All I can say is, it’s really fucking gross y’all. And the smell—have you ever had teeth pulled or know someone who has? You ever smell your/their breath after day three, where they can’t really rinse well and the blood is congealing and there’s just this major putrid funk? Yeah, George’s neck smells just like that.

Expand if you want to see the hurt/nasty (NOT for the squeamish).

This all started as weird rolls (sort of like fat rolls) on his back, and they began to develop pus.

You can read about it here.

We went to the vet and they shaved his back as much as he would tolerate and here is what was found:

Open sores and more pus. Gross, right? He also has sores on the inside of his ears.

So we took him home and did some hydrotherapy on him until the sores began to crust-over and develop scabs. Now it’s pretty scabby and we’re waiting for the swelling to go down more.

So here’s how E. coli and a staph infection work in dogs.

He should be okay; at least the vet hasn’t told us differently or to “prepare” for anything.

We’ve put little socks on his back legs; in case he does get a few scratches in, it shouldn’t cut him up.

You should smell it.

Today (Saturday) was Octoberfest for Greater Lafayette, Indiana, and it turned out to be a great turn-out. Most surprising for me was the number of Obama supporters. The Democrats (and Republicans) had a booth and sold campaign yard signs and the number of folks walking around with Obama signs FAR out-weighed the McCain signs. WHICH IS A REALLY GREAT THING.

I would rather have two individuals who know what the fuck they’re doing than an old guy who’ll, let’s face it, probably die while in office, leaving, let’s face it, again, an incompetent, inexperienced eye-winker/flirter.

Don’t fucking FLIRT with me—help me change our country!

4 more years of the last 8 year’s shit?!

I THINK NOT!

And tonight The Partner and I helped to celebrate a friend’s and my 28th birthday!

28!!

You can do a similar Google search yourself, and perhaps you can then tell me who the hell the original artist is. I’ve found roughly eight sites, mostly tumblelogs, who have posted it but no one is giving credit/mentioning an artist.

I think it’s a wonderful update to the 1911 original:

To many knitters Elizabeth Zimmermann is our greatest Knitting Godmother—akin to, I submit, a knitting goddess, who gave to us discernible knitting lessons, decipherable patterns, and the license to knit as we please. EZ lived such a wonderful life, as she tells us in her Knitting Around, and made it her task to teach other knitters that knit and purl weren’t such hard things and look! It’s so much easier if you knit around because then you don’t have to purl AT ALL!

My first introduction to EZ was through her book Knitting Without Tears. Although I wasn’t in tears at the time, I was still a beginning knitter who didn’t know much except how to knit scarves. (And really, a person only needs so many damn scarves that at some point, you HAVE to at least start on mittens.) EZ employed a conversational manner of teaching which I fell in love with, showing us it is best to laugh and knit at the same time, for if you drop a stitch you don’t much fret.

My EZ collection was made complete this morning, when my mail carrier put into my hot little hands a package containing not just another set of Options needles, but Knitting Around, The Opinionated Knitter, and Knitting Workshop. If there is ever a fire these five books will be the first things I save, in addition to Maggie Rigghetti’s Knitting In Plain English. Okay, second things I save, the first being the cats and dog.

Three designs I have been enamored with are her Bog Jacket, Seamless Hybrid Sweater, and the Adult Surprise Jacket. I shall knit these before I die.

1. Seamless Hybrid

   Appears to be a rarity amongst women-wearers, although that may just be my impression due to the lack of online documentation by women knitters. It does look great on guys, though, and I’m thinking with a few well-placed short rows and a bit of waist shaping (and maybe a couple bust darts) I can churn out an awesome sweater.

2. Adult Surprise Jacket (ASJ)

   I have my hesitations with this design. Firstly, I’ve only ever come across pictures of the Baby version, which often means folks have knit it with super-crazy color combos. I’m more of a 4-color-limit-per-garment gal and seeing picture after picture of jackets with 80 different colors scares me. But the image to the right is not quite so crazy and lets me know a toned-down color scheme is possible and may even look great. Secondly, I’m not sure how to work in shaping as the construction of the jacket is a bit strange (it ends up a wobbly rectangle and is seamed together at key spots). It could just turn out boxy, and that’s never good.

3. Bog Jacket

   Holy shit is this cute. The gal on the right added a double-ended zipper and I think I’ll do the same. I’ve started this one, last week, and decided upon a dark gray (slate gray? coal gray?) body with pink edging. I’ve incorporated short rows on both the back and the sides and waist shaping so that all my curves are taken into account. I’m using Cascade 220, which is 100% wool so it will be perfect through our Indiana winters. It’s mindless knitting, all garter stitch, which means I can watch a movie or read websites and knit at the same time. BUT, it’s garter stitch, rows and rows and rows of garter stitch. Over a thousand yards of garter stitch. The shaping provides some relief and a bit of excitement, if only because I’m not quite sure I’m doing it right.

Yum.

Thursday we got a call from our friend John who, along with his wife Katie, was checking in on Cleo through the week for us. He asked me if I knew someone named Esther; I said yes, and he said she had left a note on our door saying she found Wilson and was keeping him at her place. Holy shit was I ever so happy.

We got home in the early evening Saturday but Esther wasn’t home yet. When she did get home, we went over to retrieve Wilson. She said he had been pawing at her back door, evidently confused as to which door was his. She scooped him up and took him inside, bought him some food and made a make-shift litter box. When we went in her house Wilson wouldn’t come when called, which wasn’t too surprising as cats usually freak out when in a new environment. Esther said his favorite place was under the sofa, so she moved the couch and pulled him out.

Poor Wilson was so freaked out. I took him from Esther and noticed he must have lost at least a pound or two. He smelled me, smelled my arm, then nestled against me and started purring and licking me. His paws were slightly dirty, but there weren’t any cuts or other noticeable injuries.

We thanked Esther a thousand times, then took Wilson back to our place. We put him down at the base of the stairs so that he could acclimate himself and wonder the house on his own. Cleo came down to see who was home and Wilson freaked the fuck out. He started hissing and growling at Cleo and ran into the kitchen.

For the past couple days he and Cleo have not been getting along. He’s the instigator, immediately growling at her when he sees her. Cleo couldn’t give a shit less, though. I’m not sure if he’s just needing some time to readjust, or if he thinks he’s going to gain a step up in the hierarchy. Unfortunately for Wilson, Cleo is not budging as top cat.

Here are some shots The Partner got of Wilson his first evening back home:

Cleo was so not cool with Wilson’s new attitude:

Poor Wilson. We’ve been joking the whole time that he’s suffering from PTSD. Perhaps we shouldn’t be joking about it.

I’m just so relieved he’s back at home, and in good health.

Late last year I knit a blanket for friends and this blanket was to be similar. That was my goal. The middle starting point didn’t appear to be the same, but I kept knitting on.

First blanket:

This blanket:

Anybody else notice that pinwheel-esque swirl?

Yeah. I obviously was yarn-overing at the wrong time, even though I was using stitch markers.

Live, knit, and learn, I suppose. It may have been more squared if I had had time to block it; I finished it the morning of the shower. Then again, there may have been no hope of giving it straight edges and pointy corners even with blocking. I received a lot of compliments on it, though, so right on.

The Partner, our friend Missy, and I crammed into Missy’s car the Friday before Vic’s birthday and drove out to Penn State. Missy and I took turns driving and I was really hoping it would go a lot better than last time, but no, Ohio still sucks to drive through. As we didn’t arrive at their place until early Saturday morning, we all pretty much went to bed as soon as we got there.

Saturday morning proper we ate breakfast, drove around a bit, then headed out to the bars.

Here’s the thing about State College/Penn State: a lot of the bars won’t let you drink the day of your 21st birthday.

I’m sure you’re probably thinking, “What the fuck ever.” But I am not kidding. I thought Vic was kidding when she told me. I thought the bartender at the first bar we went in was kidding when he said they wouldn’t serve her shots, only beer. But then he took Vic’s driver’s license and wrote all her info down, then he got out a fat permanent marker and put big X’s on her hands so she would be forever marked as a Celebratory 21-year-old. I questioned his sincerity again and he told me again he could only serve us shots, and not her, because it was her 21st birthday. Then I told him his bar could fuck off, we’d go elsewhere, because we did not just drive nine fucking hours from Indiana to celebrate her 21st birthday without any fucking birthday shots. In Indiana, I said, we give FREE birthday shots.

But nearly every bar, bar and grill, and restaurant with a bar refused to serve Vic liquor. Some would only serve her if it’s been 26 hours since her birthday. Some places would serve her beer but not liquor. One bouncer wouldn’t even let us in, telling us, “We can’t do a 21 tonight. We can’t let you in.” And in the whole fucking city I couldn’t find one bar that would serve me two shots at one time.

State College bar owners, you suck.

Once we resigned ourselves to having to walk around searching for the bars that would serve us, the night went pretty well.

View the entire set here, or at Flickr:

Granted, it wasn’t much money, but HOLY SHIT Y’ALL.

Hi. I’m Anne and I’m a professional photographer.

I’ve been avoiding this postmodern bane mostly because of the ridiculous amount of office products I own.

It’s embarrassing—how much stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. So I’ve been going through every single box and container and scrutinizing every individual item as to whether it’s worth keeping, storing, tossing, or donating. I started at the bookcase and worked in a circle around the room. The bookcase was easy, but I got stuck on the closet for a few days—several days. It was scary.

There were times where I had to sit down and just stare at nothing. I got lost in all the paper. I found the lawn goose‘s bee costume and started to laugh to myself, quietly.

What person needs over 60 spiral notebooks? Over 20 binders? A storage bag full of pens of every type?

In one box I found my external flash I thought was lost. In another box I found old pay stubs from jobs I had in high school. I also went through the box of stuff from college and significantly reduced its size.

On the left is paper to be recycled, on the right shredded:

George is close to getting buried by all the paper:

While I can’t be sure, I’m thinking I was part of the reason why my alma mater instituted a printing cap my junior year:

I’ve now made it to my main desk. There are two and half boxes full of the crap that had been on my desk (and on top of the bookcase and strewn about in general–I’m a stacker) that I’m not sure what to do with. I’ll be shutting down the computer later to give it a thorough cleaning and then I’ll reconstruct my desk.

This shit’s insane.

Part of me is SO FUCKING RELIEVED to be rid of so much stuff, but the other part is saying “You can’t give that away! What if you need it in five years?!”

_______

Relieved to toss:

These PAPER NOTECARDS were a requirement for an “educational technology” course I took when I was contemplating changing my major to social studies education. I am still so fucking pissed they had us make a PAPER VERSION of a souped-up POWERPOINT PRESENTATION, this thing they call a “web quest” (or the thing I call “Student Busy Work for Lazy-ass Teachers”). PAPER?!

And this, this is a PAPER FLOWCHART of the presentation, also required. This was one of the top three worst classes ever endured.

The Chef, flipping me the bird (although, I can’t remember if I am the one who took this shot or not):

The Partner, so not amused:

We were all pretty damn drunk by this point in the evening, about 3am:

Me, looking like I’m about to cry:

But I’m actually discussing existentials with J and ready to cut someone:

The beautiful J, who caused the above expression:

View the entire set.