chill frog

Mental Static

mediocre people do exceptional things all the time

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chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.


  • 20:45 Hey Kanye! Stop embarrassing my city! #

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chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.


  • 15:34 I'd like to think that I've gotten good at reading patterns, but this Norah Gaughan book is written in, like, Vulcan. Or something. #

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chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.


  • 13:25 Internet! Y U SO SLOW T_T #

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chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 11:58 Hollywood Palms is having a job fair through Friday, 10am-7pm! #
  • 13:46 I'm TOTALLY GONNA MAKE THIS! bit.ly/MW7cF #
  • 13:47 Also, Cruella DeVille went and skinned some Popples. Or Tribbles. www.glomp.net/lj/frivola.jpg (From the latest Vogue Knitting) #
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notes to self
chill frog
[info]wtf

Dear Self,


February Lady WIPNo, you may not start a shawl. You have two sweaters on the needles right now (remember that other one? Hmm?), and the laptop bag, and if you cast on another giant project you will go cukoobananas. Put that laceweight down right now, missy.


You may, however, cast on a new pair of socks if you want. I am not entirely cruel, and that yarn you got for that sekrit project is not going to work for said project but would make a lovely pair of socks.


Oh, and remember: you have 14 swatches to knit for TKGA! Yeah, you were hoping I wouldn't say anything, weren't you?


Love,


The sane part of your brain.






In other news, I made Monkey socks! They are, well, Monkey-like. But they fit! Huzzah!


MONKEYS.MONKEY.



Originally published at Easily Distracted.


watch out, I'm gonna talk about health care
Politics as usual
[info]wtf
A lot of this is from this amazing article that [info]iatros linked me to, and that I believe EVERYONE should read. But here are many of its salient points (and my own) in a nutshell:


THE TRUTH IN RATIONING
We already ration health care. Health care is a scarce resource, and like all scarce resources, it's rationed. It's just that right now, it is rationed based on ability to pay.

YOU ALREADY HAVE A PRICE ON YOUR HEAD
We already price a human life in other areas of governance and the private sector. The Department of Transportation values a human life at $5.8 million. The CPSC rejects new safety standards if the cost is too high in relation to the number of lives saved.

THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS STUPID AND EXPENSIVE
Health-insurance premiums have more than doubled in a decade, rising four times faster than wages. We spend much more on health care than any other nation on the planet. Americans spend 1/6 of their money on health care, which will be up to 1/3 by 2030.

A recent study of car accident victims in Wisconsin estimated that those who had no health insurance received 20% less care and had a death rate 37% than those with health insurance.

60% of bankruptcies are related to illness.
53% of Americans (and 43% of Americans with insurance) reported going without recommended care because of cost, as opposed to 13% in the UK and 7% in the Netherlands.

OH, AND ABOUT THAT TERRIBLE BRITISH HEALTH CARE
73% of Canadians and Brits are satisfied with their health care as opposed to 56% of Americans. Besides, there's no rule saying we have to copy their systems.

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND THE BIG BAD BILL
The health care bill does NOT outlaw private insurance.
The health care bill does NOT keep people with employer-supplied insurance from using the public option.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE
I wonder how many people opposed to a public health care option have had the problems listed above. Obviously the system works fine for many people, mainly those who don't get seriously ill. I would like to point out that despite the fact that my family is fortunate enough to have been insured for our entire lives, we:

1) Have foregone recommended treatment due to cost
2) Gone bankrupt, partially due to medical bills
3) Spend over $2000 per year, out of pocket, on health care and insurance.
4) Have, in the course of our 6-year marriage, spent an additional $3000+ on hospital bills, after insurance.
5) Spend approximately $150 per month on prescriptions. Unless it's allergy season; then it's $200.
6) Are still paying off Caroline's birth (she's two)

And I still consider us lucky.

FINALLY, A LITTLE OPINION
I do have concerns about paying for health care. Mostly I'm mad because we could have used all that money we've spent on a pointless war in Iraq to, I don't know, keep ourselves healthy. People bitch and moan that OMG OBAMA SPENDS THE MONIEZ without remembering that it was the previous administration that left us broke in the first place. Besides, while spending money to fix health care is expensive, in the long run it will save us a ton. It's like putting solar panels on your house: yes, they cost a lot of money, but the cost is eventually recouped in energy savings. Putting money into fixing health care is expensive in the short term, but will curb the spiralling expense of the current system.



EDIT TO TL;DR SOME MORE
[info]aylara mentioned one very important thing I managed to forget: There's already a bureaucrat between you and your doctor, and that bureaucrat is insurance. Want to see this in action? Ask me about the time my doctor's practice stopped accepting my insurance because the insurance (Aetna) was taking too long to process claims. I spent a year paying out of pocket until Greg's insurance changed to Blue Cross.


There is also the issue of mental health parity. What's that? Well, let me tell you a story.

I go to two doctors on a regular basis. I see both of them every 6-8 weeks or so. I talk to them for about a half hour to check on the efficacy of my meds; each doctor prescribes two medicines that I take every day. All four medications are maintenance meds that keep me functioning like a normal human being.

Doctor number one costs $20 per visit.
Doctor number two costs $125 per visit.

The only difference between these two doctors is that doctor one is a physician and doctor two is a psychiatrist. How is that in any way fair? It's not because doctor two is a specialist; I've seen other specialists and only paid a copay. It's because, under my insurance, mental health care has a separate deductible.

There was a law recently passed requiring that insurers treat mental health claims in the same fashion as physical health claims. It doesn't do anything for me, though, because the law conveniently excluded plans for small businesses. Since our insurance is through Greg's small-business employer, that's that.

Which brings me to my final point. People go on about losing choice in health care. It's a load of crap. There is no real choice in health care right now. Our only affordable option is employer-supplied insurance. Everything else is too expensive, and would likely deny me coverage anyways, because I'm a financial liability to an insurance company.

Were Greg to lose his job, we would be in a terrible situation. If our insurance ran out, we'd never be able to get it back. And then all those relatively tiny $50 copays on my medicine would shoot up to hundreds of dollars per month. This is not a random, isolated case, either. I can list five people off the top of my head who are, have been, or will be in the same boat. That's five people that I'm close enough to that I know their health and insurance situation.

Is that the sign of a working health care system? I don't think so.

Fiber fest, yaaaaaay!
chill frog
[info]wtf

HAY [info]exit_halo, WANNA CARPOOL TOMORROW

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from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 10:43 Trapped in TVTropes. Send help. #
  • 23:32 Half our power is out - as in, one phase but not the other. It is exceedingly weird. #
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chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.


  • 10:19 Pissed at MSNBC for preempting Maddow AGAIN. I can understand Thursday, but rerunning an MJ documentary in her slot, twice? Grr. #

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chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 12:52 Seriously? It's perfectly legal for news organizations to lie and still call it journalism?? tinyurl.com/o8sg8s #
  • 15:35 Am kind of nervous about fitting my AA table in a suitcase. #
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from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 07:43 Oh lord, Spud and Chloe is adorable. Curse you, Blue Sky Alpacas! www.spudandchloe.com/ #knitting #
  • 09:05 Dead from cute: CJ is using a scrap of paper as a pretend Band-Aid and is putting it on her knee. #
  • 14:40 Pondering going to Starbucks to knit tonight, just to get out of the house and somewhere cooler and quieter. #
  • 16:30 According to TMZ, Michael Jackson is in bad shape. Wow, we were being facetious when we talked about the celeb-death-trifecta! I swear! #
  • 16:44 Oh my God, now they're reporting that Michael Jackson died. This is surreal. #
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the devil's in the gutters
chill frog
[info]wtf
shrug-in-progress

I am making a shrug! I based it off the Everybody's Doing It pattern. I used garter stitch instead of seed stitch, though, and made as many border rows as I damn well pleased. As a person with extra-wide arms, wider bands tend to look more proportionate on me. Also, the yarn is so very, very soft.

shrug + Daria Multi

I also picked up a hank of Noro's Daria Multi in order to make some cute I-cord bracelets. Noro and I have such a love-hate relationship. This time around, I love the yarn but I hate how it absolutely refuses to become a ball. Honestly, I should go to JoAnn and ask for an empty trim spool - the sort with two posts - as I bet it would be the only thing that could properly tame this yarn. It's more cord then yarn, anyways.

in the gutters

The other thing I'm working on is the TKGA Masters Program, Level I. I have heard tell that it can turn a normal knitter into a neurotic wreck, and it is SO TRUE. It's for good reason, though; I'm learning how to really watch my tension and quality. The picture above is my billionth attempt at 2x2 ribbing. I am supremely unsatisfied with my ribbing skills. I am trying to tame the gutters that form in the second knit stitch, and so far I have not had much luck. Trust me, it looks worse in person. *sob*

In order to prevent myself from feeling completely inadequate, I knit Swatch 10, which deals with yarnovers. I discovered I also hate my yarnovers. Did you know that it's possible to do them wrong? I mean, aside from wrapping the wrong way. I mean, mine were all sloppy. This did not help my feelings of inadequacy.

Finally, I turned to something I really can do: Swatch 4, bar increases. Bar increases! Easy peasy! I've done tons of those! In fact, it only took me about eight tries to get a decent swatch. I actually have to finish the top of that swatch, so there is no picture yet.

Yeah, I'm taking this program pretty seriously. How seriously? I knit a gauge swatch, which I then washed and blocked before I measured it. Doing things properly and by-the-book from the get-go? That's serious business right there.

Originally published at Easily Distracted.


from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 13:19 What can I say, I'm a prize whore. #
  • 13:37 This Sanford business is the most entertaining political trainwreck I've seen in quite some time. #
  • 16:47 I am having a horrid day. How about some yarn from @shepherdsusie? :D bit.ly/yobdz #
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from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 11:24 For @knitchick1979 and other Whovians/MAME fans: Tardis MAME console! With fancy automation! www.asciimation.co.nz/tardis/index.html #
  • 12:06 Oh God! I found a colony of EW underneath the high chair's chair pad. EWWWW #
  • 14:42 brb, dead from LOL. bit.ly/vhBlG #
  • 18:32 Boo! I need size 7 needles for my Masters knitting, but my Options needles are residing in my fair isle project. #
  • 18:46 Score! I do have a non-interchangeable size 7 circ. *dances* #
  • 19:56 I sometimes hate planning trips. I don't like being responsible for other people's vacations. #
  • 20:19 Oh hey! A high-up shelf full of books just randomly FELL OFF THE WALL. Amazingly, nothing broke. #
  • 20:54 Oh hey, my tension sucks! Also, I don't think I like this yarn. Methinks some Cascade 220 is in order. #
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Picspam time!
chill frog
[info]wtf
[flickr size="small"]http://www.flickr.com/photos/87081242@N00/3648964895[/flickr] [flickr size="small"]http://www.flickr.com/photos/juriduck/3648964877/[/flickr]

The Fake Isle hat.

[flickr size="small"]http://www.flickr.com/photos/juriduck/3648964793/[/flickr]

The Aguona laptop sleeve in progress. It looks way cooler than I actually am.

I am kind of irritated with Knit Picks, because they printed the two charts for the bag on two sides of the same page, meaning I have to pull the chart off my board every time I need to change charts - which is twice per row. If they were on separate pages, I could magnet them back-to-back. I ended up scanning them into Photoshop and following it on my laptop.

Originally published at Easily Distracted.


from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 00:36 The gremlins are conspiring to keep me from updating my craft blog. #squarespace #
  • 12:25 Caroline is trying to eat a PB&J sandwich without getting sticky. This will be fun. #squarespace #
  • 22:53 Perez Hilton totally had it coming. I mean, it is generally not kosher to punch someone, but if I had a free swing? He'd be on my list. #
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from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

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from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.


  • 10:48 Greg took CJ to gymnastics class! I am enjoying an extremely rare bit of solitude. #squarespace #

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from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.


  • 09:25 Looks like my family's plane managed to avoid the storms and land on time. Lucky them! #squarespace #

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from twitter
chill frog
[info]wtf
No more LJ cuts. Suck it up.

  • 12:21 Maybe today will be the day I win! #squarespace #
  • 12:39 Fire up the laminator! I just ordered 300 pouches for AX. Yikes. #squarespace #
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