Becca's Blog

Ageless — yeah, right.

Above is the aftermath of the big book I just finished proofreading (photo taken with my new cameraphone — I finally got one). Eraser dust everywhere and dictionaries piled on the floor. I'm relieved to have it done (partly because my full-time job has gotten a bit hectic), although in reading the book (a travel guide to France) I learned some new things and got to use my education in French. (Look ma, I'm using my degree!)

"What do you do with a BA in English?" is one of the first big laugh lines in Avenue Q, which Jane and I saw last Saturday, as one of my birthday presents. It was cute and amusing, particularly if you grew up watching Sesame Street, as I did. Before the show we had dinner at CAV wine bar near the Castro. The food was pretty good (high spots: grilled nectarine/goat cheese bruschetta and coffee pot de creme with hot cinnamon beignets) and the wines were mostly very good. Prices were not bad, but it's not cheap. We were seated in the back, but the action is up at the bar (and I mean girl-meets-girl action). Many moneyed and young, sleekly dressed ladies. Made me decide that my cute outfit was actually dorky. At the theatre, I really began to feel like a country mouse (many fancy outfits from Bloomingdales, not my style but much more au courant than mine — I just felt a little bit tattered). Although I start up the "I don't fit in" internal monologue whenever I'm in a crowd, the sartorial life lessons I decided to take away from the evening are these:
a) When I think I can get dressed in under a half-hour and look polished and put together, I am fooling myself.
b) My mother's advice about being able to wear classic, well-made clothing forever is wrong.
c) Corollary to b: Saving clothes for special occasions is a waste. I have a tendency to buy pretty clothes that I love but that belong to some life full of formal meetings and garden parties that I don't live. (I prefer not to think about the clothes I'm saving until I fit into them.) I put them away in my closet and take them out once every 18 to 24 months, wear them on special occasions, and realize I've done what my mother does when she puts on that patchwork velvet long skirt (the holiday skirt, you know). I have no idea when she bought it—it's ageless (yeah, right).

From here on out I am going to seize the day. If I feel like wearing the fringed nubuck wrap skirt out for coffee, I will damn well do it. I will wear the white cotton suit to work, by gosh. And when their time is over, I will let go of them without regret. Not only that, I'll buy cheap, trendy clothes if I like them, and let them go when their moment is over. So there.

Of course, 25 days out of 30 I will still take 5 minutes to put on a t-shirt from Target and some cheap jeans that don't really fit. I'm old enough to realize that I might be able to change a little bit, but fundamentally I'm still the same.

Lame-o, very-little-about-knitting, randomness roundup.

Lame knitting first: I'm still plugging away at the blue baby blanket; I'm down to three skeins of the Shine Sport left. Just one more for the body and the last two for the edging.  It's still too uninteresting to photograph. The blanket has been dunked in a glass of wine at the True Colors concert, dragged through the sand in Hawaii, and nuzzled by the orange boy (so it's thoroughly cat-hairy). It's lived a lot and it's not even finished. Luckily, it will wash, and it's going to a home with three cats--so I haven't fouled it beyond redemption.

I'm desperate to start something new, or get going on the colorwork sweaters for this fall, or even pick up another WIP, but with the limited knitting time I have lately, I feel like I have to get the blanket done. I've got another proofreading side project that's fun but time-consuming, and the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory hawk-watching season has started up. My first shift is this Thursday. I should be spending evenings reviewing field guides, but I can't until I finish this freelance project next weekend.

We're feeding the family of feral kitties so much that they leave some of the food. They're getting bigger, they look a little healthier, and they're less fearful of us.  The orange boy knows they're there, but so far he hasn't taken revenge by spraying. I haven't tried to catch the grizzled old patriarch lately; I figure I can just let him eat in peace with his pride.

More than a week after my wisdom teeth came out, I'm still having pain, so I've been popping Advil and I've been a regular in the oral surgeon's office. Dry socket is not a fun experience, but I've been able to control it with over-the-counter painkillers, and it should go away within a week. I'm kind of a cheap date--Advil P.M. does as much for me as Vicodin.

Josie, aka Missy J, aka the J-Dog, has not been doing so well.

She has had arthritis since she came to us at a year and a half old; she's 14 now, and the arthritis has gotten progressively worse.  It has degraded her spine and spinal cord, so she 's unsteady on her feet and can't lift her back legs easily. She can't always control what's going on with her back end, so sometimes she has accidents—and the stairs from our front and back doors make getting outside to go difficult and unpleasant for her. We decided awhile ago that we needed to make the stairs easier for her with a ramp. I was in favor of buying one, since we are not very handy. My neighbor the contractor was going to help us out, but he got busy, so we decided to try building it ourselves. We've gotten it constructed and covered with carpet, but it's still too steep and slick for her. We're going to try putting footholds and a guard rail on it, and then be patient in trying to train her to use it. So far we haven't had much luck--she ended up sliding down it on her butt (when her back legs give out, she ends up sitting down with her legs out in front of her). Of course Tina, aka Tina Beans, aka She-Butt, aka Spasmodica scampered right up and down it (with a few cat food bribes). Of course, she's a agility veteran, and we did all kinds of climbing up ramps in agility training. Tina is 12 and has a stiff shoulder, so it won't be very long before she'll need the ramp herself. Until we can perfect the ramp for Josie, we have to help her up and down the steps. Usually lifting her back end (by looping her leash under her belly) gives her enough support to get up the stairs, but it doesn't help with going down. It's a good thing I can lift her when necessary.

LinkedInto Library Thing.

This is probably stating the obvious, but I have a contrarian streak (although I always have a very good reason for my contrarian stance, unlike my Dad, whom I suspect of taking contrarian positions just to annoy me and others). So I find myself, say, supporting John Edwards rather than Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton, and having a "brand X" MP3 player rather than an iPod.

But just as often I end up following the herd, sometimes after initial resistance. For instance, I am now on the Ravelry waiting list, after holding out long enough to land as number eleventy-nine hundred (or so) in line. And I'm such an independent thinker that I apparently had exactly the same thought process as every other sentient knitblogger.

a) It's just another private club for the in-crowd. Phooey on them and their dumb club.
b) I don't have time for another bloglike thingy; I don't have time to keep up with the blog I have let alone uploading a bunch of photos to Flickr.
c) Um, well, I'm a bit curious, and I love making lists. It couldn't hurt to get in line and check it out.

And, perhaps prompted by Franklin's post, I remembered that I signed up for LibraryThing awhile back and decided to fool around with that a little bit more. And dang if it isn't fun and fascinating. I have wasted quite a bit of precious time this past week uploading titles and dinking around with tags. I finally "get" folksonomy--which is really quite valuable for someone who edits books about webby things.  I'm so enamored that I paid for a membership and ordered a CueCat from the LibraryThing folks. (I am so old that I remember when the CueCat was foisted on the world, and like many know-it-all journalists, I sniggered.)

Amazingly, my very own CueCat arrived in today's mail, and I got to try it out with the LibraryThing site and some ISBN bar codes. Not foolproof and not always easy (in fact, it doesn't work on some bar codes; coated, shiny covers seem to work best), but it's stupid fun. I'm probably going to steal a lot of time away from housework this weekend to sit in the middle of my office floor and scan more bar codes, then write capsule reviews. (Edited later to add: The book detail pages are a geek's dream, and I just discovered the statistics page and the power-editing mode. I may disappear for days.)

Also this week I was surprised to find that many of my colleagues and friends have joined a club that I thought wasn't worth belonging to: LinkedIn. I don't know if it's a little trendlet that runs through offices like a wave, or whether everyone joins the way I did; after the third flack or marketing guy you don't know sends you an invitation to join his network you finally accept. In an odd coincidence, the day after I joined I find out that Jane—like, the person I live with—has a LinkedIn account, along with many of my present and former colleagues. So I've been having a very good time nosing into their networks to see how they present themselves and who they know. And I wonder, is this MySpace without the MP3s and the eye-scorching graphics? (Needless to say, I don't get social networking sites.) LinkedIn has done much of the difficult organizational work of old-fashioned networking, and it seems like it would be much easier to ask for an introduction from behind the safety of a computer screen. Of course it's likely to be wonderful fuel for my insecurities, too: Look how many people are ignoring my invitations!

Enforced idleness.

I'm at home this afternoon, recuperating from having my two wisdom teeth yanked. It was mercifully brief, and so far I haven't dipped into the Vicodin I got prescribed.  I just peeked at the teeth, which they gave me in a little envelope. The bottom one was in pieces, and the top one, which has been surfaced for years, had a big black disgusting splotch of decay on it. Yurk. Glad to have that over with, and resolved to be *religious* about flossing forevermore. And looking forward to some Bailey's-flavored Haagen-Dazs later this evening.

It's nice to have an excuse for idleness for the afternoon; I've been switching off between listening to a Cliff Janeway mystery on my MP3 player and working on the blue baby blanket and reading the first Harry Potter book. Yes, I got sucked in by the hype and decided to start reading the series from the beginning. So I checked the first one out of the library. The first time I started reading it I couldn't get into it; I'm running hot and cold with it now. Some sections are involving and affecting, but I think maybe the movie has ruined the "action scenes" for me.

Edited Saturday morning to add: This is kind of weird--half my tongue is still a bit numb and I can only taste on one side of my mouth. And now my jaw aches.

Fall IK first impression.

I just glanced at the IK fall preview, and I dislike most of it. I really dislike (OK, hate) coat sweaters and sweater dresses. If you're short, they drown you. If you're not sylphlike, they make you look lumpy. And they end up pilly, they look like bathrobes, gah.

I usually love fall knitting mags, but I can tell I'm going to glance through this one and file it immediately, just like I did the summer issue.  And the spring issue I gave away. Huh--maybe it's time to cancel my subscription.

Another thing I hate is TypePad's new , graphic stat counter. It takes forever to load and doesn't tell you anything. Bah.