The shower is next Saturday, so it's pretty good timing.

I've started the next project. I was originally going to do one of the sweaters as a cardigan and the other as a pullover (the pattern has instructions for both), but before I started I read through the cardigan pattern and saw that it's knitted in the round and then steeked. I've never done steeking before, and while I do want to try it, I figured a gift item wasn't the best test piece, so I'm going to do two pullovers instead and save steeking for another day.

I'd be twice as far along, only I realized a couple of rows below this that I'd mis-read the pattern and was starting the rows in the colour-work graph at the wrong place (I'd started the first one in the right place, but then was going to the far right at the beginning of each new row, instead of back to the same starting place), so I frogged it and started over. Much better now. The one thing I don't like about this pattern so far, is that there are a couple of rows that involve three colours of yarn. It's orders of magnitude tanglier than just two.

At LV I recently finished The Sky Is Falling by Lester del Rey, another sci-fi story. My next project is What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. I'd wanted to do it a couple of years ago, but someone else started a solo version before I could get to it, so I put it off and did What Katy Did at School instead. The other project has since been completed, so I feel like I can do mine without stepping on anyone's toes.

Recently watched the new-ish version of Sense and Sensibility (I think it was part of that Austen series they showed on Masterpiece a year or so ago, but I missed it then). I really liked it. Well enough to buy a copy for my library. None of the others in the series impressed me that much, and I will keep faithful to the earlier versions I already own (P&P w/ Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, Persuasion w/ Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root). Not to say I no longer like the Emma Thompson version of S&S, though.

We're doing Gypsy at the WCT. I tried out for one of the stripper roles, but got cast as Miss Cratchitt, the secretary in the New York scene. Should be fun... I'm onstage for two scenes at the end of act 1, and the rest of the time I'll be able to read, play cards, relax back stage. Reminds me of Christmas Carol.

As far as the plot went, I'll bypass the fact that they used time travel as the main plot device (they comment in the film that this is cheating). I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that Spock and Nero ended up 154 years in the past, but what really bothered me is that the way they got to the past was by passing through a black hole. I mean, isn't the point of a black hole that the gravitational forces in them are so great that nothing can escape?? I mean, putting aside the passing through it, even if they could, shouldn't the ships have broken up completely, or been crushed to teeny, tiny, dense lumps?

For the rest, there were quite a few things that made me giggle, a fair few in-jokes for the fans of the series and movies, and enough explosions to satisfy the most rabid mythbusters fan.

Over the weekend I also bought the new Stargate movie. It was fun... had a lot of great stuff that was reminiscent of earlier seasons.

I got a great new lap quilt from mum for Christmas. I'd told her how cold it gets in my office, so she made me one that folds up into a pillow to keep at work. I'd been a bit worried about the gift I got for Andy - a physics kit (like a chemistry set but with gears and wires and things), but apparently his parents found him playing with it when they went to bed Christmas Eve (an hour or so after he'd said he was going to sleep).

MB and Sherry and I got to have a couple of SKVE meetings while Sherry was here for her holiday. We went to see P.S. I Love You one day and met for coffee another day. I'm not a great fan of Hillary Swank, but I enjoyed the movie ok. Sherry hadn't heard anything about it before going, so she was disappointed that Gerard Butler dies; but then relieved that he comes back in flash-backs and hallucinations. She just likes to look at him. I made them each a short scarf with a slit in one end that you can tuck the other end into. MB opened hers while Sherry and I were waiting for our coffees, and we watched her trying to figure it out. She kept looking at the length of it, then opening the slit, then folding it back up. When she heard us giggling at her she asked me what it was, "It's too short to be a scarf, and it has this opening thing only on one end..." Once she figured it out, she liked it. Sherry, having spent some time in a colder climate now, knew exactly what it was and how to use it.

I'm off to my first programming conference this week. It's a three day conference on XSLT. It's the first conference I've gone to for Baylor. I need to do a bit of research on Austin (which is where it's going to be), so I can visit stuff after hours.

I've started a new project on LibriVox to work on in conjunction with The Elusive Pimpernel. I started Anne of Avonlea last night. I had a sudden craving for some more Anne. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to get done on these two projects this coming month (while Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is in rehearsals), but I'll always have weekends.

Yes, yes, I know I usually agree with PTerry on multiple exclamation points, but this is a special occasion.

They finally called me Wednesdy evening to offer me the job. The HR lady who likes me had told me to expect the call, and to pretend to be surprised. So I pretended, and needless to say, I accepted! I'll be starting Monday week, but I still don't really know what it's going to involve... other than some amount of programming. I suppose they'll get to that eventually.

I went to see HP5 Tuesday night with some friends from the theatre. MB bought the tickets ahead of time, and at the last minute a couple of people had dropped out, so I invited Eileen to come along with us. It was pretty good, considering it was the shortest movie so far - and based on the second longest book. They left out ridiculous amounts of stuff, but what was there was good.

In other news, I'm going to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) at the Hippodrome this Saturday. It'll be the first time I get to see the Cachinnator act; Don Boscoe is also going to be in it, plus a third guy I don't know. I'm going with MB... Sherry was up for it, but was going to be out of town that day. Also, we're finally going to have our Music Man intervention this coming Tuesday. Huzzah!

I finally finished Tales from Shakespeare on LibriVox, which I'd been working on since March. I didn't remember them being so dry and dull. The only way I got through was by bribing myself with reading a chapter in a new project every time I managed to finish one of the Tales. The two projects I bribed myself with were What Katy Did at School, which I've since finished, and Anne of Green Gables, which I'm about two thirds of the way through. I'm planning on doing another of the Scarlet Pimpernel books next; I'm leaning toward El Dorado, the one where they rescue the Dauphin.

We had a SKVE meeting on Monday and watched How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole. So now we have several new quotes on our SKVE board. And let me just say that Peter O'Toole was hot back then! We still need to have our SKVE Music Man intervention with Regan and Melissa, because we never did get our schedules worked out during Mattress, and they can't keep going through life without having seen Music Man!

This from a... well, ok, she was never a music major, just an undecided music enthusiast, but she took lots of music classes, you'd think somewhere, someone would have introduced her to The Music Man! Well, if no one else will do it, I will. We're having a movie night someday soon (just need to get our schedules sorted) so she can watch it.

If Mary Beth and Sherry can make it too, we'll make a SKVE night of it. We've been talking about asking Regan to join the SKVEs and this would be a good trial run, to see if she's up to our particular brand of movie-watching. The last person we invited, Kelita, couldn't seem to understand why we found it so amusing to MST3K our way through Pride and Prejudice ("look, I have a sword!", "are you sure those are period sheep?").

And speaking of friends, we're going to get together in a couple of weeks (as soon as we all have a free evening, all at the same time) and have a Jane Austen night. Considering the number of Jane Austen films that have come out lately, it'll probably be the first in a series of Jane Austen nights. Yay!

I went to see Firewall yesterday... with one of my classes... and the professor paid. Now that's what I call a field trip! The class is cyberwarfare, and basically, we went to see the movie so we could criticize... uh, critique it and the various technologies they use in it. It was fun, but it wasn't really realistic... not that we expected it to be... it is a Harrison Ford movie, after all.

In other news, the semester is officially over for me. I took my one and only final on Thursday. Woot. I'd definitely be more excited if I were still a teacher or a full time student and actually were getting any sort of a real break this summer... or even between this semester and the summer term. It's at this time of year that I think most seriously of actually, really going back into teaching. Possibly at a community college, in a non-tenure track position so I could just get on with teaching and not have to spend half my time doing research or publishing papers. Yeah, that would be good.