I went out Saturday morning to do some research. For once, I had a little success. I think the "sit ten minutes and observe" will work better than the "traplining," at least until fall when more stuff is flowering.
I did seven samples at each site, spreading them out across the sites where there was vegetation. Again, I saw mostly butterflies (and now I know what an Eastern Tailed Blue looks like), but I did also spot a few megachilid (leafcutter) bees, and a few honeybees at the second site. (And a very small iridescent black bee that I am assuming is a halictid). Lots of the large carpenter bees (Xylocopa), but they don't often visit plants right now; I think they are in mating stage and are more involved with hovering over their patch of ground and chasing interlopers. (No idea if it's the drones or the female bees; they're hard to tell apart).
I will say I feel a lot better about the research now; now I see what I can do to get data that will work. And it's easy enough - all I need carry is my field book, my identification books, and a folding campstool. (It was very wet still on Saturday - I mean, the ground was wet - and anyway, sitting right on the ground is a good way to get bit by the various invertebrate wildlife we have (everything from chiggers to fire ants))
So once I get back, I can do that maybe one afternoon a week, plus Fridays and Saturdays, if it's not raining. I can continue to trap but I'm thinking the observations seem to work so well, that they make sense to do a lot of them. I am probably going to take more of a break in July and August; it's hotter and dryer and we have fewer things flowering. Maybe only go out once a week then. But when fall rolls around - hoping we have enough rain - and the goldenrod starts flowering, I will do more work again. (As my schedule works now, I have one day with NO classes and while we are "supposed" to hold one hour of office hours every day, I can make my hour for that day (sigh) late in the day and just come back in after field work. Once again - the inability of a few to hold the requested 10 hours of office hours means we all suffer; if I didn't post Tuesday hours I'd probably get called on the carpet - even though I could argue I "need" that time to be in the field. It's the "one bad apple" effect once again.)
One thing I do want to do over break is go to the larger, more extensive university library up where I will be and see if they have any books specifically on identifying bees and wasps, and if so, see if I can obtain my own copies of them to use. I don't know if they ever replaced their entomologist when he retired or I'd go ask him. I don't know how much extension agents know about native bees but it might be worth asking some of the extension agents around here...
Monday, May 20, 2013
Ready to go
I packed yesterday evening. And I'm hoping for a little of what folks around here refer to as "traveling mercies," there are supposed to be severe storms moving into the area. If they follow what the local weather guy (who seems to be fairly good) predicts, they will move in AFTER I have left this area, and the biggest risk will be through Arkansas overnight when I am on the train. (What do trains do about tornado warnings? Ideally, they stop outside the area likely to have a warning, pull off on a siding, and wait. I've had that happen. I packed an extra book just in case....)
I don't like tornadoes. I don't like thunderstorms that bring high winds or hail, either. The house a couple houses to the north of me had their big old hackberry split during the last high wind. The local road crew came and cut off the parts of it that were blocking the street, but the homeowners (who probably is a landlord elsewhere, I think it's a rental house) have not had the rest of the tree removed.
I don't have a basement in my current house but I do have an interior room (the bathroom) that has multiple walls between it and the outside - on one side, there's a closet full of clothes, on the other, there are a couple walls blocking, on the third, a closet where I store my extra paper towels and stuff, and on the fourth, that's my sewing room and I think what is right up against the adjoining wall is a full bookshelf. So I'm probably fairly well protected from debris punching through a wall, but of course, if the whole house comes down....no. There are city storm shelters but good luck trying to get to one if the warning comes up fast. And then there's also the issue of the people wanting to be your new best friends....the last time I went to a shelter the conversation someone tried to involve me in made me think I'd rather take my chances in my own bathroom.
I'm in, planning to do my syllabi for this summer (I have a few days after I get back, but I just prefer to know they are ready to go.)
I have a compartment on the train again. This is one of the few luxuries in which I indulge myself. It's a lot cheaper to go coach, but taking coach is like Forrest Gump's proverbial box of chocolates....sometimes you wind up with a quiet seatmate, sometimes you wind up with someone interesting and cool, sometimes you wind up with someone who talks on their cell phone the whole time and is loud, sometimes you wind up with someone who asks you if you will send them your ponytail if you ever decide to cut it off. (Yes, I had that happen to me once, and I wound up sitting in the lounge car - under the watchful eye of the attendant - for the rest of the trip. Yes, with both the conductor and lounge attendant's blessing. Luckily it was only for a couple hours, but still - it's creepy to have someone keep talking to you about something you don't want to do and that makes you wonder what's going on inside their heads).
So I prefer not to chance it, seeing as I can afford a compartment. And that way I can kick off my shoes, put on slippers (I always travel with slippers now. Yes, they add a little weight but it is so nice to have them), and just read or look at the scenery. And not have to talk to people except over dinner. To read, I've got "The Disappearing Spoon" (which I started the other night), "Hons and Rebels" (a book by, I think it was Jessica Mitford? One of the Mitford sisters. About her growing-up years), a book on the 1812 New Madrid earthquakes, and I also tossed in a copy of "The Brontes go to Woolworth's" (One of those between-the-wars light British fiction novels that I enjoy).
And I got all my planned knitting packed.
I don't like tornadoes. I don't like thunderstorms that bring high winds or hail, either. The house a couple houses to the north of me had their big old hackberry split during the last high wind. The local road crew came and cut off the parts of it that were blocking the street, but the homeowners (who probably is a landlord elsewhere, I think it's a rental house) have not had the rest of the tree removed.
I don't have a basement in my current house but I do have an interior room (the bathroom) that has multiple walls between it and the outside - on one side, there's a closet full of clothes, on the other, there are a couple walls blocking, on the third, a closet where I store my extra paper towels and stuff, and on the fourth, that's my sewing room and I think what is right up against the adjoining wall is a full bookshelf. So I'm probably fairly well protected from debris punching through a wall, but of course, if the whole house comes down....no. There are city storm shelters but good luck trying to get to one if the warning comes up fast. And then there's also the issue of the people wanting to be your new best friends....the last time I went to a shelter the conversation someone tried to involve me in made me think I'd rather take my chances in my own bathroom.
I'm in, planning to do my syllabi for this summer (I have a few days after I get back, but I just prefer to know they are ready to go.)
I have a compartment on the train again. This is one of the few luxuries in which I indulge myself. It's a lot cheaper to go coach, but taking coach is like Forrest Gump's proverbial box of chocolates....sometimes you wind up with a quiet seatmate, sometimes you wind up with someone interesting and cool, sometimes you wind up with someone who talks on their cell phone the whole time and is loud, sometimes you wind up with someone who asks you if you will send them your ponytail if you ever decide to cut it off. (Yes, I had that happen to me once, and I wound up sitting in the lounge car - under the watchful eye of the attendant - for the rest of the trip. Yes, with both the conductor and lounge attendant's blessing. Luckily it was only for a couple hours, but still - it's creepy to have someone keep talking to you about something you don't want to do and that makes you wonder what's going on inside their heads).
So I prefer not to chance it, seeing as I can afford a compartment. And that way I can kick off my shoes, put on slippers (I always travel with slippers now. Yes, they add a little weight but it is so nice to have them), and just read or look at the scenery. And not have to talk to people except over dinner. To read, I've got "The Disappearing Spoon" (which I started the other night), "Hons and Rebels" (a book by, I think it was Jessica Mitford? One of the Mitford sisters. About her growing-up years), a book on the 1812 New Madrid earthquakes, and I also tossed in a copy of "The Brontes go to Woolworth's" (One of those between-the-wars light British fiction novels that I enjoy).
And I got all my planned knitting packed.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
At long last
I FINALLY finished the Rib Fantastic socks I've been working on since spring break or so.
The yarn is a Pagewood Farm sock yarn, the colorway is called River Rock. I really like how it worked with the pattern. The Rib Fantastic pattern is just a good pattern for variegated sock yarn, period.
Here's a close up:
I'm glad I got these done before break; now I feel free to start new socks. I've got a couple candidates to work on (some indie-dyer yarn in a colorway called Butterbeer that I think will work for the Goldengroves socks out of the "Knitting socks with handpainted yarns" book, the Carousel yarn that I want to use for just-plain socks....) I am also going to take the current CPH along and work more on it as well.
I can't believe that tomorrow starts my break. (Such as it is: about a week)
The yarn is a Pagewood Farm sock yarn, the colorway is called River Rock. I really like how it worked with the pattern. The Rib Fantastic pattern is just a good pattern for variegated sock yarn, period.
Here's a close up:
I'm glad I got these done before break; now I feel free to start new socks. I've got a couple candidates to work on (some indie-dyer yarn in a colorway called Butterbeer that I think will work for the Goldengroves socks out of the "Knitting socks with handpainted yarns" book, the Carousel yarn that I want to use for just-plain socks....) I am also going to take the current CPH along and work more on it as well.
I can't believe that tomorrow starts my break. (Such as it is: about a week)
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Great new word
Well, new to me. (And also: the reference I saw to this was purely on the "Intarwebs," so it's also possible this isn't real.)
It's a Japanese word. It is transliterated as "tsundoku." Supposedly (again: found it on the "Intarwebs," take with a grain of salt) it means the habit of buying books and letting them pile up unread on nightstands and the floor.
Uh, yeah. That pretty much describes my decorating style these days: Early Tsundoku. I am an enthusiastic buyer of books, with more enthusiasm than either reading speed or time to read for "fun."
It's a Japanese word. It is transliterated as "tsundoku." Supposedly (again: found it on the "Intarwebs," take with a grain of salt) it means the habit of buying books and letting them pile up unread on nightstands and the floor.
Uh, yeah. That pretty much describes my decorating style these days: Early Tsundoku. I am an enthusiastic buyer of books, with more enthusiasm than either reading speed or time to read for "fun."
The afternoon's work
Yeah, I needed to do something different. One of the problems with research and me is that I get my head so much into it that I can't see out if things aren't going perfectly. (Not many bees, and also, I'm struggling to identify some of them. I need a better key. One thing I am going to look for over break are better keys to the main families I need to know.)
It was still really wet out after lunch - no idea how much rain we got but the news was saying we got close to 2" of rain overnight last night - so there was no sense in trying to sample. (There may not be tomorrow morning, but I could try an afternoon sampling to see what I get)
It's also too wet out to photograph quilt tops the way I usually do, hung on my clothesline (which I don't use to dry clothes - too much pollen, too many birds, and too much chance of my neighbor's escape-artist dog getting into the yard and pulling stuff off the line). So I did second best:
The pattern I used is called "Flagstone" but I think of it as "wonky four-patch" because it kind of is.
I like this top. I REALLY like this top. The colors are different, the patterns are kind of odd - somewhere between mid-century, mod, and hipster - but there's just something really endearing to me about it. I think the wonky four-patch was the best pattern I could use with these fabrics - to my eye, it just *works*.
Here's a close-up.
I'm almost tempted, since I like it so much, to see if I can get my hands on enough of that pink-background ticket print for the backing, instead of using the out-of-the-stash pink stripe. I'll have to think about it.
It was still really wet out after lunch - no idea how much rain we got but the news was saying we got close to 2" of rain overnight last night - so there was no sense in trying to sample. (There may not be tomorrow morning, but I could try an afternoon sampling to see what I get)
It's also too wet out to photograph quilt tops the way I usually do, hung on my clothesline (which I don't use to dry clothes - too much pollen, too many birds, and too much chance of my neighbor's escape-artist dog getting into the yard and pulling stuff off the line). So I did second best:
The pattern I used is called "Flagstone" but I think of it as "wonky four-patch" because it kind of is.
I like this top. I REALLY like this top. The colors are different, the patterns are kind of odd - somewhere between mid-century, mod, and hipster - but there's just something really endearing to me about it. I think the wonky four-patch was the best pattern I could use with these fabrics - to my eye, it just *works*.
Here's a close-up.
I'm almost tempted, since I like it so much, to see if I can get my hands on enough of that pink-background ticket print for the backing, instead of using the out-of-the-stash pink stripe. I'll have to think about it.
rained out again
I'm going to have a go this morning at identifying a few more things, instead. (I can hear it raining loudly, right now - so there's no sense in even trying to get out today. If this air mass moves out of here this afternoon like it's supposed to, I can probably sample tomorrow).
I think I'm suffering again from Lack Of Free Time. Several days this week I didn't get home until kind of late, and coupled with the necessary de-ticking shower and extensive scalp check (I am paranoid about ticks; the department chair who replaced my dad when he retired just recently had to step down because of neurological issues brought on by late-diagnosed Lyme disease - while that's less common here, we also have Spotted Fever and a few other scary tick-borne diseases. And also, ticks are just ewwwwwww.)
Anyway, between that and steaming all the vegetables I eat and getting in 50-60 minutes of piano practice there's not much time for other stuff. (Dammit, yes, I am keeping up with it. Magical thinking: if I keep practicing this summer my teacher will be available to give lessons in the fall, but if I do not, she won't be.)
Anyway, my diastolic blood pressure is creeping up again. (last night: 85. Which is higher than it's been since I started on the medications). That worries me. The diastolic bounces around a lot - the systolic remains pretty solidly in the 120-130 range, which is where it should be, but the diastolic can go anywhere from 58 to 80, and now 85.
What frustrates me is that I don't know what's causing it, and I don't know what I can do to change it. I'm already eating minimal sodium (even if there's a "new study" out claiming that extreme restriction does no good. I am refusing currently to believe that, mainly because that means my 8 months of effort were in vain if it's true.) I haven't been doing the regular morning exercise, thinking perhaps wrongly that walking five miles or so a day over rough terrain in the field was equivalent. (I did get up and do the exercise this morning, figuring I wouldn't get out in the field). The only other thing is that I haven't been taking as much downtime as I'd like.
I really hope this isn't some crazy "your body is out of control" things that will end in me having to go on yet another medication. (as I said elsewhere: stupid body, behave, or else I'll take something else away from you). I haven't changed my diet - not eating more, not eating less. Maybe eating less sugar than I had been but that should lower my blood pressure, not raise it. I haven't been drinking my usual tea, so there's no extra caffeine.
So, I am going to work this morning, then go home and do something else this afternoon. See if that helps. If it doesn't, I don't know - I guess it means back to the doctor after I get back home after break to try to figure out some OTHER strategy.
Truth is, I'm probably way obsessing over this. I've seen some medical write-ups that suggest a diastolic of 80 is essentially normal.....but my doc was concerned when I was having readings of 90 or above, and 85 is practically 90. (Heh. If you don't believe that, ask some of my students).
This is why I never took the diet advice to weigh myself daily - I get too obsessive about numbers like that.
I think I'm suffering again from Lack Of Free Time. Several days this week I didn't get home until kind of late, and coupled with the necessary de-ticking shower and extensive scalp check (I am paranoid about ticks; the department chair who replaced my dad when he retired just recently had to step down because of neurological issues brought on by late-diagnosed Lyme disease - while that's less common here, we also have Spotted Fever and a few other scary tick-borne diseases. And also, ticks are just ewwwwwww.)
Anyway, between that and steaming all the vegetables I eat and getting in 50-60 minutes of piano practice there's not much time for other stuff. (Dammit, yes, I am keeping up with it. Magical thinking: if I keep practicing this summer my teacher will be available to give lessons in the fall, but if I do not, she won't be.)
Anyway, my diastolic blood pressure is creeping up again. (last night: 85. Which is higher than it's been since I started on the medications). That worries me. The diastolic bounces around a lot - the systolic remains pretty solidly in the 120-130 range, which is where it should be, but the diastolic can go anywhere from 58 to 80, and now 85.
What frustrates me is that I don't know what's causing it, and I don't know what I can do to change it. I'm already eating minimal sodium (even if there's a "new study" out claiming that extreme restriction does no good. I am refusing currently to believe that, mainly because that means my 8 months of effort were in vain if it's true.) I haven't been doing the regular morning exercise, thinking perhaps wrongly that walking five miles or so a day over rough terrain in the field was equivalent. (I did get up and do the exercise this morning, figuring I wouldn't get out in the field). The only other thing is that I haven't been taking as much downtime as I'd like.
I really hope this isn't some crazy "your body is out of control" things that will end in me having to go on yet another medication. (as I said elsewhere: stupid body, behave, or else I'll take something else away from you). I haven't changed my diet - not eating more, not eating less. Maybe eating less sugar than I had been but that should lower my blood pressure, not raise it. I haven't been drinking my usual tea, so there's no extra caffeine.
So, I am going to work this morning, then go home and do something else this afternoon. See if that helps. If it doesn't, I don't know - I guess it means back to the doctor after I get back home after break to try to figure out some OTHER strategy.
Truth is, I'm probably way obsessing over this. I've seen some medical write-ups that suggest a diastolic of 80 is essentially normal.....but my doc was concerned when I was having readings of 90 or above, and 85 is practically 90. (Heh. If you don't believe that, ask some of my students).
This is why I never took the diet advice to weigh myself daily - I get too obsessive about numbers like that.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Some insect photos
Because I can. I decided to take the afternoon and start identifying stuff. I'm taking photos of some things, partly for my records, partly as a help to identify. I'll be adding to this post as I go.
#1: I THINK this is some kind of a fly, I feel like the clubbed antenna should be a giveaway to me, but I don't have a good fly reference and I don't know the flies well:
#2: some kind of buprestid (wood boring) beetle (or at least, I'm pretty sure it is). These things are super abundant in the samples. I don't have to get things to species, getting them to family is good enough, and these things aren't specifically the pollinators I'm looking for ("These are not the pollinators you are looking for. Move along now"?) so it's a bonus to be able to identify them.
#3 A wasp, no real idea on the family. This is the lowest magnification I can get with the dissecting scope I have so I can only photograph parts of things.
4. Finally one I am pretty sure about: a halictid bee, one of the so-called "little green bees" that are mostly in genus Agapostemon. It's kind of unfortunate that this one met its end all curled up, but then again I can't get all of it in the photo, so it doesn't matter TOO much.
The abdomen is in the left of the photo, the head (whitish eye) and antenna toward the right.
5. I'm FAIRLY certain this is a pleasing fungus beetle (one of my favorite common names for an organism - there are actually many species of these, this looks closest to what is called a lizard beetle)
It was too big for one photo so I took the head and abdomen separately.
#1: I THINK this is some kind of a fly, I feel like the clubbed antenna should be a giveaway to me, but I don't have a good fly reference and I don't know the flies well:
#2: some kind of buprestid (wood boring) beetle (or at least, I'm pretty sure it is). These things are super abundant in the samples. I don't have to get things to species, getting them to family is good enough, and these things aren't specifically the pollinators I'm looking for ("These are not the pollinators you are looking for. Move along now"?) so it's a bonus to be able to identify them.
#3 A wasp, no real idea on the family. This is the lowest magnification I can get with the dissecting scope I have so I can only photograph parts of things.
4. Finally one I am pretty sure about: a halictid bee, one of the so-called "little green bees" that are mostly in genus Agapostemon. It's kind of unfortunate that this one met its end all curled up, but then again I can't get all of it in the photo, so it doesn't matter TOO much.
The abdomen is in the left of the photo, the head (whitish eye) and antenna toward the right.
5. I'm FAIRLY certain this is a pleasing fungus beetle (one of my favorite common names for an organism - there are actually many species of these, this looks closest to what is called a lizard beetle)
It was too big for one photo so I took the head and abdomen separately.
Got rained out
I guess Rainbow Dash and her crew decided I was working too hard, or needed to take a day to identify the specimens I already had, or something, and pushed a bunch of clouds into the area. I got out to the first site and got the traps deployed, but on the way to the second site, it started raining. And kept raining. So I came back here - I will pick up the first set of traps around noon if it's not thundering and lightning, but if it is, they can sit overnight and I'll get them tomorrow.
A couple other observations: The only honeybees I've seen have been at my colleague's property. It's possible someone near there has a hive (I will have to ask him when he gets back into town) but there are also still a few wild colonies around here. (No idea if they are Africanized or not. The bees I observed I was able to get pretty close to and they ignored me, but it's my understanding that the so-called "Africanized" honeybees really only swarm and get aggressive in defense of the nest).
I only saw wasps and what were probably leafcutter bees at the second site. I have a few preserved bee samples but they are all native bees that I'll have to try to identify.
I'm beginning to think that a fall sampling will be a lot more profitable; that's when I remember really seeing crazy big amounts of bees. (Of course, I saw a lot visiting my holly when it was in flower - I guess hollies make lots of nectar and the bees like it, there were honeybees and a few bumblebees and some halictids and what were probably leafcutters). I'm hoping that once the privet next to my house is full-blown that it will attract lots (and that the storms today won't damage the flowers before they fully open). I could just take a chair out there and watch and maybe bone up on my identification of there are lots of things that visit it. (I know last year there were).
***
I finished the "sourball" socks last night. These MIGHT go in a "donate to charity at some point" box; the colors are close to other sock colors I already have.
I also worked more on the Rib Fantastic socks; I finished the heel flap on the second sock.
And I realize I need to start thinking hard about projects-for-over-break - I leave on Monday for about a week's break. I keep not thinking about it because the fieldwork eats all my attention these days. I might take the CPH along and try to finish it - I have about a half of the first sleeve done, so I'd have the second sleeve, the assembly, and the bands and hood. The other nice thing about taking it along would be that I'd be able to go to the dressmaker shop for buttons, and take a bit of the yarn with me to look for a good match or good contrast.
I think I'll also take (and start) Hitchhiker. I keep looking at it and thinking I want to start it, but after I finish some other things....
A couple other observations: The only honeybees I've seen have been at my colleague's property. It's possible someone near there has a hive (I will have to ask him when he gets back into town) but there are also still a few wild colonies around here. (No idea if they are Africanized or not. The bees I observed I was able to get pretty close to and they ignored me, but it's my understanding that the so-called "Africanized" honeybees really only swarm and get aggressive in defense of the nest).
I only saw wasps and what were probably leafcutter bees at the second site. I have a few preserved bee samples but they are all native bees that I'll have to try to identify.
I'm beginning to think that a fall sampling will be a lot more profitable; that's when I remember really seeing crazy big amounts of bees. (Of course, I saw a lot visiting my holly when it was in flower - I guess hollies make lots of nectar and the bees like it, there were honeybees and a few bumblebees and some halictids and what were probably leafcutters). I'm hoping that once the privet next to my house is full-blown that it will attract lots (and that the storms today won't damage the flowers before they fully open). I could just take a chair out there and watch and maybe bone up on my identification of there are lots of things that visit it. (I know last year there were).
***
I finished the "sourball" socks last night. These MIGHT go in a "donate to charity at some point" box; the colors are close to other sock colors I already have.
I also worked more on the Rib Fantastic socks; I finished the heel flap on the second sock.
And I realize I need to start thinking hard about projects-for-over-break - I leave on Monday for about a week's break. I keep not thinking about it because the fieldwork eats all my attention these days. I might take the CPH along and try to finish it - I have about a half of the first sleeve done, so I'd have the second sleeve, the assembly, and the bands and hood. The other nice thing about taking it along would be that I'd be able to go to the dressmaker shop for buttons, and take a bit of the yarn with me to look for a good match or good contrast.
I think I'll also take (and start) Hitchhiker. I keep looking at it and thinking I want to start it, but after I finish some other things....
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Day two, research
Not sure if I will get anything done tomorrow; there's a chance of storms. I'm going to set my bee traps again in the morning, but will have to watch the sky and run out and grab them if it looks stormy.
I'm finding the traplining more challenging than I expected; not a lot of things are active and it gets frustrating. I did record all the stuff flowering along a couple transects and outside of black medic and green milkweed and a few late hangers-on of a verbena, there's not much right now. (I'm not sure how much the medic is used; I saw few pollinators on it, and few on Indian paintbrush). There's a lot more butterfly activity than bee activity. Pretty much the only really active bees are the huge carpenter bees and some kind of small, non-honeybee fuzzy bee. Maybe some kind of leafcutter bee? I had really hoped it was easier to tell the bee groups apart.
And of course, I start wondering if I'm equipped to be doing this - I kind of know the butterflies, and can identify some of them on the wing (but have a hard time with the skippers, and can't quickly tell a Painted Lady from an American Lady, and I get confused by the sulphurs). The bees are even tougher on the wing, even the experts just group them by family, but I don't even really know the families yet. So of course my Inner Critic goes into overdrive.
I was thinking, "There are so many people who would be so much better at this than I am" but then again, they're not out doing it; they're doing other things. I don't know. This early work may not be worth much, I'm still learning things. Maybe I will get better later on and the stuff I do at the end of the summer will be publishable. (One of the challenges of being at a small school - I can already hear reviewers going "Why didn't you just get a bunch of little cameras and mount them in the field, and use image-processing software, rather than depending on your admittedly poor eyesight?" Because we don't have a bunch of little cameras, we don't have funds to buy them, and the field sites are "public" enough that the cameras might disappear if I didn't sit there babysitting them....)
Again, I don't know. I still feel very "I don't know what I am doing" with this but maybe that's a big part of doing research - I usually feel that way when starting a new project.
I wish I were better at doing the Mythbusters thing and going "Failure is always an option!" except with tenure review and expectations that I present some kind of report to the granting group at the end of this....it isn't. Failure is always an option when you're entertaining a television audience; not so much when you have people who might go, "What exactly WERE you thinking? Did you really think you could do that?" when you try to present your not-very-amazing research findings.
I did spend a couple of ten-minute stretches just sitting next to a patch of flowering stuff and recording every pollinator that came through (That's when I realized butterflies are running about 12 to 1 to bees). If I were better at identifying, I'd feel better about that....but maybe this is just a calibration phase where I learn stuff. (I did take my butterfly book out in the field with me and was relieved that I was identifying some correctly).
Maybe it will go better later in the season if more stuff is flowering; most of our really bee-attracting flowers seem to be the late summer stuff like goldenrods. I do plan to set up some evenings while my privet is flowering and just watch and see if I can get better at identifying stuff on the wing.....maybe even bring a sweep net home and try catching some of the things to get a close up look.
ETA: I feel some better, I looked up what I thought was a leafcutter bee (and wrote it down as thus in my notes) and I was right. Maybe I'm not so dumb at this after all. I got really good really fast at identifying prairie plants; maybe that skill will cross over for bees.
I'm finding the traplining more challenging than I expected; not a lot of things are active and it gets frustrating. I did record all the stuff flowering along a couple transects and outside of black medic and green milkweed and a few late hangers-on of a verbena, there's not much right now. (I'm not sure how much the medic is used; I saw few pollinators on it, and few on Indian paintbrush). There's a lot more butterfly activity than bee activity. Pretty much the only really active bees are the huge carpenter bees and some kind of small, non-honeybee fuzzy bee. Maybe some kind of leafcutter bee? I had really hoped it was easier to tell the bee groups apart.
And of course, I start wondering if I'm equipped to be doing this - I kind of know the butterflies, and can identify some of them on the wing (but have a hard time with the skippers, and can't quickly tell a Painted Lady from an American Lady, and I get confused by the sulphurs). The bees are even tougher on the wing, even the experts just group them by family, but I don't even really know the families yet. So of course my Inner Critic goes into overdrive.
I was thinking, "There are so many people who would be so much better at this than I am" but then again, they're not out doing it; they're doing other things. I don't know. This early work may not be worth much, I'm still learning things. Maybe I will get better later on and the stuff I do at the end of the summer will be publishable. (One of the challenges of being at a small school - I can already hear reviewers going "Why didn't you just get a bunch of little cameras and mount them in the field, and use image-processing software, rather than depending on your admittedly poor eyesight?" Because we don't have a bunch of little cameras, we don't have funds to buy them, and the field sites are "public" enough that the cameras might disappear if I didn't sit there babysitting them....)
Again, I don't know. I still feel very "I don't know what I am doing" with this but maybe that's a big part of doing research - I usually feel that way when starting a new project.
I wish I were better at doing the Mythbusters thing and going "Failure is always an option!" except with tenure review and expectations that I present some kind of report to the granting group at the end of this....it isn't. Failure is always an option when you're entertaining a television audience; not so much when you have people who might go, "What exactly WERE you thinking? Did you really think you could do that?" when you try to present your not-very-amazing research findings.
I did spend a couple of ten-minute stretches just sitting next to a patch of flowering stuff and recording every pollinator that came through (That's when I realized butterflies are running about 12 to 1 to bees). If I were better at identifying, I'd feel better about that....but maybe this is just a calibration phase where I learn stuff. (I did take my butterfly book out in the field with me and was relieved that I was identifying some correctly).
Maybe it will go better later in the season if more stuff is flowering; most of our really bee-attracting flowers seem to be the late summer stuff like goldenrods. I do plan to set up some evenings while my privet is flowering and just watch and see if I can get better at identifying stuff on the wing.....maybe even bring a sweep net home and try catching some of the things to get a close up look.
ETA: I feel some better, I looked up what I thought was a leafcutter bee (and wrote it down as thus in my notes) and I was right. Maybe I'm not so dumb at this after all. I got really good really fast at identifying prairie plants; maybe that skill will cross over for bees.
Monday, May 13, 2013
The traps worked.
Long, hard day in the field. I went out at 8 am and placed the traps at the first site, then drove to the second site and placed traps there.
While waiting, I did a "trapline" (that is - walking VERY slowly for about a 50 m transect, and recording any and all pollinator activity I observed).
I went home, ate lunch, went BACK to the first site, traplined there (And I have to say, the 10 m per minute pace that you're supposed to use - it's excruciatingly slow to walk. Or at least for me it is).
I didn't look at my traps. I was worried nothing would have happened. I am always apprehensive when I first start new research because I feel totally like this:
I figured I could leave them overnight if there was no success, or I could supplement with sweep netting and maybe sticky traps.
But then, when I came on the first set - bugs in the water! Mostly small beetles but they kind of count too. And there were a couple of tiny wasps, which will probably be a challenge to identify, but whatever.
And all the other traps worked, too. I have a couple of what I am fairly sure are halictid bees, and a number of small wasps, and what is possibly a mason bee or a digger bee. I have to identify them when I have time - for now, they are preserved. (One of the people on ITFF suggested that a reference collection can be made by submerging the specimens in Purell in glass vials - because the Purell has a high alcohol content, it preserves them, but because it is more viscous than plain old 70% isopropyl, the insect is suspended and easier to examine. I may have to try that.)
So then I was totally like this:
Some faith in my research ability has been restored.
(it's Freddie 'Mercury,' get it?)
Tomorrow I just trapline - I've decided to do every-other-day actual sampling, because I probably won't get that many different things on subsequent days; it will take working across the entire season to put together a decent reference collection and I don't want to totally overwhelm myself with hundreds of samples.
While waiting, I did a "trapline" (that is - walking VERY slowly for about a 50 m transect, and recording any and all pollinator activity I observed).
I went home, ate lunch, went BACK to the first site, traplined there (And I have to say, the 10 m per minute pace that you're supposed to use - it's excruciatingly slow to walk. Or at least for me it is).
I didn't look at my traps. I was worried nothing would have happened. I am always apprehensive when I first start new research because I feel totally like this:
I figured I could leave them overnight if there was no success, or I could supplement with sweep netting and maybe sticky traps.
But then, when I came on the first set - bugs in the water! Mostly small beetles but they kind of count too. And there were a couple of tiny wasps, which will probably be a challenge to identify, but whatever.
And all the other traps worked, too. I have a couple of what I am fairly sure are halictid bees, and a number of small wasps, and what is possibly a mason bee or a digger bee. I have to identify them when I have time - for now, they are preserved. (One of the people on ITFF suggested that a reference collection can be made by submerging the specimens in Purell in glass vials - because the Purell has a high alcohol content, it preserves them, but because it is more viscous than plain old 70% isopropyl, the insect is suspended and easier to examine. I may have to try that.)
So then I was totally like this:
Some faith in my research ability has been restored.
(it's Freddie 'Mercury,' get it?)
Tomorrow I just trapline - I've decided to do every-other-day actual sampling, because I probably won't get that many different things on subsequent days; it will take working across the entire season to put together a decent reference collection and I don't want to totally overwhelm myself with hundreds of samples.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
piecing and gardening
I'm working this weekend on putting quilt tops together. This first one (the only one finished so far) is the Bento Box quilt that I said before I wasn't sure I liked.
It's funny how the simple step of sewing blocks together sometimes makes them look like they work better together than they did in the layout:
Yeah, I think I like it again.
(ETA: there may also be some elements of Cher Horowitz' "Full-on Monet" description there - the quilt does look better from a distance than it does close up.)
The border probably helped; it has most of the (admittedly, fairly disparate) colors in the top:
I have another largish piece of psuedo-Japanese design fabric, and a coordinating fabric, in my stash that I can use for the backing.
I also worked in the garden some yesterday, mostly removing weeds. (The weeds. One of the things I hate about the climate here is that you really would need to weed practically every day if you wanted a "perfect" garden. Or mulch, or use poisons, neither of which I'm enthusiastic about)
To reward my work, I got topsoil to topdress (where it had gotten badly compacted; I hoed up as much as I could but it was hard work) and some new plants to put in - mostly lavenders, they do well in our climate.
I did get a couple little watermelon plants (they were half off) but am not holding out any great hope of success; the previous two attempts did not yield fruit.
The fennel just seeds itself in every year and I mostly let it.
My tomatoes have tiny fruits starting on them. This year, rather than doing the "lazy" thing of using a sprinkler (though I may have to do that with a timer set-up while I am gone), I've been watering them using a watering can. It doesn't take THAT long and I think it's a more effective (and certainly less wasteful of water) way of watering; my plants look better this year than they have in recent years when I was using the sprinkler.
It's funny how the simple step of sewing blocks together sometimes makes them look like they work better together than they did in the layout:
Yeah, I think I like it again.
(ETA: there may also be some elements of Cher Horowitz' "Full-on Monet" description there - the quilt does look better from a distance than it does close up.)
The border probably helped; it has most of the (admittedly, fairly disparate) colors in the top:
I have another largish piece of psuedo-Japanese design fabric, and a coordinating fabric, in my stash that I can use for the backing.
I also worked in the garden some yesterday, mostly removing weeds. (The weeds. One of the things I hate about the climate here is that you really would need to weed practically every day if you wanted a "perfect" garden. Or mulch, or use poisons, neither of which I'm enthusiastic about)
To reward my work, I got topsoil to topdress (where it had gotten badly compacted; I hoed up as much as I could but it was hard work) and some new plants to put in - mostly lavenders, they do well in our climate.
I did get a couple little watermelon plants (they were half off) but am not holding out any great hope of success; the previous two attempts did not yield fruit.
The fennel just seeds itself in every year and I mostly let it.
My tomatoes have tiny fruits starting on them. This year, rather than doing the "lazy" thing of using a sprinkler (though I may have to do that with a timer set-up while I am gone), I've been watering them using a watering can. It doesn't take THAT long and I think it's a more effective (and certainly less wasteful of water) way of watering; my plants look better this year than they have in recent years when I was using the sprinkler.
Friday, May 10, 2013
The sleeve grows
I wrote out the numbers of all the increase rows I need to do on the sleeve (so much easier than keeping track as you go, and wondering, "Okay, was I supposed to increase on row 32 or row 34?" as you come to it). I'm about 40 rows in - halfway through the increases - of the first sleeve.
And something I notice happening after busy times is happening again. I get home, think, "Yay, I don't have anything I have to do tonight, I can knit or sew" and then I don't really do very much. (Part of it, with knitting, is that I often watch television while I knit, and wow, has the level of programming, at least evening programming, taken a nosedive in the past months. It's like there are four or five cable channels - TLC, Discovery Fit and Health, Discovery, A and E, and Destination America - that are just interchanging the same reality shows. Reality shows I don't like. (Which is most of them. I liked "Dirty Jobs" but I guess that one's done. And I admit - and this is kind of a guilty-pleasure admission, because it does involve a certain amount of laughing at others' misfortune - to kind of liking "Untold Stories of the ER" (if you watch the show: "Campstove Stuffing" and the naked cactus guy are two examples of others' misfortune). But most of the others, meh. I'm not big on the "hey, let's follow around this extended family and watch them do stuff that seems weird to most of the rest of the nation" or "let's exploit this subculture within America." Or the hoarding shows. Or the shows about people with strange obsessions. I guess people like them because they're still on but they make me twitch a little.)
Anyway. I HAVE been continuing to practice piano, including during times I might otherwise have been knitting or sewing. I've been working a bit on Hanon again (wow, I can feel the burn in my forearms when I play a couple of those exercises, fast. I don't know if it's muscles out of tone - which means it will improve - or that I'm risking messing up a tendon - which means I should let up some). And still working on Beethoven's Sonatina in F. I've got the first part ("Allegro assai") pretty well nailed (and can even play it fast like the directions say). I have part of the Rondo down but there are still parts that defeat me a little, especially when I'm tired.
I've also pulled out the Anna Magdalena pieces and am working on some of them. Though it frustrates me that I can't play them perfectly - they're supposed to be easy pieces! It's rare that I can play something longer than a page or so through without a mistake. I wonder how concert pianists manage - are they just so very much better than I am that they never make mistakes, or are they just better at pretending mistakes don't happen when they do? (I am sure on some recordings they get to do multiple takes, and perhaps even in some cases "good" takes of different movements are spliced together.) Or have they practiced those few pieces so obsessively for so long that they can play them without mistakes? I tend to be more of a dilettante and want to play different things, so it's hard for me to do the laser-focus on a single piece.
***
The person who was out sick is back; I can go get the spray paint now so I know what I will be doing the rest of today - painting bee traps. (Fluorescent yellow, fluorescent blue, and white). One of my colleagues who knows about this stuff counseled me to get an adhesion primer (I think that's what it's called) so the paint will stick better to the plastic.
And something I notice happening after busy times is happening again. I get home, think, "Yay, I don't have anything I have to do tonight, I can knit or sew" and then I don't really do very much. (Part of it, with knitting, is that I often watch television while I knit, and wow, has the level of programming, at least evening programming, taken a nosedive in the past months. It's like there are four or five cable channels - TLC, Discovery Fit and Health, Discovery, A and E, and Destination America - that are just interchanging the same reality shows. Reality shows I don't like. (Which is most of them. I liked "Dirty Jobs" but I guess that one's done. And I admit - and this is kind of a guilty-pleasure admission, because it does involve a certain amount of laughing at others' misfortune - to kind of liking "Untold Stories of the ER" (if you watch the show: "Campstove Stuffing" and the naked cactus guy are two examples of others' misfortune). But most of the others, meh. I'm not big on the "hey, let's follow around this extended family and watch them do stuff that seems weird to most of the rest of the nation" or "let's exploit this subculture within America." Or the hoarding shows. Or the shows about people with strange obsessions. I guess people like them because they're still on but they make me twitch a little.)
Anyway. I HAVE been continuing to practice piano, including during times I might otherwise have been knitting or sewing. I've been working a bit on Hanon again (wow, I can feel the burn in my forearms when I play a couple of those exercises, fast. I don't know if it's muscles out of tone - which means it will improve - or that I'm risking messing up a tendon - which means I should let up some). And still working on Beethoven's Sonatina in F. I've got the first part ("Allegro assai") pretty well nailed (and can even play it fast like the directions say). I have part of the Rondo down but there are still parts that defeat me a little, especially when I'm tired.
I've also pulled out the Anna Magdalena pieces and am working on some of them. Though it frustrates me that I can't play them perfectly - they're supposed to be easy pieces! It's rare that I can play something longer than a page or so through without a mistake. I wonder how concert pianists manage - are they just so very much better than I am that they never make mistakes, or are they just better at pretending mistakes don't happen when they do? (I am sure on some recordings they get to do multiple takes, and perhaps even in some cases "good" takes of different movements are spliced together.) Or have they practiced those few pieces so obsessively for so long that they can play them without mistakes? I tend to be more of a dilettante and want to play different things, so it's hard for me to do the laser-focus on a single piece.
***
The person who was out sick is back; I can go get the spray paint now so I know what I will be doing the rest of today - painting bee traps. (Fluorescent yellow, fluorescent blue, and white). One of my colleagues who knows about this stuff counseled me to get an adhesion primer (I think that's what it's called) so the paint will stick better to the plastic.
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Nope, no bees.
I saw a few small wasps. And one hummingbird, which was visiting or exploring an Indian Paintbrush. (Probably just exploring; I don't think those things have a lot of nectar).
It's peaceful being out in the field. Especially on my colleague's land, where I know that I'm the only one actually permitted on there (other than him, his family, and his (friendly) dogs), so I have less concern. (I do carry my cell phone in case of emergencies). I spent about an hour walking the first site looking for sample locations and maybe a half-hour on my colleague's land. (It's smaller, and he also suggested a couple areas that would be fruitful to look at for sampling).
It's nice just to get out and walk. I took my field book and recorded the stuff I saw - the plants that were blooming, the thing about the hummingbird, what insects I saw. (You never know what will come in handy when you're trying to interpret results. I always tell my ecology students, when they are planning their projects, to collect more information than they think they will need, because you never know if the windspeed on a given day or something is the key to understanding what was going on).
I didn't have to talk to anyone (well, I didn't have anyone to talk to). I could just focus on what I was seeing and think about what I wanted to do to get my data in the future.
I also noticed out on the Corps land an old concrete post, it was a four-sided post, maybe about 2 1/2 feet high, with an "RW" inscribed on one side of it. Range marker? I don't know. The land out there used to be owned by farmers before the lake was built and it was ceded to the Corps so I suppose it could have been someone's boundary marker for their land. I had never seen that before, though, in all my years of working on that site, so it interested me. (I'm always interested in the "what was there before" - I was sort of tickled to learn that my homesite is apparently a small sliver of a farm that the founder of my fair city once owned. I love looking at the early photographs of my town and trying to match up the downtown buildings in those photos with what is still there. Heck, I just love looking at old photographs of any places I know, anyway - I've spent lots of time looking at early photos of the town I grew up in online (there are apparently quite a few of them, including some of the subdivision I grew up in before it was really a subdivision))
(ETA: It's a right-of-way post. It was fairly near the highway. Apparently these were used some years back: Right of Way post found along old 66 in Missouri. Now I wonder when it was placed, if it was placed when 70 was built, or before? I don't know if 70 - the main highway through there - existed before the lake or not.)
I will say that the Corps has brush-hogged the heck out of the first sampling site I went to. They must have had a dude who liked using the equipment, there are trails all over the place where there used to not be trails. That's good and bad. Good, in that it's easier for me to get around the site without bushwhacking. Not so good in that it does change the vegetation somewhat. Though it does also encourage some stuff to resprout and flower - even some of the yarrow is flowering and it seems like the wrong time of year for that.
Not a lot of stuff is flowering right now. Maybe a few more warm days and we'll get more stuff, at least the milkweeds will come on. On my colleague's land there are a few wild rose bushes that I should try on a sunnier day - they were the one fragrant thing I noticed. (It occurred to me that I could perhaps find sampling sites by following my nose - there are a few fragrant things that bloom here).
It's supposed to storm tonight, and perhaps tomorrow morning. And at any rate, until I get my last few supplies I'm a bit stymied about starting the project, at least the collecting part of it.
It's peaceful being out in the field. Especially on my colleague's land, where I know that I'm the only one actually permitted on there (other than him, his family, and his (friendly) dogs), so I have less concern. (I do carry my cell phone in case of emergencies). I spent about an hour walking the first site looking for sample locations and maybe a half-hour on my colleague's land. (It's smaller, and he also suggested a couple areas that would be fruitful to look at for sampling).
It's nice just to get out and walk. I took my field book and recorded the stuff I saw - the plants that were blooming, the thing about the hummingbird, what insects I saw. (You never know what will come in handy when you're trying to interpret results. I always tell my ecology students, when they are planning their projects, to collect more information than they think they will need, because you never know if the windspeed on a given day or something is the key to understanding what was going on).
I didn't have to talk to anyone (well, I didn't have anyone to talk to). I could just focus on what I was seeing and think about what I wanted to do to get my data in the future.
I also noticed out on the Corps land an old concrete post, it was a four-sided post, maybe about 2 1/2 feet high, with an "RW" inscribed on one side of it. Range marker? I don't know. The land out there used to be owned by farmers before the lake was built and it was ceded to the Corps so I suppose it could have been someone's boundary marker for their land. I had never seen that before, though, in all my years of working on that site, so it interested me. (I'm always interested in the "what was there before" - I was sort of tickled to learn that my homesite is apparently a small sliver of a farm that the founder of my fair city once owned. I love looking at the early photographs of my town and trying to match up the downtown buildings in those photos with what is still there. Heck, I just love looking at old photographs of any places I know, anyway - I've spent lots of time looking at early photos of the town I grew up in online (there are apparently quite a few of them, including some of the subdivision I grew up in before it was really a subdivision))
(ETA: It's a right-of-way post. It was fairly near the highway. Apparently these were used some years back: Right of Way post found along old 66 in Missouri. Now I wonder when it was placed, if it was placed when 70 was built, or before? I don't know if 70 - the main highway through there - existed before the lake or not.)
I will say that the Corps has brush-hogged the heck out of the first sampling site I went to. They must have had a dude who liked using the equipment, there are trails all over the place where there used to not be trails. That's good and bad. Good, in that it's easier for me to get around the site without bushwhacking. Not so good in that it does change the vegetation somewhat. Though it does also encourage some stuff to resprout and flower - even some of the yarrow is flowering and it seems like the wrong time of year for that.
Not a lot of stuff is flowering right now. Maybe a few more warm days and we'll get more stuff, at least the milkweeds will come on. On my colleague's land there are a few wild rose bushes that I should try on a sunnier day - they were the one fragrant thing I noticed. (It occurred to me that I could perhaps find sampling sites by following my nose - there are a few fragrant things that bloom here).
It's supposed to storm tonight, and perhaps tomorrow morning. And at any rate, until I get my last few supplies I'm a bit stymied about starting the project, at least the collecting part of it.
Oh, well, whatever
They can't take the sky from me. Or the bees. Or the soil. Or whatever.
Part of it is just exam week fatigue: your schedule SEEMS like it should be more open ("I'm only obligated to be somewhere for two hours tomorrow") but it really isn't (grading. All that grading.) And I'm having issues with my Directed Readings students. (The last one SHOULD be meeting with me this afternoon).
I guess my frustration is this: If what I am doing is so insignificant, why do people act as if it is so urgent? It's a corollary to the "If people don't treat me like I'm a grown-up, why the heck do I have so much responsibility dumped on my head?" rule.
Anyway. In a few minutes I'm bound for the field. Sometime I should take a photo of myself in field gear so those of you who haven't done fieldwork get an idea of what it's like. Typically, what I wear is an old t-shirt, tucked into a pair of old khakis or jeans. Khakis are a good idea in tick country because it's easier to see if you've picked up hitchhikers. And the tucking-in of the shirt is important - I tend to rely heavily on the "barrier" method to prevent ticks and chiggers from getting at my skin. I can't use DEET (makes me come out in hives) and the idea of permethrin (where you are supposed to saturate your clothes with it and then NOT TOUCH THEM AGAIN UNTIL AFTER THEY ARE DRY) scares me. So I use a hippy-dippy herbal repellant (which actually seems to work pretty well, at least against mosquitoes) and cover as much of my skin as practicable.
Along with the t-shirt (and ideally, it's one with a long hem: better for tucking in), I wear an old, thin, long-sleeved button front shirt (I have two that I liberated from my father's closet: they're old (one of them probably dates to the 1970s) and don't quite fit him any more). This protects further against bugs and also protects against sunburn and poison ivy. And I wear boot socks pulled up OVER the cuffs of my pants. It looks goony but again, it prevents chiggers from going up your pant leg and finding their favorite spots to bite.
And then I wear either tennis shoes (for lightweight fieldwork, or for teaching a field lab where I'm mostly standing around playing overseer) or field boots. And I need to get new field boots - mine are over a dozen years old and are beginning to show their age. (Though perhaps some saddle soap or neat's foot oil would renew them a bit. I should try that.)
And I add a hat to that - either a broad-brimmed sun hat or a baseball cap I have that has an extension down the back, kind of like the old French Foreign Legion hats. There's too much of a history of skin cancer in my family for me to spend much time outdoors without lots of protection....
Today's task is mainly reconnaissance; I don't have all my supplies yet. (#1 of yesterday's second post is related to that issue.) I CAN, however, catalog what is flowering and locate sites to set up and work. And if there are bees, I can do a rough count. It's kind of overcast (supposed to storm this afternoon), so I'm not sure how many bees will be out.
Part of it is just exam week fatigue: your schedule SEEMS like it should be more open ("I'm only obligated to be somewhere for two hours tomorrow") but it really isn't (grading. All that grading.) And I'm having issues with my Directed Readings students. (The last one SHOULD be meeting with me this afternoon).
I guess my frustration is this: If what I am doing is so insignificant, why do people act as if it is so urgent? It's a corollary to the "If people don't treat me like I'm a grown-up, why the heck do I have so much responsibility dumped on my head?" rule.
Anyway. In a few minutes I'm bound for the field. Sometime I should take a photo of myself in field gear so those of you who haven't done fieldwork get an idea of what it's like. Typically, what I wear is an old t-shirt, tucked into a pair of old khakis or jeans. Khakis are a good idea in tick country because it's easier to see if you've picked up hitchhikers. And the tucking-in of the shirt is important - I tend to rely heavily on the "barrier" method to prevent ticks and chiggers from getting at my skin. I can't use DEET (makes me come out in hives) and the idea of permethrin (where you are supposed to saturate your clothes with it and then NOT TOUCH THEM AGAIN UNTIL AFTER THEY ARE DRY) scares me. So I use a hippy-dippy herbal repellant (which actually seems to work pretty well, at least against mosquitoes) and cover as much of my skin as practicable.
Along with the t-shirt (and ideally, it's one with a long hem: better for tucking in), I wear an old, thin, long-sleeved button front shirt (I have two that I liberated from my father's closet: they're old (one of them probably dates to the 1970s) and don't quite fit him any more). This protects further against bugs and also protects against sunburn and poison ivy. And I wear boot socks pulled up OVER the cuffs of my pants. It looks goony but again, it prevents chiggers from going up your pant leg and finding their favorite spots to bite.
And then I wear either tennis shoes (for lightweight fieldwork, or for teaching a field lab where I'm mostly standing around playing overseer) or field boots. And I need to get new field boots - mine are over a dozen years old and are beginning to show their age. (Though perhaps some saddle soap or neat's foot oil would renew them a bit. I should try that.)
And I add a hat to that - either a broad-brimmed sun hat or a baseball cap I have that has an extension down the back, kind of like the old French Foreign Legion hats. There's too much of a history of skin cancer in my family for me to spend much time outdoors without lots of protection....
Today's task is mainly reconnaissance; I don't have all my supplies yet. (#1 of yesterday's second post is related to that issue.) I CAN, however, catalog what is flowering and locate sites to set up and work. And if there are bees, I can do a rough count. It's kind of overcast (supposed to storm this afternoon), so I'm not sure how many bees will be out.
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
It's not Wednesday.
Apparently today has decided to be Monday, instead:
1. Someone whose help I need on something fairly urgent is out sick, and they are the only one who can help on this particular thing.
2.
3. I had someone this morning remind me just how little what I do actually matters. Oh, I know, it's probably cosmically a good thing to be reminded of how small you really are periodically, but not when you're running around trying to do stuff. And not as part of someone trying to assert how they are "better" than you because what they are doing is more important (or at least they think it is).
And yeah, I suppose in some ways what I do matters to some people (vide the email of last week from a student's mother). But the problem is, a lot of times the "helping" stuff or the "teaching" stuff is viewed as lesser, somehow. A lot of the stuff I do that's important to ME isn't important to the world. And yeah, yeah, that shouldn't matter, except that sometimes it's the world that decides on what your paycheck is.
I think part of the problem with the whole "What you do doesn't matter" for me, and why it hurts so much to hear it (or "hear" it, and that may have been how it was in this case - that I am over interpreting something someone said that they didn't say very well. Then again, other things this person has said to other people in a similar vein....) is that my Inner Critic regularly uses that phrase against me - "You're wasting your life" or "If you were really good at what you did, you would...." or any other number of things.
I think it's harder to hear a criticism you give yourself coming out of someone else's mouth. (That may be why some people get so defensive about certain criticisms).
Anyway. I'm just tired and tired of dealing with people right now. While invigilating my last exam I was thinking (strangely enough) about how what I really wanted was someone to stroke my hair and tell me it was going to be okay.
As touch-averse as I tend to be, I don't mind people fiddling with my hair - I never really minded getting it combed or cut when I was a kid, and a small luxury I would indulge in if I weren't so cheap (and so uncomfortable at just walking up to an unfamiliar salon - I get my hair cut at a barber's that doesn't really do it, so) is having someone shampoo and blow dry my hair for me. (I did get this done - wow, 20 years ago now - when I broke my elbow and washing my hair was too hard to do with a cast. I went to the place I was getting my hair cut at the time and the lady who cut my hair did it for me several times a week until the cast came off. And she charged me less than the going rate because she knew I was a broke grad student and I really didn't have a whole lot of other options for getting my hair clean)
(It's funny, but one of the tear-up moments from a MLP cartoon? The bit in Hurricane Fluttershy where she's SO upset and is hiding and crying and one of her animal friends is combing her hair for her to try to comfort her. Because that's something I could actually deal with when I was upset, having someone else comb my hair. It really amazes me how much real human emotion - or at least, what seems like real human emotion to me - is packed into little scenes of that cartoon).
Oh well. I suppose really what was going on with the "what you are doing doesn't matter" thing was probably that THAT person was feeling insignificant and they decided to make themselves look big by making someone else look small. But it still hurt and it still annoyed me.
****
ETA: two upsides, one personal, one not personal:
1. When I was at Mart of Wal this morning to obtain donut holes and fruit (all the donut holes have gone; there is still fruit left so I ate some of it), I bought a few more blindbags. Granted, they are probably Ponies I already have (I know, the codes exist out there, but I have a really hard time reading them on the foil bags, and part of the fun is the chance that maybe there's something different and cool in there).
So I will be opening at least one of them this afternoon as a sop to my upset feelings.
2. Charles Ramsey, the overnight celebrity in the rescue of those kidnapped women? Wants to give the reward money that would by rights go to him to them and their families. Now that's a decent guy. (And he's not rolling in dough, either - though in one interview I read, he said not having money was actually one of the things that helped him sleep at night). (I really hope this doesn't "break bad" - everything I've read about him suggests he's just a decent hardworking guy who cares about people. I WANT TO BELIEVE.)
I'd like to THINK that in a similar situation I'd do the same thing, but really, I'd probably be making grabby-hands and thinking "yarn money!"
1. Someone whose help I need on something fairly urgent is out sick, and they are the only one who can help on this particular thing.
2.
3. I had someone this morning remind me just how little what I do actually matters. Oh, I know, it's probably cosmically a good thing to be reminded of how small you really are periodically, but not when you're running around trying to do stuff. And not as part of someone trying to assert how they are "better" than you because what they are doing is more important (or at least they think it is).
And yeah, I suppose in some ways what I do matters to some people (vide the email of last week from a student's mother). But the problem is, a lot of times the "helping" stuff or the "teaching" stuff is viewed as lesser, somehow. A lot of the stuff I do that's important to ME isn't important to the world. And yeah, yeah, that shouldn't matter, except that sometimes it's the world that decides on what your paycheck is.
I think part of the problem with the whole "What you do doesn't matter" for me, and why it hurts so much to hear it (or "hear" it, and that may have been how it was in this case - that I am over interpreting something someone said that they didn't say very well. Then again, other things this person has said to other people in a similar vein....) is that my Inner Critic regularly uses that phrase against me - "You're wasting your life" or "If you were really good at what you did, you would...." or any other number of things.
I think it's harder to hear a criticism you give yourself coming out of someone else's mouth. (That may be why some people get so defensive about certain criticisms).
Anyway. I'm just tired and tired of dealing with people right now. While invigilating my last exam I was thinking (strangely enough) about how what I really wanted was someone to stroke my hair and tell me it was going to be okay.
As touch-averse as I tend to be, I don't mind people fiddling with my hair - I never really minded getting it combed or cut when I was a kid, and a small luxury I would indulge in if I weren't so cheap (and so uncomfortable at just walking up to an unfamiliar salon - I get my hair cut at a barber's that doesn't really do it, so) is having someone shampoo and blow dry my hair for me. (I did get this done - wow, 20 years ago now - when I broke my elbow and washing my hair was too hard to do with a cast. I went to the place I was getting my hair cut at the time and the lady who cut my hair did it for me several times a week until the cast came off. And she charged me less than the going rate because she knew I was a broke grad student and I really didn't have a whole lot of other options for getting my hair clean)
(It's funny, but one of the tear-up moments from a MLP cartoon? The bit in Hurricane Fluttershy where she's SO upset and is hiding and crying and one of her animal friends is combing her hair for her to try to comfort her. Because that's something I could actually deal with when I was upset, having someone else comb my hair. It really amazes me how much real human emotion - or at least, what seems like real human emotion to me - is packed into little scenes of that cartoon).
Oh well. I suppose really what was going on with the "what you are doing doesn't matter" thing was probably that THAT person was feeling insignificant and they decided to make themselves look big by making someone else look small. But it still hurt and it still annoyed me.
****
ETA: two upsides, one personal, one not personal:
1. When I was at Mart of Wal this morning to obtain donut holes and fruit (all the donut holes have gone; there is still fruit left so I ate some of it), I bought a few more blindbags. Granted, they are probably Ponies I already have (I know, the codes exist out there, but I have a really hard time reading them on the foil bags, and part of the fun is the chance that maybe there's something different and cool in there).
So I will be opening at least one of them this afternoon as a sop to my upset feelings.
2. Charles Ramsey, the overnight celebrity in the rescue of those kidnapped women? Wants to give the reward money that would by rights go to him to them and their families. Now that's a decent guy. (And he's not rolling in dough, either - though in one interview I read, he said not having money was actually one of the things that helped him sleep at night). (I really hope this doesn't "break bad" - everything I've read about him suggests he's just a decent hardworking guy who cares about people. I WANT TO BELIEVE.)
I'd like to THINK that in a similar situation I'd do the same thing, but really, I'd probably be making grabby-hands and thinking "yarn money!"
Wednesday morning stuff
Meeting last night. (It was Nominating Committee at church - "who do we pick to replace the people who are ending their term as elder/deacon/deaconess/trustee"? And yes, unlike some congregations we still separate deacon and deaconess duties. I almost spoke up and remarked that a lot of churches have gone to a "diaconate" where men and women both serve and both do similar tasks, but didn't, because it seemed like we got enough nominations for both groups. And I know some women who will serve as deaconess but would not serve as deacon (which mainly involves collecting the offering and carrying the trays of bread and cups for the Lord's Supper).
The nicest thing? The board moderator said he would call all the nominees to see if they were willing to serve. In the past, they've split up the list and given part to each of us. And given my dislike of calling people on the phone....well, I do it, but it's not a comfortable thing.
***
Ran to the grocery store this morning - I am phoning it in this year on the Feast of Finger Foods. Normally I bake something or make some kind of dip or something, but this year - meh, between trying to get all my Directed Readings students taken care of, and grading, and trying to gear up my own summer research, I really had no time. So I bought a tray of fruit and a box of donut holes. At least I got the kind of donut holes that have sprinkles on them, that counts for *something*, I think.
***
While walking back to my car, I saw a pickup truck in the lot with a logo and the name "Universal Pegasus International" on it. While I suppose it is probably the exploration or land-acquisition arm of MobilGas, I admit to looking at it and thinking, "Take me back to Equestria with you"
(Now I wonder: Who would be a worse driver, Fluttershy or Rainbow Dash? Fluttershy would be way overly cautious and one of those annoying types who waits extra long before turning at an intersection to be sure it's "safe," but Dashie would probably be a bit of a leadhoof and maybe a little impatient to boot.)
***
I also look at the "CMC Trailers" mudflaps that are attached to some of the large construction-vehicle trailers here and think of Cutie Mark Crusaders. ("Maybe our special talent is trucking!")
***
Something perhaps a bit more serious: through a chain of clicking yesterday (waiting around for a Directed Readings student before I could leave for the day), I ran across a website where the writer was talking about Guy Fieri's much-maligned restaurant, and in general, Food Network personalities. And the writer hated them all. (Even Ina Garten, who is my current favorite). And had something snarky to say about all of them, and some snarky things to say about the people who would eat in a Guy Fieri restaurant.
And that kind of thing just makes me tired. I think part of my frustration with it is that I look at it and to me it seems like a cheap path to some kind of sense of superiority: "Look at me. I'm better than these sheeple, because I know that x, y, and z that they love is really crap."
And I think I also dislike it because it makes me uncomfortable - the idea of either, "What if that person wasn't wrong? What if I really DO have no taste?" or "Wow, I hope I never meet someone like that; they would judge me harshly in a split second." And I think it's the harsh-judging that gets me. Lots of people love stuff that I don't care for; one of the reasons I order so much stuff through mail order is that a lot of the stuff I like, you can't get at the Wal-mart or the Dollar Saver. But there's stuff I like that I know the tastemakers would sniff at and go all superior. And here's a dirty secret of working on a college campus: You get people like that in some of the departments. The ones who judge you because your choices in entertainment aren't as highbrow as theirs, or because your diet isn't as "pure" as theirs, or whatever.
And, I don't know. I guess I should just give up trying to please people like that and do like I did in junior high and realize that it's probably better to be scorned by some people but be true to myself, than to be doubly miserable by trying to change myself in ways I'd rather not and still not "fitting in."
I don't know. I'd rather talk about the stuff I love than hate on the stuff I don't care for. To me, that seems to lead to greater happiness. I'm not sure what kind of true happiness a person derives from, say, mocking people who eat at chain restaurants (for many of us in the US, I might note, chain restaurants are almost all we have....). I'm not into "life purity tests." As long as what you do isn't negatively impacting me, I don't really care - I will complain if you drive your loud boom car through my neighborhood at 2 am, because that wakes me up. Or I will complain if you mount a petition drive to, I don't know, ban ice cream from the grocery store on the grounds it is "unhealthy," because I'd kind of like the choice to buy ice cream or not.
But, I don't know. There's so much snark out there and it makes me SO tired and it makes me feel like I'm back in 7th grade where some people figure the way they can feel better about themselves is to make other people feel bad. And really, life is hard enough already....
But some days, I admit, I do kind of wonder if I really have no taste.
The nicest thing? The board moderator said he would call all the nominees to see if they were willing to serve. In the past, they've split up the list and given part to each of us. And given my dislike of calling people on the phone....well, I do it, but it's not a comfortable thing.
***
Ran to the grocery store this morning - I am phoning it in this year on the Feast of Finger Foods. Normally I bake something or make some kind of dip or something, but this year - meh, between trying to get all my Directed Readings students taken care of, and grading, and trying to gear up my own summer research, I really had no time. So I bought a tray of fruit and a box of donut holes. At least I got the kind of donut holes that have sprinkles on them, that counts for *something*, I think.
***
While walking back to my car, I saw a pickup truck in the lot with a logo and the name "Universal Pegasus International" on it. While I suppose it is probably the exploration or land-acquisition arm of MobilGas, I admit to looking at it and thinking, "Take me back to Equestria with you"
(Now I wonder: Who would be a worse driver, Fluttershy or Rainbow Dash? Fluttershy would be way overly cautious and one of those annoying types who waits extra long before turning at an intersection to be sure it's "safe," but Dashie would probably be a bit of a leadhoof and maybe a little impatient to boot.)
***
I also look at the "CMC Trailers" mudflaps that are attached to some of the large construction-vehicle trailers here and think of Cutie Mark Crusaders. ("Maybe our special talent is trucking!")
***
Something perhaps a bit more serious: through a chain of clicking yesterday (waiting around for a Directed Readings student before I could leave for the day), I ran across a website where the writer was talking about Guy Fieri's much-maligned restaurant, and in general, Food Network personalities. And the writer hated them all. (Even Ina Garten, who is my current favorite). And had something snarky to say about all of them, and some snarky things to say about the people who would eat in a Guy Fieri restaurant.
And that kind of thing just makes me tired. I think part of my frustration with it is that I look at it and to me it seems like a cheap path to some kind of sense of superiority: "Look at me. I'm better than these sheeple, because I know that x, y, and z that they love is really crap."
And I think I also dislike it because it makes me uncomfortable - the idea of either, "What if that person wasn't wrong? What if I really DO have no taste?" or "Wow, I hope I never meet someone like that; they would judge me harshly in a split second." And I think it's the harsh-judging that gets me. Lots of people love stuff that I don't care for; one of the reasons I order so much stuff through mail order is that a lot of the stuff I like, you can't get at the Wal-mart or the Dollar Saver. But there's stuff I like that I know the tastemakers would sniff at and go all superior. And here's a dirty secret of working on a college campus: You get people like that in some of the departments. The ones who judge you because your choices in entertainment aren't as highbrow as theirs, or because your diet isn't as "pure" as theirs, or whatever.
And, I don't know. I guess I should just give up trying to please people like that and do like I did in junior high and realize that it's probably better to be scorned by some people but be true to myself, than to be doubly miserable by trying to change myself in ways I'd rather not and still not "fitting in."
I don't know. I'd rather talk about the stuff I love than hate on the stuff I don't care for. To me, that seems to lead to greater happiness. I'm not sure what kind of true happiness a person derives from, say, mocking people who eat at chain restaurants (for many of us in the US, I might note, chain restaurants are almost all we have....). I'm not into "life purity tests." As long as what you do isn't negatively impacting me, I don't really care - I will complain if you drive your loud boom car through my neighborhood at 2 am, because that wakes me up. Or I will complain if you mount a petition drive to, I don't know, ban ice cream from the grocery store on the grounds it is "unhealthy," because I'd kind of like the choice to buy ice cream or not.
But, I don't know. There's so much snark out there and it makes me SO tired and it makes me feel like I'm back in 7th grade where some people figure the way they can feel better about themselves is to make other people feel bad. And really, life is hard enough already....
But some days, I admit, I do kind of wonder if I really have no taste.
Tuesday, May 07, 2013
Starting the sleeves
Yesterday while invigilating my first exam, I got up to the shaping on the right front of the CPH. So I finished it (the shaping takes more attention than I like to be able to pay during an exam) last night, and cast on for the first sleeve.
I debated casting both sleeves on at once - they are symmetrical, and I have enough yarn to do them simultaneously, but then I thought, no, not if you're going to be walking around a classroom, you don't want to be juggling two balls of yarn.
But still - it pleases me that I have almost entirely knit this sweater while invigilating exams. Talk about reclaiming otherwise lost time. (Some people read journal articles during exams; I confess I've caught too many people with their eyes not on their own papers to feel comfortable doing that. And I guess some campuses require that the faculty member do NOTHING while invigilating, which would make me twitch, especially for these 2-hour finals, which are loooooooooong. Even with knitting they are looooooooong.)
Edited to add: May this be none of my students this week. (But still, the macro made me laugh.)
I debated casting both sleeves on at once - they are symmetrical, and I have enough yarn to do them simultaneously, but then I thought, no, not if you're going to be walking around a classroom, you don't want to be juggling two balls of yarn.
But still - it pleases me that I have almost entirely knit this sweater while invigilating exams. Talk about reclaiming otherwise lost time. (Some people read journal articles during exams; I confess I've caught too many people with their eyes not on their own papers to feel comfortable doing that. And I guess some campuses require that the faculty member do NOTHING while invigilating, which would make me twitch, especially for these 2-hour finals, which are loooooooooong. Even with knitting they are looooooooong.)
Edited to add: May this be none of my students this week. (But still, the macro made me laugh.)
Monday, May 06, 2013
New fabric lines
Hee. There is a new line of quilt fabric coming out called Hipster. However, none of the prints have those thick-framed glasses, ironic mustaches, references to food trucks, or "fixie" bikes on them.
(Incidentally: Why hipsters like fixed-gear bikes. I knew that they stereotypically did and I kind of guessed why, but of course someone has written an internet essay on it.)
I was looking, because I thought, "If I really wanted to make that quilt a Hipster quilt, I should get a "fixie" bike print for the backing. There is a bicycle print in another collection, and it's cute, but I still think I will go with my "get it out of the stash and not spend any additional money" choice of the pink stripe.
I'm always surprised at what fabric designers come out with. Of course, the motherlode of idiosyncratic print fabrics is Spoonflower, which once sent me an e-mail with the subject line of
"See the world's largest selection of pop art chicken fabrics."
(As the deep-voiced guy in the insurance ads says: "Indeed.")
And once again: I love the whole world, in all its craziness. Of COURSE there would be more than one pop art chicken fabric in the world.
Spoonflower - and to a lesser extent, Fat Quarter Shop - can be dangerous for my credit cards. I can also spend inordinate amounts of time browsing the sites....
(Incidentally: Why hipsters like fixed-gear bikes. I knew that they stereotypically did and I kind of guessed why, but of course someone has written an internet essay on it.)
I was looking, because I thought, "If I really wanted to make that quilt a Hipster quilt, I should get a "fixie" bike print for the backing. There is a bicycle print in another collection, and it's cute, but I still think I will go with my "get it out of the stash and not spend any additional money" choice of the pink stripe.
I'm always surprised at what fabric designers come out with. Of course, the motherlode of idiosyncratic print fabrics is Spoonflower, which once sent me an e-mail with the subject line of
"See the world's largest selection of pop art chicken fabrics."
(As the deep-voiced guy in the insurance ads says: "Indeed.")
And once again: I love the whole world, in all its craziness. Of COURSE there would be more than one pop art chicken fabric in the world.
Spoonflower - and to a lesser extent, Fat Quarter Shop - can be dangerous for my credit cards. I can also spend inordinate amounts of time browsing the sites....
Exam week starts
Although this is the stereotype of finals week:
Actually, it's not quite that bad when you're a prof. (It's the week BEFORE finals that generates the eye-twitch). (Image from "Ask Caramel Anything" Tumblr).
I've actually gotten back 'round to the attitude of being able to be flexible and merciful. (Sometimes I lose that during really busy weeks when I feel like I'm being pulled in fifteen directions).
I give one this morning but it's the Gen Ed class so it's a common exam and therefore machine graded. (Common exam - being one all sections of the class take, and was written in common by the faculty teaching the class. Machine graded to cut down on subjectivity. They are biiiiiiiiiiiiiig on "uniformity" in all the sections of a Gen Ed class here....)
It was a fairly restful weekend. Saturday I came in and did a bunch of research, then I went home and removed some weeds from the garden. Sunday, it was just a little chilly to work outside (Chilly in May is a new concept here) so I worked on quilts. I now have three tops laid out and ready to be sewn together:
1. The super-cute "Hideaway" fabrics one - which I already have the border and backing for.
2. A Bento Box quilt that I pieced the blocks for LIKE A YEAR AGO and never laid out because, honestly, I'm not sure I'm still in love with the fabrics in it. I will put the top together and put the border on it....I wonder if there is some charity that will take unloved tops, just the tops, and do something good with them? I also have a very pink quilt that I made off of a jelly roll that I'm not sure I love. I was thinking of getting it quilted and donating it to Project Linus....but I have to admit, getting tops quilted to give away gets kind of expensive, and I can't keep doing it.
3. A funny quilt made out of a line of really odd novelty prints (one of the featured prints, for example, is vintage cameras). I'm thinking of it as my "Plain Four-Patches are Too Mainstream" quilt because of the vaguely hipster vibe of the fabrics, and because I did it as a "wonky" four-patch (also known as a Flagstone quilt). The best thing? I realized I have a big chunk of a pink stripe in the stash (bought on a closeout and because I kind of liked it) that will work for the backing on this.
So now, when I want to just sit down and sew, I can. Sometimes that's a big of a barrier - I will want to sew but I have nothing ready to go, and sometimes cutting is enough of a pain that it dissuades me from even working on whatever.
I also found a pattern for one of my Jelly Rolls of "sweet" fabrics - this is from the Pom Pom de Paris line (you can see the fabrics here, it's all pastel-y florals - and a piece of fabric to use as the "plain" blocks.
So yeah - I'm making good progress on that "work the stash down" thing. Of course, I still have a giant fabric stash but it feels good to work through some of the projects I have.
Actually, it's not quite that bad when you're a prof. (It's the week BEFORE finals that generates the eye-twitch). (Image from "Ask Caramel Anything" Tumblr).
I've actually gotten back 'round to the attitude of being able to be flexible and merciful. (Sometimes I lose that during really busy weeks when I feel like I'm being pulled in fifteen directions).
I give one this morning but it's the Gen Ed class so it's a common exam and therefore machine graded. (Common exam - being one all sections of the class take, and was written in common by the faculty teaching the class. Machine graded to cut down on subjectivity. They are biiiiiiiiiiiiiig on "uniformity" in all the sections of a Gen Ed class here....)
It was a fairly restful weekend. Saturday I came in and did a bunch of research, then I went home and removed some weeds from the garden. Sunday, it was just a little chilly to work outside (Chilly in May is a new concept here) so I worked on quilts. I now have three tops laid out and ready to be sewn together:
1. The super-cute "Hideaway" fabrics one - which I already have the border and backing for.
2. A Bento Box quilt that I pieced the blocks for LIKE A YEAR AGO and never laid out because, honestly, I'm not sure I'm still in love with the fabrics in it. I will put the top together and put the border on it....I wonder if there is some charity that will take unloved tops, just the tops, and do something good with them? I also have a very pink quilt that I made off of a jelly roll that I'm not sure I love. I was thinking of getting it quilted and donating it to Project Linus....but I have to admit, getting tops quilted to give away gets kind of expensive, and I can't keep doing it.
3. A funny quilt made out of a line of really odd novelty prints (one of the featured prints, for example, is vintage cameras). I'm thinking of it as my "Plain Four-Patches are Too Mainstream" quilt because of the vaguely hipster vibe of the fabrics, and because I did it as a "wonky" four-patch (also known as a Flagstone quilt). The best thing? I realized I have a big chunk of a pink stripe in the stash (bought on a closeout and because I kind of liked it) that will work for the backing on this.
So now, when I want to just sit down and sew, I can. Sometimes that's a big of a barrier - I will want to sew but I have nothing ready to go, and sometimes cutting is enough of a pain that it dissuades me from even working on whatever.
I also found a pattern for one of my Jelly Rolls of "sweet" fabrics - this is from the Pom Pom de Paris line (you can see the fabrics here, it's all pastel-y florals - and a piece of fabric to use as the "plain" blocks.
So yeah - I'm making good progress on that "work the stash down" thing. Of course, I still have a giant fabric stash but it feels good to work through some of the projects I have.
Saturday, May 04, 2013
"Grit" and success
Apparently a new educational buzzword is "grit." That people who have this elusive quality are more likely to succeed than those that lack it. And of course, the big concern: how do we develop grit in students who otherwise might not have it.
(I suspect really it's something learned in early childhood, and therefore the parents are more responsible for it. I remember my father saying to me MANY times, "You're smart; you can figure this out" when I was bordering on melting down over my math homework (FRACTIONS!!!!) or something).
There's a little online test you can take. I think this link will work, though every time I click it it gives me the score I earned. (If that doesn't work, there are .pdf versions of the tests linked here, but you have to tot up the scores yourself).
I earned a 5/5. (I'm "very gritty"! Yay!)
I'm actually a tiny bit surprised it's that high, because they ask you if you get distracted by other projects and stuff like that, and really, sometimes I do - I'll be working on something and get bored or frustrated and find something new and shiny to work on instead. On the other hand, I usually go back to the frustrating project later, unless I think it's reasonable to cut my losses and end it. (There have been one or two research projects I dropped a few months after starting them when I realized the methodology was not working or the results I was getting were trivial).
But I do tell students, when they come to me and ask me if they're "cut out for" grad school (and I have to laugh; one of my early students who asked me that was a man who DEFINITELY needed to go to grad school and if ANYONE could succeed, it would be him), I tend more to ask them about their ways of dealing with setbacks, or if they have a high tolerance for repetitive tasks, or if they get bored with things that are a lot of work for a still-off-in-the-future result.
One thing I learned in grad school - though I probably already "knew" it, but I realized it explicitly in grad school - a lot of life is just showing up and doing the work. Ten-keying in the reams of data (that was a lot of my Ph.D. initial research). Hunting through the soil for invertebrates. Spending hours out looking for a particular flowering plant in flower.
One of my grad-school colleagues used to have a little sign up over her computer that said "Detachment from outcomes." That worked for her; it kept her doing the work without worrying about what eventually would result. I guess I managed to keep going with the work because to me, everything that was moving me forward, well, it felt like it was moving me forward. Every prairie that I got the relative frequency data entered on, that was one prairie closer to finally finding out what the analysis was going to tell me.
(Heh. Now I'm reminded of the old definition of an optimist: "There's a pony in here somewhere.")
Actually, maybe curiosity played a role - I have great tenacity (gesundheit!) when I am trying to find something out that I WANT TO KNOW. And I was curious about the end-result of the ordination analysis I was going to do on the prairie. And I always get excited when I'm going to statistically analyze data, because I want to see what it's going to show me. I'm also really good at finding information; sometimes I actually "waste" time doing that and go down a lot of rabbit holes because I get engaged in the process of finding the thing I'm looking for - but I think that's another form of tenacity, not just looking at the first page of web-search results and going "Meh, it's not here, I give up"
And actually, another big thing I learned in grad school was that I could withstand setbacks. I've joked about how analyzing my master's thesis data - which was done on a mainframe version of SPSS (yes, even as late as the early 90s, we were still using mainframes for some things). I'd write my program (yeah, that was before all stats programs were menu-driven, and yeah, it was a pain), submit it, hike over to the computer center and pick up the enormous stack of white-and-green striped paper that was used to print out the results, and start sorting through. Most of the time I'd hit a point where I'd made an error, or forgotten a semicolon (though maybe it was just SAS that used semicolons; I forget), or something, and the program would terminate without doing my analysis.
So then I'd mutter a curse under my breath, hike back to my lab, find the error, fix it, run the program again. Then find the next error, fix it....and so on. It took several days to get the thing to do what I wanted. But somehow I managed to keep at it. I don't know if it was that I felt like washing out of a second program was not an option (I've shared the story of my brief unsuccessful first attempt at grad school before, don't feel like sharing it again....) or that I figured if I just kept going, eventually I'd beat the program and get my data analyzed. But I did keep going, and eventually it worked. (And ironically, the "easiest" publication of my life - in terms of having the fewest revisions and being accepted without tsuiris? Was the one based on my Master's. Perhaps Someone felt like I'd been through enough pain and needed a little encouragement....)
But now I do research part-time (and actually, am in today doing some counting and identifying of soil inverts). And you know? When you're out in the workforce doing more or less others' bidding, it's a real relief to work on something that (at least at this point in time) is "just" for you. (Yes, eventually this will generate another publication, I just don't have enough data yet).
Research is actually....kind of peaceful. It's a task you have to focus on while you're doing it, no one can interrupt you. And with each sample I crack open I don't know what I will find - there's a bit of the treasure-hunt aspect. Yes, superficially, it looks tedious - but compared to grading, it's tons of fun.
(I suspect really it's something learned in early childhood, and therefore the parents are more responsible for it. I remember my father saying to me MANY times, "You're smart; you can figure this out" when I was bordering on melting down over my math homework (FRACTIONS!!!!) or something).
There's a little online test you can take. I think this link will work, though every time I click it it gives me the score I earned. (If that doesn't work, there are .pdf versions of the tests linked here, but you have to tot up the scores yourself).
I earned a 5/5. (I'm "very gritty"! Yay!)
I'm actually a tiny bit surprised it's that high, because they ask you if you get distracted by other projects and stuff like that, and really, sometimes I do - I'll be working on something and get bored or frustrated and find something new and shiny to work on instead. On the other hand, I usually go back to the frustrating project later, unless I think it's reasonable to cut my losses and end it. (There have been one or two research projects I dropped a few months after starting them when I realized the methodology was not working or the results I was getting were trivial).
But I do tell students, when they come to me and ask me if they're "cut out for" grad school (and I have to laugh; one of my early students who asked me that was a man who DEFINITELY needed to go to grad school and if ANYONE could succeed, it would be him), I tend more to ask them about their ways of dealing with setbacks, or if they have a high tolerance for repetitive tasks, or if they get bored with things that are a lot of work for a still-off-in-the-future result.
One thing I learned in grad school - though I probably already "knew" it, but I realized it explicitly in grad school - a lot of life is just showing up and doing the work. Ten-keying in the reams of data (that was a lot of my Ph.D. initial research). Hunting through the soil for invertebrates. Spending hours out looking for a particular flowering plant in flower.
One of my grad-school colleagues used to have a little sign up over her computer that said "Detachment from outcomes." That worked for her; it kept her doing the work without worrying about what eventually would result. I guess I managed to keep going with the work because to me, everything that was moving me forward, well, it felt like it was moving me forward. Every prairie that I got the relative frequency data entered on, that was one prairie closer to finally finding out what the analysis was going to tell me.
(Heh. Now I'm reminded of the old definition of an optimist: "There's a pony in here somewhere.")
Actually, maybe curiosity played a role - I have great tenacity (gesundheit!) when I am trying to find something out that I WANT TO KNOW. And I was curious about the end-result of the ordination analysis I was going to do on the prairie. And I always get excited when I'm going to statistically analyze data, because I want to see what it's going to show me. I'm also really good at finding information; sometimes I actually "waste" time doing that and go down a lot of rabbit holes because I get engaged in the process of finding the thing I'm looking for - but I think that's another form of tenacity, not just looking at the first page of web-search results and going "Meh, it's not here, I give up"
And actually, another big thing I learned in grad school was that I could withstand setbacks. I've joked about how analyzing my master's thesis data - which was done on a mainframe version of SPSS (yes, even as late as the early 90s, we were still using mainframes for some things). I'd write my program (yeah, that was before all stats programs were menu-driven, and yeah, it was a pain), submit it, hike over to the computer center and pick up the enormous stack of white-and-green striped paper that was used to print out the results, and start sorting through. Most of the time I'd hit a point where I'd made an error, or forgotten a semicolon (though maybe it was just SAS that used semicolons; I forget), or something, and the program would terminate without doing my analysis.
So then I'd mutter a curse under my breath, hike back to my lab, find the error, fix it, run the program again. Then find the next error, fix it....and so on. It took several days to get the thing to do what I wanted. But somehow I managed to keep at it. I don't know if it was that I felt like washing out of a second program was not an option (I've shared the story of my brief unsuccessful first attempt at grad school before, don't feel like sharing it again....) or that I figured if I just kept going, eventually I'd beat the program and get my data analyzed. But I did keep going, and eventually it worked. (And ironically, the "easiest" publication of my life - in terms of having the fewest revisions and being accepted without tsuiris? Was the one based on my Master's. Perhaps Someone felt like I'd been through enough pain and needed a little encouragement....)
But now I do research part-time (and actually, am in today doing some counting and identifying of soil inverts). And you know? When you're out in the workforce doing more or less others' bidding, it's a real relief to work on something that (at least at this point in time) is "just" for you. (Yes, eventually this will generate another publication, I just don't have enough data yet).
Research is actually....kind of peaceful. It's a task you have to focus on while you're doing it, no one can interrupt you. And with each sample I crack open I don't know what I will find - there's a bit of the treasure-hunt aspect. Yes, superficially, it looks tedious - but compared to grading, it's tons of fun.
Two things yesterday....
I got my "big" (That is - in Sherman) grocery shopping done yesterday. So I have food for exam week, including a couple of different meats (it's very hard to get decent meat here in town; what the Green Spray sells is certainly healthful but it doesn't have enough marbling for my taste. And most places that have pork, have the brined kind, which I'd rather not eat.)
I also stopped at the JoAnn's and got part of the backing for the aqua quilt. (Part, because there wasn't quite the amount needed on the bolt - I will need to piece with a solid color). And the new Simply Knitting (the UK version). These are always a bit of a pig in a poke as they come shrinkwrapped (they do come with "gifts' - this time it was a cable needle and cable needle case). But the cover sweater - a lacy pullover done in a dk weight cotton blend - is a pattern I'd like to make someday.
And they had a short article on studies into the psychological benefits of knitting. I realize such a thing could be hard to measure (in general, psychology experiments seem like they'd be really hard to design, because how do you do them without your human subjects figuring out why - and then the placebo effect comes into play). But anyway, apparently there are studies suggesting that the "bilateral rhythmic movements of knitting" have a calming influence on the person, quite apart from the fact that in a knitting group you can socialize without it necessarily being about the problems you are working through (they contrasted it to group therapy, where the problems are dwelt on). Also, they point out that it gives people a future "something" to think about. (And make the point that gardening is the same - in fact, on my campus, the counselor runs a gardening therapy program - she got a grant to fund it - and it does seem to help the participants)
I've often felt that I would be even less centered than I am if I didn't knit or sew.
***
Also, my Stonewall Kitchens order came today. They make a peach-amaretto jam that is, as I said earlier, the only commercial peach jam that approaches the one my mom used to make (with farmstand peaches, or a couple years we had friends who lived in a house that had an old peach orchard). I had used up the jar I bought in McKinney, and had originally kept telling myself, "You need to go back there partly to get more" but when I realized it would be a while before that trip happened, I looked into mailordering.
Amazon has a lot of their products, but apparently not that one. So I went to the company's website, and it turns out you can order directly from them. So I did.
ETA: And there's just something I find so NICE in coming home at the end of the day and finding something I had ordered waiting for me. Part of it is that it is "good mail" - that is, not a bill, not junk mail. And part of it is, I don't know, it's a feeling akin to going to a restaurant and being able to order food and have it brought to you. To be served for once. I know that sounds kind of entitled and selfish but I spend enough time "serving" other people that it's nice to have the favor returned.
Also, Stonewall Kitchen included a "free gift" - a very small jar of cherry-berry jam. A few places do this. (Penzey's used to. I don't know if they still do, with their newer "Orders over $30 ship free" deal, which is an awfully good deal.) I know part of it is a marketing trick - it may make some people feel obligated to order again ("They gave me something...") or it may make people wonder "What will I get next time I order?" Or it will introduce people to something they really like and want to have more of. (That's how it worked with some of the Penzey's free gifts - it was a blend I might not have thought of trying otherwise)
But yeah, mail order is a big part of my life.
And I got to thinking, yesterday evening, after it came: this is not so unlike what my grandmother talked about. Back in the early days of her marriage (she was married around about 1917), the town they lived in was very small and very rural. (Well, it still pretty much was when I was visiting there as a kid - Rapid River, Michigan, is not large). And she talked about how they used the Sears and Montgomery Wards' catalogs to get so many things - clothes, and I think fabric, and I believe her treadle machine came from the Sears catalog (IIRC, it was a wedding present from her husband-to-be. Now, some wives might not see that as a good gift but he knew my grandmother's interest. And anyway, what wedding gift is still in existence nearly 100 years later?)
I think she even said they ordered books that way? That Sears or someplace used to sell books by mail order? I know she owned a fair number of books for living in a town with no bookstore and no place that really sold books.
At any rate: mail order was a lifeline for her.
And while I probably order more luxury items (fancy jam, for example) than she ever did, still, in 2013, I find mail order a lifeline - I have ordered books off of Amazon and had them faster than I could have found the time to drive to the bookstore in Sherman. When I first moved here in 1999, it was even more crucial - there was a small Hastings' in Sherman but meh, they carried more CDs and software than books, and the Books A Million was still several years off. And there was no quilt shop north of Van Alstyne or thereabouts. And it felt very, very isolated, especially to me, having come from a town with 2 quilt shops and multiple bookstores and eight or so groceries. And much of the downtown was closed up and shuttered....at least now we have a quilt shop, and several gift stores, and we are due at some point to get some kind of a kitchenwares store (the signage is up and the building looks like it's been renovated....)
It used to be, people tell me, there were more things in town. There was a Ben Franklin's and a T G and Y and even a Penney's. But when the malls opened, and when it got to the point of most people owning cars, people seemed to decide they'd rather go to Sherman or even Dallas. And maybe some of the companies shut down smaller, less-profitable branches, on the justification that "Well, people drive to malls now." And I'm sure the coming of Wal-mart didn't do anything to stop the demise of some stores.
So it's nice to see the downtown revive a little (we still have too many empty storefronts; I wish those had businesses).
But still, there are just some things I can't get here in town. Or even in Sherman. And so I am grateful to have mail order. I may use the Internet to request things, rather than a stamp and an envelope, but in some ways it's really not all that different from my grandmothers' day.
I also stopped at the JoAnn's and got part of the backing for the aqua quilt. (Part, because there wasn't quite the amount needed on the bolt - I will need to piece with a solid color). And the new Simply Knitting (the UK version). These are always a bit of a pig in a poke as they come shrinkwrapped (they do come with "gifts' - this time it was a cable needle and cable needle case). But the cover sweater - a lacy pullover done in a dk weight cotton blend - is a pattern I'd like to make someday.
And they had a short article on studies into the psychological benefits of knitting. I realize such a thing could be hard to measure (in general, psychology experiments seem like they'd be really hard to design, because how do you do them without your human subjects figuring out why - and then the placebo effect comes into play). But anyway, apparently there are studies suggesting that the "bilateral rhythmic movements of knitting" have a calming influence on the person, quite apart from the fact that in a knitting group you can socialize without it necessarily being about the problems you are working through (they contrasted it to group therapy, where the problems are dwelt on). Also, they point out that it gives people a future "something" to think about. (And make the point that gardening is the same - in fact, on my campus, the counselor runs a gardening therapy program - she got a grant to fund it - and it does seem to help the participants)
I've often felt that I would be even less centered than I am if I didn't knit or sew.
***
Also, my Stonewall Kitchens order came today. They make a peach-amaretto jam that is, as I said earlier, the only commercial peach jam that approaches the one my mom used to make (with farmstand peaches, or a couple years we had friends who lived in a house that had an old peach orchard). I had used up the jar I bought in McKinney, and had originally kept telling myself, "You need to go back there partly to get more" but when I realized it would be a while before that trip happened, I looked into mailordering.
Amazon has a lot of their products, but apparently not that one. So I went to the company's website, and it turns out you can order directly from them. So I did.
ETA: And there's just something I find so NICE in coming home at the end of the day and finding something I had ordered waiting for me. Part of it is that it is "good mail" - that is, not a bill, not junk mail. And part of it is, I don't know, it's a feeling akin to going to a restaurant and being able to order food and have it brought to you. To be served for once. I know that sounds kind of entitled and selfish but I spend enough time "serving" other people that it's nice to have the favor returned.
Also, Stonewall Kitchen included a "free gift" - a very small jar of cherry-berry jam. A few places do this. (Penzey's used to. I don't know if they still do, with their newer "Orders over $30 ship free" deal, which is an awfully good deal.) I know part of it is a marketing trick - it may make some people feel obligated to order again ("They gave me something...") or it may make people wonder "What will I get next time I order?" Or it will introduce people to something they really like and want to have more of. (That's how it worked with some of the Penzey's free gifts - it was a blend I might not have thought of trying otherwise)
But yeah, mail order is a big part of my life.
And I got to thinking, yesterday evening, after it came: this is not so unlike what my grandmother talked about. Back in the early days of her marriage (she was married around about 1917), the town they lived in was very small and very rural. (Well, it still pretty much was when I was visiting there as a kid - Rapid River, Michigan, is not large). And she talked about how they used the Sears and Montgomery Wards' catalogs to get so many things - clothes, and I think fabric, and I believe her treadle machine came from the Sears catalog (IIRC, it was a wedding present from her husband-to-be. Now, some wives might not see that as a good gift but he knew my grandmother's interest. And anyway, what wedding gift is still in existence nearly 100 years later?)
I think she even said they ordered books that way? That Sears or someplace used to sell books by mail order? I know she owned a fair number of books for living in a town with no bookstore and no place that really sold books.
At any rate: mail order was a lifeline for her.
And while I probably order more luxury items (fancy jam, for example) than she ever did, still, in 2013, I find mail order a lifeline - I have ordered books off of Amazon and had them faster than I could have found the time to drive to the bookstore in Sherman. When I first moved here in 1999, it was even more crucial - there was a small Hastings' in Sherman but meh, they carried more CDs and software than books, and the Books A Million was still several years off. And there was no quilt shop north of Van Alstyne or thereabouts. And it felt very, very isolated, especially to me, having come from a town with 2 quilt shops and multiple bookstores and eight or so groceries. And much of the downtown was closed up and shuttered....at least now we have a quilt shop, and several gift stores, and we are due at some point to get some kind of a kitchenwares store (the signage is up and the building looks like it's been renovated....)
It used to be, people tell me, there were more things in town. There was a Ben Franklin's and a T G and Y and even a Penney's. But when the malls opened, and when it got to the point of most people owning cars, people seemed to decide they'd rather go to Sherman or even Dallas. And maybe some of the companies shut down smaller, less-profitable branches, on the justification that "Well, people drive to malls now." And I'm sure the coming of Wal-mart didn't do anything to stop the demise of some stores.
So it's nice to see the downtown revive a little (we still have too many empty storefronts; I wish those had businesses).
But still, there are just some things I can't get here in town. Or even in Sherman. And so I am grateful to have mail order. I may use the Internet to request things, rather than a stamp and an envelope, but in some ways it's really not all that different from my grandmothers' day.
Friday, May 03, 2013
that was effortful.
Well, I got three of the four items ordered.
The fourth one - the paint - the company is going to be calling my grants administrator to arrange to make an account with them. Or, they might just comp me the paint because it's a small amount and the woman I talked to said she had a "soft spot for bees and for Oklahoma." (I didn't ask). I did tell her if I got comped the paint they would get a mention in the acknowledgements of any paper because that's SOP if you get free stuff to help you further your research.
But wow, what a giant effort. One place I had to call four times. And I had to learn how to do a transfer on my phone (I called and placed the order, then transferred to the administrator so she could arrange payment).
They say, never learn to do anything you don't want to have to do....
Now I need to eat. And I need to clear off my desk and start counting soil invertebrates.
ETA: I think part of the reason I find that kind of thing so effortful is that (a) I HATE talking on the phone, (b) I hate having to call up strangers and (c) I dislike asking for "help" of strangers, even when it's really their job to give it.
That may be a familial trait; my brother used to always ask my mother to make phone calls on his behalf; now he asks his wife to do it unless he absolutely HAS to for some reason.
Of course, it's all me, where I live - I can't fob my need to make calls off on anyone else so I just have to grit my teeth and do it.
If my test-making-up student gets done fast enough, and I get enough invertebrates counted, I'm going to go "big" grocery shopping this afternoon, and make a side trip to the JoAnn's.
The fourth one - the paint - the company is going to be calling my grants administrator to arrange to make an account with them. Or, they might just comp me the paint because it's a small amount and the woman I talked to said she had a "soft spot for bees and for Oklahoma." (I didn't ask). I did tell her if I got comped the paint they would get a mention in the acknowledgements of any paper because that's SOP if you get free stuff to help you further your research.
But wow, what a giant effort. One place I had to call four times. And I had to learn how to do a transfer on my phone (I called and placed the order, then transferred to the administrator so she could arrange payment).
They say, never learn to do anything you don't want to have to do....
Now I need to eat. And I need to clear off my desk and start counting soil invertebrates.
ETA: I think part of the reason I find that kind of thing so effortful is that (a) I HATE talking on the phone, (b) I hate having to call up strangers and (c) I dislike asking for "help" of strangers, even when it's really their job to give it.
That may be a familial trait; my brother used to always ask my mother to make phone calls on his behalf; now he asks his wife to do it unless he absolutely HAS to for some reason.
Of course, it's all me, where I live - I can't fob my need to make calls off on anyone else so I just have to grit my teeth and do it.
If my test-making-up student gets done fast enough, and I get enough invertebrates counted, I'm going to go "big" grocery shopping this afternoon, and make a side trip to the JoAnn's.
Friday morning random
Last night was the AAUW dinner (which means last meeting for the summer, which means I'm free of one obligation for a while). It was good but uncontrolled meals out make me twitch now. It was food served by the hospital cafeteria....but I've also read how hospitals aren't always as careful about the sodium as they might be.
I will say the single thing that tasted the saltiest to me was the (commercially produced) dinner roll. (But I still ate all of it: I get starved for bread because most commercial bread is too high in sodium for me to buy, and I rarely have time to bake these days.)
The meal was roast beef, and they had horseradish sauce with it. And green beans, which I ate, and a cheesy-bacon potato casserole, which I didn't. (Not that fond of potato casserole, and also, I figured it was one source of salt I could avoid). And salad. And apple dumplings. It was the biggest meal I've eaten in a while.
***
I will say one item needed for my bee project is already on its way, and the Whirl-pak bags are on their way to being procured. (Now I have to arrange with Fisher to have them send a W-9, and see if Bigpaintstore will do a w-9 or if I have to rethink and try to buy the paint I need locally. I will say of all the things the Fisher order is the least critical; I could bum some ethanol from the department and replace it when my order comes in.)
I will say this reminds me why I often buy supplies out of my own pocket instead of writing grants - it's a big hassle to arrange for stuff to be bought and a lot of the onus of getting the information necessary is on the PI. (At the really big universities where research is more of a priority, they have "people" to do the legwork that PIs are expected to do here, in terms of arranging for proving tax exempt status and sending w-9 forms and all that. Well, this reminds me: next time, it's probably easier to just spend the money myself. Though that's not playing the "game," and you don't get "credit" for writing grant proposals if you don't write them because your research is cheap enough you can fund it yourself. Yes, some things in academia are a little bit like a Joseph Heller novel.)
What I would like to do this afternoon: take a trip to Sherman, do my grocery shopping and do some other shopping. What I need to do: make the arrangements to try to get stuff ordered (or at least TRY), revise the paper more, make the map (the one thing that is holding me up). And also start identifying and counting soil critters.
I'm not sure which will win. (I give an exam at 8, so the 9-11 office hours stretch is going to be spent trying to get it graded). Maybe I can do an hour or two's worth of samples and still go do some shopping. (Then again: first Friday of the month so the stores will probably be slammed. Argh.)
***
At least I will get to knit while invigilating today. Not too much knitting has been going on. Hopefully that will change after exam week, when my daylight hours may be devoted to chasing bees, but in the evenings I will be free.
I did cut a few more blocks on the new quilt but admit I'm getting bored with cutting and want to sew. (But I have to cut all of them and lay it out before I can). I may push this to one side and start a simple wonky-four-patch quilt out of some novelty 10" squares I have.
***
I did know that Twilight's butt symbol had 42 points. Also, her "marathon number" for the Running of the Leaves was 42. (I notice things like that. That's the one upside to being mildly compulsive.) Unfortunately, I don't have any 600-yard or so lots of sockyarn in purple, so I guess the shawl will be pink instead. (I also have a grey-green, for another shawl, and a lovely blue-green blend (and it's a silk blend, even) for the Calico Shawl in the newest Knitscene).
I will say the single thing that tasted the saltiest to me was the (commercially produced) dinner roll. (But I still ate all of it: I get starved for bread because most commercial bread is too high in sodium for me to buy, and I rarely have time to bake these days.)
The meal was roast beef, and they had horseradish sauce with it. And green beans, which I ate, and a cheesy-bacon potato casserole, which I didn't. (Not that fond of potato casserole, and also, I figured it was one source of salt I could avoid). And salad. And apple dumplings. It was the biggest meal I've eaten in a while.
***
I will say one item needed for my bee project is already on its way, and the Whirl-pak bags are on their way to being procured. (Now I have to arrange with Fisher to have them send a W-9, and see if Bigpaintstore will do a w-9 or if I have to rethink and try to buy the paint I need locally. I will say of all the things the Fisher order is the least critical; I could bum some ethanol from the department and replace it when my order comes in.)
I will say this reminds me why I often buy supplies out of my own pocket instead of writing grants - it's a big hassle to arrange for stuff to be bought and a lot of the onus of getting the information necessary is on the PI. (At the really big universities where research is more of a priority, they have "people" to do the legwork that PIs are expected to do here, in terms of arranging for proving tax exempt status and sending w-9 forms and all that. Well, this reminds me: next time, it's probably easier to just spend the money myself. Though that's not playing the "game," and you don't get "credit" for writing grant proposals if you don't write them because your research is cheap enough you can fund it yourself. Yes, some things in academia are a little bit like a Joseph Heller novel.)
What I would like to do this afternoon: take a trip to Sherman, do my grocery shopping and do some other shopping. What I need to do: make the arrangements to try to get stuff ordered (or at least TRY), revise the paper more, make the map (the one thing that is holding me up). And also start identifying and counting soil critters.
I'm not sure which will win. (I give an exam at 8, so the 9-11 office hours stretch is going to be spent trying to get it graded). Maybe I can do an hour or two's worth of samples and still go do some shopping. (Then again: first Friday of the month so the stores will probably be slammed. Argh.)
***
At least I will get to knit while invigilating today. Not too much knitting has been going on. Hopefully that will change after exam week, when my daylight hours may be devoted to chasing bees, but in the evenings I will be free.
I did cut a few more blocks on the new quilt but admit I'm getting bored with cutting and want to sew. (But I have to cut all of them and lay it out before I can). I may push this to one side and start a simple wonky-four-patch quilt out of some novelty 10" squares I have.
***
I did know that Twilight's butt symbol had 42 points. Also, her "marathon number" for the Running of the Leaves was 42. (I notice things like that. That's the one upside to being mildly compulsive.) Unfortunately, I don't have any 600-yard or so lots of sockyarn in purple, so I guess the shawl will be pink instead. (I also have a grey-green, for another shawl, and a lovely blue-green blend (and it's a silk blend, even) for the Calico Shawl in the newest Knitscene).
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Semester almost over
I give my last in-class exam tomorrow, I hear the last presentations tomorrow, and then next week is exam week. I'm trying to quickly encumber the money for the bee project but it's more complicated than I remembered it being. (Well, if worse comes to worse, I can do the project "backwards" - do the trips to count bee activity FIRST, then do the collections and identification later, after I've bought the stuff even if the fiscal year has ended).
I really want to start on this next week if at all possible. We've had a slow spring so hopefully there will be a longer period of flowering still - my plan is to do a bunch of the project in May and June, then in July and early August when it gets hot and dry, leave it, and then go back out later on (if we get enough rain) when the fall stuff starts flowering.
If this goes well I will have a publication and a presentation from it, and maybe a bigger future project depending on what I find.
***
I got my first-ever e-mail from a parent of a student today. But wait! It was the good kind of e-mail. It was thanking me (and other faculty, but the parent specifically referenced things I had done in my classes) for helping the student build up her confidence and getting her excited about learning again. (I smell "bad experience at another school"). It also contained a request for assistance with finding summer housing - which I may have been able to help with, as I could put her in touch with someone with apartments to rent.
(And the person in question is a good student, and someone we've talked about in faculty meetings as "We don't want to lose her to transferring to another school")
So it was good all around. And reassuring, given the upset student I had to deal with earlier this week, that I do occasionally do something good even if I don't immediately realize it.
It also made me happy to read such a positive and upbeat e-mail. The parent said they hoped God would bless me and while I know some faculty on this campus who would find that statement uncomfortable, it makes me happy and grateful.
***
Tomorrow I totally need to whip that revised article into final shape and get it sent off. That's another goal I want to meet.
Well, I see it's not actually due in until August 15....wow. But I'm still going to try to get it done before this semester is officially over.
I really want to start on this next week if at all possible. We've had a slow spring so hopefully there will be a longer period of flowering still - my plan is to do a bunch of the project in May and June, then in July and early August when it gets hot and dry, leave it, and then go back out later on (if we get enough rain) when the fall stuff starts flowering.
If this goes well I will have a publication and a presentation from it, and maybe a bigger future project depending on what I find.
***
I got my first-ever e-mail from a parent of a student today. But wait! It was the good kind of e-mail. It was thanking me (and other faculty, but the parent specifically referenced things I had done in my classes) for helping the student build up her confidence and getting her excited about learning again. (I smell "bad experience at another school"). It also contained a request for assistance with finding summer housing - which I may have been able to help with, as I could put her in touch with someone with apartments to rent.
(And the person in question is a good student, and someone we've talked about in faculty meetings as "We don't want to lose her to transferring to another school")
So it was good all around. And reassuring, given the upset student I had to deal with earlier this week, that I do occasionally do something good even if I don't immediately realize it.
It also made me happy to read such a positive and upbeat e-mail. The parent said they hoped God would bless me and while I know some faculty on this campus who would find that statement uncomfortable, it makes me happy and grateful.
***
Tomorrow I totally need to whip that revised article into final shape and get it sent off. That's another goal I want to meet.
Well, I see it's not actually due in until August 15....wow. But I'm still going to try to get it done before this semester is officially over.
the weirdest thing?
I don't know if this is the weirdest (safe for work) thing on the Internet or not, but it's pretty weird.One of the people I follow on Twitter re-tweeted a link to it.
And I admit I laughed harder about it yesterday afternoon than maybe I would have other times but I guess I am a little punchy from all the grading and from wondering about how I'm going to do the Tetris-block thing with the different research projects I have going plus my summer teaching, but:
This is pretty weird.
I leave it as an Exercise to the Reader to figure out what kind of dance she's doing. I've had other people suggest it's go-go dancing, or one person suggest it's a not-very-good version of The Jerk.
Also: note the size. A 16, at least in ready-to-wear, does not have a waist of 29 any more, it's bigger. Although these sizes are "new" as of 1972 or whenever the pattern came out; my mother has some older patterns in a "size 10" that are closer to today's size 6.
I'll also note: Personally, I think that outfit would have been more flattering in a different color/print but maybe that was what was "in" then.
And I admit I laughed harder about it yesterday afternoon than maybe I would have other times but I guess I am a little punchy from all the grading and from wondering about how I'm going to do the Tetris-block thing with the different research projects I have going plus my summer teaching, but:
This is pretty weird.
I leave it as an Exercise to the Reader to figure out what kind of dance she's doing. I've had other people suggest it's go-go dancing, or one person suggest it's a not-very-good version of The Jerk.
Also: note the size. A 16, at least in ready-to-wear, does not have a waist of 29 any more, it's bigger. Although these sizes are "new" as of 1972 or whenever the pattern came out; my mother has some older patterns in a "size 10" that are closer to today's size 6.
I'll also note: Personally, I think that outfit would have been more flattering in a different color/print but maybe that was what was "in" then.
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Wanting to start
I find myself wanting to start new projects. Partly this is because of the time of the semester, partly this is because I am a little bored with what I am working on right now.
So I wound off a little yarn for the "next" projects.
Next simple socks: a Biscotte and Cie yarn (this is a Quebecois-dyed yarn) in the colorway called "Carousel."
The colors there - you can't really see it but there's a white and a pinkish tan and a purple. And I bought the yarn because those colors made me think of Rarity's Carousel Boutique. I don't KNOW that the dyer "meant" that (though she does do 'fandom' yarns; she has some Harry Potter-inspired colors).
At any rate - if these become my 'Rarity' socks, I need only make Pinkie Pie socks of some sort to have socks representing the Mane Six. (Mane Socks?). I have the Twilight Sparkle striped socks ("Sugared Violet") and the pale blue "Pegasus feather" socks, and a pair of pale yellow socks with a cable and lace pattern that I think of as my Fluttershy socks, and the Appaloosa socks, I think of as my Applejack socks, because they have the colors she would probably be if she were a "real" horse.
I'm guessing Pinkie Pie socks would have to be pink and have some kind of exuberant design on them. I think there's a stitch pattern called "balloon stitch"?
I also want to start another shawl. The other day, when I was feeling sorry for myself (I forget exactly why, now - maybe it was Too Much Grading), I bought a couple patterns off of Ravelry. Which is really not a bad way to indulge oneself: they are mostly inexpensive ($5 or so), they don't take up a lot of space (in fact, they only exist in virtual form until you print them out). And the cost goes to help support Ravelry and also to support small designers.
One pattern I bought is called "Hitchhiker." It is currently a very popular shawl pattern. (But that doesn't matter to me - I'm neither one of those who looks at an uberpopular pattern and goes "Oooh, I must have that! All the ponies everypony should know are wearing it!" nor one who looks at it and goes "Ew, too mainstream.")
If I like it, I make it. And I like this one - it's a nice simple design that should look well in a variegated yarn. And we all know how I love variegated yarns.
I'm going to use a nice pink Cascade Heritage for it. And as the pattern takes 525 yards, and I have 800-some, there will be no panicked running out of yarn like happened with Putney.
(And yes - I finally found a blindbag with one of the Princesses in it. Luna is best princess but I'm still happy to have gotten a Celestia)
Incidentally, the name of the shawl is an allusion to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - if you knit up the pattern as written, the finished shawl has 42 sawtooth points on it....
So I wound off a little yarn for the "next" projects.
Next simple socks: a Biscotte and Cie yarn (this is a Quebecois-dyed yarn) in the colorway called "Carousel."
The colors there - you can't really see it but there's a white and a pinkish tan and a purple. And I bought the yarn because those colors made me think of Rarity's Carousel Boutique. I don't KNOW that the dyer "meant" that (though she does do 'fandom' yarns; she has some Harry Potter-inspired colors).
At any rate - if these become my 'Rarity' socks, I need only make Pinkie Pie socks of some sort to have socks representing the Mane Six. (Mane Socks?). I have the Twilight Sparkle striped socks ("Sugared Violet") and the pale blue "Pegasus feather" socks, and a pair of pale yellow socks with a cable and lace pattern that I think of as my Fluttershy socks, and the Appaloosa socks, I think of as my Applejack socks, because they have the colors she would probably be if she were a "real" horse.
I'm guessing Pinkie Pie socks would have to be pink and have some kind of exuberant design on them. I think there's a stitch pattern called "balloon stitch"?
I also want to start another shawl. The other day, when I was feeling sorry for myself (I forget exactly why, now - maybe it was Too Much Grading), I bought a couple patterns off of Ravelry. Which is really not a bad way to indulge oneself: they are mostly inexpensive ($5 or so), they don't take up a lot of space (in fact, they only exist in virtual form until you print them out). And the cost goes to help support Ravelry and also to support small designers.
One pattern I bought is called "Hitchhiker." It is currently a very popular shawl pattern. (But that doesn't matter to me - I'm neither one of those who looks at an uberpopular pattern and goes "Oooh, I must have that! All the ponies everypony should know are wearing it!" nor one who looks at it and goes "Ew, too mainstream.")
If I like it, I make it. And I like this one - it's a nice simple design that should look well in a variegated yarn. And we all know how I love variegated yarns.
I'm going to use a nice pink Cascade Heritage for it. And as the pattern takes 525 yards, and I have 800-some, there will be no panicked running out of yarn like happened with Putney.
(And yes - I finally found a blindbag with one of the Princesses in it. Luna is best princess but I'm still happy to have gotten a Celestia)
Incidentally, the name of the shawl is an allusion to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - if you knit up the pattern as written, the finished shawl has 42 sawtooth points on it....
Small good news
I got the grant I applied for.
Of course, not getting it - as it was a university small grant where the money was apparently going begging - would have been far more "bad" than actually getting the grant is "good." There apparently wasn't a lot of competition for these. (I guess not many at my university are doing research, because I haven't heard of that many external grants being won). I'm going to have to figure out now how I use those funds to buy gas for field-site travel - whether they will actually do a purchase-order thing I have to take to the gas station, or what? (I hope not. I hope it's just "bring us receipts and we will reimburse") thing.
Other than that, it's the last week of classes and I am dealing with people who are melting down. I had tears after one class today when I handed something back. It frustrates me because I can never tell if it's genuine frustration/sadness or if it's something that has worked on other profs. At any rate - no, you don't get extra credit for crying.
I have one exam written, have to start the next one, then I have to figure out how to encumber some of my monies so I can get my supplies by the end of exam week, when I plan to start looking for bees.
Of course, not getting it - as it was a university small grant where the money was apparently going begging - would have been far more "bad" than actually getting the grant is "good." There apparently wasn't a lot of competition for these. (I guess not many at my university are doing research, because I haven't heard of that many external grants being won). I'm going to have to figure out now how I use those funds to buy gas for field-site travel - whether they will actually do a purchase-order thing I have to take to the gas station, or what? (I hope not. I hope it's just "bring us receipts and we will reimburse") thing.
Other than that, it's the last week of classes and I am dealing with people who are melting down. I had tears after one class today when I handed something back. It frustrates me because I can never tell if it's genuine frustration/sadness or if it's something that has worked on other profs. At any rate - no, you don't get extra credit for crying.
I have one exam written, have to start the next one, then I have to figure out how to encumber some of my monies so I can get my supplies by the end of exam week, when I plan to start looking for bees.
The last lesson
Well, yesterday was my last piano lesson. (Hopefully, just for the summer: based on what she said, it sounds like it's maybe 70% certain she will be able to teach in the fall. It comes down to whether she will still be working in the local school district. I'll know in July; I really hope it's a "yes.")
I was apprehensive about the lesson. Not apprehensive because it was the last one, not because I wanted to play REALLY EXTRA WELL seeing as it was the last one. But apprehensive because I didn't want to cry.
That's kind of sad and stupid, but I realized afterward perhaps part of my distaste for engaging in public displays of emotion (standard disclaimer: no judgement on people who DO, I get that some people do that) for myself, is that I was one of those little kids who cried SUPER easily:
- when I got threatened with detention in grade school for talking with a friend in class
- getting a grade less than I thought I had earned on a project
- being told by a classmate that, yes, I didn't get an invitation to her party because I wasn't invited even though every other girl in the class was
- someone looked at me funny
- someone called me a mean name
- the class got kept in at recess because someone else acted up
It got to the point where some of the meaner kids would TRY to make me cry, it was like a sport.
And I feel like, I guess, I've outgrown that, so I go in the OPPOSITE extreme and try really hard to be the Big Tough Cowgirl and never show an excess of emotion. (I don't always succeed; sometimes I run out of cope and just can't do it. I think the last time was last spring when the problem student finally got to me and I just broke down in my chair's office. However, I will say, to my credit, she told me I was the faculty member who lasted the longest before coming to her angry/upset/frustrated over the students' behavior).
Oh, I do cry when it's appropriate - if I didn't cry when people died, I'd have a cold butt for a heart. But I've forced myself, sometimes by biting the inside of my lip, sometimes by readjusting my hair, sometimes by forcing myself to think of something TOTALLY different ("quick! What's the recipe for chili that you use all the time?") not to cry when I feel like it's not necessary.
But anyway. I managed not to cry even though it was hard to see all the artwork and stuff gone off the walls. (She had a "timeline of music" that went from (I think it was) Michael Praetorius up to L. L. Cool J. I remember that because I remember being surprised to learn that L. L. Cool J is a year older than I am - I always pictured him as being younger).
I almost started at the end of the lesson, when she patted me on the shoulder, and told me I had come a really long way in the roughly four years I'd been taking lessons, and told me to keep practicing the scales and to just select pieces I wanted to play out of the books I had and to work on those over the summer. And that I still needed to relax my hands more, that I got too tense when I was playing.
It's going to be strange not having that focus for the week, the weekly lesson. I was thinking I needed to get a little calendar or something to write down my practice time each day. (My teacher would give us logbooks where she could write down what she wanted us to work on, and there was a space for us to record how long we practiced each day. I suppose that was more aimed at the younger students who needed prodding, but....writing down my practice time kind of became a habit and I'm almost a little afraid that without the feeling of the "need" to practice I will slack off and won't continue to progress.)
It's funny, I do have a little bit of that old "end of the school year" feeling like I used to get when I actually was in grade school - that last week of school when the bulletin boards were cleared off and you cleaned out your locker and your desk, and the school building already felt a little melancholy and empty. (I liked school. Maybe kids who didn't felt differently. But school gave me a sense of purpose and even if I didn't really fit in with a lot of the kids, the teachers liked me....)
I was apprehensive about the lesson. Not apprehensive because it was the last one, not because I wanted to play REALLY EXTRA WELL seeing as it was the last one. But apprehensive because I didn't want to cry.
That's kind of sad and stupid, but I realized afterward perhaps part of my distaste for engaging in public displays of emotion (standard disclaimer: no judgement on people who DO, I get that some people do that) for myself, is that I was one of those little kids who cried SUPER easily:
- when I got threatened with detention in grade school for talking with a friend in class
- getting a grade less than I thought I had earned on a project
- being told by a classmate that, yes, I didn't get an invitation to her party because I wasn't invited even though every other girl in the class was
- someone looked at me funny
- someone called me a mean name
- the class got kept in at recess because someone else acted up
It got to the point where some of the meaner kids would TRY to make me cry, it was like a sport.
And I feel like, I guess, I've outgrown that, so I go in the OPPOSITE extreme and try really hard to be the Big Tough Cowgirl and never show an excess of emotion. (I don't always succeed; sometimes I run out of cope and just can't do it. I think the last time was last spring when the problem student finally got to me and I just broke down in my chair's office. However, I will say, to my credit, she told me I was the faculty member who lasted the longest before coming to her angry/upset/frustrated over the students' behavior).
Oh, I do cry when it's appropriate - if I didn't cry when people died, I'd have a cold butt for a heart. But I've forced myself, sometimes by biting the inside of my lip, sometimes by readjusting my hair, sometimes by forcing myself to think of something TOTALLY different ("quick! What's the recipe for chili that you use all the time?") not to cry when I feel like it's not necessary.
But anyway. I managed not to cry even though it was hard to see all the artwork and stuff gone off the walls. (She had a "timeline of music" that went from (I think it was) Michael Praetorius up to L. L. Cool J. I remember that because I remember being surprised to learn that L. L. Cool J is a year older than I am - I always pictured him as being younger).
I almost started at the end of the lesson, when she patted me on the shoulder, and told me I had come a really long way in the roughly four years I'd been taking lessons, and told me to keep practicing the scales and to just select pieces I wanted to play out of the books I had and to work on those over the summer. And that I still needed to relax my hands more, that I got too tense when I was playing.
It's going to be strange not having that focus for the week, the weekly lesson. I was thinking I needed to get a little calendar or something to write down my practice time each day. (My teacher would give us logbooks where she could write down what she wanted us to work on, and there was a space for us to record how long we practiced each day. I suppose that was more aimed at the younger students who needed prodding, but....writing down my practice time kind of became a habit and I'm almost a little afraid that without the feeling of the "need" to practice I will slack off and won't continue to progress.)
It's funny, I do have a little bit of that old "end of the school year" feeling like I used to get when I actually was in grade school - that last week of school when the bulletin boards were cleared off and you cleaned out your locker and your desk, and the school building already felt a little melancholy and empty. (I liked school. Maybe kids who didn't felt differently. But school gave me a sense of purpose and even if I didn't really fit in with a lot of the kids, the teachers liked me....)
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
hand-clapping games
The new Piecework came yesterday. It was the annual lace issue. I didn't have a lot of time to read it, as I was grading the "big" papers for ecology, but there was an article on Susan B. Anthony in there.
And one thing caught my eye: Apparently, she was memorialized in a jump-rope rhyme. I don't have the magazine right in front of me now to know if this is what was published, but the Susan B. Anthony Museum lists this one:
That's interesting to me. We didn't jump rope that much when I was a kid (there were a few jump ropes and they usually wound up being "checked out" at recess time before we got to them), but we did use a lot of the jump rope rhymes as hand-clapping rhymes. (I am guessing most girls of my generation remember those hand-clapping games; for my cohort, they seemed to be most popular in 2nd and 3rd grade).
We used a variant of the one above, but I think it was either Miss Molly or Miss Lucy instead of Miss Lulu. And the lady with the alligator purse DIDN'T say "Vote!" - that would have made no sense to us; we didn't know who Susan B. Anthony was, and as far as we knew, women had ALWAYS had the vote. (We learned differently a few years later in history class).
I THINK what we said was "NOTHING" said the lady in the alligator purse but it's been a long time. (Some sources list her as saying "hiccups" but that doesn't seem right to me).
But it's interesting to me that that rhyme got passed down from perhaps as far back as the 1890s, maybe changing and mutating a bit on the way, but it still existed circa 1976. (I wonder: do kids still do hand-clapping games today? Or still use jump-rope rhymes?)
We also used another "Miss Somebody" rhyme:
Miss Molly had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Molly went to Heaven
The steamboat went to....
Hello, operator!
Please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me,
I'll paddle your.....
Behind the refrigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Molly sat upon it
And cut her little...
Ask me no more questions,
I'll tell you no more lies,
The boys are in the bathroom
Pulling down their....*
Flies are in the city,
Bees are in the park
Miss Molly and her boyfriend
are kissing in the d-a-r-k, d-a-r-k, dark
(*I think we used to say "pulling wings off"....we didn't really know at that time that the zipper on boy's pants was called a fly).
This is one of those "I'm gonna say a naughty word!" songs that then turns and allows for the naughty word to become something innocent. (A more famous example is the "Shaving Cream Song" that Dr. Demento used to play - you would think the guy was going to refer to another substance that started with sh- but he would say "shaving cream" instead.)
There are other variants of this rhyme but that's the one I remember.
We had other ones, I remember "Playmate, come out and play with me" which I guess was actually a child's song from the 1930s or thereabouts (Again: how did we learn these kinds of things? What kind of cultural osmosis was going on? Old Bugs Bunny cartoons? Seeing Shirley Temple movies at the revival house? Grandparents?)
There was also a song called La Paloma, which, I don't remember now if we learned it in grade-school music class or if some folkie like John Denver sang it, but somehow we turned it into a hand-clapping rhyme too. I don't remember how it went, I just remember the title.
We did once in a while get a jump rope - the big long kind, where two people turned it and one (or sometimes more) people could jump. The two rhymes I remember using with those were "Teddy bear, Teddy bear" (where you pantomimed the actions - going up stairs, saying your prayers - as you jumped) and Cinderella:
Cinderella
Dressed in yella'
Went upstairs
To see her fella'
How many kisses did he give her?
1, 2, 3, 4....
(And the idea was, you counted as high as you could before you missed a step and then it was the next person's turn)
Again, I wonder - do kids still do that kind of thing, or has the cultural transmission (however it worked) been broken? Or have these simple games been replaced by other things?
And one thing caught my eye: Apparently, she was memorialized in a jump-rope rhyme. I don't have the magazine right in front of me now to know if this is what was published, but the Susan B. Anthony Museum lists this one:
Miss Lulu had a baby, she called him tiny Tim.
She put him in the bathtub, so see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water! He ate up all the soap!
He tried to swallow the bathtub, but it wouldn’t go down his throat!!
Call for the doctor!
Call for the nurse!
Call for the lady with the alligator purse!
“Mumps!” said the doctor. “Measles!” said the nurse.
“Vote!!” said the lady with the alligator purse!!
That's interesting to me. We didn't jump rope that much when I was a kid (there were a few jump ropes and they usually wound up being "checked out" at recess time before we got to them), but we did use a lot of the jump rope rhymes as hand-clapping rhymes. (I am guessing most girls of my generation remember those hand-clapping games; for my cohort, they seemed to be most popular in 2nd and 3rd grade).
We used a variant of the one above, but I think it was either Miss Molly or Miss Lucy instead of Miss Lulu. And the lady with the alligator purse DIDN'T say "Vote!" - that would have made no sense to us; we didn't know who Susan B. Anthony was, and as far as we knew, women had ALWAYS had the vote. (We learned differently a few years later in history class).
I THINK what we said was "NOTHING" said the lady in the alligator purse but it's been a long time. (Some sources list her as saying "hiccups" but that doesn't seem right to me).
But it's interesting to me that that rhyme got passed down from perhaps as far back as the 1890s, maybe changing and mutating a bit on the way, but it still existed circa 1976. (I wonder: do kids still do hand-clapping games today? Or still use jump-rope rhymes?)
We also used another "Miss Somebody" rhyme:
Miss Molly had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Molly went to Heaven
The steamboat went to....
Hello, operator!
Please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me,
I'll paddle your.....
Behind the refrigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Molly sat upon it
And cut her little...
Ask me no more questions,
I'll tell you no more lies,
The boys are in the bathroom
Pulling down their....*
Flies are in the city,
Bees are in the park
Miss Molly and her boyfriend
are kissing in the d-a-r-k, d-a-r-k, dark
(*I think we used to say "pulling wings off"....we didn't really know at that time that the zipper on boy's pants was called a fly).
This is one of those "I'm gonna say a naughty word!" songs that then turns and allows for the naughty word to become something innocent. (A more famous example is the "Shaving Cream Song" that Dr. Demento used to play - you would think the guy was going to refer to another substance that started with sh- but he would say "shaving cream" instead.)
There are other variants of this rhyme but that's the one I remember.
We had other ones, I remember "Playmate, come out and play with me" which I guess was actually a child's song from the 1930s or thereabouts (Again: how did we learn these kinds of things? What kind of cultural osmosis was going on? Old Bugs Bunny cartoons? Seeing Shirley Temple movies at the revival house? Grandparents?)
There was also a song called La Paloma, which, I don't remember now if we learned it in grade-school music class or if some folkie like John Denver sang it, but somehow we turned it into a hand-clapping rhyme too. I don't remember how it went, I just remember the title.
We did once in a while get a jump rope - the big long kind, where two people turned it and one (or sometimes more) people could jump. The two rhymes I remember using with those were "Teddy bear, Teddy bear" (where you pantomimed the actions - going up stairs, saying your prayers - as you jumped) and Cinderella:
Cinderella
Dressed in yella'
Went upstairs
To see her fella'
How many kisses did he give her?
1, 2, 3, 4....
(And the idea was, you counted as high as you could before you missed a step and then it was the next person's turn)
Again, I wonder - do kids still do that kind of thing, or has the cultural transmission (however it worked) been broken? Or have these simple games been replaced by other things?
Monday, April 29, 2013
this and that
(procrastinating. I still have to wait for a bit to see if the last lab books come in. The others are graded. I have all but one of the big papers, I've read through the first one but really want to read them at home where it's quieter and cooler and I have fewer distractions).
I did start cutting on the next quilt this weekend; this is going to be a simple "brickwork" pattern done with 4 1/2 by 9 1/2 (finished dimensions) rectangles (and smaller rectangles every other row's end to offset). Mostly, I am using the "Hideaway" collection by Lauren and Jessie Jung....I bought pieces of this a while back just because I liked it, then I found a pattern I wanted to do.
(And I find I have two half-yard pieces that are duplicates - a turquoise background cuckoo-clock design, and a green fabric with kind of a swirly, almost paisley design. They got put to one side as possible swap-fabrics. Yes, I want to do a swap this summer; I am finding stuff I either have duplicates of, or bought a ton of and used what I wanted, or which I have fallen out of love with).
I have a few other fabrics from different lines mixed in - a couple of bee prints, a Christmas print with a red background and large pinecones on it (well, it goes with the Alpine theme of the other fabrics). And I have a huge piece of my favorite fabric in the line (a forest with chalets) for the border (and another huge piece - got on a very good sale - for the backing. Yay having all the fabric I need for a quilt on hand)
This is one that will be layout-intensive. Not sure if it will be small enough to do what I typically do - strip the pillows and top sheets (and, uh, amigurumi Ponies) off my bed and lay the fabrics out there. I don't have a design wall, and don't really have a good space for one, and increasingly I find getting down on the floor is uncomfortable for laying out quilts. For bigger things I could probably use the church's long tables at a time when no one else is down there, but it's kind of an effort to pull all my supplies there for a smaller quilt.
Maybe someday I will make a "portable" (foldable) design wall, I have heard of such things, but I am not quite handy enough to make one to the degree of sturdiness I would want. I think a foamcore one would get beat up pretty fast considering where I'd have to store it.
***
The most recent MLP "micro comic" came. This one features Rarity. It is, IMHO, by far the best of the micro-comic stories (well, so far). The storyline is the best (most complex, and I think it showcases Rarity's personality traits - both her hatred of getting dirty and sweaty, and her generosity to other ponies that allows her to overcome that hatred if necessary). And also - well, it's a Cook/Price comic, and I think they're the best ones, of the comic artists, at capturing the style and spirit of the show. And another thing they do that I love - they put in little pop-cultural references that are funny and apropos. (In this one, there are several 70s references - Rarity winds up on a flower-child commune sort of place).
The story is funny and cute, and as I said, it showcases who Rarity is well.
As for the pop culture references, maybe I liked them because they were 70s references (I was a child in the 70s, but I remember a lot of it....heck, I probably remember more of it than some people who were in their 20s at the time ;) )
There's a Bluto (from Animal House) pony. And Venus Flytrap and Johnny Fever. And (I think, they're less recognizable to me) two M*A*S*H ponies playing poker (At least, there's one who looks like Hawkeye, but I don't recognize the other). And my favorite one? A reluctant and apprehensive Fluttershy being chatted up by "two wild and crazy stallions."
Oh, and the posters the hippie ponies have up: "Celestia Superstar." And "Mane." And one for "The Baboons" featuring a pony wearing a Mike Nesmith hat. It's the little things like that that I enjoy so much.
There may be others I missed (Dennis Hopper pony, mayhaps?) but at any rate - those little references make me laugh. (They were missing a Laugh-In reference, or, if they did one, it wasn't obvious to me. Then again, I pretty much only saw Laugh-In in re-runs, and not many of those at that. But I still know some of the main characters - the Henry Gibson giant-sunflower guy reciting poetry, and the tattooed girl, and the old man on the tricycle....)
There are also a lot of show-references in this comic, things that happened during all the series of the show (including Luna's role in people's dreams). And background ponies - Lyra is there, and Octavia, and DJ PON-3, and the Flower "sisters." And Derpy has a large (well, in terms of the drawing size, at least) cameo.
Also: Celestia has best bathtub. But you would expect that.
And there's a bonus comic at the end featuring Hayseed Turniptruck and his travails at trying to impress Rarity. ("Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Poor Hayseed....) Very nicely done and I'm glad I decided to order the micro comics. (The Hayseed one is done in a different art style. That's another thing I like, that the comics let each artist kind of go with his or her own style: some are more cutesy, some are more detailed....)
I did start cutting on the next quilt this weekend; this is going to be a simple "brickwork" pattern done with 4 1/2 by 9 1/2 (finished dimensions) rectangles (and smaller rectangles every other row's end to offset). Mostly, I am using the "Hideaway" collection by Lauren and Jessie Jung....I bought pieces of this a while back just because I liked it, then I found a pattern I wanted to do.
(And I find I have two half-yard pieces that are duplicates - a turquoise background cuckoo-clock design, and a green fabric with kind of a swirly, almost paisley design. They got put to one side as possible swap-fabrics. Yes, I want to do a swap this summer; I am finding stuff I either have duplicates of, or bought a ton of and used what I wanted, or which I have fallen out of love with).
I have a few other fabrics from different lines mixed in - a couple of bee prints, a Christmas print with a red background and large pinecones on it (well, it goes with the Alpine theme of the other fabrics). And I have a huge piece of my favorite fabric in the line (a forest with chalets) for the border (and another huge piece - got on a very good sale - for the backing. Yay having all the fabric I need for a quilt on hand)
This is one that will be layout-intensive. Not sure if it will be small enough to do what I typically do - strip the pillows and top sheets (and, uh, amigurumi Ponies) off my bed and lay the fabrics out there. I don't have a design wall, and don't really have a good space for one, and increasingly I find getting down on the floor is uncomfortable for laying out quilts. For bigger things I could probably use the church's long tables at a time when no one else is down there, but it's kind of an effort to pull all my supplies there for a smaller quilt.
Maybe someday I will make a "portable" (foldable) design wall, I have heard of such things, but I am not quite handy enough to make one to the degree of sturdiness I would want. I think a foamcore one would get beat up pretty fast considering where I'd have to store it.
***
The most recent MLP "micro comic" came. This one features Rarity. It is, IMHO, by far the best of the micro-comic stories (well, so far). The storyline is the best (most complex, and I think it showcases Rarity's personality traits - both her hatred of getting dirty and sweaty, and her generosity to other ponies that allows her to overcome that hatred if necessary). And also - well, it's a Cook/Price comic, and I think they're the best ones, of the comic artists, at capturing the style and spirit of the show. And another thing they do that I love - they put in little pop-cultural references that are funny and apropos. (In this one, there are several 70s references - Rarity winds up on a flower-child commune sort of place).
The story is funny and cute, and as I said, it showcases who Rarity is well.
As for the pop culture references, maybe I liked them because they were 70s references (I was a child in the 70s, but I remember a lot of it....heck, I probably remember more of it than some people who were in their 20s at the time ;) )
There's a Bluto (from Animal House) pony. And Venus Flytrap and Johnny Fever. And (I think, they're less recognizable to me) two M*A*S*H ponies playing poker (At least, there's one who looks like Hawkeye, but I don't recognize the other). And my favorite one? A reluctant and apprehensive Fluttershy being chatted up by "two wild and crazy stallions."
Oh, and the posters the hippie ponies have up: "Celestia Superstar." And "Mane." And one for "The Baboons" featuring a pony wearing a Mike Nesmith hat. It's the little things like that that I enjoy so much.
There may be others I missed (Dennis Hopper pony, mayhaps?) but at any rate - those little references make me laugh. (They were missing a Laugh-In reference, or, if they did one, it wasn't obvious to me. Then again, I pretty much only saw Laugh-In in re-runs, and not many of those at that. But I still know some of the main characters - the Henry Gibson giant-sunflower guy reciting poetry, and the tattooed girl, and the old man on the tricycle....)
There are also a lot of show-references in this comic, things that happened during all the series of the show (including Luna's role in people's dreams). And background ponies - Lyra is there, and Octavia, and DJ PON-3, and the Flower "sisters." And Derpy has a large (well, in terms of the drawing size, at least) cameo.
Also: Celestia has best bathtub. But you would expect that.
And there's a bonus comic at the end featuring Hayseed Turniptruck and his travails at trying to impress Rarity. ("Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Poor Hayseed....) Very nicely done and I'm glad I decided to order the micro comics. (The Hayseed one is done in a different art style. That's another thing I like, that the comics let each artist kind of go with his or her own style: some are more cutesy, some are more detailed....)
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