Okay, I just have to post again. I just got a chain letter to my old school email account from an old friend of mine.

It says, "This letter was started in 1887."

LOLOLOL. Ye Olde Internetz.

It also says that it will make the Guiness Book of World Records if it keeps going until 2004...

So apparently I'm going to have a load of bad luck in my love life for not passing it on. Hehe. This is different from the normal how? That good ol' Gypsy curse definitely beats the pants off a two hundred year old chain letter.

I seem to have a problem...

I don't know if it's b/c there's been a lull in time where I haven't crocheted (thanks to 2 carpal tunnel surgeries, almost back to back!), but I can't seem to be able to keep a long chain that I've slip-stitched to the beginning of the chain to stay even & in place. As in, it's crooked/twisted, and I don't realize it till I've finished the 1st or 2nd row. I don't seem to remember having this sort of problem before!

Has this happened to any of you? Does anyone have any tips/tricks that could help me out w/this? I'm so frustrated! There's a pattern I'm trying to follow, a baby poncho (pics here, at the bottom left corner I'm trying to make for a friend who is expecting (as well as an adorable skirt I'd like to try & make for my kiddo later on) that requires me to slip stitch a very long chain, and I'm tired of frogging & starting over! :(

(xposted)

This every-fourth-night call business is freaking killing me.

Last week, I was on call on Sunday and since we have to stay through the end of rounds when we're post-call, I left work at noon on Monday. I came home and slept a few hours and then got up and did various things. I was on call again on Thursday and while I was home and in bed by 10:30 Friday morning, I slept until 5:30 PM and went back to bed at 9:30 PM and slept straight through until 9 the next morning.

Think I was tired?

Other than sleep on my first full weekend off in nearly a month, I went to a surprise birthday party for a friend (which was also a congratulations on getting engaged party, as she got engaged on her 30th birthday the previous weekend) and bought my mom some shrubbery for Mother's Day.

I was on call again last night. I started out the night with three patients. I ended up with five (of the two admissions I had, only one of them was truly ill) and still only managed two hours of sleep at work. My day went something like this:

0515: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
0525: Snooze.
0535: Snooze.
0545: Snooze. Realize I still have to make my lunch. Roll out of bed.
0645: Leave the house for work.
0700: Get sign out from the overnight resident.
0730: See the one patient I'm following, talk to his mom.
0800: Note written.
0801: Wait for attending. He's notoriously late.
0830: Still waiting.
0900: ARGH!!
0905: Dr. H shows up. It's his first day on service for a two-week stretch so we have to go over the four patients we have in detail.
0940: Done with rounds, write orders for the asthmatic to get transferred to the floor.
0941-1200: Twiddle thumbs, read articles, watch You Tube with Nick.
1200-1300: Palliative care lecture with Dr. C. Makes me want to get boarded in pediatric palliative care. Wonder if I have to do a fellowship for that.
1300-1310: Chat with secretaries in office.
1310-1600: More You Tube, more thumb twiddling, more articles to read.
1600: Get sign out from departing residents, as we were doing jack-ass shit.
1600-1800: Work on PL-2 survival guide. Check e-mail eleventy billion times.
1800: Get called to ER to eval kid for possible admission.
1820: Decide kid looks much better after a combivent and that he doesn't need my services at the moment.
1820-2300: More biding my time.
2300: Get called to ER to admit trauma patient, whose idiot brother took the car out for a joy ride when mom and dad weren't home. Kid was in the backseat (wearing his seatbelt, thank fucking god) but the car got t-boned and it took about 30 minutes to extricate the kid. He's sick but stable.
0000: Get kid settled upstairs, places tubes and drains in every orifice, and talk to parents. Dr. H is still in-house so he comes by for a peek.
0005: Quick bedside rounds on the kiddos and Dr. H is off to home for the night.
0015-0200: Time-biding.
0200-0300: Now I lay me down to sleep...
0300:...until the night float resident on the floor tries unsuccessfully to buff and turf one my way. Yes, the kid has a weird congenital anomaly but he's awfully damn stable and doesn't need my services. What do you mean you don't have beds? I'm looking at the census right now and you have PLENTY of them. FOAD!!!
0305-0315: Attempt sleep.
0315: Fail. Get called to ER to admit a kid with a different weird congenital anomaly who has a VP shunt infection.
0400: Call shenanigans on neurosurgery resident, who essentially told me I was too dumb to understand what they were going to be doing for this kid. Listen, Dr. Douchebag, you will be too busy fucking nurses in the call room tonight to take care of this kid. That chore will fall to me. I need to know what you're going to be doing in case I need to call you away from your nightly in flagrante delicto to tend to this child. Also, I'm sorry that you turned into a total dickhead when you became a neurosurgeon, because you used to be nice. I feel sorry for your wife.
0500: Get kiddo settled, talk to mom, change fucked-up orders written by Dr. Douchebag.
0530: Attempt sleep.
0535: I AM FULL OF FAIL. Pharmacy calls to ask about my newest admission's home meds. Between my lack of sleep induced psychosis and the horrible accent (one of our old nurses called this pharmacist Won Hung Lo) I have to ask him to repeat everything twice, which has the charge nurse in stitches by this point.
0540: Attempt...aw, fuck it.
0600: Round on patients.
0605-0700: Tidy up sign out sheet, check e-mail, read news feeds.
0700-0730: Sign out to day team. Have never been more happy to see them in my life.
0730-0800: Time for breakfast of champions. I usually never eat more than some toast or cereal post-call before leaving work, but desperate times call for desperate measures - French toast and bacon.
0830: Start whinging about how Dr. H is always late and that he'll be very late today because I last woke him up at 4 AM.
0910: Hooray Dr. H for showing up early!
0940: Finish rounds and head home.
1000: In bed, flip on SportsCenter, and snooze.
1500: Wake up, call husband.
1530: Drag ass out of bed, as it is seemingly nice outside.

There you have it. A day in the life of a PICU resident.

There's other things about which I want to write, but not tonight. I'm going to sit outside.

is even less interesting on Tuesday night than Saturday morning.

However, the good news is that once it's done, I have a (pretty) free Saturday, which means I can treat myself to a leisurely Saturday breakfast and still have time to make my lemon chicken to take to a swimming party that night.

Heather B.'s bridal shower the other night, one glass of wine. I bought her towels. I was especially proud because the little card I gave her had two cute towels on it, matching the gift.

When she opened them I wanted to cleverly say something like "These are for those long romantic nights in the hot tub."

What came out of my mouth was "That's for when you take naked showers together."

Who brought the TOOLISH PERVE to the party? Hmmmm??

This was following my remark about Hooters--how I wanted to have a baby and bring it there to nurse and if anyone complained say "Boobs--THIS IS WHAT THEY'RE FOR."

My friends would (hopefully) chalk these remarks up to two things: 1) my general awkwardness in large groups of people I don't know and 2) my inability to drink even one glass of wine. But I'm sure the many strangers at the party were just sort of astounded that someone as tasteful as Heather could have a friend like me.

More rather inappropriate remarks followed but I can't remember them off the top of my head; something about her new set of knives being for the "naked cooking sessions" and a sort of creepy statement about voyeurism and their future sex life.

I guess the comments had nothing on the "shake my pork" statement at Vining Street of a couple of years back, for those of you who were there (or who remember the post I made about it), or for my statement to meganquinlan about knitting three Slytherin socks for Snape. But really, you can't take me anywhere.

In spite of the crappiness of what's happened to my laptop, I've discovered that it's kind of neat to have an entire Apple store feel sorry for you. It made me feel weirdly important to have the identity of "that poor person who's been through a lot." My friend Matt works there as a concierge and apparently the entire Genius bar told him he had to be extra nice to me when he brought me the stupid thing, because "She's had enough to deal with already."

It's like they are looking at me as some kind of tragic heroine. Or that's what I tell myself, anyway.

Hi all!
Long-time lurker.
I don't post very much because I've mainly been working on this massive thread bedspread for about the past year, which has been the focus of all my crochet-energy for a while.
But, my boss is having a baby, so I made her my favorite baby blanket

( more pictures... )

 
My humor is in a very odd place lately.


link
 
 
 
 

Remember this?

For embe11ished, airmidm, elyaeru, dragonsangel68 and peridotdream.

( I finally wrote it. All in one. Hopefully I covered everything. )


Note: I actually did know that about the fish on my own. My family just went to Hawai'i (without me, sadly) and my little brother just gave me a litany of facts about the state fish last weekend.

Hi! It's my birthday coming up and relatives keep asking me what I'd like... I fancy I'd quite like a book of crochet patterns but searching through Amazon I'm finding a bit puzzling knowing which one might be best... was wondering if some people might have some suggestions?

I've heard lots about 'The Happy Hooker' but it looks as though half the book is teaching you to crochet... and I've near enough mastered it all now through tutorials online so I'm not sure I'd want to get a book where I'd only ever look at half of it? Quite a lot of the books I've found seem to spend a large proportion teaching about yarns/hooks/stitches actually...

I'm looking for something quite fun, nothing too boring or granny-ish..!! Lol. I'm loving Amigurumi and would like to start investigating further into things like bags, hats, the odd afghan!!

I'd call myself an advanced beginner, I think, but more complicated patterns would not put me off! I need/want/must!! learn more!!

Haha. So yes, any suggestions??

Thanksss! xxx

...to the inimitable capurecitaroja!

Have a wonderful day!

 

Let's Oggle Lucius! He's chained up so he can't escape ...






Shot for end of OOTP and never used. Why does this image amuse me so much? High res image may be viewed here for even greater in depth hilarity:

http://www.oclumencia.com.br/galeria/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=0&pos=0

I am looking for a free graph of a parrot to use for filet crochet.

Backstory: I am going to my very first Jimmy Buffett concert this September and I would love to wear something fun. I had thought of doing an openwork top made of lacy motifs, to wear over beach clothes or a tee, but I haven't been satisfied with the samples I have made so far.

I thought that maybe I could do the front and back of the shirt filet crochet, with a parrot, and then use the motifs to make the sleeves.

Google has not been my friend. I've found doves, a flamingo and a cockatiel, but no parrots.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

this is just a NC-17, one-off dribble of something that came to me last night.
I felt like sharing.
Guess maybe I should sneak in a disclaimer and state that Rowling owns Snape, not I... except late at night when everyone else is asleep. then he is all mine..as for the title. the french call a mind-blowing orgasm "la petite mort", the little death.



( La Petite mort )

I went golfing last week and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  In fact I'm not half bad.  The hardest part was dealing with how sore my arms were for the next week.  So sore in fact that when Mandi mentioned wanting to go again this week that I grimaced at her and made an excuse not to go.  I mean c'mon, I just got full range of motion back in my arms and I no longer wake up in the middle of the night sobbing in pain and cursing Tiger Woods for making such a stupid game so popular.  No really, I was incredibly sore but it wasn't quite that bad.  I'm actually quite excited to get back out on the course.  So much in fact that I bought myself a golf glove and some cool lil' tees.  Anyways, enough about golf.  I'm very excited for memorial day to get here.  Mandi and I are going to Tampa for a party and we are gonna stay overnight.  Just made the hotel reservations.  Should be an absolute blast!  Other than that life has been pretty boring.  

This one is for helbnt. :)

On my last trip to New Mexico, I got to do something I haven't done nearly enough of, hang out in Old Town Santa Fe.

My mom and I met up with my friend Mandy and we had breakfast at my friend (well, deliriumdreams and tkil's friend, but mine now also!) Nick's restaurant, then wandered the streets, shopped for jewelry (which you can see me wearing in the photo from the chili cookout below) and we had a great time. We went to both of the churches down there, one of which is made famous by Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, and one of which contains a miracle staircase that is quite famous in its own right.

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Full Gallery ° Slideshow

click the picture to go to the free pattern!

he is made from a Tunisian crochet in the round, where i did a traditional Tunisian circle and then i tried a few rounds of Tunisian "in the round" using 3 crochet hooks.
it was a little difficult to wrangle but it can work. 4 hooks would be better i think, or a flexible afghan hook, but i cant actually get those anywhere here.
he proved a little hard to photograph as well, so you cant see his tentacles very well, or the detail around his edge of the body. oh well.


click on image to see larger pic

rainbow jellifish on etsy
and more pics here