Spring Ahead

Check it out - actual knitting content! No need to adjust your computer; the 2 skeins of yarn are in fact different colours. Master Grey + Tom Cat = Master Cat Socks. I am also referring to them as the Stripey Cat Socks. First completed Pinkery Sock. Post-op Argyle Socks. I had to take the scissors to these before I could complete them; more detail in an upcoming post. And here's my newest project: My version of the Whisper Cardigan from Interweave Knits; its working title is The Mumble Cardigan. Being knit out of some alpaca yarn I picked up in a stash swap. I intend to knit the sleeves longer and narrower than as written, so I did a provisional cast on at the point in the pattern just past the last pattern decrease. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, I decided to cast on 70 stitches rather than 76. However, since my gauge is 22-23 stitches per 4 inches rather than 24 as called for in the pattern, I am hoping that this will not be a fatal error. I am using 4mm needles as my largest size. My dilemma is that the pattern calls for 4.5mm, 3.5 mm, and 2.75 mm needles; what specific smaller sizes should I be using? Rather than obsessing about proportional decreases in size, I let the needles make the decision - I was able to find a 3mm circ and a 2mm circ without having to leave the living room (in the needle roll of all places - imagine that!), so those are the sizes I will use. We are heading to Montreal this weekend; The Gambler has a fencing tournament on Saturday, so I am hoping to make decent progress. I am particularly looking forward to the knitting 3 inches of 1x1 rib over 296 stitches - gah! I am starting to think that there is some kind of twisted contest on amongst the IK designers to see exactly how far they can push us. Case in point: the Float Stole with it's 405 stitch cast on. Of course the Frost Flowers Stole still retains the title of Most Likely To Make You Want To Poke Your Eyes Out with its 996 stitch cast on and 220 stitches of grafting right at the end. But the one that gets me the most this issue is the so called Sweet Tee, which calls for a whole skein of Manos Silk Blend (pink) in order to knit somewhere between 26 and 34 stitches.

Tanning with a Purpose*

I always take the subway to my Wednesday knitting Meetup. I only had one token left, so on my way into the subway, I stopped to purchase more tokens at the machine. I usually buy 8 at a time - it comes to $18, so if you put in a 20 dollar bill, you get 8 tokens and $2 change. Today, the machine sounded like a jackpot - the coins kept on coming. The only thing missing was the bright lights and ringing bells. At first I thought that the machine had malfunctioned and given me way more change than it was supposed to. Then, when I started digging the coins out of the slot, I realized that they were all nickels. Two dollar's worth of nickels. I cannot believe that a TTC token vending machine punked me. ************************************************* As of tomorrow, Somerset is no longer radioactive. To celebrate, we put a month's worth of used kitty litter into our green bin. Special treat for the collection crew! *The title has nothing to do with the post. It was a line from a newspaper ad that caught my eye as I glanced at it on the subway. Turned out that I had misread it - it actually read "Training with a Purpose". I like my version better.

Things you find on The Internets...zoomer edition

It's bad enough we're stuck listening to their music until the end of time... I don't have the intestinal fortitude to see if designer branded canes and walkers have hit the market yet; it seems the big labels are into almost everything else already. (Case in point 1, Case in point 2)

The Playground.

I think it's a universal phenomenon... ...get a large enough group of elementary school-aged girls together, and one of them becomes the leader, even if no leader is needed... ...said leader issues missives about what is and isn't appropriate game to play/clothing to wear/food to eat/toys to own/nickname to have, and so on... ...she sometimes selects ladies in waiting from amongst the syncophants while those who do not fall under her spell are labelled weird, and are often shunned by the others... I plan to knit myself a Tuscany shawl; I'm going to cast on August 8 when the Beijing Olympics begin, and hope to cast off by August 25th when the Olympics end. But apparently I cannot call this a Knitting Olympics project. Because Someone Has Deemed Knitting a Winter Sport, and thus "The Knitting Olympics Will Only Occur Every Four Years". But you know what? Even though people can devote large amounts of , effot and money to it, and even shed blood, sweat, and/or tears as a part of it, Knitting isn't a sport. It's a hobby. It's an art. It's a craft. It is a means to make a living/express one's creativity/relieve stress/pass the time/do something charitable/whatever. But it is not, and in it's current manifestation, never will be a sport. Neither is NASCAR, but that's a different discussion altogether.

To wit...

Greedo and Somerset keep hoping that Synchronized Napping will be an Official Olympic Sport this year. But then they'd probably run into problems with the Russian Blue judge... Your Score: the Wit (66% dark, 34% spontaneous, 15% vulgar) your humor style: CLEAN COMPLEX DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais The'>http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=17565214125862764376">The 3-Variable Funny Test! - it rules - Yep, nothing pads the blog like a blogthing quiz. Speaking of padding - I had a few hours kill this afternoon while the business part of my weekend conference occurred and before the open bar evening festivities began. So I first headed to Tallcrest Shoes to see what they had on sale, and then hit Jacob Lingerie - who had huge signs advertising 60% off. I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to check out their bra selection. Now, (as you might have guessed from the Tallcrest reference above) I have some challenges in finding clothing to fit because I am 5 foot 11. The story of my life is that clothing/accessories are too short/too small. It's not that I am huge, but - well, let's just say that most of me is proportional to my height - my hands are big, my inseam is big, my feet are big, my back-waist length is big. However, there are a few parts of my body that are (relatively) small - I have small ears, small teeth, and I was once told by my family doctor that I had a small uterus (I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say in response to that -"Um, thanks?"). But aside from being unable to tuck my hair behind my ears, and having excess space between my teeth, these aberrations do not cause me any consternation. However, I am also small chested, so my bra size is 36A (and as a matter of fact, I don't sleep on my stomach, and have absolutely no interest in doing so, and really don't see why it would be a great thing to do). Now, current (often unattainable) standards of female beauty aside, this is a royal PITA, because many bra companies don't see fit to make bras in 36A. So when the Customer Service Associate (or whatver title they have at that store) came up to me and asked if she could help me, I asked her "Do your bras come in 36A?". Her answer was "Well, we don't get many of them in. For every 5 34B bras we get, we get one 36A bra. Because the cup size on the 34B is the same as a 36A, the only difference is in the rib cage measurement". Which on one hand was refreshingly candid from a retail salesperson, but on the other hand, drove me slightly insane, because I just so happen to have a rib cage which (when taking into account the current coat of fat/muscle covering it) DOES NOT COMFORTABLY FIT INTO A SIZE 34 BRA. Argh! Is it just me, or does that particular rationale seem really quite bizarre when you think about it - "Well, this garment has 2 major dimensions, but we choose to just ignore the second dimension when it comes to meeting our customers' needs". Good thing I stocked up on bras at the outlet mall this summer.

Stash update

For some reason, my body decided to wake up super early today. What better use of the extra time than taking and uploading stash photos to Ravelry? This is a very belated photo of the Silk Mountain that I got from my supergreat SP 11 Secret Pal. Small world - her upstream was Rochelle, who I know through GTA knitting activites - most recently I been semi-regularly attending a SNB that she belongs to. Some weirdness that I just noticed this morning: Check out the Japanese yarn content listing - what is the 13% it refers to? Vegetable fibre content? This yarn is to be knit into gloves to match a winter coat I just picked up at a local consignment shop: Which brings me to a pet peeve - fingerless gloves. I hate them, or at least the concept of them. If it's cold enough to wear gloves/mitts, I want to cover my whole hand, thankyouverymuch. Think about it - what part of your hands has the largest surface area/size ratio? It's not your palms! And the argument that they can be worn under mitts doesn't convince me - because you are still leaving your fingers with less coverage! Now I am generally a live-and-let-knit kind of person; if you want to spend all of your time and energy knitting dishcloths, or shapeless/matronly sweaters, or representations of internal organs, then you go ahead and do just that. However, the Ravelry pattern browser (which is my knitting pattern source of late) is not sophisticated enough to give one the option to exclude a particular type of garment - so when I search "gloves", I end up having to scroll though dozens of fingerless glove patterns. Although I was quite happy to stumble across these instructions for converting a sock pattern into mittens, because even though my hands are large, mittens are still much faster to knit up than socks, and I am more apt to get lots of wear out of funky mittens than funky socks, or to knit mittens up as a gift for someone else.

Some things never change

When I was young and foolish, I had a boyfriend who was really into music. He would buy a record (because I am old enough to have purchased vinyl records in my youth), tape it, and then we'd listen to the tapes. But he firmly believed (somewhat irrationally) that fast forwarding was hard on cassette tapes. So frequently, when I would suggest we listen to an album, he'd reply "We can't; it's not wound", meaning that we couldn't listen to side A until we had listened to side B. Drove me nuts. Fast forward 23 years (Oh God, I am old!), and I am in the throes of startitis, trying to decide what to cast on next. Kaleidoscope - damn, all 3 sock yarns are still in skeins. Lady of the Lake jacket - Mission Falls wool is ready to go, but the Lorna's Laces is in skeins. That groovy sock yarn that I thought of knitting into Monkeys - skeined. Handspun for Candleflame shawl - skeins. Laceweight for Tuscany - big hank o' silky goodness. Everything I want to knit right this very minute - I can't. It's not wound. Drives me nuts. Yes, I do in fact own both a swift and a ballwinder, but I find winding yarn kind of tedious. Partially because I don't have many convenient surfaces of the right width to accomodate the swift/winder clamps, so I end up with all sorts of weird arrangement, including holding the winder in my hand. Plus I always end up with one end of the yarn hanging free, and it wraps around the winder pole, and then Somerset wants to get in on the action...My life is sooooooo haaaaaaard! But speaking of hanks o' goodness: This is the great laceweight that my awesome Blogger Secret Pal sent me Isn't it lovely?

Make it stop!

OK - I have given up on the daily blogging when I am on call for the ICU. Yesterday I got to the hospital at 4:30 AM and left at 11:30 PM, and had a crapload of code blues and a bunch of new patients. Thank god for nurses who bring food into work - because even though I had a delicious salad waiting to be eaten, I didn't have the time to eat anything that involved sitting down. But enough about my bad day - here is sock yarn that makes me smile: Check out those wee little pom poms! I picked it up in Winnipeg this weekend - I met with my downstream secret pal, who took me to The Wosley Wardrobe, which is a combination yarn shop / consignment clothing boutique. I'd not seen "Pom Pon" anywhere else. I also picked up something else, but that'll be the subject of a future blog post. Four and a half days to go...

Perchance to Dream...

You'll be happy to know that with the exception of an hour of sleep lost to someone who had to be re-admitted to hospital at 1:30 AM after signing himself out against medical advice, I did get some sleep last night. And then got to go back to the hospital this morning to see the 7 or 8 Respirology referrals that I had put off until today (because I am sometimes on call for both ICU and Respirology at the same time on weekends - keeps me off the streets) Here's something else I don't understand - I was driving on the freeway (eastbound) to work Saturday morning and there was a car on fire on the side of the westbound lanes. People slowed down to take a look. Now, personally, I wanted to speed up to get past the damned thing ASAP, because I have this little quirk of NOT WANTING TO BE ONLY 3 LANES AWAY FROM AN EXPLODING GAS TANK!!!! I'm kind of funny that way about avoiding infernos and shrapnel. Is it wrong that I am very excited that tomorrow the Value Village a few km from the hospital is having a 50% off sale? And that I plan to park in a "4 hour physician parking" spot because I know that I'll head there at lunchtime? Finally - can you believe that I tried to place an order with an online yarn seller today, and I was told that my order was too heavy? I swear by all that is holy, that I was instructed to REMOVE items from my basket. Is their website run by Stash Nazis? And speaking of Nazis - we need a permit for onstreet parking, and it has to have the licence plate on the permit, which is ordered on line. I bought a temporary permit for The Gambler's car last week, but reversed the letters and numbers. He got not one but TWO parking tickets, because the permit was for BC licence plate AAA 111 rather than BC licence plate 111 AAA. And to add insult to injury, he was told that we couldn't reprint the parking permit. That and the fact that in June I got a ticket for not displaying a parking receipt on the driver's side of the windshield (it was on the passenger side) has led me to believe that Toronto Parking Enforcement Officers are either evil, or idiots. Or both. There will be real knitting content tomorrow. I promise.

And the award for lamest excuse goes to...

Our National Airline! We took an overnight flight home from Vegas Thursday. Because of minor turbulence throughout the 4 hour flight, neither The Gambler nor I were able to sleep ( I usually fall asleep before the seatbelt sign goes off, and then nap for 90 minutes). So we arrived in Toronto at 6:30 am, and went to get our luggage. We had checked in pretty early, so we expected that our luggage wouldn't be the first out. Three of our 4 suitcases finally came. So we waited for the 4th one. Then we noticed that there were no new bags coming onto the belt, but there were at least 20 people still waiting for bags, so we thought that maybe the baggage unloaders had gone on a coffee break. We waited for another 30 minutes, and then the light on the baggage carousel went on, and a buzzer went off. We watched, and nothing happened. The 4 orphaned bags on the carousel went round and round, and no new suitcases joined them. About 20 minutes later, an overhead announcement was made indicating that all the suitcases from the Las Vegas flight had been unloaded, and anyone who was missing anything should go to the baggage counter. We checked the tags on the 3 bags we did have, and realized that of the 4 stickers, the numbers only matched on 2 of the baggage labels, but our names were on all the of baggage labels. Needless to say, an overnight flight + an extra hour waiting for baggage = very frustrated customers. So to add insult to injury, the rep at the baggage counter said: " The plane was overweight, so some bags were left behind to lighten the load" Which brings 2 words to mind: Bull. Shit. Especially there was the discrepency in the tag/label ID#'s for one of our bags. The Gambler, while chatting with the people in line, discovered that every single one of them had been checked in by "the trainee". As luck would have it, that's the suitcase that contains some yarn and beads I bought at the Santa Monica Fibre Arts Fair, as well as some gifts that I picked up for a Secret Pal. Hopefully we'll get it back tomorrow. Speaking of Secret Pals, I had some packages waiting for me when I got home (we now get mail delivered right to our house! No more Superboxes!) The first was from my knittyboard Rut Bustin' Sock Swap pal: Some Knitpicks Bare sock yarn, US 13 tips and spare cords, chocolate, stitch markers, Kool Aid, blocking pins, and Favorite Socks!! Thank you Pal! The second package (from my knittyboard Secret Pal) came wrapped in bacon: (I love that packing tape! Mail Mignon!) And included a tip to make a move less painful: Look at all of the goodness that was inside: Some treats for Somerset and Greedo, spare pockets for my Options set (which I thought I had packed in the missing suitcase for a few scary hours), tunes (which will make my commute much more enjoyable), stitch markers, a needle and stitch gauge, some AllHemp 6 to play with plus not one, but 2 books - one full of crochet trims, and No Sheep For You! Thank you Pal! Which reminds me, I have to try to find my copy of Last Minute Knitted Gifts so that I can knit the Popcorn gift satchel for my own knitty Secret Pal. I'm thinking it's in a box somewhere...

Whine

I am sick of packing. And unpacking. And trying to decide what to pack. I am stressed about how much crap we have. And how much it it going to cost to ship the crap. And where we are going to store all of the crap in the new house. I have to arrange to have my work mail forwarded to the hospital. And have our mail forwarded to the new address. And figure out how to change the forwarding that is still happening with some of our mail so that it doesn't get sent to BC and then back to Ontario. I have to get a new Driver's Licence, Car Insurance and Licence Plates, Health Card, and VISA. I hate being on different flights from The Gambler. And the feeling of panic that hits me when I think that I booked the flight going in the wrong direction. And worrying that I am going to miss my flight because of traffic problems on The Bridge or The 401. And don't even get me started on living in 2 different time zones that are 3 hours apart! And I miss the cats. Oh crap, I almost forgot to pack the Blueberry Pi!! (This shot is of Blueberry beta)

Enough with the Commando rodents already!

Remember the MacGyver Mouse? Well, the other day I was leaving for work in the morning, and while I was locking the door, I heard a sound to my left from up above. It was one of those sounds that you notice, but don't think about at all. A few seconds later, out of the corner of my eye I saw something black fall down and hit the ground about 2 feet from where I was standing. I looked down to see what it was, and it was a black squirrel which presumably had dropped down off of the roof. I of course screamed. Not due to fear of squirrels, just a "something suddenly appears in front of me that is totally unexpected" shock scream. Like when you open a door not realizing that someone is standing in the doorway on the other side. Luckily it was just after 7 am, so nobody in the neighborhood partook in my blood-curdling utterance. Except for the squirrel. I think I scared the sh;t out of it - because it immediately shot up the brick wall beside the front door and ran across to the other side of the roof. Somerset is keeping an eye out to see that it doesn't come back: Anyways, I have to go. This is the second night in a row that I got paged to head back to the hospital just as I got home at 7:30 PM. It's like there's some kind of tracking device on my car. Normally I do 7 days straight on call, and by the 5th day I'm ready for a break, by the 6th day I am really getting sick of the whole thing, and on the 7th day I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY EVERYBODY IS PESTERING ME!!!! It's like a really bad case of PMS. I even woke up with a big pimple on my forehead today. Of course, this week started last Saturday at 5 PM, and doesn't end until Monday at 7 AM, so I am getting bitter about any demand request made of me. Me me me. That's all I get. Me me me. I can't breathe...I have chest pain...my patient has no blood pressure...what IS it with people? I hope she comes home soon...the food dish is empty...

Adding insult to injury...

So yesterday morning I came down for breakfast and saw that Kyle had set a mousetrap in the kitchen. I did the quick peek to make sure that there were no casualties (because that would mean me telling Kyle to come down and dispose of the evidence), and saw that the coast was clear. I set about getting my breakfast ready and noticed something (sorry, no photos)...there was mouse poop on the counter right beside the trap, which was itself pristine. I thought "Oh great, Kyle didn't think to load the trap with bait - was he hoping to scare them to death or just scare the sh!t out of them, because that seems to be the effect the trap has had" When Kyle got up, I asked him why he didn't bait the trap. "I did" he said. "I put peanut butter on the trap last night". We re-inspected the trap: the bait plate was so spotless that we could have returned it to Canadian Tire and gotten our money back! Kyle tested the trap with a spoon, and SNAP! The little bugger(s) licked that bait plate clean! I couldn't believe it!! Did he do some kind of Mission Impossible trick with a rope suspended from the ceiling? (By the way - to my Canadian readers - is the latest Tim Horton's commercial stupid or what? And how the heck does that donut count as being triple chocolate? Two different colours of chocolate icing with chocolate filling is double chocolate in my book. If the donut dough itself was chocolate, then I would buy it. Chocolate drizzle indeed! And don't even get me started about the overuse of white chocolate in their triple chocolate muffin...because white chocolate doesn't provide any chocolate flavour, it just makes things sweet, and the muffin is so sickly sweet that you can't even taste the chocolate. Bah!) Anyways, where was I - oh yeah, the Macgyver Mouse...I can't believe that not only are our mice some kind of murine stealth burglars, but they have the audacity to take a dump right beside the trap. It's like a mouse version of flipping us the bird!! I'm tempted to have Kyle fly home tomorrow and bring the cats back Monday just to teach these smart-ass Ontario mice a lesson. I am a few rows away from turning the heel on the Raindrops Keep Falling On My Socks, so I'll post another progress shot in the next few days. Oh, and I knuckled down to peer pressure and joined Socktopia 4. Crossing my fingers for a sock pal with size 6 feet.

Back in action

Somerset is a bit more herself today, at least enough so to go after anything dangly like lengths of yarn... ...or socks on a circ. Here's today's closeup of the Socks of Death Raindrops Keep Falling on My Socks. Lori asked if the pockmarks raindrop imprints are scattered randomly - they aren't (I don't do well with random). The cable pattern is an 18 stitch repeat, and requires a multiple of 18 stitches + 10. I initially tried 82 (18x4 + 10) stitches, but that couldn't make it over my ankle, but 92 stitches (2x(18x4+10)) does. Which means the spots don't travel around the sock - this side view demonstrates. So from one direction, there's going to be a funky argyloid pattern, and if the sock is rotated 90 degrees, it will be a staggered dot pattern. I'm debating whether I should rotate the heel by 90 degrees so that the argyloids will be on the front and back of the sock, but that will mean that one cable will be at the beginning/end of the row every so often, and that will probably lead to several cable mistakes (because I've already had to repair a few cables just knitting the sock as is!) So the argyloids will be on the side of the sock. Other news today is that my car and I will soon be reunited! (maybe) I had a phone call from We HAve a MoNOpoly on shipping CARs by rail in his country and thus have no need to do a good job Inc. (aka WHAMNOCAR Inc.) The guy from WHAMNOCAR called to ask for the address to which the car was supposed to be delivered. Which raised a bit of concern, since we had given that info to the woman at the moving company, who contracted WHAMNOCAR to transport my car. So I gave him my FIL's address, and Mr WHAMNOCAR said "Great! It will be there on Monday". Monday! Monday April 10th? Almost 6 weeks after they picked it up? What happened to it getting there yesterday or today? So Kyle makes some phone calls, and apparently there is room on the truck heading to Oshawa on Thursday, or to Brampton on Monday. So the car can be delivered to an empty rental house before we get there, or to my FIL's place 3 days after we arrive. After pointing out to them what the actual timing of this move, including the fact that we could DRIVE THE CAR FROM HERE TO BRAMPTON BY FRIDAY, WHAMNOCAR decided that in the interests of customer service, a customer representative would drive the car up to Brampton tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath.

Why are there no 24 hour yarn shops?

Oh my - is it only Wednesday? Crazy work at week. And apparently someone sent out a memo that at least once a day someone should bitch at me because I am asking them to do something that is PART OF THEIR JOB too late in the day (Dear ENT Doctor. I know it sucks that you have to come back to the hospital after you went home already, but it's 9 PM and I haven't left the hospital yet. Plus you have a way nicer car than me to make the trip in, and I am hazarding a guess that nobody phoned YOU at 3 AM last night because a patient was having chest pain, because being on call for ENT means that it's pretty rare for you to even get paged. And dear overnight hospitalist - do you think that I specifically request that patients don't get assigned medical beds until after 4 PM even though I ordered the transfer before 11 AM? Sadly, my psychic skills aren't finely honed enough to be able to accurately predict which ward is going to get the patient. Let's see how good your psychic powers are - how many fingers do you think I am holding up right now?) Anyways - above is the photo of Djaywalker B before I got on the plane. I have a shot demonstrating how much progress if you knit during a 1 hour flight, then spend the 1 hour layover ripping back because you screwed up the heel, and then knit for most of the 4 hour flight afterwards. I also have a shot of Socks A and B back to back so you can see where the matching of stripes is at. For some reason, Blogger does not want to upload them(or maybe it's just the dodgy WiFi hotel connection). I know that the suspense is killing you...

Imagine there's no heaven...

There seems to be a ripple of excitement through the knitting blogosphere at the upcoming publication of a certain Famous Internet Knitter's new book. Said knitter appears to be fanning the flames by encouraging a show of "knitting force" (and a disclosure of salaries, apparently.) I'm waiting for the proclamation that Knitting is now more popular than Religion (or that someone is more popular than J*sus, or maybe the V#rgin M@ry) You know, if 100% of the sales of the new book on that day were donated to charity(and some percentage of all sales thereafter), I wouldn't have a bad taste in my mouth about this. Because let's face it; there are thousands of blog postings every day that tell funny/heartwarming/instructive/cautionary tales of life and knitting and how the 2 intertwine. Do we really need to cut down more trees so that another book full of them can be published? Cue booming voice: "Get over thine self!!!"

Ad Rants

Memo to the people at Guinness: what on earth are you talking about when you refer to "St Patrick's Season"? Give me a break; this "holiday" celebrates the patron saint of a country that's about the size of Lake Superior. And I'd hazard a guess that at least 90% of the people who "celebrate" it have little or no connections to Ireland. There is no need create such entities as "St Patrick's Day Eve" in order to sell more beer. Memo to the people at Tristar: Do you remember Grade 5 math, when you learned about decimals, and rounding off? Do you remember how rounding off works? Last integer greater than 5 gets rounded up? News flash: 2 divided by 3 is not .666, it's .6(repeating), which is rounded off to .667. Don't worry, people are so enamored of conspiracy theories that you could work some other tenuous linkage between the number 23 and Satan and they'd buy it. (BTW - remember the rule about the digits that make up a number divisible by 3? The rule is that if you add them up you get another number equal to or divisible by 3? Well, it works even if you divide a number divisible by 3 by any number other than 3 {or another number divisible by 3} and the result gives you a decimal point: 3/2 = 1.5, and 1+5 = 6. It has to, because all you need to do is multiply the original number by whatever factor of 10 is required to make the result a whole number without changing the digits.)

You can't keep a good naan down...

Is there some kind of conspiracy out there that involves eliminating the yogurt from naan bread?? I went out for Indian food tonight (since I am on my own in Toronto until Kyle arrives on Tuesday), and was once again disappointed by the naan. No slightly sweet taste; it just tasted bready. If I wanted an oversized pita, I'd ask for one. This has happened at different Indian restaurants in 3 or 4 cities; in fact, I'm hard pressed to say where or when I last had a good naan. Memo to our national airline and my local airport: If ALL of Saturday's flights from our airport to Canada's largest city are cancelled, and you know that everyone has to be home from their ski holiday by Monday morning, might you consider taking this into account, and getting extra staff in on Sunday? Also, if you see that there is a 45 minute lineup just to drop off your bags, and dozens of people are still waiting in line 5 minutes after their plane is supposed to board, would it be so difficult to have a) a separate line through security for the people on the soon to depart flight so that they don't have to wait in line behind the senior citizens who showed up 3 hours early for their flight, and b) a person announcing that because of the huge lineups/dealys, that the flight would be taking off late, thus lowering the ambient anxiety level significantly? Oh yeah, and to the guy who monopolized one of the 2 baggage drop persons for 15 minutes rather than wait in the appropriate line to see the ticketing agent: I hope they sent your shiny new downhill skis to Kuala Lumpur. Good thing I had my knitting to keep me calm: I am now far enough along on the socks to see how the stitch pattern is looking. It isn't what I had expected - probably because it is based on a colourwork pattern. The textural effect is pretty cool, however. One minor concern that I have is that I am able to slip the socks over my own ankles at this point. I'm hoping that doesn't mean that they will be too loose on Janis.