Little Blue Cat!

I've been getting interested (again) in crafting and sewing, and recently stocked up on some of the essentials I didn't already have, with the intent on embarking on a new era of my life: an era of cuteness! To this end, I made an inaugural little squashy stuffed animal last week, the first, I hope, of many.

I sewed a little blue kitty with embroidered features. I used this free pattern I found online, with fleece instead of terrycloth, and the addition of a pipe cleaner sewn into the tail for maximum fun and bendiness. It turned out very cute, if I do say so myself!

Last weekend, I bundled the little blue kitty up in wrapping paper and toted it off to a baby shower, where a group of ladies sipping tea out of a fancy tea service cooed and fussed over it. Gratifying! I'm told by the expecting mother that the older sibling of the impending baby has already claimed the kitty as his own.

Serial comma

I learned to write without a serial comma. I only started using one when I started working in publishing, because my employer's house style indicated a serial comma. I thought it felt a little clumsy, a little inelegant, at first. But I got used to it, and then I got to like it. I like the order of it -- the partitioned chunk, chunk, chunk of a list neatly arranged in comma-bounded boxes. These days, its absence actively bugs me.

According to the Wikipedia article, most newspapers' styleguides recommend against it, including the New York Times, possibly, it suggests, for economy of space. But that doesn't mean that I don't wince when I read headlines like today's Democrats Clash on Trade, Health and Rival Tactics in today's Times. I know it's perfectly correct, it just... sets my teeth on edge.

Ouchie

My lower back hurts today for some reason so right now I'm lying in bed with my knees bent and my feet flat like this (my head is on the left, feet on the right):

o__/\_

And I've got my laptop with its base on my thighs, with my tummy acting as a stop for it, and the screen sticking out, looking down at me -- so the ASCII-me looks like this if you include the laptop:

o__λ_

That is all. I just wanted an excuse to make an ASCII representation of me with lambda.



. . .



Except Perry says lambda isn't ASCII. But I'll forgive him for bursting my bubble 'cause he's being all attentive and doing things like ordering me mango ice-cream for delivery and giving me his pillows, too, when I want to sit up.