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One day near the end of April, I read this page on DIY “green” cleaning products. I tried the salt and boiling water trick on our sluggish bathtub drain and it worked like a charm. That page led me to a page about a method for washing your hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Sounds odd, eh? But I read through it and figured I might as well give it a try, since my hair is a constant source of misery (brittle the day I wash it, even when I condition, then greasy and nasty the next day). KC pointed me to another page, with a slightly different method (dilute the baking soda instead of making it into a paste) which is easier. I dare you to read that page and then put ordinary shampoo on your head. EWWWW.

I started my experiment on May 1st, and have not used “real” shampoo since then. I am shocked and delighted to find that, from the very first day, my hair has turned out soft, clean, and shiny! It’s never brittle, and stays clean and nice-looking for two days. It really works! Here’s what I do:

Put one cup of warm water into each of two small plastic containers. Put one tablespoon of baking soda into one, and one tablespoon on apple cider vinegar into the other (ran out of ACV a few days ago and have used white vinegar since then, seems to work fine, but I’ll pick up more ACV soon).

While showering, I rinse my hair first, then trickle the baking soda mixture over my head and work it in well. Sometimes I comb it through. I leave it on my hair for a minute or two, then rinse well, then do the same thing with the vinegar mixture. Easy.

Now, it’s only been a week, but so far so good!

We love Dancing with the Stars! Cristian was amazing last night, even dancing with an injured arm. I hope he or Jason is the winner. Tonight we’ll see who went home this week.

I’m still a little bit sick, but nothing drastic. My throat isn’t sore anymore, but just a little bit scratchy, and I’m tired and feel generally crummy.

Henry and I just sent grocery shopping, and now I’ll make him some lunch (he picked out some fresh gorgonzola and mushroom ravioli), and then I guess I will lie around until Kung Fu, because I don’t really feel like doing anything.

We mailed off our entries for the Del Mar Fair a couple days ago. Henry’s entering his dragon collection, and I decided to enter my red cardigan and the lace scarf that I’m knitting with the leftover yarn from Kirsten’s stole, so I have two weeks to finish that up before we have to deliver our stuff to the fairgrounds.

Oh, and my favorite WoW character, Animala the Night Elf Druid, reached level 69 last night, and 350 leatherworking, so now, once I collect the very expensive materials, I can craft a fancy Riding Crop that will make my mount go 10% faster. Nerd. (She also got her Druid flight form at lvl 68, which is absolutely the best thing ever!)

Our Guild Leader, Dita, brought the song “Code Monkey” by Jonathan Coulton to my attention. What a great song! Here’s a WoW-type video for the song:

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

And another video that I really like too. So creative!

Code Monkey Lyrics:

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code Monkey have boring meeting
with boring manager Rob

Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
but his output stink
his code not functional or elegant
what do Code Monkey think

Code Monkey think maybe manager oughta write goddamn login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy just proud

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
with big warm fuzzy secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you

Code Monkey hang around at front desk
tell you sweater look nice
Code Monkey offer buy you soda
bring you cup bring you ice

you say no thank you for the soda ’cause
soda make you fat
anyway you busy with the telephone
no time for chat

Code Monkey have long walk back to cubicle
he sit down pretend to work
Code Monkey not thinking so straight
Code Monkey not feeling so great

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
with big warm fuzzy secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you a lot

Code Monkey have every reason
to get out this place
Code Monkey just keep on working
to see your soft pretty face

Much rather wake up eat a coffee cake
Take bath, take nap
This job fulfilling in creative way
such a load of crap

Code Monkey think someday he have everything even pretty girl like you
Code Monkey just waiting for now
Code Monkey say someday, somehow

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
with big warm fuzzy secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you

Ugh, woke up with a sore throat. Henry had a mild one last week, so that’s probably the one I have now. His didn’t last long, so maybe mine won’t either. I took a large spoonful of honey this morning when I got up, and another an hour later. I think maybe it helped a bit.

Whoops, missed a few days.

Two days after we had that crazy 95-degree weather, the temperature dropped and it was in the mid 50s. Ohhhh-Kay. Now it’s a normal and pleasant low-70s.

One of my cousins is getting married in SD this weekend, so her dad (my crazy Uncle Scott), his wife (Jennifer), and their three sons came into town on Thursday and we got to spend a lot of time with them yesterday. The boys are 14, 12, and 10, so Henry’s right in the middle and had a lot of fun running around with them. Chloe and Bob joined us, and we all went to the harbor and toured the USS Midway, which was amazing, and then in the evening we went to a Rockola show at a nice little out-door community springtime festival!

This morning Henry was in a Kung Fu tournament with a billion other students from White Dragon Kung Fu schools. He won a gold medal for Technique and a silver medal for Form! Yay Henry!!!!

I’ll go dump my camera and maybe post some pictures of all these goings-on later. I’m pretty tired right now though.

Lordy, it’s hot here, 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 Celsius for you people who live in other lands). And it was the same all weekend. We did the “close all windows and doors in the morning to try to keep the house cool” trick, which works pretty well except for a few hours in the afternoons when indoors and outdoors are equally bad. But then in the evening we open everything up again and it’s more bearable.

So, yeah, we didn’t do much all weekend except hide in the house and try to stay cool. Started some Horde characters with our guild, watched a lot of Arrested Development, ate nice cool salads.

At least with weather like this, it is ever so pleasant to take a before-bed walk in the warm, breezy night!

Orthodontist for Henry this morning. They installed metal bands around his top back teeth. Next week he’ll get headgear to attach to those metal bands, to pull in his overbite. Plus braces. Poor boy. And then I took him to the beach for some surfing and boogie-boarding, but really, it was almost too hot to be pleasant, since I have to wear layer after layer of sun-protection clothing. When he was done in the water, we rode the Giant Dipper Rollercoaster for a treat! Whooooo that was fun! My favorite kind of coaster — old, wooden, rattly, and thrilling! I wish it wasn’t $6/ride though. Gosh. We’d ride it every time we went to the beach if it was $2. Oh well.

Ok, well, I’ve put off the housework long enough. Oh, one more thing — I went looking for a free peasant blouse pattern and bumped into a blog full of fun sewing tutorials: http://indietutes.blogspot.com/. Lots of fantastic clothing tutorials there, mostly intended for little kids but easy enough, if you have any sewing experience at all, to modify for grownups! I love the peasant blouse, the wrap-pants, and the corset dress. With some bust darts, that red-plaid flat-fronted corset top would make a dandy summer dress!

Just discovered the Australian comedy band, Tripod. FotC they’re not, but they do have some rather funny songs!

True Geek Love:

(This part’s got a multi-player section, honey
Maybe you could operate a turret with me, would you like that, baby?
Games give you hand-eye coordination and spacial intelligence together with map reading skills, oh sugar)

Hot Girl in the Comic Shop:

(Oh my god, she’s picking out DICE!!)

On Thursdays, Henry has classes at his charter school from 9-3:30. I drop him off in the morning (it’s a 45-minute drive) and his dad picks him up in the afternoon, then they hang out for a while together, and then his dad drops him off here in the early evening. When he got home, Henry was just bubbling over with happiness while telling me about his day. In science class, they measured the volume, mass, and density of oranges and discovered that they float when unpeeled and sink when peeled. In art they worked on a secret Mothers’ Day project, and in English they started working on a class newspaper. Henry gets to interview his art teacher next week, and he’s all excited about that. Then, he helped with the K-2 art class, and then did a lot of improve in the Advanced Acting class. Sounds like he had a really fabulous day!

I didn’t sleep at all last night so I felt pretty crummy all day. After getting the house in order, I discovered a site where you can watch TV shows and movies online. I tried Charlie Bartlett, which wasn’t very good (I really can’t imagine why it gets such high ratings on imdb), but then I switched to Curb Your Enthusiasm and finished up Season Six while knitting a piece of lace that I hope to enter into the fair, if I get it done in time.

Now I’ve got dinner cooking and am listening to the new LibriVox Community Podcast! It’s a good one!

Dan helped me with my colorwars 2008 youngme/nowme entry this morning:

Young me, age 2, 1971:

(no scanner, so it’s a photo of a photo, yuck)

Nowme, age 38, 2008:

(I have no flower-print, peter-pan-collared blouses anymore, heheh)

You should view the gallery! there are tons and tons of wonderful photos there:
http://colorwar2008.com/submissions/youngnow

Whoops, sorry.

Let’s see… Kirsten loves her birthday Print o’ the Wave lace stole, yay! Now I’m dying to knit more lace. Taking commissions ;-)

Speaking of which, I’m now working on a hat that my mom commissioned for a friend. I based it on brooklyntweed’s Red Light Special hat pattern, but charted out a different design and am using different colors. Coming along nicely. Yarn is knitpicks’ Telemark, needles size 2.

I’ve been watching amazing old BBC documentaries while I knit. Yesterday I watched the first four episodes of James Burke’s “The Day the Universe Changed” which is, as you would expect, utterly fascinating. From wikipedia:

The series’ primary focus is on the effect of advances in science and technology on western philosophy. The title comes from the philosophical idea that the universe essentially only exists as you perceive it; therefore, if you change your perception of the universe, you have changed the universe itself.

To illustrate this idea, James Burke tells the various stories of important scientific discoveries and technological advances and how they fundamentally altered how western civilization perceives the world. The series runs in roughly chronological order, from around the beginning of the Middle Ages to the present.

Youtube user “jamesburkefan” has posted all the videos and made playlists for each episode so you can watch them easily. Obviously, if you like the series (and who wouldn’t?) you should consider purchasing it! Just kidding, the DVD set costs $750. Yeah, that makes sense. We wouldn’t want this spectacular series to be, you know, affordable.

Last night Dan and I watched Zodiac, a based-on-reality film about a serial killer, well, really it’s more about the men who try to track him down. Nearly three hours long and no flaws. Snappy yet believable dialogue. Beautiful pacing, directing, writing, acting, sets, costumes… you’d swear you were plunked down in the early 70s. No stupid contrived tacked-on car chases or romance. Dear Hollywood, that’s the way movies are supposed to be. Please make more. (Warning: there are a few on-screen murders. I put my head under a pillow and Dan turned down the volume and told me when it was safe to look).

Busy day, I’m pretty wiped out.

1. Breakfast, chores, etc.
2. paid bills
3. Left at 10:30 so we could get up to San Marcos in time for our meeting at Henry’s school at 11:30
4. Stopped at the surf store to get a surfboard carrying thing for the top of the car - $30!
5. Got up to school, had our quick meeting (just handing in samples so the government knows Henry learned something
heheh)
6. Picked up beginner surfboard, lent to us by awesome homeschooling family
7. back to school, dropped Henry off for classes
8. bank
9. got bloodwork done at lab (nice gentle short tattooed Stephen was there, yay! He knows how to draw blood completely painlessly, it’s amazing)
10. mailbox place
11. picked up a couple things at Trader Joe’s
12. Pharmacy
13. back to get Henry after classes
14. drove home down freeway with surfboard making horrid vibrating sounds on top of car, nerve-wracking!
15. dealt with giant pile of junk mail
16. called in change of address to MacWorld, nice cust. service lady gave us two free months
17. Helped Henry install GuildEventManager add-on
18. read backlog of email, watched The Office with Henry
19. Henry to Kung Fu
20. made dinner
21. Picked Henry back up
22. wrote this boring blog entry

and now I think my baked potatoes are done so I will eat them with approx. one stick of butter on each, yum

• @suttonhoo he looks thoroughly blocked! Creepy is right. #
• @aspenglow arthur weasley is john adams on hbo! henry spotted him right away #
• wishing for chocolate #
• @apelad welcome to, uh, not-florida #
• hmm, Cousin Charlotte is the hypochondriacal sister Mary from Persuasion, I believe. #
• Why is the Masterpiece "Room with a View" being told in flashbacks? I think they’re going to kill George in the Great War. Sigh. #
• Anthony Davies wrote the screenplay, and the costuming is lovely… but… #
• Ugh, George is all wrong, Mister Emerson is all wrong, Lucy is all wrong. I give up, I’m putting the REAL one on. #
• Man, I want Lucy’s linen suits though :) #
• Well… I’ll just wait and see if they got Cecil right… #
• I smell a little smoke, bet we’ve got a brushfire somewhere in the county #
• @lenashore hey there :) welcome back to my good graces lol! #
• this is going to be a fun colorwars game: http://colorwar2008.com/submissions/youngnow #
• packing up The Stole #
• Interesting, I was just followed by @RafeRafton, a fictional character. I guess that’s no weirder than me following a bridge… #
• @lenashore don’t stop… believing… ;-) You’ve seen the Star Wars Journey mashup? #
• @lenashore http://kayray.org/star_wars_journey.swf #
• @lenashore my favorite part is the Luke Scream #

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• wondering if twitter is broken, or if it’s really been an hour since any of my friends said anything #
• weaving beginning of edging to end of edging — last step before blocking! #
• The Stole is blocking!! #
• @gstuckey yup, pretty much! #
• @EmpPalpatine Thank you, dear Emperor! #
• @aspenglow good place for wearing warm knitted things, though #
• should be in the 80s instead of the 90s today, whew #
• @CoriS that’s a heartwarming one, isn’t it? :) :) :) #
• The Stole. Is. FINISHED! http://www.flickr.com/photos/kayray/2411099190/ #
• high of 98 degrees F today (36.6 C) #
• @LiterateKnits thanks, it was fun! #
• @suttonhoo i’ve never had duck. good? #
• for the last few days I’ve noticed that my glasses are crooked. Driving me nuts #
• @suttonhoo plenty of dark meat? #
• more potential wallpaper: 18th cent. biology illustrations http://tinyurl.com/2d7q4q #
• @aspenglow ha! I had no idea. :) don’t know how they got crooked, didn’t sit on them! #
• @zefrank oh, that’ll be fun! #

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I’m very fond of A Room with a View, so I was excited to find out that PBS was showing a new version (2007) tonight. I watched for a while, but was terribly disappointed, though I promise I had an open mind and I was ready to be pleased! First, it started off in 1922, with Lucy, obviously George-less, revisiting the Pension Bertolini, and remembering the story in flashbacks. Um, what? The first thing that popped into my mind was that, for some reason, they decided to kill George in The Great War. Maybe there’s some other reason, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. The characters were All Wrong. Mister Emerson and George were coarse. Mister Emerson was positively creepy; and George, strolling around the hallways of the Bertolini dressed only in a towel — I think not! Lucy was much bolder than she should have been. Charlotte was not manipulative enough. Cecil not stuck-up enough (though I turned it off in his first scene, so maybe he became more like himself later). The directing was clunky and obvious. The lovely delicacy of the novel was gone. Anthony Davies wrote the screenplay, so it should have been better!

One thing I did like — the costuming. It looked 1910-ish (very Betsy and the Great World). Lucy had the most beautiful linen suit on when she was “In Santa Croce With No Baedeker”, so elegant and simple. I wanted to rip it off her and steal it.

So, I gave up and put on the real version (1985) Helena Bonham-Carter, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliot, Judi Dench, Daniel Day-Lewis, Simon Callow, and, of course, Julian Sands — not coarse at all, a perfect George :)

I finished the Print o’ the Wave Stole! (Note: As written, Chart B for the edging contains an error. The second-to-last stitch of rows 9, 11, 13 and 15 should be marked as a k2tog.) I knit 34 repeats of the main motif in one long panel, instead of grafting two 17-rep pieces together down the back.

Yarn: Knitpicks’ “Shadow” in “Lost Lake” (dark green, with just a hint of blue and brown). I bought three 50-gram skeins, but only needed 12 grams of the third skein.

Needles: Knitpicks’ “Harmony” wooden circs, size 2.

Finished size: 23″ x 65″

This was my first fine lace project. It was fun and easy, and I got it done much faster than I thought I would — less than a month start to finish. Both lace patterns were relatively easy to memorize, so of course the knitting sped up when I no longer had to refer to the chart all the time.

I wish you could feel the finished stole. It is so soft and fine and light and floaty, yet very warm. It’s a very beautiful thing.

Photos! Because there are so many, I’ll make them small. Click to embiggen.

And now, backwards in time a bit, here it is blocking yesterday. It dried fast in this insanely hot weather:

And here’s what it looked like as I was rounding the final corner with the edging:

Happy birthday, Kirsten :) I’ll pop it in the mail soon!

• @gilrain that’s what the little tweet delete button is for! #
• dinner: sauted peppers/onions/mushrooms plus Trader Joe’s hofbrau brats #
• @EmpPalpatine looking forward to your new episodes! #
• @apelad yech. Chlorine. Sun. People. All bad things. #
• good slogan: "One wants one’s BBC" #
• @gilrain yeah that would feel right. (Jane Austen wrote "her’s", btw. Good old flexible changeable English) #
• @gilrain ever seen http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343228/ ? Pretty good! #
• @apelad I’ll bet it’s regional. I’d say "cracking", as in "quit cracking your knuckles!" #
• home from grocery shopping. I like driving through Pacific Beach #
• Time for BSG! #
• only 12 more edging reps to go! #
• @TweetStats mouseovers are working fine today, guess it was just a glitch #
• 93 degrees Fahrenheit here in San Diego today. #
• watching Attenborough’s Life On Earth, ep 1 #

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It was hot today — 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 Celsius) at the hottest part of the day. That’s unusually hot even for summer, and it’s only April. Wacky! We kept the windows closed all morning because the house was cooler than outdoors, but when the temperatures equalized and the house started to feel stuffy, we opened up every door and window and ran the fan to move the air around.

I did the usual housework and chores, and then I knitted for the rest of the day — finished the edging around the stole and blocked it, woohoo! Pictures tomorrow. For entertainment I listened to my Pandora.com stations for hours, also in the morning we watched Friday’s Battlestar Galactica (not enough cylon battles in that episode).

Oh, and I started watching David Attenborough’s wonderful natural history documentary series, Life on Earth. Lovely stuff. It was originally aired in 1979, and I think we might have watched it then… it all looks and sounds kind of familiar. Good luck finding it on Region 1 DVD… you might try mininova.org ;-)

• @lenashore format -> style -> bigger (command +) #
• @TweetStats hey mouseovers don’t seem to be working on the tweet cloud page :) #
• Happy Bobmas, Ravelers! #
• house = tidier! #
• @aspenglow trapped in cabinets, trapped in cabinets, can she get out will she get out ‘course she will! (Mighty Boosh fan?) #
• hilarious song: http://tinyurl.com/668ds3 #
• "On the plane, all is well. Just think of it as practicing for Hell" (I, too, hate flying) #
• @lenashore oh thank you for candyboots.com! Just saw your reply! #
• @lenashore not on plane, quoting song about planes #
• "Terry Jones: Medieval Lives" is entertaining and informative. #
• (Yes, Terry Jones of Monty Python’s Flying Circus) #

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I’ve been working on the edging like crazy. Here’s what one short end of The Stole looks like, pinned roughly out to shape:

As of tonight, I have only about 15 reps to go!

Also — last night The Office was on. Hooray!!!! I believe that was Michael’s finest “That’s what she said!” ever. Ahhhhh so wonderful to have new Office.

• @apelad hmm… last time i uploaded a photo, it asked me to "upload photo or video" #
• @apelad are you pro? #
• ok, one bite of coffee ice cream won’t keep me up all night, right? #
• @gilrain don’t let them get your computer! #
• worn out #
• @TweetStats oooooo love the tweetcloud! #
• my tweetcloud, let me show you it: http://tinyurl.com/5jz2h3 #
• "32 mentions of ve" wtf is "ve" and why did I say it 32 times? (make that 34 times now) #
• @gilrain oh, cool! well, we’ll miss, um, never seeing you ;-) #
• Dancing with the stars — I like Jason the football player and Marley the deaf actress and Priscilla Presley #
• sears, 1973: http://lileks.com/institute/sears1973/index.html #
• looks like we’re headed for some summery weather this weekend! #
• @hodgman welcome to twitter. that is all. #
• poor @hodgman will be drowned in twitterlove! #
• @pandora_radio I wish the "2 thumbs down bans band" rule was adjustable. I’d like to be more lenient. Or a "Ban this band" button #
• @gilrain I want your egg poacher! #
• knitting time #

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