every cloud has a silver lining!

Gentle Reader:

Well, today I feel a bit too Pollyannaish (Pollyanish?) for my liking, but touch wood my fortunes seem to have reversed since the gloom and doom that was Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

How so?

First: remember this?



(I should note that I incorrectly characterised this yesterday as a Moebius shoulder. It is actually a double twist shoulder. Or is that a triple axle? Why do I feel as though I'm watching figure skating?!)

...which I then turned into this with the creative use of some scissors (eek!) and some frogging?


Well, I'm pleased to announce that it has now morphed into this!




And I managed to finish the buttonband last night. (Note that Little Ms Type A came out hollering and screaming "You should be finished the whole thing by now, you lazy twit! But Doug McKenzie came along to save the day. He said:

"Take off, eh?"

And off she took, prissy little wench that it is.

Second: on Tuesday I went looking for this book at Big Box Small-Bookstore-Eating Starbucks-Pushing Conglomerate Chain Bookstore Which Shall Remain Nameless, while at the Eaton Centre (a place I completely detest, by the by. I think of it as the High Temple to the Almighty Dollar.).

Did they have it? Did they, hell, as JJ is wont to say. To add insult to injury, when I looked to see if any other stores carry it (because there are probably five thousand or so in the GTA) the screen said "ZERO available in Toronto". Oh, come on!!

As far as I can tell, this chain specializes in carrying the million books that I do not wish to read, and none that I do.

Except, however, this one:

So I bought it. (insert hiss of cat o' nine tails in the hair as I flog myself mercilessly on the back. I'm such a hypocrite.) It cheered me up immensely once I started to read it. Get a copy. And visit her blog, too.

Anyway, yesterday I had a brainstorm: why not call up Pages and see if they had gotten any in yet.

Yes! It came in the day before!!

So, after work, off I trotted merrily (and ajing jing jingling too, I think...) to Pages to snap up a copy. I also found this there:

It even has instructions for how to convert an old manual typewriter (remember typewriters? If not, you may be too young to read this blog!) into a computer keyboard. Very cool.

(Lest you wonder where Good Kristina is hiding herself during this spending spree, I should advise you that books do not count. They're educational, after all.)

I then went back to the dreaded Eaton Centre to visit the Apple Store with my busted iPod that some wanker destroyed when splashing me with his/her SUV the other day. This visit contained an object lesson for me. I went in prepared for an argument (or at least a good rant) on the topic of "The thing breaks after nine months after being splashed with a little bit of water? It cost $160.00!!! Do you not think that is an extraordinary short life cycle, even by the shoddy standard of modern electronics?!?"

Instead, I was told that my warranty still covered it - and they gave me a new one! One would think that, as a lawyer, I keep receipts and documents for large purchases and would have known this before stewing about it for two days. One would be wrong, though.

(I feel compelled to say, however, that I find the Apple Store completely depressing. I remember going to the arcade when I was a kid - do they still have arcades, by the way? For half a roll of quarters you could amuse yourself for hours and hang out with other kids. It strikes me that the Apple Store is the 21st century version of the arcade... except that no-one is socialising and everyone is being sold big ticket items, including $300.00 [$300.00!!!] earphones for your iPod. Bang&Olaffson headphones, mind you.)

So, all's well that ends well (touch wood).

And, today I'm taking this with me to ultra-boring legal seminar number 57 of the year:

Hee hee hee.

On the downside, it's still "-7 C feels like -14 C". Oh well. If life were perfect, it would be very, very boring indeed (or so I keep telling myself...)

And, you'll be glad to know that the Encyclopaedia Britannica was first published on this day in 1738. (Do you think it has knitting patterns in it? Hmm...)

I remain,

yr humble servant, kristina