So I finally finished the black hole. It’s stunning and everything I thought it should and could be. I’ve started a sweater and a pair of socks with another sweater I am going to cast on to celebrate. Steve came through this weekend and it was good to see him even though it was brief. I do half wish I had gone with him. I didn’t realize at the time that he was only going to chicago for a day. There is tons for me to start doing in st louis too. I really want to start looking at homes. I know its a bit early but its a slow market. We’ve been talking about buying a 2 family if we can find the right one. Since we don’t have kids its not a bad idea plus in a few years we can either renovate it to a single family or rent out both units and buy a house. I’m leaning towards the latter since I always wanted to be a slumlord. Today I found two I *really* like. The woodwork is absolutely stunning and they have updated kitchens. Upper end of the assumed price range though. However, this is all assuming of course that the two most dreaded words in the army do not occur. It is sort of sounding like they might. I’ve been praying though. If it does happen I think I am still going to recommend we buy a house. Since we will be here till summer 09, it would make some sense. Plus we really could use more space. I am going to insist on a pantry though. Claire did not get one in her kitchen and although I really do like her house umm a pantry is a necessity. Although the way her house is I could easily stick shelving in the basement for one. We shall see. But getting back to why I did not go with Steve, Justin has a bunch of time off this week and he’s been really really stressed because of those two dreaded words so my place is here. He was really happy when I told him I had decided to stay home. I got my hair cut and its just about shoulder length. I think I like it. I’m not sure since its a bit shorter than I was expecting. Well things to do!

So yesterday sucked on the knitting front but overall was quite fun. Got my STR shipment for the month. Chatted with all three of the family members I talk to a lot. Justin only had to work half a day. These are all very good things. He’s off carrying heavy things and playing army. Best of all as of tomorrow I am free of ANY FRG responsibility. My gran got on my case about that but I did my time and we’re getting out in November, unless the two most dreaded words in the military lexicon occur. Its a good time for a break. I have new adventures to plan. I have even had a productive morning thus far. I woke up and got Justin off to work, blogged on the knit blog, uploaded to flickr, and weeded. The front beds are terrible and I need to pick up some garden bags this week so I can get that bagged up. I want it to dry out a bit first in the blazing sun that we are sure to have today anyway, so its not a loss. Though my goal was to make it look less nasty and I think I made it worse with the waste sitting there by the walk. Oh well, I also have to clean the house and what not. I’m supposed to go out with Claire today but who knows if that happy outing will occur. We shall see.  Anyway even if it doesn’t I’ll be up for the week since I’ll have the cleaning and what not done.  Our new mower arrived and while the yard could use it I’ll have to convince Justin to put it together for me before I can get off my happy ass and mow. I’ll remind him today since it would be nice to have that task over with. The yard guy is out of town till next week and I’d just as soon not give him another check. Well I am conflicted because while I would love to just have him for the rest of the summer its a huge waste of money. I have been looking at homes since I have a basic idea of what sort of Mortgage we can get. Its doable. Depends on a lot of factors but we won’t be in a murder shack at least.  In closing I will leave you with a super cute picture of pandora guarding the knitting.

So yet again I woke up at the ass crack of early. The domestic stuff with which my life is mostly concerned is rather boring to blog hence the shortage of posts. However I am quite sure I mentioned that I post much more frequently to my knit blog. Hell I don’t even have interesting cooking to blog since I am dieting. A chance comment by an online acquaintance led to me delve back into the fascinating world of paleoanthropology. I had forgotten how much I enjoy reading about the latest discoveries. It’s all so very fascinating. I still favor Multiregional Continuity vesus the out of Africa school. I also still find the aquatic ape theory interesting even if it is derided currently. Perhaps I just enjoy crackpot theories even if they are wrong? I certainly do enjoy my crackpot nephilim theories. Although I did read something *very* interesting two days ago about the Egyptians. They apparently thought of the land of punt as their ancestral homeland. Now this could have been somewhere down in east Africa, but they also called it ‘god’s land’ which was also a nickname for Lebanon. I found this vastly more interesting when I was under the misapprehension that Lebanon was considered as the origin of punt for obvious reasons but its still a slightly provocative piece of information. My renewed interest in egypt stems from reading the amelia peabody series. I am racing through them via audio book as fast as I can. HWKDD and I also have been playing Arkham Horror. Its a fantastic game, Lovecraft based and its coop. We much prefer playing coop when possible. Things are much the same as they were in that quarter when I last posted. The only thing different is I’m hosting new photos on flickr. I had to get a pro account for a knit community thing I wanted to do and I am really impressed. I did have an unfortunate mishap with the hair dyeing this weekend.

DOH! It did not look that red in the store nor was it supposed to be more than one color like that.

My god it’s been so long since I blogged I don’t even know where to begin.  Well I do update my knitting blog at least…Well lets see, Justin and I are kicking around ideas for our future since he gets out of the army in the next year. His last day before terminal leave should be his birthday. I’m just worried about the future. We both want to go back to school and finish our degrees. However we also have to live on something and we’re both used to being comfortably middle class by now so its sort of a quandary.  Oh and we want to buy our first home since well yeah its that time. So cheap cost of living, jobs, and schools. We have some possibilities of options. I am fairly certain I can get my old job at back and maybe get him a job there too and depending on which schedule we were on, that would allow us to go to school and live decently. But there are other options as well. So I am in the twilight of my hausfrauerie. I have loved being a housewife, I’d love to continue but I probably won’t be able to. I guess we should also try and fit kids in there somewhere since I am also facing the declining years of my fertility. So really all this is making me terrified. Also things for Justin at work are fairly stressful for both of us. Just to continue on my “this sucks” vein, my grandmother is well as she puts it because she is very aware of what is happening to her ‘losing her mind’ I live 300 miles away and its not that easy for me to get away since we have only the honda and Justin needs me right now so all I can do is be there for my mom who is the one who takes care of her and make her socks. She loves my socks. Oh and lastly but not leastly believe me this is the most personally painful on the least (which just proves I’m a self-centered asshole most likely) I was working on a project and it well lets just say I suffered a disappointment. I’m trying not to be bitter but its hard. On the one hand I am quite pleased to not be as stressed since I suddenly have way more free time. On the other hand it hurts. I know it was a good idea and that has been more than proven. So that’s all I’m going to whine about that.

My first customer was pleased but I’ve got some work to do on the sites and stuff. The big problem is lack of production space which won’t be fixed (hopefully) till we move again. Also I’m trying to figure out a schedule that lets me do everything I want to do. HAH. Obviously in looking at my Audio books for the year page, I’m on huge evanovich kick. Since I’ve run out of stuff to listen to at least in the series by her that I like I’ll have to find something else. I also have some updating to do with adding a freaking cool ass plugin. Hopefully it will work with gallery if not then umm…guess not. Since it would be a right pain to reupload everything. Especially when I have tons of other net stuff to do. My pattern thing is coming along, I know I should spend some time on it today but you know its the weekend and all I want to do is make my semi-obligatory posts and knit. I head off to NYC in about a week and a half. I’m kind of nervous but it should be fun since I haven’t seen that side in years. Maybe not though. We’ll see. I’m excited overall though. Still ‘discussing’ our future home. Just depends on so many factors and I have some research to do still. Well I should head on over to the knitblog since its vastly more exciting!

There are certain things I run across far too often online. I’m crabby since I woke up on the ass crack of early for no good reason so I figured I’d list them. And by ass crack I mean several hours before my husband had to go to work early, He goes in at 5 am. If you do these things and I hurt your feelers well I am sorry but this is my list of twitch inducing make me want to haul off and bitch slap you pet peeves. Maybe its because even though I can be as snobby and elitist as the rest of the world part of me always wants to say “oh come off it” or barring that “get your head out of your ass”. I blame my salty tongue on my mother;)
1. Gifted as a verb. Yes I am aware that it is technically correct, in fact I just checked dictionary.com, however I still think it sounds ridiculously pretentious. What is wrong with verbs like given or gave?

2. The Phrase “dear friend” aren’t all friends dear? If they aren’t perhaps you should be using the word acquaintance.

3. Begging for money. I’ve seen far far too many people essentially beg for money for X over the internet. One girl I ran across on LJ was begging for cash for a down payment on an apartment. Now I realize people run into problems, hell I’ve been so broke we ate the pantry bare. Like even the stuff that never gets eaten but it just bugs me. What I find even more incomprehensible are that people fall for it. I have zero problem donating to charity. I often do donate myself but there is a vast difference between a charity and a charity of one.

4. Snark Communities. Ok on the one hand I do enjoy sites such as you knit what. On the other hand snarking does not in fact mean you are better than the person being snarked.

So HWKDD has not been very successful in his gift giving this year. It’s not his fault at all but I’m still missing my Christmas gifts. Apparently what happened is amazon sent the books/etc he ordered me to our old address. Thus it was returned and thus well apparently I’ll see them someday. I know what they are though and they rock. Then we get to my birthday, so he decided I too deserved a real ipod not the creative something or other he retired when he got his Ipod for Christmas. Very swank gift right? Well amazon for some reason is having problems charging his card. No clue why there is a plenty of money in that account. So I haven’t gotten that either. But my brushed metal hard case is on its way! The weird thing is some of the charges went through and some well didn’t so today I get the fantastic fun of calling the bank and saying WTF? Now I’m not sure I need my own Ipod because lets face it how often do I actually leave the house? I go to knitting and I go to run errands and I’m not even that into music anymore. I mean sure I like it but its not like its a hobby like it used to be. But I really really wanted one. I was consumed with the idea of having one to listen to my audio books while I do other things. It would mean I could sit other than at my desk if I wanted to audioread and knit. WAHOO! I mean how the hell can you top that. Also I do have WAY WAY WAY more music on mp3 than I do on cd so maybe that will improve my car music listening. Anyway I am very very excited. I can knit it a cozy! I actually do not feel the need to knit everything so chances are it will live in its case sans cozy. Plus if ever we live in a city with oh I don’t know trains again…Can you tell I’ve been missing Chicago lately? You know I’ve been overall pretty happy since HWKDD and I got together, STL is home in a way no other place ever has been but I would love love love love to be back in Chi. Then again ,and here is where the logic fails, if we moved back to Chi we’d have to move out to the burbs because we have exorcised our 2nd Amendment rights and you can’t have those items in cook county. So do I really want to pay the inflated cost of living to live that far from the city? But we do have good friends there and if the job thing worked out…Anyway on to the more stress…So I discovered Justin’s gift cause he saw me window shopping for one. Then my dad offered to get me one as well. So now I have to come up with another gift from him in that price range. I’m good on home electronics. I promised not to get anymore furniture till after we move. Though I think he might make an exception for a chair. I really really really really want a chair. I also want a new couch, new desks, not ugly filing cabinets, occasional tables, and lamps and.. but I digress. The only thing I can think of is perhaps a spinning wheel but I’m not sure how much I really want that. I mean yes I do want that that since spinning rocks. But do I need it? I’m not even sure of the brand to get. I know I love the really really old fashioned looks of the Kromski’s but I haven’t spun on them and I don’t even like most handspun. So it would be a very expensive destressing device since I’m not sure I’d ever even knit with the yarn I made. The only thing I really wanted for my birthday I bought with the dregs of my Christmas money so…Other than yarn and I’m not sure how well that suggestion would go over I have no idea and this is incredibly stressful to me for some reason.

So in keeping with the only acceptable geek 30th birthday last night we watched logans run and had a flashing red cake. I had a good time. Other than that nothing terribly exciting has happened well other than breaking my head on zen cart.

My god I can’t believe I will be 30 in six days. Not only is this horrifying, I’m not quite sure how it can be true. Where did the time go? It seems only yesterday that I hadn’t even started dating HWKDD. It just seems so weird. It also seems so old. I don’t want to be old yet.

So this week was pretty freaking good. HWKDD got promoted:) Long over due but very welcome. We’ve been watching movies again which is also veddy veddy nice. Last night we watched “The Full Monty” and tonight we watched an episode of monk and “The Village”. I love watching movies since it gives me knitting time. I had to run errands earlier which is always a big suck but the rest of the weekend is clear. Since some of the yarn I ordered arrived I’m going to try to get some dying done. I’m rather ashamed that I had to invest in yet another storage unit for my yarn. But the undyed stuff is for mosaic so it doesn’t count at all. The only part of the week that sucked was the stress over my grandmother. I just wish there was something I could do.