NIN - Discipline (Official Video)

TFF

Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts Film Festival - Introduction

Yeah, I'm a bit tardy in getting this posted.... so what else is new... lmao

Of Chaos, Ghosts, and Miscellaneous Mayhem

I'm calling myself getting ready for work...

Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV is providing the background soundtrack. Google it for the reviews and opinions of Trent's decision to release the album independently via various download/torrent sites. After you have perused the particulars, download it and listen. I was sorely tempted to order the $75 Deluxe (or wtf-ever it was called) package. In the end, I opted for the $10 two CD package & the instant access mp3 download link. Though the pricier package satiated my Halo collection fetish more completely, the package I purchased was more suited to the impending changes in lifestyle. ...have laptop & DVD RWs, mp3 player & micro SD cards, digital camera, brown babies, pointy sticks & drop spindle... will travel...

I have been absent from this log for so long. I'm not sure where to begin with the "catch up." It isn't that I have not wanted to write. Existence simply got in the way of living for a while.

Work remains overwhelming at points. I could do with some Xanax a couple of times a week. However, I know that my physician's response to that request will be that I don't need to be working that job if it requires medication of that type in order to be able to do it.

Amanda was on the losing end of an auto accident involving a city bus a couple of weeks back. Only one of the five kiddos was in the van with her, fortunately. Unfortunately, he sustained a skull fracture and four tears in his colon which necessitated emergency abdominal surgery. Not one of the eight airbags deployed in the total of three collisions in this accident. You purchase a $40K kid kart with all these safety features for one reason. This is not looking good for General Motors.

I have continued to be relegated to the sidelines as a "study widow." Final exams finished this week. One week of respite to commence. I don't have as much comp time as I would like to have had, having used some of it with watching kiddos while my daughter was encamped at the hospital.

Winter seemed to have taken its final, dying gasp last weekend with the dumping twenty inches of snow in about 14 hours beginning in the wee hours of Saturday morning. The wind continued blowing too much on Saturday afternoon to make any attempt at moving the volumes of white stuff more than an exercise in futility.

I had run about for 12 hours Friday night in the blowing and ever deepening white stuff. When I went to warm my car Saturday morning for the drive home, I fell in the parking lot on my way to the car and wrenched my back on the left side.

In the Sunday afternoon calm, the shovelling began in earnest, and I wrenched my back on the right side. At least I was equally matched though quite in pain.

The temperatures climbed to near 50 on Monday and have remained there nearly all week. Most of the mountains of white stuff have disappeared with only a few scattered and dirty piles remaining.

I have been working more on the creative things.

Spring cleaning arrives this week.

An early jaunt in to work is at hand.

The fractal is Madness from Dream Tree Studio www.dreamtreestudio.com

Ciao.

NIN and eBay

Nine Inch Nails and eBay have nothing in common other than the fact that those two terms happen to be presently residing in the top three slots of my limited RAM cerebral cortex. Yes, my CPU is grossly under-powered as well when compared to current industry standards. Slot number three is occupied by knitting. Specifically, the sweater which I had not gotten around to making last year for this winter that is currently under construction on over-sized 20mm/US 50 knitting needles.

While having more needles than the law should allow in the implements of construction knitting arsenal, I have but one pair of 20mm needles. They are those which have been around forever. Boye #50 plastic needles. I tend to avoid plastic needles at all costs as they tend to be too "sticky" for me. A mere 7" into this sweater back piece, I can take it no more! I popped over to eBay and purchased a pair of wooden needles made by the same manufacturer from whom I purchased the bamboo and soy yarns. They offer a fair return policy and a lifetime guarantee on their needles, and anything has to be better than my current knitting milieu.

I shop quite a bit on eBay. While my feedback rating is only 204, I have 559 feedbacks posted. That means that I am a repeat customer for several sellers. Yes, I do tend to loyalty, even on eBay. I have purchased everything from earrings to CDs to yarn to beads to vintage patterns to art supplies to quilting notions to books to knitting machines on eBay. Oh yeah, there have been a few transactions that were for several hundred dollars. LOL The most recent having been the 60 pounds of wool yarns that I bought from Bob before he stopped selling on eBay last fall.

There are items that I no longer purchase on eBay regularly. Vintage patterns would be at the top of that list. A few years ago when everyone set out to become a millionaire by selling on eBay, the price for vintage knitting patterns and magazines skyrocketed out of sight. I refuse to pay $15 plus $8 shipping for a back issue of Vogue Knitting. The idea of it is ludicrous and sheer idiocy to me.

A few of the sellers from whom I used to purchase regularly no longer sell on eBay. When the boom hit and eBay began to raise their fees and percentages on sales, it became prohibitive to make a profit to many of the noncommercial vendors. Unless of course they wanted to charge outrageous prices for items and practice extortion for shipping. The evil eBay-acquired spawn, PayPal, even charges the sellers a percentage of the shipping charges. Nothing like double-dipping. (I'm trying very hard to be polite and reasonably politically correct with that last sentence. What came to mind was more a phrase that would have been coupled with "and without lube.")

I still support the venue of eBay, however. There are some wonderful people on there, still. I can shop for goods from all over the planet from the convenience of my chair. And, there are many, many good and honest and fair merchants on there who are seeking to bring diverse and quality products to market.

I am thrilled to see sites such as Etsy www.etsy.com and Wagglepop www.wagglepop.com capturing segments of the niche and general markets.
When I finally get around to the coup that will allow me to re-occupy my studio so that I can make some product for sale, my store site will be on Etsy. I already have it set up and waiting for me to get my ass in gear.

Organizing the studio could be a good project for the wee hours of this morning before I head back to bed around 4am. The boys were behaving too badly to send to the sitter's today. After working 12 hours last night, the last thing that I wanted to do was to spend my day awake babysitting them, but I did it. The sitter has other children there as well, and it simply isn't fair to send them, when they are behaving badly, if I don't have to. As much as I really didn't want to stay up with them all day, I resigned myself to suck it up and tough it out. Michael came in a bit earlier than usual from work, so I was able to hit the bed around 4pm and slept until 9:30.

I'm just finishing up the half-a-pot of Starbucks Serena Organic Blend coffee - ah yes, serum caffeine levels are approaching therapeutic - and feel pretty good at this point. Time to consider other options and venues, take my medications and get up and moving about.

For the NIN portion of the RAM usage... Trent Reznor is tremendously talented and known to be blatantly outspoken. He has no bullshit threshold, and I love it. I subscribe to the NIN site feed on one of my Google homepages. There are days when multiple posts are made to the blog. If you are not checking, you miss out as settings show only the most recent post. Then, there are days that stretch into weeks when nothing is posted. Just when you grow really weary of checking, a post or two (or three) pops up... Damn those temperamental, right-brained, artistic types anyway! LOL

My spinning fibers and beads did not arrive today. I am a bit bummed out by that. Three new knitting patterns did arrive today, though. I have been coveting, for a couple of years now, a pattern by Karabella Yarn for a sweater that is called Traveling Cables. It is an absolutely stunningly beautiful pattern to me. The left-brained accountant offspring thinks it is hideously ugly. It is truly one of those love-it or hate-it patterns.

I have never been of a mindset to drop several dollars for one designer pattern. Though I have seen several that I really wanted to make, the idea of paying that much money for a single pattern simply did not set well in my psyche. Given that I have become quite addicted to the idea of making sweaters and things for ME (for a change), I decided last week to go ahead and take the plunge. Not only did I buy the Karabella pattern, I also purchased several patterns by Oat Couture and Just One More Row for sweaters and vests and hats and a jacket and a coat that I have really wanted to make for quite some time. I am going to make the Traveling Cables sweater pattern in alpaca. I told one of my coworkers about it and added that, for that reason, it will never be seen at work. LOL

I think my next act of submission to the purchasing of the designer patterns will be for Mission Falls. Again, another of those love it or hate it series of patterns. I love it! Creative! Different! Unique!

With that thought and bit of inspiration to motivation, I am off to the studio.