August 8, 2011
Take 2
I had surgery on February 15 this year. Last year, I had surgery on February 20. Since the surgery was on my wrist, I wasn’t able to type until I got my cast off, which was on March 24. Once I got my cast off, I still couldn’t use my arm for a few more weeks. I was really frustrated about not being able to do anything, so I sort of quit doing everything. I did knit as soon as I could though. I started knitting in December, and I’ve really been obsessed. Since I couldn’t knit for about two months, I really have been feeling like I have to knit 24/7. Every spare moment, I’ve basically been knitting and listening to knitting podcasts.
Obviously, I’m nowhere close to my blog post goal, but I’m going to start it back up. I constantly think about posts I want to write. I just haven’t been able to decide what my first post should be. This is it. Short and sweet, just to get my back on my feet. My wrist is about 85% of what it was on February 12, 2010, and I think that’s about as good as it’s going to get at this point. It will keep loosening up over time, but I’m not sure how much more I can go. I may as well get back to what I was doing before!
January 25, 2011
Food poisoning
The title to this post is a little misleading, so don’t worry; this isn’t going to be a gross or whiny story about my being sick.
A while ago, I had the following conversation that just about blew me away:
Acquaintance (A): I don’t feel good.
ListenMaudy (LM): Maybe you should go home then.
A: No, I mean I really don’t feel good. <eyebrow raising>
LM: Okay, yeah. You can’t go home?
A: Well, my stomach is really upset.
LM: …
A: You know, I don’t feel good at all. I don’t know why; I don’t have the flu or anything.
LM: Maybe you have food poisoning.
A: I can’t have food poisoning. [said like, duh!]
LM: Are you sure?
A: No! I can’t have food poisoning. I’m a vegetarian!
ZOMG. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and I never knew I was immune to food poisoning! I wasted so much time washing my hands and watching out for e. coli contamination. If only I had known!
January 11, 2011
Oh vacuuming
We have a Roomba. It is totally awesome. We just pick up all the junk on the floor, move our socks out of reach, blockade areas the Roomba shouldn’t go, and let it rip. I hate vacuuming, and actually, before I met Muffin, my allergy specialist told me that I shouldn’t vacuum because I’m really allergic to the dust. He told me I should actually leave the house while my significant other did all the vacuuming.
Muffin is wonderful, but he doesn’t like to clean any more than I do. No one’s perfect! This makes the Roomba an excellent solution for our (lack of) housekeeping skills.
The other day, while Muffin was out of town actually, I had vacuumed half of the house to clean up all the junk that had fallen out of our vents and fixtures when the roofers were pounding around up there. Then, I ran the Roomba three times to get the rest of the house and all the leaves that have been getting tracked in. I went out to run some errands, and when I got back, the Roomba was stuck underneath a table, directly next to its docking station.
The Roomba is stupid. It can almost never seem to make it back to its home, and we can’t figure out why. This time however, the Roomba didn’t just get stuck, it managed to rip the Uverse cord out of the wall and pull the wires out of the back of the jack. The jack wasn’t really attached to the wall or anything, but the wires had been attached to the jack! That little wire was the only thing that connected our house to the internet, and since we don’t have cable, we watch Netflix pretty much exclusively. I was adrift with no internet and no TV!
Unfortunately, the jack has six pins, but the cable has eight little wires in it. WTF?! Who uses a jack with fewer slots than they have wires to put in them! AT&T apparently. Anyway, since I have an iPhone, I was able to use the internet in order to determine that no one else has ever had this problem. Great.
I decided I didn’t want to mess with it anymore since Muffin was on a plane, on his way home. Next time I talked to him, he said he didn’t care either way whether I tried to fix it. I wasn’t going to mess it up, but it didn’t need to be fixed. I decided I didn’t want to “fix” it, so I popped in a DVD my sister lent us and ignored it.
The next day, I spent a little time at work trying to figure out what the heck to do. All I could find was different configurations for Cat5 and other wires with eight pins; there was nothing about only using six pins. luckily I found a site that explained what each colored wire did in the whole setup. It turns out that two of the wires aren’t used (I can’t find the site that had the diagram of which wire does what, or else I would link to it.), so I figured that maybe I could just pretend those wires didn’t exist and connect the other six in one of the recommended configurations. I wrote down the pin assignment options and went home to try it out.
Muffin had recommended that I use tweezers to push the wires into the pins since they’re all so small, so I got out my super-sharp tweezers and went to work on the first configuration. Two minutes later, my internet was back up and running! I was so excited that I couldn’t wait to rub it in to Muffin when he opened the door a moment later. He was impressed with my mad skillz but wasn’t nearly as excited as I thought was warranted, go figure.
I was so proud of myself I had to spend the rest of the night asking Muffin if he could believe I fixed it and how totally great I was. He could believe it.
Here’s the final configuration that worked for our AT&T Uverse connection:
Six-Pin Assignment for AT&T Uverse
(Part of the reason I’m posting this is that I hope someone in the future who might have the same problem will find this page and get an easy answer. If so, and that’s you, good luck!)
December 28, 2010
Christmas!
We had a great Christmas. We all went to my parents’ house for dinner and present exchanging. When we first got there, around 3pm, I was really excited to exchange gifts and have everyone open our presents. When my sister arrived, my niece was asleep, so presents were postponed until she woke up, which was about 4:45. My excitement had waned by then, so I was a bit disappointed.
We had gotten my dad a ton of fancy meats and cheeses that were supposed to be part of our hors d’oeuvres that evening. Since we opened presents so late and so close to dinner, we didn’t get to eat any of them. Sadly, Muffin and I will be out of town next weekend, but my dad sweetly said the cheeses would all keep until the next weekend we were back in town.
I got to give everyone else the presents I had made. I forgot to take pictures of the three cowls that I made for my mom and the beer cozy I made for my sister. They were all big hits; although my mom preferred the cowls made of the cheap acrylic yarn over the fancy (and expensive) wool that I bought at the last minute. I was at a yarn shop and just loved the yarn; I thought she would love it too, but she didn’t seem too thrilled with it. I guess I should stick to the letter of the request for handmade items!
My niece got a dress, but it was too big for her. I’m not sure how much too big since she refused to try it on Christmas night. I’ve only heard the report that it is indeed too big.
My older nephew got a little bear similar to my mascot. His is a little bigger and has blue eyes. Very cute. He gave it a big hug when he opened it, but there were so many presents and so many new things, that I couldn’t expect a little stuffed bear to hold his attention for very long.
(He got the one in the back)
My youngest nephew got a crocheted carrot rattle. He seemed to like it pretty well, which was great.
December 21, 2010
Popcorn
Muffin and I go to my parents’ house every weekend for a family dinner. Most of the time, my parents send us home with a ton of leftovers, which make great lunches for me throughout the week. Last weekend, my mom had gone to a craft fair or something of that nature and had come home with two bags of kettle corn. She gave me the smaller bag, which still was a lot of kettle corn.
I know that I like kettle corn, but I haven’t had it in years. Muffin doesn’t like it and absolutely hates the smell, so I never get it when we’re at a fair or anywhere that sells it. When my mom gave me some, I was super excited, but then I got in the care and opened the bag of kettle corn. O.M.G. It was so freaking delicious. I had no idea how good kettle corn was, even though I knew that I liked it overall.
On the drive home, I ate more than half of the bag. I only stopped because I didn’t want not to have any the next day. Also, Muffin had seen how big the bag was, so I figured I didn’t want to hear about having eaten it all. I swear there must be MSG in there, or maybe crack, or maybe morphine, like in cheese! Whatever’s in there, it’s absolutely delicious.
If only I had more kettle corn!
Listen, Maudy 