And so it goes.

Well, these photos are from Tuesday, but today is the proper day to post them:




A coworker made both of those for me. My birthdays have a tendency to suck - staph infection, huge work crisis, anthrax scare (and believe me I wish I was kidding about that one), etc. - so I took the day off work and booked a massage. The massage was at my gym so I figured it would work perfectly to go for a swim, grab breakfast in the cafe, then go to the massage. Well, when I went to back out of the garage I didn't realize the door was only 2/3 open and was treated to a sickening crunch. Incredibly, the crunch was not my car - there are scratches in the paint, maybe 2 or 3 inches across, not ideal, but not bad given the circumstances. I managed to break the garage door and it did not want to close again. It is bent right where I backed into it, and it gets stuck behind the door frame. Well, I went and hung by my arms from the door and was able to get it to close. Had to do the same thing when I came back home. We will see if I need to end up buying a new garage door. Sigh. Anyway, I did manage to swim, and get a (fantastic) massage, but there was no time for breakfast in there after all the drama. I did get to eat a leftover brownie (see second picture above) after lunch, though.

Anyway. I promised more about the Yarn Harlot. She was in the Chicago suburbs Tuesday night, so Bobbi came to meet me at my office and we went from there. We got there about an hour and a half early, and as you might imagine there were already a lot of people. But we chatted up the people around us, and worked on socks, and it was fun. One person went up to the microphone and asked if we could go around the room and show everyone else what we all were knitting. That was a lot of fun, and a great way to pass the time. By the time we were done, Stephanie was about ready to come talk to us...so it worked out great!

Here she is taking pictures of us all with her sock...







She kept saying how scary we all were, how nervous she was, etc., but she was a fantastic speaker, and funny as hell. (I tried to take a video, but the person in front of me kept moving her head in my way. But it may be worthwhile for those who won't be able to make it to see her, so I will post that as well.) She talked for about an hour, and then we all got in line to meet her. We waited for just over an hour, and there were more people behind us than there were in front of us! Luckily, everyone was very friendly and chatty (of course - they were knitters after all). I have no idea how late the last people were there.

Here is the video:


When it was almost our turn, I got a nice shot:


She started laughing when she saw I was knitting the infamous phallic sock... and decided that for the photo she wanted to hold it "properly." I did not manage to stop laughing before the photo was taken and hence look like a complete goon:


Anyway, she is the sweetest, most down to earth person ever. I think 90% of the reason she is so successful is that she is someone you would love to have as your best friend.