where we wuz this weekend...

god, i love this lake.
Originally uploaded by amysinger

here. right here in Milford, Pa, at the tippy top of the state.

i didn't get more than my feet in the water [it was a wedding weekend, not so much with the swimming] and just looking at this picture makes ache to be up to my neck in the lake. sigh.

the wedding [a renewal of vows, actually] was really beautiful and i loved seeing my family and getting to meet my new cousin, who is my new BFF.

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i loved reading about your weekends! you guys were busy!

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in other news:

- my teevee boyfriend got married this weekend. [p.s. that link is a bit rude -- it's to dlisted, but it's also funny]

- as I picked up Boeing to put her in the carrier to take her to the bunnyspa [vet's] for boarding, I noticed something horrible on her chest that wasn't there three days earlier. Boeing suddenly has an abscess and I got pretty angry at myself once I figured out how she got it -- a chew toy had been chewed to a shart point and she actually punctured her skin with the damned thing. she's already had a first shot of pen. g and is improving, but we'll continue to be worried about her until she's healed. if it weren't for the small hole filled with goo on her chest, you'd never know she had the thing -- knock wood, she's acting totally normally, which is good.

yup, really angry at myself. chewtoy put aside [out of bun reach] to show doc in case he needs to see it. sigh.

holy crap. i did it to myself.

so i recently went on and on about how newly made stuff breaks too soon, requiring replacement, and how we're programmed to think "must have new" any time we see something shinier than what we have. [i'm sure many of you resist this, and perhaps it doesn't affect some of you. lucky buggers.] i try to resist this horrible condition and often succeed. and sometimes not.

[this post is not going to end the way you think it is. stick with me.]

all the cool kids are getting new cameras. they take really great pictures, although we know a lot of that is the person behind the camera. so this makes me think about my cameras. i've been carrying around a Canon Powershot sd550 since I bought it for our trip to Italy a few years ago. the other camera I had was bulky and annoying. this one was light! it fit in my pocket! it takes pretty great pictures! and it's 7.1 megapixels, which is more than the other camera i had. more is better, right?

seriously. i'd just bought this super-expensive camera less than a year before the Canon. it was to be the Knitty magazine camera. but it was big and only 5 megapixels [oh, dear. less is bad, right?]. once the Canon arrived, i felt that the Lumix was already obsolete, and was angry at myself for choosing it in the first place. instead, i used the Canon for everything. that was more than 2 years ago.

this thursday, Mel and i were excavating my office, transforming it from a pile of piles into functional space -- which is another post for another day. Mel unearthed the Lumix in its rather-small, quite-nice LowePro case [smaller than I remember. hmm]. i took it out and there on the lens i saw this: 12x optical zoom.

oh. right. i chose the Lumix after hours and hours of careful searching on digital camera review websites because it had a kickass optical zoom and a Leica lens. clearly I had forgotten that part.

dudes, i talked myself out of liking something i already owned that was more than good enough for my needs just because i thought there was better to be had. it's a good lesson learned.

i charged up the battery last night and took the Lumix along with me to a Tour de Fleece kickoff party. i have some serious manual-reading to do in order to take advantage of all the features of this camera -- many manual or semi-manual options, even -- but here are a few point-and-shoot, low-light, no-tripod shots from last night. i know they are nothing special, except for the subject matter, which is lovely. but i'll be able to do better shortly, and soon, without spending a penny on anything. i love that.










bokeh, here i come.

um, wtf?

[before I go into a rant about planned obsolescence, I wanted to thank everyone who commented on the sweater and the photos. thank you. it means a lot.]

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okay. things keep breaking around here. w.t.f?

first thing to crap out this year: our antenna'd cordless phone [when you live in a house with rabbits, you have cordless phones].
- method of death: the antenna plastic broke off, exposing the wire antenna. i actually took a pair of jewelry pliers and bent the antenna end into a little loop so no one would stab themselves in the eye. that bought us about 5 more weeks. then the battery stopped holding even the tiniest charge.]
- replaced with: two antenna-free cordless phone handsets that are much nicer, plus a computery voice announces the name of the person calling, which is only fun when you're not trying to sleep.

next: the monolithic air conditioning unit in our dining room window [it came with the house].
- method of death: hub was moving it to another room and just as he got it installed, he cleverly punctured the freon coil. i panicked, grabbed the rabbits and moved them to the bedroom with an open window and all other doors open and fans on everywhere. then i googled it and relaxed a little [freon is a sufficant, not a poison, so as long as they didn't breathe it in, they're fine].
- replaced with: a super-cheap whirlpool a/c unit that's half the size, 4x as energy efficient, and cools our whole main floor. quietly. this turns out to have been a GOOD thing, the breaking, then.

followed by: hub's Blackberry, purchased only after my previous employer [also a client of hub's] insisted he be available all the time, even when we were in Italy.
- method of death: who knows. he dropped the damned thing so many times i've lost count, and it was 4 years old. in Blackberry world, that's almost ancient.
- replaced with: a red Pearl. whatever. he's the Crackberry addict in the family. he's happy, i'm happy.

but wait, there's more! our 10-year-old tube tv
- method of death: this weekend, while watching Little Miss Sunshine, it made that sound you hear when the power gets suddenly cut off. and then kept making that sound over and over. very creepy.
- replaced with: a ridiculous LCD HD-ready thingy that we got at a great price, but are just not convinced about.

it gets harder and harder to spend money on technology when you know that
a] the unit will likely break, and sooner than you think it should, and
b] something cooler will come out making you wish the thing would break.

i actually didn't want to buy a new tv now...i'd rather have waited another year or so until the really cool ones come out, but i was forced into it because i do loves my tv.

hub was smart and made sure we got the 1080p model, which is going to be important when our dvd player becomes obsolete and we're forced to buy a blu-ray system. oh, and the new tv means that if we want HD, which we now might because the tv can actually display all those extra pixels, we'd have to upgrade our tivo and cable box. do you see the sinister plan here?

i DO love new technology and new gadgets. i just want to buy one when *i* want to, not when the previous gadget they sold me broke, leaving me without the thing i didn't know i needed until i bought it and now can't live without.

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p.s. I forgot to add this: the tv in the bedroom is the one we bought at Consumer's Distributing [Canadian flashback!] before we were married. 18 years ago. and it still works just fine.

whoever invented tissue with lotion, thank you.

When looking for inspiration, do not look deeply into the big bag of used kleenex next to your bed. Because ewww.

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So yup, cold. I just had one in February, and loved it so much, I had to do it again! I've heard that quite a few of us SeaSoxers caught this thing, and my sympathies to my fellow snotheads. Since when does NyQuil not put you to sleep? Is nothing sacred?

Okay, /end whining.

Meanwhile, I know I owe you more of a recap, but it ain't coming today. I've got Knitty work to do and my precious vertical time has to be spent wisely.

Achoo.

Knitty 2008 Reader Survey -- whoops!

Are you sure this isn't a Monday morning?

I launched the surprise [woot!] and with it, our new reader survey. Inexplicably, the first question was missing ages over 60, which was totally not intentional. So I had to pull the survey offline to correct it. As a result, you'll find the corrected survey at a new URL:

Knitty 2008 Reader Survey.

Please spread the word if you see others who are frustrated with the situation. I'll send out this new URL tomorrow with the contest winner announcement. I don't think people really want THREE messages from me in less than an hour.

Thanks for understanding.

Toronto central/east-enders unite!

Help stop the possible invasion of our area by big box stores like W*l-m*rt by signing this letter, if you agree with its contents. The full story is here.

We've got enough of this stuff at Eglinton Avenue and further north. We don't need any more characterless shopping in an area that could be revitalized a hundred different -- and BETTER -- ways. Plus we know what happens to small businesses when big box stores open nearby, and losing the character of Leslieville and the Beach would be a disaster for this city.

Thank you for listening. :-)

home, lucky, sleepy, sick.

snippits of what might be a reasonably boring blog post, if i had the energy to write it:

- turbulence: i hate it. sat in row 40 of a 41-row plane on the tampa-detroit leg and was terrified for the first 30 minutes. the plane verily waggled side to side. not exaggerating. then the pilot got us high enough that it wasn't a problem again for the rest of the flight.

- lucky: because the cold hit full force the morning i left Florida, and i only read this after i got home. i'm lucky that my ears recovered as we landed, instead of bleeding or staying permanently blocked or exploding or something. but man, it did hurt for the 3 hours in the air.

- sleepy: thanks to dayquil/nyquil, my new best friends. i was able to work today thanks to the magical orange capsules of happiness

- sick: obviously.

but the trip was great and i'm glad i got good pictures so that i'll remember it once i'm coherent again.

right now, the best thing in the whole world, besides boeing's incredible shrinking bladder stone [seriously -- hub took her in again because she was acting odd this morning and the xray showed the stone is now half the size it was...which means it's going away on its own. weird, magical. we're thankful. and she stopped acting weird.] is OUR BED. and the duvets.

i'm going there now. see ya.