Yay, 24 season premiere!

Those of you who are new to the blog since last May night not know about my 24 obsession... I try to keep these posts to a minimum, I promise.

After tonight's "conclusion of the premiere" (a turn of phrase that's going to make me laugh for a while), all I can say is HOLY CRAP. Do we know if Curtis is dead? I thought THAT was the "stunning ending" that the Fox Promo Monkeys were promising us, and then there was the ACTUAL "stunning ending".

The cavalcade of guest stars hasn't been too distracting, which is good. And there's been explosion after explosion, so you know I'm happy. That's all it takes. Stuff blowing up, intercut with scenes of attractive men running around with guns. I'm easily amused. :D

Penultimate Cache Coeur update (I hope)

Cache Coeur news: I have two correctly seamed shoulders, two side bands picked up and seamed to create the side seams and armholes, and I've picked up the 240 stitches around the opening for the border. I got a lot of that done while watching 10.5 Apocalypse. I love bad TV disaster movies to begin with, and this particular one has Carlos Bernard in it... I'm still mad that they killed him off of 24. The scene towards the end of last season, when Mandy was holding him hostage and he was shirtless for no real reason? That was AWESOME. (Hang on, I'm having a shallow moment...)

Great. Now I have the word "shirtless" on my blog. I bet I'll get some fantastic search hits from that. I already had someone searching for "lolita jen", which... ew (thanks, Lolita Legs socks from Knitty, for that one). I hope whomever it was got a kick out of finding a geeky 20-something's knitting blog. I'm sure that was EXACTLY what they were hoping to find. Good news: there's porn here. Bad news: it's all yarn porn.

Anyway, I'm hoping that my next Cache Coeur update goes something like, "I'm done!" It depends how long this border takes. Every stitch gets wrapped 4 times to create elongated stitches, and then you cross the long stitches over each other in groups of 4. It looks neat, but it's time-consuming.

Only 1 more week of 24? :(

I got back today from a weekend trip up to NJ. It was very last minute -- I didn't know I was going until Friday night, and I drove up on Saturday.

Yesterday, my parents and I went to the Mother's Day brunch at my grandmother's retirement complex. I love the bizarre assortment of food you can get away with at brunch. I had a waffle and some bacon and hash browns... and roast beef with wine sauce. And I actually WORE MY CLAPOTIS for the first time ever! Not as a wrap, just as a scarf, but it still counts.

Last night my parents and I went down the shore for dinner at Henny's, which is a restaurant in Stone Harbor where (I think) I had my first "dining out" experience at the ripe old age of 6 months. The place has been there forever (my dad used to go there when HE was a kid). If it hadn't been 50 degrees out when we were done with dinner, we probably would have stopped off at Springer's for ice cream. (The lines for this place are usually halfway down the block. If you're ever anywhere remotely near Stone Harbor NJ, go to Springer's. There isn't a bad flavor in the lot.)

Knitting-wise, I finished the Petticoat sock I was working on, and got about a third of the way through the left front of my Cache Coeur. Tonight during Prison Break and 24, I got started on the back of the Mon Petit Chou hipsters. I can't believe next week is the season finale of 24... And I can't believe that Kiefer pronounced "nuclear" correctly in tonight's episode! I almost fell off the couch.

Woohoo!!!!

Well, after a marathon of my season 4 24 DVDs, I have completed all of the actual knitting on my green ribbed sweater. I've been working on this off and on since September, and knowing that there's nothing left but some seaming makes me giddy. Absolutely giddy. However, part of the giddiness could also be attributed to the fact that it's 2:30 AM and I've spent all day watching 24 and staring at green yarn*. Yes, I'm open to the possibility that this is just some form of delirium.

Now I have to face a life where I no longer have to work on my green sweater... what project should be next? Definitely NOT another sweater, at least not for a little while. Heck, now that I have this thing all but done, I may think about doing the Knitting Olympics. I hadn't been planning on it, because I didn't want to stop work on the sweater to concentrate on another project, but with the sweater thisclose to done (the only way this thing won't be done by Friday is if I fall into an untimely coma)... I'm pondering some 'next project' options that might be Olympic-worthy.

Anyway, for the record: Whee!

* When I say "staring at green yarn", I'm not kidding. Right now, the only thing that my eyes can focus correctly on is a space about 10" in front of my face. Everything else is blurry, and no, I'm not kidding. This also happened when I read Harry Potter 5 straight through... kind of an odd feeling, but for my first sweater, I'll go with it.

Job training continues

Training today finally involved me being behind the desk dealing with people. It went pretty well, I think. I even had a couple of moments where I was not under direct supervision. In theory, I'm always supposed to having someone with me in case I have questions, but it got really busy today thanks to the schools having early dismissal. So, there were a couple of times when my "training buddy" had to take care of something else and leave me *gasp* unsupervised. I didn't even break anything. Computer system still intact, building untouched by fire or flood...

Knitting: I have two sleevecaps for my green ribbed sweater completed, which is the "hard" part of the sleeve... the remainder of the sleeve knitting should go on autopilot. I think I can quite realistically have a finished sweater by the end of the month.

Valuable lesson learned from last night's episode of 24: I do not want to be killed by someone stabbing a pair of scissors through the side of my neck.

Yay, graphic violence!

Dear 24,

Welcome back. I don't care that you have completely implausible situations and plotlines. Don't ever change.

Hugs, kisses, and car bombs,
Jen

Honestly, I don't smoke, but I could use a cigarette after that. "You like that character? Oops, he's dead now. You like that one, too? Kaboom! Dead! Let's see, it would be tedious for us to kill off a third major character in 10 minutes... does horrible life-threatening injury work for you?" Those magnificent bastards.

And I got a decent amount of knitting done as well. I really enjoy knitting during 24... there's something vaguely hilarious about working on knitting while I'm sitting there cheering for the graphic violence warning. Anyway, in a couple of rows, I'll be starting the armhole decreases for the front half of my sweater. :)

No knitting content whatsoever in this post.

Sing it with me, folks: "It's the most wonderful time of the year..." Ok, so the kids may not be jingle-belling right now; I still feel that it's an appropriate song. Just look at what greeted me when I got the mail yesterday:

*Dance of Joy for the approaching 24 season premiere*

A quote from the article: "When the beloved terrorism thriller returns Jan. 15 for its fifth season, legions of diehards will have been waiting a long while (approximately 237 days, but who's counting?) ..."

229 days down, 8 to go. :)

Yes, I'm aware of how much of a dork I am. Have you seen the ads, though? "You're gonna tell me what I need to know; it's just a matter of how much you want it to hurt." Awesome! Plus, guys with guns! Decidedly attractive guys with guns! And the ads are promising at least one big explosion! And Peter Weller will be on--flippin' ROBOCOP, people!

(If, at some point in the future, I ever start to worry about being too girly, please direct me to re-read the above paragraph. I'm excited for explosions and Robocop.)

I will try very hard to have this be my only post about my 24 obsession. I will not allow things like this to take over my blog.

I need to go lie down now. Too much excitement.

It's not Christmas until Chase loses a hand

Oh, A&E... showing a traditional 24 marathon... I guess 24 can never have a Christmas episode, because then the whole season would have to be Christmas. I'm quite sick of seeing ads for Rollergirls, though. What an irritating-looking show.

So, Christmas. I got my brother a pair of elaborate noise-blocking headphones for when he's listening to music on the subway (off-topic, he apparently walked to work one day last week during the transit strike... 130 blocks or so). I got seasons 5 and 6 of Seinfeld for my dad (and I think season 4 will be his birthday present, so he'll be all caught up). My mom got the knitted presents (Branching Out and a matching hat), along with a magnetic notepad and a package of fizzy bath things. Let's see... she didn't realize that the knitted things were handknit until I pointed out that I had included washing instructions. I'm pretty sure she loved them--she asked me after dinner if I had ever considered selling any of my finished items, so she thinks they're nice enough that people would want to pay money for them. :)

What did I get? My brother gave me American Gods and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman... I told him a while ago that I had liked Good Omens, so I don't know if he remembered that, or if this was a lucky guess... regardless, good call; they were both on my ever-growing list of things to read.

From my parents (and yes, I'm aware of how obnoxious this list is):

• A couple of shirts/sweaters
• A wool/angora cardigan (I've been wearing it pretty much since I opened it, even though it's causing me some minor itchiness... and how much of a knitting geek am I: first, I admired the general pattern, and then I checked the fiber content)
• A bottle of champagne and a wine-carrying bag.
• A 6-pack of these ridiculously adorable Snapple lip balms... they're shaped like little Snapple bottles.
• Bath stuff from Jaqua... Pumpkin Papaya Puree enzyme face mask, Buttercream Frosting body butter, and Orange Vanilla scrub. The stuff smells fantastic.
• A big red faux leather bag that I feel has "knitting bag" written all over it. Seriously, it's huge. And has lots of pockets. And it's bright red.

And

• An iPod nano! It's so TINY and absolutely adorable. I have to start working out now, so I can be one of those people who listen to their iPods while they work out. I'll have to take some quality time and load music on to it tomorrow... I'm so prepared to love this thing.

Anyway, Friday night, my parents and I watched The Day After Tomorrow. Kind of silly, and fairly implausible... but if you're a knitter, it's worth it for the sweater porn. EVERYBODY in this movie wears big knitted sweaters and scarves and hats. I love stupid disaster movies anyway, regardless of the presence or absence of knitted garments.

On Christmas Eve, we watched the beginning of the Christmas Story marathon on TBS, and then we watched Bad Santa, which my parents discovered last year on their flight back from London. This is why the Brits rule; there's no way in heck they'd show that on a US airline, but Virgin Atlantic had it available and basically said, "You might not want to let your kids watch it."

Christmas, aside from the giftage... Dinner was very good (and my mom was fairly unstressed about the cooking this year). After dinner, my dad and I took my grandmother back to her place, which included our annual trip past the big Christmas tree at the Commerce Bank office on Route 70. It's at least 50 feet tall, and is pretty darn impressive. Dad and I got back, and we all watched a couple of Seinfeld episodes, and then I introduced my parents to Office Space. They laughed through the entire thing.

Drove back today... hit a little traffic on the Del Mem, but that's normal for a big travel day (and I've seen it much worse than today). And I saw a pretty ugly accident in Cecil County... it seemed to be mostly police and fire vehicles, and not so much ambulances, so hopefully everyone was ok.

Here's wishing everyone peace, love, and happiness.