Lincoln vs. Douglas it ain't...

But I guess everyone has to start somewhere. And seriously, what's gonna get a few hundred geeky high school students more riled up than a debate on the above? I assume you can't read the fine print, so here it is for your amusement:

"Seattle high school students invite fans of all ages to attend this major debate at The Seattle Public Library, Central Library-Level 1, Microsoft Auditorium on Saturday, March 21 from 4 pm to 5:30 pm. Special snacks for vamps and wizards! Trivia! Prizes! Only one series will emerge as the winner! The Great Debate is sponsored by Seattle Public Library and Team Read (www.teamread.org).

I'm almost tempted to go, if only to see the hordes of kids who I'd love to visualize turning up to cheer their side on. Will fights break out in the hallway? Will they be quoting solely from their beloved texts or from literary journals? Will box office pull factor into the mix?

Yet another freaking blog...

I'm starting it over here:

Homey Economic

If anyone has ideas for topics on here or wants to create a post for it, gimme a holla!

Into every career some cheese must fall

Kenneth Brannagh in his early days--playing a pansy privileged Brit who turns into a man thru enforced labor on an Australian sheep farm...found this footage pretty amusing.

Unfortunately embedding has been disabled on this one. Sorry!

Check it out.

I found a dream...that I could speak to...

I'm a sap, I admit it. Not the biggest Beyonce fan, but I thought she did good here. And how great it is to see their undiluted happiness? Won't last long as the pressures of one of the toughest jobs on the planet makes itself manifest. But I gotta say as a selfish citizen, I feel a lot better with Barack Obama at the helm than anyone else at the moment.

The other landmark for me:



Oh man. The thing that kills me about this is that Seeger mostly doesn't *sing* the song--he's more busy listening to everyone else singing it, and feeding the audience the lines. So great.

In the squares of the city
By the shadow of the steeple
by the relief office
I saw my people
as they stood there hungry
I stood there whistling:
"This land is made for you and me."

The refrain of our generation, ladies and gentlemen.

From Sid and Nancy:

It's called bargaining

I made white cake cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting for Steve's birthday (and mine too if I can make 'em last that long). The recipes for both are from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. The white cake is one of my all-time faves, very easy to mix up, a tasty texture, and lo-cholesterol because it only uses egg whites instead of whole eggs.

But that still doesn't mean I should have more than one a day, especially since I made Steve biscuits with sausage gravy for his birthday breakfast yesterday morning. And red wine risotto with a lot of butter and cheese in it (and some raddichio) for his bday dinner. I mean, enough's enough, right?

So...maybe I'll have a beer instead. Once I've had one more glass of water to make sure I stay hydrated. That'll counteract the beer. Somewhat. I....guess.

Knitting injury

So I'm knitting a sweater that has been the bane of my existence--but I'm learning a lot. I keep going on to ravelry (kinda a facebook for knitters) to look at pictures from all the other people knitting this same sweater. There's more than 1,000 of people who've posted pix of their versions of the sweater up there right now.

But I've been making slooow progress, and was blithely knitting away with bamboo needles , when all of a sudden I pushed the needle a little too hard--and a bamboo sliver shoved its way into my index finger. And because the bamboo was pretty pale it was impossible to get out. This happened about a week ago and the sliver is still sitting in my finger. Doesn't really bother me too much and I'm keeping an eye on it--it's slooowly working its way out.

Unfortunately it changed the way I held my hands as I knitted, and yesterday I noticed some carpal tunnel symptoms emerging, to the point where I felt pain traveling all the way up my arm. I'm on a knitting fast for a couple days until it clears up (it already feels a lot better) but I want to pick up that damn sweater so bad. It's calling to me, I swear! Man.

Maybe I can hold out one more day...