Some Links for You

I watched some people play Katamari Damacy at Movie Night last night, and I gotta say, it is everything the review says and more. Usually I find watching video games confusing and boring, but this one was super fun and exciting and had us all giggling and yelling at poor Dan to pick up various items. It's almost enough to make me want a PS2, but fortunately my joystick fear continues to keep me away from that enormous time-suck.

Porcupines = kinky freaks. Link via Energy Spatula.

Computers shaped like animals. Jill says I need one of these. To tell you the truth, I prefer my computers to be less friendly and cute and more powerful and sleek. Hence my not being a Mac user. I realize that this goes against every single aspect of my personality, but I can't help it. I want my computer to be shiny and futuristic and have blinking lights.

Minature Sheep. Via Yarn Harlot.

In boring Cynthia news, I did my laundry today and managed to excede even my expectations by actually washing, drying, folding, and putting away all of my clothes. I don't really mind hauling my shit to the laundramat and washing and drying, but I find folding my clothes to be mind-numbingly boring. And since I'm abysmal at actually doing shit I find boring (see also: every single high school progress report that said "Cynthia does great things when she's interested, and nothing when she isn't."), my laundry frequently takes about a week to actually get folded and put away, during which time it lives in a folded and unfolded pile on my floor, and becomes wrinkly and full of cat hair. But not today, for today I am an overachiever! At least when it comes to laundry. Not so when it comes to other things, like blogging, considering I'm actually posting something about my laundry.

The Flood

As if in response to my last post, my (second floor) office has flooded. For some mysterious reason, we have a shower in one of the bathrooms here, and last night pipes somewhere got stopped up and its drain was spurting out water. An entire half of our floor was covered in up to two inches of water. We're all huddled up in an office on the dry side, because the wet side smells funny and audibly squishes under your feet when you walk.

Of course, today is the day that both of my managers are out on a business trip. And I spent all morning sorting out non-flood-related craziness that happened last night.

I serendipitously spent all of yesterday morning moving from my old office on the wet side to my new office on the dry side. My office is completely dry, although currently filled with refuges from the deluge. So, in response to the comment on the last post that asked what animals I would give preference to: computer programmers and people who figure out what 800 numbers spell.

It's The End of the World As We Know It, And I Feel Wet

According to the lady on the bus, when the rapture comes (in the next five to seven years), it will be in fire. The buildings will burn, and the trees will burn, but we won't need trees, because god will make all the oxygen we need and he'll give us all our heavenly bodies.

I am struck by the redundancy of destroying the naturally occuring oxygen, and then giving us all heavenly bodies that require oxygen, and then making lots of new oxygen. I just think god should be better at planning things. Delegate the oxygen making to the trees. They're already doing it.

Then again, maybe god's a hands on kind of guy. You never know. Well, I guess you do know if you're a certain kind of person, but I'm an atheist and thus don't know shit about that shit.

It's been pouring rain all day here in Philly. I walked two blocks around 6:30 pm and got ridiculously soaked. It was coming down hard in huge fat drops, and the sidewalks and streets were streaming with ankle-deep water. I would consider gathering two of every animal, but I've never been the management type.

Oh, Obama

I was off work today, so I went and saw everybody's political boyfriend, Barack Obama, speak at the Love Park. He was speaking in support of Joe Hoeffel, who's running for Senate against Arlen Specter. I would have voted for Hoeffel anyway, what with him being the Democrat and all, but it was good to hear him speak, and now I know certain key facts about him that I didn't before, like, say, his name.

I ran into Mac at the rally. Actually, I only really knew it was going on because I read about it on her blog. It was good to see her, as I haven't in forever.

Barack Obama is just an excellent speaker. He says the same things all the other politicians do, but they just sound better coming from him. He just sounds like a genuine nice guy, and he makes you feel kind of hopeful about politics, rather than depressed. I kind of wish he was running instead of Kerry, and I really hope that he does run for President some day. He's got some of that there charisma, he does.

Anyway, this helped to assuage my guilt for missing the Kerry talk at Penn because I was hung-over and slept through it.

I Pointlessly Quote Shakespeare To Distract From My Utter Shallowness

Well, kids, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, as they say. (The they in this instance being Macbeth.) Which is to say that my life has been pretty uneventful as of late.

Is anyone else kind of excited that Cynthia Nixon is a dyke? I am, but only because I think she's hot, and also she was the only one I didn't totally hate on Sex and the City. (Because, you know, now that Cynthia Nixon has been outed, she is so totally more likely to sleep with me.)

In other News of the Shallow, I kind of have a love-hate relationship with the Fugging It Up blog. On the one hand, there's really nothing better than really horrible pictures of Britney Spears. But then I always end up reading too much of it and end up feeling really guilty for judging women based on their appearances and blah blah blah fuck your fascist beauty standards. And then I'm just all confused, because it's not like your average actress/model is trying to make some sort of feminist statement by wearing something slutty/unflattering/crazy, so why am I trying to defend them?

I guess it's the same problem I have with Pitfork and the general knitting community on lj. A little meanness generally amuses me. A lot of meanness kind of makes me feel sad and guilty and defensive, and I get all, "Step off, bitches! Who are you to judge?" Which is not at all to say that I plan to stop my Bitchy McJudgey ways anytime soon. It's funny when I do it, you know.

Your Essay Question

True or False: Ralph Nader is to Politics as Britney Spears is to Celebrity.

Discuss.

I Hope I Still Test Well

Today I registered for the GRE general exam. I will be taking it October 28th, for the bargain price of one hundred and fifteen dollars. Doesn't it seem so unfair, to spend all of that lovely money that could be spent on lovely gin on a test that I probably won't like it all?

This means that grad school has officially moved from "cloud talk" to "cloud talk with money behind it."

What I really need, I think, is someone I can talk to about what schools I can reasonably expect to get into, and maybe also what I have to do to up my chances of getting in. Like my high school college counselor. Only for grad school. Does anyone have any advice about this?

Brilliant

Porn for Kerry - now there's a movement I can get behind, if you know what I mean!

Seriously, though, the fact that it features a character named "Ann Cunter" makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.

Food Is Good

So I had heard tons of buzz about Toffutti "Better than Cream Cheese" and was all, "There's no way it can be that good! Soy imitation stuff is never as good!" But I picked some up at Trader Joe's this weekend anyway, because we just got a toaster and I wanted bagels and something to put on bagels and I was curious.

People, it is super. I might not go as far as "better than" cream cheese, but I would go as far as, "practically as good as cream cheese."

In other yummy food news, I made a calzone this weekend. (Using Trader Joe's premade pizza dough, which made me all nostalgic for when I was little and my mom would buy premade pizza dough at the Italian Market and make really super pizza.) There was a small incident involving not-enough-flour and too-much-stickiness, but I sorted it out okay. I don't actually own a rolling pin, so I used a bottle of vermouth instead. Proving, once again, that I am the drunken McGyver.

Drop Stitch Shawl

I made this shawl out of one skein of Jaeger Art Mohair. I cast on thirty stitches on size 13 needles and worked in a dropped yarn-over pattern. (Basically, it's six rows of garter stitch, and then a row of dropped yarn-overs.)

Here's what it looks like when I wear it normally and not all crazy on my head. (Sometimes, I just like to put things on my head.) I would have liked for it to be a little bit longer, and maybe fringed, but I ran out of yarn.

Here isa close up of the stitch pattern. This shawl was very gratifying to make, as it was easy, knit up quickly, and turned out to be very pretty.

New Fuzzy Hat!

I made this hat out of Wendy Velvet Touch Bulky, which is the softest and fuzziest stuff ever. Seriously, it's amazing. I was working on this hat at the last Stitch n' Bitch, and my friend Anju kept stealing my yarn so she could pet it.

The downside of this, of course, is that there's zero stitch definition. For instance, the rim of this hat is done in seed stitch. Also, dropped stitches are pretty much a lost cause.

This hat was made using the hat pattern from The Knit Stitch. The pattern is written for size 7 needles, but I used size 9 needles and made the smallest size, and it fits fine.

The Best Joke Ever (That I Made Up At Lunch)

Q: What's a pirate's favorite thickening agent?
A: Agarrrrrrrrr Agarrrrrrrrrrr!

Then I said the words "agar agar" about fifty thousand times in different funny voices, and made up pick-up lines involving the phrase "thickening agent."

The Cats Turn To The Dark Side

In an unsettling turn of events that is probably coincedental but may prove that the cats are uncannily smart and evil, they have broken the squirt bottle. It's really only a matter of time until they sufficate me in my sleep and then eat my face.

I Am Secretly Totally Obsessive Compulsive

So those of you that know me know that I read most of the blogs I read through Bloglines, a free RSS aggregator. (Unlike Feanor, I did not build my own RSS aggregator. Or my own blogging tool. I am just not that hardcore, I'm afraid.) I only get to read them around once or twice a day, so usually I've got a whole lot of blog posts to read.

This is the part where you get to see into my strange, obsessive compulsive little mind: I have a strict routine when I read them. I start at the top of my feed list, reading every new post in order. Usually, after about ten blogs I start to get bored/antsy. Then I switch to the bottom of the feed list, and start reading from the bottom up. If I get bored, I go back to the topmost unread post. I rarely read them out of order, unless I'm not going to read them all and one of the blogs I especially enjoy has posted. (Usually someone I know in real life or Yarn Harlot.)

Yes, I know I'm completely insane.

Other random OCD shit I do: I eat my food sectionally, and in reverse order of what I like. For example, if I was eating salad, pasta, and tofu for dinner, I would first eat all the salad, because I like it the least, and then all the pasta, and then all of the tofu. Unless I think I have too much food, then I'll skip a component.

I believe I've already mentioned my daily work radio routine of Air America, then Morning Edition, then old episodes of This American Life in reverse chronological order by the date they were created. (Unless there's a new This American Life, then I listen to it.)

Lest you think I'm completely insane, I should mention that I'm actually not really compelled to do these things. These are just the ways that I prefer to do things, and I tend to not even notice that I'm being a total fucking nutball until it's pointed out to me by others.

Behavior Modification

I've taken to squirting everything vaguelly cat-shaped with water whenever they start hissing or whining or any of their various annoying "we are cats and we hate each other" behaviors." I'm not sure if it contributes anything to the long term goal of having one big happy cat family, but 1. It's very satisfying, and 2. It gets them to shut the hell up.

Fear my wrath, furry little bastards!

Kittens Are Cute!

Last night, or rather this morning, sometime around five am, the cats became involved in some sort of altercation that involved them making this insane wailing noise that illustrated the notion of "caterwauling" a little too well. My roommate and I both stumbled out of our respective beds and seperated them to separate ends of the apartment, and did not murder the furry litte bastards, although I'm not sure why not.

After brunching with Monica's adorable little fuzzy kittens I am fond of reminding all of the cats that I could replace them all with kittens at any point of time. What I really want is some sort of kitten gun, that would shoot some sort of ray at cats (or anything really) and transform them back into kittens. My life would be so much better with a kitten ray.

I Make An Excellent First Impression

What I said when my manager and the interview candidate walked into my office:

"Oh, hi, I was just finding the place on this cd where it sounds like a broken down carnival for [Head Programmer]."

Septa: Not the Bomb

It took me an hour and forty-five minutes (versus my usual twenty) to get to work this morning, thanks to a bomb threat at 22nd st Station. The trains were running to 30th st Station, and then we all had to get out of the subway and take a shuttle bus to 15th st Station, and there was mass chaos and people everywhere and they changed where you got on the shuttle bus in the middle of everything. And of course, this is at 8:30 am, when everyone is going to work.

The best part is that the shuttle bus drove right by 22nd & Market, where the bomb squad was, sure enough, removing a suspicious package from the subway. Thanks, Septa, I feel so much safer now. And of course, the trains were packed and running insanely slowly. So I got to work forty-five minutes late, totally using up all the over time I worked earlier this week.

Stupid Evil Internet

I spent about three (very cranky) hours this evening trying to get spy and ad-ware off of my computer. After running Ad Aware about fifty million times, my box appears to be free of the most egregious offenders, but I'm still having some pop-up issues. Does anyone have recommendations for what else I can do?

London Diary - Wednesday, the 21st - I Become Hostile Towards My Hostel

My flight back to Philly left at 1:30 pm on Wednesday. I had planned to get back to the hostel nice and early and go to bed so I would be all fresh and rested when I woke up at 7:30 am. Instead, I got back to the hostel at midnight. So rather than dallying around the bar or whatever, I went straight to my room and got ready for bed. And then I got into bed. And then I discovered that my bed was mysteriously soaking wet.

It turned out that the air conditioning unit in my room, which was directly over my bed, had leaked all over my bed. So I got out of bed, and put on some pants, and went to go find someone who could fix this problem. Actually, first I lay there for a while, but it proved to definitely be too damp to sleep in. I should mention that I didn't have my contacts in at this point, which means I couldn't really see anything more than three feet away from me.

So I went in the front desk, and I waited in line forever while lots of random people checked in, and then I firmly but politely explained that my bed was mysteriously wet and I needed someone to fix it. (I didn't know that it was the air conditioner at this point, so I was all, "Um, maybe the rain? I don't know. It's wet. I'm sad. Fix it.") So they look at me like I'm crazy for a second, and then they call the staff whoever, who also acts like I am crazy. There are also a bunch of random teenagers running around, being drunk and annoying. I'm tired, and I'm cranky, and I hate them, and I hate their stupid clothing, and I just want to sleep.

Then I go and sit in the hallway outside my room and wait for half an hour until the man with fresh bedding shows up. While I'm waiting in the hallway, a girl in her underwear runs out of the room next door to mine, runs down the hallway, and procedes to vomit loudly for a very long time.

So finally someone shows up with fresh bedding, and goes into my room, and wakes up everyone who was sleeping there, and I'm all, "Um, sorry, my bed was oddly damp," and some guy is like, "Oh, yeah, it's the air conditioning unit, I had a bed under one in the last room I was in," and I'm like, "Fantastic, perhaps something should be done about this particular design flaw," and the linen guy is all, "Oh, I don't think we can do anything about this."

At this point, it's 1:30 am. I go to sleep for 6 lovely hours, and when I wake up at 7:30 am, I discover that the two people in the bed next to me are having sex. At 7:30 am. In a room with 6 other people in it. Seriously, people, 7:30 am? When did you go to bed? When are you planning to wake up? How are you going to go to the Tate Modern if you're fucking at 7:30 am?

Anyway, I got out of bed, and showered, and got my luggage organized, and ate my free breakfast, and headed down to the tube station. I was planning to get to the Gatewick Airport by taking the tube to Victoria station and then taking a train, but when I go to the ticket machine, a Tube information guy asks where I'm going and then tells me to go down the street and take the Thameslink. And so I do.

It's a lovely morning, all foggy and gray, and the Thameslink train ride is moderately scenic, and I freak out about missing my flight only about as much as is normal for me. (I don't know why I freak out over these things, as I have only actually missed a flight once, when I slept right through it, and then it worked out fine. Actually, that's a rather funny story, I must tell you all about it one day.)

I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, as I always do. (Except for that one time I slept through my flight, but that worked out fine.) I stood in line, and they asked me those airport questions ("Is there a bomb in your suitcase? Did you leave your suitcase with someone who put a bomb it?") and then put a sticker on my passport to indicate that I had claimed my luggage was bomb free. (Seriously, does anyone ever answer those questions wrong? Why do they ask them?) However, the questions were asked by a cute British boy with a cute British accent, so I minded them less.

Then I went through security, and they checked my pink boots for explosives. My pink boots are explosive-free, in case you were worried.

In the Gatewick airport they don't tell you what terminal your plane is leaving from until around a half hour before your flight leaves, which gave me a couple of hours to mill around and buy duty-free crap. I bought two bottles of Pimm's and a brie and tomato sandwich.

I was kind of excited about the flight back, since my flight over was so great. But when I board the plane for my longer, in the day time flight, I discover I'm just on a regular ghetto airplane. Also, the in flight movie is Hidalgo, which I do not watch.

I read Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs, by Chuck Klosterman. Then I read The Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain de Botton. By the time we land in Pittsburgh for my connecting flight, I've started to read the crazy Roland Barthes book I bought in London.

In Pittsburgh, I go through customs. Customs is very concerned about hoof and mouth disease. As a vegetarian, I feel sort of smugly superior about hoof and mouth disease. I become very confused by my customs form, and have a brief moment of panic (What if they confuscate my yarn? My precious, precious yarn!) but, as usual, everything works out fine. Because, you know, I'm not actually smuggling anything through customs. They x-ray my luggage. I go to the gate for my connecting flight. I think about buying a magazine, but can't muster up the enthusiam for anything they're selling at the airport magazine stand.

Eventually, after approximately fifty thousand hours on airplanes, I arrive in Philadelphia. It's around 6 pm. I'm very, very tired. I've been up since 7:30 am. In London. Which is 2:30 am in Philadelphia.

I go home, drop off my luggage, and go to movie night, where I give everyone British candy and am amusingly exhausted. I finally get home and to bed at 11 pm, at which point I've been awake for 21 and a half hours. I lay down in my nice, big, clean, dry bed, in my bedroom, which is not shared with 7 other people, and I fall instantly asleep.

Unfortunate Events That Occurred Yesterday

1. The discovery while walking to the bus stop that the hole in the sole of my shoe was actively imbibing water. The up side of this is that it meant I ran around in my socks all day at work, which I found kind of absurdly amusing. Also, I was wearing some very attractive socks my mother gave me for Christmas that featured a print of various fancy drinks. The down side is that I now need to buy new shoes.

2. My exclamation of "That's crazy talk!" during the developers' meeting at work. While my coworkers appear to view my various wacky outbursts as being endearingly eccentric rather than fireable offenses, in the future I should probably phrase my opinions as something more along the lines of "That sounds a tad ambitious."

London Diary - Shoes

This is the wreckage of my shoes at the end of the trip. (Closeup.) In case you were wondering, I walked a lot. I threw the shoes in the trash at the youth hostel and wore my pink boots on the plane back; it left more room for yarn in my suitcase, anyway.

London Diary - Novelty Underwear

I came very close to buying these huge novelty underwear for Jill.

Holiday Weekend

• Watched the Gilmore Girls on DVD. I just joined Netflix, and I'm really super excited about them having every tv show ever on DVD. (I realize that being excited about this some what comprises my anti-television stance. However, this way I don't have to watch commercials. And everything I watch is several years old, leaving me pleasantly behind pop culture.)
• Knit. A lot. Sweet, sweet knitting.
• Hung out with Missy in Rittenhouse Square, where we saw lots of cute dogs and the Most Entertaining Baby Ever. We also watched I Shot Andy Warhol, which was way more depressing than either of us remembered. Also, dinner at the super-yummy Vientiane Cafe!
• Watched The Weather Underground, a documentary about the Weathermen, a radical & violent student movement in the 1960s - 70s. It was really interesting; they interviewed a lot of former weathermen and had lots of historical footage. The weathermen were no longer active by the time I was born, so I found it especially interesting, since it's a side of the sixties student movements you don't hear about a lot. It was also really interesting to hear them talk about how there was a sense of the real possibility of a revolution happening in the U.S., and how now they think that feeling is gone.
• Fed various cats.
• Mailed back my Netflix movies.
• Made really yummy pasta with tofu and mushrooms and peppers and Olive Tapenade from Trader Joe's. People, if the Olive Tapenade (not the refridgerated one - the one in a jar) is available to you, buy it. It is like heaven in your mouth.
• Went to Trader Joe's with Jill. Despite the hoardes of people in TJs on Sunday afternoon, we totally made Trader Joe's our bitch by getting in and out in about twenty minutes. Also, on our way to Trader Joe's, a random guy in the subway showed Jill a picture in the newspaper of a guy with a snake going in his mouth and coming out his nose. Why? We don't know.
• Rum and Pirates Night
• Waited over an hour for a cab to get to Jill's house. Stupid cabs. I don't care if it is 2 am and the bars have just closed. I blame this on the UPenn kids, ruining everything for everyone as usual. All drunk and cab using. Bastards.
• Washed various pots and pans, cleaned up the counters in the kitchen.
• Cooked super yummy rice & beans, totally negating my pan washing in the process.
• Rid the kitchen of the various glass bottles it had been collecting.
• Introduced Monica to the new cats.
• Watched Invader Zim and knit with Sarcasmo. Is that Invader Zim strange, or what?

Unaccomplished This Weekend:

• Folding the pile of clean laundry on my bedroom floor. I've started actively wearing clothes from the unfolded pile rather than the folded pile, on the theory that it will save me a step in the long run.
• Taking the trash out.
• Cleaning the cat litter.
• Watching all of Anatomy of a Murder, despite sitting down and starting to watch it twice. Now I'm on the part where they're in the courtroom, and the prosecuting attorney is being all mean to Laura, and it's so exciting!
• Ridding the kitchen of dirty dishes.
• Working on Under the Hoodie, the sweater I'm working on with lovely, lovely Rowan Kid Classic yarn on size seven needles. Size seven needles are so small! Sweaters are so big! Also, I can't find my measuring tape, and I really need to find it before I do more work on the sweater, because I'm really close to a color change.

I'm an Icon

So Jill, because she is the coolest, made this icon of me using this thinger. And I was like, "Hey! I have all of those clothes!" So today, I am dressed up as my icon.

The Cat Drama

The new roommate (whose name is Margie, and who is very cool) has gone back to Michigan for the weekend, so the apartment belongs to me and the three cats. Yes, that's right, the three cats.

The new cats came with the new roommate. The old cat, Sophie Natasha Wigglesworth, the bitter cranky furball who I adore with all my heart, former unchallenged ruler of my apartment, detests the new cats. I have never seen any living being as full of hate and rage as my cat when confronted by the new cats.

The two new cats are Bear, a black male cat who is fairly large, and Baby, a young female gray and white cat, who is very small and dumb and still rather kittenish. Baby seems content to stay out of Sophie's way, and Sophie seems content to ignore her. Bear is more insistant on exploring the apartment outside of Margie's room, and this infuriates Sophie. Bear and Sophie are constantly engaging in weird cat staring contests where they sit and glare and hiss and make this truly awful moaning sound.

Occasionally Sophie will lay down the law in a more forceful way - there was a truly memorable moment where both Bear and Baby had somehow made their way into my bedroom, and then suddenly there was a Cat Explosion into the living room, with Sophie hissing and batting at them and generally making sure they knew that the bedroom was her territory. But mainly, it's just the hissing and the moaning. Once, it was the moaning at 6 am, which did not go over so well. Fortunately (for the cats) it was an isolated incident.

Sophie also likes to sit at the edge of the hallway that goes into my room, and become a big angry puffball, and pull her ears back and hiss a lot. I actually find it really amusing, because she's such a ridiculous little ball of hate. My little bitter angry cat! She's like the Dorothy Parker of cats.

Sophie is not the most friendly of cats in the best of times. She tends to be moody, especially with strangers. She was already unhappy with all the chaos of Phil moving out and Margie moving in. But the new cats have really just made her So Upset! And I feel so bad, both because I have inflicted these new cats on Sophie, and caused her to be so miserable, and because my cat is, in turn, making everyone else so miserable. Oh, cats, why can't we all just get along?