Last night didn't quite go as planned, but that all worked out in the end.

After I got off work, I went home to get my car, get an umbrella, and change my clothes into less fancy velvet and more rain-friendly. Sigh. I went over to the Craft Center for the auction/party, which was the most sparsely attended one that I've ever seen--presumably due to the thoroughly crappy rainy cold weather. (But for the record, I don't think it snowed.) Which is to say, there were actually open seats there for the auction. And I do really wonder about the amount of money they made...it seemed even less than usual. I think maybe one thing went over $30 in the bidding....and a few more went to 20. A lot of things went for $1, which is both convenient for the buyer and kinda sad for the person who donated it. Or in my case, a few things just were not bid on at all. Which is kind of my own fault because I donated clothing, which as you can see, wasn't exactly try-on-able. The red shirt that was tied really tight looked like it was made for a tiny little girl or something that way, and the multi-colored thing there is a skirt, not a dress. They said they'd hold them for next year, but I kinda feel bad saddling them with white elephants there. On the other hand, there was a bidding war for a few things, especially that flaming bowling bag, which the head manager said was his favorite thing and he bid heavily to get it. So good for him there.

I sat with my friend Jamie (I knit through the whole thing, she crocheted through the whole thing), and then afterwards I asked her if she wanted to go to the improv show that was supposed to be starting at 8 that night. So we went over there...and the building was locked and clearly being cleaned by custodians and people were walking up to the door and then walking away. Dammit! I don't know what happened there, but grrrr. So Jamie was all, "Wanna come over to my house and watch Babylon 5?" So we did that instead, and it was good.

I am hanging out with Jamie all weekend. This morning she and her mother and I went to the Art Center craft fair, which was pretty freaking huge. However, most of my favorite vendors I buy from were not there (sad) and I ended up not really buying anything. Though I did sign up for a three hour "problem solving knitting" class they are offering for $15 rather than $60 in January, so there's that, at least. I found an ornament Mom might want to give someone else as a gift and texted a pic of it to her to see if she wanted it...of course she didn't spot it until we'd left the craft fair and then she yelled at me for not calling her directly at home and said she doesn't have her cell on her at all times. I was all, "I know darned well you have that on you at all times, don't tell me that, I see you with that thing like it's your teddy bear," and then she was all, "Now I want that ornament!!" So if I am feeling nice I may go back there briefly tomorrow morning to see if it's still there.

After the fair we stopped in at a gallery show/craft fair, followed by hitting a thrift store that I'd seen an ad for plugging their ugly holiday sweaters. It was along the lines of "We bought a hundred of them, stop by, they are going fast!" I would guess they had...maybe around 40-ish by the time we got there? Jamie and I got one each---mine is actually quite classy, it's red with a few small pointsettias down the middle. I did look at some blingier things, but the "ugly" about a lot of the sweaters was that they were in raggedy condition, losing sequins and strings coming off and the like. Kinda sad to see that happen to clothes.

After that I said goodbye to everyone (we shall meet up again tomorrow for more shopping and browsing) and headed off to the Thank God It's Over NaNoWriMo Party, which you'll most likely also hear about from Richard and Jennifer on their Holidailies entries. This amuses me no end, somehow, that three of us doing this get to talk about it. I also found it kind of amusing that they knew of what I was talking about early on because duh, I already wrote about it here. I tend to forget what people I know IRL actually see this thing, but one month a year.... :)

We had fourteen people or so there taking advantage of their lovely kitchen and island in the middle of it. The food spread was good--I brought strawberry shortcake cookies my mom got the dough for for me in a school sale, and it looks like everyone liked them because I didn't take any home! The other cookies there were snickerdoodles, which was the other option I might have brought, so that worked out. We had delicious snack foods and dips and relish and cracker trays and a quiche and a lot of sparkling cider and exotic soda. There was lots of yakking about writing and cats, which made people happy. Some folks dug up their novels and read parts of them aloud, which was fun. I kinda wish I'd thought to bring an excerpt before coming (couldn't get my docs in the cloud to work on my phone ), but oh well.

If you stayed at the party long enough, you eventually got to meet ALL of their six cats (most of which were locked in the bedroom until the party got below a certain number of people). Nutmeg got to be out all of the time and hid under the Christmas tree a lot. Ingrid was shy and hiding in a scratching post tower, Azzie and Rosemary and Rupert roamed in and out. And we all got to hear about Sherman, who has to be LOCATED AND GRABBED (or locked in the bathroom with me at one point) any time someone tries to leave the house. Heh. At some point I want to do an entry about the arguments in my head about whether or not to get a cat and to explain where that's coming from, but there are certainly valid arguments to be made about the kinds of stuff cats get up to in your house...like flooding your bedroom, apparently! (If that happens a third time here I will lose my shit....)

Oh, and the Jenipurr car? Amazing. Never before have I seen so many Cthulhu/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Alien/flat out dead fake Jesus fish on a car before. Bwahahahahah. I love geek cars.

In other news: I had had the intention to go buy more double pointed needles today, but never got to it. Ah well, Jamie's always up for a trip to a craft store, I can probably do it with her tomorrow. And despite getting my heater fixed...a month or two ago, I forget now...I don't think it's actually uh, on. Yes, that's dumb of me to not notice, but I seriously do not spend much time at home to! How do pilot lights work again....?

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