Catch 22

With the number of foreclosures going up daily, companies that own apartments were looking to raise rents due to the influx of people needing a place to live after losing their home. (Nice isn't it? These folks are obviously broke, they've lost their house and now the landlord wants to gouge them.)

But now the landlords are finding that might not work so well. Because people who have rented for years are taking a look at the housing market and realizing they can buy for less than rent if they buy a foreclosure property. So the landlords are now in their own Catch 22. Waaa.


Although, I'm not convinced that is the case in CO where folks are still convinced they can get they same amount they would have last year, banks included. Wake up y'all.

Take for instance our old house. I see it's on the market for $210k. Ummm. I lived there y'all. And I took every last appliance with me when I left (Oven, fridge, washer/dryer, dishwasher even. Hey, the dishwasher was brand new). Sprinkler system doesn't work and there's no lawn because of it, unless you count the dandelions. HVAC system makes funny noises. Pillar out front is cracked & pulling away from the roof due to settling. Carpets are trashed and need replacing. And that's just part of it. That's why we left. There repairs needed were crazy. (Mind you this house was a fixer upper when we bought it, we didn't do most of the damage). So now they expect someone to plop down $210k plus at a guess around $40k for repairs and such? Yeah, Colorado folks are crazy.

I love the Discovery Channel

It's no secret that I am addicted to Deadliest Catch. Or that I love to watch Mike Rowe do things that make me cringe. Or that I love watching Adam and Jamie blow things up. And a have a major crush for Bear Gryls So of course, I love the new "commercial" on the Discovery Channel that shows blurbs of everyone singing. The boom de-ah-dah is something that sticks, lol.

So of course I had to search YouTube ('cause you know I have high speed now and I can watch 'em, hahaha) and found this:



It's worth watching just to see Sig, Phil, John and Andy singing

The Plan

Breakfast. A bowl of cereal.
Lunch. Half a ham sandwich and some carrot sticks (no, I am not that good, the carrots will be accompanied by lite Ranch dressing, lol) and a few reduced fat gingersnaps for dessert.

Exercise. Going to ride my bike twice today, hopefully. I'd like to go once this morning and then take the kiddo to the park and ride while she plays.

To Do:
1. Take the kiddo to school then swing by the post office and see if I can find a damned box big enough to put my gift baskets in so I can get a weight and actually load up my auctions;

2. Email the landlord and ask him how in the heck we turn on the sprinkler system (yes, the lawn is the size of a postage stamp, but I don't want to stand out there with a hose every day);

3. Divide up the chicken from Sam's into portions and freeze;

4. Put together dinner;

5. Clean house and do dishes;

6. Do laundry. Always.

6. eBay.

7. Turn heel on Sock the First, v.5. Hmmm.

I'm sure there are 8 million other things I should do today as well.

Spelling test

Each week my dear daughter has a spelling test. They get the words each Friday afternoon and then take the test the next Friday. So this week one of her words is "wool." She's been told she's so grounded if she misses that one.

PS. She got a 100% on her spelling. Yay little Cheeky Monkey Girl!!!

So long...

Sock the First, version 4. It was lovely while it lasted. But the turning of the heel was too much for both of us. He ended up with the top of the foot off to the right and I ended up frustrated and sad.

Sock the First version 5 will be cast on today. This time I am going for an ankle style sock. Why I was knitting a full sock for myself when I only ever wear ankle socks, I know not. What I do know is that there's less to frog on a screwed up ankle sock.

I also know that I need a decent first sock before I start knitting with the new Corntastic yarn I bought last week. It's very soft stuff, and I am not sure just how well it would take to repeated rippings, lol. I've yet to see anything written by someone who's actually knit with it, although it does make a lovely soft baby blanket as seen at my LYS, but the lady working couldn't tell me how well it worked up. (Please don't let it be like cotton...). By the way, Corntastic claims to be a worsted weight, but my LYS had two different weights, one a sport weight and the other a worsted. I picked up the sport. It's not a cheap yarn. I paid $8.50 a skein, and there's only 105 yds per skein. Call this one an indulgence brought about by lust for the softness and curiosity.

PS. I seem to recall the old banana seat on my first bike being much more comfortable than the rock on my new bike. Can we say numb bum? But I am riding it, even if I can't go too far before my old, out of shape, body starts screaming at me.

Anybody want an ancient cat?

'Cause mine is making us all crazy. One reason I wake up at 6 AM no matter what the day, is him. It used to be around 6 he would start yowling his head off. I could bring him up on the bed with me and pet him and then he'd bugger off, still yowling. But now it's 5 AM. So I decided it was time to do something to break the habit (it's a learned behaviour after all).

For the last week or so I've been getting up and putting him out of the bedroom. Negative response to negative behaviour. So he sits outside the door and meows. This morning he was so bad that he woke the kiddo up. So then she gets up and pets him and he stops yowling. ARGH!

I swear, the sticking him in the other room will work, as long as everyone just ignores him. We just have to live with the noise for a bit :(

In other news... I bought a bike yesterday. The plan is to ride every damned day. I can barely make it around the block before me legs start screaming at me. Apparently one's inner upper leg muscles (the Sartorius muscles) work as much as the calf muscles. Decent calf muscles I have, but apparently my Sartorius muscles have lain dormant for years. So it's around the block for me for a bit.

And this weekend, the kiddo and I are going to load her bike into the truck and head over to the school parking lot and by golly, I'm determined she will be riding by the end of the day. We'll take the bike with no training wheels, as I think the training wheels are actually keeping her from learning to balance herself, as she relies on them too much. I didn't need no stinkin' training wheels when I was her age, just an older neighbor boy that I idolized holding on to the back of my bike (in all of it's banana seat glory!).

And hey! Sock the First is in heel flap stage. Now if I could just translate the instructions for the turning of the heel into plain English...

Tweaking. Again.

Title says it all. That gray line bugged the bejeezus outta me...

Update: Still not 100% happy. This layout looked so much nicer when I orginally designed it for WordPress. *Sigh* The gray line is gone, but I want the space between the girl's shoulders and sidebar "body" to be together.

Change of plans

The yarn shops didn't happen yesterday. I spent most of the morning screwing around with this blog layout, trying unsuccessfully to removed the gray line to the left of my chick. It's times like these I wish I hadn't switched to the new Blogger. I miss being able to code manually, and put things exactly where I want them, and dammit, in the size I want them.

I'm really thinking about paying for web hosting again. But that's $100 I could spend on other things. And the Estes Park Wool Market is coming up in June

Sock the First is still going. I hesitate to say anything that may jinx it. But I will say I am already looking at more sock yarn.

I'm tempted to try this stuff, as the fiber intrigues the hell out of me, growing up surrounded by fields of the stuff. And which I can get at MSK. But I really like the colourways in the Socks That Rock Watercolour Waves. I'm especially partial to the Ruby Slippers colourway.

Anyway, better get moving, the kiddo has to be to school early today for a field trip. (This is fun, by the way. She's been ready to go since 6:30 am, haha. Keeping her busy is a challenge.) Ciao!

Updated: Changed link to correct fiber and link for Corntastic, not Maizy.

Have you tried this?!

KnitMap! Thanks to KnitMap I have a new yarn shop, Nanytutu's, to check out today during my wanderings. I want to hit my favourite, My Sister Knits, as well.

The sock thing is going ok. I've frogged it about 4 times, the last on our trip home from my mom's, which sucked and left me with no knitting for the car. Why? Because I have long nails for the first time in years and I use a long tail cast on. This results in bleeding palms. To get 'round this, I've an old sock that I cut the toe out of and a hole in the heel for my thumb. There's just enough fabric that my nails don't bite. And of course my little sock friend was somewhere in the suitcase in the truck of the car and I didn't want to take the time to look through the whole case.

I have to watch my time though, since the kiddo gets out early today. Or at least she would if she ever got ready for school! Sheesh. Better get her moving'. Ciao!

PS. If things start looking wonky later, don't worry. It's just me changing things around. The green is bugging me, lol.

PS jr. Wow. The prices on Istock photo have really gone up. Sorry, but $13 for a single image? Not.

Feeling bitchy

I really dislike this web trend of animated glittery images. I wish it would stop.

I hate when my Warcraft realm is down, and they tell me it's up. It bloody well isn't.

Another thing that I greatly dislike is when some of my favourite blog reads stop blogging. :( I know it is best for them and I wish them well, but I sure do miss them.

I've switched blogs myself several times. Either grown tired of the "persona" or just needed to clear things out. I original blogged under an old game name. Then I switched to blogging under my own name. Until I ran into a harassment issue and decided that being a bit more anonymous was better.

The last blog switch was brought about because I really got the feeling that most of my so-called blog friends... weren't. After years of blogging together, emails and even phone calls, I discovered that most of the web folk I was in contact were too self-interested to care about anyone but themselves. The relationships were great, as long as I was the one supporting them, but turn it the other way around and no one was there.

So I let a few select people know I'd moved and the rest, I poofed on. Sadly, I only actually got two emails from people asking what had happened to my blog (I changed my blog, not my email...). One of those two, I had actually planned on giving the new blog addy, you know who you are ;) The other I just thanked for their email and went on my happy way.

Anyway, enough whinging. I need to go wake up my sick kiddo. We have to go to school today for at least the first hour as we have play practice. I wonder if any of them actually practiced over the holiday? I know mine didn't. Lol.

Lost

If I ever lose my desktop computer I am screwed. I have a password list saved on it and not so honest folks would have a field day. Yeah, not real smart. But I have to say, I am absolutely lost without that list. No Ravelry, because that was the one place that I forgot to update my email, so I can't even get in a change the password.

Blogger I managed after several tries to remember my gmail address, lol. And then this morning I realised that since I am using web mail this trip, I don't even have all the email addresses I need.

But the worst piece of info I don't have with me is the pin number for my unemployment benefits. Some time this week I am supposed to get online and request benefits. Without that pin, I'm so screwed. :(

Ain't technology great??

Geez Louise!

We are leaving for a vacation tomorrow. And so of course our laptop, slated to be keeper of all the vacation pics, decides to go wonky. Everything was fine when we booted up yesterday morning then midway through the day we lost our internet connection and then slowed down to molasses speed.

At first I thought that maybe it was because I had put McAffee on there and the firewall was messing with stuff. So I opened that up. I had also put Spybot S & D on there and I am now wondering if Spybot didn't trash something it should not have. Meanwhile I can't even run McAffee to see if there's something on there that doesn't belong there because it just runs and runs but never fully loads.

*Sigh*

See, the big art of the problem is this computer started off life as my brother in law's. He Rebuilt the bloody thing then loaded it with crap. We've removed a lot of it, but... He'd had some sort of free virus checker, but never had a spyware remover.

So back I go to removal mode.

PS. I've cast on a sock. I would really like to be finished with the cuff before The Harlot starts speaking tonight, which shouldn't be a problem, since I don't life a lot of ribbing and only plan to go about an inch.