The Marci Rating System

Found the level app on my phone, can confirm that all four shelves in the lil' shelving unit are 100% level. (Well, they're all a zero on the level app, which means 100% level. Because that's how math works!)

Which is wild because that means that I guess the shelves were maybe just made that way? With a bit of a lean! No judgement here, they look great!

(There are surely other explanations, but none that are as funny. To me, personally.)

Usually I do my grocery store trip on Sundays. This week I did the Sunday trip, and then -- on Tuesday -- discovered that I did not, in fact, have another box of tissues tucked away in the cupboard under the sink. Since this is a particularly sniffly time of year for me, tissues are kind of an important thing to have available. At the moment of this discovery, SEVERAL very logical and common-sense actions would have made sense:

*go to a store and buy tissues
*order tissues online and have them delivered
*ask starandrea if they had any tissues

I did NONE of these things!

NO, I thought to myself. I CAN DO THIS MY WAY. I often tuck tissues in my sweatshirt and coat pockets during the winter season, so I knew FOR SURE there were some around. (Luckily, this FOR SURE was more accurate than my prediction that I still had another box of tissues under the sink.) ALSO I was PRETTY SURE there were those little pocket packs of tissues stashed in multiple backpacks, travel kits, etc.

ANYWAY it is now Saturday and I have not yet run out of tissues (again). Just 24-ish more hours to go until my weekly shopping trip! HECK YEAH I GOT THIS.

(Note: there was absolutely NO REASON for me to do this, except that it's the sort of low-stakes challenge that can be fun and silly and why not do it, really?)

BIG NEWS I am now decreasing on both sides of the blanket! We are in the final phase!

(Okay, so here's my less-than-coherent description of how a rectangular corner-to-corner blanket works, for when my future self has forgotten what I'm talking about. Note to my future self: really any youtube video demonstrating it would probably be more helpful than this.

First Phase: TEENY TINY CORNER expands on both sides, making a triangle! It makes the blanket get equally wider and taller at the same time.

Second Phase: ONE side keeps expanding, while the OTHER side starts decreasing. In a delightfully magical* consequence, this means the blanket stays the same width and still gets 'taller.' This is the rectangle bit, even though the shape during this phase is an increasingly-awkward four-sided polygon.

FINAL PHASE: Once the blanket is as tall as you want, BOTH sides decrease, filling in the remaining triangle of space to make a rectangle!)

[*I suspect this is not actually a magical consequence, but rather something to do with how shapes work. My understanding of how shapes work is not strong, so it seems astonishing and mysterious to me. Luckily, I live in an era where I don't have to figure out my own blanket patterns, but can instead receive free instruction from the internet and follow along on faith until I figure out what's going on.]

My brain is stuck in crochet mode right now, so we're just gonna hang out there for a while. Today/tomorrow I'm hoping to wrap up a lap blanket I'm working on using a fleecy yarn. I mostly did it to practice my left-handed stitches, and because I liked the fleecy yarn just the right amount to hit that spot of 'I want to use this right now' versus 'I want to save this for something I'll surely think of someday.'

And then the NEXT projects will begin! OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH new projects!!!

Okay, so in regular sized yarn (like a 4 weight) I'm hoping to do a blanket using knotted half-double crochet. Which means 1) remembering how to do that stitch (aka go watch a youtube video); and 2) testing it out so I can figure out a good way to alternate hands. (I think I'll probably be able to do right-right-left-left, but I want to try it first.)

And in big yarn (like a 6 weight, I think?) I want to try doing a corner-to-corner blanket, which will be brand new to me. But I watched a youtube video about doing a C2C blanket using the silt stitch, which seemed cool and relatively easy. WE'LL SEE!

Do I definitely have enough yarn to at least get started with both of those projects? Definitely yes. Will that stop me from buying more yarn? Absolutely not.

Back in January, when I requested the time off for our eclipse trip, I thought about just taking Monday and Tuesday. Technically, we'll be coming back on Tuesday, so I could work on Wednesday.

But then I figured it would be nice to have a post-trip recovery day, and a chance to do all the chores I didn't do while we were away.

Now I wish I'd also requested this Friday off, because what is packing? Why does it take so long? I'm convinced that I'm bringing both too much stuff and also am missing some critical item that I'll wish I had with me. ANYWAY this is not a terrible problem to have, and I'm sure it'll all work out. Onwards!

I've been doing the woobles crochet advent calendar, which has been A JOURNEY. (WHY are none of my spheres spherical?!?) But also fun, because it's not like they NEED to be spherical.

And any time there's a project I don't feel like doing, I just use the yarn to make something else! I DO WHAT I WANT, THOR. (Can we still use that one? I feel like it's one of those 'it's an older meme, but it checks out' situations, even though it's now over ten years old. HOW?!?)

[PS: Fun crochet fact, I was seeing a lot of chatter about yarn over vs yarn under, so I watched some youtube videos about it. (Seriously, internet videos have made learning stuff so much easier!) And the woobles teaches yarn over/yarn over, but as I was skeptically squinting at the yarn under/yarn over video, I was like 'isn't that the same thing???' Anyway, no, it's not, but that's what I was doing. Now I think it's possible my stitches are some weird amalgamation of yo/yo and yu/yo, which is VERY LIKEKLY one of the reasons my spheres aren't spherical. Ah well, it's the joy of the learning process!]

SO! Last time I was in the shower, I was all 'hmm, feels like the shampoo is getting low, I should put it on the list for my next order.' SHOCKINGLY I actually remembered to add it to the list when I got out of the shower. (A minor miracle!)

Then I was browsing around the vitacost site dropping things in my cart and checking what's on sale, and I thought 'isn't shampoo on my list now? I'll grab some.'

BUT! The brand of shampoo I like has stopped making the variety I like! (I have 'learned' this several times, each time I go looking for something from that line. It just doesn't stick in my head the way some things do.)

And I thought 'what about that new conditioner that's in the shower? I'll just get the shampoo from whatever that brand is.' (IN MY DEFENSE: I am very, very near-sighted, and can't actually read any of the bottles in the shower unless I hold them really close to my face. It's mostly bottle color and muscle memory.)

Perhaps it is obvious to guess the conclusion of this story. Perhaps the most funny part is HOW LONG it took me to figure it out. Because I got all the way through scanning my order history, noting the brand, searching the brand, and seeing one of the options clearly say BUY AGAIN? before it occurred to me. 'Wait,' I thought. 'I've done this before. That bottle in the shower IS shampoo.'

Yep. I have two shampoos in the shower right now, because one of them is getting low, a problem I've already resolved, but kudos to me for trying to solve it again, I guess? Turns out it also works great as a conditioner. You know, if I happen to get them mixed up again.

Soooo... we are going on a trip later this week, which I'm very excited about! We have friends joining us for this trip, which is also very exciting! Said friends will be staying over at our house the night before and night after the trip (extremely logical choice; I support it) and my brain has just suddenly realized that it has no idea what to make of that situation.

We've never had guests here! (I also never had guests at my apartment. Seven years! No guests! I am also now realizing that this says some things about me as a person, things which perhaps I had not intended to discuss in this post.)

The point is, what do guests need??? Towels??? Blankets??? Food??? Truly, the mind boggles. I have zero frame of reference for this. Clearly I am about to have a week full of learning!

[PS: They'll be fine. I have complete confidence in our ability to provide a reasonably adequate guest experience. ]

My brain has moved on from soup to static, and I'm not sure if that's an improvement or not? It feels pretty quiet up there.

(In probably-unrelated news, I've been trying to figure out recently whether or not I've got ringing in my ears or if it's just A Noise I Can Hear. Could be either, really.)

Our back deck has a very nice sliding glass door and sliding screen door (where "very nice" means "there's a few issues but none that have caused enough concern to get a professional to look at them," which is in fact the ultimate high bar in home ownership).

And ever since we moved in, the screen door especially has been a little hard to move. I watched some videos about ways to address the issue, which were mostly helpful in the sense of reassuring me that MANY people want to know why their sliding screen doors don't slide very well. (Some sliding screen doors are on little wheels in the track! Neat! Ours does not have little wheels. It apparently moves purely by willpower and luck.)

I saw a lot of recommendations for a WD-40 Gel Lubricant, which we applied a few times with varying effects. (aka it worked fantastically well for the first day or so, and then increasingly poorly as it got gummed up with all that outdoor stuff) It wasn't an ideal sensory experience, and then it was also a pain to clean out of the track again before reapplying.

ANYWAY I recently had the brilliant (haha time will tell) idea to try using silicone treadmill lubricant instead, which has no smell and is clear. The internet informed me I probably wasn't making a terrible mistake, though I may have gotten myself a demerit at work for looking up 'how to clean silicone lubricant' on my work computer. (I did quickly add the word 'treadmill' to the search, but by that point the damage had been done.)

IN CONCLUSION! It worked great on the inner door track, and so far I'd say has been more effective for longer on the outer screen door track than the WD-40. WHO KNEW??? I did not. But now I do! (Also it's only been like, a week. Long term results may vary, as they say.)