Friday, sweet Friday

There has been some knitting. There has been some spinning. Oh, and I've had some serious IT problems.

Relax, it's my work machine, not my personal machine, but seriously. Today has been ultra-long because my Tuesday and Wednesday were eaten by a MASSIVE hard drive failure. (Also, it's apparent that automatic backups are kind of awesome. I thought it was annoying to have it pop up once a week, but the auto-backups saved my life.)

Once the Work Machine got his new hard drive, I booted him back up, launched Firefox, and...

Nothing.

No bookmarks. 90% of my job is based on having my bookmarks. (In case you're curious, the last 10% is comprised of meetings. I spend more than 10% of my time in meetings, but guess what? I need BOOKMARKS for them.)

Because I am a dinosaur, I didn't have them saved in any sort of bookmark-saving place online. I sauntered back to IT and of course, the day my hard drive decides to go the way of the dodo bird, I am not wearing makeup. I AM, however, wearing a "comfort" sweatshirt (read "oversized and ugly"). This is not a good thing, as makeup and nice clothes seem to expedite all of my service-oriented needs.

(Yes, I know that using my looks to get things done oppresses all women in the long run. But I also use my charm, and since I determined with Dr. B that I'm oppressed anyway, I may as well "shake what my mama gave me". Good looking men work it, too. Yay, feminism!)

Anyway, Mr. IT takes remote control of my computer looking for the last time my bookmarks were backed up. (By the way, this is INCREDIBLY unnerving, especially if you've seen these two episodes [The Big Game and Revelations] of Criminal Minds. Which I have.) So, he pulls up a list, which are bookmarks from when I started working there. Like, close to two years ago.

He finds another, which is marginally more recent (from 6 months ago), and can't find anything more recent. While he's "driving" my computer, I point out the "Bookmarks Backups" folder ("Maybe they're in here?"). Aha! There is the backup from LAST WEEK. Crisis averted.

Afterward, there was much working. Lots of working. But there is an upside to this.

By using the Picard Maneuver, I managed to escape the clutches of the knitting black hole of the Sandi Sweater. I am closing in on the second sleeve with Michael Phelps-like speed. (If he knit. However, I think I may swim faster than he can knit. Take that!)

I've also started spinning up my Atlantis roving from Crown Mountain. It's pretty. In a manly way. Fetching. Dashing. Whatever. Oh, and I'm closing in on completing sock #2 of the vintage Lisa Souza sock yarn.

I've been invited to go see Quantum of Solace with some old friends, but I'm finding myself wanting to see High School Musical 3 more. (Is it just me or is Zac Efron unnaturally cute? He's no Hugh Jackman, but still.)

Speaking of Hugh Jackman, Emy, you were totally right about Van Helsing. Terrible movie. I disagree about the movie eclipsing his hotness. That's like non-planet Pluto eclipsing the sun. It'll never happen. Hugh's hotness is too great. Like the sun.

(I would LOVE to see him play a werewolf in something better. Like Richard Zeeman in a movie adaptation of the Anita Blake books, before Laurell K. Hamilton turned him into a douchebag and made the books all smutty.)

For the record, I would like to state that I saw Scoop for the Hugh Hotness. The only "scoop" it resembled is the one I use for "panning for gold" in the backyard. But he was still HOT.

In short:

1- Technology is out to get me.
2- Knitting is agreeing with me.
3- Hugh Jackman is awesome, regardless of the horrible movies he is in.

“When I Grow Up”

I had an interesting interchange with Sarah,while we were eating lunch (Sarah is 11, going on 45). We are listening to streaming Broadway on the Tivo, and something with Patti LuPone starts to play.

"I want to be Patti LuPone when I grow up," I announce.

"But you're already grown up," Sarah points out.

"But I'm not Patti LuPone yet," I answer sensibly.

So, in case that wasn't clear, here's the equation:

Jasmin ≠ Patti LuPone ≠ Grown Up.

Something I noticed...

McDonalds has started putting the nutrition information on the wrappers of the food, as well as a little icon of Ronald McDonald jumping or skipping (basically, being active) and text that encourages people to get off of their butts and move.

Now, let me give you my fast food background. When I dated Zak, I ate at McDonalds almost everyday. If it wasn't McDonalds, then it was Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, Wendy's, whatever. I'm not saying that in that 2 ½ years all that I ate was fast food with him, but it was about 90% of the food we ate in each other's company.

Having said that, when I was dating him, I was grossly underweight at 90-95 lbs. (less when I was stressed out), so this whole "fast food makes you fat" thing wasn't working for me. I was working a desk job 30-40 hours a week, and going to college full time. The year and a half while I was in high school dating Zak, I was working 15-20 hours a week, and was super-involved in marching band, choir, and whatever else I could fit. Although I should have ballooned the instant I graduated high school, or in the year afterwards when I maintained la vida teenager, I just didn't.

Maybe it was my teen metabolism, maybe it was because being super-active (physically), especially while I was in marching band. As soon as I stopped dating Zak, I swore off fast food for about a year. Now I eat at fast food places 4-12 times a year, which won't make me horribly sick or fat. Here's where I find the lawsuits/ change in packaging painfully stupid.

Everyone knows that fast food is bad for you. Just like smoking. Maybe there should be a Surgeon General's warning on everything in a fast food restaurant, like on cigarettes. I'll even give two options, like the Surgeon General does for cigarettes:

[THESE ARE NOT ACTUAL SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNINGS. I AM NOT THE SURGEON GENERAL. BUT THEY ARE A VERY GOOD IDEA, AND QUITE ARTICULATE IF YOU ASK ME.]


SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Eating fast food has been proven to cause obesity, heightened blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol levels.

OR

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Fast food contains high sodium levels, fat, and processed sugars.


Now, I understand that personal responsibility is not encouraged in mainstream American culture. This is why there are legal defenses for EVERYTHING. I'm not an extremist; I think in some cases these defenses are necessary, but Twinkie defenses are an absurd abuse of the legal system. Everyone gets a little crazy when their blood sugar plummets low enough. Some of us are even dramatic enough to shake and faint after yelling at people. (All the Hypoglycemics in the room please stand up, please stand up. [Okay, I know I'm not cool enough to quote Eminem on my blog, but it's better than me trying to pull off "Hypoglycemics, holla!"] )

What is even less excusable is someone deciding to breed and "not having time" to prepare real, nutritious food for their whelp and feeding them fast food more than once a month. Why have children if you don't take care to raise them properly? This is where the veritable list of excuses arises: high costs of living, etc. There is always time and there are things that you certainly can live without if you choose to have a child.

I'm not saying that poor people shouldn't have children, I'm just saying that proper planning (both family planning and meal planning) can prevent childhood obesity. And teen pregnancy. And Bird Flu.

Ok, maybe not Bird Flu. But who knows; maybe it can. * Raises eyebrow suspiciously *

I eat fast food, too. Just less than most people. It's the fries, man! Salty, potato-ey, goodness!

On a less socio-political note, we're seeing Gypsy tonight. Strippers + Musical theater = AWESOME!!! It's high-culture meets low-culture!

Thought of the day:

My labelmaker looks like an original Star Trek phaser. How cool is that? So, I set it to KILL! and then I make labels. Qapla!

Stream of consciousness: read at your own risk.

This is such a disjointed post that I'm warning you ahead of time. This is stream-of-consciousness. So close the window now if jumping from subject to subject distresses you.

I'm really good at setting goals and achieving them. Really. I am the worst designer, though. My designs are fine; I'm just reluctant to write them down. Mostly because I don't have time, and when I do have time, I would rather knit something else than type up what's in my head.

If only there were a sync cable so that I could plug myself into my laptop and just transfer my ideas, so that I could happily knit along, watching my Tivo, while I put the designs down for general use. But I have to write down the two patterns I promised Melinda for Maryland Sheep and Wool, which I will be attending this year. (Wooo!) That's going to get done this week, really.

Andrew is visiting his brother in Florida, who is opening a brewery... today. Or yesterday, EST. So it's me, Mom, and the schmoopies for the weekend. I have to take the dogs out for a walk; we couldn't take them to the park to run out their energy and they're starting to go stir crazy from the rain.

I want to go to Vegas again; this time, I'm going to NOT pull my groin walking. Girls can pull their groin muscles, right? I want to see Blue Man Group. And Avenue Q again. I will go prepared to the Star Trek Experience and not be mocked by a Ferengi again.

Work is great; I'm having a lot of fun there, but I am so tired today. Good thing it's Friday. They set me up with a second screen to work on side-by-side, and I must say that it is oh-so luxurious.

We need to do some work on the house; I want to paint, but we have this fugly wood paneling on one wall in the living room, and one side of the staircase. My aunt is giving me all of my mother's counted cross stitch (which she has been hoarding for close to 15 years), so I'm trying to figure out how and where to hang it.

I love croissants. Buttery goodness.

Ok, going to bed now.

Possession

The boyfriend sweater bit got me to thinking about possession. I'm all crazy when it comes to some things.

Some things you give up because you don't want them anymore. It's okay if you never see these things- say, like, a dress,- but if you see someone else wearing YOUR dress (and you know there isn't another one), don't you feel like walking up, ripping back your thing (a dress in this case) and saying, "This is MINE."

Maybe not you. Maybe you're one of those magnanimous people who can give things away and detach. I'm okay giving away things that are intended for other people, like, I'll never look at something I've knitted for someone and want to snatch it back for myself.

But there are just some things that I feel that way about. It's totally crazy, because I've gotten rid of it because I didn't want it anymore, and then I get this weird, "You can't have it, it's MINE," thing.

Just some random weirdness. I am the most villainous villain, by the way. Upcoming blog posting.