Jeans and Sneakers

I slept until 5:30pm today.  :[  But in my defense, I stayed up late talking to a kid I haven't seen in almost three years, that I went to high school with.

Wyn wore her sweater to work today, and she said she got a compliment on it, and she loves it because it's so soft!  I just hope it's warm enough.  When I wore it I was still kind of cold, but I'm always cold, so whatever.

And now for the surprise!!!  Rob told the roomate he's got until May 1st to get out.  YAY!!!  They've both got to be gone.  And we have another kid Nick who's awesome who's going to move in.  *dances around*

Other than that, not much to report.  I didn't get an email back from the yarn place around the corner that's hiring, yet.  I only sent them my resume yesterday though, so we'll see.  I did get a call from some guy who I think is a staffing person.  That always happens when I go on monster or careerbuilder. . .cause then my profile updates and is at the top-ish of some list.

I also found another kid I went to high school with who used to sit behind me in math class.  He looks so different now and he's got a masters degree in psychology and he's thinking about going back to school so he can teach.  So crazy.  I'm way proud of him, being one of the few people around my age I know who have carried through with ANYTHING.  :]

First off, let me just say that it hurts to type this right now, because the middle and ring fingers on my right hand are totally spastic from bowling yesterday.  Now, as for an explanation of how I lied. . .well, I took pictures of my sister in the sweater, and it fits her beautifully, however, I’m not posting the pictures because they came out bad, and it’s not fair to post pictures that don’t show how good she looked in it.  And also, I forgot to bring my camera to the bowling alley, and so there will be no pictures of that either.

We had a good time though.  Wyn, Chi, and Bay all made it out here alright, but when we ordered chinese food for dinner, it took an hour and 20 minutes to get here. . .causing us to miss our reservation for lanes at the bowling alley and also to miss Stephen, whom I’d invited while waiting for Wyn’s train to pull in.  We did manage to get a lane though, and aside from some crazy people bowling around us, we had fun.  I bowled horribly though, and would like to do it more often so that when I go my shoulder/arm/wrist/hand/fingers don’t die the next day.  It’s actually not that bad, but I am sore all over a little.  So out of shape it’s not even funny.  Who gets sore after bowling?!!?

So. . .the roomate’s gf is still here. . .but there has been some kind of change, there’s another bag of garbage in the hallway, but I don’t know if that’s just cleaning, or actual packing/moving preparation.  Rob kind of asked the roomate what was going on, and didn’t really get an answer.  Apparrently some time yesterday or today on WoW he asked what happened to the Ice King, something the roomate claimed he was going to become after he broke up with her. . .and the roomate said “She wants to try to work it out”.  Rob told him he’s pussywhipped.  Today Rob asked him what was going on, and he said he wasn’t sure, that he was dealing with a lot right now.  :/  Whatever.  There’s a big surprise coming tomorrow!!!  :]

Not having a job is really starting to bug me out.  Like, I’m starting to freak out, because my money is slowly running out. So in my freaked out state, I went looking for jobs on Monster.com.  I don’t typically like looking for jobs on sites like monster.com and careerbuilder.com, mostly because they’re like, those cookiecutter jobs. . .those typical office jobs that perfect people do in perfect business attire in perfect cubicles with perfect smiles and perfect makeup and plastic hair. . .ugh.  I get sick just thinking about it.  But sometimes I look because I get desperate, or because sometimes craig’s list just has total crap.  So I went looking on there today, and I saw that the yarn factory around the corner from me is hiring customer service people.  Holy crap, I got so excited.  So I sent them my resume.  It would be so cool if I could work there.  :]  I had actually sent them my resume on a whim a while back, but they weren’t hiring back then. . .but they were really nice about letting me know that they weren’t hiring!  I hope they contact me.

Rob and I got into a conversation about smart kids, and he was telling me that when he was younger, he got a really high IQ score, and the testing people told him it was high, but told him they didn’t want to tell him the actual score, lest it go to his head.  Hah.  Stupid people.  It did go to his head, (but not in a totally bad way) but it wouldn’t have really, if they just told him the score # and left it at that.  What kid knows the IQ score chart?  Like, it would have just been a number to him. . .anyway.  It got us talking about IQ tests, and I didn’t think I’d ever taken one.  So he told me that you can take one at iqtest.com, and that it was pretty accurate.  I don’t know if they changed the test though, because he said that it took like 45 mins to an hour to complete.  But when I went there, the test was 38 questions.  I don’t know if mine was accurrate or not, because there were some questions I knew I’d have to sit there and really think about for awhile, that I might actually confuse myself with a couple of times, and for those I just guessed.  It was partially because I knew that each question was timed, and if you take longer than 20 seconds to answer, it’s points off your total score.  Rob said that I was supposed to try to figure those out, and not just guess at them and that my score was probably wrong cause I didn’t really try.  Either way, my score equated to “Above average”.  Not quite gifted.  Word.

So. . .another week. . . I’m going to try and see if I can do some yoga tomorrow. 

:[ I totally told myself to write in my blog yesterday while at work with Rob. But I came home and totally forgot, once I started playing Simon the Sorcerer. Yeah, I'm talkin 1993!!!! This game is so fun! It's been awhile though, and I have to remember how to play these games, and to look for things to pick up. . .

I haven't knitted at all since my last post. :[ I think I was on a knitting high for awhile and I crashed. I'll pick it up again soon, I know I will, but for now, I'd rather just play video games.

In about an hour I'm going to the train station to pick up my sister. YAY! Then we'll chill here for a little bit and get something to eat before we go bowling. Bay is supposed to come out around 6, but I haven't heard from him, and Rob said he went out drinking last night, so I don't know if he's going to show.

So I got all pissed off last night, because after my roomate made a whole big deal about how he was going to dump his gf, and how he was going to change the locks the next day. . . she was over here last night. . .at 3am. She wasn't here around 8 or 9, or even 10 or 11. Somehow, she was here around 3 though. And there weren't any "packing" sounds coming from the room. They were watching a movie.

So tell me, why. . .after breaking up with your girlfriend because you suspected she was cheating on you, why would you have her over at 3am to watch a movie? Sounds like a bootie call to me, either that or she wanted to "talk". Which I wouldn't care about, except for that broken up couples don't bang unless they're getting back together. She wasn't here this morning though.

Sometime today, she must have snuck in, because she was in his room a few minutes ago, yelling at him about how she's really stressed out right now, and she told him before that she had to study. I don't know if they were fighting again, or if she was trying to study over here, or what, but I still didn't hear any packing going on. And last night Rob knocked over her *empty* shampoo bottles that have been sitting on the ledge of the bathtub for about 4 months now. This morning one of them, and both razors were back on the ledge.

I know some people reading this must be thinking maybe I should mind my own business. Sometimes, I feel that I'm getting too nosy into all of it. But you know what? This is my house. And no one talks to me, and I can ask questions, and I get answers that don't really answer my question, or just straight up lies (not from Rob that last. . .just when I ask the roomate). So really, the only way that I can try to know what's going on, is to keep an eye/ear out for what's happening, and try to draw my own conclusions. I just want them out of the house!!

I'm going to bring my camera to bowling tonight, so hopefully I'll have some silly pictures to share.

Oh! I should write about this. I was trying to take a nap earlier because I was really tired, but for some reason, my brain wouldn't shut up about making a pavillion. I'd try to calm my mind and tell it to quiet down, I wanted to take a nap, but no. . .my brain insisted that I had to plan out a way to make an outdoor pavillion that would be weather proof so that I could lie in it in the rain and not get wet. I did, and then I fell asleep. But since we rent, I can't build it, and now I've got this awesome idea that won't come to fruition. At least not yet. I told Rob about it, and he said that if he buys a house, I can build a pavillion in the back yard. :] And during my nap I had a dream that I saw a space ship!

But I didn’t. Got to bed reasonably late, waiting for the roomate and his (ex)gf to come back to see if they’d fight some more before I went to sleep. They did all of their fighting while gone though, I guess. I think she’s got until Sunday to move out. At least he didn’t back out of it.

I made reservations for lanes on Saturday! Word. Bowling is on. Didn’t get much else done today. I should do up some laundry, I have to wash a comforter for a friend who’s likely staying over saturday night.

No weird dreams to report, none that I can remember anyway. I’m super excited though. Myspace actually served a purpose, I found a kid I’ve been looking for since right after we graduated. It’s awesome when someone is just as excited about finding you again as you are about finding them. YAY! Hopefully we can hang out sometime.

And now for some pictArs! (click for bigger)

Here’s a picture of the golden tunic lying flat. It looks kind of fat, and the bottom looks like it comes up on the right side, but I assure you, it does not. This is only a testament to my poor photography skills. It came out pretty nice, and I promise better pictures by Saturday or Sunday, once my sister comes out and I figure out if it fits her or not.
I also posted pics of my favorite parts of the sweater. First, comes the pretty weave of it. Then there’s the side seam, you can see the decreases and increases that made the nice shaping, and it looks really pretty forming around the seam. This pattern calls for some fancy yarn, cashmerino, I think, but I knitted it up in acrylic, and I can see how it would be a smoother, more drapey sweater in the other. Not bad for a first attempt though, and I had a hell of a time figuring out how to attach the sleeves. I look forward to another chance at sleeves with Sonnet.

And now for the current sweater. . .Sonnet (and a closeup of it’s stitches):

There’s a lot to do still, but this pattern is WAY easy. It’s knitted sideways, in garter stitch, with decorative vertical stripes done in box stitch. It’s going fast, and I took a break from it for a little while. I think I might start knitting it again tonight though.

It’s really such a pretty color yarn, but you can’t tell from the pictures. I
chock it up to poor lighting (despite two lamps!), but it’s really a very light grey/blue color. In the daylight it almost glows.

Both sweaters are done in acrylic yarn, but I like the feel of the yarn used for Sonnet better than the yarn used for the golden tunic. I think for my next project I’m going to do something in cotton, or some other natural fiber. . .just something for a change.

Ok, and one more pictAr. Find the chinchilla!

A few hours ago, my roomate came in to talk to us.  He’s dumping the gf.  She’s been coming home between 3-6am for the past couple of weeks. . .with no real explanation of where she’s been.  And she’s been talking to this guy and just all around being really shady.  He said that the other night out of nowhere she said to him suddenly that she wasn’t happy in their relationship.  He thinks she’s cheating.  She came home around half an hour ago, and they went into his room, only to have her storm out a few minutes later, slamming the door.  He went after her, and yelled “Don’t slam my shit!”

Hopefully he’ll actually dump her.  I’m so tired of dealing with that whole situation.  The thing that really bugs me though, is when he came in, he started off like “I hope you guys haven’t found another roomate yet.”  Like he hasn’t done anything wrong, and we just wanted him to leave because he was with her.  Like he hasn’t lied for about a year now, and been even more of a scumbag than ever.  Like he didn’t light the frigging house on fire.  I’m pretty sure that he’s going to (be allowed to) stay if he dumps her.  I guess I’ll deal with it so long  as I get my frigging kitchen back.  >:[

I couldn’t sleep this morning.  I lay in bed for like 5 hours, and just couldn’t sleep.  I woke up no later than I have been though, so maybe I’ll be supAr tired later.

I made it to the mall to exchange the jeans and shirt I bought that didn’t fit and get stuff to finish up my store credit.  I got a gift certificate and some clothes from Rob’s mom for xmas, and I returned the clothes so I had more store credit, and I’ve been trying to use it since then.  I finally used it all.  And I got a skirt!  I wonder if I’ll actually wear it!  I have a nice clean pair of sneakers I’ve never worn yet that’ll look cute with it.

I cleaned the room today!! YAY!  My little Hoover does not like chinchilla dust/hair.  At all.  I had to hook up the unbent coathanger tool to clean out the vaccuum hose.  Yeah ghetto!

I’m looking forward to going bowling this weekend.  I’ll probably suck, but who cares?  It’s something to do, and doing stuff is fun!

I didn’t get around to crafting, because by the time I got home from the mall the sun was down and my room gets wicked cold at night, regardless of what I set my heat to.  :[  Maybe tomorrow!

I emailed two different voice lesson people.  Not that I can afford voice lessons, but I can inquire,  and perhaps afford it later.

I want that nifty set of pretty colored sharpies.  I could do neat things with it.

Firstly, I want to thank Lois Lane for the comment, and to say that I’m really not like, depressed, just mostly bored. I’d be totally fine if I wasn’t worried about having money. That’s the only downside of my situation really, is that I don’t have a steady income. But I’ve been thinking of things and ways to get some. And also, I totally went to OddTodd’s site a few weeks ago when you linked it on your blog, Lois!! Thanks for that, I love his animations, and his dog Roscoe is awesome!

Secondly, I suck. Haha, I totally didn’t clean yesterday. But it’s partially not my fault. I stayed at Rob’s office with him yesterday until around 8pm, so that we could go out to dinner with Reid. And we didn’t get home until late, and then I stayed up reading the comic V for Vendetta (cause I have a weird compulsion to read the book/comic or see the original before a movie comes out). And I didn’t set my alarm clock this morning to wake up early and do yoga or anything, because I was definitely up until after the sun came up. Playing.

Today I’ll probably take a shower, cut my hair a little, get some food, and browse the internet. I’m all sore from this morning, and I’m going to take it easy.

I had the strangest dream last night/this morning. I was in the woods, with people I knew (but no one I really know, I don’t think), and it was not 2006 at all. It was like a fantasy world, and there were weird boar-men chasing us. They had shields and carried swords and wore tabards with a red symbol on them that looks a lot like the Hoarde symbol from World of Warcraft. I kept ending up in this house. There was a cabin like house in the middle of the woods, and no matter where I ran, I kept ending up inside it, with someone I had to protect because I had better survival knowledge than them. I’d always get them out, but only to end up back in the house myself with someone else, and the boar-men outside, about to come in. The last time it happened, I was with someone who had equal survival knowledge as I did, and we both got out, and ran for the hills. Once we crested the last hill, there was a pavillion with an important man inside. There were many guards, but the important guy was at least fair and he heard our story. Then I don’t know what happened, but the situation changed entirely. I was in my grandmother’s brownstone in brooklyn, only it was and it wasn’t. A bunch of people were there, and the guy (a big bald black guy) who I survived the house in the woods with was there. It looked like a party, but if you paid close attention, you could see it was more like a rebel gathering that was supposed to be secret, but the ambassador of the bad guys was present, sitting in the center of us all, acting as if nothing were amiss. Everyone was dressed like we were in a Final Fantasy game. The ambassador said something about not being able to understand our language, and asked us if we spoke Broadway. One guy we were with was previously an actor on broadway, so he started quoting some play. The ambassador interrupted him and began singing “Cain’t say no” from Oklahoma! No one else but me knew the song, so I got up and started singing it to appease him, and hope for a way out of the mess. But I got caught up in the song, and ended up doing a full cabaret-style preformance of it, ending with me swinging from something in the ceiling. I remember trying to get someone’s attention (romantically) while singing, but at the end I wasn’t sure I did. And when I went to go look for him, I ended up in a corner by a doorway that was covered with a sheer fabric, and I saw the shadows of Gene and Eileen, and they were professing their love for one another. I got all sad, and realized that this might look like my grandmother’s brownstone, but it was really Eileen’s place, and I realized I’d made a fool of myself with the cabaret-show and had to leave immediately. The dream ended with a sequence of me going upstairs, and trying to shove all of my belongings into two bags, and recruiting the bald black guy from earlier, he realized something was going wrong and wanted to leave too. I couldn’t find one of my boots, and I wasn’t going to leave with one shoe. It gets fuzzy around here, but I remember that I knew I didn’t know how to get to the subway stop from there, but once I did, I’d be able to go home. Then I remember something about Eileen coming up and asking where I was going. I don’t know if I answered her, and I don’t remember anything else.

As I was writing that, I can see a lot of what things *could* mean, but I’ve always been skeptical of dream interpretation. In science class they always told us that dreams were just brain-reboots. . .freeing up our ram and pulling up random images from our pasts or imaginations in the process.

I’ve decided that I want to write more often. I used to write in my livejournal every day. That pretty much stopped at some point in the last two and a half years, and it’s something I sort of miss doing, and definitely miss when I’m trying to look up exactly when something occurred in my life.

This should prove interesting though, because the reason I don’t write often is that I don’t typically think I have anything worth writing about. Which is of course, not true. I have thoughts every day that I think, fleetingly, “wow I should write this down,” or “I should write about this in my blog,” but I never do. So I think that if I make myself write every day, or at least every other day, I’ll get back into the habit of writing things down, and I’ll actually have things to write about. Also it might help regulate my day, since right now, the only thing that I’ve got to do is wake up, check my email and other blogs I read at some point, eat at some point, look for jobs at some point (but usually after noon, and typically after 5pm, cause that’s when almost everyone posts.), and keep myself occupied until I’m tired.

Which is why my sleep schedule is rolling over again. I woke up around 3pm today and only because Rob woke me up. I went to sleep last night/this morning around 7am. So tomorrow I’m going to set my alarm clock. Tonight when I get home I’m going to clean the room so that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow when I wake up I’ll do some yoga on a nice freshly vaccuumed floor. Or some situps.

So I have this weird urge to buy land. It’s really strange, mostly because I haven’t got a job, or any money saved up at all, so there’s really no possible way that I *could* buy land. But I want like, a cabin, or a house, out in the country somewhere. Maybe it’s forced hermit-ism coming on as a reaction to my roomate and his stupid girlfriend. I don’t know. But I want to buy some land in the middle of nowhere, and have a house on it, and go and live there for awhile. Eat food that I have to cook because there ARE no places to order from. Ebay’s got some houses for sale in Buffalo, NY for between $4-5k, but I’m not looking to buy one. Everything else in NY, even upstate NY where I used to live and go to school, out in the middle of nowhere, is WAY way way way out of any feasible dream I could have of owning. Besides the fact that I’ve got no job and no savings, I also have bad credit from when I couldn’t get a job and pay off my credit cards when I went to college. . . At least I don’t have any stupid high interest cards now. I’m pretty much just waiting until the ones I’ve paid off fall off of my credit report. One of the worst ones should come off in a year or two.

But yeah, I want land. Or property. A house. Someplace where I belong and where I don’t have to put up with someone forcing a person in my life all the freaking time when I don’t want them there.

Ok. Lemme see, where to start. First off, I haven’t yet heard back from the job I interviewed for a week ago. I was polite, and waited a week before sending an inquiring email asking if they’d come to a decision. No response as of yet.

I have finished the golden tunic!! Well. Sort of. It’s all pieced together, with one exception. The neck band was done in this wonky stitch that ends up looking really thick and stupid in my yarn substitute (even though the rest of the sweater looks fine.) So I’ve left it off. Unfortunately for me, I have no hips. And as this is a longish sweater, it’s a bit big down below. So no pictures as of yet. I’m giving the tunic to Wyn when I next see her (it was supposed to be a surprise, but you started asking about it Wyn, so here it is, I’m giving you the tunic, unless you prove too. . .voluptuous for it.), and I’ll take pictures of it then. I’m pretty happy with my first sweater attempt, it doesn’t look like something that a 5 year old made. Attaching the sleeves proved to be a challenge, and while they’re not totally perfect, they look good and I’ll let them be.

So I’ve begun a new sweater! A cardigan this time, I think I linked it before, it’s Sonnet from Knitty.com. This one I know won’t be for me, most likely, I want to give it to Rob’s mom, cause she’s always giving me nice things. The cardigan has presented a new challenge though. . .finding the perfect buttons! You have no idea how hard it is to find nice buttons on the internet, what with web design buttons, and the whole punk rock button (badge. . .the round things with pictures on them and a pin in the back. . .) thing, and what not. It took me awhile, but I found some good button stores on the web. I think I’m going to end up looking around fabric and craft stores ultimately (and Wyn, I remember you said something about an awesome bead/button store in Queens was it? We should go there.) just because WYSIWYG doesn’t always apply to internet orders, and it’s hard enough picking out a button that matches the stitch pattern and color and overall design of the sweater, and Rob’s mom’s personality. . .*sigh* you couldn’t tell, but it’s all of this thinking that makes knitting things enjoyable for me. It’s like getting xmas gifts whenever you want, and showing people how much you care about them by showing them that you observe their likes well.

And I’ve got my eye on a few patterns in the last two Interweave knits magazines I got. Rob commented about how I’m flying at making things now. I told him it’s kind of to be expected, I don’t have anything to do all day but check my email and look for jobs. . .I like to keep busy so I pop on a movie and knit. Go through a lot of movies that way.

I’d been avoiding my project website. I was stuck on laying out the page with CSS because I’m stubborn, and wanted the entire thing done with CSS and not using tables. Well this week I jumped back on it, and while it’s not done yet, I figured some stuff out and even managed to ask Rob for some help with things I couldn’t figure out, and got a really, really basic layout done. This week I might actually start putting content into it and trying it out. We’ll see. In the end, I learned that making containers for your elements in CSS is your friend, and if you want something to be side by side, use positioning. (position: absolute; or relative;). I also learned that if you want to layer stuff using z-indexing, that element HAS to be positioned. Rob said he was proud of me, doing it all by hand. :]

I also updated my myspace profile this week. It was all black and gray and goth looking, so I brightened it up a little bit. So that got me looking for more people I haven’t spoken to in years. It’s funny how many of the people I knew in hs are now in Brooklyn or Manhattan. I guess it’s logical, because that’s where the “good” jobs are. But it makes me laugh to see people staying the same, following the flowing trends that change slightly with your age.

I’ve been having really crafty ideas for making things. Inspiration popped up out of unexpected places, and I have ideas for things to make, but I doubt I’ll actually get off my ass and make them. Knitting is my one exception. I think that my crafty progress is hindered by the fact that I do most of my crafting in my room, which I hardly ever go in, mostly because it’s freezing in there in the winter despite the single baseboard heater, but also partially because I get lonely in there. I’ve become used to having Rob around all the time. :/ Some things on my crafty to-make list are:

• A life sized statue
• A picture frame wrist cuff possibly out of duct tape or recycled magazine pages
• A figurine of me
• A yarn tote bag like this one
• A hobo pocketbook bag
• Random things with bits of fabric
• Knitted wrist cuffs

And one last thing before I go to sleep. I want to find a singing group or something. I really miss singing, too much. It’s like there’s a huge hole in my life that music used to fill, and I don’t always notice it, but when I do, it sucks so bad.