So, many of you know my close friend Erin.  She has this thing, this little machine with a tube and a sticker and some needles that stick into her body all the time that provides her with the same insulin that most of us unwittingly get from our pancreas. She has to play with the machine every time she eats, and sometimes when she doesn’t, and if anything goes wrong, things can get pretty bad pretty fast.

She’s got Type I Diabetes, and she will for the rest of her life.

So, because I love Erin and this seems to be a pain in the butt for her, as well as many others, I’m walking in a little fundraiser on Sunday, 26 October.  Instead of donating money to support Erin, I had to go and be a high roller and set my own fund raising goal.  It’s not a lot, but you can go and help me out here.

Thanks.

Always a self-portrait, this time at Stone

Don’t forget your towel.

Incidentally, I find it terribly amusing that this new ‘advice’ thing I’m doing really amounts to little more than a catalogue of my dorkiest moments.  I hope you are enjoying them.

Know this:

Only two Vice Presidents in the history of the U.S. had less experience than Sarah Palin does now.

Exhibit A: Spiro T. Agnew, Republican Governor of Maryland, served as VP under Nixon.  Should the McCain/Palin ticket be successful, Palin and Agnew will have spent the same amount of time as Governor.  Also, by the way, Agnew was indicted before the end of his term.

Exhibit B: Chester A. Arthur, Civil Rights Lawyer and NY State Port Collector, served as VP under Garfield and then as President when Garfield was assassinated.

I will now officially lay off of Palin.  For at least a week.

Watch this very impartial assessment:

You have only a few options, as far as I can tell:

1. Set up an anonymous blog (creates the different problem of getting readers).
2. Date people who don’t know how to use the internet (creates the different problem of limiting your options–significantly, in my case).
3. Just freaking do it.

So, I’m going to take option #3. This obviously creates a different problem as well, but I’m sort of not interested in being coy, so I’ll just describe my feelings about these guys, rather than the guys themselves.

Here is a brief synopsis of my recent dating experiences, in the form of a tally.  On the off chance that YOU happen to be one of these guys, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out which of these apply to you.

Wow, I can’t believe I did that: 3

Wow, I can’t believe he did that: 0 (I think this is relevant.)

He hasn’t called, what a relief: 2

He hasn’t called, what a bummer: 1

He called, yay! 1

He keeps calling, ugh: 1

Looking at it in this simplified way forces me to admit that the guys who didn’t call irk me the most.  It’s not just the bruised ego.  Only one non-caller actually disappointed me.  No, I’m irked because they told me they would.  And they didn’t.  And that just makes me feel icky.

The irked and icky in me would therefore like to get up on a soapbox and tell you all how it is.  I would always rather someone tell me the hard truth (they don’t actually like me that much, they don’t want to go out with me again, they think knitting is going to bring about the apocolypse), then tell me an easy lie.  Always.  Every time. No exceptions.

It’s a niche, fine.

At first, I really didn’t get the whole lace knitting thing.  Honestly, I still don’t.  But I have now knitted something with laceweight yarn, which is amost just as good.

Behold, the Glorious New Purple See Through Sweater:

I freaking love this thing. LOVE.  The only problem, really, is that I HATED actually knitting it.

That lovely, light, thin alpaca yarn is SO soft and wonderful, it is just hell to knit with.  So easy to drop a stitch.  So difficult to tell the difference between a purl and a knit (wtf, man, I’ve been doing this for a while–that should not be hard!). It’s not just difficult to hide a mistake in a piece like this, it’s impossible.

Lucky for me, I haven’t looked too closely at it.

Oh, right, the advice.  (You thought this was just an excuse to show off my new thing!)

Thing one: Don’t worry about inconsistencies in stitches.  My sweater looked a mess before I blocked it.  There was all manner of holes and misshapen stitches.  All of the stitches were there (there’s no fix if that’s not the case), but man were they wonky.  One good blocking and now all the holes are the same size, just as it should be!

Thing two: Don’t worry about the finishing.  All of the advice that I found online about weaving in the ends amounted to: Avoid it at all costs.  Well, that’s not useful with this kind of pattern, so I did some pretty standard weaving the ends into the cast-on/bind-off row, and it worked surprisingly well.  If it starts unravelling in the next few wearings, I will definitely let you know.

It’s 59 minutes out of your life, very well spent.  Go listen to this episode of This American Life, where they talk to individuals on all levels of the ladder, trying to simultaneously explain and understand the mortgage crisis.

If things are going well enough for you to consider a second date, but you are not absolutely certain that the relationship can survive it, do not, I repeat, DO NOT talk about politics.

…as a side note, it occurs to me that I should probably confess here that thus far I find that I am unable to take my own good advice when it comes to dating.  Learn from my mistakes.  Someone should.

Don’t apologize for being awesome.