After the last post, I started thinking about origami. I glanced up at the bookshelf beside my desk and smiled when I saw that my favorite origami book was shelved there. I haven’t even opened it in at least five years (just for perspective, that would be 3-4 home addresses) but obviously I wanted to keep it close at hand anyway.
After a few minutes’ thought, I remembered where I had stashed a packet of origami paper.
Then an iris, which is one of the few patterns I have memorized. For some reason, the step where you pull the petals down and out and curl them over a pen is very satisfying. (This pattern is pretty close to the pattern in my head.)
It’s been a month since I broke my wrist, and it will probably be at least another month before I can knit as usual. This has been a hard month.
Last night I picked up the sock I was working on. I knit the above 16 stitches. Then I had to stop, because it hurt. I tried to savor the act of knitting, but it was over so quickly.
Do you know how long it would take to finish this sock, knitting only 16 stitches per day? I did the math. Roughly 200 days. And yet, it would get finished.
That’s one of the great things about knitting – you can knit as much or as little as you like, but it’s all forward progress. There is no entropy; it doesn’t un-knit itself over time. You can pick it up years later and keep knitting, and eventually it will be finished.
I think of the time before I learned to knit. I always had this itch to create. You could call it a “creative impulse,” but then it gets muddled up with creativity, and it’s not the same thing. It’s not the urge to be clever, but the urge to make something. Most of the time making something involves following a series of steps precisely – the opposite of creativity.
I tried cooking, bookbinding, papier maché, just to name a few. None of them really did the trick. I spent a lot of time doing origami, which I enjoyed a lot. (Somewhere I have a pattern for a seriously awesome origami vulture, back from the days when people bought books for things. Naturally, these days it’s available online.) You give someone a bit of origami; they love it; they exclaim over it; they set it on a shelf and it collects dust forever. Where’s the good in that? Compare with a simple knitted dishcloth, which gets used and abused and run through the washing machine hundreds of times before it finally, sadly gives up the ghost. That’s utility for you.
People, THIS GAME IS STRESSING ME OUT. When I created Helvetica as an adult in Sims 3, I left her lifespan at “normal” because it didn’t occur to me to do otherwise. I also sent her into the game alone, leaving her family behind in the old neighborhood.
An adult Sim with a normal lifespan hits the ground with 14 Sim days before they turn into an Elder. Buying a house leaves them with so little money that they have to get jobs. (I could cheat on the funds, but where’s the fun in that?) This leaves the single Sim with precious little time in which to find a man, get herself knocked up, and carry a baby to term.
Helvetica had a wish to sign up for the medical career, which I duly obeyed. I started sending her out to community lots after work. But the life of a medical intern is exhausting, so she has little time for socializing before she has to go home and collapse in bed.
Here I am, waiting outside the hospital for her to finish work so that we can hit the town.
This is Hunter Cottoneye, the first man she met. Hunter is unemployed and mean-spirited. Five minutes after they met, he informed her that she needs to get more exercise. Humiliated, she bade him goodnight and slunk home.
This is Billy Caspian, an unemployed artistic fellow who – the game informed me – is RICH. Jackpot!
After I learned this, I switched to map view and tracked down his house. You can click on your friends’ houses and zoom in to examine them.
Not bad!
As I was taking this screenshot, I couldn’t decide if this was a really creepy thing to be doing. On the one hand, it’s a computer program. These people aren’t real.
On the other hand? Totally creepy thing to be doing.
Speaking of creepy, I went a little crazy with the new Create A Style tool. This allows you to customize the color/pattern/surface texture of everything on your lot. You can even pick one color out of a pattern, and change that particular color. For example, the fabric of her couch originally had a blue background.
Since Helvetica’s favorite color is gray, I decided to redo her house entirely in white and gray. Now her living room makes me think of Farscape, but I can’t be arsed to change it.
Helvetica spent several days trying to woo Billy. Whenever she called, he was too busy to talk. When she invited him over, he declined her invitation. DUDE, THE CLOCK IS TICKING.
He finally accepted an invitation to go out somewhere together. Once they had greeted each other, the first thing he did was tell her that she needs to exercise more.
What.
I didn’t even have her say goodbye. I just told her to go home, and she walked away from him without a second thought.
THESE LOSERS ARE WASTING HER TIME.
The next night after work I sent her over to the Broke household, behind her house. There she met this charming fellow, Buck Broke. Will you check out the pervy little mustache!
Helvetica was drawn to him. Shortly after meeting him, all of her wishes were Buck-related. “Chat with Buck.” “Learn Buck’s interests.” “Give Buck a friendly hug.” Seriously – I wanted to puke. I’m surprised she didn’t start doodling “Mrs. Helvetica Broke” on the cover of her notebook.
Whatever his other shortcomings, Buck proved to be a pretty decent guy. He’s also flirty, which helped move things along. And at least he’s not yet told her she’s fat.
Unfortunately, Buck has a night job at the mausoleum. And in Sims 3, if you invite a Sim over to your house, they still maintain their job schedule. This means that every night they have about two hours to hang out before Buck has to go to work.
“WHAAAARGL SLOBBER SLOBBER GIVE ME A BABY.”
Despite making progress with Buck, the baby clock has essentially run out. Helvetica is going to have to adopt, and hope that either she can afford to live without a job, or that her job will pay enough to hire a nanny. Or maybe she’ll be able to convince Buck Broke to move in with her as a primary caregiver? Impossible to say at this point.
It feels like I’ve been working on the third chicken tractor for years. Even though, checking through my blog archives, it’s only been a month. I probably would have finished it sooner, except that I broke my wrist halfway through, and had to complete construction with just my left hand.
But it turns out that carpentry is just like knitting. If you work on it for half an hour a day after work, eventually it gets done. Many trips to Home Depot were required, much mosquito repellent was applied, and I accumulated more sawdust inside my wrist brace than seems medically warranted. But now it’s finished!*
After due consideration, I have decided to name this chicken tractor The Hyperion. Because it too is the third location. And it too is the best. And because I’m a dork that way.
Off the top of my head, it required eighteen 1×4s, three 4×8 sheets of 1/2″ exterior grade plywood, 27 feet of 48-inch hardware cloth, and something slightly less than 200 1.5″ screws. Since all of the 1×4s were culls, the entire project cost about $150.
Here you can see that the feeder and waterer are secured to the wall by lengths of wire (stripped from the inside of a length of unused Cat5 cable). I also fastened a scrap bit of bird gutter guard to the wall above them.
If you don’t have chickens, you may think this is rather a severe measure. If you do have chickens, you’re probably wondering where you can get you some of that. (I got mine from my neighbor’s scrap pile.)
Don’t worry – it’s made of soft plastic, and the ends are nicely rounded, so it’s not an impalement risk. One thing I have learned about chickens is that it is their life’s purpose to attempt to perch atop the feeder, thereby knocking it over. Every goddamned night.
Continuing our tour outside – why, what’s that? Could it be? Yes! It is a chicken door set on the wall of the coop. Because as every fool knows, chickens don’t like to go up and down through a hole in the floor. (Pause for tired sigh.)
Here I’m demonstrating the process for opening and closing the door. From the outside. in such a way that chickens can’t escape when I do it. Genius, right?!
Moving around to the back (the end opposite the coop) we find a people door which is hinged on the side. Because as every fool knows, if you hinge the people door at the top, when you open it to go inside, chickens can run out the side opposite you. (Pause for another tired sigh.)
I have to say, this is the design feature I’m most proud of, and most sheepish about. My neighbor had a length of gutter ripped off her roof during the winter storms. For months I tried to convince her that the (flattened, bent, thoroughly mangled) gutter was garbage and should be thrown away. I finally managed to successfully move it to a scrap pile to be hauled away to the metal recycler.
And then guess what?
I realized it would work really well as skids. It does, too.
You should have seen me slinking out to the scrap pile to dig out those trashed gutters.
Anyway, since my broken wrist is directly related to skid friction problems, these gutters should be a pretty big improvement.
Here are the ladies, back in their old coop. Do you think they realize they are all about to be stuffed into a single “small dog” carrier** and taken across the lawn to be deposited in a new coop? Actually, they might. They are displaying Suspicious Necks.
Martha says, “Hey! How the hell am I supposed to jump on top of the waterer and knock it over and spill a quart of water in here?”
* Actually, I can’t say that it’s “finished.” But it has chickens in it, so I’m calling it done, even though it still needs a few more hours of work.
** I was going to take them in two trips, I swear, but once I got in there, it was just too easy to cram them all in. It was only for a few minutes, honest.
All day long yesterday I kept thinking I was forgetting about something. I didn’t remember what it was until I went next door to feed the puppies today. What can I say? I’ve been kinda overwhelmed today.
This is indeed the very last Puppy Wednesday. As you’ll see from the video, only three puppies are left – the rest have gone to their new homes. Always a sad time, but then again, it’s nice when life starts to normalize again.
I’m pleased to ring out the latest litter with what I think is one of the funniest puppy videos yet. Watch for the camera nom near the end.
On the hair: it’s still sorting itself out. Currently, it looks just like Jon Stewart’s hair, which I think is hilarious.
I also decided that instead of saying “too butch for me,” which could be misunderstood, instead I should say “too severe for me.”
Last night I felt a mosquito land on the back of my neck. I swished my non-existent ponytail to shoo it away, and nearly gave myself whiplash.
On the speech to text software: I’m surprised it took me so long to realize how perfect this is for knitters. You could totally knit while you write!
The great thing about the software is that I can write while doing something else with my hands, like readjusting my wrist brace. The weird thing about the software is that I can’t write while my mouth is full. I’m still getting used to this.
ETA Oh, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this! Turns out my yarn scale was too small to weigh all the hair. At the Post Office, it clocked in at 1lb 6oz. Of hair.
Unfortunately, most of my allotted Sims-playing time today was eaten up by floundering around the game’s various menus. Long story short: you only get one playable family per neighborhood. The Splines already occupied the one neighborhood that ships with the game. Luckily EA has made a second neighborhood available as a free download from the Store.
So here we are in Riverview! I was getting impatient, after having to re-create Helvetica three times. So instead of building a custom house, I bought her one of the pre-built houses, and opted to have it pre-furnished by the game.
These pictures are for Franz. Check it out! No more ominous blue mist drawing down the curtains at the edge of your property!
I find it rather disturbing, the way the fancy houses loom over Helvetica’s humble neighborhood.
The first thing Helvetica did was set fire to the kitchen while trying to make waffles.
But enough of these antics – time to find A Man for my little heir! I sent her across the street, just in time to catch her neighbors on their way home from work.
She hit it off with the neighbor guy, whose name is Odin.
Sadly, Odin hates children. So that’s not going to work.
I gave up telling her to chat with him in a friendly manner, and sat back to see what happened. They continued to chat for a little while longer. Then they sat down, whipped out some reading material, and proceeded to ignore each other.
I thought I’d send her out to a restaurant to scope out the Riverview dudes. Unfortunately, the restaurant is one of those “no looky” zones. As with their work locations, the camera doesn’t follow them inside. I could only park the camera outside and wait for her to finish, like a dog tied to a lamp post.
On her way home, she had a little more energy left, so I sent her to the trailer park behind her new house. This turned out to be – drumroll, please! – the Broke family! I haven’t yet figured out their relationship to celebrated Sims 2 NPC Brandi Broke. I figure they’re all cousins or something.
I had Helvetica introduce herself to the patriarch of the clan, Flat Broke. Yes, they named him Flat. Sigh.
Do I like the results? Ha ha, no! It’s way too butch for me. But that wasn’t the point. I had a pretty good idea how it would turn out, so I’m fine with it. Hair grows!
My life is so boring now, even I can’t stand it. The wrist is slowly getting better – I’ve regained most of the functionality of my fingers, and the constant pain has finally gone away. I still get a sharp stab of pain if I try to move my wrist, but things are definitely moving in the right direction.
It’s funny, but my overall frustration and irritability levels have faded as the constant pain dwindled. Coincidence? Is it just that I’m getting used to life with only a left hand? Hard to say. But I haven’t had any incidents of rage since that problem with the doughnut box last Friday.
I’m still sleeping an awful, awful lot. Again, I’m not sure it if that’s because my body is healing, or if it’s just out of boredom. Watching television or listening to an audio book is just not much fun without knitting.
Since I have this speech to text software, I’ve been trying to focus my workload more on writing. Writing with this software is a slow and frustrating process, but still faster than just typing with my left hand. I would say it has about an 80% success rate. For every 10 words, I usually have to go back and ask it to correct two. Because it’s so tricky to catch homophone errors, I end up proofreading each sentence as I write it. This isn’t very good for writing flow, and I think my writing has reflected that.
Speech to text software will never replace human transcriptionists. For one thing, the software doesn’t understand words in context. For example, just now when I said the word “transcriptionists” I must not have enunciated clearly, because it typed “transcription AdSense.” It also tries to render every cough and sigh, so I’m constantly asking it to delete random instances of “if” and “and.” Neither of these issues would ever be a problem with human transcriptionists.
That being said, I’m impressed at how well it does work. It does a fairly good job of learning from your corrections, and it will correctly transcribe the words “knits” and “knitting” whenever I say them now. It’s also remarkably good at choosing the right homophone for common words based on context, like “to,” “too,” or “two.”
And now, talk about burying the lede! I was finally able to buy a copy of The Sims 3. I was mightily tempted to pick it up off the bittorrent networks, but I did the right thing and held firm, and I’m glad that I did. This weekend I’ll be moving Garamond over to the new neighborhood, so Sims Sunday will have a whole new look.
I also created a brand new family, and I started a separate blog just for that family’s story. If Sims Sunday isn’t enough for you, be sure to check out The Splines!
One should definitely look to get away for a vacation once in a year. With hotels giving special offers during certain period of a year, the hotel room should be booked without further consideration. There are many options for a vacation spot. Grabbing flights to canada is only one of them, going on a world travel tour is another. A more luxurious experience would be to cruise west. Getting a last minute flight though can definitely save you some money.
