Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Which lolcat are you?

I am (appropriately enough)...

Sad Cookie Cat


Your Score: Sad Cookie Cat

61% Affectionate, 39% Excitable, 64% Hungry

You are the classic Shakespearian tragedy of the lolcat universe. The sad story of a baking a cookie, succumbing to gluttony, and in turn consuming the very cookie that was to be offered. Bad grammar ensues.

Find out which cat you are here

Mi doggee toks




I think these two websites are hilarious:

http://laughoutlouddogs.com/

and http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Joe, on the other hand, doesn't get it. I will look at pages of these and laugh and laugh and laugh. Joe just stares...kind of blankly.

In case anyone else enjoys this kind of humor, I'm sharing. And so's Jack.

Enjoy!

Monday, October 29, 2007

The day has finally come!

I'm on Ravelry!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!

You can find me here.

I was just checking my e-mail "really quick" before joining Husband in bed but got distracted playing with it and almost 3 hours later I'm still up. :-S

Okay.....off to bed with me.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

A Little Odd


It's called "Puppy Purse" and is a dog carrying system that lets you carry your dog like, well, a purse. The picture on the left is my favorite. I'm sure they're trying to show how cool and manly you can look while carrying your pretty-pretty-princess dog on your side. Sadly, it just doesn't work.

To see more ways to embarrass yourself in public by carrying around your dog like a piece of luggage, you can check out their website where the home page features pictures of women in dressy clothes toting their pups like fashion accessories.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Adventures in bad baking

As odd as it sounds, I like to make cake and cupcakes with diet soda. I box cake mix + 1 can diet soda mixed with a whisk (not electric beaters) and baked as usual results in a yummy, light and fluffy cake despite how weird it sounds. For best results, match the mix and the sodas like this:

Chocolate or Devil's Food cake mix + diet cola, Dr. Pepper or root beer

White or funfetti cake mix + diet sprite, 7up, or fresca (funfetti w/ fresca is my favorite)

Yellow cake mix + diet cream soda or sprite

Making cakes this way instead of with eggs and oil reduces calories and fat grams in the finished product. The reason you whisk by hand is because the carbonation in the soda is what will make it rise w/o the eggs and beating it with a mixer is too aggressive and beats the bubbles out.

Today my cake baking methods have met their match. I had a box of reduced sugar Devil's Food cake mix and wanted to make weight watchers friendly cupcakes and so stirred in a can of Diet Dr. Thunder. Bad idea. Something happened chemically with the reduced sugar cake mix and the sugarless soda and created a gooey, sticky mess. Not only was it hard to tell when the cupcakes were done (the insides were still gooey after 25 minutes in the oven.....which is a long time to bake cupcakes in my oven) but when once they came out and cooled stuck to the cupcake papers so the whole thing was mangled and only the top escaped unscathed.

So word to the wise: If making reduced sugar cupcakes, keep the fat. If you want to make cupcakes with soda, use regular cake mix.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Puppy Clothes

It's taken a bit to get the pics up for this (the green one) since most pictures of Jack look like this:
This dog just doesn't sit still! In the meantime, I had a chance to finish sweater #2 so now I have 2 FO's to show off when we had better luck with the camera today (I bribed him with bacon cheddar doggie biscuits). So I present to you the (mini) doggie fashion show starring: Jack!
















Sweater #1 is knit in Lion Brand Wool-Ease thick & quick in the colors of grass and pine and knit on size 15 needles. Pattern is by me. The original design had a V-neck but it looked funny on my small dog, so I sewed it up and now it has a plain front and a roll-neck collar in back. This was great because it was a SUPER fast knit (I'd say maybe 2.5 - 3 hours max). I'm going to try an adapted version of what I did in the round so I don't have to do seaming.



Sweater #2 is a very adapted take on Buster by Berroco. Berroco's pattern is only for medium-large dogs (and jack is on the xs side of small) so with some gauge change, stitch count change, yarn change and more really it just kind of looks like Berocco's but is pretty different in construction. I used some leftover Red Heart Soft Yarn in black and size 6 needles.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

10 reasons the West Coast makes me happy

While still harboring much affection for my friends in Boston (or other parts of the world) I realize more and more that I am almost deliriously happy to be back in the Pacific Northwest. Thereby I present to you my top 10 reasons I'm happy to be back in the Pacific Northwest:

1. Trader Joe's is just another grocery store and not a place where "all the weird hippie people work."








2. My family is now a 1-3 hour drive away rather than a 1 week drive away.







3. Jack is the best puppy ever and has brought Joe and I tremendous amounts of joy. If we hadn't moved back I'd still be puppy-less.







4. People don't look at you funny if you pass a stranger on the sidewalk and say hi.















5. It's normal for people to talk to not only the cashier but also the people in line at the grocery store. (I was telling this to one of my Boston friends and her was response was, "People actually do that?!?" Why yes. Yes they do.)




6. Alpacas. There are a lot of them here. I don't think I've seen a single alpaca living in Boston.












7. It's kind of refreshing to be normal again (as opposed to "punk rock Carissa from Seattle"). Yesterday I wore a long sleeve shirt under a t-shirt, a fat ball-chain necklace, a chunky leather watch with buckles, a studded belt, my hair up in a ponytail to show off my tattoo and flipflops where my dark purple nail polish with chunky sparkles could be seen nobody looked at me funny. (Or made fun of the way I talk....but that's a different story)



8. Fall lasts longer here. The enjoyable weather lingers a bit longer before becoming quite cold and I think the colors last longer, too (or at least longer before they are covered in snow). Lest I be accused of making things up...yes, we really have fall here. In fact, this picture was taken yesterday while I was driving home.






9. Hooray for no sales tax! I think I save a significant amount each year by not having to pay sales tax.











10. Even though there are the same number of hours in a day, being in the Pacfic time zone makes me feel like I have more time. For example, it's 7:00 now, but it's 10:00 in Boston. Which means I've got 5 more hours until midnight, they've only got three.





***Only photos used for number 3, 7, and 8 are mine. All others found on Flickr. Click image to go to fullsize photo on flickr *****

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

9252

That's how many people are ahead of me in line to get into Ravelry.

And what kills me is not only can I not use Ravelry yet....but I can't even look at other people's stuff on Ravelry until I'm invited.

*sniff sniff*

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Mama Mia!

Coming home from running errands today I began to ponder dinner. I had meant to buy turkey meatballs at the store but, alas, this store did not carry them. What to make for dinner then?

So far this week we had sushi, tuna casserole (not the nasty, runny tuna wiggle kind. This is amazing tuna casserole) and fajitas. I was feeling a bit like getting back to my [Italian] roots. I didn't want to make a plain old boring meat sauce and thought I'd do meatballs myself. I pulled out my family's top secret meatball recipe and got to work.

At first I thought the ingredients were a little odd. The recipe includes some things that would have never occurred to me to put in meatballs and leaves out some things I would think were "obvious." I resisted the urge to mess with it. I also resisted the urge to use my fancy Pampered Chef tools to make it faster and easier. I wanted to do it the old school way.

Then something magical happened. Standing barefoot in my quiet kitchen rolling meatballs by hand I felt this strange connection to my family thousands of miles and/or generations away. This is how my sister, mom, grandmother and great-grandmother (and who knows how much further back) all make these meatballs. It was almost like they were all there with me. I also felt very, very Italian (I mean, I am Italian....but I just felt like Super Italian). This is the first time this has ever happened to me and it was really special.

This also gave me an insight into the line of thinking some knitters have: that you do things to old school way, because that's how it's been done for thousands of years. Previous to this experience, this thought process seemed very, well, odd. But for the first time I understood. I still don't feel that way about knitting -- as far as I can tell, my family doesn't have much of a knitting legacy to pass down and that's probably why. But meatballs, stuffing and lasagna? You do it the old school way....because that's just how you do it.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

I found this awesome sweater called "the Deep V Argyle Vest" from See Eunny Knit! The pattern can be downloaded here.


I think it looks great, is sexy and has kind of a punk edge to it. I nominated it for the next KAL over at the Sexy Knitter's club but it lost (to patterns that only fit if you're no larger than a small....ask me what I think about that). Anyway, I think I'm going to knit this anyway but was wondering if there might be sufficient interest in others to start a KAL for it?

If anyone else is interested, say so in the comments. Thanks!

Delta Helps Monkeys by Hiring Them to Determine Airline Ticket Prices!

Has anyone else noticed that airline fares can not only be ridiculously overpriced, but make no sense either? Take my current situation for example:

I want to go to a conference in Cincinnati in January. I need to fly from Portland, OR to Cincinnati. Round trip tickets? Yeah, they cost more than $500. $500! To go to Cincinnati! I can fly to Mexico or Puerto Rico for less than that. So....I started exploring my options. Maybe I could juggle some one-way tickets and get a better deal.

This is what I found: On the day I want to fly, a one-way ticket from Portland to Boston is only $170. This flight has one layover in (you guessed it) Cincinnati. If I just want to book the leg of the trip from Portland to Cincinnati, guess how much I pay? $500! $500 for something they would give me and more for only $170. Yeah....that makes sense. Does anyone else feel like monkeys are the ones running this whole thing:
I do. So I called Delta. After sitting on hold for 15 minutes, I was transferred to a non-native English speaker who sounded like he had a thick Asian accent. While he was very polite, he wasn't helpful. When he asked if I was using the website to find these fares and I said yes, he said I needed to contact customer support through the website live chat. I didn't see a way to do this on the website, so I asked about it:

Him: You will need to contact my colleauge who is trained in these matters through the Delta website.

Me: Am I supposed to send an e-mail (I saw a link to send e-mail....and I didn't want to wait for a response) or is this live chat?

Him: It is live chat.

Me: Okay. Um....I'm not seeing where I go to find that. Can you help me?

Him: It's on the Delta website.

Me: Right. But where? What do I need to click on to get to that area?

Him: For your question you will need to contact my colleague who is doing live chat to assist customers on the website.

Me: That's fine, but how do I find this person? I don't see anything on the website about live online help.

Him: (obviously exasperated with me) Just hold on. I'll transfer to the person doing the live chat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I find it amusing I'm being transferred via phone to the online chat person. This person answers and has a British accent. She was nice and somewhat more helpful. I'll spare you the conversation (it wasn't as amusing) but in the end, there is nothing to stop me from booking my flight to "Boston" and then getting off in Cincinnati and not coming back. IN FACT she says that if I only take the first leg of my trip, I may have a CREDIT in the Delta system that I can use for up to one year.

Hmmm. So pay $500 or pay $170 and get money back? Gee, that one's hard. Why does this have to be so complicated? Why can't I just get charged a fair rate for what I want to do? So note to anyone looking around at airfare: don't just take the price the monkeys give you -- shop around first.

Wish you all a happy and cupcake-filled day,

Carissa

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Which lolcat are you?

I am (appropriately enough)...

Sad Cookie Cat


Your Score: Sad Cookie Cat

61% Affectionate, 39% Excitable, 64% Hungry

You are the classic Shakespearian tragedy of the lolcat universe. The sad story of a baking a cookie, succumbing to gluttony, and in turn consuming the very cookie that was to be offered. Bad grammar ensues.

Find out which cat you are here

Mi doggee toks




I think these two websites are hilarious:

http://laughoutlouddogs.com/

and http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Joe, on the other hand, doesn't get it. I will look at pages of these and laugh and laugh and laugh. Joe just stares...kind of blankly.

In case anyone else enjoys this kind of humor, I'm sharing. And so's Jack.

Enjoy!

Monday, October 29, 2007

The day has finally come!

I'm on Ravelry!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!

You can find me here.

I was just checking my e-mail "really quick" before joining Husband in bed but got distracted playing with it and almost 3 hours later I'm still up. :-S

Okay.....off to bed with me.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

A Little Odd


It's called "Puppy Purse" and is a dog carrying system that lets you carry your dog like, well, a purse. The picture on the left is my favorite. I'm sure they're trying to show how cool and manly you can look while carrying your pretty-pretty-princess dog on your side. Sadly, it just doesn't work.

To see more ways to embarrass yourself in public by carrying around your dog like a piece of luggage, you can check out their website where the home page features pictures of women in dressy clothes toting their pups like fashion accessories.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Adventures in bad baking

As odd as it sounds, I like to make cake and cupcakes with diet soda. I box cake mix + 1 can diet soda mixed with a whisk (not electric beaters) and baked as usual results in a yummy, light and fluffy cake despite how weird it sounds. For best results, match the mix and the sodas like this:

Chocolate or Devil's Food cake mix + diet cola, Dr. Pepper or root beer

White or funfetti cake mix + diet sprite, 7up, or fresca (funfetti w/ fresca is my favorite)

Yellow cake mix + diet cream soda or sprite

Making cakes this way instead of with eggs and oil reduces calories and fat grams in the finished product. The reason you whisk by hand is because the carbonation in the soda is what will make it rise w/o the eggs and beating it with a mixer is too aggressive and beats the bubbles out.

Today my cake baking methods have met their match. I had a box of reduced sugar Devil's Food cake mix and wanted to make weight watchers friendly cupcakes and so stirred in a can of Diet Dr. Thunder. Bad idea. Something happened chemically with the reduced sugar cake mix and the sugarless soda and created a gooey, sticky mess. Not only was it hard to tell when the cupcakes were done (the insides were still gooey after 25 minutes in the oven.....which is a long time to bake cupcakes in my oven) but when once they came out and cooled stuck to the cupcake papers so the whole thing was mangled and only the top escaped unscathed.

So word to the wise: If making reduced sugar cupcakes, keep the fat. If you want to make cupcakes with soda, use regular cake mix.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Puppy Clothes

It's taken a bit to get the pics up for this (the green one) since most pictures of Jack look like this:
This dog just doesn't sit still! In the meantime, I had a chance to finish sweater #2 so now I have 2 FO's to show off when we had better luck with the camera today (I bribed him with bacon cheddar doggie biscuits). So I present to you the (mini) doggie fashion show starring: Jack!
















Sweater #1 is knit in Lion Brand Wool-Ease thick & quick in the colors of grass and pine and knit on size 15 needles. Pattern is by me. The original design had a V-neck but it looked funny on my small dog, so I sewed it up and now it has a plain front and a roll-neck collar in back. This was great because it was a SUPER fast knit (I'd say maybe 2.5 - 3 hours max). I'm going to try an adapted version of what I did in the round so I don't have to do seaming.



Sweater #2 is a very adapted take on Buster by Berroco. Berroco's pattern is only for medium-large dogs (and jack is on the xs side of small) so with some gauge change, stitch count change, yarn change and more really it just kind of looks like Berocco's but is pretty different in construction. I used some leftover Red Heart Soft Yarn in black and size 6 needles.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

10 reasons the West Coast makes me happy

While still harboring much affection for my friends in Boston (or other parts of the world) I realize more and more that I am almost deliriously happy to be back in the Pacific Northwest. Thereby I present to you my top 10 reasons I'm happy to be back in the Pacific Northwest:

1. Trader Joe's is just another grocery store and not a place where "all the weird hippie people work."








2. My family is now a 1-3 hour drive away rather than a 1 week drive away.







3. Jack is the best puppy ever and has brought Joe and I tremendous amounts of joy. If we hadn't moved back I'd still be puppy-less.







4. People don't look at you funny if you pass a stranger on the sidewalk and say hi.















5. It's normal for people to talk to not only the cashier but also the people in line at the grocery store. (I was telling this to one of my Boston friends and her was response was, "People actually do that?!?" Why yes. Yes they do.)




6. Alpacas. There are a lot of them here. I don't think I've seen a single alpaca living in Boston.












7. It's kind of refreshing to be normal again (as opposed to "punk rock Carissa from Seattle"). Yesterday I wore a long sleeve shirt under a t-shirt, a fat ball-chain necklace, a chunky leather watch with buckles, a studded belt, my hair up in a ponytail to show off my tattoo and flipflops where my dark purple nail polish with chunky sparkles could be seen nobody looked at me funny. (Or made fun of the way I talk....but that's a different story)



8. Fall lasts longer here. The enjoyable weather lingers a bit longer before becoming quite cold and I think the colors last longer, too (or at least longer before they are covered in snow). Lest I be accused of making things up...yes, we really have fall here. In fact, this picture was taken yesterday while I was driving home.






9. Hooray for no sales tax! I think I save a significant amount each year by not having to pay sales tax.











10. Even though there are the same number of hours in a day, being in the Pacfic time zone makes me feel like I have more time. For example, it's 7:00 now, but it's 10:00 in Boston. Which means I've got 5 more hours until midnight, they've only got three.





***Only photos used for number 3, 7, and 8 are mine. All others found on Flickr. Click image to go to fullsize photo on flickr *****

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

9252

That's how many people are ahead of me in line to get into Ravelry.

And what kills me is not only can I not use Ravelry yet....but I can't even look at other people's stuff on Ravelry until I'm invited.

*sniff sniff*

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Mama Mia!

Coming home from running errands today I began to ponder dinner. I had meant to buy turkey meatballs at the store but, alas, this store did not carry them. What to make for dinner then?

So far this week we had sushi, tuna casserole (not the nasty, runny tuna wiggle kind. This is amazing tuna casserole) and fajitas. I was feeling a bit like getting back to my [Italian] roots. I didn't want to make a plain old boring meat sauce and thought I'd do meatballs myself. I pulled out my family's top secret meatball recipe and got to work.

At first I thought the ingredients were a little odd. The recipe includes some things that would have never occurred to me to put in meatballs and leaves out some things I would think were "obvious." I resisted the urge to mess with it. I also resisted the urge to use my fancy Pampered Chef tools to make it faster and easier. I wanted to do it the old school way.

Then something magical happened. Standing barefoot in my quiet kitchen rolling meatballs by hand I felt this strange connection to my family thousands of miles and/or generations away. This is how my sister, mom, grandmother and great-grandmother (and who knows how much further back) all make these meatballs. It was almost like they were all there with me. I also felt very, very Italian (I mean, I am Italian....but I just felt like Super Italian). This is the first time this has ever happened to me and it was really special.

This also gave me an insight into the line of thinking some knitters have: that you do things to old school way, because that's how it's been done for thousands of years. Previous to this experience, this thought process seemed very, well, odd. But for the first time I understood. I still don't feel that way about knitting -- as far as I can tell, my family doesn't have much of a knitting legacy to pass down and that's probably why. But meatballs, stuffing and lasagna? You do it the old school way....because that's just how you do it.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

I found this awesome sweater called "the Deep V Argyle Vest" from See Eunny Knit! The pattern can be downloaded here.


I think it looks great, is sexy and has kind of a punk edge to it. I nominated it for the next KAL over at the Sexy Knitter's club but it lost (to patterns that only fit if you're no larger than a small....ask me what I think about that). Anyway, I think I'm going to knit this anyway but was wondering if there might be sufficient interest in others to start a KAL for it?

If anyone else is interested, say so in the comments. Thanks!

Delta Helps Monkeys by Hiring Them to Determine Airline Ticket Prices!

Has anyone else noticed that airline fares can not only be ridiculously overpriced, but make no sense either? Take my current situation for example:

I want to go to a conference in Cincinnati in January. I need to fly from Portland, OR to Cincinnati. Round trip tickets? Yeah, they cost more than $500. $500! To go to Cincinnati! I can fly to Mexico or Puerto Rico for less than that. So....I started exploring my options. Maybe I could juggle some one-way tickets and get a better deal.

This is what I found: On the day I want to fly, a one-way ticket from Portland to Boston is only $170. This flight has one layover in (you guessed it) Cincinnati. If I just want to book the leg of the trip from Portland to Cincinnati, guess how much I pay? $500! $500 for something they would give me and more for only $170. Yeah....that makes sense. Does anyone else feel like monkeys are the ones running this whole thing:
I do. So I called Delta. After sitting on hold for 15 minutes, I was transferred to a non-native English speaker who sounded like he had a thick Asian accent. While he was very polite, he wasn't helpful. When he asked if I was using the website to find these fares and I said yes, he said I needed to contact customer support through the website live chat. I didn't see a way to do this on the website, so I asked about it:

Him: You will need to contact my colleauge who is trained in these matters through the Delta website.

Me: Am I supposed to send an e-mail (I saw a link to send e-mail....and I didn't want to wait for a response) or is this live chat?

Him: It is live chat.

Me: Okay. Um....I'm not seeing where I go to find that. Can you help me?

Him: It's on the Delta website.

Me: Right. But where? What do I need to click on to get to that area?

Him: For your question you will need to contact my colleague who is doing live chat to assist customers on the website.

Me: That's fine, but how do I find this person? I don't see anything on the website about live online help.

Him: (obviously exasperated with me) Just hold on. I'll transfer to the person doing the live chat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I find it amusing I'm being transferred via phone to the online chat person. This person answers and has a British accent. She was nice and somewhat more helpful. I'll spare you the conversation (it wasn't as amusing) but in the end, there is nothing to stop me from booking my flight to "Boston" and then getting off in Cincinnati and not coming back. IN FACT she says that if I only take the first leg of my trip, I may have a CREDIT in the Delta system that I can use for up to one year.

Hmmm. So pay $500 or pay $170 and get money back? Gee, that one's hard. Why does this have to be so complicated? Why can't I just get charged a fair rate for what I want to do? So note to anyone looking around at airfare: don't just take the price the monkeys give you -- shop around first.

Wish you all a happy and cupcake-filled day,

Carissa

 
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