Got Hockey! (again)

In the week since I last wrote about how the cable company still couldn't get the Center Ice channels working properly, it has continued to not work properly. Almost two weeks, how ridiculous.

However! I went onto our local Facebook group page earlier this week to ask if anyone else was having the same problem, and someone let me know that you can watch all the games via ESPN+, which I did not know. 

I would say I can't believe I didn't know, but actually, I can believe it: not embracing new technology is pretty on-brand for me. I subscribed to ESPN+ starting last season because they carry a few exclusive games, and I've used the subscription to read some subscriber-only articles about the NHL, but had never poked into it any more than that. And yet, look at that: last night's game was available, both the Bruins and the Flyers broadcasts, and it worked perfectly! (I checked on the Center Ice feed between periods, out of curiosity, and the channel that said it was showing the Bruins game was broadcasting ... the Devils game. Okay then, confirmed to be still not working right.)

So I called Summit this morning and cancelled the Center Ice package, and we'll get a credit on the next bill. Fine. I don't need you, Summit! Well, I do for other channels (NHL Network, regular ESPN, and a few games are on ABC and TNT), but not for Center Ice. Whether you ever get it working again is no longer my problem.

Whew. 

The Bruins won last night, by the way. They are now 10-0 at home, and 15-2 on the season. Not bad! (By which I mean excellent.) Last night's game wasn't the best, but you can't argue with the result. Other than the utter BS of signing the racist bully (which is a management fuck-up and not on the players at all--in fact, they spoke out against it), this season has been tons of fun so far. May it continue!

Bath Time

Put* Maggie on her box, in the sun, and she swings wildly around while giving herself a bath.

*Well, she puts herself there--she doesn't like to be told what to do. Typical cat.

Strike a pose.

Cutting!

So the former president announced last night that he's running again. You may imagine my feelings. However, I got a good laugh from the cover of the New York Post today:

See there, at the bottom? "Florida man makes announcement"?

I guess Rupert Murdoch is done with Don? Whew.

Quick Question: Messed Up Memory

I recently was looking back on something that I was completely certain happened one way, and found out it didn't (I was 100% sure that when I went to Hawaii in 2020, I flew out of Miami, but it was Lauderdale). I was so sure! Absolutely no doubt in my mind! And I am completely wrong.

Have you ever had something like that happen? It's such a disconcerting feeling. Tell me I'm not the only one who shouldn't trust their own memory. At least not all the time.

Kitty? What Kitty?

I don't see anything; do you?

Just a blanket in the sun.

You Would Think, in Two Parts

Before this weekend, I would have said one would have to go to a yarn show in order to really shop the marketplace: just makes sense, right? You would think. 

And yet, I'm not at Stitches SoCal this weekend, but notable knit-famous person Franklin Habit is, and while watching a Facebook Live he did from the marketplace, I ended up placing two yarn orders.

These things just happen sometimes, eh? When the packages from LL Yarn Co and Anzula arrive, I will surely be showing them off.

Speaking of showing off, you would also think that by now I would have expanded on the single teaser photo I put up of the yarn I bought when I was on my trip last month, and yet here we are.

The yarn store I went to was Another Yarn, in Burlington Mass. (Here's the website, but based on mention of 2020 on the front page, it isn't quite up to date.) It's a nice store I used to go to sometimes when I lived there, and the first thing I saw when I went in was a long row of bins with sale yarn.

So that means that I got these 7 skeins of Autumn Wind Shade by Trendsetter Yarns for 70% off, thank you!

It's a cotton yarn with a little cashmere blended in, quite soft, which I prize in cotton especially as so many cottons are not soft to work with. It will be fun to play with!

Then I got a couple of balls of Linie 12 Street Design Color from ONline, one in a rainbow and a white to complement it.

Finally, not my purchase but my birthday gift was this lovely skein of angora and wool. Are these my colors or what?

Soft and beautiful, two of my favorite things in yarn.

More Maggie

How can you beat looking at this cute face? Better to share these photos than continue to gripe about how I can’t watch tonight’s Bruins game, again. Sigh. Enjoy the kitty.

Hiding

My back isn't as bad as it was on Wednesday, but it's not great. 

My allergies are still awful. (One of my friends suggested it might be that all the palm trees are rebounding after the beating they took from hurricane Ian, and that could be why there's so much going on, allergen-wise.) I appreciate having something to blame, but the knowledge doesn't really help.

And the cable company (do we still call them that?) claims that they are "working on" getting NHL Center Ice, which has been nonfunctional ALL DAMN WEEK, back up, but they have no ETA. I had to listen to last night's Bruins game on the radio. (Thanks for the streaming, 98.5 the Sports Hub, at least something works.) Last month it was the NHL Network that was out for a week and a half--every rep I've talked to at Summit Broadband claims they have nothing against hockey, but I'm getting suspicious.

I looked at Maggie on my lap this morning, and thought, yeah, I don't want to face the day either.

At least it's Friday. But come on.

Glimpse of Knitting

I was knitting this week and looked down to see a whole rainbow in an inch of yarn.

This yarn is really pretty.

(Tanis Fiber Arts Purple Label Cashmere Sock in colorway magique.)

More Ugh Than Yay

I have been sleeping like crap this week: anyone else? It's usually the spring time change that's worse for me, because of how it messes up when I want to go to bed and when I have to get up, but this week, even with going to bed "early," I've been waking multiple times and having so much trouble falling back to sleep. Stupid time change.

I've also been madly congested, which I'm sure isn't helping. I'm so stuffed up that no matter how much I try to breathe through my nose, I obviously fail at that as soon as I do fall asleep, as I wake up with my mouth so dry it's hard to open it enough to drink some water. This morning, my sinuses felt larger than my skull. I gave up at 9 and took some DayQuil, in hopes that would help. (Spoiler: It did not help. It had no noticeable effect.) Meanwhile, I suggest you buy stock in Kimberly-Clark, as I am going through Kleenex like a crazy woman.

Then there's my back! When I got up, that problem spot on the mid-left was out of sorts, but later, as I bent over a drawer looking for something, my lower back gave such a twang that I almost fell over. Enough already! The coughs and giant sneezes from congestion aren't helping the back, and as I hobble around like a poorly constructed puppet, I feel like I'm falling apart at the seams.

And my poor mother is as well. Did I mention that she's been having terrible pain in her shoulder, the one she had replaced in the spring? Yeah. The doctor sent her for X-rays, which showed nothing, and then a CT scan, which apparently showed that her shoulder has 'settled' or something so that one of the surgical screws is hitting a nerve. GAH! They gave her a steroid infection, which did nothing, and pain meds, which did nothing. Yesterday they gave her a different kind of pain med, and a few hours after taking it, she felt sick and shaky and went to bed. The poor woman can't catch a break lately.

On the small plus side, I had my annual mammogram yesterday, and it was not miserably painful! When I thanked the tech for doing a good job, she said that it shouldn't be painful, just uncomfortable, and yes, Christine, I agree with you! However, I have had some that had me holding back tears, some that had me cursing the existence of seat belts and potholes on the drive home, some that actually bruised my chest. They shouldn't be painful, but they certainly are sometimes. This one was not, and I am so grateful for that.

Overall, though, I'm feeling like this, from a bookmark I bought on my trip:

(I also got the one with the giraffe. Check her stuff out!)

A Garden Tour

Election day is stressing me out, plus my allergies have gone through the roof lately and I'm monitoring another hurricane coming toward Florida (not right at us, and not as big as last time, but I feel anxious even though we should only get wind and rain and maybe a little street flooding). So how about we look at pretty flowers instead!

When I was up in Massachusetts, I went to a party at a friend's house and asked for a garden tour before things got going. M is very serious about her gardening, and getting a late-fall tour involves a lot of discussion about what she had planted here and there that was over already. I loved it! Most of what was still going was dahlias, which is like having a whole range of flowers since they're all so different. Before I show you all those, though, let me show you the few other things I photographed.

Such as a beautiful piece of glass art:

And the remains of the corn:

See? Gorgeous colors!

And magic beans!

Some fun puffy things:

That make me think of Dr. Seuss.

And of course the camera focusing on the background and not the flower. Sigh.

And a few hydrangeas. 

But then, it's all dahlias!