The Secret Life of Walter Knitty

It’s usually one way or the other with Michael Moore.  I havent agreed with all the tactics he’s used, but there are times when his humour is just spot on. With the mess our economy is in, this is very timely.

I rode my bike to and from work yesterday.  I’m pretty lucky to live in a city that is so bicycle friendly.  We have the Springwater Corridor which pretty much allows me to go from home to work and not have to deal with cars.

You guys are not going to believe this.

Yesterday, on my way home, I saw a guy who was probably about middle age, overweight, also riding a bike.  He was wearing a grey t-shirt that he had pulled up to his collarbone.

He was wearing a bright pink satin bra that looked like it was stretched across his chest pretty tight.  He was touching the cups as I rode past him.

I wish I had a camera so I could have taken his picture.  I’ll probably never see anything like that, except maybe in a campy drag show, again.

It’s been a rough week in my personal life.  But today, is a need to know if any of you ever drive a Prius.

The law firm has their own car (how nice is that).  They have either a 2008 or 2009 Prius.  I drove it for the first time a couple of months ago and get to drive it again tomorrow.  I dont have a car and rarely drive so driving can be a bit of a harrowing experience, especially if there is a lot of traffic.  Thankfully, I’m taking it at 10 tomorrow morning so there shouldnt be too much traffic in town.

Now, a Prius is not like a regular car.  First off, there is no key.  Yup, you heard me right.  There.  Is.  No.  Key.  There is a fob you stick in the dashboard.  The fob just sits there.  You cant turn it.  There is a power button on the dashboard.  Push it twice to turn the car on.  The shifter to take the car out of park and put it in drive is not where you think it would be.  Where you think it would be is actually the windshield wiper control.  To the right of the steering wheel is a knob that has drive, reverse, and neutral.  Park is not an option.  To put the car in park you have to find the button with the big “P”.  Right now, I dont remember where it is.  It’s somewhere on the dash.  Maybe tomorrow, after my morning driving experience, I’ll let you know where it is.

The car makes no noise when you start it.  The last time I drove it, I sat in the car for a couple of minutes because I didnt know if it was on.  Seriously, it’s that quiet.  Once you push the power button twice, it does turn the car on and it is ready to drive.  All the lights on the dash come on, the radio comes on, and the display screen comes on.  The display screen is kind of neat.  There is a camera in the back of the car.  When you back up it shows what is behind you on the screen.  I’m 5′2″.  This is good for me because sometimes I have a hard time seeing over the back seat and out the window.

This car, surprisingly, has a lot of get up and go.  If you press on the gas, the car does respond.  I’ve only owned 2 cars.  A 1985 Honda Civic, and a 1990 Toyota Tercel.  Neither of these had much get up and go.  The Civic had a lot of personality.  She loved jazz and hated Tool.  Hawkeye was driving her (he always drove her hard.  She was an old girl), listening to Tool.  I had a cd player installed in the car where the face would flip up.  The cd started skipping then the face flipped up and wouldnt come out.  It was several minutes before the face came down and the cd came out.  She wasn’t happy with his selection of music.  Her name was Beulah and I’ll have to do a post about her.  The Prius does not have a personality or a gender.  I dont think it’s old enough.  Anyway, the Prius does have a lot of get up and go, and responds well with little pressure on the gas pedal.

So there you have it.  If you ever drive a Prius, just remember it’s not like a regular car.  And remembering these simple tips will make a professional out of you.

I registered for the Sock Summit today.  I’m taking 3, 3 hour classes:

Dont Knock Knee Socks

Paint Your Toes: Stranded colour knitting for socks

Knitting Happily Ever After: Ergonomics for Knitters

In fall, winter, and spring I’d rather wear knee socks instead of tights or panty hose.  Sometimes when I knit I get sore so an ergonomics class sounded like a good idea.  Maybe then I will learn not to bunch up my left shoulder when I K2tog.

Thank You Mom and Dad for sending me my birthday gift early.

It’s a beautiful day and because you never know how long it’ll last (it’s not the 4th of July yet) we walked to downtown, had lunch, and took the bus home.  On the way home, there was a young woman on the bus with a fussy, hungry baby.  She threw a blanket over her shoulder and proceeded to breast feed her little one right there.  The best part?  No one on the bus batted an eye or said anything.

How cool is that?

Act 1: Because there are two suspected cases of flu in Seattle, some people here at the firm are going nuts.  One of the hospitality girls (the hospitality dpt does things like set up meetings, plan parties, etc) had to go and try to find some hand sanitizer.  Because people are going nuts our boss decided this was important.  She took the car and drove all over Portland.  She went to Costco, Fred Meyer (Fred Meyer is a combo grocery, clothing, electronic, housewares store, kind of like a Super Wal-Mart, with better quality stuff) Walgreen’s, only to find 4 bottles at Babies’R'Us. 

Act 2: The girl who works in the copy room is trying to play a prank on one of the guys who works in the mail room.  She took tissues, wadded them up, and tossed them randomly around his desk.  Her prank didnt work.

Act 3: One of the attorney’s went to Mexico just before the flu broke out on the news.  His assistant took a shower curtain, spray painted the biohazard symbol on it and cut it in straight pieces.  She also made a flier with the heading “This Is What Swine Flu Will Do To You” and put his picture next to a picture of someone dressed up as Ms. Piggy.  There are rubber gloves and a face mask stuck to the outside of his office. 

I wish I had the camera so I could take a picture of the last one for you.  It was pretty darn clever.

I spent most of the day lying on the sofa with a nasty tension headache.  I’ve really got nothing, but I do have this.  I found it when I was sitting at reception at work yesterday: Fir Tree Found In Man’s Lung.  Could you imagine being that guy?  Your doc tells you he thinks you have cancer, opens you up, only to find out you have a 2 inch tree growing in your chest?!  I know you can have fungus grow in your lungs but I always though trees were urban legend.

Gotta go.  Tomato-lentil-veggie soup and home made beer bread for dinner.  BTW, if you’ve never made beer bread give it a go.  It’s super easy and smells wonderful.

There was a post yesterday over at Samurai Knitter about how grains and beans are the foundation of civilization.  It’s true.  Eaten together grains and beans form complete proteins without which we wouldnt be where we are today.

How our ancestors grew their food is just as important as what they grew.  How food is grown has a direct effect on crop and soil health.  If your soil isnt healthy you’re not going grow squat.  Dont forget that dirt is a living thing.  The only reason dirt smells like dirt is because of bacteria.  Dirt is teeming with bacterial and microbial life and it has to be fed and cared for to produce properly.  It’s kind of amazing when you think about it.  Without bacterial, microbial, insect, other invertebrate life nothing will grow.  All that life is what makes soil fertile and what gives soil the nutrients plants need to grow.

Our ancestors were pretty damn smart.  A whole hell of a lot smarter than most modern “civilized” people give them credit for. As an aside, I work with a guy who believes aliens built the pyramids because humans at that time just wernt smart enough.   I dont know how they figured out that crop rotation, letting fields lie fallow, organic fertilizer (dead fish etc) made fertile crops, and happy soil, but they did.  Without that no one, not even aliens, would have been able to build the pyramids.  Those damn heathen In’juns taught farming to the Pilgrims and the men in Jamestown.  Partly so they wouldnt starve and partly so they would quit robbing heathen In’jun graves for grain to eat.

Crop rotation has been around a long time.  Probably about as long as people have been raising crops.  As the name implies crops are rotated during the year or from year to year.  An easy example is corn and soybeans.  Corn (for all it’s deliciousness) is pretty hard on soil.  Corn, like cotton, sucks nutrients out of soil.  Soybeans are a nitrate fixer (nitrate fixers are plants that take nitrogen from the air and fix it into the soil) and replenish what corn takes from the soil.  It’s good for pest control too.  Bugs that love one crop might not like another so much.  Without their favourite food they starve.  Woe be unto them.  Bastards.

The Wikipedia page on crop rotation has an interesting section about crop rotation during the Islamic Golden Age.  Apparently they got pretty scientific about it and wrote down all their observations.  This at a time when Europeans were too busy drowning witches and fighting over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

There are other techniques used in combination with crop rotation that serve the same purpose.  Cover crops for instance.  Red Clover is a good example of a cover crop.  It’s a nitrate fixer, helps prevent erosion, and helps keep water in the soil.  All kinds of plants can be used for cover crops: Buckwheat, red clover, peas, etc.  Cover crops also help with pest control and weed control.  Till them under, free fertilizer.

Letting fields lie fallow for a season or two is a good way to replenish soil nutrients.  Dirt gets tired of producing after a while.  It’s a living thing.  Letting fields lie fallow is a good way of giving it a break.  I saw farming change a little when I was growing up.  Farmers started to let their corn husks and stalks stand in the field through the winter instead of plowing them under.  Prevents soil erosion and improves the quality of the soil.

Ever wonder why farmers plant their rows in wavy lines?  To prevent soil erosion.  In grade school we had DNR people come in and talk about top soil and soil erosion.  The only thing that grew in Iowa before Europeans came was prairie.   God only knows how many years of plant build up there was in that dirt before it saw a plow.  It’s why the dirt there is so black and fertile and why it was so freaking hard to put a plow through.  Lots and lots of roots and plant matter just under the surface.

A good and successful look at this in action is Incan Agriculture.  Those people werent robbing any graves to get their grain.  The Incan empire would not have been possible without their very sophisticated, highly developed farming practices.  Terraced steps, the use of fish for fertilizer, carrying fertile dirt up mountains . . .  Too bad the Spanish had to save those backward, heathen, In’juns from themselves.

The lack of these techniques lead to the conditions that caused the Dust Bowl.  Yeah, there were other environmental factors too.  There was a prolonged drought because there was a change in the flow of the jet stream.  That being said, the farming practices used before and up until that point exacerbated the situation.  There were dust storms that lasted for days.  The Dust Bowl wasnt just in Oklahoma.  It ranged all the way up to the East Coast.  Here are some photos:

Look at  those dust clouds.  Could you imagine that coming toward your home and farm?  I’d be pretty alarmed and scared if something like that was coming toward me or my home.  Other than putting blankets over the windows I wouldnt know what the fuck to do.  Just think about what it must have been like if you couldnt get to shelter and got caught in that.  It’s not like being caught in a rainstorm.  The migration of Okies to CA in the 30’s during the Dust Bowl is still the largest human migration in US History.  Yes, there was a drought.  But, more importantly (imho) years before the drought the agricultural practices were sorely lacking in terms of conservation.  Cotton was intensively grown, and in many areas was the sole crop.  Cotton wreaks havoc on soil if the earth is not given a rest.  It sucks nutrients out of the soil without adding anything to it.  After a while the soil is basically dead.  If soil is abused all the microbial and bacterial life dies.  Without that the worms, other invertebrates and insects that live in the soil die too.  Years without letting fields lie fallow, crop rotation, proper irrigation, etc. left nothing to hold the soil in it’s place.  With the soil basically dead and nothing to hold it together or down on the earth all it takes is a little wind to blow it away.

In order to prevent something this catastrophic from happening again our Government encouraged farmers to engage in practices such as: crop rotation, plowing fields in wavy lines, planting cover crops, letting fields lie fallow, and not plowing their crop under in the winter.  Gasp!  Just what those unsophisticated, heathen, In’juns did so many years ago.

Emms had Mormon missionaries in her neighbourhood a week or two ago.  I shared this story with her and decided to share it here for you all to get a laugh.  Maybe you could use it the next time someone comes to convert you to their religion.

My Dad is pretty handy.  He can hang dry wall, do some wiring, plumbing, one summer he and his brothers built a garage, any remodeling they wanted done Dad did as much as he could with our help before calling in a contractor.  He has the whole set of Time Life how to books and taught himself to build a deck.

When I was a teenager my parents decided to remodel the bathroom.  The day Dad was going to take the cast iron tub out some Jehova’s came by sell him their religion.  He told them “If you help me get this God damn mother fucking tub out of here I’ll listen to what you have to say!”  He said the woman looked pretty stunned but they never came back.

Because it’s National Poetry month and it’s been so busy at work I’ve got nothing here’s Langston Hughes “Negro Speaks of Rivers”

The Washington Post has their 3rd annual Peeps diorama.  Check it out.  I like the Bernie Madoff one, but also the Escher, and I think my favourite is the Peep recreation of “Nightmare at 20,000 feet“

My Mom’s birthday is next month.  I started a pair of socks for her.  Last year I made her some socks out of some self patterning yarn that was sitting in the stash.  She thought it was pretty amazing.  This year she’s getting these socksfrom Knitty.  In green because that’s the colour she said she liked.