Unfortunate Phrasing

I realize that this makes me a horrible person, but every time I hear on the news that they're looking for the body of someone who's been decapitated, I think, "Yeah, and they're probably looking for the head, too."

F Me, Septa!

The person selling me my monthly transpass tried to put the green, male M sticker on it instead of the orange, female F sticker. This is the second time this has happened in as many months.

If this keeps up, I'm going to get some sort of complex. I may have issues with gender roles, but I'm not exactly butch. Why does Septa think I'm a boy?

Religion Wigs Me Out

This Morning Edition Segment on religion in workplace managed to completely creep me out. I try very hard not to judge people for their religious views, but most of my associations with religion are negative. I'm cool with whatever you believe in, but keep it between you and your god, okay?

I sincerely doubt that anywhere that started meetings with prayer would hire me, but on the off chance that they did, I don't think I would work there very long. Just the thought of it makes me really uncomfortable.

Kneesocks at Last!

These are the Pippi Kneestockings from Stitch n' Bitch, made with Lion Brand Magic Stripe yarn, in the Sea Blue colorway. I didn't like the Lion Brand quite as much as the other sock yarn I've worked with. The black/white/gray stripes are really muddy, and it's not quite as soft. However, it is about half the price, and if I found it in a nice colorway, I think I would work with it again. I used about a ball and a quarter of it making the kneesocks, and I'm currently working on a pair of regular socks with the remains of it.

These kneesocks took forever to make. Most of it was that I got almost done with the first one, only to discover that my gauge was off, and it was too small. (The moral of this story is Don't Gauge In The Bar.) But they were also a hell of a lot of knitting on size three needles. (I did actually finish these about a month ago. Pictures are very late because I couldn't find my usb cord for my camera.)

I also turned the heel differently than the pattern said to, because I found the specified heel to be weird.

I can't decide if I like sock knitting or not. It's a little tedious, and I don't like that you finish one only to immediately have to start another. But I really enjoy turning the heel, and I like the resulting socks. Plus, sock yarn is really super neat. I want to try some new sock patterns, I think. I think after the ones I'm making now, the next socks I make are going to be something from knitty, probably the Broadripple socks.

Pink Point Five Purse

I made this purse with two skeins of Colinette Point 5 in the Cherry colorway. I bought them despite the insane price because, well, how could I not buy anything in a colorway this beautifully pink? The colors really are amazing, and, as Jill said, "It'll match every color of [my] hair!"

Here is the purse without the cat. The button was too reflective to photograph well, but it's a pinup girl.

I'm not sure I like the Point 5. The colors are wonderful, and it makes a really nice textured fabric. But I found the extreme thick and thin made it awkward to work with, and I felt like it knit up too fast. I think this purse took me about six hours to make, including the lining. Between that and the price, I don't think I'll be using it again. However, I am definitely going to be looking for Colinette yarn in London, because I hear it's about half the price over there. (If anyone can recommend good London yarn stores, let me know!)

I made the lining using my usual "patterns are for wusses, let's just eyeball the dimensions" technique. It turns out this technique, while it works decently for most things, is not so good when you're trying to make something that has to fit into something you've already made. However, in the end it worked out, and I think the lining turned out quite nice. The fabric is something I had lying around from when I cut up an old skirt, and it turned out lovely with the colors in the purse.

Laundry Day: The Reckoning

Today was laundry day. Well, actually Tuesday was laundry day, but that didn't happen. Which is why today I was wearing these weird khaki capri pants from the Gap, Day of the Week Underwear for the wrong day of the week (It's the weekend in my cooter!), and a built-in-bra tank top I bought three years ago from Victoria's Secret.

More on the capri pants. I know that the Gap is evil, but they are a place I can go to and reliably exchange money for pants that fit me. Anyway, I bought this pants, which are this really horrible length - like, three or four inches above my ankle. They're just wrong looking. So I'm planning to cut them off to just below my knee, but in the mean time I'm rolling them up. I thought I was rocking a kind of Tom Sawyer look, but Jill says I look like I'm about to go wading.

More on the tank top. Let's just say that the tank top is fighting a good fight, but the boobs are winning. (The boobs always win.) Which is why when the FedEx guy unexpectedly showed up at my apartment door, he got to oogle my goodies.

I feel the need to note that not only did I wash all of my laundry, but I also folded it and put it away, rather than leaving it in a gigantic pile on my floor. Go, me; I'm hardly a pig person at all.

PS. Phil, if you're reading this, you got a package.

PPS. LitP: Behind the Music. This whole entry was written as an excuse to use the phrase "oogle my goodies." Isn't an awesome phrase? So musical. I think it's all those double o's.

My Inner Six-Year-Old Listens to NPR

Is it just me, or does "congressional probing" sound dirty? Even more so when I looked up the spelling of "congressional" on dictionary.com, and discovered that the fifth definition for congress is "sexual intercourse."

More Cam Phone Photos

I took this accidentally artsy shot while trying to take a picture of the back of my head. I've redyed my hair since then, so it's much pinker now.

Sophie says, "What? A sweater? No, this is a cat bed!"

Pub Crawl

So this Saturday, my friend Missy and I were sitting at the Nodding Head, drinking and minding our own business. (Side note: How totally 'sign my guestbook' is their website?)

Then, suddenly, the bar was completely invaded by a pub crawl! About twenty or thirty college age people suddenly appeared, wearing matching t-shirts and being totally fucking annoying. Everyone in the bar who was not affiliated with the pub crawl started giving each other sidlong looks, like, "The hell? How fucking annoying are these people?" The bartender was pissed off because the pub crawl hadn't told him they were coming, and because they were loud and annoying and probably tipped badly. It was like we were all involved in some sort of tragic accident, like we were in a bank that was being robbed. We were all circulating theories about the pub crawl, how it worked, how long we thought they were going to be there.

And then, after about forty-five minutes, they all left, and a palpable sense of relief washed over the bar.

The weird thing is that it was only 8 pm, and according to their t-shirts, they had already been to eight bars (and only had two left to go to). And yet, no one was falling down drunk. Yes, they were definitely intoxicated, and loud and irksome, but no one was staggering. No one was even swaying all that much, with the expection of one guy in a sideways baseball cap. They seemed to be putting an awful lot of effort into getting drunk, and doing a piss poor job of it.

Also, some of them had fisherman's hats. Pub crawl fisherman's hats.

They were like a cloud of beer-drinking locusts, except more inept. Is this what happens when you don't go to a hippie college?

How The Troc (Almost But Not Quite) Ruined Boobs For Me

As previously mentioned, Monica, Jill and I went to the Suicide Girl's Burlesque at the Troc on Thursday. The Burlesque itself was super cute and fun and great. Everything else about the experience . . . not so much.

It was partly our fault for showing up far too early, because we thought the show started at 8, rather than the doors opening at 8. But then, there was everything else, which was not our fault.

For starters, the Troc switched the over 21 and under 21 areas so that over 21 was the lower floor, standing only area, and the 18 and over was the seated balcony. I'm old, okay? I want to sit my ass down, I want a beer, and I want to see some titties. That is all I was asking from this experience. And yet, I was told I could only drink in the bar on the balcony. There were no titties in the bar! Make the 18 year olds stand up. They're young and energetic.

Then there were the opening bands. The horrible, horrible, long opening bands. The first one featured a lead singer who Jill dubbed, "The Littlest Rock God." He was amusing for the first ten minutes, as he pranced ridiculously around stage in his all white outfit. (And I do mean pranced. He reminded me of nothing so much as a My Little Pony.) For the rest of what seemed like the decade he was onstage, he was just bad. The second band we missed, because we were in the bar.

It was during the second band that Monica said, "We could have gone out, seen a movie, gotten trashed, and still gotten here in time to see boobs." If only we had known.

When the girls finally got on stage, they were totally adorable and everything we could have asked for. If only we hadn't had to give up five years of our lives first, it would have been perfect.

Bugs: The Zine

My friend Monica and I have drunkenly decided to make a zine. The theme is going to be Bugs, and you should contribute something. (Be a slave to my media empire! It is full of half-baked ideas and delusions of not-sucking!)

That's really all the information that I have so far, but if you're interested (or have any advice on making zines, as I've never done it), you can email me. Cyn AT pinkhairedgirl DOT com.

London Calling

I just bought plane tickets to London. I'll be there from July 13th to July 21st.

So tell me what to do while I'm there.

Apology for Neglect; Fun Links

Poor little blog, I feel like I've been neglecting you this week. If it makes you feel better, I've also been neglecting things like sleep. This week has been insanely hectic. Here's the run-down: Monday, knitting at the bar. Tuesday, The Decemberists. Wednesday, Movie Night. Thursday, Suicide Girls Burlesque. All this, and an effort to actually work whilst at work. It's not you, little blog, it's me, and my tendency to run around until I fall down.

I promise to make it all up to you, but in the meantime, here are two super links I found:

Awkward is the New Black via PinkTalk.

Two Things, via Sarcasmo's Corner.

I Put My Thing Down

Walking home from the concert, Amy and I were discussing how little we wanted to go to work the next day. We decided to come up with Decemberist Concert work excuses. (Not to be confused with Decemberist work excuses, which most likely would involve being on a ship headed for South Australia, or being dead in a ravine.)

My best one was, "I put my thing down, and it stayed down!"

So when I woke up in the middle of the night with an insanely painful cramp in my left calf, the first thing I thought after "Ow, motherFUCKer!" was "I put my thing down, and it STAYED DOWN!"

There's a Place Your Mother Goes

The great thing about a Decemberists concert is that practically every song they play is one of my favorite songs. I went to the show with the lovely Amy, who was more than willing to dance like a dork with me.

The last song they played was A Cautionary Song, a performance that involved Chris Funk wandering through the audience beating a very large drum and wearing the most awesome fake beard ever. Yay for fake beards!

My friend Monica was at the show registering people to vote for Music for America. She allowed me to over enthusiastically try to get people to register for a while. Everyone claimed to be registered voters, but I gave some factsheets on the war on drugs to a couple of hippies. I also got involved in a discussion with a middle-aged woman who said she wasn't going to vote because she hated George Bush and didn't know anything about John Kerry.

Didn't know anything about John Kerry, and thus wasn't voting! That is possibly the worst excuse for not voting I've ever heard. I mean, whose fault is it that you don't know anything about the man? He's got a website. I don't have a TV or a radio, and I know more about John Kerry than is really necessary. What is wrong with people? Don't bandy about your ignorance like it's an excuse, because it's not!

PS. If you're going to be at the Suicide Girls Burlesque on Thursday at the Troc, I'll see you there. I'll be the pinkhairedgirl with her two drunken coworkers.

After Work

The man at the post office had the most eclectic collection of tattoos I'd ever seen. Jesus' head and a guitar on his left forearm, spiderman and a musical staff and notes on his right. No effort had been made to group them together in anyway, or incorporate them into a bigger design. Jesus' head was next to the base of the guitar. (How much better it would be if Jesus was playing the guitar!) Spiderman crouched in his own patch of background above the musical notes. Other than Jesus, they seemed oddly innocent and banal images for tattoos. The musical notes were black with rainbow outlines, more like something you'd see on a piano teacher's coffee mug than on the forearm of a burly postal worker. I wondered if he had just gotten tattoos of everything he liked.

Running my other errands, I passed a sign advertising hats that said, "Get a new hattitude!" The word hattitude immediately became stuck in my head. I thought of sentences with it, and their corresponding headware. "Nice hattitude": a pretty pink hat. "You'll never get anywhere with that hattitude": an obstructively large hat, with a ridiculous ostrich feather. "I don't approve of your hattitude": a pirate hat. I never wear hats, but I wanted a hattitude.

Unclogging the Toilet: A Semi-Adult Odyssey

I unclogged my toilet today. It had been doing this thing where it filled up and then instead of flushing, slowly drained out. It was both really gross, and kind of ignorable. This had been going on for about a day and a half, so I decided my mission statement for the day was to fix it.

Unfortunately, because my roommate and I are fake adults, not real adults, we don't own a plunger. There's a hardware store about half a block away from me, but it was closed because it's Sunday. I mean, what kind of heathen does home repair on the Lord's Day? Other than like, everyone ever. Sunday is totally the official day where you do all the crap you've been putting off doing all weekend! What is this closed on Sunday bullshit? What, you think I'm going to fix my toilet on Saturday, when there's drinking to do? Damn the man!

So I ended up taking the El into Center City to go to Kmart and pick up a plunger, and then coming back.

Then I totally unclogged the hell out of that toilet.

This is the way everything goes in the lives of fake adults like me. We're old enough that no one is going to unclog the toilet for us, but young enough that we still don't own plungers. We run out of food and toilet paper on a regular basis. When I visit my parents, sometimes I just like to open the fridge and stare at all the food. They have so much food! And it doesn't go bad, like food does in my fridge! They cook it, before it goes bad! I, on the other hand, have completely given up on buying fresh vegetables. I just buy frozen ones, because they don't turn into mush in my crisper. Except right now I'm even out of frozen ones. All I have is have a bag of frozen edamane.

I'm still rocking it mattress on the floor style, just because I never bought a bed. At first I was too broke to buy a bed, and then it just never seemed really important. In fact, at this point I'm not sure why I would want one. The mattress on the floor has many advantages: for example, when you fall off it, you don't hurt yourself.

But I'm aquiring grown-up things, slowly. My parents gave me a set of pots and pans for my birthday, and it was like pots and pans were checked off of my grown-up checklist. Now I can cook more than two things in saucepans at once!

And now I have a plunger. And watching the toilet flush has never been more magical.

Reagan

To be perfectly honest, my reaction to Reagan's death was, "He was still alive? Huh." Reagan's presidency ended in 1989, at which point I was nine years old, and not particularly politically aware.

I did learn about him a little while studying the 1980s for Academic Decathlon in high school. The main things I remember are Iran-Contra, that my brother looks kind of like John Hinckley, and that I once got mad at my friend Tasha because she said she liked Reagan because he "looked like a nice old man."

The sum total of my feelings on Reagan's death come to this: A lot of not really caring, combined with some minor annoyance that the Republicans are trying to use this to their advantage on the presidential campaign.

Pork

My favorite part of these chocolate-covered pork rinds is that they advertise them as though they are good for you. This despite the fact that they are pigskin covered with chocolate.

When all of you Atkins people come to your senses, the rest of us are just going to laugh and laugh and laugh, I tell you.

Missing Person

I haven't seen my roommate since he left for London two weeks ago. He's been back in Philly since last Thursday.

I know he's still alive. I've talked with him on the phone. Things in my apartment have been moved around. There's delicious lasagna in the fridge. I heard him getting ready for work at 6:30 this morning. But I haven't actually seen him.

I'm beginning to wonder if he's been replaced by a very clever Phil impersonator. Or perhaps a robot.

No-Pants Girl

Saturday, when I went to Adrienne's party, I accidentally ended up on the "no eating, all drinking" plan. Which seldom works well, and works even less well when there's a lot of free booze involved.

Which is why Sunday morning I ended up on the "puking up red wine all over oneself" plan. Which included vomiting on the only pair of pants I had brought with me.

Fortunately, Emily has a washing machine. (It's actually quite impressive, with many shiny knobs and buttons.)

Unfortunately, it meant I spent a couple of hours wandering around Emily's house with no pants on. And meeting some of her many, many housemates. (I should mention that Emily had left for work by this point, so these people really just had no idea who I was.)

I attempted to play it cool by just not mentioning it at all. Like, "Hi, strangers! You don't know me, but I'm wandering your house with no pants on! It's cool, don't mind me."

No one said anything, so I guess it worked.

Washington DC, It's Paradise To Me

So I headed on up to Washington DC this weekend, because my friend Adrienne was having a party in celebration of her graduating from college and moving to England. (I reiterate: England! Where everyone except me is!)

The requisite tons of Oberlin kids were there, and we got to chat about what we're doing with our college degrees, which is mainly nothing. My friend Lynn, for example, is walking bull terriers, which seems a lot more exciting and fulfilling than my job.

There was a lot of free booze. There was a bar called "Madame's Organ" in a place called "Adam's Morgan," which seems like pure genius in bar-naming form to me. There was me drunkenly talking to strangers about indie rock, which is always amusing for me, although probably less so for the strangers, as they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

There was also a lot of me carrying all of my worldy posessions around with me in a Powerpuff Girls backpack, which was great except for the tendency for my underwear to fall out of it when I was rooting around for my book or my knitting or something.

I stayed an extra two days in order to hang out with the always fabulous Emily. We saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was awesome, although I found myself strangly and disturbingly attracted to Harry Potter. (Also, the Weasley twins. Hot!)

We saw a preview for Around the World in Eighty Days, which I find myself wanting to see, but only for Steve Coogan. If I do see it, I plan to have lots of fun imaging that Phileas Fogg is actually Tony Wilson, who Steve Coogan played in 24 Hour Party People. (Did that last sentence make sense to anyone who isn't me? No? Well, don't worry about it, then.)

In other news, I am finding myself strangely addicted to these facial blotting tissues I bought at the Body Shop. I'm not sure they're making my face less shiny or break-out prone, but I like the pro-active feeling I get while dragging them around my face.

My Moment of Realization Is My Moment of Downfall

I left for work early today due to some loud gay sex that was taking place in my apartment. (I'm not naming names, but it wasn't me and it wasn't the cat.) I realize that me complaining about this is the pot calling the kettle loud and slutty. I also would like to state at this juncture that I needed to work extra hours anyway, to make up for some time I'm taking off Monday, and I'm happy that my roommate is getting some.

But I had the sudden realization that my roommate has both recently started seeing someone, and recently become unemployed. Which means that loud gay sex has pretty much become his job.

Oh well. I guess I can use the over time pay.

Ring My Bell

I got a package slip in my mailbox today. Which is great, except that I was home when the mail was delivered. The postman just didn't bother to ring my bell. This isn't the first time this has happened, either.

It's a minor annoyance; I'll just stop by the post office on the way to work tomorrow. But there are Buffy DVDs in that package, dammit! I want it now! And how hard is it to ring my doorbell, anyway?

Everybody Drowns

I saw Beulah at the Northstar tonight. If you've ever gotten a mix cd from me, it probably had "Popular Mechanics for Lovers" by them on it, because I've put it on pretty much every mix cd I've ever made. Beulah are dorky, bitter, and totally danceable, which makes them everything I could ask for in a band. I bought a t-shirt that says "Beulah Saves," because I have the sneaking suspicion that rock and roll just might save us all.

I know about Beulah because Neal gave me The Coast Is Never Clear for Christmas the Christmas after we broke up. They had a show in Philly the week after he died, but I didn't go, even though I had planned to. So I went to this show even though I ended up having to go by myself.

Their latest album is called Yoko, and I don't know if Neal ever heard it. I think he would have liked it, as it's bleaker and more depressing than their earlier works.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out if Neal would like any given band. Some stuff is obvious, and it tended to be the more depressing the better, but he still surprised me sometimes. A lot of our relationship centered around music. I turned him onto Belle & Sebastion, and onto indie rock in general. He got me into Beulah and Mirah.

I miss him. I think about him all the time. I've been thinking about him more recently, because his parents mailed me some stuff I had given him, and I got it a couple of months ago. I got back the stuffed pig I had left him when I went back to college, and every hope I had that this was all some really fucked up joke disappeared.

I think about him more now than I did when he was alive. Which seems wrong, somehow, like I'm being self indulgent, like I don't have the right to miss him this much because I wasted my chances to talk to him before he died. I don't even know what I would say to him, if I got the chance. Except maybe I would ask him if he likes The Decemberists, because I can't decide if he would or not, and it bothers me.

Knitting Dorkitude

I have gone gauge swatch crazy. I used to be really bad at making gauge swatches, because I'm very unmotivated to knit something that I'm just going to rip out. So I would make tiny gauge swatches, or get bored an inch in, and then the stitches would be all stretched out when I tried to measure the swatch, or I'd be all, "Oh, it's close enough!"

It was never actually close enough. As I learned after I nearly finished a knee sock, only to discover it was way to small. (Otherwise known as the "Don't gauge in the bar" debacle.)

So then I hatched a plan: I would save my gauge swatches, and eventually sew them together to form a blanket! Brilliant. I am totally gauge happy now: I've knitted five in the last two days.

And I've discovered that I knit a full needle size smaller on metal needles than I do on wood ones. My size 9 Addi turbos get the same gauge as my size 8 bamboo needles.

Yeah, that's not a total pain in the ass.

It makes sense, because I do pull the yarn a lot tighter on the metal ones, because they're all slippy. This is going to make figuring out my gauge so much harder. I think I may try to stick to just buying bamboo needles from now on.

Also, I think this explains why my cardigan turned out too small. I gauged it on bamboo, and knitted it on plastic.

I Want To Marry MT-Blacklist and Have Its Babies

Have I mentioned that I love MT-Blacklist so much I want to lick it? I installed it in like, five minutes, and presto! No more spam comments!

I actually had a dream about MT-Blacklist a couple nights ago, just in case you need proof I'm a total dork.