Ohhh, WoW is me...

Ass in, woe is me. WoW was to do their normal Tuesday maintenance today, be back up by noon our time. Ummm. Now it is 8 hours later and they are still not up. Of course, I had today off work and thought that between this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon when I have to go to work I'd be able to make a big push toward level 70 with my Alliance druid, Morticia. I hit 69 with her yesterday. Not bad, from level 62 to 69 in less than a week. I jokingly said to my hubby last week that we had seven days to get seven levels and we've nearly done it. Now if WoW would just cooperate. *Sigh*

Remembrance Day

The 11th hour, of the 11th day of the 11th month. Today is Veteran's Day, or Remembrance Day as it is known most of the rest of the world. Whether you support war or you don't, remember that our military folks are just doing their jobs and give them a pat on the back. And maybe at 11 am today, where ever you are, stop and take a few minutes to remember all those that have died serving our country.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae

Go and

VOTE!!!

Roflmao

So I got home from work tonight to find a box sitting on my chair. It was from the Beverage Gourmet. The company I ordered my Pumpkin Pie Sauce from. I was amazed that it had arrived so quickly, as it only shipped yesterday. I actually ordered through amazon.com. So when I found an actual web address for the B.G. on the invoice I went there, they had to be close since it shipped so fast.

Umm. They're just a few streets down from us, lol. I about died when I saw they were local. I paid them ten bucks to ship my sauce, hahaha.

So we are having 'puter issues, AGAIN. So the new 'puter goes off to work manana, where my boss said he'd have a look at it. Yay, my boss is a brilliant tech. And he's a sweetie to look at the stupid thing for no charge. I'm so glad he likes me, lol (all the managers do apparently, since I got employee of the month last month, lol. Never got my 3 month review, but I figure that means I'm doing something right).

Strangely enough (and I am almost afraid to say it for fear I will jinx things...) the old 'puter seems to be behaving quite properly at the moment. So... *Knock wood*

Anyhoo, I think I am going to call it a night. We are all off tomorrow, so I may actually get to sleep in a bit. Yeah right. I almost always wake up at the ass crack of dawn, lol. The good news is, come Sunday, 5:30 am comes an hour later, and wouldn't it be nice if my body decided that that was ok and continued on like normal? Lol. That sounds ever so convoluted, but you know what I mean. Or maybe not, but oh well *grin*

For crying out loud

I'm getting absolutely fed up lately with WoW. It's up and down more often than a fiddler's elbow. Tuesday it was down from before I woke up until at least 1 pm. Then there have been the rolling restarts, which normally only takes it down for a few minutes at a time, but always in the morning, which I'm sure is their low traffic time, but it's my prime playing time, lol. And now this morning they are having a "brief maintenance" that should only last about 3 hours.

I realize they just put out a huge content patch and that's why all the issues but I also find it absolutely amazing that they would release something so blasted buggy! And just think, in about two weeks we get to go through this again with the expansion. Yay.

Really my biggest annoyance is I pay a monthly fee to be able to play this bloody game. When it's down, I can't play. Where's my recompense? Okay, to be fair there is a post on the message boards about giving us credit for time lost, but no one is saying how much at the moment. *Grumble*

So anyhoo. I ordered me some Pumpkin Spice Sauce for my coffee. Yum. I've decided that I adore Starbuck's Pumpkin Spice lattes and since I can't go there all the time, I'll make my own, lol.

Okay, gotta go find a pic of Snoopy rising from the pumpkin patch so I can carve my pumpkin this evening. See yas all later!

Jeez

Where does the time go? And I've had so much more of it lately too (I just had three days off, you'd think there would have been some productive time in there, wouldn't you?).

And yet all I've really done is read a little and WoW a lot. I actually hit saturation point yesterday afternoon though. I logged out in the middle of a very frustrating battleground and only went back in occasionally to Trick or Treat, lol.

Saturday was actually a lovely family day. We headed for the zoo. Boo at the Zoo to be exact. The kiddo wore her costume and trick or treated whilst we enjoyed the animals. It was a madhouse. Sooo many people, sooo many kids, lol. Note to parents: If you plan to take your babies and young toddlers, maybe waiting until after their nap would be a good idea rather than instead of a nap? I saw so many tired and cranky kids and surely that's not what the day was meant to be.

Mind you, my kiddo actually fell asleep on the way home, and hubby and I would have liked to have napped as well, haha.

Anyway, it's back to work for me today so I had best go get ready. See ya all later!

And now for something completely different....

I don't usually use this space as a political forum. But with less than three weeks from the election I feel as though I must speak my mind.

First, I feel strongly that it is every American over 18's duty to go out and vote. If you don't vote, don't you dare come back to me and start bitching about the government, our economy, the war, whatever. Don't tell me you don't have time, or you can't get to the polls. Most states have mail in ballots available to everyone now, especially to those who won't be home to vote (The state of Colorado offers a mail-in ballot to everyone. They also offer early voting to those who can't vote on election day. Early voting begins Oct. 20th. I will be making my vote count Monday).

But most importantly I feel the need to urge everyone in Colorado who values choice to vote NO on Amendment 48. Amendment 48 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to:
* define the term "person" to "include any human being from the moment of fertilization"; and
* apply this definition of person to the sections of the Colorado Constitution that protect the natural and essential rights of persons, allow open access to courts for every person, and ensure that no person has his or her life, liberty, or property taken away without due process of law.

What all this legal speak means for women is that a fertilized egg is a person. Therefore any form of abortion would be illegal. There is no out for the other person involved (the mother) in the case of medical emergency.

But the biggest issue I have with this amendment is that it would make many birth control forms illegal!

You all have a right to your opinion on abortion (though I do ask you to keep it to yourself here, thank you), but NO ONE has the right to tell anyone that they can not take reasonable steps to prevent an unwanted pregnancy! No one should be forced into parenthood. No child should be made to endure being unwanted.

Amendment 48 is intolerable. It's also unconstitutional and will result in an expensive, drawn out, legal battle that will cost the taxpayer.

VOTE NO ON AMENDMENT 48!

I started

to blog the other day. I got one whole sentence written before my attention was diverted elsewhere, lol.

It's been very Autumn-y here lately, 40s and gray and rainy until yesterday. Yesterday the sun came back out and we made it to 50 degrees. It was absolutely lovely :) The cool, wet days reminded hubby of home and he's battling a touch of homesickness at the moment. He and the munchkin wet walking in the misty rain a few days ago whilst I was at work and in the damp the next day as well.

The Cherry Bomb is moving again. I've knit a bit here and there over the last few days, most especially whilst we all watched The Princess Bride last night. Now I love me a good fairy tale and a cheesey chick flick, but this has never been one of my favourite movies. But hubby loves it and well, on Talk Like a Pirate Day I ran into a bunch of movie clips containing pirates and The Dread Pirate Roberts moved into other clips online whilst the daughter sat next to me which lead to the promise of watching the entire thing some time.

We all had a lovely time and enjoyed the movie. Still not one of my favourite movies (there's no chemistry between Cary Elwes and Robin Wright! The scene where he is leaving Buttercup to go off and make his fortune and he's talking about true love, he swear his stare is totally dead. But anyhoo...) but we all giggled our way through.

On the reading front, Eightfoldrabbit asked if I'd read Patricia Briggs. Funny you should ask, as I just finished Cry Wolf. What seems like ages ago now, I picked up an anthology called On the Prowl, purely because it contained a Monere story by Sunny. I read the Patricia Briggs story, liked it and that was that until I was wandering through Barnes and Noble one day and happened across Cry Wolf on an end cap. I picked it up and realized from the blurb on the back that it was the continuation of that short story.

Loved it! So I now have the first two books of her Mercy Thompson series on hold at the library. Yay. And thank goodness for libraries, I tell you. With a voracious reading appetite like I have I'd never be able to afford to keep myself in books with out my local libraries! And one library has this cool system called Prospector, which connects to a bunch more libraries and allows me to get books from them if my library doesn't have them. They send the book I request to the local library and I just go pick it up, read it and return it like a regular book. Brilliant! And it's FREE! I think at any given moment I have at least 10 books on hold ;)

Anyway. I finally found me some guild love in WoW for Alas. Joined yesterday, so hopefully I will have better luck with this guild than I have in the past. Why is it so blasted hard to find a decent guild Horde-side on my server?? This new guild is just what I am looking for though. They are all pretty casual, though they do raid. But I don't have to do anything. My main interest is in making some friends before the expansion comes out so I can go explore then.

I had to laugh though, the person I was talking to about the guild before I joined was all, you can't raid unless you are geared up first. Ummm. Did you not look at my character on the Armory? The only top of the line piece of gear I am missing is a new axe. But since I am primarily a long distance damage kind of girl, that's not a big issue. Yes, all my gear is PvP rather than PvE, but it's just as good as any PvE gear and makes me rock in any setting, lol.

Well. Better finish breakfast and hit the shower. Today is one of the few shifts I actually work this week, so I had better get to it!

Yeah well...

Still no knitting going on, but I did buy myself a set of cable needles and now I am looking for a decent (read: simple) cable scarf pattern to knit for someone for Christmas. Not sure which stash wool I will use, most likely the Plain & Fancy, because while I have no idea what I am going to do with the Brooks Farm, using it on a scarf for someone else is not in the plan ;) Yeah, I'm feeling totally selfish about that yarn!

The good news is I did find one book in my stack that kept me enthralled all the way through. One Foot in the Grave was a much better book than the first in the series and now I am eagerly awaiting the release of the new book, At Grave's End, in December.

And I finally finished the Kitty book, along with the next in the series, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, (which I enjoyed more) and now I'm eagerly awaiting the next two books in the series, due out in January and February. Yay.

And of course the old stand by authors are coming out with new books soon (see my wish list) as well too, so that part of my ennui will hopefully end soon ;)

Anyway, I've the day off, so I am going to go see what kind of trouble I can get into today ;)

Yum!

I love October and Halloween. We've got our smashed witch on the front door and our ghost lanterns lit.

And this evening we baked a lovely apple pie. And soooo simple. Just preheat the oven to 350 and get out a medium saucepan. In the saucepan mix a 1/2 cup of each: White sugar, brown sugar and butter, add 3 tablespoons of flour and a little water and slowly bring to a boil. Simmer. Then take 6 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced and layer on pie crust in your favourite pie plate (mine's a deep dish, 10 inches so you might want to do less apples). Pour the caramel over all the apples, top with a second crust, vent a bit and bake. I recommend a cookie sheet under the pie plate in case of bubbling over!

We baked ours for probably 45 minutes 'til the crust was golden brown.

Things we learned: with juicy apples you really don't need to add much water to the caramel mixture, next time I may not add any. Maybe toss the apples in the caramel before pouring in pie plate. Add a bit of vanilla to the caramel for an extra bit of flavour. And have ice cream or whipped cream on hand to eat with the pie, yum! Lol.

This pie was wonderful though, just the tart tang of the apples with the sweet caramel, not hidden under all the cinnamon flavour you usually get in apple pie. Hubby liked it so much he threatened to eat the whole pie right then and there ;)

Ennui.

I can't get into anything right now. I don't believe I've knit a stitch in more than a week. I have several books on the go at the moment, none that holds my interest for longer than a chapter at a time.

I've got the "at work" book, Kitty Takes a Holiday, the after work books, Death Perception (this is one of those authors that has more than one series and I like the other series better, but...), Hungry Ghosts (ok, I have to be fair, I only just started this one tonight and I'm only a few pages in) and somewhere in this house I have my traditional spooky-ooky-it's-Halloween-ghost-book, along with the latest Christine Feehan book, Dark Curse (I'm losing interest in this series unfortunately, they are all so very similar now and I'm really starting to get tired of the overly macho dominating males, I've not really enjoyed one of these books since Dark Melody), another called One Foot in the Grave, which I've not even opened yet, and umm, another in a series that I was half-hearted about at the best of times and now have really lost interest in. Nothing has grabbed my interest and held it since I finished the last Odd Thomas book.

Not one of them am I any farther than a few chapters in, well, except for the spooky-ooky-it's-Halloween-ghost-book because that's all short bits and interesting ;)

TV isn't really doing it for me either. Even good ol' Ghost Hunters is paling this season. *Sigh*

And WoW. Well, I hit 44 with my gnome mage. She's out of rest experience, so she's in the inn for a bit until I get that back. Alas is 70. Got my last top tier item last week. I made the guys at work freak when I jokingly mentioned that I'd had to do some dailies to earn some money back after I got my new helm and had to gem it, which dropped me under 10k. "10K? You're freaking out about dropping under 10k? I've barely got 100 gold!" Ummm. No. But they don't seem to grasp that I've been 70 for quite some time now. There's nothing more I can spend money on in game, so of course I have the money. I'm bored. I actually took up fishing in the game, just for something different. I'm really looking forward to next month and Wrath of the Lich King.

*Sigh* This too shall pass. Soon I hope.

Under construction!

Pardon the mess whilst I change over to my October look ;) It's going to stay a bit messy for the rest of the day as I don't think they'll let me work on my blog at work, lol.

Happy October, y'all!

Sad and silent

We just can't win

Our new computer arrived early last week. We thought that was a good thing. But honestly, it has been trouble from day 1. It constantly disconnected from the wireless network, froze and gave us USB errors, causing bad shut downs similar to the old machine we were trying to improve upon. So we did some reading online and followed the instructions. Some few hours and another $20 later things seemed more stable.

Until my hubby went raiding in WoW that night. Then it froze and we had to power down. Again, USB errors and aggravation. I went in to work the next day and bitched to my boss that Vista sucks and it's a power hog and he looked at me like I had grown a second head. "Bring it in."

I wish I had been able to convince my hubby to heed my boss' advice. Instead the problem grew steadily worse. We finally called Dell who had us run the diagnostic and told us it had to be software and that we needed to go back to factory settings and start again. *Sigh*

Guess what? It's even worse now! I started up this AM and no sooner had I established my wireless connection than it just crashed. No freeze this time, just a blue screen and error code. It then restarted itself, and seems ok now, but I wasn't going to push my luck, I'm on the old computer now.

So basically what I have learned is that Vista is conflicting with one of the three programs I have put on the new machine, but not entirely sure which one:
1. Firefox
2. Thunderbird
3. World of Warcraft. Now that would just be brilliant, seeing as how this machine is literally built for gaming and it won't run the one game we want it to. And unfortunately, up until late last night this seemed the most likely culprit as the crashes occurred most often whilst WoW was running.

The damn thing is going into work some time today. I would quite honestly love to box the bloody thing up and send it back to Dell and call it good :(

Good news and bad news. Bad news is it was Warcraft that was conflicting. Good news, it wasn't conflicting with Vista. And it didn't have to go into work with me after all. Bad news, it's conflicting with my virus software. Good news, all I have to do is turn off it temporarily whilst playing. All in all, it's still a pain in the arse. I'm tempted to put McAffee on instead...

Ahoy!

By the Powers! Ye didn't think I'd let Talk Like a Pirate Day pass without notice, did ye? Grab yer grog and some dubloons, matey and plunder!!

If ye be a WoW fan, head yerself to Booty Bay and party with the Dread Captain DeMeza, where it be Pirate Day. And don't ferget yer pirate togs and grog! See, there be the Dread Pirate Alastrine. Ye don't want to be tanglin' with that wench, do ye? I have me a big axe and I not be afeared to use it! ;)

And go get yerself a pirate name. I be the newly named, Pirate Val the Staggering Drunk. Yo ho ho and a bottle o' rum!

Chugging right along

The knitting is going. That's all I'm saying, lol.

I've been reading a lot lately too. A co-worker introduced me to Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series, I'll start book 3 tonight. I used to read a lot of Dean Koontz in high school and early in my marriage. Somewhere along the way I just stopped reading for some reason. So when my co-worker offered to loan me the first two books I jumped at them.

One reason is because it's a series. I love series books, I love watching the characters develop through out the books, learning more about them.

And of course, it's fall, with All Hallow's Eve approaching, my favourite time of year. So the ghosty books have hit my reading list as well.

I've started keeping an Amazon wish list again. Mostly to remind myself of which authors I like are coming out with new books so I can remember to request them from the library ;) But Amazon also has a Universal Wish List now, so I can add links from anywhere I like, lol. So now I have knitting things on my list as well. I've stuck the link in my sidebar so y'all can see what I'm reading and what I'm lusting for ;)

In other news, we've bought a new toy. It will hopefully arrive next week. Our computer hard drive is dying. It keeps freezing up, leaving us no choice but to shut off at the power source. That inevitably screws with Windows XP and we have problems.

So now I shall be switching to Vista. I've played with it a bit at work, we shall see.

I think perhaps

I should just not blog about my current knitting project status. It seems that every time I do, I end up in Frogville.

This time it wasn't because of a mistake, at least not that I know of. This time it was because of the way sets of stitches were lining up funky. I noticed that every once in a while a small section, usually for an inch or so, the stitches would look off. And if I flipped to the wrong side of my knitting, you could see that the purl stitches were absolutely lined up.

Instead of looking like this:
- - -
 - -

They looked like this:
----
----

Which in the grand scheme of things wasn't really noticeable to anyone. Except me. And it finally got to me enough that I frogged. So we will see if it's something I did unintentionally or if it's the funky twist of the cotton yarn or what. I just know I couldn't let it continue without at least trying to fix it. *Sigh* The joys of perfectionism, lol.

Lovely

What a difference a week makes! Labor Day weekend was truly the last summer weekend if this week has been anything to go by. Last weekend was hot and I remember wishing for fall to hurry up and get here ;) Come Tuesday, autumn arrived. The temps dipped and I am loving it. This next week should stay in the 70s as well. Of course, this means I need to tidy the spare bedroom up a bit, so I can move my geraniums indoors before the first frost (Which I am begging for now. Just one hard frost to kill off all the weeds that are making me miserable, lol).

I'm thinking it could be a long winter though. The high country had its first snow a few weeks ago, actually leaving several inches behind in the lower mountains and it has certainly snowed above tree line since. But that's ok, I have plenty of knitting to see me through ;)

Speaking of knitting, I'm plodding along on Cherry Bomb. I've reached the first repeat of waist shaping on the front (so about 5 inches, lol). I joined the Big Girl Knits group on Ravelry last night and went through the posts on Cherry Bomb whilst I was there. I am now very glad that I added an inch to the length, since the biggest lament of CB knitters was that it needed to be a bit longer. I tend to like my tops a bit longer anyway, and looking at pics of FOs on Rav made me decide to add a half inch. Fortuitously, I lost track whilst watching TV the other night (new Ghost Hunters) and when I checked length it was 4 inches instead of 3.5. I didn't have the patience to unknit for half an inch, so I left it and just changed my notes on my pattern. I think the extra half inch is better.

My next plan is to pick up a cable needle tomorrow and try my hand with some leftover yarn at cabling. I want to make sure I can turn out a nice cable before I commit myself to yarn for the Susie Hoodie ;) I've priced the yarn though, and figure I can get it for a reasonable price, so that's good.

Anyhoo, I have to work today so I had best get moving. Ciao!

No laboring on Labor Day here

For the first time in years I have Labor Day off. We haven't planned a bloody thing, other than I know I have to go to the grocery store at some point today.

Not sure what I will do today. I've been doing very little knitting. I've only just begun Cherry Bomb (nothing like waiting until autumn to start a summer tank, lol).

There's been a lot of reading. Nothing spectacular that stands out though, just quick reads, like a bunch of cozy mysteries. I do have Acheron in the bedroom, waiting to be cracked. It's a tremendous volume, 736 pages, and I just can't seem to be too terribly interested. *Sigh* I will read it soon though, it's a library book and must go back soon.

As always there's been a lot of WoW. I've got Alastrine kitted out in top gear, although she could use a new helm at some point, I think I will start work on that today in AV.

I've started playing one of my old Ally 'toons again yesterday. Gnorma is a level 32 gnome mage who needs a lot of help, lol. But at least she's high enough to have a mount to ride instead of running every where. I sadly don't have the patience for that any more, Alas has spoilt me, with her flying mount and her very fast Cobalt Riding Talbuk. Gnorma's mechanical chicken mount is almost too slow for me, (And so incredibly stupid looking!) lol. It's been a bit tough getting used to soloing again, after having a pet to help Alas kill things, and the whole magic thing is odd too. Gnorma is an incredible squishy compared to Alas at this level, so I have to be careful about what I take on or she ends up dead.

Anyhoo. It won't be long before the family is awake, so I think I shall take the last of my quiet time and head for WoW. Ciao!

Well what do you know...

I was looking for a recipe on the 'net this afternoon and as I went to close out my browser I got a pop up window that said "Warning, your computer is infected!" And it claimed to be Windows XP Antivirus 2008. When I tried to close the window without installing it tried to install the software anyway. I hurriedly turned the computer off.

McAffee is running on it now, just to make sure, but I think I caught it. This is the evil virus I was talking about. It's not an anti-virus program like it is claiming to be.

Unfortunately, most people don't know that and they immediately click on the "Remove all threats now" button.

So word to the wise, don't visit web sites you don't know and don't trust anything that tries to download automatically.