Here, and Then Again There

I'm a bit frustrated at the things I want to show you, and the lack of daylight in which to photograph them well. Some things will have to wait, I guess (I hate waiting).

Or use bad pictures. For my birthday, my aunt got me a couple of lovely things at Apple Festival. Want to see bad pictures of them? Of course you do!

A beautiful wooden bowl:



And a beautiful skein of yarn (more alpaca sock yarn, from the same vendor as the socks I'm working on right now).


For that matter, here is the current sock in progress, or here it was as of last weekend anyway. It's a bit farther on now.


That to all those people who think what I'm knitting couldn't possibly fit on my foot. Does too!

There were both alpacas and llamas at the Fest. Nope, I still can't tell which is who by sight. I think these were the llamas.


Whatever they were, they had a bad case of the grass is always greener going on. It all looked the same to me.

If I could just get all the way out...

So that would make these the alpacas? Maybe?

I'm hurt that you don't know.

As always, there were some fun signs:



Amen to that. I learned from children that I have no patience.


Fortunately, we were going to the workers lot. Because, chase cars? Huh?

The rest will have to wait until I'm home in daylight. Which will be ... a week from Saturday, I think. Sigh. I have a love-hate relationship with this two-week period of October.

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While I am, naturally, sorry that the Bruins lost last night, I have to say that a week into the regular season I am already tired of the sturm und drang about their record. Early media and fan panic is nothing new, but this year there is the slightly malicious tone of "Stanley Cup Hangover!" that makes it seem even sillier. Whatever, people. It's a hockey game. A game. I love hockey, but the world will not end because the Bruins started the season 1-3. Forget the world: their season will not end by starting this way. Outside of fantasy world, no team is going 82-0. Calm down.

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Here's an example of my perverse nature: I don't like the constant pressure and deadlines at work, but yesterday I was cranky because it was slow. Now, that's because I was drooping with tired and coughing/sneezing/blowing my nose* all the live-long day, but still. You can't please me. I spent more than half the day on a time-filler project, and while it did need to be done, and is a project that allows for somewhat perceptible progress, still, too much not enough. Today was a better balance.

*These allergies! If we don't get a hard freeze soon to kill this stuff off, I don't know what I'll do. I'm taking cold medicine, and cough syrup, and I still woke myself coughing last night. Thank god for cough drops (I like the ones I got yesterday, they're Burt's Bees, and not overly mediciny), but I don't want to need one 24-7. Can you believe that I'm wishing for a freeze? Me?

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Learned the hard way: Apparently, if a roller-ball pen is left close enough to the surface of a mouse pad, the mouse pad will suck the ink right out of it. In this case, "the hard way" means deeply ink-stained fingers that no amount of washing will remove. This morning's shower took care of 99% of it, but yesterday no amount of sink-scrubbing helped.

The mouse pad went into the trash. Some things are not fixable.

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Sentence I never thought to hear (on NPR, yet): "Now the US embassy in Syria has responded on its Facebook page..."

The US embassy in Syria ... has a Facebook page?

Do they expect people to "like" them there?

In my mind, there are serious things and frivolous things, and they don't always mesh well.

Serious:
US embassies
Syria

Frivolous:
Facebook

You? Frivolous, serious? Thoughts?

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A wonderful story in The New Yorker on the fiftieth anniversary of The Phantom Tollbooth.

And, some of the cast of that amazing movie, The Princess Bride, gathered on its 25th anniversary:



Thanks to my brother for the tip.