fauxklore

I've had a pretty sociable week.

Storytelling Show: Saturday night’s storytelling show went well. We had a good and responsive audience. The venue was easier to get to than I expected it to be. And they had an excellent sound system. My story went okay, but I left out a couple of things I had planned to say, but so it goes.

Medicare: I had my appointment on Monday to go down to the Social Security office to show them my proof of age. I am sure that I clicked the “I have an appointment” button on their check-in kiosk, but somehow it gave me a number for a drop-in, instead of an appointment. Which meant that I ended up waiting much longer than I should have. But I got everything sorted and should have my Medicare card any day now. I still need to get my Social Security account on-line sorted. They could reset my password, but not my cell phone number for two-factor authentication. So I had to fill in the stuff on-line that has them send me something to fix that. (Last night, I stumbled upon the piece of paper on which I’d written down my password, but the old cell phone number would still have been a problem.) What is particularly annoying is that, if I hadn’t set up the account a long time ago, I could have circumvented all of that, because I could have logged in using my login.gov account, which I set up to get global entry.

Knitting Group: We normally meet at the police station, but the community room gets used for early voting, so we were at Wegman’s instead. We had a good group, with two new people. I’m making progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan, but it may not be completely done by the end of the year. It’s still a good project for social crafting as it is pretty brainless. Also, I brought some knitting pattern books from the 1950’s to give away and Tom took two of them.

Needles and Crafts: My other crafting group, which meets on line, had been on hiatus over the summer and just started up again yesterday afternoon It was great seeing everyone and I got some more done on the afghan. We’ll actually be meeting at a member’s house on alternate weeks, which is, of course, less convenient, especially because she lives in darkest Maryland.

Buy Nothing: I got rid of three things last week. So far this week, I got rid of one item (two furnace filters that were the wrong size) and am waiting for someone to pick up another thing (a trivet made of wine corks.)

Baseball: I had been rooting for the Marlins, primarily because I think Kim Ng is cool, but, oh well. (She is being talked about for the BoSox GM job.) I find the Dodgers the most tolerable of the teams who are left. The Twins are okay, I suppose. I wouldn’t mind the Phillies so much (I do like their GM, Sam Fuld), but I hate mascots in general and the Phanatic is the worst of the worst of them. I detest the Orioles because of all the effort their leadership put into trying to keep Washington from getting a team, as well as their failure to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch.

Genealogy: Wednesday night was the Litvak genealogy group I am the subject matter expert for. One of the good discussion topics had to do with what resources are worth paying for. My opinion is that it is perfectly fine not to renew relatively expensive sites like Ancestry and My Heritage until you need to use them. They don’t delete your account, so you can start up again when it makes sense to.

The main reason I am so far behind on writing here is that I’ve taken a couple of semi-local trips, each about a three hour drive away, this month.

Shenandoah Valley: The first trip was to the Shenandoah Valley the first weekend of the month. I drove out to Clifton Forge (a bit west of Lexington, VA) on Saturday, November 5th for the first Allegheny Highlands Storytelling Festival. The drive wasn’t too bad, even though I still hate I-81, which tends to have too many big, slow-moving trucks. Also, there were some rain showers off and on. The festival itself was worth going to, especially as it had been way too long since I’d seen Kim Weitkamp (who was headlining, along with Donna Washington). There were also a few regional tellers performing. It was, in general, quite entertaining. There was a story swap, too, which I emceed. Fortunately, everyone pretty much stuck to the time limit and I didn’t have to strong-arm anyone off the stage.

I stayed overnight at the Travelodge in Low Moor, about 4 miles away, which was adequate. There was heavier the rain the next morning, when the Virginia Storytelling Alliance annual meeting (including brunch) was held. If the weather had been better, I would have walked over to the Coffee Mill Museum to check that out. Maybe next year, since it looks like this festival will happen again. Fortunately the rain had let up by the time that was over.

I drove up to Staunton to see the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum. The $15 admission fee includes the museum and a guided tour of Wilson’s birthplace. My feelings about Wilson are complicated. I admire his intellectual abilities and think he has the primary responsibility for bringing the U.S. onto the world stage. But he had some repugnant positions, particularly regarding race. The museum displays have some level of apologistic tendencies there, but I can agree to some extent that he was a person of his time and place.

Anyway, the highlight of the museum is his car (a his 1919 Pierce-Arrow limousine.



Other exhibits include an underground reproduction of World War I trenches, Wilson’s office at Princeton, a number of displays about the times of his presidential terms (e.g. a lot of material re: women’s suffrage). I’d say it’s worth an hour or so.

The house tour really has more to do with his parents than with the President himself, since his family only lived there for 2 years and he was born during that time.



The tour guide did not seem particularly knowledgeable. For example, when I asked where they had moved there from, she didn’t know. (It turns out that Wilson’s father had been a professor at Hamden-Sydney College, which is roughly between Lynchburg and Richmond, before becoming the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Staunton). And there was a room with musical instruments (a guitar and piano) and she didn’t know if he played any instruments, though his mother and one sister were very musical. I’d say it was worth a stop, but as much because downtown Staunton is a pleasant place for a stroll than for its own merits as a museum.

I spent the night in Harrisonburg. The next morning, I went to Shenandoah National Park. I’d been to a little bit of the park before, but only briefly. Going early in the day was wise, as there were few cars on Skyline Drive. Also, this finally gave me a chance to get a lifetime Senior Pass for the National Park system. The weather was excellent, though a bit windy in a few places. I stopped at several overlooks and went to the visitor center, including hiking a couple of trails from there. It would have been prettier a few weeks earlier, but the fall foliage was pretty much gone. Here, have some pictures anyway.











I spent about 5 hours total at the park, at the end of which things had gotten more crowded. It’s only an hour and a half away, so I really have no excuse for not going there more.

Ocean City Knitting Retreat: A while back I saw an ad for a knitting week somewhere but the schedule didn’t work. It prompted me to do some googling and I found a retreat in Ocean City. Maryland the week before Thanksgiving. The hotel price was very good and it seemed to be a pretty informal thing - mostly time to sit around and work on projects and chit chat.

The drive was reasonably pleasant, except for the first mile or so from my house to the Beltway, which crawled due to construction. I’d gotten a later start than I’d hoped to, so I didn’t really have time to stop at any of the historic towns on the Eastern Shore. It would certainly be intriguing to spend a week or so driving around them, though, particularly some of the sites associated with Harriet Tubman.

Anyway, I had no issues finding the hotel. When I got up to my room, I saw this lovely view of the Atlantic. Alas, it was rather too cold and windy to enjoy sitting out on the balcony.



I found the ballroom where the retreat was and soon found that things were sort of weird. There were only a couple of other knitters there, while there were about 20 scrapbookers hard at work in most of the room. Oddly, there was another, (unrelated) scrapbooking event going on in the adjacent ballroom. Anyway, I had a bunch of yarn to get rid of (mostly from a friend who had been clearing out her stash of novelty yarn) and I put that out on the flea market table. Then I set out to spend some time knitting and crocheting and talking with the few knitters. I spent most of my time working on a Tunisian crochet afghan. In fact, I worked the same few inches of it twice, because I’d screwed up the edges the first time and had to frog it. A few more people arrived for various periods of time over the next few days. There were also a couple of people selling nice yarns, one of whom I would have bought from but she had only one skein of the colorway I liked.

I did take some time to walk around a bit of the town, which is really dead by mid-November. Walking on the boardwalk is a mixed experience - pleasantly uncrowded, but cold and windy for the most part. (I had brought enough warm clothing to make it reasonably enjoyable.) Still, I think Octoberish would be a better time to go to Ocean City - past peak crowds, but with more places open. I don’t feel the need to go back to this event in the future.

On the plus side, I won a very good door prize - $50 in gift cards for Joann.

And, as I said, I did have a nice view. Here, have a sunrise photo.

Celebrity Death Watch: Ray Thomas sang and played flute with The Moody Blues. Jerry Van Dyke was Dick’s younger brother and acted on such television shows as My Mother the Car and Coach. John Young was the ninth man to walk on the moon and commanded the first Space Shuttle launch. Thomas Bopp co-discovered Comet Hale-Bopp. Interestingly, he was a hobbyist who worked at a factory, not a professional astronomer.

TCC Luncheon: Despite jet lag, I dragged myself out of the house to go to the Travelers’ Century Club lunch meeting in McLean on Saturday. There was a very good turnout and we had to move to a different area of the restaurant. I ran into somebody I met not long ago at Sixth and I there, too. It’s always interesting when different parts of my life intersect. Anyway, there was lots of good travel conversation. But the real reason to go to these things is to be convinced I’m not alone in my obsessions.

JGSGW: On Sunday I drove to Maryland for a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting. The topic had to do with blogging and how it can enhance your research. That was reasonably interesting, but I wish there had been more examples of content from various blogs and less on the mechanics of the speaker’s own blog. Anyway, I should do more writing about genealogy here and, actually, I will this year because I decided to do the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, which is worth separate entries.

Shopping: I did order both turtlenecks (but not a dozen, and not all black) and tights. I also ordered yarn for a specific project – a crochet-along blanket depicting the solar system. Of course, I am starting out behind, because I just ordered the yarn and it will take several days to get to me. But that gives me time to find where the correct size crochet hook is lurking in my place.

The Story Surge will get its own entry, but here is some general catching up.

Crafting 1: I did manage to make some hairpin lace. I am now slightly obsessed with it and engaging in a project that I cant yet talk about publicly. If you might want some of the results of it, let me know.

Crafting 2: Margaret Fisher taught an excellent freeform knit and crochet class in association with the Artisphere yarn bomb project. I ran into someone I used to work with there and it was fun to reconnect. (I have since seen her at the main yarn bomb get-together.) The interesting part was that I completely failed to recognize her out of the context of work, until she mentioned somebody else I used to work with.

Crafting 3: Looped Yarn Works was advertising that they'd do another Valentine's Day yarn bombing of Dupont Circle. I went a bit overboard and crocheted 32 hearts, strung together in various ways. That was mostly because this pattern is so easy and quick, with each heart taking me under 5 minutes to crochet. Then the weather sucked and they didn't put them up as far as I can tell.

Crafting 4: I did finish a giant orange circle (made with a doily pattern intended for thread) for the yarn bomb and am now working on knitting a rodent of unusual size.

Food Pornography 1: I went out to a Restaurant Week dinner at Lincoln with a few flyertalk friends a couple of weeks ago. I am attempting to try specialty cocktails and got a Shoemaker's Rickey, which was okay but not enough to persuade me to switch from G&Ts. The mushroom beignets were amazing. Beet salad was a bit disappointing, as there were too many dissonant flavors and not enough emphasis on the beets. Stuffed lamb chops were delicious but came out long after everyone else's third course. Fudge cake for dessert was excellent, as was the mocha custard with it, but the passion fruit gelee on the plate was too sweet. Overall, I would definitely be willing to eat there again.

food Pornography 2: I tried a Wild Ophelia Smokehouse BBQ Potato Chips chocolate bar. The 70% dark chocolate was good, but the potato chips mostly added crunch without significant smoky barbecue flavor.

Antarctic Exploration: I went to a lecture at National Geographic. David Roberts was discussing his book Alone on the Ice, about Douglas Mawson. Having read Mawson's The Home of the Blizzard, I can't say that I learned much new, but there were photos and bits of film by Frank Hurley (whose first expedition it was and who, of course, took the iconic photos from Shackleton's Endurance expedition among others.) One new thing I did learn is that Hurley's mother tried to talk Mawson out of taking him along. Anyway, I remain impressed by Mawson's strength and accomplishment, managing to return to his base safely after both his companions died and most of his supplies fell into a crevasse with the first of them. I definitely need to check out the museum exhibit on him when I am in Adelaide in May.

Mileage Running: Yes, I did another trip to add another airport (and some miles) for that United challenge. That one was to Las Vegas. I stayed overnight at the Tropicana, which is now a Doubletree and was kind of a mixed experience. The room was okay but there are shutters, not blinds, and things don't get as dark as I'd prefer. And they charge a resort fee, which is especially obnoxious since some of the things it includes (e.g. free internet) I would get free as a Hilton elite member anyway. The casino there is small and not especially modern, but that is less of an issue since it is across the street from the MGM Grand. But I may try staying downtown the next trip I take out to Vegas.

Ballet: I have a subscription to the Washington Ballet this season. Thursday night (Valentine's Day), I saw L'Amour (love, baby). This started with the world premiere of a one-act ballet based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Laclos (which I read many years ago as part of a class on Evil and Decadence in Literature). The music was by Vivaldi, which is suitable in period but didn't really work in tone for me. The bigger sin - and one which is not uncommon in modern ballet - was sections in which the dancers danced to no music at all. Still, the ballet was reasonably true to the plot of the novel and Jared Nelson was an expressively wicked Valmont.

That was followed (after intermission) by a short piece called Opposites Distract which was my favorite of the evening for its matching of dance to the slightly jazzy, slightly Latin-inflected scrore by Ottmar Leibert.

Finally, there was a piece called Under Covers which featured dancers performing in and around beds to a variety of covers of pop songs. I had mixed feelings about this. Part of that was that I hated the concept of three young Asian women dancing in baby doll pajamas around an older white man. (There was a bit of balance with three men dancing in the dreams of a woman, but the costuming had them in tuxedos.) And, while the dance to it was fine, the cover of "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Johnny Cash was the worst cover of that song I have ever heard. (I don't normally hate Johnny Cash, but this was simply awful.)

So, overall, it was a mixed night, which is about what I expect for mixed ballet programs.

Theatre:I saw Shakepeare's R&J at Signature Theatre yesterday afternoon. This is a provocative play, involving four boys at a Catholic military boarding school who act out the forbidden play late one night. When this was originally written and performed in the late 1990's, the gay aspect would have been far more shocking. Seeing two young men smooching nowadays (as they play Romeo and Juliet) is less controversial, so the issue is mostly one of their setting and their own reactions to their emerging sexuality. The whole thing is done with a fair amount of humor. At times I did find it hard to follow since I got a bit lost as to which of the secondary characters was which. (It might help if I had ever actually seen the actual Shakespeare play.) I also had some issues with the ending, which deals with the aftermath of the night. Is one night enough to make someone reject his entire background? It seems too easy, too conflict-free for Student #1 / Romeo to walk away from his regimented life.

I spent last weekend mileage running. Star Mega Do 4 had this challenge for bonus miles if participants fly to or through 20 different airports on United. While the miles involved are realistically not worth it, its the type of challenge that appeals to the obsessive side of my nature and I decided to go for it. I'd already had three airports in January (since I flew JFK to IAD on United after my return from Israel on El Al and I flew to/from LAX on a business trip). Last weekend was close to a pure mileage run. I flew DCA to ORD to SFO to RNO on Saturday. Things were slightly risky because it looked like the first flight might get delayed, but they went with a shorter turn around time for the late arriving plane and I actually got to Chicago slightly early. I got to Reno about midnight and was flying out (RNO to DEN to IAD) at 6 a.m., so just got a taxi to the Atlantis and killed four and a half hours at the casino, easily staying within my gambling budget). Then there was a mechanical delay with the RNO to DEN flight, leaving me with about a 2 minute connection time, but United held the connecting flight for the 15 or so of us who were on it, so it all worked out.

This weekend was focused on errands. I did a used bookstore run, selling 31 books and acquiring 15. (Part of that was because I wanted to use up some previously acquired credit.) A couple of those books were even ones I had been looking for. I also had to run over to another bookstore to drop off flyers for an upcoming event. And there were less interesting chores like grocery shopping.

Today was knitting group and we were doing a destash sale. The idea was to bring yarn (and books and notions) you no longer wanted and try to sell them to other folks there. In the course of looking for things to destash, I uncovered a baby sweater that I think my mother must have knitted and given me for finishing. (I believe that because I have no memory of having knitted it myself. And because it is pink, though not a horrible pastel pink. And I have no idea who else would have given it to me.) I brought that along and did finish it, as well as finishing crocheting an amigurumi piece. I also knitted a hexagon for the Artisphere yarn bomb, mostly because I wanted to see how a particular pattern would work. I'd brought three skeins of yarn to destash, sold 2 of them, and donated the third (lime green muppet fur) to the charity pile at a local store. I did buy one skein and a pattern book, however.

I still have a ton of things to get done, but at least I had some productive activity. Which makes up for a work week where I felt like I was spinning my wheels, largely because of a couple of long meetings.

Celebrity Death Watch: I have three celebrity deaths to mention. The least famous is Dora Saint, better known as Miss Read. She wrote several novels of English village life. I admit that I haven’t read any of them, but the descriptions I’ve seen suggest I would like them and I’ve made a note to check for them the next time I’m at the library.

Second is Jonathan Frid, who played the vampire Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows. This was the only soap opera I ever really got into. One does have to wonder if they might stake him just to be safe.

The most publicized death was that of Dick Clark. Some of my friends may recall that I was on a current events trivia game show he hosted in 1991. Those things go by in a blur but the two things I remember saying about him at the time were: 1) he was much much more personable than Alex Trebek and 2) he wore about 2 inches of pancake makeup. (By the way, I came in second and won $1400, having missed a question about Woodrow Wilson’s second wife’s maiden name. Or maybe it was his first wife. I would not have known either at the time.)

Cool Washington Moment: The space shuttle Discovery was ferried to the Udvar-Hazy Center (the branch of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum out by Dulles Airport) on Tuesday morning on the back of a 747. They did a fly-over around the National Mall and up and down the Potomac. I (and everyone else in my office) watched the passes up and down the Potomac. Unfortunately, I did not have a camera with me so I can’t add to the plethora of photos on-line. You will have to trust my word that it was awesome.

Miami Baseball Trip: Having been to a game at every major league ballpark requires maintenance. It was easy enough to fly down to Miami to catch a game at the new Marlin’s ballpark. The actual travel down had all the routine annoyances – the inevitable hour delay for my American Airlines flight (though I did miraculously end up with an empty middle seat next to me), the bland (but cheap) rental car complete with poor ergonomics, and an Alamo clerk who was entirely unfamiliar with the local area and gave me directions that led to it taking me 30 minutes to get to my hotel 10 minutes away. A good night’s sleep at an above average Hampton Inn refreshed me and I set out to do some sightseeing.

I’d been to Fort Lauderdale a couple of times and changed planes at MIA several times, but had never actually gone to Miami. The obvious thing to do was to walk around the Art Deco District in Miami Beach and I had downloaded this walking tour from National Geographic, which proved to provide a good overview. My taste in architecture is more subdued, but I do think the style suits the climate and I understand why people like it. And, of course, I am all in favor of historic preservation. It was a bit windy and drizzly, which also cut down on crowds. The rain ended by the time I had lunch and I walked a bit more along the beach before leaving the area.

That left me time for a bit of random driving around downtown Miami before going over to Marlins Park. I prepaid for parking, which made it reasonably simple. I’ll have to rate it in the same group as the better modern ballparks, probably a bit below PNC Park in Pittsburgh. The retractable roof and retractable wall of windows with views of downtown are nice features. The home run sculpture thingy is horrible and wonderful in equal measures but qualifies as local character. I also liked the Bobblehead Museum except for them having Yaz in the top row where he was hard to see. There was a “taste of Miami” food court, though I am still unsure about the idea of ceviche at a ballpark. They get downgraded for having cheerleaders and for a lack of fan enthusiasm, which extended to about half the crowd not even bothering to get up for the seventh inning stretch. Admittedly, the team did not give them a lot to be enthusiastic about, with Carlos Zambrano walking three batters in the first and Heath Bell blowing a 4-1 lead in the ninth, aided and abetted by Logan Morrison’s fumbling of a fly ball. The only Marlins player who I was favorably impressed by was Emilio Bonifacio. Not that I was really all that impressed by the Astros, either. This was a game that fell into the “I don’t really care who wins” category, allowing me to focus on the quality of the play, which was barely up to major league level.

I also want to comment briefly on people watching, which is always entertaining. There was a woman a few seats away from me who appeared to be a poster child for bulimia. She was quite thin but ate three entire pizzas and some sort of chicken nuggets and fries. It was fascinating to watch in a bizarre and disturbing way. Another woman, sitting more or less in front of me, spent the entire game alternating between reapplying makeup and what I can only describe as attempting to arrange her boobs inside the very short dress she was wearing. I can only imagine what the (male) partners of these two women were thinking.

By the way, my flight home was oversold and I thought about volunteering to get bumped. But I had gotten up at 4 a.m. to get to the airport and getting home for a nap was a higher priority than a $300 voucher. I consider this a sure sign that I am getting old.

Knitting Activism: I did not actually take that nap (except for a brief one on the plane) because there was knitting group to go to. I finished the body of the amigurumi uterus and crocheted one fallopian tube, inserting a pipe cleaner for shaping. I figure there is about another hour or so of work until it is done. The idea is, of course, to send it to a male politician on the grounds that if he had a womb of his own, he might stay out of mine.

First, I did get around to uploading photos of the Dupont Circle Valentine's Day yarn bombing.

About the only significant thing I did the week before leaving was go out to dinner with the D.C. flyertalk crowd. Well, actually, there was someone visiting from northern California, but I see her on the East Coast all the time. There was one new person and I hope we didn't scare him too badly. We ate at BTS, by the way, which is a trendy burger joint in Foggy Bottom. I thought it was quite good and they have an excellent beer menu, including Big Daddy IPA. But the conversation is really the point and that was, of course, excellent.

I can get a piece of paper off my desk if I mention that my immediate reaction to seeing a "kangaroo wallet" in a catalogue was to speculate about what kangaroos have that they can't just carry loose in their pockets.

As for celebrity death watch, I can't say much for either Andrew Breitbart or James Q. Wilson other than that the latter was at least a more thoughtful and more civil Conservative pundit. But I can recycle a pun for Davy Jones and sing, "I'm a bereaver."

I have a couple of non-celebrity deaths to cope with, too - a friend's husband and a colleague. There is also the imminent demise of Melody Records in Dupont Circle, a place that has been way more responsible for exercising my credit card than I care to admit.

In more positive news, Fenway Park has been declared a National Historic Site! Yay! I should also mention the retirements of Tim Wakefield and of Jason Varitek. Tek, in particular, was one of my favorites for many years, probably because he played his entire major league career for the Red Sox. I wish him (and Wake) well for the future.

Speaking of baseball, I now have a ticket to a game at the new ballpark in Miami. No, I'm not obsessive, no, not at all.

Finally, I read today that the Grim Reaper walks at 2.4 miles per hour. (Before you ask, I've already forgotten where I read it, but if you insist I will claim it was an actual scientific reference.) I hope that is referring to flat terrain only.

Most of this delay was because one of the things I did this past weekend was take some pictures. See, there was a Volksmarch to celebrate the National Cherry Blossom Festival and I braved the unwashed masses of tourists to walk around D.C. with a camera for a change. It was a particularly enjoyable walk, across the mall, around the tidal basin, and up to the Botanic Gardens and the Capitol.

After that route, I made my way over to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and (finally) took some pictures of the completed Smithsonian Community Coral Reef. I added them to my coral reef set on Flickr.

I was intending to insert some photos here, but that function doesn't seem to be working, presumably due to the DDOS attack.

I came home and got some errands done, then went to a story swap in the evening. I used that as an opportunity to rehearse one of my stories for the Kensington Row Story Salon. There was the usual wide range of material and good conversation over snacks afterwards. Ralph is championing the need to revive the art of narrative poetry and we discussed that, which led to talking about sequels. That, in turn, led to a discussion of Flanders and Swann.

The major event of Sunday was seeing And the Curtain Rises at Signature Theatre. This is the most recent product of the American Musical Voices Project, which funds the development of new musicals. The story involves the development of the first American musical, The Black Crook in 1866. The show starts as a dreadful melodrama, Return to Black Creek but the producer takes advantage of a ballet troupe (living in the theatre after being burned out of their own venue) to create a spectacle. There are a few love stories woven in. The show was reasonably diverting, with a few genuinely funny moments, but the music was utterly forgettable. Still, it's good to encourage new musicals to be written and, with some work, this could be a nice second tier show, i.e. the sort of thing that gets done by summer stock companies and high schools.

By the way, I renewed my subscription to Signature for next season.

As for the week, I've been surprisingly productive at work during most of it. Yesterday was the exception. Because I was telling stories in Kensington after work, I drove in to work. And Neptune decided he needed new shoes about halfway to the office. That is, my car (called Neptune because it's a blue-green Saturn and I am a space geek) got a flat. Fortunately, I was reasonably near Sears. And I knew I was going to need new tires soon, so I just got all 4 replaced. Given that Neptune is 17+ years old and the previous tires were only the second set, I can't complain too much. (I also got new front brake pads, while I was at it. I knew that was coming up soon and I figured it was easiest to do it while the tires were already off.) This is why I have a reserve in my budget for contingencies.

I also had a return of my phone issues at work. In short, our building manager has now managed to disconnect my phone twice. While there is an advantage to the phone not ringing, there are times when I need to call people and it is a lot more convenient to do it from my own desk. At least this time, she knew how to fix it herself and didn't have to wait three days for Verizon to come out.

Then there was the joy of driving to Kensington after work. I have finally figured out how to get there without getting lost. (Let's just say that Arlington road signs leave something to be desired.) But there was an accident on the GW Parkway and another slog on the Beltway. All of the times I've gotten lost getting to Jane's house actually helped me there, since I knew how to get across Bethesda on surface streets. That was important since it also let me buy gas. And I got to Kensington on time.

The storytelling went fine. Liz started, with a mixture of personal stories and Hindu myth, plus other snippets about creating stories. I attempted to be seasonal, with a bad pun involving baseball. I followed that with my piece about my father's less than literal translations of the Passover Haggadah. Then I did some material from my "Fortune, Fools, and Fowl" program. That included an Armenian folk tale, a Bill Greenfield story, "Why I'm Not a Millionaire" and a couple of short poems about chickens. And, yes, I had my rubber chicken out, as sort of a prop, though there was not really a good place to put it. Overall, I had lots of fun and got laughs in the right places (and groans in appropriate ones).

There was a workshop at the Museum of Natural History this afternoon on curating the Community Coral Reef, which will be part of The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef exhibit. I went down and dropped off the last of my contributions. I saw a couple of people I know from the group at one of the local yarn stores. I also got to see some interesting pieces other people made, e.g. one made from yellow caution tape.

It looks like the process of putting together the community reef will be interesting and challenging. This has been a very fun project ot be involved in. And, as I have said before, how often does one get to make something that will be exhibited in the Smithsonian?

If you are interested in what my little bits of this look like, I've overcome my resistance to flicker and uploaded photos.

Last year, I'd taken classes pretty much the whole time I was at Stitches and complained that I felt rushed in the marketplace. So, this year, I only signed up for one class a day. I wasn't able to sign up right when registration opened, so some of the classes I was interested in were sold out. But I still found plenty of things I was interested in.

My Thursday afternoon class was Edie Ekman's Crochet: Buttonbands and Buttonholes. This was pretty straightforward and I could have learned most of what there was just from the handout (although it had a couple of errors). There were a couple of interesting ornate buttonhole / edging patterns, so it was worthwhile. The most useful part of the class, however, was her explanation of charted crochet patterns which I admit I've shied away from.

On Friday, I took A Sampling of Stitches from Margaret Fisher. I'd signed up for that class largely because I'd really liked her Entrelac class last year. This was also an excellent class. She went over four categories of stitches and we worked swatches in each. The smocking stitches were very straightforward and easy. The twisted traveling stitches were complex, but I felt like I came away with a basic understanding of how to follow the charts for them. The most useful part of the class was her explanation of brioche stitch patterns, which are written in a very non-intuitive way. Finally, she had us do some elongated stitch patterns, which turn out to be easier and more fun than I would have expected. In fact, the seafoam pattern stitch she provided is perfect for some yarn I bought last year.

Ann McCauley's Movement for Knitters on Saturday was disappointing. Other attendees seemed more into it, but I had been expecting more practical ergonomics instead of a bunch of new age claptrap about things like holding your fourth finger to alleviate fear. (The class was focused on a Japanese bodywork modality called jin shin jyutsu, which is related to shiatsu. Had that been clear in the class description, I'd never have signed up for it.) Overall, this just wasn't my sort of thing.

Fortunately, the class I took this morning (Laura Bryant's Fake Short Rows) was excellent. The technique is related to the elongated stitches I'd learned on Friday and looks like a good way to make interesting, drapy scarves and shawls (and edgings). It was easy and fun and I suspect it will be very helpful with using up some of my stash.

Speaking of stash, I did add to it in the marketplace, mostly because I can never resist buying small amounts of various exotics. In particular, I couldn't pass up a yarn made from silk and stainless steel and another one that contains jade. There's are also some bison, yak, and camels joining the sheep and alpaca herd in my den. And I bought a few patterns and a pair of square circular needles (which I've been curious about for a while). Overall, however, I was fairly restrained. For example, I did not buy any quiviut. And I bought only one skein of Lamb's Pride (my favorite wool yarn) despite it being just $4.50 a skein. (Admittedly, I have pretty much an entire box of it in my den already.)

Finally, I went to the Saturday night banquet and student fashion show. The food was surprisingly decent for convention center banquet catering. The fashion show went on a bit long. If I ruled the world, I'd limit people to showing just one piece, or possibly two. There were some beautiful items, but there were others that seemed fairly ordinary to me. And some things - like intricate lace - just don't show up well at a distance. At the end, they gave out bags of goodies to each table. You were supposed to distribute things in a particular order, but our table ended up trading amongst ourselves. Given my liking of exotics, nobody should be surprised that I traded a kit for fingerless gloves away in exchange for a skein of milk yarn (80% milk, 20% wool and, no, I have no idea how they make that).

Now, all I need is some time to actually sit down and knit (or crochet).