Kiss My Knits!

Well, that was a blast! We nearly sold out the theater, and the preliminary numbers raised for Equality Now sound very good. I met a Greenville Browncoat who had one of my kits there. She was a fairly new knitter and wanted pointers on picking up stitches for the earflaps. We went through it, and I showed her an alternate method that worked better for her. She picked it up (so to speak) quickly.

I went with Turtlegirl, Amy (whom I don’t think I’d really met), and who had never seen Serenity before. I realized this when at that big surprising moment in the movie – you know the one I mean – she gasped. There were at least 10 gasps in the theater, so that’s a good group of new recruits.

Hearing the gasps reminded me of the time I saw The Empire Strikes Back when it was re-released in theaters. There was a girl sitting near us who, 25 years after the original release, had never seen the movie AND was completely unspoiled. One has to assume she was raised in the Amazon. In a cave. By wolves. During the Middle Ages. Regardless, it was so cool to hear her gasp in amazement at Darth Vader’s big reveal and whisper excitedly to the guy she was with. Really took me back to 1981. This was like that – you can never get back that moment before you knew what was coming, but you can still feel a certain vicarious thrill.


In addition to donating a hat for the silent auction (it went for well above retail, thanks to that Browncoat for her generosity), I also loaned my mannequin for displaying an authentic costume from the movie. This nice young man carried it back to my car. He also gave me back my glass head used for hat display, leading to this exchange between me and .

Illiane: Hey, want to see my new car?
Me: Absolutely! I just got my head from this guy, let me go put it away.
Illiane: A college guy gave you head? All right!
Me: Yep. I’ve still got it.

It went on. You get the gist. We were a little punchy. I imagine the young man would be appalled to learn of this conversation. His mother would, too, since I know her.


Moving on!

A lot of us met up at Fuel Pizza afterward. They very graciously gave our group vouchers indicating that they would donate a portion of profits from our meals to Equality Now. I heard the cashiers talking. They said they’d only been expecting about 20 people. Instead we took over the upstairs. So a good time was had by all, and it was a good haul for Equality Now, too. It was good for Fuel Pizza too, of course, since I know I had a good time and will go back, and I’m sure others will as well.

All in all, it was a very successful evening. Once everybody’s rested up, we can start thinking about next year. Can’t stop the signal!

If you don’t already have tickets for your local Serenity screening, GET THEM NOW. Most places are having their big-screen showings tonight, and many of those locales are selling out.

I’ll be at Charlotte’s tonight, at the Park Terrace theater. Seating begins at 7pm and the show starts at 7:30, but there’ll be check-in and activities from 6pm onward. Last I heard, there were fewer than 25 tickets left for a 200 seat theater, and they’ve stopped selling online. If you don’t already have tix, arrive early or take your chances!

Great film, great cause. Highly recommended. Go.

You probably didn’t know this, but is a talented seamstress who used to sell her beautiful handmade purses. She very kindly gave me the ritzy gold number to the right to pass on to Emily a couple of weeks ago. I held onto it until today since I’m trying to dole out the toys over the summer. Emily was delighted to receive it. Thanks, Illiane!

Getting this toy prompted Emily to dig out a little stuffed doll she had of Lilly, the mouse in the story Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. The problem with this is that she’d shown zero interest in this doll for quite some time, and the purse was gone. Of all the various tasks of parenting, number one on the hate parade is searching for small plastic pieces of junk toys. It causes my blood pressure to rise within seconds. Of course I don’t display this to my child, but you have to imagine cartoon steam coming out of my ears. We looked for a while, then I asked if I could just make her one.

I had some purple fabric which Emily approved, so I fired up the sewing machine and knocked one out. I couldn’t remember the trick for turning a tube of fabric inside out, and my clumsy attempts with a crochet hook to snag the end and pull it through didn’t work, so the seam on the strap shows. I gave it to Emily, who glanced at it, then without looking, set it at the edge of a table where it fell to the ground. She was busy doing something else. Le sigh. I asked if it was too big, and Emily said no, so I went off and took a shower.

When I got out, Emily had taken the time to look at the purse more closely. She said that yes, it was too big, as I suspected. I got her to show me where she wanted it to fall on Lilly, then remade it. I was glad I hadn’t expended any extra effort to make that strap look nice. (Illiane, I need to get you to show me the strap-turny trick.) Emily said this purse was good. Then she put the doll aside and hasn’t picked it up since.

So this is my day. Making little fabric purses for a stuffed mouse at the request of a cute little ingrate. (Note: when she didn’t offer, I did prompt her to thank me for each purse.)

Welcome to parenthood. Duration: LIFE.

Emily’s new dress.
Also, happy birthday, Mom!

Hats up for: FL, NC, NC

Souvenirs, beach anticipation, and blueberry muffins.

I went out last night to buy a dress for Emily after realizing that she has none that fit her properly. I had asked her if she wanted to come along, but she said I should get her one and surprise her.

Since I was at the mall, I decided to stop at the Apple Store. I went to the back of the store with my determined face on, which tends to deter kiosk vendors and over-eager salespeople. One guy, however, was very friendly and greeted me, so I smiled back and said hi. He looked familiar.

He came up to me as I was pondering games, and said, “Aren’t you that Zork girl?” Aha! Yes! It was Zork guy! We reminisced again about text-based games and he said that I would forever be tied in his mind with that entire genre. I love that! I left him my card so he’d have a name to go with the Zork connection. He’s got a Windows machine now, so he’s going to try to download some and give them another shot for old times’ sake Nice guy, I like him.

I did not, by the way, buy any games. I spent far too much money on my solo weekend, and I’ve got too much other stuff to do to really enjoy a new game anyway.

Everybody’s asked if I was doing wonderful and wild things this weekend. The answer has turned out to be “nope.” Instead I’ve wandered around town doing things I wanted to (hence the spending too much money), and also taking care of a lot of errands like dropping things off at Goodwill, etc. I think there’s been some disappointment on some people’s parts because of that, but there shouldn’t be. It’s still a great break.

When I’m taking care of Emily, there’s a constant blanket of responsibility over my mind. Whatever I’m doing, I have to also have a process running in my mental computer that factors in how it affects my child. When she’s out of town, I don’t have to factor that in. The blanket is peeled off and more of who I used to be is exposed. I can stay up late if I want, knowing that there won’t be a little person stealing my bed at 6am. I can go to the video store and know that I’m free to browse as long as I want without a little person getting bored, or having to subconsciously keep constant tabs on her location. I can play my music loudly, even the stuff like Ike Reilly that has lyrics that are obscene.

life is definitely different without my daughter around. Nonetheless, I’ll be very glad to have her back today.

While putting up a Serenity flier yesterday, I saw a poster for The Charlotte Public Library summer film series. They’ve got some really good movies, and they’re showing them in the theater at Imaginon. Nice venue! Sunday, they’ll be showing the Buster Keaton silent movie Our Hospitality with live piano accompaniment. This will probably fall during the time that I have to go pick up Emily from her grandparents, but if it doesn’t, I’m going and I’m asking my father if he wants to come. I mean, look at the picture – that’s comedy gold, people!

They’ve actually got a lot of good movies. I wouldn’t mind seeing All About Eve on the big screen, and I know Guys and Dolls is one of my husband’s favorite musicals. I wonder if they sell popcorn…

I have several care packages to mail, hopefully today. gets a knitting kit, and so does . They may take an extra day – everything’s slower when school is out.

Speaking of things slowing down, I’ve managed to pick up poison ivy on one finger of my right hand. It’s not an area where the yarn rubs directly when I knit, but it’s still slowing me down because it’s quite sensitive. With my poison ivy track record, I should just never go outdoors ever in the summer. Well, this is why I build extra time into my Jayne hat estimates. I almost never need to use it, but this week I will.

Got to run – somebody wants me to play!

While watching the Seven Samurai a few days ago, we ran into a problem we’ve run into before. We have a DVD player that works intermittently. We also have a DVD/VHS combo with a non-working DVD player. So we have to play DVDs on our PS2 game system. When it’s a particularly long movie, or when the PS2 has been on a long time and heats up, it stops playing DVDs. We finally wound up putting an ice pack under the machine in order to watch the last half of the movie. I think it was the ice pack that made us decide to get a new DVD player.

And so we did! Behold, the Panasonic DMR-EH75V. It’s a DVD recorder / VCR combo with an 80gig hard drive and the ability to record in all kinds of new and fancy ways. Today we used the TVGuide online function to tell it to record Barney – no setting times up or anything, just “hey, this program’s gonna be on, record it, willya?” It worked like a charm.

We’re still figuring out how everything works, but so far, this thing ROCKS. It’s no TiVo, but I do see what all of y’all with DVRs are going on about now. The remote is easy enough that Emily got the hang of it this morning on the first try. We can rip our old VHS tapes to DVD and hopefully free up some space. It took the place of two non-functioning machines, so that’s a space saver right there. And it will be much easier with this system to get our home movies onto some kind of actual watchable format. This was a little pricier than the budget DVD/VCR combo we might have gone for before, but I think it’s going to prove to be worth the money.

In summer break news, Emily is signed up for the local dance school’s “Little Mermaid Week” now, and is quite excited by the prospect. She looks forward to this dance camp every summer. I think we probably still need one or maybe two more activities to round out the summer, so we don’t both go crazy.

Tomorrrow, my husband and a friend will be driving to Niagara Falls for a meeting of online friends. It won’t just be Emily and me, though. Her Nana has obtained tickets to a stage production of High School Musical and wants to keep her over the weekend for that. Looks like a great start to the summer!

Yesterday, Turtlegirl76 and I went to the Charlotte Dragon Boat festival and had a great time!
Read all about it! Pictures, too!