an exercise in self-indulgence

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It fucking snowed this evening. I have no idea how much.

Enough to make it impossible to get up my damn driveway.

Car is parked on the street. Hope it's not a "snow emergency", because I live on a snow emergency route and will get ticketed (or possibly towed, I suppose). Hell, hope nobody smashes into it. Streets are not in the best condition and people drive too fast through here.

And tomorrow will be the special fun of digging my car out from the inevitable snowplow mess. And clearing the driveway again to see if I can get up then.

*headdesk*

my driveway

[Dec. 8th, 2009|04:19 pm]

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Please to note the title of my journal-- "An Exercise in Self-Indulgence". How else can you explain sharing pictures of a driveway?

( cut for not-overly-large pics )

It started to rain about the time I was leaving for work (when the pics were taken). I've got my fingers crossed that all that nicely cleared driveway isn't a solid sheet of ice when I get home tonight.

Oh, and randomly... my most recent completed knitting project...
( Read more... )
:)

Snowy Tuesday

[Dec. 8th, 2009|12:09 pm]

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I have no idea what the official accumulation was, but I just cut a couple long swaths through snow that was six inches deep on my driveway.

With the snowthrower I bought last year and never used. :) I'm glad it works. And dingaling me still hadn't removed the pricetag thingy dangling off it (I bought the floor sample). I had to learn a bit about paying attention to where I was going when I managed to do a diagonal across one part of the drive. Oops.

The snow is very pretty, I will admit. But I am not looking forward to driving in it.

And there's snow/sleet mix in the forecast for this afternoon/evening, so it's possible all my driveway work will be for nothing.

*shrug*

snow sucks

[Dec. 7th, 2009|11:26 am]

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Who knew that depression would change my attitude about snow and winter in general? I sure didn't.

I just spent entirely too long outside clearing my too-fucking-long driveway and then my car...

I have a detached garage. It sits at the back of the property, so it's a little walk from the door. And spiders live there when the weather isn't bad, so normally I don't use the garage. But this time of year, it's in my best interest to deal with the walk and just park inside. Especially if I'm not paying attention to the weather. I swear the crap was thicker on the car than it was on the driveway.

And we didn't even get that much snow, but there was frozen crap underneath, so it was a pain to clear. And really, my driveway's not all that clear. I probably should have used more ice melt. I may regret that when I come home tonight.

All the snow can just stop. We don't need any snow this winter. Or any frozen precipitation, period.

	[Dec. 5th, 2009\|04:07 pm]
Okay, whom do I need to thank? A Stargate: SG-1 Christmas ornament just arrived at my home. THANK YOU!!! It's on the tree now, after a bit of playing with the lights and hearing some of what it had to say. Meanwhile, I've started clipping for my festivids assignment. Heck, I've got a couple clips in place. But that's all the further I'm going with that until I'm done clipping. I didn't go with the fandom I was matched on, but rather a movie I haven't seen before. I just typed in "christmas" in my Media Monkey search box. Result? 1375 tracks. Huh. I had no idea. Seriously, I thought I had cleared a lot of holiday music off the computer. Wait. Just figured it out... I did remove a ton of stuff. Media Monkey hadn't updated the library. 537 tracks now. That's a bit more reasonable. ;) I'm not really feeling the season yet, which is disappointing. I'm going to take a computer break this evening and wrap some presents. I'm hoping that will help. Oh! Worth mentioning, I think. I hung stuff up on the walls today! I've been in this house for over a year, and the only stuff on the walls was hung on nails already in the wall. Today marks my first nail pounding. Enough random for now. Back to the vidding process...
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	[Nov. 23rd, 2009\|09:09 pm]
Yesterday at my parents' place. Shows off the boring side of the mitts. They've got a great braided cable on the other side. If for some reason you're interested in what I've been knitting lately, I've uploaded pics to my photobucket 'yarn stuff' directory.
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	[Nov. 14th, 2009\|11:11 pm]
Had a really good day with karitawyr today. Which is an amazing thing considering my day started by discovering a leak in my toilet plumbing. No more home warranty, so I had to do the scary thing of finding a plumber on a Saturday. He took a couple hours to get here and probably spent another hour actually working. I have no idea how long he was here though. Not really. All I know is that I am thankful I got paid yesterday and that this was the check with the 20 hours of overtime on it. But like I said, good day otherwise. Watched SGU (I think I actually almost liked this episode). Made Karita watch Community. We watched the dvd release of Children of the Gods. And food! Ate entirely too much. Found out there are two Irish pubs here in Leavenworth. One was kinda scary looking and the other was closed. :( Also there's a wee Brit shop here that we visited today, but the emphasis was definitely on the tea and not the other stuff. And we knitted! Much knitting with the tv on. A good day. A really good day. I needed that.
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Home again.	[Nov. 9th, 2009\|05:53 pm]
I had a most excellent weekend with the most excellent ell. Hostess with the mostess, donchaknow. There was tapas and Men Who Stare at Goats and supermarket sushi and Stitch-n-Bitch and car worries and Kabob Palace and playful kitty who went nuts with the laser pointer and Real Genius and watermelon and and and... You get the idea. Now I'm back home and worrying about work. Trying not to. Also, I'm wicked tired and have no idea why. I guess it's like con drop. :) Think I'll go sit on the couch and knit and watch Community.
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[Nov. 6th, 2009|02:39 pm]

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What I need is a new job. So much easier said than done, even in a good economy.

I've been here almost two and a half years. Sadly, that's one of my longest stretches at any job.

Schedule change is on the horizon. I'm hoping that will help some.

And it just registered this afternoon...I have to leave my house tomorrow at 5:30am to make my flight. Leave the house at 5-freaking-30. Ouch. I had thought I would read some while on the plane. I think I'll be sleeping instead. And I haven't packed yet. Oops.

I need to stop *thinking* now.

	[Nov. 5th, 2009\|09:39 pm]
I figure if I'm getting multiple phone calls checking up on me, I probably should update. I'm still muddling through. Today at work wasn't awful. Still got another 20 minutes to go, but I'm cautiously optimistic... The evil machine that would not be fixed is fixed, but I wasn't the one who did the final fixing. Odds of two usb cables crapping out at the same time? Yeah. Whatever. I think the OEM handled this one poorly. Tonight was a conveyor motor in an xray. Right down there on the list of things I don't like doing. Thankfully I had Nick to help. Help, hell, he did most of the work. Or at least it felt like it. I'm making a little trip this weekend. ell generously offered up a change of venue, so I'll be flying out to DC Saturday morning to spend the weekend with her and her temp kitty. Timing happened to work out with synecdochic's monthly stich-n-bitch too. My cup runneth over. Knitting... finished one mitt, started in on the second one tonight. Yeah, got enough down time at work to knit. Finally. Fannishly there's nothing. Still no vidding. Of course no writing. Haven't even really been reading. Been watching Castle and Community, but not feeling fannish about either... well, other than really wanting to vid Castle, but I still haven't stumbled across a song yet. One thing about Castle. A question.... Does anyone else get something of a Moonlighting feel from Castle? Or is it just me?
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Springfield, MO

[Oct. 29th, 2009|10:54 pm]

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Oh, look. Springfield again.

If not for the spectacularly crappy weather, I'd be on my way home. Instead, I'm at my usual hotel until a reasonable hour in the morning when the rain should be done. And then I get to go to work. *facepalms*

Oh, and I get to be on-call Saturday as well.

I'm tired and really close to overwhelmed right now. Think I'll knit for a bit then go to bed.

	[Oct. 25th, 2009\|05:41 pm]
Last weekend marked my fifth anniversary of living in the Kansas City area. Next month marks five years living alone. I'm wandering around my house today thinking both how cool it is that I have this big old house and how sad it is that it's just me and apparently it's only ever going to be just me. Not so much a pity party, really. I've been watching tv and knitting today. Rewatched a bunch of Community eps. I really enjoy that show. You should try it out. I'm taking a break from White Collar right now. I'd probably be done watching it if it were available On Demand on the cable. Alas, no. But hulu is taking care of me (Yes, it's available on usa's site, but not full-screen. I like full-screen) :) The knitting is going really slowly. Much smaller yarn, much smaller needles. Adds up to much slower knitting. I'm considering getting rid of all the small sock yarn. I just don't know that I have the patience for it anymore. We'll see how this pair goes. Although if I worked small things with small yarn... I'm thinking of making up some really wee socklets for my Christmas tree this year. I bought new jeans yesterday. Yet another size smaller. At the beginning of the summer I was wearing size 22. My new jeans are size 18. Go me. My mood.... up and down today. Pity the sun didn't see fit to show itself today.
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brief update

[Oct. 23rd, 2009|05:28 pm]

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Okay, so coming up with questions is a bazillion times harder than I thought. I'm thinking I'll be dealing with those over the weekend. Sorry.

Meanwhile, work is work. Getting some knitting done in between preventive maintenance slogging.

( cut for not-overly-large pic... )

Moving right along on the next knitting project. I haven't worked on size 2 needles in about forever, and this is really trying my patience. Not in a bad way, I think. No pics of this one yet.

I keep slogging along. Days kinda blending into one another.

I'm trying something new at work. Every couple of hours I'm getting up and walking the terminal all the way up and back. It's over a third of a mile long, so it's *something*. Better than sitting on my ass in the office.

Meme time.	[Oct. 20th, 2009\|08:09 pm]
As seen over at master_chatnoir... Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile." • I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity • Update your journal with the answers to the questions • Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions edit - coming up with questions is harder than I expected, so no more. sorry! :( I make no guarantees of the quality of the questions I'll ask. Sorry. But here's some answers. Questions courtesy of the aforementioned Chat. 1. How did you learn to knit? - I taught myself from a crappy book when I was around 30. Had to relearn a few years later, again from a crappy book. I have since learned new things via the ever-so-shiny internet (like knitting backwards!). 2. If you could change careers right now, would you? And if so, to do what? - Oh, hell yes. If I could change to something that would make enough money to make ends meet, I would be there a month ago. To what, I have no idea. I've done a bunch of crap jobs in the past, nothing that would make ends meet now. I miss the night audit thing, but that pay around here is a joke. Once upon a time I was in college working towards being a programmer. Wish I could do that, but I'm so out of date it's not even funny. 3. What would be your dream meal? - I love food in general. This question is too hard. The Thanksgiving meal from last year would be right up there. Alternatively, a couple Godzilla rolls from Stix with a salad and a big bowl of cut watermelon would be mighty tasty. 4. What are you dressing up as for Halloween (and if you say you aren't, then what would you be if you did dress up)? - I'm not dressing up. I do have my generic Darth NoVacancy costume that I really should take to Escapade. 5. Which would you rather have: 1. An unending source of money; 2. Perfect happiness; 3. The knowledge of what life after death is? - I'll take the happiness, please. Partly because it would probably include a good source of cash. ;) And oddly enough, I'm not all that curious about life after death. Oh, and I only choose the happiness if it's unlimited.
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[Oct. 20th, 2009|12:24 am]

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I just want this day to be over.

Ruined a shirt and pair of khakis today. Had a machine fail to come back up properly after preventive maintenance.

It's 12:30 and I'm still at work and I just want to go home and cry and crawl into bed for a week.

edit - home by 1:30 or so. Shirt and pants went out to the curb with the rest of the trash. My hands feel like they're never going to be clean again.

There was one bright spot ---> A postcard. I think it was

elayna88 (judging from the handwriting and the postmark). Jack O'Neill *and* Michael Westen. How could I not smile? And then want to cry because I really don't feel I've done a damn thing to earn the fucking awesome friends I've got.

	[Oct. 3rd, 2009\|06:04 pm]
I just vacuumed the downstairs (omg the nastiness in the dirtcup! it really hasn't been that long and still... ew). So now I think it's meme time. 01. Comment to this entry saying 'ICONS!' and I will pick 6 of your icons. 02. Make an entry in your own journal and talk about the icons I picked. These are courtesy of batagur. ( cut for length... )
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*Monday*

[Sep. 22nd, 2009|12:31 am]

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OMG. Can I please not have another work day like that for a while, please? Nick's sick, so I had to hit the ground running a half hour early... and didn't stop running until a half hour after my shift should have been over.

I got all kinds of filthy and sweaty. Really gross. Ew. Oddly enough, I'm not feeling it in my joints. Probably will tomorrow.

Did I mention I had to work Saturday night?

Oh, I didn't mention going to the Renaissance Festival with Karita Saturday afternoon. Quotage! "Nothing says Renaissance like Dumbledore and a steak sandwich." And then there was the kilted swish. And, of course, the half-naked Gypsy dancing boys.

Ah, thinking about Saturday afternoon has helped my mood. :)

Now it's time to take out the trash.

vid - Stay Up Late (Leverage gen, Hardison-centric)

[Sep. 15th, 2009|10:57 pm]

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Nevermind my mood, here's a vid.

Music by Talking Heads. (I originally felt a Hall and Oates song would be perfect for Hardison... but I had forgotten that notion by the time this one seized me.)

Thanks to

paian and

linda3m for the always wonderful support services.

Download links (right-click, save as) -
~44meg wmv
~92meg avi (not actually any higher quality, I just am inept at getting the darn avi filesize down)