Everyone's going on rural vacation.

Off to a fairly remote Montana ranch in the morning to hang out with some friends who live in the Netherlands. Back late Tuesday, so a short trip.

But it'll be really good to see the friends and get away and spend my birthday up there. Doesn't sounds like they've got any internets these days.

In fact, I sent my friend an email with my flight info days ago and he called just a few minutes ago to check in and see if I was coming and saying he hadn't gotten the email. Good thing he called, otherwise I would've been stranded at the airport up there come morning. I'd actually called him about 15 minutes before he called me, but I think I called his Skype-US-number-for-US-people-to-call-while-he's-in-the-Netherlands number. And if he has no internets, he won't be getting the message. I'd tried to call his dad's cell, but I don't think they have reception.

As for me, I'm sitting annoyedly at the office waiting for the project to copy onto the flash drive so I can take it with me. I'd asked J to start copying it over before he left so I wouldn't have to sit here for an hour (I was at the other office today), but he didn't. So I would've enjoyed being home by now but instead I'm sitting here copying the project. And I'm annoyed.

and here we go.

Long post ahead.

S left town. R&L left town. T left town. K is staying for another week and a half. She thinks an extended period of time under her parents' roof could drive her nuts though.

Friday T'n'K'n'myself went to hike Longs Peak. Tons of people on the trail. I warned them beforehand that I was a bit out of shape. Turns out I was right. My knee coming down was unhappy in a way that my knee has never been unhappy before. It wasn't fun. Almost locking up. Or locking up. But then we ended up at the Southern Sun for dinner, which is a five minute walk from where I used to live and a really fun place. T had wanted to go, and he definitely approved.

Ended up going back to their place that night because we live on opposite sides of town, and we wanted to just get to bed after a long day. When I went to bed I thought we were just going to brunch to play games - K REALLY likes playing games; it's sort of a disease - but when I woke up the plans had changed and after picking up E we went up to Cheyenne for the first day of the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. Weren't sure we were going to get tickets, but K scored some while the rest of us waited in line.

There was all the usual - I say usual but I don't have a whole lot of rodeo experience - rodeo stuff like bull riding and bronco riding and cow wrestling and tying and stuff. K had really wanted mutton busting, which I hadn't heard of. I guess it's where they put helmets on little kids and have them try to ride sheep the way the adults ride bulls and broncos and stuff. Apparently, it's pretty funny. But there wasn't any mutton busting.

Instead, the highlight of the day turned out to be this ridiculous event called wild horse racing. Teams of three guys, maybe twenty teams total. Each given a completely wild horse, never ridden, really really having no desire to be ridden.

Teams have to get a saddle on the horse and one of them has to do a full lap around the track.

Chaos. Absolute chaos. Horses breaking free and running around, lots of bucking, etc. But the best was when one horse pretty much broke free started sprinting around the track, but one poor dude managed to hold onto the rope and got dragged, face down in the dirt behind a wild horse at a dead sprint, probably 1/4 of the way around the track before it occurred to him to let go. I can't imagine how much dust he ate. My lord. But it was awesome.

Had Indian food on the way back down with the team, which was fun. It was right below the place I'd taken my old housemate to get her wisdom teeth out last year. She was *so* drugged and *so* out of it when I took her home and had to take care of her. Pretty hilarious.

Tonight loom girl is playing a concert. So, a bunch of years ago I did this thing for a year and afterwards everyone else who'd done this thing met up to talk about it at this conference. And there was a girl there who had the most amazing energy and aura about her and I basically fell in love with her instantaneously. And all growing up as a kid in my parents' basement my mom had had this giant, basically room-sized loom that she pretty much hadn't used since I had been conceived. And for various reasons it occurred to me that this girl was the person to whom the loom should be given, who would appreciate it and put it to good use, and I ran back to my room and called my mom on my phone and told her she was going to give her loom to this girl. And my mom wasn't convinced, but I put them in touch but eventually my mother did and this father of an ex of loom girl's disassembled it from the basement and packed it up in his pickup truck and drove it across the country.

Anyway, turns out loom girl isn't using the loom so much right now because she's playing in this band that's doing pretty good for itself and is on tour in my town TONIGHT. So I'm going. And it'll be really good to see her and really fun. Sadly, she currently dates the main boy in the band, after whom it's named. But I've really only spent, like, thirty hours with her in my life. But she's awesome. Awesome.

And tonight she's playing a concert with her band here in town. Yay loom girl.

But a fun couple of days. Aside from the soreness, which was causing my to do some silly hobbling yesterday at the rodeo.

I just made a little burp!

I don't know where it came from. I think I've only burped, just now included, maybe 2 or 3 times in my post-baby, conscious life. This was a very rare and bizarre occurrence. Crazy.

For a long time, I didn't think it was physically possible for me to do so. But a little one just popped out!

Damnit.

So. There's the unsecured wireless network in my neighborhood (somewhere) that I've been stealing my internet from for lo this past year. Sometimes it isn't reliable, I realize, but I love it anyway, and it does the job.

Yesterday morning it was working normally like it always does. About mid-morning, I twice got one of those 'ip conflict - another device on the network has been assigned the same ip address' errors that sometimes pop up. Never had one on this network before. I put the computer away to do some other things and take a nap, etc, and then later I came back.

And that's when the problems started.

Now, every time I go to connect to the wireless network, i see the little 'radar' icon with the yellow shifting dot as normal for Windows. And then - as it has 'connected' to the wireless network, the computer freezes.

More frozen than you could imagine.

I must've restarted the computer a dozen times yesterday and twice this morning, without fail, the computer freezes as soon as it connects to the other network. which I just don't get. Sure, it could not connect or something, but what would be making it freeze?

Anyway. I hope I manage to get this sorted because I really don't want to have to pay for the internets.

I just renewed my driver's license online!

My birthday is coming up too, and my license (not that I really drive these days much at all) was about to expire after five years. I went online to see where I should go to renew it, but instead I discovered that I was able to do it online. Pretty cool.

All up in my business.

And I'm not happy with it. So the backyard grows like gangbusters, as the lady I bought the house from last summer described it. And that's really cool. And things were growing like gangbusters this summer, and everything was lovely. But recently, everything's been falling over. And I'd been thinking to myself that everything had grown so big that it was falling over under its own weight. And partially, that's what was happening. But not entirely.

This evening, I took a closer look at the goings on. And I'm not happy. There's this vine, and it's wrapped itself tightly around virtually all of my flowers, and is more or less suffocating them, and they're all collapsing under the weight of these vines that are climbing the flowers to get to the sunlight.

And I had hoped to be a laissez faire gardener. But I see that it's no longer a possibility. But now, in a way, it's too late. Because of the trauma that I have to induce on my flowers to get rid of this damn vine. And you have no idea how much of it I pulled out. It just kept coming and coming, and I'm sure there's a ton more. It's taking over everything. It's getting all up in my business. And I'm pissed. And I've let my lovely flowers down.

It got dark tonight. I'll go back soon and keep going. But I don't know how I can really beat this stuff. It's insidious. I have a feeling this this will be my own personal never-ending war on (flower) terrorism hell.

In other news, I randomly stumbled upon this earlier in the night. I really really wasn't looking for anything of the sort. Popped up on a Google search for something else entirely. But totally hot.

Ok, so maybe the world isn't ending.

But not up to my high standards, either. To my credit, though, it's the first thing I've actually completed using the Magic Loop technique, so I suppose it's ok that I wasn't 100% on top of it, but I'm still not fully pleased. The lass is also quite small, so I was trying to guess an appropriate size for her. We'll see if it works.





England, 2006.

Band coming Saturday!

I'm rather excited. The Two Man Gentlemen Band will be in town. They're a lot of fun. They sing funny songs, often naughty.

I'm FREAKING OUT.

Knitting.

Yarn emergency. I've got knots in my balls of yarn like you couldn't believe, and it's driving me insane. Insane.

I'm freaking out. I'm going to go get some dinner. And I've asked my mom to come over and save me. Not that she can. I think I'm doomed right now. It's a bad scene over here. Yarn emergency. Gak!

It rained.

(Written last night, not posted due to lack of internets)

Still raining. Lots of rain tonight.

Sadly, I doubt it can ever rain enough to keep the yahoos from setting off fireworks. I really don't like fireworks, never have. Except for one night, new year's ever 2003/04, but that's another story. But for the most part, I hate fireworks. And I hate that it's every Americans god-given right to set off fireworks if she wants, and that a lot of people enjoy it and like making loud bangs that bother me.

In other news, washed my bedding today but didn't bother to take the other clothes off the laundry line in the basement and draped sheets and such on top. Call it laziness, if you like. Unsurprisingly, things aren't quite dry by bedtime. So things'll be slightly damp until my body heat dries them up. Not having a dryer, it's always a race to get things washed and dried all in one day, when it comes to bedding. But not clearing the laundry lines doesn't help the cause...

Great weather forecast for the 4th...

Tonight: Showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm before 10pm, then a slight chance of showers. Some storms could be severe, with large hail, damaging winds, and heavy rain. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 54. North northwest wind between 5 and 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.


Actually, that's good for me. Turns out I'm awful at keeping a lawn green. I'm really bad. The rest of the garden looks fine, if overgrown. But I'm terrible at the lawn. Maybe I need a new sprinkler. It's also the water conservationist in me, who isn't willing to water enough for it to be happy. But geez.

Not much to say.

E left last night.

Caught a few drinks with him after work before he went to the airport.

He never made it to my house as he had a migraine Tuesday, so we took Tuesday off from hanging out.

But he won a bunch of stuff at the conference, which is cool.

And maybe I was just seeing your email on his phone?