The day after thanksgiving we were all called in to a meeting with the vice-president of entertainment. We weren't quite sure what the meeting was about, since not quite a year ago they told us that they were going to cut all the salaried employees 10% and all the hourly employees hours by between 5 and 8. Most of the theatre employees only got our hours cut by 5; one hour a day. That was all they could spare us. One hour less a day to do the same amount of work, and in some cases more, as they also cut our part time employees except in very extreme situations. One hour a day less adds up to several hundred dollars a month. I was okay. I had just paid off my car, and I had roommates. I cut down on my frivolous spending. I knit more and went out less. It wasn't too hard, but there were other people in my department and others that had mortgages. Others that had medical expenses. That had to get second jobs just to get by. (I don't really feel sorry for the ones who simply refused to learn how to cut back on their electronics or shoe budget or whatever, but there were those who were really desperate and struggling).

We had three expectations as to what the meeting was going to be about: one, they were going to give us our hours back. Unlikely. Two, they were going to cut us even more, or worse, close the show entirely. Also unlikely, we're a pretty big money maker, even food and beverage services suffer when there's no show going on. Three, they were simply going to pat us on the back and say, 'Yay you, tonight is your 2000th show, well done.' In which case, one of the girls in the department said she would have rather gotten a Hallmark card. There was a bit of bitterness going on.

Today, the day after thanksgiving, they announced that we are getting our hours back come the first of the year. Happy Holidays. Now, it's not all of what we got cut, there were many other meetings where bad news was brought to bear, but it is a start. It is a huge relief. One of my friends was literally dancing, and is already making plans to go out in mid January after we get that first paycheck, because she'll be able to afford to be social again. She'll be able to afford to bring her student loans out of forbearance.

Maybe things are staring to look up after all. I hope they are for you too.

Happy Holidays.

So, in case you don't know, I'm fat. I'm actually what you call 'morbidly obese'. Have been for a long time now. I'm currently seeing a doctor for this and not for the first time. She has suggested surgery. I'm not sure how I feel about that, as I'm not really sure that's actually the problem. I over-eat, sure. I eat the wrong things, definitely. But I'm not the sort of fat girl that usually eats things because they taste good, or because they make me feel good. I eat because my body says it is hungry, and I eat emotionally.

Food doesn't make me feel good. I listen to my friends talking about how good they feel after a big meal, and all I feel is nauseous. People say you shouldn't go to the grocery store when you're hungry because then you buy a bunch of snack food, I shouldn't go to the grocery store when I'm hungry because then I come out with nothing but bagels and orange juice because nothing looks good to me. I drive by fast food places, and they smell good, but I know that they won't taste as good as they smell, so I keep driving. I've had the discussion of the question 'which sense would you rather lose if you had to pick one?' Easy. Taste. It's the least useful to me. I read a book once when I was a kid that had one single mention of a character surviving in space on protein and vitamin pills and clearly this has stuck with me, because I really think I would be okay with that as long as my stomach didn't get all growly at me.

Let's back up. Not only am I morbidly obese, I've gained over fifty pounds this past year. Last summer, just before I switched my job, I joined Weight Watchers. Yes, I lost about ten pounds in the first few weeks, but after that I yo-yo'd and ultimately gained more than I lost. The really frustrating thing was that the weeks I thought I was doing really well were the weeks that I inevitably had gained four pounds. Around the time the Holidays came around, I got too busy to sacrifice my weekends, and I gave up. It cost too much and wasn't doing anything anyway. Meanwhile, all summer our entire department day shift had been doing a 15-minute mini abs class in the middle of our work day. It was great. Our manager even joined in. I was convinced, however, that I was actually getting weaker and fatter because after months I hardly do more than I had at the beginning, and sometimes even less. We stopped that after someone had messed up their shoulder doing something else. So in January I got a membership to the gym and started going three or four times a week after work with one of the other girls, the girl that was leading the abs class, actually. I continued to go faithfully even after she got a second job that prevented her from going with me every day. I got fatter. I worked out for hours and hours every week; cardio, weights, machines.... I steadily gained about two pounds a week for five months, far past the point everyone told me I should reach the peak and start dropping weight. I got frustrated. I kept going, I kept gaining. I went on vacation, I.... haven't been going as regularly the past couple of months.

I have not had a lot of success with doctors. The last time I mysteriously gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time was when I was in high school, and when I went to the doctors, most of what they told me was what was wrong with me because of sudden weight gain. That was not very helpful, and I looked like a junkie from all the blood tests I'd had done over the course of that month or so. I hope this time is better. I've only had the one visit with the general practitioner thus far.

I don't feel good. I'm exhausted all the time. Right now I'm so tired that I may burst into tears at any second. I keep having these particular headaches. At this moment I'm hungry, but the thought of food makes my stomach turn. I haven't even started on how offensive I find people's attitude towards fat people...

So I enjoy making things useful far past its primary function. More than the current trend for repurposing, I've been doing this since I was a child and turning my furniture upside-down and sideways to make habitats for my dolls and action figures that I liked just as well as any commercial bought dollhouse, if not more. I just like seeing how I can use things. It's sort of a mental game I play. It helps that I work in theatre, a field where it is encouraged and sometimes downright necessary to improvise wildly when the perfect object is unobtainable. So many props are made from gluing bottle caps on things, it's amazing. If I worked in any other field, it would be props, just because I enjoy that part of it so much.

Anyway, I was tired and irritated by the fact that my yarn kept falling out of my lap and rolling away and getting dirty on the floor, and I had neither the money nor the inclination to buy one of those fancy-schmancy 'yarn-tainers', so I made my own. Now, don't get me wrong, I have since then received one of the fancy ones as a gift, and it's great; it's clear and it has a very nice, smooth lid and a handle, but there is one problem that makes me like mine sort of better. The fancy ones have a very nice, smooth edged hole in the top of the lid with a little rubbery pad around the inside so that your yarn won't snag or get all roughed up, which is again, great, but once you've put your yarn in your jar, and poked the yarn through the hole and cast on your project, you're stuck using that one container until either you're done, or you break your yarn. This might encourage some people to finish their projects faster, but I'm not one to succumb to peer-pressure from inanimate objects.

So I made my own.




It's one of those cardboard tube style containers for chow-mein noodles that I like to put on salad. The plastic lid is thin enough to punch a hole in, (I used the large-size hole punch at work), and then cut a slit from the edge to the hole, and voila, you can change your projects at will. The diameter of this one fits a 100g center-pull cake of sock-weight very comfortably. I've also heard that oatmeal containers work very well. And you can decorate the outside, if you wish!

What other notions can be made with house-hold stuff? I'm curious to what you all think...


Also, go check out the podcast at Here's to Ewe!


(X-posted at 20sknitters

So I've been doing a lot of experimenting with dyeing yarns recently, and I thought I'd share what I've learned so far. To start with, I'd heard that you can dye yarn with unsweetened Kool-aid, so I looked around on line, and lo and behold, I found a tutorial over on Knitty which gives a fantastic overview on the process here. I didn't get my hands on nearly as many different flavors as the author of that site did, much to my chagrin.

( So, step by step, here's how I did what I've been discovering: )
I hope you've gotten some ideas here. Also go and listen to the podcast where I talk about dyeing things with Kool-aid at Here's to Ewe

So I haven't done one of these in a long time, like, as in, over a year. Wow. So, without further ado, here's what I've been knitting. Or at least some of it.

Beware, pictures are big in the huge way.

( Ooohhh.... stitchy goodness... )

Hope you enjoyed that. If you want to find me on Ravelry, I'm here.

And to finish, a request: I seem to have a serious dearth of knitting and yarn related icons. Would anyone like to make me one? Pretty please? I promise not to be greedy...

So I listen to a lot of podcasts at work, and recently I've been listening to knitting podcasts like Sticks and String by David Riedy and Cast on with Brenda Dayne And most recently Brass Needles by Miss Kalendar, and I'm exited to announce that two of my friends and co-workers have just started their own podcast, Here's to Ewe about the TKGA Master knitter program, which one is doing and the CYCA teaching certification program which the other is attempting. There's also a lot of other stuff, as we are theatre geeks who live in Vegas, so there's stuff about that too.

You can find their podcast, and please please go and check them out Here. That's herestoewe (at) wordpress (dot) com.

Check out the other podcasts too, they're really interesting and educational.

I taught a little girl to knit a couple days ago. Actually it was a couple weeks ago, as the gloves I was working on the palm of the first one are now both complete and added to my Ravelry project page. But. I taught a little girl to knit while we were sitting at the tire store waiting for our cars. She wasn't driving, of course, she was eight, but I have no idea why exactly her entire family was there, but it was close to closing time, as I'd hurried there straight after I'd filled my tire at work with fix-a-flat.

Anyway, her whole family of about six were there, all waiting for their car to get fixed, and she was the youngest. I, like I had the last time(s) I was there, hopped up on one of the high chairs at the table and got out my stuff and started knitting. A while later one of the others asked what I was doing in a tone that implied that they'd wanted to ask for at least the last half hour I'd been there. I showed them the picture, and the little girl, who'd previously been darting in and out of the waiting room asking for quarters for the candy machine stated that she'd always wanted to learn to knit, and her mother asked promptly if I was crocheting. 'No,' I replied, 'it's knitting. She's right.'

I then, of course, offered to teach the little girl, whose name I learned was Bianca and that she was eight, and I fished out some acrylic I had in my bag for a baby toy and a pair of size 9 needles and showed her how. She took to it much easier than I remember doing myself when my grandmother tried to teach me when I was about her age, and when they had to leave, I told her mother what to get and where to find relatively cheap supplies and simple kids' kits so that she could continue. I really hope she does. She was doing pretty good for her first time and being all hopped up on Runts.

So my computer is messed up. The new one. The pretty, shiny red one. Luckily I can still make the old one work, so that's what I'm doing.

Anyone have any computer fixing ideas that don't involve taking it apart?

Well, this is it. The end of an era. My second decade done with. The last day of my twenties. The last three hours, actually. If you count that, since I'm on the west coast now, and I was born in the eastern time zone. Or unless you count that I was born somewhere around dawn. Still, when I wake up tomorrow, I will be thirty. If you say I don't look it, I will tell you to tell it to my grey streak, which my hairdresser refuses to dye. Men.

I remember when I was a teenager watching the Olympics and thinking that I'd done nothing with my life because kids my age and younger were winning gold medals. Now they're half my age. Before my twenty-fifth birthday I had a bit of a crisis; I panicked and thought that i ought to dye my hair back to a normal color, take out my nose ring, start a 401-k and a fad diet and join a dating service and get a minivan. So instead, I went out drinking with the girls and everything was better.

People tell me now, when I say I feel like I haven't done anything with my life that I have; I've gone to college, I've worked at two of the top five Shakespeare festivals in the country on opposite sides of the continent, I've moved to Las Vegas with $350 in my bank account and managed to made it work. I've met wonderful, talented, creative people, and I've learned how small the world is, especially in the field I work in. I remember where I was when Princess Di died and the Challenger exploded, and the Berlin Wall fell, and of course 9/11. I've rung in the new year in front of Big Ben, and the Las Vegas strip, and by banging pots together on my front porch in Ohio.

I've heard that thirty is supposed to be the new twenty-one, but I don't want it to be. Twenty-one sucked, I'm hoping thirty is going to be somewhat better. I had a friend tell me that once you hit thirty, you're just glad you made it through all the dumb stuff you did in your twenties. Maybe my problem is that I didn't do enough truly stupid crap to get to the gratitude yet. Right now it's still traumatic, and I feel like I haven't done much with myself. I want to do something important to someone, hopefully a lot of people. I want to create something unique. I want to make my own rules and not have to worry about someone telling me I can't, especially myself.

For those of you who don't watch Dancing With the Stars, (I usually don't either), here's a clip of last night's show... featuring performers from MY show! Yay! They looked fantastic out there. I'm so proud.





Also, check out those dresses, those things took a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of cursing, but they're beautiful, damnit.

Oh, oh Battlestar... oh ho you rip my guts out and tromple over them over and over. Oh, how I love you and hate you. Oh, how I'm going to frakking miss you.



Oh, oh, my poor, poor Lee...

Item one: I have five days of paid vacation time I need to use by April 3rd. Any suggestions on what I should do? No trips to Hawaii or cruises, I'm on a budget.

Observation: Jojo, the Mayor's son in Horton Hears a Who! should totally have been voiced by Gerard Way 'cause he looks way more like the character than Jesse McCartney does:




See?

I, unlike some people, do not generally post my reactions to one episode or another of some TV show, or write insightful book reviews and such, but I do have to share one thing.

Tonight's Battlestar Galactica?

Made. Of. Awesome.


Oh, my pilots. Oh, stupid people. Oh, my pilots, how I love you.

I am still pimping my friends' entry in the Flight of the Conchords fanvid Lipdub contest! They're really funny! Go here to watch, or to the Official site

Or just watch it here...




Also, if you have a youtube account, it'd be much appreciated if you could rate and/or comment. Thanks for helping them win!

Happy National Pie Day y'all.

Go make pie!

Or watch a silly toon about pie...

I know there are lots of you.

A couple of my friends here in Vegas have made a video to enter the contest to somehow be part of the new season's opening sequence. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but apparently winning involves people going to watch your video. So go watch it! They're pretty funny guys.



Or go here. Or here for the full contest site.

Fuuuuuuuuck...



That's some messed up shit. Dayum. I want more now please. Stupid having to wait for the next episode.

Because I've decided that I need to post more often, I give you...

Links!

-Boomsine! Fun, addicting game.

-Etymology: The quiz

-On that note, for those of you who haven't heard of this one: Free rice! Now with more subjects to choose from. Each right answer donates rice to end world hunger.

-Geeky cakes decorated to celebrate the nerd in us all!

-Violent Acres does a post titled Human nature makes people assholes, not the internet. There's a lot of truth in that.

-Finally, the ebay auction that reminded me that I like doing props as much as costumes. Yeah, it's BSG. I had to put something in this about it, I haven't seen the new episode yet. :D

So this morning as I was driving to work, I saw what I thought was a brown mass of vegetable matter rolling down the side of the road under the I-15 overpass like a tumbleweed... until I got closer and realized that it wasn't plant matter, it was a ratty brown toupee... And I thought... Only in Vegas

I hate new year's eve in the same way that I hate valentine's day and my birthday. It's just another day people, get over it.

And I hate new year's day is a very specific way that I think might be largely a result of living in Las Vegas, which is similar to the way I'm generally annoyed with living in Las Vegas, and that is that people come here from all over the world and assume that in this city, the rules no longer apply and they actually can do whatever the hell they want with no consequences. It's a holiday, not an excuse to be idiotic.

I'd rather be working a double shift at the movie theatre.