I don’t notice spam much, as yahoo does a pretty good job of filtering it right to Bulk, where I just delete it without looking. But today one slipped by, and I found its text interesting. I actually left it open and read it a couple of times. An excerpt:
i ve got the solution – visit the tundra spend a month or two you ll be
longing to hear the sound of other humans!
the signal is soliciting me not to testify to the us government about
the activity of soviet spy rings on the freshwater pearls and other earthy materials.
What crazy person wrote that? It’s almost poetry, but really bad poetry which is the only kind I like anyway, so I enjoyed it.
Feeling better. Thanks for asking. I think I kicked its ass. Yeah.
And we got a raise! Kind of amazing, when you consider how broke our city is, but we were 19% below top-step dispatcher salary for our county, and now we’re starting to close that gap. It’s just impossible to hire good dispatchers when they can go somewhere, anywhere, else and make way more money, which is why we’re always short and worn thin working fourteen hour days.
Also: Just finished the BEST book I’ve read in a long time. I was in the airport with Bethany waiting for Mom and Christy to arrive from Paris, and their plane was delayed for an hour and a half. So we wandered into the bookshop, and Bethany put a book in my hands, saying, "You should totally read this. It was great. I loved it." I looked at the jacket and said, "Okay."
Her jaw dropped. "What?"
"I said, okay, I’ll buy it."
"No one EVER buys what I tell them to."
And she was right, it was wonderful. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Not great literature, sure, but fun as hell. It’s kind of meta-noir, a thriller novel about a thriller novel, set in Barcelona, and written thickly, all foggy and shrouded. Oh, lovely. (But if you buy it, please buy it at an independent bookstore or Booksense, which is as easy as Amazon and makes you feel lots better about yourself.) Tell ’em Bethany told you to buy it.
Okay. I have lots to do today, including a spinning lesson! I can’t quite believe that I’m going to learn, or going to be able to figure out what to do with my hands/feet, but Janine has been lovely enough to offer her help, and I’m so excited. More to follow. Happy weekend, y’all.
Yay for raises!! And, good luck at your spinning lesson.
Now you can buy more coffee! Yay for the raise! That is funny about Bethany and her book choice and nobody doing what she tells them to do. I can relate to that!
Oh, Rach — I’m spinning and it’s too wonderful. The learning curve is very steep, which is great, ’cause you’re really awful at first and then you get better so quickly! (The worse you are at first, you know, the better you feel later on…lucky for me!) I skeined some yarn last night (after I “set the twist,” a new concept to my self-taught self), and Elliot said “You know, you can actually make something with that!” And it’s true — it’s “real yarn.”
Enjoy!!!
nice to read your urging to buy your book recommendation at an independent/Booksense seller (although guiltily I do buy from Amazon)- you’re all right. happy for your raise too
I’ve never been to your blog before (I searched for ‘sexy knitting patterns’ and this is what it gave me??) but if you loved Shadow of the Wind, you can’t be all bad. It was one of my favorite books, along with Gregory Maguire’s Wicked. I’ll be back, if I can remember the URL… 🙂
Spinning lesson?!
/insert evil cackling/
glad to hear you’re better!!! congrats on the raise too!!! have fun spinning and be sure to tell us all about it!!!
I’m so very, very glad Janine has drawn you into the fold. Spinning is wonderful.
WHOO HOO!!! Spinning is SO addictive, just you wait and see 🙂 Glad to hear you have kicked the darn bug.
Hey, I hear you’re great at spinning. And the picture was so cute. And I’m happy to hear you’re feeling better. And about the raise too.
oh i’m so glad you mentioned indie booksellers – folks forget how important that is too much of the time it seems. oh and speaking of books, as a fellow queer grrl, have you read either of ann-marie macdonald’s brilliant novels? if not, i can almost promise you’ll want to devour fall on your knees – assuming you can handle sad.
p.s. i’m gonna be submitting to your tattoo gallery soon, i’m just gonna let this baby heal a bit longer – it’s only been three days…
I am so glad you recommend independent book sellers. I read that Amazon was a big Bush supporter and am trying to limit my interaction with them. Independent sellers are the best.
May I ask you a totally unrelated to your post, basic knitting question? I am working on a sweater and am about to begin the sleeves. I’m impatient and think that it’s a good idea to knit them both at once. What do you do and why? Thanks!
I’m kind of thinking I’m being stupid here but WHAT IS THIS OBSESSION WITH SPINNING ONE’S OWN YARN with everyone???????????
Rach you –and several others are my favs in reading blogs daily and all– have kind of gone off the deep end with this spinning your own yarn thing as far as I can tell. So I have to ask…is this some kind of fad or is it a serious endeavor? What is this with spinning one’s own yarn? What is behind this recent motivation that keeps cropping up in all the serious knitting blogs?
Spinning yarn is hard work! No one in their right mind would think it’s easy. So why suffer through all this hard work? For what?
So I have to ask: why?
Is it a desire to go back in history and do what our ancestor-women folk did out of necessity? Learning to spin yarn out of hair is a skill that is pretty much lost these days. Is that the desire? Hey, it’s a talent that can come in handy someday…
Or *lol* is this a precursor to gathering up cat hair from all four corners of the house???
I know my own cat (I have only one) sheds so darn much that I’ve wondered if I oughta keep it all and maybe spin it into yarn one day…It wouldn’t take long to gather up what I would need considering how much fluff I pick up each day…
So what is going on here? Why the sudden interest in spinning ones’ own yarn?
spinning….oh yeah!
so glad you are feeling better….
xoxoxo