SuperEggplant

I am back in California after my two-week sojourn in Portland, OR. I had a great time in Portland, but it is nice to be back home with the hub and the dog. The night before my departure, I got a migraine* and was out of commission for the entire evening. The next morning I felt a bit better, so insane brother and I went and met our friends Wendy, Lillie, and Jason at Grand Central Bakery. Here’s a photo of Wendy and Lillie taken by Jason with my new orange Sony:

Unfortunately, I had a relapse of the punes, and by the time we got to the airport, I was feeling pretty out of it. I had to rush outdoors to be, um, sick, and after that I felt a bit better. The plane to SF was delayed, though, so I missed my connecting flight and had to wait four hours at SFO. Not all was lost, however, because breast-cancer-fighting Megan was able to come meet me! We had dinner at Osho in the international terminal, and it was actually pretty good. Megan looks great with her bald head and seems to be doing really well. She is such a tough cookie.
*Has anyone tried acupuncture or acupressure for migraines? I’ve been getting migraines every month, and recovering from them is become more and more difficult.

First off, I think most visitors know that my friend Megan was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s one of the toughest cookies I know, so she’s hanging in there (and she looks like a friendly alien with her bald head! I’m not kidding). To show her some support I set up a shop with some T-shirts designed by the very talented and generous Cat Manning. Check them out if you have a chance!
In other news, Giant Robot is opening a store in San Francisco!!!!! They have the most interesting and fun stuff, and I can’t get enough of their novelty T-shirts. They have a store in LA, but I have no reason to go to LA. I do have plenty of reasons to head to SF, though, and this just adds another one to the list.
And in other news, my mother made it home from Japan in one piece. Her 98-year-old mother sleeps and eats, and that’s about it. She seems to really enjoy her food, though, so, hey, rock on, grandma! My mother brought me THIS:

Yup. It’s the orange Sony U30 I’ve been coveting! It’s only a 2 megapixel digicam, but I decided that was plenty sufficient for my needs. It is SO cute. The instructions are all in Japanese, but insane brother found me the English instructions in PDF format. He may be a complete lunatic, but he’s good for some things. Heh. My mom also brought me these, which are apparently all the rage in Japan:

They feel kind of funny on, but they are fun.
I wore my poncho in public (well, to a Japanese restaurant with my parents), and I got a compliment! From a normal-looking person! People, I am all about the poncho now. My father (who is even more insane than my brother) even wants one. Maybe I will make him the one with the pom poms designed by Melissa and featured in Stitch n Bitch!

Happy Halloween! In honor of this wonderful day, I have more items to FRIGHTEN you. Look at this sweater that I knit and designed all by my lonesome about 20 years ago (front on left, back on right):

Mwahahahaha!!!! If it gets any colder here, I might be forced to wear it! Now THAT would be scary.
By the way, my parents give out FULL-SIZE candy bars (usually packets of M&Ms).

I thought I was going to do a lot of sitting around and working from my parents’ house, but I have had field trips every day since I’ve been here! Monday I played with my friends the Slabs, Tuesday the genius Mrs. Harris (my friend Alice’s mom who sewed/knitted all those delicious goodies for Alice’s daughter Meredith) and I visited Rose City Textiles, a haven of outdoor fabrics (just picture an entire WALL of zippers and rolls upon rolls of polarfleece), and Lint, the fancy new yarn store.
Today, insane brother and I saw Lost in Translation. It was an accurate depiction of Japan, that is for sure! We planned to see the 12:45pm showing, but oh, mister three bachelor’s degrees and one master’s degree lunatic brother misread the time, and it started at 12:30pm. Ooops. We even had to eat food court food to get there on time! We decided to wait until the next showing, so what does insane brother do? Makes me walk in the cold and rainy and windy weather into a scary part of town so he can drop off a job application to be a gas meter reader. I got revenge by making him go the cosmetics counter in Nordstrom.
Now I am going to knit on my poncho (which I am going to need, since it was practically snowing here tonight!).

Now I am in Portland. The weather today was so gorgeous. I did that Run Like Hell Half Marathon this morning, and it was a bit brisk, but it was so beautiful! I felt like such a doofus because I was having such a pleasant time (but the downhills made my black toenail even blacker, and I think it’s going to fall off soon. Oooh, too much information. Sorry).
I did no knitting en route to Portland, but I did read The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which was very cute. It offers some wise words regarding pumpkin, which I thought were quite timely: “You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.” Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout, people!!!

I’m leaving tomorrow for Portland, so what do I do? I open one of the giant bags of Halloween candy. I always wait until Halloween so I am not tempted to nibble, but this time I wanted to try one of the crunchy Snickers, so I ripped it open. Now Peter will have to look at the bowl of candy all week (he said he didn’t care, though).

Lately I have been a sucker for all things pumpkin. I just polished off a pint of Double Rainbow ice cream in pumpkin. The texture was outstanding, but the ice cream itself was a tad on the sweet side (though I ate it all, so it’s not like it was horrible or anything). Today I had pumpkin creme brulee. Now THAT was super yummy! I’m going to try to search out pumpkin goodies in Portland, but I have a feeling I will be sitting at home with my father most of the time …