January 24, 2009

10:04 p.m.

Post-Feast

First, to get the rant overwith: My fingers are annoying the hell out of me. I feel like I slept with my hand in a poison ivy patch. AARRRRRRRRRGGHHHHH. They hurt so much they're almost numb in places, except for the fucking ITCHING.

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The dinner at Cornstove Central was outstanding. Simply the best chicken curry I've ever had, plus homemade roti and chana masala and basmati rice and fixin's. And poached bosc pears with audacious cream sauce. I almost popped.

Carol got V. and S. to talk about how they met and married. It was fascinating. They actually met through a matrimonial website in India. The first three months they only talked on the phone. When they did start to meet, it was all done very properly and traditionally, and with the objective to marry if they liked each other and if the parents were all pleased. S. was already in the states working and V. was still going to school in India. There was a lot of travel those first months.

They were very good sports to play Taboo with us even though English is a second language for them. They did pretty well! Taboo is a game where you try to get your partner to guess a word, but there is a list of other words you cannot say in trying to describe the word. So you have to talk around the subject and come up with alternate terms for things. Rose had recently gotten the game, and of everyone there, she and I were the most maniacal enthusiastic players. We were awesome! Our best word was:

Rose: This is a mammal, whose only defense is these things --

Bornearly: A porcupine!

(impressed gasping and frustrated eye-rolling from rest of participants, as Carol checks her watch again)

Everybody spent too much time removing the last card and fishing out the next card. That little egg-timer is probably a minute long. You have to cut time-corners wherever possible. We were focused, we were intense, we were like Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky -- only if they were on the same team. And not playing chess, but just trying to guess words. And if English was both their first language. Languages. ...guage. Anyway we played until everyone else was sick of it, and secretly we wanted to look at a few more cards. Rose did dishes instead, and I scratched my fingers surreptitiously under the table. And thought about yarn.

Soon it was time to go. I still want to knit a little tonight. OH-- I stopped into a little yarn shop in Rose's town this afternoon. I'd never been there before, but Rose went in recently and said I had to go. The front of the shop has several couches where women just come and knit the afternoon away together, with free coffee. I needed a certain needle anyway so I went. In addition to the needle I bought three skeins of gorgeous, kettle-dyed merino wool, which the woman spun into balls for me at no charge. They're soft and squishy and bright. I'd like a mattress made of a big spun ball of merino yarn. Come to think of it, my mattress does feel like one of those.

Hats will fly out of my fingers. They have "stash swaps" every so often, where you can bring the extra yarn you've changed your mind about (from your "bright puce" phase or whatever) and swap it for someone else's. Kind of like Junk Bingo, but without the bingo.

Anyway I was able to clear out a few things from my apartment today, because of returning Carol's swim flippers and tennis racket, and giving her the other prototype Angel Poppet I made at Christmas. This made enough room for the three new skeins of yarn. Now I really need to stop spending money on yarn.

Nicely tired now; just a few stitches, I think, and then bed.