My crush on Hunter just gets more passionate all the time. Go read, and luxuriate in his ability to flay rightwing dipshits alive with nothing more dangerous than his use of the English language.

Work is good. Work is crazy. I feel appreciated and respected. I feel tired. By Friday, my brain is mush. Between the job, the gym, the dogs and the knitting and the housework and the phone and the mail and taking out the trash, the blog ain’t what it used to be. But it’s good. The gym is good. I need, I crave, I must have exercise. I sleep better, think more clearly, and generally function at a higher level when I exercise. It sucks, because it takes time and generates sweaty workout clothes to be laundered and I’d rather skip it, but I can’t. My knee is still bothering me somewhat, but it feels better with exercise – it’s the sitting that kills me. I sit too much in this job.

I finished the pointless green linen baby blanket, and it’s in the wash even as I type. It’s roughly 30x34 in its unrelaxed state, but linen is very tense until it’s washed, especially in feather and fan. The washcloth was the best swatch ever – I’ve used it and abused it, and now I’m totally in love with linen. Euroflax Linen is amazing. It’s almost like knitting with kitchen twine, yet somehow less hand-straining than cotton. It relaxes after machine washing and dryer abuse into this floppy, soft, gentle fabric that feels nothing like the tense-twine-y stuff it had been.

My next linen project: this shawl. I have four skeins of a rich merlot. I saw a pattern that called for four skeins of this very yarn. Victoria Lace Shawl. It says it’s “easily memorized.” It’s fate. It’s Kismet. It's vaguely feather and fannish. It’s just my speed.

I really want to make this sweater, in soft floppy linen to wear over a tank, but it has to keep a while. My yarn budget just went into the crapper. Knitting up the stash isn't just a sound fiscal decision now, it's a necessity. The living room TV is dying, slowly, dramatically, like Garbo.

The picture tube is blinking, on and off, on and off, and is now unwatchable. (Garbo coughs softly....) The dying TV is 10 years old, a Sony, 32 inches, and weighs more than I do. It outweighs my tall, strong, Sophia Loren proportioned Girlchild. My husband was very strong, though he was not a huge man – 6 ft. and between 190 and 210, depending on his fast food consumption in any given year – but he was very, very strong. He could lift this sucker. By himself. I can’t lift it with help, and I can barely push it on its stand on the tile floor. I looked at other TVs of this type and forget it, they are all this heavy. That’s the weight of a conventional picture tube. I don’t want another like this. I can’t have another like this, I can’t move the goddamn thing.

But my living room is an issue – there is only one possible traffic pattern/furniture configuration, and the TV is across from the couch, on the other side of the room. I can’t downsize the TV and still be able to see it comfortably.

So, it’s time to join the 21st century. The 2006 yarn budget is going toward a 32 inch HD flat screen TV. A 32 inch flat screen weighs less than 50 pounds. I can lift that easily and without hurting myself. It costs an arm and a leg, but there is not much point in spending more than half of that money on something that is 1) obsolete; and 2) did I mention I can’t move it, let alone pick it up?

So I'm psyching myself to kiss at least $1200 goodbye, and leap into the 21st century. I can have an HD-DVR by driving a mile and a half to the nice folks at Bright House. A conventional TV I cannot fucking move would be cheaper, but do I want to invest hundreds of dollars in something obsolete and really frigging heavy, or just bite the bullet? I think the bullet needs to be bitten, but I will do my homework first.

Back in the Day when we were raising kids, my husband formed the rule that if, at the end of the month, we had $800 left over, an $800 thing would go wrong. If we had $2,000 left over, a $2,000 thing would go wrong. It never failed. And yeah, I have a stray $2,000 in the bank right now. Cue the TV death scene....