This is a special post, coming to you from my circa 2002 PC laptop. You see, my Mac is in the shop. I was working on my Xmas list last night when it froze up and subsequently refused to boot. After attempting several secret Apple shortcut/key combos suggested by my excellent, sympathetic stepmother, I took it to the local genius bar. The problem is either the hard drive or the cable connecting the hard drive to the logic board. I took this news surprisingly well. They may or may not be able to do data recovery for me, so I may be looking to replace a lot of music that I bought from Itunes and never got around to backing up. So, dear reader, I want you to back up all your important files so that this doesn't happen to you. Let me be the object lesson for you. Keep your fingers crossed for me, too!
What else has happened lately? hmmm.... I went to the doctor twice in one week, which made me feel like such an adult. I hadn't been in a couple of years and needed to take care of all of those mundane, general maintenance things. The horrible GP that I saw last time has since left the practice, and I got reassigned to a much cooler doctor. No lecture about quitting smoking, but instead an open dialogue about a willingness to help when I'm ready to quit. A willingness to work with me, rather than dictating a list of things that I HAVE to do. Because, let's face it, I'm probably not going to do them if a lecture is involved. Oh, and the new doctor knits. Highly excellent!
I hennaed my hair, which was quite the disaster. The Pyrex bowl that I was using as a ghetto bain marie exploded, sending broken glass and water everywhere. Fortunately, the smaller bowl wasn't upset, and the henna didn't spew all over the kitchen. Isn't Pyrex supposed to be practically indestructible? The explosion really shook me, since I had just left the kitchen when the bowl shattered. Had I not drifted back into the living room to watch ER, I could have been impaled by giant chunks of glass. Yikes. Oh, and the henna seems to have seriously clogged my bathroom sink. So, I had to clean up broken glass (including opening the stovetop), scrub two sinks, pour boiling water down the drains, and scrub the bathtub. Wish I could post a pic of what the henna did to my bath puff, but my camera and PC don't talk to each other. It's a dramatic, army olive color. While the henna was on my hair, I had a moment of panic that I would accidentally dye my hair green, like Anne of Green Gables does when trying to dye her hair black. Usually red dyes appear purple in solution. The end result in my hair is fine. It's not green. It's not a definite color, since hennaed hair appears so very different in different types of light. One of my coworkers thinks it looks blonder. My mom says it looks brown (under those damn ugly energy saver compact fluorescent bulbs). It looks red under incandescents, and kind of red gold in natural light. In any case, it's not so washed out looking as it was before the henna and it has a nice shine. I guess that could be the new shampoo and conditioner combo, Reincarnate and Veganese, both by Lush. Reincarnate contains red henna, which should help maintain the color.
Still knitting up a storm. I'm down to three hats and a scarf on the to-knit list. Maybe a pair of fingerless gloves, too, I haven't decided yet. I'm having a hard time psyching myself up for all of those hats. They're not difficult or anything, just not exciting. I long to knit something for myself! This is the time of year that cries out for lots of cozy sweaters. Oh, and I appreciate my own work, which is not always the case with my giftees. I'll try not to knit bitterly.