Arson, gussets, and my boyfriend, the Luddite.

James and I had our first Xmas tree. Naturally, since it was our first Xmas together! Yay team us!



We got it at the Market; tiny, tiny tree! About 4 ft. tall, and we carried it home on the bus.

And, in what is sure to be an annual tradition, we burnt it after New Year's Day.

I wish that I had been less panicked when it went up because I would have loved to capture on film the twelve-foot flames that shot up when James lit a Lysol plume into the dry branches. However, panic we both did; I screamed, "Put it out! Use this!"

Fifteen minutes before the ceremonial burning commenced James had found an old fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink. I assumed that it wasn't good any more (they go bad, right?) and discounted it. But James, investigating it for the (missing, as we will discover presently) safety pin, accidentally shot the extinguisher off straight at the window. Our kitchen suddenly exploded in sweet and slightly carcinogenic-smelling white powder.

I mentioned he was drunk, yes? No?

So it was the (now confirmed) fire extinguisher that I rushed out the kitchen door to James, which he used with drunken gusto. Darby, our next-door neighbor, walked by on the street, twenty feet away.

"You guys need some help there?"

"Uh, no...we're good. We're fine."

Humans fear fire. I don't know if he and his girlfriend will come over to drink with us again.

Anticipating calamity (and rightly so), James and I had prepared a couple pots of water on the kitchen counter. We doused the remaining flames and vowed to do this stupid, not smart, very bad thing again next year. A new tradition born!

James cleaned the kitchen, too, apologizing profusely. He then told me that the same thing had happened years ago with his father (who looks and sounds like Fat Elvis), right in front of him. But with a gun.

I told him that I didn't want guns in my house. Funny, I never had a problem with them before.

So that was my Monday.

In less flammable news, today (Wednesday!) I taught myself how to knit thumb gussets! For non-sartorialists, that's the fancy term for the widening of a glove in preparation for the thumb part. It was so easy that I don't know why I never did it before. Anyway, I now can make actual fingerless gloves instead of just tubes with holes in them for your thumbs, which are dumb and don't keep you warm. For some reason when I wear "gloves" like that, it seems like 99% of the heat I lose through my hands is through my thumbs. Anyways, this first pair is blocking right now; I'll post a picture of them tomorrow as long as I remember to.

Finally, this evening (while sitting on the couch finishing the gloves) I taught James what the Refresh button on a web browser is used for.

"It's that thing with the two circling arrows*. Next to the red X, that's the Stop button. No, where the browser buttons are. Where the back arrow is. It's between the Home, the picture of the house, and the red X. Okay, you got it. Good."

I've never had to be the techie one before.

*On IE. I'm having download problems and can't get Firefox on my laptop. Probably because the laptop is so old that it predates the written language.