Twists of Fate

Stargate actor Don S. Davis dies. I thoroughly enjoyed every single role I saw this actor in, but I will admit that Hammond of SG-1 was absolutely my favorite. He was an integral part of the series, and the show was never quite the same when he left in 2003 due to health concerns.

RIP sir, RIP.

I’ve been such a crankypants that I’m trying to find good things to think about. So here’s a small list.

1. OMG YAYS my picker came! The box is outside, waiting for the studio to be ready. The OOPs man just came and delivered it. Hopefully, if the equipment and fleeces start piling up on the deck, the damn landlady will get her ass in gear and will finish removing the evicted dude’s furniture, and clean and have it ready for me this weekend.

2. Speaking of the UPS man, I have a crush on mine. He has a very manly mustache, and is quite attractive. Mrrowr.

3. New cotton sleep pants. My legs will never see the light of day again in shorts or a short skirt. This is my compromise while I’m at home.

4. I’m glad I put the pants on about 60 seconds before the UPS man came to the door. It would have been an interesting conversation otherwise.

5. Getting some black plastic bags to do my annual “shake and bake” of my fleeces that have not yet been used. It’s finally going to be warm and sunny enough here this weekend to warrant using them.

6. Receiving the quilting fabric order, and notification that the second fat quarter club shipment is in the mail.

7. Realizing I should find a quilting teacher.

8. Setting my first attempt at making Balm of Gilead out in the sun to steep. While I didn’t collect the cottonwood buds myself, I have high hopes that the simple recipe will turn out marvelously. I found that this helped soothe my hands and wrists when I’d been doing too much typing and knitting, as well as my knee when I fell HARD at my B&B during Madrona. A friend made the first jar I’d used, and she did collect the buds herself. I am not that adventuresome (bugs live outside, don’t you know), so I ordered some and am tinkering. We’ll see how it goes.

9. Fresh strawberries from the farmer’s market, along with a chocolate ganache in regular and cayenne from Chocolate Serenade. The booths were side by side, and the chocolate vendor had a lightbulb and bought strawberries from next door for customers to dip in the ganache to sample. Totally awesome. I’m so going to eat myself sick on these things.

10. Ghosty!mew didn’t hiss at me when I went out to feed her just now. Watching a cat go NOMNOMNOM is always happymaking.

Anyone who reads this - please send good vibes that the studio aka crafting space will be ready this weekend. I need to excavate my apartment from under all the boxes of materials I’m planning on working with in the coming six months or so, and I’d really, really like to get this all moving.

Happy Friday!

No updates. I’m too pooped to say much aside from the fact I’m working on a pair of socks when I can pick up needles, and that I can’t wait for my last day of work so I can sleep for a week and then pick up the pieces of my life.

Until then, though, this made me laugh so hard I nearly peed my pants.

How is anyone else doing?

Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

This is a fairly old post (October 2006) but it’s been linked a lot recently in the places I hang out online. I’ve been pondering it a lot the past couple of days.

I’ll never be beautiful, by most sociatal standards. I’ll probably never even be pretty. As one male ex-friend of mine memorably put it, “Well, at least you’re not, like, really ugly or anything.”

I’ve learned, as noe of the mostly-not-ugly ones, that beauty to me is often found in small, seemingly inconsequential things. The way someone wrinkles there nose when they smile and laugh. The sly sideways glance when someone is trying not to laugh out loud at the stupidity of other people when we’re sitting in endless meetings. The care with which someone’s hands cradle a newborn baby, coax notes from a guitar, or the dirt under someone’s fingernails after carefully placing a seedling into some rich, brown earth.

And the amazing, gorgeous, wonderfulness that is potential. That’s something really beautiful.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, except to say that the above link was interesting, and that I like my version of beauty a whole lot more than what many would call it. It’s less binding and restrictive, you know?

In knitting news? Not much knitting news. Still too tired to actually work on anything consistently. I’m buying fiber and yarn at a ridiculous rate though. Mostly so I can play with it when my assignment at this job ends, which shold be in the next two to three weeks. I hope!

I hope everyone out there is well, happy and enjoying the Spring!

A candidate I can get behind!!

Er, not that way of course. I love sheep, but I don’t love sheep. Not even Dolores, tempting though she may be. I mean, I don’t have health insurance, and you just never know where her fleece has been.

ANYway, I can totally say I’m a member of the Fibertarian party. At some point, when I’m not totally PMSing and generally wanting to trample my fellow Americans under my stiletto-shod heel while bolting into the Fran’s Chocolate store in an effort to stem my irrational tears.

Um, yes. How you doon?

I don’t care who mocks me for this, but I LOVE the Spice Girls. I nearly bought a ticket for their Vegas concert, but couldn’t get away from work to go. They may not be the best singers in the whole world, and they may have spawned the scary spectacle that is Posh, but I love them liek whoa. When I’m in a truly pissy mood I’ve discovered myself firing up iTunes and finding one of the bouncier ones to be-bop along to.

It’s really hard to take life seriously when listening to the Spice Girls.

Which is why it’s a nice way to mentally flush the cache from a very stressful work week, and get on to dooting around with fiber for the evening. Right?

Right, dammit. GIRL POWER! ;)

In St Distaff Day if I bought a new wheel?

Background: I am a big SciFi geek. I love me some Star Trek and Stargate. I even bought all the MacGyver DVDs so I could extend my enjoyment of Richard Dean Anderson back a few years when he was young, taut and pretty. I also now have two Swiss Army Knives in my possession, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue.

Because my RDA lurv is so strong, I got up at 4:30 AM on a fucking Saturday morning to try to get tickets for Gatecon 2008 in Vancouver. The website launched ticket sales at 5am. There were something like 230 VIP tickets, and they were gone within 90 seconds. I have issues with the navigation on the site, the fact that they allowed people to purchase in blocks of ten for fucks sake, and yes, I am in fact BITTER. I’m even invoking the CAPSLOCK OF EMPAHSIS to tell you how BITTER I am.

Obviously, I wasn’t one of the lucky ticket winners. Included in the ticket price was a photo session with the man himself. I’ve invested a lot of tv crush time on him, and you know, I like Vancouver. Tail end of August, nice hotel, a whole plethora of other geeky people who could debate Goa’uld vs Wraith vs Replicators for hours, with citations of specific eps and character names and all the attendant nerdiness that I really do enjoy reveling in.

However, tickets were also 185 GBP, which = a shit ton of cash in USD these days.

So, the moral of the story? I didn’t get the tickets, but I was so frustrated (and sleep deprived) that I called up Copper Moose and ordered a new wheel to help dry the BITTER tears of my fannish disappointment. It’ll be cheaper in the long run, I think. Price of new wheel vs con ticket, gas and drive time to Vancouver, hotel stay for three nights, meals, slipping and falling in the dealer room and swiping my card on the way down…. It’s probably for the best.

Plus, there’ll be no need for RDA to bust out a restraining order*, so I even save on legal fees! It’s a win all around!

Right?

::crickets chirp::

*Disclaimer: I wouldn’t stalk the man, and in fact in-person celeb meetings make me squirm liek whoa. I’ve been to cons where people go off and stalk the actors while they’re in town, and I’ve asked the car to pull over and found a ride back to my hotel to avoid being part of that behavior. I dig the level of interaction RDA has with his fans, and am ridiculously pleased that he’s dipping his toes back into the great fannish ocean after years and years of avoiding it like the plague (see Simpsons episode 17:17 “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore”). I hope everyone treats him with the respect and courtesy anyone should give someone who’s as skittish about his privacy as a wild mustang who just unexpectedly stumbled into a wolf pack. I look forward to the con reports (BITTER! SO BITTER!), but the second level tickets are still way too expensive for me to justify the whole shebang. Anyway, wouldn’t stalk him, respect him lots, hope he enjoys and makes arrangements for smaller cons/events in the future.