Stitch n'bitch!

There’s really not much to bitch about with knitting…yet. I am sure I am going to get to a point where I am stuck and then I will bitch up a storm. Or more likely, I’ll quit. But right now, things are going swimmingly. I finished my first scarf this weekend! It’s far from perfect, but it’s done and I am excited about that. I started my second scarf too. I’m actually more excited about the second one because it already looks a lot better and I got to pick out the yarn and I didn’t need any help getting it started, so it feels more like my very own project. I didn’t realize how addicting knitting would be, but I think it’s a great winter activity when you live in a place that is only getting about 6.5 hours of daylight.

One of the other things I am doing to keep busy this winter is trap shooting. I joined a league. My team is the only all female team in league history. None of us have ever shot a gun before, so we are probably the biggest joke in league history too, but I’m sure we are also having more fun than any other team so it all evens out. Shooting a gun is fun. And knitting and shooting makes me feel more ‘Alaskan’ somehow. My other ‘Alaskan’ activities of late include getting a fishing license and scoping out a fly rod to buy myself for my birthday.

Holy crap – I turn 30 next week!! When did that sneak up on me?! It’s on a Thursday. Lame. I am going to usher in a new decade by going to work. Oh well, I guess that’s just how adults roll and 30 is indisputably a grown up age… I’ll try to come up with something a little more exciting.

Confessions, Part III

Yes, I am still slightly obsessed with Twilight. I have finally put down the books, but I did preorder the dvd…

Anyway, my latest Twilight obsession is with the mittens the main character wears in the film. I decided I wanted to get a pair, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I did however find the pattern, courtesy of Subliminal Rabbit. I have always wanted to knit, but never got around to learning. So last night I decided to ask my roommate to knit me a pair. I was going to offer to buy the yarn and pay her whatever she thought was reasonable. She had other ideas though.

Basically as soon as I got the word ‘knit’ out she ran into her room and came out with a ball of yarn and needles. She thought I wanted to learn how to knit, not pay her to knit something for me. I was pretty skeptical – not of her ability to teach me, but my ability to learn. I write with my left hand, but I do most other things with my right hand. When I’m up to bat, I’m a leftie, but when I’m catching, I throw with my right hand. I can only use a scissors in my right hand. I play pool right handed and I shoot a gun with my right hand. I think I might golf left handed, but I’ve only ever done mini-golf and maybe I would do better if I tried it right handed because I am pretty bad. Ok, really, really bad.

The point is that I had no idea which hand would be dominant for knitting. But I was game to learn. And after about 20 minutes, I sort of had it down! After an hour, my rows were starting to straighten up and I was getting the hang of it! And it was actually fun. Here’s how far I got last night. I am sure anyone that has ever knit something can see that I have a long way to go, but it’s a pretty damn good start.

Happy January 20th, Everyone!!

Even though I am quite bitter about having to work during Obama's inauguration, I am pretty sure this has been one of the best Tuesdays of my life thus far.

ROCK STAR

My roommate is an Auger Rock Star. To fully appreciate her awesomeness, let me start at the beginning:

Last Friday night I might have decided to partake in a few libations. I was having a dance party with myself in the living room, enjoying life, and minding my own business. At some point I went to the bathroom and as the toilet was flushing, I reached for a hair band and accidently knocked my roommate’s hair pick into the toilet. I saw it happen and I decided there was no way that the pick was actually going to fit in the pipes, so I figured I would just wait until the toilet was done flushing and then I would fish it out. As I was mulling this plan over, the pick disappeared. Crap.

In my slightly intoxicated state, I decided to ignore what just happened and continued to bust a move and completely forgot about the whole thing.

Fast forward to the next morning.

We had a few guests spend the evening with us and one of them woke up and went to the bathroom and was mortified because we don’t have a plunger and she had to come tell me she clogged the toilet. Obviously I remembered what I had done and for a split second I contemplated keeping it a secret, but that is just wrong so I fessed up.

Of course, it was a Saturday so plumbers were charging up the wazoo to come fish a foreign object out of a toilet. The rest of the day was spent with a shower snake, an auger, a plunger, a wire coat hanger, and disgustingly enough, my own hands as I tried to get the lodged pick out of our effing S-bend. No luck.

I called my friend and he agreed to pull the toilet up so we could pull the pick out from the bottom, which meant I had to go to the hardware store to get a new toilet seal. And the liquor store to buy a case of beer as a thank you. I have amazing friends. It’s a real friend that is willing to spend his Saturday ripping up your toilet.

Anyway, while I was out braving the four feet of snow, my roommate borrowed a different kind of toilet auger from our neighbors and managed to get the pick out! She got the pick out!! Crisis averted! And now we have a case of beer!

I.am.dumb.

Last night I was coerced into going down to a bar and playing trivia. Nothing makes me feel like more of a dumbass than playing trivia, except maybe reading M5K’s blog. I am full of useless knowledge about pop culture but even in trivia games knowing that Crystal Pepsi came out in 1992 is completely useless. Our categories last night were State Mottos, Guns N’Roses, The Bailout, Television, and Inventors. I thought I’d be able to hold my own in the Guns N’Roses and television questions, and I hoped I would know at least one or two answers about the bailout since I do try to read the news every day. Wrong! I’m sure most of my readers know that Guns N’Roses was formed by members from Hollywood Rose and L.A. Guns, but not this girl. I got the L.A. Guns, but Hollywood Rose? What the hell is that? I’m also sure most of you know which Guns N’Roses song starts with a Cool Hand Luke quote, but I sure as hell didn’t. I mixed up AIG with Lehman Brothers. I got the ALASKA state motto wrong. And who knew that punk ass Ohio is trying to steal North Carolina’s aviation thunder? They claim to be ‘the birthplace of aviation’. WTF? The moral of this story: I should never be asked to play on a trivia team again. Sure, I am super fun to hang out with and I’ll make the evening more entertaining, but with $50 at stake, I am not going to lead any team to victory.

Welcome to 2009, loser!

I’ve been trying not to let the winter blues get me down, but I am failing. I am surrounded by people who are so in love with winter that I am sure they would marry it if they could. Their annoying declarations about how wonderful winter is are worse than all the damn snow and the single digit temperatures. I swear to God, the next person that starts talking about how great snow is will get punched in the face.

In other news, my NYE sucked donkey balls. I rented a few movies (Wanted with Angelina Jolie and the most recent Harry Potter movie) and didn’t even drink. Apparently I don’t know how to have fun without liquor. Anyway, as I was sitting there, I realized that I should be working in Hollywood. I know I can’t act, but I started off at film school and I think I would be a good producer. I am a planner to an almost pathological degree. This is not to say that I am a neat person. I get very defensive about this. I am messy, but I know where everything is and I know what needs to get done. I think that would be a good quality when it comes to getting shit done on a set where there aren’t any file cabinets or databases easily accessible.

Anyway, the only reason I switched over to a state school and ended up majoring in journalism is because I am a chicken. I didn’t want to have even bigger student loans and I didn’t want to wait tables for the rest of my life, which I knew would be a very real possibility trying to make it in the entertainment industry. I’ve known for the last 6 years that I don’t want to work in an office for the rest of my life. But for some reason, I’ve spent the last few years assuming that if I want to get a job that doesn’t involve sitting in front of a computer all day, I’d have to go back to school for some sort of science degree. I seriously looked into several forestry options. I don’t know why I didn’t think of anything else – certainly not going back into the arts. Probably because I gave up on that career choice a long time ago.

Well, not anymore! I turn 30 in a few months and I think its bullshit that I have spent my whole life going for jobs that I am not passionate about. It’s not a great feeling knowing that you’ve spent your whole life doing stuff because you were afraid to fail at what you really wanted to do.

Seeing as I am not a stupid 19-year old anymore, I am going to be logical about this. I know that I change my mind about everything every other week, so it’s not like I am going to pack up my car and head down to L.A. But I am going to take advantage of the fact that I work at a television station and learn everything I can about set design and camera operations and stuff. And I am hopefully going to chip away at some of the debt I have accrued over the last decade. And if a few years, when I no longer have an aging dog to take care of, and I don’t have to plan everything decision I make around my credit card balance, perhaps I’ll be ready to take that leap. Plus, I’ll have a few years experience in the media field, even if public television is about as far away from Hollywood as you can get.