For the 3rd year in a row, I will be finishing my costume the day I wear it to a party. But that’s because I didn’t start until last night. Oops. I’m almost done, maybe 2 hours left, but I needed a break. I got up early to do my hair in pin curls since that takes all day to dry. As soon as I’m done, I have to clean my apartment, and I still have to go get food and drinks for tonight’s party, which won’t be until later, after I can take my hair down. Hopefully I can wave it and get it to look like Gene Tierney / Ingrid Bergman.

Funeral #4 this year for my family is on Friday. Before this year, I’d only ever been to 2 funerals. This sucks.

Even Stevphens Debate on Religion from the Daily Show

Going camping this weekend with my family at Elk Neck State Park in Maryland. It’s a nice place and they have a hike out to a lighthouse.

I’m enjoying being able to take a literature course since it lets me read. I never have time to read except for school stuff, which is usually tech textbooks.

I need to go get some allspice. I’m going to make apple butter in my crockpot to bring camping. I had some Duffield’s peach butter last weekend and it was sooo good.

My grandmother gave me a crockpot cookbook and it has all sorts of cool desserts and stuff in it, not something I ever associated with crockpots before. I always just thought of pot roast, stew, or corned beef.

I got my iPod from Google yesterday, along with a messenger bag, and I decided to keep it. The box was just sitting there and I really wanted to open it so I cracked. I’ll give my old mp3 player to my little sister. The new one is a 30gb video one.

Apparently big families are trendy right now. I don’t see how that makes any sense. Having kids isn’t a trend. You can’t get rid of them when it’s not trendy any more. And this article considers “big” to be anything more than 2. I don’t consider my family with 4 kids big, I consider it normal. I always felt bad for my friends with only 1 or no siblings because they had no one to play with. My mom came from 4 kids, my dad from 5. Both of my parents’ dads came from 3 kids, and my mom’s mom came from 4. My dad’s mom came from 7 though, and most of them had lots of kids. Two had 6, one 8, and one 9. I can’t imagine having less than 4 when I do eventually have kids. Big families seem much more fun and weird than little ones.

Halloween is in 2 weeks and I have not made my costume. I have the fabric and most of the notions. I have the shoes and stockings. I just ordered black satin opera gloves, and I just found a 1940s purse I can make. It’s in the bottom left corner of the picture below. I won’t need to buy the pattern, it looks easy enough to make. And I have everything I need to make that too, except for snaps or some magnetic closure. I’ll have to do a run to JoAnn’s sometime in the next week for that, and some trim I need for the dress as well. I haven’t figured out how to do my hair yet but I’ve found plenty of instructions for that, and makeup, online. I just need to figure out which hairstyle will work the best for my short hair. Also need setting lotion for that since it will be some kind of curls. I don’t know why I haven’t started yet and this week I’m really busy, and next weekend I’m camping. Last minute sewing again.

Simplicity #1151, published 1944

I want all of her books. But they’re all out of print and selling for ridiculous prices, even though they were printed in the last 5 years.

Here are some of her books to give you an idea:

And I can find absolutely no information on the author either. You have no idea how much this bothers me. Why aren’t they printing more copies?? I can’t even find a website for the publisher – Streamline Press of California.

eta:
Just found an article from 2002 in the LA Business Journal about the whole thing, where they say the books will be in print for many years to come.

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Google just emailed me that I won their iPod raffle at the conference. I almost never win things! Yay!