Boston Market ran out of chicken

Sunday or Monday, a friend forwarded an email to me, with a link to some coupons for Boston Market. In response to KFC giving away a free piece of chicken on Monday (which I totally forgot about), Boston Market had coupons for a chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and cornbread for a dollar. The coupons were good till Sunday, November 1st. And of course they hope that you will also buy a drink (which I did), and maybe an extra side item (which I did not). So I ended up spending about three dollars for every coupon I used, which is not too bad.

Tuesday I went by myself. There was a big line. I didn't think that I was the only person with a coupon, but I thought maybe without the sale being mentioned on Oprah, maybe there wouldn't be quite that many people. But, I was prepared that there might be. Other people seemed surprised at the line. That's always funny to me. What, you thought you were the only one who got that email about the coupons? And I suppose that there were a few people there who didn't have coupons and were just wondering what was going on.

Anyway, there was a line, but I was impressed how fast the line was moving. They just assumed that most people had a coupon, and they seemed prepared to deal with it. I got done with lunch a lot sooner than I had planned on, so I was able to run a few errands before going to the library.

Wednesday we went together to a different location, and there was not as much of a line at first, but later there was. Again, they seemed prepared, and the line moved quickly.

Thursday, we went to the second location again, and when the cashier took our coupons and our money and our drink orders, she says something like "Is meatloaf okay?"

Well, I rarely order meatloaf, but okay. It seems that they had gotten so efficient at selling the cheap chicken dinners that they had run out of chicken, so they were substituting meatloaf. Another customer in line told me that he had been to another location where they were substituting turkey.

Again, the employees were quite efficient, so maybe they will run out of meatloaf and turkey as well.

Anyway, substituting meatloaf is probably a better solution than putting up a sign saying that they wouldn't honor the coupons at all, as KFC did. I still haven't received my rain check on that one.

Whatever. A cheap lunch is a cheap lunch, and I have just printed out more coupons for the weekend.

Yesterday

It looks like R and/or J stopped by again. Really guys, if you're going to read, stop and say hello or something.

Looks like I also have a new reader in Germany. That one makes no sense.

Yesterday my husband went out of town to middle of nowhere Texas. Only I had some confusion over when was where and which town had what name and so forth. So middle of nowhere that is west of here is next week, not yesterday like I thought. So I might end up going there anyway, I'll have to give that some thought.

So, my husband went someplace just east of here, near one of his siblings, so he would have gone to visit sibling if he had the time. Only it was just the one day schedule, so he probably wouldn't have any time. It probably wouldn't even be enough time to squeeze in lunch together.

And then, after he got and paid for a motel room, he went to work, only to find out there was no work.

This gets a little bit weird.

We used to work for other companies and sometimes the schedule would get screwed up. It rarely got screwed up to the point where we got the day off, and by that time half of the day was gone anyway. But sometimes at other companies, the company doesn't have anything to do with finding the location where my husband's job is actually done. At this company, someone in the company calls a bunch of different groups of people until they find a group that wants to hire them. And then it is up to that group of people to find a place for my husband and his coworkers to work that day. And then someone else in the company calls potential customers and schedules when they come in.

Weird problems sometimes happen. For one thing, the person that the company pays to find the groups who want to hire the company, he gets paid just for finding a group that the company will work for that day. And the people who schedule appointments get paid for just doing that. Neither of them actually care if the company makes money. It doesn't amount to anything on their paychecks. The first guy probably doesn't even care if there are any customers.

On the other hand, my husband and the sales people he works with only get paid a small amount (usually less than minimum wage) for showing up and doing the work, and the rest of their pay is commission. So, if there aren't any customers, or, if the customers don't buy very much, they really don't get paid enough to work that day. Only, they don't have the option of not working that day, if someone has found a place to work, even if it is obvious that no one is going to make any money (other than the guy who made the arrangements in the first place).

So one of these guys (one that my husband had never heard of before) arranged to have some people work east of here last week. Only, after the schedule was made, somehow my husband's boss and the salespeople's boss didn't get the message, and no one from the company was sent to that location. So the customers all showed up at the location, but no one from the company was there, and they all went home mad.

That was odd.

Then, a makeup day was scheduled for Monday, and my husband and some salespeople were sent to the location. Only, the people at the location didn't think that they were doing any business that day. They thought that they were just supposed to meet with someone from the company to discuss when they might reschedule, if they even want to reschedule. So there were some people at the location, just sort of waiting for someone to come and apologize, not actual customers and the usual volunteers and such that are usually at a location.

So last week there were customers and volunteers, but no one from the company to do any work. And yesterday there were three people from the company to do some work, but no customers and no volunteers.

So my husband didn't do any work yesterday. I'm not sure if he'll get paid anything. He's supposed to get some minimum amount even if there are no customers, but I'm not sure what happens when you're actually turned away from the location.

And he'd already paid for the motel room and couldn't get that money back. So he called to ask if he should just come home.

Well, probably not. The room is already paid for, and he's a little closer to where he would work Tuesday, but not by much.

He was, however, real close to the sibling, and now they could have lunch or dinner or whatever.

So I guess that is what happened, but I don't know as I missed his call this morning.

But that was weird. With other companies, we used to have this sort of problem a lot, cause they didn't even call to confirm that we were allowed to use the location for work that day. But I hadn't heard of anything this bad happening with this company. Work gets cancelled or added at the last minute, but I don't remember ever being told that there was a job on a day when there were no customers scheduled at all.

You would think that someone would notice that before.

Well, I said that I wasn't going to do any knitting yesterday, but I did some anyway. Not much, just a little. A lot of the stuff that I was going to do yesterday I couldn't do. I found out that I didn't have the supplies that I thought I had, so I will see about getting some at Walmart today. I didn't want to make a special trip to get anything yesterday. Yesterday was the only day that I could stay home all day, so that is what I did, I stayed home. Today there will be going to the library and going to get pills and possibly going to Walmart and having lunch at Boston Market. Yesterday, I looked for a certain file on the computer, which when I found it I couldn't open it cause Word Perfect had been deleted from the computer.

I wonder who would do that?

After that I just sort of went back to doing nothing. I got out stuff for the weird food, but then it is really to early to do anything but practice, which I think would be better to do on Thursday or even Friday. If I do it now, and it goes well, I'll just have to clean everything and put it away til Friday or Saturday. If I wait til Thursday, I can clean it but just leave everything out where I can use it again the next day. And having just practiced the day before would probably be better anyway. If the practice one doesn't go well, it doesn't matter when it gets done, cause I won't be doing it again. So either way I shouldn't do anything else til at least Thursday.

I don't know. Yesterday was just sort of a rainy depressing day. I should have done something more useful with it, like cleaning the bathtub.

The day did finally end with an episode of Heroes and some amusing emails.

I guess I will go put on my face and charge my phone and such so I can leave.

For the rest of the week

I shouldn't do any knitting. Or, at least, I shouldn't do any knitting when I have enough time to do something else. If I get some knitting done while I am waiting for something else to happen or right before I go to bed, that's fine. But, for the most part, I should be doing other things, as Halloween is on Saturday, and I am not yet ready for the party.

Plus, starting Tuesday, I'll spend four afternoons at the Irving Library, and that will take up a big chunk of my time.

Other things I need to be doing--I need to find a copy of my resume. I need to get out the cotton candy machine and see if it works. I need to make jewelry and props for Saturday. I need to pick up pills and maybe get that flu shot. I need to see if Tuesday is a good day to visit grandma. I need to see if I have stuff to fix my hair properly before Friday.

And, in addition to the normal cleaning and such I should--try to make a witch hat (just in case the other plans for the Halloween costume don't work out), and see about getting an oil change (which I might not have money left for since I'll have to buy extra gas for all that driving back and forth from Irving), and decide what (if anything) I should try to buy 50% off on Sunday. I don't think there's anything that I really want of Halloween decorations, but that is a good day to go and buy kitchen stuff that gets marked down because it is orange and black.

Still, it will be hard to remember to leave the knitting alone. While I was sorting through some stuff in the back room, I found that I had seven boxes of yarn and unfinished scarves. So I had been thinking that I should go and finish those scarves and do something with them. Some of them might be Christmas presents, or I might want to wear some of them, and I suppose there is always the slim chance that I would sell some of them. Selling them is unlikely, since to get paid a reasonable amount for my time and the money I spent on the supplies, I have to charge eighty dollars and up for the scarves mostly made on the machine, and the totally handmade scarves would start at around a hundred and fifty dollars.

As you might guess, I don't sell a lot of scarves.

I wear a few of them myself, and then I give a lot of them as Christmas gifts, and I've given two away for club fundraiser auctions. But I think that I've only actually sold two scarves, and both of those were the eighty dollar ones.

Anyway, I started making a lot of scarves, but I didn't finish a lot of them, unless someone was waiting for it I just put it away somewhere. For some reason I can't really explain, I really dislike making the fringe at the end of the project. Partially, I think this is because I sometimes get my left and my right confused and do something backwards, which then has to be undone and then done over again. But that doesn't happen near as much now as when I first started, but still, I tend to put off this part of the project until someone is waiting on the scarf, or maybe the scarf just goes into a box and I never get around to doing it. And, with those scarves that are mostly made on the machine, I dislike joining the ends of the panels together, and maybe I dislike this part even more than I dislike making the fringe.

I have really no explanation for either. Making fringe usually takes about two hours, and joining panels together takes two or three hours (or longer, depending on how long the scarf is), and I think to myself that there is no hurry, and that I've already done the part that takes real time and effort, and finishing the rest of the scarf would only take two to five hours, which I could do in an afternoon whenever I decided that a scarf really needed to be finished.

But without someone waiting on a scarf, without Christmas or some other deadline approaching, the scarves never get finished, which is why there are now several unfinished scarves in with the seven boxes of yarn.

For some of them I will have to go out and buy more yarn to make the fringe. I hope that I can still match all of the colors.

So for the past month or so I have been trying to finish up a scarf every week, so that I don't have all of these unfinished scarves just taking up space, and now I have about four finished scarves and I am working on two more. And, while I should not put them away, as that would mean I might not get back to them until after Christmas, or, that they would again go unfinished indefinitely, I should try to refrain from working on them much this week, at least until I've crossed off these other things from my list that should be done by Friday so that I can relax and go to the party on Saturday.

And that is just the scarves. I'm sure if I really looked that I would find I have all sorts of unfinished business.

My husband will be mostly gone for the week, so if I don't get anything done I will have no one to blame but myself.

And it still doesn't seem like October even now

Here it is, the last week of the month. Halloween is Saturday, and I'm just not feeling it.

Maybe I'm turning into my mother.

I have done nothing. I haven't made the jewelry to go with my costume. I haven't fixed the witch hat that I should take just in case I can't go through with the whole acting like a certain character on a cable tv show. I haven't made any props. I haven't checked into the planned weird food or made any interesting containers for that.

Less than a week left to do that stuff, and I haven't done any of it.

Yesterday, I did dye my hair. So now I sort of itch. You are supposed to do this allergy test before you dye your hair, but I never bother with it. And it isn't like I break out or anything, it's just the smell tends to bother me for a few days. But, since the color only last so many shampoos, I don't want to waste one just yet. Besides, having a shampoo less than twenty-four hours later is probably not recommended.

Yesterday, I also went to Judgement house. The hell scene is probably the closest I will get to a haunted house this year. There was a different Satan this year. I'm not saying that he is a bad actor, just that he isn't as into it. He tends to stand up straight and smile at people. Not that the real Satan doesn't do that. But, I think I liked the other guy better.

I wonder about the audition process. It must be really hard to decide who gets to be Satan and who gets to be Jesus.

A couple of the angels looked like they were ready for a nap, but the rest of them did pretty good.

I must remember for next time that no matter how I early I go, thinking that I will get in sooner, I will probably still have an hour to wait. There was no need to eat before buying a ticket. I can get my ticket, find out how long it will be, and probably have time to go to Sonic. In fact, I would probably have time to get in my car and go to another restaurant or even to go home for a bit. And if I don't have time to go do any of that, great, I can go eat afterwards.

Looks like I won't be going out of town tomorrow. It wasn't anyplace special, just middle of nowhere Texas in between Abilene and Midland. There were no plans, other than just getting out of the house for a bit and watching cable and doing some knitting. Maybe there would be leaves to look at on the way. We don't usually drive that direction, maybe there would be something to look at on the way, but probably we wouldn't have much time for that anyway. But I was thinking of going, but Waco has been added to the schedule, and have plans the rest of the week and cannot go to Waco.

Not that I really was dying to go to Waco either, though we might have gone to the zoo in the morning if we got there in time. And depending on where the motel was in relation to a certain haunted house, I might have thought about trying to go. But I really shouldn't go anywhere Tuesday, and I pretty much have plans for the rest of the week too. So I guess that I'm not going now.

My sister is going to Thrillvania. I have been once, though I didn't feel like I had time to see everything. And of course they have since added a few things that I haven't seen at all. I want to go. My sister isn't interested, but her friends are going to drag her out of the house to do something, and right now that something is a planned trip to Terrell.

My friends will not be dragging me anywhere. The week before the party, we are all too busy with party stuff. And a couple of them aren't well anyway. At least it isn't that damned flu. Or at least, not yet. I still didn't get a seasonal flu shot, and there isn't enough of the other shot to go around yet.

There is good news on the knitting. I have found one of my missing latch hook tools, and, I have bought some replacement "needles" on eBay, and they are already here. Now if I could just get some multi-pronged transfer tools and some glow in the dark yarn, I'd be all set. For now I am just happy that I can get back to work on the current project with a proper size latch hook tool.

Seems like I had something else to say, but I can't remember what it was. Anyway, I had better go and look for some of my stuff today, or I can't go and do what I had planned for the week even if I do stay home. And I had better make that jewelry and some props. And I should work on that hat, etc....

Sunday is not my day of mourning

About this time last week I was looking at the tracker thing, and you know the rest cause I posted about it on Monday. Busted! Anyway, since then I don't think that R and J have been reading my blog, or if they have, they're not doing it very much, and I don't think that they gave the address to the rest of my friends, or that the rest of my friends have rushed over to read anything that I wrote.

And it isn't like I would ever write anything that wasn't true anyway.

So I'm going to have a bit of a rant, and, if one of my friends happens to read this, well, it is the truth.

My friend the pilot would like to have a bunch of us over for dinner, and, needing a reason and a time for inviting us over, has decided that a certain friend's birthday is a good day and a good excuse. He was trying to get a general idea of how we felt about it, and if that was a good time for most of us, etc.... I can't remember, but maybe he waited until the birthday friend was out of hearing range before he asked, but most of the rest of us thought it was a good idea. And I think that he had already asked some of the others before I heard about it. Anyway, he thought the friend's birthday was on a Friday, but by the time he told me about it, he was pretty sure that it was on a Sunday.

I totally agreed that it was a good idea, and, unless I am sick or out of town that day, I said I would be there.

Just to be sure that we all heard and that we were all in agreement, the pilot sent out an email yesterday explaining what he would like to do and when and such. R and J said that sounded good and I'm all for it and another friend is also planning to go. And everyone was planning to go until this morning.

Miss Allergies said "No, not on a Sunday."

Now, this wasn't something like, she forgot that she had to be somewhere else on this particular Sunday. And this isn't because she has some religious problem with having fun on a Sunday. And it isn't even that it is a "school night" and she has to be home by a certain time on Sunday to get some sleep. This is every Sunday, that, unless it is followed by one of those Monday holidays or that she is taking a personal vacation day on the following Monday, she cannot do anything fun on a Sunday, because she is too busy feeling sorry for herself that she has to go to work the next day on Monday.

Seriously, this is what the woman does.

But life goes on, and you forget that this is what she does, until she says that she can't do something, because it is on a Sunday. So the rest of us (when we have money, which I currently do not) go out to dinner once a month on a Sunday, and she never goes, and you forget that is why she doesn't go. You think that she doesn't have money or that she is busy that day or that that particular restaurant is too far of a drive, or whatever. But then once in a while, the group goes to her favorite restaurant or one that is two blocks from her place, and you think that you will see her there, and you say something about it, but she says that she can't go because it is Sunday.

And then, if you have heard the explanation before, then you remember and maybe try to talk her out of staying home. If you have not heard the explanation, you think that she is joking. And then she goes on about it, how the whole day is ruined because she has to go to work the next day, and you are just shocked and don't know what to say.

For the rest of us, maybe we don't stay out late on a Sunday, and maybe we are busy on a certain Sunday, and maybe we spend a certain amount of time at church or something. For some of us, Sunday is just another day that is no different from any other day. For most of us, Sunday is half of our weekend, and we don't waste it worrying about Monday. But for Miss Allergies it is just not a day during which a person can plan to do anything fun.

So here our friend the pilot has planned something fun, and most of the rest of us has agreed that it would be fun, and Miss Allergies is probably going to either ruin it or try to have it moved to a Saturday, or maybe a Friday night.

Friday nights are not good for people who have concerns about staying out late. Not that anyone needs to get up early the next morning, just the staying up late and then having to drive someplace is not a good idea. And I am thinking that except for me, most people have other things that they would want to do on a Saturday. And, I am thinking that the pilot might have thought that Sunday would either be easier on him (or his wife, or someone else in his family having to share the house with many guests) or that it might be preferred by the friend having the birthday.

As I do not have a job right now, it is probably not going to matter to me if it is between a Sunday or a Saturday. But, if I have the chance to go out of town to someplace cool, and I have to miss this, I will. I think if it gets moved to some day that I have a chance to do something else and I could have gone if it were left on the original Sunday, I'm going to be really mad that I have to choose.

At some point, I think if some of us are going to make plans, and Sunday works for most people, then we have to go with Sunday, even if that means that Miss Allergies chooses not to go with us. It is her choice to not go with us, not that she has to be somewhere else.

Okay, end of rant.

Now I'm going to go knit something.

The rest of the weekend

Payday was Friday, and we very briefly were caught up with the bills, or at least, the important bills that we are paying. The credit card people still aren't getting anything, though I did get something in the mail from one of them, offering to settle for seventy percent and if I paid that they would stop calling me and such. I'm a little confused by the offer. Do they mean that the payments would be reduced to seventy percent, or that the total would be reduced if I could pay it all at once? Cause if I can't pay fifty dollars, I probably don't have fourteen hundred either.

Anyway, I soon won't have either amount. The bit of having money never lasts for long.

We went to lunch a few times and bought a few speciality food items. I went off in search of yam noodles. Yam noodles are supposed to have so much fiber that you don't gain any calories. Yam and tofu noodles are one of the "in" things now because of Hungry Girl. But they aren't cheap. Eight ounces for two dollars or more, and that isn't even the same as you would get for eight ounces of dried pasta. It says that it is two servings, but it looks more like one serving to me, and a small serving at that. But, I had to try them. Still haven't actually got around to eating them, as I've only just now been to Whole Foods to buy them.

Of course, what I really want to find is dried yam noodles, if there is such a thing. I got confused and bought sweet potato noodles. Then I went to yet another Asian market and bought more refrigerated yam noodles. So I now have three different kinds to try, but still haven't found a place that sells dry yam noodles.

While I was at one of the Asian markets, I bought a dragon fruit. I maybe buy one or two of these a year, cause I can only find them at Central Market, where they cost five dollars each, and then seven dollars each, and then last trip I didn't buy any cause they were ten dollars each. Not even ten dollars a pound, but tens dollars each. So at the Asian Market they were five dollars a pound, and I bought one that was about half a pound. Much more reasonable, but still not something that I'm going to buy on a regular basis. I bought a few more odd things like that, but they didn't cost near as much.

We found a few things at Goodwill, including a Divx player for twenty bucks. It didn't work properly when we got it home, but my husband thought that it might just be the cables. So we went to the dollar store, but they didn't have those kind of cables. Then we went to Radio Shack, where those particular cables cost twenty dollars and up.

So, we can't spend a lot of money trying to get the twenty dollar player to work, or we might as well just give up and buy a new player. But I thought that we should maybe look at a discount place, but my husband doesn't agree and thinks that we should go to a thrift store. The thrift store has cables, which are not the twenty dollar ones, but he buys a couple anyway for five dollars. Then we go to the place I wanted to go and buy the twenty dollar cables for seven dollars.

All during this weekend, we have tried to buy sandwiches at a Vietnamese place, but we kept getting there when the place was closed. We are now thinking that the place has recently gone out of business, cause I can believe that we got there too late one day, and I can believe that maybe they are just closed on Sunday, but I can't imagine that the place would close before five on a Monday. So they just must be gone. Tried another place, and they too were gone. There must be a dozen places in the area that sell those sandwiches, but the two places I used to buy from are gone, and I really don't remember where the other places are.

No sandwiches for us. Which meant that each time we ate someplace else and spent more money than I intended to. We've had our fun, we need to stop that and just cook something.

Which means that I'll need to go buy groceries today.

I still don't have a flu shot yet.

While all this is going on, my grandmother took ill, and my mother didn't call to tell me until Monday. And I didn't go to my brother's place this weekend, so when I briefly spoke to him he didn't tell me about it either, cause he thought that I already knew. Now that I think about it, he said something in passing when I asked about something else, but he didn't make it sound like a big deal.

So now my mother is all upset because they are probably going to have to but grandma in a nursing home again, and she doesn't want to go. But for some reason, she doesn't tell me about it until Monday. And I think that grandma is going to the hospital or something, and I then make plans to mostly sit at home and do nothing so that I can wait for the phone to ring, cause I think that we're going to take grandma to the hospital and I'm going to spend most of the day in a hospital waiting room.

But no, they aren't going to do that. At least, they didn't do that Monday. They might do that today or tomorrow, but not yesterday.

I guess I don't get what they are waiting for.

Anyway, I expect that eventually there will be a trip to the hospital or something, one of those hurry up and wait things, and there will be a lot of time in a hospital lobby, so I'm going to have a book and some knitting ready to go, and I'm not going to go much of anywhere today, just in case someone calls.

Oh, I forgot. I posted another video in the Wendy's contest, and it is finally where you can actually see it. I'm Wendyswitch, if you couldn't guess.

BUSTED!

If I did not want it heard, I would not have said it--Klingon proverb

Some of my friends have found my blog. Oh, well.

Last week I was looking at the tracker and saw that someone from Cedar Hill had Googled something that led them to my post about me having dinner with William Shatner. My friends R and J live in Cedar Hill, and they had also been at that event.

Crap.

Okay, a lot of people live in Cedar Hill, so it didn't have to be them. I've had a mostly anonymous blog. I rarely use anyone's real name, and once I deleted a post when I realized I forgot and used someone's name. I told one of my friends that I had a blog, and he said that he found it, but I was never sure that he had cause he didn't leave me a comment. I've met two fellow bloggers, but for the most part, my friends do not know that this is my blog.

Anyway, we were at dinner Saturday, and R said that they were Googling stuff last week because for some reason they needed to know the date for the captain's dinner, and they couldn't remember. So R and J from Cedar Hill did find my blog.

Crap.

Oh, well.

And it isn't like I've ever said anything really bad about anybody. And it isn't like I ever said anything that wasn't true. It is just nice to have someplace to rant about things that your friends and family don't know about. And now my friends can find this place if they want to.

Stuff happens. Whatever.

A few days by myself

There are little things that I like about having the place to myself. Like I can leave the kitchen light on all night without having someone around to complain about it. Like if I wake up in the middle of the night I can roll over and watch TV without disturbing the other person.

Would have been nice to have a working VCR when I wanted to watch TV in bed, but I still don't have one. My brother gave me a VCR that he wasn't using, but you need the remote to set up the VCR, and the remote is ruined because the batteries were left in it when it was put into storage.

Don't ever put things into storage until you've removed the batteries.

Other than that, I had a pleasant enough day, and I got almost six hours of sleep last night.

Another thing about having the place to myself is that I can take naps whenever I want and not have to worry about the other person's schedule.

A couple of days ago I got out the knitting machine and moved it into another room. It wasn't working very well where I had it, partially because I haven't used it in almost a year, and partially because the table wobbled a bit. So I hoped that it would work better once I got it set up in a more stable spot, which it did, but I am still out of practice a bit, and I've misplaced some tools and what I am using as substitutes aren't working as well as I'd hoped. But they do work somewhat, so I've decided to continue with a project that I hope will end up being Miss Allergies Christmas present.

If that goes well, I will make something similar for someone else. That still leaves one friend that I don't have money for, two friends that I don't have a clue, and most of my family that I don't have a clue.

Back to the knitting.

About a year ago we found another knitting machine in a thrift store. It was a slightly older model, but still basically the same as the one I already had. It was "new in the box" and had all of the necessary parts. It was forty dollars. We bought it. Not that I really thought that I would need a whole second machine, but I thought it would be nice to have replacements parts if I broke a keyplate or something. And of course, I was always losing things like transfer tools and latch hook tools, so now I had a whole new set of those.

So I eventually lost all of the first set of transfer tools, both latch hook tools, and all but one of the new transfer tools. I still have all of the other parts such as keyplates from both sets. And somewhere around here I even have another whole machine that I have never even set up. It is still in the box, but I've put the tools that came with it somewhere else.

I have tried to get other things that would work as latch hook tools. First, I bought several latch hook tools made for rug kits. These are available at most craft stores for a few dollars. But, while they pretty much look the same, they are a bit too big to replace the ones I lost. The second thing that I did was bid on a few eBay auctions to get replacement "needles", thinking that most machines would use the same size I had. Actually, most machines use "needles" that are smaller than those on my machine, and so I bought ten very reasonable priced smaller "needles" that I was going to make latch hook tools from, only after seeing how small they were I didn't bother.

At the time I did all of that I was just looking for backups, just in case. I still had at least one complete set of tools. Now that I have lost all but the one transfer tool, I have to use the other latch hooks, one that is too big, and one that is too small. Though not comfortable to hold, the smaller one looks better, so I am mainly using that.

At this point I would pay for the over priced tools and the shipping if I had any money, which I don't. Yesterday I was desperate enough to try to break a "needle" off of the spare machine. Except that when I went to get it, I found only the empty box from the first machine. Now I can't find the second machine.

I did all of this cleaning. How come I still can't find things?

The other thing I will probably do this weekend is make more videos. I found another contest. In fact, I've found several, but I don't have ideas for all of them yet.

We have received emails from the first contest saying that we had won third place (a hundred dollars) and then the non-winning entries were supposed to receive $20.09 each. Since I had three non-winner entries, and received an email for each, we should be getting a total of $160.27. Except that there has been no word from them this week. Monday was a holiday, so maybe that slowed things down a bit, but I would have thought that they would at least send us another email.

I could really use $160.27 right about now. We have to sign something first. Maybe something will be in the mail today. But still, you'd think that they would have emailed and told us to watch for it in the mail.

Still a bit early to do much of anything. I think maybe I'll watch Bones or something.

Oh, and yesterday I found a link for a movie my dad rather liked called The 27th Day.
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=M783NEWE

It doesn't much feel like October

Halloween is usually my favorite holiday, even more than Christmas. I like the costumes. I like the decorations. As a kid I liked to walk around in the dark. I like haunted houses.

And here it is halfway through the month, and I've done nothing. I've done a bit of shopping to get a costume, but really, that still isn't ready. And this year my costume isn't even the "Halloween type" of costume that I would normally wear. I'm just going to go as a TV character from a cable show and see if people can guess who I am supposed to be.

I haven't decorated the house. Well, there are some decorations up all year, cause it seems silly to risk damaging them trying to squish them into a box for storage. I like them, so why not just leave them up. No one else is going to see, and if they did see, well, if they didn't get it, why did I invite them to my house? So there are pumpkins up all year and ravens and owls and a few skulls and now a couple of tombstones. But the rest of the stuff is still in boxes, and they will probably stay in the boxes this year, cause I probably won't get enough of the place clean to bother with putting the rest of it up.

And of course I have no money, so that tends to be a problem. I'm not even looking at the haunted house ads. I can't go to anything. I bought my ticket to the Halloween party a long time ago, so I wouldn't have to worry about saving enough money to do that. But I haven't money for anything else. No haunted houses, no Screams, no Fright Night at Six Flags. Nothing. I can't do any of that.

At this point I'm not even sure that I will make it to Judgment House at my mom's church. Not that it would cost a lot (and if I literally had no money, mom would pay for it), but that is not a month long thing, and by the time it gets here I will probably be busy with other things. Being the only Judgment house in the area, it is usually a long wait.

I will have the house to myself for a couple of days. My husband is going to middle of nowhere just west of here. While I was debating on whether or not to go with him, I decided that if I went we would either have the added expense of staying over Saturday night (which the company might or might not pay for, but even if they did we would still need the extra money up front and then wait to be paid back) or else I would have to find someplace to wait all day, like maybe movie theater, and that also takes money and I find it rather tiresome anyway.

So while I was debating about that (the main reason for going to middle of nowhere is to have a place to knit without distractions other than the cable TV, and there not being a good place in the house to set up the knitting machine), I remembered that this weekend there is a meeting, so I shouldn't go anyway. So that is figured out. I'm not going. But it is only for a couple of days and Saturday, and I will already be busy on Saturday, so I don't expect to get much done. Still, it would be nice to get a couple of videos done, work on some knitting, maybe do some sorting.

The weather is not all that cold, but there did seem to be this dramatic drop in temperature earlier, so for a couple of days it did seem cold and I start to cough and get a sore throat and such. It went from what would have been a pleasant eighty if it had been dry, to a high of about sixty, which means that if you wake up in the middle of the night it is about forty. Forty is no big deal, except that I do not have an electric blanket and I hadn't yet turned on the heater. So the heater was on for a couple of days, but now it is back off. It is just so wet outside. It doesn't dry out long enough to do any gardening, so all that water is going to waste. Except that it is making the grass too tall, and it doesn't dry out on my husband's day off, so it doesn't get cut.

I really do not care how the grass looks, but this is starting to look really bad. We will get a complaint letter if he does not cut the grass soon, but it is hard to do as it keeps raining on and off.

In other parts of the country, people are going out to look at the red and orange leaves. Here, if we have a red tree, it is because the crepe myrtles are still blooming. We will probably go from having green trees to having no leaves on the trees rather quickly. We don't get a lot of the red and orange thing, and of course if we had it right now we couldn't really go out and enjoy it anyway. It is raining too much to go out and look at the leaves.

I think I may miss the entire October experience, except for the Halloween party. I won't even get to do much in the way of after-holiday shopping, cause we don't have any money. Not that I need to eat tons and tons of candy, but it was nice to get some while it was on sale so that I wasn't tempted to spend money on it the rest of the year. And I tend to buy a lot of practical things the day after a holiday, like plastic spoons and storage containers and Kleenex, cause they are half price for being orange.

That reminds me. If you like the Rubbermaid Takealongs, go out and buy some more while you still can. I think that they are going to switch to something "new and improved", which is new but I can't see how it is improved. In fact, the new ones look like the same cheap plastic that all the other brands use, which is why I was spending a little more to get Rubbermaid in the first place. So I need to go and buy about a dozen or so of those, regardless of color, but I can't because we don't have any money. So it doesn't look like I will be going out to stock up on them November 1st.

Except for the party, I have nothing to look forward to. Not even post-holiday clearance sales.

And I still don't have a flu shot.

This sucks. Business usually picks up by now, but not this year.

The Logic of Cats

I tend to think that animals think about things the way that we do, only they are not as smart, and they will never figure out some things, and they might be able to do things that we can't, like figure out who is on the other side of the door by taking a sniff and also occasionally discover someone has cancer by the same means.

I do not expect them to know everything. I do not expect that dogs know when we leave Monday morning we are going to work or to school, and that going to work pays for the dog food, and that we get the dog food from the store, etc.... I do think that on some level the dog knows that it is Monday, or something like that, because after a couple of days of not having the weekday routine it is now back, and we go to work or to school or whatever. They can't know that we are going to work, but they have figured out that we go somewhere on a regular basis, and that we usually come home from that place at a certain time and all of that.

So I would also think that cats know a few things about cars. They don't necessarily see them the way that we do. I think that most cats do not ride in cars on a regular basis, and do not think of them as a means of transportation, or if they have figured out that part that the transportation is usually to a place that they do not want to go, like the vet. To a cat, a car has more practical purposes. It is something that can be climbed on for a look around, or maybe something to be climbed on to reach something even higher up, or something to sit on because it is warm, or maybe something to take a nap on.

So I realize that the fact of people using cars for transportation is mostly irrelevant to a cat, as cats do not often use them for transportation, and on those rare occasions it is usually transportation to someplace that they do not want to go. But I would think that cats are at least aware that people do use the cars for something, that the cars are not specifically provided by people for cats to use to climb on. I would at least think that cats have noticed that cars are not entirely stationary objects. While cars are often found parked in driveways and on the sides of streets and such, sometimes the cars are missing from their places in driveways and such, and cars are also sometimes seen rolling away from the driveways and moving up and down the streets and such as that. You would also think that the cats would notice that when the cars are moving or are about to be moved from driveways and such, that people are in the cars when this happens, and that they might have gone so far as to figure out that people make the cars move.

Well, maybe figuring out that people make cars move is to much, but they should have at least figured out that people know when the cars will move and that they get inside the cars just a bit before this happens.

It would therefore not be a good time to climb up on top of the car just after people are seen getting inside the car.

We went to my brother's this weekend for the usual, though we decided to drive there due to the fact that it had been raining and there was still mud and puddles of water here and there. We watched some TV and had a visit with my brother and Mean Kitty. Mean Kitty has been declawed and is a lot of fun to play fight with, except that one can never entirely be sure that she is just playing. And then we were leaving, and I forgot something and went back inside the house.

Mean Kitty is not supposed to go outside, and is certainly not permitted to be outside when it is getting dark.

I was aware that Mean Kitty had followed me to the door, but she rarely shows any interest in actually going outside, she just likes to have a look outside from the safety of the door. So at one point I was aware that there was a cat behind me, and then a few seconds later I saw that there was a cat in front of me walking around on top of the car, and then finding a good spot on the car for a nap.

I had a moment of panic, thinking that I had let Mean Kitty out the door. But the door had closed behind me, and there was Mean Kitty looking through the glass. On top of the car was a grey cat I had never seen before. It had a collar, but no tags.

My husband was already in the car. Not only had the cat seen my husband get in the car, but the cat then spent some time on the hood of the car looking at my husband through the windshield before continuing to climb onto the roof of the car. I am not sure why the cat would have thought that this car was a good place to settle down for a nap, considering that the cat had probably never seen the car before, and even if she had she would have known that the car doesn't stay in that spot for very long, and certainly is about to be moved from that spot now that people were getting into the car.

The grey cat was friendly enough and didn't seem to mind being picked up, though it was probably not entirely happy that the main reason for being picked up was to be moved from away from the car. My brother came outside to see what we were doing, and he didn't know whose cat it was, though he thought he had seen it around and maybe it belonged to someone on the street behind his.

The grey cat now had the attention of three people outside the house, plus a certain Mean Kitty watching from behind the glass door. The two cats looked each other over, and I expected a lot of noise from Mean Kitty, as Mean Kitty doesn't like other animals, or even other people much, except for my brother. But they both seemed quiet enough and just looked at each other, then the grey cat went back to exploring and looking at the people outside.

Well, I had long ago decided that I cannot have a cat or a dog in my present circumstances, and that was even before the current financial problems. Otherwise, I might have taken the friendly cat home with me, since there were no tags on the collar. We drove away, and my brother went back into the house. I hope the cat has a good home and went back to it.

I hate my life. And I can't even have a cat.

Still no word from Publisher's Clearing House

And no big winning lotto tickets either.

But it looks like we will be getting a hundred dollars for the gardening video.

While I am happy, it doesn't even make up for the latest drama with the bank.

Since I the time I had first wanted to enter the video contest, my hopes for winning have gone from--it sure would be nice to have some extra money--to--I could make a car payment with that--to--I'm behind on a car payment and need some money to catch up--to--at this point I would just like to get the flu shots and maybe buy some groceries if I win something.

Okay, so now I've won something. Not the top prize or even the second prize, but we did win the third prize of a hundred dollars.

And I really would like to have that flu shot before the party.

I will blog more about the bank later.

Defying Gravity and other random stuff

You may have watched Defying Gravity on ABC, until it was announced that the eighth episode was the season finale. Or maybe it was said to be the series finale. I can't remember. Anyway, it's a bit silly to call the eighth episode the season finale, but sometimes they only make eight episodes of a new show, especially when it is just a summer replacement series. Or sometimes they only make ten episodes, or maybe they only make thirteen episodes.

So, I had thought that they had only made the eight episodes, and that if the ratings were good they would make more for next year, and if the ratings weren't good then the season cliffhanger of them all looking at whatever was in storage bay four would just be the end of it.

Turns out that they filmed thirteen episodes, and episode eight was not meant to be the season cliffhanger. ABC just isn't going to bother with the other five episodes. People in Canada are still watching the show.

So, I have just found out that channel 131 has episodes nine and ten. I have just watched episode nine and seen what is in storage bay four. Tomorrow I will watch episode ten, and hopefully episode eleven will be posted on Saturday.

Anyway, if there is something that you like to watch now that you missed, and you can't find it on Hulu, look on 131.

And there is a lot of cool stuff on Hulu that you might not have noticed.

I've already mentioned finding The Bionic Woman on Hulu. I have yet to look at Return of the Planet of the Apes (animated), but that's cool that they have it. If you missed Daybreak, (think more serious Groundhog Day with the black guy from Private Practice), you can still watch it. You can watch the nineties version of Dark Shadows. They have the short-lived Century City, about a law firm in the future. Maybe you would like to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. They have three seasons of Sliders, and seven seasons of Stargate SG1. They have most of the new Outer Limits, and a lot of the old ones.

Anyway, they have a lot of cool stuff if you are ever wanting something to pass the time.

I guess that is all I have to say for now. I have the usual stuff to do. I'd better get started on it.

Yesterday's shopping

So here it is October, and I don't have my Halloween costume ready, or even mostly ready. This just won't do at all. I had to go shopping.

I had been shopping earlier and found an interesting dress. I held up the dress and asked my husband who it looked like. He thought the same thing that I did. I tried on the dress, and while it fit, it would need some work. But it was only two dollars, so I decided to buy it anyway.

Nearly a month later, I've had no luck finding fabric to match the dress, and I haven't found a bra to go with the dress, and I'm running out of time to fix it.

I very much have it stuck in my head that I was going to go to the Halloween party as a certain character from a cable TV show that was on this year. The character died, so if I don't go as that character this year, I don't think I would try to do it next year instead. I can use the dress for something else, but I think that this is the only year that I want to be that character, unless maybe some other people want to go as a group as characters from that show, and then I might just tag along with them. But as for going by myself as the character, either it will be this year or else I just won't do it.

After looking at pictures of the character, it isn't like the dress I bought exactly matches anything that she wore. She definitely has a certain style, but I think I can wear something that doesn't exactly match anything and just act like the character.

In fact, the plan is to act like the character and see if anyone can guess who I'm supposed to be.

So yesterday I decided to go shopping, and then I would make a final decision. Either a.) find fabric to fix the first dress and find a bra and shoes to go with it, b.) find a different dress that will work for the same character, or c.) admit defeat and buy some black fabric so that I can be a witch or a vampire or something.

Before I started going to this party every year and got so competitive, I would find a witch costume or a black vampire dress and just go as one of those every year. I didn't do all of this fuss over the costume, it was already done, I just had to see which one fit better or if it needed repairs or anything. The witch costume I had shrunk, and I'm not sure what happened to my first black and red vampire outfit.

Anyway, that idea went out the window after I wore a different costume one year and won a ribbon. And at this party it is rare for people to wear the same costumes year after year. So I have had a different costume every year since then. But I have started to think that this is all taking up too much of my time and that I should just go back to having the standard witch or vampire costume ready to go and wear one of those most of the time.

But maybe not this year.

So I had all these places mapped out. The first place I went to was a thrift store, and I tried on five or six things. Now, I don't need another black dress. I like black dresses, but I have several, and I don't wear them that often. So I should stop buying them. As it is, I have already bought one that I haven't worn yet. But, as I was looking through the racks, a black dress spoke to me. The character tends to wear dark brown, not black, but would anyone other than me notice?

There was a dark brown dress, but it would need work, and I already have a blue dress that needs work. So I figured if I bought that I would spend the rest of the day still trying to match fabric. I didn't buy that one. The other dresses didn't work at all.

And then the black dress turned out not to be a dress but pants. And it didn't quite look exactly like the character, but, it did look pretty good on me. And it didn't need as much work as either of the other dresses, and if I do decide that it needs something, finding matching black fabric would probably be easier than matching brown or blue.

I also found a bra and shoes.

So, that settles that. I bought the black almost dress and the bra and the shoes. Now I will just have to make up some jewelry to go with it, and decide if it would look better with a belt and do I need to hem up the pants.

My not so attractive arms are still showing, but maybe I'll wear a shawl or something with it.

After that I went to Michael's, still hoping for either some glow-in-the-dark yarn, or something to make glow-in-the-dark yarn. I have found out why I can't seem to find the yarn, the kind I heard about last year has been discontinued. I don't understand why. I don't get the whole discontinued thing anyway, but if you are the only source of a really unique thing, why stop making it? So that sucks. I bought a very small bottle of glow-in-the-dark fabric paint, wondering if it might be possible to dye the yarn, but it probably won't work. I will just have to find someone who has some of the discontinued yarn (and pay shipping) or give up on the idea.

Next, I went to JoAnn's, and I'm not sure why. Just went there on autopilot I guess. I mean, I no longer need to match the blue fabric (besides which I think that I had already tried at that particular store), I didn't buy the brown dress so I didn't need to match that, and if I wanted to match the black I probably wouldn't buy it there anyway. It's too expensive. Even their clearance stuff is at least four dollars a yard, and for clearance stuff I usually only spend a dollar or two, usually at Walmart. I used to also buy stuff at Clothworld or Hancock's, but most of those have closed.

Anyway, I should have gone straight to Walmart, but I didn't. So as long as I'm there, I try one more time to find knitting tools to go with the knitting machine. And I find that the ten dollar pocket knitter has a single transfer tool that would probably work. I'm still out of luck on getting a proper size latch hook or getting a two or three pronged tool, but if I am ever truly desperate and need to get a transfer tool without having it shipped, I guess I can buy a pocket knitter.

While I was in JoAnn's I bought a bra extender. As it turns out, I paid almost twice what they cost at Walmart, but it is too much of an effort to go back and return it to save a dollar and a quarter.

And, as it turns out, I may not need the extender anyway. But it is good to have one, just in case.

I did not buy anything of interest at Walmart. After not finding any interesting fabric, I nearly left the store without buying anything, but remembered that my husband had asked for something that cost five dollars. So I bought that, and then I went home. I was too tired to go on to Hobby Lobby, and I was about out of money anyway. Besides, I got the main thing that I was after at the thrift shop.

When I get home, I regret spending the five dollars at Walmart. My husband didn't seem all that happy I bought it, and now I don't have enough left for all of the lottery tickets I usually buy on Tuesday. I'll have enough to buy two for today and two for tomorrow, but I usually spend sixteen dollars every other Tuesday. I don't have that much left. I'll just have to spend four dollars today and get the rest on Friday.

And there had better be money on Friday or I will be really mad.

The Bionic Woman and random things

The first fourteen episodes of The Bionic Woman are on Hulu. That is, the first fourteen episodes of the real The Bionic Woman are on Hulu, not the recently "re imagined" thing done by those people who "re imagined" Battlestar Galactica. The re imagined thing was removed months ago, and now there are fourteen hours of "The Bionic Woman Classic."

If you are not a big fan of either The Bionic Woman or The Six Million Dollar Man, you might not think this is a big deal. Except that The Bionic Woman was on thirty-three years ago (and The Six Million Dollar Man was on a couple of years before that), and we haven't been able to (legally) buy or rent either series on video or DVD in the years since then. The reruns were on The Sci Fi Channel (now SyFy) about ten years ago, and I saw some of them then, but I didn't actually have cable, I was just in a lot of motel rooms where I could sometimes watch on Thursday and Friday afternoons. But mostly, I haven't seen them since I was a kid.

Now when someone makes a movie or a TV show, the subject of DVDs is just part of the deal. It is decided ahead of time what everyone's cut will be if there is a DVD and all of that, and if you don't like your cut or you flat out don't want your work to be on a DVD, then you can go and look for another job. But in the seventies the contracts weren't written like that, and if you want to release a DVD of something from that time you have to go back and get everyone to sign another contract and figure out what everyone's cut is, etc....

And some people can't be reached, and some people just don't want to play, and some people hold out for more money.

And while this sort of thing drags on, those of us who really want to see the show again look for illegal copies, and when the people holding out for more money finally do sign on, there are fewer customers wanting to buy, and there is less money to be made anyway.

Better to have a smaller cut of a bigger pie than to wait til there is no pie left.

So maybe there will be more of The Bionic Woman on Hulu, and maybe some of The Six Million Dollar Man will make an appearance, and maybe they will both be available on DVD now. Not that I actually have proof of any of that, but it does seem a step in the right direction.

Back to my usual moaning about the money situation.

So we made a car payment on both cars, which means that we are now currently only one payment behind on each car, and I doubt that anyone is going to try and take my car over one late payment. And I hope that we will be caught up on that next month anyway.

But that didn't leave us much money, as there is still a missing expense check out there, as we changed our direct deposit to a different bank so that we could close one of our accounts.

My husband is going to middle of nowhere Texas for three days next week, and while I was sitting here debating on where or not I should go with him, I realized that I already have plans for that weekend. So that settles that. Now if we could actually get paid for that expense check, he would actually have enough money to go on the trip, just he will be going alone because of my prior commitment.

It was just middle of nowhere Texas, and not even a long drive, and the main point of my going would have been knitting anyway.

About the knitting....

I should have started that months ago. In fact, I should have started it in January and been done with it. But I usually save some of the knitting for when I go on these little trips, but there haven't been many of these little trips, and of the few that there have been I ended up not going on most of them, mainly due to the money situation but occasionally because of my prior commitments.

So, basically, I haven't done any of the knitting that needs to be done before Christmas, and here it is already October.

I may be handing out IOUs for Christmas.

And then there is always this confusion about who is doing what for Christmas anyway.

After having worked with the round looms for more than four years and having had The Ultimate Sweater Machine for almost three years, I have yet to knit any sweaters. I am mainly knitting scarves, though there have been a few hats and the odd assortment of leg warmers and such. At some point I thought that I should learn regular knitting before attempting to knit a sweater. Not that I had any intention of knitting a whole sweater by hand, but I had thought that there might be some little thing that needed to be done with a sweater that just wouldn't be practical on the machine. Like I thought that I might need to do some regular knitting around the neck or at the waist or maybe on the sleeves, that the pieces of the sweater might not match up the way I imagine while working on the machine, and I would have some hand knitting to do before joining the pieces. So I attempted to learn regular knitting, but I didn't get very far with it. Regular knitting just isn't my thing.

Anyway, you would think that knitting scarves all the time would get dull, but I seem to get new ideas for them now and then. But even with the machine, they do seem to take so long.

And then there are these little tools that come with the machine. One of them is called the latch hook tool, which looks like the latch hook tool that comes with a rug kit, except that is a smaller hook. And the other is the transfer tool, which rather looks like a giant sewing needle, except that the pointy end is buried in the handle as it is the big eye of the needle that is used on the knitting machine. If you aren't doing anything fancy, you don't use these tools very often, but you do need them once in a while, especially if you've made a mistake.

On the other hand, if you are doing something fancy, you need these tools all of the time. And, if you are doing something fancy, it is helpful to have double or triple pronged transfer tools, and double or triple latch hooks.

The problem is that I have never seen double or triple latch hooks, so if I want those I will have to find a way to make them myself, and I have seen that other knitters have done just that. As for the double and triple pronged transfer tools, they used to just come with the machine, but now they don't, and if you want them you have to pay extra and have them sent, which means that you also have to pay shipping.

It seems to me that the charge for the tools is more than they should be, even before you have to add for shipping.

By contrast, the tool that goes with the round loom is easily found at any craft store, usually for a dollar. I have bought several sets of looms, and still I lose the little tool and have to go to the store and buy more. But it is no big deal. The tools are at the store and they only cost a dollar.

The cheapest transfer tool for the knitting machine is three dollars, and it is not available at the store, and so in addition to the three dollars you have to pay for shipping and you have to wait for the mail to arrive.

So to get the transfer tool and the latch hook that came with the kit (cause I am always losing things and need them replaced, or maybe something breaks once in a while), that would cost me about fifteen dollars with the shipping. And that's not counting if I would like a double pronged or triple pronged transfer tool, and they are only sold two at a time, so another ten dollars if I want the one and another twenty dollars if I want them both.

And that's if they even have them in stock, which doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

About a year ago we found another knitting machine at a thrift store for forty dollars, and we decided to buy it, just for the tools and such, not cause I wanted another machine. So I had another transfer tool and another latch hook, which would have cost me about fifteen dollars to buy online. Unfortunately, this kit did not come with the desired additional two and three pronged transfer tools, but now I also have a spare of just about everything else, and I think this is good to have just in case I should break a key plate or tear the thing that holds the weights onto the machine.

But now I have lost both latch hook tools and all but one of my transfer tools. It is time to buy some more tools, or look into buying another machine to get more tools.

That has lead to some interesting eBay searches. There just all of a sudden seem to be a lot of people selling old knitting machines. And some of them aren't selling for that much, so I am tempted to buy another one. I imagine all of the tools and spare parts that I might get for somewhere in the twenty to forty dollar range.

Now I just have to figure out which one I should bid on.

(I probably just missed bidding on the one I should have tried to get, but I had it in my head that it was over tomorrow, and I wanted to think more about the money situation before I bid on anything.)

Unfortunately, I can't bid very much. In addition to the usual money problems, there is that still missing expense check, and the fact that my husband just realized that his car inspection sticker lapsed three months ago.

Still, I do have to wonder what is up with all of these knitting machines on eBay. Is it just an odd coincidence? Are desperate people raiding there craft rooms and finding knitting machines they have decided they will never use? Are that many knitters all dying and having estate sales?

I just don't know what the deal is. Another odd thing is when someone is selling the machine and knows nothing about it. One ad for a machine turns out to just be for the carriage, and there are no hooks. But there are other spare parts, so maybe no one else will want that one and I will be able to get it.

Of course, I have no money left in the Paypal account, so if I decide to buy anything I will have to come up with some money from somewhere else and remember to transfer it before the bill is due.

Anyway, it really ticks me off that I have to think about any of this right now. If I am going to make those Christmas presents, I have to have those tools. If I am not going to make any Christmas presents, I certainly do not have the money to buy Christmas presents instead, and I'm going to have to tell people to count me out this year. And it shouldn't be this much trouble. The tools should just be in the craft stores with the other knitting stuff. Even overpriced at five dollars each, I would buy them, if they would just put them in the stores.

And while I am worrying about the knitting, I still haven't finished my Halloween shopping. I have an idea for a costume, but not all of the parts. I may have to give up and go as a witch, but since I have gained weight since last time, I would still have to go shopping. I had hoped to get a flu shot before the party, but I doubt that I will have enough money left for one shot, and of course this year there are two. Great.

October 1st

Okay, so the deadline for the video contest has now past.

This apparently hasn't stopped someone from posting a new video for the contest. Not only that, but it has been posted in some way that only friends can see it, and I'm not one of the friends. Hopefully, that person forgot to make the contest one of the friends, and the judges won't be able to see it either.

I would be really mad if I did all this work only to be beaten by someone who entered the contest hours after the deadline pasted.

In case you missed any of my videos, here is the first one. Here is my second one, about knitting, and the revised video now entered in the contest. And here is the video I posted about food, and it's revised version.

And here is my very last video that I posted thirty minutes before midnight yesterday. It's dumb. The voiceover part is terrible. It wasn't great to start with, but I thought I had turned it up enough to hear it. I've had a lot of trouble with the voiceover stuff, and last night I was working by myself and couldn't figure out what was wrong. First, the clips weren't properly muted, so I had to go back and do that. And sometimes the microphone doesn't do well near a power pack, so I moved that, but there's only so far that you can move that to and still have it work. And I just ran out of things to try, and I ran out of time, so I posted the video anyway.

I did at least figure out how to turn down the music a bit.

This is the first one I've added music to. I like this little bit that is supposed to go with the "sports" video, and just before I gave up trying to find it, I decided to make a "sports" clip and then just deleted everything else from the clip except the music.

During the week or so that I didn't work on videos, I forgot how to do a few things. So even though this last video is shorter and there is less going on than in the others, it still took me about six hours to make the thing. That is in addition to filming the thing.

And, as you might guess, most of the day before making the video was spent cleaning the backroom, so that I had something to film.

And I forgot to hide the labels on the yarn, and I didn't have time to do anything to fix it. So it might not count in the contest anyway.

So of the thirteen videos posted, four of them are mine. I should get something, right?