Passion

Sigh. "Definitely" and "defiantly" are different words, World.  Please stop using them interchangeably.  "Definitely" means "certainly" and is spelled exactly the way it sounds. Definite - ly.  "Defiantly" means "resistant, rebellious, insubordinate", is also spelled exactly the way it sounds (defiant - ly), and is actually very rarely used at the beginning of a sentence, and almost never on its own.  If you find yourself wanting to use one of these words to agree with someone, or as a complete sentence, you probably want "definitely".  Okay?  Okay. Moving on.

*****

Jim and I went to Mackinac Island over the weekend. Guess what? There were no cars there! *gasp* 
Seriously, though, it is a pretty cool little island. There's a little historic town, and we wandered through the museum and learned a bit about the island's history. It used to be the center of the fur trade, since it sits right in between two great lakes and is a great waypoint if you use lakes as a highway system.  All transportation on the island is by bike or horse (or foot), but it doesn't really matter, since the circumference of the island is only about 8 miles. It's quite small.  We rented bikes and rode around the outside, and it was a perfect day.




We stopped for a while and skipped rocks.  The water was too cold to swim, but it was a great day for sitting and watching the water.


We also bought 1.5 lbs of fudge, which is the other thing the island is famous for. I have to say, this is pretty amazing fudge. We may have to go back when I run out.
Later this week.

The rest of the pictures we took are here.

Merry Christmas!

 Weeee!  I had such a fun weekend.

Thursday I got dyes and white yarn from Knitpicks.com.  I LOVE knitpicks.  They have such great stuff, and their prices are insanely low.  So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday each I dyed a skein of yarn.( pictures of the skeins I dyed )

Friday night Mike D and I went to see Wilco in concert in Ann Arbor.  It was EPIC.  Except for two guys in front of us who were a little too into it, and were bopping and jumping and twisting all over the place like they were on ecstasy and it was a techno concert.  There was a short woman behind them who asked them if they could calm down so she could see... and they said NO.  And got more boisterous.  And then got out tiny bottles of vodka and drank them.
Now, I'm all for enjoying a good concert.  I danced and jumped a bit too.  And I played some pretty kickass air drums (Wilco's got some great sequences where the drums are just... oh man...).  And I love me some vodka.  But seriously?  When you're interfering with other peoples' ability to enjoy the concert, and you're doing it willfully?  That's when you're a jerk, and you have a problem.
But anyway!  The concert itself was so good.  They played I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, Radio Cure (yes, I cried), and Jesus, Etc.  They didn't play Hummingbird or Via Chicago, or Reservations or Poor Places... but I figure, with something like 97 cds out, I was lucky to get 3 of my all-time favorites.  And I liked everything else they played, too. :-)  The only downside was they weren't selling cds after the concert...  I think I'm actually 2 cds behind schedule now.  I have YHF, Summerteeth, AGIB... and then I need Sky Blue Sky and I think there is one after that.
(And yeah, the icon for this post is Mika and not Jeff Tweedy. But, uh... deal with it.)

Anyway.

Saturday Jim and I lounged about and, after I stopped dyeing yarn, cuddled on the couch and watched Underworld.  It was a relaxing day.

Sunday Mike and Andrea D took us to a local orchard, Wiard's.  We ate donuts, drank cider, watched a guy fill up a tray with apple pulp so he could mush it into cider, went on a hayride, solved a corn maze, looked at rescued bunnies, and enjoyed a lovely fall day with lots of sunshine.  We were so lucky with the weather--it's been mostly rainy for the last several weeks, and Sunday was only slightly cold and had a gorgeous blue sky.
I took a bunch of pictures but don't want to post them all here, so go check them out on Flickr. :-P
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnatheory/sets/72157622621492488/

All in all it was a fantastic weekend.  Life is, temporarily, very good.

Oh! Almost forgot--

Obligatory Claire photo.

 I just realized I haven't even really posted text in a while.  Man, I'm such a blog slacker.

The last few weekends have been so much fun.  Three weeks ago Jim and I went to a beer festival with two of our good friends.  Jim doesn't drink, but the rest of us sampled all sorts of different beers from microbreweries all over Michigan.  The best one I tasted was actually from a brewery about two miles from where Jim's parents live, so we've resolved to go back there so I can buy a warehouse full of their beer.  Jim drove us all to our weekly Friday night tabletop gaming group after the beer festival, which was quite amusing.  The group is up to about 10 people now, which is absurd for a tabletop adventuring group, but somehow it is usually still fun.

The following weekend the same friend who hosts the tabletop game threw a huge party for his Warcraft guild.  They are on the same server Jim and I play on, and we knew a bunch of the members (including one of the people who went to the beer festival with us, and who only comes to this part of the state on rare occasions), so we were invited as well.  It took up most of a Saturday night and lasted well into the small hours of Sunday morning and was just a fantastic get together.  I got to meet a couple of really awesome new people, too.  Afterwards I moved one of my characters into their guild so I could hang out with them online.

Last weekend we finally started back up with another tabletop gaming session that had been suspended for most of the summer while one of our group members bought a house and moved.  We finally met up in his basement, along with two new people, and even though we ended up spending literally half the time we were there helping the new guys create characters, we had a really fun evening.  The four of us who were playing ended up killing off a really scary level 6 bear of some sort, but Jim (who is the dungeon master) had rolled a 100 on his percentile dice (he rolls them to see how awful our random encounter is going to be, and 100 is the worst possible) decided that our victory over it had been too easy and that with a 100 we probably should have died.  So he sent a level 11 elite dire bear after us.  We were level 3 and 4.

We killed it.

It was pretty much the best D&D moment ever.

This week I decided I needed to make some knitting friends, so I used the location search on Ravelry to find a group in this area.  I finally found one that had active threads in their forum, so I introduced myself.  They get together on Wednesday nights about three miles from my apartment, so Wednesday I headed over there and met up with 3 of them.  We sat outside (it was a beeeeaaauuuutiful evening) and knitted for about 3 hours.  I was by far the youngest, but they were very nice women and it was fun to be able to talk knitting.  Also, they told me about the Michigan Fiber Festival, which is this weekend on the other side of the state, and when I expressed interest, one of them offered me a ride!!  So I am meeting her at her house tomorrow morning at 6 am and we're going to drive across the state so I can fondle pretty pretty yarns.

Also this week, Jim and I decided we needed a break from Warcraft, so we're going Tuesday to Tuesday without logging in at all.  The funny thing is, what I miss is not playing my max-level characters.  What I really want to do is log in and level some of my level 20-something characters on different servers.  I think the time for an extended break from Warcraft is imminent, though.  Just not really enjoying the experience anymore.

Also also this week, my boss told me I can start working full time.  He got me a new computer, so I don't have to shuffle around where I'm working depending on what day it is, what time of day it is, and who else is in the office (Thursdays were the worst; I had to use 3 different computers on Thursdays based on who was in the office and what times they worked).  So I now have a Real Job(tm).  Still poor though!  Cross your fingers he gives me a raise to go with the new full-time status.

Lastly, one of my friends from the tabletop gaming groups decided he wants a Dr. Who scarf.  It is a foot-wide, 14-foot-long monstrosity in 8 colors.  I originally estimated it would take me 12 weeks to knit it.  But I am getting paid!  Also it is taking a fraction of the time I predicted.  I'm a quarter through after only about 2.5 weeks of knitting (which I guess means it will still take 10 weeks, but hey, 5/6 is still a fraction.......).
I would post current pictures of my progress, but apparently Jim has my camera at his parents' house, where he is documenting the process of putting a new engine in his car (the old one blew up last week)(no one was hurt).

( Aaaaand I post more pictures. )


Also, I'm pretty sure this entry in itself proves that I never was, nor ever will be, cool.  
tabletop games + Warcraft + knitting + crazy cat lady = completely uncool
Maybe the bit about the beer festival helped?

 Vaarsuvius felt left out after I posted those pics of Claire.  So he decided to be extra cute today.


( Lots (LOTS) of pictures below the cut. )

 Our apartment has pets!

Lots of pictures below.

( Clicky! )

Been meaning to upload some pictures for a while. I have a ton of pictures of Nevada, so this post will be just those.

( Warning: large images )

So that's Claire (she looks so innocent, eh? she's very feisty. I lub her). I was going to upload more pictures, but then I remembered they're still on my camera and my camera is in my suitcase and my suitcase is questionably still somewhere between here and Chicago, though I kind of suspect it's actually in Taiwan by now because, after four phone calls across eight hours today, the airport people still won't tell me exactly where my suitcase is or how long it will take for it to get here. So you may never get more pictures than these, and you'll probably never see pictures of my baby sister in a snowsuit being pulled up and down a small hill while screaming and trying to eat snow at the same time.