Nye's - Polish karaoke piano bar in Minneapolis (on Hennepin)

ION, I’ve been a traveling FIEND. Houston (wedding!), Dallas (nephew is permanently my nephew!), Minneapolis (zombie bars and Polish karaoke piano bars!), I’ve been to them all in the past month, and I’ll be heading to Vegas before the month is out. I am SO OVER traveling, yo. I miss my couch. Where I happen to sitting at this very moment, with a cat attached to my side.

On the plus side, I’ve been making new friends, from lots of places–L.A., northern Cali, Texas, D.C. and even Sweden. Hopefully Facebook will help me maintain and possibly grow these new acquaintances into more permanent fixtures, ’cause they’re all pretty awesome.

Dao, Moppety, Katie and me, on the dance 'floor' at 'stina's wedding

My knitting has been mainly scarves lately–quick, easy, and lightweight, so I can carry them around with me. Maybe I’ll post more on them later.

Saw the supermoon last night, and it was very impressive. No pictures, though, since my moon pictures always come out fuzzy, so I didn’t even try this time.

Saw the Avengers yesterday–so!awesome! Awesome enough to merit a second theater viewing, possibly even in 3D. (I hate 3D–headache inducing and generally not worth the extra $$. Might make an exception in this case, though.)

Let’s see, what else? Work is work. I need to practice more at pool before the tournament. I really need to do some grocery shopping. Oh, and my weight is out of control. Must!Move!More!

Ok, the end.

I’ve been borrowing my department’s Kindle to try to get the temptation out of my system, and so far I’ve finished one book on it ([amazon_link id="0061231177" target="_blank" ]Scepter of the Ancients (Skulduggery Pleasant)[/amazon_link]) and am about a quarter into my second ([amazon_link id="0345515579" target="_blank" ]Unholy Ghosts (Downside Ghosts, Book 1)[/amazon_link]). I’ve also purchased several ebooks from Amazon, when they’ve been cheap enough that I couldn’t resist.

So far, it’s cool. I’m reading just fine on it. Any more than with physical books? Maybe not so much, but it does help curtail spending in physical bookstores (not necessarily a good thing, though, since I don’t want physical bookstores to go *poof* like Borders *sniff*). But in 2011, my reading volume went down significantly from previous years, and I believe part if it can be attributed to me trying not to buy new books, yet not being particularly interested in the books I’d already bought.

This post is all over the place, isn’t it? What is it even about? Not sure. Let’s try to break it down to bullet points:
1. I’m not buying a Kindle yet because I can’t afford it.
2. I’m borrowing a Kindle, so I can buy books by new to me authors without spending too much or taking up space on my already crowded bookshelves.
3. I’m newly inspired to find new authors.

i.e., I’m trying harder to spend more time reading, whether it’s an ebook or a physical book. (Finished three physical books this year already.) So, there’s that.

Whatever, I think I’ll just go read something now.

I finished this hat in two days:

Choc....something hat from Baby Beanies

Riley in the first hat his Auntie Polgara made for him

I made another hat as well–a pointy one in blue and green–but for some reason completely forgot to take a picture of it. Plus I suspect it’s already too small for his head. Obviously this means I’ll need to make another in the next size up!

I also picked up some marbled yarn (don’t have it with me, will try to remember to add the name later) in cranberry colors to make a Big Bad Baby Blanket, which I wanted to get started on a couple of days ago, but I can’t find any of my size 11 or 13 circs. I know I have them, ’cause it’s my favorite size, so I can only assume I have a gazillion WIPs still on needles hiding in the many nooks and crannies of my apartment. Question is, do I go in search of them, or do I just buy more needles? Hmm. I think I see some new Addi Turbos in my future!

It’s a small thing, and it’s mostly for my own use, but I’m looking forward to being able to search my disks by actor, director, writer, and/or year of release!

Problem is, I need more blogs to experiment on. I had some cool ideas for one of my sites, but the stakeholder doesn’t want me making any changes right now because she doesn’t have time to review and approve for awhile, which makes me sad. I’m considering building a bug/ticket tracker for projects at work. There’s no guarantee I could get everyone to actually use it, but it’d be a fun and educational experience, and if I could figure out how to build it as a customizable theme to release to the public, that’d be even better.

Seriously, WordPress excites me like nothing work-related has for a long time. It feels good.

ETA: For some reason this link isn’t working above, so here it is again:
[amazon_link id="1119995965" target="_blank" ]Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)[/amazon_link]