First Day of Vacation...Yippee!

Sheesh. So much to say that I hardly know where to start. I had my hair done last night after work. It is so short...I love it. What I do to my hair is cruel and unusual punishment; it's a double process (first bleached then dyed), and not a very pleasant experience. To get my hair to be white-blonde, I leave the salon with a hint of blue in my hair that fades after a few days. I like the blue - I'd wear it all the time, but sometimes people look at me as if to say, "are you aware that your hair is bluish?", and I return the look, as if to say, "yeah, I know my hair is blue...do you have a problem with that?" In Swedish I can say my hair is blonde, my hair is blue, my hair is white, and my hair is gray. I just can't say my blue-blonde hair is covering my gray. That will take further study. Ja.
Just as I predicted, the hurricane was a bust. Classic news coverage though. The best was a Channel 5 story last night at 11. News team was on the Cape, which is where the weather was worse, granted. So the only story for days has been Hurricane Earl BARRELING up the coast ready to bear down on the helpless inhabitants of Cape Cod. So they're in Wellfleet at Bob's Ice Cream waiting for the town to be decimated, and the correspondent points to the people in line and says (I'm paraphrasing - I should've written it down), "People have been in line, buying ice cream for hours." Well, you can bet that if they felt safe enough to buy ice cream in Wellfleet, I felt safe enough to go to bed.
And now I should be getting ready for my trip, but I prefer to be distracted. I always struggle with what to take, what to check, and what to carry-on. For in-flight knitting, I like to keep the needles small and circular for the most part so that I don't get hassled. I've never had any trouble, but a friend of mine had her needles taken away and broken right in front of her. It wasn't in the US, but still. That's just unnecessary.
For reading, I was going to take The Social History of Knitting in America and It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For but they're both hard cover. (I should've finished the knitting history while I was in Seattle last month but I didn't and then misplaced it when I got home. Wednesday just happened to be every-other-Wednesday, so A found the book and put it where I couldn't possibly miss it. She's great that way, but I'm getting off the track.) I think I'll look around for some lighter reading material - in weight, not content.
So, what will I knit on the plane you ask? I think I'll go with another Xenocryst (Aug post, "In Record Time") for my sister H, who I'm going to visit. I've knit her a couple hats, and she wants another one. When she was here in July, I told her to let me know what color she wanted and I'd get the wool and make it for her. On her way down from Maine, she stopped at JoAnn Fabrics to look at yarn colors. She called me from there with 100 grams of light pink acrylic in her hands. Me: "Just tell me what color you want and I'll get the yarn." She said she was already in the store and had the yarn. Me: "Do NOT buy that acrylic yarn; it makes my flesh crawl. Just pick out a color." Needless to say, she gave me the acrylic yarn when I saw her that evening. (She put it on the table next to my chair where it sat for many weeks. My friend B was afraid to mention it. Finally she said, "What is that doing in your house?") Yes, I'm a snob. Life is too short to buy cheap yarn. The yarn I'm going to use is Cascade Pure Alpaca (100% Baby) pictured all wound to the left of the scary acrylic. Mmmm, Alpaca.
I've tried to post a couple different video clips of Munchie talking, but I keep getting errors when I try to play them. I'll get her posted when I get home from Tahoe. Look for me next Sunday. Bye!