Incoherent Scribblings

Pre-Birthday Silliness

Even though my birthday isn’t for 13 more days, May 9 holds a special place in my heart because according to my mother and the doctor who delivered me, that is when I was actually supposed to be born. However, in accordance with what quickly became the story of my life, I apparently overslept and as a result, didn’t make it into the world for almost two more weeks.

Of course, two weeks later when I finally did decide to make an appearance I did it in literally the most ass-backwards way. You see, I was a breech baby. My mother always jokes that I presented my best side to the world first, but I suspect I was just being cheeky.

Anyway…

This morning I received a visit from someone who, at this point, shall remain nameless. After an encounter we had last weekend, I had been waiting for (and looking forward to) this visit all week. During my discussion with He-Who-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named the subject of my birthday, which this year falls the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend and on the opening day of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, came up.

When I mentioned to He-Who-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named that my plans for my birthday included a long holiday weekend in which I planned drive to The Big City to see the long-awaited fourth installment of the Indiana Jones movies in a fancy cinemaplex, his response was that he would hate for me to be alone while celebrating these two important milestones. In that case, I told him, he was welcome to come with me and after he confirmed he would love to do just that, we made plans for… dare I call it a date?

I just hope he doesn’t mind too much when I drool over Harrison Ford/Indiana Jones for the entire two hours!

SBQ: Favorite Pastime

Today’s SBQ was suggested by Outi and is:

What is your favorite past time while stitching? Do you just enjoy silence, listen to music/audiobooks or do you “watch” TV/movies? Do you have specific favorites you listen to/watch while stitching?

Honestly speaking, I like to do all of the above while stitching. Depending on my mood, sometimes I enjoy the silence, other times I listen to my last.fm station or my music collection, and sometimes I “watch” television shows or movies. Since I don’t own a television, I only watch a few select programs like House or Heroes on my laptop so obviously they are some of my favorites to “watch” while stitching.

However, I recently discovered the joy of listening to audiobooks while stitching.

I quite enjoyed listening to Harry Potter 1 and 2 during my drive over Christmas break a few weeks ago, which made me wonder if I would like to listen to them while stitching.

After all, if one can entertain his or her brain by listening to an audiobook while performing a mechanical task like driving, wouldn’t another mechanical task (like stitching* ) work just as well? So I set up a somewhat odd corner in my living room consisting of my stitching, my chair, and what I have dubbed my “all-purpose entertainment center” (aka my laptop) and started to listening to Harry Potter 3…

… And 4.
… And 5.

* Before anyone gets up in arms, as a stitcher I know that cross stitching is a creative outlet, but the fact is inserting a needle and thread into a piece of fabric over and over again is a pretty mechanical task… I think we all know what I mean.

In Which I Bitch About Internet Speak

I will be the first to admit that even though I was an English (literature) major, my grammar is not always perfect. (I won’t even begin to discuss my spelling abilities here, but in word they are non-existent.) I don’t like being a grammar Nazi and in fact, after learning a second and third language I am pretty lenient on the grammar that I come across on the Internet because I know that a large majority of what I see is written by non-native speakers of English.

However…

The blatant bastardization of the English language that can be referred to as Internet speak has begun to bother me more and more every time that I run across it. I don’t notice it so much on the blogs that I visit, but it creeps up with ever more frequency on places like MySpace, Facebook, and the like.

I know it comes partly from the abbreviations that are semi-necessary when one uses text-messaging, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. In particular, I am aggravated by im for I’m, ur for your, the idea that vowels are no longer necessary in words, this seemingly incessant need to add z instead of s to words to create the plural, the obvious misspelling of simple words such as the, and deliberately bad grammar such as i iz.

It isn’t that I can’t understand this pidgin language, I can. In fact, I am as guilty as the rest of us and readily admit that I (over)use lol, rotfl, btw and omg (to name just a few) when chatting with friends or posting to bulletin boards.

However, the point is when I write something of substance for the entire world to see, I (mostly) follow those maddening rules of English grammar and spelling that I learned in eighth grade English class and don’t understand why everyone else can’t do the same.

It really isn’t too much to ask, iz it?!

House Call

First of all, if you haven’t figured out by some of the cryptic blog post titles here and there, I am seeing someone. As I told my mom, it is not the dude from the laundromat, but the situation is complicated and I am still trying to sort things out. I am not sure where it is going or if it will go anywhere, but he makes me laugh and for now that is enough.

Of course, all the time I am spending with him has drastically cut into my stitching time. I take my stitching with me because we keep insisting that we need to work on spending time in “companionable silence,” but for some reason when something gets unzipped, it isn’t my stitching bag!

Nevertheless, I did get some stitching time in this weekend while watching Season 1 of House M.D. As you may or may not know, when I moved to Texas I left my $10 yard sale TV in Iowa. As a result of this TV-lessness, I have been totally jonesing for Dr. House and finally decided to join Netflix so that I can watch TV shows that I missed while I was in Germany or have never seen in English and movies on my computer.

Writers strike or not, with no TV I have obviously not yet seen the current season of House, but I am thoroughly enjoying seeing all the previous episodes in order. I figure by the time I catch up on the first three seasons, Season 4 should be close to being released on DVD.

Anyway, while I was drooling over Dr. House, I worked on Outi’s replacement birthday exchange piece. Though I have no pictures to share at the moment, you can rest assured that I did not drool on the linen.

And as I usually say when I have no pictures to do the talking for me and I am running out of things to say, the exchange piece is coming along nicely, I am enjoying stitching it immensely, and I believe it is on schedule to be finished and mailed by December 1.

TTFN!

A Little Late

I know I am a little late to the Harry Potter party, but I finally saw The Order of the Phoenix last week and today I came to the top of the waiting list at my local public library for The Deathly Hallows. I will be ready to discuss both soon.