I found a Warning Label Generator on someone’s blog. I decided to enter my blog name: JELOCA.

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From Go-Quiz.com

ICK ICK ICK ICK ICK ICK ICK NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

This is the Harlequin baby blanket that I knit for the MKG’s charity drive this coming year. I believe that the blankets will be raffled, and the knitters will have our names put in a hat, and the person whose name is drawn gets to pick where the raffle money goes…to which charity.

The yarn is Tessin by Muench. I’m not too keen on the colors, but love this yarn and the way it works up in garter. It’s so nice and floppy and a child will love it…I want to buy some of this yarn to make something for my future children! I’m so glad I chose to ask for a yarn pack. This yarn is a great example of something I would have seen on the net or in person and NEVER would have picked up to buy…to garish and the colors are just not me. Yet I love the final fabric it creates and am eager to work with it again…in the right project.
It doesn’t seem that big when you’re knitting it…squares of garter knit as one piece with no seaming in the end. But when I laid it down on the bed to photograph…it’s huge!
Thanks to V. for sending the link re: the good wife article:
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/goodwife.asp
What a relief!

So the wedding is Sunday and I still am not freaking out. I’m frantically trying to get the house clean for our guests Thursday night, and trying to remember to pack everything for our honeymoon, and to get my brother moved in, and stuff like that…but not about the wedding.

I have had 2 dreams so far about stuff going wrong at the wedding, so I think my subconscious is a little more worried than I am.

I can’t believe this was ever spewed into the female consciousness. How much do you want to bet that a man wrote it?

Article from Housekeeping Monthly, May 11 1955. Click on it to make it big enough to read.

What timing. I made the mistake of reading it out loud to my dad and Yannick. To say they were amused is an understatement.

I know I’m slacking off. I’m running around trying to get the house cleaned up for the cake & coffee we’re hosting after the rehearsal next week, Y keeps going up north then coming back then going and driving me nuts, there were car issues to deal with and I’m just generally exhausted.

I can’t believe I’m getting married next weekend!

I don’t have photos of the car, but I got a ’98 Malibu. It’s in great condition, no body work to be done but minor (tres minor) rust spots. Didn’t know until AFTER we bought it, took it for a car wash and filled up the tank that the gas tank was rotted and started oozing gas right away. In 30 hours I lost 3/4 of a tank of gas! Luckily the dealership honored that we didn’t know about the problem before purchase, and they replaced the tank (the actual tank, not the gas) for me free of charge. So now the car is great and I’m loving riding around in it. I’m loving having cupholders(!!!) and that it has a tape player and not just CD because the audio book section at the library is 90% on tape and I can now get a zillion more books to listen to. Yes, I did just say that I prefer my ’98 to my ’87 because I now have cupholders and a tape player. LOL. But I will miss my Celebrity big time, she was my first car and I love her!

I’m rushing to finish the Harlequin blanket before next week. I’m 1/4 of the way through the last group of 3 blocks, then just one block after that and crocheting the border.

Since I have no images of the car to post, nor of the knitting, I’ll put up one of me as a kid. Enjoy!

I know, I know. I haven’t posted in about a week. I don’t really have an excuse, except the following excuses:

1- Monday through Thursday general: I’ve been knitting some stuff for hire, and couldn’t blog about it, nor post photos of it. Let’s call it Torch.
2- Tuesday specific: went to the hall where the wedding will be and finalized stuff with them. Stayed there late, had a late dinner after, then crashed.
3- Wednesday specific: didn’t work as I had a last dress fitting at 11:30am, then went to the jeweler about my ring and some jewelry, then to the place that is doing the flowers and decor.
4- Thursday night: way too darn tired to even knit, much less think or talk or type about knitting.
5- Friday night: don’t even remember what I did Friday. Oh yeah, went with Yannick to see the minister who is marrying us. Finalized some stuff for our ceremony, which we wrote ourselves. (Not the vows. The entire ceremony).
6- Saturday: went for my hair appointment at 8:30am until 12:30pm. 4 hours to do the color for the wedding. Then went for a manicure, just ‘cus. Then Yannick came home and made dinner, then went back to work at my mom’s, so I stayed home, watched some TV and crashed again. Worked on the Harlequin Baby Blanket at the hair dresser. Too lazy to take or post a photo.
7- Sunday: Got up lazily while Yannick went to quote on a job, and watched about 3/4 of the movie Garden State while knitting the Harlequin. I had to stop because Yannick picked me up for a late lunch, as we had to go over what stuff to do before the wedding and before the honeymoon. Had a late dinner too, then watched Scary Movie 4 before passing out on the couch during the special features and having to drag my butt upstairs to bed.
8- Monday: didn’t go to work as I bought myself a new car! Yes, I got a new car. I love it, but will blog about it later because a) I’m tired. b) I haven’t eaten supper yet. c) I need something to blog about tomorrow. 🙂

Yesterday Yannick and I went to the Old Port of Montreal for the afternoon. We had such a fun time going around and visiting the exhibitions. We went through the Science Center but while there was some cool stuff to see, it was mostly geared towards kids. I remember the Toronto Science Center being cooler. We went to the Imax and saw Deep Sea 3D which was AMAZING. It was a 40 minute, 3D view into the underwater lifeforms deep in the oceans. When we left there we ran into an old friend from my B’Nai Brith/USY days who now is married, pregnant and lives in the West Island.

From there we went to the promenades and walked around, and watched one of the street performers put on a 30 minute show involving many jokes, a unicycle, juggling, fire, tape and children. Very original and very funny. He performs a few times a night so if you are in the area and see a crowd forming, please go watch, he’s well worth the time. After the show we went to do the Shed 16 Labyrinth (which bugs me because a Labyrinth has only 1 way in and 1 way out…whereas the Shed 16 attraction is a maze) and were determined to beat the average time for getting in and out of the maze, which is suggested as 60-90 minutes. Once inside, you have to go around and find different rooms with clues to the final code, and along the way you have to deal with the maze itself, weird floors to walk on, some walls that are all like seatbelts hanging down, some corridors that are all sandbags to navigate, and many forks in the path that you have to climb through a jungle-gym of elastic ropes before you can pass. Do NOT do this if you have a bad back or knees, as you will never get through. The guy at the end couldn’t believe that we did it in 30 minutes, but I have to say, Yannick has a really good sense of direction.

We were going to go to Ma’s, a Caribbean restaurant on Sherbrooke O, but when we got there it was 8:30pm and it had closed at 8pm. So we started walking down the street looking for a new place to try, and found La Louisianne. We’d never been there, but anywhere that has Sweet Potato Fries is a place I’d try! Oh my it is now one of my favorite places to eat! We sat on the terrasse and enjoyed some amazing Cajun food. We shared an appetizer of alligator- I ATE ALLIGATOR. And LOVED it!!! Did you ever eat calamari, and enjoy the flavor (with garlic and spices and stuff) but swallow it right away because the texture is really chewy? Well, picture the same kind of taste, but with a texture like chicken. In fact, if I didn’t know it was alligator, I would have sworn it was seasoned chicken. Delicious, I’d go back for that in a second. I made my meal of appetizers, and had the Sweet Potato Fries with Chipotle Mayo (oh my god good), Red Bean Soup (good, but I don’t need it again), and Grilled Vegetable Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette (self-explanitory, and delicious). Yannick had the Crawfish Ettouffe, and he adored it. I can’t wait to go back and try the crab cakes, they looked delicious too.

After dinner we watched the rest of the Jerry Springer Opera. Wow. Um. Weird.

Yesterday afternoon Yannick and I attended a surprise baby shower for his cousin Rene and Vivianne. It’s always fun when we get together with them, because most summers they hold an “epluchette” (my apologies to the French language for mangling the spelling of that word). I didn’t know what it was until the first one I went to. Basically you gather all your family and friends, camp out on someone’s property with tables and lawn chairs and drinks, get a few barbecues going, and boil up as many corn-on-the-cobs as you can buy. Yesterday we were around 100 people, so if you figure about 2-to-4 cobs per person…that’s a LOT of corn! Once the corn is going, the other barbecues fire up some hotdogs and hamburgers, plus there were salads and veggies and chips and stuff. At the last one there was music, this time there wasn’t.

It was held out in Les Cedres and one of Vivianne’s relative’s homes. It was a gorgeous property, with beautiful landscaping and bordering really lush corn fields. The entire area around there was gorgeous.

On the way down I couldn’t help noticing the sky, and since I’d brought our camera with, I snapped a few photos. They don’t even do it justice, the sky really was breathtaking yesterday.


This last one makes me feel like you can crop out the land and put the words “The Simpsons” up in the clouds. 😉

We got there around 4pm, and left around 7:30pm when they were opening presents. There was a huge pile of gifts because everyone there had chipped in and the money collected was used to purchase tons of stuff for the parents-to-be. I had brought with the pink sweater and booties that I’d knit for them, but since no one else walked in with an individual gift, I left it in the car. I’ll bring it to them once Élodie is born.

I didn’t ask his family’s permission to post photos of them online, so I won’t. But I did take a cool one of Yannick with two of his nephews, and since you can’t really make them out I think it will be ok if I post it here.

He took turns taking each kid by the hands and swinging them around in circles. The younger two he did at the same time, and I love how this photo catches them completely in the air.
When we got home we went to the cinema-Montreal website to see if there were any movies playing that we wanted to see. We decided to go to Bon Cop, Bad Cop. While waiting until it was time to leave, we watched a bit of TV. There was something starting on Bravo that I hadn’t heard of, so I set it to tape but we watched the opening 20 minutes- a musical theater version of The Jerry Springer Show. WTF??? Who thought this would be a good idea? It was really funny, but the strangest musical I have ever seen!

Bon Cop, Bad Cop was a great, great, great, GREAT movie. Definately one I want to own. It is about 40% in French, but don’t let that deter anyone from going because there are subtitles, and it doesn’t go too fast. I preferred listening to the French dialogue rather than reading the subtitles, because not everything translates smoothly and it was much funnier in French. What a hysterical movie! It’s supposed to be a cop thriller, but there were so many truisms and so much humor injected that really there is hardly a minute that goes by when you’re not laughing at something.

To sum up the premise, a killer is on the loose, and when a body is found half in Ontario and half in Quebec (don’t ask!) a cop from each province is assigned to work together. The scenes in Montreal take place mostly in French (with much swearing) and the ones in Toronto are in English. Patrick Huard and Colm Feore are brilliant together, and I really hope this becomes a series, much like the Lethal Weapon series. The serial killer’s motives are a bit unrealistic, but it doesn’t matter because the movie is so much fun.

And let me just say how much I love seeing Montreal onscreen when it is actually protraying MONTREAL! Too often our fair city is used to represent places all over the world- it is so refreshing to recognize an area and- lo and behold- it is actually supposed to be THAT AREA. There is a scene that takes place at Spurs, a country-western bar near my work. I love watching the movie and going “hey, I know that place!” Other scenes took place on Mount Royal, on our highways, at the Old Port and more.

And for a Canadian movie on a Saturday night- the place was PACKED. It started at 9:50pm, we got there at 9:45pm and barely found seats. People were coming in all through the previews and had to split up. Most of the audience was French but I really hope this movie finds a foothold with English audiences too, because it really was great.

Rules for The Amazing Lace challenge # 6 – the final challenge:

Your challenge — your final challenge — is to post a photo of your lace being proudly worn or displayed by the strangest, funniest, or most unlikely model you can find. Maybe it is human; maybe it isn’t. It just needs to be clever and unexpected.

So tell me honestly- is there a more unlikely model to display a lace wip than….

….dun dun dun….

…Optimus Prime?
Optimus Freaking Prime, people. This is TOTALLY unlikely. Just think what would happen if the Decepticons ever got a hold of this photo- he’d never live it down!

They’d be sitting around in their evil lair…discussing their plans for world domination (probably with Stewie)…and all of a sudden one of them, (I’m thinking Ratbat, trying to get some evil cred) would perk his head up and call out “Hey Megatron, guess what I saw online today?” And Megatron would be all “What?” And Ratbat would be all “Get this- Idiot Prime was on some chick’s website, and- you’re never going to believe this- he was holding up a piece of LACE.” Heads would swivel, guns would accidentally go off, and a few villains would transform by mistake in their shock. Then much laughing and ridiculing would ensue.

It would be like “Robots in Disguise? Ha! More like Robots in Drag!!”

Sigh.

It was too good to be true. My little clunker (read: huge-a$$ $hitbox 1987 Celebrity) is dying. Yannick and I paid peanuts for the car, obviously second-hand (possibly third- or fourth-hand). I’ve had her for about 4 years. She is my first car, my only car. And now I have to replace her.

Why? Well. I’ll explain, but please bear in mind that I’m no car expert, and I’m relating second-hand what I was told, to the extent that I understand it.

Already the car is living in agony. She’s really a candidate for “Pimp My Ride”. When I got her, the front (bench) seat was only bolted on one side, there is no passenger-side side mirror, the parking brake is seized and she was covered in rust. There was also a hole in the floor at the driver’s feet. We bolted the bench in place, and she was good to go (the pesky hole was covered with a piece of steel and wood). Since that time, I managed to dent the back bumper. The STEEL bumper. I also have a bashed-in driver’s door and a crooked frame from the accident in January that almost killed me. This means that the driver’s window doesn’t open more than 3″. Oh, and the front passenger door is rusted shut. And the fabric that lines the ceiling (whatever) is sagging and almost blocks the back window. There’s probably more wrong with her, but I can’t remember. Fact is, she runs great. Engine is good, transmission is good, brakes, even the A/C works great. Dude, the car saved my life. So it was a big bummer to find this: See the huge jagged rip? That’s not supposed to be there. And it’s REALLY not supposed to be ripped 3/4 of the way through.

Apparently the engine and all that sit in a frame, and that frame is bolted or whatever to the frame of the car. On the passenger’s side, both the front and back bolts (or whatever) that hold the engine block to the frame, have ripped like this. We don’t know if this was caused by the accident, or just from time. Scary thing is, if Yannick hadn’t glanced at my car Sunday and thought “that doesn’t look right” and taken a look, I’d still be driving it, and could have had a major accident. The car still drives, but if I hit a bad pothole or something and the rips tear all the way through, the passenger side of my engine block will crash to the pavement, definately causing an accident that requires towing, and quite possibly knocking my front passenger tire off the car. In the city it could be bad. On the highway it could be fatal.

Yannick will let me drive around our neighborhood, but he won’t let me take it on the highway. Since I live in the West Island and work in CSL, I need to take the highway to get to work. Which means that I’ve been getting driven in each morning by my dad, and Yannick’s been coming to get me every night. This sucks.

Yannick’s been shopping around for another used car, but we’re being a little more picky this time as we are hoping to start a family soon after the wedding and need a car that will be safe to put a carseat in.

Regardless of what I find, I will definately be needing to put my little Chevy out to pasture. I’ll need to drive the Chevy to the levy…so to speak.

No longer will I be able to sing along with Weezer and change the words from

to

Doobie doobie. Doobie doobie.

The end of an era.

Ok, so something creepy is happening. I’ve had the “femur” in a bowl of water for about 2 days now. According to the packaging, after 1 hour the 1″ long femur should grow to about 2″. After 6 hours it should be around 3″, and after 12 hours it should be roughly 5-6″ long. The thickness is supposed to grow at the same ratio.

Well.

That is clearly not happening! In an attempt to keep this blog PG I’m going to post a link to the photo instead of the photo itself. If you want to see the femur in its current state, please click here. Parents, be advised that the photo is slightly risque to anyone who can make out what the thing is supposed to be. In this photo I’ve drawn over the outline of what the femur looks like in its original size. This photo is a little more descriptive so please don’t click if there are children or others who might object in the room.

Now that you’re all back from viewing the mutant in all its horror….WTF?? How come only the ends are growing? The, uh, longbone is still the exact same size!

Don’t get me wrong, I have no desire for the femur to grow other than for my own amusement and the validation of whatever amount my cousins spent on it. I almost expected it not to grow at all. But only growing at the two ends? This thing is sick, man!

Deawn…where are you? I HAVE to hear your take on this!