Those amusing Floridians...

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/13861456.htm

The Sock

This is me (in my new kitchen) looking adoringly at my perfectly fitting, but perhaps not perfectly formed, sock. Please note how shiny my hair still is despite giving up gloss colouring.

I'm working on the other one now. It took me a while to remember how to cast on. Although I'm still not sure if I did this correctly, I'm proceeding with the sock anyway. It seems to be holding together.

My Arms Hurt

Went up the hill all this weekend.

Saturday:
A trad cliff ticking off more easy classics:
The Carthaginian, a two pitch grade 15 (5-7+), was super easy, even for a 15.
The first pitch of Joseph, 12 (5-6)
The Great Unwashed, 10 (5-5), which was awesome – is a flaring open corner/with a small chimney section
The Bonatti Crack, 10 (5-5), which is very short but only features a crack, that goes through an overhang. About 5 grades harder than the Cartheginian.

Retired for a "wine tasting" evening in celebration of the Big Kev's 40th birthday that was about two weeks ago. I made an array of excellent salads that I stored in an Esky full of ice from the night before. I ate gluten free organic beef sausages until my eyes popped out and some bitch baked a brie with maple syrup and almonds that I was forced to eat most of. Jeanie, Julian (the new sailor boyfriend), Kev, Catherine (who is not Kev's girlfriend apparently.., Pommie Mick, Penny, Mikl, and I, all had blind wine tastings where we got blind. Jeanie and Julian kicked us out of the Hartley Vale School house so they could have what we can only imagine to be noisy sex, and Mikl and I camped in the yard and got woken early by crazy cockatoos.

Sunday:
Adventure new route:

9-pitch grade 18 (5-9) new sports route in the Grose Valley with Mikl.

Access : Walk in 30 mins, do two abseils, bash another 10 mins around the base of the cliff.

We swung leads, but the rock was covered in dirt and sand from the extensive cleaning and drilling (which will wash off in the next storm) and the smaller footholds were often crumbly and liked to disappear from under me. All this is fine for those taller folks with good fingers (Mikl), but for those trying to use their feet instead of hands (me) it was kind of nerve-wrecking. Besides, I haven’t climbed that much in ages. The top three pitches are consistent grade 17 jug-hauling up a vertical wall, but this goes on for about 80m and I thought my arms were going to fall off. Besides, we left all the bolting gear and ropes out there on pitch 4, so we had to haul stuff. All together Mikl and I had the lead rope, a skinny hauling rope attached to a bag with shoes and water in it, a 100m static rope, an old fluffy 50m dynamic rope, two other skinny ropes, and the drill. So my arms are a wee bit sore today, and I have NO SKIN at all.

Skipped my weight lifting class with Jo today in favour of a Thai food for lunch with Jims (Jemima). Finished off the first draft of the bloody proposal for money from the government. Yay!

Give me the money!!!

The latest thing for me is that I am adjusting to working at a university instead of a research institute in a country that invests in science and research. All this means is that I have to beg with the Australian government for them to part with multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars to support me in my quest for science. There isn't, however, a simple sytem whereby I can ask for money and they can say yes or no, but a complicated system of proposing research whereby you are required to suffer from an extreme overinflation of how good you and your friends are, and how you will chnage the world thus propelling Oz into stardom and a position of internmational envy. This apparently happend every year, where researchers ask for 3 or 5 years worth of money and reapply every year for more to stash away for the many times they are rejected. So far I have spent one solid week writing mine, which is looking very full of itself and in my opinion suffers from a feasibity flaw. Changing the world is a big claim.

We have aquired a variety of interesting furniture from council pick ups, where people throw out unwanted pieces because they are truly crap, or (these are the ones we go for) are hideously ugly but in perfect working order or fail to fit in with the new colour scheme. Our little house is looking more homely, but nowhere near completed. We also built a bed in the guest room, with plently of storage underneath, which involved much swearing.

Good sock news. After locating a knitting shop with older ladies keen to solve my problem, I prompty went home and worked the sock knitting dilemma out all by myself. I later recieved am email from karin instructing that I had done exactly the right thing. I am now happily zipping through the foot of the sock, and all should go well for at least a few days.

In interesting other news, our back neighbours had very loud sex and apparently are both screamers. It really was a carry on that amused for 5 minutes, and then got really silly. Who cares if everybody knows your having sex? Have a couple of screams and then get on with it.

Sock Probs

Ok, so I have been knitting a sock. I have done the leg, turned the heel, and have no fucking idea what a heel flap is. I need to transfer 15 stitches from the heel onto another needle according to the pattern (I also have 30 stitches on the other needle at this point), but the problem is that I only have 17 stitches in total on this needle to begin with. Hence my dilemma.

HELP