Knitting, with Dogs

1/22: In case you were wondering..

My dryer is put back together now and working just fine, thanks.

Tomorrow I get to go celebrate my brother's birthday with him. After that, I get to see Dear Robert's eldest brother & nephew who flew into town tonight for a long weekend visit.

Yay family!

1/21: Wii

My sister, the Fabulous Lisa, gave me a Wii for my birthday last year.  Today I got it hooked up to the internet.

Now, when Netflix starts supporting streaming movies over the Wii, I'll be ready!

When I was doing the little exercises on the Wii Fit stuff, Jasper got really confused while I was jogging in place.  He was all "WTF??? You look like you're running, but you're NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!!!"

At least he didn't jump on me this time. :)

1/16: Rain and blah

Every January I should just rename this blog Whiny Woman, with Dogs.  I hate January.

Anyway, if you want to stock up on some patterns at Ravelry and help the relief effort for Haiti too, check this page of Ravelry patterns, or filter by "help for Haiti = yes".  This will be a relatively ephemeral link.  After February or March, in some cases, the link should be gone.

I picked up a couple of patterns, and may go back for one or two more.  Patterns are relatively cheap.

I'm sorry to say I've done nothing more constructive than play flash games all evening.  No wonder my eyes hurt.

To make up for my utter lack of content, here's a video of musk oxen.  Know where your qiviut comes from!

1/15: Shaking off the blues, I hope

I've been too glum to walk the last couple of days, but I decided that today was the day to move. 

So I walked up to JoAnn and bought some yarn to make Norwegian Totoro mittens.  (Rav link.) :)

Boy, JoAnn's is remodeling.  I hope that means they'll get more yarn in.

1/13: My problems are small, really

I whine a lot, I know, but I really have nothing to complain about.  Especially compared to those folks in Haiti.

The Yarn Harlot has put out the Knit-Signal.

Go donate to your favorite charity, for Haiti.  I'm poorer than a church mouse right now, but my home hasn't been shattered by an earthquake.  By any standard, I'm WAY better off than those poor souls there.

If you can help, please do.  Donate to the Red Cross, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, your local church's relief fund, whatever. 

Charity Navigator has a good list of trustworthy organizations too.

There but for the grace of god go we all.  Just sayin'.

1/12: Adventures in Dryer Repair

How to take an old Maytag dryer apart:

First, take off the front cover:

Remove the bulkhead:

Remove the drum and the belt:

Get that stuff out of the way and enjoy the view of the naked dryer guts:

Make a wild-ass guess as to the cause of your anomalous noise:

Left:  idler pulley, to keep the belt tension out.  The bushing it rides on has obvious wear.

Right: One of the rollers the back of the drum rides on.  You can see them in the picture just above this one, at about 5:00 and 8:00 under the big circle that marks where the drum sits.

Tomorrow I'll go down to the appliance parts store and see if they have these parts in stock.  If they do, I'll replace them, put everything back together, and hope like hell that one of them fixes the problem.

I got my car back today.  It cost much less to fix than I expected, but that was largely because the part they needed isn't available from any of their suppliers.  There are definite downsides in having a 17 year old car that wasn't that popular to begin with (Mitsubishi Expo LRV). They had to try to clean up and rebuild the old part, so no guarantees.  But she's running right now.

Every day a new adventure.  Every. Single. Day. :)

1/11: The rise of the machines

2010 is falling away from its early promise of being a good year.

The bad news:

My car doesn't start reliably.

Yesterday my washing machine leaked water all over the floor.

Tonight my DRYER suddenly started making loud rumbly noises.

I broke another piece off my broken molar.

Jeezopete.

The good news:

The car's in the shop, and didn't have to be towed.

The washing machine wasn't repeated.  I suspect maybe there was a little ice dam in the drainage hose or something.

Dryers are relatively simple machines. I've taken this dryer apart and put it back together.  I even had the drum out.  Awkward and fiddly, but not really that hard to do.

There's no good news about my tooth though, so far. :(

Every day a new adventure.

In other news, it's getting warmer and I walked 3.5 miles today. :)

Well, I'm back...

Remembering my dad

At my wedding rehearsal:

My dad, me, and my brother at the Lawrenceville hamfest.  I became a ham radio operator so I could talk with my dad on the radio.

Dad in a reflective moment at my wedding:

And even though it's a crappy lo-res PDA photo, this is one of my favorite pictures of my dad from
Christmas a few years ago.  That's my mom's picture behind him.
 

My dad died a year ago today.  I have days when I want to go all Inigo Montoya on the universe and cry, "I want my father back, you son of a bitch!" 

My dad forgot a lot of things in his last few years.  But he never forgot he loved me.

I miss you, daddy.

:rolls eyes:

Two things:

1.  I drank the Kool-Aid.  I signed up for Facebook.  /facepalm/

2.  If you're going to do something crazy on Teh Intarwebz, at least TRY not to be stupid when you do it!( (Internet dramaz = entertaining.)

Two other things:

1. I signed up for a handspun/roving swap on Ravelry.  I've dyed my roving, now I've got the spinning to do.  I need to do 8 oz. by the end of February.

2.  Thing-a-Day 2009 is starting up on 2/1.   I tried to do this last year, but was interrupted by my dad's final illness and death.  :(  I think I'll try again this year, unofficially, because I have a bit of superstitious dread about starting over again.  (As in: what if I start again and someone else dies???  I know, not logical, but that's why it's SUPERSTITIOUS dread.  Because it's NOT logical.)

I've got some ideas of what I want to do, but we'll see what happens.