Arghghakfdf I hate lace knitting.

I started on my first shawl today, the Forest Canopy Shawl.

I frogged it at least three times, before I even got to the lace repeat. THEN I was like, huh, I really should use these lifelines people keep telling me about. So I'm putting in lifelines on every odd row. Which doesn't change the fact that lifelines are a pain in the ass to pick back up when the yarn you're using is mohair, plus you're going to need to rip back again if you, I dunno, forget that the row the lifeline is on is a purl row, and start doing another purl row after it, rather than the lace pattern.

It's like, jaysus, it's just YO and sl1-k2tog-psso. This is not rocket science. How can I go so wrong? And yet consistently I end up with the wrong number of stitches in a row, usually because I forgot a YO.

I think part of the problem is the yarn I picked is wholly inappropriate. I thought I could make it work with the Berocco Smart Mohair, but no. It's too dense, even with 8s, and tinking mohair is tough. Of course the only other suitable yarn I have is:

1) Even hairier mohair (Dynasty Yarns Mongolia), and mohair is just a Bad Idea for a first lace project
2) a half a ball of cotton/corn fiber blend (Queensland Haze), which is about half as much as I need
3) Some Berocco Comfort DK I was planning to use for another project.

After my attempt with the Berocco Smart Mohair, I think trying anything worsted is right out. Maybe I need to go invest in some more of that Queensland Haze. It's great stuff.

Today, I would like to clean the house!

As I am the kind of person who can't be on my bare feet for any length of time or suffer the pain of no arch support, I went searching for a pair of shoes.

I found one of my three strap sandals.

I found one brown tennis shoe.

I found one of my two-strap sandals.

I can't seem to find a pair of any shoes suitable for wearing around the house.

.... what? I don't even have words.

ETA: I found the second tennis shoe. It was in the laundry basket. What?

Sleep study happened. Even though the tech was right there, watching my EEG and listening to my breathing and hearing me grind my teeth watching my leg muscles twitch, etc, etc, they can't tell me anything until a doctor interprets the findings. Le sigh.

The tech was awesome, though - very experienced and fascinating to talk to. She got me into the whole setup in 15 minutes, when it can sometimes take upwards of an hour to do.

I don't feel like I slept very well. It wasn't that I was terribly uncomfortable, just that the whole situation is unnatural, and you're acutely aware that you're in this strange situation and you're supposed to sleep, dammit. It puts a lot of pressure on you, and every time you start to drift off, your body's like, "Hey, I'm sleeping! Woohoo!" I felt like I spent a lot of time drifting into and out of light sleep.

The tech came in at one point to fix the connection on my right leg, and I asked what time it was: 4:45. I asked if she was getting good data, because I felt like I hadn't slept much. "Oh, you have. We've been getting good data all along."

Once that happened, I was solidly awake, and couldn't get back to sleep, so she suggested I go home, since they had what they needed. So I drove home on dark roads at 5:30am, and crashed back in bed with Matt, to get some real rest.

And now I'm awake, and trying to figure out what to do with my day. I should probably go wash the electroconductive gel out of my hair, but I enjoy looking like Bride of Frankenstein.

That sound is the sound of me hitting the floor after spending most of the day running around Lunenburg, Leominster, and Fitchburg, attempting to buy a used car - in particular, the '00 Mercury Sable I mentioned yesterday.

I found the guy's place all right, and looked at the car - though of course I have no clue what I'm looking at. From what I could see, the car is just about in fair condition - there's some damage to the leather, and some rust, and a cracked shield on the rear left turn signal. The seller told me he planned to sand down and paint one of the worst rust spots, and replace the rear left shield before selling it.

I took the car for a drive - it drove fine, although the gas pedal was softer than I was used to - and took it to Vianor in Fitchburg. Even though I had called ahead, they said when I arrived that their service technician had just started on a strut job, and thus wouldn't be available for a couple of hours. I was persistent, though, and they said they'd have one of their maintenance guys drive it around the block.

Luckily, as I was sitting in the waiting area, the service tech came out to tell the woman whose car supposedly needed new struts that, in fact, she did not need new struts, and that the mechanic who told her she did was a Lying Liar. He talked to her about what she did need - a strut mount, and not that badly - and then was free to look at the Sable, after all.

After giving it a once over, the mechanic told me, "It's a good car, if you're not buying it from [some place in Fitchburg], and you're not paying more than $1500." I told him the asking price was $1500, and he said, "Let me take a closer look and see if I can get you some bargaining room."

He came back and told me that the valve cover gaskets were leaking oil, and needed to be replaced, to the tune of $350-$400 (only because you have to remove the upper intake to get to the rear ones). He also said that the pulley for the power steering pump was broken, and needed to be replaced for about $150, or it would chew through belts. (He also took the time to write this all down for me - yet another reason why I love the folks at Vianor). He did also add that he liked those cars, because the parts were cheap, and the motor would run forever. Overall, he recommended I bargain the guy down to $1200.

So I went back, and that's basically what I did. I didn't even mention $1200; the guy selling the car did, and I basically said "sold!" He still needs to clean up those things I mentioned, and get the title (he bought it from a dealer and fixed it up), so I couldn't drive it away, but I gave him a $600 deposit, and he's going to deliver it straight to Vianor for those repairs as soon as he has the title.

(Meanwhile, while I'm doing all this, the guy at Grand Rental Station who was giving a tune-up to my snowblower called and told me that the carburetor needed to be replaced. Thankfully the carburetor for a snowblower is only like $70, and this is a snowblower we got for free, so I can't complain).

Of course, getting the $600 was a chore, because stupid me didn't realize that Orchard Street in Leominster intersects Merriam, which intersects Main Street right next to the Bank of America, and I went all the way to the ATM on the John Fitch in Fitchburg, only to realize the ATM wouldn't give me $600; I then had to backtrack to the one on Main Street (a branch office) to get a live teller to give me the money - thank goodness BoA branches are open until 5pm on Friday, because it was 4pm by this time. By the time I got back, the poor guy was sitting his car, waiting to bring his son to basketball practice.

Whew. Now I shall have a decently driveable car for my interview on Wednesday, and I won't have to choke on gas fumes whenever I drive somewhere. Yeah, it's not the greatest car ever, but it will last me until I get a more steady source of income, which is the main thing.

Today has really sucked. I brought the Tercel in to Vianor to see if they could at least patch it back together enough to pass inspection.

It's saying a lot that they had hoist it up on the lift by the frame, because the usual supports are completely rotted away.

In the words of my mechanic, "there's not a lot that isn't wrong with this vehicle." There's a big break in the exhaust right under my seat, and the flanges along the exhaust the length of it are rusted out. The struts are shot, and there are little bits of springs floating around in them (or something like that?) It burns and leaks oil. It leaks transmission fluid. It's riddled with rust. It idles rough.

He basically told me it wouldn't be ethical of him to try to piece this together, because it's Too Far Gone.

So that's a little bit more serious than what was told to me this time, so now I really do need to look for a cheapo car. And ideally fast, because I have a job interview next Wednesday in Westborough. I'm less willing to spend money this time around, though, because now I am really, honest-to-god unemployed.

I stumbled on this '00 Mercury Sable wagon on Craigslist. Now, I would not usually buy an American car, but this one has decent Consumer Reports ratings and is selling for $1500. It does have 180k miles on it, but honestly, given the fact that New England winters destroy cars faster than their parts can degrade, I'm less worried about the mileage than the number of years. It's in essence a better car than Matt is driving. I don't know what condition it's in, yet, but KBB says in fair condition it'd be worth $1500, so it seems like a good deal.

Of course, when I tried to call, it seems like the guy's phone is having Issues *headdesk*

I've been keeping myself together today by knitting. God, have I been knitting. I finished up both WIPs, the green socks and the feather & fan lace scarf. Now my hands are itching to try something new, but all the projects in my Ravelry queue seem to involve needles I don't have, or learning to cable and learning magic loop. (I have a pair of cabled mitts that call for size 3 circulars with magic loop, or DPNs. I have size 3 circulars (no DPNs) which I've never used - I learned socks on DPNs - and I have a cable needle. I just have no clue what I'm doing, and I'd rather be working on DPNs. I know v_cat swears by circulars for everything, but I'm reluctant to try).

I still have a bunch of Berocco Smart Mohair, left over from my days of buying too much yarn. Maybe I should look for something to make with that.

So I want to go to the Boston Babydolls' new show on Friday, V for Vixen, but it's at the Oberon, and I can't figure out the damn ticket pricing. There appear to be two types of tickets: dance floor tickets, at $25/each, and table tickets, at $49/each.

... are the dance floor tickets standing room only? Do I seriously have to pay $100 just for me and Matt to sit down? (Not even counting the expense of getting into Cambridge and parking there).

Can you tell I've like never been to a club in my life?

I dunno. Maybe I'd rather save my money for RiffTrax Christmas Shorts-stravaganza later this month. Especially since it has musical guest Weird Al!

ETA: So, I was right. $25 just gets you in the door. If you want a seat, you pay $49 each. The show is 3+ hours long, too, and I am Too Old to stand for that long. I definitely am gonna pass - sorry, laurion. Hope the next show is in a better venue.

Maybe I'll go to Challenging Contras on Friday instead...

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may have already seen these, but I wanted to share two vampire-related knitting patterns I've come across lately. AND I'M NOT A GOOD ENOUGH KNITTER YET TO MAKE THEM. Hmph.

Dracula's Bride, a lace shawl pattern by Goddess Knits. Someone was making this at the FPCoG Thankgsiving potluck I went to, and I fell instantly in love with the picture on the cover. No surprise there - it's black and red, my colors, with a hint of bat wings, and with a sympathetic theme :) Apparently the black is attained by overdying the edge, which, together with the fact that this is a complex shawl, and I've just started knitting lace, is more than a bit intimidating. (I actually went and bought the Forest Canopy Shawl pattern instead, as it's supposed to be the primo beginner lace shawl pattern - hopefully that can act as practice).

Tepes - just another cute hat with impaled stick figures cabled on it.

(I dug up non-Ravelry links for all you non-Ravelry people who like to knit. SEE HOW I LOVE YOU?)

Yes, Lise, you have done some crazy productive stuff today, despite not being able to crawl out of bed in time for church.

You've written 5400 words on your NaNovel.

You've gotten closer to the end of Deadhouse Gates (which is getting even more deus ex machina-y, damn. Or I guess that should be Dujek ex-machina).

You turned the heel on a sock.

You've started on your Step 5 in OLGA.

You've reread all your fanfiction and consoled yourself with your past awesomeness.

Hell, you even figured out how you could rewrite "A Savage Place," your abandoned post-manga Hellsing fic, such that it's no longer AU (set it 30 years in the future, take out Walter, make sure you mention Heinkel's injury, etc), and began working on it again.

You've read Sherlock Holmes/House crossover fic, and been cheered by the thought of Victorian-era Cuddy.

And now it's time to go to bed.

Yes, Lise, you did write some awesome fanfiction.

No, Lise, now is not the time to be re-reading it all, when you still have to write 6,661 words to win NaNoWriMo.

If you really want to, you can start writing fanfic within the context of the novel. It'll up the word count, at least.

"Failures do what is tension-relieving, while winners do what is goal-achieving."

Normally I wouldn't favor the failure/winner language, but this is to remind me that IT'S NOVEMBER 29TH AND YOU ONLY HAVE 39,000 WORDS ON NANOWRIMO. Which means I should not decide that now is a great time to, yanno, catch up on two years of Hellsing fanfic, or turn the heel on a pair of socks, or finish reading Deadhouse Gates, or enter this past week's receipts into YNAB, etc, etc.

Because apparently I can NEVER ESCAPE THE HELLSING FANDOM, and we all know what my favorite pairing is, I was looking over recent entries on the integraxalucard community, when I came across this comment on one of the recent-ish (like, from July) entries:

I was on the Wayback Machine, going over those old Red Anne Bonney Fics From Hell review archives...

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? I haven't posted to FfH since 2007. I took the site down about six months ago. I haven't written a Hellsing fic in even longer. And people are STILL looking me up?

I need a tag for, HALP THIS FANDOM DEVOURS ME.

Dammit, Hirano, you sure do like gender-ambiguous characters, don't you?

At first I thought Yoichi was female. S/he looks damn feminine here and here.

... but certainly the historical Nasu no Suketaka Yoichi was male.

... I also remembered that in the span of centuries the three main characters come from, men and women were pretty strictly separated, so Oda Nobunaga and Yoichi living together as they do probably would be exceedingly weird, even if they're in a fantasy world.

... Yes, Toyohisa makes a big deal about him/her at their introduction: As translated by MaP (who are not the best translators - clearly non-native English speakers), he says of Yoichi, "He's a man of the war between between the Genji and Heike clans!! That was some four hundred years ago! It's just too absurd a story to believe!" - so it's hard to tell if it's the fact that Yoichi comes from the 12th century, or his/her gender, that he's incredulous about.

... there's a section at the end of chapter four where Toyohisa says, "Since you said you were Nobunaga, when I saw this other man, I thought he was that famous Mori Ranmaru" (which the translation notes say was Oda's gay lover). Toyohisa also adds, "More than that, I thought he was a woman."

... the Wikipedia article on Drifters describes Yoichi as a "very effeminate man."

... all this made me do a double-take through the first four chapters, Looking for Boobs. All of the pictures are pretty ambigious - see the two I linked above. Certainly you've got nothing like my Go Tits! Integra icon above, which seemed terribly appropriate here.

I HAD resigned myself to the Yoichi is Male school of thought, thinking it sad that there wasn't going to be another awesome female character in Drifters, when I started reading chapter 5, and saw Toyohisa saying, "She's completely different from Genji's war records." Arrgh! Of course, chapter 5 is translated by INP, who are not the same translators as chapter 5.

I would be a lot more content resting in either camp if I could read the originals, dammit, and see what pronouns, or lack thereof, are being used. Japanese speech is pretty heavily gendered. But there aren't any tankoubon yet, and I don't have the last seven months of Young King Ours handy, thanks.

I wish Hiranomoe hadn't decided they weren't going to translate Drifters because other groups were doing it faster (and SHITTIER, thanks), because I'm sure they would have gotten this right. Actually, maybe they did get to chapters four or five before they quit - I'll go check.

Whatever gender Yoichi is, s/he can make Oda Nobunaga and Shimazu Toyohisa pluck the feathers off chickens. That's what really matters.

Back from a Friday Thanksgiving with my father's family in Orange County, NY. I really enjoyed seeing most of these folks again - including ones I hadn't seen since my Uncle Joe and (I guess she's now my aunt - it's just weird to call her that, since my uncle got married so late in life) Terry's wedding. Heck, my Aunt Sandy was there, and I hadn't seen her since my wedding, five years ago. I always disliked her as a kid, seeing her as sour and unhappy. Maybe she was! But she's also a lot like me; and now that she's no longer married to the guy she was married to for many years, and her kids are grown, she seems pretty cheerful. She's an avid knitter and she was offering to show me how to do cables this weekend.

( Adventures in watching Faux News with my grandmother )

Randomly, my grandmother had an April 2008 issue of National Geographic, which I read with interest. I had never really read NGM before - my exposure to it as a kid involved plundering it for pictures to use in art projects - and I was actually surprised at the high level of the journalism. I read with an interest an article about the Sahel region of Africa, from a journalist who was later arrested and illegally imprisoned in Darfur, as well as an article exploring the historical legacy and the social realities of rickshaw use in Calcutta/Kolkata. Good stuff. It probably costs an arm and a leg to subscribe to, but I made a mental note to check it out once in a while at my library.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping, and since I couldn't get up and read since the house is tiny and I would have woken someone up, I spent a lot of time laying in bed with my Samsung Rogue, trying to research things like, "What are the most commonly spoken languages in the world?" on the tiny screen. Did you know Bengali is in the top five? I did not know that. This topic came up, btw, because I had a wonderful/terrible idea to make 2010 the "year of learning languages," and devote each separate month to learning as much as I can about the most common languages in the world. It's probably not something I'll do, but I like the idea.

IN OTHER NEWS ENTIRELY: I am about 100 pages from the end of Deadhouse Gates. I like the book, and Steven Erikson in general, tremendously, but ( spoiler ) was a little unbelievable. Yes, ( More spoilers ) that seems... unlikely? I can't imagine Erikson writing himself into a corner and having to write a deus ex machina to get out of it, but it just reads that way, dammit.

Also, I still want to pat Duiker on the head. Also all the Malazan engineers in Chain of Dogs. Coltaine's whole "oops, I just demoted a man for unsurpassed bravery" moment was funneh.

Because I've been in a manga-y mood lately, and none of the stuff on my shelf is sating me (I started reading/re-reading Shaman King - can't remember how much I've read - and fuck, but the living characters are boring), and I can't sleep, I went to OneManga and started reading Drifters, Kouta Hirano's new series.

My observations, after reading the first couple of pages:

1) Holy shit, Hirano's doing a manga set in feudal Japan. This makes my inner fangirl happy. (ETA: Apparently that's only the first chapter. Then the Shimazu become looooost iiiiin spaaaaaace and tiiiiiime end up in a fantasy world. Wait, isn't this the novel I tried to write when I was 13?).

2) Hirano really only has five or six character models. (Cue the jokes from Hellsing Abridged about Luke Valentine being Integra's brother; also see the One Piece doujinshi Hirano did where Vivi managed to look like Enrico Maxwell). Shimazu Toyohisa appears to be based on the Alucard model.

3) I am getting a lot better at deciphering action scenes in manga. It is a learned skill.

4) This series is going to have as many shots of geta as Hellsing did of boots, isn't it? Does Hirano have a foot fetish?

... okay, this is actually kind of uncanny. When I said, "didn't I try to write this novel when I was 13?" I wasn't kidding. My fantasy world I developed around that time had a feudal-era Japanese diaspora. Just this last year, trying to better develop this idea from my teen years, I latched onto the figure of Akechi Mitsuhide, who was rumored to have been killed by a peasant after the Battle of Yamazaki, but in legend became a monk named Tenkai. I imagined him traveling north, to the Kuril Islands that housed the "doorway" to my fantasy world.

... and now Hirano has written a series where a whole bunch of feudal-era Japanese folks end up in a fantasy land. And one of them is Oda Nobunaga... who, historically, was forced to commit seppuku by the aforementioned Akechi Mitsuhide.

Hirano, stop writing my novel!

... alsoalso, someone needs to tell whoever's translating this series that (re: chapter four) Ham and Shem are the names of Noah's sons. And that the other two arguing dudes are Hannibal, and, uh, Scipio the Elder, I think. Great job with the Japanese history annotations, but this part needs work.

I'm on hold with the HARP program peeps because I'm sick of my stalker/mortgage broker, and I want to see if some of the stuff he's doing (like telling me I have to complete the application RIGHT NOW because the government only gives them 21 days to process an application) is kosher.

Seriously, this guy has been an abusive dick, and I'm sick of it.

This just in: the government has terrible elevator music.

_dragonwolf_ started this idea, but I'm going to use somewhat different categories than she did, because my "relationships" category would basically be "Yep, Matt and I are still married," and my "vanity" category would be "I don't put on clothes or take a shower unless I need to leave the house."

( Health )

( Work )

( Finances )

( Creative Endeavors )

Well, I read volume 9 of Hellsing, which I'd had on my shelf for a while, and since it apparently takes Dark Horse over a year to translate a shorter-than-usual volume that is almost entirely made up of action sequences and sound effects, I went in search of the Hiranomoe translations of the last few chapters.

Which I found. Dear lord, more crack! Awesome crack. And a satisfying ending, I felt, for the fangirl in me.

So now I am officially done reading the series. The end! I guess this means I could finish my once-started set-in-Whitby Hellsing epic, but it's kind of AU now, unless it takes place far in the future. Ohwellz.

One thing that is funny is that Matt somehow absorbed all the final reveals of the manga, without reading it. Probably from reading TV Tropes. So we had a conversation that went like this:

( This is spoilery, I GUESS, if you're a loser like me who's a year behind on Hellsing )

I wish I had read all this, yanno, a year ago, when the series actually finished, so I could squee about it with someone else. Now everyone has moved on. Le sigh.

How sad is it that I only just now finished Hellsing volume 8 (the volume best known for the death of Enrico Maxwell, and Alucard growing a beard?) I seem to recall all my Hellsing peeps were talking about it back in, what, 2004? I saw bits of it then, but to finally see the whole thing, translated professionally, was something else entirely.

Man, this shit is cracky - and also chock full of both literary and historical references! Actually, the whole Alucard back story is pretty awesome, and ties in well with both Dracula and the life of Vlad Tepes ... and the symbolism with the cross and the breaking of it, his death wish ("like you killed me 100 years ago, like you killed me 500 years ago"), etc, were nice touches.

You can also tell how old this volume is by the fact that Hirano's notes at the end reference the Enies Lobby arc of One Piece ("Nico Robin yelled 'I want to live!'," Hirano writes), and the end of Death Note.

Never change, Hirano.

Well, with the completion of the first-season DVDs, and "The Two Live Crew Job," I've now watched all of Leverage to date.

I am continually amazed by how awesome this show is. Have I mentioned this recently?

I also think there needs to be fic that takes place between season one and two with Taco Guy from "The 12-Step Job" as Nate's AA sponsor.

(as someone who's involved in a 12 Step program, I have to say their representation of them was pretty shoddy in that episode. But the episode involved Parker on anti-depressants, which by itself it was awesome)

(alsoalso, I think I'm the only fangirl who hates Sterling. Aren't we sick of suave villains with English accents yet?)

ETA: Alsoalsoalso, anyone else notice that one of Sterling's minions is also one of the villains in the first season of Burn Notice?