Misery is chiggers in your bra.

The pawprint socks are coming along. During one of Junior's long naps (he takes one of those per day, usually), I got all the way to the first heel flap. My tension's still not as even as I'd like when working Fair Isle on socks, but it's looking pretty good, in my opinion.

It was another busy weekend. A trip to the Prairie, rehearsal, and lots of visiting. Ah, visiting. It's always fun to drive through the city with Himself. He points out the places he played as a kid ("This used to be all woods here..."), various former jobsites ("Yeah, I blew all this up years ago..."), and homes of childhood friends ("That's where _____ used to live; now, he was a weird sumbich. That's _____'s old house; he's dead now..."). After several such forays into nostalgia, I came to a startling conclusion.

Every last one of Himself's friends are either weird or dead.

Having met many of them, I can say that yes indeed, they're weird. At least it's in good ways. Nobody's a sociopath or anything. They're just... weird. Case in point is a fellow called Squirrel. He's definitely not dead. He's been known as Squirrel for so long that even Himself can't remember his real name.

We were up in the city on the fourth, trying to avoid the crush of traffic and pedestrians during the parade. After all was calm, we headed down a road that took us past Squirrel's house. There he was on the lawn, wearing boxer shorts, a T-shirt and a police hat.

Like I said, he's definitely not dead.

He was also wearing a necklace. Some kind of dangly things interspersed with beads and wire bits. Didn't think much of it until he commented that he "couldn't talk right 'cause the dentist pulled all my teeth. Here's my old ones!" He then shook his necklace. Those dangly things were his teeth.

Himself later mentioned that he hated to think what would happen if Squirrel were ever "neutered"...?