In the Drink

Well I am so bummed! I just dropped my iPod in water by accident. I am talking it was completely submerged! Not just a little sprinkle of water! Don't ask me how. I was trying to be careful but I was wearing it at work and walking around the office in my own little iPod world until the fateful accident. Now my iPod is drying out on my desk but my hope is wearing thin. I think I may be out the iPod completely, which means I can't sell it towards getting a new iPod. The worst thing is that if we get a new one the husband has decreed that he will take the hew video iPod and I will get his hand-me-down which has a smaller HD than my soaked iPod. What a wonderful additon to my birthday :-(

More than half my life

I have now officially "been with" the husband more than one half of my entire life. So I am not sure if it is all downhill from here or what? I met the husband when I was the ripe old age of 14 - gulp! Although we have only been married for 5 years this Saturday, April 29, 2006 will be our 15th anniversary of being "together" along with my 31st birthday! I think I like the 15 year mile marker better than the 31 year marker.

What what do I have planned for the 3rd decade of of my life? I don't know but I am sure it will be better than the 1st decade of my life! As a present to my self I am taking the day off from work tomorrow and having a massage.

Also the husband returns from Las Vegas tomorrow, after being gone almost a week for a huge convention that he had to work. Can you believe I turned down going to Vegas for my birthday to save on $$?! Oh well it was fun last year when I went. When airfare from CA to Las Vegas costs more than $300 it just isn't worth it, when it used to be only $79! Damn gas prices!

Anyways Happy Birthday to me!

,

Big Yellow Banana

Have you ever been walking down the street and wondered what everyone was walking to or rushing for? I often wonder this while I walk through the morning rush of walkers in the Financial District. Sometimes I make up little names for people like the Spikey (the business man) who is always on my train and rushes to his office with his spikey product filled hair. Today - there was the Banana Guy - no joke the guy was wearing a full head to toe yellow banana suit and carrying a bag as if he was rushing off to an office job. I make up stories for the people who are wearing casts on arms or legs. However my biggest nemisis on my morning commute is the Patch Lady (who wears a black eye patch), who always takes my seat on BART if she gets in line before I get there.

I lost the will to blog this past week - Slice of America

I am sorry but I just had no will this past week to write. I thought of little amusing topics throughout the week every now and again but I didn't write them down so they are now gone but I assure you there were witty amusing things roaming around in my head last week. They just didn't make it onto the computer.

Last week I did however go to the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. The new building - which ironically is right next to the old building. Get this the old building was too small for all the books and so they spent millions on the new state fo the art library but the design only has the about the exact same amount of usable square feet as the old library had. How funny is that!

The library is a very interesting place to people watch. It's almost like a Starbucks without the coffee. People with laptops as far as the eye can see. In fact every since place to sit at a table had an ethernet connection! I was impressed. The interesting thing was that everyone was on the computers and hardly anyone was roaming the stacks of books. The only people who weren't on computers and were sitting down were the indigent population - they weren't even reading - they just kind of looked lost.

This bahemoth of a library has an enormous amount of elevators - it was interesting to be in an elevator with someone who was obviously a student toting a backpack and ipod, a snooty rich lady toting her Fendi bag and her toddler, me, and the indigent guy all crammed into an elevator together. Quite an interesting slice of America.

Would anyone notice if I killed my boss?

I absolutely hate my boss's snarky rude comments. He says he want's me to be "more in touch with our remote offices". Well I talk to them all frequently and I can't help them when they don't tell me anything!

Today my China consultant mentions the need for a new computer in our Beijing office. Before I even get to respond to his email - my boss send me an email saying:

"This request from ______ is the thing I was talking about when asking you to be more in touch with our remote offices to make sure their office needs are being met.
Cheers"

What a complete jerk! I don't even think he realizes how snarky he is being he actually thinks he is giving me helpful constructive criticism!

So maybe he will disappear someday and I won't have to listen to his attitude or maybe I will dissapear. Either way one of us will have to disappear becasue otherwise I am going to have to do something drastic like hire a hit man or quit. I guess quitting would be better than the hit man . . .

BTW: I actually created a new email folder named "My Boss Being An Ass" just for this email.

The Lure of Starbucks

Starbucks is so evil! Why do I want yummy pastries and cocoa or caramel apple cider from there anyways? I'll tell you why it feels like a little affordable indulgence. I don't buy diamonds for myself everyday but I can justify a cocoa with whipped cream on top and maybe feel extra special with a peppermint shot too. Or I can feel decadent with an apple fritter or both decadent and health conscious with a piece of low-fat blueberry bread. Evil - pure evil! I wish the powdered Nestle's cocoa that I brought to work in my tupperware felt so decadent!

1 Year 2 Months

I finally finished my very first scarf! Ok to be more precise I finally finished my first scarf that I re-knit.

History of the Purple Scarf
This was the first yarn that I ever bought when my friend was teaching me to knit in January, 2005. It is (Merino and Cashmere) Adrienne Vittadini's Trina in color 110. I worked really hard on it and felt great accomplishment at my first ever knitted project . . . until I tried it on. It was 2 times wider than it should have been which made it about half as long as it should have been. Granted I knew nothing about gauge or about measuring stitches per inch. I never wore it and for a brief while the husband took ownership of it but never wore it. Then the scarf had a brief stint at a furniture warmer and was draped over the back of our sofa until I decided that the yarn was too good to be trapped in a horrible first scarf turned bad, so I unraveled it. The whole thing looked like ramen noodles all over my sofa while I wound it into balls again. Then I had aspirations of making a matching hat and mittens so I bought a few more skeins of the yarn.

So now my first scarf is finally done and I even wore it to work today for it's first outing! It's such yummy yarn I can't wait to make the matching hat and mittens!

James Blunt was in San Francisco with Me!

Last night I was with James Blunt at his concert at the Warfield. So maybe I wasn't exactly "with" him unless you consider a couple thousand people venue as being an intimate rondevouz. Ok - I was only there for the concert with the teeming masses and I was with the husband but a girl can dream can't she?

The husband was my official photographer of the event. He was great. It was too dark and far away for flash protography to be effective, plus that was prohibited, so he had to do super long exposures and try to keep the camera steady, which was not an easy task to accomplish in an estrogen filled room of dancing and swaying women along with the guys they dragged along to the show.

The opening acts, Sierra Swan and Boy Least Likely To were pretty cool and their music is on iTunes if you are interested.

James Blunt wonderful! The program was well rehearsed. The lighting was live and not pre-programmed. JB played at least 5 or 6 songs that aren't on the album and I am going to go crazy until I find out all the names of the new songs! I remember at least one new song name, Same As Day. The music and singing were live - no lip syncing - thank you very much. And the music had a harder edge to it than the Back to Bedlam album has - I really enjoyed that. It just shows how different the songs can be when performed live and also the difference between studio musicians whose playing has been homogenized by editing versus the energy of a live performance by the tour band.

JB did ask the audience to refrain from screaming and making noise during No Bravery and Goodbye My Lover" and for the most part the audience was. He also did jump on top of the speaker during one of the songs.

All in all - the JB concert was one of the best Birthday/Anniversay presents the husband has ever given me! We even got to have seats, since we were in the balcony! Other teeming masses were crammed onto the floor below. Oh I almost forgot to mention the husband and I ate at Original Joe's prior to the concert and while we were walking we found JB's tour bus! I fished out one of my business cards and wrote a note on the back of it and put it under the windshield wiper of the bus. Who knows if he'll ever get the note but it was fun never-the-less!

There were only 2 downsides of the whole evening: I know that artists only really make money off their touring, since the record companies take most of the money from the album sales unless the artist also has written the music, then they get some $$ from the album. All the tickets for the concert were a face value of $25 and I know that most of the people there had to buy them from second market vendors or off of eBay for much higher like we did. Our 2 tickets cost us $150 and I know that tickets in the lower sections of the balcony were going for $299+ per seat! Crazy! It's such a shame that JB won't see any of that $$ from the second market ticket scalpers. The other downside was that as we were leaving the theater, I totally missed the bottom 2 stairs and strained my ankle pertty badly. So now I am stuck with propping it up and icing it today.

I am, however, so glad we went to the concert! I didn't get to bed till 1am and the husband stayed up even later to clean up the pics but it was worth it!



More pics from the 04/06/06 James Blunt Concert at the Warfield in San Francisco!

New Knitting Book

My knitting hero, The Yarn Harlot came out with a new book this week! I was so excited that I couldn't' wait to rip open the Amazon.com box because I had preordered it of course. Doesn't everyone preorder knitting books?





Yarn Rules contains more knitting humor that any fiber art crafter could appreciate but it also had some useful info in it too. Don't let the useful knitting info scare you away from the book though if you are a non-knitter.

According to The Yarn Harlot the world consists of three type of people:

• non-knitters
  
• knitters
  
• Knitters (note the capital "K")
  

I fall into the category of knitter, since I havent' ventured into really difficult projects yet. But I have Knitting aspirations. The types of knitters can further be broken down into categories.

Yarn Harlot knitting Categories

• Missionary
  
• Sensei (I fall between Sensei and Scientist)
  
• Scientist
  
• Organic
  
• Pretender
  

I feel the Sensei/Scientist is a knitter who is willing to teach but will not "spread the knitting word" to those who aren't interested and willing and will also rip back and unravel large amounts of her work in order to achieve "perfection" or at least a state as close to "perfection" as possible. The Scientist apparently has a hard time living with mistakes and like things a certain way. Hmm - yup sounds like me.

I absolutely love The Yarn Harlot's writing. It reminds me a little bit of me with the knitting obsession but a lot of my sister mixed in for the humor part.

Who knew that knitting and yarn could be so entertaining on so many different levels?!