I’m Not “Dead” Yet (Weeklyish Roundup)

As will soon become apparent, November has been a helluva month. That’s all I’ll say about that.

• Although I appreciate the pop-culture phenomenon that is the LOLcat, I’ve never much been a fan. The only in-that-vein site I consistently find entertaining is the Fail Blog, from which the image above comes (via my friend C., who loves her some LOL blogs and really I only pay attention to them when she tells me to.)
  • I imagine one might thus conclude that cute animals don’t make me happy, but making fun of the failures of others does.
    • If you’re inclined, do feel free to discuss the greater meaning of that. I submit there is no such greater meaning.
• I freaking hate it when people use quotation marks to emphasize text. It’s inappropriate, people. No exceptions.
  • If you need to emphasize something and you can’t use rich text and you don’t want to shout (as using all caps would have you do), might I recommend the asterisk? Making something *bold* this way can be mighty effective. Pass it on.
• The winter issue of Interweave Crochet is done. There are some very, very nifty patterns in there, the likes of which I’d never seen before. I hope you like it. The preview will go up online in about three weeks.
• Loveland, CO, occasionally finds itself downwind of a town that plays host to a massive beef processing facility. For two full days of my stay there, the town smelled bad. Very, very bad.
• For two days of my stay (a different two days, I might add), it was so warm, the only way I could describe it was “end of days warm”. It’s just not supposed to be 26 degrees C in mid-November. Creeped me out.
• I’m reading We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver, for book club. I was tempted to put it down because I’m severely bothered by it, due entirely to personal issues that have nothing to do with the quality of the book. I’m not putting it down precisely because of those issues; I might gain more from reading it than I’ll lose to discomfort. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish it in time for book club, but maybe I’ll surprise myself.
• In case it’s not obvious, I’ve ditched NaNoWriMo in favour of editing the interview recording. My mic worked great; Joss’s phone, not so much. He’s totally understandable, but I’m trying to make the whole thing go down easier. I’ll also transcribe it.
  • I’m enjoying playing with Audacity. It’s possible my text/image-only time on the web is over.
• Still, I’m so glad I even started in on NaNoWriMo. I’ve now written more fiction than I ever had, save for that one time I was forced to in high school. I’ve said before and assert here again that the crap I’ve written makes me extremely happy, and although I’m sure none of it will ever see the light of day, I did accomplish quite a bit in thinking through this story. So just because I’ve ditched the novel-writing challenge this month doesn’t mean the story is dead. Au contraire.
• For the first time in many months, I did some spinning this weekend. That’s really all I have to say about that.
• We went to the One of a Kind craft show this weekend. Although the stuff there was great, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the show overall. The array didn’t seem very original and the number of vendors was small for the hefty admission price. I wonder if I’m getting craft-fair fatigue; everything’s starting to look the same to me. Sigh.
  • I’m tempted to start thinking about this in the context of handmade gift-giving being an answer to the bland overcommercialized mass market, but it’s too late and I should go go sleep.
• Yay, short work week ahead!