I am finally back in WI and it's freezing up here. I've checked into the hotel and had a nice hot shower to get warmed up and de-hogged, and will be walking over to Appleby's once I am certain my hair and beard are totally dry. As cold as it is out there any dampness would freeze immediately. I did manage to finish up the camo watch cap last night. It's nothing fancy, just a basic cap made with camo yarn. It fits perfectly and is quite warm. I'll be taking it easy here tonigh...

Ok, this is one really ugly hat. I wanted to learn how to work with more than one color and make more interesting designs, which entails learning the stranding technique in knitting. This hat is my practice project to learn the technique and practice it a bit. I didn't follow any sort of pattern, I just made it up as I went along, thus the ugly hat LOL. I did learn a lot doing it though.

Ok, time to change calendars, write the wrong date on checks, and generally adjust to another arbitrary numerical change in our measure of that illusion called time. Any excuse for a party I suppose. May the upcoming trip around the sun bring each and every one of you health, happiness, and blessings of all kinds. May friendships grow stronger, the tax man lose your address, and fortune smile upon you every day. Or not.

I haven't cooked a pot of pinto beans in ages but today it just sounded good. They're on the stove cooking with some cubed salt pork, onion, and garlic. They been simmering on the stove for a couple of hours now and are smelling pretty damn good. I think when they are getting close to ready later today I'll make some rice to go with them. I considered making cornbread, but my cornbread never does turn out as well as I would like, and I never have liked the mix stuff, so I think I'll just s...

One of the knitting forums I frequent got attacked by some damn spammer trying to sell cell phones. I truly despise these people and hope there is an especially brutal spot in Hell reserved for these asshats.

I found a great tee shirt that I need to order. It should cut down on some of the dumb questions I sometimes get while knitting in truckstops. Link

OK, I know that tech support spends most of their time dealing with complete morons. I get that and they are trained accordingly, but they should at least make an effort to put people into those support positions that at least have a small clue about the system they are supposed to be supporting. Come on! For at least the past couple of weeks the dsl signal here has been dropping out every few minutes. Just enough to screw up downloads, watching of videos, and online chatting. It's extreme...

I made a couple of hats as Christmas gifts. They turned out ok I guess.

For those who observe the Christmas holiday with gift exchanges, what is that one thing that you are really hoping to get? Maybe it's more than one thing. Maybe it's something you haven't even mentioned to a potential gift giver but secretly would like to get. So, JU, let's have it. What do you want for Christmas? I'll start it off. Some really nice yarn. A knitting book by Elsebeth Lavold titled Viking Patterns For Knitting

Wow, some folks got some cheap gas in WI. Link

As I will probably be leaving out on the road again tomorrow I am basically using up the groceries I have on hand. I was looking through the fridge and cupboards trying to decide what to make for dinner. I had the ingredients for baked beans and some ground chuck. Hmmmmm. Ok, I whipped up the makings for the baked beans, browned the chuck in some green and red bell peppers, onion, and red pepper. I then mixed it into the prepped beans and popped the whole mess into the oven. I really didn'...

I just saw a news story on the idiot box about a truck driver that was involved in four separate accidents in Tampa yesterday resulting in the death of one person. They named the intersection where the fatality occurred and something just hit me as wrong about the story. A bit of quick Googling for the news story both cleared it up as well as angered me a bit. The 'truck driver' wasn't a trucker at all but was a guy driving a pickup. The way the story was given on the newscast gave the dis...

We had a cold front pass through sunny Florida. The temps, which had been running above average, are now down in the low 60s with very low humidity. It's quite nice. Where I had been running the air conditioning yesterday to knock down the humidity I have now shut that down and opened the windows to allow the nice fresh air to circulate through the house. It's quite comfortable if just a tad chilly. The high for today is predicted to be in the upper 60s or low 70s and the humidity is suppo...

Just in case you're really bored. Link

Dinner is cooking and it smells great. I tend to experiment with different improv recipes when I am home. Tonight I am working on a sort of goulash kinda thing that I threw together and if it tastes half as good as it smells it's going to be a treat. I browned some lean ground beef, combined that with some elbow macaroni, tomato sauce, petite cut Roma tomatoes, finely diced white onion, finely diced red and green peppers, finely diced half clove of garlic, a dash of red pepper, a dash of ...