Adventures of a Freelance Murray Slaughter

spelling errors in the title are because ulysses is on my hand, because i think after last week, where i left him for FOUR WHOLE DAYS, me going out for a few hours is close to abandonment.

right now he is hugging me arm, his head on my elbow, and purring his little heart out. He's adorable. Psychotically needy is ok, when its this cute.

I walked to Medford today. But it wasn't like, deep into Medford, really. Just to theloriest's, which is just on the other side of Tufts. Google says 2.1 miles. My mother called in the middle of it, and I mentioned to her that I was just about to walk into my third town on my walk. Tiny wee little towns around here.

So strange to me to recognize that, now, as 'a good walk' but not as an 'impossible to do that oh my god i could never ever do that.' I was just...walking, looking over my shoulder to see if my bus was there, and when it wasn't, I kept walking. Feet were sore at the end, but not in screaming pain. Was good.

robdamnit and I were in agreement that this heart-shaped bit of crystal crap is easily the most horrible.

and I mean ALL the soap. I ran out of laundry detergent after washing everything for baitcon, out of dishwasher soap washing the last load so that the dishwasher would be empty while I was away, I ran out of floor cleaner two weeks ago, we're almost out of hand soap in the bathroom. I think the regular dish soap is the only stuff that we're not out of, and that's only because I don't use it much since, well, dishwasher :-) Oh, and shampoo, but that's because last time I bought it I bought 'buy two, get one free' of Suave in the '40% free!' bottles.

Normally soap gets used at different rates, so it doesn't feel like such a burden to replace; some Mr. Clean this week...a thing of laundry soap the next...buying it all at once makes me long for some fictional world i never lived in where everything gets cleaned with a bar of carbolic soap. Eh bien. It was all on sale, with coupons to boot, and in one case a rebate, and a buy one get one, etc. I was thrifty as heck, and after figuring it all out, I seem to have spent $7 for about $30 Of soap.

And running out of all the soap, all at once is, at least, something slightly less frequent than a solar eclipse.

Eben is off to his family at the cape this weekend, and Doug to Firefly, which, combined with soap supplies means I will happily spend tomorrow cleaning. That's probably weird.

It is odd to me that that isn't even a case of me making the best of a task I have to do...while 2 or 3 years ago, I would likely not have been so frugal in buying basic necessities, I've always enjoyed a good house cleaning. I'm no Anne Shirley (I loathe washing dishes, which she enjoyed), but I really do get into mopping....

...finding The Golden Girls this funny the first time. I'm pretty certain I couldn't have gotten half these jokes fully when I was 14, and that's likely a good thing.

forget about dance troupes and novelty acts left over from th Gong Show, and cute as a button 8-year-olds who sing, this footage is...it goes beyond talent.

thanks to whitebird for linking to this.

involves walking; I have, I estimate, about 4 miles of walking and about 7 tasks to get done today, and right now it's raining so hard that it's like a sheet of water just sinking out there.

I know it won't clear up, but if it could just ... lessen between 2 and 5, that would be grand.

EDIT: waiting to hear back on most things, have crossed out the definitely taken stuff.

I am selling off some of my knitting books; while I still knit, it's taking a back seat to other things around here right now (though I made the cats new catnip mice about a month ago). So I'm keeping the books that I really love, and have knit from in the past and shall knit from again, and selling off the ones that just aren't it for me. So I'm keeping most of the things that teach me to knit toys, really, because that's the part of knitting that's appealed to me the most ;-)

All of the books are in new or near new condition; I take *good* care of my books. I will ship in the US, though I will show a little preference to local pick up, and they'll be sent media mail. It'll be $3 for shipping one book because I don't know exactly what it will be, but they're all in the $2.38-$3.19 range. More books, I will weigh them for you.

Make any reasonable offer. Comments are screened in case you want to leave shipping info; I will offer these in knitswap and elsewhere in a day or two, but thought my friends should have first crack at them.

• The Knitter's Bible: Knitted Accessories
• Stitch N'Bitch Nation
• The Knitted Teddy Bear (a good book, but I have 2 other bear knitting books)
• Vogue Stitchionary
• Vogue Stitchionary 2
• Vogue Stitchionary 3

I will sell one of these (I want to keep one book on the subject around, and they're both decent books, so whichever one someone else wants, I'll keep the other):

• One Skein Wonders
• One Skein

Am also selling a copy of the non-knitting Chain Mail Jewelry.

eat all the test batch of cinnamon rolls I made tonight (test batch should be read as 'what people are getting if brunch happens').

anyone else noticing 20-40 minute delays between comments/personal messages being sent on LJ, and actually receiving them in email?

I got a contract. It got *totally* lost in the 'landed the contract, left for Baitcon 30 seconds later' rush.

When I went into the landlord's on Thursday to straighten many things out, the manager asked me if I wanted to do some web development for them. This was not a hard question. There were a whole bunch of other things involved, after, and Friday morning I met with the woman-of-all-work who had been doing their HTML, and we did a project scope for some PHP coding and helping them get a domain set up online and a few other things. I needed her to gather some info for me, met with her again yesterday to pick it up on a flash drive. It's a small project, and the final billing amount will be...just a little over July's rent. That was a coincidence, it really is about 20 hours work after talking to the HTML person, and I'd already quoted $35 an hour when the manager asked me about my rates.

I mentioned this at Baitcon to several people who had helped me, and totally spaced on posting it when I got back. Also I am absolutely wanting more work (Masha asked me at Diesel last night about doing some stuff for her, so yes, I assure you, I have more debts, and school coming up, and while I don't need more charity, more work is, I assure you, GRAND).

So, back to that grind.

Happy Canada Day! I made you some nanaimo bar ice cream but everyone at Baitcon eated it.

so a while ago, I noticed that they had some fun pool toys at Shaw's. Didn't buy them, because you know, no money. But they put all the pool toys on sale, 50-75% off, so I took a peek. The one line I was really interested in was a pile of medieval weaponry articulated in foam...a battle axe, a war hammer...and a barbed flail.

They were sold out of everything except the kinda beat up floor-model flail. But the woman at the self-serve monitor area said I could have it for $2. At this point, while I'm considering it ($2 is still something I need to think on), her manager came up behind me, and teasingly said, "You watch out for her (the cashier). She's evil."

So I turned around, with the spiked end dangling on its cable, and said, "That's ok, I'm armed."

The look on his face was so priceless the cashier dropped the price to 99 cents.

I really do love how much his highness loves me; my welcome home last night was an overwhelming pile of purry furry snuggly cat. but he has followed me to the bathroom every time I've gone, and he woke me 3 times last night to welcome me home again.

small was apparently happy to see me, after all, but it seems she has good instincts; until ulysses left momentarily for food, she was nowhere to be seen...but as soon as he left the room momentarily, she came zooming in and onto my lap. But 5 minutes of cuddling seems to be enough for her to make sure I know she missed me.

Meanwhile he's snoring on my stomach, and in for a surprise; I have an appointment at 3 and Diesel afterwards. Poor cat, abandoned to something resembling a life.

1. nanaimo bar ice cream went over really well. It's not *exactly* a frozen custard, because it's made with Byrd's custard powder, not as a real custard with eggs and extensive cooking and stuff. Also I didn't make a traditional nanaimo filling (icing sugar, butter, custard powder, a little milk), as that really isn't the thing for ice cream. So I made the standard recipe on the can, but with a cup of sugar to get the flavour right. It got good reviews and 7 votes for 'best', so I am happy.
   
2. That said, I think that in the future, any Canadian flavours I do that might not be really obvious (ie, the putative poutine ice cream, the ketchup ice cream that came about after discussing The Great Canadian Ketchup Cake and feeding people ketchup chips), should likely be footnoted; having JB announce it as 'Nanaimo Bar - that's an egg-free vanilla custard with chocolate bits, folks' would have caused less 'What the hell is a Nanaimo Bar?' questions. While I don't think I need to explain 'Kraft Dinner' to people now, if I make a pork-free bangbelly ice cream, or a butter tart ice cream, it should prolly be explained a little.
   
3. I'm still a little off from the ultimate goal of 'a weight that they will let me skydive at', but I think I'd like to make the goal for the next year be 'at Baitcon 2010, I would like to try the aerial silks'. I circled them a lot, but couldn't get up the nerve. On the other hand, today after all the kids had left, I commandeered the swing for a good 20 minutes (when kids are around, you can get about 2 minutes before there's a chorus of 'Can I have a turn?'). That was great fun, and not something I could have done 2 years ago.

there will be more.

the cat just tried to welcome me home by burying me in his fur.

he's been purring and just *looking* at me for about 10 minutes.

small, meanwhile, has barely noticed I'm here.

ok, we're not but I wanted to say it (to find the reference). What I am going to need is some more stakes. My GOD, but the tomato plants, given the slightest bit of sun yesterday, were all YAY! and I think they grew 3" since yesterday afternoon. They have about 10" of stake left to grow, though, so they should last the weekend. The stakes James cut for me the other day are great (and the length I think these tomato plants will need), but I only needed 2 at the time, and it was obvious after planting Laurie's tomatoes the other day that hers needed some support, so I gave them to her so they wouldn't fall over.

The sickly tomatillo perked up a little yesterday once the sun came out. It's still very yellow, though, and you would never believe that it was planted at the same time as the 20" bruiser next to it.

I am going to try starting another tomatillo, I think. Dunno if it will work, or if the difference in growtimes will be too drastic.

and realized I was thinking hammercock needed to see it, too. And with that, realized really, everyone needs to see the wonder of chicken-fried bacon.