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Cold—and overcast, but it's dark, so who'd notice

Head cold.

Went home sick from work today and actually went to bed. I took some swatching and a book and some water, but I did eventually fall asleep. One good thing about being sick is getting to sleep in the afternoon.

I’ve decided that it’s not ethical to knit for someone else when one is contagious unless the article can be sterilized. How do you sterilize a hand wash only item?

Hence the swatching instead something more substantial. I have only a toe left on the Flame socks.

I also think that if you can work from home, it is unethical to go to work, particularly to go to work in a closed, crowded subway car. Fellow sick New Yorkers, please stay home. Same to you, my coworkers with hordes of children.

I have signed up for the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat. That’s getting out of the city.

Two days ago, while having my biweekly massage—it’s cheaper than a shrink & more fun—I was trying to clear my mind without falling asleep, but all I could think about was knitting. The bug is back.

Winterish, and dark outside. Finally not sweaty.

Resisting

I keep picking up Jane Sowerby’s Victorian Lace Today. I’m so tempted. I’m resisting; it is only a month and a half until the Χ–thing and there is no way I’m finishing a shawl in six weeks. I’m down to one or two conference calls a week and staff meetings are down to a minimum.

Work, though, is why I have nothing to show. Unless you are interested in SQL scripts and funds transfer pricing analyses. I do have a lovely cap plodding along in a Tunisian rib with cables in a smaller sort of gauge. Lots of knitting with very little progress. And a Manos de Uruguay Cotton Stria scarf at work for those conference calls I’m not having. Nothing significant enough for photos.

I now have a laptop for work. Which I carry home every night in case I should finally come down with a cold or the flu and be compelled to stay home. I haven’t yet, but I check my e-mail and end up wasting time at home that I could be wasting at work.

Question

If you are knitting a hat with cables and ribbing, is it better to decrease into the rib or the cable?

I’m on VACATION.

I cannot remember when I last felt this relaxed. Not that a sane person would call me relaxed.

I’m on vacation for only a week; and at the end of the week I turn 49. My joy is not unmitigated.

Spring. Finally. Maybe.

Five weeks after the false hope of March, it finally warmed up enough to get out on my bike and flap my love-handles in the wind. I work a loose shirt to protect the innocent. This was a marvelously perfect day for biking. Not too cool, not too warm. Steady, but not too insistent breeze. Light traffic.

Today will probably be the best day Brooklyn will have all year. Everybody was out. People on bikes—some cute guys, too— everywhere. McCarran Park, between Greenpoint and Williamsburgh, was packed, as were the sidewalk tables at the restaurant on Smith St.

Feather & Fan Update

I’m ⁷/₈ through round 165. This sounds like a lot, but that’s only 72% of the total stitches. Only twenty-five more rounds, mostly plain knitting until I get to the crocheted cast-off, which will be the end of me.

I finished a scarf, too, since we last met. I’ll take pictures eventually.

Confession

Sometimes blogging seems like Work. Some days at Work are 90% e-mail.

In Other News

• We’re having a home office installed tomorrow. We had to move everything out of the office in preparation. It seems quite large now, but the living room is cramped.
• A table, two good-quality bookcases, a mirror and a black plastic cylindrical trash-can went out to the curb to make way for the new furniture. All found homes, good ones I hope. The trash can went first—odd, since it was the cheapest thing out there. The last to go was the six-foot bookcase. I was surprised, How often do you find a six-foot, maple-veneer, mahogany-finish bookcase in excellent condition with all the shelves on the street FOR FREE?
• My elder sister turned 50 today. This is not a consolation to me. I did remember to call her. Eventually.
• I warned my younger sister that in the two years after I turn 50 I am unlikely to forget that she is relatively right behind me, so she should be nice to both my older sister and me.
• I have realized that my the vacation I had (vaguely) planned out of the country next year to avoid spending my 50^th with anyone but J will probably not happen. We have a major system conversion due at the end of April next year at work.
• Of the tens of people I saw biking today, I was one of the four oldest. I’m almost certain the other three are gay. And they looked pretty good. I’ve got some work ahead of me.

Overcast, not as warm as I’d like, but so much better than last week.

Time to Get My Butt in Gear

Call me an optimist, but the weather doesn’t seem quite as antagonistic this week. I need to get the bike into the local shop for a tune-up and a new back wheel, so I can get these love handles out flapping in the wind once more.

I was in a cab on the way home from my biweekly massage, where if I didn’t make a conscious effort to relax I would probably feel like a blob of kneaded lard, and I saw throng of poeple going into the local gym. At 7pm! Spring is definitely coming.

I’d probably be more motivated if that throng hadn’t been, on average, twelve years younger than me.

However, I absolutely refuse to go up a waist-size. Those hideous gym walls will see me yet again. Soon. Right after I get over the fact that I now have to get up at 4:30, despite what the lying clock says.

And the Point of Starting DST Three Weeks Earlier Is?

And we save energy by having the lights and heat on earlier in the colder and darker early morning hours? I can’t help thinking somehow ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco, BP, et al. are making money off this.

Lulled into Complacency

I’m having one of those weeks where people cancel meetings I have to attend and postpone deadlines and thereby open huge swatches of my calendar. I forget what I’m supposed to be working on. Doom, clearly, approaches.

There’s a schedule out there somewhere that says I’m required for 730 hours of requirements review over the next four months. 4 months × 21 business days/month × 8 business hours/day = 672 hours. Doom approaches.

Still rather cold and getting colder.

What to Cook With

I had disliked my stove for some time. It was white and didn’t match the fridge or the dishwasher. It was hard to clean. The burner grates weren’t flat, so pans would rock back and forth when stirring. Think stirring risotto for twenty minutes straight. The burners would go out instead of going low. It was, like much in this condo, the cheap builders’ model.

I finally got a new one, a Kitchenaid, with more features than I need. The feature I like best is the high-heat burner with the grate insert that reverses to become a wok stand. That is a full-size wok from a Chinese restaurant supply store on the stand. Cheap. Cooking in a wok with enough space to push each cooked ingredient out as it is done and opening enough space in the middle to cook the next is a revelation. I might even cook more stir-fry.

What I really want to cook more of is South Asian and Middle Eastern. What I need to cook more of is vegetables, so I went rooting through Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. I had the stove; I had the recipe’s. I needed vegetables and spices.

Lots of Spices

While the stove was delivered last weekend and installed on Monday, neither of us had anytime to use it. I did boil water for pasta on Thursday, but that was it. I plotted with my cookbook and tossed all the stale spices into the trash.

Friday, though, I was able to take the day off and I went shopping. I went to Fairway for the bulk of it, but came home without a few things, notably, no red chilis, fresh or dried. Then I hit a few local shops trying to fill in the gaps and to pick up a five-inch cast iron pan for roasting spices. I found enough ingredients to make cucumber raita, Afghan sour cherry chutney, Hyderabadi red lentils and Sri Lankan sweet potatoes with cardamum and chilis. All of these were excellent. The raita was some of the best I’ve ever had and the sweet potatoes were good even leftover and cold.

Saturday, I went out to further fill in the remaining gaps in my grocery list and pick up few things J had added. I hit Dean & Deluca and got sweet smoked paprika and manchego cheese for J, and paid a fortune for Mexican oregano, but bombed out on everything on my South Asian list. Then I got my wok at the restaurant supply at Houston and Lafayette, two blocks away, then walked with the not exactly lightweight wok to First Ave just below Sixth St to a South Asian spice dealer and grocery, which is where I should have gone to begin with. Everything that was on my original list and some extras, all cheaper than anywhere else. The day was perfect for it too.

Have you ever smelled asafoetida? There is a reason it’s hard to find. Noxious and nauseating. I sealed the small jar I bought in a mason jar when I got home. So far it works, but I’m afraid to open the jar.

Saturday was a Chinese-like stir-fry, in honor of the new wok, with a ersatz fresh-ground five-spice powder (no star anise in the house), some chicken breasts and lots of vegetables. Not bad. I love the wok.

I also made tabouleh from scratch for lunches. It has an entirely different texture than what you get in the instant versions or pre-packaged—smoother and less oily.

J broke-in the oven Sunday with Lemon Bars and dinner that evening was Jaffrey’s Red Peppers Stuffed with Herbed Rice in the Persian Style. This was perfectly fine, but I’m now pretty sure tarragon is more appealing in concept than practice. Thyme would be a good substitute.

Knitting

There was some progress on Feather & Fan in the last month, but most of my knitting was done on a lace scarf in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool on #2’s (Am) during innumerable conference calls to tedious to recall. Between that and typing e-mails, my hands and wrists have been tired.

This has all been rather long-winded, but I’ve spared you the last month of boredom and tedium. Really, you missed nothing.

Anyone care to review 300 pages or so of financial systems business requirements documents for me? I didn’t think so.

Cold, cold cold, and getting colder; cloudly earlier.

Cold: the Other Kind

Just the usual winter cold. I left work early and stayed home Friday, but spent most of the day on the phone with conference calls. We called it a working-from-home day instead of a sick day.

Socks Complete

I finished the second pair of socks in Gem Opal. They are thick, but not too much so, and should be warm. They aren’t quite dress socks though. Weaving the end I was surprised how even the stitches came out after washing, Knitting on the subway occasionally results in odd loose stitch, but it evened out nicely.

I’ve swatched for dress socks in Schaffer Yarn’s Anne on #00 (1.75mm) and #000 (1.5mm) dpn’s. The smaller gauge looks good, but there is no way I can knit with those on the subway. I’m doubtful about the #00’s. I got 8¼ st/in and 9½ st/in respectively, seated in a stationary chair.

Feather & Fan Update

I have passed the 60% mark, and am approaching the end of round 151. Forty-nine to go.

And now for the odd body part.

I had a delightfully witty post all ready for Wednesday, but hit the back button on the browser and lost it all. That was dumb, because I already knew that I have more flexibility typing it in TextWrangler and pasting it in when I’m finished.

Cool, a bit damp. Nowhere near as cold as Friday and yesterday morning.

Shopping

Yesterday’s shopping trip was the Container Store in Manhattan. I have a new piece of furniture, a console, which has two main functions: to look nicer than the desk it replaces in the living/dining room and to store yarn. It has glass doors and somehow plastic zipper bags of yarn weren’t the most attractive thing to display. So we had to buy something to put the yarn in to put it in the console.

This is full now, but there is no yarn stashed anywhere else in this apartment. At least, not that I can remember. And, yes, some plastic bags are still visible. I need to do some rearranging. The bright flash also makes it more obvious. The room is usually darker.

While there, we ordered stuff to organize the bedroom closet better, and bought trays and boxes to straighten up around here. I’ve even cleaned my desk.

Going Out

J & I went to a new wine bar on Atlantic Ave. yesterday evening, Donna DeVine (I’m not sure of the capitalization). We each had a fight of reds and some cheeses. The wine and the cheese were excellent. It was a little early and the place was not busy, so it was slow and relaxing. The place has a nice atmosphere too.

Backing Up

The witty post was supposed to be about last weekend’s trip to Dallas to see my mom for her birthday. I can’t remember the last time I celebrated her birthday, certainly not without celebrating my younger sister’s, which is on the same day.

We flew down on Saturday. I took knitting on a plane with me for the first time. Airports and airplanes are much less stressful when I’m knitting, or maybe it wasn’t that stressful because for once I wasn’t flying during a holiday season.

I had no problem going through security with Addi Turbos in my carry-on, but it still took us a while to get through: J wore a shirt with steel snaps, under a sweater. The guy scanned him for five minutes.

Our flight attendant on the way back was a newbie knitter, so we talked knitting for awhile.

At Mom’s we ate and played Scrabble, WordThief and Upwords and vainly tried to complete the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle. I gained another pound I’ll have to work off before spring, but it was fun.

My older sister and my neice want hand-knitted socks, so I’ll have an opportunity to knit some more feminine socks with brighter colors.

Hoping

I’m hoping for a less stressful week at work. Both of my bosses will be out of town and I’ve finished one round of system testing and the next doesn’t hit me for two weeks. I’ll cross my fingers, but I won’t hold my breath.

And I’m picking up Feather & Fan again this week.