Dedicated to the one I love

Today is the anniversary of when I met my husband. It was 20 years ago today that I fell in love with the man of my dreams. So today my blog is going to be about him…

***Soppy love crap ahead be warned***

I often tell people that he is the greatest man to walk the face of the Earth. He is not a powerful or rich man. In fact, he is a stay at home uncle. But he cooks for me and cleans the house and makes all those stupid phone calls for vet appointments and plumbers. Usually if people question his greatness, I point out that we spend many an evening with him reading to me while I knit. Does it get better than that? I do not think so!
We like a lot of the same movies and entertainment. While I veer more towards movies like “30 Days of Night” and he towards “My Dinner with Andre” we both love action films (all the Bourne films) and sarcastic comedies (Monty Python anyone) and of course all B-films (Bert I. Gordon is our hero). He taught me to like opera, and I taught him to appreciate heavy metal. We both like to go to live theater and discovered early on that small odd production were more our style. He introduced me to Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft. We both did (and still occasionally do) role playing; in fact we met at a role playing convention.
He makes me laugh and he always seems to know what to say when I am feeling bad. He has put up with me and my crazy family for 20 years without complaint.
He is my partner and my friend and I am thankful everyday we are together.

Mainly Movie review

Over the weekend I did something new and exciting. I dyed yarn with Kool-Aid. Oh Yeah! It turned out really nice. I was going to take pictures, but I could not get the lame digital camera to work at all. So no pics today. Sigh. We had enough points on our credit card to get a new one so I told the DH to get one so I can take pictures for my blog. It should be here in a couple of weeks. Yeah!

Monday night The Girl and I went to see “30 Days of Night”. We both enjoyed it and found it quite scary. Several reviews had complained about the gore, but I did not think it was any worse than most of the horror films made today. It was bloody, but then again it is about vampires. It sorts of goes hand and hand. It held my attention and the vampires were successfully creepy and not at all attractive, which I think is a breath of fresh air. My all time favorite vampire movie is “Near Dark” just because I think it is a more realistic portrayal of how someone who can not hold a job and kills for a living would actual live. How do vampires get all the money they always have in movies? It has always bothered me. The vampires in “30 Days” are basically a pack of animals, which is a reasonable portrayal of such creatures.

I also finished the hat I am making for my co-workers husband last night. Now I just need to do the neck warmer. I am going to make up my own based on some other patterns I have found. I want it to match the hat I made.
I have several UFOs that I need to finish. Plus Christmas presents. I really need to get working on those as well. I do not know which to do first. I would like to finish up stuff I started, but then I start to worry I will not get the presents done. Arrrgh.

Just a brief update

I did hit all the stores on the Shop Hop last Friday. There were 3 that I had never been in before. One of them was really nice and I will probably go back to it since it is not far from my work. The other two were okay, but not extraordinary and way too far away for me to go to regularly. I only spent about $100; very good for 7 yarn shops!
I finished the dreaded merino scarf. I handed it in last night at Guild. The gal who I made if for, could not make it to the meeting so I do not know if she will like it or not. The scarf I received was nice enough, but a little small. That is partially my fault since I said I wanted enough left over to make a head band. However, I think she used a smaller needle than I would have on the pattern so it is really dense. I am worried that it is too small and I will lose it. I will have to wear it a little and see what I think. My husband came with me to Guild last night. The Girl has been sick the last few days and was particularly crabby. He felt sitting with a bunch of knitting strangers was better than being at home with her. She was still crabby when we came home because she did not think it would take so long. I have been going to Guild one Tuesday a month for over a year and normally I do not get back until after 9. Last night we were home before 8:30. Arrrggh!
I finished up a duck last night for a Swap-bot partner. I think I will make another one so she will have a pair. It was really quick to make.
I other news, my co-worker has expanded her order to a hat and a neck warmer and upped the price to $50. So I picked up yarn on Friday and I am going to get that made up.
It is Wednesday, which means hubby has improve tonight. So hopefully I will be able to get a lot of knitting done.

Thursday notes

So, DH had Improv class last night and I was able to spend a quiet evening knitting and watching TV. The Girl was mad at me most of the evening because I did not want to drive my husband to class and thereby drive her around too. I am not sure why she wanted to go with, but I was already in my p.j.s and my husband wanted to drive himself. Any way, I watched “Pushing Daisies” which was okay, but a tad bit too quirky for my taste. The reason I bring it up though is that it was revealed that the P.I. in the show knits when he is stressed. Since the main guy had brought his childhood sweetheart back to life he had knit “a slip stitch vest and 2 gun cozies”. I just loved the idea of a gun cozy! It was the funniest thing in the show.
I was able to knit about 5 inches on the dreaded merino blend scarf. It is due at Guild next Tuesday, so the end is in site. Yeah!!
I need to knit a farm animal for a partner on swap-bot and I am also working on a novelty scarf for The Girl. She picked out what yarns she wanted and it is going well. I will get it done fairly quickly.
There is a gal here at work who has offered me $20 to knit her a hat. I know it is not really enough to pay for my time, but I really like to knit hats. I think I will take her up on the offer.
Then, I need to get cracking on Christmas presents. I know most of what I am going to make, so I think I will be okay. We will see.

Bad Norwegian

I can’t believe I missed Leif Erikson day yesterday. I am half Norwegian and I still missed it. Dang! Well, Happy Belated Leif Erikson day! Have some Rommegröt and be joyous.

I other news. I finished “The Chocolate War” last Friday. It was pretty good, not much character development, but that is probably because it is teen fiction. It was depressing in the end. I do not know how this made it on the top 10 list of banned books for 2006. Your average teen would be exposed to more sexual innuendos in an episode of “2 ½ Men”. My husband and discussed it and he thinks it is because it shows authority in a bad light. Perhaps, but really, most kids get that watching cereal commercials and anything by Disney.
This whole banned book week has reminded me of a discussion I had with a friend of my many years ago. He was totally against the Harry Potter books. I knew this and really never bought it up because I did not want to get the lecture about how they were evil. I always enjoyed them. Well, I mentioned we had went to the movie and he was pooh poohing that when he said that he was looking forward to “The Lord of the Rings” movie coming out. I was flabbergasted. He said he loved those books. I pointed out that the Harry Potter books were basically LotR lite and he got defensive. I think he was told by someone that the Harry Potter books were bad so rather than reading them and finding out for himself, he was spouting a party line. I do not think he went out and read them, buy I hope it made him think a little.

Over the weekend it was excessively hot here. It was 87 on Saturday. Yuck. I finished up a hat for DH. I will post it here as soon as I get the photo.
He used it yesterday because a cold front has come in and yesterday’s high was 47. A 40 degree swing in 3 days! Pretty cool, huh?
I am glad for the cool weather. It has been a long time coming.

I have taken this Friday off of work so I can participate in the 2nd Annual Shop Hop. I plan on hitting all 7 stores in one day. We will see if I am successful. I have it all mapped out so if I get too tired half way through, I can pick up the rest on Saturday. I think it is going to be a lot of fun.

Reading

Yesterday I decided to go to the library and check out some banned books. Oddly, there is no reference to banned books week at the public library. I would think they would want to celebrate diversity. It was odd. Anyway, I checked out “The Chocolate War” and “I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings”. I had never read either one of these books. I had never heard of “The Chocolate War” and I was reading it when I got home and my DH asked what I was reading. I told him that it was one of the top banned books of 2006. He was surprised since it was so old. I was shocked to see it had been written in 1974. I guess teenagers never really change all that much. It is a good book so far.
I was wondering why I had never even heard of it when I realized that I really did not spend much time reading “teen” fiction. I read a couple of Judy Blume books and then went right into Heinlein, Bradbury, Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut. No time for teen books. Not really much time for anything reality based, because, well reality sucked. This does not include biographies and history books, which I love. I know this seems like a contradiction, but I consider the past not as real as the present. It is always under debate as to what happened. (I have a degree in history and I was reading history books on my own when I was in high school. Yes, I was THAT popular! :) )
I still gravitate towards the fantastic and the surreal. Perhaps this is not good, I am not sure. I know that life is far more complicated than most books can portray.
One reality based fiction book and movie I did love was “Mystic River” and that was mainly because it showed how angry someone who is bereaved can be. I find that death is often portrayed with sadness only, but I know that when my sister died, I was pissed off. And the whole custody battle was a nightmare. I remember reading some Anne Tyler book (“St. Maybe”?) in which some guy’s brother and sister in-law dies and he takes custody of the kids. Of course these kids were just little angels and had no ill effects from the loss of their parents! What a load of hogwash. It just really sort of ticked me off. Would it kill her to say go talk to some people who are raising someone else’s kid(s) and see what it might really be like?
Sorry, I didn’t mean to rant.

Blah

I am feeling a bit of ennui today. It rained over the weekend. It was the 8th rainest September on record here in MN. I can really tolerate only so much rain, I do much better with snow. And the Vikings lost to the Packers. Always a depressing ordeal. I could not find any US 7 – 6” DPNs anywhere I went. What is up with that?
I have a bad case of startitis. I just am having difficulty finishing any projects. The most important thing I have to do is the scarf for my swap partner at Guild (the merino blend one). I have been plugging away, but it has been difficult. If I knit to long, not only do my eyes itch, for some reason my face starts to go numb. I hate merino.
I am close to finishing a hat for my DH. However, I can not finish it until I get some size 7 DPNs. Blah.
I do have to get going on Christmas presents. I ordered some rainbow striped yarn for The Girl. She wants rainbow knee highs. That is going to be one of her presents.
I wanted to make a tank and some anklets for my mom. I am going to make Scrabble bags for the in-laws. I have not started any of these projects. Although I do have most of the yarn, so I guess that is a start!