But enough about you

I've got a new hobby/addiction. Rojonoir, I know you play. Anybody else out there willing to play go with a total beginner? I've been playing against Jon, but he's still winning handily even with a 9-stone handicap - and he claims he's not that good. So I'm easy pickings. :)

I made one of those impulse buys today that comes after a decade of hemming and hawing. I got a real drill. Lots of volts. Lots of clutch settings. An extra battery pack. It's so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.


Makita 14.4V drill

I mean, it's not totally top of the line, but let's compare it to my previous drill: 3 times the voltage! Batteries that hold their charge -- plural! It's even prettier!

I love power tools.

I went to my first French night at chez Miller last night. I've only had one quarter of French, so I was pretty quiet, but I really enjoyed listening to everyone else babbling away.

Here are some things I wanted to say, but couldn't. Maybe one of my more French-literate readers can help me with the translations, since I idiotically left my dictionary at Miller's.

• I am thinking about taking French 102 online.
  
• We have met before. Chris and I drove you home from Little Red Studio a few weeks ago.
  
• When the circular needle is no longer long enough, you switch to the double-pointed needles.
  

And then, for calibration, here are a few things I did successfully say in French:

• Wine, please?
  
• The cow eats the apple.
  
• Would you like to fondle my yarn?
  

French night is excellent and I'll definitely be going back -- in fact, we are hosting next time! -- but I'd really love to go to Spanish night. Unfortunately, it's on Wednesdays and conflicts with my architecture course, so it will have to wait until summer.

Does anybody want any yarn? I have a very large quantity of high-quality wool, silk, mohair, and assorted other fibers, in many colors. I find that when I start a new project, I'd rather buy just the right yarn than dig through my stash for something that's only almost-right. The yarn is too good to send to one of those knit-for-the-troops projects, which is what I did the last time my stash outgrew its storage space. Besides, tough military men don't wear magenta silk socks, or so I'm told.

Laura, I saw that book about knitting lingerie on your Amazon wishlist. That seems like a better use for magenta silk, no? (BTW, if you get that book, I definitely want to look through it.)

Or perhaps someone would like to make one of these?

An addict has to stay away from her triggers, we all know that. But I had no idea that going out to a few parties last week was going to lead to this kind of self-destructive behavior... but let me explain.

I went out. I had fun. I decided I wanted to go out more. I realized, girlishly, that I had nothing to wear. (This is almost literally true, since all my clothes are currently 2-3 sizes too big.) I went shopping. Then I needed to accessorize: one of my new shirts has a plunging-V neckline that will only serve to emphasize my lack of cleavage if I don't put in a necklace to glitz up that vast expanse of skin. The mall was useless to me.

So you see how I came to be standing over the Swarovski crystal case at the bead store. (What was I thinking, incidentally, moving into a house that is less than two blocks from a bead store?)

The store clerk said, "It looks like you are over 50 so you get 20% off." I thought, wow, I guess I should accept the discount, but is it really such a bad hair-skin-everything day? Then I realized: "Oh, you mean the number of beads, not my age!" and she laughed and said, "That's right, Swarovskis, so dangerous and addictive we can only sell to adults!"

So here I am, falling off the beadwagon after ten years of sobriety. Who's going to be there for me when I hit bottom?