Category Archives: Play

My Mom Can Beat Up Your Mom!

Wishlists

In which my mom is better than your mom, because your mom didn’t send me TWO BOXES OF BOOKS.

Boxes of BooksWhen I got home from work tonight, I was greeted by the glorious sight of two boxes of books on the porch.

My mom sent me TWO BOXES OF BOOKS. Hell to the yeah, bitches!

There’s all kinds of fabulous stuff in there. Sci-fi. Fantasy. The Story of O. A little something by the Marquis de Sade. Ursula K LeGuin. Steven King. Barbara Kingsolver.

And more!

More more more!

We here at the little house on second street are beside ourselves with bibliophilical glee! AmmZon had already yanked out two books to read by the time I got home from my trip to the Dead Cock for an after-work cocktail.

Two.

Entire.

Boxes.

Of.

Books.

*faints*

Redheads Have More Fun

Social, Travel

In which I go on a wild little trip!

Slot MachineOn St. Pat’s we got all riled up and decided for no good reason whatsoever to go to the casino. It’s less than an hour away, and we had sober drivers, so off we went — at one-thirty in the morning! It was a strange idea because none of us could really afford to gamble, but we went anyway.

I was good and spent only ten dollars ($5 in penny slots, and $5 worth of cocktails). Baby Girl & Core played some slots and maybe a little blackjack. Two of our party blew their gambling budgets in about two hours and took off. The final member of our party gambled all night and got the rest of us a comped room. (Well, mostly comped. I think she had to pay $40 for it.) We got back to Fairfield around three on Sunday afternoon, completely shagged out.

My head kept making that casino noise until I went to bed last night. You know, the sound of two thousand slot machines dinging? That eager, never-ending hum? It’s probably what the primal sound sounds like. (Heh. Enlightenment: an eternity’s worth of loose slots!)

In other news interesting only to myself, last night the curse arrived in force, and today I feel like my guts are falling out. At least my hair’s a cool color!

Happy St. Pat's

Social

In which today is a silly holiday. Silly. So silly.

So, I’m Irish. I have some Irish blood, at any rate, but my family never observed any notable Irish behaviors. Anyway, St. Patrick’s Day is just a weird holiday, the way it’s celebrated here. Green beer, and adults punching one another if they don’t spot green clothing? Dorky, if you ask me, which you may as well have.

I’m wearing Army-green pants. (Not by design, they’re just what I grabbed.) They’ll just have to do. And if I get punched? I will certainly annoy the hell out of me ’cause I’ve been out of high school for a loooong time, bitches.

I will shortly be going out for drinks with Baby Girl & Core-Daddy and Raybo. (Raybo needs a drink; she’s been nursing an older sibling with disturbing medical issues up in Iowa City and if her voice on the phone is any indication she’s past ready to let her hair down.)

The Dead Cock is all decorated with green metallic shamrocks from some beer distributor or another, and I hear they’ll be selling Jell-o shots. I’ll probably end up having one even though they’re gross. Because hey, it’s Jell-o.

In other news, she sent me three boxes of hair color, and Baby Girl colored my hair for me today! I have dark red hair now; it turned out great. I haven’t colored my hair in so long that it was all my natural color (which is an utterly non-descript medium brown). I’d post a pic but it’s dark out and my cell phone camera doesn’t have a flash, so you can’t tell it’s red. But it is red. Red! Dark red.

Craptastic.

Social, Travel

In which I make the best of it.

I stopped for gas on the way out of town, and in spite of my nice interview clothes I took a look underneath the jeep. The exhaust has rusted out. Parts of it are hanging down all over the place, and so I called and canceled my appointment because if I’d driven to Iowa City like that, sections of exhaust would have ended up all over.

I’ve been told I need to take it to a shop. I can’t afford that so I’m quasi-carless. I’ll probably drive it around in town anyway.

In lieu of going to Iowa City, AmmZon took me to lunch at India Cafe. Here is my lunch:

India Cafe

Hah! That’s not really my lunch. Just an image of it.

Then I accompanied Her Tallness to the yarn store so she could buy yarn and needles for this project. Here is an image of some yarn:

Yarn Shopping

Now she’s at work rubbing people for money, and I am home.

I need find some mechanical person to ask if I can just rip out the fucking exhaust and drive around without fuming myself to death or not. If I can just remove the dangling parts, that will do until I can afford to fix it.

In other news, here’s some MP3 love for y’all. Hey Vuboq! Here’s Dick and Jane. Hey Scott! Here’s Pretty. Hey everyone else! If you haven’t listened to my new bisexual hooker junkie Jew rapper celebrity crush yet, you should click too, ’cause it’s Mickey Avalon (“call me Mr Riiiiight”) and we are so slummin’ now, bitches. Check this lyric:

Baby was Jen’s best friend
and maybe if you were lucky
licky licky sucky sucky
Mickey Mickey, fuck me fuck me
more junk in her trunk than a Honda
I know you wanna do the Jane Fonda

One, two, three, four
get your booty on the dance floor
work it out, shake it little momma
lemme see you do the Jane Fonda

You just can’t write a rap lyric like that! AND I DEFY YOU TO TRY! *collapses into giggles* No, seriously though. It’s strangely charming. He’s really quite smart; his lyrics are clever in their way. I lurve him.

Now I’m going to do AmmZon’s taxes. I’m supposed to be fixing this form, but the server’s installation of Perl is all fucked up and it won’t run cgi scripts for me. Talk about a cute error: “Perhaps the capitalisation of ‘mysql’ isn’t right”?!? WTF, box. I don’t have root on it, it’s a hosting service, so there’s a ticket open.

Grease, Yum

Social

In which there’s food and drink.

My girl Raybo texted me last night and asked me what I was doing. I texted back that I was doing nothing. (Which wasn’t exactly true. I was sitting on my bedroom floor in my pajamas, winding a ball of sock yarn.) She replied that she’d like to take me out for a drink. I replied that she should come pick my ass up and got dressed.

We went to the Dead Cock and did shots with the bartender and complained that there was no eye candy and talked about sex in great detail. (In our defense, it was the wrestling on TV that started the whole sex conversation. I mean, just tell me that watching two smooth, buff men spending minute-long intervals in the Missionary position puts only me in mind of, I don’t know, sex maybe? Pshaw! It’s the gayest shit ever! Well, except for the part where they’re punching each other in the fucking head. The guy on the bottom even hooks his ankles together around the waist of the guy who is, well, topping him. Anyway. So I pointed the TV out to Ray and said, “Look, it’s hot boy sex,” and she immediately started doing MST3k voiceovers. It was hysterical: “Oh come on baby, you know you want it. Relax and stop punching daddy in the head. Cause if you don’t it’s just gonna make him KNOCK. YOU. OUT.”)

At one thirty in the morning, we went next door to the pizza joint, and we two inhaled an entire medium cheese pizza in about ninety-eight seconds. It was so delicious I count it among my most profound spiritual experiences ever. OMFG.

Then I came home and AmmZon’s dad was bleeding all over the kitchen because he’d fallen on the ice and cracked his head open. He refused stitches. When the bleeding was staunched, I ordered him to lie down on the couch and sleep, because otherwise he was just going to keep walking around talking about how falling made him feel like an idiot. Truck bandaged his head up. Then everyone else went to sleep, and I answered email until 3 in the morning.

Knitting, Knitting, Knitting

Knitting, Work

In which I bore my non-knitting readers half to death.

I’ve been knitting myself a hat. This is the third hat that I’ve started for myself; the other two I gave away because when they were finished they weren’t my hat.

A Hat... For Me!

This hat is brown and pink, which are totally my colors. It’s not fuzzy, but it’s not acrylic either — it’s wool. I think I might get to keep this one! It looks great in broad daylight, but the colorway kinda falls apart in indoor lighting and ends up looking weird… Of course, if you know me in person, you know I often put clothes on over my pajamas and go out in public, and that I’ve been known to wear brown shoes with black purses. So it’s not like I’m a paragon of style.

In other news, I had an interesting talk with a couple of friends last night and the end result is that I’m going to go apply here on Monday before I drive up to Iowa City to register at Kelly Services. They’re not actively hiring, but from what I heard omgwtfbbq do they ever need me.

Box o' Yarn!

Knitting

In which there’s a parcel! Yay!

The mailman came back this afternoon and left a box on the porch. This box contains the items I got with the Patternworks gift certificate my mom sent me for Christmas:

Talking Yarn, Man

I’ve been waiting for this box for over a week! I got a felted clog pattern, 2 skeins of Meredith Bay yarn, 2 skeins of sock yarn, 4 skeins of Lamb’s Pride worsted, a bottle of wool wash, a free scarf pattern I’ll never use, and 1 skein of Lopi (to round out the order).

Yarn! I’ll make socks. Slippers. A new hat. It’s super extra exciting cool!

Why I Love The Internet

Social, Travel, Work

In which it turns out that complaining does do you some good.

Yesterday I felt all shitty and marginal and rejected and sorry for myself, so I wrote a big old whiny post about it. Within an hour of posting I’d had two heartfelt private emails and a long IM conversation aimed at helping me work it all out. That’s why I love the Internet.

No good news today on the job front. That last place isn’t going to hire me, I can feel it, so I’ve applied for a few jobs in Iowa City: one position at the University, a couple of cool jobs off of craigslist, an office job through Kelly Services.

The problem, I think, is that I have to rein it in during interviews. No one wants to know how smart I am. No one wants me to ask them why they chose the questions they use, nor do they even want me to answer their clever interview questions honestly. (When they ask me for my five-year plan, I will say I want to still be working for their organization). No one wants to hear about my work philosophy or that I’ve engineered myself out of jobs in the past. No one wants to hear personal anecdotes that take more than 15 seconds to tell, and no one gives a shit about what I’d like in a job.

Iowa City’s only an hour away, so I can easily drive up there for interviews. I might go up there this week and register at Kelly Services in person, maybe take their skills tests; maybe they can get me some temp work immediately. (There aren’t any temp agencies with actual work in Fairfield or Ottumwa; I’ve already tried that angle.)

I can’t move very far away because I haven’t got enough money to achieve escape velocity, but I could get to Iowa City. I like it up there, it’s a college town, there’s coffee and books and jazz, and there’s work. It has it’s own craigslist (where I saw three dog-friendly housing situations!!!). I even know a few people up there, one of whom told me to apply at the University — for the second time — in yesterday’s comments. After a stint there, I could escape Iowa altogether, if that ever seemed necessary.

In other news, my dog has a big old lump on her side. It’s driving me nuts. It came up rapidly, isn’t affecting her appetite or digestion or behavior, and doesn’t hurt her, but I hate it anyway.

The Ron Jeremy Knit-gasm (Big Ram Remix)

Knitting, Social

In which NLW cracks me all the fuck the way up.

The Ever-Handsome Mr J was out of town last night, so NLW called me and took me out to dinner at Pizza Hut. I love that about her. We talked about me, then we talked about her. Then we bought cranberry juice and chocolate sandwich cookies and went to her house and talked about knitting.

We’ve designed the hardest knitting pattern ever, to wit: a nine-foot long Entrelac scarf, knit in the round on size 0 needles, with steeks! Hah! (“If you knit that, your knitting cock would be so huge that all future knitting would be optional! OPTIONAL!!!”)

Then we surfed Flickr for “entrelac” and decided that Noro Silk Garden (a brand of yarn) really is pretty much made for Entrelac. Then we sighed, “Noro” a few times. Then we decided we need to find some software with which to lay down a thumpin’ house track, and layer recordings of knitters squealing/sighing/screaming various yarn names: “Oooh, Noro!” and “Koigu! Koigu!” and then a few forceful interjections of a Ron Jeremy sound-byte something along the lines of, “UUUUHHHnnnnnnnnggggghhhhh!!!”

Knitting house. It’s funny. It’d get mad play, bitches. MAD play.

Gorgeous! Totally Not Filthy.

Knitting, Weather, Work

In which I accentuate the positive! (Yes, I’m feeling much better today.)

It’s so nice outside today that I can barely stand myself. I’ve been sitting on the porch in the sun, reading. It’s so lovely!

Sweater UpdateI’ve finished the back of my sweater, and I am in the process of finishing the front. I’ve used half the yarn I bought for the project, so I think it’s safe to assume that I’m halfway done. Sweaters take an awfully long time to knit, people.

I want to highlight my hair. Someone should come over with a box of highlight RIGHT NOW. It’d be so fun!

Or, since my friends are hosting a lovely Bloody Mary Sunday, I might motivate myself to get dressed and go on over there instead.

In other news, I just randomly double-clicked on an MP3 file on my computer, and instead of booting iTunes it booted Winamp… which began playing a porno clip of a skinny girl wearing panties with cherries printed on them. It’s so interesting, sharing a computer with two other users!

And, just for the hell of it, because I used the words in the title of this post, here’s a remix of Filthy/Gorgeous for you.

Update: I have a follow-up interview here on Tuesday morning; the HR woman just emailed me. OMG, if the CEO likes me they just might hire me. A full-time job I actually think I want! Holy broken condoms, Batman!