Quick post because I'm an exciting lady.

Delicious-looking picture via

I went to work early, left early, went to the bank, went to the garage where my poor car is resting, and in three minutes we're off to dinner with some friends. Without knowing we already had a corned beef feast this week, they offered us a second one - how could we say no?

Also, I thought you should know that I'm in the process of pioneering a new look: sweaters over sweaters. It's inspired by the early settlers of this country and the fact that my office is fucking cold. Look for it on the runways next fall.

To make up for this being a short post, here's a present: Hyperbole and a Half. If you don't already read this, go do so. You'll spend a few hours reading all the archives, at least. Just do yourself a favor and don't try to read them on the sly in a quiet office, because the snorting gets really obvious pretty quickly. And the more you try to squash the guffaws, the more you sound like you're birthing a water buffalo in your cubicle. Or maybe that's just me.

What busy and important things are you up to?

On why I hate driving stick

Or, In which I sound conceited and maybe sort of bitchy

I had my first lesson in how to drive a standard yesterday. When I first started driving, I learned on a standard, but then haven't driven one in eight years. But now my lovely little car is gone and Andy's truck is a manual, so it's time for me to relearn. It doesn't hurt that it's one of my goals for the year, either.

Here's why I really don't like driving stick: I'M NOT GOOD AT IT. I know that this applies to pretty much anyone who doesn't know how, but the thing is, I'm usually pretty good at whatever I try to do. I know my strengths, and I tend to stick to them. I'm an educated, intelligent person, so I can usually figure new stuff out pretty well. But I'm not great at physical/spatial stuff, so learning standard is like asking me to learn Irish dancing in a few hours. I can get the car to start moving from a stop maybe an eighth of the time, but it feels like I'm doing the same thing both when I'm successful and when I'm unsuccessful. I can't just feel it a few times and then know what I'm doing right or wrong.

I also don't typically stick to doing stuff I'm not good at. I can do easy-level sudoku, but I can't do the really hard ones, so I don't bother trying. But with this, I have to stick with it, and I have to keep failing, over and over again. I really hate it every single time I stall the car out, but I can't just be like, okay, tell me the secret, and I'll get it right every time. It's something I have to learn slowly and painfully.

Add to this the complicated emotional issues that came with learning it the first time from my mom. My mom is a lovely lady, and a lot of fun to hang out with, but I have no idea what made my parents decide she should be the one to teach us to drive. Often she would wait till the last second to give an instruction, then yell it, so the whole time I was behind the wheel I felt nervous, waiting for Andy to yell something, even though he's not that kind of communicator. The only huge, blow-up, multiday fight I got in with my mother was a direct result of her teaching me to drive. So I hate feeling like every time I stall the car (which was a lot, you guys), I failed a little more, and I feel anxious on top of it because of bad memories.

But! I'm smart and I'm strong and I'm going to get the hang of it! We're going back out later for another lesson, and I'm hoping that by the end of the week, with a few more practice sessions, I'll be good to go.

Can you drive a standard? Who taught you? Please share any secrets you may have that will lead to my success.

On making it up as you go

Picture via

I spent last evening knitting with some friends. One of these friends in particular is a fairly ambitious but relatively new knitter. She also is one of the most interesting, dynamic people I've ever met, so it doesn't surprise me that she's not interested in starting with a garter stitch scarf. She knit one of those big enough for a doll, announced that she knew the basics, and demanded to be taught the next step. When I'm not around and she decides she wants to move on, she spends hours on YouTube watching tutorials, trying, ripping out, and trying again. She has decided she needs a pair of wristwarmers, but most of the patterns out there are too advanced for her, so she figured she'd just knit some and figure it out as she went.

WHAT? I totally love this about her. She is fearless. She has just about finished her first wristwarmer, including a somewhat-improvised thumb gusset that she sort of made up as she went along. (For those of you who don't knit or crochet or sew or whatever, thumb gussets are the sort of thing that scare people away from knitting mittens for a long time.)

There are a group of people out there, crafters who don't follow patterns and who feel that trying to follow a pattern restricts one's creativity. Sometimes this results in really bizarre things that you might see while tripping on acid (I'm not even trying to be mean here - Google-search "freeform knitting" and you will see what I mean), but every once in a while you'll find something so stunning that of course it was made up on the spot by a brilliant, inspired mind. That's pretty much happening with my friend's wristwarmers. They're stunning.

I am the kind of knitter who follows a pattern (even if it's one I made up) 96% of the time. I always have an idea what the end result will look like before I even pick up my needles.

This girl is four years my junior, but I want to be like her when I grow up.

Who is inspiring you lately? What lessons are you absorbing?

What it's like to be me today

Hello, beautiful

Here's what's going on in my head right now:

The insurance company has decided that my car is totaled. This means that the whole process is going to take longer than the week or so we planned for. We have to find out exactly why they totaled it, because if there's nothing structurally wrong with the car we'll probably buy it back from them and get it fixed. Either way, we decided it's smarter to stop paying for the rental I've been using all week, so it looks like this weekend will be spent learning to drive standard. That way I can drop Andy off at work and pick him up (he works longer days than I do) or, if I'm not confident enough to face rush hour on the highway yet, he can drop me off and pick me up, and I can work four ten-hour days next week. Hassle.

I need a haircut. And some dye. I dyed it black for Halloween but don't want to commit to black hair full time, so I've been rocking several inches of brownish roots for a while now. I can't decide what I want to do with it right now, but this website will make deciding really easy or a lot harder.

Thursdays have become Knitting Night for me and some friends. Tonight we're taking a field trip to the other side of the city so I can get more lovely, lovely Baby Alpaca Grande, which is pictured above. I'm halfway done with a gorgeous seed-stitch cowl in the softest coral yarn ever (that's it second from the right in the picture). I'll try to post a picture of the finished thing, because I made up the pattern because I'm a badass knitter like that.

I'm hungry.

What's it like to be you today?

On Jamaica

Pretty image via

I realized after I posted yesterday that I haven't shared anything else about my trip to Jamaica with you dudes. If you get the chance, you should go there. Here are a few reasons why:

• They give you rum. Lots and lots of rum.
• You can win even more rum. It's given out as a prize.
• I may be misremembering, but I think the winner of the kid's volleyball tournament got rum.
• The entertainment provided by the resort was terrifically bad. 
• The first night we went to the show (the second night there) was the all-Jamaican cast's rendition of scenes from Grease. The guy playing Danny Zuko had a very limited command of a) his lines and b) English.
• They had a Lavar Burton look-alike MCing everything.
• They had a dance contest one night. An eight-year-old girl performed a dance called the dirty wine. Lavar told her, "You need Jesus."
• If it rained, we went inside and watched part of National Treasure, which was always on tv.
• I won some rum. And they gave us two bottles of rum in our room, with a coconut with the top lopped off, for being newlyweds.
• The food was pretty good for being buffet-style. Andy particularly liked that there was a jerk chicken hut on the beach. I particularly liked that there was a bar on the beach.
• We didn't know the names of any of the staff, so we nicknamed them. We were particularly fond of Sideburns, Bossy, and Crazy Thumbs Murphy.
•  There was enough to do at or through the resort that we didn't feel weird about not leaving much. We went parasailing and snorkeling and on a sunset cruise thing, which involved a pirate hideout which is now a bar.

In the interest of full disclosure, I can tell you that the good people of RIU resorts do not know who I am, and that we paid them a lot of money to hang out there and drink their rum. I'll also add that Andy has an aunt who's a travel agent, so we could afford a decent trip.

Have you ever been to Jamaica? Was it awesome? If not, where else have you been that you think I'd like?

On travel

Where we stayed; image via

Andy and I got married in July of 2008. We honeymooned for a week in Jamaica, which was awesome. And since I have nothing to talk about today (to type about?), I'm going to share the oh-so-charming story of the first day of our honeymoon. Don't worry, it's not any weird sex story or anything. Promise.

Our flight left somewhere around 6 in the morning. Which meant getting to the airport around 4:30. Which meant waking up at 4. Which is not so good for me. I have two possible emotions upon waking: confusion or rage. Thankfully, that morning, my body went with "confusion," and we were both totally packed so we got out the door without much incident.

In the airport, Andy's bag set off one of the detectors, necessitating a search by hand. The offending item: a full-size tube of sunscreen, grabbed at the last second by Andy in a thoughtful moment. He knows I burn easily and saw the sunscreen sitting on the shelf in the bathroom, so he assumed I had forgotten it. (He didn't know I had two different kinds of sunscreen in my packed luggage.) Because it was still before five in the morning, I stared at him, incredulous, and demanded to know why he had packed more than three ounces of liquid in his carry-on. He paused, and said, "Well, I didn't memorize the TSA guidelines like you did, and I didn't want you to burn." So then I felt like an asshole for a while.

The flights were fine, customs was a pain, someone on the shuttle to the resort stole my glasses. I am not kidding. Apparently health care in Jamaica is really expensive so there's a big market for stuff like that. (Don't worry, I had my contacts.)

When we arrived at the resort, the room wasn't ready yet. We left our stuff in a locked room, changed into suits, and headed for the beach. On the way we stopped by the waterfront bar. Many bartenders at all-inclusive resorts are coached to pour lightly; I can assure you that if such a direction was given to our bartenders, they roundly ignored it. I spent my first three hours at the resort drinking a lot of rum and laying in the sun.

Once they notified us that our room was ready, we moved our stuff and decided to take a nap in the nice, cool sheets. We were, by four in the afternoon, drunk enough that we didn't even want to use the bed for other purposes. We just wanted a nap.

When I woke up, I had that awful, groggy, hungover feeling that comes from too much sun and rum and sleeping. I had napped for over two hours. I felt terrible. We decided to go see if dinner would help settle my stomach. We were on our honeymoon! I couldn't feel crappy!

Dinner was fine, except our seat: we were directly under a ceiling fan, which was directly under a light. Which meant the whole table was treated to a strobe-light effect. Ever feel hungover and nauseous and then sit under a strobe light?

Which is how I spent the first night of my honeymoon puking over a fence into the bushes outside the dining room, then going to bed at eight. I win at romance.

Frigidity

Imagine this sweater but with a plain front, no buttons, no belt.

I'm going to let you in on a secret. The sweater I'm wearing today (see above) is usually worn as a bathrobe-type thing. It's from L.L. Bean, approximately eight years old, it's enormous and kind of shapeless and 100% wool, and I've used it so much around the house that until last night it was covered in pills.

But it's FREAKING COLD here right now, so while we watched a movie yesterday I de-pilled it, and threw it on this morning over some jeggings and two shirts. You do what you have to to stay warm. Plus, it actually looks pretty cute. I'm kind of sad that this is maybe the third time I've worn this thing out of the house.

So tonight we're going to eat leftover corned beef and all the fixings - because I made a freaking amazing dinner yesterday - and watch movies and curl up on the couch. Did you know that a dog makes an even better blanket than a blanket does?

What are you doing to keep warm? If it's not icy where you are, please send me warm thoughts!