Plastic doll beards, actual knitting, and a late summer surprise poppy

Posted On August 28, 2021

Another Saturday afternoon spent watching YouTube and ripping CDs to my laptop so I can then dump the music on a thumb drive so I can move it upstairs to my old iMac whose CD drive has been broken for years so I can listen to them on iTunes.

Speaking of iMacs, I will likely have a brand new one by next week’s update. I’ve decided to start a livestream show idea I’ve been kicking around for months, and I know that neither the old iMac nor the little MacBook I’m typing this on right now are up to the task.

Well, the laptop probably has the juice for streaming, but, alas, it’s one of the models that has but one USB-C port… which is a problem if one expects that an hour long stream might run down the battery AND you want to use an external webcam and an external USB mic.

Anyway, there’s an appropriate iMac model on sale at a store in the next city over and that will have plenty of ports.

It’ll also be more ergonomic for writing on, though I’m now kinda used to being hunched over the laptop.

What else… I got another batch of dolls for the web series I’m developing. (Naturally, all have been redressed.)

This is some Harry Potter doll, but she has the right combo of age and resting bitch face for one of the middle-aged women fans of my main character:

Another Harry Potter character turned out to be a dead ringer for Rick Rubin, which is kinda useful for a web series based in a recording studio… though I will be giving him his own name and backstory; he won’t actually be supposed to be Rick Rubin.

Kinda a bummer that his beard is molded plastic, but oh well.

Speaking of molded plastic, this Snape doll has that for the hair on his head, and if I’d known that, I probably wouldn’t have bought him.

Well, he doesn’t have a specific character and will just be used in the backgrounds, so hopefully it won’t be too noticeable. I guess I can always have some joke about him using way too much hairspray.

On the upside, he has old-looking hands with prominent veins, which is useful for an episode where my main character is spazzing about having “grandpa hands.” (The main character is a heavily Botoxed rock star in his early 60s but in deep, deep denial about that fact.) So… I can take close-ups of the Snape doll’s hands for that because the main character doll doesn’t have that kind of detailing in the hands.

Lastly, I picked up a WWE doll, who has a rather different build to the Barbies while being the same size. She kinda looks like she could be a cousin to one of my top 8 characters, actually.

Of course, the flip side of acquisition is purging. I do plan to move at some point in the next couple years and I’m getting rid of junk that I know I don’t want to haul with me, taking stuff to donate at thrift stores. And in the meantime, it will cut down on the clutter while I’m still living here.

Thursday’s planned trek didn’t work out, though, as the Value Village in Victoria was shut down due to a power outage, so I ended up just coming home with my trunk still full. Oh well.

Yeah, there’s other thrift stores, but most are more of a hassle to deal with. And I have to go back down on Monday or Tuesday anyway.

I mentioned my trip to California this October in last week’s blog. However, due to a few different circumstances, I’ll be postponing that trip til January. Kinda shitty, but oh well.

And I guess it works out with starting the livestream show, because otherwise I couldn’t do that til November (it would suck to start the show in September, do 3 weeks of it, then have to skip 2 weeks).

In better news, I’m now back on track with exercising every night, either going for a 45 minute walk or using the exercise bike for the length of an episode of the Golden Girls and then doing some weightlifting with dumbbells.

Last week I mentioned having balled up a couple skeins of yarn. One of those is now well on the way to being a wrap, the Wassailing Stole by Courtney Spainhower:

The yarn I’m using is “Alpaca Merino Worsted” by Estelle Yarns, color 510. It’s 60% alpaca and 40% merino wool. I have a bunch of other skeins to wind into balls too, but I figure I’ll leave it til I need them, unless I dig up my ball winder that I left somewhere at my dad’s house.

What else… I didn’t watch quite as many movies this week because I was watching a lot of YouTube stuff. I did watch the following, though:

• Team America: World Police
• Major League
• Joe vs. the Volcano
• 27 Dresses
• Bull Durham
• Lost in Translation
• Hannah and Her Sisters

I still intend to do some little write-ups on movies I’m watching… eventually. Problem is I tend to watch stuff like this at the end of the night when I don’t have the energy or motivation to then take the time to write a couple paragraphs.

Well, let’s wrap it up with some garden pics, huh? Not that there’s a ton in bloom at the moment, I expect more in a couple weeks after we get some rain and cooler temperatures.