kmkat and her kneedles

Driving in Boston = hell.

Elder Son has finished his medical school career at Mt. Sinai in Manhattan. He spent April doing a one month family practice rotation at a clinic in Duluth affiliated with the University of Minnesota there; right now he is in the first week of month-long family practice rotation at a clinic in Lawrence, Massachusetts. As a graduation present we provided him with a car, which he will now need, Lawrence being 25 miles or so from where he is staying in Boston.

::cue ominous music::

He has called home for the past three nights requesting me to go onto Google maps and direct him to that Boston residence .

I had heard long ago that Boston was a terrible city to drive in -- one-way streets that come to a dead end being the example that was given. I cannot vouch for that specific situation, but Google maps has shown me a multitude of one-way streets, sometime, often, meeting head-on. No grid pattern of streets and almost no right angle intersection. Any number of way to get from the outlying areas to downtown but damned few easy ways to get anywhere else.

We will mail him a GPS today.

* * * * *

Note: I wrote this Tuesday night but Typepad was broken and remained so until now. I, and many others, wrote to their help site starting last night. Now, hours later, they finally fixed it.

Hi everyone, 

Thanks for reporting the issue! Unfortunately, we do have to sleep sometimes, and at the time of the initial report, it was almost midnight on the east coast and we were closed. We tackled things just as soon as we opened this morning, and the issue is now fixed. 

Get it together, Typepad. In case you hadn't noticed, the internet is as 24/7 operation. Sleep is not an excuse.

 

 

Ten on Tuesday, the yuk-it-up edition.

Ten Favorite Comedy Movies.

1. Bedazzled (the original, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore; part of the plot is the
   personification of the seven deadly sins -- Rachel Welch is Lust)
2. The Big Lebowski (well, duh -- y'all know this is my favorite movie of all time)
3. Annie Hall (this was my favorite movie until TBLeb came along)
4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Smokey and I can recite the dialogue verbatim -- and often do, much to the disgust of Younger Son, who thinks we need some new jokes)
5. Love Actually (is there anything cuter than Hugh Grant or Colin Firth in love?)
6. any Marx Brothers movie ("Make that three hard boiled eggs!")
7. (see #6)
8. (see #6)
   
9. (see #6)
   
10. (see #6)
    

 

Yarn bombing!

  

Younger Son and I were on our way to dinner one night last week when we spotted this.
Happily, his cell phone has an 8MP camera, and he was able to capture what we saw.

  

Thanks to City of Lakes Waldorf School, 2364 Nicollet Ave, for providing blog fodder!

Just in case you thought he was the PEOPLE'S governor.

    

And he is only campaigning for governor of a relatively unimportant Midwestern state...

(graphics from http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance)

Knitting book destash.

When I started to straighten the bedroom this morning, I discovered the reason my knitting books are topsy-turvy: I have too many to fit on the shelf. 

Time to destash the knitting books.

All are in like-new condition and are linked to their Amazon page. Where there are two links, the second is to the publisher's page because Amazon did not have a picture of the cover.

Confessions of a Knitting Heretic : Tips, Techniques, Projects & Reflections by an Unorthodox Hand Knit Designer & Teacher / Annie Modesitt. $14 + media rate postage.

Domino Knitting / Vivian Høxbro. $14 + media rate postage.

Handknit Holidays ; Knitting Year-Round for Christmas, Hannukkah, and Winter-Solstice / Melanie Fralick. $15 + media rate postage.

Handknitter's Handbook / Montse Stanley (note: my copy is probably 20 years old, bought used on eBay; it lacks a dust cover but is in very good condition otherwise except for slight yellowing of the pages). $10 + media rate postage.

Knitting for Peace : Making the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time / Betty Christiansen. $10 + media rate postage.

Knitting Vintage Socks : New Twists on Classic Patterns / Nancy Bush. $18 + media rate postage.

Mary Thomas's Knitting Book / Mary Thomas. $9 + media rate postage.

Modular Knits : New Techniques for Today's Knitters / Iris Schreier. $15 + media rate postage.

Stitch 'n Bitch : The Knitter's Handbook / Debbie Stoller. $11 + media rate postage.

Vintage Modern Knits : Contemporary Designs Using Classic Techniques / Courtney Kelley & Kate Gagnon Osborn. $20 + media rate postage.

Like I did last time, I set my prices based on cover price vs. Amazon's price. In almost every instance, what you pay over Amazon's price is more than enough to pay for media rate shipping. 

Media rates for smaller packages is at right.  To give you an idea, the heaviest book is the Montse Stanley, which tips the scales at 2 lb 4 oz. Domino Knitting is the lightest at 6 ounces.

PayPal or personal check accepted; if the latter, no shipping until payment clears. Email me if you are interested; click on "About" at upper right and hover over "Email me" to see my addy. 

 

Ten on Tuesday, the pin-up edition.

Ten Things Pinned To My Bulletin Board.

1. Property tax bill for real estate taxes due in 2012. 
2. Large lapel button with photo of Elder Son in about tenth grade in his track uniform.
3. Gift certificate to a local furniture/home decor store. I really need to use that.
4. List of women's shelter needs clipped from their newsletter.
5. Spoke card from Younger Son's first No-Hater Rolling Dance Super Bike MegaParty, Friday, October 2, 2009.
6. (Until last Saturday) My Yarnover registration.
   
   My bulletin board has never been hung up; it sits propped against the wall between my computer desk and said wall so gets very little use. I shall continue with things attached to the front of the refrigerator.
    
7. An illustrated card showing the differences between a deer tick and a wood tick.
8. A photo of Younger Son when he was about 3.
9. A postcard from Yellowstone Park.
10. Grocery list, plus a bunch of strips for paper for the next 20 such lists.

 

 

WIP Wednesday Thursday.

Not the only thing on the needles by any means, nor necessarily the most interesting, but the one that I had a photo of. If there is interest I will write up the pattern (but only for those of us with size 8.5 narrowish feet).

Ten on Tuesday, the after-vacation edition.

Ten Good Things About Coming Home After A Vacation.

1. Sleeping in my own bed again. It may not be perfect (memory foam is not as great as it was proclaimed to be), but I love my bed. It is an adjustable one that we inherited from Smokey's parents and provides the only way I can comfortably read in bed. Given how much I like to read in bed, that is HUGE. I love my comforter, too, and my Very Own Special Down Pillows (although I now take those pillows with me on vacation).
    
2. Having my kittehs around again. This is HUGE as well. Hannibal The Fluffball of Doom is the best kitteh I have ever had, and I have had cats since before I can remember. He is awesome -- super friendly, completely pliable (how many kittehs will let you move them to where YOU want them to be, in the position YOU want them to be in, and not protest nor run away), a most excellent purr, and only sheds black hair, which is way less noticeable than orange or gray tabby fur. Even En Esch The Stoopid is preferable to no kitteh -- he is dependably snuggly and tends to scoot outside at bedtime far less than his brother and so is available for snuggling while I am reading in bed (see above).
   
   
    
3. Using my own computer again. Admittedly, the new iPad may make this less important, but there is something to be said for the computer with the perfect keyboard (yay, Mac!) and good speakers and all my music and a largish monitor and the perfect chair. And not having to make it to a library somewhere when they are open. (We tend to start the day around 3 pm. Or later.)
    

Really, those first two are the main things. I cannot come up with anything else. I used to sort of welcome getting back to a more productive routine, but ever since that 4-week vacation a couple years ago I am perfectly happy to be on vacation.. forever. 

Get 'em while they are hot.

Get yours here.

First person to locate a source for a pair of 3-mile-long purple shoelaces gets a prize bragging rights.

The magic of photography.

As I was standing in front of our renewable energy table chatting with the vendor next to us, I noticed a fourth-grade girl wearing shoes I would have killed for in fourth grade. I sneaked my camera out of my pocket and Kinneared her as best I could, but this shot... sucks. I could have killed that kid with the red soles for stepping in front of her.

I know that an overexposed photo is more susceptible to computer correction than an underexposed one, but I thought it was worth a try to see what I could do with this dark mess.

Behold!

The photo will never win any prizes, but at least you get to see the awesomeness of knee-high Cons with purple laces.

Babies!

One of my knitting groups (I attend 4 on an irregular basis) met at one of the member's farm today because she wanted to show us her baby lambs -- all 38 of them! 

The newest was only a few hours old and was still with its mama in the barn.

Later I went to the county recycling center for its annual Earth Day event. There were exhibits by vendors of any number of products -- geothermal HVAC systems, flax meal granola, window blankets -- and by the county health department (How to Catch Lyme Disease in Three Easy Steps) and the UW extension agents and the county land & water department (Jeremy the bug guy was there, as was Amy the water gal, both of them very popular with crowds), plus the county renewable energy committee on which I sit. The recycling center invites all the area schools to send their fourth grade classes, and the place is bustling with 9- and10-year-olds from 9 to 3. 

What else did I see? More babies!

These were kids rather than lambs. It is hard to tell their size in the photo, but they were roughly the size of Hannibal The Fluffball of Doom, my cat. And sooo adorable.

R.I.P., Dick Clark.

Best comment on his passing, retweeted by lectio: 

"Dick Clark is dead at 82. Now we will not be able to ring in the New Year properly. Well played, Mayans, well played."

* * * * *

I am loving the new iPad. Read the NYTimes in bed this morning (very smugly, I might add).

So far I have Adobe, Kindle, Atomic Lite (a browser specially designed for mobile devices that I have on my iPod as well), Skype, PBS (thanks, Kym!), CBS MN, KARE11, KSTP.com, (those three are Twin Cities TV stations), NPR Hourly News, The Weather Channel, WI State Journal (Madison newspaper), the Wall Street Journal, the aforementioned NYTimes, Twitter, a calculator, a clock/stopwatch/timer/alarm, and G! All of those except the NYT and WSJ were free, which is generally my preferred price.

G!, aka G-Whizz! is something I was not aware of. It is a Google apps browser, with integrated access to Gmail, Gtalk, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reader, voice, and a number of other googly  things. It was free (ad-supported) and I am not yet convinced it is worth the $2.99 it would cost to get rid of the ads. Its Twitter feed does not seem to update properly, and Twitter's own app is so good that really, why would I want another? Time will tell...

A request: All of you who have an iPad, please share the name (and price) of your favorite app in the comments. Knitting apps are, of course, solicited most sincerely.

ETA: I love word games, don't much care for ones like Angry Birds.

Tax season = done!

Actually, Monday was my last day. Tuesday (today) was the all-day organizational meeting of the new county board. And it WAS all day -- 9am to 4:30, phew. It took that long to revise the rules of order and to vote on committee assignments. I will have my third term on the finance committee (yay!) and managed to get myself elected to the public protection committee. I figure watching Perry Mason, The Defenders (remember them?), Boston Legal, L.A. Law, and every iteration of Law && Order qualifies me to serve on that committee. Right? Right?

The other exciting news is that I am writing this post on my brand-new iPad! What a fun toy. So far I have set up most of the same apps that I have on my iPod Touch -- Gmail and some other Google apps, a couple Twin Cities TV stations for news, Skype, Twitter, a weather app, the Kindle app, Adobe Reader.

Something I figured out while doing all that was that the iPad would be the perfect way to read a daily newspaper again. We have been without a daily paper for most of the past 13 years since we moved to rural Wisconsin. The Minneapolis paper has never had daily delivery here; we subscribed to the St Paul paper for a few months but basically it sucks as a newspaper, we even subscribed to the NYTimes for a while -- always at least a day late but still possibly better than nothing but not enough better to justify the cost. I really, really missed reading the morning paper --it and my breakfast and morning coffee had been a treasured part of my daily routine for many years.

All this is to say I subscribed to the iPad version of the NYTimes tonight.We shall see if it is worth $20/month. The iPad is plugged into its charger right next to my bed. I may start to start the day with the newspaper again.I''m getting excited just thinking about it!

Tax chuckles.

In fourth quarter 2011, MNCPA [Minnesota Society of CPAs] surveyed members to identifythe most creative tax deductions proposed by clients. Survey results are being shared with the media as part of the MNCPA's tax campaign promoting hiring a CPA for tax preparation. Following is the MNCPA list of strange deductions for 2011. It's a good bet that many of these deductions would have triggered a letter from the IRS had a CPA not intervened and encouraged the tax filers to not include them on their returns.

1. Questionable dependents. One woman wanted to include the months she was pregnant, even though she relinquished rights upon the child's birth; another taxpayer wanted to claim his elected official because he "pays his salary;" and one taxpayer wanted to claim a former spouse.

2. Charitable donations? The market value of whole blood that the taxpayer donated; a $100,000 deduction for burning down an old cabin; gambling losses; private school tuition; and raffle tickets.

3. "Fido" as a business expense. Pets proved popular with taxpayers wanting to deduct everything from pet food to vet bills.

4. Inflated mileage calculations. A handyman proposed taking a $25,000 mileage deduction, even though he had only $10,000 in revenue. He justified it by saying he drove 50,000 business miles in one year.

5. Creative medical expenses. A rental house in Arizona; an in-ground swimming pool without a doctor's order; a spouse's drug habit; breast implants and tummy tucks.

6. Investment or not? An attorney's fees for a divorce, considered an "investment" by the former spouse.

7. Business travel and entertainment deductions. A personal luxury car; three country club memberships; a motor home; and the full cost of a wedding.

 

The saddest part? I didn't even find these funny. They all just sounded like part of a normal day's work...

Addition to the update to the update.

Smokey plays this for me every election.

Update to the update.

As I was falling asleep last night it occurred to me that I had not given any background or context for that "I won!" announcement. Not everyone is intimately familiar with all the details of my life ;-)

In 2008 I ran for the Polk County Board of Supervisors, which is equivalent to the boards of commissioners in many states. (Whereas states with county commissioners tend to have boards of 5 - 11 members, Wisconsin takes a different, more grass-roots approach. Our county board has 23 supervisors, although a referendum on yesterday's ballot reduced the size to 15 by an overwhelming majority.) I ran in 2008 because I had been following county politics for a number of years, several people had urged me to run, that year no one else was running in my district. You could way I pushed the "Easy" button to get elected. I was reelected in 2010 and again yesterday, both times defeating the same opponent.

And that's what I have to say about that.

Quick update.

• Tax season has been keeping me quite busy (=understatement of the week).
• I have photos of interesting things that have happened at the office, but it is all things you have seen in previous years -- the 10-key race, the Saturday morning Bloody Marys.
• Yes, we accountants are an exciting lot.
• I did a return today for a couple with a couple hundred thousand dollars in income, taxable income of $69,000, and who had zero tax.
• I thought there was something wrong with the software. So did the accountant who sits in the next cubicle when I showed it to her.
• Even after my manager explained to me how it worked -- something to do with dividend income and the 15% rate -- I still boggled.
• It may be right, but it ain't right, if you know what I mean. 
• Anyway.
• Today was election day in Wisconsin. Presidential primary, plus county and municipal elections.
• I was up for reelection. I had pretty much resigned myself to not being reelected, for a number of reasons.
• Mainly because I did zero campaigning. In previous years I at least sent a flyer to all voters in my district. This year I decided that was a waste of postage because roughly half of them get returned as undeliverable.
• I won anyway, 150 to 139.
• The high voter turnout was probably due to the presidential primary.
• There are ~1900 souls in my district.
• I had done such a good job of resigning myself to losing -- think of all the time I would have to knit, with no meetings to go to! -- that I was a bit disappointed to win.
• That feeling didn't last long. 
• I celebrated by working until 10:45.
• P.M. 

Women.

"All my adult life, I’ve been pretty sure I’m a sentient, even semi-competent human being. I have a job and an apartment; I know how to read and vote; I make regular, mostly autonomous decisions about what to eat for lunch and which cat videos I will watch whilst eating my lunch. But in the past couple of months, certain powerful figures in media and politics have cracked open that certitude.

"You see, like most women, I was born with the chromosome abnormality known as 'XX,' a deviation of the normative 'XY' pattern. Symptoms of XX, which affects slightly more than half of the American population, include breasts, ovaries, a uterus, a menstrual cycle, and the potential to bear and nurse children. Now, many would argue even today that the lack of a Y chromosome should not affect my ability to make informed choices about what health care options and lunchtime cat videos are right for me. But others have posited, with increasing volume and intensity, that XX is a disability, even a roadblock on the evolutionary highway. This debate has reached critical mass, and leaves me uncertain of my legal and moral status. Am I a person? An object? A ward of the state? A 'prostitute'? (And if I’m the last of these, where do I drop off my W-2?)"

http://ideas.time.com/2012/03/07/subject-for-debate-are-women-people/

Ten on Tuesday, the happy music edition:

Ten Eleven Songs That Put Me In A Good Mood

1. Old Time Rock & Roll / Bob Seger -- I cannot sit still when this comes on :-)
    
2. Can't Find My Way Home / Blind Faith
   
   
3. Fields of Gold / Sting
    
4. Good Vibrations / Beach Boys
   
   
5. Five Years Time / Noah and the Whales
   
   
6. Shambala / anybody who wants to cover it
    
7. Anything by Queen
    
8. Love Lost / Temper Trap
   
   
9. School's Out / Alice Cooper
   
   
10. Bach Brandenburg Concerto #1 and #2
    
    
11. Big County  / Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
     
12. Don't Look Back / Boston

Lots of others, too many to remember...

Monday night bullets.

I have lots of little things to share. Tragically, many of them require photos, which I cannot upload because my camera cable is 75 miles away. Bullets will have to do.

• I have been back in Minneapolis at the salt mines* accounting job for four weeks now, which accounts for the shocking lack of real posts. 
   
• This situation will continue until some days after April 17. 
   
• Deal with it.
  
  
• My knitting has slumped to the purely mindless, a 31-stitch-wide Montego Bay scarf.
   
• That pattern gave me fits the first time I made it, but now it is just mindless enough. Really, how hard can a 2-stitch pattern be?
   
• Don't answer that.
   
• The yarn is the Alchemy Silk Purse that I thought was destined for something else.
   
• I realized since I wrote that post that I would get a lot more use out of a long skinny scarf than a triangular shawlette.
   
• Silk yarn is lovely to knit.
   
• Silk yarn is easily damaged by careless frogging or tinking.
   
• I don't care.
   
• Much.
   
• I have a nearly visceral urge to cast on some socks.
  
  
• Not gonna happen, though. I have forbidden myself to touch sock yarn until I finish this scarf.
   
• At the rate I am going that will take until sometime after April 17.
   
• Work is getting really busy. A week ago on Friday afternoon I ran out of work, so I put out an email to the managers I work for, alerting them to my availability.
   
• Guess what. I got more work.
   
• So much that I worked all this past weekend.
   
• And had to take off most of today because I had worked myself into a migraine.
   
• Silly kats never learn.
   
• The drain pipe between this house and the city sewer was blocked on Saturday.
   
• Ewww.
   
• Smokey and I spent Sunday evening roto-rootering it out.
   
• More ewww.
   
• It works now.
   
• :-)
   
• The house still smells.
   
• :-(
   
• The weather is nearly warm enough here for open windows.
   
• :-)
   
• Nearly.
   
• :-(
   
• On Sunday the only snow I could see in the city was a few scraps in places where 1, it had been piled up, and b, it was in the shade.
   
• Today even those had melted.
   
• :-)
   
• Nice weather is nice.
   
• Not for the farmers, though; we went into the winter in a drought condition and got only a fraction of the normal snowfall.
   
• Watch for food prices to rise.
   
• You heard it here first.

 Okay, enough for tonight. Morning always comes earlier than it should, imho.

* This is a joke and not at all fair to the job. I like what I do, my employer is one of the best, and, last but not least, they pay me almost as much as I think I am worth ;-)