it's hard having teaching things to post about and crafty stuff to post about. i would make a whole other journal but if i end up going to grad school after i'm done with this i'm only going to need it for 3 months and that's wasteful. so as i've said before, if you're not logged in viewing LJ posts, you're missing the ones about student teaching. i'll post about that after this one.

so anyway. when i was at NJ sheep and fiber i bought this huge ball of ashland bay brand fiber. i think it's merino and mohair, because it's too coarse and fuzzy to be silk. i really haven't had time to dye, since i've had to go home every weekend for this or that, so i thought it would be nice to have something that would provide instant gratification. what you see above is a wonderful fingering-sport weight yarn which will become winter socks for my tootsies. i kinda like knitting socks a lot. i thought i'd never want to do it, but it's really satisfying to shape them and watch them come together. plus, knitting makes me sleepy, so i do it before bed and sleep happy.

before student teaching started i was thinking to myself, "wow, it would suck to get sick while i'm doing this." and of course, my third week in, i'm sick. the kids are so filthy! they're just sneezing all over the place, not covering their mouths or anything like 5 year olds. gross. so like 50% of the teachers are sick and we've just been passing it around. however, i picked up some airborne because the ladies have been RAVING about it, and sho nuff, it's working. this, decongestants, and theraflu have helped me kick this thing pretty quickly. the grapefruit flavor tastes like straight up ass, but what do you want?

in gaming news, i picked up harvest moon ds the other day, and it's alright. it's exactly like the other versions. it's fun though, and addictive, but it really just made me want to play a wonderful life again. i'm in the 3rd year of that one, i think, and started a new game because i'm doing so well in my original one that i don't want to get really into it until i have adequate time. is anyone else into virtual farming or is it just me?

finally, boon and i went to ihop last weekend. i got this:



oh man. that should be illegal. let's not beat around the bush here. that thing is a donut. it is not french toast. it is a donut stuffed with sweet cream cheese, topped off with strawberries, powdered sugar, and whipped cream. i ate my heart attack and enjoyed every bite. luckily there are only 2 ihops that i know of, and they're both pretty far away.

a guy just pulled up in the parking lot, and when he opened his car door you could hear that he was BLASTING hootie and the blowfish. i think he knew how lame it was because he turned the radio down immediately.

that's all! what's up with YOU?

teaching has been interesting. i can't really go into it further. there are so many things to worry about and consider, so many things that make it so hard to do simple things. it's weird how poor a district can be and you don't even realize it.

i spun up this sock yarn last night and it's already dry and so nice, and i want to cast on now but i don't want to have this many UFOs floating around. i have ... 4 or 5 i think? and i know that's not many for a seasoned knitter, but it's too many for me.

  

before and after.

that's all i got! my bedtime's 10:00, you know. i'm late.

i just started student teaching on thursday, and haven't done much since there were half days and everything was all weird.

i can't write about it here, but if you want to know what goes on and you have an LJ, add me there so you can have access to the friends-only details. it'll probably be a ton of complaining and stressing, but that's what student teaching is about, right?

i'm watching fast times at ridgemont high. again. my tum is achey so i'm just chillin out. i have knitting to do but i left my needles at home - i ended up buying a different yarn than the pattern called for, so the needles i have are far too large to work with.

boon n i are probably going to panera for dinner. mmmmmm. panera. while we're up there i'm going to pick up some size 0s. i can't wait to swatch. sorry, can't tell you what it's for. it's a secret.

ah, good afternoon.

i woke up first thing this morning and finished plying this yarn. it is the most incredible thing i have ever made with these two hands. it might not look like anything special, but it was a labor of love. dyeing merino/silk mill ends (which are a MESS to work with), carding them and recarding them, spinning the singles painfully thin, then finally plying them.

i have no idea the yardage on this thing, but after it was washed, it went from being about fingering weight to sport, but that's totally okay. i am going to list it for a lot. it would make incredibly soft/gorgeous socks, and if no one wants to buy it i will gladly keep it.

i have some more yarn work to do today, then HOPEFULLY i can get out to the yarn store tomorrow. this is a new one, and i'm really excited about going because if the stock is as good as they advertise, i will have a lot of fun knitting ahead of me. ooh! as i was looking for their address i found that there's another one relatively close by. decisions, decisions! it really all depends on what i get done here today, because both getting my personal update finished and running some more errands are a lot more important than browsing yarn.

i had so much to write about last night, then i decided to wait until i finished this yarn so i could post the picture and now i can't remember anything i was going to say. well. it's been raining since i woke up this morning - note i did say "morning," as my waking hours are slowly changing - and it's so cool outside that it's almost cold. i needed a sweatshirt when i went to the post office earlier. perfect for some tea and comfort. OH MY GOODNESS. i almsot forgot. comfort!? looksie:



that is the definition of yum. it is a betty crocker hot fudge cake. the best part is that you only have to add water! good for me, because i don't like to eat or use eggs really. there's a chocolate drizzle for the top, then when you cut into it, fudge drips out of the middle. my only regret is that i had no ice cream to put on it, but that might have ruined the pure chocolate sensation.

dinner's going into the oven. seeya! ♥

HAHAHAHAHA WTF

oh MAN! i CAN'T believe i lost this auction!!!

HAHAIHSIFHQOIRUP(@U#O*@)*%$)*!~!@!@SLKFDSFK

please look.
oh man.

when my parents go away on the weekends to work on the other house, pumpkin becomes THE most annoying cat in the universe. so annoying that it really takes all of your self control not to bash his head in. and seriously? i would never hurt an animal, ever. i like cats more than i like babies. but he is just SO irritating. i think he has like, separation anxiety or something when my mom goes away, because he's her little baby. and usually he's really sweet and adorable. but when she's not here, he's jumping on the table trying to eat our food, he's jumping on our computers, he's walking all over everything we're doing. and if you put him on the floor or something, he'll get right back up. you can put him on the floor 15 times, and he'll get back up 15 times. GOD. i just want to lock him in a room when my mom isn't here.

ANYWAY, what i was really posting for was for you to see this:



i originally found it on cuteoverload. they have an LJ feed that i never need to subscribe to. this makes my brain freeze and my heart melt with cuteness. i can't see it too many times or i'll die. enjoy.

where is my home?

there was some kind of nonsensical accident today when i was taking ben to work. it just made me realize that no matter how much i like this area, i will never move back to central NJ. i won't go farther north than i am now. i really like it up here, and there are new schools opening up, but that's a horrible thing because it just means that our population is growing.

the road is a small road that was never very heavily trafficked, but all of the stupid yuppies who move in here from new york and north jersey drive their SUVs way too quickly and inattentively and make it dangerous for those of us who actually know how to navigate the area. of course, the accident was between an SUV and a horse trailer. i hope there were no horses in it at the time. whatever happened was bad enough that the small two lane road was closed completely, and 4 ambulances were called. i sat for a half hour waiting to get to my road, which was maybe 500 yards away, but there was no passage.

as irritating as the accident was, it got worse. because i turned around and went to go home through a development that i knew connected to a road near my house. as i drove through street after street of houses i couldn't tell apart, becoming more and more lost, i just grew so angry. why here? why new jersey? i know that these people exist elsewhere, but i just can't understand why swarms of them had to settle here and make everything so crappy for everyone else. sure, some of them aren't bad. but when there's a noticeable difference between traffic, manners (personal and while driving), congestion, and accidents from this year to even 3-4 years ago? i think it's fairly safe to make this generalization.

what can i do? they're driving me from my home and i have no choice but to go. i can't wait to come back in 10 years - who knows, even 5 - to see that all of the horse and vegetable farms and trees have been cleared out and smoothed down to make way for 100s of grossly overpriced McMansions complete with mr. and mrs. gas guzzlers.

on a lighter note, is it lame that a walk to remember is making me tear up a bit?

what have i done!?

looks like a nice, unassuming sock, right? look closer.



this sock could be a board game. i'd call it "holes and ladders." for some reason my gauge completely changed after the heel. i started knitting it SUPER loosely, i don't know why. i was just being a jackass for some reason. so this one looks like crap! i saw how it was turning out and thought, you know? i'm not even going to bother ripping it because it's for me and i don't even care.

it's a handpainted sock yarn i bought from etsy seller ruby297, and it's fabulously soft and pretty. i should have used smaller needles, but i used 3s. like i said, it was a perfect choice until after the heel. whatev.

i have some yarn that was a custom for me, so when i get ready to start on that one i'm actually going to be very serious about it. till next time, socks.

it is freezing in this house! i'm so happy that it's actually cold. in the summer. it's cold enough here in the basement for me to want to turn on the stove. mmmmmm. can't wait till winter. mittens and scarves and love.

i'd like to talk about this some more.

by "this," i mean multiblog. i mentioned in the last post that i was looking around for quite some time to find a client that would allow me to easily cross post from LJ (livejournal) to blogger. i found some things, but they all varied and ultimately were not what i wanted.

first there was a client called crosspost, which seemed really interesting and promising, but wouldn't even install on my computer. actually, it did install amongst errors, then wouldn't OPEN once "successfully" installed. this program claimed that you could cross post between almost any of the popular blogging services. it would have been great to try it out! but nothing.

second, i tried something called elicit, which received a really encouraging writeup on another site. it's a BMS or "blog management system," through which you can conveniently and easily register and update all of your blogs. it has all of these exciting features like a blog post calendar, content editor, and integration with sites like wikipedia, flickr, google, and del.icio.us. well, all that sounds great. except, the UI of the program is anything but intuitive. i was able to muddle around in it a bit, but when i'm looking for a program that will allow me to quickly and easily update my blogs, i'm looking for something like, instantly. i don't want to have to consult the help file within 5 minutes of looking at the thing. actually, i don't want to have to consult the help file at all, unless i'm trying to do something really crazy.

so, that seemed to be about it as far as programs go. there were probably a lot more, but i really didn't have the patience to sit around and search through all of the nonsense for them. i found a link to a site called peopleaggregator, which i'm not even going to link to because i didn't understand what the hell it was. supposedly you also have the capability of managing all of your blogs, photos, videos, music, and everything in this community setting. but i just wanted to be able to manage my blogs. talk about asking for too much! because you can't DO that directly through the site. you have to go to this OTHER site, called outputthis.org, register for that too, and hope that it will link back up with the original site. dude. fuck that. no, seriously. why all of this work? i just. want. to manage. my blogs.

i went to the shareware site and download.com, and nothing there really tickled my fancy. i just want something like semagic, and i want that something to post to other blogs.

and that is when i arrived at multiblog. it's not the prettiest program, but it does what it needs to do. it has the capability of posting moods and music, which is nice, because as i said before, LJ's capabilities are really what i'm interested in. i wish it could conveniently post images and links like semagic does, but i suppose i should stop comparing it to that program. you can preview your posts before posting, and there are two post buttons. one for posting, and one for posting and publishing. since blogger cannot accept titles, this is convenient to me, because i have the regular post button set to LJ, and the p&p button set to blogger, which enables me to quickly add some header tags which will "fake" a title for my blogger post before posting. not bad.

what i also like is that if i put in an LJ tag such as < lj user= blah >, it will post to LJ correctly, but not to blogger. that's great if i'm posting an LJ exclusive post. but if i go in and set up names in my address book, a simple code can be substituted which will post the lj user tag and a regular html link to whichever one will accept it. that is very nice, because back in the day when i was using the movable type to LJ crosspost plugin, typing out long LJ links to users became really old.

so what i'm saying here is that multiblog is pretty nice, but it does have some shortcomings. i've only been using it for about 24 hours, but at the sweet $5 registration price, i'll probably pay for it and hang onto it. there are some things that multiblog could add to make it absolutely perfect, but i can wait to see where it goes.

finally, after some hours of searching.

i've been looking for some time for a client that would crosspost LJ to blogger. i like LJ the most and use its features the most, but still want to use blogger because there are a lot of knit blogs that i like to read, comment to, and keep up with without having to post anonymously all the time. similarly, i'm sure there are people who have blogs who are interested in my adventures but don't want to bother coming all the way to LJ for my posts. so after like, hours of searching and trial and error, i finally found this program called multiblog which is working out nicely. it does have its limitations, but it's simple, it works, and i can deal with that. for now.

if you didn't see the little update i made to my post from yesterday, i neglected to check my catchall email account on my server and found an additional 30,000ish spam emails i had to painstakingly delete today. these 60,000 emails took up approximately 499mb of space. ain't that some shit.

the picture above? ben took it. when we were leaving VA the sun was setting. it was a really good capture. unfortunately my camera still needs batteries - the good kind, which are back at my apartment - so no new exciting pictures till i get that taken care of.

i can't wait to start on my secret knitting project. i can't wait for the sheep and fiber fest! but now, i can't wait to get to bed. nite ♥