After all, it's hard work trying to find those 23 hours in a day to sleep. However, get the yarn out, and he starts to look more like this:
It's REALLY useful when you're working on a bi-color illusion scarf and trying to keep two balls of yarn from tangling, let me tell you! (Which, btw, I still have not found another ball of the red. Apparently it's a discontinued color. I'm thinking I'm going to have to go with an online order and pay for shipping. Sigh.)Since I can't finish the scarf, I've been working on the blanket. I finished the next stripe repeat and put it on some scrap yarn to measure it. The second I got it shaped out on the floor, I watched Teddie walk quite deliberately to the center of it and plop down, then glare at me:
So hard to find good help these days. Anyway, after two repeats (each repeat adds six inches outwards from the center), the blanket is 26"x26". That would be 6+6+2+6+6 (the 2 is the width of the center square). One more repeat (6+6+6+2+6+6+6, or, realizing it's a SQUARE and therefore the distance across the middle is exactly the same as the length of a side - that's a little trick I like to call "that math stuff.") should make it about 38"x38", which I think will be a good size.
Anyway, I'm working on that, job hunting (hopefully I will hear back from last week's interview soon, because I'm not sure I have a contact number), trying to do homework and failing (the videos he had us copy don't play w/o the cd as far as I can tell, and the urls for the software he wants us to use don't work), and getting mildly addicted to Penn & Teller's Bullshit tv show. The premise is "you can't bullshit a bullshitter" and the topics they've covered on the episodes I've seen so far have been a little surprising but really interesting (everything from cryptozoology to environmental issues to aliens to free speech to mediums to animal rights. Really!) It's definitely not for the conservative viewer ("You'll notice more obscenity than we usually use. That's not just because it's on Showtime and we want to get some attention. It's also a legal matter. If one calls people liars and quacks, one can be sued and lose a lot of one's money. But "mother f%^&$#s" and "a#%@#s" is pretty safe. If we said it was all scams, we could also be in trouble. But "bullshit", oddly, is safe." - Penn Jillette...there's also occasional nudity, although what I've seen has been pretty tasteful and just, well, the human body looking like human bodies do - an episode on breast enlargements was hysterical!) Of course, it's all done in the sarcastic style of Penn & Teller, and seems to be fairly well-researched, even if I don't always necessarily agree with their views (self-proclaimed atheists). There's even been a few times that I've thought "Wow, that was unexpectedly sensitive," such as "You can't heal a broken heart by pretending it's not broken" near the end of their first episode on mediums or, "the time to treat people right is when they're alive. A ham sandwich, a soda, a joke now mean more to your loved ones than a $10,000 coffin after they're dead. Which brings to mind one more thing - if you're still lucky enough to be able to do it, call your mother" after one about funeral homes (my mother would not appreciate a call right now, as it's about 3:00a there). There's even occasional magic tricks being done in the background. So it's been pretty interesting.
Two classes last night (instructor class seems to have been moved pretty much to Wednesdays now), and Sir taught us how to do butterfly kicks! Mine are pretty sloppy and weak right now, but I still feel just a little cooler now =) Just haganah tonight, and I have a feeling after a post-class good-natured rant last night, we'll be doing a lot of pushups. The way I used to do pushups, with my arms out to the sides, while technically correct, put a lot of strain on my elbows and is what made pushups hurt so much. Mr. R won't let me do them that way anymore (he hasn't for a while, actually, he just felt the need to remind me last night). He has me do them slightly differently, with my elbows much closer to my sides, which is actually MORE correct form-wise. The good part - they don't hurt my elbows. At all. The bad part - a TOTALLY different muscle group is getting worked, so it's very much about learning how to do pushups all over again and having to completely rebuild that muscle strength and endurance. It's very slow going and slightly frustrating - I was the last person to finish the pushup drill last night, and I'm the "scary strong" one in class - but I guess at least I know I'm doing them right and, more importantly, I'm doing them in a way that will allow me to continue doing them and not tear up my ligaments more, which will probably save my butt not only in class, but in Basic as well. Darn instructors, helping me out like that!
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