The year of our Lord two thousand and ten is turning out to be, if you will excuse the profanity, a real motherfucker. And it’s only January. /headdesk

—Read the rest of How’s that for being born under a bad sign

Why, hi there. Long time, no see. <insert apology and valid excuse for not blogging>

Now that that’s out of the way: It’s freaking freezing here. Ferrealzies. Not like normal Southern “Oh crap, eight whole hours below 32 degrees” kind of cold, we are talking about several consecutive days of cold and the forecast for this weekend being “We’re all gonna die!”.

Now anyone north of say…Interstate 20 is probably saying “What a bunch of greenhorns”, voice dripping with contempt. But, people, we are not used to cold. We say the same thing about you when you start dropping like the petals of a delicate flower when it gets above 95 degrees. How not-used-to-it are we? Until this year, I did not have what could strictly be called a “coat”. I have a couple jackets, a hoodie or two. The only hat we had in the house was The Husband’s baseball cap. Gloves? I think I have some rubber ones around here somewhere I use when I chop peppers.

All this to say that all I have been doing since Christmas is hibernating: knitting (but failing miserably at taking pictures of said knitting), listening to the sound of our retirement fund going up in smoke in the form of our heating bill this month, and spending entirely too much time on the interwebs. This results of which are that I am sick of several things around the house (pretty much everything but the living room wall color actually) and it is too cold and we are too poor to do anything about it. Which leads me to spending too much time self-flagellating on IKEA.com. (Oh IKEA, why do you refuse to build a store closer than 5 hours from here? And if you can’t be buggered to build closer, why can you not offer all of your goods on your website?) :sigh: Guess that’s what I get for continuing to reside in the nether regions of civilization.

So instead of doing laundry or anything actually constructive, here is my current WANTlist:

—Read the rest of Freeze the balls off a pool table

So, yeah, I pretty much suck at this whole updating regularly thing. On the up side, it looks like Fall might actually be just around the corner, so I am sure that will help. It’s not exactly what I would call “crisp” yet, mostly just tepid and dreary, but at least it isn’t sweltering and Hell-esque.

I haven’t been totally sitting on my ass for the past couple months, my current big project is a granny hexagon afghan for us*.

—Read the rest of Legend of the Fall

First the rules:

1. Respond and rework. Answer the questions on your blog. Replace one question that you dislike with a question of your invention, and add one more question of your own.

2. Tag other people.

Now the questions:

—Read the rest of Getting to know me, getting to know all about me

How badass is this?

By illustrator Tom Whalen, seriously check out his deviantart profile.
<via abduzeedo>

Couple more of my favorites after the jump.

—Read the rest of Say hello to the twenty-first century!

I hope all my fellow United Statesians had a great Independence Day. Ours was spend eating (ok gorging) and visiting with family and friends at my parents’ house. We had four types of ribs (tandoori, brown sugar rub, barbecue, and Tony’s*), baked beans, corn on the cob, homemade bread, potato salad, chips and dip, and enough sweets to take out an entire hospital wing of diabetics.

—Read the rest of Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. -Abraham Lincoln

I know I haven’t been updating much lately, truth is that lately my life has consisted of little more than trying to keep from dying of a heat stroke. After a relatively mild spring (like we actually got one) the heat has arrived with a vengeance in Louisiana. Near recordbreaking heat every day means I haven’t really been doing much baking, cooking beyond halfheartedly grilled chicken, knitting, or anything that might even be remotely interesting.

Hopefully soon I will either get re-acclimated to the oppressive heat or we will get bit of a break in the weather and find my motivation again.

Usually The Husband’s and my weekend consist of either:

a) Going to visit family or
b) Spending most of the time in a near-vegetative state

This weekend, however, we decided to mix it up a bit.

—Read the rest of A productive weekend

This should be under the Merriam-Webster’s definition of “suck”.

I have been working on this pair of socks for…ages, since way before last Christmas. But they are just a pair for myself so I was in no great hurry, just working on them here and there as I have a few minutes.

The yarn is one of the normal mass-production yarns…Patons I think. I have the label but I am too lazy to go hunt it down. Anyway, I had two balls of it, one for each sock. Now when I made the first sock, I ended up pretty much having  just enough to finish it (and I was sweating it there at the end), but I did finish it. So I don’t know where I went wrong. Maybe my beginning tail was longer or over all those months my gauge loosened up or I finished the other during a waning moon instead of a waxing or there is a small discrepancy from one ball to the next. All I know is I felt like crying when it became apparent that it just wasn’t going to make it. Sure, it’s not that big of a deal, if I really tried I could have it redone a couple days, but I was sooo ready to have them done…even though it is now June and just the thought of wearing wool socks makes me want to chew my feet off, it just would have been nice to have a project completed, haven’t had a whole lot of those lately.

The offending sock has now been frogged and recasted-on (is that English?). I decided I would give it one more try and if I still come up short I will just…set fire to it. Sounds like a reasonable plan to me.

Well had actually. The Husband and I have spent the last week honing our Darth Vadar-with-hay-fever impersonations. As a result, I am behind on pretty much life in general (really good for the OCD).

I think my feedreader has suffered the most though, as I was already behind. One of my feeds has over 700 posts unread. /headdesk

So as much for my own benefit as anything, below are some things of interest I have run across in trying to wade through my reader that I want to keep for revisiting later.

—Read the rest of I think I have the consumption…