began turning long before Bush took office. An attack of this scale is hardly a spur of the moment decision.

Around 10-ish, our Director of Operations Scott Reid came out and read a press release. It said that the Capitol may have been hit, and all air traffic had been grounded, but there were aircraft that were still unaccounted for. "As far as I know," Scott told us, "none of the schools are closing. If I find out anything more, I will make an announcement." Then it was back to work as usual. It was kind of hard to go back to work as usual. I don't think a lot got done that day.

After work, I went to pick Cody up from school. He was in second grade at the private school then, and they don't have bus service. Once we got home, I turned on the TV and parked myself in front of it. That was around 4:00 PM, and I got my first images of the planes hitting and the towers falling. Of the people hanging out of the windows pleading for a miracle. Of others who decided the miracle wasn't coming and jumped. I was watching a live broadcast when tower 7 fell. There was no bomb. There was no explosion. It just fell.

But then came a dilemma. I knew the President was due to speak, but it was Cub Scout registration night. I wanted to hear the speech, but we would need to go to scout night, too. So I put in a tape and hit record, and just let the entire tape fill up with news. Later, I fast forwarded to the President's speech and watched it. Then I put the tape on the shelf, and haven't looked at it since.

The next few days were filled with news, sadness, cheering when another person was pulled alive from the rubble of the towers, and mourning when another body was found. The dam out at the lake was closed off to prevent terrorists from blowing it. People were really worried about that, too. "If they blow that dam, this whole town will be wiped out."

"Don't worry about it," I tried to reassure them. "Terrorists want attention. They aren't going to hit a town nobody's ever heard of." The dam remained closed for several weeks, and though they are open now, the gates have never been taken down.

I was concerned about how all this was affecting Cody, who was only 7 at the time. He didn't seem outwardly affected, so I asked him one day if he ever worried about something like that happening to us. "No," he said. "I know that if someone tries to fly a plane into our house, you'll go out there and make him stop." But he put a sign on his bedroom door that said, "No bin laden allowed!", and his play was filled with airplanes crashing into buildings. He did come up with a creative, and rather unique solution to the problem. His idea? Put up fake buildings and let the terrorists kill themselves off. Works for me.

Now some six years later, people are back to life as usual. Most of America is going about their business as if it had never happened. Even worse are the ones who want to give up on freedom. They want to quit, give up, surrender and pretend it won't happen again. They want to pretend it didn't happen in the first place. They want to forget.

Me? I will never forget.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go knit some more soldier socks...

Really Whiny Post

I don't blame you if you want to skip this one, because I'm feeling really whiny this evening. Nothing is really wrong, but I've been depressed and weepy all evening. I think it's mostly my hormones acting weird, because yes, folks, I am that age. As much as I've wanted to deny it, I think I'm finally going to have to face the fact that I am going through The Change. I've talked to B about what I've been going through--and more than just moodiness--and she agrees.

One bad side effect of this is that I've lost my karate mojo. I don't even care about going to class any more. I did go tonight, but didn't really enjoy it.


A bit more bad news. Saturday morning somebody shot my dog. She is ok, though. We just can't imagine someone wanting to shoot her. I think it was probably some bratty kid with a pellet gun, just shooting to be hurting something. B, who never wants to think badly of anyone, is sure she just caught some of the scatter from dove hunters. I don't think so. If it was dove hunters, they were using awfully big shot to be hunting birds. I went ahead and took her to the vet because of her age. She is almost 12. He showed me the x-ray, and it looked like a pellet gun pellet to me. He left it in her leg. I asked him if we needed to get it out, and he said they'd do more damage to her leg digging around in there trying to find it, than it would do by just being in there. Good thing is that it missed her bone.

You can see in this picture that her left leg is almost twice as big as her right one from the swelling. Other than that, and a little stiffness, you'd never know she was hurt. She is back to running full speed across the yard. Just as if nothing had happened. She is one tough dog.

Now, if only I knew what had happened to her collar.

Finished My Socks

The Yukon Leaves socks are finished!

Note how well the stripes match. I'd like to take credit for that--telling you that I carefully measured so that I started at the exact same point in the pattern repeat, but I'd be lying. It was completely and totally a fluke. That makes 4 items I've completed from my WIP list.

I'm off to go knit some more and watch football. But before I leave, here's a photo that didn't quite make it into my personal gallery. It's a good photo, but the one I posted yesterday is better balanced. At least I think so.

Strange and Ironic Photos

I have been living in this house for almost a year now, and haven't started trying to decorate it. I'm lousy at that sort of thing. I know what looks good, but I don't have a clue as to how to do nifty stuff like that. Add to that the fact that the budget right now doesn't really allow for interior design, and well, my walls are still pretty bare. Last week, I decided to print out some of my favorite photos and hang them in the hall.

The very first picture I printed out was this one:

You've seen it before. When I had finished printing it out, Cody asked me why I had taken a picture of barbed wire. I explained that pictures like that are very artistic. He replied, "You sure do take some strange and ironic photos." As I printed out more photos, he said I was going to have an entire wall of strange and ironic photos. "Yes," I replied. "It'll be like my very own private art gallery." My entire gallery of Strange And Ironic Photos can be found here.

Neither strange nor ironic, I took lots of sky pictures today. I couldn't help myself. The sky was so full of wondrous shapes and colors that I couldn't decide which picture to post, so you get a bonus. A couple of bonuses, in fact.

While I was picture taking, guess who just happened to fly over. That's right, The U.S. Army.

Cody could probably tell you what kind of helicopters those are, but I don't know. I just think it's pretty wild that my el cheapo little point and shoot camera could capture those rotors like that.

Squeaky says, "Give me a chance and I'll capture those rotors."

A Couple Of Stumps

This one I cheated on. I actually worked on it for about three lunch breaks instead of just one.

A tree stump, drawn from imagination.

Another kind of stump, my group leader Johnny. Every day I look at the back of his head, as he sits with his feet up on the desk eating his lunch. Every day I think, "if I were any good at drawing people, I could sketch him." Finally, one day I could no longer resist. I told myself, "don't draw a person. Just draw each shape you see." This is what I came up with:



He wouldn't hold his head still, but the rest of him I think looks pretty good.

I thought this story sounded odd from the very beginning. What kind of parents go off and leave three children under the age of 4 alone in a hotel room?

.

Strange Dreams

It seems my nights have been beset by strange dreams of late. One could argue that my nights have been inhabited by strange dreams my entire life, but these dreams have been strange in that they are a different kind of strange than my normal strange.

Last night I dreamed I was away at a karate camp of some sort. Several of us were staying in a fairly new cabin. The wood was still bright and new, and did not yet have that weathered look. The bunks were made of the same type of wood, and everything smelled fresh and clean. It was the end of the day, and the light from the setting sun streaming in through the windows gave everything in the cabin a glow of warmth and beauty. It was in the midst of this warm glow that I decided I needed to take a shower. I gathered my toiletries and off I went to find the shower.

The shower was no more than a curtained off corner of a storage shed. Just as I arrived, I saw another lady entering the shower. "This is just temporary," a camp employee explained as I am waiting, "until we can get the regular shower built." He means well, so I refrain from pointing out that this information isn't really helpful to me at that point in time.

My turn for the shower finally arrives and I get in only to discover that no water will come out of the shower head. "You have to use that hand sprayer," says the lady who'd just gotten out.

"Give me that shower head, and I'll take it home and get Bob to fix it," says my pastor's wife who is suddenly, inexplicably there--and in full Sunday morning garb no less. I disconnect the offending piece of equipment, give it to her, and she leaves through the shed/shower's back wall, which is suddenly, inexplicably not there. I take the hand sprayer, wet myself down, and then begin shampooing my hair, all the while gazing out across green hills, blue skies, and the preacher's wife who'd stopped to speak to someone as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

A man enters the shed through the space where the back wall wasn't, and moves off to my left, where a wall never was. Just some crates, boxes and other stuff one would find in a shed. The whole time, he has his head down and his eyes turned away from me. At the time, I think he is just trying to keep from embarrassing me.

Another man enters the shed through the space where the back wall wasn't, only this one is on my right. The whole time he is coming down the hill, until he gets behind the wall, which is still there because it is now supporting the mysteriously reinstalled and suddenly working shower head, he has his eyes scrunched tightly shut. Something begins nagging at my sensibilities, but I don't quite know what it is.

Then a third man enters the shed to my left, and this one is walking backwards! He keeps his back turned to me the entire time. "All right!" I exclaim. "This is just not normal for a man to be in the presence of a naked woman and not look!" I mean, I rationalize to myself in my dream, I know I don't have the body I had when I was 17, but here I'm thinking I look pretty good for my age--despite having given birth to a baby nearly as big as me--and these men don't even want to look at me. Am I that repulsive?

It was at this point I woke up, and the blow to my self esteem was so great that I ripped off all my clothes and ran out into the street stark naked and stayed there until somebody ogled me.

OK, I didn't really do that.

More strange dreams to come...

Hee Haw!

Cody brought home his first progress report. To say that I was pleased would be a massive understatement. He has 7 classes, but doesn't receive grades in band or art, so that's 5 grades he gets. He got 4 A's and one B. Best yet--not a single zero! Not one. Hee Haw!!! Last year, he was averaging 16 zeros per progress report. This time, not a single one. His English teacher even added a note saying he was a pleasure to teach. I wanted to say, "Who are you and what have you done with my son?" I think nearly failing last year may have put the fear of God into him. He is doing so much better, I just can't gush on enough about him.

However, I know that listening to another parent gush on and on about her child gets old after a while, so let's move on...

I got a pretty good night sleep last night and feel better than I have in days. Unfortunately, I skipped karate and went to bed early to get that good night's sleep, but it was worth the sacrifice. Hee Haw!

I finished the September dishcloth, and on time too! Hee Haw! Usually I can guess at the pattern, but this one had me thrown until nearly the end. I think it's supposed to be a birthday cake. Appropriate, seeing as a disproportionate number of my family members have birthdays in September. October was almost as busy, but so far, I'm the only November baby--unless you count far distant cousins I don't even know.


Labor day was relatively quiet around here. This is how my munchkins spent the day. Ignore the state of the carpet. It was vacuumed soon--very soon--after this picture was taken.


You know, I didn't think my blog was this important:

My URL is blocked in China. Not surprising, since the entire Google network is blocked. Once Google took over Blogger, we all became blocked as well.

I am almost to the heel of my second Yukon Leaves sock. Just need to finish the pattern repeat, then I can start the heel flap. This pattern uses a band heel, which I've never done before. I don't really like it. If I do these socks again, I'm going to use a regular flap and gusset heel.

Last but certainly not least, both my college teams (U of Texas, and LSU) won their first games, though I didn't get to see either. Hee Haw!

Will The Real Yarn Snobs Please Stand Up?

On my Acrylic and Shotguns post, Babs left a comment referring me to what she termed "the best thing I'd ever read on the acrylic/non acrylic wars." She left a link, so I popped on over and read the original post. It was very interesting to say the least. The author presents a scenario which goes something like this: On a knitting message board/group, someone asks the following question:

I'm thinking about making a sweater for my sister's baby. I was going to use Red Heart. Has anybody worked with it before?

In her scenario, a few knitters kindly respond:

Knitter 2: I've worked with Red Heart and I'm not crazy about it. I like yarn with natural fibers in them better for babies; they breathe better and it's not good for babies to be damp and sweaty. Have you thought about cotton?

Knitter 3: I have to agree. I made a blanket out of Red Heart and it pilled the first time I used it. I don't think it's worth it.

Knitter 4: Red Heart feels scratchy to me and when I made my kid a hat from it, he complained it every time he wore it, so make sure you feel it before you buy it to see if you think it's soft enough.

Then, in the fictional scenario, another knitter jumps in with the following response:

Knitter 5: Well, I think you are just a bunch of yarn snobs.

The implication being, of course, that those who use acrylic are the real yarn snobs, but will quickly slap that label on anyone who criticizes their chosen yarn.

It's easy to prove a point when you control both sides of the debate. In that situation, you can fabricate the responses that best support your position. However, when you introduce reality into the situation, you will find that your chosen scenario moves in an entirely different direction.

If you were to ask the above question on any knitting message board, or in any knitting group, the responses you receive in real life will be vastly different from the responses received in the imaginary scenario presented above. True, you may get one or two of those types of responses, bu they will be drowned out by a majority of angry, emotional ranting posters.

What you will most likely hear in real life is:

--Why would you give [your sister] a shoddy gift made from cheap, inferior yarn? Doesn't she rate better?

--I would never put ACKrylic next to a baby's sensitive skin.

--Acrylic is junk yarn only used by lower class people.

--The only ones who use acrylic are those who are too stupid to know the difference. Intelligent people only knit with wool.

--[Babies] deserve better than things made from shoddy, poor quality yarn.

--[New mothers] have enough to worry about without having things made from crappy yarn dumped on them.

--No serious knitter would ever use such a poor quality, inferior, shoddy, crappy, junk yarn as acrylic.

*Note: all the above responses are quotes, or paraphrased quotes, taken directly from yarn lists/message boards*

Comments like these are immediately going to put people on the defensive. If people really did respond to questions about acrylic yarn in the calm, rational manner in the imaginary examples presented, no doubt the term yarn snob would become a thing of the past. Unfortunately, those who object to acrylics typically respond with the liberal use of terms like crappy, junky, shoddy, inferior. It is these terms people are going to object to, rather than someone simply not liking a certain type of yarn.

Case in point, the author of the post quoted here goes on to write a long message which is basically nothing more than another anti-acrylic tirade. The adjective used most often?

Crappy.

More Sundries

Sus, your wish is my command. The Yukon leaves socks pattern close up:


Note that I have carried the pattern down the foot. This is personal preference. All socks can be made with the entire foot in plain stockinette.

We have one! The second hurricane of the 2007 season, Felix, is now a category 5 storm. He attained Cat 5 status approximately 8:00 PM Sunday evening. He has sustained winds of 165 MPH and gusts of 200+ MPH. This is as strong as Katrina ever was.

UPDATE: He has weakened slightly through the afternoon, but is still a strong Cat 4 storm. He is not expected to be a threat to the US, but will likely hit Mexico in roughly the same areas devastated by Dean.

From the department of absurd lawsuits:

A West Virginia man is suing McDonald’s for putting cheese on his hamburger after he explained his allergy at the drive-through. The plaintiff “repeatedly asked as to the status of his food and whether it had no cheese, and took multiple preventive steps to assure his food did not contain cheese,” the suit says. However, he proceeded to eat the sandwich and ended up at the hospital after his ensuing allergic reaction. As The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto quipped, “So apparently the ‘multiple preventive steps’ he took ‘to assure his food did not contain cheese’ did not include looking at the #@*& sandwich before eating it!” --The Patriot Post

Now, you would think I'd side with the plaintiff on this one. After all, I have food allergies, too. However, I'm siding with McD's. Why? Because I do have food allergies. I expect McDonald's to make a reasonable effort to keep allergens off my burgers when I request it, but the ultimate responsibility of what I put into my mouth rests squarely on my shoulders. If I eat without looking, and have a reaction, it's no one's fault but mine.

Now, I know it's been a while, but last time I ate at McDonald's, I had to ask for cheese.

Yukon Leaves Socks

One down, the second well on its way.

Being sick is good for something, I guess.

Got Yarn?

Got any yarn you're not quite sure what to do with it?



Maybe it was a gift from a well meaning friend or relative. Maybe it is left over from some larger project. Maybe it was some you absolutely loved, but only one ball was left in the clearance bin, and it's just not quite enough to make anything with it. Maybe you just went crazy when it first came out, but now the eyelash yarn has sort of gone out of style, and you still have a drawer full. Oh, what to do? What to do?

Here's an idea...Scarves From The Heart donates hand knit or crocheted scarves to cancer patients. And just why do cancer patients need scarves? Well, for one thing, the treatment they go through really messes up their bodies. They will feel cold, even when the temps are warm. More than anything, they need to know someone cares.

A scarf is such a simple thing, but to someone dying of cancer, it can mean so much.