Spoonerisms: Prime Real Estate

Apparently I created the new cool place to be, just by folding up the squares blanket and draping across the back of the sofa.

Dipity was the first one to hang out there. Note how she can just drape over it. Of course, partly because he's always loved the blanket and partly because Dipity thought it was cool, Spoon had to start hanging out there, too. He even managed to steal the spot from Dipity. Just by sitting down in her personal space.

Spoon, instead of draping elegantly, mashes the hell out of the cushion. Ah, well.

Pandora's Litter Box: Feline Dental Hygiene

Note the little "here's where we put the IV" bald spot on his right leg

Spoon got his teeth cleaned today. Because it's impossible to keep one cat segregated from food and water¹ in a one-bedroom, two-cat apartment, particularly when one of the cats is Pandora, and expect to get any sleep, I boarded him at the vet the night before. Pandora had a 24-hour, Spoon-free party zone. It felt weird without him, though.

And, of course, I felt a little guilty. He doesn't really have a favorite non-wand toy that I could send with him. I decided I should make a mini-version of the squares blanket with the leftover yarn so he can take it with him when he's not at home. Or something. I'm still so burned out from finishing the big one that it's going to be some time before I can face even a small one.

Pandora sheds on Spoon's blankie while he's gone

I picked him up this evening. As part of the discharge instructions, the assistant told me to keep his activity level low for the next day. "I'm not sure it can get any lower than it already normally is." He was actually pretty excited on the drive back, when normally he'll just lay in the carrier as long as I keep the lid open. He really wanted to get out. He wanted some love, dammit!

For a cat who was supposedly going to have a sore mouth, he sure is talking up a storm, demanding lots of attention. Pandora was less-than-thrilled to have him back. He's a little lethargic right now, even for him, but he seems to be doing fine.

---

¹For those who've never had dental work done on their pets, the animals must be anaesthetized during the procedure to keep them comfortable and pliable.

Pandora's Litter Box: Typical Male

• Remote control: check
• Beer: check
• Sprawled out on couch: check
• Snuggling with favorite blankie: check

Knittin' Crap: The Neverending Blanket Is Done!

After two years of working on I'm-not-going-to-count-how-many squares, having to buy more Tahki Cotton Classic, made more difficult because I didn't write the color numbers down and they only make the yarn in almost 130 colors, and getting all kinds of help from Spoon, it is finally done. The infamous Squares Blanket.

Finishing a long-overdue project is a little like coming home after a really long road trip. The last few miles seem the longest.

I went on a "finish-this-now-or-die" spree last week. I finally seemed to have enough squares to finish to the size I wanted and the blanket was about 75% assembled. I ended up having to make a few squares to fill in gaps, I almost got a blister from nearly-non-stop crocheting with a cheap metal hook because I couldn't find my more comfortable Clover E hook anywhere, and I started getting, well, a little crazy. Plus working on a blanket in 90+ degree heat, I had to get in some uncomfortable positions to work on the blanket without getting covered by it. Not to mention all the feline "help."

Knittin' Crap: Mine!

And it's not even done yet.

Red Eye: The Kindness of Strangers

My mother had called me the morning of Friday the 5th to say she thought my father was probably in his last week or so and that I should come within the next few days. I went to work, applied for family leave, and made plane reservations that would put me out there Monday night.

Sunday around noon my cell phone beeped to tell me the battery was low. When I dug it out, I saw that my mother had called at 8AM that morning. Crap. I had meant to put the phone by my bed. I called her back. My father had started having extreme difficulty breathing in the middle of the night and had basically not been conscious since the previous evening. The hospice nurse gave him 6-12 hours at that point. My mother decided not to call right away because in that time frame, there was no way I could get out there in time. 12 hours later, though, he still had the same labored, steady breath.

I scrambled to find a flight. If I had actually answered the damned phone when it rang, I would have been able to get a flight that would get me there that evening. But at that point I was looking at red eye flights that would put me there first thing in the morning. The problem is that the airport there shuts down for the night. Not for the same reasons the Burbank Airport does, where it has to cut out the noise because of the residential neighborhoods surrounding it. The Podunk, Florida airport is in the middle of podunk-nowhere even by podunk-nowhere standards. The only thing the planes disturb are the mosquitoes.

I booked the flight that would get me there first, at 8:36AM. It left LAX at 11-something. I called my dear friend Steve, who was kind enough to drive me, then threw a bunch of stuff in a suitcase, then killed my back working on assembling my squares blanket while I waited.


I was in such a daze at the sirport that, although I thought it was odd that the woman at the counter stuck what I took to be a baggage claim sticker on the back of my boarding pass, I didn't really think about it. Yeah, that was no baggage claim sticker. I don't know if it was just random selection or because I booked a last-minute one-way ticket or because I had previously used the term "mail bomb" in my blog, but I had been flagged for a search at the security checkpoint.

Fortunately, I was dazed and tired enough not to care all that much.

At least I can assume that I wasn't the victim of standard racial profiling, since I'm a rather generic-looking Northern European female. Also, I've never heard of Fundamentalist Agnostic militants.

I went to the gate to sit and wait. A man was sitting next to me, asking the occasional polite question. I wasn't trying to be rude, but I was just terribly out of it. Finally, I ask where he was going. To Fort Lauderdale, after a business trip. I told him where I was going. He asked if I was visiting someone. At that point, I broke down and told him my father was dying, and I was trying to get there to see him before it was too late. The man next to me looked sadly away, then asked me if it was cancer. "Lung." He said a few kind but not cloying things and it was time to board.

When the woman scanned my ticket, it beeped "search baggage" again. "Um, they already did that at the checkpoint." She said it was normal and shooed me on my way.

The plane was a Boeing 767. It had those personal video things on the backs of the seats. We got on while they were still booting.


I had a window seat, and it turned out that no one was in the aisle seat next to me, so I managed to doze most of the way to Atlanta.

To be continued...

Metro Journal: August 25 We Have A Winner

...For Biggest Total Dumbass.

So, I had to go to the post office this morning to mail my zombie assassin. I had only figured out where the main branch in Glendale was a few months ago, after literally having passed by on a regular basis for years. I went to my regular stop and saw both a 180 or 181 and a 780 stop and then leave before I could cross the street. Crap. Oh, well. Another local came about 5-10 minutes later, and a local was actually better because it would stop closer to the post office.

When we got to the Glendale Blvd stop, over a dozen people were waiting. And, of course, one of the first to get on was this numbskull who had no idea how much the fare was and didn't have his wallet out and must have put every dollar bill he owned through the dryer 90 times. Usually if you have a pass, you can flash it at the driver and get around the machine hog, but the guy behind this machine hog also apparently needed to pay cash. And was about as clueful and prepared as the guy in front of him, and was buying a day pass, which required trying to tease even more bills into the machine.

We were there forever.

The post office was a couple of stops later. It's one of those huge, old fashioned stone buildings with metal grillwork everywhere. It also opens at 8:30, earlier than the one at my bus stop. I got there about 8:35, and.... there was no line at the window! Yay!

I like this post office.

After I left, I walked the three blocks or so to the 780 stop at Brand and Broadway. I sat down to wait. A 181 was there, and a number of people were getting on, so it was stopped for a couple of minutes. Some dumbass therefore decides to make a right turn right in front of it into a parking garage. Except that was the moment the bus put the left signal on to merge into traffic.

You may recall my earlier introduction of Bus Person Car. The only rule is that Bus Always Wins. So, just don't be a dumbass and try to make a right hand turn in front of a stopped bus, because buses generally don't stay stopped long, Bus Always Wins, and even if you don't actually get hit, I tell all my blog readers (all 3 of them) that you're a dumbass. If you do get hit, I tell the police officer who shows up to take statements from witnesses that you're a Total Dumbass, and then I tell my blog readers.

Well, this dumbass didn't get hit. But he really would have deserved it.

I had to wait a bit for the next 780. When it came, Deputy Wiegel was driving! If you've ever watched Reno 911, you too would recognize her, if not just from the face, the first time she started hollering instructions at people. This was maybe the 3rd or 4th time I'd been on her bus.

Walking down the aisle, I found myself... stepping over a golden retriever sitting only halfway under a seat. This scene seemed familiar... After I sat down, I saw the woman over the golden retriever speaking sign language into the hand of the man next to her, who also had a white walking stick in his hand. Then a woman across the aisle got closer and began speaking sign language, although why she had to get closer, I'm not sure. Anyway, long-time readers may remember this dog.

The rest of the trip was not very exciting, although, even though the stop between Central and San Fernando on Los Feliz has been moved to the corner of Central and Los Feliz because of roadwork, and even though they actually posted a sign when the roadwork started noting the stop change, all this over a week ago, there were still confused-looking people standing at the regular, closed stop as we went by. Um, the bus is supposed to, what, drive over the open trench? Stop in the middle of the only open lane while a bunch of people file over the aforementioned open trench?

In spite of all this, a relatively productive weekend and a pleasant post office experience had left me in a reasonably good mood, at least for a Monday morning. Then I got to work, and my relative cheeriness was made asunder by two co-irkers-from-hell. Ugh.


I got out of work later in the evening than usual. I was 90% sure that I had either missed the last DASH, since I got out there the time last DASH was supposed to (but never) came, which does not mean that I missed the last DASH on the schedule; just the last one that generally bothers to stop. So I walked to Western, and just as I got to Western... the northbound DASH appears in the turn lane. Oh, well.

The last stop for the northbound 207 is at the northwest corner of Western and Hollywood, which means that, to get to both the Red Line station and the stop for the eastbound buses (like mine), you have to cross both Hollywood Blvd and Western. This is, quite simply, the Intersection from Hell. It's like a nexus for dumbass drivers. They get drawn there from the far corners of the globe. Well, seriously, it's Hollywood. There are a lot of tourists. That said, I'm pretty sure most of the worst dumbasses are home-grown.

Last Friday, I had crossed Western first, and a lot of us were waiting to cross Hollywood. So, six billion people (yes, almost everyone on the planet) were waiting to cross. The light changes and there were go. Except total dumbass decides to start her left turn. And, of course, impeded by curb-to-curb pedestrians, she had to sit there blocking traffic. Dumbass. And then she parked, yes, parked her car in the bus lane. Asshole. So she could go run into the bank at that corner. Which wasn't going to close for about another two hours. Where is the goddamned tow truck when you need it? I seriously think they should allow cow-catchers on buses so they can butt assholes who stopped their cars in the bus lane. Seriously.

The northbound direction of Western has a protected left-turn lane at Hollywood. I'm not sure about southbound, but there generally isn't nearly as much traffic coming from that direction. At any rate, as we were all getting off the 207 and getting to the intersection, both directions were red for pedestrians. A 757 (those double-long accordion buses) was making a left turn, although I think the light was already mostly changed when it started. Which didn't stop the woman behind it from also turning. And, um, when a double-long bus is in front of you, you don't really have the excuse that you were already in the intersection. The light and walk sign had already changed by this point, so we start walking across Hollywood Blvd. Except, even though the southbound cars on Western have also already started entering the intersection, a major dumbass starts a left turn. He could not have even started moving when the light had turned yellow. So, he blocks the left southbound lane, because cars in the right lane were already in the intersection. And even if they had stopped to let the asshole through, um, hello, people in the intersection here! He couldn't even finish the turn and finally stop blocking traffic until the light had turned.

What a fucking asshole. He therefore wins Biggest Total Dumbass on the Planet!

Except the trip didn't get much better. The 780, when it finally came, was full-to-bursting, even once people had gotten off, and a dozen others were still waiting to get on. I couldn't deal, so I deemed it less painful to wait 15 minutes for the next one that try to get on. Almost as soon as I sat down, a 180 or 181 came. Normally, I might have waited the 15 minutes for the next 780, but I was in a "bird in the hand" mood, and this bus was well under half full. I sat down, stuck my enormous backpack in the seat next to me, and started to work on my squares blanket. (I'm almost done with the squares!) I just couldn't deal with people. I did keep an eye open to make sure the bus wasn't filling up so much that it would require a seat, but that didn't happen until we got well into Glendale. So I stuck the backpack on my lap... and a man carrying a toddler sat down. And apparently the only word the girl could say was, "Daddy!" But she made sure to say it at every pitch and volume at her command. It seems he had gotten on with his wife and slightly older daughter, so when people sitting near them at the front got off, he moved. And then at the next stop, Animal Print Woman got on. I've seen her often on the bus. She is probably nearing 50, her hair is frosted, and she is prone to wearing, yes, animal prints. And she sat next to me. But she also got off at the following stop.

After I got off the bus, I went into the post office to check my box for zombie assassins. Instead, there was only the September issue of Scientific American, which means I am now 3.5 issues behind. As I was walking toward the door, an older man standing in front of the usually-broken stamp machines called out to me, so I walked over. His English wasn't very good; most likely he was Armenian. He held out a $10 bill and pointed to one of the selection samples, I guessed to ask me if that was enough. The stamps he wanted, Liberty Forever Stamps, were $8.40 for the pack, so I nodded. He motioned for me to stay while he fed in the bill. Apparently he needed me to press the buttons - C4. Armenian does actually use a totally different alphabet, you know, and the buttons were so old it was hard for me to make them out. So I pressed the buttons, the machine spit out some stamps and some change, and the man thanked me in at least two languages. I smiled, told him he was welcome, and left. However, his wife was standing outside, and she thanked me, too.

Well, whaddya know.

Knittin' Crap: I Am So Square

I saw this pattern in the Spring 2006 issue of Interweave Crochet. I decided it looked really neat, but I didn't want to use the wool yarn shown. So I bought a bunch of different colors of Tahki Cotton Classic, which comes in 128 colors. (I only bought about 16). Since by this time the number of colors I had no longer matched the number in the pattern and my gauge would be totally different because the Cotton Classic is much heavier than the original yarn, I just decided to come up with a random list of my own colors.

Geek that I am, I made my computer do it.

I wrote a script in Perl that does the following:

• Takes the list of color names (the array @colors)
• Makes the specified number of each size (i.e. number of rows) square (the has %size_odds)
• Always makes 2-row squares two different colors
• In larger squares, increases the odds by 10% that the following row will use the same color as the row before it... I didn't want a bunch of 8-row squares in 8 different colors
• Makes sure no two squares will be exactly the same

It outputs to two files. One uses the numbers assigned to each color by its position in the array @colors (only add to the end of this list if you add colors or it will get out of whack if you need to add more) and saves that to a file in case you need to add more squares later (that's a different script which, yes, I did have to write). The other produces the human-readable output, which looks like this:

1:orange 2:berry

1:candy pink 2:lime 3:lime 4:lime 5:sky blue 6:lilac

1:berry 2:lime sherbet 3:lime sherbet 4:lime sherbet 5:royal blue 6:lime 7:lime 8:canary 9:lilac 10:sky blue 11:navy 12:coral

1:candy pink 2:berry 3:sky blue 4:tangerine 5:green 6:dk pink

1:orange 2:navy

1:taupe 2:navy 3:navy 4:lime 

What it doesn't do: you can't specify the amounts of yarn you have by color and it doesn't compute the size of the blanket or conversely how many squares to make for a particular size.

I did actually run out of the lt. yellow, mainly because of that 12-row square in the picture where rows 7-12 were lt. yellow. It's probably not the last so far, so I wrote another script to replace it with other colors. I already have some partially made blocks that called for it.

Here's the script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# blocks - make random colors for blocks for a blanket
# Karen B.

# Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
# http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

use strict;

my $namefile = "newblocks"; # Outfile - human-readable
my $savefile = "saveblocks"; # Outfile - numbers only

# Name your colors
my @colors = ( 'lime', 'sky blue', 'navy', 'candy pink', 'royal blue',
'dk pink', 'tomato', 'green', 'lilac', 'orange', 'coral',
'turquoise', 'jade', 'canary', 'lt. yellow', 'lime sherbet',
'taupe', 'tangerine', 'berry' );

# Number of rows => number of blocks in that size
my %size_odds = (
'2' => 50,
'4' => 49,
'6' => 16,
'8' => 7,
'10' => 2,
'12' => 2 );

my $cnum = $#colors + 1; # Actual number of colors

my %done;   # Hash of finished squares

foreach my $size (keys %size_odds) {
my $lim = $size_odds{$size};
while ($lim-- > 0) {
my $done;
my $out;

do {
 my %used;

 $out = '';
 my $round = 1;
 my $cur = int(rand($cnum));
 my $last = $cur;
 $done = "$cur";
 $out = "$round:$colors[$cur]";
 $used{$cur}++;
 $round++;
 if ($size == 2) {
   until ($last != $cur) {
     $cur = int(rand($cnum));
   }
   $out .= " $round:$colors[$cur]";
   $done .= ",$cur";
 } else {
   while ($round <= $size) {
     if (int(rand(3)) == 0) {
       $out .= " $round:$colors[$last]";
     } else {
       do {
         $cur = int(rand($cnum));
       } while ( $used{$cur} );
       $out .= " $round:$colors[$cur]";
       $used{$cur}++;
       $last = $cur;
     }
     $round++;
     $done .= ",$cur";
   }
  }
 } while ( exists($done{$done}) );
   $done{$done} = $out;
 }
}

open(OUT, ">$namefile");
print OUT join("\n\n", values %done); # This naturally "shuffles" the list
close(OUT);

open(COL, ">$savefile");
print COL join("\n", keys %done);
close(COL);

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.