The temperature is too damn high!

Yup. It's bloody hot.

Fortunately, we had the AC on, and we turned the TV off because it was throwing too much heat, and instead we had the radio on. I read a little bit of I Capture the Castle, too. Boy, do I love AC...

I've not done much knitting, except for a headband for House Cup. I may post a picture sometime. It turned out nicely, and I still have a bit of cotton leftover. I've got itchy fingers, though, so I may start something else out of cotton to keep me busy - I need to destash anyway. I was going to start a hat, but the yarn I want to use is wool so I may leave that for autumn. I have bits and bobs of cotton to use up, though, so I might make a scrap-cloth.

I have something else to keep me busy: a book is waiting for me to pick up at the library. Trouble is, it's 407 pages long, so I'm worried I won't be able to read it. I have three weeks with the book, though, so we'll see. I may be stuck in the house if the heat keeps up, so it'll be nice to have a new book to read.

Luckily, it's cooler today than it was yesterday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for rain...

A Confusion of Sports Terminology

From watching soccer, I've noticed that I get a bit confused by what the commentators are saying sometimes. Part of it has to do with my having watched hockey as a kid, and part of it is because I'm still learning the rules of soccer. So, here is an example of how I confuse my sports terms...

#1: 'Extra Time'. In soccer, overtime periods are called 'extra time', but I still say 'overtime' because, being Canadian, I'm used to hockey terms at times. Also, the extra time periods (two fifteen-minute periods) are mandatory - I think hockey overtime is sudden-death (or maybe it's only sudden-death in playoff games?).

#2: 'Added/Stoppage Time'. This has more to do with how different commentators talk. From watching the FIFA World Cup, I was used to it being called 'stoppage time', but sometimes I hear commentators say 'added time'. Stoppage/added time, for anyone who isn't familiar with the term, is the amount of time accumulated from the stops in play for fouls or injuries, and it's played at the end of the half.

#3: 'Penalty box'. My hockey knowledge appears again here. In hockey, a penalty box is where players sit when they've committed a foul. While that player's in the box, everyone else plays a 'power play' - which means that for the time that the player's in the box, the other team has an advantage, and when the power play timer is up the player in the box comes back out on the ice and regular play is resumed. Now, in soccer, a penalty box is the big outer box at the goal nets. When a player is roughly challenged in that box, they are sometimes entitled to a penalty kick (a kick that's closer to the goal than a free kick, and there is no 'wall' of players to deflect it - players are allowed to stand behind the kicker but, if I remember correctly, they can't move until the kick is taken). I say 'sometimes' because I'm still not familiar with all the rules, and sometimes a referee can decide that no penalty will be given. This box is often called the penalty area instead, but I find that when commentators are covering Major League Soccer (a North American league), they tend to say 'box' instead of 'area'.

Because I'm still not familiar with all the rules, here's a Wiki link on the penalty box/area. It will explain it better than I can :)

Last, but definitely not least, I want to congratulate Japan on winning the Women's FIFA World Cup. You did awesome!!!! :D

Aaaaand finished!

So, I finally finished Blood and Chocolate :)

I like the book and the movie for different reasons. For instance, I didn't like Book Aiden as much as Movie Aiden - maybe it has something to do with the age difference between the movie characters and the book characters. I'd like to re-watch the movie, because I haven't seen it in a while and I can't remember much of the plot.

Now, to finish I Capture the Castle... the problem is, I saw the movie before finishing the book, so I know how it ends :( But the book is better than the movie, although I liked the movie quite a bit. I was annoyed that they made Cassandra's brother Thomas a lot younger for the movie, though - in the book he's about fifteen, but in the movie he's more like eleven of twelve.

I still have an itch to start a new book, even though I have others to finish. I'm trying to stop myself from starting another book until I finish I Capture the Castle - I only have ninety-ish pages to go, and the font is pretty easy to read.

So those are my latest book adventures. Hopefully by the time I post another book-related blog post, I'll be finished I Capture the Castle!

Almost finished...

I'm almost done reading Blood and Chocolate.

It's about time, too. I started it a couple of summers ago and just couldn't sit and read it. But for the past month I've made a point of trying to finish it. Now I have about five pages left. Now, to finish Harry Potter 6, and I Capture the Castle...

I think I've decided to read historical fiction when I'm finished with Blood and Chocolate. There's a book that the library has called Crossing Stones by Helen Frost, which is set at the start of the first World War, and I added it to my to-read list on Ravelry and my booklist thing on my library's website, but never got around to reserving it. So, when I've finished Blood and Chocolate, I'm going to reserve it, I think. I also really want to read books I own that my parents got for me at Indigo, and some that I bought with gift cards from my grandparents.

Also, I really want to read some science fiction. This is partly due to the fact that I have a sci-fi story idea that I'm planning, so I want to familiarize myself with the genre. I've watched sci-fi, but have never read any. It would certainly be an interesting change from fantasy novels.

For traditional sci-fi, I'm planning on reading Starship Troopers, and for more of the YA sci-fi, I'd like to read Across the Universe, The Water Wars, and a few others. I'm also interested in dystopian fiction, so I plan to read some of that as well.

So: science fiction, dystopia, historical fiction... got any favourites? Feel free to comment :)

I'm still alive!

So, I haven't died yet ;) I'm sorry about the lack of posts. It was partly due to busyness and partly due to laziness. Okay, mostly due to laziness.

Knitting has been going swimmingly. I'm participating in the House Cup again, and I made a Dalek dishcloth last month. This month I'm knitting a Lacy Baktus (I believe I've talked about that pattern in a previous post), and I might try to fit another project in if I can.

In other news, I definitely have to have my wisdom teeth taken out. I'm not happy about this, but it needs to be done, and if I leave it 'til later the bottom wisdom teeth will probably push the other teeth in and wreck their alignment, which would not be cool.

So, not much of an update, but I'll try to post more. Until next time...

Wow, I haven't posted in ages.

Hi there :)

The past few weeks have been a bit hectic. Remember my last post about the appliances and how I 'slew' them? Well, our furnace decided to have a tantrum as well, and we had to have it fixed. In a nutshell, I had to sleep on our futon, and was grumpy.

In knitting news, I made a ton of dishcloths. Well, it was only three, but it felt like a ton. I'm trying to knit up older stash, including dishcloth cotton - I hope to find a pattern to use up odds and ends of cotton, because I have a bunch of partial-skeins to use up. I've also got plans to use up my acrylic.

I haven't worked on my novel as much as I'd like to. I think what I need to do is set aside one day - probably Sunday, when my dad's watching his NASCAR race - to work on it. Maybe I can stick with that.

That's pretty much it. I'll try to post more often...

Nostalgia and appliances

So... it's been a while since I posted, huh? I feel like a terrible blogger :p

Where do I start? Well, things were somewhat boring until a couple of weeks ago, when I was deemed the Appliance Killer. Allow me to explain.

It started with the washing machine. I put a load of laundry in the wash, and later discovered that it had gotten stuck in the final spin. It must have been spinning for hours! My dad tinkered with the dial a little and eventually it started working properly again.

Not long after that, I put some clothes - track pants, fuzzy polyester shirts, etc. - that I had washed into the dryer, and I opened the door while it was running and checked on the clothes. They were cold. I figured it just got stuck, because the dryer is fairly old and gets stuck sometimes, so I went ahead and put my other load - t-shirts, light pants, and my sheets - into the dryer. But when the cycle finished, my laundry was still damp. It turned out that the heating element was burned out, so I didn't kill it exactly, but my dad still had to take my laundry to the laundromat to dry it. He later went shopping for the element he needed and got the dryer back into working order.

If that wasn't enough, our microwave decided to die on us, too. Mom was trying to thaw some slices of bread in the microwave, and it was taking forever to heat up the bread. That evening, I put a four-cup measuring cup full of water in the microwave to fill my hot water bottle, and the water was cold after five minutes on the highest power level. I even tried a lower power level, but that didn't work either. So, for about 48 hours our microwave became a big, glorified kitchen timer (because the timer still worked). My parents went out and bought a fancy new microwave with a convection function. I think my mom loves it :)

So there you have it: I am an appliance killer. I should have a theme song.

And now, for the nostalgia. I finally saw Spice World all the way through last week. It's a pretty cute movie, and because of it, I indulged in some Spice Girls songs via YouTube. Shameful, I know.

Well, I should close this post, as the soccer game is coming on in about half an hour - Toronto FC versus Vancouver Whitecaps. Should be interesting.