Archive for May, 2005

I Sincerely Apologize to my Neighbors

Except to the psychopaths who insist on feeding the pigeons.

Is this ugly or what?

bright blue car cover

This color is remarkably accurate.

There’s nothing quite like driving through SoHo with a bird-sh!t-covered Jetta, let me tell you. If I have to replace this cover every six months, it will still be cheaper than having the car detailed every six months; and definitely cheaper than the embarrassment when I try to stretch that out to a year.

So bright, it might even frighten those berry-seed-laden flying cr@p machines away. One can only hope.

I Forgot

Just because it will annoy her, I have to say happy 46th to my friend M. If you keep it up, one of these days you’ll overtake me.

I am not in love with knitting Socks

I don’t hate knitting socks. Socks are fine. I’d post a picture, but I’d really rather be able to show one whole sock. Call it a design error on my part. I finally turned the heel and thought, “A good sock would have ribbing here so it will stay up.” I hate k2p2 rib.

I knit k2p2 rib for thirty minutes and think, “That baby blanket needs work too.”

I’ve knit a couple of thousand stitches this weeken, sitting out on the terrace in the warm weather, but seemingly little progress has been made. I could have finished a scarf in the time I’ve spent on that sock.

But, it has been a wonderful weedend. The weather has been perfect. I got three good bike rides in: one down to Borough Park on Saturday, one up through Brooklyn Heights and down to Red Hook and the Columbia St pier on Sunday and today one down First and Second Avenues almost to Bay Ridge. The last was an hour, and after the first few minutes of stiffness, I was fine. I was not winded and I probably could have lasted another half hour easily.

My butt, however, will enjoy the next few days off the bike. Brooklyn is not a paradise of pavement. First Ave is Belgian paving blocks and railroad tracks. Second Ave, at the northern end, is ruts on top of potholes. The rest of Brooklyn is covered in hills and idiots who park in the bike lanes.

Inspired by Sean’s nostalgic shots and in response (sorta) to those who are still waiting to see the A side, I give you this, the college mug-shot.
511.jpg

One of my best photos.

That’s what I looked like twenty years ago, back when I had hair (thinning, yes, but still hair), wore contact lenses, weighed 107 lbs., and worked as a resident assistant in a mega-university in Texas (room 511). That’s a five-o’clock shadow you see, which is now more of a five-o’clock ghost, a skinny, black suede tie–it was the ’80’s–and a Army/Navy store uniform shirt from what had to been the smallest US marine ever to have lived. I loved that shirt. Oddly, my eyebrows were darker then.

Sadly, I was trying to be straight then.

Unturning the Heel

I’ve turned the heel on the sock, and ended up somehow with two extra stitches. I can’t find any stitches I’ve picked up and there are no yarn-over holes; nonetheless, it’s time to rip.

I got in a good bike ride yesterday, again down through Carroll Gardens and Red Hook, over to 5th Ave and up and back across Boerum Hill. I need to get a smaller, more portable camera to take with me. Though no picture can give you the exact sensation of biking past a sanitation truck yard and waste transfer station. Or biking over uneven Belgian paving blocks.

No ride today. It’s chilly and there’s rain on the radar map. That means knitting and cooking. I’ve already potted a chocolate mint and a ginger mint for the terrace.

Some Things Never Change

Palm software is apparently one of those things.

One of the by-effects of switching from PC to Mac is having to replace my 3-yr-old iPac Pocket PC with a Palm-based PDA. Macs and PCs get along much better now, but syncing your Windows PDA with Tiger Mail and Address book is not to be done.

So I got a PalmOne Tungsten E2, fairly cool, not souped up with features I’ll never use, and not what I’d call cheap, and, really, Palm software hasn’t improved markedly in three years. It’s cr@p.

Pocket PC is as far ahead of Palm as Tiger is head of XP.

Creeping Up the Arch

Sock_001_001Well, I’ve made it past the toe. On to the heel.
I tried following the instructions and dividing the stitches on four needles, but that’s too unwieldy for a miserable 14 stitches per dpn. It’s moving much faster on three. Note: I did insert a marker.

In my currently rather uneventful life, that’s all for my excitement.

I Have Begun a Sock

Twice.

Attempting the toe-up version, I ended up with two more stitches on one side than the other. Rather than blaming on my inability to count past two, I’ll blame it on trying to knit on the NYC subway at 9:30 in the morning.

I saw a dermatologist for the first time today. As a dermatologist, I mean. I’m sure I’ve seen one in the wild before. They’re not rare. I have dry skin and allergies, and all my moles are benign gifts of my ancestors. Woo-hoo.

And he was sort of cute, in a Chelsea sort of way. I’m guessing very Chelsea, but then my gaydar has never been very good. Though, he liked my tattoo, the one on my back. And he wasn’t horrified to find me knitting on the misshapen sock toe when he came into the examining room.

He had nice skin.