Hilary Booth... of course!

So I've fallen off a little on my Stitching Olympics. I mostly blame being so tired after work.

Last night I finished Ink Circles' Quackworth 2007 during the women's marathon. It felt more like a middle distance race than a real marathon, but oh well, I'm not complaining.

Again I'm using HDF Bitterness on a 32ct Belfast cream linen.

( Quackworth 2007 )

Here are my Stitching Olympics galleries.

*blinks* Wow. After stitching steadily throughout the weekend coverage, I finished one page of Quackworth already! (Ok, it's only two pages long, but still...) I'm going to finish this *a lot* faster than I'd planned.

( Stitching Olympics progress )

Teaching Company is at it again. In time for the 2008 Olympics, they've released a pair of specially commissioned lectures on Ancient Origins of the Olympic Games.

I finished the latest part of the Book of Ink Circles. Maybe it was 4th of July, but I kept quoting a certain sequence in "1776". See if you agree:

( We're waiting for the egg to hatch... )

With the Olympics coming, cross_stitch is starting their Stitching Olympics. Basically you set goals for yourself at various gold/silver/bronze level for different types of projects. If you finish, you win! I'm debating which projects to include. Once I have fabric, I want to do Ink Circles "Quackworth" and I really want to finish my fox tote bag I started years ago. I just can't figure out who to use for the third one. "Garden Verses" is huge. I'd need nearly another four years to finish that one. I need to look through the old projects. I know I'll be visiting Scarlet Thread for one piece of fabric.

Laura Branigan is dead from a brain aneurysm. She was 47.

The Olympics are over. Now we can wait for athletes to hit the slopes and ice in Torino. Bejing sounds like they're excited for the next Summer Games if they're ahead of schedule preparations are any indication.

All things considered, it wasn't a bad birthday. I have tokens of 'steem from friends and relatives. I have a Borders gift card I need to spend. I had a late dinner with a good friend where I could relax a little. I don't know why this birthday has made me so down. Feeling more alone than usual, I guess.

I'm still irritated with the DVR. Sometimes the sound records properly and sometimes I get gobbledygook. With the soaps, at least they have reairings later at night. But when it messed up my Bravo Olympic coverage of the modern pentathlon for both men and women, I was quite utterly miffed. This is a sport I've been fascinated with for awhile, but had never seen actual coverage of. Five sports in one day And now I have no commentary, no pearls of wisdom, no "this is really good, watch this!" alerts. Color me snarky, but the Russian men's winner, you pick up the flag for the victory strut after you finish the race.

Oh, for the writers on my flist, 500_a_day has opened. Write 500 words a day to keep up your writing momentum. I've promised to post twice this week as part of my goals. Since gooberfishbowl will be Fearless Leader next week for CVS with the WorldCon exodus, I won't have anywhere to hide.

In spite of having the best lottery number in years, I was still put on the Media West waiting list. Boo hiss.

In the practicing random acts of nostalgia: katemonkey has started a review blog Insert Girl's Name Here, reviewing the Sunfire romances. Remember these? Each featured one particular heroine torn between two men during some historical period. She has also started a LJ feed at sunfire_books.

The Olympics seriously rocked last night. ( I can't hear myself for the screaming )

Again from the library. I just spent a long hour on the phone with Dell Computers. First I needed to extend the warranty on the desktop, since it would nearly be expired by the time I decided to do anything about the monitor issues. Then I dealt with tech support. Now I've heard the horror stories. I've heard the stories of tech support by way of New Delhi or Bangalor. And yes, that much was true. My situation was sadly worsened by my own clumsiness. I was nearing the end of my first call and I nearly had a replacement monitor out of the call when I dropped the phone which disconnected me. I called back and nearly had to go through the entire plugging and checking stuff as before. Theoretically I should have a new monitor in a few days. Hopefully that will solve things. Hopefully.

Olympics was draining last night. I knew the US men leading was too good to be true. Oddly I'm quite pleased for the Japanese team and thrilled for our American boys. I still can't tell the difference between the Hamm twins. I had to memorize the bib numbers. I'm noticing the skills I miss from the old days, like the Thomas flair on the pommel horse. I think it was Nemov who used to do the trailing flair down the length of the horse and it was so cool to watch. I am annoyed about the "boycotted year" thing though. The US men in 1984 had to beat the Japanese and Chinese men in those Olympics. That gold was no gimme. I also kept thinking "Has it really been 20 years?" I was still thinking of my own Olympic dreams back then. I remember Mary Lou Retton storming down the vaulting track to launch herself into history.

GIP! I decided to turn this into my underwater archaeology icon. Very apt choice, after watching a program on National Geographic's "Mysteries of the Deep", which featured two wrecks. The first one was a classical Greek ship off the coast of Turkey at Tektaş Burnu. That one fascinated me because the team was led by George Bass from Texas A&M's Institute of Nautical Archaeology. The other ship was the 17th century Swedish warship called the Kronan lost in the Baltic. Because of the Baltic's lack of shipworms, the divers brought up some glorious pieces of ornate woodwork.

Good wishes to my parents and other Floridians who are facing Charley who turned into a Category 4 Hurricane. I looked at the radar on the Weather.com just now and there isn't much of the state showing right now.

I thought of my PotC fans and the Slayers campaigners while reading Crossgen's "El Cazador", their gorgeous pirate comic. A pity the company is filing bankruptcy, so they won't at least release a trade.

The Olympics start tonight, so I'll probably be curled up in front of the tv, watching the opening ceremonies. After that, who knows what events I'll catch. I tend to watch less of the Summer Games than the winter ones.