I already said this on FB, but I know not everyone checks that ( Read more... )

Apparently my AIM account got hacked last night. I woke up with 934 new contacts, and some weird conversations open with people. If you received a message from me in the past 12 hours, please ignore.  I've changed my password, so hopefully this won't happen again.  

I need some advice.  Two years, on a whim, I started knitting a cardigan.  I was visiting Ashley's family for a few weeks and desperately needed a knitting project, so I just kind of guesstimated some stitch counts and cast on.  I got about half a foot in before I was back in Hangzhou and got distracted by other projects.  I think the basic premise ( Read more... )

For a while I've been worrying about my knitting progress; since I'm never around other knitters to learn from and get advice, I've been afraid my technique might have stagnated.  One of my goals for this year is to make sure my knitting projects continue to challenge me. When I took a step back to consider that, I realized I didn't have to worry ( Read more... )

Books:  Finished book four of The Parasol Protectorate.  Liked that one the most of the series. I know it's kind of weird that I kept reading even though I wasn't very enthusiastic about the first three books, but I think it all came together in that book. And since they're such quick reads, it's not like I lost a lot of time.  I'll have to see ( Read more... )

"Safe in Mianyang

Just letting you all know I made it back safe.  The last three days of my trip were easily the most chaotic.

Returning from Ha Long Bay on the 13th, I picked up my train ticket for that night which I had reserved in advance.

I packed up and headed for the train station for the 9 hour ride to Lao Cai in the north of Vietnam.  Lao Cai ( Read more... )

"Saigon Day 3/ Hanoi Days 1-2

I'm reeeaaaally tired, so I'm gonna get this email out as quickly as possible and run to bed.
Finished up my stay in Saigon yesterday by visiting a pagoda and then the Fine Arts Museum.  Once I got to the pagoda (a clueless cab driver dropped me off 2km from it and wouldn't listen when I said it was the wrong place) it ( Read more... )

So, I'm a week into this trip and while I've been sending out emails to various people along the way, it's been an inconsistant mailing list (and some people I just don't have emails for.)  So I think what I'm going to start doing is posting the emails here.  I'll have to get around to backdating the old emails so they all have the correct dates.

"Saigon Day 2: Impulse Buys

While up to now I've been fairly good about keeping to my itinerary, yesterday was a pretty major shift in plans.  While trying to book my train ticket to Hanoi, the travel agents finally managed to convince me to just fly there.  The plane ticket is actually cheaper than the train would have been (though since I'll have ( Read more... )

"Safe in Vietnam

It was a long day of traveling, because apparently it takes 3 buses to get to Saigon from Siem Reap.  Since everything I've seen here says Saigon and not Ho Chi Minh City, and Saigon is much easy to say/type, I'm just going to use that from now on.

I was supposed to get picked up at 5:50am for a 6:30 bus, but the van didn't arrive ( Read more... )