Category: Any Major Dude, Steely Dan

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Knitting News (Not the Meaning of Life)

The good news is – the Christmas jumper is now almost long enough, so I can leave out those other design items I had in mind, and move on to doing the bottom rib. The right sleeve – which I’ve been picking at on and off over the last couple of weeks – is also nearly long enough, although I’ve hardly started the left one. On straight needles, I would do both sleeves at the same time next to one another on the needles, to make sure they’re the same, but that wouldn’t really work with circular needles so I’ll just have to keep checking it matches the right one. This doesn’t mean I can get it finished in a couple of days, but the end is in sight, it should be done by mid-December at the latest. Then I’ll have to concentrate on catching up on the weather blanket, which is way behind.

Enough of knitting and crochet news, and the poem which I still haven’t found, because I didn’t look for it on the laptop, didn’t get round to it. I’m not sure what’s on there anyway, but maybe that’s where all the missing blog posts from 2016 are, it makes sense. Which reminds me that I need to convert all the Word files on my new(ish) laptop to Open Office or Word 2007 before Thursday, when my year’s free trial of Office 365 (or whatever it’s called) expires, and Microsoft start demanding money with menaces. I’m quite content with my legitimate copy of Office 2007, bought in good faith ten years ago and still perfectly adequate for my needs, except I can’t install it on the new laptop because there isn’t a CD player to load the software from. This time last year I wasn’t bothered because I knew I had a full year to work out how to install it on the laptop, or adapt to using Open Office, but somehow I slipped into the bad habit of using Office 365 because it was there. But a decision has been made, and I’m sticking to it.  

Well, none of that is very deep, although I do need to sort it out. I’ve not been putting it off because I particularly don’t want to do it or am nervous about it – in fact I started earlier in the week on some of my files, to confirm it was quite straightforward and wouldn’t take long – it’s just that other things seem more important and/or interesting.

And I will get back to Destiny and the Meaning of Life at some point (no, I haven’t finished with that, even though I’ve stated categorically that I don’t think there’s anything mystical behind it all). Come to that, a Destiny which was predetermined and inevitable really wouldn’t be worth talking about, would it?

I’m just going to throw out this thought for now: all the wisdom life teaches us seems quite banal when you think about it – maybe that’s why it’s so hard to live by.

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Second of the Month

My determination this morning took me as far as Sainsbury’s Local (which is not very far, but does mean I have to cross the road – however, the city council kindly installed a zebra crossing last year, so it’s a lot easier than it used to be.) I thought it was raining, but I needed milk so made myself go anyway, and the rain stopped.

It’s the second today, and the second and the seventeenth are important days with regard to the weather blanket, because they are days for starting new rows (because there are sixteen squares in a row, and obviously each day’s square can’t be done till the next day at the earliest, because it’s done on the basis of actual conditions, not forecasts). The first row for each month starts with a square indicating the name of the month, followed by 15 days (or 14 and one indicating the year for February), and the second row has 16 day squares, or 15 and a filler square at the end for a 30 day month (or the other half of the year, 14 days and a filler square or 15 days if it’s a leap year.) The other thing that happens at the ends of the rows is that I add the next bit of the border to the new one and the one immediately before (which was completed the day before, because the dates run left to right for the first half of the month and right to left for the second).

That might sound confusing, but it’s really simple in practice, and it means that today I need to do a square for yesterday and one saying ‘Nov’ to start the next row (I do them in that order for reasons which are a bit too technical to go into here), and then extend the border over the end of the previous row and the beginning of the new one.

To anybody who doesn’t at least know me on Facebook the above will sound like complete gobbledegook, but hopefully the illustration will help.

Before I went to Sainsbury’s I filled a jug with cold water to fill up the coffee maker then knocked it all over the counter, and had to move the spice rack out of the way, which meant that quite a few of the jars fell out, though fortunately nothing smashed and no lids came off.

Shit Happens – the First Noble Truth of Buddhism.

‘When the demon is at your door/In the morning it won’t be there no more/Any major dude will tell you.’ Steely Dan, Any Major Dude. I guess the Buddha was one of the most Major of Major Dudes.

Cause and effect – everything happens for a reason – or a complex of reasons, in the sense of the set conditions which cause it, but not in the sense that it has a purpose. Purpose implies a guiding consciousness – and on the question of an overall consciousness/purpose for everything, the jury’s still out.