*screaming in frustration!!!*

I switched to Blogger Beta a few weeks back (basically because this stupid thing made me) and I just spent 10 minutes trying to log in to do a blog post. It just kept giving me the royal run-around, not allowing me to log in. So, now I dont even remember what I was going to post!!!

ARGH!!!!!! *grumble*

I think I even made the comment in a post back when I did the switch that I hoped I wasnt making a big mistake. How prophetic.

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I saw an afghan pattern in a knitting magazine a few days ago that I've just fallen in love with (need to go back and buy the magazine), but I dont know enough about knitting to either follow the pattern, or even do the stitches. I think the afghan uses yarn overs and some sort of knitted lace stitches. Same deal with a shawl pattern that I found for free on the internet somewhere. Knitted lace just looks neat. Hopefully I'll figure that out soon.

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I've noticed on several forums that a lot of people are using my rectangle granny square pattern. Seen the comment that people are worried about the long sides of the afghan narrowing while the corners on the short ends stick out. This is perfectly normal. Once your afghan starts getting bigger the weight of the afghan will make things even out. You dont need to do anything special to fix it. (I'll post this information on the blog post that has the pattern too)

Finished another pineapple shawl

I think I'm a bit obsessed with this pattern...I really like making these...

I'm probably going to give this one to my great-aunt Vi. (my paternal grandma's sister) My dad is thinking of visiting her within the next week or two, so I might take this shawl and another one that I'm almost finished with to give to her.

I've also got another shawl in the works. It's being made with Rainbow Boucle' yarn...it's just a basic half granny square shawl. Nothing too difficult and no fancy stitches, since they would get lost in the fuzzy goodness of the boucle' yarn. I have 3 skeins of that particular color (and it takes about a half skein to make the shawl) so I'm trying to figure out what else to make with it. If I ever get any good with knitting, maybe I'll knit an afghan from it.

I hate phish!

A few minutes ago, I was sitting at my desk...reading a fan fic story and crocheting a new shawl. I happened to look up and saw that a high school friend who now lives in FL had just logged onto Yahoo Messenger...within a second or two, I got an instant message from him. It said he had a new website and gave a link (the words "sexual content" in the link should have been my first clue this wasnt a good thing) and me...being stupid, clicked on it.

It looked like a Yahoo page and even tho I was currently logged into Yahoo it wanted me to enter my name and password...Just as I was hitting the "sign in" button, I happened to look at the address bar on my browser.

I dont think I've typed that fast in a long time. I already had a browser window open to my email account, so I quickly leaped into my account information page and changed my password....and then changed it again after a few minutes. (to something totally different from my old password. with gibberish words and numbers)

Hopefully I did that fast enough. Then I emailed my friend who had "instant messaged" me...telling him what happened. (if he's been hacked, he probably wont read it...if he calls me tomorrow I'll tell him about it then)

I really hate spammers and phishers...they are the cockroaches of the internet!

I hope I didnt just totally screw things up...

I just switched my blog over to the new blogger beta whatever-ya call it thru Google.

Immediately I've had a problem...but, here I am posting. Hopefully I'm not just talking to myself.

Ever break a garage door? We broke ours tonight. Actually, I think there's been a problem with it for a long time, actually since we bought the house. (the house was brand new 4yrs ago when my parents bought it, so it's not like the door was beat up by the previous owners)

My parents had to go grocery shopping, so I took them. We got back. I pressed the button to make the door go up. It went up about 5 inches and then went back down. Tried again. Several more times. No go. So my dad went in the front door (locking it behind himself...why?) and he tried to open it from the inside...by pressing the button repeatedly.

I got out of the car and asked my dad to disconnect the door so we could lift it up. He did, and we still couldnt lift it. We gave up, took the milk, Southern Comfort, hamburger buns and Krispy Kremes in. (we only bought the essentials) I called Norm at the garage door place to come fix it. Of course they cant get here till 9am tomorrow (it was 430pm when I called. all his techs were at the bars...errr...went home to their wives for dinner)

So my poor car is exiled to the driveway for the night (thank goodness I have a car alarm!) and my dad's car, which he needs to drive to work tomorrow at the butt-crack of dawn is trapped inside. (guess who's car he's taking to work...where the parking garage has a requirement that you get hit at least once a week by another car)

While I was on the phone with Norm, I looked at the spring that helps the opener lift the door. I asked Norm, the expert in these matters, if it's a bad thing if one of the springs is in two pieces.

He told me that's a bad bad thing. Very serious. (apparently it's like when you have a ball-point pen with the clicky thing...if the spring inside the pen breaks, you cant get the pen to do the clicky thing anymore) The door weighs about 150pounds or more, and is impossible to move without the spring.

Hopefully it's not too expensive of a repair.

This isnt the first garage door we've broken. At our last house, the ancient garage door there had these springs that went the length of the garage door (they had the wheel and pully system, the one we have now is the screw system) One day we had just gotten home from somewhere, got out of the car, closed the garage door and went into the house. Right after we all got into the house there was a big BANG! and the sound of a spring going *sproing!*. The spring on that one snapped, and the tension in the wheel and pully let loose and shot the spring into the wall next to the door. (left a big hole in the wall. We were surprised to see the garage had good insulation in the walls) My dad's pretty sure that if we'd been in that garage when the spring when it broke, someone would have been hurting, or they'd have a nice write-up in the morning obits, with a story about the importance of maintaining your garage door in working order.

I'm just hoping my car will be safe outside (and in the parking garage at my dad's job). There are neighbor kids down the street who are NOT closely watched by their parents. The other night these kids were running around in the field behind my house with BB guns (I hope they were BB guns!) shooting at critters/and or themselves. Havent been able to catch them doing anything truly horrible yet, but I'm sure eventually they'll do something that will give the neighbors something to gossip about.

Wow, I can do it now...finally!

It took me about 3 months, but I finally figured out how to do the purl stitch AND how to knit in the round on double pointed needles.

So, now I've finally been able to do the stockinette stitch. I love the look of that stitch, I just dont like how slowly I go to do that stitch. I knit continental, but I apparently purl English style. So, I just whip thru the knit stitch, and trudge slowly thru the purl stitches.

I really am enjoying knitting on double pointed needles. It took me about a day to get used to doing it, but I think I like that type of knitting the best. (cause I get stockinette without having to actually purl!)

So, I really only have two knitting projects going right now (to go along with the 5 crochet projects I'm doing and the work-in-mind project I have for my sewing machine)

I'm doing a scarf in knit stitch. (I started this the week my left eye went wonky. Amazing that I knitted this "one-eyed" and havent dropped a stitch...that I know of)

And then I have this. I dont know what it is...I'm just knitting in the round on double pointeds just to see what I can do. I might work on this for another 5 or 6 inches and then try to learn how to decrease and somehow turn this into a purse. (it's too narrow for a hat, and too wide for a sock I think)

I might try changing colors on it too...not sure yet on what I want to do with this.

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Went to my opthamologist on friday, and I went to a neuro-opthamologist yesterday afternoon. (I wanted the neuro-op to check and make sure I didnt have anything else going on) and both doctors told me that they believe my vision problem this fall (optic neuritis) was probably viral/bacterial in origin (I had strep throat the week my eye went loopy) and that it will probably continue to improve. There's a chance I might be stuck with wonky color vision in that eye, and some residual fuzzy vision, but my eye should be ok. It might take a year for things to get back to what they were in that eye, but I should probably have normal vision eventually.

Maybe I'll be able to get my sewing machine out in a few weeks to attempt a vest (which will be my first attempt at sewing clothing) My aunt and one of my cousins found a sewing machine store that has sewing classes. So, I might go up there and see if they can teach me how to do more with my sewing machine than sew in straight lines.

Fun with photoshop

Edit: I twiddled with the picture some more and took out a lot of the extraneous bits of picture...hopefully made it a bit smaller so people on dial-up arent cursing my name while they wait for the picture to load.

My absolute favorite picture of TinyMonsters!!

This is one of the few baby (puppy) pictures I have of TinyMonsters.

He'd just had his ears cropped and they had the headgear on his head to hold the ears in place and to keep them clean. I would almost swear he's looking at the camera and saying "What the hell did those damn humans just do to me?" and his next thought was probably "first chance I get, I'm gonna go pee all over their new carpet!".

Tiny was probably about 3 or 4 months old when this picture was taken. I'm guessing it's late March or early April of 1997. (he was born 12.26.1996). I wish I had more pictures of him when he was a little guy...he was so cute.

well, I'm (mostly) healed...

Went to the opthamologist today. He said my eye looks normal. I still have a lot of fuzziness in my vision. He said that's normal. It may or may not go away. I've apparently got a lot of healing to do, but I guess the optic nerve is no longer swollen...just a bunch of residual nerve damage that may or may not go away.

Let this be a lesson to everyone. Do NOT IGNORE a headache that you would consider the **WORST** you've ever had. Especially if your eye hurts when you move it, or you have big blind spots obscuring your vision!!!!! (ok, I ignored the headache and eye pain, but when those blind spots popped up, I started listening)

He told me that he didnt see any evidence of any of that scary stuff that could sometimes cause the Optic Neuritis, so that's made me feel a lot better. (there's like a dozen illnesses and conditions that can cause Optic Neuritis, he thinks mine might have been viral)

The eye doctor did suggest that I go and see an neuro-opthamologist just to make sure there wasnt anything he missed. He thought it would be a good idea just in case the neuro-eye doc thinks that there could be something to be done for the fuzzy vision and the dyschromatopsia (wonky color vision) Said it wouldnt hurt to do that now, especially since I've already met my deductible for the year. The year runs out soon and he thought I should try to get to the neuro-optho before the end of the year just so I dont have to shell out a gazillion dollars for the deductible again.

He wrote me out a new glasses Rx, but didnt give it to me yet just in case the neuro-eye doctor thinks I need a different one.

Hopefully my insurance wont hit me with too much of a bill. (they only pay 80%!) It'll be a bit bothersome around christmas, but it's probably more important that I have good eyesight rather than an iPod.

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Ohmygosh! I found my most favorite picture of TinyMonsters the other night in a picture frame that my dad had stolen from me to put a picture of one of my nieces in several years back. As soon as I install a driver for my dad's scanner onto my computer, I'll post the picture. It's sooooo cute! It's from when he was a puppy...probably only 2 or 3 months old. He'd just had his ears cropped and was wearing this "headgear" to hold his ears up (please, no kvetching about it being cruel to crop a dog's ears...) In the picture, Tiny's looking up at the camera with this look that says "what the hell did you just do to me?!?...and why is everyone laughing??". He's just so adorable in this picture. I'll scan it tomorrow morning and post it.