brainylady

After work tonight, I'll be going to a fancy hotel with my coworkers, where we'll be served delights such as shark fin soup (no, thanks) and they'll probably sing karaoke. Yes, it's time again for the company's year-end party. (A little behind the Western world, as we're celebrating the end of the year of the goat, not the end of 2003.) (We're actually a little early; the year of the monkey doesn't begin until January 22.) The party will be quite tame, if it's anything like last year's. These parties are definitely not like the drunken and disorderly office parties I've been to in Canada. (Do you know the Phyllis Diller quote? "What I don't like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.") And there are draw prizes. A couple of mountain bikes are up for grabs this year, which is pretty sweet -- though I'd be scared to death to ride a bike around here.

No knitting news; whenever I get a minute I work on my second Regia mini-ringel sock. I haven't gotten around to ordering Kureyon for a Rosedale sweater, but I'm going to. I swear!

I'm still horrified by the thought of cosmetic foot surgery. Now some study shows that wearing stilettos -- specifically, dancing in stilettos -- reduces a woman's risk of knee problems! Could this research have been more specific, do you think? "Yes, hello, I'd like a big fat research grant to study the relationship between three-inch heels and knees, please." "Will you be looking at feet, spines, and so on?" "No, just the knees." "All righty, and any consideration of the role played by high heels in the positioning of women as helpless sexual objects within patriarchal culture?" "No, no, just knees." "Okey-dokey! Here you are, then." I appreciate the column in today's Guardian, which points out that

the idea that shoes that force a woman to stand painfully on tiptoe all day are actually good for her does sound as revelatory as Dr Atkins' theory that a bucket of lard for breakfast will do marvels for one's figure.

(It's so good to know, though, that "heavy housework such as scrubbing" is potentially more harmful than wearing stiletto heels. I don't scrub and I wear Birkenstocks: knees of steel, baby!)