Last few weeks

Sarah: My first car was Buick Skyhawk. Not even a Skylark. It was red. It cost 200 bucks and it had, like, 140,000 miles on it. I drove it for a year and then it burst into flames.

Patient telling me about bad hospital experience: I got a bill for $800 once. $800. Do you have any idea how many margaritas I could have drank with that? 200!

This is going to be quite photo-heavy.

Me and Joyce H, my right-hand lady. She quit on Monday because she has to take a very extended leave of absence.

I drive west to get to work every morning. The rising sun is behind me and sometimes it's just absolutely gorgeous and crystal clear enough to get a half decent picture.

French Toast platter of awesome. I also recently made a chicken broth reduction with tomato cream sauce that was very good over some blackened chicken and pasta, but I made it at like midnight and the pictures didn't turn out well at all.

Rainy day view from the guest bedroom.

My Jonathan Strange bookmark. I did break down eventually and end up buying Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on my Kindle though because I've left the book at work overnight two times now. I don't think the Kindle version has the footnotes that the paperback version is so famous for though, so I'm missing some of the backstory.


Today the monthly KnitPicks catalog arrived and this month it advertises the holiday patterns and things. It also has a section with pictures of the latest yarn brands and colors. Knitters call this yarn porn but whatever.

I'm flipping and I come across the latest self-striping sock yarn. Something catches my eye. Can you see it?

A curiously colored yarn called "Time Traveler", quite reminiscent of the colors in the famous "Doctor Who Scarf".

This is the Doctor Who Scarf made famous by Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor in the 1970s.

I jumped up and went to Knitpicks.com to see if I was hallucinating or they actually were referring to Doctor Who.

Check this out:

AHAHAHAHA yes. It is a limited edition color and I badly want it but homie don't knit socks. I have wanted a skinny scarf with the doctor who colors (and at one point almost bought skeins of each color JUST to make a skinny doctor who scarf) but I always chickened out. This is perfect and I don't have to buy all them individually! I added two skeins to my shopping cart like a boss.

I love when my arenas of geekdom overlap.
Things such as this livejournal: Crafty Tardis

In case you can't tell, Luke has a crochet hook and Vader has knitting needles.

Oh and speaking of geekery:

Prequel to Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time~! Ocarina of Time is one of my top three favorite video games ever and my only reason for still having a Nintendo 64. My ringtone is the Ocarina of Time theme song.

I haven't been this excited about something since I saw Halo 2's trailer for the first time back in high school.

The only problem is I don't have a Nintendo Wii. Technicality.

Sunday

Sitting outside the 'Bucks.

Now we have a magician whose power is that he can control cats.

"One of the servants observed that if only cats had been good for anything -- which they were not -- then [that magic] might have been useful." (paraphrased from pg. 61)

I love the scathing little comments in this book!

Thomas Edison's historical reenactor is kinda hot

Skypeing and with my bro at 4am:
Me: Look at this book I bought, Vin. *holds up to webcam* Look how big this thing is.
Vin: That's what she said.

Me: These headphones make my ears hurt.
Vin: That's what she said.
Me: ...What?
Vin: Be quiet, I'm tired.


(I was registering a patient for her surgery but she had some knitting with her so naturally we talked about that for 20 minutes)
Me: (trying to wind down the conversation) Do you remember the stuff I told you about your procedure?
Patient: No, I only remember the stuff we were talking about with knitting. We have our priorities straight.

Sarah walks in with a coffee.
Me: That smells good. What is it?
Sarah: Regular coffee with some chocolate powder. It's a fake mocha. Faux-cha.

My scarf of hate is finally finished and blocked. And screw you, stockinette stitch, you're dead to me. You may be easy to knit, but you are an ugly person inside.

It still curls even after shaping and blocking.

Blocked on my grandma's guest bed.

********

So, I have a Kindle right. I haven't bought an actual book since 2008's In the Courts of the Sun. I still refer to that as the-book-I-will-someday-finish.
After work on Friday I went to Barnes & Noble (I don't own BN's Nook and I keep my Kindle with me at all times, and I feel like the B&N employees can smell it and then ban me for life.) I haven't wanted to read a book this much since that book about a serial-killing Ouiji board (don't laugh it was AWESOME), and of course the Pendergast novels but those don't count.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

"It’s 1808, and that upstart Napoleon is battering the English. Enter Mr. Norrell, a stuffy but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practicing magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Mr. Norrell travels to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved. It is an enthralling, moving story of a rivalry between the only two practicing sorcerers in England."

For some reason, that summary sold me on it. That, and the glowing review from Neil Gaiman and the fact that it was TIME's Book of the Year.

So I bought it.

This behemoth is 846 pages.

I am on page 35. At risk of making my own Carpetbook, the text is blurred out.
The book is written in an old-timey fashion and it's semi-difficult to follow. Definitely can't read this in a few hours or days like I can with other books.


******


I was informed this morning by my good friend James that someone I used to play Final Fantasy XI with (who I knew only as her character named "Bob") has recently passed away. I didn't know Bob too well but I will forever remember the conversation we had years ago about curling hair with a flat-iron. "It doesn't work even if you spiral your hair," she advised me. I remember cracking up at that because that was JUST what I had been about to try. I also remember her story about how she named her character "Bob": she asked her dad what she should name her character and he jokingly said "Bob". Unfortunately it's been probably four or five years since I last spoke to her, so long that I don't remember much about except that she was a Hume Paladin.

I had to search my harddrive to find a screenshot of her:

Transformed into a baby chocobo while waiting for Limbus.

Getting ready for Kirin.

Here's to you, Bob.

Law and Order marathon

Progress Progress Progress. It'll be done soon!~

*Add: too busy eating my body weight in Watermelon.

Good thing I've seen these episodes already.

Took my car to Toyota today to stop that bizarre high pitched screeching that sounded like a legion of weasels inside my engine begging for freedom every time I put my car in reverse and backed out of the driveway.

For $249.31, the weasel legion better be silenced.

Long ass weekend

A fly had gotten into the house and my mom’s trying to help my brother hunt it by describing it…

Mom: It’s small, Vin.
Vin: We do not spare the young.
Mom: I know, but I was just telling you what it looks like.
Vin: Mom, I know what a fly look like. I’m experienced.
Mom: That’s what she said.

Due to the office being closed Monday and the fact that I never work Wednesdays I decided to take Tuesday off as well so I could have a super long weekend. I am somewhat dreading this as I know I will not want to wake up for work on Thursday. I often joke that when I take long vacations where I am accountable to nobody for long periods of time I will come back to work looking like Tom Hanks in Castaway.

It could happen.

Among other things I have recently begun to watch Smallville. I know I am, like, eleven years late to the party and since the show was on the air from 2001 to 2011.

For some reason back in high school my friend Cassie convinced me to watch one episode from the second season and I remember not getting it at all.
I am now noticing a pattern in my life where I watch one episode of a given TV show, hate it, then pick it up several years later. This happened to me with Doctor Who. And Star Trek. Anyway I think Tom Welling is gorgeousness.

My friend Mea and I reconnected yesterday after not having talked to her for over half a year. She lives in Japan and I had no idea how to contact her after December-ish of last year. She's just about the funniest person ever and a bonafide Pendergast fan.

This is Mea's treasure trove of all things Pendergast that she ordered from Canada and the most beautiful damn thing I've ever seen.

Ahaha.


So now I actually will write about the thing I meant to.
About half a year ago my friend Indira from work gave me a banana bread recipe that I've been meaning to make, so here it is. Bananas are my absolute favorite fruit. (1. Bananas, 2. Watermelon, 3. Oranges, 4. Apples, 5. Cantaloupe)
The recipe is all the way the hell in the kitchen and nothx getting up. Email me if you want it.

And I have just enough vanilla ice cream left to top it off.

Star Wars episode 4 is on Spike so might as well take advantage of this blessing of geekdom and knit to the sound of Darth Vader strangling people with the force.