Still Life, With Cats

I cannot recall exactly what year it was that I first read a Harry Potter book. I do recall, however, that it was while I was spending the night at a friend’s house, and that I stayed up for hours binge-reading the first two books in quick succession. Later, I joined the hordes eagerly awaiting each book release, and we even went so far as to pick up our copies of the last few books at the midnight releases. Every single time we got a new one in the series I would sit down in the day or two beforehand and read every previous one all over again. I loved those books. Heck, I still do. They are not high art, to be sure, but they are incredibly fun to read, and I especially love how many kids finally found a love of reading through the gateway drug of the little boy who lived in a closet under the stairs on Privet Lane.

Recently it occurred to me that while I’ve read all the books numerous times, I’ve not actually seen all the movies. I checked Netflix, but they didn’t have any of them, and we’ve been pondering various options for tracking them down, and then someone suggested we check the library.

Here is where I guiltily admit that while I regularly avail myself of the vast network of books I can get from the library, never does it occur to me to check out *other* things. But sure enough, they’ve got every single one of them in stock, so over the past week or so they’ve all been trickling in. And tonight we sat down to watch the first one.

Emma Watson is, hands down, my favorite thing in this movie. She is cuter than words, and has the most adorable glare, and oh, I just want to pick up tiny little Hermione and keep her in my pocket to pull out when other people are being clueless idiots. As for the rest of the movie – eh. I recall being a bit disappointed by what they left out from the books, and the second time around I didn’t feel much differently. But if we’re going to do the whole series, we’ve got to take the bad with the good, and at least now it’s done with. And at least there was Emma Watson to keep it from being as awful as it otherwise would have been.

*****

Today’s dishcloth is a fairly simple basketweave pattern because I needed something that didn’t require much thought while my attention was otherwise distracted by Emma Watson, and Alan Rickman being deliciously cold, and Maggie Smith being EXACTLY how I always pictured McGonagall every time I read the books, and oh, also some kid who lived under the stairs.

I am a knitter. As such, I have a yarn stash. I have, over the past few years, been making an attempt to whittle that down a bit, although I freely admit there has been some stash acquisition here and there, but for the most part, things are going in the right direction.

I have a bin of cotton yarn that has been staring at me every time I go into the stash closet, so I have finally decided to deal with it. Today kicks off the first of an entire month of me knitting 1 dishcloth a day. 28 dishcloths may not use up all the kitchen cotton in the stash, but it should make a sizable dent.

Because this is my own personal challenge, I get to set all the rules. I might use the same pattern more than once (although I’m going to try to do a different one for every day). I might knit more than one a day and use those extras to cover the days where there simply isn’t any knitting time at all. I might decide to make scrubbies or dish towels or some other vaguely dishcloth-related item, depending on how I feel and how sick I am of making dishcloths by that point. We shall see.

So here’s the very first dishcloth of the month. The pattern is the Double Bump Dishcloth, available for download via Ravelry. I have no idea what brand the yarn is, as I lost the ball band years ago (and there’s a lot of this particular color in my stash so this won’t be the only teal dishcloth you’ll see this month.

This was a pretty easy knit – it’s a 4-row pattern that didn’t take much of any thought or concentration. We watched the the Puppy Bowl 2015 highlights on my computer while I knit this.

We’ve got a trip out of town coming up. We have been using the same petsitting service for years, and most of the time the people who come to take care of our furry horde have been here before. But this time there will be a new person, so we scheduled a time for her to come over.

She was reading the doormat (the one that says not to let Sherman out) as I opened the door. I noted that the doormat was correct, and as if he knew he was being discussed, Sherman came charging forward, demanding attention the nanosecond she stepped inside. He followed us around as I gave her the quick tour, shoving his head into every discussion and insisting he be noticed. Clearly he never got the memo that cats are supposed to be distant and aloof.

* * * * *

Fifteen years ago today this little corner of the internet went live. Technically the blog started a bit earlier, on a different platform (I vaguely recall it was Diaryland, but who the heck knows anymore), but it didn’t take me long to determine I’d much rather have my own domain than have to piggyback on someone else’s, so I shut that down and registered this domain, and never looked back.

Way back in 2000, I was hand coding every single entry in HTML, using Notepad, because I knew if I didn’t do it all manually I’d never get the hang of programming for the web. At some point I decided I was tired of hand coding, so I tried out Greymatter, and also Moveable Type (both of which were perfectly lovely programs). Eventually, though, I settled on WordPress, which I’ve been using ever since. I admit some days I miss the simple HTML layout I first started with, but using the WordPress system gives me a lot more flexibility and, well, to be honest, I no longer have the time (or perhaps the desire) to be coding all of this in Notepad.

Anyway, happy blogiversary to me. Fifteen years ago today I kicked things off with an entry about cats. Obviously, all blog platform technology aside, some things around here will never change.

So I think I mentioned that this year for Christmas, Richard got ‘me’ (aka the cats) a Butterfly Jar.

It seemed like such a great idea- a glass jar with some kind of weird electronic butterfly thing inside, that flutters in a disturbingly realistic way every time you tap the jar. What could be remotely sinister about *that*?

Well, it turns out there was some kind of device built into the lid. An hour or so ago we heard this strange humming sound coming from the living room, and when we went to investigate, whammo. Suddenly we were hit by some kind of shrink ray. Turns out that butterfly has a nasty sense of humor, and isn’t a fan of having someone tap on its jar all the time.

We tried running, but it turns out that tiny people look just like tasty snacks to house cats. My side still hurts from being batted y Rupert’s giant paw.

We climbed into an empty mason jar (good thing I’m a canner) and pulled a lid down on top, but it’s only a matter of time before the cats work out how to knock that off. It’s probably too late for us. But please. Be safe. Avoid the butterfly jar. And also cats.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

As is the custom among my people (okay, among my family), this morning I got up bright and early (oh so early), tossed some coffee down my throat, grabbed a piece of the lemon curd coffee cake from last night to stash for later once my stomach woke up, and drove off to Vacaville to meet my older sister and my mom for the after-Christmas sales. The women in my family have been doing this every single year that I can recall, and it is always a lot of fun.

We met up at Target and went through there first, but they didn’t have much of anything at all. I suspect this is because Target, like many other stores, has been doing a lot of their ‘after Christmas’ sales blitzes before Christmas these years, so there isn’t as much left for after. I did, however, manage to pick up a couple stocking stuffers for next year, and my mom found the LED lights she was looking for, so it wasn’t a total loss.

We also swung by Pier One and Joann Fabrics. Pier One always has a lot of absolutely gorgeous holiday decor, but my house has Rupert and Sherman, so anything breakable doesn’t stand a chance. Joann Fabrics has had some really cute Christmas stuff in the past but there was pretty much nothing left at all (and we got there when they first opened) so that was a bit of a disappointment.

We had much better luck at Michael’s and Cost Plus. Lots of awesome stocking stuffers, plus it is always so much fun to just wander through Cost Plus and get inspired by all the beautiful furniture and accessories.

After that my mom and sister and I headed off to Panera, where we got hot drinks and possibly also pastries, and set up camp at a table in the very back corner while we waited for the menfolk to come join us.

Once everyone made it to one location and lunch was consumed, we then all headed back to my parents’ house, for annual exchanging of gifts and the much-anticipated consuming of cookies. Mmm, cookies.

I am quite happy with all of my presents. Among other things, I got copies of two books I have been really really wanting: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe of xkcd, and Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain by Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek. We saw Bradley Voytek at WesterCon in Salt Lake City this summer and he gave a presentation on the neuroscience of zombies, and read excerpts from the book, and it was absolutely delightful. Both of these books are basically sneaky science (using weird things to get someone to learn something useful), but I’m totally fine with that.

I also got these, because my family is awesome and clearly knows me well.

My brother-in-law got the coffee beans ice mold too, except he unwrapped his before I unwrapped mine and I freely admit I stared at it and my first thought was ‘ooh, where can *I* get one of those!’ and then I unwrapped mine a little later on and gave a little cheer.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

For the past three years Richard and I have gone on a cruise – what I refer to among friends and relations as ‘Nerd Boat’, and what is, in real life, called JoCo Cruise Crazy.

We have attended three in a row and we loved it – although admittedly the reasons we went on the cruise had nothing whatsoever to do with the destinations (frankly, neither of us is into sunbathing, or shopping, or hot, humid climates) and more to do with the sense of community; the gathering of our own kind; the amazing friends we made that we looked forward to seeing each time. Over the past three years, I have arranged music for a ragtag bunch of recorder players for the talent show; watched amazing performances from people like Peter Sagal, Grant Imahara, Randall Munroe, and on and on. I cheered on the Fancy Pants competition. I took part in a human zen drum (directed by none other than Jonathan Coulton himself). I knit (and we wore) the most awesome Tardis fezzes. I played new (to me) games and toured a Star Wars museum on a tropical island and built crazy, nonsensical things out of legos while sailing on a boat, and danced and laughed and hung out with people from every walk of life who all shared something in common; who all ‘got’ each other without having anyone think what we love; what we do is weird or strange or not normal.

We are not going on the 2015 cruise.It’s been somewhat of a struggle to make it work financially every year and there are huge projects we need to tackle on our house, and there are other ways we would like to spend our money. But oh, it is hard not to feel wistful when I see my fellow Seamonkeys getting more and more excited as the date comes closer, or to see the list of the featured performers and know that I’m not going to be able to see them, or to know that there are friends I have only seen while on Nerd Boat that I am not going to get to see this time around.

When I saw that Wired had an article all about the 2014 cruise, I was excited. I started reading it, and while at first I thought, hey, this guy actually gets it.’ Okay, so he got a few points wrong, but that’s fine, it was his first time, and it’s a huge, crazy, amazing experience and it’s perfectly understandable he wouldn’t have all the details straight. But by the end, I just ended up feeling sorry for him. Here he was in the middle of a giant crowd of people in which, for once, he wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone he wasn’t, and yet he kept on pretending. Here he was, getting angry that people tease him and judge him, and yet I got the sense that he was sitting there, judging everyone else; all those people like me who were embracing wholeheartedly their nerdery; their shared enthusiasm for being with everyone else and taking part in, for want of a better term, nerd camp at sea, and it just left me feeling unsettled.

There are other Seamonkeys who have written about this, but I think this one covers why this article troubled me the best. I wish for the author that he figures out how to get out of his own way. Maybe Nerd Boat isn’t going to be his thing. But he clearly has a lot of issues to work through and I hope that eventually he finds a place where he can feel at home, the way Nerd Boat feels for every one of us Seamonkeys, no matter if we are sailing on the boat in 2015, or simply sailing in spirit, wishing we were there.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.