I always mean to do Music Monday posts a la Twitter trends. I just never get around to it. Today, though, I broadcast live, one-handed, from Biotest, where I want to set multiple people on fire.

Seriously.

Fire.

Remember Mr. OSHA Violation? The guy who got the job instead of me? He was sticking the guy sitting next to me and reached over and started hitting keys on my netbook. If I didn't have a big fucking needle in my arm, I would have slapped him across the face. Who the hell does that? I know that sometimes friends mess with each other like that, but OSHA Violation and I have never had a conversation. He's never stuck me (I told my regular phlebs that I will not let him stick me, and they understand). And then he messes with my computer like we're buddies? What the fuck is that?

Maybe I'm overreacting. I'm kind of bitter that they hired more people (who are, obviously, not me), but at the same time I don't want to work there, because Mary tells me horror stories all the time. And their management is pretty much retarded. They have no idea what's going on in their building -- for fuck's sake, OSHA requires them to cover finger sticks with band-aids and they didn't buy band-aids for almost two months.

AUGH. End rant. Music time. These are five songs I've been listening to a lot lately. I downloaded a lot of Neko Case this weekend and I think I've listened to This Tornado Loves You a hundred times since Friday.

Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You
[Download] ( Lyrics )

Camera Obscure - French Navy
[Download] ( Lyrics )

Dirty Projectors - No Intention
[Download] ( Lyrics )

Passion Pit - Sleepyhead
[Download] ( Lyrics )

Neko Case - Hold On, Hold On
[Download] ( Lyrics )

Remember how I was planning to move to New Zealand in July?

Yeah, I am way too poor for that. I still want to leave Iowa City, and I liked what little I saw of Oklahoma City over Christmas, so now I'm planning on going back to Oklahoma with clemsblueruins in July. I don't have to have $5000 in the bank just to go there, and the rent is hella cheaper. Plus, they have a ton of libraries and blood banks/plasma centers -- even if I don't get hired there, Oklahoma City's Craigslist has three times as many job postings as Iowa city does.

I've been apartment hunting all day, in between watching all of Kill Bill (can we say overrated, much?). I opened up at least fifty tabs over the course of four hours, and I can't even remember half of them, now. So this is another link dump post.

( Apartments! )

I'll add more throughout the week. I'm going to start calling them, now that I have minutes on my phone again. Hopefully I can get one by the end of the month, and I won't have to worry about money things until we leave. I'll be getting a Uhaul trailer to hitch on clemsblueruins' dad's car for our stuff, and then get my own car when we get down there. Grown-up times, they're not so fun.

One day, I'll make a post of substance. Until then, I'll continue posting pictures of pretty things. I was going to make a picspam of Sendhil Ramamurthy last night while watching Heroes, but Google Images fails to bring good pictures of him.

So this is what I want for my birthday. It's not a "IF YOU ARE MY REAL FRIEND YOU WILL BUY THIS FOR ME" list, just a "THESE ARE PRETTY I WANT THEM" list. All I really expect for my birthday are people coming for PIE NIGHT on Wednesday.

( If I had monies... )

There are no words for how much I hate people right now. Every other patron coming in tonight is batshit fucking crazy. "I hit some guy's car in the parking lot, what should I do?" "I can't get into my car because someone parked too close, what should I do?" "How many fines do I have? What do you mean 'do I have a library card,' of course I do, can't you look it up without me giving you any information whatsoever? WELL GET A RETINA SCANNER OR SOMETHING JEEZ."

WHAT THE HELL YOU GUYS WHY ARE PEOPLE SO FUCKING STUPID

Pretty things. I am going to look at pretty things.

( I'm going to picspam Sendhil Ramamurthy so I do not kill people. )

clemsblueruins wants a blankie for her mommy and I don't want to be at work right now so it's time for another Ravelry Picture Post!

(I am still working on cable patterns for the cardigan featured in the last picture post, but I want to get other things done first so when I knit it I can focus entirely on the cardigan. #itshallbedone)

( Pretty blankets on Ravelry! )

I think the best holiday gift I received this year was the ability to fall asleep and wake up at a reasonable time. I know it'll wear off soon because it's most likely just exhaustion from the flights, but still. I'll try to make it last.

For those of us just tuning in, this week was Delia's First Vacation.
(I do not count the trip to North Carolina with my dad when I was 8 because it was with my dad, and therefore not a vacation.)

Lots of firsts: first vacation, first more-than-three-days-off-work, first plane rides, first day-spent-waiting-for-planes, first scrapbooks, first high-speed holiday knitting sprees.

And I brought the blizzards with me to Oklahoma. Epic blizzards, with record snowfall. As I Tweeted that morning: "They're closing the highways," they said in the morning, with no snow on the ground. An hour later, we couldn't see out the window.

It was pretty epic, but it did leave us stranded inside for nearly three days because no one in Oklahoma owns snow plows or shovels. But being weathered, longtime Iowa residents, clemsblueruins and I ventured out on the third day and trekked through 14-inch snow drifts to get to the strip mall/shopping center for shopping and not-bacon-filled meals.

Oh god, the bacon. We had bacon for breakfast almost every morning. So. Much. Bacon. If there is one thing clemsblueruins do it is feed their children. I have been ruined for saving food for later. I ate SO MUCH that I think my stomach has expanded and Delia-sized portions are no longer satisfying. I ate ten chicken nuggets, medium fries, and a cheeseburger at McD's last night and I was still hungry. :-O

And now, looking at my fridge full of bad milk, orange juice, apples, cheese, and bread, I feel even hungrier.

I want bacon. :(


Obligatory gift list: big squishy teddy bear, too much candy, pretty earrings that I promptly lost in the airport, a scrapbook and stickers, more candy, Oklahoma swag, Oklahoma travel guides (for the scrapbook), a Target gift card, Avon lotion sets, coloring book and crayons (I am three years old), Gameboy and Mario Bros. 3, love, more candy and bacon.

A more substantial post will come when I'm over the flight and have photos. Or maybe I'll just post all of my tweets from the holiday.

( Tweet Tweet! )

Dear FedEx Guy,

Thank you so much for delivering a box of snow to my house today.

Usually the USPS and UPS guys leave my packages in my mailbox, or in a pinch, by the front door of the house, which is shielded by a large, roofed patio.

But you are much wiser than they are.

You know that when the entire state is under a blizzard warning, the best place to leave an unsealed cardboard box is on the top floor's uncovered porch. Better yet, you know to leave the box sitting side-up, in order to accumulate the most snow inside.

That's awfully crafty of you. I am pretty impressed.

Unfortunately, the wool yarn inside isn't as impressed. It's quite wet and I fear that it may become moldy.

What do you think we should do about this, FedEx Guy? You're the smart one. I'll default to your expertise. Should I throw it out on the porch again, to cover it in even more snow? After all, we're supposed to get another 14 inches tonight, on top of the 2 that were on top of the box when I got home. Those 14 inches can't hurt it any more, right?

Let me know what you think I should do, and I'll get right on it.

I can't wait for my next delivery from you. What will it be? I have a prop wig on order that should be coming this week. Will it be a moldy mass of snow, too?

Love,
Delia

ETA: No idea how I forgot this, but I put in my letter of resignation at Coralville today.

RT @DeliaLogan Xmas shopping for moi? Joann's SALE (http://bit.ly/6TewVw) brown or natural, free shipping code: ECD334B Sale ends tomorrow night!

I know, I'm a whore for crossposting this, but the answer to "What do you want for Christmas?" is six-dollar yarn.

I think I'm going to buy some tonight anyway. I love this yarn. I've got three skeins of the brown for my cardigan (which will likely be knit on the plane to OKC, due to Other Knitting Obligations right now), but just knitting the swatch with it was amaaaaazing. Fisherman's Wool + Addi Turbos = KNITTINGASM

When I find my camera cord, I will post pictures of SEBASTIAN: The Violet Netbook and tell you a tale of my electric charge and how it fucks up all computers including library catalogs!

Yes, yes, yes, it's another Delia Is Knitting Something She'll Probably Never Finish post.

I was out with Emily (part of my straight girl harem) on Sunday and we ended up at Joann's because I needed some DPNs for my Endpaper Mitts. I saw they just got in a shipment of Lion Brand Fishermen's Wool and the second I saw it, I saw Brooklyn Tweed's Saddle Shoulder Aran Cardigan and didn't think twice. I bought three skeins and sat with ants in my pants at the write-in that night until I could go home and cast on.



Look at that GQMF, goddamn.

The pattern, of course, is impossible to find. I have some EZ books that have early versions of it -- basically, other cardigans with similar cable and aran panels -- but she knits cardigans in the round as pullovers and then steeks them to turn them cardigans. Steeking scares the living hell out of me because you are cutting your sweater in the middle and then picking up the stitches to make hems. Just looking at people's steeking projects is terrifying because if you do it wrong, you've lost all of your knitting and you have pieces of useless yarn left over. Yikes.

So I've spent the last two nights poring over aran cable patterns trying to find ones that are really simple and look sharp. I've settled on the horseshoe pattern (the twisty branching cables next to the button bands), but I'm trying to find a good replacement for the diamond pattern. I like the challenge of aran panels, but I think a lot of the cables are super bulky-looking and unflattering, which is why I was so drawn to the BT cardigan -- the cables are all one-over twists, which are much slimmer and use fewer stitches.

I haven't decided if I'm going to do this all on circs and just hold off the sections on scrap yarn once I get to the sleeve decreases, or if I'm going to do it in pieces and sew them together. The pattern calls for doing the whole thing at once (and steeeeeeking, noooo), and so the maths I've seen for cable panels are for doing it all in one piece. But I haven't decided what cables I'm going to use, and I don't even know my gauge.

( A few notes, pulled from cardigans I like. )

( Reference photos. Not dial-up friendly. )

I broke in my snow boots, trudging through slush on Clinton Street to get to House of Aromas for a NaNoWriMo write-in. That night, I had trouble finding Colleen on Facebook, and we joined a Facebook group on where sexy had been before Justin Timberlake brought it back.

At a write-in on the near-bottom floor of Stanely Hall, with a handful of undergrad community kids, we rolled around on the floor, listening to Lemon Demon and watching videos of clowns yodeling and quintuplet babies cackling.

We watched Peter Pan at one point, and I felt like a big pedohead because Jeremy Sumpters is fit.

We read and saved about half of the Natalie Dee/Toothpaste For Dinner/Married to the Sea comics in the span of a month.

It all started when we put some Mentos in a two-liter of Diet Coke and watched V for Vendetta.

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

I <3 The Fleet

Warning: this is long. Colleen demanded I put it up for the world to see, but since there was flouncing involved and I was at work without screencaps, it will be a biased report (in my favor, naturally, but I feel that it was in my favor to begin with). I have all of his comments in Gmail thanks to Facebook's email notifications, but my comments are lost in the tubes purgatory. :(

For those new to The Life And Times of Delia, I am an internet drama addict. I don't go for IRL drama so much because The Fleet is incestuous and every I know knows everyone else I know, and it becomes a big convluted game of Telephone whenever drama gets involved, so this is a rarity for me.

Today was the perfect example of Internet Drama Gone Bad. ( Brought to you by the phrase 'straw man.' Learn it, use it often, use it in inappropriate contexts! )

( The end? Are you kidding? )

( The End! For realsies! )

It was a beautiful day in the Wank Neighborhood. I haven't felt this relaxed in weeks. Good lord this post took forever to compile. Two hours. I should have a beer. ;)