Vacation Recap, Episode 2: All the Other Stuff, Plus What I Forgot The First Time Around

Let's see. We flew into Ontario airport, met up with The Rest of the Fam and headed straight for Disneyland. I don't really have a huge amount to say other than we had a great time, enjoyed ourselves immensely, and that if a picture is worth 1000 words, then my Flickr set is worth about a quarter of a million.

Highlights? Well, if you insist!

Doing our time

The Three Alexanders (yes, three Alexanders, they say they are birds of a feaaaatheeeer)

Self-portrait

She was very perplexed by my existence.

THB's best girl-catching face

So yea, Disney was awesome as usual. Plus I got a bunch of crying baby pictures, which is a double-bonus. What can I say, I've been to Disneyland a bunch of times, and it gives me something to do!

OH! Guess what!!! Take a look over at the sidebar of WIP's and tell me if you can see what's missing. I'll give you a hint - it's something that has been there pretty much for-ev-er. And it's donedonedone! A virtual cookie for the first person to figure it out!

Also, I finished my Papa Socks. They're sort of unphotographable (Mozilla doesn't think that "unphotographable" is a word, but phooey on Mozilla!), but I'll try. For now, I'm claiming my yardage: 361. I'm going to bundle them up to send to Alaska tomorrow.

And I've been working on my Scarf #21 (Rav link for Cathy!). I'm thisclose to having the bloody center repeat memorized, and I'd say I'm about 1/2 way done with the body. Once I get pretty close to running out of yarn, I'll just graft the second end piece on, and block, and voila! Done! I have noticed, however, that it's difficult to judge how many inches I've put on the stole in a sitting. I've reached that interminable point in the ball of yarn where it doesn't seem to be getting smaller - even when I've been knitting steadily for an hour or more. So I've taken to putting a locking stitch marker on at the beginning of my knitting session, and now I can admire how much I'm getting done with perfect accuracy. I'd take pictures, but it really looks exactly the same as last time I showed it to you - only now it's a bit longer.

Let's see, what else? ManCandy and I have spent the last week scratching our heads as to how Panza is getting off of our netted-in porch. We pushed on all the slats, wired the outer door shut despite the fact that Panza won't push open a regular door (he's a bit of a wuss), and used IKEA technology to secure the netting even more.. securely... to the stucco wall. Meanwhile, the litter boxes are in the living room and neither kitty can go outside without direct supervision. Tonight we opened the porch and let them outside to see if we could figure out how the little pooper is getting outside - there had to be a cat-sized hole somewhere!

And there was. The netting leaves a space about 1.5 feet between its top and the porch roof. He's been climbing the porch support posts, hauling all of his 15 pounds over the netting, and jumping down onto the concrete. Now I know I should have probably thought of this before, but I've never had a cat that climbed things. I know they like to go up trees and such for fun, but none of my felines has ever been inclined that way, including Panza. But apparently the lure of the Great Outdoors was enough, and now we need more netting and an industrial staple gun before they can go outside again. Bloody cats!

Mr. Darcy, I feel it necessary to add, has made no attempts to climb fence posts. He says it might wreck his nails.

I came home to a bunch of presents! And then I opened them, and it was just like Christmas without the turkey and the quiet contemplation of the tree in the middle of the night and the gifts you don't really like. So I guess it wasn't like Christmas much, but I did get to unwrap stuff!
Can you guess what these are?

They unwrapped to become this:
You're looking at the aftermath of the Crown Mountain Farms sale I mentioned before I headed to Mom's, and it completely erased any vestigial sadness I felt about spinning up more of my CMF stash. Now all I need to do is spin thinner so I can get 1000 yards out of 4 ounces like Miss Alice Faye! I think I just need to dedicate 4 ounces of nice stuff to get better at spindle spinning. Maybe I'll go digging and do that now instead of school work...