A pleasant birthday

Thanks, everyone, for the birthday greetings. I didn't actually do anything special on my birthday, though I did go out to dinner.

My body gave me a nice birthday present -- I've reached my no-shit-I-really-mean-it-this-time goal weight the day before, after having readjusted my goal weight downward several times.

Last Saturday Lydy and I went to the Campbell's International skating competition at the Xcel Energy Center. We had good seats, which we improved upon by moving downward and centerward to some unoccupied seats. This was more of an exhibition than a competition, despite the judging -- only six male and six female skaters, each doing a free skate. This was the first time I'd seen live competition, though, and it really was much better than seeing it on TV. In addition to the competition skaters, there was an exhibition routine by Inoue and Baldwin (pairs) and Belbin and Agosto (dance).

The U.S. Nationals will be at the same venue in 2007 -- they're selling all-event tickets for $495. I don't think I'll do that, but I do want to buy tickets for some of the events.

After the competition, we went back to Lydy's and had various rum concoctions (sugar-free hot buttered rum for me, rum and Coke for DD-B, and high-test hot buttered rum for Lydy) and talked about Stuff. I left around 3:30 a.m., which made it the latest night I've had in months. And a very fine time it was, too.

Today my birthday package from my mother arrived, and in addition to the sweater and pants (both of which fit, and look nice), there was an article from the Chicago Reader entitled "To Mordor and Back" about LotR fandom, and slash fandom in general. (The leader read: "Drugs and alcohol nearly runied Sarz Maxwell's life. Writing dirty stories aobut hobbits made it worth living again.")

So when I called my mother to thank her for the clothing, I gathered my courage, remembered that National Coming Out Day was on my birthday this year and mumbled that a lot of the media writing I was involved with (she knew about that part) was in fact X-rated (that part she didn't). She took it very calmly; possibly she'd seen enough zines when I'd come to visit that it came as no surprise.

I have a party to go to on Saturday, and Lydy will be taking me out to dinner on Sunday, so it's a nice birthday week all around.

Cross-stitch: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The good: I finally finished the cross-stitch project I've been working on for the last couple of years. It's a Noah's Ark pattern -- a Teresa Wentzler design, which means it's exceedingly complicated. All of the animals were stitched over one stitch, which is the cross-stitch equivalent of petit-point. I don't have a digital camera, so I can't show my version of the finished project, but it looks much like this:

http://www.twdesignworks.com/Designs/noah_l.html

It's intended for my niece, who will be four years old at Christmas. I intended to have it done earlier, of course, but I lost a year or more with glasses difficulties that made it hard for me to focus on the project. I think she's still young enough to appreciate it.

The bad: I started on my new project, a cactus sampler intended for cakmpls. No, that's not the bad part. The bad part is that after making a good start, I realized that I'd messed up, and spent a couple of hours ripping out the wrong bits and restitching them.

The ugly: After I did another section, I later realized that I'd had it right the first time, so I had to rip out the restitched areas and re-restitch them. And after that, I thought I had another incorrect section, and spent half an hour carefully counting stitches before finally coming to the conclusion that it was actually fine.

And this was supposed to be a simple project -- a respite after the complicated one I'd just finished. I guess I should have paid more attention to the fact that the magazine rated it three stars (on a four-star scale) for difficulty -- though I suspect most of that is because there are a lot of half-stitches.