Awake

This and That

The other day I pulled out an unfinished scarf that I had started in the Fall. I had made it too wide, the colors weren't exactly what I wanted, I didn't have enough of one of the colors to finish it, and I thought it was a waste of the good Alpaca yarn to stitch it into something that brought me no joy. I had crocheted a very thin and somewhat coarse sock yarn together with a very soft Alpaca wool (courtesy of an Alpaca named Kirra in Hood River, Oregon) and when I pulled it out, it created a tangled mess. There was no way to keep it from tangling without any help, so I just let it gnarl together and spent over 2 hours untangling it. In the end, I only had to cut and discard a very small length of the Alpaca yarn. I am glad that I salvaged the deliciously soft Alpaca yarn instead of leaving it disconcertingly in an unfinished project. I wonder what I will create with it instead.

I discovered last night that the independent downtown Ashland Varsity Theatre doesn't share its showtimes with anyone except catheatres.com. Not even Google knows what times movies play there! It's true, I should have figured it out long before now. I always thought that it couldn't be the case that both theatres showed the same movies at the same time according to Google. But the power of the Google brand overthrew my intuition and as I arrived to find the Varsity oddly void of people, I just had to ask, "Is Coraline playing here?" The answer was no. Still waylaid by the power of the Google, I pulled out my printout of the Google movie showtimes results ("But it says here...!") and was then informed that they only share their movie showtimes with catheatres.com (and only them). Google, for whatever reason, instead of showing no results for The Varsity, extrapolated the Ashland Street Cinemas' showtime onto The Varsity. (Shakes head and sighs and returns home.)

Meanwhile, while I wait to be in the mood to go to the movie theatre (maybe Thursday I'll be ready), I'm crocheting some little flowers for my beanie hat. I made a beanie just like this for my ex and had tried it on after I finished it and loved the way it felt and fit. (More alpaca yarn...my favorite. We had found it in a yarn shop in Boerne, Texas when I had visited over Thanksgiving.) It's a medium gray, though, and not very girly. So I'm adding some flowers to it so I can wear it and feel girlish and not like a bank robber or a 15-year-old boy. It's amazing what flowers can do for a girl.

Today I finished listening to Donald Miller read his book Blue Like Jazz. I'm glad that I decided to listen instead of read this particular book. It was just the right kind of encouragement served up just the way I needed it. And his living in Portland felt like he was a "friend-of-a-friend" instead of some faceless name. It's not a book for everybody, but today, it was a book for me. Thanks, Don. And, thanks, Jesus.