Oh god, how horrible

merriam webster defines Accident like this: 1 a: an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance. Curious that the definition leaves the emotion out. Merriam and Webster never tell us how heart wrenching they really can be; even for total strangers.

This horrible accident happened on the commute home yesterday. I spoke to my mom this morning and she said that the poor girl's dad was waiting at the next stop with her supper. Oh god i can hardly stand it. It's just so unfathomably sorrowful.

Every so often when i think my life sucks, these awful things happen and remind me to be more thankful, more appreciative and more deserving of the really great life I've got. I'm horrified that it took another family's sorrow in order to do so.

So in keeping with molly's TGIF idea, i'm gonna give it a go too. Though today is only thursday, i'll make a post anyway.
Today i am mostly thankful for my family. Even though they drive me nuts, I'm thankful that they help me, and they aren't too angry when i'm less than helpful. I really love my family. And i like to think they really love me too. A thought that makes me sad (because i am reminded of the poor man on the platform at Waban) is that my mom would bring me supper if i asked her to. I really am a lucky person, and i really am thankful for that.

sweet georgia brown!

Did you watch that game yesterday? Jon Lester threw a no hitter! A no hitter! no one even got a single! Jacoby ellsbury made a great play in center, and that was the only play of concern the whole night!

He was throwing gas the whole night. It's nice to see him throw so well, because he does sometimes have a bad inning, or sometimes he's a bit fall-apart-at-the-seams-ish. but he had his good stuff last night, that's for sure!



A no hitter. Wow.

the devil rays?

Yipes! but the devil rays are in first place in the AL East. I don't think it will last very long, but it does appear that they are becoming a pretty good ball club. the AL East is really full of good teams, and adding Tampa bay to the mix is going to make for a good summer indeed.



If there is one good thing that came of them topping the sox in the standings, it is that they beat the yankees to do so.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

fits like a.... mitten!

so, remember the Not So Superbowl Hat? well, i came across a second ball of that yarn. I hadn't realized the NSSH only use a part of one single ball. i thought it used all of one and part of the second. This is good, because now i can make matching mittens for debra as well.

Tomorrow is the first day of May, so hat and mittens are not needed any more, but here is what i learned: mittens are great fun to make, and they don't take very long, and they only need one ball of yarn. yay! I really like this yarn,i might try to see if i can find some more on line.

here is what i love about ravelry

It's sheer and utter and complete usefulness.

Sure, at first glance it's just a place for nerdy knitters to get together and act the part, but it's really a great tool for learning. The site admins have really made the site very intuitive and user friendly.

Since it's sort of a Bulletin Board, you can post back and forth on all sorts of topics. Who knew there were so many knitting Foo Fighters fans in the world? I so wish there were more sites set up this way- a sewing one in particular, but the possibilities really are endless.

but since it's also sort of like wiki, there's a lot of great actual info available. If you have a question, you can search the threads, or the techniques, or the patterns. This is key because there's no trawling through pages and pages of info you can't really use because the search hit on the word "the". There's a directory of useful places to shop. so say you need to find a particular yarn or needle, search the yarns or search the shops. There's a directory of people, so you can see where people are from, and what they knitted- you can ask them how they liked the project, the yarn et cetera.

my favorite thing about ravelry, is everything. I've really improved my knitting knowledge and skills in the few short months i've been a member. Rock On Casey, Jess; and Bob too!

Here is what i love:

Trail mix! not the yucky kind you get in packages, oh no. I make my own. I make it on sunday evenings, and it lasts through the week for lunches.

here's what i buy:
1 bag dried apricots
1 bag dried cherries
1 bag dried apples
(these are all available in the raisin section, or the produce dept of the grocery)

1 package of pecans
1 package of whole almonds
1 package of chocolate chips
(look in the baking aisle for these)

1 box of some sort of cereal that doesn't have too much taste, but does have substance- shredded wheat squares, or the like.

Here's what i do:
I use about 1/2 package of the dried fruits, a handful or two of the nuts and cereal, and a single handful of the chocolate chips. Now, to start, you should toast the nuts in the toaster, on the shortest cycle. just enough for them to get toasty and warm, not long enough to burn. When they come out, throw them in a metal 13x9x3 rectangle pan and toss the chips over them so the chips get melty, but keep their shape. set aside so the nuts and chips begin to get cool.

Set aside, and begin work on the fruits- chop the apricots roughly, so you sort of get three pieces from each one. same for the apples if needed. then, throw everything into the pan with the nuts and chips (that are sort of melty cool now) and toss around so the chocolate gets on somethings, and not on others. you really want the chocolate to be on the other stuff, but not so that its too hard to eat with your hands. Spread everything out in the rectangle pan and set aside to thoroughly cool. then scoop into snack size baggies- 1/3 to 1/2 cup serving size please! Viola! you have a whole week's worth of tasty trail mix.

you can mix it up any way you like- i tried cinnamon chips in there- not my favorite. I also sometimes use apple jacks for the cereal. other times i use cranberries instead of the cherries. I once used prunes because i could only find mixed dried fruit that day- hey are tasty, but, there are other.... benefits shall we say. You can put pretzel sticks in there too. I get roughly two mixes out of a single package of the fruit. The other stuff is really just pantry junk you probably already have on hand.

It's quite tasty, and according to these nutrition facts, while it might not top the list of great foods, it's not so bad for you that you'll feel too guilty.

try it, you'll like it!

Flight AEI 132 Hat!

so, I've managed to work out a pattern for the hat i knitted in time to keep my ears warm in ireland. Though we had spectacular weather, my ears are wimpy, and i like to keep them covered.

It's a pdf, and here is the snappy snap:

kimono jacket mania!

So i just recently began sewing clothing. i've made a couple of summertime skirts for myself, but clothing is still very intimidating. a cure for that? Children's clothing, YAY! As you have seen in my recent littlest googie posts, children's clothing is quick, usually easy, and it usually doesn't use too much fabric. Also, if you flub it up, you can start over with less remorse.

so here are my first forays into more complex clothing. kimono jackets!
This one is the very first. it's totally reversible, both because it's more useful that way, and because making it reversible allows me to have a much better looking product- i'm terrible at finishing.



This set also has some shoes made out of the scraps. These are so tiny though that they were not as fun to make. I suppose i should have made them by hand sewing, not using the machine.


Now, i also need to have a gift for my cousin's new baby. I hope she doesn't see this before the shower.
here is his kimono.


Boy fabrics and patterns are hard to find. Often times fabrics that are boyish are sort of ugly. but i think these are tremendously cute, and not in an overpowering drippy kind of way.

sign the petition?

I think it's pretty clear by now to which political party i belong. That said, i would like to take a tiny bit of your time to ask you to click this link: http://www.voteboth.com

I don't think many people will disagree (even republicans) that the country seems to be in a morass of uncertainty politically, economically, and yes even morally. I also don't think I'll be saying anything new if I propose that the current administration has done very little to get us out of the quagmire. Sometimes it even seems that they initiated it, or at the very least exacerbated it.

So I don't think I'll be saying anything controversial if I opine that change is needed. A combined democrat ticket would be both unbeatable as far as voting goes, but it could also be a very successful administration. They both have strengths that can be useful, and these individual strengths sort of jive and dovetail- where one might be too junior, the other has a bit more tenure in washington. Where one might be off putting, the other is smooth and approachable.

It really could be a dream ticket. Vote Both

the littlest googie

hee hee hee. That's what we call her.


So here is what I learned over the weekend: Baby things are quick and easy to make! In one day I made three and a half dresses! And they are ridiculously cute.


The white farmyard print is made of flannel, and this pink one is reversible. Is that spit up? no problem! i'll just flip it inside out!


Kristen is going to be the proud recipient of lots of things from me i imagine. It's not that i'm spoiling her over the others- it's just that i'm a much more advanced crafter now than i was for the others. Johnny is four or five now, and i was just learning how to sew, and i hadn't even learned how to knit until January of 2007.

So it's just the luck of the draw that the littlest googie gets to have all my handiwork. I hope i don't make them so that photos are embarrassing when she is a teenager.

here are the others

So here are the other photos of the dresses.
This one is the inside of the pink one- it's totally reversible. This side is nice and bright- orange and bright magenta.


This blue one is actually the first one I made. It's made almost entirely out of on hand materials. I'm doing my best to work only with materials that i already have on hand. (course that's a pipe dream just ask the people at the fabric shop)


then there is this nifty trim around the edge- i had concerns about using the yellow, but i think it turned out pretty ok.

St. Patrick's Day, So Tis.

Today is St. Patrick's Day. and at the risk of being silly, I do extend a happy one to you.

On St. Patrick's day, I often forgo my bright kelly green and Kiss Me I'm Irish shirts, and instead opt for my Dublin Shirt from the Gaelic Athletic Association. The Association was founded as a way to enjoy, promote and preserve culture that was inherently and fundamentally Irish. What is truly brilliant is that it's through sport. Sport has a way of uniting people, even when their teams or clubs are polar rivals.

As you must know by now, I'm a sport-o at heart. So the GAA is like home for me. A dream for me is to work for the GAA. I secretly wish that someone reads this and has a stateside job for me. Did you know that the players who play in GAA Teams get no compensation for it at all? They play because they love the game, and they love being Irish. I love being American, and I love being of Irish decent, so i think that makes me an ideal candidate to work for them; but I dunno if I could play hurling.



I like to think that Gaelic Football is something i could play. Since I'm a soccergirl, I think I would be able to at least understand it a bit, but I don't think i would be very good at it, and it would be a learning experience, for sure.

So today is St. Patrick's day, hoo hoo! It's a day to celebrate being Irish, not just a day to get bombed. Go have a look around the GAA Site, or these wiki travel sites: Cork City, Dublin, Belfast, Sligo. Here are some good Neighborhood cameras.

Menu Pages is a great way to keep from starving, and Arnotts will ensure that you keep the Irish economy afloat. If I had just a bit more money, I would return to Ireland again and again. If I had just a bit of luck, I would work for the GAA.

Can i borrow another pencil?

So it never occurred to me that people might be reading this blog. I mean sure, we've all heard about the Facebook horror stories, in which a blogger posts disparaging comments about their boss and then gets sacked. But i confess, it never crossed my mind that people would have a look round. I sort of figured, for sure people took one look, saw how boring and frivolous the thing is and then split for something more....relevant.

So imagine my surprise when my pencil case partner said she saw a post on my blog and was suddenly stricken with swap anxiety. Gosh, i feel so sheepish! get a load of these great things she made for me:


They are so well made, and so fit my personality that I can't believe she had anxiety. I'm so excited to use them and put things in them. i'm going to use the green meadow one for pencils and pens and things for continuing education classes. The crazy quilted one has got all my manicure supplies in it. I so needed one for that job, because the old one sacrificed it's zipper pull in the name of haute couture. (and a zipper with no pull is not actually a zipper anymore!)

and have a look here.
Shermy even received new toys to chase all over the apartment. He's quite good with a catnip toy, he wings them all over the place, then he carries them with him and hops into the bed. occasionally he puts them in his water dish, which makes me mad.

I'm pleased to have done this swap, What fun! Though i don't think i'll lend out any of my new pencils. i'll just keep one or two of those chewed up ones with the eraser missing and give those out instead.

Can i borrow a pencil?

I belong to craftster.org, as it seems half the whole world does. I used to enjoy it quite a lot, and i still do, though i find it much less useful than i did before. I did what many members did- Swap Swap Swap like crazy, until i blew myself out. A swap is when a person collects some members, and questionnaires about themselves, and then assigns partners. the partners do a bit of conversation back and forth on-line, and then craft for each other. The item crafted is usually centered around some kind of theme- i.e. a Pink Purse Swap would require all participants to make a purse that is pink for their partner, based on the questionnaire and bits of cyber conversation.

I don't swap too often anymore- the themes are a bit too.... mundane for me, and there are all sorts of qualifications and requirements and deadlines and things that for me, it's just gotten a bit too stressful. I really just like to craft for people.

so to the point of this post:

i recently completed a swap for pencil cases. My partner in this swap is still in school, so i wanted to make her something she can use with binders. but i also wanted to make something centered on her great loves- music and polar bears. well, it's hard to find polar bear fabric, so i had to settle for her favorite color, teal.

I think i hit the mark pretty well. the case is useful, and it's full of fun things. it can be threaded around the binder rings, and it's pretty durable. the omi-yuri pin was an afterthought, it can go on a purse quite nicely.


I really like to craft for people; Though i DO NOT like to do freelance or commission work. I like to try to make something i think someone will like and be able to use. For me, it becomes much less fun if a person keeps asking- where is my bag? how much fabric will it take to make....? my all time favorite is How hard is it to make curtains? not hard at all. my first sewing projects were curtains and pillow cases. You should start there too.

Major League Jerks

One would think in this day of Mitchell Reports and Perjury allegations against Hall of Fame Contestants, that major league baseball would be a bit more inclined to foster goodwill toward fans and take part in a renewed effort toward young players.

But, oh no! As I hear over and over and over ad nauseam, MLB is actually a business,not a game.

Sorry, but get stuffed, MLB. How can you say that a team with a mariner for a mascot has to pay royalties- The team mascot is a tribute to a bunch of Massachusetts fishermen you jerks. I suppose a team can no longer call themselves the Cardinals. After all, it is a bird. My grandmother had a pair who liked yo use her bird feeder. I hope she doesn't owe money. Can't be called the A's? surely the team isn't made up of a roster full of Athletes, so Athletics is certainly a logical thing to call them.

MLB is a bunch of sillies, who want nothing more than to run the show. They like to dazzle us with their fund raising and community service, but they only want to serve the community on their terms; and ONLY when it ultimately benefits them- they make big fat money of the sale of Licensed Merchandise and they would on the purchase of uniforms. At Cape League games- they make big fat money of the 50/50.

An interesting thing is that many of the players who play in the Cape league go on to have fantastic MLB careers- thus helping the MLB recoup the money granted in the first place. This is simply bad business, and if you ask me just another PR mess for the MLB who appear more and more often to be like F-troop.

Go See a Cape League Game this Summer- you'll be glad you did. you can find all the schedules, rosters and stats here:
http://www.capecodbaseball.org/

I have to confess,

i think i might go see the sex and the city movie.

Though i'm on the fence, the series finale on hbo was so good, and so ridiculously happy, that I don't want to wreck it by an unhappy movie. i dunno. I really enjoy that show, because it really is true to life- believe it or not. Those girls have in the past been self conscious, self-assured, happy, scared, sad, neurotic, self-destructive, cruel, hurtful, caring, nurturing, supportive and above all, sincere people. Each character is a well done exploration of how a single person can exhibit such a varied number of foibles, and qualities.

not just the women on that show, the significant man characters are explorations of these things as well. The stupid name of the show was actually quite a clever thing- people are drawn to it by the name, but then they stick around because the show is really quite good.

i'm on the fence.

starbucks closing?

we can only hope. Actually, it's just for a little while. Too bad.

The thing I hate about starbucks is everything. The coffee is swill. It is just too strong. True, there is something singularly bad about weak coffee, but the solution isn't to make it so strong that you make that funny face like when your beer is skunked. That's essentially skunked coffee. Blech!

I can't stand the stupid names they give or the fact that you have to order in quasi italian. Ah for criminy sake. i don't want the biggest one you have, and i don't want the smallest one you have. i just want a medium coffee.

I cannot stand the people. The workers at starbucks are too often disinterested and disingenuous. They seldom have a knack for dealing with large queues of customers, and it's very evident. The queues themselves are another source of angst for me while i'm at starbucks. There are so many retail gee gaws and impulse item stands in the way that just waiting for your stupid drink is an exercise in irritation.

The worst thing about starbucks is that they have really ruined a fledgling cafe culture in the US, certainly the Northeast. when starbucks moved in, independents couldn't compete with the marketing machine. Other times, the horrible customer service standards set the bar so low for independents that even if they pull a good coffee, they are such assholes behind the counter.

I know, if i hate it so much why do i go? well, i don't actually I haven't been to starbucks for probably 8 months. But posting this makes me feel better anyway.

Woo hoo, the Foos!

So Colleen and I went to see the Foo Fighters at the Centrum on Monday. As noted in my Desert Island Discs yammer, I love the Foo Fighters. I just love them. I love that their lyrics are poetic, and crafty, and I love Dave Grohl's voice- it's a pretty wide range; and i just love the music. I simply love the way they put all the components together. It's hard for me to pick a favorite album- though I continually return to The Colour and the Shape. And it's even harder for me to select a favorite song- though I continually return to Doll/Monkeywrench. The fact of the matter is, there are very few current bands that I dig more than the Foos.

Against Me! were alright- a typical opener. Their sound is sort of like the Cult- which I dig, so I was moderately interested in hearing what they had to sing. The second band- Serj Tankian was really disappointing. I guess he's the guy from System of a Down. They had a bit of schtick- top hats and frilly tuxedos- but they were just unimpressive. His voice was too shrill to enjoy.

The foo fighters came on and rocked.

I think Dave Grohl is a better front man than Kurt Cobain was. There I've said it. He's very good with an audience- he's very personable on stage and the audience can really get the impression that he's actually speaking to them and interested in them. As a matter of fact- he actually engaged one guy in the audience about the Tee shirt he was wearing. "What's that shirt say? Wait, wait, Hold still, I can't read it"

They played lots of hits- they have a bunch of albums now- so they can't play everything, but they do play many of the favorites. I would rather they steer clear of the semi acoustic versions of things like everlong and things like that; I like it when they rock, but the rest of the crowd seemed to dig it so, ok.

It was a really long night, they played for a long time, in the middle of it, the whole band, plus a bunch of other musicians came down to the other end of the arena floor and they did a long set- half and hour or forty minutes or so. It was really cool- they were very close to the audience. It was a really good part of the tour, it made the show feel a bit like it feels at the Paradise. I wish more huge bands would do things like that.

We had a really good time- well worth the investment.

This is priceless

you have got to go see this
hilarious film of spring training.

i would be so mad if my teammates did that to me! how cruel!

I Heart Spring Training!

sweet georgia brown, i love spring training.

when I was in college, we went to orlando for softball spring games. So I totally know just how inherently great spring training is. It's like a secret society of all things good- a whole bunch of baseballers getting together to play ball. There is just something sublime about spring training. Spikes on concrete walkways, funny looking tan lines. There's a particular kind of hot in florida in february and march. it's not really hot an humid, but you still work up a sweat. The sun is just so welcome after a long hard, snowy winter. It's just fantastic. And there's nothing to worry about- you just need to play ball. The media isn't as fiendish, if you're in college, classes are miles away. It's just pure baseball or softball. At the end of the day, it's still sort of light out, and you can feel really good about working hard and playing a great game.

Red Sox pitchers and catchers are here- I SO wish i could be too.