Well, I just watched the most recent episode of Doctor Who. I was under the impression that the finale was around two hours, so I was a little disappointed to realize the last episode airs next week. But considering that I’ll probably cry over it, and I didn’t cry today, maybe that’s for the better. I don’t really need a two-hour crying jag, despite what Russell T. Davies seems to think.

I didn’t get to the gym this weekend because I was busy doing other stuff, and when I wasn’t busy doing other stuff, I wasn’t feeling up to it. But Greg put up some shelves for me in the craft room, so I could start getting that cleaned up, so I can get started on my Hallowe’en costume. And I’m trying out some recipes from the latest Vegetarian Times. And we watched Idiocracy last night, which was alright but not anywhere near as awesome as I’d been led to believe, and then Dodgeball, which was fantastic.

I’ve been knitting away at the apple leaf counterpanes, and joining as I go. I’ve only got three so far, but I’m pretty excited about it.

And I used some fabric in my stash to make a simple nightgown – just two rectangles and a drawstring ribbon neck/strap thing. But it’s comfy, and I probably wouldn’t have used the fabric otherwise. I mean, I like it, but it’s a little too much for even me, to wear in public.

So, Wednesday I checked out a camera from the library so I could take some pictures, especially of my hair, since I got it died that evening. Here’s before:

And here’s after:

It’s evenly red, and noticeably red, although it’s not quite as noticeable in the pictures as in real life. I love it.
I’ve also got two other pictures, but I’ll save them for later. (I only had the camera two nights, and the rechargeable batteries in it were dying, and it didn’t seem to like our non-rechargeable batteries at all – which is weird, since our old camera only liked non-rechargeable batteries, and wouldn’t work with rechargeable once they were recharged.)

GAGG: 203.72 miles

I got on one of the rickety bikes at the gym today, where the wheel catches about halfway through a rotation/revolution/whatever, so I got to 30 minutes, and my knees said, “Enough!” and then I stuck it out like thirty more seconds to make it an even five miles, and called it a day.

I didn’t get to the gym at all last week, because I didn’t have any shorts to wear, since the ones I could wear to the gym (all two of them – okay, well, the two I am *willing* to wear to the gym) potentially had poison ivy oil on them and needed to be washed before I could wear them. And I didn’t wash them until the weekend. Awesome.

No time to type now – I need to take a shower and work on some Librivox editing. Fun stuff.

Not really news, but here’s something I’ve learned this week: tea tree oil is the bomb.

I mean, I knew it before, but that shit really does do everything. It’s clearing up my poison ivy rash/blisters way faster than they would clear up on their own, and (with the help of a benadryl here or there) there’s no itching, which is fucking awesome, because when the itching gets started? I lose my mind.

I’m so excited! I had a consultation tonight with my most fabulous hairstylist, Mary, to discuss dyeing my hair red – and I have an appointment next Wednesday to do it. Sweet. (I was kind of expecting her to say it wouldn’t be possible, since there’s kind of a lot of dye already in my hair. So it was good news, especially for my Anne Shirley Hallowe’en costume.)

Other than that, I don’t feel like I have much new stuff to share, really. I have developed an obsession with made-from-scratch lemonade, and actually just finished making a jugfull. Sooooo good.

I guess I could show you the risks we run when we change a trash can but take our sweet time getting the new bag in: the trash can gets claimed by a certain trash-can-lover. In fact, if it’s not wedged in somewhere securely (like between the sink and the toilet, or between the nightstand and the bed), this has a tendency to happen, too, even with a bag in it. Occasionally, even with trash in it. What a loon.

And actually, now that they’re side-to-side in my Photobucket files, I’m realizing this is probably inherited behavior:

(Okay, no, probably not really. I know almost all cats like getting in boxes and containers and shit. It just amused me to see those pictures right next to each other, very similar.)

Dudes – SO sorry about not wrapping up the New York trip posts until now. But if you know me at all, you know I’m a slackass.

So, the last Saturday we were in New York, we got up, and Danny and Michel walked us down to Choice Market in Fort Greene, and we grabbed some breakfasty stuff then headed back to D&M’s to eat breakfast. Sweet mother of god, THAT is how you do breakfast. I forget what it was called, “Parisian” or “French” something-or-other, but it included a muffin, a croissant, and half a baguette with jam and butter, and I also got a middling-sized fruit tart to split with Greg. Heaven! We mooched around until Michel had to go to work, and then we mooched around some more until Brent (yet another Chapel Hill/Carrboro transplant) showed up, and then we collected Brian and headed out for dinner at the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden, in Queens. (I tried to get up with my friend, Harold, but it was not meant to be. Which probably saved him alot of frustration, considering what I’m about to relate.)

What a fucking trip that was. I’ll see if I can condense it. First, the N train that usually runs out to Queens wasn’t running out to Queens, so the Q train was, and we had to take that. It got delayed right after we got on, due to a sick passenger in the train *ahead* of ours. I’m not really sure how that works out, actually, but I had my trusty new book of crossword puzzles, so I was set. Then we get, I think, kind of barely in Queens but not at the station we wanted, and had to get off because there was some problem with switching tracks, that meant the Q train was also not running all the way. Supposedly we could have caught a shuttle bus, but the lines were insane, so we ended up getting taxis. Two of them, since there were five of us, total, and we couldn’t find a cabbie interested in breaking the law. It’s cool, though – Greg and Brian got in one cab, and Danny, Brent, and I got in another. Although! I should mention, where we initially were after leaving the subway, we couldn’t get a taxi. The road split further up, and all the empty taxis were taking the split for Manhattan, and not the split that lead to us. So we had to walk further up the road, past the split, to trick someone into stopping for us. (I guess Manhattan is where all the good customers are? I don’t know.) Oh my god – also? Let me take this opportunity, while I’m talking about cabs, to say how crushed I was that we didn’t find the Cash Cab! Oh well.

So, Brent, Danny, and I get into a cab – me up front with the driver, B&D in the back. Danny gives the guy directions, and then he basically drives all over the place in circles. Danny had kind of given him directions that were slightly wrong, but even after Danny corrected them, the guy was having trouble finding the beergarden. Luckily, there was a map that Brent and Danny could see, and so they navigated. We rolled up at the beergarden like four minutes after Brian and Greg, even though we left at the same time from the same place. I mean, it’s not bad or anything, but that is four minutes of extraneous driving.

So we finally arrive at the beergarden – and Greg is really excited about it. He went there before when he was up for Danny’s bachelor party. (Actually, I might have mentioned that Greg called me around 1AM, telling me about the shits he took that day. And I was like, “Are you in a restaurant right now, saying this shit? Because people who are trying to eat probably don’t want to hear that.” And Greg was all, “That’s what they get for eating in public!” He was pretty drunk.) So, first of all, it was fucking awesome. Second of all, Michel had convinced me that I needed to try sauerkraut with pierogies and sour cream – she hadn’t liked sauerkraut either until she had it with pierogies and sour cream, and afterward she could even eat sauerkraut by itself. So I’d say I’d try it, and maybe even like it (although I had my doubts). Greg was convinced that I would try it, and be instantly converted – and what’s more, he somehow came to the conclusion that the beergarden’s pierogies would not only make me love sauerkraut, but also make me love beer, so he was really looking forward to us getting there and eating. Well, we get there, and there’s some sort of festival going on, but the security guys at the door don’t say shit to us about the $10 entry fee. That’s cool. There are no tables to be had outside, so we go inside and then down to what Greg says is the “normal” restaurant area – but no waitresses were working it, because they were all outside working the festival. I’m pretty hungry, so we go outside to order some food – and they’re all out of pierogies, and like half of their menu. This is at 7:30ish in the evening. The only thing they had on the menu that wasn’t meat, that they still had, were french fries, so we got three orders and demolished them. Once again, I had two rum and cokes, or maybe it was a rum and coke and a kamikazi – I feel sure there was a kamikazi in there somewhere – and I even tried a little beer. I think it was Cruci-something (I remember the name reminded me of “crucifixion”) – it was alright. Krusovice! That’s what it was.

Well, Greg kept getting “one more round” until I was ready to eat someone’s head, and then we finally snagged a cab and headed for Jackson Heights for Indian food. We found a cabbie who was willing to take all of us, so Greg sat on Brian’s lap, and they sang Korpiklaani songs LOUDLY and drunkenly. I felt a little bad for the cabbie (and also a little squished in the back seat), but he didn’t seem fazed at all. I’m pretty sure he’s driven drunk people around before, and probably seen worse than rowdy singing. So we get to Jackson Heights, and Jackson Diner is closed – but there are tons of Indian restaurants in that neighborhood, so we found one that was open: Indian Taj, and it was AMAZING. SO GOOD! And there was stuff on the buffet I hadn’t seen before, and it was incredible – I want to say, looking at their menu online, the new (to me) dishes were Kadai Paneer and Dal Makhani. And – this is another huge point in their favor, and so sensible, I think – they had pitchers of water on every table, so we could just refill our own glasses as needed. (I love Sitar to death, but my one complaint is that when they’re busy, it is very easy to get overlooked with respect to drink refills, and since I’m such a pansy about spicy food, I really need those refills, y’all. I know bread and raita help more than tea or water, but still.)

We caught the subway back to Fort Greene, but it was like one or one-thirty in the morning at this point, and when we got off to switch trains, the one we needed to get the rest of the way to Fort Greene just wasn’t coming. So we ended up walking the rest of the way – I think Danny said it was only about twelve blocks, but it felt like forever to me, since I was tired and full of yummy Indian food. But we made it back to D&M’s, and hung out for a while, and then went to sleep. And right before going to sleep, Greg said the most magical thing: “What do you say we drive back tomorrow instead of Monday?” YES! (I prefer a day to settle in at home after vacation, before going back to work, especially after a ten-hour drive.) So we got up Sunday morning, packed the car up, fueled up in New Jersey where it’s cheaper than in New York, and drove home. Ahhhh. We took Monday easy, went to a friend’s Memorial Day cookout, and it was the end of an excellent vacation.

I still owe you what I did 5/30-6/1, so here’s that, while I’m at it. May 30th, Dara and Tiffianna accompanied me to Walkertown, NC, to seek out this fabric store that had been recommended to me: Fabric Center. It was awesome! From the outside, it doesn’t look so impressive, but it is chockfull of fabric at ridiculously cheap prices – and even some really vintage fabrics, yards and yards still on the bolt. Matching vintage trim, too! I picked up some fabric for my first quilt, and Dara and Tiffianna got some fabric, too. So worth the drive out there! On the way back, we stopped at Granddaddy’s Antiques Mall, and it was pretty damn cool, too. I saw so much Depression glass, and drooled over it, but managed not to buy anything. Then Sunday, 6/1, Dara and Tiffianna picked me and Greg up on their way out to the Raleigh Farmer’s Market. It was fucking amazing – so much bigger than the Carrboro Farmer’s Market. We got some vegetables (used in dinner that night), a pint of the sweetest, freshest strawberries I’ve ever had (some eaten raw, some in muffins, and the rest in pancakes – and we’ve still got about half of those pancakes in the freezer to finish up), a holy basil plant, and the four roma tomato plants I mentioned earlier. I love the Raleigh Farmer’s Market!

Now I just need to finish up that cow post, and I’ll be all caught up.

The good news is: jackfruit is the SHIT! I think it’s my new favorite meat substitute. The carnitas were delicious. Here are (cellphone) pictures of the jackfruit getting shredded in a bowl, after cooking for eight hours in the crockpot; and in my tortilla – the white stuff is sour cream, the green stuff is guacamole, and the kind of fleshy-looking shredded stuff is the jackfruit.

The bad news is: when I got out the crockpot, I noticed there was kind of a vaguely white film over part of the inside of it. I rubbed it with my finger, and it didn’t come off, and it didn’t feel raised from the rest of the ceramic, so I figured the finish had just gotten dull – the crockpot is certainly old enough. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but it’s gone now, after cooking the jackfruit, and we both had what appears to have been food poisoning last night. Actually, I don’t know why I’m saying “what appears to have been” – it totally was food poisoning, and I got it worse than Greg (probably because my immune system is a weenie). I guess on the up side I didn’t throw up – but I felt so miserable, and so ready to puke, that I came damn near to sticking a finger down my throat. (That’s how you know it’s bad – I can’t even consider it unless I’m feeling desperate.) It was also like three in the morning when it hit, and I was wondering if it were appendicitis (it hurt worse on the right side), or if I needed to go to the hospital. I also felt a little bit like I was tripping. I was EXTREMELY unhappy, basically. But Greg was sweet as usual, and even though he didn’t feel so hot either, he sat up with me for a while, and read to me, and got me water, and just generally took excellent care of me until I could get back to sleep. And then, because the height of the new bed was making me dizzy (getting in and out to run to the bathroom), I was on one of the couches in the living room – so he tucked in on the other couch to sleep out there with me, in case I needed anything. *That* is a fucking great husband.

It’s a shame about the jackfruit, since it was delicious, but I tossed it out this morning. No more food poisoning for us! I’m also quite a bit ill with myself for letting that film in the crockpot slide. And we washed it out very well after the last time we used it, so when it just seemed like the finish was dull, I was like, “Well, that can’t be anything to worry about.” Oh well. We’re both alright today – still feeling a little iffy, but miles better than last night. And I’m retiring that crockpot – I’ll get a new one for cooking (that isn’t probably older than I am), and I’ll use the old one for dyeing yarn, if I ever get around to dyeing yarn.

Oh god – I just remembered we had invited Dara and Tiffianna over for dinner last night, to try the jackfruit. Well, Dara’s been sick this week, and while that sucks for her, I guess it was fortunate for the both of them, since they didn’t come over for a generous portion of…botulism, I guess. Yeesh.

And I meant to go to the gym today – I took yesterday off to recover, since after Friday evening’s workout, my knees and feet were complaining quite a bit. (And my ribs, too, although I’m not sure how they get a workout when I’m on a stationary bike.) Well, I did not go to the gym today, since I was recovering from last night’s events. (Although Greg did, but he is a masochist.) I’m starting to feel back to normal. Oh – but the yard work I did Tuesday? I totally grabbed some poison ivy or oak or sumac without noticing, and while I had gloves on for exactly that purpose, it must have rubbed up against my arm, because I’ve got a rash on the inside of my elbow that’s driving me fucking crazy. Calamine dries it out, but doesn’t stop it from itching, and hydrocortisone cream stops it from itching, but doesn’t dry it out, and it looks pretty gross. Oy.

This weekend wasn’t a total bust, though. I watched some Mrs. Marple and some Poirot, and read quite a bit, and Greg taught me how to edit stuff in Final Cut Pro, so I can start helping out with the Librivox editing, instead of him doing it all himself on my behalf. And our tomato plants are shooting up – so not only haven’t I killed them (the mint and holy basil are still kicking, too), but they’re growing well! Which is good, since Greg loves tomatoes, and we’re avoiding store-bought tomatoes while the salmonella scare is on. So maybe the plants will start producing soon – I’m pretty sure I saw the beginnings of flowers on them today.

GRODY!

Greg saw what appeared to be a clog in the shower drain, so he got some pliers and yanked it out, and it was way worse than I expected (and I’m pretty sure worse than he was expecting). We both agreed there was no way it was all our hair, and some of it (possibly even most of it) had to be from before we moved in. In fact, I stick all my hair that sheds in the shower on the shower wall, and then throw it away when I get out of the shower, so that it *won’t* go down the drain and clog it. I’m sure I miss the occasional strand, but I’m pretty careful, so I know there’s no way this clog is all mine. Anyway, get a load of this shit. It’s CRAZY. It’s like Samara’s about to crawl out that shit. Good thing Greg removed it.

GAGG: 198.72 miles

For some reason, and I’m not really sure why, this week really took it out of me. I suspect having to work two twelve hour days (since I took Tuesday off) might have played a part, but it’s not like they were very strenuous twelve hour days, just sitting in my cube as per usual. So I’m not sure why yesterday evening I was so very mentally and physically exhausted. And the weird thing is – well, *I* find it weird, since I hate exercise so – I think if I had made it into the gym over the middle of the week, I would have been less exhausted yesterday evening. But anyway, I dragged myself in with Greg, and then I even ended up working out for 50 minutes, instead of just 30. (It could have been 60 if Greg had worked out ten minutes more on the elliptical before asking if I was ready to go, and I know he would have happily stayed the extra ten minutes if I’d said so. But my willpower was not so hot, and I was kind of not loving the gym, and I was already so pleased about sticking out 20 extra minutes, that when he did ask, instead of saying, “No, let me just do ten more minutes,” I said, “Fuck yes, let’s go home.” To be fair, it was a consistently ass-busting 50 minutes, because I kept an eye on my heart rate to make sure it was “in the zone” or whatever.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t finish mowing the yard last weekend, and I didn’t finish this past week. I woke up around 4:45 and was up until about 5:50 before I could get back to sleep this morning, and I was seriously considering mowing the yard (since it was light enough to see by at 5:50, and it would have been cooler then than this late morning/afternoon), but I didn’t want to wake Greg up, and I especially didn’t want to wake the neighbors up and piss them off, so I thought I’d wait until 6:00ish this evening. That is not to be the case, because Greg is out there right now mowing, in the heat, and with his allergies. He said he wanted to do it because it needs doing and also so I wouldn’t have to, which is sweet. But I’m so mad at myself for not mowing it all earlier so he wouldn’t be able to. Oh well.

And now I’ve got to run to the store to get an onion, because I am making jackfruit carnitas for dinner, and it’s going to sit in the crockpot for about eight hours. I’ll take some shitty ass cell phone pictures of the finished product, and let you know how it turns out. I’m hoping it’ll be fucking rad, like all the reviews I read said it was. But I’m still a little iffy about what is basically a fruit being used as a meat substitute – it certainly *looks* alright from the pictures I’ve seen, but I’m not convinced about the taste yet. We’ll see.

The new Knitty is out!!

I love it. My absolute favorite, must-knit, WILL-knit-and-soon! patterns are Couvercle (I’ve had some Araucania Nature Cotton in my stash for a while now, hoarding it for just the right thing, and I think this is it, even though I’ll still have plenty leftover afterwards), BYOB (because I need more reusable bags for groceries), and Chevette (because I love chokers, love this pattern, and love William Gibson).

SQUEE!