Thursday, March 5, 2009

I have to stop this!

Not the blog, the title. When I started this, I happened to give the first couple of posts titles that began with, "I Have...," and I thought I'd continue it. The TV show Friends did that. If you recall, their episode titles were all, "The One...." "The One With the Ring," "The One Where No One's Ready," and like that. Since I started out, "I Have...," I thought I'd keep it going. But it's hard. And kind of stupid. So maybe not — stay tuned to find out.

Anyway...I'll try to post something of substance later, but for right now I wanted to mention these great ties I happened to come across. Yes, really, ties! The company is Sine Die. Do you live in Texas? If not, you might not be so impressed, or get the 'in' jokes, but their ties are pretty anyway. If you are from Texas, you'll love it. Be sure to read the 'About Us,' as well as browsing the subtle and very cool tie designs.

More later, hopefully with knitting photos. Stitch and Bitch is tonight!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

I have a problem with (most of) the Stars

This should have been dated 2/28/09, last Saturday. If you're not a hockey fan, you can skip this post — you won't care.

I'm a Dallas Stars fan. Saturday night my boy, Steve Ott, got the stuffing beat out of him by Travis Moen of the Anaheim Ducks. At the game's final buzzer, the Anaheim netminder, Jean-Sebastien Giguere, grabbed Ott, got him in a headlock and took his helmet off. Giguere let him go and a whole flock of Ducks descended on Ott. It ended up being Moen who latched on and kept punching him in the head (the reason the helmet had to be removed). This is all fairly standard hockey stuff, except that Ott badly broke his hand last fall and can't fight; everyone in the league knows this. From what I've read, Anaheim fans are pretty proud of Moen whomping up on someone who couldn't fight back. But, really, that's not my point. (And to be fair, when Moen finally tripped and fell to the ice, Ott did a WWF body slam on him and inflicted what damage he could. I'm not claiming he's an innocent bystander.)

My point here is that Ott's team mates were nowhere to be found. No one helped him. That is not standard hockey stuff. This is a serious team sport; that's a very big part of why there are fights in the first place. When hits are a little too hard, or when a valuable team member is targeted too often, the 'enforcers' on the team start to hold their opponents accountable. Except not the Stars, not Saturday night. No one came to help.

I'm so disappointed in the whole team! (And I'm not the only one.) I keep trying to figure out why on earth it happened. Ott's been important to the team this season — why would the rest of the team just ignore a beat down? This is coloring our whole attitude towards the Stars. It's season ticket renewal time, and my husband and I are actually having serious second thoughts.

We'll see how that works out. Maybe we'll get past it. Ott played last night; assuming he doesn't start looking to be traded, maybe the bewilderment and disgust will fade. In any case, here's what I have to say:
Dear Remaining Stars,

There is no 'I' in 'team.' Apparently there's also no 'you.'

Signed,
A Steve Ott fan

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

I have no idea!

Okay, so I'm cruising along, barely keeping up with work, scrambling with housework, but thinking I'm doing okay, then I realize I haven't posted anything here in, like, a year and a half. [sigh] I really didn't realize!

The cousins' visit was fine. They seemed to have a good time. Their bedroom and bathroom were clean, which was all I promised! I did discover a (literal) chink in the new shower door's caulking when I cleaned it prior to their arrival. There was a gap in the bottom caulking, and after running the shower for a minute, we had a little fountain over the edge of the tub. It was up against the wall beside the toilet, in the same place that, a couple of years ago, a leaky fill line sent water under the wall into my office. For days. Maybe weeks. Until I stepped in exactly the right spot and felt the squish.

There was water inside the closet, too. It was not fun.

Fortunately, this time I heard the water running and saw the leak before it spread. It was too late to do anything about it before the cousins got here, but after they left and it dried out, I caulked the heck out of it. As you can see above, I've had all I need of ripping out moldy carpet and soggy padding.

So the only water problem I have to deal with is in the pool, which is empty right now. We had a chemical imbalance that couldn't be fixed, so yesterday we drained the pool (all 20,000 gallons) and today we're refilling. And in a few weeks, we'll be paying the water bill. And paying and paying and paying. An empty pool is kind of cool-looking, though!