winged orange

Saw Lady Gaga last night in Atlantic City, and she was AWESOME. Seriously, the show was a groovy take on The Wizard of Oz and Gaga really is fantastic live. She played just about everything on The Fame (except “Paper Gangster”, boo) and I think everything on The Fame Monster, plus “Glitter & Grease,” “Vanity,” & a new song called “You and I,” which I really, really loved. I was sad I was out of money from Disney, because a.) I wanted a t-shirt and b.) I wanted to go buy tickets for another show. It was that good.

A couple of my friends went with me, and they went to the Beach Bar across from Boardwalk Hall while I was at the show. I specifically left them with the instructions, “Don’t get shitfaced!” but who listens to me? They had, to borrow a phrase from Gaga, “had a little bit too much, much”. Fortunately, they were at that stage of drunk where they were funny rather than sick, so that’s good. They’re much better at making friends when they’ve had a few, and we made some fun friends. My favorite friend was this guy (click for bigger):

This is Backup Dancer Scotty. My friend Melissa (on the left in the picture) told him she liked his cool hair, which you can’t see in the photo, but it has leopard spots painted into it. He said thanks and that it helped in his line of work. Melissa asked him what he did, and he said, “Oh, I’m a backup dancer for Lady Gaga”. WHAT?! IS THIS REAL LIFE? Apparently it was. He was the nicest guy; we hung out with him for quite a while. He said he’d also danced for Janet Jackson and Britney Spears in the past, and that when he wasn’t touring, he lived in Lancaster, PA. Seriously, nicest guy ever.

And then a little while after THAT, as we’re leaving the bar, LADY GAGA HERSELF rolled by in one of those rickshaw things that pushy dudes are always pushing around the boardwalk, and started high-fiving fans. It was CRAZY.

So to sum it all up, last night I:

• saw Lady Gaga live
• drank mojitos with one of her backup dancers
• high-fived Gaga on a rickshaw
• got hit on by British guys dressed up as cowboys because that’s how they thought Americans celebrated Independence Day
• turned down aforementioned hit with my brand new diamond ring ;)
• literally held my drunk-ass friends’ hands as we walked the five blocks back to the train station
• took someone’s keys for the first time EVER
• had a friggin’ ball

I still kind of can’t believe it was real. I don’t party, I very rarely go to bars, and I certainly don’t meet random backup dancers in bars I don’t go to. CRAZINESS.

I’m back from Florida, and the Disney hangover has finally worn off. It was a really excellent trip; I did everything I went there to do. I rode all the rides in Magic Kingdom (no lie). We did Drinking Around the World in EPCOT. We rode Expedition Everest and saw the Flights of Wonder show in Animal Kingdom. We rode Rock N Roller Coaster and said goodbye to the old Star Tours in MGM. We even went to Universal and braved the crowds and the heat to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Scott got us into the cast and press preview of Captain EO, which was amazing, because it wasn’t due to open until two days after we left.

And, as some of you know from Twitter & Facebook, while we were there, Scott and I got engaged! :)

I know my Twitter friends are dying to hear how it all went down. It was a pretty crazy ride, but very us. We got into Florida on June 24, and we were there crazy early – like 8:30 AM early. We couldn’t get into the rooms yet, so we stored our luggage and went to MGM (yes, I know it’s technically Hollywood Studios now. But that name is a sham and a lie and I won’t be a party to it). We stayed at the park as long as we could, until we decided around 3:30 that we all needed a shower – it was humid in Florida! Like, ungodly humid. You walked outside and you just hit a tangible wall of humidity. Ugh. We had dinner reservations at 7:30, and nobody wanted to be gross, so we went back to shower, nap, and change.

We checked in at the desk and got our room numbers, and collected our luggage. When I walked into Scott’s and my room, I was met with this:

I was both excited and vaguely disappointed. We had told Disney when we changed our reservation, way back in October, that we’d be celebrating our engagement when we visited. I never called back and canceled it; I was still holding out hope that we’d be engaged by the time we set foot on Disney property. I assumed the basket was from Disney, and Scott said he would check, but not to open it, which I agreed with – I once paid $15 for a poncho because Disney left it in our room and I opened it, thinking it was part of the deal. He called a little while later and said to leave it, the hotel staff would send it back to the florist; it was a mistake. Well, boo hiss. I didn’t have time to worry about it, though. We had dinner reservations at MGM. By the time we came back that night, the basket was gone.

The next day, June 25, was Magic Kingdom Day! I was super- excited; Magic Kingdom is my favorite place in the history of ever, and the park had extra magic hours that night – open until 3 AM! We went early in the morning and rode the good stuff – Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates. I may have had a nap in the Hall of Presidents. By about noon-thirty, we were tired, sweaty, and hungry, so we went back to the hotel for lunch. We had to be back to the park by 5 for dinner reservations at Tony’s, which is the Lady & the Tramp restaurant on Main Street.

As we were getting ready for dinner, I saw Scott putting on pants. “Honey, what are you doing? It is a million and five degrees outside.” “I know, but the pants breathe better than my shorts.” “Okay. Whatever.” I was so tired by that point – we had had three hours of sleep Wednesday into Thursday and not much more Thursday into Friday – that I wasn’t going to argue. I did, however, briefly contemplate dressing up nicer, since we had dinner reservations, but in the end, comfort won out and I threw on new gym shorts and a Michael Jackson t-shirt.

So we had dinner at Tony’s – which was massive – and then got ready to begin this photo scavenger hunt that Scott’s friend Jess had written up for us. Jess is an avid Disney-goer, and between regular park visits and cruises, she probably has at least twice as many Disney hours under her belt as I have. She was awesome, and made us photo hunts for each park, divided up either by couple or by guys vs. girls. Magic Kingdom day was guys vs. girls, so after dinner, we literally hit the ground running. Newbie & I thought the boys were going to get kicked out of the park, the way they were tearing down Main Street! We studied the list and started on Main Street – we took care of, like, five pictures right there: funny hats, Lady & the Tramp’s pawprints, singin’ in the rain on a lamp post, picking up an alien (I had a Stitch backpack), and a picture with a classic Disney character. We made our way through the rest of the park at a speed faster than I’ve ever seen it, doing really crazy things along the way. One of the items on the list was “singing It’s a Small World”. I wanted to win, so I took a video of Newbie doing the entire thing in ASL. Poor girl.

We had just finished the second-t0-last thing on the list, which was “playing pirates” in Adventureland, when we got a text from the boys saying that they’d won and to meet them at the castle. I was so pissed. “THERE IS NO WAY THAT THEY BEAT US! WE FLEW!” We sauntered back to the castle, where the boys were waiting, talking to a Photopass photographer to take the final picture: in front of the castle:

We took a couple of group shots when Rusty, the photographer, said he wasn’t busy and would we like to do more closer to the castle? Ummm…yes! So we moved closer and took a few more. For one of them, Rusty wanted us to look sad. That one was hard. I love Disney too much to be sad.

In the middle of our little photoshoot, Scott stopped and said, “Hold up, guys. This isn’t working for me. Something’s missing.” And then he did this:

Which was rapidly followed by a lot of this:

And a little speech, which, not gonna lie, I don’t even remember. (Scott says he expected that, and I’ll hear it again at the wedding.) I do remember, though, that it ended with, “Will you marry me?” Which was then followed by this:

This:

This:

And finally, this:

Afterward, there were lots of phone calls and texting, Newbie & Adrian presented Scott with a ball & chain from Pirates, and then someone said, “You just got engaged! What are you gonna do now?!”

My answer? “I’M GOIN’ TO DISNEY WORLD!” (We totally went on Space Mountain right after that. Best. Engagement. EVAR.)

And that basket that almost ruined the whole thing? It came back, a little bigger and a little badder:

Oh! And because everyone always asks, here’s my (beautiful, lovely, gorgeous, I’m-never-taking-it-off) ring:

And that’s it, the story of how we started our happily ever after. :) All the rest of the pictures from the trip are up on my Flickr, if anyone’s interested!

See that handsome son-of-a-bitch up there in that photo? That one all excited to be huggin’ Minnie Mouse? THAT WILL BE ME, IN LESS THAN TEN HOURS. I AM GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!

See you all on July 1! :D

Getting “it” for the first time in the back seat of a car, feeling that virgin beer or pot buzz, seeing Star Wars back in the beginning when absolutely every human being on Planet Earth was going through the same thing at the same awesome moment in time: these are the intensely personal, emotional, epiphany-type experiences that are right up there with being a Bon Jovi fan at a Bon Jovi concert.

– Lonn Friend, ‘One Wild Night Live 1985-2001′ liner notes

I’m finally reasonably recovered from seeing Bon Jovi on Wednesday. The show was amazing, but I got back home at 3:30 Thursday morning and was up for work at 6:20. Good lord, I was so useless that day at work. Worth it, though. Worth. IT.

I knew our show was going to be awesome because it was a hometown show, and there’s a totally different energy seeing Bon Jovi in Jersey versus seeing them in Philly or some other venue. However, I totally didn’t realize that Bon Jovi was the first act or event to play the New Meadowlands Stadium, and that we were there on opening night, which was pretty damn cool. The set list was really good, even though they didn’t play Captain Crash for me (but they played it the other two nights at Meadowlands. Why hurt me, boys? I love you). They played some stuff I haven’t heard live before. They opened with “Blood on Blood,” and did “Something for the Pain” acoustic, which was pretty badass, especially because they brought Tico (the drummer) and David (the keyboardist) out front. Tico played a freakin’ washboard and David played an accordion and it was awesome. The biggest surprise for me was that they did “Dry County” as their first encore. I LOVE that song; it’s off Keep the Faith and it’s just awesome. I lost my mind when I realized that’s what they were playing. I don’t know what possessed them to include that in the tour, but I’m glad they did! (Side note: as I was going through YouTube videos to find a good one for this post, I was hearing people in a good portion of the videos going, “OH MY GOD THEY ARE PLAYING DRY COUNTY!” That was totally me.)

Before I saw the live show, I was convinced I wasn’t really crazy about the new album, The Circle. Admittedly, a lot of the songs sound really similar to each other or to other songs the band’s recorded in the past. It wasn’t nearly as strong as Have A Nice Day had been. You can tell Jon had a theme he was going for, and you can sort of tell which songs fit in that theme and which don’t. I had kind of hoped it would grow on me like Lost Highway had, but it just…didn’t. The album as a whole is more mellow than a lot of their more recent stuff had been. But they did such a good job with the songs from The Circle that they played live -  “We Weren’t Born to Follow,” “When We Were Beautiful,” “Superman Tonight,” and “Love’s the Only Rule” – that I figured I must have been missing something. Not gonna lie, what really won me over was the live performance of “Love’s the Only Rule”. I don’t know, something about the way Jon got us all to sing the “whoa-oh-ohs” got me. I love audience participation at Bon Jovi concerts. There is something too cool about singing with your favorite band with thousands of other fans who love them just as much as you do.

I don’t love the new album as much as some of their others, but I definitely enjoy it more since hearing some of the songs live. I would have loved to have heard “Fast Cars” live, but I don’t think they’ve done that one yet. Overall, the show really reminded me why I love Bon Jovi. I hadn’t listened to them very much this year at all, because I’ve been so caught up in other things and with other artists. I just forgot how much I love them and how much of my life I have invested in them. I haven’t missed a tour since 2003, and I’ve seen them more than once on some tours. That’s pretty crazy; there isn’t another band or singer I’ll follow to the extent that I follow my boys. I don’t know if it’s because we’re all from Jersey, or if it’s because I really got into them when I was a junior in high school, when I was finally starting to be comfortable with who I am, but this band totally has a piece of my heart. I will always love my boys. <3

I’ve been so busy and stressed out lately, it’s a wonder I haven’t actually lost my mind. Between worrying about work and worrying about school and worrying about having work while I’m in school, I’m just a hot mess. I don’t sleep well, and when I do sleep, I have crazy whacked out dreams. Even on the weekends. On Saturday night, I had a dream that I was outside in this outdoor aviary with lots of beautiful birds in cages…including mine. Lori was in a cage with five or six other cockatiels, and someone let the birds out so we could see them. And then they all flew away, even Lori. Ohhh, I was so heartbroken. I had to wake up and check on her to make sure she was still safely in her cage. After I went back to sleep, I had ANOTHER weird dream. I dreamed that I was watching what looked like a live version of Captain EO, and I was there with a friend from work, rockin’ out. She told me that after EO was over, Michael was going to come out to see the audience, so I ran to the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to go when the gloriousness was happening. Don’t you know, I MISSED IT. Leave it to me to miss Michael Jackson in my dreams because I had to pee. What is my life, guys?

That’s not the half of it. I’ve had dreams I’ve left work – just upped and left – and got in huge trouble. I’ve had dreams involving floating severed heads. It’s horrible. Some of them, like that severed head dream, leave me chilled to the bone when I wake up. I can’t wait until I have a job and this is all settled. It’s too much for me to deal with all at once; I could handle competency exams and photo IDs and immunization records all separately, but on top of this job hunt and the uncertainty of it all, it’s just sort of getting on top of me. But there’s no time for me to let it get on top of me during the day, so it manifests itself at night. Wonderful.

On Sunday, I took a break and met Scott in Princeton for the day. I love Princeton. I love that whole area; I went to college in Ewing, which is not far at all from Princeton, and I miss it all the time. I miss the area just as much as I miss being in college; I only associate that area of the state with good things. College was for me what high school is for a lot of people – best years of my life. I went through my first breakup there. I met the love of my life there. I grew up there. I had a hell of a lot of fun. :)

The original plan was just to go up to Princeton Record Exchange, go to Twist for probiotic fro-yo, and then go to dinner. Scott wanted to go to Washington Crossing Park too. He’s a history buff; I’m not that way, but I humored him. The little museum was nice, and there were revolutionary war spinning wheels at the Johnson Ferry House. Mostly it was a lot of walking around outside which was nice; I hadn’t really gone to the gym last week (#slacker), so it did me good to walk around. We got a lot of nice pictures, too – click for bigger at Flickr.

After we were done at the park, we drove down to Princeton to walk around Nassau Street, which is right across from the university and where all the main shops are. Princeton really is beautiful.

I got my favorite at Twist: probiotic Ghiradelli chocolate fro-yo with strawberries, Reese’s Cups, hot fudge, & peanut butter sauce. MMMMMMM. I could live on that stuff, not even gonna lie. :) We also went to Prex because I wanted to look for vinyl to put on my wall when I move. I have two of my mom’s old Bette Midler albums, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and Stevie Nicks’ Belladonna on vinyl already, but Prex has a really good selection of $1 vinyl. I passed up a copy of Bat Out of Hell there years ago and I’m STILL sorry about that to this day. I wanted to get some vinyl from all of my favorites. They didn’t have everything I wanted, but I came away with a good selection!

The top is three Bette Midler albums: The Rose soundtrack (homygod I love that movie), No Frills (which has one of the best covers of all Bette’s albums), and Mud Will Be Flung Tonight!, which is her comedy album. The bottom is Heart’s self-titled album, Bon Jovi’s 7800 Degrees Fahrenheit, and, of course, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Thriller even has the liner notes with it. I still need a Gaga vinyl, preferably The Fame Monster, something by Meat Loaf, and something by Tom Petty. I also really, really, REALLY want to find Dangerous on vinyl. I think that’s my favorite album cover ever. I love it so much I bought it on a t-shirt. It needs to live on my wall.

We had a really nice day. :) It was great to kind of put all my stress on the back burner for at least a little while. Did I mention that Scotty even bought me Thriller? I have the best boyfriend ever. I win.

My birthday was yesterday, May 2. I am officially 26. I really don’t know how to feel about this. This means that I’m 4 years away from 30. I handled 25 pretty well, but not gonna lie, there was some kicking and screaming with 26. Most of it was mental, but I spent the week leading up to my birthday in kind of a funk, which is odd for me – usually I can’t WAIT for my birthday, but this year I had a lot of shit going on, between my car acting funny (turns out it was the battery, but I don’t know how long I can keep getting off easy with these car repairs) and being sure that certain people would forget my birthday (they did). None of it was directly related to getting older, but I’m sure that was part of it. I’m trying to get over myself there, because this is shaping up to be a good year for me in a lot of ways.

A little yarn and some good company never hurt anything, though, and I perked up when it was time to go to Maryland Sheep & Wool. Amanda (who is not Lloyd and who needs a nickname) and I schlepped it down to MD to meet my friend Lizz, who was not a yarn person, but who is interested enough that she’d brave the 90-degree weather and the crowds with us for the second year in a row. We had a really good time, despite the heat. Lizz had such a good time that she came in “just to watch” and left with 2 felting kits, 2 skeins of yarn, and 2 weaving looms. I’ve converted another one. :D I myself didn’t get too crazy – I only bought a 4 oz. purple/blue cloud of fiber from Loop and 8 oz. of see-it-from-space pink/yellow/orange cormo, both of which you can see in the photo mosaic farther down the page. I also got two Sheep Incognito prints: Firefly Ballet & The Odd Couple. Those prints are dangerous; I had a hell of a time deciding on those two, and I saw at least five more that I wanted.

Amanda and I came back from MD just in time for me to watch the Kentucky Derby with my family and pick my second Derby winner in a row. :) Scott took me to dinner at Friday’s, where I had the aptly-named Ultimate Mojito, and was a little silly by the time we got home. Between the sunburn, the exhaustion of being up at 7 and running all day on 5 hours of sleep, 4 hours of car travel, and alcohol, I was done. I just crashed.

Sunday was my actual birthday, so I got up and made cupcakes using the Hello Cupcake! book Lloyd brought me in October. :) Scott took me to see How to Train Your Dragon, which was adorable, and I highly recommend it. We had steak dinner – my favorite! – and did presents. My big gift was the tickets for Bon Jovi later this month, but I also got some birthday money and some Disney money.

All in all, it was a nice, quiet birthday. I’ll leave you with some photos. Full versions are all on Flickr, if you’re interested.:

I’m going to be so sad when spring break is over. I’m really enjoying having a whole week off, even if today is the first day I haven’t left the house. So far on my spring break, I have:

Visited the Franklin Institute with Scott

This is one of those things we’ve been meaning to do for the five and a half years we’ve been together, and are only just now getting to. Neither of us had been to the Institute in about 10 years, and a lot of stuff had changed. We had a pretty good time, though. :) I even had my very first astronaut ice cream, which was much better than I expected room temperature, freeze-dried ice cream to be.

During our trip, we also learned that New York is better than Philadelphia in terms of public transportation and city layout (and everything, really), did a half-ass toe stand on the light-up Billie Jean floor (see photos), and discovered that I have the most awesome but ultimately useless Spidey Sense ever: I can correctly identify a Michael Jackson song from a block away within one note. No lie. There was an impersonator in a park about a block away, and while we were waiting to cross the street, I heard the very beginning of Smooth Criminal – the part right before the heartbeat – and I was all, “What? Smooth Criminal? Where?!” Scott thought I was hearing things until we got farther down the block and he saw the impersonator. “Honey,” he said, “that is AMAZING. One note.” I win. :D

Went to Fordham to meet my advisor

This was yesterday. Ultimately, it went pretty well. Turns out that my master’s degree isn’t entirely useless – out of the 11 classes I took for my MA, I can count 6 of them towards my doctorate. I may also be able to get a seventh, if I can argue it well enough, because APA just changed the requirements on cognition courses. I really hope I can exempt out of it, because not only would it save me $3,000, it would also save me having to take another cog course. It was such a bitch when I took it at Columbia. :P

Anyway. Six courses is a semester and a half, seven is almost a full year. That will save me between $18,000 and $21,000, which is FANTASTIC. I also learned that even though you have to register for some thing, like doctoral residency, thrice (I said it), you only pay for it once, and it’s only a $1,000 fee as opposed to a $3,000 fee. Also, the first three years are heavy coursework, and the last two are practica and internship, which means that those two years are lighter years financially. This is all good news. I sent in my deposit today, with the thought that if I can’t find a job to support myself before the semester starts, that I’ll either withdraw or try to defer my admission.

So in short, #DrWingedOrangePhD is a tentative go. :D (Guys, when I graduate, can I get a sign for my office with that hashtag on it? Please?)

Did no knitting, but lots of spinning

It was 90 degrees most of this week. For some reason, I decided this was the perfect time to play with all my nice, warm wool. I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either, but there you have it. The first thing I wanted to do was finish spinning this fiber I’d had on a bobbin for the last year. The way I screwed up the first half of it was such a disappointment that I couldn’t even touch the second half for the longest time. I wanted my bobbin back, so I just sucked it up and spun it. I’m not even sure how to categorize the final product.

It looks fine in the picture, I know, but see how many skeins there are? That’s a problem. I got that first good-sized skein done and was apparently at 240 yards before the yarn snapped. I was annoyed, but I just skeined up what I had and started over. After another 82 years, the yarn broke again. Nuts. Skein, restart. Then after another 50 yards, I had another snap. By that point, I was yelling, “OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” every two minutes. I got one more 100-yard skein done before I had to stop. You should see what I had to throw out. Probably 50 yards, at least, of little 10-yard pieces that would snap off randomly between the smaller skeins.

I can’t bring myself to wash it. I’m convinced it’s going to disintegrate. The part that gets me is that all told, there’s enough for me to make either of the shawls I want to make. I just don’t know if I trust it. Spinning friends – thoughts? Should I try to use it? Should I treat it like The One Ring and try to burn it, because clearly this stuff is cursed?

In the meantime, I picked up something new so I wouldn’t hate spinning forever and ever because of the Yarn of DOOM. This is cormo/bamboo I got at MD Sheep & Wool last year. It has sparklies in it, which means that everything else in my little world will contain yellow sparklies for about two months after I finish the yarn. :)

I started this post yesterday and only got this far:

Since the last time I posted anything of substance (Gaga squeeing not withstanding), I have moved on from my depressed rage about how I can’t afford to do Fordham’s Ph.D. program to righteous rage because no one at Fordham is calling me back. I’ve emailed my academic advisor about four times in the last two weeks, and since that initial email she sent me from Africa – which led me to believe that Fordham was going to be helpful – I haven’t heard anything more from her. She hasn’t returned my phone calls either. I’ve been trying to schedule a meeting so we can go over my transcript from Columbia and talk about what classes I would hypothetically be taking next year if I registered, but I can’t even get that far. I gave up on financial aid and sorted THAT mess out on my own. It’s to the point now where I’m questioning if I even want to do a program there, because I don’t want to spend five years pulling teeth and beating down doors to get things done. I’ve already been in one program where I wasn’t supported financially OR academically, and that was only 3 semesters. In the words of our “esteemed” former President Bush, “Fool me once, shame on…shame on you? Well, you can’t get fooled again!” (Seriously, click the link. Watch it. It’s worth it. I’ll wait.) I haven’t made a concrete decision yet, but I’m starting to seriously entertain the possibility of walking away and applying again next year. It’s a risk. but I’ve heard this year was one of the most competitive in admissions history, so if I can get admitted this year, I can probably cut it next year too. I just don’t want to be stuck in a program where I’m not heard as a student, and if I walked away for this reason, it would be on my terms, not because I couldn’t scrape together the money.

Today I finally heard back from my advisor, and I have a meeting set up with her at Fordham next Wednesday at 3:30. I am not entirely pacified, because there was no explanation in the email as to why it took a week and a freaking half to get back to me, but I’m trying not to split hairs here. I’m still not sure if this is going to work out, but meeting with my advisor is a good start. At least I’ll be able to figure out a.) which classes from my MA will count towards the Ph.D. and b.) what my program will look like/if some semesters will be more expensive than others. I’ll also be able to get an idea of how my advisor…erm…advises, and how she views and responds to her students academically, which is very telling. There’s so much that’s iffy about me doing this program. Getting a part-time job while I’m in school is iffy, whether I’ll get any help from my family (not because they don’t want to, but they have another kid in school and all) is iffy, whether Fordham will ever cover more than one class is iffy, the helpfulness of the faculty at this point is iffy. Without some of those “ifs,” my ability to finish this program is compromised. I have hardcore warning bells going off in my head, so we’ll see.

On a lighter note, it’s spring time, and as such, I’m doing inventory of my knitting projects to see what stays and what goes. I’ve been more ADD than usual with my knitting this year, I’m guessing due to my astronomical levels of stress. Some of them I know are going to stay, but some I am undecided about. In order of seniority…

Handspun Aeolian shawl – Oh sweet jesus, the trials I have been through with this. Seriously, I was so damaged by the EPIC FAIL OF 09 that the other half of this fiber isn’t even spun up yet. I’ve only just now begun to finish spinning it. I think the new singles are going to be fantastic, but there probably won’t be enough of them to make even the Aeolian shawlette with the narrow edging. I don’t even know if the original plied and beaded debacle is usable. I’m inclined to think it is, just…not for this. My instinct is to make a smaller/different shawl (I was thinking Bitterroot, but don’t think it’s actually any smaller) with the new singles instead of forging ahead with Aeolian. And I’ll just make that…later. Out of something else. Something that I didn’t spin. Yes/no?

Winter Wheezes/Snowflake Mitts – THESE THINGS ARE OUT FOR MY BLOOD. They were really fun when I started them, but somewhere along the way, fun degenerated into being dissatisfied with the way the motifs show up. I could even get past that, but the thumb. THE THUMB. The directions for the thumb in this pattern make no sense to me, and I’m trying to just do it my way, but to do it properly I really should rip back, which isn’t going to happen because of my foolish pride the issues involved ripping back. The motifs look awesome in a from-afar picture, but up close, it’s really hard to make out. My options are to rip these out entirely for something like the Endpaper mitts, where the motif is more dense and repetitive, or to just suck it up and finish these even if I’m a hundred when they’re done. I’m leaning towards the last one because the thought of ripping all that out makes me want to cry. Thoughts?

Rhinebeck One-Row – Meh, this will get done. Possibly on my trip to NYC next week, actually. It’s just a matter of perseverance. There’s nothing wrong with it or anything, and I really do like the yarn. I’m just lazy and now it’s spring, so scarves seem sort of moot right now. :) I’ll probably wear it to Rhinebeck 2010, which is a full Rhinebeck after I planned to wear it (and like three full Rhinebecks after I bought most of the fiber), but it’ll get done. I am unconcerned.

Moonwalker – This one stays. Absolutely. It’s so imperfect, between me flubbing a row here and there and the yarn being so uneven, but I love it and it stays. No one will be able to spot the mistakes anyway, what with the lace pattern being what it is, the unevenness of the yarn, and the fact that where the mistakes are, the yarn is black. I love it even though it’s on size 2 needles and I’ll be knitting it forever; I love it so much that I would be happy to knit a few rows on it here and there for the rest of my life. I think it’s going to come with me to Florida in June so I can work on it during the flight and in the airport and stuff. I am still completely in love with the colors, and I don’t think it will look exactly like I imagined it, but I still firmly believe it will be amazing anyway. Moonwalker L.O.V.E.

It’ll All Work Out – Here’s irony for ya. I’m knitting this to work through my stress and my grad school application process and all that, and I was pretty far in. I was 5 repeats out of 7 on section 2 (so, what? 50-some rows?) and I saw a snag on the edge, so I went to put a lifeline in to fix it. While I was doing that, a bunch of stitches jumped off the needle and started to unravel. But it didn’t unravel across, it unraveled down and sideways! I looked at it, assessed the damage, shed a tear, and then frogged the whole bloody thing and started over. I’m presently two repeats (out of 7) into section 2, but I have Season 3, Disc 1 of Mad Men coming so I imagine I’ll make some good progress on it over spring break.

I have all these big projects going on. I need to start knitting socks again or something.

Other things I need to do: vacuum my car, bathe in the moonlight, and reorganize my tags here and on LJ. They are a hot mess.

…Ro-mah-ro-mah-mah…

…Gaga ooh-la-la!

Goin’ to see Gaga! :D And later that month, goin’ to see Tom Petty with my dad. My summer will be AWESOME, because it goes like this:

• May 26 – Bon Jovi at Giants Stadium
• June 24-30 – DISNEYWORLD!
• July 4 – Gaga in AC
• July 31 – Tom Petty

Too bad my August will look like this:

• August 1 – forever: crying because my fun made me broke and I’m now a poor grad student who will have no money EVER.

Focusing on the positive here. :)